LIBRARY THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN VOLUME I i 1 J J ' '3 r • f r • • ; • • • • • " ' '. • ', . • • « . ' • .' r f ' ' ' < • • ' • . • ' « • . The LIFE of ABRAHAM LINCOLN Drawn from original Sources and containing many SPEECHES, LETTERS and TELEGRAMS hitherto unpubHshed, by Ida M. TARBELL Volume One Illustrated New York: The Doubledav & McClure Co.. 1900 Copyright, 1895, 1896, 189S, 1899, By the S. S. McClur^ Co. Copyright, 1900, By Doubleday & McClure Co. To my Father 283155 J ^ PREFACE The work here offered the public was begun in 1894 at the suggestion of Mr. S. S. McQure and Mr. J. S. Philhps, editors of " McClure's Magazine." Their desire was to add to our knowledge of Abraham Lincoln by collecting and pre- serving the reminiscences of such of his contemporaries as were then living. In undertaking the work it was deter- mined to spare neither labor nor money and in this deter- mination Mr. McClure and his associates have never wa- vered. Without the sympathy, confidence, suggestion and criticism which they have given the work it would have been impossible. They established in their editorial rooms what might be called a Lincoln Bureau and from there an or- ganized search was made for reminiscences, pictures and documents. To facilitate the work all persons possessing or knowing of Lincoln material were asked through the ]\Iagazine to communicate with the editor. The response was immediate and amazing. Hundreds of persons from all parts of the country replied. In every case the clews thus obtained were investigated and if the matter was found to be new and useful was secured. The author wrote thou- sands of letters and travelled thousands of miles in collecting the material which came to the editor simply as a result of this request in the magazine. The work thus became one in which the whole country co-operated. At the outset it was the intention of the editors to use the results of the research simply as a series of unpublished rem- vii viii PREFACE iniscences, but after a few months the new material gath- ered, while valuable seemed to them too fragmentary to be published as it stood, and the author was asked to prepare a series of articles on Lincoln coveting his life up to 1858 and embodying as far as possible the unpublished material col- lected. These articles, which appeared in '' jMcClure's Magazine " for 1895 and 1896, were received favorably, and it was decided to follow them by a series on the later life of Lincoln. This latter series was concluded in September, 1899, and both series, with considerable supplementary mat- ter, are published in the present volumes. It is impossible in this brief preface to mention all who have aided in the work, but there are a few whose names must not be omitted, so essential has their assistance been to the enterprise. From the beginning Mr. J. McCan Davis of Springfield, Illinois, has been of great service, particularly in examining the files of Illinois newspapers and in interviewing. It is to Mr. Davis's intelligent and patient research that we owe the report of Lincoln's first published speech, the curious letters on the Adams law case, most of the documents of Lincoln's early life in New Salem and Springfield, such as his first vote, his reports and maps of surveys, his marriage certifi- cate and many of the letters printed in the appendix. Mr. William H. Lambert of Philadelphia has also assisted us constantly by his sympathy and suggestions, and his large and valuable Lincoln collection has been freely at our dis- posal. Other collections that have been generously opened are those of O. H. Oldroyd of Washington, R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky., C. F. Gunther, Chicago, 111., and Louis Vanuxem, Philadelphia, Pa. The War Department of the United States Government has extended many cour- tesies, the War Records being freely opened and the mem- bers of the War Records Commission aiding us in every way PREFACE IX in their power. The hbrarians of the War Department, of the Congressional Library, of the Boston PubUc Library and of the Astor Library of New York, have also been most helpful. The chief obligation which any student of Abraham Lin- coln owes is to the great work of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, In it are collected nearly all the documents essential to a study of Lincoln's life. Their History has been freely con- sulted in preparing this work and whenever letters and speeches of Lincoln appearing in their collection of his writings have been quoted, their version has been followed. Other lives of Lincoln that have been found useful are those of W. H. Herndon, W. O. Stoddard, John T. Morse, Isaac Arnold, Ward H. Lamon, H. C. Whitney, and J. G. Holland. The new material collected will, we believe, add con- siderably to our knowledge of Lincoln's life. Docu- ments are presented establishing clearly that his mother was not the nameless girl that she has been so generally believed. His father, Thomas Lincoln, is shown to have been something more than a shiftless " poor white," and Lincoln's early life, if hard and crude, to have been full of honest, cheerful effort at betterment. His struggles for a livelihood and his intellectual development from the time he started out for himself until he was admitted to the bar are traced with more detail than in any other biography, and considerable new light is thrown on this period of his life. The sensational account of his running away from his own wedding, accepted generally by historians, is shown to be false. To the period of Lincoln's life from 1849, when he gave up politics, until 1858, the period of the Lincoln and Douglas Debates, the most important contribution made is the report of what is known as the " Lost Speech." The second volume of the Life contains as an appendix X PREFACE 196 pages of letters, telegrams and speeches which do not appear in Lincoln's " Complete Works," published by his private secretaries Messrs. Nicolay and Hay. The great majority of these documents have never been published at all. The source from which they have been obtained is given in each case. No attempt has been made to cover the history of Lin- coln's times save as necessary in tracing the development of his mind and in illustrating his moral qualities. It is Lincoln the man, as seen by his fellows and revealed by his own acts and words, that the author has tried to picture. This has been the particular aim of the second series of articles. I. M. T CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Origin of the Lincoln Family — The Lincolns in Kentucky — Birth of Abraham Lincoln - - I IL The Lincolns leave Kentucky for Southern Indiana — Conditions of life in their new home - - - l8 IIL Abraham Lincoln's early opportunities— The books he read— Trips to New Orleans — Impression he made on his friends ------ 29 IV. The Lincolns leave Indiana — The journey to Illinois- Abraham Lincoln starts out for himself - - 45 V. Lincoln secures a position— He studies grammar— First appearance in politics ----- 5Q VI. The Black Hawk war— Lincoln chosen captain of a company— Re-enlists as an independent ranger— End of the war ------ 73 VII. Lincoln runs for State assembly and is defeated — Store- keeper—Student—Postmaster—Surveyor - - 89 VIII. Electioneering in Illinois in 1834— Lincoln reads law— First term as assemblyman— Lincoln's first great sorrow ------- 108 IX. Lincoln is re-elected to the Illinois assembly — His first published address— Protests against pro-slavery reso- lutions of the assembly - - - - - 124 X. Lincoln begins to study law — Mary Owens— A news- paper contest— Growth of political influence - - 147 xi xii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XI. Lincoln's engagement to Mary Todd — Breaking of the engagement — Lincoln-Shields duel . . - 170 XIL Lincoln becomes a candidate Jor Congress and is de- feated — On the stump in 1844 — Nominated and elected to the 30th Congress - - - - 192 XIIL Lincoln in Washington in 1847 — He opposes the Mexi- can war — Campaigning in New England - - 207 XIV. Lincoln at Niagara— Secures a patent for an inven- tion — Abandons politics and decides to devote him- self to the law ..---- 225 XV. Lincoln on the circuit— His humor and persuasiveness ■. . . — — His manner of preparing cases, examining wit- nesses, and addressing juries - - - - 241 XVI. Lincoln's important law eases — Defence of a slave girl — The McCormick case — The Armstrong murder case — The Rock Island bridge case _ - . 257 XVII. Lincoln re enters politics ----- 279 XVIII. The Lincoln-Douglas debates - - - - 301 XIX. Lincoln's nomination in i860 _ - - - 334 XX. The campaign of i860 _ _ _ _ - 359 XXI. Air. Lincoln as President-elect - - - - 387 ILLUSTRATIONS Abraham Lincoln Frontispiece to Vol. I PAGE The Home of Abraham Lincoln, Grandfather of the President. facing 4 Facsimile of the Marriage Bond of Thomas Lincoln ii Return of Marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks 12 Facsimile of the Appointment of Thomas Lincoln as Road Sur- veyor 13 House in which Abraham Lincoln was Born facing 20 Facsimile of the Record of the Lincoln Family made by Abraham Lincoln in the Family Bible 22 Fragment from a leaf of Lincoln's Exercise Book 31 Facsimile of Lines from Lincoln's Copy Book 42 The Earliest Portrait of Abraham Lincoln facing 46 Thomas Lincoln's Bible facing 64 Two Views of Rock Spring Farm facing 82 Map Showing Lincoln's supposed Line of March in Black Hawk War 85 Facsimile of a Letter Written by Lincoln 97 Facsimile of a Report of a Road Survey by Lincoln 102 Facsimile of a Map made by Lincoln of Road in Menard County, 111 103 Lincoln in 1858 facing 116 Facsimile of a Map of Albany, 111., made by Lincoln 131 Map of Illinois, illustrating a System of Internal Improvements 1834 135 The Grave of Nancy Hanks facing 140 Facsimile of Page from Stuart & Lincoln's Fee Book 154 Sarah Bush Lincoln facing 168 xiii XIV ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Facsimile of Invitation to a Springfield Cotillion Party 171 Facsimile of Marriage License and Certificate of Abraham Lin- coln igi Lincoln in February, i860, at the Time of the Cooper Institute Speech facing 200 Thomas Lincoln's Home in Illinois facing 222 Facsimile of Map of Circuit which Lincoln Travelled in Practising Law 243 Facsimile of a Lincoln Memorandum 250 The Kirkham's Grammar Used by Lincoln at New Salem facing 258 Lincoln in i860 facing 284 Grave of Ann Rutledge in Oakland Cemetery facing 316 Lincoln in the Summer of i860 facing 340 Chair Occupied by the Chairman of the Republican National Con- vention, i860 348 Lincoln Home, Springfield, Illinois facing 380 THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1 ,•■>)« ,, LIFE OF LINCOLN CHAPTER I. THE ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY — THE LINCOLNS IN KENTUCKY BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Between the years 1635 and 1645 there came to the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, from the west of England, eight men named Lincoln. Three of these, Samuel, Daniel, and Thomas, were brothers. Their relationship, if any, to the other Lincolns who came over from the same part of Eng- land at about the same time, is not clear. Two of these men, Daniel and Thomas, died without heirs; but Samuel left a large family, including four sons. Among the descendants of Samuel Lincoln's sons were many good citizens and prominent public officers. One was a member of the Boston Tea Party, and served as a captain of artillery in the War of the Revolution. Three served on the brig Hazard during the Revolution. Levi Lincoln, a great-great-grandson of Samuel, bom in Hingham in 1749, and graduated from Har- vard, was one of the minute-men at Cambridge immediately after the battle of Lexington, a delegate to the convention in Cambridge for framing a state constitution, and in 1781 was elected to the continental congress, but declined to serve. He was a member of the house of representatives and of the senate of Massachusetts, and was appointed attorney-general of the United States by Jefferson; for a few months preced- ing the arrival of Madison he was secretary of state, and in 1807 he was elected lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts. (0 f f t ( r r f r f r t r r ' 1 • r t t t t r c t ft 2 LI?E OF LINCOLN In 1811 he wa^ at)pcinted associate justice of the United States Supreme Court by President Madison, an office which he dechned. From the close of tlie Revohitionary war he was considered the head of the Massachusetts bar. His eldest son, Levi Lincoln, born in 1782, had also an honorable career. He was a Harvard graduate, became governor of the state of Massachusetts, and held other im- portant public offices. He received the degree of LL. D, from both Williams College, and Harvard College. Another son of Levi Lincoln, Enoch Lincoln, served in congress from 18 18 to 1826. He became governor of Maine in 1827, holding the position until his death in 1829. Enoch Lincoln was a writer of more than ordinary ability. The fourth son of Samuel Lincoln was called Mordecai. Mordecai was a rich " blacksmith," as an iron-worker was called in those days, and the proprietor of numerous iron- works, saw-mills, and grist-mills, which with a goodly amount of money he distributed at his death among his child- ren and grandchildren. Two of his children, Mordecai and Abraham, did not remain in Massachusetts, but removed to New Jersey, and thence to Pennsylvania, where both became rich, and dying, left fine estates to their children. Their de- scendants in Pennsylvania have continued to this day to be well-to-do people, some of them having taken prominent positions in public affairs. Abraham Lincoln, of Berks county, who was born in 1736 and died in 1806, filled many public offices, being a member of the general assembly of Pennsylvania, of the state convention of 1787, and of the state constitutional convention in 1 790. One of the sons of this second Mordecai, John, received from his father " three hundred acres of land, lying in the Jerseys." But evidently he did not care to cultivate his in- heritance, for about 1758 he removed to Virginia. "Vir- ginia John," as this member of the family was called, had ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY 3 five sons one of whom, Jacob, entered the Revolutionary army and served as a heutenant at Yorktown. The third son was named Abraham and to him his father conveyed, in 1773, a tract of 210 acres of land in what is now Rocking- ham county, Virginia. But though Abraham Lincoln pros- pered and added to these acres he was not satisfied to remain many years in Virginia. It was not strange. The farm on which he lived lay close to the track of one of the earliest of those wonderful western migrations which from time to time have taken place in this country. Soon after John Lincoln came into Virginia vague rumors began to be cir- culated there of a rich western land called Kentucky. These rumors rapidly developed into facts, as journeys were made into the new land by John Finley, Daniel Boone and other adventure-loving men, and settlers began to move thither from Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina. There were but two roads by which Kentucky could be reached then, the national highway from Philadelphia to Pittsburg and thence by the Ohio, and the highway which ran from Philadelphia south-westward through the Virginia valley to Cumberland Gap and thence by a trail called the Wilderness Road, northwest to the Ohio at Louisville. The latter road was considered less dangerous and more practical than the former and by it the greater part of the emigrants journeyed. Now this road lay through Rockingham county. Abraham Lincoln was thus directly under the influence of a moving procession of restless seekers after new lands and unknown goods. The spell came upon him and, selling two hundred and forty acres of land in Rockingham County for five thou- sand pounds of the current money of Virginia — a sum worth at that time not more than one hundred and twenty-five pounds sterling — he joined a party of travelers to the Wil- derness. Returning a few months later he moved his whole family, consisting of a wife and five children, into Kentucky. 4 LIFE OF LINCOLN Abraham Lincoln was ambitious to become a landed pro- prietor in the new country, and he entered a generous amount of land — four hundred acres on Long run, in Jefferson county ; eight hundred acres on Gxecn river, near the Green river lick ; five hundred acres in Campbell county. He settled near the first tract, where he undertook to clear a farm. It was a dangerous task, for the Indians were still troublesome, and the settlers, for protection, were forced to live in or near forts or stations. In 1784, when John Filson published his " History of Kentucky," though there was a population of thirty thousand in the territory, there were but eighteen houses outside of the stations. Of these stations, or stock- ades, there were but fifty-two. According to the tradition in the Lincoln family, Abraham Lincoln lived at Hughes Sta- tion on Floyd creek in Jefferson county. All went well with him and his family until 1788. Then, one day, w^hile he and his three sons were at work in their clearing, an unexpected Indian shot killed the father. His death was a terrible blow to the family. The large tracts of land which he had entered were still uncleared, and his per- sonal property was necessarily small. The difficulty of reach- ing the country at that date, as well as its wild condition, made it impracticable for even a wealthy pioneer to own more stock or household furniture than was absolutely es- sential. Abraham Lincoln was probably as well provided with personal property as most of his neighbors. The in- ventory of his estate, now owned by R. T. Durrett, LL. D., of Louisville, Kentucky, was returned by the appraisers on March 10, 1789. It gives a clearer idea of the condition in which he left his wife and children, than any description could do : £ s. d. I Sorrel horse 8 I Black horse 9 lo I Red cow and calf 4 10 m ^ \^"^7^ as 4A IS if c S X H <; fa Q z o o o PS fa < c w K H 3 C S o O c c cc ;> HI Sfcl a; ,«' fa , a ^ // U ' CAMEROKJ > - COUNS ^ ,7 "\\~^ ,,^'-'/,i^ •■' ''">■ '"'Mv,,;;,; >, '„„J\,. ,^ |'-avM||/,,. >^^>""//A, ,.vxV^ V\"l/. 'Ml'/. \. ,A\|.j, MAP OF NEW SALEM, ILLINOIS. Drawn for this biography by J. McCaun Davis, aided by surviving inhabitants of New Salem. Dr. John Allen, who lived across the road from Berry & Lincoln's store, attended Ann Rntledge in her last illness. None of the buildings are in existence to-day. lO ' LIFE OF LINCOLN Thomas Lincoln learned his trade. At all events, the two cousins became engaged and on June lo, 1806, their mar- riage bond was issued according to the law of the time. Two days later according to the marriage returns of the Rev- erend Jesse Head, they were married, — a fact duly attested also by the marriage certificate made out by the officiating minister. The marriage took place at the home of Richard Berry, near Beechland in Washington County, Kentucky. It was celebrated in the boisterous style of one hundred years ago, and was followed by an infare, given by the bride's guardian. To this celebration came all the neighbors, and, according to an entertaining Kentucky centenarian. Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, even those who happened in the neigh- borhood were made welcome. He tells how he heard of the wedding while " out hunting for roots," and went " just to get a good supper. I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln at her wed- ding," continues Mr. Graham, "afresh looking girl, I should say over twenty. I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian — and only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had bearmeat ; . . . venison; wild turkey and ducks; eggs, wild and tame, so common that you could buy them at two bits a bushel ; maple sugar, swung on a string, to bite off for coffee or whiskey; syrup in big gourds ; peach-and-honey ; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juice in; and a race for the whiskey bottle." After his marriage Thomas Lincoln settled in Elizabeth- town. His home was a log cabin, but at that date few peo- ple in the state had anything else. Kentucky had been in the union only fourteen years. When admitted, the few brick structures within its boundaries were easily counted, and there were only log school-houses and churches. Fourteen ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY II o H n o o n o a n o cA^ .^^ ^''i^f ^^'^'^^'^^^^ RKTITRN OF MABRUOB OP THOMAS LINCOLN AND NANCY HANK8. From a tracing of the oriplnal, made by Henry Whitney Cleveland. This certificate waa diacoveied about 1886 by W. F. Booker, Ksci-, Clerk of Washington County, Kentucky. ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY 13 years had brought great improvements, but the majority of the population still lived in log cabins, so that the home of Thomas Lincoln was as good as most of his neighbors. Lit- tle is known of his position in Elizabethtown, though we have proof that he had credit in the community, for the descend- ants of two of the early store-keepers still remember seeing on their grandfathers' account books sundry items charged to T. Lincoln. Tools and groceries were the chief purchases he made, though on one of the ledgers a pair of " silk sus- penders," worth one dollar and fifty cents, was entered. He not only enjoyed a certain credit with the people of Eliza- bethtown; he was sufficiently respected by the public authori- ties to be appointed in 181 6 a road surveyor, or, as the office ^^^^^C'^rUoZ.U^y /$^^ L^^au/y^ / FACSIMILE OF THE APPOINTMENT Off THOMAS LINCOLN AS KOAD SURVEYOR. is known in some localities, supervisor. It was not, to be sure, a position of great importance, but it proved that he was considered fit to oversee a body of men at a task of consider- able value to the community. Indeed, all of the documents mentioning Thomas Lincoln which have been discovered show him to have had a much better position in Hardin county than he has been credited with. It was at Elizabethtown that the first child of the Lincolns, a daughter, was born. Soon after this event Thomas Lin- coln decided to combine farming with his trade, and moved 14 LIFE OF LINCOLN to the farm he had bought in 1803 on the Big South fork of NoHn creek, in Hardin County, now La Rue County, three miles from Hodgensville, and about fourteen miles from Elizabeth town. Here he was living when, on February 12, 1809, his second child, a boy, was born. The little new- comer was called Abraham, after his grandfather — a name which had persisted through many preceding generations in both the Lincoln and Hanks families. The home into which the child came was the ordinary one of the poorer western pioneer — a one-roomed cabin with a huge outside chimney, a single window, and a rude door. The description of its squalor and wretchedness, which are so familiar, have been overdrawn. Dr. Graham, than whom there is no better authority on the life of that day, and who knew Thomas Lincoln well, declares energetically that 'Tt is all stuff about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in a winter. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and butter, a good feather bed — for I have slept on it. They had home- woven 'kiverlids,' big and little pots, a loom and wheel. Tom Lincoln was a man and took care of his wife." The Lincoln home was undoubtedly rude, and in many ways uncomfortable, but it sheltered a happy family, and its poverty affected the new child but little. He grew to be robust and active and soon learned how endless are the de- lights and interests the country offers to a child. He had several companions. There was his sister Nancy, or Sarah — both names are given her — two years his senior; there was a cousin of his mother's, ten years older, Dennis Friend (commonly called Dennis Hanks), an active and ingenious leader in sports and mischief; and there were the neighbors' boys. One of the latter, Austin Gollaher, lived to be over ninety years of age and to his death related with pride how he played with young Lincoln in the shavings of his ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY 15 father's carpenter shop, hunted coons and ran the woods with him, and once even saved his Ufe. " Yes," Mr. Gollaher was accustomed to say, " the story that I once saved Abraham Lincoln's Hfe is true. He and I had been going to school together for a year or more, and had become greatly attached to each other. Then school dis- banded on account of there being so few scholars, and we did not see each other much for a long while. One Sunday my mother visited the Lincolns, and I was taken along. Abe and I played around all day. Finally, we concluded to cross the creek to hunt for some partridges young Lincoln had seen the day before. The creek was swollen by a recent rain, and, in crossing on the narrow footlog, Abe fell in. Neither of us could swim. I got a long pole and held it out to Abe, who grabbed it. Then I pulled him ashore. He was almost dead, and I was badly scared. I rolled and pounded him in good earnest. Then I got him by the arms and shook him, the water meanwhile pouring out of his mouth. By this means I succeeded in bringing him to, and he was soon all right. '* Then a new difficulty confronted us. If our mothers discovered our wet clothes they would whip us. This we dreaded from experience, and determined to avoid. It was June, the sun was very warm, and we soon dried our clothing by spreading it on the rocks about us. We promised never to tell the story, and I never did until after Lincoln's tragic end." When the little boy was about four years old the first real excitement of his life occurred. His father moved from the farm on Nolin creek to another some fifteen miles northeast on Knob creek, and here the child began to go to school. At that day the schools in the west were usually accidental, de- pending upon the coming of some poor and ambitious young man who was willing to teach a few terms while he looked for an opening to something better. The terms were ir- regular, their length being decided by the time the settlers 1 6 LIFE OF LINCOLN felt able to board the master and pay his small salary. The chief qualifications for a school-master seem to have been enough strength to keep the " big boys " in order, though one high authority affirms that pluck went " for a heap sight more'n sinnoo with bovs." Many of the itinerant masters were Catholics, strolling Irishmen from the colony in Tennessee, or French priests from Kaskaskia. Lincoln's first teacher, Zachariah Rincy, was a Catholic. Of his second teacher, Caleb Hazel, we know even less than of Riney. Mr. Gollaher says that Abraham Lincoln, in those days when he was his schoolmate, was " an unusually bright boy at school, and made splendid progress in his studies. Indeed, he learned faster than any of his schoolmates. Though so young, he studied very hard. He would get spicewood bushes, hack them up on a log, and burn them two or three together, for the purpose of giving light by which he might pursue his studies." Probably the boy's mother had something to do with the spice-wood illuminations. Tradition has it that Mrs. Lincoln took great pains to teach her children what she knew, and that at her knee they heard all the Bible lore, fairy tales, and country legends that she had been able to gather in her poor life. Besides the "A B C schools," as Lincoln called them, the only other medium of education in the country districts of Kentucky in those days was "preaching." Itinerants like the school-masters, the preachers, of whatever denomination, were generally uncouth and illiterate ; the code of morals they taught was mainly a healthy one, and they, no doubt, did much to keep the consciences of the pioneers awake. It is diffi- cult to believe that they ever did much for the moral training of young Lincoln, though he certainly got his first notion of public speaking from them ; and for years in his boyhood one of his chief delights was to gather his playmates about him, ORIGIN OF THE LINCOLN FAMILY 17 and preach and thump until he had his auditors frightened or in tears. As soon as the child was strong enough to follow his father in the fields, he was put to work at simple tasks ; — bringing tools, carrying water, picking berries, dropping seeds. He learned to know his father's farm from line to line and years after, when President of the United States, he recalled in a conversation at the White House, in the presence of Dr. J. J. Wright of Emporia, Kansas, the arrangement of the fields and an incident of his own childish experience as a farmer's son. " Mr. President," one of the visitors had asked, " how would you like when the war is over to visit your old home in Kentucky?" "I would like it very much," Mr. Lin- coln replied. " I remember that old home very well. Our farm was composed of three fields. It lay in the valley sur- rounded by high hills and deep gorges. Sometimes when there came a big rain in the hills the water would come down through the gorges and spread all over the farm. The last thing that I remember of doing there was one Saturday afternoon ; the other boys planted the com in what we called the big field; it contained seven acres — and I dropped the pumpkin seed. I dropped two seeds every other hill and every other row. The next Sunday morning there came a big rain in the hills, it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming down through the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off the field." (») CHAPTER II THE LINCOLNS LEAVE KENTUCKY FOR SOUTHERN INDIANA CONDITIONS OF LIFE IN THEIR NEW HOME In i8i6 a great event happened to the little boy. His father emigrated from Knob creek to Indiana. " This re- moval was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on ac- count of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky," says his son. It was due, as well, no doubt, to the fascination which an unknown country has always for the adventurous, and to that restless pioneer spirit which drives even men of sober judg- ment continually towards the frontier, in search of a place where the conflict with nature is less severe — some spot farther on, to which a friend or a neighbor has preceded, and from which he sends back glowing reports. It may be that Thomas Lincoln was tempted into Indiana by the reports of his brother Joseph, who had settled on the Big Blue river in that State. At all events, in the fall of 1816 he started with wife and children and household stores to journey by horse- back and by wagon from Knob creek to a farm selected on a previous trip he had made. This farm, located near Little Pigeon creek, about fifteen miles north of the Ohio river, and a mile and a half east of Gentry ville. Spencer County, was in a forest so dense that the road for the travellers had to be hewed out as they went. To a boy of seven years, free from all responsibility, and too vigorous to feel its hardships, such a journey must have been a long delight and wonder. Life suddenly ceased its routine, and every day brought forth new scenes and adven- tures. Little Abraham saw forests greater than he had ever 18 LEAVE KENTUCKY FOR INDIANA 19 dreamed of, peopled by strange birds and beasts, and he crossed a river so wide that it must have seemed to him hke the sea. To Thomas and Nancy Lincohi the journey was probably a hard and sad one ; but to the children beside them it was a wonderful journey into the unknown. On arriving at the new farm an axe was put into the boy's hands, and he was set to work to aid in clearing a field for corn, and to help build the " half-face camp " which for a year was the home of the Lincolns. There were few more primitive homes in the wilderness of Indiana in 18 16 than this of young Lincoln, and there were few families, even in that day, who were forced to practice more make-shifts to get a living. The cabin which took the place of the " half- face camp " had but one room, with a loft above. For a long time there was no window, door, or floor ; not even the traditional deer-skin hung before the exit; there was no oiled paper over the opening for light; there was no pun- cheon covering on the ground. The furniture was of their own manufacture. The table and chairs were of the rudest sort — rough slabs of wood in which holes were bored and legs fitted in. Their bedstead, or, rather bed-frame, was made of poles held up by two outer posts, and the ends made firm by inserting the poles in auger- holes that had been bored in a log which was a part of the wall of the cabin ; skins were its chief covering. Little Abra- ham's bed was even more primitive. He slept on a heap of dry leaves in the corner of the loft, to which he mounted by means of pegs driven into the wall. Their food, if coarse, was usually abundant ; the chief diffi- culty in supplying the larder was to secure any variety. Of game there was plenty — deer, bear, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks, birds of all kinds. There were fish in the streams, and wild fruits of many kinds in the woods in the summer, and these were dried for winter use ; but the difficulty of raising 20 LIFE OF LINCOLN and milling corn and wlieat was very great. Indeed, in many places in the west the first flour cake was an historical event. Corn-dodger was the every-day bread of the Lincoln house- hold, the wheat cake being a dainty reserved for Sunday mornings. Potatoes were the only vegetable raised in any quantity, and there were times in the Lincoln family when they were the only food on the table ; a fact proved to posterity by the oft-quoted remark of Abraham to his father after the latter had asked a blessing over a dish of roasted potatoes — " that they were mighty poor blessings." Not only were they all the Lincolns had for dinner sometimes; one of their neigh- bors tells of calling there when raw potatoes, pared and washed, were passed around instead of apples or other fruit. They even served as a kind of pioneer chauffrette — being baked and given to the children to carry in their hands as they started to school or on distant errands in winter time. The food was prepared in the rudest way, for the supply of both groceries and cooking utensils was limited. The for- mer were frequently wanting entirely, and as for the latter, the most important item was the Dutch oven. An indis- pensable article in the primitive kitchen outfit was the " grit- ter." It was made by flattening out an old piece of tin, punching it full of holes, and nailing it on a board. Upon this all sorts of things were grated, even ears of corn, in which slow way, enough meal was sometimes secured for bread. Old tin was used for many other contrivances be- sides the " gritter," and every scrap was carefully saved. Most of the dishes were of pewter; the spoons, iron; the knives and forks horn-handled. The Lincolns of course made their own soap and candles, and if they had cotton or wool to wear they had literally to grow it. It is probable that young Abraham Lincoln wore little cotton or linsey-woolsey. His trousers were of roughly o « ►4 O U < u o ac ■a 3S; 36 aS .9 V a > -* d f-H ■5 CD ^ * a X' a> C/J 'C 5: '0 "3 ^ -M K Vi he -M a S5 2 ^2 3 S.3 ^ 5 =3 «■: o S R » o 0+2 ^5 2 .' o - --^ •r S tc 51s -^ St— tc 5-=^ W -">» <4-rl O • • « ' f I LEAVE KENTUCKY FOR INDIANA 21 his cap a coon-skin; it was only the material for his blouse or shirt that was woven at home. If this costume had some ob- vious disadvantages, it was not to be despised. So good an authority as Governor Reynolds says of one of its articles — the linsey-woolsey shirt — " It was an excellent garment. I have never felt so happy and healthy since I put it off." These "pretty pinching times," as Abraham Lincoln once described the early days in Indiana, lasted until 1819. The year before Nancy Lincoln had died, and for many months no more forlorn place could be conceived than this pioneer home bereft of its guiding spirit; but finally Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and returned with a new wife — Sally Bush Johnston, a widow with three children, John, Sarah, and Matilda. The new mother came well provided with household furniture, bringing many things unfamiliar to lit- tle Abraham — "one fine bureau, one table, one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bed- ding, and other articles." She was a woman of energy, thrift, and gentleness, and at once made the cabin home-like and taught the children habits of cleanliness and comfort. Abraham was ten years old when his new mother came from Kentucky, and he was already an important member of the family. He was remarkably strong for his years, and the work he could do in a day was a decided advantage to Thomas Lincoln. The axe which had been put into his hand to help in making the first clearing, he had never been al- lowed to drop; indeed, as he says himself, " from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly hand- ling that most useful instrument." Besides, he drove the team, cut the elm and linn brush with which the stock was often fed, learned to handle the old shovel-plough, to wield the sickle, to thresh the wheat with a flail, to fan and clean it with a sheet, to go to mill and turn the hard-earned grist into flour. In short, he learned all the trades the settler's 22 LIFE OF LINCOLN boy must know, and so well that when his father did not need him he could hire him to the neighbors, Thomas Lincoln also taught him the rudiments of carpentry and cabinet-making, and kept him busy much of the time as his assistant in his trade. There are houses still standing, in and near Gentryville, on which it is said he worked. As he grew older he became one of the strongest and most popular " hands " in the vicinity, and much of his time was spent as a " hired boy " on some neighbor's farm. For twenty-five cents a day — paid to his father — he was hostler, ploughman, wood-chopper, and carpenter, besides helping the women with the " chores." For them he was ready to carry water, make the fire, even tend the baby. No wonder that a laborer who never refused to do anything asked of him, who could " strike with a maul heavier blows " and " sink an axe deeper into the wood " than anybody else in the community, and who at the same time was general help for the women, never lacked a job in Gentryville. Of all the tasks his rude life brought him, none seems to have suited him better than going to the mill. It was, per- haps, as much the leisure enforced by this trip as anything else that attracted him. The machinery was primitive, and each man waited his turn, which sometimes was long in com- ing. A story is told by one of the pioneers of Illinois of go- ing many miles with a grist, and waiting so long for his turn, that when it came, he and his horse had eaten all the corn and he had none to grind. This waiting with other men and boys on like errands gave an opportunity for talk, story-telling, and games, which were Lincoln's delight. If Abraham Lincoln's life was rough and hard it was not without amusements. At home the rude household was overflowing with life. There were Abraham and his sister, a stepbrother and two stepsisters, and a cousin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Dennis (Friend) Hanks, whom misfortune ' ' , ' > 1 1 ' > LIFE OF UNCO LIS? ',.> 23 .«< ^, ?>«?. X!i^ ^^?^ Wh^^"^ Nssj- ?«Sy J^ O K:s5k ^^^t_ «^^='^^, df-y'-^-^ lf(6 P^ ^< (K^ ■JL. '^H. &^^;;^^^^^^^^^^V^^^^^^^g^^ J- 7^ // ^' .^ ■■'^ By permission, ffom Hamdon and Welk's "Llie of Abraliam Lincoln." Copyiisht 189J, ty D, Appleton & Co, M H n a r o - 9 a .2 '<4 m fa O O 2; OJ H .9 a .£? fa ^ 2 IS fe o o H H n fa O » 1^ CO < fa LEAVE KENTUCKY FOR INDIANA 25 Hanks Lincoln, Dennis (Friend) Hanks, whom misfortune had made an inmate of the Lincoln home — quite enough to plan sports and mischief and keep time from growing dull. Thomas Lincoln and Dennis Hanks were both famous story- tellers, and the Lincolns spent many a cozy evening about their cabin fire, repeating the stories they knew. Of course the boys hunted. Not that Abraham ever became a true sportsman ; indeed, he seems to have lacked the genu- ine sporting instinct. In a curious autobiography, written entirely in the third person, which Lincoln prepared at the request of a friend in i860, he says of his exploits as a hunter: "A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys ap- proached the new log cabin ; and Abraham with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on any larger game." This exploit is confirmed by Dennis Hanks, who says: "No doubt about A. Lincoln's killing the turkey. He done it with his father's rifle, made by William Lutes of Bullitt county, Kentucky. I have killed a hundred deer with her myself j tur- keys too numerous to mention." But there were many other country sports which he en- joyed to the full. He went swimming in the evenings; fished with the other boys in Pigeon creek, wrestled, jumped, and ran races at the noon rests. He was present at every country horse-race and fox-chase. The sports he preferred were those which brought men together; the spelling-school, the husking-bee ; the "raising;" and of all these he was the life by his wit, his stories, his good nature, his doggerel verses, his practical jokes, and by a rough kind of politeness — for even in Indiana in those times there was a notion of politeness, and one of Lincoln's school-masters had given "lessons in manners." Lincoln seems to have profited in a degree by them; for Mrs. Crawford, at whose home he worked for 26 ^ LIFE OF LINCOLN some time, declares that he always "lifted his hat and bowed" when he made his appearance. There was, of course, a rough gallantry among the young people; and Lincoln's old comrades and friends in Indiana have left many tales of how he "went to see the girls," of how he brought in the biggest back-log and made the brightest fire; of how the young people, sitting around it, watch- ing the way the sparks flew, told their fortunes. He helped pare apples, shell corn and crack nuts. He took the girls to meeting and to spelling-school, though he was not often al- lowed to take part in the spelling-match, for the one who "chose first" always chose "Abe Lincoln," and that was equivalent to winning, as the others knew that "he would stand up the longest." The nearest approach to sentiment at this time, of which we know, is recorded in a story Lincoln once told to an ac- quaintance in Springfield. It was a rainy day, and he was sit- ting with his feet on the window-sill, his eyes on the street, watching the rain. Suddenly he looked up and said : "Did you ever write out a story in your mind ? I did when I was a little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they were the first I had ever heard. I took a great fancy to one of the girls ; and when they were gone I thought of her a great deal, and one day when I was sitting out in the sun by the house I wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father's horse and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were surprised to see me. I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope with me ; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and when we rode up we found it was the one we had left a few hours before, and we went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing happene.. — the horse came back to the same place ; and then we concluded that we ought not to LEAVE KENTUCKY FOR INDIANA 2^ elope. I stayed until I had persuaded her father to give her to me. I always meant to write that story out and publish it, and I began once ; but I concluded that it was not much of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love with me." His life had its tragedies as well as its touch of romance — tragedies so real and profound that they gave dignity to all the crudeness and poverty which surrounded him, and quick- ened and intensified the melancholy temperament which he ' inherited from his mother. Away back in 1816, when Thomas Lincoln had started to find a farm in Indiana, bid- ding his wife be ready to go into the wilderness on his re- turn, Nancy Lincoln had taken her boy and girl to a tiny grave, that of her youngest child; and the three had there said good-by to a little one whom the children had scarcely known, but for whom the mother's grief was so keen that the boy never forgot the scene. Two years later he saw his father make a green pine box and put his dead mother into it, and he saw her buried not far from their cabin, almost without prayer. Young as he was, it was his efforts, it is said, which brought a parson from Kentucky, three months later, to preach the sermon and conduct the service which 'seemed to the child a necessary honor to the dead. As sad as the death of his mother was that of his only sister, Sarah. Married to Aaron Grigsby in ,1826, she had died a year and a half later in child-birth, a death which to her brother must have seemed a horror and a mystery. Apart from these family sorrows there was all the crime and misery of the community — all of which came to his ears and awakened his nature. He even saw in those days one of his companions go suddenly mad. The young man never re- covered his reason but sank into idiocy. All night he would croon plaintive songs, and Lincoln himself tells how, fasci- nated by this mysterious malady, he used to rise before day- 28 LIFE OF LINCOLN light to cross the fields to listen to this funeral dirge of the reason. In spite of the poverty and rudeness of his life the depths of his nature were unclouded. He could feel intensely, and his imagination was quick to respond to the touch of mystery. CHAPTER III ABRAHAM LINCOLN S EARLY OPPORTUNITIES — THE BOOKS HE READ TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS IMPRESSION HE MADE ON HIS FRIENDS With all his hard living and hard work, Lincoln was get- ting, in this period, a desultory kind of education. Not that he received much schooling. He went to school " by littles," he says; "in all it did not amount to more than a year." And, if we accept his own description of the teachers, it was, per- haps, just as well that it was only " by littles." No qualifica- tion was required of a teacher beyond " readin', writin,' and cipherin' to the rule of three." H a straggler supposed to know Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a ''wizard." But more or less of a school-room is a matter of small importance if a boy has learned to read, and to think of what he reads. And that, this boy had learned. His stock of books was small, but he knew them thoroughly, and they were good books to know; the Bible, "^sop's Fa- bles," "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim Progress," a "History of the United States," Weems's "Life of Washing- ton," and the "Statutes of Indiana."* These are the chief *The firstauthorized sketch of Lincoln's life was written by the late John L. Scripps of the Chicago " Tribune," who went to Springfield at Mr. Lincoln's request, and by him was furnished the data for a campaign biography. In a letter written to Mr. Hemdon after the death of Lin- coln, which Herndon turned over to me, Scripps relates that in writing his_ book he stated that Lincoln as a youth read Plutarcli's " Lives." This he did simply because, as a rule, every boy in the West in the early days did read Plutarch. When the advance sheets of the book reached Mr. Lincoln, he sent for the author and said, gravely : " That paragraph wherein you state that I read Plutarch's ' Lives ' was not true when you wrote it, for up to that moment in my life I had never seen that early contribution to human history; but T want your book, even if it is *9 30 LIFE OF LINCOLN ones we know about. Some of these books he borrowed from the neighbors ; a practice which resulted in at least one casu- alty, for Weems's "Life of Washington" he allowed to get wet, and to make good the loss he had to pull fodder three days. No matter. The book became his then, and he could read it as he would. Fortunately he took this curious work in profound seriousness, which a wide-awake boy would hardly be expected to do to-day. Washington became an exalted figure in his imagination; and he always contended later, when the question of the real character of the first President was brought up, that it was wiser to regard him as a god- like being, heroic in nature and deeds, as Weems does, than to contend that he was only a man who, if wise and good, still made mistakes and was guilty of follies, like other men. Besides these books he borrowed many others. He once told a friend that he "read through every book he had ever heard of in that country, for a circuit of fifty miles." From everything he read he made long extracts, with his turkey- buzzard pen and brier-root ink. When he had no paper he would write on a board, and thus preserve his selections un- til he secured a copybook. The wooden fire-shovel was his usual slate, and on its back he ciphered with a charred stick shaving it off when it had become too grimy for use. The logs and boards in his vicinity he covered with his figures and quotations. By night he read and worked as long as there was light, and he kept a book in the crack of the logs in his loft, to have it at hand at peep of day. When acting as ferryman on the Ohio, in his nineteenth year, anxious, no doubt, to get through the books of the house where he boarded, before he left the place, he read every night until midnight. nothing more than a campaign sketch, to be faithful to the facts; and in order that the statement might be literally true, I secured the book a few weeks ago, and have sent for you to tell you that I have just read it through."— Jesse W. Weik. J o p pa S2 ^ IBOV X X.KXT cr LXKOOLX'l IXaBCIlS-BOOSf 32 LIFE OF LINCOLN Every lull in his daily labor he used for reading, rarely going to his work without a book. When ploughing or culti- vating the rough fields of Spencer county, he found fre- quently a half hour for reading, for at the end of every long row the horse was allowed to rest, and Lincoln had his book out and was perched on stump or fence, almost as soon as the plough had come to a standstill. One of the few people still left in Gentryville who remembers Lincoln, Captain John Lamar, tells to this day of riding to mill with his father, and seeing, as they drove along, a boy sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned stake-and-rider worm fence, reading so in- tently that he did not notice their approach. His father turn- ing to him, said : "John, look at that boy yonder, and mark my words, he will make a smart man out of himself. I may not see it, but you'll see if my words don't come true." "That boy was Abraham Lincoln," adds Mr. Lamar impressively. In his habits of reading and study the boy had little en- couragement from his father, but his stepmother did all she could for him. Indeed, between the two there soon grew up a relation of touching gentleness and confidence. In one of the interviews a biographer of Mr. Lincoln sought with her be- fore her death, Mrs. Lincoln said : "I induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at home, as well as at school. At first he was not easily recon- ciled to it, but finally he too seemed willing to encourage him to a certain extent. Abe was a dutiful son to me always, and we took particular care when he was reading not to disturb him^ — would let him read on and on till he quit of his own accord." This consideration of his stepmother won the boy's confidence, and he rarely copied anything that he did not take it to her to read, asking her opinion of it; and often, when she did not understand it, explaining the meaning in his plain and simple language. Among the books which fell into young Lincoln's hand EARLY OPPORTUNITIES 33 when he was about eighteen years old was a copy of the "Revised Statutes of Indiana."* We know from Den- nis Hanks and from Mr. Turnham of Gentryville, to whom the book belonged, and from other associates of Lincoln at the time, that he read the book intently and discussed its contents intelligently. It was a remarkable volume for a thoughtful lad whose mind had already been fired by the history of Washington. It opened with that wonderful document, the Declaration of Independ- ence, following the Declaration of Independence was the Constitution of the United States, the Act of Virginia passed in 1783 by which the "Territory North Westward of the river Ohio" was conveyed to the United States, and the ordi- nance of 1787 for governing this territory, containing that clause on which Lincoln in the future based many an argu- ment on the slavery question. This article. No. 6 of the Ordi- nance, reads : "There shall be neither slavery nor involun- tary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her la- bor or service, as aforesaid." *The book was owned by Mr. David Turnham of Gentryville, and was given by him in 1865 to Mr. Herndon, who placed it in the Lincoln Memorial collection of Chicago. In December, 1894, this collection was sold in Philadelphia, and the "Statutes of Indiana" was bought by Mr. William Hoffman Winters, Librarian of the New York Law Institute, where it now may be seen. The book is worn, the title page is gone, and a few leaves from the end are missing. The title page of a duplicate volume reads : "The Revised Laws of Indiana, adapted and enacted by the General Assembly at their eighth session. To which are prefixed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and sundry other documents con- nected with the Political History of the Territory and State of Indiana. Arranged and published by authority of the General Assembly. Cory- don: Printed by Carpenter and Douglass, 1824." (3) 34 LIFE OF LINCOLN Following this was the Constitution and the Revised Laws of Indiana, three hundred and seventy-five pages, of five hun- dred words each, of statutes. When Lincoln finished this book, as he had, probably, before he was eighteen, we have reason to believe that he understood the principles on which the nation was founded, how the State of Indiana came into being, and how it was governed. His understand- ing of the subject was clear and practical, and he applied it in his reading, thinking, and discussion. After he had read the Statutes of Indiana, Lincoln had free access to the library of an admirer. Judge John Pitcher of Rockport, Indiana, where he examined many books. Although so far away from the center of the world's activ- ity, he was learning something of current history. One man in Gentryville, Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, took a Louisville paper, and here Lincoln went regularly to read and discuss its contents. All the men and boys of the neighborhood gathered there, and everything which the paper printed was subjected to their keen, shrewd common sense. It was not long before young Lincoln became the favorite member of the group, the one listened to most respectfully. Politics were warmly discussed by these Gentryville citizens, and it may be that sitting on the counter of Jones's grocery, Lincoln even argued on slavery. It certainly was one of the live questions in Indiana at that date. For several years after the organization of the Territory, and in spite of the Ordinance of 1787, a system of thinly dis- guised slavery had existed; and it took a sharp struggle to bring the State in without some form of the institution. So uncertain was the result that, when decided, the word passed from mouth to mouth all over Hoosierdom, "She has come in free, she has come in free!" Even in 1820, four years after the admission to Statehood, the census showed one hundred and ninety slaves, nearly all of them in the southwest corner, EARLY OPPORTUNITIES 35 where the Lincolns Hved, and it was not, in reality, until 1821 that the State Supreme Court put an end to the question. In Illinois in 1822- 1824 there was carried on one of the most violent contests between the friends and opponents of slavery which occurred before the repeal of the Missouri Compro- mise. The effort to secure slave labor was nearly successful. In the campaign, pamphlets pro and con literally inundated the State; the pulpits took it up; and "almost every stump in every county had its bellowing, indignant orator." So violent a commotion so near at hand could hardly have failed to reach Gentryville. There had been other anti-slavery agitation going on within hearing for several years. In 1804 a number of Baptist ministers of Kentucky started a crusade against the institu- tion, which resulted in a hot contest in the denomination, and the organization of the ''Baptist Licking-Locust Association Friends of Humanity." The Rev. Jesse Head, the minister who married Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, talked freely and boldly against slavery; and one of their old friends, Christopher Columbus Graham, the man who was present at their wedding, says : "Tom and Nancy Lincoln and Sally Bush were just steeped full of Jesse Head's notions about the wrong of slavery and the rights of man as ex- plained by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine." In 1806 Charles Osborne began to preach "immediate emancipation" in Tennessee. Ten years later he started a paper in Ohio, devoted to the same idea, and in 18 19 he transferred his cru- sade to Indiana. In 1821 Benjamin Lundy started, in Ten- nessee, the famous "Genius," devoted to the same doctrine; and in 1822, at Shelby ville, only about one hundred miles from Gentryville, was started a paper similar in its views, the "Abolition Intelligencer." At that time there were in Kentucky five or six abolition societies, and in Illinois was an organization called the 36 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN "Friends of Humanity." Probably young Lincoln heard but vaguely of these movements ; but of some of them he must have heard, and he must have connected them with the "Speech of Mr. Pitt on the Slave Trade;" with Merry's elegy, "The Slaves," and with the discussion given in his "Kentucky Preceptor," "Which has the Most to Complain of, the Indian or the Negro?" all of which tradition declares he was fond of repeating. It is not impossible that, as Freder- ick Douglas first realized his own condition in reading a school-speaker, the "Columbian Orator," so Abraham Lin- coln first felt the wrong of slavery in reading his " Ken- tucky " or "American Preceptor." Lincoln was not only winning in these days in the Jones grocery store a reputation as a talker and a story-teller; he was becoming known as a kind of backwoods orator. He could repeat with effect all the poems and speeches in his vari- ous school readers, he could imitate to perfection the wander- ing preachers who came to Gentryville, and he could make a political speech so stirring that he drew a crowd about him every time he mounted a stump. The applause he won was sweet; and frequently he indulged his gifts when he ought to have been working — so thought his employers and Thomas, his father. It was trying, no doubt, to the hard- pushed farmers, to see the men who ought to have been cut- ting grass or chopping wood throw down their scythes or axes and group around a boy, whenever he mounted a stump to develop a pet theory or repeat with variations yesterday's sermon. In his fondness for speech-making young Lincoln attended all the trials of the neighborhood, and frequently walked fifteen miles to Boonville to attend court. He wrote as well as spoke, and some of his productions were printed, through the influence of his admiring neigh- bors. Thus a local Baptist preacher was so struck with one of Abraham's essays on temperance that he sent it to Ohio, EARLY OPPORTUNITIES 37 where it is said to have appeared in a newspaper. Another article on "National Politics," so pleased a lawyer of the vicinity that he declared the "world couldn't beat it." In considering the different opportunities for development which the boy had at this time it should not be forgotten that he spent many months at one time or another on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. In fact, all that Abraham Lincoln saw of men and the world outside of Gentryville and its neighborhood, until after he was twenty-one years of age he saw on these rivers. For many years the Ohio and the Mis- sissippi were the Appian Way, the one route to the world for the western settlers. To preserve it they had been willing in early times to go to war with Spain or with France, to se- cede from the Union, even to join Spain or France against the LTnited States if either country would insure their right to the highway. In the long years in which the ownership of the great river was unsettled, every man of them had come to feel with Benjamin Franklin, "a neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street door." In fact, this water-way was their "street door," and all that many of them ever saw of the world passed here. Up and down the rivers was a con- tinual movement. Odd craft of every kind possible on a river went by: "arks" and "sleds," with tidy cabins where families lived, and where one could see the washing stretched, the children playing, the mother on pleasant days rocking and sewing; keel-boats, which dodged in and out and turned inquisitive noses up all the creeks and bayous; great fleets from the Alleghanies, made up of a score or more of timber rafts, and manned by forty or fifty rough boatmen ; "Orleans boats," loaded with flour, hogs, produce of all kinds; pirogues, made from great trees; "broad-horns;" curious nondescripts worked by a wheel; and, after 1812, steamboats. All this trafHc was leisurely. Men had time to tie up and 38 LIFE OF LINCOLN tell the news and show their wares. Even the steamboats loitered as it pleased them. They knew no schedule. They stopped anywhere to let passengers off. They tied up wherever it was convenient, to wait for fresh wood to be cut and loaded, or for repairs to be made. Waiting for repairs, seems, in fact, to have absorbed a great deal of the time of these early steamers. They were continually running onto "sawyers," or "planters," or "wooden islands," and they blew up with a regularity which was monotonous. Even as late as 1842, when Charles Dickens made the trip down the Mississippi, he was often gravely recommended to keep as far aft as possible, "because the steamboats generally blew up forward." With this varied river life Abraham Lincoln first came into contact as a ferryman and boatman, when in 1826 he spent several months as a ferryman at the mouth of Ander- son creek, where it joins the Ohio. This experience sug- gested new possibilities to him. It was a custom among the farmers of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois at this date to collect a quantity of produce, and float do\\Ti to New Orleans on a raft, to sell it. Young Lincoln saw this, and wanted to try his fortune as a produce merchant. An incident of his pro- jected trip he related once to Mr. Seward : "Seward," he said, "did you ever hear how I earned my first dollar?" "No," said Mr. Seward. "Well," replied he, "I was about eighteen years of age, and belonged, as you know, to what they call down south the 'scrubs ;' people who do not own land and slaves are no- body there ; but we had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell. After much persuasion I had got the consent of my mother to go, and had constructed a flat- boat large enough to take the few barrels of things we had gathered to New Orleans. A steamer was going down the EARLY OPPORTUNITIES 39 river. We have, you know, no wharves on the western streams, and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the landings they were to go out in a boat, the steamer stop- ping, and taking them on board. I was contemplating my new boat, and wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any part, when two men with trunks came down to the shore in carriages, and looking at the different boats, singled out mine, and asked, 'Who owns this ? ' I answered modestly, 'I do.' 'Will you,' said one of them, "take us and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning some- thing, and supposed that each of them would give me a couple of bits. The trunks were put in my boat, the pas- sengers seated themselves on them, and I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on board, and I lifted the trunks :ind put them on the deck. The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out, 'You have forgotten to pay me.' Each of them took from his pocket a silver half- dollar and threw it on the bottom of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time." Soon after this, while he was working for Mr. Gentry, the leading citizen of Gentryville, his employer decided to send a load of produce to New Orleans, and chose young Lincoln to go as "bow-hand," "to work the front oars." For this trip he received eight dollars a month and his pas- sage back. Who can believe that he could see and be part of this river life without learning much of the ways and thoughts of the world beyond him ? Every time a steamboat or a raft tied up near Anderson creek and he with his com- panions boarded it and saw its mysteries and talked with its crew, every time he rowed out with passengers to a passing 40 LIFE OF LINCOLN steamer, who can doubt that he came back with new ideas and fresh energy? The trips to New Orleans were, to a thoughtful boy, an education of no mean value. It was the most cosmopolitan and brilliant t:ity of the United States at that date, and there young Lincoln saw life at its intensest. Such was Abraham Lincoln's life in Indiana; such were the avenues open to him for study and for seeing the world. In spite of the crudeness of it all; in spite of the fact that he had no wise direction, that he was brought up by a father with no settled purpose, and that he lived in a pioneer com- munity, where a young man's life at best is but a series of makeshifts, Lincoln soon developed a determination to make something out of himself, and a desire to know, which led him to neglect no opportunity to learn. The only unbroken outside influence which directed and stimulated him in these ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from his stepmother. These two women, both of them of unusual earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or the other of them at his side throughout his youth and young manhood. The ideal they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that if a boy is upright and industrious he may aspire to any place within the gift of the country. The boy's instinct told him they were right. Everything he read confirmed their teachings, and he cultivated, in every way open to him, his passion to know and to be something. His zeal in study, his ambition to excel made their impression on his acquaintances. Even then they pointed him out as a boy who would "make some- thing" of himself. In 1865, thirty-five years after he left Gentry\dlle, Wm. H. Herndon, for many years a law part- ner of Lincoln, anxious to save all that was known of Lin- coln in Indiana, went among his old associates, and with a sincerity and thoroughness worthy of grateful respect, inter- viewed them. At that time there were still living numbers EARLY OPPORTUNITIES 4I of the people with whom Lincoln had been brought up. They all remembered something of him. It is curious to note that all of these people tell of his doing something dif- ferent from what other boys did, something sufficiently su- perior to have made a keen impression upon them. In almost every case each person had his own special reason for ad- miring Lincoln. A facility in making rhymes and writing essays was the admiration of many, who considered it the more remarkable because "essays and poetry were not taught in school," and "Abe took it up on his own account." • Many others were struck by the clever application he made of this gift for expression. At one period he was employed as a "hand" by a farmer who treated him unfairly. Lincoln took a revenge unheard of in Gentryville. He wrote dog- gerel rhymes about his employer's nose — a long and crooked feature about which the owner was very sensitive. The wit he showed in taking revenge for a social slight by a satire on the Grigsbys, who had failed to invite him to a wedding, made a lasting impression in Gentryville. That he should write so well as to be able to humiliate his enemies more deeply than if he had resorted to the method of taking re- venge current in the country, and thrashed them, seemed to his friends a mark of surprising superiority. His schoolmates all remembered his spelling. He stood at the head of his class invariably and at the spelling-matches in which the young people of the neighborhood passed many an evening the one who first began "choosing sides" always chose "Abe Lincoln." So often did he spell the school down that finally, tradition says, he was no longer allowed to take part in the matches. Very many of his old neighbors recalled his reading habits and how well stored his mind was with information. His explanations of natural phenomena were so unfamiliar to his companions that he sometimes was jeered at for them, 42 LIFE OF LINCOLN though as a rule his Hsteners were sympathetic, taking a certain pride in the fact that one of their number knew as much as Lincohi did. "He was better read than the world knows or is likely to know exactly," said one old acquaint- ance. "He often and often commented or talked to me about what he had read — seemed to read it out of the book as he went along — did so with others. He was the learned boy among us unlearned folks. He took great pains to explain ; could do it so simply. He was diffident, then, too." One man was impressed by the character of the sentences Lincoln had given him for a copybook. "It was considered at )yO\y>,^ FACSIMILE OF LINES FROM LINCOLN'S COPY BOOK. that time," said he, "that Abe was the best penman in the neighborhood. One day, wliile he was on a visit at my mother's, I asked him to write some copies for me. He very willingly consented. He wrote several of them, but one of them I have never forgotten, although a boy at that time. It was this : " ' Good boys who to their books apply Will all be great men by and by.' " His wonderful memory was recalled by many. To save that which he found to his liking in the books he borrowed Lincoln committed much to memory. He knew many long poems, and most of the selections in the "Kentucky Precep- EARLY OPPORTUNITIES 43 tor." By the time he was twenty-one, in fact, his mind was well stored with verse and prose. All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clear- ness in argument. "When he appeared in company," says Nat Grigsby, "the boys would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories, maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly see the force and bearing of what he said." This ability to explain clearly and to illustrate by simple figures of speech must be counted as the great mental acquirement of Lincoln's boyhood. It was a power which he gained by hard labor. Years later he related his experience to an acquaintance who had been surprised by the lucidity and simplicity of his speeches and who had asked where he was educated. "I never went to school more than six months in my life," he said, "but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my tem- per, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking "up and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. "I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it ; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over ; until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have 44 LIFE OF LINCOLN bounded it north and bounded it south, and bounded it east and bounded it west." Mr. Herndon in his interviewing in Indiana found that everywhere Lincohi was remembered as kind and helpful. The man or woman in trouble never failed to receive all the aid he could give him. Even a worthless drunkard of the village called him friend, as well he might, Lincoln having gathered him up one night from the roadside where he lay freezing and carried him on his back a long distance to a shelter and a fire. The thoughtless cruelty to animals so common among country children revolted the boy. He wrote essays on "cruelty to animals," harangued his play- mates, protested whenever he saw any wanton abuse of a dumb creature. This gentleness made a lasting impression on his mates, coupled as it was with the physical strength and courage to enforce his doctrines. Stories of his good heart and helpful life might be multiplied but they are summed up in what his stepmother said of the boy: "Abe was a good boy, and I can say what scarcely one woman — a mother — can say in a thousand : Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or ap- pearance, to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life. . . . His mind and mine — what little I had — seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected president. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys ; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw, or expect to see." CHAPTER IV THE LINCOLNS LEAVE INDIANA — THE JOURNEY TO ILLINOIS ABRAHAM LINCOLN STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF In the spring of 1830 when Abraham Lincoln was twenty-one years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln, decided to leave Indiana. The reason Dennis Hanks gives for this re- moval was a disease called the "milk-sick." Abraham Lin- coln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and several of their relatives who had followed them from Kentucky had died of it. The cattle had been carried off by it. Neither brute nor human life seemed to be safe. As Dennis Hanks says: "This was reason enough (ain't it) for leaving?" Any one who has traveled through the portions of Spencer County in which the Lincolns settled will respect Thomas Lincoln for his energy in moving. When covered with timber, as the land was when he chose his farm, it no doubt promised well ; but fourteen years of hard labor showed him that the soil was niggardly and the future of the country unpromising. To-day, sixty-five years since the Lincolns left Spencer County, the country remains as it was then, dull, common- place, unfruitful. The towns show no signs of energy or prosperity. There are no leading streets or buildings; no man's house is better than his neighbor's, and every man's house is ordinary. For a long distance on each side of Gen- tryville as one passes by rail, no superior farm is to be seen, no prosperous farm or manufactory. It is a dead monotonous country, where no possibilities of quick w^ealth have been dis- covered, and which only centuries of tilling and fertilizing can make prosperous. 45 46 LIFE OF LINCOLN The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in central Illinois. It was at that day a country of great renown in the West, the name meaning "The land where there is plenty to eat." One of the family — John Hanks, a cousin of Abraham's mother — was already there, and the inviting" reports he had sent to Indiana were no doubt what led the Lincolns to decide on Illinois as their future home. Gentryville saw young Lincoln depart with genuine regret, and his friends gave him a score of rude proofs that he would not be forgotten. After he was gone, one of these friends planted a cedar tree in his memory. It still marks the site of the Lincoln home — the first monument erected to the memory of a man to whom the world will never cease to raise monuments. The spot on the hill overlooking Buckthorne valley, where the Lincolns said good-by to their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors and friends, is still pointed out. Buckthorne valley held many recollections dear to them all, but to no one of the company was the place dearer than to Abraham. It is certain that he felt the parting keenly, and that he never forgot his years in the Hoosier State. One of the most touching experiences he relates in all his published letters is his emotion at visiting his old Indiana home four- teen years after he had left it. So strongly was he moved by the scenes of his first conscious sorrows, efforts, joys, am- bitions, that he put into verse the feelings they awakened. While he never attempted to conceal the poverty and hard- ship of these days, and would speak humorously of the "pretty pinching times" he experienced, he never regarded his life at this time as mean or pitiable. Frequently he talked to his friends in later days of his boyhood, and always with apparent pleasure. "Mr. Lincoln told this story (of his youth)," says Leonard Swett, "as the story of a happy child- THE EARLIEST PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ABOUT 1848. ACE 39. From the original daguerreotype, owned by !iMr. Lincoln's son, the Hon. Robert T. Lin- coln through whose courtesy it wa-^ first published in "McClure's Magazine" for Novem- ber, 'l89.>. It was afterwards republished in the McClure 'Life of Lincoln," and in the " Century Magazine " for February, hSQT, r r c c f STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF \^ hood. There was nothing sad or pinched, and nothing of want, and no alhision to want in any part of it. His own de- scription of his youth was that of a happy, joyous boyhood. It was told with mirth and glee, and illustrated by pointed anecdotes, often interrupted by his jocund laugh." And he was right. There was nothing ignoble or mean in this Indiana pioneer life. It was rude, but only with the rudeness which the ambitious are willing to endure in order to push on to a better condition than they otherwise could know. These people did not accept their hardships apatheti- cally. They did not regard them as permanent. They were only the temporary deprivations necessary in order to accom- plish what they had come into the country to do. For this reason they endured hopefully all that was hard. It is worth notice, too, that therewas nothing belittling in their life; there was no pauperism, no shirking. Each family provided for its own simple wants, and had the conscious dignity which comes from being equal to a situation. If their lives lacked culture and refinement, they were rich in independence and self-reliance. The company which emigrated to Illinois included the family of Thomas Lincoln and those of Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall, married to Lincoln's stepsisters — thirteen per- sons in all. They sold land, cattle and grain, and much of their household goods, and were ready in March of 1830 for their journey. All the possessions which the three families had to take with them were packed into big wagons — to which oxen were attached, and the caravan was ready. The weather was still cold, the streams were swollen, and the roads were muddy; but the party started out bravely. In- ured to hardships, alive to all the new sights on their route, every day brought them amusement and adventures, and es- pecially to young Lincoln the journey must have been of keen interest. 48 LIFE OP LINCOLN He drove one of the teams, he tells us, and, accord- ing to a story current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a fair peddler's business on the route. Captain William Jones, in whose father's store Lincoln. had spent so many hours in discussion and in story-telling, and for whom he had worked the last winter he was in Indiana, says that before leaving the State Abraham invested all his money, some thirty-odd dollars, in notions. Though all the country through which they expected to pass was but sparsely settled, he believed he could dispose of them. "A set of knives and forks was the largest item entered on the bill," says Captain Jones; "the other items were needles, pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic necessities. When the Lincolns reached their new home near Decatur, Illinois, Abraham wrote back to my father, stating that he had doubled his money on his purchases by selling them along the road. Unfortunately we did not keep that letter, not thinking how highly we would have prized it in years afterwards." The pioneers were a fortnight on their journey. All we know of the route they took is from a few chance remarks of Lincoln's to his friends to the effect that they passed through Vincennes, where he saw a printing-press for the first time, and through Palestine, where he saw a juggler performing sleight-of-hand tricks. They reached Macon County, their new home, from the south. Mr. H. C. Whitney says that once in Decatur, when he and Lincoln were passing the court- house together, "Lincoln walked out a few feet in front, and, after shifting his position two or three times, said, as he looked up at the building, partly to himself and partly to me : *Here is the exact spot where I stood by our wagon when we moved from Indiana, twenty-six years ago ; this isn't six feet from the exact spot.' . . . He then told me he had frequently thereafter tried to locate the route by which they STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF 49 had come, and that he had decided that it was near the main hne of the IlHnois Central railroad." The party settled some ten miles west of Decatur, in Ma- con County. Here John Hanks had the logs already cut for their new home, and Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, and Hall soon had a cabin erected. Mr. Lincoln says in his short autobi- ography of i860: "Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham." If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they certainly were the most famous ones he or anybody else ever split. This was the last work Lincoln did for his father, for in the summer of that year (1830) he exercised the right of majority and started out to shift for himself. When he left his home, he went empty-handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years of age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of respectable clothes ; and one of the first pieces of work he did was "to split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white-walnut bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers." He had no trade, no profession, no spot of land, no patron, no influence. Two things recommended him to his neighbors — he was strong, and he was a good fellow. His strength made him a valuable laborer. Not that he was fond of hard labor. One of his Indiana employers says : "Abe was no hand to pitch into work like killing snakes ;" but when he did work, it was with an ease and effectiveness which compensated his employer for the time he spent in practical jokes and extemporaneous speeches. He could lift as much as three ordinary men, and "My, how he would chop," says (4) 50 LIFE OF LINCOLN Dennis Hanks. "His axe would flash and bite into a sugar- tree or sycamore and down it would come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin', you would say there was three men at work by the way the trees fell." Standing six feet four, he could out-lift, out-work and out-wrestle any man he came in contact with. Friends and employers were proud of his prowess, and boasted of it, never failing to pit him against any hero whose strength they heard vaunted. He himself was proud of it, and throughout his life was fond of comparing himself with tall and strong men. .When the committee called on him in Springfield in i860, to notify him of his nomination as President, Governor Mor- gan, of New York, was of the number, a man of great height and brawn. "Pray, Governor, how tall may you be?" was Mr. Lincoln's first question. There is a story told of a poor man seeking a favor from him once at the White House. He was overpowered by the idea that he was in the presence of the President, and, his errand done, was edging shyly away, when Mr. Lincoln stopped him, insisting that he measure with him. The man was the taller, as Mr. Lincoln had thought ; and he went away evidently as much abashed that he dared be taller than the President of the United vStates as that he had dared to venture into his presence. Governor Hoyt tells an excellent story illustrating this in- terest of Lincoln's in manly strength, and his involuntary comparison of himself with whomsoever showed it. It was in 1859, after Lincoln had delivered a speech at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair in Milwaukee. Governor Hoyt had asked him to make the rounds of the exhibits, and they went into a tent to see a "strong man" perform. He went through the ordinary exercises with huge iron balls, tossing them in the air, and catching them and rolling them on his arms and back; and Mr. Lincoln, who evidently had never before seen such a combination of agility and strength, watched him with STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF 5 1 intense interest, ejaculating under his breath now and then: "By George ! By George !" When the performance was over, Governor Hoyt, seeing Mr. Lincoln's interest, asked him to go up and be introduced to the athlete. He did so ; and, as he stood looking down musingly on the man, who was very short, and evidently wondering that one so much smaller than he could be so much stronger, he suddenly broke out with one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he said, "why, I could lick salt off the top of your hat." His strength won him popularity, but his good-nature, his wit, his skill in debate, his stories, were still more efficient in gaining him good-will. People liked to have him around, and voted him a good fellow to work with. Yet such were the conditions of his life at this time that, in spite of his popu- larity, nothing was open to him but hard manual labor. To take the first job which he happened upon — rail-splitting, ploughing, lumbering, boating, store-keeping — and make the most of it, thankful if thereby he earned his bed and board and yearly suit of jeans, was apparently all there was before Abraham Lincoln in 1830, when he started out for himself. Through the summer and fall of 1830 and the early winter of 1 83 1, Mr. Lincoln worked in the vicinity of his father's new home, usually as a farm-hand and rail-splitter. Most of his work was done in company with John Hanks. Before the end of the winter he secured employment of which he has given an account himself, though in the third person : "During that winter, Abraham, together with his step- mother's son, John D. Johnston, and John Hanks, yet resid- ing in Macon County, hired themselves to Denton Offutt to take a flatboat from Beardstown, Illinois, to New Orleans, and for that purpose were to join him — Offutt — at Spring- field, Illinois, as soon as the snow should go off. When it did go off, which was about the first of March, 1831, the country was so flooded as to make traveling by land impracticable; to obviate which difficulty they purchased a large canoe and 52 LIFE OF LINCOLN came down the Sangamon river in it. This is the time and manner of Abraliam's first entrance into Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but learned from him that he had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown. This led to their hiring themselves to him Tor twelve dollars per month each, and getting the timber out of the trees, and building a boat at old Sangamon town, on the Sangamon river, seven miles northwest of Springfield, which boat they took to New Orleans, substantially on the old contract." Sangamon town, where Lincoln built the flatboat, has, since his day, completely disappeared from the earth; but then it was one of the flourishing settlements on the river of that name. Lincoln's advent in the town did not go unno- ticed. In a small community, cut off from the world, as old Sangamon was, every new-comer is scrutinized and discussed before he is regarded with confidence. Lincoln did not es- cape this scrutiny. His appearance was so striking in fact that he attracted everybody's attention. "He was a tall, gaunt young man," says Mr. John Roll, of Springfield, then a resident of Sangamon, "dressed in a suit of blue homespun jeans, consisting of a round-about jacket, waistcoat, and breeches which came to within about four inches of his feet. The latter were encased in rawhide boots, into the tops of which, most of the time, his pantaloons were stuffed. He wore a soft felt hat which had at one time been black, but now, as its owner dryly remarked, 'was sun-burned until it was a combine of colors.' " It took some four weeks to build the raft, and in that pe- riod Lincoln succeeded in captivating the entire village by his story-telling. It was the custom in Sangamon for the "men- folks" to gather at noon and in the evening, when resting, in a convenient lane near the mill. They had rolled out a long peeled log, on which they lounged while they whittled and talked. Lincoln had not been long in Sangamon before he joined this circle. At once he became a favorite by his jokes STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF 53 and good-humor. As soon as he appeared at the assembly- ground the men would start him to story-telling. So irresist- ibly droll were his "yarns" that, says Mr. Roll, "whenever he'd end up in his unexpected way the boys on the log would whoop and roll off." The result of the rolling off was to pol- ish the log like a mirror. The men, recognizing Lincoln's part in this polishing, christened their seat "Abe's log." Long after Lincoln had disappeared from Sangamon, "Abe's log" remained, and until it had rotted away people pointed it out, and repeated the droll stories of the stranger. When the flatboat was finished Lincoln and his friends pre- pared to leave Sangamon. Before he started, however, he was the hero of an adventure so thrilling that he won new laurels in the community. Mr. Roll, who was a witness of the whole exciting scene, tells the story : "It was the spring following the winter of the deep snow.* Walter Carman, John Seamon, and myself, and at times oth- ers of the Carman boys had helped Abe in building the boat, and when we had finished we went to work to make a dug- out, or canoe, to be used as a small boat with the flat. We found a suitable log about an eighth of a mile up the river, and with our axes went to work under Lincoln's direction. The river was very high, fairly 'booming.' After the dug- out was ready to launch we took it to the edge of the water, and made ready to 'let her go,' when Walter Carman and John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck the water, each one anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they shot out from the shore they found they were unable to make any headway against the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Sea- mon was in the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to 'head up stream,' and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves powerless against the stream. At last they began to pull for the wreck of an old flatboat, the first ever built on ♦1830 — 1831. "The winter of the deep snow" is the date which is the starting point in all calculations of time for the early settlers of Illinois, and the circumstance from which the old settlers of Sangamon County receive the name by which they are generally known, "Snow-birds." 54 LIFE OF LINCOLN the Sangamon, which had sunk and gone to pieces, leaving one of the stanchions sticking above the water. Just as they reached it Seamon made a grab, and caught hold of the stanchion, when the canoe capsized, leaving Seamon clinging to the old timber, and throwing Carman into the stream. It carried him down with the speed of a mill-race. Lincoln raised his voice above the roar of the flood, and yelled to Car- man to swim for an old tree which stood almost in the chan- nel, which the action of the high water had changed. "Carmen, being a good swimmer, succeeded in catching a branch, and pulled himself up out of the water, which was very cold, and had almost chilled him to death ; and there he sat shivering and chattering in the tree. Lincoln, seeing Car- man safe, called out to Seamon to let go the stanchion and swim for the tree. With some hesitation he obeyed, and struck out, while Lincoln cheered and directed him from the bank. As Seamon neared the tree he made one grab for a branch, and, missing it, went under the water. Another des- perate lunge was successful, and he climbed up beside Car- man. Things were pretty exciting now, for there were two men in the tree, and the boat was gone. "It was a cold, raw April day, and there was great danger of the men becoming benumbed, and falling back into the water. Lincoln called out to them to keep their spirits up and he would save them. The village had been alarmed by this time, and many people had come down to the bank. Lmcoln procured a rope, and tied it to a log. He called all hands to come and help roll the log into the water, and after this had been done, he, with the assistance of several others, towed it some distance up the stream. A daring young fellow by the name of 'Jim' Dorrell then took his seat on the end of the log, and it was pushed out into the current, with the expectation that it would be carried down stream against the tree where Seamon and Carman were. "The log was well directed, and went straight to the tree; but Jim, in his impatience to help his friends, fell a victim to his good intentions. Making a frantic grab at a branch, he raised himself off the log, which was swept from under him by the raging water, and he soon joined the other two victims upon their forlorn perch. The excitement on shore STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF 55 increased, and almost the whole population of the village gathered on the river bank. Lincoln had the log pulled up the stream, and, securing another piece of rope, called to the men in the tree to catch it if they could when he should reach the tree. He then straddled the log himself, and gave the word to push out into the stream. When he dashed into the tree, he threw tlie rope over the stump of a broken limb, and let it play until it broke the speed of the log, and gradually drew it back to the tree, holding it there until the three now nearly frozen men had climbed down and seated themselves astride. He then gave orders to the people on the shore to hold fast to the end of the rope which was tied to the log, and, leaving his rope in the tree he turned the log adrift. The force of the current, acting against the taut rope, swung the log around against the bank, and all 'on board' were saved. The excited people, who had watched the dangerous experiment with al- ternate hope and fear, now broke into cheers for Abe Lincoln and praises for his brave act. This adventure made quite a hero of him along the Sangamon, and the people never tired telling of the exploit." The flatboat built and loaded, the party started for New Orleans about the middle of April. They had gone but a few miles when they met with another adventure. At the village of New Salem there was a mill-dam. On it the boat stuck, and here for nearly twenty- four hours it hung, the bow in the air and the stern in the water, the cargo slowly setting back- wards — shipwreck almost certain. The village of New Salem turned out in a body to see what the strangers would do in their predicament. They shouted, suggested, and advised for a time, but finally discovered that one big fellow in the crew was ignoring them and working out a plan of relief. Having unloaded the cargo into a neighboring boat, Lincoln had suc- ceeded in tilting his craft. Then, by boring a hole in the end extending over the dam, the water was let out. This done, the boat was easily shoved over and reloaded. The ingenuity which he had exercised in saving his boat made a deep im- 56 LIFE OF LINCOLN pression on the crowd on the bank, and it was talked over for many a day. The proprietor of boat and cargo was even more enthusiastic than the spectators, and vowed he would build a steamboat for the Sangamon and make Lincoln the captain. Lincoln himself was interested in what he had done, and nearly twenty years later he embodied his reflections on this adventure in a curious invention for getting boats over shoals. The raft over the New Salem dam, the party went on to New Orleans, reaching there in May, 1831, and remaining a month. It must have been a month of intense intellectual activity for Lincoln. Since his first visit, made with young Gentry, New Orleans had entered upon her "flush times." Commerce was increasing at a rate which dazzled specula- tors and drew them from all over the United States. From 1830 to 1840 no other American city increased in such a ratio; exports and imports, which in 183 1 amounted to $26,000,000, in 1835 had more than doubled. The Creole population had held the sway so far in the city; but now it came into competition, and often into conflict, with a push- ing, ambitious, and frequently unscrupulous native Ameri- can party. To these two predominating elements were added Germans, French, Spanish, negroes, and Indians. Cosmo- politan in its make-up, the city was even more cosmopolitan in its life. Everything was to be seen in New Orleans in those days, from the idle luxury of the wealthy Creole to the or- ganization of filibustering juntas. The pirates still plied their trade in the Gulf, and the Mississippi river brought down hundreds of river boatmen — one of the wildest, wickedest set of men that ever existed in any city. Lincoln and his companions ran their boat up beside thou- sands of others. It was the custom to tie such craft along the river front where St. Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF 57 without going ashore. No doubt Lincoln went too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous, called the "swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey, and the flint-lock pistol ruled. All of the picturesque life, the violent contrasts of the city, he would see as he wandered about ; and he would carry away the sharp impressions which are produced when mind and heart are alert, sincere, and healthy. In this month spent in New Orleans, Lincoln must have seen much of slavery. At that time the city was full of slaves, and the number was constantly increasing ; indeed, one-third of the New Orleans increase in population between 1830 and 1840 was in negroes. One of the saddest features of the in- stitution was to be seen there in its aggravated form — the slave market. The better class of slave-holders of the South, who looked on the institution as patriarchal, and who guarded their slaves with conscientious care, knew little, it should be said, of this terrible traffic. Their transfer of slaves was hum.ane, but in the open markets of the city it was attended by shocking cruelty and degradation. Lincoln wit- nessed in New Orleans for the first time the revolting sight of men and women sold like animals. Mr. Herndon savs that he often heard Mr. Lincoln refer to this experience: "In New Orleans for the first time," he writes, "Lincoln beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw 'negroes in chains — whipped and scourged.' Against this inhumanity his sense of right and justice rebelled, and his mind and con- science were awakened to a realization of what he had often heard and read. No doubt, as one of his companions has said, 'slavery ran the iron into him then and there.' One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She un- derwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders ; they pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that 'bidders might satisfy themselves 58 LIFE OF LINCOLN whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not.' The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of 'unconquerable hate.' Bidding his companions follow him, he said: 'Boys, let's get away from this. If ever 1 get a chance to hit that thing' (meaning slavery), 'I'll hit it hard.' " Mr, Herndon gives John Hanks as his authority for this statement, but, according to Mr. Lincoln's autobiography, Hanks did not go on to New Orleans, but, having a family, and finding that he was likely to be detained from home longer than he had expected, he turned back at St. Louis. Though the story as told above probably grew to its present proportions by much telling, there is reason to believe that Lincoln was deeply impressed on this trip by something he saw in a New Orleans slave market, and that he often re- ferred to it. CHAPTER V LINCOLN SECURES A POSITION — HE STUDIES GRAMMAR — FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS The month in New Orleans passed swiftly, and in June, 1 83 1, Lincoln and his companions took passage up the river. He did not return, however, in the usual condition of the river boatman "out of a job." According to his own way of putting it, "during this boat-enterprise acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to ac- count he contracted with him to act as a clerk for him on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New Salem." The store and mill were, however, so far only in Offutt's imagination, and Lincoln had to drift about until his employer was ready for him. He made a short visit to his father and mother, now in Coles County, near Charleston (fever and ague had driven the Lincolns from their first home in Macon County), and then, in July, 1831, he went to New Salem, where, as he says, he "stopped indefinitely, and for the first time, as it were, by himself." The village of New Salem, the scene of Lincoln's mercan- tile career, w^as one of the many little towns which, in the pio- neer days, sprang up along the Sangamon river, a stream then looked upon as navigable and as destined to be counted among the highways of commerce. Twenty miles northwest of Springfield, strung along the left bank of the Sangamon, parted by hollows and ravines, is a row of high hills. On one of these — a long, narrow ridge, beginning with a sharp and sloping point near the river, running south, and parallel 59 6o LIFE OF LINCOLN with the stream a Httle way, and then, reaching its highest point, making a sudden turn to the west, and gradually- widening until lost in the prairie — stood this frontier village. The crooked river for a short distance comes from the east, and, seemingly surprised at meeting the bluff, abruptly changes its course, and flows to the north. Across the river the bottom stretches out half a mile back to the highlands. New Salem, founded in 1829 by James Rutledge and John Cameron, and a dozen years later a deserted village, is res- cued only from oblivion by the fact that Lincoln was once one of its inhabitants. The town never contained more than fifteen houses, all of them built of logs, but it had an ener- getic population of perhaps one hundred persons, among whom were a blacksmith, a tinner, a hatter, a schoolmaster and a preacher. New Salem boasted a grist-mill, a saw-mill, two stores and a tavern, but its day of hope was short. In 1837 it began to decline and by 1840, Petersburg, two miles down the river, had absorbed its business and population. Sa- lem Hill is now only a green cow pasture. Lincoln's first sight of the town had been in April, 1831, when he and his crew had been detained in getting their flat- boat over the Rutledge and Cameron mill-dam. When he walked into New Salem, three months later, he was not alto- gether a stranger, for the people remembered him as the in- genious flat-boatman who had freed his boat from water by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in the bottom. Offutt's goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and he "loafed" about, so those who remember his arrival say, good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in his droll way making friends of ev- erybody. By chance, a bit of work fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave him an opportunity FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS 6l to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election day. In those days elections in Illinois were conducted by the viva voce method. The people did try voting by ballot, but the ex- periment was unpopular. It required too much form and in 1829 the former method of voting was restored. The judges and clerks sat at a table with the poll-book before them. The voter walked up, and announced the candidate of his choice, and it was recorded in his presence. There was no ticket peddling, and ballot-box stuffing was impossible. The village school-master. Mentor Graham by name, was clerk at this particular election, but his assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr. Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling-place, and called to him : " Can you write? " " Yes," said the stranger, " I can make a few rabbit tracks." Mr. Graham evidently was satis- fied with the answer, for he promptly initiated him ; and he filled his place not only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he irnmediately began " to spin out a stock of Indian yarns." So droll were they that men who listened to Lincoln that day repeated them long after to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his story-tell- ing. A few days later he accepted an ofifer to pilot down the Sangamon and Illinois rivers, as far as Beardstown, a flat- boat bearing the family and goods of a pioneer bound for Texas. At Beardstown he found Offutt's goods, waiting to be taken to New Salem. As he footed his way home he found two men with a wagon and ox-teara going for the goods. Offutt had expected Lincoln to wait at Beardstown until the ox-team arrived, and the teamsters, not having any creden- tials, asked Lincoln to give them an order for the goods. 62 LIFE OF LINCOLN This, sitting down by the roadside, he wrote out ; one of the men used to relate that it contained a misspelled word, which he corrected. When the oxen and their drivers* returned with the goods, the store was opened in a little log house on the brink of the hill, almost over the river. The precise date of the opening of Denton Offutt's store is not known. We only know that on July 8, 1831, the County Commissioners' Court of Sanga- mon County granted Offutt a license to retail merchandise at New Salem, for which he paid five dollars, a fee which supposed him to have one thousand dollars' worth of goods in stock. The frontier store filled a unique place. Usually it was a " general store," and on its shelves were found most of the articles needed in a community of pioneers. But supplying goods and groceries was not its only function ; it was the pio- neer's intellectual and social center. It was the common meet- ing-place of the farmers, the happy refuge of the village loungers. No subject was unknown there. The habitues of the place were equally at home in discussing politics, reli- gion, or sports. Stories were told, jokes were cracked, and the news contained in the latest newspaper finding its way into the wilderness was repeated again and again. Lincoln could hardly have chosen surroundings more favorable to the highest development of the art of story-telling, and he had not been there long before his reputation for drollery was established. But he gained popularity and respect in other ways. There was near the village a settlement called Clary's Grove, the most conspicuous part of whose population was an organiza- tion known as the " Clary's Grove Boys." They exercised a veritable terror over the neighborhood, and yet they were not a bad set of fellows. Mr, Hemdon, who knew personally many of the " boys," says : FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS 63 "They were friendly and good-natured ; they could trench a pond, dig a bog, build a house ; they could pray and fight, make a village or create a state. They would do almost any- thing for sport or fun, love or necessity. Though rude and rough, though life's forces ran over the edge of the bowl, foaming and sparkling in pure deviltry for deviltry's sake, yet place before them a poor man who needed their aid, a lame or sick man, a defenceless woman, a widow, or an or- phaned child, they melted into sympathy and charity at once. They gave all they had, and willingly toiled or played cards for more. Though there never was under the sun a more generous parcel of rowdies, a stranger's introduction was likely to be the most unpleasant part of his acquaintance with them." Denton Offutt, Lincoln's employer, was just the man to love to boast before such a crowd. He seemed to feel that Lincoln's physical prowess shed glory on himself, and he de- clared the country over that his clerk could lift more, throw farther, run faster, jump higher, and wrestle better than any man in Sangamon county. The Clary's Grove Boys, of course, felt in honor bound to prove this false, and they ap- pointed their best man, one Jack Armstrong, to "throw Abe." Jack Armstrong was, according to the testimony of all who remember him, a "powerful twister," "square built and strong as an ox," "the best-made man that ever lived ;" and everybody knew that a contest between him and Lincoln would be close. Lincoln did not like to "tussle and scuffle," he objected to "woolling and pulling;" but Offutt had gone so far that it became necessary to yield. The match was held on the ground near the grocery. Clary's Grove and New Sa- lem turned out generally to witness the bout, and betting on the result ran high, the community as a whole staking their jack-knives, tobacco plugs, and "treats" on Armstrong. The two men had scarcely taken hold of each other before it was evident that the Clary's Grove champion had met a match. 64 LIFE OF LINCOLN The two men wrestled long and hard, but both kept their feet. Neither could throw the other, and Armstrong, convinced of this, tried a "foul." Lincoln no sooner realized the game of his antagonist than, furious with indignation, he caught him by the throat, and holding him out at arm's length, he "shook him like a child." Armstrong's friends rushed to his aid, and for a moment it looked as if Lincoln would be routed by sheer force of numbers; but he held his own so bravely that the "boys," in spite of their sympathies, were filled with admira- tion. What bid fair to be a general fight ended in a general hand-shake, even Jack Armstrong declaring that Lincoln was the "best fellow who ever broke into the camp." From that day, at the cock-fights and horse-races, which were their common sports, he became the chosen umpire ; and when the entertainment broke up in a row — a not uncommon occur- rence — he acted the peacemaker without suffering the peace- maker's usual fate. Such was his reputation with the "Clary's Grove Boys," after three months in New Salem, that when the fall muster came off he was elected captain. Lincoln showed soon that if he was unwilling to indulge in "woolling and pulling" for amusement, he did not object to it in the interests of decency and order. In such a community as New Salem there are always braggarts who can only be made endurable by fear. To them Lincoln soon became an au- thority more to be respected than sheriff or constable. If they transgressed in his presence he thrashed them promptly with an imperturbable air, half indolent, but wholly resolute which was more baffling and impressive than even his iron grip and well-directed blows. A man came into the store one day and began swearing. Now, profanity in the presence of women, Lincoln never would allow. He asked the man to stop ; but he persisted, loudly boasting that nobody should prevent his saying what he wanted to. The women gone, the man began to abuse Lincoln so hotly that the latter said : "Well, if you ^_^c^.o .. i ■-, I ^ y H~ . «>. 0- r i- 55" '-^ ;-, \ L * »■ i-< m n FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS 65 must be whipped, I suppose I might as well whip you as any other man;" and going outdoors with the fellow, he threw him on the ground, and rubbed smart-weed into his eyes until he bellowed for mercy. New Salem's sense of chivalry was touched, and Denton Offutt's clerk became more of a hero than ever. His honesty excited no less admiration. Two incidents seem to have particularly impressed the community. Having discovered on one occasion that he had taken six and one- quarter cents too much from a customer, he walked three miles that evening, after his store w^as closed, to return the money. Again, he weighed out a half-pound of tea, as He supposed. It was night, and this was the last thing he did be- fore closing up. On entering in the morning he discovered a four-ounce weight in the scales. He saw his mistake, and closing up shop, hurried off to deliver the remainder of the tea. This unusual regard for the rights of others soon won him the title of "Honest Abe." As soon as the store was fairly under way, Lincoln began to look about for books. Since leaving Indiana in March, 1830, he had had in his drifting life, little leisure or op- portunity for study, though a great deal for observation of men and of life. His experience had made him realize more and more clearly that power over men depends upon knowledge. He had found that he was himself supe- rior to many of those who were called the "great" men of the country. Soon after entering Macon county, in March, 1830, when he was only twenty-one years old, he had found he could make a better speech than at least one man who was before the public. A candidate had come along where he and John Hanks were at work, and, as John Hanks tells the story, the man made a speech. "It was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down a box, and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candidate, Abe wasn't. Abe beat him (5) 66 LIFE OF LINCOLN to death, his subject being the navigation of the Sangamon river. The man, after Abe's speech was through, took him aside and asked him where he had learned so much, and how he could do so well. Abe replied, stating his manner and method of reading, what he had read. The man encouraged him to persevere." He studied men carefully, comparing himself with them. Could he do what they did ? He seems never up to this time to have met one who was incomprehensible to him. "I have talked with great men," he told his fellow-clerk and friend Greene, "and I do not see how they differ from others." Then he found, too, that people listened to him, that they quoted his opinions, and that his friends were already say- ing that he was able to fill any position. Offutt even de- clared the country over that "Abe" knew more than any man in the United States, and that some day he would be President. When he began to realize that he himself possessed the qualities which made men great in Illinois, that success de- pended upon knowledge and that already his friends cred- ited him with possessing more than most members of the community, his ambition was encouraged and his desire to learn increased. Why should he not try for a public posi- tion? He began to talk to his friends of his ambition and to devise plans for self-improvement. In order to keep in prac- tice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to debating clubs. "Practicing polemics," was what he called the exer- cise. He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammar was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, and asked his advice. "If you are going before the public," Mr. Graham told him, "you ought to do it." But where could he get a grammar? There was but one, said Mr. Graham, in the neighborhood, and that was six miles away. Without waiting for further information, the FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS 6/ young" man rose from the breakfast-table, walked immedi- ately to the place and borrowed this rare copy of Kirkham's Grammar. From that time on for weeks he gave every mo- ment of his leisure to mastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his friend Greene to "hold the book" while he recited, and, when puzzled by a point, he would consult Mr. Graham. Lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood became interested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him in mind and helped him as he could, and the village cooper let him come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright to read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered. "Well," Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, "if that's what they call a science, I think I'll go at another." Before the winter was ended he had become the most popu- lar man in New Salem. Although he was but twenty-two years of age, in February, 1832, had never been at school an entire year in his life, had never made a speech except in de- bating clubs and by the roadside, had read only the books he could pick up, and known only the men who made up the poor, out-of-the-way towns in which he had lived, "encour- aged by his great popularity among his immediate neigh- bors," as he says himself, he decided to announce himself, in March, 1832, as a candidate for the General Assembly of the State. The only preliminary expected of a candidate for the leg- islature of Illinois at that date was an announcement stating his "sentiments with regard to local affairs." The circular in which Lincoln complied with this custom was a document of about two thousand words, in which he plunged at once into the subject he believed most interesting to his constituents — "the public utility of internal improvements." At that time the State of Illinois — as, indeed, the whole 68 LIFE OF LINCOLN United States — was convinced that the future of the country depended on the opening of canals and railroads, and the clearing out of the rivers. In the Sangamon country the population felt that a quick way oi getting to Beardstown on the Illinois river, to which point the steamer came from the Mississippi, was, as Lincoln puts it in his circular, "indis- pensably necessary." Of course a railroad was the dream of the settlers ; but when it was considered seriously there was always, as Lincoln says, "a heart-appalling shock accom- panying the amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations. The probable cost of this contemplated railroad is estimated at two hundred and ninety thousand dollars ; the bare statement of which, in my opinion, is sufficient to justify the belief that the improve- ment of the Sangamon river is an object much better suited to our infant resources. "Respecting this view, I think I may say, without the fear of being contradicted, that its navigation may be rendered completely practicable as high as the mouth of the South Fork, or probably higher, to vessels of from twenty-five to thirty tons burden, for at least one-half of all common years, and to vessels of much greater burden a part of the time. From my peculiar circumstances, it is probable that for the last twelve months I have given as particular attention to the stage of the water in this river as any other person in the country. In the month of March, 1831, in company with others, I commenced the building of a flatboat on the Sanga- mon, and finished and took her out in the course of the spring. Since that time I have been concerned in the mill at New Salem. These circumstances are sufficient evidence that I have not been very inattentive to the stages of the water. The time at which we crossed the mill-dam being in the last days of April, the water was lower than it had been since the breaking of winter in February, or than it was for several weeks after. The principal difficulties we encountered in de- scending the river were from the drifted timber, which ob- structions all know are not difficult to be removed. Knowing FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS 69 almost precisely the height of water at that time, I believe I am safe in saying that it has as often been higher as lower since. "From this view of the subject it appears that my calcula- tions with regard to the navigation of the Sangamon cannot but be founded in reason ; but, whatever may be its natural advantages, certain it is that it never can be practically useful to any great extent without being greatly improved by art. The drifted timber, as I have before mentioned, is the most formidable barrier to this object. Of all parts of this river, none will require so much labor in proportion to make it navigable as the last thirty or thirty-five miles ; and going with the meanderings of the channel, when we are this dis- tance above its mouth we are only between twelve and eighteen miles above Beardstown in something near a straight direction ; and this route is upon such low ground as to retain water in many places during the season, and in all parts such as to draw two-thirds or three-fourths of the river water at all high stages. "This route is on prairie land the whole distance, so that it appears to me, by removing the turf a sufficient width, and damming up the old channel, the whole river in a short time would wash its way through, thereby curtailing the distance and increasing the velocity of the current very considerably, while there would be no timber on the banks to obstruct its navigation in future; and being nearly straight, the tim- ber which might float in at the head would be apt to go clear through. There are also many places above this where the river, in its zigzag course, forms such complete peninsulas as to be easier to cut at the necks than to remove the obstruc- tions from the bends, which, if done, would also lessen the distance. "What the cost of this work would be, I am unable to say. It is probable, however, that it would not be greater than is common to streams of the same length. Finally, I believe the improvement of the Sangamon river to be vastly impor- tant and highly desirable to the people of the county ; and, if elected, any measure in the legislature having this for its ob- ject, which may appear judicious, will meet my approbation and receive my support." 70 • LIFE OF LINCOLN Lincoln could not have adopted a measure more popular. At that moment the whole population of Sangamon was in a state of wild expectation. Some six weeks before Lin- coln's circular appeared, a citizen pf Springfield had adver- tised that as soon as the ice went off the river he would bring up a steamer, the "Talisman," from Cincinnati, and prove the Sangamon navigable. The announcement had aroused the entire country, speeches were made, and subscriptions taken. The merchants announced goods direct per steamship ''Talis- man," the country over, and every village from Beardstown to Springfield was laid off in town lots. When the circular appeared the excitement was at its height. Lincoln's comments in his circular on two other subjects, on which all candidates of the day expressed themselves, are amusing in their simplicity. The practice of loaning money at exorbitant rates was then a great evil in the West. Lin- coln proposed that the limits of usury be fixed, and he closed his paragraph on the subject with these words, which sound strange enough from a man who in later life showed so pro- found a reverence for law : "In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law on this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be such that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be justified in cases of greatest necessity." A general revision of the laws of the State was the second topic which he felt required a word. "Considering the great probability," he said, "that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others ; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most to the advancement of justice." Of course he said a word for education : FIRST APPEARANCE IN POLITICS 7 1 "Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves. "For my part, I desire to see the time when education — and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry — shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute some- thing to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate that happy period." The audacity of a young man in his position presenting himself as a candidate for the legislature is fully equaled by the humility of the closing paragraphs of his announcement : "But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already been more presuming than becomes me. However, upon the subjects of which I have treated. I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them ; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be errone- ous, I shall be ready to renounce them. "Every man is said to have his peculiar 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. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor 72 LIFE OF LINCOLN upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But, if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have l^een too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined." Very soon after Lincoln had distributed his hand-bills, en- thusiasm on the subject of the opening of the Sangamon rose to a fever. The "Talisman" actually came up the river; scores of men went to Beardstown to meet her, among them Lincoln, of course, and to him was given the honor of pilot- ing her — an honor which made him remembered by many a man who saw him that day for the first time. The trip was made with all the wild demonstrations which always attended the first steamboat. On either bank a long procession of men and boys on foot or horse accompanied the boat. Cannons and volleys of musketry were fired from every settlement passed. At every stop speeches were made, congratulations offered, toasts drunk, flowers presented. It was one long hur- rah from Beardstown to Spring-field, and foremost in the ju- bilation was Lincoln, the pilot. The "Talisman" went to the point on the river nearest to Springfield, and there tied up for a week. When she went back Lincoln again had the conspicu- ous position of pilot. The notoriety this gave him was prob- ably quite as valuable politically, as the forty dollars he received for his service was financially. While the country had been dreaming of wealth through the opening of the Sangamon, and Lincoln had been doing his best to prove that the dream would be realized, the store in which he clerked was "petering out" — to use his expres- sion. The owner, Denton Offutt, had proved more ambitious than wise, and Lincoln saw that an early closing by the sheriff was probable. But before the store was fairly closed, and while the "Talisman" was yet exciting the country, an event occurred which interrupted all of Lincoln's plans. CHAPTER VI THE BLACK HAWK WAR — LINCOLN CHOSEN CAPTAIN OF A COMPANY REENLISTS AS AN INDEPENDENT RANGER END OF THE WAR One morning in April a messenger from the governor of the State rode into New Salem, scattering circulars. The circular was addressed to the militia of the northwest sec- tion of the State, and announced that the British band of Sacs and other hostile Indians, headed by Black Hawk, had invaded the Rock River country, to the great terror of the frontier inhabitants ; and it called upon the citizens who were willing to aid in repelling them, to rendezvous at Beardstown within a week. The name of Black Hawk was familiar to the people of Illinois. He was an old enemy of the settlers, and had been a tried friend of the British. The land his people had once owned in the northwest of the present State of Illinois had been sold in 1804 to the government of the United States, but with the provision that the Indians could hunt and raise corn there until it was surveyed and sold to settlers. Long before the land was surveyed, however, squatters had invaded the country, and tried to force the Indians west of the Miss- issippi. Particularly envious were these whites of the lands at the mouth of the Rock river, where the ancient village and burial place of the Sacs stood, and where they came each year to raise corn. Black Hawk had resisted their encroachments, and many violent acts had been committed on both sides. Finally, however, the squatters, in spite of the fact that the line of settlement was still fifty miles away, succeeded in 73 74 LIFE OF LINCOLN evading the real meaning of the treaty and in securing a sur- vey of the desired land at the mouth of the river. Black Hawk, exasperated and broken-hearted at seeing his village violated, persuaded himself that the village had never been sold — indeed, that land could not be sold. "My reason teaches me," he wrote, "that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as is necessary, for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it, then any other peo- ple have a right to settle upon it. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away." Supported by this theory, conscious that in some way he did not understand he had been wronged, and urged on by White Cloud, the prophet, who ruled a Winnebago village on the Rock river, Black Hawk crossed the Mississippi in 183 1, determined to evict the settlers. A military demonstration drove him back, and he was persuaded to sign a treaty never to return east of the Mississippi. "I touched the goose-quill to the treaty and was determined to live in peace," he wrote afterwards; but hardly had he "touched the goose-quill" be- fore his heart smote him. Longing for his home, resentment at the whites, obstinacy, brooding over the bad counsels of White Cloud and his disciple, Neapope — an agitating Indian who had recently been east to visit the British and their In- dian allies, and who assured Black Hawk that the Winneba- goes, Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawottomies would join him in a struggle for his land, and that the British would send him guns, ammunition, provision, and clothing early in the spring — all persuaded the Hawk that he would be suc- cessful if he made an effort to drive out the whites. In spite of the advice of many of his friends and of the Indian agent in the country, he crossed the river on April 6, 1832, and with THE BLACK HAWK WAR 75 some five hundred braves, his squaws and children, marched to the Prophet's town, thirty-five miles up the Rock river. As soon as they heard of Black Hawk's invasion, the set- tlers of the northwestern part of the State fled in a panic to the forts; and from there rained petitions for protection on Governor Reynolds. General Atkinson, who was at Fort Armstrong, wrote to the governor for reinforcements ; and, accordingly on the i6th of April Governor Reynolds sent out ''influential messengers" with a sonorous summons. It was one of these messengers riding into New Salem who put an end to Lincoln's canvassing for the legislature, freed him from Offutt's expiring grocery, and led him to enlist. There was no time to waste. The volunteers were ordered to be at Beardstown, nearly forty miles from New Salem, on April 22d. Horses, rifles, saddles, blankets were to be se- cured, a company formed. It was work of which the settlers were not ignorant. Under the laws of the State every able- bodied male inhabitant between eighteen and forty-five was obliged to drill twice a year or pay a fine of one dollar. "As a dollar was hard to raise," says one of the old settlers, "every- body drilled." Preparations were quickly made, and by April 22d the men were at Beardstown. The day before, at Richland, Sanga- mon County, Lincoln was elected captain of the company from Sangamon. According to his friend Greene it was something beside ambition which led him to seek the captaincy. One of the "odd jobs" which Lincoln had taken since coming into Illinois was working in a saw-mill for a man named Kirkpatrick. In hiring Lincoln, Kirkpatrick had promised to buy him a cant-hook with which to move heavy logs. Lincoln had proposed, if Kirk- patrick would give him the two dollars which the cant- hook would cost, to move the logs with a common hand- 76 LIFE OF LINCOLN spike. This the proprietor had agreed to, but when pay-day- came he refused to keep his word. When the Sangamon com- pany of vohmteers was formed Kirkpatrick aspired to the captaincy, and Lincoln knowing it^ said to Greene: "Bill, I believe I can make Kirkpatrick pay me that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook. I'll run against him for captain." And he became a candidate. The vote was taken in a field, by directing the men at the command "march'' to assemble around the one they wanted for captain. When the order was given, three- fourths of the men gathered around Lincoln. In Lincoln's third-person autobiography he says he was elected "to his own surprise;" and adds, "He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction." The company was a motley crowd of men. Each had se- cured for his outfit what he could get, and no two were equipped alike. Buckskin breeches prevailed, and there was a sprinkling of coon-skin caps. Each man had a blanket of the coarsest texture. Flint-lock rifles were the usual arm, though here and there a man had a Cramer. Over the shoulder of each was slung a powder-horn. The men had, as a rule, as little regard for discipline as for appearances, and when the new captain gave an order were as likely to jeer at it as to obey it. To drive the Indians out was their mission, and any order which did not bear directly on that point was little respected. Lincoln himself was not familiar with mili- tary tactics, and made many blunders of which he used to tell afterwards with relish. One of these was an early experience in giving orders. He was marching with a front of over twenty men across a field, when he desired to pass through a gateway into the next inclosure. "I could not for the life of me," said he, "remember the proper word of command for getting my compan}^ endtvise, so that it could get through the gate ; so, as we came near I THE BLACK HAWK WAR "]"] shouted : 'This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate !" Nor was it only his ignorance of the manual which caused him trouble. He was so unfamiliar with camp discipline that he once had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Another disgrace he suffered was on account of his disorderly company. The men, unknown to him, stole a quan- tity of liquor one night, and the next morning were too drunk to fall in when the order was given to march. For their law- lessness Lincoln wore a wooden sword two days. But none of these small difficulties injured his standing with the company. They soon grew so proud of his quick wit and great strength that they obeyed him because they admired him. No amount of military tactics could have se- cured from the volunteers the cheerful following he won by his personal qualities. The men soon learned, too, that he meant what he said, and would permit no dishonorable performances. A helpless Indian took refuge in the camp one day; and the men, who were inspired by that wanton mixture of selfishness, un- reason, and cruelty which seems to seize a frontiersman as soon as he scents a red man — were determined to kill the refugee. He had a safe conduct from General Cass ; but the men, having come out to kill Indians and not having suc- ceeded, threatened to take revenge on the helpless savage. Lincoln boldly took the man's part, and though he risked his life in doing it, he cowed the company and saved the Indian. It was on the 27th of April that the force of sixteen hun- dred men organized at Beardstown started out. The army was cold, the roads heavy, the streams turbulent. The army marched first to Yellow Banks on the Mississippi, then to Dixon on the Rock river, which they reached on May 12. At Dixon they camped, and near here occurred the first bloodshed of the war. yS LIFE OF LINCOLN A body of about three hundred and forty rangers, under Major StiHman, but not of the regular army, asked to go ahead as scouts, to look for a body of Indians under Black Hawk, rumored to be about twelve miles away. The permission was given, and on the night of the 14th of May, Stillman and his men went into camp. Black Hawk heard of their presence. By this time the poor old chief had discovered that the promises of aid from the Indian tribes and the British were false, and dismayed, he had resolved to recross the Mississippi. When he heard the whites were near he sent three braves with a white flag to ask for a parley and permission to de- scend the river. Behind them he sent five men to watch proceedings. Stillman's rangers were in camp when the bearers of the flag of truce appeared. The men were many of them half drunk, and when they saw the Indian truce- bearers, they rushed out in a wild mob, and ran them into camp. Then catching sight of the five spies, they started after them, killing two. The three who reached Black Hawk reported that the truce-bearers had been killed as well as their two companions. Furious at this violation of faith. Black Hawk "raised a yell," and sallied forth with forty braves to meet Stillman's band, who by this time were out in search of the Indians. Black Hawk, too maddened to think of the dif- ference of numbers, attacked the whites. To his surprise the enemy turned, and fled in a wild riot. Nor did they stop at the camp, which from its position was almost impreg- nable; they fled in complete panic, saiwe qui pent, through their camp, across prairie and rivers and swamps, to Dixon, twelve miles away. The first arrival reported that two thou- sand savages had swept down on Stillman's camp and slaughtered all but himself. Before the next night all but eleven of the band had arrived. THE BLACK HAWK WAR 79 Stillman's Defeat, as this disgraceful affair is called, put all notion of peace out of Black Hawk's mind, and he started out in earnest on the warpath. Governor Reynolds, excited by the reports of the first arrivals from the Stillman stam- pede, made out that night, "by candle light," a call for more volunteers, and by the morning of the 15th had messengers out and his army in pursuit of Black Hawk. But it was like pursuing a shadow. The Indians purposely confused their trail. Sometimes it was a broad path, then it suddenly radi- ated to all points. The whites broke their bands, and pur- sued the savages here and there, never overtaking them, though now and then coming suddenly on some terrible evi- dences of their presence — a frontier home deserted and burned, slaughtered cattle, scalps suspended where the army could not fail to see them. This fruitless warfare exasperated the volunteers; they threatened to leave, and their officers had great difficulty in making them obey orders. On reaching a point in the Rock river, beyond which lay the Indian country, a company -under Colonel Zachary Taylor refused to cross, and held a public indignation meeting, urging that they had volunteered to defend the State, and had the right, as independent Ameri- can citizens, to refuse to go out of its borders. Taylor heard them to the end, and then spoke : *T feel that all gentlemen here are my equals ; in reality, I am persuaded that many of them will, in a few years, be my superiors, and perhaps, in the capacity of members of Congress, arbiters of the fortunes and reputation of humble servants of the republic, like myself. I expect then to obey them as interpreters of the will of the people; and the best proof that I will obey them is now to observe the orders of those whom the people have already put in the place of authority to which many gentlemen around me justly aspire. In plain English, gentlemen and fellow-citizens, the word has been passed on 8o LIFE OF LINCOLN to me from Washington to follow Black Hawk and to take you with me as soldiers. I mean to do both. There are the flatboats drawn up on the shore, and here are Uncle Sam's men drawn up behind you oh the prairie." The volun- teers knew true grit when they met it. They dissolved their meeting and crossed the river without Uncle Sam's men being called into action. The march in pursuit of the Indians led the army to Ottawa, where the volunteers became so dissatisfied that on May 27 and 28 Governor Reynolds mustered them out. But a force in the field was essential until a new levy was raised; and a few of the men were patriotic enough to offer their services, among them Lincoln, who on May 29 was mustered in at the mouth of the Fox river by a man in whom, thirty years later, he was to have a keen interest — General Robert Anderson, commander at Fort Sumter in 1861. Lin- coln became a private in Captain Elijah Iles's company of Independent Rangers, not brigaded — a company made up, says Captain lies in his "Footsteps and Wanderings," of "generals, colonels, captains, and distinguished men from the disbanded army." General Anderson says that at this muster Lincoln's arms were valued at forty dollars, his horse and equipment at one hundred and twenty dollars. The In- dependent Rangers were a favored body, used to carry mes- sages and to spy on the enemy. They had no camp duties, and "drew rations as often as they pleased." So that as a private Lincoln was really better off than as a captain.* The achievements and tribulations of this body of rangers *Wil]iam Ciillcn Bryant, who was in Illinois in 1832 at the time of the Black Hawk War, used to tell of meeting in his travels in the State a company of Illinois volunteers, commanded by a "raw youth" of "quaint and pleasant" speech, and of learning afterwards that this captain was Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln's captaincy ended on May 27th, and Mr. Bryant did not reach Illinois until June 12th, and as he never came nearer than fifty miles to the Rapids of the Illinois, where the body of rangers to which Lincoln belonged was encamped it is evident that the THE BLACK HAWK WAR 8 1 to which he belonged are told with interesting detail by its commanding officer, Captain lies, in his ''Footsteps and Wanderings," While the other companies were ordered to scout the country, he writes, mine was held by General Atkin- son in camp as a reserve. One company was ordered to go to Rock River (now Dixon) and report to Colonel Taylor (afterwards President) who had been left there with a few United States soldiers to guard the army supplies. The place was also made a point of rendezvous. Just as the com- pany got to Dixon, a man came in, and reported that he and six others were on the road to Galena, and, in passing through a point of timber about twenty miles north of Dixon, they were fired on and six killed, he being the only one to make his escape. . . . Colonel Taylor ordered the com- pany to proceed to the place, bury the dead, go on to Galena, and get all the information they could about the Indians. But the company took fright, and came back to the Illinois river, helter-skelter. General Atkinson then called on me, and wanted to know how I felt about taking the trip; that he was exceedingly anxious to open communication with Galena, and to find out, if possible, the whereabouts of the Indians before the new troops arrived. I answered the general that myself and men were getting rusty, and were anxious to have something to do, and that nothing would please us better than to be or- dered out on an expedition ; that I would find out how many of my men had good horses and were otherwise well equip- ped, and what time we wanted to prepare for the trip. I called on him again at sunset, and reported that I had about fifty men well equipped and eager, and that we wanted one day to make preparations. He said go ahead, and he would prepare our orders. The next day was a busy one, running bullets and get- ting our flint-locks in order — we had no percussion locks then. General Henry, one of my privates, who had been promoted to the position of major of one of the companies, "raw youth" could not have been Lincoln, much as one would like to believe that it was. (6) 82 LIFE OF LINCOLN volunteered to go with us. I considered him a host, as he had served as Heutenant in the war of 1812, under General Scott, and was in the battle of Lundy's Lane, and several other battles. He was a good drill officer, and could aid me much. . . . After General Atkinson handed me my or- ders, and my men were mounted and ready for the trip, I felt proud of them, and was confident of our success, al- though numbering only forty-eight. Several good men failed to go, as they had gone down to the foot of the Illinois rapids, to aid in bringing up the boats of army supplies. We wanted to be as little encumbered as possible, and took noth- ing that could be dispensed with, other than blankets, tin cups, coffee-pots, canteens, a wallet of bread, and some fat side meat, which we ate raw or broiled. When we arrived at Rock River, we found Colonel Tay- lor on the opposite side, in a little fort built of prairie sod. He sent an officer in a canoe to bring me over. I said to the officer that I would come over as soon as I got my men in camp. I knew of a good spring half a mile above, and I de- termined to camp at it. After the men were in camp I called on General Henry, and he accompanied me. On meeting Colonel Taylor (he looked like a man born to command) he seemed a little piqued that I did not come over and camp with him. I told him we felt just as safe as if quartered in his one- horse fort; besides, I knew what his orders would be, and wanted to try the mettle of my men before starting on the perilous trip I knew he would order. He said the trip was perilous, and that since the murder of the six men all com- munications with Galena had been cut off, and it might be besieged ; that he wanted me to proceed to Galena, and that he would have my orders for me in the morning, and asked what outfit I wanted. I answered "Nothing but coffee, side meat and bread." In the morning my orders were to collect and bury the re- mains of the six men murdered, proceed to Galena, make a careful search for the signs of Indians, and find out whether they were aiming to escape by crossing the river below Gal- ena, and get all information at Galena of their possible whereabouts before the new troops were ready to follow them. VIEW OF ROCK SPRING FARMj WHERE PRESIDENT LINCOLN WAS Buk.X. From a photograph taken in September, 1895, for this biography. The house in which Lincoln was born is seen to the right, in the background. Sec paye 1i. '■^'m:''^m^^^'-''^'^f''''^M ROCK SPRING, ON THE FARM WHERE LINCOLN WAS BORN. From a photograph taken in September, 1895, for this biograpliy. See paoe 14. THE BLACK HAWK WAR 83 John Dixon, who kept a house of entertainment here, and had sent his family to Galena for safety, joined us, and hauled our wallets of corn and grub in his wagon, which was a great help. Lieutenant Harris, U. S. A., also joined us. I now had fifty men to go with me on the march. I detailed two to march on the right, two on the left, and two in ad- vance, to act as look-outs to prevent a surprise. They were to keep in full view of us, and to remain out until we camped for the night. Just at sundown of the first day, while we were at lunch, our advance scouts came in under whip and reported Indians. We bounced to our feet, and, having a full view of the road for a long distance, could see a large body coming toward us. All eyes were turned to John Dixon, who, as the last one dropped out of sight coming over a ridge, pronounced them Indians. I stationed my men in a ravine crossing the road, where anyone approaching could not see us until within thirty yards ; the horses I had driven back out of sight in a valley. I asked General Henry to take command. He said, "No; stand at your post," and walked along the line, talking to the men in a low, calm voice. Lieu- tenant Harris, U. S. A., seemed much agitated ; he ran up and down the line, and exclaimed, "Captain, we will catch hell!" He had horse-pistols, belt-pistols, and a double-bar- reled gun. He would pick the flints, reprime, and lay the horse-pistols at his feet. When he got all ready he passed lalong the line slowly, and seeing the nerves of the men all quiet — after General Henry's talk to them — said, "Captain, we are safe; we can whip five hundred Indians." Instead of Indians, they proved to be the command of General Dodge, from Galena, of one hundred and fifty men, en route, to find out what had become of General Atkinson's army, as, since the murder of the six men, communication had been stopped for more than ten days. My look-out at the top of the hill did not notify us, and we were not undeceived until they got within thirty steps of us. My men then raised a yell and ran to finish their lunch. . . . When we got within fifteen miles of Galena, on Apple Creek, we found a stockade filled with women and children and a few men, all terribly frightened. The Indians had shot at and chased two men that afternoon, who made their 84 LIFE OF LINCOLN escape to the stockade. They insisted in our quartering in the fort, but instead we camped one hundred yards outside, and slept — what httle sleep we did get — with our guns on our arms. General Henry did not sleep, but drilled my men all night ; so the moment they were called they would bounce to their feet and stand in two lines, the front ready to fire, and fall back to reload, while the others stepped forward to take their places. They were called up a number of times, and we got but little sleep. We arrived at Galena the next day, and found the citizens prepared to defend the place. They were glad to see us, as it had been so long since they had heard from General Atkinson and his army. The few Indians prowling about Galena and murdering were simply there as a ruse. On our return from Galena, near the forks of the Apple River and Gratiot roads, we could see General Dodge on the Gratiot road, on his return from Rock River. His six scouts had discovered my two men that I had allowed to drop in the rear — two men who had been in Stillman's defeat, and, hav- ing weak horses, were allowed to fall behind. Having weak horses they had fallen in the rear about two miles, and each took the other to be Indians, and such an exciting race I never saw, until they got sight of my company; then they came to a sudden halt, and after looking at 'us a few mo- ments, wheeled their horses and gave up the chase. My two men did not know but that they were Indians until they came up with us and shouted "Indians !" They had thrown away their wallets and guns, and used their ramrods as whips. The few houses on the road that usually accommodated the travel were all standing, but vacant, as we went. On our return we found them burned by the Indians. In my return to the Illinois River I reported to General Atkinson, saying that, from all we could learn, the Indians were aiming to es- cape by going north, with the intention of crossing the Mis- sissippi river above Galena. The new troops had just ar- rived and were being mustered into service. My company had only been organized for twenty days, and as the time had now expired, the men were mustered out. All but my- self again volunteered for the third time. 86 LIFE OF LINCOLN It was the middle of June when Captain lies and his com- pany returned to Dixon's Ferry from their Indian hunt and were mustered out. On June 20 Lincoln was mustered in again, by Major Anderson, as a member of an independent company under Captain Jacob M. Early. His arms were valued this time at only fifteen dollars, his horse and equip- ments at eighty-five dollars. A week after re-enlistment Lincoln's company moved northward with the army. It was time they moved for Black Hawk was overrunning the country, and scattering death wherever he went. The settlers were wild with fear, and most of the settlements were abandoned. At a sudden sound, at the merest rumor, men, women, and children fled. "I well remember these troublesome times," writes one Illinois woman. "We often left our bread dough unbaked to rush to the Indian fort near by." When Mr. John Bry- ant, a brother of William Cullen Bryant, visited the colony in Princeton in 1832, he found it nearly broken up on account of the war. Everywhere crops were neglected, for the able- bodied men were volunteering. William Cullen Bryant, who, in June, 1834, traveled on horseback from Peters- burg to near Pekin and back, wrote home : " Every few miles on our way we fell in with bodies of Illinois militia pro- ceeding to the American camp, or saw where they had en- camped for the night. They generally stationed themselves near a stream or a spring in the edge of a wood, and turned their horses to graze on the prairie. Their way was barked or girdled, and the roads through the uninhabited country were as much beaten and as dusty as the highways on New York island. Some of the settlers complained that they made war upon the pigs and chickens. They were a hard- looking set of men, unkempt and unshaved, wearing shirts of dark calico and sometimes calico capotes." Soon after the army moved up the Rock river, the inde- THE BLACK HAWK WAR 87 pendent spy company, of which Lincoln was a member, was sent with a brigade to the northwest, near Galena, in pursuit of the Hawk. The nearest Lincoln came to an actual engagement in the war was here. The skirmish of Kellogg's Grove took place on June 25 ; Lincoln's company came up soon after it was over, and helped bury the five men killed. It was probably to this experience that he referred when he told a friend once of coming on a camp of white scouts one morning just as the sun was rising. The Indians had sur- prised the camp, and had killed and scalped every man. "I remember just how those men looked," said Lincoln, "as we rode up the little hill where their camp was. The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay heads towards us on the ground. And every man had a round red spot on the top of his head about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque ; and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over." Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and added, somewhat irrelevantly, "I remem- ber that one man had buckskin breeches on." Early's company, on returning from their expedition, joined the main army on its northward march. By the end of the month the troops crossed into Michigan Territory — as Wisconsin was then called — and July was passed floun- dering in swamps and stumbling through forests, in pursuit of the now nearly exhausted Black Hawk. No doubt Early's company saw the hardest service on the march for to it was allotted the scouting. The farther the army advanced the more difficult was the situation. Finally the provisions gave out and July 10, three weeks before the last battle of the war, that of Bad Axe, in which the whites finally massacred most of the Indian band, Lincoln's company was disbanded at Whitewater, Wisconsin, and he and his friends started for home. The volunteers in returning suffered much from 88 . LIFE OF LINCOLN hunger. More than one of them had nothing to eat on the journey except meal and water baked in rolls of bark laid by the fire. Lincoln not only went hungry on this return; he had to tramp most of the way. The night before his company started from Whitewater he and one of his mess- mates had their horses stolen; and, excepting when their more fortunate companions gave them a lift, they walked as far as Peoria, Illinois, where they bought a canoe, and pad- dled down the Illinois river to Havana. Here they sold the canoe, and walked across the country to New Salem. CHAPTER VII LINCOLN RUNS FOR STATE ASSEMBLY AND IS DEFEATED STOREKEEPER STUDENT POSTMASTER SURVEYOR On returning to New Salem Lincoln at once plunged into "electioneering." He ran as "an avowed Clay man," and the country was stiffly Democratic. However, in those days political contests were almost purely personal. If the candidate was liked he was voted for irrespective of prin- ciple. "The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard for him," said Stephen T. Lo- gan, a young lawyer of Springfield, who made Lincoln's ac- quaintance in the campaign. "He was as ^tiff as a man could be in his Whig doctrines. They did this for him sim- ply because he was popular — because he was Lincoln." It was the custom for the candidates to appear at every gathering which brought the people out, and, if they had a chance, to make speeches. Then, as now, the farmers gath- ered at the county-seat or at the largest town within their reach on Saturday afternoons, to dispose of produce, ibuy supplies, see their neighbors, and get the news. During "election times" candidates were always present, and a reg- ular feature of the day was listening to their speeches. They never missed public sales, it being expected that after the "vandoo" the candidates would take the auctioneer's place. Lincoln let none of these chances to be heard slip. Ac- companied by his friends, generally including a few Clary's Grove Boys, he always was present. The first speech he made was after a sale at Pappsville. What he said there is not remembered ; but an illustration of the kind of man he was, 89 90 " LIFE OF LINCOLN interpolated into his discourse, made a lasting impression. A fight broke out in his audience while he was on the stand, and observing that one of his friends was being worsted, he bounded into the group of contestants, seized the fellow who had his supporter down, threw him, according to tradition, "ten or twelve feet" mounted the platform, and finished the speech. Sangamon County could appreciate such a perform- ance ; and the crowd at Pappsville that day never forgot Lin- coln. riis visits to Springfield were of great importance to him. Springfield was not at that time a very attractive place. Bryant, visiting it in June, 1832, said that the houses were not as good as at Jacksonville, "a considerable proportion of them being log cabins, and the whole town having an appear- ance of dirt and discomfort." Nevertheless it was the largest town in the county, and among its inhabitants were many young men of breeding, education, and energy. One of these men Lincoln had become well acquainted with in the Black Hawk War* — Major John T. Stewart, at that time a lawyer, and, like Lincoln, a candidate for the General Assembly. He met others at this time who were to be associated with him *There were many prominent Americans in the Black Hawk War, with some of whom Lincoln became acquainted. Among the best known were General Robert Anderson ; Colonel Zachary Taylor ; General Scott, afterwards candidate for President, and Lieutenant-General ; Henry Dodge, Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin, and United States Senator; Hon. William D. Ewing and Hon. Sidney Breese, both United States Senators from Illinois ; William S. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton ; Colonel Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone ; Lieutenant Albert Sidney Johnston, afterwards a Confederate General ; also Jeffer- son Davis, President of the Southern Confederacy. Davis was at this time a lieutenant stationed at Fort Crawford. According to the muster rolls of his company he was absent on furlough from March 26 to August 18, 1S32' but, according to Davis's own statement, corroborated by many of the early settlers of Illinois who served in the Black Hawk War, Davis returned to duty as soon as he found there was to be a war. When Black Hawk was finally captured in August, after the battle of Bad Ax, he was sent down the river to Jefferson Barracks, under the charge of Lieutenant Jcffer.son Davis. Black Hawk, in his "Life," speaks of Davis as a "good and brave young chief, with whose conduct I was much pleased," RUNS FOR STATE ASSEMBLY 91 more or less closely in the future in both law and politics, among them Judge Logan and William Butler. With these men the manners which had won him the day at Pappsville were of little value ; what impressed them was his "very sen- sible speech," and his decided individuality and originality. The election came off on August 6th. Lincoln was de- feated. "This was the only time Abraham was ever de- feated on a direct vote of the people," says his autobiographi- cal notes. He had a consolation in his defeat, however, for in spite of the pronounced Democratic sentiments of his pre- cinct, he received, according to the official poll-book in the county clerk's office at Springfield, two hundred and twenty- seven votes out of three hundred cast. This defeat did not take him out of politics. Six weeks later he filled his first civil office, that of clerk of the Septem- ber election. The report in his hand still exists, his first offi- cial document. In the following years few elections were held in New Salem at which Lincoln did not act as clerk. The election over, Lincoln began to look for work. One of his friends, an admirer of his physical strength, advised him to become a blacksmith, but it was a trade whach afforded little leisure for study, and for meeting and talking with men; and he had already resolved, it is evident, that books and men were essential to him. The only employ- ment in New Salem which offered both employment and the opportunities he sought, was clerking in a store. Now the stores in New Salem were in more need of customers than of clerks, business having been greatly overdone. In the fall of 1832 four stores offered wares to the one hundred in- habitants of New Salem. The most pretentious was that of Hill and McNeill, which carried a large line of dry goods. The three others, owned respectively by the Herndon broth- ers, Reuben Radford, and James Rutledge, were groceries. Failing to secure employment at any of these establish- 92 LIFE OF LINCOLN ments, Lincoln resolved to buy a store. He was not long in finding an opportunity to purchase, James Herndon had already sold out his half interest in Herndon Brothers' store to William F. Berry; and Rowan Herndon, not getting along well with Berry, was only too glad to find a purchaser of his half in the person of "Abe" Lincoln. Berry was as poor as Lincoln; but that was not a serious obstacle, for their notes were accepted for the Herndon stock of goods. They had barely hung out their sign when something hap- pened which threw another store into their hands. Reuben Radford had made himself obnoxious to the Clary's Grove Boys, and one night they broke in his doors and windows, and overturned his counters and sugar barrels. It was too much for Radford, and he sold out next day to William G. Green, for a four-hundred-dollar note signed by Green. At the latter's request, Lincoln made an inventory of the stock, and offered him six hundred and fifty dollars for it — a propo- sition which was cheerfully accepted. Berry and Lincoln, being unable to pay cash, assumed the four-hundred-dollar note payable to Radford, and gave Green their joint note for two hundred and fifty dollars. The little grocery owned by James Rutledge was the next to succumb. Berry and Lincoln bought it at a bargain, their joint note taking the place of cash. The three stocks were consolidated. Their aggregate cost must have been not less than fifteen hundred dollars. Berry and Lincoln had secured a monopoly of the grocery business in New Salem. Within a few weeks two penniless men had become the proprietors of three stores, and had stopped buying only because there were no more to purchase. But the partnership, it was soon evident, was unfortunate. Berry, though the son of a Presbyterian minister, was according to tradition "a very wicked young man," drinking, gambling, and taking an active part in all the disturbances RUNS FOR STATE ASSEMBLY 93 of the neighborhood. In spite of the bad habits of his part- ner, Lincoln left the management of the business largely to him. It was his love of books which was responsible for this poor business management. He had soon discovered that store-keeping in New Salem, after all duties were done, left a large amount of leisure on a man's hands. It was his chance to read and he scoured the town for books. Hour after hour he was seen stretched on the counter, his head on a cracker-box, or outside under a tree, reading, oblivious of business, indifferent to the evident fact that Berry was squandering whatever the firm might make. It was in this period that Lincoln discovered Shakespeare and Burns, In New Salem there was one of those curious individuals, some- times found in frontier settlements, half poet, half loafer, in- capable of earning a living in any steady employment, yet familiar with good literature and capable of enjoying it — Jack Kelso. He repeated passages from Shakespeare and Burns incessantly, over the odd jobs he undertook, or as he idled by the streams — for he was a famous fisherman — and Lincoln soon became one of his constant companions. The tastes he formed in company with Kelso he retained through life. It was not only Bums and Shakespeare that interfered with the grocery keeping; Lincoln had begun seriously to read law. His first acquaintance with the subject, we have already seen, had been made when, a mere lad, a copy of the "Revised Statutes of Indiana" had fallen into his hands. But from the time he left Indiana in 1830 he had no legal reading until one day soon after the grocery was started, there happened one of those trivial incidents which so often turn the current of a life. It is best told in Mr. Lin- coln's own words.* "One day a man who was migrating to ; *This incident was told by Lincoln to Mr. A. J. Conant, the artist, who in i860 painted his portrait in Springfield. Mr. Conant, in order 94 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it. Without further examination I put it away in the store, and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone's Commentaries. I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time ; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read" — this he said with unusual emphasis — "the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them." But all this was fatal to business, and by spring it was evi- dent that something must be done to stimulate the grocery sales. Liquor selling was the expedient adopted, for, on the 6th of March, 1833, the County Commissioners' Court of Sangamon County granted the firm of Berry and Lincoln a license to keep a tavern at New Salem. It is probable that the license was procured not to enable the firm to keep a tavern but to retail the liquors which they had in stock. Each of the three groceries which Berry and Lincoln ac- quired had the usual supply of liquors and it was only natural that they should seek a way to dispose of the surplus quickly and profitably — an end Which could be best accomplished by selling it over the counter by the glass. To do this lawfully to catch Mr. Lincoln's pleasant expression, had engaged him in conver- sation, and had questioned him about his early life ; and it was in the course of their conversation that this incident came out. It is to be found in a delightful and suggestive article entitled, "My Acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln," contributed by Mr. Conant to the "Liber Scrip- torum." RUNS FOR STATE ASSEMBLY 95 required a tavern license ; and it is a warrantable conclusion that such was the chief aim of Berry and Lincoln in procur- ing a franchise of this character. We are fortified in this conclusion by the coincidence that three other grocers of New Salem were among those who took out tavern licenses. In a community in which liquor drinking was practically universal, at a time when whiskey was as legitimate an arti- cle of merchandise as coffee or calico, when no family was without a jug, when the minister of the gospel could take his "dram" without any breach of propriety, it is not surprising that a reputable young man should have been found selling whiskey. Liquor was sold at all groceries, but it could not be lawfully sold in a smaller quantity than one quart. The law, however, was not always rigidly observed, and it was the custom of storekeepers to treat their patrons. The license issued to Berry and Lincoln read as follows : Ordered that William F. Berry, in the name of Berry and Lincoln, have a license to keep a tavern in New Salem to con- tinue 12 months from this date, and that they pay one dollar in addition to the six dollars heretofore paid as per Treas- urer's receipt, and that they be allowed the following rates (viz.) : French Brandy per ^ pt 25 Peach " " " i8f Apple " " " 12 Holland Gin " " i8f Domestic " " 12^ Wine " " 25 Rum " " i8f Whiskey " " 12-J Breakfast, dinner or supper 25 Lodging per night 12^ Horse per night 25 Single feed 12^ Breakfast, dinner or supper for Stage Passengers 37^ who gave bond as required by law. 96 LIFE OF LINCOLN At the granting of a tavern license, the apphcants there- for were required by law to file a bond. The bond given in the case of Berry and Lincoln was as follows : Know all men by these presents, we, William F. Berry, Abraham Lincoln and John Bowling- Green, are held and firmly bound unto the County Commissioners of Sangamon county in the full sum of three hundred dollars to which payment well and truly to be made we bind ourselves, our heirs, executors and administrators firmly by these presents, sealed with our seal and dated this 6th day of March A. D. 1833. Now the condition of this obligation is such that Whereas the said Berry & Lincoln has obtained a license from the County Commissioners' Court to keep a tavern in the town of New Salem to continue one year. Now if the said Berry & Lincoln shall be of good behavior and observe all the laws of this State relative to tavern keepers — then this obligation to be void or otherwise remain in full force. Abraham Lincoln [Seal] Wm. F. Berry [Seal] Bowling Green [Seal] This bond appears to have been written by the clerk of the Commissioners' Court; and Lincoln's name was signed by some other than himself, very likely by his partner Berry. Business was not so brisk in Berry and Lincoln's gro- cery, even after the license was granted, that the junior part- ner did not welcome an appointment as postmaster which he received in May, 1833. The appointment of a Whig by a Democratic administration seems to have been made without comment. "The ofiice was too insignificant to make his poli- tics an objection," say his autobiographical notes. The du- ties of the new office were not arduous, for letters were few, and their comings far between. At that date the mails were carried by four-horse post-coaches from city to city, and on horseback from central points into the country towns. The RUNS FOR STATE ASSEMBLY 97 rates of postage were high. A single-sheet letter carried thirty miles or under cost six cents ; thirty to eighty miles, ten cents ; eighty to one hundred and fifty miles, twelve and one-half cents ; one hundred and fifty to four hundred miles, eighteen and one-half cents; over four hundred miles, GX- c^,^ .^^^T- ^ ^^^.^^ ^ ^KqajJ^ Ma^ji»^ Aoa^<^^^ Co ,^t_ Me^oL /C*<^ Q.ffA.Ot^MjU Q-y^eA. /U-o-u/- C-^JUL. ofc j^ ^toww-t. _ Ivo^CJU^ y- 6ty\'^-.cJi, t&AXf ./Uf-L. £^AJV-^ /yiA.o.M»» tl^ Jou'l/J -^^. ^U0^<^-*-' FACSIMILE OF Jl RKPORT OF ▲ ROAD SURVEY BY LINCOLN. RUNS FOR STATE ASSEMBLY 103 IJf'i^tt^jLA^ £rt,^^ v^ ^4«. of ^cct:on^.A^.^M. *?^/;r- ^a.y» o a FIRST PUBLISHED ADDRESS 141 over me, and most other men ; and that is, the faculty of en- tanghng a subject so that neither himself, or any other man, can find head or tail to it." Taking up the resolution on the bank, he declared its meaning : "Some gentlemen have their stock in their hands, while others, who have more money than they know what to do with, want it ; and this, and this alone, is the question, to set- tle which we are called on to squander thousands of the peo- ple's money. What interest, let me ask, have the people in the settlement of this question? What difference is it to them whether the stock is owned by Judge Smith or Sam Wiggins ? If any gentleman be entitled to stock in the bank, which he is kept out of possession of by others, let him as- sert his right in the Supreme Court, and let him or his an- tagonist, whichever may be found in the wrong, pay the costs of suit. It is an old maxim, and a very sound one, that he that dances should always pay the fiddler. Now, sir, in the present case, if any gentlemen whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay the fiddler. No one can doubt that the examination proposed by this resolution must cost the State some ten or twelve thousand dollars ; and all this to settle a question in which the people have no in- terest, and about which they care nothing. These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the peo- ple ; and now that they have got into a quarrel with them- selves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel." The resolution had declared that the bank practised various methods which were "to the great injury of the peo- ple." Lincoln took the occasion to announce his ideas of the people and the politicians. "If the bank really be a grievance, why is it that no one of the real people is found to ask redress of it? The truth is, no such oppression exists. If it did, our people would groan with memorials and petitions, and we would not be pennitted 142 LIFE OF LINCOLN to rest day or night till we had put it down. The people know their rights, and they arc never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded. Let them call for an investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the call. But they have made no such call. I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man who does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the bank. It has doubled the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with a sound circulating medium; and they are all well pleased with its operations. No, sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the alarm (which, by the way, is a false one). It is he who, by these unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and direct. It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of the people's public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to make valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry. Mr. Chairman* this work is exclusively the work of politicians — a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom, because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal." The speech was published in full in the "Sangamon Jour- nal" for Jan. 28, 1837, and the editor commented : " Mr. Lincoln's remarks on Mr. Linder's bank resolution in the paper are quite to the point. Our friend carries the true Kentucky rifle, and when he fires he seldom fails of sending the shot home." One other act of his in this session cannot be ignored. It is a sinister note in the hopeful chorus of the Tenth Assem- bly. For months there had come from the southern States violent protests against the growth of abolition agitation in the North. Garrison's paper, the " infernal Liberator," as it was called in the pro-slavery part of the country, had been gradually extending its circulation and its influence; and it already had imitators even on the banks of the Mississippi. FIRST PUBLISHED ADDRESS 143 The American Anti-slavery Society was now over three years old. A deep, unconquerable conviction of the iniquity of slavery was spreading through the North. The South felt it and protested, and the statesmen of the North joined them in their protest. Slavery could not be crushed, said the con- servatives. It was sanctioned by the Constitution. The South must be supported in its claims, and agitation stopped. But the agitation went on, and riots, violence, and hatred pursued the agitators. In Illinois, in this very year, 1837, we have a printing-office raided and an anti-slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy, killed by the citizens of Alton, who were de- termined that it should not be said among them that slavery was an iniquity. To silence the storm, mass-meetings of citizens, the United States Congress, the State legislatures, took up the question and again and again voted resolutions assuring the South that the Abolitionists were not supported ; that the country recognized their right to their " peculiar institution," and that in no case should they be interfered with. At Spring- field, this same year (1837) the citizens convened and passed a resolution declaring that "the efforts of Abolitionists in this community are neither necessary nor useful." When the riot occured in Alton, the Springfield papers uttered no word of condemnation, giving the affair only a laconic mention. The Illinois Assembly joined in the general disapproval, and on March 3d passed the following resolutions : " Resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Illinois: " That we highly disapprove of the formation of Abolition societies, and of the doctrines promulgated by them. " That the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave-holding States by the Federal Constitution, and that they cannot be deprived of that right without their consent. " That the General Government cannot abolish slavery in 144 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said District, without a manifest breacli of good faith. *' That the governor be requested to transmit to the States of Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, New York and Connecti- cut a copy of the foregoing report and resolutions " ^ Lincoln refused to vote for these resolutions. In his judg- ment no expression on the slavery question should go unac- companied by the statement that it was an evil, and he had the boldness to protest immediately against the action of the House. He found only one man in the assembly willing to join him in his protest. These two names are joined to the document they presented : " Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same. " They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils. " They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institu- tion of slavery in the different States. " They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be ex- ercised, unless at the request of the people of the District. " The difference between these opinions and those con- tained in the resolutions is their reason for entering this pro- test. " Dan Stone, " A. Lincoln, " Representatives from the County of Sangamon." The Tenth Assembly gave Lincoln an opportunity to show his ability as a political manoeuvrer, his power as a speaker, and his courage in opposing what seemed to him wrong. FIRST PUBLISHED ADDRESS 145 There had never been a session of the assembly when the members had the chance to make so wide an impression. The character of the legislation on foot had called to Vandalia numbers of persons of influence from almost every part of the State. They were invariably there to secure something for their town or county, and naturally made a point of learn- ing all they could of the members and of getting as well ac- quainted with them as circumstances allowed. Game suppers seem to have been the means usually employed by visitors for bringing people together, and Lincoln became a favorite guest not only because he was necessary to the success of al- most any measure, but because he was so jovial a companion. It was then that he laid the foundation of his extensive ac- quaintance throughout the State which in after years stood him in excellent stead. The lobbyists were not the only ones in Vandalia who gave suppers, however. Not a bill was passed nor an election decided that a banquet did not follow. Mr. John Bryant, the brother of William Cullen, was in Vandalia that winter in the interest of his county, and he attended one of these ban- quets, given by the successful candidate for the United States Senate. Lincoln was present, of course, and so were all the prominent politicians of the State. "After the company had gotten pretty noisy and mellow from their imbibitions of Yellow Seal and 'corn juice,' " says Mr. Bryant, "Mr. Douglas and General Shields, to the con- sternation of the host and intense merriment of the guests, climbed up on the table, at one end, encircled each other's waists, and to the tune of a rollicking song, pirouetted down the whole length of the table, shouting, singing, and kick- ing dishes, glasses, and everything right and left, belter skel- ter. For this night of entertainment to his constituents, the successful candidate was presented with a bill, in the morn- ing, for supper, wines, liquors, and damages, which amounted to six hundred dollars." (10) 146 LIFE OF LINCOLN But boisterous suppers were not by any means the only feature of Lincoln's social life that winter in Vandalia. There was another and quieter side in which he showed his rare companionableness and endeared hirnself to many people. In the midst of the log-rolling and jubilations of the session he would often slip away to some acquaintance's room and spend hours in talk and stories. Mr. John Bryant tells of his coming frequently to his room at the hotel, and sitting "with his knees up to his chin, telling his inimitable stories and his triumphs in the House in circumventing the Democrats." Major Newton Walker, of Lewiston, who was in Vandalia at the time, says : "I used to play the fiddle a great deal and have played for Lincoln a number of times. He used to come over to where I \Vas boarding and ask me to play, and I would take the fiddle with me when I went over to visit him, and when he grew weary of telling stories he would ask me to give him a tune, which I never refused to do." CHAPTER X LINCOLN BEGINS TO STUDY LAW MARY OWENS A NEWS- PAPER CONTEST GROWTH OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE As soon as the assembly closed, Lincoln returned to New Salem ; but not to stay. He had determined to go to Spring- field. Major John Stuart, the friend who had advised him to study law and who had lent him books and with whom he had been associated closely in politics, had offered to take him as a partner. It was a good opening, for Stuart was one of the leading lawyers and politicians of the State, and his in- fluence would place Lincoln at once in command of more or less business. From every point of view the change seems to have been wise ; yet Lincoln made it with foreboding. To practise law he must abandon his business as surveyor, which was bringing him a fair income ; he must for a time, at least, go without a certain income. If he failed, what then ? The uncertainty weighed on him heavily, the more so because he was burdened by the debts left from his store and because he was constantly called upon to aid his father's fam- ily. Thomas Lincoln had remained in Coles County, but he had not, in these six years in which his son had risen so rap- idly, been able to get anything more than a poor livelihood from his farm. The sense of responsibility Lincoln had towards his father's family made it the more dif^cult for him to undertake a new profession. His decision was made, how- ever, and as soon as the session of the Tenth Assembly was over he started for Springfield. His first appearance there is as pathetic as amusing. "He had ridden into town," says Joshua Speed, "on a borrowed horse, with no earthly property save a pair of sad- 147 148 LIFE OF LINCOLN die-bags containing" a few clothes. I was a merchant at Springfield, and kept a large country store, embracing dry- goods, groceries, hardware, books, medicines, bed-clothes, mattresses — in fact, everything that the country needed. Lin- coln came into the store with his saddle-bags on his arm. He said he wanted to buy the furniture for a single bed. The mattress, blankets, sheets, coverlid, and pillow, according to the figures made by me, would cost seventeen dollars. He said that perhaps was cheap enough ; but small as the price was, he was unable to pay it. But if I would credit him till Christmas, and his experiment as a lawyer was a success, he would pay then ; saying in the saddest tone, Tf I fail in this I do not know that I can ever pay you.' As I looked up at him I thought then, and I think now, that I never saw a sad- der face. "I said to him : 'You seem to be so much pained at con- tracting so small a debt, I think I can suggest a plan by which you can avoid the debt, and at the same time attain your end. I have a large room with a double bed upstairs, which you are very welcome to share with me.' " 'Where is your room?' said he, " 'Upstairs,' said I, pointing to a pair of winding stairs which led from the store to my room. "He took his saddle-bags on his arm, went upstairs, set them on the floor, and came down with the most changed ex- pression of countenance. Beaming with pleasure, he ex- claimed : " 'Well, Speed, I am moved.' " Another friend, William Butler, with whom Lincoln had become intimate at Vandalia, took him to board; life at Springfield thus began under as favorable auspices as he could hope for. After Chicago, Springfield was at that day the most prom- ising city in Illinois. It had some fifteen hundred inhabitants, and the removal of the capital was certain to bring many more. Already, in fact, the town felt the effect. "The owner of real estate sees his property rapidly enhancing in value," declared the "Sangamon Journal ;" "the merchant anticipates BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 149 a large accession to our population and a corresponding addi- tional sale for his goods ; the mechanic already has more con- tracts offered him for building and improvements than he can execute ; the farmer anticipates the growth of a large and important town, a market for the varied products of his farm ; — indeed, every class of our citizens look to the future with confidence, that, we trust, will not be disappointed." The effect was apparent too, in society. "We used to eat all together," said an old man who in the early thirties came to Springfield as a hostler; "but about this time some one came along and told the people they oughtn't to do so, and then the hired folks ate in the kitchen." This differentiation was apparent to Lincoln and a little discouraging. He was thinking at the time of this removal of marrying, but he soon saw that it was quite out of the question for him to support a wife in Springfield. 'T am afraid you would not be satisfied," he wrote the young woman, " there is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor, without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that pa- tiently?" Lincoln's idea of marrying Mary Owens, of whom he asked this question, was the result of a Quixotic sense of honor which had curiously blinded him to the girl's real feel- ing for him. The affair had begun in the fall of 1836, when a woman of his acquaintance who was going to Kentucky on a visit, proposed laughingly to bring back a sister of hers on condition that Lincoln marry her. " I of course accepted the proposal," Lincoln wrote afterwards in a letter to Mrs. O. H. Browning, "for you know I could not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but privately, between you and me, I w-as I50 LIFE OF LINCOLN most confoundedly well pleased with the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, thought her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objec- tion to plodding life through hand in hand with her. Time passed on, the lady took her journey and in due time re- turned, sister in company, sure enough. This astonished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily showed that she was a trifle too willing, but on reflection it occurred to me that she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to come, without anything concerning me ever having been mentioned to her, and so 1 concluded that if no other objection presented itself, I would consent to waive this." Another objection did present itself as soon as he saw the lady. He was anything but pleased with her appearance. "But what could I do?" he continues in his letter to Mrs. Browning. "I had told her sister that I would take her for better or for worse, and I made a point of honor and con- science in all things to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to act on it, which in this case I had no doubt they had, for I was now fairly convinced that no other man on earth would have her, and hence the conclusion that they were bent on holding me to my bargain. 'Well, thought I, T have said it, and, be the consequences what they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it.' At once I determined to consider her my wife, and this done, all my powers of dis- covery were put to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, but for her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this, no woman that I have even seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself that the mind was much more to be valued than the person, and in this she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been acquainted. "Shortly after this, without attempting to come to any positive understanding with her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first saw me. During my stay there I had let- BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 151 ters from her which did not change my opinion of either her intellect or intention, but, on the contrary, confirmed it in both. "All this while, although I was fixed 'firm as the surge-re- pelling rock' in my resolution, I found I was continually re- penting the rashness which had led me to make it. Through life I have been in no bondage, either real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired to be free. After my return home I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time in planning how I might get along in life after my contemplated change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter." Lincoln was in this state of mind when he went to Spring- field and discovered how unfit his resources were to support a wife there. Although he put the question of poverty so plainly he assured Miss Owens that if she married him he would do all in his power to make her happy. "Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine," he wrote her, "should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented ; and there is noth- ing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What you have said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have misunderstood it. If so, then let it be forgotten ; if otherwise, I much wish you would think seri- ously before you decide. What I have said I will most posi- tively abide by, provided you wish it. My opinion is that you had better not do it. You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more serious than you now imagine. I know you are capable of thinking correctly on any subject, and if you deliberate maturely upon this before you decide, then I am willing to abide your decision." 152 LIFE OF LINCOLN This decidedly dispassionate view of their relation seems not to have brought any decision from Miss Owens; for three months later Mr. Lincoln wrote her an equally judicial letter, telling her that he could not think of her " with en- tire indifference," that he in all cases wanted to do right and "most particularly so in all cases with women," and summing up his position as follows : "I now say that you can now drop the subject, dismiss your thoughts (if you ever had any) from me forever, and leave this letter unanswered, without calling forth one ac- cusing murmur from me. And I will even go further, and say that if it will add anything to your comfort or peace of mind to do so, it is my sincere wish that you should. Do not understand by this that I wish to cut your acquaintance. I mean no such thing. "What I do wish is that our further acquaintance shall de- pend upon yourself. If such further acquaintance would contribute nothing to your happiness, I am sure it would not to mine. If you feel yourself in any degree bound to me, I am now willing to release you, provided you wish it ; while, on the other hand, I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I can be convinced that it will, in any considerable degree, add to your happiness. This, indeed, is the whole question with me. Nothing would make me more miserable than to believe you miserable — nothing more happy than to know you were so." Miss Owens had enough discernment to recognize the dis- interestedness of this love-making, and she refused Mr. Lin- coln's offer. She found him "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness," she said. When finally refused Lincoln wrote the letter to Mrs. Brown- ing from which the above citations have been taken. He con- cluded it with an account of the effect on himself of Miss Owen's refusal : " I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that BEGINS TO STUDY LAW I53 I had so long been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them per- fectly; and also that she, whom I had taught myself to be- lieve nobody else would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a little in love with her. But let it all go ! I'll try and outlive it. Others ha\'« been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason — I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have me." The skill, the courage, and the good-will Lincoln had shown in his management of the bill for the removal of the capital gave him at once a position in Springfield. The entire "Long Nine," indeed, were regarded by the county as its benefactors, and throughout the summer there were barbe- cues and fireworks, dinners and speeches in their honor. "The service rendered Old Sangamon by the present delegation" was a continually recurring toast at every gathering. At one "sumptuous dinner" the internal improvement scheme in all its phases was toasted again and again by the banqueters. " The Long Nine' of Old Sangamon — well done, good and faithful servants," drew forth long applause. Among those who offered volunteer toasts at this dinner were "A. Lincoln, Esq.," and "S. A. Douglas, Esq." At a dinner at Athens, given to the delegation, eight for- mal toasts and twenty-five volunteers are quoted in the re- port of the affair in the "Sangamon Journal." Among them were the following : A. Lincoln. He has fulfilled the expectations of his friends and disappointed the hopes of his enemies. A. Lincoln. One of nature's noblemen. By A. Lincoln. Sangamon County will ever be true to her 154 LIFE OF LINCOLN o o 8 i> 03 01 (D HS >> « a o -3 d •a o e B o u ID BEGINS TO STUDY^AW 155 best interests, and never more so than in reciprocating the good feelings of the citizens of Athens and neighborhood. Lincoln had not been long in Springfield before he was able to support himself from his law practice, a result due, no doubt, very largely to his personal qualities and to his repu- tation as a shrewd politician. Not that he made money. The fee-book of Lincoln and Stuart shows that the returns were modest enough, and that sometimes they even "traded out" their account. Nevertheless it was a satisfaction to earn a livelihood so soon. Of his peculiar methods as a lawyer at this date we know very little. Most of his cases are utterly uninteresting. The very first year he was in Springfield, however, he had one case which created a sensation, and which is an admirable example of the way he could combine business and politics as well as of his merciless persistency in pursuing a man whom he believed unjust. It seems that among the offices to be filled at the August election of 1837 was that of probate justice of the peace. One of the candidates was General James Adams, a man who had come on from the East in the early twenties, and who had at first claimed to be a lawyer. He had been an aspirant for various offices, among them that of governor of the State, but with little success. A few days before the August elec- tion of 1837 an anonymous hand-bill was scattered about the streets. It was an attack on General Adams, charging him with having acquired the title to a ten-acre lot of ground near the town by the deliberate forgery of the name of Joseph An- derson, of Fulton County, Illinois, to an assignment of a judgment. Anderson had died, and his widow, going to Springfield to dispose of the land, had been surprised to find that it was claimed by General Adams. She had employed Stuart and Lincoln to look into the matter. The hand-bill, which went into all of the details at great length, concluded as follows : "I have only made these statements because I 156 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN am known by many to be one of the individuals against whom the charge of forging the assignment and slipping it into the general's papers has been made ; and because our si- lence might be construed into a eonfession of the truth. I shall not subscribe my name ; but hereby authorize the editor of the 'Joi-ii'11^1' to give it up to any one who may call for it." After the election, at which General Adams was successful, the hand-bill was reproduced in the "Sangamon Journal," with a card signed by the editor, in which he said : "To save any further remarks on this subject, I now state that A. Lin- coln, Esq., is the author of the hand-bill in question." The same issue of the paper contained a lengthy communication from General Adams, denying the charge of fraud. The controversy was continued for several weeks in the newspapers. General Adams often filling six columns of a single issue of the "Springfield Republican." He charged that the assault upon him was the result of a conspiracy between "a knot of lawyers, doctors, and others," who wished to ruin his reputation. Lincoln's answers to Adams are most emphatic. In one case, quoting several of his assertions, he pronounced them "all as false as hell, as all this community must know." Adams's replies were al- ways voluminous. "Such is the turn which things have lately taken," wrote Lincoln, "that when General Adams writes a book I am expected to write a commentary on it." Replying to Adams's denunciation of the lawyers, he said : "He at- tempted to impose himself upon the community as a lawyer, and he actually carried the attempt so far as to induce a man who was under the charge of murder to entrust the defence of his life to his hands, and finally took his money and got him hanged. Is this the man that is to raise a breeze in his favor by abusing lawyers? ... If he is not a lawyer, he is a liar; for he proclaimed himself a lawyer, and got a man hanged by depending on him." Lincoln concluded: BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 157 "Farewell, General. I will see you again at court, if not be- fore — when and where we will settle the question whether you or the widow shall have the land." The widow did get the land, but this was not the worst thing that happened to Adams. The climax was reached when the "Sangamon Jour- nal" published a long editorial (written by Lincoln, no doubt) on the controversy, and followed it with a copy of an indictment found against Adams in Oswego County, New York, in 1818. The offence charged in this indictment was the forgery of a deed by Adams — "a person of evil name and fame and of a wicked disposition." Lincoln's victory in this controversy undoubtedly did much to impress the community, not necessarily that he was a good lawyer, but rather that he was a clever strategist and a fearless enemy. It was not, in fact, as a lawyer that he was prominent in the first years after he came to Springfield. It was as a politician. The place he had taken among the lead- ers of the Whig party in the winter of 1836 and 1837 he easily kept. The qualities which he had shown from the out- start of his public life were only strengthened as he gained experience and self-confidence. He was the terror of the pre- tentious and insincere, and had a way of exposing their shams by clever tricks which were unanswerable arguments. Thus, it was considered necessary, at that day, by a candi- date to prove to the farmers that he was poor and, like them- selves, horny-handed. Those politicians who wore good clothes and dined sumptuously were careful to conceal their regard for the elegancies of life from their constituents. One of the Democrats who in this period took particu- lar pains to decry the Whigs for their wealth and aristocratic principles was Colonel Dick Taylor, gen- erally known in Illinois as "ruffled-shirt Taylor." He was a vain and handsome man, who habitually ar- rayed himself as gorgeously as the fashion allowed. 158 LIFE OF LINCOLN One day when he and Lincoln had met in debate at a coun- tryside gathering, Colonel Dick became particularly bitter in his condemnation of Whig elegance. Lincoln listened for a time, and then, slipping near tht speaker, suddenly caught his coat, which was buttoned up close, and tore it open. A mass of ruffled shirt, a gorgeous velvet vest, and a great gold chain from which dangled numerous rings and seals, were uncovered to the crowd. Lincoln needed to make no further reply that day to the charge of being a "rag baron." Lincoln loved fair play as he hated shams ; and through- out these early years in Springfield boldly insisted that friend and enemy have the chance due them. A dram- atic case of this kind occurred at a political meeting held one evening in the Springfield court-room, which at that date was temporarily in a hall under Stuart and Lin- coln's law office. Directly over the platform was a trap-door. Lincoln frequently would lie by this opening during a meet- ing, listening to the speeches. One evening one of his friends, E. D. Baker, in speaking angered the crowd, and an attempt was made to "pull him down." Before the assailants could reach the platform, however, a pair of long legs dangled from the trap-door, and in an instant Lincoln dropped down beside Baker, crying out, "Hold on, gentle- men, this is a land of free speech." His appearance was so unexpected, and his attitude so determined, that the crowd soon was quiet, and Baker went on with his speech. Lincoln did not take a prominent place in his party because the Whigs lacked material. He had powerful rivals. Edward Dickinson Baker, Colonel John J. Har- din, John T. Stuart, Ninian W. Edwards, Jesse K. Dubois, O. H. Browning, were but a few of the brilliant men who were throwing all their ability and ambition into the contest for political honors in the State. Nor were the .Whigs a whit superior to the Democrats. William L. D. Ew- BEGINS TO vSTUDY LAW 159 Ing, Ebenezer Peck, William Thomas, James Shields, John Calhoun, were in every respect as able as the best men of the Whig party. Indeed, one of the prominent Democrats with whom Lincoln came often in contact, was popularly regarded as the most brilliant and promising politician of the State — Stephen A. Douglas. His record had been phenomenal. He had amazed both parties, in 1834, by securing the appoint- ment by the legislature to the office of State Attorney for the first judicial circuit, over John J. Hardin. In 1836 he had been elected to the legislature, and although he was at that time but twenty-three years of age, he had shown himself one of the most vigorous, capable, and intelligent members. In- deed, Douglas's work in the Tenth Assembly gave him about the same position in the Democratic party of the State at large that Lincoln's work in the same body gave him in the Whig party of his own district. In 1837 he had had no diffi- culty in being appointed register of the land office, a position which compelled him to m.ake his home in Springfield. It was only a few months after Lincoln rode into town, all his earthly possessions in a pair of saddle-bags, that Douglas ap- peared. Handsome, polished, and always with an air of pros- perity, the advent of the young Democratic official was in striking contrast to that of the sad-eyed, ill-clad, poverty- stricken young lawyer from New Salem. From the first, Lincoln and Douglas were thrown con- stantly together in the social life of the town, and often pitted against each other in what were the real forums of the State at that day — the space around the huge "Franklin" stove of some obliging store-keeper, the steps of somebody's law office, a pile of lumber, or a long timber, lying in the pub- lic square, where the new State-house was going up. In the fall of 1837 Douglas was nominated for Congress on the Democratic ticket. His Whig opponent was Lincoln's law partner, John T. Stuart. The campaign which the two i6o LIFE OF LINCOLN conducted was one of the most remarkable in the history of the State, For five months of the spring and summer of 1838 they rode together from town to town all over the northern part of Illinois (Illinois at that fime was divided into but three congressional districts ; the third, in which Sangamon county was included, being made up of the twenty-two north- ernmost counties) , speaking six days out of seven. When the election came off in August, 1838, out of thirty-six thousand votes cast, Stuart received a majority of only fourteen; but even that majority the Democrats always contended was won unfairly. The campaign was watched with intense interest by the young politicians of Springfield; no one of them felt a deeper interest in it than Lincoln, who was himself a candi- date for the State legislature, and who was spending a great deal of his time in electioneering. As the campaign of 1840 approached Lincoln was more and more frequently pitted against Douglas. He had by this time no doubt learned something of the power of the "Little Giant," as Douglas was already called. Certainly no man in public life between 1837 and i860 had a greater hold on his followers. The reasons for this grasp are not hard to find. Douglas was by nature buoyant, enthusiastic, impetuous. He had that sunny boyishness which is so irresistible to young and old. With it he had great natural eloquence. When his deep, rich voice rolled out fervid periods in support of the sub-treasury and the convention system, or in opposition to internal improvements by the federal government, the people applauded out of sheer joy at the pleasure of hearing him. He was one of the few men in Illinois whom the epithet of "Yankee" never hurt. He might be a Yankee, but when he sat down on the knee of some surly lawyer, and confidentially told him his plans ; or, at a political meeting, took off his coat, BEGINS TO STUDY LAW i6i and rolled up his sleeves, and ''pitched into" his opponent, the sons of Illinois forgot his origin in love for the man. Lincoln undoubtedly understood the charm of Douglas, and realized his power. But he already had an insight into one of his political characteristics that few people recognized at that day. In writing to Stuart in 1839, while the latter was attending Congress, Lincoln said : "Douglas has not been here since you left. A report is in circulation here now that he has abandoned the idea of going to Washington, though the report does not come in a very authentic form, so far as I can learn. Though, by the way, speaking of authen- ticity, you know that if we had heard Douglas say that he had abandoned the contest, it would not be very authentic." At that time the local issues, which had formerly engaged Illinois candidates almost entirely, were lost sight of in na- tional questions. In Springfield, where the leaders of both parties were living, many hot debates were held in private. Out of these grew, in December, 1839, a series of public discussions, extending over eight evenings, and in which several of the first orators of the State took part. Lincoln was the last man on the list. The people were nearly worn out before his turn came, and his audience was small. He began his speech with some melancholy, self-deprecatory reflections, complaining that the small audience cast a damp upon his spirits which he was sure he would be unable to overcome during the evening. He did better than he ex- pected, overcoming the damp on his spirits so effectually that he made what was regarded as the best speech of the series. By a general request, it was printed for distribution. The speech is peculiarly interesting from the fact that while there is a little of the perfervid eloquence of 1840 in it, as well as a good deal of the rather boisterous humor of the time, a part of it is devoted to a careful examination of the statements of l62 LIFE OF LINCOLN his opponents, and a refutation of them by means of pubHc documents. As a good Democrat was expected to do, Douglas had ex- plained with plausibility why the Van Buren administration had in 1838 spent $40,000,000. Lincoln takes up his state- ments one by one, and proves, as he says, that "the majority of them are wholly untrue." Douglas had attributed a part of the expenditures to the purchase of public lands from the Indians. "Now it happens," said Lincoln, "that no such purchase was made during that year. It is true that some money was paid that year in pursuance of Indian treaties; but no more, or rather not as much as had been paid on the same account in each of several preceding years Again, Mr. Douglas says that the removal of the Indians to the country west of the Mississippi created much of the expendi- ture of 1838. I have examined the public documents in rela- tion to this matter, and find that less was paid for the re- moval of Indians in that than in some former years. The whole sum expended on that account in that year did not much exceed one quarter of a million. For this small sum, although we do not think the administration entitled to credit, because large sums have been expended in the same way in former years, we consent it may take one and make the most of it. "Next, Air. Douglas says that five millions of the expendi- tures of 1838 consisted of the payment of the French in- demnity money to its individual claimants. I have carefully examined the public documents, and thereby find this state- ment to be wholly untrue. Of the forty millions of dollars expended in 1838, I am enabled to say positively that not one dollar consisted of payments on the French indemnities. So much for that excuse. "Next comes the Post-ofifice. He says that five millions were expended during that year to sustain that department. By a like examination of public documents, I find this also wholly untrue. Of the so often mentioned forty millions, not one dollar went to the Post-office. . . . BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 1 63 o "I return to another of Mr, Douglas's excuses for the ex- penditures of 1838, at the same time announcing the pleas- ing intelligence that this is the last one. He says that ten mil- lions of that year's expenditure was a contingent appropria- tion, to prosecute an anticipated war with Great Britain on the Maine boundary question. Few words will settle this. First, that the ten millions appropriated was not made till 1839, and consequently could not have been expended in 1838 ; second, although it was appropriated, it has never been expended at all. Those who heard Mr. Douglas recollect that he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression of pity for me. 'Now he's got me,' thought I. But when he went on to say that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of the French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions had been for the Post-ofiice, which I knew to be untrue ; that ten millions had been for the Maine boundary war, which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to go unexposed, — I readily con- sented that, on the score both of veracity and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or I were the more de- serving of the world's contempt." These citations show that Lincoln had already learned to handle public documents, and to depend for at least a part of his success with an audience upon a careful statement of facts. The methods used in at least a portion of this speech are exactly those which made the irresistible strength of his speeches in 1858, 1859, ^^^ i860. But there was little of as good work done in the campaign of 1840, by Lincoln or anybody else, as is found in this speech. It was a campaign of fun and noise, and nowhere more so than in Illinois. Lincoln was one of the five Whig Presidential electors, and he flung himself into the campaign with confidence. "The nomination of Harrison takes first rate," he wrote to his partner Stuart, then in Washington. **You know I am never sanguine, but I believe we will carry l64 LIFE OF LINCOLN the State. The chance of doing so appears to me twenty-five per cent, better than it did for you to beat Douglas." The Whigs, in spite of their dislike of the convention system, or- ganized as they never had before, and even sent out a "confi- dential" circular of which Lincoln was the author. This circular provided for a remarkably complete organi- zation of the State, as the following extracts will show : After due deliberation, the following is the plan of or- ganization, and the duties required of each county commit- tee: ( 1 ) To divide their county into small districts, and to ap- point in each a subcommittee, whose duty it shall be to make a perfect list of all the voters in their respective districts, and to ascertain with certainty for whom they will vote. If they meet with men who are doubtful as to the man they will sup- port, such voters should be designated in separate lines, with the name of the man they will probably support. (2) It will be the duty of said subcommittee to keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence, and also to place in their hands such documents as will enlighten and influence them. (5) On the first of each month hereafter we shall expect to hear from you. After the first report of your subcommit- tees, unless there should be found a great many doubtful voters, you can tell pretty accurately the manner in which your county will vote. In each of your letters to us, you will state the number of certain votes both for and against us, as well as the number of doubtful votes, with your opinion of the manner in which they will be cast. (6) When we have heard from all the counties, we shall be able to tell with similar accuracy the political complexion of the State. This information will be forwarded to you as soon as received. Every weapon Lincoln thought of possible use in the con- test he secured. "Be sure to send me as many copies of the BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 165 'Life of Harrison' as you can spare from other uses," he wrote Stuart. "Be very sure to procure and send me the 'Senate Journal' of New York, of September, 1814. I have a newspaper article which says that that document proves that Van Buren voted against raising troops in the last war. And, in general, send me everything you think will be a good 'war-club.' " Every sign of success he quoted to Stuart ; the number of subscribers to the "Old Soldier," a campaign newspaper which the Whig committee had informed the Whigs of the State that they ''must take;" the names of Van Buren men who were weakening, and to whom he wanted Stuart to send documents; the name of every theretofore doubtful person who had declared himself for Harrison. "Japh Bell has come out for Harrison," he put in a postscript to one letter; "ain't that a caution?" The monster political meetings held throughout the State did much to widen Lincoln's reputation, particularly one held in June in Springfield. Twenty thousand people attended this meeting, delegations coming from every direction. It took fourteen teams to haul the delegation from Chicago, and they were three weeks on their journey. Each party carried some huge symbolic piece — the log cabin being the favorite. One of the cabins taken to Springfield was drawn by thirty yokes of oxen. In a hickory tree which was planted beside this cabin, coons were seen playing, and a barrel of hard cider stood by the door, continually on tap. Instead of a log cabin, the Chicago delegation dragged across country a govern- ment yawl rigged up as a two-masted ship, with a band of music and a six-pounder cannon on board. There are many reminiscences of this great celebration, and Lincoln's part in it, still afloat in Illinois. General T. J. Henderson writes, in his entertaining reminiscences of Lin- coln: 1 66 LIFE OF LINCOLN "The first time I remember to have seen Abraham Lincoln was during the memorable campaign of 1840, when I was a boy fifteen years of age. It was at an immense Whig mass- meeting held at Springfield, Illinois, -in the month of June of that year. The Whigs attended this meeting from all parts of the State in large numbers, and it was estimated that from forty to fifty thousand people were present. They came in carriages and wagons, on horseback and on foot. They came with log cabins drawn on wheels by oxen, and with coons, coon-skins, and hard cider. They came with music and ban- ners; and thousands of them came from long distances. It was the first political meeting I had ever attended, and it made a very strong impression upon my youthful mind. "My father, William H. Henderson, then a resident of Stark county, Illinois, was an ardent Whig; and having served under General William Henry Harrison, the then Whig candidate for President, in the war of 1812-1815, he felt a deep interest in his election. And although he lived about a hundred miles from Springfield, he went with a dele- gation from Stark county to this political meeting, and took me along with him. I remember that at this great meeting of the supporters of Harrison and Tyler there were a number of able and distinguished speakers of the Whig party of the State of Illinois present. Among them were Colonel E. D. Baker, who was killed at Ball's Bluff, on the Potomac, in the late war, and who was one of the most eloquent speakers in the State ; Colonel John J. Hardin, who was killed at the bat- tle of Buena Vista, in the Mexican war; Fletcher Webster, a son of Daniel Webster, who was killed in the late war; S. Leslie Smith, a brilliant orator of Chicago ; Rev. John Ho- gan, Ben Bond, and Abraham Lincoln. I heard all of these men speak on that occasion. And while I was too young to be a judge of their speeches, yet I thought them all to be great men, and none of them greater than Abraham Lin- coln." The late Judge Scott of Illinois says of Lincoln's speech at that gathering, in an unpublished paper "Lincoln on the Stump and at the Bar" : "Mr. Lincoln stood in a wagon, from which he addressed BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 167 the mass of people that surrounded it. The meeting was one of unusual interest because of him who was to make the prin- cipal address. It was at the time of his greatest physical strength. He was tall, and perhaps a little more slender than in later life, and more homely than after he became stouter in person. He was then only thirty-one years of age, and yet he was regarded as one of the ablest of the Whig speakers in that campaign. There was that in him that attracted and held public attention. Even then he was the subject of popu- lar regard because of his candid and simple mode of discuss- ing and illustrating political questions. At times he was in- tensely logical, and was always most convincing in his argu- ments. The questions involved in that canvass had relation to the tariff, internal public improvements by the federal gov- ernment, the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of pub- lic lands among the several States, and other questions that divided the political parties of that day. They were not such questions as enlisted and engaged his best thoughts ; they did not take hold of his great nature, and had no tendency to de- velop it. At times he discussed the questions of the time in a logical way, but much time was devoted to telling stories to illustrate some phase of his argument, though more often the telling of these stories was resorted to for the purpose of rendering his opponents ridiculous. That was a style of speaking much appreciated at that early day. In that kind of oratory he excelled most of his contemporaries — indeed, he had no equal in the State. One story he told on that occa- sion was full of salient points, and well illustrated the argu- ment he was making. It was not an impure story, yet it was not one it would be seemly to publish; but rendered, as it was, in his inimitable way, it contained nothing that was of- fensive to a refined taste. The same story might have been told by another in such a way that it would probably have been regarded as transcending the proprieties of popular ad- dress. One characterizing feature of all the stories told by Mr. Lincoln, on the stump and elsewhere, was that although the subject matter of some of them might not have been en- tirely unobjectionable, yet the manner of telling them was so peculiarly his own that they gave no offence even to refined and cultured people. On the contrary, they were much en- i68 LIFE OF LINCOLN joyed. The story he told on this occasion was much Hked by the vast assembly that surromided the temporary platform from which he spoke, and was received with loud bursts of laughter and applause. It served to place the opposing party and its speakers in a most ludicrous position in respect to the question being considered, and gave him a most favorable hearing for the arguments he later made in support of the measures he was sustaining." Although so active as a Whig politician Lincoln was not prominent at this period as a legislator. Few bills originated with him. Among these few one of interest is the Illinois law requiring the examination of school teachers as to their qualifications, and providing for the granting of offi- cial certificates of authority to teach. In the pioneer days, any person whom circumstances forced into the business was permitted to teach. On December 2, 1840, Lincoln offered the following resolution in the Illinois House of Representa- tives : "Resolved, That the committee on education be instructed to inquire into the expediency of providing by law for the examination as to the qualification of persons offering them- selves as school teachers, that no teacher shall receive any part of the public school fund who shall not have success- fully passed such examination, and that they report by bill or otherwise." A motion to table this resolution was defeated. Within the ensuing three months the legislature passed "an act mak- ing provision for organizing and maintaining common schools" — the act which was the foundation of the common school system of Illinois. Section 81 of this act, providing for the qualification of teachers embodied Lincoln's idea. This section made it the duty of the school trustees in every township "to examine any person proposing to teach school in their vicinity in relation to the qualifications of such per- son as a teacher," or they might appoint a board of commis- SARAH BUSH LINCOLN. From a photograph in possession of her granddaughter. Mrs. Harriet Chapman, of Charleston, 111. Sarah Bush was born in Kentucky, Decem- ber 13, 1788. She was a friend of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, and it is said that Thomas Lincoln had been her suitor before she married Daniel Johnston. Her husband died in October, 1818. In November, 1819, Thomas Lincoln sought her a second time in marriage. She was in debt, and the fact caused her to hesitate ; but her suitor redeemed all her paper, and presented it to her with renewed protestations of affection. He was convinced that a woman with her honor about debts would make Him a good wife. There is no question that as Thomas Lincoln's wife she exerted a remarkable influence upon his household, and with her dignity and kindliness played a large part in the development of her step-son, Abraham. She died on the 10th of December, 1869, at the old homestead in Coles County, Illinois. BEGINS TO STUDY LAW 169 sloners to conduct the examination; and a certificate of quali- fication was to be issued by a majority of the trustees or com- missioners. Since then, of course, all the States have passed laws providing for the examination of teachers. In Illinois, no material change has been made in Lincoln's plan (for this section of the law was very likely drawn by Lincoln), ex- cept that the power of examination has been transferred from the trustees or commissioners to the county superin- tendent of schools an office then unknown. CHAPTER XI Lincoln's engagement to mary todd — breaking of the engagement lincoln-shields duel Busy as Lincoln was with law and politics the first three years after he reached Springfield, he did not by any means fail to identify himself with the interests of the town and of its people. In all the intellectual life of the place he took his part. In the fall of 1837 with a few of the leading young men he formed a young men's lyceum. One of the very few of his early speeches which has been preserved was de- livered before this body, its subject being the Perpetuation of our Political Institutions. At the request of the mem- bers of the Lyceum this address was published in the "San- gamon Journal" for February 3, 1838. The most pleasing feature of his early life in the town was the way in which he attracted all classes of people to him. He naturally, from his political importance and from his relation to Mr. Stuart, was admitted to the best society. But Lincoln was not received there from tolerance of his position only. The few members left of that interesting circle of Springfield in the thirties are emphatic in their statements that he was recognized as a valuable social factor. If indifferent to forms and little accustomed to conventional usages, he had a native dignity and self-respect which stamped him at once as a su- perior man. Pie had a good will, an easy adaptability to peo- ple, which made him take a hand in everything that went on. His name appears in every list of banqueters and merry- makers reported in the Springfield papers. He even served as committeeman for cotillion parties. " We liked Lincoln 170 HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 171 though he was not gay," said one charming and cultivated old lady to me in Springfield. "He rarely danced, he was never very attentive to ladies, but he was always a welcome guest everywhere, and the centre of a circle of animated ^^^.lOIT ^^ 6v&fu^ aC 7 6'cMca, ^. <^. December J6fA, /839i N. n. RiocCLS. R. ALLEN. c. D. TAYLOR, M. M. WASM, c. H. MCRRVNAM, r. W. TOtO. N. C WHIxeSiOE. 0. A. BOUCLASS. M. . CASTHAH. w . S. rKCNTICL J. H. OILUCR. H. W. EDWARDS. tk. . LINCOLN, Mtn»3trs. rACSIMIIiB OF INVITATION TO A SPRINGFIELD COTItUON PARTY. From the collection of Mr. C. F. Gunther, Chicago, talkers. Indeed, I think the only thing we girls had against Lincoln was that he always attracted all the men around him." Lincoln's kindly interest and perfectly democratic feeling attached to him many people whom he never met save on the 172 LIFE OF LINCOLN streets. Indeed his life in the streets of Springfield is a most touching and delightful study. He concerned himself in the progress of every building which was put up, of every new street which was opened; he passed nobody without recog- nition ; he seemed always to have time to stop and talk. He became, in fact, part of Springfield street life, just as he did of the town's politics and society. In 1840 Lincoln became engaged to be married to one of the favorite young women of Springfield, Miss Mary Todd, the sister-in-law of one of his political friends, a member of the "Long Nine" and a prominent citizen, Ninian W. Ed- wards. Miss Todd came from a well-known family of Lexington, Kentucky; her father, Robert S. Todd, being one of the leading citizens of his State. She had come to Springfield in 1839 to live with her sister, Mrs. Edwards. She was a brilliant, witty, highly-educated girl, ambitious and spirited, with a touch of audacity which only made her more attrac- tive, and she at once took a leading position in Springfield society. There were many young unmarried men in the town, drawn there by politics, and Mr. Edwards's handsome home was opened to them in the hospitable Southern way. After Mary Todd became an inmate of the Edwards house, the place was gayer than ever. She received much attention from Douglas, Shields, Lincoln, and several others. It was soon apparent, however, that Miss Todd preferred Lincoln. As the intimacy between them increased, Mr. and Mrs. Ed- wards protested. However honorable and able a man Lin- coln might be, he was still a "plebeian." His family were humble and poor; he was self-educated, without address or polish, careless of forms, indifferent to society. How could Mary Todd, brought up in a cultured home, accustomed to the refinements of life, ambitious for social position, accom- modate herself to so grave a nature, so dull an exterior? HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 173 Miss Todd knew her own mind, however. She loved Lin- cohi, and seems to have beheved from the first in his future. Some time in 1840 they became engaged. But it was not long before there came the clashing in- evitable between two persons whose tastes and ambitions were so different. Miss Todd was jealous and exacting; Lincoln thoughtless and inattentive. He frequently failed to accompany her to the merry-makings which she wanted to attend and she, naturally enough, resented his neglect interpreting it as a purposed slight. Sometimes in revenge she went with Mr. Douglas or some other escort who of- fered. Reproaches and tears and misunderstandings fol- lowed. If the lovers made up, it was only to fall out again. At last Lincoln became convinced that they were incompati- ble, and resolved that he must break the engagement. But the knowledge that the girl loved him took away his cour- age. He felt that he must not draw back, and he became pro- foundly miserable. "Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented ; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the ef- fort," Lincoln had written Miss Owens three years before. How could he make this brilliant, passionate creature to whom he was betrothed happy ? A mortal dread of the result of the marriage, a harrow- ing doubt of his own feelings, possessed him. The experience is not so rare in the history of lovers that it should be re- garded, as it often has been, as something exceptional and abnormal in Lincoln's case. A reflective nature founded in melancholy, like Lincoln's, rarely undertakes even the sim- pler affairs of life without misgivings. He certainly experi- enced dread and doubt before entering on any new relation. When it came to forming the most delicate and intimate of 1 74 LIFE OF LINCOLN all human relations, he staggered under a burden of uncer- tainty and suffering and finally broke the engagement. So horrible a breach of honor did this seem to him that he called the day when it occurred the "fatal first of January, 1841," and months afterward he wrote to his intimate friend Speed : "I must regain my confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made. In that ability I once prided myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem I lost — how and where you know too well. I have not yet regained it, and, until I do, I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance." The breaking of the engagement between Miss Todd and Mr. Lincoln was known at the time to all their friends. Lin- coln's melancholy was evident to them all, nor did he, in- deed, attempt to disguise it. He wrote and spoke freely to his intimates of the despair which possessed him, and of his sense of dishonor. The episode caused a great amount of gossip, as was to be expected. After Mr. Lincoln's assassi- nation and Mrs. Lincoln's sad death, various accounts of the courtship and marriage were circulated. It remained, however, for one of Lincoln's law partners, Mr. W. H. lierndon, to develop and circulate the most sensational of all the versions of the rupture. According to Mr. Herndon, the engagement between the two was broken in the most violent and public way possible, by Mr. Lincoln's failing to appear at the wedding. Mr. Herndon even describes the scene in detail : "The time fixed for the marriage was the first day of Janu- ary, 1 84 1. Careful preparations for the happy occasion were made at the Edwards mansion. The house underwent the customary renovation ; the furniture was properly arranged, the rooms neatly decorated, the supper prepared, and the guests invited. The latter assembled on the evening in ques- tion, and awaited in expectant pleasure the interesting cere- mony of marriage. The bride, bedecked in veil and silken HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 175 gown, and nervously toying with the flowers in her hair, sat in the adjoining room. Nothing was lacking but the groom. For some strange reason he had been delayed. An hour passed, and the guests, as well as the bride, were becoming restless. But they were all doomed to disappointment. An- other hour passed ; messengers were sent out over town, and each returning with the same report, it became apparent that Lincoln, the principal in this little drama, had purposely failed to appear. The bride, in grief, disappeared to her room; the wedding supper was left untouched; the guests quietly and wonderingly withdrew; the lights in the Ed- wards mansion were blown out, and darkness settled over all for the night. What the feelings of a lady as sensitive, pas- sionate, and proud as Miss Todd were, we can only imagine ; no one can ever describe them. By daybreak, after persistent search, Lincoln's friends found him. Restless, gloomy, miserable, desperate, he seemed an object of pity. His friends. Speed among the number, fearing a tragic termina- tion, watched him closely in their rooms day and night. 'Knives and razors, and every instrument that could be used for self-destruction, were removed from his reach.' Mrs. Edwards did not hesitate to regard him as insane, and of course her sister Mary shared in that view." No one can read this description in connection with the rest of Mr. Herndon's text, and escape the impression that, if it is true, there must have been a vein of cowardice in Lincoln. The context shows that he was not insane enough to excuse such a public insult to a woman. To break his en- gagement was, all things considered, not an unusual or ab- normal thing; to brood over the rupture, to blame himself, to feel that he had been dishonorable, was to be expected, after such an act, from one of his temperament. Nothing, however, but temporary insanity or constitutional cowardice could explain such conduct as here described. Mr. Herndon does not pretend to found his story on any personal knowl- edge of the affair. He was in Springfield at the time, a clerk in Speed's store, but did not have then, nor, indeed, did he 176 LIFE OF LINCOLN ever have, any social relations with the families in which Mr. Lincoln was always a welcome guest. His authority for the story is a remark which he says Mrs. Ninian Ed- wards made to him in an interview: "Lincoln and Mary were engaged; everything was ready and prepared for the marriage, even to the supper. Mr. Lincoln failed to meet his engagement; cause, insanity." This remark, it should be noted, is not from a manuscript written by Mrs. Edwards, but in a report of an interview with her, written by Mr. Herndon. Supposing, however, that the statement was made exactly as Mr. Herndon reports it, it certainly docs not justify any such sensational description as Mr. Herndon gives. If such a thing had ever occurred, it could not have failed to be known, of course, even to its smallest details, by all the relatives and friends of both Miss Todd and Mr. Lincoln. Nobody, however, ever heard of this wedding party until Mr. Herndon gave his material to the public. One of the closest friends of the Lincolns throughout their lives was a cousin of Mrs. Lincoln's, Mrs. Grimsley, after- wards Mrs. Dr. Brown. Mrs. Grimsley lived in Springfield, on the most intimate and friendly relations with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and the first six months of their life in the White House she spent with them. She was a woman of un- usual culture, and of the rarest sweetness and graciousness of character. Some months before Mrs. Brown's death, in August, 1895, a copy of Mr. Herndon's story was sent her, with a request that she write for publication her knowledge of the afifair. In her reply she said : "Did Mr. Lincoln fail to appear when the invitations were out, the guests invited, and the supper ready for the wed- ding? I will say emphatically, 'No.' "There may have been a little shadow of foundation for Mr. Herndon's lively imagination to play upon, in that, the year previous to the marriage, and when Mr. Lincoln and HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 177 my cousin Mary expected soon to be married, Mr. Lincoln was taken with one of those fearful, overwhelming periods of depression, which induced his friends to persuade him to leave Springfield. This he did for a time ; but I am satisfied he was loyal and true to Mary, even though at times he may have doubted whether he was responding as fully as a manly, generous nature should to such affection as he knew my cousin was ready to bestow on him. And this because it had not the overmastering depth of an early love. This every- body here knows ; therefore I do not feel as if I were betray- ing dear friends." Mrs. John Stuart, the wife of Lincoln's law partner at that time, is still living in Springfield, a refined, cultivated, intelligent woman, who remembers perfectly the life and events of that day. When Mr. Herndon's story first came to her attention, her indignation was intense. She protested that she never before had heard of such a thing. Mrs. Stuart was not, however, in 'Springfield at that particular date, but in Washington, her husband being a member of Congress. She wrote the following statement for this biography : "I cannot deny this, as I was not in Springfield for some months before and after this occurrence was said to have taken place ; but I was in close correspondence with relatives and friends during all this time, and never heard a word of it. The late Judge Broadwell told me that he had asked Mr. Ninian Edwards about it, and Mr. Edwards told him that no such thing had ever taken place. "All I can say is that I unhesitatingly do not believe such an event ever occurred. I thought I had never heard of this till I saw it in Herndon's book. I have since been told that Lamon mentions the same thing. I read Lamon at the time he published, and felt very much disgusted, but did not remember this particular assertion. The first chapters of Lamon's book were purchased from Herndon; so Herndon is responsible for the whole. "Mrs. Lincoln told me herself all the circumstances of her engagement to Mr. Lincoln, of his illness, and the breaking (12) 178 LIFE OP LINCOLN off of her engagement, of the renewal, and her marriage. So I say I do not believe ono word of this dishonorable story about Mr. Lincoln." Another prominent member in the same circle with Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd is Mrs. B. T. Edwards, the widow of Judge Benjamin T. Edwards, the sister-in-law of Mr. Ninian Edwards, who had married Miss Todd's sister. She came to Springfield in 1839, ^^^ was intimately acquainted with Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd, and knew, as well as an- other could know, their affairs. Mrs. Edwards is still living in Springfield, a woman of the most perfect refinement and trustworthiness. In answer to the question, "Is Mr. Hern- don's description true?" she writes: "I am impatient to tell you that all that he says about this wedding — the time for which was 'fixed for the first day of January' — is a fabrication. He has drawn largely upon his imagination in describing something which never took place. 'T know the engagement between Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd was interrupted for a time, and it was rumored among her young friends that Mr. Edwards had rather opposed it. But I am sure there had been no 'time fixed' for any wed- ding; that is, no preparations had ever been made until the day that Mr. Lincoln met Mr. Edwards on the street and told him that he and Mary were going to be married that even- ing. Upon inquiry, Mr. Lincoln said they would be married in the Episcopal church, to which Mr. Edwards replied : 'No; Mary is my ward, and she must be married at my house.' "If I remember rightly, the wedding guests were few, not more than thirty; and it seems to me all are gone now but Mrs. Wallace, Mrs. Levering, and myself, for it was not much more than a family gathering; only two or three of Mary Todd's young friends were present. The 'entertain- ment' was simple, but in beautiful taste; but the bride had neither veil nor flowers in her hair, with which to 'toy nervously.' There had been no elaborate trousseau for the bride of the future President of the United States, nor even a handsome wedding gown ; nor was it a gay wedding." HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT i79 Two sisters of Mrs. Lincoln who are still living, Mrs. Wallace of Springfield, and Mrs. Helm of Elizabethstown, Kentucky, deny emphatically that any wedding was ever ar- ranged between Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd but the one which did take place. That the engagement was broken after a wedding had been talked of, they think possible ; but Mr. Herndon's story, they deny emphatically. "There is not a word of truth in it !" Mrs. Wallace broke out, impulsively, before the question about the non-appear- ance of Mr. Lincoln had been finished. *T never was so amazed in my life as when I read that story. Mr. Lincoln never did such a thing. Why, Mary Lincoln never had a silk dress in her life until she went to Washington." As Mr. Joshua Speed was, all through this period, Mr. Lincoln's closest friend, no thought or feeling of the one ever being concealed from the other, Mrs. Joshua Speed, who is still living in Louisville, Kentucky, was asked if she knew of the story. Mrs. Speed listened in surprise to Mr. Hern- don's tale. 'T never heard of it before," she declared. "I never heard of it. If it is true, I never heard of it." While the above investigation was going on quite unex- pectedly, a volunteer witness to the falsity of the story ap- peared. The Hon. H. W. Thornton of Millersburg, Illinois, was a member of the Twelfth General Assembly, which met in Springfield in 1840. During that winter he was boarding near Lincoln, saw him almost every day, was a constant visi- tor at Mr. Edwards's house, and he knew Miss Todd well. He wrote to the author declaring that Mr. Herndon's state- ment about the wedding must be false, as he was closely asso- ciated with Miss Todd and Mr. Lincoln all winter, and never knew anything of it. Mr. Thornton went on to say that he knew beyond a doubt that the sensational account of Lin- coln's insanity was untrue, and he quoted from the House journal to show how it was impossible that, as Lamon says, l8o LIFE OF LINCOLN using Herndon's notes, "Lincoln went crazy as a loon, and did not attend the legislature in 1841-1842, for this rea- son;" or, as Herndon says, that he had to be watched con- stantly. According to the record taken from the journals of the House by Mr. Thornton, and which have been verified in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln was in his seat in the House on that "fatal first of January" when he is asserted to have been groping in the shadow of madness, and he was also there on the following day. The third of January was Sunday. On Monday, the fourth, he appears not to have been present — at least he did not vote; but even this is by no meajis con- clusive evidence that he was not there. On the fifth, and on every succeeding day until the thirteenth, he was in his seat. From the thirteenth to the eighteenth, inclusive, he is not recorded on any of the roll-calls, and probably was not pres- ent. But on the nineteenth, when "John J. Hardin announced his illness to the House," as Mr. Herndon says (which an- nouncement seems not to have gotten into the journal), Lin- coln was again in his place, and voted. On the twentieth he is not recorded ; but on every subsequent day, until the close of the session on the first of March, Lincoln was in the House. Thus, during the whole of the two months of Janu- ary and February, he was absent not more than seven days — as good a record of attendance, perhaps, as that made by the average member. Mr. Thornton says further: "Mr. Lincoln boarded at William Butler's, near to Dr. Henry's, where I boarded. The missing days, from January 13th to 19th, Mr. Lincoln spent several hours each day at Dr. Henry's ; a part of these days I remained with Mr. Lincoln. His most intimate friends had no fears of his injuring himself. He was very sad and melancholy, but being subject to these spells, nothing serious was apprehended. His being watched, as stated in Hernr don's book, was news to me until I saw it there." HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT i8i But while Lincoln went about his daily duties, even on the "fatal first of January," — the day when he broke his word to Miss Todd, his whole being was shrouded in gloom. He did not pretend to conceal this from his friends. Writing to Mr. Stuart on January 23d, he said : 'T am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me. The matter you speak of on my account you may attend to as you say, unless you shall hear of my condition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall be unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene might help me." In the summer he visited his friend Speed, who had sold his store in Springfield, and returned to Louisville, Ken- tucky. The visit did much to brighten his spirits, for, writ- ing back in September, after his return, to his friend's sister, he was even gay. A curious situation arose the next year (1842), which did much to restore Lincoln to a more normal view of his relation to Miss Todd. In the summer of 1841, his friend Speed had become engaged. As the time for his marriage ap- proached, he in turn was attacked by a melancholy not un- hke that from which Lincoln had suffered. He feared he did not love well enough to marry, and he confided his fear to Lincoln. Full of sympathy for the trouble of his friend, Lin- coln tried in every way to persuade him that his "twinges of the soul" were all explained by nervous debility. When Speed returned to Kentucky, Lincoln wrote him several let- ters, in which he consoled, counselled, or laughed at him. These letters abound in suggestive passages. From what did Speed suffer? From three special causes and a general one, which Lincoln proceeds to enumerate: l82 LIFE OF LINCOLN "The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous temperament; and this I say from what I have seen of you personally, and v^hat you have told me concerning your mother at various times, and concerning your brother Will- iam at the time his wife died. The first special cause is your exposure to bad weather on your journey, which my ex- perience clearly proves to be very severe on defective nerves. The second is the absence of all business and conversation of friends, which might divert your mind, give it occasional rest from the intensity of thought which will sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to the bitterness of death. The third is the rapid and near approach of that crisis on which all your thoughts and feelings concentrate." Speed writes that his -fiancee is ill, and his letter is full of gloomy forebodings of an early death. Lincoln hails these fears as an omen of happiness. *T hope and believe that your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can once and for- ever be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object), surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery. It really appears to me that you yourself ought to rejoice, and not sorrow, at this in- dubitable evidence of your undying affection for her. Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Per- haps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it. ... I am now fully convinced that you love her as ardently as you are capable of loving. Your ever being happy in her presence, and your intense anxiety about her health, if there were nothing else, would place this beyond all dispute in my mind. I incline to think it probable that your nerves will fail you occasionally for a while; but once you get them firmly HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 183 guarded now, that trouble is over forever. I think, if I were you, in case my mind were not exactly right, I would avoid being idle. I would immediately engage in some business or go to making preparations for it, which would be the same thing." Mr. Speed's marriage occurred in February, and to the letter announcing it Lincoln replied : "I opened the letter with intense anxiety and trepidation ; so much so, that, although it turned out better than I ex- pected, I have hardly yet, at a distance of ten hours, become calm. "I tell you. Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar) are all the worst sort of nonsense. I fancied, from the time I received your letter of Saturday, that the one of Wednesday was never to come, and yet it did come, and what is more, it is perfectly clear, both from its tone and handwriting, that you were much happier, or, if you think the term preferable, less miserable, when you wrote it than when you wrote the last one before. You had so ob- viously improved at the very time I so much fancied you would have grown worse. You say that something indes- cribably horrible and alarming still haunts you. You will not say that three months from now, I will venture. When your nerves once get steady now, the whole trouble will be over forever. Nor should you become impatient at their being even very slow in becoming steady. Again you say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize." His prophecy was true. In March Speed wrote him that he was "far happier than he had ever expected to be." Lin- coln caught at the letter with pathetic eagerness. "It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to hear you say you are 'far happier than you ever expected to be.' i84 LIFE OF LINCOLN That much I know is enough. I know you too well to sup- pose your expectations were not, at least, sometimes ex- travagant, and if the reahty exceeds them all, I say. Enough, dear Lord. I am not going beyond the truth when I tell you that the short space it toX)k me to read your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all I have enjoyed since the fatal ist of January, 1841. Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy, but for the never-absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make so. That still kills my soul. I cannot but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise. She accompanied a large party on the railroad cars to Jacksonville last Monday, and on her re- turn spoke, so that I heard of it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly. God be praised for that." Evidently Lincoln was still unreconciled to his separation from Miss Todd. In the summer of 1842, only three or four months after the above letter was written, a clever ruse on the part of certain of their friends threw the two unexpect- edly together ; and an understanding of some kind evidently was reached, for during the season they met secretly at the house of one of Lincoln's friends, Mr. Simeon Francis. It was while these meetings were going on that a burlesque en- counter occurred between Lincoln and James Shields, for which Miss Todd was partly responsible, and which no doubt gave just the touch of comedy necessary to relieve their tragedy and restore them to a healthier view of their rela- tions. Among the Democratic officials then living in Springfield was the auditor of the State, James Shields. He was a hot- headed, blustering Irishman, not without ability, and cer- tainly courageous; a good politician, and, on the whole, a very well-liked man. However, the swagger and noise with which he accompanied the execution of his duties, and his habit of being continually on the defensive, made him the butt of Whig ridicule. Nothing could have given greater HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 185 satisfaction to Lincoln and his friends than having an op- ponent who, whenever they joked him, flew into a rage and challenged them to fight. At the time Lincoln was visiting Miss Todd at Mr. Fran- cis's house, the Whigs were much excited over the fact that the Democrats had issued an order forbidding the payment of State taxes in State bank-notes. The bank-notes were in fact practically worthless, for the State finances were suffer- ing a violent reaction from the extravagant legislation of 1836 and 1837. One of the popular ways of attacking an obnoxious political doctrine in that day was writing letters from some imaginary backwoods settlement, setting forth in homely vernacular the writer's views of the question, and showing how its application affected his part of the world. These letters were really a rude form of the "Bigelow Pa- pers" or "Nasby Letters." Soon after the order was issued by the Illinois ofiicials demanding silver instead of bank- notes in payment of taxes, Lincoln wrote a letter to a Spring- field paper from the ''Lost Townships," signing it "Aunt Rebecca." In it he described the plight to which the new or- der had brought the neighborhood, and he intimated that the only reason for issuing such an order was that the State of- ficers might have their salaries paid in silver. Shields was ridiculed unmercifully in the letter for his vanity and his gallantry. It happened that there were several young women in Springfield who had received rather too pronounced atten- tion from Mr. Shields, and who were glad to see him tor- mented. Among them were Miss Todd and her friend Miss Julia Jayne. Lincoln's letter from the "Lost Townships" was such a success that they followed it up with one in which "Aunt Rebecca" proposed to the gallant auditor, and a few days later they published some very bad verses, signed "Cathleen," celebrating the wedding. i86 LIFE OF LINCOLN Springfield was highly entertained, less by the verses than by the fury of Shields. He would have satisfaction, he said, and he sent a friend, one General Whitesides, to the paper, to ask for the name of the writer of the communications. The editor, in a quandary, went to Lincoln, who, unwilling that Miss Todd and Miss Jayne should figure in the affair, ordered that his own name be given as the author of letters and poem. This was only about ten days after the first let- ter had appeared, on September 2d, and Lincoln left Spring- field in a day or two for a long trip on the circuit. He was at Tremont when, on the morning of the seventeenth, two of his friends, E. H. Merryman and William Butler, drove up hastily. Shields and his friend Whitesides were behind, they said, the irate Irishman vowing that he would challenge Lincoln. They, knowing that Lincoln was "unpractised both as to diplomacy and weapons," had started as soon as they had learned that Shields had left Springfield, had passed him in the night, and were there to see Lincoln through. It was not long before Shields and Whitesides arrived, and soon Lincoln received a note in which the indignant auditor said : "I will take the liberty of requiring a full, positive, and absolute retraction of all offensive allusions used by you in these communications in relation to my private character and standing as a man, as an apology for the insults con- veyed in them. This may prevent consequences which no one will regret more than myself." Lincoln immediately replied that, since Shields had not stopped to inquire whether he really was the author of the articles, had not pointed out what was offensive in them, had assumed facts and hinted at consequences, he could not sub- mit to answer the note. Shields wrote again, but Lincoln simply replied that he could receive nothing but a withdrawal of the first note or a challenge. To this he steadily held, even refusing to answer the question as to the authorship of the HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 187 letters, which Shields finally put. It was inconsistent with his honor to negotiate for peace with Mr. Shields, he said, unless Mr. Shields withdrew his former offensive letter. Seconds were immediately named: Whitesides by Shields, Merryman by Lincoln; and though they talked of peace, Whitesides declared he could not mention it to his principal. *'He would challenge me next, and as soon cut my throat as not." This was on the nineteenth, and that night the party re- turned to Springfield. But in some way the affair had leaked out, and fearing arrest, Lincoln and Merryman left town the next morning. The instructions were left with Butler. If Shields would withdraw his first note, and write another asking if Lincoln was the author of the offensive articles, and, if so, asking for gentlemanly satisfaction, then Lincoln had prepared a letter explaining the whole affair. If Shields would not do this, there was nothing to do but fight. Lin- coln left the following preliminaries for the duel : "First. Weapons: Cavalry broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal in all respects, and such as now used by the cavalry company at Jacksonville. "Second. Position : A plank ten feet long, and from nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed on edge, on the ground, as the line between us, which neither is to pass his foot over on forfeit of his life. Next a line drawn on the ground on either side of said plank and parallel with it, each at the distance of the whole length of the sword and three feet additional from the plank; and the passing of his own such line by either party during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest. "Third. Time: On Thursday evening at five o'clock, if you can get it so ; but in no case to be at a greater distance of time than Friday evening at five o'clock. "Fourth. Place : Within three miles of Alton, on the op- posite side of the river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you." 1 88 LIFE OF LINCOLN As Mr. Shields refused to withdraw his first note, the en- tire party started for the rendezvous across the Mississippi. Lincoln and Merryman drove together in a dilapidated old buggy, in the bottom of which rattled a number of broad- swords. It was the morning of the 226. of September when the duellists arrived in the town. There are people still liv- ing in Alton who remember their coming. "The party ar- rived about the middle of the morning," says Mr. Edward Levis, "and soon crossed the river to a sand-bar which at the time was, by reason of the low water, a part of the Missouri mainland. The means of conveyance was an old horse-ferry that was operated by a man named Chapman. The w^eapons were in the keeping of the friends of the principals, and no care was taken to conceal them ; in fact, they were openly dis- played. Naturally, there was a great desire among the male population to attend the duel, but the managers of the affair would not permit any but their own party to board the ferry- boat. Skiffs were very scarce, and but a few could avail themselves of the opportunity in this way. I had to content myself with standing on the levee and watching proceedings at long range." As soon as the parties reached the island the seconds be- gan preparations for the duel, the principals meanwhile seat- ing themselves on logs on opposite sides of the field — a half- cleared spot in the timber. One of the spectators says : "I watched Lincoln closely while he sat on his log awaiting the signal to fight. His face was grave and serious. I could discern nothing suggestive of 'Old Abe,' as we knew him. I never knew him to go so long before without making a joke, and I began to believe he was getting frightened. But pres- ently he reached over and picked up one of the swords, which he drew from its scabbard. Then he felt along the edge of the weapon with his thumb, like a barber feels of the edge of his razor, raised himself to his full height, stretched out his long arms and clipped off a twig from above his head with HIS MARRIAGE.EN-G4GEMENT 189 the sword. There wasn't another man of us who could have reached anywhere near that twig, and the absurdity of that long-reaching fellow fighting with cavalry sabers with Shields, who could walk under his arm, came pretty near making me howl with laughter. After Lincoln had cut off the twig he returned the sword to the scabbard with a sigh and sat down, but I detected the gleam in his eye, which was always the forerunner of one of his inimitable yarns, and fully expected him to tell a side-splitter there in the shadow of the grave — Shields's grave." The arrangements for the affair were about completed when the duellists were joined by some unexpected friends. Lincoln and Merryman, on their way to Alton, had stopped at White Hall for dinner. Across the street from the hotel lived Mr. Elijah Lott, an acquaintance of Merryman. Mr. Lott was not long in finding out what was on foot, and as soon as the duellists had departed, he drove to Carrollton, where he knew that Colonel John J. Hardin and several other friends of Lincoln were attending court, and warned them of the trouble. Hardin and one or two others imme- diately started for Alton. They arrived in time to calm Shields, and to aid the seconds in adjusting matters "with honor to all concerned." That the duellists returned in good spirits is evident from Mr. Levis's reminiscences : "It was not very long," says he, "until the boat was seen returning to Alton. As it drew near I saw what was presumably a mortally wounded man lying in the bow of the boat. His shirt appeared to be bathed in blood. I distinguished Jacob Smith, a constable, fanning the supposed victim vigorously. The people on the bank held their breath in suspense, and guesses were freely made as to which of the two men had been so terribly wounded. But suspense was soon turned to chagrin and relief when it tran- spired that the supposed candidate for another world was nothing more nor less than a log covered with a red shirt. I90 LIFE OF LINCOLN This ruse had been resorted to in order to fool the people on the levee; and it worked to perfection. Lincoln and Shields came off the boat together, chatting in a nonchalant and pleasant manner." The Lincoln-Shields duel had so many farcical features, and Miss Todd had unwittingly been so much to blame for it, that one can easily see that it might have had considerable influence on the relations of the two young people. However that may be, something had made Mr. Lincoln feel that he could renew his engagement. Early in October, not a fort- night after the duel, he wrote Speed : "You have now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than the day you married her I well know, for without you would not be living. But I have your word for it, too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a close ques- tion : Are you now in feelings as well as judgment glad that you are married as you are ? "From anybody but me this would be an impudent ques- tion, not to be tolerated ; but I know that you will pardon it in me. Please answer it quickly, as I am impatient to know." We do not know Speed's answer, nor the final struggle of the man's heart. We only know that on November 4, 1842, Lincoln was married, the wedding being almost im- promptu. Mrs. Dr. Brown, Miss Todd's cousin, in the same letter quoted from above, describes the wedding : "One morning, bright and early, my cousin came down in her excited, impetuous way, and said to my father : 'Uncle, you must go up and tell my sister that Mr. Lincoln and I are to be married this evening,' and to me : 'Get on your bon- net and go with me to get my gloves, shoes, etc., and then to Mr. Edwards's.' When we reached tliere we found some ex- citement over a wedding being sprung upon them so sud- denly. However, my father, in his lovely, pacific way, 'poured oil upon the waters,' and we thought everything was HIS MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT 191 *ship-shape/ when Mrs. Edwards laughingly said : 'How for- tunately you selected this evening, for the Episcopal Sewing Society is to meet here, and my supper is all ordered.' "But that comfortable little arrangement would not hold, as Mary declared she would not make a spectacle for gossip- ing ladies to gaze upon and talk about; there had already To any Minister of ihc Gospel, or other QUthoriidPersca-GREETING. Ocutcuunotu and atat6 ol Jltinolit an*) Li, ^ doirto', \^ mum, vc MO*«i ^Ot'Tt^^^^ ^g^X2lLJUR' ^^a ^ ^ 7!^MMM2 i2 2 ^ SS2^::^2. i ■^Oj h m FACSIMILE OF MARRIAQK LICENSE AND CEBTIFICATB OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. From the original on file in the County Clerk's office of Springfield, 111. been too much talk about her. Then my father was des- patched to tell Mr. Lincoln that the wedding would be de- ferred until the next evening. Clergyman, attendants and intimate friends were notified, and on Friday evening, in the midst of a small circle of friends, with the elements doing their worst in the way of rain, this singular courtship culminated in marriage. This I know to be literally true, as I was one of her bridesmaids, Miss Jayne (afterwards Mrs. Lyman Trumbull) and Miss Rodney being the others." CHAPTER XII LINCOLN BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS AND IS DEFEATED ON THE STUMP IN 1844 NOMINATED AND ELECTED TO THE 3OTH CONGRESS For eight successive years Lincoln had been a member of the General Assembly of Illinois. It was quite long enough, in his judgment, and his friends seem to have wanted to give him something better, for in 1841 they offered to support him as a candidate for governor of the State. This, how- ever, he refused. His ambition was to go to Washington. In 1842 he declined renomination for the assembly and be- came a candidate for Congress. He did not wait to be asked, nor did he leave his case in the hands of his friends. He frankly announced his desire, and managed his own canvass. There was no reason, in Lincoln's opinion, for concealing political ambition. He recognized, at the same time, the legitimacy of the ambition of his friends, and entertained no suspicion or rancor if they contested places with him. "Do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had w^aited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?" he wrote his friend Herndon once, w-hen the latter was complaining that the older men did not help him on. "The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jeal- ousy never did help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted 192 BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 193 injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it." Lincoln had something more to do, however, in 1842, than simply to announce himself in the innocent manner of early politics. The convention system introduced into Illinois in 1835 by the Democrats had been zealously opposed by all good Whigs, Lincoln included, until constant defeat taught them that to resist organization by an every-man-for-himself policy was hopeless and wasteful, and that if they would succeed they must meet organization with organization. In 1841 a Whig State convention had been called to nominate candidates for the offices of governor and lieutenant-gover- nor; and now, in March, 1843, ^ Whig meeting was held again at Springfield, at which the party's platform was laid, and a committee, of which Lincoln was a member, was ap- pointed to prepare an "Address to the People of Illinois." In this address the convention system was earnestly de- fended. Against this rapid adoption of the abominated sys- tem many of the Whigs protested, and Lincoln found him- self supporting before his constituents the tactics he had once warmly opposed. In a letter to his friend John Bennett, of Petersburg, written in March, 1843, he said: "I am sorry to hear that any of the Whigs of your county, or of any county, should longer be against conventions. On last Wednesday evening a meeting of all the Whigs then here from all parts of the State was held, and the question of the propriety of conventions was brought up and fully discussed, and at the end of the discussion a resolution recommending the system of conventions to all the Whigs of the State was unanimously adopted. Other resolutions were also passed, all of which will appear in the next 'Journal.' The meeting also appointed a committee to draft an address to the people of the State, which address will also appear in the next 'Jo^^' nal.' In it you will find a brief argument in favor of con- ventions, and, although I wrote it myself, I will say to you (13) 194 LIFE OF LINCOLN that it is conclusive upon the point, and cannot be reasonably answered. "If there be any good Whig who is disposed still to stick out against conventions, get him, at least, to read the argu- ment in their favor in the 'Address.' " The "brief argument" which Lincoln thought so conclu- sive, "if he did write it himself," justified his good opinion. After its circulation there were few found to "stick out against conventions." The Whigs of the various counties in the Congressional district met on April 5, as they had been instructed to do, and chose delegates. John J. Hardin of Jacksonville, Ed- ward D. Baker and Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, were the three candidates for whom these delegates were in- structed. To Lincoln's keen disappointment, the delegation from Sangamon county was instructed for Baker. A variety of social and personal influences, besides Baker's popularity, worked against Lincoln. "It would astonish, if not amuse, the older citizens," wrote Lincoln to a friend, "to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction." He was not only accused of being an aristo- crat, he was called "a deist." He had fought, or been about to fight, a duel. His wife's relations were Episcopalian and Presbyterian. He and she attended a Presbyterian church. These influences alone could not be said to have defeated him, he wrote, but "they levied a tax of considerable per cent, upon my strength." The meeting that named Baker as its choice for Congress appointed Lincoln one of the delegates to the convention. "In getting Baker the nomination," Lincoln wrote to Speed, ''I shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made a BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 195 groomsman to a man that has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear 'gal.' " From the first, however, he stood bravely by Baker. "I feel myself bound not to hinder him in any way from getting the nomination ; I should despise my- self were I to attempt it," he wrote certain of his constituents who were anxious that he should attempt to secure the nomi- nation in spite of his instructions. It was soon evident to both Lincoln and Baker that John J. Hardin was probably the strongest candidate in the district, and so it proved when the convention met in May, 1843, ^^ Pekin. It has frequently been charged that in this Pekin conven- tion, Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln agreed to take in turn the three next nominations to Congress, thus establishing a spe- cies of rotation in ofhce. This charge cannot be sustained. What occurred at the Pekin convention is here related by one of the delegates, the Hon. J. M. Ruggles of Havana, Illinois. "When the convention assembled," writes Mr. Ruggles, "Baker was there with his friend and champion delegate, Abraham Lincoln. The ayes and noes had been taken, and there were fifteen votes apiece, and one in doubt that had not arrived. That was myself. I was known to be a warm friend of Baker, representing people who were partial to Hardin. As soon as I arrived Baker hurried to me, saying : 'How is it ? It all depends on you.' On being told that not- withstanding my partiality for him, the people I represented expected me to vote for Hardin, and that I would have to do so. Baker at once replied: 'You are right — there is no other way.' The convention was organized, and I was elected secretary. Baker immediately arose, and made a most thrill- ing address, thoroughly arousing the sympathies of the con- vention, and ended by declining his candidacy. Hardin was nominated by acclamation; and then came the episode. "Immediately after the nomination, Mr. Lincoln walked across the room to my table, and asked if I would favor a resolution recommending Baker for the next term. On be- 196 • LIFE OF LINCOLN ing answered in the affirmative, he said: 'You prepare the resolution, I will support it, and 1 think we can pass it.' The resolution created a profound sensation, especially with the friends of Hardin. After an excited and angry discussion, the resolution passed by a majority of one." Lincoln supported Hardin energetically in the campaign which followed. In a letter to the former written on jMay nth, just after the convention, he says: ''Butler informs me that he received a letter from you in which you expressed some doubt as to whether the Whigs of Sangamon will support you cordially. You may at once dis- miss all fears on that subject. We have already resolved to make a particular effort to give you the very largest majority possible in our county. From this no Whig of the county dissents. We have many objects for doing it. We make it a matter of honor and pride to do it ; we do it because we love the Whig cause; we do it because we like you personally; and, last, we wish to convince you that we do not bear that hatred to Morgan County that you people have seemed so long to imagine. You will see by the 'Journal' of this week that we propose, upon pain of losing a barbecue, to give you twice as great a majority in this county as you shall receive in your own. I got up the proposal." Lincoln was true to his promise and after Hardin was elected and in Washington he kept him informed of much that went on in the district ; thus in an amusing letter written in May, 1844, while the latter was in Congress, he tells him of one disgruntled constituent who must be pacified, giving him, at the same time, a hint as to the temper of the "Loco- focos." "Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have forborne to trouble you heretofore," he writes; "and I now only do so to get you to set a matter right which has got wrong with one of our best friends. It is old Uncle Thomas Campbell of Spring Creek (Berlin P. O.). He has received BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 197 several documents from you, and he says they are old news- papers and old documents, having no sort of interest in them. He is, therefore, getting a strong impression that you treat him with disrespect. This, I know, is a mistaken impres- sion, and you must correct it. The way, I leave to yourself. Robert W. Canfield says he would like to have a document or two from you. "The Locos here are in considerable trouble about Van Buren's letter on Texas, and the Virginia electors. They are growing sick of the tariff question, and consequently are much confounded at Van Buren's cutting them off from the new Texas question. Nearly half the leaders swear they won't stand it. Of those are Ford, T. Campbell, Ewing, Calhoun, and others. They don't exactly say they won't go for Van Buren, but they say he will not be the candidate, and that tlicy are for Texas anyhow." The resolution passed at the Pekin convention in 1843 was remembered and respected by the Whigs when the time came to nominate Hardin's successor. Baker was selected and elected, Lincoln working for him as loyally as he had for Hardin. In this campaign — that of 1844 — Lincoln was a presidential elector. He went into the canvass with unusual ardor for Henry Clay was the candidate and Lincoln shared the popular idolatry of the man. His devotion was not merely a sentiment, however. He had been an intelligent student of Clay's public life, and his sympathy was all with the principles of the "gallant Harry of the West." Through- out the campaign he worked zealously, travelling all over the State, speaking and talking. As a rule, he was accompanied by a Democrat. The two went unannounced, simply stop- ping at some friendly house. On their arrival the word was sent around, "the candidates are here," and the men of the neighboi'hood gathered to hear the discussion, which was car- ried on in the most informal way, the candidates frequently sitting tipped back against the side of the house, or perched on a rail, whittling during the debates. Nor was all of this 198 LIFE OF LINCOLN electioneering done by argument. Many votes were still cast in Illinois out of personal liking, and the wily candidate did his best to make himself agreeable, particularly to the women of the household. The Hon. William L. D. Ewing, a Democrat who travelled with Lincoln in one campaign, used to tell a story of how he and Lincoln were eager to win the favor of one of their hostesses, whose husband was an important man in his neighborhood. Neither had made much progress until at milking-time Mr. Ewing started after the woman of the house as she went to the yard, took her pail, and insisted on milking the cow himself. He naturally felt that this was a master stroke. But receiving no reply' from the hostess, to whom he had been talking loudly as he milked, he looked around, only to see her and Lincoln lean- ing comfortably over the bars, engaged in an animated dis- cussion. By the time he had completed his self-imposed task, Lincoln had captivated the hostess, and all Mr. Ewing re- ceived for his pains was hearty thanks for giving her a chance to have so pleasant a talk with Mr. Lincoln. •i Lincoln's speeches at this time were not confined to his own State, He made several in Indiana, being invited thither by prominent Whig politicians who had heard him speak in Illinois. The first and most important of his meet- ings in Indiana was at Bruceville. The Democrats, learning of the proposed Whig gathering, arranged one, for the same evening, with Lieutenant William W. Carr of Vincennes as speaker. As might have been expected from the excited state of politics at the moment, the proximity of the two mass-meetings aroused party loyalty to a fighting pitch. "Each party was determined to break up the other's speak- ing," writes Miss O'Flynn, in a description of the Bruceville meeting prepared from interviews with those who took part in it. "The night was made hideous with the rattle of tin pans and bells and the blare of cow-horns. In spite of all BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 199 the din and uproar of the younger element, a few grown-up male radicals and partisan women sang and cheered loudly for their favorites, who kept on with their flow of political information. Lieutenant Carr stood in his carriage, and ad- dressed the crowd around him, while a local politician acted as grand marshal of the night, and urged the yelling Demo- cratic legion to surge to the schoolhouse, where Abraham Lincoln was speaking, and run the Whigs from their head- quarters. Old men now living, who were big boys then, can- not remember any of the burning eloquence of either speaker. As they now laughingly express it: 'We were far more in- terested in the noise than the success of the speakers, and we ran backward and forward from one camp to the other.' " Fortunately, the remaining speeches in Indiana were made under more dignified conditions. One was delivered at Rockport; another ''from the door of a harness shop" near Gentryville, Lincoln's old home in Indiana; and a third at the "Old Carter School" in the same neighborhood. At the delivery of the last many of Lincoln's old neighbors were present, and they still tell of the cordial way in which he greeted them and inquired for old friends. After his speech he drove home with Mr, Josiah Crawford, for whom he had once worked as a day laborer. His interest in every familiar spot — a saw-pit where he had once worked — the old swim- ming pool, the town grocery, the mill, the blacksmith shop, surprised and flattered everybody. "He went round inspect- ing everything," declares one of his hosts. So vivid were the memories which this visit to Gentryville aroused, so deep were Lincoln's emotions, that he even attempted to express them in verse. A portion of the lines he wrote have been preserved, the only remnants of his various early attempts at versification. In this campaign of 1844 Lincoln for the second time in his political life met the slavery question. The chief issue of 200 LIFE OF LINCOLN that campaign was the annexation of Texas. The Whigs, under Clay's leadership, opposed it. To annex Texas with- out the consent of Mexico would compromise our national reputation for fair dealing, Clay argued ; it would bring on war with Mexico, destroy the existing relations between North and South and compel the North to annex Canada, and it would tend to extend rather than restrict slavery. A large party of strong anti-slavery people in the North felt that Clay did not give enough importance to the anti- slavery argument and they nominated a third candidate, James G. Birney. This "Liberal Party" as it w^as called, had a fair representation in Illinois and Lincoln must have en- countered them frequently, though what arguments he used against them, if any, we do not know, no extracts of his 1844 speeches being preserved. The next year, 1845, he found the abolition sentiment stronger than ever. Prominent among the leaders of the third party in the State were two brothers, Williamson and Madison Durley of Hennepin, Illinois. They were outspo- ken advocates of their principles, and even operated a sta- tion of the underground railroad. Lincoln knew the Dur- leys, and, when visiting Hennepin to speak, solicited their support. They opposed their liberty principles. When Lin- coln returned to Springfield he wrote Williamson Durley a letter which sets forth with admirable clearness his exact position on the slavery question at that period. It is the most valuable document on the question which we have up to this point in Lincoln's life. "When I saw you at home," Lincoln began, "it was agreed that I should write to you and your brother Madison. Until I then saw you I was not aware of your being wdiat is gen- erally called an Abolitionist, or, as you call yourself, a Lib- erty man, though I well knew there w^ere many such in your county. LINCOLN IN FEBRUARY, 1860, AT THE TIME OF THE COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH. From photograph by Brady. Tiie debate with Douglas in 1858 had given Lincoln a national reputation, and tlie t'oi lowing year he received many invitations to lecture. One came from a young men's Republican ilub in New York. Lincoln consented, and in Feb- ruary, 18()1) (about three months liefore his noininatioi for the presidency), delivered what is known, from the hall in which it was delivered, as the "Cooper Institute speech." While in Xew York he was taken by the committee of entertainment to Brady's gallery, and sat for the portrait reprodticed above. It was a frequent remark with Lincoln that this portrait and the Cooper Institute speech made him President. BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 20I "I was glad to hear that you intended to attempt to bring about, at the next election in Putnam, a union of the Whigs proper and such of the Liberty men as are Whigs in principle on all questions save only that of slavery. So far as I can perceive, by such union neither party need yield anything on the point in difference between them. If the Whig abolition- ists of New York had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be President, Whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed ; whereas, by the division, all that either had at stake in the contest was lost. And, indeed, it was ex- tremely probable, beforehand, that such would be the result. As I always understood, the Liberty men deprecated the an- nexation of Texas extremely; and this being so, why they should refuse to cast their votes (so) as to prevent it, even to me seemed wonderful. What was their process of rea- soning, I can only judge from what a single one of them told me. It was this : 'We are not to do evil that good may come.' This general proposition is doubtless correct; but did it ap- ply? If by your votes you could have prevented the exten- sion, etc., of slavery, would it not have been good, and not evil, so to have used your votes, even though it involved the casting of them for a slave-holder ? By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing have been evil ? "But I will not argue further. I perhaps ought to say that Individually I never was much interested in the Texas ques- tion. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model. On the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or without annexation. And if more were taken because of annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left where they were taken from. It is possibly true, to some extent, that, with annexa- tion, some slaves may be sent to Texas and continued in slavery that otherwise might have been liberated. To what- ever extent this may be true, I think annexation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free States, due to the Union of the States, and perhaps to liberty itself 202 LIFE OF LINCOLN (paradox though it may seem), to let the slavery of the other States alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear that we should never knowingly lend ourselves, directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death — to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old. Of course I am not now consider- ing what would be our duty in cases of insurrection among the slaves. To recur to the Texas question, I understand the Liberty men to have viewed annexation as a much greater evil than ever I did; and I would like to convince you, if I could, that they could have prevented it, without violation of principle, if they had chosen." At the time that Lincoln wrote the above letter to the Durley brothers he was working for a nomination to Con- gress. In 1843 he had helped elect his friend Hardin. He had secured the nomination for Baker in 1844 and had worked faithfully to elect him. Now he felt that his duty to his friends was discharged and that he was free to try for himself. He undoubtedly hoped that neither of his friends would contest the nomination. Baker did not but late in 1845 it became evident that Hardin might. Lincoln was worried over the prospect. "The paper at Pekin has nomi- nated Hardin for governor," he wrote his friend B. F. James in November, "and, commenting on this, the Alton papers indirectly nominated him for Congress. It would give Har- din a great start, and perhaps use me up, if the Whig papers of the district should nominate him for Congress. If your feelings toward me are the same as when you saw me (which I have no reason to doubt), I wish you would let nothing appear in your paper which may operate against me. You understand. Matters stand just as they did when I saw you. Baker is certainly off the track, and I fear Hardin intends to be on it." Hardin certainly was free to run for Congress if he wanted to. He had voluntarily declined the' nomination in BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 203 1844, because of the events of the Pekin convention, but he had made no promise to do so in 1846. Many of the Whigs of the district had not expected him to be a candidate, how- ever, arguing that Lincoln, because of his relation to the party, should be given his turn. "We do not entertain a doubt," wrote the editor of the "Sangamon Journal," in February, 1846, "that if we could reverse the positions of the two men, a very large portion of those who now support Mr. Lincoln most warmly would support General Hardin quite as well. " As time went on and Lincoln found in all probability that Hardin would enter the race, it made him anxious and a little melancholy. In writing to his friend Dr. Robert Boal of Lacon, Illinois, on January 7, 1846, he said: "Since I saw you last fall, I have often thought of writing you, as it was then understood I would ; but, on reflection, I have always found that I had nothing new to tell you. All has happened as I then told you I expected it would — Baker's declining, Hardin's taking the track, and so' on. "If Hardin and I stood precisely equal — that is, if neither of us had been to Congress, or if we both had — it would not only accord with what I have always done, for the sake of peace, to give way to him ; and I expect I should do it. That I can voluntarily postpone my pretensions, when they are no more than equal to those to which they are postponed, you have yourself seen. But to yield to Hardin under present circumstances seems to me as nothing else than yielding to one who would gladly sacrifice me altogether. This I would rather not submit to. That Hardin is talented, energetic, unusually generous and magnanimous, I have, before this, affirmed to you, and do not now deny. You know that my only argument is that 'turn about is fair play.' This he, prac- tically at least, denies. "If it would not be taxing you too much, I wish you would write me, telling the aspect of things in your county, or rather your district ; and also send the names of some of your Whig neighbors to whom I might, with propriety, write, 204 LIFE OF LINCOLN Unless I can get some one to do this, Hardin, with his old franking list, will have the advantage of me. My reliance for a fair shake (and I want nothing more) in your county is chiefly on you, because of your position and standing, and because I am acquainted with so few others. Let me hear from you soon." Lincoln followed the vibrations of feeling in the various counties with extreme nicety, studying every individual whose loyalty he suspected or whose vote was not yet pledged. "Nathan Dresser is here," he wrote to his friend Bennett, on January 15, 1846, "and speaks as though the contest between Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard county. I know he is candid, and this alarms me some. I asked him to tell me the names of the men that were going strong for Hardin; he said Morris was about as strong as any. Now tell me, is Morris going it openly ? You remem- ber you wrote me that he would be neutral. Nathan also said that some man (who he could not remember) had said lately that Menard county was again to decide the contest, and that made the contest very doubtful. Do you know who that was ? "Don't fail me to write me instantly on receiving, telling me all — particularly the names of those who are going strong against me." In January, General Hardin suggested that since he and Lincoln were the only persons mentioned as candidates, there be no convention, but the selection be left to the Whig voters of the district. Lincoln refused. "It seems to me," he wrote Hardin, "that on reflection you will see the fact of your having been in Congress has, in various ways, so spread your name in the district as to give you a decided advantage in such a stipulation. I appreciate your desire to keep down excitement ; and I promise you to 'keep cool' under all circumstances. ... I have always been in the habit of acceding to almost any proposal that a BECOMES A CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS 205 friend would make, and I am truly sorry that I cannot in this. I perhaps ought to mention that some friends at dif- ferent places are endeavoring to secure the honor of the sit- ting of the convention at their towns respectively, and I fear that they would not feel much complimented if we shall make a bargain that it should sit nowhere." After General Hardin received this refusal he withdrew from the contest, in a manly and generous letter which was warmly approved by the Whigs of the district. Both men were so much loved that a break between them would have been a disastrous thing for the party. "We are truly glad that a contest which in its nature was calculated to weaken the ties of friendship has terminated amicably," said the Sangamon " Journal," The charge that Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln tried to ruin one another in this contest for Congress has often been denied by their associates, and never more em- phatically than by Judge Gillespie, an influential politician of the State. "Hardin," Judge Gillespie says, "was one of the most unflinching and unfaltering Whigs that ever drew the breath of life. He was a mirror of chivalry, and so was Baker. Lincoln had boundless respect for, and confidence in, them both. He knew they would sacrifice themselves rather than do an act that could savor in the slightest degree of meanness or dishonor. These men, Lincoln, Hardin and Baker, were bosom friends, to my certain knowledge. . . Lincoln felt that they could be actuated by nothing but the most honorable sentiments towards him. For although they were rivals, they were all three men of the most punctilious honor, and devoted friends. I knew them intimately, and can say confidently that there never was a particle of envy on the part of one towards the other. The rivalry between them was of the most honorable and friendly character, and when Hardin and Baker were killed (Hardin in Mexico, and Baker 2o6 LIFE OF LINCOLN at Ball's Bluff) Lincoln felt that in the death of each he had lost a dear and true friend." After Hardin's withdrawal, Lincoln went about in his characteristic way trying to soothe' his and Hardin's friends. "Previous to General Hardin's withdrawal," he wrote one of his correspondents, "some of his friends and some of mine had become a little warm ; and I felt . . . that for them now to meet face to face and converse together was the best way to efface any remnant of unpleasant feeling, if any such existed. I did not suppose that General Hardin's friends were in any greater need of having their feelings corrected than mine were." In May, Lincoln was nominated. His Democratic oppo- nent was Peter Cartwright, the famous Methodist exhorter, the most famous itinerant preacher of the pioneer era. Cart- wright had moved from Kentucky to Illinois when still a young man to get into a free State, and had settled in the Sangamon valley, near Springfield. For the next forty years he travelled over the State, most of the time on horseback, preaching the gospel in his unique and rugged fashion. His district was at first so large (extending from Kaskaskia to Galena) that he was unable to traverse the whole of it in the same year. He was elected to the legislature in 1828 and again in 1832; Lincoln, in the latter year, being an opposing candidate. In 1840 when he was the Democratic nominee for Congress against Lincoln he was badly beaten. Cart- wright now made an energetic canvass, his chief weapon against Lincoln being the old charges of atheism and aris- tocracy; but they failed of effect, and in August, Lincoln was elected. The contest over, sudden and characteristic disillusion seized him. "Being elected to Congress, though I am grate- ful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected," he wrote Speed. CHAPTER XIII LINCOLN IN WASHINGTON IN 1 847 HE OPPOSES THE MEXI- CAN WAR CAMPAIGNING IN NEW ENGLAND In November, 1847, Lincoln started for Washington. The city in 1848 was Httle more than the outhne of the Washing- ton of 1899. The capitol was without the present wings, dome, or western terrace. The White House, the City Hall, the Treasury, the Patent Office, and the Post-Office were the only public buildings standing then which have not been re- built or materially changed. The streets were unpaved, and their dust in summer and mud in winter are celebrated in every record of the period. The parks and circles were still unplanted. Near the White House were a few fine old homes, and Capitol Hill was partly built over. Although there were deplorable wastes between these two points, the majority of the people lived in south eastern part of the city, on or near Pennsylvania avenue. The winter that Lincoln was in Wash- ington, Daniel Webster lived on Louisiana avenue, near Sixth street; Speaker Winthrop and Thomas H. Benton on C street, near Third; John Quincy Adams and James Bu- chanan, the latter then Secretary of State, on F street, be- tween Thirteenth and Fourteenth. Many of the senators and congressmen were in hotels, the leading ones of which were Willard's, Coleman's, Gadsby's, Brown's, Young's, Fuller's, and the United States. Stephen A. Douglas, who was in Washington for his first term as senator, lived at Willard's. So inadequate were the hotel accommodations during the ses- sions that visitors to the town were frequently obliged to ac- cept most uncomfortable makeshifts for beds. Seward, vis- 207 2o8 • LIFE OF LINCOLN iting the city in 1847, tells of sleeping on "a cot between two beds occupied by strangers." The larger number of members lived in "messes," a species of boarding-club, over which the owner of the house occupied usually presided. The "National Intelligencer" of the day is sprinkled with announcements of persons "prepared to ac- commodate a mess of members." Lincoln went to live in one of the best known of these clubs, Mrs. Spriggs's, in "Duff Green's Row," on Capitol Hill. This famous row has now entirely disappeared, the ground on which it stood being oc- cupied by the Congressional Library. At Mrs. Spriggs's, Lincoln had as mess-mates several congressmen : A. R. Mcllvaine, James Pollock, John Strohm, and John Blanchard, all of Pennsylvania, Patrick Tompkins of Mississippi, Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, and Elisha Em- bree of Indiana. Among his neighbors in messes on Capitol Hill were Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. One of the members of the mess at Mrs. Spriggs's in the win- ter of 1 847- 1 848 was Dr. S. C. Busey of Washington, D. C. " I soon learned to know and admire Lincoln," says Dr. Busey in his " Personal Reminiscences and Recollections," " for his simple and unostentatious manners, kind-hearted- ness, and amusing jokes, anecdotes, and witticisms. When about to tell an anecdote during a meal he would lay down his knife and fork, place his elbows upon the table, rest his face between his hands, and begin with the words, ' That re- minds me,' and proceed. Everybody prepared for the ex- plosion sure to follow. I recall with vivid pleasure the scene of merriment at the dinner after his first speech in the House of Representatives, occasioned by the descriptions, by him- self and others of the congressional mess, of the uproar in the House during its delivery. "Congressman Lincoln was always neatly but very plainly dressed, very simple and approachable in manner, and unpre- IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 209 tentious. He attended to his business, going promptly to the House and remaining till the session adjourned, and ap- peared to be familiar with the progress of legislation." The town offered then little in the way of amusement. The Adelphi theater was opened that winter for the first time, and presented a variety of mediocre plays. At the Olympia were "lively and beautiful exhibitions of model artists." Herz and Sivori, the pianists, then touring in the United States, played several times in the season ; and there was a Chinese museum. Add the exhibitions of Brown's paintings of the heroes of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vista, and of Pow- ers's "Greek Slave," the performances of Dr. Valentine, "De- lineator of Eccentricities," a few lectures, and numerous church socials, and you have about all there was in the way of public entertainments in Washington in 1848. But of din- ners, receptions, and official gala affairs there were many. Lincoln's name appears frequently in the "National Intelli- gencer" on committees to offer dinners to this or that great man. In the spring of 1849 he was one of the managers of the inaugural ball given to Taylor. His friend Washburn re- calls an amusing incident of Lincoln at this ball. "A small number of mutual friends," says Mr, Washburn, "including Mr. Lincoln, made up a party to attend the inauguration ball together. It was by far the most brilliant inauguration ball ever given. Of course Mr. Lincoln had never seen anything of the kind before. One of the most modest and unpretend- ing persons present, he could not have dreamed that like hon- ors were to come to him, almost within a little more than a decade. He was greatly interested in all that was to be seen, and we did not take our departure until three or four o'clock in the morning. When we went to the cloak and hat room, Mr. Lincoln had no trouble in finding his short cloak, which little more than covered his shoulders, but, after a long search was unable to find his hat. After an hour he gave up (14) 2IO LIFE OF LINCOLN all idea of finding it. Taking his cloak on his arm, he walked out into Judiciary square, deliberately adjusting it on his shoulders, and started off bare-headed for his lodgings. It would be hard to forget the sight of that tall and slim man, with his short cloak thrown over his shoulders, starting for his long walk home on Capitol Hill, at four o'clock in the morning, without any hat on." Another reminiscence of his homely and independent ways comes from the librarian of the Supreme Court at that pe- riod, through Lincoln's friend, Washburn. Mr. Lincoln, the story goes, came to the library one day for the purpose of procuring some law books which he wanted to take to his room for examination. Getting together all the books he wanted, he placed them in a pile on a table. Taking a large bandana handkerchief from his pocket, he tied them up, and putting a stick which he had brought with him through a knot he had made in the handkerchief, he shouldered the package and marched off from the library to his room. In a few days he returned the books in the same way. Lincoln's simple, sincere friendliness and his quaint humor soon won him a sure, if quiet, social position in Washington. He was frequently invited to Mr. Webster's Saturday break- fasts, where his stories were highly relished for their origi- nality and drollery. Dr. Busey recalls his popularity at one of the leading places of amusement on Capitol Hill. "Congressman Lincoln was very fond of bowling," he says, "and would frequently join others of the mess, or meet other members in a match game, at the alley of James Cas- paris, which was near the boarding-house. He was a very awkward bowler, but played the game with great zest and spirit, solely for exercise and amusement, and greatly to the enjoyment and entertainment of the other players and by- standers by his criticisms and funny illustrations. He ac- cepted success and defeat with like good nature and humor, and left the alley at the conclusion of the game without a IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 211 sorrow or disappointment. When it was known that he was in the ahey, there would assemble numbers of people to wit- ness the fun which was anticipated by those who knew of his fund of anecdotes and jokes. When in the alley, surrounded by a crowd of eager listeners, he indulged with great free- dom in the sport of narrative, some of which were very broad. His witticisms seemed for the most part to be im- promptu, but he always told the anecdotes and jokes as if he wished to convey the impression that he had heard them from some one; but they appeared very many times as if they had been made for the immediate occasion." Another place where he became at home and was much appreciated was in the post-office at the Capitol. "During the Christmas holidays," says Ben. Perley Poore, " Mr. Lincoln found his way into the small room used as the post-ofifice of the House, where a few jovial raconteurs used to meet almost every morning, after the mail had been dis- tributed into the members' boxes, to exchange such new stories as any of them might have acquired since they had last met. After modestly standing at the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln was reminded of a story, and by New Year's he was recognized as the champion story-teller of the Capitol. His favorite seat was at the left of the open fire- place, tilted back in his chair, with his long legs reaching over to the chimney jamb. He never told a story twice, but ap- peared to have an endless repertoire of them always ready, like the successive charges in a magazine gun, and always pertinently adapted to some passing event. It was refresh- ing to us correspondents, compelled as we were to listen to so much that was prosy and tedious, to hear this bright speci- men of western genius tell his inimitable stories, especially his reminiscences of the Black Hawk war." But Lincoln had gone to Washington for work, and he at once interested himself in the Whig organization formed to elect the officers of the House. There was only a small Whig majority, and it took skill and energy to keep the offices in 212 LIFE OP LINCOLN the party. Lincoln's share in achieving this result was gen- erally recognized. As late as i860, twelve years after the struggle, Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, who was elected speaker, said in a speech in Boston wherein he dis- cussed Lincoln's nomination to the Presidency : "You will be sure that I remember him with interest, if I may be al- lowed to remind you that he helped to make me the speaker of the Thirtieth Congress, when the vote was a very close and strongly contested vote." A week after Congress organized, Lincoln wrote to Springfield: "As you are all so anxious for me to distin- guish myself, I have concluded to do so before long;" and he did it — but not exactly as his Springfield friends wished. The United States was then at war wath Mexico, a war that the Whigs abhorred. Lincoln had used his influence against it; but, hostilities declared, he had publicly affirmed that every loyal man must stand by the army. Many of his friends, Hardin, Baker, and Shields, among others, were at that mo- ment in Mexico. Lincoln had gone to Washington intend- ing to say nothing in opposition to the war. But the admin- istration wished to secure from the Whigs not only votes of supplies and men, but a resolution declaring that the war was just and right. Lincoln, with others of his party in Congress, refused his sanction and voted for a resolution offered by Mr. Ashburn, which declared that the war had been "unnecessa- rily and unconstitutionally" begun. On December 22d he made his debut in the House by the famous "Spot Resolu- tions," a series of searching questions so clearly put, so strong historically and logically, that they drove the admin- istration from the "spot" where the war began, and showed that it had been the aggressor in the conquest. The resolu- tion ran : — *'Whereas, The President of the United States, in his message of May 11, 1846, has declared that 'the Mexican IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 213 Government not only refused to receive him (the envoy of the United States), or to hsten to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil.' "And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that ' we had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities ; but even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our citizens.' " And yet again, in his message of December 7, 1847, that ' the Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment which he (our minister of peace) was authorized to propose, and finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil.' ''And zvhereas, This House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at that time our own soil : therefore, '' Resolved, by the House of Representatives, that the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House — " First. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citi- zens was shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 18 19 until the Mexican revolution. " Second. Whether that spot is or is not within the terri- tory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico. " Third. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long be- fore the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled be- fore the approach of the United States army. " Fourth. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east. 214 LIFE OF LINCOLN " Fifth. Whether the people of that settlement, or a ma- jority of them, or any of them, have ever submitted them- selves to the government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or i^aying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way. '' Sixth. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States army, leav- ing unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the message stated ; and whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it. " Seventh. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War. " Eighth. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not so sent into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Depart ment that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or protection of Texas." In January Lincoln followed up these resolutions with a speech in support of his position. His action was much criti- cised in Illinois, wdiere the sound of the drum and the intoxi- cation of victory had completely turned attention from the moral side of the question, and Lincoln found himself obliged to defend his position with even Mr. Herndon, his law part- ner, who, with many others, objected to Lincoln's voting for the Ashburn resolution. "That vote," wrote Lincoln in answer to Mr. Herndon's letter, "affirms that the war was unnecessarily and unconsti- tutionally commenced by the President ; and I will stake my life that if you had been in my place you would have voted just as I did. Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone out of the House — skulked the vote? I expect not. If you had skulked one vote, you would have had to skulk many IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 215 more before the end of the session. Richardson's resolutions, introduced before I made any move or gave any vote upon the subject, make the direct question of the justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would. You are com- pelled to speak ; and your only alternative is to tell the truth or a lie. I cannot doubt which you would do. " This vote has nothing to do in determining my votes on the questions of supplies. I have always intended, and still intend, to vote supplies ; perhaps not in the precise form rec- ommended by the President, but in a better form for all pur- poses, except Locofoco party purposes." * * * This determination to keep the wrong of the Mexican war before the people even while voting supplies for it Lincoln held to steadily. In May a pamphlet was sent him in which the author claimed that "in view of all the facts" the govern- ment of the United States had committed no aggression in Mexico. "Not in view of all the facts," Lincoln wrote him. "There are facts which you have kept out of view. It is a fact that the United States army in marching to the Rio Grande marched into a peaceful Mexican settlement, and frightened the inhabitants away from their homes and their growing crops. It is a fact that Fort Brown, opposite Matamoras, was built by that army within a Mexican cotton-field, on which at the time the army reached it a young cotton crop was grow- ing, and which crop was wholly destroyed and the field itself greatly and permanently injured by ditches, embankments, and the like. It is a fact that w^hen the Mexicans captured Captain Thornton and his command, they found and cap- tured them within another Mexican field. " Now I wish to bring these facts to your notice, and to as- certain what is the result of your reflections upon them. If you deny that they are facts, I think I can furnish proofs which shall convince you that you are mistaken. If you ad- mit that they are facts, then I shall be obliged for a reference to any law of language, law of States, law of nations, law of morals, law of religions, any law, human or divine, in which an authority can be found for saying those facts constitute *No aggression.' 2i6 LIFE OF LINCOLN "Possibly you consider those acts too small for notice. Would you venture to so consider them had they been com- mitted by any nation on earth against the humblest of our people ? I know you would not. Then I ask, is the precept * Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them ' obsolete? of no force? of no application? " The routine work assigned Lincoln in the Thirtieth Con- gress was on the committee on the post-office and post roads. Several reports were made by him from this committee. These reports, with a speech on internal improvements, cover his published work in the House up to July. As the Whigs were to hold their national convention for nominating a candidate for the presidency in June, Lincoln gave considerable time during the spring to electioneering. In his judgment the Whigs could elect nobody but General Taylor and he urged his friends in Illinois to give up Henry Clay, to whom many of them still clung. "Mr. Clay's chance for an election," he wrote, "is just no chance at all." Lincoln went to the convention, vi^hich was held in Phila- delphia, and as he prophesied, "Old Rough and Ready" was nominated. He went back to Washington full of enthusiasm. "In my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious triumph," he wrote a friend. "One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us — Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seekers, Locofo- cos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in noth- ing else, in showing which way the wind blows." In connection with Alexander H. Stephens, of whom he had become a warm friend, Toombs, and Preston, Lincoln formed the first Congressional Taylor club, known as the "Young Indians." Campaigning had already begun on the floor of Congress, and the members were daily making speeches for the various candidates. On July 27th Lincoln made a speech for Taylor. It was a boisterous election IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 217 speech, full of merciless caricaturing, and delivered with in- imitable drollery. It kept the House in an uproar, and was reported the country over by the Whig press. The "Balti- more American," in giving a synopsis of it, called it the "crack speech of the day," and said of Lincoln: "He is a very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man, and a tremen- dous wag, withal. . . . Mr. Lincoln's manner was so good-natured, and his style so peculiar, that he kept the House in a continuous roar of merriment for the last half hour of his speech. He would commence a point in his speech far up one of the aisles, and keep on talking, gesticulating, and walking until he would find himself, at the end of a paragraph, down in the centre of the area in front of the clerk's desk. He would then go back and take another head, and zvork down again. And so on, through his capital speech." This speech, as well as the respect Lincoln's work in the House had inspired among the leaders of the party, brought him an invitation to deliver several campaign speeches in New England at the close of Congress, and he went there early in September. There was in New England, at that date, much strong anti-slavery feeling. The Whigs claimed to be "Free Soilers" as well as the party which appropriated that name, and Lincoln, in the first speech he made, defined care- fully his position on the slavery question. This was at Wor- cester, Massachusetts, on September 12th. The Whig State convention had met to nominate a candidate for governor, and the most eminent Whigs of Massachusetts were present. Curiously enough the meeting was presided over by ex-Gov- ernor Levi Lincoln, a descendant, like Abraham Lincoln, from the original Samuel of Hingham. There were many brilliant speeches made; but if we are to trust the reports of the day, Lincoln's was the one which by its logic, its clear- ness, and its humor, did most for the Whig cause. "Gentle- 2i8 LIFE OF LINCOLN men inform me," says one Boston reporter, who came too late for the exercises, "that it was one of the best speeches ever heard in Worcester, and that several Whigs who had gone off on the "free soil" fizzle Imve come back again to the ,Whig ranks." A report of the speech was printed in the Boston "Adver- tiser." According to this report Lincoln spent the first part of his hour in defending General Taylor against the charge of having no principles and in proving him a good Whig. "Mr. Lincoln then passed," says the Advertiser, "to the subject of slavery in the States, saying that the people of Illi- nois agreed entirely with the people of Massachusetts on this subject, except, perhaps, that they did not keep so constantly thinking about it. All agreed that slavery was an evil, but that we were not responsible for it, and cannot affect it in States of this Union where we do not live. But the question of the extension of slavery to new territories of this country is a part of our responsibility and care, and is under our con- trol. In opposition to this Mr. Lincoln believed that the self- named 'Free Soil' party was far behind the Wiiigs. Both parties opposed the extension. As he understood it, the new party had no principle except this opposition. If their plat- form held any other, it was in such a general way that it was like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee peddler offered for sale, 'large enough for any man, small enough for any boy.' They therefore had taken a position calculated to break down their single important declared object. They were working for the election of either General Cass or General Taylor. The speaker then went on to show, clearly and elo- quently, the danger of extension of slavery likely to result from the election of General Cass. To unite with those who annexed the new territory, to prevent the extension of slavery in that territory, seemed to him to be in the highest degree absurd and ridiculous. Suppose these gentlemen suc- ceed in electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the extension of slavery to New Mexico and Cali- fornia; and General Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and would not prohibit its restriction. But IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 219 if General Cass was elected, he felt certain that the plans of farther extension of territory would be encouraged, and those of the extension of slavery would meet no check. The * Free Soil ' men, in claiming that name, indirectly attempt a deception, by implying that Whigs were not Free Soil men. In declaring that they would Mo their duty and leave the con- sequences to God,' they merely gave an excuse for taking a course they were not able to maintain by a fair and full argu- ment. To make this declaration did not show what their duty was. If it did, we should have no use for judgment; we might as well be made without intellect; and when divine or human law does not clearly point out what is our duty, we have no means of finding out what it is but using our most intelligent judgment of the consequences. If there were di- vine law or human law for voting for Martin Van Buren, or if a fair examination of the consequences and first reasoning would show that voting for him would bring about the ends they pretended to wish, then he would give up the argument. But since there was no fixed law on the subject, and since the whole probable result of their action would be an assist- ance in electing General Cass, he must say that they were be- hind the Whigs in their advocacy of the freedom of the soil. "Mr. Lincoln proceeded to rally the Buffalo convention for forbearing to say anything — after all the previous declara- tions of those members who were formerly Whigs — on the subject of the Mexican War because the Van Burens had been known to have supported it. He declared that of all the parties asking the confidence of the country, this new one had less of principle than any other. "He wondered whether it was still the opinion of these Free Soil gentlemen, as declared in the * whereas ' at Buffalo, that the Whig and Democratic parties were both entirely dis- solved and absorbed into their own body. Had the Vermont election given them any light? They had calculated on mak- ing as great an impression in that State as in any part of the Union, and there their attempts had been wholly ineffectual. Their failure there was a greater success than they would find in any other part of the Union. "At the close of this truly masterly and convincing speech," the "Advertiser" goes on, "the audience gave three 220 LIFE OF LINCOLN enthusiastic cheers for Ilhnois, and three more for the elo- quent Whig member from that State." After the speech at Worcester, Lincoln spoke at Lowell, Dedham, Roxbury, Chelsea and Cambridge, and on Septem- ber 22(1, in Trcmont Temple, Boston, following a splendid oration by Governor Seward. His speech on this occasion was not reported, though the Boston papers united in call- ing it ''powerful and convincing." His success at Worcester and Boston was such that invitations came from all over New England asking him to speak. But Lincoln won something in New England of vastly deeper importance than a reputation for making popular cam- paign speeches. Here for the first time he caught a glimpse of the utter impossibility of ever reconciling the northern conviction that slavery was evil and unendurable, and the southern claim that it was divine and necessary ; and he be- gan here to realize that something must be done. The first impression of slavery which Abraham Lincoln received was in his childhood in Kentucky. His father and mother belonged to a small company of western abolition- ists, who at the beginning of the century boldly denounced the institution as an iniquity. So great an evil did Thomas and Nancy Lincoln hold slavery that to escape it they were willing to leave their Kentucky home and move to a free State. Thus their boy's first notion of the institution was that it was something to flee from, a thing so dreadful that it was one's duty to go to pain and hardship to escape it. In his new home in Indiana he heard the debate on slavery go on. The State he had moved into was in a territory made free forever by the ordinance of 1787, but there were still slaves and believers in slavery within its boundaries and it took many years to eradicate them. Close to his Indiana home lay Illinois and here the same struggle wxnt on through all his boyhood. The lad was too thoughtful not IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 221 to reflect on what he heard and read of the differences of opinions on slavery. By the time the Statutes of Indiana fell into his hands — some time before he was eighteen years old — he had gathered a large amount of practical informa- tion about the question which he was able then to weigh in the light of the great principles of the Constitution, the ordinance of 1787, and the laws of Indiana, which he had begun to study with passionate earnestness. When he left Indiana for Illinois he continued to be thrown up against slavery. In his trip in 1831 to New Or- leans he saw its most terrible features. As a young legislator he saw the citizens of his town, and his fellows in the legis- lature ready to condemn as " dangerous agitators," those who dared call slavery an evil, saw them secretly sympa- thize with outlawry like the Alton riot and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy. So keenly did he feel the danger of pass- ing resolutions against abolitionists which tacitly implied that slavery was as the South was beginning to claim, a di- vine institution that in 1837, he was one of the only two members of the Illinois assembly who were willing to pub- licly declare "that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy." From time to time as he travelled on the Mississippi and Ohio he saw the workings of slavery. In 1841 coming home from a visit to Louisville, Ky., he was in the same boat with a number of negroes, the sight so impressed him that he de- scribed it to a friend : " A gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this fast- ened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient dis- tance from the others, so that the negroes were strung to- gether precisely like so many fish upon a trot-line. In this 222 LIFE OF LINCOLN condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery, where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unre- lenting than any other where ; and yet amid all these distress- ing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One whose offense for which he had been sold was an over-fond- ness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually, and the others danced, sang, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day. How true it is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in other words, that he renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while he permits the best to be nothing better than tolerable." Runaway slaves, underground railway stations, masters and men tracking negroes, the occasional capture of a man or woman to be taken back to the South, trials of fugitives — all the features common in those years particularly in the States bordering on bond territory Lincoln saw. In 1847 he was even engaged to defend a slave-owner's claim, a case he lost, the negro being allowed to go free. It was not until 1844-45, however, that the matter became an important element in his political life. Hereto- fore it had been a moral question only, now, however, the annexation of Texas made it a political one. It became necessary that every politician and voter decide whether the new territory should be bond or free. The abolitionists or Liberty party grew rapidly in Illinois. Lincoln found himself obliged not only to meet Democratic arguments, but the abo- lition theories and convictions. When in 1847 he went to Congress it was already evident that the Mexican war would be settled by the acquisition of large new territory. What was to be done with it ? The North had tried to forestall the South by bringing in a provision that whatever territory was acquired should be free forever. This Wilmot proviso as it » «> || 1 t , I i IN WASHINGTON IN 1847 223 was called from the name of the originator, went through as many forms as Proteus, though its intent was always the sume. From first to last Lincoln voted for it. "I may ven- ture to say that I voted for it at least forty times during the short time I was there," he said in after years. Although he voted so persistently he did little or no debating on the question in the House and in the hot debates from which he could not escape, he acted as a peace-maker. At Mrs. Spriggs's mess, where he boarded in Washington, the Wilmot proviso was the topic of frequent conversation and the occasion of very many angry controversies. Dr. Bu- sey, who was a fellow boarder, says of Lincoln's part in these discussions, that though he may have been as radical as any in the household, he was so discreet in giving expression to his convictions on the slavery question as to avoid giving of- fence to anybody, and was so conciliatory as to create the im- pression, even among the pro-slavery advocates, that he did not wish to introduce or discuss subjects that would provoke a controversy. "When such conversation would threaten angry or even unpleasant contention he would interrupt it by interposing some anecdote, thus diverting it into a hearty and general laugh, and so completely disarrange the tenor of the discus- sion that the parties engaged would either separate in good humor or continue conversation free from discord. This amicable disposition made him very popular with the house- hold." But when in 1848 Lincoln went to New England he expe- rienced for the first time the full meaning of the "free soil" sentiment as the new abolition sentiment was called. Massa- chusetts was quivering at that moment under the impas- sioned protests of the great abolitionists. Sumner was just deciding to abandon literature to devote his life to the cause of freedom and was speaking wherever he had the chance 224 LIFE OF LINCOLN and often in scenes which were riots. "Ah me such an as- sembly," wrote Longfellow in his Journal after one of these speeches of Sumner. "It was like one of Beethoven's sym- phonies played in a saw-mill." Whittier was laboring at Amesbury by letters of counsel and encouragement to friends, by his pure, high-souled poems of protest and prom- ise and by his editorials to the "National Era," which he and his friends had just started in Washington. Lowell was pub- lishing the last of the Biglow Papers and preparing the whole for the book form. He was writing, too, some of his noblest prose. Emerson, Palfrey, Hoar, Adams, Phillips, Garrison, were all at work. Giddings had been there from Ohio. Only a few days before Lincoln arrived a great convention of free soilers and bolting Whigs had been held in Tremont Temple and its earnestness and passion had produced a deep impression. Sensitive as Lincoln was to every shade of popu- lar feeling and conviction the sentiment in New England stirred him as he had never been stirred before, on the ques- tion of slavery. Listening to Seward's speech in Tremont Temple, he seems to have had a sudden insight into the truth, a quick illumination ; and that night, as the two men sat talk- ing, he said gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate : "Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing." CHAPTER XIV; LINCOLN AT NIAGARA — SECURES A PATENT FOR AN INVEN- TION ABANDONS POLITICS AND DECIDES TO DEVOTE HIM- SELF TO THE LAW It was late in September when Lincoln started westward from his campaigning in New England. He stopped in Al- bany, N. Y., and in company with Thurlow Weed called on Fillmore then candidate for Vice-President. From Albany he went to Niagara. Mr. Herndon once asked him what made the deepest impression on him when he stood before the Falls. "The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls," he responded, "was, where in the world did all that water come from?" The memory of Niagara remained with him and aroused many speculations. Among various notes for lectures which Nicolay and Hay found among Mr. Lincoln's papers after his death and published in his " Com- plete Works," is a fragment on Niagara which shows how deeply his mind was stirred by the majesty of that mighty wonder. "Niagara Falls ! By what mysterious power is it that mil- lions and millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would anticipate without seeing it. If the water moving onward in a great river reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred feet in de- scent in the bottom of the river, it is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain, (15) 22s 226 • LIFE OF LINCOLN the water, thus plunging, will foam and roar, and send up a mist continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows. The mere physical of Niagara Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world's Wonder. Its power to excite reflection and emotion is its great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the plunge, or fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn its way back to its present position ; he will ascertain how fast it is wearing now, and so get a basis for determining how long it has been wearing back from Lake Ontario, and finally demonstrate by it that this world is at least fourteen thou- sand years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say, 'Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the suq^lus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth's surface.' He will estimate with approximate accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water fall with their full weight a distance of a hundred feet each minute — thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the same time. . . . "But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent — when Christ suffered on the cross — when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea — nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker; then, as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of America have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Contemporary with the first race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastodon, so long dead that fragments of their monstrous bones alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara — in that long, long time never still for a single moment (never dried), never froze, never slept, never rested." In his trip w^estward to Springfield from Niagara there oc- curred an incident which started Lincoln's mind on a new line of thought, one which all that fall divided it with poli- tics. It happened that the boat by which he made part of the VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 227 trip stranded in shallow water. The devices employed to float her, interested Lincoln much. He no doubt recalled the days when on the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Sangamon he had seen his own or his neighbor's boats stuck on a sand-bar for hours, even days. Was there no way that these vexatious delays could be prevented in shallow streams ? He set him- self resolutely at the task of inventing a practical device for getting boats over shoals. When he reached Springfield he began to build a model representing his idea. He showed the deepest interest in the work and Mr, Herndon says he would sometimes bring the model into his office and while whittling on it would talk of its merits and the revolution it was going to work on the western rivers. When Lincoln returned to Washington he took the model with him, and through Mr. Z. C. Robbins, a lawyer of Wash- ington, secured a patent. "He walked into my office one morning with a model of a western steamboat under his arm," says Mr. Robbins. "After a friendly greeting he placed his model on my office-table and proceeded to explain the principles embodied therein that he believed to be his own invention, and which, if new, he desired to secure by letters- patent. During my former residence in St. Louis, I had made myself thoroughly familiar with everything appertaining to the construction and equipment of the flat-bottomed steam- boats that were adapted to the shallow rivers of our western and southern States, and therefore, I was able speedily to come to the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln's proposed improve- ment of that class of vessels was new and patentable, and I so informed him. Thereupon he instructed me to prepare the necessary drawings and papers and prosecute an application for a patent for his invention at the United States patent office. I complied with his instructions and in due course of proceedings procured for him a patent that fully covered all the distinguishing features of his improved steamboat. The 228 • LIFE OF LINCOLN identical model that Mr. Lincoln brought to my office can now be seen in the United States patent office." But it was only his leisure which Lincoln spent in the fall of 1848 on his invention. All through October and the first days of November he was speaking up and down the State for Taylor. His zeal was rewarded in November by the elec- tion of the Whig ticket and a few weeks later he went back to Washington for the final session of the Thirtieth Con- gress. He went back resolved to do something regarding slavery. He seems to have seen but two things at that mo- ment which could constitutionally be done. The first was to allow the slave-holder no more ground than he had; to ac- complish this he continued to vote for the Wilmot proviso. The second was to abolish slavery in the District of Colum- bia. Over ten years before, in 1837, Lincoln had declared, in the assembly of Illinois, that the Congress of the United States had the power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District. When he went to Washington in 1847 ^^ found a condition of things which made him feel that Congress ought to exercise the power it had. There had existed for years in the city a slave market : "a sort of negro livery stable, where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to southern markets, precisely like droves of horses," Lincoln said in describing it in later years ; and this frightful place was in view from the windows of the Capitol. Morally and intellectually shocked and irritated by this spec- tacle, Lincoln brooded over it until now, in the second ses- sion of his term, he decided to ask that Congress exercise the power he had affirmed ten years before belonged to it, and on January 16, 1849, he drew up and presented a bill to abol- ish slavery in the District of Columbia, "with the consent of the voters of the District and with compensation to owners." VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 229 The bill caused a noise in the House, but came to naught, as indeed at that date any similar bill was bound to do. It showed, however, more plainly than anything Lincoln had done so far in Congress his fearlessness when his convictions were aroused. The inauguration of Taylor on March 4, 1849, ended Lin- coln's congressional career. The principle, "turn about is fair play," which he had insisted on in 1846 when working for the nomination for himself, he regarded as quite as ap- plicable now. It was not because he did not desire to return to Congress. " I made the declaration that I would not be a candidate again," he wrote Hemdon in January, 1848, "more from a wish to deal fairly with others, to keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district from going to the enemy, than from any cause personal to myself; so that, if it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I could not refuse the people the right of sending me again. But to enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to enter me, is what my word and honor forbid." And yet he was not willing to leave public life. The term in Congress had only increased his fondness for politics. It had given him a touch of that fever for public office from which so few men who have served in Congress ever entirely recover. The Whigs owed much to him, and there was a general disposition to gratify any reasonable ambition he might have. "I believe that, so far as the Whigs in Congress are concerned, I could have the General Land Office almost by common consent," he wrote Speed; "but then Sweet and Don Morrison and Browning and Cyrus Edwards all want it, and what is worse, while I think I could easily take it myself, I fear I shall have trouble to get it for any other man in Illi- nois. Although he feared his efforts would be useless, he pledged his support to his friend, Cyrus Edwards. While Lincoln 230 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN was looking after Edwards's interests, a candidate appeared who was most objectionable to the Whigs, General Justin Butterfield. Lincoln did all he could to defeat Butterficld save the one thing necessary — ask the position for himself. This he would not do until he learned that Edwards had no chance. Then he applied; but it was too late. Butterfield had secured the office while Lincoln had been holding back. When Edwards found that Lincoln had finally applied for the place, he accused him of treachery. Lincoln was deeply hurt by the suspicion. " The better part of one's life consists of his friend- ships," he wrote to Judge Gillespie, '' and, of them, mine with Mr. Edwards was one of the most cherished. I have not been false to it. At a word I could have had the office any time before the Department was committed to Mr. Butterfield — at least Mr. Ewing and the President say as much. That word I forbore to speak, partly for other reasons, but chiefly for Mr. Edwards's sake — losing the office that he might gain it. I was always for (him) ; but to lose his friendship, by the effort for him, would oppress me very much, were I not sustained by the utmost consciousness of rectitude. I first determined to be an applicant, uncondi- tionally, on the 2d of June ; and I did so then upon being in- formed by a telegraphic despatch that the question was nar- rowed down to Mr. B. and myself, and that the Cabinet had postponed the appointment three weeks for my benefit. Not doubting that Mr. Edwards was wholly out of the question, I, nevertheless, would not then have become an applicant had I supposed he would thereby be brought to suspect me of treachery to him. Two or three days afterwards a conversa- tion with Levi Davis convinced me Mr. Edwards was dis- satisfied ; but I was then too far in to get out. His own let- ter, written on the 25th of April, after I had fully informed him of all that had passed, up to within a few days of that time, gave assurance I had that entire confidence from him which I felt my uniform and strong friendship for him en- titled me to. Among other things it says: 'Whatever course VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 231 your judg-ment may dictate as proper to be pursued shall never be excepted to by me." I also had had a letter from Washington saying Chambers, of the " Republic," had brought a rumor there, that Mr. E. had declined in my favor, which rumor I judged came from Mr. E. himself, as I had not then breathed of his letter to any living creature. In saying I had never, before the 2d of June, determined to be an applicant, unconditionally, I mean to admit that, before then, I had said, substantially, I would take the office rather than it should be lost to the State, or given to one in the State whom the Whigs did not want ; but I aver that in every instance in which I spoke of myself I intended to keep, and now believe I did keep, Mr. E. above myself. Mr. Edwards's first suspicion was that I had al- lowed Baker to overreach me, as his friend, in behalf of Don Morrison. I know this was a mistake; and the result has proved it. I understand his view now is, that if I had gone to open war with Baker I could have ridden him down, and had the thing all my own way. I believe no such thing. With Baker and some strong man from the Military tract and else- where for Morrison, and we and some strong men from the Wabash and elsewhere for Mr. E., it was not possible for either to succeed. I believed this in March, and I know it now. The only thing which gave either any chance was the very thing Baker and I proposed — an adjustment with them- selves. *'You may wish to know how Butterfield finally beat me. I cannot tell you particulars now, but will when I see you. In the meantime let it be understood I am not greatly dissatis- fied — I wish the office had been so bestowed as to encourage our friends in future contests, and I regret exceedingly Mr. Edwards's feelings towards me. These two things away, I should have no regrets — at least I think I would not." It was not until eleven years later that Edwards forgave Lincoln. Then at Judge Gillespie's request he promised to " bury the hatchet with Lincoln " and to enter the campaign for him. Lincoln declared that he had no regrets about the way the General Land Office went, but, if he had not, his Whig 232 LIFE OF LINCOLN friends in Washington had. They determined to do some- thing for him, and in the summer of 1849 summoned him to the capital to urge him to accept the governorship of Oregon. The Territory would soon be a' State, it was believed, and Lincoln would then undoubtedly be chosen to represent it in the United States Senate. Unquestionably, a splendid politi- cal prospect was thus opened. Many of Lincoln's friends ad- vised him to accept; his wife, however, disliked the idea of life in the far West, and on her account he refused the place. The events of the summer of 1849 seemed to Lincoln to end his political career. He had no time to brood over his situation, however. The necessity of earning a livelihood was too imperative. His financial obligations were, in fact, considerable. The old debt for the New Salem store still hung over him; he had a growing family; and his father and mother, who were still living in Coles county, whither they had moved in 1831, were dependent upon him for many of the necessaries, as well as all the comforts, of their lives. At intervals ever since he had left home he had helped them; now by saving their land from the foreclosing of a mortgage, now by paying their doctor's bills, now by adding to the cheerfulness of their home. He was equally kind to his other relatives, visiting them and aiding them in various ways. Among these relatives were two cousins, Abraham and Mordecai, the sons of his uncle Mordecai Lincoln, who lived in Hancock County, in his congressional district. At Quincy, also in his district, lived with his family a brother of his mother — Joseph Hanks. Lin- coln never went to Quincy without going to see his uncle Jo- seph and "uncle Joe's Jake," as he called one of his cousins. "On these occasions," writes one of the latter's family, Mr. J. M. Hanks of Florence, Colorado, "mirth and jollity abounded, for Mr. Lincoln Indulged his bent of story-tell- ing to the utmost, until a late hour." His half-brother, John VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 233 Johnston, he aided for many years. His help did not always take the form of money. Johnston was shiftless and always in debt, and consequently restless and discontented. In 185 1 he was determined to borrow money or sell his farm, and move to Missouri. He proposed to Mr. Lincoln that he lend him eighty dollars. Mr, Lincoln answered : " What I propose is, that you shall go to work, ' tooth and nail,' for somebody who will give you money for it. . . . 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 then give you one other dollar. ... In this I do not mean you shall go off 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 be soon 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 dol- lars. 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' work." A few months later Lincoln wrote Johnston in regard to his contemplated move to Missouri : "What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without work ? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you ? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are ; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year ; and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money, and spend it. Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never after own a spot big 234 LIFE OF LINCOLN enough to bury you in. Half you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat, drink, and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, I feel it my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery." All this plain advice did not prevent Johnston trying to sell a small piece of land on which Mr. Lincoln had paid the mortgage in order to secure it to his step-mother during her life. When Mr. Lincoln received this proposition he replied : "Your proposal about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I want or could claim for myself; but I am not satis- fied with it on mother's account. I want her to have her liv- ing, and I feel that it is my duty, to some extent, to see that she is not wronged. She had a right of dower (that is, the use of one-third for life) in the other two forties; but, it seems, she has already let you take that, hook and line. She now has the use of the whole of the east forty as long as she lives, and if it be sold, of course she is entitled to the interest on all the money it brings as long as she lives ; but you pro- pose to sell it for three hundred dollars, take one hundred away with you, and leave her two hundred at eight per cent., making her the enormous sum of sixteen dollars a year. Now, if you are satisfied with treating her in that way, I am not. It is true that you are to have that forty for two hundred dollars at mother's death ; but you are not to have it before. I am confident that land can be made to produce for mother at least thirty dollars a year, and I cannot, to oblige any living person, consent that she shall be put on an allowance of six- teen dollars a year." It was these obligations which made Lincoln resume at once the practice of the law. He decided to remain in Springfield, although he had an opportunity to go in with a well-established Chicago lawyer. For many reasons life in Springfield was satisfactory to him. He had bought a home there in 1844, and was deeply attached to it. There, too, he was surrounded by scores of friends who had known him VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 235 since his first appearance in the town, and to many of whom he was related by marriage ; and he had the good will of the community. In short, he was a part of Springfield. The very children knew him, for there was not one of them for whom he had not done some kind deed. "My first strong impres- sion of Mr. Lincoln," says a lady of Springfield, "was made by one of his kind deeds. I was going with a little friend for my first trip alone on the railroad cars. It was an epoch of my life. I had planned for it and dreamed of it for weeks. The day I was to go came, but as the hour of the train ap- proached, the hackman, through some neglect, failed to call for my trunk. As the minutes went on, I realized, in a panic of grief, that I should miss the train. I was standing by the gate, my hat and gloves on, sobbing as if my heart would break, when Mr. Lincoln came by. " 'Why, what's the matter ?' he asked, and I poured out all my story. " 'How big's the trunk? There's still time, if it isn't too big.' And he pushed through the gate and up to the door. My mother and I took him up to my room, where my little old- fashioned trunk stood, locked and tied. 'Oh, ho,' he cried; 'wipe your eyes and come on quick.' And before I knew what he was going to do, he had shouldered the trunk, was down stairs, and striding out of the yard. Down the street he went, fast as his long legs could carry him. I trotting behind, dry- ing my tears as I went. We reached the station in time. Mr. Lincoln put me on the train, kissed me good-bye, and told me to have a good time. It was just like him." This sensitiveness to a child's wants made Mr. Lincoln a most indulgent father. He continually carried his boys about with him, and their pranks, even when they approached re- bellion, seemed to be an endless delight to him. Like most boys, they loved to run away, and neighbors of the Lincolns tell many tales of Mr. Lincoln's captures of the culprits. One 236 LIFE OF LINCOLN of the prettiest of all these is a story told of an escape Willie once made, when three or four years old, from the hands of his mother, who was giving him a tubbing. He scampered out of the door without the vestige^of a garment on him, flew up the street, slipped under a fence into a great green field, and took across it. Mr. Lincoln was sitting on the porch, and discovered the pink and white runaway as he was cut- ting across the greensward. He stood up, laughing aloud, while the mother entreated him to go in pursuit; then he started jn chase. Half-way across the field he caught the child, and gathering him up in his long arms, he covered his rosy form with kisses. Then mounting him on his back, the chubby legs around his neck, he rode him back to his mother and his tub. It was a frequent custom with Lincoln, this of carrying his children on his shoulders. He rarely went down street that he did not have one of his younger boys mounted on his shoulder, while another hung to the tail of his long coat. The antics of the boys with their father, and the species of tyranny they exercised over him, are still subjects of talk in Springfield. Mr. Roland Diller, who was a neighbor of Mr. Lincoln, tells one of the best of the stories. He was called to the door one day by hearing a great noise of children cry- ing, and there was Mr. Lincoln striding by with the boys, both of whom were wailing aloud. "Why, Mr. Lincoln, what's the matter with the boys ?" he asked. "Just what's the matter with the whole world," Lincoln replied; "Lve got three walnuts and each wants two." Another of Lincoln's Springfield acquaintances, the Rev. Mr. Alcott of Elgin, 111., tells of seeing him coming away from church, imusually early one Sunday morning. "The sermon could not have been more than half way through," says Mr. Alcott. " Tad' was slung across his left arm like a pair of saddle-bags, and Mr. Lincoln w^as striding along with VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 237 long, and deliberate steps toward his home. On one of the street corners he encountered a group of his fellow-towns- men. Mr. Lincoln anticipated the question which was about to be put by the group, and, taking his figure of speech from practices with which they were only too familiar, said : ' Gentlemen, I entered this colt, but he kicked around so I had to withdraw him.' " There was no institution in Springfield in which Lincoln had not taken an active interest in the first years of his resi- dence ; and now that he had decided to remain in the town, he resumed all his old relations, from the daily visits to the drug-stores on the public square, which were the recognized rendezvous of Springfield politicians and lawyers, to his weekly attendance at the First Presbyterian church. That he was as regular in his attendance on the latter as on the former, all his old neighbors testify. In fact, Lincoln, all his life, went regularly to church. The serious attention which he gave the sermons he heard is shown in a well-authenti- cated story of a visit he made in 1837, with a company of friends, to a camp-meeting held six miles west of Springfield at the "Salem Church." The sermon on this occasion was preached by one of the most vigorous and original individ- uals in the pulpit of that day — the Rev. Dr. Peter Akers. In this discourse was a remarkable and prophetic passage, long remembered by those who heard it. The speaker prophesied the downfall of castes, the end of tyrannies, and the crushing out of slavery. As Lincoln and his friends returned home there was a long discussion of the sermon. "It was the most instructive sermon, and he is the most impressive preacher, I have ever heard," Lincoln said. "It is w^onderful that God has given such power to men. I firmly believe his interpretation of prophecy, so far as I understand it, and especially about the breaking down of civil and re- ligious tyrannies; and, odd as it may seem, when he des- 238 LIFE OF LINCOLN cribed those changes and revolutions, I was deeply impressed that I should be somehow strangely mixed up with them." If Lincoln was not at this period a man of strictly ortho- dox beliefs, he certainly was, if tve accept his own words, profoundly religious. In the letters which passed between Lincoln and Speed in 1841 and 1842, when the two men were doubting their own hearts and wrestling with their dis- illusions and forebodings, Lincoln frequently expressed the idea to Speed that the Almighty had sent their suffering for a special purpose. When Speed finally acknowledged himself happily married, Lincoln wrote to him : "I always was super- stitious; I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you together, wdiich union I have no doubt he had foreordained." Then, referring to his own troubled heart, he added : "Whatever He designs He will do for me yet. 'Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,' is my text just now." Only a few months after Lincoln decided to settle perma- nently in Springfield his father, Thomas Lincoln, fell danger- ously ill. Lincoln in writing to John Johnston, his half- brother, said : 'T sincerely hope father may recover his health, but, at all events, tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker, wdio will not turn away from him in any extremity. Lie notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him." Lincoln's return to the law was characterized by a marked change in his habits. He gave much more attention to study than he ever had before. His colleagues in Springfield and on the circuit noticed this change. After court closed in the town on the circuit, and the lawyers were gathered in the bar- room or on the veranda of the tavern, telling stories and chaffing one another, Lincoln would join them, though often VISITS NIAGARA FALLS 239 but for a few minutes. He would tell a story as he passed, and while they were laughing at its climax, would slip away to his room to study. Frequently this work was carried on far into the night. "Placing a candle on a chair at the head of the bed," says Mr. Herndon, "he would study for hours. I have known him to study in this position until two o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile, I and others who chanced to occupy the same room would be safely and soundly asleep." Although he worked so late, "he was in the habit of rising earlier than his brothers of the bar," says Judge Weldon. "On such occasions he was wont to sit by the fire, having un- covered the coals, and muse, ponder, and soliloquize." But it was not only the law that occupied him. He began a serious course of general education, studying mathematics, astronomy, poetry, as regularly as a school-boy who had les- sons to recite. In the winter of 1849-50 he even joined a club of a dozen gentlemen of Springfield who had begun the study of German, the meetings of the class being held in his office. Much of Lincoln's devotion to study at this period was due to his desire to bring himself in general culture up to the men whom he had been meeting in the East. No man ever realized his own deficiencies in knowledge and experience more deeply than Abraham Lincoln, nor made a braver struggle to correct them. He often acknowledged to his friends the consciousness he had of his own limitations in the simplest matters of life. Mr. H. C. Whitney, one of his old friends, gives a pathetic example of this. Once on the circuit his friends missed him after supper. When he returned, some one asked where he had been. " Well, I have been to a little show up at the Academy," he said. "He sat before the fire," says Mr. Whitney, "and narrated all the sights of that most primitive of county shows, given 240 LIFE OF LINCOLN chiefly to school children. Next night he was missing agaip ; the show was still in town, and he stole in as before, and en- tertained us with a description of new sights — a magic lan- tern, electrical machine, etc. i told him i had seen all these sights at school. ' Yes,' said he sadly, ' I now have an ad- vantage over you, for the first time in my life seeing these things which are, of course, common to those who had, what I did not, a chance at an education when they were young.' " It was to make up for the "chance at an education" which he did not have in youth that Abraham Lincoln at forty years of age, after having earned the reputation of being one of the ablest politicians in Illinois, spent his leisure. CHAPTER XV LINCOLN ON THE CIRCUIT HIS HUMOR AND PERSUASIVE- NESS HIS MANNER OF PREPARING CASES^ EXAMINING WITNESSES,, AND ADDRESSING JURIES When in 1849 Lincoln decided to abandon politics finally and to devote himself to the law, he had been practising for thirteen years. In spite of the many interruptions elec- tioneering and office-holding had caused he was well-estab- lished. Rejoining his partner Herndon — the firm of Lin- coln and Herndon had been only a name during Lincoln's term in Washington — he took up the law with a singleness of purpose which had never before characterized his practice, Lincoln's headquarters were in Springfield, but his prac- tice was itinerant. The arrangements for the administration of justice in Illinois in the early days were suited to the con- ditions of the country, the State being divided into judicial circuits including more or less territory according to the population. To each circuit a judge was appointed, who each spring and fall travelled from county-seat to county- seat to hold court. With the judge travelled a certain num- ber of the best-known lawyers of the district. Each lawyer had, of course, a permanent office in one of the county-seats, and often at several of the others he had partners, usually young men of little experience, for whom he acted as coun- sel in special cases. This peripatetic court prevailed in Illinois until the beginning of the fifties; but for many years after, when the towns had grown so large that a clever lawyer might have enough to do in his own county, a few lawyers, (16) 241 242 LIFE OF LINCOLN Lincoln among them, who from long association felt that the circuit was their natural habitat refused to leave it. The circuit which Lincoln travelled was known as the "Eighth Judicial Circuit." It induded fifteen counties in 1845, though the territory has since been divided into more. It was about one hundred and fifty miles long by as many broad. There were no railroads in the Eighth Circuit until about 1854, and the court travelled on horseback or in car- riages. Lincoln had no horse in the early days of his prac- tice. It was his habit then to borrow one, or to join a com- pany of a half dozen or more in hiring a "three-seated spring wagon," Later he owned a turn-out of his own, which figures in nearly all the traditions of the Eighth Circuit; the horse being described as "poky" and the buggy as "rattling." There was much that was irritating and uncomfortable in the circuit-riding of the Illinois court, but there was more which was amusing to a temperament like Lincoln's. The freedom, the long days in the open air, the unexpected if trivial adventures, the meeting with wayfarers and settlers — all was an entertainment to him. He found humor and human interest on the route where his companions saw noth- ing but commonplaces. "He saw the ludicrous in an assem- blage of fowls," says H. C. Whitney, one of his fellow- itinerants, "in a man spading his garden, in a clothes-line full of clothes, in a group of boys, in a lot of pigs rooting at a mill door, in a mother duck teaching her brood to swim— in everything and anything." The sympathetic observations of these long rides furnished humorous settings for some of his best stories. If frequently on these trips he fell into sombre reveries and rode with head bent, ignoring his com- panions, generally he took part in all the frolicking which went on, joining in practical jokes, singing noisily with the rest, sometimes even playing a Jew's-harp. .When the county-seat was reached, the bench and bar TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 243 quickly settled themselves in the town tavern. It was usually a large two-story house with big rooms and long verandas. There was little exclusiveness possible in these hostelries. FACSIMILE OF MAP OF CIRCtTIT WHICH LINCOLN TRAVELLED IN PRACTISING LAW. Ordinarily judge and lawyer slept two in a bed, and three or four beds in a room. They ate at the common table with jurors, witnesses, prisoners out on bail, travelling peddlers, 244 LIFE OF LINCOLN teamsters, and laborers. The only attempt at classification on the landlord's part was seating the lawyers in a group at the head of the table. Most of them accepted this distinction complacently. Lincoln, however, seemed to be indifferent to it. One day, when he had come in and seated himself at the foot with the "fourth estate," the landlord called to him, "You're in the wrong place, Mr. Lincoln ; come up here." "Have you anything better to eat up there, Joe?" he in- quired quizzically; "if not. Til stay here." The accommodations of the taverns were often unsatis- factory — the food poorly cooked, the beds hard. Lincoln ac- cepted everything with uncomplaining good nature, though his companions habitually growled at the hardships of the life. It was not only repugnance to criticism which might hurt others, it was the indifference of one whose thoughts were always busy with problems apart from physical com- fort, who had little notion of the so-called " refinements of life," and almost no sense of luxury and ease. The judge naturally was the leading character in these nomadic groups. He received all the special consideration the democratic spirit of the inhabitants bestowed on any one, and controlled his privacy and his time to a degree. Judge David Davis, who from 1848 presided over the Eighth Cir- cuit as long as Mr. Lincoln travelled it, was a man of unusual force of character, of large learning, quick impulses, and strong prejudices. Lincoln was from the beginning of their association a favorite with Judge Davis. Unless he joined the circle which the judge formed in his room after supper, his honor was impatient and distraught, interrupting the con- versation constantly by demanding: "Where's Lincoln?" "Why don't Lincoln come?" And when Lincoln did come, the judge would draw out story after story, quieting every- body who interrupted with an impatient, "]\Ir. Lincoln's talk- ing." If anyone came to the door to see the host in the midst TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 245 of one of Lincoln's stories he would send a lawyer into the hall to see what was wanted, and, as soon as the door closed, order Lincoln to "go ahead." The appearance of the court in a town was invariably a stimulus to its social life. In all of the county-seats there were a few fine homes of which the dignity, spaciousness, and elegance still impress the traveller through Illinois. The hospitality of these houses was generous. Dinners, recep- tions, and suppers followed one another as soon as the court began. Lincoln was a favorite figure at all these gatherings. His favorite field, however, was the court. The court- houses of Illinois in which he practised were not log houses, as has been frequently taken for granted. "It is not proba- ble," says a leading member of the Illinois bar, "Mr. Lincoln ever saw a log court-house in central Illinois, where he prac- tised law, unless he saw one at Decatur, in Macon County. In a conversation between three members of the Supreme Court of Illinois, all of whom had been born in this State and had lived in it all their lives, and who were certainly familiar with the central portions of the State, all declared they had never seen a log court-house in the State." The court-houses in which Lincoln practised were stiff, old-fashioned wood or brick structures, usually capped by cupola or tow^er, and fronted by verandas with huge Doric or Ionic pillars. They were finished inside in the most uncompromising style — hard white walls, unpainted wood- work, pine floors, wooden benches. Usually they w-ere heated by huge Franklin stoves, with yards of stove-pipe running wildly through the air, searching for an exit, and threaten- ing momentarily to unjoint and tumble in sections. Few of the lawyers had offices in the town ; and a corner of the court- room, the shade of a tree in the court-yard, a sunny side of a building, were where they met their clients and transacted business. 246 ' LIFE OF LINCOLN In the courts themselves there was a certain indifference to formahty engendered l^y the primitive surroundings, which, however, the judges never ahowed to interfere with the seriousness of the work. Lincoln habitually, when not busy, whispered stories to his neighbors, frequently to the annoyance of Judge Davis. If Lincoln persisted too long, the judge would rap on the chair and exclaim : "Come, come, Mr. Lincoln, I can't stand this! There is no use trying to carry on two courts; I must adjourn mine or you yours, and I think you will have to be the one." As soon as the group had scattered, the judge would call one of the men to him and ask: "What was that Lincoln was telling?" 'T was never fined but once for contempt of court," says one of the clerks of the court in Lincoln's day. "Davis fined me five dollars. Mr. Lincoln had just come in, and leaning over my desk had told me a story so irresistibly funny that I broke out into a loud laugh. The judge called me to order in haste, saying, 'This must be stopped. Mr. Lincoln, you are constantly disturbing this court wath your stories.' Then to me, 'You may fine yourself five dollars for your disturb- ance.' I apologized, but told the judge that the story was worth the money. In a few- minutes the judge called me to him. ' What was the story Lincoln told you ? ' he asked. I told him, and he laughed aloud in spite of himself. * Remit your fine,' he ordered." The partiality of Judge Davis for Lincoln was shared by the members of the court generally. The unaffected friendli- ness and helpfulness of his nature had more to do wdth this than his wit and cleverness. If there was a new clerk in court, a stranger unused to the ways of the place, Lincoln was the first — sometimes the only one — to shake hands with him and congratulate him on his election. "No lawyer on the circuit was more unassuming than was TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 247 Mr. Lincoln," says one who practised with him. "He arro- gated to himself no superiority over anyone — not even the most obscure member of the bar. He treated everyone with that simplicity and kindness that friendly neighbors manifest in their relations with one another. He was remarkably gen- tle with young lawyers becoming permanent residents at the several county-seats in the circuit where he had practised for so many years. . . . The result was, he became the much-beloved senior member of the bar. No young lawyer ever practised in the courts Avith Mr. Lincoln who did not in all his after life have a regard for him akin to personal af- fection." "I remember with what confidence I always went to him," says Judge Lawrence Welden, who first knew Lincoln at the bar in 1854, "because I was certain he knew all about the matter and would most cheerfully help me. I can see him now, through the decaying memories of thirty years, stand- ing in the corner of the old court-room ; and as I approached him with a paper I did not understand, he said, 'Wait until I fix this plug of my "gallis" and I will pitch into that like a dog at a root.' While speaking he was busily engaged in trying to connect his suspenders with his pants by making a plug perform the function of a button." If for any reason Lincoln was absent from court, he was missed perhaps as no other man on the Eighth Circuit would have been, and his return greeted joyously. He was not less happy himself to rejoin his friends. "Ain't you glad I've come?" he would call out, as he came up to shake hands. The cases which fell to Lincoln on the Eighth Circuit were of the sort common to a new country. Litigation over bor- dering lines and deeds, over damages by wandering cattle, over broils at country festivities. Few of the cases were of large importance. When a client came to Lincoln his first 248 LIFE OF LINCOLN effort was to arrange matters, if possible, and to avoid a suit. In a few notes for a law lecture prepared about 1850, he says: "Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to com- promise 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 opportunity of being a good man. There will still be busi- ness enough. "Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it." He carried out this in his practice. "\\'ho was your guardian?" he asked a young man who came to him to com- plain that a part of the property left him had been withheld. "Enoch Kingsbury," replied the young man. "I know Mr. Kingsbury," said Lincoln, "and he is not the man to have cheated you out of a cent, and I can't take the case, and advise you to drop the subject." And it was dropped. "We shall not take your case," he said to a man wdio had shown that by a legal technicality he could win property worth six hundred dollars. "You must remember that some things legally right are not morally right. We shall not take your case, but will give you a little advice for which we will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man ; we would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way." Where he saw injustice he was quick to offer his services to the wronged party. A pleasant example of this is related by Joseph Jefferson in his "Autobiography." In 1839, Jef- ferson, then a lad of ten years, travelled through Illinois TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 249 with his father's theatrical company. After playing at Chi- cago, Quincy, Peoria and Pekin, the company went in the fall to Springfield, where the sight of the legislature tempted the elder Jefferson and his partner to remain throughout the season. But there was no theatre. Not to be daunted they built one. But hardly had they completed it before a re- ligious revival broke out in the town, and the church people turned all their influence against the theatre. So effectually did they work that a law was passed by the municipality im- posing a license which was practically prohibitory. "In the midst of our trouble," says Jefferson, "a young lawyer called on the managers. 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 he would accept no fee whether he failed or succeeded. The young lawyer began his harangue. He handled the subject with tact, skill, and humor, tracing the history of the drama from the time when Thespis acted in a cart to the stage of to-day. He illustrated his speech with a number of anecdotes, and kept the council in a roar of laughter. His good humor prevailed, and the exorbitant tax was taken off." The "young lawyer" was Lincoln. Having accepted a case, Lincoln's first object seemed to be to reduce it to its simplest elements. "If I can clean this case of technicalities, and get it properly swung to the jury, I'll win it," he told his partner Herndon one day. He began by getting at what seemed to him the pivot on which it rested. Sure of that, he cared little for anything else. He trusted very little to books; a great deal to common sense and his ideas of right and wrong. "In the make of his character Mr. Lincoln had many ele- ments essential to the successful circuit lawyer," says one of his fellow-practitioners. "He knew much of the law as writ- ten in the books, and had that knowledge ready for use at all 250 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN times. That was a valuable possession in the absence of law books, where none were obtainable on the circuit. But he had more than a knowledge of the law. He knew right and justice, and knew how to make their application to the af- fairs of every-day life. That was an element in his charac- ter that gave him power to prevail with the jury when argu- ing a case before them. Few lawyers ever had the influence with a jury that Mr. Lincoln had." When a case was clear to him and he was satisfied of its justice, he trusted to taking advantage of the developments of the trial to win. For this reason he made few notes be- forehand, rarely writing out his plan of argument. Those he left are amusingly brief ; for instance, the notes made for FACSIMILE OF A LINCOLN MEMORANDUM, From the Lincoln collection in the law offices of Messrs. Vanusem &• Potter, of Phila- delpliia. This characteristic memorandum was found by Messrs. Herudon & Weik in looking over the papers in Lincoln's law office. It was the label to a package of letters, pamphlets, and newspapers which he had tied togetlier and marked. a suit he had brought against a pension agent who had with- held as fee half of the pension he had obtained for the aged widow of a Revolutionary soldier. Lincoln was deeply in- dignant at the agent, and had resolved to win his suit. He read up the Revolutionary war afresh, and when he came to address the jury drew a harrowing picture of the private soldier's sufferings and of the trials of his separation from his wife. The notes for this argument ran as follows : "No contract — Not professional services. Unreasonable charge, — Money retained by Deft not given by Pl'fif. — Revolutionary War. — Soldier's bleeding feet. — PlTr's hus- band. — Soldier leaving home for army. — Skin deft. — Close." TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 251 Lincoln's reason for not taking notes, as he told it to H. W. Beckwith, when a student in the Danville office of Lin- coln and Lanion, was : " Notes are a bother, taking time to make, and more to hunt them up afterwards; lawyers who do so soon get the habit of referring to them so much that it confuses and tires the jury." " He relied on his well- trained memory," says Mr, Beckwith, " that recorded and indexed every passing detail. And by his skilful questions, a joke, or pat retort as the trial progressed, he steered his jury from the bayous and eddies of side issues and kept them clear of the snags and sandbars, if any were put in the real channel of his case." Much of his strength lay in his skill in examining wit- nesses. *'He had a most remarkable talent for examining witnesses," says an intimate associate; "with him it was a rare gift. It was a power to compel a witness to disclose the whole truth. Even a witness at first unfriendly, under his kindly treatment would finally become friendly, and would wish to tell nothing he could honestly avoid against him, if he could state nothing for him." He could not endure an unfair use of testimony or the misrepresentation of his own position. "In the Harrison murder case," says Mr. T. W. S. Kidd of Springfield, a crier of the court in Lincoln's day, "the prosecuting attorney stated that such a witness made a certain statement, when Mr. Lincoln rose and made such a plaintive appeal to the at- torney to correct the statement, that the attorney actually made the amende honorable, and afterwards remarked to a brother lawyer that he could deny his own child's appeal as quickly as he could Mr. Lincoln's." Sometimes under provocation he became violently angry. In the murder case referred to above, the judge ruled con- trary to his expectations, and, as Mr. Lincoln said, contrary to the decision of the Supreme Court in a similar case. "Both 252 LIFE OF LINCOLN Mr. Lincoln and Judge Logan, who was with him in the case," says Mr. Kidd, "rose to their feet quick as thought. I do think he was the most unearthly looking man I had ever seen. He roared like a lion suddenly aroused from his lair, and said and did more in ten minutes than I ever heard him say or saw him do before in an hour." He depended a great deal upon his stories in pleading, using them as illustrations which demonstrated the case more conclusively than argument could have done. Judge H. W. Beckwith of Danville, Illinois, in his "Personal Recollections of Lincoln," tells a story which is a good example of Lin- coln's way of condensing the law and the facts of an issue in a story. "A man, by vile words, first provoked and then made a bodily attack upon another. The latter in defending him- self gave the other much the worst of the encounter. The aggressor, to get even, had the one who thrashed him tried in our circuit court upon a charge of an assault and battery. Mr. Lincoln defended, and told the jury that his client was in the fix of a man who, in going along the highway with a pitchfork on his shoulder, was attacked by a fierce dog that ran out at him from a farmer's door-yard. In parrying off the brute with the fork its prongs stuck into the brute and killed him. " 'What made you kill my dog?' said the farmer. " 'What made him try to bite me?' " 'But why did you not go at him with the other end of the pitchfork?' " 'Why did he not come after me with his other end ?' At this Mr. Lincoln whirled about in his long arms an imagin- ary dog and pushed its tail end toward the jury. This was the defensive plea of 'son assault demesne' — loosely, that 'the other fellow brought on the fight.' — quickly told, and in a way the dullest mind would grasp and retain." TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 253 Mr. T. W. S. Kidd says that he once heard a lawyer op- posed to Lincoln trying to convince a jury that precedent was superior to law, and that custom made things legal in all cases. When Lincoln arose to answer him he told the jury he would argue his case in the same way. Said he : "Old 'Squire Bagly, from Menard, came into my office and said, 'Lincoln, I want your advice as a lawyer. Has a man what's been elected justice of the peace a right to issue a marriage license?' I told him he had not; v^^hen the old 'squire threw himself back in his chair very indignantly, and said : 'Lin- coln, I thought you was a lawyer. Now Bob Thomas and me had a bet on this thing, and we agreed to let you decide ; but if this is your opinion I don't want it, for I know a thunderin' sight better, for I have been 'squire now eight years and have done it all the time.' " His manner of telling stories was most effective. "When he chose to do so," writes Judge Scott, " he could place the opposite party, and his counsel too, for that matter, in a most ridiculous attitude by relating in his inimitable way a perti- nent story. That often gave him a great advantage with the jury. A young lav>-yer had brought an action in trespass to recover damages done to his client's growing crops by de- fendant's hogs. The right of action under the law of Illinois, as it was then, depended on the fact whether plaintiff's fence was sufficient to turn ordinary stock. There was some little conflict in the evidence on that question; but the weight of the testimony was decidedly in favor of plaintiff, and sus- tained beyond all doubt his cause of action. Mr. Lincoln ap- peared for defendant. There was no controversy as to the damage done by defendant's stock. The only thing in the case that could possibly admit of any discussion was the con- dition of plaintiff's fence; and as the testimony on that ques- tion seemed to be in favor of plaintiff, and as the sum in- volved was little in amount, Mr. Lincoln did not deem it nee- 254 LIFE OF LINCOLN essary to argue the case seriously, but by way of saying something in behalf of his chent he told a little story about a fence that was so crooked that when a hog went through an opening in it, invariably it came out on the same side from whence it started. His description of the confused look of the hog after several times going through the fence and still finding itself on the side from which it had started, was a humorous specimen of the best story-telling. The effect was to make plaintiff's case appear ridiculous; and while Mr. Lincoln did not attempt to apply the story to the case, the jury seemed to think it had some kind of application to the fence in controversy — otherwise he would not have told it — and shortly returned a verdict for the defendant." Those unfamiliar with his methods frequently took his stories as an effort to wring a laugh from the jury. A law- yer, a stranger to Mr. Lincoln, once expressed to General Linder the opinion that this practice of Lincoln was a waste of time. "Don't lay that flattering unction to your soul," Linder answered; "Lincoln is like Tansey's horse, he 'breaks to win.' " But it was not his stories, it was his clearness which was his strongest point. He meant that the jury should see that he was right. For this reason he never used a word which the dullest juryman could not understand. Rarely, if ever, did a Latin term creep into his arguments. A lawyer quot- ing a legal maxim one day in court, turned to Lincoln, and said: "That is so, is it not, Mr. Lincoln?" "If that's Latin," Lincoln replied, "you had better call an- other witness." His illustrations were almost always of the homeliest kind. He did not care to "go among the ancients for figures," he said. " Much of the force of his argument," writes Judge Scott, " lav in his logical statement of the facts of a case. When TRAVELLING ON THE CIRCUIT 255 he had in that way secured a clear understanding of the facts, the jury and the court would seem naturally to follow him in his conclusions as to the law of the case. His simple and natural presentation of the facts seemed to give the impres- sion that the jury were themselves making the statement. He had the happy and unusual faculty of making the jury believe they — and not he — were trying the case. Mr. Lin- coln kept himself in the background, and apparently assumed nothing more than to be an assistant counsel to the court or the jury, on whom the primary responsibility for the final decision of the case in fact rested." He rarely consulted books during a trial, lest he lose the at- tention of the jury, and if obliged to, translated their state- ments into the simplest terms. In his desire to keep his case clear he rarely argued points which seemed to him unessen- tial. "In law it is good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not," he wrote. He would thus give away point after point with an indifferent "I reckon that's so," until the point which he con- sidered pivotal was reached, and there he hung. "In making a speech," says Mr. John Hill, "Mr. Lincoln was the plainest man I ever heard. He was not a speaker but a talker. He talked to jurors and to political gatherings plain, sensible, candid talk, almost as in conversation, no ef- fort Vvhatever in oratory. But his talking had wonderful ef- fect. Honesty, candor, fairness, everything that was con- vincing, was in his manner and expressions." This candor of which Mr. Hill speaks characterized his entire conduct of a trial. "It is well understood by the pro- fession," says General Mason Brayman, "that lawyers do not read authorities favoring the opposing side. I once heard Mr. Lincoln, in the supreme court of Illinois, reading from a reported case some strong points in favor of his argument. Reading a little too far, and before becoming aware of it, he 256 LIFE OF LINCOLN plunged into an authority against himself. Pausing a mo- ment, he drew up his shoulders in a comical way, and half laughing, went on, 'There, there, may it please the court, I reckon I've scratched up a snake. But, as I'm in for it, I guess I'll read it through.' Then, in his most ingenious and matchless manner, he went on with his argument, and won his case, convincing the court that it was not much of a snake after all." CHAPTER XVI LINCOLN^S IMPORTANT LAW CASES DEFENCE OF A SLAVE GIRL THE MCCORMICK CASE THE ARMSTRONG MUR- DER CASE THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE Abraham Lincoln^s place in the legal circle of Illinois has never been clearly defined. The ordinary impression is that, though he was a faithful and trusted lawyer, he never rose to the first rank of his profession. This idea has come from imperfect information concerning his legal career. An examination of the reports of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1840, when he tried his first case before that body, to 1 86 1, when he gave up his profession to become President of the United States, shows that in this period of twenty years, broken as it was, from 1847 to 1849, by a term in Congress, and interrupted constantly, from 1854 to i860, by his labors in opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Lin- coln was engaged in nearly one hundred cases before that court, some of them of great importance. This fact shows him to have been one of the leading lawyers of his State. Between ninety and one hundred cases before the vSupreme Court of a State in twenty years is a record surpassed by but few lawyers. It was exceeded by none of Lincoln's Illinois contemporaries. Among the cases in which he was prominent and of which v/e have reports, there are several of dramatic import, viewing them, as we can now, in connection with his later life. One of the first in which he appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court involved the freedom of a negro girl called Nance. In spite of the fact that Illinois had been free (17) 257 258 LIFE OF LINCOLN since its admission as a State, many traces of slavery still remained, particularly in the southern and central parts of the State, Among the scattered slaveholders was one Nathan Cromwell of Tazewell County, who for some years had in his service a negro girl, Nance. He claimed that Nance was bound to him by indenture, and that he had the right to sell her as any other property, a right he succeeded finally in exercising. One of his neighbors, Baily by name, bought the girl ; but the purchase was conditional : Baily was to pay for his property only when he received from Cromwell title papers showing that Nance was bound to serve under the laws of the State. These papers Cromwell failed to pro- duce before his death. Later his heirs sued Baily for the purchase price. Baily employed Lincoln to defend him. The case was tried in September, 1839, and decided against Baily. Then in July, 1841, it was tried again, before the Supreme Court of the State. Lincoln proved that Nance had lived for several years in the State, that she was over twenty-one years of age, that she had declared herself to be free, and that she had even purchased goods on her own account. The list of authorities he used in the trial to prove that Nance could not be held in bondage shows that he was already familiar with both Federal and State legislation on the slavery ques- tion up to that date. He went back to the Ordinance of 1787, to show that slavery was forbidden in the Northwest Territory; he recalled the Constitution that had made the State free in 1818; he showed that by the law of nations no person can be sold in a free State. His argument convinced the court; the judgment of the lower court was overruled, and Nance was free. After Lincoln's return from Congress in 1849, ^^^ was en- gaged in some of the most important cases of the day. One of these was a contest between the Illinois Central Railroad, at that time building, and McLean County, Illinois. This / GIVGLISH (,:RAI*MAR 1| lAMUAAR hECTTJRES .; ; ^' SStAEOED iXD MIjcB nWBOVEP. * ''^ V onrosnrATXt ( V ,. J R ^l,.SS HBAi. U, U>WE» MABKCT Bm/.4 _Ji -^-^"'^^— ^-*^^— - f - ■ dibWi* 1 A. COMPSNDItnW; EXURACt,^ , A NEW SY8TEMATKK OKDSR t^PARglXi. ( JE -.V srSTEU Ot^PtSCm^ATlOX, EXF.R(iBIS n FAtt£ «V A KB7 TO THE EXEBeiSBS: ~*BTHE USE OF SCH301,S AND PalVATr LX-iK?;' lU THE KIRKHAM S GRAMMAR USED BY LINCOLN AT NEW SALEM. It is said that Lincoln learned this grammar practically by heart. He presented the booii to Ann Rutledge. After the death of Ann, it was studied by her brotlier, Robert, and is now owned by his widow, at Casselton, North Dakota. The words, "Ann M. Rutledge is now learning grammar," were written by Lincoln. The order on James Rutledge to pay Daniel P. Nelson thirty dollars and signed "A. Lincoln for D. Offutt," was pasted upon the front cover of the book liy Robert Rutledge. See pufife 66. » 1,1, IMPORTANT LAW CASES 259 road had been exempted by the legislature from all State taxation on condition that it pay perpetually into the State treasury seven per cent, of its annual gross earnings. When the line was laid in McLean County the county authorities declared that the State legislature could not excuse the rail- road company from paying county taxes; accordingly the company's property was assessed and a tax levied. If this claim of the county could be sustained, it was certain to kill the railroad; and great preparations Vv^ere made for the de- fence. The solicitor of the Illinois Central at that time was General Mason Brayman, who retained Lincoln. The case was tried at Bloomington, before the supreme court, and, largely through the efforts of Lincoln, was won for the road. According to Herndon, Lincoln charged for his services a fee of two thousand dollars. Going to Chicago he presented his bill. "Why," said the officer to whom he applied, "this is as much as a first-class lawyer would have charged." Stung by the ungrateful speech, Lincoln withdrew the bill, left the office, and at the first opportunity submitted the mat- ter to his friends. Five thousand dollars, they all agreed, was a moderate fee, considering what he had done for the road, and six leading lawyers of the State signed a paper in which they declared that such a charge would not be "un- reasonable." Lincoln then sued the road for that amount, and won his case. "He gave me my half," says Herndon; "and as much as we deprecated the avarice of great corpora- tions, we both thanked the Lord for letting the Illinois Cen- tral Railroad fall into our hands." The current version of this story names General George B. McClellan as the testy official who snubbed Lincoln when he presented the bill. This could not have been. The incident occurred in 1855; that year Captain McClellan spent in the Crimea, as one of a commission of three sent abroad to study the European military service as displayed in the Crimean 26o LIFE OF LINCOLN war. It was not until January, 1857, that McClellan re- signed his commission in the United States army to become the chief engineer, and afterwards vice-president, of the IIH- nois Central Railroad. It was when an officer of the Illinois Central, however, that McClellan first met Lincoln. "Long before the war," he says, in "McClellan's Own Story," "when vice-president of the Illinois Central Railroad, I knew Mr. Lincoln, for he was one of the counsel of the company. More than once I have been with him in out-of-the-way county-seats where some important case was being tried, and, in the lack of sleeping accommodations, have spent the night in front of a stove, listening to the unceasing flow of anec- dotes from his lips. He was never at a loss, and I could never quite make up my mind how many of them he had really heard before, and how many he invented on the spur of the moment. His stories were seldom refined, but were always to the point." It was through his legal practice that Lincoln first met still another man who was to sustain a relation of the great- est importance to him in the war. This man was Edwin M. Stanton. The meeting occurred in Cincinnati in 1855, in connection with a patent case which is famous in the legal history of the country, and in which both Lincoln and Stan- ton had been retained as counsel. So much that is false has been written of this meeting, that a full and exact statement of the circumstances has been obtained for this work from Mr. George Harding of Philadelphia, the only one of either judges or counsel in the case living at this writing. ^ "Cyrus H. McCormick owned reaping-machine patents granted in 1845 ^^i^l 1847," says Mr. Harding, "upon which he sued John M. Manny and Co. of Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Manny had obtained patents also. Manny and Co. were large manufacturers of reaping-machines under Manny's patents. McCormick contended that his patents were valid and secured to him a virtual monopoly of all practical reap- IMPORTANT LAW CASES 261 ing machines as constructed at that date. If McCormick had been successful in his contention, Manny would have been enjoined, his factory stopped, and a claim of four hundred thousand dollars damages demanded from his firm. McCor- mick's income from that monopoly would have been vastly increased. Hence the suit was very important to all parties and to the farming public. The plaintiff McCormick had re- tained Mr. E. N. Dickerson and Reverdy Johnson. The former was entrusted with the preparation of the plaintiff's case and the argument before the court on the mechanics of the case. Mr. P. H. Watson, who had procured Manny's patents, was given by Manny the entire control of the de- fendant's case. He employed Mr. George Harding to pre- pare the defence for Manny, and to argue the mechanics of the case before the court. In those times it was deemed im- portant in patent cases to employ associate counsel not spe- cially familiar with mechanical questions, but of high stand- ing in the general practice of the law, and of recognized forensic ability. If such counsel represented the defendant he urged upon the court the importance of treating the patentee as a quasi-monopolist, whose claims should be limited to the precise mechanical contributions which he had made to the art; while, on the other hand, the plaintiff's forensic counsel was expected to dwell upon the privations and labor of the patentee, and insist on a very liberal view of his claims, and to hold that defendants who had appro- priated any of his ideas should be treated as pirates. The necessity of the forensic contribution in the argument of patent cases is not now recognized. "McCormick had selected Mr. Reverdy Johnson for the forensic part of his case. Mr. Watson was in doubt as to whom to select to perform this duty for the defendants. At the suggestion of Mr. Manny, Mr. Watson wrote to Mr. Lin- coln, sending to him a retainer of five hundred dollars, and requesting him to read the testimony, which was sent to him from time to time as taken, so that if Mr. Watson afterward concluded to have him argue the case he would be prepared. Mr. Harding had urged the employment of Mr. Stanton, who was personally known to him, and who then resided at Pittsburg. 262 LIFE OF LINCOLN "With a view to determining finally who should argue the forensic part of Manny's case, Mr, Watson personally visited Springfield and conferred with Mr. Lincoln. On his way back from Springfield he called upon Mr. Stanton at Pitts- burg, and, after a conference, retained Mr. Stanton, and in- formed him distinctly that he was to make the closing argu- ment in the case. Nevertheless Mr. Lincoln was sent copies of the testimony ; he studied the testimony, and was paid for so doing, the same as Mr. Stanton. Mr. Watson considered that it would be'prudent for Mr. Lincoln to be prepared, in case of Mr. Stanton's inability, for any cause, to argue the case; so that, at the outset, Mr. Stanton was selected by Mr. Manny's direct representative to perform this duty. "When all the parties and counsel met at Cincinnati, Mr. Lincoln was first definitely informed by Mr. Watson of his determination that Mr. Stanton was to close the case for de- fendants. Mr. Lincoln was evidently disappointed at Mr. Watson's decision. Mr. Lincoln had written out his argu- ment in full. He w'as anxious to meet Mr. Reverdy Johnson in forensic contest. The case was important as to the amount in dispute, and of widespread interest to farmers. ]\Ir. Lin- coln's feelings were embittered, moreover, because the plain- tiff's counsel subsequently, in open court, of their own mo- tion, stated that they perceived that there were three counsel present for defendant, and that plaintiff had only two coun- sel present ; but they W'Cre willing to allow all three of de- fendant's counsel to speak, provided Mr. Dickerson, who had charge of the mechanical part of McCormick's case, were permitted to make two arguments, besides Mr. Johnson's argument. Mr. Watson, who had charge of defendant's case, declined this offer, because the case ultimately de- pended upon mechanical questions; and he thought that if Mr. Dickerson were allowed to open the mechanical part of the case, and then make a subsequent argument on the me- chanics, the temptation would be great to make an insuf- ficient or misleading mechanical opening of the case at first, and, after Mr. Harding had replied thereto, to make a fuller or different mechanical presentation, which could not be re- plied to by Mr. Harding. It was conceded that neither Mr. Lincoln nor Mr. Stanton was prepared to handle the me- IMPORTANT LAW CASES 263 chanics of the case either in opening or reply. In view of these facts, Mr, Watson decided that only two arguments would be made for Manny, and that Mr. Harding would open the case for defendant on the mechanical part, and Mr. Stanton would close on the general propositions of law ap- plicable to the case. Mr. Stanton said in court that per- sonally he had no desire to speak, but he agreed with Mr. Watson that only two arguments should be made for de- fendants whether he spoke or not. Mr. Lincoln, knowing Mr. Watson's wishes, insisted that Mr. Stanton should make the closing argument, and that he would not himself speak. Mr. Stanton accepted the position, and did speak, because he knew that such was the expressed wish and direction of Mr. Watson, who controlled the conduct of defendant's case. "Mr. Lincoln kindly and gracefully, but regretfully, ac- cepted the situation. He attended, and exhibited much in- terest in the case as it proceeded. He sent to Mr. Harding the written argument which he had prepared, that he might have the benefit of it before he made his opening argument ; but requested Mr. Harding not to show it to Mr. Stanton. The chagrin of Mr. Lincoln at not speaking continued, how- ever, and he felt that Mr. Stanton should have insisted on his, Mr. Lincoln's, speaking also ; while Mr. Stanton merely carried out the positive direction of his client that there should be only two arguments for defendant, and that he, Mr. Stanton, should close the case, and Mr. Harding should open the case. Mr. Lincoln expressed to Mr. Harding satis- faction at the manner in which the mechanical part of the case had been presented by him, and after Mr. Lincoln had been elected President, he showed his recollection of it by tendering Mr. Harding, of his own motion, a high position. "In regard to the personal treatment of Mr. Lincoln while in attendance at Cincinnati, it is to be borne in mind that Mr. Lincoln was known to hardly any one in Cincinnati at that date, and that Mr. Stanton was probably not impressed with the appearance of Mr. Lincoln. It is true there was no per- sonal intimacy formed between them while at Cincinnati. Mr. Lincoln was disappointed and unhappy while in Cin- cinnati, and undoubtedly did not receive the attention which he should have received. Mr. Lincoln felt all this, and par- 2&4 LIFE OF LINCOLN ticularly, but unjustly, reflected upon Mr. Stanton as the main cause. When Mr. Lincohi was nominated for Presi- dent, Mr. Stanton, hke many others in the country, sincerely doubted whether Mr. Lincoln was equal to the tremendous responsibility which he was to be called upon to assume as President. This is to be borne in mind, in view of events subsequent to the case at Cincinnati. Mr. Stanton never called upon Mr. Lincoln after he came to Washint^ton as President. Mr. Lincoln in alluding to Mr. Stanton (both before and after his election as President) did not attempt to conceal his unkind feeling towards him, which had its origin at Cincinnati. This feeling did not undergo a change until after he met I\Ir. Stanton as Secretary of War. "The occurrences narrated show how one great man may underrate his fellow man. Mr. Stanton saw at Cincinnati in Mr. Lincoln only his gaunt, rugged features, his awkward dress and carriage, and heard only his rural jokes; but Stan- ton lived to perceive in those rugged lineaments only expres- sions of nobility and loveliness of character, and to hear from his lips only wisdom, prudence, and courage, couched in lan- guage unsurpassed in literature. But above all they show the nobility of Mr. Lincoln's character in forgetting all un- kind personal feeling engendered at Cincinnati towards Mr. Stanton, and subsequently appointing him his Secretary of War. " The above was narrated by I\Ir. Harding for the main purpose of correcting the popular impression that Mr. Stan- ton, of his own motion, rode over and displaced Mr. Lincoln in the case at Cincinnati ; for the truth is that j\Ir. Stanton, in the course he pursued, was directed by his clients' repre- sentative, Mr. Watson, who believed that he was serving the best interests of his clients." Lincoln was first suggested to Mr. Manny as counsel in this case by a younger member of the firm, Mr. Ralph Emer- son, of Rockford, Illinois. Mr, Emerson, as a student of law, had been thrown much into company with ]Mr. Lincoln, and had learned to respect his judgment and ability. Indeed, it was Lincoln who was instrumental in deciding him to IMPORTANT LAW CASES 265 abandon the law. The young man had seen much in the practice of his chosen profession which seemed to him un- just, and he had begun to feel that the law was incompati- ble with his ideals. One evening, after a particularly trying day in court, he walked out with Lincoln. Suddenly turn- ing to his companion, he said : "Mr. Lincoln, I want to ask you a question. Is it possible for a man to practice law and always do by others as he would be done by?" Lincoln's head dropped on his breast, and he walked in silence for a long way; then he heaved a heavy sigh. When he finally spoke, it was of a foreign matter. "I had my answer," said Mr. Emerson, "and that walk turned the course of my life." During the trial at Cincinnati, Lincoln and Mr. Emerson were thrown much together, and Mr. Emerson's recollec- tions are particularly interesting. " As I was the sole intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln in the case, when it was decided that he should not take part in the argument, he invited me to his room to express his bitter dis- appointment ; and it was with difficulty that I persuaded him to remain as counsel during the hearing. We generally spent the afternoons together. The hearing had hardly pro- gressed two days before Mr. Lincoln expressed to me his satisfaction that he was not to take part in the argument. So many and so deep were the questions involved that he realized he had not given the subject sufficient study to have done himself justice. "The court-room, which during the first day or two was well filled, greatly thinned out as the argument proceeded day after day. But as the crowd diminished, Mr. Lincoln's interest in the case increased. He appeared entirely to forget himself, and at times, rising from his chair, walked back and forth in the open space of the court-room, as though he were in his own ofifice, pausing to listen intently as one point after another was clearly made out in our favor. He manifested such delight in countenance and unconscious action that its effect on the judges, one of whom at least already highly re- spected him, was evidently stronger than any set speech of 266 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN his could possibly have been. The impression produced on the judges was evidently that Mr, Lincoln was thoroughly convinced of the justice of our side, and anxious that we should prevail, not merely on account of his interest in his clients, but because he thought our case was just and should triumph. "The final summing up on our side was by Mr. Stanton; and though he took but about three hours in its delivery, he had devoted as many, if not more, weeks to its prepara- tion. It was very able, and ]\Ir. Lincoln was throughout the whole of it a rapt listener. Mr. Stanton closed his speech in a flight of impassioned eloquence. Then the court adjourned for the day, and Mr. Lincoln invited me to take a long walk with him. For block after block he walked rapidly forward, not saying a word, evidently deeply dejected. "At last he turned suddenly to me, exclaiming, 'Emerson, I am going home.' A pause. T am going home to study law.' " 'Why,' I exclaimed, 'Mr. Lincoln, you stand at the head of the bar in Illinois now ! What are you talking about ?' " 'Ah, yes,' he said, 'I do occupy a good position there, and I think that I can get along with the way things are done there now. But these college-trained men, who have devoted their whole lives to study, are coming West, don't you see? And they study their cases as we never do. They have got as far as Cincinnati now. They will soon be in Illinois.' Another long pause; then stopping and turning toward me, his countenance suddenly assuming that look of strong determination which those who knew him best some- times saw upon his face, he exclaimed, 'I am going home to study law ! I am as good as any of them, and when they get out to Illinois I will be ready for them.' " The fee which Lincoln received in the McCormick case, in- cluding the retainer, which was five hundred dollars — the largest retainer ever received by Lincoln — amounted to nearly two thousand dollars. Except the sum paid him by the Illinois Central Railroad it was probably the largest fee he ever received. The two sums came to him about the same IMPORTANT LAW CASES 267 time, and undoubtedly helped to tide over the rather un- fruitful period, from a financial standpoint which followed • — the period of his contest with Douglas for the Senate. Lincoln never made money. From 1850 to i860 his income averaged from two thousand to three thousand dollars a year. In the forties it was considerably less. The fee-book of Lincoln and Herndon for 1847 shows total earnings of only fifteen hundred dollars. The largest fee entered was one of one hundred dollars. There are several of fifty dol- lars, a number of twenty, more of ten, still more of five, and a few of three dollars. But Lincoln's fees were as a rule smaller than his clients expected or his fellow lawyers approved of. Mr. Abraham Brokaw of Bloomington, Illinois, tells the following story illustrating Lincoln's idea of a proper fee. One of Mr. Bro- kaw's neighbors had borrowed about $500.00 from him and given his note. When it became due the man refused to pay. Action was brought, and the sheriff levied on the property of the debtor and finally collected the entire debt; but at about that time the sheriff was in need of funds and used the money collected. When Brokaw demanded it from him he was unable to pay it and was found to be insolvent. Thereupon Brokaw employed Stephen A. Douglas to sue the sureties on the official bond of the sheriff. Douglas brought the suit and soon collected the claim. But Douglas was at that time in the midst of a campaign for Congress and the funds were used by him with the expectation of being able to pay Brokaw later. However, he neglected the matter and went to Washington without making any settlement. Brokaw, although a life-long and ardent Democrat and a great admirer of Douglas, was a thrifty German and did not propose to lose sight of his money. After fruit- lessly demanding the money from Douglas, Brokaw went to David Davis, then in general practice at Blooming- 268 LIFE OF LINCOLN ton, told him the circumstances and asked him to under- take the collection of the money from Douglas. Davis pro- tested that he could not do it, that Douglas was a personal friend and a brother lawyer and 'Democrat and it would be very disagreeable for him to have anything to do with the matter. He finally said to Brokaw, "You wait until the next term of court and Lincoln will be here. He would like noth- ing better than to have this claim for collection. I will intro- duce you to him and I have no doubt he will undertake it." Shortly after, Brokaw was presented to Lincoln, stated his case and engaged his services. Lincoln promptly wrote Douglas, still at Washington, that he had the claim for col- lection and that he must insist upon prompt payment. Doug- las, very indignant, wrote directly to Brokaw that he thought the placing of the claim in Lincoln's hands a gross outrage, that he and Brokaw were old friends and Democrats and that Brokaw ought not to place any such weapon in the hands of such an Abolitionist opponent as Lincoln and if he could not wait until Douglas returned he should at least have placed the claim for collection in the hands of a Democrat. Brokaw's thrift again controlled and he sent Douglas' letter to Lincoln. Thereupon Lincoln placed the claim in the hands of "Long" John Wentworth, then a Democratic member of Congress from Chicago. Wentworth called upon Douglas and insisted upon payment, which shortly after was made, and Brokaw at last received his money. "And what do you suppose Lincoln charged me?" Brokaw says in telling the story. After hearing a few guesses he answers, "He charged me exactly $3.50 for collecting nearly $600.00." Such charges were felt by the lawyers of the Eighth Cir- cuit, with some reason, to be purely Quixotic. They pro- tested and argued, but Lincoln went on serenely charging what he thought his services worth. Ward Lamon who was one of Lincoln's numerous circuit partners says that he and IMPORTANT LAW CASES 269 Lincoln frequently fell out on the matter of fees. On one oc- casion Lamon was particularly incensed. He had charged and received a good sized fee for a case which the two had tried together and won. When Lamon offered Lincoln his share he refused it. The fee was too large, he said, part of it must be refunded and he would not accept a cent until part of it had been refunded. Judge Davis heard of this transac- tion. He was himself a shrewd money-maker, never hesi- tating to take all he could legally get and he felt strong dis- gust at this disinterested attitude about money. Calling Lincoln to him the judge scolded roundly. "You are pau- perizing this court, Mr. Lincoln, you are ruining your fel- lows. Unless you quit this ridiculous policy, we shall all have to go to farming." But not even the ire of the bench moved Lincoln. If a fee was not paid, Lincoln did not believe in suing for it. Mr. Herndon says that he would consent to be swindled before he would contest a fee. The case of the Illinois Cen- tral railroad, however, was an exception to this rule. He was careless in accounts, never entering anything on the book. When a fee was paid to him, he simply divided the money into two parts, one of which he put into his pocket, and the other into an envelope which he labelled "Herndon's half." Lincoln's whole theory of the conduct of a lawyer in regard to money is summed up in the "notes" for a law lecture which he left among his papers : " The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client. An ex- orbitant fee should never be claimed. As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as' well as for your client. And when you lack interest in the case the 270 LIFE OF LINCOLN job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the perform- ance. Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance. Then you will feel that you are working for something, and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee note — at least not before the consideration service is performed. It leads to negligence and dishonesty — negli- gence by losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in re- fusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration to fail." If a client was poor, and Lincoln's sympathies were aroused, he not infrequently refused pay. There are a few well authenticated cases of his offering his services to those whom he believed he could help, stipulating when he did it that he would make no charge. The best known example of this is the Armstrong murder case. William, or "Duff" Armstrong, as he was generally called, was the son of Lincoln's New Salem friends, Jack and Hannah Armstrong. In August, 1857, Duff and a num- ber of his mates had joined a crowd of ruffians who had gathered on the outskirts of a camp-meeting held near Ha- vana, in Macon county. He had drunk heavily for some days, and, finally, in a broil on the night of August 29, had beaten a comrade, one Metzker, who had provoked him to a fight. That same night Metzker was hit with an ox-yoke by another drunken reveller, Norris by name. Three days later he died. Both Armstrong and Norris were arrested. Marks of two blows were on the victim, either of which might have killed him. That Norris had dealt one was proved. Did Armstrong deal the other? He claimed he had used nothing but his fists in the broil ; but both the marks on Metzker were such as must have been made by some in- strument. The theory was developed that one blow was from a slung-shot used by Armstrong, and that he and Nor- ris had acted in concert, deliberately planning to murder Metzker. Outraged by the cruelty of the deed, the whole IMPORTANT LAW CASES 27 1 countryside demanded the punishment of the prisoners. Just at the time that Armstrong was thrown into prison his father died, his last charge to his wife Hannah being, "SeU every- thing you have and clear Duff." True to her trust, Hannah engaged two lawyers of Havana, both of whom are still liv- ing, to defend her boy. Anxious lest the violence of public feeling should injure Duff's chances, the lawyers secured a change of venue to Cass county, their client remaining in prison until spring. Norris, in the meantime, was convicted, and sentenced to eight years in the penitentiary. When the lawyers and witnesses assembled in Beards- town, May, 1858, for Armstrong's trial, it happened that Lincoln was attending court in the town. At that moment he was, after Stq^hen A. Douglas, the most conspicuous man in Illinois. His future course in politics was a source of interest in the East as well as the West. The coming con- test with Douglas for the senatorship — for it was already probable that he would be the candidate in the convention which was only a month away — was causing him intense anxiety. Yet occupied as he was with his profession, and harassed by the critical political situation, he did not hesitate an instant when Hannah Armstrong came to him for advice. Going to her lawyers, he said he should like to assist them. They, of course, were glad of his aid, and he at once took the case in hand. His first care was the selection of a jury. Not knowing the neighborhood well, he could not discriminate closely as to individuals ; but he took pains, as far as he could control the choice, to have only young men chosen, believing that they would be more favorable to the prisoner. A sur- viving witness in the case estimates that the average age of the jury was not over twenty-three years. The jury empanelled, the examination of witnesses seems to have been conducted, on behalf of the defence chiefly by Lincoln, Many of the witnesses bore familiar names. Some 272 LIFE OF LINCOLN were sons of "Clary's Grove Boys," and Lincoln had known their fathers. "The witnesses were kept out of the court- room until called to testify," says William A. Douglas. "I happened to be the first witness called, and so heard the whole trial. When William Killian was called to the stand, Lincoln asked him his name. " 'William Killian,' was the reply. "'Bill Killian,' Lincoln repeated in a familiar way; 'tell me, are you a son of old Jake Killian?' " 'Yes, sir,' answered the witness. " 'Well,' said Lincoln, somewhat aside, 'you are a smart boy if you take after your dad.' " As the trial developed it became evident that there could have been no collusion between Armstrong and Norris, but there was strong evidence that Armstrong had used a slung- shot. The most damaging evidence was that of one Allen, who swore that he had seen Armstrong strike Metzker about ten or eleven o'clock in the evening. When asked how he could see, he answered that the moon shone brightly. Under Lincoln's questioning he repeated the statement until it was impossible that the jury should forget it. With Allen's testi- mony unimpeached, conviction seemed certain. Lincoln's address to the jury was full of genuine pathos. It was not as a hired attorney that he was there, he said, but to discharge a debt of friendship. "Uncle Abe," says Duff Armstrong himself, "did his best talking when he told the jury what true friends my father and mother had been to him in the early days. . . . He told how he used to go out to 'Jack' Armstrong's and stay for days ; how kind mother was to him ; and how, many a time, he had rocked me to sleep in the old cradle." But Lincoln was not relying on sympathy alone to win his case. In closing he reviewed the evidence, showing that all depended on Allen's testimony, and this he said he could IMPORTANT LAW CASES 273 prove to be false. Allen never saw Armstrong strike Metz- ker by the light of the moon, for at the hour when he said he saw the fight, between ten and eleven o'clock, the moon was not in the heavens. Then producing an almanac, he passed it to the judge and jury. The moon, which was on that night only in its first quarter, had set before midnight. This unexpected overthrow of the testimony by which Lin- coln had taken care that the jury should be most deeply im- pressed, threw them into confusion. There was a complete change of feeling. Lincoln saw it ; and as he finished his ad- dress, and the jury left the room, turning to the boy's mother, he said, "Aunt Hannah, your son will be free before sundown." Lincoln had not misread his jury. Duff Armstrong was discharged as not guilty. There has long been a story current that the dramatic in- troduction of the almanac, by which certainly the audience and jury were won, was a pure piece of trickery on Lincoln's part; that the almanac was not one of 1857, but of 1853, in which the figure three had been changed throughout to seven. The best reply to this charge of forgery is the very evident one that it was utterly unnecessary. The almanac for August, 1857, shows that the moon w^as exactly in the position where it served Lincoln's client's interests best. He did not need to forge an almanac, the one of the period being all that he could want. Another murder case in which Lincoln defended the ac- cused occurred in August, 1859. The victim was a student in his own law office, Greek Grafton. The murderer, Peachy Harrison, was the grandson of Lincoln's old political antago- nist, Peter Gartwright. Both young men were connected with the best families of the county ; the brother of one was married to the sister of the other; they had been life-long friends. In an altercation upon some political question hot (18) 274 • LIFE OF LINCOLN words were exchanged, and Harrison, beside himself, stabbed Crafton, who three days later died from the wound. The best known lawyers of the State were engaged for the case. Senator John M. Palmer and General A. McClernand were on the side of the prosecution. Among those who rep- resented the defendant were Lincoln, Herndon, Logan, and Senator Shelby M. Cullom. The tragic pathos of a case which involved, as this did, the deepest affections of almost an entire community, reached its climax in the appearance in court of the venerable Peter Cartwright. No face in Illi- nois was better known than his, no life had been spent in a more relentless war on evil. Eccentric and aggressive as he was, he was honored far and wide ; and when he arose in the witness stand, his white hair crowned with this cruel sor- row, the most indifferent spectator felt that his examination would be unbearable. It fell to Lincoln to question Cart- wright. With the rarest gentleness he began to put his ques- tions. "How long have you known the prisoner?" Cartwright's head dropped on his breast for a moment; then straightening himself, he passed his hand across his eyes and answered in a deep, quavering voice : 'T have known him since a babe, he laughed and cried on my knee." The examination ended by Lincoln drawing from the wit- ness the story of how Crafton had said to him, just before his death : "I am dying ; I will soon part with all I love on earth, and I want you to say to my slayer that I forgive him. I want to leave this earth with a forgiveness of all who have in any way injured me." This examination made a profound impression on the jury. Lincoln closed his argument by picturing the scene anew, appealing to the jury to practice the same forgiving spirit that the murdered man had shown on his death-bed. IMPORTANT LAW CASES 275 It was undoubtedly to his handling of the grandfather's evi- dence that Harrison's acquittal was due. A class of legal work which Lincoln enjoyed particularly was that in which mathematical or mechanical problems were involved. He never lost interest in his youthful pot-boiling profession of surveying, and would go out himself to make sure of boundaries if a client's case required particular in- vestigation. Indeed, he was generally recognized by his fel- low lawyers as an authority in surveying, and as late as 1859 his opinion on a disputed question was sought by a conven- tion of surveyors who had met in Springfield. One of the most interesting cases involving mechanical problems which Lincoln ever argued was that of the Rock Island Bridge. It was not, however, the calculations he used which made it striking. The case was a dramatic episode in the war long waged by the Mississippi against the plains beyond. For decades the river had been the willing burden-bearer of the West. Now, however, the railroad had come. The Rock Island road had even dared to bridge the stream to carry away the traffic which the river claimed. In May, 1856, a steamboat struck one of the piers of the bridge, and was wrecked and burned. One pier of the bridge was also destroyed. The boat owners sued the railroad com- pany. The suit was the beginning of the long and violent struggle for commercial supremacy between St. Louis and Chicago. In Chicago it was commonly believed that the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce had bribed the captain of the boat to run upon the pier ; and it was said that later, when the bridge itself was burned, the steamers gathered near and whistled for joy. The case was felt to involve the future course of western commerce ; and when it was called in Sep- tember, 1857, at Chicago, people crowded there from all over the West. Norman B. Judd, afterwards so prominent in the politics of the State, was the attorney of the road, and he en- 276 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN gaged Lincoln, among others, as counsel. Lincoln made an address to the jury which those who remember it declare to have been one of his strongest legal arguments. " The two points relied upon by the opponents of the bridge," says Judge Blodgett of Chicago, " were: "First. That the river was the great waterway for the commerce of the valley, and could not legally be obstructed by a bridge. "Second. That this particular bridge was so located with reference to the channel of the river at that point as to make it a peril to all water craft navigating the river and an un- necessary obstruction to navigation. "The first proposition had not at that time been directly passed upon by the Supreme Court of the United States, al- though the Wheeling Bridge case involved the question ; but the court had evaded a decision upon it, by holding that the Wheeling Bridge was so low as to be an unnecessary obstruc- tion to the use of the river by steamboats. The discussion of the first proposition on the part of the bridge company de- volved mainly upon Mr. Abraham Lincoln. "I listened with much interest to his argument on this point, and while I was not impressed by it as a specially elo- quent effort (as the word eloquent is generally understood), I have always considered it as one of the ablest eft'orts I ever heard from Mr. Lincoln at the bar. His illustrations were apt and forcible, his statements clear and logical, and his rea- sons in favor of the policy (and necessarily the right) to bridge the river, and thereby encourage the settlement and building up of the vast area of fertile country to the west of it, were broad and statesmanlike. "The pith of his argument was in his statement that one man had as good a right to cross a river as another had to sail up or dozvn it; that these were equal and mutual rights which must be exercised so as not to interfere with each other, like the right to cross a street or highway and the right to pass along it. From this undeniable right to cross the river he then proceeded to discuss the means for crossing. Must it always be by canoe or ferryboat? Must the products of all the boundless fertile country lying west of the river for IMPORTANT LAW CASES 277 all time be compelled to stop on its western bank, be unloaded from the cars and loaded upon a boat, and after the transit across the river, be reloaded into cars on the other side, to continue their journey east? In this connection he drew a vivid picture of the future of the great West lying beyond tlie river, and argued that the necessities of commerce de- manded that the bridges across the river be a conceded right, which the steamboat interests ought not to be allowed to successfully resist, and thereby stay the progress of develop- ment and civilization in the region to the west. *' While I cannot recall a word or sentence of the argu- ment, I well remember its effect on all who listened to it, and the decision of the court fully sustained the right to bridge so long as it did not unnecessarily obstruct navigation." All the papers in regard to the trial are supposed to have been burned in the Chicago fire of 1871, but the speech, which was reported by Congressm.an Hitt of Illinois, at that time court stenographer, was published on September 24, 1857, in the Chicago " Daily Press," afterwards united with the '' Tribune." According to this report the first part of the speech was devoted to the points Judge Blodgett outlines; the second part was given to a careful explanation of the currents of the Mississippi at the point where the bridge crossed. Lincoln succeeded in showing that had the pilot of the boat been as familiar as he ought to have been with the river, he could easily have prevented the accident. His argument was full of nice mathematical calculations clearly put, and was marked by perfect candor. Indeed, the honesty with which he ad- mitted the points made by the opposite counsel caused consid- erable alarm to some of his associates. Mrs. Norman B. Judd (Mr. Judd was the attorney of the road) says that Mr. Jo- seph B. Knox, who was also engaged with Mr. Lincoln in the defence, dmed at her house the day that Lincoln made his speech. " He sat down at the dinner table in great excite- 278 ' LIFE OF LINCOLN ment," writes Mrs. Judd, "saying, 'Lincoln has lost the case for us. The admissions he made in regard to the currents in the Mississippi at Rock Island and Moline will convince the court that a bridge at that point will always be a serious and constant detriment to navigation on the river.' 'Wait until you hear the conclusion of his speech,' replied Mr. Judd; 'you will find his admission is a strong point instead of a weak one, and on it he will found a strong argument that will satisfy you.' " And as it proved, Mr, Judd was right. The few cases briefly outlined here show something of the range of Lincoln's legal work. They show that not only his friends like Hannah Armstrong believed in his power with a jury, but that great corporations like the Illinois Central Railroad were willing to trust their affairs in his hands; that he was not only a "jury lawyer," as has been often stated, but trusted when it came to questions of law pure and sim- ple. If this study of his cases were continued, it would only be to accumulate evidence to prove that Lincoln was consid- ered by his contemporaries one of the best lawyers of Illinois. It is worth notice, too, that he made his reputation as a lawyer and tried his greatest cases before his debate with Douglas gave him a national reputation. It was in 1855 that the Illinois Central engaged him first as counsel ; in 1855 that he went to Cincinnati on the IMcCormick case; in 1857 that he tried the Rock Island Bridge case. Thus his place was won purely on his legal ability unaided by political prestige. His success came, too, in middle life. Lincoln was forty years old in 1849, when he abandoned politics definitely, as he thought, for the law. He tried his greatest cases when he was from forty-five to forty-eight. CHAPTER XVII LINCOLN RE-ENTERS POLITICS From 1849 to 1854 Abraham Lincoln gave almost his en- tire time to his profession. Politics received from him only the attention which any public spirited citizen without per- sonal ambition should give. He kept close watch upon Fed- eral, State and local affairs. He was active in the efforts made in Illinois in 185 1 to secure a more thorough party organization. In 1852 he was on the Scott electoral ticket and did some canvassing. But this was all. He was yearly becoming more absorbed in his legal work, losing more and more of his old inclination for politics, wHen in May, 1854, the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before in all his life. The Missouri Compromise was the second in that series of noble provis- ions for making new territory free territory, which liberty- loving men have wrested from the United States Congress, whenever the thirst for expansion has seized this country. The first of these was the " Ordinance of 1787," prohibiting slavery in all the great Northwest Territory. The second the Missouri Compromise, passed in 1820, was the result of a struggle to keep the Louisiana Purchase free. It pro- vided that Missouri might come in as a slave State if slavery was never allowed north of 36° 30' north latitude. The next great expansion of the United States after the Louisiana Purchase resulted from the annexation of Texas, and of the territory acquired by the Mexican War. The North v/as determined that this new territory should be 279 28o LIFE OF LINCOLN free. The South wanted it for slaves. The struggle be- tween them threatened the Union for a time, but it was adjusted by the compromise of 1850, in which, according to Mr. Lincoln's summing up, " the South got their new fugitive-slave law, and the North got California (by far the best part of our acquisition from Mexico) as a free State. The South got a provision that New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may come in with or without slavery, as they may then choose; and the North got the slave-trade abolished in the District of Columbia. The North got the western boundary of Texas thrown farther back eastward than the South desired; but, in turn, they gave Texas ten millions of dollars with which to pay her old debts." For three years matters were quiet. Then Nebraska sought territorial organization. Now by the Missouri Compromise slavery was forbidden in that section of the Union, but in spite of this fact Stephen A. Douglas, then a member of the Senate of the United States, introduced a bill to give Nebraska and Kansas the de- sired government, to which later he added an amend- ment repealing the Missouri Compromise and permitting the people who should settle in the new territories to reject or establish slavery as they should see fit. It was the passage of this bill which brought Abraham Lincoln from the court room to the stump. His friend Richard Yates was run- ning for re-election to Congress. Lincoln began to speak for him, but in accepting invitations he stipulated that it should be against the Kansas-Nebraska bill that he talk. His earnestness surprised his friends. Lincoln was coming back into politics, they said, and when Douglas, the author of the repeal, was announced to speak in Springfield in Oc- tober of 1854, they called on Lincoln to meet him. Douglas was having a serious struggle to reconcile his RE-ENTERS POLITICS 281 Illinois constituency. All the free sentiment of the State had been bitterly aroused by his part in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and when he first returned to Illinois it looked as if he would not be given even a hearing. Indeed, when he first attempted to speak in Chicago, September i, he was hooted from the platform. With every day in the State, however, he won back his friends, so great was his power over men, and he was beginning to arouse something of his old enthusiasm when he went to Springfield to speak at the annual State Fair. There was a great crowd present from all parts of the State, and Douglas spoke for three hours. When he closed it was announced that Lincoln would answer him the next day. Lincoln's friends expected him to do well in his reply, but his speech was a surprise even to those who knew him best. It was profound, finished, vigor- ous, eloquent. When had he mastered the history of the sla- very question so completely ? they asked each other. "The anti-Nebraska speech of Mr. Lincoln," said the Springfield " Journal " the next day, " was the profoundest, in our opinion that he has made in his whole life. He felt upon his soul the truths burn which he uttered, and all present felt that he was true to his own soul. His feelings once or twice swelled within, and came near stifling utterance. He quiv- ered with emotion. The whole house was as still as death. He attacked the Nebraska bill with unusual warmth and energy; and all felt 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, and the house ap- proved the glorious triumph of truth by loud and continued huzzas." The vigor and earnestness of Lincoln's speech aroused the crowd to such enthusiasm that Senator Douglas felt obliged to reply to him the next day. These speeches of October 3, 4 and 5, 1854, form really the first of the series of Lincoln- 282 LIFE OF LINCOLN Douglas Debates. They proved conclusively to the anti- Nebraska politicians in Illinois that Lincoln was to be their leader in the fight they had begun against the extension of slavery. Although the speech of October 4 was not preserved, we know from Paul Selby, at that time editor of an indepen- dent paper in Jacksonville, Illinois, which had been working hard against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, that Lincoln's speech at Springfield was practically the same as one delivered twelve days later at Peoria in reply to Douglas. Of this latter a full report was preserved. In his reply at Peoria, Lincoln began by a brief but suffi- cient resume of the efforts of the North to apply the Declara- tion of Independence to all new territory which it acquired, and failing in that to provide for the sake of peace a series of com.promises reserving as much territory as possible to freedom. He showed that the Kansas-Nebraska bill was a direct violation of one of the greatest of these solemn com- promises. This he declared was " wrong." " Wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it. This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal, for the spread of slavery, I can- not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the en- emies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many men among ourselves into an open war with the very funda- mental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest." RE-ENTERS POLITICS 283 Disavowing all " prejudice against the Southern people," he generously declared : " They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. . . I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse 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 .... 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, and there are not surplus shipping and sur- plus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. ... I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to de- nounce people upon It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South. . . . The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbidden the taking of them into Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle, and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter." Taking up the arguments by which the appeal of the ye^ Missouri Compromise was justified, he answered them one by one with clearness and a great array of facts. The chief of these arguments was that the repeal was in the interest of the " sacred right of self-government " that the people of Nebraska had a right to govern themselves as they chose, voting for or against slavery as they pleased. " The doctrine of self-government is right," Lincoln said, " absolutely and eternally riglit, but it has no just applica- tion as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that 284 LIFE OF LINCOLN whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do just what he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total, destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ' all men are created equal,' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another. " Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sar- casm, paraphrases our argument by saying : ' The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes ! ' " Well ! I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to be as good as the average of people else- where. I do not say the contrary. What I do say is that no man is good enoug'h to govern another man without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet- anchor of American republicanism." This Peoria speech, which is very long, is particularly in- teresting to students of Mr. Lincoln's speeches, because in it is found the germ of many of the arguments which he elab- orated in the next six years and used with tremendous effect. With the Peoria speech Douglas had had enough of Lin- coln as an antagonist, and he made a compact with him that neither should speak again in the campaign. It was char- acteristic of Douglas that on his way to Chicago he should stop and deliver a speech at Princeton ! But though Lincoln had temporarily withdrawn from the stump he was by no means abandoning the struggle. The iniquity of the Kansas-Nebraska bill grew greater to him every day. He meant to fight it to the end and he wanted to go where he could fight it directly. Lie became a candidate LINCOLN IN i860. From an ambrotype taken in Springfield, Illinois, on August 13, 1860, and bought by Mr. AVilliam H. Lambert from Mr. W. P. Brown of Philadelphia. Mr. Brown writes of the portrait: " This picture, along with another one of the same kind, was presented by President Lincoln to my father, J. Henry Brown, deceased (min- iature artist), after he had finished painting Lincoln's picture on ivory, at Sprirg- field, Illinois. The commission was given my father by Judge Read (John M. Read of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania), immediately after Lincoln's nomi- nation for the presidency. One of the ambrotypes I sold to the Historical Society of Boston, Massachusetts, and it is now in their possession." The miniature re- ferred to is now owned by Mr. Robert T. Lincoln. It was engraved by Samuel Sartain, and circulated widely before the inauguration. After Mr. Lincoln grew a beard, Sartain put a beard on his plate, and the engraving continued to sell ex- tensively. RE-ENTERS POLITICS 285 for the General Assembly of Illinois from Sangamon County and was elected by a large majority in November. A little later he saw an opportunity for a larger position. Al- though Illinois was strongly Democratic, the revolt against the Nebraska bill had driven from the party a number of men, members of the Legislature who had signified their determination to vote only for an Anti-Nebraska Senator. This gave the Whigs a chance, and several candidates of- fered themselves — among them Lincoln. Resigning from the Legislature (members of the Legislature could not be- come candidates for the senatorship), he began his elec- tioneering in the frank Western style of those days by re- questing his friends to support him. " I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator," he wrote his friend Gillespie, "' and, if I could have your support, my chances would be reasonably good. But I know, and acknowledge, that you have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a candidate yourself. If, however, you are not, then I should like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members, down your way." He sent a large number of similar letters to friends, and by the first of January, when the Legislature re-assembled, he felt his chances of election were good. " I have more committals than any other man," he wrote his friend Wash- burne. Nevertheless he failed of the election. Just how he explained to Washburne early in February : "I began with 44 votes, Shields (Democratic) 41, and Trumbull (Anti-Nebraska) 5, — yet Trumbull was elected. In fact, 47 different members voted for me, — getting three new ones on the second ballot, and losing four old ones. How came my 47 to yield to Trumbull's 5? It was Gov- 286 LIFE OF LINCOLN ernor Matteson's work. He has been secretly a candidate ever since (before, even) the fall election. All the members round about the canal were Anti-Nebraska, but were never- theless nearly all Democrats and old personal friends of his. His plan was to privately impress them with the belief that he was as good Anti-Nebraska as any one else — at least could be secured to be so by instructions, which could be easily passed " The Nebraska men, of course, were not for Matteson ; but when they found they could elect no avowed Nebraska man, they tardily determined to let him get whomever of our men he could, by whatever means he could, and ask him no questions The Nebraska men very confident of the election of Mat- teson, though denying that he was a candidate, and we very much believing also that they would elect him. But they wanted first to make a show of good faith to Shields by voting for him a few times, and our secret Matteson men also wanted to make a show of good faith by voting with us a few times. So we led off. On the seventh ballot, I think, the sip-nal was given to the Nebraska men to turn to Matte- son, which they acted on to a man, with one exception. . Next ballot the remaining Nebraska man and one pretended Anti went over 'to 'him, giving him 46. The next still an- other, giving him 47, wanting onl)^ three of an election. In the meantime our friends, with a view of detaining our ex- pected bolters, had been turning from me to Trumbull till he had risen to 35 and I had been reduced to 15. These would never desert me except by my direction; but I became satis- fied that if we could prevent Matteson's election one or two ballots more, we could not possibly do so a single ballot after my friends should begin to return to me from Trum- bull. So I determined to strike at once, and accordingly ad- vised my remaining friends to go for him, which they did and elected him on the tenth ballot. " Such is the way the thing was done. I think you would have done the same under the circumstances I could have headed off every combination and been elected, had it not been for Matteson's double game — and his defeat now gives me more pleasure than my own gives me pain. RE-ENTERS POLITICS 287 On the whole, it is perhaps as well for our general cause that Trumbull is elected. The Nebraska men confess that they hate it worse than anything that could have happened. It is a great consolation to see them worse whipped than I am." Not only had Lincoln made the leading orator of the Nebraska cause cry enough, he had by his quick wit and his devotion to the cause secured an Anti-Nebraska Senator for the State. Although for the time being campaigning was over, Lin- coln by no means dropped the subject. The struggle between North and South over the settlement of Kansas grew every day more bitter. Violence was beginning, and it was evident that if the people of the new territory should vote to make the State free it would be impossible to enforce the decision without bloodshed. Lincoln watched the developments with a growing determination never to submit to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He would advocate its restoration so long as Kansas remained a territory, and if it ever sought to enter the Union as a slave State he would oppose it. He discussed the subject incessantly with his friends as he travel- led the circuit; and wrestled with it day and night in soli- tude. A new conviction was gradually growing upon him. He had long held that slavery was wrong but that it could not be touched in the State where it was recognized by the Constitution; all that the free States could require, in his judgment, was that no new territory should be opened to slavery. He held that all compromises adjusting difficulties between the North and South on the slavery question were as sacred as the Constitution. Now he saw the most important of them all violated. Was it possible to devise a compromise which would settle forever the conflicting interests? He turned over the question continually. Judge T. Lyle Dickey of Illinois once told the Hon. William Pitt Kellogg that 288 LIFE OF LINCOLN when the excitement over the Kansas-Nebraska bill first broke out, he was with Lincoln and several friends at- tending court. One evening several persons, including him- self and Lincoln, were discussing the slavery question. Judge Dickey contended that slavery was an institution, which tlie Constitution recognized, and which could not be disturbed. Lincoln argued that ultimately slavery must become extinct. " After a while," said Judge Dickey, " we went upstairs to bed. There were two beds in our room, and I remember that Lincoln sat up in his night shirt on the edge of the bed arguing the point with me. At last, we went to sleep. Early in the morning I woke up and there was Lincoln half sitting up in bed. * Dickey,' he said, * I tell you this nation cannot exist half slave and half free. ' Oh, Lincoln,' said I, * go to sleep.' " As the months went on this idea took deeper root, and in August, 1855, we find it expressed in a letter to George Robertson of Kentucky : " Our political problem now is, * Can we as a nation continue together permanently — for- ever — half slave and half free? ' The problem is too mighty for me — may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution." Not only was he beginning to see that the Union could not exist " divided against itself," he was beginning to see that in order to fight effectively against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the admission of Kansas as a slave State, he mig'ht be obliged to abandon the Whigs. All his life he had been a loyal Henry Clay Whig, ardent in his devotion to the party, sincerely attached to its principles. His friends were of that party, and never had a man's party friends been more willing than his to aid his ambition. But the Whigs were afraid of the Anti-Nebraska agitation. Was he being forced from his party? He hardly knew. "I think I am a Whig," he wrote his friend Speed, who had inquired where he stood, " but others say there are no RE-ENTERS POLITICS 289 Whigs and that I am an AboHtionist." This was in August, 1855. The events of the next few months showed him that he must stand by the body of men of all parties — Whig, Democratic, Abolition, Free Soil — who opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and were slowly uniting into the new Republican party to fight it. The first decisive step to organize these elements in Illi- nois was an editorial convention held on February 22, 1856, at Decatur. One of the editors interested, Paul Selby, re- lates the history of the convention in an unpublished manu- script on the " Formation of the Republican Party in Illi- nois," from which the following account is quoted : " This movement, first suggested by ' The Morgan Jour- nal ' at Jacksonville, having received the approval of a con- siderable number of the Anti-Nebraska papers of the State, resulted in the issue of the following call : "" '' Editorial Convention. — All editors in Illinois opposed to the Nebraska bill are requested to meet in Convention at Decatur, Illinois, on the 22d of February next, for the pur- pose of making arrangements for organizing the Anti-Ne- braska forces in this State for the coming contest. All edi- tors favoring the movement will please forward a copy of their paper containing their approval to the office of the Illinois ' State Chronicle,' Decatur. " Twenty-five papers indorsed the call, but on the day of the meeting only about half that number of editors put in an appearance. One reason for the small number was the fact that, on the night before a heavy snow-storm had fallen througliout the State, obstructing the passage of trains on the two railroads centering at Decatur. The meeting was held in the parlor of the ' Cassell House ' — afterwards the ' Oglesby House,' now called the ' St. Nicholas Hotel.' Those present and participating in the opening proceedings, as shown by the official report, were: E. C. Dougherty, 'Register,' Rockford; Charles Faxon, ' Post.' Princeton; A. N. Ford, * Gazette,' Lacon ; Thomas J. Pickett, ' Republi- can,' Peoria; Virgil Y. Ralston, 'Whig,' Ouincy; Charles (19) 290 LIFE OF LINCOLN H. Ray, ' Tribune,' Chicago ; George Schneider, ' Staats Zeitung,' Chicago; Paul Sclby, 'Journal,' Jacksonville; B. F. Shaw, 'Telegraph,' Dixon; W. J. Usrey, "Chronicle,' Decatur, and O. P. Wharton, ' Ackcrtiser,' Rock Island. In the organization Paul Sclby was made Chairman and W. J. Usrey, Secretary, while Messrs. Ralston, Ray, Wharton, Dougherty, Prickett and Schneider constituted a Committee on Resolutions. The platform adopted as ' a basis of com- mon and concerted action ' among the members of the new organization, embraced a declaration of principles that would be regarded in this day as most conservative Repub- licanism, recognizing ' The legal rights of the slave States to hold and enjoy their property in slaves under their State laws; ' reaffirming the principles of the Declaration of In- dependence, with its correlative doctrine that ' Freedom is national and slavery sectional;' declaring assumption of the right to extend slavery on the plea that it is essential to the security of the institution * an invasion of our rights ' which 'must be resisted;' demanding the restoration of the ]\Iis- souri Compromise and ' the restriction of slavery to its present authorized limits;' advocating the maintenance of ' the naturalization laws as they are ' and favoring ' the widest tolerance in matters of religion and faith ' (a rebuke to Know-Nothingism) ; pledging resistance to assaults upon the common schoool system, and closing with a demand for reformation in the administration of the State Government as ' second only in importance to the question of slavery itself.' Mr. Lincoln was present in Decatur during the day, and, although he did not take part in the pul^lic deliberations of the convention, he was in close conference with the Com- mittee on Resolutions, and the impress of his hand is seen in the character of the platform adopted. Messrs. Ray and Schneider, of the Chicago ' Press,' were also influential fac- tors in shaping the declaration of principles with which the new party in Illinois started on its long career of almost un- interrupted success. " The day's proceedings ended with a complimentary ban- quet given to the editors at the same hotel by the citizens of Decatur. Speeches were made in response to toasts by Mr. Lincoln, R. J. Oglesby (afterwards Major-General of RE-ENTERS POLITICS 291 Volunteers and three times Governor of Illinois — ^then a young lawyer of Decatur), Ray of the Chicago 'Tribune,' Ralston of the Quincy 'Whig' and others among the editors. In the course of his speech, referring to a movement which some of the editors present had inaugurated to make him the Anti-Nebraska candidate for Governor at the ensuing election, Mr. Lincoln spoke (in substance) as follows: 'I wish to say why I should not be a candidate. If I should be chosen, the Democrats would say it was nothing more tlian an attempt to resurrect the dead body of the old Whig party. I would secure the vote of that party and no more, and our defeat will follow as a matter of course. But I can suggest a name that will secure not only the old Wliig vote, but enough Anti-Nebraska Democrats to give us the victory. That man is Colonel William H. Bissell.' " Here IMr. Lincoln again displayed his characteristic un- selfishness and sagacity. That he would, at that time, have regarded an election to the Governorship of the great State of Illinois as an honor not worth contending for, will scarcely be presumed. He was seeking more important results, how- ever, in the interest of freedom and good government — the \^ ending of the political chaos that had prevailed for the past two years and the consolidation of the forces opposed to slavery extension in a compact political organization. Bis- sell had been an officer in the Mexican War with a good record; had afterwards, as a member of Congress from the Belleville District, opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and had refused to be brow-beaten by Jefferson Davis into the retraction of statements he had made on the floor of Con- gress. As will appear later, he was nominated and Lincoln's judgment vindicated by his election and the unification of the elements which afterwards composed the Republican party. " One of the last acts of the editorial convention was the appointment of a State Central Committee, consisting of one member for each Congressional District and two for the State at large. Some of the names were suggested by Mr. Lincoln, while the others received his approval. . . . A supplementary resolution recommende'd the holding of a State Convention at Bloomington, on the 29th of May fol- 292 LIFE OF LINCOLN lowing", and requested the committee just appointed to issue the necessary call " It is a coincidence of some interest that, on the day the Illinois editors were in session at Pecatur a convention of representatives from different States, with a similar ohject in view for the country at large, was in session at Pittsburg, Pa. The latter was presided over by the venerable Francis P. Blair, of Maryland, while among its most prominent members appear such names as those of Governor E. D. Morgan of New York, Horace Greeley, Preston King, David Wilmot, Oliver P. Morton, Joshua R. Giddings, Zachariah Chandler and many others of national reputation. A National Committee there appointed called the first Na- tional Convention of the Republican party, held at Phila- delphia on the 17th of June." In the interval between the Decatur meeting and the Bloomington Convention called for May 29, the excitement in the county over Kansas grew almost to a frenzy. The new State was in the hands of a pro-slavery mob, her Gov- ernor a prisoner, her capital in ruins, her voters intimidated. The newspapers were full of accounts of the attack on Sum- ner in tlie United States Senate by Brooks. One of the very men who had been expected to be a leader in the Bloomington Convention, Paul Selby, was lying at home prostrated by a cowardly blow from a political opponent. Little wonder then that when the Convention met its mem- bers were resolved to take radical action. The convention was opened with John M. Palmer, afterwards United States Senator, in its chair, and in a very short time it had adopted a platform, appointed delegates to the National Convention, nominated a State ticket, completed, in short, all the work of organizing the Republican Party in Illinois. After this work of organizing and nominating was finished, there was a call for speeches. The convention felt the need of some powerful amalgamating force which would wield its dis- RE-ENTERS POLITICS 293 cordant elements. In spite of the best intentions of the mem- bers, their most manful efforts, they knew in their hearts that they were still political enemies, that the Whig was still a Whig, the Democrat a Democrat, the Abolitionist an Aboli- tionist. Man after man was called to the platform and spoke without producing any marked effect, when suddenly there was a call raised of a name not on the program — '' Lin- coln " — " Lincoln " — '' give us Lincoln." The crowd took it up and made the hall ring until a tall figure rose in the back of the audience and slowly strode down the aisle. As he turned to his audience there came gradually a great change upon his face. " There was an expression of in- tense emotion," Judge Scott, of Bloomington, once told the author. " It was the emotion of a great soul. Even in stature he seemed greater. He seemed to realize it was a crisis in his life." Lincoln, in fact, had come to the parting of the ways in his political life, to the moment when he must publicly break with his party. For two years he had tried to fight slavery extension under the name of a Whig. He had found it could not be done, and now in spite of the efforts of his conservative friends who 'had vainly tried to keep him away from the Bloomington Convention, he was facing that con- vention, was openly acknowledging that henceforth he worked with the Republican Party. Lincoln's extraordinary human insight and sympathy told him as he looked at his audience that what this body of splendid, earnest, but groping men needed was to feel that they had undertaken a cause of such transcendent value that beside it all previous alliances, ambitions and duties were as nothing. If he could make them see the triviality of their differences as compared with the tremendous principle of the new party, he was certain they would go forth Republicans in spirit as well as in name. 294 LIFE OF LINCOLN He began his speech, then, deeply moved, and with a pro- found sense of the importance of the moment. At first he spoke slowly and haltingly, but gra'dually he grew in force and intensity until his hearers arose from their chairs and with pale faces and quivering lips pressed unconsciously to- wards him. Starting from the back of the liroad platform on which he stood, his hands on his hips, he slowly advanced towards the front, his eyes blazing, his face white with pas- sion, his voice resonant with the force of his conviction. As he advanced he seemed to his audience fairly to grow, and when at the end of a period he stood at the front line of the stage, hands still on the hips, head back, raised on his tip toes, he seemed like a giant inspired. *' At that moment he was the handsomest man I ever saw," Judge Scott de- clared. So powerful was his effect on his audience that men and women wept as they cheered and children there that night still remember the scene, though at the time they understood nothing of its meaning. As he went on there came upon the convention the very emotion he sought to arouse. " Every one in that before incongruous assembly came to feel as one man, to think as one man and to purpose and re- solve as one man," says one of his auditors. He liad made every man of them pure Republican. He did something more. The indignation which the outrages in Kansas and througl'iout the country had aroused was uncontrolled. Men talked passionately of war. It was at this meeting that Lin- coln, after firing his hearers by an expression which became a watchword of the campaign, " We won't go out of the Union and you shan't," poured oil on the wrath of the Illi- nois opponents of the Nebraska bill by advising " ballots, not bullets." Nothing illustrates better the extraordinary power of Lincoln's speech at Bloomington than the way he stirred up RE-ENTERS POLITICS 295 the newspaper reporters. It was before the stenographer had become accHmated in IlHnois, thoug'h long-hand re- ports were regularly taken. Of course, all the leading papers of the State leaning towards the new party, had reporters at the convention. Among these was Mr. Joseph Medill. " It was my journalistic duty," says Mr. Medill, " though a delegate to the convention, to make a ' long-hand ' report of the speeches delivered for the Chicago ' Tribune.' I did make a few paragraphs of what Lincoln said in the first eight or ten minutes, but I became so absorbed in his mag- netic oratory that I forgot myself and ceased to take notes; and joined with the convention in cheering and stamping and clapping to the end of his speech. " I well remember that after Lincoln sat down and calm had succeeded the tempest, I waked out of a sort of hypnotic trance, and then thought of my report for the ' Tribune.' There was nothing written but an abbreviated introduc- tion. " It was some sort of satisfaction to find that I had not been ' scooped,' as all the newspaper men present had been equally carried away by the excitement caused by the won- derful oration and had made no report or sketch of the speech." A number of Lincoln's friends, young lawyers, most of them, were accustomed to taking notes of speeches, and as usual sharpened their pencils as he began. " I attempted for about fifteen minutes," saj^s Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, " as was usual with me then to take notes, but at the end of that time I threw pen and paper away and lived only in the inspiration of the hour." The result of this ex- citement was that when the convention was over there was no reporter present who had anything for his newspaper. They all went home and wrote burning editorials about the speech and its great principle, but as to reproducing it they could not. Men came to talk of it all over Illinois. They 296 LIFE OF LINCOLN realized that it had been a purifying fire for the party, but as to what it contained no one could say. Gradually it be- came known as Lincoln's " lost speech." From the very mystery of it its reputation grew greater as time went on. But though the convention so nearly to a man lost its head, there was at least one auditor who had enough control to pursue his usual habit of making notes of the speeches he heard. This was a young lawyer on the same circuit as Lincoln, ]\Ir. LL C. Whitney. For some three weeks be- fore the convention Lincoln and W'hitney had been attend- ing court at Danville. They had discussed the political situation in the State carefully, and to Whitney Lincoln had stated his convictions and determinations. In a way Whit- ney had absorbed Lincoln's speech beforehand, as indeed any one must have done who was with Lincoln when he was pre- paring an address, it being his habit to discuss points and to repeat them aloud indifferent to who heard him. Whitney had gone to the convention intending to make notes, know- ing, as he did, that Lincoln had not written out what he was going to say. Fortunately he had a cool enough head to keep to his purpose. He made his notes, and on returning to Judge Davis's home in Bloomington, where he, with Lin- coln and one or two others, were staying, he enlarged them •\Vhile the others discussed the speech. These notes Whitney kept for many years, always intending to write them out, but never attending to it until the author, in 1896, learned that he had them and urged 'him to expand them. This Mr. Whitney did, and the speech was first published in " McCIure's Magazine " for September, 1896. Mr. Whitney does not claim that he has made a full report. He does claim that the argument is correct and that in many cases the expressions are exact. A few quotations will show any one familiar with Lincoln's speeches that Mr. Whitney has caught much of their style, for instance, the following : RE-ENTERS POLITICS 297 " We come — we are here assembled together — to protest as well as we can against a great wrong, and to take meas- ures, as well as we now can, to make that v/rong right ; to place the nation, as far as it may be possible now, as it was before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and the plain way to do this is to restore the Compromise, and to demand and determine that Kansas shall be free! While we affirm, and reaffirm, if necessary, our devotions to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, let our practical work here be limited to the above. We know that there is not a perfect agreement of sentiment here on the public questions which might be rightfully considered in this convention, and that the indignation which we all must feel cannot be helped; but all of us must give up something for the good of the cause. There is one desire which is uppermost in the mind, one wish common to us all — to which no dissent will be made; and I counsel you earnestly to bury all resentment, to sink all personal feeling, make all things work to a com- mon purpose in which we are united and agreed about, and which all present will agree is absolutely ncessary — which i}iust be done by any rightful mode if there be such : Slavery must be kept out of Kansas! The test — the pinch — is rig-ht there. If we lose Kansas to freedom., an example will be set which will prove fatal to freedom in the end. We, there- fore, in the language of the Bible, must ' lay the axe to the root of the tree.' Temporizing will not do longer; now is the time for decision — for firm, persistent, resolute ac- tion. "We have made a good beginning here to-day. As our Methodist friends would say, ' I feel it is good to be here.' While extremists may find some fault with the moderation of our platform, they should remember that ' the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift.' In grave emergencies, moderation is generally safer than radicalism; and as this struggle is likely to be long and earnest, we must not, by our action, repel any who are in sympathy with us in the main, but rather win all that we can to our standard. 298 LIFE OF LINCOLN We must not belittle nor overlook the facts of our condition — that we are new and comparatively weak, while our enemies are entrenched and relatively strong. They have the administration and the political power ; and, right or wrong, at present they have the numbers. Our friends who urge an appeal to arms with so much force and eloquence, should recollect that the government is arrayed against us, and that the numbers are now arrayed against us as well; or, to state it nearer to the truth, they are not yet expressly and afiirmatively for us; and we should repel friends rather than gain them by anything savoring of revolutionary methods. As it now stands, we must appeal to the sober sense and patriotism of the people. We will make converts day by day; we will grow strong by calmness and mode- ration; we will grow strong by the violence and injustice of our adversaries. And, unless truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the majority after a wdiile, and then the revolution which we will accomplish will be none the less radical from being the result of pacific meas- ures. The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle. Slavery is a violation of the eternal right. We have tempo- rized with it from the necessities of our condition, but as sure as God reigns and school children read, that black FOUL LIE CAN NEVER BE CONSECRATED INTO God's HAL- LOWED TRUTH ! • ••••••• " I will not say that we may not sooner or later be com- pelled to meet force by force; but the time has not yet come, and if we are true to ourselves, may never come. Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. There- fore, let the legions of slavery use bullets; but let us wait patiently till November, and fire ballots at them in return; and by that peaceful policy, I believe we shall ultimately win. " Did you ever, my friends, seriously reflect upon the speed with which we are tending downwards? Within the memory of men now present the leading statesmen of Virginia could make genuine, red-hot abolitionist speeches RE-ENTERS POLITICS 299 in old Virginia; and, as I have said, now even in ' free Kansas ' it is a crime to declare that it is ' free Kansas.' The very sentiments that I and others have jtist uttered, would entitle us, and each of us, to the ignominy and se- clusion of a dungeon; and yet I suppose that, like Paul, we were ' free born.' But if this thing is allowed to continue, it will be but one step further to impress the same rule in Illinois. "The conclusion of all is, that we must restore the Mis- souri Compromise. We must highly resolve that Kansas must be free! We must reinstate the birthday promise of the Republic; we must reaffirm the Declaration of Inde- pendence; we must make good in essence as well as in form Madison's avowal that ' the word slave ought not to ap- pear in the Constitution; ' and we must even go further, and decree that only local law, and not that time-honored instrument, shall shelter a slave-holder. We must make this a land of liberty in fact, as it is in name. But in seeking to attain these results — so indispensable if the liberty which is our pride and boast shall endure — we will be loyal to the Constitution and to the ' flag of our Union,' and no matter what our grievance — even though Kansas shall come in as a slave State ; and no matter what theirs — even if we shall restore the Compromise — We will say to the Southern DisuNiONisTs, We won't go out of the Union^ and YOU SHAN'T! ! ! CHAPTER XVIII THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES " The greatest speech ever made in Illinois, and it puts Lincoln on the track for the Presidency," was the comment made by enthusiastic Republicans on Lincoln's speech be- fore the Bloomington Convention. Conscious that it was he who had put the breath of life into their organization, the party instinctively turned to him as its leader. The effect of this local recognition wae at once perceptible in the national organization. Less than three weeks after the delivery of the Bloomington speech, the national conven- tion of the Republican party met in Philadelphia June 17, to nominate candidates for the presidency and vice- presidency. Lincoln's name was the second proposed for the latter office, and on the first ballot he received one hun- dred and ten votes. The news reached him at Urbana, 111., where he was attending court, one of his companions read- ing from a daily paper just received from Chicago, the result of the ballot. The simple name Lincoln was given, without the name of the man's State. Lincoln said indif- ferently that he did not suppose it could be himself; and added that there was " another great man "of the name, a man from Massachusetts. The next day, however, he knew that it was himself to whom the convention had given so strong an endorsement. He knew also that the ticket chosen was Fremont and Dayton. The campaign of the following summer and fall was one of intense activity for Lincoln. In Illinois and the neigh- boring States he made over fifty speeches, only fragments .•?oo THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 301 of which have been preserved. One of the first important ones was delivered on July 4, 1856, at a great mass meet- ing at Princeton, the home of the Lovejoys and the Bry- ants. The people were still irritated by the outrages in Kansas and by the attack on Sumner in the Senate, and the temptation to deliver a stirring and indignant oration must have been strong. Lincoln's speech was, however, a fine example of political wisdom, an historical argument ad- mirably calculated to convince his auditors that they were right in their opposition to slavery extension, but so con- trolled and sane that it would stir no impulsive radical to violence. There probably was not uttered in the United States on that critical 4th of July, 1856, when the very foundation of the government was in dispute and the day itself seemed a mockery, a cooler, more logical speech than this by the man who, a month before, had driven a con- vention so nearly mad that the very reporters had forgotten to make notes. And the temper of this Princeton speech Lincoln kept throughout the campaign. In spite of the valiant struggle of the Republicans, Bu- chanan was elected; but Lincoln was in no way discour- aged. The Republicans had polled 1,341,264 votes in the country. In Illinois, they had given Fremont nearly 100,- 000 votes, and they had elected their candidate for gov- ernor. General Bissell. Lincoln turned from arguments to encouragement and good counsel. " All of us," he said at a Republican banquet in Chicago, a few weeks after the election, " who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are a majority of four hundred thousand. But in the late contest we were divided between Fremont and Fillmore. Can we not come together for the future? Let every one who really believes and is re- solved that free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the last con- 302 LIFE OF LINCOLN test he has done only what he thought best — let every such one have charity to believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the real issue let us reinaugurate the good old ' central idea ' of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us; God is with us. We shall again be able, not to declare that ' all States as States are equal,' nor yet that ' all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew the broader, better declaration, includ- ing both these and much more, that ' all men are created equal' " The spring of 1857 gave Lincoln a new line of argu- ment. Buchanan was scarcely in the Presidential chair before the Supreme Court, in the decision of the Dred Scott case, declared that a negro could not sue in the United States courts and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the Territories. This decision was such an evident ad- vance of the slave power that there was a violent uproar in the North. Douglas went at once to Illinois to calm his con- stituents. " What," he cried, " oppose the Supreme Court ! is it not sacred? To resist it is anarchy." Lincoln met him fairly on the issue in a speech at Spring- field in June, 1857. " We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience to and respect for the judiciial department of government. . . . But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to it. . . . If this important decision had been made by the unani- mous concurrence of the judges, and without any ap- parent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal pub- lic expectation and with the steady practice of the de- partments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or if, wanting in some of these, it had been before THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 303 the court more than once, and liad there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, per- haps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespect- ful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country." Let Douglas cry " awful," " anarchy," " revolution," as much as he would, Lincoln's arguments against the Dred Scott decision appealed to common sense and won him commendation all over the country. Even the radical lead- ers of the party in the East — Seward, Sumner, Theodore Parker — began to notice him, to read his speeches, to con- sider his arguments. With every month of 1857 Lincoln grew stronger, and his election in Illinois as United States senatorial candidate in 1858 against Douglas would have been insured if Douglas had not suddenly broken with Buchanan and his party in a way which won him the hearty sympathy and respect of a large part of the Republicans of the North. By a fla- grantly unfair vote the pro-slavery leaders of Kansas had secured the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution allow- ing slavery in the State. President Buchanan urged Con- gress to admit Kansas with her bogus Constitution. Doug- las, who would not sanction so base an injustice, opposed the measure, voting with the Republicans steadily against the admission. The Buchananists, outraged at what they called " Douglas's apostasy," broke with him. Then it was that a part of the Republican party, notably Horace Greeley at the head of the New York " Tribune," struck by the boldness and nobility of Douglas's opposition, began to hope to win him over from the Democrats to the Repub- licans. Their first step was to counsel the leaders of their 304 LIFE OF LINCOLN party in Illinois to put up no candidate against Douglas for the United States senatorship in 1858. Lincoln saw this change on the part of the Republican leaders with dismay. " Greeley is' not doing me right," he said. " . . . I am a true Republican, and have been tried already in the hottest part of the anti-slavery fight; and yet I find him taking up Douglas, a veritable dodger, — once a tool of the South, now its enemy, — and pushing him to the front." He grew so restless over the returning popu- larity of Douglas among the Republicans that Herndon, his law-partner, determined to go East to find out the real feel- ing of the Eastern leaders towards Lincoln. Herndon had, for a long time, been in correspondence with the leading abolitionists and had no difficulty in getting interviews. The returns he brought back from his canvass were not altogether reassuring. Seward, Sumner, Phillips, Garrison, Beecher, Theodore Parker, all spoke favorably of Lincoln, and Seward sent him word that the Republicans would never take up so slippery a quantity as Douglas had proved himself. But Greeley — the all-important Greeley — was lukewarm. " The Republican standard is too high," he told Herndon. " We want something practical. . . . Douglas is a brave man. Forget the past and sustain the righteous." " Good God, righteous, eh ! " groaned Hern- don in his letter to Lincoln. But though the encouragement which came to Lincoln from the East in the spring of 1858 was meagre, that which came from Illinois was abundant. There the Republicans supported him in whole-hearted devotion. In June, the State convention, meeting in Springfield to nominate its candidate for Senator, declared that Abraham Lincoln was its Urst and only choke as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas. The press was jubilant. " Unanimity is a weak word," wrote the editor of the Bloomington " Pantagraph," " to THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 305 express the universal and intense feeling of the convention. Lincoln! Lincoln!! LINCOLN!!! was the cry every- where, whenever the senatorship was alluded to. Delegates from Chicago and from Cairo, from the Wabash and the Illinois, from the north, the center, and the south, were alike fierce with enthusiasm, whenever that loved name was breathed. Enemies at home and misjudging friends abroad, who have looked for dissension among us on the question of the senatorship, will please take notice that our nomination is a unanimous one; and that, in the event of a Republican majority in the next Legislature, no other name than Lin- coln's will be mentioned, or thought of, by a solitary Repub- lican legislator. One little incident in the convention was a pleasing illustration of the universality of the Lincoln senti- ment. Cook county had brought a banner into the assem- blage inscribed, ' Cook County for Abraham Lincoln.' Dur- ing a pause in the proceedings, a delegate from another county rose and proposed, with the consent of the Cook county delegation, * to amend the banner by substituting for ** Cook County " the word which I hold in my hand,' at the same time unrolling a scroll, and revealing the word ' Ill- inois ' in huge capitals. The Cook delegation promptly accepted the amendment, and amidst a perfect hurricane of hurrahs, the banner was duly altered to express the sentiment of the whole Republican party of the State, thus : ' Illinois for Abraham Lincoln.' " On the evening of the day of his nomination, Lincoln ad- dressed his constituents. The first paragraph of his speech gave the key to the campaign he proposed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government can- not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." Then followed the famous charge of conspiracy against (20) 306 LIFE OF LINCOLN the slavery advocates, the charge that Pierce, Buchanan, Chief Justice Taney, and Douglas had been making a con- certed effort to legalize the institution of slavery " in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." He marshalled one after another of the measures that the pro- slavery leaders had secured in the past four years, and clinched the argument by one of his inimitable illustrations : " When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, — Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James,* for instance, — and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a liouse or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such a piece in — in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." The speech was severely criticised by Lincoln's friends. It was too radical. It was sectional. He heard the com- plaints unmoved. " If I had to draw a pen across my record," he said, one day, " and erase my whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased." The speech was, in fact, one of great political adroitness. It forced Douglas to do exactly what he did not want to do in Illinois: explain his own record during the past four years; explain the true meaning of the Kansas-Nebraska * Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Ro^er Taney, James Buchanan. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 307 bill ; discuss the Dred Scott decision ; say whether or not he thought slavery so good a thing that the country could afford to extend it instead of confining it where it would be in course of gradual extinction. Douglas wanted the Republi- cans of Illinois to follow Greeley's advice : " Forgive the past." He wanted to make the most among them of his really noble revolt against the attempt of his party to fasten an unjust constitution on Kansas. Lincoln would not allow him to bask for an instant in the sun of that revolt. He crowded him step by step through his party's record, and compelled him to face what he called the " profound central truth " of the Republican party, " slavery is wrong and ought to be dealt with as wrong." But it was at once evident that Douglas did not mean to meet the issue squarely. He called the doctrine of Lincoln's " house-divided-against-itself " speech "sectionalism;" his charge of conspiracy " false; " his talk of the wrong of slav- ery extension " abolitionism." This went on for a month. Then Lincoln resolved to force Douglas to meet his argu- ments, and challenged him to a series of joint debates. Doug- las was not pleased. His reply to the challenge was irritable, even slightly insolent. To those of his friends who talked with him privately of the contest, he said : " I do not feel, between you and me, that I want to go into this debate. The whole country knows me, and has me measured. Lincoln, as regards myself, is comparatively unknown, and if he gets the best of this debate, — and I want to say he is the ablest man the Republicans have got, — I shall lose everything and Lincoln will gain everything. Should I win, I shall gain but little. I do not want to go into a debate with Abe." Publicly, however, he carried off the prospect confidently, even jauntily. " Mr. Lincoln," he said patronizingly, " is a kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman." In the mean time his constituents boasted loudly of the fine spectacle they were 3o8 LIFE OF LINCOLN going to give the State — " the Little Giant chawing up Old Abe!" Many of Lincoln's friends looked forward to the encounter with foreboding. Often, in spite of their best intentions, they showed anxiety. " Shortly before the first del)ate came off at Ottawa," says Judge H. W. Beckwith of Danville, 111." " I passed the Chenery House, then the principal hotel in Springfield. The lobby was crowded with partisan leaders from various sections of the State, and Mr. Lincoln, from his greater height, was seen above the surging mass that clung about him like a swarm of bees to their ruler. He looked careworn, but he met the crowd patiently and kindly, shaking hands, answering questions, and receiving assur- ances of support. The day was warm, and at the first chance he broke away and came out for a little fresh air, wiping the sweat from his face. "As he passed the door he saw me, and, taking my hand, inquired for the health and views of his * friends over in Vermillion county.' He was assured they were wide awake, and further told that they looked forward to the debate between him and Senator Douglas with deep concern. From the shadow that went quickly over hi^ face, the pained look that came to give quickly way to a blaze of eyes and quiver of lips, I felt that Mr. Lincoln had gone beneath my mere words and caught my inner and current fears as to the result. And then, in a forgiving, jocular way peculiar to him, he said, * Sit down ; I have a moment to spare and will tell you a story.' Having been on his feet for some time, he sat on the end of the stone step leading into the hotel door, while I stood closely fronting him. " 'You have,' he continued, * seen two men about to fight ? ' " * Yes, many times.' " ' Well, one of them brags about what he means to do. He jumps high in the air, cracking his heels together, smites THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 309 his fists, and wastes his breath trying to scare somebody. You see the other fellow, he says not a word,' — here Mr. Lincoln's voice and manner changed to great earnestness, and repeat- ing — ' you see the other man says not a word. His arms are at his side, his fists are closely doubled up, his head is drawn to the shoulder, and his teeth are set firm together. He is saving his wind for the fight, and as sure as it comes off he will win it, or die a-trying.' " He made no other comment, but arose, bade me good- by, and left me to apply the illustration." It was inevitable that Douglas's friends should be san- guine, Lincoln's doubtful. The contrast between the two candidates was almost pathetic. Senator Douglas was the most brilliant figure in the political life of the day. Winning in personality, fearless as an advocate, magnetic in eloquence, shrewd in political manoeuvring, he had every quality to captivate the public. His resources had never failed him. From his entrance into Illinois politics in 1834, he had been the recipient of every political honor his party had to bestow. For the past eleven years he had been a member of the United States Senate, where he had influenced all the important legislation of the day and met in debate every strong speaker of North and South. In 1852, and again in 1856, he had been a strongly supported, though unsuccessful, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1858 he was put at or near the head of every list of possible presi- dential candidates made up for i860. How barren Lincoln's public career in comparison ! Three terms in the lower house of the State Assembly, one term in Congress, then a failure which drove him from public life. Now he returns as a bolter from his party, a leader in a new organization which the conservatives are denouncing as " visionary," " impractical," " revolutionary." No one recognized more clearly than Lincoln the differ- 3IO LIFE OF LINCOLN ence between himself and his opponent. " With me," he said, sadly, in comparing the careers of himself and Douglas, " the race of ambition has been a failure — a flat failure. With him it has been one of splendid success." He warned his party at the outset that, with himself as a standard- bearer, the battle must be fought on principle alone, without any of the external aids which Douglas's brilliant career gave. " Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown," he said; " All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet ap- pointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, tri- umphal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages, all taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone." If one will take a map of Illinois and locate the points of the Lincoln and Douglas debates held between August 21 and October 15, 1858, he will see that the whole State was trav- ersed in the contest. The first took place at Ottawa, about seventy-five miles southwest of Chicago, on August 21 ; the second at Freeport, near the Wisconsin boundary, on August THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 311 2."]. The third was in the extreme southern part of the State, at Jonesboro, on September 15. Three days later the contestants met one hundred and fifty miles northeast of Jonesboro, at Charleston. The fifth, sixth, and seventh de- bates were held in the western part of the State; at Gales- burg, October 7; Quincy, October 13; and Alton, Octo- ber 15. Constant exposure and fatigue were unavoidable in meet- ing these engagements. Both contestants spoke almost every day through the intervals between the joint debates; and as railroad communication in Illinois in 1858 was still very in- complete, they were often obliged to resort to horse, car- riage, or steamer to reach the desired points. Judge Douglas succeeded, however, in making this difficult journey some- thing of a triumphal procession. He was accompanied throughout the campaign by his wife — a beautiful and bril- liant woman — and by a number of distinguished Democrats. On the Illinois Central Railroad he had always a special car, sometimes a special train. Frequently he swept by Lincoln, side-tracked in an accommodation or freight train. " The gentleman in that car evidently smelt no royalty in our car- riage," laughed Lincoln one day, as he watched from the caboose of a laid-up freight train the decorated special of Douglas flying by. It was only when Lincoln left the railroad and crossed the prairie, to speak at some isolated town, that he went in state. The attentions he received were often very trying to him. He detested what he called " fizzlegigs and fireworks," and would squirm in disgust when his friends gave him a genuine prairie ovation. Usually, when he was going to a point distant from the railway, a " distinguished citizen " met him at the station nearest the place with a carriage. When they were come within two or three miles of the town, a long pro- cession with banners and band would appear winding across 312 LIFE OF LINCOLN the prairie to meet the speaker. A speech of greeting was made, and then the ladies of the entertainment committee would present Lincoln with flowers, sometimes even winding a garland about his head and lank figure. His embarrass- ment at these attentions was thoroughly appreciated by his friends. At the Ottawa debate the enthusiasm of his support- ers was so great that they insisted on carrying him from the platform to the housewhere hewas to be entertained. Power- less to escape from the clutches of his admirers, he could only cry, " Don't, boys ; let me down ; come now, don't." But the " boys " persisted, and they tell to-day proudly of their ex- ploit and of the cordial hand-shake Lincoln, all embarrassed as he was, gave each of them when at last he was free. On arrival at the towns where the joint debates were held, Douglas was always met by a brass band and a salute of thirty-two guns (the Union was composed of thirty-two States in 1858), and was escorted to the hotel in the finest equipage to be had. Lincoln's supporters took delight in showing their contempt of Douglas's elegance by affecting a Republican simplicity, often carrying their candidate through the streets on a high and unadorned hay-rack drawn by farm horses. The scenes in the towns on the occasion of the de- bates were perhaps never equalled at any other of the hust- ings of this country. No distance seemed too great for the people to go ; no vehicle too slow or fatiguing. At Charles- ton there was a great delegation of men, women, and children present which had come in a long procession from Indiana by farm wagons, afoot, on horseback, and in carriages. The crowds at three or four of the debates were for that day im- mense. There were estimated to be from eight thousand to fourteen thousand people at Ouincy, some six thousand at Alton, from ten thousand to fifteen thousand at Charleston, some twenty thousand at Ottawa. Many of those at Ottawa came the night before. " It was a matter of but a short THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 313 time," says Mr. George Beatty of .Qila^aj " until the few- hotels, the livery stables, and private houses were crowded, and there were no accommodations left. Then the cam- paigners spread out about the town, and camped in whatever spot was most convenient. They went along the bluff and on the bottom-lands, and that night the camp-fires, spread up and down the valley for a mile, made it look as if an army was gathered about us." When the crowd was massed at the place of the debate, the scene was one of the greatest hubbub and confusion. On the corners of the squares, and scattered around the outskirts of the crowd, were fakirs of every description, selling pain- killers and ague cures, watermelons and lemonade; jugglers and beggars plied their trades, and the brass bands of all the four corners within twenty-five miles tooted and pounded at " Hail Columbia, Happy Land," or " Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." Conspicuous in the processions at all the points was what Lincoln called the " Basket of Flowers," thirty-two young girls in a resplendent car, representing the Union. At Charleston, a thirty-third young woman rode behind the car, representing Kansas. She carried a banner inscribed : "I will be free; " a motto which brought out from nearly all the newspaper reporters the comment that she was too fair to be long free. The mottoes at the different meetings epitomized the popu- lar conception of the issues and the candidates. Among the Lincoln sentiments were : Illinois born under the Ordinance of '87. Free Territories and Free Men, Free Pulpits and Free Preachers, Free Press and a Free Pen, Free Schools and Free Teachers, 314 " LIFE OF LINCOLN " Westward the star of empire takes its way; The girls Hnk on to Lincohi, their mothers were for Clay." Abe the Giant-Killcr. Edgar County for the Tall Sucker. A striking feature of the crowds was the number of women they included. The intehigent and Hvely interest they took in the debates caused much comment. No doubt Mrs. Doug- las's presence had something to do with this. They were particularly active in receiving the speakers, and at Quincy, Lincoln, on being presented with what the local press de- scribed as a " beautiful and elegant bouquet," took pains to express his gratification at the part women everywhere took in the contest. While this helter-skelter outpouring of prairiedom had the appearance of being little more than a great jollification, a lawless country fair, in reality it was with the majority of the people a profoundly serious matter. With every discus- sion it became more vital. Indeed, in the first debate, which was opened and closed by Douglas,* the relation of the two speakers became dramatic. It was here that Douglas, hoping to fasten on Lincoln the stigma of " abolitionist," charged him with having undertaken to abolitionize the old Whig party, and having been in 1854 a subscriber to a radical platform proclaimed at Springfield. This platform Doug- las read. Lincoln, when he replied, could only say he was never at the convention — knew nothing of the resolutions; but the impression prevailed that he was cornered. The next issue of the Chicago " Press and Tribune " dispelled it. That paper had employed to report the debates the first short- * By the terms agreed npon by Douglas and Lincoln for regulating the debates Douglas opened at Ottawa. Jonesboro, Galesburg, and Al- ton with an hour's speech; was followed I>y Lincoln with a speech of one and a half hours, and closed with a half-hour speech. At the three remaining points, Freeport, Charleston, and Quincy, Lincoln opened and closed. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 315 hand reporter in Chicago, Mr. Robert L. Hitt — now a Mem- ber of Congress and the Chairman of the Committee on For- eign Affairs. Mr. Hitt, when Douglas began to read the resolutions, took an opportunity to rest, supposing he could get the original from the speaker. He took down only the first line of each resolution. He missed Douglas after the debate, but on reaching Chicago, where he wrote out his re- port, he sent an assistant to the files to find the platform adopted at the Springfield Convention. It was brought, but when Mr. Hitt began to transcribe it he saw at once that it was widely different from the one Douglas had read. There was great excitement in the office, and the staff, ardently Republican, went to work to discover where the resolutions had come from. It was found that they originated at a meeting of radical abolitionists with whom Lincoln had never been associated. The '' Press and Tribune " announced the " forgery," as it was called in a caustic editorial, " The Little Dodger Cor- nered and Caught." Within a week even the remote school- districts of Illinois were discussing Douglas's action, and many of the most important papers of the nation had made it a subject of editorial comment. Almost without exception Douglas was condemned. No amount of explanation on his part helped him. " The par- ticularity of Douglas's charge," said the Louisville " Jour- nal," " precludes the idea that he was simply and innocently mistaken." Lovers of fair play were disgusted, and those of Douglas's own party who would have applauded a trick too clever to be discovered could not forgive him for one which had been found out. Greeley came out bitterly against him, and before long wrote to Lincoln and Herndon that Douglas was " like the man's boy who (he said) didn't weigh so much as he expected and he always knew he wouldn't." Douglas's error became a sharp-edged sword in Lincoln's 3i6 LIFE OF LINCOLN hand. Without directly referring to it, he called his hearers' attention to the forgery every time he quoted a document by his elaborate explanation that he believed, unless there was some mistake on the part of those with whom the matter originated and which he had been unable to detect, that this was correct. Once when Douglas brought forward a docu- ment, Lincoln blandly remarked that he could scarcely be blamed for doubting its genuineness since the introduction of the Springfield resolutions at Ottawa. It was in the second debate, at Freeport, that Lincoln made the boldest stroke of the contest. Soon after the Ottawa debate, in discussing his plan for the next encounter, with a number of his political friends, — Washburne, Cook, Judd, and others, — he told them he proposed to ask Douglas four questions, which he read. One and all cried halt at the sec- ond question. Under no condition, they said, must he put it. If it were put, Douglas would answer it in such a way as to win the senatorship. The morning of the debate, while on the way to Freeport, Lincoln read the same questions to Mr. Joseph Medill. " I do not like this second question, Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Medill. The two men argued to their journey's end, but Lincoln was still unconvinced. Even after he reached Freeport several Republican leaders came to him pleading, " Do not ask that question." He was obdu- rate; and he went on the platform with a higher head, a haughtier step than his friends had noted in him before. Lin- coln was going to ruin himself, the committee said despond- ently ; one would think he did not want the senatorship. The mooted question ran in Lincoln's notes : " Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slav- ery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Consti- tution ? " Lincoln had seen the irreconcilableness of Doug- las's own measure of popular sovereignty, which declared > 1 J » . ' JO, 1)1 5 J (Ch rsrs zi 253 "^ K -S Up -" -.a; P5 ct: 2 ill c; " O ti. 13 o o § ■" &— >» ci » a> tut ce THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 317 that the people of a territory should be left to regulate their domestic concerns in their own way subject only to the Constitution, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case that slaves, being property, could not under the Constitution be excluded from a territory. He knew that if Douglas said no to this question, his Illinois constituents would never return him to the Sen- ate. He believed that if he said yes, the people of the South would never vote for him for President of the United States, He was willing himself to lose the senatorship in order to defeat Douglas for the Presidency in i860. " I am after larger game; the battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this," he said confidently. The question was put, and Douglas answered it with rare artfulness. " It matters not," he cried, " what way the Su- preme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution ; the people have the lawful means to intro- duce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slav- ery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is sup- ported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its ex- tension." His Democratic constituents went wild over the clever way in which Douglas had escaped Lincoln's trap. He now prac- tically had his election. The Republicans shook their heads. Lincoln only was serene. He alone knew what he had done. The Freeport debate had no sooner reached the pro-slavery press than a storm of protest went up. Douglas had be- trayed the South. He had repudiated the Supreme Court 3l8 LIFE OF LINCOLN decision. He had declared that slavery could be kept out of the territories by other Icfrislation than a State Constitu- tion. " The Freeport doctrine," or " the theory of unfriendly legislation," as it became known, spread month by month, and slowly but surely made Douglas an impossible candi- date in the South. The force of the question was not real- ized in full by Lincoln's friends until the Democratic party met in Charleston, S. C, in i860, and the Southern dele- gates refused to support Douglas because of the answer he gave to Lincoln's question in the Freeport debate of 1858. " Do you recollect the argument we had on the way up to Freeport two years ago over the question I was going to ask Judge Douglas ? " Lincoln asked Mr. Joseph Medill, when the latter went to Springfield a few days after the election of i860. " Yes," said Medill, " I recollect it very well." " Don't you think I was right now? " " We were both right. The question hurt Douglas for the Presidency, but it lost you the senatorship." " Yes, and I have won the place he was playing for." From the beginning of the campaign Lincoln supple- mented the strength of his arguments by inexhaustible good- humor. Douglas, physically worn, harassed by the trend which Lincoln had given the discussions, irritated that his adroitness and eloquence could not so cover the fundamental truth of the Republican position but that it would up again, often grew angry, even abusive. Lincoln answered him with most effective raillery. At Havana, where he spoke the day after Douglas, he said: " I am informed that my distinguished friend yester- day became a little excited — nervous, perhaps — and he said something about fighting, as though referring to a pugilistic encounter between him and myself. Did anybody in this audience hear him use such language? [Cries of " Yes."] THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATEvS 3I9 I am informed further, that somebody in his audience, rather more excited and nervous than himself, took off his coat, and offered to take the job off Judge Douglas's hands, and fight Lincoln himself. Did anybody here witness that war- like proceeding? [Laughter and cries of "Yes."] Well, I merely desire to say that I shall fight neither Judge Doug- las nor his second. I shall not do this for two reasons, which I will now explain. In the first place, a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this contest. It might es- tablish that Judge Douglas is a more muscular man than myself, or it might demonstrate that I am a more muscular man than Judge Douglas. But this question is not referred to in the Cincinnati platform, nor in either of the Spring- field platforms. Neither result would prove him right nor me wrong; and so of the gentleman who volunteered to do this fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder. " My second reason for not having a personal encounter with the judge is, that I don't believe he wants it himself. He and I are about the best friends in the world, and when we get together he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, when the judge talked about fighting, he was not giving vent to any ill feeling of his own, but merely trying to excite — well, enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience. And as I find he was tolerably successful, we will call it quits." More difficult for Lincoln to take good-naturedly than threats and hard names was the irrelevant matters which Douglas dragged into the debates to turn attention from the vital arguments. Thus Douglas insisted repeatedly on taunt- ing Lincoln because his zealous friends had carried him off the platform at Ottawa. " Lincoln was so frightened by the questions put to him," said Douglas, " that he could not walk." He tried to arouse the prejudice of the au- dience by absurd charges of abolitionism. Lincoln wanted to give negroes social equality; he wanted a negro wife; he 320 LIFE OF LINCOLN was willing to allow Fred Douglass to make speeches for him. Again he took up a good deal of Lincoln's time by forcing him to answer to a charge of refusing to vote sup- plies for the soldiers in the Mexican War. Lincoln denied and explained, until at last, at Charleston, he turned sud- denly to Douglas's supporters, dragging one of the strong- est of them — the Hon. O. B. Ficklin, with whom he had been in Congress in 1848 — to the platform. " I do not mean to do anything with Mr. Ficklin," he said, " except to present his face and tell you that he personally knows it to be a lie." And Mr. Ficklin had to acknowledge that Lincoln was right. " Judge Douglas," said Lincoln in speaking of this policy, " is playing cuttlefish — a small species of fish that has no mode of defending himself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes." The question at stake was too serious in Lincoln's judg- ment, for platform jugglery. Every moment of his time which Douglas forced him to spend answering irrelevant charges he gave begrudgingly. He struggled constantly to keep his speeches on the line of solid argument. Slowly but surely those who followed the debates began to understand this. It was Douglas who drew the great masses to the de- bates in the first place ; it was because of him that the public men and the newspapers of the East, as well as of the West, watched the discussions. But as the days went on it was not Douglas who made the impression. During the hours of the speeches the two men seemed well mated. " I can recall only one fact of the debates," says Mrs. William Crotty of Seneca, Illinois, " that I felt so sorry for Lincoln while Douglas was speaking, and then to my surprise I felt so sorry for Douglas when Lincoln replied." The dis- interested to whom it was an intellectual game, felt the power THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 321 and charm of both men. Partisans had each reason enough to cheer. It was afterwards, as the debates were talked over by auditors as they Hngered at the country store or were grouped on the fence in the evening, or when they were read in the generous reports which the newspapers of IlHnois and even of other States gave, that the thoroughness of Lincoln's argument was understood. Even the first debate at Ottawa had a surprising effect. " I tell you," says Mr. George Beatty of Ottawa, " that debate set people thinking on these import- ant questions in a way they hadn't dreamed of. I heard any number of men say : ' This thing is an awfully serious ques- tion, and I have about concluded Lincoln has got it right.' My father, a thoughtful. God-fearing man, said to me, as we went home to supper, * George, you are young, and don't see what this thing means, as I do. Douglas's speeches of " squatter sovereignty " please you younger men, but I tell you that with us older men it's a great question that faces us. We've either got to keep slavery back or it's going to spread all over the country. That's the real question that's behind all this. Lincoln is right.' And that was the feeling that prevailed, I think, among the majority, after the debate was over. People went home talking about the danger of slav- ery getting a hold in the North. This territory had been Democratic; La Salle County, the morning of the day of the debate, was Democratic ; but when the next day came around, hundreds of Democrats had been made Republicans, owing to the light in which Lincoln had brought forward the fact that slavery threatened." It was among Lincoln's own friends, however, that his speeches produced the deepest impression. They had be- lieved him to be strong, but probably there was no one of them who had not felt dubious about his ability to meet Douglas, Many even feared a fiasco. Gradually it began to be clear to them that Lincoln was the stronger. Could it (21) 322 LIFE OF LINCOLN be that Lincoln really was a great man? The young Re- publican journalists of the " Press and Tribune " — Scripps, Hitt, Medill — began to ask themselves the question. One evening as they talked over Lincoln's arguments a letter was received. It came from a prominent Eastern statesman. " Who is this man that is replying to Douglas in your State? " he asked. " Do you realize that no greater speeches have been made on public questions in the history of our country; that his knowledge of the subject is profound, his logic unanswerable, his style inimitable?" Similar letters kept coming from various parts of the country. Before the campaign was over Lincoln's friends were exultant. Their favorite was a great man, " a full-grown man," as one of them wrote in his paper. The country at large watched Lincoln with astonishment. When the debates began there were Republicans in Illinois of wider national reputation. Judge Lyman Trumbull, then Senator, was better known. He was an able debater, and a speech which he made in August against Douglas's record called from the New York " Evening Post " the remark : " This is the heaviest blow struck at Senator Douglas since he took the field in Illinois; it is unanswerable, and we sus- pect that it will be fatal." Trumbull's speech the " Post " afterwards published in pamphlet form. Besides Trumbull, Owen Lovejoy, Oglesby, and Palmer were all speaking. That Lincoln should not only have so far outstripped men of his own party, but should have out-argued Douglas, was the cause of comment everywhere. " No man of this genera- tion," said the " Evening Post " editorially, at the close of the debate, " has grown more rapidly before the country than Lincoln in this canvass." As a matter of fact, Lincoln had attracted the attention of all the thinking men of the coun- try. " The first thing that really awakened my interest in him," says Henry Ward Beecher, " was his speech parallel THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 323 with Douglas in Illinois, and indeed it was that manifesta- tion of ability that secured his nomination to the presi- dency." But able as were Lincoln's arguments, deep as was the im- pression he had made, he was not elected to the senatorship. Douglas won fairly enough ; though it is well to note that if the Republicans did not elect a senator they gained a sub- stantial number of votes over those polled in 1856. Lincoln accepted the result with a serenity inexplicable to his supporters. To him the contest was but one battle in a " durable " struggle. Little matter who won now, if in the end the right triumphed. From the first he had looked at the final result — not at the senatorship. " I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish," he said at Chicago in July. " I do not pretend that I would not like to go to the United States Senate; I make no such hypocritical pretense; but I do say to you that in this mighty issue, it is nothing to you, nothing to the mass of the people of the nation, whether or not Judge Douglas or myself shall ever be heard of after this night; it may be a trifle to either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon which hang the destinies of the na- tion perhaps, it is absolutely nothing." The intense heat and fury of the debates, the defeat in November, did not alter a jot this high view. " I am glad I made the late race," he wrote Dr. A. G. Henry. " It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age which I would 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." At that date perhaps no one appreciated the value of what Lincoln had done as well as he did himself. He was abso- lutely sure he was right and that in the end people would see it. Though he might not rise, he knew his cause would. vy 324 LIFE OF LINCOLN " Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late con- test both as the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest," he wrote. " No ingenuity can keep these an- tagonistic elements in harmony Ibng. Another explosion will soon occur." His whole attention was given to conserv- ing what the Republicans had gained, — " We have some one hundred and twenty thousand clear Republican votes. That pile is worth keeping together;" to consoling his friends, — " You are feeling badly," he wrote to N. B. Judd, Chairman of the Republican Committee, " and this too shall pass away, never fear;" to rallying for another effort, — " The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats." If Lincoln had at times a fear that his defeat would cause him to be set aside, it soon was dispelled. The interest awakened in him was genuine, and it spread with the wider reading and discussion of his arguments. He was besieged by letters from all parts of the Union, congratulations, en- couragements, criticisms. Invitations for lectures poured in upon him, and he became the first choice of his entire party for political speeches. The greater number of these invitations he declined. He had given so much time to politics since 1 854 that his law practice had been neglected and he was feeling poor; but there were certain of the calls which could not be resisted. Douglas spoke several times for the Democrats of Ohio in the 1859 campaign for governor and Lincoln naturally was asked to reply. He made but two speeches, one at Columbus on September 16 and the other at Cincinnati on September 17, but he had great audiences on both occasions. The Columbus speech was devoted almost entirely to answering an essay by Douglas which had been published in the Sep- tember number of " Harper's Magazine," and which began by asserting that — " Under our complex system of gov- THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 325 ernment it is the first duty of American statesmen to mark distinctly the dividing-hne between Federal and Local au- thority." It was an elaborate argument for " popular sov- ereignty " and attracted national attention. Indeed, at the moment it was the talk of the county. Lincoln literally tore it to bits. " What is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty ? " he asked. " It is, as a principle, no other than that if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object. Applied in government, as he seeks to apply it, it is this : If, in a new territory into which a few people are beginning to enter for the purpose of making their homes, they choose to either exclude slavery from their limits or to establish it there, however one or the other may affect the persons to be enslaved, or the infinitely greater number of persons who are afterward to inhabit that Territory, or the other mem- bers of the families of communities, of which they are but an incipient member, or the general head of the family of States as parent of all — however their action may affect one or the other of these, there is no power or right to interfere. That is Douglas's popular sovereignty applied." It was in this address that Lincoln uttered the oft-quoted paragraphs : " I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. That is the build of the man, and conse- quently he looks upon the matter of slavery in this unim- portant light. " Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is endeav- oring to force this policy upon the American people, that while he is put up in that way, a good many are not. He ought to remember that there was once in this country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a Democrat — a man whose principles and policy are not very 326 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN prevalent amongst Democrats to-day, it is true; but that man did not take exactly this view of the insignificance of the element of slavery which our friend Judge Douglas does. In contemplation of this thing, we all know he was led to exclaim, ' I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just!' We know how he looked upon it when he thus expressed himself. There was danger to this country, danger of the avenging justice of God, in that little unim- portant popular-sovereignty question of Judge Douglas. He supposed there was a question of God's eternal justice wrapped up in the enslaving of any race of men, or any man, and that those who did so braved the arm of Jehovah — that when a nation thus dared the Almighty, every friend of that nation had cause to dread his wrath. Choose ye be- tween Jefferson and Douglas as to what is the true view of this element among us." One interesting point about the Columbus address is that in it appears the germ of the Cooper Institute speech deliv- "' ered five months later in New York City. Lincoln made so deep an impression in Ohio by his speeches that the State Republican Committee asked per- mission to publish them together with the Lincoln-Douglas Debates as campaign documents in the presidential election of the next year. In December he yielded to the persuasion of his Kansas political friends and delivered five lectures in that State, only fragments of which have been preserved. Unquestionably the most effective piece of work he did that winter was the address at Cooper Institute, New York, on February 27. He had received an invitation in the fall of 1859 to lecture at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. To his friends it was evident that he was greatly pleased by the compliment, but that he feared that he was not equal to an Eastern audience. After some hesitation he accepted, provided they would take a political speech if he could find THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 327 time to get up no other. When he reached New York he found that he was to speak there instead o£ Brooklyn, and that he was certain to have a distinguished audience. Fear- ful lest he was not as well prepared as he ought to be, con- scious, too, no doubt, that he had a great opportunity before him, he spent nearly all of the two days and a half before his lecture in revising his matter and in familiarizing him- self with it. In order that he might be sure that he was heard he arranged with his friend, Mason Brayman, who had come on to New York with him, to sit in the back of ry the hall and in case he did not speak loud enough to raise his high hat on a cane. Mr. Lincoln's audience was a notable one even for New York. It included William Cullen Bryant, who introduced him, Horace Greeley, David Dudley Field and many more well known men of the day. It is doubtful if there were any persons present, even his best friends, who expected that Lincoln would do more than interest his hearers by his sound arguments. Many have confessed since that they feared his queer manner and quaint speeches would amuse people so much that they would fail to catch the weight of his logic. But to the surprise of everybody Lincoln im- pressed his audience from the start by his dignity and his seriousness. " His manner was, to a New York audience, a very strange one, but it was captivating," wrote an auditor. '' He held the vast meeting spellbound, and as one by one his oddly expressed but trenchant and convincing arguments conjfirmed the soundness of his political conclusions, the house broke out in wild and prolonged enthusiasm. I think I never saw an audience more thoroughly carried away by an orator." The Cooper Union speech was founded on a sentence from one of Douglas's Ohio speeches : — " Our fathers when they framed the government under which we live imderstood \^ 328 LIFE OF LINCOLN this question just as well, and even better, than we do now." Douglas claimed that the " fathers " held that the Constitu- tion forbade the Federal government controlling slavery in the Territories. Lincoln with infinite care had investigated the opinions and votes of each of the " fathers " — whom he took to be the thirty-nine men who signed the Constitu- tion — and showed conclusively that a majority of them *' certainly understood that no proper division of local from Federal authority nor any part of the Constitution forbade the Federal government to control slavery in the Federal Territories." Not only did he show this of the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, but he defied anybody to show that one of the seventy-six members of the Con- gress which framed the amendments to the Constitution ever held any such view. " Let all," he said, " who believe that ' our fathers who framed the government under which we live understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now/ speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Re- publicans ask — all Republicans desire — in relation to slav- ery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and pro- tected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be con- tent." One after another he took up and replied to the charges the South was making against the North at the moment : — Sectionalism, radicalism, giving undue prominence to the slave question, stirring up insurrection among slaves, refus- ing to allow constitutional rights, and to each he had an un- impassioned answer impregnable with facts. THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 329 The discourse was ended with what Lincoln felt to be a precise statement of the opinion of the question on both sides, and of the duty of the Republican party under the cir- cumstances. This portion of his address is one of the finest early examples of that simple and convincing style in which most of his later public documents were written. " If slavery is right," he said, " all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality — its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its enlargement. All they ask- we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for de- siring its full recognition as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this ? " Wrong, as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances such 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 ; such as a policy of ' don't care ' on a question about which all true men do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Dis- unionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance ; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said and undo what Washington did. 330 LIFE OF LINCOLN " Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false ac- cusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." From New York Lincoln went to New Hampshire to visit his son Robert, then at Phillips Exeter Academy. His coming was known only a short time before he arrived and hurried arrangements were made for him to speak at Con- cord, Manchester, Exeter and Dover. At Concord the ad- dress was made in the afternoon on only a few hours' notice, nevertheless, he had a great audience, so eager were men at the time to hear anybody who had serious arguments on the slavery question. Something of the impression Lincoln made in New Hampshire may be gathered from the following ar- ticle, " Mr, Lincoln in New Hampshire," which appeared in the Boston " Atlas and Bee " for March 5 : The Concord " Statesman " says that notwithstanding the rain of Thursday, rendering travelling very inconvenient, the largest hall in that city was crowded to hear Mr. Lincoln. The editor says it was one of the most powerful, logical and compacted speeches to which it was ever our fortune to lis- ten; an argument against the system of slavery, and in de- fence of the position of the Republican party, from the de- ductions of which no reasonable man could possibly escape. He fortified every position assumed, by proofs which it is impossible to gainsay ; and while his speech was at intervals enlivened by remarks which elicited applause at the expense of the Democratic party, there w^as, nevertheless, not a single word which tended to impair the dignity of the speaker, or weaken the force of the great truths he uttered. The " Statesman " adds that the address " was perfect, and was closed by a peroration which brought his audience to their feet. We are not extravagant in the remark, that a political speech of greater power has rarely if ever been ut- tered in the Capital of New Hampshire. At its conclusion THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 331 nine roof-raising cheers were given; three for the speaker, three for the RepubHcans of Ilhnois, and three for the Re- publicans of New Hampshire." On the same evening Mr. Lincoln spoke at Manchester, to an immense gathering in Smyth's Hall. The " Mirror," a neutral paper, gives the following enthusiastic notice of his speech : " The audience was a flattering one to the reputa- tion of the speaker. It was composed of persons of all sorts of political notions, earnest to hear one whose fame was so great, and we think most of them went away thinking better of him than they anticipated they should. He spoke an hour and a half with great fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful interest. He did not abuse the South, the Administration, or the Democrats, or indulge in any person- alities, with the solitary exception of a few hits at Doug- las's notions. He is far from prepossessing in personal ap- \^ pearance, and his voice is disagreeable, and yet he wins youry attention and good will from the start. " He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent pas- , sages ; he is not a wit, a humorist or a clown ; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry and good nature pervades what he says, gilding over a deep current of practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments ; not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his train of belief, persons who are opposed to him. For the first half hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and from that point he began to lead them off, little by little, cunningly, till it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind than any public speaker we have heard since long Jim Wilson left for California." From New Hampshire Lincoln went to Connecticut, where on March 5 he spoke at Hartford, on March 6 at New Haven, on March 8 at Woonsocket, on March 9 at Norwich. There are no reports of the New Hampshire speeches, but 332 LIFE OF LINCOLN two of the Connecticut speeches were published In part and one in full. Their effect was very similar, according- to the newspapers of the day, to that in New Hampshire, described by the " Atlas and Bee." By his debates with Douglas and the speeches in Ohio, Kansas, New York and New England, Lincoln had become a national figure in the minds of all the political leaders of the country, and of the thinking men of the North. Never in the history of the United States had a man become prominent in a more logical and intelligent way. At the beginning of the struggle against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, Abraham Lincoln was scarcely known outside of his own State. Even most of the men whom he had met in his brief term in Congress had forgotten him. / Yet in four years he had become one of the central figures of his party ; and now, by worsting the greatest orator and politician of his time, he had drawn the eyes of the nation to him. It had been a long road he had travelled to make himself a national figure. Twenty-eight years before he had delib- erately entered politics. He had been beaten, but had per- sisted; he had succeeded and failed; he had abandoned the struggle and returned to his profession. His outraged sense of justice had driven him back, and for six years he had travelled up and down Illinois trying to prove to men that slavery extension was wrong. It was by no one speech, by no one argument that he had wrought. Every day his cease- less study and pondering gave him new matter, and every speech he made was fresh. He could not repeat an old speech, he said, because the subject enlarged and widened so in his mind as he went on that it was " easier to make a new one than an old one." He had never yielded in his cam- paign to tricks of oratory — never played on emotions. He had been so strong in his convictions of the right of his case THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 333 that his speeches had been arguments pure and simple. Their elegance was that of a demonstration in Euclid. They per- suaded because they proved. He had never for a moment counted personal ambition before the cause. To insure an ardent opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in the United States Senate, he had at one time given up his chance for the senatorship. To show the fallacy of Douglas's argu- ment, he had asked a question which his party pleaded with him to pass by, assuring him that it would lose him the elec- tion. In every step of this six years he had been disinter- ested, calm, unyielding, and courageous. He knew he was right, and could afford to wait. " The result is not doubt- ful," he told his friends. " We shall not fail — if we stand firm. We shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it; but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come." The country, amazed at the rare moral and intellectual character of Lincoln, began to ask questions about him, and then his history came out; a pioneer home, little schooling, few books, hard labor at all the many trades of the frontiers- man, a profession mastered o' nights by the light of a friendly cooper's fire, an early entry into politics and law — - and then twenty-five years of incessant poverty and strug- gle. The homely story gave a touch of mystery to the figure which loomed so large. Men felt a sudden reverence for a mind and heart developed to these noble proportions in so unfriendly a habitat. They turned instinctively to one so familiar with strife for help in solving the desperate prob- lem with which the nation had grappled. And thus it was that, at fifty years of age, Lincoln became a national figure. CHAPTER XIX Lincoln's nomination in i860 The possibility of Abraham Lincoln becoming the presi- dential candidate of the Republican party in i860 was proba- bly first discussed by a few of his friends in 1856. The dra- matic speech which in May of that year gave him the leader- ship of his party in Illinois, and the unexpected and flatter- ing attention he received a few weeks later at the Republican national convention suggested the idea; but there is no evi- dence that anything more was excited than a little specu- lation. The impression Lincoln made two years later in the Lincoln and Douglas debates kindled a different feeling. It convinced a number of astute Illinois politicians that ju- dicious effort would make Lincoln strong enough to justify the presentation of his name as a candidate in i860 on the ground of pure availability. One of the first men to conceive this idea was Jesse W. Fell, a local politician of Bloomington, Illinois. During the Lincoln and Douglas debates Fell was travelling in the Middle and Eastern States. He was surprised to find that Lincoln's speeches attracted general attention, that many papers copied liberally from them, and that on all sides men plied him with questions about the career and personality of the new man. Before Fell left the East he had made up his mind that Lincoln must be pushed by his own State as its presidential candidate. One evening, soon after returning home, he met Lincoln in Bloomington, where the latter was attending court, and drew him into a deserted law-office for a confidential talk. 334 NOMINATION IN i860 335 " I have been East, Lincoln," said he, " as far as Boston, and up into New Hampshire, traveUing in all the New Eng- land States, save Maine; in New York, New Jersey, Penn- sylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana; and everywhere I hear you talked about. Very frequently I have been asked, ' Who is this man Lincoln, of your State, now canvassing in opposition to Senator Douglas ? ' Being, as you know, an ardent Republican and your friend, I usually told them we had in Illinois two giants instead of one; that Douglas was the little one, as they all knew, but that you were the hig one, which they didn't all know. " But, seriously, Lincoln, Judge Douglas being so widely known, you are getting a national reputation through him, and the truth is, I have a decided impression that if your popular history and efforts on the slavery question can be sufficiently brought before the people, you can be made a formidable, if not a successful, candidate for the presi- dency." " What's the use of talking of me for the presidency," was Lincoln's reply, " whilst we have such men as Seward, Chase, and others, who are so much better known to the peo- ple, and whose names are so intimately associated with the principles of the Republican party ? Everybody knows them ; nobody scarcely outside of Illinois knows me. Besides, is it not, as a matter of justice, due to such men, who have car- ried this movement forward to its present status, in spite of fearful opposition, personal abuse, and hard names ? I really think so." Fell continued his persuasions, and finally requested Lin- coln to furnish him a sketch of his life which could be put out in the East. The suggestion grated on Lincoln's sensi- bilities. He had no chance. Why force himself? " Fell," he said, rising and wrapping his old gray shawl around his tall figure, " I admit that I am ambitious and would like to 336 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN be President. I am not insensible to the compliment you pay me and the interest you manifest in the matter; but there is no such good luck in store for me as the presidency of these United States. Besides, there is nothing in my early history that would interest you or anybody else ; and, as Judge Da- vis says, ' it won't pay.' Good night." And he disappeared into the darkness. Lincoln's defeat in November, 1858, in the contest for the United States senatorship, in no way discouraged his friends. A few days after the November election, when it was known that Douglas had been reelected senator, the Chi- cago " Democrat," then edited by '* Long John " Went- worth, printed an editorial, nearly a column in length, headed " Abraham Lincoln." His work in the campaign then just closed was reviewed and commended in the highest terms. " His speeches," the " Democrat " declared, " will be recognized for a long time to come as the standard authori- ties upon those topics which overshadow all others in the political world of our day; and our children will read them and appreciate the great truths which they so forcibly incul- cate, with even a higher appreciation of their worth than their fathers possessed while listening to them. " We, for our part," said the " Democrat " further, " con- sider that it would be but a partial appreciation of his services to our noble cause that our next State Republican Convention should nominate him for governor as unanimously and en- thusiastically as it did for senator. With such a leader and with our just cause, we would sweep the State from end to end, with a triumph so complete and perfect that there would be scarce enough of the scattered and demoralized forces of the enemy left to tell the story of its defeat. And this State should also i)resent his name to the National Republican Convention, first for President and next for Vice-President. We should then say to the United States at large that in our opinion the Great Man of Illinois is Abraham Lincoln, and none other than Abraham Lincoln." NOMINATION IN i860 337 All througH the year 1859 a few men in Illinois worked quietly but persistently to awaken a demand throughout the State for Lincoln's nomination. The greater number of these were lawyers on Lincoln's circuit, his life-long friends, men like Judge Davis, Leonard Swett, and Judge Logan, who not only believed in him, but loved him, and whose ef- forts were doubly effective because of their affection. In ad- dition to these were a few shrewd politicians who saw in Lincoln the " available " man the situation demanded ; and a group represented by John M. Palmer, who, remembering Lincoln's magnanimity in throwing his influence to Trum- bull in 1854, in order to send a sound Anti-Nebraska man to the United States Senate, wanted, as Senator Palmer him- self put it, to " pay Lincoln back." Then there were a few young men who had been won by Lincoln in the debates with Douglas, and who threw youthful enthusiasm and con- viction into their support. The first time his name was sug- gested as a candidate in the newspapers, indeed, was because the young editor of the Central Illinois " Gazette," Mr. W. O. Stoddard, had caught a glimpse of Lincoln's inner might and concluding in a sudden burst of boyish exultation that Lincoln was " the greatest man he had ever seen or heard of," had rushed off and written an editorial nominat- ing him for the presidency ; this editorial was published on May 4, 1859. The work which these men did at this time cannot be traced with any definiteness. It consisted mainly in " talk- ing up " their candidate. They were greatly aided by the newspapers. The press, indeed, followed a concerted plan that had been carefully laid out by the Republican State Committee in the office of the Chicago " Tribune." To give an appearance of spontaneity to the newspaper canvass it was arranged that the country papers should first take up Lincoln's name. Joseph Medill, editor of the " Tribune," 33^ LIFE OF LINCOLN and secretary of the committee, says that a Rock Island pa- per opened the campaign. Lincoln soon felt the force of this effort in his behalf. Letters came to him from unexpected quarters, offering aid. Everywhere he went on the circuit, men sought him to dis- cuss the situation. In the face of an undoubted movement for him he quailed. The interest was local ; could it ever be more? Above all, had he the qualifications for President of the United States? He asked himself these questions as he pondered a reply to an editor who had suggested announc- ing his name, and he wrote; " I must in all candor say I do not think myself fit for the presidency." This was in April, 1859. In the July following he still declared himself unfit. Even in the following November he had little hope of nomination. " For my single self," he wrote to a correspondent who had suggested the putting of his name on the ticket, " I have enlisted for the permanent success of the Republican cause, and for this object I shall labor faithfully in the ranks, unless, as I think not probable,, the judgment of the party shall assign me a different posi- tion." The last weeks of 1859 and the first of i860 convinced Lincoln, however, that, fit or not, he was in the field. Fell, who as corresponding secretary of the Republican State Cen- tral Committee had been travelling constantly in the inter- ests of the organization, brought him such proof that his candidacy was generally approved of, that in December, 1859, 1^^ consented to write the " little sketch " of his life now known as Lincoln's " autobiography." He wrote it with a little inward shrinking, a half shame that it was so meagre. " There is not much of it," he apolo- gized in sending the document, " for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and not to go beyond the material." NOMINATION IN i860 339 By the opening of i860 Lincoln had concluded that, though he might not be a very promising candidate, at all events he was now in so deep that he must have the approval of his own State, and he began to work in earnest for that. " I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not be nominated on the national ticket," he wrote to Nor- man B. Judd, " but I am where it would hurt some for me to not get the Illinois delegates. . . . Can you help me a little in your end of the vineyard? " The plans of the Lincoln men were well matured. About the first of December, 1859, Medill had gone to Washing- ton, ostensibly as a " Tribune " correspondent, but really to promote Lincoln's nomination. '* Before writing any Lin- coln letters for the " Tribune,'" says Mr- Medill in his " Reminiscences," " I began preaching Lincoln among the Congressmen. I urged him chiefly upon the ground of availability in the close and doubtful States, with what seemed like reasonable success." February 16, i860, the "Tribune" came out editorially for Lincoln, and Medill followed a few days later with a ringing letter from Washington, naming Lincoln as a can- didate on whom both conservative and radical sentiment could unite, and declaring that he now heard Lincoln's name mentioned for President in Washington " ten times as often as it was one month ago." About the time when Medill was writing thus, Norman B. Judd, as member of the Republican National Committee, was executing a manoeuvre the impor- tance of which no one realized but the Illinois politicians. This was securing the convention for Chicago. As the spring passed and the counties of Illinois held their conventions, Lincoln found that, save in the North, where Seward was strong, he was unanimously recommended as the candidate at Chicago. When the State Convention met at Decatur, May 9 and 10, he received an ovation of so 340 LIFE OF LINCOLN picturesque and unique a character that it colored all the rest of the campaign. The delegates were in session when Lin- coln came in as a spectator and was invited to a seat on the platform. Soon after, Richard Oglesby, one of Lincoln's ardent supporters, asked that an old Democrat of Macon County be allowed to offer a contribution to the convention. The offer was accepted, and a curious banner was borne up the hall. The standard was made of two weather-worn fence-rails, decorated with flags and streamers, and bearing the inscription : ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE RAIL CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN i860 Two rails from a lot of 3,000 made in 1830 by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln — whose father was the first pioneer of Macon County. A storm of applause greeted the banner, followed by cries of "Lincoln! Lincoln!" Rising, Lincoln said pointing to the banner, " I suppose I am expected to reply to that. I can- not say whether I made those rails or not, but I am quite sure I have made a great many just as good." The speech was warmly applauded, and one delegate, an influential Ger- man and an ardent Seward man, George Schneider, after wit- nessing the demonstration, turned to his neighbor and said, " Seward has lost the Illinois delegation." He was right; for when, later, John M. Palmer brought forth a resolution that " Abraham Lincoln is the choice of the Republican party of Illinois for the presidency, and the delegates from this State are instructed to use all honorable means to secure his nomination by the Chicago Convention, and to vote as a unit for him," it was enthusiastically adopted. While the politicians of Illinois were thus preparing for the campaign, the Republicans of the East hardly realized LINCOLN IN THE SUMMER OF 1860. From a copy of a photograph owned }»■ Mrs, Cyrus Aldrich. Reproduced here trom a copy m^a^i^ the courtesy of Mr. Daniel Fish, ot Mmneapohs. «( t aZ " > Lincoln soon saw that not only the strong men of his party were supporting him, but that they were working harmoni- ously in an excellent organization. The Republicans all agreed with the " Tribune " that " the election of Mr. Lin- coln though it could not be accomplished without work, was eminently a thing that could be done," and they set themselves vigorously to do it. As the party was composed largely of young men who felt that the cause was worthy of their best * The Hon. H. L. Dawes in interview corrected by him and pubHshed with his permission. THE CAMPAIGN OF i860 369 efforts, great zest and ingenuity was thrown into the cam- paigning. Arrangements were immediately made for a sys- tematic stumping of the whole country. The speakers en- gaged were of a very high order, among them being Sum- ner, Seward, Chase, Cassius M. Clay, Greeley, Stevens, Many of the speeches were of more than usual dramatic in- terest. Such was Sumner's great speech at Cooper Institute, July II, on " The Origin, Necessity and Permanence of the Republican Party." It was the first speech Sumner had made in public since the attack on him in the Senate in 1856, and attracted immense attention. Seward made a five weeks' trip through the West, often speaking several times a day. No one worked harder than Carl Schurz. " I began speaking shortly after the convention," Mr. Schurz once told the author, " and continued until the day of the election, mak- ing from one to three speeches, with the exception of about ten days in September when I was so fatigued that I had to stop for a little while. I spoke in both English and German, under the auspices of the National Committee and not only in the larger towns, but frequently also in country districts." No speaker of the campaign touched the people more deeply. " Young, ardent, aspiring," said the New York " Evening Post," in speaking of Mr. Schurz, " the ro- mances connected with his life and escape from his father- land, his scholarly attainments, and, above all, his devotion to the principles which cast him an exile on our shores, have all combined to render him dear to the hearts of his country- men and to place him in the foremost rank of their leaders." Beside this educational work on the stump was that by pamphlets. After the campaign lives of Lincoln and Ham- lin, of which there were many,* the " campaign tracts " is- * On May ig, the day after the nominations were made, five different lives of Lincoln were announced by the New York "Evening Post." The first to appear was the Wigwam Edition, which was ready at the (24) 370 LIFE OF LINCOLN sued by the " Tribune " were the most widely circulated docu- ments. There were several of these, the most popular being Carl Schurz's speech on the Doom of Slavery, and Seward's on the Irrepressible Conflict. There was at the same time, of course, an immense amount done in the press, and much of it by the ablest literary men the United States has pro- duced, thus Lowell wrote essays for the "Atlantic." Whittier verses for the " Tribune " and the " Atlantic," Bryant, Gree- ley, Raymond, Bowles editorials for their journals. The Republican campaign of i860 had one distinguishing feature, — the Wide Awakes, bands of torch-bearers who in a simple uniform of glazed cap and cape, and carrying col- ored lanterns or blazing coal-oil torches, paraded the streets of almost every town of the North throughout the summer and fall, arousing everywhere the wildest enthusiasm. Their origin was purely accidental. In February, Cassius M. Clay spoke in Hartford, Connecticut. A few ardent young Re- publicans accompanied him as a kind of body guard, and to save their garments from the dripping of the torches a few of them wore improvised capes of black glazed cambric. The uniform attracted so much attention that a campaign club formed in Hartford soon after adopted it. This club called itself the Wide-Awakes. Other clubs took up the idea, and soon there were Wide-Awakes drilling regularly from one end of the North to the other. A great many fantastic movements were invented by them, a favorite one being a peculiar zig-zag march — an imita- beginning of June. The best were those by W. D. Howclls and David W. Bartlett. The Illinois " State Journal" of June 5, i860, quoted a paragraph from the Cincinnati " Commercial" to the effect that "it is stated that there have already been fifty-two applications to Mr. Lincoln to write his biography." The "Journal " of June 15, i860, said that none of the numerous biog- raphies announced by publishers as " authorized " or the " only author- ized" has been in fact authorized by Mr. Lincoln. "He is ignorant of their contents and is not responsible for anything they contain." THE CAMPAIGN OF i860 371 tion of the party emblem — the rail-fence. Numbers of the clubs adopted the rules and drills of the Chicago Zouaves — one of the most popular military organizations of the day. 1 In the summer of i860 Colonel Ellsworth, the commanding officer of the Zouaves, brought them East. The Wide- Awake movement was greatly stimulated by this tour of the Zouaves. Almost all of the clubs had their peculiar badges, Lincoln splitting rails or engineering a flat-boat being a favorite deco- ration for them. There were many medals worn as well. Many of these combined business and politics adroitly, the obverse advising you to " vote for the rail-splitter," the re- verse to buy somebody's soap, or tea, or wagons. Many of the clubs owned Lincoln rails which were given the place of honor on all public occasion and the " Origin- als," as the Hartford Wide-Awakes were called, possessed the identical maul with which Lincoln had split the rails for the famous fence. It had been secured in Illinois together with such weighty credentials that nobody could dispute its claim, and was the pride of the club. It still is to be seen in Hartford occupying a conspicuous place in the collection of the Connecticut Historical 'Society. Campaign songs set to familiar airs were heard on every hand. Many of these never had more than a local vogue, f but others were sung generally. One of the most ringing " was E. C. Stedman's " Honest Abe of the West," sung to the air of " Star Spangled Banner." "Then on to the holy Republican strife! And again, for a future as fair as the morning, For the sake of that freedom more precious than life, Ring out the grand anthem of Liberty's warning ! Lift the banner on high, while from mountain and plain. The cheers of the people are sounded again; Hurrah ! for our cause— of all causes the best ! Hurrah! for Old Abe, Honest Abe of the West!" 372 LIFE OF LINCOLN One of the campaign songs which will never be forgotten was Whittier's '' The Quakers Are Out : — " " Give the flags to the winds ! Set the hills aH aflame ! Make way for the man with The Patriarch's name ! Away with misgivings — away With all doubt, For Lincoln goes in when the Quakers are out ! " In many of the States great rallies were held at central points, at which scores of Wide-Awake clubs and a dozen popular speakers were present. The most enthusiastic of all these was held in Mr. Lincoln's own home, Springfield, on August 8. Fully 75,000 people gathered for the celebration, by far the greater number coming across the prairies on horseback or in wagons. A procession eight miles long filed by Mr. Lincoln's door. Mr. E. B. Washburne, who was with Mr. Lincoln in Springfield that day, says of this mass meeting : " It was one of the most enormous and impressive gath- erings I had ever witnessed. Mr. Lincoln, surrounded by some intimate friends, sat on the balcony of his humble home. It took hours for all the delegations to file before him, and there was no token of enthusiasm wanting. He was deeply touched by the manifestations of personal and political friendships, and returned all his salutations in that off-hand and kindly manner which belonged to him. I know of no demonstration of a similar character that can com- pare with it except the review by Napoleon of his army for the invasion of Russia, about the same season of the year in 1812." From May until November this work for the ticket went on steadily and ardently. Mr. Lincoln during all this time remained quietly in Springfield. The conspicuous position in which he was placed made almost no difference in his sim- THE CAMPAIGN OF i860 373 pie life. He was the same genial, accessible, modest man as ever, his habits as unpretentious, his friendliness as great. The chief outward change in his daily round was merely one of quarters. It seemed to his friends that neither his home nor his dingy law office was an appropriate place in which to receive his visitors and they arranged that a room in the State House which stood on the village green in the centre of the town, be put at his disposal. He came down to this office every morning about eight o'clock, always stopping on his way in his old cordial fashion to ask the news or ex- change a story when he met an acquaintance. Frequently he went to the post-office himself before going to his office and came out his arms loaded with letters and papers. He had no regular hours for visitors ; there was no cere- mony for admittance to his presence. People came when they would. Usually they found the door open ; if it was not, it was Mr. Lincoln's own voice which answered, " come in," to their knock. These visitors were a strange medley of the curious, the interested and the friendly. Many came simply to see him, to say they had shaken hands with him; numbers to try to find out what his policy would be if elected; others to wish him success. All day long they filed in and out leaving him some days no time for his correspondence, which every day grew larger. He seemed never to be in a hurry, never to lose patience, however high his table was piled with mail, however closely his room was crowded with visitors. He even found time to give frequent sittings to the artists sent from various parts of the country to paint his portrait. Among those who came in the summer after the nomination were Berry, of Boston ; Hicks, of New York ; Conant, of St. Louis; Wright, of Mobile; Brown, and At- wood, of Philadelphia; Jones, of Cincinnati. Mr. Lincoln took the kindliest interest in these men, and later when Presi- dent did more than one of them a friendly turn; thus in 374 LIFE OF LINCOLN March, 1865 he wrote to Seward in regard to Jones and Piatt, that he had " some wish " that they might have " some of those moderate sized consulates which facihtate artists a httle in their profession." They in their turn never forgot him. Sitting over their easels by the hour in the corner of his office assigned them they got many glimpses into the man's great heart, and nowhere do we get pleasanter pic- tures of Mr. Lincoln in this period than from their journals. To those who observed Mr. Lincoln closely as he received his visitors one thing was apparent : he always remained master of the interview. While his visitors told him a great deal, they learned nothing from him which he did not wish to give. The following observations, published in the Illinois " State Journal " in November, i860, illustrate very well what happened almost every day in his office : " While talking to two or three gentlemen and standing up, a very hard looking customer rolled in and tumbled into the only vacant chair and the one lately occupied by Mr. Lin- coln. Mr. Lincoln's keen eye took in the fact, but gave no evidence of the notice. Turning around at last he spoke to the odd specimen, holding out his hand at such a distance that our friend had to vacate the chair if he accepted the proffered shake. Mr. Lincoln quietly resumed his chair. It was a small matter, yet one giving proof more positively than a larger event of that peculiar way the man has of mingling with a mixed crowd. " He converses fluently on all subjects, illustrates every- thing by a merry anecdote, of which article he has an abun- dant supply. I said on all subjects. He does not talk poli- tics. He passes from that gracefully the moment it is intro- duced. Hundreds seek him every week to get his opinion on this or that subject. He has a jolly way of disposing of that matter by saying, ' Ah ! you haven't read my speeches. Let me make you a present of my speeches.' And the earnest inquirer finds himself the happy possessor of some old docu- ments." THE CAMPAIGN OF i860 375 Among his daily visitors there were usually men of emi- nence from North and South. He received them all with per- fect simplicity and always even on his busiest days, found a moment to turn away from them to greet old friends who had known him when he kept grocery in New Salem or acted as deputy-surveyor of Sangamon County. One day as he talked to a company of distinguished strangers an old lady in a big sun-bonnet, heavy boots and short skirts walked into the office. She carried a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a white string. As soon as Mr. Lincoln saw her he left the group, went to meet her and, shaking her hand cordially, inquired for her " folks." After a moment the old lady opened her package and taking out a pair of coarse wool socks she handed them to him. " I wanted to give you somethin', Mr. Linkin," she said, " to take to Washington, and that's all I hed. I spun that yarn and knit them socks myself." Thanking her warmly, Mr. Lincoln took the socks and holding them up by the toes, one in each hand, he turned to the astonished celebrities and said in a voice full of kindly amusement, " The lady got my latitude and longitude about right, didn't she, gentlemen ? " The old lady was not the only one, however, who gave Mr. Lincoln " something to carry to Washington." From the time of his nomination gifts poured in on him. Many of these came in the form of wearing apparel. Mr. George Lin- coln, of Brooklyn, who in January carried a handsome silk hat to the President-elect, the gift of a New York hatter, says that in receiving the hat, Mr. Lincoln laughed heartily over the gifts of clothing and remarked to Mrs. Lincoln: " Well, wife, if nothing else comes out of this scrape, we are going to have some new clothes, are we not? " To those who observed Mr. Lincoln superficially in this period, it might have seemed that he was doing nothing of any value to himself or to his party. Certainly he was taking 376 LIFE OF LINCOLN no active part in the campaign. He was making no speeches — writing no letters — giving no interviews. This poHcy of silence he had adopted at the outset. The very night of his nomination his townspeople in serenading him had called for a speech. Standing in the doorway of his house he said to them that he did not suppose the honor of such a visit was intended particularly for himself as a private citizen, but rather as the representative of a great party; that as to his position on the political questions of the day he could only refer them to his previous speeches, and he added: — " Fel- low citizens and friends : The time comes upon every pub- lic man, when it is best for him to keep his lips closed. That time has come upon me." When in August the monster mass meeting was held in Springfield every effort was made to persuade Mr. Lincoln to speak. All he would consent to do was to appear and in a few words excuse himself. Up to the time he left for Washington to be inaugurated, he kept his resolve. Nor would he write letters explaining his position, or de- fending himself. So many letters were received asking his political opinion that he found it necessary soon after his nomination to prepare the following form of reply to be sent out by his secretary : " Dear Sir : Your letter to Mr. Lincoln of , and by which you seek to obtain his opinions on certain political points, has been received by him. He has received others of a similar character, but he also has a greater number of the exactly opposite character. The latter class beseech him to write nothing whatever upon any point of political doc- trine. They say his positions were well known when he was nominated, and that he must not now embarrass the canvass by undertaking to shift or modify them. He regrets that he cannot oblige all, but you perceive it is impossible for him to do so. Yours, etc., "JNO. G. Nicolay/' THE CAMPAIGN OF i860 377 To one gentleman who asked him to write something dis- claiming all intention to interfere with slaves or slavery in the States, he replied, '' I have already done this many many times; and it is in print and open to all who will read. Those who will not read or heed what I have already pub- licly said would not read or heed a repetition of it. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- suaded though one rose from the dead." And to another correspondent who suggested that he set forth his conservative views, he wrote: — ***" I will not forbear from doing so merely on punctilio and pluck. If I do finally abstain, it will be because of ap- prehension that it would do harm. For the good men of the South — and I regard the majority of them as such — I have no objection to repeat seventy and seven times. But I have bad men to deal with, both North and South ; men who are eager for something new upon which to base new misrepre- sentations; men who would like to frighten me, or at least to fix upon me the character of timidity and cowardice. They would seize upon almost any letter I could write as being an * awful coming down.' I intend keeping my eye upon these gentlemen, and to not unnecessarily put any weapons in their hands." Nor would he defend himself against the " campaign sto- ries " which appeared in numbers. One of which his enemies made much was that he had received two hundred dollars for the Cooper Union speech in February, i860. They claimed that as it was a political speech it was contrary to political etiquette to accept pay. Lincoln explained the affair in a let- ter to a gentleman who had been disturbed by it and added : — " I have made this explanation to you as a friend, but I wish no explanation made to our enemies. What they want is a squabble and a fuss, and that they can have if we ex- plain; and they cannot have it if we don't." 378 LIFE OF LINCOLN Another foolish tale which caused Lincoln's partisans un- rest was that when he was a member of Congress he had charged several pairs of boots to his stationery account and that they had been paid for out oi. public funds. One of Lin- coln's friends took the trouble to examine the stationery account for the Thirtieth Congress and to publish a certified denial of the story. Lincoln's silence and inactivity were merely external. As a matter of fact no one was busier than he. No one was fol- lowing more intently and thoughtfully the gradual develop- ment of the situation and the daily fluctuation of opinion. By correspondence, from the press, through his visitors many of whom came to Springfield at his request, he kept himself informed of how the campaign was going from Maine to California. Whenever he feared a break in the ranks he put in a word of warning or of advice. He warned Thurlow Weed that Douglas was " managing the Bell element with great adroitness." He cautioned Hannibal Hamlin against a break the latter feared in Maine, " Such a result as you seem to predict in Maine " — he wrote, " would, I fear, put us on the down-hill track, lose us the State elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana, and probably ruin us on the main turn in November." While he gave the strictest attention to the progress of the elections all over the country, he man- aged to keep above local issues and to hold himself aloof from the personal contests and rivalries within the party. In fact Lincoln kept in perfect touch with the progress of his party from May to November and was able to say at any time with accuracy just what his chances were in each State. He seems at no time to have had any serious fear that he would be defeated. There was a tragic side to this very certainty of election which Lincoln felt deeply. In the Convention which had nominated him, nine States of the Union had not been rep- THE CAMPAIGN OF i860 379 resented. If he should be elected these States would have had no voice in his choice. He knew that he was pledged to a platform whose principles these States stigmatized as " deception and fraud," and that if elected he must deny what they claimed as rights. He knew that in at least one State, Alabama, the legislature two months before his nomi- nation had pledged itself by an almost unanimous vote in case of his election to call a convention to consider what should be done for " the protection of their rights, interests and honor." He knew that numbers of influential Southern men were repeating daily with Wm. L, Yancey, " I want the cotton states precipitated in a revolution," or declaring with Mr. Crawford of Georgia, " We will never submit to the in- auguration of a Black Republican President." From May to November he watched anxiously for every sign that the South was preparing to make good the threats with which its orators were inflaming their audiences, which a hostile press reiterated day by day, which teemed in his mail, and which brought scores of timorous men to Spring- field to advise and warn him. How serious was it all ? He did his utmost to discover; even writing in October to Major David Hunter to find out how much truth there was in the report of disaffection in a Western fort : " I have a letter from a writer unknown to me," he said, " saying the offi- cers of the army at Fort Kearney have determined, in case of Republican success, at the approaching presidential election, to take themselves, and the arms at that point. South, for the purpose of resistance to the government. While I think there are many chances to one that this is a humbug, it oc- curs to me that any real movement of this sort in the army would leak out and become known to you. In such case, if it would not be unprofessional, or dishonorable (of which you are to be judge), I shall be much obliged if you will ap- prise me of it." 380 LIFE OF LINCOLN In spite of all that Lincoln knew of the temper of the South, in spite of his close study of events there through the summer of i860, he did not believe secession probable. " The people of the South have too muck good sense and good tem- per to attempt the ruin of the government rather than see it administered as it was administered by the men who made it. At least so I hope and believe," he wrote a correspondent in August, And in September he said to a visitor, " There are no real disunionists in the country." There were reasons for this confidence. In every State of the South there was a Union party working to meet the crisis which Lincoln's election was sure to produce; many of the members sent him cheering letters. In acknowledging such a letter in August, Lincoln wrote : " It contains one of the many assurances I receive from the South, that in no probable event will there be any very formidable effort to break up the Union." Then, too, Lincoln had heard this threat of secession for so long that he had grown slightly indifferent to it. He re- membered that in the Fremont campaign it had been em- ployed with even more violence than now. Again in 1858 the clamor of disunion had risen. He believed that now much of the noise about disunion was merely political, raised by the friends of Breckinridge, Douglas, or Bell, to drive vot- ers from him. The leading men of the party sustained Lin- coln in this belief. Seward and Schurz both confidently as- sured Republicans in their speeches that they might vote for Lincoln without fear, and Bryant, in the " Evening Post," laughed at the " conservative distresses " of those who sup- posed that Lincoln's election would cause secession and war ; reminding them that when Jefferson was a candidate it was said his election would " let loose the flood-gates of French Jacobinism " and that Henry Clay had declared that " noth- ing short of universal commercial ruin " would follow Jack- LINCOLN HOME, SPRINGFIELD^ ILLINOIS. From photosr 4IO LIFE OF LINCOLN Mr. Lincoln and his party were to leave Springfield by a special train at eight o'clock on Monday morning, February II. And at precisely five minutes before eight o'clock, he was summoned from the dingy waiting-room of the station. Slowly working his way through the crowd of friends and townspeople that had gathered to bid him good-by, he mounted the platform of the car, and turning, stood looking down into the multitude of sad, friendly upturned faces. For a moment a strong emotion shook him ; then, removing his hat and lifting his hand to command silence, he spoke : My friends, no one, not in my situation, 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 knowing 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 hope in your prayers you will com- mend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell. * A sob went through the listening crowd as Mr. Lincoln's broken voice asked their prayers, and a choked exclamation, " We will do it ! We will do it ! " rose as he ceased to speak. Upon all who listened to him that morning his words pro- duced a deep impression. " I was only a lad of fourteen," says Mr. Lincoln Dubois, of Springfield, " but to this day I can recall almost the exact language of that speech." '' We have known Mr. Lincoln for many years," wrote the editor of the " State Journal." " We have heard him speak upon a * The version of the farewell speech here used is that given by Nico- lay and Hay in their " Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln." MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 411 hundred different occasions ; but we never saw him so pro- foundly affected, nor did he ever utter an address which seemed to us so full of simple and touching eloquence, so exactly adapted to the occasion, so worthy of the man and the hour. Although it was raining fast when he began to speak, every hat was lifted and every head bent forward to catch the last words of the departing chief. When he said, with the earnestness of a sudden inspiration of feeling, that zuith God's help he should not fail, there was an uncontrollable burst of applause." The speech was of course telegraphed over the country, and though politicians sneered at it, the people were touched. He had appealed to one of their deepest convictions, the belief in a Providence whose help was given to those who sought it in prayer. The new President, they said to one another, was not only a man who had struggled with life like common people ; he was a man who believed, as they did, in God, and was not ashamed to ask the prayers of good men. The journey eastward through Illinois, which now began, was full of incident. No better description of it was ever given than that of Thomas Ross, a brakeman on the presi- dential train. " The enthusiasm all along the line was intense. As we whirled through the country villages, we caught a cheer from the people and a glimpse of waving handkerchiefs and of hats tossed high into the air. Wherever we stopped there was a great rush to shake hands with Mr. Lincoln, though of course only a few could reach him. The crowds looked as if they included the whole population. There were women and children, there were young men, and there were old men with gray beards. It was soul-stirring to see these white- whiskered old fellows, many of whom had known Lincoln in his humbler days, join in the cheering, and hear them shout after him, ' Good-by, Abe. Stick to the Constitution, and we will stick to you.' It was my good fortune to stand 412 ■ LIFE OF LINCOLN beside Lincoln at each place at which he spoke — at Decatur, Tolono, and Danville. At the State line the train stopped for dinner. There was such a crowd that Lincoln could scarcely reach the dining-room. ' Gentlemen,' said he, as he surveyed the crowd, ' if you will make me a little path, so that I can get through and get something to eat, I will make you a speech when I get back.' " I never knew where all the people came from. They were not only in the towns and villages, but many were along the track in the country, just to get a glimpse of the Presi- dent's train. I remember that, after passing Bement, we crossed a trestle, and I was greatly interested to see a man standing there with a shot-gun. As the train passed he pre- sented arms. I have often thought he was there, a volun- teer, to watch the trestle and to see that the President's train got over it in safety. As I have said, the people everywhere were wild. Everybody wanted to shake hands with Lincoln, and he would have to say : ' My friends, I would like to shake hands with all of you, but I can't do it.' At Danville I well remember seeing him thrust his long arm over several heads to shake hands with George Lawrence. Walter Whit- ney, the conductor, who went on to Indianapolis, told me when he got back that, after Lincoln got into a carriage, men got hold of the hubs and carried the vehicle for a whole block. At the State line, I left the train, and returned to Springfield, having passed the biggest day in my whole life." It was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon before the party reached Indianapolis, where they were to spend the night. An elaborate reception had been prepared, and here Mr. Lin- coln made his first speech. It was not long, but it contained a paragraph of vital importance. The discussion over the right of the government to coerce the South was at its height. Lincoln had never publicly expresssed himself on this point. In the Indianapolis speech he said : The words " coercion " and " invasion " are much used in these days, and often with some temper and hot blood. Let us make sure, if we can, that we do not misunderstand the MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 413 meaning of those who use them. Let us get exact definitions of these words, not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves, who certainly deprecate the things they would represent by the use of words. What, then, is " coer- cion " ? What is " invasion " ? Would the marching of an army into South Carolina without the consent of her people, and with hostile intent toward them, be " inva- sion " ? I certainly think it would ; and it would be " coer- cion " also if the South Carolinians were forced to submit. But if the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all of these things be " invasion " or " coercion " ? Do our pro- fessed lovers of the Union, but who spitefully resolve that they will resist coercion and invasion, understand that such things as these on the part of the United States would be coercion or invasion of a State ? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be exceedingly thin and airy. If sick, the little pills of the homeopathist would be much too large for them to swallow. In their view, the Union as a family relation would seem to be no regular marriage, but rather a sort of " free-love " ar- rangement, to be maintained only on " passional attraction." The speech was warmly applauded by the Republican press. It was the sign they had been seeking from Mr. Lin- coln. But to the advocates of compromise it was a bitter message. " The bells of St. Germain I'Auxerrois have at length tolled forth the signal for massacre and bloodshed by the incoming administration," said the New York "Herald." A long public reception in the evening, a breakfast the next morning with the Governor of the State, another reception at the hotel, and then, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 12th, Mr. Lincoln's party left Indianapolis for Cincinnati. Several of the friends who had come from Springfield left Mr. Lin- coln at Indianapolis, but others joined him, and the train was 414 LIFE OF LINCOLN as full of life and interest as it had been the day before. There was, too, the same succession of decorated, cheering towns; the same eager desire to see and hear the President at every station. At Cincinnati, where the second night was spent and where a magnificent reception was given him, Lin- coln made two brief addresses. In that to the Mayor and citizens he was particularly happy : " I have spoken but once before this in Cincinnati," he said. " That was a year previous to the late presidential election. On that occasion, in a playful manner, but with sincere words, I addressed much of what I said to the Ken- tuckians. I gave my opinion that we as Republicans would ultimately beat them as Democrats, but that they could post- pone that result longer by nominating Senator Douglas for the presidency than they could in any other way. They did not, in any true sense of the word, nominate Mr. Douglas, and the result has come certainly as soon as ever I expected. I also told them how I expected they would be treated after they should have been beaten ; and I now wish to recall their attention to what I then said upon that subject. I then said, ' When we do as we say — beat you — you perhaps want to know what we will do with you. I will tell you, so far as I am authorized to speak for the opposition, what we mean to do with you. We mean to treat you, as near as we possibly can, as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated you. We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere with your institutions; to abide by all and every compromise of the Constitution ; and, in a word, coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerate men — if we have degenerated — may, according to the examples of those noble fathers, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. We mean to remember that you are as good as we ; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circum- stances. We mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and treat you accordingly.' " Fellow-citizens of Kentucky ! — friends ! — brethren ! may I call you in my new position ? I see no occasion, and feel no MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 415 inclination, to retract a word of this. If it shall not be made good, be assured the fault shall not be mine." These conciliatory remarks were received with great en- thusiasm, the crowd rushing at him as soon as he had fin- ished, patting him on the back, and almost wrenching his arms off in their efforts at showing their approval. On Wednesday morning, Mr. Lincoln left Cincinnati for Columbus. Although few stops were made, he was kept busy receiving the committees and politicians who boarded the train here and there, and who were indefatigable in their efforts to draw from him some expression of his views. Mr. Lincoln felt that to answer their questions would be the gravest indiscretion, and he resorted to stories and jests in his efforts not to commit himself or offend his visitors. The reports of his " levity," as more than one felt this practice to be, were telegraphed over the country and bitterly com- mented upon by a large part of the press. So far, however, as the stories Mr. Lincoln told on his journey have come to us, they contain quite as much political wisdom as a sober dissertation could have contained. Thus there was a great deal of discussion en route about the possibility of reconciling the Northern and Southern Democrats. Mr. Lincoln was appealed to. " Well," he said, " I once knew a good sound churchman called Brown, who was on a committee to erect a bridge over a very dangerous and rapid river. Several engineers had failed, and at last Brown said he had a friend Jones, who, he believed, could build the bridge. Jones was accordingly summoned. ' Can you build this bridge ? ' asked the committee. ' Yes,' replied Jones ; ' I could build a bridge to the infernal regions if necessary.' The committee was horrified; but after Jones had retired. Brown said thoughtfully, ' I know Jones so well, and he is so honest a man and so good a builder, that if he says he can build a 4i6 • LIFE OF LINCOLN bridge to Hades, why, I believe it; but I have my doubts about the abutments on the infernal side.' So," said Lin- coln, " when politicians say they can harmonize the Northern and Southern wings of the Democracy, why, I believe them, but I have my doubts about the abutments on the Southern side." At Columbus, the brilliant receptions of Indianapolis and Cincinnati were repeated, and here Mr. Lincoln addressed briefly the State Legislature. One clause of his remarks proved to be most unfortunate : Allusion has been made to the interest felt in relation to the policy of the new administration. In this I have received from some a degree of credit for having kept silence, and from others some depreciation. I still think that I was right. In the varying and repeatedly shifting scenes of the pres- ent, and without a precedent which could enable me to judge by the past, it has seemed fitting that, before speaking upon the difficulties of the country, I should have gained a view of the whole field, being at liberty to modify and change the course of policy as future events may make a change neces- sary. I have not maintained silence from any want of real anx- iety. It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety, for there is nothing going wrong. It is a consoling circum- stance that when we look out there is nothing that really hurts anybody. We entertain different views upon political questions, but nobody is suffering anything. This is a most consoling circumstance, and from it we may conclude that all we want is time, patience, and a reliance on that God who has never forsaken this people. A hostile press took the phrases " there is nothing going wrong " — " there is nothing that really hurts anybody " — " nobody is suffering anything," and used them apart from the context, to prove that the President-elect did not grasp MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 4i7 the situation. At Newark, New Jersey, a week later, just be- fore the presidential party passed through, a poster appeared in the town quoting these sentences and calling on the unem- ployed to meet at the station when Mr. Lincoln's train ar- rived and show the President that " they emphatically dif- fered from these sentiments." Nothing came of this attempt to create a disturbance. On Thursday morning, February 14, the presidential party was again en route, this time bound for Pittsburg. Lincoln must have made this journey with a lighter heart than that of the day before, for the danger that the count- ine of the electoral vote would be interfered with, was now over. The night before at Columbus, he had received a tele- gram which read : " The votes have been peaceably counted. You are elected." The ceremony had passed off without in- cident. At Pittsburg, where the night of the 14th was spent, the President spoke to an immense crowd, and as the issue in Pennsylvania had been so largely protection, it was to that doctrine that he gave his chief attention. Nothing could have pleased the Iron City better. The people were so wild with enthusiasm that it took the combined efforts of the po- lice and militia to get the presidential party on the train and out of town. From the hour that Lincoln's coercion remarks at Indian- apolis reached the country, he had received telegraphic con- gratulations and remonstrances at almost every stop of the train. The remarks at Columbus produced a similar result, and he seems to have concluded at this point to make his fu- ture speeches more general. At Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, and New York there was nothing in what he said that his enemies could fasten on. His journey from Pittsburg east- ward was in no way different from what it had been pre- viously. There were the same crowds of people at every (27) 4i8 • LIFE OF LINCOLN station, the same booming of cannon, gifts of flowers, recep- tions at hotels, breakfasts, dinners, and kmcheons with local magnates. All along the route in the East, as in the West, the people were out; everywhere' there were flags and ban- ners and mottoes. The party in the train continued to change as it had done, committees and " leading citizens " replacing each other in rapid succession. None of these accessions aroused more interest among the other members of the party than Horace Greeley, who appeared unexpect- edly at Girard, Ohio, bag and blankets in hand, and after a ride of twenty miles with Mr. Lincoln, departed. At Buffalo, where Mr. Lincoln spoke on Saturday, the 1 6th, a bit of variety was infused into the celebration by the fulfilment of an election wager. The loser was to saw a cord of wood in front of the American House and present it to the poorest negro to be found. He accordingly appeared with a wagon-load of cord-wood just before Mr. Lincoln began his speech from the hotel balcony, and during the ad- dress sawed vigorously. The journey through New York State, with the elaborate ceremonies at Albany and New York City, occupied three days, and it was not until the evening of February 21 that Lincoln reached Philadelphia. The day had been a hard one. He had left New York early, had replied to greetings at Jer- sey City and again at Newark, had addressed both branches of the New Jersey Legislature at Trenton and gone through a formal dinner there, and now, though it was dark and cold, he was obliged to ride in state through the streets of Phila- delphia to his hotel, where hundreds of visitors soon were surging in to shake his hand. The hotel was still crowded with guests when he was summoned to the room of one of his party, Mr. Norman Judd. There he was introduced to Mr. Allan Pinkerton, who, as Mr. Judd explained, was a Chicago detective and had a story to lay before him. MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 4^9 " Pinkerton informed me," said Mr. Lincoln afterwards, in relating the affair to Benson J. Lossing, " that a plan had been laid for my assassination, the exact time when I expected to go through Baltimore being publicly known. He was well informed as to the plan, but did not know that the conspirators would have pluck enough to execute it. He urged me to go right through with him to Washington that night. I did not like that. I had made engagements to visit Harrisburg, and go from there to Baltimore, and I resolved to do so. I could not believe that there was a plot to murder me. I made arrangements, however, with Mr. Judd for my return to Philadelphia the next night, if I should be con- vinced that there was danger in going through Baltimore. I told him that if I should meet at Harrisburg, as I had at other places, a delegation to go with me to the next place (then Baltimore), I should feel safe, and go on." Mr. Lincoln left Mr. Pinkerton, and started to his room. On the way he met Ward Lamon, also a member of his party, who introduced Frederick Seward, the son of the Senator. Mr. Seward, who relates this story in his life of his father, told Mr. Lincoln that he had a letter for him from his father. The letter informed Mr. Lincoln that Gen- eral Scott and Colonel Stone, the latter the officer command- ing the District of Columbia militia, had just received infor- mation which seemed to them convincing, that a plot existed in Baltimore to murder him on his way through that city. Mr. Seward besought the President to change his plan and go forward secretly. Mr. Lincoln read the note through twice slowly and thoughtfully ; then looked up, and said to Mr. Seward, " Do you know anything about the way this information was ob- tained ? " No, Mr. Seward knew nothing. "■ " Did you hear any names mentioned ? Did you, for in- stance, ever hear anything said about such a name as Pin- kerton?" 420 LIFE OF LINCOLN No, Mr. Seward had heard no names mentioned save those of General Scott and Colonel Stone. " I may as well tell why I ask," said Mr. Lincoln. " There were stories and rumors some time ago, before I left home, about people who were intending to do me a mischief. I never attached much importance to them — never wanted to believe any such thing. So I never would do anything about them in the way of taking precautions and the like.- Some of my friends, though, thought differently — Judd and others — and, without my knowledge, they employed a detective to look into the matter. It seems he has occasionally reported what he found; and only to-day, since we arrived at this house, he brought this story, or something similar to it, about an attempt on my life in the confusion and hurly-burly of the reception at Baltimore." " Surely, Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Seward, " that is a strong corroboration of the news I bring you." He smiled, and shook his head. " That is exactly why I was asking you about names. If different persons, not know- ing of each other's work, have been pursuing separate clews that led to the same result, why, then, it shows there must be something in it. But if this is only the same story, fil- tered through two channels, and reaching me in two ways, then that don't make it any stronger. Don't you see ? " After a little further discussion of the subject, Mr. Lin- coln rose and said : " Well, we haven't got to decide it to- night, anyway, and I see it is getting late. You need not think I will not consider it well. I shall think it over care- fully, and try to decide it right; and I will let you know in the morning." The next day was Washington's birthday. The hauling down of the Stars and Stripes in the South and the substi- tuting of State flags had stirred the North deeply. The day the first Palmetto Flag was raised in South Carolina, a new MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 421 reverence for the national emblem was born in the North. The flag began to appear at every window, in every but- tonhole. On January 29 Kansas was admitted into the Union, without slavery, thus adding a new star to the thirty- three then in the field; and for raising the new flag thus made necessary, Washington's birthday became almost a universal choice. In Philadelphia, it was arranged that the new flag for Independence Hall be raised by Mr. Lincoln. The ceremony took place at seven o'clock in the morning. Mr. Lincoln's brief speech was one of the best received of all he made on the journey : I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle from which sprang the institutions under which we live. You have kindly sug- gested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to our distracted country. I can say in return, sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that Declaration. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.'" This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? 42 2 LIFE OF LINCOLN If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is forced upon the government. The government will not use force, unless force is used against it. My friends, this is wholly an unprepared speech. I did not expect to be called on to say a word when I came here. I supposed I was merely to do something toward raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet. [Cries of " No, no."] But I have said nothing l)ut what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by. It was after returning from the flag-raising at Philadel- phia that Lincoln told his friends that he had decided to go on to Washington at whatever time they thought best after his only remaining engagement was filled; viz., to meet and address the Pennsylvania Legislature at Harrisburg that afternoon. The engagement was carried out, and late in the afternoon he was free. It had been arranged that he leave Harrisburg secretly at six o'clock in the evening with Colonel Lamon, the rest of his party to know nothing of his departure. But Mr. Lincoln did not like to go without at least informing his companions, and asked that they be called. " I reckon they'll laugh at us, Judd," he said, " but you had better get them together." Several of the party, when told of the project, opposed it violently, arguing that it would expose Mr. Lincoln to ridicule and to the charge of cowardice. He, however, answered that unless there was something besides ridicule to fear, he was disposed to carry out Mr. Judd's plan. MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 423 At six o'clock he left his hotel by a back door, bareheaded, a soft hat in his pocket, and entering a carriage, was driven to the station, where a car and engine, imlighted save for a headlight, awaited him. A few minutes after eleven o'clock, he was in Philadelphia, where the night train for Washing- ton was being held by order of the president of the road for an " important package." This package was delivered to the conductor as soon as it was known that Mr. Lincoln was on the train. At six o'clock the next morning, after an un- disturbed night, he was in Washington, where Mr. Wash- burne and Mr. Seward met him, and, with devout thanks- giving, conducted him to Willard's Hotel, there to remain until after the inauguration. There were still nine days before the inauguration, and nine busier days Mr. Lincoln had not spent since his elec- tion. He was obliged to make visits to President Buchanan, Congress and the Supreme Court, and under Mr. Seward's guidance, this was done at once. He received, too, great numbers of visitors, including many delegations and com- mittees. The Hon. James Harlan, of Iowa, at that time United States Senator, called on Mr. Lincoln on February 23, the day of his arrival. " He was overwhelmed with callers," says Mr. Harlan. " The room in which he stood, the corridors and halls and stairs leading to it, were crowded full of people, each one, apparently, intent on ob- taining an opportunity to say a few words to him privately.'^ It was in these few days before his inauguration that the great fight over the future Cabinet was made. As we have seen, Lincoln had made his selections, subject to events, be- fore he left Springfield. When he reached Washington he sought counsel on his proposed appointments from great numbers of the leading men of the country. If they did not come to him, he went to them. Thus ex-Senator Harlan, in an unpublished manuscript, " Recollections of Abraham Lin- 424 ■ . LIFE OF LINCOLN coin," tells how the President-elect sounded him on the Cabi- net. " A page came to me at my desk in the Senate Cham- ber," writes Mr. Harlan, " and said, ' The President-elect is in the President's room and wishes to see you.' I confess that I felt a little flurried by this announcement. I had not been accustomed to being called in by Presidents of the United States ; hence, to gain a little time for self-composure, I said to the little page, ' How do you know that the Presi- dent-elect wishes to see me? ' ' Oh,' said he, ' his messen- ger came to the door of the Senate Chamber, and sent me to tell you.' ' All right,' said I. ' You may tell the President's messenger that I will call immediately,' which, of course, I did without the least delay. " I was received by the President in person, who, after the ordinary greetings, offered me a seat, and seated himself near me. No one else was in the room. He commenced the conversation, saying in a half-playful, half-serious tone and manner, * I sent for you to tell me whom to appoint as mem- bers of my Cabinet.' I responded, saying, ' Mr. President, as that duty, under the Constitution, devolves, in the first instance, on the President, I have not given to the subject a serious thought ; I have no names to suggest, and expect to be satisfied with your selections.' He then said he had about concluded to nominate William H. Seward, of New York, as Secretary of State; Edward Bates, of Missouri, for Attor- ney-General; Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, for Secretary of the Interior ; Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, for Secretary of the Navy ; Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, for Postmaster- General; and that he thought he ought to appoint Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, and Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, for the remaining two places, but was in doubt which one to offer Mr. Cameron and would like to have me express my opinion frankly on the point. " * Well,' said I, ' Mr. President, if that is the only ques- MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 425 tion involved, I have not the sHghtest doubt that Mr. Chase ought to be made Secretary of the Treasury,' and then I pro- ceeded to mention, without hesitation or reserve, my reasons for this opinion. He thanked me cordially for my frankness. I took my leave. This interview lasted probably about ten or fifteen minutes." Not all of those with whom Mr. Lincoln talked about his Cabinet professed, like Senator Harlan, to be satisfied with his selections. Radical Republicans, mistrusting Seward's spirit of compromise, besought him to take Chase and drop Seward altogether. Conservatives, on the contrary, fear- ing Chase's implacable " no compromise " spirit, urged Lin- coln to omit him from the Cabinet. Seward finally, on March 2, probably thinking to force Lincoln's hand, withdrew his consent to take an appointment. He said later that he feared a " compound Cabinet " and did not wish to " hazard " him- self in the experiment. This action brought no immediate reply from Mr. Lincoln. He simply left Seward's name where he had placed it at the head of the slate. The struggle over Cameron's appointment, which had been going on for more than two months, now culminated in a desperate en- counter. The appointment of Blair was hotly contested. Caleb Smith's seat was disputed by Schuyler Colfax. In short, it was a day-and-night battle of the factions of the Republican party, which raged around Lincoln from the hour he appeared in Washington until the hour of his inaugura- tion. In spite of all the arguments and threats from excited and earnest men, to which he listened candidly and patiently; Lincoln found himself, on the eve of his inauguration, with the Cabinet which he had selected four months before un- changed. This fact, had it been known, might have modified somewhat the opinion expressed generally at the time, that the new President would never be anything but the tool of 426 LIFE OF LINCOLN Chase or Seward, or of whoever proved to be the strong man of his Cabinet — that is, if he was ever inaugurated. Of this last many had doubts, and even, at the last hour, were betting in the hotel corridors and streets of Washington that Abraham Lincoln would never be President of the United States. END OF VOL. I COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Tliis book is due on the date iiulicatecf below , or at the , expiration of a definite period after the date of ijorrowinjii, ' as provided by the rules of the Library or by special ar- rangement with the Librarian in charge. DATE BORROWED DATE DUE DATE BORROWED DATE DUE - I 1 1 1 C2ei638IMS0 'cvo , . _ m 1 9 (SfiB hh; Ii m WmM. m