The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1864-03-26
By MRS. HARRIET BEEcHER STOWE.

To the busts Of Washington and Franklin which
adorned its grand halls, See there That reyo-
luton was an era OF great men. You can see it
by their very heads We have no great men
now-a-days." IS Possibly we have, was the re-
ply The great men OF that day were not
known IN their contemporaries as We know them,
s,nce history has fully set forth their work, and
shown what they accomplished. Washington and
franklin stood in their day as open TO criticism
as Lincoln, Chase and Butler in ours, and per-
haps IN some future day, looking on their busts
an the Capitol, our descendants may shake their
heads and say, Alb, there are no such great men
now We have thought a brief series of the
portraits of the men of our times-the history
makers of our day-might not be uninteresting.
And first among them, as is due to his station
as commander in chief of our army and navy,
we place for record in the Watchman and Refec-
tor the honored name,
Abraham Lincoln
The revolution through which the American
nation Is passing is not a mere local CONFUSION.
1t is a war for a principle which concerns all
mankind. IL is THE war for the rights sf the
working classes of mankind, as against the usur-
patton of privileged aristocracies. You can make
nothing else of it. That Is the reason why, like
q shaft of light in the Judgment day, it has gone
through all nations, dividing to the right and the
left the multitudes. For US and our cause, all
the common working classes of Europe-all
that toll, and sweat. and are oppressed. Against
us, all privileged classes, mobiles, princes, bank
ere, and great manufacturers, and all who live at
ease. A silent instinct, piercing to the dividing
OF soul and spirit, joints and marrow, has gone
through the earth, and sent every soul with in
slinctive certainty where it belongs. The poor
iaborers of Birmingham and Manchester, the
poor silk weavers of Lyons. to whom our conflict
has been present starvation and lingering death,
haze stood bravely for US. No sophistries could
blind or deceive hem-they knew that oar cause
was their cause. and they have suffered their part
heroically, as if fighting by our side, because
they knew that our victory was to be their vic
tory. On the other side all aristocrats and hold
es of exclusive privileges have felt the instinct
of Opposition, and the sympathy with a struggling
aristocracy, for they, too, feel that our victory
will be their doom.
This great contest has visibly been held in the
hands of Almighty God, and is q fulfllment Of
the solemn prophecies with which the Bible is
sown thick as stars, that He would spare the soul
of the needy and Judge the cause of the Door.
1t was He who chose the instrument for this
work, and lie chose him with a visible reference
to the rights and interests of the great majority
of mankind, for which he stands.
Abraham Lincoln is in the strictest sense q man
of the icorking classes. All his advantages and
abilities are those of a man of the working
classes all his disadvantages and disabilities are
THOSE of Q 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 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 work,
axe in hand, to clear up a farm in a Western
forest Until he was seventeen his life was that
CT a simple farm laborer, with only such intervals
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 hand on a
fat boat, and on his return he split the rails for
a log cabin and built it, and enclosed ten acres of
land with a rail fence of his own handiwork.
The next year he hired himself for twelve dollars
o month to build a fat boat and take her TO New
Orleans, and any one who knows what the life of
a Mississippi boatInan was in those DAYS, must
know that it involved every kind of labor. In
1882, in the Black Hawk Indian war, the hardy
boatman volunteered to fight for his country, and
was unanimously elected n captain, and served
with honor for a season in frontier military life.
After this, while serving as a postmaster, he be-
gan his law studies, borrowing the law books he
was too poor to buy, and studying by the light OF
his evening fire. He acquired a name in the
country about as a man of resources and shrewd-
ness ; he was one that people looked to for coun-
sci ia exigencies, and to whom they were ready
TO depute almost any enterprise which needed
skill and energy. The surveyor of Slngamon
county being driven with work. came to him to
take the survey of a tract off from his hands.
True, he had never studied surveying-but what
of that? He accepted the ''job." procured a
chain, a treatise on surveying, and did the icork.
Do we not see in this a parable of the wider
wilderness which in later years he has under
taken 10. survey and fit for human habitation
triih0uf chart or surveyors chain?
In 1886 our backwoodsman flat boat hand,
captain, surveyor. obtained a license to practise
law, and, as might be expected, rose rapidly.
One anecdote will show the esteem in which he
was held in his neighborhood. \ client came to
hIm in a case relating TO a certain land claim,
and Lincoln said TO him, Your first step must be
70 take thirty thousand dollars and go and make
a legal tender-it OF course Will be refused, but
is is a necessary STEP"
But said the man, :" haven't the thirty
thousand dollars To make it with"
90, that's it. Just step over to the bank with
me and I'll get it"
So into the bank they went, and Lincoln says
TO the cashier, "We just want to take thirty
thousand dollars to make a legal tender with.
I'll bring it back in an hour or two"
The cashier handed across the money to 'Hon-
est Abe and without a scratch of the pen in ac-
acknowledgement he strobe his way with the specie,
all in most sacred simplicity, made the tender,
as il he had been borrowing a 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 Wing
party, and canvassed the State rs stump speaker
in time of Henry Clay, and in 1876 was elected
representative to Congress. Here he met the
grinding of the great question of the day-the
upper and neither milestone of slavery and free
dom resolving against each other. Lincoln's
whole nature inclined him to be a harmonizer of
conflicting parties rather than a committed COM
blatant on either side. He was firmly and from
principle an enemy to slavery-but the ground
he occupied in Congress was in some respects a
middle one between the advance guard of the