Evening star., 1940-02-11

Civil War and the assassination OF
Abraham Lincoln.
Barest remnants Of the generation
which took an active part in that titanic
struggle of men and ideas are still alive.
Yet, In sense, it is not so long past.
Veterans of the World War must realize
that they soon will be as far away in
time from Belieau Wood and the Ar
gonne Forest as were the veterans of
North and South from Shiloh and
Charlottesville when they themselves
were boys. Then the Grand Army of the
Republic and the United, Confederate
Veterans were hale and robust men, who
marched along the streets with frm
steps and were the leadins citizens of
their communities.
There has accumulated through the
years a vast and chaotic Civil War lit
erature. A few years ago the Pension
Bureau here in Washington had large
library made up entirely of regimental
histories, company histories, ETC., of the
Northern armies. The South must have
had comparably large accumulation of
such material. Biographies and auto
biographies have run into the thousands
Many hundreds of personal diaries have
been printed. Historical societies have
compiled and published the letters, OH
cial and intimate, of the Civil War
worthless. To all this should be added the
millions of pages OF periodical literature.
the contemporary newspapers, the con-
tributions of foreign countries, the grave
stones in village cemeteries. the thou
sands of soldiers monuments scattered
over the country
Regulations have famed and gone out.
Names which were household words a
couple of generations ago now would
draw blanks on any radio questions-and-
answers contest. The world has advanced
SO far materially that it is difhcult for
the present generation to conceive of the
America of gas lights and kerosene
lamps. of steam boats, muddy highways,
slow trains, hoop skirts, slavery, diph-
iberia.
Revival of Interest.
There has been of late years an enor-
nous revival of interest in this era. The
Nation perhaps has reached at last a
time when the atmosphere and events
Of the Cos are possessed Of just the
proper degree of emotionalism for such
q revival. 1t is witnessed by the phenom-
eral success of such book and movie
as Gone With the Wind" and by such
monumental works as Douglas Free
mans biography of Lee, and the fast
accumulating biographies, many of them
of high literary quality, of the military
leaders on both sides.
Probably the most monumental and
imperishable of these is Carl Sandburg's
four-volume biography of Abraham Lin
gether with sandburg's earlier work.
1.-THE Prairie Years." it constitutes a
complete life story of the backwoods
lawyer placed by vagary of political
fate In that fierce light which beats
upon throne to become the world folk
hero of the 18th century. It Is the work
Of an historian and poet in whose
brain has been distilled the epic of Lin
| coins life and times out of the vast
before mentioned mass of historical and
| journalistic literature. The labor in
| volved must have been titanic. Sand
burg has gotten out Of it both q biogra-
| ply and poem.
Man-Go Emerges.
It is history Of the Civil War and Of
the ways Of life and ways of thought Of
the American Of the mid-l9th century.
An adequate biography of Lincoln was
bound to be such, for Lincoln" has come
to mean something far vaster than the
one harassed, sorrow-laden, merciful,
often -blundering, ungainly man at the
helm of the American ship of state from
! 1861 to 1865. The Civil War and the
ways of life and the ways of thought
Of the mid-19th century have become in
the strange workings Of history's laws
Of relativity parts Of this vaster Lincoln
rather than the man himself Z part Of
them. These past 75 years have been