reliminary Stages of the War
2. Bull Run
3. Lincoln's Administration Generally
4. Foreign Policy and England
5. The Great Questions of Domestic Policy

IX. THE DISASTERS OF THE NORTH
1. Military Policy of the North
2. The War in the West up to May, 1862
3. The War in the East up to May, 1863

X. EMANCIPATION

XI. THE APPROACH OF VICTORY
1. The War to the End of 1863
2. Conscription and the Politics of 1863
3. The War in 1864
4. The Second Election of Lincoln: 1864

XII. THE END

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

INDEX

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN

The subject of this memoir is revered by multitudes of his countrymen
as the preserver of their commonwealth. This reverence has grown with
the lapse of time and the accumulation of evidence. It is blended with
a peculiar affection, seldom bestowed upon the memory of statesmen. It
is shared to-day by many who remember with no less affection how their
own fathers fought against him. He died with every circumstance of
tragedy, yet it is not the accident of his death but the purpose of his
life that is remembered.

Readers of history in another country cannot doubt that the praise so
given is rightly given; yet any bare record of the American Civil War
may leave them wondering why it has been so unquestioningly accorded.
The position and task of the American President in that crisis cannot
be understood from those of other historic rulers or historic leaders
of a people; and it may seem as if, after that tremendous conflict in
which there was no lack of heroes, some perverse whim had made men
single out for glory the puzzled civil magistrate who sat by. Thus
when an English writer tells again this tale, which has been well told
already and in which there can remain no important new facts to
disclose, he must endeavour to make clear to Englishmen circumstances
and conditions which are familiar to Americans. He will incur the
certainty that here and there his own perspective of American affairs
and persons will be false, or his own touch unsympathetic. He had
better do this than chronicle sayings and doings which to him and to
those for whom he writes have no significance. Nor should the writer
shrink too timidly from the display of a partisanship which, on one
side or the other, it would be insensate not to feel. The true
obligation of