5^73»7L63 Chris tner* 
 
 B2Cii62a According to Lincoln* 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
973.7L63 
 &2C462q 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/accordingtolincoOOchri 
 
KCOBDING 
 
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 LINCOLN 
 
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ACCOBOING 
 
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 LINCOLN 
 
 by Richard Christner 
 
 Illustrated by 
 Harry Goff 
 
 FO R EWOR D 
 
 Nobody ever liked a good story better than Abraham Lincoln, 
 especially when it proved an important point. One of his friends 
 once wrote that when the President laughed at a story, he "laughed 
 all over." 
 
 Lincoln's humor, which reveals courage during a time of great 
 national peril, is an important part of our tradition. So are his 
 earthy common sense and deep, human understanding. He was 
 completely untouched by the pomp and circumstance of high office. 
 
 Many of Lincoln's stories are as worthwhile today as when 
 they were first told. Here are some of these stories, with the 
 President's words as they were reported by his friends. 
 
 Here, too, is a selection of some of the important things Lincoln 
 said in speeches, as well as a famous Lincoln letter. 
 
 Copyright 1957, The Economics Press, Inc., Montclair, New Jersey. 
 Printed In U.S.A. 
 

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 THE ANGRY GOVERNOR 
 
 
 During the Civil War, the Governor of one of the Northern 
 states arrived in Washington in a violent rage. He was angry about 
 the number of troops drafted from his state, the way they were being 
 drafted, and the draft in general. He went first to see the Provost 
 Marshal-General, who couldn't give him an answer to satisfy him. 
 Neither could the Secretary of War. So he stalked out and took his 
 case straight to the President. Before the Provost Marshal- General 
 had a chance to see Lincoln, the Governor returned to his office. H^, 
 had been with Lincoln three hours. He was smiling and contente<f,/ 
 He didn't mention his interview. He merely said that he was going 
 home and had dropped in en route to say goodbye. 
 
 The next time the Provost Marshal -General saw Lincoln, he 
 asked what had happened with the Governor. He said he supposed 
 Lincoln had been forced to make a lot of concessions to get the 
 Governor into such a good humor. 
 
 "Oh, no," Lincoln replied. "I did not concede anything. You 
 know how that Illinois farmer managed the big log that lay in the 
 middle of the field. To the inquiries of his neighbors one Sunday, he 
 announced that he got rid of the big log. 
 
 " 'Got rid of it!' said they. 'How did you do it? It was too big 
 to haul out, too knotty to split, and too wet and soggy to burn; what 
 did you do.**' 
 
 " 'Well, now, boys,' replied the farmer, 'if you won't divulge 
 the secret, I'll tell you how I got rid of it— I ploughed around it.' 
 
 "Now," said Lincoln, "don't tell anybody, but that's the way I 
 got rid of the Governor. I ploughed around him, but it took me 
 three mortal hours to do it, and I was afraid every minute he'd see 
 what I was at." 
 
THE SENATE COMMITTEE 
 
 During his term of office Lincoln frequently had to listen at 
 length to suggestions from people who thought they knew how 
 to run the government and fight the war better than he did. Once, 
 after his Secretary of War had resigned, he was visited by a com- 
 mittee from the Senate. They pointed out that no member of the 
 cabinet had been chosen for his ability to prosecute a war and 
 the cabinet as a whole had lost the confidence of the country. 
 Since the President was about to select a new Secretary of War, 
 they said, it might be a good idea to change all seven cabinet 
 members. 
 
 "Gentlemen," Lincoln replied, "your request for a change of 
 the whole cabinet because I have made one change reminds me 
 of a story I once heard in Illinois of a farmer who was much 
 troubled by skunks. They annoyed his household at night, and his 
 wife insisted that he should take measures to get rid of them. One 
 moonlight night he loaded his old shotgun and stationed himself 
 in the yard to watch for the intruders, his wife remaining in the 
 house anxiously awaiting the result. 
 
 "After some time she heard the shotgun go off, and in a few 
 minutes the farmer entered the house. 'What luck had you?' said 
 she. 'I hid myself behind the wood pile with the shotgun pointed 
 toward the hen roost, and before long there appeared not one 
 skunk but seven. I took aim, blazed away, killed one, and he 
 raised such a fearful smell that I concluded it was best to let the 
 other six go'." 
 
 The Senate committee broke into laughter and departed. 
 

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 VANITY 
 
 Once Lincoln and a friend were in a conversation where the name 
 of a certain Illinois politician came up. The politician, who had recently 
 died, had been an able man, but extremely vain. 
 
 ^' If General had known how big a funeral he would have 
 
 had," Lincoln said, ''he would have died years ago." 
 
 THE GOVERNOR WHO WANTED 
 HIS OWN WAY 
 
 A Northern Governor who worked hard at raising and equip- 
 ping troops from his state during the war often complained violently 
 when he was asked by the federal government to carry out particular 
 orders. On one occasion he argued and protested so bitterly about 
 not having his own way that the Secretary of War wondered whether 
 he could be depended upon to cooperate. The Governor's threatening 
 dispatches were shown to Lincoln for his opinion. 
 
 The dispatches seemed to amuse the President. After reading 
 them over he said cheerfully, "Never mind, never mind, those dis- 
 patches don't mean anything. Just go right ahead. The Governor is 
 like a boy I saw once at a launching. When everything was ready 
 they picked out a boy and sent him under the ship to knock away 
 the trigger and let her go. At the critical moment everything depended 
 on the boy. He had to do the job well by a direct vigorous blow, 
 and then lie flat and keep still while the ship slid over him. 
 
 "The boy did everything right, but he yelled as if he was being 
 murdered from the time he got under the keel until he got out. I 
 thought the hide was all scraped off his back; he wasn't hurt at all. 
 The master of the yard told me that this boy was always chosen for 
 that job, that he did his work well, that he never had been hurt, but 
 that he always squealed in that way. 
 
"That's just the way with the Governor. Make up your minds 
 that he is not hurt, and that he is doing the work right, and pay no 
 attention to his squealing. He only wants to make you understand 
 how hard his task is, and that he is on hand performing it." 
 
 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL 
 
 On one occasion Lincoln was visited by a member of Con- 
 gress from Ohio who sank into a chair and announced in a 
 drunken voice, ''Oh, why should (hie) the spirit of mortal be 
 proud?" 
 
 This was a line of Lincoln's favorite poem, which goes: 
 
 "Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud? — 
 Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, 
 A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave. 
 He passeth from life to his rest in the grave." 
 
 "My dear sir," said Lincoln, examining the Congressman 
 closely, "I see no reason whatever." 
 
 THE OFFICE SEEKERS 
 
 During his Presidency, Lincoln was constantly plagued by office 
 seekers. Once a friend, seeing him looking anxious, asked him if 
 there was bad news from the front. "No," answered the President, 
 "it isn't the war, it's that postmastership in Brownsville, Ohio." 
 
On one occasion some men came to talk to him about giving 
 a command to General Fremont. Lincoln said he didn't know 
 where he could place him. It reminded him, he said, of the man 
 who advised his son to take a wife. Agreeing, the son asked, 
 "Whose wife shall I take?" 
 
 On another occasion a delegation called on President Lincoln to 
 ask for the appointment of a friend to the Sandwich Islands (now 
 Hawaii). After talking about how capable their candidate was, they 
 went on to point out that he was also ill and that the climate would 
 be good for him. "Gentlemen,^' Lincoln said, '7 am sorry that there are 
 eight other applicants for that place, and they are all sicker than 
 your man.'' 
 
 SIDE ISSUE 
 
 A farmer from one of the border counties of Virginia came to 
 Lincoln at a reception and said that some Union soldiers had helped 
 themselves to some hay and horses on his farm. He said he hoped 
 Lincoln would help make sure he got paid as soon as possible. 
 
 Lincoln said this reminded him of an old acquaintance of his, 
 Jack Chase. Chase, who was the best raftsman Lincoln had ever seen, 
 was eventually named Captain of the first steamboat on the river 
 where he had handled rafts. Jack always used to take the wheel 
 going through the rapids. One day when the boat was churning 
 along through the roughest part of the rapids and Jack was doing 
 his best to stay in the narrow channel a small boy came up and 
 tugged on his coat tail. "Say, Mister Captain!" he said. "I wish you 
 would just stop your boat a minute — I've lost my apple overboard!" 
 
LINCOLN AND LORD LYONS 
 
 Lord Lyons, the proper and stately British Minister, arrived at 
 the White House with a letter from Queen Victoria announcing 
 the marriage of the Prince of Wales. The Minister stated, with 
 great diplomatic solemnity, that whatever response the President 
 would make he would immediately send to the queen. 
 
 Lincoln listened attentively to Lyons, who was a bachelor, 
 and said, "Lyons, go thou and do likewise." 
 
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 EXCERPTS FROM FAMOUS 
 LINCOLN SPEECHES 
 
 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS: I am loth to close. We are not 
 enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may 
 have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 
 
 The mystic cord of memory, stretching from every battle-field 
 and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this 
 broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again 
 touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 
 
 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS: With malice towards none, with 
 charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see 
 the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's 
 wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for 
 his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cher- 
 ish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. 
 
MESSAGE TO CONGRESS (1861): Again as has already been said, 
 there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer 
 being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men every- 
 where in these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired 
 laborers. The prudent penniless beginner in the world labors for 
 wages a while, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for 
 himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length 
 hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and 
 generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all — gives 
 hope to all, and consequent energy and progress, and improvement 
 of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted 
 than those who toil up from poverty— none less inclined to touch 
 or take aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware 
 of surrendering a political power they already possess, and which, 
 if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement 
 against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon 
 them, till all of liberty shall be lost. 
 
 ADDRESS TO A COMMITTEE FROM THE WORKINGMEN'S ASSO- 
 CIATION OF NEW YORK (1864): Property is the fruit of labor; 
 property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some 
 should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence, is 
 just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who 
 is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor 
 diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring 
 that his own shall be safe from violence when built. 
 
LINCOLN'S LETTER TO MRS. BIXBY 
 
 Dear Madam: 
 
 I have been shown in the files of the War Department a state- 
 ment of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the 
 mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. 
 I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which 
 would attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so over- 
 whelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation 
 that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. 
 I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your 
 bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 
 and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so 
 costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 
 
 Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
 Abraham Lincoln 
 
 
 
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THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 
 
 Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth 
 upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and 
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
 
 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
 that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can 
 long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We 
 have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for 
 those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is 
 altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 
 
 But in a larger sense we can not dedicate— we can not conse- 
 crate—we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and 
 dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor 
 power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long 
 remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they 
 did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the 
 unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly advanced. 
 It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 
 before us— that from these honored dead we take increased 
 devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full 
 measure of devotion— that we here highly resolve that these dead 
 shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have 
 a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 
 
 The quotes from Lincoln in this booklet appeared in "The Life, Public Services and 
 State Papers of Abraham Lincoln" by Henry J. Raymond (1865) and "Reminiscences 
 of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time" collected and edited by Allen 
 Thorndike Rice (1886). Good one volume biographies of Lincoln for those interested 
 in reading further are those by Benjamin P. Thomas and Carl Sandburg. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 973.7L63B2C462A C001 
 
 ACCORDING TO LINCOLN. MONTCLAIR 
 
 3 0112 031794107