The Project Gutenberg eBook, Abraham Lincoln, by George Haven Putnam

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Title: Abraham Lincoln

Author: George Haven Putnam

Release Date: March 27, 2004 [eBook #11728]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The People's Leader in the Struggle for National Existence

By

GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, LITT. D.

Author of
"Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages,"
"The Censorship of the Church," etc.

With the above is included the speech delivered by Lincoln in New York,
February 27, 1860; with an introduction by Charles C. Nott, late Chief
Justice of the Court of Claims, and annotations by Judge Nott and by
Cephas Brainerd of New York Bar.

1909

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The twelfth of February, 1909, was the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Abraham Lincoln. In New York, as in other cities and towns
throughout the Union, the day was devoted to commemoration exercises,
and even in the South, in centres like Atlanta (the capture of which in
1864 had indicated the collapse of the cause of the Confederacy),
representative Southerners gave their testimony to the life and
character of the great American.

The Committee in charge of the commemoration in New York arranged for a
series of addresses to be given to the people of the city and it was my
privilege to be selected as one of the speakers. It was an indication of
the rapid passing away of the generation which had had to do with the
events of the War, that the list of orators, forty-six in all, included
only four men who had ever seen the hero whose life and character they
were describing.

In writing out later, primarily for the information of children and
grandchildren, my own address (which had been d