From “The Life of Abraham Lincoln.” Copyright 1900, The McClure Co. Lincoln early in 1861. This is supposed to be the first, or one of the first, portraits made of Lincoln after he began to wear a beard WHY WE LOVE LINCOLN BY JAMES CREELMAN Author of “On the Great Highway” “As, in spite of some rudeness, republicanism is the sole hope of a sick world, so Lincoln, with all his foibles, is the greatest character since Christ.”— John Hay. NEW YORK THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY MCMIX Copyright, 1909

While our great battleship fleet thundered peace and friendship to the world, as it moved from sea to sea, stinging pens and voices in one country after another answered that America had suddenly passed from blustering youth to cynical old age, and that the harmless effrontery of our nationality in the past was not to be confounded with the cold-brained, organized, money-worshipping greed of the new generation of Americans. Meanwhile, in all parts of the American continent, preparations were bei

If Daniel Boone, the mighty hunter and Indian fighter, had not roused the imagination of Virginians and Carolinians by his wonderful and romantic deeds in the exploration of the Kentucky wilderness, the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln would not have left Rockingham County, Virginia, and “entered” seventeen hundred acres of land in Kentucky, where he was presently slain on his forest farm by a savage in the presence of his three sons. The youngest of these sons, Thomas Lincoln, was the father of t

Even at the age of ten years the frontier lad was a hard worker. When he was not wielding the axe in the forest, he was driving the horses, threshing, ploughing, assisting his father as a carpenter. He also “hired out” to the neighbors as ploughboy, hostler, water-carrier, baby-minder or doer of odd chores, at twenty-five cents a day. He suddenly began to grow tall, and there was no stronger youth in the community than the lank, loose-limbed boy in deerskins, linsey-woolsey, and coonskin cap, wh

Two years later the milk-sickness which had robbed Lincoln of his mother again visited the Pigeon Creek settlers, and his father decided to move to Illinois, where rich lands were to be had cheap. Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall accompanied the Lincoln family. The tall young woodchopper had just passed his twenty-first birthday, and it was he, in buckskin breeches and coonskin cap, who goaded on the oxen hitched to the clumsy wagon that creaked and lurched through the March mud and partly frozen stre

After the war of 1812, which was fought while Lincoln was in his rude Kentucky cradle, the continental spirit of the American people gradually rose to a high pitch, which was intensified in 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine was born and the Holy Alliance—not to say all Europe—was warned against armed interference with even the humblest republic of the Western Hemisphere. A new sense of power inspired swaggering, bragging American politics. So the Greeks bragged when Alexander overthrew Persia; so C

And now came the first great romance of Lincoln’s life. He fell in love with pretty, auburn-haired Anne Rutledge, daughter of the owner of the tavern in which he lived. His passion seemed hopeless, for the slender maid of seventeen was pledged to a young man from New York. Yet Lincoln loved and waited and hoped. His studies had worn him to emaciation. His ill-fitting clothes hung loose on his ungainly figure. His face was thin and his eyes sunken. He was poor, and a mere clodhopper. Still he lov

We love Lincoln because his life plucks every harp-string in true democracy. Lincoln is the answer to Socialism. He represents individualism, justifying opportunity. Self-government stands vindicated in his name. The thought of him is at once an inspiration and challenge to the poorest and most ignorant boy or man in America. But we love him most of all because he saved the nation which Washington began, and, in the bloody act of salvation, brought human slavery to an end in the great Republic.

It was in 1856 that the conscience and courage of the North found a voice in Abraham Lincoln. In his great soul the civilization of America suddenly flowered. In Congress Lincoln had vainly opposed the war with Mexico as “unnecessary and unconstitutional,” and he had gone back to Springfield to practice law with his new partner, William H. Herndon. The mighty sweep of events in the country had forced the Whigs and Northern Democrats to form the Free Soil party, not to extinguish slavery, but to

How still Lincoln became after his nomination for President in 1860! A note of acceptance, just twenty-three lines long, and then unbroken silence till the end of the campaign. He had thundered throughout the country against the Christless creed of slavery until men forgot his crude manners, preposterous figure and shrill, piping voice in admiration and reverence of his noble qualities. Now the crooked mouth was set hard. He retired to his modest home in Springfield, Illinois. Nor could threats

A month before the first vote for President was cast, Governor Gist, of South Carolina, addressed a secret circular to the other slave State governors saying, that if Lincoln were elected, which seemed almost certain, South Carolina would secede from the Union. The whole South was urged to join in this dismemberment of the republic. The answers of the governors, even before the election had occurred, showed that it was not the intention of the slave States to submit to the rule of the majority,

All the way from Springfield Lincoln carried a small handbag containing the manuscript of his inaugural address, upon which it was believed that the issue of peace or war would depend. The whole country waited anxiously to hear what the rail-splitter had to say, now that he had command of the army, navy and treasury. Would he dare to send troops to the rescue of Major Anderson and his men, besieged in Charleston harbor by rebellious South Carolina? Would he relieve the loyal garrisons hemmed in

Those who in peaceful times like these wonder why so strong and direct a man as Lincoln should have been so eager to conciliate the haughty and rebellious Confederacy, to assure the rebels that there would be no “coercion” or “invasion,” and to appeal to their historic national consciousness, rather than to tell them in so many words that they would be scourged into obedience, must consider that he at last realized the Southern misunderstanding of his purpose and temperament which caused the Gov

Lincoln’s tenderness of heart was one of his striking traits. The story of his life is full of touching incidents showing his pity for all living things in distress. As a boy he protected frogs and turtles from torture; as a frontiersman he returned young birds to their nests, and once rode back on his tracks over the prairie and dismounted to help a pig stuck in the mud; as President his habit of pardoning soldiers condemned to death excited the wrath of his generals. His heart melted at the si

To Lincoln the preservation of the Union was of much greater importance than the freedom of the negro race. No one who has ever glanced through his speeches and writings can have any doubt about that. When he signed the Proclamation of Emancipation he did it solely to save the Union. It was his mind, rather than his heart, that inspired the deed; for his inclination was to recognize the constitutional property right in slaves and to secure their emancipation by paying for them. This reverence fo

Wearying of McClellan’s delays and excuses for not fighting, Lincoln removed him and put Burnside in command of the Army of the Potomac. When Burnside fought at Fredericksburg the President appeared at the War Department telegraph office in carpet slippers and dressing gown, and waited all day without food for the shocking news of defeat that did not come until four o’clock the next morning—ten thousand dead and wounded. The President calmly endured the general abuse that followed this disaster.