Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

We have already stated that Mr. Lincoln was not elected President of the United States for any commanding fame, or for any known merit as a statesman. His panegyrists, although they could not assert for him a guiding intellect or profound scholarship, claimed for him some homely and substantial virtues. It was said that he was transparently honest. But his honesty was rather that facile disposition that readily took impressions from whatever was urged on it. It was said that he was excessively amiable. But his amiability was animal. It is small merit to have a Falstaffian humour in one's blood. Abraham Lincoln was neither kind nor cruel, in the proper sense of these words, simply because he was destitute of the higher order of sensibilities.

His appearance corresponded to his rough life and uncultivated mind. His figure was tall and gaunt-looking; his shoulders were inclined forward; his arms of unusual length; and his gait astride, rapid and shuffling. The savage wits in the Southern newspapers had no other name for him than “the Illinois Ape.”

The new President of the United States was the product of that partizanship which often discovers its most “available” candidates among obscure men, with slight political records, and of that infamous demagogueism in America that is pleased with the low and vulgar antecedents of its public men, and enjoys the imagination of similar elevation for each one of its own class in society. Mr. Lincoln had formerly served, without distinction, in Congress. But among his titles to American popularity were the circumstances that in earlier life he had rowed a flat-boat down the Mississippi; afterwards been a miller; and at another period had earned his living by splitting rails in a county of Illinois. When he was first named for the Presidency, an enthusiastic admirer had presented to the State Convention of Illinois two old fence-rails, gaily decorated with flags and ribbons, and bearing the following inscription: “Abraham Lincoln, the Rail Candidate for President in 1860.-Two rails from a lot of 3,000, made in 1830, by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln.” The incident is not mentioned for amusement: it is a suggestive illustration of the vulgar and silly devices in an American election.

Since the announcement of his election, Mr. Lincoln had remained very retired and studiously silent in his home at Springfield, Illinois. Expectations were raised by the mystery of this silence; his panegyrists declared that it was the indication of a thoughtful wisdom pondering the grave concerns of the country, and likely to announce at last some novel and profound solution of existing difficulties; and so credulous are all men in a time of anxiety and embarrassment, and so eager to catch at hopes, that these fulsome prophecies of the result of Mr. Lincoln's meditations actually