LINCOLN A BRAHAM LINCOLN was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. His father, Thomas Lincoln, and his mother, Nancy Hanks, were both natives of Virginia. When Lincoln was eight years of age, his father moved into Indiana, buying a farm in what is now Spencer County. Schools were rare and the teachers were only qualified to impart the rudiments of instruction. "When I came of age, 99 wrote the future President, "I didn't know much; still I could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity." At the age of 19, Lincoln made a journey as a hired hand on a flat boat to New Orleans, and two years later with his father emigrated to Macon, Illinois. Lincoln helped to build a cabin, clear a field and split rails to fence it. At the age of 21, he assisted in building a flat boat and in floating it down the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Afterward he was a clerk in a country store, but, when the Black Hawk Indian War broke out, he volunteered, was elected the captain of a company and took part in the campaign. Having failed in store-keeping, he was glad to accept the office of County Surveyor of Sangamon. In 1834 he was chosen a member of the Illinois Legislature, and was re-elected successively in 1836, 1838 and 1840, after which he declined a nomination. Having been admitted to the bar in 1836 he removed to Springfield, which soon afterward became the capital of the State. In 1846, he was elected a member of the National House of Representatives. In 1854, Lincoln, who hitherto had been a member of the Whig party, took an energetic part in the slavery agitation, and joined the Republican party when it was organized in 1856. In 1858 he contested in public debate with Stephen A. Douglas the nomination to a seat in the Federal Senate, but was defeated. The remarkable campaign, however, attracted close attention in every part of the Union, and Lincoln's speeches gave him a national fame which caused him to be nominated for the Presidency at the Republican Convention held in Chicago on May 16, 1860. In the inaugural address pronounced by him on March 4, 1861, he declared the Union perpetual and all acts of secession void, and announced the determination of the Federal Government to defend its authority. After having vigorously conducted the war for the restoration of the Union for nearly two years, he issued on January 1, 1863, a proclamation emancipating all persons held to servitude in certain specified States and parts of States. The action which he then took was finally embodied in a Constitutional amendment, which was not passed, however, until after his death. He was re-elected to the Presidency on November 8, 1864, by an enormous majority of the electoral vote, and he lived to witness the surrender of Lee's army on April 9, 1865. On the evening of April 14 of the same year he was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington, by John Wilkes Booth, and he breathed his last upon the following morning. ON HIS NOMINATION TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE AT THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 16, 1858 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: F WE could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation not only has not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to |