association for a boy to struggle against, and a deal of hard work to be done. On the other hand such travel is not delusive, it does not permit life to look the least like a holiday affair, nor unfit the wanderer for a sober return to the quietness of home. Young Lincoln at the least travelled in a practical American manner, saw something of the world, and got paid for it.

Settlers are a most unsettled generation, and in March, 1830, Thomas Lincoln migrated again; this time to Macon county, Illinois. Abraham accompanied his father to the new home, and there helped to build a log-cabin for the family, and to split enough rails to fence ten acres of land. From this he has been called the Rail-splitter. Now, to split rails has been a necessary piece or labor since the days of Milo of Crotona, who was a rail-splitter in his time; and while that occupation may not qualify a man for statesmanship, the name of Rail-splitter is a better one than Hair-splitter; moreover, while a man's career and the words he has spoken show his brain to be a good one, it is no harm to him before the people to be able to show a good muscular record. Young Lincoln's flat-boat trip soon proved to be an advantage, and in 1831 he was engaged, at twelve dollars a month, to assist in the construction of a flat-boat, and subsequently in its navigation down the river to New Orleans. He acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his employer, who upon his return put him in charge of a store and mill at New Salem, then in Sangamon, now in Menard county, Illinois. But these peaceful successes were soon lost sight of in the excitement of the Black Hawk war, which broke out in 1832. Lincoln joined a company of volunteers, and was elected their captain, an event which gave him a great deal of pleasure. He served through a campaign of three months, and on his return home was nominated by the Whigs of his district as a candidate for the state legislature; but the county was Democratic and he was defeated, though in his own immediate neighborhood he received two hundred and seventyseven votes, while only seven were cast against him. These indications of personal popularity flattered and stimulated to future effort, and were thus not without their effect upon a young man looking for a career. His next venture was the establishment of a country store, which did not prove prosperous, and which he relinquished to become postmaster of New Salem. While in this position he began to study law, and borrowed for that purpose the books of a neighboring practitioner; the books were taken at night, and returned in the morning before they could be needed in the lawyer's office. Upon the offer of the surveyor of Sangamon county, to depute to him a portion of the work of the county surveyor's office, Mr. Lincoln procured a compass and chain and a treatise on surveying, and did the work. In 1834 he was again nominated as a candidate for the legislature, and was elected by the largest vote cast for any candidate in the state. He was re-elected in 1836, and in the same year was licensed to practise

law. From New Salem he removed in April, 1837, to Springfield, and there opened a law office in partnership with Major John F. Stuart. Mr. Lincoln was re-elected to the state legislature in the years 1836 and 1840, and meanwhile rose rapidly to distinction in his profession, becoming especially eminent as an advocate in jury trials. He was also several times a candidate for presidential elector, and as such canvassed all of Illinois and part of Indiana for Henry Clay, in 1844, and made speeches before large audiences almost every day.

Mr. Lincoln was elected a representative in Congress from the central district of Illinois in 1846, and took his seat on the first Monday in December, 1847. His congressional career was consistently that of one who believed in freedom and respected the laws. He voted forty-two times in favor of the Wilmot proviso. He voted for the reception of anti-slavery memorials and petitions; for an inquiry into the constitutionality of slavery in the district of Columbia, and the expediency of abolishing the slave-trade in the district; and on January 16th, 1849, he offered to the House a scheme for the abolition of slavery in the district, and for the compensation of slave-owners from the United States treasury, provided a majority of the citizens of the district should vote for the acceptance of the act. He opposed the annexation of Texas, but voted for the loan bill to enable the government to carry on the Mexican war, and for various resolutions to prohibit slavery in the territory to be acquired from Mexico. He voted also in favor of a protective tariff, and of selling the public lands at the lowest cost price. In 1849 he was a candidate for the United States Senate, but was defeated. Upon the expiration of his congressional term Mr. Lincoln applied himself to his profession; but the repeal of the Missouri compromise called him again into the political arena, and he entered energetically the canvass which was to decide the choice of a Senator to succeed General Shields. The Republican triumph, and the consequent election of Judge Trumbull to the Senate, were attributed mainly to his efforts. Mr. Lincoln was ineffectually urged as a candidate for the vicepresidency in the national convention which nominated Colonel Fremont in 1856. He was unanimously nominated candidate for United States Senator in opposition to Mr. Douglas by the Republican state convention at Springfield, June 2d, 1858, and canvassed the state with his opponent, speaking on the same day at the same place. In the course of this canvass, and in reply to certain questions or statements of Mr. Douglas, Mr. Lincoln made the following declarations: "I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive slave law. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave states into the Union. I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new state into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that state may see fit to makė. . . . I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States territories."

In explanation he said, "In regard to the fugitive slave law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under the constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern states are entitled to a congressional fugitive slave law. . . . . In regard to the question of whether I am pledged to the admission of any more slave states into the Union, I state to you very frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave state admitted into the Union; but I must add that, if slavery shall be kept out of the territories, during the territorial existence of any one given territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt their constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as adopt a slave constitution uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union." Assertions like this should be a sufficient answer to those who pronounce Mr. Lincoln an abolitionist. The Republican candidates pledged to the election of Mr. Lincoln received one hundred and twenty-five thousand two hundred and seventy-five votes; the Douglas candidates received one hundred and twenty-one thousand one hundred and ninety votes; and the Lecompton candidates five thousand and seventy-one. Mr. Lincoln had thus, on the popular vote, a clear majority over Mr. Douglas of four thousand and eighty-five; but Mr. Douglas was elected Senator by the legislature, in which his supporters had a majority of eight on joint ballot.

Mr. Lincoln acquired a national reputation mainly through his contest with Senator Douglas, and it consequently excited much surprise when, in the Republican national convention assembled at Chicago, his name was put forward in connection with the Presidency. Many prominent Republicans did not hesitate to declare their further support of the party conditional upon the nomination of Mr. Seward; but the availability of Mr. Lincoln was persistently urged by those who considered his most prominent opponent too conspicuously committed to the unpopular opposition to slavery interests. The whole number of votes in the convention was four hundred and sixty-five, and two hundred and thirtythree were necessary to a choice. Mr. Seward led on the first two ballots; and on the third, Mr. Lincoln received three hundred and fifty-four votes, and his nomination was declared unanimous. His opponents for the Presidency in other parties were brought forward in such a manner, that the country was geographically divided, and the contest was made almost exclusively sectional. By the extreme course of the Southern press, the sectional feature of the contest was more clearly brought out, and it was forced upon the North that Mr. Lincoln was exclusively its own candidate; and the disruption of the country was openly threatened in the event of his election. From this it resulted that Mr. Lincoln

received at the North a support that he could never have received on his party account, and with three other candidates in the field his popular vote was one million eight hundred and fifty-seven thousand six hundred and ten. His vote in the electoral college was one hundred and eighty, against one hundred and forty-three for all others; and the gentleman who had received the largest opposing vote, John C. Breckenridge, declared from his place as president of the Senate, February 13th, 1861, that "Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, having received a majority of the whole number of electoral votes, was duly elected President of the United States for the four years commencing on the 4th of March, 1861."

Mr. Lincoln arrived in Philadelphia, on his way to the capital, February 21st; and he there received full and accurate information, through the detective police, of the particulars of a plan for his assassination in the streets of Baltimore when he should reach that city. On the next day he visited Harrisburg, spoke before the legislature of Pennsylvania, and that night returned privately, but not disguised, to Philadelphia, whence he took the regular night train for Washington, and, without change of cars, arrived in the capital shortly after six, A. M., of February 23d. He was duly inaugurated on the 4th of March, and upon that occasion he said: "Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern states that, by the accession of a Republican administration, their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that 'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.' I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. . . . . I consider that, in view of the constitution, the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed in all the states."

For some time previous to the election, resistance to the laws had been determined upon in the event of Mr. Lincoln's success; and on December 20th a convention assembled in South Carolina had declared that state out of the Union. During the months of January and February, 1861, the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, had been also declared out of the Union in a similar manner; and a congress of representatives from those states had convened at Montgomery, in Alabama, February 6th, had chosen a President, and proceeded otherwise to organize a new government. Such was the position of affairs at the time of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. Only a day after it,

Peter G. T. Beauregard, an officer of the United States army, but involved in the rebellion, was ordered by the rebel President to the command of the forces assembled for the investment of Fort Sumter, and on March 9th, the so-called Confederate Congress passed an act for the establishment and organization of an army. Yet Mr. Lincoln did not entirely despair of a settlement of the trouble without war, and the policy chosen by him, 'to use his own words, "looked to the exhaustion of all peaceful measures before a resort to any stronger ones.' He therefore "sought only to hold the public places and property not already wrested from the government, and to collect the revenue, relying for the rest on time, discussion and the ballot-box. He promised a continuance of the mails, at government expense, to the very people who were resisting the government, and gave repeated pledges against any disturbances to any of the people, or to any of their rights. Of all that which a President might constitutionally and justifiably do in such a case, every thing was forborne, without which it was believed possible to keep the government on foot."

But this was of no avail, and in a little more than a month after Mr. Lincoln's accession to office, Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor was attacked, and "bombarded to its fall." The bombardment and surrender were concluded on the thirteenth of April, and on the fifteenth the President issued his first proclamation-by which he called out "the militia of the several states of the Union to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress rebellious combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed;" and convened both houses of Congress in extra session. By subsequent proclamations he declared the complete blockade of all the ports of the United States south of the Chesapeake; increased the regular army by twenty-two thousand, and the navy by eighteen thousand men, and called for volunteers to serve during three years, to the number of five hundred thousand. "These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity; trusting that Congress would readily ratify them."

Congress readily did so. Further reference to these affairs was made by the President in his first message to Congress in these noble words: "It was with the deepest regret that the executive found the duty of employing the war power in defence of the government forced upon him. He could but perform this duty, or surrender the existence of the government. No compromise by public servants could, in this case, be a cure-not that compromises are not often proper; but that no popular government can long survive a marked precedent that those who carry an election can only save the government from immediate destruction, by giving up the main point upon which the people gave the election. The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own