ness of statement, calmness, and the conclusiveness of its course of reasoning.

The South, however, had gotten beyond the realm Its leaders had fanned it into a fury, hot

of reason.

with hate.

With what delicacy and tenderness Lincoln treats them in his final appeal for the Union.

Lincoln's fame as statesman and patriot may well rest upon his first inaugural address.

CHAPTER XX

LINCOLN THE LEADER

"He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." -II Sam. 24: 3.

OUR own experience, confirmed by the records of history, demonstrate that leaders are born, not made. Men and birds and beasts, indeed almost all living creatures, have their leaders, and in most cases they lead because they are the best qualified to lead. This is peculiarly true as to the leaders of public thought.

Evidences of Lincoln's leadership appeared at a comparatively early date. The children of the neighborhood looked to him to furnish their entertainment by speech or story. The grown-ups looked upon him as a boy of unusual education, in that he could write and write well, and accordingly they called upon him to attend to much of their correspondence, for writing in that day was a rather unusual accomplishment in his community.

In all the games in which he was not a participant for honors, from a boxing or wrestling match to a horse race, he was always chosen as referee, umpire, judge. Such was his universal reputation for fairness and fearlessness that his judgments and decisions were rarely, if ever, questioned.

His great physical strength, his skill with the maul and the ax and the scythe, gave him front rank in every community in which he lived as boy and youth. These qualities at that age were peculiarly marks of excellence and superiority.

Unusual respect and even veneration was paid his physical powers, as well as his mental capacity. He was a helper to every one that was in need, from the humblest housewife to the biggest farmer in the community, with a gentleness, a kindness, a gratitude not ordinarily found in giants. He was friend of everybody and enemy of nobody. Even as a boy it could well be said of him that he always had "charity for

all and malice toward none."

The "people" at Gentryville, the "folks" at New Salem, all seemed to see in this boy and youth one of their own kind. He was born of them, and among them, and in some way or other he just seemed to "belong." He emulated their virtues, eschewed their vices, and yet maintained the respect and good-will of all.

We remember how he was chosen captain in the Black Hawk War in 1832 over an older and more experienced man, Kilpatrick. The people did it. They believed in him and wanted to honor him.

We remember how, though a Whig, he was appointed postmaster at New Salem in 1833 by President Jackson, a Democrat, because the people wanted him and generally recommended him.

We remember how he rose to leadership in the general assembly of Illinois, so that he was the unanimous choice of his party for speaker of the House in 1838 and again in 1840. He was recognized as the Whig party leader of Illinois in the national campaign of 1840, 1844, and 1848, indeed in almost every national campaign until the death of the Whig party.

It has been said that all this recognition of leadership on the part of Lincoln in early life, as well as later, was unconscious and unsought so far as Lincoln was

concerned. We deceive ourselves and misrepresent Lincoln. There have been few men in our American life more ambitious than he.

The first reference that he makes to his political ambition was in his first circular at twenty-three years of age, when he became a candidate for the first time for member of the Illinois House of Representatives. You will remember what he said in the circular. It will bear repetition here in this chapter:

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed."

In 1854, in one of his great speeches, he said:

"Twenty-two years ago, Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then-he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were both ambitious, I, perhaps quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure; with him, it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation, and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow."

This high and honorable ambition upon the part of Abraham Lincoln "of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem," should be the motive power of more men in the public service to-day.

There is a lot of human nature about most of us. Some have more than others. Lincoln was of this latter type. He knew the average man better than the average man knew himself, and he always seemed to take that average man's view-point, that is his best view-point, his noblest view-point, and then he would present his view in such a simple straightforward manner that the average citizen would adopt it much in surprise that Lincoln had only presented his auditor's own view of things after all; therefore, being the auditor's own, it must be correct. For 'tis with our judgments as with our watches: "None go just alike, but each believes his own."

It has been said that consistency is the plea of the small mind. That contains the half of a truth and the whole of a lie.

Lincoln himself asserted the right and the duty of changing his mind whenever he found that he was wrong; nevertheless, in following the course of his life from its Lake Itasca down to the great Gulf, we find a consistency, a sincerity, a straightforwardness of the current that is astonishing. True, he is human enough to present now and then a trifling, a temporary departure, but in the substance of things, in the essentials of each day's duties, in his conduct toward his fellow men, his fellow lawyers, his fellow statesmen, the Lincoln of Gentryville, Indiana, of New Salem, Illinois, of Springfield, Illinois, was the same Lincoln at Washington, D. C., always animated by a "passion for justice," the achievement of which was the goal of his life, and to which he was as true as the magnet to the pole.

I have already discussed at considerable length "his passion for justice," in a previous chapter devoted