The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1892-02-12


colnesque tone which insures popular
acceptance. The sentimentalist draws
inspiration from those passages in which
the Liberator fairly rivaled the Hebrew
prophets, while the imaginative writer
finds in that progress from the cabin to
the White House a series of incidents
with all the charms of romance and all
the convenience of reality.
The jurist and statesman, the orator,
the philanthropist and the enthusiastic
social reformer find in Lincoln's state
papers and speeches passages Of strange
portent, weighty prophecies of the issues
which were to come, hints at the solu-
ton OF the problems of capital and labor
and taxation. The student of mind de-
velopment has not yet been heard from,
yet l venture to predict that the Herbert
Spencer or Bacon of the next generation
will find in Lincoln's advance splendid
and luminous illustration of the laws of
intellectual growth. He will have this
tremendous advantage, he can admit
many charges now denied and proceed
with confidence on this axiom: One
may fall into many errors, yet rise above
AMI profit by them all if his primary aim
be- correct and his moral nature sound.
just now we look at the Liberator
through the blaze and smoke Of the he
roic age. For twenty-seven years an
army of poets and orators have been in
dustriously engaged in stripping away
DO o,,l
golden halo about the martyrs homely
features. He looks down upon us out
of a cloud and enveloped by an aureole.
The apotheosis is at last complete; the
Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky, Indiana
and Illinois is banished from history,
and the Abraham Lincoln of patriotic
song and eulogy is scarcely more real
historical parsonage than Romulus or
Agamemnon. The reaction has, how
ever, set in. Herndon's book marks the
beginning of a new era. The coming
generation will not be satisfied with a
steel portrait and flight of eulogistic
oratory. It will insist ppon having the
real man.
The philosopher will then find that the
career of Abraham Lincoln naturally
divides itself into five clearly defined
stages. Sprung from the very rudest
and poorest class in the border south,
Lincoln had all the rude humors and
gestures of the untaught man of that
type. 1t has been proved that the Lin
coin family, early in the Eighteenth CEN
tury, possessed some substance and held
at least a middle rank, but thereafter the
decline was SO rapid that in the person of
Thomas Lincoln and in the Kentucky
howell the family had, at the date of the
hero's advent, reached the lowest point.
The standard of the region was certainly
not high, but the Lincolns and their
congeners sank below it.
The boyhood of the Liberator was a
tragedy and can only be treated as such.
A few CLEANS of humor broke its melan.
choly monotony here and there, and the
riotous wit of the new west sometimes
tortured mirth even out of misery; still
it was tragedy and dark and gloomy
one. Yet out of that abyss came occa-
sional flashes of intellect which showed
that the strain Of the older Lincolns was
again to show itself by that mysterious
law which scientists call atavism, but
which the common people explained long
before Darwin by saying of such one
that he "talzes back"-that is, from re-
mote ancestor. In proof of the foregoing
summary it is necessary to cite but one
fact: When Thomas Lincoln married
Nancy Hanks his friends and relatives
remarked with sort of surprise that she
could read and write and was "a ra'al
smart woman"
The woeful childhood Of Lincoln ended
suddenly when he was eleven years old
and his stepmother arrived; from that
date the mental philosopher can trace
with ever increasing interest the rapid
development of his mind. All at once,
apparently, as ii it were in day, he
ceased to be the forlorn and neglected
child and became the smart boy of the
neighborhood." In three years he was
noted; in five more he was notorious.
The usual results of being the "smart
boy" of a country neighborhood had fol-
lowed. 1t is extremely difficult to find
any one who remembers anything about
him previous to 1920; it is altogether too
easy to find many in southern Indiana
who remember many things he did after
1926; for there is no doubt that his "smart-
ness" had, for want of a better field, taken
turn for queer ways and that he was,
as the people said, up to some mighty
mean tricks"