The Cordova daily times., 1921-03-17
LINCoLN's GRASP OF AMERICAN
 HISTORY

James Russell Lowell, in speaking of the college graduate of the years just before the Civil war, said that there were fifty of them fairly read in the classics for one who had reasonable acquaintance with Ameri- ican history.
 Adams, Jefferson, Madison and the younger Adams knew a great deal of the history they had hedped to make. Caleb Cushing was well versed in the annals of our legislation. Here one pauses-Daniel Webster can hardly be said to be a learned historian, though whatever he knew of history he could present with force never to be surpassed. Clay was eloquent, surely he never hoped to be looked on as a man deeply read in our chronicles. Benton's knowledge was pOrtentiOus. George Bancroft made history the leading object of his life. The average reader cannot think of a statesman between 1840 and 1860 with such store of historic facts as James G. Blaine, or Sunset Cox, Theodore Roosevelt, or Henry Cabot Lodge could produce. Did one of them bring forth a biography equal to Carl Schurz's life of Henry Clay, or John Bigelow's life of Samuel J. Tilden? Their ability showed as lawyers. Parton spoke of his histori- cal knowledge even among the best educated men of the country, was at rather a low ebb. John Fiske says that he saw in a bookstore volume entitled "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" and wondered whether Pontiac was the name of a man or place It is hardly probable that John Fiske was worse informed than most of his contemporaries.
 Suppose now that one reads for the first time Lincoln's address, delivered on February 27, 1860, at Cooper In stitute, New York, and so well known that it is commonly called "The Cooper Institute of Speech" In this speech Lincoln argues that the fed eral government has the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. No one will call it a learned speech it has not the sound of the professor of history, but it shows an off-hand readiness that is not to be despised.
 Lincoln had talked with older men, he had been in the Illinois legislature and in congress, he had written edi- torials, he had practiced in the courts, he had debated with Douglas, and history had become to him what it is to all who truly love it something to be absorbed every day as one absorbs the morning sunlight. There are men on the ocean who do not assume a mathematical air but who are good navigators. There are men in the country, who do not pose as mathematicians, but who are re- liable in their surveys. Lincoln was at home in history even as some men who make no pretense of learning read Latin or Greek, and get the best of it without lexicon.
 A historic vein runs through the first inaugural In the letter to Erastus Cornig and his associates there is one of the strongest historic arguments ever presented by an American statesman. Ac always, the tone is not that of the modern stu. dent who has read deeply, it Is more like that of the Greek who got at the root of a question by hearing others talk about it. Had Lincoln been reared in the Orient he might have developed the strange faculty of those persons-that of learning the structure of entire languages by the ear, seemingly with little study, but in reality by searching applica- tion.
 It has often been said that Lin. eoln was an unlettered man, and in his sadder moments he may have considered himself so. True, he went to school for less than year. and he grew up where libraries were few