“‘These essays’--from the preface to which I have just quoted--had been written at divers times from 1833 onward, and were collected, in 1846, into a volume which has had a history. It is a book of exact definitions, just discriminations, lucid and tenacious arguments; and it deals with certain obstinate and elusive sophistries in an effective way. It is not to be wondered at that when it fell into the hands of a young Western lawyer, Abraham Lincoln,--whose characteristic was ‘not to be content with an idea until he could bound it north, east, south, and west,’--it should prove to be a book exactly after his mind. It was to him not only a study on slavery, but a model in the rhetoric of debate. It is not difficult to trace the influence of it in that great stump-debate with Douglas, in which Lincoln’s main strength lay in his cautious wisdom in declining to take the extreme positions into which his wily antagonist tried to provoke or entice him. When, many years after the little book had been forgotten by the public, and after slavery had fallen before the President’s proclamation, it appeared from Lincoln’s own declaration to Dr. Joseph P. Thompson that he owed to that book his definite, reasonable, and irrefragable views on the slavery question, my father felt to sing the _Nunc dimittis_.” CHAPTER XXVI. MR. LINCOLN’S HUMANITY. Martial law is severe, and, doubtless, not without reason. Desertion in time of war is a capital offence, and many a poor fellow suffered the penalty during the terrible four years of the civil war. Many more would have suffered but for the humane interposition of the President, who was glad to find the slightest excuse for saving the life of the unfortunate offender. As Dr. Holland observes, he had the deepest sympathy for the soldiers who were fighting the battles of their country. He knew something of their trials and privations, their longing for home, and the strength of the temptation which sometimes led them to lapse from duty. There was infinite tenderness in the heart of this man which made him hard to consent to extreme punishment. I propose to cull from different sources illustrations of Mr. Lincoln’s humanity. The first I find in a letter written to Dr. Holland by a personal friend of the President: “I called on him one day in the early part of the war. He had just written a pardon for a young man who had been sentenced to be shot, for sleeping at his post as a sentinel. He remarked as he read it to me, ‘I could not think of going into eternity with the blood of the poor young man on my skirts.’ Then he added, ‘It is not to be wondered at that a boy, raised on a farm, probably in the habit of going to bed at dark, should, when required to watch, fall asleep, and I can not consent to shoot him for such an act.’”