There was the roughness of the frontier upon Mr. Lincoln; his clothes hung unthought of on his big angular frame; he broke often, in the midst of the weightiest affairs of state, into broad and boisterous humor; he did his work with a sort of careless heaviness, as if disinclined to action; but there was a singular gift of insight in him from early boyhood. He had been bred in straitened, almost abject poverty; and yet he had made even that yield him more than other boys get from formal schooling. He had made a career for himself in Illinois, culminating in his debates with Douglas, debates to which the whole country paused to listen; and he was ready to be President by the time he became President. He called Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase, the accepted leaders of his party, into his cabinet; but he himself determined the course and policy of his administration. - Woodrow Wilson.