laborers, naturalized citizens and soldiers-can vote for none but the Republican ticket, if they wish to vote for their own interests.

The laborer should be a Republican because the Democratic party, no matter what it may profess for the sake of catching his vote, is now, as it has been, his enemy. The Democrats not only lived and fattened on slave labor in the South, but despised and maligned the free labor of the North. Alex. H. Stephens called our Northern workmen "the bogtrotters of Ireland." Governor McDuffie, in one of his messages to the legislature of South Carolina, declared: “Slavery is the corner-stone of the Republic, and that the laboring population, bleached or unbleached, is a dangerous element in the body politic."

Southern Democrats would not permit immigration into their section, and uttered hundreds of sentences like McDuffie's, one member of Congress affirming that whenever his party should become strong enough, it "would enslave all laborers, white and black; they were fit for nothing else."

The author of the "Life of Stonewall Jackson," a Virginia Democrat, in describing those who fought in the Union army said:

Of the rank and file I knew but little. Some companies seemed to be of a decent agricultural or mechanical complexion; but by far the greater part were the most unsavory looking wretches I ever beheld. The Irish were the next best. Then came the genuine Dutch, about as cleanly and intellectual as the overgrown sows of "der Vaterland"—this motley crew of jail-birds, malefactors, released convicts and Dutch-Yankee vermin, from the cellars and rookeries of Europe and the North.

The Muscogee (Alabama) Herald thus sets forth very clearly the old Democratic estimate of those who labor:

Free society! we sicken of the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small fisted farmers and moon-struck theorists? All the Northern, and especially the New England States, are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevalent class one meets

with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel and small farmers who do their own drudgery; and yet who are hardly fit for association with a Southern gentleman's body-servant. This is your free society.

These expressions might be multiplied almost indefinitely. How can any naturalized citizen vote the Democratic ticket? Certainly no Irishman can support that party without stultifying himself. Great Britain, like the Democracy, has been the champion of oppression. She sided with secession, she urges on the Democratic dogma of free-trade. Free-trade means nourishment and commercial strength for the English, and harder times for laborers, artisans and producers in America. Can the Irish vote to thus change things about? Can any laborer vote for the champions of such a policy?

What started the great stream of immigrants from Europe, settled and enriched the Western States, sent railroads into the wilderness and gave the nation a mighty impetus? The free-homestead law, signed by the immortal Lincoln and drafted and passed by a Republican Congress, after having been killed time and again while the Democrats were in power.

No Union soldier can vote the Democratic ticket and have a consistent record.

If it was right to throttle secession, put down the Rebellion and save the Union in 1861, it is right to-day. That right can not be maintained and preserved and the acts done in its behalf defended except by keeping the government in the hands of those who saved it until those who attempted its destruction shall have passed away.

Those who fought to suppress the Rebellion and maintain an undivided Union were patriots or murderers. If they were patriots then, they are patriots now. If they were murderers then, they are murderers now. If, therefore, they shall use the ballot-box now to place the government under the control of those from whose grasp they saved it with bayonets then, the glories and splendors of the past will be

wiped out, and they will appear before the world as selfconfessed murderers.

These are plain terms, but the facts can not be stated in any other words without conveying the same meaning.

In short, what valid reason can be urged why any patriotic and honest citizen of the United States should vote the Democratic ticket? What valid reason is there for placing the control of the government in the hands of the Democracy?

The people want no change; the business men want no change; the manufacturers of the South, struggling to keep their Democratic representatives on the right track in regard to the tariff, want no change. If all the office-seekers were either provided for or removed from the country, the industrial, professional, producing, manufacturing, farming and commercial classes would be unanimously in favor of retaining the Republican party in power.

That party saved the Union, wiped out slavery, gave free lands to settlers, liberal pensions to soldiers, civil and equal rights to the freedmen, good money to every State in the Union, the best banking system in the world, a tariff policy that fosters manufacturing and protects artisans and producers, cheap postage and perfect postal facilities, money that will buy land anywhere and everywhere, and forms of taxation that are least burdensome to the poor.

Against all these things the Democratic party has interposed its persistent objection and opposition. Who then, can vote the Democratic ticket?

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CHAPTER XXXVI.

LIVES OF REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS.

Abraham Lincoln-Ulysses S. Grant-Rutherford Birchard HayesJames Abram Garfield-Chester Allan Arthur-The Republican Candidates for 1884-James Gillespie Blaine-John Alexander Logan.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

While the war of the Revolution was still raging, probably during the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln left the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia, and settled in the wilds of Kentucky. Two years later, while at work in the field, he was shot dead by the Indians, who were at that time exceedingly cruel and blood-thirsty. He left a widow and five children, one of whom was Thomas Lincoln, then four years of age.

The early life of Thomas Lincoln was one of extreme hardship, of which no account was ever kept. He was the poorest of the poor, and wrought like a slave for his scanty livelihood. At the age of twenty-eight he built a log cabin and married Nancy Hanks, like himself a child of poverty and hardsdip, but a woman of superior mind and lovely Christian temper. The second child of Thomas and Lucy Lincoln was Abraham, who stands enrolled below no mortal name in the history of the world.

He was born in Hardin county, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. His father was very, very poor, and the region in which he lived afforded but scant opportunities for education or advancement of any kind. At the age of seven he was permitted to attend school for a short time, but as his only text-book was a dilapidated copy of Dilworth's Speller, the benefits of his schooling were limited.

When he was in his eighth year his father, tired of the utterly hopeless struggle which crushed the energies of the poorer white settlers of the slave States, disposed of his little homestead, and gathering his homely household goods upon a raft, started for Spencer county, Indiana. The journey was a continuous battle with swamps, bridgeless streams and forests; but the family were plucky, and after literally chopping a road into Spencer county, they at last arrived at a suitable location, three miles from any human habitation. Here they reared a log cabin and fell bravely to the precarious task of obtaining proper sustenance for the body.

The mother of Abraham, a woman of piety and some education, taught her boy to read and write, and studiously encouraged his taste for books. When he was ten years of age she died. She was a noble woman, of whom Lincoln always said: "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angelmother; blessings on her memory."

Two years later his father married again, and the stepmother proved kind and tender to Abraham. When he was twelve years of age a Mr. Crawford opened a school in a cabin not far from the Lincoln homestead, for the benefit of the settlers. Young Lincoln was one of his scholars, and studied arithmetic and one or two other common branches.

"The Pocket," as that portion of the wilderness was then called, contained but few books; yet the entire supply was, by various means, allowed to pass through young Lincoln's hands. In this way he became familiar with Bunyan's Pil grim's Progress, Life of Clay, Weem's and Ramsay's Life of Washington, Æsop's Fables and several other volumes of similar character.

At the age of nineteen he made a trip to New Orleans down the Ohio and Mississippi, in company with the son of the owner of a flat-boat, who intrusted to his care a valuable cargo. Attacked in the night by a gang of thieves, the young men defended the property bravely and effectively, driving