ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN
The subject of this memoir is revered by multitudes
of his countrymen as the preserver of their commonwealth.
This reverence has grown with the lapse of time and
the accumulation of evidence. It is blended with
a peculiar affection, seldom bestowed upon the memory
of statesmen. It is shared to-day by many who
remember with no less affection how their own fathers
fought against him. He died with every circumstance
of tragedy, yet it is not the accident of his death
but the purpose of his life that is remembered.
Readers of history in another country cannot doubt
that the praise so given is rightly given; yet any
bare record of the American Civil War may leave them
wondering why it has been so unquestioningly accorded.
The position and task of the American President in
that crisis cannot be understood from those of other
historic rulers or historic leaders of a people; and
it may seem as if, after that tremendous conflict in
which there was no lack of heroes, some perverse whim
had made men single out for glory the puzzled civil
magistrate who sat by. Thus when an English
writer tells again this tale, which has been well told
already and in which there can remain no important
new facts to disclose, he must endeavour to make clear
to Englishmen circumstances and conditions which are
familiar to Americans. He will incur the certainty
that here and there his own perspective of American
affairs and persons will be false, or his own touch
unsympathetic. He had better do this than chronicle
sayings and doings which to him and to those for whom
he writes have no significance. Nor should the
writer shrink too timidly from the display of a partisanship
which, on one side or the other, it would be insensate
not to feel. The true obligation of impartiality
is that he should conceal no fact which, in his own
mind, tells against his views.
Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United
States of America, was born on February 12, 1809,
in a log cabin on a barren farm in the backwoods of
Kentucky, about three miles west of a place called
Hodgensville in what is now La Rue County.
Fifty years later when he had been nominated for the
Presidency he was asked for material for an account
of his early life. “Why,” he said,
“it is a great folly to attempt to make anything
out of me or my early life. It can all be condensed
into a single sentence; and that sentence you will
find in Gray’s ’Elegy’:—
“‘The short and simple annals
of the poor.’
