Samuel Scoville, Jr.

“ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? ”

“ Under the responsibilities and discipline of that great office Lincoln reached his full stature as a statesman and grew into the heroic figure which has come down to us. Only a great man could have shown the magnanimity and forgetfulness of self which he showed to Seward, to Stanton, to McClellan, and to a host of others.
Lincoln called political and personal opponents to office. His only test was whether they could be of service to the country. Most of his Cabinet and even his generals regarded his election as an accident and himself as a country politician wholly unfitted to be President. ”

“ Today no one remembers a sentence, a line, or an idea from Everett's speech. Read what Lincoln said, and note how every sentence rings true and familiar, like some oft-heard chapter of the Bible:
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. ”

“ THE CHRISTIAN
Like Moses, Luther, and Washington, Lincoln became a great leader of men only when he surrendered himself to God. His mother, Nancy Hanks, was a Christian woman. Of her he said: "I remember her prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life."
As a boy he read his Bible and attended church when he could. In those days he learned the hymns which were his favorites throughout life, "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" and "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." During his early manhood he drifted into a temporary indifference toward religious matters. ”

“ Making but one point—the complete discrediting of the only eyewitness—Lincoln summed up to the jury and acquitted his client.
There can be no better ending to an account of Lincoln's life as a lawyer than the advice which he once gave to young lawyers:
Let no young man choosing the law for a calling yield to the popular belief that a lawyer cannot be an honest man. ”

“ It was about this time that he fell in love with the beautiful Ann Rutledge, who died soon after they became engaged. "My heart is buried there," he said to a friend when they once passed her grave. There is no doubt that Lincoln was a changed man after her death and that her loss deepened his life. This thought has been nobly phased by Edgar Lee Masters in the epitaph which he has written for her almost unmarked grave:
Ann Rutledge
Out of me, unworthy and unknown. ”

“ God must have loved the common people, for he made so many of them. You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Anything that argues me into social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, as if a man could prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. Again he would crystallize his whole argument into a single sentence:
Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet. ”

“ It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored 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. ”

“ To Chittenden, the Register of the Treasury, Lincoln said:
That the Almighty does make use of human agencies, and directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the plainest statements in the Bible. I have had so many evidences of his direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some other power than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from above. I frequently see my way clear to a decision when I am conscious that I have not sufficient facts upon which to found it. ”

“ I have just told the folks here in Springfield, on the hundred-and-tenth anniversary of Washington's birthday, that the one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave nor one drunkard on the face of God's green earth. ”

“ It has been well said that the difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician tries to make the people do something for him, while a statesman tries to do something for the people. Applying this test Abraham Lincoln was always a statesman. ”

“ The judge sent a messenger, directing him to return, but he positively declined. "Tell the judge that my hands are dirty, and that I have gone away to wash them," was the answer that he sent back.
"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough." So
Lincoln in Early Manhood. ”

“ The picture of his inner life is a harder one to draw than that of his appearance and habits. There were two men in Lincoln. One of them was the Lincoln known to all his townsfolk—the plain, honest, shrewd, kindly, humorous man, with a certain native dignity which kept them from calling him by his first name. "He was folky but not familiar," one of them afterward wrote. The other man was the dreamer, who made his dreams come true; the mystic, who dreamed of the swift ship carrying him to a dark shore before the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and the night before his death ”

“ Trusting in him, who can go with me and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To his care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
From that day a new life begins for him—the life of a devoted Christian. "I have been driven many times to my knees," he later wrote, "because I had nowhere else to go."
Again he declared:
I would be the veriest blockhead if I thought I could get through with a single day's business without relying upon Him who doeth all things well. ”

“ Across the years the echo of it thrills us today. Every young man should read Abraham Lincoln's speech of May 19, 1856, which created a great party and outlined principles that this country has made a part of itself. ”

“ No man with whom he talked even for a few moments but felt that Lincoln was genuinely interested in him. Men trusted him for that, and because they saw by his everyday life that his sympathy was not put on but real. We like to read of the time in Springfield when he found a child sobbing on the porch of her home. ”

“ Few boys of today start life so handicapped by hardships or with fewer opportunities. Lincoln knew little about his ancestors. In later life he said that he was more concerned to know what his grandfather's grandson would be than who his grandfather had been.
One of his grandfathers was named Abraham Lincoln, and went as a pioneer to Kentucky—then the "Dark and Bloody Ground" claimed and guarded by fierce Indian tribes. There, near where the city of Louisville now stands, he cleared a field in the forest, not far from a stockade erected by other settlers, and built a cabin. ”

“ The family had gone on and the hackman had forgotten to call for her trunk. There was no time to get him before the train went. Lincoln shouldered the trunk and carried it on his back down to the station, arriving just in time to catch the train. This habit of kindness never left him all his life through. He was merciful in the merciless days of the Civil War. He pardoned men condemned for cowardice in battle. "If God Almighty gives a man a cowardly pair of legs," he said, "how can he help running away?" ”

“ Every boy and every man, by following them, can make himself a speaker, and add to his influence with men. Here are some of Lincoln's rules for oratory:
Don't shoot too high. Aim low and the common people will understand you. They are the ones you want to reach — at least they are the ones you ought to reach. The educated and refined people will understand you, anyway. If you aim too high your ideas will go over the heads of the masses and only hit those who need no hitting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was necessary to shoot quick and straight to save his brother's life. Aiming through a loophole at a white string of wampum on the Indian's breast, Mordecai dropped him dead while Thomas escaped into the cabin. From there Mordecai fought off the other Indians until help came from the stockade.
The sight of his father's death turned this oldest boy Mordecai into an Indian-hunter, and he spent his life in stalking and killing Indians wherever he could find them. Thomas, the father of Abraham Lincoln, grew up a wandering laboring boy, with just enough education to write his name. ”

“ If anyone, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance. Lincoln brought into the practice of his profession the same charity and kindness that he had shown as a laborer, a storekeeper, and a surveyor. A young lawyer tells about arguing his first case in Chicago and making a failure of it. After he had sat down in despair a complete stranger to him came forward from the back of the room and stated that, as a member of the bar, he claimed the privilege of helping a young man who was evidently embarrassed. ”

“ You will not only find it full of real men and women, but also of the things you have wondered about and been troubled about all your life, as men have been always; and the more you read the more it will become plain to you what things are worth while and what are not; what things make men happy—loyalty, right dealings, speaking the truth, readiness to give everything for what they think their duty, and, most of all, the wish that they may have the approval of the Christ, who gave everything for them ”

“ Lincoln had a genius for seeing the real point in a case at once and aiming steadily at it from the beginning of a trial to the end. The issue in most cases lies in very narrow compass, and the really great lawyer disregards everything not directly tending to that issue. The mediocre advocate is apt to miss the crucial point in his case and is easily diverted by minor matters. ”

“ Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. ”

“ Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." ”

“ Lincoln did not win much glory in this campaign, but at some risk to himself he saved the life of a helpless old Indian whom his men wished to kill.
When he came back to New Salem, in partnership with a man named Berry he opened a store, giving his notes in payment for the stock. Berry ran the business heavily into debt and died. Instead of going through bankruptcy Lincoln sold out, shouldered the burden for fifteen years, and paid off every dollar of the debt with interest. ”

“ Lincoln's mildness and good humor were habitual, but woe be to him who relied on those qualities to take a wrongful advantage of his client. In a murder case in which he represented the defendant, the judge unexpectedly made a ruling which was contrary to the decisions of the Supreme Court and was most injurious to Lincoln's client. A spectator described what follows: "Lincoln rose to his feet as quick as thought and was the most unearthly looking man imaginable. ”

“ McClellan, one of Lincoln's first generals, was a Democrat and had provided the special trains on which Douglas had traveled during his debates with Lincoln. When appointed a general McClellan disregarded Lincoln's orders and treated his chief in a way that but few men could have borne. At one time when Lincoln called at his house to see him on a critical matter, McClellan sent down word that he could not be disturbed and calmly went to bed, leaving the President of the United States to take himself home. ”

“ Once when a man was condemned to death for sleeping at his post he drove ten miles in the middle of the night to make sure that his telegram pardoning him had been received. On the very day of his death he said at a Cabinet meeting, when the treatment of the Confederate leaders was under discussion: "Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments."
Thirty-six hours after the fall of Richmond Lincoln visited the place and sought out the home of General Pickett, who had made the great charge at Gettysburg. Lincoln had known him as a boy. ”