John G. Nicolay, A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, condensed from Nicolay and Hayes' Abraham Lincoln: A History

Abraham Lincoln sprang from exceptional conditions — was in truth, in the language of Lowell, a “new birth of our new soil.” But this distinction was not due alone to mere environment. The ordinary man, with ordinary natural gifts, found in Western pioneer communities a development essentially the same as he would have found under colonial Virginia or Puritan New England: a commonplace life, varying only with the changing ideas and customs of time and locality. But for the man with extraordinary powers of body and mind; for the individual gifted by nature with the genius which Abraham Lincoln possessed; the pioneer condition, with its severe training in self-denial, patience, and industry, was favorable to a development of character that helped in a preeminent degree to qualify him for the duties and responsibilities of leadership and government. He escaped the formal conventionalities which beget insincerity and dissimulation. He grew up without being warped by erroneous ideas or false principles; without being dwarfed by vanity, or tempted by self-interest.

Some pioneer communities carried with them the institution of slavery; and in the slave State of Kentucky Lincoln was born. He remained there only a short time, and we have every reason to suppose that wherever he might have grown to maturity his very mental and moral fiber would have spurned the doctrine and practice of human slavery. 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