ate for the legislature, as member of the
legislature and as country lawyer, he was learning to love his fellow
men and to get along well with them, while keeping his own conscience
and building a reputation for honesty. When as a member of Congress and
as a successful lawyer his proved ability brings him a measure of
security and comfort he is not elated. And when his fellow men,
reciprocating his great love for them, and manifesting their confidence
in his integrity, make him President of the Republic he still remains
the humble brother of the common people.

But fate did not decree that he should enjoy the honors he had so richly
deserved. The White House was not a resting place for him. In the hour
of his election the Nation for which he prayed was divided and the men
that he loved as brothers were rushing headlong toward fratricidal war.
He who loved peace was to see no more peace except just a few hopeful
days before his own tragic end. He who hated war must captain his dear
people through their long and mighty struggle and share in his gentle
heart their great sacrifices. As the kindly harmonizer of jealous
rivals, as the unifier of a distracted people, as the sagacious leader
of discordant factions, he proved his true greatness in the hours of
the nation's peril. In many a grave crisis when it seemed that the
Confederacy would win and the Union be lost the almost superhuman wisdom
of Lincoln would see the one right way through the storm. For good
reasons, the followers of Lincoln came to believe that he was being
guided by God Himself to save the Union.

The genealogists of Lincoln trace his ancestry back to Virginia and to
Massachusetts and to those Lincolns who came from England about 1635.
The name Abraham recurs frequently among the Lincolns and our President
seems to have been named after his grandfather Abraham who was killed by
the Indians in Kentucky in 1778, when Thomas, the father of the
President, was only ten years of age. Thus left fatherless at a tender
age in a rude pioneer community, Thomas did not even learn to read. He
worked about as best he could to live, became a carpenter, and in 1806
married his cousin, Nancy Hanks, the daughter of Joseph Hanks and his
wife, Nannie Shipley, a sister of Thomas Lincoln's mother, Mary.

The first child of Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy was a daughter. Our
President, the second child, was born February 12, 1809, in a log cabin,
three miles from Hodgensvil