The Xenia sentinel. [volume] (Xenia [Ohio]) 1863-186?, 1864-02-09
Abraham Lincoln.

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe is writing a
series of articles for the Christian Watch-
man and Reflector, on g Men of our Times.
In the issue Of that paper Of January 7th,
she says:
abraham Lincoln is, in the strictest
sense a man of the aOorLipg classes. All his
advantages and-abilities are those ola man
Of the working classes; and his position,
now at the head Of one of the most power
full nations of the earth, is a sign to all who
live by labor that their day is coming.
Lincoln was born to the inheritance of hard
work, as truly as the poorest laborer's son
that digs in our fields. At seven years of
age he, was set to hard work, axe in hand,
tO'eleaF up,a farm in a Western forest
Until he was seventeen his life was that of
a simple farm laborer, with only such in
tervals of schooling as farm laborers get.
Probably the school instruction of his whole
life would not amount to more than one
year. At nineteen he made a trip to New
Orleans as a hired man on. fatboat, and
on his return he split the rails for a log
cabin and builtit, and en- closed ten acres of
land with a rail fence of his own handi-
work. The next year he hired himself for
twelve dollars a month to build hatboat
and to take her to New Orleans; and any
one who knows what the life of a Missis-
sippi boatman was in those days must know
that it involved every kind of labor
-In-1 1882, In the Black Hawk Indian war,
the hardy boatmau volunteered to fight for
his country, and was unanimously elected
a captain, and served with honor for a sea-
son in frontier military life After this,
while serving as a postmaster, he began
bis law studies, borrowing the books he
was too poor to buy, and studying by the
light of his evening fire. He acquired
name in the country about as man of re-
sources and shrewdness he was one that
people looked to for counsel in exigencies, |
and to whom they were ready to depute
almost any enterprise which needed skill |
and energy. The Surveyor of Sangamon |
county, being driven with work, came to
take the survey of a tract off his hands
True, he had never studied surveying
but what of that2 He accepted the "job," |
procured chain and did the work. Do |
We not see in this parable of the wider will |
derness which in latter years he has un-
dertaken to survey and fit for human habi-
tatiOn without chart or surveyors chain? |
=
Little did the Convention that nominated /
Abraham Lincoln for President know what |
they were doing. Little did the honest,
fatherly, patriotic man, who stood in his
simplicity on the platform of Springfield
asking the prayers Of his townsmeh, and
receiving their pledges to remember him,
fOresee how awfully be was to need those
prayers, the prayers of all this nation, and
the prayers of all the working, suffering
common people throughout the world.
Gods hand was upon him with a visible
protection, saving first from, the danger of
at Baltimore, and bringing
him to our National Capital. Then the
world has seen and wondered at the great
est sign and marvel of our day, to wit. a
plain working man Of the people, with no
more culture, instruction or education than
any such working man may obtain for him.
self, called on to conduct the passage of a
great people through a crisis involving the
destinies of the whole world. The eyes Of
princes, mobiles, aristocTats, of dukes, earls,
statesmen, warriors, all turned on
the plain backWoOdsman,-with bis simple
sense, his imperturable simplicity, his de-
termined selfrelianee, his unimpeachable
and incorruptible honesty, as be sat amid
the war Of conflicting elements with unpre-
tending steadiness striving to guide the
national ship throughra channel at whose
perils the worlds oldest statesmen stood
lghast The brilliant courts of Europe
.eveied their opera-glasses at the phenom-
snon. Fair ladies saw that he had horny
bands snd disdained white gloves. Dappor
liplOmatists were shocked at his system of
etiquette, but old statesmen, who knew the
.errOrs of that passage, were wiser than
court ladies-and dandy diplomatists, who
watched him with fearful curiosity, sim
ply asking, "Will that awkward old back
yoodsman really get this ship through ?
# he does, it will be time for US to look
bout us"
* x x x
Lincoln is a strong man, but his strength
S Of peculiar kind; it lis not aggressive