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that hope effective is to cut asunder the bonds that tie us together, and take our separate position in the family of nations." These sentiments found a ready echo among the seditiously disposed people of South Carolina.

The period for the electoral struggle for the Presidency was approaching. The conventions for the nomination of candidates had met. The Democratic National Convention assembled on the

25th of April, at Charleston, in 1860. South Carolina. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, was elected president, and a platform was adopted. This, however, did not concede to the South all it claimed as "necessary guarantees for the preservation of the Union," and the Southern delegates withdrawing, organized a Southern convention. This met on the 3d of May, but after many ineffectual attempts, failing to agree upon a candidate for the Presidency, adjourned to meet at Richmond. The Democratic National Convention had also adjourned to meet at Baltimore, on the 13th of June. On reassembling, a On reassembling, a large number of delegates again withdrew. Those remaining nominated Stephen A: Douglas, of Illinois, for President, and Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, for Vice-President. The seceders met and nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, then Vice-President of the United States, for President, and for Vice-President, Joseph Lane, of Oregon. These nominations were afterward confirmed by the convention at Richmond. In the mean time a convention, styling itself the "Constitu

tional Union," met at Baltimore on the 9th of May, and nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, for President, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for VicePresident.

Again, at Chicago, on the 16th of May, the convention of that now imposing party, the National Republican, met in convention and nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, for President, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, for VicePresident.

The leaders of the South had evidently determined to forego the advantage of their usual political combinations with their fellow-partisans of the North, by whose aid they could alone hope to secure their prescriptive importance in the Union. They were willing thus to weaken by division those who were still inclined to succor them in an unavoidable struggle with a party whose power if established they professed to consider fatal to their rights. It would seem that disunion with them was a predetermined act, and that they wished the success of the National Republicans, whom they persisted in denouncing as abolitionists, to justify their contemplated Southern rebellion to the people of the South, whose sensitive anxieties for the security of their slave interests might be readily excited to an angry resistance to the constitutional authorities of the United States. The division of the Democratic party, from which certainly the Southern leaders could have no fears of an invasion of their constitutional rights, threw the election into the power of the Republicans, whom

LINCOLN DENOUNCED IN THE SOUTH.

they professed to dread as the avowed enemies of the institutions of the South. The result, easily foreseen, soon occurred. As it became evident that Lincoln would be elected, the conspirators of the South, some of whom were in the highest places of the States and of the Union, began, through message, speech, and the press, to denounce the Republican candidate as an abolitionist, whose purpose, at the head of a powerful party, was to interfere with Southern slavery, and by incendiary appeals to excite the people to resistance. In South Carolina, the conspirators, confident of the sympathy of the misguided people, did not hesitate to declare their rebellious purposes. On the day before the Presidential election, the governor of South Carolina delivered a message to the Legislature, in which he boldly avowed the principles of secession, and recommended the appointment of delegates to a convention

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to be assembled for the purpose of dissolving all connection with the United States.

Even in Virginia, Governor Letcher, at that early date, did not fear to suggest treason, and declared in his message to the Legislature: "It is useless to attempt to conceal the fact, that in the present temper of the Southern people, it [alluding to the probable election of Lincoln] can not and will not be submitted to. *** The idea of permitting such a man to have the control and direction of the army and navy of the United States, and the appointment of high judicial and executive officers, postmasters included, can not be entertained by the South for a moment." vember the 6th the election took place, and Abraham Lincoln, as was foreseen, was elected President of the United States. His principles and character will be best illustrated by a cursory history of his life and political career.

On No

CHAPTER II.

Birth of Lincoln.-His Ancestry.-Humble Parentage.-Early Education.-Small Accomplishments extensively Utilized.-Handling of the Axe.-Death of his Mother.-Study of the Bible.-Second Marriage of his Father.-Young Lincoln's earliest Literary Acquirements.--Later pursuits of Learning.-Bodily Development and Accomplishments. First Trip on a Flat Boat.-A Migration to Illinois.-A feat of "Splitting Rails."--A Hand on a Flat Boat.-Reward of Industry and Integrity.-General Manager of a Shop and Mill.--A Volunteer in the Black Hawk War.--A sudden and unexpected Promotion.--Return to Civil Life.--A Candidate for the Legislature.—A Partnership in a Shop.-Failure.-An extemporaneous Surveyor-Elected Member of the Legislature.-Good opinion of his Constituents.-Reading Law.—Admission to the Bar.-Professional Success.-Prominent among the Politicians.-A Canvass of the State. Elected Whig Member of Congress.-His Votes and Opinions on the Slave Question. Return to practice as a Lawyer.-Member of Whig National Convention.-A Champion of the Republican Party.-Nominated a United States Senator.-Canvass of the State.-Contest with Douglas.-A Victory and a Defeat.-His candid Answers to Questions on Slavery.--Nominated for the Presidency.-Enthusiasm of his Party.— An exciting Canvass.-Elected President.—Sudden Elevation.—“Honest Abe."-Character and Manners.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN was born in Hardin | out property and without education, County, Kentucky, on the 12th of Feb- Thomas Lincoln found himself in the ruary, 1809. From the dark and con- unenviable position of one of those fused traditions of an humble ancestry, a mole-eyed investigator has traced back the lineage of our President to some forefathers who emigrated from England to America, and settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where they were engaged in the tranquil pursuit of farming, and known as peaceful members of the "Society of Friends." One of them, however, the great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, removed to Virginia, where his grandson, Thomas Lincoln, the father of the President, was born. The family soon migrated to Kentucky. Here Thomas, Abraham's father, being left poor and uneducated, led the life of an itinerant laborer, ready to put his shoulder to any work that promised a fair day's wages. He, however, on marrying Nancy Hanks, in 1806, became less movable, and fixed himself a settler in Hardin County, where our President was born.

poor whites" who in a society based on slavery are contemned alike by the negro and his master. He therefore determined to emigrate to a free State, where personal labor was deemed no humiliation and honest poverty no disgrace. He accordingly moved, in the autumn of 1816, to Spencer County, Indiana, when his son Abraham had reached the age of eight years. The youth had already, while in Kentucky, picked up some stray scraps of learning, and could not only read and cipher, but write. This rare accomplishment of the juvenile scholar proved invaluable to the Lincoln family and the illiterate neighbors of their forest home in Indiana. They had left relatives and friends in Kentucky, and were naturally desirous of keeping up a correspondence with them. Young Abraham's Lincoln's services were accordingly put into With-requisition as the secretary, not only of

PURSUIT OF LITERATURE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

his father, who could barely sign his name, and of his mother, who, "though a ready reader, had not been taught the accomplishment of writing," but of many of the other rude settlers of the wilderness. He thus early acquired a facility of expression which proved of good service to him in after time, and aided his future advancement in life.

This, however, was only the occupation of his rare intervals of leisure. He more frequently handled the axe than the pen. A log-house was to be built, and his father's land to be cleared of its forest growth of oaks and hickories. Abraham was young, but well-grown, and wondrously strong for his age, and took to the rude labor with instinctive readiness. "An axe was at once placed in his hands, and from that time until he attained his twenty-third year, when not employed in labor on the farm, he was almost constantly wielding that most useful instrument."*

In 1818, young Lincoln lost his mother, a pious woman of the Baptist persuasion, who had taken care that no Sunday should pass without having a chapter of the Bible read either by herself or one of her children. Her son is said thus to have acquired a familiarity with the words and principles of the Scriptures, which made an abiding impression upon his memory and conduct. His father, however, soon provided himself with another wife, by marrying a Mrs. Sally Johnston, of Kentucky, who proved a worthy substitute to her not

"Life of Abraham Lincoln." Horace Greeley & Co., New York.

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able predecessor. Schooling was too dear, and the necessity of hard work too pressing, to allow of much devotion to study, and Abraham was left chiefly to his own unaided exertions for his education. With barely a year's instruction in all, he succeeded, by diligently reading the rare books that fell in his way, in developing his naturally vigorous understanding, and preparing himself for the success which has marked his life. His earliest literary acquisitions, after his spelling-book and the Bible, were a stray copy of Esop's Fables, which he conned until he learned it by heart; the Pilgrim's Progress, Franklin's Autobiography, Weems' picturesque Life of Washington, and Riley's wondrous narrative of travel. At the age of fifteen he earned, by three days' work, in reaping a distant neighbor's corn, Ramsay's History of the Revolution, and soon after crowned his arduous pursuit of literature with the acquisition of a copy of Plutarch's Lives. "He studied English grammar after he was twenty-three years of age; at twenty-five he mastered enough of geometry, trigonometry, and mensuration to enable him to take the field as a surveyor; and he studied the six books of Euclid after he had served a term in Congress, and when he was forty years of age, amid the pressure of an extensive legal practice, and of frequent demands upon his time by the public."

In the mean time, while young Lincoln was striving against every disad"Life of Abraham Lincoln." Horace Greeley & Co., New York.

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of age, were at once put to service. The summer was mostly spent in building the log-house, as a protection against the storms and frosts of the approaching autumn and winter. The next step was to prepare the bit of prairie which had fallen to the lot of the Lincolns, for a crop of Indian corn. It was now that Abraham accomplished that memorable feat of "splitting the rails" for the tenacre field, which has subsequently been cultivated to such advantage by the fertilizing rhetoric of political orators.

The winter compelling an intermission of labor on the farm, and the severity of the season restricting the means of livelihood at home, young Lincoln was induced to accept the offer of a neighbor to assist in floating a flat-boat from Beardstown, on the Illinois River, to New Orleans. Having performed this service greatly to the satisfaction of his employer, he was rewarded by him with the appointment of general manager of his shop and mill in New Salem. He had been thus occupied for several months, when, on the breaking out of the Black Hawk war in 1832, he joined a company of volunteers. Lincoln was at once chosen the captain, an unexpected elevation, which he declared gave him more pleasure than any subsequent honor which has fallen to his lot. The war being soon brought to a close, Lincoln returned to civil life, after the brief military career of three months.

The fame of the prairie lands of Illinois, with their seductive promise of cheap lands and natural richness of soil, had reached the Lincoln family, and tempted them to seek its "fresh fields and pastures new." Accordingly, in the spring of 1830, Thomas Lincoln, with his wife and children, abandoned his home in Indiana and journeyed to the new land of promise. Ox-carts loaded with the women folk, the household goods, the farming utensils, and provision of corn and bacon for the journey, and driven by the patriarch and his son, our present President, carried all the hopes and fortunes of the Lincolns to their new home. After a slow and long journey through an unfrequented country, picturesque to the eye with its diversified scenery, but trying to the endurance of the traveler with its mountain acclivities, its deep watercourses, and perplexing forests, they finally arrived in Illinois. Here the On reaching New Salem, he was inLincolns settled in Macon County, duced to offer himself as a "Whig" canwhere the strong arm and skilled labor didate for the Legislature, but was deof Abraham, now one-and-twenty years | feated by his Democratic opponent. He

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