The Nashville globe. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1906-193?, 1909-02-12

One hundred years ago next Friday
there was born in a cabin on Nolins
creek three miles west of the obscure
hamlet of Hodgensville, Kentucky,
Abraham Lincoln, whose most fitting
epitaph in this season Of remembrance
of the great emancipation is that HE
loved the plain people About his
personality, both before and since his
death from the assassin's bullet, has
arisen a great body of literature. His
career was one which appeals force
fully to the imagination; his charac-
teristics were those which appeal no
less forcefully to the heart.
Fortunately for the world, his biog-
raphy. so often undertaken, has been
written not only by those who depend
ed for their material on apocryphal
legend and hearsay testimony, but as
well by men who were closely associ-
ated with him and came to their task
lovingly and panoplied in ample
equipment Such a one was William
H. Herndon, his law partner at Spring
field, ILL.,, in the days before he had
achieved political preferment, when
he was finding himself. So equipped,
also, were Nicolay and Hay, who were
intimately associated with him as Sec
cretaries during his period OF stress
and whose nine-volume history of Lin
coins life is the most exhaustive hith-
erto or likely to be undertaken.
There have been many other biogra-
plies, long and short, some of them
never rescued from the transitory pag-
es of magazines, others written for
this or that special purpose from
this and that special viewpoint. And
in addition there have been almost
countless anecdotes purporting to be
of Lincoln or told by him, which have
fiuttered into the glance of the reading
public in the daily press and have
found oblivion in dutsy file racks. For
these reasons the Lincoln legend has
become almost as much part OF
American education as reading and
writing.
One brought face to face with the
great masses of Lincolniana cannot
help asking how many of these anec
dOtes should be believed, how many
rejected as probably untrue. rea
sonable answer perhaps is that the
bulk of such stories are worthy of &C
,ceptance on the following grounds:
The status of Lincoln in the mind Of
the world to-day is such that the film
siest Renaissance concerning him &C
Quires by the magic of his name 9
fictitious value; frequently cold anal
ysis of a tale which for the moment
seems vital with human interest re
veals that it has none of the qualities
of a tellable story. The Midas touch
of a great mans name transmutes it
and without that name it is incon
ceivable that it should have been giveI
currency.
LINCOLN's FIRST CONTACT WITH TIL
SLAVE TRADE.
Lincoln was %, unlettered and with
out definite aim in life, when he wa
first brought into contact with slavery
He was engaged with two companion
for the modest wages of so cents
day and a bonus of $50 to run flat
boat from Illinois to New Orleans
In the louisiana city he saw for tn
first time negroes in chains-whippet
and scourged." One morning Will
walking through the city with tw
companions he passed slave auction
where a comedy mulatto girl was OF
the block.
The possible purchasers pinched he
flesh and made a thorough examine
ton, and she was trotted up and dow