y the varied impressions of numerous witnesses whose accounts
thus correct or verify each other. Some inconsistencies and
contradictions are inevitable,--but these relate usually to minor
matters, seldom or never to the great essentials of Lincoln's life and
personality. The author's desire is to present material from which the
reader may form an opinion of Lincoln, rather than to present opinions
and judgments of his own.

Lincoln literature has increased amazingly in the past twenty-five
years. Mention of the principal biographies in existence at the time of
the original edition was included in the Preface. Since then there have
appeared, among the more formal biographies, the comprehensive and
authoritative work by Nicolay and Hay, the subsequent work by Miss Ida
Tarbell, and that by Herndon and Weik, besides many more or less
fragmentary publications. Some additions, but not many, have been made
to the present edition from these sources. The recently-published Diary
of Gideon Welles, one of the most valuable commentaries on the Civil War
period now available, has provided some material of exceptional interest
concerning Lincoln's relations with the members of his Cabinet.

In re-writing the present work, it has been compressed into about
two-thirds of its former compass, to render it more popular both in form
and in price, and to give it in some places a greater measure of
coherency and continuity as an outline narrative of the Civil War. But
its chief appeal to the interest of its readers will remain
substantially what it was in the beginning, as set forth in its title,
"The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Those Who Knew Him."

F.F.B.
SANTA BARBARA, CAL., _April, 1913._

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This book aims to give a view, clearer and more complete than has been
given before, of the personality of Abraham Lincoln. A life so full of
incident and a character so many-sided as his can be understood only
with the lapse of time. A sense of the exhaustless interest of that life
and character, and the inadequacy of the ordinarily constructed
biography to portray his many-sidedness, suggested the preparation of a
work upon the novel plan here represented. Begun several years ago, the
undertaking proved of such magnitude that its completion has been
delayed beyond the anticipated time. The extensive correspondence, the
exploration of available sources of information in the books, pamphlets,
magazine