



Produced by Richard Hulse and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                        Transcriber’s Notes

  Punctuation has been standardized.

  Characters in small caps have been replaced by all caps.

  Non-printable characteristics have been given the following
  transliteration:
      Italic text: --> _text_

  This book was written in a period when many words had not become
  standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
  variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have
  been left unchanged.




                              _Lincoln
                     and the Sleeping Sentinel_




    Illustration: LINCOLN.--From a painting by Howard Pyle




                              LINCOLN

                                AND

                       THE SLEEPING SENTINEL


                           THE TRUE STORY


                              TOLD BY

                          L. E. CHITTENDEN

                  REGISTER OF THE TREASURY, 1861-65
                            AND AUTHOR OF
                 “RECOLLECTIONS OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
                       AND HIS ADMINISTRATION”


                            WITH PORTRAITS


    Illustration: Publisher’s Seal


                        NEW YORK AND LONDON
                    HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

                               MCMIX




                Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

                        _All rights reserved._

                       Published January, 1909.




                          _Illustrations_


  LINCOLN.--From a painting by Howard Pyle        _Frontispiece_

  LINCOLN IN 1857.--From a photograph in
    the collection of Charles Carleton Coffin     _Facing p._ 20

  LINCOLN AND HIS SON THOMAS, KNOWN AS “TAD.”
    --From a photograph by Brady                      ″       28

  LINCOLN.--From the statue by Augustus
    St. Gaudens, at Lincoln Park, Chicago             ″       36

  LINCOLN IN 1865.--From a photograph by Rice         ″       46




                            _Introduction_


Without any attempt at biographical details or an appreciation, a
few chief facts in Abraham Lincoln’s great career may be helpfully
recalled to the minds of readers. His ancestors were Quakers in Berks
County, Pennsylvania. His parents, born in Virginia, were influenced
by the current of migration across the Alleghanies, and were carried
first to Kentucky and afterward to Indiana.

It was in Hardin County, Kentucky, that Abraham Lincoln was born,
February 12, 1809, the child of these humble settlers. Compared
with the opportunities of the present-day boy, his chances seemed
desperate indeed. His attendance at a regular school covered hardly
more than a year. Nearly all the education which, among other gifts,
enriched him with such a mastery of the English tongue he acquired
painfully by himself. It was a question of necessities, of aiding to
wrest a livelihood from a new country that confronted the boy, and
so we find him at work, and at nineteen entering a larger world
of practical affairs by helping to guide a flat-boat down the
Mississippi to New Orleans. What he had to do was done so faithfully
that his employer promoted him to be a clerk, and gave him charge of
a store and mill at New Salem, Illinois.

The first public recognition of Lincoln’s character came in his
election as captain of a company in the war against Black Hawk and
his band of rebellious Indians in 1832. This was followed by his
appointment as postmaster at New Salem, Illinois, which gave him
better opportunities for study--opportunities so well improved
that he was admitted to practise as a lawyer in 1836. He began his
professional career at Springfield, Illinois. Law and politics were
almost inseparable, and as Lincoln rose in his profession, and became
noted for the shrewd common-sense and the dry humor of his speeches
at public meetings, he gained more and more prominence as a leading
member of the old Whig party in Illinois.

The next steps were natural ones--repeated elections to the
Legislature of Illinois, and then a nomination for Congress,
which led to his election in 1847. At Washington he made his mark
particularly as an opponent of slavery. Then followed, in 1858,
his selection as a candidate for the United States Senate against
Stephen A. Douglas, which involved a series of historic debates over
the slavery question. The popular voice was for Lincoln, but the
Legislature elected Douglas. From this contest Lincoln emerged with
a standing which finally brought to him the Republican nomination for
the presidency over William H. Seward in the stormy days of 1860.

Lincoln’s great career as the sixteenth President of the United
States, from 1861 to 1865, is not to be entered upon in this
outline of facts. His superhuman part in preserving