The Project Gutenberg eBook, Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln,
1832-1865, by Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Merwin Roe

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Title: Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865

Author: Abraham Lincoln

Release Date: January 17, 2005 [eBook #14721]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPEECHES AND LETTERS OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN, 1832-1865***

E-text prepared by Melanie Lybarger, Suzanne Lybarger, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

SPEECHES & LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1832-1865

Edited by

MERWIN ROE

London: Published
by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd
and in New York
by E.P. Dutton & Co

First issue of this Edition 1907; Reprinted 1909, 1910, 1912

Mr. Bryce's Introduction to 'Lincoln's Speeches' is printed from plates
made and type set by the University Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.

Taken by permission from 'The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln,'
Century Company, 1894

[Illustration: WHEN HE SENT HIS GREAT VOICE FORTH OUT OF HIS BREAST, &
HIS WORDS FELL LIKE THE WINTER SNOWS, NOR THEN WOULD ANY MORTAL CONTEND
WITH ULYSSES--HOMER. ILIAD.]

INTRODUCTION

No man since Washington has become to Americans so familiar or so
beloved a figure as Abraham Lincoln. He is to them the representative
and typical American, the man who best embodies the political ideals of
the nation. He is typical in the fact that he sprang from the masses of
the people, that he remained through his whole career a man of the
people, that his chief desire was to be in accord with the beliefs and
wishes of the people, that he never failed to trust in the people and to
rely on their support. Every native American knows his life and his
speeches. His anecdotes and witticisms have passed into the thought and
the conversation of the whole nation as those of no other statesman have
done.

He belongs, however, not only to the United States, but to the whole of
civilized mankind. It is no exaggeration to say that he has, within the
last thirty years, grown to be a conspicuous figure in the history of
the modern world. Without him, the course of events not