ite 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,
character, and purpose of the men against whom he was contending. It
became of larger importance when Lincoln was directing from Washington
the policy of the national administration that he should have a
sympathetic knowledge of the problems of the men of the Border States
who with the outbreak of the War had been placed in a position of
exceptional difficulty, and that he should have secured and retained the
confidence of these men. It seems probable that if the War President
had been a man of Northern birth and Northern prejudices, if he had been
one to whom the wider, the more patient and sympathetic view of these
problems had been impossible or difficult, the Border States could not
have been saved to the Union. It is probable that the support given to
the cause of the North by the sixty thousand or seventy thousand loyal
recruits from Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, and Virginia, may
even have proved the deciding factor in turning the tide of events. The
nation's leader for the struggle seems to have been secured through a
process of natural selection as had been the case a century earlier with
Washington. We may recall that Washington died but ten years before
Lincoln was born; and from the fact that each leader was at hand when
the demand came for his service, and when without such service the
nation might have been pressed to destruction, we may grasp the hope
that in time of need the nation will always be provided with the leader
who can meet the requirement.

After Lincoln returned from New Orleans, he secured employment for a
time in the grocery or general store of Gentry, and when he was
twenty-two years of age, he went into business with a partner, some
twenty years older than himself, in carrying on such a store. He had so
impressed himself upon the confidence of his neighbours that, while he
was absolutely without resources, there was no difficulty in his
borrowing the money required