trend of national history. Any attempt to understand the achievements
and the omissions of the Northern people without undertaking an
intelligent estimate of their leader would be only to duplicate the
story of "Hamlet" with Hamlet left out. According to the opinion of
English military experts*, "Against the great military genius of certain
Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate
devotion to the Union, which he worshiped, of the great Northern
President. As long as he lived and ruled the people of the North, there
could be no turning back."

* Wood and Edmonds. "The Civil War in the United States."

Lincoln has been ranked with Socrates; but he has also been compared
with Rabelais. He has been the target of abuse that knew no mercy; but
he has been worshiped as a demigod. The ten big volumes of his official
biography are a sustained, intemperate eulogy in which the hero does
nothing that is not admirable; but as large a book could be built up
out of contemporaneous Northern writings that would paint a picture of
unmitigated blackness--and the most eloquent portions of it would be
signed by Wendell Phillips.

The real Lincoln is, of course, neither the Lincoln of the official
biography nor the Lincoln of Wendell Phillips. He was neither a saint
nor a villain. What he actually was is not, however, so easily stated.
Prodigious men are never easy to sum up; and Lincoln was a prodigious
man. The more one studies him, the more individual he appears to be. By
degrees one comes to understand how it was possible for contemporaries
to hold contradictory views of him and for each to believe frantically
that his views were proved by facts. For anyone who thinks he can hit
off in a few neat generalities this complex, extraordinary personality,
a single warning may suffice. Walt Whitman, who was perhaps the most
original thinker and the most acute observer who ever saw Lincoln face
to face has left us his impression; but he adds that there was something
in Lincoln's face which defied description and which no picture had
caught. After Whitman's conclusion that "One of the great portrait
painters of two or three hundred years ago is needed," the mere
historian should proceed with caution.

There is historic significance in his very appearance. His huge,
loose-knit figure, six feet four inches high, lean, muscular, ungainly,
the evidence of his great physical strength, was a fit symbol of those
har