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41. Lincoln as a student
Lincoln as a student
Description
But while all this misery was upon him, his ambition rose to higher aims. He walked many miles to borrow from a schoolmaster a grammar with which to improve his language. A lawyer lent him a copy of Blackstone, and he began to study law. People would look wonderingly at the grotesque figure lying in the grass, “with his feet up a tree,” or sitting on a fence, as, absorbed in a book, he learned to construct correct sentences and made himself a jurist. At once he gained a little practice, pettifogging before a justice of the peace for friends, without expecting a fee. Judicial functions, too, were thrust upon him, but only at horse races or wrestling matches, where his acknowledged honesty and fairness gave his verdicts undisputed authority.
42. Prairie schooner
Prairie schooner
Description
After his return he worked and lived in the old way until the spring of 1830, when his father “moved again”, this time to Illinois; and on the journey of fifteen days “Abe” had to drive the ox wagon which carried the household goods. Another log cabin was built, and then, fencing a field, Abraham Lincoln split those historic rails which were destined to play so picturesque a part in the presidential campaign twenty-eight years later.
43. Lincoln as a flatboatman
Lincoln as a flatboatman
Description
It is doubtful whether he felt himself much superior to his surroundings, although he confessed to a yearning for some knowledge of the world outside of the circle in which he lived. This wish was gratified. At the age of nineteen he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans as a flatboat hand, temporarily joining a trade many members of which at that time still took pride in being called “half horse and half alligator”.
44. Parlor in the home, Springfield
Parlor in the home, Springfield
Description
His time had not yet come when, in 1846, he was elected to Congress. In a clever speech in the House of Representatives, he denounced President Polk for having unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and he amused the Committee of the Whole by a witty attack upon General Cass. More important was the expression he gave his anti-slavery impulses by offering a bill looking to the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, and by his repeated votes for the famous Wilmot Proviso, intended to exclude slavery from the Territories acquired from Mexico. But when, at the expiration of his term, in March, 1849, he left his seat, he gloomily despaired of ever seeing the day when the cause nearest to his heart would be rightly grasped by the people, and when he would be able to render any service to his country in solving the great problem. Nor had his career as a member of Congress in any sense been such as to gratify his ambition. Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great destiny for himself, it must have been weak at that period; for he actually sought to obtain from the new Whig President, General Taylor, the place of Commissioner of the General Land Office, willing to bury himself in one of the administrative bureaus of the government. Fortunately for the country, he failed; and no less fortunately, when, later, the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs. Lincoln’s protest induced him to decline it. Returning to Springfield, he gave himself with renewed zest to his law practice, acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850 with reluctance and a mental reservation, supported in the presidential campaign of 1852 the Whig candidate in some spiritless speeches, and took but a languid interest in the politics of the day. But just then his time was drawing near.
45. Lincoln taking oath of office
Lincoln taking oath of office
Description
His inaugural address foreshadowed his official course in characteristic manner. Although yielding nothing in point of principles, it was by no means a flaming anti-slavery manifesto, such as would have pleased the more ardent Republicans. It was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing father speaking to his wayward children. In the kindliest language he pointed out to the secessionists how ill-advised their attempt at disunion was, and why, for their own sakes, they should desist. Almost plaintively he told them that, while it was not their duty to destroy the union, it was his sworn duty to preserve it; that the least he could do, under the obligations of his oath was to possess and hold the property of the United States; that he hoped to do this peaceably; that he abhorred war for any purpose, and that they would have none unless they themselves were the agressors. It was a masterpiece of persuasiveness; and while Lincoln had accepted many valuable amendments suggested by Seward, it was essentially his own.
46. Home of Abraham Lincoln
Home of Abraham Lincoln
Description
He married Mary Todd of Kentucky. He continued to “ride the circuit,” read books while travelling in his buggy, told funny stories to his fellow lawyers in the tavern, chatted familiarly with his neighbors around the stove in the store and at the post-office, and his hours of melancholy brooding as of old, and became more and more widely known and trusted and beloved among the people of his State for his ability as a lawyer and politician, for the uprightness of his character and the ever-flowing spring of sympathetic kindness in his heart. His main ambition was confessedly that of political distinction; but hardly any one would at that time have seen in him the main destined to lead the nation through the greatest crisis of the century.
47. Lincoln's library
Lincoln's library
Description
The peace promised, and apparently inaugurated, by the Compromise of 1850 was rudely broken by the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories of the United States, the heritage of coming generations, to the invasion of slavery, suddenly revealed the whole significance of the slavery question to the people of the free States, and thrust itself into the politics of the country as the paramount issue. The Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the hour. The Abraham Lincoln’s time was come. He rapidly advanced to a position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery question stirred his soul in its profoundest depths.
48. Lincoln's farewell speech to his neighbors
Lincoln's farewell speech to his neighbors
Description
The presidential election of 1860 approached, and Lincoln was elected President by a majority of fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges. On the 11th of February, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield for Washington; having with characteristic simplicity, asked his law partner not to change the sign of the firm “Lincoln and Herndon” during the four years’ unavoidable absence of the senior partner, and having taken an affectionate and touching leave of his neighbors.
49. Lincoln's debate with Douglas
Lincoln's debate with Douglas
Description
In the assault on the Missouri Compromise which broke down all legal barriers to the spread of slavery, Stephen Arnold Douglas was the ostensible leader and central figure; and Douglas was a senator of Illinois, Lincoln’s State, and in Illinois all eyes turned to Lincoln as Douglas’s natural antagonist. When, in 1858, Douglas’s senatorial term being about to expire, Lincoln was formerly designated by the Republican convention of Illinois as their candidate for the Senate, to take Douglas’s place, and the two contestants agreed to debate the questions at issue face to face in a series of public meetings, the eyes of the whole American people were turned eagerly to that one point; and the spectacle reminded one of those lays of ancient times telling of two armies, in battle array, standing still to see their two principal champions fight out the contested cause between the lines in single combat.
50. Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad
Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad
Description
This photograph of Lincoln and little "Tad" was taken in 1861, when the four years of war were yet to burden the heart of the great President. In 1865, only a few days before his assassination, Lincoln for the last time entered the Brady gallery in Washington, and again sat for his picture with "Tad". Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, in 1809. His father moved to Indiana in 1816, and to Illinois in 1830. As a boy Lincoln had very few advantages, but he grew up with all the vigor of the frontier. In 1832 he served as a private and as a captain in the Black Hawk War. Failing as a merchant, he studied law and was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1834, and again in 1836. In 1848 he was elected to the lower House of Congress on the Whig ticket, and in 1858 as candidate for the new Republican party, he was defeated by Douglas, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. In spite of his defeat Lincoln's debates with Douglas made him a conspicuous figure and in 1860 won for him the Presidency as the nominee of the Republican party. Lincoln's life from 1861 to 1865 is bound up in the great struggle between the North and the South. In 1864 he was re-elected to the Presidency. He was shot and mortally wounded at Ford's Theater at Washington, April 14, 1865.
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