Mindon min biography of abraham lincoln

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Before Mr. Lincoln surrenders han själv completely to the public — for it is apparent he is fast approaching the great crisis of his career — it may not be entirely inappropriate to take a nearer and more personal view of him. A knowledge of his personal views and actions, a glimpse through the doorway of his home, and a more thorough acquaintance with his marked and strong points as they developed, will aid us greatly in forming our general estimate of the man. When Mr. Lincoln entered the domain of investigation he was a severe and persistent thinker, and had wonderful endurance; hence he was abstracted, and for that reason at times was somewhat unsocial, reticent, and uncommunicative. After his marriage it cannot be said that he liked the kultur of ladies; in fact, it was just what he did not like, though one of his biographers says otherwise. Lincoln had none of the tender ways that please a woman, and he could not, it seemed, by any positive act of

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Abraham Lincoln’s Personality

“In temper he was Earnest, yet controlled, frank, yet sufficiently guarded, patient, yet energetic, forgiving, yet just to himself; generous yet firm,” wrote J. T. Duryea of the U.S. Christian Commission, which met frequently with President Abraha Lincoln. “His conscience was the strongest element of his nature. His affections were tender & warm. His whole nature was simple and sincere – he was pure, and then was himself.”¹

The Marquis de Chambrun, a French writer who came to know Mr. Lincoln in the last months of his life, observed: “Such a nature was admirably constituted to direct an heroic struggle on the part of a people proud enough to prefer a guide to a leader, a man commissioned to execute the popular will but, as in his case, strong enough to enforce his own.”²

Much of Mr. Lincoln’s character was framed in early manhood when he moved to New Salem, Illinois to work for shopkee

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Publisher's Note.

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These volumes are submitted as faithful reproductions of the original "Herndon's Lincoln". We have endeavored to make the body of the work conform, line for line and word for word, to the original.

THE PUBLISHERS.

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THE year 1840 finds Mr. Lincoln entering his thirty-second year and still unmarried. "I have come to the conclusion," he suggests in a facetious letter, two years before, "never again to think of marrying." But meanwhile he had seen more of the world. The State Capital had been removed to Springfield, and he soon observed the power and influence one can exert with high family and social surroundings to draw upon. The sober truth is that Lincoln was inordinately ambitious. He had already succeeded in obtaining no inconsiderable political recognition, and numbered among his party friends men of wealth and reputation; but he himself was poor, besides lacking the graces and ease of bearing obtained through mingling in polite society — in fa