Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

His father died about this time, his noble son sending him this message, "to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him."

In 1854, through the influence of Stephen A. Douglas, a brilliant senator from Illinois, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, whereby those States were left to judge for themselves whether they would have slaves or not. But by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it was expressly stated that slavery should be forever prohibited in this locality. The whole North grew to white heat. When Douglas returned to his Chicago home the people refused to hear him speak. Illinois said, "His arguments must be answered, and Abraham Lincoln is the man to answer them!"

At the State Fair at Springfield, in October, a great company were gathered. Douglas spoke with marked ability and eloquence, and then on the following day, Abraham Lincoln spoke for three hours. His heart was in his words. He quivered with emotion. The audience were still as death, but when the address was finished, men shouted and women waved their handkerchiefs. Lincoln and the right had triumphed. After this, the two men spoke in all the large towns of the State, to immense crowds. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill worked out its expected results. Blood flowed in the streets, as pro-slavery and anti-slavery men contested the ground, newspaper offices were torn down by mobs, and Douglas lost the great prize he had in view, – the Presidency of the United States.

When the new party, the Republican, held its second convention in Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, Abraham Lincoln received one hundred and ten votes for Vice President. What would Nancy Hanks Lincoln have said if she could have looked now upon the boy to whom she taught the Bible in the log cabin!

An incident occurred about this time which increased his fame. A man was murdered at a camp-meeting, and two young men were arrested. One was a very poor youth, whose mother, Hannah Armstrong, had been kind to Lincoln in the early years. She wrote to the prominent lawyer about her troubles, because she believed her son to be innocent. The trial came on. The people were clamorous for Armstrong to be hanged. The principal witness testified that "by the aid of the brightly shining moon, he saw the prisoner inflict the death-blow with a slung shot."

After careful questioning, Mr. Lincoln showed the perjury of the witness, by the almanac, no moon being visible on the night in question. The jury were melted to tears by the touching address, and their sympathy went out to the wronged youth and his poor old mother, who fainted in his arms. Tears, too, poured down the face of Mr. Lincoln, as the young man was acquitted. "Why, Hannah," he said, when the grateful woman asked what she should try to pay him, "I shan't charge you a cent; never." She had been well repaid for her friendliness to a penniless boy.

The next year he was invited to deliver a lecture at Cooper Institute, New York. He was not very well known at the East. He had lived unostentatiously in the two-story frame-house in Springfield, and when seen at all by the people, except in his addresses, was usually drawing one of his babies in a wagon before his door, with hat and coat off, deeply buried in thought. When the crowd gathered at Cooper Institute, they expected to hear a fund of stories and a "Western stump speech." But they did not hear what they expected. They heard a masterly review of the history of slavery in this country, and a prophecy concerning the future of the slavery question. They were amazed at its breadth and its eloquence. The "New York Tribune" said, "No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."

After this Mr. Lincoln spoke in various cities to crowded houses. A Yale professor took notes and gave a lecture to his students on the address. Surprised at his success among learned men, Mr. Lincoln once asked a prominent professor "what made the speeches interest?"

The reply was, "The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style of your reasoning and your illustrations, which were romance, and pathos, and fun, and logic, all welded together."

Mr. Lincoln said, "I am very much obliged to you for this. It throws light on a subject which has been dark to me. Certainly I have had a wonderful success for a man of my limited education."

The sabbath he spent in New York, he found his way to the Sunday-school at Five Points. He was alone. The superintendent noticing his interest, asked him to say a few words. The children were so pleased that when he attempted to stop, they cried, "Go on, oh! do go on!" No one knew his name, and on being asked who he was, he replied, "Abraham Lincoln of Illinois." After visiting his son Robert at Harvard College, he returned home.

When the Republican State Convention met, May 9, 1860, at Springfield, Ill., Mr. Lincoln was invited to a seat on the platform, and as no way could be made through the dense throng, he was carried over the people's heads. Ten days later, at the National Convention at Chicago, though William H. Seward of New York was a leading candidate, the West gained the nomination, with their idolized Lincoln. Springfield was wild with joy. When the news of his success was carried to him, he said quietly, "Well, gentlemen, there's a little woman at our house who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I am; and if you will excuse me, I will take it up and let her see it."

The resulting canvass was one of the most remarkable in our history. The South said, "War will result if he is elected." The North said, "The time has come for decisive action." The popular vote for Abraham Lincoln was nearly two millions (1,857,610), while Stephen A. Douglas received something over a million (1,291,574). The country was in a fever of excitement. The South made itself ready for war by seizing the forts. Before the inauguration most of the Southern States had seceded.

Sad farewells were uttered as Mr. Lincoln left Springfield for Washington. To his law partner he said, "You and I have been together more than twenty years, and have never passed a word. Will you let my name stay on the old sign till I come back from Washington?"

The tears came into Mr. Herndon's eyes, as he said, "I will never have any other partner while you live," and he kept his word. Old Hannah Armstrong told him that she should never see him again; that something told her so; his enemies would assassinate him. He smiled and said, "Hannah, if they do kill me, I shall never die another death."

He went away without fear, but feeling the awful responsibility of his position. He found an empty treasury and the country drifting into the blackness of war. He spoke few words, but the lines grew deeper on his face, and his eyes grew sadder.

In his inaugural address he said, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors… Physically speaking we cannot separate."

The conflict began April 12, 1861, by the enemy firing on Fort Sumter. That sound reverberated throughout the North. The President called for seventy-five thousand men. The choicest from thousands of homes quickly responded. Young men left their college-halls and men their places of business. "The Union must and shall be preserved," was the eager cry. Then came the call for forty-two thousand men for three years.

The President began to study war in earnest. He gathered military books, sought out on maps every creek and hill and valley in the enemy's country, and took scarcely time to eat or sleep. May 24, the brilliant young Colonel Ellsworth had been shot at Alexandria by a hotel-keeper, because he pulled down the secession flag. He was buried from the east room in the White House, and the North was more aroused than ever. The press and people were eager for battle, and July 21, 1861, the Union army, under General McDowell, attacked the Confederates at Bull Run and were defeated. The South was jubilant, and the North learned, once for all, that the war was to be long and bloody. Congress, at the request of the President, at once voted five hundred thousand men, and five hundred million dollars to carry on the war.

Vast work was to be done. The Southern ports must be blockaded, and the traffic on the Mississippi River discontinued. A great and brave army of Southerners, fighting on their own soil, every foot of which they knew so well, must be conquered if the nation remained intact. The burdens of the President grew more and more heavy. Men at the North, who sympathized with the South, – for we were bound together as one family in a thousand ways, – said the President was going too far in his authority; others said he moved too slowly, and was too lenient to the slave power. The South gained strength from the sympathy of England, and only by careful leadership was war avoided with that country.

General McClellan had fought some hard battles in Virginia – Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, and others – with varying success, losing thousands of men in the Chickahominy swamps, and after the battle of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, one of the severest of the war, when each side lost over ten thousand men, he was relieved of his command, and succeeded by General Burnside. There had been some successes at the West under Grant, at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, and at the South under Farragut, but the outlook for the country was not hopeful. Mr. Lincoln had met with a severe affliction in his own household. His beautiful son Willie had died in February. He used to walk the room in those dying hours, saying sadly, "This is the hardest trial of my life; why is it? why is it?"

This made him, perhaps, even more tender of the lives of others' sons. A young sentinel had been sentenced to be shot for sleeping at his post; but the President pardoned him, saying, "I could not think of going into eternity with the blood of the poor young man on my skirts. It is not to be wondered at that a boy raised on a farm, probably in the habit of going to bed at dark, should, when required to watch, fall asleep, and I cannot consent to shoot him for such an act." This youth was found among the slain on the field of Fredericksburg, wearing next his heart a photograph of his preserver, with the words, "God bless President Lincoln."

An army officer once went to Washington to see about the execution of twenty-four deserters, who had been sentenced by court-martial to be shot. "Mr. President," said he, "unless these men are made an example of, the army itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the many."

"Mr. General," was the reply, "there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God's sake, don't ask me to add to the number, for I won't do it." At another time he said, "Well, I think the boy can do us more good above ground than under ground."

A woman in a faded shawl and hood came to see the President, begging that, as her husband and all her sons – three – had enlisted, and her husband had been killed, he would release the oldest, that he might care for his mother. Mr. Lincoln quickly consented. When the poor woman reached the hospital where her boy was to be found, he was dead. Returning sadly to Mr. Lincoln, he said, "I know what you wish me to do now, and I shall do it without your asking; I shall release your second son… Now you have one, and I one of the other two left: that is no more than right." Tears filled the eyes of both as she reverently laid her hand on his head, saying, "The Lord bless you, Mr. President. May you live a thousand years, and always be at the head of this great nation!"

Through all these months it had become evident that slavery must be destroyed, or we should live over again these dreadful war-scenes in years to come. Mr. Lincoln had been waiting for the right time to free the slaves. General McClellan had said, "A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present armies"; but Sept. 22, 1862, Mr. Lincoln told his Cabinet, "I have promised my God that I will do it"; and he issued the immortal Emancipation Proclamation, by which four million human beings stepped out from bondage into freedom. He knew what he was doing. Two years afterward he said, "It is the central act of my administration, and the great event of the nineteenth century."

The following year, 1863, brought even deeper sorrows. The "Draft Act," by which men were obliged to enter the army when their names were drawn, occasioned in July a riot in New York city, with the loss of many lives. Grant had taken Vicksburg on July 4, and General Meade had won at the dreadful three days' fight at Gettysburg, July 1-4, with a loss of more than twenty thousand on either side; but the nation was being held together at a fearful cost. When Mr. Lincoln announced to the people the victory at Gettysburg, he expressed the desire that, in the customary observance of the Fourth of July, "He whose will, not ours, should everywhere be done, be everywhere reverenced with profoundest gratitude." He reverenced God, himself, most devoutly. "I have been driven many times upon my knees," he said, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."

On Nov. 19, of this year, this battle-field was dedicated, with solemn ceremonies, as one of the national cemeteries. Mr. Lincoln made a very brief address, in words that will last while America lasts, "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 for us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the 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 the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Emerson says of these words, "This, and one other American speech, that of John Brown to the court that tried him, and a part of Kossuth's speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with each other, and no fourth."

The next year, Feb. 29, 1864, the Hero of Vicksburg was called to the Lieutenant-Generalship of the army, and for the first time Mr. Lincoln felt somewhat a sense of relief from burdens. He said, "Wherever Grant is, things move." He now called for five hundred thousand more men, and the beginning of the end was seen. Sherman swept through to the sea. Grant went below Richmond, where he said, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

Mr. Lincoln had been re-elected to the Presidency for a second term, giving that beautiful inaugural address to the people, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widows and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, and the long war was ended. The people gathered in their churches to praise God amid their tears. Abraham Lincoln's name was on every lip. The colored people said of their deliverer, "He is eberywhere. He is like de bressed Lord; he walks de waters and de land."

An old colored woman came to the door of the White House and met the President as he was coming out, and said she wanted to see "Abraham the Second."

"And who was Abraham the First?" asked the good man.

"Why, Lor' bless you, we read about Abraham de First in de Bible, and Abraham de Second is de President."

"Here he is!" said the President, turning away to hide his tears.

Well did the noble-hearted man say, "I have never willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom."

Five days after the surrender of General Lee, Mr. Lincoln went to Ford's Theatre, because it would rest him and please the people to see him. He used to say, "The tired part of me is inside and out of reach… I feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done."

While Mr. Lincoln was enjoying the play, John Wilkes Booth, an actor, came into the box behind him and fired a bullet into his brain; then sprang upon the stage, shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!" The President scarcely moved in his chair, and, unconscious, was taken to a house near by, where he died at twenty-two minutes past seven, April 15, 1865. Booth was caught twelve days later, and shot in a burning barn.

The nation seemed as though struck dumb; and then, from the Old World as well as the New, came an agonizing wail of sorrow. Death only showed to their view how sublime was the character of him who had carried them through the war. While the body, embalmed, lay in state in the east room of the White House tens of thousands crowded about it. And then, accompanied by the casket of little Willie, the body of Abraham Lincoln took its long journey of fifteen hundred miles, to the home of his early life, for burial. Nothing in this country like that funeral pageant has ever been witnessed. In New York, in Philadelphia, and in every other city along the way, houses were trimmed with mourning, bells tolled, funeral marches were played, and the rooms where the body rested were filled with flowers. Hundreds of thousands looked upon the tired, noble face of the martyred President.

In Oak Ridge Cemetery, at Springfield, Illinois, in the midst of a dense multitude, a choir of two hundred and fifty singing by the open grave of him who dearly loved music,

"Children of the Heavenly King,"

Abraham Lincoln was buried, Bishop Simpson, now dead, spoke eloquently, quoting Mr. Lincoln's words, "Before high Heaven and in the face of the world I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love."

Charles Sumner said, "There are no accidents in the Providence of God." Such lives as that of Abraham Lincoln are not accidents in American history. They are rather the great books from whose pages we catch inspiration, and in which we read God's purposes for the progress of the human race.