licy, and he was able to impress upon
them his perfect integrity of purpose and the soundness of his
conclusions,--conclusions which thus became the policy of the nation.

He calls himself a "mast-fed lawyer" and it is true that his
opportunities for reading continued to be most restricted. Davis said in
regard to Lincoln's work as a lawyer: "He had a magnificent equipoise of
head, conscience, and heart. In non-essentials he was pliable; but on
the underlying principles of truth and justice, his will was as firm as
steel." We find from the record of Lincoln's work in the Assembly and
later in Congress that he would never do as a Representative what he was
unwilling to do as an individual. His capacity for seeing the humorous
side of things was of course but a phase of a general clearness of
perception. The man who sees things clearly, who is able to recognise
both sides of a matter, the man who can see all round a position, the
opposite of the man in blinders, that man necessarily has a sense of
humour. He is able, if occasion presents, to laugh at himself. Lincoln's
capacity for absorbing and for retaining information and for having this
in readiness for use at the proper time was, as we have seen, something
that went back to his boyhood. He says of himself: "My mind is something
like a piece of steel; it is very hard to scratch anything on it and
almost impossible after you have got it there to rub it out."

Lincoln's correspondence has been preserved with what is probably
substantial completeness. The letters written by him to friends,
acquaintances, political correspondents, individual men of one kind or
another, have been gathered together and have been brought into print
not, as is most frequently the case, under the discretion or judgment of
a friendly biographer, but by a great variety of more or less
sympathetic people. It would seem as if but very few of Lincoln's
letters could have been mislaid or destroyed. One can but be impressed,
in reading these letters, with the absolute honesty of purpose and of
statement that characterises them. There are very few men, particularly
those whose active lives have been passed in a period of political
struggle and civil war, whose correspondence could stand such a test.
There never came to Lincoln requirement to say to his correspondent,
"Burn this letter."

III

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY

In 1856, the Supreme Court, under the headship of Jud