H E who seeks to understand the character and achievement of Abraham Lincoln must begin with a study of the man’s honesty. At the base of his nature, in the tap-root and very fiber of his being, pulsed a fidelity to truth, whether of thought or of deed, peculiar to itself. So thoroughgoing was this characteristic that it seems to have begun in him where in other men it generally leaves off. Politicians without number have yielded a work-a-day obedience to the rules of honor, but there is record

E ARLY one spring morning long ago,—to be precise, on the 15th day of April, 1837,—a solitary horseman might have been seen riding along the wagon road that ran from New Salem to Springfield. He was obviously not one of G. P. R. James’s jaunty heroes, nor yet a new-world variation on the melancholy Don, but romance and allegory alike can furnish forth few figures more striking than that which skirted the Illinois prairies on this particular forenoon. The traveler, sad-eyed and gaunt, was our fri

I F the judicial rather than the forensic temperament swayed Lincoln’s conduct as a lawyer, it should be remembered that this was a drawback only when he found himself on the wrong side of a suit. When he stood on the right side, with time enough to exert all the faculties of his slow-moving mind, no advocate in the State was more skillful and effective. Indeed, those very qualities which impaired his usefulness for the winning of a bad cause made him especially strong in a good one. After he hi

T HE love of money never twined its sinister roots around the heart of Abraham Lincoln. He was wholly free of any desire to amass riches, nor could he understand why others should be eager to do so. The mere piling up of possessions seemed to him unworthy of an able man’s ambition, and the benevolence which manifests itself in grinding the faces of many fellow-beings, so as to acquire a fortune for a few public benefactions, hardly appealed to one whose humanity took the form of honest, kindly a

S IDE by side with Lincoln’s life at the bar ran a different yet kindred career—that of the politician. These twin pursuits claimed him at almost the outset, as they claim so many men who enter upon the law. But in his case the customary order was reversed, for he had been elected to public office before he became a lawyer. Early during the spring of 1832, while still a clerk in Denton Offutt’s grocery store at New Salem, Lincoln announced himself to be an aspirant for electoral honors. How this

T HE morning that my father finished that concluding paragraph—the last that he ever wrote—he called mother into the study. With an air of mysterious solemnity, belied by the twinkle in his eye, he beckoned her to the desk. “Meta, if you promise not to tell a soul, I’ll tell you a state secret,” he said. “I’ve got Lincoln to Congress at last.” Then more earnestly he continued: “It wasn’t an easy job either. I’ve fought all his battles side by side with him, and the world will probably never know

WITH THE CORRESPONDING ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES Archer’s Ethical Obligations : Ethical Obligations of the Lawyer. By Gleason Leonard Archer. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1910. Arnold : The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Isaac N. Arnold. Seventh Edition. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. 1896. Atkinson : The Boyhood of Lincoln. By Eleanor Atkinson. New York: The McClure Company. 1908.   Banks : The Lincoln Legion. The Story of Its Founder and Forerunners. By Rev. Louis Albert Banks,

The author would have wished to acknowledge his indebtedness to the many admirers of Abraham Lincoln who so cheerfully and readily replied to his inquiries. The responsiveness of all to whom he applied for information and particularly the eagerness with which collectors entrusted precious pamphlets and scrap-books to him were a constant source of gratification and encouragement. In the following notes there are frequent references to secondary authorities. They are given, not to authenticate wha