Why was this man so loved that his death caused a whole nation to
forget its triumph, and turned its gladness into mourning? Why
has his fame grown with the passing years until now scarcely a
speech is made or a newspaper printed that does not have within
it somewhere a mention of his name or some phrase or sentence
that fell from his lips? Let us see if we can, what it was that
made Abraham Lincoln the man that he became.
A child born to an inheritance of want; a boy growing into a
narrow world of ignorance; a youth taking up the burden of coarse
and heavy labor; a man entering on the doubtful struggle of a
local backwoods career--these were the beginnings of Abraham
Lincoln if we look at them only in the hard practical spirit
which takes for its motto that "Nothing succeeds but success. If
we adopt a more generous as well as a truer view, then we see
that it was the brave hopeful spirit, the strong active mind, and
the great law of moral growth that accepts the good and rejects
the bad, which Nature gave this obscure child, that carried him
to the service of mankind and the admiration of the centuries as
certainly as the acorn grows to be the oak.
Even his privations helped the end. Self-reliance, the strongest
trait of the pioneer was his by blood and birth and training, and
was developed by the hardships of his lot to the mighty power
needed to guide our country through the struggle of the Civil
War.
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