live by
themselves. The right of a state to leave the Union was called "the
right of secession"--a right which the North held did not exist under
the Constitution.

Nevertheless, one by one, under the leadership of South Carolina,
December 20, 1860, the slave-holding states announced their secession,
either by act of state legislature or in convention assembled; and on
February 4, 1861, there had been formed in our government a Southern
confederacy. At this time the whole number of states in the Union was
thirty-two, and of this number eleven entered the Southern
confederacy.

The first shot was fired by the Southern confederacy on April 12,
1861, against Fort Sumter, a fortification of the Federal Government
over which floated the stars and stripes. The war lasted four years,
ending on April 9, 1865, when Robert E. Lee, commander-in-chief of the
army of the Southern confederacy, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant,
commander-in-chief of the Federal army.

Abraham Lincoln

The central figure in the Civil War is Abraham Lincoln--in heart,
brain, and character, not only one of our greatest Americans, but one
of the world's greatest men.

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Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. His
parents had come to this then pioneer state from Virginia, and his
grandfather, whose Christian name he bore, moved there as early as
1781, where, a few years later, he was killed by the Indians while
trying to make a home in the forest. When Lincoln was eight years old,
his people moved to the new state of Indiana about the time it came
into the Union, and there he lived until he was twenty-one, when he
went to Illinois, from which state, eventually, he was elected
President.

In 1859, when he was beginning to gain some recognition as a national
figure, he was asked to write a little sketch of his life, and in the
letter enclosing it he said: "There is not much of it, for the reason,
I suppose, there is not much of me." In this sketch, which is indeed
brief, he tells us he was raised to farm work until he was twenty-two;
that up to that time he had had little education; and when he became
of age he did not know much beyond reading, writing, and ciphering to
the "rule of three." He clerked for one year in a store and was
elected and served as captain of the volunteers in the Black Hawk War;
later on he ran for the state legislature (1832) and was defeated,
though successful in the three succeeding electio