instance, a supply of stationery for which the adjutants of the brigade
had been waiting, was carried off to serve the needs of our opponents.
We tore down a convenient and unnecessary shed and utilised from the
roof the shingles, the clean portions of which made an admirable
substitute for paper. For some days, the morning reports of the brigade
were filed on shingles.

Lincoln's work as a farm-hand was varied by two trips down the river to
New Orleans. The opportunity had been offered to the young man by the
neighbouring store-keeper, Gentry, to take part in the trip of a
flat-boat which carried the produce of the county to New Orleans, to be
there sold in exchange for sugar or rum. Lincoln was, at the time of
these trips, already familiar with certain of the aspects and conditions
of slavery, but the inspection of the slave-market in New Orleans
stamped upon his sensitive imagination a fresh and more sombre picture,
and made a lasting impression of the iniquity and horror of the
institution. From the time of his early manhood, Lincoln hated slavery.
What was exceptional, however, in his state of mind was that, while
abominating the institution, he was able to give a sympathetic
understanding to the opinions and to the prejudices of the slave-owners.
In all his long fight against slavery as the curse both of the white and
of the black, and as the great obstacle to the natural and wholesome
development of the nation, we do not at any time find a trace of
bitterness against the men of the South who were endeavouring to
maintain and to extend the system.

It was of essential importance for the development of Lincoln as a
political leader, first for his State, and later in the contest that
became national, that he should have possessed an understanding, which
was denied to many of the anti-slavery leaders, of the actual nature,