"Make our Lincoln your leader; he has a heart that we can trust," and Lincoln was made the heart of the people in the great cause of human rights. Lincoln, who had defended the little animals of the woods. Lincoln, who had been true to his pioneer father, when the experience had cost him years of toilsome life. Lincoln, who had pitied the slave in the New Orleans market, and whose soul had cried to Heaven for the scales of Justice. Lincoln, who had protected the old Indian amid the gibes of his comrades. Lincoln, who had studied by pine-knots, made poetry on old shovels, and read law on lonely roads. Lincoln, who had had a kindly word and pleasant story for everybody, pitied everybody, loved everybody, and forgave everybody, and yet carried a sad heart. Lincoln, who had resolved that in law and politics he would do just right.

John Hanks had brought some of the rails that the candidate for the presidency had split into the Convention of Illinois, and the rails that represented the hardships of pioneer life became the oriflamme of the leader from the prairies. He who is true to a nation is first true to his parents and home.

That was an ever-to-be-remembered day when, in August, 1860, the people of the great West with one accord arranged to visit Abraham Lincoln, the candidate for the presidency, at Springfield, Illinois. Seventy thousand strangers poured into the prairie city. They came from Indiana, Iowa, and the lakes. Thousands came from Chicago. Men came in wagons, bringing their wives and children. They brought tents, camp-kettles, and coffee-pots. Says a graphic writer who saw the scene:

"Every road leading to the city is crowded for twenty miles with vehicles. The weather is fine, and a little overwarm. Girls can dress in white, and bare their arms and necks without danger; the women can bring their children. Everything that was ever done at any other mass-meeting is done here. Locomotive-builders are making a boiler; blacksmiths are heating and hammering their irons; the iron-founders are molding their patterns; the rail-splitters are showing the people how Uncle Abe used to split rails; every other town has its wagon-load of thirty-one girls in white to represent the States; bands of music, numerous almost as those of McClellan on Arlington Heights in 1862, are playing; old men of the War of 1812, with their old wives, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, are here: making a procession of human beings, horses, and carriages not less than ten miles in length. And yet the procession might have left the town and the people would scarcely be missed.

"There is an immense wigwam, with galleries like a theatre; but there are people enough not in the procession to fill a dozen like it. Half an hour is long enough to witness the moving panorama of men and women, horses, carriages, representatives of trades, mottoes, and burlesques, and listen to the bands."

And among those who came to see the great procession, the rail-splitters, and the sights, were the Tunker from the Indian schools over the Mississippi, and Aunt Indiana from Indiana.

There was a visitor from the East who became the hero of the great day. He is living now (1891) in Chelsea, Mass., near the Soldiers' Home, to which he often goes to sing, and is known there as "Father Locke." He was a natural minstrel, and songs of his, like "Down by the Sea," have been sung all over the world. One of his songs has moved thousands of hearts in sorrow, and pictures his own truly loving and beautiful soul:

"There's a fresh little mound near the willow,
Where at evening I wander and weep;
There's a dear vacant spot on my pillow,
Where a sweet little face used to sleep.
There were pretty blue eyes, but they slumber
In silence, beneath the dark mold,
And the little pet lamb of our number
Has gone to the heavenly fold."

This man, with the approval of President Lincoln, went as a minstrel to the Army of the Potomac. We think that he was the only minstrel who followed our army, like the war-singers of old. In a book published for private use, entitled Three Years in Camp and Hospital, "Father Locke" thus tells the story of his interview with President Lincoln at the White House:

"Giving his hand, and saying he recollected me, he asked what he could do for me.