The New International Encyclopædia/Lincoln, Abraham
LINCOLN,  (1809-65). The
sixteenth President of the United States, born in
Hardin County, Ky., February 12, 1809. His
ancestry has been with some difficulty traced
back to Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England,
who emigrated to America and settled in Hingham,
Mass., in 1638. Some of his descendants,
who were Quakers, settled in Amity Township,
N. J., and finally in Rockingham County, Va.
The Virginia Lincolns are described as “reputable
and well-to-do.” One of them, the President's
grandfather, removed to Jefferson County, Ky.
Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, a carpenter
by trade, was ignorant and thriftless. He
married Nancy Hanks, who seems to have belonged
to an obscure family, but herself to have been a
woman of noble character. After several
removals in Kentucky, Thomas Lincoln went in
1816 to Indiana. At the new home his wife died
after two years, when Abraham was not quite
eight years old, and a year later he married Mrs.
Sally (Bush) Johnson, whom he had formerly
courted. All Abraham's schooling combined
would probably not have made up more than
one year. As he grew up, however, he had access
to a few books which he read and reread — the
Bible, Shakespeare, Æsop's Fables, Robinson
Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, a history of the United
States, and Weems's Washington. He seems
to have been ambitious from the outset, trying
hard to learn, but much influenced by the coarseness
of his surroundings, from the externals of
which he never got quite free. He grew to be
six feet four inches in height; marvelous tales
are told of his strength, and much more credible
ones of his laziness, skill at jesting and story-telling,
and popularity.

When Abraham was twenty-one his father's
migratory nature impelled him to try his
fortunes in Illinois, and he settled on the north
fork of the Sangamon, which empties into the
Illinois. Here the younger Lincoln helped to split
rails and to clear and plant some fifteen acres.
In 1831, with two relatives, he took a flatboat
to New Orleans, whither he had made a previous
trip. Ten years later he went to New Orleans
again. These trips enabled him to see the true
nature of slavery. In 1832 Lincoln was chosen
captain of a company of volunteers for service in
the Black Hawk War. They saw no fighting and
were mustered out within five weeks, when
Lincoln reënlisted as a private, serving until June
16th. He then returned to Sangamon, making
his abode at the little mushroom town of New
Salem, and, having announced his candidacy for
the State Legislature, he began electioneering

vigorously. With great humor and with an
energy not always confining itself to strict argument,
he advocated pure Whig doctrine — a
national bank, internal improvements, and a
protective tariff. The follower of Clay was beaten
by the Jacksonian Democrats, but be had gained
experience and had spread his popularity. His
next venture was as a partner in a dry-goods
and grocery store at New Salem, but the concern
failed, the partner fled, and Lincoln was left to
settle the losses. He paid all he owed in 1849.
Having no gift for trade, he now began to read
law, studied hard, and made swift headway.
In May, 1833, he was appointed postmaster at
New Salem, and is said to “have carried the
post-office in his hat,” for the mail came but once a
week. This position he held three years. In
1834 Lincoln's personal properly was about to
be sold by the sheriff to satisfy a judgment, when
a new friend, Bolin Greene, bid in the property
and gave it over to him. In 1834 he was again
a candidate for the Legislature, and was elected,
running far ahead of his ticket. He was rather
an observer than an active legislator in this
session.

Lincoln's first love was unhappy. While
boarding with James Rutledge, in New Salem, he
became enamored of Ann, his landlord's daughter,
a well-reared girl of seventeen. She had at the
time another lover, who promised marriage, but
he broke his word. Lincoln and Ann Rutledge
were betrothed in 1835, but the girl fell ill, and
in August she died of brain fever.

In 1836 Lincoln was again a candidate for the
Legislature on the following characteristic
platform: “I go for all sharing the privilege of the
Government who assist in bearing its burdens.
Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to
the rights of suffrage who pay taxes or bear
arms, by no means excluding females.” Lincoln
stumped the district, and by his vigorous speeches
won a Whig victory. In the Presidential contest
of 1836 Lincoln was for Hugh L. White of
Tennessee. In the struggle of Jackson against the
United States Bank and the shifting policy of
Van Buren he had no interest, but he heeded his
duties as a legislator, and began that
anti-slavery record upon which so much of his fame
will ever rest. The abolitionists were in the
highest activity. Garrison's Liberator was
intensely annoying to the upholders of slavery.
President Jackson had at the close of 1835
invited the attention of Congress to the
circulation through the mails of what were then
called ‘inflammatory’ documents. Henry Clay,
Edward Everett, many of the Governors of the
Northern States, and a large majority of the
House of Representatives strenuously opposed
the agitation of the slavery question; all
petitions to Congress on the subject were laid on the
table without reading or debate, and all possible
means were taken to prevent the discussion of the
hateful subject. On the night of November 7,
1837, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was mobbed and
shot dead at Alton, Ill., for persisting in publishing
an abolition newspaper.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

At this juncture, when the Legislature was
about to pass resolutions deprecating the
anti-slavery agitation, Lincoln presented his protest,
to which he could get but one signer besides
himself. Herein he declares slavery to be founded
on injustice and bad policy; but he avers that
abolition agitation tends to increase slavery's

evils; that Congress may not interfere with
slavery in the States, though it might in the
District of Columbia on the request of the people.
This protest was meant to avoid extreme views;
therefore no mention was made of slavery in
the Territories, that point being covered by the
Missouri Compromise, which was then in full
force. Lincoln was never extreme, and probably
till the war began he saw no hour when he would
have altered a word in this protest.

When the State capital was removed to Springfield
in 1839, Lincoln settled there. Two years
before he had been licensed as an attorney, and
being at the capital, he could attend both to his
duties as a member of the Legislature and his
law practice. His business grew so rapidly that
he took into partnership John T. Stuart, a prominent
Whig, who had been a good friend also in
former years. Lincoln preferred to be the junior
in the firm. Springfield was a village of about
1500 inhabitants, and Lincoln was not only poor,
but he was in debt.

In 1840 Lincoln was an elector on the Harrison
ticket, and made speeches in all parts of the
State. But one-sided speeches were not suited to
his temper; he preferred joint debates, wherein
he might employ his masterly skill at retort. A
year earlier Lincoln had made the acquaintance
of Mary, the daughter of the Hon. Robert S.
Todd, of Lexington, Ky., and a sister of the wife
of Ninian W. Edwards, of Springfield, a
distinguished lawyer. Through her comeliness and
her wit the young lady had gained many admirers.
Some political papers were contributed by
her to a local newspaper; and Lincoln, to shield
her, assumed the responsibility, barely avoiding a
duel. About six weeks afterwards, November 4,
1842, he married Miss Todd.

In 1844 Lincoln was once more an elector on
the Clay (Whig) ticket, and in 1846 he was
elected to Congress by 1511 majority in a
district which two years before had given him only
914. When he took his seat as Representative in
the Thirtieth Congress, his great rival, Stephen
A. Douglas, was in the Senate. Lincoln was put
on the Committee of Post-Offices and Post-Roads.
Though opposed to the Mexican War, he voted
for supplies to carry it on. In 1848 he favored
the nomination, by the Whigs, of Taylor for President,
and made a strong speech in the House for
that purpose, subsequently speaking in various
parts of the country. In the second session of the
Thirtieth Congress he made no special mark. His
law partnership with Stuart ended April, 1841,
when he united in practice with ex-Judge Stephen
T. Logan, and soon afterwards formed a partnership
with his best friend, William H. Herndon.
As a lawyer he spoke tellingly and often to the
mirth of the courtroom. Many curious anecdotes
are told of the great man as a story-teller, of his
power, his energy, his oddities, and his generosity.
Though thousands of good stories
unknown to Lincoln pass current as having been
told by him, it is true that few great statesmen
were more capable than he of perceiving the
kernel of a tale. He had also a ready and
humorous wit, and was quick to follow a good
parry with a well-aimed thrust.

When his term in Congress was over Lincoln
wished to be Commissioner of the General Land
Office, but he did not get the appointment. He
was offered the Governorship of Oregon Territory,
but his wife declined to go there, and he would

not accept. For two years after leaving
Congress he was not prominent. In 1850 he refused
a nomination for Congress. July 1, 1852, he was
selected at a meeting of citizens to deliver a
eulogy on Henry Clay. The bill offered by
Douglas, January 4, 1854, to establish a Territorial
Government in Nebraska, reopened the
anti-slavery war, and Lincoln was forced to take
decided ground against spreading slavery into
the Territories. This he did at the State Fair at
Springfield, Ill., in October, in a speech of great
power. Lincoln had felt that his natural
opponent was Douglas and he seized eagerly this
opportunity of refuting his arguments; Douglas
recognized his opponent's strength and secured
from him a truce from debating for that fall.
In November, despite his positive declination,
Lincoln was again elected to the Legislature. At
the same time he was very desirous to succeed
Shields (a Democrat) in the United States Senate;
but Lyman Trumbull carried off the prize.
During the Kansas excitement Lincoln's sympathies
were all in favor of the free-State side, but
he discountenanced the use of force.

It was at the State Convention at Bloomington
in 1856 that the Republican party in Illinois
was formed, and there Lincoln made what many
deem the greatest of all his speeches. This
speech, preserved only in description, took
advanced anti-slavery ground and was undoubtedly
earnest and powerful. On June 17, 1856, at the
Republican Nominating Convention at Philadelphia,
Lincoln's name was put forth for
Vice-President, and was received with considerable
favor, for he got 110 votes. This year, for the
third time, Lincoln was on the electoral ticket,
now as a Republican, and he made some fifty
speeches for Frémont. The quality of these
speeches bettered his reputation and spread it
even to the East. In April, 1858, the Democrats
indorsed the stand Douglas had taken in the
Kansas dispute, and nominated him for the Senate.
Lincoln expected and received the Republican
nomination in June, and in accepting he
delivered the carefully thought out speech which
contained the famous statement that a house
divided against itself cannot stand. In July he
challenged Douglas to the now famous seven
debates, the direct result of which was to win
the latter the Senatorship. Lincoln, however,
was not arguing for the Senatorial prize alone,
but with a greater purpose — he was fighting for
Republican success in the Presidential contest
of 1860, and the opportunity it would bring to
‘hit hard’ the great ‘moral, social, and political
wrong’ of slavery.

In April, 1859, the people of his own town
began to talk of Lincoln as a proper candidate
for President, but he discouraged the idea. In
September he made speeches in Ohio in the track
of Douglas; in December he spoke at several
places in Kansas. He was more and more talked
of for a Presidential nomination, and finally
authorized his friends to work for him. On
February 27, 1860, on invitation, he appeared in
New York and spoke in Cooper Institute. The
address was warmly praised in most of the city
journals, and was in fact highly successful.
After this he spoke in many cities in New
England. He was present, though not a delegate, at
the Illinois State Convention, May 9, 1860, where
he received the most flattering evidences of his
great popularity, which was fully assured by the

adoption without dissent of a resolution declaring
him the choice of the Republicans of Illinois
for President.

On May 16, 1860, the Republican National
Convention met at Chicago. The city was full
of political workers. Indeed, no previous
convention had had half the number of ‘outside
delegates.’ Two days were spent in organization
and the adoption of a platform. Balloting
came on the third day. Up to the previous
evening Seward's nomination seemed certain; but
the outside pressure for Lincoln was powerful,
for his friends were chiefly men of Illinois, and
the convention was held in their State. On the
third ballot Lincoln won the nomination, and
in the afternoon Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was
nominated for Vice-President. The platform
adopted, though denying the right of Congress to
interfere with slavery in the States, demanded
that slavery be forbidden in the Territories. It
declared in favor of internal improvements and
protection.

The Democratic National Convention at
Charleston split on the slavery question. The
South totally repudiated Douglas and his
squatter sovereignty, whereas Douglas was
equally determined to stick to it. Most of the
Southern delegates withdrew and organized a
separate convention. Those who remained voted
fifty-seven times for a candidate, Douglas always
having the highest number, but not the
two-thirds required by Democratic precedent. They
adjourned to meet at Baltimore, June 18th. The
seceders adjourned to meet at Richmond, Va.,
early in June, but after convening they further
adjourned to meet June 28th in Baltimore. The
result finally was the nomination of three
Presidential candidates: Douglas by one convention,
Breckenridge of Kentucky by the seceders, or
extreme Southerners, and Bell (formerly a Whig)
of Tennessee, by the ‘Constitutional Union’ Party,
comiposed for the most part of ‘Know-Nothings’
and old-time Whigs. The canvass was warm on
all sides. Lincoln was elected on November 6th
by 180 votes, Breckenridge receiving 72, Bell
39, and Douglas 12. The election was strictly
sectional, for the Republicans got no electoral
vote in a Southern State. Feeling the need of
all possible support, Lincoln chose his Cabinet
carefully, trying to get a varied representation;
he wished even to have a Southerner, until his
offer to Mr. Graham, of North Carolina, was
flatly refused. Meanwhile the South was making
ready to secede, and on December 20th the South
Carolina Convention unanimously adopted the
ordinance of secession. The year closed in gloom,
and 1861 opened with no hope of peace. On
February 4th a peace congress met in Philadelphia;
on the same day delegates met at
Montgomery, Ala., to form a Southern Confederacy;
on the 18th the work was done, and Jefferson
Davis was inaugurated President.

On February 11, 1861, Lincoln set out for
Washington, taking a rather roundabout road.
Everywhere the people were eager to see and hear
him. On Monday, March 4th, he was inaugurated,
and delivered an elaborate address, full of
the best qualities of his nature. The appearance
of the new President is thus described
by Ward Lamon, in his Life of Abraham
Lincoln: “He was six feet four inches high,
the length of his legs being out of all
proportion to that of his body. When he sat on a

chair he seemed no taller than an average man,
measuring from the chair to the crown of his
head; but his knees rose high in front. He
weighed about 180 pounds, but was thin through
the breast, narrow across the shoulders, and had
the general appearance of a consumptive
subject. Standing up, he stooped slightly forward;
sitting down, he usually crossed his long legs or
threw them over the arms of the chair. His head
was long and tall from the base of the brain and
the eyebrow; his forehead high and narrow,
inclining backward as it rose. His ears were large
and stood out; eyebrows heavy, jutting forward
over small sunken blue eyes; nose long, large, and
blunt; chin projecting far and sharp, curved
upward to meet a thick lower lip, which hung
downward; cheeks flabby, the loose skin falling
in folds; a mole on one cheek, and an uncommonly
prominent Adam's apple in his throat.
His hair was dark brown, stiff and unkempt;
complexion dark, skin yellow, shriveled, and
leathery. Every feature of the man — the hollow
eyes, with the dark rings beneath, the long, sallow,
cadaverous face, intersected by those peculiar
deep lines, his whole air, his walk, his long and
silent reveries, broken at intervals by sudden and
startling exclamations, as if to confound an
observer who might suspect the nature of his
thoughts — showed that he was a man of sorrows,
sorrows not of to-day or yesterday, but
long-treasured and deep, bearing with him continual
sense of weariness and pain.” Yet this strangely
sorrowful man dearly loved jokes, puns, and comical
stories, and was himself world-famous for
his inimitable narrative powers. He drank very
little, and was in precept and example for
temperance; and at table he always ate sparingly.
He was never a member of a church; indeed, he
is believed to have had doubts of the divinity of
Christ and of the inspiration of the Scripture, i.e.
of revelation. In early life he read Volney and
Paine, and wrote an essay in which he agreed
with their conclusions. Of modern thinkers he
was thought to agree most with Theodore Parker.

At his inauguration Lincoln denied the right
of any State or number of States to go out of
the Union. In the South the address was
regarded as practically a declaration of war, and
preparations were hurried; in the North it was
strongly approved, and parties were quickly
consolidated. Less than six weeks afterwards,
General Beauregard, on behalf of the Confederate
Government, bombarded Fort Sumter, in Charleston
Harbor, forcing the surrender of Major
Anderson and his small force on April 14th.
There began the Civil War, and from that
day to the day of his death the political biography
of Lincoln is nearly identical with the
history of the United States. On April 15th he
called for 75,000 volunteers, and hundreds of
thousands in the first flush of patriotic feeling
thronged to enlist. At the same time Lincoln
called for a special session of Congress to meet
on the Fourth of July. On April 19th he
proclaimed a blockade of the Southern ports; on
April 27th he authorized the suspension of the
writ of habeas corpus. The date for the meeting
of Congress had been made distant, not only to
allow the President to develop his policy and to
avoid the turmoil that would ensue if the
members met in the height of passion, but also to
take advantage of the famous holiday — thus
satisfying a curious superstitious streak in
Lincoln's
nature. The only direct request made was
for 400,000 men and $400,000,000. The request
was granted with additions. On July 15th a
Democratic member (McClernand of Illinois)
offered a resolution pledging the House to vote any
amount of money and any number of men necessary
to put down the rebellion and restore the
authority of the Government. There were only
five opposing votes in a House of nearly 300
members.

On July 21st the Union forces were badly
defeated at Bull Run, and driven in a panic back
upon Washington. For a moment this flight had
the effect of disheartening the President.
General Scott, who was commander-in-chief when
the war broke out, resigned at the end of October,
1861, and Gen. George B. McClellan took
his place. McClellan was a skillful tactician and
organizer, but slow to strike. Lincoln realized
the necessity for acting, but he had not yet
gained the knowledge of war that he later
acquired. His appointment of Edwin M. Stanton,
a man not pleasing to him personally, as Secretary
of War (January 14, 1862), was an evidence
of great statesmanship, and Lincoln had trials
that would have broken a weaker man. McClellan,
after waiting and complaining unnecessarily,
finally began a campaign in which he was
thoroughly baffled by General Lee. In July
Halleck was appointed general-in-chief of the armies
of the United States. At the end of August the
principal Federal force, under the command of
Pope, was defeated in the second battle of Bull
Run. On September 16th-17th McClellan met
Lee in the bloody battle of Antietam in
Maryland. This engagement was hardly decisive, but
as the Confederates were forced to give up their
invasion, Lincoln chose this moment to issue his
proclamation, September 22, 1862, declaring that
he would on January 1, 1863, emancipate the
slaves of all the States then or thereafter in
rebellion. This proclamation was a military measure
justified as depriving the South to some
extent of an advantage it enjoyed. Politically it
was of the utmost importance, since it was the
means of winning from the anti-slavery element
throughout the North a more hearty support
than had previously been accorded, and added
greatly to the influence of the National Government
abroad, where economic hardships threatened
to conceal the fact that the war was being
fought largely to vindicate a great moral
principle. The support it received finally showed
Lincoln to be right. Before this, though desiring
emancipation, he had labored to persuade the
border States to take the step of their own
accord, in return for compensation, but he had been
unsuccessful. Two years afterwards Lincoln said
of the proclamation: “As affairs have turned it is
the central act of my administration, and the
great event of the nineteenth century.” McClellan
failed to use his great force to follow Lee
after Antietam; Burnside took command and was
defeated at Fredericksburg: Hooker was appointed
and suffered the disaster of Chancellorsville.
Then the tide began to turn, and on July 4th,
1863, General Grant captured Vicksburg. At the
same time Meade at Gettysburg beat off the second
invasion of Lee and won a decisive victory.
On November 19, 1863, Lincoln made his immortal
speech on the dedication of the National
Cemetery at Gettysburg. Meade having failed to
follow up his victory over Lee, Lincoln, in March,

1864, complying with the recommendation of
Congress, appointed Grant commander-in-chief.
Ihe South was nearly worn out and Lee's
superior generalship could not prevail against Grant's
determination and unlimited resources. On April
9, 1865, Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

On November 8, 1864, Lincoln was reëlected
over General McClellan by a vote of 212 to 21;
Andrew Johnson was elected Vice-President.
When Lee's surrender ended the war Lincoln was
busy with plans for reconstruction, but on April
14, 1865, before he could do anything toward
utilizing his wisdom in reorganization, he was shot
in his box at Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes
Booth, a dissipated and fanatical actor. The ball
entered Lincoln's brain and he never regained
consciousness. At 7 o'clock on the following
morning he was dead.

The loss to the country by this death was
incalculable, and the assassin injured most of all
the people he would have served. The problem of
bringing the two sections again into a union
which should be more than one of force was as
difficult as that of managing the war. To this
problem Lincoln would have brought not only
his experience, but generosity, utter lack of
vindictiveness, incomparable tact, a tried strength
which prevented vacillation. Lincoln's most
marked characteristic was the accuracy with
which he understood the American people. He
was wholly honest; he thought fairly and never
as a bigoted partisan. As a lawyer he was
weak unless convinced of inherent right in his
case, and when he was convinced he relied for
victory on a skill in presenting facts which often
set the other side in a light clearer than their
attorneys could throw on their case. He
conquered by the power of truth. This love for
truth, his infinite patience, and his hard thinking
seem to have guided him unerringly in every
great problem he had to solve. He who had
grown up in a drifting, almost illiterate, shiftless
society, who had no education save that which he
had been able to pick up in hours not devoted to
bread-getting, who had been for years a mere
country lawyer, with a narrow horizon, directed a
foreign policy of dignity, strength, and honesty.
Lincoln came of rough, shiftless, poverty-stricken
stock, but through inexplicable gifts he wielded
in a democracy and with the full consent of the
people a power as great as that of the Czar. It
was altogether fitting that a man of such charity
should have the honor of doing most to free his
country of slavery. This was his great achievement,
but it must not he forgotten that events so
great as the inception of the Pacific railroads and
of the present national banking system belong to
his administration. Some of the measures taken
to repress Northern sympathizers with the South
brought upon him harsh criticism, but these will
probably be condoned by history, or at most
condemned very tenderly. For the memory of
the great martyr President is year by year held
in more honor throughout the entire Union for
which he gave his life.

Consult: Lives by Holland (Springfield, Mass.,
1865); Lamon (Boston, 1872); Leland (New
York, 1870); Arnold (Chicago, l885); by Herndon
and Weik (3 vols., ib., 1889); by Nicolay
and Hay (10 vols., New York, 1890); and an
abridgment by Nicolay in 1902; Reminiscences
by distinguished men of his time (New York,
1885); Morse in the “American Statesmen
Series”
(Boston, 1893); Hapgood (New York,
1899); and Tarbell (New York, 1900).