97%7L6'5 C^G?2a Gates, Arnold Francis Amberql ow of Abraham Lin- coln and Ann Rut I edge LINCOLN ROOM UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY MEMORIAL the Class of 1901 founded by HARLAN HOYT HORNER and HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER AMBERGLOW BY ARNOLD FRANCIS GATES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/amberglowofabrahOOgate COPYRIGHTED, 1939 BY ARNOLD FRANCIS GATES. SPECIAL PRINTING OF 300. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES. AMBERGLOW OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND ANN RUTLEDGE BY ARNOLD FRANCIS GATES PUBLISHED BY THE GRIGLAK PRINTERY. WEST LEISENR1NG, PA. DEATH OF ANN RUTLEDGE WHERE ARE the chiding leaves? Is that the winter snow a-falling? Is it her that's calling me - In the brooding coldt I hear in every sound; In wind; In heavy rain that's falling - I say again - I hear her calling me! Why, oh why should every natural sound Abound with pleading cries? Why must every gnarled tree Easily whisper sighs? I know.. . That life is living And death is easily met. But listen - I hear her calling yet! And though I live for ages My soul shall ever see A friendly, constant shadow That pleads and waits for me. T^HE MEMORY OF Abraham Lincoln -*- is like a spirit within these United States that reveals a deep significance only after long and analytical thought. A nation lived prior to his coming but kept on doing so only under his after-life force. His strong will became a nation's and preserved its entity. As the American Messiah Lincoln becomes that more with the passing years. In the seventy odd years since his death the Martyred President has gripped the nation's imagination with a firmness no measure of upheaval can loosen. With each passing year that hold must grow until the nation will live in its mighty shadow. For it is only right that the memory of a noble man be the 5 spirit of living Democracy! In a world of hate it is an important need that a people cling to that which can sustain its reason for existence. Ann Rutledge influenced the shape of events that sent Lincoln to the White House and gave the world a great man. She stirred the mind that was destined to rise above the horizon of a period and see the ages. New Salem, Illinois was the modest setting for a drama that took a million years to shape and a few days to form. Out of its tense moments a nation was reborn again and rededicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. A. F. G. r AMBERGLOW "N 1835 ABRAHAM LINCOLN was twenty- six years old. That year gave promise in the very expectancy of new birth. Summer came early to New Salem and scattered the Sangamon banks with the freshness of green life. The earth warmed under sunlight and tended toward gentle- ness. Birds fluttered in the brushgrowth and joined the mighty chorus of lusty nature. It was a year of hope and amiable pleasantness. No blur of the horizon came to common vision though young Abe sometimes felt the coldness of unnamed fear. But any feelings of f orboding were shrugged off as his almost natural melancholia. He was in love now and there was no room for gloom. Abe Lincoln was in love and its effects softened the moody lines about his mouth. The settlement noticed this and was pleased. That Ann Rutledge would be a fine wife and make something of Abe, was generally agreed. 7 AMBERGLOW Lincoln's love for Ann Rutledge revealed itself in many fumbling ways. A tenderness of tone under the awkward offer to carry a pail or tray while boarding at her father's tavern; the few words he said with deeper meanings and the many left un- said; its reaction as revealed in Ann's mature understanding and encouragement - such small things nurtured the love both grew to know. Lincoln's emotions never found expression in the words he so yearned to voice. Gracious Ann Rutledge understood however and returned that deeper love with her own faith. When Ann Rutledge finally promised to marry the lanky, thinking Abraham Lincoln he carved it out on a stone: A. Lincoln and Ann Rutledge were betrothed here July ky 1833. That was the last gesture of youth; a prelude to the agony of a spirit that was to be burned by the fury of ruthless, impartial ways. Suddenly a fever whispered death under the leafy green of a still young summer. A woman died near Sand Ridge. Others died in the settlement of New Salem and still more in the scattered pioneer cabins throughout the region. It stirred the AMBERGLOW sympathy in young Lincoln -as human suffering always did - but he kept to his books, the neglected store and his pleasant stays with Ann Rutledge. She was thinking of going to school and hoped Abe would do the same. Lincoln was willing and so the two lovers planned. Then, one day in August, Doctor John Allen came to see Lincoln before he left for the Rutledge farm at Sand Ridge. He had received a call that Ann was ill and thought Abe should know. For the instant a cold numb of fear came to Lincoln but he shook it off angrily and hastily joined the doctor on the impatient ride. Sickness was a grave turn with these people of the hard frontier. His mother had only been sick once - before she died. Torturing his mind with brooding silence Lincoln hastened to Ann's side. She was in bed; flushed with fever and weak. She smiled with pleasure when Lincoln came to her and whispered an encouraging promise to get better. On the second day Ann Rutledge died. This blow of loss snapped in Abraham Lincoln's mind. The futility of life seized him and tore at his judgment with silent completeness. Theminister's words over her grave brought a sullen protest that remained wordless and only stirred the tempest 10 AMBERGLOW in his soul. The will of God could not be left for what was once the buoyant life of fair Ann Rutledge! There was no consolation in the mockery of human words or in the presence of fellow men. He tore himself away from the sympathetic com- munity as a protest. Somewhere there was an answer for him. . . an answer to the one great Why. . . In the blindness of emotional pain Lincoln silently yearned for the physical. He wandered aimlessly along the quiet river bank. Heedlessly he stumbled through the briery underbrush and tore his hands on the young thorns. Summer rains and lightning flare eased his aching brow and matched the tempest within him. He sobbed his pain on Ann's fresh grave while the storm rolled sound over the trees and shaped the wind's stern whisper. Thunder, whipped by the storm's quick fury, boomed in an equal hate and marked the brief glare of lightning flashes. The storm took Lincoln's own helplessness with it and the gentle sound of receding rain almost epito- mized the soft voice of Ann Rutledge. Abe raised himself on one arm and listened - the wind whispered something in the leaves. He rose slowly and stumbled to the cabin of a friend. AMBERGLOW 11 Bowling Green and his wife, Nancy, watched the change in Abe Lincoln with tender solicitude. His loss stirred their sympathetic hearts. "I can't bear to think of her out there alone, " came to Abe's lips almost as a plea to the night. Bounds of inutility strained under the violent agi- tation within him. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away mocked him and urged the bitterness he rarely revealed. If it was but to accept this with such fatalistic simplicity how short might be his pain! Lincoln used the cabin loft as his friends in- sisted. Decision was of no matter now so he did everything with a dazed abstraction. Nights brought a measure of surcease for then he could rest to the drift of sounds and hear her call in the whispers of leaves. There was no real sleep with the spiritual torture he bore in silence. For weary weeks the tall, gaunt youth sought for peace along the Sangamon banks. He strived to find the trust in God nature might reveal. The pleasures he had found in natural sounds came back as complete indifference. Now there was no restfulness in the form of brush and green. No answer to his search marked the roughness of 12 AMBERGLOW bark or the wet of dew. From the light of eager youth Abraham Lincoln slowly formed into the shade of tempered age. The spirit began to know the amberglow of pain. . .the moods that softened the touch of coming greatness. Nancy Green gave Abe work to do. She sensed the emptiness he was striving to fill and made him do much. His hands became occupied and slowly drew the tired mind to them. Out of the haze, fellow men called near -insanity, work drew the first faint pattern of acceptance. It went into long months of quiet patience for Lincoln didn't voice his thoughts. Bowling and his wife understood. Autumn browned the countryside and colored the thick foliage of the abundant year. Abe went to the Old Concord graveyard and cleared Ann's grave. The answer he had sought almost was within reach! The close of summer life drew the thought of certain end and, for a moment, he hoped. Then the proclivity lapsed back into the tired turn and he sat down by the grave to talk of the emptiness his life had suddenly taken on. At twenty-six he was without a reason for the life others said was yet before him! The flash of age that came with death never left Lincoln. It brought that deep foresight of doom AMBERGLOW 13 he was ever to know in the span of his noble life. All the warmth of Ann Rutledge's had softened the deep lines the wilderness etched into his face. Turmoil that almost engulfed the mind in its thoroughness changed doubt into purpose and made the acceptance of fatalism almost the answer. Through it all Bowling and Nancy were his real friends. They made a sane home for the weary Lincoln and forced work into his big calloused hands. From husking corn and chopping firewood to carrying water, Abe did much but none with the pure joy he had once known. He did what was asked of him because his innate kindness answered. At night he sat before the crackling fire and watched the flames shape the fair head of Ann; form the cornsilk hue of her hair in wisps of bright heat. His kind friends worried but never let it show. Instead they carefully drew out little fragments of his old self by the unconscious application of naturalness. It was never to be the same but they hoped for the quiet resignation that was to make Lincoln's last four years the greatest. Ever so slowly he responded to this understanding. His great loss, after all, was not an indifferent world's. A. Lincoln was a backwoodsman in a 14 AMBERGLOW sparse settlement of Illinois - a nobody. On the other hand 1835 knew a world of pomposity and heroics. Big men moved over the stage and said their pieces against the hazed background of New Salem and its life and death. Life was but the short experience before the void men feared as Death. But the passing of a tavern- keeper'sdaughter was to become immortal. Into the winter of 1835 Abraham Lincoln drifted - the dulling confusion of his mind kin to the seasonable changes. The finality of acceptance changed the youth into a man. What was left of the monotony of living faced him and he met it with physical energy. Hard work all day tired him out and made dreamless sleep easy. Ann Rutledge was dead and he, Abraham Lincoln, was yet to know his destiny. Fate had been hard with the good hearted Abe and was to add more to his deep anguish. Life hammered at the man with the harshness of the frontier. Yet in spite of all the forces that strived to form a shell of hard cynicism about him Lincoln ever remained tender and sympa- thetic. The spleen of a universe could not lessen the deep warmth that was part of his democratic nobility. Who can measure the value of loss? The death of Ann Rutledge gave the world a great AMBERGLOW 15 humanitarian yet her life could have done the same. Tragedy and suffering can derogate as well as destroy. That they spared Lincoln was only because his extraordinary mind could maintain an equilibrium while spiritual equanimity crumbled about him. The influence of fair Ann must ever be a moot question for Lincoln held her memory in silence. Life is for the living and death but of that nothingness that marks off each human span, Abraham Lincoln ever walked near that shadow and so understood life. . .Ann Rutledge helped him as much in death as in life. . . The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. - Abraham Lincoln December 1, 1862 3 0112 031804104