PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 
 HELEN NICOLAY 
 
 ' ^%K.^s <^Pi^*l 
 
 *»*%>5^ii5i^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CEx\TURY CO. 
 
 1913 
 
S0U'^HI^AST■P^^^7 BRAMGH 
 
 Copyright, 1912, by 
 The Centuey Co. 
 
 Puhlished, October, 1912 
 
 
 t-^S? 
 
 
 UKceu:.-K;, 
 
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTl 
 TRANSFERRED FROM PUBUC PBRARY 
 
 644712 '' 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 WHEN my father began collecting 
 material to be used in his joint 
 work with John Hay, " Abraham Lincoln : 
 A History," he put certain things into an 
 envelope marked " Personal Traits," mean- 
 ing to make a chapter with that heading. 
 As the work grew the items gathered 
 under that head overflowed from one 
 envelope into many ; and at the same time 
 it became manifest that a chapter with 
 such a title would be out of place. Inci- 
 dents illustrating Mr., Lincoln's personal 
 traits found their rightful place elsewhere ; 
 and the authors argued that if the work 
 as a whole did not reflect his character, it 
 was labor lost. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The envelopes, bursting with their load, 
 were put aside. My father meant at some 
 future time, to make of the material thus 
 collected, a smaller and more intimate vol- 
 ume. More pressing literary tasks, and 
 failing health, interfered. 
 
 Unfortunately, first-hand knowledge, 
 that could take those miscellaneous notes, 
 personal jottings, private letters, and 
 newspaper clippings, unrelated as the col- 
 ors on a painter's palette, and blend them 
 into an absolutely satisfactory portrait, 
 is not a kind of knowledge to be in- 
 herited — even by a daughter who grew 
 up in an atmosphere of devotion to Lin- 
 coln, and who, even in childhood was ac- 
 corded the privilege of helping, in so far 
 as she was able, with the details of the 
 " History." 
 
 That experience, however, seems to put 
 upon her a certain obligation to use these 
 
PREFACE 
 
 notes, while it does not lessen her sense of 
 the perils of the task. It is a case, indeed, 
 where duty and something very like pre- 
 sumption go hand in hand. 
 
 She wishes to make acknowledgment to 
 Mr. Robert Lincoln for his personal kind- 
 ness in help and advice; and also to the 
 authors whose painstaking research has 
 brought to light new letters and material 
 since " Abraham Lincoln : A History," was 
 published. 
 
 Washington^ D, C, 
 Ma2/ SI, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Man and His Nature ... 3 
 
 II Lincoln's Anecdotes and Similes . 12 
 
 III His Developing Power 36 
 
 IV The Start in Life 63 
 
 V The Eighth Judicial Circuit . , 79 
 
 VI Lincoln's Attitude Toward Money 97 
 
 VII A New Candidate 117 
 
 VIII The Campaign Summer .... 134 
 
 IX The Journey to Washington . . 151 
 
 X EvERY-DAY Life at the White House 173 
 XI President Lincoln, His Wife and 
 
 Children 198 
 
 XII Those in Authority 234? 
 
 XIII Daily Receptions of the Plain 
 
 People 257 
 
 XIV The Memorandum of August 
 
 Twenty-Third 289 
 
 XV His Forgiving Spirit 315 
 
 XVI His Reason and His Heart . . . 337 
 
 XVII Lincoln the Writer 359 
 
 XVIII His Moral Fiber 377 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Party accompanying Lincoln on the Journey 
 from Springfield to Washington .... 154 
 
 Handbill used on Lincoln's Journey to Wash- 
 ington 168 
 
 Autograph Text of Address to Foreign En- 
 voys 176 
 
 President's Note about a Post-oflBce Appoint- 
 ment, with Montgomery Blair's Endorsement 186 
 
 Two Characteristic Endorsements, and a Call 
 to a Special Cabinet Meeting .... 190 
 
 A Presidential Tea Party 206 
 
 Autograph Text of Lincoln's Rebuke to His 
 Cabinet 240 
 
 Memorandum across back of which Lincoln 
 asked his Cabinet to write their names, but 
 whose Contents he did not show them until 
 after his reelection 312 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 THE MAN, AND HIS NATURE 
 
 TO make claim of superhuman good- 
 ness or wisdom or ability for 
 Abraham Lincoln is to belittle him — to 
 detract from the dignity of his life and 
 the inspiration of his example. The rea- 
 son his name is on every lip, and that the 
 sound of it warms every heart, is that he 
 was so human, yet lived on a higher plane 
 than his fellows. That he freed an en- 
 slaved race and brought a long and bitter 
 war to an end, is impressive, but not vital 
 to his greatness. The fact that counts, is 
 that he passed through every stage of his 
 
 2 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 marvelous career, from laboring man to 
 ruler with more than imperial power, se- 
 renely constant to one inflexible standard 
 of right — never arrogant and never 
 abashed, just in act, and in sympathy a 
 brother to mankind. 
 
 Some men, bom with the gift of 
 wit, lack judgment, or persistent energy. 
 Others, dowered with unusual sagacity, are 
 hampered by a cold earnestness which re- 
 pels confidence. Still others, afflicted with 
 blind unreasoning energy, blunder per- 
 petually into destructive acts of courage 
 and daring. Lincoln had these qualities in 
 happy combination: wit to attract and 
 hold men, logical sense and clear vision to 
 plan methodical action ; and, best of all, 
 that high courage which, when the golden 
 moment came, inspired him to bold and 
 fearless action, regardless of what others 
 thought and careless of consequences to 
 himself. 
 
 4 
 
THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 
 
 To study his character it is not neces- 
 sary to dig at the tap-root of his family 
 tree. It is unimportant whether his ulti- 
 mate ancestor was a baron who lived by 
 robbery, or a serf yielding his oppressor 
 unwilling tribute of sweat and blood. To 
 invent him a proper blazon we need only 
 cross the ax of the pioneer with the mace, 
 the symbol of delegated authority. In 
 blood and brain, ambition and achievement, 
 he was one with the men who in a single 
 century carried American civilization from 
 the slopes of the Alleghanies to the beaches 
 of our Pacific coast. His grandfather 
 was killed by savages. He himself bore 
 arms in the last Indian war of northern 
 Illinois. 
 
 Born in a Kentucky log cabin, reared in 
 an Indiana frontier settlement, beginning 
 life on his own account in an Illinois vil- 
 lage scarcely less primitive, he moved with 
 the tide of onward progress, not as a piece 
 of driftwood helplessly tossed by capri- 
 
 5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cious waves, but as the pilot of his self- 
 built craft, swayed indeed, now and then, 
 by adverse currents, but planning his own 
 course, and making port with the precision 
 born of rudder and compass. 
 
 In the inscrutable ways of Providence it 
 came about that when this man was fifty 
 years old his self-made craft became sud- 
 denly the ship of State, and his hand on the 
 helm the deciding factor in the lives of 
 thirty-one millions of his fellow-country- 
 men. 
 
 It is not enough to say that only in 
 America could such things be. Abraham 
 Lincoln is not explained so easily. He 
 was not alone the product of a new land, 
 but of the ages. Physically a wonderful 
 organ, mentally a wonderful instrument, 
 he was played upon by all the wonderful 
 influences of our new continent — by the 
 God-given freshness of the prairies, and 
 the mystery of primeval forests shadow- 
 ing secrets of an aboriginal race — also 
 
 6 
 
THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 
 
 by Spartan fortitude, Roman law, and 
 Christian charity, gathered in remote days 
 by European forebears, and brought across 
 the sea to flower in him under the clear 
 light of a sun as yet undimmed by the 
 miasma of civilization. And with all this 
 background it took more than average 
 human experiences to make him what he 
 became. 
 
 Intellectually his life divides itself into 
 three periods. The first, of about forty 
 years, beginning in the backwoods cabin, 
 ended with the close of his term in Con- 
 gress. The second, of about ten years, 
 concluded with his nomination to the Presi- 
 dency. The third, of about five years, 
 terminated at his death. Had he been 
 called upon to exercise the duties of Presi- 
 dent at the end of the first period, he would 
 not have disgraced the office, but the school- 
 ing which followed was necessary, even 
 with his unusual gifts, to the fulfilment of 
 his destiny, and the lasting good of the 
 
 7 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 American people. " First the blade, then 
 the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
 His life was an orderly development, each 
 achievement preparing the way for the one 
 to come. 
 
 In the first period he grew, as hundreds 
 of his contemporaries grew, from nothing 
 in wisdom and worldly possessions, to an 
 honorable place in the material and mental 
 life of his time. It y^as the season of his 
 personal growth. In the second he put a 
 moral question before the people in terms 
 so ringing that they had to listen. With- 
 out conscious will on his part, but as 
 inevitably as the magnet draws to itself a 
 following, he became in those years a leader 
 of men, merged his individuality in that of 
 a cause, and became the champion of a 
 great idea. In the third period, when 
 events crowded so thickly that the half- 
 century he had already lived seemed but a 
 short time compared to the days and weeks 
 of his Presidency, he was called upon to 
 
 8 
 
THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 
 
 put his championship to the test — to lead 
 his followers through doubt and tribula- 
 tion, and finally to lay down his life for the 
 faith that was in him. 
 
 History dwells on the fact that this man, 
 who began so humbly and traveled so far, 
 had only one scant year of schooling; and 
 it treasures, rightly enough, a few leaves 
 from his copy-book, and one or two doggerel 
 verses as precious relics. Of the teachers 
 who walked with him all the days of his 
 youth, it says little. Yet poverty taught 
 him the value of industry, of skill, of repu- 
 tation. Labor taught him, better than 
 books could do, his individual right to the 
 fruits of his individual toil. Another great 
 teacher was solitude, in whose still places 
 he learned to think — to measure his pow- 
 ers, and take counsel of his own mind and 
 heart. 
 
 But even taking into account all these, 
 we know practically nothing of how he edu- 
 cated himself, or why. The force which 
 
 9 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 moves the grain of wheat to activity re- 
 mains ever a mystery. We only know that 
 a miracle was wrought, and that by the 
 time this pioneer boy reached manhood the 
 cast of mind as well as of body, the tricks 
 of speech, and the spaciousness of soul, 
 had developed, that remained with him to 
 the end. 
 
 A man of many moods but great single- 
 ness of aim, he was complex, yet of a 
 strange simplicity. So natural in manner, 
 so free from arrogance and assumption of 
 power, that some could not see how grandly 
 he towered above them. Unable to believe 
 that one so placed could have come through 
 the fires of life unscathed, they read into 
 his acts subtleties and meanings which were 
 not there; for, with the knowledge of a 
 world-wise man, he kept the heart of 
 a child. Humble-minded, he was confident 
 of his own powers. Intensely practical, he 
 was dowered with a poet's vision, and 
 a poet's capacity for pain. Keen, analyt- 
 ic 
 
THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 
 
 ical, absolutely just, he was affectionate — 
 and tender-hearted almost to the verge of 
 unreason. Fond of merriment, he was one 
 of the saddest men who ever lived. 
 
 Some, seeing only one side of his char- 
 acter, and some another, doubted and mis- 
 judged him. Though those nearest him 
 were the ones who loved him best, even they 
 hardly realized the measure of his great- 
 ness. Time had to demonstrate the con- 
 summate wisdom of his acts, truth had to 
 unearth hidden facts, and men and women 
 who casually judged him and passed on 
 had each to bring a little tribute of praise 
 or blame before the world could see how the 
 varied and apparently contradictory ele- 
 ments in Lincoln's nature — sadness and 
 gaiety, justice, logic and mercy, humility 
 and assurance — combined in one genial, 
 luminous whole; just as conflicting colors 
 of the spectrum fuse together into strong 
 white light. 
 
 11 
 
II 
 
 Lincoln's anecdotes and similes 
 
 JUST as white light, broken into com- 
 ponent parts, dazzles an untrained 
 eye with reds and yellows, to the exclusion 
 of violets and indigo, without which the 
 gaudier colors are only disturbing factors, 
 popular estimate has laid too much stress 
 on one of the least of Lincoln's qualities — 
 his story-telling power; if indeed, it was a 
 quality, and not the result of a quality — 
 an effect, not a cause. That he was a 
 royal story-teller there is no doubt, but 
 legend and popular fancy have combined to 
 distort the measure and the reason of his 
 
 gift. 
 
 Sorrow and hardship darkened the ear- 
 
 12 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 liest years of his childhood, but his was a 
 gay and happy nature by right of birth. 
 As a boy he loved a story for the pure fun 
 in it; and, since he was human, liked to 
 tell one, because in those pioneer times of 
 few amusements and almost no books, the 
 exercise of the faculty carried with it pop- 
 ularity, even more than it does to-day. 
 yEsop's "Fables," one of the few books 
 that fell into his hands, was a mine of 
 wealth to such a lad, and a formative in- 
 fluence as well. 
 
 Grown to manhood, he faced juries by 
 day, or appeared after nightfall before 
 scanty groups of settlers, gathered solemn 
 and expectant in dimly lighted log cabins 
 to hear his views on State politics or Na- 
 tional tariff or internal improvement. In 
 such conditions the power of a story to 
 rivet attention or illuminate the dismal sur- 
 roundings was not to be thrown away. 
 Later in his career he used anecdotes with 
 telling eff'ect to clinch an argument, or 
 
 13 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 good-humoredly turn away a bore. In the 
 stress of his Presidency they became abso- 
 lutely necessary to tide over the despond- 
 ency of bloody, bitter days. 
 
 That he could not have told humorous 
 tales with the frequency rumor indicates, is 
 self-evident. Had he done so there would 
 have been no time to carry on the war. He 
 himself disclaimed responsibility for more 
 than one-sixth of those attributed to him, 
 adding modestly that he was " only a retail 
 dealer," who remembered a good story 
 when he heard it. In spite of which, most 
 of the tales invented since the days of 
 Abraham the patriarch have been laid to 
 his door. 
 
 The proof of his skill in telling them 
 lies in the avidity with which people lis- 
 tened for and talked about them, either in 
 criticism or praise. For of course there 
 were good unimaginative men who could 
 not see beyond a story to the application 
 
 14 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 of it, and who failed entirely to grasp the 
 reason for its telling. To these he seemed 
 to be occupying his mind with frothy 
 nothings while the country was in extremis 
 
 — a sort of nineteenth-century Nero, with- 
 out even the dignity of Nero's music and 
 malice. 
 
 Some went so far as to remonstrate with 
 him for his levity. They could not see 
 that, tortured almost beyond endurance by 
 the responsibility and the horror of the 
 war, he was telling stories for a purpose 
 
 — reaching out instinctively for some- 
 thing to turn the current of his thoughts 
 even a moment, in order that he might get 
 a firmer grasp again, and a saner outlook 
 upon life. 
 
 " If it were not for this occasional vent 
 I should die," he told a scandalized and 
 protesting congressman. Then, seeing 
 that his visitor, who had come on a serious 
 errand, was really hurt, he lapsed with 
 
 15 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 characteristic suddenness into his patient 
 gravity, and began discussing the matter 
 in hand. 
 
 These quick transitions from grave to 
 gay were a constant source of wonder to 
 his friends. He seemed so possessed with 
 merriment while it lasted, and put it 
 aside so quickly. Laughter was to him a 
 stimulant, and an aid to work. In a lec- 
 ture, written years before, he defined it as 
 the "joyous, universal evergreen of life." 
 An old Springfield friend, hearing it ring 
 out in the White House against the lurid 
 background of war, called it, with sudden 
 deep insight, " the President's life-pre- 
 server." 
 
 This laugh of Mr. Lincoln's was one 
 secret of his power as a story-teller. His 
 own enjoyment was so genuine, his realiza- 
 tion of a situation so keen, that it exer- 
 cised a power almost hypnotic over his 
 hearers. Even the dullest saw the scene 
 as he did while he was describing it, his 
 
 16 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 expressive face showing every emotion in 
 turn. Then when the cHinax was reached 
 he would lead the laughter with a hearti- 
 ness that seemed to convulse his whole 
 body. Yet a moment later the merriment 
 died out of his eyes, lines of care descended 
 again like a gray veil over his face, and 
 sad and weary, he took up his burden. 
 
 Such moments of relaxation were liter- 
 ally snatched from toil. No man worked 
 harder or had longer hours than he. It 
 was the constant endeavor of his secretaries 
 to compress his working day within reason- 
 able limits — and his constant practice, in 
 the kindness of his great heart, to break 
 through rules he admitted ought to be 
 kept, and to see people morning, noon, and 
 night. Importunate visitors sometimes 
 forced their way into his very bedroom, 
 and neither midnight nor early dawn was 
 free from prearranged interviews. Thus 
 care was always with him; he was never 
 allowed to forget, even had his been a 
 2 17 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 nature to forget, that there was a great 
 war raging in the land, and that he, more 
 than anv one else, was held accountable for 
 its course and final outcome. 
 
 Those who heard him tell his stories are 
 fast passing away. Which of the many 
 attributed to him are of the one-sixth he 
 really told, and which of the five-sixths he 
 did not tell, is in some cases already im- 
 possible to determine. Some are vouched 
 for by unimpeachable authority ; some bear 
 internal evidence of untruth. Careful 
 search has brought to light less than a 
 hundred that seem likely to be genuine. 
 Even if he told all these and as many more, 
 the number would be a small one, to ac- 
 count for such a reputation. 
 
 Concerning the quality of his stories, 
 certain facts stand out. They were al- 
 ways short. Lincoln's worst enemy never 
 accused him of telling a long story. And 
 they never lacked point. A third charac- 
 teristic is that he always took his illustra- 
 
 18 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 tions from a life with which he was fa- 
 mihar. As he expressed it, he " did not 
 care to quarry among the ancients for his 
 figures." The hfe in which he grew up, 
 the hfe of pioneer times, and of the small 
 village communities which immediately fol- 
 lowed it in the Middle West, was poor in 
 culture and refinements of living, but 
 strong in racy human nature. Hence 
 overfastidious people, who liked " quarry- 
 ing among the ancients," found his stories 
 coarse. Homely, would be a truer term, 
 for they were never coarse in spirit, even 
 when most sordid in detail. Ethically 
 they always pointed a clean moral. They 
 were of the soil — strongly of the soil — 
 but never of the charnel-house. 
 
 His story of the skunks, for example. Is 
 the tale of a man who hid behind his wood- 
 pile and saw six of these malodorous ani- 
 mals walking in procession to deplete his 
 hen-house. Firing, he killed one, and 
 when upbraided later for not exterminat- 
 
 19 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ing them all, replied with feeling that he 
 had been six weeks getting over the effects 
 of shooting that one, and " reckoned he 'd 
 let the others go." 
 
 Then there is the story of the louse on 
 the man's eyebrow, supposed to have been 
 told by Mr. Lincoln to silence a trouble- 
 some member of the Illinois legislature who 
 questioned the constitutionality of every 
 motion made. " Mr. Speaker," said Lin- 
 coln, with a quizzical smile, and a twinkle 
 in his deep-set eyes, " Mr. Speaker, the ob- 
 jection of the Member from So-and-So re- 
 minds me of an old friend of mine," and 
 to the merriment of his colleagues he went 
 on to describe a grizzled frontiersman with 
 shaggy overhanging brows, and spec- 
 tacles, very like the objecting legislator. 
 One morning, on looking out of his cabin 
 door the old gentleman thought he saw a 
 squirrel frisking on a tree near the house. 
 He took down his gun and fired at it, but 
 the squirrel paid no attention. Again and 
 
 20 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 again he fired, getting more mystified and 
 more mortified at eacli failure. After a 
 round dozen sliots he threw down the gun, 
 muttering tliat there was " something 
 wrong with the rifle." 
 
 " Rifle 's all right," declared his son who 
 had been watching him. " Rifle 's all 
 right, but where 's your squirrel ? " 
 
 " Don't you see him ? " thundered the 
 old man, pointing out the exact spot. 
 
 " No, I don't," was the candid answer. 
 Then, turning and staring into his father's 
 face, the boy broke into a jubilant shout. 
 " Now I see your squirrel ! You 've been 
 firing at a louse on your eyebrow." 
 
 Certainly the moral of this could not be 
 improved upon, however coldly one may re- 
 gard the subject. And these two are the 
 most violent examples of their class. 
 
 Then there were the stories in which sub- 
 jects considered either too sacred or too 
 profane were introduced. One described a 
 rough frontier cabin, with children running 
 
 21 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 wild, and a hard-worked wife and mother, 
 slatternly and unkempt, not overhappy 
 perhaps, but with a woman's loyal instinct 
 to make the best of things before a stran- 
 ger. Into this setting strode an itinerant 
 Methodist, unctious and insistent, selling 
 Bibles as well as preaching salvation. She 
 received him with frontier hospitality, but 
 grew restive under questioning she deemed 
 intrusive, and finally answered rather 
 sharply that of course they owned a Bible. 
 He challenged her to produce it. A search 
 revealed nothing. The children were 
 called to her aid, and at last one of them 
 unearthed and held up for inspection a 
 few tattered leaves. Protest and re- 
 proaches on the part of the visitor, but on 
 her own stanch sticking to her colors. 
 " She had no idea," she declared, " that 
 they were so nearly out." 
 
 Another told of a traveler lost during 
 a terrific thunder-storm, blundering and 
 floundering along in thick darkness, except 
 
 22 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 when vivid lightning flashes showed him 
 trees falHng around him, and the heavens 
 apparently rent asunder. At last a flash 
 and a crash more terrible than all the rest 
 brought him to his knees. He was not a 
 praying man. His petition was short and 
 to the point. " O Lord," he gasped, " if 
 it 's all the same to you, please give us a 
 little more light and a little less noise ! " 
 
 A third was about building a bridge 
 across a very dangerous and rapid river. 
 Several engineers had tried and failed, 
 when a devout church member told the 
 committee in charge that he had a friend 
 who could do it. The friend was sum- 
 moned. " Can you build this bridge ? " 
 they asked him. " Certainly," was the an- 
 swer. " I could build a bridge to the in- 
 fernal regions." The committee was not 
 only skeptical but shocked. After the en- 
 gineer had retired his friend said, " I know 
 
 so well, he is so honest and so good 
 
 a builder, that if he says he can build a 
 
 23 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 bridge to Hades, I suppose he can ; but, I 
 must say," he added thoughtfully, " I have 
 my doubts about the abutments on the in- 
 fernal side." 
 
 The twentieth century will regard such 
 matters more leniently than the nineteenth ; 
 certainly it is hard to see, in the light of 
 present-day liberty, how these can be 
 classed as license. 
 
 Many of the stories attributed to Lin- 
 coln — very likely with reason, since every- 
 body tells them — are of the class which, 
 through sheer excellence and much repeti- 
 tion, has ceased to be personal or even 
 national property, and become part of 
 the folk-lore of the world. " Swapping 
 horses while crossing a stream," is an ex- 
 ample. He gave even these his own indi- 
 vidual touch. His story of " trying the 
 greens on Zerah," with its subtle accusa- 
 tion of human nature, was his much more 
 artistic version of the usual " try it on the 
 dog." As he told it, the scene of the story 
 
 24 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 was the neighborhood where he grew up. 
 In tlie early spring, after a monotonous 
 winter diet, the farmers there were very 
 fond of the dish called " greens " — boiled 
 dandelion tops, or other harmless wild 
 leaves. On one occasion a large and 
 greedy family sat down to a very moder- 
 ate-sized dish of greens, and Zerah, the 
 half-witted boy, whimpered at the unfair 
 distribution of the dainty. Shortly after- 
 ward the whole household, including him- 
 self, became desperately sick, something 
 poisonous having been gathered by mis- 
 take. All recovered, but the lesson was 
 not lost. After that Zerah was invariably 
 served first, with his full share, the 
 others saying eagerly, " Try it on Zerah ; 
 if he stands it, it won't hurt the rest of 
 us." 
 
 This is almost the only one of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's stories that shows a trace of irony. 
 His heart was too sunny, his belief in hu- 
 man nature too strong, to permit accusing 
 
 25 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his fellow men, even in jest, of cruelty or 
 meanness. 
 
 Another point is interesting. His 
 stories never varied. He always told them 
 the same way. Once established, the form 
 remained unchanged to the last word and 
 expression. Mr. A. J. Conant, who oc- 
 cupied a government office in Washington 
 during the rebellion, has given us a hint 
 of the way in which Mr. Lincoln made a 
 story his own. He told the President a 
 tale which the latter enjoyed and some- 
 times repeated, giving him due credit. 
 This, by the way, is not the invariable cus- 
 tom of story-tellers. The story was about 
 a man who hoped to become county judge, 
 and hired a horse and buggy from his 
 neighbor, a liveryman, in order to drive to 
 the nominating convention held in a town 
 some sixteen miles away. He asked the 
 livery-stable keeper to give him the best 
 and fastest horse he had, explaining that 
 he was anxious to get there early and do a 
 
 26 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 little log-rolling before the meeting opened. 
 His neighbor, being of opposing politics, 
 had other views, and furnished him with a 
 beast which, though starting out very well, 
 broke down utterly. Long before he 
 reached his destination the convention had 
 adjourned, and of course he lost the nomi- 
 nation. Even with its head turned toward 
 home the poor horse could not hurry. It 
 was late the following afternoon before 
 they pulled up in front of the stable. The 
 candidate's anger had had time to cool, 
 and feeling the uselessness of recrimina- 
 tion, he handed the reins over to his 
 neighbor, only remarking : " Jones, I 
 see you are training this horse for the 
 New York market. I know you expect to 
 sell him for a good price to an undertaker 
 for a hearse-horse." In vain the owner 
 protested. "Don't deny it," said the 
 would-be judge. " I know it is true. I 
 know by his gait how much time you have 
 spent training him to go before a hearse. 
 
 27 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 But it is all labor lost, my friend. He will 
 never do. He is altogether too slow. He 
 could n't get a corpse to the cemetery in 
 time for the resurrection ! " 
 
 The words in italics show Mr. Lincoln's 
 interpolations. Few as they are, they dis- 
 close his quick grasp of the motives of 
 both men, and, rendering the story plausi- 
 ble, make it twice as amusing. 
 
 But Lincoln's stories might have been 
 short and good and dramatically told, and 
 forgotten in a day. Their kindhness 
 would not have saved them, or their homely 
 realism. Their crowning excellence lay in 
 being always apt — told not for themselves 
 alone, but in illustration of some point he 
 saw and wished to make clear to others. 
 In that sense they were not stories at all, 
 but parables. Their teller would have 
 been the first to disclaim any intention of 
 preaching. He told them as simply as he 
 did everything else in life; but mentally 
 and spiritually he was of the line of the 
 
 28 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 old Hebrew poets, who had a message to 
 deliver, and spoke it with conviction, in 
 vivid figures of the life they knew. And 
 just because his stories were so apt and so 
 wonderfully told, retelling them in print 
 after half a century is like wrenching jew- 
 els from their setting, or sea growths from 
 ocean gardens, or anything supremely fit 
 and right in its own place, and displaying 
 it mutilated in utterly alien surroundings. 
 So short were these stories, and so 
 charged with meaning, that anecdote melts 
 insensibly into simile. Sometimes it is hard 
 to fix the boundary line between them. In 
 a letter declining an invitation to a Jeffer- 
 son birthday celebration in 1859, he wrote : 
 " I remember being once much amused at 
 seeing two partially intoxicated men en- 
 gaged in a fight with their great-coats on, 
 which fight, after a long and rather harm- 
 less contest, ended in each having fought 
 himself out of his own coat and into that 
 of the other. If the two leading parties 
 
 29 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of this day are really identical with the 
 two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, 
 they have performed the same feat." Is 
 this a story, or a simile? 
 
 Lincoln's early letter to his friend 
 Joshua F. Speed, describing his predica- 
 ment when he wanted to run for Congress 
 and instead found himself sent to the nomi- 
 nating convention against his will, in- 
 structed to vote for his friend Baker, as 
 leaving him "fixed a good deal like a fel- 
 low who is made a groomsman to a man that 
 has cut him out and is marrying his own 
 dear ' gal,' " summed up a drama and a 
 political situation in one sentence ; though 
 not quite so vividly as did his retort to 
 the friend who begged him to interfere in 
 the campaign of 1864 when Republicans 
 were quarreling among themselves, and 
 seemed thereby in danger of losing the elec- 
 tion. " I learned a great many years 
 ago," was his answer, " that in a fight be- 
 
 30 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 tween husband and wife, a third party 
 sliould never get between the woman's skil- 
 let and the man's ax-helve." 
 
 His mind seemed to translate every sit- 
 uation into dramatic form, and he became 
 wonderfully adept in setting forth the pic- 
 ture he saw in a few swift words. Pages 
 of quotation from his letters and daily 
 conversation could be made, showing this 
 trait. Whether it developed out of his 
 story-telling faculty, or side by side with 
 it, is a question more interesting than im- 
 portant. His answer to the New Salem 
 election clerk that he " could make a few 
 rabbit tracks " when that worthy inquired 
 if he knew how to write, indicates that it 
 was of sufficiently early origin ; and in the 
 very last public address he made, speaking 
 of establishing loyal governments in the 
 southern States, he used the figure of the 
 fowl and the egg. " Concede that the new 
 government of Louisiana is only to what it 
 
 31 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 should be, as the egg is to the fowl," he 
 said; "we shall sooner have the fowl by 
 hatching the egg than by smashing it." 
 
 " A man watches his pear tree day after 
 day, impatient for the ripening of the 
 fruit. Let him attempt to force the proc- 
 ess, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. 
 But let him patiently wait, and the ripe 
 pear at length falls into his lap," was his 
 illustration of the folly of trying to has- 
 ten public opinion. He was speaking of 
 the Emancipation Proclamation, as he was 
 also when he gave that disconcerting an- 
 swer to the committee of Chicago clergy- 
 men : " I do not want to issue a document 
 that the whole world will see must neces- 
 sarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull 
 against the comet ! " 
 
 " I asked him what was his policy," 
 said the Prince de Joinville, telling of an 
 interview he once had with President Lin- 
 coln. " I have none," he replied. " I 
 pass my life in preventing the storm from 
 
 32 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 blowing down the tent, and I drive in the 
 pegs as fast as they are pulled up." 
 When emancipation became a " peg," he 
 drove it home with great effect. 
 
 " Two dogs that get less eager to fight, 
 the nearer they come together," and, 
 " fitting the round man into the square 
 hole," are similes recorded in the diary of 
 Secretary Welles. Lincoln's half-humor- 
 ous likening of himself at the beginning of 
 his first term, when civil offices had to be 
 filled and appointments made, regardless of 
 whether war broke out or not, to " a man so 
 busy renting rooms in one end of his house 
 that he has no time to put out a fire burn- 
 ing in the other " ; his discouraged remark 
 that sending men to the Army of the Po- 
 tomac was like " shoveling fleas across a 
 barn floor — half of them never got 
 there " ; and his searching question to 
 critics who denounced his war methods as 
 too severe : " Would you prosecute it in 
 future with elder-stalk squirts charged 
 
 3 S« 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with rose-water ? " are among the most 
 graphic. 
 
 In writing to mihtary commanders he 
 was constantly using such figures. His 
 admonition to " hold on with a bull-dog 
 grip and chew and choke," has in it the 
 very spirit of dogged fight ; while his warn- 
 ing to General Hooker not to get his 
 army " entangled upon the river, like an 
 ox jumped half over a fence, and liable 
 to be torn by dogs front and rear, without 
 a fair chance to gore one way or kick the 
 other," is as comprehensive as it was sound 
 from a military point of view. 
 
 In these, as in his anecdotes, there is a 
 noticeable absence of bitterness. After 
 Chickamauga he did indeed speak of Rose- 
 crans as " confused and stunned, like a 
 duck hit on the head," but that was in the 
 privacy of the Executive office, to one of 
 his confidential secretaries. To the same 
 young man he admitted that a high official, 
 then plotting against his reelection, would 
 
 34> 
 
ANECDOTES 
 
 probably, " like the blue-bottle fly, lay eggs 
 in ever}^ rotten spot he can find," but in 
 public he never admitted that this officer 
 was at fault. 
 
 Had Lincoln been of a vindictive tem- 
 perament, or possessed of less self-control, 
 this dangerous power of using words might 
 have brought about his undoing. Had it 
 become master of his mind, instead of its 
 servant, it could have ridden him far, mak- 
 ing enemies at every turn. But his kindly 
 nature held it rigorously in check. So 
 rigorously that when, tried beyond endur- 
 ance, his pent-up feelings did break the 
 barrier and find outlet in a stinging phrase, 
 it was worse than any blow — as when, 
 looking down on the sleeping Army of the 
 Potomac, he called it, in sorrow, more than 
 in anger, " only McClellan's body-guard." 
 
 35 
 
Ill 
 
 HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 IN analyzing Lincoln's influence as 
 writer and speaker, teacher and neigh- 
 bor, it must be conceded that this gift of 
 anecdote and simile, this instinct to trans- 
 late situations into dramatic form, was a 
 tremendous help in getting his views before 
 the public in a shape to attract and hold 
 attention. Another gift, equally valuable, 
 developed later — during the ten years 
 preceding his election as President. This 
 was his art of compressing a moral truth 
 or a guiding principle into one short and 
 telling sentence. All three were merely 
 different manifestations of his dominant 
 mental quality, his strong reasoning power. 
 
 36 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 " The point — the power to hurt — of 
 all figures lies in the truthfulness of their 
 application," he once said, and his faculty 
 of picturesque presentation would have 
 availed little, had it not been for the clear 
 perception which made the figure he used 
 the mirror of the fact itself. 
 
 His mind went unerringly to the heart 
 of a thing. He saw essentials, and in the 
 light of his straightforward gaze non-es- 
 sentials shriveled and disappeared. Even 
 abstract moral questions, which to others 
 might appear nebulous and of uncertain 
 outline, had for him definite shape. They 
 could be examined from all sides. He 
 made up his mind about them only after 
 consideration, but they were never misty. 
 He might approach them through dark- 
 ness, but never through a fog. 
 
 And clear statement of what he saw was 
 from boyhood a passion with him. " I re- 
 member how, when a mere child, I used to 
 get irritated when anybody talked to me 
 
 37 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in a way I could not understand," he told 
 a friend. " I don't think I ever got angry 
 at anything else in my life. But that al- 
 ways disturbed my temper, and has, ever 
 since." He would puzzle far into the 
 night over the sayings of men who came 
 to talk with his father, lying sleepless until 
 he believed he had caught their meaning, 
 and then would repeat it over and over in 
 simple words, until he was sure he had put 
 it in language plain enough for any boy to 
 understand. 
 
 In this bit of autobiography he has told 
 the secret — as much of the secret as we 
 can ever know — of his self -education. 
 Given his keen moral perceptions, his pas- 
 sion for clear statement, his feeling for 
 the beauty of words, and his sense of 
 humor, his literary style follows as a mat- 
 ter of course. 
 
 Given his clear perception of the thing 
 he wanted to do, his direct, simple proc- 
 esses of reasoning usually showed him a 
 
 38 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 way to do it. The technique might be 
 original, but the result was effective and 
 satisfactory. Thus, when his flatboat lay 
 half submerged over a dam, with its nose 
 in mid-air, he freed it from water by the 
 simple expedient of boring a hole in its 
 bottom. And when his military knowledge 
 was not sufficient to get his company of 
 Black Hawk volunteers through a gate 
 " endwise " in terms prescribed by the 
 manual, his common sense prompted him 
 to dismiss it " for two minutes, when it will 
 fall in again on the other side of the gate." 
 Instead of running in grooves hollowed out 
 by custom, his mind had the tonic direct- 
 ness of a child's. To the day of his death 
 he kept the childlike attitude of heart; he 
 was never too old to learn. 
 
 No process seemed too tedious or too 
 difficult if the end was worth while. 
 
 In answer to a query received during the 
 campaign of 1860, he wrote: 
 
 39 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Yours of the 24th, asking " the best mode 
 of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the 
 law/' is received. The mode is very simple, 
 though laborious and tedious. It is only to 
 get the books and read and study them care- 
 fully. Begin with Blackstone's " Commen- 
 taries," and after reading it carefully 
 through, say twice, take up Chitty's " Plead- 
 ings," Greenleaf 's " Evidence," and Story's 
 " Equity," etc., in succession. Work, work, 
 work, is the main thing. 
 
 Yours very truly, A. Lincoln. 
 
 He saw no road to knowledge by way 
 of '' six easy lessons." Work, work, work, 
 and the use of the faculties with which the 
 Lord endowed him, were his means of suc- 
 cess. It was after the end of his term in 
 Congress that he applied himself with 
 dogged energy to mastering the proposi- 
 tions of Euclid, because, as he said, he 
 was not sure he knew what the word 
 " demonstrate " meant. When he thought 
 
 40 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 he had found out, he continued the prac- 
 tice of the law. 
 
 In the early part of his career politics 
 and the law went hand in hand, each help- 
 ing on the other. His growing promi- 
 nence in politics brought him increased 
 law practice, while the practice of law 
 sharpened and trained his strong reason- 
 ing powers; and both callings carried him 
 out among people where his good fellow- 
 ship and wit won him hosts of friends. 
 The same qualities which made him agree- 
 able to his friends made him effective with 
 a jury. At first indeed, it was his fair- 
 ness and his way of putting things, more 
 than deep legal knowledge, which counted 
 in the court room ; while in his political ad- 
 dresses he was merely talking to a larger 
 and more informal jury, using practically 
 the same methods, whether he spoke from 
 the body of a wagon drawn up in the shade 
 of trees, or the less unsteady footing of 
 
 41 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the court-room floor. It was the taking, 
 free-and-easy manner of the Middle West. 
 Litigation was not complicated by ab- 
 struse points of law; and in politics, cam- 
 paign arguments, enlivened by anecdotes, 
 good-natured personalities, and pungent 
 observations on questions of the day, made 
 up the popular speech. 
 
 Major Stuart, Lincoln's first law part- 
 ner, did little to foster a closer application 
 to study in his friend. He was always 
 more interested in politics than in his pro- 
 fession. After four years this partner- 
 ship came to an end, and another was 
 formed with Judge Stephen T. Logan, who 
 had lately retired from the circuit bench. 
 Judge Logan was a man of more studious 
 temperament and of keen legal mind, 
 and opened to Lincoln, both by precept 
 and example, new vistas of work and 
 achievement in the law. These, to his 
 partner's delight, and also somewhat to his 
 astonishment, Lincoln embraced with ar- 
 
 42 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 dor. " He would study out his case, and 
 make about as much of it as anybody," 
 the judge said, years afterward, with the 
 wonder of it still upon him. " His ambi- 
 tion as a lawyer increased, he grew con- 
 stantly ... he got to be quite a for- 
 midable lawyer." After four years of this 
 stimulating companionship Judge Logan 
 had a son ready to enter the office, and in 
 1845 Lincoln made way for him by open- 
 ing an office of his own, taking in a young 
 and enthusiastic junior partner, Wm. H. 
 Herndon, a business connection which re- 
 mained unbroken until Lincoln's death. 
 
 Lincoln's election to the Thirtieth Con- 
 gress once more enlarged his horizon. 
 The two winters he spent in Washington, 
 while not adding materially to his local or 
 national fame, were of immense benefit in 
 his personal development. They gave 
 him opportunity to study the complex 
 machinery of Federal government, and its 
 relation to that of the States at first hand, 
 
 43 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and, what was quite as Important, a chance 
 to measure himself with pohtlcal leaders 
 and representative men from all parts of 
 the Union. 
 
 The drudgery of congressional life; 
 work on committees, and haunting Depart- 
 ments to look after the interests of con- 
 stituents, no light task in the straggling, 
 unpaved, and un-omnltjused Washington 
 of the late '40's, did not fill him with 
 undue elation. " Being elected to Con- 
 gress, though I am very grateful to our 
 friends for having done it, has not pleased 
 me as much as I expected," he wrote his 
 friend Speed; and to his partner he con- 
 fessed that speechmaking In the House 
 gave him no greater thrill than speaking 
 elsewhere. " I was about as badly 
 scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak 
 in court." That Lincoln habitually suf- 
 fered the pangs described by an eloquent 
 preacher : " Five minutes before sermon- 
 time I would rather be shot than begin ; 
 
 44 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 five minutes before time to close, I would 
 rather be shot than stop," is unlikely. 
 That he could enjoy another's speech we 
 have abundant proof. " I just take my 
 pen to say that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, 
 a little, slim, pale-faced consumptive man, 
 with a voice like Logan's, has just con- 
 cluded the very best speech of an hour's 
 length I ever heard. My old, withered, dry 
 eyes are full of tears yet," he wrote to 
 Herndon. After this burst of enthusiasm 
 it is interesting to read what Stephens 
 wrote, years later, about the impression 
 made on him at that time by the tall mem- 
 ber from Illinois. 
 
 " Mr. Lincoln was careful as to his man- 
 ners, awkward in his speech, but was pos- 
 sessed of a very strong, clear, vigorous 
 mind. He always attracted and riveted 
 the attention of the House when he spoke. 
 He had no model. He was a man of 
 strong convictions, and what Carlyle would 
 have called an earnest man. He abounded 
 
 45 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in anecdote, and socially he always kept 
 his company in a roar of laughter." 
 
 Socially, either as member of the 
 " mess " at Mrs. Spriggs's boarding-house 
 near the Capitol where he lived, or as 
 guest at Webster's breakfast parties, Lin- 
 coln could hold his own ; and in debate, as 
 we have seen, he impressed a man of 
 Alexander H. Stephens's brilliant intellect 
 as " strong, clear and vigorous." But it 
 is significant that after this experience and 
 contact with the larger minds of the day, 
 he set himself like a schoolboy to study 
 works of mathematics and logic. Evi- 
 dently, he felt in himself a lack of the 
 power of close and sustained reasoning. 
 
 He returned to Springfield at the end of 
 his term in Congress, and for four years 
 worked hard at the law; the attention he 
 bestowed upon it being repaid by increas- 
 ing practice, and an ever-growing sense 
 of the interest and even the responsibility 
 of his calling. His character took on a 
 
 46 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 graver dignity during these years, while 
 losing nothing in geniality and charm. 
 He was still the center of every group he 
 joined, and still left behind him a ripple 
 of smiles and laughter ; but his friends no- 
 ticed that he was less often in their com^ 
 pany, and more and more likely to be 
 found in the quiet of his own office. The 
 very short autobiography written by him 
 in 1860 to aid in preparing the campaign 
 "life," states that "in 1854 his profes- 
 sion had almost superseded the thought of 
 politics in his mind when the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise roused him as he had 
 never been before." 
 
 This was the law passed in 1820 by 
 which Missouri was allowed to enter the 
 Union as a slave State, on condition that 
 thereafter slavery was to be prohibited in 
 all remaining United States territory lying 
 north of latitude of 36° 30', the southern 
 boundar3^-lIne of Missouri. 
 
 As a moral question and cause of politi- 
 47 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cal disturbance, slavery was as old as the 
 nation. The germ of the Union armies 
 came across seas in the cabin of the May- 
 fiower, and that of Secession lay in the 
 hold of the Dutch slaver which sailed up 
 ihe James River in 1619. Slave codes 
 and abolition societies were in existence be- 
 fore our Constitution. The signers of 
 that instrument grappled hopelessly with 
 the anomaly of involuntary servitude in a 
 country dedicated to freedom; and every 
 generation of statesmen since had labored 
 in vain to quell the growing agitation. 
 Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin 
 in 1793 early comphcated the question of 
 morals with that of money. From being 
 a source of perplexity and some shame to 
 the founders of our government it had be- 
 come by 1820 a burning sectional issue, 
 threatening disruption. The Missouri 
 Compromise postponed the final struggle 
 forty years, but did not quiet discussion. 
 Most of the territory still available for 
 
 48 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 making new States lay north of 36° 30', 
 and the South did not propose to lose a 
 political ascendancy it had long enjoyed. 
 Its influence brought about the annexation 
 of Texas with the resulting Mexican War, 
 as a means of gaining new territory south 
 of 36° 30'. This acquisition, however, 
 only added fuel to the flame. Compro- 
 mises in the Constitution, compromise in 
 1820, and sundry other compromises 
 agreed upon in 1850 in the deluded hope 
 that they would be " final," were of no 
 avail. A plague-spot in the body politic, 
 it grew steadily, and increased in virulence 
 despite all palliative measures, until only 
 the surgery of war, and Lincoln's heroic 
 measure of emancipation could rid us of 
 the disease. 
 
 Lincoln had grown to manhood during 
 this time of increasing agitation, on the 
 border land between the two systems. He 
 had been born in a slave State, and lived, 
 both in Indiana and Illinois, in communi- 
 4 49 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ties dominated largely by Kentucky tra- 
 ditions. But these early influences did not 
 serve to shake his inborn aversion to 
 slavery. It was one of the moral ques- 
 tions he had never seen through a fog. 
 At the age of nineteen, on his first slow 
 flatboat voyage down to the " sugar 
 coast " of the Mississippi River, he had 
 abundant time to observe the unlovely de- 
 tails of its practical working, and to de- 
 cide that it was bad. The sight of human 
 beings chained together " like so many fish 
 upon a trot-line," and driven and beaten 
 for no fault of their own, made a Whig of 
 him, when, an ambitious boy in need of 
 friends, he lived in a town where Whig 
 doctrines were much in disfavor. As a 
 member of the Illinois legislature he had 
 prepared a " protest " which only one man 
 had the courage to sign with him; and 
 during his single term in Congress he voted 
 over forty times, in one form or another, 
 for the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to 
 
 50 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 keep slavery out of the territory acquired 
 as a result of the war with Mexico. He had 
 also, while in Congress, introduced a bill 
 for gradual compensated emancipation of 
 the slaves in the District of Columbia. 
 He may have thought that all his interests 
 now centered in the law; but consciously 
 or unconsciously, the subject of slavery 
 was always near his heart. 
 
 He believed that though slavery was 
 evil, the Federal government had no power 
 to abolish it in States where it already ex- 
 isted ; but that it did have ample authority 
 to exclude it from all United States ter- 
 ritories. The Missouri Compromise, while 
 not ideal, at least served to confine it 
 within fixed geographical bounds. 
 
 The accidents of a senate debate and 
 the ambition of Lincoln's fellow-townsman 
 suddenly precipitated the repeal of this 
 measure upon the country in the innocent 
 guise of " a bill to organize the Territory 
 of Nebraska." Senator Douglas, to fur- 
 
 51 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ther his own Presidential aims, adopted 
 and advocated it, utterly ignoring his 
 previous declaration that the Missouri 
 Compromise was " canonized in the hearts 
 of the American people as a sacred thing 
 which no ruthless hand would ever be reck- 
 less enough to disturb," and not only Lin- 
 coln, but the whole country was " roused " 
 — the South in advocacy of it, the North 
 in opposition ; for its effect was to open up 
 once again the entire question of slavery 
 extension. 
 
 From January to May the battle raged 
 in Congress ; and after that, from the day 
 the bill finally passed until the fall elec- 
 tions were held, acrimonious discussion 
 swept the land like a whirlwind. 
 
 For Lincoln the question had a personal 
 as well as a moral interest. Senator 
 Douglas, its chief advocate, without whose 
 support the measure could never have be- 
 come a law, was an old acquaintance ; had 
 indeed been his political adversary for 
 
 52 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 nearly twenty years. Some said that he 
 had been his rival in love as well. 
 
 Lincoln took no public part in the dis- 
 cussion until September. Meantime he 
 was studying the question in all its bear- 
 ings, historical, legal and political. Op- 
 position newspapers accused him of 
 *' mousing about the libraries in the State 
 House" — and the charge was perfectly 
 true. 
 
 When he did speak it was in a new tone 
 of authority. His statements were backed 
 by facts, and could be proved by legislative 
 documents. There was no lack of force 
 in his presentation, but it was done with 
 unwonted seriousness. He used fewer 
 anecdotes, and cited more history; and 
 there was a noticeable absence of the wordy 
 fury and explosive epithets characteristic 
 of the day. " His speeches at once at- 
 tracted a more marked attention than 
 they had ever before done," the autobiog- 
 raphy continues. " As the canvass pro- 
 
 53 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ceeded he was drawn to different parts of 
 the State. . . . He did not abandon the 
 law, but gave his attention by turns to 
 that and poHtics. The State agricultural 
 fair was at Springfield that year, and 
 Douglas was announced to speak there." 
 
 The agitation had already brought the 
 Whig and Democratic parties in Illinois 
 to the verge of disruption. Douglas had 
 been almost mobbed when he appeared in 
 Chicago. By common consent political 
 leaders hurried to Springfield from all 
 parts of the State, and a sort of tourna- 
 ment of speech-making took place, lasting 
 nearly a week. Douglas made a speech on 
 the first day. Next afternoon Lincoln an- 
 swered him, speaking for more than three 
 hours. Neither speech was reported in 
 full, but the newspapers gave much space 
 to the meetings. One account of Lincoln's 
 speech gives such a graphic picture of the 
 scene, that quotation, even of its very bad 
 English, may be forgiven. 
 
 54 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 This anti-Nebraska speech of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's was the profoiindest, in our opinion, 
 that he has made in his whole life. He felt 
 upon his soul the truths burn which he ut- 
 tered, and all present felt that he was true 
 to his own soul. His feelings once or twice 
 swelled within and came near stifling utter- 
 ance, and particularly so when he said that 
 the Declaration of Independence taught us 
 that " all men are created equal " — that by 
 the laws of Nature and Nature's God all men 
 were free — that the Nebraska Law chained 
 men, and that there was as much difference 
 between the glorious truths of the immortal 
 Declaration of Independence and the Ne- 
 braska Bill as there was between God and 
 Mammon. These are his own words. They 
 were spoken with emphasis, feeling, and true 
 eloquence. ... We only wish others all over 
 the State had seen him while uttering these 
 truths only as Lincoln can utter a felt and 
 deeply felt truth. He quivered with feeling 
 and emotion. The whole house was as still 
 as death. He attacked the Nebraska Bill 
 with unusual warmth and energy, and all felt 
 
 55 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that a man of strength was its enemy, and that 
 he intended to blast it if he could by strong 
 and manly efforts. He was most successful. 
 The house approved ... by loud and con- 
 tinuous huzzas. Women waved their white 
 handkerchiefs. . . . Douglas felt the sting. 
 He frequently interrupted Mr. Lincoln. . . . 
 Mr. Lincoln exhibited Douglas in all the at- 
 titudes he could be placed in a friendly de- 
 bate. He exhibited the Bill in all its aspects, 
 to show its humbuggery and falsehoods, and 
 when thus . . . held up to the gaze of the 
 vast crowd, a kind of scorn and mockery was 
 visible upon the face of the crowd, and upon 
 the lips of the most eloquent speaker. . , . 
 At the conclusion of this speech every man 
 and child felt that it was unanswerable. 
 
 Two weeks later the same champions met 
 again, and discussed the same questions at 
 Peoria, Illinois. It is said that at the end 
 of this debate Senator Douglas sought a 
 friendly interview with Lincoln for the 
 purpose of obtaining from him an agree- 
 
 56 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 ment that neither would speak again in 
 pubHc before the election. Douglas had 
 good cause to be alarmed at the unexpected 
 power developed by his antagonist; all the 
 strength Mr. Lincoln displayed in the next 
 six years — the eloquence of his " lost " 
 speech at Bloomington in 1856, the argu- 
 ments used in his joint debates with Doug- 
 las in 1858, and the convincing logic of 
 his Cooper Institute speech in I860 — 
 was foreshadowed in these two discourses. 
 With the advent of this new and deeper 
 interest in national affairs, and the substi- 
 tution of a vital moral principle for the 
 party issues and local questions discussed 
 in his former campaigns, can be dated the 
 change in Lincoln's manner of speaking. 
 The best examples of his first style were 
 remarkable; witty, trenchant, and ef- 
 fective; full of droll illustrations, and not 
 lacking in close reasoning. They were 
 rattling good stump speeches of the kind 
 to win tribute of applause from the other 
 
 57 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 side, however unwilling; summed up in an 
 ancient Democrat's exclamation as he beat 
 his hands together lustily : " I don't be- 
 lieve a darned thing he says, but I can't 
 help clapping him — he 's so pat! " 
 
 This now gave way to increased earnest- 
 ness, and to a sober presentation of his sub- 
 ject, clear in statement, and exact in 
 defining the questions at issue: 
 
 " I do not propose to question the pa- 
 triotism or to assail the motives of any 
 man or class of men, but rather to con- 
 fine myself strictly to the naked merits 
 of the question. I also wish to be no less 
 than national in all the positions I may 
 take, and whenever I take ground which 
 others have thought, or may think, nar- 
 row, sectional and dangerous to the Union, 
 I hope to give a reason which will appear 
 sufficient, at least to some, why I think 
 differently. And, as this subject is no 
 other than part and parcel of the larger 
 general question of domestic slavery, I wish 
 
 58 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 to make and to keep the distinction be- 
 tween the existing institution and the ex- 
 tension of it, so broad and so clear that 
 no honest man can misunderstand me, and 
 no dishonest one successfully misrepresent 
 me." 
 
 Historical fact and cold logic replaced 
 good-natured thrusts at men and events, 
 anecdotes gave way to axioms, and illus- 
 trations, sparingly used, were, when em- 
 ployed at all, forcible rather than humor- 
 ous. 
 
 " If you think you can slander a woman 
 into loving you, or a man into voting for 
 you, try it till you are satisfied." 
 
 " A highwayman holds a pistol to my 
 ear and mutters through his teeth, ' Stand 
 and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then 
 you will be a murderer ! ' " 
 
 " If I saw a venomous snake crawling 
 in the road, any man would say I might 
 seize the nearest stick and kill it ; but if I 
 found that snake in bed with my children, 
 
 59 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that would be another question. I might 
 hurt the children more than the snake, 
 and it might bite them." This was used 
 to emphasize his point that slavery could 
 not be attacked where it already existed. 
 " But if there was a bed newly made up, 
 to which the children were to be taken, and 
 it was proposed to take a batch of young 
 snakes and put them there with them, I 
 take it no man would say there was any 
 question how I ought to decide." And he 
 characterized Douglas's policy of letting 
 each separate territory settle the moral 
 question for itself, as " groping for some 
 middle ground between the right and the 
 wrong, vain as the search for a man who 
 should be neither a living man nor a dead 
 man." 
 
 Logic and force, an unassailable array 
 of facts presented with great earnestness, 
 and infrequent though sometimes grue- 
 somely pertinent illustrations, were not, 
 
 60 
 
HIS DEVELOPING POWER 
 
 however, tlie only elements of strength in 
 this second manner of Lincoln's. It was 
 at this period that he developed that power 
 so noticeable in his later utterances of 
 compressing truth into short and ringing 
 sentences, which seemed to catch up the 
 very spirit of his argument and focus it as 
 in a burning glass. 
 
 " No man is good enough to govern an- 
 other man without that other's consent," 
 he said in one of the earliest of these 
 speeches. 
 
 " When the white man governs himself, 
 that is self-government; but when he gov- 
 erns himself and also governs another man, 
 that is more than self-government — that 
 is despotism." 
 
 " No man can logically say he does n't 
 care whether a wrong is voted up or voted 
 down." " He cannot say people have a 
 right to do wrong." 
 
 " He who would be no slave must con- 
 61 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sent to have no slave. Those who deny 
 freedom to others deserve it not for them- 
 selves, and under a just God, cannot long 
 retain it." 
 
 " Let us have faith that right makes 
 might, and in that faith let us dare to do 
 our duty as we understand it." This last 
 was the closing exhortation of his Cooper 
 Institute speech. 
 
 Battle-cries of his new faith, they were 
 charged with an earnestness ten times more 
 impressive than the sallies of his earlier 
 manner. His own growth, and the maj- 
 esty of his theme, were alike apparent. No 
 longer merely a clever speaker, talking for 
 political ends, he had received his Pente- 
 costal touch of flame and become a teacher 
 — a leader of men. 
 
 62 
 
IV 
 
 THE START IN LIFE 
 
 THOUGH we have little to do with 
 Lincoln's youth, it is unfair to leave 
 it entirely out of the picture, since the 
 half-faced camp at Pigeon Cove and the 
 settlements in Indiana and Illinois where 
 he spent his boyhood left their lasting 
 trace on speech and habit. It was a life 
 of democratic equality, wherein no man 
 was much richer or wiser than his fellows ; 
 a life of open air, neighborly helpfulness 
 and no shams, In which each Individual 
 stood or fell on his own merits. In the 
 White House Lincoln continued to measure 
 people and things by these unsophisticated 
 standards of personal worth and useful- 
 ness. 
 
 63 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " Every man is said to have his pe- 
 cuhar ambition. Whether it be true or not, 
 I can say, for one, that I have no other 
 so great as that of being truly esteemed 
 of my fellow men by rendering myself 
 worthy of their esteem," he wrote at the 
 age of twenty-three, in his first published 
 " Address to the Voters of Sangamon 
 County." As a summing up of his atti- 
 tude toward society it would have been 
 equally true on the day of his death. He 
 was frankly ambitious, but with a whole- 
 some ambition, willing good alike to him- 
 self and his neighbor. As a means to that 
 end he seized on every chance bit of wis- 
 dom that came his way, welcoming it as 
 eagerly in the White House as in the mud- 
 chinked log cabin, and absorbing it, not 
 with a scholar's thirsty love of learning 
 for its own sake, but for the purpose it 
 might serve later on. 
 
 Although the people among whom his 
 youth was passed were unlettered, we are 
 
 64 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 apt to dwell with undue insistence on the 
 intellectual poverty, as we do on the phys- 
 ical misery, of those days. In things of 
 the spirit and things of the body alike, the 
 boy had enough to nourish and stimulate, 
 though never enough to surfeit his growing 
 need^. If we were to imagine his early 
 life an allegorical play, and write down as 
 dramatis personce a list of the human be- 
 ings and the things that influenced him, it 
 might read something like this : 
 
 A Father. 
 A Good Woman. 
 A Sweetheart. 
 A Schoolmaster. 
 
 A Constable who owned a Law Book. 
 A Town Drunkard. 
 A Bully. 
 A Braggart. 
 An Indian Chief. 
 A Voyage down a Great River. 
 A few Good Books. 
 5 65 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 His father, although not a worldly suc- 
 cess, was a man of good reputation and 
 native wit. His stepmother took the boy 
 into her big warm heart and gave him in- 
 tellectual sympathy as well as physical 
 comfort. Sweet Ann Rutledge whose 
 early death plunged Lincoln in such grief, 
 was a girl of greatest purity and 
 charm ; so, in the three nearest relation- 
 ships of life, he had the Best the world 
 can offer. 
 
 Mentor Graham, the New Salem school- 
 master, while not the wisest of his calling, 
 was learned enough to help him to a knowl- 
 edge of grammar and surveying. Jack 
 Kelso, disreputable town drunkard though 
 he was, had a love of Shakspere and Burns 
 to offset his love of drink. Jack Arm- 
 strong, leader of the Clary's Grove rowdies, 
 fought Lincoln, felt his strength, and 
 loved him, to the lasting good of both. 
 Dave Turnham, constable, possibly added 
 to the interest of his " Revised Statutes 
 
 66 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 of Indiana " by the unnecessary ceremony 
 with which he surrounded the volume. 
 Denton Offut, who bragged and blustered, 
 and set Lincoln in the pathway of commer- 
 cial venture and heavy debt ; James Gentry, 
 local capitalist, whose substance loaded the 
 flatboat upon which the future emancipa- 
 tor floated down into the heart of slavery ; 
 Black Hawk, the defiant old chief, whose 
 revolt gave Lincoln his short experience of 
 military service; and the chorus of neigh- 
 bors and acquaintances w^ho laughed at 
 his boyish stories and mock speeches, each 
 had a share in building his character. 
 
 As for the few books that fell into his 
 hands, blind chance could never have flung 
 together a collection so fitted to his future 
 needs. The Bible, ^sop's "Fables," 
 " Robinson Crusoe," " The Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress," a " History of the United States," 
 a " Life of Washington," and Dave Turn- 
 ham's cherished copy of the " Revised 
 Statutes of Indiana," embracing within its 
 
 67 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 covers the Declaration of Independence, 
 the Constitution of the United States, and 
 the Ordinance of 1787 with its provision 
 excluding slavery from the Northwest Ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 In this small but fruitful mine he delved 
 to good purpose. He was not abnormal — 
 only a normal boy of unusual mental gifts, 
 with a fixed purpose to succeed, and 
 blessed with a stepmother who systemat- 
 ically abetted his efforts at self -improve- 
 ment. Even his father, who, owing to the 
 family tragedy of old Abraham Lincoln's 
 death at the hand of savages, grew up 
 " literally without education " and as his 
 son tells us, " never did more in the way 
 of writing than to bunglingly sign his 
 own name," had ambitions for the lad, 
 chief of which was that he should learn to 
 " cipher clean through the 'rithmetic." 
 
 So, though the path of knowledge 
 stopped far short of a college door, it was 
 carefully smoothed for him inside his own 
 
 68 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 home. " We took particular care not to 
 disturb him when he was reading," his step- 
 mother told a visitor in her old age ; and 
 John Hanks, describing their youth to- 
 gether, says : " When Abe and I returned 
 to the house from work, he would go to 
 the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, 
 take a book, sit down, cock his legs up as 
 high as his head, and read." Not a grace- 
 ful picture, but true to the life, and, as 
 we are informed by one who knew him 
 well in the White House, a habit that 
 stayed with him all his days. " Some of 
 his greatest work in later years was done 
 in this grotesque Western fashion, ' sitting 
 on his shoulder blades.' " 
 
 John Hanks, and Lincoln's stepbrother, 
 John D. Johnston, were the ones who might 
 have filed objections ; "for this humoring 
 must have looked very like favoritism in 
 the immunity it gave from household 
 chores. However, even they took a pride 
 in his " smartness," although without the 
 
 69 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 faintest desire to emulate it, they lived 
 and died, untouched by fame. 
 
 Lincoln and Black Hawk, the Indian 
 Chief in our imagined list, never met. 
 Indeed, Lincoln's soldiering had no mili- 
 tary result whatever, and he was the first 
 to ridicule it — yet the episode had its 
 bearing on his whole career. He once said 
 of himself that he was like the Hoosier 
 who " reckoned he liked gingerbread better 
 and got less of it than any man he knew " ; 
 and at the outset of this short campaign a 
 particularly sweet bit of " gingerbread " 
 came to him in his unexpected election by 
 the men of his company to the honorable 
 office of captain. " He has not since had 
 any success in life which gave him so 
 much pleasure," he confessed in middle 
 age. Since a certain amount of sweet is 
 good for soul as well as body, this 
 success did him no harm ; w^hile it was a far 
 more important happening of the campaign 
 that he should be thrown into the society of 
 
 70 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 Major John T. Stuart, who was to be his 
 first law partner. 
 
 Lincoln's autobiographical notes give, in 
 briefest form, the history of the next few 
 years. " Returning from the campaign, 
 and encouraged by his great popularity 
 among his immediate neighbors, he the 
 same year ran for the legislature, and 
 was beaten — his own precinct, however, 
 casting its votes 277 for him and 7 against 
 him." " This," he states, " was the only 
 time Abraham was ever beaten on a direct 
 vote of the people." 
 
 Lincoln was so forgetful of self, that it 
 is refreshing occasionally to come across 
 perfectly innocent and pardonable traces 
 of human vanity. He was justly proud 
 of his place in the hearts of the American 
 people, and it gave him uncommon satis- 
 faction to remember that with the excep- 
 tion of this, his earliest venture in politics, 
 they never failed him when allowed to ex- 
 press their will at first hand. In this case 
 
 71 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 it would have been a miracle had he suc- 
 ceeded. He announced his candidacy just 
 before starting on the Black Hawk 
 campaign, after onl}^ a few months' resi- 
 dence in the county, when he was a stranger 
 to practically every one outside his own 
 precinct, and as he got back from the war 
 only ten days before election, he stood 
 small chance against men of wider ac- 
 quaintance. Two years later, when he 
 tried again, the result was different. 
 
 The autobiography continues : " He 
 was now without means and out of busi- 
 ness, but was anxious to remain with his 
 friends who had treated him with so much 
 generosity, especially as he had nothing 
 elsewhere to go to. He studied what he 
 should do — thought of learning the black- 
 smith trade — thought of trying to study 
 law — rather thought he could not succeed 
 at that without a better education. Before 
 long, strangely enough, a man offered to 
 sell, and did sell, to Abraham and another 
 
 72 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 as poor as himself an old stock of goods, 
 upon credit. They opened as merchants; 
 . . . Of course they did nothing but get 
 deeper and deeper in debt. He was ap- 
 pointed postmaster at New Salem, the of- 
 fice being too insignificant to make his 
 politics an objection. The store winked 
 out. The surveyor of Sangamon offered 
 to depute to Abraham that portion of his 
 work which was within his part of the 
 county. He accepted, procured a compass 
 and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a lit- 
 tle, and went at it. This procured bread, 
 and kept soul and body together. The 
 election of 1834 came, and he was then 
 elected to the legislature by the highest 
 vote cast for any candidate." — Here again 
 is the note of pride. — " Major John T. 
 Stuart, then in full practice of the law, 
 was also elected. During the canvass, in 
 a private conversation, he encouraged 
 Abraham to study law. After the election 
 he borrowed books of Stuart, took them 
 
 73 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 home with him, and went at it in good 
 earnest. He studied with nobody. He 
 still mixed in the surveying to pay board 
 and clothing bills. When the legislature 
 met, the law books were dropped, but were 
 taken up again at the end of the session. 
 He was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. 
 In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law 
 license, and on April 15, 1837, removed 
 to Springfield and commenced the practice 
 — his old friend Stuart taking him into 
 partnership." 
 
 This election to the Illinois legislature 
 was undoubtedly the great determining 
 event in Lincoln's life. Had he lost in- 
 stead of won, the world might have gained 
 a blacksmith and lost a President. His 
 store had just " winked out " ; he was heav- 
 ily in debt, and his one unreasonable 
 creditor had attached his horse and sur- 
 veying instruments for debt, literally 
 snatching the bread out of his mouth. The 
 four dollars a day which Illinois legislators 
 
 74 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 then received must have seemed a gift from 
 Heaven — as it was a sign to trust to 
 instinct and brain instead of muscle for 
 his future career. 
 
 Intellectually it removed him at once 
 from the dull routine of village life to 
 the companionship and rivalry of the keen- 
 est intellects gathered from all parts of 
 the State. It taxed all his knowledge, and 
 confronted him with new and absorbing 
 problems. 
 
 But life was still very primitive, and 
 in the electioneering tours which were a 
 feature of every campaign, social as well 
 as political qualifications went far with the 
 voters. Candidates were expected to ap- 
 pear at all sorts of neighborhood gather- 
 ings, and the man who was equally 
 equipped to turn the accidents of a horse- 
 race or a debate on the tariff to his 
 advantage was the man to win. 
 
 Lincoln was in his element on such oc- 
 casions. He could reconcile belligerent 
 
 75 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 patriots with a joke ; and in quoit throwing 
 or impromptu trials of strength his tact 
 and his muscle were equally valuable. 
 
 Sometimes opposing candidates met un- 
 expectedly on these tours and spent the 
 night under the same farmhouse roof. 
 Then it came to a trial of wits. One of 
 Lincoln's opponents, but his personal 
 friend (as they all were), told how Lincoln 
 got the better of him on such an occasion. 
 Milking-time came, and the other, anxious 
 to array the farmer's wife on his side, 
 took stool and pail from her hands and 
 went to work, chuckling at the march he 
 was stealing. But when he finished, he 
 discovered Lincoln leaning over the fence 
 in fruitful idleness, deep in conversation 
 with the lady ! Then and afterward, Lin- 
 coln was preeminently a practical politi- 
 cian. 
 
 Not a tricky politician. Principles in- 
 variably came first with him. But in all 
 that is fair in party warfare, the shaping 
 
 76 
 
THE START IN LIFE 
 
 ^" 
 
 of issues, the choosing of candidates, and 
 that intimate knowledge of local leader- 
 ship, and drift of feeling, he was a master. 
 His retentive memory gave him an unusual 
 grasp of political situations, while his com- 
 mon sense showed him ways in which to 
 deal with them as direct as they were novel. 
 Even in the early days of his legislative 
 experience his fellow members felt this. 
 " We would ride while he would walk, but 
 we recognized him as a master of logic." 
 
 His letters on local political topics in 
 Illinois are marvels of acumen and detail. 
 He had tables of election figures at his 
 tongue's end ; but his crowning gift of 
 political diagnosis was due to his sympathy, 
 strange as that may seem — to his ability 
 to imagine himself in the " other fellow's " 
 place — which gave him the power to fore- . 
 cast with uncanny accuracy what his op- ] 
 ponents were likely to do. 
 
 Long after he left the legislature he was 
 a welcome guest in its party caucuses. 
 
 77 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 On invitation of some member he would 
 enter and take a seat, drawing around his 
 shoulders the shawl he sometimes wore, 
 cross his long legs, clasp his hands about 
 his knees, and listen to what was being 
 said. When all had finished, he would 
 throw aside the shawl, and rising slowly 
 to his full height, would begin: 
 
 " From your talk, I gather the Demo- 
 crats will do so and so," stating why he 
 thought so. " It seems to me, if I were a 
 member of this body, I should do so and 
 so to checkmate them " — going on to in- 
 dicate the moves for days ahead ; making 
 them all so plain that his listeners won- 
 dered why they had not seen it that way 
 themselves. 
 
 78 
 
THE EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 STRAYED OR STOLEN 
 
 From a stable in Springfield on Wednes- 
 day, 18th Inst., a large bay horse, star in his 
 forehead, plainly marked with harness; sup- 
 posed to be eight years old; had been shod 
 all around, but is believed to have lost some 
 of his shoes, and trots and paces. Any per- 
 son who will take up said horse and leave 
 information at the Journal Office or with the 
 subscriber at New Salem, shall be liberally 
 paid for their trouble. 
 
 A. Lincoln. 
 
 THIS was a misfortune indeed, for 
 in those days law and politics were 
 twin vagabonds, as peripatetic as a ped- 
 dler's cart. Candidates pursued votes into 
 
 79 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 remote clearings, and lawyers went about 
 their business on horseback. 
 
 The State was divided into large judi- 
 cial districts. The Eighth District, for 
 instance, in which Lincoln lived, stretched 
 from the Illinois River eastward to the 
 Indiana line, and almost an equal distance 
 north and south. Twice a year the Circuit 
 Judge, and such lawyers as happened to 
 have cases before him, traveled around the 
 circuit, from one county seat to another, 
 holding court in each; and since Illinois 
 roads were poor at best, and at M^orst were 
 seas of pasty black mud, horseback riding 
 was the most trustworthy means of loco- 
 motion. 
 
 To Lincoln, who loved the open air, and 
 contact with people, these long rides, usu- 
 ally in congenial company, were very 
 pleasant; while to his fellow travelers his 
 good spirits and quaint observations were 
 a source of endless delight. 
 
 Both bench and bar seem to have re- 
 80 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 garded their semi-annual pilgrimages in the 
 light of rather gay frolics, echoes of which 
 still come down to us, usually with Lincoln 
 as the central figure of a jolly group. 
 Sometimes he is chuckling over the ways 
 of small boys, or the family cares of a 
 duck wdth her brood; sometimes laughing 
 heartily at the antics of a clothes-line full 
 of garments filled out and set dancing by 
 the breeze. Occasionally he rides on, 
 moody and silent, eyes and brain alike busy 
 with things far away. Once he reins in 
 his horse suddenly, and turns back half a 
 mile to pull an unfortunate pig out of the 
 mire. — Not from love of the pig, as he 
 informs his companions, but " just to take 
 a pain out of his own mind." 
 
 But in spite of his fund of fun and talk 
 there was apt to be a serious book in his 
 scanty luggage, and his friend Leonard 
 Swett tells us that he found time to study 
 " to the roots " any question in which he 
 was at the moment interested. In after 
 6 81 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 years he looked back upon these circuit 
 experiences as among the happiest of his 
 life. 
 
 " I guess we both wish we were back 
 in court trying cases," he said wistfully 
 to General Butler. 
 
 The Eighth Judicial Circuit served as 
 the setting for many of his anecdotes. It 
 was on a stage journey in pursuit of his 
 calling that a man offered him a cigar. 
 Lincoln refused with polite jocularity, 
 saying that he " had no vices." The man 
 gave a scornful grunt and smoked in si- 
 lence for a time, then blurted out, " It 's 
 my experience that men with no vices have 
 plaguey few virtues ! " — an observation 
 Lincoln cherished and repeated for years. 
 
 His personal habits and tastes being 
 of the simplest, the rough quarters and 
 often inadequate accommodations did not 
 trouble him in the least. His friend Judge 
 Davis only saw Lincoln angry once from 
 such a cause. That was when they ar- 
 
 82 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 rived cold and wet at an inn late one after- 
 noon, to find the landlord absent, and no 
 wood cut for a fire. Lincoln threw off 
 his coat, seized an ax, and chopped vigor- 
 ously for an hour, while the Judge labored 
 with wet kindlings. When the landlord 
 returned he received a warm but uncomfort- 
 able reception. 
 
 Judge Davis took a far keener interest 
 in creature comforts than Lincoln, and the 
 latter came back from a trip in his com- 
 pany, laughing heartily at a retort this 
 interest provoked. The Judge recognized 
 the difficulty of catering in remote places, 
 and remarked on the excellence of the 
 beef. "You must have to kill a whole 
 critter when you want meat in a place like 
 this." 
 
 "Yes," was the landlord's laconic an- 
 swer, "we never kill less than a whole 
 critter." 
 
 During "Court Week" each little 
 county town was galvanized into fic- 
 
 83 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 titlous activity. The Judge, by vir- 
 tue of his office, was given the best 
 room in the flimsy wooden " hotel " ; 
 but being an open-hearted Westerner, 
 as well as an instrument of justice, 
 shared it with from one to six of his 
 lawyer friends. The rest packed them- 
 selves into what space was left. At meal 
 times the Judge sat at the head of a long 
 table around which lawyers, jurors, wit- 
 nesses, prisoners out on bail, peddlers, and 
 men who cared for the teams, crowded 
 in hungry equality. Food, though abun- 
 dant, was often so badly prepared that 
 only the seasoning of wit and laughter with 
 which it was eaten saved the company 
 from early and dyspeptic graves. 
 
 After the meal, those not busy in court, 
 or in preparing cases for the morrow, ad- 
 journed to the public room, or, carrying 
 their chairs out on the sidewalk, tilted 
 luxuriously back against the hotel, and 
 went on swapping stories and chunks of 
 
 84 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 political wisdom ; while the male residents, 
 and farmers from the surrounding country, 
 strolled up to take part in the symposium. 
 
 Court Week was a political as well as 
 a legal event ; for the leading lawyers either 
 were, or had recently been, members of the 
 legislature, and as such were called upon 
 to explain the " loud uninterrupted groan 
 of hard times" which newspapers were 
 echoing from one end of the continent to 
 the other. It behooved a man who wished 
 to rise either in law or in politics, to be 
 well posted and alert. Lincoln, who was 
 witty, and a good talker besides, was sure 
 of enthusiastic greetings wherever he went. 
 " He brought light with him," says one 
 writer. No wonder. He was as ready to 
 listen as to talk; never talked about his 
 own troubles; and never asked for help, 
 though always ready to give it. 
 
 In the court room he strove to divest a 
 case of every question except the vital 
 one, giving away point after point to his 
 
 85 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 opponent until he came to the one he 
 deemed essential, and taking his stand on 
 that. " In law it is good policy never to 
 plead what you need not, lest you oblige 
 yourself to prove what you cannot," was 
 one of his maxims. He talked to a jury 
 as he spoke to an audience, in a kindly 
 direct way, using the subtle flattery of 
 making them feel that they themselves were 
 really trying the case ; that he was merely 
 helping them to formulate what they had 
 long believed. He spoke very clearly and 
 deliberately, using few gestures, until some 
 anecdote became applicable, when he told it 
 with rare dramatic force. 
 
 Knowing the necessity of holding atten- 
 tion, he employed language so simple that 
 the dullest juryman could follow him; 
 and for the same reason he rarely spoke 
 from notes. " Notes are a bother, taking 
 time to make, and more to hunt up after- 
 ward," he told a law student ; adding that 
 the habit of referring to them was apt to 
 
 86 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 grow upon one, and always tended to tire 
 and confuse the listeners. Notes that he 
 used in a case involving the pension of a 
 bent and crippled widow of a Revolution- 
 ary soldier are certainly not prolix enough 
 to distract a jury. 
 
 " No contract. — Not professional serv- 
 ices. — Unreasonable charge. — Money re- 
 tained by Deft not given by Pl'ff. — 
 Revolutionary War. — Describe Valley 
 Forge privations. — Ice. — Soldier's bleed- 
 ing feet. — Pl'fF's husband. — Soldier leav- 
 ing home for army. — Skin DefH. — 
 Close." 
 
 For the same excellent reason he rarely 
 used a Latin word. He felt that the aver- 
 age juryman could not follow high-flown 
 language in his native tongue, let alone in 
 a dead language, and he preferred to talk 
 with him, man to man. A colleague who 
 relied on different methods once quoted a 
 legal maxim and turned to him asking, 
 " Is n't that so, Mr. Lincoln? " 
 
 87 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " If that is Latin, you had better call 
 another witness," he answered, with a touch 
 of shortness which recalls his confession 
 that from childhood it irritated him to hear 
 people talk in a way he could not under- 
 stand. He had little patience with men 
 who obscured, or tried to obscure, their 
 own trail. It reminded him, he said, of a 
 little Frenchman out West during the 
 "winter of the deep snow," whose "legs 
 were so short that the seat of his trousers 
 rubbed out his footprints as he walked." 
 
 Secretary Usher has said that Lincoln 
 belonged to the reasoning class of men. 
 " As a lawyer he never claimed everything 
 for his client. . . . He was also very 
 careful about giving personal offense, and 
 if he had something severe to say, he would 
 turn to his opponent, or to the person about 
 to be referred to, and say, * I don't like to 
 use this language,' or, ' I am sorry that I 
 have to be hard on that gentleman,' and 
 therefore, what he did say, was thrice as ef- 
 
 88 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 fective, and very seldom wounded the per- 
 son attacked." 
 
 His way with witnesses was quite mar- 
 velous. Even if hostile at the outset, they 
 soon came under his spell and ended by 
 wanting to please him. A boy who was 
 subpoenaed in a case against his uncle, told 
 how he went on the stand determined to 
 say as little as possible. On learning his 
 name Mr. Lincoln began asking questions. 
 — "Was he related to his old friend?" 
 who happened to be the boy's grandfather. 
 The tall lawyer showed such friendly inter- 
 est that before he knew it, the little witness 
 was pouring out the whole story. He re- 
 tired covered with shame, feeling he had 
 been most disloyal ; but outside the court- 
 room door Lincoln met him, looked at him 
 kindly, and stopped to say that he under- 
 stood — he knew he had not meant to tes- 
 tify against his people, but he had done 
 right in telling all he knew, and nobody 
 could criticize him for it. " The whole 
 
 89 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 matter was afterwards adjusted," the lit- 
 tle story ends, '' but I never forgot his 
 friendly and encouraging words at a time 
 when I needed sympathy and consolation." 
 
 Lincoln carried his love of fair play into 
 every detail of his profession. " Yes," he 
 said to a man who sought to retain him in 
 a questionable suit. " There is no reason- 
 able doubt but that I can gain your case 
 for you. I can set a whole neighborhood 
 at loggerheads ; I can distress a widowed 
 mother and her six fatherless children, and 
 thereby gain for you six hundred dollars, 
 which rightfully belongs, it appears to me, 
 as much to them as it does to you. I shall 
 not take your case, but I will give you a 
 little advice for nothing. You seem a 
 sprightly energetic man. I would advise 
 you to try your hand at making six hun- 
 dred dollars in some other way." 
 
 After Lincoln's death some notes, evi- 
 dently intended for a lecture to law stu- 
 dents, were found among his papers. 
 
 90 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 " Discourage litigation," said one of these. 
 " Persuade your neighbors to compromise 
 whenever you can. Point out to them how 
 the nominal winner is often a real loser — 
 in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a 
 peacemaker the lawyer has a superior op- 
 portunity of being a good man. There 
 will still be business enough." 
 
 Yet he occasionally allowed himself the 
 luxury of offering his services. In the 
 Armstrong murder trial, the most dramatic 
 of all his cases, he defended the accused for 
 the love he bore his parents — a friendship 
 dating from the day Jack Armstrong, the 
 bully of Clary's Grove, fought the tall 
 stranger who had come to live in New 
 Salem, and felt his strength. 
 
 Joseph Jefferson, writing of his child- 
 hood, tells how in 18S9 his father went to 
 Springfield, and relying on the patronage 
 of the legislature, prepared to stay all 
 winter. He built a little wooden theater, 
 but scarcely was it opened, when a revival 
 
 91 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 began in town, and excited church members 
 had the poor httle playhouse taxed out of 
 existence. " In the midst of our trouble a 
 young lawyer called upon the management. 
 He had heard of the injustice, and offered, 
 if they would place the matter in his hands, 
 to have the license taken off, declaring that 
 he only desired to see fair play, and would 
 accept no fee, whether he failed or suc- 
 ceeded." 
 
 When the matter came to a hearing he 
 made an elaborate argument, covering the 
 history of acting from antiquity down, 
 handling his subject — and his town coun- 
 cil — with such skill that the tax was re- 
 moved. Lincoln was fond of the play, and 
 his championship loses nothing in human 
 interest from the fact that these were prob- 
 ably the first good actors it had been his 
 fortune to see ; and that he anticipated a 
 world of delight within its walls if the little 
 wooden theater was allowed to remain. 
 
 Judge David Davis, speaking of Lin- 
 92 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 coin's rank as a lawyer, says : " In all the 
 elements that constitute the great lawyer he 
 had few equals. ... He seized the strong 
 points of a cause, and presented them with 
 clearness and great compactness. His 
 mind was logical and direct, and he did not 
 indulge in extraneous discussion. General- 
 ities and platitudes had no charms for him. 
 An unfailing vein of humor never deserted 
 him ; and he was able to claim the attention 
 of court and jury when the cause was the 
 most uninteresting, by the appropriate- 
 ness of his anecdotes." An Eastern lawyer 
 once expressed the opinion that Lincoln was 
 wasting his time in telling stories to a jury. 
 " Don't lay that flattering unction to your 
 soul," was his friend's rejoinder. "Lin- 
 coln is like Tansey's horse, he ' breaks to 
 win.' " 
 
 " The framework of his mental and 
 moral being was honesty," Judge Davis 
 continues, " and a wrong cause was poorly 
 defended by him. The ability which some 
 
 93 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 eminent lawyers possess, of explaining 
 away the bad points of a cause by ingenious 
 sophistry, was denied him. In order to 
 bring into full activity his great powers, it 
 was necessary that he should be convinced 
 of the right and justice of the matter which 
 he advocated. When so convinced, whether 
 the matter was great or small, he was usu- 
 ally successful." 
 
 " There is a vague popular belief that 
 lawyers are necessarily dishonest," Lincoln 
 wrote in his notes for a law lecture. " I 
 say vague, because when we consider to 
 what extent confidence and honors are re- 
 posed in and conferred upon lawyers by the 
 people, it appears improbable that their 
 impression of dishonesty is very distinct 
 and vivid. Yet the impression is common, 
 almost universal. Let no young man 
 choosing the law for a calling for a moment 
 yield to the popular belief — resolve to be 
 honest at all events; and if in your own 
 judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, 
 
 94 
 
EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 
 
 resolve to be honest without being a law- 
 yer. Choose some other occupation, 
 rather than the one in the choosing of 
 which you do, in advance, consent to be a 
 knave.'* 
 
 He never took a case which appeared to 
 him unjust, and if he found out that he 
 had been mistaken, it was only with the 
 greatest effort that he could make himself 
 go on with it. 
 
 " Swett," he exclaimed on one occasion, 
 turning to his associate, " the man is guilty. 
 You defend him. I can't." Another time 
 he said to the lawyer engaged with him, 
 " If you can say>anything for the man, do 
 it. If I attempt it the jury will see that I 
 think he is guilty and convict him." On 
 still another occasion, being suddenly con- 
 fronted with proof that his client was at- 
 tempting fraud, he walked out of the court 
 room and went to his hotel in deep disgust. 
 The Judge sent a messenger to request his 
 return. He refused. 
 
 95 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "Tell the Judge," he said, "that my 
 hands are dirty. I came over to wash 
 them." 
 
 " Perversely honest " was the verdict, 
 half resentful, and wholly admiring, passed 
 upon him by his fellow lawyers. 
 
 96 
 
VI 
 
 Lincoln's attitude toward money 
 
 PAINFULLY honest, also he was in 
 money matters. Tradition has it 
 that his initial experience in the value of 
 money lay in being made to pull fodder 
 three whole days at twenty-five cents a 
 dav, to pay for a rain-soaked volume. He 
 had borrowed the book. It got wet. He 
 payed the price of carelessness in back- 
 breaking toil ; but after that the book was 
 his very own. " This is a world of com- 
 pensation," as he wrote some forty years 
 later. 
 
 He told Secretary Seward that he 
 earned his first dollar by taking two trav- 
 elers and their luggage out from the river 
 7 97 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 edge to a steamboat which stopped for 
 them, Western fashion, in midstream. For 
 this service each man threw a silver half- 
 dollar into the bottom of the boat, where 
 they shone very large and fair as he rowed 
 ashore. 
 
 The frontier value of money differed 
 from ours. As a symbol it meant more, as 
 a commodity, less. It stood for the world 
 the pioneer had left behind him, and all he 
 wished to gain, but its momentary purchas- 
 ing power was strangely limited. A rifle 
 and a strong right arm could supply more 
 of his immediate needs than any amount of 
 gold. 
 
 This fostered an undefined feeling that 
 money was after all a fantastic, rather than 
 a real thing, and accounts for certain loose 
 ideas about money obligations which pre- 
 vailed. For instance, in the burst of confi- 
 dence and exchange of promissory notes 
 which inaugurated Lincoln's venture as a 
 merchant, not a cent of money saw the 
 
 98 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 light, though signatures and I. O. U.'s were 
 dealt around among half a dozen men, like a 
 hand at cards. Death, drink, and defalca- 
 tion cast their consuming blight on all the 
 other parties to the transaction, and the 
 whole indebtedness, amounting to six or 
 seven hundred dollars, came finally to rest 
 upon Lincoln's shoulders. Instead of fol- 
 lowing the prevailing fashion, taking to his 
 heels, or claiming that failure wiped out the 
 debt, he assumed the load, promising to pay 
 when he could. 
 
 His neighbors, remembering how he had 
 tramped miles to make restitution of six 
 and a quarter cents, and had pursued a cus- 
 tomer with a few ounces of tea after inad- 
 vertently giving short measure, felt that he 
 took money obligations with sufficient seri- 
 ousness, and agreed to wait. Seventeen 
 years later, long after " Honest Old Abe " 
 had become a household word in all Sanga- 
 mon County, he paid the last fraction of 
 what he called his " National Debt." 
 
 99 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The two pieces of good fortune men- 
 tioned in his autobiography, being made 
 deputy surveyor of Sangamon County, and 
 postmaster of New Salem, happened provi- 
 dentially at this time. Both were tributes 
 to his personal worth, not to his politics, for 
 John Calhoun, the surveyor, was an ardent 
 Democrat, and New Salem, except when 
 Lincoln was running for the legislature, 
 voted systematically against the Whigs. 
 
 The only obstacle to his becoming Cal- 
 houn's deputy lay in his abysmal ignorance 
 of surveying — a detail which Calhoun 
 promptly overcame by lending him a text- 
 book, which he as promptly took to his 
 schoolmaster friend Mentor Graham. Six 
 weeks later, haggard from application, but 
 equipped for his new duties, he presented 
 himself again before Calhoun. 
 
 He was made postmaster in May, 1833, 
 and kept the situation about three years, 
 until New Salem's population shrank to 
 such insignificance that a postmaster was a 
 
 100 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 needless luxury. Popular fable locates the 
 office " in his hat." Its principal perqui- 
 site was the privilege of reading the news- 
 papers addressed to it — newspapers filled 
 at that time with the debates of Webster, 
 and Lincoln's boyhood idol, Henry Clay. 
 
 With postage at twenty-five cents, a lit- 
 tle actual cash also passed through his 
 hands, and this must have been gratifying 
 in his state of poverty, even though it be- 
 longed to the Government. How sharp a 
 line he drew between Government property 
 and his own came to light a number of 
 years later, when an agent of the Postoffice 
 Department called on him in Springfield to 
 ask for a balance of about seventeen dollars 
 due from the defunct New Salem office. 
 After an instant's hesitation he rose, and 
 going to a little trunk in a corner, took 
 from it a cotton cloth in which the exact 
 sum was tied up. A friend who saw his 
 face as the agent made his request, had 
 hastily offered a loan. " I never use any 
 
 101 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 man's money but my own," Lincoln said 
 quietly, after the officer took his departure. 
 
 That he had kept it through all those 
 years of poverty, tied up in the quaint little 
 driginal package, was profoundly charac- 
 teristic. His methods of dealing with cash 
 were as simple as his honesty was strict. 
 In his lawyer days he wrote, " This is 
 Herndon's half," in his careful legible hand 
 upon an envelope and put into it one part 
 of a joint fee, while the other went into his 
 own pocket. That was all he felt called 
 upon to do. The firm, of course, kept 
 books, but he was rarely moved to make an 
 entry in them. When his inconvenient 
 sense of honesty rendered it impossible for 
 him to go on with a case, the other " half " 
 followed the first into his partner's en- 
 velope. 
 
 Judge Davis wrote of him : " To his 
 honor be it said, that he never took from a 
 client, even when his cause was gained, more 
 than he thought the services were worth and 
 
 102 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 the client could reasonably afford to pay. 
 The people where he practised law were not 
 rich, and his charges were always small. 
 When he was elected President, I question 
 whether there was a lawyer in the circuit, 
 who had been at the bar so long a time, 
 whose means were not larger. It did not 
 seem to be one of the purposes of his life to 
 accumulate a fortune. In fact, outside of 
 his profession, he had no knowledge of the 
 way to make money, and he never even at- 
 tempted it." 
 
 " You are pauperizing this court," 
 Judge Davis used to tell him. " You are 
 ruining your fellows. Unless you quit this 
 ridiculous policy we shall all have to go to 
 farming." But Lincoln went on serenely 
 charging as he saw fit. Once his bill was 
 $3.50 for collecting a note of nearly $600 ; 
 but politics and professional courtesy were 
 involved, and another man made the actual 
 collection. A chent who owed him for pro- 
 fessional services met with financial re- 
 
 103 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 verses, and soon after lost his hand. Lin- 
 coln returned his note, saying, " If you had 
 the money I would not take it." 
 
 The largest fee he ever received was in 
 the contest between the Illinois Central 
 Railroad and McLean County over certain 
 taxes alleged to be due from the railroad. 
 After litigation covering two years Lincoln 
 won the case. He presented a bill for 
 $2,000 which the railroad refused to pay 
 on the ground that it was excessive. 
 Whereupon half a dozen of his lawyer 
 friends signed a statement that in their 
 opinion $5,000 would be a moderate 
 charge; and he sued the railroad for that 
 sum and got it. The story that George B. 
 McClellan was the man who refused the 
 original bill with the slighting remark, 
 " That is as much as a first-class lawyer 
 would have charged," is manifestly untrue, 
 since McClellan was not an officer of the 
 road, and not even in this country at the 
 
 104 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 time. Parenthetically it is interesting to 
 be told by competent authority that the 
 same services would now command a fee of 
 $50,000. 
 
 In the McCormick Reaper case, about 
 which much has been written to explain and 
 recount his first rather unfortunate meet- 
 ing with Edwin M. Stanton, the fee was 
 about $2,000. Both of these, coming to 
 him near the time of his joint debate with 
 Douglas, helped tide over that period of in- 
 creasing fame and decreased earnings. In 
 the decade between 1850 and 1860 his in- 
 come is said to have rarely reached $3,000 
 a year. Before that time it was very much 
 less. 
 
 " The matter of fees Is Important," he 
 wrote in his notes for a law lecture, " far 
 beyond the mere question of bread and but- 
 ter involved." It was their moral impor- 
 tance he had in mind. " Properly attended 
 to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and 
 
 105 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 client." In his theory of money, as in his 
 theory of hfe, honesty was paramount. 
 
 " Don't you think I have honestly earned 
 twenty-five dollars ? " he asked the pair of 
 opposing lawyers who were to fix the 
 amount of the fee in a case which had gone 
 against him. They expected to allow him 
 at least one hundred. 
 
 As Judge Davis said, it did not seem to 
 be one of the purposes of his life to accu- 
 mulate a fortune. He said that a house in 
 Springfield, such as he owned, and twenty 
 thousand dollars, which he hoped to earn 
 before his working days were over, were 
 " all that a man ought to want." 
 
 But he had no patience with the sin of 
 shiftlessness, no matter how patient he 
 might be with the sinner. His letters to his 
 stepbrother, John D. Johnston, who was 
 born with a genius for remaining in debt, 
 and was always asking help, were as un- 
 compromisingly truthful as they were gen- 
 erous. In one of them he wrote: 
 
 106 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 Your request for eighty dollars I do not 
 think it best to comply with now. At the 
 various times when I have helped you a little 
 you have said to me, * We can get along very 
 well now ' ; but in a very short time I find 
 you in the same difficulty again. Now, this 
 can only happen by some defect in your con- 
 duct. What that defect is, I think I know. 
 You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. 
 I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have 
 done a good whole day's work, in any one 
 day. You do not very much dislike to work, 
 and still you do not work much, merely be- 
 cause it does not seem to you that you could 
 get much for it. This habit of uselessly 
 wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is 
 vastly important to you, and still more so to 
 your children, that you should break the 
 habit. . . . You are now in need of some 
 money; and what I propose is, that you shall 
 go to work, ' tooth and nail ' for somebody 
 who will give you money for it. Let father 
 and your boys take charge of your things at 
 home, prepare for a crop and make the crop, 
 and you go to work for the best money wages, 
 
 107 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 or in discharge of any debt you owe, that 
 you can get; and, to secure you a fair re- 
 ward for your labor, I now promise you, that 
 for every dollar you will, between this and 
 the first of May, get for your own labor, either 
 in money or as your own indebtedness, I will 
 give you one other dollar. By this, if you 
 hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from 
 me you will get ten more, making twenty 
 dollars a month for your work. In this I do 
 not mean you shall go oif to St. Louis, or 
 the lead mines, or the gold mines in Cali- 
 fornia, but I mean for you to go at it for 
 the best wages you can get close to home in 
 Coles County. Now if you will do this you 
 will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, 
 you will have a habit that will keep you from 
 getting in debt again. But, if I should now 
 clear you out of debt, next year you would be 
 just as deep in as ever. You say you would 
 almost give your place in Heaven for seventy 
 or eighty dollars. Then you value your place 
 in Heaven very cheap, for I am sure you 
 can, with the offer I make, get the seventy 
 or eighty dollars for four or five months' 
 
 108 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 work. You say if I will furnish you the 
 money you will deed me the land, and, if you 
 don't pay the money back, you will deliver 
 possession. Nonsense! If you can't now 
 live with the land, how will you then live 
 without it? You have always been kind to 
 me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. 
 On the contrary, if you will but follow my 
 advice, you will find it worth more than 
 eighty times eighty dollars to you. 
 
 He watched over and cared for the inter- 
 ests of his father and stepmother with the 
 same spirit, and against similar discourag- 
 ing odds ; and as he grew in fame, not only 
 family letters, ill-spelt, and more fluent 
 than logical, but letters from old neighbors, 
 breathing patriotism and incompetence, 
 came with their pleas for aid, and were met 
 in his old neighborly fashion. Here is one 
 message which he sent out into the world : 
 
 My old friend Henry Chew, the bearer of 
 this, is in a strait for some furniture to com- 
 mence housekeeping. If any person will 
 
 109 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 furnish him twenty-five dollars worth, and he 
 does not pay for it by the 1st of January 
 next, I will. A. Lincoln. 
 
 He did. But sometimes bread cast 
 upon the waters returned in its original 
 form. An express company's envelope 
 was found among his papers, bearing this 
 endorsement : 
 
 September 25, 1858. 
 
 This brought me fifteen dollars without 
 any intimation as to where it came from. It 
 probably came from Mr. Patterson, to whom 
 I loaned this amount a few days ago. 
 
 Lincoln. 
 
 During his service in the legislature his 
 campaign expenses were small enough to 
 satisfy the most exacting. On one occa- 
 sion the Whigs contributed the sum of $200 
 toward his personal expenses. At the end 
 of the canvass he handed his friend Joshua 
 F. Speed $199.25 with the request that it 
 be returned to the subscribers. " I did not 
 
 110 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 need the money," he said. " I made the 
 canvass on my own horse ; my entertain- 
 ment, being at the houses of friends, cost 
 me nothing, and my only outlay was sev- 
 enty-five cents for a barrel of cider which 
 some farm-hands insisted I should treat 
 them to." 
 
 Railroad passes were not regarded with 
 the same covetous suspicion, then as now, 
 and an amusing note shows his most origi- 
 nal way of asking for a renewal. 
 
 Springfield, III.^ Feb. 13, 1836. 
 
 R. P. Morgan, Esq. 
 
 Dear Sir: Says Tom to John, "Here's 
 your old rotten wheelbarrow. I 've broke it, 
 iisen *on it. I wish you would mend it, 'case 
 I shall want to borrow it this afternoon." 
 
 Acting on this precedent, I say, " Here 's 
 your old ' chalked hat.* I wish you would 
 take it and send me a new one, 'case I shall 
 want to use it the first of March." 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. Lincoln. 
 Ill 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 A letter to his friend N. B. Judd, writ- 
 ten shortly after Douglas's victory, reveals 
 the fact that his private subscription to 
 the Republican campaign fund in 1858 was 
 $500. Unlike Douglas, he paid his own 
 ordinary expenses during the canvass, 
 " Which, being added to my loss of time 
 and business, bears pretty heavily upon one 
 no better off in this world's goods than I; 
 but as I had the post of honor, it is not for 
 me to be over-nice." 
 
 He was bitterly attacked by the New 
 York Herald for accepting a check for 
 $200 for the famous Cooper Institute 
 speech. No public notice was taken of it, 
 but he was sufficiently distressed to write a 
 private letter denying that he ever charged 
 anything for a political speech in his life, 
 and giving the full history of the half 
 truth on which the accusation was based. 
 
 Having simple tastes, he managed to 
 save something from his official salary, 
 which few Presidents have been able to do ; 
 
 112 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 but this was not by virtue of changing any 
 of his habits in regard to money getting or 
 giving. The cashier of one of the Wash- 
 ington banks, meeting an old friend of Mr. 
 Lincoln's on the street one morning, re- 
 marked " that President of ytfUrs is the 
 oddest man alive. Why, he endorses notes 
 for niggers ! " 
 
 At the time Lincoln entered the White 
 House, Government credit was at a peril- 
 ously low ebb. Buchanan's last two Secre- 
 taries of the Treasury found difficulty in 
 borrowing even small sums at high interest 
 to meet Government expenses. The Civil 
 War immediately created new and insistent 
 demands upon the Treasury, which ex- 
 panded as the months went by into financial 
 operations greater than ever before re- 
 corded. Lincoln's crystalline simplicity in 
 money matters seemed hardly fitted to cope 
 with such a situation ; nor did his choice of 
 his Presidential rival, Salmon P. Chase, a 
 man of little previous financial experience, 
 8 113 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 for Secretary of the Treasury, seem neces- 
 sarily reassuring. But the good genius 
 which watches over our country was never 
 more active. This is not the place to re- 
 capitulate Secretary Chase's resourceful 
 and masterly skill in upholding our credit 
 at home and abroad; a management which 
 Evarts called " the marvel of Europe and 
 the admiration of our own people." 
 
 Lincoln, realizing the worth of Mr. 
 Chase's services, as well as his own inex- 
 perience, exercised less constant supervision 
 over the Treasury than over some of the 
 other departments. He made occasional 
 suggestions, but did not insist upon them ; 
 and when Mr. Chase needed the weight of 
 his assistance with Congress, either in mes- 
 sages, or in conversation with individuals, 
 gave it effectively and ungrudgingly. 
 
 In the fight to make paper money legal 
 tender both men advocated it as a measure 
 of necessity, not choice ; and worked for it 
 with unwearying devotion. A paragraph 
 
 114 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 
 
 in John Hay's diary quotes Lincoln as 
 saying that he " thought Chase's banking 
 system rested on a sound basis of princi- 
 ple ; that is, causing the capital of the coun- 
 try to become interested in the sustaining of 
 the national credit. That was the princi- 
 pal financial measure of Mr. Chase in which 
 he (Lincoln) had taken an especial inter- 
 est." 
 
 The two were officially in perfect accord, 
 but politically Chase was ambitious on his 
 own account, and personally he could never 
 understand his chief, whose whimsical re- 
 marks and Western ways seemed to him dis- 
 tressingly undignified. 
 
 Mr. Chase came to him one day with a 
 report on the vast sums of paper currency 
 already issued, and the sums still needed 
 to pay the soldiers and carry on the Gov- 
 ernment. At the end of the dismal recital 
 he stopped as if to say, " What can be 
 done about it? " Lincoln with a flicker of 
 perplexity, and another of amusement 
 
 115 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 crossing his sad face, looked down on his 
 shorter companion and answered, " Well, 
 Mr. Secretary, I don't know, unless you 
 give your paper mill another turn." At 
 which levity Chase almost swore, and de- 
 parted in high dudgeon. 
 
 116 
 
VII 
 
 A NEW CANDIDATE 
 
 JOHN HAY'S first recollection of Lin- 
 coln was of seeing him hurry into the 
 office of his uncle, IMIlton Hay, waving a 
 newspaper, and fairly quivering with ex- 
 citement as he exclaimed, " This will never 
 do ! Douglas treats it as a matter of in- 
 difference, morally, whether slavery is voted 
 down or voted up. I tell you it will never 
 do!" 
 
 For twenty years he and Douglas had 
 been acquaintances and opponents. He 
 was fully aware of the effective but not al- 
 ways scrupulous methods by which Doug- 
 las had distanced him in fame and fortune, 
 using office after office as stepping-stones 
 
 117 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 toward the goal of his ambition, the Presi- 
 dency. Personally their relations were of a 
 neighborly, half-familiar, wholly super- 
 ficial sort. " I would not behave as well 
 as you will have to now, for twice the 
 money," Lincoln had told him when Doug- 
 las was made judge of the Illinois Supreme 
 Court, as the result of a rather questionable 
 political manoeuver. 
 
 Lincoln knew him to be not only a wily 
 and astute politician, but a master-juggler 
 with words, who could, by mere eloquent 
 bullying, hypnotize his audiences into be- 
 lieving that black was, if not white, a very 
 tender gray. 
 
 Ever since Lincoln's reentrance into pol- 
 itics it had been a foregone conclusion that 
 he would contest Douglas's reelection in 
 1858, and it must be his business in this 
 campaign to point out the difference be- 
 tween white and gray of any kind. 
 
 Douglas had returned to Illinois with a 
 quarrel with President Buchanan on his 
 
 118 
 
ANEW CANDIDATE 
 
 hands in addition to his senatorial fight. 
 He had staked his pohtical future on his 
 theory of Popular Sovereignty, while the 
 administration had advanced far beyond 
 that ground, and now proposed to adopt the 
 Lecompton Constitution and make Kansas 
 a slave State whether it would or no. This 
 quarrel, added to his fame as a speaker, 
 drew such crowds to his meetings that mere 
 numbers and enthusiasm seemed likely to 
 drown all intelligent discussion. It was to 
 offset this that Lincoln sent Douglas his 
 challenge to joint debate. 
 
 Mr. Norman B. Judd, who carried his 
 note to Douglas, once told my father that 
 Lincoln asked his advice about sending the 
 challenge, but did it in such a way that 
 Mr. Judd saw his mind was fully made up. 
 Mr. Judd therefore told him he thought it 
 would be a good thing. " He then sat 
 down in my office and wrote that note," Mr. 
 Judd continued. " After I got the note I 
 had very hard work to find Douglas. I 
 
 119 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hunted for him for three days before I got 
 a chance to present it to him. When I did 
 so finally it made him very angry ; so much 
 so that he almost insulted me. ' What do 
 you come to me with a thing like this for ? ' 
 he asked, and indulged in other equally ill- 
 tempered remarks." 
 
 But to refuse would mean instant loss of 
 prestige, and he named the seven towns of 
 Ottowa, Freeport, Jonesboro', Charleston, 
 Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, and dates 
 extending through August, September, and 
 October, as places and times of meeting. 
 
 The Democrats jubilantly predicted an 
 easy victory. Lincoln's friends, on the 
 other hand, were not altogether sanguine, 
 and not a few Republicans of national rep- 
 utation, like Horace Greeley of the New 
 York Tribune, openly favored Douglas's 
 reelection, on the ground that his quarrel 
 with the administration was only a first step 
 toward complete political regeneration. 
 
 Lincoln was sensitive to this undercur- 
 120 
 
A NEW CANDIDATE 
 
 rent. It pained him that his local party 
 friends doubted him, and it pained him still 
 more that men of prominence were willing 
 to jeopardize a principle for the sake of 
 Douglas's brilliant reputation. 
 
 Both physically and intellectually the 
 campaign proved unusually strenuous. In 
 addition to the seven great debates each 
 candidate made engagements to speak at 
 meetings of his own, sometimes at several 
 meetings a day. As Illinois is a long 
 State, this necessitated constant traveling. 
 Douglas had a special train, gaily deco- 
 rated, and appropriately besprinkled with 
 campaign emblems and mottoes. Lincoln, 
 less given to display, and less plentifully 
 supplied with funds, used any mode of 
 conveyance that offered — farm wagon, 
 freight train, or local — his own engine 
 having to pull up on a siding while his 
 rival's special flashed by in a whirl of cin- 
 ders and a roar of campaign noise. 
 
 Processions and fireworks, music and 
 121 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 banners, greeted each in turn, until it 
 seemed that the whole State had turned out 
 to hear the debate of these intellectual 
 giants. In the northern counties, settled 
 originally by people from New England, 
 sentiment favored Lincoln ; the southern 
 end upheld Douglas in his theory that 
 slavery was not a moral issue, but purely 
 a local question. 
 
 In their very first debate, in the north- 
 ern end of the State, Douglas, quick to 
 seize an advantage, asked his antagonist 
 a series of questions, avowedly designed to 
 bring forth answers which would make him 
 unpopular " down in Egypt " as the pro- 
 slavery end of the State was called. At 
 their second meeting Lincoln answered 
 these frankly and fully, and in return asked 
 Douglas four questions, the second of which 
 was whether, in his opinion, the people of a 
 United States territory could, in any law- 
 ful way, against the wish of any citizen 
 of the United States, exclude slavery be- 
 
 122 
 
A NEW CANDIDATE 
 
 fore that territory became a State. If 
 Douglas answered " No," he would please 
 the South, at the cost of denying his 
 own theory of Popular Sovereignty. If he 
 stood by his theory and answered " Yes," 
 he might win the senatorship, but in doing 
 so he would make bitter enemies of all the 
 Democrats in the South. 
 
 As he had done before, in sending the 
 challenge, Lincoln first made up his mind 
 to ask this question, and then consulted his 
 friends. Mr. Judd and one or two others 
 made a hurried journey and stormed the 
 hotel bedroom where their candidate was 
 catching a few hours' sleep, waking him 
 at two in the morning to implore him not 
 to ask it, or at least to modify Its form. 
 " If you ask it you can never be Senator," 
 they assured him. The rescue party had 
 its journey for its pains. Lincoln, good 
 natured but unmoved, sitting in scanty dis- 
 habille on the edge of the bed from which 
 he had just been routed, unconscious alike 
 
 123 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of anything remarkable in his personal ap- 
 pearance or of anything unusual in his 
 mental attitude, replied: 
 
 " Gentlemen, I am killing larger game. 
 If Douglas answers, he can never be Presi- 
 dent ; and the battle of 1860 is worth a 
 hundred of this." 
 
 Yet, in spite of his wonderful political 
 insight, there is no reason to suppose he 
 foresaw his own prominence in the battle 
 of 1860. His power of analysis could 
 cut mercilessly through Douglas's most in- 
 volved and fantastic arabesques of argu- 
 ment, but neither his logic nor his poet's 
 vision was far-reaching enough to see the 
 place he was to hold in the history and 
 the hearts of his native land. 
 
 " In that day I shall fight in the ranks," 
 he wrote his friend Judd; for Douglas 
 answered " Yes," and in spite of Lincoln's 
 majority of 3821 in the popular vote, an 
 antiquated apportionment gave the legis- 
 
 124 
 
ANEW CANDIDATE 
 
 laturc, and consequently the senatorship, 
 to the Democrats. 
 
 Though disappointed, Lincoln was still 
 serene. " I am glad I made the late race," 
 he wrote another friend. " It gave me a 
 hearing on the great and durable question 
 of the age, which I could have had in no 
 other way; and though I now sink out of 
 view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I 
 have made some marks which will tell for 
 the cause of civil liberty long after I am 
 gone." 
 
 Lincoln really wanted to be Senator. "^ 
 He told a friend after the Presidency was J 
 practically his, that he would rather have / 
 a full term in the Senate than four years 
 In the White House. Douglas was willing ^ 
 to play the political game to the verge of ) 
 sharp practice in order to become Presi-/ 
 dent. An ironical Fate — or our coun- V 
 try's beneficent Providence — gave each \ 
 the office desired by the other. By a J 
 
 125 _^ 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 further irony of Fate it was Douglas him- 
 self who prolonged interest in the sena- 
 torial contest until it merged into the 
 Presidential campaign. Having gained his 
 senatorship he started on a tour of the 
 slave States to make his peace with South- 
 ern voters ; and in every speech he took 
 pains to allude to Lincoln as the champion 
 of Abolitionism, and to his views as the 
 platform of the Republican party. In 
 this way Lincoln was kept before the pub- 
 lic as an authority. " You are like Byron 
 who woke up one morning to find himself 
 famous. People want to know about you," 
 a Chicago editor wrote him. 
 
 The Alleghanies still separated East 
 from West in February, 1860, when Lin- 
 coln went to New York to deliver his 
 Cooper Institute speech. There were still 
 people who thought of the men across the 
 mountains as incessantly wielding bowie- 
 knives. They had heard of Mr. Lincoln's 
 extraordinary height, of his story-telling, 
 
 126 
 
A NEW CANDIDATE 
 
 something of his early struggles. Part of 
 his audience that night came expecting to 
 see a mountebank ; part from a keen inter- 
 est in his speeches as reported in the news- 
 papers. All were intensely curious. He, 
 on his part, was equally curious to test the 
 effect of his words on a representative 
 Eastern audience such as filled Cooper In- 
 stitute to overflowing. 
 
 His hearers saw a very tall man with a 
 sad, strongly marked face, perfectly self- 
 possessed, who began his address quietly 
 and soberly, as though he were addressing 
 a court; who told not a single story, and 
 who used so few gestures that, as one of 
 his auditors expressed it, the speech might 
 almost have been delivered from the head 
 of a barrel. Yet the impressive earnest- 
 ness of his manner, the power and closeness 
 of his reasoning, and the fairness of all the 
 conclusions he drew, held their absorbed 
 attention. Next morning's papers showed 
 that his speech had taken New York by 
 
 127 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 storm. In New England, where he made 
 a short tour before returning home, he 
 was heard with equal interest by working- 
 men and college professors. The first 
 recognized him as one of themselves ; the 
 latter marveled at his finished literary 
 style. Only those who dreamed of bowie- 
 knives went away disappointed. 
 
 Lincoln's political astuteness saved him 
 from one pitfall of politicians — allowing 
 their friends to speak of them too soon 
 as Presidential possibilities. It was only 
 a few months before the actual nomination 
 that he sanctioned the use of his name, and 
 he did it then more with an idea of strength- 
 ening him in some future contest with 
 Douglas, than with reference to either 
 place on the National ticket. Before go- 
 ing East to deliver his Cooper Institute 
 speech, however, he had become an avowed 
 candidate. 
 
 Local quarrels made It appear doubtful 
 for a time if he could secure the delega- 
 
 128 
 
A NEW CANDIDATE 
 
 tion from his own State. As failure in 
 this would be unfortunate for his sena- 
 torial hopes, as well as for the more im- 
 mediate enterprise, his presence at the 
 Illinois State convention was deemed ad- 
 visable, and he was in the hall as a spec- 
 tator when John Hanks and a companion 
 marched in bearing the rails supposed to 
 have been made by him in pioneer days. 
 
 After witnessing the furor they created, 
 he did not go to the Chicago convention. 
 He felt, he said, like the boy who had 
 " stumped " his toe, and was too big to 
 cry, and too much hurt to laugh — he 
 was too much of a candidate to attend, 
 and not enough of one to stay away. 
 
 He had his nerves well in hand, but 
 when the National Convention met, and 
 newspapers were filled with hints that his 
 knowledge of politics translated into indi- 
 cations of the drift of chances, he found 
 himself able to do little work. He seemed 
 rather discouraged, and remarked as he 
 9 129 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 threw himself down on the old office lounge, 
 that " he guessed be 'd better go back to 
 practising law." 
 
 It is said that he was playing a desul- 
 tory game of ball on a vacant lot near 
 the Journal office when news came that his 
 name was before the convention. Turning 
 to his companions with one of his queerly 
 humorous expressions, he disappeared 
 into the newspaper office, and soon started 
 for home. But progress was slow. The 
 town was too excited to allow its most 
 illustrious citizen to walk home unac- 
 costed, and he was still in the business 
 section when a boy dashed down the steps 
 of the telegraph office and charged at full 
 speed through the crowd, shouting at the 
 top of his youthful lungs, " Mr. Lincoln, 
 Mr. Lincoln, you 're nominated ! " 
 
 People thickened around him as if by 
 magic, shaking his hand and every other 
 hand within reach. For a few minutes the 
 
 130 
 
A NEW CANDIDATE 
 
 central figure seemed to forget his own 
 part in the general rejoicing — to be only 
 one of the happy cheering throng. Then, 
 excusing himself with the remark that there 
 was a little woman down on Eighth Street 
 who would be glad to hear the news, he 
 went to tell her. 
 
 Next day a committee from the Chicago 
 convention, headed by its chairman, Mr. 
 Ashmun, ranged themselves around three 
 sides of Mr. Lincoln's modest parlor to 
 formally notify him of its choice. Those 
 who had not seen him ' before eyed him 
 curiously as he stood, tall and gaunt, 
 hands folded and head bent, without visi- 
 ble embarrassment, but absolutely devoid 
 of expression, while Mr. Ashmun made his 
 little speech. 
 
 Then, looking up, the new candidate's 
 eyes and smile seemed to illumine his face 
 as though a lamp had been suddenly kin- 
 dled within, and he answered in a few well- 
 
 131 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 chosen words, ending with a hearty, 
 " Now I will no longer defer the pleasure 
 of taking each of you by the hand." Join- 
 ing Mr. Ashmun he advanced upon Gov- 
 ernor Morgan of New York, the most 
 imposing figure in the groupo As soon as 
 Mr. Ashmun made the introduction Lin- 
 coln asked his height. " Six feet three," 
 was the astonished answer, and the New 
 Yorker lapsed into disconcerting silence, 
 wondering what irrelevant question this 
 strange Presidential candidate would ask 
 next. But Lincoln's genial simplicity won 
 them all in spite of themselves, and as 
 they passed out one member of the com- 
 mittee was heard to remark to his neighbor, 
 " We might have done a more brilliant 
 thing, but we could hardly have a done a 
 better one." 
 
 In the East there was difference of 
 opinion. " We heard the result coldly 
 and sadly," Emerson confessed; and 
 Charles Francis Adams thought that no 
 
 1S2 
 
ANEW CANDIDATE 
 
 experiment so rash had been tried in the 
 whole history of our Government. Doug- 
 las, on the other hand, learning of the 
 nomination, remarked with conviction. 
 " That means business." 
 
 133 
 
VIII 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 BEING a Presidential candidate made 
 astonishingly little difference in Mr. 
 Lincoln's daily habits. More people rang 
 the bell of the plain but comfortable 
 house on Eighth Street. He opened the 
 door himself if no one else was there to 
 do it. More people stayed to dinner or 
 supper on invitation of the host or the 
 proud hostess, sitting down to a typically 
 abundant Western table. When he ap- 
 peared upon the street people came up to 
 shake his hand — but they had been doing 
 that for years. 
 
 To-day it would be impossible for a 
 man to achieve nomination without run- 
 ning the gauntlet of innumerable cameras. 
 
 134 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 A gentleman who visited Springfield to 
 congratulate Mr. Lincoln " and form his 
 personal acquaintance " ventured to ask 
 him " for a good likeness." He replied 
 that he had no satisfactory picture — 
 " But then," he said, " we will walk out 
 together, and I will sit for one." Result: 
 one ambrotype ! 
 
 The headquarters of the National Com- 
 mittee remained as usual in New York. 
 No " literary bureau," or other election- 
 eering organization existed at Springfield. 
 The local telegraph office, an inconvenient 
 little apartment on the second floor of an 
 office building near the Public Square, was 
 not even enlarged. Lincoln wrote no pub- 
 lic letters, and made no set or impromptu 
 speeches, with the exception of speaking 
 a word of greeting once or twice to passing 
 street parades. Even the strictly confi- 
 dential letters in which he gave advice on 
 points in the campaign, did not exceed 
 a dozen in number. 
 
 1S5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The legislature not being in session, the 
 Governor's room in the State House was 
 set aside for his use, and here he re- 
 ceived his visitors, coming in usually be- 
 tween nine and ten o'clock in the morning, 
 bringing with him the mail he had re- 
 ceived at his own home. His office force 
 consisted of one quiet young secretary, 
 who assisted him with his correspondence 
 in the intervals of greeting visitors ; and 
 wrote wonderingly to a correspondent of 
 his own that Mr. Lincoln's mail averaged 
 as many as fifty letters a day. 
 
 Many of them, being merely congratu- 
 latory, needed no answer. Letters from 
 personal friends, Mr. Lincoln acknowl- 
 edged with his own hand; and in these 
 he showed from the first considerable con- 
 fidence of success. Governor Chase was 
 the only one of his rivals in the convention 
 to write him. His letter, among the first 
 to arrive, gave Lincoln much pleasure. 
 " Holding myself the humblest of all 
 
 136 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 those whose names were before the con- 
 vention," he wrote in reply, " I feel espe- 
 cial need of the assistance of all ; and I am 
 glad — very glad — of the indication that 
 you stand ready." 
 
 Cassius M. Clay, who had hoped to be 
 nominated for Vice-president, wrote breez- 
 ily: 
 
 Well, you have cleaned us all out. The 
 Gods favor you, and we must with good 
 grace submit. After your nomination for 
 the first post, my chances were of course 
 ruined for becoming heir to your old clothes. 
 It became necessary to choose a Vice-presi- 
 dent from the Northeast, and of Democratic 
 antecedents. But after Old Kentucky had 
 come so liberally to your rescue, I think you 
 might have complimented us with more than 
 two votes ! Still we won't quarrel with you 
 on that account. Nature does not aggregate 
 her gifts; and as some of us are better look- 
 ing men than yourself, we must cheerfully 
 award you the post of honor. 
 
 137 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Allow me to congratulate you, and believe 
 me truly devoted to your success, and com- 
 mand my poor services if needed. 
 
 One letter of congratulation, quite apart 
 from the rest, came from an old comrade 
 in the Black Hawk war. 
 
 Respected Sir: In view of the intimacy 
 that at one time subsisted between you and 
 me, I deem it my duty as well as privilege, 
 now that the intensity of the excitement of 
 recent transactions is a little passed from 
 you and from me, after the crowd of con- 
 gratulations already received from many 
 friends, also to offer you my heartfelt gratu- 
 lation on your very exalted position in the 
 great Republican party. No doubt but that 
 you will become tired of the flattery of cring- 
 ing selfish adulators. But I think you will 
 know that what I say I feel. For the at- 
 tachment in the Black Hawk campaign while 
 we messed together with Johnston, Faucher, 
 and Wyatt, when we ground our coffee in the 
 same cup with the hatchet handle — baked 
 
 138 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 our bread on our ramrod around the same 
 fire — ate our fried meat off the same piece 
 of elm bark — slept in the same tent every 
 night — traveled together by day and by 
 night in search of the savage foe — and to- 
 gether scoured the tall grass on the battle- 
 ground of the skirmish near Gratiot's Grove 
 in search of the slain — with very many in- 
 cidents too tedious to name — and consum- 
 mated in our afoot and canoe journey home, 
 must render us incapable of deception. 
 Since the time mentioned, our pursuits have 
 called us to operate a little apart; yours, as 
 you formerly hinted, to a course of political 
 and legal struggle; mine to agriculture and 
 medicine. The success that we have both 
 enjoyed, I am happy to know, is very en- 
 couraging. I am also glad to know, although 
 we must act in vastly different spheres, that 
 we are enlisted for the promotion of the 
 same great cause — the cause which, next to 
 revealed religion (which is humility and 
 love) is most dear, the cause of Liberty, as 
 set forth by true Republicanism and not rank 
 abolitionism. 
 
 139 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Then let us go on in the discharge of duty, 
 trusting for aid to the Great Universal Ruler. 
 Yours truly, George M. Harrison. 
 
 Among the letters were many requests 
 for his opinion on points of party doc- 
 trine. For these he prepared a polite form, 
 explaining why he could not comply. 
 There were also many letters of advice. 
 William Cullen Bryant, whom we are wont 
 to consider a poet rather than a politician, 
 wrote with " the frankness of an old cam- 
 Ipalgner," to warn him against making 
 speeches or promises — even to be chary 
 of kind words. Joshua R. GIddings elo- 
 quently recommended John Quincy Adams 
 as the model for an untried Westerner to 
 follow. Such letters Lincoln answered 
 with modest sincerity. " I appreciate the 
 danger against which you would guard 
 me," he wrote Bryant, " nor am I wanting 
 in the purpose to avoid it. I thank you 
 for the additional strength your words give 
 me to maintain that purpose." 
 
 140 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 Requests for details of his personal life, 
 to be used in campaign biographies, were 
 refused as a rule ; but since " lives " were 
 sure to be published, Lincoln made excep- 
 tions and wrote with his own hand two 
 short biographical sketches. The longer 
 of these, covering several sheets of legal- 
 cap, was turned over to one William Dean 
 Howells, then unknown to fame, who wrote 
 from it a Life of Abraham Lincoln which 
 served its purpose and was speedily for- 
 gotten. A cautious well-wisher sent the 
 candidate confidential word that the proof- 
 sheets must really be searchingly examined. 
 He was careful to certify to the young 
 gentleman's exquisite literary taste, but 
 hinted darkly that his anti-slavery views 
 might color the work. Needless to say 
 Mr. Lincoln did not appoint a committee 
 of revision ; and so far as is known, Mr. 
 Howells's contribution to the campaign did 
 not lose the Republican candidate any 
 votes. 
 
 141 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 After two months had gone by, and 
 Lincoln had received no word from his 
 companion on the ticket, he sent him the 
 following characteristic little note : 
 
 Hon. Hannibal Hamlin^ 
 
 My Dear Sir: It appears to me that 
 you and I ought to be acquainted^ and ac- 
 cordingly I write this as a sort of introduc- 
 tion of myself to you. You first entered the 
 Senate during the single term I was a mem- 
 ber of the House of Representatives, but I 
 have no recollection that we were introduced. 
 I shall be pleased to receive a line from you. 
 
 The prospect of Republican success now 
 appears very flattering, so far as I can per- 
 ceive. Do you see anything to the contrary? 
 Yours truly, A. Lincoln. 
 
 The simplicity and friendliness of this 
 wera duplicated in the simplicity and 
 friendliness with which he met his visitors 
 — the neighbors who trusted him, political 
 friends who admired him, and doubters 
 come from afar to see what manner of 
 
 142 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 Westerner a freak of popular fancy had 
 made candidate of the vigorous young Re- 
 pubhcan party. They passed in and out 
 of his door all day long, and each felt in- 
 stinctively the kindness and honesty that 
 shone from his deeply furrowed face. 
 That wonderful expressive face, mirthful, 
 shrewd, melancholy, and suffused with 
 emotion by turns ; so homely in its rugged 
 uncompromising lines, so sad in moments 
 of repose; on occasion so tenderly beauti- 
 ful in expression. Neighbors who knew it 
 of old, loved it, though they would proba- 
 bly have called it ugly. Newcomers mar- 
 veled at it, but soon forgot to question if 
 it were handsome or not. 
 
 It seems odd that such a marked face 
 could have been unknown to any one seek- 
 ing him, yet there were those who met 
 Mr. Lincoln and failed to recognize him. 
 My father's notes tell of a stranger who 
 asked the way to the State House. The 
 tall man of whom he inquired said he was 
 
 143 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 going there himself and offered to act as 
 guide. Then, on reaching the Governor's 
 room, turned upon him with a merry smile 
 and quite inimitable gesture of apology, 
 saying, " I am Lincoln." 
 
 Artists got permission to paint his por- 
 trait, and set up their easels in the Gov- 
 ernor's room, doing their work as well as 
 they could for the constant interruption 
 of callers, and the marauding forays of 
 Mr. Lincoln's two little boys, who appeared 
 at intervals and got inextricably mixed 
 with the paints, to the stifled wrath of 
 the artist. Mr. Lincoln's mild, " Boys, 
 boys, you must n't meddle ! Now run 
 home and have your faces washed," 
 seemed lamentably inadequate. 
 
 Jones of Cincinnati established a sculp- 
 tor's studio near by, and made a 
 bust of Mr. Lincoln, to which the candi- 
 date referred jokingly as his " mud-head." 
 The sculptor Volk also made studies for 
 a statue. On a certain Sunday morning he 
 
 144 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 went by appointment to the house on 
 Eighth Street to make casts of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's hands. Being asked to hold a stick, 
 or something of the kind, he disappeared 
 into the woodshed, the sound of sawing was 
 heard, and he reappeared, whittling the 
 edges of a piece of broomhandle. Mr. 
 Volk explained that it was not necessary 
 to trim off the edges so carefully. " Oh, 
 well," he said, " I thought I would like to 
 have it nice." 
 
 Presents of a symbolic nature were 
 showered upon the candidate until the 
 room at the State House took on the aspect 
 of a museum. Mr. Lincoln used the axes, 
 wedges, log-chains, and other implements 
 as texts for explanations and anecdotes 
 of pioneer craft ; thus making them serve 
 a double purpose in amusing his visitors 
 and keeping the conversation away from 
 politics. 
 
 For in all this exchange of friendly 
 greeting, and under all the campaign en- 
 ^° 145 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 thusiasm, was a note of increasing anxiety. 
 The South was making ugly threats. It 
 behooved Lincoln to keep silence on party 
 questions, and even more on the problems 
 of national politics which loomed ever 
 larger and darker as the summer ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 He was begged to issue some statement 
 to allay the growing unrest in the South 
 
 — to say something to reassure the men 
 " honestly alarmed." " There are no such 
 men," he answered stoutly. " It is the 
 trick by which the South breaks down 
 every Northern man. If I yielded to their 
 entreaties I would go to Washington with- 
 out the support of the men who now sup- 
 port me. I would be as powerless as a 
 block of buckeye wood. The honest men 
 
 — you are talking of honest men — will 
 find in our platform everything I could say 
 now, or which thej^ would ask me to say." 
 
 So he went on talking pleasantries and 
 pioneer days to his visitors, watching 
 
 146 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 meanwhile the ever-growing menace be- 
 hind the circle of their friendly faces. 
 
 The anxiety took on a personal note. In 
 October his secretary wrote : " Among the 
 many things said to Mr. Lincoln by his 
 visitors there is nearly always an expressed 
 hope that he will not be so unfortunate 
 as were Harrison and Taylor, to be killed 
 off by the cares of the Presidency — or 
 as is sometimes hinted, by foul means. It 
 is astonishing how the popular sympathy 
 for Mr. Lincoln draws fearful forebodings 
 from these two examples, which, after all, 
 were only a natural coincidence. Not only 
 do visitors mention the matter, but a great 
 many letters have been written to Mr. 
 Lincoln on the subject." 
 
 Another manifestation of the same feel- 
 ing was noted by the Reverend Albert Hall, 
 one of the pastors of Springfield, as he sat 
 in the Governor's room, waiting to speak 
 to Mr. Lincoln. " Several weeks ago," he 
 wrote, " two country boys came along the 
 
 147 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dark passage that leads to his room. One 
 of them looked in at the door, and then 
 called to his fellow behind, saying, ' Come 
 on, he is here.' The boys entered and he 
 spoke to them. Immediately one of them 
 said that it was reported in their neighbor- 
 hood that he (Mr. Lincoln) had been 
 poisoned, and their father had sent them 
 to see if the report was true. ' And,' said 
 the boy with all earnestness, ' Dad says 
 you must look out and eat nothing only 
 what your old woman cooks for you — 
 and Mother says so too ! ' " 
 
 On election day the excitement under 
 which Springfield labored reached its 
 height about three o'clock in the afternoon, 
 when the candidate himself appeared in 
 the upper room in the Court House where 
 the voting took place. He had been recog- 
 nized in the street, and even the distribu- 
 tors of Democratic tickets had swung their 
 hats and shouted with the rest. 
 
 As many as his townsmen as could, fol- 
 148 
 
THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 
 
 lowed him through the halls and up the 
 stairs, forcing themselves into the room as 
 he went to the voting table and deposited 
 the straight Republican ticket, from which 
 his own name had been erased. A shout 
 went up as he turned again toward the 
 door. Hemmed in as he was by friends 
 and enthusiasm, he could only take off his 
 hat, and smile as he worked his way slowly 
 out of the room. " And when he smiles 
 heartily," the local newspaper account 
 added, " there is something in it good to 
 see." 
 
 That night, after the returns began to 
 come in, excitement rose again in Spring- 
 field. Good news, first from near-by pre- 
 cincts, then from farther away, set the 
 crowds to cheering. Over in the lighted 
 State House men began to shout and dance, 
 and in a room across the way their wives 
 and daughters dispensed smiles and good 
 things to eat. 
 
 Lincoln meanwhile sat alone in the little 
 149 
 
ABRAHAIM LINCOLN 
 
 telegraph office, reading the returns as 
 they were handed to him. Little by little 
 accumulating majorities reported from all 
 directions, convinced him of Republican 
 victory. With this conviction there fell 
 upon him an overwhelming, almost crush- 
 ing sense of his coming responsibilities. 
 The noise of rejoicing broke into the 
 room in waves of ever increasing sound; 
 but the successful . candidate sat on alone, 
 with head bowed, his deep-lined face sad 
 and set — - looking into the future. 
 
 150 
 
IX 
 
 THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 N that hour Lincoln completed one of 
 the great and characteristic acts of 
 his life — the choice of his cabinet. He 
 resolved to make his four principal rivals, 
 Seward and Chase and Cameron and Bates, 
 his chief advisers. The audacity and un- 
 worldliness of it are alike staggering. 
 
 Whether he already felt within him a 
 power to govern men, or whether he did it 
 from loyal obedience to the principles of 
 representative government, knowing that 
 nowhere else could he find men so truly 
 representing the different elements out of 
 which the Republican party had been made, 
 he deliberately chose to gather them about 
 
 151 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 him and ignore the personal questions such 
 an act must precipitate. 
 
 Then followed the troubled months pre- 
 ceding his inauguration, a season for him 
 of anxiety and growth, in which he passed 
 from his second phase of teacher, to his 
 third of ruler and magistrate. 
 
 The South had made ugly threats be- 
 fore the election, now it prepared to carry 
 them out. South Carolina passed its Or- 
 dinance of Secession ; and one by one the 
 other Cotton States followed her example. 
 Officers of the army and navy began giving 
 up the Government property in their 
 charge. The administration at Washing- 
 ton seemed bound in a fatal lethargy; 
 while Lincoln, who saw need for instant 
 action, could do nothing — would be pow- 
 erless until after the fourth of March. 
 
 He did not doubt either the duty or 
 the ability of the Government to maintain 
 its own integrity. " That," he said, " is 
 not the ugly point in the matter. The 
 
 152 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 ugly point is the necessity of keeping the 
 Government together by force, as ours 
 should be a government of fraternity." 
 
 In December his secretary brought him 
 a rumor that Buchanan had ordered Major 
 Anderson to give up Fort Moultrie if it 
 should be attacked. 
 
 " If that is true, they ought to hang 
 him ! " Lincoln exclaimed, and went on to 
 say that only the day before he had noti- 
 fied General Scott to be prepared to hold 
 or re-take the forts immediately after the 
 Inauguration. " There can be no doubt 
 that in any event that is good ground to 
 live and die by," he said. 
 
 Before the end of the year he began 
 receiving notes offering the services of 
 State militia to uphold National authority. 
 But nobody wanted war. " Compromise " 
 was the word on every lip. Letters of 
 advice came to him, thick and fast. His 
 visitors increased in numbers and impor- 
 tance. The Chenery House, where most 
 
 153 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of them stayed, was so crowded with 
 strangers that "dinner," as the young 
 secretary sadly remarked, " is worth 
 scrambHng for." 
 
 Lincoln was urged to make up his cab- 
 inet of " conservative men," one or more of 
 them from the South. The difficulty of 
 doing this he showed with unsparing logic 
 in a little unsigned editorial printed in the 
 Springfield Journal, 
 
 " First. Is it known that any such 
 gentleman of character would accept a 
 place in the cabinet? 
 
 " Second. If yea, on what terms does 
 he surrender to Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Lin- 
 coln to him, on the political differences 
 between them; or do they enter upon the 
 administration in open opposition to each 
 other.?" 
 
 Affairs of national importance, trivial 
 
 tasks, and this great menace filled his days 
 
 like the interwoven details of some bad 
 
 dream. His cabinet had been decided upon 
 
 154 
 
Jamife anb §mte of i\t ^xmkvA ©led : 
 
 HON. A. LINCOLN. 
 
 MRS. LINCOLN AND TWO CHILDREN. 
 
 ROBT. T. LINCOLN. 
 DR. W. S. WALLACE, 
 
 LOCKWOOD TODD 
 
 "■uarnKTaE. 
 
 JOHN G. NICOLAY, Esor., Private Secretary. 
 JOHN M. HAY, Esqr.. A ?sistant Secretary, 
 HON. N. B. JUDD, of III nois, 
 liON. DAVID DAVIS, ot Illinois, 
 COL. E. V. SUMNER, U ,S. A. 
 MAJ. D. HUNTER, U. iS. A. 
 
 CAPT. G. W. HAZZARD. U. S. A. 
 COL. E. E. ELLSWORTH, of New York. 
 COL. WARD H. LAMON, of Illinois. 
 J. M. BURGESS, Esq., of Wisconsin. 
 GEO. 0. LATHAM. 
 
 W. S. WOOD. Superintendent of Arrangement!), 
 
 BURNETT FORBES, Assistant Superintendent of Arrangements. 
 
 Party accompanying Lincoln on the Journey from Springfield 
 
 to Washington 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 in his own mind; but many letters and 
 interviews, and the exercise of much tact 
 were necessary in offering these appoint- 
 ments. His inaugural had to be written, 
 and its tenor kept secret from the news- 
 paper men who dogged his footsteps. His 
 private affairs must be put in order; the 
 details of his journey to Washington de- 
 cided upon; and in addition, he had to 
 find time and grace to appear unhurried 
 and agreeable with even his least desirable 
 callers — like the " regular genuine Se- 
 cessionist " who sat twirling his hat in his 
 hands, half inchned to hide its blue cock- 
 ade, until Lincoln took pity on him, en- 
 gaged him in bantering conversation, and 
 sent him away with a copy of the Lincoln- 
 Douglas Debates under his arm; while a 
 mannerless and humorless Yankee across 
 the room, snarled, and evidently longed for 
 a fight. 
 
 Lincoln found time to pay a visit of 
 farewell to his stepmother in Coles 
 
 155 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 County; and on the day before starting 
 for Washington, appeared at his old law 
 office to go over matters of business with 
 his partner Mr. Herndon. After they had 
 finished their talk he threw himself down 
 on the old lounge, and for a while neither 
 spoke. He seemed to be passing in review 
 the incidents of his law practice; but he 
 was neither sad nor sentimental. Pres- 
 ently he began to speak of amusing 
 things that had happened on the Eighth 
 Circuit. It was only as he was taking his 
 leave that he paused on the threshold, and 
 with a sudden change of tone, asked that 
 the office sign be allowed to hang undis- 
 turbed. " Give our clients to understand 
 that the election of a President makes no 
 difference," he said. " If I live I 'm com- 
 ing back sometime, and we '11 go right on 
 practising law, as if nothing had hap- 
 pened." 
 
 But how deeply he was moved by this 
 departure from his old home, his speech 
 156 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 of farewell, made from the platform of 
 the train, as his neighbors stood uncov- 
 ered in the falling snow, amply testified. 
 There was in it a sadness and a pathos 
 almost prophetic. 
 
 " My friends : No one not in my situ- ! 
 ation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness '^ 
 at this parting. To this place, and the 
 kindness of these people, I owe everything. 
 Here I have lived a quarter of a century, 
 and have passed from a young to an old 
 man. Here my children have been born, 
 and one is buried. I now leave, not know- 
 ing when or whether ever I may return, 
 with a task before me greater than that 
 which rested upon Washington. Without 
 the assistance of that Divine Being who 
 ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With 
 that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in 
 Him who can go with me, and remain 
 with you, and be everywhere for good, let 
 us confidently hope that all will yet be 
 well. To His care commending you, as I 
 
 157 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hope in your prayers you will commend 
 me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 
 
 It was true that he went to assume a 
 responsibility " greater than that which 
 rested upon Washington," yet the glamour 
 of that journey with its cheering thousands, 
 when the train seemed to be rushing 
 through one continuous crowd, and every 
 throat was calling his name, might have 
 justified even a modest man in the belief 
 that he was to have an easy task. Lin- 
 coln accepted the acclaim in his heart, as 
 he acknowledged it in his speeches, as a 
 welcome from the people to their chief 
 magistrate. 
 
 His personal relation to the throngs was 
 one of joyous comradeship. A crowd of 
 clamorous enthusiastic American citizens 
 drew him irresistibly. At every halt he 
 was met by eager demands for a speech, 
 yet it was manifestly impossible for him to 
 speak everywhere. At first he gave himself 
 up unreservedly to the various committees 
 
 158 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 which tumbled into his car at every city 
 and State line, and tried to drag him forth 
 even before the train had come to a halt. 
 But experience showed that this was fool- 
 hardy. In the mad push and crush and 
 confusion a false start not only hope- 
 lessly dislocated the official program, but 
 endangered life and limb. Major Hunter 
 of his suite received serious injuries from 
 mere pressure of the crowd. Lincoln 
 learned to sit quietly in his car till told 
 that preparations had been deliberately 
 completed. But it was easy to see that 
 this cost him both effort and pain. His 
 sympathy with the people made him shrink 
 from any protest against these eager first 
 greetings; and though his judgment bade 
 him refuse the popular calls for his pres- 
 ence outside, his heart and feelings were 
 with the shouting multitude. 
 
 At Indianapolis, the first stopping- 
 place, he struck the key-note of his duty 
 and theirs in the coming crisis. " The 
 
 159 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 maintenance of this government," he de- 
 clared, " is your business, and not mine. 
 I wish you to remember, now and forever, 
 that if the Union of these States and the 
 liberties of this people shall be lost, it is 
 but little to any one man of fifty-two years 
 of age, but a great deal to the thirty mil- 
 lions of people who inhabit these United 
 States and to their posterity in all coming 
 time. It is your business to rise up and 
 preserve the Union and liberty for your- 
 selves, and not for me." 
 
 This was not the usual complimen- 
 tary oratory. It was a blast of cool logic, 
 and had in it a ring of authority. Already 
 he was the ruler. In Douglas's bullying 
 tones these words might have sounded like 
 a threat. But spoken with Lincoln's deep 
 earnestness, the reasonableness of his posi- 
 tion was manifest, and his auditors felt 
 sure he would aid them to the utmost in 
 their efforts to preserve the Union for 
 themselves and their children. 
 
 160 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 Whenever time would permit, public ev- 
 euing receptions were arranged ; but these 
 functions, added to the day's fatigue of 
 travel and official ceremony, were a serious 
 tax upon his strength. His friends urged 
 him to stand where he could bow to the 
 passers-by, instead of shaking hands. The 
 experiment was tried, but he speedily re- 
 belled. It changed live personal contact 
 into meaningless show. He seemed to be 
 on exhibition like some wild animal, and 
 felt separated by an enormous chasm from 
 the people with whom it was his duty, now, 
 more than ever before, to come into close 
 relation. This was worse than any amount 
 of fatigue, and he returned to the old 
 way, where a cordial grasp of the hand, 
 and a fitting word established instantane- 
 ous sympathy. 
 
 The experiences of the first day devel- 
 oped both the enthusiasm and the diffi- 
 culties of the journey. A letter written 
 that night told of the crowds. " The 
 " l6l 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 house is literally jammed full of people. 
 Three or four ladies and as many gentle- 
 men have even invaded the room assigned 
 to Mr. Lincoln ; while outside the door I 
 hear the crowd grumbling and shouting in 
 almost frantic endeavor to get to another 
 parlor at the door of which Mr. Lincoln 
 stands shaking hands with the multitude. 
 It is a severe ordeal for us, increased ten- 
 fold for him." 
 
 But the letter said nothing about Mr. 
 Lincoln's greatest ordeal that day, which 
 was nothing less than the loss of his inau- 
 gural address. It had been written and 
 printed with the utmost secrecy before 
 leaving Springfield ; but with curious opti- 
 mism Mr. Lincoln placed it for the jour- 
 ney in a little old-fashioned black oil-cloth 
 carpet-bag, which he gave in charge of his 
 eldest son, Robert, without telling him 
 what the bag contained. 
 
 To Robert, full of the exuberant care- 
 162 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 lessness of eighteen, the trip seemed much 
 more a triumphal progress than to his 
 father. In the recent campaign he had 
 come in for a certain amount of notice as 
 the "Prince of Rails," a pendant to his 
 father's sobriquet, "The Illinois Rail- 
 Splitter"; and at every stopping-place 
 a group of " the boys " stood ready to 
 seize upon him and do the honors after 
 their own capricious fashion. 
 
 At Indianapolis, partly from inexperi- 
 ence on the part of the travelers, partly 
 from insufficient police control, only a por- 
 tion of the suite reached the carriages in- 
 tended for them. The rest, including 
 Robert, had to force their way, luggage in 
 hand, as best they could, to their hotel. 
 Even so they reached it long before the 
 others, who were being conscientiously 
 driven through the streets in procession. 
 No sooner had Mr. Lincoln arrived and 
 worked his way through the packed corri- 
 
 163 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dors to his room, than he was called out 
 again, to address the crowd from a bal- 
 cony. 
 
 When at last he had time to think of 
 the little black bag, Robert was not to 
 be found. Feverish inquiries developed 
 that he was off with " the boys," and still 
 more time elapsed before he could be lo- 
 cated and brought back. To his father's 
 impetuous questions he replied with bored 
 and injured virtue that having arrived in 
 the confusion, with no room to go to, he 
 had handed the bag to the hotel clerk — 
 after the usual manner of travelers. 
 
 " And what did the clerk do with it ? " 
 his father asked. 
 
 " It is on the floor behind the counter," 
 was the complacent answer. 
 
 Visions of his inaugural in all the morn- 
 ing papers floated before the President- 
 elect, as without a word he threw open 
 his door and began making his way 
 through the crowded halls to the office. 
 
 164 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 One single stride of his long legs swung 
 him across the clerk's desk, and he fell 
 upon the small mountain of luggage accu- 
 mulated behind it. Taking a little key 
 from his pocket, he began delving for 
 black bags, and opening such as the key 
 would unlock, while bystanders craned 
 their necks, and the horrified clerk stood 
 open-mouthed. The first half dozen 
 yielded an assortment of undesired and 
 miscellaneous articles; then he came upon 
 his own, inviolate — and Robert had no 
 more porter's duty during the rest of the 
 trip. 
 
 It was not the least of the strange con- 
 trasts in Mr. Lincoln's career, that after 
 the enthusiasm and acclamations of this 
 journey, he was forced to enter Washing- 
 ton secretly, under cover of night. News 
 of the plot against his life, coming from 
 two sources, equally trustworthy, was too 
 serious to disregard; and though he was 
 averse to such a course, believing that 
 
 165 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 " assassination of public officers is not an 
 American crime," he was too impartial and 
 just to deny that this was no longer a 
 question of his personal desires, or even 
 of his private life, but of the orderly 
 transmission of authority. 
 
 When it became known that the Presi- 
 dent-elect had entered the Nation's capital 
 in such manner, great was the wonder 
 and the criticism. The town was semi- 
 Southern, and not at all inclined to greet 
 the newcomer with open arms. This act 
 gave another peg upon which to hang 
 criticism. Stanton, with a world of ma- 
 lignity in his tone, spoke of the way Lin- 
 coln " crept into Washington." Others 
 called it " that smuggling business." No 
 one seemed to reflect that it required more 
 courage for a brave man to conquer his 
 natural aversion to such a course than to 
 follow his impulse and disregard the warn- 
 ing. 
 
 The Presidential party was quartered 
 166 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 at Willard's. " The original plan was to 
 go to a private house which had been 
 rented for the occasion," we learn by a 
 letter from one of the suite. " This plan 
 having been changed, and no rooms having 
 been reserved, all the party except Mr. 
 and Mrs. Lincoln have but sorry accom- 
 modations." 
 
 Here during the week before inaugura- 
 tion Lincoln received visits of ceremony 
 from President Buchanan and the outgoing 
 cabinet, from his rivals in the recent cam- 
 paign, Douglas and Breckinridge, from 
 the fruitless Peace Congress then in ses- 
 sion, which came in a body, headed by its 
 chairman, Ex-president Tyler, and from 
 many lesser social and political lights. 
 Here also, when such formalities were not 
 in progress, the crowded hotel parlors, 
 so thronged " as to make it seem like hav- 
 ing a party every night," turned a battery 
 of not altogether friendly eyes upon the 
 President-elect and his suite. His sim- 
 
 167 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 plicity of manner and his apt replies al- 
 ternately amused and impressed the on- 
 lookers. 
 
 Douglas especially, critical and a bit 
 malicious, yet full of State pride, and 
 of admiration for Lincoln personally, 
 watched him. " He has not yet got out 
 of Springfield," he said. " He has his 
 wife with him. He does not know that he 
 is President-elect of the United States, sir. 
 He does not see that the shadow he casts 
 is any bigger now than it was last year — 
 but he will soon find it out when he is 
 once inside the White House." 
 
 " There is not the slightest apprehen- 
 sion about trouble at the Inauguration — 
 or any other time. That cloud has blown 
 over," one of the suite wrote home. That 
 was the universal hope, yet General Scott 
 saw to it that all possible precautions were 
 taken. Military preceded and followed 
 and trotted in double files on each side of 
 the carriage in which the two Presidents 
 
 168 
 
TO THE COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS 
 
 For the RECEPTION OF THE PRESIDENT ELECT : 
 
 GENTLEMEN:— 
 
 AW : , ,u • A ^^PSf^'^^'Sf with the responsibility of the safe conduct of the President elect, 
 and his suite to then- destination, I deem jt my duty, for special reasons which you will readilv rnm 
 prehend, to oner the lollowmg suggestions : ■' ^"'"" 
 
 First: The President elect will under no cbrciimstances attempt to pass firouch any crowd unlii 9„rh 
 arrangements are made as will meet the approval of Col. Ellsworth, who is charged with the rfRnnnri 
 bility of all matters of this character, and .to focilitate this, you will confera favor by piacint Tol F l»." 
 worth in communication With the chief * f your escort, immediately upon the arrival of the train. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT ELECT, 
 
 COL. LA.MON, or other Members! of his Suite, 
 
 O&e or two members of the Escort or Committee. 
 
 COL. E. V. SUMNER, U S. A., 
 MAJ. D. HUNTER. U. S. A., 
 HON. N. B. JUDD, of Illinois, 
 HON. DAVID DAVIS, of Illinois. 
 
 COL. E. E. ELLSWORTli 
 
 CAPT. HAZZAKD, 
 
 JOHN G. NICOLAY. Esq. Privule Secret arv 
 
 Member of tiie Escort, " * 
 
 ROBT. T. LINCOLN, 
 
 JOHN M. HAY, As.sistant Secretary, 
 
 Two Members of the Escoit, 
 
 The other members of the suite may be arranged at your pleasure by your committee on the cars 
 Two cairiages will be reqaired to convey Mrs. Lincoln and family and her escort from the cars. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Secretaries will require rooms contiguous to the President elect. 
 
 A private dining room with table for six or eight persons". 
 
 Mr. Wood will also require a room near the President elect, for the accommodarion of himself and 
 Secretary. 
 
 The other members of the suite will be placed as near as con venient. 
 
 For the convenience of the committee, a li.st of the names of the suite arranged in their proper order 
 is appended. 
 
 Trusting, gentiemeu, that inasmuch as we have a common purpose in tl is matter, the safety, conn 
 fort and convenience of the President elect, these suggestions will be received in the spirit in which 
 they are offered, I have the honor to be your Obedient Servant, 
 
 W S. WOOD, Superintendent. 
 
 Handbill used on Lincoln's Journey to Washington 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 rode to the Capitol on the morning of In- 
 auguration. Squads of riflemen were 
 posted on the roofs of commanding houses 
 along Pennsylvania Avenue. Cavalry 
 guarded the side-street crossings along the 
 route of the procession. There were rifle- 
 men in the windows of the Capitol ; and on 
 the brow of Capitol Hill, in a position to 
 command the approach, and also the broad 
 plaza where the out-door ceremonies took 
 place, a battery of flying artillery stood 
 ready either to thunder forth a salute, or 
 to do more deadly work. 
 
 With the mailed hand thus very thinly 
 disguised In the glove of ceremony, Lin- 
 coln was made President. Fortunately 
 there was not the slightest disturbance. 
 " A fine day and a fine display. A grati- 
 fying and glorious inauguration," was the 
 summing up sent back to Illinois. 
 
 The focus of all eyes was a group of 
 four men, representing the political past 
 and future of the country. One of them 
 
 169 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was Douglas, who had brought about the 
 repeal of the Missouri Compromise. An- 
 other was Chief Justice Taney, who had 
 announced the Dred Scott decision. A 
 third was Buchanan, whose use and misuse 
 of official power had helped on the mischief 
 born of these two acts. The fourth was 
 Lincoln, who must now bring the country 
 through the crisis they had done so much 
 to precipitate. 
 
 Very strong and vigorous he looked, in 
 contrast with the white-haired, withered 
 Buchanan. Very tall he loomed over the 
 short and stocky Douglas, who courteously 
 held his hat when he rose to dehver his 
 inaugural address. Very clear and far- 
 reaching his voice sounded over the listen- 
 ing crowd as he spoke words which could 
 not be misunderstood. 
 
 No President ever entered upon his du- 
 ties with so impartial yet so firm a declara- 
 tion of official intention. His inaugural 
 declared the Union perpetual, the Con- 
 
 170 
 
JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 
 
 stitution unbroken, ordinances of secession 
 void. He would maintain the Government 
 and execute the laws, but there would be 
 no violence or bloodshed unless forced upon 
 the National authority. " In your hands, 
 my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and 
 not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil 
 war." Then, as if this statement of fair- 
 ness and justice were too harsh, he con- 
 tinued : " I am loath to close. We are 
 not enemies but friends. We must not be 
 enemies," and so on to the end of his 
 appeal for a more perfect understanding. 
 
 A cheer greeted the conclusion. Chief 
 Justice Taney arose, and again Mr. Lin- 
 coln looked very tall and vigorous, stand- 
 ing in front of him, as he laid his hand 
 upon the open Bible and repeated, dis- 
 tinctly and deliberately, the oath of office. 
 
 The battery on the brow of the hill 
 boomed its salute. Again the people 
 cheered; and entering their carriage, the 
 withered old man, and the vigorous 
 
 171 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Westerner rode back along Pennsylvania 
 Avenue to the White House, where 
 Buchanan took cordial leave of the new 
 President, wishing him success and happi- 
 ness in his administration. 
 Success, and happiness ! 
 
 172 
 
X 
 
 EVERY-DAY LIFE AT THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 THE menace of war, which had been 
 drawing hourly nearer since the elec- 
 tion, crossed the threshold by his side. 
 Speaking to an old friend, months later, 
 Lincoln said : " Browning, of all the trials 
 I have had since I came here, none begin 
 to compare with those I had between the 
 inauguration and the fall of Fort Sumter. 
 They were so great that could I have an- 
 ticipated them, I would not have believed 
 it possible to survive them. The first 
 thing that was handed me after I entered 
 this room when I came from the inaugura- 
 tion, was the letter from Major Anderson, 
 saying that their provisions would be ex- 
 
 173 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hausted before an expedition could be sent 
 to their relief." 
 
 Before the administration was an hour 
 old the issue was upon him, yet the North 
 would talk only of compromise. Horace 
 Greeley had printed an editorial declaring 
 that the Union could not be pinned to- 
 gether with bayonets. Mercantile inter- 
 ests, fearing to lose Southern trade, clam- 
 ored loudly for concession. Buchanan had 
 apologized to Ex-president Tyler for al- 
 lowing a few soldiers to carry the flag 
 through the streets of the capital on Wash- 
 ington's birthday. Public opinion was 
 awry. To use Lincoln's own forceful 
 words, " sinners were calling the righteous 
 to repentance." In Washington men pro- 
 tested their loyalty to the new President in 
 the morning, and at night started south to 
 join the confederacy. Congress had ad- 
 journed without providing means to meet 
 the rebellion. It fell upon Lincoln, not 
 only to make momentous decisions, but to 
 
 174 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 assume responsibilities rightly belonging 
 to the legislative branch of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 For, though the fall of Fort Sumter 
 cleared the air, and drew the line sharply 
 between patriotism and treason, it precipi- 
 tated a flood of new questions — how to 
 provide troops ; how to get money to pay 
 troops ; how to choose efficient generals to 
 lead troops ; and how to answer the ques- 
 tions foreign governments were sure to ask. 
 
 Once started, from small beginnings of 
 riot and panic, and an early harvest of 
 death which seemed appalling, yet would 
 have passed unnoticed in the slaughter of 
 later campaigns, the avalanche of war 
 swept on through four interminable years. 
 After the expectation of speedy victory 
 died away, it was Lincoln's lot to watch 
 with sickening anxiety the procession of 
 unsuccessful campaigns, and to learn by 
 sad experience the deficiencies of his gen- 
 erals. 
 
 175 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The slow grinding torture of those 
 days — the thing which wore on him, body 
 and soul, and turned him from a vigorous 
 man to an old one, was not the physical 
 labor of the Presidency, imnlense as that 
 was — nor his realization of the horror 
 and waste of war, deep as that was. It 
 was seeing the need with such pitilessly 
 clear vision, grasping the vast problem 
 with the logic which made him " the ablest 
 strategist of the war," and yet being un- 
 able to infuse his own spirit and vision 
 into the men through whom the fight must 
 be made. Even his subordinates felt this. 
 His secretary longed " to get into the most 
 active and hottest part of the fight, wher- 
 ever that may be." " This being where I 
 can overlook the whole war and never be 
 in it — always threatened with danger and 
 never meeting it — constantly worked to 
 death and yet accomplishing nothing, 
 grows exceedingly irksome. It is a feel- 
 
 176 
 
Autograph Text of Address to Foreign Envoys 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 mg of duty and not of inclination which 
 keeps me here." 
 
 If these were the fcchngs of the young 
 man who kncAv he could throw himself into 
 the thick of the fight whenever he chose to 
 leave the post to which he had been as- 
 signed, how much more must have been the 
 suffering of his. chief, on whom the whole 
 crushing responsibility lay, and whom no 
 earthly power could release. No wonder 
 he said to General Schenck : " If to be 
 the head of Hell is as hard as what I have 
 to undergo here, I could find it in my heart 
 to pity Satan himself." 
 
 A memorandum in the handwriting of 
 my father, found in a sealed envelope en- 
 dorsed, " A private paper. Conversation 
 with the President, October 2, 1861," 
 though the merest skeleton of their talk, 
 shows how uncompromisingly he faced con- 
 ditions. 
 
 177 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 POLITICAL. 
 
 Fremont ready to rebel. 
 
 Chase despairing. 
 
 Cameron utterly ignorant and regardless 
 of the course of things, and the probable 
 result. Selfish and openly discourteous 
 to the President. Obnoxious to the 
 country. Incapable either of organiz- 
 ing details or conceiving and executing 
 general plans. 
 
 FINANCIAL. 
 
 Immense 
 claims left 
 -for Con- 
 gress to 
 audit. 
 
 Over-draft to-day, Oct. 2, 1861, $12,- 
 
 000,000. 
 Chase says new loan will be exhausted in 
 
 11 days. 
 
 MILITARY. 
 
 Kentucky successfully invaded. 
 Missouri virtually seized. 
 178 
 
 Credit gone at St. Louis. 
 Cincinnati. 
 Springfield. 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 October here, and instead of having a force 
 ready to descend the Mississippi, the 
 probability is that the Army of the West 
 will be compelled to defend St. Louis. 
 
 Testimony of Chase 
 
 Bates 
 the Blairs 
 
 Meigs 
 
 Gower 
 
 Gurley 
 
 Browning 
 
 Thomas, that everything in 
 the West, military and financial, is in 
 hopeless confusion. 
 
 And in view of odds like these it was his 
 duty to keep up the spirits of the country ! 
 To foster the morale of the people, without 
 which victories in the field would have been 
 as impossible as for the soldiers to breathe 
 without oxygen. The strength and natu- 
 ral buoyancy of the. man who could look 
 such situations in the face, and smile, and 
 tell stories, is difficult to comprehend. 
 
 179 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Once, nioiilJis after it happened, the 
 President told of being v/akened at night 
 at the Soldiers' Home by a general who 
 came in a panic to urge the immediate 
 flight of McClellan's army from Harri- 
 son's Landing, the soldiers to be hurried 
 away on transports, and their horses killed, 
 because it was evident they could not be 
 saved. " Thus often," said the President, 
 " I, who am not a specially brave man, 
 have had to restore the sinking courage 
 of these professional fighters in critical 
 times." 
 
 But he was only human. His early fits 
 of gloom, conquered and fought down, 
 were occasionally echoed in these moods, 
 when he seemed constrained to think aloud, 
 before a listener he could trust — not for 
 the benefit of the other's advice, but to get 
 his thought into words. Possibly also he 
 craved the listener's silent sympathy. 
 Carl Schurz wrote of such an interview, 
 and Leonard Swett told of being sent for 
 
 180 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 by Lincoln, who read letters from Ameri- 
 cans and foreigners about emancipation, 
 and then, laying the letters aside, dis- 
 cussed the question himself from many 
 points of view, without asking Mr. Swett's 
 advice, or even seeking to impress his own 
 ideas upon him. Mr. Swett felt himself 
 more an observer of the President's men- 
 tal processes than a hearer of his voice. 
 Finally he wished his visitor a safe jour- 
 ney home, and the audience was over. 
 Evidently this earlier talk with his secre- 
 tary was the outcome of another such im- 
 perative need. That it was unusual, and 
 impressive, is plain from the manner in 
 which the note was preserved. 
 
 In spite of the war, daily life went on, 
 as daily life must, in a round of incidents 
 trivial in themselves. The tragic back- 
 ground was made endurable by a great 
 hope, and against it details of common- 
 place living etched a curious, inconsequent, 
 never-ending pattern. 
 
 181 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln was servant of the people 
 equally by heart's impulse and in fulfil- 
 ment of his oath. Every hour was dedi- 
 cated to their service. His day began 
 early, and ended only when physical weari- 
 ness drove him to his bed. Frequently at 
 night he could not sleep, and rose to wan- 
 der from room to room. 
 
 At first all his time was taken up with 
 office seekers. " The grounds, halls, stair- 
 \ ways, closets, are filled with applicants, 
 who render ingress and egress difficult," 
 Secretary Seward wrote. Mr. Lincoln be- 
 gan by trying to receive these importu- 
 nates, and attend to official business, twelve 
 full hours a day. Later his reception 
 hours were limited, in theory, from ten 
 o'clock to one; but it was in theory only. 
 
 " I am looking forward with a good deal 
 of eagerness to when I shall have time to 
 at least read and write my letters in peace 
 without being haunted continually by 
 some one who ' wants to see the President 
 
 182 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 for only fvc minutes,'' At present this 
 request meets me from almost every man, 
 woman and cliild I see, whetlier by day or 
 by night, in the house, or on the street," 
 my father wrote wlien they had been in 
 Washington three weeks. 
 
 That day of leisure never came. Be- 
 fore the office-seekers had been disposed of, 
 war filled the house with a totally different 
 class of visitors — men who wanted com- 
 missions, others who wished to furnish 
 stores to the army, inventors with im- 
 proved engines of destruction, and a never- 
 ending stream of officers in search of pro- 
 motion. 
 
 Although, with the voluntary resigna- 
 tions of officials who went south to join the 
 rebellion, and the countless military ap- 
 pointments made necessary by the new 
 armies, no President has had such an in- 
 crease in the number of places at his dis- 
 posal, they were not nearly enough for the 
 hungry hordes. " Gentlemen," he said to 
 
 183 
 
^ 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a group who urged the benefit of the cli- 
 mate as additional reason for appointing 
 their candidate Commissioner to the Sand- 
 wich Islands, " I am sorry to say that 
 there are eight other applicants for the 
 place, all sicker than your man." 
 
 That was long before the days of Civil 
 Service reform, but Lincoln's ideas of fair- 
 ness gave a full equivalent. The patient 
 thoroughness he lavished on his appoint- 
 ments has inspired many reminiscences. 
 
 "What is the matter? " a friend asked 
 in alarm, coming upon him sad and de- 
 pressed. " Have you bad news from the 
 army? " 
 
 " No, it is n't the army," he replied with 
 one of his weary, humorous smiles. " It is 
 the post-office at Brownsville, Missouri." 
 
 He had steadily refused to make any 
 promises before his election. " I will go 
 to Washington, if at all, an unpledged 
 man," he declared. " Justice to all " was 
 the motto he announced to Mr. Seward 
 
 184 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 when he tendered liim the office of Secre- 
 tary of State, and he steadfastly and con- 
 sistently tried to enforce it, even down to 
 the post-office at Brownsville, Missouri. 
 
 War's toll brought an increasing num- 
 ber of applications for office on the part 
 of disabled soldiers and also of soldiers' 
 widows. "My conclusion is," he wrote 
 the Postmaster General, "that other 
 things being equal, they have the better 
 right." 
 
 Justice to all included the Government 
 as well as individuals, and prompted letters 
 like the following: 
 
 My dear Sir: I understand a bill is be- 
 fore Congress by your instigation, for taking 
 your office from the control of the Depart- 
 ment of the Interior, and considerably en- 
 larging the powers and patronage of your 
 office. The proposed change may be right 
 for aught I know, and it certainly is right for 
 Congress to do as it thinks proper in the 
 case. What I wish to say is, that if the 
 
 185 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 change is made, I do not think I can allow 
 you to retain the office; because that would 
 be encouraging officers to be constantly in- 
 triguing, to the detriment of the public 
 interest, in order to profit themselves. 
 
 In the rare cases where justice to all 
 could be combined with special favors, he 
 took particular pleasure. Having a spe- 
 cially warm spot in his heart for artists 
 and men of letters, he asked the Secretary 
 of State to " watch out " for " some of 
 those moderate-sized consulates which fa- 
 cilitate artists a little in their profession," 
 in order that he might gratify the sculptor 
 who made his " mud-head," and certain 
 other talented youths, William Dean How- 
 ells among them. It is to be observed, 
 however, that he did not direct the Secre- 
 tary of State to create opportunities — he 
 only asked him to watch for them. 
 
 One favor which he had no cause to 
 regret he granted with some reluctance. 
 
 186 
 
Cy4/V^^ II. I?<.l- 
 
 ^dcr'CC' Jy c^ J\y <y^^pA°---f /la/-^--*-*^-, />v.^rfc^^^ 
 ^^ -it?^^. ,^1-Cr /./v-Jc^ ^ Ae^. 
 
 ~> £^^ /> — o 
 
 President's Note about a Post-office Appointment, with 
 Montgomery Blair's Endorsement 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 It became evident before they left Spring- 
 field that my father would need an assist- 
 ant, and he ventured to ask that his friend, 
 John Hay, be allowed to accompany them. 
 Mr. Lincoln at first demurred : " I can't 
 take all Illinois with me ! " he said, with a 
 whimsical grimace. 
 
 Occasionally justice and common sense 
 inspired him to benevolent despotism in ap- 
 pointments as in other matters. 
 
 " Dear Sir : I personally wish Jacob 
 Freese of New Jersey to be appointed 
 colonel for a colored regiment, and this re- 
 gardless of whether he can tell the exact 
 shade of Julius Csesar's hair," was one of 
 the characteristic notes sent to Stanton. 
 It probably made the choleric Secretary of 
 War sputter with wrath, but accomplished 
 its worthy end. 
 
 Although Lincoln's manner was one of 
 almost unfailing good humor and quiet 
 tolerance, there were times when he showed 
 that his patience had limits. When the 
 
 187 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 flood of place-seekers was at its height, a 
 delegation came to urge California ap- 
 pointments which were earnestly opposed 
 bj Lincoln's early friend, Colonel E. D. 
 Baker, who had become Senator from Ore- 
 gon. The spokesman of the delegation, 
 both in his speech and in the papers he 
 presented, made bitter and criminal accu- 
 sations against Baker, which the President 
 knew to be unfounded. He intimated as 
 much, but the accuser persisted. Lincoln 
 heard him through in silence, and when he 
 had finished handed him back the papers. 
 
 " Keep them, sir," the man said. " I 
 wish you to keep them. They are yours." 
 
 "Mine to do with as I please.'^" the 
 President asked quickly. 
 
 " Yes," was the reply. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln stepped to the fireplace, 
 thrust the papers between the blazing 
 brands, and as the room was lighted by the 
 fresh flame dismissed the interviewers with 
 a stern '' Good morning, gentlemen." 
 
 188 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 One of his wearisome and unavoidable 
 tasks was signing commissions sent over 
 every day from the War and Navy De- 
 partments. Every appointment and pro- 
 motion in the regular army, as well as 
 many in the volunteer service, necessitated 
 a new commission. These, made out on 
 heavy parchment, very oily and hard to 
 write upon, would be placed on his desk in 
 piles six or eight inches high, and he would 
 sit working away at them with the patient 
 industry of a laborer sawing wood. 
 
 His correspondence also took much time, 
 though he read only about one in a hun- 
 dred of the letters addressed to him. He 
 rarely dictated. He either made a verbal 
 or written summary for his secretary, or 
 carefully wrote out the whole himself — 
 and frequently carefully copied it. All his 
 important state papers and political letters 
 were signed with his full name. His signa- 
 ture on less formal documents was " A. Lin- 
 coln." The range of his daily correspond- 
 
 180 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ence ran the whole gamut from naming 
 a baby to the most important national 
 and international affairs, and in addition 
 he made many endorsements, some of them 
 lengthy, on communications he did not 
 answer. 
 
 " O. H. P. trying to resign an office 
 which he does not hold," was one of them. 
 Another read: 
 
 " It seems to me Mr. C. knows nothing 
 about the weather in advance. He told 
 me three days ago that it would not rain 
 again till the thirtieth of April or first of 
 May. It is raining now, and has been for 
 ten hours. I cannot spare any more time 
 to Mr. C." Such notes were apt to ex- 
 press a certain finality. 
 
 Among the most beautiful of his letters 
 were those written to parents whose sons 
 had died in battle. " He bore the sorrows 
 of the nation in his heart," as John Hay 
 said. No amount of repetition could dull 
 his ears to the pitiful cry of bereavement. 
 
 190 
 

 
 
 Two Characteristic Endorsements, and a Call to a Special 
 
 Cabinet Meeting 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 When young Ellsworth, whom he knew 
 personally, was killed at Alexandria, one 
 of the first victims of the war, he not only 
 wrote to his parents, but directed that his 
 body be brought to the White House as if 
 he were his own son ; and the funeral was 
 held in the great East Room. 
 
 Gradually under the strain of responsi- 
 bility and care, his demeanor changed. 
 He was just as cordial, just as kindly; 
 but his infectious laughter was less often 
 heard; and from brooding on serious and 
 weighty things he acquired an air of de- 
 tachment. " Lincoln's prevailing mood in 
 later years was one of meditation," my 
 father wrote. " Unless engaged in con- 
 versation, the external world was a thing 
 of minor interest. Not that he was what 
 is called absentminded. He did not for- 
 get the spectacles on his nose, and his eye 
 and ear lost no sound or movement about 
 him when he sat writing in his office or 
 passed along the street. But while he 
 
 191 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 noted external incidents, they remained 
 secondary. His mind was ever busy in 
 reflection. Sometimes he would sit for an 
 hour, still as a petrified image, his soul 
 absent in the wide reahn of thought." 
 Then the entrance of a friend would sum- 
 mon his spirit back, the kindling eye 
 and quaint remark would anticipate the 
 friendly hand clasp, and wit and practical 
 common sense rule the interview. 
 
 Even a President as hard working as 
 Lincoln had to have relaxation. He used 
 to drive late in the afternoon; though this 
 could hardly be called diversion, since his 
 objective point was apt to be one of the 
 earthworks which circled Washington, or 
 one of the military hospitals. 
 
 He gave much attention to the hos- 
 pitals ; especially to the building of one 
 which should be a model; consulting the 
 doctor in charge over ingenious devices for 
 the comfort of the wounded, and paying 
 
 192 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 * 
 
 for some of them out of his own pocket. 
 He also provided flower seeds to turn the 
 square in which it stood into something less 
 dismal than a waste of clay and weeds. 
 
 In his visits to the hospitals he gave out 
 far more vitality and sympathy than he 
 gained. " There was no medicine equal 
 to the cheerfulness his visit inspired, but 
 its effect on him was saddening in the ex- 
 treme," said one who watched him on such 
 a round. 
 
 His influence upon the well was no less 
 marked than upon the sick. A nineteen- 
 year-old surgeon who was detailed to take 
 Mr. Lincoln through the hospital at City 
 Point just a week before the assassination, 
 never forgot leading him through ward 
 after ward, until finally they came to that 
 filled with sick and wounded prisoners. 
 With a feehng of patriotic duty, he said : 
 " Mr. President, you won't want to go in 
 there; they are only rebels." The Presi- 
 
 13 193 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dent stopped, and laying his large hand 
 on his shoulder gently answered, " You 
 mean Confederates." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had a quick comprehension 
 of mechanical principles, and found both 
 amusement and interest in the cloud of in- 
 ventors with devices important or vision- 
 ary, that the war brought to Washington. 
 One proposed to do away with the need for 
 bridges by giving each soldier a pair of 
 little watertight canoes, one for each foot. 
 Another had an epoch-making scheme for 
 moving artillery by means of iron-clad bal- 
 loons. Some of them obtained permission 
 to set up models in the White House base- 
 ment, and the grounds south of the Execu- 
 tive Mansion became a favorite place for 
 trying the new guns. When he could es- 
 cape from the labors of the office, or omit 
 his daily drive, Mr. Lincoln stole away to 
 watch the experiments, to take his turn at 
 the shooting, and enjoy the remarks of the 
 bystanders. He quoted with deep appre- 
 
 194* 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 elation the verdict of one man, who com- 
 demned a marvelous gun because of its 
 shght recoil. " It would not do," he said. 
 " Too much powder. A good piece of au- 
 dience should n't rekyle. If it did at all, 
 it should rekyle a little forrid." 
 
 Flag raisings and reviews became as 
 much a part of the routine as breakfast. 
 Lincoln's first Fourth of July as President 
 was marked by both these functions. 
 " One pretty incident of the review," my 
 father wrote, " was the passing of the 
 Garibaldi Guards, a regiment made up en- 
 tirely of foreigners, whose colonel's com- 
 mands in French were translated in 
 process of transmission to the men into 
 German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, and 
 several other tongues. Each man had 
 stuck a flower or a sprig of green into his 
 hat, and as the successive ranks passed the 
 President, they took them out and threw 
 them toward him, until he stood in a per- 
 fect shower of leaves and blossoms." One 
 
 195 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 wonders what became of these sons of the 
 Old World who paid floral tribute to the 
 Son of the Prairies. They were sent 
 across the Potomac, " and having an idea 
 that there was a fight ahead, marched sing- 
 ing the Marseillaise, with loaves of bread 
 stuck on the points of their bayonets " — 
 and so, out of history. 
 
 An ingenuous soldier boy wrote home to 
 his family in Maine that at the flag-raising 
 the President wore plain citizen's clothes 
 " with blue kid gloves " which were short 
 at the wrist and showed his bare arm as he 
 pulled the rope " with as much deliberation 
 as though he had been working his old flat- 
 boat down the river." 
 
 Sudden emotion choked the boy as the 
 colors floated free, and a burst of military 
 music and cheering filled the air. But it 
 was the President's smile which impressed 
 him most. " I think I should wilHngly 
 ride fifty miles to vote for him again as I 
 did last November," he wrote. 
 
 196 
 
LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 
 
 He watched the 71st New York escort 
 Mr. Lincohi back to the White House. 
 " I wish you could liave seen him march. 
 He paid httle or no attention to the music 
 of Dodworth, but paced off at an irregular 
 rate " — the pioneer gait that he never ex- 
 changed for city-bred movements — " while 
 Mr. Seward, whose arm he held, was seen 
 to keep step, his ' left foot on the down 
 beat.' " 
 
 The boy lingered near the White House 
 until he saw the President at one of the 
 windows, spyglass in hand, looking toward 
 the Old Dominion. How many times he 
 used that glass to sweep the Virginia hills ! 
 How many times he and Mr. Seward trav- 
 eled the same road, not quite in step, but 
 one in purpose! How many, many times 
 his. smile and spirit won men and women 
 as they captivated that boy ! 
 
 197 
 
XI 
 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLISr, HIS WIFE AND 
 CHIKdREN 
 
 LINCOLN was an unusually affec- 
 tionate and indulgent father. A 
 paragraph in a letter to his friend Speed 
 shows that he and his wife had the ex- 
 periences and emotions common to proud 
 parents. 
 
 We have another boy, born the 10th of 
 March. He is very much such a child as 
 Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order. 
 Bob is ** short and low/* and I expect always 
 will be. He talks very plainly — almost as 
 plainly as anybody. He is quite smart 
 enough. I sometimes fear that he is one of 
 the little rare-ripe sort that are smarter at 
 
 198 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 about five than ever after. He lias a great 
 deal of that sort of mischief that is tlie off- 
 spring of such animal spirits. Since I began 
 this letter, a messenger came to tell me Bob 
 was lost; but by the time I reached the house 
 his mother had found him and had him 
 whipped, and by now, very likely, he is run 
 away again. 
 
 The second child died in infancy, but 
 two others were born to them, both boys. 
 Their father liked to have them with him, 
 even when to others they appeared decid- 
 edly troublesome. If they swarmed too 
 persistently over his person he brushed 
 them away like gnats, but he never turned 
 them out of the room or reproved them, ex- 
 cept in the mildest manner. When they 
 began to go to school he studied with 
 them. 
 
 One of his Springfield neighbors, re- 
 calling how constantly they were in his 
 company, tells of being attracted to the 
 door one day by hearing children cry. He 
 
 199 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 saw Mr. Lincoln striding by with two of 
 his sons, both wailing loudly. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter with the 
 boys? " he asked. 
 
 " Just what is the matter with the 
 whole world," was the answer. " I 've got 
 three walnuts, and each wants two." 
 
 " Bob," the eldest, showed a grasp of 
 principles and property rights in dealing 
 with his brothers which foreshadowed suc- 
 cess in business and diplomacy. Mr. Lin- 
 coln came upon his youngest clinging like 
 a burr to Robert, and demanding a knife 
 the latter held in his hand. " Oh, let him 
 have it. Bob, to keep him quiet," he urged. 
 " No," Bob replied. " It is my knife, and 
 I need it to keep me quiet." 
 
 " He promises very well, considering we 
 never controlled him much," the father 
 wrote of this eldest son. 
 
 Wlien Lincoln was inaugurated Robert 
 had just entered Harvard. The others, 
 Wilhe and Thomas, or " Tad," aged ten 
 
 200 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 and eight, respectively, ranged lawless and 
 lovable, over the Executive iNIansIon. No 
 room was sacred from their intrusion ; no 
 conference too weighty to be broken in 
 upon by the rush of their onslaught. 
 They instituted a minstrel show in the 
 attic, and inserted dogs, cats, goats and 
 ponies into various crevices of the domestic 
 establishment. 
 
 It was the elder of these, a child of great 
 promise, bright and gentle and studious, 
 who sickened and died in February, 1862. 
 " A fine boy of eleven years, too much 
 idolized by his parents," Attorney-General 
 Bates wrote in his diary; adding that the 
 Government departments were closed on 
 the day of his funeral — the only time, 
 probably, that the death of a child has 
 been so observed in the history of our 
 country. 
 
 Lincoln allowed his bereavement to make 
 no difference in his daily tasks, and gave 
 little outward sign of his grief; but his 
 
 201 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 heart lavished its tenderness on his young- 
 est child, Tad, a merry warm-hearted 
 little lad, who interrupted his father's 
 gravest labors with impunity, and found 
 safe refuge in his office from the domestic 
 authorities. 
 
 He must have been a winning small boy, 
 in spite of his talent for keeping himself 
 and others in hot water, for even the gruff 
 Secretary of War succumbed, and in a 
 moment of indiscretion commissioned him 
 a lieutenant. Tad's next exploit was to 
 drill the household servants, and one night, 
 to relieve the regular sentries, and put 
 them all on duty. His father, thinking it 
 a good joke, refused to interfere, until the 
 small officer, wearied by his authority, fell 
 asleep, when the Commander-in-Chief of 
 the Army carried him tenderly to bed, and 
 then went downstairs and dismissed the 
 awkward squad. 
 
 The boy, running in and out among the 
 202 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 visitors waiting to see the President, be- 
 came their active champion. One day he 
 rushed into his father's office and asked 
 permission to introduce some " friends," 
 returning with a delegation Mr. Lincoln 
 had been dexterously avoiding. Once in- 
 side the door, he stopped, asked the name 
 of the oldest of the group, presented him 
 to his father, and added, " Now, Judge, 
 you introduce the rest ! " The President, 
 fairly caught, took him on his knee, kissed 
 him, told him he had introduced his friends 
 like a gentleman, and made the best of an 
 interview which could not be satisfactory 
 to either side. 
 
 Lincoln's love for children did not stop 
 with his own sons. He was greeted with 
 ecstasy by the group of grandchildren 
 who roamed over the country place of F. 
 P. Blair, Sr., a few miles from Washing- 
 ton ; and they remember to this day the 
 abandon with which he entered into their 
 
 203 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 games, how long his strides were, and how 
 far his coat tails sailed out behind him as 
 
 he ran. 
 
 When children came to him on business 
 in the Executive Office, as they sometimes 
 did, he listened to them with the same 
 courtesy accorded their elders, never deny- 
 ing their requests on account of their 
 youth. Those who criticized the Presi- 
 dent's merciful unwillingness to impose the 
 death penalty, dreaded to see a woman 
 with a child in her arms enter that room. 
 They knew she would have a speedy and 
 sympathetic hearing. " It was the baby 
 that did it, madam," Edward, the colored 
 usher, observed to one wife who passed out, 
 radiantly tearful. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln was a Kentuckian, and the 
 fact that some of her relatives fought in 
 the Southern armies was enough to keep 
 gossip busy with rumors of her tacit if not 
 open sympathy with the rebellion — gos- 
 sip which did her grievous wrong, and 
 
 204 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 added one more to the daily trials of the 
 President. It was a thing of which he 
 could take no public notice; but at one 
 time he felt constrained to tell several mem- 
 bers of the cabinet his side of the story 
 then current. " He gave the details with 
 frankness and without disguise. . , . 
 They did him credit on a subject of scandal 
 and abuse," one of them wrote. 
 
 The President's attitude toward his wife 
 had something of the paternal in it, al- 
 most as though she were a child, under his 
 protection. It is said that when President 
 Taylor offered to make him Governor of 
 Oregon Territory, shortly after the end of 
 his term in Congress, Lincoln's refusal was 
 largely because of her unwillingness to go 
 so far into the wilderness. 
 
 Personally he was singularly indifferent 
 to physical surroundings, and neither the 
 wilderness, had they gone there, nor the 
 stately proportions and practical incon- 
 venience of the Executive Mansion when 
 
 205 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 they actually experienced them, affected 
 him in the least. But, like many another 
 good American husband, it pleased him to 
 see his wife enjoying luxury; and in 
 March, 1861, the White House must have 
 seemed to both of them a very grand home 
 indeed. 
 
 During the war, as for many years 
 after, the President's family and the busi- 
 ness of state were housed in uncongenial 
 intimacy. The family lived upstairs in 
 the western end of the building, the of- 
 fices were in the east end; the state apart- 
 ments were below; and visitors and office- 
 seekers blocked anterooms and halls; while 
 Tad split the ears of cabinet ministers and 
 long-suffering clerks, as, with mischief and 
 drum, he did what he could to convert this 
 " dwelling-place but not a habitation," into 
 a real home. 
 
 The Lincolns were the Western-most 
 people who had inhabited the White House, 
 and were as new to official ceremony as to 
 
 206 
 

 A Presidential Tea Party 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 stately surroundings. The President, how- 
 ever, had his native dignity and his term in 
 Congress to fall back upon; while Mrs. 
 Lincoln had her woman's wits and that ease 
 in fitting into more luxurious surroundings 
 which is the birthright of every living crea- 
 ture, from protoplasm to potentate. 
 
 On request the State Department fur- 
 nished elaborate lists of officials and func- 
 tions, along with certain helpful details. 
 From that source or elsewhere they were 
 advised never to say " Sir " to a titled 
 foreigner ; and that " at evening calls of 
 diplomats it is well for the President to go 
 down." The hour for state dinners was 
 set sternly at seven. The family might 
 dine at six. A memorandum prescribed 
 " dress for gentlemen " as " coat, black 
 dress, or ditto blue with bright buttons — 
 (never wear frocks)" — which seems to 
 press the Lincoln regime back into remote 
 picturesqueness. 
 
 With these hints, and their natural good 
 207 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sense, they got on as well as most new ad- 
 ministrations. One of the hints was that 
 " parties, if given, must be entirely in- 
 formal or accidental." After Mrs. Lin- 
 coln had been installed about a year she 
 determined to ignore this rule, and sent out 
 invitations for a party which was not at 
 all " accidental." Society was rocked to 
 its center, and the local papers printed col- 
 umns detailing the elegance of everybody's 
 manners and costumes, not forgetting the 
 foreigners who must never be addressed as 
 " Sir," and ending with an inventory of 
 the sugar ornaments on the supper table. 
 Notes made in the house were less sac- 
 charine. " Half the city is jubilant at be- 
 ing invited, while the other half is furious 
 at being left out in the cold. It was a 
 very respectable, if not brilliant success. 
 Many of the invited guests did not come, 
 so the rooms were not at all overcrowded. 
 . . . Those who were here (some of them 
 having sought and almost begged their in- 
 
 208 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 vitatlons) will be forever happy in the 
 recollection. . . . Suffice it to say that 
 the East Room looked very beautiful ; that 
 the supper was magnificent, and that when 
 all was over, by way of an interesting little 
 finale, a couple of the servants, much 
 moved by wrath and wine, had a jolly little 
 knock-down in the kitchen, damaging in its 
 effects to sundry heads and champagne 
 bottles. This last item is strictly entre 
 nous.'* 
 
 That was the culmination of Mrs. Lin- 
 coln's social achievements. The very next 
 of these confidential letters, enclosing a 
 newspaper account of the great party, 
 adds : " Since then one of the President's 
 little boys has been so sick as to absorb all 
 his attention." From that time on pri- 
 vate and public sorrow put an end to all 
 except the formal and official entertaining. 
 
 The traditional state dinners and recep- 
 tions took place; and there was music in 
 the summer on the White House lawn ; 
 14 209 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 when occasionally the noise of heavy guns 
 would draw the crowd away from the band 
 down to the river's edge to gaze across at 
 the Virginia hills. 
 
 The great public receptions were not 
 disagreeable to the President, and he 
 seemed surprised when people commiserated 
 him upon having to endure them. He 
 would shake hands with thousands of peo- 
 ple, seemingly unconscious of what he was 
 doing, murmuring some monotonous salu- 
 tation, his eye dim and thoughts far away, 
 until a familiar face, or the sight of a lit- 
 tle child would focus his attention. 
 " Hurrah for Mist' Linthon ! " a small cit- 
 izen lisped as he came up, convoyed by 
 his proud parent. " Hurrah for Mister 
 You ! " the President responded, gathering 
 him in his arms, and giving him a mighty 
 toss toward the ceiling. 
 
 Many people came primed with a speech 
 to deliver, but unless it was compressed into 
 the smallest possible space, it never got ut- 
 
 210 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 terance. If it were brief enough, and 
 caught the President's fancy, it received a 
 swift answer. One night an elderly gen- 
 tleman from Buffalo said, " Up our way 
 we believe in God and Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 " My friend, you are more than half 
 right ! " was the President's reply as he 
 passed him on to the next in line. 
 
 Lincoln had grown to manhood and 
 prominence in a period of grave formality 
 of manner, in a locality where old Southern 
 traditions of good breeding prevailed. 
 Dignity was as natural to him as honest 
 living or straight thinking. In his audi- 
 ences with diplomats he lost nothing in 
 comparison with men trained in European 
 courts. His natural poise and sense of fit- 
 ness made both words and bearing unem- 
 barrassed. Yet after complying with all 
 the requirements of custom, his kindly wit 
 was apt to find outlet. When Lord Lyons 
 went to the White House to announce the 
 marriage of the Prince of Wales, he made 
 
 211 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the customary formal speech. The Presi- 
 dent answered in like manner ; then, taking 
 the bachelor diplomat by the hand, he sup- 
 plemented it with a genial, " And now, 
 Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise ! " 
 
 Contrary to popular belief nobody pre- 
 sumed to call Lincoln " Abe," or had, since 
 he was a boy, " Honest Old Abe " was 
 indeed an expression country-wide, but it 
 was used in speaking about him, not to 
 him. There was that in his bearing, 
 friendly as it was, which forbade familiar- 
 ity. His own son has told the writer that 
 even his mother addressed her husband as 
 " Mr. Lincoln." Sometimes in talking to 
 men much younger than himself, he called 
 them by their first names, but with those 
 of his own generation, even intimates of 
 his early years, his nearest approach to 
 familiarity was in dropping the prefix 
 " Mr." In this he followed the well-estab- 
 lished custom of the time and place. 
 
 He was as temperate in his speech as in 
 212 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 his appetites. His innate honesty forbade 
 his saying things he did not mean, while 
 his appreciation of the value of words 
 made him differentiate between their use 
 and abuse as he would between the use and 
 abuse of gold. He was generous, but no 
 spendthrift with either. His hearty " I 
 am glad to see you," accompanied by a 
 warm handclasp and his smile, meant more 
 than another man's extravagant compli- 
 ments. If he was not glad he did not say 
 so. " Good morning," or " What can I 
 do for you?" or some equally unperjured 
 greeting sufficed. This strict truthfulness 
 in little things gives added point to his oc- 
 casional vivid statements ; like that to Mr. 
 Browning about the first weeks of his ad- 
 ministration, or his remark to General 
 Schenck that he could find it in his heart to 
 pity Satan himself. 
 
 With his w^ealth of sympathy, his con- 
 science, and his unflinching sense of jus- 
 tice, he was predestined to sorrow. There 
 
 213 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was in his nature a strain of deep melan- 
 choly, a trait not uncommon among the 
 pioneers. In his youth, during the years 
 when blood pounds fastest, and desires and 
 aspiration protest loudest against the stem 
 discipline of fact, it came upon him time 
 and again; and because he was different 
 from his fellows — a finer instrument, re- 
 sponding more readily to calls of the spirit 
 — it hurt cruelly. "If what I feel were 
 equally distributed to the whole human 
 family, there would not be one cheerful face 
 on the earth." From one so temperate in 
 speech, these words mean much. 
 
 By the time he reached middle life the 
 sharpness of these attacks had been lived 
 down, but a melancholy underlay all his 
 moods — even his merriest. He was still 
 vibrant to chords of feeling. 
 
 " I believe I feel trouble in the air before 
 it comes," he said, entering the room of his 
 secretaries to bring news of a military dis- 
 aster which had just reached him. 
 
 214 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 " I am 8uperstitious," he admitted fre- 
 quently, but in the next breath was apt to 
 give a good and sensible reason for what 
 he was pleased to call his superstition. He 
 placed enough importance on dreams to 
 tell them ; not only his recurrent dream of 
 the ship and the dark shore, but others. 
 Once he sent a despatch to his wife, advis- 
 ing her to put away Tad's pistol, because 
 he had had " an ugly dream " about him. 
 
 In unguarded moments he gave way to 
 grief with complete unconsciousness. The 
 gray, drawn look of his face in mental 
 pain ; his " ghostlike " appearance as he 
 walked up and down the room, exclaiming, 
 " My God, my God ! what will the country 
 sa}^ ? " ; the way the tears ran unheeded 
 down his cheeks while he inspected the 
 Monitor and lived again in imagination 
 that memorable battle ; his stumbling steps 
 and hands pressed to his heart as he went 
 from McClellan's headquarters, heedless of 
 the sentinel's salute, on learning of Col- 
 
 215 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 onel Baker's death — betrayed how com- 
 pletely he forgot himself in grief. 
 
 Fortunately his joy was as spontaneous 
 as a child's. No amount of experience 
 made him callous to either happiness or 
 pain. " I myself will telegraph the news 
 to General Meade ! " he cried, seizing his 
 hat when Secretary Welles brought word 
 that Vicksburg had fallen. Then he 
 stopped, his face beaming, caught Welles's 
 hand and almost embracing him cried, 
 " What can we do for the Secretary of the 
 Navy for this glorious intelligence? He 
 is always giving us good news. I cannot 
 tell you my joy over the result. It is 
 great, Mr. Welles, it is great ! " 
 
 Yet such was his self-control that he 
 could make his face a mask when he saw 
 fit, and it was not often that casual vis- 
 itors realized the depth of his feeling. One 
 secret of his success had been his power of 
 inspiring confidence in his followers. One 
 duty of his high office he felt to be keeping 
 
 216 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 up the spirits of his countrymen during the 
 dark hours of war. He had need of his 
 great physical endurance, and all his self- 
 control. Many were the sleepless nights 
 he passed after that first Sunday when he 
 remained in his office until dawn, listening 
 to the excited tales of those who had wit- 
 nessed sights and sounds of the battle of 
 Bull Run. 
 
 His was the faith which moves moun- 
 tains. He could even extract a bitter com- 
 fort from sad news. Being told of heavy 
 firing in the direction of Knoxville, at a 
 time when he was very anxious, he said 
 that anything which showed that General 
 Burnside was not overwhelmed, was cheer- 
 ing. " Like Sallie Carter, when she heard 
 one of her children cry, he could say, 
 * there goes one of my young ones, not 
 dead yet, bless the Lord ! ' " 
 
 He wore his greatness so naturally that 
 he could afford to jest. Living by the 
 same rule in matters great and small, 
 
 217 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 whether signing an emancipation procla- 
 mation or attending to the trifling demands 
 of a child, he did not have to put on added 
 solemnity for great occasions, and he gath- 
 ered what comfort and relief he could from 
 the flickering bits of humor that crossed 
 his path. 
 
 Although wanting in the language of 
 gallantry, he was not incapable of turning 
 a neat compliment. The artist Carpenter 
 has told of one which would have pressed 
 Chesterfield hard. An enthusiastic lady 
 gave the President an entirely superfluous 
 bouquet. The situation was momentarily 
 embarrassing, but " with no appearance 
 of discomposure, he stooped down, took 
 the flowers, and looking from them into the 
 sparkling eyes and radiant face of the 
 lady, said, with a gallantry I was unpre- 
 pared for, ' Really, madam, if you give 
 them to me, and they are mine, I think I 
 cannot possibly make so good a use of them 
 as to present them to you in return ! ' " 
 
 218 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 He was the most abstemious of men. 
 Not that he remained on principle a total 
 abstainer as he was during part of his early 
 life ; but he never cared for wines or liquors 
 of any sort, and never used tobacco. 
 Judge Lawrence Weldon once overheard 
 Douglas trying to ridicule him on this 
 point. 
 
 "What! You a temperance man?" 
 Douglas asked. 
 
 " No," drawled Lincoln, with a smile. 
 " I 'm not a temperance man ; but I 'm 
 temperate in this — to wit — I don't 
 drink." 
 
 At table he ate sparingly, without seem- 
 ing to know what he was eating. When 
 Mrs. Lincoln was away he sometimes ab- 
 sentmindedly omitted the formality of din- 
 ing altogether. To some visitors who 
 apologized for sending in their cards at 
 the dinner hour, he replied : 
 
 " It makes no difference. When my 
 wife is away I just browse around." 
 
 219 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 It was the company, not the meat, 
 which interested him. Carl Schurz, for 
 whom he had a strong liking, once asked 
 leave to present his German brother-in- 
 law, a young merchant from Hamburg. 
 Mr. Lincoln told him to bring him the next 
 day about lunch time, adding casually that 
 there would be something to eat. Schurz 
 had no little difficulty in quieting his 
 guest's trepidation. His assertion that 
 there would be no court etiquette or for- 
 mality whatever was too wild for the for- 
 eigner's belief. When he found ■ himself 
 greeted like an old friend, and the three 
 sat down alone to luncheon, he pulled him- 
 self out of his stupefaction, and answered 
 entertainingly the many questions about 
 Hamburg with which his host plied him. 
 The meal ended in anecdotes and laughter ; 
 and as they left the White House the 
 young German was vainly trying to find 
 words in which to express his puzzled ad- 
 miration for the man who had risen from 
 
 220 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 peasant to ruler, and, with so much dig- 
 nity, remained so unconscious of self. 
 
 To his two secretaries he was the em- 
 bodiment of kindness and friendliness. 
 For a time they occupied a room In the 
 Executive Mansion, and saw him, literally, 
 day and night. Like boys, they had their 
 own names for him. " The Tycoon " was 
 their favorite, with " The Ancient " a close 
 second. When their admiration passed all 
 bounds they gave him the comprehensive 
 title, " The American." 
 
 " What a man it is," wrote John Hay 
 in his diary, after detailing a nocturnal 
 visit of the President, who came with a 
 volume of Hood in his hand, to read them 
 something which struck his fancy. " Oc- 
 cupied all day with matters of vast mo- 
 ment, deeply anxious about the fate of the 
 greatest army in the w^orld, with his own 
 fame and fortune hanging on the events of 
 the passing hour, he has such wealth of 
 simple bonhomie and good fellowship that 
 
 221 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he gets out of bed and perambulates the 
 house in his shirt to find us that we may 
 share with him the fun of poor Hood's lit- 
 tle conceits." 
 
 Personally Lincoln was very brave. 
 When he visited the army at the front and 
 reviewed the troops, he was the cause of 
 much anxiety to the commanders, because 
 his tall figure, made taller still by the 
 " stove-pipe " hat he habitually wore, ren- 
 dered him a conspicuous and unmistakable 
 target for the enemy. When General 
 Early's troops came within a few miles of 
 Washington he was actually under fire at 
 Fort Stevens, so interested in watching de- 
 velopments that he was quite impatient at 
 being made to leave his exposed position. 
 General Butler confessed that no one ever 
 gave him a fright equal to Lincoln, be- 
 cause of his calm disregard for personal 
 safetj". 
 
 " The Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
 must n't show any cowardice in the pres- 
 
 222 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 ence of his soldiers, however he may feel," 
 was his laughing reply. 
 
 But no instance of his complete forget- 
 fulness of danger equals his entry into 
 Richmond, when he walked for two miles 
 or more, practically unescorted, through 
 streets of silent houses behind whose closed 
 blinds despairing women and sad-eyed men 
 looked on the joy-crazed negroes who sur- 
 rounded him, calling down blessings upon 
 his head with all the fervent picturesque- 
 ness of their race. 
 
 Lincoln's ceremonious uncovering in an- 
 swer to the sweeping obeisance of a bent 
 and grizzled negro whose twisted limbs 
 and white hairs betokened the labors and 
 injustice heaped upon the race, is one 
 of the most impressive and dramatic in- 
 cidents of the war. But to the white on- 
 lookers in the houses, inflamed by passion 
 and made bitter by defeat, it must have 
 borne a different aspect. A bullet might 
 very easily have sped from behind one of 
 
 223 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 those forbidding shutters. To the honor 
 of Richmond, if the temptation came, it 
 was thrust aside, and the Commander-in- 
 Chief of its conquering host passed in 
 safety into the house lately occupied by the 
 President of the Confederacy. 
 
 The reverie into which he fell as he 
 rested in Jefferson Davis's own chair was 
 so serious and so deep that the aide on 
 duty did not dare address him. When 
 General Weitzel, in command of the con- 
 quered city, reported, and together the 
 two passed through the burned and dev- 
 astated portions of the town to Libby 
 Prison and Castle Thunder, where memory 
 would have its way, the general turned to 
 him and asked what he was to do about 
 the conquered people. 
 
 Lincoln's reply was that he did not wish 
 to give orders upon that subject. " But," 
 he said, in his kindly way, " if I were in 
 your place, I 'd let 'em up easy. Let 'em 
 up easy." 
 
 224! 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 Walt Whitman, seeing the President 
 drive by seated beside his wife, his carriage 
 drawn by " only two horses, and they noth- 
 ing extra," thought Lincoln a very ordi- 
 nary-looking man. He probably thouglit 
 so himself, but it is doubtful if he was as 
 indifferent to his personal appearance as 
 we have been led to suppose. There were 
 too many passing references in his speeches 
 and in conversation, to warrant the belief 
 that he gave it no thought. One or more 
 of his stories refer to it ; he spoke of it at 
 least twice in his debates with Douglas ; he 
 said to ]\Ir. Chittenden that though he 
 " did not set up for a beauty " he thought 
 the people of the South would not find him 
 so ugly or so black as he had been painted. 
 He told John Hay of his dream in which 
 a party of plain people began to comment 
 on his appearance, saying he was a very 
 common-looking man, to which he replied, 
 " the Lord prefers common-looking peo- 
 ple, that is the reason he makes so many 
 15 225 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of them." His shuddering comment on a 
 portrait of himself was that it was " hor- 
 ribly like." And there is the final bit of 
 evidence that he took the advice of a little 
 girl, a total stranger, who wrote to him 
 during the campaign, suggesting with 
 childish candor that he would look better 
 if he wore whiskers. 
 
 We know that he was proud of, or at 
 least interested in, his great height, and 
 took a boyish delight in measuring himself 
 with any exceptionally tall man he met — 
 to the astonishment, and sometimes to the 
 deep embarrassment of the latter ; and that 
 when he had a chance to exhibit his strength 
 of arm — how far he could throw, or how 
 clean and deep a cut he could make with 
 an ax — he seized the opportunity, and 
 showed an ingenuous pride in the excellence 
 of his performance. 
 
 The probability is that he was fully 
 aware of the worst aspect of his personal 
 appearance, and regretted it; and had no 
 
 226 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 notion of its best. He was a huge spare 
 man, slightly stooping, who walked with 
 the peculiar slow woods-and-fields move- 
 ment of the Western pioneer ; and who sat, 
 as tall people have to sit, on chairs made 
 for shorter folk, not erect, but disposing of 
 their long limbs as best they may. A 
 sculptor who made most careful measure- 
 ments and studies from photographs, tells 
 us that, from a sculptor's point of view, 
 Lincoln's proportions were quite perfect. 
 So mucli for the frame. It was the indwell- 
 ing spirit which transformed it and baf- 
 fled description. When sitting withdrawn 
 and musing, one saw only a sad sallow man, 
 on whom the clothes hung loosely. In the 
 glow and excitement of public speaking he 
 was singularly handsome — at times seemed 
 almost inspired. When he looked into the 
 eyes of a fellow being in trouble, he had 
 the most tenderly sympathetic face in the 
 world. 
 
 My father strongly denied that Lincoln 
 227 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was careless in his dress. He said that 
 Lincoln's clothes were always scrupulously 
 neat, and were in accord with his means and 
 his surroundings. Reminiscences of the 
 period before his Presidency describe him 
 as wearing a short-waisted black dress coat, 
 and trousers not too long. The West was 
 even less rigid and progressive than the 
 East in matters of costume, and at that 
 period we were not yet far away from the 
 days when the cut of coat which is now a 
 badge of servitude before six p. m. and of 
 emancipation after that hour, was the con- 
 servative garment by daylight for all men 
 free, white, and over twenty-one. 
 
 The gentleman who met Mr. Lincoln 
 when he went to deliver the Cooper Insti- 
 tute speech tells how he accompanied him 
 to his room at the hotel, and saw him open 
 his grip-sack and shake out a new suit of 
 black broadcloth, which though carefully 
 packed, had become a mass of wrinkles. 
 He hung it up, trusting optimistically that 
 
 228 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 the creases would disappear before lie had 
 to put it on. There is something rather 
 pathetic in the picture of this great man 
 doing his inadequate best to appear suit- 
 ably clad before his Eastern audience. 
 The idea of sending his suit to be pressed 
 never crossed his mind. That was not the 
 way things were managed in his simple 
 household. 
 
 He never forgot the dignity of his of- 
 fice, but he could not take its pomp and 
 ceremony seriously. That it could be ex- 
 pected to interfere with his simple and un- 
 affected demeanor as an individual, he re- 
 fused to admit. He wished to be free to 
 come and go as he chose. His axiom that 
 " he who would be no slave must consent to 
 have no slave " applied in his own mind, as 
 truly to himself as to mankind in the ab- 
 stract. His propensity for roaming about 
 Lafayette Square, or between the old War 
 Department and the White Llouse, late at 
 night, alone, or accompanied only by one 
 
 229 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of his secretaries, filled those who knew of 
 the habit with dismay. He admitted that 
 he ran a certain risk of assassination, but 
 contended that the only way to guard 
 against that effectively, was to shut him- 
 self up in an iron box, where he could not 
 possibly perform the duties of President. 
 Any measure short of that seemed to him 
 useless. " Why put up the bars," he said, 
 " when the fence is down all around? " 
 
 The Secretary of War proposed that the 
 Adjutant-General be detailed to attend 
 him. He answered with characteristic 
 courtesy and decision : 
 
 My dear Sir: On reflection I think it 
 will not do, as a rule, for the Adjutant-Gen- 
 eral to attend me wherever I go; not that I 
 have any objection to his presence, but that 
 it would be an uncompensating encumbrance 
 both to him and to me. When it shall occur 
 to me to go anywhere, I wish to be free to go 
 at once, and not to have to notify the Adju- 
 tant-General and wait till he can get ready. 
 
 2S0 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 It is better, too, for tlie public service that he 
 shall give his time to the business of his 
 office, and not to personal attendance on me. 
 While I thank you for the kindness of the 
 suggestion, my view of the matter is as I have 
 stated. 
 
 When it was finally decided that a guard 
 must be maintained at the White House, 
 and an escort of cavalry must accompany 
 him on his daily drive, he submitted, 
 though not without humorous protest. 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Lincoln and I cannot hear 
 ourselves talk for the clatter of their sabers 
 and spurs ; and some of them appear to be 
 new hands and very awkward, so that I am 
 more afraid of being shot by the accidental 
 discharge of a carbine or revolver, than of 
 any attempt upon my life by a roving 
 squad of ' Jeb ' Stuart's cavalry." 
 
 A guard was, however, only a common 
 precaution, especially during the summer 
 months, when Lincoln rode or drove out 
 through wooded roads to spend the nights 
 
 231 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 at the Soldiers' Home, returning to the Ex- 
 ecutive Mansion in the early morning. He 
 acknowledged this, and then proceeded 
 with his usual artless democracy to turn 
 official etiquette topsy-turvy by haling 
 General Meade out of the War Department 
 to be presented to the obscure captain of 
 his new guard, on the simple ground that 
 both were from Pennsylvania. Stanton 
 and the rest might post guards all around 
 the lot, but no power on earth could 
 prevent his treating them like men and 
 brothers. 
 
 He invited the captain to share his early 
 and frugal breakfast, and the captain 
 thought him the kindest and pleasantest 
 gentlemen he ever met. " He never spoke 
 unkindly of any one, and always spoke of 
 the rebels as ' those Southern gentlemen.' " 
 
 The captain used to knock at his door at 
 half past six or seven in the morning, and 
 usually found him reading, though some- 
 times still busy with his toilet. " All 
 
 232 
 
HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 
 
 right. Just wait a moment, while I repair 
 damages," he called one morning, when 
 caught in the act of sewing on a " vital 
 button." 
 
 As a stickler for official ceremony Lin- 
 coln was really hopeless. He took most 
 unpardonable liberties with established 
 custom, and disconcerting short cuts to re- 
 sults. Not only would he sew on his own 
 buttons, or bring a general downstairs to 
 be introduced to a captain if he chose ; 
 but more than once, in his anxiety to 
 get first-hand and correct information in 
 the military and diplomatic service, he in- 
 vited subordinates to report directly to him 
 instead of through regular official channels. 
 No wonder men whose minds worked only 
 inside a binding of red tape were scandal- 
 ized. 
 
 233 
 
XII 
 
 THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 LINCOLN took his Presidential rivals 
 into his cabinet, and compelled them 
 to be his friends ; but even his genial soul 
 could not warm them toward each other. 
 Seward and Chase were antagonistic. 
 Stanton and Welles were not in accord. 
 Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War, 
 proved insubordinate. Seward meddled 
 with the Navy and the Law, according to 
 the heads of those Departments. Bates 
 had little patience with Stanton. Welles 
 thought Chase's financial policy all wrong. 
 Blair seemed to all of them aggressively 
 mindful of family interests. And each be- 
 gan by believing it his moral duty to help 
 
 234 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 neutralize the great national blunder wliich 
 had elected Lincoln by guiding and direct- 
 ing him with all the brains at his command. 
 
 It could not be called a harmonious com- 
 pany, yet the earnest patriotism in the 
 heart of each, and Lincoln's elastic good 
 nature, held them together fairly well. 
 Newspapers printed sensational accounts 
 of quarrels, and rumors of wholesale cab- 
 inet changes ; but they continued to work 
 together for the country's good, and 
 changes, when they occurred, were neither 
 wholesale nor sensational. 
 
 Lincoln dominated them from the first, 
 though it was long before they found it out. 
 As late as January, 1862, Attorney-Gen- 
 eral Bates wrote in his diary: 
 
 " There is no quarrel among us, but an 
 absolute want of continuity of intelligence, 
 purpose and action. In truth, it is not an 
 administration, but the separate and dis- 
 jointed action of seven independent offi- 
 cers, each one ignorant of what his col- 
 
 235 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 leagues are doing. . . . The President is 
 an excellent man, and in the main wise, but 
 he lacks will and purpose, and I greatly 
 fear he has not the power to command." 
 
 Yet even before they were actually his 
 advisers he began his sway. Two days 
 before the inauguration, Seward, suspect- 
 ing an undue leaning toward the more rad- 
 ical element in the party, attempted to 
 withdraw. Lincoln waited until the in- 
 augural procession was forming in the 
 street, and then sent him a short note, re- 
 fusing to release him, remarking as he 
 handed it to his private secretary to be 
 copied: 
 
 " I cannot afford to let Seward take the 
 first trick." 
 
 In Lincoln's mind their mutual relations 
 were clear. The cabinet was not a re- 
 gency, but a board of advisers. Questions 
 of administration he settled with each de- 
 partment separately. Questions of policy 
 he discussed with his cabinet ; but he rarely 
 
 236 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 asked their vote; and on several occasions 
 his final decision was against their almost 
 unanimous judgment. Yet he was patient 
 to hear advice, and candid to admit the 
 force of argument. When he had to give 
 a decision adverse to the majority, he gave 
 it, not with the pride of authority, but as 
 though constrained by public duty. 
 
 Lincoln's modification of Seward's de- 
 spatches at the time of the Trent affair, 
 and his magnanimous handling of that gen- 
 tleman when in a moment of madness Sew- 
 ard intimated that Lincoln was a failure 
 as President, offered to do his thinking for 
 him, and proposed to end the budding re- 
 bellion by bringing on war Avith most of 
 the military powers of Europe, is an old 
 story. It is easy to imagine the frigid 
 note with which Washington would have 
 dismissed such a minister, or the impetuos- 
 ity with which Jackson would have thun- 
 dered him out of his cabinet. Lincoln 
 answered in a few quiet words, entirely de- 
 
 237 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 void of passion, pointing out that it was for 
 him and no one else to make final decisions, 
 adding, " I wish, and suppose I am en- 
 titled to have, the advice of all my cabinet." 
 Seward was great enough to comprehend 
 his generosity, and so far as is known, the 
 matter was never alluded to between them. 
 
 When Secretary Cameron sent out a re- 
 port in favor of arming negroes for mili- 
 tary service, which he knew was at that 
 time contrary to Lincoln's policy, Lincoln 
 showed no anger. He merely recalled the 
 advance copies and asked him to modify 
 the order. For a time the incident seemed 
 forgotten, but one day Cameron was made 
 Minister to Russia, and there was a new 
 Secretary of War. 
 
 It is said that on the death of Cardinal 
 Mazarin Louis XIV called his cabinet 
 together and told them that for the future 
 he intended to be his own prime minister. 
 Lincoln made no unnecessary statements, 
 but gradually it dawned upon the cabinet 
 
 238 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 that he was master. Seward was the first 
 to find it out. " There is but one vote in 
 the cabinet, and that is cast by the Presi- 
 dent," he wrote some weeks after his unbe- 
 lievable Memorandum of April 1, 1861. 
 
 This Westerner whom they had thouglit 
 to rule had a kingly way of his own. For 
 all his simple manners he gave orders like 
 one born to power. " You will hear all 
 they may choose to say, and report it to 
 me. You will not assume to definitely con- 
 summate anything," he instructed Seward 
 when the latter went to meet the commis- 
 sioners of the Confederacy at Hampton 
 Roads. And when the war was nearing 
 its close he sent word to Grant : " You are 
 not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any 
 political question. Such questions the 
 President holds in his own hands, and will 
 submit them to no military conferences or 
 conventions. Meanwhile you are to press 
 to the utmost your military advantages." 
 
 When he read his cabinet the prelimi- 
 239 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 nary Proclamation of Emancipation, he 
 told them flatly that he had resolved upon 
 the step, and had not called them together 
 to ask their advice. 
 
 No descendant of a hundred kings could 
 be more sure of his right to command. 
 Even Louis could not have been more dic- 
 tatorial or emphatic ; but his methods were 
 characteristically his own. 
 
 In 1864 when intrigues within the cabi- 
 net reached a pitch that he could no longer 
 ignore, he read his assembled advisers the 
 following impressive little lecture : 
 
 " I must myself be the judge how long 
 to retain in, and when to remove any of 
 you from, his position. It would greatly 
 pain me to discover any of you endeavor- 
 ing to procure another's removal, or in any 
 way to prejudice him before the public. 
 Such endeavor would be a wrong to me; 
 and much worse, a wrong to the country. 
 My wish is that on this subject, no remark 
 be made, nor question asked, by any of 
 
 240 
 
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 5^ 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 you, here or elsewhere, now or hereafter." 
 At another time an intrigue set on 
 foot by some friends of Chase, resulted in 
 such criticism of Seward by Republican 
 senators that Seward sent the President 
 his resignation. Lincoln called the cen- 
 sorious senators, and all of the cabinet, ex- 
 cept Seward, to a meeting at the White 
 House, neither side knowing that the other 
 was to be present. In the unexpected 
 face-to-face council a very warm discussion 
 took place, and Chase found himself; with 
 the rest of the cabinet, defending Seward. 
 To save his consistency he next day 
 brought the President his own resignation, 
 which was accepted with unflattering alac- 
 rity. 
 
 A moment later a friend entering the 
 room found Mr. Lincoln alone, regarding 
 the paper with an indescribably whimsical 
 expression. 
 
 " Now I can ride," he said. " I have a 
 
 pumpkin in each end of my bag ; " and 
 16 241 
 
ABRAHAIVI LINCOLN 
 
 forthwith sat down and wrote identical 
 notes to Seward and Chase, asking them 
 to withdraw their resignations. 
 
 Lincoln was well satisfied with this day's 
 work, by which he had made the critics 
 thrash out their differences in his presence, 
 and had saved the services of both his able 
 ministers to the country. " I do not see 
 how it could have been done better," he 
 said. " I am sure it was right. If I had 
 yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward 
 the thing would all have slumped over one 
 way, and we should have been left with a 
 scanty handful of supporters. When 
 Chase sent in his resignation I saw the 
 game was in my own hands, and I put it 
 through." 
 
 The cabinet sessions were absolutely in- 
 formal. Regular meetings were held at 
 noon on Tuesdays and Fridays. When 
 special meetings were necessary the Presi- 
 dent or Secretary of State called the mem- 
 bers together. There was a long table in 
 
 242 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 the cabinet room, but it was not used as a 
 council board. The President generally 
 stood up and walked about. The others 
 came in and took their seats according to 
 convenience, staying through the session, 
 or stating their business and departing, as 
 pressure of work demanded. Sometimes 
 the meeting was opened by a remark or an 
 anecdote by the President ; of tener by the 
 relation of some official or personal hap- 
 pening to one of his advisers. 
 
 The many stories of strained relations 
 between Lincoln and Stanton are capable 
 of a gentler interpretation than is usually 
 given them. Stanton was undoubtedly 
 prejudiced against Lincoln in the begin- 
 ning. This was perhaps the result of an 
 unquiet conscience, since he had treated 
 Mr. Lincoln with scant courtesy in the 
 McCormick Reaper case some years 
 
 before. 
 
 Simon Cameron told my father that 
 when he was made Minister to Russia Lin- 
 
 243 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 coin asked whom he wished for his succes- 
 sor in the War Department. H^e answered, 
 " Stanton." 
 
 " Well," said Lincoln, " go and ask 
 Stanton whether he will take it." 
 
 On his way Mr. Cameron met Secre- 
 tary Chase, and told his errand. Chase, 
 who had a weakness for feeling that he was 
 pulling the strings and making the pup- 
 pets dance, said, " Don't go to Stanton's 
 office. Come with me to my office, and 
 send for Stanton to come there, and we 
 will talk it over together." They did so, 
 and Stanton agreed to accept the post, 
 possibly in the same spirit of hostile pa- 
 triotism with which he had entered on his 
 duties under Buchanan. But there was a 
 rugged honesty in him which could not fail 
 to respond to Lincoln's qualities. He was 
 as impetuous and explosive as the Presi- 
 dent was slow to anger ; but his bluster was 
 a habit of speech quite as much as a state 
 of mind, and Lincoln bore no malice. 
 
 244 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 " Did Stanton say I was a d — d fool? " 
 Lincoln asked when Mr. Lovejoy came in 
 bewildered rage to report an interview the 
 President had authorized him to hold with 
 his Secretary of War. 
 
 "He did, sir!" 
 
 The President bent his head, then looked 
 up with his winning smile and remarked, 
 " If Stanton says I am a d — d fool, I must 
 be one, for he is nearly always right. I 
 will slip over and see him." The point of 
 this and similar stories is that Lincoln 
 kept his temper, refused to air family dif- 
 ferences, official or personal, in public, 
 and that after " slipping over to see him," 
 the matter was arranged. 
 
 " This woman, dear Stanton, is a little 
 smarter than she looks to be " — that mes- 
 sage and even his note about Julius 
 CcTsar's hair, are not the kind a man sends 
 where relations are seriously strained. 
 
 Several members of the cabinet were af- 
 flicted with undue seriousness. When the 
 
 245 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 President endorsed a paper, " Referred to 
 Mars and Neptune," the heads of the War 
 and Navy Departments looked askance. 
 When they heard him laugh only a 
 moment before turning to consider the 
 weighty matter of the Emancipation Proc- 
 lamation, they felt that something was 
 radically wrong. They could scarcely 
 condone Lincoln's joking; and when Stan- 
 ton tried to be mildly funny they instantly 
 scented a scandal. Secretary Welles con- 
 fided to his diary : " The President still 
 remains with the army . . . Stanton . . , 
 remarked that it was quite pleasant to 
 have the President away. That he 
 (Stanton) was much less annoyed. 
 Neither Seward nor myself responded." 
 
 Lincoln's remark that he " had n't much 
 influence with this administration," and 
 that he was " only the lead-horse who 
 must n't kick over the traces," was his 
 way of saying that if he delegated powers 
 and duties to his cabinet ministers, it was 
 
 246 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 only fair to refrain from interfering while 
 they carried them out. " It is a good 
 thing for individuals that there is a Gov- 
 ernment to shove over their acts upon. 
 No man's shoulders are broad enough to 
 bear what must be," he said ; and to critics 
 of the administration he would answer : 
 
 " Suppose all you owned was in gold, 
 and the gold had been put into the hands 
 of Blondin to carry across the Niagara 
 River on a rope — would you shake the 
 rope and keep shouting contradictory ad- 
 vice ; or would you hold your breath and 
 your tongue, and keep hands off until he 
 was safely over? The Government is 
 carrying an immense load and doing the 
 best it can. Don't badger us. We '11 get 
 you safe across." 
 
 He never lost his sense of proportion. 
 He used to tell a story of a pilot on a 
 Western river, who was using every bit of 
 his skill and vigilance to keep the boat in 
 the narrow channel, when he felt a tug at 
 
 247 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his coat, and heard a boy cry, " Say, Mr. 
 Captain, say ! I wish you 'd stop your 
 boat a minute, I 've lost my apple over- 
 board." And he had another story about 
 a steamboat with a " five-foot boiler and a 
 seven-foot whistle " which had to stop 
 stock-still every time the engineer blew a 
 blast. 
 
 Criticism which took no more account of 
 values worried him little. " I '11 do the 
 very best I can," he said — " the very best 
 I know how. And I mean to keep doing so 
 till the end. If the end brings me out all 
 right what is said against me won't amount 
 to anything. If the end brings me out 
 wrong, ten angels swearing I was right 
 would make no difference." 
 
 Senators seemed to consider themselves 
 specially privileged in the line of criticism. 
 
 " I fear I have made Senator Wade my 
 enemy for life," he said ruefully one day. 
 " He was here just now, urging me to dis- 
 miss Grant, and in response to something 
 
 248 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 he said I answered, ' Senator, that reminds 
 me of a story.' He said in a petulant way, 
 ' It is with you all story, story ! You are 
 letting this countr}'^ go to hell with your 
 stories, sir ! You are not more than a mile 
 away from it this minute.' " 
 
 " What did you answer? " 
 
 " I asked good-naturedly if that was 
 not just about the distance from here to 
 the Senate Chamber. He was very angry, 
 grabbed up his hat and went off." 
 
 It is said that the aptness of the retort 
 worked its way through the senator's anger 
 before he reached that place " a mile 
 away," and that he turned back to apolo- 
 gize. The President's callers were not 
 always so reasonable ; and he was sin- 
 cerely distressed if any one left him in ill 
 humor. 
 
 With Senator Sumner his relations were 
 outwardly most cordial, though he was not 
 insensible to the spirit of criticism which 
 underlay the smiling intercourse. " I 
 
 249 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 5 
 
 have never had much to do with bishops 
 he said once, " but, do you know — Sum- 
 ner is my idea of a bishop." 
 
 Sumner was troubled by what he called 
 " the slow working of Lincoln's mind " ; 
 yet he was not always quick to catch the 
 President's meaning. Hamilton Fish told 
 my father about calling upon the President 
 in Sumner's company when curiosity was 
 rife over the destination of General Burn- 
 side's expedition against Roanoke Island. 
 Mr. Sumner began asking questions. 
 
 " Well," said the President, " I am not 
 a military man, and of course I cannot tell 
 about these matters — and indeed, if I did 
 know, the interests of the public service 
 require that I should not divulge them. 
 But," he added, rising and sweeping his 
 long hand over a map of the North Caro- 
 lina coast which hung in a corner, " now 
 see here. Here are a large number of in- 
 lets, and I should think a fleet might per- 
 haps get in there somewhere. And if they 
 
 250 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 were to get in there, don't you think our 
 boys would be likely to cut up some flip- 
 flaps? I think they would." 
 
 Mr. Fish turned the conversation. As 
 they left the White House Sumner ex- 
 pressed impatience at the President's reti- 
 cence. " Why," said his companion. 
 " He told you where Burnside was going ! 
 He wanted to satisfy your curiosity, but of 
 course he could not make an official decla- 
 ration. I think you ought to be well 
 pleased that he was so frank." 
 
 " Well, Governor, who has been abusing 
 me in the Senate to-day?" Lincoln asked 
 Senator Morrill as the latter came into his 
 office. The Senator protested. 
 
 " Mr. President, I hope none of us abuse 
 you knowingly and wilfully." 
 
 " Oh, well," he said, " I don't mean that. 
 Personally you are all very kind — but I 
 know we do not all agree as to what this 
 administration should do and how it ought 
 to be done. ... I do not know but that 
 
 251 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 God has created some one man great 
 enough to comprehend the whole of this 
 stupendous crisis from beginning to end, 
 and endowed him with sufficient wisdom to 
 manage and direct it. I confess I do not 
 fully understand and foresee it all. But I 
 am placed here where I am obliged to the 
 best of my poor ability to deal with it. 
 And that being the case, I can only go 
 just as fast as I can see how to go." 
 
 " That," continued Mr. Morrill, " was 
 the way he saw this thing — as a stupen- 
 dous movement, which he watched and upon 
 which he acted as he might best do when 
 in his judgment tlie opportune moment 
 came. . . . He saw that in his dealings 
 with it he must be backed by immense 
 forces ; and to this end it was his policy to 
 hold the nation true to the general aim. 
 . . . He moderated, guided, controlled, or 
 pushed ahead as he saw his opportunity. 
 He was the great balance-wheel which held 
 the ship true to her course." 
 
 252 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 It required all his wisdom, all his firm- 
 ness, all his tact. He must maintain prin- 
 ciples, and not make enemies. A hiirh of- 
 ficlal came to him in a towering rage, but 
 went away perfectly satisfied. " I sup- 
 pose you had to make large concessions? " 
 the President was asked. " Oh, no," was 
 the answer. " I did not concede anything. 
 You have heard how the Illinois farmer 
 disposed of the log that was too wet to 
 burn, too big to haul away, and too knotty 
 to split? He plowed around it. Well, 
 that is the way I got rid of Governor 
 Blank. I plowed around him. But it 
 took three mortal hours ; and I was afraid 
 every minute that he would find me out ! " 
 
 Lincoln's loyalty and fairness made him 
 keep unsuccessful generals in command 
 long after the patience of impatient people 
 was exhausted. " I think Grant has 
 hardly a friend left, except myself," he re- 
 marked, before the fall of VIcksburg justi- 
 fied the waiting. After VIcksburg fell the 
 
 253 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 President sent Grant a letter which showed 
 that he too had had his moments of ques- 
 tioning — and also how heartily and grace- 
 fully he could say, " You were right and I 
 was wrong." 
 
 " My dear General : I do not remem- 
 ber that you and I ever met personally. I 
 write this now as a grateful acknowledg- 
 ment for the almost inestimable service you 
 have done the country. I wish to say a 
 word further " ; then, summing up the 
 various plans that the general had tried in 
 the course of his siege, including the last 
 one which ended in victory, he continued, 
 " When you got below and took Port Gib- 
 son, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought 
 you should go down the river and join 
 General Banks, and when you turned north- 
 ward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was 
 a mistake. I now wish to make the per- 
 sonal acknowledgment that you were right 
 and I was wrong." 
 
 The President knew that a change in 
 254 
 
THOSE IN AUTHORITY 
 
 commanders always involved more tlian the 
 mere risk of " swapping horses while cross- 
 ing a stream." There was tlie troublesome 
 question of finding a better horse. Sena- 
 tor Wade, who was not the most patient 
 of men, urged him to supplant McClcllan. 
 
 " Well," said the President, " put your- 
 self in my place for a moment. If I 
 relieve McClellan whom shall I put in com- 
 mand? Who, of all the men, is to super- 
 sede him.? " 
 
 " Why," said Wade, " anybody." 
 
 " Wade," replied Mr. Lincoln, with 
 weary resignation, " anybody will do for 
 you, but not for me. I must have some- 
 hodyr 
 
 He realized that more than mere fighting 
 qualities had to be borne in mind. The 
 multifarious details of keeping an army 
 in good physical and moral condition — 
 from the prompt delivery of rations to 
 good regimental music — and the fact 
 that the lack of one single small item, like 
 
 9>^5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 horse-shoe nails, might cripple a whole 
 corps and lose a battle, was summed up 
 in his quaint way, when, discussing the 
 qualities of various generals in the field, 
 he said, 
 
 " Now there is Joe Hooker. He can 
 fight. I think that is pretty well estab- 
 lished — but whether he can ' keep tav- 
 ern ' for a large army is not so sure." 
 
 The heart-sickening list of military rep- 
 utations that began in promise and ended 
 in defeat, dragged on, saddening and 
 wearying him. His inflexible sense of jus- 
 tice left him not even the satisfaction of 
 wrath, for he knew that none of these men 
 failed willingly. 
 
 256 
 
XIII 
 
 DAILY RECEPTIONS OF THE PLAIN PEOPLE 
 
 SECRETARY WELLES kept an 
 Interesting and voluminous diary. 
 In it he wrote: 
 
 It is an infirmity of the President that 
 he permits the little newsmongers to come 
 around him and be intimate; and in this he 
 is encouraged by Seward, who does the same, 
 and even courts the corrupt and the vicious, 
 which the President does not. He has great 
 inquisitiveness. Likes to hear all the politi- 
 cal gossip as much as Seward. But the Presi- 
 dent is honest, sincere, and confiding. . . . 
 
 Fully three-quarters of Lincoln's time 
 was indeed given up to seeing people, and 
 the " little newsmongers " played a not 
 17 257 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 unimportant part in his success. He had 
 no time for reading newspapers. He soon 
 gave up all attempts to do so ; yet it was 
 imperative that he should know the drift 
 of thought and feeling all over the coun- 
 try. His private secretaries, bringing him 
 their daily digest of news, marveled to find 
 him already so well informed. The secret 
 lay in these interminable interviews. With 
 prominent men from all sections coming 
 to receive or impart information, and the 
 " plain people," as he liked to call them, 
 coming to him on all sorts of errands, there 
 was hardly a subject of public interest not 
 touched upon and discussed. His visitors 
 supplied all he could have acquired by 
 reading, and in addition the element of 
 interest or prejudice which each uncon- 
 sciously put into his narrative. The Pres- 
 ident used to call these interviews his pub- 
 lic opinion baths ; and he was much better 
 equipped for the task of governing, be- 
 cause he understood, in part at least, the 
 
 258 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 foibles and prejudices of the different lo- 
 calities. He had not left his skill in prac- 
 tical politics behind hini in Illinois, and he 
 knew that upon the cooperation of all these 
 people he must finally rely. 
 
 His friends begged him to save himself 
 the fatigue of seeing the throngs who came 
 on insignificant errands. They reminded 
 him that nine out of ten had some favor 
 to ask, and that nine-tenths of these he 
 could not grant. 
 
 '' They do not want much," he answered,\ 
 " and they get very little. Each one con- 
 siders his business of great importance, 
 and I must gratify them. I know how I 
 would feel in their place." At noon, on 
 days when the cabinet was not in session, 
 the doors were thrown open, and the public 
 might enter. 
 
 There was of course some danger in this. 
 Insane people and criminals might, indeed 
 sometimes did, enter with the rest. But 
 the military guard, the ushers, and Lin- 
 
 259 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 coin's secretaries were all on the alert to 
 detect them, and acquired great skill in 
 handling undesirable visitors. 
 
 " Lunatics and visionaries are here so 
 frequently that they cease to be strange 
 phenomena," my father wrote. " I find 
 the best way is to discuss and decide their 
 projects as deliberately as any other mat- 
 ter of business." 
 
 The President, having read deeply in 
 the book of human nature, was himself 
 skilled in detecting hidden signs of false- 
 hood and deceit. " They are a swindle," 
 the youthful John Hay declared, as he 
 announced a delegation from the far 
 Souih. " Let them in, they will not swin- 
 dle me," quoth the President. 
 
 Men of all sorts with projects of all 
 kinds, legitimate or otherwise, came to ask 
 for official sanction. These were apt to 
 lag behind, hoping for a word alone with 
 the President. " Well, my friend, what 
 can I do for you ? " he would ask in dis- 
 
 260 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 concertinglj prompt and public fashion. 
 But lie arrogated to himself no right of 
 criticism or censure because he was Presi- 
 dent, treating all as though the burden 
 of proving dishonesty rested upon the 
 Government. 
 
 Particularly welcome were the occa- 
 sional visits of stalwart mountaineers from 
 East Tennessee, whom the President 
 greeted like younger brothers. " He is 
 one of them, really," wrote John Hay ; " I 
 never saw him more at his ease than he is 
 with these first-rate patriots of the bor- 
 der." 
 
 Sometimes a group of Indians from the 
 far West filled the room with gaudy color, 
 and Lincoln would air his two or three In- 
 dian words, to their stolid amusement. 
 Oftener the apartment was somber with 
 the mourning garments of women come to 
 plead for husbands or fathers in trouble, 
 or to ask permission to pass south through 
 the military lines. 
 
 261 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 More of the President's visitors were sad 
 than happy. Some of them came on er- 
 rands that were ridiculous as well as trivial. 
 Once a voluble landlady deluged him with 
 insistence that he hold up the pay of her 
 treasury-clerk lodger until his account was 
 settled. 
 
 Though so busy he apparently had leis- 
 ure for all, bending a care-lined benignant 
 face to listen, grave, courteous, sympa- 
 thetic; breaking at times into his sudden 
 infectious laugh, referring one to this bu- 
 reau and another to that official, to whom 
 they should have carried their requests in 
 the first place; or scribbling a few words 
 on a card which opened vistas of quite 
 breathless happiness. 
 
 It pained him to say " No," and it was 
 his impulse to keep the conversation on a 
 semi-humorous footing where the " No," 
 if it must be said, would hurt as little as 
 possible. To this end he drew on his fund 
 of anecdotes, until almost every account 
 
 262 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 of an interview at the White House tells of 
 the President's smile, and his sympathy, 
 and how he told a funny story. 
 
 Sometimes he essayed tlie dangerous ex- 
 periment of answering a fool according to 
 his folly. A gentleman came to him in 
 behalf of a private soldier who hadif 
 knocked down his captain. " I tell you 
 what I will do. You go up to the Capitol, 
 and get Congress to pass a law making it 
 legal for a private to knock down his cap- 
 tain, and I '11 pardon your man with pleas- 
 ure," he said with such waggish earaest- 
 ness, and such evident desire to please, 
 that both burst out laughing, and the mat- 
 ter was dropped. 
 
 He told his cabinet that he found cer- 
 tain questions very embarrassing. He re- 
 minded himself of a man in Illinois who 
 was so annoyed by a pressing creditor that 
 he feigned insanity whenever the creditor 
 broached the subject. " I," said the Pres- 
 ident, " on more than one occasion in this 
 
 26S 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 room, have been compelled to appear very 
 mad." 
 
 The few people who had no requests to 
 make, usually came to give advice. Min- 
 isters seemed to feel themselves as privi- 
 leged as Senators in this regard. Mr. Car^ 
 penter tells of a clergyman who asked for 
 an interview. The President assumed an 
 air of patient waiting. There was a mo- 
 ment's silence. " I am now ready to hear 
 what you have to say," he prompted, as 
 the silence continued. The visitor hastily 
 disclaimed having anything particular to 
 say. He had only come to pay his re- 
 spects. " My dear sir ! " the other cried, 
 his face lighting up, " I am delighted to 
 see you. I thought you had come to 
 preach to me ! " 
 
 Singly or in delegations they came for 
 that purpose — to show him his duty in 
 regard to emancipation, or some other 
 matter about which he was not yet ready 
 to declare his policy. While courteous, he 
 
 264 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 absolutely refused to be hurried into a dec- 
 laration. " He will not be bullied, even 
 by his friends," one of his secretaries 
 wrote. 
 
 Others, singly, or in delegations, came to 
 pray with him. Respecting their motive, 
 and himself deeply religious, he received 
 them with unfailing courtesy. A IVIetho- 
 dist exhortation, or a Quaker prayer meet- 
 ing, might seem inconvenient, even time 
 consuming, in the midst of his busy morn- 
 ing, but this " Christian without a creed " 
 not only reverenced the power to Avhom the 
 petition was addressed ; he was grateful for 
 the human bond it helped to strengtlien. 
 Sometimes, however, he was moved to ask 
 questions hard to meet. To one person 
 who claimed to bring him a direct com- 
 mand from the Almighty, he replied: 
 
 " I hope it will not be irreverent for me 
 to say that if it is probable that God 
 would reveal his will to others on a point 
 so connected with my duty, it might be 
 
 265 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 supposed He would reveal it directly to 
 
 me." 
 
 He had a most disconcerting way of 
 pricking bubbles with the point of his 
 logic. A committee of rich New Yorkers 
 hurried to Washington when the Confeder- 
 ate ironclad Merrimac was striking terror 
 into hearts along the Atlantic coast, and 
 demanded a gun-boat for the protection of 
 New York harbor. " Gentlemen," he an- 
 swered, " the credit of the Government is 
 at a very low ebb. It is impossible under 
 present conditions to do what you ask. 
 But it seems to me, that if I were half as 
 rich as you are reputed to be, and half as 
 badly scared as you appear to be, I would 
 build a gun-boat and present it to the 
 Government." 
 
 When, at long intervals, his patience 
 gave way, and he blazed forth in righteous 
 wrath, men quailed before him. Editor 
 Medill of the Chicago Tribune told of a 
 time in 1864 when a call for extra troops 
 
 9.m 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 drove Chicago to tlic verge of revolt. Her 
 quota was 6000 men. She sent a delega- 
 tion to ask for a new enrollment, which 
 Stanton refused. Lincoln consented to oo 
 with the delegation to Stanton's office and 
 hear both sides. "I shall never forget," 
 said Mr. Medill, " how after sitting in si- 
 lence for some time, he suddenly lifted 
 his head and turned on us a black and 
 frowning face. 
 
 " ' Gentlemen,' he said, in a voice full 
 of bitterness, ' after Boston, Chicago has 
 been the chief instrument in bringing 
 this war on the country. The Northwest 
 has opposed the South as the Northeast 
 has opposed the South. It is you who 
 are largely responsible for making blood 
 flow as it has. You called for war until 
 we had it. You called for emancipation, 
 and I have given it to you. Whatever you 
 have asked for you have had. Now you 
 come here begging to be let off from the 
 call for men which I have made to carry on 
 
 267 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the war you have demanded. You ought 
 to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a 
 right to expect better things of you. And 
 you, Medill, you are acting hke a coward. 
 You and your Tribune have had more in- 
 fluence than any paper in the Northwest 
 in making this war. You can influence 
 great masses, and yet you cry to be spared 
 at a moment when your cause is suffering. 
 Go home and send us those men ! ' 
 
 " I could n't say anything. It was the 
 first time I was ever whipped, and I did n't 
 have an answer. We all got up and went 
 out, and when the door closed, one of my 
 colleagues said, ' Well, gentlemen, the Old 
 Man is right. We ought to be ashamed of 
 ourselves. Let us never say anything 
 about this, but go home and raise the 
 men.' " 
 
 It speaks volumes for Lincoln's abso- 
 lute justice and for Medill's fairminded- 
 ness, that even after the lapse of years, the 
 editor could bring himself to tell how 
 
 268 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 Lincoln called lilni " coward," and admit 
 that he was right. 
 
 Usually the President sat out impor- 
 tunity in an attitude of patient waiting. 
 One summer afternoon General Fry found 
 him listening to a common soldier. lie 
 looked worn and tired. " Well, my man, 
 that may all be so, but you must go to 
 your officers about it," he said when the 
 petitioner stopped for breath. Again the 
 tale recommenced, and the President gazed 
 wearily through his office window at the 
 broad river in the distance. Finally he 
 turned to him out of patience. 
 
 " Go away," he said. " Now go away. 
 I cannot meddle in your case. I could as 
 easily bail out the Potomac with a tea- 
 spoon as attend to all the details of the 
 army." 
 
 It was not often that he showed even 
 so much feeling. Ordinarily he trusted 
 to the soft answer which turns away wrath, 
 or to the humorous answer which disarms 
 
 269 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 resentment. The wittiest of all of these 
 he made in answering a man who wanted 
 a pass to Richmond. 
 
 " I would gladly give you the pass if 
 it would do you any good," he^ said. " But 
 in the last two years I have given passes to 
 Richmond to 250,000 men, and not one of 
 them has managed to get there yet." 
 
 But even wit did not make refusal easy 
 to this kind-hearted man. He extracted 
 a grim amusement from his attack of 
 varioloid by saying that at last he " had 
 something he could give to everybody ! " 
 
 Once in a while he had the pleasant sur- 
 prise of a visitor with something important 
 and helpful to say. At the time he was 
 considering a proclamation of amnesty, 
 Mr. Robert Dale Owen took it upon him- 
 self to prepare a digest of historical prece- 
 dents. He spent three months upon the 
 task, and then asked permission to read 
 his paper to the President. Mr. Lincoln, 
 knowing nothing of its contents, and sec- 
 
 270 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 ing only a very formidable-looking docu- 
 ment, settled into his attitude of patient 
 endurance. But this soon gave way to 
 alert interest. He began asking questions, 
 and interrupting with requests that cer- 
 tain paragraphs be read again. When 
 Mr. Owen finished, and offered him tlic 
 paper, he accepted it with hearty thanks. 
 
 " Mr. Owen, it is due to you that I 
 should say that you have conferred a very 
 essential service both upon me and upon 
 the country by the preparation of this 
 paper. It contains that which it was ex- 
 ceedingly important that I should know, 
 but which, if left to myself, I never should 
 have known, because I have not the time 
 necessary for such an examination of au- 
 thorities as a review of this kind involves. 
 And I want to say, secondly, that if I 
 had the time, I could not have done the 
 work as well as you have done it." 
 
 Nothing showed his patience and kindli- 
 ness more than his manner with the women 
 
 271 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 who came to the Executive Office — and 
 many were the militant females he encoun- 
 tered during his Presidency. 
 
 " To-day, Mrs. Major Blank of the reg- 
 ular army calls and urges the appointment 
 of her husband as a brigadier-general. 
 She is a saucy woman, and I am afraid 
 she will keep tormenting me till I may 
 have to do it," is his autograph confession 
 of a spirited feminine attack; and of their 
 inequality of weapons. 
 
 The wife of a Western general, more en- 
 ergetic than diplomatic, descended upon 
 the capital, demanded an interview with 
 the President, and upbraided him with 
 meaning to ruin her husband. Lincoln be- 
 gan to talk about the difficulty she must 
 have experienced in making the journey 
 from the West alone; more of a journey 
 then than now. He was so kind that she 
 had to respond, but she was very per- 
 sistent, and very much in earnest, and had 
 no idea of stopping there. Again and 
 
 272 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 again she returned to the charge; agani 
 and again he parried. lie was courteous, 
 even sympathetic, but he took no notice of 
 her questions or insinuations, and gave 
 her not a single answer. " I had to ex- 
 ercise all the rude tact I have, to avoid 
 quarreling with her," he said feelingly 
 when the ordeal w^as over. 
 
 But it was in dealing with women in dis- 
 tress, particularly with women in the hum- 
 bler walks of life, that his kindness was 
 most marked. 
 
 " It is hard to portray the exquisite 
 pathos of INIr. Lincoln's character, as man- 
 ifested in his acts from time to time," 
 Mr. James Speed once said to my father, 
 in telling him of an incident that had come 
 to his knowledge. It was at the end of 
 one of the daily receptions. 
 
 " Is that all.? " Mr. Lincoln asked. 
 
 " There is one poor woman here yet, 
 Mr. President," Edward, the colored 
 usher, replied. " She has been here for 
 i8 273 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 several days and has been crying and tak- 
 ing on, and has n't got a chance to come 
 in yet." 
 
 " Let her in," said Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 The woman told her story. It was just 
 after the battle of Gettysburg. She had a 
 husband and three sons in the army, and 
 was left alone to fight the hard battle of 
 life. At first her husband had sent her 
 regularly a part of his pay, and she had 
 managed to live. But gradually he had 
 yielded to the temptations of camp life, 
 and no more remittances came. Her boys 
 had become scattered among the various 
 armies, and she was without help. Would 
 not the President discharge one of them 
 that he might come home to her.^^ 
 
 While the recital was going on the 
 President stood before the fireplace, his 
 hands crossed behind his back, his head 
 bent in earnest thought. When the woman 
 ended, and waited for his reply, his hps 
 opened and he spoke, not as if he were re- 
 
 274 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 plying to what she said, but rather as if 
 he were in abstracted and unconscious self- 
 communion. 
 
 " I have two, and you have none." 
 
 That was all he said. Then he walked 
 across to his writing table, and taking a 
 blank card, wrote upon it an order for the 
 son's discharge. Upon another paper he 
 wrote out in great detail where she should 
 present it, to what department, at what 
 office, and to what official; giving her such 
 directions that she might personally follow 
 the red-tape labyrinth. 
 
 A few days later, at a similar close of 
 the general reception for the day, Edward 
 said, " That woman, Mr. President, is here 
 again, and still crying." 
 
 " Let her in," said Lincoln. " What 
 can be the matter now? " 
 
 Once more he stood in the same spot, be- 
 fore the fireplace, and for the second time 
 heard her story. The President's card 
 had been a magic passport. It had 
 
 275 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 opened forbidden doors, and softened the 
 sternness of official countenances. By its 
 help she had found headquarters, camp, 
 regiment and company. But instead of 
 giving a mother's embrace to a lost son re- 
 stored, she had arrived only in time to 
 follow him to the grave. The battle of 
 Gettysburg, his wounds, his death in the 
 hospital — the story came In eloquent frag- 
 ments through her ill-stifled sobs. And 
 now, would the President give her the next 
 one of her boys? 
 
 Once more Mr. Lincoln responded with 
 sententious curtness, as if talking to him- 
 self, 
 
 " I have two, and you have none." 
 Sharp and rather stern, the compres- 
 sion of his lips marking the struggle be- 
 tween official duty and human sympathy, 
 he walked once again to his little writing 
 table and took up his pen to write for the 
 second time an order which should give the 
 pleading woman one of her remaining boys. 
 
 276 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 And the woman, as if In o])cdlcncc to an 
 impulse she could not control, moved after 
 him, and stood by his side as he wrote, and 
 with the familiarity of a mother placed her 
 hand on the President's head and smoothed 
 his wandering and tangled hair. Human 
 grief and sympathy had ovcrleapt all the 
 barriers of convention, and the ruler of a 
 great nation was truly the servant, friend, 
 and protector of this humble woman, 
 clothed for the moment with a paramount 
 claim of loyal sacrifice. 
 
 The order was written and signed. 
 The President rose and thrust it into her 
 hand with the choking exclamation, 
 " There ! " and hurried from the room, 
 followed, so long as he could hear, by the 
 thanks and blessings of an overjoyed 
 mother's heart. 
 
 Lincoln's sympathy for the soldiers was 
 very genuine. They were not only fight- 
 ing his country's battles — they came 
 from that large mass of sturdy citizenship 
 
 277 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of which he spoke with pride and affection 
 as " the common people." " With us 
 every soldier is a man of character, and 
 must be treated with more consideration 
 than is customary in Europe," he ex- 
 plained to a French nobleman. 
 
 He recognized the potential force in 
 each single regiment. " I happen tempo- 
 rarily to occupy the White House. I am 
 a living witness that any one of your chil- 
 dren may look to come here as my father's 
 child has," he told an Ohio regiment ; and 
 another time he remarked that any regi- 
 ment of the army could furnish material 
 and ability to fill all the highest offices in 
 the Government. 
 
 His visits to camps and army corps 
 were an ovation, for the " boys " loved 
 him in return, and responded in every way 
 permitted by discipline. It was not only 
 for soldiers in the abstract that he cared. 
 He sampled their rations, chuckled over 
 their repartee, and " sized up " individual 
 
 278 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 members of a company as he passed by ; 
 while for those in trouble he agonized in 
 spirit as no ruler of this world had ever 
 done. 
 
 Court-martial cases reached a number 
 approaching 30,000 a year during the 
 war; and although, of course, only a small 
 proportion were for capital offenses, the 
 latter were referred by hundreds to Presi- 
 dent Lincoln ; and each case brought to 
 his notice became the subject of his per- 
 sonal solicitude. Secretary Stanton and 
 officers of the army protested against his 
 wholesale clemency. He would ruin the 
 army, they declared; but the military tel- 
 egraph was kept busy with his messages 
 staying executions and asking details of 
 evidence. Attorney-General Bates told 
 him flatly that he was not fit to be en- 
 trusted with the pardoning power. This 
 did not move him in the least. He pri- 
 vately believed Bates to be as " pigeon- 
 hearted " as himself. 
 
 279 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Judge-Advocate General Holt labored 
 with him, pointing out why it was better 
 rigidly to enforce the law. " Yes, your 
 reasons are very good," he would reply, 
 "but I don't think I can do it." He 
 " did not believe it would make a man any 
 better to shoot him," and argued that if 
 the Government kept him ahve it could 
 at least get some work out of him. 
 
 He used to tell his story of the Irish 
 soldier who was asked why he had de- 
 serted. " Well, Captain," said he, " it 
 was not me fault. I 've a heart in me 
 breast as brave as Julius Caesar; but when 
 the battle begins, somehow or other these 
 cowardly legs of mine will run away wid 
 me! " 
 
 " I have no doubt," the President would 
 add, " that is true of many a man who 
 honestly means to do his duty, but is over- 
 come by a physical fear greater than his 
 will. I am not sure how I would act my- 
 self if Minie balls were whistling, and 
 
 280 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 those great oblong sliells were shrieking 
 in my ears." 
 
 He used to call cases of cowardice and 
 desertion his " leg cases." In the press 
 of business large numbers of them accumu- 
 lated on his desk; when he had leisure he 
 would send for Judge Holt and go over 
 them. John Hay, making record in his 
 diary of six hours of a July day spent in 
 this manner, commented on the eagerness 
 with which Mr. Lincoln caught at any fact 
 which would justify saving the life of a 
 condemned soldier. He was only merciless 
 in cases where meanness or cruelty were 
 shown. " Cases of cowardice he was espe- 
 cially averse to punishing with death. 
 He said it would frighten the poor devils 
 too terribly to shoot them." " Let him 
 fight instead of shooting him," he en- 
 dorsed on the case of a man who had once 
 before deserted, and then reenlisted. 
 
 The sentence of another who had safely 
 escaped into Mexico he approved, saying, 
 
 281 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " We will condemn him as they sell hogs 
 in Indiana, ' as they run.' " 
 
 Schuyler Colfax, happening on such a 
 scene, carried away a memory of Lin- 
 coln's exceeding reluctance to approve the 
 death penalty. One case he laid aside, 
 saying he would wait a few days until he 
 could read the evidence. Another he put 
 by " until I can settle in my mind whether 
 this soldier can better serve the country 
 dead or living." To still a third he said 
 that the general commanding would be in 
 Washington soon, and he would talk it over 
 with him. At last Judge Holt presented 
 a very flagrant case, with the remark that 
 this might meet the President's require- 
 ment of serving the country better dead 
 than living; but Lincoln answered that, 
 anyway, he guessed he 'd put it among his 
 " leg cases." 
 
 Some of the reasons he gave for grant- 
 ing pardons were whimsical enough, but 
 there was a sound principle underlying his 
 
 282 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 action. He tried to probe for motives; 
 and if he learned that a man's general 
 record was good, he accepted that as pre- 
 sumptive evidence that he meant to do 
 right, wherever his " cowardly legs " 
 might have carried him. 
 
 " This life is too precious to be lost," 
 he said in the case of a boy who fell asleep 
 on guard because in addition to his own 
 duty, he had volunteered to take the place 
 of a sick comrade. 
 
 " Did you say this boy was once badly 
 wounded? Then, since the Scriptures say 
 that in the shedding of blood Is remission 
 of sins, I guess we '11 have to let him 
 off," was his decree in another case. " If 
 a man had more than one life I think 
 a little hanging would not hurt this one," 
 he said again. " But after he is once dead 
 we cannot bring him to life, no matter how 
 sorry we may be ; so the boy shall be par- 
 doned," and resting a moment from his 
 labors, he threw up his spectacles, and told 
 
 283 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his story of a darky in one of the bravest 
 regiments at Fort Donelson. 
 
 " Were you in the fight ? " some one 
 asked him. 
 
 " Had a little taste ob it, sah." 
 
 '' Stood your ground, did you? " 
 
 " No, sah — I runs." 
 
 " Ran at the first fire, did you ? '* 
 
 " Yes, sah, an' I would 'a run sooner 
 if I knowed it was a-comin'." 
 
 " That was not very creditable to your 
 courage." 
 
 " Dat is n't my line, sah. Cookin' is my 
 perfession." 
 
 " But have you no regard for your repu- 
 tation ? " 
 
 " Reputation 's nuffin to me by de side 
 ob life." 
 
 " Do you consider your life worth more 
 than other peoples'? " 
 
 " Worth mo' to me, sah." 
 
 " Do you think your company would 
 have missed you if you had been killed? " 
 
 284 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 "Maybe not, sail. A dead wlilte man 
 ain' much to dcse sojcrs, let alone a dead 
 nigger. But I'd 'a' missed myself, an' 
 dat 's de point wif me." 
 
 Many of Lincoln's daily visitors came 
 on these sad errands. Congressmen ap- 
 pealed to him to pardon their constituents. 
 " Why don't you men up there in Congress 
 repeal the law, instead of coming and ask- 
 ing me to override it and make it practi- 
 cally a dead letter? " he asked. But they 
 did not see fit to do so, and he plodded 
 wearily through endless masses of testi- 
 mony. 
 
 It was in this labor that he spent the 
 morning after his reelection. He became 
 more and more convinced of the sickening 
 uselessness of " this butchering business." 
 " There are already too many weeping 
 widows in the United States," he said. 
 " For God's sake do not ask me to add to 
 the number ! " and he almost invariably 
 suspended execution " until further or- 
 
 285 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ders," which, needless to say, were never 
 given. 
 
 " If a man comes to him with a touching 
 story, his judgment is almost certain to 
 be affected by it. Should the applicant 
 be a woman — a wife, mother, or sister — 
 in nine cases out of ten, her tears, if noth- 
 ing else, are sure to prevail," Attorney- 
 General Bates declared. 
 
 The most whimsical reason sufficed. 
 
 " My poor girl," he said to a young 
 woman in a neat but scanty dress, " you 
 have come with no governor or senator or 
 member of Congress to plead your cause. 
 You seem truthful, and you donH wear 
 hoops, and I '11 be whipped but I '11 pardon 
 your brother ! " 
 
 Some of these cases came very close to 
 him personally, as he read the names of 
 men or sons of men he had known ; but 
 even when no personal acquaintance in- 
 tensified his interest, the care he bestowed 
 upon them was enormous. Not only one 
 
 286 
 
DAILY RECEPTIONS 
 
 telegram, but several would be sent about 
 a single case. Some of them, long and 
 full of detail, betrayed the strain to whicli 
 his sympathy had been subjected. One, 
 to General Mead, was as follows : 
 
 An intelligent woman in deep distress 
 called this morning, saying her husband, a 
 lieutenant in the Army of the Potomac, was 
 to be shot next Monday for desertion; and 
 putting a letter in my hand, upon which I 
 relied for particulars, she left me without 
 mentioning a name or other particular by 
 which to identify the case. On opening the 
 letter I found it equally vague, having 
 nothing to identify her by except her sig- 
 nature, which seems to be " Mrs. Anna S. 
 King." I could not again find her. If you 
 have a case which you shall think is probably 
 the one intended, please apply my despatch 
 of this morning to it. 
 
 His " despatch of this morning " was 
 bis usual order to postpone execution till 
 further orders. 
 
 287 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Thaddeus Stevens once went with a con- 
 stituent of his, an elderly woman, to the 
 President on an errand of mercy. Mr. 
 Lincoln granted her request, and her 
 gratitude was literally too deep for words. 
 Not a syllable did she utter until they 
 were well on their way out of the White 
 House, when she stood still and broke forth 
 vehemently : 
 
 " I knew it was a Copperhead lie ! " 
 
 "What do you mean, madam?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " They told me that he was an ugly- 
 looking man ! He is not. He is the 
 handsomest man I ever saw in my life ! " 
 
 288 
 
XIV 
 
 THE MEMORANDUM OF AUGUST TWENTY- 
 THIRD 
 
 ' T AM here by the blunders of the Denio- 
 X crats," Lincoln told Hugh McCulloch. 
 " If, instead of resolving that the war was 
 a failure, they had resolved that I was a 
 failure, and denounced me for not more 
 vigorously prosecuting it, I should not 
 have been reelected." 
 
 No act or episode of his life was more 
 characteristic than his attitude toward a 
 second term. In talking with strangers 
 he discouraged any mention of it, but to 
 friends he frankly admitted his readiness 
 to continue the work he had entei;^d upon. 
 " A second term would be a great honor, 
 19 289 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and a great labor, which together, per- 
 haps, I would not decline if tendered." 
 
 His two secretaries were, of course, 
 keenly interested; and the way he pursued 
 his undeviating course, not indifferent to, 
 but regardless of, his political fate, would 
 have won their undying admiration, had 
 it not been his long before. 
 
 " This town is now as dismal as a de- 
 faced tombstone," John Hay wrote my 
 father late in the summer of 1863. " The 
 Tycoon is in fine whack. I have rarely 
 seen him so serene and so busy. He is 
 managing this war, the draft, foreign re- 
 lations, and planning a reconstruction of 
 the Union, all in one. I never knew with 
 what tyrannous authority he rules the 
 cabinet until now. The most important 
 things he decides, and there is no cavil. 
 I am growing more and more firmly con- 
 vinced that the good of the country abso- 
 lutely demands that he should be kept 
 where he is till this thing blows over. 
 
 290 
 
AUGUST TWENT Y-TII I U 1) 
 
 There is no man in the country so wise, 
 so gentle and so firm. I believe the hand 
 of God placed him where he is." 
 
 " Some well-meaning newspapers advise 
 the President to keep his fingers out of the 
 military pie, and all that sort of tlu'ng," 
 he wrote again; "the truth is, if he did, 
 the pie would be a sorry mess. The old 
 man sits here and w^ields like a backwoods 
 Jupiter the bolts of war and the machinery 
 of Government, with a hand equally steady 
 and equally firm. ... I do not know 
 whether the nation is w^orthy of him for 
 another term. I know the people want 
 him. There is no mistaking that fact. 
 But politicians are strong yet and he is 
 not ' their kind of a cat.' I hope God 
 won't see fit to scourge us for our sins by 
 any one of the tw^o or three most promi- 
 nent candidates on the ground. • . ." 
 
 Republicans generally felt as did these 
 tw^o young men, but the President had 
 active critics and opponents within his own 
 
 291 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 party. " Corruption, intrigue and malice 
 are doing their worst, but I do not think 
 it Is In the cards to beat the Tycoon," 
 my father wrote in his turn. Curiously 
 enough, the most determined opposition 
 within Republican ranks came from anti- 
 slavery men, who could not forgive the 
 Emancipator for the deliberation with 
 which he took the steps toward freedom. 
 There were also those who blamed him for 
 the slow progress of the war. 
 
 It was hard, however, for these elements 
 of discontent to find a rallying point, since 
 no prominent Republican in Congress or 
 in the military service cared to enter the 
 ungrateful contest. In the cabinet only 
 one man was short-sighted enough to 
 Imagine he could make headway against 
 Lincoln's wide popularity. This was 
 Chase, who had been the first to assure 
 Lincoln of his support in I860. Pure 
 minded and absolutely devoted to the 
 Union though he was, he seemed Incapable 
 
 292 
 
AUGUST TWENTY -THIRD 
 
 of judging men or motives — even his own 
 — correctly. He really thought himself 
 free from political ambition, and truly Lin- 
 coln's friend, yet for months he was busy 
 writing letters in the interests of his own 
 candidacy. 
 
 Lincoln knew of this, but went on ap- 
 pointing Mr. Chase's partlzans to office. 
 John Hay, wrathfully indignant, ventured 
 to free his mind to his chief, telling him 
 he was making himself particeps crim'inis 
 by these appointments. " He seemed much 
 amused at Chase's mad hunt after the 
 Presidency," the young man wrote. " He 
 says it may win. Lie hopes the country 
 will never do worse." 
 
 The movement in Chase's favor reached 
 its culmination in a secret circular signed 
 by a committee of which Senator Pomeroy 
 of Kansas was chairman, which criticized 
 Lincoln's " tendency toward compromises 
 and temporary expedients " and lauded 
 Chase as the man to rescue the country 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 from present and future ills. Copies of 
 this soon reached the White House. Lin- 
 coln refused to look at them. Shortly 
 afterward it got into print. Secretary 
 Chase wrote to the President offering to 
 resign, but assuring him that he had no 
 knowledge of the document before seeing 
 it in the newspapers. 
 
 Mr. Robert Lincoln remembers that he 
 was at home at the time, and that after 
 dinner his father strolled into his room, 
 showed him Mr. Chase's letter, asked for 
 writing materials, and sitting down wrote 
 a note in answer, to the effect that he knew 
 just as little about such things as his 
 friends allowed him to know, that neither 
 of them could be held responsible for acts 
 committed without their instigation or ap- 
 proval, and adding, " Whether you shall 
 remain at the head of the Treasury De- 
 partment is a question which I will not 
 allow myself to consider from any stand- 
 point other than my judgment of the pub- 
 
 294 
 
AUGUST T W E N T Y - T H I R 1) 
 
 lie service, and, in tliat \\v\v, I do not 
 perceive occasion for a change." 
 
 When he showed this to his son, the 
 latter asked in sui^^rise if lie had not seen 
 the circular. Mr. Lincoln stopped him 
 almost sternly, saying that a good many 
 people had tried to tell him something it 
 did not suit him to hear, and that his 
 answer to the Secretary of the Treasury 
 was literally true. " Thereupon," Mr. 
 Robert Lincoln added, " at his request I 
 called a messenger, and the note to Mr. 
 Chase was sent." 
 
 Mr. Chase's candidacy, however, had no 
 foundation except in the imagination of a 
 few personal followers, and perished for 
 lack of nourishment. An attempt, made 
 without Grant's knowledge, to stampede 
 the country for that general, failed for the 
 same reason. Lincoln regarded that also 
 with the utmost serenity. "If he takes 
 Richmond, let him have it," he said. 
 
 But the talk annoyed him. " I wish they 
 295 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would stop thrusting that subject of the 
 Presidency into my face," he remarked. 
 " I don't want to hear anything about it." 
 
 It was neither Chase nor Grant, but 
 Fremont who was finally nominated by 
 Republican malcontents in a much-her- 
 alded but poorly attended convention at 
 Cleveland. Lincoln, on hearing that most 
 of the expected leaders stayed away, and 
 that at no time was the attendance greater 
 than four hundred, picked up the Bible 
 which lay habitually on his desk, and after 
 turning over the leaves a moment read : 
 
 " And every one that was in debt, and 
 every one that was discontented, gathered 
 themselves unto him ; and he became a cap- 
 tain over them, and there were with him 
 about four hundred men." 
 
 The great current had set toward Lin- 
 coln, and when the Republican National 
 Convention came together in Baltimore on 
 the 7th of June, 1864, it had nothing to 
 do but to record the popular will. The 
 
 296 
 
AUGUST T W E N T Y - T H I R D 
 
 choice of a Vice-president presented more 
 difficulty, for there was an impression 
 abroad that it would be wise to select a 
 war Democrat. Lincoln was besieged to 
 make his wishes known, but refused, even 
 to his closest friends, being convinced that 
 it was a question in which he had abso- 
 lutely no right to interfere. The final 
 choice was made so quickly that the Presi- 
 dent, walking over to the War Depart- 
 ment, in quest of news, heard of Andrew 
 Johnson's nomination before the messenger 
 despatched a few minutes earlier, with a 
 telegram announcing his own renomlna- 
 tion, had succeeded in finding him. 
 
 Next day, for the second time in his life, 
 this pioneer ruler faced a committee sent 
 to tell him that he had been nominated for 
 the highest office within the people's gift. 
 This time he received them in the great 
 East Room instead of in his modest 
 Springfield parlor. He, as well as his sur- 
 roundings, was altered. Experience had 
 
 297 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ripened him, responsibility had aged him. 
 His benignity of expression was greater, 
 his physical vigor less. There was in his 
 bearing all the old courage, and a greater 
 consciousness of power. 
 
 The summer proved to be full of fight- 
 ing and frightful losses in the armies, and 
 of consequent panics among politicians. 
 It became necessary to resort to a draft, 
 and this in itself indicated such waning 
 enthusiasm that leading Republicans 
 begged the President to withdraw the call, 
 or at least to suspend it until after the 
 election. " What is the Presidency worth 
 to me, if I have no country ? " was his 
 answer. 
 
 He brought serious criticism upon him- 
 self by refusing to sign a bill passed by 
 Congress which prescribed a form for re- 
 establishing State governments based on 
 the assumption that they had been out of 
 the Union. Lincoln's contention from the 
 first had been that the Union was per- 
 
 298 
 
AUGUST T W E N T Y - T n I R D 
 
 petual, and that thcj had never passed, 
 and could not pass by revolution, out of 
 Federal control. It was, he admitted, " a 
 question of metaphysics," but it involved 
 the principle on which all his action had 
 been based, and which he could not ignore, 
 even though it might have serious conse- 
 quences for himself. 
 
 The Peace men, meanwhile, were clamor- 
 ing for an end of the war. Horace 
 Greeley insisted with such vehemence that 
 Confederate commissioners already were in 
 Canada, empowered and ready to treat 
 with the Federal authorities, that Lincoln, 
 to convince him and others like-minded 
 that the administration was as anxious as 
 they could be to bring the war to a close, 
 empowered Greeley himself to go to Can- 
 ada, and if he found the alleged commis- 
 sioners properly authorized, to bring them 
 to Washington. The mission ended as 
 Lincoln supposed it would, in proving the 
 utter falsity of Greeley's assertions, and 
 
 299 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in making that earnest gentleman a bit 
 ridiculous. 
 
 " I sent Brother Greeley a commission. 
 I guess I am about even with him," he said 
 with a twinkle in his eye. 
 
 But all these causes combined to increase 
 the popular unrest, and to breed dissatis- 
 faction with the administration. McClel- 
 lan seemed the foreordained Democratic 
 candidate, but the party managers, real- 
 izing the advantage of making their op- 
 ponents fight an unseen foe, and at the 
 same time of keeping themselves In a po- 
 sition to drop McClellan and adopt some 
 one else If chance and the fortunes of war 
 dictated, postponed their national conven- 
 tion until September; and having no can- 
 didate of their own, were free to devote 
 all their time and energy to attacks upon 
 the administration. 
 
 In the campaign of I860 Lincoln had 
 possessed no shadow of authority. Now 
 that he commanded all the resources of the 
 
 SOO 
 
AUGUST T W E N T Y - T II I R D 
 
 GoveiTimcnt, he was implored to niako 
 promises, to assist liis friends and o])pose 
 his enemies. 
 
 " I recognize no sucli tiling as political 
 friendship personal to myself," he an- 
 swered, and as far as promises were con- 
 cerned, he kept himself as free as he had 
 done four years before when he announced 
 that he would go to Washington " an un- 
 pledged man." 
 
 One who was present related to my 
 father the details of a stormy interview 
 which took place between the President, 
 Simon Cameron and Thaddeus Stevens. 
 They had come to talk over the political 
 situation in Pennsj^lvania. jNIr. Stevens 
 said : " Mr. President, our convention at 
 Baltimore has nominated you again, and 
 not only that, we are going to elect you. 
 But the certainty of that will depend very 
 much on the vote we can give you in Penn- 
 sylvania in October; and in order that we 
 may be able in our State to go to work 
 
 SOI 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with a good will I want you to make us one 
 promise; namely, that you will reorganize 
 your cabinet and leave Montgomery Blair 
 out of it." 
 
 Mr. Stevens went on to elaborate his 
 reasons, and a running fire of criticism 
 and comment was entered into between 
 the three gentlemen, gradually rising in 
 warmth ; the whole interview lasting some 
 two or three hours. As the discussion pro- 
 ceeded, Mr. Lincoln rose from his chair 
 and walked up and down the room. 
 
 The issue being made up, he gave his 
 answer, towering to his full height, and 
 delivering his words with emphatic ges- 
 tures and intense earnestness. 
 
 " Mr. Stevens, I am very sorry to be 
 compelled to deny your request to make 
 such a promise. If I were even myself 
 inclined to make it, I have no right to do 
 so. What right have I to promise you 
 to remove Mr. Blair, and not make a simi- 
 lar promise to any other gentleman of in- 
 
 302 
 
AUGUST TWENTY -THIRD 
 
 flucncc to remove any other lueniher of my 
 cabinet whom he does not happen to hke? 
 The Republican party wisely or unwisely 
 has made me their nominee for President, 
 without asking any such pledge at my 
 hands. Is it proper that you should de- 
 mand it, representing only a portion of 
 that great party? Has it come to this, 
 that the voters of this country are asked to 
 elect a man to be President — to be Ex- 
 ecutive — to administer the Government, 
 and yet that this man is to have no will or 
 discretion of his own? Am I to be the 
 mere puppet of power? To have my con- 
 stitutional advisers selected beforehand, to 
 be told I must do this, or leave that un- 
 done? It would be degrading to my man- 
 hood to consent to any such bargain — I 
 was about to say it is equally degrading to 
 your manhood to ask it. 
 
 " I confess that I desire to be reelected. 
 God knows I do not want the labor and 
 responsibility of the office for another four 
 
 303 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 years. But I have the common pride of 
 humanity to wish my past four years' ad- 
 ministration endorsed ; and besides I hon- 
 estly beheve that I can better sers^e the 
 nation in its need and peril than any new 
 man could possibly do. I want to finish 
 this job of putting down the rebellion, and 
 restoring peace and prosperity to the coun- 
 try. But I would have the courage to 
 refuse the office rather than to accept on 
 such disgraceful terms as really not to be 
 President after I am elected." 
 
 The political horizon grew darker and 
 darker. Military victory, which would 
 have rejoiced all hearts and turned the 
 current toward Republican success, was 
 denied. Lincoln grew haggard and care- 
 worn. To a friend who urged him to go 
 away for a fortnight's rest, he replied, " I 
 cannot fly from my thoughts. My solici- 
 tude for this great country follows me 
 wherever I go. I do not think it is per- 
 sonal vanity or ambition, though I am not 
 
 304 
 
AUGUST T W E N T Y - T H I R D 
 
 free from these infirmities, but I cannot 
 but feel that the weal or woe of tins great 
 nation will be decided in November. 
 There is no program offered by any wing 
 of the Democratic party but that must 
 result in the permanent destruction of the 
 Union." 
 
 Toward the end of August he became 
 convinced that the election was likely to 
 go against him. Having come to this con- 
 clusion, he laid down for himself in writing 
 the course he ought to pursue. On the 
 23d he wrote: 
 
 " This morning, as for some days past, 
 it seems exceedingly probable that this ad- 
 ministration will not be reelected. Then 
 it will be my duty to so cooperate with the 
 President-elect as to save the Union be- 
 tween the election and the inauguration, as 
 he will have secured his election on such 
 ground that he cannot possibly save it 
 after^vard." 
 
 He folded and pasted the sheet of paper 
 ^° 305 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in such a way that its contents were hid- 
 den, and as the members of the cabinet 
 came in, handed it to each in turn, asking 
 them to write their names across the back. 
 Then he put the paper away, giving no 
 hint of its nature. 
 
 Two days later my father wrote to John 
 Hay, who was in IHinois : 
 
 Dear Major: Hell is to pay. The New 
 York politicians have got a stampede on that 
 is about to swamp everything. Raymond 
 and the National Committee are here to-day. 
 R. thinks a commission to Richmond is about 
 the only salt to save us; while the Tycoon 
 sees and says it would be utter ruination. 
 The matter is now undergoing consultation. 
 Weak-kneed d — d fools . . . are in the 
 movement for a new candidate to supplant 
 the Tycoon. Everything is darkness and 
 doubt and discouragement. Our men see 
 giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows 
 of the opposition, and are about to surrender 
 without a fight. 
 
 306 
 
AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 I think that to-day and lierc is the tiiniiiig- 
 point in our crisis. If the President can in- 
 fect R. and his committee witli some of liis 
 own patience and pluck, we are saved. If 
 our friends will only rub their eyes and 
 shake themselves, and become convinced tliat 
 they themselves are not dead, we shall win 
 the fight overwhelmingly. 
 
 Henry J. Raymond was Chairman of 
 the Executive Committee of the llepubll- 
 can party. Mr. Lincoln answered his pro- 
 posal to send a commission to Richmond 
 by the same kindergarten method lie bad 
 used in answering Greeley. He asked Mr. 
 Raymond to draw up an experimental 
 draft of resolutions which be proposed 
 that Mr. Raymond should himself carry to 
 Richmond. On seeing them in black and 
 white the mission took on a different 
 aspect, and Raymond readily agreed that 
 such a course would be worse than losing 
 the election — it would be surrendering it 
 in advance. 
 
 S07 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " Nevertheless," wrote the President's 
 secretary, " the visit of himself and com- 
 mittee did great good. They found the 
 President and cabinet much better in- 
 formed than themselves, and went home 
 encouraged and cheered." 
 
 That proved indeed to be the turning- 
 point of the campaign. A few days later 
 the Democrats nominated McClellan upon 
 a platform declaring the war to be a fail- 
 ure. That in itself was fatal to their 
 cause, since McClellan's one chance of suc- 
 cess lay in his war record. " The Lord 
 preserve this country from the kind of 
 peace they would give us 1 It will be a 
 dark day for this nation if they elect the 
 Chicago ticket ! " wrote an inmate of the 
 White House. 
 
 McClellan himself was apparently some- 
 what aghast. He did not reply to the let- 
 ter from the Convention for some days. 
 Lincoln was asked what he thought could 
 
 308 
 
AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 be the cause of the delay. " Oh,'' he said, 
 " he 's intrenching." 
 
 Mihtary and naval victories began to 
 succeed the discouragements of the preced- 
 ing months; the country awoke to the true 
 meaning of the Democratic platform ; and 
 in a brilliant rush of enthusiasm and hope 
 the political campaign went on to its tri- 
 umphant end with Republican majorities 
 so incredibly large that one patriot re- 
 marked in the utmost reverence, that " The 
 Almighty himself must have stuffed the 
 ballot-boxes." 
 
 The night of election day was rainy and 
 dark. The President splashed through 
 puddles to the War Department to get the 
 returns, and sent the interesting despatches 
 back to Mrs. Lincoln at the White House, 
 saying, " She is more anxious than I am." 
 
 He was not alone as he had been four 
 years before when the telegraph instru- 
 ments ticked news of his victory, and the 
 
 809 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 appalling sense of his responsibility had 
 blotted out the noise of cheering in the 
 streets. This election was a vindication of 
 the way he had borne his trust ; the verdict 
 of the people that they held him worthy 
 to complete his task. Officials and friends 
 came and went as he read the returns. He 
 was "most genial and agreeable all the 
 evening," and when a midnight supper 
 appeared from some beneficent and mys- 
 terious source, he took the part of host, 
 and " went awkwardly and hospitably to 
 work," serving the fried oysters. He told 
 stories, and was gay and happy, yet there 
 was no lack of feeling, even of deep solem- 
 nity, in the closing words of the little 
 speech he made to the serenaders he found 
 waiting for him when he left the War De- 
 partment in the early morning hours to 
 return to the White House: 
 
 " I am thankful to God for this ap- 
 proval of the people; but while deeply 
 grateful for this mark of their confidence 
 
 310 
 
AUGUST TWENTY -THIRD 
 
 in mc, If I know my heart, my gratitude is 
 free from any taint of personal triumph. 
 . . . It Is no pleasure to me to trluinj)h 
 over any one; but I give thanks to the 
 Almighty for this evidence of the people's 
 resolution to stand by free government and 
 the riglits of humanity." 
 
 At the next cabinet meeting the Presi- 
 dent took a paper from his desk. It had 
 a series of autographs across the back. 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " do you remember 
 last summer I asked you to sign your 
 names to the back of a paper of which I 
 did not show you the inside? This is It. 
 Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this 
 open without tearing it." It required 
 some little cutting to get it open. Then 
 he read the memorandum of August 23d 
 with its signature, A. Lincoln, and the 
 names on the outside, William H. Seward, 
 W. P. Fessenden, Edwin M. Stanton, 
 Gideon Welles, Edw. Bates, M. Blair, and 
 J. P. Usher. 
 
 311 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " You will remember," he said, " that 
 this was written at a time six days before 
 the Chicago nominating convention, when 
 as yet we had no adversary, and seemed 
 to have no friends. I then solemnly re- 
 solved on the course of action indicated 
 above. I resolved in case of the election 
 of General McClellan, being certain that 
 he would be the candidate, that I would 
 see him and talk matters over with him. 
 I would say, ' General, the election has 
 demonstrated that you are stronger and 
 have more influence with the American 
 people than L Now let us together, you 
 with your influence, and I with all the ex- 
 ecutive power of the Government, try to 
 save the country. You raise as many 
 troops as you possibly can for this final 
 trial, and I will devote all my energies to 
 assisting and finishing the war.' " 
 
 One of his hearers said, " And the gen- 
 eral would answer you, ' Yes, Yes ' ; and 
 the next day when you saw him again, and 
 
 312 
 
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AUGUST TWENTY-TIir RD 
 
 pressed those views upon Iii,,,, hv would 
 say, ' Yes, Yes,' and so on forever, and 
 would have done nothing at all." 
 
 " At least," said the President, *' I 
 should have done my duty and have stood 
 clear before my own conscience." 
 
 Just when one feels that one has Lin- 
 coln's traits classified — that he was a very 
 kind man with a keenly logical mind and 
 a buoyant disposition — a man with ideals 
 but no illusions, who saw things witliout 
 glamor, and patiently looked ahead to 
 plan and combine them to his will, one 
 comes upon some such contradiction as 
 this. 
 
 Why did he write such a paper as this 
 memorandum of August 23, 186-i? And, 
 having w^ritten it, why did he paste it to- 
 gether and get his cabinet to write their 
 names across the back, ignorant of its con- 
 tents ? 
 
 What hidden comfort did he expect to 
 derive from this — or what possible use 
 
 313 
 
/ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 could he have made of it if the nightmare 
 of his defeat had come true? He was sure 
 of his own steadfastness, sure of the loy- 
 alty of his cabinet. Why resort to this 
 unpractical but most characteristic act? 
 
 Was it that while he had the courage to 
 stand alone — to bear his burden silently 
 without adding to the gloom and discour- 
 agement of even his closest advisers — 
 he wrote this and got them to set their 
 names upon it as a sort of silent wit- 
 ness of his secret pledge — that though he 
 meant to go down in defeat, if he must, 
 " like the Cumberland, with colors flying," 
 he craved for himself the sympathy he gave 
 in such unstinted measure to others? 
 
 314 
 
XV 
 
 HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 ON the day of Lincoln's second elec- 
 tion the White House was still and 
 deserted. " Everybody in Washington, 
 and not at home voting, seems ashamed of 
 it, and stays away from the President," 
 John Hay wrote. Sitting in this un- 
 wonted leisure, Lincoln's deep-set eyes 
 looked back over the thirty-two years of 
 his political life. After a time he said: 
 " It is a little singular that I, who am not 
 a vindictive man, should have always been 
 before the people for election in canvasses 
 marked for their bitterness. Always but 
 once. When I came to Congress it was a 
 quiet time. ..." 
 
 315 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 At the end of the vista he saw a lank, un- 
 known youth of twenty-three, carefully 
 signing his name to his first public paper, 
 an " Address to the Voters of Sangamon 
 County," which was a territory larger 
 than the State of Rhode Island, and as far 
 removed from the center of political life as 
 the equator is from the pole. The friend 
 to whom he spoke saw a gaunt, care-worn 
 figure, aging before his time, whose sad 
 benignant face was known to the world's 
 end ; and whose name, written with equal 
 care at the foot of a state paper not long 
 before, had set four million people free. 
 These thirty-two years had covered a 
 period of material development as great as 
 that of any century preceding it, and keep- 
 ing pace with this, the political activities in 
 which he had taken part had ranged from 
 the purely local needs of a frontier com- 
 munity to the moral problems which have 
 shaken empires and made martyrs since the 
 world began. 
 
 316 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 Tliat he passed through these witliout 
 engendering spite in himself or enmity in 
 his opponents sliows that he was indeed 
 " not a vindictive man." There was a 
 Quaker strain in his blood. His father had 
 been called lazy. If Lincoln inherited any 
 of this trait it was transmuted both by 
 bis Quaker blood and by the kindness in 
 his heart into a laziness about making 
 quarrels. That night of his second elec- 
 tion the group gathered in the War De- 
 partment, jubilant over the returns, yet 
 found time to say hard things about cer- 
 tain public men who had been hostile to the 
 President. " You have more of that feel- 
 ing of personal resentment than I have," 
 Lincoln said in surprise. " Perhaps I have 
 too little of it; but I never thought it paid. 
 A man has not the time to spend half his 
 life in quarrels. If any man ceases to at- 
 tack me, I never remember the past against 
 him." 
 
 Which is perhaps the reason why, ac- 
 317 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cording to the daily press, " intimate 
 friends " of the great President have been 
 dying with alarming frequency for forty 
 years. He was so kindly that people felt 
 " intimate " with him on very slight ac- 
 quaintance. 
 
 That friends were a better political and 
 worldly asset than enemies, a logic less keen 
 than his could easily prove; yet it is safe 
 to say that it was his heart rather than his 
 head which made him strive, all his life 
 long, to turn enemies into friends. 
 
 He did not like strife. In his merchant 
 days he preserved the decencies of his shop 
 by knocking down a ruffian who insisted on 
 swearing in the presence of women, and he 
 emphasized the lesson by rubbing a plenti- 
 ful supply of dog- fennel into his cheeks, 
 but when the man howled for mercy Lin- 
 coln brought water to bathe his smarting 
 face. 
 
 With the exception of his one duel he 
 was never engaged in a political quarrel. 
 
 318 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 In 1840 a man named Anderson with whom 
 he was contesting a seat in tlie legislature 
 sent him a note bristling with belligerent 
 possibilities. Lincoln's answer ended the 
 matter, though it was more of an apology 
 to himself than to his correspondent. 
 
 In the difficulty between us of which you 
 speak you say you think I was the aggressor. 
 I do not think I was. You say my " words 
 imported insult." I meant them as a fair set- 
 off to your own statements and not otherwise ; 
 and in that light alone I now wish you to 
 understand them. You ask for my " present 
 feelings on the subject." I entertain no un- 
 kind feelings to you, and none of any sort 
 upon the subject, except a sincere regret that 
 I permitted myself to get into such an alterca- 
 tion. 
 
 In maturer life his attitude was ever the 
 same. While he was President it became 
 his official duty to reprimand a young of- 
 ficer court-martialed for quarreling. No 
 gentler rebuke was ever administered. 
 
 319 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The advice of a father to his son, " Be- 
 ware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, 
 bear it that the opposed may beware of thee," 
 is good, but not the best. Quarrel not at all. 
 No man, resolved to make the most of him- 
 self, can spare the time for personal conten- 
 tion. Still less can he afford to take all the 
 consequences, including the vitiating of his 
 temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield 
 larger things to which you can show no more 
 than equal right ; and yield lesser ones though 
 clearly your own. Better give your path to 
 a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for 
 the right. Even killing the dog would not 
 cure the bite. 
 
 The sweet reasonableness of turning the 
 other cheek is not often urged. 
 
 His sense of humor, and his failure to 
 take himself too seriously, gave him all the 
 more time and strength for things which 
 really mattered, but led his friends at times 
 into questionable liberties of speech. Gen- 
 eral John M. Palmer once said to him, 
 
 320 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 " Well, Mr. Lincoln, if nnyhody had told 
 me that In a great crisis hke this, the peo- 
 ple were going out to a little one-horse town 
 and pick out a one-horse lawyer for Presi- 
 dent, I would not have believed it." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was in the hands of tlie 
 barber at the time. He whirled about in 
 his chair, sweeping the man out of tlie way 
 with his long arm. General Palmer sud- 
 denly realized the enormity of his blunder. 
 But the President was not angry. Placing 
 his hand on the general's knee he answered 
 very earnestly, " Neither would I." 
 
 There is an Illuminating entry In John 
 
 Hay's diary. " B and the President 
 
 continue to be on very good terms in spite 
 of the publication of B.'s letter. . . . B. 
 came to explain it to the President, but he 
 told him he was too busy to quarrel with 
 him. If he (B.) did n't show him the let- 
 ter he probably would never see It." 
 
 Although he would not go half way to- 
 ward a quarrel he would take a deal of 
 21 321 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 pains to correct a misunderstanding. He 
 relied much on a full and frank interchange 
 of Ideas. He once wrote to Thurlow 
 Weed: 
 
 My dear Sir : I have been brought to fear 
 recently that somehow by commission or 
 omission, I have caused you some degree of 
 pain, I have never entertained an unkind 
 feeling or a disparaging thought toward you, 
 and if I have said or done anything which 
 has been construed into such unkindness or 
 disparagement, it has been misconstrued. I 
 am sure if we could meet we would not part 
 with any unpleasant impression on either 
 side. 
 
 Carl Schurz sent him a letter of criticism 
 which he felt to be unjust, and to which he 
 sent a long and, for him, unusually caustic 
 reply. Mr. Schurz in his " Autobiogra- 
 phy " tells the sequel : 
 
 Two or three days after Mr. Lincoln's 
 letter had reached me a special messenger 
 
 S22 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 from him brought nic another co.nnnmica- 
 tion from him, a sliort note in his own hand 
 askmg me to come to see him as soon as my 
 duties would permit. He wished me, if pos- 
 sible, to call early in the morning before the 
 usual crowd of visitors arrived. . . . The 
 next morning at seven I reported mvself at 
 the White House. I was promptlv' shown 
 into the little room upstairs which was at 
 that time used for cabinet meetings — the 
 room with the Jackson portrait above the 
 mantelpiece — and found Mr. Lincoln seated 
 in an arm-chair before the open grate fire, 
 his feet in gigantic morocco slippers. He' 
 greeted me cordially as of old, and bade me 
 pull up a chair and sit down by his side. 
 Then he brought his large hand, with a slap, 
 down on my knee, and said with a smile: 
 "Now tell me, young man, whether you 
 really think that I am as poor a fellow as 
 you have made me out in your letter.? " 
 
 I must confess this reception disconcerted 
 me. I looked into his face and felt some- 
 thing like a big lump in my throat. After a 
 while I gathered up my wits, and after a word 
 
 323 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of sorrow if I had written anything that 
 could have pained him, I explained to him 
 ray impressions of the situation and my rea- 
 sons for writing him as I had done. He 
 listened with silent attention, and when I 
 stopped said very seriously, ** Well, I know 
 that you are a warm antislavery man, and a 
 good friend to me. Now let me tell you all 
 about it." Then he unfolded in his peculiar 
 way his views of the then existin*g state of 
 affairs, his hopes and apprehensions, his 
 troubles and his embarrassments, making 
 many quaint remarks about men and things. 
 I regret I cannot remember all. Then he 
 described how the criticisms coming down 
 upon all sides chafed him, and how my letter, 
 although containing some points that were 
 well founded and useful, had touched him as 
 a terse summing-up of all the principal 
 criticisms, and offered him a good chance at 
 me for a reply. Then, slapping my knee 
 again, he broke out in a loud laugh and ex- 
 claimed — 
 
 " Did n't I give it to you hard in my letter ? 
 Didn't I.^ But it didn't hurt, did it.? I 
 
 324 
 
H I^S FORGIVING S P I It I T 
 
 did not mean to, and therefore I wanted you 
 to come so quickly." 
 
 He laughed again and seemed to enjoy the 
 matter heartily. ** Well," he added, " I guess 
 we understand one another now, and it 's all 
 right." 
 
 When after a conversation of more than 
 an hour, I left him, I asked whether he still 
 wished that I should write to him. 
 
 " Why certainly," he answered. " Write 
 to me whenever the spirit moves you." 
 
 We parted better friends than ever. 
 
 More than once he wrote such letters, 
 and then refrained from sending them. 
 One of these was to General Meade after 
 Lee's escape from Pennsylvania. Another, 
 which was sent, bears an endorsement in 
 his own hand. 
 
 " Withdrawn because considered harsh 
 by General Halleck." 
 
 Still another, which came to liglit many 
 years after the war, bore on its envelope in 
 the handwriting of General Hunter, " The 
 
 S25 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 President's reply to my ' ugly letter.' 
 This lay on his table a month after it was 
 written, and when finally sent was by a 
 special conveyance, with the direction that 
 it was only to be given me when I was in 
 a good humor." 
 
 While not insensible to personal criti- 
 cism, he was far too even-tempered to be 
 unduly influenced by it. He knew that 
 much of it was like the Irishman's descrip- 
 tion of a tree-toad in one of his stories, 
 " Nothin' afther all but a blame noise ! " 
 while some of the rest could be excused for 
 the reason given in another of his stories 
 by the henpecked man for standing his 
 wife's abuse, " It does n't hurt me any, and 
 you 've no idea what a power of good it 
 does to Sarah Ann." 
 
 He was broad-minded enough to remem- 
 ber that a man's opinion of him, or of his 
 administration, might not impair his use- 
 fulness as a public servant. It seemed a 
 
 326 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 poor rule that would not work botli ways. 
 He knew he would be censured, ,u,(I riirl.tlv, 
 for appointing a man to office slnipry be- 
 cause he praised hini. It seemed equally 
 illogical to refuse to appoint men simply 
 because they blamed him. When lie was 
 remonstrated with for giving an office to one 
 who had zealously opposed his reelection, 
 he is reported to have said, « That would 
 not make him less fit for the place. And I 
 think I have Scriptural authority for ap- 
 pointing him. You remember, when the 
 Lord was on Mt. Sinai getting out a com- 
 mission for Aaron, that same Aaron was at 
 the foot of the mountain, making a false 
 god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron 
 got his commission." 
 
 His sense of fairness, and absolute free- 
 dom from personal resentment were no- 
 where more forcibly exhibited than in his 
 relations with his generals. But clear 
 reading of character went hand in hand 
 
 327 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with forbearance. His letter to General 
 Joseph Hooker on placing him in command 
 shows how completely this was so. 
 
 I have placed you at the head of the Army 
 of the Potomac. Of course I have done this 
 upon what appear to me to be sufficient rea- 
 sons^ and yet I think it best for you to know 
 that there are some things in regard to which 
 I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe 
 you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, 
 of course, I like. I also believe you do not 
 mix politics with your profession, in which 
 you are right. You have confidence in your- 
 self, which is a valuable, if not an indis- 
 pensable quality. You are ambitious, which, 
 within reasonable bounds, does good rather 
 than harm; but I think that during General 
 Burnside's command of the army you have 
 taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted 
 him as much as you could, in which you did 
 a great wrong to the country, and to a most 
 meritorious and honorable brother officer. I 
 have heard, in such a way as to believe it, 
 of your recently saying that both the army 
 
 328 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 and the Government needed .i dielalor. Of 
 course it was not for tl.is, but in spite of it, 
 that I have given you the command. Only 
 those generals who gain successes can set up 
 dictators. What I now ask of you is nuMitarv 
 success, and I will risk the dictatorship. 
 The Government will support you to the ut- 
 most of its ability, which is neither more nor 
 less than it has done and will do for all com- 
 manders. I much fear that the spirit which 
 you have aided to infuse into the army, of 
 criticizing their commander and withholding 
 confidence from him, will now turn upon you. 
 I shall assist you as far as I can to put it 
 down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were 
 alive again, could get any good out of an 
 army while such a spirit prevails in it; and 
 now, beware of rashness. Beware of rash- 
 ness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance 
 go forward and give us victories. 
 
 When Grant's critics brought up old 
 gossip of his drunkenness, he answered 
 with the jest which has been quoted as 
 proof of his abandoned character, that he 
 
 329 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would be glad to know the brand of whisky 
 he used; or with another variant of this 
 same idea, quoted in Admiral Dahlgren's 
 diary — the reply of George III to the 
 charge that one of his generals was quite 
 mad. " If that were true, he wished he 
 would bite all his other generals." 
 
 One of Lincoln's secretaries, discussing 
 the various generals, remarked that there 
 was only one to whom power would be 
 really dangerous. McClellan was too 
 timid. Grant too sound and cool-headed to 
 usurp authority, and so on. " Yes," said 
 the President, referring to still another 
 who had been mentioned. " He is hke Jim 
 Jett's brother. Jim used to say that his 
 brother was the d — dst scoundrel that ever 
 lived; but that in the infinite mercy of 
 Providence, he was also the d — dst fool." 
 
 With McClellan the President's personal 
 relations were typical. At first the general 
 had been overwhelmed by his new and 
 strange position, " President, General Scott 
 
 330 
 
HIS I O R G 1 V I N (; S ]> I U I r 
 
 and all deferring to inc," hul in contum- 
 platlng his own great responsibility lie 
 quickly forgot this, and even tlie rights 
 and courtesies due to others. The Presi- 
 dent, as was his custom, went freely to his 
 house, by day or night. One evening a 
 long and awkward youth, introduced as 
 " Captain Orleans," just come to serve on 
 McClellan's staff, went to announce his ar- 
 rival. " One does n't like to make a mes- 
 senger of the king of France, as that youth, 
 the Count of Paris, would be, if his family 
 had kept the throne," Lincoln said quietly, 
 as he watched him mount the stairs. 
 
 But to McClellan the President's sim- 
 plicity of manner seemed to indicate in- 
 competence. Contemptuous mention of 
 him and his cabinet in private letters 
 passed to marks of open disrespect, which 
 reached their climax one night when Mr. 
 Lincoln, accompanied by Mr. Seward and 
 a secretary, went to the general's house. 
 Being told that he was at a wedding, they 
 
 331 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 waited an hour for his return. They heard 
 the servant at the door tell him that they 
 were there, but the General paid scant heed, 
 and passing the door of the room in which 
 they sat, went on upstairs. After another 
 half hour they sent to remind him that they 
 were still waiting. Word came back that 
 he had gone to bed. 
 
 No comment was made as the three 
 walked away, but after Secretary Seward 
 had been left at his own door the anger of 
 the younger man blazed forth at this "un- 
 paralleled insolence of epaulettes." The 
 President " seemed not to have noticed it 
 specially, saying it was better at this time 
 not to be making points of etiquette and 
 personal dignity." But we are told that he 
 stopped going to McClellan's house, send- 
 ing for the General to come to him when he 
 desired to see him. 
 
 It was harder for a man of Lincoln's 
 temperament to forgive a wrong to his 
 country than to himself ; yet after McClel- 
 
 3S2 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 lan's dismal failure, after Lis wildly insub- 
 ordinate letter charging the President and 
 the administration with doing their utmost 
 to sacrifice his army; and after his direct 
 suggestion that General Pope, who was in 
 peril through McClellan's own fault, be left 
 to " get out of his scrape as best he might," 
 Lincoln crowded back all resentment public 
 and private, and over the protest of his 
 cabinet, placed him in command of the de- 
 fenses of Washington, because he was con- 
 vmced that " if he cannot fight himself he 
 excels in making others ready to fight." 
 
 "We must use the tools we have," he 
 used to say.^ And his whole attitude was 
 summed up in his announcement, " I shall 
 do nothing in malice. What I deal with is 
 too vast for malicious dealing." 
 
 He understood McClellan, both his good 
 qualities and his defects. When he gave 
 Grant his commission as Lieutenant-Gen- 
 eral, the two had a little talk, and he spoke 
 a parable, telling of a war among the ani- 
 
 333 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 mals, when Jocco, the monkey, was sure he 
 could command the army if only his tail 
 were a little longer. So they spliced a 
 piece on, and Jocco looked at it admiringly, 
 and said he thought he would like a little 
 more. And they gave it, and he called for 
 more, until the room was full of tail. 
 Then, there being no place elsewhere, they 
 began coiling it about his shoulders, until 
 the sheer weight of it broke him down. 
 
 Even when his sorrow and resentment 
 were keenest he did not fail to give credit 
 for the good which had been done. Lee's 
 escape after Gettysburg grieved him 
 sorely. He said to his son, " If I had 
 gone up there I could have whipped them 
 myself." He felt that at that moment the 
 Union army held the war in the hollow of 
 its hand — and would not close it. 
 " Still," he added generously, " I am very, 
 very grateful to Meade for the great serv- 
 ice he did at Gettysburg." 
 
 When the Chief Justiceship, the highest 
 S34 
 
HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 
 
 office in a President's gift, fell vacant, Ik.- 
 gave it to Chase, though no one had worked 
 harder to supplant Lincoln in the Presi- 
 dency. The wonder and splendor of the 
 act fairly dazzled the secretary who carried 
 the nomination to the Senate. 
 
 "Congress met Monday," he wrote, 
 " but the President did not get the mes- 
 sage ready until Tuesday when it was sent 
 m. At the same time he sent in the nom- 
 ination of Chase for Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court. Probably no other man 
 than Lincoln would have had, in this age 
 of the world, the degree of magnanimity to 
 thus forgive and exalt a rival who had so 
 deeply and unjustifiably intrigued against 
 him. It is, however, only another marked 
 illustration of the greatness of the Presi- 
 dent in this age of little men." 
 
 But his quiet appreciation of Chase's po- 
 sition had been very keen. During the in- 
 terval between his resignation from the cab- 
 inet, and his appointment as Chief Justice, 
 
 335 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's secretary one day brought 
 
 his chief a letter from Mr. Chase who was 
 
 in Ohio. 
 
 "What is it about.?" the President 
 
 asked. 
 
 " Simply a kind and friendly letter." 
 Without reading it, Mr. Lincoln said, 
 
 " File it with his other recommendations." 
 
 336 
 
XVI 
 
 HIS REASON AND HIS HEART 
 
 THOUGH Lincoln's place in history 
 rests on the fact that he freed the 
 slaves, his place in the hearts of men rests 
 on something entirely different — the way 
 in which he did it. A fanatic, or a tyrant 
 might have signed a proclamation of eman- 
 cipation ; but only a man of clear vision and 
 surpassing goodness could have moved 
 through years of bloodshed to a culmina- 
 ting act which destroyed miHions of his 
 countrymen's property at a stroke of the 
 pen, and yet kept an ever warmer place in 
 their affections. 
 
 His two qualities of head and heart acted 
 
 like counterweights. His logic, though 
 22 337 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 unsparing, was never hopeless, being 
 warmed by the goodness of his heart. He 
 beheved that right would ultimately tri- 
 umph, and this gave him patience to move 
 slowly, to bear apparent defeat, and to 
 wait the appointed time of the Lord. His 
 faith in a mysterious overruling Provi- 
 dence was too sincere and too humble to 
 permit his attempting to force either right- 
 eousness or justice on an unready world. 
 
 Personal observation and experience had 
 very little to do in forming his convictions 
 on slavery. Though born in a slave State 
 he left it when a mere child, and he had 
 only passing glimpses of slavery's hghts 
 and shadows during his two flatboat voy- 
 ages to New Orleans. It was his inborn 
 sense of natural justice which revolted 
 against the barbarous selfishness of the 
 system. 
 
 " If slavery is not wrong, nothing is 
 wrong," he said. To the argument that 
 it was a necessity forced upon the white 
 
 338 
 
HIS REASON AND HEART 
 
 man, he replied, ^ that goin^r nmnv thou- 
 sand miles, seizing a set of savages, l,ring- 
 mg them here and making slaves of them, 
 IS a necessity imposed on us by them, in- 
 volves a species of logic to which my mind 
 wdl scarcely assent." 
 
 But he recognized that the problem had 
 long since passed that stage. In his 
 Peoria speech, when he stepped forth as 
 the champion of freedom, he frankly ad- 
 mitted that, " If all earthly power were 
 given me I should not know what to do as 
 to the existing institution. My first im- 
 pulse would be to free all the slaves and 
 send them to Liberia, to their own native 
 land. But a moment's reflection would 
 convince me that whatever of high hope (as 
 I think there is) there may be in this in the 
 long run, its sudden execution is impossible. 
 If they were all landed there in a day they 
 would all perish in the next ten days." 
 
 Every actual observation deepened his 
 natural convictions. Yet he did not allow 
 
 339 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his feelings to carry away his reason. He 
 remembered that the practice was rooted in 
 custom, and entrenched in constitution and 
 law. To cut it out would be to endanger 
 the national life. Also, while his heartfelt 
 compassion went out to the slave, he had 
 broad charity for the slave-holder, domi- 
 nated by education, local prejudice and 
 property interests. 
 
 This enabled him at the very beginning 
 of his career to strike that key-note in 
 statesmanship through which he wrought 
 one of the world's great political reforms. 
 He had been but two years in the legisla- 
 ture of Illinois when that body passed reso- 
 lutions " highly disapproving abolition so- 
 cieties," and declaring that " the right of 
 property in slaves is secured to the slave- 
 holding States by the Federal Constitu- 
 tion," the identical proposition in support 
 of which the South began civil war. Lin- 
 coln and five others voted against it. In 
 addition, in order not to leave their senti- 
 
 S40 
 
HIS REASON AND 11 K A U T 
 
 mcnts in doubt, hv and one oilier incmber 
 signed a written protest and entered it on 
 the journal, reciting their belief tliat tlie 
 institution of slavery was founded on bolli 
 injustice and bad policy, but that Congress 
 had no power to interfere with it in the 
 States, and that while it had power to abol- 
 ish it in the District of Columbia, it ouglit 
 only to exercise that power at the request 
 of the people of the District. 
 
 Conservative as this seems, it required at 
 that day a sturdy political courage to sign 
 such a document, in face of the violent 
 prejudice against everything savoring of 
 " abolitionism." It was in that same year 
 that a mob at Alton, IHInoIs, shot to deatli 
 Elijah P. Lovejoy for persisting in his 
 right to print an anti-slavery newspaper. 
 
 Twelve years afterward, during his term 
 in Congress, Lincoln presented a bill 
 for compensated emancipation — his plan 
 for making the path of righteousness easier 
 to the slave-owner, and the path toward 
 
 341 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 liberty less dangerous for the slave. By its 
 provisions masters were to receive money 
 value for their property, and the slaves ade- 
 quate guardianship and training for their 
 new life. It could be accomplished only 
 with the full consent of the owners, and he 
 proposed to try it experimentally in the 
 District of Columbia, a territory so small 
 that its workings could be easily watched 
 and any dangerous tendencies noted. The 
 measure had the approval both of the con- 
 servative citizens of Washington, and of 
 the anti-slavery leaders in Congress ; but it 
 failed to become a law, party heat being 
 already too great to admit of moderate 
 legislation. He could save neither sinned 
 against nor sinners. In the poetic imagery 
 of the Second Inaugural, it was decreed that 
 the blood drawn by the lash must be paid 
 for in blood drawn by the sword. 
 
 All Lincoln's study of the question dur- 
 ing the years that separated his Peoria 
 speech from his taking the oath of office as 
 
 342 
 
HIS REASON AND HEART 
 
 President confirmed liim in his early belief 
 that slavery was lawful in the Southern 
 States, and that where this was the case the 
 only remedy lay with the people living In 
 those States. All his effort was directed 
 toward preventing its spread into Federal 
 territory, where, he held, the Government 
 had a right to interfere. When he took 
 the oath as President he assumed the of- 
 ficial responsibility of the judge, who can- 
 not allow his individual feelings to supplant 
 the mandates of the law. 
 
 Then came the Civil War. If Lincoln 
 had been only a political theorist, he would 
 have taken this opportunity to declare that 
 by appealing to arms slavery had subjected 
 itself to the risks of war, and would have 
 at once launched against it his subsequent 
 decree of military emancipation. But his 
 education had made him first of all a prac- 
 tical statesman, and practical statesman- 
 ship demanded the maintenance of the in- 
 tegrity and power of the Union first of all. 
 
 343 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Rash reforms like that proposed by Fre- 
 mont and antislavery radicals would im- 
 peril the Union, and to permit the Union 
 to die was to permit slavery to live. So, 
 champion of freedom though he was, he an- 
 nulled Fremont's proclamation. 
 
 His paramount duty he emphasized in 
 his letter answering the criticisms of Hor- 
 ace Greeley. 
 
 As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," 
 as you say, I have not meant to leave any one 
 in doubt. I would save the Union. I would 
 save it the shortest way under the Consti- 
 tution. ... If there be those who would 
 not save the Union unless they could at 
 the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree 
 with them. My paramount object in this 
 struggle is to save the Union, and not either 
 to save or to destroy slavery. . . . What I 
 do about slavery and the colored race I do 
 because I believe it helps to save the Union, 
 and what I forbear I forbear because I do 
 not believe it would help to save the Union. 
 
 344 
 
HIS REASON ANM) II K A R T 
 
 I shall do less wlicnever I shall believe what 
 I am doing hurts the cause, and I sh ,JI ,j„ 
 more whenever I shall believe ch.ing more 
 will help the cause. ... I have here statrd 
 my purpose according to my view of official 
 duty; and I intend no modification of my oft- 
 expressed personal wish that all men every- 
 where could be free. 
 
 He had a broader aim than more con- 
 quest of the South. A true restoration of 
 the Union must include a renewal of fra- 
 ternal sympathy between the sections. In 
 this spirit he recommended and Congress 
 adopted his old policy of compensated abol- 
 ishment — the offer of a money equivalent 
 to States that would voluntarily relinquish 
 slavery, holding it to be a remedy at once 
 more effectual, more humane, and far less 
 costly than war. The offer was refused, 
 yet its spirit secured the adhesion of the 
 border States to the Union, pushing the mil- 
 itary frontier down from the Ohio River to 
 the Tennessee line, and adding during the 
 
 345 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 war more than 225,000 volunteers to the 
 Union armies. 
 
 The rejection of this generous offer, and 
 simultaneous reverses to McClellan's army 
 before Richmond brought about the mili- 
 tary necessity which justified Lincoln in 
 using his authority as Commander-in-Chief 
 of the army to issue his proclamation of 
 mihtary emancipation. Important as was 
 this act, the signing of the decree was only 
 an incident in the battle he was commis- 
 sioned to wage, and about which he had 
 recorded his well-considered resolve, " I ex- 
 pect to maintain this contest until success- 
 ful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my 
 term expires, or Congress or the country 
 forsake me." The great issue was not the 
 bondage of a race, but the life of a nation, 
 a principle of government, a question of 
 primary human right. 
 
 The country accepted the edict of eman- 
 cipation as wise and necessary, but whether 
 it would be held valid in law, Lincoln 
 
 846 
 
HIS REASON ANM3 HEART 
 
 frankly said he did not know. If tl,e re- 
 bellion should triumph, manifestly the 
 proclamation would be so much waste pa- 
 per. If the Union were victorious, every 
 step of that victory would be clothed with 
 the mantle of law. That was the lesson 
 of all history; the philosophy of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Of one thing he was sure. Plaving is- 
 sued his proclamation he would never re- 
 tract or modify it. The freed slaves had 
 done their part. They had been armed 
 and had fought shoulder to shoulder with 
 the whites, bravely and well. To restore 
 the Union with their help, under a pledge 
 of liberty, and then, under whatever legal 
 construction, to attempt to reenslave them, 
 would be a moral monstrosity — would be, 
 in the language of one of his early 
 speeches, "to repeal human nature." 
 " There have been men base enough to pro- 
 pose to me to retuni to slavery our black 
 warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee," he 
 
 S4>7 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 said. " Should I do so, I should deserve to 
 be damned in time and eternity." 
 
 He wished the voluntary consent of the 
 States to his act, and therefore set in mo- 
 tion the machinery of a constitutional 
 amendment. Lincoln did not live to see it 
 a part of the Constitution, but it became so 
 less than a year after his death. 
 
 These measures, taken in orderly se- 
 quence, in strict pursuance of duty, had 
 brought about through his agency the end 
 he desired and thought so very far away. 
 His reason might well have been satisfied. 
 But his heart was not yet content. As 
 the war drew to its close his kindness went 
 out more and more to these enemies who 
 were yet brothers. When he met the Con- 
 federate commissioners at Hampton Roads, 
 and through his sympathy and intuition di- 
 vined their undercurrent of hopelessness, 
 he told them that he personally would favor 
 payment by the Federal Government of a 
 liberal indemnity for the loss of slave prop- 
 
 348 
 
HIS REASON AND II K A It T 
 
 ertj, on absolute cessation of I he war, and 
 voluntary abolition of slavery in the Soulli- 
 ern States. 
 
 He spent the day after his return from 
 this meeting in perfecting a new i)r()p()sal 
 designed as a peace offering to the South, 
 and that evening called his cabinet to- 
 gether and read them the draft of a joint 
 resolution and a proclamation offering the 
 Southern States $400,000,000 on condition 
 that the Thirteenth Amendment be ratified 
 by the requisite number of States before 
 July first, 1865. But this was a height of 
 altruism to which his constitutional advis- 
 ers could not follow him. " You are all 
 opposed to me," he said sadly, as he folded 
 the paper and ended the discussion. But 
 he still continued to ponder offers of 
 friendship. In the last public speech he 
 made, to a crowd of people gathered in 
 front of the Executive INIansion to cele- 
 brate Grant's victory, he hinted at some 
 new announcement he was considering and 
 
 349 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would soon make to the South. Can it be 
 doubted it was as generous as this one? 
 
 Such, in a broad way, were Lincoln's 
 achievements and action on slavery. He 
 wrought in the great field of original 
 statesmanship, and the Archimedean lever 
 whereby he moved the world was public 
 opinion. Under his guidance, in the swift 
 rush of events, results came to pass in a 
 decade that had seemed like hopes a hun- 
 dred years removed. For this he took 
 to himself no credit. " I claim not to have 
 controlled events," he said, " but frankly 
 admit that events have controlled me." 
 And again, " My policy is to have no pol- 
 icy." Keeping in view his large ideal and 
 ultimate aim, he disposed of each individual 
 problem as it came up, though this led 
 him into the apparent inconsistency of re- 
 fusing to arm negro soldiers, then of arm- 
 ing them, of revoking military proclama- 
 tions of emancipation, then of issuing a 
 great and sweeping edict of freedom — 
 
 350 
 
HIS REASON AND I Ii: A R T 
 
 once it ]cd liim into actually ofTcriii^r to l>uy 
 a slave for $500. 
 
 Lincoln's reply to the minister who anx- 
 iously « hoped the Lord was on his side," 
 summed up his creed and his practice. He 
 said that did not trouble liim in the least. 
 His great concern was that he and the 
 country should be on the side of the Lord. 
 
 Mention has been made of Lincoln's 
 extreme reluctance to approve the death 
 penalty. This was not the outcome of 
 sentimental regard for soldiers. In 1862 
 a very serious Lidian uprising with atro- 
 cious massacres took place in Minnesota. 
 After it was quelled a court-martial tried 
 the prisoners, and under the impulse of 
 popular indignation sentenced about three 
 hundred to be hanged. Learning of this 
 the President ordered the execution stayed, 
 and the testimony forw^arded to him. Let- 
 ters and telegrams poured in upon him, 
 begging him to allow the sentences to 
 stand; but determined to have no hasty sac- 
 
 351 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 rifice, he patiently investigated each case 
 for himself, finally confirming the sentences 
 of less than forty out of the three hundred, 
 these being cases where reliable witnesses 
 testified to seeing the men actually en- 
 gaged in acts of atrocity. In forward- 
 ing the testimony to the Senate he stated 
 his anxiety " to not act with so much clem- 
 ency as to encourage another outbreak on 
 the one hand, nor with so much severity as 
 to be real cruelty on the other." 
 
 For red and white alike he stood firm in 
 his determination to execute only the de- 
 crees of justice. 
 
 '' In considering the policy to be 
 adopted for suppressing the insurrection 
 I have been anxious and careful that the 
 inevitable conflict for this purpose shall 
 not degenerate into a violent and remorse- 
 less revolutionary struggle," he told Con- 
 gress in his first annual message. Both his 
 reason and his heart forbade him to sanc- 
 tion measures of retaliation urged for the 
 
 352 
 
HIS REASON AND UK ART 
 
 massacre of negro soldiers at Fort Pillow. 
 Frederick Douglas, the colored man, with 
 whom he talked on this siihjoct, said, ^' I 
 shall never forget the benignant expression 
 of his face, the tearful look of his eye, and 
 the quiver of his voice." He could not 
 take men out and kill them in cold blood 
 for Avhat was done by others. " Once be- 
 gun," he said, " I do not know where such 
 a measure would stop." 
 
 The same question came up in regard 
 to the treatment of prisoners, and received 
 the same answer. It was argued that if 
 men were starved at Libby Prison and An- 
 dersonville, the same treatment should be 
 meted out to Confederates. "Whatever 
 others may say or do I never can, and I 
 never will, be accessory to such treatment 
 of human beings," he said. 
 
 The question of prisoners lay heavy on 
 his heart. General Butler told of a day 
 when the President was visiting his com- 
 mand. They had gone through the hos- 
 ^3 353 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 pitals, and the wards of wounded Con- 
 federate prisoners, and he had brought 
 hght and cheer by his presence. After- 
 ward as they sat at dinner he was weary 
 and depressed. The General was pained 
 to see that his guest did not eat, and asked 
 if he were ilL " I am well enough," he re- 
 plied, pushing away his plate, " but would 
 to God this dinner or provisions like it 
 were with our poor prisoners in Anderson- 
 ville." 
 
 As the war drew to its close the ques- 
 tions of exchanging prisoners, and of the 
 treatment of Southern leaders, assumed 
 larger proportions. Secretary Welles, 
 who found time to write many things in 
 his " deadly diary," moralized thus : 
 
 This war is extraordinary in all its aspects 
 and phases^ and no man is prepared to meet 
 tliem. ... I have often thought that greater 
 severity might well be exercised, and yet it 
 would tend to barbarism. No traitor has 
 been hung. I doubt if there will be; but an 
 
 S54, 
 
HIS REASON AND II K A R T 
 
 example sliould be made of some of the lead- 
 ers, for present and for future good. They 
 may, if taken, be imi)risoned, or driv.n into 
 exile, but neither would be lasting. Parties 
 would form for their relief, and ultimately 
 succeed in restoring the worst of them to 
 their homes and the privileges they originally 
 enjoyed. Death is the proper penalty and 
 atonement. . . . But I apprehend there will 
 be very gentle measures in closing uj) tlic 
 rebellion. 
 
 He knew his chief. The full difference 
 in their mental make-up is shown in an en- 
 try in this same diary four months later. 
 " Oct. 5, 1864. The President came to see 
 me pretty early this morning in relation 
 to the exchange of prisoners. It had 
 troubled him during the night." 
 
 Lincoln's care was not how to make the 
 punishment lasting, but how best to heal 
 the scars of war. An endorsement on a 
 paper that passed between him and the 
 War Department shows his whole attitude. 
 
 355 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " On principle I dislike an oath which 
 requires a man to swear he has not d6ne 
 wrong. It rejects the Christian principle 
 of forgiveness on terms of repentance. I 
 think it is enough if the man does no 
 wrong hereafter." 
 
 He frankly admitted that he hoped the 
 leaders of the rebellion would escape. " If 
 you have an elephant on your hands, and 
 he w ants to run away — better let him 
 run ! " he said. And with similar intent 
 he told the story of a boy who, with much 
 expenditure of time and energy had ac- 
 quired a coon, only to find him a great 
 nuisance. He could not, however, bring 
 himself to admit this to his family. One 
 day, leading it along the road, he had more 
 than he could do to manage the little vixen. 
 At length, with clothes torn, and muscles 
 weary, he sank to the ground, tired out. 
 A gentleman passing, asked what was the 
 matter. 
 
 " Oh, this coon is such a trouble to me." 
 356 
 
HIS REASON AND JI KAUT 
 
 " Why don't you gd rid of l.i,,,, tlun? " 
 "Hush," said the boy. "Don't you 
 sec, he is gnawing his rope off? That is 
 just what I want. I ',n going to let hin. 
 do It, and then I can go home and tell the 
 folks he got away from me." 
 
 On April 11 Lincohi spoke from a win- 
 dow of the Wliite House to a largo and 
 joyful crowd, gathered in honor of Leu's 
 surrender. The President's speech was 
 full of conciliation. Senator Harlan fol- 
 lowed, and in the course of his remarks, 
 touched on the thought uppermost in ev- 
 erybody's mind. " What shall we do with 
 the rebels?" he asked. A voice answered 
 from the crowd, " Hang them ! " 
 
 Lincoln's small son w^as in the room, 
 playing with the pens on the table. Look- 
 ing up he caught his father's pained ex- 
 pression. 
 
 "No, no, Papa," he cried in his child- 
 ish voice. " Not hang them. Hang on to 
 them ! " 
 
 357 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "That is it! Tad has got it. We 
 must hang on to them ! " the President ex- 
 claimed in triumph. 
 
 Lincoln's final official act was writing, 
 " Let it be done," on the petition of a Con- 
 federate prisoner who desired to take the 
 oath of allegiance. " I think this will take 
 precedence of Stanton," he is reported to 
 have said, for Stanton wished to hedge re- 
 habilitation about with more safeguards. 
 
 In the cabinet meeting on that last 
 morning of his life he talked in a strain of 
 the utmost friendliness toward the South. 
 No one need expect him to take any part 
 in hanging these men, even the worst of 
 them. Enough lives had been sacrificed. 
 Anger must be put aside. 
 
 With words like these on his lips, and a 
 gladness in his heart which found expres- 
 sion in a physical embrace of his rough and 
 prickly friend Stanton, he closed their last 
 cabinet session. 
 
 358 
 
XVII 
 
 LINCOLN THE WRITER 
 
 LINCOLN knew no foreign tongue, 
 yet he spoke two languages — the 
 vernacular, and a strong, majestic prose, 
 akin to poetry. He used one and then 
 the other, as best suited his audience or the 
 nature of his subject ; but whatever the lan- 
 guage, it expressed high aims, for he had 
 only one moral code. 
 
 Growing up among very simple people, 
 he acquired a plainness of manner, both 
 in thought and speech, which differ- 
 entiated him, all his days, from the 
 statesmen nurtured in ease and plenty. 
 The Boston Transcript, commenting on 
 his first inaugural, called it " the plain 
 
 359 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 homespun language of a man of the peo- 
 ple, who was accustomed to talk with ' the 
 folks,' " — " the language of a man of vital 
 common sense, whose words exactly fitted 
 his facts and thoughts." 
 
 This simplicity shocked not a few. It 
 was not living up to the popular concep- 
 tion of a statesman. The echoes wakened 
 by our great orators were still rolling over 
 the land, and every budding politician was 
 expected to rival them. A soaring perora- 
 tion was deemed as essential to a speech as 
 the " Fellow citizens " with which it 
 opened. Lincoln, with his straightfor- 
 ward sentences made up of short forceful 
 words, was not playing the game accord- 
 ing to accepted rules. Ex-president Tyler 
 complained that he did not even play it 
 according to rules of grammar. 
 
 In his later years Lincoln used to repeat 
 with glee the picturesque description of a 
 Southwestern orator who " mounted the 
 rostrum, threw back his head, shined his 
 
 360 
 
LINCOLN THE W H i i 1. K 
 
 ejcs, opened Iiis moutli, and I.ff the conse- 
 quences to God." This was an cxrrcis.. „f 
 faith In which he never indnl^nd, f|„,„^rl, )„. 
 passed through a period of nsin^r H,, 
 rather florid eloquence of the stump speech 
 with great effect. Studies in tl,e hiw en- 
 courage neither flights of fancy nor misuse 
 of words. His scrupulous regard for 
 truth, and his own good sense, speedily 
 corrected any leaning toward extravagant 
 metaphor. 
 
 In one of Lincoln's early speeches in 
 New England he expressed a " feeling of 
 real modesty" in addressing an audience 
 " this side the mountains," where every- 
 body was supposed to be instructed and 
 wise. He had the unschooled man's wist- 
 ful admiration and longing for educational 
 advantages which had been denied him; 
 and until convinced by contact and much 
 experience with men trained in the best 
 routine machines of learning, actually ex- 
 pected to suffer by comparison. It is quite 
 
 361 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 possible that up to the very last he was 
 astonished, and a bit disappointed to find 
 that he held his own so well beside them. 
 
 He had, too, the genuine admiration 
 for the arts and for science common to 
 many Westerners whose taste and appre- 
 ciation have outrun their opportunities, 
 and he enjoyed talking with men of these 
 pursuits — looking, as it were, through 
 their eyes into a world so different from his 
 own. Professor Joseph Henry was one 
 of the rare men in Washington in those 
 days. The two were mutually attracted, 
 though too busy to see much of each other. 
 The scientist was astonished at the Presi- 
 dent's intelligent grasp of subjects about 
 which he professed entire ignorance. " He 
 is producing a powerful impression upon 
 me," he confessed, " more powerful than 
 any one I can now recall. It increases 
 with every interview. I think it my duty 
 to take philosophic views of men and 
 things, but the President upsets me. If I 
 
 362 
 
LINCOLN THE WRITER 
 
 did not resist the inclination, 1 nii<rlil even 
 fall in love with him." Lincoln on his side 
 admitted that until meeting Professor 
 Henry he supposed the Smithsonian to be 
 a rather useless institution. ** But," he 
 said, " it must be a grand school if it pro- 
 duces such thinkers as he." 
 
 The President was fond of music, in a 
 frank untutored way, though he had not an 
 excruciatingly sensitive ear. The clash of 
 regimental bands playing against each 
 other, which drove Colonel Baker to dis- 
 traction at a certain review, did not dis- 
 turb him in the least. Perhaps it is better 
 to say that he liked the idea of nnisic — 
 the sound and swing of martial tunes, and 
 the pathos of a simple ballad. He must 
 have been unconsciously sensitive to 
 rhythm, for he read poetry uncommonly 
 well, and his own prose at its best has a 
 movement as inevitable as that of a march- 
 ing column. 
 
 There is a popular saying that only 
 363 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 three books are needed to complete a li- 
 brary — the Bible, Blackstone and Shak- 
 spere. He had delved deep in all three. 
 His lawj^er's training is visible in every- 
 thing he wrote, down to the smallest scrap, 
 in a clearness of expression which leaves 
 no chance for misunderstanding either the 
 fact stated or his own motive. But it has, 
 too, that indefinable literary elegance 
 called style. In the sentence quoted in the 
 last chapter, for instance, " I expect to 
 maintain this contest until successful, or 
 till I die, or am conquered, or my term ex- 
 pires, or Congress or the countrj^ forsake 
 me," no possible lawyer-loophole is left un- 
 guarded, yet because of its diction it is 
 neither redundant nor ungraceful. 
 
 His familiarity with and use of Biblical 
 phraseology was remarkable even in a time 
 when such use was more common than now. 
 We are told that he read Shakspere more 
 than all other writers put together. When 
 only two or three were present he was fond 
 
 364 
 
LINCOLN THE VV R 1 T K R 
 
 of reading aloud from the tragedies or the 
 historical plays. John Hay tells us that 
 " he passed many of the summer evenings 
 in this way when occupying his cottage at 
 the Soldiers' Home. . . , the plays he 
 most affected were ' Hamlet,' * Macheth,' 
 and the series of histories. Among these 
 he never tired of ' Richard II.' The ter- 
 rible outburst of grief and despair into 
 which Richard falls in the third act had a 
 peculiar fascination for him." ]\Ir. Hay 
 heard him read it at Springfield, at the 
 White House, and at the Soldiers' Home. 
 
 For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 
 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings: 
 
 How some have been deposed; some slain in 
 
 war; 
 Some haunted by the ghosts they have de- 
 posed; 
 Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping 
 
 kill'd; 
 All murdered: for within the hollow crown 
 That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
 
 S65 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Keeps Death his court; and there the antic 
 
 sits, 
 Scoffing his staie, and grinning at his pomp, 
 Allowing him a breath, a little scene. 
 To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with 
 
 looks. 
 Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 
 As if this flesh, which walls about our life. 
 Were brass impregnable, and humor'd thus 
 Comes at the last and with a little pin 
 Bores through the castle walls, and — fare- 
 well, king! 
 
 He liked to see these same plays acted. 
 Apparently he cared more for the acting 
 of men than of women — more for Hack- 
 ett, for instance, than for Charlotte Cush- 
 man. He was so delighted with Hackett's 
 Falsi aff that he wrote the veteran actor a 
 letter, which through an indiscretion on 
 the latter's part, was printed in the New 
 York Herald with accompanying abuse. 
 Hackett, greatly mortified, made profound 
 apologies, to which the President replied 
 
 $66 
 
LINCOLN THE WRIT J : R 
 
 in the kindest manner, that thourrh l,e had 
 not expected to see his note in print, it had 
 not distressed liim. "These connnents 
 constitute a fair specimen of what has oc- 
 curred to me throufvh life. I have endured 
 a great deal of ridicule without nnich mal- 
 ice and have received a great deal of kind- 
 ness not quite free from ridicule. I am 
 used to it." 
 
 He told a friend that he had never read 
 a whole novel in his life, though he once 
 began " Ivanhoe." Occasionally he read a 
 scientific work with deep interest, but his 
 busy life left him little time for such indul- 
 gence. During his Presidency the little 
 leisure that he had for reading was de- 
 voted, almost of necessity, to works on 
 military science. 
 
 " The music of Lincoln's thought was 
 always in a minor key," my father wrote. 
 Of modern poems the sad or reminiscent 
 appealed to him — like Holmes's '* Last 
 Leaf," Hood's "Haunted House," and 
 
 367 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 " Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be 
 proud? " 
 
 Among his own writings are found a 
 few bits of verse. On the Day of Judg- 
 ment few indeed will be the public men 
 who will not have to face a similar charge. 
 Lincoln's verses were inspired by revisiting 
 his old home, " within itself as unpoetical 
 as any spot on the earth," he admitted, but 
 which " aroused feelings in me which were 
 certainly poetry, though whether my ex- 
 pression of these feelings- is poetry, is 
 quite another question." 
 
 Certain other fragments — one on Ni- 
 agara Falls, notes for a law lecture, and a 
 more extended paper, the skeleton, partly 
 clothed, of a lecture on " Discoveries, In- 
 ventions and Improvements," which he de- 
 livered a few times in Springfield and 
 neighboring towns in 1859 and I860, are 
 all that we have of his efforts at self ex- 
 pression on subjects other than his con- 
 trolling inspiration. 
 
 368 
 
LINCOLN THE W U IT i; r 
 
 One who heard the lecture describL-d it 
 as longer and containing several fine pas- 
 sages not in the printed copy. It is easy 
 to see that even as it stands, Lincohi's 
 smile and manner would have made another 
 thing of it. Even in print tiiere are a 
 few bits wittily his own, like the characteri- 
 zation of Young America — "lie owns a 
 large part of the world by right of possess- 
 ing it, and all the rest by right of wanting 
 it and intending to have it." 
 
 The probability is that all these were 
 composed within that period of compara- 
 tive leisure between the end of his term in 
 Congress and the day when the repeal of 
 the Missouri Compromise unchained the 
 new political controversy. He attached 
 no undue importance to them. Refusing 
 an invitation to lecture in the spring of 
 1859, he wrote: "I cannot do so now. I 
 must stick to the courts awhile. I read a 
 sort of lecture to three different audiences 
 during the last month and this, but I did 
 24 369 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 so under circumstances which made it a 
 waste of no time whatever." 
 
 At what time Lincoln began the compo- 
 sition of his first inaugural was unknown, 
 even to his secretary. My father's opin- 
 ion was that while he did not set himself 
 seriously to this task until the result of the 
 election had been ascertained beyond 
 doubt, it is quite possible that it had been 
 considered with great deliberation during 
 the summer, and that sentences and per- 
 haps paragraphs of it had been put in 
 writing. Mr. Lincoln often resorted to 
 the process of cumulative thought, and his 
 constant tendency to and great success in 
 axiomatic definition resulted in a large 
 measure from a habit he had of reducing 
 a forcible idea to writing, and keeping it 
 till further reasoning enabled him to elab- 
 orate or conclude his point or argument. 
 There were many of these scraps among 
 his papers — seldom in the shape of mere 
 
 370 
 
LINCOLN TH K W R 1 T K R 
 
 rough notes ; almost always as a finished 
 proposition or statement. 
 
 It was about one of his political letters, 
 the Conlvling letter of August 2(), ISGJ^, 
 that John Hay wrote to my fatlR-r with 
 irrepressible youthful enthusiasm : 
 
 " His last letter is a great thing. Some 
 hideously bad rhetoric . . . yet the whole 
 letter takes its solid place in history as the 
 great utterance of a great man. The 
 whole cabinet could not have tinkered up 
 a letter which could have compared with 
 it. He can snake a sophism out of its 
 hole better than all the trained logicians 
 of all schools. I do not know whether the 
 nation is worthy of him. . . ." 
 
 This Conkling letter has been called 
 " his last stump speech." It has in it all 
 the qualities which made him the leader of 
 his party in Illinois for a generation — 
 the close reasoning, the innate perception 
 of political conduct, wit, sarcasm, and 
 
 371 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that picturesque eloquence which abounded 
 in his earher and more careless oratory. 
 But all are strengthened and intensified 
 by a sense of his great responsibility. 
 " The Father of Waters again goes un- 
 vexed to the sea," " All the watery mar- 
 gins " of our land, and " Man's vast fu- 
 ture," with their poetic note, are balanced 
 by statements as irrefutable as that two 
 and two make four, and his axiom that 
 " there can be no appeal from the ballot 
 to the bullet " — Nowhere a syllable that 
 could be dispensed with, nowhere a word 
 lacking. 
 
 Modest as he was, Lincoln knew the 
 value of his work. When a friend asked 
 him if he meant to attend the mass meeting 
 in Springfield to which Mr. Conkling's let- 
 ter was an invitation, he replied, 
 
 " No. I shall send them a letter in- 
 stead, and it will be a rather good letter." 
 
 Although a ready impromptu speaker, 
 he made for himself a rule to which he ad- 
 
 372 
 
LINCOLN THE WRIT K II 
 
 hered during his Presidency. This was to 
 say nothing in public that he had not first 
 committed to writing. Reprimands to dc- 
 hnquent officials, the little speech on pre- 
 sentnig Grant his commission as Lieuten- 
 ant General, and the speeches of formal 
 ceremony to diplomats, as well as the far 
 more intimate lecture to his cabinet, were 
 all carefully written beforehand. 
 
 When he delivered the Gettysburg Ad- 
 dress he held the paper in his hand, but 
 did not read from it. It was " in a firm 
 free way, with more grace than is his 
 wont " that he " said his half dozen lines 
 of consecration." " And the music wailed, 
 and we went home through crowded and 
 cheering streets — and all the particulars 
 are in the daily papers," John Hay wrote. 
 Next day Edward Everett sent the Pres- 
 ident a note of thanks for personal cour- 
 tesies received, and of appreciation of the 
 address. " I should be glad if I could 
 flatter myself that I had come as near the 
 
 373 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 central idea of the occasion in two hours 
 as jou did in two minutes." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln answered, " In our respect- 
 ive parts yesterday you could not have 
 been excused to make a short address, nor 
 I a long one. I am pleased to know that 
 in your judgment, the little I did say was 
 not entirely a failure. Of course I knew 
 Mr. Everett would not fail." 
 
 Much has been written to prove that 
 neither Lincoln nor the country was satis- 
 fied with the address, and that it was re- 
 served for English critics to discover its 
 wonderful beauty. The only direct evi- 
 dence lies in this letter to Edward Everett, 
 which may or may not conceal more mean- 
 ing than a conventional answer to a merited 
 compliment. The probability is that 
 though he thought the address not nearly 
 so bad as some would have us imagine, he 
 did not dream that the world would acclaim 
 it a masterpiece. He would doubtless have 
 been astonished, and the first to protest, 
 
 374 
 
LINCOLN THE W R I T K R 
 
 had he been told that he was a ^rcat writer. 
 Yet the world so holds him; and siirelv in 
 elevation of thought and nobility* of 
 expression it is hard to find his superior. 
 
 Sherman called his style " the unaffeeted 
 and spontaneous eloquence of the heart." 
 It was indeed an eloquence of the heart. 
 His early striving after lucid brevity, and 
 his dramatic sense, gave him the power of 
 expressing ideas in short and forceful 
 terms. His moral purpose made him a 
 teacher whose voice carried far. To this 
 he had attained before he became Presi- 
 dent. But it was the experience of the 
 Presidency which brought to full flower 
 another quality, a beauty of phrase and a 
 benignity of expression only hinted at in 
 his earlier writings. 
 
 " We shall nobly save or meanly lose, 
 the last, best hope of earth." " It is 
 rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
 great task remaining before us — that 
 from these honored dead we take increased 
 
 375 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 devotion to that cause for which they gave 
 the last full measure of devotion." " I 
 have not willingly planted a thorn in any 
 man's bosom." " We must not sully vic- 
 tory with harshness." " With malice to- 
 ward none ; with charity for all ; with firm- 
 ness in the right as God gives us to see the 
 right, let us strive on to finish the work we 
 are in, to bind up the nation's wounds ; to 
 care for him who shall have borne the bat- 
 tle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to 
 do all which may achieve and cherish a just 
 and lasting peace among ourselves, and 
 with all nations." 
 
 Before his election he might have writ- 
 ten, " Fellow citizens, we cannot escape 
 history ! " But he could not have spoken 
 the " half dozen lines of consecration " at 
 Gettysburg, or the marvelous words of the 
 Second Inaugural. 
 
 It was his suffering — the thorny path 
 he trod, carrying a nation's grief, which 
 gave his words their final majesty. 
 
 376 
 
XVIII 
 
 HIS MORAL FIBER 
 
 A FEW characters live in history un- 
 circumscribed by time or place. 
 They may have died ten centuries or ten 
 days ago; we feel them to be as vital and 
 as modern as ourselves. 
 
 It is hard to think of Lincoln in any en- 
 vironment except our own, yet the country 
 he knew was vastly different. The Civil 
 War bridged a gulf wider than we realize. 
 Up to that time America had been the land 
 of individual effort, where those who were 
 dissatisfied could go on into the wilder- 
 ness and work out their doom or their sal- 
 vation unmolested. The very peopling 
 of the continent had been a protest against 
 
 377 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 despotism — against doing things the way 
 some one else decreed. In our early at- 
 tempts at concerted government conces- 
 sions toward central power were given 
 grudgingly, and sometimes withdrawn 
 again, in spite of demonstrated success. 
 We accepted the motto, " In union is 
 strength," officially ; in private we pinned 
 our faith to its opposite — " every man 
 for himself." 
 
 By its mere magnitude the Civil War 
 compelled a change. The struggle as- 
 sumed such vast proportions that Ameri- 
 cans were forced to think in a new way — 
 to do things together in large masses, to 
 contemplate immense quantities, to calcu- 
 late stupendous sums. 
 
 A volunteer army is in essence coopera- 
 tion, and four years' training in the possi- 
 bilities of voluntary cooperation taught 
 the nation the value of " team work." At 
 the end of the struggle over a million men, 
 trained in these new ways, carried their 
 
 378 
 
HIS MORAL FIBER 
 
 knowledge back into civil life, and spread 
 it through the business world. If the 
 germ of secession lay hidden In the hold of 
 the Dutch slaver that sailed up the James 
 River in 1619, the inception of present in- 
 dustrial methods was breathed in by both 
 Union and Confederate armies as they lay 
 in the swamps of Virginia. 
 
 Just enough poison may be a tonic, 
 though too much is a deadly drug. In- 
 dividualism did its great work on this con- 
 tinent, but, pushed to its conclusion, 
 would have brought ruin. This new force 
 quickened the pulse of national life so 
 that the waste of war was repaired with 
 unheard-of speed ; and now men wonder 
 how much farther it is wise to pursue the 
 same course. 
 
 Remembering the wisdom of Lincoln 
 who presided over the other great change, 
 people have sought to make him a prophet 
 for this generation. Not finding what 
 they wanted among his words, the un- 
 
 379 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 scrupulous have not hesitated to invent 
 them. My father once made a list of a 
 dozen or more spurious quotations and 
 allegations concerning Lincoln; but the 
 one he was most often called upon to deny, 
 was this : 
 
 Yes, we can all congratulate ourselves that 
 this cruel war is drawing to a close. It has 
 cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. 
 The best blood of the flower of American 
 youth has been freely offered upon our coun- 
 try's altar that the nation might live. It has 
 been a trying hour for the republic, but I 
 see in the near future a crisis arising which 
 unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the 
 safety of my country. As a result of the 
 war, corporations have been enthroned, and 
 an era of corruption in high places will fol- 
 low, and the money power of the country 
 will endeavor to prolong its reign by working 
 upon the prejudices of the people until all 
 wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the 
 republic is destroyed. I feel at this time 
 more anxiety for the safety of my country 
 
 380 
 
HIS MORAL FIBKU 
 
 than ever before, even in the midst of thr 
 war. God grant that my fears may prove 
 groundless ! 
 
 This alleged quotation seems to have 
 made its first appearance in the Presiden- 
 tial campaign of 1888, and it has returned 
 with planetary regularity ever since. 
 Although convinced by internal evidence 
 of its falsity, my father made every effort 
 to trace it to its source, but could find no 
 responsible or respectable clue. The truth 
 is that Lincoln was no prophet of a distant 
 day. His heart and mind were busy with 
 the problems of his own time. The legacy 
 he left his countrymen was not the warn- 
 ing of a seer, but an example and an ob- 
 ligation to face their own dark shadows 
 with the sanity and courageous inde- 
 pendence he showed in looking upon those 
 that confronted him. 
 
 His early life was essentially of the old 
 era. He made his own career by indi- 
 
 381 
 
/^ 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 vidual effort. His childhood, on the edge 
 of civilization, had on the one side the 
 freedom of the wilderness, and on the other 
 the very few simple things which have been 
 garnered as necessities from the world's 
 useless belongings. His lawyer's earn- 
 ings, at their highest, were only a pittance, 
 by modern estimate; and a hundred de- 
 tails of his letters and daily life — like 
 his invitation to an audience in the Lin- 
 coln-Douglas campaign, to meet him " at 
 candle-light," which was not a figure of 
 speech but an actual condition, showed how 
 completely he was part of that vanished 
 time. 
 
 Yet when the change came he led the 
 country out of old ways into new. Rising 
 above the hatred and bitterness of the 
 struggle, he held attention to the great and 
 enduring principles which made such a 
 sacrifice of life not only tolerable, but 
 holy. By force of his own personality he 
 shamed men into contempt for vindictive- 
 
 382 
 
HIS M C) U A L F I 15 K R 
 
 ness and meanness; and doing so, rol)hi'(i 
 war of its bitterest sting. 
 
 His sudden elevation to the Presidency 
 had no deteriorating effect upon his (\un\- 
 ities of head or of heart. His mental 
 equipoise remained undisturbed, his moral 
 sensitiveness unblunted, his simpllcltv of 
 manner unchanged, his strong Individual- 
 ity untouched. His responsibilities served 
 only to clear his judgment, confirm his 
 courage and broaden and deepen his hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Dwellers on mountain tops are lonely. 
 The very clearness of his mind, and the 
 largeness of his view, conspired to rob him 
 of companionship in the sense of intel- 
 lectual equality. A vainer man might have 
 felt this. Lincoln, entirely without ego- 
 tism, grasped the greater fact of human 
 brotherhood, and found interest and com- 
 panionship in the fact of a common hu- 
 manity. 
 
 He had no false pride about little 
 383 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 things ; no false modesty about great ones. 
 He knew that he had a great part to play, 
 and played it simply, earnestly. He had 
 no illusions but also, no bitterness. He 
 did have strong affections, a very real 
 craving for sympathy, a merry wit, and 
 an infinite capacity for pain. He was a 
 man of patience, of faith, of broad princi- 
 ples, of high aspirations ; accepting with- 
 out rude rebuff any good he could secure 
 for the moment, yet all the while shaping 
 and preparing in meditation and silent 
 hope the path by which the nation might 
 mount to higher levels. 
 
 This man of no illusions lived very close 
 to mystery. From the day he stood be- 
 side his father in the unhealthful shade of 
 Pigeon Cove, a little heart-sick boy, 
 watching the whip-saw eat its way 
 through the green wood that was to make 
 coffins for his mother and the others who 
 had died of the dreadful " milk sick- 
 ness," to the night before he was mur- 
 • 584 
 
HIS ]VI O R A L F I B 1<: R 
 
 dered, when he dreamed again liis 
 recurrent dream of the strange slilp liur- 
 rying toward a dark and unknown shore, 
 he seemed always to feel the unseen very 
 near. 
 
 Every act of his private life, and every 
 public paper he sent forth, testified not 
 only to his belief in, but to his reliance 
 upon, a power higher and wiser than him- 
 self, " The purposes of the Almighty are 
 perfect and must prevail," he wrote, 
 " though we erring mortals may fail to 
 accurately perceive them in advance. . . . 
 We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and 
 our own error therein. Meanwhile we 
 must work earnestly in the best lights He 
 gives us, trusting that so working still con- 
 duces to the great end He ordains." 
 
 In its reverence for the words and acts 
 of Christ the civilized world has set up Its 
 standard of moral philosophy. Judged 
 by this standard Lincoln must be 
 accorded preeminence among his contem- 
 ns 385 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 poraries. A patriot in his complete 
 devotion to his Government and its Con- 
 stitution, his greatness of soul rose above 
 patriotism and acknowledged the right of 
 every human being made in God's image 
 to his personal act of kindness and mercy 
 — not as an act of grace from a mighty 
 ruler, as he was; but as a service com- 
 manded ahke by the laws of man and God. 
 In the practice of justice, of patriotism, 
 of mercy — in the utter oblivion of self, 
 "with malice toward none, with charity 
 for all," he followed in the footsteps of 
 the Galilean. 
 
 Fate placed him at the cross-roads of 
 national destiny. The muse of history 
 thrust before him a blank tablet and bade 
 him write upon it the life or death of the 
 New World republic. It is our privilege 
 to read from that tablet the record of a 
 Union presented, and a new conception of 
 dominion, majesty and power, tempered 
 by the Golden Rule. But at that time no 
 
 386 
 
HIS MORAL FIBER 
 
 mortal, not even he who was to writi-, could 
 foretell the inscription. lie himself did 
 not pretend to pierce the veil of the future. 
 He only knew the magnitude of his task, 
 and that he was not dismayed. 
 
 THE END 
 
 S87 
 
UBRARVOFCONOKtSS 
 
 003 789 281 6 ^