Abraham Lincoln, the poor frontier boy, the
struggling young lawyer, the Illinois politician, whom many, even
among the Republicans who voted to elect him President, thought
scarcely fit to hold a much smaller office, proved beyond
question the man for the task gifted above all his associates
with wisdom and strength to meet the great emergencies as they
arose during the four years' war that had already begun.
Since this is the story of Mr. Lincoln's life, and not of the
Civil War, we cannot attempt to follow the history of the long
contest as it unfolded itself day by day and month by month, or
even to stop to recount a list of the great battles that drenched
the land in blood. It was a mighty struggle, fought by men of the
same race and kindred, often by brother against brother. Each
fought for what he felt to be right; and their common inheritance
of courage and iron will, of endurance and splendid bravery and
stubborn pluck, made this battle of brothers the more bitter as
it was the more prolonged. It ranged over an immense extent of
country; but because Washington was the capital of the Union, and
Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, and the
desire of each side was to capture the chief city of the other,
the principal fighting ground, during the whole war, lay between
these two towns, with the Alleghany Mountains on the west, and
Chesapeake Bay on the east.
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