Litchfield enquirer., 1864-01-28
WHOLE NO. 2O1Y

y, ', victory will be their doom.
 The great contest has visibly beeR held in the hands of Almighty God, and is a fulfills ment ofthe solemn prophecies with which the Bible is sown thick as stars, that he would spare the cause of the needy and judge the poor. It was He who chose the instrument for this woSk, and lie chose him with visible reference to the rights and interests of the great majority of mankind, for which he stands.
 Abraham Lincoln is in the strichest sense c man of the acorking cIGsses. All his advan6 tages and abilities are those of a man of the Worklngclasses all his disadvantages and disabilities are those of man of the working classes; and his position 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 coming. Lincoln was born to the inhsr. ltance of hard work, as truly as the poorest la borer's son that digs in our felds At seven years of age he was set to work, ax in hand, to clear up farm in Western forest. Untill he was seventeen his life was that ofa simple farm laborer, with only such intervals of school. ing as farm laborerB get. Probably the whole school instructions of his whole life would not be more than one year. At nineteen he made trip to New Orleans as hired hand on a Hat boat, and on his return split the rails of a
 
 of land with a rail fence of his own handiwork. The next year he hired himself for twelve dol lars month to build a flat boat and take her to New Orleans, and any one who knows what the life ot Mississippi boatman was in those days, must know that it involved every kind of labor. In 1886, in the Black Hawk Indian war, the hardy boatman volunteered to fyht for hlS country, and was unanimously elected captain, aud served with honor for season on frontier m iaiy life. After this, while ser- Vlng as postmaster, he began his law studies borrowing the law 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 resources and shrewdness he was one that people looked to for counsel in eXigencies, and to whom they were ready to dispute almost any enterprise which needed skill and energy. The surveyor of Sanramon county being driven with work, came to him to take tue survey of a tract off from his hands, True, lie had never studied surveying-but what of that? He accepted the "job" and dtd tue scork. Do we not see him in this par able of the wider wilderness which iu later years he has undertaken to survey and fit for human habitation avitloM chart or surveyor. chain.
 In 1886 our backwoodsman, flat boat hand, u tice law, as might be expected, rose rapidly, One anecdote will show the esteem in which he was held in his neighborhood. A client came to him in a case relating to a certain land claim, and Lincoln said to him, Your first step must be to take thirty thousand dol- lars and go and make a legal tender-it of course will be refused, but it is a necessary step."
 But' said the man II haven't the thirty thousand dollars to make it with''
 70, that's it, Just step over to the bank with me and I'll get it.
 So iuto the bank they went, and LincoIu says to the cashier, |" We just want to take thirty thousand dollars to make legal tender with. I'll brisg it back in an hour or two."
 The cashier handed the money to Honest Abe,' and without scratch of the pen in ac. knowledgement, he strode his way with the specie, all in most sacred simplicity made the tender, and brought it back with as much non. chalauce as if he had been borrowing Q silver spoon of his grandmother. His honesty, shrewdness, energy, and keen practical insight into men and things, soon made him the most influential man in his State. He became the reputed leader of the Whig party, and can- | vassed the State as stump speaker in the time l of Henry Clay, and in l946 was elected rep-
 
 grinding of the great question of the day-the upper and neither mlstone of slavery and freedom revolving against each other. Lincolns whole nature inclined him to be a harmonizer of conflicting parties rather than committed combattant on either side. He was firmly and from principle an enemy to slavery-but the ground he occupied in Congress was in some respects middle one between the advance guard of the anti-slavery and the spears of the fre-eaters. He voted with John Quincy Ad. ans for the receipt of anti-slavery petitions He voted with Giddings for Committee of Inquiry into the consttutionality of slavery Tn the District of Columbia, aud the expedency of abolishing slavery in that District; he vo- ted for the various resolutions prohibiting sla. very in the territories to be acquired from Mexico and he voted fortytwo times for the Wilmot proviso. In l649, January 10th, he offered plan for aboishing slavery in the Dis. rict of Columbia, by compensation from the National Treasury, with the consent of Q ma jority of the citizens. He opposed the annex ation of Texas, but voted for the bill to pay the expenses of the war.
 But at the time of the repeal of the Missou, ri Compromise, he took the field heart and soul against the plot to betray our territories to slavery. It was mainly owing to his exer- tions that at this critical period, Republican Senator in the trembling national scales of the conflict, was worth thousand times his weight in gold.
 Little did the Convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for the President, know what they were doing. Little did the honest, fatherly, patriotic man, who stood in his sin- pl;city on the platform at Springfield, asking the prayers of his townsmen and receiving their pledges to remember him, foresee how awfully he was to need those prayers, the prayers of all this nation and the prayers of all the working, suffering suffering common people throughout the world. Gods hand was upon him with visible protection. saving first from the danger of assassination at Bal timore. and bringing him safely to our nation al capital Then the world have 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 education than any such working man may obtain for himself, called on to conduct the passage of a great people through crisis in- voving the destinies of the whole world. The eyes of princes, nobles, aristocrats, of dukes, earis, scholars. statesmen, warriors, all turned on the plain backwoodsman. with his simple sense, his imperturabe simplicity, his deter mined self-reliance, his impracticable and in- COrruDtible hOnesfv ns ba sat omid tha ,var If