Lin-Liv: Lincoln through Livermore

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography.


LINCOLN, Abraham, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (1861-1865), opponent of slavery.  Issued Emancipation Proclamation January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in southern states.  By the end of the Civil War, more than four million slaves were liberated from bondage. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 224-225, 356; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 65, 66, 140, 241-243, 275, 368-370, 385, 690-691; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 715-727; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, pp. 242-259; National Archives and Records Administration [NARA], College Park, Maryland; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 662) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, pp. 242-259:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (February 12, 1809-April 15, 1865), sixteenth president of the United States, was, to use his own words, born "in the most humble walks of life" (Works, I, 8). His birthplace was a log-cabin about three miles south of Hodgen's mill on what was known as the "Sinking Spring Farm" in Hardin (now Larue) County, Kentucky. Lincoln himself could trace his line no farther back than to certain ancestors in Berks County, Pennsylvania, whom he vaguely described as Quakers; but research has disclosed a lineage reaching back to Samuel Lincoln who came from Hingham, England, and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. On the Lincoln side the descent was as follows: Samuel Lincoln (died 1690); Mordecai Lincoln of Hingham and Scituate, Massachusetts (died 1727) ; Mordecai Lincoln of Berks County, Pennsylvania (died 1736); John Lincoln of Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Rockingham County, Virginia (died 1788); Abraham Lincoln of Rockingham County, Virginia, and later of Kentucky; Thomas Lincoln, father of the President. The merging of the Lincolns with the migratory streams of pioneer America is illustrated by the progeny of John Lincoln mentioned above "Virginia John" as he was called. Of his five sons, whose names were reminiscent of ancient Israel, Jacob alone remained in Virginia, while Abraham, Isaac, John, and Thomas removed to Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, or Ohio. Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of the President, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Green River, Lincoln County, Kentucky, about 1782; but was killed about 1786 by Indians while opening a farm in the forest (Beveridge, post, I, II, note 2).

Thomas Lincoln (1718-1851) was large, powerful, and compactly built. According to his distinguished son, he was "a wandering laboring-boy," and "grew up literally without education" (Works, VI, 25), and in mature life was barely able to write his name. Born in Rockingham County, Virginia, he went with his father to Lincoln County, Kentucky, roved about for some. years, married and settled in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, after which he pursued the occupations of carpenter and farmer, changing his residence frequently, making nothing of his poorly chosen farms, avoiding contacts with "society" in town, and bequeathing little besides life itself to his son. Thomas' first wife, Nancy Hanks, was the mother of Abraham. According to the best available authority, she was the natural child of Lucy Hanks; and her paternity is unknown, the date of her birth being a matter of conjecture. Some years after the birth of Nancy, Lucy Hanks married Henry Sparrow in Mercer County, Kentucky; and Nancy was reared by her aunt, Betsy Hanks (Mrs. Thomas Sparrow). Though many tender eulogies of Lincoln's mother have been written, there is little reliable evidence concerning her. She seems to have been superior to the general Hanks level in intellectual vigor, and was described as spiritually inclined, affectionate, amiable, cool, and heroic (Herndon and Weik, post, I, 10). Whatever her natural endowments, she was "absolutely illiterate" (Beveridge, I, 16) and was throughout life identified with lowly people. Her marriage to Thomas Lincoln occurred on June 12, 1806, the backwoods ceremony being performed in the cabin of a friend in Washington County, Kentucky, by Jesse Head, a Methodist parson. On the Hanks side the ancestry of Lincoln is beclouded in a maze of misinformation; and much of the data presented by earlier biographers on this subject must be rejected, including unreliable accounts of a mythical Nancy Shipley Hanks, sometimes erroneously mentioned as Lincoln's maternal grandmother, and of various alleged Hankses whose real name was Hawks. According to W. E. Barton (Lineage of Lincoln, pp. 186, 210), the parents of Lincoln's grandmother, Lucy, were Joseph and Ann (Lee) Hanks of Hampshire County, Virginia, and Nelson County, Kentucky; and one finds Hankses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries living on the Rappahannock as close neighbors of various Lees with whom at times they intermarried. It is only by conjecture as to several links, however, that Barton argues a connection between Lincoln's line and that of Robert E. Lee (Ibid., pp. 208-n).

Without following all the migrations of "Thomas the unstable," it may be noted that during the years of Abraham's early boyhood the family lived in a picturesque spot on Knob Creek about eight miles from his birthplace-a spot of natural beauty, of peace and grandeur, in a region of rocky cliffs, noble trees, and clear streams. Throughout life Lincoln carried fresh recollections of his Kentucky home-of the backwoods school where he was taught to read, write, and "cipher to the rule of three," of fishing and hunting adventures, of boyish escapades, of the old stone house on Nolin Creek where the young people gathered for dances, and of the mill to which as a child he carried the family grit. When the boy was seven the family was again on the move, this time for the Indiana woods. With their sorry stock of household goods they "packed through" to the Ohio River, ferried across, and followed a newly blazed trail to the home in the brush which Thomas had selected. This home, in which the Lincolns were at first but squatters, was located in the Pigeon Creek neighborhood in what is now Spencer County, Indiana. The first winter they had not even a cabin -merely a rude shelter of poles, brush, and leaves enclosed on three sides and called a "half-faced camp." Their cabin, when Thomas got round to building it, had at first neither floor, door, nor window; and the family fare was a matter of game animals, honey, birds, nuts, ·and wild fruit. The family of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, with their two children, Sarah and Abraham, was soon joined by Nancy's foster parents, Betsy and Thomas Sparrow, with the colorful Dennis Hanks, who was as essential a part of this backwoods picture as "that Darne Little half-face camp," as Dennis called it, which the Sparrows used after the Lincolns had discarded it. Tragedy soon descended upon Pigeon Creek. Thomas Sparrow and Betsy his wife were stricken with what the settlers called the "milk sick," and were laid away in coffins fashioned by Thomas Lincoln. To these and other sufferers Nancy Lincoln had generously ministered. She soon fell ill, lingered without medical help for a week, and died (October 1818) with words of pious. admonition for her children. In life and death her brief story was that of the American pioneer woman.

Thomas Lincoln soon found another wife in Sarah (Bush) Johnston of Elizabethtown, Kentucky; widow of Daniel Johnston, who came with her three children to the Indiana cabin; and with the addition in 1823 of John Hanks there were nine persons in this narrow abode. The household equipment was now improved; and the stepmother became an important factor in the boy's rearing. From the Weik manuscripts-memories of Lincoln's early associates recorded after many years-we may reconstruct, through Beveridge's pages, a fairly definite picture of Lincoln as an easy-going backwoods youth who did his stint of hard labor on the homestead, performed odd jobs for neighbors, shunned the vociferous camp-meetings of the time, avoided membership in the church, and used his leisure for self-improvement by the reading of a few good books. The Bible, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, Aesop's Fables, William Grimshaw's History of the United States, the Kentucky Preceptor, Weems's Life of Washington, and various other biographies and books of verse were. the principal works known to have been used by Lincoln at this period. As to formal schooling, there was, very little. While living in the Knob Creek home in Kentucky, Abraham and his sister Sarah had attended country schools for some weeks; now in Indiana he sat for brief periods under several schoolmasters (Andrew Crawford, Azel W. Dorsey, and William Sweeney by name) to whose log schools he had to walk long distances; but, in all, his attendance at school did not exceed one year. Out of school his vigor for reading and study was probably less a matter of ambition than of healthy intellectual interest. It was his stepmother who told the familiar story of his ciphering on boards which he shaved off with a drawing-knife to prepare for fresh efforts. His readiness to walk many miles for books is well attested, as is also his fondness for speech-making and for mimicking the preachers and orators who penetrated to the rough creekside. He somehow grew up without the frontier vices, avoiding liquor and being wholly free from dissoluteness and profanity. Though avoiding girls, he was uncommonly sociable; and the nearby country store at Gentryville held for him an unfailing fascination. The river attracted him powerfully and entered largely into hi~ early life. He earned a few dollars by rowing passengers from the shore to passing steamers; and in. the year 1828 he made the trip from Gentry's landing on the Ohio to New Orleans. Though stirred with the ambition to become "a steamboat man," he returned to the monotony of Pigeon Creek, where his father had a claim upon his labor. As the boy emerged from his teens he was tall, powerful, muscular, ungainly, tender toward animals, a recounter of robust stories, mighty with the axe, and not without a certain latent poetry in his nature. His relations with his father seem not to have been happy, and he welcomed the day when he could shift for himself.

In the year of Abraham's coming of age (1830) the Lincolns were again on the move. Having sold his Indiana holdings, Thomas set out with his family to Macon County, Illinois, whither John Hanks had preceded them. With ox-drawn wagons they trekked through forest and prairie, crossed the Wabash, and settled on the Sangamon River not far from Decatur. At first Abraham remained with the family, helping to build the new cabin, splitting fence rails, planting corn, and assisting in the rough tasks of the following winter. In the service of one Denton Offutt he assisted in building and navigating a flatboat from a point on the Sangamon River near Springfield to New Orleans; but the story that "the iron entered his soul" on seeing the New Orleans slave auction, and that he vowed if he ever had a chance to "hit that thing" he would "hit it hard," is untrustworthy (Beveridge, 1, to 7). Returning from the southern mart on a steamer, Lincoln, then only a drifter, selected as his home the village of New Salem, about twenty miles northwest of Springfield a remote hamlet set high on a bluff overlooking the Sangamon.

Here he spent six picturesque and formative years (1831-37), working in the store of Denton Offutt till it "petered out"; managing a mill; conducting a store with W. F. Berry, who died leaving a heavy debt ($1,100) all of which Lincoln finally paid; splitting rails and doing odd jobs to earn a scant living; acting as village postmaster; traversing the county as deputy surveyor; and all the while reading law, studying grammar, widening his acquaintance; following the trends of national politics, and laying the foundations for a wide personal influence. It was during this period that he served in the Black Hawk War, being unanimously elected captain by the men of his company. Another gauge to measure his stature is the devotion of the "Clary Grove Boys"-stalwart rowdies to whom hero worship was as natural as swearing, drinking, and fighting. This tribute to Lincoln's manhood, which came in spite of his freedom from the vices of the gang, seems to have been in part a recognition of his prowess in competitive sport, especially wrestling, and in part a pure matter of personal attachment.

In 1834 Lincoln was chosen to the state legislature; and he served during four successive terms (1834-41), first at Vandalia, the old capital, and later at Springfield. It was a frontier legislature, but its party maneuvers were spirited, and it offered Lincoln his first political training. Being a Clay Whig in a Democratic body, he belonged to the minority; but he became Whig floor leader and directed the fortunes of his party in the lower house, receiving in several sessions the full party vote for the speakership. On national issues, which were necessarily of concern to him as a prominent party worker, he acted as a regular Whig, supporting the Bank of the United States, opposing the leading measures of Jackson and Van Buren, and attacking the independent treasury. He studiously avoided association with abolitionists, but he did not want this attitude construed as positive support of slavery. Consequently, when the legislature in 1837 passed resolutions severely condemning abolition societies, Lincoln and his colleague Dan Stone from Sangamon County entered a protest, asserting that slavery was "founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils" (Works, I, 52).

In 1837 Lincoln left New Salem, which was soon thereafter abandoned, later to be rebuilt as a memorial to him, and made his home in Springfield. So poor was he at this time that his surveying instruments had been attached to pay a debt; he rode into town on a borrowed horse carrying his possessions in two saddle-bags, and was glad to make arrangements with friends for free lodging and board. He was now a practising lawyer, having been licensed as an attorney September 9, 1836; and he formed a partnership with J. T. Stuart, a man of influential family, able in the law, and prominent in Whig circles. While in New Salem, Lincoln had paid court to Ann Rutledge whose father kept the rude inn where he boarded. Though the girl's attractions and tragic death have inspired an extravagant amount of sentimental fiction, actual evidence on the matter is scant. She was engaged to a man named John McNamar, but his long absence suggested desertion. Her engagement to Lincoln seems to have been conditional upon honorable release from her absent lover. That Ann preferred Lincoln in case her lover should return and renew his suit seems doubtful; and on both sides there were reasons for deferring marriage. With matters in this unsettled state, Ann died of "brain fever," August 25, 1835. Lincoln's proposal to Mary Owens, whom he met through the kindness of her sister at New Salem, need not be treated here; nor is there room to analyze the confused testimony that surrounds his troubled courtship of Mary Todd.

Herndon's sensational story of Lincoln's failure to appear at his wedding, said to have been set for January 1, 1841, has produced a mass of contradictory discussion. In the best treatment of the subject (Sandburg and Angle, Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow, 1932, pp. 40-60, 174-185, 330), the conclusion is reached that there was no defaulting bridegroom at a wedding, but that some violent emotional disturbance did occur; indeed, no one can read Lincoln's correspondence of the period without being impressed with his excessive morbidity. After a series of breaks and reconciliations, complicated by Mary's rumored flirtations with other men, the disturbed lovers were finally brought together; and they were married in some haste on November 4, 1842. As to the degree of happiness that attended their married life it is equally difficult to reach a fully rounded conclusion (see Lincoln, Mary Todd). On Lincoln's side there was indifference to domestic niceties and a certain untidiness and lack of dignity that grated upon the sensibilities of a proudly reared woman ; on the other hand, the domestic atmosphere was not improved by Mary's bursts of temper. Their first son, Robert Todd [q.v.], was born August 1, 1843; he alone grew to manhood. The other children were: Edward Baker (March, 1846-February 1, 1850), William Wallace (December 21, 1850-February 20, 1862), and Thomas or "Tad" (April 4, 1853-July 15, 1871 ).

In the years 1847-49 Lincoln served one term in Congress, where he had the distinction of being the only Whig from Illinois. His election with more than 1,500 majority over the doughty backwoods preacher, Peter Cartwright, was a significant personal triumph, for Cartwright was himself a man of great popularity. In his undistinguished career as congressman the matters most worthy of comment are those which pertain to the Mexican War and to slavery. Lincoln had not opposed the war while campaigning as a candidate; but when his party sought political advantage by denouncing the conflict as a Democratic war unjustly begun by Polk, Lincoln joined aggressively in this party attack. He voted (January 3, 1848) that the war was "unnecessarily begun": and on December 22, 1847, he introduced his "spot resolutions" (Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, 1 Session, p. 64), which were so worded as to imply that the "spot" on which had occurred the shedding of American blood, which Polk had interpreted as Mexican aggression, was in fact an unoffending settlement of Mexican people, outside American jurisdiction, against which an American force had been unnecessarily sent contrary to General Taylor's advice. On January 12, 1848, he made a striking speech on his resolutions-a Whig speech in which he subjected the President's evidence to cold analysis, accused him of befogging the issue, and questioned the purposes of the administration as to the duration of the war and the terms of peace (Ibid., pp. 154-56). In this speech Lincoln made a declaration which hardly comported with his later declarations against Southern secession; for he asserted the right of "any people," or of "a majority of any portion of such people," to "shake off the existing government, and form a new one" (Works, I, 338- 39). Though Lincoln had voted to grant supplies to sustain the war, and though his antiwar speech made but slight impression generally, he had deeply offended the people of his state. His attitude was denounced in Illinois as unpatriotic; he was described as a "second Benedict Arnold," and was accused of having plead the cause of the enemy (Beveridge, I, 432). On various occasions Lincoln voted for the Wilmot proviso; and on January 10, 1849, he read a proposal to abolish slavery in the national capital ( Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, 2 Session, p. 212). It is characteristic of his conservatism that he proposed such abolition only in case three conditions should be met: emancipation was to be gradual; compensation was to be made to slaveholders; and the proposed act was not to go into force unless approved by the citizens of the District at a special election. Lincoln did not move among the great in Washington, nor did he rise above the obscurity of the average congress man. He amused a small circle by his camaraderie and droll stories, but the more brilliant social life of the capital was closed to him. Vigorous anti-slavery men were not his associates, but he formed a real friendship with Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. Party affairs took much of his energy. He spent weary hours addressing documents to voters; wrote numerous letters; served as the Illinois member of the Whig national committee; delivered a rollicking speech against Cass which was essentially a campaign document (July 27, 1848, Works, II, 59-88) ; and participated in the Whig convention at Philadelphia in 1848, laboring hard for the inexperienced Zachary Taylor and against his former hero, Henry Clay. In the campaign of 1848 his services on the stump were not eagerly sought, least of all in Illinois; but he visited Massachusetts, speaking at Worcester, Chelsea, Dedham, Cambridge, Lowell, and Boston. One misses in these speeches the resonant tone of Lincoln's later declarations. Antislavery as he was at heart, he counseled against voting for the Free-Soil candidate, Van Buren, since such action would help to elect Cass. Though the Whigs were nationally successful in this election, Lincoln had the humiliation of seeing his party lo se his own district, where the defeat of S. T. Logan for Congress might be interpreted as a repudiation of Lincoln's record by his neighbors. With a sense of futility he bade goodbye to Washington; and, while the thunders of the mid-century slavery crisis were shaking the country, he renounced politics, returned to the obscurity of Springfield, and sadly resumed his law practice.

As a lawyer Lincoln rose to front rank in his own state. He was associated with capable partners-at first John Todd Stuart, then Stephen T. Logan, and finally William H. Herndon. His practice was important and extensive in the state supreme court and also in the federal courts. After Illinois was divided into two federal judicial districts, Lincoln attended the sessions of the United States courts in Chicago with increasing frequency. In his circuit practice,' where cases ha d to be quickly whipped into shape, he was not more than ordinarily successful; but in the higher courts, where careful study served to bring into play the sureness of his matured judgments, his record was outstanding (Paul M. Angle, in Lincoln Centennial Association Papers, 1928, esp. pp. 38-41). It is true that Lincoln is chiefly remembered as a luminous figure among the circuit-riding lawyers who traveled the judicial circuit presided over by Judge David Davis. He thoroughly enjoyed this picturesque life, jogging over the prairies in his rickety buggy, meeting the country folk on their own level, and joining the happy migratory life of judge and attorneys as they lodged two in a bed and eight in a room, swapped stories, and made the taverns resound with hilarity. During court week the lawyers were in demand for political speeches, and Lincoln's popularity was enhanced by his aptness on these occasions. It was here that his humor and story telling showed at their best; and to the stories themselves must be added the wizardry of Lincoln's quaint manner and the charm of his smile. Some of the specific cases of this circuit-riding phase have received undue emphasis, such as the Wright case in which Lincoln represented the widow of a Revolutionary soldier and recovered an exorbitant fee  which a grasping pension agent had charged, and that of "Duff" Armstrong whom Lincoln successfully defended on a murder charge, making use of an almanac to refute testimony as to moonlight on the night of the murder. The human interest of these smaller cases has served to obscure the really important litigation with which Lincoln was connected. His services were enlisted in determining such important matters as the right of a county to tax the Illinois Central Railroad ( 17 Illinois, 291-99), the right to bridge a navigable stream ( the Effie Afton case, Beveridge, I, 598-605), and the protection of the McCormick Reaper Company against infringement of its patents (Ibid., I, 575-83). In this McCormick case, which was tried before a federal court at Cincinnati, Lincoln suppressed his feelings when snubbed by eastern attorneys; and later as president he appointed one of the se lawyers, Stanton, to his cabinet. A study of his whole legal career shows that he was more than a country lawyer; and to those factors which gave him fair success in the rural county seats his common sense, his shrewdness, his effectiveness before a jury, his strong invective, and his reputation for honesty-one must add further qualities that mark the outstanding attorney: a searching thoroughness of investigation (Beveridge, I, 573-74), a familiarity with pertinent judicial doctrines, and a knack of so stating a legal question as to brush away its technicalities and get at the core of the controversy. There are instances of his declining to receive excessive fees, refusing questionable cases, and even withdrawing from a case on discovering during the trial that his client's cause was unjust. In fragmentary notes for a law lecture he stated his conception of professional standards ( Works, II, 140-43). A successful lawyer, he said, must stress diligence, attend promptly to the preparation of documents, and cultivate extemporaneous speaking as the "lawyer's avenue to the public." He should discourage litigation and choose honesty above professional success  "Work, work, work," he said, "is the main thing" (Ibid., VI, 59).

The Lincoln of the prairies was a man of marked individuality. Standing six feet four, with uncommon length of arms and legs, his figure loomed in any crowd, while the rugged face bespoke a pioneer origin and an early life of toil and poverty. In a head not over large each feature was rough and prominent. In contrast to the round, full-cheeked Douglas, Lincoln's face showed deep hollows and heavy shadows. The craggy brow, tousled hair, drooping eyelids, melancholy gray eyes, large nose and chin, heavy lips, and sunken, wrinkled cheeks produced an effect not easily forgotten. A wide variety of qualities is revealed in his portraits, which give the impression of a character whose depth is not readily sounded-a personality in which conflicting hereditary strains were peculiarly blended. Those who have described him from life dwell upon the contrast between the seeming listlessness of the face in repose and the warmth of the countenance when animated with conversation or public speech. The trappings of the man intensified the effect of crudeness. In a day of grandiloquent male adornment Lincoln's habiliments departed as far from the Godey fashion plate as did his mid-western speech from the sophisticated accent of the East. The battered stovepipe hat stuffed with papers, the rusty ill-fitting coat, the ready-made trousers too short for the legs, the unpolished boots, the soiled stock at the neck, the circular cloak in winter or linen duster in summer, the bulging umbrella and hard-used carpet-bag, gave an entirely unpremeditated effect of oddity, the man's appearance being apparently of no more concern to him than the food which he seemed to eat without tasting.

Few men could match Lincoln as a stump-speaker. Beginning with apparent diffidence he gained composure and assurance as he proceeded, speaking with freedom, naturalness, and convincing power. In impassioned periods the gaunt figure, despite the sunken chest, became "splendid and imposing" (Herndon and Weik, II, 77) ; and in the directness of his intense passages the tall form seemed to gain in height. His mind had that tenacity and steadfastness of logic that goes with slowness in forming conclusions. There is a clarity and compactness in his writings which is in pleasing contrast to the verbosity so common in his day. Never descending to triteness or banality, his papers show careful composition and abound in epigrams and pithy phrases. This power of written and spoken utterance must be reckoned high among his qualities as a statesman. His political philosophy revealed a democratic liberalism closely resembling the creed of Thomas Jefferson. Anglo-Saxon principles of civil liberty were fund a mental in his thinking (A. C. Cole, in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, October 1926-January 1927, pp. 102-14); he advocated the broadening of political rights, even favoring woman suffrage far ahead of his time; and the leveling doctrines of the Declaration of Independence became a kind of religion with him. Laborers and the less favored classes generally found in him an earnest champion. Though never identifying himself with any ecclesiastical denomination, he was not lacking in the religious sense; and in his public papers he expressed with sincerity the spiritual aspirations of his people.

In the agitation that swept the country with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise Lincoln emerged from political inactivity and launched upon the larger career which occupied the coming years. From 1854 on there appeared a new tone in his speeches, a notable earnestness combined with adroitness in narrowing the contest to one phase of the slavery question, thus making it a suitable party issue. In a speech at Springfield, October 4, 1854, repeated at Peoria on October 16 (Works, II, 190-262), Lincoln answered Douglas, who had spoken in the same hall the previous day. His reasoned appeals to the Declaration of Independence, his sarcasm, his searching questions, and his shrewdness in avoiding pitfalls, indicated that he had now struck his stride as a leader. Still calling himself a Whig, though events were drawing him toward the new Republican party, he worked hard for the senatorship from Illinois in 1855; but, after successive ballots in the legislature indicated his dwindling strength, he aided the cause of the Anti-Nebraska fusionists against the Democrats by throwing his support to Trumbull.

The next year Lincoln became definitely identified with the new party; and at the Republican state convention at Bloomington he delivered, on May 29, 1856, what some have called his greatest speech (Works, II, 308 note). In a time of high excitement over the Kansas struggle, when radicals were trying to capture the Republican party, Lincoln's task was to make a fighting speech which would have enough boldness to inspire the crusading abolitionists and yet so define the issue as to keep the support of moderates. Herndon exhausted his adjectives in describing the speech and declared that on that occasion his partner was seven feet tall. Lincoln soon became active in the new party, attending every meeting he could reach, speaking frequently, managing the details of party machinery, and carrying on an extensive correspondence with voters. He was now the leading Republican as he had been the leading Whig of Illinois. At the time of Fremont's nomination for the presidency at Philadelphia in 1856 he received 110 votes for the vice-presidential nomination; and in this way his name was widely advertised in the North. He campaigned for Fremont in this election, though McLean had been his choice; but he had only partial success in winning Whig support for the Republican cause.

Successfully seeking the Republican senatorial nomination in 1858, Lincoln delivered a carefully prepared speech on June 16 before the state Republican convention at Springfield. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," said he. "I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other" ( Works, III, 2). In this speech, as elsewhere, Lincoln denounced the Dred Scott decision of 1857 as part of a pro-slavery conspiracy which, unless thwarted, would one day legalize slavery even in the free states. In the campaign with Douglas for the senatorship, Lincoln at first trailed his opponent, speaking at Chicago on July 10 just after his antagonist had spoken at the same place, and repeating the performance at Bloomington and elsewhere. On July 24, 1858, he challenged Douglas [q.v.] to a series of debates; and the acceptance of the challenge gave Lincoln the advantage of being matched against the outstanding leader of the Democratic party. Beginning at Ottawa, August 21, reaching an early climax at Freeport, August 27, and closing at Alton on October 15, the seven "joint debates" were but the most striking incident of a long duel between Lincoln and Douglas. It was indeed a memorable contest. The emotion of cheering crowds, the clack and rattle of western campaigning, the sporting spectacle of contestants facing each other in successive forensic rounds, the physical disparity between the candidates, the contrast between Douglas' private railroad car and the crowded coach or freight caboose in which Lincoln, not without an eye to political effect, lumbered into town to be fetched to his lodging in a hay-wagon-these features lent a picturesque interest to a contest in which the importance of the stakes far exceeded the realization of participants or spectators. Each candidate showed respect for the other, and the discussions were conducted on a high plane, albeit with a deadly earnestness. In the speeches there were few elements that were new. Lincoln shrewdly capitalized the growing split in the Democratic ranks; he denounced Douglas' indifference as to the right or wrong of slavery; and he used with telling effect the inconsistency between "popular sovereignty" and the doctrine of the Dred Scott decision, both of which Douglas favored. At Freeport, by a question as to whether the people of a territory could exclude slavery, he forced Douglas to compromise himself as presidential candidate in 1860 by taking a position which offended the South, though gaining votes for the senatorial contest in Illinois.

Once and again in the debates Lincoln disavowed abolitionist doctrines and stressed the conservative note. He did not advocate the unconditional repeal of fugitive-slave laws nor oppose the admission of states in which slavery might be established by constitutions honestly adopted. Negro citizenship did not receive his indorsement, nor did he urge political or social equality for the races. His advocacy of abolition in the District of Columbia was again qualified by those safeguarding conditions which he had previously proposed as congressman. With the politician's eye for vote-getting and for uniting the incongruous elements of his nascent party, he avoided the language of the anti-slavery crusader and narrowed the issue to the clear-cut doctrine of freedom in the territories. The effectiveness of his campaign was shown in the election returns. His party carried districts containing a larger population than those carried by the Democrats, but inequitable apportionment gave Douglas a majority in the legislature, insuring his election. The contest lifted Lincoln into national prominence; and in 1859 he made many speeches in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kansas, impressing his ideas upon the people of important doubtful states.

His name was now being mentioned for the presidency, and it was as a presidential possibility that he delivered on February 27, 1860, his Cooper Institute speech in New York (Works, V, 293-328). This was a notable formulation of the issues on which the new party could do battle. Exclusion of slavery from the territories as the doctrine of the fathers was the key note of the address, which was delivered in Lincoln's best style and with a dignity in keeping with the occasion. Decrying the efforts to discredit the Republican party by identifying it with the radicalism of John Brown or the abusiveness of Helper's Impending Crisis, he spoke for an attitude of understanding and friendliness toward the Southern people. He urged his party to "yield to them if ... we possibly can," doing "nothing through passion and ill temper"; and he denounced efforts to destroy the Union.

Lincoln was named in state convention as the choice of Illinois Republicans for the presidency; and a combination of factors led to his success in the national convention at Chicago. Seward was considered too radical and was injured by the powerful opposition of Greeley. Other candidates had weak points; Bates could not carry the Germans; Chase could not muster his own state.  The moderate element was growing in the new party, and in certain "battle-ground states", Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, which had supported Buchanan in 1856-it was vitally important to nominate a conservative candidate. Lincoln had steadily counseled moderation; he had avoided connection with the Know-Nothings, had pleased the Germans by his opposition to measures directed against foreigners, and had made himself highly acceptable as a second choice in case Seward could not be named. In short, Lincoln was so free from radicalism, so careful to avoid offense, and yet withal so skilful in inspiring enthusiasts that he proved to be precisely the type of candidate to which a convention turns after the luminous stars of the pre-convention canvass have proved unavailable. The atmosphere of the wigwam at Chicago was favorable to the "rail splitter," opposition within the state having been skilfully sidetracked. O. H. Browning, for instance, who favored Bates because of his strength with the old Whigs, was a member of the Illinois delegation pledged to Lincoln; and he labored loyally for him at the convention. David Davis, in charge of the Lincoln forces at Chicago, worked tirelessly and did his part well, though his bargaining in cabinet positions was contrary to Lincoln's instructions. With 465 delegates present and 233 necessary to a choice, the first ballot stood: Seward 173 1/2, Lincoln 102, Cameron 50 1/2, Chase 49, Bates 48, the rest scattered. On the second ballot Cameron's name was withdrawn to Lincoln's advantage, Seward receiving 184 1/2 votes, Lincoln 181, Chase 42 1/2, Bates 35. On the third ballot the change of four Ohio votes during the count precipitated a stampede to Lincoln, who became the convention's choice amid scenes of wild excitement.

In the fury of the ensuing campaign, with the Democratic party split between North and South and disunion threatened in case of Republican success, Lincoln remained quietly at Springfield. He conferred with leaders, received delegations, wrote letters, and prepared a short autobiography for campaign purposes; but he avoided political speeches. While the people of the South were expecting the worst from him, he did but little to reassure them. In the election of November 6, 1860, he was chosen president by pluralities in enough states to give him a considerable electoral majority; but as regards the whole popular vote he was a minority president. There were ten Southern states in which not a single popular vote had been cast for him; and, strangely enough, his own county in Illinois voted against him. Lincoln carried every Northern free state except New Jersey. His vote in New England was nearly three times that of Douglas; elsewhere in the East his vote stood to that of Douglas as 7 to 4; in the Western states the contest was closer, the ratio being 8 to 7. Lincoln's total in the popular vote was 1,866,452 as compared to 1,376,957 for Douglas, 849,781 for Breckinridge, and 588,- 879 for Bell (Edward Stanwood, A History of the Presidency, 1924, I, 297). The electoral vote stood: Lincoln 180, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, Douglas 12. In the critical interval between his election and his inauguration Lincoln continued his policy of silence, making no speeches and avoiding public statements as to his policy. While events were moving rapidly in the lower South and disunion was consummated by the formation of a Southern Confederacy without hindrance from Washington, the President-Elect, though never doubting that the government possessed the authority to maintain itself, remained passive and quiet at Springfield. Matters of patronage, cabinet making, the preparation of his inaugural address, conferences, and correspondence occupied his attention. He found time for a trip to Coles County where he visited his aged stepmother, directing that the grave of his father be suitably marked, and for one to Chicago to meet Hannibal Hamlin, November 21-26, 1860. To the measures of compromise proposed in Congress he gave scant encouragement. The Crittenden proposal to avert disunion was shattered by Lincoln's inflexible refusal to countenance the territorial extension of slavery. He requested General Scott to be ready to "hold or retake" the forts in the South as the case might require; and he did little to allay Southern fears as to his policy. He assured John A. Gilmer of North Carolina (December 15, 1860, Works, VI, 81) that he would not discriminate against the South in appointments and that the only substantial difference between the Southern people and himself was in the matter of slavery extension. To another Southerner, Samuel Haycraft, he wrote that the "good people of the South" would find in him "no cause to complain" (November 13, 1860, Ibid., VI, 69-70). These and other similar letters, however, were confidential, and the pacific nature of his intentions was not appreciated. The pliable Seward, during these clays, was more prominent as Republican spokesman than the President-Elect. A survey of the Southern press in this crisis shows a division of sentiment between those who recognized Lincoln's election as legal and would await an "overt act" before embarking upon disunion and those who asserted that abolition had swept the North and that the "cause of the South" had no future except by separation. (See D. L. Dumond, Southern Editorials on Secession, 1931, esp. pp. 221-223, 304-06; see also A. C. Cole in American Historical Review, July 1931, pp. 740- 67.) It was not long before the men who held the latter view seized the reins in the lower South; and fast-moving events made theirs the controlling policy for the South in general. (Much light is thrown on Lincoln as president-elect by the colorful letters of Henry Villard to the New York Herald, November 1860 to February 1861). In the matter of cabinet making the inclusion of Seward, Chase, and Bates was a recognition of rivals, while Wells was chosen as a New Englander and a former Democrat who had turned Republican. Lincoln had wished to include some representative of the South (as distinguished from the border states) and had approached John A. Gilmer of North Carolina on this subject, but his efforts to this end proved unsuccessful. Bargains in the nominating convention were kept by the appointment of Caleb B. Smith of Indiana and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania.

On February 11, 1861, with words of restrained emotion, Lincoln left Springfield for Washington. His speeches en route did little to reassure the skeptical East, but they made it clear that the government would resist secession. The effect of these speeches in the South was distinctly unfavorable ( D. L. Dumond, The Secession Movement, 1931, pp. 258-60). Newspapers carried full accounts of the journey, and unfortunate publicity was given to trivial incidents, as when Lincoln, whose chin was now marred by a new-grown beard, publicly kissed a little girl for whom he inquired as his train stopped at her town, and explained that the facial adornment had been assumed at her request. His secret night ride to Washington, occasioned by detective reports of assassination plots, was a humiliation to his friends and a subject of ridicule by his opponents. In a conciliatory inaugural address Lincoln again disclaimed any intention to interfere with slavery in the states, counseled observance of all federal laws (not accepting the Fugitive-slave Law), and plead earnestly for the preservation of the Union, which he declared to be perpetual (Works, VI, 169-85). Denouncing secession as anarchy he announced that the national power would be used to ''hold, occupy, and possess" (he did not say "repossess") federal "property and places." Declaring that "physically speaking, we cannot separate," he a sked his countrymen "one and all" to "think calmly," pledging that the government would not assail them, and closed with a poetic reminder of those "mystic chords of memory" which he hoped would yet "swell the chorus of the Union.''

Inexperienced as he was in the management of great affairs, untrained in executive function s requiring vigorous action, the new President found himself borne down by a cruel pressure of miscellaneous duties, overwhelmed by a horde of office seekers, and embarrassed by unfamiliar social exactions, while through it all the Sumter crisis, involving the momentous issue of civil war, was pressing for a solution. With the eyes of the nation on the fort at Charleston as a test of the new administration, with Major Anderson reporting that in a few weeks the garrison must surrender unless provisioned, and with informal negotiations in progress between Union leaders and Southern commissioners concerning the relation of the Washington government to the Confederacy, events were pushing the new executive to a decision. Meanwhile his very position as leader was at stake. Seward had begun by supposing that he would be premier, and had fatuously proposed a startling program of foreign aggression as a means of reuniting the country. Lincoln's answer to his secretary left no doubt as to who was president, but his words left no sting. If a certain thing must be done, said he simply, "I must do it" (Works, VI, 237). As to Sumter, Lincoln took advice but made his own decision, not, however, without a certain laxness in his control of the situation which unfortunately gave Southern leaders the impression of bad faith; for Seward, without Lincoln's authority, had made virtual promises which the administration could not keep. Lincoln asked his cabinet to submit written advice as to provisioning Sumter. Only two members, Chase hesitatingly and Blair emphatically, favored it. Seward, Cameron, Welles, Smith, and Bates counseled evacuation, though some of the secretaries later changed their positions. Having already committed himself to the general policy of holding federal property, and feeling that evacuation would be tantamount to surrender, Lincoln ultimately decided to provision the fort. Yet Seward assured the Confederate commissioners that the fort would be evacuated; and Lincoln himself was willing to evacuate it if by this means the secession of Virginia could be averted. "A State for a fort," he is reported to have said, "is no bad business (Annual Report of th e American Historical Association for the Year 1915, 1917, p. 2rr). Late in March he sent Ward H. Lamon [q.v.] to Charleston, primarily to investigate and report; but Lamon unfortunately gave Anderson, Beauregard, and Governor Pickens the impression that the garrison would be withdrawn (War of the Rebellion: Official Records, series I, volume I, 1880, pp. 222, 230, 237, 294). In all this there was considerable muddling, though without bad faith on Lincoln's part; and the confusion was increased by a bungling of orders due to Seward's interference with arrangements made by Lincoln and Well es, as a result of which the Sumter expedition was crippled by the detachment of the powerful Powhatan. The pacific attitude of the President was manifest in the purpose of the expedition (to convey food to the garrison and to land reënforcements only in case of attack), and also in the care which he took to notify the governor of South Carolina of his action, thus removing the element of hostile surprise. Diverse interpretations have been placed upon Lincoln's action, and the whole subject has occasioned a flood of controversy. There are many threads to the story; and to the perplexities of conflicting evidence must be added the difficulties of reading thoughts and assessing motives in a field where violent misunderstandings were inevitable. Under the onslaught of opposing forces, with the border states and upper South on the brink of secession and the war clouds gathering, Lincoln himself seems to have vacillated, to have pondered evacuation, meanwhile testing its possible consequences and even giving hints that such a course was under consideration without committing himself to it (a process to which statesmen must often resort), and in the end to have concluded that, in view of the uncertainty of compensating benefits accruing to the cause of union, the fort should not be surrendered. As the exhaustion of supplies made some change inevitable, the closest approximation to the preservation of the status quo was what Lincoln decided to do-to feed the garrison without aggressively strengthening it.

When the war came, Lincoln met the issue with a series of purely executive measures, for Congress was not convened until July 1861. He treated the conflict as a huge "insurrection"; and before Congress, on July 13, 1861, recognized a state of war, he had summoned the militia, proclaimed a blockade, expanded the regular army beyond the legal limit, suspended the habeas corpus privilege, directed governmental expenditures in advance of congressional appropriation, and in cooperation with his cabinet and the state governments had launched a multifold series of military measures. In a masterly message to Congress on July 4, 1861, he explained his Sumter policy, recounted the steps that led to war, stated the issue as between separation and union, commented on the world significance of the struggle, and appealed for ratification of previous acts as well as for future cooperation (Works, VI, 297-325). This legislative ratification of the president's irregular acts was soon given (United States Statutes at Large, XII, 326); and the Supreme Court added its sanction by deciding in the Prize Cases (67 U. S., 635-99), though not without vigorous dissent, that executive proclamations were adequate for the inauguration of maritime war.

As the war progressed, Lincoln extended his executive powers until, man of peace that he was, he was called a dictator. In dealing with disloyal activities-a serious problem because of pro-Southern activity in the North-he urged no special laws against treason, he but slightly used such laws as existed, and he had no system of nation-wide prosecutions; but, under his suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, thousands of persons were arrested on suspicion, after which, usually without trial, they were kept in prison for a time and then released. In this his purpose was precautionary and preventive, not punitive or vindictive. When confronted with anti-war or anti-administration agitation in speech or press, Lincoln usually showed toleration; and throughout the war "Copperhead" meetings were common and opposition newspapers persisted in their attacks upon the President and his party. The case of C. L. Vallandigham [q. v.], arrested for an anti-war speech of May 1, 1863, by order of General Burnside, was a familiar theme of denunciation by Lincoln's opponents; but the facts show leniency and tact in him rather than severity. He and all the cabinet regretted the arrest; and when a military commission condemned the agitator to imprisonment during the war, Lincoln commuted the sentence to banishment within the Confederate lines. Later, when Vallandigham escaped from the South and conducted a violent agitation in Ohio, Lincoln left him unmolested. There were, it is true, instances of newspaper suppression, as in the case of the Chicago Times in June 1863 (in which case Burnside's suspension order was promptly revoked); but in general Lincoln advised military restraint and counseled the suppression of assemblies or newspapers only when they were working "palpable injury" to the military (Works, IX, 148).

Looking broadly at his administration, one is impressed with the many difficulties that beset Lincoln's path. He had a rival for the presidency (Chase) in his cabinet. Within his own party the "Jacobins," a group which seemed at times a cabal of congressional leaders but which became the dominant element, tried his patience with their radicalism, their defiant opposition, and their interference in the conduct of the war. Abolition demands required his utmost tact; for the outcries of such men as Wendell Phillips reached at times an almost hysterical pitch. Always he had the activities of anti-war leaders to deal with. Though bringing Democrats within his cabinet and appointing many of them to civil and military positions, he was unable to carry through his "all parties program"; and he found it necessary to function as leader of one party, the Republican or "Union" party. Scheming men imposed on his generosity and a constant stream of people clamored at his doors. He had the defeatists to deal with-men who demanded peace first and union afterward; while he had the equally hard problem of keeping the Union cause clear of abuse, so that victory, when achieved, would not itself become a curse. The maladjustment of governmental activities, state and federal, military and civil, made his tasks needlessly hard; while the profiteering, plunder, and graft that came in the wake of war wounded his honest soul. A group of senators, partisans of Chase [q.v.], descended upon him in December 1862, demanding the removal of Seward and threatening to take important matters of policy out of his hands. Though inwardly suffering bitter distress (Diary of O. H. Browning, I, 601), Lincoln received the intriguing senators with calm, rode the storm by shrewd steering, kept both Seward and Chase in his cabinet, silenced his critics, and reassured the public. Often he faced a hostile and meddling Congress, and at times he seemed almost deserted. Favoring a war policy with as little of vengeance as possible, always remembering that the people of the South were to be respected, he encountered the opposition of the vindictive element which ultimately seized the Republican party and overthrew his policy in reconstruction days. It is in his reaction to these difficult circumstances that we find the measure of Lincoln's qualities as president: his unaffected kindness, his poise, his humor, his largeness of soul, his fairness toward opponents, his refusal to get angry, his steadiness, his ability to maintain that well-tempered morale which is so indispensable in a desperate war. There was also the notable trait of selflessness; for if Lincoln suffered when his pride was pierced, such was the temper of his self-control (which must not be misunderstood as mere humility) that no outward reaction of irascibility, peevishness, or ungenerous conduct resulted.

In his cabinet Lincoln found an ill-assorted group. Welles inwardly denounced Seward; Bates distrusted Stanton, Seward, and Chase; Stanton and Seward were uncongenial; and Chase, though never actually disloyal to Lincoln, was a constant source of discord. Yet Lincoln, lax as he was in administrative methods, maintained an attitude of cooperation in his official family. Such changes as occurred in his cabinet were of a sort to strengthen the President's position, the vigorous Stanton displacing the incompetent Cameron, Chase being shrewdly kept in the cabinet until after the renomination of Lincoln when he gave way to the more pliable Fessenden, Speed and Dennison serving as acceptable substitutes for Bates and Blair.

In the military phases of his task Lincoln was sorely beset. Governmental organization for war purposes was ill suited to the emergency and seemed at times formless. Some of the state governors embarrassed him by over-activity that trenched upon the duties of the secretary of war; others caused trouble by sheer recalcitrancy. Military efficiency was subordinated to personal ambition; there was a superfluity of political generals; and there was confusion and experimentation in the central control of the army. Troops when brought into the field were often unreliable; "some of the brigadier-generals," wrote Halleck (Works of Lincoln, VII, 77), were "entirely ignorant of their duties and unfit for any command." The war machine suffered from an ill-advised system of conscription, from undue state control of military matters, from widespread desertion and "bounty jumping," and from harmful newspaper activity, which betrayed military secrets, discredited the government, defamed generals, fomented antagonism among officers, and weakened the morale of soldier and citizen. Congressional interference was evident in the Committee on the Conduct of the War (W. W. Pierson, in American Historical Review, April 1918, pp. 550-76), which investigated Union disasters, held protracted conferences with the President, and considered themselves "a sort of Aulic Council clothed with authority to supervise the plans of commanders in the field, to make military suggestions, and to dictate military appointments" (Ibid., p. 566, citing W. H. Hurlbert, General McClellan and the Conduct of the War, 1864, p. 160). That Lincoln listened patiently to the committee and yet never permitted them to take the wheel from his hand, is evidence at once of his tact and his shrewdness.

With his burning sense of the issues at stake and his pathetic eagerness for one battle to end it all, Lincoln was subjected to repeated humiliation in the defeat of Union arms. His reaction to defeat is illustrated in his memorandum of July 23, 1861, following the first Bull Run, in which he outlined a comprehensive plan for pushing the blockade, drilling the forces, discharging "three-months men" who would not reenlist, bringing forward new volunteer units, protecting Washington against attack, and formulating a joint forward movement in the West (Works, VI, 331-32). The pressure of military duties upon Lincoln was more than any president of a republic should bear. He pored over books on strategy; scanned the military map; prepared orders for the army; gave counsel concerning such details as the acquisition of horses and the price of guns; outlined plans of campaign, not forgetting, however, the hazard of binding a distant commander to specific lines and operations; directed the allocation of supplies; attended war councils; and devoted constant attention to military appointments. He assumed a special degree of military responsibility at the time of McClellan's illness in January 1862; and he had to make those repeated calls for troops which intensified the depression of the country. In his experimentation with men he expressed a whimsical wish for a "school of events"-mimic situations in which men might be tried ( F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, p. 225); and he even contemplated taking the field himself (Diary of O. H. Browning, I, 52,3).

Kindness and forbearance, mingled at times with fatherly admonition, characterized his attitude toward his generals. When Fremont issued impossible orders in the West without consulting the President, Lincoln sent him a word of "caution, and not of censure," directed that certain orders be "modified," sent Blair from his cabinet for a friendly conference, and finally removed the General only when his insubordinate conduct left no alternative. Lincoln's search for a winning general is a painful story. McClellan snubbed him, differed with him as to plans, wrote complaining letters, and fell short in the business of fighting. Lincoln ignored the snubs with the remark that it were better "not to be making points of ... personal dignity" (Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, I, 53); and on the retirement of Scott in--November 1861 he made McClellan general-in-chief of all the armies. The President's plans, beset as he was by boards, senators, councils, military "experts," and clamoring editors, proved hopelessly at variance with McClellan's performance. In January 1862 the perplexed President issued a peremptory "war order" directing a "general movement of all the land and naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces" for February 22 (Works, VII, 89). This order was ignored, and Lincoln acquiesced in McClellan's oblique movement against Richmond via the peninsula. At the outset of the peninsular campaign, however, Lincoln relieved McClellan of supreme command; and he modified the latter's plan for the concentration of Union forces against Richmond by retaining McDowell's corps near Washington, while he also decreased McClellan's importance by reorganizing the army under corps commanders. McClellan's ineffectiveness caused Lincoln to put Pope in command of a separate Army of Virginia; but on Pope's failure at the second battle of Bull Run the President dropped him and ordered a reconsolidation of forces under McClellan, who was thus given a new opportunity. Then came McClellan's failure to pursue Lee after Antietam, upon which Lincoln finally removed him from command. The failure of McClellan's successors-of Burnside at Fredericksburg and Hooker at Chancellorsville- added to Lincoln's perplexity and tended to discredit his ability in military matters; while Meade's success at Gettysburg was marred by another failure to pursue and crush Lee's army, and even under Grant, whom Lincoln brought to the East in 1864, there were months of sanguinary fighting with hope deferred. Lincoln's blunders in military matters, which are not to be denied, were largely attributable to political pressure or to unsatisfactory human material, and were partly offset by constructive factors such as his guarding of Washington, his attention to the western phases of the war, and his final support of Grant in the face of bitter criticism.

Cautious in his dealings with Congress, Lincoln seldom seized the initiative in the framing of legislation. He went his own way by a remarkable assumption of executive authority; and on the few occasions when he sought to direct important legislation he was usually unsuccessful. The congressional election of 1862 was unfavorable to him; and elements out of sympathy with Lincoln were often dominant in Congress, which sought to curb the president's power of arrest, passed measures which he disapproved, and came to an impasse with him as to reconstruction. Though the reconstruction issue is a notable exception, Lincoln usually yielded when Congress enacted measures distasteful to him, as in the case of the West Virginia bill and the second confiscation act. Moderates were disappointed in this pliancy, which they described as "going over to the radicals"; yet the radicals themselves were far from capturing Lincoln, and at the time of his death in office an open break such as that which occurred --Under Johnson seemed probable.

Though the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation is the most memorable of Lincoln's acts, the stereotyped picture of the emancipator suddenly striking the shackles from millions of slaves by a stroke of the pen is unhistorical. Lincoln's policy touching slavery was a matter of slow development. Throughout the struggle he held that Congress did not have the power to abolish slavery in the South; and in keeping with his "border-state policy" he resisted for many months the clamors of abolitionists. When Union generals, notably Fremont in Missouri and Hunter in the lower South, attempted emancipation by military edict, Lincoln overruled them; and he said to a religious group: "I do not want to issue a document that . . . must . . . be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet" (Works, VIII, 30). Answering Greeley's antislavery appeal on August 22, 1862, he wrote, though with the proclamation already in his drawer, that his "paramount object" was to "save the Union," and was not "either to save or to destroy slavery" (Ibid., VIII, 16). It was found, however, that war over a vastly extended front with a slave-holding power forced the government either to take steps toward emancipation or to become both its own enemy and a promoter of slavery. By July 1862, therefore, Congress had, at least on paper, provided as much as the Emancipation Proclamation involved, by freeing slaves coming within Union military lines, emancipating slave-soldiers, and decreeing liberation generally as to all "rebel owned" slaves in the sweeping though ineffectual confiscation act of July 17, 1862. In addition, Congress had by this time prohibited slavery in the territories and in the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, from Lincoln's pondering of the slavery problem there had emerged a plan of constructive statesmanship. Recognizing state authority in the premises, mindful of Southern property rights, and moved by the conviction that the North ought equitably to share the financial burden of emancipation, since it must share the guilt of slavery, Lincoln had urged Congress to launch a scheme of gradual emancipation by voluntary action of the states, with federal compensation to slave-holders. This plan, however, as well as the scheme of deportation and colonization in Africa, had broken down; and in July 1862 Lincoln reached the decision to issue his edict of liberation. By this time the increasing radicalism of the war mind, the indifference of the border states to his compensation scheme, and the realization that foreign sympathy could not be obtained for a government which "sought to put down the rebellion with the left hand, while supporting slavery with the right hand" (Chase Manuscripts, Library of Congress, volume LXII, no. 1989) had done their work. On July 22, 1862, Lincoln summoned his cabinet and read aloud the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

His decision was now made; he was not asking advice "about the main matter." Rather he was announcing his course and taking counsel about incidental questions pertaining to its execution. Accepting Seward's· suggestion that the measure would gain force if issued on the morrow of victory, he waited until Lee had been fought off at Antietam and gave out his preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862 (Works, VIII, 36-41). In this edict he gave warning that on January 1, 1863, all slaves in rebellious districts would be made free; but the proclamation was far from an abolition document, for the President emphasized the restoration of the Union as the object of the war, and pledged further efforts to provide compensation to slaveholders. By common usage, the term "Emancipation Proclamation" applies to the edict of January 1, 1863, that of September 22, 1862, being but a warning. The Proclamation of January 1, 1863, contained no general declaration against slavery as an evil (Ibid., VIII, 161-64). The Union slave states were naturally not affected; and important districts of the South (the whole state of Tennessee as well as portions of Virginia and Louisiana) were excluded from the terms of. the proclamation. The most curious fact about the whole matter was that the proclamation applied only to regions under Confederate control; and Lincoln was denounced for freeing slaves only on paper in districts where his power could not extend. It is hard to put in a word the actual effect of the Proclamation. Preservation of slavery in non-rebellious districts was clearly implied; and if the Southern states had done all Lincoln asked in September 1862, thus obviating the necessity of the final proclamation, there was nothing in the preliminary document to prevent the war from ending with slavery still maintained. Yet the President's stroke at slavery did somehow change the character of the war; and its moral effect was great, albeit somewhat offset by the displeasure of those who opposed a "war to free the negroes." Military emancipation extended as the armies advanced in the South; but as to the legal potency of the Proclamation Lincoln himself had grave doubts. Effective liberation, in fact, came through state action in the border states and more notably through the anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution. Perhaps the chief importance of the Proclamation was in paving the way for these final measures. Lincoln's part in the whole matter was necessarily central. It was he who determined the time, circumstances, and manner of the proclamation; and it was his conviction that, had it been issued six months earlier, public sentiment would not have sustained it (F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, p. 77).

In spite of serious complications with France and Great Britain, Lincoln gave little direct attention to foreign affairs. He brushed aside Seward's bellicose foreign program of April 1, 1861; and he materially, assisted in the preservation of peace by softening Seward's instructions of May 21, 1861, to Charles Francis Adams on the general question of Great Britain's attitude toward the war and by directing that Adam treat the whole dispatch as confidential. In the Trent affair the influence of Sumner, Seward, and Bright contributed powerfully toward peace with Great Britain, the threads being in Seward's hands; but Lincoln's moderation, though at first he seems to have supposed that Mason and Slidell ought not to be released (Frederic Bancroft, The Life of W. H. Seward, 1900, II, 234), was an important factor. His restraint in international dealings is shown by a "paper" which he prepared, advocating that the Trent case be arbitrated (Diary of O. H. Browning';1, 517). On such questions as the French proposal for mediation, French intervention in Mexico, and the protests against British aid in the building and equipment of Confederate warships, the course of the administration was successfully directed by Seward, to whom Lincoln wisely delegated foreign affairs with the minimum of presidential interference.

While preserving the dignity of his high position, Lincoln's manners as president were unconventional and his habits irregular. Often his meals, when carried upstairs, would be left untouched for hours. He took no regular exercise, his chief relaxation being found in the summer evenings at the Soldiers' Home. During the first week of the battle of the Wilderness, says Carpenter (Six Months at the White House, p. 30), he "scarcely slept at all"; and the black rings under his eyes bespoke the strain under which he labored. In his last year his friends all noted his mental weariness; as he expressed it, the remedy "seemed never to reach the tired spot" (Ibid., p. 217). Despite this strain there was always a readiness to shake hands with a casual visitor and to receive the humblest citizen or soldier. In reviewing the death penalty for desertion or sleeping on sentinel duty, he eagerly sought excuses for clemency; yet his mercy was not mere weakness, and at times he did confirm the death sentence. He read the newspapers but little, for news reached him through more direct channels. Day and night his familiar form was seen in the telegraph office of the War Department across from the White House. In humorous stories and the repetition of favorite literary passages he found mental relaxation. The poem "Oh Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud" had a peculiar fascination for him, and his familiarity with Shakespeare was often a matter of surprise. Laughter was an absolute need of his harassed mind and he habitually thought in terms of parable, his anecdotes usually having a backwoods flavor and a tang of the pioneer West. His enjoyment of rough jest is shown in his fondness for such humorists as Nasby and Artemus Ward; his matter-of-fact secretaries had to endure a chapter from Ward as a preface to his reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in cabinet meeting. The melancholy of the earlier Lincoln deepened under the pressure of war. Not alone did the nation's woes bear heavily upon him, but the death of his son Willie in February 1862, following nightly vigils at the bedside, added a personal bereavement which would have come nigh to prostration but for the pressure of public duties. Though a ready speech-maker, Lincoln as president made very few public addresses, the chief examples being his inaugurals, his Gettysburg address, and his last speech, April 11, 1865, which dealt with reconstruction (Works, XI, 84-92). In lieu of the "White House publicity" of later presidents, he made use of the art of correspondence. When answering criticism or appealing to the people, he would prepare a careful letter which, while addressed to an individual or delegation, would be intended for the nation's ear. When a meeting of citizens protested against the arrest of an agitator, Lincoln wrote an elaborate letter (to E. Corning and others, June 12, 1863) explaining his policy of arbitrary arrests and pointing out the inability of the courts to deal with rebellion. Referring to the death penalty for desertion he asked, "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" (Works, VIII, 308). Writing to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862, he raised the question whether Southern unionists should be "merely passengers ... to be carried snug and dry throughout the storm, and safely landed right side up" (Ibid., VII, 296). On finding it impossible to attend a meeting of "unconditional Union men," at Springfield, Illinois, he wrote an important letter to J. C. Conkling (Works, IX, 95- 102) in which he defended the Emancipation Proclamation as a measure for saving the Union. In this letter he paid tribute to the men of Antietam, Murfreesboro, and Gettysburg, not forgetting "Uncle Sam's web-feet," for whose noble work "at all the watery margins" he expressed deep thanks. Of like importance were his letter to Greeley on the slavery question (August 22, 1862), to Raymond of the Times regarding compensated emancipation, to Governor Seymour concerning the opposition of New York to the conscription law, and to Mrs. Bixby, whom he beautifully consoled for the loss of her sons in battle. On November 19, 1863, in dedicating a soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg; Lincoln lifted the nation's thoughts from the hatreds and imminent horrors of war in a brief address which is recognized as his most famous speech (Works, IX, 209-10). In his few simple words of dedication the factor of enmity toward the South was notably lacking; and the prevailing note was Lincoln's central idea of the broad significance of the Civil War as a vindication of popular rule.

The story of the campaign and election of 1864 has never been fully told. In an atmosphere of national depression and war-weariness, with prominent men denouncing the "imbecility" of the administration at Washington, with victory deferred after three years of terrible losses, with financial credit at low ebb, and with defeatists demanding peace on the ground that the war was a failure, the President faced the hazard of a popular election. Though the presidential boom of Salmon P. Chase [q.v.], to which Lincoln closed his ears, soon collapsed, Fremont accepted nomination from an anti-Lincoln group; and the Democrats ominously gathered their forces while at the same time postponing their nomination until August. Such Republicans as Greeley, H. W. Davis, Beecher, Bryant, Whitelaw Reid, and many others, were minded to drop Lincoln; but Republican managers set an early date for the party convention (June 7), Lincoln meanwhile keeping Chase in the cabinet, and there was little difficulty in obtaining the President's renomination when the convention met at Baltimore. The renomination was in fact unanimous; but in the months that followed, the military outlook became still gloomier; and when McClellan was nominated by the Democrats in August on a peace platform his strength seemed truly formidable. At this juncture a surprising movement developed-nothing less than an effort to supplant Lincoln with a "more vigorous leader" and force his withdrawal (New York Sun, June 30,   1889, p. 3). A plan was laid for a convention to meet at Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 28 "to concentrate the union strength on some one candidate, who commands the confidence of the country, even by a new nomination if necessary" (Ibid.). At this time Greeley wrote that Lincoln was "already beaten," and that only "and other ticket" could save the party from "utter overthrow." As late as August 25, H. W. Davis I, wrote: "My letters from Maryland say Lincoln can do nothing there, even where the Union  party is most vigorous, and everybody is looking for a new candidate from somewhere." These extracts will serve to suggest the active opposition to Lincoln within his own party, which was due to such factors as the lack of Union success in battle, the conservatism of Lincoln, his leniency toward the South which ran counter to the radical plan of reconstruction, his call of July 18, 1864, for 500,000 volunteers, and the feeling that the President under Seward's ins fluence was an opportunist and compromiser s rather than a vigorous executive. The real strength of the anti-Lincoln movement is difficult to gauge because a favorable turn in the administration's fortunes occurred in September with the fall of Atlanta and Republican electoral successes in Vermont and Maine, after which, for the sake of party harmony, various anti-Lincon men such as Wade and Greeley gave him their support. With this turn of the tide the demand for Lincoln's withdrawal lost its point and the Cincinnati convention was never held. Efforts were put forth to include certain states of the Confederacy in the election, and the President carried Louisiana and Tennessee where reorganized "loyal" governments had been set up; but the votes of these states, being unnecessary, were not recognized by Congress in the electoral count. Thus only the Union states were counted; and all of them except Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey gave Lincoln their electoral vote. This electoral sweep, together with Lincoln's popular majority of more than 400,000 over McClellan, gave the election somewhat the appearance of a Lincoln landslide; there were, however, powerful McClellan minorities in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania (H. M. Dudley, "The Election of 1864," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March 1932.) In the event of McClellan's election Lincoln had resolved "to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration." As his secretaries record, it was the President's intention to "talk matters over" with McClellan and say to him: "Now let us together, you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the Government, try to save the country." At the time when this patriotic resolve to cooperate with a victorious opponent was made (August 23, 1864), the President considered his own defeat "exceedingly probable" (Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IX, 251- 52).

At his second inauguration, March 4, 1865, Lincoln made no effort to review the events of his administration, but delivered a brief address which, for loftiness of tone, ranks among his greatest state papers (Works, XI, 44-47). Breathing a spirit of friendliness toward the enemy, he refused to blame the South for the war, and counseled his countrymen to "judge not, that we be not judged." "With malice toward none; with charity for all," he concluded, "let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace .... " There were few Northern leaders who manifested as fair an understanding of the Southern people as Lincoln (A. C. Cole, in Lincoln Centennial Association Papers, 1928, pp. 47-78); and he devoted careful thought and labor to the restoration of the Southern states to the Union. In his proclamation of December 8, 1863, he pardoned (with certain exceptions) those Confederates who would swear allegiance to the Union; and he vigorously promoted the organisation of "loyal" governments in the Southern states, requiring that they abolish slavery, and standing ready to welcome them into the Union though the loyal nucleus be no more than ten per cent. of the voters of 1860. When Congress, on July 2, 1864, passed the Wade-Davis Bill providing a severe plan that would hinder reconstruction, Lincoln applied the "pocket" veto, and announced his reasons in a "proclamation" of July 8 (Works, X, 152-54), upon which the authors of the bill, with an eye to the President's embarrassment in the campaign for reelection, severely attacked him in an address to the people known as the Wade-Davis manifesto. The details of Lincoln's further efforts toward reconstruction are too elaborate to be recounted here. His scheme was carried through to his own satisfaction in Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Virginia; but Congress never recognized any of these "Lincoln governments" of the South.

As to peace negotiations with the Confederacy, Lincoln insisted upon reunion and the abolition of slavery, but manifested a generous disposition on collateral issues. This was his attitude in connection with the peace efforts of Horace Greeley [q.v.] in 1864; and the same moderate attitude was manifested in connection with Blair's mission to Richmond (see Blair, Francis Preston, 1791-1876) and in the Hampton Roads Conference of February 1865. In this conference Lincoln, in company with Seward; conferred on board a warship with three Confederate commissioners (J. A. Campbell, A. H. Stephens, and R. M. T. Hunter); and accounts agree that, while the President again insisted upon reunion and emancipation, he showed willingness to use the pardoning power freely in the South, to allow self-government to the returning states, and even to recommend liberal compensation to slave-holders. On the fall of Richmond Lincoln visited the Confederate capital, where he walked the streets unmolested, and advised with Southern leaders, notably J. A. Campbell. He expressed a desire to permit the "rebel" legislature of Virginia to return and reorganize the state; but this purpose, as well as his other plans for the South, was defeated.

He gave the closest attention to the final military phase of the war, visiting the army and remaining with Grant at City Point from March 24 until April 9, except for his two-day visit to Richmond on the 4th and 5th. His return to Washington coincided with Lee's surrender, an event which gave added significance to the President's last speech, which was a statesmanlike paper read to a cheering crowd at the White House on the night of April 11. Returning to the subject of reconstruction, he appealed to a divided North to let the South come back to the Union. Casting theories aside, he said: "We all agree that the seceded States ... are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the ... object of the government ... is to again get them into that proper practical relation" (Works, XI, 88). "Concede," he said, "that the new government of Louisiana is ... as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it" (Ibid., XI, 91). On the last day of Lincoln's life the subject of reconstruction was discussed at length in cabinet meeting; and a project was considered which resembled the plan later announced by President Johnson on May 29, 1865 (40 Congress, 1 Session, Report of Committees of the House of Representatives, no. 7, pp. 78-79). Again Lincoln expressed the wish that all vindictiveness be laid aside and that the Southern people be leniently treated (F. W. Seward, Reminiscences, 1916, p. 254). With opposition growing within his own party and threatening the ruin of his generous plans had he lived, he was removed by assassination, which silenced criticism and conferred the martyr's crown. At Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth [q.v.]. After lying unconscious through the night he died the following morning. The state rites over, the funeral train moved west with frequent stops; and amid fulminations of vindictive oratory, with people and soldiers mourning their beloved Chief, the body was laid to rest at Springfield.

The early crystallization of the enduring Lincoln tradition was illustrated by Stanton's comment, "Now he belongs to the ages." That he was among the "consummate masters of statecraft" may be disputed, but such was the impression he left that this distinction has been accorded him. In the shortest list of American liberal leaders he takes eminent place: liberalism with him was no garment; it was of the fiber of his mind. His hold upon the affections of his own people has not been due merely to the fact that he, a backwoods lad, rose to the highest office in the land. It is doubtful whether any other leader of the North could have matched him in dramatizing the war to the popular mind, in shaping language to his purpose, in smoothing personal difficulties by a magnanimous touch or a tactful gesture, in avoiding domestic and international complications, in courageously persisting in the face of almost unendurable discouragements, in maintaining war morale while refusing to harbor personal malice against the South. Not inappropriately, he has become a symbol both of American democracy and the Union.

[For bibliographies, see Daniel Fish, Lincoln Bibliography (1906), also in Complete Works, XI, 135-380;

Jos. B. Oakleaf, Lincoln Bibliography (1925);

W. E. Barton, "The Lincoln of the Biographers, "Trans. Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1929 (1929), pp· 58-116.

The most important edition of the writings and speeches is John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (Gettysburg ed., 12 volumes, 1905), and it is to this edition that the foregoing references are made.

Additional writings are to be found in G. A. Tracy, Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln (1917); Lincoln Letters, Hitherto Unpublished, in the Library of Brown University  and other Providence Libraries (1929);

P. M. Angle, New Letters and Papers of Lincoln, (1930).

The best edition of the Lincoln-Douglas debates is that of E. E. Sparks in Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, volume III (1908):

Of manuscript collections the most important are the Weik MSS. (preserved by J. W. Weik, collaborator with Herndon), and the voluminous Lincoln papers deposited in the Library of Congress, but withheld from investigators for many years. Certain alleged Lincoln documents have proved to be forgeries, such as the letters to Senator Crittenden, December 22, 1859, and to A. H. Stephens, January 19, 1860 (see W. C. Ford in Massachusetts Historical Society Proc., May 1928). the letter to an Italian named Melloni, alleged to have been written in 1853 (New York Times, November 20,   23, 24, 1931, May 8, 1932), and the fantastic collection of Lincoln and Ann Rutledge letters published in the Atlantic Monthly, December 1928-February 1929 (see P. M. Angle, "The Minor Collection: A Criticism," Ibid., April 1929).

Autobiographical portions of Lincoln's utterances have been collected in An Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln (1926), by N. W. Stephenson.

Campaign biographies were issued by J. L. Scripps, J. H. Barrett, and J. Q. Howard in 1860, and by H. J. Raymond. W. M. Thayer, and J. H. Barrett again in 1864.

After Lincoln' s death there appeared a number of biographies by men who had known him more or less closely. Ward H. Lamon [q .v.] brought out The Life of Abraham Lincoln from his Birth to his Inauguration as President (1872). This work; which gives a realistic and partly unfavorable picture of Lincoln, was written not by Lamon but by Chancey F. Black. Isaac N. Arnold of Chicago, from year of association with Lincoln, published studies in 1-86. and 18-9, and The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1885).

J. G. Holland, Life of Abraham Lincoln (1866), though produced too soon to permit of historical perspective, was a work of merit, compiled with discrimination and attractively written.

In 1889 appeared Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, by W. H. Herndon and J. W. Weik,   which should be used in the edition of P. M. Angle (1930). With all its limitations, this biography is a classic. It presents Lincoln without the halo, giving a view of the every-day life of the man with a wealth of anecdote and a power of portrayal which has caused it to be extensively used by later biographers. Herndon substituted "for Lincoln's aureole the battered tall hat. with valuable papers stuck in its lining, which he had long contemplated with reverent irritation" (Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln p. 102). It is, however, the Lincoln of the prairies whom Herndon and Weik present ; their account of the presidency is wholly inadequate. Many years later Weik returned over the same trail and published The Real Lincoln (1922), reaffirming certain disputed statements in the Herndon work and adding minor details.

The monumental work by Lincoln's secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 volumes;1890), inaugurated a new era of Lincoln historiography. It is a voluminous history as well as a biography, for the authors attempted to include everything. Approved by Robert Lincoln, it possesses both the advantages and the defects of an authorized biography. From their daily contact with the President, Nicolay and Hay had an inside acquaintance with his administration; and they made use of a vast range of material, including papers which have been used by no other writers. Their uniform tendency, however, to treat everything from the point of view of Lincoln, their unsympathetic attitude toward his opponents, and their partiality for the Republican party, made it impossible for them to produce the definitive biography.

Since Nicolay and Hay, the Lincoln bibliography has reached tremendous dimensions, and a full list would comprise thousands of items. The activity of collectors and dealers in Lincolniana has magnified the importance of every trivial item; and the yearly output of Lincoln addresses and articles, tinctured with the political or social predilections of the authors, is of staggering proportions. Only a few outstanding titles can be mentioned here.

At the forefront of recent biographies is Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (2 volumes, 1928). This great work is not as readable as certain other biographies, for the author has presented his material as he found it with the minimum of literary coloring; its high value derives from its soundness and thoroughness of historical. investigation.

Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (2 volumes, 1900), is based on material collected by the author in the service of McClure's Magazine, and was first published serially in that periodical in 1895-96. It has merit as a popular "life," but some of its statements, e.g., those concerning the parentage of Nancy Hanks, have been disproved.

 Abraham Lincoln (1917), by Lord Charnwood, is an excellent one-volume biography. Though he conducted but little original research and used easily available published sources, Charnwood has produced a well-proportioned narrative which gains much by being addressed to an English audience.

Another short biography of high merit is Lincoln: An Account of His Personal Life, etc. (1924), by N. W. Stephenson. With rare literary artistry Stephenson treats the "emergence" of Lincoln's character from its earlier hesitancies into the "final Lincoln," whom he places among the "consummate masters of statecraft."

W. E. Barton has been tireless in his research and has produced a great many books on Lincoln, among which are: Life of Abraham Lincoln (2 volumes, 1925); The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln (1920); The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (1920); The Women Lincoln Loved (1927); The Lineage of Lincoln (1929); Lincoln at Gettysburg (1930).

Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln : The Prairie Years (2 volumes, 1926), though attempting no elaborate documentation or critical evaluation of sources, is extraordinarily vivid and has a remarkable Pictorial quality in its portrayal of the rough American pioneer life out of which Lincoln came.

Emil Ludwig, Lincoln (1930), translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul, though of slight importance as a historical contribution, is dramatic and readable, conforming: to the new biographical vogue.

Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln the Man (1931) is almost alone in its devastating treatment.

The following biographies should also be mentioned:

Carl Schurz, Abraham Lincoln (1891);

E. P. Oberholtzer, Abraham Lincoln (1904);

J. T. Morse, Abraham Lincoln (2 volumes, 1893);

J. G. Nicolay, A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln (1902).

Certain works of reminiscence give special emphasis to Lincoln, such as:

H. C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (1892);

U. F. Linder, Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois (1879);

A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times (1892) ;

H. B. Rankin, Intimate Character Sketches of Abraham Lincoln (1924);

A. T. Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (1886);

Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1884);

James Speed, James Speed; A Personality (1914); and

W. O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times (1890).

The following diaries are of special note:

Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary (3 volumes, p.p., 1908, with omissions and with personal. names reduced to initials);

Diary of Gideon Welles, ed. by J. T. Morse, Jr. (3 volumes, 1911), a voluminous and valuable record for the presidency containing many devastating statements concerning members of Lincoln's cabinet (critically analyzed, especially as to Welles's numerous emendations, by H. K. Beale in American Historical Review, April 1925, pp. 547- 52);

"Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase" (Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, volume II, 1903);

"The Diary of Edward Bates," ed. by H. K. Beale, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1930, volume IV (1932);

The Diary of Orville Hielzman Browning, ed. by T. C. Pease and J. G  Randall (3 volumes 1927-33, in the Illinois Historical Collections).

Various problems of Lincoln's presidency are treated by J. G. Randall in Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (1926).

The following are special studies of particular phases of Lincoln's career: Charles F. Adams, "President Lincoln's Offer to Garibaldi," Massachusetts Historical Society Proc., 3rd series, volume I (1908), pp. 319-25;

P. M. Angle, "Abraham Lincoln: Circuit Lawyer," Lincoln Centennial Association Papers ... 1928 (1928);

D. H. Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office (1907);

F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (1866);

A. C. Cole, Lincoln's "House Divided" Speech (1923),

"Lincoln and the American Tradition of Civil Liberty," in Journal Illinois State Historical Society, October 1926-January 1927, pp. 102-14,

"Abraham Lincoln and the South," in Lincoln Cent. Association Papers ... 1928 (1928),

"President Lincoln and the Illinois Radical Republicans," in Miss. Valley Historical Review, March 1918,   pp. 417- 16, and

"Lincoln's Election an Immediate Menace to Slavery in the States?", American Historical Review, July 1931, pp. 740-67;

W. E. Dodd, Lincoln or Lee (1928);

D. K. Dodge, Abraham Lincoln, Master of Words (1924);

J. T. Dorris, "President Lincoln's Clemency," Journal Illinois State Historical Society, January 1928, pp. 547-68;

John Eaton, Grant,   Lincoln and the Freemen, (1907);

C. R. Fish, "Lincoln and the Patronage," American Historical Review, October 1902, pp. 53-69, and

"Lincoln and Catholicism," Ibid., July 1924, pp. 723-24 (a rebuke to those who by spurious quotations have falsified Lincoln's attitude toward the Catholics) ;

F. I. Herriott, "Memories of the Chicago Convention of 1860," Annals of Iowa, October 1920, and

"The Conference in the Deutsches Haus, Chicago, May 14-15, 1860," Trans. Illinois State Historical Society 1928 ( 1928) ;

Frederick T. Hill, Lincoln the Lawyer (1906);

Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, Nancy Hanks: The Story of Abraham Lincoln's Mother (1899), an unreliable work, unfortunately followed by certain biographers;

E. C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864 (1927);

J. H. Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln (1909), useful as to the English Lincolns but unreliable as to the American line;

M. D. Learned, Abraham Lincoln, An American Migration (1909), useful in proving that the origin of the Lincoln family was English, not German, and in tracing the movements of the Lincolns as a ''typical American migration";

Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family (1923), a valuable genealogical contribution;

C. H. McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (1901);

J. B. McMaster, A History of the People of the U.S. during Lincoln's Administration (1927);

Charles Moore, compiler, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural (1927);

Mary L. Miles, "The Fatal First of January, 1841," Journal Illinois State Historical Society, April 1927, pp. 13-48;

Rexford Newcomb, In the Lincoln Country (1928);

C. O. Paullin, "President Lincoln and the Navy," American Historical Review, January 1909, pp.284-303, and

"Abraham Lincoln in Congress, 1847- 1849," Journal Illinois State Historical Society, April-July 1921, pp. 85-89;

J. G·. Randall, "Lincoln in the Role of Dictator," So. Atl. Quar., July 1929, and

"Lincoln's Task and Wilson's," Ibid., October 1930;

P. O. Ray, The Convention that Nominated Lincoln (1916);

J. F. Rhodes, "Lincoln in Some Phases of the Civil War," Harvard Graduates' Magazine, September 1915, pp. 1-19;

J. T. Richards, Abraham Lincoln, the Lawyer-Statesman (1916);

Don C. Seitz, Lincoln the Politician (1931);

Albert Shaw, Abraham Lincoln (2 volumes, 1929), a "cartoon history" with hundreds of contemporary drawings;

J. W. Starr, Jr., Lincoln & the Railroads (1927);

N. W. Stephenson, "Lincoln and the Progress of Nationality in the North," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1919, Volume I (1923), pp. 353-63;

Ida M. Tarbell, In the Footsteps of the Lincolns (1924), a somewhat inaccurate book;

W. H. Townsend, Lincoln the Litigant (1925), and Lincoln and His Wife's Home Town (1929) ;

L.A. Warren, Lincoln's Parentage and Childhood (1926), a most valuable and scholarly work.

For references on the assassination, see Booth, John Wilkes.]

J.G.R.


LIVERMORE, MARY ASHTON RICE (December 19, 1820-May 23, 1905), reformer, suffragist, author,

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1:

LIVERMORE, MARY ASHTON RICE (December 19, 1820-May 23, 1905), reformer, suffragist, author, was the fourth child of Timothy and Zebiah Vose Glover (Ashton) Rice. Her father was descended from Edmund Rice, who came to Massachusetts in 1638; her mother's father was born in London. In her parents' Boston home on Salem Street, not far from the Old North Church, Mary Rice passed most of her childhood. Here she was indoctrinated with the tenets of Calvinistic religion and with high ethical standards, while she received the education provided for girls by the public and private schools of Boston. Her New England schooling was once interrupted, when her father, infected with the western fever of the thirties, moved to a frontier section of New York state, only to return to Boston two years later, convinced that pioneer farming had few attractions.

Mary, having completed the work of the Hancock Grammar School at fourteen, entered the Female Seminary of Charlestown, where, before the end of her first year, she was teaching as well as studying. After graduation, s h e remained here as an instructor in French and Latin until an opportunity came to teach on a Virginia plantation. From this experience she later drew the picture of plantation life which is to be found in her Story of My Life. After her return to Massachusetts, while teaching at Dux bury, she met and married (May 1845) the Reverend Daniel Parker Livermore, of the Universalist Church. They lived together fifty-four years, until the death of Livermore on July 5, 1899. The first pastorate served by the young couple after their marriage was at Fall River, where they were indefatigable in their labors with reading and study groups, one of which was made up of factory operatives. Here Mary Livermore's first published work, a temperance story, was written. The next post, at Stafford, Connecticut, was resigned because of Daniel Livermore's advocacy of the temperance cause, in opposition to the majority of his congregation. After serving pastorates in Weymouth and Malden, Mass., they started for Kansas in 1857, but abandoned their intention to settle there and remained in Chicago. Here Daniel Livermore became editor and proprietor of a church periodical, the New Covenant, which he conducted from 1857 to 1869, his wife serving as associate editor. At the same time she cared father two children. took a lively interest in local charities, and did much miscellaneous writing. She was the only woman to report the convention which nominated Lincoln.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, she devoted her extraordinary energy to the work of the Northwestern Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. Up to this time she had given scant attention to the extension of the suffrage to women, believing that desirable social reforms could be accomplished by other method s than the vote. Her war experience seems to have convinced her that woman's suffrage would be the most direct route to the curtailing of the liquor traffic, improvements in public education, and the alleviation of many problems of poverty; and at the close of hostilities she directed all her efforts to the enfranchisement of women. At the first woman's suffrage convention in Chicago she delivered the opening address, and was elected president of the Illinois Woman's Suffrage Association. In 1869 she established The Agitator, a paper devoted to the cause. A few months later, The Agitator was merged with the Woman's Journal, just established in Boston, and she undertook the editorship of the new periodical. The family then moved from Chicago, and for the remainder of her life she lived in Melrose, Massachusetts.

In 1872 she gave up her editorial work to devote her time to public lecturing, and for the last twenty-five years of the century she was a well known platform speaker, on social questions and topics of history, biography, politics, and education. The lecture she most frequently delivered was probably, "What Shall We Do with Our Daughters?" a plea for the higher education and the professional training of women. The two subjects in which she was most interested arid in which her influence was most largely felt were the education of women and the cause of temperance. For ten years she was president of the Massachusetts Women's Christian Temperance Union; she was also president of the Massachusetts Woman's Suffrage Association, and was connected with the Women's Educational and Industrial Union and the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. Notable among her later publications are her two autobiographical volumes, My Story of the War: A Woman's Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience (1888) and The Story of My Life, or, The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years (1897). In 1893 her name appeared, with that of Frances E. Willard [q.v.], as joint editor of A Woman of the Century, a compilation of biographical sketches, which went through a number of editions, under other titles. Throughout her life her vigor rarely failed, and she spoke from a public platform after she had passed her eighty-third birthday.

[Works mentioned above; Arena, August 1892; Lilian Whiting, Women Who Have Ennobled Life (1915); E. S. Phelps, in Our Famous Women (1884); Mrs. J. A. Logan, The Part Taken by Women in American History (1912); E. L. Didier, in The Chautauquan, July 1906; E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. Gage, Hist. of Woman Suffrage (6 volumes, 1881-1922); W. E. Thwing, The Livermore Family of America (1902); Woman's Journal, May 27, June 10, 1905; Outlook, June 3, 1905; Boston Transcript, May 23, 1905.)

E. D.


LIVERMORE, Samuel, 1732-1803, New Hampshire, lawyer, statesman.  Member of Congress, U.S. Senator 1785-1805, Chief Justice of the State of New Hampshire.  Voted against Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 740-741; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 307; Dumond, 1961, p. 104; Annals of Congress, 2 Congress, 2 Session, p. 861; 15 Congress, 2 Session, 1818-1819, p. 1192; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 761)

“In the present slaveholding states let slavery continue, for our boasted constit8tion connives at it; but do not, for the sake of cotton and tobacco, let it be told to future ages, that while pretending to love liberty, we have purchased an extensive country to disgrace it with the foulest reproach of nations.” (Dumont, 1961, p. 104). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 307:

LIVERMORE, SAMUEL (May 25, 1732- May 18, 1803), jurist, congressman, senator, was the third son and fourth child of Deacon Samuel Livermore and Hannah Brown, daughter of Deacon William Brown of Waltham, Massachusetts. The Livermore family in America descended from John Livermore (Leathermore or Lithermore), a potter by trade, who left England in 1634 and was admitted the following year as freeman in Watertown, Massachusetts. His descendants became people of substance and of importance. His great-grandson, Deacon Samuel, inherited from an uncle a farm in the township of Waltham, where he took up his residence and held various offices. Here his son Samuel was born. Nothing is known of the boy's early education, but at eighteen he was teaching in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and at nineteen he entered the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), where he expected to fit himself for the ministry. He took his degree in one year, after which he returned to his teaching, at the same time studying law in the office of Edmund Trowbridge. At the age of twenty-four he was admitted to the bar and began to practise in Waltham, but he soon moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he established his reputation as an energetic and fearless lawyer. He also became the warm friend of the royal agent, Governor Wentworth.

When trouble was brewing between the colony and the mother country, Livermore withdrew from Portsmouth to the Scotch-Irish settlement of Londonderry (now Derry), New Hampshire. He was elected to represent the township in the General Assembly of 1768-70 but was recalled to Portsmouth in 1769 when Wentworth appointed him judge-advocate in the Admiralty court, and attorney- general. Five years later, however, he returned to Londonderry, and the next year (1775) he pushed farther still into the wilds to Holderness, at that time accessible only in winter, when vehicles could travel over the s now. Here he made his home, acquiring by grant and purchase more than two-thirds of the whole township, over which he practically ruled as "squire," building a dignified residence, a church, and a gristmill, and personally superintending both farm and mill when the break with England prevented the fulfilment of his duties as king's attorney-general. Despite his apparent withdrawal from the Revolutionary conflict, popular confidence in him led to his election in 1776 as attorney-general, and from this time almost until his death he held office under the state practically continuously, sometimes, indeed, filling two offices at once.

In 1779 he was elected by the General Court as commissioner to the Continental Congress to represent the interests of the state in the controversy over the "New Hampshire Grants" on the west side of the Connecticut River. His services as commissioner led to his being chosen again as a representative to Congress in 1785, 1789, and in 1791. At the end of the last term (1793), he was elected to the United States Senate, and at the end of the six-year term, he was reelected for another six years but resigned in 1801 because of failing health. Twice he. was chosen president of the. Senate, pro tempore, and as such signed the address to the President on the death of Washington. Meantime, he had also been holding other state offices, the most important being that of chief justice of the superior court (1782--90). Thus he did not at first resign when elected to Congress, for there was then no law requiring it. When the Constitution of the United States was being debated, and the vote of New Hampshire hung in the balance, Livermore as a member of the convention of 1788 did great service in bringing about ratification, thus securing the ninth state and ensuring the acceptance of the Constitution. In 1791 he was president of the New Hampshire constitutional convention.

On September 23, 1759, Livermore married Jane, daughter of the Reverend Arthur Browne of Portsmouth, the first minister of the Church of England to settle in New Hampshire. There were five children, the eldest of whom died in infancy. Of his surviving sons, Edward St. Loe and Arthur [qq.v.] both became distinguished lawyers, and George Williamson (1764-1805) held for many years the office of clerk of the court and register of deeds at Holderness. Few more picturesque or important figures than Samuel Livermore are found in early New Hampshire history. Homely and sometimes harsh of speech, he possessed a frankness and kindness of heart which atoned for his brusqueness, while his honesty and common sense as a judge made amends for his contempt for precedents and for his sometimes inconsistent decisions. He died at his home in Holderness and was buried there in the cemetery of Trinity Church.

[A part of Livermore's journal, telling of his journey to college in 1751, is quoted in a manuscript sketch of him (140 pp., undated) by his grandson, in the library of the New Hampshire Historical Society at Concord. This manuscript also contains copies of letters and other memoranda. The journal has been printed in part in Putnam's Magazine, June 1857, pp. 631-35. The New Hampshire Provincial and State Papers, volumes VII, VIII, X, XXII (1873- 1893), contain the records of his activities in the state, and the Journals of Congress and Annals of Congress give his congressional service. A good sketch of his life by C. R. Corning may be found in the Proceedings Grafton and Coos County Bar Association, volume I (1888), and there are also sketches in C. H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); E. S. Stackpole, History of New Hampshire (1916), volume II; and the New Hampshire Historical Society Collections, volume V (1837). More of his personality is given in the chapter devoted to him by Geo. Hodges in Holderness {1907). For the family genealogy, see Henry Bond, Genealogy of the Families and Descendants of the Early Settlers of Watertown, Massachusetts (1855), and W. E. Thwing. The Livermore Family of America (1902). See also F. M. Colby, "Holderness and the Livermores," Granite Monthly, February 1881. A copy of a portrait by Trumbull hangs in the courtroom in the State Library at Concord and is reproduced in the Proceedings of the Grafton and Coos County Bar Association, volume II, and by Hodges, who also reproduces a portrait of Mrs. Livermore, attributed to Copley.]

E. V. M.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.