THE CABIN IN THE CLEARING

It was only a small cabin in a forest-clearing in the wilderness of Indiana. It stood on a knoll overlooking a piece of ground where corn and vegetables grew. In the woods around the cabin were bear, deer, and other wild creatures. The furniture was rude, brought from the East, or made of logs and hickory-sticks, while the bed was a sack of leaves. In the big fireplace, the logs cut from the forest, burned with a cheerful blaze.

And there lived little Abe Lincoln, nine years old, with his father and sister and his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

Abe was born in Kentucky. When he was seven, his family moved to the cabin in Indiana. He helped clear the way through the wilderness to the new home. So with swinging the axe and blazing trails, he was made unusually large and strong for his age, alert and courageous—a real backwoods boy.

He could shoot, fish, cut down trees, and work on the farm in the clearing. In his veins ran the red blood of Kentucky pioneers. His grandfather, in the days of Daniel Boone, had been killed by an Indian, while Abe’s father—a child then—had been rescued from this same Indian by his brother, Mordecai Lincoln, a daring lad, who shot the savage with his dead father’s rifle, so saving his little brother.

HOW HE LEARNED TO BE JUST

But it was not all work for Abe on the new farm in Indiana. He picked wild plums and pawpaws in the woods, and ate corn dodgers, fried bacon, roast wild turkey, and fish caught in the Indiana streams. He went to school when he could, which was not often, for in those days schools were few and far between, and teachers were not many.

But little Abe had the best teacher of all, his mother, Nancy Lincoln. For, though his father could scarcely write his own name, his mother could read, and she loved books. She taught her little son his letters and how to read. Often they sat together in the cabin, Abe and his sister at their mother’s knee, while she read the Bible to them.

“I would rather my son would be able to read the Bible, than to own a farm, if he can’t have but one,” she said.

She was a beautiful woman, slender, sad, and pale, with dark hair. She was more refined than most women of those hardy pioneer times, but she could use a rifle, work on the farm, spin, and do other housework. Because of her gentle and firm character, she was loved and respected not only by her husband and children, but by her neighbours.

Above all things she had a deep and tender religious spirit which she shared with Abe and his sister, Sarah. She taught Abe to love truth and justice and to revere God. In time he could repeat by heart much of the Bible, and, when he grew up, he thought and wrote in the simple, clear, and forceful language of the Bible. And he learned from it his ideas of right and his scorn of wrong, making him “Honest Abe.”

OFF TO NEW ORLEANS

Young Abe Lincoln went on several flatboat trips carrying produce down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

One of these trips made a deep and lasting impression upon him. In New Orleans, he visited the slave-market. There negro men, women, and children were bought, sold, and flogged. Wives were torn from their husbands, children from their mothers, and auctioned off like cattle.

The anguish of these scenes wrung Lincoln’s heartstrings. With quivering lips, he said, “If ever I get a chance to hit that thing, I will hit it hard.”

John Hanks, a relative who was with him at the slave-market, said in after years:—

“Lincoln saw it; his heart bled; said nothing much, was silent, looked bad. I can say it, knowing him, that it was on this trip that he formed his opinions of slavery. It run its iron into him, then and there.”

THE KINDNESS OF LINCOLN

The Little Birds

When Lincoln was a lawyer, one day he was going with a party of lawyers to attend court. They were riding, two by two, on horseback through a country lane, Lincoln in the rear. As they passed through a thicket of wild plum and crab-apple trees, his friends missed him.

“Where is he?” they asked.

Just then Lincoln’s companion came riding up. “Oh,” replied he, “when I saw him last, he had caught two young birds that the wind had blown out of their nest, and was hunting for the nest to put them back.”

After a little while, Lincoln rode up, and when his friends rallied him about his tender heart, he said:—

“I could not have slept, unless I had restored those little birds to their mother.”

Rescuing the Pig

Another time, Lincoln was riding past a deep miry ditch, and saw a pig struggling in the mud. The animal could not get out, and was squealing with terror.

Lincoln looked at the pig and the mud, and then at his clothes—clean ones, that he had just put on. Then he decided in favour of the clean clothes, and rode along.

But he could not get rid of the thought of the poor animal struggling so pitifully in its terror. He had not gone far when he turned back.

He reached the ditch, dismounted, and tied his horse. Then he collected some old wooden rails, and with them made a foot-bridge to the bottom of the ditch. He carefully walked down the bridge, and caught hold of the pig. He pulled it out, and setting it on the ground, let it run away.

The screaming, struggling pig, had spattered Lincoln’s clean clothes with mud. His hands were covered with filth; so he went to the nearest brook, washed them, and wiped them on the grass.

Later, when telling a friend about his adventure, Lincoln said that he had rescued the pig for purely selfish reasons, “to take a pain out of his own mind.”

Opening Their Eyes

It was toward the close of the Civil War, the crisis had come, and the end of the long struggle was in sight. The Union troops were hemming in Richmond. President Lincoln went himself to City Point, and there he remained, anxiously waiting.

In his tent lived a pet cat. It had a family of new-born kittens. Sometimes, the President relieved his mind by playing with them.

Finally Richmond was taken, and Lincoln prepared to visit the city. Before he left his tent, he picked up one of the kittens, saying:—

“Little kitten, I must perform a last act of kindness for you before I go. I must open your eyes.”

He passed his hand gently over its closed lids, until the eyes opened; then he set the kitten on the floor, and said:—

“Oh! that I could open the eyes of my blinded fellow-countrymen as easily as I have those of that little creature!”

LINCOLN AND THE CHILDREN

Hurrah for Lincoln!

Abraham Lincoln loved children, and even strange children were drawn to him, as though they had known him all their lives. Here are a few of the stories told about Lincoln and his child-friends.

Soon after Lincoln was elected President, he went to Chicago, where he was welcomed with shouts and cheers.

Later, as he sat in a room talking with friends, a little boy was led in. At the sight of the President-elect, he took off his hat and swung it, shouting:—

“Hurrah for Lincoln!”

Lincoln rose, and catching the little fellow in his strong hands, tossed him to the ceiling, shouting:—

“Hurrah for you!”

Only Eight of Us, Sir!

On this same visit to Chicago, while Lincoln was talking with visitors, a little German girl, heading a delegation of other girls, walked timidly up to him.

“What do you want, my little girl? What can I do for you?” he asked kindly.

“I want your name,” she said.

“But there are many other little girls that want my name, and as I cannot give it to them all, they will feel hurt if I give it to you.”

She looked around at her companions, and said, “Only eight of us, sir!”

Lincoln could not resist that, so he sat down immediately, and forgetting his other visitors, took eight sheets of paper and wrote a line and his name on each. These he gave to the little girls, and they went away happy.

He’s Beautiful!

Once a little girl’s father took her to call upon Lincoln. She had been told that he was very homely. But when he lifted her on his knee and talked to her in his kindly, merry way, she turned to her father, and exclaimed:—

“O Pa! He isn’t ugly at all! He’s beautiful!”

Please Let Your Beard Grow

But there was another little girl who did not think so. She lived in Westfield, in the State of New York. She had seen Lincoln’s picture, and did not like it; so after his election she wrote a letter asking him to let his beard grow, as she thought it would make him better looking.

Lincoln enjoyed the letter very much.

It happened later that he was on a train passing through Westfield, and, as the train stopped for a few minutes, he was asked to address the people at the station. He told about the letter, and stroking his chin, added:—

“I intend to follow her advice!”

He then called for the little girl. She came forward, and he greeted her kindly.

Three Little Girls

One day, after Lincoln had gone to Washington, three little girls, the children of a workingman, went to the White House on a reception day. They joined the throng, and were pushed along until they came to where Lincoln was shaking hands with each of his visitors.

When the children reached him, they were so bashful, that they did not dare to put out their hands. But Lincoln saw them passing by, and called:—

“Little girls, are you going to pass me without shaking hands?”

Then, stooping over, he kept every one waiting while he shook hands with each child.

THE PRESIDENT AND THE BIBLE

Lincoln’s love of truth, justice, and mercy, his detestation of everything ignoble, brutal, or mean, were taught him or strengthened in him from childhood through his reading of the Bible.

The language of his speeches and writings was forceful and direct like the English of the Bible, and such a phrase as “A house divided against itself,” he took from the Bible.

While President, he used to carry a New Testament with him; and he could quote whole passages. He used often to rise early in the morning to get time to read and pray before the pressing business of the day began.

He read the Bible aloud to the coloured servants of the White House. Once, when a Committee of Coloured People waited upon him, to present him with a fine copy of the Bible, he took it and made a speech to them, a part of which was:—

“In regard to this great book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Saviour gave to the World was communicated through this book. But for it, we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.

“To you I return my most sincere thanks for the very elegant copy of the great Book of God which you present.”

WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN SPEAK
A LINCOLN ORDER
To the Army and Navy

The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service.

The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine will, demand that Sunday labour in the Army and Navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.

The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperilled, by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High.

“At this time of public distress”—adopting the words of Washington in 1776—“men may find enough to do in the service of God and their Country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.”

The first General Order issued by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever be defended:—

“The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavour to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his Country.”

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE GETTYSBURG NATIONAL CEMETERY

Fourscore and seven years ago our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that Nation, or any Nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that Nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The World will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of Freedom; and that Government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln