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Show LIFE HISTORY OF GREAT PRESIDENT Lincoln's Career Can Not Be Too Attentively Studied by the Youth of America. l ERAHAM LINCOLN, whoso t0$ figure history has already transfigured, and whose yJihA memory is reverenced by : all peoples, was born in Hardin county, Kentucky, on Febru-'ary Febru-'ary 12, 1809, a descendant of Samuel Lincoln of Norwich, England, and the son of Thomas Lincoln, an uneducated unedu-cated and thriftless carpenter, who had married Nancy Hanks. Few books came within his way in boyhood, but he had access to the Bible, Shakespeare, Shake-speare, "Aesop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," and a iistory of the United States and vVeems' Washington, the reading and re-reading of which laid the foundation founda-tion that mastery of idiomatic English Eng-lish which he was to show so often in later life. At the age of twenty-one he accompanied accom-panied his father to Illinois, and there won reputation as a rail-splitter by. helping to clear and plant some 15 acres of land. In 1831 he made acquaintance ac-quaintance with slavery in a trip to New Orleans, renewing the' experience experi-ence ten years afterward. After slight service as a volunteer, Lincoln settled at New Salem, entered enter-ed for a while into politics, tried his fortunes in a dry goods and grocery store, and finally settled down to the study of law. In May, 1S33, he was appointed to postmastership of New Salem, and held the position for three years. Elected to the legislature as a Whig - '-Ja-1834, Lincoln was sent to congress in 1846, from which date began his '0 public campaign against slavery and ' his oratorical contest with his rival, Stephen A. Douglas. On July 1, 1852, he delivered his eulogy on "Henry Clay, and in October, 1854, spoke powerfully pow-erfully against the extension of slavery slav-ery into the territories. Lincoln, after aft-er being again returned to the legislature, leg-islature, was on June 17, 1856, named for vice-president at the Republican nominating convention in Philadelphia. Philadel-phia. Then followed his -challenge to the seven famous debates with Douglas, Doug-las, and in May, 1860, his nomination as candidate for president at the Republican Re-publican national convention in Chicago. Chi-cago. The platform adopted, while demanding de-manding that slavery be forbidden in the territories, denied the right of congress to interfere with slavery in the states. The south now prepared for secession. Lincoln, elected to the presidency, denied in his inaugural the right of any state or number of states to leave the Union. The reply re-ply of the Confederate government was General Beauregard's bombardment bombard-ment of Fort Sumter. The president V . at once called, ouf 75,000 volunteers, '! and the war for the Union was on. The history of the conflict was thenceforward thence-forward a part of Lincoln's own political polit-ical history until his death by the hand of an assassin on April 14, 1865. "The martyr president," says Ward Lamon, in his Ufa. of Abraham Lincoln, Lin-coln, "was six feet four inches high, tho length of his legs being out of all proportion to that of his body. When he sat on a chair he seemed to taller than an average man, measuring measur-ing from the chair to the crown of his head; but his knees rose high in front He weighed about ISO pounds, but was thin through the breast, narrow nar-row across the shoulders, and had the general appearance of a consumptive consump-tive subject. Standing up, he stooped stoop-ed slightly forward; sitting down, he usually crossed his long legs or threw them over the arms of the chair. His head was long and tall from the base of the brail, and the eyebrows; his forehead hi:;u and narrow, incliuiug backward as it rose. "His ears nere large and stood out; eyebrows were heavy, jutting forward over small sunken blue eyes; nose long, large and blunt; chin projecting far and sharp, curved upward to meet a thick lower lip, which hung downward; down-ward; cheeks flabby, the loose skin falling in folds: a mole on one cheek and an uncommonly prominent Adam's Ad-am's apple in his throat. "Every feature of the man the hollow hol-low eyes, with the dark rings beneath; be-neath; the long, sallow, cadaverous face, intersected by those peculiar deep lines; his whole air, his walk, his long and silent reveries, broken at intervals by sudden and startling exclamations, as if to confound an obsoj-.er whs .rujght 63pect. the nature na-ture of his thoughts showed that he wish man of sorrows not of today or of yesterday, but long treasured and deep, bearing with him continual sense of weariness and pain." |
