an
eighth, from its extent, and soil, and mineral resources, destined to
incalculable greatness, closed its eyes on its coming, prosperity, and
enacted, as by Taney's dictum it had the right to do, that every free
black man who would live within its limits must accept the condition of
slavery for himself and his posterity.

Only one step more remained to be taken. Jefferson and the leading
statesmen of his day held fast to the idea that the enslavement of the
African was socially, morally, and politically wrong. The new school
was founded exactly upon the opposite idea; and they resolved, first,
to distract the democratic party, for which the Supreme Court had now
furnished the means, and then to establish a new government, with negro
slavery for its corner-stone, as socially, morally, and politically
right.

As the Presidential election drew on, one of the great traditional
parties did not make its appearance; the other reeled as it sought to
preserve its old position, and the candidate who most nearly
represented its best opinion, driven by patriotic zeal, roamed the
country from end to end to speak for union, eager, at least, to
confront its enemies, yet not having hope that it would find its
deliverance through him. The storm rose to a whirlwind; who should
allay its wrath? The most experienced statesmen of the country had
failed; there was no hope from those who were great after the flesh:
could relief come from one whose wisdom was like the wisdom of little
children?

The choice of America fell on a man born west of the Alleghanies, in
the cabin of poor people of Hardin county, Kentucky--ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

His mother could read, but not write; his father could do neither; but
his parents sent him, with an old spelling-book, to school, and he
learned in his childhood to do both.

When eight years old he floated down the Ohio with his father on a
raft, which bore the family and all their possessions to the shore of
Indiana; and, child as he was, he gave help as they toiled through
dense forests to the interior of Spencer county. There, in the land of
free labor, he grew up in a log-cabin, with the solemn solitude for his
teacher in his meditative hours. Of Asiatic literature he knew only the
Bible; of Greek, Latin, and mediaeval, no more than the translation of
Aesop's Fables; of English, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The
traditions of George Fox and William Penn passed to him dimly along
the lines of two