AMERICAN HISTORY STORIES.

IV.

THE CIVIL WAR.

ABRAHAM

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

BRAHAM LINCOLN was the President during this dark time in our nation's history, the Civil War.

He was not a handsome man, not an educated man, not a society-mannered man; but a more honest, more loyalhearted, more grand-souled man than Abraham Lincoln, never stood at the head of our government. He was as honest as George Washington, as sturdy as Andrew Jackson, as brave as the bravest General, and, in the end, as noble as the noblest martyr.

He had had a hard life as a boy. He had been brought up on a Kentucky farm, where he had learned to hoe and to

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plant, to drive oxen, to build log-houses, to split rails, to fell trees; everything that a farmer boy away out in a new country would have to do, this boy had done. Indeed, when he was named for President by the Republican party, the opposing parties sneered at him, calling him a vulgar rail-splitter," "an ignorant boor, unfit for the society of gentlemen."

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But for all his hoeing and his rail-splitting, for all his poverty and his hard labor, for all his rough home and his common companions, Abraham Lincoln soon proved that he had a something in his head and in his heart that any gentleman might well have been proud to own a something that a world of fine houses and fine clothes could not buy

something which, by and by, prompted him to set all the poor black men and women free.

Although Abraham Lincoln did live in the backwoods, and did not go to school, nevertheless, he was all this time in the best of society. Fortunately for him, his mother was a real lady in heart, and tried always to keep her boy from growing up a coarse, ignorant "rail-splitter," as his party opponents called him. She taught him always to keep his eyes open, and his thoughts awake to the beauties about him in nature. She taught him that it was a noble heart that could see God in the beautiful flowers, in the birds, in the fields, in the forests, and in the waters; that it was the artist's soul that loved to watch the beautiful sunset lights and the deepening shadows; she taught him to read the few books that she owned, and helped him to earn a few more; she encouraged his love for reading, and was careful that his reading was always of the best kind.

The result was, that when Abraham Lincoln came to be President, and had to write letters and make speeches, he always had the very best style of English at his command. When he said a thing, it was so simply and so correctly said, that every one knew just what he meant. And behind his words, too, there was always his big, honest, truthful heart. Is it any wonder, then, when, by and by, this good man died-shot down by an enemy of our Union that all the country mourned for him, and felt for a time as if no one could be found to fill this good, great man's place.

Here is what a good woman says of him: "When Abraham Lincoln wrote a thing, you read what he meant. The meaning was not covered up under a heap of useless words. One thing was apparent in him from boyhood. This was his straightforward truthfulness and sincerity of purpose. No political experience ever twisted him; he ended life as he began it, an honest, sincere, trustworthy man. One of the great outcries against him by his opponents after he was elected was, 'He is an uncouth, rough backwoodsman. He is no gentleman.' It is true that he was very uncouth in face and figure; never handsome to look at, although the soul of the man sometimes shone through the plain features in a way that transfigured them, and his deep gray eyes were full of a great sadness, that seemed almost to prophesy his tragic fate. He had not the manners of a court, but he did deeds from the promptings of a simple, manly heart that a king might have been proud to own, and if he was not a true gentleman, God does not make any now-a-days."

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When the Republicans chose Abraham Lincoln, the South was furious not because they had chosen Lincoln, but because they had chosen any one at all. "If a Republican President is elected," said these Southern States, "we will go out of the Union."

Now, it is said that the Southerners really were in hopes that a Republican President would be elected, so that they