The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who actually combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus puts in antithesis.  Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western country lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world, and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Sagamore hill, oyster bay, N. Y., September 22, 1905.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

“I have endured,” wrote Lincoln not long before his death, “a great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule.”  On Easter Day, 1865, the world knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really signified.  Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real.  This should not be.  For Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious.  Invaluable is the example of the man, intangible that of the hero.

And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness listened at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham Lincoln, yet there is for us another way whereby we may attain such knowledge—­through his words—­uttered in all sincerity to those who loved or hated him.  Cold, unsatisfying they may seem, these printed words, while we can yet speak with those who knew him, and look into eyes that once looked into his.  But in truth it is here that we find his simple greatness, his great simplicity, and though no man tried less so to show his power, no man has so shown it more clearly.

Thus these writings of Abraham Lincoln are associated with those of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and of the other “Founders of the Republic,” not that Lincoln should become still more of the past, but, rather, that he with them should become still more of the present.  However faint and mythical may grow the story of that Great Struggle, the leader, Lincoln, at least should remain a real, living American.  No matter how clearly, how directly, Lincoln has shown himself in his writings, we yet should not forget those men whose minds, from their various view-points, have illumined for us his character.  As this nation owes a great debt to Lincoln, so, also, Lincoln’s memory owes a great debt to a nation which, as no other nation could have done, has been able to appreciate his full worth.  Among the many who have brought about this appreciation, those only whose estimates have been placed in these volumes may be mentioned here.  To President Roosevelt, to Mr. Schurz and to Mr. Choate, the editor, for himself, for the publishers, and on behalf of the readers, wishes to offer his sincere acknowledgments.