V.

Abraham Lincoln was born in the midst of the primeval forests of America, on the banks of the Ohio, and not far from the Mississippi, the first the finest, and the other the largest of North American rivers. His father was a laborer; his grandfather was a colonist-soldier, and perished at his own door, while defending his home from the savages. In the midst of those Kentucky woods, on the 12th of February, 1809, came into the world, he whose name, for ages to come, shall never be uttered save with the veneration inspired by the great Redeemer's, with the love felt for all public benefactors, and with the sorrow due to all sublime martyrs.

"Abraham Lincoln (said one of the journals opposed to him, as in mockery of his humble origin), this honest old lawyer, with face half Roman, half Indian, passed his first years in the western wilds, grappling with remonstrating bears, and looking out for the too frequent rattlesnake. Tall, strong, lithe and smiling, Abe toiled on as farmlaborer, mule-driver, sheep-feeder, deer-killer, wood-cutter, and, lastly, as boatman on the waters of the Wabash and the Mississippi."

VI.

Such was the childhood and youth of Abrahanı Lincoln. When but seven years of age, in 1816, he left the Kentucky forests on the southern bank of the Ohio, for those on the other side of the river in the State of Indiana.. Fourteen years later, in 1830, he again moved from the Indiana forests into the still more savage ones of Illinois,. on the confines of the region then inhabited by the savages whose arrow's had, years before, caused the death of his grandsire. These two trips, or rather this progressive march of the Western settler, which marked two epochs in the obscure life of Abraham Lincoln, had presented but one contrast, but one simple and natural change—which was, that in the first he was carried by his father with the rest of his family, in a wagon drawn by oxen, whilst in the latter, it was he who, being more fit for work, guided the vehicle which carried his household goods to the Far West.

On his arrival in Illinois, the young settler found himself-as had his grandfather-with gun in hand, to resist the invasion of the aboriginal tribes. In the war with the Indians, known as the Black Hawk War, he was elected by his companions Captain of Volunteers.

VII.

During all this time, Abraham Lincoln had been to school but for six months. But there are beings who derive their learning from all that they see, or that they hear, or that comes into their hands, whether printed or written-books, newspapers, paintings, objects of nature, -in a word, all that can be acquired from books, as ideas or as syntheses; and Abraham Lincoln's was one of those deep minds which gather, from observation and comparison, an immense store of intellectual wealth and practical knowledge.

By said means, Abraham Lincoln became a lawyer in 1835.

He was not a lawyer graduated at a University; he had no diploma, and could scarcely count twenty-seven years of a poor and uneventful life; but the moral power which was raising him to the glorious end in store for him, soon placed him at the summit of the profession which he had selected.

In 1845, Abraham Lincoln was the best lawyer in the State of Illinois.

VIII.

But Abraham Lincoln was not like all other lawyers. Having had no masters, neither had he colleagues, nor numerous but haughty clients, such as gather round the jurists in vogue. For him, the Forum was not an arena for ambition, nor a field camp in which to strive for scholastic renown; it was not even the tribunal of science, and much less the place for acquiring wealth. It was something nobler, for he was more humble and disinterested. For that athlete of the forests, the Forum was the tribunal of God's justice; it was the throne of the law, sublime goddess of that modern paganism, stigmatized by Rome, called Human Democracy, simple formula of the Old Gospel which proclaimed the equality of men; it was,

in fine, the portico of charity where the unfortunate sought refuge from the strong, and where all persecuted virtue found a shelter.

That was the diadem of Abraham Lincoln-the starting-point in his grand mission of humanity. Mercy, tenderness, love for the good, respect for man, pity for the afflicted, and, above all, his perfect, unquestioned and sublime honesty. Abraham Lincoln was the advocate of the poor, of all the widows and orphans of Illinois; and therefore lived in an humble way, with no other happiness and no other pride than his wife and children, his sole income being his daily bread, blessed by the lips of thousands.

In that simple home, the sole inheritance of the martyr's children, lived, for twenty-five years, the very personification of unspotted honor, that "Honest Abe," whom the American people mourn as for a father, and bless almost as a saint. It was there in his old homestead, in Springfield, that his fellow-countrymen sought him to carry him to that Capitol in Washington, from the summit of which it seems as though the whole world might be surveyed; and there he now rests in the eternal sleep of this earthly nothingness, after having received, in his passage from the Presidential Chair to the tomb-not the angry oath of those who shook the bloody tunic of Caesar in the Forum, crying for vengeance !-but the grandest Apotheosis within the memory of ages, as a tribute from a free people to a citizen.

IX.

As a political man, Abraham Lincoln had but one principle-Liberty, as, when a lawyer, he had but one aim-Justice. Therefore, before being called to the Presidential Chair of Washington's successors, had his voice for truth and liberty already been heard at public meetings, and in the halls of Congress on two solemn occasions in the history of the American nation. The first was when the accursed ambition of the men of the South carried into Mexico the banner of the Stars, veiled with the crape of the usurpers. Abraham Lincoln, placing himself by the side of the noble Clay, and from the seat which he occupied by the votes of his fellow-citizens, as a representative in Congress from Iilinois, denounced before the

world the crime of that oligarchy of slavery, which wished to usurp the territories lying south of the Union, to plant therein the seed of slavery, accursed of God and condemned by the human law of all times.

The second proof was in 1858, when those same men attempted to gain, through political trickery, the territories of the North, in order to introduce into that virgin soil their black institutions, by repealing the so-called "Missouri Compromise," which had, since 1820, prevented the propagation of slavery into the North by a barrier as of granite, for it was the barrier of the law.

Abraham Lincoln had then become the hope of a party. The Republicans were organizing in those days of preparation, under the rallying cry of "No more slavery in free territories." The Democrats, who were already meditating the bloody catastrophe, which has been termed the "Rebellion," put forward, on their side, as opponent to the rising athlete of the West, in this conflict, or rather in this skirmish preliminary to the grand struggle, the man of the South whom they considered their champion, the famous Stephen Douglass, known as the little giant on account of his small stature and colossal eloquence. They were both candidates for seats in the United States Senate from the State of Illinois. They contested face to face, day by day, and hour by hour, by speech, by argument, and at the ballot-box. The popular voice was in favor of Abraham Lincoln, but the votes of the State Legislature elected his rival, and Abraham Lincoln yielded a willing submission, for the choice was made in accordance with the law.

X.

But his defeat was his most glorious victory. He had entered the lists as a soldier in a just cause, and though defeated now, he was to rise again as leader in that cause. Few men-says a California journalist, as he draws, with masterly hand, the necrology of President Lincoln, referring to the above-mentioned electioneering canvass of 1858, were able to cope with Stephen Douglass; but Abraham Lincoln was. In the force and logic of his arguments, in the style of eloquence requisite to move the masses of the West, in his readiness with answers, in his

just criteria, in the art of captivating and convincing vast assemblages, he had but few superiors.

Even that great and discontented distributor of all high reputations-the London Times-said, when giving an account of a book which was published, with the debates upon slavery, between Douglass and Lincoln, in Illinois, that this "obscure Western lawyer" had by himself thrown more novelty and light upon that old subject, than was due to Wilberforce and Lord Brougham, the great English abolitionists, to the most illustrious opponents of slavery in the American Union-Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

The reputation of Abraham Lincoln was already made, for it had crossed the Atlantic.

XI.

Be it as it might, Lincoln, though defeated by Douglass in Illinois, in 1858, in his turn triumphed over the latter in all the free States in 1860; and Abraham Lincoln, the "rail-splitter" of Hardin County, Kentucky, and the plain lawyer of Springfield, was inaugurated President of the United States on the 4th of March, 1861.

The farewell words of Lincoln on that occasion to the town of his love were, like his own soul, pure and full of tenderness.

"My friends," said he, betraying much emotion, as he addressed the inhabitants of Springfield for the last time, on the 11th of February, 1861-"my friends, no one not in my position can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century; here my children were born; and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me which is, perhaps, greater than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never could have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him; and in the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I cannot succeed, but with which success. is certain. Again, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.”