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LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
From the collection of Frederick H. Meserve, Esq., New York City 
 
ABRAHAM 
 LINCOLN 
 
 The' BOY and the MAN 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MORGAN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THEODORE ROOSEVELT. THE BOY 
 AND THE MAN *' 
 
 "THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 MCMXXVI 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
Copyright, 1908, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1908. Reissued 
 April, 1925 ; October, 1926. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY 
 THE BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
 

 TO tiM. 
 
 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln, The Boy and the Man,* 
 is not a critical study, but a simple story. Its 
 aim is to present in dramatic pictures the strug- 
 gles and achievements of a common man, in 
 whom the race of common men is exalted ; who 
 solved great problems by the plain rules of com- 
 mon sense and wrought great deeds by the 
 exercise of the common qualities of honesty and 
 courage, patience, justice, and kindness. That is 
 the Lincoln who, on the centenary of his birth, 
 stands forth as the true prophet of a reunited 
 people and the noblest product of that democracy 
 which is slowly uniting all peoples in fraternal 
 bonds. 
 
 In the preparation of this volume many authori- 
 tative sources have been freely drawn upon for 
 illustrative incidents, a grateful acknowledgment 
 of which is mad** in the chapter entitled "A 
 Course in Lincoln." 
 
 Til 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBR 
 I. 
 
 A Child of Poverty 
 
 
 II. 
 
 Life in the Indiana Wilderness 
 
 
 III. 
 
 The Awakening of Ambition 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 A Boyhood of Toil 
 
 
 V. 
 
 On the Prairies of Illinok 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 Wrestling with Destiny . 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 In the Legislature . • 
 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Lover and Lawyer 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 Marriage and Politics 
 
 
 X. 
 
 In Congress . 
 
 
 XL 
 
 Life on the Circuit . 
 
 
 XII. 
 
 Home and Neighbors . , 
 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Called to his Life Mission 
 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "A House divided against Itsel 
 
 f" 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Great Debate 
 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A National Figure . . 
 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The Standard Bearer . , 
 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 President-elect . . , 
 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Going to Washington . . 
 
 
 »AG« 
 
 I 
 
 9 
 
 i7 
 
 2 3 
 
 30 
 
 39 
 
 50 
 
 58 
 
 67 
 
 75 
 
 83 
 
 97 
 
 104 
 
 116 
 
 124 
 
 *35 
 
 '43 
 158 
 
 170 
 
 IX 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CM AFTER 
 
 
 FAGS 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Inauguration . . . 
 
 . 179 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Called to the Helm in a Storm 
 
 . . 187 
 
 XXII. 
 
 "And the War Came" 
 
 . 198 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 In the Gloom of Defeat 
 
 . 215 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 A Break in the Clouds . 
 
 . 234 
 
 XXV. 
 
 t€ Don't swap Horses while crossing th 
 
 e River" 253 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Life in the White House 
 
 . 266 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Lincoln and his Children 
 
 . 284 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Lincoln and his Soldiers 
 
 292 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Lincoln the Emancipator 
 
 . 3°7 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Lincoln and his Cabinet 
 
 . 322 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Lincoln and his Generals 
 
 . • 338 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Lincoln in Victory 
 
 . 358 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 The Death of Lincoln . 
 
 • 382 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Sorrow of the World . • • 
 
 • 397 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 A Course in Lincoln . 
 
 . 407 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Lessons from Lincoln • . • 
 
 • 417 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 
 *■ 
 
 
 Abraham Lincoln .... 
 The Birthplace of Lincoln 
 
 . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 6 
 
 An Example of Lincoln's Craftsmanship . 
 
 . . . 36 
 
 Lincoln in his Prime .... 
 
 . 130 
 
 Lincoln at Antietam .... 
 
 . 230 
 
 An Interesting Lincoln Portrait . • 
 
 . 254 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln ...... 
 
 ► • • 270 
 
 The President and his Son . • • . 
 
 . 288 
 
ABRAHAM UNCOLN 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 A CHILD OF POVERTY 
 
 Abraham Lincoln born to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in 
 a log cabin on a farm near Hodgdenville, La Rue County, Ken- 
 tucky, February 12, 1809. — Kentucky then a frontier state, 
 to which Abraham's grandfather came about 1780, and where 
 in 1784 he was killed by the Indians. — Narrow escape of 
 Abraham's father, who became a wandering laborer, unable 
 to read or write. — His rollicking marriage feast, June 12, 1806. 
 — Abraham's privations in childhood. — His tribute to a soldier 
 of 1812. — Troubled by a bad land title and by slavery, the 
 family leave Kentucky to make a new home in a free state. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was born to poverty and 
 ignorance. A rude log cabin on a poor, scrub farm 
 was his birthplace. His father could not read and 
 could barely write his name. His mother could 
 both read and write, but she knew little of books 
 or the world. 
 
 Their home was on the Kentucky frontier, and 
 there was not yet a state in all the West that lay 
 beyond them. Kentucky itself had been a savage 
 waste only a few years before, that "dark and bloody 
 ground" on which no white man had set foot. The 
 generation of bold pioneers who had threaded their 
 way over the Alleghanies in the steps of Daniel 
 Boone were still on the scene, and the boy Lincoln 
 
 B I 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 heard from their lips the moving story of how they 
 had hewn a path for civilization across the mountains 
 and wrested peace from the roving red men in hard- 
 fought battles. 
 
 His own grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, for 
 whom he was named had been one of that band 
 of brave homeseekers. This elder Abraham, like 
 most of the Kentucky settlers, came from Virginia. 
 He found the land a wilderness. The buffalo 
 roamed the blue-grass fields, and as Boone said, 
 "were more frequent than I have seen cattle in 
 the settlements, browsing on the leaves of the cane, 
 or cropping the herbage on these extensive plains, 
 fearless because ignorant of the violence of man." 
 
 Warlike tribes of Indians lurked in the giant 
 forests, and the white men, clad in skins, needed 
 always to be on guard for their lives. They were 
 as ready with the knife as with the rifle, and could 
 outrun and outfight the Indian. They were of the 
 same daring breed as the hardy men who have 
 pushed the frontier westward to the Pacific and 
 been the pathfinders of the nation. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, the pioneer, took up a tract 
 of land near where the city of Louisville now stands 
 and built his home on it. There he was killed by 
 the Indians while opening a farm. He was going 
 to his day's work in the clearing when a shot rang 
 
 2 
 
A CHILD OF POVERTY 
 
 out from the brush and he fell dead. His three 
 sons were with him at the time. One of the boys 
 started on a run to summon aid from the nearest fort, 
 for there were forts all over Kentucky, in which the 
 people gathered and defended themselves when 
 attacked. 
 
 Another son fled to the cabin for a rifle. Seizing 
 the gun he looked out and saw an Indian stooping 
 over the third and youngest boy, who had been 
 left beside the murdered father. To save him 
 from the hands of the savage he must shoot 
 quickly through a crack between the logs of the 
 cabin wall, at the risk of killing his baby brother. 
 He aimed at a white ornament on the Indian's 
 breast and fired. His aim was true, and the red 
 foe pitched forward dead. By this narrow chance 
 the little fellow, Thomas, was spared to be the 
 father of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The elder Abraham was a man of some thrift, 
 for when he sold his property in Virginia the sale 
 brought him $600, and he was a man of some spirit, 
 else he would not have been a Kentucky pioneer. 
 His grandson has said of him that he was a member 
 of one of the " undistinguished families — second 
 families perhaps I should say," but the younger 
 Abraham lived and died without any definite knowl- 
 edge of his grandfather's origin. "I am more con* 
 
 3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cerned," he said, "to know what his grandson 
 will be." He knew only of a "vague tradition" 
 that the grandfather had come from Pennsylvania 
 to Virginia. Those who sought to set up ancestral 
 claims for him failed to arouse his interest in the 
 subject. 
 
 It is the accepted belief now that he was descended 
 from a Massachusetts family which migrated to 
 Pennsylvania, thence to Virginia, and finally to 
 Kentucky. This, moreover, is not a very proud 
 boast, for his branch of the Massachusetts Lincolns 
 was wholly unknown to fame and fortune. Thus 
 his descent has been traced through seven 
 generations, disclosing four farmers, a miller, a 
 blacksmith, and a weaver. 
 
 All that is known of Abraham Lincoln, the grand- 
 father, indicates that he measured up to the average 
 of the men around him, the sturdy state builders 
 who founded the first commonwealth of the West. 
 In his untimely death, his family suffered a dire 
 misfortune. The new home was broken up. The 
 widow moved to another county, while the boy 
 who shot the Indian was so embittered by his ex- 
 perience that for some time he hunted the redskins 
 in a passion for revenge. 
 
 Under the law, most of the property went to the 
 oldest son. Thus Thomas, the youngest, was left 
 
 4 
 
A CHILD OF POVERTY 
 
 poor and "grew up literally without education/' 
 a "wandering, laboring boy," as his famous son has 
 recorded. He developed into a man of stalwart 
 body, five feet ten inches in height, and was honest 
 and sober. Ambition, however, seemed to be crushed 
 in him by the hard circumstances of his youth and, 
 drifting about from one job to another, he steadily 
 sank in social condition. He was as often called 
 "Linkern" or "Linkorn" as Lincoln, because he 
 himself did not know how to spell his name. 
 
 Finally he became a carpenter and married Nancy 
 Hanks, the niece of the man in whose shop he worked. 
 The Hankses had come from Virginia in the same 
 party with the Lincolns, and it had been Nancy's 
 ill fortune to be set adrift, an orphan, much after 
 the manner of her husband's lot in life. She was 
 regarded as handsome in her girlhood, and one 
 old neighbor declared long afterward, "The Hanks 
 girls were great at camp-meetings. They were the 
 finest singers and shouters in our county." 
 
 The union of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks 
 was celebrated in the rollicking manner of the time 
 and place. Bear meat, venison, wild turkey, and 
 duck graced the feast. There was maple sugar, 
 " swung on a string to bite off for coffee or whiskey," 
 there was syrup in big gourds, there were peaches 
 and wild honey, and a sheep was cooked whole over 
 
 5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 wood coals in a pit. When Thomas went to house- 
 keeping he was not so poor as to be without a cow, 
 and he had "a good feather bed, a loom and wheel." 
 He took his bride to a little cabin in the village no 
 larger than one room of an ordinary dwelling. 
 
 In spirit Nancy, who was twenty-three at her 
 marriage, was much the superior of her twenty-eight- 
 year-old husband, and she tried her best to teach him 
 to read and write. His son frankly confessed, 
 however, that his father "never did more in the 
 way of writing than to bunglingly write his own 
 name." 
 
 With the birth of their first child, a daughter, 
 the Lincolns were forced to the conclusion that a 
 family could not be supported on what a carpenter 
 could earn in a community where most men built 
 their homes with their own hands, and they moved 
 to a farm near the village. There, in a mere hut, 
 on those poor, barren acres, Abraham Lincoln was 
 born to Thomas and Nancy. His only cradle was 
 his good mother's arms. His only playmate in 
 his earliest childhood was his sister. His play- 
 ground was the lonely forest. He had no toys, for 
 toys cost money, and money was hardly ever seen 
 in the Lincoln home. 
 
 The father must raise or shoot what they ate, 
 and the mother's restless fingers must spin and 
 
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A CHILD OF POVERTY 
 
 weave what they wore. Free schools were then 
 unknown in Kentucky; but his mother, poor as she 
 was, insisted on sending Abraham and his sister 
 to a teacher. He could fish in the Big South Fork, 
 and once, as he was coming from the creek, the 
 patriotic spirit aroused in his home by the War of 
 1812, then in progress, was put to the test. "I had 
 been fishing one day," he said years afterward, 
 "and caught a little fish, which I was taking home. 
 I met a soldier in the road and, having been told 
 that we must be good to the soldiers, I gave him my 
 fish." 
 
 After a few years of struggling, Thomas Lincoln 
 began to long for the newer country to the west. 
 The deed to his place was in dispute and he could 
 not afford to buy another farm, because Kentucky 
 was rapidly becoming a settled state and its good 
 land was valuable. Moreover, the people with 
 profitable farms were slaveholders. There were 
 very few slaves in the Lincoln neighborhood, it is 
 true; the soil was not rich enough for such care- 
 less labor. Still, Abraham Lincoln has said that 
 his father's "removal was partly on account of 
 slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in 
 land titles." 
 
 The claim to the farm was sold for 400 gallons 
 of whiskey and $20 in money, the whole amounting 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to $300. In those days, when there was no govern- 
 ment tax on alcoholic spirits, any farmer was free to 
 set up a still and make his corn into whiskey. There 
 was indeed little else to do with corn, for there were 
 no railroads to carry it to market, and it seldom 
 sold for more than ten cents a bushel. When made 
 into whiskey, however, it was easily traded. It was 
 almost as good as money, which was extremely 
 scarce. 
 
 After Thomas had built a raft, he loaded the 
 whiskey and his kit of tools on it. Leaving the 
 family behind, he floated down the creek to the, 
 Ohio River and then across to the Indiana shore, 
 where he chose some timber land for his new farm. 
 
 On his return to Kentucky, the family made 
 ready to go with him to their Indiana home. The 
 last sad duty of the mother was to take Abraham 
 and his sister to the burial place of her third child, 
 and there drop her tears upon the sod before leaving 
 forever the little grave in its unmarked desolation. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 LIFE IN THE INDIANA WILDERNESS 
 
 Removal of the Lincolns to a farm near Gentryville, Spencer 
 County, Indiana, in the almost savage wilds of a new state, in 
 1816. — Their home, amid a primitive people, a mere hut, with 
 no floor but the bare earth. — Abraham sleeping on a bed of 
 leaves in the loft and growing up without education. — Wield- 
 ing the axe in the primeval forest. — His one shot. — Death of 
 his mother, October 5, 181 8. — A desolate cabin. — Marriage 
 of Thomas Lincoln and Sarah Bush Johnston at Elizabethtown, 
 Kentucky, December 2, 181 9. — The new mother transformed 
 the rude home. — A family of nine living in one room. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was only seven years old 
 when, his sister beside him, he trudged behind his 
 father and mother into the trackless wilds of southern 
 Indiana. All the possessions of the family were 
 loaded on the backs of two borrowed horses, and 
 three days were required to make the journey of 
 eighteen miles from the Ohio River to the new home 
 on Little Pigeon Creek, for Thomas Lincoln had to 
 cut his way with an axe through the primeval 
 forest. The land he had chosen was covered with 
 a dense growth of timber, and no shelter awaited 
 him and his family. He must hasten to cut down 
 a lot of young saplings in order to build a shed of 
 poles. This was the home. It shielded the family 
 
 9 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 only on three sides, — an open-faced camp, as it was 
 called. 
 
 The home built, a field had to be quickly cleared 
 on which to raise the necessary food. Abraham, 
 young as he was, lent a hand, for he was 
 large for his age and could swing an axe. While 
 his father assailed the big trees, he chopped away 
 the rank underbrush. He dropped the seed in the 
 stumpy field in the light of the moon and planted 
 potatoes in the dark of the moon, as all the wise 
 folk of the region did. The minds of the early 
 Hoosiers were filled with ancient superstitions, and 
 they were governed in their daily lives by signs and 
 charms. 
 
 It was a wild country, inhabited by a primitive 
 race. Indiana had only just been admitted to the 
 Union as a state when the Lincolns took up their 
 home within its borders. The court-house of the 
 county in which they lived was made of logs. The 
 grand jury sat on a log in the woods, and it was 
 noted of one trial jury that there was not a pair 
 of shoes among them, for nearly every one wore 
 moccasins. 
 
 The settlers dressed, as the Indians before them, 
 in the skin of the deer, and never were without 
 their rifles and their long side knives. A farmer's 
 onlv implements were the axe, the rifle, the maul, 
 
LIFE IN THE INDIANA WILDERNESS 
 
 the plough, and the scythe. The brier of the wild 
 thorn was the only pin in a woman's toilet. Tea 
 was brewed from roots dug in the woods. 
 
 House raisings and hunting parties were the 
 main social pleasures known to the widely scattered 
 pioneers, aside from the rare event of a wedding, 
 when the people gathered uninvited, and, with 
 practical jokes and all manner of boisterous sport, 
 persecuted the poor bride and groom by night and 
 day. On the hunts, all the game was driven into 
 a common center, where it was slaughtered. Every 
 table depended on the rifle. There was a salt 
 "lick" in the creek near the Lincoln cabin, to which 
 the deer came, and thus Thomas easily kept his 
 family supplied with meat. 
 
 Abraham cared nothing for shooting, and the one 
 record of his hunting comes from his own pen in 
 after life. "A few days after the completion of 
 his eighth year," he wrote of himself, "in the ab- 
 sence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached 
 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 trigger on 
 any larger game." 
 
 This new log cabin was built by Thomas Lincoln 
 the second year of his life in Indiana. His family 
 lived in the open-faced pole camp through all the 
 
 ii 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 freezing storms of one winter. In the spring the 
 miserable habitation was turned over to some 
 Hankses, who had followed their cousin Nancy 
 from Kentucky, and the Lincolns moved into the 
 new home; but even its walls apparently had cracks 
 through which a rifle could be fired at a wild turkey. 
 
 Moreover, it had neither a floor nor a window. 
 The poor dwellers within its rude shelter actually 
 lived on the bare earth, which turned to mud in 
 the winter thaws. To shut out the sleet and snow, 
 there was not even a skin to hang over the hole 
 which served for a doorway. In one corner of the 
 only room, two poles stuck between the logs made 
 a bedstead. Nimbly climbing up on pegs driven 
 into the wall, Abraham slept on a heap of loose 
 leaves in the loft. Not a piece of crockery was 
 there in the cabin. Tin and pewter and gourds 
 were the table ware. 
 
 The aim was to raise only enough corn to keep 
 the meal box supplied and enough wheat for cakes 
 on Sunday. It hardly paid to raise more, for corn 
 brought little or nothing, and wheat only twenty- 
 five cents a bushel, so far was the farm from the 
 market. Besides, Thomas Lincoln never was a 
 good farmer, and sometimes the family had nothing 
 but potatoes to eat. A neighbor declaies that even 
 these were not always cooked, for he recollects 
 
 12 
 
LIFE IN THE INDIANA WILDERNESS 
 
 eating raw potatoes at the Lincolns' ; it was not 
 always easy to build a fire before the days of matches. 
 Abraham Lincoln long afterward said with simple 
 sadness in speaking of this period of his life, "They 
 were pretty pinching times." 
 
 Malaria lurked in the deep glades of the forest, 
 and pestilence was bred by the ignorant habits of 
 the people. A large part of the population was 
 stricken by a disease known to the backwoods as 
 milk sickness. The wife of Thomas Lincoln, 
 crushed in spirit by the hard fortunes of the family 
 through two winters, and bent in body under the 
 burdens of a frontier household, fell an easy prey 
 to this epidemic. 
 
 There was no physician within thirty-five miles, 
 and the swift fever burned her life out while her 
 helpless husband and children watched by her bed. 
 As the end drew near, Abraham knelt sobbing be- 
 side his dying mother, while she laid her hand on 
 his young head and gave him her last message, 
 ielling him to be good to his father and sister, and 
 calling on all to be good to one another, to love their 
 kin, and to worship God. 
 
 When the wearied soul was gone, the broken 
 body was shrived by the Lincolns and the Hankses, 
 there in the isolation of their forest home. Thomas 
 himself felled the pine tree and cut out the green 
 
 *3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 boards, which he pegged together for the rude 
 coffin. In a shallow grave on a knoll near by, with- 
 out a spoken prayer, but bitterly wept by children 
 and kindred, all that could die of Nancy Hanks 
 Lincoln was tenderly lowered to that rest which 
 was denied her in life. As long as he lived, her 
 son held her in reverence as his " angel mother," and 
 there is a tradition that sometime after her burial, 
 the sorrowing boy induced a traveling preacher 
 to deliver a sermon and say a prayer above her 
 grave. 
 
 With this death, that which made a home of the 
 bare hut, a wife's devotion and a mother's love, 
 was gone, and the widower and the orphaned were 
 left in desolation to face a hard and dreary winter. 
 After a short time of despair, the father rose to the 
 practical necessity of his situation and went back to 
 Kentucky to seek out a new head for his house and 
 a mother for his family. 
 
 On this mission, he made a wise choice. Find- 
 ing that one whom he had known in his youth was 
 widowed, he courted her with such despatch 
 that they were married the next morning. 
 
 When Thomas returned to Little Pigeon Creek 
 with his tall, curly-haired bride and her son and 
 two daughters, a four-horse team was needed to 
 carry her property, for she was rich in comparison 
 
LIFE IN THE INDIANA WILDERNESS 
 
 J — ^— — ' ' "" ' " ' Ill— — »■ III II I T— »^— 3 
 
 with her groom. The forlorn, neglected little boy, 
 Abraham, who was growing up like a weed, looked 
 with wondering eyes as he helped unload the fine 
 ihings. A bureau, that must have cost $50, was 
 among them. There was an extra feather bed 
 to take the place of his pallet in the loft, and at 
 last he was to have a pillow for his head. There 
 were also homespun blankets and quilts, a flax 
 wheel, and a soap kettle. 
 
 The new mistress ordered a wash-stand to be 
 set up beside the doorway, and she scrubbed the 
 children and fitted them out with decent clothing. 
 She gave Abraham a linsey-woolsey shirt of her 
 own make to take the place of his old deerskin shirt. 
 Her husband was driven to make and hang a door, 
 lay a floor, cut a window, and to grease some paper 
 with which to cover it and let in the light. 
 
 Abraham had so far forgotten the little he had 
 learned in the Kentucky school that now, though 
 ten years old, he could not write. Yet somehow 
 he had become the leader of the household. With- 
 out schools or books, his only chance to learn was 
 from wayfarers, and on such occasions he showed 
 a thirst for knowledge which annoyed his father, 
 who could not sympathize with the inquiring mind 
 of his boy. As he sat perched on the fence in front 
 of the cabin, he would ask questions as long as any 
 
 i5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 passer-by would tarry to answer him, or until his 
 father sent him away. 
 
 One day a wagon broke down in the road, and 
 the wife and two daughters of the owner stayed at 
 the Lincolns' until it was repaired. "The woman 
 had books," as Abraham recalled in later life, "and 
 read us stories. They were the first I ever heard." 
 There never had been a book or a newspaper in 
 the house, and he never forgot the sight of those 
 pages nor the woman who, by the chance of a 
 breakdown on the road, opened to his mind the 
 field of printed knowledge. 
 
 Hope and happiness entered the little cabin in 
 the wilderness at the call of its thrifty and vigorous 
 housewife, crowded though it was, for with the 
 husband and wife, their five children, and two 
 Hankses who had come to live with them, a family 
 of nine dwelt in peace in its one room. There 
 seemed to be a special harmony between Mrs. 
 Lincoln and Abraham. "His mind," she said, 
 "and mine — what little I had — seemed to run 
 together." She shared her heart with her hus- 
 band's children and sanctified the name of step- 
 
 mother. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE AWAKENING OF AMBITION 
 
 Learning life's lessons and building character amid poverty, toH, 
 and sorrow. — Abraham starting to school at ten. — Walking 
 nine miles a day to and fro. — Eager to study. — Ciphering on 
 a wooden shovel and making notes on the logs of his cabin. — 
 His passion for books — borrowing and reading all the volumes 
 within a fifty-mile circle. — Working three days to pay for 
 a damaged book. — Only a few months' schooling in all. 
 
 "It was a wild region, with many bears and 
 other wild animals still in the woods. There I 
 grew up. There were some schools, so called, 
 but no qualification was ever required of a teacher 
 beyond ' readin', writin', and cipherin' to the rule 
 of three/ If a straggler supposed to understand 
 Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, 
 he was looked upon as a wizard. There was ab- 
 solutely nothing to excite ambition for education. " 
 — Abraham Lincoln, in his own life sketch. 
 
 Nevertheless it was in those backwoods of Indiana 
 that the ambition of Lincoln was awakened. There, 
 out of poverty and toil and sorrow, the sturdy nature 
 of the child was woven, and there the man was 
 born, sprung from the very earth. The wild forest 
 was his university, and it taught him more than 
 c 17 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 many boys learn in academic groves, for it taught 
 him to use his hand as well as his head, and to think 
 and act for himself. His mental growth was slow 
 and did not cease while he lived; but morally, his 
 character seemed to come almost to its full stature 
 in mere boyhood. 
 
 His noble stepmother insisted that all her children 
 should be sent to school, though the fee for the 
 teacher must have been a heavy burden for the 
 Lincolns. The father knew nothing of school, and 
 cared no more. To him it was a sheer waste of 
 time, and he needed what the labor of the boys 
 could earn. 
 
 There were no schoolhouses in southern Indiana. 
 A roving teacher could hold sessions only in some 
 tumble-down cabin. Mean as the opportunity 
 was to gain an education in such a hovel, the boy 
 Lincoln seized it eagerly. At one time he had to 
 walk nine miles a day in going to and from school. 
 
 The road he traveled probably was no more than 
 a mere deer path through the lonely woods, but he 
 loved the solitude. The noon lunch, which he 
 carried in his pocket, was only a corn-dodger, a 
 cake made from coarse meal. He would study 
 all day Sunday, for there was no church to attend, 
 and every minute he could steal as he went about 
 his Saturday chores he gave to his lessons. The 
 
 18 
 
THE AWAKENING OF AMBITION 
 
 poor father hated the sight of a thing so useless to 
 himself as a book, and the stepmother had to beg 
 him to let Abraham read at home. 
 
 To practise his lessons in arithmetic he used 
 a wooden shovel, for he had no slate, paper was 
 scarce, and there was not a lead pencil in the house. 
 When he had covered the shovel with his sums 
 done in charcoal, he would scrape off the figures and 
 thus be ready for a fresh start. He scrawled his 
 notes from his books all over the logs of his cabin 
 and on any piece of board he could pick up. This 
 spirit naturally sent him to the head of his class with 
 a bound. He gained such readiness in spelling that 
 he soon "spelled down" the entire school, and at 
 last was barred from spelling matches, so it is said. 
 
 Writing was another of his favorite studies, and 
 he acquired a good, clear hand. This assured 
 him the proud position of the letter-writer for 
 the family and their illiterate neighbors. One of 
 the earliest Lincoln manuscripts in existence was 
 written by him as a form for a friend: — 
 
 " Good boys, who to their books apply, 
 Will all be great men by and by." 
 
 He no sooner could read than he took fire with 
 a passion for books. He had none at home, and there 
 was no public library. Wherever he heard of 
 
 m 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a book, near or far, he went afoot to see the owner, 
 and borrowed it and kept it until he had de- 
 voured all there was between its covers. In this 
 way he found and read "iEsop's Fables," Bunyan's 
 "Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," and a 
 history of the United States. 
 
 To retain for reference the things he liked best, 
 he bought a note-book, into which he copied his 
 favorite selections. His pen was made from the 
 quill of a turkey buzzard and his ink from the 
 juice of a brier root. 
 
 A dictionary coming to his hand, he read it, 
 page by page, day after day, until the last ray of 
 light had faded. In later years he said that if 
 any one used a word or phrase in his hearing which 
 he could not understand, it always had made him 
 angry. He remembered as a boy climbing to his 
 loft in a rage more than once on this account, and 
 walking the floor far into the night, while trying to 
 work out the meaning of something he had heard. 
 He could not sleep until he had solved the puzzle 
 and found a way to state the same idea in the 
 plainest words. 
 
 Even a copy of the statutes of Indiana fell a prey 
 to the timber boy's wild hunger for knowledge. 
 He read it through as eagerly as if it had been a 
 detective story. Nor was he poorly rewarded, 
 
 20 
 
THE AWAKENING OF AMBITION 
 
 for it not only contained the Constitution of 
 the United States, but it also introduced him to 
 the Declaration of Independence. It held, too, the 
 Ordinance of 1787, by which Indiana and all 
 the country between the Ohio and the Mississippi 
 had been dedicated to freedom in these simple 
 and now familiar terms: "There shall be neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude in said territory, 
 otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof 
 the party shall have been duly convicted/' Indeed, 
 that worn and forbidding volume gave him a better 
 understanding of the government of his country 
 than many big schools impart to their pupils. 
 
 Among his other borrowings was a copy of 
 Weems's "Life of Washington," from which he 
 drew the inspiring lessons of that immortal career 
 and of the War of the Revolution. Those lessons 
 sank deep into his youthful mind. After the lapse 
 of a generation, he recalled in a speech to the men 
 of '6 1, Weems's stories of the battles fought and 
 hardships endured by the men of '76. "You all 
 know," he said, "for you have all been boys, how 
 these early impressions last longer than any others. 
 I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, 
 that there must have been something more than 
 common that those men struggled for. I am ex- 
 ceedingly anxious that that thing . . . shall be 
 
 8£ 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 perpetuated in accordance with the original idea 
 for which that struggle was made." 
 
 He had still another reason for remembering 
 that book. He was so charmed by the tale that 
 he carried it with him when he mounted to his 
 loft, and there he lay in bed and read its pages until 
 his bit of tallow had burned out. Then he poked 
 the volume in a chink in the wall, where he could 
 put his hands on it the minute he woke in the morn- 
 ing. A driving rain in the night came through the 
 cracks and soaked the book. The man who had 
 lent it to him claimed damages and made Lincoln 
 pull fodder in his corn-field for three full days. 
 Nevertheless he went on borrowing right and left, 
 until he felt assured he had read every book within 
 a fifty-mile circle. 
 
 His total schooling amounted to much less than 
 a year. He attended from time to time until he 
 was nineteen; but each time his father felt obliged 
 to take him out after a few weeks. When his labor 
 was not required at home, the father was in need 
 of the few cents a day which the boy could earn 
 by working for other farmers, for the wolf of want 
 was always at the door of the Lincoln cabin. 
 
 <^ 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A BOYHOOD OF TOIL 
 
 Stories of the giant strength of the youthful Lincoln. — Hired out 
 by his father at twenty-five cents a day. — Rated as lazy by his 
 employers, because his heart was not in his rough work while 
 he dreamed of the great world without. — Walking fifteen miles 
 to hear lawyers argue in court and haranguing his fellow-laborers 
 from stumps in the fields. — Writing essays on morals and 
 politics. — Hailed as the village jester. — Became a flatboat- 
 man. — How he earned his first dollar. — The earliest monu- 
 ment to Lincoln reared by a boy friend. 
 
 Lincoln's figure shot up rapidly from his eleventh 
 year, and at nineteen he had grown to his full height 
 of six feet, four inches. He was wiry, and of rugged 
 health, swarthy in complexion, and his face was 
 shriveled not unlike that of an old man. The 
 strangely serious look, so marked in his bearing 
 through life, had already come into his countenance. 
 
 The unreflecting rustics about him simply set him 
 down as queer, as they saw this youth of strange 
 moods pass in a flash from gay to grave. His tight 
 buckskin breeches were "drawn up" in the rains, 
 until twelve inches of blue, bony shins were exposed 
 in the gap between them and the tops of his low 
 shoes, and on his head he wore a coonskin cap. 
 "Longshanks" was his descriptive nickname. 
 
 Wonderful stories are told of the giant strength 
 
 23 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of his boyhood, of his picking up and moving a 
 chicken house, weighing 600 pounds, and bearing 
 off a great log while three men were disputing as 
 to how they should unite to lift it. " His axe would 
 flash and bite into a sugar tree or a sycamore," 
 Dennis Hanks has said, "and if you heard him 
 felling trees in a clearing, you would say there were 
 three men at work by the way the trees fell." 
 
 Lincoln and his sister were both "hired out" 
 to the more prosperous neighbors, whenever there 
 was a demand for their services. One woman re- 
 called, in her old age, the time when the boy worked 
 for her husband and slept in their loft. She praised 
 him for knowing how "to keep his place" and for 
 not coming where he was not wanted. He would 
 lift his hat and bow when he entered her house, 
 and was tender and kind, "like his sister." 
 
 A day's work was from sunrise to sunset, and for 
 this he received a quarter of a dollar, but if he missed 
 any slight part of the long day, he was docked. 
 The reward for his labor did not go to him, how- 
 ever, but to his father, to whom he owed all his 
 time until the noon of his twenty-first birthday. 
 He had no spending money and felt little need of 
 any. Money was not what he longed for. It was 
 not the object of the ambition which gnawed like 
 hunger within him. 
 
 24 
 
A BOYHOOD OF TOIL 
 
 Already he stood apart and alone. He was with, 
 but not of, the backwoodsmen, among whom he 
 toiled and jested. His thoughts and his dreams 
 had borne him out of their forest world and far 
 away from the tasks of his hands. His heart was 
 not in hoeing and wood-chopping. He slaughtered 
 hogs, swung the axe and the scythe, and wielded 
 the flail, but he could not put the man into the work. 
 His employers knew it and rightfully found fault. 
 "I say he was awfully lazy," one of them insisted 
 nearly half a century afterward. "He worked 
 for me, but he was always reading and thinking. 
 He said to me one day his father taught him to 
 work, but he didn't teach him to love it." 
 
 This man did not take into his calculations the 
 fact that his big, lazy hired hand would walk farther 
 and work harder to get an old book than any one 
 else around him would walk or work to get a new 
 dollar bill. In vain his father tried to get such fool- 
 ishness out of his son's head and induce him to learn 
 practical things ; the boy was a great, strong fellow, 
 and it was time he made something out of himself. 
 
 The father was anxious for him to be a carpenter, 
 but he could not excite the young man's enthusiasm. 
 He would do the day's work, as it was given him 
 to do and after his own fashion, and that was all. 
 He would rather, any time, tramp off to the county 
 
 25 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 seat, some fifteen miles away, and listen to lawyers 
 argue. For days afterward he would be a lawyer, 
 holding mock trials in the fields and delivering 
 speeches from stumps, while the other hands gathered 
 around him, to the indignation of the farmer. 
 
 Only one newspaper came to the neighboring 
 village, and Lincoln delighted to go to the store and 
 read aloud to the unlettered throng its reports of 
 debates in Congress and its news from the great 
 world. Some of his views startled the entire country- 
 side. He insisted, for instance, the earth was round, 
 that the sun did not move, and that the moon did 
 not come up or go down, but that instead "we do 
 the sinking." 
 
 Hating to see even dumb creatures mistreated, 
 he wrote an essay on " Cruelty to Animals," although 
 many years were to pass before the first society was 
 formed in their defence. He wrote a paper on 
 "Temperance," although there was yet no organized 
 novement in that direction and the very word was 
 vithout meaning to the average person. 
 
 Humor mingled with earnestness in the nature 
 of the youth. He joked and frolicked as well as 
 studied and argued. He wrote rhymes on passing 
 events and sometimes had to back up his rough 
 satires with his big fists. He celebrated in verse 
 the long, crooked nose of the man who made him 
 
 26 
 
A BOYHOOD OF TOIL 
 
 work out the damage to the borrowed book, and 
 took revenge in the same way when he was not 
 invited to a wedding in the family of the rich man 
 of the village. If he began to tell stories at the 
 cross-roads store, the loungers crowded the place, 
 and sometimes he held his roaring audience until 
 midnight. 
 
 All the while he longed for the wider world 
 without; but he respected his father's right to his 
 labor. He eagerly welcomed the chance to go 
 down to the river to help the ferryman in the rough- 
 est toil at thirty-seven cents a day, for there he was 
 at last on the great highway of trade and travel. 
 While working on the river, he found his way to 
 a lawyer's library, where he could read half the 
 night. 
 
 In those surroundings he wrote a paper on the 
 "American Government," in which he urged the 
 necessity of preserving the Constitution and main- 
 taining the Union. The lawyer, when he had read 
 this appeal, declared the "world couldn't beat it," 
 and would have taken him into his office, only the 
 youth insisted his parents were so poor they could 
 not spare him as a breadwinner. 
 
 When a flatboatman offered him $8 a month, he 
 went as bow-hand, and thus standing forward, poled 
 the craft down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New 
 
 27 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Orleans. While idling about the river before start- 
 ing on that voyage, a little incident happened which 
 he always described as an important event in his life. 
 It is the story of the way he earned his first dollar by 
 taking two men and their trunks to a steamer which 
 waited for them in midstream. 
 
 "I was about eighteen years of age," he said, 
 "and belonged, as you know, to what they call 
 down South the 'scrubs.' J was very glad to have 
 the chance of earning something, and supposed 
 each of the men would give me a couple of bits. 
 I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on 
 board, and I lifted the trunks and 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. 
 
 "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." 
 
 When Abraham came of age, his father decided 
 to leave Indiana. The son could no longer be 
 
 28 
 
A BOYHOOD OF TOIL 
 
 expected to stay on the unpromising farm in the 
 timber, and his sister had lately died in young wife- 
 hood. One of the Hankses had gone to the new state 
 of Illinois, and his reports of the country induced 
 the Lincolns to follow him. 
 
 The people generally were sorry to lose the young 
 man whose strong hands always had been ready 
 to help any one in need and whose droll ways had 
 made him the favorite character in the community. 
 As he was leaving the dreary scene of so much sad- 
 ness and struggle, a boyhood companion planted 
 a cedar in memory of him, and that little tree was 
 the first monument raised in honor of Abraham 
 Lincoln, 
 
 29 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ON THE PRAIRIES OF ILLINOIS 
 
 The Lincolns leave Indiana for Illinois, March, 1830, Abraham 
 driving his fathers ox team. — Building the new home on the 
 Sangamon, and splitting rails for a fence. — Bidding farewell 
 to the humble roof of his parents. — Once more a flatboatman 
 in C831. — His strange introduction to New Salem. — Stirred 
 to indignation by the sight of a slave auction in New Orleans. 
 — Keeping store in New Salem, where he arrived in the sum- 
 mer of 1 83 1. — Winning the title of "Honest Abe." — Battling 
 with frontier roughs. — Failure of the store. — Studying and 
 dreaming. 
 
 In moving to Illinois, Thomas Lincoln resumed 
 the westward journey which his ancestor had begun 
 at Plymouth Rock and which had continued through 
 seven generations of Lincolns. 
 
 An ox team drew the family and its scanty pos- 
 sessions from Indiana to Illinois, and Abraham 
 was the driver. The wagon wheels were without 
 spokes, being mere rounded blocks of wood, cut 
 from the trunk of an oak tree, and with a hole in 
 the center for the axle. There were neither roads 
 nor bridges. Creeks and rivers had to be forded. 
 The trails through the Hoosier forests were broken 
 by the February thaw, while the prairies of Illinois 
 were a sea of mud. 
 
ON THE PRAIRIES OF ILLINOIS 
 
 Across those great stretches of level and fertile 
 land, ready to spring into richest gardens at the 
 lightest touch of man, the Lincolns wended their 
 toilsome way until they came to the meaner soil 
 of the timber country on the Sangamon River, 
 where they chose to pitch their new home. All 
 the early settlers shunned the broad, open country 
 as a desert. They had always lived in the woods. 
 in the older states whence they came, and, though 
 they saw the tall grass waving and the flowers 
 rioting in bloom on these wide plains, they could 
 not believe nature had been generous enough to 
 clear the land for the use of man. 
 
 The Lincolns, therefore, as the rest, sought a 
 place like that which they had left in Indiana, and 
 no better. There they went to felling trees and 
 hewing the logs for their cabin and ploughing a field 
 among the stumps. Abraham's was the leading 
 hand in this work, as well as in splitting the walnut 
 rails for a fence. 
 
 With the first winter came a season of utter dreari- 
 ness, celebrated in local history to this day as the 
 winter of the deep snow. The snow lay three feet 
 on a level, when a freezing rain followed and crusted 
 it. For weeks the people could not leave their 
 cabins. No doubt young Lincoln's desire for 
 another life than that which had been his 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 from birth, was strengthened in this desolate 
 period. 
 
 When spring came, he left his father's humble 
 roof forever. He was twenty-two and had duti- 
 fully given to his parent all his labor through the 
 years since childhood. He had helped him build his 
 new home and clear and fence his new farm, as 
 well as plant and harvest his first crop. 
 
 Now, with his axe over his shoulder and all his 
 other belongings in a little bundle, he started out 
 for himself. At first he worked about the neighbor- 
 hood, splitting rails and doing whatever was given 
 him to do. If he saw a book, he read it, and he 
 amazed the rustics with his speechmaking on various 
 subjects. He even ventured to reply to a political 
 speaker, and in this, his first joint debate, he won 
 not only the applause of the audience in the field, 
 but the praise of his opponent as well. 
 
 While knocking about in this way, he happened 
 upon a man who engaged him at fifty cents a day 
 to go on a flatboat to New Orleans, with the promise 
 of an added sum of money if the venture succeeded. 
 He paddled the Sangamon in a canoe to the point 
 where he fitted up the raft, on which he floated down 
 the river until, unfortunately, it was stranded on 
 a dam in front of New Salem. All the village 
 flocked to the scene of the excitement, and the 
 
 32 
 
ON THE PRAIRIES OF ILLINOIS 
 
 — — —^» — ■— — ^ — *— — "^ — — "^^j i 
 
 wise men ashore offered their noisy advice to the 
 crew. 
 
 One member of that crew moved the crowd to 
 laughter. He was a tall, gaunt, sad-faced young 
 man. His coat was ragged, his hat was battered; 
 and his trousers of torn and patched homespun, 
 with nearly half of one of the legs missing, com- 
 pleted a picture that was forlorn indeed. He neither 
 looked at the grinning people on the bank, nor 
 said a word in reply to their gibes. He had thought 
 out in his own mind a way to get over the dam. 
 He met the emergency without turning to any one 
 for advice, and in ^ue time the boat floated onward 
 and from view, the grotesque figure of the youthful 
 Lincoln standing on the deck, pole in hand. 
 
 After the cargo of corn and hogs had been landed 
 and sold in New Orleans, Lincoln and John Hanks 
 went about the city to see the sights. One of those 
 sights made an impression on Lincoln's mind 
 which the years did not efface and to which in after 
 time he never could refer without emotion. It was 
 a slave auction, and, as he came to it, he saw a young 
 woman standing on the block, while the auctioneer 
 shouted her good points. He saw her driven around 
 the mart, exhibited and examined as if she were 
 a horse, in that circle of sordid dealers in human 
 flesh. This was slavery in its ugliest aspect, and 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln was stirred to the depths of his nature. 
 "If I ever get a chance to hit this thing," he de- 
 clared to John Hanks, according to the story which 
 the latter has given to history, "I'll hit it hard." 
 
 From New Orleans, the flatboatmen returned 
 by steamer to St. Louis. Thence Lincoln walked 
 across Illinois to his father's farm. After visiting 
 his family there, he went on his way until he came 
 again to New Salem, where his boat had stuck on 
 the dam. His employer in the baating enterprise 
 had decided to open a store in that village of twenty 
 log houses and one hundred population, and Lincoln 
 was to help him. He walked into the little settle- 
 ment to find that the merchant and his merchandise 
 had not yet arrived. Every one remembered him 
 as the silent, strange, and ingenious young man 
 who had freed the flatboat from its obstruction, 
 and his easy good nature and droll remarks won 
 him a hearty welcome among the people, who, 
 a few months before, had jeered at him from the 
 river bank. 
 
 Another distinction awaited him. An election 
 was to be held, and penmanship not being a com- 
 mon accomplishment in New Salem, Linioln was 
 asked if he could write a good hand. He answered 
 he "could make a few rabbit tracks on paper," 
 and he was selected to help the clerk of the eW^ion. 
 
 34 
 
ON THE PRAIRIES OF ILLINOIS 
 
 a post which brought him in touch with all the 
 voters and which also brought him a small but 
 needed sum of money. The stories he told at the 
 polls that day increased the popular favor in which 
 he was held, and half a hundred years later old 
 men, with smiling satisfaction, retold them to a new 
 generation. 
 
 At last the new store was opened. The ambition 
 of the owner was not content with this one venture, 
 and he bought the mill as well. Lincoln was placed 
 in charge of both businesses, for his employer had 
 unlimited faith in him and his all-round ability. 
 He boasted that his clerk was the best man in New 
 Salem and could beat any one, fighting, wrestling, 
 or running. The villagers were willing to admit, 
 of one accord, that the young stranger was a mighty 
 clever fellow, but the sweeping assertion of the 
 merchant led to more or less argument, and was 
 looked upon by some as a challenge. 
 
 The Clary's Grove boys, a "generous parcel of 
 rowdies," who "could trench a pond, dig a bog, build 
 a house," who "could pray and fight, make a village, 
 or create a state," were open doubters. They 
 even risked $10 in a bet with the merchant that 
 their chief bully, Jack Armstrong, was a better 
 man than his clerk. Lincoln held back. He had 
 no desire to fight, 
 
 35 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The merchant, however, was very much in earnest, 
 and so were the Clary's Grove boys. A man had 
 to win their favor, and failing to win it, New Salem 
 was no place for him. The big, good-natured new- 
 comer finally consented, and all the village flocked 
 to the battle-field. Lincoln's weight is given as 
 214 pounds at that time, but the long reach of his 
 muscular arm was his strongest point, and he 
 quickly seized Jack Armstrong by the throat and 
 beat the air with him, to the admiration of the crowd, 
 including the Clary's Grove boys and even Jack 
 himself. 
 
 The verdict of the battle was loyally accepted 
 by all, and the winner became the sworn friend 
 then and thenceforth of every man for miles around. 
 His admirers never ceased to brag about the things 
 he could do, and one of their favorite pastimes was 
 to arrange feats of strength for him to perform. 
 It is a tradition that once he raised a barrel of whiskey 
 from the ground and lifted it until, standing erect, 
 he could drink from the bung-hole, refusing, however, 
 to swallow the liquor, for he always set before the 
 community in his own life a much-needed example 
 of total abstinence. Another legend represents 
 him as having lifted, by means of ropes and straps 
 fastened about his hips, a box cf stones, weighing 
 nearly 1000 pounds. 
 
 36 
 
Frcm the collection of H. W. Fay, Esq., De Kalb, 111. 
 
 A Yoke which is treasured as an Example of 
 Lincoln's Craftsmanship 
 
ON THE PRAIRIES OF ILLINOIS 
 
 His neighbors respected him for his strength of 
 character as well as for his strength of body. If 
 a wagon stalled in the crooked, muddy lane, 
 which was the only street of New Salem, he was 
 among the first to go to the aid of the driver. If 
 a widow were in need of firewood, he cut it for 
 her. He watched with the sick, and any chance 
 for kindness, from splitting a log to rocking a cradle, 
 found his hand always ready to serve. If he made 
 a mistake in weight or change across his counter, 
 he did not sleep until he had corrected the error> 
 though sometimes he tramped miles into the country 
 in order to find the customer whom he had innocently 
 wronged. All relied on his sincerity, and thus, 
 while hardly more than a boy, he came to be hailed 
 as "Honest Abe." 
 
 He was not, however, a successful business man. 
 He would rather lie on the counter, his head resting 
 on a pile of calico, and study a grammar, which he 
 had walked six miles to borrow, than cultivate 
 trade. Sometimes intending purchasers found him 
 not in the store at all, and had to call him from 
 the wayside, where he was sprawling on the grass, 
 covering a wrapping-paper with problems in mathe- 
 matics. While a sale was pending or in a lull in 
 social conversation, he was likely to pull out a book 
 and lose himself in the pages of Tom Paine, Voltaire, 
 
 37 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Rollin, or Gibbon, rare copies of whose works he 
 had come upon in that rude hamlet on the remote 
 frontier. 
 
 In less than a year the merchant had failed and 
 his clerk was adrift again, free to ramble about the 
 village, the life of its groups of loiterers, or to sit 
 all day beside the eccentric old fisherman on the 
 banks of the Sangamon and listen to his quotations 
 from the poetry of Shakespeare and Burns; or 
 else, silently to walk the street, absorbed in a book, 
 speaking to no one and seeing no one. He earned 
 enough by an occasional job to keep him, for he 
 never let himself become dependent on others. 
 
 There was a moral dignity about him which the 
 villagers felt and respected. They did not rate 
 him a loafer, but they did feel he was wasting his 
 hours. Those bustling planners and builders of 
 New Salem could not know that this dreamer among 
 them was planning and building for all time, while 
 the village they were rearing would in a few years 
 be but a cow pasture and remembered among men 
 only because fate had selected it as a station in the 
 progress of Abraham Lincoln: — 
 
 " For the dreamer lives forever, 
 And the toiler dies in a day e M 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 WRESTLING WITH DESTINY 
 
 Lincoln already marked out for leadership. — Chosen a captain in 
 the Black Hawk War, an honor which pleased him more than 
 any other. — Saving the life of the only Indian he saw in the 
 campaign against the red men in the spring of 1832. — Search- 
 ing for his place in life. — Entering politics. — Defeated for 
 the Legislature in August, 1 832. — High finance in New Salem. 
 — Lincoln's failure as a trust magnate. — A heavy burden of 
 debt. — His first sight of Blackstone. — Doing chores about 
 the village. — A barefoot law student. — Appointed post- 
 master May 7, 1833, he carried his office in his hat. — Sur- 
 veyor. — Crushed by a creditor, saved by a friend. — His 
 gratitude. 
 
 Homeless and unemployed, Lincoln was glad 
 to respond to the Governor's call for volunteers, 
 when Black Hawk, the old Indian chief, took the 
 war path in Illinois. The scene of the conflict was 
 far removed from the Sangamon, but the chance 
 for a campaign aroused the spirit of adventure in 
 the young pioneers about New Salem. 
 
 When the company from that neighborhood met, 
 many of the soldiers wished Lincoln to be their 
 captain. At the election, he and the one other can- 
 didate for the post took up positions apart, ancfr 
 their followers rallied around them. By far the 
 larger number went over to Lincoln's side, and thu* 
 
 39 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he was chosen. It was an honor which he said 
 long afterward pleased him more than any that 
 had come to him. 
 
 He really cared nothing for the little military 
 glory there was in it, and he never wore the title 
 of captain after the war was over. That those 
 among whom he had come only a year before, 
 without friends and without a name, had singled 
 him out for leadership, filled him with satisfaction. 
 Doubtless it caused him to feel that his secret dreams 
 of a higher destiny were coming true. 
 
 He knew nothing of his new duties and took little 
 trouble to learn. The story is told that when his men 
 came to a narrow gate, he could only shout at them, 
 "This company will break ranks for two minutes 
 and form again on the other side of that gate." 
 A more experienced commander would have had 
 his troubles in reducing that band of rough merry- 
 makers to martial discipline, and Captain Lincoln 
 bore with entire good humor the various forms of 
 disgrace which they brought upon their commanding 
 officer. 
 
 He was arrested and his sword taken from him 
 for one day, because a member of his company 
 fired a gun within the limits of the camp. At an- 
 other time, when some of his men made a night raid 
 on the headquarters' provisions, *heir captain had 
 
 40 
 
WRESTLING WITH DESTINY 
 
 to pay for their frolic by wearing a wooden sword 
 two days. He even permitted them to draw him 
 into a wrestling match with a champion from a rival 
 command, and they had the humiliation of seeing 
 their captain thrown. When his company was 
 mustered out of the service and disbanded, Lincoln, 
 with no vanity of rank, enlisted as a private in a 
 cavalry troop. 
 
 The fortunes of war, however, did not bring him 
 within sight of Black Hawk or within sound of battle. 
 Indeed, instead of slaying Indians, he saved the life 
 of the only red man with whom he came in contact. 
 This was an old Indian, who bore a pass as a trusted 
 friend of the whites. He was set upon by a crowd 
 of soldiers, who pretended to think his pass was 
 a forgery, and who were determined to shoot him 
 as a spy. Lincoln appealed to the men to spare 
 him, and finding them deaf to his appeal, quickly 
 placed his own body between the Indian and the 
 guns of his enemies and thus shielded him from 
 harm. 
 
 With the end of the war, Lincoln returned to New 
 Salem. He was, as he afterward said, "without 
 means and out of business," and he "had nothing 
 elsewhere to go to." An election was about to be 
 held for members of the Legislature. He was en- 
 couraged to become a candidate, for the sake of 
 
 41 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the experience and advancement the place would 
 bring him. In a democracy like ours, all the govern- 
 ment, from the little town up to the great nation, is 
 but a school for the instruction, improvement, and 
 elevation of the citizens. The Legislature was like 
 a university for Lincoln, and it was in this spirit 
 that he sought a seat in it. 
 
 His announcement of his candidacy was in the 
 nature of the man. After frankly stating his posi- 
 tion on the questions of the hour, he added, "I may 
 be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, hold- 
 ing 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 erroneous, I shall 
 be ready to renounce them." He declared his 
 greatest ambition was to "be truly esteemed of my 
 fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their 
 esteem. How far," he added, "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," and "if the good people in their 
 wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, 
 I have been too familiar with disappointments tc 
 be very much chagrined. " 
 
 His campaign was short and only one of his 
 meetings has been called to memory. This was at 
 
 42 
 
WRESTLING WITH DESTINY 
 
 a place some distance from New Salem, where he 
 waited until the close of an auction, when he got 
 up and attempted to speak to the crowd. The peo- 
 ple ignored him, for they seemed bent on enjoying 
 a fight, and a general engagement followed. The 
 candidate was forgotten. He quickly gained at- 
 tention, however, by stepping down into the thick 
 of the fray, seizing the ringleader and throwing him 
 flat on the ground. Then he climbed upon the 
 platform again, took off his old hat, and made a 
 speech to an entirely respectful audience. 
 
 He was a candidate before the voters of the entire 
 county, and, having no acquaintance outside his 
 own town, he was defeated; "the only time I have 
 ever been beaten by the people," he was able to 
 say nearly twenty years later. The vote cast in the 
 precinct of New Salem, however, was most flatter- 
 ing to him, for he received 277 ballots there among 
 his neighbors in the village and the surrounding 
 country, and only seven were thrown against him. 
 
 He turned again to business, and with a partner 
 he bought out a storekeeper. Not long afterward 
 the Clary's Grove boys celebrated by smashing the 
 windows of one of the other stores. The frightened 
 proprietor took the hint, and offered to sell his stock 
 cheap. Lincoln and his partner became the purchas* 
 ers, and next they bought the only remaining store. 
 
 43 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 By this combination, or trust, they gained a monop- 
 oly of the trade of New Salem, and, after the fashion 
 of high finance in a later day, they had done it all 
 without a cent of cash. In each case they gave 
 their notes, their promises to pay. Credit was the 
 life of business on the frontier, for currency seldom 
 was seen there, and personal notes passed from 
 hand to hand almost as readily as treasury notes in 
 our day. 
 
 In his tanbrogans, blue yarn socks, broad-brimmed, 
 low-crowned straw hat without a band, and usually 
 with only one suspender on his trousers, Lincoln 
 did not look like a financial magnate or a merchant 
 prince. He went to live at the tavern, a log structure 
 of four rooms, where all the men lodgers slept to- 
 gether, and where he delighted to meet the travelers, 
 who tarried there on the stage route. When the 
 place was crowded, he good-naturedly relieved 
 the landlord by sleeping on a counter in his store. 
 
 Storekeeping again failed to interest Lincoln. 
 He continued to be a student of men and books. 
 By a strange chance one book came to him, which 
 probably fixed his course in life. The firm, in its 
 readiness for a trade, bought from a stranger a barrel 
 of odds and ends. While Lincoln was searching 
 through its varied contents with his long arm, he 
 fished out a copy of Blackstone's commentaries on 
 
 44 
 
WRESTLING WITH DESTINY 
 
 a— — — — — — — — —«——■— 
 
 the common law. He was fascinated by the very 
 sight of it, and day after day pored over its pages as he 
 lay on the ground near the store, his feet resting 
 high against the trunk of a tree, and his body wrig- 
 gling around to keep in the shade. Meanwhile his 
 partner was giving most of his attention to the rear 
 of the store where the liquors were kept, for all 
 country stores in those times sold liquor, though 
 in this one there was no bar. 
 
 In a few months the firm was dissolved and the 
 store was sold, the purchaser, of course, indorsing 
 and promising to pay the notes of Lincoln and his 
 partner. After a little while, however, the new 
 man fled, Lincoln's old partner died, and Lincoln 
 alone stood responsible for the total indebtedness, 
 an obligation so heavy that he always spoke of it 
 as the "national debt." He had shown himself 
 a poor business man, it is true, but he bravely faced 
 his responsibility. He did not run away from it 
 or try to beg off. 
 
 "That debt was the greatest obstacle I have ever 
 met in life," he said after many years. He owed 
 $1100 and he had no way to get money except by 
 hard labor at a small wage. He went to his creditors 
 and told them if they would wait, he would give 
 them all he could earn above the cost of living as 
 fast as he could earn it, and thus work out the last 
 
 45 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dollar. It seemed to him that his whole life was 
 mortgaged as he started out again, with only his 
 strong right arm to help him lift the burden from 
 his shoulders. One week he would split rails, 
 another week toil in the fields, while from time to 
 time he helped out in the store and did chores about 
 the tavern. 
 
 Through it all he did not cease to read. By 
 walking to Springfield, a distance of twenty miles, 
 he could borrow law books, and people long re- 
 membered the picture of the big barefoot student, 
 intently reading as he came and went along the 
 dusty road. Another tale oft told, is of an old 
 farmer finding his hired man lying in the field, with 
 a book in his hand. 
 
 "What are you reading?" he demanded. 
 
 "I ain't reading; I'm studying," Lincoln answered, 
 without losing his place on the page. 
 
 "Studying what?" 
 
 "Law, sir." 
 
 " Great — God — Almighty," the farmer snorted, 
 as he went ofF, shaking his wise old head. 
 
 The eager student would not stop reading even 
 for darkness. The cooper gave him the freedom 
 of his shop, and there he would go of an evening, 
 build a fire of shavings, and read by its light. As 
 fast as he learned anything about the law, he made 
 
 46 
 
WRESTLING WITH DESTINY 
 
 his knowledge useful to his neighbors by drawing 
 up their legal papers and by representing them in 
 trials before the justice of the peace, all without 
 charge. 
 
 The upward turn came in the fortunes of Lincoln 
 when friends obtained for him the postmastership 
 of New Salem. It was not a highly paid office, 
 nor was there much to do. When the mails came 
 only once or twice a week, and sometimes in the 
 winter only once a month, the postmaster was 
 not kept very busy. At best, letters were not many, 
 for the cheapest postage then was six cents for 
 thirty miles or less; from that figure the rate rose 
 as high as twenty-five cents on a letter going to 
 a distant state. The people were so much given 
 to doing business on credit that they would not 
 pay cash even for their letters, and Lincoln had to 
 carry numerous accounts in his head. 
 
 While he was postmaster, the post-office of New 
 Salem was in his hat. Meeting a man for whom 
 he had a letter, he would take off his hat, withdraw 
 the mail from it, and deliver it on the spot. As he 
 went about his day's labor in the country, he would 
 distribute the mail at the cabins on the way. 
 
 Next, a chance to do surveying came to him, as 
 it had come to Washington in his youth, and he 
 fitted himself for the duty by hard study, 50 hard, 
 
 47 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 indeed, that his friends were alarmed for his health. 
 He gained repute for his accuracy in his new work, 
 and this, with the natural fairness of his mind, won 
 respect for the young surveyor's decisions regarding 
 disputed boundary lines. One day, when he was 
 surveying a piece of land over which there was 
 a long-standing quarrel, he put his stick into the 
 ground and said, "Here is the corner." A man 
 dug in the earth, and the by-standers were astonished 
 to see him uncover the buried mark, which years 
 before, the original surveyors of the national gov- 
 ernment had placed at the exact spot indicated by 
 Lincoln. 
 
 For the first time in his life, he had a right to feel 
 at ease. He was making a living and at the same 
 time preparing himself for the future. Then once 
 more, the shadow of misfortune fell across his path. 
 A stranger, who had come into possession of one 
 of his notes given in purchase of a store, sued him 
 and seized his horse, saddle, bridle and all, and, 
 worse still, his surveying instruments. It was a 
 dark hour, filled with humiliation. A friend, how- 
 ever, came to the rescue and saved him, by buy- 
 ing in the property and handing it back to him. 
 
 Lincoln never lacked a friend and never forgot 
 one. A man in New Salem who had trusted him 
 for board was himself homeless in his old age. 
 
 48 
 
WRESTLING WITH DESTINY 
 
 Lincoln, with his gratitude still warm after many 
 years, went to the distant part of the state, where 
 his one-time benefactor was an inmate of a poor- 
 house, took him from the place and found a good 
 home for him. The friendships he made along the 
 Sangamon, amid the struggles of his early man- 
 hood, when he had neither fortune nor fame, stood 
 the tests of time and change and lasted through 
 life. They were the corner-stone of his success. 
 
 49 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 Elected a Representative in 1834. — Borrowing money with which 
 to clothe himself and going to Vandalia, then the capital of 
 Illinois. — First meeting with Stephen A. Douglas. — Lincoln 
 a member of Henry Clay's Whig party. — Favoring woman's 
 suffrage. — An early joint debate. — Reelected to the Legis- 
 lature in 1836, 1838, and in 1840. — Whig candidate for Speaker. 
 — Leader of his party in the House. — Fighting for removal of 
 the capital to Springfield. — Wild legislation. — Lincoln tak- 
 ing his stand against slavery in the session of 1837, only one 
 member in sympathy with him. 
 
 Lincoln was no longer a stranger, when, for the 
 second time, he announced himself a candidate 
 for the Legislature. He now made a general can- 
 vass, visiting as many of the voters as he could in 
 their homes and in their fields, eating with them and 
 laughing with them. 
 
 Newspapers then were few and little read. Candi- 
 dates, therefore, could not make themselves and their 
 opinions known to the voters except by going among 
 them in person. Lincoln showed himself a good 
 campaigner, always ready for any situation. At one 
 farm where he stopped, it was harvest time and the 
 farmer was in no mood to talk politics. He bluntly 
 told the young politician he judged a man by the 
 
IN THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 work he could do. Lincoln accepted the challenge 
 good-naturedly, and, going down the field, he cut the 
 grain with such ease that he led all the other work- 
 ers. There were several voters among the harvest- 
 ers, and when Lincoln shook their hands in parting, 
 he was assured of their enthusiastic support. He 
 was elected by a handsome vote. 
 
 Borrowing the money with which to buy suitable 
 clothing, he went to the capital at the opening of 
 the session, and there entered upon the career for 
 which he had long been fitting himself in the hard 
 school of experience. He was now approaching his 
 twenty-sixth birthday. He never had lived in a 
 town, but always in log-houses in the woods. He 
 never had lived where there was a church. He 
 never had been inside a college, and had attended 
 school hardly more than six months in all. He wel- 
 comed the lour dollars a day, which was allowed 
 members of the Legislature, as by far the highest 
 pay he ever had received. In fact, he had not aver- 
 aged four dollars a week. 
 
 His fellow-members were frontier solons, pioneer 
 farmers and village lawyers, for there were no 
 large towns in Illinois. Chicago was yet a mere 
 trading post in a swamp. There were a few French- 
 men, representing the surviving communities of 
 the period when Illinois was under the lilies of the 
 
 U. F ILL. l.l 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Bourbons and the tricolored flag of revolutionary 
 France; the rest of the members generally were 
 men of southern origin like Lincoln. 
 
 The state was founded and ruled by Southerners. 
 There was only a small population of Northerners 
 in the upper half, which was sparsely settled, and 
 the Yankee was an object of popular prejudice, 
 since he was regarded as a thrifty and meddlesome 
 person, prone to insist upon ordei and his own 
 strict standards of life. 
 
 Lincoln remained in modest silence through 
 his first term in the Legislature. He no doubt 
 regarded himself merely as a pupil and was content 
 to watch and listen. He cultivated his associates 
 quietly and laid the foundation for the future. It 
 was then and there that Stephen A. Douglas entered 
 the story of Lincoln's life. 
 
 Douglas was a Yankee from Vermont, but he 
 was acting with the Democratic party, which had 
 long dominated Illinois. Although he had come 
 to the state only a year before with thirty-seven 
 cents in his pocket, he had picked up a living by 
 teaching school and practising law, and was now at 
 the capital to gain the appointment of prosecuting 
 attorney in his district. 
 
 While Douglas went with the majority, Lincoln 
 made the harder choice and joined the minority. 
 
IN THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 Indeed, his party, afterward known as the Whig, 
 was yet without even a name, with no victories to 
 its credit and no honors to bestow. It was out of 
 power in the nation and in the state, and had but 
 few followers in New Salem. Lincoln, however, 
 was naturally inclined to take the part of the weak 
 in politics as well as in the everyday relations of 
 life. Moreover, the new party was the party of 
 Henry Clay, the model and idol of the young states- 
 man of the Sangamon. 
 
 In offering himself for reelection, Lincoln an- 
 nounced he was in favor of "admitting all whites 
 to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, 
 by no means excluding females." As he had taken 
 in boyhood a stand for temperance and against cru- 
 elty to animals in advance of any general agitation 
 of those questions, so now he came out for a measure 
 of woman suffrage before there was a movement 
 in favor of it anywhere. He had no thought of 
 making an issue on this subject at that early day, 
 b'ut his declaration shows that he was thinking and 
 not afraid to express his thoughts. 
 
 His contest for a second term took place in a 
 presidential year, and he entered into a number of 
 exciting joint debates. In one of those debates, 
 which was held in Springfield, he was stirred to makf; 
 a spirited personal reply to an opposing speaker. 
 
 53 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 This man was accused of having recently re- 
 ceived a first-class federal office as a reward for 
 changing his politics. He was also noted for 
 having erected on his house the only lightning-rod 
 in the town, and the first Lincoln had seen. 
 Grouping these things together, Lincoln con- 
 cluded a rousing rejoinder to the gentleman, by 
 declaring he would rather die on the spot, than, 
 like his opponent, "change my politics for an 
 office worth three thousand dollars a year, and 
 then feel compelled to erect a lightning-rod to 
 protect a guilty conscience from an offended 
 God." 
 
 In the election that followed, nine members were 
 chosen from Sangamon County, and Lincoln led 
 them all with the highest vote. He took a prominent 
 part in the work of the session and was on the most 
 important committee. The young state dreamed 
 of the greatness awaiting it and was eager to hasten 
 its coming by all manner of legislation for building 
 roads and canals. 
 
 Plans were adopted with a hurrah, which, if 
 carried out, would have bankrupted the state for 
 a generation. Lincoln plunged in with the rest, 
 all of whom, with the recklessness of youth, threw 
 caution to the winds. He made it his more special 
 mission, however, to have the capital of the state 
 
 54 
 
IN THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 transferred to Springfield, in his own county, and 
 he won the battle. 
 
 Nevertheless, in all the transactions of that am- 
 bitious session, only one incident survives in human 
 interest. The nation had been disturbed by the 
 rumblings of a moral protest against slavery. The 
 agitation had begun in New England, where Faneuil 
 Hall echoed with the appeal for freedom, and thence 
 had spread abroad. 
 
 Those who had taken it up were pitifully few in 
 number and without political standing, but their 
 feeble voice startled the country like a cry in the 
 night. The South demanded that these assaults 
 upon the peace of the Union should be suppressed, 
 and the great body of the northern people were 
 equally opposed to the movement. 
 
 The meetings of the Abolitionists were broken 
 up in various parts of the North by violence under 
 the leadership of conservative men of property. 
 A "broadcloth mob" dragged William Lloyd Gar- 
 rison through the streets of Boston with a halter 
 round his body, and the Mayor of that city, apologiz- 
 ing to the Mayor of Baltimore, explained that when 
 the police had ferreted out Garrison and his paper, 
 The Liberator, they found his office to be " an obscure 
 hole; his only visible auxiliary a negro boy; his 
 supporters a few insignificant persons of all colors." 
 
 55 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 In New Hampshire and in Connecticut an in- 
 dignant population raided private schools which 
 received negro pupils. A mass meeting in Cin- 
 cinnati demanded that the publication of an anti- 
 slavery paper in that city should be stopped, and its 
 press was thrown into the Ohio River. The meet- 
 ing place of the despised agitators in Philadelphia 
 was burned, and, within the year, the editor of an 
 Abolition paper in Alton, Illinois, was murdered. 
 Congress and the legislatures of several states united 
 in denouncing all discussion of the sensitive subject. 
 The Legislature of Illinois joined in this denuncia- 
 tion of the agitators by a resolution of both houses. 
 
 In all the work of that session Lincoln had gone 
 with the tide, but now he boldly took his stand apart. 
 He wrote a protest and called upon the members 
 to sign it. In this short and simple document, 
 he admitted that the Abolition movement tended 
 rather to increase than abate the evils of slavery, 
 and that Congress had no power to abolish the 
 system in the states; but he did urge his associates 
 to place on record the declaration that "they believe 
 that the institution of slavery is founded on both 
 injustice and bad policy. ,, 
 
 This language, in the light of a later day, is mild 
 to the degree of timidity, but when it was written, 
 twenty-four years or almost a quarter of a century 
 
 56 
 
IN THE LEGISLATURE 
 
 before the Civil War, slavery never had been ar- 
 raigned as an injustice in any party platform or 
 by any party leader. In all the Legislature, Lincoln 
 found only one man who would sign his moderate 
 little paper. Dan Stone, a colleague from Sangamon, 
 was willing to write his name upon it, and under 
 it appears the signature, "A. Lincoln." 
 
 It was the still, small voice of conscience. The 
 first test had come, and Lincoln had bravely chosen 
 his part. Although he served four terms in the 
 Legislature and became the Whig candidate for 
 Speaker and the chosen leader of his party on the 
 floor of the House, aside from this one act, big with 
 prophecy, history has rescued from oblivion nothing 
 4se i*. his service which foreshadowed his future. 
 
 57 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LOVER AND LAWYER 
 
 The tragic story of Lincoln's first love. — His wooing of Ann Rut- 
 ledge, the tavern-keeper's daughter at New Salem. — The con- 
 flict between her conscience and her heart. — Lincoln plunged 
 in gloom by her death, August, 1835. — Friends feared 
 he would lose his mind. — A primitive man always in 
 his sentiments. — His removal to Springfield in 1837 to begin 
 the practice of law with John T. Stuart. — Too poor to pro- 
 vide a bed for himself. — At once the center of a group of 
 brilliant and ambitious young men, destined to win fame. — ■ 
 Characteristic instance of his integrity. — Paying a claim made 
 by the government. — Still working out his debt. 
 
 The story of Lincoln as a lover forms a melan- 
 choly chapter. No other experience of his early 
 years gave him so much anguish, no other trial so 
 tested and tempered his nature. If it did not bring 
 him happiness, neither did it embitter him. On 
 the contrary, he came forth from that period of 
 soul-wracking doubt and despondency, a master 
 of his passions, with a patience and a fortitude 
 which fitted him to endure disappointment and 
 suffering. 
 
 If Lincoln had a sweetheart in his boyhood, 
 a prying world has been unable to discover the 
 
 S3 
 
LOVER AND LAWYER 
 
 tender episode. In his youth he was charmed by 
 books rather than woman's looks, and no legends 
 have come down of the gallantry of the Hoosier 
 wood-chopper, sighing and wooing on the banks of 
 Little Pigeon Creek. It is the accepted belief 
 that he escaped a lover's pangs until he was a 
 young man of twenty-five or twenty-six, when the 
 auburn-haired daughter of the tavern-keeper of 
 New Salem smote his heart. 
 
 This was Ann Rutledge, a Kentucky girl by 
 birth, a South Carolinian by descent. She was at- 
 tractive both in mind and in person, refined in man- 
 ner, and strong in character. If it was love at first 
 sight, Lincoln's fortunes were so low that he did 
 not venture openly to aspire to her hand in the begin- 
 ning of their acquaintance, when sometimes he was 
 only a penniless helper about her father's tavern. 
 
 Moreover, she was engaged to another. It was 
 not until after this man had disappeared from the 
 knowledge of the village and Lincoln had risen to 
 the surveyorship and a seat in the Legislature, that 
 he told her of his love. It is a tradition that he first 
 opened his heart to her at a "quilting," to which 
 he escorted her, and as a proof that her own heart 
 responded, there was preserved for years the very 
 quilt over which her agitated fingers flew — and the 
 uneven stitches told the story. 
 
 59 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The girl, however, felt bound in loyalty to the 
 absent one. She asked Lincoln to wait until she 
 could gain her release from that obligation. Her 
 letter was sped on the way to its distant destination, 
 and they could only watch for the slow coming of 
 the answer. They waited through the months, 
 and no reply came. At last she promised herself 
 to Lincoln, who was compelled to postpone their 
 marriage indefinitely, because he could not yet 
 support a wife. 
 
 In the midst of almost the first happiness which 
 he had ever known, his sweetheart fell sick. Her 
 faithful nature had been unable to free itself from 
 the shadow of the man who had gone away with 
 her pledge to remain true till he came again. The 
 villagers said her heart was breaking for him. 
 More likely, however, it was her conscience rather 
 than her heart that was troubled. 
 
 Her sickness ran into a fever, and she was for- 
 bidden to receive callers. She disclosed her love 
 for Lincoln by begging earnestly and constantly 
 to be permitted to see him. She could not live, and 
 her family let her have her only wish. The last 
 song she sang was for him. After a few days the 
 end came and Lincoln was borne down with woe. 
 
 The love of Ann Rutledge had been like a beautiful 
 flower in the hard and thorny pathway of his lonely 
 
 60 
 
LOVER AND LAWYER 
 
 life. To see this flower fade and die ere it bloomed, 
 filled him with the darkest despair. In his senti- 
 ments and emotions, Lincoln remained always a 
 primitive man, a simple backwoodsman. No eleva- 
 tion of mind or station seemed to affect these elements 
 of his nature. His heart was unchanged to the end. 
 He never rose superior to its aches and appeals; 
 he could always cry. 
 
 Malaria attacked the settlers in the dank forests 
 and the tillers of the newly turned soil of the virgin 
 land of the West. Lincoln did not escape the 
 disease and this, together with his intellectual isola- 
 tion and his naturally sensitive disposition, made 
 him a man of dark moods. These he could 
 sometimes disguise or momentarily beguile with 
 jests and laughter, but, in his sluggish physical 
 condition, he seemed powerless to conquer them 
 and throw them off. 
 
 He grieved for the dead girl until his friends 
 feared he was losing his mind. Returning to 
 the Legislature he summoned the spirit for carry- 
 ing on his work there, but he sadly confessed to 
 a fellow-member, "Although I seem to others to en- 
 joy life rapturously, yet when alone I am so over- 
 come by mental depression, I never dare to carry 
 a pocket-knife." 
 
 In this somber frame of mind, Lincoln bade 
 
 61 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 good-by to New Salem. It, too, was dying. The 
 post-office had "winked out," as its quaint post- 
 master expressed it, and the trade of the place 
 had been diverted to a near-by town. When, with 
 everything he owned in his saddle-bags, he mounted 
 a borrowed horse and rode away to be a lawyer in 
 Springfield, he was even poorer than when he first 
 walked into New Salem, for now he was deep in debt. 
 
 He was in his twenty-ninth year, and the lawyer, 
 from whom he had been borrowing law books, 
 offered to take him into his office. Although 
 Springfield was a little town of between one and 
 two thousand population, it had been made the new 
 capital of the state, largely through Lincoln's efforts 
 in the Legislature. The townspeople naturally felt 
 grateful toward him, and the field was a promising 
 one. 
 
 Arrived at Springfield, he ordered a bedstead of 
 the cabinet-maker and then went to a general store 
 to see how much the bedding would cost. The 
 price was seventeen dollars. He sighed and his 
 face took on an added shade of gloom. 
 
 "I have not the money to pay," he confessed, 
 "but if you will credit me until Christmas, and my 
 experience here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay 
 you then. If I fail in that, I will probably never 
 pay you at all." 
 
 6a 
 
LOVER AND LAWYER 
 
 While the storekeeper had no personal acquaint- 
 ance with him, he had heard him speak and he 
 admired him. His sympathy was aroused by his 
 air of hopeless poverty and he told him, if he 
 would accept it, he would share his bed with him* 
 
 "Where is your room?" Lincoln inquired. 
 
 "Upstairs," the proprietor answered. 
 
 The forlorn-looking newcomer took his saddle- 
 bags on his arm and went up the stairway. Coming 
 down in a few minutes, his face was in a broad smile, 
 as he said, "Well, Fm moved." 
 
 There in the room above the store of his generous 
 host, he lodged, while struggling to get a foothold 
 in his new profession. For years his debts hung 
 over him like a black cloud. He felt in honor bound 
 to share every hard-earned dollar with his creditors. 
 Long after the stores for which he contracted the 
 debt had been razed to the ground and New Salem 
 itself had utterly vanished from the earth, he was 
 still paying for them out of his scanty earnings at 
 the bar. 
 
 Friends who knew through what stress he had 
 passed and still was passing, gained a glimpse of the 
 integrity of the man one day when an agent of the 
 Post-office Department appeared in Springfield. 
 This official came to collect a balance of seventeen 
 dollars due the government from Lincoln at the 
 
 63 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 time he had retired from the postmastership of 
 New Salem. Lincoln stepped over to an old box 
 in his office and drew forth a sock containing the 
 exact amount in silver and copper coins. There it 
 had reposed, untouched by him, through every 
 temptation of years of pinching need, while he 
 waited for the government to give him a chance 
 to settle. Those who saw the proceeding were 
 amazed, but he simply remarked that he had made 
 it his practice not to spend money belonging to 
 others. 
 
 Had Lincoln been able to choose for himself, 
 he could not have found more fortunate head- 
 quarters in Springfield than the store over which 
 he slept. In front of the big wood fire there, the 
 rising young men of the town were in the habit of 
 gathering in the evening, and, with his humor and 
 his earnestness, he soon became the center of the 
 company, which included Stephen A. Douglas, who 
 was admitted to practice before the State Supreme 
 Court the same day that Lincoln's name was en- 
 rolled; O. H. Browning, afterward a member of 
 a President's Cabinet, E. D. Baker, later a 
 Senator from Oregon, and others destined to fame. 
 
 It was an ambitious group, and Baker is said to 
 have burst into tears while reading the Constitution 
 of the United States and finding rhat he, a native 
 
 64 
 
LOVER AND LAWYER 
 
 of England, could never be President. The questions 
 of the hour were warmly debated, and every cause 
 found a champion. Once, when the arguments 
 became unusually heated, Douglas sprang up and 
 challenged his opponents to a public debate, which 
 came off, four on a side, and raged for more than a 
 week. Lincoln was the last speaker, and the world 
 hardly would recognize the Lincoln it knows in the 
 bombast which he delivered on that occasion. 
 "Many free countries have lost their liberties, and 
 ours may lose hers," he declared, "but if she shall, 
 let it be my proudest plume, not that I was the 
 last to desert, but that I never deserted her." 
 
 It was in a time when the mock heroic was the 
 favorite tone of our public speaking. Lincoln, like 
 the rest in that period, had nothing to talk about, 
 and he split the ear with wordy declamation. In 
 a day of ordinary things he could be as ordinary 
 as any one. Only when his heart was touched by 
 a lofty cause was he lifted above the commonplace. 
 
 When the roaring log-cabin and hard-cider cam- 
 paign of 1840 spread over the country, a period of 
 all shouting and no thinking, he was in the thick 
 of the idle fray. The bitter personal controversies 
 of that year, in which he was involved, sufficed him 
 for the rest of his days. It was a part of his edu- 
 cation. Thenceforth, aside from an absurd duel 
 
 65 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 two years afterward, he practised a self-control and 
 a courtesy which held him aloof from all personal 
 wrangling. He fought measures and not men, and 
 relied upon the arguments of the mind rather than 
 those of the fists. 
 
 The Washingtonian temperance movement which 
 swept over the land reawakened Lincoln's early 
 interest in the subject. The moral and humane 
 aspects of the crusade stirred him and inspired him 
 to deliver a powerful address, in which he foretold 
 the time "when there shall be neither a slave nor 
 a drunkard on the earth." 
 
 If there was a moral principle beneath any question 
 presented to him, his nature was certain to respond 
 to it. This was shown again when Knownothingism 
 raised its head, and, by secret methods, attempted 
 to place foreign-born residents under the ban and 
 to discriminate against men on account of their re- 
 ligious belief. As the movement gained in strength, 
 timid politicians were thrown into a panic. Lincoln, 
 on the other hand, struck at the thing boldly, and 
 at the very outset of the agitation he offered a resolu- 
 tion in convention declaring that the right of con- 
 science "belongs no less to the Catholic than to the 
 Protestant." No form of intolerance or proscription 
 had a place in the make-up of the man. 
 
 66 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 MARRIAGE AND POLITICS 
 
 Lincoln's lack of the social graces. — His strange courtship of 
 Mary Todd. — Their sharp differences in temperament and 
 breeding. — His long wrestle with doubt. — A period of almost 
 suicidal despair. — Miss Todd innocently involved him in an 
 absurd duel with General Shields, September, 1842, which 
 became the means of reuniting them. — Their abrupt marriage, 
 November 4, 1842. — The ambitious bride's faith in her 
 husband's future. — Lincoln elected to Congress in 1846. 
 
 The graces of a lady's man were denied Lincoln. 
 "Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links 
 which make up the chain of a woman's happiness 
 — at least it was so in my case." This is the verdict, 
 and doubtless a fair verdict, of one who rejected him 
 as a suitor. She rightfully complained that when 
 they were riding and came to a stream, he never 
 thought of seeing that her horse got safely over the 
 ford, but galloped on, trusting her <o look out for 
 herself. 
 
 He never had any parlor small talk He retained 
 through life an indifference to social formalities. 
 He seemed not to defy them, but never fc > understand 
 them. In Springfield he could not wholly avoid 
 
 67 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the society of the place, because of the rank which 
 he took at the bar and in politics. From the first 
 his associations were with persons who pretended to 
 some breeding in the young and ambitious capital* 
 where, as he wrote, there was " a good deal of flourish- 
 ing about in carriages. " When he felt called upon 
 to attend a ball, he danced little, and was rather 
 given to annoying the women by diverting their 
 partners to a corner of the room, where he generally 
 held forth to a masculine group. 
 
 In the same year he went to Springfield, Mary 
 Todd came from Kentucky to visit her eldest sister, 
 who had married into a notable family of Illinois. 
 After a stay of a few months, she returned to her 
 native state, but came again two years later to make 
 her sister's home her own, in preference to her father's 
 house, over which a step-mother presided. She was 
 a spirited, impulsive, outspoken, pretty little woman 
 of twenty-one, used to refined society and as well 
 educated as a woman could be in those days. 
 
 Her sister's spacious dwelling was the social center 
 of the town, and Miss Todd never was without 
 attentions and admirers. In an open competition 
 among them, Lincoln, poor and awkward, would 
 have been easily distanced, for in her train were 
 graceful courtiers like Stephen A. Douglas. Not- 
 withstanding her pride of family, for she was de- 
 
 68 
 
MARRIAGE AND POLITICS 
 
 scended from governors and generals, her interest 
 was enlisted in the character of the former wood- 
 chopper, and the bright promise of future distinction 
 which he wore excited her ambition. 
 
 Her family did not look kindly upon her prefer- 
 ence for him, and the halting and doubting suitor 
 himself would have discouraged a less resolute 
 woman. She and Lincoln were not only opposites in 
 breeding but in temperament as well, and the course 
 of their love never ran smoothly. Whether in his 
 conflicting emotions and morbid presentiments of 
 unhappiness he failed her on the appointed wedding 
 day, history is not certain. There is no question, 
 however, that he brought his relations with her to 
 an abrupt end, and plunged into a period of des- 
 perate melancholy. 
 
 Friends watched him and cared for him with 
 anxious solicitude. He wrote to his partner, then 
 in Congress, that he was the most miserable man 
 living, and that if his misery were distributed among 
 the human family, there would not be one cheerful 
 face on earth. He could not tell if he would ever 
 recover; "I awfully forebode I shall not." In his 
 groping for help, he wrote a noted Cincinnati doctor, 
 describing his condition, his early love for Ann Rut- 
 ledge and his more recent experience, and asking 
 him to prescribe. 
 
 69 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 After months of this unhappy mood a good friend, 
 who was going to Kentucky co see his betrothed, 
 took Lincoln with him. There the heart-sick 
 patient gained some relief amid new scenes and 
 faces, and most of all in striving to cure his friend, 
 who was strangely stricken with the same torment- 
 ing doubts in his own love affair. When he had 
 seen this case end in a happy marriage and he had 
 returned to Illinois, he wrote to the bridegroom 
 with glowing satisfaction: "I always was super- 
 stitious. I believe God made me one of the instru- 
 ments of bringing you and Fanny together, which 
 union I have no doubt He had foreordained. What- 
 ever He designs, He will do for me yet." 
 
 Ever present in his mind was the sad plight in 
 which he had placed Miss Todd. It was a wound 
 in his honor. He reproached himself for even 
 wishing to be happy when he thought of her whom 
 he had made unhappy. "That," he wrote, "still 
 kills my soul." When he heard, after a year, that 
 she had taken a short journey and had said she 
 enjoyed it, he exclaimed, "God be praised for that." 
 
 Finally, this strange love story of Lincoln and 
 Mary Todd was threatened with the blood stain 
 of a tragedy, which, fortunately, turned out to be 
 a roaring farce. For political purposes he wrote 
 a letter to the Springfield paper, pretending to come 
 
 70 
 
MARRIAGE AND POLITICS 
 
 from a widow, in which he ridiculed the auditor 
 of Illinois, James Shields, destined to be a Senator 
 of the United States and a general in the Union 
 army. The letter was followed, the next week, 
 by an imitation over the same signature, but with 
 which Lincoln had nothing to do. 
 
 This second communication made all kinds of 
 fun of Shields, who was stung to demand the name 
 of the writer. The editor of the paper came to 
 Lincoln and told him that the offending article had 
 been written in a spirit of pure mischief by Miss 
 Todd and another young woman, afterward the 
 wife of Lyman Trumbull, a distinguished Senator 
 from Illinois in the period of the Civil War. To 
 protect the true authors, Lincoln promptly told the 
 editor to give his name to Shields, and a most 
 ridiculous duel was the result. 
 
 He was heartily ashamed of this encounter be- 
 fore he went into it and never ceased to be ashamed 
 of it. Being the challenged man, he chose as weapons 
 the largest cavalry broadswords, and the party went 
 forth to the field of honor, where Lincoln grimly 
 ran his finger along the edge of his ugly duelling 
 instrument, and, reaching out his long arm, cut 
 off a twig from a tree, far above his head. Brought 
 face to face, the principals quickly came to a peace- 
 able understanding, but the spirit of fight was caught 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 up by the seconds, and challenges flew back and 
 forth for several days, all as bloodless in the out* 
 come as the Lincoln-Shields duel. 
 
 In the next scene, Cupid entered the fray and 
 Lincoln surrendered to his fate and Mary Todd, 
 His impulses were as weak and wayward as ever, 
 but his sense of duty, his ideal of honor, were asserting 
 themselves over his doubts and fears. He must, 
 however, hasten to consult once more the friend who 
 had borne him away to Kentucky and who had 
 now been married eight months. "I want to ask 
 you a close question," he wrote to him. "Are 
 you, in feeling as well as in judgment, glad you 
 are married ?" 
 
 Whatever the answer may have been to this most 
 unusual inquiry, Lincoln and Mary Todd called 
 the latter's sister to where they were sitting one 
 Friday morning, and told her they had decided to 
 be married in the evening. No time was allowed 
 for the arrangement of a feast or for the play of 
 gossip. The bride must even borrow a wedding 
 gown from a sister who had lately married. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln loyally accepted and shared the 
 simple lot of her struggling husband. They went 
 to live at a tavern at "four dollars a week," and it 
 was enough for the aspiring wife to dream of fortune 
 and fame, and to know, as she said, "that his heart 
 
 72 
 
MARRIAGE AND POLITICS 
 
 is as large as his arms are long." It is a pleasant 
 legend that the bride boasted she would make her 
 ungainly groom the President of the United States. 
 
 He was steadily advancing at the bar and was 
 already looked upon as a leader in politics. After 
 retiring from the Legislature, he refused to consider 
 the empty honor of the Whig nomination for Gov- 
 ernor, Illinois being strongly Democratic. His one 
 political ambition was to sit in Congress. He was 
 perfectly frank about it. "If you should hear any 
 one say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress," 
 he wrote, " I wish you, as a personal friend of mine, 
 would tell him you have reason to believe he is 
 mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very 
 much." 
 
 His brilliant friend, E. D. Baker, however, got 
 ahead of him, and Lincoln cheerfully awaited his 
 turn to receive Congressional honors. He only 
 mildly complained that the influence of the churches 
 should have been exerted as one of the means of 
 preventing his nomination, an opposition which 
 was raised, he said, "because I belonged to no 
 church and was suspected of being a deist." 
 
 Another issue of that canvass only amused him. 
 "I, a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy," 
 he said in explaining his defeat in a letter to a man 
 who had known him in New Salem, "have been 
 
 73 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, 
 and aristocratic family connections." This referred, 
 of course, to the family into which he had married, 
 but to a group of friends Lincoln laughingly 
 protested, "I do not remember of but one of my 
 relatives who ever came to see me, and while he was 
 in town he was accused of stealing a jews-harp." 
 
 When, at last, his time came, Lincoln put forth 
 every effort to succeed Baker in Congress. He 
 wrote to several active men in each precinct and 
 saw that the local paper did not neglect him. He 
 was a shrewd and close campaigner, missing no 
 points in the fight and keeping a sharp eye on all 
 the details of the contest. 
 
 In the election he carried his own county by the 
 largest majority ever given to a Whig candidate 
 up to that time, and won the district by a liberal 
 margin. Then, as the first flush of victory passed 
 away, he sadly admitted, "It has not pleased me 
 as much as I expected/* 
 
 74 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 IN CONGRESS 
 
 Lincoln, taking his seat, December, 1847, entered a Congress 
 notable for distinguished members. — As the only Whig from 
 Illinois, he was singled out and welcomed by the leaders. — 
 His delight in the great library at the Capitol. — President 
 Polk's Mexican War policy challenged by the new member, 
 although his course cost him his popularity at home. — The 
 House roaring with laughter over his stump speech on the floor 
 in the campaign of 1848. — Speaking in Massachusetts in the 
 summer of that year. — Affected by the Free-soil movement in 
 that state. — His unsuccessful effort in 1849 to abolish slavery 
 and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. — Seeking an 
 appointment under President Taylor in 1849 an ^ ms fortunate 
 failure. 
 
 Lincoln was thirty-eight when he took his seat 
 in Congress and entered upon another grade in the 
 university of life. 
 
 The time was well chosen for him. The eloquence 
 of Webster still contended with the philosophy 
 of Calhoun for the mastery of a Senate, in which 
 sat many other noted men, among them, Benton 
 and Cass, Tom Corwin, Sam Houston in his Navajo 
 blanket, Jefferson Davis and Simon Cameron, 
 Hannibal Hamlin, and John A. Dix. Stephen A. 
 
 75 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Douglas received his promotion to the upper cham- 
 ber the day Lincoln entered the lower. 
 
 Robert C. Winthrop was the Speaker of the House, 
 and under him sat Alexander H. Stephens, Robert 
 Toombs, Collamer of Vermont, and Andrew Johnson. 
 Horace Greeley was added to the membership by 
 a special election. Above all, the name of John 
 Quincy Adams still illuminated the roster of the 
 House, and it was while Lincoln was a member 
 that the "old man eloquent" fell, mortally stricken 
 at his post of duty in the hall of representatives, worn 
 out by a life of service to the republic. 
 
 The new Congressman from Illinois was totally 
 unknown to his fellow-members. As the only Whig 
 from his state, however, he received a special wel- 
 come from his party associates, and this, with his 
 natural gift for winning men, soon marked him 
 out from the crowd. He attracted the favor of 
 Daniel Webster and was a guest at several of the 
 great expounder's Saturday breakfasts. He needed 
 only to tell his first story in the lounging room at 
 the Capitol to gain attention there, and within a 
 few weeks he was the recognized champion of the 
 story-tellers of Congress. 
 
 The Congressional Library and the Library of 
 the Supreme Court, with their great stores of books, 
 were like a gold mine in his eyes. More than once 
 
 76 
 
IN CONGRESS 
 
 the attendants were amused to see him tie up a lot 
 of books in his bandanna handkerchief, stick his 
 cane through the knot, and go forth to his boarding 
 house with the bundle over his shoulder, just as in 
 other days he had carried his wardrobe while tramp- 
 ing from job to job. 
 
 James K. Polk was President and the Mexican 
 War in progress. Many people believed it was 
 an unjust war and brought on for the purpose of 
 gaining more territory for slavery and adding more 
 slave states to the Union. The President insisted 
 that the war was forced upon the United States 
 by Mexico, that she had invaded our territory and 
 shed the blood of our citizens on our soil. His 
 opponents denied this. They contended that the 
 President had sent American soldiers beyond the 
 established boundaries of the country, and that the 
 Mexican troops had only tried to repel them from 
 what Mexico rightfully regarded as her own soil. 
 
 Without waiting to follow the lead of older mem- 
 bers, Lincoln drew up and presented a series of 
 resolutions before his first month in Congress was 
 at an end. These are known to history as the 
 "spot resolutions," in which the question is sharply 
 pressed upon President Polk as to whether the 
 spot to which he had sent American soldiers and 
 where the first blood of the war was shed was 
 
 77 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 within the established boundaries of the United 
 States. 
 
 After a few weeks he addressed the House in 
 support of his resolutions, delivering a sober argu- 
 ment in behalf of them and giving a searching 
 review of the case. He called upon the President 
 to answer the questions candidly, reminding him 
 that he sat where Washington sat and ought to 
 answer as Washington would answer. If the ques- 
 tions should be evaded, the country must accept the 
 evasion as a confession that the war was wrong and 
 that the President hoped to conceal the wrong be- 
 neath military glory — "that attractive rainbow that 
 rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that 
 charms to destroy," and he gave it as his opinion that 
 Polk was " a bewildered, confounded, and miserably 
 perplexed man." 
 
 This speech, made when the country was ringing 
 with cheers for the victory of American arms, brought 
 upon Lincoln's head the censure of many of his 
 friends and constituents, to one of whom, a clergy- 
 man, he wrote, asking if the precept "whatsoever ye 
 would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
 to them" is "obsolete, of no force, of no application." 
 Much as he opposed the sending of an army into 
 Mexico, all the appropriations for supporting the- 
 soldiers in the field received his vote, and to capture 
 
 78 
 
IN CONGRESS 
 
 for his party the military hero of the hour, he aided 
 in forming a Taylor Club in Congress. 
 
 He attended the National Convention at Phila- 
 delphia which nominated General Taylor for Presi- 
 dent. To the same end, he delivered on the floor, 
 in the midst of the campaign, a rousing stump speech, 
 which set the House in an uproar of laughter and 
 applause. A press correspondent pictured him as 
 he worked his way down the aisle, talking and ges- 
 ticulating, until he reached the clerk's desk, only to 
 retreat to his starting point and then march down 
 again. 
 
 As the campaign advanced, there was a call for 
 him from Massachusetts, where the Whigs were 
 troubled by the rise of the Free Soil party, standing 
 for the policy of keeping the soil of all the territories 
 of the United States free from slavery. It was 
 a novel experience for him to speak to audiences 
 in the staid and settled East, and to see and hear 
 this "capital specimen of a Sucker Whig," as one 
 of the Massachusetts papers described him, was 
 a noveky to the New Englanders. 
 
 A lively demand for his services sprang up in the 
 Old Bay State, and his stay there was crowded with 
 engagements. Instead of the orator in a swallow- 
 tail, to which the people were used, they saw a 
 prairie giant in a black alpaca coat, who, in begin* 
 
 79 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ning, would roll up his sleeves, then roll back his 
 cuffs, next loosen his tie, and finally pull it off in the 
 melting heat of the weather and of his fervid oratory. 
 
 In Boston he spoke with William H. Seward of 
 New York, and at the hotel, after the meeting, he 
 remarked: "Governor Seward, I have been think- 
 ing 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/' 
 
 For the first time he found himself in a community 
 where there was an active, organized sentiment on 
 that question and he felt the influence of his surround- 
 ings. His party had nominated Taylor, a southern 
 slaveholder, and was ignoring all the problems con- 
 nected with slavery. Lincoln, however, face to face 
 with the Free Soilers in Massachusetts, plainly saw 
 that the politicians could not dodge the subject 
 much longer and that the great conflict must come. 
 
 He was not a candidate for reelection to Congress, 
 because it was the custom in his district to give 
 a member only one term, and besides his opposition 
 to the Mexican War had made it impossible for 
 him to win at the polls. Returning to Washington 
 the following winter, he distinguished the closing 
 year of his service by introducing a well-thought- 
 out measure against slavery. 
 
 80 
 
IN CONGRESS 
 
 There was a slave mart in sight of the Capitol, 
 "a sort of negro livery stable/' Lincoln said, "where 
 droves of negroes were collected and temporarily 
 kept, and finally taken to southern markets, precisely 
 like droves of horses. ,, To remove this spectacle, 
 he offered a bill abolishing the slave trade in the 
 District of Columbia and for the gradual abolition 
 of slavery there, with compensation for the slave- 
 holders. 
 
 For this bill he labored earnestly and at one time 
 succeeded in bringing together the opponents of 
 slavery and the then Mayor of Washington in sup- 
 port of it. Afterward, however, southern sentiment 
 was aroused against it, the Mayor withdrew his 
 indorsement, and Lincoln's bill was laid on the table, 
 where it slumbered until it was awakened, a dozen 
 years later, by the clash of arms in the Civil War. 
 
 As the inauguration of President Taylor drew 
 near, the only Whig representative from Illinois 
 had a busy time. He was on the committee in 
 charge of the inaugural ball, at which he lost his hat 
 and was obliged to walk home bareheaded. The 
 office-seekers under the new administration pressed 
 hard for his influence. He acted in this matter 
 with dignity and fairness. 
 
 In the end, he sought for himself the appoint- 
 ment as Commissioner of the General Land Office, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Fortunately, he was too late; the place had been 
 promised to another and he was spared a political 
 burial in a Washington bureau. He was deeply 
 disappointed for a time, and was tempted to console 
 himself with a lesser office out in the territory of 
 Oregon, but Mrs. Lincoln's objections overruled him. 
 He returned to his dingy little law office in Spring- 
 field with reluctance, gave up politics, and went to 
 work at his profession. "I have always been a 
 fatalist," he said afterward. "What is to be, will 
 be, or rather, I have found all my life, as Hamlet 
 says, 
 
 "'There's a divinity that shapes our end^ 
 Rough hew them how we will.' " 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 Failing as an office seeker, Lincoln returned to his dingy little 
 law office in Springfield in 1849. — Declined a lucrative city 
 practice in Chicago. — His indifference to money making. — 
 Censured for his small charges. — His yearly income. — His 
 largest fee. — Discouraging unnecessary lawsuits and re- 
 jecting cases that were wrong. — Championing the cause of 
 the poor without pay. — A pen picture of the man as he rode 
 the country circuit. — Some of his noted cases in the higher 
 courts. — His bitter rebuff at the hands of Edwin M. Stanton, 
 in an important case at Cincinnati in 1857. 
 
 Fortune never served Lincoln better than when, 
 at the end of his two years in Congress, she led his 
 steps up the old stairway to the bare and dingy law 
 office of Lincoln and Herndon in the back room of a 
 two-story brick building on the Square in Springfield. 
 
 It was not a spacious office, nor even a clean one, 
 for in a neglected corner of it, where packages of 
 government seeds were tossed, the seeds found 
 enough earth in which to take root and sprout. Here, 
 however, Lincoln was his own master, free to think 
 his own thoughts and to speak them. He would 
 have been far more cramped in the lofty and exten- 
 sive quarters of the Commissioner of the General 
 
 83 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Land Office at Washington than within these narrow 
 and dusty walls. 
 
 Amid admiring friends and familiar surroundings, 
 he soon forgot his desires and disappointments as 
 an office-seeker, for his ambition really did not lie 
 in that direction. A flattering offer of a partner- 
 ship with a prosperous Chicago lawyer did not 
 tempt him in the least, and he declined it on the 
 ground that, having a tendency to consumption, 
 confinement in a city office might kill him. 
 
 In prompting him to this decision, fortune again 
 favored him. A Chicago practice might not have 
 proved fatal to his health, but the big clients and 
 the big fees of a city well might have interfered with 
 his mental and moral growth. As it was, he lived 
 and died without a trace of avarice. No lawyer of 
 his ability ever cared less for money. To him 
 wealth was, as he once said, "simply a superfluity 
 of things we don't need." 
 
 No man in his position could have fewer needs. 
 His tastes remained to the end as simple as they 
 were in the beginning. While other members of 
 the bar grew rich by accumulating land, he would 
 not turn his hand over to make a dollar in specu* 
 lation and was content to stay a poor man. Most 
 of the able lawyers around him made more money 
 in representing absent landlords and money lenders 
 
 84 
 
LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 than they earned at the bar. Not liking that line 
 of work, however, he refused to trouble himself 
 with it, even in his early days when clients were 
 few. Once in declining such a chance, he wrote, 
 recommending another man, "whom," as he said, 
 "the Lord made on purpose for just that kind of 
 business." 
 
 He was a poor money maker in his profession 
 itself. Daniel Webster, who sent him a case, was 
 amazed at the smallness of his bill, and his fellow- 
 lawyers generally looked upon his charges as scan- 
 dalously low. This, indeed, seemed to be his only 
 fault in their eyes. In one instance, where another 
 attorney had collected two hundred and fifty dollars 
 for their joint services in a case, he refused to accept 
 his share until the fee had been reduced to what 
 he considered a fair sum and the overcharge had been 
 returned to the client. When David Davis, the 
 presiding judge of the circuit, who himself became 
 a millionaire landowner, heard of this, he indignantly 
 exclaimed, "Lincoln, your picayune charges will 
 impoverish the bar." 
 
 Lincoln's practice, at best, probably brought him 
 an income of from two to three thousand dollars 
 a year. The largest fee he ever charged was in an 
 important tax case for the Illinois Central Railway 
 Company. After he had won the suit, he pre 
 
 »5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sented, in person, his bill for two thousand dollars, 
 and an official of the corporation regarded it as so 
 extortionate that he refused to pay it. It was a new 
 experience for Lincoln to have any question raised 
 as to the fairness of his charges. When he con- 
 ferred with his friends at the bar, however, they 
 agreed that his bill was ridiculously small. At their 
 urgent suggestion he sued for five thousand dollars 
 and the court compelled the company to pay it. 
 
 It was a common thing for Lincoln to discour- 
 age unnecessary lawsuits, and consequently he was 
 continually sacrificing opportunities to make money. 
 One man who asked him to bring suit for two 
 dollars and a half against a debtor who had not 
 a cent with which to pay, would not be put off in 
 his passion for revenge. His counsel, therefore, 
 gravely demanded ten dollars as a retainer. Half 
 of this he gave to the poor defendant, who thereupon 
 confessed judgment and paid the two dollars and 
 a half. Thus the suit was ended to the entire sat- 
 isfaction of the wrothy creditor. 
 
 Lincoln was equally ready to take up a just case 
 without hope of pay as he was to refuse an unjust 
 one at the loss of a good fee. He dragged into court 
 a pension agent who insisted on keeping for himself 
 half of a four-hundred-dollar claim, which he had 
 collected from the government for the aged widow 
 
 86 
 
LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 of a soldier of the Revolution. There, in his own 
 expressive phrase, he "skinned" him, moved the 
 jury to tears by his stirring appeal for justice to the 
 old woman, and won the verdict, all without charge 
 for his services. 
 
 Naturally he shrank from confinement in a 
 Chicago law office, for the free and roving life of 
 the country circuit was his joy. He never seemed 
 to tire of this gypsy existence. In the new West, 
 a lawyer could not make a living from his practice 
 in one county alone. A circuit included a group 
 of counties, and the circuit judge went from county 
 to county holding court, while the members of the 
 bar followed him on his rounds. 
 
 Lincoln's circuit embraced more than a dozen 
 counties and was one hundred and fifty miles broad. 
 At first there were no roads worthy of the name, and 
 no bridges at all. The judge, riding horseback, 
 led a cavalcade of mounted attorneys, while others, 
 who could not afford a mount, trudged afoot. After 
 Lincoln's return from Congress he journeyed in a 
 rattletrap buggy, which a blacksmith had rudely 
 put together. 
 
 He delighted in roaming the prairies and was 
 ready for every adventure. Whenever and wher- 
 ever the party stopped at a tarm-house for dinner, 
 he was the favorite, with his stories and jokes. Witb 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his long legs and his unfailing helpfulness, he would 
 get out, at an uncertain ford, take off his boots, 
 roll up his trousers, and tread the stream to test its 
 depth for the benefit of the rest of the company. 
 
 Even the dumb brute in distress did not appeal 
 to him in vain. A squealing pig, "mired down" 
 in a bog, drew him to its rescue, and two little birds, 
 blown by the wind from their nest in a grove through 
 which he was passing, called him back with their 
 plaintive chirping. "I couldn't have slept," he 
 protested to his smiling companions when he had 
 overtaken them, "if I had not restored them to their 
 mother." 
 
 At once the best-known and the best-liked man on 
 the circuit, an enthusiastic welcome awaited him on 
 his arrival at a county seat. Bench and bar, sur- 
 rounded by scores and hundreds of delighted citizens, 
 gwe him a hearty greeting as he alighted before 
 Jie tavern and grasped with genuine pleasure their 
 outstretched hands, exclaiming in friendly recogni- 
 tion of each, "Hello, Smith," "Hello, Jones," "Ain't 
 you glad I've come?" 
 
 On his head he wore either a twenty-five-cent, low- 
 crowned palm hat or a high, shaggy beaver of the 
 William Henry Harrison period. Often his clothes 
 were of wrinkled, dusty, rusty, shiny bombazine, while 
 sometimes, for lack of buttons, his suspenders were 
 
 88 
 
LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 fastened to his trousers by a plug or a stick, which 
 he had whittled for the purpose. In his hand he 
 carried a queer old carpet-sack, and under his arm 
 a worn and faded green cotton umbrella, tied around 
 the middle with a coarse cord. Inside of it "A. 
 Lincoln" was inscribed in letters of big white thread, 
 and from its handle the knob had been missing as 
 long as any one could remember. 
 
 Careless as he was in his dress, his face was always 
 carefully shaven and his person scrupulously clean. 
 Free as he was in meeting people, and easy as the 
 poorest and plainest men were in his presence, he in- 
 vited no cheap familiarity. No one thought of slap- 
 ping him on the back or of addressing him as "Abe" ; 
 he was "Mr. Lincoln" among acquaintances and 
 simply "Lincoln" among even the oldest and closest 
 friends. 
 
 Tavern keepers cordially hailed his coming, 
 because his presence under their roof made their 
 hostelry the center of the community for the time 
 being, while he never was known to complain of 
 the food or service. 
 
 If he appeared in the lounging room of the inn 
 at night and tilted back in a chair, the news spread 
 abroad and the place quickly filled to the doors 
 and windows with a crowd eager to follow the play 
 of his humor, while Judge Davis and his select 
 
 89 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 coterie of the more reserved members of the bar 
 impatiently waited for him to come to the judge's 
 room upstairs and enliven their discussions. 
 
 For some time after he came back from Washing- 
 ton he was in a studious mood. With his admission 
 to the bar and his opportunity to mingle with its 
 interesting members, he ceased to care for books. 
 He was reading men and studying life. When, 
 however, with his keen eye and candid mind, he 
 brought himself into comparison with the carefully 
 trained lawyers whom he met at the capital of the 
 nation, he felt the glaring defects in his own edu- 
 cation. He returned home with the determination 
 to read. 
 
 He was forty, but not too old to learn. He took 
 up Euclid as his first study, and he persevered until 
 he had mastered the first six books of that classic 
 authority. Night after night on the circuit, long 
 after the judge and his two or three other fellow- 
 lodgers, whose room he shared, were snoring in their 
 sleep, Lincoln lay and read, with a candle on the 
 chair at the head of his bed, and his feet, as usual, 
 hanging over the footboard. Again he was as likely 
 to disappear from the tavern and steal off alone to 
 enjoy himself like a boy at some simple magic-lan- 
 tern show in the village, or at a performance 
 of an obscure theatrical troupe. 
 
 90 
 
LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 In court he himself was the star actor. On that 
 stage the comedies and tragedies of real life were 
 enacted. The court-house was the only intellectual 
 center on the frontier, and thither the toiling dwellers 
 in the prairie solitudes crowded, hungry for the men- 
 tal excitement which the combats of the lawyers 
 afforded. The proceedings were not technical or 
 tedious. Neighborhood quarrels, common in a new 
 country, were tried out and decided more by the 
 broad rules of common sense or by the play of the 
 emotions than by the refined processes of the law. 
 
 In this arena, Lincoln easily led. With his many- 
 sided nature, he had his special mood and manner 
 for each case. If there was occasion for it, his 
 broad humor and homely illustration caused the 
 court room to ring with laughter. If his love of 
 justice and hatred of wrong were aroused, judge 
 and jury, bar and spectators, were thrilled by 
 his passionate earnestness. His sorrowing eye and 
 trembling voice, when his pity was touched, melted 
 to compassion all within their range. 
 
 On the other hand, let a cold abstraction of the 
 law be his theme, and his native power of clear 
 reasoning stripped it of all confusing technicali- 
 ties until the main principle was made plain enough 
 for the simplest understanding. He had no liking 
 for abstruse speculations, no patience with legal 
 
 9 1 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hair-splitting. He did not care to win his cases by 
 tricks, and generally refused to take sharp advantage 
 of the mistakes of his opponents. If he had any 
 truth on his side, he clung to that alone, indifferently 
 yielding everything else. 
 
 "Yes," he would say, as he gave up these minor 
 points to the other side, in the careless speech which 
 he was in the habit of using in his careless mood, 
 "I reckon that's right," or "I hain't going to insist 
 on that point." When, however, the "real nub" 
 of the matter, as he called it, was reached, the oppos- 
 ing lawyer found to his amazement that the easy- 
 going Lincoln had turned to steel in a twinkling 
 and was gripping like a vise the one vital point. 
 
 He did not always have the right on his side; 
 but the practice of few able and busy lawyers could 
 bear as well as his has borne the searching examina- 
 tion of history. When he went to court, he did not 
 eave his private conscience at home, and he seems 
 to have been as careful of his honor, as true to his 
 ideals, in his profession as in his public life. 
 
 As a rule men with bad cases did not go to 
 him, because it was notorious that he was a poor 
 lawyer in a poor case. "I think," said one of his 
 fellow-attorneys, "he was of less real aid in trying 
 a thoroughly bad case than any man I ever associated 
 with." When he saw the weakness of his side, he 
 
 92 
 
LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 lost courage. Once in the midst of a trial he turned 
 to his associate counsel, exclaiming, "The fellow is 
 guilty: you defend him; I can't." For the same 
 reason he turned over another case to his junior, 
 saying, "The jury will see that I think the man is 
 guilty." While trying a civil suit, he discovered evi- 
 dence that his client was attempting a fraud, and he 
 fled from the court-house like a coward. 
 
 Lincoln really stood in awe of the truth. If it 
 was against him, his courage and his faith utterly 
 forsook him. When Herndon, his young partner, 
 once filed for the firm a plea that did not rest on 
 known facts, Lincoln gently insisted that he with- 
 draw it. "The cursed thing," he said, "may come 
 staring us in the face long after this suit has been 
 forgotten." He did not, indeed, urge a purely moral 
 reason for the withdrawal of the plea, but it was the 
 reasoning of a mind so wholly moral that it could 
 not believe a lie ever would triumph. His repute for 
 honesty and fairness swayed juries more than his 
 spoken words. He did not bully a witness, but 
 with natural kindliness led him along until he tola* 
 the facts in spite of himself. 
 
 His successes at the bar were not all won before 
 rustic juries. He tried as many cases before the 
 Supreme Court of Illinois in the last ten years of 
 his practice as any man on his circuit. When he 
 
 93 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 had been a lawyer only four years, he carried the 
 Supreme bench with him in a strong argument 
 against the validity of a note, which had been given 
 in payment for a negro girl. His contention was 
 that by the Ordinance of 1787, which he had first 
 read in his Hoosier log-cabin in the borrowed volume 
 of Indiana statutes, there could not be a lawful 
 Sale of a human being in any part of the original 
 Northwest Territory. This early case of Lincoln's 
 marked a precedent which was afterward cited in 
 nearly a score of cases. 
 
 In one instance, he was called to Chicago to try 
 a big case involving the title to a valuable tract of 
 land on the Lake front. In another interesting 
 and important case, he laid down the rule that 
 people had as much right to cross rivers as to go 
 up and down them. This trial arose from the 
 building of the first bridge over the Mississippi and 
 from the fight which the boatmen made against 
 it as an obstruction to their business. 
 
 The worst disappointment of his professional ca- 
 reer befell him when he went to Cincinnati as coun- 
 sel in a reaper patent case. The opposing counsel 
 was an eminent lawyer from the East. Lincoln 
 welcomed the encounter and prepared for it by 
 diligent study. His friends on the circuit were con- 
 fident he would gain honor in this higher forum. 
 
 94 
 
LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT 
 
 His client, however, who had four hundred thou- 
 sand dollars at stake, lost heart when he beheld 
 the brilliant talent arrayed against his homely 
 country lawyer, and he called Edwin M. Stanton 
 to his aid. Stanton carried matters with a high 
 hand and ignored Lincoln, who, through an open 
 door in a hotel, heard him scornfully exclaim ; 
 "Where did that long-armed creature come from 
 and what can he expect to do in this case ?" Agair 
 he pictured him as "a long, lank creature from 
 Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on 
 the back of which the perspiration had splotched 
 wide stains that resembled a map of the continent." 
 
 The unknown and melancholy stranger, without 
 friends in the city, saw himself shut out of the trial 
 of a celebrated case in which he had hoped to 
 win distinction. He was deeply humiliated, but he 
 drew a lesson from his bitter experience and obser- 
 vation in Cincinnati. He frankly recognized that 
 the lawyers there, college-bred men, were better 
 trained than the lawyers on the old circuit. He saw 
 that educated attorneys were working their way 
 steadily toward the West. "They study their cases 
 as we never do," he said. "They will soon be in 
 Illinois and I am going home to study law. I am 
 as good as any of them, and when they get out tc 
 Illinois, I shall be ready for them." 
 
 95 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 No rebuff could crush for a moment the self- 
 reliant spirit of the man; but his resolution to apply 
 himself more closely and studiously to the law was at 
 once overruled by events, calling him to still higher 
 and heavier duties, for which his whole life had been 
 fitting him. 
 
 Although the bar, of which he was the unchallenged 
 leader, could not boast great learning, it numbered 
 many able men — men like himself, who knew more 
 of practice than of theory. In a new land, without 
 traditions, they had been thrown upon their own 
 resources. Innocent of precedents and decisions, 
 they had been obliged to blaze a path and break 
 the soil for justice. Their task, if it did not make 
 them finished lawyers, at least bred a company 
 of strong, original men, who, when opportunity 
 knocked at the doors of their village law offices, 
 showed they were equally ready to lead in the 
 council of the nation or to command on the field 
 of battle. 
 
 9 6 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 HOME AND NEIGHBORS 
 
 The two Lincolns: one the simple, homely, familiar neighbor; 
 the other the solitary, moody idealist and prophet, whom no 
 man knew. — Without kindred around him and without con- 
 fidants. — His home life. — Mrs. Lincoln's social trials on 
 his account. — Etiquette a closed book to him. — His knightly 
 devotion and tender sympathy. — His relations with his boys. 
 — Not a reader. — Fond of sad songs. — His real law office 
 in his hat. — His orderly mind and faithful memory. — How 
 he divided fees with his partner. — His famous defence of Jack 
 Armstrong's son in a murder trial in May, 1858. 
 
 Lincoln went through the world alone. 
 
 There seem, indeed, to have been two Lincolns. 
 The friends who knew him best saw hardly more 
 than the plain, simple, practical man, who milked 
 his cow, bedded his horse, and went to market with 
 his basket on his arm, giving a cheery "howdy" to 
 every one he met on the way, or who sat on a box 
 at the foot of his office stairs and told stories to a 
 group of street loiterers. 
 
 They beheld another Lincoln, from time to time 
 as he walked the street, completely wrapped in 
 solitude, or as he sat brooding in his office by the 
 hour and far into the night. His closest associates 
 have confessed they seldom caught a glimpse of the 
 H 97 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 inner Lincoln, the poet, the dreamer, the idealist, 
 the prophet who pondered within the outer Lincoln 
 and guided him on to his destiny. 
 
 Whatever the sorrows of the man, whatever his 
 hopes, he told them to no one, asked no one to share 
 them. Not one of his kindred came forth from 
 the lowly obscurity in which he was born to keep 
 him company on the high road to fame. Without 
 a mother, a brother, or a sister, he knew little or noth- 
 ing of his race, save an illiterate father, who lived 
 to see but not to understand the promise of his son's 
 distinction. 
 
 He had no chums in boyhood, and in manhood no 
 confidants. He and his wife loyally kept their mutual 
 vows, but they were held apart somewhat by nature 
 and training. Mrs. Lincoln was her husband's 
 most generous admirer and sincere adviser, watch- 
 ing his political advancement with eager pride, for, 
 like a woman of the old South, she was an ardent 
 politician. Her delicate nervous system, however, 
 was easily unstrung by family cares. 
 
 Lincoln's innocence of social standards, so im- 
 portant in her eyes, jarred upon her at times. She 
 felt competent to make their home a center, be- 
 fitting, as she felt, the honor in which he was 
 held. He good-naturedly, if awkwardly, endured 
 the ceremonials of the little capital city, going with 
 
 9» 
 
HOME AND NEIGHBORS 
 
 her to the "grand fetes," which she flatteringly 
 pictured in her letters to Kentucky friends. More- 
 over, they gave parties of their own, one of which 
 she could boast was attended by three hundred 
 persons. 
 
 Careful as Lincoln was of the feelings of others, 
 he offended, without knowing, his wife's sense of 
 propriety, for etiquette remained always a closec 
 book to him. At the table he might forget there 
 was a special knife for the butter, or, if the bell 
 rang, not wait for the busy "hired girl" to answer 
 it, but, rising from his favorite position on the floor, 
 himself go in his slippers and shirt sleeves to wel- 
 come, perchance, some ladies who had come to 
 make a fashionable call. 
 
 All others in Springfield could more readily for- 
 give their distinguished townsman his little lapses 
 of this kind than could his proud and sensitive wife. 
 Even the picture of her unhappiness easily might 
 be overdrawn, for Lincoln's lack of the small graces 
 of life was outweighed many times by his knightly 
 honor, his patient devotion, as well as by the silent 
 sympathy with which he bore her nerve storms. 
 
 He delighted to carry his boys on his back and tc 
 take one of them by the hand when he went down 
 town. Their turmoil never disturbed him. The mis- 
 chief-making of youth only amused him ; he never 
 
 99 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 viewed it with alarm. "Since I began this letter/' he 
 wrote to a friend, " a messenger came to tell me that 
 Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house, 
 his mother had found him and had him whipped, 
 and by now, very likely he is run away again. " 
 
 When this same Bob was bitten by a dog, his anx- 
 ious and always superstitious father dropped every- 
 thing and took him to Indiana that a wonderful mad- 
 stone in that state might be applied to the wound. 
 The boys could go to his office and pull down the 
 law books, scatter legal documents over the floor, 
 and bend the points of the pens without ruffling 
 his temper, however much they annoyed his partner, 
 
 For Lincoln, the office was merely a shelter and 
 a lounging place, with a chair to sit on and a sofa 
 worn by use to fit his reclining body. His mind 
 was orderly in a remarkable degree. His thought 
 was clear and straight. He always knew just where 
 to find anything in the carefully arranged compart- 
 ments of his well-stocked head. His memory was 
 most trustworthy. He made no notes in preparing 
 his cases. A desk was a good enough foot-rest for 
 him, but that was all. He would rather write on 
 his knee, while his hat was sufficiently large to ac- 
 commodate his letters and the memoranda of his 
 thoughts, which he made from time to time on bits 
 of paper. 
 
 xoo 
 
HOME AND NEIGHBORS 
 
 "When I received your letter," he wrote to a 
 client, "I put it in my old hat, and, buying a new 
 one the next day, the old one was laid aside and the 
 letter was lost sight of for a time. ,, Usually when 
 the hat became crowded, he dumped its varied 
 contents in a pile and labelled it thus, "When you 
 can't find it anywhere else, look in this." 
 
 He never kept any books or accounts. If he re- 
 ceived a fee in the absence of his partner, he would 
 carefully divide it at once, wrap up the latter's share, 
 mark it "Herndon's half," and place it in the drawer. 
 
 Lincoln liked to lie on the sofa and read the news- 
 papers, and to the distraction of his partner read 
 aloud, because, as he explained, in that way he took 
 in what he was reading by the ear as well as by 
 the eye. He was not, however, a regular reader 
 of books, except for some special purpose which 
 he had in hand. He knew the BiMe well, and he 
 knew much of Shakespeare. He waj fond of Burns 
 and Milton. Beyond these great works, from which 
 he could recite long passages, he never went far in 
 the field of literature. 
 
 "Immortality," that morbidly mournful poem with 
 its familiar line, 
 
 "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ?" 
 remained to the end the oft-quoted and favorite 
 expression of his melancholy nature. 
 
 IOI 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 He took no interest in local gossip and no part 
 in local rivalries. He was indifferent to town and 
 county politics. He never held aloof, however, 
 from his townsfolk. On the contrary, he was always 
 a sympathetic sharer in their pleasures and their 
 troubles, ever ready to lend a hand to a neighbor 
 in need. One of the last criminal cases he tried 
 was undertaken for a humble friend, in the midst 
 of absorbing political activities. 
 
 The son of that Jack Armstrong, the champion 
 of Clary's Grove, whose loyal friendship Lincoln 
 had won by whipping him in open battle at New 
 Salem, was on trial for killing a man. Jack was 
 in his grave, but his widow turned to Lincoln to 
 save her boy. He gratefully remembered that the 
 poor woman had been almost a mother to him in 
 his friendless days and that her cabin had been his 
 home when he had no other. He laid aside all 
 else now and went to her aid. The defendant's 
 guilt was extremely doubtful. 
 
 The chief witness testified that he saw the boy 
 strike the fatal blow and that the scene occurred 
 about eleven o'clock at night. Lincoln inquired how 
 he could have seen so clearly at that late hour. 
 " By the moonlight," the witness answered. 
 "Was there light enough to see everything that 
 happened ?" Lincoln asked. 
 
 102 
 
HOME AND NEIGHBORS 
 
 "The moon was about in the same place the sun 
 would be at ten o'clock in the morning and nearly 
 full," the man on the stand replied. 
 
 Almost instantly Lincoln held out a calendar. 
 By this he showed that on the night in question, 
 the moon was only slightly past its first quarter, 
 that it set within an hour after the fatal occurrence, 
 and that it could, therefore, have shed little or no 
 light on the scene of the alleged murder. The 
 crowded court was electrified by the disclosure. 
 
 " Hannah, " whispered Lincoln as he turned to 
 the mother, "Bill will be cleared before sundown. " 
 
 Then, addressing the jury, he told them how he 
 had come to the boy's defence, not as a hired at- 
 torney, but to discharge a debt of friendship incurred 
 in the days when friends were few. With genuine 
 feeling he summoned up the picture of the simple 
 past, the old log-cabin of the Armstrongs', where 
 the good woman now beside him in her silvered 
 ocks had taken him in, and given him food and 
 shelter, and how she mended his tattered clothes 
 while he rocked Bill to sleep in the cradle. 
 
 Every member of the jury loved Lincoln and 
 honored him. With tears of sympathy flowing 
 down their cheeks, they gladly gave him the verdict 
 which, with his whole heart, he begged from their 
 hands. 
 
 103 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 The repeal of the Missouri Compromise passed by the Senate 
 and celebrated by the firing of cannon, March 4, 1854. — The 
 North's rude awakening. — Compromise, the old policy of 
 the nation, thrown to the winds. — Slavery threatening the 
 free soil of the West. — The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Sena- 
 tor Stephen A. Douglas's popular sovereignty plan. — Lincoln 
 stirred as never before. — His first debates with Douglas. — 
 Lincoln gave way to Lyman Trumbull, who was elected to 
 the Senate in 1855. — The famous "Lost Speech" delivered 
 at Bloomington, Illinois, May 29, 1856, when reporters forgot 
 their duty as they sat bound in the spell of Lincoln's earnest- 
 ness. — Lincoln's name presented for Vice-president to the 
 first Republican National Convention in 1856. — How he 
 received the news. 
 
 The iron-throated cannon of the Washington 
 Navy Yard, which, exulting over the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise, broke the stillness of the 
 dawn of a March day in the year 1854, was the signal 
 gun that awakened the sleeping nation to the last 
 great conflict between freedom and slavery. While 
 it proclaimed to the South the promise of more slave 
 territory and more slave states, the North was rudely 
 startled from its dream of peace and security. Its 
 echo, rolling over mountain and plain, called Lincoln 
 to his life mission. 
 
 104 
 
CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 Compromise had been the policy of the country 
 since the beginning. Now that policy was thrown 
 to the winds. The Constitution itself was a com- 
 promise. It had contemplated the prohibition of 
 the African slave trade, but to satisfy the interests 
 involved it had forbidden Congress to stop it until 
 the lapse of twenty years. The Ordinance of 1787 
 did not interfere with the spread of slavery into 
 the Mississippi Valley of the South, but it forbade 
 it forever in the Northwest Territory, a vast region 
 stretching from the Ohio to the upper waters of the 
 Mississippi. 
 
 Following the purchase of the immense territory 
 of Louisiana from France, the Missouri Com- 
 promise of 1820 was devised. Missouri was to be 
 admitted as a slave state, but slavery ever thereafter 
 was to be excluded from the great plain lying be- 
 tween the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains 
 and above the parallel of 36 30'. 
 
 When the war with Mexico had brought another 
 large addition to the national domain, the Com- 
 promise of 1850 was made. By this compromise 
 the South agreed that California should be admitted 
 as a free state, while the North conceded that all 
 the rest of the newly acquired soil should be left 
 unpledged either to freedom or to slavery, and at 
 the same time it accepted the Fugitive Slave Act 
 
 105 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 an extreme measure which compelled the returi? 
 of runaway slaves, who sought refuge within the 
 borders of the free states. 
 
 With the adoption of each of these historic com- 
 promises, the statesmen who made them united 
 in congratulating the country on a happy solution 
 of the vexed problem for all time. Both political 
 parties joined in hailing the Compromise of 1850 
 as the end of the long feud between the sections. 
 They agreed with one voice that the disturbing 
 subject should be banished from discussion. 
 
 "There shall be no more agitation," Daniel 
 Webster thundered. "We will have peace." At 
 the same time Henry Clay complimented the country 
 on the acceptance of the Compromise everywhere 
 "outside of Boston," while Douglas positively an- 
 nounced that he never would make another speech 
 on the hateful subject of slavery. Lincoln was not 
 in politics, but he adopted the opinion of the leaders 
 of both parties at Washington that the question was 
 settled. 
 
 It was a problem, however, which never had shown 
 any pity for the repose of the Union, and within 
 three years it rose again, a spectre at the feast. The 
 time had come for Congress to set up territorial 
 governments in that part of the Louisiana Purchase 
 lying west of the Missouri River. This was a tract 
 
 106 
 
CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 of land four hundred and seventy-five thousand 
 square miles in extent and all of it bore the com 
 mon name of Nebraska. 
 
 Less than a thousand white persons were scattered 
 over that wild empire, which to-day includes the 
 states of Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, and the two 
 Dakotas, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. 
 It lay almost wholly north of the line drawn in the 
 Missouri Compromise, and by that act, slavery was 
 excluded from its soil. 
 
 The South now pointed out that the Compromise 
 ot 1850 had left the question of slavery or freedom 
 to be decided by the people of the territories of Utah 
 and New Mexico which were acquired in the Mexi- 
 can War, and it demanded that Nebraska be treated 
 in strict accordance with the true spirit of that 
 Compromise. All the territory of the United States, 
 the southern leaders insisted, belonged equally to 
 the people, North and South, and Congress had no 
 right to exclude from it the lawful property of 
 any citizen, whether it be property in slaves or in 
 horses. 
 
 The chairman of the Senate committee in charge 
 of the subject was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. 
 He had been a close second in the race for the 
 Democratic nomination for President a little while 
 before, and was aflame with desire for the nomina- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tion in the coming campaign. The South had the 
 power to bestow or withhold the great prize which 
 he sought. For a time Douglas hesitated. 
 
 In the end he yielded to the voice of ambition 
 and became the able champion of the repeal of that 
 time-honored compact, the Missouri Compromise. 
 He proposed, in the creation of the territories of 
 Kansas and Nebraska, to leave to the settlers, to 
 the "popular sovereignty," as he pleasingly termed 
 it, whether slavery should be adopted or forbidden 
 on their soil, and he battled for his plan with the 
 might of a "little giant," by which name his ad- 
 mirers delighted to speak of him. 
 
 With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 
 the agitation of the question of slavery ceased to 
 be local to Boston, as Clay had flattered himself 
 only four years before, and ceased to be confined to 
 Massachusetts or New England. An outburst of 
 passion swept the land from the Atlantic to the Pa- 
 cific, as the people of the North, with the freshly 
 printed pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" before them, 
 saw the institution cast its dark shadow across the 
 free plains of the far West. 
 
 Douglas was for the moment bewildered by the 
 storm of earnest protest. "This tornado," he ex* 
 claimed, "has been raised by Abolitionists and 
 Abolitionists alone." Abolitionists, however, were 
 
 108 
 
CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 still few in number. If it had been a question 
 of abolishing slavery in the South, he could have 
 counted its advocates by the hundred. It was now 
 a question of abolishing freedom in the North, and 
 the people rallied to the standard by the tens of 
 thousands. 
 
 Douglas afterward said that when he left Washing- 
 ton he could have traveled from Boston to Chicago 
 by the light of his own burning effigies. Arriving 
 in the latter city, then his home, he was greeted 
 by sullen crowds in the streets, while flags drooped 
 at half mast on the vessels and at half staff on the 
 buildings. The bells were tolled at sunset, as if for 
 his funeral. A meeting was arranged for him in 
 the open air, but there he was received with hisses 
 and groans. As these grew louder and louder, tKs 
 long-time master of popular audiences angrily bu^ 
 vainly shouted for attention. For more than two 
 hours the struggle continued, until at last he with- 
 drew and the crowd roared in triumph. 
 
 Quitting the frowning city, he went into the coun* 
 try, where he still met with coldness or worse, unti! 
 he turned his face southward, when his welcome im- 
 proved. At Springfield, however, he was confronted 
 by a figure more menacing to his progress than the 
 noisy thousands of a city mob. It was the earnest 
 figure of Lincoln, which Douglas, in his swift climb 
 
 109 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 up the heights of fame, had left and all but forgotten 
 in the obscurity of a country law office. 
 
 Lincoln was, as he said, losing interest in politics 
 when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise stirred 
 him as he never had been stirred before. It is true 
 he had not at any time looked upon the institution 
 of slavery with indifference. It had, he wrote. 
 " continually exercised the power to make me miser 
 able." 
 
 When, as a flatboatman, he saw the young woman 
 on the slave block at New Orleans offered to the high- 
 est bidder, his hot indignation was aroused. Again, 
 as a young legislator, when he heard a unanimous 
 shout of approval of a resolution denouncing all 
 agitation of the question, he and one other member 
 stood alone in recording their judgment that slavery 
 was wrong. 
 
 When he saw the slave pen of Washington from 
 the door of the Capitol and saw negroes held as 
 chattels in the Federal city, he offered a bill abolish- 
 ing slavery and the trade in human beings in the 
 District of Columbia. Now, when he saw slavery 
 threatening the free soil of Kansas and Nebraska, 
 he felt the crisis had come between freedom and 
 bondage, and that a great and solemn duty was 
 marked out for him. 
 
 The man stood before his friends transformed. 
 
 no 
 
CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 Some of the most influential among them fell away 
 from him in his zeal in the new cause. He cared 
 to talk of nothing else. He ceased to jest. 
 
 The Legislature to be elected that year would 
 have the duty of electing an associate for Douglas 
 in the Senate, and Lincoln became the Whig candi- 
 date for that seat. He prepared himself by study as 
 if he had been richly retained in a great law case. 
 
 In his opening speech at Springfield, Douglas said 
 he understood that "Mr. Lincoln of this city" would 
 reply to him. Lincoln was in the audience and the 
 next night, there in the State House, he delivered 
 his rejoinder before an assemblage that crowded 
 the hall. He had invited Douglas to attend, and 
 while he spoke the Senator sat directly in front of 
 him and more than once started to his feet as he 
 felt the force of his adversary's logic. 
 
 For four hours Lincoln spoke with an earnestness 
 which shook his giant frame and awed friend and 
 foe alike. Without fear of the brilliant debater 
 who had crossed swords with Webster and the great 
 orators of the Senate, he challenged him, point by 
 point. From this time he was the leader of his 
 party in the state, and from all parts of Illinois 
 urgent requests for speeches poured in upon him. 
 
 He followed Douglas to Peoria, and there, in 
 a big meeting, they divided the time between them 
 
 in 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 His readiness in the debate amazed his opponent. 
 By his clear reasoning, he coined his arguments 
 into powerful maxims, so simple that they sank into 
 the understanding of every hearer : " 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. " "No man is good enough to govern 
 another man without that other's consent." "Re- 
 peal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all compro- 
 mise, repeal the Declaration of Independence, repeal 
 all past history, still you cannot repeal human na- 
 ture " "Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed 
 in the dust. Let us purify it. Let us turn and 
 wash it white, in the spirit if not in the blood of 
 the Revolution." 
 
 Thus a new voice was raised in the land, not, it 
 is true, in the halls of Congress, nor yet in Faneuil 
 Hall or before a brilliant assemblage in a great city 
 with the presses waiting to spread its utterance 
 abroad. It was lifted far out on the prairies, where 
 there were no reporters to echo it; yet, in good time, 
 it was heard all over the country. There was no 
 report whatever of the Springfield speech; the 
 Peoria speech, Lincoln wrote out in his own hand 
 for his home paper. 
 
 Douglas frankly told him that he had given him 
 
 112 
 
CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 more trouble than Sumner, Seward, Chase, or any 
 of the men he had met on the floor of the Senate. 
 They had agreed to debate at another meeting 
 near by, but the debate did not take place. On 
 the contrary, to the surprise of their followers, 
 they parted, each going to his home. Douglas may 
 have cried enough and begged off on account of 
 ill health, as it is asserted he did; but there is nc 
 record by which to solve the mystery of the sudden 
 ending of the campaign. 
 
 Lincoln's side won in the election, but he failed 
 to be chosen Senator because a few anti-Douglas 
 Democrats in the Legislature refused to vote for 
 a Whig. He yielded to them and gave the election 
 to Lyman Trumbull, an able member of their party, 
 who was not less zealous than himself in opposing 
 slavery in the territories. 
 
 Though defeated, he did not lower the standard 
 which he had raised. Every event justified his 
 belief that the crisis had come. Under the lead 
 of Douglas, Congress had left the question of slavery 
 to be decided by the settlers on the plains, and Kansas 
 became a bloody battleground between armed men, 
 who rushed in from the North and from the South 
 and who debated the problem with knives and 
 rifles and the torch. Rival settlements and govern- 
 ments of Northerners and Southerners were broken 
 i "3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 up and destroyed in a war of extermination almost 
 as savage as any that had ravaged the land when 
 tribes of red men fought for the possession of it. 
 Indeed, white women fled with their children to the 
 protection of the Indians. 
 
 When the campaign for the election of President 
 came in 1856, the Whig party was a wreck. Lincoln 
 joined the organization which rose on its ruins 
 and became a Republican. He was welcomed at 
 the State Convention of the new party as its natural 
 leader. There, speaking for the first time as a Re- 
 publican, the great cause in which his whole soul 
 was enlisted moved him to deliver an address of 
 such wonderful power that even the press reporters 
 forgot their duty as they sat bound in its spell, and 
 it has passed into history as the "lost speech," The 
 reports all praised it and editors drew their texts 
 from it; but no one could reproduce the "lost 
 speech." The delegates, however, carried its in- 
 spiration with them to the first National Conven- 
 tion of the Republican party about to meet in 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 While that Convention was in session, Lincoln 
 was on the circuit, trying cases. One noon as he 
 came to dinner at the tavern where he was staying 
 he found an excited group, discussing the news from 
 the Philadelphia Convention, which they were reading 
 
 114 
 
CALLED TO HIS LIFE MISSION 
 
 in a Chicago paper. Fremont had been nominated 
 for President, and in the balloting for Vice-president 
 one hundred and ten votes were recorded for Lin- 
 coln. The latter protested with a careless air, that 
 they could not have been thinking of him, and that 
 the votes must have been meant for a Massachusetts 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Further reports, however, showed that the Illinois 
 delegates had proudly presented the name of the 
 author of the "lost speech/' and while, happily, he 
 was not chosen for the second place on the ticket, 
 they had introduced to the nation the name of 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 "a house divided against itself" 
 
 *The Lincoln-Douglas contest for the Senate in 1858. — Douglas's 
 restored popularity. — Leading Republicans discourage any 
 opposition to the "Little Giant's" reelection. — Lincoln 
 alarmed by the Dred Scott Decision, March 6, 1857. — Deaf 
 to friends who warned him against declaring that the Union 
 could not endure half slave and half free. — His celebrated 
 opening speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. — He 
 matched himself against Douglas at the climax of the latter's 
 brilliant career. — Their personal references to each other. — 
 "You cannot fool all the people all the time." 
 
 When Douglas went before the people of Illinois 
 In 1858, asking for a third term in the Senate of 
 the United States, Lincoln dared to match himself 
 against the most famous and brilliant campaigner 
 of the time, at the height of his popularity. 
 
 By his remarkable skill in juggling the issues 
 of the hour, Douglas seemed to have regained the 
 favor he had lost by his repeal of the Missouri Com- 
 promise. Balancing between the North and the 
 South, he had raised in each section the hope that 
 his great weight would be lent to its cause. Now, 
 on the eve of his canvass for reelection, he boldly 
 arrayed himself against President Buchanan and 
 the national administration of his owr party on a 
 
 06 
 
"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 
 
 question arising in the bitter struggle between the 
 forces of slavery and antislavery in Kansas, and 
 took his stand with the Republicans in the Senate. 
 His display of courage won for him loud applause 
 throughout the North. 
 
 Horace Greeley and other distinguished Re- 
 publican leaders urged the Republicans of Illi- 
 nois to join hands with him and return him to 
 the Senate by a unanimous vote. Lincoln was 
 deaf to these appeals. He believed the time had 
 passed for compromise on the question of the 
 spread of slavery. He was in no mood to play 
 politics in what he solemnly felt was a crisis be- 
 tween right and wrong. 
 
 In the celebrated case of Dred Scott, the Supreme 
 Court had lately decided that slavery could not be 
 excluded from the territories. That court of last 
 resort now held that the Constitution guaranteed 
 forever "the right to traffic" in slaves, "like an 
 ordinary article of merchandise," in all the territory 
 of the United States. 
 
 Lincoln refused to abide by this sweeping doctrine, 
 uecause he believed that if it were accepted, the next 
 step would be to declare that the free states them- 
 selves could not lawfully exclude the traffic from 
 their soil. He foresaw slavery invading his own 
 state of Illinois, and assailing there the system of 
 
 117 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 free labor, by which he and men like him had toiled 
 up from poverty and ignorance. 
 
 The battle for freedom was on and he determined 
 not to yield an inch of ground. "I know there is 
 a God," a friend has quoted him as saying in a 
 private talk; "and He hates injustice and slavery. 
 I see the storm coming. I know His hand is in it. 
 If He has a place and work for me — and I think 
 He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but 
 truth is everything." 
 
 As the time drew near, when the Republicans of 
 Illinois were to meet in convention and nominate 
 him as their candidate for the Senate, he was seen, 
 day after day, busily making notes on bits of paper, 
 which he tucked away in his hat. He consulted 
 with no one. He asked no advice. He did not even 
 tell his partner what he was doing. 
 
 On the day before the convention he broke his 
 silence, and, calling twelve or fifteen friends to- 
 gether in the State Library, he read to them the 
 speech which he had prepared for the occasion, and 
 which opened with this now immortal statement: 
 
 "A house divided against itself cannot stand. 
 I believe this government cannot endure permanently 
 half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union 
 to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall 
 — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It 
 
 1x8 
 
"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 
 
 will become all one thing, or all the other. Either 
 the opponents of slavery will arrest the further 
 spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
 shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ulti- 
 mate extinction; or its advocates will push it for- 
 ward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, 
 old as well as new, North as well as South. . . ." 
 
 When Lincoln had read his entire speech to the 
 little group of neighbors, every man present warned 
 him that such a frank announcement would surely 
 defeat him for the Senate; but one of them, Mr. 
 Herndon, his partner, who rejoiced in its boldness, 
 declared, "Lincoln, deliver that speech as read and 
 it will make you President." No one else, however, 
 expressed any sympathy with the utterance, and 
 most of those present warmly denounced it as fool- 
 ish and disastrous. Lincoln was unmoved by their 
 earnest and sometimes angry protests. 
 
 "Friends," said he, "the time has come when 
 these sentiments should be uttered, and if it is 
 decreed that I should go down because of this speech, 
 then let me go down linked with the truth." He 
 explained that he had taken from the Bible the state- 
 ment that "a house divided against itself cannot 
 stand," because every one would know what it 
 meant, and that it would strike home to the minds 
 of men and arouse them to the perils of the time. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Without changing a word in it, he delivered the 
 speech the next day and braved the criticisms which 
 came to him from many quarters. He had thrown 
 away his party's chance for victory and ruined his 
 own fortunes, he was told over and over again. 
 Nevertheless, to one of his critics he said, "If I 
 had to draw a pen across my record 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." 
 
 Yet he was not blind to the unequal combat on 
 which he had entered and which his warmest ad- 
 mirers dreaded. Although he was forty-nine years 
 old, he was still a country lawyer, struggling to make 
 a living. He had no organized following, for he 
 was not a politician of the machine kind. He was 
 without encouragement from the Republicans of 
 other states, and he was without money. His sole 
 reliance must be the great truth which had taken 
 hold of him and made him its champion. 
 
 Douglas, on the other hand, had sat on the bench 
 of the Supreme Court of Illinois at the early age of 
 twenty-eight; he had entered Congress at thirty-one 
 and been a Senator since his thirty-third year. At 
 thirty-nine he had fallen only two votes behind the 
 leading candidate for President in the early bal- 
 
 120 
 
"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 
 
 loting of the Democratic National Convention of 
 1852, and had led all rivals for that highest honor on 
 the first ballot in the Convention of 1856. He was 
 yet in his forty- fifth year and marked out as the 
 only choice of the northern Democracy in the next 
 contest for the Presidency. 
 
 For many years he had been the undisputed master 
 of politics in Illinois, with a large, obedient, and well- 
 drilled following, proud of the fame he had won 
 for their young state and confident of the added 
 luster he was to shed upon it from the presidential 
 chair. Through an ambitious marriage and success- 
 ful investments in Chicago real estate, he was the 
 possessor of an independent fortune. A man of the 
 great world, he had been welcomed in the capitals 
 of Europe, while his house in Washington was noted 
 for its hospitality. 
 
 Coming on from Washington to open his cam- 
 paign, he entered Chicago in a dazzling triumph, 
 and, in the presence of cheering thousands, eagerly 
 took up the gage of battle which Lincoln had thrown 
 down. His opponent was there to hear the renowned 
 Senator patronizingly refer to hirnas " a kind-hearted, 
 amiable gentleman, a right good fellow, a worthy 
 citizen, of eminent ability as a lawyer, and, I have 
 no doubt, of sufficient ability to make a good Senator." 
 The issues between them were made up, he said, 
 
 121 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as he rang the changes on Lincoln's simile of "a 
 house divided against itself," and they involved the 
 questions of obedience or disobedience to the decrees 
 of the Supreme Court, and peace or war between 
 the sections. 
 
 When Lincoln replied the next evening, he pictured 
 his opponent as a man of world-wide celebrity, whose 
 followers for years had felt certain he would be 
 President, and "they have seen in his round, jolly, 
 fruitful face, post-offices, marshalships, and cabinet 
 appointments, chargeships and foreign missions 
 bursting and sprouting out, ready to be laid hold 
 of by their greedy hands." No one, on the con- 
 trary, Lincoln continued, had ever expected him to 
 be President. "In my poor, lean, lank face nobody 
 has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out." 
 Apart from these personal references, there was 
 little levity in his address and nothing else to detract 
 from its earnestness and force. 
 
 A familiar quotation from Lincoln is attributed 
 to a speech which he made in the early part of his 
 campaign, but which cannot be found in his published 
 works. "You can fool all the people some of the 
 time," so runs the phrase, " and some of the people 
 all the time; but you cannot fool all the people 
 all the time." After the most painstaking investi- 
 gation it is impossible to say with certainty where 
 
 122 
 
"A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF" 
 
 or whether Lincoln made this remark. It so happily 
 expresses his faith in the final wisdom of the common 
 people, however, that the words are likely ever to 
 stand to the credit of his name. 
 
 As Douglas journeyed down the state, his triumph 
 continued, and he seemed to be having his own im- 
 perious way with the cheering people. At Spring- 
 field, Lincoln replied to him, and, referring to some 
 sharp personal flings, he protested that he intended 
 to conduct the canvass strictly as a gentleman, "in 
 substance at least, if not in the outside polish. The 
 latter I shall never be, but that which constitutes 
 the inside of a gentleman, I hope I understand. " 
 
 He confessed he had been a <5£| at failure" in the 
 race of ambition on which he and Douglas had 
 started in that very town twenty years before, and 
 he added, "I affect no contempt for the high eminence 
 he has reached. So reached that the oppressed 
 of my species might have shared with me in the 
 elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence 
 than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a 
 monarch's brow." 
 
 12$ 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE GREAT DEBATE 
 
 Douglas challenged by Lincoln, July 24, 1858. — National at- 
 tention attracted to their joint meetings. — The opening debate 
 at Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858. — A picturesque audience. 
 — The prairies lit up by the camp-fires of the great crowd. — 
 Sharp contrasts between the two antagonists. — Their ap- 
 pearance and their methods. — Friends beg Lincoln not to 
 ask his "Freeport questions," August 27, 1858. — "The 
 battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this." — Douglas's tour 
 made in great state in McClellan's car while Lincoln rode in 
 a crowded coach. — The position of each speaker on the slavery 
 question. — Douglas's costly campaign. — His slender victory 
 at the polls. — "A slip and not a fall." 
 
 Lincoln now determined to challenge Douglas 
 to meet him in joint debate. It was midsummer, 
 and he realized he had not stemmed the tide of 
 popular interest which was bearing his antagonist 
 on to success. 
 
 With the prestige of his name and with his art as 
 a stump speaker, Douglas was filling the eye and the 
 ear of the state, skilfully juggling with all sorts of 
 questions. Lincoln, on the other hand, was making 
 poor headway, unaided, as he was, by the glamour 
 of victory and confined by his own serious purpose 
 to the single issue of the restriction of slavery. It 
 
 124 
 
THE GREAT DEBATE 
 
 was under these circumstances that he resolved to 
 confront his wily opponent face to face on the plat- 
 form, in an effort to hold him to a logical discussion 
 of the real question of the campaign and focus 
 upon it the attention of the people. 
 
 Douglas did not shrink from a close encounter, 
 and an agreement was readily made for seven 
 debates. Lincoln's friends were fearful. Not a 
 few of them thought he was placing his head in the 
 lion's mouth. 
 
 The great battle opened in August. The eye of 
 the nation was attracted by the duel. Press cor- 
 respondents hastened to the scene from as far away 
 as New York, and car-loads of people from Chicago 
 poured into the dusty little village which had been 
 chosen for the first debate. Country folk came 
 the night before in wagons, on horseback, and afoot, 
 and their camp-fires lit up the prairie as if an army 
 were in bivouac. 
 
 The meeting was held in the open air in the pres- 
 ence of a vast throng, before which the two cham- 
 pions stood in sharp contrast. Douglas was hardly 
 five feet four inches tall, but his broad shoulders 
 and stalwart neck were surmounted by a head mas- 
 sive and majestic. His voice could deepen to a 
 roar, while, well-groomed and prosperous-looking, 
 he strode the stage as one at home and at ease. 
 
 125 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln's clothes, on the contrary, hung on his 
 frame of six feet four as if it were a rack. Little 
 twinkling gray eyes lit up, when aroused, the shadows 
 of sorrow in his furrowed face, above which a shock 
 of coarse dark hair tumbled in utter lawlessness. 
 A high tenor voice, nervously running almost into 
 a piping falsetto, added to the disappointment of the 
 first impression which his presence gave. To com- 
 plete an unpromising picture, his stooping figure 
 with the hands clasped at the back was stiff with 
 awkwardness as he began to speak. 
 
 The very homeliness of the man, however, his 
 modest bearing, and his air of mingled sadness and 
 sincerity excited sympathy and drew to him the 
 hearts of the plain people. When he had warmed 
 to his task, and his big right hand had fallen to his 
 side, ready to point out with a long, bony finger 
 the truth he felt, and when his head swung back- 
 ward or forward in an expressive emphasis, the 
 listeners found their thought as well as their feeling 
 enlisted. He seemed to have no stage manners, 
 no studied art. His gestures were as simple as his 
 words, yet when he was deeply stirred, waves of 
 emotion swept over him, his thin voice softened 
 into music, and his giant figure was glorified by 
 a heroic spirit. 
 
 At the end of this first encounter between the two 
 
 126 
 
THE GREAT DEBATE 
 
 men, most of the politicians on both sides felt that 
 Douglas had outclassed his opponent. Lincoln's 
 partisans in the crowd, however, did not share that 
 feeling. Those near the stand rushed upon it, and, 
 in their enthusiasm, lifted him to their shoulders and 
 bore him away to his tavern. 
 
 "Don't, boys," he pleaded in vain; "let me down; 
 come now, don't." He was in too serious a mood 
 to like any of the usual claptrap of campaigning. 
 He had little patience with "fizzlegigs and fireworks," 
 as he described the spectacular aspects of the contest. 
 
 After the meeting, modestly reassuring a friend, 
 he wrote, "Douglas and I for the first time this 
 canvass crossed swords here yesterday. The fire 
 flew some and I am glad to say I am yet alive." 
 
 He determined to draw a heavier fire at the next 
 chance. The night before the second debate he 
 showed some followers the notes of several questions 
 which he intended to ask Douglas. The friends, 
 taking alarm, begged him not to put one of the ques- 
 tions, but he stood firm against their entreaties as 
 they gathered about him at midnight in his sleeping 
 room. 
 
 "If you put it," one of them finally warned him, 
 "you can never be Senator." 
 
 "Gentlemen," he answered, as he drew his lips 
 together between the words, "I am killing; larger 
 
 127 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 game; if Douglas answers, he can never be Presi- 
 dent, and the battle of i860 is worth a hundred 
 of this." 
 
 Keeping his resolve, he asked Douglas, the next 
 day, if, in his opinion, the people of a territory could 
 lawfully exclude slavery from its limits. In other 
 words, he asked him if there was anything left 
 of his popular sovereignty doctrine now that the 
 Supreme Court had decided in the Dred Scott case 
 that slavery could not be prohibited in the territories. 
 
 Douglas answered that there still remained a 
 way to restrict slavery and that a territorial legisla- 
 ture could keep it out of the territory by " unfriendly 
 legislation," regardless of the Supreme Court. This 
 reply made possible his success in Illinois and his 
 reelection to the Senate; but the South, as Lincoln 
 expected it would, greeted with an outburst of 
 denunciation this "Freeport heresy," so called 
 because of the name of the little town in which 
 the momentous question was put and answered. 
 
 The debates fully justified Lincoln's purpose 
 in proposing them. They aroused public opinion 
 as perhaps no other political meetings anywhere 
 ever have aroused it. No one could ignore the one 
 question at issue or remain indifferent to the result. 
 The excitement spread like a prairie fire. 
 
 People swarmed to the meetings by the thousands, 
 
 128 
 
THE GREAT DEBATE 
 
 They came from forty and fifty miles around, entire 
 families leaving their homes and taking their bed- 
 ding and their cooking utensils with them. Gay 
 cavalcades of young men and wagons laden with 
 rustic belles escorted the speakers to the meeting 
 places, which were roofed by the open sky and with 
 only the far horizon of the flat lands for their walls. 
 
 The debates were justified as well by their dig- 
 nity. The most restless and enthusiastic crowds 
 Were free from ruffianism. The debaters and their 
 audiences were sobered and exalted by the imposing 
 theme of discussion. Little wooden villages were 
 made historic by the immortal words uttered within 
 their limits. 
 
 Douglas and Lincoln both sought to avoid 
 personalities, but the latter' s better temper gave 
 him the advantage in this respect. Only once did 
 he fall to the level of recrimination, when he was 
 stung to say of his rival, "I don't want to quarrel 
 with him ... to call him a liar, but when I come 
 <quare up to him, I don't know what else to call 
 dm." 
 
 At another time, however, he referred to a certain 
 
 *how of fight which Douglas had made and assured 
 
 ;he people there would be no fight between them. 
 
 'He and I are about the best friends in the world," 
 
 *aid Lincoln, "and when we get together he would 
 
 C 139 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 no more think of righting me than of righting his 
 wife." Douglas sometimes broke out with a fiery 
 retort to the "black Republicans" who interrupted 
 him. "I am clinching Lincoln now, and you are 
 scared to death," he shouted one day when the 
 crowd became noisy. 
 
 Each man staked his election wholly on the slavery 
 question. Neither dodged it or digressed to any 
 other subject. The greatest disadvantage which 
 Douglas suffered, as we see him in the light of a later 
 day, is to be charged to the position he took. His 
 face was turned to the past and all its dark preju- 
 dices, while Lincoln's was turned to the future 
 and its noble hopes. Douglas had the Union and 
 the Constitution, the Supreme Court and the su- 
 premacy of the law, with which to round his swell- 
 ing periods; but over his head forever hung the evil 
 shadow of human bondage. 
 
 "I don't care whether slavery be voted up or 
 voted down," he said, with the eye of his ambi- 
 tion always on the South and the Presidency. 
 " I don't believe the negro is any kin of mine at all," 
 he declared, while he flung his contempt at "black 
 niggers" and demanded, with cynical carelessness, 
 "Who among you expects to live, or have his children 
 live, until slavery shall be established in Illinois or 
 abolished in South Carolina?" 
 
 130 
 
Lincoln in his Prime 
 
THE GREAT DEBATE 
 
 Above this counsel of despair, Lincoln's tones 
 rang out like the voice of a prophet. On his side 
 there was no past with its legacy of old wrongs to 
 be defended. He took his stand for a clear principle, 
 for a lofty ideal of human rights, and the eternal 
 years are his. The speeches he delivered in that 
 campaign have taken their place among the master- 
 pieces of political oratory, and retain the power to 
 thrill and inspire a generation unborn when he 
 grappled with the "little giant" on the plains of 
 Illinois. 
 
 Yet his practical mind held him closely to practi- 
 cal things. He was not an Abolitionist. Had he 
 tried to address an antislavery meeting in Boston, he 
 would have been hooted off the platform. He never 
 failed to deny Douglas's charge that he believed in 
 "nigger equality." 
 
 He frankly said he would not make voters or 
 jurors of the negroes; and he gave it as his opinion 
 that "there is a physical difference between the white 
 and black races which I believe will forever forbid 
 the two races living together on social and political 
 equality." Nevertheless, he maintained that "in the 
 right to put into his mouth the bread that his own 
 hands have earned, the negro is the peer of Judge 
 Douglas or any other man." 
 
 He raised no agitation against slavery in the 
 
 *3* 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 states where it was established under the authority 
 of the Constitution, although he hoped for its " ulti- 
 mate peaceable extinction" everywhere. His every 
 reference to his own native South and to the slave- 
 holders was temperate and even charitable. 
 
 The southern people, he admitted, were acting 
 as the people of the North would act in the same 
 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." 
 
 His sole concern was to stop the spread of slavery, 
 which he had hated his life long; to keep it out of 
 the territories and out of the free states of the North. 
 In this cause alone he pledged himself to strive, 
 until wherever the Federal government had power 
 "the sun shall shine, the rain shall fall, and the 
 wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to un- 
 requited toil." 
 
 In the closing debate, which took place at Alton, 
 near St. Louis, standing where he could look across 
 the Mississippi and see the shore of the slave state 
 of Missouri, he rested his entire case on the naked 
 question, "Is slavery wrong?" 
 
 "That is the real issue," he said with solemn 
 impressiveness. "That is the issue that will con* 
 
 132 
 
THE GREAT DEBATE 
 
 tinue in this country when these poor tongues of 
 Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is 
 the eternal struggle between these two principles — • 
 right and wrong — throughout the world." 
 
 Lincoln's voice, now at the end of the contest, 
 was as clear as in the beginning, while Douglas's 
 heavier voice was husky and broken. In the course 
 of the campaign there had been only seven debates, 
 but between their joint meetings each had delivered 
 fully a hundred speeches, besides managing all the 
 details of the canvass. 
 
 Douglas traveled in great state from point to point 
 in the private car of George B. McClellan, who had 
 lately resigned from the army to become a high 
 official of the Illinois Central Railway. He carried 
 with him a band of musicians, and on a flat car 
 attached to his coach was a cannon to proclaim 
 his coming. Mrs. Douglas often accompanied the 
 Senator, and the influence of her beauty and her 
 gracious manner was regarded with fear by her 
 husband's opponents. 
 
 The railway corporation was not friendly to the 
 new party and its disturbing agitation, and Lincoln 
 was obliged to content himself with half a seat in 
 a common car. In such cramped quarters he was 
 more than once compelled to sit up through a weari* 
 some night journey, 
 
 m 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Douglas had spent, In his lavish manner, eighty 
 thousand dollars of his private fortune. Lincoln 
 had no fortune on which to draw, and his party 
 had little machinery to be run. As it was, his 
 campaign cost him nearly a thousand dollars, an 
 expense which he could ill afford. 
 
 In the election, Lincoln's side received a majority 
 of five thousand on the popular vote, but the arrange- 
 ment of the districts was such that a few more 
 Democrats than Republicans were chosen to the 
 Legislature, which reelected Douglas to the Senate. 
 
 While Lincoln was walking home in the gloom 
 of the rainy election night after reading the reports 
 of his defeat, he lost his footing in the muddy street; 
 but, recovering his balance, he drew from the little 
 incident a good omen, saying to himself as his 
 thought recurred to the event of the day, "It is 
 a slip and not a fall/' 
 
 234 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A NATIONAL FIGURE 
 
 *The fight must go on." — "I shall fight in the ranks." — Douglas's 
 dearly bought victory. — Lincoln, lacking money for house- 
 hold expenses at end of campaign, returned to work on the 
 circuit. — Rising demand upon him to speak in all parts of 
 the country. — Answering Douglas in Ohio, September, 1859. 
 — His position on Knownothingism defined. — Proposed for 
 the Presidency. — "I am not fit to be President." — Address- 
 ing a great meeting in Cooper Union, New York, February 27, 
 i860. — His triumphs in the East. — His New Haven speech 
 held up as an example in English before a class at Yale. 
 
 Lincoln had met his Bunker Hill. He had 
 taken his stand and fought a good fight in a cause 
 that could not fail. "Though I now sink out of 
 view and shall be forgotten/' he wrote to a dis- 
 consolate supporter, "I believe I have made some 
 marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty 
 long after I am gone." Another received this coun- 
 sel from the defeated candidate, "Let the past as 
 nothing be. . . . The fight must go on," and "I 
 shall fight in the ranks." 
 
 Douglas's victory was his own undoing. The 
 Democrats of the South, indignant over the ad- 
 missions and concessions which he had felt forced 
 
 *35 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to make in his debates with Lincoln, denounced 
 him as a traitor to his party. He had won the Sena- 
 torship but was losing the Presidency. With his 
 usual boldness he hastened southward to reassure 
 the people of the slave states that he had really 
 yielded nothing of value to the interests of slavery. 
 The Almighty, he pleaded, had drawn a line between 
 slave labor and free labor, and slavery could not be 
 adopted with profit in the territory of the North- 
 west. 
 
 His valiant efforts to bridge the chasm were all 
 in vain. The house was, in truth, divided against 
 itself. Each day verified anew Lincoln's stern 
 metaphor. Even the Christian Church, in most 
 of its denominations, was divided against itself 
 along Mason and Dixon's unhappy line. 
 
 Douglas's own party was hopelessly divided 
 against itself, and he returned to Washington to 
 find that the Democratic caucus of the Senate had 
 removed him in disgrace from the chairmanship of 
 the committee on territories which he had held for 
 eleven years. Jefferson Davis and other southern 
 senators vigorously assailed the "Freeport heresy," 
 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were the subject 
 of earnest discussion on the floor of the Senate 
 through two sessions. 
 
 Meanwhile Lincoln was again at work on the 
 
 136 
 
A NATIONAL FIGURE 
 
 circuit in the old task of getting a living. The lost 
 time and his campaign expenses had told heavily on 
 his slender purse. "I am absolutely without money," 
 he explained, "even for household expenses." 
 
 As the state campaigns of 1859 were opened, his 
 services were called for in many places, Kansas, 
 Minnesota, and Iowa being among the earliest to 
 seek his aid. Wherever Douglas appeared, there 
 was a loud demand for Lincoln. Distant New 
 Hampshire urged him to come there to answer his 
 famous adversary, and New York and Ohio made 
 like requests. "I have been a great man such a 
 mighty little time," he confessed to an enthusiastic 
 admirer, "that I am not used to it yet." 
 
 An Indiana leader wrote to tell him that his counsel 
 carried such weight that every political letter falling 
 from his pen was copied throughout the Union. 
 In these letters, which he wrote to his correspondents 
 2nd to committees, he modestly offered much sane 
 advice. 
 
 "I have some little notoriety," he observed on 
 the subject of Knownothingism, "for commiserating 
 the oppressed condition of the negro ; and I should 
 be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project 
 for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even 
 though born in different lands and speaking different 
 languages from myself." 
 
 137 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 To a Boston organization he sent this clear 
 message: "This is a world of compensation, and 
 he who would be no slave must be content to have 
 no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve 
 it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot 
 long retain it." 
 
 When Douglas went to Ohio, Lincoln accepted 
 urgent invitations to answer him at Cincinnati and 
 Columbus. There the Republican State Committee 
 published the reports of the Illinois debates and 
 Lincoln's two Ohio speeches for general circulation, 
 as the best means of educating the people on the 
 issues of the coming campaign of i860. Thus Lin- 
 coln was chosen as the champion of his party's 
 cause before the entire nation, and three huge 
 editions of the addresses found a ready sale. 
 
 The men around him, as they gazed wonderingly 
 on the growing fame of their simple neighbor, began 
 to dream of high honors in store for him. One little 
 weekly paper in central Illinois already carried at 
 the head of its columns the name of Lincoln for 
 President. He himself, however, did not yet share 
 these dreams. 
 
 "What is the use of talking of me, while we have 
 such men as Seward and Chase?" he said, when 
 stopped on the street by an admiring prophet. 
 u Every one knows them and scarcely any one out- 
 
 138 
 
A NATIONAL FIGURE 
 
 side of Illinois knows me. Besides, as a matter 
 of justice, is it not due to them ? There is no such 
 good luck for me as the Presidency of these United 
 States." With that he wrapped his old gray shawl 
 around his shoulders and stalked away. 
 
 "I must in candor say," he wrote in a confidential 
 letter in the spring of 1859, "that I do not think 
 myself fit for the Presidency," and he requested 
 that such a thing be not publicly proposed. In 
 midsummer of that year, only nine months before 
 the nomination was to be made, he repeated this 
 modest statement, and as late as December indicated 
 that he intended to bide his time until Douglas came 
 up again for election, five years away, and try once 
 more for his seat in the Senate. "I would rather," 
 he said, "have a full term in the Senate than in the 
 Presidency." 
 
 It was not until a meeting of the party leaders 
 of Illinois was held in the winter that he con- 
 sented to let himself be presented as a candidate for 
 President. 
 
 He was much pleased by an invitation, which he 
 had received, to deliver a lecture in New York. 
 His friends were wildly delighted by this recognition 
 of him in the metropolis. Again he burrowed in 
 the State Library and spared no pains in b\s prep- 
 aration to acquit himself ^ tK rredit before an 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 audience of strangers in the great city. Lincoln 
 was not a diffident man. He was not given to self 
 depreciation. He felt his power. He was, however, 
 doubtful of his success before the New Yorkers, 
 so different in their training and taste from his 
 western people. 
 
 Arrived in the city, he went to hear Henry Ward 
 Beecher preach, and, with a friend, he visited Five 
 Points, then the notorious center of the slums of 
 New York, where he found himself in a missionary 
 Sunday-school. Being a stranger, he was called 
 on to speak to the children, and his homely and 
 kindly talk so pleased them that they cried, when he 
 paused, "Go on," "Oh, do go on." As he was 
 leaving the room, the teacher asked him his name. 
 "Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois," he simply an- 
 swered. 
 
 When the committee, which had invited him to New 
 York, called on him at the Astor House, and he saw 
 its members in their fashionable attire, he seemed 
 to be conscious of his own awkward appearance for 
 the first time in his life. He felt under the neces- 
 sity of apologizing for the wrinkled condition of his 
 suit, which he had brought with him in a valise; 
 and in beginning his speech he was again embar- 
 rassed as he looked at the well-clothed dignitaries 
 on the platform. The collar of his coat did not 
 
 140 
 
A NATIONAL FIGURE 
 
 fit, and he was troubled lest the audience noted 
 its bad habit of flying out of place whenever he 
 raised his arms. 
 
 The meeting, probably the most memorable ever 
 held in New York, took place in Cooper Institute. 
 It was an imposing occasion. "No man," one 
 newspaper said, " since the days of Clay and Webster, 
 has spoken to a larger assemblage of the intellect 
 and mental culture of our city." William Cullen 
 Bryant presided. Horace Greeley and men of light 
 and leading were in attendance. 
 
 The speech which he delivered was so packed 
 with fact and reason that it was stripped bare of 
 rhetorical flourish. It was a spacious review of 
 the entire constitutional, legislative, and political 
 history of the institution of slavery since the nation 
 was founded. Those who heard it felt their intel- 
 ligence complimented by the moderation, fairness, 
 and soberness of the learned argument, fit to be 
 addressed to a bench of judges. They were not 
 called on to listen to the special pleading of a trim- 
 ming politician, to suffer their prejudices to be 
 aroused by an artful stump speaker, or to reward 
 with guffaws his idle jests. 
 
 "Let us have faith," was the high keynote he 
 struck, "that right makes might, and, in that faith 
 kt us to the end, dare to do our duty as we under- 
 
 141 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 stand it." The four leading papers of the city re- 
 ported the speech in full, and Greeley said in the 
 Tribune, "No man ever before made such an im- 
 pression in his first appeal to a New York audience." 
 
 New York has been the pitfall of more than one 
 visiting statesman. It was there that Abraham 
 Lincoln proved to himself his power to lead th^ 
 nation and disproved to himself his original con- 
 ception that he was "not fit to be President." 
 
 From this great triumph, Lincoln went to New 
 England to see his son, Robert, who was at school, 
 and he spoke in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New 
 Hampshire. At New Haven he told his hearers 
 that twenty-five years before he was " a hired laborer, 
 mauling rails, or at work on a flatboat," and that 
 he wished every laborer, black as well as white, to 
 have the same chance to rise that he had enjoyed. 
 
 The professor of rhetoric in Yale College observed 
 with admiration the fine structure of his speech. 
 He not only took notes of it and held it up before 
 his class the next day as an example in English 
 composition, but he followed the speaker to a neigh- 
 boring city, that he might again sit at the feet of 
 this self-taught master of our mother tongue. 
 
 S42 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 Lincoln's nomination for President a mystery of politics. — All 
 signs pointed to the choice of Seward. — Seward men on 
 their arrival in Chicago amazed by Lincoln's popularity. — ■ 
 The great scene in the Wigwam at Chicago ; Lincoln nominated, 
 May 1 8, i860. — The third and final ballot: Lincoln of Illinois, 
 231; Seward of New York, 180; Chase of Ohio, 24; Bates 
 of Missouri, 22 ; Collamer of Vermont, 5. — How Lincoln 
 received the news. — His melancholy presentiment. — The 
 East stunned by the choice of the rail-splitter. — Douglas's 
 tribute to his old-time foe. — Lincoln's silence in the cam- 
 paign. — The "Wide Awakes" and their "rail-fence march." — 
 The result of the election, November 6, i860: Lincoln of 
 Illinois, Republican, 1,866,452; Douglas of Illinois, Northern 
 Democrat, 1,375,157; Breckinridge of Kentucky, Southern 
 Democrat, 847,953; Bell of Tennessee, Constitutional Union, 
 590,631. — Electoral vote: Lincoln^ 180; Breckinridge, 72; 
 Bell, 39; Douglas, 12. 
 
 As the time drew near for the meeting of the 
 Republican National Convention of i860, all signs 
 seemed to point to the choice of William H. Seward 
 of New York, and Lincoln's nomination for Presi- 
 dent remains one of the mysteries of politics. 
 
 A large majority of the representative men of the 
 Republican party throughout the country favored 
 Seward. Wealth and influence were enlisted on 
 
 H3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his side. He was easily the foremost member of 
 the party. State after state, in the West as well 
 as in the East, declared for him. Indeed, no 
 other candidate had succeeded in winning any 
 open support beyond the borders of his own 
 state. His opponents were regarded merely as 
 "favorite sons." 
 
 It has been estimated that nearly if not quite 
 two-thirds of the delegates went to the National 
 Convention with the expectation of voting for 
 Seward and nominating him. At least eight of 
 the twenty-two delegates from Illinois herself favored 
 him, while he left his place in the Senate and went 
 home to be in readiness to receive the committee 
 of notification. 
 
 Lincoln had consented to let the Republicans of 
 Illinois present his name, but chiefly with the idea 
 that in this way he might help the party in the 
 state and keep himself in line for Douglas's seat 
 in the Senate. He never was heard to express a 
 definite hope that he would be nominated for Pres- 
 ident. At one time he was afraid he would not 
 have the support even of his own state. He never 
 looked upon himself as a positive and aggressive 
 candidate. 
 
 "I suppose," he wrote to an Ohio man two months 
 before the Convention, "I am not the first choice 
 
 144 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 of a very great many. Our policy, then, is to give 
 no offense to others — leave them in a mood to come 
 to us if they shall be compelled to give up their first 
 love." 
 
 Only a few weeks in advance of the Convention, 
 he was for some time in Chicago, where he was en- 
 gaged in court. His presence in the city attracted 
 no attention among politicians or in the press. 
 Nothing occurred in the course of his stay that 
 foreshadowed the great acclaim with which, in that 
 very city a month hence, he was to be nominated 
 for the highest honor in the land. 
 
 Nevertheless, some of Lincoln's loyal old friends 
 on the circuit, the men whom he had been drawing 
 to him ever since he walked into New Salem with 
 his wardrobe in a bandanna handkerchief, were 
 not inactive. They quietly visited other states 
 and canvassed the public men at Washington, 
 sowing the seed for him as a second choice or as 
 the compromise candidate. 
 
 Yet his name was not always included in the list 
 of possibilities in the eastern press, and the East 
 did not seriously consider him in connection with 
 the Presidency until the meeting of the Illinois State 
 Convention, which was held only one week before 
 the assembling of the National Convention. 
 
 As Lincoln was going to this former gathering, 
 t> 145 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 some one expressed his surprise. "Oh," he smiled> 
 "I am not enough of a candidate to make it proper 
 for me to absent myself." When, however, the 
 State Convention assembled, with delegates from 
 all over Illinois in attendance, an unexpected en- 
 thusiasm for his candidacy was disclosed, and he 
 was unanimously named as the choice of the state. 
 
 At the right moment, John Hanks and another 
 man were marched into the hall, bearing two old 
 rails, which, Hanks declared, Lincoln had split when 
 fencing in his father's farm on the Sangamon, nearly 
 thirty years before. The assemblage went wild 
 over these symbols of their leader's humble toil, 
 and the rails were carried thence to Chicago, where 
 women garlanded them with flowers and where 
 they were as proudly displayed as if they had been 
 the swords of a military hero. 
 
 Chicago caught the Lincoln contagion, as the 
 western people streamed by the thousands into 
 the rude, unkempt city. It was the first National 
 Convention ever held there, and indeed the second 
 to be held west of the Alleghanies. The star of 
 empire, in its westward course, had now risen over 
 the great valley of the Mississippi, and a conscious- 
 ness of their supreme power in the nation was 
 dawning upon the stalwart builders of the new states. 
 
 Until now the South and the East had ruled, 
 
 146 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 At last the scepter was passing from their hands. 
 All the Presidents thus far had been born in the old 
 states of the seaboard. In Lincoln, the rail-splitter, 
 the West beheld itself typified, and its people rallied 
 to his standard. 
 
 As, with an easy assurance of command, the delega- 
 tions of distinguished men came out from the East 
 under the banners of Seward, they were dazed by 
 the rising and boisterous enthusiasm for his almost 
 unheard-of rival. 
 
 The New Yorkers slapped their pockets and 
 boasted of the money they could raise for the election, 
 if their man should be nominated. Their brilliant 
 bands and drilled clubs marched and counter- 
 marched in the dusty streets, but their lines wavered 
 under the cheering onslaughts of the Lincoln men. 
 Judge David Davis was on the scene, tirelessly 
 moving from headquarters to headquarters in his 
 missionary efforts, aided by a devoted group of 
 Lincoln's comrades on the old circuit. 
 
 Before the assembling of the Convention, Indi- 
 ana, a doubtful state of the first importance in the 
 election, came out boldly for the western candidate, 
 and demanded his nomination. Ohio, with a candi- 
 date of her own, began to drift toward Lincoln as 
 her final choice. Pennsylvania, also with a home 
 candidate, tended in the same direction. The 
 
 147 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Chicago newspapers united to swell the tide. Delega- 
 tions from all sections showed signs of weakening. 
 
 Seward's long record on old issues raised preju- 
 dices against him. Lincoln, on the other hand, 
 stood only for the living question of the day. Even 
 on this he had a popular advantage of Seward, 
 whose battles with the slave power in the Senate 
 through many years had spread abroad the fear 
 that he was a man of radical views, while Lincoln's 
 comparative obscurity made it easier for the con- 
 servatives to support him. 
 
 The Convention assembled in an immense wooden 
 wigwam, set up for the occasion, and ten thousand 
 spectators crowded into it. In the strategy of the 
 first two days the more skilful politicians of the 
 Seward following outgeneraled the opposition, and 
 the confidence in the nomination of the veteran 
 statesman of New York rose to its climax on the 
 very eve of the balloting. Nearly every press cor- 
 respondent, from Horace Greeley down, telegraphed 
 a prediction of Seward's victory. 
 
 The men from Lincoln's circuit did not lie down 
 to sleep that last night. Their candidate, in the 
 quiet of Springfield, had taken alarm lest their 
 zeal in his cause should blind them to the standards 
 of conduct, which were more precious to him than 
 any ambition. A messenger was despatched to 
 
 148 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 them, with this written warning from Lincoln, 
 * Make no contracts that will bind me." He would 
 rather be free in his country law office than sit in the 
 chair of the President with a mortgage on his head. 
 
 The nominating day came. The Seward clubs 
 marched the streets as in triumph. While they 
 paraded, however, the shouters for Lincoln swarmed 
 into the wigwam, and the proud paraders, when 
 they came, found awaiting them standing room only, 
 and little even of that. Many a partisan of Seward 
 was left to waste his cheers in the outer air. 
 
 In those days no speeches were made in placing 
 candidates in nomination. Their names were merely 
 proposed and seconded without remarks. The mo- 
 tions for Seward were wildly applauded. When, 
 however, Lincoln's nomination was moved, it was 
 seized upon as the signal for such an uproar as never 
 had been heard in a National Convention. A leader 
 had been carefully chosen for the purpose, a man of 
 extraordinary vocal power, and he had summoned 
 from the prairies a lusty-throated lieutenant, who, 
 though a Democrat, so delighted to hear himself 
 roar that he did not object to lending his lungs to 
 the enemy. 
 
 At the close of these vociferous exercises, men 
 held their breath while the roll of the states was 
 called. Here again was the "house divided against 
 
 ?49 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 itself." Nine states of the South did not respond, 
 for they sent no representatives to the Convention, 
 and the names of some of them were hissed and 
 jeered as the clerk called them. 
 
 The hopes of the Seward men fell as they heard 
 Maine give nearly one-third, New Hampshire two- 
 thirds, and Massachusetts a fifth of their votes to 
 Lincoln. Even New England was yielding to the 
 man from the West. On this first ballot, Seward 
 was more than a score of votes short of the neces- 
 sary majority. His total was 173 J against 102 for 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Vermont broke to the Illinoisan on the second 
 ballot and Pennsylvania swung into line with her 
 large delegation. Lincoln gained throughout the 
 roll-call and at the end Seward was only three and 
 a half votes ahead. 
 
 On the third ballot, Lincoln commanded a ma- 
 jority of the Rhode Island and New Jersey votes. 
 The Ohioans forsook their candidate, and most 
 of them went to Lincoln, who, at the close of the 
 call, stood within a vote and a half of victory. 
 A delegate from Ohio leaped up and announced 
 ihe change of four votes in that delegation to 
 Lincoln. This was more than enough. 
 
 A clerk, not waiting for the official announcement 
 *f the result, waved a tally sheet in the air and 
 
 I5JO 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 shouted "Abe Lincoln!" to a man on the roof, 
 who was anxiously peering through the skylight 
 and who now cried the news to the crowd in the 
 street. The mad cheering within was instantly 
 caught up without, while the echoes of a booming 
 cannon rolled over the waters of Lake Michigan. 
 
 A huge and horrible picture of the strange-look- 
 ing man of destiny was hurried into the hall, where 
 delegations, in an eagerness to change their votes 
 to the credit of the winning side, were frantically 
 striving to make themselves heard above the fierce 
 din. New York and Massachusetts dolefully bowed 
 to the will of the majority. Men staggered from 
 the exciting scene as if drunk, the victors overcome 
 by a sensation of joy, the vanquished by the burden 
 of their disappointment. 
 
 Lincoln relieved the strain of the convention days 
 by strolling the streets of Springfield, and by playing 
 "barn ball " — simply throwing a ball against a wall 
 and catching it as it bounded back. During the 
 progress of the first two ballots he sat in the telegraph 
 office and added up the votes as the bulletins came 
 in. Feeling that his nomination was assured, he 
 accepted an invitation to visit the office of the 
 local newspaper and wait there for the third ballot. 
 Soon a breathless messenger brought him the news 
 of his success as he sat in the editor's big arm-chair, 
 
 151 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "There is a little woman down at our house, who 
 will like to hear this," Lincoln said, after he had 
 read the despatch aloud. "I'll go down and tell 
 her," and he was gone before any one in the 
 I room had recovered from the effect of the report 
 sufficiently to offer congratulations. 
 
 As he reached the sidewalk, a group of laborers, 
 Irish immigrants, cheered him heartily. "Gentle- 
 men," he said to them, by way of acknowledging 
 their friendly tribute, "you had better come up 
 and shake my hand while you can; honors elevate 
 some men, you know." 
 
 When he had given the tidings to the " little woman," 
 who had been the first to believe in his greatness 
 and who had been the most constant in her confi- 
 dence that the world would recognize it, he went up- 
 stairs, and, exhausted by repressed excitement, lay 
 down on the couch in Mrs. Lincoln's sitting room. 
 
 While lying there he was disturbed to see in a mir- 
 ror two images of himself, which were alike, except 
 that one was not so clear as the other. The double 
 reflection awakened the primitive vein of supersti- 
 tion, always present in him. He rose and lay down 
 again to see if the paler shadow would vanish, but 
 he saw it once more. Some friends coming to call, 
 he left the room and its annoying glass. 
 
 When he was down town the next morning, the 
 
 **2 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 disagreeable impression of the day before returned 
 to him. He went home and reclined on the couch 
 to see if there were not something wrong with the 
 mirror itself. He was reassured to find it played 
 the same trick. When he tried to show it to Mrs. 
 Lincoln, however, the second reflection failed to 
 appear. Mrs. Lincoln took it as a sign that he 
 was to have two terms in the Presidency, but she 
 feared the paleness of one of the figures signified 
 that he would not live through the second term. 
 
 He himself never was free from an unhappy pre- 
 sentiment. "I am sure," he said to his partner 
 once, "I shall meet with some terrible end," and 
 he told him that in his opinion Caesar had been 
 foreordained to be slain by Brutus, and that Brutus 
 but obeyed a law of his being, which he was power- 
 less to overrule. 
 
 The committee of notables who came the day 
 after the nomination to place in his hand the standard 
 of the Republican party, found Lincoln struggling 
 to throw off the melancholy that had settled upon 
 him in the midst of his great success. They went 
 to the unpretending village house in which he lived, 
 curious and anxious to see the man who had been 
 chosen, they hardly knew how or why, to lead them 
 in a contest more momentous than any other in 
 the history of American politics. 
 
 153 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 On the committee were men from all the states 
 that took part in the Convention, not a few of whom 
 were more widely known than their nominee. As 
 they crowded into the parlor and approached him, 
 most of them looked on him for the first time, and 
 several have recorded the shock of disappointment 
 which they felt. They saw a man with none of 
 the outlines and with none of the manners of the 
 conventional statesman, a new kind of man in the 
 eyes of the visitors from the older states. 
 
 He stood there before them, stiff and dull, until 
 the time came for him to reply to the address of 
 the chairman. Then he lifted his head and his 
 face lighted up with strength and gentleness. After 
 his brief speech, his constraint entirely left him and 
 he was as free as if among his familiars. 
 
 The guests passed into the back parlor, where 
 Mrs. Lincoln greeted them, and the toasts of the 
 evening were drunk in water, for Lincoln declined 
 to open a lot of liquors, which some friends had pro- 
 vided, because he did not like the idea of changing 
 the custom of his home even if he was a candidate 
 for President. 
 
 "What is your height?" was Lincoln's greeting 
 to the tall member from Pennsylvania, for he was 
 always interested in tall men. 
 
 "Six feet, three. What is yours, Mr. Lincoln?" 
 
 iS4 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 "Six feet, four," Lincoln answered, ever proud of 
 his stature. 
 
 "Then Pennsylvania bows to Illinois, a land where 
 we thought there were none but little giants." 
 
 As the delegates left Chicago, after the nomination, 
 they sped homeward across prairies illuminated 
 with bonfires, and past villages whose rejoicings 
 rang out from all the belfries. The East, however, 
 was stunned by the seeming prank of fortune which 
 had crowned with the supreme honor a "third-rate 
 country lawyer," as a great New York journal said. 
 The eastern press spread before their readers the 
 scant biographical sketches of Lincoln which they 
 were able to gather, and hastened their reporters 
 to Springfield to "write up" this great unknown. 
 
 There was a grave fear in some quarters that 
 a noisy western crowd had stampeded the delegates 
 into the thoughtless choice of a smart local politician. 
 Many caught in their mind's eye only the grotesque 
 picture of an uncouth rail-splitter, pushing himself 
 forward by the arts of a frontier demagogue. "Who 
 is this huckster in politics ?" Wendell Phillips 
 demanded from Boston; "Who is this county court 
 advocate ?" 
 
 There was at least one man of note in Washington 
 who could speak intelligently of the nominee. This 
 was Stephen A. Douglas. He was among the first 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 at the capital to receive the news and he was able 
 to quiet the fears of his Republican associates h\ 
 the Senate. " Gentlemen," he said to them, "you 
 have nominated a very able and a very honest man." 
 
 Douglas himself stood as the candidate of the 
 Democratic party of the North, while Breckinridge? 
 was the candidate of the party in the South. Thus 
 divided, there was no chance of success for either. 
 
 Lincoln's election was reasonably certain from 
 the outset. He adopted at once the policy of letting 
 well enough alone. Aside from his little speech 
 of acceptance and his letter to the same point, con- 
 taining less than one hundred and fifty words, he 
 kept a strict silence throughout the campaign and 
 did not once leave Springfield. All the tempta- 
 tions of vanity to parade himself or his views, every 
 impulse to correct the misrepresentations and mis- 
 understandings of him, which were rife, he firmly 
 resisted. 
 
 The canvass developed a good deal of enthusiasm. 
 Wide Awake Clubs in their picturesque costumes 
 sprang up all over the country, and their zigzag 
 "rail-fence march," as it was outlined by the blazing 
 torches which they bore, in honor of "Old Abe, 
 the rail-splitter of the Sangamon," was in high favor. 
 
 In the election, Lincoln received a plurality of 
 the votes in every free state and a clear majority 
 
 l S 6 
 
THE STANDARD BEARER 
 
 over all in the electoral college. But in ten states 
 of the South not a ballot was cast for him. Thus 
 was made manifest the "house divided against 
 itself." 
 
 While the cheers of his proud and happy towns- 
 people filled the air on election night, the bitter 
 anguish of the nation's jeopardy was in his heart, 
 and in his face the shadow of his awful responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 i57 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 Lincoln confronted at the outset by a crisis in the life of the nation. 
 — The cotton states of the South refused to abide by the elec- 
 tion of a northern man on an antislavery platform. — The 
 North bewildered by the preparations for secession. — Many 
 Northerners gave up the Union. — "Wayward sisters, depart 
 in peace. " — Lincoln's beacon lights. — His firm stand for the 
 Union. — Men feared he could not be inaugurated in Wash- 
 ington. — Parting from his stepmother. — Her gloomy fore- 
 bodings. — His property. — Obliged to borrow money for 
 White House expenses. — His last visit to the old law office. 
 
 The usual portion of a President-elect, the en- 
 joyment of success and the good wishes of a united 
 people, was denied Lincoln. Instead, angry con- 
 fusion reigned around him. 
 
 The leaders of the far South, the cotton states, 
 had determined in advance not to abide by the 
 election of a northern man, standing on a platform 
 which declared it the right and duty of Congress to 
 forbid slavery in the territories. They, too, had 
 wearied of compromise. If they had supported 
 Douglas and his doctrine of "popular sovereignty," 
 Lincoln could not have been elected. They chose, 
 instead, to break with the Democratic party of the 
 North and follow Breckinridge, who had taken 
 
 ISS 
 
PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 his stand squarely against the power of the govern- 
 ment to set bounds to the institution of slavery. 
 
 As they seceded from their party rather than 
 accept the nomination of Douglas, so now the radi- 
 cal men at the South were ready to secede from the 
 Union itself rather than accept the election of Lin- 
 coln. South Carolina, without waiting for the 
 result of the voting, made the first move toward 
 secession, and the men of the neighboring states 
 gravely planned to join the revolt. 
 
 The booksellers of Charleston rejected an edition 
 of Harper s Weekly because it contained a portrait 
 and sketch of the President-elect, while a paper 
 in that city soon printed its Washington despatches 
 under the general headline, "Foreign News." 
 
 Most of the people of the North had carelessly 
 assumed that the threats of disunion, which they 
 had heard for many months, were uttered only for 
 political effect. Now as they saw grim preparations 
 for dividing the country, they were bewildered. A 
 babel of voices sprang up in the counsels of the free 
 states. 
 
 The Union as a national ideal did not yet inspire 
 the passion which all the people have felt for it since 
 it was cemented by the best blood of both the North 
 and the South and ransomed from destruction by 
 the treasure poured forth with a lavish hand in the 
 
 159 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 long Civil War. It had been for so many years the 
 football of sectional politics that in i860 there were 
 many, alike in the slave states and the free states, 
 who held it lightly. 
 
 There were Republicans, like Horace Greeley, 
 who insisted on letting the South go its own way t 
 and Henry Ward Beecher, who argued that secession 
 would be a good thing for the North. The Aboli- 
 tionists cried, "Let the Union slide," and Winfield 
 Scott, the venerable and patriotic Lieutenant-general 
 of the army, advised the Federal government to 
 say, "Wayward sisters, depart in peace." Seward 
 and a large section of the Republicans turned with 
 hope to the old policy of compromise, and not less 
 than forty measures, in this spirit, were presented to 
 Congress. 
 
 To the moral panic, a financial and industrial 
 panic was added. Banks suspended, trade was 
 paralyzed, and the national treasury nearly bank- 
 rupt. The country seemed to stand on the brink 
 of wholesale disaster. The Mayor of New York 
 solemnly called on the city council to consider the 
 advisability of the secession of Manhattan Island 
 and the establishment of the municipality as a free 
 city. 
 
 There were signs in the North of a violent re- 
 action in sentiment on the question of slavery. 
 
 160 
 
PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 Again, a broadcloth mob rose up in Boston to dis- 
 perse an Abolition meeting, and one hundred 
 policemen were required for the safe conduct of 
 Wendell Phillips through the streets of that city. 
 Many Republicans lamented the election of Lincoln, 
 as the cause of all the distress which had befallen 
 the land. 
 
 Meanwhile the President-elect went his silent 
 way. He continued to occupy the room in the 
 State House which he had adopted as his office 
 at the time of his nomination. Its door was un- 
 guarded and all could freely enter. Office seekers 
 swarmed about him and friends surrounded him, 
 yet he dwelt apart. 
 
 When he left the telegraph office in which he 
 received the returns on election night, the frame- 
 work of his cabinet was complete in his mind. 
 With characteristic self-reliance, he acted wholly on 
 his own judgment. He did not mention the subject 
 even to Herndon. "He never confided to me any 
 of his purposes," said Judge David Davis. When 
 the time came for him to prepare his inaugural 
 address, he withdrew to a room over a store and 
 there wrote it in solitude. 
 
 It is probably true that he could look no farther 
 than others into the dark and troubled future. In 
 common with most of the northern leaders, he shared 
 M i6x 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the delusions of hope. The coming of a great 
 war was not foreseen by Lincoln. While, however, 
 he had no set of policies all made up and ready 
 for the emergency, he had principles, and he was 
 steadfastly true to them. They were his safe guide 
 in the storm, which buffeted other statesmen about 
 like corks in a surf. His course was marked out 
 solely by two ideals, — the Union and the restric- 
 tion of slavery. These were his beacon lights, 
 and he steered toward them with an unfaltering 
 hand. 
 
 Only once since election had his voice been heard 
 in public. To those who were celebrating his 
 success, he spoke five short sentences, the last of 
 which expressed the spirit of the whole, "Let us 
 at all times remember that all American citizens 
 are brothers of a common country, and should dwell 
 together in the bonds of fraternal feeling." 
 
 From every direction, demands came for him to 
 speak or act, but he resolutely refrained from adding 
 to the volume of idle sound. There was an anxious 
 desire all over the country to take the measure of 
 the untried leader. In a letter to Senator Henry 
 Wilson of Massachusetts, Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's 
 partner, drew this remarkably just portrait: "Lin- 
 coln is a man of heart, ay, as gentle as a woman's 
 and as tender — but he has a will as strong as iron. 
 
PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 He, therefore, loves all mankind, hates slavery 
 and every form of despotism. . . . 
 
 "Lincoln will fail here, namely, if a question 
 of political economy — if any question comes up 
 which is doubtful, questionable, which no man can 
 demonstrate, then his friends can rule him; but, 
 when on justice, right, liberty, the government, 
 the Constitution, and the Union, then you may all 
 stand aside; he will rule then, and no man can 
 rule him — no set of men can do it. There is no 
 fail here. This is Lincoln, and you mark my pre- 
 diction. You and I must keep the people right; 
 God will keep Lincoln right." 
 
 He summoned distinguished men to Springfield, 
 and some of them have confessed the disagreeable 
 surprise they felt on first beholding the new chieftain. 
 As likely as not, when they pulled the bell of his 
 modest home, he himself in his " snufT-colored and 
 slouchy pantaloons, open black vest, held by a 
 few brass buttons," would let them in. While he 
 talked in his quaint way, perhaps his two little 
 boys would clamber over him, poking their fingers 
 in his eyes and mouth, without reproof or even 
 notice from their father. 
 
 Through these visitors and through confidential 
 letters to friends, the President-elect put forth, 
 little by little, the steadying influence of his own 
 
 163 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 firm conviction of duty. Leaders were inspired by 
 him to take heart in the cause of the Union. As 
 early as November 15 he gave it as his impression 
 that "the government possesses both the authority 
 and the power to maintain its integrity. ,, 
 
 In the midst of the projects for patching up a peace, 
 the wavering in Washington received this sharp 
 warning, written on December 11: "Entertain no 
 proposals for a compromise in regard to the extension 
 of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under 
 again; all our labor is lost and sooner or later must 
 be done over again. . . . The tug has to come, 
 and better now than later." Two days afterward 
 came this clear injunction, "Hold firm as a chain of 
 steel." 
 
 To a famous and influential politician of New 
 York he wrote, in this same week, "My opinion 
 is that no state can, in any way, lawfully get out of 
 the Union without the consent of the others." On 
 December 21 he directed a friend in Washington 
 to present his compliments to General Scott and to 
 "tell him confidentially I shall be obliged to him to 
 be as well prepared as he can to either hold or re- 
 take the forts (in the seceded states), as the case 
 may require, at and after the inauguration." 
 
 "Is it desired," he wrote a southern acquaintance, 
 * that I shall shift the ground upon which I was 
 
 164 
 
PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 elected ? I cannot do it." He would not repent 
 of "the crime of having been elected," and would 
 neither apologize nor beg forgiveness. Assuring 
 Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, with whom he 
 served in Congress and who was to become the 
 Vice-president of the Confederate states, that the 
 South would be in no more danger of interference 
 in its affairs under his administration than it was 
 under Washington's, he frankly added, "I suppose, 
 however, that does not meet the case. You think 
 slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we 
 think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That, 
 I suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only sub- 
 stantial difference between us." 
 
 If Lincoln was able to show forbearance toward 
 the South, he had no patience with the frantic cry 
 for compromise which rose from men of business 
 in the North, intent more on profit than on prin- 
 ciple. "They seek a sign," he sternly declared, 
 "and no sign shall be given them. ... I am not 
 insensible to any commercial or financial depres- 
 sion that may exist, but nothing is to be gained 
 by fawning around the 'respectable scoundrels' who 
 got it up. Let them go to work to repair the mis- 
 chief of their own doing and then perhaps they 
 will be less greedy to do the like again." 
 
 Each day brought some new menace to the Union, 
 
 165 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and it became doubtful if Lincoln would be inaugu- 
 rated in peace. Edwin M. Stanton, then Attorney- 
 general of the United States, said, toward the end of 
 January, he did not think it probable or hardly pos- 
 sible that the government would be in Washington 
 on the fourth of March. 
 
 The seceding states were striving to draw Virginia 
 with them. If the Old Dominion could be induced 
 to secede, Maryland would be likely to follow her. 
 Thus the Federal capital would be surrounded 
 by secession states and cut off from the North. 
 The Confederacy would make Washington its own 
 capital and leave the new President of the United 
 States to set up his government somewhere else. 
 
 Moreover, there was a chance that Lincoln's 
 election would not be declared by Congress. The 
 Republicans were in a minority in the Senate, and 
 the presiding officer, whose duty it was to open 
 the returns, was Vice-president Breckinridge, the 
 southern candidate for President who had been 
 defeated at the polls. 
 
 It was feared under these circumstances that the 
 Vice-president and the unfriendly majority in the 
 Senate would prevent the counting of the votes and 
 the declaration of the result. There was much 
 anxiety on this account, and Lincoln decided to stay 
 in Springfield until the question was settled. Happily 
 
 166 
 
PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 the Vice-president and the Senate discharged their 
 duty in an orderly manner. 
 
 When it became an assured fact that the vote 
 would be counted, the President-elect was ready 
 to start on his journey to Washington. With Mrs. 
 Lincoln he had paid a brief visit to Chicago, and 
 there she bought for the inauguration the first silk 
 dress she ever owned. As they were unpacking 
 their purchases, after their return home, the husband 
 remarked: "Well, wife, there is one thing likely 
 to come out of this scrape anyhow. We are going 
 to have some new clothes." 
 
 As he was about to leave Springfield to assume 
 the exalted station to which he had been called, he 
 did not forget the simple woman who had brought 
 sunshine into his desolate boyhood, whose faithful 
 hands had clothed him, and who had given him 
 a chance to go to school and learn his letters. His 
 good stepmother was still living, and he was loyally 
 caring for her in her old age. 
 
 He now turned from his high honors and heavy 
 tasks to visit her in her home. The people came 
 out in great crowds to cheer him on his way to 
 his humble destination. When his brief visit was 
 finished, the noble woman parted from him with 
 gloomy forebodings. She feared his enemies would 
 kill him. In the throng of old neighbors and 
 
 167 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 friends who poured into his office at the State 
 House to bid him farewell, Hannah Armstrong came 
 from Clary's Grove. She, too, was filled with anxiety 
 for his safety. 
 
 Lincoln had found a tenant for his house and 
 had sold its furnishings. This dwelling, together 
 with a piece of land in Iowa which he had received 
 from the government as a reward for his service 
 in the Black Hawk War and a house lot in Lincoln, 
 Illinois, a town which had been named for him, 
 constituted the whole of his property. In its entirety 
 it would have brought ten or twelve thousand dollars. 
 He had so little ready money, however, that he was 
 forced to borrow in order to pay his expenses in 
 the White House, until he could draw the first 
 quarterly instalment of his salary as President. 
 
 On his last day in Springfield he went to the old 
 law office in the little back room, where his great 
 duty had found him, and there stretched himself on 
 the well-worn lounge. As he gazed up at the dusty 
 ceiling, he feelingly recalled to his partner their 
 long association, in which they never had a "cross 
 word." 
 
 Then he referred in a sentimental vein to their 
 sign, which had swung on its hinges until it was 
 nearly covered with rust, and he asked "Billy," 
 as he called Herndon, to let it hang there until he 
 
 168 
 
PRESIDENT-ELECT 
 
 came back from Washington, and then they would 
 go on practising law just as if he never had been 
 President. 
 
 Rising and walking to the door, however, he spoke 
 of a presentiment that he would not return alive. 
 Herndon chided him for his lack of philosophy. 
 "But," he insisted, "it is in keeping with my phi- 
 losophy." Turning away with a mournful face, 
 he walked down the stairs and passed under the 
 creaking sign for the last time. 
 
 169 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 GOING TO WASHINGTON 
 
 ILincoln's eloquent farewell to his Springfield neighbors, February 
 II, 1861. — "Not knowing when or whether ever I may re- 
 turn." — His journey eastward. — His greeting to a little girl, 
 at whose suggestion he had grown a beard. — Caricatured as 
 a sot. — Coldly received in New York. — Pleading for the 
 threatened Union. — His solemn pledge at Independence Hall 
 on Washington's birthday. — Warned of a plot to murder him 
 as he passed through Baltimore. — Stealing into Washington in 
 the night. — His unexpected arrival at the capital at dawn, 
 February 23. 
 
 Lincoln, standing on the rear platform of his 
 special car in the train that was about to bear him 
 away to Washington, lifted his hand as a signal for 
 silence. He stood there, a solemn figure, and a 
 spell fell upon the neighbors who had gathered 
 at the Springfield station on a chill and dreary 
 February morning to bid him farewell. 
 
 He had removed his hat and they, too, bared their 
 heads to the falling snowflakes. While he gazed at 
 them in silence for several seconds, his lip quivered 
 with grief and there was a tear on his cheek. When 
 at last he had summoned the strength to speak, his 
 husky tone added to the impressiveness of the few 
 tad words he chose for the leave-taking: — 
 
 190 
 
GOING TO WASHINGTON 
 
 "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. With- 
 out the assistance of that Divine Being who ever 
 attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assist- 
 ance, 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 commend me, I bid you an affec- 
 tionate farewell/ ' 
 
 The train pulled away, followed by the brimming 
 eyes of the people, and, until it had disappeared 
 from their view, they could see Lincoln, still stand- 
 ing on the platform of his car, looking at the little 
 town where fame had sought him out. 
 
 In his young manhood he had walked its streets, 
 a barefoot law student. In one of its halls he had 
 sounded the warning that a house divided against 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 itself cannot stand, and now his was the chosen 
 hand to avert the national calamity which he then 
 foretold. Within its limits was the only home 
 that stood between the log-cabins of his early days 
 and the White House toward which he was speed- 
 ing. On the morrow he would reach his fifty-second 
 birthday. 
 
 If, as he said, the task laid upon him was greater 
 than that which fell to Washington, with equal 
 truth he said at another time in the course of his 
 journey, "I hold myself, without mock modesty, 
 the humblest of all the individuals who have been 
 elected President of the United States." No other 
 President, probably no chief of state anywhere 
 in the civilized world, has risen from the social 
 depths in which Lincoln's fortunes were cast by 
 the lottery of birth. No other man clothed with 
 rule has embodied so completely the innumerable 
 race of common men. 
 
 Furthermore, no other President had ever been 
 elected with so little known in his favor, with so 
 slight a prestige. The country was a stranger 
 even to his name five years before. He really had 
 been on the national stage less than three years. 
 The only executive place he ever had held was 
 the post-office of New Salem, which he "carried 
 in his hat." Since the day when the people were 
 
 172 
 
GOING TO WASHINGTON 
 
 surprised by the news of his nomination for Presi- 
 dent, he had not made a single appearance out- 
 side of Springfield, and had not addressed in all 
 more than three or four hundred words to the public. 
 Naturally the people now watched him with narrow- 
 eyed curiosity as he emerged before them. 
 
 His tour lasted nearly two weeks, and included 
 stops in the principal cities on the way to Washing- 
 ton. All the simple, homely ways of the man were 
 caught up and magnified or distorted, for men were 
 unused to seeing such a figure as his standing on 
 die heights of greatness. 
 
 A little girl had written him, begging him to grow 
 a beard, because she thought it would improve 
 his appearance. When he came to the town in 
 New York where she lived, he called for her, and 
 said as he kissed her, "You see, Grace, I have let 
 these whiskers grow for you." The incident was 
 ridiculed in the press, and one paper carried its 
 report of the day under the flippant heading, — 
 "Old Abe kissed by a pretty girl." 
 
 The unusual blend of humor and earnestness in 
 Lincoln's composition was new to the nation at 
 large, and the cartoonist of the principal illustrated 
 paper, having read in the daily press that Lincoln 
 kept those around him on his travels in a contin- 
 ual roar, pictured this life-long foe of intemperance 
 
 *73 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as a sot with a whiskey glass in his hand, raising 
 a laugh among some drunken loafers who sur- 
 rounded him, while near by stood a hearse bearing 
 the corpse of the Union. 
 
 The city of New York received him with cold 
 disdain. Wall Street was charging the tottering 
 government ten and twelve per cent interest; the 
 Broadway crowds were silent if not sullen when 
 he passed. At the opera, where he appeared in 
 black gloves, an amused smile ran round the boxes. 
 
 The hearts of the plain people, however, re- 
 sponded to the one clear note which he sounded 
 in all his addresses. Everywhere he pleaded for 
 the threatened Union, not as a political dogma, nor 
 yet as a commercial asset, but as the fairest hope 
 that earth held for the masses of mankind. Peace 
 was in his mind always, but he aroused much en- 
 thusiasm in the Assembly of New Jersey, when 
 with a good deal of vigor he said, "It may be neces- 
 sary to put the foot down firmly. ,, 
 
 The climax of his appeals to patriotism was ap- 
 propriately reached when he spoke in Independence 
 Hall at Philadelphia, on Washington's birthday. 
 "I have never had a feeling politically," he de- 
 clared, "that did not spring from the sentiments 
 embodied in the Declaration of Independence," 
 which he held up as the ideal of an equal chance for 
 
 i74 
 
GOING TO WASHINGTON 
 
 all men, not here alone, but throughout the world. 
 "'If it (the Union) cannot be saved without giving 
 up that principle, I was about to say I would rather 
 be assassinated on this spot than surrender it." 
 
 He was not delivering a prepared speech. He 
 had come, as he understood, merely to hoist the 
 flag, and, stirred by the great associations of the 
 hallowed hall, he spoke out of a full heart. He 
 expressed the fear that he might have been betrayed 
 by his emotions into saying something indiscreet; 
 "but," he added, "I have said nothing that I am 
 not willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of 
 Almighty God to die by." 
 
 There was one troublesome point on the route 
 of the President-elect's journey. To get to the 
 capital he must pass over the soil of Maryland, 
 a southern state, and rumors continually came to 
 the party that the notorious "plug uglies" of Bal- 
 timore were preparing to mob him. Every op- 
 portunity would be afforded riotous persons on such 
 an occasion, for, in those days, railway cars destined 
 for Washington were hauled by horses through the 
 streets of Baltimore. Moreover, every other city 
 had offered its hospitality to the President-elect, 
 but no official invitation had been received from 
 the metropolis of this slave state. 
 
 Allan Pinkerton, the noted detective, came to 
 
 175 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln with the story of a plot against him in 
 Baltimore, and Seward sent a messenger from 
 Washington with similar information. Those in 
 his party who were closest to him were consulted. 
 On their advice he decided to slip away from Harris- 
 burg, where he was at the time, secretly return to 
 Philadelphia on a special train, and there board the 
 regular night train from New York to Washington. 
 
 He keenly felt the humiliating spectacle which would 
 be presented of the chosen chief of the people steal- 
 ing into their capital, as he said, "like a thief in 
 the night." He appreciated the ridicule which 
 the step would bring upon him, not only from the 
 South, but from his critics in the North. He de- 
 termined, however, to forego the vanity of display- 
 ing his personal courage, rather than take the least 
 risk of incurring the national calamity which his 
 assassination would entail. 
 
 In accordance with the plans made, Lincoln was 
 called from the hotel dining room at six o'clock in 
 the evening. Most of those who had accompanied 
 him from Springfield were not let into the secret. 
 He went to his chamber, where he changed to his 
 traveling clothes, and where he left his poor wife 
 to sob the night away. She begged to be permitted 
 to go with him, but it was deemed best that she 
 should stay behind. 
 
 176 
 
GOING TO WASHINGTON 
 
 Coming down from his room with a soft hat in 
 his pocket and a shawl over his arm, he stepped 
 into the waiting carriage of the Governor of Penn- 
 sylvania. A loud order was given to the driver to 
 take them to the Governors mansion, but when 
 the carriage was safely away from the hotel, the 
 order was changed and they were driven to the 
 railway, where the train was in readiness. An 
 official secretly climbed a telegraph pole outside 
 the city and grounded the wires leading to Baltimore, 
 so there would be no chance of any communication 
 of the news in that direction. 
 
 At Philadelphia the President-elect entered a 
 general sleeping car and went to his section un- 
 recognized. Only Pinkerton and one other man 
 were with him, the latter a lawyer of giant build 
 and courage from the old circuit, Ward H. Lamon, 
 who was loaded down with ugly weapons. 
 
 The train passed safely through sleepy and un- 
 suspecting Baltimore, and at dawn, when it drew 
 into the station at Washington, an Illinois Congress- 
 man stood behind a pillar scanning the passengers 
 as they came out of their cars. Lincoln and Lamon 
 were the last to appear, and, joined by the Congress- 
 man, they went into the street, where they hired 
 a carriage like any other strangers. At the hotel 
 it was some time before the flurried attendant* 
 * 177 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 could prepare suitable quarters for the unexpected 
 guest. 
 
 Meanwhile the anxious and sleepless waiters in 
 Harrisburg, who had restored the wires to working 
 order at the hour when the train was due to arrive 
 at its destination, were relieved by the receipt of 
 this cipher message, "Plums delivered nuts safely." 
 
 The startling information that the President-elect 
 was in the city quickly spread over waking Wash- 
 ington, and was sped on the telegraph to every 
 corner of the land. And thus Abraham Lincoln, 
 sixteenth President of the United States, entered 
 the capital of the republic. 
 
 178 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE INAUGURATION 
 
 Washington, a part of the "enemy's country," in no welcoming 
 mood toward Lincoln and his party. — The clamor of office 
 seekers and the intrigues of leaders filled the air. — The struggle 
 of factions to dictate the choice of a cabinet. — " If that slate 
 breaks again, it will break at the top." — Seward resigned, 
 but Lincoln refused to "let him take the first trick." — Assas- 
 sination feared. — The President-elect driven from Willard's 
 Hotel to the Capitol, surrounded by soldiers, March 4, 1861. 
 — A historic group. — Guarded by rifles and cannon while 
 taking the oath. — A melancholy ceremony. — Lincoln's 
 earnest and eloquent plea for peace and union. 
 
 Washington received Lincoln in no welcoming 
 mood. The Federal city really was in the "enemy's 
 country/' It was a southern slaveholding com- 
 munity which hoped and believed the Northerners 
 would soon be driven out by the secessionists, whose 
 open emissaries were everywhere, even in places 
 of power. 
 
 The new party about to be installed in office 
 was a stranger to the people of the city, who were 
 mostly Democrats. Their party had administered 
 the government for nearly sixty years with slight 
 interruption, and there was a feeling that no other 
 party was capable of governing the country. Wash- 
 
 m 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ington, therefore, frowned upon the eager Republican 
 office seekers, largely wearing the manners and garb 
 of the new West, as they thronged the streets and 
 swarmed the Capitol and the hotel lobbies. 
 
 Clamor and intrigue filled the air which the 
 President-elect breathed, and a faction fight raged 
 around him over the formation of his cabinet. 
 
 It was generally believed that some one of the 
 more distinguished Republican leaders, or at least 
 some group of experienced politicians, would control 
 this new and inexperienced man. Few dreamed 
 that it was to be a Lincoln administration. One 
 day it looked as if Seward had captured the Presi- 
 dent-elect; but the next day the Chase element or 
 some other appeared to have gained the upper hand 
 of the kindly, simple man who told stories to his 
 callers and sent them away without permitting them 
 to draw from him a positive opinion on any subject. 
 
 Finally, when an Illinois friend rushed in with 
 the rumor that the Seward faction had "broken 
 the cabinet slate," Lincoln said firmly, "If that 
 slate breaks again, it will break at the top." This 
 proved to be true. Seward, whose name was written 
 at the top, failed in his effort to dictate other ap- 
 pointments, and only two days before the inaugura- 
 tion sent the President-elect a letter declining to 
 accept the Secretaryship of State. 
 
THE INAUGURATION 
 
 Lincoln made no reply unfil he was about to go 
 to the Capitol to be sworn in. Remarking then to 
 his private secretary, "I can't afford to let Seward 
 take the first trick," he wrote urging him to accept 
 and giving him two days in which to reconsider his 
 refusal. In the end, the framework of the cabinet 
 stood as he had constructed it in his mind on elec- 
 tion night in Springfield. 
 
 On the day of the inauguration, when the White 
 House carriage drew up in front of Lincoln's hotel, 
 President Buchanan, an old man in an old-fashioned 
 swallow-tail coat, hobbled out and into the hoteL 
 to reappear a few minutes later with the President- 
 elect, who was dressed in a new black suit and a 
 shining high hat, and who carried in his hand a 
 gold-headed cane. General Scott had closed all 
 the liquor saloons in the city and carefully arranged 
 his small military force to thwart any attempt at 
 assassination and to prevent disorder among the 
 thousands of hostile persons in the city, who looked 
 with sullen faces on the transfer of the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The presidential carriage moved along Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue between double files of cavalry, 
 while soldiers marched in front and behind it. 
 Groups of riflemen were stationed on various roofs 
 which commanded the thoroughfare, watching for 
 
 i8r 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the slightest sign of hostility, and cavalrymen 
 guarded every approach to the avenue by side 
 streets. 
 
 A feeling of relief was manifest in both houses 
 of Congress when it was known the journey had 
 been made without trouble, and that Lincoln had 
 arrived at the Capitol. 
 
 Shortly after twelve o'clock the President and the 
 President-elect appeared at the eastern front, in 
 the sight of the waiting thousands on the broad 
 esplanade. Overhead, ugly derricks hung about 
 the yet unfinished dome, while the great bronze 
 statue of Freedom still stood on the ground biding 
 the time when it should be swung into its lofty place 
 above and crown the completed Capitol. A battal- 
 ion of soldiers was drawn up near the steps, and from 
 the windows, riflemen scanned the scene with vigi- 
 lant eyes, while a battery of flying artillery was 
 posted in the rear of the crowd. 
 
 As Lincoln stepped to the place where he 
 was to be invested with his stupendous respon- 
 sibilities to his country and mankind, he was the 
 center of a remarkable group of historical char- 
 acters. 
 
 Within reach of his arm stood the President, 
 James Buchanan, about to pass into retirement 
 after forty years of distinguished public service; 
 
 182 
 
THE INAUGURATION 
 
 Roger B. Taney, the learned and venerable Chief- 
 justice, from whose Dred Scott decision Lincoln 
 had made his successful appeal to the nation; 
 Stephen A. Douglas, a witness here to the final 
 victory of his life-long rival; John C. Breckinridge, 
 another defeated candidate for President in the 
 recent contest, who but a few minutes before had 
 laid down the gavel of the Vice-president, and who 
 ere many months would be in arms against the 
 Union; finally, William H. Seward, who was con- 
 soling himself for the loss of the Presidency with 
 the hope that he might become the master of this 
 novice, whom the Chicago Convention had strangely 
 preferred to him. 
 
 Still another interesting figure was there, a man 
 of striking appearance, who waved his outspread 
 hands, and with a peculiar pride in his bearing 
 introduced to the people Abraham Lincoln as the 
 President-elect of the United States. This was 
 E. D. Baker, now a Senator from Oregon, but 
 formerly one of that coterie of budding statesmen 
 who gathered in front of the open fire in the store 
 over which Lincoln slept in the early days of his 
 life in Springfield — the ambitious youth who wept 
 over the Constitution of the United States when he 
 learned from it that a native of England like him- 
 self could not aspire to the Presidency. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 As Lincoln moved forward to begin his address, 
 only a faint cheering greeted him from his half- 
 unfriendly audience. Removing his brilliant new 
 silk hat, he was seeking a resting place for it, when 
 Douglas stretched forth his hand and took it and 
 held it throughout the ceremony. By this simple 
 but dramatic act of courtesy, the Democratic leader 
 of the North signalized alike to the friends and to 
 the enemies of the Union his readiness to serve and 
 sustain the new President in the crisis which con- 
 fronted him. 
 
 All the exultant joyousness of an inauguration 
 was missing from Lincoln's. Like his childhood, 
 like his boyhood, like his young manhood, like his 
 love and marriage, his inaugural day must be tinged 
 with melancholy and clouded with forebodings of 
 evil. Every other President had received his great 
 honor from a united country. It came to him 
 from a Union torn by discord and broken by seces- 
 sion. 
 
 Each of his predecessors could cheer himself 
 with the hope that he might have the happy fortune 
 to hand down the shield of the nation with an added 
 star. With Lincoln, on the contrary, it was a very 
 different question. How many stars must he lose 
 and how many could he save, was the heart-wracking 
 problem with which he grappled as he stood there 
 
 184 
 
THE INAUGURATION 
 
 on the steps of the Capitol registering in Heaven, 
 as he said, a solemn oath to preserve, protect, and 
 defend the Constitution and the Union. 
 
 Breasting the surging tide of secession, he reasoned 
 with the South in a spirit of calmness and fairness. 
 Though they might leave the Union, he reminded 
 the southern people, the North and the South still 
 would have to dwell together, side by side, face to 
 face. Physically the sections could not separate; 
 no wall could be reared between them. The two 
 peoples, he argued, could get along better as fellow- 
 citizens bound by the Constitution and the laws, 
 than as aliens living together under treaties. He 
 implored the discontented not to act in haste. The 
 government would not assail them; there could 
 be no conflict unless they brought it on. "In your 
 hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen," he told 
 them, "and not in mine, is the momentous issue 
 of civil war." 
 
 One of the most beautiful and eloquent passages 
 xO be found in the pages of oratory brought to its 
 climax this great plea for peace and union : — 
 
 "I am loath 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 chords of memory, stretch- 
 ing from every battlefield and patriot grave to every 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 living heart and hearth-stone 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." 
 
 186 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 CALLED TO THE HELM IN A STORM 
 
 Seven states in secession, and seven more on the verge of it. — 
 The North itself divided. — A month crowded with hopes 
 and fears. — The inner Lincoln keeping his own counsel, 
 while the outer man in good-humored patience bore with the 
 wild scramble for office. — The White House mobbed by place 
 hunters. — Charles Francis Adams shocked by the President. 
 — Seward convinced of Lincoln's unfitness for his great task, 
 boldly proposed, April I, 1861, that the President relinquish 
 his powers and responsibilities. — A masterful reply. — The 
 Cabinet on March 15 advised the surrender of Fort Sumter, 
 but finally, on March 29, agreed with the President that it 
 should be provisioned. — Lincoln's sleepless night. — His or- 
 ders to General Scott. — Expedition to reenforce Fort Pickens, 
 Florida, sailed April 6. — Ships bearing provisions for Fort 
 Sumter, South Carolina, sailed from New York April 9. 
 
 With a heavy heart, Lincoln entered the White 
 House under an angry sky. Other Presidents have 
 lightly stepped across its threshold as to the sun- 
 lit summit of their ambition. He had not sought 
 it; he never had aspired to it. The Presidency 
 came to him, not as a prize to be enjoyed, but as 
 a cross to be borne. As Emerson said, he was sent 
 to the helm in a tornado. 
 
 The bravest well might shrink from a burden 
 such as his. Seven states — South Carolina, Georgia, 
 
 187 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas 
 — had already declared their separation from the 
 Union and set up the government of a new repub- 
 lic at Montgomery under the Presidency of Jeffer- 
 son Davis. 
 
 Their senators and representatives had withdrawn 
 from the Congress of the United States. The Fed- 
 eral courts had been suspended among them, and the 
 stars and stripes hauled down from the flagstafFs 
 of the Federal buildings within their borders, while 
 officers in the army were daily resigning their com- 
 missions to "go with their states/' for had they 
 not been taught from the text-books at West Point 
 that secession was right ? Meanwhile seven other 
 slave states were wavering between union and dis- 
 union. 
 
 Public opinion at the North also was confused 
 and divided. No one knew how to compel a state 
 by force of arms to stay in the Union, to keep its 
 senators and representatives in their seats in Con- 
 gress, to provide jurors for the Federal courts, and 
 to pei form generally its simple duties under the 
 national government. All the northern people 
 dreaded war, and hesitated to take any step that 
 would bring on an armed conflict. 
 
 Lincoln kept his own counsel through all this 
 soul-torturing struggle. "I never knew him to 
 
 188 
 
CALLED TO THE HELM IN A STORM 
 
 ask advice about anything," an associate on the 
 old circuit has said, and now in meeting the gravest 
 responsibility that ever fell to a President, he relied 
 on his own sense of right and duty. 
 
 Again, as in every hour of trial, the inner Lincoln 
 walked alone; the outer man good-naturedly shuffled 
 along through the routine of the day's work as if 
 free from any heavier care. When Senator Sherman 
 introduced his brother, William T., who had lately 
 resigned as military instructor in a Louisiana college 
 and who was full of the news of the preparation for 
 war which the South was making, the latter was 
 amazed by Lincoln's flippant reply, "Oh, well! 
 I guess we'll manage to keep house and get 
 along without you soldier-fellows." How much the 
 President was deluding himself with false hopes of 
 peace, and how much he was disguising his fears 
 of war, his callers could not tell. 
 
 He listened with smiling patience to the stories 
 of the petty ambitions of office seekers, and turned 
 away senators and representatives hungry for patron- 
 age, with homely jokes aptly applied to the case 
 of each. The country never has seen such another 
 ugly scramble for spoils as raged then when the 
 nation was in its death throes. "I am like a man," 
 Lincoln said, "who is busy letting rooms in one end 
 of his house while the other end is afire." 
 
 189 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The prize of public office was now within reach 
 of the Republicans for the first time, and they lost 
 their heads in a wild stampede for the loaves and 
 fishes. "The grounds, halls, stairways, and closets 
 of the White House,'' Seward said in a letter to his 
 wife, "are filled with applicants." One long line 
 moved in as another long line moved out. They 
 swaggered about the house with the air of proprie- 
 torship, and threatened the doorkeepers who tried 
 to restrain them. 
 
 Whenever the door to Lincoln's room opened 
 for a second, they rushed toward it merely to catch 
 a glimpse of him. As the place was then arranged, 
 the President could not pass from his office to the 
 dining room or to his sleeping chamber without 
 forcing his way through this noisy, jostling crowd. 
 To get a drink of water, he must expose himself 
 to their clamor. Watching for these chances, the 
 importunate regularly waylaid him, stuffing their 
 applications and indorsements in his hand, or whis- 
 pering their wants in his ear as he indulgently 
 paused and inclined his head. 
 
 When, in order to get a breath of fresh air, he 
 went to drive with Mrs. Lincoln, men ran out to his 
 carriage and tossed their papers in his lap. Even as 
 he was walking in the street, he was stopped by 
 a job hunter. "No, no," Lincoln said with a wave 
 
 iqo 
 
CALLED TO THE HELM IN A STORM 
 
 » 
 
 of his hand, "I won't open shop here." He com- 
 plained to a friend of the hunger for office which 
 afflicted mankind, but with his inveterate sense of 
 humor and fairness, he admitted he himself was not 
 exempt from this appetite. 
 
 He was always practical. He knew how men were 
 reached, and he felt it would strengthen him and his 
 new administration to satisfy this appetite for place 
 as well as he could. He bore it as a duty, with a 
 cheerfulness that was severely taxed, but which 
 seldom failed. 
 
 One day Secretary Seward took Charles Francis 
 Adams, the newly appointed minister to England, 
 to see the President. Adams was about to leave 
 on his important mission to London, and was 
 anxious to receive his instructions. As he sat in 
 the White House, there came to his mind the im- 
 posing dignity of his father's figure, when John 
 Quincy Adams presided over the mansion, and 
 while his thought was dwelling upon it, Lincoln, 
 "a tall, large-featured, shabbily dressed man, of 
 uncouth appearance, slouched into the room," 
 his "much-kneed, ill-fitting trousers, coarse stock- 
 ings, and worn slippers" at once catching the exact- 
 ing eye of the descendant of two Presidents. 
 
 Recovering from the shock as well as he could, 
 the Minister politely thanked the President for the 
 
 191 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 honor he had done him in selecting him for a post 
 so delicate. Lincoln acknowledged his thanks care- 
 lessly, and then, stretching out his legs and clasping 
 his hands behind his head, he dropped Adams 
 from his attention, and said to Seward, "Well, 
 Governor, I've this morning decided that Chicago 
 post-office appointment." 
 
 An Adams was no more to Lincoln than any 
 other son of Adam. In his native, unaffected 
 democracy he could not feel an awe or a reverence 
 for any human being, however high his station or 
 however long his lineage. It was not his habit to 
 look up at one man and look down upon another. 
 He saw all men, the honored and the unhonored, 
 the rich and the poor, on a common level with 
 himself. 
 
 As for attempting to instruct the Minister to 
 England in his duties as a diplomat, or discussing 
 the possible future relations between this country 
 and Great Britain, he would not cross the Atlantic 
 Ocean until he came to it. Adams, therefore, went 
 out from his presence for the last time, to carry 
 with him through alf his trials at the British capital 
 and even to his grave, the impression of an ill- 
 dressed, ignorant chief, without a soul above office 
 seekers. 
 
 As the members of his Cabinet and other leaders 
 
 192 
 
CALLED TO THE HELM IN A STORM 
 
 came and went, watching and measuring the simple- 
 mannered President with no official airs about him, 
 standing up under all this pulling and hauling as 
 if he enjoyed it, they were puzzled if not disheartened 
 by the sight. They saw the chieftain of the dis- 
 membered Union, in whose hands the life of the 
 nation lay, and upon whom the searching eye of 
 Europe rested, laughing and jesting as he parceled 
 out post-offices, seemingly without a thought for 
 anything except these trifles. 
 
 Among them Lincoln did not have one old friend, 
 one man who had known him a year before. For 
 the purpose of consolidating his party, he had ap- 
 pointed all his rivals for the nomination in the 
 Chicago Convention, and had not reserved for him- 
 self even one personal selection. The conviction 
 grew among these strangers at his council table 
 that some one else than Lincoln must save the 
 Union. 
 
 Seward, as the head of the Cabinet and as the 
 great leader of his party, was emboldened to take 
 upon himself the task which he felt his chief was 
 slighting. After four weeks he submitted to him 
 in writing a proposal such as no other President 
 in history has had the humiliation to receive. 
 
 In this elaborate paper the Secretary of State 
 calmly announced to Lincoln that the administra- 
 
 o 193 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tion had drifted without a policy until its negligence 
 had become a scandal and a peril. He broadly 
 hinted, therefore, that the President should turn the 
 entire matter over to him, and that he be permitted 
 to evacuate Fort Sumter, adopt a vigorous foreign 
 policy, demand explanations from Great Britain 
 and Russia, send agents into Canada, Mexico, and 
 Central America to rouse them against Europe, and 
 finally to get up a war with France and Spain 
 if the governments of those two countries refused 
 to apologize for things they were supposed to be 
 doing in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. By 
 these means it was hoped that the slavery question 
 would be obscured, and the South in its awakened 
 patriotism would join with the North in fighting 
 foreign foes. 
 
 Lincoln met this extraordinary situation like 
 a strong man. He realized that his Cabinet was in 
 danger of going to pieces, and that the resignation 
 of his leading adviser would cause a heavy loss in 
 public confidence. Without the least show of 
 wounded feelings, without betraying the slightest 
 passion, he brushed aside Seward's proposals with 
 a firm yet gentle hand. He wrote to him at once, 
 pointing out briefly and calmly that he had steadily 
 followed the course laid down in his inaugural, 
 and he added in a tone of quiet, confident command 
 
 194 
 
CALLED TO THE HELM IN A STORM 
 
 »■ — ' ■ *■"* " | " ■ " ■ 
 
 that whatever was to be done by the administration, 
 "I must do it," and "upon points arising in its 
 progress I wish and suppose I am entitled to have 
 the advice of all the Cabinet." 
 
 Seward had made the test, no doubt with motives 
 entirely patriotic, and had found his master, whom 
 he thenceforth served with a generous loyalty that 
 knew no shade of turning. "Executive force and 
 vigor," he wrote to his wife only a few weeks after- 
 ward, "are rare qualities. The President is the 
 best of us." 
 
 When Lincoln was inaugurated, the flag of the 
 Union was still flying above Fort Sumter in the 
 harbor of Charleston, but under the guns of a Con- 
 federate battery which had been set up on the shore. 
 He came to his desk after his first night in the White 
 House, to find lying upon it a report that the loyal 
 garrison of soldiers who were maintaining the flag 
 had food for only a limited number of days. 
 
 He sent for Lieutenant-general Scott, who shook 
 his head sadly and said that the little band of de- 
 fenders must surrender. To send them provisions 
 through Charleston, an army of twenty thousand 
 men would be required to fight their way. To 
 provision them by sea was impracticable. 
 
 This was the awful choice presented to the Presi- 
 dent. He must haul down the flag and abandon 
 
 i95 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 before the world the seven seceded states, or call 
 the nation to arms in a civil war. If the sentiment 
 of the North was not ready to resort to force, the 
 sentiment of the southern states which clung to the 
 Union was unanimously opposed to such a measure. 
 Any blow struck at the South, it was feared, would 
 unite all the states of that section in a common 
 defence. 
 
 Lincoln submitted the question to his cabinet, 
 the gravest ever presented to that body, and nearly 
 all its members advised him to give up Fort Sumter. 
 Only one among them recommended that an effort 
 be made to provision it. The President himself 
 felt that to order its evacuation would be "utterly 
 ruinous" and that "it would be our national 
 destruction consummated." 
 
 Almost alone, however, he could only grope along 
 his course. He did not know the way, and there 
 seemed to be no one who could tell him. Day 
 after day he anxiously discussed the subject with 
 officers of the army and the navy. On every hand 
 there was irresolution. 
 
 Finally, General Scott counseled him to give up 
 still another fort, which was situated on the coast 
 of Florida. This filled him with concern. "Lin* 
 coin's eyes did not close in sleep that night," his 
 secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, have recorded in their 
 
 196 
 
CALLED TO THE HELM IN A STORM 
 
 * 1 1 1 . 1 ■ ■ i ■ "■ < «* 
 
 history. He watched by the rended Union, his 
 precious charge, in its mortal crisis as the shadow 
 of dissolution lay upon it. The morning found him 
 fixed in his determination to save it. 
 
 Several of his cabinet, appalled by the added 
 sacrifice which they were called upon to make, 
 turned from their yielding mood and strengthened 
 his hands to resist the surrender of the forts. The 
 plans which he had been debating for provisioning 
 Sumter were vigorously pushed, and at the same 
 time he ordered General Scott to despatch a suffi- 
 cient force to defend the Florida fort. 
 
 "Sir," the old-fashioned soldier replied, as he 
 rose and stood erect, "the great Frederick used to 
 say, 'When the king commands, all things are 
 possible.' It shall be done." 
 
 197 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 "and the war came" 
 
 Fort Sumter fired on, April 12, 1861, and surrendered to the Con- 
 federates, April 14. — The North awakened by the assault on 
 the flag. — Douglas standing for the Union beside his old-time 
 rival. — Lincoln's call for an extra session of Congress and 
 75,000 volunteers, April 15. — A quick response from the free 
 states. — Lincoln's offer of the command of the Union army 
 to Robert E. Lee, April 18. — Resignation of southern army 
 officers. — The Sixth Massachusetts Regiment mobbed in the 
 streets of Baltimore, April 19. — Washington cut off and in peril. 
 — Lincoln's anxious week, waiting for the defenders of the 
 capital. — Dependent on untried officials. — His first diplo- 
 matic experience. — Revising Seward's imprudent despatch 
 to London, May 21. — Death of Douglas, June 3. — The two 
 armies in their first battle at Bull Run, July 21. — The rout of 
 the Union forces. — Lincoln's calmness and courage. 
 
 "Both parties deprecated war; but one of them 
 would make war rather than let the nation survive; 
 and the other would accept war rather than let it 
 perish. And the war came." — Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The shell from the Confederate battery at Charles- 
 ton which tore a path of fire across the gray sky 
 of an April dawn, marked the opening scene in the 
 tragedy of the great war between the states. Wild 
 cheers rang from the crowded shore, and when the 
 earliest rays of the sun gleamed on the folds of 
 
 toS 
 
AND THE WAR CAME 
 
 Sumter's flag, there was not a friendly eye to greet 
 it frcm the mainland. Out at the mouth of the 
 harbor the two relief ships which Lincoln had 
 despatched with food, stood helpless spectators 
 of the one-sided duel, having arrived too late to 
 succor the one hundred and twenty-eight men of 
 the devoted garrison. Their coming had been but 
 the signal for the attack. 
 
 All through the hours of that evil Friday, the 
 guns of Charleston rained their hissing iron upon 
 the island fort, and the startling echoes of their 
 sullen boom rolled over the land. The hesitant 
 North sprang to its feet with clenched fists. The 
 people of the free states felt that their efforts to avoid 
 a fight had been mistaken for cowardice. 
 
 Parties and factions were fused in a fiery glow 
 of patriotism. Argument was hushed; doctrines 
 and dogmas were forgotten. The sordid calcula- 
 tions of trade were banished from mind. Men for 
 the first time learned from their quickened heart- 
 beats how precious to them was the imperiled 
 Union. The flag now assailed, was drawn from 
 its long neglect and unfurled by loyal hands from 
 thousands of windows. The nation awoke. 
 
 In Washington, the leaders swarmed to the White 
 House and were steadied by Lincoln's coolness. 
 They found him grave, but not cast down. With- 
 
 199 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 out bluster or boastfulness, he was confidently 
 turning to the need of the hour. The cabinet met, 
 and, like the North, it was no longer divided, although 
 its members did not agree as to the seriousness of 
 the situation. Seward predicted the trouble would 
 all be over in three months. 
 
 For two days the bombardment of Sumter con- 
 tinued, and then while the fort was in flames, its 
 gallant commander sadly capitulated. With the 
 honors of war, he was permitted to march his men 
 out on Sunday and embark them on one of the 
 relief ships. 
 
 Douglas went to the White House Sunday even- 
 ing and was with Lincoln two hours. He read the 
 proclamation which the President had prepared 
 for publication on Monday, convoking Congress 
 in extra session on the fourth of July, and calling 
 into the army seventy-five thousand volunteers. His 
 only objection to it, he said, was that it did not 
 call for two hundred thousand men. The press 
 of the country the next morning printed Lincoln's 
 proclamation and Douglas's pledge of support side 
 by side. As a still further service to the Union, 
 the loyal leader of the northern democracy went 
 at once to Illinois, delivering patriotic speeches n 
 the way. 
 
 The two houses of the Legislature met together 
 
 200 
 
AND THE WAR CAME 
 
 at Springfield to receive his counsel. "There can be 
 no neutrals in this war ; only patriots and traitors/' 
 was the inspiring watchword which he sounded, 
 while the veins of his neck and forehead swelled 
 with the passion that possessed him. He labored 
 on in the cause until sickness overtook him. As he 
 lay dying in his home in Chicago, the air was vibrant 
 with the footfalls of his old-time followers, responding 
 to his last appeal and marching forth to the defence 
 of the nation under the leadership of Lincoln. 
 
 The North eagerly met the President's call. In 
 twenty-four hours a Massachusetts regiment was 
 at the doors of Faneuil Hall, and in forty-eight 
 hours the men of the Old Bay State, which was 
 first in the Revolution, were in the van of the host 
 that hastened to the rescue of the capital. The 
 drum-beat of the Union resounded from every village 
 green. Warriors thronged the paths of peace. 
 Women wept and prayed and worked for their 
 country's defenders. 
 
 The great wave of emotion for the Union, however, 
 beat against the Mason and Dixon line as upon 
 a foreign shore. Not one of the slave states obeyed 
 the call. The Governor of Delaware, while refus- 
 ing to organize and forward any troops, did yield to 
 the President's proclamation so far as to suggest 
 that those who wished to volunteer might offer their 
 
 201 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 services directly to the Federal government. Mary- 
 land demanded that no Union soldiers be brought 
 across her soil. 
 
 The Governor of Lincoln's native state replied, 
 "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked 
 purpose of subduing her sister southern states," 
 while the Governor of Missouri declared to the 
 President, "Not one man will Missouri furnish to 
 carry on such an unholy crusade. " 
 
 All the states farther south rushed into the Con- 
 federacy, until its flag was entitled to bear eleven 
 stars in its union of blue, and Jefferson Davis's Secre- 
 tary of War boasted it would wave over the Capitol 
 at Washington in a few weeks. A full third of the 
 officers of the regular army and half of the officers 
 of the navy went with the South. Notable among 
 the soldiers lost by this defection were Robert E. 
 Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston, 
 Jubal A. Early, Pemberton, A. P. Stewart, Braxton 
 Bragg, Pickett, Beauregard, J. E. B. Stuart, A. P. 
 Hill, and Joseph Wheeler. 
 
 Men like these were of the flower of the army. 
 Lee was marked out by General Scott to command 
 the Union forces. He sat by the lofty columns of the 
 portico of his Arlington home, with the walls of the 
 Capitol and the yet unfinished shaft of marble reared 
 to the memory of Washington, the greatest of the Vir* 
 
 202 
 
AND THE WAR CAME 
 
 ginians, before his eyes, while his undoubted love for 
 the Union and his dread of drawing his sword against 
 his native state painfully struggled for the mastery. 
 Virginia won him. He resigned from the army and 
 offered his services to the Governor at Richmond. 
 
 Not all saw their duty in the same light. Scott, 
 Thomas, and Farragut were among the Southerners 
 who stood at their posts against every temptation. 
 When the offer to make him the commander of her 
 troops came to Scott from Virginia, the state in 
 which he was born, the old general replied, "I have 
 served my country under the flag of the Union for 
 more than fifty years, and as long as God permits 
 me to live, I will defend that flag with my sword, 
 even if my own native state assails it." 
 
 Lincoln took special pride in the report that not 
 a private in the little army of sixteen thousand 
 regulars forsook the colors. This force was so 
 widely scattered, however, as to be of little use in 
 the opening days of the war, when there were not 
 soldiers enough in Washington to form a safe body- 
 guard for the President in the White House, which 
 stood on southern soil and only across the Potomac 
 River from the Confederate state of Virginia. When 
 Sumter was fired on, all except six hundred soldiers 
 of the regular army were guarding the distant frontier 
 from the Indians. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Even before open hostilities began, double sentries 
 were placed in the shrubbery of the White House 
 grounds at night, and a small guard camped in the 
 basement of the mansion. With the fall of Sumter, 
 the capital was in dire need of defenders. There 
 was gathered in Charleston alone a Confederate 
 army which could be transported to Washington by 
 rail in two days, and which was quite strong enough 
 to seize the city. The volunteers in the eastern 
 states, therefore, were despatched to the defence 
 of the capital. 
 
 Washington was connected with the North by 
 only one line of railway, running through Mary- 
 land. While a Massachusetts regiment was crossing 
 Baltimore in cars drawn by horses, as the custom 
 was at that time, the rails were torn up by a mob of 
 blacks as well as whites, lashed to fury by the sight 
 of the "Yankee invaders/' There, on the anni- 
 versary of the battle of Lexington, the blood of 
 Massachusetts was shed on the cobblestones of 
 the city street, and when the command reached 
 Washington in the evening, it marched to the Capitol 
 followed by a line of stretchers bearing its wounded. 
 
 To prevent the coming of any more troop trains 
 to Baltimore, railway bridges were destroyed above 
 that city, and Washington was cut off from the 
 North. Baltimoreans came in delegations to insist 
 
 .204 
 
AND THE WAR CAME' 
 
 that no soldiers be brought across Maryland. "I 
 must have troops to defend this capital," Lincoln 
 reasoned with them; "geographically it lies sur- 
 rounded by the soil of Maryland, and mathematically 
 the necessity exists that they should come over her 
 territory. Our men are not moles and cannot 
 dig under the earth; they are not birds, and cannot 
 fly through the air. There is no way but to march 
 them across, and that they must do." 
 
 Through an anxious week, Lincoln waited for 
 troops. "Why don't they come? Why don't they 
 come ?" he was heard to ask himself as he walked 
 his office floor. "I begin to believe there is no 
 North," he said to some men of the Massachusetts 
 regiment. New York mails were three days in com- 
 ing through. Even telegraphic communication was 
 interrupted at times. The wildest rumors gained 
 currency. Wagons moved through the streets, laden 
 with the baggage and furniture of fleeing families. 
 Mrs. Lincoln was urged to take her children and join 
 in the flight, but she clung to her husband, protesting, 
 "I shall never leave him here alone." 
 
 General Scott prepared to defend the place, 
 point by point. The public buildings were barri- 
 caded. At every door of the Capitol, cement barrels, 
 sand-bags, and heaps of iron were piled ten feet high. 
 Office seekers found better use for their time than 
 
 205 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 haunting the anterooms. They were armed with 
 muskets, revolvers, knives, and clubs, and a band 
 of them camped in the great East Room of the 
 White House, sleeping on the velvet carpet. 
 
 Famine menaced the city. The surrounding 
 country had been well-nigh stripped of provisions, 
 and the government seized a large quantity of flour 
 in storage at a mill. After trying delays the sol- 
 diers began to arrive, however, by way of Annapolis, 
 and soon nearly twenty thousand armed men were 
 assembled. Washington was safe. 
 
 The new administration struggled beneath a 
 tremendous burden. The Republican party was 
 unused to power. Its leaders had been trained 
 almost wholly in opposition. Lincoln, who was 
 not accustomed to having even an office clerk under 
 him, suddenly found himself charged with the task 
 of organizing, equipping, and commanding an im- 
 mense army. 
 
 Congress was not in session. The members of 
 the cabinet were mere apprentices in their several 
 branches; clerks resigned by the hundreds, and most 
 of the experienced chiefs of bureaus had gone with 
 the South. Seward was innocent of diplomacy. 
 Chase, at the head of the Treasury, was a novice in 
 finance. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, was ig- 
 norant of naval affairs, and Cameron, the Secretary 
 
 206 
 
"AND THE WAR CAME" 
 
 of War, knew nothing of military matters. All were 
 obliged to learn the very primer of their novel duties 
 in the face of an enemy which had chosen specially 
 trained men to lead it forward. 
 
 The army, badly crippled by the resignations 
 of many able officers, was under the command of 
 Lieutenant-general Scott, a veteran of the War of 
 1 8 12 and of the war with Mexico, who at seventy-five 
 still retained a stalwart spirit, but whose intellect 
 was enfeebled by age and long service. The Adju- 
 tant-general had transferred himself to the same 
 office in the hostile army. The younger men who 
 were to captain the armies of the Union were yet 
 in obscurity. Lincoln could only employ such tal- 
 ent as he found about him, and strive to inspire 
 the slow-going and the timid with his own spirit 
 of courage and activity. 
 
 The free states, however, fairly overwhelmed the 
 government with their generosity in enlisting sol- 
 diers. Arms must be found for them and uni- 
 forms manufactured. Above all, money had to be 
 raised, and the national credit never was so low. 
 Chase threatened the reluctant bankers that if they 
 did not accept the bonds which he was issuing, 
 he would flood the country with circulating notes, 
 even if it should take a thousand dollars of such 
 currency to buy a breakfast. 
 
 207 
 
BRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln took a direct and active interest in all 
 the military details, so unfamiliar to him. He 
 soon found that he could not leave them wholly to 
 others. He was impatient of the red tape which 
 entangled his feet at every step. If he asked for 
 a report on a subject, it would be so long and com- 
 plicated as to be of no use to him. "When I send 
 a man to buy a horse," he said one day as he glanced 
 at such a report, "I don't wish him to tell me how 
 many hairs he has in his tail; I wish to know only 
 his points." 
 
 He felt obliged personally to go into many matters 
 which he would have preferred to leave to trained 
 and competent subordinates. He even tested vari- 
 ous kinds of rifles, which were offered for sale to the 
 government. Several times he went to the grounds 
 back of the White House and fired the weapons 
 at a target, usually a little piece of paper which he 
 had pinned to a tree, eighty or a hundred paces away. 
 Once when dissatisfied with the result, he whittled a 
 small wooden sight and adjusted it over the carbine, 
 after which he shot two rounds, scoring a dozen 
 hits in fourteen shots. 
 
 The recollection of his only martial experience 
 was brought to mind in an interesting way one day 
 when Major Anderson called at the White House. 
 Lincoln thanked the Major for his defence of Fort 
 
 208 
 
AND THE WAR CAME 
 
 Sumter and then asked, "Major, do you remember 
 ever meeting me before ?" "No, Mr. President/' 
 the Major replied with some surprise, for he was 
 quite sure he never had seen Lincoln until then. 
 "My memory is better than yours," the President 
 said with an amused look; "you mustered me into 
 the service of the United States in 1832, at Dixon's 
 Ferry, in the Black Hawk War." 
 
 Troubles abroad were added to the troubles at 
 home. Great Britain hastened to lead the nations 
 of Europe in conceding to the Confederacy the 
 rights of a belligerent power. The royal proclama- 
 tion to this effect was issued on the day that Charles 
 Francis Adams, the new Minister of the United 
 States, arrived in London. When the news reached 
 Washington, Seward at once prepared a long and, 
 on the whole, an able protest, in the course of 
 which, however, he reminded the British that the 
 Americans had whipped them in two wars, and 
 were ready to fight them again, and, if need be, two 
 or three other European nations at one and the 
 same time. 
 
 He proposed to send this extraordinary paper to 
 Adams, and have him read its offensive language 
 to the British Minister of Foreign Affairs. In ac- 
 cordance with custom he took it to the President, 
 and read it to him. The latter at once saw th» 
 
 P 20~ 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 grave mistake which his Secretary of State had made, 
 and he requested him to leave the document. 
 
 It was Lincoln's first experience in international 
 diplomacy, but Adams probably was spared the hu- 
 miliation of receiving his passports from the London 
 ministry and a ruinous foreign war was averted by 
 the alterations which this country lawyer made in 
 Seward's despatch. Drawing his pen through a few 
 words here and there, selecting a softer term now 
 and then, and marking "omit this" opposite some 
 aggressive passage, he stripped the communication 
 of all harm, without impairing its strength. 
 
 Finally, he expressly instructed the American 
 Minister, instead of reading it to the British Secretary, 
 to hold it entirely for his own guidance. On an 
 occasion such as this, Lincoln's level head and 
 native common sense availed more for the cause of 
 the Union than the theories and speculations of 
 a trained man who had pursued statesmanship as 
 an art or a profession. 
 
 Although the volunteers continued to pour into 
 Washington, the outposts of the Confederacy drew 
 nearer and nearer, and Lincoln gazed long and often 
 through a White House telescope at the Confeder- 
 ate flag which floated above the city of Alexandria, 
 across the Potomac in Virginia. 
 
 The Confederate capital had be**n established 
 
 2IO 
 
AND THE WAR CAME 
 
 at Richmond, only a little more than one hundred 
 miles away, and "On to Richmond " was the pas- 
 sionate watchword which resounded throughout 
 the North with increasing volume. An influential 
 Republican journal in New York loudly demanded 
 the resignation of the cabinet, and held over the 
 President the threat that he himself might be su- 
 perseded unless the war were pushed more vigor- 
 ously. 
 
 When Congress met on the fourth of July, it 
 found more than three hundred thousand troops 
 enrolled under the stars and stripes, and Lincoln 
 ready to give full account of his stewardship through 
 four momentous months. He recounted in his mes- 
 sage the great perils which he had been called 
 upon to meet. "As a private citizen," he said, 
 "the executive could not have consented that these 
 institutions shall perish; much less could he, in 
 betrayal of so vast and so sacred a trust as the free 
 people have confided to him." 
 
 With peculiar pride, this man of the common people 
 pointed to the volunteer army which he had as- 
 sembled, "without a soldier in it but who has taken 
 his place there of his own free choice," while in his 
 democratic soul he exulted that there was hardly 
 a regiment "from which there could not be selected 
 a President, a cabinet, a Congress, and perhap? 
 
 211 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a court, abundantly able to administer the govern- 
 ment." 
 
 Congress readily authorized an army of half a 
 million men and four hundred millions of dollars 
 with which to support it. The senators and represen- 
 tatives echoed and enforced the national cry for a 
 forward movement, and the forces then encamped 
 upon the Virginia hills overlooking the capital were 
 started southward. 
 
 At Manassas, thirty-two miles from Washington, 
 they encountered a Confederate army, and the battle 
 of Bull Run was fought. In the heat of a July 
 Sunday, the men of the North and the South 
 grappled for the first time, moiling their bright, 
 new uniforms of blue and gray in the heavy dust 
 of the parched earth. 
 
 Civilians in Congress and in the departments were 
 so confident of an easy victory for the North, they 
 hastened to the scene of the expected conflict as if 
 to a monster picnic, eager to speed the soldiers on in 
 their holiday march to Richmond. From the Con- 
 federate capital, too, spectators flocked to the theater 
 of war, and Jefferson Davis could not repress a sigh 
 as he looked across the lines and saw waving on the 
 other side the flag under which he had been reared 
 at West Point, and which he had followed on the 
 plains of the West and on the fields of Mexico. 
 
 212 
 
AND THE WAR CAME 
 
 Lincoln hid his anxiety as he could, while he 
 waited for the outcome. He went to church in 
 the morning. In the early afternoon, rumors of 
 all kinds flew about. When he called on General 
 Scott at three o'clock, he found the aged soldier 
 asleep in his office. The General woke up suffi- 
 ciently to express his confidence i i the result, and 
 fell asleep again as the President left. Definite 
 news of a great Union success came later, and 
 Lincoln went for a drive. 
 
 At six o'clock, Seward hurried to the White House 
 and excitedly asked for the President. "The battle 
 is lost," he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. General 
 McDowell was in full retreat, and calling on General 
 Scott to save the capital. Lincoln returned in a 
 few minutes and heard in silence the report of the 
 disaster. Without saying a word or betraying by 
 look any disappointment, he turned from the door 
 of the White House and went to the War Department. 
 
 As the fleeing fugitives from the scene of defeat 
 straggled breathlessly into the city toward mid- 
 night, Lincoln, stretched on the lounge in the cabinet 
 room, received the wild reports of the rout and 
 of the probable capture of Washington. No one 
 realized that in the clash of two green armies, the 
 victors were almost as completely overcome by 
 surprise as were the vanquished themselves. The 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Confederates, content to hold the ground from 
 which they had driven the Federals, made no for- 
 ward movement on the capital. 
 
 When morning came, Lincoln still lay on the 
 lounge, listening and making notes, for he had neither 
 gone to bed nor slept. All day Monday, under the 
 gloom of a rainy sky, the beaten and demoralized 
 troops waded through the muddy streets. The 
 North was humiliated and embittered. The con- 
 fusion threatened to run into chaos. 
 
 Lincoln showed no sign of wavering in the furious 
 storm. On the contrary, those who watched him 
 were inspired when they saw beneath the sadness 
 which enveloped him like a cloud, an added strength 
 of purpose, a deeper determination. He was learn- 
 mg, side by side with the people, the awful price 
 which must be paid for the salvation of the Union. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 George B. McClellan appointed to the command of the Army of 
 the Potomac, July 27, 1861. — The armies costing #2,000,000 
 a day with no battles won. — The seizure of Mason and Slidell, 
 November 8, 1861, brought threats of war from the British.— 
 Victoria and Lincoln working together for peace. — Great 
 success of Lincoln's statesmanship in winning the border states. 
 — Stanton called to the Cabinet, January 13, 1862. — Grant's 
 capture of Fort Donelson, February 16. — The Merrimack 
 sank the Cumberland in Hampton Roads, March 8. — Alarm 
 in the North. — The victory of the Monitor, March 9. — Lincoln's 
 simple faith. — Farragut captured New Orleans, April 25. — 
 McClellan's unsuccessful Peninsular Campaign against Rich- 
 mond, March 17 to July 2. — Second defeat at Bull Run, 
 August 30. — Victory at Antietam, September 16-17.— 
 Emancipation Proclamation, September 22. — The winter of 
 1 862-1 863 the darkest since Valley Forge. — A movement 
 to force Lincoln to resign. — The disasters of Fredericksburg, 
 December 13, 1862, and Chancellorsville, May 2-4, 1863. — 
 Lincoln's courage. — Lee's invasion of the North. 
 
 Lincoln wasted no time in fighting over again 
 a battle that was lost. He offered no defence for 
 himself, and found no fault with others. To cheer 
 the disheartened soldiers of Bull Run, he went 
 among them in their camps as if they had won a 
 victory, and no officer heard a word of complaint 
 from his lips. 
 
 215 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 There were those in the North who were so dis- 
 mayed by the retreat, that they lost all faith in the suc- 
 cess of the Union. Horace Greeley wrote to Lincoln 
 in despair. "You are not considered a great man," 
 ne frankly said, " and I am a hopelessly broken one," 
 and he called upon the President to sacrifice him- 
 self "if the Union is irrevocably gone," and give 
 up the needless struggle. Counsels like these, 
 while they did not seem to weaken the purpose of 
 Lincoln, must have heavily taxed his fortitude. 
 
 Men who pressed about him with conflicting 
 advice, found him not thinking of the past, but of 
 the future. The very day after Bull Run, on the 
 advice of General Scott and with the enthusiastic 
 approval of the country, he appointed George B. 
 McClellan to the command of the routed army. 
 
 McClellan was a brilliant engineer graduate of 
 West Point, who had resigned a railway presidency 
 and surrendered a salary of ten thousand dollars 
 to enter the military service at the outbreak of the 
 war. In a series of skirmishes, he had driven scat- 
 tered bands of Confederates out of the mountains 
 of western Virginia, and secured that region to the 
 Union. 
 
 Although, before this brief campaign, he never 
 had commanded more than a company of men, 
 or held higher rank than captain, he came to the 
 
 216 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 head of the Army of the Potomac, at the age of 
 thirty-four, with the prestige of the only success 
 yet won by Union arms and with the admiring 
 confidence of the public. Hailed as the "Young 
 Napoleon," his martial portrait was almost wor- 
 shipped in the homes of the people. The popular 
 faith in the youthful hero of the hour was shared 
 by Lincoln, and President and cabinet and senators 
 paid deference to him. 
 
 His camps became the principal social attraction 
 of the capital, and at a grand review, with Lincoln 
 mounted beside him, he proudly rode down the lines 
 of fifty thousand soldierly troops, to the thunder of 
 artillery, the roll of drums, the blaring of bugles, 
 and the waving of standards. Displaying a genius 
 for order, he had knit the mob of raw recruits into 
 a compact and imposing army; officering, arming, 
 uniforming, and drilling it in accordance with the 
 highest military standard. At the same time, his 
 engineering skill was employed in behalf of the de- 
 fence of Washington until he had thrown around 
 the city a chain of forty well-placed forts. 
 
 Here, however, his ardor and his ability seemed 
 to halt. The enemy, facing him from behind its 
 intrenchments at Manassas, did not tempt him to 
 a forward movement. Dizzied by his sudden eleva- 
 tion to the heights of fame, he grew deaf to advice 
 
 217 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and impatient with advisers. He ignored Scott, 
 and sneered at Lincoln. Nevertheless, he had 
 done such good work as an organizer, and was so 
 strong in the affections of his army, that the President 
 stood by him in the face of a violent reaction from 
 the hero-worshipping of a short while before. The 
 public mind became restless as months of inac- 
 tivity went by, and the once proud report, "All 
 quiet on the Potomac," passed into a jest and a 
 byword. 
 
 Congress met in the winter under lowering clouds. 
 The war was costing two millions a day, the public 
 debt was piling up, and not a battle had been won. 
 Secretary Chase was at the end of his resources 
 in the money markets of the cities. His next 
 resort was the issuance of paper money, "green- 
 backs," as they came to be known. 
 
 The nation, sorely distracted within, was beset 
 without by foreign menace. Great Britain, France, 
 and Spain invaded Mexico in seeming contempt of 
 the Monroe Doctrine. It was feared their next 
 step would be the recognition of the Confederacy 
 as an established and independent nation, and 
 possibly their forcible intervention between the 
 North and the South. A cotton famine threatened 
 England, by reason of the blockade of southern 
 ports, which the navy of the Union had effected. 
 
 218 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 English mills were closed and thousands of English 
 working people were in dire distress. 
 
 In the midst of this perilous international situa- 
 tion, a naval vessel of the United States overhauled 
 the British mail steamer Trent, on the high seas, 
 and took from her Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who 
 were bound on a foreign mission for the Confederate 
 government. The North seized upon the incident 
 as a subject for wild rejoicing. When the captives 
 were landed in Boston, the city banqueted their 
 captor, who also received the congratulations of 
 the Secretary of the Navy and the thanks of Con- 
 gress. 
 
 The British government was aflame with indigna- 
 tion and started troops to Canada, while the ministers 
 of the Queen framed an ugly communication to the 
 government at Washington. Happily Victoria was 
 a lover of peace. She and her Prince Consort gave 
 their anxious attention to softening the despatch. 
 This noble and important act of statesmanship was 
 the last public duty which the Prince performed, 
 and some have attributed his death, which quickly 
 followed, to the heavy strain of the crisis arising 
 from the Trent case. 
 
 It was equally fortunate that the American chief 
 of state kept a cool head in this period, when states- 
 men and people joined in twisting the tail of the 
 
 219 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 then very unpopular British lion. Neithei Lincoln 
 nor Seward had shared in the national enthusiasm 
 over the unauthorized act of a naval captain in 
 firing across the bow of a neutral vessel on the high 
 seas and searching her. As the public exultation 
 died away, they united in the ungrateful task of 
 mending a bad case. 
 
 The Secretary of State wrote a skilful and sat- 
 isfactory reply. He conceded, in cheerful terms, 
 the justness of the British complaint, and grace- 
 fully disavowed the seizure, proudly reminding the 
 British that he welcomed an opportunity thus to 
 establish the historical position of the United States 
 — a principle which it had upheld throughout the 
 existence of the nation and against even Great 
 Britain herself. 
 
 The allusion to the American contention in the 
 War of 1 8 12 was not lost on public opinion in either 
 country. Accompanied by the grumblings of a 
 sorely tried people, the Confederate commissioners 
 were surrendered, and the terrifying shadow of 
 a foreign war was dispelled. 
 
 In the general disappointment over the lack of 
 military success, few took account of a great and far- 
 reaching victory which Lincoln, virtually without 
 bloodshed, had quietly won in the border states. 
 He had slowly brought to the support of the Union 
 
 220 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 the slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, 
 and Missouri, laid the foundations of the new and 
 loyal state of West Virginia, and encouraged the 
 patriotism of the brave dwellers in the mountains 
 of eastern Tennessee. 
 
 Himself bone of their bone and flesh of their 
 flesh, he had led the people of the border, step by 
 step, into the path of loyalty. It is doubtful if 
 any other leader in the North was fitted to work 
 with them and solve this delicate and vital problem. 
 Lincoln was no "Yankee" in their eyes. In their 
 peculiar clannishness, they felt he was one of them. 
 He thought with them, and patiently moved with 
 them, his hand on their pulse, as he cautiously felt 
 his way to the final goal. 
 
 When the Baltimoreans raged against the passage 
 of troops through their city, he brought his recruits 
 to Washington by way of Annapolis. When Ken- 
 tucky resented the northern soldier as an invader, 
 he sent Anderson, a gallant Kentuckian and the 
 defender of Fort Sumter, to take command in that 
 state. When the radical Republicans of the North 
 clamored for the summary abolition of slavery 
 and the subjugation of the halting border states at 
 the point of the bayonet, he steadily persisted in 
 his moderation, and confidently waited for the logic 
 of events to bring them into line. 
 
 221 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "How many times," James Russell Lowell cried 
 out, "must we save Kentucky and lose our own 
 souls?" Lincoln believed that to "lose Kentucky 
 is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." Ken- 
 tucky lost, he reasoned, "we cannot hold Missouri, 
 nor, as I think, Maryland." These lost, and the 
 Union was lost. 
 
 The sentiment and interest of the border people 
 were with their kindred in the other slave states 
 in the beginning of the conflict. They had not, 
 however, been bred in the school of secession, and 
 they loved the Union. On the other hand, they 
 distrusted the new party in power, and suspected it 
 would conduct the war with partisan and sectional 
 objects. 
 
 Lincoln alone interested them, and he slowly 
 but steadily won their confidence and support. 
 Maryland ceased to resist or protest, as the troops 
 from the North poured through Baltimore. The 
 Confederate government was overthrown in Mis- 
 souri, and that state became a stanch upholder 
 of the flag. Kentucky elected a Union Legislature, 
 and the stars and stripes were run up on the Capitol 
 at Frankfort. Thus by the wisest statesmanship, 
 pursued under a storm of censure, Lincoln rescued 
 the nation from certain destruction before a military 
 victory was inscribed on the standard of the Union^ 
 
 Z22 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 By his peaceful capture of the five states which 
 lay on the border, including West Virginia, he added 
 to the strength of his cause a population of more 
 than three million Southerners, who contributed 
 above three hundred thousand fighting men to the 
 ranks of the Union. Thenceforth the North was 
 not required to battle for this vast stretch of southern 
 soil, and it became the base of the great armies as 
 they moved southward. Lincoln's bare hand had 
 dealt the Confederacy a deadlier blow than it ever 
 was to receive on any battlefield. 
 
 The war had begun with the cry "On to Rich- 
 mond," and public interest was centered upon the 
 Army of the Potomac. The people paid much less 
 heed to the armies which were forming in the valley 
 of the Mississippi. Yet these warriors in the West 
 were the first to gladden the national heart with 
 a victory, and linked in glory with this victory was 
 the unknown name of Grant. 
 
 Without any brilliant reviews or resounding 
 proclamations, and unheralded as another Napoleon, 
 this obscure and silent soldier led such forces as 
 his unfriendly superiors gave him, up the banks 
 of the Tennessee River. At Fort Donelson he 
 thrilled the wearied nation with the watchwords, 
 "Unconditional surrender," and took fifteen thou- 
 sand prisoners. 
 
 223 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 In two months more, the sailors and soldiers of 
 the Union bore the banished flag up the mouth 
 of the Mississippi and hoisted it again over the city 
 of New Orleans. Soon Memphis fell, and Port 
 Hudson and Vicksburg alone remained to challenge 
 the free navigation of the " Father of Waters." 
 
 Few dreamed, however, of the great toll in blood 
 which this latter stronghold of the Confederacy 
 would yet exact ere it yielded. The loyal moun- 
 taineers of Tennessee still waited for the army of 
 rescue, and when Sherman said that two hundred 
 thousand men would be required for the campaign, 
 he was set down as crazy, relieved of his command, 
 and sent to St. Louis, where he served in the harm- 
 less position of drill-master for the volunteer regi- 
 ments. 
 
 Meanwhile the splendid Army of the Potomac 
 continued to shine its buttons and dazzle the ladies 
 of Washington. Lincoln, in despair, had taken up 
 the study of books of tactics, to prepare himself 
 for the work which professional soldiers had failed 
 to do. 
 
 Forgetful, in his anxiety for the public welfare, 
 of any personal feelings he may have had, he ap- 
 pointed as Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, 
 the lawyer who rudely pushed him out of the trial 
 of the reaper case at Cincinnati a few years before 
 
 224 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 and who had been a merciless critic of his administra- 
 tion. By this selection 3 powerful force was added 
 to the national counsels. Stanton was a Democrat, 
 and had sat in Buchanan's cabinet, and although 
 as unlike as two men well could be, Lincoln was 
 able to employ and direct the great energy of his 
 new and tireless Secretary. 
 
 After more than six months of inaction, McClellan 
 was positively ordered to break camp and begin 
 a forward movement toward Richmond. Again, 
 however, the General delayed, and the Confederate 
 army at Manassas was permitted to march away 
 unmolested, leaving its terrible-looking wooden can- 
 non to mock the timid enemy. 
 
 On the same day that the Confederates exasper- 
 ated the North by escaping unhurt from the front of 
 a far greater army, consternation was spread abroad 
 by the appearance of the Confederate ram Merri- 
 mack, in the waters of Hampton Roads. This ves- 
 sel, formerly belonging to the navy of the United 
 States, had been so covered with iron by its new 
 and ingenious owners as to make it invincible against 
 wooden ships. With its big iron prow, it readily 
 sank the first boat it assailed and its work of de- 
 struction continued until it was the unchallenged 
 monarch of the Roads. 
 
 No port of the Union was safe with this monster 
 Q 225 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 afloat, shedding the shot of its foes as a duck sheds 
 water. "It may land a shell in the midst of us 
 while we are talking here," Stanton said as he stood 
 in the cabinet room of the White House. The 
 Secretary of War was filled with the gloomiest 
 forebodings. The whole character of the war was 
 changed. Every naval vessel under the stars and 
 stripes would be destroyed by the Merrimack, and 
 the great cities of the northern seaboard would be 
 laid under tribute of gold. A fleet of canal boats, 
 piled with stone, was hastened down the Potomac, 
 to be sunk in the channel at the approach of the 
 dreaded vessel, in order to prevent its coming to 
 Washington. 
 
 Lincoln would not believe the situation could 
 be as dark as it looked in that hour of fright. He 
 told one anxious caller he expected setbacks and 
 defeats, for they are common to all wars, "but/* 
 he added with simple seriousness, "I have not the 
 slightest fear of any result which shall fatally impair 
 our military and naval strength. This is God's 
 fight, and He will win it in His own good time. He 
 vill take care our enemies do not push us too far." 
 
 The faith of the man grew with his needs in the 
 terrible years of darkness. "I have been driven to 
 my knees many times," he confessed, "by the over- 
 whelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." 
 
 aa6 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 He hoped now that a novel vessel which had in- 
 terested him would prove to be a timely instrument 
 for the overthrow of the Merrimack. When the 
 plans of John Ericsson, the inventor of this craft, 
 were brought to Washington, the naval experts 
 were divided in their opinion of them. The man 
 having them in charge went to the White House 
 to see Lincoln, feeling, as every one did, that he was 
 ready to hear an appeal 
 
 Lincoln always was curious about mechanical 
 inventions, and he examined the plans with intel- 
 ligent interest. " I think there is something in this," 
 he remarked, and he went in person to the meeting 
 of the experts, where, sitting on a box in the crowded 
 room, he lent his influence to the adoption of the 
 experiment. 
 
 When the news came of the exploits of the Con- 
 federate ironclad, he remembered that Ericsson's 
 boat was even then on the way from New York. 
 The general opinion was that it would not weather 
 the seas, but Lincoln said, "I am sure the Monitor 
 is still afloat, and will give a good account of herself.'* 
 In the very evening of the day of the Merrimack's 
 triumph, the strange ship, "like a cheese-box on 
 a raft," arrived on the scene under tow. 
 
 The Merrimack steamed confidently toward her 
 uncinny little foe the next morning, and for three 
 
 227 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hours the stillness of the Sunday was broken by 
 an extraordinary battle, the first that ever took 
 place between ironclads. At the end, Lincoln's 
 "cheese-box" was the almost unscathed victor, 
 and the naval experts, not only at Washington, but 
 at every capital of Europe, learned a useful lesson. 
 The wooden fighting ship was doomed; a revolu- 
 tion had been wrought on the seas. 
 
 The mouth of the James thus freed from the enemy 
 by the Monitor, McClellan determined to make his 
 tardy advance on Richmond along the banks of 
 that river rather than by the direct course, which 
 the President favored. Taking with him from 
 Washington one hundred and twenty thousand sol- 
 diers, his army was readily transported by boats 
 down the Potomac. For nearly three months he 
 battled in his Peninsular Campaign at Yorktown, 
 Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Gaines's Mill, and at 
 Malvern Hill. Once his army was within seven 
 miles of Richmond, and the archives of the Con- 
 federate government were packed for flight. 
 
 All in vain ! Midsummer found McClellan con- 
 gratulating himself on a masterly retreat. Lincoln 
 was the last to lose faith in this accomplished 
 but unsuccessful soldier. He leaned upon him no 
 longer. He admitted afterward that the defeat 
 of the Peninsular Campaign left him "nearly as 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 inconsolable as I could be and live." When he 
 foresaw its failure, he gratified an impulse by writ- 
 ing to Secretary Seward a strange pledge : " I expect 
 to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, 
 or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress 
 or the country forsake me." 
 
 He called for three hundred thousand more men, 
 and started another army southward under Pope ; but 
 at Bull Run a second defeat was scored against the 
 arms of the North. Again the Federals fled from 
 the shore of that wretched little stream and sought 
 refuge within the fortifications of the capital. 
 
 Emboldened by his unbroken successes to take 
 the aggressive, Lee opened a campaign of invasion. 
 Washington and Pennsylvania alike trembled at his 
 progress northward. Lincoln turned once more to 
 McClellan, against the protest of his advisers, and 
 called upon him to drive back the Confede/ate 
 chieftain and defend the capital. The battle of 
 Antieiam resulted, on the soil of Maryland, and the 
 invaders were checked there by the Army of the 
 Potomac. 
 
 Lincoln had promised God in prayer, if He would 
 give the Union a victory, the shackles should be 
 stricken from the slaves. When the news of the 
 success at Antietam came, he kept his vow and 
 drew forth the Emancipation Proclamation, which 
 
 229 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he had prepared and held in readiness for the 
 occasion. By its terms, all slaves within the Con- 
 federate lines on the first day of the coming year 
 were to be declared free. 
 
 McClellan again disappointed the hopes of 
 his chief. He failed to follow the battle of An- 
 tietam with an aggressive movement. Lee was suf- 
 fered to escape with his beaten army unpursued, 
 recross the Potomac, and return to Virginia. The 
 President implored his general to move, and personally 
 went to see him in his camp. After several weeks 
 of waiting, and facing another season of inaction, 
 Lincoln relieved him of his command, and McClellan 
 parted forever with the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 The succeeding winter, the second of the war, 
 was the darkest in the life of the nation since Valley 
 Forge. The elections in November were a rebuke 
 to the administration. Confederate cruisers were 
 banishing American merchant ships from the seas, 
 while Grant seemed to be battling against nature 
 herself in the swamps about Vicksburg. 
 
 Loud cries of dissatisfaction arose in the North. 
 Men came to Lincoln clamoring for changes in 
 commanders and plans and policies. "Gentle- 
 men," he said to one delegation of advisers, "sup- 
 pose all the property you were worth was in gold, 
 and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry 
 
 230 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 across the Niagara River on a rope. Would you 
 shake the cable or keep shouting at him, 'Blondin, 
 stand up a little straighter — Blondin, stoop a little 
 more — go a little faster — lean a little more to 
 the north — lean a little more to the south'?' No, 
 you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, 
 and keep your hands off until he was safe over. 
 The government is carrying an enormous weight. 
 Untold treasures are in our hands; we are doing 
 the very best we can. Don't badger us. Keep 
 silence, and we will get you safe across." 
 
 In this period of perplexity, he often sought the 
 only relief and refuge open to him, and turned away 
 his heavy cares and wearisome callers with a jest. 
 
 A member of Congress who had gone to him 
 burdened with complaints, indignantly objected 
 when the President started to tell him a story. 
 "Mr. President," the member said, leaping to his 
 feet, "I beg your pardon, but I did not come here 
 this morning to hear a story." A look of pain came 
 in Lincoln's face. "I have great confidence in you," 
 he said, "and great respect for you, and I know 
 how sincere you are; but if I couldn't tell these 
 stories, I should die." The Congressman's wrath 
 was turned to a new sympathy by this confession. 
 
 As the discontent deepened among the leaders, 
 there were strong men who came to the conclusion 
 
 231 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that a change must be made in the Presidency itself. 
 A movement was suggested, having for its object 
 the enforced resignation of Lincoln, and the sub- 
 stitution of Vice-president Hamlin. In the late 
 winter and early spring the feeling was intensified 
 by fresh disasters. Lincoln did not bend to the 
 gale. In such an hour the courage of the man was 
 the salvation of the Union. Behind a brave front, 
 and beneath a flippant speech, his heart was heavy 
 with grief. Shadows of sorrow enveloped him. 
 "I shall never be happy any more," he said. "My 
 life springs are wearing out, and I shall not last." 
 
 He had found no general who would act on his 
 own responsibility. The conduct of military opera 
 tions was thrown upon his shoulders, and twice 
 he had personally gone to the front. The Army 
 of the Potomac lost the battles of Fredericksburg 
 and Chancellorsville, and once more the unconquered 
 Lee was pressing northward. 
 
 As Lincoln held the fateful message from Chan- 
 cellorsville in his hand, his face was gray with agony. 
 "My God! my God!" he cried in broken tones, 
 "what will the country say ? What will the country 
 say?" All night he paced the floor, not in despair, 
 but in his anxious searching for a way out of the 
 darkness. When the clerks came to his office in 
 the morning, they found him with sleepless eyes, 
 
 23 2 
 
IN THE GLOOM OF DEFEAT 
 
 eating his breakfast at his desk, and beside him 
 the instructions to Hooker which he had thought 
 out and written down in the long watches he had 
 kept alone on the deck of the storm-beaten ship of 
 state. 
 
 233 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863. — Lincoln's 
 order to the army to pursue the enemy. — The great battle 
 of the war at Gettysburg, July 1, 2, 3, a victory for the Union. 
 — Lee's retreat. — Grant's long struggle for Vicksburg, and 
 its surrender July 4. — "The 'Father of Waters' goes unvexed 
 to the sea." — The draft. — The draft riots in New York, 
 July 13, 14, 15, 16. — Lincoln and the "Copperheads." — 
 His hatred of tyranny. — His modesty. — The victories around 
 Chattanooga, November 24, 25, 28. — Lincoln's Gettysburg 
 address, November 19, 1863. 
 
 The war had been in progress more than two 
 years, when Lee, with easy confidence, left the de- 
 fences of Richmond, and at the head of the ever 
 victorious Army of Northern Virginia bore the stars 
 and bars of the South into the North. 
 
 The great captain of the Confederacy had so 
 readily overthrown in turn each champion of the 
 Union who had been sent against him that the foe 
 no longer inspired his respect. He resolved to carry 
 the war into the enemy's country, strike terror to the 
 prosperous population of the free states, deal the 
 Union a staggering blow on the heart, unfurl his 
 colors above the Capitol at Washington, and dictate 
 a final peace to a prostrate nation, 
 
 $34 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 As Lee's mighty columns swept upward, Hooker, 
 in command of the Army of the Potomac, proposed 
 to swoop down on Richmond and take the exposed 
 capital of the Confederacy. Lincoln, however, 
 instantly rejected this plan, without losing a minute 
 for consultation with military advisers. Guided by 
 his own common sense, he told Hooker that Lee's 
 army, and not Richmond, should be his point of 
 attack. 
 
 He argued that the city could not be captured in 
 less than twenty days. In all that time, Lee would 
 have a free hand in his invasion. Moreover, Rich- 
 mond was worth nothing in comparison with the 
 capture or defeat of the Confederate army. " Follow 
 on his flank," Lincoln's order ran, "and on his 
 inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens 
 his." No decision in the war was more important 
 than this, or more fruitful of results. 
 
 Hooker pursued Lee across Maryland. The 
 Confederates entered Pennsylvania unchallenged, 
 however, and seventy-five thousand southern soldiers 
 trod the free soil of the Keystone State. At one 
 time their cavalry dashed up to the picket lines of 
 Harrisburg. Both Pittsburg and Philadelphia were 
 thrown into panic. Labor ceased in those busy 
 centers of northern industry, and the laborers were 
 marshaled for defence. 
 
 235 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 At the height of the black crisis, the Army of 
 the Potomac was left leaderless. General Hooker 
 resigned the command in a military quarrel. 
 The country stood appalled. Lincoln and Stanton 
 hastened to place General Meade at the head of 
 the forces. 
 
 The new commander grasped the reins with des- 
 perate energy, and with his ninety thousand men fol- 
 lowed the invaders into Pennsylvania so swiftly that 
 Lee was compelled to turn about and face him at 
 the village of Gettysburg, only a few miles from 
 the Maryland line. There for three days, in wheat 
 fields and peach orchards, across lovely valleys and 
 up gentle hills, the two great armies fought an im- 
 mortal battle with the life of the Union as the stake. 
 
 The opening shock of the gigantic combat occurred 
 on the first day of July, and when night fell, victory 
 again was with the sword of Lee. The second 
 day dawned upon the rival hosts facing each other 
 from opposite heights, with a valley hardly a mile 
 wide between them. Another night found the Union 
 army holding its ground, but with nearly twenty 
 thousand of its men dead or wounded. 
 
 A little after noon of the third day, while the 
 foemen watched in silence, the Confederates sud- 
 denly opened a furious bombardment with one 
 hundred and fifteen guns. For an hour and a half 
 
 236 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 the terrible roar of the cannonading lasted, and 
 then stillness again until Pickett rode out to the 
 crown of Seminary Ridge, which the Confederates 
 held, and with fifteen thousand men in gray behind 
 him paraded down the slope. Across the valley 
 they charged, their banners flying, beneath a mad- 
 dening hail of iron from the Union batteries. 
 
 With ranks frightfully thinned but unwavering, 
 they began the climb up Cemetery Ridge, looking 
 into the smoking muzzles of the enemy. Even at 
 musket range, the survivors pressed on until a Con- 
 federate officer with a hundred men had vaulted 
 the stone wall in front of the Union forces, and 
 borne the battle flags of the South to the very 
 crest of Cemetery Ridge. There the little band of 
 Southerners paused for a moment in the midst of 
 their foes; the battle tide of the Confederacy had 
 come to its flood. 
 
 The bugle sounded retreat, and the broken 
 brigade fell back, while the men in blue who held 
 the Ridge mingled with their proud rejoicing a 
 hearty admiration for the gallantry of their fellow- 
 Americans in gray. As Pickett's brave band, 
 now pitifully few in numbers, returned to Seminary 
 Ridge and flung themselves at the feet of their com- 
 rades, Lee sadly confessed, "All this has been my 
 fauk; it is I who have lost the fight." 
 
 237 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 For the Confederacy had lost the battle of Gettys- 
 burg and its great stake. The Union was saved. 
 The next day was the Fourth of July, and the North 
 kept it as a thanksgiving, while Lee with his shattered 
 army turned his face southward to make his last 
 stand in front of Richmond. 
 
 When General Meade failed to press his advantage 
 and smash or capture the invading army before it 
 could recross the Potomac, Lincoln's disappoint- 
 ment clouded his enjoyment of the victory. He 
 entreated the General not to let Lee escape. The 
 General and his corps commanders, however, in 
 the reaction from the terrible strain under which 
 they had been working throughout the momentous 
 campaign, did not care for more fighting at once. 
 
 On hearing of their decision in council, Lincoln 
 blamed himself for not having taken the field in 
 person, in an effort to crush Lee, thus hastening 
 the end of the war. When Meade expressed his 
 satisfaction that the enemy in its retreat was no 
 longer on our soil, the President complained, "Why 
 will not our generals get that notion out of their 
 heads? All American soil is ours!" 
 
 While watching and urging the movement which 
 came to its climax at Gettysburg, Lincoln's heavy 
 anxiety was greatly increased by the long campaign 
 which Grant was making against Vicksburg. From 
 
 238 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 midwinter to midsummer, the unresting victor of 
 Fort Donelson, "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, 
 as he had been admiringly called, struggled to cap- 
 ture that citadel of the Confederacy. He moved 
 down the Mississippi, from which, however, he could 
 not assault Vicksburg, perched on the frowning brow 
 of a lofty bluff. It could be successfully attacked 
 only in the rear, which, moreover, could not be 
 reached from the north where Grant's soldiers were, 
 because a vast watery jungle lay between it and 
 them. The only approach was from the south. 
 
 To go below by way of the river, it was neces- 
 sary to run past the powerful batteries. Gunboats 
 tried to pick their way along small streams, but the 
 vigilant enemy succeeded in blocking the narrow 
 and crooked course by felling trees across it, and 
 by posting sharp-shooters in the dense woods that 
 lined the shores. 
 
 Many weeks were spent in desperate and unsuc- 
 cessful attempts to solve the hard problem. The 
 bayous and swamps surrounding the place, the sud- 
 den rises in the waters of the Mississippi, and the 
 ingenuity of the enemy baffled Grant's every efforto 
 Meanwhile his army clung to the levee, or bank of 
 the river, as the only bit of dry ground for its en- 
 campment. Its tents stretched in a thin line along 
 the Mississippi for seventy miles. 
 
 239 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Disease broke out among the men; the North 
 became discouraged. The demand for a new com- 
 mander grew until it seemed to be almost unani- 
 mous. Grant had not been a Republican, and was 
 without influential friends at Washington. He was 
 a stranger to the country at large. Lincoln, who 
 had never seen the man, was nearly alone in stand- 
 ing by him in his hour of trial, stoutly resisting 
 the loud cry for his removal. 
 
 When all other plans had failed, Grant determined 
 upon a bold movement. He marched his men down 
 the levee, but his horses and their provender, his 
 wagons and artillery could not move by that nar^ 
 row path. He therefore loaded them on transports* 
 and in the darkness of night the boats ran by tht 
 blazing cannon of Vicksburg. For two hours they 
 were under fire as they steamed around the bend 
 in the river. Nevertheless, the passage was made 
 with only slight losses. 
 
 With his men and his supplies now safely below 
 the forts, Grant opened his campaign upon the rear 
 of Vicksburg, completely cutting himself off from 
 his base and living on the country. He had first to 
 encounter a protecting army of the enemy and beat 
 it. In the course of this task he took the city of 
 Jackson, Mississippi, and hoisted the stars and 
 stripes yver the Capitol of the state of Jefferson 
 
 2/0 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 Davis. Then he began the siege of Vicksburg in 
 the almost tropical heat of a southern summer. 
 
 The place was so well fortified that it could not 
 be taken by storm, and the besiegers crept upon 
 their long-sought prize inch by inch as they mined 
 and burrowed in the earth. The advance was made 
 through trenches and tunnels, until Vicksburg was 
 entirely surrounded and cut off, with the Union 
 gunboats controlling the river in front, and Grant's 
 army investing it in the rear. Yet it gallantly stood 
 by its guns until it was face to face with starva- 
 tion. Not another morsel of food could its garrison 
 obtain. 
 
 The boats on the river and the batteries in the 
 rear shelled the city night and day. Its people 
 dug caves, as the only shelters from the incessant 
 rain of deadly fire, and men, women, and children 
 lived in them. 
 
 At last the famishing and battered town could no 
 longer withstand the siege, and a white flag fluttered 
 from the Confederate parapet. The commander, 
 Pemberton, was a northern man, a Pennsylvanian, 
 who had resigned from the United States army at 
 the outbreak of the war and cast his lot with the 
 South. He and Grant had met in a happier time, 
 in the campaign in Mexico. Their acquaintance 
 was renewed in the shade of an oak tree, where 
 * 241 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 they discussed the terms of surrender. The next 
 day, the Fourth of July, while all the North was 
 glad for its deliverance at Gettysburg, the flag of 
 the Confederacy was lowered on the heights of 
 Vicksburg, the city's brave defenders stacking their 
 arms and marching out past the men of the con- 
 quering army of Grant, whose rejoicing was silenced 
 in their respect for a worthy foe. 
 
 Lincoln listened day and night for the news. 
 "Nothing from Grant yet!" he exclaimed as he 
 ran through the despatches late one night. "Why 
 don't we hear from Grant ? I shall stay up until 
 I hear something." There was no telegraph to 
 Vicksburg, and the precious message had to be sent 
 up the river to Illinois by steamer before it could 
 be placed on the wires for Washington. 
 
 When at last it came, Lincoln felt richly rewarded 
 for his vigilance. The nation burst into joy. The 
 White House was serenaded for the first time since 
 the cloud of war settled upon it. " I am very glad 
 indeed to see you to-night," Lincoln said to the 
 jubilant throng from a window, "and yet I will not 
 say I thank you for this call ; but I do most sincerely 
 thank God Almighty for the occasion on which you 
 have called." 
 
 In a few days a freight steamer passed in peace 
 down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans. 
 
 242 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 When the people of the upper valley met at Spring- 
 field, Illinois, to celebrate the reopening of their 
 great natural highway, Lincoln sent to the meeting 
 a letter inspired by a grateful heart. "The 'Father 
 of Waters' again goes unvexed to the sea," so ran 
 the fine keynote which he struck, this one-time flat- 
 boatman who had floated on its broad bosom in 
 his youth. He warned the country, however, not 
 to be "over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. " 
 
 The war was, indeed, far from ended. Even on 
 the heels of victory, the draft began. Until now 
 the ranks of the immense armies had been filled 
 entirely by volunteers, encouraged by the liberal 
 bounties which many states offered to those who 
 enlisted. Under the great drain on the fighting 
 strength of the North, and the long series of disasters 
 in the summer and winter of 1862, the martial 
 spirit of the people was at last exhausted. Warfare 
 was no longer a holiday pastime. Volunteering 
 ceased, and no recruits came forward to take the 
 places of the thousands who fell in battle or were 
 stricken by disease. 
 
 The furnishing of supplies to the army, and the 
 large output of paper money, had brought on a 
 business boom. Labor was in strong demand, and 
 wages were high. There was every temptation for 
 men to stay at home and work. 
 
 243 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The government was driven to draft its soldiers, 
 to compel men to join the army. Agents of the 
 War Department knocked at every door in the land, 
 and enrolled the names of all citizens of military 
 age. In each district these names were written on 
 separate slips of paper. A man blindfolded drew 
 forth one paper at a time, and read the name which 
 it bore. Any one whose slip was drawn must go 
 into the army for three years or pay a forfeit of 
 three hundred dollars. 
 
 This privilege of buying off excited indignation 
 among the poorer people of New York City, who 
 denounced it as an act of favoritism toward the rich, 
 and it was also believed that unfair demands were 
 made on the districts where laboring men lived. 
 A wild riot broke out, and for nearly four days 
 the city was in the hands of a furious mob, who 
 killed and burned and robbed. Business was 
 brought to a standstill. The uprising was not 
 suppressed until the dead and wounded numbered 
 a thousand, and the property loss amounted to two 
 million dollars. Ten thousand troops were massed 
 in the city when the draft was resumed in peace. 
 
 Lincoln was unusually distressed by this outbreak 
 among the working people, for whom more than 
 all else he was striving to save the Union. They 
 quietly obeyed the hard law generally, howerer, 
 
 244 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 throughout the country. The brighter prospects of 
 the success of the Union arms which Gettysburg 
 and Vicksburg held out, and the earnest work of 
 the states, revived the spirit of volunteering, and 
 it proved not to be necessary after all to draft a 
 very large number of soldiers. 
 
 At all times, Lincoln's difficulties in the North 
 were only second to his difficulties at the South. 
 It was not his fortune to lead a united people against 
 a foreign foe. The war was between brethren of 
 a common country and on home soil. As in the 
 beginning, opinion in the North was divided on 
 the question of going to war, so it remained divided 
 on the question of continuing the war. 
 
 A large section of the party in opposition to the 
 Republicans, while standing on its right and its 
 duty to criticise the political measures of the ad- 
 ministration, loyally sent its members to the front 
 by the tens of thousands and elected representatives 
 to Congress, who supported the army in the field. 
 The Secretary of War himself and many of the 
 foremost generals were drawn from this great body 
 of patriotic Democrats, without whose devotion, 
 often under trying circumstances, the Union could 
 not have been saved. 
 
 There was a faction, on the other hand, which 
 took the position that the Union could be restored ? 
 
 245 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 not by force, but only by compromise. The members 
 of this faction were called "Copperheads/* because 
 some of them had cut from copper one-cent pieces 
 the head of liberty, and worn it as a pin. 
 
 This faction, sometimes operating in secret societies, 
 was far more exasperating than influential in its 
 extreme hostility to the administration and the war. 
 Lincoln showed little disposition to repress the 
 Copperheads, or even notice them. Subordinates, 
 however, not gifted with the President's temper, 
 were often stung to strike at them and in their zeal 
 against them to violate the right of free speech 
 and the principles on which the republic rested. 
 Newspapers were suppressed, arbitrary arrests were 
 made, and men locked up in military forts without 
 charge or trial, and on mere suspicion. 
 
 Although convinced that to save the Union he 
 could rightfully disregard the Constitution itself, and 
 all the guaranteed rights of citizens, Lincoln did not 
 enjoy the exercise of the despotic authority which 
 he held in his hands. He hated and dreaded to put 
 it forth. He himself never attacked an individual, 
 or sought to injure any man in body or estate. It 
 has been truly said that he abused his tyrannical 
 power only to pardon, and on the side of mercy. 
 
 Invested with the greatest authority ever reposed 
 in an American, he remained, throughout, a simple 
 
 246 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 man of the people. Supreme title and authority 
 failed to exalt or change him. Even with a million 
 armed men under his command, his manner was 
 as unaffected and modest as when he led a company 
 of fellow-rustics from New Salem in the Black 
 Hawk War. While guiding generals and cabinet 
 ministers, he never could bring himself to use 
 dictatorial language. 
 
 The summer of 1863 closed with the Union 
 forces struggling to gain the natural gateway to 
 the South through the mountains of Tennessee 
 at Chattanooga. News of a reverse which they 
 suffered reached Lincoln one night in September 
 while he was lodging in a cottage at the Soldiers' 
 Home, near Washington. "I have feared it," he 
 said, "for several days. I believe I feel trouble in 
 the air before it comes. " He mounted his horse and 
 rode to the city in the moonlight, to take measures 
 for reenforcing the army. 
 
 A few weeks later, with Grant in command, the 
 flag of the nation was borne through a series of 
 notable successes around Chattanooga. Lookout 
 Mountain was won by a "battle in the clouds," 
 and Missionary Ridge was inscribed among the 
 great victories on the standards of the Union. 
 
 The national exultation over a glorious summer 
 reached its climax at Gettysburg in November, 
 
 247 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 when a multitude of people met to dedicate the 
 burial-place of thirty-five hundred of those who 
 fell in battle there. Edward Everett was the chosen 
 orator, but the President had been invited to make 
 "a few appropriate remarks." 
 
 Lincoln had no time for special preparation, 
 and seemed indifferent to his slight part in the 
 celebration. He wrote half of his speech on the 
 day before he left Washington, and did not have a 
 chance to finish it until he was in Gettysburg and 
 about to start for the cemetery. The closing sen- 
 tences were hastily scribbled in pencil, and then he 
 went on horseback in the procession to the scene 
 pf the exercises, where one hundred thousand 
 people were gathered. 
 
 The two speakers represented the extremes in 
 methods of culture. Everett had been favored 
 with every facility for education, which universities 
 at home and abroad, association with cultivated 
 people and the observations of travel afford, and 
 his learning had won for him the honor of the 
 Presidency of Harvard College. 
 
 Lincoln's schooling had been limited to six months 
 in a tumble-down cabin in the wilderness, while 
 his life had been lived among an unschooled people. 
 His taste for literature was untrained, and had been 
 little indulged. "I never read an entire novel in 
 
 248 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 my life," he once confessed, and according to his law 
 partner, Herndon, he "never sat down and read 
 a book through." His two favorites, however, — 
 the Bible and Shakespeare, — he knew well. The 
 former lay on his desk in the White House always, 
 while he made it a rule to carry a volume of the 
 great English bard with him when on a journey. 
 
 It was inevitable that the speeches of these men, 
 so different in their training, should be compared, 
 and Lincoln's personal friends were disturbed by 
 the fear that he had not prepared himself to do his 
 best. Everett spoke for two hours, delivering an 
 address of unusual beauty and eloquence, after 
 which a great choir sang a dirge. Then Lincoln 
 rose to speak the closing words. 
 
 While he sat on the speakers' platform, the people 
 standing on the ground had been unable to see him. 
 Now as he lifted himself into view they almost 
 forgot to cheer, in their eagerness to behold "Father 
 Abraham," whom they had followed in storm and 
 sunshine. They tiptoed to look upon his care-worn 
 face, full of the woe of war, while for a moment he 
 stood before them in silence. He seemed not to 
 return their gaze, or to see any one among all those 
 thousands. 
 
 When he spoke, his high, penetrating tones carried 
 his words to the outermost fringe of the vast audi- 
 
 249 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ence, which had not yet, however, become attentive. 
 He held his hastily written manuscript in his left 
 hand, and merely cast a glance at it once. In less 
 than three minutes the people were amazed to see 
 him disappear from their view, as he resumed his 
 seat. He had finished and retired before a pho- 
 tographer, who had planned to make a negative 
 of the imposing scene, could adjust his camera. 
 
 The men on the platform who had settled them- 
 selves to listen to a speech of some length, had not 
 caught the force of the little he said, and were dis- 
 appointed. "He has made a failure," Seward said 
 to Everett, " and I am sorry for it. His speech was 
 not equal to him." 
 
 Only when it was spread on the printed page and 
 taken by itself apart from the bustle of the throng, 
 was it recognized as an immortal masterpiece, this 
 wonderful prose poem : — 
 
 "Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers 
 brought forth on this continent a new nation, con- 
 ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition 
 that all men are created equal. Now we are en- 
 gaged 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 por- 
 tion of that field as a final resting-place for thos« 
 
 250 
 
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS 
 
 who here gave their lives that that nation might 
 live. 
 
 "It is altogether fitting and proper that we should 
 do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, 
 we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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 for- 
 get what they did here. 
 
 "It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated 
 here to the unfinished work which they who fought 
 here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather 
 for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain- 
 ing before us — that from these honored dead we 
 take increased devotion to that cause for which they 
 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 govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, for the people, 
 shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 Everett, on reading this address, was among the 
 first to see its quality. "I should be glad," he 
 wrote, "if I could flatter myself that I came as near 
 the central idea of the occasion in two hours as 
 you did in two minutes." A high London authority 
 
 251 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ranked it with the noblest classic in the golden age 
 of Greek eloquence. 
 
 The speech was born of the year so inspiring to 
 Lincoln, who at last had been permitted to see, be- 
 tween the breaking clouds, "the home of freedom," 
 as he said in his message to Congress when it met 
 in December, "disenthralled, regenerated^ enlarged, 
 and perpetuated." 
 
 *5* 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 "don't swap horses while crossing the river" 
 
 Lincoln's campaign for reelection in 1864, in a season of doubt 
 and gloom. — "Anybody but Lincoln," the cry of the politicians, 
 but the plain people would have no one else for their candidate* 
 — Republicans drop their party name, and Lincoln and John- 
 son nominated on a Union ticket at Baltimore, June 8, 1864. — 
 "Don't swap horses," Lincoln's watchword for the country.— 
 The Confederate raid on Washington, under General Early, 
 July 10. — The capital in danger. — The repulse, July 12. — 
 A time of despair. — Gold rose to $2.85, July 16. — Another 
 call for 500,000 men. — "I intend to go down with my 
 colors flying." — Lincoln's withdrawal demanded by Republi- 
 can leaders. — His own opinion, August 23, that he would 
 be defeated. — McClellan nominated for President by the Demo- 
 crats, August 31. — "The war a failure." — The tide turned by 
 Sherman's and Sheridan's victories in September. — Lincoln 
 triumphantly reelected November 8. — The popular vote, 
 Lincoln, 2,216,067; McClellan, 1,808,725. — The electoral 
 vote, Lincoln 212; McClellan 21. — The Confederacy doomed. 
 
 In some respects the year 1864 was the hardest 
 of all for Lincoln. Encouraged by the victories 
 of the preceding summer, public opinion looked 
 for a speedy ending of the war in the spring, when 
 the armies of the Union, inspired by the memory 
 of glorious successes and under Grant as General- 
 in-chief, left their winter quarters and moved upon 
 the enemy. Nevertheless, after weeks filled with 
 
 253 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 frightful slaughter, Lee and Johnston still bore aloft 
 the defiant banner of the unconquered Confederacy, 
 and the North was disheartened. 
 
 Drooping spirits were revived for a while by 
 Grant's ringing message, "I propose to fight it out 
 on this line if it takes all summer." The terrible 
 sacrifices in the battles of the Wilderness, Spott- 
 sylvania, and Cold Harbor, however, sent a shudder 
 through the land. In forty days, Grant had lost 
 fifty thousand men battling with Lee and settled 
 down to the grim siege of Petersburg. At the same 
 time, Sherman was paying for every inch of ground 
 he slowly gained against Johnston in Georgia. 
 
 In a season of doubt and gloom, Lincoln himself 
 must fight a battle at the polls for his reelection 
 to the Presidency. The radicals in the Republican 
 party were in open revolt against him. They held 
 a National Convention and nominated John C. 
 Fremont for President. 
 
 The Republican politicians were equally opposed 
 to the President. "Anybody but Lincoln" seemed 
 to be the well-nigh unanimous sentiment among 
 them. He himself admitted he had only one friend 
 in the entire House of Representatives on whom he 
 could rely. 
 
 The leaders did not complain of any personal 
 slight at Lincoln's hands. On the contrary, h# 
 
 254 
 
i'rom the collection of Frederick H. Meserve, Esq., New York City 
 
 One of the Most Interesting of All Lincoln Portraits 
 
"DON'T SWAP HORSES 
 
 had shown rare consideration for the feelings of 
 all. His marvelous temper had withstood the great 
 strain of his duties and troubles, and he had quarreled 
 with no one. Indeed, the natural dignity of the 
 man's mind was such as to restrain him from enter- 
 ing into controversies. He would not turn around 
 to repel even the most unjust attack. "If the end 
 brings me out all right, what is said against me 
 won't amount to anything," he reasoned; "if the 
 end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I 
 was right would make no difference." 
 
 He never criticised, complained, or explained. 
 It was not his habit to discuss his associates in public 
 life. He made no threats against individuals, and 
 took no revenges. He even permitted a member 
 of his cabinet, Secretary Chase, to be a candidate 
 against him for the nomination. 
 
 Lincoln's opponents objected to him chiefly be* 
 cause he had not yet conducted the war to a success, 
 and because he was not as much of a partisan as 
 they wished to see in the White House. He was 
 ruled by his conscience and not by a caucus. He 
 would be bound to no faction, but insisted on keep- 
 ing his hands free to serve the whole people. 
 
 Once he illustrated his position in this respect 
 with a "little story." It was of a roving family 
 who were so much on the move that their chickens 
 
 255 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would lie on their backs and cross their legs, ready 
 to be tied, whenever they saw the wagon brought 
 out. " Now," Lincoln explained by way of a moral 
 for the tale, "if I were to listen to every committee 
 that comes in at that door, I might just as well cross 
 my hands and let you tie me." 
 
 In the midst of war, with the life of the nation 
 in jeopardy, party with him was only a means to 
 an end. His devotion to the Union rose above 
 everything else. Former Democrats were in a 
 majority in his cabinet, and McClellan, Burnside, 
 Meade, and Grant among his generals were not 
 regarded as Republicans. He forgot party preju- 
 dices, and even his own personal feelings in his 
 passion for the Union. 
 
 When he heard of an order driving a general out 
 of the army for having made a speech in support 
 of the Democratic candidate, McClellan, the Presi- 
 dent stopped it. "Supporting General McClellan 
 for the Presidency," he said, "is no violation of 
 army regulations, and as a question of taste in 
 choosing between him and me, — well, I'm the 
 longest, but he's better-looking." 
 
 As soon as the masses of Lincoln's party were 
 heard from, it was clearly seen that their faith in 
 him had not been weakened by his critics, and that 
 they would not accept any other leadership. Little 
 
 256 
 
DON'T SWAP HORSES—" 
 
 by little his character had gained the solid respect 
 of intellectual men and the confidence of the business 
 world. The people, the plain people, as he liked 
 to call them, however, had been drawn to him by 
 instinct as to their own. They were the first to 
 trust in his wisdom, his common sense, and to 
 recognize his power to lead. 
 
 Now, in the thick of the cries and plots of hostile 
 politicians, the voice of the people was lifted in his 
 behalf, and the mutterings of the opposition were 
 drowned in its mighty volume. Legislatures and 
 conventions East and West declared for his re- 
 nomination, with a unanimity that left no room 
 for doubt. 
 
 When the National Convention met, it reflected 
 his spirit. The delegates dropped their party 
 designation entirely. They did not nominate him 
 on a Republican, but on a Union ticket, and they 
 chose Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as the candidate 
 for Vice-president. The only excitement manifested 
 in the proceedings was aroused by the politicians 
 who strove for the honor of seconding Lincoln's 
 name. 
 
 After the adjournment of the Convention, a dele- 
 gation of the National Union League called at 
 the White House to congratulate the President, and 
 it was on this occasion that he mad? a remark 
 s 257 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 now so familiar. " I do not allow myself to suppose," 
 Lincoln said, "that either the Convention or the 
 League have concluded that I am either the greatest 
 or the best man in America, but rather they have 
 concluded it is not best to swap horses while cross- 
 ing the river, and have further concluded that I 
 am not so poor a horse that they might not make 
 a botch of it in trying to swap." 
 
 This homely maxim sank into the public mind 
 and became probably the most potent argument 
 in the campaign. "Don't swap horses while cross- 
 ing the river" was thenceforth the inspiring watch- 
 word. 
 
 The slow and desperate struggle on the battle- 
 field continued through the summer, and the de- 
 pression of the Republican leaders fell to its lowest 
 level. Men of business, too, who were making 
 fortunes never dreamed of before in this country, 
 grew more and more fearful of the future. It is 
 doubtful, however, if the stout hearts of the people 
 were much affected in their loyalty to Lincoln and 
 their determination to sustain the war. 
 
 A Confederate army dashed up to the city limits 
 of Washington in July and skirmished in full view 
 of the Capitol dome, the work of finishing which 
 had steadily gone on by Lincoln's orders throughout 
 the war. The city was caught almost defenceless, 
 
 258 
 
DON'T SWAP HORSES-" 
 
 Government clerks shouldered guns beside the few 
 thousand troops available to repel the invader. 
 
 The President himself visited the firing line and 
 was in sight of the Confederates. There was a 
 panic in the North over the prospect of the loss 
 of the capital. Gold leaped up in value until a 
 gold dollar was worth two dollars and eighty-five 
 cents in paper money. Nothing shook Lincoln's 
 patience more than the greed which led men to 
 speculate in each misfortune that overtook the 
 country. "I wish every one of them had his devilish 
 head shot off," he exclaimed in unwonted anger 
 while discussing the "gold sharks" with the Governor 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 When the news of the bold invasion reached 
 Europe, the hopes of those who had looked for the 
 downfall of the Union were revived. Napoleon III 
 is quoted as having exulted that the Confederacy 
 would surely capture Washington. The people at 
 the capital feared it would have to be abandoned, 
 and a steamer was in readiness to bear the Presi- 
 dent and cabinet to safety. Happily, reinforcements 
 came from Grant, and the Confederates stole 
 away. 
 
 More men were needed by the armies, and Lin- 
 coln determined to call for them. Political advisers 
 begged him not to do it, as they feared it would 
 
 259 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ruin his chance of reelection. He put their advice 
 aside. "It is not a personal question at all," he 
 replied. "It matters not what becomes of me. 
 We must have the men. If I go down, I intend 
 to go like the Cumberland, with my colors flying." 
 
 The call was issued. It made the staggering 
 demand for rive hundred thousand men, and pro- 
 vided for drafting them in September if the states 
 should fail to provide them before that date. 
 
 No news of victory came from the front in those 
 critical weeks of the early summer. Instead, the 
 wounded and the sick poured into Washington in 
 a steady stream. Lincoln could not go from the 
 White House in any direction without passing a 
 hospital. War-broken men hobbled about every- 
 where. In driving to his summer cottage at the 
 Soldiers' Home, he was likely to come upon a long 
 line of ambulances, filled with the suffering. 
 
 "I cannot bear it," he once said to a companion, 
 as he turned his saddened face away from the piti- 
 ful scene. "This is dreadful." The man tried to 
 lighten the President's spirits by assuring him that 
 victory would surely come. "Yes," he admitted, 
 "victory will come, but it comes slowly." 
 
 There were nights not a few when he could not 
 sleep. "How willingly would I exchange places 
 with a soldier who sleeps un the ground in the Army 
 
 260 
 
DON'T SWAP HORSES—" 
 
 of the Potomac/ ' he remarked one morning with 
 a heavy sigh, as he took up the duties of a new day. 
 
 Physically he bore the burden of his unceasing 
 labors like the giant he was. He was so tortured 
 through his sympathies, however, that he looked 
 in his face like a broken-down man. His heart 
 seemed to be weighted with all the woes of the land, 
 public and private. Old friends seeing him after 
 the lapse of the years since he left them in Illinois, 
 were shocked by the deep lines which time had 
 stamped on his countenance. He did not hope for 
 anything beyond the end of the war ; he lived only in 
 the task of restoring the Union. "I shall not last 
 long after it is over," he told Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
 
 As the summer wore on without any military 
 successes to stimulate the public mind, Lincoln's 
 reelection grew more and more doubtful. The 
 Democrats had postponed their convention until the 
 last of August, but McClellan was already certain 
 to be their candidate for President. At last the 
 Republican leaders lost all hope. Lincoln's best 
 friends felt obliged to tell him it was impossible 
 for him to win. 
 
 A determined movement sprang up among im- 
 portant members of the party to call a conference, 
 and urge him to withdraw from the hopeless contest, 
 and permit another to take his place. Many favored 
 
 26t 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 substituting General Benjamin F. Butler of Massa- 
 chusetts. Charles Sumner had regarded himself 
 as a confidant of the President, who once smilingly 
 remarked, "Sumner thinks he runs me." As the 
 election drew near, the Massachusetts Senator 
 agreed with the opposition, and washed Lincoln 
 would see that patriotism required his retirement, 
 because of his lack of "practical talent for his im- 
 portant place." 
 
 Lincoln, however, did not believe anything would 
 be gained by "swapping horses," although he him- 
 self finally accepted the opinion that there was 
 little prospect of his own success. He sat down 
 on August 23, wrote out a resolution which he had 
 taken in secret, and sealed it. 
 
 "This morning," so this strange paper ran, "as 
 for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable 
 that this administration will not be reelected. 
 Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the 
 President-elect as to save the Union between the 
 election and the inauguration, as he will have secured 
 the election on such ground that he cannot possibly 
 save it afterwards." 
 
 The Democratic National Convention held its 
 session in the last days of August, and nominated 
 McClellan on a platform declaring that after four 
 y«ars of failure in the struggle to restore the Union 
 
 S62 
 
DON'T SWAP HORSES — 
 
 by war, the time had come for a cessation of hostilities 
 and an effort to restore it by peaceable negotiation. 
 This was a view held by many men at the time, 
 including not a few influential Republicans. 
 
 Startling events, however, coming in a remarkable 
 series, quickly and completely corrected the opinion 
 that the war was a failure. Sherman roused the 
 nation by this message from Georgia on September 2, 
 "Atlanta is ours and fairly won." 
 
 Only a few days before, the President, by direction 
 of Congress, had caused a day to be set apart for 
 "humiliation and prayer." Now he called on the 
 people to give thanks. After hardly more than 
 a fortnight, Sheridan won the battle of Winchester 
 in the Shenandoah. Once more the country re- 
 joiced. 
 
 The early state elections foreshadowed a victory 
 for Lincoln at the polls in November. When elec- 
 tion night came, he sat in the War Department 
 until the morning hours, receiving the news of his 
 success, and in the lulls reading aloud the humorous 
 yarns of Petroleum V. Nasby in a little book of 
 yellow paper covers, which he had brought with 
 him in the breast pocket of his coat. 
 
 As soon as his reelection was assured, he re- 
 membered Mrs. Lincoln's anxiety and said, "Send 
 the word riglit over to Madam; she will be more 
 
 263 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 interested than I am." It was found on the com- 
 plete returns that he had been chosen by a majority 
 of nearly half a million votes, carrying all the states 
 remaining in the Union except New Jersey, Dela- 
 ware, and Kentucky. 
 
 Late as was the hour when he returned to the 
 White House, he was greeted there by a party of 
 serenaders. All feeling of personal exultation was 
 lost in his deep satisfaction that the people had 
 resolved to go on with the war for the Union. "It 
 is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one," he 
 said in acknowledging the serenade. 
 
 A day or two afterward he made another speech, 
 in which he pointed out the value of the experience 
 through which the country had passed, showing as 
 it did that a popular government could sustain 
 a national election while under the strain of a great 
 civil war. "We cannot have free government with- 
 out elections," he told the people. "If a rebel- 
 lion could force us to forego or postpone a national 
 election, it might fairly claim to have already con- 
 quered and ruined us." 
 
 The Union went on in its triumph. Sheridan 
 through the fall and into the winter cleared the val- 
 ley of the Shenandoah — that great natural avenue 
 by which the Confederacy had thrice invaded the 
 North. Sherman marched to the sea. Thomas 
 
 264 
 
"DON'T SWAP HORSES 
 
 overwhelmed and utterly dispersed a Confederate 
 army in Tennessee. Lee was foredoomed to defeat 
 as soon as spring should come. 
 
 Lincoln's eyes beheld the dawn of peace, and all 
 saw the new light that was in them as he turned 
 'Com the sword which he hated to the olive branch 
 which he loved. 
 
 2t>5 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 How the Civil War was brought home to the President and hi > 
 family. — Old friends who wore the gray. — Lincoln's tears 
 for a fallen Confederate brigadier. — Mrs. Lincoln's brothers 
 slain under the Stars and Bars. — Heavy shadows in the 
 Executive Mansion relieved only by Lincoln's sense of humor. 
 
 — Four years with no vacations. — Lincoln's religious creed. 
 
 — His simple life and plain manners in the White House. — 
 How he met his visitors, and how he dressed. — Evenings with 
 friends. — What he read. — Forgetting his meals. — His 
 light diet. — His muscular strength. — Open house to the 
 people. — His " public opinion baths." — His democratic 
 ideals and practices. 
 
 The full meaning of the Civil War was brought 
 home to the Lincolns in the White House as much 
 as to any family in the land. To multitudes alike 
 in the North and in the South it differed little from 
 a strife with a foreign nation. Their families were 
 not divided by it, and they never were called upon 
 to sorrow over a fallen foe. 
 
 On the other hand, the battle line crossed the 
 very hearthstone of the President's home. The 
 President of the United States was as much a 
 Southerner by birth as the President of the Con- 
 federate States himself, since both were born in 
 
 266 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 Kentucky. Some of Lincoln's oldest and dearest 
 friends wore the gray. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln, too, was a Kentuckian and deeply 
 attached to her southern kindred. The husband 
 of one of her sisters, Ben Hardin Helm, had been 
 a favorite of her own husband. When Lincoln 
 became President, he summoned Helm to Wash- 
 ington for the purpose of giving him a place of 
 honor under the administration. On his return 
 to Kentucky, a major's commission was forwarded 
 to him by the President; but Helm after a painful 
 wrestle with his doubts went with the South. He 
 showed himself a brilliant soldier and died gallantly 
 on the field of Chickamauga. 
 
 There is a story that, after the news of the battle 
 reached Washington, the great chieftain of the 
 Union was found in bitter tears, weeping over the 
 loss of this Confederate brigadier. Not only were 
 several of Mrs. Lincoln's sisters parted from her by 
 the war, their husbands' hands against her husband's 
 cause, but some of her brothers as well were in the 
 Confederate service. 
 
 While the duty fell to her to open a grand ball in 
 honor of the Union victory at Shiloh, one of her 
 brothers, who in his youth has been the darling of 
 her heart, lay dead on that battlefield in a uni- 
 form of gray. Another brother in the Confederacy 
 
 267 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fell at Vicksburg and was dying while his sister 
 in the White House listened to the shouts of re- 
 joicing over the victory of Grant. 
 
 With the affection of his family thus torn by 
 a fratricidal strife, and with his mind and heart 
 constantly weighted by the cares of the distracted 
 nation, there was little gayety in the household of 
 the President. The usual official banquets and recep- 
 tions went on mechanically. At such times Lincoln 
 stood unweariedly by the hour, his big white-gloved 
 hand grasping the hands of the passing throng, 
 but all the while his eyes looked far beyond the 
 scene, as they followed his thoughts to the trenches 
 where his soldiers were battling for the Union. 
 
 He seemed neither to see nor to hear most of those 
 whom he greeted on such occasions. No chance, 
 however, was lost for the play of his humor. "Up 
 our way," an old man said, when presented at one 
 of the receptions, "we believe in God and Abraham 
 Lincoln. " The President's face lighted up as he 
 replied, "My friend, you are more than half right." 
 
 His irrepressible sense of humor broke through 
 even the stiffest ceremonials, as, for instance, when 
 the bachelor Minister of Great Britain, Lord Lyons, 
 brought the very formal announcement of the mar- 
 riage of the Prince of Wales. The Minister and the 
 President played their perfunctory parts with the 
 
 268 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 utmost gravity, the former obeying the command of 
 his gracious sovereign, the Queen, to make known 
 to His Excellency the happy news that her son, the 
 heir apparent, His Royal Highness, Albert Edward, 
 etc., had wedded Her Royal Highness, the Princess 
 Alexandra, etc., of Denmark. 
 
 After the President had suitably acknowledged 
 the receipt of the information, and begged that his 
 congratulations be presented to Her Majesty, to 
 the royal bride and groom, and the entire British 
 nation, he paused, and then with a twinkle in his 
 eye, added, "Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise. " 
 
 The White House was not only a somber place 
 in war time, but there was little or no opportunity 
 for Lincoln to escape from its shadows. His was 
 an administration without vacations. His only ref- 
 uge through four hard years was in a little cottage 
 at the Soldiers' Home, near the city. 
 
 Sometimes he drove and sometimes rode between 
 the two places. Secretary Stanton insisted on 
 sending a mounted guard with him, their drawn 
 sabers held upright. He protested time and again 
 that these twenty-five or thirty cavalry outriders 
 were a nuisance. "They make such a noise," he 
 said, "Mrs. Lincoln and I cannot hear ourselves 
 talk." 
 
 Lincoln never felt free to visit his home in Illinois, 
 
 269 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 or to take the least rest from his great task. He 
 went to the front a few times to see his generals, 
 and made two or three appearances at public meet- 
 ings in the interest of the soldiers at near-by places. 
 Aside from these rare exceptions, each day found 
 him at his post. 
 
 One day, a sister of Mrs. Lincoln, who was making 
 a visit at the White House, insisted on taking him 
 away from his desk, and she led him into the con- 
 servatory, then attached to the mansion. As they 
 walked among the flowers, he confessed he never 
 had been in there before. The truth is, this man, 
 in whose pathway of life there had been so many 
 thorns, had little chance to cultivate a taste for 
 flowers. 
 
 When this lady, who was very near to Lincoln, 
 in whose home he had courted and married, and 
 whose gentle control over his wife in her frequent 
 nervous disturbances he appreciated, left the White 
 House to return to her family, she carried with 
 her in her mind "the picture of the man's despair." 
 Her sympathetic eye penetrated "beneath what the 
 world saw," as she said, and found "a nature as 
 tender and poetic as any I ever knew." 
 
 Although Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln occupied a pew 
 in a Presbyterian Church in Washington, he never 
 was a member of any church. Theology did not 
 
 270 
 
From the collection of Frederick H. Meserve. Esq., New York City 
 
 Mary Todd Lincoln 
 
 From a photograph by Brady wnen she was the mistress of the White House 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 interest him. Religion was, his wife said, "a kind 
 of poetry in his nature." He has been quoted as 
 saying to a member of Congress, who inquired why 
 one possessing such a deep reverence and such a 
 true ideal of Christian faith and morals, had not 
 united with some church, "When any church will 
 inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for 
 membership the Saviour's condensed statement of 
 both law and gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with 
 all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that 
 church shall I join with all my heart and soul." 
 
 Notwithstanding Mrs. Lincoln's wayward temper, 
 her husband had a solid respect for her judgment. 
 He felt a special reliance on her intuition regard- 
 ing character, and in choosing men he sometimes 
 accepted what he regarded as her superior knowl- 
 edge of human nature. When she was absent, 
 he was in the habit of sending her by telegraph 
 the reports of battles and military movements. 
 iVthough she is said not to have been prudent in 
 money matters, he never denied or questioned her 
 wish for anything. "You know what you want," 
 he would say, "go get it." 
 
 They lived their lives in Washington as simply 
 as they could. Their servants followed the free 
 and easy example set before them. One of them 
 
 271 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 has been handed down to history as interrupting 
 an important state conference by opening the Presi- 
 dent's door and saying, "She wants you." "Yes, 
 yes," Lincoln replied, without showing any sign 
 of annoyance. The conference continuing, however, 
 the door was soon opened again and the servant 
 repeated with emphasis, "I say, she wants you." 
 
 A man calling by appointment one Sunday 
 morning and receiving no response when he rang the 
 White House bell, opened the door, walked up- 
 stairs, and, looking in vain for a servant to announce 
 him, finally knocked at the door of the President's 
 office. "Oh," explained Lincoln, "the boys are all 
 out this morning." 
 
 Presidential manners never were acquired by 
 Lincoln. He had formed the habit of early rising 
 when he lived in the backwoods, and always clung 
 to it. One morning about six o'clock a passer-by saw 
 him standing in the White House gateway. "Good 
 morning, good morning," the President said, "I am 
 looking for a newsboy. When you get to the corner, 
 I wish you would send one up this way." 
 
 He almost invariably wore slippers, in order to 
 relieve himself of the long-legged boots of the time, 
 and except in the appointed hours for receiving 
 callers, he was likely to wear a dressing-gown, as 
 he really hated clothes. He sometimes appeared 
 
 272 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 in the streets wearing a faded linen duster, and in 
 winter he often protected himself on going out by 
 wrapping a gray shawl about his shoulders. 
 
 He knew how to be correct in deportment when 
 he deemed that occasion required it. A man who 
 was present once when Charles Sumner called, 
 has described the manner in which Lincoln received 
 that self-conscious statesman. He dropped his long 
 leg from the arm of the chair in which he was 
 slouching at ease, rose and saluted with studied 
 dignity his imposing caller, who carried a cane, 
 and was arrayed in a brown coat and fancy waist- 
 coat, checked lavender trousers, and a striking pair 
 of spats. After the Senator had gone, Lincoln again 
 relaxed with the remark, "When with the Romans 
 we must do as the Romans do." 
 
 His freest hours were passed among friends in his 
 office in the evening, when he told stories with as 
 hearty an enjoyment of their humor as if he were 
 again in the lounging room of a tavern on the old cir- 
 cuit. At such times his laughter resounded through 
 the White House with a true ring, and care seemed 
 to have fled the place. His comradeship ranged 
 from a scientist of the eminence of Professor Joseph 
 Henry of the Smithsonian Institute, who was among 
 the earliest in Washington to appreciate his charac- 
 ter, to Petroleum V. Nasby, the humorist. 
 t 273 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Once among his callers came an elderly man from 
 Indiana, whom he quickly recognized, though he had 
 not seen him since boyhood. "You are John A. 
 Brackenridge," Lincoln promptly said; "I used to 
 walk thirty -four miles a day to hear you plead law 
 in Booneville, and listening to your speeches first 
 inspired me with the determination to be a lawyer." 
 
 He was free from all vanity of official dignity. 
 He shrank from wearing the high designation of 
 President, and referred to his office as "this place," 
 "since I have been in this place," or "since I came 
 here." Once when needing to speak of the apart- 
 ment reserved in the Capitol for the Chief Magis- 
 trate, he shyly said, "that room, you know, that they 
 call the President's room." He was genuinely an- 
 noyed to have friends from Illinois address him 
 as "Mr. President," and often pleaded, "Now call 
 me Lincoln, and I'll promise not to tell of the breach 
 of etiquette." 
 
 Dennis Hanks, his old co-laborer in the woods 
 of Indiana and on the prairies of Illinois, came to 
 see him, all dressed up for the occasion, and Lin- 
 coln quickly placed him at ease and on the equal 
 footing of their early days when they slept together 
 in the log-cabin. Dennis had been sent to influ- 
 ence the President to release some Copperheads in 
 Illinois, who had been in a riot against soldiers, 
 
 274 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 and Lincoln gravely summoned Secretary Stanton 
 to meet his visitor. He was cordially entertained, 
 and before he went home Lincoln gave him a watch 
 suitably engraved. 
 
 In the course of a visit which Lincoln received 
 from the old friend who had taken him in when he 
 came to Springfield without money enough to buy 
 a bed, and over whose store he slept, two women 
 came to beg the President to release from jail two 
 men who had been arrested for resisting the draft. 
 He not only granted their request, but at one stroke 
 of his pen liberated all who were in the jail with 
 them for the same offence. "These fellows have 
 suffered long enough," he said. 
 
 As one of the women, an aged mother, was leaving, 
 she said to him simply, "I shall probably never 
 see you again until we meet in Heaven." This 
 remark touched the President, and his friend told 
 him he was too sensitive and nervous a man to 
 expose himself to such trying scenes every day. 
 "Things of the sort you have just seen don't hurt 
 me," Lincoln protested; "it is the only thing to-day 
 that has made me forget my condition or given me 
 any pleasure." Then he added, "Die when I may, 
 I want it said of me by those who know me best, 
 that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower 
 where I thought a flower would grow." 
 
 275 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 While Lincoln read little, one form of relief for 
 his mind was to read aloud to two or three friends. 
 He delighted thus to read from Shakespeare, and 
 Holmes's "Last Leaf" took its place among his 
 favorites, its most familiar stanza particularly ap- 
 pealing to his melancholy mood : — 
 
 "The mossy marbles rest 
 On the lips that he has prest 
 
 In their bloom; 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a yeir 
 On the tomb." 
 
 John Hay, one of his secretaries, said Lincoln 
 \/as not a man to laugh alone. If he found some- 
 thing that much amused him in a volume of Tom 
 Hood, for instance, he would get out of bed, where 
 he often read, stalk through the hall in his night- 
 clothes, and wake up his secretary, that he might 
 read aloud the passage which had pleased him. 
 In writing, he relied on his ear more than on his 
 eye. It was his custom to form a sentence in his 
 mind and then speak it, perhaps in a whisper, be- 
 fore putting it on paper. 
 
 Lincoln's office was almost his prison cell for 
 four years. His day there usually began as early as 
 eight o'clock and lasted until bedtime. If he were 
 not at his desk, it was safe to look for him poring 
 
 276 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 over the despatches from the armies, in the tele- 
 graph office of the War Department, which he fairly 
 haunted. 
 
 Often he did not leave his work long enough to 
 eat his meals. When he went to the dining table, 
 he was not unlikely to sit there lost in thought, 
 without taking note of what he ate. He could not 
 tell as he left his breakfast whether he had drunk 
 coffee or milk. A very light diet sufficed him, 
 and even this he neglected. Mrs. Lincoln and the 
 servants were obliged to watch him to see that he 
 did not entirely forget to eat, and when he failed 
 to come to the dining room, they would send a 
 tray to him in his office. A glass of milk and a few 
 crackers or a little fruit satisfied his appetite. 
 
 In spite of his carelessness in this respect, he 
 kept himself in remarkable physical condition. 
 His muscles held their hardness. He could grip an 
 axe by the tip end of its handle and hold it out even 
 with his shoulder. He remained always a hardy 
 and not ungraceful horseback rider. 
 
 From the windows of his office he could see at 
 first the Confederate flags flying, but later the dis- 
 tant view was filled with the white tents of the Union 
 soldiers on the hills of Virginia. Near by stood 
 the unfinished Washington monument. War maps 
 hung on the walls, and his table was covered so deep 
 
 277 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with papers that it was not always possible for him 
 to find room to rest his hand while signing his name 
 to a document. "I am like the Patagonians," he 
 said with a laugh once, as he hunted for a place 
 where he could write. "You know they live off* 
 oysters and throw the shells out the window. When 
 the pile of shells grows so high as to shut in the win- 
 dow, they simply move and build a new house." 
 
 Notwithstanding the volume of business trans- 
 acted in the White House in his administration, he 
 never found fault with a member of his clerical staff. 
 He was content to work longer hours than any sub- 
 ordinate and to spare every one but himself. 
 
 The task, which to many would have been the 
 most wearing, was to him the most welcome. This 
 was the task of receiving the people. He finished 
 his reception to privileged persons, senators, rep- 
 resentatives, and officials at noon, and then except 
 on the two cabinet days each week the door was 
 thrown open, and the waiting crowd rushed in 
 from the hall, the anteroom, and the stairway. 
 
 In the motley mass were office seekers, crippled 
 veterans, fathers and mothers and wives of soldiers 
 in trouble, widows and orphans of those who had 
 fallen in battle, inventors and cranks and all sorts 
 of advisers, along with citizens who came merely 
 to grasp the President's hand and give him a word of 
 
 278 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 good cheer. They found him in his black broadcloth 
 suit, sitting in his arm-chair beside a table on which 
 a Bible lay. 
 
 He insisted there should be no secrets. "St. 
 Helena ? Why, we don't have a consul there," he 
 said in a voice heard by all, as he replied to the 
 whispers of an eager man who leaned over him. 
 The man continued to whisper, and Lincoln con- 
 tinued to tell him in his high-pitched tone that he 
 did not believe there was such an office. 
 
 "Yes, there is," the old messenger of the White 
 House finally broke in to say, from his position be- 
 side the door. "We have a consul at St. Helena, 
 and he's a fellow that Buchanan appointed." Lin- 
 coln did not rebuke this interruption, but began to 
 write on a little pad. When he had finished he tore 
 off" the slip, and before handing it to his caller read 
 it aloud: — 
 
 "Dear Gov. Seward: — If there be a consul at 
 
 St. Helena — 'mind you,' he added to the man, 
 
 'I don't wholly give up my contention' — I wish 
 
 you would appoint the bearer, particularly because 
 
 he comes from Thad Stevens, who has not troubled 
 
 us much of late. cc A T „ 
 
 "A. Lincoln. 
 
 He had infinite patience with bores. A weather 
 prophet gained his attention, for Lincoln was always 
 
 279 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 credulous in such matters, and he gave the man's 
 prophecies a fair trial. Finally, after several dis- 
 appointments, he wrote to the prophet declining to 
 see him again, because he had predicted it would 
 not rain for a month, and a ten-hour downpour set 
 in within two or three days. 
 
 He did not hesitate to protect himself, when it 
 seemed to him patience had ceased to be a virtue. 
 One insulting visitor, an army officer, who had 
 been cashiered and who was blind to gentler re- 
 proof, overstepped all bounds. Lincoln seized him 
 by the collar and marched him to the door. 
 
 On the whole, he derived much profit from his 
 practice of keeping open house. In the first place, 
 he genuinely enjoyed the occasion. Human nature 
 delighted him. All who came into his presence 
 felt that he was interested in them, and not hold- 
 ing himself above them. The man fairly breathed 
 equality. 
 
 His natural, unconscious democracy was reflected 
 in a story he told of a dream he had. He dreamed 
 he was in some great assembly, and the people drew 
 back to let him pass, whereupon he heard some one 
 say, "He is a common-looking fellow." In his 
 dream, Lincoln turned to the man and said, " Friend, 
 the Lord prefers common-looking people; that is 
 why He made so many of them." 
 
 280 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 Those who approached him in awe of his station 
 were instantly at ease as they came to him and ready 
 to confide in him, as in a friend. No honest man 
 was abashed in his presence or humbled himself 
 as he greeted him. On his part, if he could do 
 a kindness to a simple person, with no powerful 
 influence behind him, he was happy. 
 
 He called these receptions his "public opinion 
 baths," because he said he came out of them reno- 
 vated and invigorated in his sense of responsibility 
 and duty. "No hours of my day," he reasoned, 
 "are better employed than those which bring me 
 again within the direct contact and the atmosphere 
 of the average of our whole people." Officials are in 
 danger of becoming merely official, and of forgetting 
 that they hold power only for others. Meeting the 
 people in the free way that he did, served, he said, 
 "to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image 
 of that great popular assemblage out of which I 
 sprang and to which I must return." 
 
 The first principle of Lincoln's wonderful leader- 
 ship was to keep always in touch with the people. 
 Absorbed in his duties, he lost the habit of news- 
 paper reading, and once when urged to read some 
 editorial comments on a subject, he replied, "I know 
 more about it than any of them." He went neither 
 to editors nor to senators to learn public opinion, 
 
 281 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and he repeatedly showed that his judgment of it 
 was more correct than theirs. 
 
 "I don't want to know what Washington thinks 
 about it," he said to a man who was telling him of 
 opinion in Congress. He preferred to deal directly 
 with the people. When he had anything to say to 
 them, he knew how to say it in a way they would 
 surely understand. " Billy, don't shoot too high," 
 he used to caution Herndon, his old law partner. 
 The people knew, too, that when he spoke, it was 
 to some purpose other than to hear himself talk. 
 "I am very little inclined on any occasion," he re- 
 marked, "to say anything unless I hope to produce 
 some good by it." 
 
 To a regiment which he reviewed he made an 
 appeal for the Union that brought the cause home 
 to every fireside: "I happen temporarily to occupy 
 this big White House. I am a living witness that 
 any one of your children may look to come here 
 as my father's child has. It is in order that each 
 one of you may have through this free government 
 which we have enjoyed an open field and a fair 
 chance . . . that the struggle should be maintained, 
 that we may not lose our birthright. . . ." 
 
 When some workingmen from New York called, 
 they saw in him a fellow-lab orei, who personified 
 the opportunity for which the republic stands 
 
 282 
 
LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 "The strongest bond of human sympathy," Lincoln 
 told them, "outside of the family relation, should 
 be one uniting all working people, of all nations 
 and tongues and kindred/' but not to war upon 
 property. "Let not him," he said, "who is house- 
 less 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." 
 
 In him the multitude saw themselves in the White 
 House, for his virtues were all simple ones, as likely 
 to be found among common men as in any grade 
 of life, — truth, temperance, courage, and wisdom. 
 James Russell Lowell, in the middle of Lincoln's 
 term, drew from his example the lesson that " a pro- 
 found common sense is the best genius for states- 
 manship." 
 
 Lincoln influenced the people far more than they 
 influenced him in whatever intercourse he had with 
 them. He was not in any sense a "President with 
 his ear to the ground." Fe needed to consult 
 only his own instincts in order to know the people's, 
 for he could feel, as Emerson said, "the pulse of 
 twenty million throbbing in his heart." 
 
 *3 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 LINCOLN AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 His sympathetic attitude toward youth. — "Tad" and "Willie" 
 with their pets and at play in the White House. — Their shouts 
 always welcome in the ears of their care-burdened father, and 
 their intrusions never resented. — Willie's death, February 20, 
 1862, and Lincoln's grief. — "The hardest trial of my life." 
 
 — Little Tad, the President's only chum in the dark days 
 of war time. — Stanton made him a lieutenant. — Lincoln's 
 modest application to Grant in behalf of his son Robert. 
 
 — Tad and the office seekers. — Falling asleep nightly beside 
 his father at work. 
 
 Children liked Lincoln. Their keen eyes seemed 
 to penetrate his sad and rugged countenance and 
 see the good-natured man behind it. Simple per- 
 sons, young as well as old, instinctively felt a kin* 
 ship with him and stood in no awe of him. Babies 
 in their mothers' arms reached out trustingly toward 
 him, and romping youngsters were not stilled in 
 his presence. He delighted in their bold freedom 
 and did not care if they were noisy. 
 
 He looked upon the hard privations of his own boy- 
 hood as an example to be avoided and not followed. 
 For that reason, he was not given to preaching 
 from the familiar text, "When I was a boy I had to 
 do this and that." 
 
 284 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 His four children were all boys: Robert Todd, 
 born August I, 1843; Edward Baker, born March 
 10, 1846, died in infancy; William Wallace, born 
 December 21, 1850, died in the White House, Feb- 
 ruary 20, 1862; Thomas, born April 4, 1853, died 
 in Chicago, July 15, 1871. 
 
 But one of the boys lived to manhood. The oldest, 
 Robert, was a student at Harvard while Lincoln was 
 President. Only William and Thomas, or "Willie" 
 and "Tad," as he called them, were with their father 
 in the White House. 
 
 The former was ten and the latter eight years old 
 when they went to live in the stately old mansion 
 of the Presidents. They had been brought up in a 
 plain home in a little town out on the prairies of 
 Illinois, where they were free to play in the streets 
 and on the "commons" with other boys. When 
 their father became President of the United States 
 and they moved into the White House, they refused 
 to change their independent manners and habits. 
 
 They each had a goat, and they hitched their 
 horned steeds to big chairs and drove them up and 
 down the hall. They had dogs which they harnessed 
 and drove in the winding paths of the White House 
 grounds. Two ponies in the presidential stable were 
 theirs, and mounted on them they galloped along 
 the avenues of the capital. They gave shows in 
 
 285 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the attic of the mansion among the historic rubbish, 
 stowed away there by a dozen Presidents in the 
 past. 
 
 Their shouts at play were the only notes of joy 
 that came to the ears of their care-burdened father. 
 Their voices, however loud, did not annoy him, 
 and he never seemed to be impatient of their in- 
 trusions upon him, no matter how grave might be 
 the business which he had in hand. Often he went 
 out into the grounds and joined in their games, 
 regardless of his dignity and the amazement of the 
 lookers-on. Sometimes he played ball with them 
 and their playmates, running the bases with his long 
 legs as if he had no other purpose in life. 
 
 When a cat belonging to one of his sons had kittens 
 and a dog belonging to the other had pups, both 
 events occurring on the same day, he shared the 
 children's excitement and announced the stirring 
 news to senators and generals as they called on 
 matters of state. 
 
 His two little boys were Lincoln's closest com- 
 panions after he went to the White House, and were 
 more intimate with him than any member of the 
 cabinet. In their first winter there they both fell 
 sick, and at the same time Mrs. Lincoln was con- 
 fined to her bed. It was in a dark period, when 
 the nation itself was believed to be lying at death's 
 
 286 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 door. The President was overwhelmed by his 
 anxieties, private and public. He sat up with his 
 boys through the nights and went about his heavy 
 official duties by day. 
 
 Willie died, and his father's heart was torn with 
 grief. "This is the hardest trial of my life," he 
 confessed to the nurse, and in a spirit of rebellion 
 this man, overweighted with cares and sorrows 
 cried out: "Why is it ? Why is it ?" 
 
 He strove like a little child to learn to say, 
 "Thy will be done," while the lifeless body of his 
 loved boy lay in the Green Room, beneath his 
 office. For weeks the battle raged in his breast, 
 and one day in each of those weeks while the struggle 
 lasted he surrendered to his grief, dropping his work 
 and wrapping himself in gloom. Mrs. Lincoln, 
 meanwhile, sought to console herself by attempting 
 to communicate with the spirit of her dead child 
 through a medium and his table rappings and slate 
 writings in a darkened room. 
 
 A vision of the youth came to Lincoln several 
 nights in his dreams, and gave him a certain melan- 
 choly pleasure. In good time, however, the dark 
 passion which had clouded his nature was entirely 
 thrown off, and a nobler philosophy ruled him. 
 Doubtless the fortitude he gained in this time of 
 suffering became a part of that heroic faith in the 
 
 287 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 man which lifted him above the general despair 
 when his country's fortunes sank the lowest. 
 
 After Willie's death, little Tad received a double 
 share of his father's affection. Generally they slept 
 together, and no time or place was sacred from 
 the boy. He was free to interrupt his father on any 
 occasion and to crawl over him even at a meeting 
 of the Cabinet. The President liked to go through 
 picture books with him, and laughed carelessly 
 when teachers or tutors complained that he did not 
 pay enough attention to his school books. 
 
 The boy was all the dearer to his father because 
 of an impediment in his speech, due to a defective 
 palate. This was overcome as he grew older, but 
 when he was a little fellow he could hardly make 
 himself understood by strangers. 
 
 Even Secretary Stanton, who was so stern with 
 men, had a weakness for Tad. One day the Secre- 
 tary of War pretended to appoint him a lieuten- 
 ant in the army. The boy took the honor in dead 
 earnest, and soon contrived somehow to fit himself 
 out in a uniform appropriate to his rank. The little 
 lieutenant was fond of drilling and eating with the 
 President's guard of soldiers. 
 
 Taking it into his head to relieve them one night, 
 he sent away the squad on duty and proceeded to 
 organize a new guard from among the laborers about 
 
 28S 
 
From the collection of Frederick H. Meserve, Esq., New York City 
 
 Lincoln and Tad 
 
 From a photograph made in Washington 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 the White House. The affair was excitedly brought 
 to the President's attention, but the Commander- 
 in-chief was moved to laughter rather than censure. 
 In at least one great review of the army down in 
 Virginia, this youngest lieutenant, mounted on a 
 horse, rode behind his father and the commanding 
 general as they galloped along the line of cheering 
 troops. 
 
 While Tad gained his military rank without em- 
 ploying his father's influence, his brother Robert 
 owed his commission in the army to the President's 
 intercession with General Grant. The shyness 
 with which Lincoln, who showered shoulder straps 
 by the thousands, hinted for this little favor from 
 his general lends peculiar interest to his applica- 
 tion: "Please read and answer this letter as though 
 I was not President, but only a friend. My son, 
 now in his twenty-second year, having graduated 
 at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war 
 before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the 
 ranks, nor yet to give him a commission to which 
 those who have already served long are better en- 
 titled and better qualified to hold. 
 
 "Could he, without embarrassment to you or 
 detriment to the service, go into your military 
 family with some nominal rank, I, and not the 
 public, furnishing his necessary means ? If no, say 
 
 U 2&Q 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 so without the least hesitation, because I am as anx- 
 ious and as deeply interested that you shall not be 
 encumbered as you can be yourself." 
 
 The President's letters and telegrams to his wife, 
 when she and Tad were absent from Washington, 
 were almost always laden with some piece of infor- 
 mation for Tad's special benefit. In one such com- 
 munication he noted that "Nanny was found resting 
 herself and chewing her little cud on the middle of 
 Tad's bed," and again he sent this message by 
 telegraph, "Tell Tad the goats and father are very 
 well, especially the goats." 
 
 Perhaps the strangest document in all the volumes 
 of the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln is a 
 telegram in reference to Tad : — 
 
 "Executive Mansion, June 9, 1863. 
 
 "Mrs. Lincoln, Philadelphia, Pa.: 
 
 "Think you had better put Tad's pistol away. 
 I had an ugly dream about him. 
 
 "A. L." 
 
 The son had the father's active sympathies. He 
 used to get up little fairs of his own, at which he 
 held sales for the aid of the sick and wounded 
 soldiers. Sometimes he went into the crowd of 
 office seekers, who were always at the White House, 
 una soricited money for the same good end. He had 
 
 290 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 I M>— — — —■— — — M I II ——I — —— m I II — — — — — — — 
 
 a habit of going among the people in the halls and 
 waiting room and learning their wants. Now and 
 then when they touched his pity or appealed to his 
 sense of justice, he promptly led them into the 
 presence of the President. 
 
 In the evening, it was Tad's custom to go tc 
 his father and make a report of all he had seen 
 and done since morning. As a rule he fell asleep 
 in the midst of his prattle, and then Lincoln turned 
 again to his labors, his boy lying on the floor beside 
 his desk. When the President's own long day was 
 done, he took the sleeping child on his shoulder and 
 carried him to bed. 
 
 291 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 Indifferent to the pomp and glory of war, this commander of a 
 million men in arms held himself no more than the equal of 
 the least among them. — His deference to the men in the ranks 
 and their love for Father Abraham. — Visiting the sick and 
 wounded. — His interview with a blind soldier. — Heeding a 
 baby's appeal. — His beautiful tribute to a bereaved mother. — 
 Looking into the camp kettle. — His courage in the face of the 
 enemy. — "There are already too many weeping widows." — His 
 hatred of Fridays. — A friend of the coward. — " Leg cases." — 
 Pity for a condemned slave-trader. — Lincoln and the sleeping 
 sentinel. — The boy who paid the President's bill. 
 
 "O, slow to smite and swift to spare, 
 Gentle and merciful and just ! 
 Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 
 
 The sword of power — a nation's trust ! " 
 
 — William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 Lincoln's life was filled with striking contrasts. 
 For this careless captain of a company of unruly 
 rustics in the Black Hawk War to become the 
 Commander-in-chief of a million soldiers, a mightier 
 force of warriors than any conquering monarch 
 of modern times ever assembled, was perhaps the 
 strangest fortune that befell him. In four years he 
 called to his command two and a half millions of 
 men, probably a greater number than followed the 
 
 292 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 eagles of Napoleon in all his twenty years of cam- 
 paigning from Areola to Waterloo. 
 
 Yet this unparalleled martial power never touched 
 the ambition of Lincoln. He cared nothing for the 
 pomp of arms, the pride of rank, or the glory of 
 war. This man who could say to ten hundred 
 thousand armed troops, go, and they would go y 
 come, and they would come, held himself to be 
 no more than the equal of the least among them 
 While he stood toward all as a comrade rather than 
 a commander, they looked up to him in perfect trust, 
 and delighted to hail him as Father Abraham. 
 
 It was enough for him to touch his hat to a general, 
 but he liked to bare his head to the boys in the ranks. 
 He himself created generals by the hundreds, but 
 in his eyes the private soldier was the handiwork of 
 the Almighty. The reported capture of an officer 
 and twelve army mules in a raid near Washington 
 only moved him to remark, "How unfortunate! 
 I can fill that brigadier's place in five minutes, but 
 those mules cost us two hundred dollars apiece." 
 He never to the end solved the mystery of the uni- 
 forms, and could not tell a general from a colonel 
 by his epaulettes. 
 
 If he passed the White House guard twenty times 
 a day, he always saluted its members. He knew by 
 name every man in the company which watched 
 
 293 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 over him in his rest at the Soldiers' Home, and was 
 the real friend of all, heartily enjoying an occasional 
 cup of coffee at their mess and the little jokes they 
 played on one another. If any were missing, he 
 noticed their absence, and if they were sick, he never 
 forgot to ask about them. 
 
 The many military hospitals, crowded with human 
 suffering, that sprang up in Washington, were his 
 special care. He visited and cheered the wounded, 
 pausing beside their cots of pain, bending upon them 
 his pitying gaze and laying his great hand tenderly 
 on their fevered brows. He remembered and 
 watched those who were in peril of death, and 
 eagerly welcomed any signs of improvement in their 
 condition, while he joked with those who were well 
 enough to take a joke. 
 
 Once as he drove up to a hospital, Lincoln saw 
 one of the inmates walking directly in front of his 
 team, and he cried out to the driver to stop. The 
 horses were checked none too soon to avoid running 
 the man down. Then Lincoln saw that the poor 
 fellow, only a boy, had been shot in both eyes. 
 He got out of his carriage and, taking the blind 
 soldier by the hand, asked him in quavering tones 
 for his name, his service, and his residence. "I am 
 Abraham Lincoln," he himself said, as he waf 
 leaving, and the sightless face of the youth was lit 
 
 294 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 up with gratitude as he listened to the President's 
 words of honest sympathy. 
 
 The next day the chief of the hospital laid in the 
 boy's hands a commission as first lieutenant in the 
 army of the United States, bearing the President's 
 signature, and with it an order retiring him on three- 
 fourths pay for all the years of helplessness that, 
 until then, had stretched before him through a hope- 
 less future. 
 
 The sympathy of most men who get to be presi- 
 dents, governors, or statesmen can be reached only 
 through their heads. It becomes a thing of the 
 mind, filtered and cooled by an intellectual process. 
 Lincoln's sympathies always remained where nature 
 herself placed them, in the heart, and thence they 
 freely flowed, unhindered by reflection and calcu- 
 lation. Kindness with him was an impulse and 
 not a duty. His benevolence was far from scientific, 
 yet he was so shrewd a judge of human nature that 
 he seldom was cheated. 
 
 The stone walls of the White House no more 
 shut him in from his fellows, from the hopes and 
 sorrows, the poverty and the pride of the plain 
 people, than did the unhewn logs behind which 
 he shivered and hungered in his boyhood home. 
 A mother's tears, a baby's cry, a father's plea, an 
 empty sleeve, or a crutch never failed to move him. 
 
 295 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 A woman weeping in a hall of the War De- 
 partment with a baby in her arms, disturbed him, 
 and he could not put the affecting picture out 
 of his thoughts. Learning that she was crying be- 
 cause she could not be permitted under the rules 
 to go to her husband in the Army of the Potomac, 
 and show him their first born which the father never 
 had seen, he caused the Department to summon 
 the soldier to Washington by telegraph, and a bed 
 in one of the hospitals to be assigned to the mother 
 and child. This good deed done, the great simple 
 man was happy for the rest of the day. 
 
 A soldier who did not appeal to him at all, but 
 whose angry curses on the government he chanced 
 to hear while walking along a path in the White 
 House grounds, gained his aid. The President, 
 seating himself at the foot of a tree, examined the 
 man as to his grievance, and gave him an order 
 which promptly brought him the pay he had been 
 unable to draw. 
 
 His wonderful patience was most wonderful in 
 his bearing toward all who wore the blue. They 
 came to him in perfect trust, when colonels and 
 generals and bureau chiefs and the Secretary of 
 War were deaf to them. With the great burden of 
 the nation on his shoulders, he always stopped to 
 listen to their tales of trouble, although, as he said, 
 
 296 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 he might as well have tried to bail out the Potomac 
 with a teaspoon as to go into every detail of the 
 administration of a vast army. 
 
 Once when disaster was on every hand, and he 
 was overborne with care, he reproved a man, who 
 had been refused by every one else, for following 
 him to the Soldiers' Home, his only refuge, and 
 $ent him away. Early the next morning, after a 
 night of remorse, he went to the man's hotel, begged 
 his forgiveness for treating "with rudeness one who 
 had offered his life for his country " and was in 
 sore troubb. Taking him in his carriage, the Presi- 
 dent saw him through his difficulties. When he 
 told Secretary Stanton what he had done, the Sec- 
 retary himself apologized for having rejected the 
 appeal in the first instance. 
 
 "No, no," said Lincoln, "you did right in ad- 
 hering to your rules. If we had such a soft-hearted 
 old fool as I am in your place, there would be no 
 rules that the army or the country could depend 
 on." 
 
 When he heard of a poor widow in Massachusetts; 
 a working woman who, it was reported, had lost 
 five sons in battle, he sat down and wrote her one 
 of the most beautiful letters of condolence that a 
 hand ever was inspired to write: — 
 
 "I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word 
 
 297 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of mine which should attempt to beguile you from 
 the grief of a loss so overwhelming, 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 our Heavenly Father may assuage the 
 anguish of your bereavements and leave 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. " 
 
 Whenever he visited an army, he showed his 
 unfailing interest in the enlisted men, going among 
 them, and even looking into their camp kettles to 
 see how they were fed. "General," he said to 
 Butler, " I should like to ride along the lines and see 
 the boys and how they are situated." Accordingly 
 he and the General rode until they were within 
 three hundred yards of the enemy's pickets. The 
 latter heard the Union troops cheering their Presi- 
 dent, and saw his tall figure as he sat in his saddle. 
 Butler was uneasy and said, "You are in a fair 
 rifle shot of the rebels, and they may open fire on 
 you." He wished him to turn away. Lincoln 
 laughed and replied, "The Commander-in-chief 
 of the army must not show any cowardice in the 
 presence of his soldiers, whatever he may feel." 
 And he kept on until he had covered the entire 
 
 298 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 line of intrenchments, some six miles or more in 
 length. 
 
 It was for the men in the trenches that he felt the 
 Union must be saved. He was not striving to per- 
 petuate it for the sake of the business interests of 
 the country, for the benefit of the prosperous. He 
 believed the downfall of the Union, the overthrow 
 of a government by the people, would be a heavy 
 if not a fatal blow to the multitude the world over, 
 to "the last best hope of earth." Each man can 
 look upon the universe only with his own eyes. 
 Lincoln saw how freely the democratic institutions 
 of the United States had permitted him to rise, and 
 this was the ideal which he cherished for the Union. 
 
 "Gold is good in its place, but living, brave, and 
 patriotic men are better than gold," he said. His 
 Secretary of the Treasury complained of him, that 
 he never once asked to see the treasury figures, to 
 see how the money was coming in and going out 
 to carry on the war. His Secretary of War, on the 
 other hand, continually complained of him for inter- 
 fering with that department, in his effort to protect 
 private soldiers. The generals echoed this pro- 
 test. Indeed, the only criticism of Lincoln's 
 own direct use of his despotic authority which 
 stands to-day is of his lavish exercise of the par- 
 doning power. 
 
 299 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 This interest on his part was no fickle, unsteady 
 freshet of gushing sentimentality which overflowed 
 one day and dried up the next, no alternating current 
 of strength and weakness. Mercy flowed in a con- 
 stant stream from its fountain in his great heart, 
 nourishing the fragrant flower of charity under the 
 withering blasts of war. 
 
 The eye, in running over the printed pages of 
 his official correspondence, is forever coming upon 
 traces of this persistent quality of the man. "If 
 you have not yet shot Dennis McCarthy, don't." 
 " Has he been a good soldier, except the desertion ? 
 About how old is he ?" "I do not like this punish- 
 ment of withholding pay ; it falls so very hard upon 
 poor families. " These several quotations from de- 
 spatches sent by Lincoln are a few out of scores 
 of similar inquiries and instructions which may be 
 seen in casually turning the leaves of his published 
 writings. 
 
 Commanders in the field implored him to withhold 
 his hand, and scolded him because he would not 
 leave them free to apply the stern measures they 
 deemed necessary to the discipline of the military 
 machine. He never could forget, however, that 
 a volunteer army after all is a human machinej 
 and it was his faith that love conquers more than 
 fear. Every soldier who carried a musket was as 
 
 300 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 a son of his. All were his children, and hardly 
 more than children were the defenders of the Union. 
 
 Of the two and a half million enlistments, more 
 thtn two million were of boys under twenty-one; 
 more than a million of the soldiers were not even 
 eighteen; eight hundred thousand went into the 
 army before they were seventeen, two hundred 
 thousand before they were sixteen, and one hundred 
 thousand before they were fifteen years old. 
 
 "There are already too many weeping widows,** 
 Lincoln insisted to one of those who protested, 
 when forbidden to shoot twenty-four deserters in 
 a row; "for God's sake, don't ask me to add to 
 the number, for I won't do it." "They are shoot- 
 ing a boy to-day," he was heard to say once. "I 
 hope I have not done wrong to allow it." He hated 
 Fridays. As he turned to a heap of sentences lying 
 on his table one Thursday, he said, "To-morrow is 
 butcher's day, and I must go through these papers 
 and see if I can't find some excuse to let these poor 
 fellows off." 
 
 He was honest about it. He did not pretend to 
 apply any strict rules of justice. "I think this boy 
 can do us more good above ground than under 
 ground," was his reason in one instance. "The 
 case of Andrews is really a very bad one," was his 
 indorsement on a commutation, and he admitted 
 
 301 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he commuted the sentence solely "because I am 
 trying to evade the butchering business." 
 
 The coward found a friend in this brave man. 
 Convictions on the black charge of "cowardice in 
 the face of the enemy" he lightly called "leg cases." 
 "If," he demanded of a frowning army officer, 
 "God Almighty gives a man a cowardly pair of 
 legs, how can he help their running away with him ?" 
 A pigeon-hole in his desk was crowded with these 
 "leg cases" of men who had run away, but who 
 were suffered by Lincoln to live to fight another 
 day. 
 
 His hand, so ready to spare, paused above the death 
 writ of a convicted slave-trader, as he sadly remarked, 
 "Do you know how hard it is to have a human being 
 die when you feel that a stroke of your pen will 
 save him ?" Even this heinous offender was not 
 barred from his large pity as a brother man. He 
 delayed the execution from the fear that in the 
 man's delusive hope of pardon he had not prepared 
 himself for death, and he admonished him in the 
 days of grace which he gave him "to refer himself 
 to the mercy of the common God and Father of 
 all men." 
 
 To his friend, David Davis, the presiding judge 
 of the old circuit, whom he lifted to the bench of 
 the supreme court of the United States, he once 
 
 ->02 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 said he did not believe in killing, and that if the 
 world had no butcher but himself, it would go 
 bloodless. 
 
 He was open to appeals for clemency at any time 
 and in any place. One man went to him late 
 at night, after he had gone to bed, and he sat 
 down in his night-clothes and wrote the order sus- 
 pending the execution of a nineteen-year-old boy 
 for sleeping at his post. The boy was to be shot 
 the next morning, and Lincoln was so troubled by 
 the fear that his telegram might go astray he rose 
 and dressed and went to the War Department in 
 order to get into direct telegraphic communication 
 with the army in the field. Once when he was 
 disturbed by a like fear he was not content until 
 he had repeated his order by telegraph to four 
 persons. 
 
 A condemned man did not need any powerful 
 influence in his behalf. "If he has no friend, I'll 
 be his friend," Lincoln said as he stopped the 
 shooting of a soldier. 
 
 To a woman who pleaded for her brother's life, 
 Lincoln said, "My poor girl, you have come here 
 with no governor, or senator, or member of Con- 
 gress to speak in your cause; you seem honest and 
 truthful, and you don't wear hoops, and I'll be 
 whipped if I don't pardon him." "God bles« 
 
 303 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 President Lincoln " was the written inscription under 
 a photograph of Lincoln which was found in the 
 pocket of a dead soldier after the battle of Freder- 
 icksburg. By the President's mercy he had been 
 spared a dishonorable death to die on the field of 
 honor. 
 
 The oft-told story of Lincoln and the sleeping 
 sentinel has the power to move the heart far more 
 than any feat of arms in the Civil War. The senti- 
 nel was a young soldier from Vermont, who was con- 
 demned to die in a camp near Washington because 
 he had fallen asleep while on guard duty. The 
 offence was particularly serious at the time, because 
 the safety of the capital depended on the watch- 
 fulness of the sentries. The officials determined to 
 make an example of the Green Mountain youth. 
 Every effort to save him had failed when the 
 captain and the members of his company, all neigh- 
 bors of the doomed offender, went to the White 
 House and saw Lincoln. 
 
 A few hours afterward the boy was astonished 
 to receive a visit from the President of the United 
 States, who asked him about his parents, their farm, 
 his work, and his life generally. He told the Presi- 
 dent the simple story of his old home among the hills, 
 and took from his pocket a picture of his mother. 
 Lincoln told him he was too good a boy to be shot 
 
 3°4 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS SOLDIERS 
 
 for merely falling asleep once. He himself had been 
 brought up on a farm and knew how hard it must 
 be for a country boy to keep awake nights when 
 inew to army habits and duties. He promised to free 
 him, but he would have to present a heavy bill for 
 his services. 
 
 The soldier's happy face reflected a grateful heart. 
 He was sure his father would raise what money he 
 could by mortgaging the farm and pay the charge. 
 Lincoln said that would not be enough; the boy alone 
 could pay the bill and only by proving himself to 
 be as brave and faithful as any soldier of the Union. 
 His hand rested on the head and his kindly eyes 
 looked full into the honest face of the boy, who 
 pledged his life that he would not disappoint his 
 benefactor. 
 
 The President's bill was presented not long 
 afterward. It was in the Peninsular Campaign and 
 in the boy's first battle. In a desperate charge across 
 a river and upon some blazing rifle pits he was among 
 the first to face and among the last to turn his back 
 on the enemy. When retreat was sounded, he swam 
 in safety to the friendly bank of the stream. 
 
 But he felt he had not yet paid the President's 
 
 bill. He plunged into the water again and again, 
 
 and swam to and fro under the shot of the foe in 
 
 the work of rescuing wounded comrades, until he 
 
 x 305 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 had brought back the last of them, but with a bullet 
 in his own loyal breast. Then he was ready to close 
 his account with earth. He had paid the President's 
 bill in full, and with his dying breath he blessed the 
 mercy of Lincoln for trusting him and permitting 
 him to give his life for the Union. 
 
 306 
 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 His life-long hatred of slavery. — Why he was not an Abolitionist. 
 
 — His courage and wisdom in resisting rash counsels. — Could 
 not free the slaves as President, but only as Commander-in- 
 chief and as a military, not as a moral measure. — General 
 Butler's declaration that slaves were contraband of war, May, 
 1861. — Lincoln's effort to promote gradual, compensated 
 emancipation in the border states. — The slaves in the District 
 of Columbia emancipated by Congress, April 16, 1862. — 
 Lincoln first announced to his cabinet, July 22, 1862, his 
 purpose to proclaim emancipation in warring states. — Writing 
 the Proclamation in secret. — His vow to God. — A strange 
 scene in the cabinet room, Lincoln first reading from Artemus 
 Ward, and then reading his Proclamation, September 22, 1862. 
 
 — Emancipation of more than three million slaves proclaimed, 
 January 1, 1863. — The Confederacy staggered. — One hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand black troops for the Union in 1864. — 
 The South driven to arming the negroes. — Lincoln's ideals 
 for the freedmen. — His dread of a race problem. — The 
 thirteenth amendment adopted by Congress, February I, 1865, 
 and ratified by the states, December 18, 1865. 
 
 Lincoln always hated slavery. Yet he never 
 was an Abolitionist, for the Abolitionists who 
 were ridiculed as long-haired men and short-haired 
 women, or cranks, hated the Constitution and the 
 Union as well as slavery. Because the Constitution 
 recognized the existence of slavery and protected it 
 within the states where it existed, they denounced 
 
 P7 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 it as a league with death and a covenant with hell. 
 Despairing of the abolition of slavery within the 
 Union, they loudly advocated disunion and the separa- 
 tion of the North from the South. 
 
 Lincoln, on the other hand, felt a deep passion 
 for the Union, and it was his faith that the principles 
 of liberty and equality, on which it was founded, 
 would surely lead in the end to the gradual eman 
 cipation of the slaves. He believed the nation 
 would not permanently remain half free and half 
 slave; that it would become either one thing or the 
 other, and that under the inspiration of the Decla- 
 ration of Independence and the democratic institu- 
 tions of the republic, freedom would triumph. 
 
 The Abolitionists did not support him when he 
 was a candidate for President, and after he became 
 President their eloquent orator, Wendell Phillips, 
 described him as "the slave hound of Illinois. " 
 Lincoln was still for the Union above all else, for 
 he felt if that were lost, the surest guarantee of 
 freedom for white men as well as black would be 
 lost. 
 
 If he had permitted the Civil War to become 
 at once a fight against slavery rather than a fight 
 for the life of the Union, he would have driven 
 from his side the slave states on the border and a 
 majority of the people of the free states of the North 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 as well. Moreover, he believed that he had no 
 right under his oath of office to destroy slavery 
 except to save the Union. 
 
 A President in time of peace could not free the 
 slaves any more than he could enter a man's house 
 and take away something that lawfully belonged to 
 him. Not as President, but only as Commander- 
 in-chief of the army engaged in open war, could 
 Lincoln emancipate the negroes, just as he could 
 kill, burn, or confiscate whenever and wherever he 
 thought he could thereby hurt the enemy and help 
 the Union. 
 
 In resisting the rash counsels of the radicals, Lin- 
 coln showed a courage equal to his wisdom. He 
 must seem to ignore the moral sentiment of the 
 civilized world which was outraged by the institu- 
 tion of slavery in a free country, and appear in- 
 different to a cause which he had espoused in his 
 youth. 
 
 He could not fail to see, however, that freedom 
 was on the way. No man could stop it, and it needed 
 no encouragement. The South had made war in 
 order to perpetuate slavery. As surely as the South 
 lost, slavery would be lost. 
 
 From the outset the army commanders were 
 confronted with the question of what to do with the 
 negroes who came within the Union lines. Some 
 
 3°9 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 generals restored the slaves to their owners, while 
 others went so far as to issue emancipation proc- 
 lamations on their own responsibility. 
 
 Both methods brought embarrassment to Lincoln. 
 To return the runaways to slavery aroused in- 
 dignation in the North and even in Europe, while 
 to proclaim them free, alarmed the border states and 
 the conservatives of the North. General Benjamin 
 F. Butler found the happiest solution of all. He 
 declared the negroes who came under his military 
 jurisdiction "contraband of war," and held them 
 just as any contraband article is held or treated in 
 time of war. 
 
 That fortunate phrase surmounted many diffi- 
 culties, and "contrabands," as the fugitives came 
 to be known in the speech of the day, flocked to 
 the standard of freedom in increasing numbers. 
 They dug trenches, threw up earthworks, and did 
 all manner of labor for the Union armies. They 
 were not free, however, in the cold eye of the law. 
 
 As events continued to hasten the institution of 
 bondage to its downfall, Lincoln did his utmost to 
 prepare the Union slaveholders and their sympa- 
 thizers for the inevitable end. He strove to put 
 in operation a plan for paying the owners of slaves 
 in the border states, and to gain their consent to 
 a slow process of compensated emancipation. He 
 
 310 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 pleaded earnestly with the representatives of those 
 states in Congress, and he addressed the people 
 themselves. "You cannot, if you would, be blind 
 to the signs of the times, ,, he warned them in a 
 proclamation in the spring of 1862. 
 
 Their prejudices against the abolition of slavery, 
 however, clouded their vision, and his warning was 
 unheeded. Congress, having power over the matter 
 in the District of Columbia, passed a law for the 
 compensated emancipation of the three thousand 
 slaves at the capital, an act which Lincoln himself 
 had proposed when he was a member of the House 
 a dozen years before. 
 
 A year of disaster to the national cause sealed 
 the fate of slavery. The negro must be freed and 
 called to the aid of the Union. Lincoln reasoned, 
 "Often a limb must be amputated to save a life; 
 but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. ,, He 
 must amputate slavery from the body of our in- 
 stitutions in order to save the government itself 
 from wreck. He would not emancipate the negroes 
 because he personally wished to see all men free. 
 To do that would be a violation of his oath. He 
 would free them solely because he believed as Com- 
 mander-in-chief of the army that their services 
 had become a military necessity. 
 
 As in every important transaction in his life, he 
 
 3" 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 kept his own counsel while waiting and watching 
 for the time to act. He listened to those who ad- 
 dressed him on the subject and discussed it with 
 them; but he told no one of his purpose. In mid- 
 summer of 1862 he first informed his cabinet 
 of his intention, but he was urged to wait. Mc- 
 Clellan's army was at that time retreating down 
 the peninsula from Richmond, and it was argued 
 that if the step were taken then, the world would 
 look upon it as an act of desperation. While he 
 waited, Lincoln wrote the Proclamation in secret. 
 
 A month after the President had confided his 
 purpose to the cabinet, Horace Greeley spread on 
 the page of the New York Tribune a stirring appeal 
 for immediate emancipation. Lincoln answered 
 the editor without disclosing the resolution which 
 he had already taken. He still insisted on keeping 
 before the people the one issue of saving the Union. 
 
 " My paramount object," Lincoln wrote to Greeley, 
 "is to save the Union, and not either to save or 
 destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without 
 freeing any slave, I would do it — and if I could 
 save it by freeing all the slaves,. I would do it — and 
 if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others 
 alone, I would also do that. What I do about 
 slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe 
 it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I 
 
 312 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 — — — — — — — m^— — — ■ — — e 
 
 forbear because I do not believe it would help to 
 save the Union. " 
 
 Several weeks later, a delegation of clergymen 
 from Chicago came to press him to free all the slaves 
 at once, and they said they had come in obedience 
 to a Divine command. Lincoln answered that it 
 seemed as if God would be more likely to reveal His 
 will on this subject to him than to others, and he 
 assured his callers, if he could learn what God 
 wished him to do, he would do it. Even then 
 the written Proclamation lay in his desk, still con- 
 cealed from every eye save his own. 
 
 A few days more and the battle of Antietam 
 brought victory to the Union arms. Five days 
 after that event there was a meeting of the cabinet. 
 When all the members were in their seats, Lincoln 
 told them Artemus Ward, the humorist, had sent 
 him his latest book, and he would like to read a 
 funny chapter from it. "High-handed Outrage at 
 Utica ,? was the title of this chapter. One of the 
 secretaries said he seemed to enjoy the reading of 
 it very much, and that all the members smiled, 
 "except Stanton." 
 
 When the President had finished it, and finished 
 his laugh over it, his face and his tone underwent 
 an instant change. "Gentlemen," he said gravely, 
 "when the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined 
 
 313 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland to 
 issue a proclamation of emancipation such as I 
 thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing 
 to any one, but I made the promise to myself — and 
 to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out 
 and I am going to fulfil that promise. I have got 
 you together to hear what I have written down. 
 I do not wish your advice about the main matter, 
 for that I have determined for myself. This I say 
 without intending anything but respect for any 
 one of you." 
 
 He confessed it might seem strange that he should 
 have submitted the matter to the judgment of God, 
 but the way was not clear to his own mind. Now 
 that God had decided in favor of the slaves, he was 
 satisfied the Proclamation was right. He asked 
 the members, therefore, merely to consider the 
 language of the document and not its purpose, for 
 that had been fully and finally decided. 
 
 He acknowledged that others in his place might 
 do better than he could do. If he believed any 
 one else more fully possessed the public confidence 
 and there were a constitutional way in which that 
 person could be placed in the presidential chair, 
 he would gladly yield it to him. "I am here," 
 he added; "I must do the best I can and bear the 
 responsibility." 
 
 3i4 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 If a scene like unto this ever was enacted in the 
 cabinet room of the White House, before or since, 
 it is not recorded in history. Opening with laughter 
 over a roaring farce from the pen of Artemus Ward, 
 shifting in a twinkling to the freeing of a race from 
 bondage, and concluding by a simple, humble con- 
 fession of a childlike reliance on prayer, it affords 
 in its contrasts a portrait of Lincoln as true as it is 
 extraordinary. 
 
 The Proclamation thus brought forth did not 
 go into effect until the first of January following, 
 and it promised freedom only to those negroes held 
 to slavery in the states which at that date should still 
 be at war with the Union. In other words, it gave 
 the slaveholders one hundred days' grace, in which 
 period, by bringing their states back into the Union, 
 they could avert the emancipation of their slaves. 
 
 The New Year came and with it the usual recep- 
 tion by the President to the ministers from foreign 
 nations, the justices of the courts, the members of 
 the Senate and House, the officers of the army and 
 navy, the chiefs of bureaus, and the public. This 
 hard task finished, Lincoln seated himself to sign 
 the final Emancipation Proclamation, declaring the 
 slaves in the Confederate States thenceforward and 
 forever free. 
 
 As he took up his pen, his hand was stiff from the 
 
 3i5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 long ordeal of hand-shaking. He said he feared 
 it would tremble so badly that posterity would 
 look at his signature and say, "He hesitated." 
 Yet, he declared, his whole soul was in it, and 
 he remarked that if his name got into history at 
 all, it would be for the act which he was about to 
 complete. After resting his arm, he wrote his name 
 at the bottom of the Proclamation with much care. 
 Then examining his penmanship, he said with a 
 smile, "That will do." 
 
 The pen was given to a Massachusetts man, its 
 handle gnawed by Lincoln's teeth, for it was his 
 habit to hold his pen in his mouth while forming 
 and rounding sentences in his mind before beginning 
 them on paper. The Proclamation and his signa- 
 ture he intended to preserve for himself and his 
 heirs. When, however, he was asked to give it to a 
 great fair in Chicago and let it be sold for the benefit 
 of sick and wounded soldiers, he unselfishly parted 
 with it. A generous sum of money, three thousand 
 dollars, was realized by its sale at auction, but the 
 document itself was destroyed in the conflagration 
 which burned the larger part of Chicago eight years 
 later. 
 
 By the Proclamation more than three million of 
 the four million slaves in the South were declared 
 free. All those in the loyal border states, in Ten* 
 
 316 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 nessee, and in the part of Louisiana held by the 
 Union forces were excluded from its provisions, 
 because, acting as Commander-in-chief of the army, 
 the President could not interfere with slavery out- 
 side the enemy's country. 
 
 Lincoln's first purpose was to spread demoraliza- 
 tion among the slaves of the Confederates, tempting 
 the laborers who were tilling the fields and raising 
 the crops which supported the Confederate army, 
 and who besides were doing much of the heavy work 
 in the construction of fortifications, to cease their 
 labors and seek freedom within the Union lines. 
 Wherever the Stars and Stripes appeared in the states 
 of the Confederacy, slavery instantly perished. 
 Everywhere the blacks hailed the advance of "Lin- 
 kum's soldiers" as their deliverance from bondage. 
 
 The next step after the issuance of the proclamation 
 was to enroll negro troops and send them forth in 
 the army of liberation. In the last critical period of 
 the war, when the draft was necessary in the North 
 and extravagant bounties had to be paid to white 
 volunteers, there were one hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand black men under arms, battling for the Union. 
 
 Lincoln said of this new force, which the policy 
 of emancipation had brought to the support of the 
 government, " Keep it, and you can save the Union. 
 Throw it away, and the Union goes with it." He 
 
 3*7 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was thoroughly convinced that only by calling in the 
 help of the negroes could the life of the nation be 
 preserved. 
 
 The Confederacy reeled from the blow, when its 
 full effect was felt, and the leaders of the South were 
 enraged. Jefferson Davis denounced the Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation as the "most execrable measure 
 recorded in the history of guilty man," and the Con- 
 federate Congress enacted that any white officer cap- 
 tured while commanding negro troops might be put 
 to death. Some of the generals of the South an- 
 nounced they would treat captured negro soldiers as 
 they treated any other form of captured property. 
 In a few instances black captives were massacred 
 and an angry cry for retaliation arose in the North. 
 Lincoln, however, said he could not bear the thought 
 of killing southern prisoners of war for what other 
 Southerners had done. He would not order the 
 innocent shot as a punishment for the guilty. 
 
 The time came when the South itself, in its ex- 
 tremity, turned to the despised race. In November, 
 1864, President Davis sent a message to his Congress, 
 saying that rather than accept defeat the Confeder 
 ates would employ negro soldiers and reward them 
 with freedom. General Lee and General Johnston 
 both urged the adoption of such a plan, and finally, 
 en the eve of the fall of Richmond, provision wa» 
 
 318 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 made, by act of the Confederate Congress, for the 
 enrolment of black troops under the Stars and Bars 
 of a republic which had placed the slavery of the 
 African race in its very corner-stone. Thus was Lin- 
 coln's Emancipation Proclamation doubly justified 
 as a military measure. 
 
 Morally, Lincoln wjuld have preferred to see the 
 negroes freed, not at one stroke, but gradually. 
 This was the ideal he expressed time and again, 
 for he was always a very practical man. He dreaded 
 sudden revolutions and their equally violent reac- 
 tions. He feared the racial strife and the social 
 problem which would follow any kind of emancipa- 
 tion, and he even favored the experiment of sending 
 the freedmen out of the South and colonizing them 
 in Central America, or elsewhere. When he saw 
 that this would not be done, he turned to the educa- 
 tion of the liberated blacks as the best hope of fitting 
 them to hold their own in a land where they had so 
 long been in slavery. 
 
 He favored no sweeping and radical plans. His 
 purpose was to seek some slow but wise process, 
 whereby "the two races could gradually live them- 
 selves out of their old relation to each other, and both 
 come out better prepared for the new." Universal 
 negro suffrage did not strongly appeal to him. He 
 preferred that the ballot should be placed only in the 
 
 3*9 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hands of the colored men who had fought for the 
 Union, and the "very intelligent." Black voters of 
 those classes, he thought, would "probably help in 
 some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty 
 in the family of freedom. " 
 
 He continued to beg the people of the border 
 states to complete the work o/ freeing the slaves by 
 compensated emancipation. Millions of dollars were 
 offered them in payment for their negroes, but the 
 owners would not accept. The only course re- 
 maining was the adoption of an amendment to the 
 Constitution, forbidding slavery everywhere within the 
 United States. 
 
 After all the evil which the institution had wrought, 
 it must be destroyed, root and branch, before the 
 restoration of the Union. It would be a criminal 
 folly to permit a vestige of it to linger and disturb the 
 new Union. Lincoln therefore strove earnestly in the 
 closing months of the war for the passage of the thir- 
 teenth amendment, which he looked upon as the 
 completion of his labors for freedom. 
 
 In the evening following his second inauguration 
 he held a reception. Frederick Douglass, who was 
 born a slave, presented himself to be received by the 
 President. No negro ever before had been seen on a 
 social occasion at the White House, and the police 
 Started at once to put Douglass out. A protest being 
 
 320 
 
LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR 
 
 raised by some onlooker, however, he was permitted 
 to take his place in the line of guests, where in due 
 time he was cordially greeted by the President. For 
 Lincoln, although he knew the prejudices of others, 
 had a respect for the feelings as well as for the rights 
 of the members of this enslaved race. 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln," said Douglass, "is the only white 
 man with whom I have ever talked, or in whose pres- 
 ence I have ever been, who did not consciously or 
 unconsciously betray to me that he recognized my 
 color." He invited Douglass to tea in his cottage at 
 the Soldiers' Home, and many negroes attended the 
 President's New Year's reception in the closing 
 days of the war, laughing and crying with joy as 
 they stood in their new manhood before their eman- 
 cipator. 
 
 321 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 A group of naturally discordant advisers moulded and harmonized 
 by Lincoln's unsuspected mastery of men. — Seward or Chase 
 expected to be the real power behind the chair of the unknown 
 and untried President. — Seward's amazing proposal to 
 Lincoln, April I, 1861, and the kindly firmness with which 
 the latter rejected it. — Chase's pathetic failure to understand 
 his chief. — Attempt of the Senate to reconstruct the cabinet, 
 December 19, 1862, and Lincoln's successful method of meet- 
 ing the crisis. — Lincoln and Stanton a strangely matched team. 
 — "I have very little influence with this administration." — 
 How Lincoln slowly and gently gained the lead over all. — 
 Chase's resignation, June 28, 1864, and Lincoln's generous 
 appointment of him to the Chief-justiceship, December 6, 
 1864. — Estimates of Lincoln's leadership by Seward and 
 Stanton. 
 
 Lincoln hated to dictate. He shrank from assum- 
 ing to control the members of his cabinet until 
 forced by circumstances to take upon himself the 
 responsibility. His natural preference was to work 
 with, rather than to lead men. He could not bear 
 to humble any fellow-being, however low his rank. 
 He found, however, as emergencies arose, that some 
 one must rule, and that as President he alone was 
 responsible to the people. His courage never per- 
 mitted him to shirk a duty, and thus little by little 
 
 3^ 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 his power was modestly put forth until his quiet 
 mastery was complete. 
 
 When the members of Lincoln's cabinet first met, 
 probably no one among them suspected that their 
 counsels would be ruled by the man who sat at the 
 head of the table. None of them knew him, and 
 most of them felt they were the superiors of the un- 
 tried and untrained President. They had all been 
 chosen by him for political and party reasons. Four 
 had been his competitors for the nomination at Chi- 
 cago. He had not one personal friend in the group. 
 
 The construction of such a cabinet was a daring 
 venture. There was no binding tie between the 
 secretaries. Rivals or strangers to Lincoln, they 
 were not united in loyalty to him. Drawn from hos- 
 tile factions, there was no harmony of purpose among 
 them. Only a President with the power to mould 
 and master men could hold together a group of 
 advisers naturally so discordant. 
 
 Few, if any, imagined that Lincoln would dominate 
 them. For twenty years there had been a succession 
 of weak Presidents, reigning but not ruling. The 
 Chief Executive had come to be no more than the 
 figurehead of a strong faction. Lincoln's administra- 
 tion, therefore, was expected to be his only in name. 
 
 Two men in the cabinet, Seward and Chase, repre- 
 senting opposing forces in the new Republican party, 
 
 3 2 3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 aspired to be the real power behind the President's 
 chair. Their struggle for control began before Lin- 
 coln reached Washington, and grew more intense as 
 time went on. Seward, an old and adroit New York 
 politician, had been the original choice of a large 
 majority of Republicans for President, and he 
 looked upon Lincoln as a mere accident of politics. 
 Moreover, as Secretary of State, he held the ranking 
 place in the cabinet. 
 
 Under these circumstances he assumed at once to 
 be the directing genius of the administration. He 
 was a man of free and easy manners, and had been 
 long in Washington. Lincoln liked him, and relied 
 for a while upon his larger experience with public men 
 and public affairs. 
 
 In this period, Seward amused himself by play- 
 ing the part of a prime minister. He undertook 
 not only to conduct the State Department, but 
 to deal with the seceded states of the South, and 
 to give orders to the army and navy. By his 
 advice there were no stated cabinet meetings for 
 several weeks, because he preferred to be the sole 
 adviser of the President, and he took it upon himself 
 to call the few meetings which were held in the early 
 stages of the administration. 
 
 Intoxicated by power, he lost his head. He de- 
 termined to have his supreme position formally 
 
 3 2 4 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 recognized and established. It was then that he 
 made in writing his wild proposal to the President, 
 that the United States should bring on a war with 
 some foreign nation in order to awaken the patriot- 
 ism of the South, and that the President should let 
 him conduct the government. 
 
 ; Lincoln ignored this mortal insult as if it had come 
 from a child, and put aside the folly of it all with the 
 patience and firmness of a large nature — a display 
 of strength which instantly and forever conquered his 
 ambitious Secretary. 
 
 When Seward had finished reading the brief and 
 kindly reply, he was entirely changed. Ever after 
 he was content simply to serve. Straightway taking 
 his place in his own department, he kept it to the end, 
 an able and loyal lieutenant of his chief, whose path 
 he never crossed again. He was the first to challenge 
 the new President and the first to accept his leader- 
 ship. 
 
 No hint of the encounter escaped the lips of either 
 Lincoln had maintained his own dignity, without 
 humiliating Seward. The good understanding be- 
 tween them in their official relations ripened into a 
 hearty personal friendship, which nothing ever dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 Chase, the other ambitious member of the cabinet, 
 built for himself the enduring fame of a great Secre- 
 
 3 2 5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tary of the Treasury, but he remained throughout his 
 service a stranger to the President. The Secretary 
 was a man of culture, and was an eminent statesman 
 when Lincoln was yet unknown outside of Illinois. 
 He never could persuade himself to accept the latter's 
 elevation above him. 
 
 Worst of all, he was totally without a sense of 
 humor, and that deficiency hopelessly and pathetic- 
 ally separated the two men. "The truth is," Chase 
 observed with all his solemn seriousness, "I have 
 never been able to make a joke out of this war." He 
 was a persistent and open critic of the President, at 
 whose council table he sat. "He may have been a 
 good flatboatman and rail-splitter," he admitted to 
 one of his correspondents, in a flippant reference to 
 the President, but he failed to appreciate Lincoln's 
 statesmanship. 
 
 His constant faultfinding with the President and 
 his associates aided in finally bringing on a serious 
 crisis. When the administration was well-nigh over- 
 whelmed with disaster in the field and defeat at the 
 polls, the Republican senators, still cherishing the 
 delusion that Lincoln was not his own master, de- 
 termined to rescue him from Seward's influence, 
 which they thought was wrecking the administration, 
 and place him under the wiser guidance of Chase. 
 They did not dream that the entire cabinet could go 
 
 326 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 and a new one come without affecting the President's 
 policies. 
 
 A caucus T/as held, and a delegation of leading 
 senators was sent to force the retirement of the 
 Secretary of State. Lincoln received them without 
 showing any resentment, and invited them to return 
 in the evening. When they came at the appointed 
 time, they were surprised to find that he had as- 
 sembled all the members of the cabinet except 
 Seward, and the two groups were thus obliged to 
 discuss the situation face to face. 
 
 This unexpected meeting resulted in clearing the 
 air and in silencing several of the senators. Seward 
 offered his resignation, and Chase felt that he had 
 been exposed in a position where it was only proper 
 for him to show the same self-sacrificing spirit. He 
 came to see the President the next morning, with his 
 written resignation in his hand. While he was still 
 hesitating to present it, however, Lincoln approached 
 him, and guessing what the irresolute Secretary held 
 in h*s hand he reached for the paper. Chase could 
 do nothing less than deliver it to him and take his 
 departure. 
 
 Lincoln was made happy thus to have the two 
 rivals on an equal footing. He sat down at once and 
 wrote to both of them, declining to accept their 
 resignations, whereupon they resumed their duties* 
 
 3 2 7 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "Now," said Lincoln, with a smile of satisfaction, 
 "I can ride; I have got a pumpkin in each end of my 
 bag." He had retained the two factions in his ser- 
 vice in order that they should balance each other, 
 and had reorganized his cabinet without losing 
 either of his able secretaries. 
 
 After that experience with the President, the sen- 
 ators concluded that he knew enough to conduct his 
 own affairs, and they let him alone. They could 
 sympathize with Horace Greeley, who adopted the 
 prudent policy of keeping away from the White 
 House. "Lincoln is too sharp for me," the famous 
 editor declared; "every time I go near him, he winds 
 me around his finger." 
 
 With equal tact and skill, the President made 
 a much-needed change in the head of the War 
 Department. Secretary Cameron, a powerful poli- 
 tician, had not conducted this most important de- 
 partment to the satisfaction of his chief and the 
 country. Lincoln succeeded in the delicate task of 
 securing his withdrawal from it without wounding 
 his feelings, and appointed in his place Edwin M. 
 Stanton, a Democrat, who had shown himself an out- 
 spoken personal and political enemy of the President. 
 
 Stanton, who was a lawyer in Washington, had 
 not entered the White House since Lincoln's ap- 
 pearance there, and had been free with his criticisms 
 
 328 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 of the administration. All this counted for nothing 
 against his fitness for the office. Lincoln's nature 
 was a stranger to the spirit of revenge. He did not 
 have to forgive the insult he received at Stanton's 
 hands the first time they met in the reaper case in 
 Cincinnati a few years before, or his bitter criticism 
 of the administration; he could calmly ignore them. 
 
 The new Secretary of War brought to his duties 
 a patriotic devotion that was almost fanatical and 
 an energy that thrilled the dispirited armies. He 
 forgot himself, the President, and every one else in 
 his rage for the success of the Union arms. "Now, 
 we will have some fighting," was his grim watch- 
 word. He trod intrigue and influence like serpents 
 under his ruthless heel. He would have no secret 
 influences in his department. Taking his stand 
 each day at a certain hour to receive his callers, — 
 senators, generals, and all alike, — he placed beside 
 him a stenographer who took down a report of 
 everything that was said. 
 
 Men rushed to the White House in offended 
 dignity to complain of the high-handed measures 
 of the new Secretary. To smooth the ruffled feel- 
 ings of one of them, Lincoln told a story. "We 
 may," he said, "have to treat Stanton as they are 
 sometimes obliged to treat a Methodist minister 
 I know out West. He gets wrought up to so high 
 
 3 2 9 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a pitch of excitement in his prayers and exhorta- 
 tions that they put bricks in his pockets to keep 
 him down. But I guess," the President concluded 
 with a twinkle, " we'll let him jump awhile first." 
 
 A Governor who came to the White House in a rage 
 over some act of Stanton's was sent away in a better 
 frame of mind, but without receiving any concession. 
 Lincoln was asked to tell how he appeased him, and 
 he said he did it the same way that an Illinois farmer 
 got rid of a big log which lay in the middle of his 
 field : he " ploughed around " the wrathful Governor. 
 " But," the President confessed, " it took me nearly 
 three hours to do it, and I was in mortal fear all the 
 time that he would discover what I was up to." 
 
 No doubt Lincoln secretly rejoiced in the very 
 violence of Stanton's temper as a quality which he 
 himself lacked, and was glad to employ it in the 
 service of his administration. When a man who had 
 wheedled the President into giving him a note of 
 introduction to the Secretary hastened back to the 
 White House to tell him that Stanton had angrily 
 torn up the President's card and thrown it in the 
 waste basket, Lincoln looked upon it as a good joke. 
 "Well, that's just like Stanton," he exclaimed with 
 real enjoyment of the situation. 
 
 A Congressman who went to the Secretary with 
 an order from the President came back to report 
 
 33° 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 that Stanton ignored the order and said the President 
 was a fool. Lincoln only answered that if Stanton 
 said he was a fool, he must be a fool, as "Stanton is 
 nearly always right and generally says what hemeans. ,, 
 
 To another man who begged him to overrule 
 Stanton's refusal of a pass through the military 
 lines, the President remarked with a helpless air, 
 "I can do nothing; for you must know that I have 
 very little influence with this administration." 
 
 Nevertheless, in his own quiet way, Lincoln took 
 care to slip a few bricks into the pockets of his ram- 
 pant Secretary of War as occasion required. If un- 
 checked in his remorseless passion for the triumph 
 of the Union, he might have shut the gates of mercy 
 and set up an iron-handed despotism that would 
 have wrecked the cause which he had so much at 
 heart. Lincoln ruled him with a forbearance and 
 firmness which gave the government the aid of 
 his great powers, while restraining him from harming 
 its interests. 
 
 When the capital was in peril from Lee's first in- 
 vasion, and Lincoln determined to recall McClellan 
 to the command of the army, he knew that Stanton 
 would never sanction the step, and he acted 
 without consulting him. The Secretary when he 
 heard of it came to the White House in an ugly 
 mood. The President met him in the kindest 
 
 33 1 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 spirit, but in terms marked with such strong decision 
 that there could be no appeal, he told him he had 
 given the order and he alone would stand responsible 
 for it before the country. 
 
 At another time when Lincoln gave a permit 
 without knowing that it was contrary to the wishes 
 of both Grant and Stanton, the latter positively 
 refused to comply with it. The President regretted 
 his act, but he had given his word and felt he m^t 
 see it through, in order to avoid a serious difficulty 
 with powerful persons who were concerned in the 
 matter. He said therefore: — 
 
 "Mr. Secretary, I reckon you'll have to execute 
 the order." 
 
 "Mr. President," Stanton replied with feeling, 
 "I cannot do it; the order is an improper one." 
 
 "Mr. Secretary," Lincoln persisted with a look 
 of determination, "it will have to be done." 
 
 That was enough. No man could have a quarrel 
 with Lincoln, and Stanton obeyed without further 
 protest. Then, always fair, the President wrote 
 to Grant explaining in plain words that the permit 
 was a blunder on his own part and that Stanton 
 should not be blamed for it. 
 
 "He might appear to go Seward's way one day," 
 Grant said in reviewing Lincoln's leadership, "and 
 Stanton's another; but all the time he was going 
 
 3S 2 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 his own course and they with him. It was that 
 gentle firmness in carrying out his own will without 
 argument, force, or friction that formed the basis." 
 
 The bravery and constancy of the man gave him 
 the lead without effort on his part. His patience 
 was a large part of his strength. His temper was 
 slow and under excellent control. He never spoke 
 in haste, acted in haste, or moved in haste. No 
 member of his cabinet ever heard a word of fault- 
 finding from him or received even a frown. 
 
 Yet if it suited him, he could speak with positive 
 ness. When Halleck as General-in-chief of the 
 army dared to ask that one of the Secretaries 
 be dropped, Lincoln bluntly replied, "I propose to 
 be myself the judge as to when a member of the 
 cabinet shall be dismissed." Again, to suppress 
 a quarrel between the members themselves, he felt 
 obliged to read the cabinet a rather stern lecture, 
 in which he said he did not wish to hear more of 
 such a thing "here or elsewhere, now or hereafter." 
 
 While compelled by his position to be the head 
 of his administration, and sometimes to overrule 
 his subordinates, he seldom interfered in the affairs 
 of any department other than the War Department, 
 where as Commander-in-chief it was necessary for 
 him to take a close and active interest. 
 
 Incapable of jealousy, he left the members of his 
 
 333 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cabinet free to conduct their respective branches 
 of the public service in their own way and to reap 
 for themselves whatever fame their success brought 
 them. He was ignorant of the details of their duties 
 and did not try to acquire a knowledge of them, 
 trusting entirely to their judgment and experience. 
 He had no taste for desk work, and with his remark- 
 able memory he was able to carry the Presidency 
 of the United States in his hat. 
 
 "Money," Lincoln cried to some bankers. "I 
 don't know anything about money. I never had 
 enough of my own to fret me, and I have no opinion 
 about it anyway. Go see Chase.** The Secretary 
 of the Treasury was as innocent as he of finance 
 in the beginning of the administration, but with a 
 high order of intelligence he had built up a sys- 
 tem which brought in the three billions required 
 for the expenses of the army and enough more 
 to carry on the rest of the public work. It stands 
 in history as a great achievement and wholly 
 to his credit. Lincoln had the sound common 
 sense not to waste his time in meddling with the 
 work which he appointed another to do and who 
 gave all his thought and strength to the task. 
 
 Unfortunately Chase's extraordinary abilities were 
 impaired by a childish vanity and a peevish temper. 
 He was a poor chooser of men, and whenever the 
 
 334 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 President saw fit to revise or interfere with his ap- 
 pointments, he took offence. Resignation was his 
 favorite way of showing resentment, and Lincoln 
 coaxed him out of several such fits of ill humor. 
 
 "I went directly up to him with his resignation 
 in my hand," he recalled, in describing one expe- 
 rience of this kind when he had driven out to his 
 Secretary's house, "and putting my arm around 
 his neck, said to him, ' Chase, here is a paper with 
 which I wish to have nothing to do. Take it back 
 and be reasonable;' I had to plead with him a long 
 time." 
 
 In his restless ambition to be President and in 
 his contempt for Lincoln's qualifications for the place, 
 Chase finally permitted himself to be a candi- 
 date against his chief. It was at a time when Lin- 
 coln was pursued by opponents, and the outlook 
 for his reelection was dark. Yet he patiently bore 
 with this opposition in his own official household. 
 
 Chase himself came to see the false position which 
 he was occupying and offered to resign. Lincoln 
 answered that he had ignored the entire matter as 
 far as he could. He had refused to read the circulars 
 issued in behalf of the Secretary's candidacy and 
 had not encouraged any one to discuss the subject 
 in his hearing. He concluded by declining to accept 
 his resignation. 
 
 335 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "Whether you shall remain at the head of the 
 Treasury Department is a question/' the President 
 added in fine temper, "which I shall not allow myself 
 to consider from any standpoint other than my 
 judgment of the public service, and in that view 
 X do not perceive occasion for change/' 
 
 Long after the movement for Chase's nomination 
 had perished in its absurdity and Lincoln himself 
 was nominated again, the Secretary once more lost 
 his patience with the President and resigned. A 
 grave financial crisis was upon the country, and it 
 was generally a time of gloom for the Union. Lin- 
 coln, however, had the courage to face the inevitable, 
 and with a promptness which took Chase by sur- 
 prise he accepted the resignation on the ground 
 that the differences between them had become so 
 embarrassing that it was best they should part. 
 "I had found a good deal of embarrassment from 
 him," the retiring Secretary in his unfortunate lack 
 of humor confided to his diary, "but what he had 
 found from me I cannot imagine." 
 
 Lincoln, on the other hand, ungrudgingly said, 
 "Of all the great men I have known, Chase is equal 
 to about one and a half of the best of them." 
 
 The Chief-justiceship of the United States soon 
 became vacant. With a magnanimity rarely equaled, 
 Lincoln conferred on Chase this highest honor in a 
 
 336 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 President's gift. There is genuine pathos in this 
 entry which the ex-Secretary made in his diary at a 
 time when Lincoln, ignoring their unhappy estrange- 
 ment, had determined to crown his great services with 
 a splendid prize, "I feel tnat I do not know him." 
 Others whose good fortune it was to sit at the 
 cabinet table of Lincoln were more happily gifted 
 by nature to appreciate the homely yet lofty nature 
 which swayed their counsels by its moral force. 
 Seward pronounced it a character "made and 
 moulded by Divine Power to save a nation," and 
 Stanton beheld in his chief "the most perfect ruler 
 of men the world has ever seen." 
 
 337 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 All the great soldiers destined to reap the harvest of glory, in 
 obscurity when the war began. — Grant, Sherman, Sheridan 
 and Thomas unknown men in 1861. — The advantage of th' 
 Confederacy in its military leaders. — Lincoln's trials with 
 McClellan and the earlier commanders. — His remarkable letter 
 to Hooker, January 26, 1863. — How he applied his gift of 
 common sense to the art of war. — Some of his homely words of 
 wisdom regarding strategy. — No meddlesome spirit. — Stand- 
 ing by Grant when the general was a stranger and friendless. 
 — "I can't spare this man; he fights." — His faith in him. 
 "You were right and I was wrong." — Grant, General-in- 
 chief in the spring of 1864. — Grant and Sherman's estimates 
 of Lincoln. — His model relations with his generals. — His 
 great achievement in maintaining the civil power supreme, 
 and himself, the elected chief of the people, superior to military 
 heroes. 
 
 The great captains destined to lead the armies 
 of the Union to victory were unknown men when 
 the war began. 
 
 Grant had resigned his captaincy in the regular 
 army and was a clerk in his father's leather store 
 at Galena, Illinois, at a salary of fifty dollars a month. 
 His duties were to keep books and buy hides from 
 the farmers' wagons. He was thirty-nine and his life 
 a failure, although he had shown in the Mexican cam- 
 paign that he was a good hand at the trade of war. 
 
 1$ 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 Sherman, too, had resigned from the regular 
 army, in which he had risen to the rank of captain 
 in the commissary department. He had missed 
 active service in the Mexican War, having been on 
 a detail in California at that time. After leaving 
 the army he tried banking and the practice of the 
 law, each of which occupations he abandoned, and 
 he was at the head of a military school in Louisiana 
 when that state prepared to secede. At the out- 
 break of the war he was forty-one and the president 
 of a street railway in St. Louis. 
 
 Sheridan was only thirty and a captain in the 
 quartermaster's department. Thomas also was in 
 the army and a major. Meade, who was forty-six, 
 had been in the service most of the time since leav- 
 ing West Point, twenty-five years before. Hancock 
 was thirty-five and a captain. McPherson was 
 a lieutenant. Whether in the army or out, the 
 generals who reaped the harvest of glory were veiled 
 in obscurity when the war came. Fortune seemed 
 determined to keep them in concealment until, like 
 the stars of the theater, the stage of action was made 
 ready for their entrance upon it. 
 
 Grant vainly applied to the War Department and 
 to the governors of three states for a commission; 
 his applications were pigeon-holed. Sherman, who 
 had a brother in the Senate, was not entirely neg- 
 
 339 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 lected. He received the offer of the chief clerkship 
 of the War Department, but feeling that he would 
 be more useful with the sword than with the pen, 
 he refused the place and bided his time in the street- 
 car office. 
 
 Sheridan was sent out to buy horses, the one task 
 of all for which he probably was the least fitted. 
 Thomas was under suspicion because he was a 
 Virginian, and his superiors could not understand 
 why he had not gone over to the South. They did 
 not deem it safe to trust him with an independent 
 command. Thus it chanced that the men who were 
 to bear the flag of the Union to its final triumph 
 were all hidden from view in the early days of the 
 war. 
 
 Fate dealt more kindly with the Confederacy. 
 Its President was himself a soldier, trained at West 
 Point and in the war with Mexico, and he had 
 besides been Secretary of War of the United States. 
 Whether due to Jefferson Davis's acquaintance 
 with military men and military affairs, or to some 
 other cause, the Confederate government discovered 
 and developed at the outset some of its greatest 
 commanders — men like Lee, Johnston, Longstreet, 
 and Jackson. 
 
 Lincoln, on the other hand, knew nothing of war 
 or warriors. He was wholly dependent on the 
 
 340 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 professional advice of the men whom he found at 
 the head of the regular army. Scott, the command- 
 ing general, was seventy-five and in his dotage, 
 while the next officer in rank, the commander of 
 the department of the East, General Wool, was 
 seventy-three. Another aged major-general, Twiggs, 
 in command of the department of Texas, abandoned 
 his entire charge to the Confederacy, and the Ad- 
 jutant-geneial himself went over to the enemy. 
 
 The duty of constructing an army thus was thrust 
 upon Lincoln, feebly aided by Scott. The Secretary 
 of War, Cameron, was a politician and ignorant of 
 military matters. 
 
 Governors and senators pressed for the appoint- 
 ment of political favorites. While Lincoln yielded 
 to this pressure, he accepted in most instances the 
 counsels of General Scott. At the suggestion of 
 the old General, the command of the army in the 
 field was offered to Robert E. Lee; but the latter 
 listened to the call of his state rather than to that 
 of his country. McClellan was Scott's next choice, 
 and he also selected Halleck to take charge of the 
 operations in the West. To both of these men the 
 President clung, long after they had lost the favor 
 of the cabinet and the public. 
 
 Lincoln and McClellan first met in Illinois, where 
 *he latter was a railway official. Being a Democrat, 
 
 Ml 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he supported Douglas in his campaign for the Senate 
 and carried him over the state in his private car* 
 While Lincoln ignored their past political unfriend* 
 liness, McClellan seemed to regard him rather 
 as the poor country lawyer whom he had known 
 in the West than as the Commander-in-chief who 
 had lifted him to his high eminence in the army. 
 
 His staff were cautioned against imparting military 
 secrets to the supposedly guileless and garrulous 
 President, who, not standing on the order of prece- 
 dence, was in the habit of seeking out his young 
 general, whom he fondly addressed as "George," 
 at his home in the city instead of troubling him to 
 come to the White House, 
 
 One evening when he called, McClellan refused 
 even to see him. The General entered his house 
 and went upstairs, sending down word to Lincoln, 
 who modestly sat waiting for him in his anteroom, 
 that he was going to bed and must be excused. 
 After that incident they met as a rule only at the 
 White House and on official business. 
 
 Even there the soldier did not always show the 
 respect due to his chief. He refused, in the presence 
 of the cabinet, the President's request that he sub- 
 mit his plans, at a time when the public patience 
 was worn out by the army's delays. On another 
 occasion he failed entirely to respond to a sum- 
 
 342 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 mons to meet the President; but Lincoln remarked 
 to the indignant men who were waiting with him, 
 "Never mind; I would hold McClellan's horse if 
 he would only bring us success/' 
 
 The General was a young man. His rise had 
 been too rapid for his own good, and he mistook Lin- 
 coln's patient deference for weakness. His letters to 
 his wife overflowed with boyish conceit. " By some 
 strange operation of magic I seem to have become 
 the power of the land," he confided to her. Growing 
 Napoleonic in spirit as well as in name, at another 
 time he informed her, "I would cheerfully take the 
 dictatorship and agree to lay down my life when the 
 country is saved." 
 
 McClellan's constant grievance was a lack of 
 support, both in men and supplies, while his chronic 
 weakness was his unwillingness to make the best of 
 what he had, and to remember that the President 
 and others in authority, as well as himself, had their 
 duties and their troubles. 
 
 When Lincoln at last replaced him, after a trial 
 of more than a year, he selected as his successor 
 the man next in rank, Burnside, in spite of the latter's 
 own protest that he was "not competent to command 
 such a large army." It was hoped that the new 
 General's modesty would avail more than his prede- 
 cessor's self-assurance; but in a month he went 
 
 343 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 down in the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg, and 
 Hooker, the next man in line, took his place. 
 
 Lincoln wrote the new commander an extraor- 
 dinary letter, such a letter as has seldom been ad- 
 dressed to a man at the head of a great army by 
 any civil official. In this unusual communication 
 he said to Hooker: — 
 
 "I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, 
 which of course I like. I also believe you do not 
 mix politics with your profession, in which you are 
 right. You have confidence in yourself, which is 
 a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You 
 are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds 
 does good rather than harm ; but I think that during 
 General Burnside's command of the army you have 
 taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him 
 as much as you could, in which you did a great 
 wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and 
 honorable brother officer. I have heard in such 
 a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that 
 both the army and the government needed a dic- 
 tator. 
 
 "Of course it is not for this, but in spite of it, 
 that I have given you the command. Only those gen- 
 erals who gain successes can set up dictators. What 
 I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk 
 ihe dictatorship.' ' 
 
 344 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 These plain words of reproof and warning combined, 
 as only Lincoln could, firmness with good humor. 
 They sobered rather than angered Hooker. "He 
 talks to me like a father/' he said. "I will not 
 answer this letter until I have won him a great 
 victory." 
 
 At this time, Lincoln was most sorely tried. The 
 war had been going on two years, and he was not 
 sure he had yet found a general. He was in a 
 mood to despair of shoulder straps and the military 
 profession. Man after man had risen in the magnifi- 
 cence of a splendid new uniform and the mystery 
 of the art of war. Lincoln had watched them come 
 on at first with a layman's simple confidence, but 
 afterward with increasing distrust, flourishing their 
 swords and issuing high-sounding proclamations to 
 their troops. 
 
 Napoleon seemed to be the favorite model among 
 them. Too often, alas, their ambitions outran their 
 performances. McClellan was going to "crush 
 the rebels in one campaign." Again he confidently 
 promised, "In ten days I shall be in Richmond. " 
 Now, Hooker was filled with the same confidence, 
 and talked so much and jauntily of taking Richmond, 
 that Lincoln's heart sank at the familiar sound of it. 
 
 Although Halleck, the General-in-chief, was at 
 his elbow to serve as military adviser, the President 
 
 345 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in his responsibility to the country and to history 
 had been driven slowly to undertake the direction of 
 the armies. He sat up nights with military books, 
 and his eye was continually on the war maps. He 
 found, probably greatly to his surprise, that his gift 
 of plain common sense had its usefulness even in 
 the strategy of warfare. Little by little he gave 
 his generals the benefit of it, but always with a good 
 deal of diffidence. 
 
 "With these continuous rains," he once reminded 
 McClellan, "I am very anxious about the Chicka- 
 hominy — so close in your rear and crossing your 
 line of communication. Please look to it." "By 
 proper scout lookouts," he telegraphed General 
 Fremont, "and beacons of smoke by day and fires 
 by night you can always have timely notice of the 
 enemy's approach. I know not as to you, but by 
 some this has been too much neglected." 
 
 "I state my general idea of this war to be," he 
 wrote to General Buell, "that we have the greater 
 numbers, and the enemy has the greater facility 
 of concentrating forces upon points of collision; 
 diat we must fail unless we find some way of making 
 our advantage an overmatch for his." He added, 
 however, that he did not offer his views as orders 
 and would blame the General if he should adopt 
 f.hem contrary to his own judgment. 
 
 346 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 "You would be better off anywhere," he wrote 
 General Banks, "for not having a thousand wagons 
 doing nothing but hauling the forage to feed the 
 animals that draw them." "He who does some- 
 thing at the head of one regiment," he gently ad- 
 monished General Hunter, "will eclipse him who 
 does nothing at the head of a hundred." 
 
 "I would not take any risk," he cautioned Hooker, 
 when urging him to begin the pursuit of Lee, which 
 reached its glorious climax in the great victory at 
 Gettysburg, "of being entangled upon the river, 
 like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to 
 be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance 
 to gore one way and kick the other." "If he stays 
 where he is," he telegraphed again to Hooker re- 
 garding Lee, "fret him, and fret him." "If the 
 head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg and the tail 
 of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg 
 and Chancellorsville," so ran one of his messages 
 to the same General early in the Gettysburg cam- 
 paign, "the animal must be very slim somewhere. 
 Could you not break him ?" 
 
 In trying to compose the untimely quarrel between 
 Halleck and Hooker, he wrote to the latter, "If 
 you and he would use the same frankness to one 
 another and to me that I use to both of you, there 
 would be no difficulty." All he asked, he said. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was that the two generals should harmonize their 
 judgments and go ahead, "with my poor mite added, 
 if indeed he and you shall think it entitled to any 
 consideration at all." 
 
 In such instances as these, it is seen how Lincoln 
 sought to leaven the counsels and campaigns of 
 his commanders with simple common sense. The 
 same common sense, however, saved him from 
 meddling with men who went about their business 
 and let him alone. 
 
 There rose a general with whom he never inter- 
 fered, to whom he never offered a word of advice. 
 This was Grant, who got into the war by leading to 
 the front a mutinous Illinois regiment, from which 
 the fair-weather political colonels had fled in terror. 
 
 Without influence and opposed by jealous su- 
 periors, this soldier mounted the ladder of military 
 rank by strictly and silently minding his own business. 
 He never asked for promotion. He was heard from 
 in Washington only when he had some action to 
 report. He did not stop to clamor for more men 
 or to complain of a lack of supplies. He took what 
 was given him and went ahead. 
 
 He must have puzzled and amazed Lincoln, this 
 strange man from his own state, whom he never 
 had heard of until he was winning victories for 
 him. It is doubtful if, when Grant was charged 
 
 348 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 with intemperance, he said he would like to send 
 the same brand of liquor to other generals, but the 
 familiar story well expresses the President's con- 
 fidence. 
 
 While his victory at Fort Donelson was yet fresh, 
 Grant was placed under arrest by Halleck for a 
 petty military offence, but Lincoln caused him to 
 be released and restored to his command. The 
 early reports from the battle of Shiloh gave the im- 
 pression that the army had been imperiled through 
 Grant's dissipation, and a storm of denunciation 
 assailed him. Lincoln sustained him single-handed, 
 simply saying, "I can't spare this man; he fights." 
 
 In the disappointments of the long Vicksburg 
 campaign, the old prejudices against the General 
 were revived, and once more Lincoln stood by him 
 when he was friendless. All the while the two 
 men remained strangers, and the General could 
 not even know who it was that was shielding 
 him. 
 
 When the victory came, the President took pains 
 to let the world know that all the credit belonged to 
 Grant. "I do not remember that you and I ever met 
 personally," he wrote to him; and after praising his 
 campaign, which led to the capture of Vicksburg, 
 he admitted that he had feared it was a mistake. 
 "I now wish," Lincoln generously concluded, "to 
 
 349 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 make the personal acknowledgment that you were 
 right and I was wrong." 
 
 It was in the course of this movement that Sher- 
 man developed as Grant's great lieutenant, protesting 
 to those who would give him a share in the congratu- 
 lations over the Union success at Vicksburg, "Grant 
 is entitled to every bit of credit for this campaign; 
 I opposed it." 
 
 In the battles about Chattanooga in the fall, 
 Sheridan came in contact with Grant and Sherman, 
 and thus at last the fortunes of war brought to- 
 gether the three generals whose trusting and af- 
 fectionate military companionship lasted to the end, 
 sealed in devotion and unstained by jealousy. 
 
 The Union now had a thoroughly organized 
 army led by great commanders. Congress revived 
 the grade of Lieutenant-general, and Lincoln sum- 
 moned the victor of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chat- 
 tanooga to the capital to receive the high rank which 
 none but Washington, among American soldiers, had 
 worn, Scott having held it only by brevet. 
 
 Notwithstanding Grant's renown filled the land, 
 he was unknown at the seat of government. His 
 post of duty had been at the front, and he had kept it. 
 When, leading a young son by the hand, he walked 
 up to the desk of a Washington hotel with a cigar 
 in his mouth, a well-worn army hat on his head, 
 
 35o 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 and a linen duster on his back, the clerk told him 
 he had no room except at the top of the house. 
 The little blue-eyed, rusty man, with rough light 
 brown whiskers, seemed not to care where he was 
 sent as he went on writing the name, which startled 
 the clerk when he turned the register around and 
 read "U. S. Grant and Son, Galena, 111." 
 
 The truth is, the newly arrived guest would have 
 preferred the obscurity of an attic chamber to the 
 honors which were thrust upon him in the parlor 
 suite, to which he was promptly assigned. He 
 never showed the dread of the guns of Vicksburg, 
 which he betrayed whenever he was obliged to face 
 the noisy enthusiasts who crowded the lobbies of 
 the hotel, waiting to catch a glimpse of him, whik, 
 as he tried to eat his dinner under the eyes of the 
 cheering people in the big dining room, he probably 
 wished he was living off the country again down in 
 Mississippi. 
 
 When he was taken to the White House in the 
 evening, he was embarrassed to find a reception 
 in progress. Men and women drew back in their 
 surprise as they saw the illustrious soldier led to 
 Lincoln. The President clasped his hand in hearty 
 gratitude and held it, while his little eyes looked 
 down upon his general in frank curiosity. It was a 
 picture ready for the pages of history, 
 
 35i 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 As soon as the brief scene was ended, the visitor 
 was caught in an eddying whirl of eager admirers 
 and swept on to the East Room, where at the sug- 
 gestion of some one he climbed up on the safe heights 
 of a sofa and there timidly submitted himself to 
 the gaze of the people. It was his first appearance 
 as a lion. When he had finally broken the siege 
 and escaped to the outer air, he was perspiring 
 from the ordeal through which he had passed, and 
 hoping that the "show business" was ended for 
 good. 
 
 The next day, in the presence of the Cabinet, 
 he received his commission as Lieutenant-general 
 and his designation as General-in-chief of all the 
 armies, East and West. He kept out of sight as 
 completely as he could the rest of the day, and on 
 the day following went to the headquarters of the 
 Army of the Potomac, while the day after that 
 found him on his way back to Tennessee, having 
 pleased Lincoln not a little by declining a White 
 House dinner. 
 
 War had become a business, and Grant was s.11 
 business. No longer did the commander prance 
 along cheering lines at grand reviews, dwell in state 
 in Washington, or issue ringing proclamations to 
 his army. The new General-in-chief was one who 
 had always lived with his men, who shared their 
 
 352 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 hardships and perils, and who in uniform and 
 bearing could easily be mistaken for a private 
 soldier. 
 
 Grant pressed matters with such despatch, that 
 in the first week of May, while Sherman's army 
 was starting southward from Chattanooga on the 
 great Georgia campaign, he himself led the Army 
 of the Potomac into the wilderness on its slow and 
 bloody journey to Richmond. This latter prize was 
 within an easy day's w T alk, but now every inch of 
 the way must be paved with Union dead. With 
 Lee in front of him, Grant for the first time faced a 
 foeman worthy of his steel. 
 
 Lincoln no longer troubled himself with the direc- 
 tion of the armies. He trusted all to Grant and his 
 brothers in arms. "The particulars of your plan I 
 neither know nor seek to know," he told Grant, who 
 replied, "Should my success be less than I desire and 
 expect, the least I can say is that the fault is not with 
 you." The General-in-chief gave secret orders to 
 Sherman, which involved the famous march to the 
 sea, and requested that Sheridan be placed in com- 
 mand of a division. 
 
 When the latter came to Washington, Lincoln 
 
 frankly admitted that he himself, as well as Stanton, 
 
 was opposed to his appointment on account of his 
 
 comparative youth, but had given it to him solely 
 
 *a 353 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 because Grant desired it. After the new appointee 
 had gloriously justified Grant's confidence by his 
 victories in the Shenandoah Valley, the President 
 playfully remarked to "Little Phil," that although his 
 ideal cavalry leader was at least six feet four in height, 
 he had come to the conclusion that five feet four 
 would do in a pinch. 
 
 The only grievance Lincoln ever expressed against 
 Grant took the form of a tribute of praise. "General 
 Grant/' he said, "is a copious worker and fighter, but 
 a very meager writer or telegrapher." 
 
 In the conduct of his cabinet, Lincoln showed 
 himself a leader of leaders. In his relations with his 
 generals, he proved himself a commander of com- 
 manders. "He was incontestably the greatest man 
 I ever knew," is Grant's estimate of him, while Sher- 
 man said, "Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to 
 possess more of the elements of greatness combined 
 with goodness than any other." 
 
 Lincoln did not go to the head of the group of 
 statesmen whom he called into his cabinet, or the 
 galaxy of generals whom he called to the colors of 
 the nation, because he was more brilliant or more 
 ambitious than the others. He did not conquer 
 men by sheer strength, or trick them by smartness. 
 Leadership came to him because he had a purpose 
 that never wavered, a heart that never quailed, a 
 
 354 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 faith that never drooped, a courage that never shrank 
 from responsibility. 
 
 Besides the possession of these qualities, he was a 
 gentleman among gentlemen, with a knightly sense 
 of honor and a fine regard for the feelings of others. 
 He dropped men from the cabinet and from com- 
 mand, and moved them around freely, but without 
 quarreling with them or incurring their enmity. 
 
 His letters and messages to his generals are modelr 
 of simple frankness, kindly courtesy, and good taste. 
 As he confessed to Grant in congratulating him on 
 the capture of Vicksburg, "You were right and I was 
 wrong," so he took pains to admit in telegraphing to 
 Sherman the thanks of the nation for his capture of 
 Savannah, "The honor is all yours, for I believe none 
 of us went further than to acquiesce," and finally, 
 after the surrender at Appomattox, he declared to 
 the rejoicing nation, "No part of the honor for plan 
 or execution is mine." 
 
 It is not easy to get up a rivalry with a man who is 
 without envy; he is exalted above comparison and 
 competition. Lincoln's was not a jealous nature. 
 If he had shown a fear of a general's fame, he would 
 thereby have lifted him at once to his own level. 
 
 His opponents were always looking for a chance 
 to displace him in the confidence of the people with 
 some military hero. At first McClellan, then Rose- 
 
 355 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 crans, and finally Grant was the favorite among them. 
 Lincoln was fearful at one time that the conqueror of 
 Vicksburg, in his innocence of politics, might lose his 
 head and be tempted to be a candidate against him 
 in 1864. When he was assured by Grant's friends 
 that the "presidential grub" was not "gnawing at 
 him, ,, he expressed his sense of relief. Afterward, 
 when a movement to make Grant President was 
 openly started, his only comment was, "If he takes 
 Richmond, let him have it." 
 
 It is sometimes claimed for Lincoln that he became 
 a better general than any in the field. That may not 
 be true. At any rate, it was not a necessary qualifica- 
 tion for his place. It was far more important that* as 
 the Chief Magistrate of the republic and Commander- 
 in-chief of the army by the voice of the people, he 
 should have the ability to maintain his supremacy 
 over his military subordinates. This he did at all 
 times, and it stands as one of the most useful and 
 wonderful of his achievements. 
 
 There never was an hour when his hand did not 
 rule the giant hosts in arms, when his pen was not 
 mightier than the sword; never an hour of weakness, 
 tempting a "man on horseback" to spurn his au- 
 thority and seriously dream of setting up a military 
 despotism. For this signal vindication of democratic 
 institutions, the American people themselves are un- 
 
 35$ 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS GENERALS 
 
 doubtedly entitled to the larger share of credit, while 
 no small share is due to the democratic characters of 
 the military chieftains. With a weak or wilful man 
 in Lincoln's place, however, it would have been 
 impossible. He would surely have been overridden 
 by events and men too powerful for him to direct 
 and control. 
 
 This was at once the test and the triumph of a gov- 
 ernment by the people. All things considered, prob- 
 ably it is without a parallel in history. In a long and 
 mighty civil war in a democracy, with a million men 
 under arms, the civil power remained always supreme, 
 and the lawfully elected chief, a plain citizen, who 
 never had set a squadron in the field, stood forth at 
 the end, easily the foremost figure, without even 
 a rival among the victorious generals and martial 
 heroes who surrounded him. 
 
 357 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 His noblest qualities called out in the hour of success as his hand 
 turned to the new task of binding up the wounds of the Union. 
 
 — Striving to win the South by magnanimity. — Applying 
 Christian principles and the golden rule to statecraft. — Dis- 
 appointed in his efforts for peace at Hampton Roads conference, 
 February 3, 1 865. — How he disposed of Charles I as an example. 
 
 — His plan to offer to pay the South for its slaves defeated in 
 the cabinet, February 5, 1865. — His rejoicing over the passage 
 of the thirteenth amendment. -— His second inauguration, 
 March 4, 1865, and his second inaugural address. — His visit 
 to Grant's army at City Point, Virginia, March 22 to April 9, 
 to supervise terms of peace. — Lincoln and Grant, Sherman 
 and Sheridan in conference. — The fall of Richmond, April 3. 
 
 — Lincoln in Richmond, April 4 and 5. — Modest bearing of 
 the conqueror in the capital of the enemy. — The black freed- 
 men in ecstasy. — Lincoln in Jefferson Davis's chair. — "Judge 
 not, that ye be not judged." — Returning to Washington, 
 April 9. — Prophetic words from Shakespeare. 
 
 Victory called out Lincoln's noblest qualities. 
 He accepted it as humbly as he had borne defeat. 
 
 When assured at the close of the military opera- 
 tions, in the fall of 1864, that the country was saved, 
 and that in a brief campaign in the spring the Con- 
 federacy would surely be overthrown, he did not 
 pause to exult. His hand turned at once to its new 
 task. He must bind up the wounds of the Union 
 
 **8 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 
 and restore it. He would not fasten it together with 
 bayonets and erect a rebellious Ireland or a deso- 
 lated Poland within its borders. The South, con- 
 quered by force, must be won by magnanimity. 
 
 For him, this was a grateful duty. No bitterness 
 rankled in his great, patient heart. Even when the 
 blows of the foe rained heavy upon him, the Con- 
 federates still were to him countrymen and fellow- 
 Americans. His habit of fairness forbade him to 
 hold any individuals, however high their stations, 
 personally responsible for a great civil war. 
 
 It better suited his sense of humor to refer to his 
 adversaries as "the other side" or as "these south- 
 ern gentlemen" than to rail at them as "rebels." 
 "Jeffy D." and "Bobby Lee" were his favorite 
 names for the two principal chieftains of the Con- 
 federacy. When Stonewall Jackson was killed and 
 a Washington newspaper printed an editorial tribute 
 to that gallant upholder of the Stars and Bars, Lin- 
 coln wrote a letter to the editor, commending his 
 article. 
 
 No sooner was he assured that the arms of the 
 South must yield to the Union than he g^ve his 
 anxious thought to winning the hearts of the south- 
 ern people. Many, if not most, of the leaders of the 
 Republican party were unable so readily to c$Jm the 
 passions which the long and desperate strug/i* had 
 
 359 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 aroused in them. The radicals were loud in their 
 call for the hanging of the foremost Confederates, for 
 the confiscation of property, and for ruling the south- 
 ern states as conquered provinces. Not a few who 
 had clamored for a cowardly peace in the midst of 
 war now lustily cried out for harsh measures as 
 peace drew near. Lincoln's next battle must be 
 with Congress and a large section of his own party. 
 
 He disliked the form of the oath which Secretary 
 Stanton prescribed for those in the South who wished 
 to swear allegiance and which required them to de- 
 clare they had not given "aid and comfort to the 
 enemy. ,, This, he complained, " rejects the Christian 
 principle of forgiveness on terms of repentance. I 
 think it is enough if the man does no wrong here- 
 after." 
 
 His whole course was guided by his feeling that the 
 government should be animated by "no motive for 
 revenge, no purpose to punish for punishment's sake," 
 and he laid down as the golden rule of statesmanship 
 that "we should avoid planting too many thorns 
 in the bosom of society." He stated only a guiding 
 principle of his own life when he said, "If any man 
 ceases to attack me, I never remember the past 
 against him." 
 
 He refused to lend himself to any vengeful spirit 
 toward those in the North who had opposed his elec* 
 
 360 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 tion. "I am in favor," he said, "of short statutes 
 of limitations in politics." In his annual message to 
 Congress he claimed the people who voted against 
 him, as well as those who voted for him in the recent 
 election, as friends of the Union. No candidate, he 
 proudly pointed out, sought support on the avowal 
 that he was for giving up the Union. Men had dif- 
 fered only as to the method of saving it. 
 
 At the approach of spring, in 1865, the season for 
 opening a new movement against the army of Lee, 
 Lincoln was most anxious to gain peace without 
 further bloodshed. He cared nothing for the mili- 
 tary triumph which was certain to come. He 
 would rather coax than drive the South into sub- 
 mission. In this generous spirit he went to Hamp- 
 ton Roads to meet Alexander H. Stephens, the Con- 
 federate Vice-president, and other representatives of 
 the Richmond government. 
 
 If he had cared to stand on his dignity as President, 
 he would not have gone to meet those subordinates 
 of Jefferson Davis. If he had been moved by anv 
 pride of victory, he would have spurned the reprc 
 sentatives of a foe already staggering to defeat. He 
 thought, however, not of himself, but of the lives of 
 the men in blue and the men in gray which would 
 be sacrificed on the renewal of the struggle. In an 
 effort to save them, he left the capital and journeyed 
 
 361 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to the meeting place aboard a boat in Hampton 
 Roads. 
 
 On this mission he was deeply disappointed, for 
 he found that the men he met had been instructed to 
 insist on the recognition of the Confederate govern- 
 ment. The President could not, of course, admit 
 that there was any other established nation within 
 the United States. 
 
 One of the Confederates, in urging him to recog- 
 nize them in their official capacity, pointed out as a 
 precedent that King Charles I of Great Britain had 
 deigned to treat with the representatives of the Par- 
 liamentary army when it was in the field against him. 
 Lincoln met this argument with a characteristic 
 reply, which completely silenced it. "I do not pro- 
 fess," he said, "to be posted in English history. On 
 such matters I will turn you over to Seward. All I 
 distinctly recollect about Charles I is that he lost 
 his head." That was quite sufficient to dispose of 
 this historic example as a safe one to follow. 
 
 The conference having failed, Lincoln returned to 
 Washington and tried another measure of stopping 
 the war. This was in the form of a message to Con- 
 gress, recommending that the government offer four 
 hundred million dollars as compensation for the los: 
 of the slaves, provided the Confederates should lay 
 down their arms before April i. Again he was dis' 
 
 362 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 appointed. When he submitted his plan to the cabi- 
 net, its members were unanimously against it. "I 
 see that you are all opposed to me," he said with a 
 heavy sigh as he put the draft of his message in a 
 drawer, " and I will not send it." 
 
 One other object engaged his serious attention in 
 that period. He was anxious that in the restored 
 Union there should be no trace of the institution of 
 slavery, the source of so much discord in the old 
 Union. Slaves had been transformed into freedmen 
 at the advance of the armies of the North, bearing 
 his Emancipation Proclamation, and the system of 
 bondage was in shreds throughout the South. He 
 earnestly wished, however, to see its abolition in the 
 border states as well as in the Confederate states 
 decreed in the Constitution. 
 
 Senator Sumner proposed a constitutional amend- 
 ment, declaring that "everywhere within the limits of 
 the United States and of each state or territory 
 thereof, all persons are equal before the law, so that 
 no person can hold another as a slave." 
 
 Lincoln, however, preferred this form, "Neither 
 slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punish- 
 ment of crime whereof the party shall have been duly 
 convicted, shall exist within the United States, or 
 any place subject to their jurisdiction." The first 
 part of that sentence was copied word for word from 
 
 3 6 3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the Ordinance of 1787, which in his boyhood Lin- 
 coln had read in a borrowed copy of the statutes of 
 Indiana. He liked it then, and he desired now 
 to see it embedded in the fundamental law of the 
 land. 
 
 No battle won brought him the joy which he felt 
 when Congress adopted the resolution proposing this 
 amendment. The Legislature of Illinois was in 
 session at Springfield and before night it had given 
 its approval. The news was sent to Lincoln by 
 telegraph, and he was proud to see his own state 
 take the lead in ratifying this thirteenth amendment 
 of the Constitution. 
 
 As he drove to the Capitol to be inaugurated a 
 second time, a battalion of negro soldiers had an 
 honorable part in the procession. While proudly 
 escorting the emancipator of their race, they kept 
 martial step on a pavement which, at his first inaugu- 
 ration only four years before, had been pressed by 
 the feet of slaves. 
 
 When Lincoln again took his place on the steps 
 of the Capitol to renew his pledge to preserve the 
 Union, the group which surrounded him on the 
 former occasion was gone. Buchanan was in re- 
 tirement and Breckinridge was battling against the 
 Stars and Stripes. Taney had sunk into his grave 
 beneath the weight of years. Douglas was dead in 
 
 3 6 4 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 his prime. Baker had fallen on one of the first fields 
 of the conflict. 
 
 Lincoln himself was another man. No longer the 
 untried stranger, he stood there, the trusted and 
 faithful leader crowned with a people's love. The 
 awful story of the great war was written in his kindly 
 face, where the heroic struggles and sacrifices of the 
 imperiled nation could be traced in the new lines of 
 strength about his mouth and in the added furrows 
 of sorrow and care about his eyes. Whichever way 
 he glanced over the audience hushed in expectancy, 
 he saw sick and mutilated veterans from the 
 hospitals, at once the witnesses and wrecks of the 
 strife. 
 
 There was less fear of an attempt at assassination 
 now than at the former inauguration, and no ex- 
 traordinary precautions were taken. When a well- 
 known but eccentric actor, John Wilkes Booth, 
 tried to press his way toward the presidential stand, 
 the police pushed him back, and nothing more was 
 thought of it, as an incident of this kind is not 
 unusual on such an occasion. 
 
 A rain had been falling and the day was gloomy. 
 As Lincoln was about to take the oath, however, 
 the sun burst through the clouds, an omen which he 
 said made his "heart jump." The people listened 
 to his inaugural address, awed by its solemn and 
 
 365 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 stately beauty, gazing upon him as if he were a 
 prophet speaking by inspiration : — 
 
 "Fellow-countrymen: At this second appear- 
 ing to take the oath of the presidential office, there 
 is less occasion for an extended address than there 
 was at the first. Then, a statement, somewhat 
 in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting 
 and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, 
 during which public declarations have been con- 
 stantly called forth on every point and phase of the 
 great contest which still absorbs the attention and 
 engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is 
 new could be presented. The progress of our 
 arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as 
 well known to the public as to myself; and it is, 
 I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging 
 to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction 
 in regard to it is ventured. 
 
 "On the occasion corresponding to this four 
 years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed 
 to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all 
 sought to avert it. While the inaugural address 
 was being delivered from this place, devoted alto- 
 gether to saving the Union without war, insurgent 
 agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without 
 war — seeking to dissolve the Union and divide 
 effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated 
 
 366 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 war; but one of them would make war rather than 
 let the nation survive; and the other would accept 
 war rather than let it perish. And the war came. 
 
 "One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
 slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, 
 but localized in the southern part of it. These 
 slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. 
 All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause 
 of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend 
 this interest was the object for which the insurgents 
 would rend the Union, even by war; while the 
 government claimed no right to do more than to 
 restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 
 
 "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude 
 or the duration which it has already attained. 
 Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict 
 might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself 
 should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, 
 and a result less fundamental and astounding. 
 
 "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same 
 God; and each invokes His aid against the other. 
 It may seem strange that any men should dare to 
 ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread 
 from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us 
 judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers 
 of both could not be answered; that of neither 
 has been answered fully. The Almighty has His 
 
 367 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of 
 offences! for it must needs be that offences come; 
 but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' 
 
 "If we shall suppose American slavery is one 
 of those offences which, in the providence of God, 
 must needs come, but which, having continued 
 through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, 
 and that He gives to both North and South this 
 terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the 
 offence came, shall we discern therein any departure 
 from those divine attributes which the believers 
 in a living God always ascribe to Him ? 
 
 "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
 this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 
 Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth 
 piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years 
 of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
 drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 
 another drawn with the sword, as was said three 
 thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous al- 
 together/ 
 
 "With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
 with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the 
 right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; 
 to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who 
 shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and 
 
 368 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish 
 a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with 
 all nations." 
 
 The Second Inaugural at once took its place 
 beside the Gettysburg Address, and thus he, who 
 in his untutored youth practised his native gift 
 of oratory on the field hands among whom he toiled, 
 had given to the world the two noblest examples 
 of American eloquence. "With malice toward none, 
 with charity for all," came forth from his soul 
 like a chant, while his closing words fell upon the 
 thronged esplanade with the effect of a benedic- 
 tion. When he had finished, some freed their 
 emotions with cheers, some with tears. All went 
 away as from an impressive religious ceremony. 
 
 He had deliberately chosen to place on record in 
 his inaugural the historical fact that the offence of 
 slavery came by both the North and the South, 
 and his belief that God had brought upon them a 
 terrible war as the woe due to each section be- 
 cause of that offence. At the same time he re- 
 minded the North that God had not fully answered 
 its prayers, and that the Almighty had His own 
 purposes. Lincoln said he knew it would not flatter 
 men to be told there was a difference in purpose 
 between God and them. "It is a truth," he added* 
 "which I thought needed to be told, and as what* 
 2B 369 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ever of humiliation there is in it falls more directly 
 on myself, I thought others might afford for me to 
 tell it." 
 
 When the time came for Grant to leave his winter 
 quarters and begin his campaign, Lincoln went 
 down to the seat of war, near Richmond. He had 
 already sent positive instructions to the General-in- 
 chief not to decide or even discuss any political 
 question with Lee. "Such questions," he added 
 firmly, in the true spirit of a government where the 
 civil is at all times superior to the military authority, 
 ''the President holds in his own hands, and will 
 submit them to no military conferences or con- 
 ventions." 
 
 Feeling now that the downfall of the Confederacy 
 was near, he determined to be on the scene and in 
 readiness to meet any emergency which might arise. 
 There he lived on a boat in the James River, 
 opposite the cluster of huts on the bank which served 
 as Grant's headquarters. Admiral Porter urged 
 him to accept his bed, but he insisted upon not 
 disturbing the Admiral, and sleeping in a small 
 stateroom whose berth was four inches shorter 
 than his body. "I slept well," he said the next 
 morning, "but you can't put a long sword into a 
 thort scabbard." 
 
 His host set carpenters to work in the absence 
 
 370 
 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 of his distinguished guest, to remedy the deficiency. 
 The stateroom was quickly lengthened and widened, 
 and the following morning Lincoln soberly reported: 
 "A miracle happened last night; I shrank six inches 
 in length, and about a foot sideways." The Admiral 
 was positive, however, that if he had "given him 
 two fence rails to sleep on, he would not have found 
 fault." 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln and Tad were sent for, and the 
 elder son, Robert, came from Harvard to see a few 
 days' soldiering as a member of Grant's staff. It 
 proved to be more nearly a vacation than any the Presi- 
 dent had been privileged to enjoy since the burdens 
 of the nation had fallen upon his shoulders. The 
 wife noted with pleasure that his old forebodings 
 of an evil fate seemed almost to have been driven 
 from his bosom by his rising spirits. He sat about 
 the camp fire in the evenings, telling stories and 
 listening to the officers' tales, and he devoted not 
 a little of his attention to the care of a furry family, 
 which Grant's cat had lately presented to the General. 
 
 As he and Mrs. Lincoln drove about the country 
 one day, they came to a remote little graveyard, 
 on the banks of the James. The new green foliage 
 of the trees cast its shade upon the tranquil scene, 
 and the flowers of spring were budding above the 
 nounds. Lincoln was so attracted to the spot* 
 
 371 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that he and his wife left their carriage, and walked 
 among the graves. The restfulness of the place 
 touched his fancy, and this victorious master of 
 a million men in arms turned wearily from the 
 vain pomp of power, and sighed for the simple 
 peace about him. "Mary," he said, "you are 
 younger and will survive me. When I am gone, 
 lay my body in some quiet place like this." 
 
 Sherman came from the South, and Grant, Shen 
 man, and Sheridan grouped themselves about their 
 Commander-in-chief. "Must more blood be shed ?" 
 Lincoln anxiously inquired. "Can't this last bloody 
 battle be avoided ?" He whose voice never faltered 
 in the dark days of the war, shrank from the thought 
 of one more volley, now, when it seemed so needless. 
 He was assured, however, that Lee would not give 
 up until thoroughly beaten. 
 
 He rode with Grant hour after hour, through 
 swamps and over corduroy roads, with the ease of 
 a seasoned cavalryman. The cheers of the soldiers 
 swept around him wherever he appeared. He sat 
 for hours in front of the camp, tilted back in his 
 chair, and his hand shading his eyes, watching the 
 movements of the men. 
 
 It was on the last day of March when the Army 
 of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia 
 once more faced each other in battle array and began 
 
 37* 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 the fifth year of their struggle for the soil of the 
 Old Dominion. Grant's legions in blue dashed into 
 the fray with the spirit of confidence, while there 
 were heavy hearts beneath the tattered coats of gray 
 as the mere remnant of Lee's once magnificent army 
 wearily but loyally gathered about their devoted 
 chief in his last stand for a cause that was already 
 lost. 
 
 Lincoln waited behind, eagerly watching each 
 courier as he rode in from the front. "How many 
 prisoners?" was almost always his first question. 
 Every capture was welcomed by him as a merciful 
 hastening of the end. 
 
 On the first of April came Sheridan's victory 
 at Five Forks and the doom of Richmond. Its 
 certain and immediate fall was decreed by that 
 battle. The Confederate flag continued to wave 
 above the Capitol, and the buying and selling of 
 men, women, and children went on, even when the 
 columns of freedom were advancing upon the city. 
 A man would still bring one hundred dollars in 
 gold. 
 
 Jefferson Davis sat in his pew listening to the 
 prayer for the President of the Confederate States, 
 the day after the battle of Five Forks, when word 
 came to him from Lee that he, whose mighty arm 
 had parried every blow at Richmond for four long 
 
 373 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 years, could defend it no more. He must flee from 
 Grant along the Appomattox River. 
 
 The government of the Confederacy was hastily 
 loaded upon trains, and Davis and his cabinet fled 
 southward. Silver plate and family treasures were 
 taken from the old homes of the aristocracy and 
 buried beyond the sight of the pillaging invaders, 
 at whose approach the city trembled. Some masters 
 collected their slaves beside the railway and sought 
 safety in flight for their property in human beings; 
 but the institution of bondage perished while the 
 bondmen waited there in their chains. 
 
 The military supplies were fired by the Con- 
 federates as they quit the town, which soon was 
 ablaze. Liquors were emptied into the gutters 
 and scooped up in pans and buckets by whites and 
 blacks, who became frenzied from drink. The en- 
 tire place was speeding to a mad destruction when 
 in the early hours of Monday morning the vanguard 
 of the Union forces, which had cautiously entered 
 the outer intrenchments only to find them deserted, 
 whirled into Richmond. 
 
 On their heels came the negro troopers of a 
 cavalry regiment, their waving swords a sign of 
 deliverance for the people of their race who ran 
 beside the proud horsemen shouting for joy. The 
 flag of the nation was hoisted again upon the Capitof 
 
 374' 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 of Virginia, and the Union commander established 
 his headquarters in the house of the fugitive Presi- 
 dent of the Confederacy. 
 
 Richmond had fallen, and Richmond was saved. 
 For the army of the Union did not come to loot 
 or triumph. On the contrary, it extinguished the 
 roaring flames that were devouring the city, fed the 
 hungry of the long-besieged and starving capital, 
 and repressed the drunken rioters and robbers and 
 loosened convicts who had struck terror to every 
 home. 
 
 "I want to see Richmond," Lincoln said, with 
 a curiosity as simple as a boy's, when he heard of 
 the capture of the stronghold against which he had 
 hurled his soldiers by the hundreds of thousands. 
 He went by the river from Grant's headquarters 
 on Tuesday and landed from a twelve-oared barge 
 near Libby Prison. There was no military escort 
 to meet him, and not even a vehicle of any kind. 
 Taking his boy Tad by the hand, he walked through 
 the streets for a mile and a half, guarded only by 
 ten sailors. 
 
 The negroes were in ecstasy as they beheld their 
 emancipator. They touched the skirt of his coat 
 in awe, or prostrated themselves at his feet. He 
 was annoyed and even saddened to have any human 
 being humble himself before him. "Don't kneel 
 
 375 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to me; that is not right," he said, and a leader 
 among them commanded in a hoarse whisper, "Sh — 
 sh — be still; heah our Saviour speak." Lincoln 
 continued: "You must kneel to God only. I am 
 but God's humble instrument; but you may rest 
 assured that as long as I live no one shall put a 
 shackle on your limbs." 
 
 He told them they were as free as he was, and 
 even freer, for they had less care and worry. " God 
 bless you and let me pass on," he said to them as 
 he moved forward with difficulty through the black 
 mass. Again, in the strange progress of this modest 
 conqueror an old slave lifted his hat, and the Presi- 
 dent returned the salutation by lifting his, whereat 
 the crowd of negroes who followed him gaped in 
 Wonder to see a white man uncover to a black. 
 
 Lincoln went on until he came to the "White 
 House of the Confederacy," which Davis had left 
 only thirty-six hours before. The day was hot and 
 the perspiration ran down his face as he entered 
 the old mansion. Walking into the office, he seated 
 himself at a desk. "This must have been President 
 Davis's chair," he said, as his hands rested on its 
 arms, and he leaned against its comfortable back. 
 
 There he sat in revery, gazing into space, while not 
 unlikely his sympathies were touched by the misfor- 
 tunes of the exiled master of the house. " He ought 
 
 376 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 to be hanged," some one said in his passion against 
 Davis. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," was 
 Lincoln's only reply. 
 
 He returned to the army headquarters on the river 
 at night, but came again to Richmond on Wednesday. 
 He sought out the home of General Pickett, the hero 
 of the memorable charge at Gettysburg, who valiantly 
 but vainly made the last defence of Richmond at Five 
 Forks. Lincoln forgot that Pickett was an enemy in 
 the field. He remembered only his old friendship 
 for him, when the famous General was a boy on a 
 visit to Illinois, and he himself had obtained for 
 him his appointment as a cadet at West Point. He 
 found the house and knocked at the door. 
 
 "Is this where George Pickett lives ?" he asked the 
 woman who came with a baby in her arms to answer 
 his summons. She said it was and that she was 
 Mrs. Pickett. Then he told her who he was, pro- 
 testing he came not as "the President," the title which 
 she had exclaimed in her astonishment, but simply as 
 "Abraham Lincoln, George's old friend." The baby 
 stretched forth his little hands, and the conqueror 
 took the conquered in his arms. Thus the union 
 was restored beside one hearthstone at least. 
 
 Lincoln tarried at Grant's headquarters until the 
 morning of the day on which Lee surrendered his 
 famished army. " Get them to ploughing and gather- 
 
 377 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ing in their own little crops/' he said as he discussed 
 the terms that should be offered to the vanquished, 
 "and eating pop-corn at their own firesides, and you 
 can't get them to shoulder a musket again for half a 
 century." 
 
 It was Sunday. The end of the great Civil War 
 was at hand, "the mightiest struggle and the most 
 glorious victory as yet recorded in human annals/' 
 according to the judgment of Mommsen, the eminent 
 German historian. The North was still ringing with 
 the echoes of the people's rejoicing over the fall of 
 Richmond, and to-morrow all the bells would peal 
 forth the glad tidings from Appomattox. The new 
 birth of freedom, to which Lincoln had dedicated the 
 nation among the dead at Gettysburg, he had seen 
 with his own eyes, and government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people, was saved from wreck. 
 
 As he sailed up the Potomac, he read aloud these 
 words from Macbeth : — 
 
 "Duncan is in his grave; 
 After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well. 
 Treason has done its worst; nor steel, nor poison, 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
 Can touch him further." 
 
 A second time he read this passage from Shake- 
 speare, seemingly fascinated by the words. The 
 boat approached Washington, the white dome of 
 
 378 
 
LINCOLN IN VICTORY 
 
 the Capitol swimming in the sky. As Mrs. Lincoln 
 
 looked upon their journey's end, an expression of 
 
 dread came into her face. 
 
 "That city," she said, "is filled with our enemies." 
 "Enemies!" Lincoln replied, as if the word had 
 
 no place in the new era of peace, "we must never 
 
 speak of that." 
 
 379 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 From 
 THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION ODE 
 
 By James Russell Lowell 
 1865 
 
 Nature, they say, doth dote, 
 
 And cannot make a man 
 
 Save on some worn-out plan, 
 
 Repeating us by rote: 
 For him her Old World mould aside she threw, 
 
 And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 
 Of the unexhausted West, 
 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 
 
 How beautiful to see 
 Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
 Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
 One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
 
 Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
 
 But by his clear-grained human worth, 
 And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 
 
 They knew that outward grace is dust; 
 
 They could not choose but trust 
 In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
 
 And supple-tempered will 
 That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust 
 
 Nothing of Europe here, 
 Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 
 
 Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
 
 Could Nature's equal scheme deface; 
 
 3&5 
 
LOWELL'S ODE 
 
 Here was a type of the true elder race, 
 
 And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 
 ***** 
 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
 But at last silence comes; 
 These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
 Our children shall behold his fame, 
 
 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American* 
 
 381 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 To win the hearts of his foes, his chief care in his closing days. — ■ 
 No exulting at the White House over the conquered South. — 
 Lincoln's last speech, April 1 1, 1865. — His anxiety for a speedy 
 restoration of the Union. — His strange dream the night before 
 his assassination. — His last cabinet meeting, held on the fatal 
 Friday. — Peace and good-will his watchwords.- — "We must 
 extinguish our resentments." — Fondly planning the future 
 with his wife. — Her unhappy premonition. — Their theater 
 party with Major Rathbone and the daughter of Senator Harris 
 of New York as their guests. — Lincoln assassinated in a box 
 at Ford's Theater, April 14, by John Wilkes Booth. — Escape 
 of the assassin. — Secretary Seward stabbed by Lewis Powell, 
 alias Payne, one of Booth's accomplices. — Death of Lincoln, 
 April 15. 
 
 Lincoln's chief care on returning to his post of 
 duty seemed to be to win the hearts of his foes. 
 
 He longed to see the great armies of both sides dis- 
 perse and the soldiers return to the ways of peace. 
 The North was wild with joy over the ending of the 
 war. Probably no other event in history ever was 
 so universally celebrated among any people. The 
 multitude felt it was their victory, won by themselves 
 and for themselves. 
 
 Yet if Lincoln could have had his choice, not a 
 salute would have been fired or a bell rung in triumph 
 
 382 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 over his defeated countrymen in the South. He 
 would have had the nation at large emulate the spirit 
 of Grant at Appomattox when he ordered the artil- 
 lery to stop firing in honor of Lee's surrender. 
 
 At a serenade the next day, Lincoln called on the 
 band to play "Dixie," and, as its stirring strains 
 echoed through the White House, his foot kept time 
 to the battle song of the Confederacy. A great 
 crowd coming to rejoice with him on the night of 
 the second day after the surrender, he appeared at a 
 window and read his speech while a man at his elbow 
 held a lamp above his manuscript. 
 
 He spoke to the humbled vanquished rather than 
 to the exultant victors, and in a tone of the utmost 
 soberness. "It may be my duty," he said in con- 
 cluding, "to make some new announcement to the 
 people of the South. I am considering, and shall 
 not fail to act when satisfied that action will be 
 proper." 
 
 April 14 fell on Good Friday. It is doubtful, 
 however, if the religious significance of the day oc- 
 curred to Lincoln's mind, for he always lived among 
 a people who were not used to observing it as the 
 anniversary of the crucifixion of the Saviour. 
 
 By his own selection it was the occasion for raising 
 above the ruins of Fort Sumter the flag which had 
 been lowered there four years before. Anderson, 
 
 &3 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 its defender then, was the central figure in the cere- 
 mony, and the orator of the day eloquently thanked 
 God that Lincoln had been spared to behold the 
 glorious fulfilment of his labors for the Union. 
 
 An unwonted ease and happiness seemed to rest 
 upon the President. Robert returned from the army 
 and for an hour his father listened to the young man's 
 account of what he had seen and done. 
 
 General Grant, the captor of three armies, came, 
 wearing modestly his latest and noblest honors. 
 There was still a Confederate army in the field in 
 North Carolina, under Johnston, and Grant was 
 worried because no report of its capture had been 
 received from Sherman. Lincoln was sure that good 
 news would soon come, for he had had a dream the 
 night before, the same dream which had been the 
 forerunner of other great events. He dreamed he was 
 in a strange ship, moving rapidly toward a dark and 
 indefinite shore. This was the vision which he had 
 seen in his sleep before the battles of Antietam, 
 Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg, and he 
 was confident it meant now that Sherman had de- 
 feated, or was about to defeat, Johnston. What else 
 could it mean ? He knew of no other important 
 event that was pending. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln joined in welcoming the victorious 
 General-in-chief, and, as a return for the courtesies 
 
 384 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 she had lately received at his headquarters, invited 
 him and Mrs. Grant to go to the theater in the even- 
 ing. The General promised to consider the invi- 
 tation, and Mrs. Lincoln sent a messenger to Ford's 
 Theater with a request for a box. 
 
 Within an hour, John Wilkes Booth called at the 
 theater for his mail, which he was accustomed to re 
 ceive there, and a man in the office spoke to him of 
 the distinguished party that was coming to the even- 
 ing performance. Booth's was a familiar and dra- 
 matic figure in the streets of Washington. He was 
 a handsome young man of twenty-eight, who was 
 generally regarded as a person of dark but harmless 
 moods. As an actor, his gifts were by no means 
 worthy of his name, which had been made famous 
 by the genius of his brother Edwin and his father, 
 Junius Brutus. 
 
 Throughout the war he vaunted his loyalty to the 
 South, and his hostility to the Union preyed upon his 
 never well-balanced mind. It is apparent that the 
 news he heard at the theater instantly determined 
 him to carry out a desperate project which had long 
 been in his thoughts, and he called into council a 
 group of mad adventurers. 
 
 It was cabinet day at the White House. When 
 Lincoln took his seat at the head of the table, Stan 
 ton had not come. While waiting for the Secretary 
 20 3 8 5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of War, the President told again the story of his 
 dream voyage in a phantom ship toward an unseen 
 shore. 
 
 The uppermost topic of discussion at the meet- 
 ing was the policy to be pursued toward the states 
 of the South, as well as toward Jefferson Davis 
 and various other principals in the war against the 
 Union. Lincoln said he regarded it as providential 
 that Congress was not in session to interfere in the 
 matter of reconstruction. He believed that by wise 
 and discreet action the administration could set 
 the states upon their feet, secure order, and reestab- 
 lish the Union before the meeting of Congress in 
 December. 
 
 As to the treatment of the Confederate leaders, he 
 said with much feeling that no one need expect he 
 would take any part in hanging these men, even the 
 worst of them. " Frighten them out of the country," 
 he cried, in a high-pitched voice. "Open the gates! 
 Let down the bars! Scare them off!" and he 
 threw up his arms as if to drive a herd of sheep. 
 "Enough lives have been sacrificed," he continued. 
 "We must extinguish our resentments, if we expect 
 harmony and union." 
 
 He expressed his dislike of the disposition of some 
 persons to hector and dictate to the people of the 
 South. "All must begin to act in the interest of 
 
 386 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 peace." Such was his parting injunction to the cabi- 
 net, and the members left him with this sentiment 
 of a generous statesmanship ringing in their ears. 
 
 He was in high spirits, but Stanton was troubled 
 at the thought of both the President and the General- 
 in-chief exposing themselves in a theater box at a 
 time of intense excitement when there were men 
 abroad who had been made desperate by defeat. 
 Lincoln, however, was an avowed fatalist, believing, 
 as he often said, that what is to be will be, regard- 
 less of anything we may do. Thus it will be remem- 
 bered he argued with Herndon in the old law office, 
 that Caesar had been appointed to die by Brutus's 
 hand, even as Brutus had been foreordained to 
 slay Caesar. 
 
 Moreover, assassination never had stained the 
 pages of American history. Lincoln paid no atten- 
 tion to the many threatening messages which came to 
 him, and kept only a few of them, which he labeled 
 "Assassination Letters" and laid away in his desk. 
 "If I am killed, I can die but once," he protested on 
 one occasion; "but to live in constant dread of it, is 
 to die over and over again." 
 
 Stanton repeated his warning to Grant. Whether 
 the General was influenced by this is not known, but 
 at any rate he withdrew his acceptance of Mrs. Lin- 
 coln's invitation and with his wife left the city in the 
 
 387 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 early evening to visit their daughter, who was at 
 school in New Jersey. 
 
 The President and Mrs. Lincoln went for a drive 
 in the afternoon, he expressing a wish that they 
 should go alone. Tender recollections came back 
 to him, and he spoke of their early struggle to* 
 gether, their home in Springfield, and their friends. 
 "We have laid by some money/' he continued, 
 " and during this term we will try to save up more. 
 Then we will go back to Illinois." He meant, when 
 he returned, to go on practising law. He hoped 
 first, however, they would see a little of the old 
 world and visit California. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln was so unused to finding him care 
 free, that her superstition was aroused by his light- 
 headedness. She told herself it was unreal, and 
 could not last. "I have seen you thus only once 
 before," she reminded him; "it was just before our 
 dear Willie died." 
 
 When the evening paper came out, it carried this 
 announcement of the theater management: "Lieu- 
 tenant-general Grant, President and Mrs. Lincoln 
 and ladies, will occupy the state box at Ford's 
 Theater to-night, to witness Miss Laura Keene's 
 company in Tom Taylor's ' American Cousin.' ,; 
 
 Already Booth's conspiracy was complete, and his 
 evil secret, which it might be supposed he could find 
 
 388 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 no one to keep, was in the breasts of his trusted 
 followers. 
 
 Soon after Lincoln returned from his drive, an offi- 
 cial of the War Department called to report that Jacob 
 Thompson, formerly Secretary of the Interior of the 
 United States, and during the war the leader of the 
 group of Confederates who had made Canada their 
 headquarters in their operations against the Union, 
 was about to escape from Portland, Maine, by a 
 steamer sailing for Europe. Stanton wished to arrest 
 Thompson. "Well," the President said to his caller, 
 who had informed him of Stanton's wishes," I rather 
 guess not. When you have an elephant on your 
 hands, and he wants to run away, better let him run." 
 
 Lincoln was detained by visitors in the evening, 
 and was late in starting for the theater. On the way, 
 he and his wife were joined by a happy young 
 couple, lately betrothed, and whom they had invited 
 in place of the Grants. It was nine o'clock when 
 they entered their box to the orchestral strains of 
 "Hail to the Chief," and amid the hearty cheering 
 of a crowded house. Lincoln seated himself in a 
 rocking chair, near the railing, and the members of 
 his party settled themselves to enjoy the comedy, 
 which later gained celebrity under the name of 
 "Lord Dundreary," the elder Sothern making a 
 notable success of the title role 
 
 389 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Meanwhile Booth, impatiently awaiting the time 
 which he had chosen for his appearance at the 
 theater, paced up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. 
 As the hour drew near, he went to a bar and min- 
 istered to his madness by taking a large drink of 
 brandy. Then he sauntered into the theater, and at 
 ten o'clock was seen strolling along the wall aisle of 
 the balcony toward the state box. Within, sat the 
 Commander-in-chief of mighty armies, without a 
 soldier to guard him. 
 
 Booth, stepping into the little anteroom of the 
 box, barred the door behind him with a piece of wood, 
 which one of his dupes, an employee of the theater, 
 had placed there for the purpose. Peeping through 
 a hole which this fellow had bored for him, he looked 
 upon his illustrious prey, and noted his position. 
 Thus prepared, he noiselessly opened the door. 
 
 The audience was roaring with laughter over the 
 farcical lines of the one actor on the stage at the 
 moment. A little while before, Lincoln had been 
 speaking with his wife, his thoughts still fondly dwell- 
 ing on plans for their future, and he had closed his 
 remarks by saying, "There is no place I should like 
 so much to see as Jerusalem." 
 
 There he sat, "with malice toward none, with 
 charity for all," without a personal enemy in the 
 wovld. Could Booth have looked into his coun- 
 
 39o 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 tenance, its simple benignity might have appealed to 
 his better nature, as the frenzied intruder paused for 
 a second on the verge of his awful deed. But stealing 
 upon him from behind, he fired his cowardly shot. 
 
 Lincoln rose from his chair under the impulse of 
 the shock, and then sank back, his head drooping and 
 his eyes closed, only to open again upon the unseen 
 shore of that mysterious bourne, toward which he had 
 sailed in his dream-ship the night before. By a 
 great mercy, he neither saw the assassin nor felt 
 the wound. 
 
 The young man in the party sprang at the murderer, 
 who let his pistol fall as he plunged a knife in the 
 arm outstretched to restrain him. A realization of 
 the terrible scene slowly dawned upon the bewildered 
 mind of Mrs. Lincoln, and she screamed. The 
 wife's cry aroused the stupefied audience to the great 
 tragedy which had supplanted the comedy they were 
 watching. They saw the handsome face of Booth, 
 his eyes lustrous with passion, as he leaned out of the 
 box, blade in hand, making ready to leap upon the 
 >tage. 
 
 The distance was only nine feet, and Booth had 
 often made a jump of twelve feet from a rock while 
 playing in " Macbeth/' In his flying descent now, 
 however, his spur caught in an American flag, with 
 which the front of the President's box had been 
 
 39i 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 draped, and he fell upon the stage, dragging down 
 the flag in his fall. His leg was broken, but with 
 the strength of a crazed man, he quickly rose and 
 drew his knife through the air, shouting, "Sic semper 
 tyrannis," the motto on the seal of Virginia. 
 
 To his distracted mind it was all a play, and he 
 but a player. His lines spoken, his part finished, he 
 strode from the stage. At the stage door stood a 
 boy holding a horse, hired for the occasion, and 
 crouching on its back, Booth dashed away in the light 
 of the moon, the animal's hoof beats clattering noisily 
 in the stillness of the night, and the rider squirming 
 in pain from the broken bone which was tearing 
 through the flesh of his leg. 
 
 Men rushed to Lincoln's box, to find its door 
 secured against their entrance. An army surgeon in 
 the audience, climbing up on another man's back, 
 made his way into the front of the box. The door 
 was unbarred, and one or two other doctors came. 
 
 It was seen at once that the bullet had entered the 
 back of the head and crashed into the brain. Lin- 
 coln must die, meeting the fate which had brooded 
 over him from youth, and which he had long fore- 
 boded. It seems as if it were written in the book of 
 life, that this man of trials and disappointments 
 should not live to enjoy the success which he had 
 achieved, or the applause of the world which he 
 
 392 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 had won. The irony of it was that he, the faithful 
 son and loving father of the people, should be struck 
 down as a tyrant. 
 
 He was lifted from the chair into which he had 
 sunk. With a doctor holding his head, and others 
 supporting the stricken body and legs, he was borne 
 from the theater, men going ahead and tearing the 
 seats from the floor to make a passageway. Mrs. 
 Lincoln, only less helpless than her husband, was led 
 after him, and as the little procession left the audi- 
 torium, the curtain was lowered forever upon the 
 stage of Ford's Theater. 
 
 It was felt the President could not survive a ride 
 over the cobblestones to the White House in his 
 waiting carriage, and those who were bearing him 
 paused on the sidewalk, not knowing which way to 
 turn. A lodger in the house of a tailor, opposite the 
 theater, came to the door to learn the cause of the 
 commotion on the street, and he told them to bring 
 the wounded man to his room. Lincoln was carried 
 into the house, his blood dripping on the steps. 
 There he was taken into a little room, where he was 
 laid diagonally upon the bed, which was shorter 
 than his body. 
 
 In the meantime the excited crowd from the theater 
 poured into Pennsylvania Avenue, spreading as they 
 went the direful news of what they had seen. Soon 
 
 393 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 they were met by others, equally excited, who said 
 that Seward had been assassinated in his home. 
 
 Stanton, hearing first of this latter crime, was has- 
 tening to the house of the Secretary of State when 
 he was astounded by the report of the murderous 
 attack on the President. Naturally fearing there was 
 a plot afoot to paralyze the government, he closed the 
 liquor saloons, threw a heavy guard around the house 
 where the President lay, placed the city under martial 
 control, and took general command. 
 
 The bitter suspicion started in his mind and in the 
 public mind generally, that some of the Confederate 
 leaders, blinded by the misfortunes of war, had con- 
 spired with the assassins. In this way Booth's horrid 
 act at once wrought a grievous injury to the very 
 people who, in his wild mania, he fancied he was 
 serving. The true friend of the disarmed and pros- 
 trate South was struck down, while his heart throbbed 
 with generosity toward the conquered states, and in 
 a flash Lincoln's policy of peace and good-will was 
 dashed to the earth. 
 
 All through the hopeless night, death battled with 
 the giant strength of Lincoln. He moaned con- 
 tinually, but happily he was unconscious of the long 
 struggle which was so painful for others to watch. 
 Statesmen and generals were about him, not ashamed 
 of their tears, while Mrs. Lincoln grieved in a 
 
 394 
 
THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 
 
 near-by room. The night was as dismal without as 
 within, for a raw and drizzling rain had set in and 
 continued to fall throughout the following day. 
 
 Hour by hour the pulse of the dying man grew 
 weaker. At twenty-two minutes after seven in the 
 morning of Saturday, April 15, it ceased to beat, and 
 turning from the mortal Lincoln, Stanton hoarsely 
 whispered, "Now he belongs to the ages." 
 
 395 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN I 
 
 By Walt Whitman 
 1865 
 
 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
 The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
 But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
 O the bleeding drops of red, 
 
 Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
 Fallen cold and dead. 
 
 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
 
 Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills, 
 
 For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores 
 
 a-crowding, 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
 Here Captain ! dear father ! 
 This arm beneath your head ! 
 
 It is some dream that on the deck, 
 You've fallen cold and dead. 
 
 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, 
 The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and donei 
 From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
 Exult O shores, and ring O bells ! 
 But I with mournful tread, 
 Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
 Fallen cold and dead. 
 
 30 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 SORROW OF THE WORLD 
 
 The day that Lincoln died unique in history. — National joy 
 turned to universal grief. — "God reigns and the government 
 at Washington still lives." — A revolution in the policies of the 
 nation wrought in a day. — Unseemly rejoicing by the radicals. 
 — Lincoln's plans of reconciliation supplanted by a bitter 
 suspicion of the South. — Jefferson Davis arraigned as an ac- 
 complice in the assassination. — The punishment of Booth and 
 his plotters. — The awful fate which pursued the President's 
 companions in the theater box. — The widow's mind broken 
 by the blow. — Lincoln's estate. — The funeral day, April 19, 
 1865, observed all over the country. — The body lying in state 
 at the Capitol. — The sixteen-hundred-mile journey to Spring- 
 field began April 21. — A million Americans looked upon the 
 face of their dead chieftain. — The arrival of the remains in 
 Springfield, May 3. — The burial at Oak Ridge, May 4. 
 
 The Saturday that Lincoln died stands alone in 
 history. There never was another day like it. A 
 victorious people awoke to continue their week of 
 rejoicing. All the North was gayly decked. In an 
 hour the land was engulfed by a tidal wave of grief 
 and rage. 
 
 It was no mere show, no ceremonial tribute of 
 a nation to its chief. On the contrary, millions 
 mourned the loss, not of an official but of a friend. 
 Men met in the streets, in the stores and in the shops, 
 
 397 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with tears in their eyes, and their throats aching with 
 emotion. Sorrow filled the homes. Services in the 
 churches on Easter Sunday were robbed of their 
 usual joyousness. 
 
 No other death ever touched so many hearts. 
 People rebelled against the cruelty of their bereave^ 
 ment, and a bitter spirit of revenge toward the South 
 burned in their breasts. Stanton feared that wild 
 rumors might cause panic and disorder in New York, 
 and while Lincoln was dying he arranged for a public 
 meeting to be held in Wall Street in the early morning. 
 Garfield, then a member of Congress, was among 
 those sent to calm the public of the metropolis, and, 
 standing by the statue of Washington on the steps of 
 the Sub-treasury, he thrilled the thousands who 
 crowded the street with the eloquent assurance that 
 " God reigns and the government at Washington still 
 lives. ,, 
 
 Nevertheless, a revolution really had taken place. 
 Benjamin Disraeli, in his speech on Lincoln in the 
 British House of Commons, declared that "assassi- 
 nation never has changed the history of the world." 
 It is true, however, that in the flash of Booth's pistol 
 shot, the policies of the government had been com- 
 pletely reversed. The hands of the radicals, which 
 Lincoln had restrained for four years, were free at 
 last. The reign of the bayonet and the carpet-bagger, 
 
 398 
 
SORROW OF THE WORLD 
 
 the ku-klux, the shot-gun, and the "bloody shirt" 
 was inaugurated in the South, and the country 
 entered upon a decade of angry turmoil. 
 
 Stanton left the death chamber to order the arrest 
 of Jacob Thompson, the Confederate emissary, with 
 whom the President had refused to interfere the day 
 before. Extreme men in high places hailed the ac- 
 cession of Vice-president Johnson to the Presidency 
 as "a godsend to the country." The new President 
 delighted them by declaring "treason must be made 
 infamous, and traitors must be punished." Senator 
 Wade of Ohio, the President of the Senate, exclaimed, 
 " By the gods, there will be no trouble now in running 
 the government." 
 
 A caucus of Republican senators was held within a 
 few hours of Lincoln's death, and plans were laid 
 for overturning his projects for the reconstruction 
 of the South. Grant himself was swept into the 
 current of retaliation. "Extreme rigor will have 
 to be observed," he said in a severe military de- 
 spatch, "whilst assassination remains the order of 
 the day with the rebels." 
 
 Stanton proclaimed an offer of one hundred 
 thousand dollars for the arrest of Jefferson Davis as 
 an accomplice in the murder of Lincoln, and for two 
 years the President of the fallen Confederacy was 
 held in prison on that and other charges without trial. 
 
 399 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Happily history acquits him and all responsible men 
 of any knowledge of or sympathy with the assassina- 
 tion. 
 
 Booth was hunted down and shot, while four per- 
 sons convicted of conspiring with him, including a 
 woman, Mrs. Surratt, were hanged. A physician, 
 who set the broken leg of the assassin, and two other 
 men were sentenced to banishment for life on Dry 
 Tortugas, one of the Florida keys, and the man who 
 bored the hole in the theater box was condemned to 
 pass six years on that remote and lonely island. 
 
 The future held in store for the innocent com- 
 panions of Lincoln on the night of the assassination 
 a fate not less terrible than that which befell the guilt) 
 companions of the assassin. The widow's always 
 frail nervous organization was wrecked by the shock. 
 She raved throughout the dreadful night that fol- 
 lowed, and throwing herself upon the corpse in the 
 morning, it was with difficulty that she was persuaded 
 to leave. As she was led to the White House car- 
 riage which had stood at the door through the long 
 hours, she cast a glance at the theater and cried in 
 bitterness, "Oh, that horrible house ! " 
 
 The only mitigation of her misfortune lay in the 
 small competence which her husband left her and her 
 children. Aside from the real estate, which he owned 
 when he went to Washington and which he still held 
 
 400 
 
SORROW OF THE WORLD 
 
 at his death, he died possessed of a personal estate 
 valued at more than one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. Since he never was a money maker and was 
 obliged to borrow in order to pay his expenses in his 
 first months in the White House, he must have been 
 fortunate in the choice of a wise financial adviser, 
 thus to have accumulated amid absorbing cares a 
 personal property, equaling in value the total of the 
 salary he received as President. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln went to live in England and France, 
 but she found no refuge, even in far-away lands, from 
 the relentless specter which pursued her. The picture 
 of the frightful scene in the theater was imprinted for- 
 ever on her broken mind. She continually dwelt on it 
 in her thought and conversation. For some time she 
 was in a private asylum near Chicago, while her later 
 years were passed in a sister's home at Springfield. 
 
 The young couple who were her guests in the 
 box, married, but the wife was slain by the crazed 
 husband. 
 
 Lincoln's was the kindest fate of all. His body 
 was removed from the modest dwelling of the tailor 
 to the Green Room of the White House, where it 
 was enthroned on a splendid catafalque. There it 
 lay in state, resting beneath the roof where, living, 
 he had found only toil and care. A peace, not of 
 this world, was in the upturned face, in striking con- 
 id 401 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 trast to the turbulent passions which disturbed 
 the men who gathered about the bier. 
 
 Seward, who had been stabbed while in bed by 
 one of the conspirators and narrowly escaped death, 
 was not told of Booth's crime. He could only wonder 
 why his kind and thoughtful chief did not call, for he 
 felt he would be the first to visit him in his affliction. 
 On Sunday, when he caught a glimpse from wher^ 
 he lay of a flag at half staff, the meaning of i 
 flashed on his mind. 
 
 The funeral was held in the White House on 
 Wednesday, and all the people of the North rever- 
 ently kept the day. Not a kinsman of the lonely man 
 was among the mourners, but races and sects were 
 knit together in a kinship of sorrow for this brother 
 of man. Queen Victoria sent her condolences to 
 Mrs. Lincoln, " as from a widow to a widow." 
 
 More than kingly honors were paid the mortal 
 remains of one who entered the world through a hovel 
 of logs. He was borne to the Capitol, where many 
 thought his appropriate sepulture was in the crypt 
 built for the bones of Washington, his only peer in 
 American history. Illinois, however, claimed his 
 dust, as the rightful heritage of her soil. The 
 prairies must be hallowed by the grave of the first 
 great man to be nurtured by them. 
 
 Cities and states begged the privilege of honoring 
 
 402 
 
SORROW OF THE WORLD 
 
 his body on its way to the grave. Arrangements 
 were made for the cortege to pass over nearly the 
 same route which Lincoln had followed on his way 
 to the capital four years before. At Philadelphia, 
 Liberty Bell was placed at the head of his coffin in 
 Independence Hall, where, in 1861, he had solemnly 
 declared he would rather be assassinated then and 
 there than surrender the Union. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands looked upon his face in 
 New York. A multitude of people from all over the 
 upper part of the Empire State gathered at Albany, 
 and were in waiting at midnight when the body was 
 placed in the Capitol. 
 
 At every little station the people gathered and stood 
 with bared heads as the funeral train swept by. 
 Arches were erected over the track of the railroad. 
 Bonfires lit the way by night. The people of the West 
 assembled in Chicago, to bend in reverence above the 
 bier of the first President they had given to the nation. 
 
 Springfield, proud in her grief, welcomed home the 
 familiar form of her immortal citizen. It was carried 
 in honor to the hall of the House of Representatives, 
 where the now silent lips had aroused a people to 
 battle for freedom. There it lay, surrounded by the 
 scenes and friends of his early struggles. 
 
 His loving stepmother lived to mourn the wilder- 
 ness waif, whom she had reared for his wonderful 
 
 403 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 destiny, but she was too feeble from age to attend his 
 funeral. The news of his assassination did not sur- 
 prise her, for she had dreaded it every day since he 
 left her to enter upon his duties at Washington. 
 
 His sign still swung in front of the old law office, 
 and from the country about New Salem and Clary's 
 Grove simple men and women brought their tribute 
 of tears, not to the dead President, but to the good 
 neighbor, who had helped them in the field, in the 
 forest, or on the highway, and with whom they 
 had shared the crust of poverty. Long before the 
 world knew him and enrolled him among the great, 
 they knew him and honored him. In the imposing 
 procession to the tomb, "Old Bob," the horse that 
 had carried him on his travels around the circuit, 
 walked behind the funeral car of his dead master. 
 
 The prairie was in its Maytime bloom, when Lin- 
 coln was laid to rest on its bosom, beside his Willie 
 and the other little boy who had died in early child- 
 hood, where Tad soon joined him, and where, after 
 seventeen years of weary waiting, the distracted wife 
 and mother found the peace for which she yearned. 
 Above his grave, a lofty monument was reared by 
 his countrymen, and thousands of black men, from 
 whose ankles he had struck the shackles of slavery, 
 contributed for its erection out of the earnings of 
 their free labor. 
 
 404 
 
PUNCH'S TRIBUTE 
 
 From 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Foully murdered, April 14, 1865 
 
 By Tom Taylor in London Punch 
 
 May 6, 1865 
 
 You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier! 
 
 You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
 Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
 
 His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. 
 
 His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair 
 His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
 
 His lack of all we prize as debonair^ 
 
 Of power or will to shine, of art to please; 
 
 Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
 The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew, 
 
 Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
 Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you ? 
 
 Yes; he had liv'd to shame me from my sneer, 
 To lame my pencil, and confute my pen, 
 
 To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
 This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men. 
 
 My shallow judgment I had learn'd to rue, 
 Noting how to occasion's height he rose; 
 
 How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true; 
 How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows; 
 
 How humble, yet how hopeful he could be; 
 
 How in good fortune and in ill the same; 
 Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 
 
 Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 
 40S 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 So he went forth to battle, on the side 
 
 That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 
 As in his peasant boyhood he had plied 
 His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights, — ■ 
 
 The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 
 
 The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe, 
 
 The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 
 The prairie hiding the maz'd wanderer's tracks. 
 
 The ambush'd Indian, and the prowling bear, — 
 Such were the deeds that help'd his youth to train 
 
 Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear, 
 If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 
 
 So he grew up, a destin'd work to do, 
 
 And liv'd to do it; four long suffering years' 
 
 111 fate, ill feeling, ill report, liv'd through, 
 
 And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, 
 
 The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 
 And took both with the same unwavering mood, — 
 
 Till, as he came on light from darkling days, 
 And seem'd to touch the goal from where he stoodj 
 
 A felon hand, between the goal and him, 
 
 Reach'd from behind his back, a trigger prest — 
 And those perplex'd and patient eyes were dim, 
 Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest. 
 
 The words of mercy were upon his lips, 
 Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 
 
 When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
 To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men. 
 
 4.06 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 A COURSE IN LINCOLN 
 
 Some of the more notable Lincoln books, by means of which a 
 course of reading may be planned and the most inspiring ethical 
 lesson in American biography may be studied. — A long line 
 of side reading. — Lincoln in poetry. 
 
 I have ventured to borrow the title and text of this 
 chapter from Charles E. Hughes, who, speaking as 
 the Governor of New York, at a Lincoln Birthday 
 meeting, expressed the wish that "in our colleges, 
 and wherever young men are trained, particularly 
 for political life, there could be a course in Lincoln. " 
 
 My purpose is twofold. I wish to make some 
 acknowledgment, inadequate as it necessarily must 
 be, of the sources from which I have derived inspira- 
 tion and material for this narrative, and at the same 
 time to point inquiring readers the way to a fuller 
 knowledge of Lincoln than may be gained from any 
 single story or interpretation of his life. 
 
 There is no more companionable figure in history, 
 and, for my own part, my memory dwells with grat- 
 itude on the very titles of most of the books to 
 which I owe what knowledge I have of him, and 
 with which I have passed so many pleasant and 
 
 ¥>7 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 profitable hours while pursuing a "course in Lin- 
 coln." 
 
 Whether an eminent British educator was gifted 
 with prophecy when he said that in the future " morals 
 will be taught only through biography," the character 
 and career of Lincoln present an inspiring ethical 
 lesson such as Americans, at least, cannot draw from 
 any other man in history. He lived the life of 
 America so completely as to touch it at every grade, 
 and in nearly all its phases. 
 
 Moreover, the elements were so varied and mixed 
 in his nature as to make him in an unusual degree 
 "all things to all men." Numerous as the books 
 about him already are, it is to be hoped they and the 
 readers of them will continue to increase and multi- 
 ply, for no two writers depict the same man in the 
 same mood. 
 
 Foremost among the works to which Lincoln 
 writers and readers alike are indebted stands that 
 monumental structure, "Abraham Lincoln, A His- 
 tory," by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John 
 Hay. Nicolay and Hay have not only left in their 
 ten volumes a life of the man, but as well a history of 
 his times. 
 
 William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, aided 
 by Jesse W. Weik, compressed into his two volumes a 
 work which is unique in American biography. In its 
 
 408 
 
A COURSE IN LINCOLN 
 
 intimacy, its sincere criticism, and its thoroughness, 
 this life of Lincoln offers an extraordinary portrait. 
 
 Ida M. Tarbell's Life, which is published in 
 four volumes and in two volumes, deservedly ranks 
 high among Lincoln books, not only because of the 
 vitality of Miss Tarbell's story, but as well by reason 
 of the diligent and enterprising research that it rep- 
 resents, and which seems to have sought out and 
 exhausted every neglected witness. 
 
 "The Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln," by 
 Francis F. Browne, has a wealth of anecdote and 
 reminiscence in its single volume, while William 
 Eleroy Curtis's "True Abraham Lincoln " abounds 
 in entertaining and graphic pictures of the man, de- 
 rived from men who knew him in the flesh. Norman 
 Hapgood's "Abraham Lincoln, the Man of the 
 People " is a virile exposition of the subject, while 
 John Tyler Morse's Life, in two volumes, is an 
 able and critical study of Lincoln and his work. 
 
 Isaac N. Arnold, in preparing his Life, well im- 
 proved an advantage only second, if not equal, to 
 Herndon, and Nicolay and Hay, for as a brother 
 lawyer at the bar of Illinois, and as a member of 
 Congress in war time, he was long associated with 
 Lincoln. Ward H. Lamon's Life is another book 
 based on a personal relationship with the subject. 
 Henry J. Raymond's Life is specially inter«sting 
 
 409 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 among the earliest Lincoln books, as it presents the 
 view of one who himself played a prominent part in 
 the politics of the war period. John G. Holland 
 is another of the pioneers in the Lincoln biographi- 
 cal field, and his simple story still holds its charm 
 after the lapse of years. 
 
 F. B. Carpenter's "Six Months in the White 
 House" is from the pen of the artist whose brush 
 painted the familiar picture of the "Reading of the 
 Emancipation Proclamation," and is one of the most 
 readable of all contributions to Lincoln literature. 
 Henry C. Whitney's "Life on the Circuit with Lin- 
 coln " is a racy portrayal of the man in a picturesque 
 background, by a fellow circuit rider, and the volume 
 has an attractive atmosphere peculiar to it. 
 
 "Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," by L. E. 
 Chittendon, is a book crowded with memory pictures, 
 which the author gained while an official of the Lin- 
 coln administration. Alonzo Rothschild's "Lincoln, 
 Master of Men " is laid out on an original plan and 
 executed with skill. "Personal Recollections of 
 Abraham Lincoln," by James R. Gilmore, affords 
 not a few novel glimpses, while "Washington in 
 Lincoln's Time," by Noah Brooks, presents some 
 impressive scenes, clearly drawn by the hand of a 
 trusted friend of the President. 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln," by Carl Schurz, is a luminous 
 
 4.IO 
 
A COURSE IN LINCOLN 
 
 appreciation, and coupled with it in its latest reprint- 
 ing is a highly suggestive essay by Truman H. Bart- 
 lett, on " The Physiognomy of Lincoln/' Professor 
 Bartlett, who has long been a student of Lincoln por- 
 traits, aggressively combats the common impression 
 that Lincoln was a man of ungainly appearance and 
 awkward movement. He sees a statuesque beauty 
 in the outer Lincoln, corresponding to the recognized 
 beauty of his mind and character, and does not hesi- 
 tate to compare his life mask favorably with the 
 profiles of Washington and the Greek Jove. 
 
 It is well not only to read about a man, but also to 
 go to the man himself and form impressions of him 
 at first hand. To know Lincoln in this way, a reader 
 must turn to the "Complete Works of Abraham 
 Lincoln," edited by Nicolay and Hay. In the 
 twelve volumes of this work, a diligent and enter- 
 prising effort has been made to present every authen- 
 tic line in existence from the man's speeches and writ- 
 ings. No Lincoln book is more interesting than the 
 "Complete Works," which contains some attractive 
 portraits, several notable tributes to Lincoln's 
 memory, a thorough index, an admirable Lincoln 
 bibliography by Daniel Fish, and an intelligent Lin- 
 coln anthology. 
 
 There is an unending line of side reading for the 
 student of Lincoln, and I am indebted under this 
 
 411 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 head to "Lincoln in the Telegraph Office/' by D. 
 H. Bates; "Lincoln, the Lawyer," by Frederick 
 Trevor Hill ; " Memories of the Men who saved the 
 Union," by Don Piatt; "Lincoln at Gettysburg," 
 by Clark E. Carr; "Recollections of Abraham Lin- 
 coln," by Joshua R. Speed; "Reminiscences of 
 Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His 
 Time," compiled by Allen Thorndike Rice; "Grant, 
 Lincoln, and the Freedmen," by John Eaton; "Lin- 
 coln and Stanton," by William D. Kelley; "Memo- 
 ries of Many Men and of Some Women," by Maunsell 
 B. Field; "Inside the White House in War Times," 
 by William O. Stoddard; "Echoes from Hospital 
 and White House," by Rebecca B. Pomeroy; "The 
 Spirit of Old West Point," by Morris Schaff; "Cau- 
 cuses of i860," by Murat Halstead; "Recollections 
 of the Civil War," by Charles A. Dana; "The Assas- 
 sination of Abraham Lincoln," by Osborn H. Old- 
 royd ; John Carroll Power's account of the Lincoln 
 funeral and description of the Lincoln memorial at 
 Springfield; "Nancy Hanks," by Caroline Hanks 
 Hitchcock; "Abraham Lincoln and Men of War 
 Times," by Alexander K. McClure; "Lincoln's Plan 
 of Reconstruction," by Charles H. McCarthy, and 
 "Lincoln and Seward," by Gideon Welles. 
 
 A view of a man may be gained through the eyes 
 of his contemporaries, which is not afforded by any 
 
 412 
 
A COURSE IN LINCOLN 
 
 other means. Interesting and significant lights are 
 shed on Lincoln by such books as Grant's " Memoirs," 
 Garland's " Life of Grant," " General Grant's Letters 
 to a Friend," "The Sherman Letters," Michie's "Life 
 of General McClellan," Gardner's "Life of Stephen 
 A. Douglas," Charles Francis Adams's Life of his 
 father, Boutwell's "Sixty Years in Public Affairs," 
 "Butler's Book," Cox's "Three Decades of Legisla- 
 tion," Blaine's "Twenty Years of Congress," Storey's 
 "Life of Sumner," McCall's "Life of Thaddeus 
 Stevens," Hart's "Life of Chase," Lothrop's "Life 
 of Seward," Joel Benton's "Greeley," and George W. 
 Julian's "Reminiscences," while in various papers 
 in the Century's " Battles and Leaders of the Civil 
 War," Lincoln is incidentally shown in his relation 
 to military men and movements. 
 
 A reader of James Ford Rhodes's "History of the 
 United States," and James Schouler's "History of 
 the Civil War," is permitted to see Lincoln in the 
 setting of his times and cannot fail to incur lasting 
 obligations to those historians. Addresses on Lin- 
 coln by Bancroft, Sumner, Ingersoll, Watterson, 
 McKinley, Swett, and other orators, are rich in dra- 
 matic pictures of the man and eloquent estimates of 
 his character. 
 
 Some excellent Lincoln reminiscences can be found 
 only in the bound volumes of the magazine* of several 
 
 413 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 decades, ready access to which, however, is provided 
 by Poole's Index. 
 
 Moreover, Lincoln lives in poetry as well as in 
 prose. The latter records his deeds, while the former 
 gives us the spirit of the man. The historian is a 
 reporter, but the poet is a prophet. In history we may 
 find what a man was; it is the office of the poet to 
 foretell the verdict of the future and imagine for us 
 the immortal that he is to be. 
 
 Measured by this standard, Lincoln's enduring 
 greatness assumes heroic proportions. What other 
 figure of the nineteenth century inspired a body of 
 verse equal in quality to that which has been offered 
 in tribute to him ? Much of it came forth in the year 
 of his death, but it has stood the test of time. 
 
 Walt Whitman was stirred by the passion of grief 
 to produce in "O Captain! My Captain!" his most 
 lyrical poem. Lowell, after delivering his "Com- 
 memoration Ode" in 1865, in honor of the soldiers 
 of Harvard, hastened to add to it his memorable 
 tribute to Lincoln. London Punch's apology re- 
 mains one of the most interesting of all the Lincoln 
 poems. It is a remarkably clear estimate of his char- 
 acter and picture of his career for a writer in London 
 so quickly to have grasped. By a strange coinci- 
 dence, the author of Punch's tribute, Tom Taylor, 
 was also the author of "Our American Cousin," the 
 
 414 
 
A COURSE IN LINCOLN 
 
 play which held the boards at Ford's Theater the 
 night of the assassination. 
 
 In William Cullen Bryant's "Abraham Lincoln," 
 there are other lines as good as these : — 
 
 " Whose proudest monument shall be 
 The broken fetters of the slave." 
 
 Richard Henry Stoddard's "Horatian Ode/ 5 
 Bayard Taylor's "Gettysburg Ode," George H. 
 Boker's and S. Weir Mitchell's verses, Whittier's 
 " Emancipation Group," his dedicatory poem on the 
 occasion of the unveiling of a monument in Boston 
 Richard Watson Gilder's "Life Mask of Abraham 
 Lincoln," and a Lincoln sonnet by Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman, are among other notable contributions. 
 Stedman's "Hand of Lincoln" opens with a stanza 
 which discloses the quality and plan of this interest- 
 ing poem: — 
 
 "Look on this cast, and know the hand 
 That bore a nation in its hold; 
 From this mute witness understand 
 
 What Lincoln was — how large of mould." 
 
 Maurice Thompson, a Confederate soldier, in his 
 poem on " Lincoln's Grave," has interpreted perhaps 
 best of all the full breadth of the man's sympathies, 
 as these few verses may serve to show : — 
 
 4i5 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 "He was the southern mother leaning forth, 
 
 At dead of night to hear the cannon roar, 
 
 Beseeching God to turn the cruel North 
 
 And break it that her son might come once more; 
 
 He was New England's maiden pale and pure, 
 
 Whose gallant lover fell on Shiloh's plain. 
 * * * * * 
 
 "He was the North, the South, the East, the West, 
 The thrall, the master, all of us in one. 
 
 416 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 LESSONS FROM LINCOLN 
 
 Time and change, instead of dimming his fame, have only served 
 to make his example more needed and useful. — Claimed by 
 all parties and all sections. — The true prophet of the reunited 
 people. — His influence growing world-wide. — Washington 
 and Lincoln. — The latter belongs wholly to America. — The 
 full meaning of the man remains for future generations to 
 discover. — His greatness a miracle, or only the common sense 
 of a common man ? — Lincoln's inspiring message to all men. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was born into a world very 
 different from ours — so different that it seems to 
 have been in another age. The bees of Bonaparte 
 swarmed over Europe, and the peace of Vienna had 
 left him, at the climax of his career, the master of the 
 continent, from the Russian frontier to the Medi- 
 terranean. George III, though in his dotage, yet 
 wore the crown from which the most splendid jewel 
 had been plucked by the sword of Washington. 
 Africa was almost unknown, and, aside from India, 
 Asia was as little known as it was five hundred years 
 before. 
 
 Along the western shore of this continent, the 
 banner of Spain waved over an immense empire, 
 which stretched unbroken from the Sierra Nevadas 
 
 419 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to Cape Horn. In our own flag there were only 
 seventeen stars. Thomas Jefferson was the Presi- 
 dent of a nation of seven million people. Robert 
 Fulton's steamboat was only two years old. Ste- 
 phenson's locomotive was yet twenty years away. 
 
 Labor's burden was measured only by what it 
 could bear. The black toiler was a chattel, and his 
 white brother struggled beneath an industrial serf- 
 dom which had every legal and social sanction. 
 Women had almost as few rights at law as they had 
 a cycle before, and no broader sphere of activity. 
 
 Democracy was without a foothold in any of the 
 principal countries of the Old World. England was 
 still an aristocracy, and as much ruled by the few as 
 at any time in the six centuries since Runnymede. 
 
 The United States had a government for the people, 
 but not yet by the people. There was a governing 
 class in the town, the state, and the nation. The 
 log-cabin was not regarded as a breeding-place for 
 statesmen, and if a fortune-teller had whispered in 
 the ear of Jefferson that the babe in Nancy Hanks's 
 arms would one day sit in the President's chair, the 
 imagination even of that great Democrat would 
 have been staggered. 
 
 Lincoln's death, as well as his birth, seems remote 
 to the people of this generation. It is commonly 
 said that life has changed quite as much in the few 
 
 418 
 
LESSONS FROM LINCOLN 
 
 decades which have passed since he died as it some- 
 times has changed in an equal number of centuries. 
 Certainly the country, which he did the most to save, 
 has grown more in population in that brief period 
 than it grew in the two hundred and fifty years before. 
 Its growth in wealth and luxury has been even more 
 astounding. One of our multi-millionaires to-day 
 could have bought and sold all the millionaires of 
 the world in 1865. Probably there is one railway 
 system now with as much mileage as there was in all 
 the land then. One city in these days has as many 
 people as there were in all the cities together in those 
 days. 
 
 Life is so swift that men of middle age think of 
 Abraham Lincoln as among the ancients. 
 
 Distance, however, does not dim the fame of Lin- 
 coln. The years only increase the force of the lesson 
 which his life teaches. Time and change have served 
 to make his example even more needed and more 
 useful. 
 
 As the strife in which he spent himself recedes and 
 subsides, his figure looms larger and clearer. Con- 
 troversy has fallen away from him. He no longer 
 reads a party, as Jefferson and Hamilton still do. All 
 parties invoke his name. In the growing harmony 
 and security of the federation of states, he is ceasing 
 "o be the chieftain of a section. In the end all 
 
 419 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Southerners will claim him, as many Southerners 
 already are claiming him. 
 
 The self-respect of the new South does not require 
 that a line he spoke or wrote be stricken out. He 
 stands as the true prophet of the reunited people in 
 this happier day, when the mere reminders of the 
 battles between fellow-countrymen have long been 
 dropped from the regimental standards of the army 
 of the nation and the very name of rebellion has 
 been discarded by the government at Washington. 
 
 "The Union with him, in sentiment, rose to the 
 sublimity of a religious mysticism/' said Alexander 
 H. Stephens, the Vice-president of the Confederacy, 
 while Henry W. Grady, the most eloquent spokes- 
 man of that great and flourishing South, which has 
 risen from the devastation of war, pronounced him 
 "the first typical American, the first who compre- 
 hended within himself all the strength and gentleness, 
 all the majesty and grace of this republic." 
 
 In truth, Lincoln is rising above politics entirely* 
 The concrete issues, for which he directly stood 
 as a statesman, are of the past. He is coming more 
 and more to stand for social rather than political 
 principles, — for democracy in all things, in all lands. 
 
 His countrymen are thus moving to place him on 
 the broadest, firmest, and most enduring basis, where 
 the vicissitudes of politics and government cannot 
 
 420 
 
LESSONS FROM LINCOLN 
 
 reach him. It well may be that in time the world 
 will take him, that he will cease to be even national, 
 and that all the races of his "plain people" every- 
 where, catching the inspiration of his career, will 
 ;nake universal the old chant: — 
 
 " We arc coming, Father Abraham ! ** 
 
 Whether Lincoln ranks with, or outranks, Wash- 
 ington, is an old but not an important question. 
 Comparison is unnecessary. 
 
 Men who may be counted off in pairs, whether in 
 history or among our everyday associates, are not 
 interesting. A real man suggests no one but him- 
 self. Abraham Lincoln was not made in any other 
 man's mould, and when he was made his mould was 
 broken. 
 
 As a brave, adroit, and patriotic soldier, Washing- 
 ton led the American people to independence. As a 
 wise, prudent, and incorruptible statesman, he led 
 them in establishing a government. He was the 
 foremost American in the last twenty-five years of 
 his life. 
 
 On the other hand, Lincoln was on the national 
 stage hardly half a dozen years. Until his debate 
 with Douglas in 1858, he was unknown outside of 
 Illinois. So brief a record, however crowded, could 
 not account for so great a renown. 
 
 431 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 When we think of Washington we think of what 
 he did. When we think of Lincoln we think of what 
 he was True, he wielded a greater and more des- 
 potic authority than Washington or any other Ameri- 
 can ever wielded. Nevertheless, he is remembered 
 and revered more as a man of ideals than as a man 
 of power. 
 
 The smoke of battle has rolled away from Lincoln. 
 We know he was the master of generals and the 
 leader of armies; but that is not the picture which 
 posterity carries in its mind's eye. The Kentucky 
 log-cabin, and not the White House, is in the back- 
 ground of that familiar picture. He is surrounded 
 not with the gleaming bayonets of the martial mil- 
 lions whom he commanded, but by the primeval 
 forest of his Indiana wilderness, an axe rather than a 
 sword in his hand. 
 
 W T e dwell less on his triumphs at the bar than on 
 his achievements in arithmetic on a wooden shovel, 
 with a lump of charcoal for a pencil. Oftener we 
 see him among his rustic familiars on the banks of 
 the Sangamon than in the camp of his grand army 
 on the Potomac, among his bucolic equals in the 
 streets of Springfield than with his outriders in the 
 avenues of Washington. His little Gettysburg ad- 
 dress is worth more to us than all his official messages 
 to Congress. 
 
 422 
 
LESSONS FROM LINCOLN 
 
 We mark the height of glory which he gained, but 
 chiefly to measure his lifelong struggle upward from 
 the depths of poverty and ignorance, whence he 
 rose. 
 
 A passionate protest assails the historian, who at- 
 tempts to remove or modify a single trace of the 
 disadvantages over which he triumphed. That is 
 the Lincoln who is sacred to us. That is the Lincoln 
 whom Americans claim wholly as their own. 
 
 Other nations have bred great statesmen, but 
 other nations have not bred them the way Lincoln 
 was bred, "as God made Adam," said Lowell, "out 
 of the very earth, unancestried, unprivileged, un- 
 known." Napoleon might boast he made his mar- 
 shals out of mud, but he did not make his statesmen 
 from that material. In the upheaval of war, men 
 sometimes rise from the bottom. In the work of 
 peace, the upper crust generally remains intact. 
 Even the French Revolution did not develop one 
 peasant leader among its statesmen. 
 
 Lincoln's greatness is still a mystery, to many a 
 miracle. Possibly it may have been fundamentally 
 the common sense of a common man. The world 
 does not yet know, for it has no standard by which 
 to try him, since he is the only common man who has 
 walked in a high place without losing his commonness, 
 the only man of the people in the pages of history 
 
 423 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 whom no honor could exalt above his native sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 It was reserved for Lincoln to verify to the world 
 the American contention, proclaimed in 1776, that 
 all men are fit to govern themselves. It remains for 
 future generations to catch the full meaning of his 
 life. 
 
 If his countrymen to-day should see ahead of them 
 a task like his in the Civil War, would they dare to 
 choose one of his bringing up for that task ? Would 
 they not put their trust in training rather than in 
 character — in an expert rather than in a man ? 
 
 In the resistless progress of democracy, the race 
 will learn " how much truth, how much magnanimity, 
 and how much statecraft await the call of oppor- 
 tunity in simple manhood, when it believes in the 
 justice of God and the worth of man." Then, it 
 may be, that the career of Lincoln will cease to be a 
 riddle, and that a line of Lincolns will, like him, 
 spring from the soil — yes, even from city pave- 
 ments — and usher in the reign of common men and 
 common sense. 
 
 Meanwhile, all men may find in Lincoln's life 
 an inspiration against every obstacle in their path- 
 way, whether they be choppers, fishers, or ploughmen. 
 As toil and hope redeemed him, so any one may 
 redeem himself from poverty, illiteracy, and ob- 
 
 424 
 
LESSONS FROM LINCOLN 
 
 scurity, the disinherited may claim their inheritance, 
 the unschooled may make their scantiest leisure their 
 teacher, and the benighted hew their way out of the 
 wilderness of ignorance. 
 
 As Washington is the father of his country, so Lin- 
 coln stands for the brotherhood of the American 
 people. He himself passed through all classes and 
 belonged to none. The boast of heraldry and the 
 claim of privilege are covered with irony in the pres- 
 ence of 
 
 " This hind of princes peer, 
 This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men." 
 
 As the Christian church always returns from afar 
 to its humble source in the rude manger of Bethlehem, 
 so must Americans, while the name of Lincoln lasts, 
 own their kinship with the lowborn, the poor, and the 
 ignorant. 
 
 425 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abraham Lincoln 
 
 Birthplace described, i, 6; ignorant of 
 his family origin, 3; indifferent to 
 ancestral claims, 4 ; descended from 
 farmers and mechanics, 4; anec- 
 dote of the War of 181 2, 7; moved 
 to Indiana, 7, 8 ; a hut in the wilder- 
 ness, 9 ; his first shot, n; his 
 mother's farewell, 13; his step- 
 mother's good influence, 15, 16; 
 schooling, 18, 19, 22; eagerness for 
 books, 19, 20, 21, 22; great height 
 and strength, 23, 24; accused of 
 laziness, 25; boyhood dreams, 
 25, 26, 27; early writings, 26, 
 27; on a flat boat, 27; his 
 first dollar, 28; moved to Illi- 
 nois, 29, 30; left his father's roof, 
 32; once more a flatboatman, 32, 
 33; a slave auction, 34; arrived 
 in New Salem, Illinois, 34 ; whipped 
 a frontier bully, 36; clerk in a 
 store, 36; his honesty, 37; loafing 
 and dreaming, 38; failure in busi- 
 ness, 43. 44, 45- 
 
 Politician and Lawyer, Captain in 
 Black Hawk War, 39, 40, 41 ; de- 
 feated for Legislature, 42, 43 ; read- 
 ing law, 46; postmaster, 47; sur- 
 veyor, 48; elected to the Legisla- 
 ture, 51; met Stephen A. Douglas, 
 52; joined the Whigs, 52; reckless 
 legislation, 54; took his stand 
 against slavery, 55, 56, 57; defeated 
 for Speaker, 57; leader of the 
 minority, 57; his first love, 59; 
 death of Ann Rutledge and his 
 despair, 60, 61 ; moved to Spring- 
 field, 62; his poverty, 62; prac- 
 
 tising law, 62 ; a group of brilliant 
 associates, 64; early oratorical 
 manner, 65; ceased to engage in 
 personal controversies, 65; oppo- 
 sition to Knownothingism, 66; 
 lack of social graces, 67 ; met Mary 
 Todd, 68; relations with her 
 abruptly ended, 69; his desperate 
 melancholy, 69; duel with Shields, 
 70, 71; marriage, 72; defeated 
 for Congressional nomination, 73; 
 suspected of being a deist, 73; 
 elected to Congress, 74; attracted 
 the favor of Webster, 76 ; opposition 
 to Mexican War, 77, 78; stumping 
 Massachusetts for Zachary Taylor, 
 79; first meeting with Seward, 80; 
 foresaw slavery conflict, 80; intro- 
 duced bill for abolition of slavery in 
 the District of Columbia, 81; a 
 disappointed applicant for office, 
 81,82; returned to law practice, 83 ; 
 declined a Chicago practice, 84; 
 his small fees, 85; his largest fee, 
 85; discouraged unnecessary suits, 
 86; habits on the circuit, 87, 88, 89; 
 mastering Euclid, 90; important 
 cases, 93, 94; rebuffed by Stanton, 
 94, 95 ; realized lack of education, 
 95; offended Mrs. Lincoln's sense 
 of propriety, 98, 99; devotion to 
 his children, 99, 100; office habits, 
 100, 101 ; defended Jack Arm- 
 strong's son, 102; confuted a wit- 
 ness with an almanac, 103. 
 Anti-slavery Leader, aroused by repeal 
 of Missouri Compromise, 104; 
 confronted Douglas, 109; candi- 
 date for Senate in 1854, 111; his 
 stirring watchwords, 112; complS* 
 
 427 
 
INDEX 
 
 merited by Douglas, 112, 113; 
 defeated for the Senate, 113 ; joined 
 the Republican party, 114; the 
 "lost speech," 114; supported for 
 Vice-president, 115; candidate for 
 the Senate against Douglas, 116; 
 antagonize^ by Horace Greeley, 
 117; friends opposed "house di- 
 vided against itself" speech, 118, 
 119; opening of the debate with 
 Douglas, 125; the Freeport ques- 
 tions, 128 ; his position on the issues 
 of the campaign, 131, 132; defeated 
 by Douglas, 134; campaign ex- 
 penses, 134. 
 Candidate for President, his national 
 leadership recognized, 137; Ohio 
 speeches, 138; declined to be candi- 
 date for President, 138, 139; re- 
 considered and consented, 139; 
 Cooper Union speech and its suc- 
 cess, 140, 141, 142; his rhetoric 
 praised by Yale professor, 142; 
 regarded himself merely as a "dark 
 horse" for President, 144; hailed 
 as the rail-splitter, 146; western 
 enthusiasm aroused for him, 147; 
 warned friends against making 
 pledges, 149; his nomination by 
 the Chicago convention, 150; his 
 reception of the news, 151, 152; 
 a disturbing omen, 153; visited 
 by the committee of notification, 
 154; the East bitterly disappointed 
 by his nomination, 155; Douglas's 
 tribute, 155; campaign and elec- 
 tion, 156; his election regretted 
 by many Republicans, 161; con- 
 structing his cabinet, 161; his 
 silence and seclusion, 161; his 
 beacon lights in the storm, 162; 
 first speech after election, 162; 
 his character portrayed by Hern- 
 don, 162; his appearance shocks 
 visitors, 1 63 ; position on secession, 
 164, 165; feared his election would 
 not be proclaimed by Senate, 166; 
 
 428 
 
 farewell visit to stepmother, 167; 
 his small estate, 168; last visit to 
 his law office, 168, 169; farewell 
 to Springfield, 171; cold reception 
 in New York, 1 74 ; stirring address 
 at Philadelphia, 175; warned by 
 Pinkerton of an assassination plot 
 in Baltimore, 175, 176; going 
 through Baltimore by night, 177, 
 178. 
 President, 1 861-1863, coolly received 
 in Washington, 179; his power to 
 lead unsuspected, 180, 323; diffi- 
 culty with Seward, 180, 181; sur- 
 rounded by armed guards at his 
 inauguration, 181; the center of a 
 remarkable group of men, 183; 
 his hat held by Douglas, 184; his 
 appeal for the Union, 185; a time 
 of great trial, 188; his apparent 
 indifference, 189; overwhelmed by 
 office seekers, 190; shocked Charles 
 Francis Adams, 191, 192; extra- 
 ordinary proposal by Seward 
 brushed aside, 194, 195, 324, 325; 
 appreciated by Seward, 195; ad- 
 vised by General Scott to surrender 
 Fort Sumter, 195; advice endorsed 
 by cabinet, 196; his own determi- 
 nation against surrender, 196; a 
 sleepless night, 196; expedition to 
 Fort Sumter ordered, 197; the 
 attack on Sumter, 198, 199; leaders 
 steadied by his coolness, 199; the 
 surrender of Fort Sumter, 200; 
 call for volunteers and extra session 
 of Congress, 200; Douglas's offer 
 of support, 200; the North rallied 
 around the President, 201 ; hostility 
 in the border states, 201, 202; 
 eleven southern states in secession, 
 202; wholesale resignations in the 
 army, 202; Lee declined the 
 Union command, 202; notable 
 Southerners who stood by the 
 Union, 203; no desertions among 
 the private soldiers, 203 ; his anxiety 
 
INDEX 
 
 for the safety of the capital, 205; 
 crippled state of the government, 
 206, 207; his struggle with novel 
 duties, 208; his greeting to Major 
 Anderson, 209; first experience in 
 diplomacy, 210; first message to 
 Congress, 211; his bearing under 
 the defeat at Bull Run, 213, 214; 
 wild counsels ignored, 216; ap- 
 pointed General McClellan to com- 
 mand the army, 216; meeting the 
 threat of war from Great Britain 
 in the Trent case, 220; saving the 
 border states from secession, 220, 
 221, 222, 223; appointed Stanton 
 Secretary of War, 224; faith in the 
 Monitor, 227; grieving over loss of 
 son, 287; depressed by failure of 
 Peninsular Campaign, 228; a 
 strange pledge, 229 ; letter to Greeley 
 on emancipation, 312; extraordi- 
 nary cabinet scene, 313; provisional 
 emancipation proclamation, 229; 
 disappointed again by McClellan, 
 330; administration rebuked at 
 the polls, 230; skilful handling of a 
 cabinet crisis, 326, 327, 328; final 
 Emancipation Proclamation, 315; 
 seeking relief in jests, 231 ; attempt 
 to force his resignation, 232 ; agony 
 over defeats at the front, 232; ex- 
 traordinary letter to Hooker, 344; 
 ordered Hooker to pursue Lee, 235 ; 
 appointed Meade to command, 236 ; 
 blamed himself for not taking 
 command in person after Gettys- 
 burg, 238; anxiety over Vicksburg, 
 238; nearly alone in standing by 
 Grant, 240; rejoicing over Vicks- 
 burg, 241, 242; "The father of 
 waters goes un vexed to the sea," 
 243 ; distressed by draft riots, 244 ; 
 troubles with the Copperheads, 246; 
 Gettysburg address, 248, 249, 250, 
 251, 252. 
 
 President, 1 864-1 865, reelection op- J 
 posed by radicals and Republican | 
 
 429 
 
 leaders, 254; relations with poli- 
 ticians, 255; sustained by the plain 
 people, 256; renominated on a non- 
 partisan ticket, 257; "Don't swap 
 horses while crossing the river," 
 258; on the firing line near Wash- 
 ington, 259; disgusted with "gold 
 sharks," 259; insisted on calling for 
 500,000 men, 259, 260; heart 
 racked by the wounded, 260, 261 ; 
 retirement from ticket planned by 
 leaders, 261, 262; admitted his 
 own probable defeat, 262; saved 
 by timely victories, 263; reelected, 
 263; old friends among the Con- 
 federates, 267; weeping for the loss 
 of a Confederate brigadier, 267; 
 no vacations, 269; religious creed, 
 271 ; attitude toward Mrs. Lincoln, 
 271; manner toward callers, 271, 
 272, 273; modesty, 274; visited 
 by Dennis Hanks, 274; kindness, 
 275; reading, 276; diet, 277; office 
 habits, 278; democracy, 280, 281; 
 leadership, 281, 282, 283; advice 
 to workingmen, 282, 283; children, 
 285 ; diffident application for son's 
 appointment on Grant's staff, 289; 
 appreciation of private soldiers, 
 293; caring for the sick and 
 wounded, 294, 295; tribute to a 
 mother, 297; ideal of the Union, 
 299 ; saving soldiers under sentence, 
 300, 301, 302, 303, 304; opposed to 
 capital punishment, 302; received 
 Frederick Douglass, first negro at 
 White House, 320; invited Doug- 
 lass to tea, 321 ; shaking hands with 
 freedmen at New Year's reception, 
 321; relations with Seward, 324, 
 325; relations with Chase, 326; 
 relations with Stanton, 328, 329, 
 33°» 3Z 1 * 33 2 \ firmness toward 
 cabinet, 333; indifferent to finance, 
 334; relations with Chase, 335, 336, 
 337; anecdote of relations with 
 McClellan, 342, 343 ; giving gener- 
 
INDEX 
 
 als the benefit of his common sense, 
 346, 347 ; first meeting with Grant, 
 351, 352; first meeting with Sheri- 
 dan, 353, 354; only grievance 
 against Grant, 354; estimates of, 
 by Grant and Sherman, 354; pos- 
 sessed the essential qualities of a 
 gentleman, 355; frankness and 
 courtesy toward his officers, 355; 
 lack of jealousy and envy, 355; 
 baffled attempts to supplant him 
 with a military hero, 356; main- 
 tained his own supremacy at all 
 times, 357; attitude toward foes in 
 arms, 359; efforts to conquer the 
 South by magnanimity, 359; op- 
 posed by the leaders of his party, 
 360; objected to ironclad oath, 360 ; 
 adopted the golden rule in states- 
 manship, 360; at the Hampton 
 Roads conference, 361, 362; 
 planned to pay for slaves rejected 
 by cabinet, 362; pressed the 
 Thirteenth Amendment, 363, 364; 
 a changed man at second inaugura- 
 tion, 365; Booth pushed back by 
 the police, 365; second inaugural, 
 366, 367, 368; took its place beside 
 the Gettysburg address, 369. 
 Last Days, at the front with Grant, 
 370; anxious to avert another 
 battle, 372; in Richmond, 375; 
 among the freedmen, 375, 376; in 
 Davis's chair, 376; visited Mrs. 
 Pickett, 377; discussed terms of 
 surrender, 378; returning to Wash- 
 ington, 378; prophetic lines from 
 Macbeth, 378; his wife's strange 
 dread, 379 ; no exultation in victory, 
 382; called for "Dixie," 383; last 
 speech, 383; a dream, 384; invited 
 Grant to the theater, 385 ; anxious 
 to hasten reconstruction, 386; 
 "Enough lives have been sacri- 
 ficed," 386; parting injunction to 
 cabinet, 386; ignored Stanton's fears 
 for bis safety, 387; attitude regard- 
 
 ing assassination, 387; invitation 
 to theater declined by Grant, 387; 
 future plans discussed with wife, 
 388; her premonition, 388; at 
 Ford's Theater, 389; last words, 
 390; shot by Booth, 391; closing 
 hours, 392, 393, 394, 39s ; death, 
 395; tribute by Lowell, 380, 381; 
 tribute by Whitman, 396; mourned 
 by the nation, 397, 398; policy 
 toward the South reversed, 398, 
 399; Radicals welcomed the 
 change, 399; punishment of the 
 conspirators, 400; awful fate of 
 companions in theater box, 400; 
 value of estate, 400, 401 ; funeral 
 and burial, 402, 403, 404; tribute 
 in London Punch, 405, 406; a 
 course of Lincoln reading, 407, 408, 
 409, 410, 411, 412, 413; tributes 
 by the poets, 414, 415, 416; lessons 
 from his life, 417, 418, 419, 420, 
 421, 422, 423, 424, 425. 
 
 Habits and Manners: — 
 
 Ambition, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 28. 
 Education, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 
 
 26, 27, 37, 38, 42, 44, 45. 46, 76, 
 
 90, 95, 248, 249. 
 Friendships, 48, 49, 88, 145. 
 Humor, 26, 27, 76, 89, 90, 231, 25** 
 
 268, 269, 329, 330, 331. 
 Kindness, 37, 88, 275, 294, 295, 296. 
 Lawyer, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 95, 
 
 96. 
 Literary Tastes, 101, 276. 
 Melancholy, 61, 69, 97, 98. 
 Oratory, 25, 65, 126. 
 Personal Appearance, 15, 23, 33, 44, 
 
 77, 79, 80, 88, 89, 95, 98, 99, 126, 
 
 140, 163, 173, 191, 272. 
 Physical Strength, 23, 24, 36, 43. 
 Superstitions, 10, 100, 153, 169, 247, 
 
 290, 384. 
 Temperance, 26, 36, 66. 
 Thrift, Lack of, 44, 84, 85. 
 
 43° 
 
INDEX 
 
 Opinions and Principles : — 
 
 Fatalism, 82, 153, 387. 
 Honesty, 37, 45, 46, 63, 64, 92, 93> 
 148, 149. 
 
 Knownothingism, 66, 137. 
 Religion, 70, 73, 118, 271, 313, 314. 
 Slavery, 21, 34, 55, 56, 57, 66, 80, 81, 
 
 no, 138, 307, 308. 
 Woman's Suffrage, 53. 
 
 Abolition, its advocates few in number, 
 108, 109; Lincoln's opposition to, 
 
 131- 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, shocked by 
 Lincoln's appearance, 191, 192; 
 position in London saved by Lin- 
 coln's diplomacy, 210. 
 
 Anderson, Robert, his meeting with 
 Lincoln, 209. 
 
 Armstrong, Hannah, her son de- 
 fended by Lincoln, 103; last visit 
 to Lincoln, 168. 
 
 Armstrong, Jack, whipped by Lincoln, 
 36; his son defended by Lincoln, 
 103. 
 
 Baker, Edward D. t early association 
 with Lincoln, 64; at Lincoln's 
 inauguration, 183. 
 
 Booth, John Wilkes, pushed back by 
 the police at the second inaugura- 
 tion, 365; informed of Lincoln's 
 plan to visit theater, 385; con- 
 spiracy, 388, 389, 390; shot Lin- 
 coln, 391; leg broken, 392; flight, 
 392; death, 400. 
 
 Breckinridge, John C, candidate for 
 President, 158; as Vice-president 
 declared Lincoln's election, 166; 
 at Lincoln's inauguration, 183. 
 
 Browning, Orville H., early associa- 
 tion with Lincoln, 64. 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, presided 
 over the Lincoln Cooper Union 
 meeting, 141. 
 
 Buchanan, James, escorted Lincoln 
 to the Capitol, 181; at Lincoln's 
 inauguration, 182. 
 
 Burnside, Ambrose E., appointed to 
 command by Lincoln, 343. 
 
 Butler, Benjamin F., proposed for 
 
 President, in place of Lincoln; 26t; 
 anecdote of Lincoln in camp, 298; 
 declared negroes contraband of 
 war, 310. 
 
 Cameron, Simon, member of the same 
 Congress with Lincoln, 75; forced 
 out of Lincoln's cabinet, 328. 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., preferred for 
 President by Lincoln, 138; his 
 threat to the bankers, 207; issuing 
 greenbacks, 218; relations with 
 Lincoln, 326; resignation declined 
 by Lincoln, 327; relations with 
 Lincoln, 335, 336, 337. 
 
 Clay, Henry, model and idol of Lin- 
 coln, 53; his Compromise of 1850, 
 106. 
 
 Compromise of 1850, adopted, 105, 
 106, 107. 
 
 Davis, David, complained of Lin- 
 coln's small fees, 85; fondness for 
 Lincoln, 89; managed Lincoln's 
 campaign in the convention of i860, 
 147; not confided in by President- 
 elect, 1 61 ; anecdote of Lincoln 
 concerning capital punishment, 302. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, member of the same 
 Congress with Lincoln, 75 ; assailed 
 Douglas's "Freeport Heresy," 136; 
 sighing for the old flag at Bull Run, 
 212; denunciation of the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation, 318; advo- 
 cated employment of negro soldiers, 
 318; military training, 340; flight 
 from Richmond, 373, 374; charged 
 with complicity in Lincoln's assassi- 
 nation, 399. 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A., first acquaint- 
 ance with Lincoln, 52; admitted to 
 the Supreme Court with Lincoln, 
 
 431 
 
INDEX 
 
 64; advocated "popular sover- 
 eignty," 107, 108; mobbed in 
 Chicago, 109; confronted by Lin- 
 coln, 109, no, hi; complimented 
 Lincoln, 112, 113; reelection op- 
 posed by Lincoln, 116; opening 
 of the debate with Lincoln, 125; 
 elected to the Senate, 134; rebuked 
 by Democratic caucus of Senate, 
 136; his tribute to Lincoln, 155; 
 defeated for President, 156; held 
 Lincoln's hat at inauguration, 184; 
 supporting Lincoln at the outbreak 
 of the war, 200; death, 201. 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, first negro re- 
 ceived at the White House, 320; 
 invited to tea by Lincoln, 321. 
 
 Dred Scott Decision, its political 
 effect, 117. 
 
 Emancipation, adopted for District of 
 Columbia, 311 ; first proclamation, 
 229; delayed by Lincoln for con- 
 stitutional and political reasons, 
 308, 309 ; discussed by Lincoln in a 
 letter to Greeley, 312; extraordi- 
 nary cabinet scene when draft of 
 proclamation was presented, 314, 
 315; signing of the final proclama- 
 tion, 315; loss of the original copy, 
 316; effect of the proclamation, 
 317, 318; justified by events, 319. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, tribute to 
 Lincoln's leadership, 283. 
 
 Ericsson, John, inventor of the Moni- 
 tor, 227. 
 
 Everett, Edward, orator at Gettysburg, 
 248; complimented Lincoln's ad- 
 dress, 251. 
 
 France, invaded Mexico, 218; Em- 
 peror exalted over supposed fall of 
 Washington, 259. 
 
 Fremont, John C., nominated for 
 President against Lincoln, 254. 
 
 Garfield, James A., speech on Lincoln, 
 
 398. 
 Garrison, WUiiam Lloyd, mobbed in 
 Boston, $$. 
 
 Grant, Ulysses S., capture of Fort 
 Donelson, 223; Vicksburg cam- 
 paign, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242; per- 
 sonal situation at the outbreak of 
 the war, 338, 339; how he rose to 
 command, 348, 349; his appoint- 
 ment as General-in-chief, 350, 351, 
 352; first meeting with Lincoln, 
 351, 352; estimate of Lincoln, 354; 
 visited by Lincoln at the front, 370; 
 declined Lincoln's invitation to the 
 theater, 387; stirred to retaliation 
 by Lincoln's assassination, 399. 
 
 Great Britain, conceded belligerent 
 rights to the Confederacy, 209; 
 protest of the United States as 
 revised by Lincoln, 210 ; invasion of 
 Mexico, 218; cotton famine, 218; 
 threat of war in the Trent case, 219; 
 conciliated by the United States, 
 220. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, member of Congress 
 with Lincoln, 76; favored Douglas 
 against Lincoln, 117; at the Lin- 
 coln Cooper Union meeting, 141; 
 praised Lincoln's speech, 142; 
 favored letting the South go, 160; 
 letter from Lincoln on emancipa- 
 tion, 312; opinion of Lincoln, 328. 
 
 Halleck, Henry W., rebuked by 
 Lincoln, 333. 
 
 Hamlin, Hannibal, member of the 
 same Congress with Lincoln, 75; 
 proposed for President, 232. 
 
 Hanks, Dennis, at the White House, 
 274. 
 
 Hanks, John, an anti-slavery anec- 
 dote, 34; introduced in campaign 
 of i860 rails split by Lincoln, 
 146. 
 
 Herndon, William H., anecdote of 
 Lincoln's devotion to the truth, 
 93; letter to Senator Wilson on 
 Lincoln, 162. 
 
 Hooker, Joseph, instructions from 
 Lincoln, 233; ordered to pursue 
 Lee, 235; resigned, 236; received 
 
 432 
 
INDEX 
 
 extraordinary letter from Lincoln, 
 
 344, 345- 
 
 Jackson, Thomas J., tribute to, en- 
 dorsed by Lincoln, 359. 
 
 Johnson, Andrew, member of Con- 
 gress with Lincoln, 76; nominated 
 for Vice-president, 257; accession 
 to the Presidency welcomed by the 
 Radicals, 399. 
 
 Kansas, the battle between slavery 
 and anti -slavery, 113, 114. 
 
 Kansas-Nebraska Act, adopted, 108. 
 
 Lamon, Ward H., escorted Lincoln 
 through Baltimore, 177, 178. 
 
 Lee, Robert E., declined the command 
 of the Union army and resigned his 
 commission, 202, 203; first inva- 
 sion of the North, 229; defeated 
 at Gettysburg, 237; advocated 
 employment of negro soldiers, 318; 
 last stand, 373. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, grandfather of the 
 President, came from Virginia to 
 Kentucky, 2 ; killed by the Indians, 
 2; his estate, 3. 
 
 Lincoln, Mary Todd, her first meeting 
 with Lincoln, 68 ; her temperament, 
 69 ; relations with Lincoln abruptly 
 ended, 69; brought on duel be- 
 tween Lincoln and Shields, 71 ; 
 marriage, 72; brothers and sisters 
 in the Confederacy, 267, 268; 
 confided in by her husband, 271; 
 with her husband at Grant's head- 
 quarters, 371 ; a strange dread, 
 379; a premonition, 388; suffering 
 and death, 400, 401. 
 
 Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, mother of 
 the President, girlhood and ante- 
 cedents, 5; married to Thomas 
 Lincoln, 5; her superiority, 6; 
 death and burial, 13, 14. 
 
 Lincoln, Robert Todd, anecdotes of 
 his boyhood, 99, 100; visited at 
 school by his father, 142; student 
 at Harvard, 285; appointed on 
 Grant's staff, 289. 
 
 Lincoln, Sarah Bush Johnston, step- 
 mother of the President, marriage, 
 14, 15; visited by stepson on his 
 way to Washington, 167; mourned 
 her stepson's death, 303, 304. 
 
 Lincoln, Thomas, father of the Presi- 
 dent, saved from the Indians, 3; 
 a "wandering, laboring boy," 5; 
 sober but without ambition, 5; 
 married to Nancy Hanks, 5; car- 
 penter, 5; his illiteracy, 6; farmer, 
 6; moved to Indiana, 7, 8; second 
 marriage, 14, 15; moved to Illi- 
 nois, 29, 30. 
 
 Lincoln, Thomas, "Tad," life in the 
 White House, 285, 286; pretended 
 appointment as lieutenant in the 
 army, 288. 
 
 Lincoln, William Wallace, life in the 
 White House, 285, 286; death, 
 287. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, impatient of 
 Lincoln's conservatism, 222; esti- 
 mate of Lincoln's statesmanship, 
 283; the Harvard Commemoration 
 Ode, 380, 381. 
 
 Massachusetts, Lincoln awakened by 
 its Free Soil Movement, 80. 
 
 McClellan, George B., lent his 
 private car to Douglas in the 
 campaign against Lincoln, 123; 
 appointed by Lincoln to the 
 command of the army, 216; dis- 
 astrous Peninsular Campaign and 
 retirement from command, 228; 
 recalled to command and victory 
 of Antietam, 229; finally relieved 
 of. command, 230; candidate for 
 President against Lincoln, 262; 
 anecdote of relations with Lincoln, 
 342, 343- 
 
 Meade, George G., appointed to com- 
 mand the Army of the Potomac, 
 236. 
 
 Missouri Compromise, repealed, 104. 
 
 Negro, The, Lincoln's opinion of his 
 racial status, 131 ; his service to the 
 
 2F 
 
 433 
 
INDEX 
 
 Union indispensable, 317, 318; his 
 deportation favored by Lincoln, 
 319; Lincoln favored giving him 
 conditional suffrage, 319; Lin- 
 coln's respect for his feelings, as 
 well as rights, 321; recognized 
 at second inauguration, 364. 
 
 Pemberton, John C, surrendered 
 Vicksburg, 241, 242. 
 
 Phillips, Wendell, disgusted by Lin- 
 coln's nomination, 155; threatened 
 in the streets, 161; denunciation of 
 Lincoln, 308. 
 
 Pickett, George E., charge at Gettys- 
 burg, 237; a friendly visit from 
 Lincoln, 377. 
 
 Pinkerton, Allan, warned Lincoln of 
 an assassination plot in Balti- 
 more, 175, 176. 
 
 Polk, James K., his Mexican policy 
 opposed by Lincoln, 77. 
 
 Popular Sovereignty, advocated by 
 Douglas, 108. 
 
 Porter, David D., entertained Lincoln 
 on his flagship, 370. 
 
 Rutledge, Ann, Lincoln's early sweet- 
 heart, 59; death, 60. 
 
 Scott, W infield, " Wayward sisters, de- 
 part in peace," 160; first instruc- 
 tions from Lincoln, 164; his plans 
 to preserve peace at Lincoln's in- 
 auguration, 181; advised Lincoln 
 to surrender Fort Sumter, 195; re- 
 fused to go with the South, 203; 
 in his dotage, 207; recommended 
 McClellan's appointment, 341. 
 
 Seward, William H., first meeting 
 with Lincoln, 80; preferred for 
 President by Lincoln, 138; his 
 nomination in i860 deemed a cer- 
 tainty, 143, 144; defeated by Lin- 
 coln, 150; for compromise, 160; 
 disappointed in effort to control 
 Lincoln's cabinet, 180, 181; his 
 extraordinary proposal brushed 
 aside by Lincoln, 194, 195; protest 
 to the British government revised 
 
 by Lincoln, 209, 210; meeting the 
 threat of war from Great Britain 
 in the Trent case, 220; relations 
 with Lincoln, 324,325; resignation 
 declined by Lincoln, 327; stabbed 
 in bed, 394; first news of Lincoln's 
 death, 402. 
 Sheridan, Philip H., won the battle of 
 Winchester, 263; cleared the Shen- 
 andoah, 264; personal situation 
 at the outbreak of the war, 339, 
 340; first meeting with Lincoln, 
 353. 354; victory at Five Forks, 
 
 373- 
 
 Sherman, John, introduced his brother 
 to the President, 189. 
 
 Sherman, William T., amazed by 
 Lincoln's flippancy, 189; relieved 
 of command, 224; captured At- 
 lanta, 263; marched to the sea, 
 264; personal situation at the out- 
 break of the war, 339, 340; esti- 
 mate of Lincoln, 354. 
 
 Shields, James, duel with Lincoln, 71. 
 
 Spain, invaded Mexico, 218. 
 
 Stanton, Edwin M., his early rebuff 
 to Lincoln, 94, 95; feared the fall 
 of Washington before Lincoln's 
 inauguration, 166; called to the 
 cabinet, 224; alarmed by the vic- 
 tory of the Merrimack, 226; rela- 
 tions with Lincoln, 328, 329, 330, 
 331; feared for Lincoln's safety, 
 
 387. 
 
 Stephens, Alexander H., member of 
 Congress with Lincoln, 76 ; letter 
 from Lincoln on secession, 165; 
 at the Hampton Roads conference, 
 361. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, favored Lincoln's 
 retirement, 262; at the White 
 House, 273; slavery amendment 
 not favored by Lincoln, 363. 
 
 Taney, Roger B., at Lincoln's inaugu- 
 ration, 183. 
 
 Taylor, Zachary, supported by L!a- 
 coin, 79. 
 
 434 
 
INDEX 
 
 Thomas, George H., dispersed Con- 
 federates in Tennessee, 265. 
 
 Thompson, Jacob, escape favored by 
 Lincoln, 389; arrest ordered by 
 Stanton, 399. 
 
 Trumbull, Lyman, his fianc6e shielded 
 by Lincoln, 71; elected to the 
 Senate by Lincoln's aid, 113. 
 
 War, The Civil, the South determined 
 not to abide by Lincoln's election, 
 158; South Carolina the first to 
 move, i 9; northern efforts for 
 peace, 1 60 ; secession of New York 
 City proposed, 160; business panic, 
 160; Lincoln's position on seces- 
 sion, 164, 165 ; seven states seceded, 
 188; Fort Sumter's surrender 
 advised by Scott, 195; similar 
 advice from the cabinet, 196; expe- 
 dition to Fort Sumter ordered, 197; 
 the attack on Sumter, 198, 199; the 
 surrender, 200 ; the response of the 
 North, 201 ; eleven states in seces- 
 sion, 202; wholesale resignation of 
 army officers, 202; no desertions 
 among the privates, 203 ; the Sixth 
 Regiment of Massachusetts attacked 
 in Baltimore, 204; Washington 
 cut off and defenceless, 204, 205, 
 206; Bull Run, 212, 213, 214; 
 McClellan appointed to command, 
 216; the border states saved from 
 secession, 220, 221, 222, 223; 
 Grant's capture of Fort Donelson, 
 223; fall of New Orleans and Mem- 
 
 phis, 224; battle of Hampton 
 Roads, 225, 226, 227, 228; Penin- 
 sular Campaign and McClellan's 
 retirement from command, 228: 
 second Bull Run, 229; McClellan 
 recalled to command and victory 
 of Antietam, 229; McClellan 
 finally relieved of command. 230; 
 battles of Fredericksburg and 
 Chancellorsville, 232; Gettysburg 
 campaign, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238; 
 Vicksburg campaign, 238, 239, 240, 
 241, 242; the draft, 243, 244, 245; 
 battles of Chattanooga, Lookout 
 Mountain, and Missionary Ridge, 
 247; battles of the Wilderness, 
 Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor, 
 254; Washington in danger, 258; 
 gold rose to 285, 259; capture of 
 Atlanta, 263; battle of Winchester, 
 263 ; Grant, Lieutenant-general, 
 35°. 3Si» 352; Sherman's march, 
 353 ; the Wilderness campaign, 353 ; 
 final campaign against Lee, 372, 
 373; Richmond in flames, 374; 
 entered by the Union troops, 374; 
 Appomattox, 378. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, recognition of Lin- 
 coln, 76; amazed by smallness of 
 Lincoln's legal charges, 85 ; favored 
 Compromise of 1850, 106. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, "O Captain! My 
 Captain!" 386. 
 
 Wilson, Henry, letter from Herndoo 
 on Lincoln, 162. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
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