THE THREE GREATEST AMERICANS _Theodore Roosevelt_ 333 HIS CHOICE AND HIS DESTINY _F. M. Bristol_ 333 ABRAHAM LINCOLN _Robert G. Ingersoll_ 334 LINCOLN _Paul Laurence Dunbar_ 341 THE GRANDEST FIGURE _Walt Whitman_ 342 ABRAHAM LINCOLN _Lyman Abbott_ 345 "LINCOLN THE IMMORTAL" _Anonymous_ 346 THE CRISIS AND THE HERO _Frederic Harrison_ 349 LINCOLN _John Vance Cheney_ 351 MAJESTIC IN HIS INDIVIDUALITY _S. P. Newman_ 353 IX LINCOLN YARNS AND SAYINGS THE QUESTION OF LEGS 359 HOW LINCOLN WAS PRESENTED WITH A KNIFE 360 "WEEPING WATER" 361 MILD REBUKE TO A DOCTOR 362 X FROM LINCOLN'S SPEECHES AND WRITINGS LINCOLN'S LIFE AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 365 THE INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY 365 SPEECH AT COOPER INSTITUTE 368 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 371 LETTER TO HORACE GREELEY 376 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 378 THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION 380 GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 382 REMARKS TO NEGROES ON THE STREETS OF RICHMOND 383 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 384 PREFACE An astounding number of books have been written on Abraham Lincoln. Our Library of Congress contains over one thousand of them in well-nigh every modern language. Yet, incredible as it may seem, no miner has until to-day delved in these vast fields of Lincolniana until he has brought together the most precious of the golden words written of and by the Man of the People. Howe has collected a few of the best poems on Lincoln; Rice, Oldroyd and others, the elder prose tributes and reminiscences. McClure has edited Lincoln's yarns and stories; Nicolay and Hay, his speeches and writings. But each successive twelfth of February has emphasized the growing need for a unification of this scattered material. The present volume offers, in small compass, the most noteworthy essays, orations, fiction and poems on Lincoln, together with some fiction, with characteristic anecdotes and "yarns" and his most famous speeches and writings. Taken in conjunction with a good biography, it presents the first succinct yet comprehensive view of "the first American." The Introduction gives some account of the celebration of Lincoln's Birthday and of his principal biographers. NOTE