Call for Five Hundred Thousand Men 471 Letter to Mrs. Gurney 473 The Tennessee Test Oath 474 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD AND EARLY MANHOOD. Preliminary--Birth of Abraham Lincoln--Removal from Kentucky-- At Work--Self Education--Personal Characteristics--Another Removal--Trip to New Orleans--Becomes Clerk--Black Hawk War-- Engages in Politics--Successive Elections to the Legislature-- Anti-Slavery Protest--Commences Practice as a Lawyer--Traits of Character--Marriage--Return to Politics--Election to Congress. The leading incidents in the early life of the men who have most decidedly influenced the destinies of our republic, present a striking similarity. The details, indeed, differ; but the story, in outline, is the same--“the short and simple annals of the poor.” Of obscure parentage--accustomed to toil from their tender years--with few facilities for the education of the school--the most struggled on, independent, self-reliant, till by their own right hands they had hewed their way to the positions for which their individual talents and peculiarities stamped them as best fitted. Children of nature, rather than of art, they have ever in their later years--amid scenes and associations entirely dissimilar to those with which in youth and early manhood, they were familiar--retained somewhat indicative of their origin and training. In speech or in action--often in both--they have smacked of their native soil. If they have lacked the grace of the courtier, ample compensation has been afforded in the honesty of the man. If their address was at times abrupt, it was at least frank and unmistakable. Both friend and foe knew exactly where to find them. Unskilled in the doublings of the mere politician or the trimmer, they have borne themselves straight forward to the points whither their judgment and conscience directed. Such men may have been deemed fit subjects for the jests and sneers of more cultivated Europeans, but they are none the less dear to us as Americans--will none the less take their place among those whose names the good, throughout the world, will not willingly let die. Of this class, pre-eminently, was the statesman whose life and public services the following pages are to exhibit. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Sixteenth President of the United States, son of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln--the former a Kentuckian, the latter a Virginian--was born February 12th, 1809, near Hodgenville, the county-seat of what is now known as La Rue county, Kentucky. He had one sister, two years his senior, who died, married, in early womanhood; and his only brother, his junior by two years, died in childhood.