Influential in oratory, skillful in political management, masterful in temperament, and of unflinching loyalty, he was long the genuine leader of the House. In recalling the several members of that body he stands forth as the one striking and dominant figure. Nor did his activity cease with the war; he continued preëminent in the questions which immediately succeeded it, so that the reconstruction of the country, without which our story would be incomplete, finds its proper place in his biography. Therewith, I think, the series reaches completion.

JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

September, 1898.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

From an original, unretouched negative, made in 1864, at the time he commissioned Ulysses S. Grant Lieutenant-General and Commander of all the armies of the Republic. It is said that this negative, with one of General Grant, was made in commemoration of that event.

Autograph from the copy of the Gettysburg Address made by Lincoln for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Fair at Baltimore, in 1864, and now in the possession of Wm. J.A. Bliss, Esq., of that city.

VIGNETTE OF LINCOLN'S EARLY HOME

The vignette of Lincoln's early home on Goose-Nest Prairie, near Farmington, Ill., is from a drawing after a photograph. This log cabin was built by Lincoln and his father in 1831.

LYMAN TRUMBULL

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at Washington.

Autograph from the Brady Register, owned by his nephew, Mr. Levin C. Handy, Washington, D.C.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at Washington.

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

EDWIN M. STANTON

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at Washington.

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC

From the painting by W.F. Halsall in the Capitol at Washington.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

CHAPTER I

THE RAW MATERIAL

Abraham Lincoln knew little concerning his progenitors, and rested well content with the scantiness of his knowledge. The character and condition of his father, of whom alone upon that side of the house he had personal cognizance, did not encourage him to pry into the obscurity behind that luckless rover. He was sensitive on the subject; and when he was applied to for information, a brief paragraph conveyed all that he knew or desired to know. Without doubt he would have been best pleased to have the world take him solely for himself, with no inquiry as to whence he came,—as if he had dropped upon the planet like a meteorite; as, indeed, many did piously hold that he came a direct gift from heaven. The fullest statement which he ever made was given in December, 1859, to Mr. Fell, who had interrogated him with an eye "to the possibilities of his being an available candidate for the presidency in 1860:" "My

parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families,—second families, perhaps I should say. My mother ... was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now remain in Adams, some others in Macon, counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782.... His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like." This effort to connect the President with the Lincolns of Massachusetts was afterward carried forward by others, who felt an interest greater than his own in establishing the fact. Yet if he had expected the quest to result satisfactorily, he would probably have been less indifferent about it; for it is obvious that, in common with all Americans of the old native stock, he had a strenuous desire to come of "respectable people;" and his very reluctance to have his apparently low extraction investigated is evidence that he would have been glad to learn that he