158. The Backwoodsman Who Became President. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, February 12, 1809. His parents were so poor that they hardly knew that they were poor. When he was seven years old his family crossed the Ohio River and settled in Indiana. There they found a place in the deep, dark forest, in the southern part of the state, and began to build a cabin for a home. Abe worked hard to help build it. It was not much of a house—only fourteen feet square. One side was left out, and here they built the fire. It was not very warm in winter and not very cool in summer. The hard ground was the floor.

The father was a sort of carpenter, and out of rough timbers he made a table and some three-legged stools. He also made the bedsteads, which consisted of poles driven into the wall.

In the loft of the cabin Abe made himself a bed of leaves. Every night he climbed into the loft by means of wooden pins driven into the wall. He was busy helping cut down trees and burning them to make room for a patch of corn and pumpkins.

The lad and his sister roasted the ears of young corn over the fire. The ripe corn was ground into meal from which corn bread was made. This was baked in the ashes or on a board in front of a bed of red-hot coals.

The woods, great thick woods for miles on all sides of them, were broken only here and there by a "clearing." In these forests Abe went hunting with a gun on his shoulder. He often came back laden with squirrels, wild turkeys, and other game.

They were living in the cabin when Abe's mother sickened and died. He was broken-hearted. She had taught him what little he knew. Her last words to him were: "Try to live as I have taught you and to love your Heavenly Father."

Many years after, when he became famous, he said: "All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." She was put in a coffin roughly cut out of logs by the same tools that had made their furniture, and laid to rest in a corner of the clearing. Long years afterward a good man put a stone over the grave, with this inscription: "Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the mother of President Lincoln, died October 5, A.D. 1818, aged 35 years."

After a year his father went back to Kentucky to look about for a wife. He found a widow, named Sarah Bush Johnston, and married her. He had known her before he met Nancy Hanks. She was thrifty and industrious, and her bedding and other household goods filled a four-horse wagon.

Before winter came she made her husband put a good floor, and a door, and windows in the cabin. She took charge of Abe and his sister, and made them "look a little more human." She put good clothes on the children and put them to sleep in comfortable beds.

159. Lincoln Educates Himself. Schools were scarce in that new country, and Abe never had more than a year at school. His stepmother encouraged him in every way to study at home.

When Abe got a taste for reading it was hard to satisfy it. He read the Bible, Æsop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, a history of the United States, and Weem's Life of Washington. He borrowed the Revised Statutes of Indiana. These were all solid books, good for a young boy to read. When a sentence pleased him, he read and reread it. If he did not own the book, he took many notes, filling his copy book with choice sentences.

John Hanks, a boy brought up with Lincoln, says: "When Abe and I returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn bread, sit down, take a book, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read." He read, wrote, and ciphered incessantly.

Young Lincoln was soon able to do a "man's labor," although only a boy. He was strong and powerful, and a great favorite. In that family of brothers, sisters, and cousins, his good-natured jokes and stories kept peace. Abe was the great story-teller of the family.

At the age of nineteen Lincoln reached his full height of six feet four inches. By that time he had read every book he could find, and could "spell down" the whole country. "He could sink an ax deeper into the wood than any man I ever saw," said a neighbor.

When Abe was twenty-one, the entire family started for Illinois. Along forest roads, and across muddy prairies, for two weeks they traveled till they came to the Sangamon River.

They built a cabin on the north fork of the river. With the help of John Hanks, young Lincoln plowed fifteen acres, planted it in corn, and split the rails from the tall walnut trees on the ground and fenced it.

160. Tries to be a Business Man. The next year he was hired to take a flatboat to New Orleans. The boat was loaded with hogs, pork, and corn. The wages of the trip were fifty cents a day, and twenty dollars besides for each man.

They "poled" and rowed their slow way down the Ohio and the Mississippi. At New Orleans, Lincoln first saw a slave auction. He saw men and women sold. As he turned away he said to a friend: "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard." He did not then dream of the mighty blow he would one day strike. After his return from New Orleans, he became a clerk in a store.

One day a woman gave Lincoln six cents too much. That very evening he walked several miles to find her and give back the money. At another time Lincoln found that he had not given a woman as much tea as she paid for. He went in search of her and gave her the rest of the tea.

About this time Lincoln joined a company of soldiers going to the Black Hawk War. An Indian chief named Black Hawk was on the "war path." All the frontier was up in arms against him and his band of braves.

Lincoln was well pleased when nearly all the men in his company walked over and stood by his side. This was their way of electing a captain. No election in later days gave him greater pleasure.

Little fighting was done by Lincoln's company, but sitting around the camp fires in the evening, he became famous as a story-teller, and he made many friends.

161. Makes a Success in Politics. On his return from the war, though he was only twenty-three years old, he became a candidate for the state legislature, but was defeated.

A little later he was again a candidate. This time he won. After the election, he said to a friend: "Did you vote for me?" "I did," replied the man. "Then you must lend me two hundred dollars." Lincoln needed a suit of clothes and money to pay the expenses for traveling in a stagecoach to the capital!

In 1837 the legislature passed a set of resolutions in favor of slavery and condemning the Abolitionists. Lincoln could not stand this. He and one other man signed a protest declaring that slavery was founded on "injustice and bad policy."

Lincoln was reËlected to the legislature seven times. He generally got more votes than other men on the ticket because the people liked his quaint sayings and his unpretending manner.

In the meantime, after three or four years of study, he was given a license to practice law. He made it a rule never to take a case which he believed to be wrong. He was a successful lawyer, but the road to fame by way of the law was a slow one. It gave Lincoln a chance to engage in politics, as we have already seen.

He liked "stump speaking." He liked to go about the country from one speaking place to another, or to travel from one county to another to meet the different sessions of the courts. He spoke for what he believed to be the truth. He was always in earnest, and made his hearers feel that he was sincere.

In 1840 he was one of Harrison's orators, and in 1844 he threw all his power and influence in favor of Henry Clay, his favorite among the great men, for the presidency.

In 1846 the Whigs of Springfield, where he was then living, put Lincoln forward for Congress, and succeeded in getting him elected. He was not in favor of the war with Mexico, then going on, and was not selected to run again. Lincoln returned to Springfield, and began the practice of law with greater success than ever before.

When Senator Douglas of Illinois, in 1854, carried the Kansas-Nebraska Bill through Congress, anti-slavery men all over the nation raised a storm of indignation. This bill repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had stood for thirty years, and threw the territories open to slavery.

Douglas spoke at the state fair, held in Springfield. He tried to explain why he favored the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Lincoln made a speech four hours in length, ably answering the argument of Douglas. This speech made him the champion for the anti-slavery people in the state against Douglas.

The same question was fought out between them at Peoria, a little later. Again Lincoln met Douglas' arguments. People began to talk of Lincoln as the next United States senator. More and more, popular opinion in the state began to turn toward Lincoln.

Accordingly, in 1858, at Springfield, the Republicans in convention named Lincoln for United States senator. He made a speech to the Republicans in which he said that this country cannot remain half slave and half free—that it must become all slave or all free.

This called every man to face a new question. No greater question could be raised. Some friends of Lincoln pleaded with him not to say that the country could not remain half slave and half free. "I had rather be defeated with that expression in my speech than to be victorious without it," said Lincoln.

162. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Douglas attacked this speech, and Lincoln challenged him to hold several joint debates before the people of Illinois. Seven debates were arranged, in which Douglas insisted upon opening and closing four.

The people of Illinois were mainly farmers in 1858. They traveled long distances to hear these giants debate the question of slavery. Some of them were several days coming and going—in wagons, on horseback, or on foot. The newspapers in the larger cities sent men to listen to these debates, and take down the words used by Lincoln and Douglas. The editors knew the people were anxiously waiting to read what these men had to say about slavery.

"Can the people of a ... Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen ... exclude slavery?" Lincoln asked. "Yes," said Douglas. That was a fatal answer. For, by this answer, Douglas lost the support of the Democrats of the South, although he held the Democrats of Illinois. He could still be senator, but he could never be president.

The debates went on. "I do not perceive," said Lincoln, "that because the white man is to have the superior position, the negro should be denied everything ... there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights [named] in the Declaration of Independence ... I agree with Judge Douglas, he [the negro] is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowments. But, in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

These debates made Lincoln widely known. He accepted invitations to speak in Ohio, New York, and New England.

In May, 1860, the Republicans of Illinois met in state convention. Lincoln was there. The people picked him up, lifted him over their heads, and placed him on the platform. The cheering was loud. Just at this moment John Hanks came into the hall carrying two fence rails, with the Stars and Stripes mounted between them, bearing in large words the following: "Taken from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the Sangamon Bottom in the year 1830." The people stood up and cheered, and threw their hats high and shouted for Lincoln, the "rail-splitter." He made them a speech. The convention then and there named him as the choice of the Republican party of Illinois for the next President of the United States.

163. Lincoln President. A few weeks later Abraham Lincoln was nominated in Chicago by the National Convention of the Republican party for the presidency. Just as the passage of Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill killed the old Whig party, so the debates between Lincoln and Douglas split the Democratic party into a northern and a southern wing.

Douglas was nominated by the northern wing, and Breckenridge by the southern wing. This division in the Democratic party resulted in the election of Lincoln to the presidency, in November, 1860.

During the fall and winter, seven southern states left the Union, and set up a government called the "Confederate States of America." They had their government all in running order before Lincoln left Springfield.

In February, 1861, Lincoln said good-by to the people of Springfield, and started for Washington to take his seat as president. The people were bound to see him and hear his voice and shake his hand. Along the route there were cheers, bonfires, and military parades with miles of marching men. At Philadelphia he raised a flag over Independence Hall. He made a touching speech in regard to the men of the Revolution who had sat in that hall, and pledged himself to abide by the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

On March 4, with soldiers guarding the capitol, Lincoln read his inaugural address and took the oath of office which all presidents before him had taken. This speech was listened to with the greatest interest. It was now plain to everybody that Lincoln meant to fight, if fighting were necessary to save the Union.

In April Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. After awful hardships, Colonel Anderson and his men surrendered the fort to the Confederate troops.

Lincoln immediately sent forth the call for seventy-five thousand men. He made it a call to save the Union which Jackson, Webster, and Clay had done so much to save. War had come—civil war, the most dreadful kind of war. Four more states left the Union, and joined the Confederate States. But the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained with the Union.

While the Union troops were gathering and drilling in Washington, Lincoln declared a blockade of the ports of the Confederate States. He saw that if he closed the ports of the South he could prevent the shipment of cotton to Europe and so keep the Confederacy from getting supplies in exchange for the cotton. This was a heavy blow to the Confederates.

The South depended on the Merrimac to break the blockade. The Merrimac was a wooden war vessel which had been covered with a double coat of iron. It had a great iron beak with which it could ram wooden vessels. The Merrimac moved to attack the Union fleet, which was stationed in Hampton Roads. The shot fired from the Union vessels and from the shore batteries had no more effect on the iron coat of the Merrimac than hail on a tin roof. She sank one wooden war vessel and set another on fire. What was to hinder her from going up the Potomac and bombarding Washington?

But Lincoln placed his hope in the Monitor. This strange craft, "looking like a cheese box on a raft," reached Hampton Roads that night and took position to defend the Union fleet from the Merrimac. The next morning the two ironclads met in battle. It was a battle of giants. "Why do you stop firing?" asked an officer of one of the gunners on the Merrimac. "I can do her as much damage by snapping my thumb at her every two minutes and a half," was the reply.

It was a drawn battle. Washington was safe. The South could not break the blockade. This battle between the Merrimac and the Monitor changed the navies of the world. Wooden war vessels now gave place to iron vessels.

Meantime great battles were also being fought on land. In the East the Union army under General McClellan had been hurled back in an attack on Richmond. The Confederates under General Lee, in an attempt to invade the North, had been forced to retreat.

In the West events of equal importance were taking place. The Union troops under General Grant defeated the Confederates in many battles in Kentucky and Tennessee. Then with the aid of the Union fleet under Captain David Farragut, Grant captured the Confederate strongholds along the Mississippi River, and so cut the Confederacy in two.

Lincoln had declared the war was to be fought to save the Union and not to get rid of slavery. But as the war went on, the slavery question would keep coming up. The Confederates used the slaves to build forts, cook for the army, and to do other work. Thus the slave took the place of the white soldier. Other slaves raised food supplies and cared for the women. In this way the slaves were constantly being used to help fight against the Union.

The time had come to destroy slavery. Lincoln now saw that by freeing the slaves he could strike a heavy blow at the Confederacy. So as commander in chief of the Union armies he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation January 1, 1863.

The war, however, continued more than two years longer. The long list of dead and wounded on both sides saddened Lincoln. Day by day the lines in his kindly face grew deeper.

Finally the news came that General Grant had hammered General Lee's lines to pieces, and that Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were leaving Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.

Early in April President Lincoln went to visit the city of Richmond. Here he saw a city on fire, and a mob breaking into houses.

Grant was pursuing Lee's army. He overtook it, and on April 8 offered terms of surrender. Lee accepted. The president's heart was filled with gratitude that no more lives were to be sacrificed on either side.

164. President Lincoln Assassinated. The evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to Ford's Theater in Washington to rest his body and mind. As he sat in a box, John Wilkes Booth, an actor, shot him in the back of the head. Booth sprang upon the stage, flourished his revolver, and escaped.

Abraham Lincoln died the next day. Thus the nation lost a great man. He was truly a man "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

Many monuments have been built to honor the name of this great man. The most unique one is in Edinburgh, Scotland—a life-size statue with one hand holding the Emancipation Proclamation and with the other striking the chains from a half-rising slave. Another interesting monument is the Lincoln Tower of Christ Church, London. High on this tower in red, white, and blue tiles, is the American flag. The largest memorial is at Springfield, Illinois, the home of Lincoln and where he lies buried. One of the most celebrated is the St. Gaudens statue in Lincoln Park, Chicago.

165. Andrew Johnson as President. Before the war Lincoln had begun the reconstruction of the South. He did not admit that the Confederate states had ever really left the Union. Whenever one-tenth of the voters in a state would take an oath of loyalty to the Union, he allowed them to set up a new government. Lincoln then recognized this as the regular state government.

Lincoln did not live to apply his wise and moderate rule to more than a few states. Even here he met with opposition from Congress. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded him as President, was a Southerner, though a stout Unionist. He was honest, but rude and harsh in his behavior.

Johnson tried to carry out Lincoln's plans for reconciling the defeated states. But he did not consult Congress before he began. Congress felt that the President was trying to override its power. It made much more harsh conditions for re-admitting the southern states.

The quarrel between the President and Congress ended in an impeachment trial. Johnson retained his presidency by only one vote. Whether or not this trial was deserved may be a question. There can be no doubt, however, but that in dealing with foreign countries Andrew Johnson's motives were wise and patriotic as well.

Mexico had long owed certain debts to England, France, and Spain. The French emperor, Napoleon III, determined to make these debts an excuse for extending his power. He sent soldiers to Mexico, and used them to set up an Austrian archduke, Maximilian, as Emperor of Mexico. President Johnson sent American soldiers to the Rio Grande, and the French forces were withdrawn. Maximilian had now no support and later was shot.

In 1867 Johnson purchased Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000. Thus one more European power gave up its possessions in the New World.

166. The Progress of Reconstruction. Contentment of mind and regular, peaceful growth of trade and business did not return to the South until long after Johnson's presidency. Congress had little understanding of the difficulties with which it was faced. Under its reconstruction the life of the South was for a time cruelly unsettled. At last the old southern leaders themselves restored order. Then they governed much as before.

Lincoln had earned the respect of the South, for he was a leader great enough to be generous in victory. He might have checked the misrule which nearly ruined the industries of the South, and created more lasting bitterness than the war. The South suffered as great a loss as the North in the death of Lincoln.

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