silent. I can say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that he formed
his opinion of slavery. It ran its iron into him then and there, May,
1831. I have heard him say so often." Perhaps in other talks old John
Hanks dramatised his early remembrances a little; he related how at the
slave auction Lincoln said, "By God, boys, let's get away from this.
If ever I get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard."

The youth, who probably did not express his indignation in these
prophetic words, was in fact chosen to deal "that thing" a blow from
which it seems unlikely to recover as a permitted institution among
civilised men, and it is certain that from this early time the thought
of slavery never ceased to be hateful to him. Yet it is not in the
light of a crusader against this special evil that we are to regard
him. When he came back from this voyage to his new home in Illinois he
was simply a youth ambitious of an honourable part in the life of the
young country of which he was proud. We may regard, and he himself
regarded, the liberation of the slaves, which will always be associated
with his name, as a part of a larger work, the restoration of his
country to its earliest and noblest tradition, which alone gave
permanence or worth to its existence as a nation.




CHAPTER II

THE GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN NATION

1. _The Formation of a National Government_.