hat
the Government was straining every nerve to buy, build and otherwise
make ready.

More important, however, than soldiers trained or untrained, was the
united will of the people of the North; and most important of all the
steadfast and courageous soul of the man called to direct the struggle.
Abraham Lincoln, the poor frontier boy, the struggling young lawyer, the
Illinois politician, whom many, even among the Republicans who voted to
elect him President, thought scarcely fit to hold a much smaller
office, proved beyond question the man for the task gifted above all
his associates with wisdom and strength to meet the great emergencies as
they arose during the four years' war that had already begun.

Since this is the story of Mr. Lincoln's life, and not of the Civil
War, we cannot attempt to follow the history of the long contest as
it unfolded itself day by day and month by month, or even to stop to
recount a list of the great battles that drenched the land in blood. It
was a mighty struggle, fought by men of the same race and kindred, often
by brother against brother. Each fought for what he felt to be right;
and their common inheritance of courage and iron will, of endurance and
splendid bravery and stubborn pluck, made this battle of brothers the
more bitter as it was the more prolonged. It ranged over an immense
extent of country; but because Washington was the capital of the Union,
and Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, and the desire
of each side was to capture the chief city of the other, the principal
fighting ground, during the whole war, lay between these two towns, with
the Alleghany Mountains on the west, and Chesapeake Bay on the east.
Between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River another field of
warfare developed itself, on which some of the hardest battles were
fought, and the greatest victories won. Beyond the Mississippi again
stretched another great field, bounded only by the Rocky Mountains and
the Rio Grande. But the principal fighting in this field was near or
even on the Mississippi, in the efforts made by both Unionists and
Confederates to keep and hold the great highway of the river, so
necessary for trade in time of peace, and for moving armies in time of
war.

On this immense battle-ground was fought one of the most costly wars
of modern times, with soldiers numbering a million men on each side; in
which, counting battles and skirmishes small and great, an average o