American citizen. [volume] (Butler, Butler County, Pa.) 1863-1872, 1864-01-27
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

man ana HeHectof, on 'n1en OF our lines.
In the issue of that paper of January 9TH,
she says;
Abraham Lincoln is, in the strietest
sense, man Of the scorking classes. All
his advantages and abilities are those of
man of the working classes and his posi-
ton, now at the head of one of the most
powerful nations of the earth, is sign to
all who live by labor that their day is COM
ing. Lincoln was born to the inheritance
of hard work, as truly as the poorest la
borer's son that digs in our fields. At
seven years of age he was set to work, axe
in hand, to clear up farm in the western
forest Until he was seventeen his life
was that of a simple farm laborcr, with on
ly such intervals of schooling as farm la
borers get, Probably the school instruc-
tion of his whole life would not amount to
more than one year. Atnineteen he made
q trip 10 New Orleans as a hired man on a
fatboat, and Onhis return he split the rails
for log cabin and built it; and inclosed
ten acres of land with rail fence of his
own handi-work, The next year he hir-
ed himself for twelve dollars a month to
build fatboat and to take her to New
Orleans; and any one who knows what the
life of NJ ississippi boatman was in those
days must know that itinvolved every kind
Of labor
In 1882, in the Black Hawk Indian
war, the hardy boatman volunteered to fight
for his country, and was unanimously elect
ed a captain, and served with honor for a
season in frontier military life. After
this, while serving as postmaster, he be-
gan his law studies, borrowing the books
he was too poor to-buy, and studying by
the light of his evening fire. He acquir-
ed name in the country about as man
of resources and shrewdness; he was one
that people looked to for counsel in cxigen-
cies, and to whom they were ready to de-
pute almost any enterprise which needed
skill and energy. The surveyor of Sanga-
mon county, beingdriven with work, came
to him totake the survey of a tract off his
hands, True, he had never studied sur
veying-but what of that? lie accepted
the 'job, " procured chain, and did the
work. Do we not see in this parable Of a
wider wilderness which in latter years he
has undertaken to survey and fit for human
habitation without chart or surveyors
chain. y i = i x
Little did the Convention that nomin-
ated Abraham Lincoln for President know
what they were doing. Little did the
honest, fatherly, patriotic man, who stood
in his simplicity on the platform at Spring
field, asking the prayers of his townsmen,
and receiving their pledges to remember
him. forsec how awfully he was to need
those prayers, the prayers of all this ma
ton, and the prayers Of all the working
suffering people throughout the world
Gods hand was upon him with visible
protection, saving first from the danger of
assassination at Baltimore, and bringing
him safely to our National capitlo. Then
the world has seen and wondered at the
greatest sign and marvel of our day, to
wit: plain working man of the people,
with no more culture, instruction or edu-
cation than any such working man may OBJ
tain for himself, called on to conduct the
passage of great people through a crisis
involving the destinics of the whole world.
The eyes Of princes, mobiles, aristocrats, of
dukes, earls, scholars, statesmen, warr-
ors, all turned on the plain backwoodsman,
with his simple sense, his impcrturable
simplicity, his determined self-reliance, his
impracticable and incorruptible honesty,
as he sat amid the war of conflicting ele.
ments with pretending steadiness, striv-
ing to guide the national ship through a
channel at whose perils the worlds oldest
statesman stood aghast. The brilliant
courts of Europe leveled their opera-glas-
ses at the phenomenon. Fair ladies saw
that he had horny hands and disdained
white gloves Dapper diplomatists were
shocked at his system of etiquette, but old
statesmen, who knew the terrors of that
passage, were wiser than court ladies and
dandy diplomatists, who watched him with
fearful curiosity simply asking, "Will
that awkward old backwoodsman really get
that ship through? If he does, it will be
time for us to look about us.
Lincoln isastrongman, but his strength
is of peculiar kind; it is not aggressive,
50 much as passive, and among passive
things it is like the strength not so much
of stone buttress as of wire cable. 1t
is strength swaying to every influence,
yielding on this side and on hat to popu-
lar needs, yet tenaciously and infexibly
bound to carry its great end and probably
by no other kind of strength could our