h. Died April
15th. Remains Interred at Springfield, Illinois, May 4th.

LINCOLN AND McCLURE.

(From Harper's Weekly, April 13, 1901.)

Colonel Alexander K. McClure, the editorial director of the Philadelphia
Times, which he founded in 1875, began his forceful career as a tanner's
apprentice in the mountains of Pennsylvania threescore years ago. He
tanned hides all day, and read exchanges nights in the neighboring
weekly newspaper office. The learned tanner's boy also became the aptest
Inner in the county, and the editor testified his admiration for young
McClure's attainments by sending him to edit a new weekly paper which
the exigencies of politics called into being in an adjoining county.

The lad was over six feet high, had the thews of Ajax and the voice of
Boanerges, and knew enough about shoe-leather not to be afraid of any
man that stood in it. He made his paper a success, went into politics,
and made that a success, studied law with William McLellan, and made
that a success, and actually went into the army--and made that a
success, by an interesting accident which brought him into close
personal relations with Abraham Lincoln, whom he had helped to nominate,
serving as chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania
through the campaign.

In 1862 the government needed troops badly, and in each Pennsylvania
county Republicans and Democrats were appointed to assist in the
enrollment, under the State laws. McClure, working day and night at
Harrisburg, saw conscripts coming in at the rate of a thousand a day,
only to fret in idleness against the army red-tape which held them there
instead of sending a regiment a day to the front, as McClure demanded
should be done. The military officer continued to dispatch two companies
a day--leaving the mass of the conscripts to be fed by the contractors.

McClure went to Washington and said to the President, "You must send a
mustering officer to Harrisburg who will do as I say; I can't stay there
any longer under existing conditions."

Lincoln sent into another room for Adjutant-General Thomas. "General,"
said he, "what is the highest rank of military officer at Harrisburg?"
"Captain, sir," said Thomas. "Bring me a commission for an Assistant
Adjutant-General of the United States Army," said Lincoln.

So Adjutant-General McClure was mustered in, and after that a regiment
a day of boys in blue left Harrisburg for the front. Colonel McClure is
one o