[Illustration: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) were born in Kentucky only a few miles apart. Lincoln educated himself, eventually settled in Illinois, and became a highly successful frontier attorney.] [Illustration: Davis graduated from West Point, became a wealthy Mississippi planter, and served successively as Secretary of War and U. S. senator. Both men were tall and of striking appearance; both married strong-willed women.] The destiny of Civil War America lay largely in the hands of four men: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses Simpson Grant, and Robert Edward Lee. Since an abundance of printed works exists on the lives and careers of these leaders, given here are but a few generalities concerning each. In many respects, Lincoln long seemed mysteriously complex. But those who knew the man quickly dropped any impression that Lincoln was crude or provincial. “He is the best of us all,” his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, once stated. The solemn-looking Lincoln was a deeply earnest chief executive who devoted his last four years to reuniting a shattered nation that he loved dearly and to raising the nation to a higher moral and spiritual level. He was kind, genial, compassionate, and religious (though he attended church without joining any denomination). Lincoln possessed several ingredients of greatness. He had a deep love of humanity, a keen understanding of men, and a fantastic patience with the generals and politicians who tried him by their lack of strength and capacity. He was also a man of total integrity and deep humility. As a patriot he believed firmly that “this government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Not once in those years of passion did he express the slightest hatred for the Union’s enemies. In his second inaugural address, delivered a month before his death in 1865, Lincoln closed by stating: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us continue the work we are in ... [and] do all that may achieve a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” [Illustration: On July 7, 1865, four persons convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of Lincoln were hanged at the Washington Arsenal. Among the four was Mrs. Mary Surratt (second from left), the first woman in America to be executed for a capital offense.]