who had placed it in his hands; commander-in-chief of a vast military
power, which waged with ultimate success the greatest war of the century;
the triumphant champion of popular government, the deliverer of four
millions of his fellowmen from bondage; honored by mankind as Statesman,
President, and Liberator.

Let us glance now at the first half of the brief life of which this was
the glorious and happy consummation. Nothing could be more squalid and
miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln was born--a one-roomed
cabin without floor or window in what was then the wilderness of
Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life which swiftly moved westward
from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of schools and
churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers, of all things
which are generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of
life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could
keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever seeking,
without success, to better his unhappy condition by moving on from one
such scene of dreary desolation to another. The rude society which
surrounded them was not much better. The struggle for existence was
hard, and absorbed all their energies. They were fighting the forest, the
wild beast, and the retreating savage. From the time when he could
barely handle tools until he attained his majority, Lincoln's life was
that of a simple farm laborer, poorly clad, housed, and fed, at work
either on his father's wretched farm or hired out to neighboring farmers.
But in spite, or perhaps by means, of this rude environment, he grew to
be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four at nineteen, and fabulous
stories are told of his feats of strength. With the growth of this
mighty frame began that strange education which in his ripening years was
to qualify him for the great destiny that awaited him, and the
development of those mental faculties and moral endowments which, by the