etic illustration of
men who are big with talent, of women full of latent gifts, of fathers
and mothers like Thomas Lincoln and his young wife, who struggle on
without opportunity, who are denied their chance, who are imprisoned by
poverty, and fettered by circumstance, who are like birds beating bloody
wings against the bars of an iron cage, who die unfulfilled prophecies,
and dying, transfer their ambitions to their gifted children, believing
that their son shall behold what the father and mother must die without
seeing. God worked no miracle in Abraham Lincoln.

There is a photograph of the signature of the grandfather upon a title
deed in Culpeper County in Virginia. Now, place that signature side by
side with the signature of Abraham Lincoln on the emancipation
proclamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in the signature of the
grandfather comes down and repeats itself in the strong, steady
clearness of the grandson. And perhaps the strong, sinewy sentence came
down and repeated itself also, for all fine thinking stands with one
foot on fine brain fibre. The time has come for men with a sharp knife
and a hot iron to expunge from two or three of the otherwise best
biographies of Abraham Lincoln these false, superficial and ignorant
statements about his ancestry. Science, observation, experience, history
and sifted facts all unite to tell us that whatever was great in its
unfolding in the talent of Abraham Lincoln was great in the seed form in
his father and mother.

Where were the hidings of his power? Why is Lincoln revered above his
fellows, the orators, the soldiers, and the statesmen and editors and
secretaries of his time? A line of contrast with the other great men who
were his competitors for fame will make Lincoln's supremacy to stand
forth as clear in outline as the mountains, and as bright as the stars.
For example, Wendell Phillips was the agitator and orator of the
abolitionists. Phillips said, "Emancipation is the essential thing. The
Union secondary. If the Southern States will not emancipate the slaves,
force them out of the Union." Horace Greeley was the editor of the war
epoch. Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If
they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was
the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an
exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow
and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter