Vicksburg a delegation waited on Mr. Lincoln complaining because Grant had paroled Pemberton's army. Pemberton, they said, would soon have the men together again. Mr. Lincoln did not attempt to argue with them. He simply told them the story of Sykes's dog, remarking, as he ended, that he guessed Pemberton's army was in about the same condition as the dog. He told the same story on other occasions when delegations came to him to criticize the paroling of Confederate troops. Each time, if we believe his auditors, the story had its peculiar color. Thus there were several authentic versions of the one story.

Match a highly disciplined intellect with an equally disciplined moral sense and you have conduct of the highest order, and that is what we find in Abraham Lincoln. He could do more than solve problems, he could fit his conduct to the solution. And this moral discipline was as much the result of training from boyhood as his intellectual discipline. He had a keen notion of right and wrong as a boy, and was willing to fight for what he believed right; although he was by no means a fighting boy. On the contrary, he was peaceable and companionable, loving games, tests of strength, talk, debates, jokes, jokes so rough that they might often be called horseplay.

All the stories left us of his early life, however, show that while he would not fight for the sake of fighting, he did not hesitate to show his power where it was a case of injustice. There is a story of his defeat of the leader of a gang of bad boys in the neighborhood of his early home in Sangamon County, which may be regarded as typical of his attitude. His thrashing of the leader of the Clary's Grove gang brought him great honor in the community, and certainly made for the future order and peace of the neighborhood.

He not only had a contempt for the bully, but sympathy with the weak. So far as we know, Lincoln's first active sympathy with the condition of the negro came from a visit to a slave market in New Orleans. All that he saw in his youth of the

outside world came from an occasional trip on a flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. There is no doubt that these trips were a real factor in the education of this wideawake boy. It was on one of these trips that he visited a slave market, and his impressions were so strong that there is reason to believe that he often referred to the experience in discussing the slave question in after years. Thus his sympathies had been early stirred on the question; so that when the time came that he had an opportunity to express himself, as it did first in 1837, he was the quicker to do it. He not only had an intellectual conviction that slavery was wrong, but he had the backing of his emotions. Nevertheless, it must have taken a great deal of courage to sign a public protest against the institution as early as he did. He was only twenty-eight years of age and a member of the Illinois legislature. Resolutions had been brought up in the assembly disapproving of the formation of abolition societies, declaring that the right of property in slaves was sacred, and that the general government could not fairly abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of the citizens of the District. Lincoln and one of his fellow representatives were the only members of the body to protest against these resolutions. It is not the first proof that we have that he was already courageous enough to fit his conduct to his convictions, but it is certainly the most decisive. From this time his political courage and consistency showed itself in many different ways. He was in Congress when the Mexican War broke out; and his condemnation of the course of the United States towards Mexico in this unjust and unnecessary war, shows what kind of material he was made of. He had to submit to very severe criticism, even from many of his best friends in Illinois, for his course, but it only made him the more effective in his opposition.

Lincoln's moral courage in public life had a severe test in the '50's when the slave question became acute. He had practically

given up politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as nothing before ever had. He immediately began to discuss the question in public and private. And very early in these discussions, he came to the conclusion which later became the backbone of his great debate with Douglas: that the country could not exist half slave and half free; that it must be all one thing, or all the other. It was a most unpopular doctrine in his own party, the Whig, and he found himself lined up with a few bolting Whigs and Democrats, the nucleus which, in 1856, formed itself into the Republican Party. Ardent Whig that he had been, the break was a serious matter to Mr. Lincoln; and he did not make it until he was convinced it was only through a new organization that the advance of slavery could be stopped.

Perhaps no more impressive proof of Lincoln's fidelity to principle is found in his whole career than his refusal, in his debate with Douglas, to allow his opponent to manipulate his argument in such a way that it would mean one thing in the North and another thing in the South. Mr. Lincoln insisted on asking questions of Douglas which made it possible for the latter to satisfy the people of Illinois that he was sound on the slavery question. The result was that he was elected, Lincoln defeated. But these answers which satisfied Illinois dissatisfied the South. They were in contradiction with what Douglas had persuaded the South that he believed. Lincoln showed the country that Douglas "was carrying water on both shoulders.” Lincoln realized what he was doing, but he persisted in asking the questions which helped his own defeat, because he was determined to do his part in making the people of the country understand the question at issue. That is, he held it of more importance that the country should be clear in its views and sound in its conclusions, than that he should be elected, or that his party be successful. He showed, in fact, the highest order of political morality. And that such political morality is in the long run the best of policies, the fact of his nomination

and election to the presidency, two years later, is good enough evidence.

There is no episode in Mr. Lincoln's administration as President of the United States which is better evidence of his fundamental sense of justice than his efforts, early in the war, to bring about what is called compensated emancipation; that is, to persuade Congress to buy and free the slaves of the Southern states. He saw very clearly that emancipation would probably be the result of the war to save the Union. He saw that it might be necessary as a war measure. He revolted against the idea of confiscating the property of the South, though that property might be in men. Therefore he worked out the plan of buying the blacks. I doubt if there was any experience of his career as President of the United States which gave him greater regret than the failure of this measure. The whole episode is an excellent example of the humanity and sense of justice which underlay all of his public policy, - qualities, which, as I have said, had their foundation in his youth, and which were as logical an outcome of the moral training which he gave himself as his power of logical thought and of clear and eloquent expression were the results of his intellectual training.

IDA M. TARBELL