The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-04-30

The Kansas man who sues for dfvoree because his wife treats him just as she does other men is to be pitied.
 
 THE POWER OF CIRCUMSTANCES
 Sir Walter Scott eaks of The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances" and Daniel Webster once referred to the fearful concatention of circumstances" There is an old Latin expression which refers to what the discordant harmony of circumstances would and could eff. feet"
 They all refer to the prevalent belief that human beings are largely the crca | lures or circumstances. and we have some instances in the history of our own | country, without going farther, which seem to strengthen the belief that men who have reached great eminence and prominence owed their greatness to for ! tuitous circumstances"
 | We regard Abraham Lincoln as one of the most noted instances that our country has seen. There was hardly anything in his early or middle life upon which any
 
 he would ever be a great man. His origin was not only obscure, but was what in ordinary language would ne call ed mean. He had .iJ advantay ss of birth, l wealth, education CT influence. He had rugged common cense and a homely way Legislature of Illinois, lnd one term in Congress. but made ID special reputation | in either body. His noted campaign against Douglas in 'S5S for Senator gave l him prominence, but he was defeated, much to his disappointment. Then he tried the lecture field. made a failure of 1t and soon quit. Up to 1860, it may be safely said, Abraham Lincoln was very commonplace character.
 It was his insiste1t opposition to slavery at a time when the powers of abolition | were culminating, that made him a pres slavery men looked on him as a fit advo- cate of their policies. It was the rivalry between other prominent men of his party which opened the way for him. There 1 were Seward, Cameron, Chase and others, who had national prominence, but the l jealousies and rivalries among their ad- herents killed all of the n off and the nom- ination went to the least known, and, if 1 the truth must be told, to the one sup posed to be least qualified. Thus. after he vas more than 50 years of age, he
 became President, through a train of | h. have remained almost unknown. The acute stage of the question of slavery and
 the deadly rivalry among anti-slavery leaders made Lincoln one of the most prominent figures of the last century. Without these aids he would have lived in all probability, man of little note and prominence.
 And the same train of circumstances
 which brought on the war and made Lin coin a great man, also gave to Grant all the claim to greatness that he had. He was certainly a mediocre man in
 every respect. As a lieutenant in the reg
 ular army he saw some service in the | West and in the Mexican war, but gave
 no evidence of talent or military great ness. There was so little in it in his es-
 timation that he resigned in 1854 because
 he saw nothing in the future for him as
 a military man. He tried his hand at | farming and as a tanner without suc-
 cess. In fact, Grant was failure at ev-
 erything he undertook, and but for the
 breaking out of great war he would I
 scurlty
 And 1t was little better than chance
 that placed him in the Union Army. It
 is doubtful if he had any choice, other
 than such as he would have felt by
 reason of having cid a commission in
 the army of the United States Be that
 as it may, and whatever high opinions
 may be held of him in some quarters as
 a military man, his best friends would
 hardly claim that he displayed any tal-
 ent In the early scenes of the war. The
 failure of Mcclellan, Pope and others to put down the rebellion rrougat him
 to the front at critical time and he had the honor and glory of ending the strug- gle. If that did mt make him a great
 man it made him prominent and gave
 him great name. And So, slavery and
 aboliticnism made two men great in the country's history who would otherwise
 have been ''the "a~!d forgetting, by the world forgot" so far as any one can judge, and they are but two instances
 that might be brought forward to show
 how circumstances alter mems lives.