uler for this
great nation.

Almost every success was balanced--sometimes overbalanced by a seeming
failure. Reversing the usual promotion, he went into the Black Hawk War
a captain and, through no fault of his own, came out a private. He rode
to the hostile frontier on horseback, and trudged home on foot. His
store "winked out." His surveyor's compass and chain, with which he was
earning a scanty living, were sold for debt. He was defeated in his
first campaign for the legislature; defeated in his first attempt to be
nominated for Congress; defeated in his application to be appointed
commissioner of the General Land Office; defeated for the Senate in the
Illinois legislature of 1854, when he had forty-five votes to begin
with, by Trumbull, who had only five votes to begin with; defeated in
the legislature of 1858, by an antiquated apportionment, when his joint
debates with Douglas had won him a popular plurality of nearly four
thousand in a Democratic State; defeated in the nomination for
Vice-President on the Fremont ticket in 1856, when a favorable nod from
half a dozen wire-workers would have brought him success.

Failures? Not so. Every seeming defeat was a slow success. His was the
growth of the oak, and not of Jonah's gourd. Every scaffolding of
temporary elevation he pulled down, every ladder of transient
expectation which broke under his feet accumulated his strength, and
piled up a solid mound which raised him to wider usefulness and clearer
vision. He could not become a master workman until he had served a
tedious apprenticeship. It was the quarter of a century of reading
thinking, speech-making and legislating which qualified him for
selection as the chosen champion of the Illinois Republicans in the
great Lincoln-Douglas joint debates of 1858. It was the great
intellectual victory won in these debates, plus the title "Honest old
Abe," won by truth and manhood among his neighbors during a whole
generation, that led the people of the United States to confide to his
hands the duties and powers of President.

And when, after thirty years of endeavor, success had beaten down
defeat; when Lincoln had been nominated elected, and inaugurated, came
the crowning trial of his faith and constancy. When the people, by free
and lawful choice, had placed honor and power in his hands; when his
signature could convene Congress, approve laws, make ministers, cause
ships to sail and armies to move; when he could speak with