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 Barton. William 
 
 The education of Abraham Lincoln 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
THE EDUCATION 
 
 OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
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The Education of Abraham Lincoln 
 
 An Address 
 
 Delivered before the Faculty and Students of 
 
 Illinois College 
 Jacksonville, Illinois, February 7, 1923 
 
 By 
 William E. Barton, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 Author of "The Soul of Abraham Lincoln" 
 "The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln", etc. 
 
 COURIER PRESS 
 Jacksonville, Illinois 
 
The letter of David Rutledge to his father 
 and his sister Ann, which was for some months 
 in my possession, is now the property of Mr. 
 Henry B. Rankin of Springfield. It is repro- 
 duced in fae-simile by his courtesy. It's use 
 on the platform in this lecture and its pub- 
 lication in this brochure constitute its first 
 presentation to the public. It is Mr. Rankin's 
 purpose that ultimately it shall be placed in a 
 fire-proof museum at New Salem. 
 
 W. E. B. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 It is an honor, as it is also a pleasure, to speak to you today on 
 The Education of Abraham Lincoln. Appropriate as that theme 
 would be as the title of an address before the faculty and student body 
 of any educational institution in America, there are valid reasons why 
 the subject should have a special interest here. That Abraham Lin- 
 coln sustained a peculiarly close relation to this institution is known, 
 of course, to all of you; and it is my purpose today to show that that 
 relation was closer than is generally known, closer, perhaps, than any 
 of you realize. 
 
 But even if I were able to add nothing to your present knowledge 
 of Lincoln, I should not think it superfluous to speak to you about 
 him. We can never afford to permit an ennobling event or relation- 
 ship to become commonplace. It is important that we hold in mem- 
 ory and appreciation whatever makes life more worthy. Wordsworth 
 taught us a needed lesson concerning nature's most beautiful phe- 
 nomenon : 
 
 "My heart leaps up when I behold 
 A rainbow in the sky : 
 
 So was it when my life began; 
 
 So is it now I am a man; 
 
 So be it when I shall grow old — 
 Or let me die." 
 
 When the time comes that we can behold a rainbow and not be 
 thrilled by it, then in the midst of life we are in death. Wherever we 
 find ourselves able to live where great men have trodden and not feel 
 a sense of exhileration, then, whether we be young or old, we have 
 permitted something very precious to die out within us. Abraham 
 Lincoln's relation to Jacksonville and to Illinois College was very 
 close and interesting. I earnestly hope that President Eammelkamp 
 will write out for publication the story of that relationship. I am not 
 attempting today to cover that ground. But I carry no owls to Athens 
 when I speak in this place, where the story is better known than in 
 most places, of The Education of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 3 
 
When Abraham Lincoln went to Congress in 1847, he found him- 
 self confronted with a blank which he was expected to fill out, giving 
 an outline of his life. Opposite the word "Education" he wrote, 
 "Defective." All his life he was painfully conscious of the defective- 
 ness of his education. If by education we are to understand the com- 
 pletion of any course of study in school or in preparation for entrance 
 upon the work of a profession, then Lincoln's education was indeed 
 defective. But the world, as it studies the life of Lincoln, tends more 
 and more to think of him as a man with a fairly good education, an 
 education in some respects almost ideal for the task which he assumed. 
 
 Let us review, rapidly, the grades of his education, and his several 
 promotions as a scholar. 
 
 First, there were two brief periods of study in Kentucky "blab- 
 schools" where the pupils studied aloud to assure the teacher that they 
 were not wasting their time. His two Kentucky teachers were Zach- 
 ariah Einey and Caleb Hazel. Probably his only text-book in that 
 State was a speller, and the first is said to have been Dillworth's; but 
 later he used the Webster "Blueback." The method of instruction in 
 that day was that the pupil should spell through the book several 
 times before he learned to read. His first reading lessons were the 
 short sentences given as exercises under each group of words in the 
 spelling book. A student had to be proficient in spelling all the sep- 
 arate words in the book before he was allowed to put even the simplest 
 words together. The single letter was supposed to be the unit of 
 instruction, and the next unit was the word. As the alphabet was 
 first learned from A to Z before any words were constructed, so the 
 spelling of all the words in the book was learned before any sentences 
 were formed. Lincoln learned to spell "incomprehensibility" in the 
 list of "words of eight syllables accented upon the sixth" before he 
 learned to read "Is he to go in?" and other sentences in words of two 
 letters each; and it was a milestone in his education when his new 
 learning conveyed to him the information that "Ann can spin flax." 
 Judged by present day methods, this was not the best way to begin an 
 education; but faulty as it was it had certain merits. Lincoln became 
 a good speller. Usually he spelled down the school. Lincoln's mis- 
 spelled words in after life were infrequent. He was a much better 
 speller than Washington. For that matter, it is only within the last 
 century that education has determined to rob orthography of all 
 originality. 
 
 4 
 
In Indiana, Lincoln attended school for three brief periods, his 
 teachers being Azel W. Dorsey, Andrew Crawford and a man named 
 Swaney. There he studied the English Reader, and he made progress 
 with Pike's Arithmetic as far as the Eule of Three. There was use of 
 the English Bible as a text-book for reading. 
 
 In his home, Lincoln read the Bible, Weems' Life of Washington, 
 Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, Aesop's Fables, and an unidenti- 
 fied History of the United States. Later he read the Arabian Nights, 
 Weems' Life of Franklin, and the Statutes of Indiana. It was an 
 excellent library. It would be well for almost any American boy to 
 have these books and no others for a full year, substituting a better 
 biography of Washington for that of Weems, and supplying a better 
 and more complete History of the United States. 
 
 In New Salem, he studied Kirkham's Grammar, and he used 
 thereafter remarkably good grammatical forms, though he often split 
 his infinitives and made some minor errors in diction. There he stu- 
 died surveying and law. There he began to read poetry, and there he 
 read books on religion, some of them adverse to religion as there and 
 then understood. 
 
 By this time he was twenty-eight years of age, and had been 
 admitted to the bar. He removed from New Salem to Springfield in 
 1835, and there he began the practice of his profession. 
 
 We are now to think of his formal schooling as complete. When 
 he said good-bye to Mentor Graham, who taught him grammar, and to 
 the friends who helped him to a knowledge of surveying, he may be 
 understood to have graduated. 
 
 He knew that many men in his profession in Illinois had more of 
 formal education than he possessed. He knew that to a certain extent 
 he was handicapped for lack of more learning. But he decided not to 
 go to school any more. 
 
 Some years ago William Allen White wrote a book, entitled "The 
 Court of Boyville." Therein he set forth that if one particular man 
 living in Leavenworth, Kansas, had, on a certain night in 1865, eaten 
 only two pieces of pumpkin pie for supper, a President of the United 
 States would have been removed from his high office. But the pie 
 was unusually good, and he ate three pieces, and in consequence did 
 not attend a Republican caucus in his ward that night. For the lack of 
 his vote, there was a tie, and the chairman broke the tie by a vote for 
 a set of delegates to the approaching municipal or county convention 
 
 5 
 
other than the set for which the man with colic would have voted if he 
 had been present and able to keep his mind upon the business of the 
 evening. In consequence, a different set of delegates went from 
 Leavenworth to the convention of the legislative district, and a man 
 was elected from that district to the legislature other than the man 
 who would have been chosen if the pie had not been so good. By the 
 margin of that one vote, a different man was elected to the Senate of 
 the United States than would otherwise have been chosen. From 
 that point on, everyone knows the story. Andrew Johnson had been 
 impeached by the House of Representatives, and it was known how 
 every Senator would vote, except Senator Eoss, the newly elected 
 Senator from Kansas. What he did caused him to be ostracised, and 
 he lived and died a political and almost a social outcast; though he 
 appears to have done what he believed his duty, and what by this 
 time most of us are glad he did. 
 
 I once asked Mr. White whether this was truth, or only a good 
 newspaper story, and he told me that he obtained the information and 
 heard the working out of this story by a reliable man, and he believed 
 it to be correct. 
 
 I hope that not many people have bought and read, "The Ifs of 
 History," by Joseph Edgar Chamberlain, formerly of the Boston 
 Transcript, because if more people had read it, I should have less 
 pleasure in quoting it. He tells us, for instance, that if the voters of 
 Athens had not grown weary of hearing Aristides called "The Just", 
 in consequence of which weariness they banished him. and if a most 
 reprehensible political trick had not resulted in the election of The- 
 mistocles as his successor, the Christian world, as it now is, might 
 never have heard of Christ, and we all should probably have been dis- 
 ciples of Zoroaster. And he tells many other startling things, out of 
 which I could make an interesting address, especially if I were not 
 compelled to use quotation marks. 
 
 I have in mind another inquiry. If Ann Rutledge had lived, and 
 had married Abraham Lincoln, what would have happened to Booker 
 T. Washington and to the world? 
 
 I am not unaware that William H. Herndon has answered this 
 question by saying that Lincoln, being an indolent and home-loving 
 man, would under those conditions have settled down comfortably in 
 Springfield, and lost his ambition or the energy essential to putting it- 
 into effect. Herndon's conclusion, as everyone knows, was that Mrs. 
 
 6 
 
Lincoln's unmerciful nagging drove Lincoln away from home into 
 politics, and made him President. I have much more sympathy and 
 charity for that much abused woman than Herndon had. Sometime 
 I expect to tell what I believe about Mary Todd Lincoln, but not now. 
 Nor am I approaching the inquiry from Herndon's point of view. I 
 draw no present contrast between that fine girl, Ann Eutledge, and 
 that proud and ambitious, and I think faithful, woman, Mary Todd 
 Lincoln, but I raise the question because it suggests a rather unusual 
 point of inquiry. What would have happened if Ann Rutledge had 
 lived? 
 
 In the first place, I do not think that she and Abraham Lincoln 
 would have married immediately, nor do I think the reason would 
 have been any lingering fondness upon her part for any other man. 
 The notion that her heart was torn between her new love for Lincoln 
 and an earlier and recurrent affection for John McNamar, I do not 
 credit. I shall some day tell who was the source of that story, and 
 why I think it untrue and unworthy. I think that Lincoln and Ann 
 Eutledge sincerely cared for each other, and that no shadow of a for- 
 mer love was cast between them by any haunting memories of hers. 
 The reason why Lincoln and Ann Rutledge would not have married 
 immediately was that Ann felt unfitted to be the wife of as great a 
 man as she believed Lincoln was destined to be, and wished to go to 
 school and have him go to school. The last sister of Ann Rutledge 
 lived until last summer. Sarah Rutledge Saunders died in Lompoc, 
 California, May 1, 1922. For some years before her death I was in 
 correspondence with her, and, in the summer of 1921, I went to Cali- 
 fornia and visited her and made a photograph of her. She was at that 
 time in bed with a broken hip, but was able to be lifted, and I lifted 
 her into a wheeled chair, and rolled her out into the sunshine and 
 made a picture of her, the last that was taken, as I suppose, for from 
 that bed she did not arise thereafter, except for a few moments at a 
 time to rest, and this at infrequent and lengthening intervals. 
 
 With her, and with a considerable number of nieces and nephews 
 and her one surviving son, I discussed all phases of the question con- 
 cerning Lincoln and Ann Rutledge. What I am now giving relates to 
 this matter of the desire of Ann that she should go to school, and that 
 iibraham also should secure a better education to fit him for the large 
 work which even then he believed he had before him. 
 
 It is not surprising that Ann Rutledge believed that Lincoln was 
 
 7 
 
to accomplish great things. Mary Todd believed that. Indeed, Mary 
 Todd firmly believed that he would some day be President. Ann 
 Rutledge had no such thought as that; but her family had in it a 
 signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Governor, and some 
 judges, and other officials. Lincoln had been a candidate for the Leg- 
 islature, and on his second attempt in 1834 had been successful, and 
 she had heard him and his friends talk in the Rutledge Tavern about 
 his political future. Of course she believed in him, and wanted the 
 best for him that could be secured. And she wanted to be fitted to be 
 the wife of such a great man as she thought he was sure to be. 
 
 This tradition is clear in the Rutledge family, and I had it from 
 "Aunt Sally Saunders/' her sister, and from others of the Rutledge 
 connection. 
 
 Where did she plan that she should go to school, and what were 
 Lincoln's plans if she had lived? 
 
 Their plan was that he should go to Illinois College at Jackson- 
 ville, and that she should attend the Female Academy at Jacksonville. 
 
 David Rutledge, Ann's brother, was a student at Illinois College 
 at the time of the courtship of Lincoln and Ann. At least two other 
 young men from New Salem were students there. They were friends 
 of Lincoln. Lincoln himself procured a book of Greek exercises, and 
 seems to have considered whether he might secure a classical educa- 
 tion. That book I have seen and examined. It indicates that Lin- 
 coln had more or less definitely in mind the possibility of his going to 
 college. It was more than a possibility. Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson, in 
 an excellent magazine article, has reminded us that there were three 
 colleges then in Illinois, and that Lincoln knew of them all and had 
 opportunity of attending any one of them. If he had attended any, 
 it would certainly have been Illinois College, at Jacksonville. 
 
 I learned from "Aunt Sally" that she had one letter addressed to 
 Ann, the only letter the family had that she received from anyone, and 
 perhaps the only one that was addressed to her by any member of her 
 own household. This letter she loaned to me, with the privilege of 
 use. To my great delight, I found it had an important bearing upon 
 the question of Ann's plans for an education. The letter was written 
 to her from Jacksonville, where her brother David was in college, and 
 it dealt directly with her own purpose to go there the next autumn, 
 and he encouraged the plan. It was really three letters in one, all on 
 the two sides of one sheet, with room still saved for the address. The 
 
 8 
 
main letter was to David's father, James Eutledge. The first post- 
 script was to Ann. The second postscript was to James Kittridge, 
 concerning the district school at Sand Ridge, where the Rutledges had 
 their farm. The letters are in the stiff and formal language of the 
 time. Postage cost a good deal, and David had opportunity to save 
 postage by sending this letter by a schoolmate. The letter to his 
 father read thus : 
 
 "College Hill, July 27, 1835. 
 "Dear Father :— 
 
 "The passing of Mr. Blood from this place to that affords me an 
 opportunity of writing you a few lines. I have thus far enjoyed good 
 health, and the students generally are well. I have not collected any- 
 things of Brooks, except that I agreed to take his paper as I thought 
 that that would be better than nothing at all, though he says he could 
 pay the order in about two months. L. M. Greene is up at home at 
 this time trying to get a school, and I had concluded to quit this place 
 and goe to him untill the commencement of the next term, but I could 
 not get off without paying for the whole term, therefore I concluded 
 to stay here. 
 
 "If Mr. Blood calls on you to stay all night, please to entertain 
 him free of cost, as he is one of my fellow students and I believe him 
 to be a good religious young man. I add nomore, but remain yours 
 with respect untill death. 
 
 "D. H. Eutledge. 
 "To James Rutledge." 
 
 You will not fail to note the value of a refusal by a college treas- 
 urer to refund to a departing student a portion of his term bills as an 
 element of value in holding a stable student body. David Rutledge 
 had determined to go home, but when the college treasurer refused 
 him a rebate, he resolved to stay on, and get his money's worth in 
 education. That is something of which college treasurers may prop- 
 erly take note. 
 
 It will be noted also that a year's subscription to a newspaper, 
 though not greatly prized, was considered better than nothing, and 
 that an editor's promise to pay in two months was not rated highly. 
 
 The Greene brothers, to one of whom this letter makes reference, 
 were friends of David Rutledge, as they were of Abraham Lincoln, and 
 their home-coming for vacation teaching must have been a matter of 
 general comment. 
 
 The second postscript had to do with school teaching. McGrady 
 Rutledge, a nephew of James and cousin of David, had been asked to 
 
 9 
 
secure the teaching of the Sand Ridge school for another student 
 named Porter. The Sand Ridge school was near the Rutledge farm, 
 though several miles from New Salem. To Sand Ridge the Rutledge 
 family retired after the Tavern failed, and there Ann and her father 
 died. Ann did not die in New Salem, as most writers suppose, but 
 several miles from there. We may quote, out of its order, the second 
 postscript, which is to James Kittridge : 
 
 "P. S. — I wish you to send McGrada's letter to him immediately 
 as it requests him to attend to the school on Sand Ridge for Mr. Porter 
 and also I want intelligence to come the next mail concerning it. I 
 add nomore. 
 
 "D. H. Rutledge. 
 "James Kittridge." 
 
 David spelled "nomore" as a single word, and that was the way it 
 was pronounced in formal discourse, a kind of "Amen." It was a 
 word sometimes uttered with great solemnity in sermons, a word of 
 two syllables, accented on the second. 
 
 The first postscript is the part of the letter of the greatest inter- 
 est. It reads : 
 
 "To Anna Rutledge : 
 
 "Valued Sister. So far as I can understand Miss Graves will 
 teach another school in the Diamond Grove. I am glad to hear that 
 you have a notion of comeing to school, and I earnestly recommend to 
 you that you would spare no time from improving your education and 
 mind. Remember that Time is worth more than all gold therefore 
 throw away none of your golden moments. I add nomore, but &c. 
 
 "D. H. Rutledge. 
 "Anna Rutledge." 
 
 This letter is in full accord with the Rutledge tradition. Ann 
 Rutledge and Lincoln were engaged to be married, and she desired to 
 wait at least a year to attend The Jacksonville Female Academy. This, 
 the only Girls' Seminary in Jacksonville in 1835, was merged with 
 Illinois College in 1903. Ann had written or sent to her brother an 
 inquiry concerning the school, and of her hope to be a student there 
 in the fall of 1835. Lincoln, as he and she dreamed over the matter 
 together, was to have entered Illinois College, at least for a year. 
 
 Ann Rutledge must have been sick when her brother wrote this 
 letter. It was dated July 27, 1835, and she died August 25, 1835, 
 after a sickness of about six weeks. Lincoln was not living in the 
 house in which she died. He went over, riding from New Salem to 
 
 10 
 
Sand Ridge, and visited her once during her illness. What they said 
 to each other no one knows. 
 
 No one remembers trie funeral of Ann Rutledge. "Aunt Sally" 
 had rather a clear impression that her cousin, Rev. John Cameron, 
 conducted the service. He was a Cumberland Presbyterian, as were 
 the family of the Rutledges. The father of that sect, Rev. James 
 McGrady, was a personal friend of the family, and James Rutledge 
 was converted under his ministry. 
 
 What would have happened if Ann Rutledge had lived, and she 
 had gone to the Jacksonville Female Academy in the autumn of 1835, 
 and Abraham Lincoln at the same time had entered Illinois College? 
 
 Could Lincoln have gone to college? Certainly he could. Other 
 young men as little prepared in education and with as little money did 
 go to Illinois College. Newton Bateman, whom Lincoln was to know 
 well as State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois, starved 
 his way through Illinois College, and Richard Yates, the War Gov- 
 ernor, went there, and Richard Oglesby got through two years at 
 Mount Morris. These were Lincoln's contemporaries, and they were, 
 some of them, as poor as he. Lincoln could have gone to college, and 
 if Ann Rutledge had lived, he probably would have gone. 
 
 I do not think that Ann Rutledge planned to go to Jacksonville 
 unless Lincoln also went. She had had one love affair that ended 
 unhappily, and she was not likely to go away deliberately and leave 
 her lover for a year. The Rutledge tradition appears to me to have 
 every appearance of probabaility, that the plan of Ann to attend the 
 Female Academy was thought out jointly by Abraham and Ann, and 
 had joined to it his plan for at least a year of study at Illinois College. 
 Every student of Illinois College has a right to think with greater 
 pride of his Alma Mater because it was, in imagination and hope, the 
 college of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Lincoln might have spent here the seven years which he spent at 
 New Salem, and graduated with a smaller debt than he had when that 
 little city "winked out." I cannot help wondering whether this Col- 
 lege or any college would have done more for him than New Salem did. 
 
 On August 6, 1834, Lincoln was elected a member of the Illinois 
 Legislature. At Vandalia he met the heads of the three Illinois col- 
 leges as they came to the capital in the interests of their respective 
 schools. Shurtleff College was at Upper Alton, and McKendree at 
 Lebanon. Lincoln knew of both of them. But he knew more still 
 
 11 
 
 LIBRARY - 
 
 uNivERsmr of mmm 
 
about Illinois College, which had been operating since 1830 at Jack- 
 sonville, only twenty miles away from New Salem. Far from its 
 having been unthinkable for Lincoln to go to college, it was impos- 
 sible for him not to think of it. William G. Greene, and his brother 
 alluded to in David Rutledge's letter, and David himself, were con- 
 stant reminders that a young man eager to learn could go to Jackson- 
 ville practically without money, and the college would provide work, 
 and admit him to its preparatory department, and hold out before 
 him the hope of a real diploma and a degree. Illinois College had a 
 faculty of four Yale alumni, who were graduates in Divinity, also. 
 Three of them were men of distinction. They were the President, 
 Edward Beecher, and Professors Jonathan Baldwin Turner and 
 Julian M. Sturtevant. To have been associated with these men, in 
 classes so small that every student was an intimate friend of the 
 teacher, would of itself have been a liberal education. Edward 
 Beecher was a brother of Henry Ward Beecher, and an author of note, 
 as well as an inspiring teacher. 
 
 One thing a year or more would have done for Abraham Lincoln, 
 it would have given him a more reasonable and progressive theology 
 than he had ever heard preached. Illinois College was founded under 
 the Plan of Union of the Congregationalists and Presbyterians. These 
 Presbyterians were of the New School, and very different from those 
 whose preaching Lincoln had heard. Under the teaching of such 
 men as these, Lincoln would have found some of his religious difficul- 
 ties materially helped. Some of his theological opinions would have 
 been modified. He would have known the current thought in New 
 England theology, a system which, whatever its faults, believed in 
 fearless thinking and in intellectual and spiritual progress. 
 
 It requires no very vivid stretch of the imagination to think of 
 Abraham Lincoln as emerging from Illinois College a Congregational 
 minister, or possibly a New School Presbyterian. The former would 
 have been rather the more likely, because his early training as a Bap- 
 tist would have made him familiar with the Congregational form of 
 Church government. 
 
 Of course he would have come out an ardent abolitionist, as were 
 the men who would have been his teachers and his fellow students, 
 including his subsequent law-partner, William H. Herndon. Lincoln 
 would not have waited so long nor gone through so patient an evolu- 
 tion in the working out of his theories of human freedom. 
 
 12 
 
We can imagine him as holding joint debates, not with Stephen 
 A. Douglas, on politics, but on theology, with Peter Cartwright and 
 other Methodists on the one hand, and with Old School Baptists and 
 old line Calvinists of the Southern Presbyterian type on the other. 
 
 Maybe he would have entered politics by the way of the ministry, 
 as Peter Cartwright did, and as Senator Edwin D. Baker did, and as 
 he would have found opportunity to do. 
 
 Perhaps he would have stuck to the law, and let others preach the 
 gospel, and would have gone on with his legal studies established on a 
 firmer base of cultural learning. Would he have been a better edu- 
 cated man if he had gone to college? Would he have served God and 
 his country better than he did? Or was the education which he had 
 better than any college could have given him? What would have 
 happened to Abraham Lincoln and the country if Ann Eutledge had 
 lived ? 
 
 The Scribes and Pharisees, graduates of the schools of their time, 
 inquired wonderingly concerning Jesus, "How knoweth this man let- 
 ters, having never learned?" By letters, of course, they meant litera- 
 ture. They wondered that He, whose educational advantages had 
 been only those of the ordinary Jewish peasant lad who had attended 
 the school of the local synagogue, possessed, as they discovered Him 
 to possess, the essentials of a liberal education. Most of us have had 
 occasion now and then to express surprise at the culture and wisdom 
 of some man or woman of limited educational opportunities. 1 have 
 heard men who could scarcely read who were evidently men of mental 
 discipline. I have heard men whose ordinary speech was ungram- 
 matical who rose to something like nobility of utterance in prayer. 
 
 In most cases I have known the secret, or at least an important 
 part of the secret of this culture adapted to circumstance, in a knowl- 
 edge of the Bible. Certainly this was true of Jesus, and it was true of 
 Lincoln. Lincoln used the Bible as a text-book in the common 
 schools of Indiana. He read it in his home. He became familiar 
 with its content so that he was quick to notice an unfamiliar passage* 
 and to look it up and discover "whether it was so in his Bible." 
 
 Lincoln's concise, exact, forceful style was derived from profound 
 study of the Scriptures. He entered upon his series of debates with 
 
 * An interesting incident in this connection is his dispute with Hon. H. C. 
 Deming of Connecticut, concerning the Levites appointed to guard the cause- 
 way, in I Chronicles 26:17-18. See Deming's Memorial Address on Lincoln, 
 pp. 41-42. 
 
 13 
 
Stephen A. Douglas, basing his position on the words of Jesus, "A 
 house divided against itself cannot stand." He used Biblical phrases 
 and allusions freely, and as one to whom the content of the Bible was 
 familiar. His last and noblest a'ddress, the Second Inaugural, was 
 profoundly Biblical. There if anywhere Lincoln uttered the deepest 
 convictions of his heart. The education of Lincoln was fundamentally 
 Biblical. To any student who would know the secret of his literary 
 style, I commend a thoughtful study of the English Bible. 
 
 It is alleged that in his youth Abraham Lincoln read every book 
 he could get his hands upon, and that he "borrowed every book within 
 fifty miles." We must allow something for exaggeration. But in his 
 youth, he would appear to have been a diligent reader. He got bravely 
 over it. As Herndon says, "He read less and thought more" than any 
 other man in public life in that day. For the most part, we read too 
 much; and almost every one of us reads too much trash. The time we 
 waste in useless reading is worse than wasted. We weaken our mem- 
 ory by reading so much that we do not care to remember. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln's education did not stop with his school- 
 ing. He was not even one of those men who looking back are able 
 to say that their education was interrupted by their schooling. He 
 learned in school and he learned after he left school. In school he 
 had no desk, but sat on a puncheon bench, whose four legs were 
 driven through auger-holes and not sawed off where they projected 
 above the surface of the seat; that would have been considered a need- 
 less concession to the flesh. If he wanted to write, he put his bare 
 feet on the puncheon bench in front of him, and made a desk of his 
 knees. His teachers knew nothing of modern methods, and the 
 methods they knew were defective enough, but he learned. "Lickin' 
 and l'arnin' " went together in those schools, and Lincoln got both of 
 these in school and afterward. Nature's method of teaching is a word 
 and a blow, with the blow first. 
 
 We have some knowledge of Lincoln's post-graduate studies. 
 
 In February, 1860, Lincoln went to New York and delivered his 
 Cooper Union address. He continued his journey into New England, 
 and spoke at New Haven and elsewhere. Rev. J. P. Gulliver talked 
 with him after his address in Norwich, Connecticut, and wrote out the 
 interview as he remembered it. This was widely published in 1865, 
 soon after Lincoln's death, and appears in Brockett's Life of Lincoln, 
 published in that year, as follows : 
 
 14 
 
" 'I want very much to know, Mr. Lincoln, how you got this 
 unusual power of putting things. It must have been a matter of 
 education. No man has it by nature alone. What has your education 
 been?' 
 
 a <n 
 
 c Well, as to education, the newspapers are correct — I never 
 went to school more than twelve months in my life. But, as you say, 
 this must be a product of culture in some form. I have been putting 
 the question you asked me to myself, while you have been talking. 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 don't think I ever got angry at 
 anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, 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 the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could 
 not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after 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 compre- 
 hend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has since stuck by 
 me, for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I 
 have bounded it North, and bounded it South, and bounded it East, 
 and bounded it West. Perhaps that accounts for the characteristic 
 you observe in my speeches, though I put the things together before.' 
 
 " 'Mr. Lincoln, I thank you for this. It is the most splendid 
 educational fact I ever happened upon. This is genius, with all its 
 impulsive, inspiring, dominating power over the mind of its possessor, 
 developed by education into talent, with its uniformity, its perma- 
 nence, and its disciplined strength, always ready, always available, 
 never capricious — the highest possession of the human intellect. But 
 let me ask, did you not have a law education? How did you prepare 
 for your profession?' 
 
 " '0, yes. I read law, as the phrase is; that is, I became a law- 
 yer's clerk in Springfield, and copied tedious documents, and picked 
 up what I could of law in the intervals of other work. But your ques- 
 tion reminds me of a bit of education I had, which I am bound in hon- 
 esty to mention. I thought, at first, that I understood its meaning, 
 but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself, 'What do 
 I do when I demonstrate, more than when I reason or prove? How 
 does demonstration differ from any other proof?' I consulted Web- 
 ster's Dictionary. That told of certain proof, "proof beyond possi- 
 bility of doubt;" but I could form no idea of what sort of proof that 
 was. I thought a great many things were proved beyond a possibility 
 of doubt, without recourse to any such extraordinary process of rea- 
 
 15 
 
soning as I understood 'demonstration' to be. I consulted all the dic- 
 tionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better 
 results. You might as well have defined 'blue' to a blind man. At 
 last I said, 'Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not under- 
 stand what demonstrate means.' And I left my situation in Spring- 
 field, went home to my father's house, and stayed there until I could 
 give any propositions in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then 
 found out what 'demonstrate' means, and went back to my law studies.' 
 " 'I could not refrain from saying, in my admiration for such a 
 development of character and genius combined, 'Mr. Lincoln, your 
 success is no longer a marvel. It has been a legitimate result of ade- 
 quate causes. You deserve it all, and a great deal more. If you will 
 permit me, I would like to use this fact publicly. It will be most 
 valuable in inciting our young men to that patient, classical and math- 
 ematical culture which most minds absolutely require. No man can 
 talk well unless he is able, first of all, to define to himself what he is 
 talking about. Euclid, well studied, would free the world of half its 
 calamities, by banishing half the nonsense which now deludes and 
 curses it. I have often thought that Euclid would be one of the best 
 books to put on the catalogue of the Tract Society, if they could only 
 get people to read it. It would be a means of grace.' 
 
 " 'I think so,' said he, laughing; 'I vote for Euclid.' " 
 It is evident that in some minor particulars, Mr. Gulliver's mem- 
 ory was at fault, as for instance, where Lincoln is quoted as saying that 
 he "became a lawyer's clerk in Springfield." That was what Mr. 
 Gulliver understood when Lincoln told him that he began his legal 
 career in the office of an older lawyer. It is interesting also to note 
 another minor error in which Lincoln is made to say, that, in his effort 
 to learn the meaning of the word "demonstrate," he "went home to 
 his father's house." 
 
 L T ndoubtedly Lincoln used the expression "went home," and Mr. 
 Gulliver supposed he meant that he went to his own father's house 
 at the beginning of his legal career. As a matter of fact, that was not 
 what Lincoln meant. He went back to his own home in Springfield 
 after his one term as a member of the House of Eepresentatives in 
 Washington. Then was when he discovered a higher form of proof 
 that the establishment of a fact by a preponderance of evidence. His 
 biographers, Nicolay and Hay, give us the correct background for the 
 Gulliver interview : 
 
 "It was at this time, that he gave notable proof of his unusual 
 powers of mental discipline. His wider knowledge of men and things, 
 acquired by contact with a great world, had shown him a certain lack 
 
 16 
 
in himself of close and sustained reasoning. To remedy this defect, 
 he applied himself, after his return from Congress, to such works on 
 logic and mathematics as he fancied to be serviceable. Devoting him- 
 self with dogged energy to the task in hand, he soon learned by heart 
 six books of the propositions of Euclid, and he retained through life a 
 thorough knowledge of the principles they contained." — (Nicolay and 
 Hay, i:298-299). 
 
 It is to be remembered that Lincoln was at this time forty years 
 old. He had been four times elected a member of the Legislature 
 and had served a term in Congress. 
 
 We have another and not less remarkable evidence of Lincoln's 
 power of self-discipline, his determination to gain a post-graduate 
 education. In 1857, he was engaged in what was probably his most 
 important lawsuit, as he then believed, and went to Cincinnati to try 
 the well known Eeaper Case, in which he was associated with Edwin 
 M. Stanton. The story is well known how Stanton refused to permit 
 Lincoln to plead and of Lincoln's bitter disappointment, but he did 
 not sit down and sulk about it. He determined to improve his educa- 
 tion. Mr. Ealph Emerson, who was his client, had told the story : 
 
 "When the hearing was through, Mr. Lincoln called me to him as 
 we left the courtroom, and wanted to walk and talk. For block after 
 block he walked forward, silent and deeply dejected. At last, turning 
 to me, he exclaimed, 'Emerson, I'm going home.' A pause, 'I'm going 
 home to study law.' 
 
 " 'Why' I exclaimed, 'Mr. Lincoln, you stand at the head of the 
 bar in Illinois. What are you talking about!' 
 
 " 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'I do occupy a good position there, and I 
 think that I can get along with the way things are going there now. 
 But these college trained men who have devoted their whole lives to 
 study are coming west, don't you see? They study on a single case 
 perhaps for months, as we never do. We are apt to catch up the thing 
 as it goes before a jury and trust to the inspiration of the moment. 
 They have got as far as Ohio now. They will soon be in Illinois.' 
 
 "Another long pause. Then stopping and turning to me, his 
 countenance suddenly assumed that strong look of determination 
 which we who knew him best sometimes saw on his face, and he ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 " 'I'm going home to study law! I'm as good as any of them, and 
 when they get out to Illinois, I will be ready for them!' 
 
 "He finished and at once became very cheerful, as though he now 
 saw a clear path before him." 
 
 Having now considered Lincoln's schooling, both that which he 
 
 17 
 
got and that which he failed to secure, what are we to say about his 
 education ? 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, when he began his public career, was able to 
 write a neat and legible hand. He was able to think clearly and to 
 state his opinions in well-chosen words. I wonder how many students 
 of Illinois College write as good a hand as Lincoln? How many have 
 as direct and clear and correct a style? Is the English language 
 spoken upon the campus the English learned from the English 
 Department? 
 
 Lincoln learned the value of words. It was his custom when 
 reading a book to pronounce each word as he read it. This may have 
 been in part an inheritance from his blab-school days, but it was also 
 a process of verbal evaluation. When he was writing, he wrote slowly, 
 pronouncing each word as he wrote it. He weighed it as he uttered 
 and wrote it. His knowledge of poetry came largely through his ear 
 for words. At New Salem, with its remarkable variety of people, he 
 became acquainted with Jack Kelso, a sort of vagrant elocutionist, 
 who recited poetry to Lincoln and the other young men. The sound 
 of poetry rather than the sight of poetry in print caused Lincoln to 
 love poetry. He learned to love Shakespeare, Byron and Burns from 
 hearing their lines recited. Then he learned to love the reading of 
 them. 
 
 Do not undervalue words. Learn the use and value of words. 
 Cultivate an adequate vocabulary, and use words with precision and 
 discrimination. Do not cheapen your utterance by words ill-chosen 
 or with slovenly pronunciation. Had Lincoln been everything else 
 that he was, and lacked eloquence and the power of lucid expression, 
 he never could have risen to the position which he held. 
 
 We live in a period in which words are undervalued. One of the 
 perils of the moving-picture lies in the fact that the movies gather 
 groups of people in badly ventilated rooms, where, with considerable 
 eye-strain, they are subject to the play of powerful emotions without 
 words. If we train up a generation whose power of emotion is disso- 
 ciated from the use of words, we shall have a generation incapable of 
 sustained thought. 
 
 Lincoln at Gettysburg said : 
 
 "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, 
 but it can never forget what they did here." 
 
 18 
 
He was mistaken. Memorable as were the deeds performed at 
 Gettysburg, they are less nearly imperishable than his words. The 
 Gettysburg address will be printed and recited for a thousand years 
 after it shall have become necessary to attach foot-notes telling 
 whether the battle of that name occurred in New England during the 
 American Revolution or in Flanders during the World War, or in 
 some other notable conflict not only of armies but of ideals. "The 
 words that I speak unto you," said the Lord Jesus, "they are Spirit, 
 and they are life. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words 
 shall not pass away." 
 
 Young men, do not be afraid of eloquence. It is the finest of the 
 fine arts. You have no brush or pallette or canvas, no chisel or mallet 
 or block of marble, no instrument of music, nothing but the human 
 voice and the human ear, and the soul of the orator in contact with 
 the soul of his audience. Yet you can impart knowledge, awaken 
 emotion, paint pictures upon the walls of memory, and influence life 
 choices. There is very little eloquence left at the bar or on the stump, 
 but the pulpit remains the throne of eloquence. If you have charac- 
 ter, ability, power in the use of words, and a passionate love of service, 
 aspire to be preachers of the Gospel. There is no nobler calling, no 
 more royal throne of power among men. 
 
 So I rate high among the educational attainments of Lincoln his 
 power to use words in written and oral discourses, and I commend to 
 you a thoughtful study of the power of correct and accurate speech. 
 
 But education is not complete without its moral quality. Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's education included a sense of responsibility to God, and 
 a power to influence the lives of men. 
 
 Added to all the rest, Abraham Lincoln had a training of sym- 
 pathy and a discipline of conscience and a strengthening of will which 
 made him quick to discern a duty, and able to act with gentleness, 
 discrimination, decision and firmness. 
 
 If education be defined as a wide knowledge of things contained 
 in books, Abraham Lincoln had little of it. He called himself a 
 "mast-fed" lawyer, one who had gotten his scant fattening from what 
 he could root out in the woods, instead of what was thrown to him in 
 the pen. Growing up where, as he said, there was "absolutely nothing 
 to inspire one with ambition to secure an education," he learned what 
 the schools could teach him, and he continued to learn. It is well for 
 us in our childhood to hear what good use Lincoln made of his few 
 
 19 
 
books in youth. It will do us good if we remember that he mastered 
 Euclid at forty, and went home to study law at fifty. 
 
 If education be a discipline of mind and character which fits a 
 man to do well his appointed work in the world, Abraham Lincoln 
 was a man of liberal education. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln derived an important part of his education 
 from books. If in his boyhood he had been deprived of the small but 
 excellent library which he found available for his instruction, it is 
 impossible to believe that he could ever have attained to greatness. 
 But books, after all, furnished the minor portion of his equipment for 
 life. Lincoln knew a few books, and those few he knew well; but 
 much broader and more comprehensive was his knowledge of men. 
 
 It might be said of him as it was said of Jesus, if not in the same 
 degree at least in the same sense, that "He needed not that any should 
 tell him what was in man, for He knew men." Jesus knew the heart 
 of men perfectly; and Lincoln, to an unusual degree, knew what was 
 in men. This is the real test of an education, its value as an element 
 of power among men. Books are of value, but there never was a book 
 as great as the man who made it. Knowledge derived from books is 
 to be highly esteemed, but the measure of its value is its contribution 
 to life. Lincoln did not have to travel far to know men; there were 
 men of almost as many kinds in New Salem as there were in Spring- 
 field or New York City. Lincoln knew them, not simply in the sense 
 of knowing their names and being on speaking terms with them, but 
 in the sense of understanding them and believing in them. His view 
 of human nature was not impractically high; he knew the frailty of 
 humanity, and the power of motive; but he also knew that the average 
 man has more good about him than bad. He believed in the average 
 man. It was his conviction that the destinies of the Republic were 
 safer with the great body of the people than with political leaders 
 because the average man's judgment is sound and his conscience true. 
 He knew that a demagogue might fool all the people some of the time, 
 and some of the people all the time, but he also believed that they 
 could not fool all the people all the time. He had knowledge of 
 humanity, and because he had knowledge he had also faith. He 
 knew men, and he believed in men. 
 
 The power of great men to inspire us depends largely upon the 
 degree to which we feel ourselves possessed of interests common to 
 themselves and us. There is little help for us in the example of a man 
 
 20 
 
elevated upon so high a pedestal that his feet are hopelessly out of 
 touch with the ground on which we must stand. Lincoln stands with 
 his feet upon our common soil. He helps us because we have so much 
 in common with him. You students of Illinois College have some 
 special right to a feeling of comradeship with him. It requires very 
 little stretch of the imagination to make him your fellow-student. 
 Yours also is the privilege of using this education, as he so nobly 
 employed his, in the service of God and your country. 
 
 2L 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA 
 
 973.7L63GB28E C 001 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. JACKSO 
 
 3 0112 031817452