Lives of the Presidents of the United States of America from Washington to the Present Time

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1867. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVI. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Life in a Log-cabin. -- Excellence of Character early developed. -- A Day-laborer. -- A Boatman. -- A Shopkeeper. -- A Student. -- A Legislator. -- A Lawyer. -- A Member of Congress. -- A Political Speaker. -- The Debate with Douglas. -- Eloquence of Mr. Lincoln.-- Nominated for the Presidency. -- Habits of Temperance. -- His Sentiments.-- Anecdotes. -- Acts of his Administration. -- His Assassination. In the interior of the State of Kentucky, there is the county of Larue. Even now, it is but sparsely populated. Seventy-five years ago it was quite a wilderness, highly picturesque in its streams, its forests, and its prairies; in places, smooth as a floor, and again swelling into gentle undulations like the ocean at the subsidence of a storm. The painted Indian here had free range: a savage more ferocious than the wild beasts he pursued. Though Daniel Boone had explored this region, and had returned to the other side of the Alleghanies laden with peltry, and with the report that it was an earthly paradise, there were but few who were ready to plunge into the pathless wilderness, leaving all vestiges of civilization hundreds of miles behind them. But Providence, for the sake of peopling this country, seems to have raised up a peculiar class of men, who loved hardship and peril and utter loneliness. The Indians were always clustered in villages; but these men, the pioneers of civilization, penetrated the recesses of the forest, and reared their cabins in the most secluded valleys, where they seldom heard the voice or saw the face of their brother-man. About the year 1780, when the war of the Revolution was still raging, one of these men, Abraham Lincoln, left the beautiful Valley of the Shenandoah, in Virginia, for the wilds of Kentuck...