The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1921-02-12
E. dit al S
LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY

While the south does not yet recognize February ! Z,
Lincoln birthday, as legal holiday the time is Prob
ably not far distant when it will join the rest of the ma
ton in doing So If public referendum were taken to
determine the greatest of the United States,
at least FIVE of them would be southern men, and Lin
coins name by an overwhelming majority, would head
both lists.
His parents were from Virginia. His ancestry on
both sides leads back through Old Dominion lines to
British sources. He married a Kentucky woman whose
sympahes all southern and two of whose brothers
were killed while fighting in the Confederate armies.
Lincolns early training tinctured with southern
ideas and limited by the opportunities Of his community.
He read the same books that millions Of other southern
boys read studied the great book of nature, particular
ly human nature from the same point of view, and
CURED the same general moral and political ideas
His first political inspiration from the speeches
of Henry Clay and he became an ardent disciple of
this great Kenuckian. Later in life he traced the main
doctrines Of Clay their source which he discovered in
the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Thenceforth, he was
an ardent Jefersonian In his great Cooper Union
speech at New York, he declared he had enter
tanned political aspiration which was not drawn from
the declaration of independence. With equal truth he
might have said that he had never adopted political
principle and scarcely made political argument for
which he net some measure indebted to the author
of the declaration.
He possessed to most remarkable degree the acul-
ty of historical judgment. He saw things without pas
sion and in their true perspective. He distinguished be-
the act and the actor Though hating slavery, he
felt ill will fer the slave holder Though fighting the
Southern Confederacy with all the power of his mind and
heart, not a syllable of condemnatiop of the men who
constituted the Confederacy found its way into his
speeches writings.
Whatever motives may have actuated others of his
day. there is no room to doubt the purity of his own
The preservation of the union was his great object.
When that was accomplished he desired that the north
and south should dwell together in unity Had Lincoln
lived the which heaped upon the south in re-
construction days would have been avoided Ii was
in his mind to deprive the southern people Of the
electoral franchise hamper them in reccnstructng their
social and political affairs. He never dreamed of
conterrng upon the negro equal social political rights
He countenanced the fiction that the south was con-
quered territory but held consistently throughout his term
that the ordinances of secession were void, that the
south had not legally Withdrawn from the union, that
they still constituted integral parts of it, and when they
returned to their allegiance the war would be over and all
its objects accomplished.
Like the great of early days-W ashngon JEFF
ferson Madison Mason, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick
Henry, and others whose achievements nourished his
early mind-he deeply imbued with the spirit of
American liberty and independence, while from the later
Wing statesmen, Webster and Clay he had learned to
look upon the principle of unity as the only basis upon
which liberty and independence could exist In that
simple faith he lived and constitutes the key to all his
actions
1t the simplicity of his creed the purity of his
heart the ceaess of his and the accuracy of his
judgment that made him the indispensable character
in the nations most critical period These qualities, in
conjunction with the pathos Of his life and his tragca!
fate have lifted him an eminence in the mind o! the
world which other American has yet attained
Lincoln is and will ever continue to be, the typical
American hero and his life achievements and utter
vii! constitute for all time fruitful and inspiring
subject of study and emulation.