“ When General Lee surrendered to General Grant, one point was noticed by the spectators which, it was held, distinguished the Cavalier from the Puritan. Grant was in his fighting clothes and his every-day sword by his side, while General Lee, dressed faultlessly as a soldier should always be, carried a court sword, presented him as a honor by the Southerners. So, in wars, Providence does not flourish the showy weapon, but uses a strong and sharp blade without ornamental hilt. Abraham Lincoln was the instrument of Heaven for work--ceaseless, bloody work, hard, for it was that least to his taste. ”

“ I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet-- like an old woman's dance! I am in favor of a national bank, the international improvement scheme, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I will be thankful. If defeated, it will be all the same!"-- (Springfield Republican.) ”

“ Veterans will remember the peculiar effect, on a forced march, of the younger or less-enduring comrade falling asleep as to all but his eyes and the muscles employed, but stepping out and apparently sustained only by the touching of elbows in the lurching from the ruts in the obliterated road. On the night of the stunning news of the last conflict at Chancellorsville, Lincoln could derive no comfort from later intelligence. Late at night General Halleck, commanding the capital, and Secretary Stanton left him unconsoled. ”

“ Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land offices, marshalships and cabinet appointments, chargé-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.... On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. ”

“ Lincoln was right to demonstrate that the vision was founded on fact, and no supernatural sight at all. His trying the repetition was like Lord Byron's quashing a similar illusion, but of a suit of clothes hung up to look like a friend whom he believed he saw in the spirit. A more widely read man would have dismissed the "fetch" like the President-elect, but with a laugh. ”

“ He was all but too late, for the President had literally under his hand the Gordon reprieve. The powerful influence reached even into the executive study. Lawyer Delafield Smith stood firmly upon the need of making an example, and Mr. Lincoln gave way, but in despair at having to lay aside the pen and redoom the miserable tool to the gallows, where he was executed, at New York. "Mr. Smith," sighed the President, "you do not know how hard it is to have a human being die when you know a stroke of your pen may save him." ”

“ The cavalry chargers, trained to avoid hurting men--for a rider might be thrown--eluded contact, and the coachman neatly pulled aside. In the next moment, in a cloud of dust, the President, leaning out of the window, to ascertain the cause of the abrupt stop, saw the poor young soldier by his side. Lincoln threw out a hand to seize him by the arm, and reassure him of safety by the vibrating clutch. Then, perceiving the nature of the affair, he asked in a voice trembling with emotion about the man's regiment and disablement. ”

“ The scales having fallen from our sight and the figure of the greatest American standing out colossal and clean-cut for posterity to worship as without a blemish, it is hard to measure the conceit of the clique of politicians, pettifoggers, and office-seekers certainly assisting in the advancement of Abraham Lincoln from confined obscurity in the West to the choice of the Northern nation. ”

“ Coming out of the West with the unique recommendation, "This gentleman from Kentucky never drinks," President Lincoln had only the American standby, the ice-water pitcher, on his sideboard. And up to the last, even when the jubilation upon the war's close made many a stopper fly out of the tabooed bottle, he could say: "My example never belied the position I took when I was a young man." So he could reply to a New England women's temperance deputation, probably believing the caricaturists who pictured "Old Abe" mint-juleping with the eagle. ”

“ To quote well is good, but to quote fitly is better. His intimates noticed that he would reecho a story--a simile or a tag--and so neatly apply it that it seemed fresh on the second use. He was an admirable actor, though not appreciated in that light; for he could reappear in the same part without palling. Hence one often meets his stories, as, for instance, this one. His life law partner, Herndon, tells it as used toward a petty judge, in Illinois, of inferior ability to Lincoln's. It was a murder case, and this bully on the bench kept ruling against Herndon and Lincoln. ”

“ With a fire in my front and one in my rear to contend with, and not receiving that cordial cooperative support from Congress, reasonably expected, with an active and formidable enemy in the field threatening the very life-blood of the government, my position is anything but on a bed of roses. ”

“ The judge advocate-general, Holt, as well as the military chiefs, were in despair at their superior trifling with the laws of war by suspending mortal decrees, and, in short, in hunting up excuses for delaying the blow of justice. Once the judge brought to the President a case so flagrant that he did not doubt that, for a rarity, the chief would sign without any cavil and hesitation. A soldier had demoralized his regiment in the nick of a battle by dashing down his rifle and hiding behind a tree. ”

“ Lincoln had been reading from Edmund Burke's life, when he threw down the book with disrelish. He fell into his habit of musing, and on reviving, said to his associate, Herndon:
"I've wondered why book publishers do not have blank biographies on their shelves, always ready for an emergency; so that if a man happens to die, his heirs or his friends, if they wish to perpetuate his memory, can purchase one already written--but with blanks. ”

“ From a lawyer turned sword of the State, this was reasonable enough; so the young man responded:
"I hope I am as grateful to you, Mr. Lincoln, as any man can be for his life. But this came so sudden that I did not lay out for it. But I have my bounty-money in the savings-bank, and I guess we could raise some money by a mortgage on the farm; and, if we wait till pay-day for the regiment, I guess the boys will help some, and we can make it up--if it isn't more nor five or six hundred, eh?" ”

“ During a review of General Howard's corps on the Rappahannock, in April, 1863, President Lincoln noticed, whether his eyes were "unmilitary or not," that a very numerous mass of men were spectators, though wearing a semisoldierly look and clothes. They were, in fact, the inevitable hangers-on of an army, the more in number, as the escaped slaves were welcomed by the soldiers, as they made them do their dirty work. The commanding general explained that they were "the cooks, the bottle-washers, and the nigger waiters." They had come out to see the President. ”

“ Brought from Kentucky, Lincoln's natal State, by a planter, Hinkle, he had set her and children free in Indiana, not fostering the waning oppression. Her son, growing up, had the rashness to venture on the steamboat down to New Orleans. His position was as bad as that of an Americanized foreigner returning into a despotic land. He was arrested and held for sale, having crossed a Louisiana law framed for such intrusions: a free negro could be sold here as if never out of bond. ”

“ The Constitution will not be preserved and defended until it is enforced and obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced, and defended--let the grass grow where it will! ”

“ A witty Irish soldier always boasting of his bravery when no danger was nigh, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied:
"'Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with me.'"-- (Debate, Lincoln: Springfield, Illinois, December, 1839.)
"ONE AND A HALF TIMES BIGGER THAN OTHER MEN!" ”

“ Spencer called the dark-complexioned foreigner a nigger, and, further, said he had married a white woman--a crime in Illinois at that era. On the defense were Lawrence Weldon and C. H. Moore. Lincoln was teasled as the court sustained a, demurrer about his papers being deficient. So he began, his address to the jury:
"My client is not a negro--though it is no crime to be a negro--no crime to be born with a black skin. But my client is not a negro. His skin may not be as white as ours, but I say he is not a negro, though he may be a Moore!" looking at the hostile lawyer. ”

“ It was confidently forethought by the numerous admirers of Governor Seward--who escaped being the President by a political combination and not want of supreme merit--that he would in the Cabinet, whatever nominally his post, be the ruling spirit. Not a man suspected that the plain man of the prairie could develop into the lord of the manor, and put and keep not only the able and cultured Seward, but the turbulent Stanton and the obstreperous Chase, in their places. ”

“ He was nervous with this first attempt and made a mull of his presentment, when a gentleman of the bar, rising, and extending a tall, ungraceful figure, intervened and laid down the case on the young Kentuckian's lines so feebly offered and entangled that the hearers might be glad to be so disembarrassed of a feeling for the novice floundering. The bench sustained Blackburn's demurrer. Arnold was so vexed that he objected to the volunteer intervener, whereupon the befriended man learned it was one Abraham Lincoln, as unknown to him as he was to fame. ”

“ From the later light and the letter from Wilkes Booth to his brother-in-law, Sleeper Clarke, the comedian, no doubt is left that to kidnap him was a plot dated very early when the foresighted slave-holders were certain that he was a greater enemy from consistency than the louder-voiced and openly violent Abolitionists. While Colonel Lamon doubted, and wished he had not been beguiled into aiding in the ignominious flight in disguise and secretly by train, Secretary Seward and General Scott gave it credence. The foreboding had touched Lincoln before he left his Illinois home. ”

“ Secretary of War Stanton, fierce like all apostates, turned on this Democrat, and his disgrace as to the army was threatened. Captain Andrews went to the fountain-head with his remonstrance. He was right, for Lincoln said:
"Andrews has as good a right to hold onto his Democracy, if he chooses, as Stanton had to throw his overboard. No; when the military duties of a soldier are fully and faithfully performed, he can manage his politics his own way!" ”

“ As a fruit of incessant study Abraham Lincoln fitted himself to accept the post of clerk at Offutt's store, in New Salem, in 1831. It was a responsible position, requiring strict honesty, intelligence, glib talk, attention, and courtesy to the few dames in the population of twenty households, "with the back settlement to hear from." In fact, Lincoln's gifts and cultivated acquirements made him such a favorite that the list of customers from out of town was extensive. This promotion of a newcomer nettled the bad element of the region. ”

“ Lincoln had no need to go back to Scripture for his defense. It is martial law, unwritten but valid, that if a delinquent soldier, fugitive from justice, or breaking prison, reaches the battle-field and takes his place gallantly, no more would be said about the hanging charge, even though it were literally a hanging one. ”

“ On the 22d of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, scheduled to pass on from Harrisburg, where he made a speech as arranged, instead of waiting to depart by the morning train, sped to Philadelphia and thence by a special train detained for "a military messenger with a parcel," to Washington, by the regular midnight train. The news of his arrival at the capital by this unexpected and clandestine route, and in disguise--this was denied--of a Scotch cap and plaid shawl, startled everybody. ”

“ During the avalanche of plans to conduct the suppression of the rebellion, a genius proposed what afterward seemed a forecast for Sherman's march to the sea. But at the time, Lincoln saw in it merely a desperate venture which would detail a rescue-party much more important. ”

“ The arts and wiles of the marplots were equaled only by the prodigality and persistency of the parents to save their sons from "the evils of camp life." It is but fair to the Puritans to accept their plea that the loss of them fighting the country's battles did not so distress them. Lincoln replied to the political argument nobly:
"Gentlemen, it is not necessary that I should be re-elected, but it is necessary that our brave boys in the front should be supported, and the country saved." (The hackneyed phrase had led to his party being nicknamed "the Union-savers.") ”

“ Even Lincoln's marriage was to be accompanied by a diversion of that merry imp of incongruity always with him--as Shakespeare's most stately heroes are attended by a comic servant. He married Miss Mary Todd, of Kentucky, at Springfield, at the age of thirty-three. It was the first wedding performed with all the ceremonial of the Episcopalian sect. This was to the awe of the Honorable Judge Tom C. Brown, an old man, and friend and patron of our Abraham. ”