This book aims to give a view, clearer and more complete than has been given before, of the personality of Abraham Lincoln.

A life so full of incident and a character so many-sided as his can be understood only with the lapse of time.

A sense of the exhaustless interest of that life and character, and the inadequacy of the ordinarily constructed biography to portray his many-sidedness, suggested the preparation of a work upon the novel plan here represented.

Begun several years ago, the undertaking proved of such magnitude that its completion has been delayed beyond the anticipated time.

The extensive correspondence, the exploration of available sources of information in the books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers of a quarter of a century, and in the scraps and papers of historical collections, became an almost interminable task.