And yet so subtle is
the influence of birth and custom, that we can trace one lasting effect
of this early and brief environment. Though he ever hated slavery, he
never hated the slaveholder. This ineradicable feeling of pardon and
sympathy for Kentucky and the South played no insignificant part in his
dealings with grave problems of statesmanship. He struck slavery its
death-blow with the hand of war, but he tendered the slaveholder a
golden equivalent with the hand of friendship and peace.
His advancement in the astonishing career which carried him from
obscurity to world-wide fame; from postmaster of New Salem village to
President of the United States; from captain of a backwoods volunteer
company to commander-in-chief of the army and navy, was neither sudden,
nor accidental, nor easy. He was both ambitious and successful, but his
ambition was moderate and his success was slow. And because his success
was slow, his ambition never outgrew either his judgment or his powers.
From the day when he left the paternal roof and launched his canoe on
the head waters of the Sangamon River to begin life on his own account,
to the day of his first inauguration, there intervened full thirty years
of toil, of study, self-denial, patience; often of effort baffled, of
hope deferred; sometimes of bitter disappointment.
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