"I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. "Yours sincerely and respectfully, A. LINCOLN." IV. HUMANITY AND THE GREAT SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE Many people in estimating Lincoln's scholarship do not sufficiently recognize how much an eager student of life can learn in such wide experience as his among men. To say that he was uneducated or that he was self-made are alike erroneous. He was truly entered in the school of experience in which he chose the wisest interest as his teacher, and from which he graduated as a martyred president, one of the wisest masters of humanity. It can hardly be said that Lincoln arrived slowly at a leadership of men. He was only twenty-eight when he was regarded as one of the most influential men in his State. The nation was then in the midst of the religious belief that God intended slavery or he would not have made men black. Even at that early period Lincoln, with the boldness of a Martin Luther, declared that "the institution of slavery is founded both on injustice and bad policy," though the great reformation was not yet at hand. It is said that "those in glass houses should not throw stones." Society and government have yet so many sins and wrongs to answer for that the people of slavery days can hardly be blamed for not seeing as we see now. Mankind seems to be only well started on the way to civilization. Now and then we are given a great far-seeing man and the vision of righteousness is made a little clearer. We see a little farther through him into the promised land of a better world. To any one looking down upon the stormy United States of that period it could be seen that probably no one ever entered the presidency, and more probably never would, who seemed so destitute of influential associates and political supporters. It was Lincoln alone and his faith in the unseen faithful of his ancient Israel. He knew the people. He knew they understood what the great crisis in their country's history meant for their ideals of America. They wanted a leader from among themselves, because they no longer trusted the politicians in high places. In 1862 John James Piatt wrote: