associates--rather than condensed and remolded into other form. While
these utterances are in some cases rude and unstudied, they have often a
power of delineation and a graphic force that more than compensate for
any lack of literary quality.

In a work prepared on such a plan as this, some repetitions are
unavoidable; nor are they undesirable. An event or incident narrated by
different observers is thereby brought out with greater fulness of
detail; and phases of Lincoln's many-sided character are revealed more
clearly by the varied impressions of numerous witnesses whose accounts
thus correct or verify each other. Some inconsistencies and
contradictions are inevitable,--but these relate usually to minor
matters, seldom or never to the great essentials of Lincoln's life and
personality. The author's desire is to present material from which the
reader may form an opinion of Lincoln, rather than to present opinions
and judgments of his own.

Lincoln literature has increased amazingly in the past twenty-five
years. Mention of the principal biographies in existence at the time of
the original edition was included in the Preface. Since then there have
appeared, among the more formal biographies, the comprehensive and
authoritative work by Nicolay and Hay, the subsequent work by Miss Ida
Tarbell, and that by Herndon and Weik, besides many more or less
fragmentary publications. Some additions, but not many, have been made
to the present edition from these sources. The recently-published Diary
of Gideon Welles, one of the most valuable commentaries on the Civil War
period now available, has provided some material of exceptional interest
concerning Lincoln's relations with the members of his Cabinet.

In re-writing the present work, it has been compressed into about