Cass, Douglas, Lincoln--all were adopted sons of the Northwest,
and the career of every one illustrates not only the prodigality
with which the back country showered its opportunities upon men
of industry and talent, but the play and interplay of sectional
and social forces in the building of the newer nation. Cass and
Douglas were New Englanders. One was born at Exeter, New
Hampshire, in 1782; the other at Brandon, Vermont, in 1813.
Lincoln sprang from Virginian and Kentuckian stocks. His father's
family moved from Virginia to Kentucky at the close of the
Revolution; in 1784 his grandfather was killed by lurking
Indians, and his father, then a boy of six, was saved from
captivity only by a lucky shot of an older brother. Lincoln
himself was born in 1809. Curiously enough, Cass and Douglas, the
New Englanders, played their roles on the national stage as
Jackson Democrats, while Lincoln, the Kentuckian of Virginian
ancestry, became a Whig and later a Republican.
Cass and Douglas were well-born. Cass's father was a thrifty
soldier-farmer who made for his family a comfortable home at
Zanesville, Ohio; Douglas's father was a successful physician.
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