Lincoln's Birthday

Part 1

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Our American Holidays

LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

Our American Holidays

A series of Anthologies upon American Holidays, each volume a collection of writings from many sources, historical, poetic, religious, patriotic, etc., presenting each American festival as seen through the eyes of the representative writers of many ages and nations.

EDITED BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

12mo. Each volume $1.00 net

NOW READY

THANKSGIVING LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY CHRISTMAS MEMORIAL DAY

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WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY EASTER ARBOR DAY FLAG DAY FOURTH OF JULY NEW YEAR'S DAY

MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 31 East 17th Street New York

Our American Holidays

LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF LINCOLN AS GIVEN IN THE MOST NOTEWORTHY ESSAYS, ORATIONS AND POEMS, IN FICTION AND IN LINCOLN'S OWN WRITINGS

EDITED BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1916

Copyright, 1909, by MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY NEW YORK

Published, January, 1909

2nd Printing--June, 1911 3rd Printing--July, 1914 4th Printing--Feb. 1916

CONTENTS

PAGE PREFACE ix

INTRODUCTION xi

I A BIRDSEYE VIEW OF LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 3 A BRIEF SUMMARY OF LINCOLN'S LIFE Osborn H. Oldroyd 6

II EARLY LIFE

LINCOLN'S EDUCATION Horace Greeley 15 ABE LINCOLN'S HONESTY 17 THE BOY THAT HUNGERED FOR KNOWLEDGE 18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Florence E. Pratt 19 YOUNG LINCOLN'S KINDNESS OF HEART 20 A VOICE FROM THE WILDERNESS Charles Sumner 21 CHOOSING ABE LINCOLN CAPTAIN 22

III MATURITY

Part 2

LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE 31 HOW LINCOLN AND JUDGE B---- SWAPPED HORSES 33 LINCOLN AS A MAN OF LETTERS H. W. Mabie 34 LINCOLN'S PRESENCE OF BODY 44 HOW LINCOLN BECAME A NATIONAL FIGURE Ida M. Tarbell 45 LINCOLN'S LOVE FOR THE LITTLE ONES 89 HOW LINCOLN TOOK HIS ALTITUDE 90

IV IN THE WHITE HOUSE

HOW LINCOLN WAS ABUSED 95 SONNET IN 1862 John James Piatt 96 LINCOLN THE PRESIDENT James Russell Lowell 96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Frank Moore 109 THE PROCLAMATION John Greenleaf Whittier 110 THE EMANCIPATION James A. Garfield 112 THE EMANCIPATION GROUP John Greenleaf Whittier 121 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CHRISTMAS GIFT Nora Perry 122

V DEATH OF LINCOLN

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! Walt Whitman 127 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEATH Walt Whitman 128 HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY Walt Whitman 134 TO THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN William Cullen Bryant 135 CROWN HIS BLOODSTAINED PILLOW Julia Ward Howe 136 THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Walt Whitman 137 OUR SUN HATH GONE DOWN Phoebe Cary 139 TOLLING Lucy Larcom 142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Rose Terry Cooke 143 EFFECT OF THE DEATH OF LINCOLN Henry Ward Beecher 144 HYMN Oliver Wendell Holmes 151 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Tom Taylor 153

VI TRIBUTES

THE MARTYR CHIEF James Russell Lowell 159 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Ralph Waldo Emerson 161 WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN William McKinley 169 LINCOLN Theodore Roosevelt 170 LINCOLN'S GRAVE Maurice Thompson 170 TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN 173 ABRAHAM LINCOLN H. H. Brownell 174 TRIBUTES 189 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Joel Benton 189 ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Richard Watson Gilder 190 LINCOLN George H. Boker 192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN James A. Garfield 193 AN HORATIAN ODE R. H. Stoddard 195 SOME FOREIGN TRIBUTES TO LINCOLN Harriet Beecher Stowe 202 THE GETTYSBURG ODE Bayard Taylor 211 TRIBUTES 212 LINCOLN Macmillan's Magazine 214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN R. H. Stoddard 215 LINCOLN Edna Dean Proctor 215 WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM'D Walt Whitman 218

VII THE WHOLE MAN

LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE Edwin Markham 233 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN George Bancroft 235 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Goldwin Smith 276 GREATNESS OF HIS SIMPLICITY H. A. Delano 278 HORACE GREELEY'S ESTIMATE OF LINCOLN 279 LINCOLN J. T. Trowbridge 282 THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF LINCOLN B. B. Tyler 282 TO THE SPIRIT OF LINCOLN R. W. Gilder 296 LINCOLN AS A TYPICAL AMERICAN Phillips Brooks 297 LINCOLN AS CAVALIER AND PURITAN H. W. Grady 304 LINCOLN, THE TENDER-HEARTED H. W. Bolton 306 THE CHARACTER OF LINCOLN W. H. Herndon 307 "WITH CHARITY FOR ALL" W. T. Sherman 317 LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY Ida V. Woodbury 318 FEBRUARY TWELFTH M. H. Howliston 319 TWO FEBRUARY BIRTHDAYS L. M. Hadley and C. Z. Denton 323

VIII LINCOLN'S PLACE IN HISTORY

THE THREE GREATEST AMERICANS Theodore Roosevelt 333 HIS CHOICE AND HIS DESTINY F. M. Bristol 333 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Robert G. Ingersoll 334 LINCOLN Paul Laurence Dunbar 341 THE GRANDEST FIGURE Walt Whitman 342 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Lyman Abbott 345 "LINCOLN THE IMMORTAL" Anonymous 346 THE CRISIS AND THE HERO Frederic Harrison 349 LINCOLN John Vance Cheney 351 MAJESTIC IN HIS INDIVIDUALITY S. P. Newman 353

IX LINCOLN YARNS AND SAYINGS

THE QUESTION OF LEGS 359 HOW LINCOLN WAS PRESENTED WITH A KNIFE 360 "WEEPING WATER" 361 MILD REBUKE TO A DOCTOR 362

X FROM LINCOLN'S SPEECHES AND WRITINGS

LINCOLN'S LIFE AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 365 THE INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY 365 SPEECH AT COOPER INSTITUTE 368 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 371 LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY 376 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 378 THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION 380 GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 382 REMARKS TO NEGROES ON THE STREETS OF RICHMOND 383 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 384

PREFACE

An astounding number of books have been written on Abraham Lincoln. Our Library of Congress contains over one thousand of them in well-nigh every modern language. Yet, incredible as it may seem, no miner has until to-day delved in these vast fields of Lincolniana until he has brought together the most precious of the golden words written of and by the Man of the People. Howe has collected a few of the best poems on Lincoln; Rice, Oldroyd and others, the elder prose tributes and reminiscences. McClure has edited Lincoln's yarns and stories; Nicolay and Hay, his speeches and writings. But each successive twelfth of February has emphasized the growing need for a unification of this scattered material.

The present volume offers, in small compass, the most noteworthy essays, orations, fiction and poems on Lincoln, together with some fiction, with characteristic anecdotes and "yarns" and his most famous speeches and writings. Taken in conjunction with a good biography, it presents the first succinct yet comprehensive view of "the first American." The Introduction gives some account of the celebration of Lincoln's Birthday and of his principal biographers.

NOTE

The Editor and Publishers wish to acknowledge their indebtedness to Houghton, Mifflin & Company; the McClure Company, R. S. Peale and J. A. Hill Co.; Charles Scribner's Sons; Dana Estes Company; Mr. David McKay, Mr. Joel Benton, Mr. C. P. Farrell and others who have very kindly granted permission to reprint selections from works bearing their copyright.

INTRODUCTION

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born at Nolin Creek, Kentucky, on Feb. 12, 1809. As the following pages contain more than one biographical sketch it is not necessary here to touch on the story of his life. Lincoln's Birthday is now a legal holiday in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Washington (state) and Wyoming, and is generally observed in the other Northern States.

In its inspirational value to youth Lincoln's Birthday stands among the most important of our American holidays. Its celebration in school and home can not be made too impressive. "Rising as Lincoln did," writes Edward Deems, "from social obscurity through a youth of manual toil and poverty, steadily upward to the highest level of honor in the world, and all this as the fruit of earnest purpose, hard work, humane feeling and integrity of character, he is an example and an inspiration to youth unparalleled in history. At the same time he is the best specimen of the possibilities attainable by genius in our land and under our free institutions."

In arranging exercises for Lincoln's Birthday the teacher and parent should try not so much to teach the bare facts of his career as to give the children a sense of Lincoln's actual personality through his own yarns and speeches and such accounts as are given here by Herndon, Bancroft, Mabie, Tarbell, Phillips Brooks and others. He should show them Lincoln's greatest single act--Emancipation--through the eyes of Garfield and Whittier. He should try to reach the children with the thrill of an adoring sorrow-maddened country at the bier of its great preserver; with such a passion of love and patriotism as vibrates in the lines of Whitman, Brownell and Bryant, of Stoddard, Procter, Howe, Holmes, Lowell, and in the throbbing periods of Henry Ward Beecher. His main object should be to make his pupils love Lincoln. He should appeal to their national pride with the foreign tributes to Lincoln's greatness; make them feel how his memory still works through the years upon such contemporary poets as Gilder, Thompson, Markham, Cheney and Dunbar; and finally through the eyes of Harrison, Whitman, Ingersoll, Newman and others, show them our hero set in his proud, rightful place in the long vista of the ages.

In order to use the present volume with the best results it is advisable for teacher and parent to gain a more consecutive view of Lincoln's life than is offered here.

The standard biography of Lincoln is the monumental one in ten large volumes by Nicolay and Hay, the President's private secretaries. This contains considerable material not found elsewhere, but since its publication in 1890 much new matter has been unearthed, especially by the enterprise of Miss Ida Tarbell, whose "Life" in two volumes contains the essentials of the larger official work, is well balanced, and written in a simple, vigorous style perfectly adapted to the subject. If only one biography of Lincoln is to be read, Miss Tarbell's will, on the whole, be found most satisfactory.

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