traordinary powers of body and mind; for the individual gifted by
nature with the genius which Abraham Lincoln possessed; the pioneer
condition, with its severe training in self-denial, patience, and
industry, was favorable to a development of character that helped in a
preeminent degree to qualify him for the duties and responsibilities of
leadership and government. He escaped the formal conventionalities which
beget insincerity and dissimulation. He grew up without being warped by
erroneous ideas or false principles; without being dwarfed by vanity, or
tempted by self-interest.

Some pioneer communities carried with them the institution of slavery;
and in the slave State of Kentucky Lincoln was born. He remained there
only a short time, and we have every reason to suppose that wherever he
might have grown to maturity his very mental and moral fiber would have
spurned the doctrine and practice of human slavery. And yet so subtle is
the influence of birth and custom, that we can trace one lasting effect
of this early and brief environment. Though he ever hated slavery, he
never hated the slaveholder. This ineradicable feeling of pardon and
sympathy for Kentucky and the South played no insignificant part in his
dealings with grave problems of statesmanship. He struck slavery its
death-blow with the hand of war, but he tendered the slaveholder a
golden equivalent with the hand of friendship and peace.

His advancement in the astonishing career which carried him from
obscurity to world-wide fame; from postmaster of New Salem village to
President of the United States; from captain of a backwoods volunteer
company to commander-in-chief of the army and navy, was neither sudden,
nor accidental, nor easy. He was both ambitious and successful, but his
ambition was moderate and his success was slow. And because his success
was slow, his ambition never outgrew either his judgment or his powers.
From the day when he left the paternal roof and launched his canoe on
the head waters of the Sangamon River to begin life on his own account,
to the day of his first inauguration, there intervened full thirty years
of toil, of study, self-denial, patience; often of effort baffled, of
hope deferred; sometimes of bitter disappointment. Given the natural
gift of great genius, given the condition of favorable environment, it
yet required an average lifetime and faithful unrelaxing effort to
transform the raw country stripling into a competent r