Mendelssohn said of her, “I never met so noble, so true, and real an art nature as Jenny Lind.” N. P. Willis said: “To give away more money in charity than any other mortal; to be humble, simple, genial, unassuming, and still be the first of prima donnas; to have begun as a beggar girl and risen to receive more honor than a queen, this is the combination that makes the wonder of a dozen heroines in one single girl.”
7. LINCOLN, EMANCIPATION PRESIDENT
When the Hall of Fame was opened in New York City, George Washington was found to have the votes of one hundred per cent of the electors, and Abraham Lincoln came next with ninety-nine per cent. Lincoln, the great emancipator of four million slaves, and the preserver of the nation’s unity, came next to Washington, the Father and first President of his country. In Harden, now Larue County, Ky., February 12, 1809, he was born and grew up in such poverty as few boys have ever known. His mother died when the little fellow was very young, so that not until little Abe was seven years old, and his stepmother, a woman of energy and intelligence, took charge of the desolate household, did the shaggy-headed, ragged, barefoot, forlorn lad begin “to feel like a human being.” From the time he could hold an axe in his little hand he was expected to work. His father was a lazy, shiftless, “poor Southern white,” which is the last word in unthrift. He hired out Abe to the neighbors to plow, dig ditches, chop wood, drive oxen, and “tend the baby” when a farmer’s wife was busy, keeping all the scanty wages Abe earned and growling because the lad loved to read when he had finished his work. Often he came home at night all aching with cold and wet, not to lounge at leisure as other boys, but while his parents slept, he rolled another log on the fire to give him light, or by the aid of a pine-knot stuck in the wall to light the dingy cabin, he read such books as he could borrow. When sixteen years old, besides being a rail-splitter and teamster, he was earning six dollars a month by managing a ferryboat across the Ohio River. Perhaps the turning-point in his life came when he found two old law-books that had been thrown away with some rubbish he was hauling. He read these books and stored up the information they gave. His wide reading enabled him later to speak eloquently, especially against the slave-trade which he hated. One day, passing through the great slave-market of New Orleans, and seeing a girl being auctioned from the slave-block, his soul was so kindled that he decided then and there, “I’ll knock that thing hard, if I ever get a chance.” And he did. He was tender-hearted, and nothing aroused him more than to see a helpless animal or person mistreated.
He was six feet four inches tall, awkward and homely in countenance, very powerful, a famous wrestler, but he was never known to use his strength for his own benefit, and while he whipped the bullies that made him fight, he never picked a quarrel in his life. He served as captain in the Black Hawk war, and at the age of twenty-two ran for the legislature and was defeated. He ran a country store in Springfield, Ill., and failed, but he paid up the last dollar, although this took him fourteen years to do. He studied law and became a leading lawyer, admired for his honesty as well as industry. He stood always for peace if possible, and often persuaded his clients to make up their quarrel in his office instead of going to law. While he was an attorney, feeling that his lack of education put him at a disadvantage with Eastern men who, educated and trained in great colleges, were coming West, he determined “to be ready for them,” and so undertook a home course of study in mathematics, logic, and literature. It was hard work, but he won. He was elected to the Legislature of Illinois, sent to Congress at Washington, became the leader of the Republican party, and in 1860 was elected President of the nation. During the terrible years of the Civil War his hand guided the torn and distracted country out of the cyclone of hatred and bloodshed into peace and prosperity. Few souls in history have had fiercer trials than those through which he passed. His friends grew impatient and found fault, his enemies jeered, his closest followers doubted, but he could neither be hurried, delayed, nor swerved from the cause of right he had laid out for himself. His patience, self-possession, resources, tact, large-heartedness, and faith in God never failed him.
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Proclamation of Emancipation, and by his stroke of the pen set four million human beings free. No wonder that in many churches in the United States, as well as in England, Christian people sang “The year of jubilee is come!”
In spite of his lack of early education, his speeches and documents are among the finest in our history. His Gettysburg address every boy should know. In his second inaugural address this sentence occurs: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Just as he was about to enjoy the hard-won victory of peace, an insane assassin laid low the great emancipator, “a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.” He died April 15, 1865, sincerely mourned by “the boys in blue” and “the boys in gray” and the States of the nation that he had saved in union.
Abraham Lincoln will always rank as one of the greatest presidents, and, as the years roll on, his place in the affection and reverence of his countrymen becomes more secure. James Russell Lowell wrote this fitting tribute to him:
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly, earnest, brave, far-seeing man,