Produced by Robert Nield, Tom Allen, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLNBY HENRY KETCHAM
TO MY TWO OLDER BROTHERS, JOHN LEWIS KETCHAM, AND WILLIAM ALEXANDER KETCHAM, WHO UNDER ABRAHAM LINCOLN AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF LOYALLY SERVED THEIR COUNTRY IN THE WAR FOR THE PERPETUATION OF THE UNION AND THE DESTRUCTION OP SLAVERY, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
CONTENTS.
I. The Wild West
II. The Lincoln Family
III. Early Years
IV. In Indiana
V. Second Journey to New Orleans
VI. Desultory Employments
VII. Entering Politics
VIII. Entering the Law
IX. On the Circuit
X. Social Life and Marriage
XI. The Encroachments of Slavery
XII. The Awakening of the Lion
XIII. Two Things that Lincoln Missed
XIV. Birth of the Republican Party
XV. The Battle of the Giants
XVI. Growing Audacity of the Slave Power
XVII. The Backwoodsman at the Center of Eastern Culture
XVIII. The Nomination of 1860
XIX. The Election
XX. Four Long Months
XXI. Journey to Washington
XXII. The Inauguration
XXIII. Lincoln his Own President
XXIV. Fort Sumter
XXV. The Outburst of Patriotism
XXVI. The War Here to Stay
XXVII. The Darkest Hour of the War
XXVIII. Lincoln and Fremont
XXIX. Lincoln and McClellan
XXX. Lincoln and Greeley
XXXI. Emancipation
XXXII. Discouragements
XXXIII. New Hopes
XXXIV. Lincoln and Grant
XXXV. Literary Characteristics
XXXVI. Second Election
XXXVII. Close of the War
XXXVIII. Assassination
XXXIX. A Nation's Sorrow
XL. The Measure of a Man
XLI. Testimonies
PREFACE.
The question will naturally be raised, Why should there be another Lifeof Lincoln? This may be met by a counter question, Will there ever be atime in the near future when there will not be another Life ofLincoln? There is always a new class of students and a new enrolment ofcitizens. Every year many thousands of young people pass from theGrammar to the High School grade of our public schools. Other thousandsare growing up into manhood and womanhood. These are of a differentconstituency from their fathers and grandfathers who remember the civilwar and were perhaps in it.
"To the younger generation," writes Carl Schurz, "Abraham Lincoln hasalready become a half mythical figure, which, in the haze of historicdistance, grows to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses indistinctness of outline and figure." The last clause of this remark ispainfully true. To the majority of people now living, his outline andfigure are dim and vague. There are to-day professors and presidents ofcolleges, legislators of prominence, lawyers and judges, literary men,and successful business men, to whom Lincoln is a tradition. It cannotbe expected that a person born after the year (say) 1855, couldremember Lincoln more than as a name. Such an one's ideas are made upnot from his remembrance and appreciation of events as they occurred,but from what he has read and heard about them in subsequent years.
The great mine of information concerning the facts of Lincoln's lifeis