Search -
Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln (1866)
Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln - 1866 Author:Francis Bicknell Carpenter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SIX MONTHS AT THE WHITE HOUSE I Leave to other and abler pens the proper estimate of Abraham Lincoln as a ruler and statesman,— his work and place in history.... more » Favored, during the year 1864 with several months of personal intercourse with him, I shall attempt in these pages to write the story of that association ; not for any value which the record will have in itself, but for the glimpses it may afford of the person and character of the man, — every detail of whose life is now invested with enduring interest for the American people. That Art should aim to embody and express the spirit and best thought of its own age seems self- evident. If it fails to do this, whatever else it may accomplish, it falls short of its highest object. It cannot dwell always among classic forms, nor clothe its conceptions in the imagery of an old and worn- out world. It must move on, if it is to keep pacewith that " increasing purpose which through the ages runs," and its ideals must be wrought out of the strife of a living humanity. It has been well said by a recent writer: " The record of the human family to the advent of Christ, was the .preparation of the photographic plate for its "image/ -All subsequent history is the bringing "out" bf". the divine ideal of true manhood." Slowly, "But surely j through the centuries, is this purpose being accomplished. Human slavery has been the material type or expression of spiritual bondage. On the lowest or physical plane, it has symbolized the captivity and degradation of our higher nature; with the breaking in of new light, and the inspiration of a deeper life, it is inevitably doomed. That man, to attain the full development of the faculties implanted in him, must be in spiritual and physical freedom, is a principle which lies at the foundation of a...« less