sman who in this
absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who
actually combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus
puts in antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western
country lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the
world, and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to
guide his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type,
a leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation
or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 22, 1905.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

"I have endured," wrote Lincoln not long before his death, "a great
deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of
kindness not quite free from ridicule." On Easter Day, 1865, the world
knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really
signified. Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by
year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew
him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real. This should not be. For
Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more
than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious. Invaluable is the example of
the man, intangible that of the hero.

And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness
listened at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham
Lincoln, yet there is for us another way whereby we may attain such
knowledge--through his words--uttered in all sincerity to those who
loved or hated him. Cold, unsatisfying they may seem, these printed
words, while we can yet speak with those who knew him, and look into
eyes that once looked into his. But in truth it is here that we find his
simple greatness, his great simplicity, and though no man tried less so
to show his power, no man has so shown it more clearly.

Thus these writings of Abraham Lincoln are associated with those of
Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and of the other "Founders of the
Republic," not that Lincoln should become still more of the past, but,
rather, that he with them should become still more of the present.
However faint and mythical may grow the story of that Great Struggle,
the leader, Lincoln, at least should remain a real, living American.
No matter how clearly, how directly, Lincoln has shown himself in his
writings, we yet should