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A Reporter's Lincoln

by
Walter B. Stevens

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The style of this book is intended
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porter's note book.

A Reporter's Lincoln

History is not history unless
it is the truth. — Lincoln

BY
WALTER B. STEVENS

Missouri Historical Society
Saint Louis
1916

Edition limited to six hundred copies of which this is
No  41 

This Notebook is dedicated to
CAPTAIN HENRY KING,
whose intimate knowledge of
Lincoln dated from the "Lost
Speech;" whose youth was
passed among relatives of
Lincoln; whose appreciation of
Lincoln was inspiration to the
reporter for the assembling of
many of these recollections.

3^0

Copyright, 1916
by the
Missouri Historical Society

>

They Knew Lincoln
These recollections of Lincoln were assembled in newspaper
goings and comings. They are plain tales told by men and women
"who knew Lincoln." In degree of acquaintance they range from
a single, perhaps casual, meeting, to years of intimacy. In respect
to time, they relate to Lincoln, the clerk at New Salem; to Lincoln,
the president; and to Lincoln at stages of his career between the
clerkship and the presidency.
New Salem, the settlement that was promising when Lincoln
went there to begin his manhood life, passed away long ago. When
the site was visited by the reporter not a building was left. But
living in and about Petersburg, the thrifty little city which succeeded
New Salem, were men and women, advanced in years, who remem
bered "when nobody along the Sangamon could put Abe Lincoln
on his back." They told, from personal observation, how Lincoln
took the death of Ann Rutledge. They described the wrestling
match between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, the neighborhood
champion. They heard Lincoln read his argument about the Bible
and saw his employer take the paper from him and burn it. They
recalled how Lincoln saved Duff Armstrong with an almanac, in a
murder trial, and Duff Armstrong, in the flesh, reformed and a
church member, was there to stoutly assert that the almanac was
not faked. After Lincoln the wrestler and clerk, Lincoln the surveyor and
legislator, came Lincoln the lawyer and Lincoln the politician.
Lincoln rode the eighth circuit. Half a century afterwards his trail
was followed by his lawsuits, his stories, his homely sayings. At
the court towns on the circuit, people told of Lincoln from personal
recollections. Of Lincoln sitting on the log with the editors and framing the
first platform of the Republican movement in Illinois; of Lincoln
going fishing with a carryall full of boys; of Lincoln dropping from
the statehouse window in Vandalia to break a quorum, — of such
were the recollections. The Bloomington speech was "lost," but
perhaps more vivid than the forgotten words were the impressions
which listeners received and which they described.
Robert R. Hitt, many years Member of Congress from the
Freeport, III., district, took the speeches of the Douglas-Lincoln
joint debate for the Chicago Tribune. During a mid-winter recess

of Congress, Joseph B. McCullagh, editor of the Globe-Democrat,
sent his Washington correspondent to Mr. Hitt for an interview on
the joint debates. Mr. Hitt was not willing to be quoted in direct
narration. He had preserved much that was printed at the time of
the debates. This material he supplemented with his recollection of
many incidents connected with the historic meetings. The narrative
was long. After it was written from the notes taken at the talk,
another visit was made to Mr. Hitfs library overlooking McPherson
Square. The narrative was read at length. Mr. Hitt made some
further suggestions which were noted. In this form, approved by
Mr. Hitt, the story of the debates is given.
There were grayheads in Alton who saw Lincoln and Shields
arrive from Springfield, who marveled as the long, clattering sabres
were lifted down from the top of the stagecoach, who watched the
two boatloads of solemn looking men cross to Lincoln-Shields island
near the Missouri shore, and who told how Lincoln practiced lopping
off the willow twigs while the seconds measured the ground and
arranged preliminaries for a duel.
These narratives include incidents which seemed trivial at the
time of occurrence, but which, later, had important bearing on the
great career. Going to see how his son Robert was getting on at
Exeter, in preparation for Harvard, Lincoln made speeches in New
England. The next year the eastern delegates who turned earliest
from their first choices to Lincoln, in the nominating convention at
Chicago, were from the New England localities where Lincoln had
spoken. Reminiscences of the family life, given by a favorite nephew
who spent much time in the Lincoln home at Springfield are more
satisfying than much that has been given by the biographers.
From the unpublished store of Lincoln manuscripts possessed
by William K. Bixby have been drawn many revelations.
With no purpose to prove or disprove anything about Lincoln,
but with the sole intention to add to the popular comprehension of
the Great American, these narratives have been reported.
W. B. S.

Growing Days at New Salem
New Salem, the town where Lincoln tended store and made his reputation
as the champion jumper and wrestler, is a reminiscence. It was promising in
1833. Only the hill remafhs, from the summit of which there is a long stretch of
the Sangamon bottom in view. Some years ago might have been seen the founda
tion timbers of the log house in which Bill Berry and Abe Lincoln kept the
grocery. But the old timbers have disappeared, gone to be manufactured into
Lincoln souvenirs. The mill which stood on the river bank under the hill is gone.
It was burned long ago. At this mill, according to Salem traditions, Lincoln
played one of his practical jokes. He took advantage of the absence of the miller
to prop up in the hopper a dead hog with an ear of corn in its mouth. All Salem,
except the miller, laughed. The miller felt scandalized at the insinuation of
excessive toll "as the wheel went around."
The everlasting hill, which was the site of New Salem, is there, but the road to
the settlement, leading up a hollow, has been washed away. The abandoned
town site is part of a pasture and the only way to reach it is roundabout, through
gates and up a steep climb. From the height the visitor looks down the side of
the hill almost as steep as the roof of a house. And that descent was the scene of
another Lincoln joke, in which a boon companion, Jack Armstrong, aided and
abetted. One day Lincoln and Armstrong, so the local tradition is told, put an
old toper who was sleeping off his potations into a hogshead and started it roll
ing down the hill. About halfway the hogshead struck a stump, the head flew
out, the hoops burst and the drunken man escaped with nothing worse than a
bruise or two.
These Salem traditions are entertaining, but in connection with them the fact
should be kept in mind that when Abraham Lincoln came to the settlement to
keep store he was only 22 years old. When he was past 25 he was elected to the
Legislature, moved to Springfield and began to be a lawyer. A story of this New
Salem period is that, having great difficulty in driving a drove of hogs across a
bridge, Lincoln resorted to the expedient of sewing together the eyelids of several.
He then started the blinded hogs ahead of those that could see and the drove
passed over the bridge without any more trouble. This is one of the stories of
Lincoln's early manhood which has been questioned. It is still told and accepted
in Petersburg, the Menard County town which grew as New Salem declined with
the transition from river to rail. An old lady with an excellent memory laughed
merrily as she declared her faith in the tradition about the hogs.
"I guess it is true," she said. "Perhaps Lincoln didn't really do the sewing,
but only made the suggestion. You know, we hadn't many bridges in those days.
We had to drive the hogs across the country to the Illinois River to ship them to
market. Hogs weren't used to bridges and would refuse to cross. As I heard
the story, Lincoln proposed the sewing and it was really done. Years after, when
Mr. Lincoln had moved to Springfield, this story was told on him here. I think
old Mr. Smoot started it as a reminiscence of Lincoln's early life in New Salem.
Some of Lincoln's Petersburg friends, who didn't know so much about the pioneer
days, expressed disbelief in the story. They were indignant that such things
should be said of Mr. Lincoln. One of them, a member of the Killian family, I
think, went all of the way to Springfield to tell Mr. Lincoln what the Petersburg'

6 A Reporter's Lincoln
people were circulating on him and to get a contradiction. Mr. Lincoln listened
to him and said: 'Sh-sh — don't say another word about it. That thing was done
right on old man Smoot's place.' So I judge it must have been a true story."
New Salem days made an important as well as an interesting period in the
life of Abraham Lincoln. They transformed the lanky, fun-loving boy of 22 into
the ambitious, studious man of 25. When Lincoln came to New Salem he was
proud to win the jumping and wrestling matches. Before he went away he was
writing his views upon religion. Development of the mind was rapid.

One community in the United States remembered the "ninety-ninth anniver
sary of the adoption of the constitution," and celebrated it in 1886. That place
was Petersburg, the successor of New Salem. The scene of the celebration was
the Menard County Fair Grounds, in the midst of fine Illinois farms, some of the
lines of which were run by the great liberator fifty years before, when he changed
his vocation from that of grocery clerk to country surveyor.
The celebration took the form of a fish-fry, a popular pastime of that period
in that part of Illinois. Old residents could remember the fish-fry dating back
to Lincoln's time. The fish-fry was to these people what the barbecue was to
Kentucky. The master of the fish-fry at the Petersburg celebration came from
"over on the Illinois river." He looked back upon twenty years of practice in
the art. In a shed of the fair grounds he set up his rude furnace, simply two rows
of bricks to keep the huge pans above fire. A wagon-load of cobs and pine wood
was heaped at one end of the furnace. With a boy to feed the fire as he directed,
the fish-frying chef was ready for his work. The fish, croppie and bass and those
twin aboriginals of the Illinois, the cat and the buffalo, were cleaned, scraped and
cut into quarter-pound sections. They were brought in bushel baskets and heaped
on a large table in front of the master. Then the real expert work began. With
a seemingly careless hand, the master poured out two bushels of meal on the
table near the heap of fish. He emptied a sack of salt upon the meal. He spread
two pounds of pepper over the meal and the salt. With arms bared to the elbow,
he thoroughly mixed the mess, and stirred the pieces of fish. He continued to
stir and stir until every piece of fish was well covered with meal and seasoning.
In the long string of pans the lard was beginning to smoke when the master
threw in the fish. With a long fork he moved from pan to pan, prodding and
turning and at the same time giving sharp directions to the fireman.
The master turned off his first batch at ten o'clock. For eight hours he kept
the pans hot. Every fifteen minutes the master delivered to the committee one
hundred pounds of fish. Outside of the frying shed was stretched a rope, in a
semi-circle. Over this rope were handed the loaves of bread and the hot fried
fish in countless wooden plates, hour after hour. Before sundown over 3,000
pounds of fish had been served. This part of Illinois has been famous for the
participation of the gentler sex in politics ever since Lincoln one day about
1833, told Mary Owens, as they were going up the hill west of town, his poor
opinion of "a political woman." Two hundred picnic parties spread their table
cloths under the trees and furnished accompaniments to the fried fish. All
Petersburg society was there. The wild and exuberant Rock Creek boys came in
procession bearing a pole with a much embarrassed coon aloft and escorting a
gaily decorated triumphal car filled to overflowing with lively girls. Indian Creek,
Athens and all of the other townships sent their delegations.

Growing Days at New Salem 7
Out from the great throng a member of the committee led an old gentleman
to a quiet spot where a wagon tongue offered seating accommodation and said,
"Uncle Johnny, here's a reporter. He wants to see somebody who knew Mr.
Lincoln when he Hved here. You are just the one to talk to him."
And Uncle Johnny Potter, kindly-faced, with a twinkle in his eyes, a slight
deafness, careful of his words, and with a recollection of detail that was marvelous,
began to talk in 1886 of things that happened in 1831.
"The first time I ever saw Abe Lincoln," he said, "was that summer. I was
just starting in life myself, on my place below here and had a log cabin. In
front of the house was a tolerably low rail fence I had built, mebbe five rails
high. We had done breakfast a few minutes, when two young men came walk
ing along the road. One of them was Abe. A man named Offut was going to
start a grocery at Salem. That was the town then, just up the river a couple of
miles above where Petersburg is now. Offut had engaged Abe to clerk for him,
and Abe was walking up to go to work in the store. He had slept that night
at Clary's Grove, and when he and the young man with him got along to my place
they wanted to know if they could get a bite to eat. The old woman fixed them
up something, the things were on the table, and they had their breakfast. When
they got through they came out, and Abe straddled over that five-rail fence as
if it wasn't in the way at all. I expect he would have gone over just as easy if
it had been higher, for he had powerful long legs. When he got out to the road
he turned and looked back at the table, and said: 'There's only one egg left; I
believe I'd better make a clean thing of it.' So he straddled the fence again, got
the egg and went off — laughing like a boy, shuffling the hot egg from one hand to
the other and then peeling and eating it. That was the first time I saw Abe, but
I saw a good deal of him afterwards, for Salem was where we all went to do our
trading." "Uncle Johnny, tell him about the wrestling match with father," said a sturdy,
middle-aged man with a pleasant face. "You remember all about that."
The speaker was Jack Armstrong, the son of the famous Jack Armstrong,
who was the champion in all athletic sports in this valley of the Sangamon fifty
years before.
"I remember it," said Uncle Johnny. "Your father was considered the best
man in all this country for a scuffle. In a wrestle, shoulder or back hold, there
was only now and then a man he couldn't get away with. When Lincoln came
into this country there was a crowd called the Clary Grove boys, who pretty
much had their way, and Jack Armstrong was the leader among them. Most
every new man who came into the neighborhood had to be tried. Lincoln was
pretty stout and the boys made it up to see what there was in him. They got
him to talking about wrestling one day, and he said he could throw any man
around there. Bill Clary kept at Lincoln until he got him into a bet of $5. Then
he put Jack Armstrong against him. They were pretty well matched, but Abe
was a good deal taller and could bend over Jack. They wrestled a good while,
and I think Abe had thrown Jack two joints and was likely to get him down.
Clary, I expect, thought he was in danger of losing his money for he called out:
'Throw him anyway, Jack.' At that Jack loosed liis back hold and grabbed Abe
by the thigh and threw him in a second. Abe got up pretty mad. He didn't say much,
but he told somebody that if it ever came right, he would give Bill Clary a good
licking. You see the hold Jack took was fair in a scuffle, but not in a wrestle,
and they were wrestling. After that Abe was considered one of the Clary's

8 A Reporter's Lincoln
Grove boys. I believe they called him president of their club. Abe and Jack
got to be great friends and Abe used to stay at Jack's house."
"Yes," said the Jack Armstrong of the later generation, "I've heard mother
tell many times how she foxed Mr. Lincoln's pants when he got to be surveyor.
You see the cloth wouldn't last no time out in the brush and grass and briars
where surveyors had to tramp. So they used to sew a covering of buckskin on
the outside of the legs. That was what was called foxing 'em."

"Abe," volunteered Riley Potter, one of the substantial farmers of Menard,
"was mighty handy at frolics and parties. Most of the young people would sorter
hang back, but Abe had a word for everybody, and especially for the smart girls.
There couldn't any of them get the best of him. He was generally asked to help
wait on the table and make folks feel sociable. One night Abe was helping the
visitors and there was a girl there who thought herself pretty smart. When Abe
got to her he asked her if he should help her. She said she'd take something.
Abe, he filled up her plate pretty well, and when he passed it to her she says,
quite pert and sharp, 'Well, Mr. Lincoln, I didn't want a cart-load.' Abe never
let on that he heard her, but went on helping the others. By and by Liddy got
through, and when Abe came around her way again she said she believed she'd
take a little more. 'All right, Miss Liddy,' says Abe loud enough for the whole
room to hear, 'back up your cart and I'll fill it again.' Of course there was a big
laugh. Liddy felt awful bad about it. She went off by herself and cried the whole
evening." Uncle Johnny smiled and shook his head when he was asked if "Honest Abe"
was the name given Mr. Lincoln in Salem days. "I think," he said, "the most of
us had more confidence in Abe's smartness than in his honesty. When Abe ran
for the Legislature, the time he was elected, Ned Potter and Hugh Armstrong
had a pledge from him that he would try to get us cut off and made into a new
county. You know this used to be a part of Sangamon. The division was the
big question. We elected Abe on the Whig ticket, although the Democrats had
the majority. Well, he put our petition in his pocket and didn't do anything for
us. That is the way I recollect it. Afterward they cut us off and made this
Menard County. Folks felt pretty sore about the way Lincoln did. He never
came back here to live, but settled in Springfield and practiced law."

Lincoln could jump as well as wrestle. During the time that he clerked at
the store in Salem, Lincoln made the acquaintance of the father of William B.
Thompson of the St. Louis bar. At Beardstown was located the house of Knapp,
Pogue & Co., in those days the largest distributing store in that part of Illinois.
The stocks of goods were brought up the river by steamboat to Beardstown, and
thence sent out to the small stores in the towns and neighborhoods of several
counties. The clothing, the groceries and the other supplies reached the farmers
by that method. A junior partner in the Beardstown house was the father of
Mr. Thompson. It was his business to visit the scattered stores in the interest
of his firm. That the elder Thompson was a good deal of an athlete added to his
prestige with the country people he met on his rounds. Coming to the New
Salem store, Mr. Thompson met for the first time Abraham Lincoln. As he rode
up, he noted the number of horses hitched to the rack, and saw that the farmers
were engaged in the popular amusement of "three jumps." This was an athletic

Growing Days at New Salem 9
performance in which Mr. Thompson excelled. The young merchant from
Beardstown lost no time getting into the game. He was astonished to see the
new clerk, whom everybody called "Abe," toe the mark, swing forward in three
standing jumps and pass his own scratch by some inches. As Mr. Thompson
told the story afterward, this was the first time he had ever been beaten at
"three jumps."
An acquaintance between the young merchant and the young clerk ripened
into friendship. Mr. Lincoln confided to Mr. Thompson his ambition to do some
thing more than to jump, and to be something more than a clerk in a country
store. He said he had formed the purpose to study law and to be a lawyer. He
asked Mr. Thompson to lend him books. Returning home from New Salem the
merchant told of this champion jumper who wanted to borrow books, and said
to his friends that he had never met with any other man who was so anxious to
read and to inform himself as was young Abe Lincoln. And after subsequent
meetings, Mr. Thompson expressed to acquaintances his conviction that Mr.
Lincoln would become one of the best self-educated men in the country. In after
years Mr. Lincoln was often the guest at the house of Mr. Thompson in Virginia,
111., when he was attending court at that town.

In one of the joint debates Senator Douglas referred to Lincoln's clerking
days at New Salem. He may have meant to be magnanimous in a patronizing
way, but he really held Lincoln up to ridicule for what he had done twenty-six
years before. Douglas was making his opening speech in the debate at Ottawa
when he said:
"I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I
have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of
sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both compara
tively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school
teacher in the Town of Winchester and he a flourishing grocery keeper in the
Town of Salem. (Applause and laughter.) He was more successful in his
occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods.
Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill every
thing which they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and
when a cabinet maker I made a good bedstead and table, although my old boss
said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. (Cheers.)
But I believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for
his business enabled him to get in the Legislature. I met him there, however,
and had a sympathy with him because of the uphill struggle we both had in
life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat
any of the boys wrestling or running a footrace, in pitching quoits or tossing a
copper; could ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together. (Uproarious
laughter.) And the dignity with which he presided at a horse race or a fist fight
excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody that was present and
participated." When Mr. Lincoln's turn came he made but the briefest reply to what Senator
Douglas had told about Salem days. He said only:
"The judge is woefully at fault again about his early friend being a grocery
keeper. I don't know that it would be a great sin if I had, but he is mistaken.
Lincoln never kept a grocery in his life. It is true that Lincoln did work the
latter part of one winter at a little stillhouse up at the head of the hollow."

10 A Reporter's Lincoln
With these few words of personal answer to Douglas, Lincoln plunged into
the discussion of the great national issue of that campaign.

New Salem folks of Lincoln's time were not numerous in 1886. Mrs. Samuel
Hill, who was the wife of the principal store-keeper, was one of the most inter
esting of the survivors. Of the best Kentucky stock, she was a hale, vigorous old
lady, and her memory of those days was still vivid. She lived in one of
the pleasant residences of Petersburg, back on the bluff overlooking the valley.
Sitting before a wood fire in her comfortable parlor, Mrs. Hill let her memory
go back fifty years and more to call up the appearance of Mr. Lincoln on the
streets of Salem.
"He went about a good deal of the time without any hat," she said. "His
hair was long. His yellow tow-linen pants he usually wore rolled up one leg
and down the other. Many years afterward, when he was a candidate for the
presidency, the recollection of how he looked in Salem would come up and
make me laugh in spite of myself."
"I don't think Mr. Lincoln was overindustrious," Mrs. Hill continued. "My
husband kept the principal store in Salem, and we lived in a little house close
by. We had no cellar, and Mr. Hill cut a door in the rear so that I used the
store cellar. The store was a great gathering place for all the neighborhood.
When I would be in the cellar churning, or attending to some household matter,
I could almost always hear Mr. Lincoln's voice and the crowd laughing. In front
of the store was a kind of shed or porch where the people collected in warm
weather. I could generally see Mr. Lincoln about when I looked out. He didn't
do much. His living and his clothes cost little. He liked company, and would
talk to everybody, and entertain them and himself."
The conversation turned upon Lincoln's early love affairs, and Mrs. Hill was
asked about the story of Ann Rutledge, over whose death Lincoln's mind, it was
claimed, became unhinged.
"Lincoln," said Mrs. Hill, "visited at the Rutledges, and he may have thought
a good deal of Ann. She died of consumption, and after her death there was a
long rainy spell. Some of Lincoln's friends at that time thought he was a little
unbalanced, or at any rate they were afraid he would become so. I never thought
he was so deeply interested in Ann Rutledge, for it wasn't very long after she
died until he was courting Mary Owens. Mary came from Kentucky to visit
her sister, Betsy Abies, who was Bennett Abies' wife. They lived near Salem.
Lincoln was at Bennett Abies' a good deal, and Betsy, who was a great talker,
and sometimes said more than she ought, perhaps had told Lincoln she was going
to bring her sister up from Kentucky to marry him. When Mary arrived Lincoln
told some one he was intimate with that he supposed Mrs. Abies' sister had come
up to catch him, but he'd show her a thing or two. This friend of Lincoln's was
also a great friend of the Abies family, and it wasn't long until Mary heard just
what Lincoln had said. Then she said she would teach him a lesson, and she
did, too. I don't think they ever became really engaged, for Mary was a woman
of too much character to go as far as that, and I don't think she ever got very
much in earnest. She told me once that she didn't. But Mr. Lincoln thought a great
deal of her, I expect. He used to write to her long after he went to Springfield.
She finally moved to Weston, in Platte County, Mo., and became the wife of a
Mr. Vineyard. Mr. Ben Vineyard, the lawyer in St. Joseph, is a son of hers."

Growing Days at New Salem 11
Lincoln went to the Blackhawk war and became a captain of the volunteer
company raised in the Salem neighborhood. In the four years after he came
trudging into the Salem community, straddling the rail fence and making a "clean
thing'' of the breakfast at Uncle Johnny Potter's, he followed surveying, read law
and was a successful candidate for the Legislature. Notwithstanding his
sociability, the years from 22 to 25 had been improved. That first election to
the Legislature, it is to be remembered, was on the Whig ticket in a district
where the Democrats were in the majority. Lincoln was learning politics as
well as a great deal else in the days at Salem.
J. F. Willson of Tallula, near Petersburg, recalled an incident of Lincoln's
surveying. A line was being run not far from where the town of Tallula is now.
"It struck a sugar tree in the center," Mr. Willson said. "As was the custom
with the surveyors of that time, the tree was marked with three hacks 'fore and
aft,' as the description ran. Some one of the chain carriers bantered the party
to show who could make the highest hack on the trunk of the tree. After the
others had done their best, Lincoln took the ax handle by the end, and, reach
ing up, made a hack much higher than any other member of the party. The tree
stood for more than thirty years afterwards, and was pointed out to visitors with
Lincoln's high hack upon it. That tree fell soon after Lincoln was assassinated.
I am not superstitious. I only mention the coincidence."
Papers which Lincoln made out while he was surveying were preserved for
many years by the residents of Menard County, then Sangamon. The Lincoln
souvenir collectors and the historical societies have gradually gathered most of
these relics. The plat of the town of Bath was perhaps the most important of
Lincoln's surveying jobs.
Upon "Lincoln, the rail-splitter." the Douglas men rang the changes through
the senatorial campaign of 1858. Two years later Republicans accepted the chal
lenge and exploited "Lincoln, the rail-splitter," in convention and in campaign
with speech and song and story and emblem. Then the biographers, one after
another, made much of "Lincoln, the rail-splitter." The winter he was 21 Abra
ham Lincoln did split rails on his Uncle Hank's farm, near Decatur. He got 50
cents a hundred. Of that job he told when he was asked about his rail-splitting
experiences. Coming back from a trip with a boat load of corn and pork to
New Orleans, Lincoln entered upon his Salem days. Uncle Johnny Potter was
for many years regarded as the best authority on traditions of Lincoln's life at
Salem. He could not remember that there was much rail-splitting.
"Lincoln may have helped split rails when he was visiting some of the neigh
bors." Uncle Johnny would say, when asked, "but he didn't make his living by
it, as they said afterwards, when he was running for president. I believe Abe
and George Close took a job to cut 1000 rails for somebody over the river one
time, but that is about the only time I remember of Lincoln's splitting rails."

The traditions go to show that Lincoln did a variety of work while he lived
among the Salem people, clerking in the stores, helping on the farms in the busy
seasons and surveying as the country was settled and farmers wanted the lines
run. And all of the time that he was living the life of the neighborhood he was
reading, studying and thinking. This thinking was along original lines. It was
speculative. It showed the mental activity of the young man. That is the most
that should be said of it. As the result of his thinking Lincoln advanced views
or suggestions which formed the basis for one of the Salem traditions that he was

12 A Reporter's Lincoln
an infidel. He was a Bible student at the time. One day he startled the crowd
gathered in the principal store of Salem by producing the manuscript and reading
his argument that the Bible, as a whole, was not to be believed. He asked the
advice of his listeners whether the paper should be printed. The keeper of the
store, Mr. Hill, who had employed Lincoln as a clerk when he needed help, looked
upon him as he mrght upon a younger brother. He very promptly replied to the
argument by saying:
"Look here, Abe. The best thing you can do is to burn that and not tell
anybody you ever wrote it."
With that Mr. Hill took the manuscript from Lincoln's hand and threw it
into the fire. It is not remembered that Lincoln was particularly disturbed by
this summary disposition of his argument. The traditions do not evidence that
he had reached settled convictions on religion. He started discussion, however,
in the little community, and that was what he liked very much to do. The wife
of the man who had burned the argument asked Lincoln, "Do you really believe
there isn't any future state?" And Lincoln, so Mrs. Hill told, replied. "Mrs. Hill,
I'm afraid there isn't. It isn't a pleasant thing to think that when we die that is
the last of us." Mrs. Hill thought this unsettled view of religion underwent a
change after Lincoln moved to Springfield. Upon such incidents as this in his
Salem days the controversialists, after Lincoln died, built varying opinions as to
what he thought about religion.

Giants in Those Days

Frederick W. Lehmann of St. Louis, one-time solicitor general of the United
States, said of the "remarkable company of men that followed the procession of
the courts in Illinois when Lincoln rode the circuit:
"There were no great corporation lawyers, there was not any great corpora
tion business, but there was that which would tend to develop and tend to refine
more than the exigencies of mere commerce would do, and that was the dis
cussion of matters involving the human heart and human interests. A friend
of mine speaking at a banquet in Chicago had been assigned to speak of the old
bar of Illinois. His father had kept a hotel at Bloomington, and he took as the
subject of his discourse a page of his father's hotel register on the opening day
of a term of the court at Bloomington. There was nothing exceptional in the
occasion; there were none present except those who followed the judges in
their regular ride of the circuit. Among the not more than fifteen men upon the
register of that day were James McDougall, who became United States senator
from California; James Shields, general in two wars and senator from three
states; E. D. Baker, a major general in the Civil War and senator from Oregon;
Lyman Trumbull, United States senator, and author of the amendment of the
constitution abolishing slavery; David Davis, a United States senator and justice
of the Supreme Court; O. H. Browning, who became a cabinet officer; Stephen
A. Douglas, a United States senator, and later candidate for the presidency, and
Abraham Lincoln. Such men as these in that small and undistinguished group
of country lawyers."

How He Broke the Quorum
The grievance of Vandalia agaist Abraham Lincoln has been ameliorated by
time. It was acute seventy-five years ago. At that time the residents of the
ancient capital of Illinois did not smile as they gazed at the windows of the room
in which the representatives sat. One window in particular became historic. It
is there to-day, the sill about 14 feet from the ground. Three generations of Van-
dalians and thousands of visitors have stood in the courthouse yard and along
the street, imagining how Lincoln looked as he hung by his long arms from that
window sill, and how far his long legs had to drop to reach the ground.
Vandalia was the capital of Illinois a score of years. The seat of government
was moved from Kaskaskia because immigration was settling the Wabash and
the Sangamon regions. Vandalia was chosen by a commission under an act
which made the new location the capital for twenty years. At the expiration of
that period the Legislature was required to determine whether Vandalia or some
other place should be the capital for the next two decades.
The old Illinois Statehouse of 1830 became Vandalia's Courthouse. It stands in
about the same form of architecture it did three-quarters of a century ago, with
the massive columns and the spacious portico, which were considered indispens
able in capitol buildings. Stone sills have been substituted for the wooden
beneath the windows. The interior has undergone some subdivision and modern
izing to make a convenient county courthouse. But the old residents can still
show where the two branches of the Legislature met that memorable winter when
Vandalia was trying to hold the capital, and when Springfield was trying to
capture it.
There were giants in those days. Sangamon County had sent to the Legisla
ture that session two state senators and seven representatives. Springfield had
picked her best politicians for the supreme effort at capital moving. The com
bined stature of the Sangamon delegation was 55 feet. "The long nine" as they
were called, stood for Springfield's hopes. Lincoln furnished 6 feet and 4 inches
of the aggregate. He was about 25 years old, comparatively unknown to the
Springfield people who had made up the delegation. His election seems to have
been a result not contemplated in the capital-moving programme. It came about
largely by reason of a local issue in Sangamon. The northwest part of Sangamon,
where Lincoln had been living for years while he clerked and surveyed and helped
on the farms and pursued his reading and studying, desired to be cut off from
Sangamon, and to be made a separate county. The movement was popular along
the lower Sangamon. Water lines were trade routes. These neighbors of Lin
coln looked to the Illinois river for their commercial relations with the rest of
the world. They had little interest in Springfield. Hugh Armstrong and Ned
Potter were political leaders in that part of Sangamon. They got up a petition to
have what is now Menard County cut off, took from Lincoln a pledge that he
would make it his business to obtain this legislation if it was possible, and then
ran him as their candidate. The settlements along the Sangamon in that part of
the county were strongly Democratic, but on the issue of separation Lincoln,
although a Whig, was elected and became one of "the long nine." He was new
in politics. Before the fight for the capital ended he was the leader of "the long
nine." The service he rendered Springfield paved the way for his removal to the
new state capital and gave him his start in the practice of law.

14 A Reporter's Lincoln
In that Legislature were four men who became United States senators. Two
of the participants in the capital fight became nominees of their parties for the
presidency, and one the nominee of his party for the vice-presidency. One of
them was a general in the Mexican war, and three of them were generals in the
civil war. The struggle was a long drawn-out game in parliamentary tactics.
Lincoln's quick wit and physical agility played the winning move.
Vandalia secured the first advantage in the, choice of the presiding officer.
Springfield carried on a campaign of education... The location of Vandalia, on the
bluffs of the Okaw, is picturesque. The Springfield missionaries insisted that
Vandalia was unhealthy and urged removal from the river to the prairie on sani
tary grounds. There had occurred several deaths of members of theLegislature
while the capital was at Vandalia. The Springfield argument attributed the mor
tality to the location of the capital. This aroused much indignation among the
Vandalians. It was not mentioned by later generations without some feeling.
An old resident remarking upon the iniquity of the charge against the climate of
Vandalia, said:
"The trouble was busthead whiskey. I've heard them tell that at Ebenezer
Capp's store, which was the general resort of the legislators of that time, a barrel
of liquor was kept with the head knocked out and a dipper hanging on a nail so
that thirsty members could help themselves. I have seen some of the old accounts
of Ebenezer showing a bill of $80 for the entertainment of members of the Legis
lature a single evening." 
(
The session wore away without Lincoln being able to do anything with the
petition to create a new county. All other business except the question of capital
location was held back. Springfield continued working for votes. On one pre
text and another the settlement was postponed. The removal sentiment seemed
to be gaining. Vandalia people watched closely the attendance; the purpose being
to force a vote when Springfield absentees might give the advantage. One morn
ing the presiding officer suddenly laid before the members the question of capital
location for the next twenty years. The Vandalia members to a man were in their
seats. Several supporters of Springfield had gone to their homes, but had not re
turned. A hurried canvass showed the Springfield members their side was in the
minority. There was only one way to beat Vandalia, and that was to break the
quorum. The morning roll call had shown barely a sufficient number to do busi
ness. The Springfield men looked toward the door and saw what the plan was.
There stood the sergeant-at-arms with a force which made exit impossible.
Clearly the Vandalia people meant to hold the minority until the vote which
would prevent removal of the capital could be passed. Lincoln was on the floor
to delay action. It was evident that postponement of the vote would be only
temporary, and that Vandalia controlled the situation. Lincoln nodded to his
friends, turned and hurried to the window. A wooden sill at that time projected
beyond the wall. Before his purpose was understood and before the officers of
the House could reach him Lincoln stepped out on the sill, let himself down
until he hung by his hands and dropped to the ground. Several other Springfield
men followed. Those who remained in their seats raised the point of no quorum.
That blocked the proceedings. The quorum remained broken until the supporters
of Springfield reached the capital. Near the close of the session the issue was
forced and the Legislature voted to remove the capital to Springfield. Such is
the Vandalia story of "How Lincoln broke the quorum." When one of the old
residents tells the story the others smile and say, "Yes, that was the way it was."

The Duel He Didn't Fight
The old resident of Alton takes the visitor to the river bank in front of the
City Hall and, pointing across the Mississippi to an island heavily wooded with
willows, informs him that there is the "Lincoln-Shields Park." On the 22d of
September, 1842, the stage coaches rattled down the long valley through the bluffs
of Alton and unloaded an extraordinary passenger list at the Piasa Hotel. The
people stitting and standing on the wide double galleries of the three-story, hipped
roof, wooden hotel, looked and wondered as James Shields, the state auditor,
accompanied by General Whitesides and several other well-known Springfield
Democrats, stepped down from one coach and went into the hotel. They were
amazed when another vehicle delivered Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer; E. H.
Berryman and William Butler. About the same time Elijah Lott and J. J. Hardin
and several others, well-known public men of Illinois, drove into town. There
was no hilarity as these groups arrived and entered the hotel. When a bundle of
the great, clumsy cavalry sabres of that day was lifted carefully down from the
coach and carried in, the lookers-on began to exchange excited comments. All
over town went the rumor that a duel was coming off. Leaders of politics in
Alton, Whigs and Democrats, were taken into confidence by their respective
friends from the state capital. "Jim" Shields had challenged "Abe" Lincoln and
they were going across the river to fight on Missouri soil with "broadswords,"
the regulation cavalry sabres of the United States Army. Those were the years
of "dragoons" in this country.
The two parties did not waste time at the hotel. It became evident through
hurried conferences that friends who had learned of the intended meeting had
followed with the hope of preventing it. Hardin and Lott were two of the
would-be pacificators. Lincoln and Shields, with their seconds and surgeons, and
with an attendant carrying the bundle of sabers, left the hotel and walked down
Piasa street to the river bank, where a ferry with paddle wheels which were driven
by horses was tied. But expeditious as the movement was, the Altonians, old arid
young, had anticipated it, without any aid from the modern telephone. The
hotel galleries were crowded, the street was full of people, hundreds stood on the
river bank. There was difficulty in limiting the number of passengers on the
ferry boat. The town constable was taken along. Friends who were trying to
fix up the trouble pressed their way on board. Some prominent Altonians who
could not well be refused were permitted to go. One newspaper man secured
passage. He was "Bill" Souther, afterward better known to the history of Illinois
as William G. Souther.
The Southers were of the earliest New England stock. Their ancestor was
the first secretary of the Plymouth colony. They had moved to Alton shortly
before this time and "Bill" Souther was a printer on the Alton Telegraph and
Democratic Review. He afterward became an editor at Springfield. Other mem
bers of the Souther family moved from Alton to St. Louis and established one
of the great metal industries of that city. "Bill" Souther saw it all, but his paper
printed not one word from him. Traditions and some recollections written long
afterward have preserved the facts of this, one of the most remarkable meetings
under the code on American soil. Thomas M. Hope, Samuel W. Buckmaster and
Dr. English were of the Alton men who joined in the movement to avert blood
shed and to prevent political scandal.

16 A Reporter's Lincoln
As soon as the ferry reached the island Mr. Lincoln was taken in one direction
and Mr. Shields in the other. They were given seats on logs and left to them
selves while seconds and peacemakers discussed the situation. In a short time a
serious defect in the proceedings on the part of Shields came to light. The
challenge had been sent prematurely. The mistake is explained quite clearly in
the Alton traditions. Lincoln had amused himself and had entertained the Whigs
by writing funny letters to a Springfield paper about the Democrats, and signing
his epistles "Aunt Rebecca." Mary Todd, who afterwards became Mrs. Lincoln,
and Julia Jayne conspired to add to the gayety of the community by getting up an
"Aunt Rebecca" letter of their own composition and sending it to the paper along
with some verses which they signed "Cathleen." The letter which the girls
wrote went outside of politics and contained a burlesque proposal of marriage
to Auditor Shields. Now, the auditor, afterward a United States senator from
three states, and a brave general of two wars, was a fiery young man. While
Springfield laughed, Shields began an investigation. He demanded of the editor
the real name of "Aunt Rebecca." The girls became frightened. Bunn, the
banker, went over to Mr. Lincoln's office and said:
"We've got into an awful fix?"
"What's the matter?" asked Lincoln.
"The girls have written some poetry on Shields," said Bunn. "Didn't you
see it in the paper? Well, Shields says he won't stand it. What shall we do
about it?"
"You go back and when you meet Shields tell him I wrote it," said Lincoln.
Shields accepted this without verification and sent the challenge. The peace
makers, hurrying to Alton, brought the true story of the authorship. The facts
came out in the conference on the island. Mr. Hope went to Shields and told
him he would bring disgrace on the Democratic party if he persisted in a meeting
under such circumstances. The seconds began the interchange of notes. Shields
saw the error of proceeding further when he learned that Lincoln was not the
writer. For an hour or more the writing and exchanging of notes went on. Mean
time the population of Alton stood in a dense mass on the river bank looking
across the channel and having a good view of all of the movements. "Bill"
Souther, good reporter that he was, kept his eyes on the principals. He told that
for some time after the landing Lincoln and Shields sat quietly on their logs.
Lincoln said nothing, and Souther thought he looked serious. After awhile
something happened, and Souther said that when he saw it he "nearly blew up."
The bundle of sabres had been laid down near the log where Lincoln was sitting.
Lincoln reached out and took up one of the weapons. He drew the blade slowly
from the scabbard, and Souther said "it looked as long as a fence rail." Holding
the blade by the back, Lincoln looked closely at the edge, and then, after the
manner of one who has been grinding a scythe or a corn knife, he began to feel
gingerly the edge with the ball of his thumb. By this time "Bill" Souther was
tremendously interested. Holding the sabre by the handle, Lincoln stood up
and looked about him. He evidently saw what he was looking for in a willow tree
several feet away. Raising the mighty weapon with his long arm, Lincoln reached
and clipped one of the topmost twigs of the willow. When he had thoroughly
satisfied himself as to the efficiency of the broadsword he sat down. A few
minutes later the correspondence was closed on terms "honorable to both parties."
As the boat put back to Alton the spectators on the bank were horrified to see
lying prone upon the deck a figure covered with blood, while a well-known
Altonian leaned over the figure plying a fan vigorously. Not until the boat was close

The Duel He Didn't Fight 17
in shore was it seen that the figure was a log of wood and that the "bloody" cov
ering was a red flannel shirt. Wentworth dropped the fan, stood up and grinned.
Lincoln was 6 feet and 4 inches, with an arm length in proportion. Shields
was 5 feet and 6 inches, chunky and short-limbed. "Bill" Souther marveled much
over the willow tree exhibition, and wondered how long Shields could have stood
up against such odds.
A very sober second thought came to Alton after the first excitement over the
Shields-Lincoln duel. Alton had one of the best weekly newspapers in the valley.
The paper was large. It contained much interesting matter. It was called the
Alton Telegraph and Democratic Review. The presidential campaign was two
years in the future, but this paper carried at the top of the editorial page "For
President, Henry Clay."
The paper came out as usual on the 24th of September, two days after the
duel. Not one word of what "Bill" Souther saw on the island was printed. Not the
slightest reference was made to the affair, which was the talk of the town. The
next issue, on the 1st of October, contained an editorial beginning just below the
announcement for Henry Clay. The caption of this leader was "Our City," and
then followed the rest of the sentence and the editor's condemnation, in his sever
est style, of the disgraceful affair and his demand for indictment and punishment.
This editorial was not the least interesting incident of the duel:
"OUR CITY
Was the theatre of an unusual scene of excitement during the last week, arising
from the visit of two distinguished gentlemen of the City of Springfield, who,
it was understood, had come here with a view of crossing the river to answer the
'requisitions of the code of honor' by brutally attempting to assassinate each
other in cold blood.
"We recur to this matter with pain and the deepest regret. Both are, and
have been for a long time, our personal friends. Both we have ever esteemed in
all the private relations of life, and consequently regret that we consider an im
perative sense of duty we owe to the public compels us to recur to the disgrace
ful and unfortunate occurrence at all. We, however, consider that these gentle
men have both violated the laws of the country and insist that neither their
influence, their respectability nor their private worth should save them from
being made amenable to those laws they have violated. Both of them are
lawyers; both have been legislators of the State and aided in the construction of
laws for the protection of society; both exercised no small influence in the com
munity — all of which, in our estimation, aggravates, instead of mitigates, their
offense. Why, therefore, they should be permitted to escape punishment while a
friendless, penniless and obscure person for a much less offense, is hurried to the
cells of our County Jail, forced through a trial with scarcely the forms of law, and
finally immured within the dreary walls of a penitentiary, we are at a loss to
conjecture. It is a partial and disreputable administration of justice which,
though in accordance with the spirit of the age, we most solemnly protest against.
Wealth, influence and rank can trample upon the laws with impunity, while
poverty, scarcely permitted to utter a word in its defense, is charged with crime
in our miscalled temples of justice.
"Among the catalogue of crimes that disgraces the land, we look upon none
to be more aggravated and less excusable than that of dueling. It is the calm
est, most deliberate and malicious species of murder — a relic of the most cruel
barbarism that ever disgraced the darkest periods of the world — and one which

18 A Reporter's Lincoln
every principle of religion, virtue and good order loudly demands should be put
a stop to. This can be done only by a firm and unwavering enforcement of the
law in regard to dueling toward all those who so far forget the obligations they
are under to society and the laws which protect them as to violate its provisions.
And until this is done, until the civil authorities have the moral courage to dis
charge their duty and enforce the law in this respect, we may frequently expect
to witness the same disgraceful scenes that were acted in our city last week.
"Upon a former occasion, when under somewhat similar circumstances our
city was visited, we called upon the attorney general to enforce the law and bring
the offenders to justice. Bills of indictment were preferred against the guilty, but
there the matter was permitted to rest unnoticed and unexamined. The offenders,
in this instance, as in the former, committed the violation of the law in Spring
field, and we again call upon Mr. Attorney General Lamborn to exercise a little
of that zeal which he is continually putting into requisition against the less
favored but no less guilty offenders, and bring all who have been concerned in
the late attempt at assassination to justice. Unless he does it he will prove him
self unworthy the high trust that has been reposed in him.
"How the affair finally terminated, not having taken the trouble to inquire,
we are unable to say. The friends of Mr. Shields and Mr. Lincoln claim it to
have been settled upon terms alike honorable to both, notwithstanding the
hundred rumors, many of which border upon the ridiculous, that are in circula
tion. We are rejoiced that both were permitted to return to the bosom of their
friends, and trust that they will now consider, if they did not do it before, that
rushing unprepared upon the untried scenes of eternity is a step too fearful in its
consequencs to be undertaken without preparation.
"We are astonished to hear that large numbers of our fellow-citiens crossed
the river to witness a scene of cold-blooded assassination between two of their
fellow-beings. It was no less disgraceful than the conduct of those who were to
have been the actors in the drama. Hereafter we hope the citizens of Springfield
will select some other point to make public their intentions of crossing the
Mississippi to take each other's life than Alton. Such visits can not but be
attended not only with regret, but with unwelcome feelings, and the fewer we
have the better.
"We should have alluded to this matter last week but for our absence in
court." The Alton Telegraph and Democratic Review was published by J. A. Bail-
hache & Co. The editor was George T. M. Davis, twice mayor of Alton, who
afterwards was editor of the New Era in St. Louis. Col. Davis served gallantly
in the Mexican war and afterwards was prominent in public life at Washington.
His grandsons became business men in St. Louis.

Duff Armstrong and the "Almanac"
At a political gathering in the little county of Menard a citizen said to the
reporter: "Do you want to see the man who was tried for murder and cleared by Abe
Lincoln and an almanac?"
Thus came about an acquaintance with Duff Armstrong. Duff was a stocky
little man with suspicious gray eyes, a bristling reddish-brown mustache. He
was standing on the edge of the crowd, listening with a look of patience rather
than of interest to the orator, when he was called; and he walked away to a more
retired spot without any apparent regret at leaving the speaking. Upon the pole
of a wagon which had brought a load of farmers to hear the tariff expounded.
Duff and the reporter found seats. Duff Armstrong was a reticent man, and
almost under protest he told the story of the camp-meeting row, of his mother's
appeal to Lincoln to come and defend him, of Mr. Lincoln's response, of the trial
and of the introduction of the almanac.
The man for whose death Duff Armstrong was tried was Press Metzgar.
A campmeeting ground was the scene of the tragedy. Metzgar had a refreshment
stand on the outskirts of the camp. There he sold whiskey as well as other things.
Duff Armstrong, then a young man of eighteen or twenty years, had had some
thing to drink at the place. A dispute arose over his demand for more. Metzgar
refused to serve him unless he paid in advance. Young Armstrong took this as a
reflection on his solvency. A fight followed as usual under such circumstances.
Metzgar received wounds from which he died. There were others besides Arm
strong in the fight but he was held as the principal responsible for the killing.
It was not a shooting as the writer of an historical novel described it but the
death wounds were given with a slung-shot. Witnesses of the fight made it
appear that Armstrong was the aggressor, and that he beat Metzgar savagely,
being assisted by a friend. These witnesses testified that they saw the fight
from a little distance, and gave a minute account of it. They claimed that
although the time was ten o'clock at night the moon was shining brightly, and it
was possible to see the combatants almost as plainly as in the daytime.
"Armstrong," the reporter asked, "tell about the killing. Were you guilty?"
Duff looked down at the ground, stuck his knife in the sod two or three
times and said with emphasis:
"No, I wasn't. Press pitched into me without any cause. I had had a drink
or two but I knew what I was about. Press was getting the best of me when I
gave it to him."
Then Duff told how Mr. Lincoln was brought into the case. His mother
was known to the whole community as "Aunt Hannah." She had been kind to
Lincoln when he lived in the Salem neighborhood. Local sentiment about the
Metzgar affair was against Duff. The man who was indicted as accessory to
the killing had been given eight years in the penitentiary. In her distress, Aunt
Hannah wrote to Mr. Lincoln who, at that time, had been living in Springfield
a dozen or more years. Mr. Lincoln wrote back at once that he would defend
Duff. He told the family to get a change of venue to Beardstown, on account of
local prejudice. This was done. He told Aunt Hannah to rely upon him. No
body knew what the defense was to be, Duff said. But when the case came to

20 A Reporter's Lincoln
trial, Lincoln was there. He questioned the witnesses for the prosecution very
closely. There were two men who testified to the details of the fight. Mr.
Lincoln had them describe the positions of the combatants when the slung-shot
was used; and they made the circumstances look bad for Duff. Then he pressed
them to know how they could testify so accurately and led them into positive
statements about the moonlight. They described the moon as being about the
height of the sun at ten in the morning. Mr. Lincoln returned to this again and
again, and asked the witnesses if they were sure they were not mistaken. As
often as the question was put, so often they committed themselves. They insisted
the moon shining down upon the combatants made every movement plain to them.
Then the almanac was produced. Duff said that Mr. Lincoln passed it to the
jurors and asked them to see what kind of a night it was on which the fight took
place and to judge of the accuracy of such testimony as they had heard. The
almanac was examined. It showed that there was no moonlight such as the
witnesses had sworn. Mr. Lincoln followed up this advantage with a speech in
which he tore the testimony to pieces. He argued the theory that Armstrong
had been attacked and that he had only exerted himself in self defense. He
told the jurors how he had held "little Duff" in his arms many a time at the
Armstrong cabin while Aunt Hannah cooked the meals and he described the
character of the little chap, as he had seen it forming, in such a way it seemed
impossible to imagine him as making the assault described by these witnesses
who had sworn there was a high moon when there was not. Duff was acquitted.
"He told mother that he wouldn't charge a cent for defending me, and he
never did," said Armstrong, as the narrative drew to a conclusion.
"But, Duff, what about that almanac?" was asked. "Where did Lincoln get
it? Was it bogus?"
The gray eyes flashed. The jack-knife was plunged into the grass roots as
Armstrong blurted out in an indignant tone:
"It's all foolishness to talk about Lincoln having had that almanac fixed up
for the trial. He didn't do anything of the kind. I recollect that after he had
been asking the witnesses about the moonlight, he suddenly called for an almanac.
There wasn't any in the courtroom of the year he wanted. So he sent my cousin
Jake out to find one. Jake went out, and after awhile he came back with the
almanac. Lincoln turned to the night of the fight at the camp-meeting and it
showed there wasn't any moon at all that night. Then he showed it to the jury. That
was all there was to the almanac story. The almanac was all right. I tell you
he was a mighty smart man and a good one, too.''
Duff Armstrong sold his trotting horse, joined the church and became a
respected citizen of Menard County. He was always ready to defend Lincoln
against the tradition of having palmed off on the jury a doctored almanac. But
the tradition lived through two or three generations. Uncle Johnny Potter who
was an intimate friend of the Armstrongs laughed and shook his head when the
reporter asked him what the real facts were about the almanac. Some Peters
burg people who were at the campmeeting insisted that there was nearly a full
moon that night in spite of Mr. Lincoln's documentary evidence. Old almanacs
were overhauled. A search was made for the almanac that Mr. Lincoln had used
in the courtroom, but it could not be found, so the tradition ran.

Twenty years ago a wealthy collector of Lincolniana was offered what was
claimed to be the almanac with which Lincoln cleared Duff Armstrong. The

Duff Armstrong and the Almanac 21
trial at Beardstown took place in 1858, a year and a half after the affray. With
the almanac was furnished a number of affidavits of its genuineness as the one
used by Lincoln. The collector had no doubt that he was buying the real thing
and paid a good price for it but nothing like the $1,000 at which the almanac was
valued. Then J. McCan Davis, a lawyer of Springfield, took up the investigation of
the mystery. He traced the almanac back through several successive owners,
who had bought it at increasing prices. He talked with lawyers who were con
nected with the case. He hunted up the surviving jurors. Mr. Davis said he
obtained cumulative testimony which entirely satisfied him Mr. Lincoln did not
use the almanac sold to the Chicago collector. He traced this "Lincoln almanac"
to a man who claimed to have been a deputy sheriff at the time of the Arm
strong trial. This man's story was that he found the almanac in a book he bought
at a sale of the effects of a somewhat noted Illinoisan named Shaw. A pro
longed deadlock occurred in the Illinois Legislature over the senatorship when
John A. Logan and William R. Morrison were the rival candidates. A vacancy
occurred in one of the state senatorial districts where the Democrats had a
normal majority. By a shrewdly managed still hunt, which is a chapter in
Illinois political history, the Republicans elected Shaw to the Legislature and
Logan was chosen senator by this narrow margin. Shaw died and when his
library was sold this "Lincoln almanac" was discovered. The man who found
it claimed that Shaw had been in some way connected with the Armstrong case.
And thus the chain was begun. The collector who bought the almanac was a
shrewd business man. He had no doubt of the genuineness of his relic. The
almanac was of the issue of 1854. By skillful pen work the "4" was changed into
a "7", making the almanac appear to have been issued in 1857, the year of the
affray at the campmeeting.
But Mr. Davis did more than trace the almanac to its source. He went to
the best astronomical records and learned that Mr. Lincoln had no need to take
any other year in order to obtain almanac evidence to impeach the witnesses
against Duff Armstrong. The genuine almanac for 1857 showed there was no full
moon on the night of the affray. There was a new moon, Mr. Davis said, about
two days old. Instead of being in the east where the sun would be at ten o'clock
in the morning, as the witnesses testified, it was, at the hour of the fight, almost
setting in the west.

Brand of Whiskey Grant Drank
A Lincoln story which will never die is the reply the president made to the
criticism of Grant's habits. Lincoln said: "He wished he knew what brand of
whiskey Grant drank, in order that he might send some to the other generals."
The story survives and is oft told, but the circumstances which prompted Lin
coln's remark are not so well remembered. A St. Louis man brought that story
from Washington. He was Henry T. Blow. His home was in Carondelet, now
the southern part of the city, but then a separate municipality. Mr. Blow knew
Gen. Grant when he was Capt. Grant. The Blows and Dents were acquainted,
socially. Although a Virginian, Mr. Blow had become first an emancipationist,
then a Republican and at the outbreak of the war an ardent Union man. Mr.
Blow was sent to Venezuela as United States minister. He did not like Caracas
and came back to Missouri within the year to run for Congress. After enter-

22 A Reporter's Lincoln
ing upon this campaign, in which he was successful, Mr. Blow visited Washington
and talked with the president on conditions in the West. The battle of Pitts
burg Landing, or Shiloh, had been fought and almost lost. Three months before
the country had dubbed the victor of Fort Donelson "Unconditional Surrender"
Grant and had made a hero of him. Now, with the disputed responsibility for
the Pittsburg Landing surprise, there arose a mighty clamor on the part of cer
tain newspapers and politicians, that Grant be superseded. Mr. Blow talked freely
with the president. He told him what he had known of Grant before the war
and mentioned the fear entertained by some persons that Grant drank too much
to be intrusted with high command. Mr. Blow was a smooth spoken man, with
sharp black eyes, quick to appreciate humor. He had been a very successful
business man for years before he became interested in politics. He was rather
below the average height. President Lincoln listened thoughtfully until Mr.
Blow had expressed himself, and then asked with apparent seriousness what
brand of whiskey Grant drank. Explaining why he sought the information, he
used the language about sending some to the other generals, which has become"'
historic. Mr. Blow lost no time in starting the story on its rounds. The
criticism of Grant's habits seemed to lose its force rapidly, as the story was
spread.

Captain Henry King's Experience
Who wrote Lincoln's speeches? That was a topic of discussion in the days
before the country had come to know the man. Frederick W. Lehmann of
St. Louis said:
"Captain Henry King, for many years the well-known editor of the Globe-
Democrat, a master in the use of language, had an experience which is enlighten
ing. As a young newspaper man he had been assigned to report a speech of
Mr. Lincoln. He had been greatly impressed with it, with its sentiment and
expression. He made his report of it in the best style that he could command,
using the words that he thought Mr. Lincoln ought to have used. He submitted
the report to Mr. Lincoln, very proud of his accomplishment. Mr. Lincoln looked
over it carefully and said, 'Young man, you made a most excellent report of this
but I think you did not quite get my language here and there.' And he went
through with it, changing back the words to the simple Saxon that he had
himself used so well. Captain King said he was unable to recognize what he
had written.
"There were men older than Captain King who tried to edit what Mr.
Lincoln said," continued Mr. Lehmann, "Seward looked over the manuscript of
the inaugural address, criticised it with some severity, and actually insisted on
striking out the last clause as too sentimental for such an occasion. Mr. Lin
coln always had faith in himself, where principle or sentiment was involved,
and that clause often attributed to Mr. Seward, but which he did not write, but
considered inappropriate remained, in which Mr. Lincoln made this appeal to his
southern friends, 'We are friends, we are not enemies. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection.
The mystic chords of memory stretching from every patriotic grave and battle
field to every loving heart and hearthstone throughout this broad land, will yet
swell the music of the Union when touched, as they surely will be, by the better
angels of our nature.' "

The "New Party" of the Fifties
Ira Haworth was one of the young men Lincoln selected to help him start
the Republican party. The Haworths were pioneers in Illinois. One of them
founded the City of Danville. Another member of the family started George
town. Ira Haworth grew up in Vermilion County, where as a boy he came to
know and reverence Lincoln.
The Haworths were Quakers. When past eighty Ira Haworth had the placid
look which made him the youngest-appearing octogenarian in Kansas. The Lin-
colns back several generations were Quakers. Between Abraham Lincoln and Ira
Haworth's father in the forties there was correspondence on the iniquity of slavery.
"I first met Mr. Lincoln at the boarding house of old Mrs. Carruthers in
Danville, where he was stopping while attending court," Mr. Haworth said. "Mr.
Lincoln didn't show at first all that was in him. He grew on you as you came to
know him well. He was very tall, 6 feet and 4 inches in his bare feet. While he
looked spare, he was muscular. He weighed 180 pounds. His hair was very
dark brown and of coarse growth. His eyes were hazel, tending to a grayish hue
in color, deep set, with a serious expression, which changed quickly to a twinkle
at the prospective introduction of a joke or a story. Lincoln's nose was of more
than medium size and of the Roman type. The mouth was large and lips firm, of
medium thickness. The features were rather large to attract admiration. Lin
coln's demeanor was that of extreme simplicity, with deliberate movements, and
a mixture of cordiality and dignity."

Mr. Haworth said that Lincoln had no desire to go back to Congress after the
term to which he was elected in 1846 by the Whigs; that he found the surround
ings in Washington uncongenial. He believed from his association with Lincoln
that the latter began early the consideration of plans for the formation of the
Republican party.
"The campaign of 1848 was closely contested," Mr. Haworth said, as he de
scribed this evolution of a new party in Mr. Lincoln's thoughts. "Lincoln took
an active part that year, presenting the issues that were agitating the public
mind. He achieved reputation not only in Illinois, but in neighboring States,
through that campaign. The result of the campaign was the election of the
Whig ticket, but within four years the Whig party had gone to pieces. Lincoln
wrote to me to call a caucus in my county to consider the advisability of forming
a new party. I sent out a call and six of us met to talk over the proposition. We
organized, elected officers, talked over the plan and adjourned with the under
standing we would get a larger attendance for the next meeting. The work of
starting the new party was arduous. The anti-slavery party discouraged the
movement by urging those who were then without a party to join their ranks.
The old Democratic party was in possession of the government, so well fortified
that the leaders were defiant and uncompromising toward the slavery agitators.
Those Wigs who were originally in favor of slavery extension joined the Demo
cratic oligarchy, which received them joyfully."
Mr. Haworth described graphically thej slow, discouraging progress made in
the first few months with the organization of the Republican party in Illinois.
Lincoln, as Mr. Haworth recalled those earliest efforts, was the head of the move
ment. To increase the interest the few original Republicans in each locality

24 A Reporter's Lincoln
invited ladies to their meetings and endeavored to interest them. This was a
decided novelty in politics. Lincoln carried on correspondence with his young
acquaintances in the various counties, and pressed the organization by counties
.preparatory to a convention to form the state organization. Haworth was so
active that he was afterwards given the title of "father of the Republican party"
in his part of the state.

The biographers of Lincoln say that he gave little attention to politics in the
early fifties. They seem to have derived this impression from the contemporaries
of Lincoln who were themselves prominent in politics of those years. But Lin
coln, by the testimony of Haworth and others, who were young and scarcely
known outside of their school districts in 1852-55, was very busy in politics. He
was creating the Republican party of Illinois even before the name had been
chosen. He was writing letters to young men who had just reached their majori
ties, or were about coming of age. He was going out from Springfield to little
gatherings at schoolhouses and country stores, talking about the new party and
outlining what principles it should build upon. He was scribbling tentative plat
forms. The old Whig leaders at the state capital and at the county seats were
wondering what was going to happen, and waiting for some kind of a revelation
of public drift. Lincoln, paying little heed to the leaders, was making sentiment
with the people, organizing from the neighborhood and the school district up
ward. He was constructing the Republican party of Illinois. The man who was
so handy with the manual tools that he could turn out cabinet work was putting
together mentally the framework of a political organization, which, at the end
of the decade, was to sweep the country. And he was doing it so quietly and with
so little surface indication that the politicians did not appreciate what was going
on; they thought "Abe Lincoln" had gone out of politics and was giving his whole
attention to law business. They never did realize, as did Haworth and the other
young unknowns to whom Lincoln had given the commissions of local arganizers,
the constructive work done by him long before the Bloomington convention was
called to form the state organization. Two new ideas Lincoln developed in this
political creation. He converted and encouraged young men new in politics. His
suggestion brought into the little meetings and gave prominence to women. The
great moral issue appealed strongly to the feminine sympathy. Women turned
out in numbers to these school district meetings of the new party. They entered
upon the new party movement with enthusiasm. They had become a great
political force in Illinois when the campaign of 1860 opened. They rode in the
processions. They sang, they laughed and they cried for "Old Abe." And their
interest dated back to those neighborhood gatherings which Lincoln had pro
moted in the counties of Central Illinois when the politicians thought he was giv
ing all of his time and thought to the practice of the law. Thus Abraham Lincoln
and the people created the Republican party in Illinois. The political leaders
came in when the ground swell rifted them, and many of them never did quite
realize how it all came about.

In the vault of one of the Kansas City, Kan., banks were long preserved as
articles of great value a cane and a gavel, made of black walnut, handsomely turned
by the lathe and adorned with metal bands. The cane was inscribed across the
top, "Ira Haworth," and around the head, "Abraham Lincoln," with the word,
"presented."

The "New Party" of the Fifties 25
"When Lincoln's nomination was announced to the convention at Chicago,"
said Mr. Haworth, who was one of the Illinois delegates, "two stalwart ushers
entered the door of the wigwam bearing on their shoulders a unique design. They
carried two walnut fence rails, decorated with the national colors. Supported by
the rails was an immense shield, and on the shield was a large picture of Lincoln.
As the men slowly made their way up the densely packed aisle, with excitement
already high, the audience went wild. Hats were thrown in the air; handker
chiefs were waved vigorously. The shouts made a deafening roar. The people
arose to their feet and cheered the progress of the rails and the picture through
the wigwam until the design was placed upon the platform.
"The rails used on that occasion," said Mr. Haworth, "were made by Mr.
Lincoln in what was then Sangamon County, when he was 20 or 21 years old.
They had been in use twenty years on the farm of John Hanks, who was Lincoln's
uncle, until they were transported to Chicago, to be used if Lincoln was nom
inated. While John Hanks produced the rails and testified to their genuineness,
the idea of using them in connection with the nomination was not his. Richard J.
Oglesby and Richard Yates orignated the plan."
Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Haworth thought, had no part in the rail incident. He was
in the Republican movement because of the principles it represented. But Lin
coln was too good a politician to discourage the use of the rails when he saw how
his rail-splitting record appealed to the every-day human interest.
"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Haworth, "obtained one of these rails of his own
splitting and had made for me the cane and gavel which you see. The two were
sent to me at Danville by express. The next time I met Mr. Lincoln, I thanked
him for the remembrance. He said he had sent me the cane thinking I would
have use for it when I became old. 'You know,' he added, 'the wicked generally
do live to become old.' Referring to the gavel Mr. Lincoln said to me: 'I want
you to arrange to go into the campaign for me.' I said: 'Mr. Lincoln, I always
thought you a man of judgment.' He replied: 'Take these relics and go before
the people explaining how you got them.' Well, the result was I arranged matters
so as to leave the farm and went through the counties in my part of the State
holding meetings at the schoolhouses. A man went ahead of me making appoint
ments, I drove from schoolhouse to schoolhouse, holding three or four meetings
a day, showing the gavel and the cane and telling the story about them. In thirty
days, by the account I kept, I attended over 100 of these meetings. In the same
time, according to a record made, there were at these meetings over 1000 changes
of Democrats to become Republicans. That was the way we swept Illinois for
Lincoln." After that campaign his neighbors in Vermilion called Mr. Haworth "the
father of the Republican party." When he moved away in 1870 to settle in Kansas,
a farewell meeting was held and Mr. Haworth was given the title of "the grand
father of the Republican party" of Vermilion.
"I suppose that now I am entitled to be called one of the great-grandfathers
of the Republican party," said Mr. Haworth, with a twinkle of the eyes.

"I never saw Mr. Lincoln drink liquor," said Mr. Haworth. "In 1847 he
made an address in which he declared his fidelity to the cause of temperance.
He then pledged his assistance to its advancement in all future time. His asser
tions attracted me and made a profound impression on me, for I had been a total
abstainer. Having found a public man thinking as I did about temperance, for

26 A Reporter's Lincoln
that was unusual in those days, I became attached to him in no ordinary degree.
The two great subjects of slavery and temperance led to an acquaintance with
Mr. Lincoln by which I gained much as a young man. Lincoln was at heart a
Christian. 'Whatever appears to be God's will, I will do it,' he said to a deputa
tion representing different religious denominations which called upon him at the
White House in September, 1862. That was his guiding principle all of the time
I knew him. His influence over younger men who made his acquaintance was
very strong and for much good. I have always felt that I was more indebted to
him for my course in life than to any other person. Mr. Lincoln had wonderful
self command. He told me on one occasion that he had never in his life been
really angry. His motives in the work he did to create the Republican party in
Illinois were of the highest character. Previous to the meeting of the convention
in Chicago, which nominated him in 1860, Mr. Lincoln was approached by persons
who wished to be empowered to promise certain things in return for support.
Mr. Lincoln replied, 'No, gentlemen. I have not sought the nomination. Neither
will I attempt to buy it with pledges. If I shall receive the nomination and be
elected, I shall not go into office as the tool of this or that man, or the property
of any faction or clique. The people's choice will be my choice. I desire that the
result shall be to keep the jewel of liberty in freedom's family.' "

A Drink and a Sunrise
In 1859 B. F. Smith was a young brakeman on the Illinois Central railroad.
Afterward he became one of the pioneers in the development of berry culture in
Southern Illinois. He made Centralia famous and was known far and wide as
"Strawberry" Smith. Still later he moved to Kansas, helped to bring Lawrence
into high repute as a fruit center, and published for many years a horticultural
journal. Mr. Smith had these personal experiences with the two most talked
of men in Illinois.
"Senator Douglas rode with me in the brakeman's seat from Odin to
Champaign one trip in 1859. He offered me a cigar, which I refused, saying
that I had never learned to smoke. At Champaign he took a seat in the second-
class car, next to the baggage car. Here he emptied a small bottle of liquor into
his stomach, or nearly all of it. When I went through the car at Chicago, he
roused up before his friends came to meet him and offered me a drink from
his bottle, which I refused. It seemed strange to him for a railway brakeman
to refuse to smoke or drink with him.
"The other distinguished man who rode with me about that time was
Abraham Lincoln. He sat in my seat on the run from Champaign to Tolono.
It was about sunrise. There was only one farm then between those two stations,
in 1859, all green prairie. A beautiful sun rising attracted Mr. Lincoln. He called
my attention to it, — the sun just rising over those beautiful, undulating hills. He
wanted me to share with him his admiration of the scene. I admitted that it was
lovely. I had been seeing the sun rise every morning between those two stations,
as we left Chicago at 9 p. m., and hadn't thought much about the beauty of it.
Mr. Lincoln had been asleep until we reached Champaign. Well the moral of this
is in the contrast of the two great men. One of them tempted me by offering a
cigar at the beginning of the journey and at the end of it desired me to help him
empty a bottle of whiskey. The other called my attention to that beautiful sun
rise over the virgin prairies of Illinois and invited me to share with him the
impression of it."

The Eighth Circuit

"The eighth circuit" and Mr. Lincoln's relation to it perhaps have had no
counterpart in the history of the American bar. When this circuit was organized
in 1847 it had fourteen counties, occupying the central part of Illinois, around
Bloomington. As immigration from the North and South flowed in, the circuit
was gradually reduced in area. But even after his own County of Sangamon was
taken out Lincoln continued to practice and to be a strong personality in the
eighth circuit. In each county of the circuit two terms of court were held
yearly. Mr. Lincoln spent about half of the year attending these terms of court
away from his home. He continued to attend the eighth circuit terms after
other lawyers had ceased to "ride the circuit." He was present at the spring terms
of the circuit in 1860, a few weeks before his nomination to be president. And
after his election it was necessary for him to visit Bloomington to make disposi
tion of the cases in which he was retained. This peculiarly close relationship
of Mr. Lincoln to the eighth circuit bore upon his political as well as upon his
legal career. In the eighth circuit he won the reputation of being the best jury
lawyer of Illinois. In the eighth circuit he organized the movement which led to
the Republican party of Illinois. In the eighth circuit he won the influential and
steadfast political friends who brought about his nomination for the presidency.
To Bloomington for the terms of court in the early days of the eighth circuit
came with Lincoln Edwin D. Baker, afterward a United States senator from
Oregon; James A. McDougal, afterward United States senator from California;
Stephen A. Douglas, United States senator from Illinois; Judge Stephen T.
Logan of Springfield; Daniel W. Voorhees, afterward a United States senator
from Indiana; Judge Usher, afterward secretary of the interior; Norman H.
Purple of Peoria, and T. Lyle Dickey of Ottawa, both of them afterward judges
of the Supreme Court. David Davis was ten years judge of this circuit.

The late Ezra M. Prince of Bloomington, secretary of the local Historical
Society, in a paper written some time before his death, described the customs
and conditions which prevailed.
"The relations between the court, lawyers, jurors, of the eighth circuit was
peculiar, one that has long since passed away," Mr. Prince said: "The court was
rather a big family consultation, presided over by the judge, than a modern court.
Judge Davis personally knew a large portion of the people in the circuit. The
jurors were then selected by the sheriff. In McLean, and probably in the other
counties, substantially the same jurors appeared from term to term, personal
friends of Judge Davis, men of intelligence, sound judgment and integrity, whose
verdicts rarely had to be set aside. Court week was a holiday for the people of
the county. Political years there was always speaking at the courthouse, the
parties using it on alternate nights. The people attended court to get the news,
hear the speeches, listen to the exciting trials and to do their trading. The
lawyers and many of the jurors, witnesses and suitors stopped at the same tavern.
"There was a singular comradeship of these attendants upon the court. With
out the court at all losing its dignity, there was a freedom and familiarity as of
old friends and acquaintances meeting upon a public occasion, rather than the

28 A Reporter's Lincoln
formality and dignity associated with the idea of a modern court. Often the
judge's room, which sometimes was the only decent one in the tavern, was used
evenings by the lawyers in their consultations, without regard to the presence
of the judge.
"In several, perhaps all, of these counties, young lawyers who desired to
avail themselves of Mr. Lincoln's popularity and who, perhaps, distrusted their
own ability to prepare and try cases in the circuit court, arranged with Mr. Lin
coln to allow them to advertise him as their partner. So there was Lincoln &
Jones in this county and Lincoln & Smith in that; but the partnership was limited
simply to Lincoln trying Smith's and Jones' cases, if they had any, and dividing
fees with them. The only law partners, in the proper acceptance of the term, Mr.
Lincoln ever had were his Springfield partners, Col. John T. Stuart early in his
legal career, and later William H. Herndon. Mr. Herndon never traveled the
circuit. Mr. Lincoln was always a great favorite with the court, lawyers and all
attendants upon the court. The young and inexperienced received from him wise
and timely advice and aid in their cases. The trial of cases was conducted almost
entirely by these leaders of the circuit. Mr. Lincoln being on one side or the
other of nearly every case tried. A crowd always gathered around him, whether
in court or elsewhere, expecting the never-failing 'story.' The evenings were a
contest of wits, for the pioneer lawyer always had a good story ready. These
customs of the circuit made its leaders warm friends."

After most of the other lawyers had given up the practice of riding the
circuit Leonard Swett continued it with Mr. Lincoln. There developed between
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Swett a very close personal relationship. Mr. Swett, some
time before his death, speaking of this friendship, said: "It seems to me I have
tried a thousand lawsuits with or against Lincoln and I have known him as
intimately as I have known any man in my life."
Letters of Lincoln to Swett are in the possession of Bloomington friends.
Some of them indicate the confidential character of the relations between the two,
especially during the presidential campaign of 1860.
With Mr. Lincoln's practice in the eighth circuit developed the acquaintance
and grew the leadership which made him the master spirit in the formation of the
new political party. No other location than Bloomington for the anti-Nebraska
convention, not even Springfield, would have made easier Mr. Lincoln's guiding
influence. From Bloomington, among the men who had known him most inti
mately in the years of the eighth circuit practice, started the movement to make
Mr. Lincoln the nominee of the Republicans in 1860.
Jesse W. Fell of Bloomington began the detail work of organizing Illinois
for Lincoln immediately after the defeat for the United States Senate in 1858.
He had been secretary of the Republican committee during that 1858 campaign.
The first serious, active movement in Mr. Lincoln's candidacy was this effort of
Mr. Fell. A better man for the undertaking there was not in Illinois. Mr. Fell
had come to Bloomington in 1832 from his Quaker home in Pennsylvania. Giving
up the law and going into development business, he had founded the first news
paper of Bloomington, had been instrumental in the establishment of the first
library. He had planted 13,000 trees in the suburb of Normal before there was
a house built. He had secured the Normal University. He was the pioneer
horticulturist and arboriculturist of Illinois. He gave the names of trees to
twenty streets. Consistently refusing office for himself, Mr. Fell became the

The Eighth Circuit 29
devoted admirer and friend of Mr. Lincoln. There was no limit to Mr. Fell's
industry when he set about the accomplishment of a purpose. In his avowed
intention to make Mr. Lincoln the nominee for president he had the constant
advice and aid of two other residents of Bloomington, both lawyers, who became
of national prominence. One of them was Leonard Swett, a tall, dark, hand
some man from Maine, whose magnetic presence and melodious eloquence had
won for him the title of "the advocate of the West." The third member of this
Bloomington triumvirate, determined to secure the nomination of Mr. Lincoln,
was the heavy weight, the man of great mental strength whose sagacity the whole
state of Illinois respected, David Davis. No man in politics ever had more loyal,
more intelligent attention to his interests than these three Bloomington men gave
to the candidacy of Mr. Lincoln. Their attachment to him was something
phenomenal in politics. With his newspaper instincts and his inclination to pro
motion methods, Mr. Fell put in early operation at Bloomington a press bureau.
At the instance of Mr. Fell, and as the result of not a little persuasion, Mr. Lin
coln sat down to a table in the courtroom at Bloomington and wrote the
autobiography of himself which is historic. He did this in 1859. The first use
Mr. Fell made of the sketch was to send a copy of it to a paper in Pennsylvania,
his early home, with the information that this was the man whose joint debates
with Douglas had aroused the whole country, and the man whose name Illinois
would, in all probability, present to the Republican Convention of 1860.

"Strikingly characteristic of Mr. Lincoln was the closing sentence of that
autobiography,'' the former vice-president, Adlai E. Stevenson, said. When Mr.
Lincoln had completed the story of his life, he wrote, "No other marks or brands
recollected." This was the usual form in which legal notices of animals "strayed
or stolen" concluded in the northern states, while it was not infrequently
employed in the South, especially Kentucky, for a notice of a "runaway slave."
This sentence was the touch of humor which Mr. Lincoln added to an account of
his life, straightforward, definite and concise. Mr. Lincoln, his Bloomington
friends said, neither made capital of his self-made qualities, nor did he conceal the
hardships of his early life. He drew often on his experiences with his wonderful
memory to illustrate some point or thought he wished to convey. He did not talk
of himself for his sake any more than he told stories because they were good
stories. If Mr. Fell hadn't been the extraordinarily persevering man that he
was, it is probable the story of Lincoln by Lincoln, would never have been
written. To show what kind of a man Jesse W. Fell was, it is said of him in
Bloomington that when he went into the office of Judge Davis one day, that
sturdy "prairie farmer" called out loud enough for all in the room to hear: "Oh,
here's Fell again. No, I can't do it. But it's no use to talk; you'll have me before
you go away." Mr. Fell pressed Mr. Lincoln for this account of himself until he
got him seated at a desk in the courthouse and saw the story put on paper. Mr.
Lincoln wrote this, as he did his letters and his law papers, with very few changes
and with seldom a pause to think. He wasted no words.

"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Ky. My parents were both
born in Virginia, of undistinguished families — second families, perhaps I should
say. My mother, who died in my 10th year, was of a family of the name of
Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams and others in Macon County, 111.

30 A Reporter's Lincoln
My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County,
Va., to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by
the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm
in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks
County, Pa. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the
same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names
in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.
"My father, at the death of his father, was but 6 years of age, and he grew up
literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer
County, Ind., in my 8th year. We reached our new home about the time the state
came into the Union. 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 absolutely nothing to incite ambition for education. Of course, when I came
of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to
the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little
advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to
time under the pressure of necessity.
"I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was 22. At 21 I came to
Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon,
now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store.
"Then came the Blackhawk war; and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a
success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the
campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was
beaten — the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next and three
succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candi
date afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to
Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower house of
Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive,
practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and
generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing
interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused me again.
What I have done since then is pretty well known.
"If any personal description of me is thought desirable it may be said I am,
in height, 6 feet 4 inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average 180 pounds;
dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands
recollected."

This, the only story of his life Lincoln wrote, he dated "Springfield, December
20, 1859," although the late Lawrence Weldon, Jesse W. Fell and the other Bloom
ington friends of Mr. Lincoln said it was written in the courthouse under the
circumstances already given. Mr. Lincoln signed the story, just as he always did
his name, "A. Lincoln." Mr. Fell, with the wisdom of a newspaper man, preserved
and published the story exactly as Mr. Lincoln wrote it.

The Bloomington Convention
The cradle of the Republican party of Illinois was Major's Hall, in Blooming
ton. It rocked May 29, 1856. The hand that rocked the cradle was Abraham
Lincoln's. The third story, which was the hall, was removed. There was apprehension
about the strength of the walls after the place had served as the principal
auditorium for two generations of Bloomingtonians. Major's Hall became
Bloomington's historic landmark. The convention which created the Republican
party of Illinois is Bloomington's political glory.
Painstakingly and intelligently Bloomington assembled, through an historical
society of more than ordinary virility, the record and the recollections of that
convention. More than the surface proceedings — more than the public events
— have been sought. The hitherto unwritten history has been secured. And thus
has come to be known the part that Abraham Lincoln performed in the planning
for the convention, in the framing of the platform, in the selection of the candi
dates. Before they passed away the men who participated in the Bloomington
convention and in the conferences and consultations preceding it gave to the
Bloomington Historical Society their recollections. The results are revelations
of Lincoln's active agency in the shaping of the Republican party movement in
Illinois that add much to hitherto printed history.

The Bloomington convention grew directly out of a conference of fifteen
editors and Abraham Lincoln at Decatur on Washington's birthday. Those who
attended the conference called it the "Free State Editorial Convention." The
call for the conference read:
"All editors in Illinois opposed to the Nebraska bill are requested to meet in
convention at Decatur on the 22d of February next, for the purpose of making
arrangements for the organization of the anti-Nebraska forces in this state for
the coming contest."
The number of papers in Illinois which editorially indorsed the movement
was twenty-five. The editors of this number of papers signed the call for the
meeting. A heavy snowfall the night before cut down the attendance to fifteen.
Mr. Lincoln arrived from Springfield. Paul Selby of the Morgan Journal, who
presided, was authority for this statement:
"The most important work of the convention was transacted through the
medium of the committee on resolutions. Mr. Lincoln was in conference with
the committee during the day, and there is reason to believe that the platform
reported through Dr. Charles H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune, the chairman, and
adopted by the convention, bears the stamp of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar intellect."
The editors recommended that a delegate convention be held at Bloomington
on Thursday, the 29th day of May. They appointed a state central committee to
make arrangements for the convention. Most of those named as the committee
accepted the appointment. The committee met and issued the call, which
announced: "A state convention of the anti-Nebraska party in Illinois will be held in the
City of Bloomington, on Thursday, the 29th day of May, 1856, for the purpose of

32 A Reporter's Lincoln
choosing candidates for state officers, appointing delegates to the national con
vention, and transacting such other business as may properly come before the
body." Ten members of the committee which the fifteen editors had selected, signed
this call. One of them was Mr. Lincoln's law partner. Another was Richard J.
Oglesby, the young lawyer, who had presided at the banquet given to the editors
at Decatur. Purposely the editors did not give a name to the new party. On
the day that this conference was in progress at Decatur there was in session at
Pittsburg a gathering of men from several states assembled "for the purpose of
perfecting the national organization, and providing for a national delegate con
vention of the Republican party to nominate candidates for the presidency and
vice-presidency." Not only did Illinois editors refrain from calling their move
ment "Republican," but the committee they appointed to bring into existence
the Bloomington convention, did not make use of the word "Republican."
Abraham Lincoln was a wise politician. The time had not come to name the
child.

Mr. Lincoln did not participate openly in the proceedings of the editorial
convention, but he was near at hand for consultation. In the evening a local
committee of Decatur citizens — Isaac C. Pugh, who was afterwards colonel of
the Forty-first Illinois; Dr. H. C. Johns, who died about fifteen years ago, and
Maj. E. O. Smith — provided a banquet to the editors and several invited guests
at the Cassell House. Mr. Lincoln attended the banquet and made the principal
address. One of the editors, who preceded Mr. Lincoln on the list of speakers,
suggested him as the most available man to be nominated for governor and to head
the new party in Illinois. Mr. Lincoln, replying to the reference to himself,
argued that it would be much better to nominate an anti-Nebraska Democrat
for governor rather than an old-line Whig like himself, pointing out that it
would be necessary for the new movement to draw from the Democrats and to
widen the breach between the Douglas following and the Democrats who were
opposed to Douglas in his Kansas-Nebraska policy. He concluded this argument
with the opinion that William H. Bissell was the most available man for the
nomination. This advice the convention at Bloomington carried out, the success
ful result being just as Mr. Lincoln predicted to the editors at Decatur.
When Mr. Lincoln was presented by the toastmaster at the editors' banquet
he began with an apology for his presence at a meeting of editors, speaking of
himself as an interloper, and then he said he was reminded of an incident. He
did not say that he was giving a personal experience of his own, but the editors
surmised as much and were greatly amused. Mr. Lincoln said the man of whom
he was speaking possessed features the ladies could not call handsome. This man,
while riding through the woods, met a lady on horseback. He turned out of the
path and waited for the lady to pass. The lady stopped and looked at the man
a few moments and said:
"Well, for land sake, you are the homeliest man I ever saw."
"Yes, madam," the man replied; "but I can't help it."
"No, I suppose not," the lady said; "but you might stay at home."
Mr. Lincoln, when the editors stopped laughing, said that he felt on this
occasion — a banquet to editors — with propriety he might have stayed at home.

The Bloomington Convention 33
The banquet address of Mr. Lincoln to the editors at Decatur was not the
most important act of his in connection with the gathering. His influence and his
suggestion carried the conference past a crisis of farreaching consequence. In
the conclusions at Decatur none contributed more to the success of the new party
movement than the declaration against Knownothingism. The German immigra
tion into Illinois had been large. A conspicuous figure in the Decatur conference
was George Schneider, editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung. He was put upon
the committee on resolutions. Mr. Schneider considered it vital to have embodied
in the resolutions a condemnation of the native American spirit. What occurred
is given in his own words:
"The revolution of 1848 and 1849 in Germany sent thousands of the best men
of Germany — men of culture and strong will power — to this country, who were
placed at the heads of many of the best newspapers printed in the German
language. All of these papers opposed the extension of slavery in the new
territories. Illinois was in advance of all of them, and nearly every paper
published in the German language in the state opposed the Nebraska bill. But
here appeared most suddenly a black cloud on the political horizon which seemed
to assume such proportions and threatening form as to not only dampen the fire
of the new movement against slavery, but to drive the Germans from the ranks
of the party to be formed. I entered the Decatur conference with a resolution
in opposition to this movement, and I had resolved to fight with all my might
and win or go down, and with me, perhaps, the new party. My friend, Paul
Selby, placed me on the committee on resolutions, and I helped to form a plat
form containing a paragraph against the proscriptive doctrine of the so-called
American party. This portion of the platform raised a storm of opposition, and,
in utter despair, I proposed submitting it to Mr. Lincoln and to abide by his
decision. Mr. Lincoln, after carefully reading the paragraph, made the following
comment: " 'Gentlemen, the resolution introduced by Mr. Schneider is nothing new. It
is already contained in the Declaration of Independence, and you can not form a
new party on proscriptive principles.'
"This declaration of Mr. Lincoln's saved the resolution, and, in fact, helped
to establish the new party on the most liberal democratic basis. It was adopted
at the Bloomington convention and next at the great, and the first, national
Republican convention at Philadelphia on the 18th of June, 1856."
According to Mr. Schneider, the Illinois delegation performed an important
part at Philadelphia in securing the proper committee on resolutions, and in
obtaining the declaration which Mr. Lincoln saved at the Decatur conference.
"The great majority of the Germans in all the states of the North, and even in
some portions of the South, entered the new party. The new light which appeared
at Decatur and Bloomington spread its rays over the whole of the United States,
and so the regeneration of the Union and the downfall of slavery dated from
Bloomington." Mr. Schneider, from his personal knowledge of the circumstances just given,
and from his observation as a newspaper editor, always held that Lincoln had
more to do with the creation and establishment of the Republican party on lines
which insured its success than historians have credited to him.
Of Lincoln's activity in the organization of the new party movement before
the convention of 1856 at Bloomington, J. O. Cunningham of Urbana was a
witness. Mr. Cunningham accompanied Mr. Lincoln to Bloomington. Mr. Lin-

34 A Reporter's Lincoln
coin had been engaged at the courts in Vermilion and Champaign counties before
the convention. The way to reach Bloomington in those days was to take what
is now the Wabash to Decatur and thence go by way of the Illinois Central to
Bloomington. This was Mr. Cunningham's recollection of the journey:
"A number of delegates and others from the eastern counties, mostly young
men, happened on the train with Mr. Lincoln, and arrived at Decatur about the
middle of the afternoon. No train going to Bloomington until the next morning
made it necessary that we spend the afternoon and night at Decatur. The after
noon was spent by Mr. Lincoln in sauntering about the town and talking of his
early experiences there twenty-five years before. After awhile he proposed going
to the woods, then a little way south or southwest of the village, in the Sangamon
bottoms. His proposition was assented to, and all went to the timber. A con
venient log by the side of the road, in a patch of brush, afforded seats for the
company, where the time was spent listening to the playful and familiar talks
of Mr. Lincoln. We spent the night at the Cassell House, and early the next
day a train took us to Bloomington. Mr. Lincoln was very solicitous to meet
some of his old Whig friends from Southern Illinois, whom he hoped to enlist
in the new political movement, and searched the train to find such. He was
gratified in finding some one from the south, and it is believed that Jesse K.
Dubois, afterward nominated at Bloomington as auditor of public accounts, was
the man." Mr. Cunningham described the conditions in Bloomington when Mr. Lincoln
and the delegates from the eastern counties arrived there in the morning:
"Many were awaiting the opening of the convention, largely from the
northern counties. There existed a most intense feeling upon the situation in
Kansas. Lawrence had been sacked but recently by the ruffianly pro-slavery men,
and the greatest outrages perpetrated upon free-state settlers. The evening pre
vious to the convention Gov. Reeder arrived in town, having been driven a
fugitive from the territory he had been commissioned to govern, and spoke to
a large crowd of listeners in the street from an upper piazza. He was moderate
and not denunciatory in his address, only delineating the violence he had
witnessed and suffered. Dispatches were received and often publicly read to the
crowd at the hotels and on the streets, and excitement over the situation was
intense. No convention in Illinois ever assembled under circumstances of greater
excitement." 
The success of Mr. Lincoln's policy in the planning of the new party move
ment was seen when the convention assembled at Bloomington and it developed
that the majority of the delegates present had voted four years previously for
the Democratic nominee for president, Franklin Pierce. When the state ticket,
which the convention nominated with a rush, was analyzed, it was found that
the majority of the nominees had voted with the Democratic party four years
previously. One of the nominees on the electoral ticket put forth at Bloomington,
Mr. Ferry, had been on the Democratic electoral ticket in 1852. Mr. Lincoln
steadfastly refused to permit his name to be used for the head of the state ticket.
When his nomination was suggested he met it with this opinion: "I wish to say
why I should not be a candidate. If I should be chosen the Democrats would
say, 'It was nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the dead body of the old
Whig party.' I would secure the vote of that party and no more, and our defeat
would follow as a matter of course. But I can suggest a name that will secure
not only the old Whig vote, but enough anti-Nebraska Democrats to give us the

The Bloomington Convention 35
victory. That name is Col. William H. Bissell." This suggestion was made to
the editors at Decatur on the 22d of February. The editors went home and
advocated the nomination of Bissell with such force that when the Bloomington
convention met no other name was considered, and Bissell was nominated with a
great demonstration. In fact, one enthusiastic delegate shouted that Bissell had
already been nominated by the people of Illinois and the convention should only
reaffirm. The declaration which Mr. Lincoln's advice secured at Decatur, which was
adopted at Bloomington and also in the Philadelphia convention with such
tremendous influence upon the Germans was this:
"That the spirit of our institution, as well as the constitution of our country,
guarantees the liberty of conscience as well as political freedom and that we will
proscribe no one, by legislation or otherwise, on account of religious opinions,
or in consequence of place of birth."

The call for the anti-Nebraska convention at Bloomington provided for 226
delegates. Some counties sent more than their apportionment, owing to the inter
est the people felt in the new party movement. Thirty counties, mostly in
"Egypt," were wholly unrepresented. The roll call contained 270 names. Bloom
ington was filled with excited people. The proceedings were regular, but there
were no contests and no ballots. The business was transacted as rapidly as a
mass meeting of one mind might have disposed of it. The programme had been
arranged, and the master spirit in the arrangement was Abraham Lincoln. But
Mr. Lincoln did not make himself conspicuous. He was on the committee which
selected the ticket. He had already fixed the platform, practically, at a small
conference held in Springfield between the Decatur editorial conference and the
Bloomington convention. He followed the other speakers in a statement of the
opportunity and of the demand for this new party movement. That statement or
address was the keynote of the Republican campaign in Illinois that year. It
was the historic "Lost Speech" — lost because no report was made of it. Two
short sessions in one day comprised the whole of the convention of a party
which was not at the time formally named. Yet that party in November following
had grown to such proportions that it elected its entire state ticket with pluralities
of from 3000 to 20,000. It polled 96,000 votes for the presidential electors, within
9000 of a plurality. Since that election in 1856 Illinois has had but two governors
who were not Republicans. Before that election Illinois had been in the hands
of the Democrats thirty years. Abraham Lincoln builded the new party well.
In the Bloomington convention were Democrats, Whigs and Abolitionists. The
idea which Mr. Lincoln had made dominant in the editors' platform at Decatur
was opposition to extension of slavery into the new territories. Upon that plat
form all of these elements could and did stand. A lifelong Democrat, John M.
Palmer, was elected president of the convention. A Democrat and a hero of the
Mexican war, Col. Bissell, was put at the head of the state ticket. Mr. Lincoln
planned and perfected this union of widely diverse elements as no other man could
have done. His "Lost Speech" welded together these elements.

The speaker who preceded Mr. Lincoln was John S. Emory, the Kansas
editor. He was from Lawrence, the scene of the latest troubles. Years after
wards he wrote a graphic narrative of what he saw and heard in Bloomington
that day. This account is preserved in the papers of the Historical Society of
Bloomington. It reads:

36 A Reporter's Lincoln
''I got off the cars May 28 at Bloomington. I learned that the Missouri river
was shut up to free-state men and that there was to be next day a big gathering
of the friends of freedom from all parts of Illinois. I here met Gov. Reeder, who
had got out of the territory in the disguise of an Irish hodcarrier. My own
home city had been sacked and our newspaper office demolished, and the types
and printing presses thrown into the raging Kaw. The morrow came in that
Illinois town, May 29, 1856. It was full of excited men. The very air was sur
charged with disturbing forces; men of all parties met face to face on the streets,
in the overflowing hotels and about the depot platforms of the incoming trains.
Anti-Nebraska Democrats, Free Soil Whigs and Abolitionists were all there.
The large hall— Major's — was crowded almost to suffocation as I took my seat
on one of the rear benches. Browning was called for, and he enjoined upon us
to 'ever remember that slavery itself was one of the compromises of the constitu
tion and was sacredly protected by the supreme law.' After this — rather a cold
dose to be administered just at that time — Owen Lovejoy appeared and carried
the convention by a storm of eloquent, invective and terrific oratory. The com
mittee on resolutions was named. While this was being done I felt a touch on
my shoulder, when a young man said he was going to call me out to talk while
the committee was out, adding that I must stop when I saw the committee come
in, as it had been arranged to have 'a fellow up here from Springfield, Abe Lin
coln, make a speech. He is the best stump speaker in Sangamon County.' This
young man was Joseph Medill, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, as I after
wards learned.
"I had no thought of anything of this kind, but of course I was prepared to
tell the story of bleeding Kansas there in the house of her friends. But two
things bothered me all of the time I was speaking. One was, I was trying to
pick out Mr. Lincoln, who was to follow me, for he was 'the best stump speaker
in Sangamon County,' as I had been told, and I had never heard his name before.
Added to this was the watching I kept up at the hall door of the committee room
to be sure to have a fitting end to my rather discursive talk on that now notable
occasion, when the party standing for free Kansas was born in Illinois and when
a great man appeared as the champion of the Kansas cause. As I stepped aside
Mr. Lincoln was called for from all sides. I then for the first time, and the last,
fixed my eyes on the great president. I thought he was not dressed very neatly
and that his gait in walking up to the platform was sort of swinging. His hair
was rather rough and the stoop of his shoulders was noticeable. But what took
me most was his intense serious look. He at once held his big audience and
handled it like the master he was before the people, pleading in a great and just
cause. To-day that 'Lost Speech' looks quite conservative. His chief contention
all through it was that Kansas must come in free, not slave. He said he did not
want to meddle with slavery where it existed and that he was in favor of a
reasonable fugitive slave law. I do not now recall how long he spoke. None of
us did, I judge. He was at his best, and the mad insolence of the slave power as
at that time exhibited before the country furnished plenty of material for his
unsparing logic to effectually deal with before a popular audience. Men that day
were hardly able to take the true gauge of Mr. Lincoln. He had not yet been
recognized as a great man, and so we were not a little puzzled to know where
his power came from. He was not eloquent like Phillips, nor could he electrify
an audience like Lovejoy, but he could beat them both in the deep and lasting
convictions he left on the minds of all who chanced, as I did, to listen to him
in those dark days." 

The Bloomington Convention 37
The impression the "Lost Speech" made upon J. O. Cunningham, who had
accompanied Mr. Lincoln to Bloomington from Urbana, was expressed by him
in these words:
"During the absence of the committees many speeches were made. Lovejoy
(and, by the way, Lovejoy was the greatest stump speaker I ever listened to),
Browning, Cook, Williams, Arnold and among them one Emory, a free state
refugee from Kansas, all made speeches. Owing to the inflamed condition of
public sentiment, the audience had become much wrought up in feeling when it
came the turn of Mr. Lincoln to make his speech, the so-called 'Lost Speech.' I
thought it then a great speech, and I now think it a great speech, one of the
greatest and certainly one of the wisest ever delivered by him. Instead of adding,
as he might have done, and as most speakers would have done, to the bitterness
and exasperation his audience felt, as a manner of gaining control of the audience,
he mildly and kindly reproved the appeal to warlike measure invoked by some
who had spoken before him, and before entering upon the delivery of his great
arraignment of the slavery question and of the opposing party, he said: 'I'll tell
you what we will do; we'll wait until November, and then shoot paper ballots
at them.' This expression, with his conciliatory and wise declarations, greatly
quieted the convention and prepared the members for the well-considered plat
form which was afterward presented and adopted."

Gen. Thomas J. Henderson, close friend of Owen Lovejoy, long a member
of Congress from Lovejoy's district, said of the culminating scene of the
convention: "The great speech of the convention was the speech of Abraham Lincoln.
His speech was of such wonderful eloquence and power that it fairly electrified
the members of the convention and everybody who heard it| It was a great
speech in what he said, in the burning eloquence of his words and in the manner
in which he delivered it. If ever a speech was inspired in this world, it has always
seemed to me that that speech of Mr. Lincoln's was. It aroused the convention
and all who heard it and sympathized with the speaker to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm. I have never heard any other speech that had such great power
and influence over those to whom it was addressed. I have always believed it
to have been the greatest speech Mr. Lincoln ever made and the greatest speech
to which I ever listened. I can never forget that speech, and especially that
part of it where, after repelling with great power and earnestness the charge of
disunion made against the anti-Nebraska party, he stood as if on tiptoe, his tall
form erect, his long arms extended, his face fairly radiant with the flush of
excitement, and, as if addressing those preferring the charge of disunionism, he
slowly, but earnestly and impressively, said:
" 'We do not intend to dissolve the Union, nor do we intend to let you
dissolve it.'
" As he uttered these memorable and, I may say, prophetic words, the mem
bers of the convention and everybody present rose as one man to their feet and
there was a universal burst of applause, repeated over and over again, so that
it was some moments before Mr. Lincoln could proceed with his speech."

While the Bloomington convention refrained from the use of the name of the
Republican party, it left no doubt as to the purposes of the party organization

38 A Reporter's Lincoln
then formed. It did more than select a full delegation to the National Repub
lican Convention, which was to meet in Philadelphia the following month. The
Ohio Republican Convention was in session that 29th day of May, at Columbus.
Judge Owen T. Reeves, a resident of Bloomington, was then a young lawyer
recently from Ohio. With Jesse W. Fell, Mr. Lincoln's zealous friend in Bloom
ington, Mr. Reeves prepared a telegram of greeting from the Bloomington con
vention to the Ohio Republican Convention, and John M. Palmer, the president
of the Bloomington convention, signed it. This greeting breathed the spirit of
Lincoln to combine all of the elements opposed to extension of slavery in the new
party. It read:
"The delegates of the free men of Illinois in convention assembled send
greetings to the free men of Ohio. William H. Bissell is nominated for governor
with the enthusiastic acclaim of the most enthusiastic delegate convention ever
assembled in Illinois. Gov. Reeder and Mrs. Robinson are here. They have
appeared before the public and have been greeted by the wildest applause. The
excitement consequent upon the latest outrages at Lawrence, Kan., is sweeping
like wildfire over the land."
The Ohio convention responded, addressing the telegram to "the Republican
Convention of Illinois," and the telegram was read to the convention in Major's
Hall, "amid great applause." Mrs. Robinson was the wife of the first governor,
by election, of Kansas, "a most beautiful and interesting lady." She came to
Bloomington on the train with the delegation from Springfield, having fled from
Kansas to Illinois for protection. Her husband had been elected under the Free
Soil constitution. He had been indicted on a charge of treason and had been
imprisoned. Andrew W. Reeder was the first territorial governor. He had been
elected to Congress by the Free Soil party, had been indicted with Gov. Robin
son, but had escaped in disguise.

A committee of the Historical Society of Bloomington, headed by George
Perrin Davis, son of Mr. Lincoln's long-time intimate friend Judge David Davis,
made every effort that could be suggested to find the "Lost Speech." John G.
Nicolay, who was Lincoln's secretary and who, in collaboration with John Hay,
wrote and compiled the standard history of Abraham Lincoln, was a delegate to
the Bloomington convention. At that time he was editor and proprietor of the
Pike County PVee Press, published at Pittsfield. He signed the call for the
editors' conference at Decatur, his paper being one of the first to indorse the
suggestion of Paul Selby's Morgan Journal of Jacksonville that such a conference
should be held. Mr. Nicolay heard the "Lost Speech," but he took no notes of
it . He wrote to the Bloomington committee that the address "held the audience
in such rapt attention that the reporters dropped their pencils and forgot their
work." Lincoln not only did not write out that speech, but he had no memor
anda. So much the committee discovered. The conclusion of the committee
was that "the speech is still lost."

Lawyer, Philosopher, Statesman
"There was this true of all of his law practice," said Judge Owen T. Reeves of
Bloomington, who saw much of Mr. Lincoln in the courts for fifteen years pre
ceding the election to the presidency. "He impressed court and jurymen with
his absolute sincerity. Mr. Lincoln assisted the state's attorney in prosecuting
a fellow who had killed somebody. Leonard Swett defended the man, and
acquitted him on the ground of insanity. It was reported afterward that Mr. Lin
coln said that was the last time he would ever assist in the prosecution of a man
charged with murder. That was about 1857. If Mr. Lincoln was employed in a
case where the other side had little or nothing to it he would ridicule it out of
court. I remember a man named Phil Miller brought a law suit to recover dam
ages from a man named Jones in a neighborhood above here. The claim for
damages was based on an alleged assault. Phil went on the stand and described
the assault as having been a kind of running fight over a ten-acre field. Mr.
Lincoln pressed the plaintiff on the cross-examination, bringing out fully all of
the details of the affair, which had not resulted in serious injury. When the time
came to argue the case to the jury Mr. Lincoln dwelt on the evidence and said:
'I submit to you that for a fight which spread all over a ten-acre field this is about
the smallest crop of a ten-acre fight you gentlemen ever saw.' "

"When Mr. Lincoln was busy preparing a plea or writing an instruction, noth
ing going on around him interested him or attracted his notice," Judge Reeves
said. This complete mental abstraction is described by others who knew Mr.
Lincoln. J. H. Burnham of Bloomington, when he was editor of the Pantagraph,
had a personal experience. He sat in the courtroom one day waiting for Mr.
Lincoln to make a speech.
"Whenever I looked toward him," said Mr. Burnham, "he was apparently
gazing abstractedly into my own eyes. Again and again I felt his eyes upon me
with an expression as if I reminded him of some one whom he had once known. Yet
I really believed his mental abstraction was so great that he actually had no idea
of my presence."
The reverse of this complete abstraction of mind was true of Mr. Lincoln.
When Mr. Lincoln observed or directed his mind toward anybody or anything he
received and retained impressions which were amazingly definite and lasting.
"Mr. Lincoln," Judge Reeves said, "had a faculty of asking questions of
persons who had knowledge of any particular subject which would draw out all of
the knowledge they possessed. He would sit in the hotel when not engaged in
court and carry on conversations with various persons. He would describe the
pioneer days and the pioneer practice with great detail. But I never knew him to
tell a story unless it was in illustration of something else which had come up in
the conversation. I never heard him tell a story which wasn't apposite and
illustrative." "The simplicity of Mr. Lincoln," Judge Reeves said, "was well illustrated by
an incident which occurred, while he was addressing a jury in the old courthouse
here. Mr. Lincoln had a way of getting close to the jurors and gesticulating with

40 A Reporter's Lincoln
his long arms over their heads. On this occasion a button fastening his suspen
ders to the trousers gave way while Mr. Lincoln was in the midst of the argu
ment. Mr. Lincoln stopped, looked down to see what had happened, and then said
to the jury, 'Excuse me, gentlemen, for a moment while I fix my tackling.' He
walked over to the woodbox by the stove — we burned wood in those days — picked
up a splinter, took out his pocket knife and sharpened the splinter to a good point.
He thrust the wooden pin through the cloth and fastened the suspenders over
the ends. Returning to the jury, he said, 'Now, gentlemen, I am ready to go on.' "
An incident illustrative of Mr. Lincoln's philosophic observation, Judge
Reeves told in these words: "I remember one morning coming up town rather
earlier than usual, and meeting Mr. Lincoln in front of the courthouse. Mr.
Lincoln had his hands behind him, as usual. I greeted him and asked him if he
had been taking a walk.
" 'Yes, he said, 'and I came past Gridley's new house and looked it over.'
"Gen. Asahel Gridley was just finishing a handsome residence, much superior
to other homes here. I remarked that Gen. Gridley was going to have a fine
house. " 'Yes, it is a fine house,' Mr. Lincoln said, 'but I was thinking it isn't the
best thing for a man in a town like Bloomington to build a house so much
better than his neighbors.' "
"I think it was the most impressive speech I ever heard Lincoln make,"
Judge Reeves said, as he leaned back in his chair, recalling to memory Lincoln
and the "Lost Speech." Judge Reeves was a young lawyer, recently from Ohio
when the convention, which formed the Republican party" of Illinois, filled Major's
Hall to the doors in May, 1856. He helped Jesse W. Fell prepare the greeting to
the Republican Convention of Ohio, which was meeting that day in Columbus to
organize the new party in that state.
"Mr. Lincoln was wonderfully stirred," Judge Reeves continued. "Usually he
was very calm and deliberate in his manner. That so-called 'Lost Speech' seemed
to show that he had outlined in his mind the whole movement for a new party.
He started out with a historical sketch of the legislation on the subject of slavery,
beginning away back. He referred to the ordinance of 1787 when all of this
northwest territory was dedicated to freedom. Then he took up the Missouri
compromise. Step by step he came down to the conditions then existing. My
recollection is that the speech lasted about an hour. Lincoln's speech, as I
remember, was the last one made. There were Whigs, Democrats and Aboli
tionists in the convention, which was the result of a conference of editors of anti-
Nebraska bill papers held in Decatur the 22d of February, Washington's birth
day. Paul Selby of Jacksonville was the leading spirit of that editorial conference.
The Nebraska bill was, in effect, the repeal of the Missouri compromise of 1820,
fixing the bounds of slavery. General concessions were made to secure harmony
in the Major's Hall convention. The main idea was opposition to extension of
slavery into the new territories. There were nearly 300 delegates in the conven
tion. They appointed a state delegation to represent Illinois in the Philadelphia
Convention, which nominated Fremont and Dayton."

"I first met Mr. Lincoln in March, 1855," Judge Reeves continued. 'The
impression Mr. Lincoln made upon me then was that he was a man out of the
ordinary among men of distinction. I said to Judge David Davis, who took very

Lawyer, Philosopher, Statesman 41
kindly to young lawyers and was inclined to assist them, — I said to him the
impression I had formed of Mr. Lincoln was that he was an extraordinary man.
"'H-m! h-m! That is a very correct impression you have obtained,' was the
answer Judge Davis gave me to my comment. I think that Judge Davis under
stood Mr. Lincoln better than a great many did. I don't believe any man ever
lived who had more perfect knowledge of human nature than had Mr. Lincoln.
Mr. Lincoln knew the feelings, the prejudices, the motives of common humanity.
He was a master of all that. No man had more sympathy for the common people
than Mr. Lincoln had."
The judgment of his Bloomington friends Mr. Lincoln consulted, but he was
not always guided by the advice he sought upon political matters. Judge Reeves
recalled the circumstances of a visit and a consultation Mr. Lincoln had at
Bloomington in 1858.
"The first joint debate was at Ottawa," he said. "There Senator Douglas
propounded certain questions to Mr. Lincoln to answer at the next debate at
Freeport. Mr. Lincoln came to Bloomington to see Judge Davis. Norman B.
Judd came down from Chicago for the conference. There was a consultation on
these questions offered by Senator Douglas. The answers to the questions were
submitted by Mr. Lincoln and considered. Then Mr. Lincoln said, 'I'm going to
propound certain questions to Douglas.' He told them the questions he intended
to ask. They remonstrated and said that Douglas would answer Lincoln's ques
tions in a certain manner and that the result would be the defeat of Lincoln for
the Senate. Mr. Lincoln insisted that he would ask the questions, and said: 'If
he answers as you say he will and it defeats me for the Senate, it will forever
defeat him for the presidency.' And that was the result. Mr. Lincoln foresaw
that if Douglas made the answers which Judge Davis, Mr. Judd and the others
predicted Douglas would make, those answers would forever debar Douglas from
getting the support of the Southern Democrats."

Wells H. Blodgett's Experience
Of Lincoln's friendliness toward younger men, there are many recollections.
Wells H. Blodgett of St. Louis, had his experience. He was reading law about
1859 in Mr. Judd's Chicago office where Mr. Lincoln visited whenever he came to
the city. An acquaintance sprang up between them. Mr. Lincoln called the
young student by his middle name "Howard" and gave him advice. Shortly
before the nomination in 1860, Mr. Lincoln was in the office. As he passed out the
door one of the law partners called after him:
"Are you coming up to the convention, Lincoln?"
Mr. Lincoln closed the door as if he had not heard or did not intend to
answer. But he opened it again and, looking in, said:
"Well, I don't know. I am not quite enough of a candidate to stay away
and too much of a candidate to come."
After the nomination Mr. Lincoln attended a public reception in Chicago.
Among those who shook hands with the nominee, was Henry W. Blodgett,
afterwards the judge.
"Where is Howard?" Mr. Lincoln asked.
The brother replied that he was at the office.
"Tell him to come over," said Mr. Lincoln.
Wells H. Blodgett went to the hotel. There stood Mr. Lincoln, a striking
figure in his first swallow tail suit and with kid gloves, once white but now

42 A Reporter's Lincoln
grimy from much hand shaking. Mr. Blodgett fell in line, when he had nearly
reached Mr. Lincoln, the latter held up his hands and said with mock seriousness:
"Howard, look at this. Never go into politics."
Mr. Blodgett said that Lincoln never in his life wore a starched collar; that
pictures depicting him wearing such a collar were untrue. Lincoln always wore a
shirt with a loose collar, which turned outward from his neck, plainly showing a
prominent Adam's apple.
The Rock Island Bridge, said Col. Blodgett, was the first built across the
Mississippi river. Owners of river boats sued to have the draw bridge removed,
as obstructing river navigation. Their contention was that a boat needed a space
150 feet wide in order to pass up and down the river. Lincoln, who was on the
side of the owners of the bridge, argued that the interests of the people wishing
to cross the river were equal to those of people going up or down the stream. He
said Lincoln argued that at intersecting streets it was necessary for people going
one way to wait until people going at right angles had passed, turn and turn
about. Arguing along this line, Lincoln contended that boats and people cross
ing the river should take turns while the draw bridge closed and opened. He
said the bridge offered ample space for boats to go up and down and that the
river people were straining a point when they wanted space enough to turn
about right at the bridge. Lincoln and his associate lawyers won the case and
there is to-day a bridge across the river at Rock Island.

A Land Case
Lincoln's popular fame as a lawyer rested largely upon his convincing power
before juries. But Lincoln was more than a jury lawyer. He could untangle
the knotty land cases in a way to make those who listened wonder why they had
thought them difficult. J. H. Cheney of Bloomington went down to Springfield
in August, 1853, to consult Lincoln about the title to a piece of land.
"I took with me," he said, "a letter of introduction from Gen. Asahel Gridley
of this place. Upon entering his office I found Lincoln in and presented my letter
from Gen. Gridley. I stated my case. Lincoln gave close attention, asking a
few questions as I proceeded. When I had finished he talked about the case,
making every point clear, so clear, indeed, that I wondered why I had come. It
seemed as if every one should have understood the case. Lincoln concluded by
saying that I had a good title to the land, and then asked, 'What did old Grid.
say about it?' I told him Gen. Gridley had said he thought my title a good one,
but advised me to see him. Lincoln's comment was, 'Grid, is a good lawyer,
and he knows.' I then asked him how much he charged for the advice. He said,
'I reckon if it is worth anything, it is worth $10,' which I paid."
Mr. Cheney had an experience with Mr. Lincoln later in which Mr. Lincoln
was the seeker after information, and Mr. Cheney was the giver.
"It was in the spring of 1859," said Mr. Cheney, "when Mr. Lincoln was
in Bloomington attending court. Mr. Lincoln was stopping at the Pike House.
He was in the office reading what I took to be a comic almanac. He seemed to
be very much amused and would frequently chuckle to himself. A gentleman and
I were discussing difference in weights of cattle before and after being fed and
watered. Mr. Lincoln addressed us and said: 'Gentlemen, I have been interested
in your conversation. As a matter of information, I would like to know what
the shrinkage would be."

The "Lost Speech"

Upon Judge Reuben M. Benjamin the "Lost Speech" of Mr. Lincoln made a
peculiar impression.
"It so happened," said Judge Benjamin, sitting at a table in the law library
of Bloomington, "that I was in Washington when the anti-Nebraska bill passed
the Senate on May, 1854. I had been principal of Hopkins Academy at Old
Hadley in Massachusetts the winter before, and had gone down to Washington
on a week's vacation. I went up to the capitol at 12 o'clock, midday, and I
didn't leave until the bill passed at 1 o'clock in the morning. I heard Douglas,
Lewis Cass, who was the only one to read what he had to say; Sumner, Gwinn,
Butler of South Carolina, Mason, Seward, Chase and Benjamin of Louisiana,
speak upon the measure. One thing impressed me so vividly that I can now see
Sumner turning toward James Murray Mason and pointing to him, as he quoted
what George Mason, his grandfather, had said about slavery when he refused to
sign the constitution because it contained the clause deferring the abolition of the
slave trade. I came to Bloomington in April, 1856, and entered the law office of
Asahel Gridley and John H. Wickhizer. On the wall of the office I read in Mr.
Wickhizer's handwriting: "The repeal of the Missouri compromise will lead to
civil war." With the recollection of that debate in the Senate I listened to Mr.
Lincoln as he made his speech in Major's Hall on May 29, 1856. The "Lost
Speech" was not rhetorical, but it was logical. Every now and then Mr. Lincoln
threw in some statement like a blow from a sledgehammer. Familiar as I felt
that I was with the subject of extension of slavery in the territories, from having
heard the leaders of both parties discuss it exhaustively at that session in the
Senate, I was deeply moved by the manner in which Mr. Lincoln handled the
subject." "That Major's Hall convention," continued Judge Benjamin, "was made up
of elements which differed widely, but which were agreed upon opposition to
extension of slavery in the territories. And that was the issue to which Mr.
Lincoln addressed himself as the one great question before the country. There
were Democtrats, like Palmer, who presided over the convention; Abolitionists,
like Owen Lovejoy and John Wentworth, and Whigs, like David Davis and O. H.
Browning. The main thing in the resolutions, as in Mr. Lincoln's speech, was
opposition to extension of slavery into the territories. The 'Lost Speech' of Mr.
Lincoln at the Bloomington convention was very like what is known as the
Peoria speech, delivered in 1854."
A few months after that Bloomington convention, Judge Benjamin had his
first personal relationship with Mr. Lincoln. Judge Benjamin, after a study of the
Illinois practice, felt prepared for admission to the bar. He made application.
Mr. Lincoln was appointed by the court to examine him. He made some inquiries
and wrote out the certificate. The part of the examination which left the strong
est impression on the applicant's mind was that Mr. Lincoln omitted what was
quite customary in those days with examining committees — extension of courtesy
by the candidate at another kind of bar. There was no treating when Judge
Benjamin was passed by Abraham Lincoln.

44 A Reporter's Lincoln
When He Was Just "Bob's Father"
"The only time I ever saw Abraham Lincoln was when I was a student at
Exeter, N. H.," said Professor Marshall S. Snow when he was dean of Washing
ton University. "His son, Robert, was at Phillips-Exeter Academy, in the class
above me. Mr. Lincoln had been in New York the last of February, 1860, to
make his famous Cooper Union speech against slavery. He came up to Exeter
to see 'Bob' for a day. I think, perhaps, he came to stay over Sunday. The
national campaign was opening, but the presidential nominations had not been
made. We had heard of Lincoln, had read his speeches, but I don't think any
of us regarded him as likely to be the Republican nominee for president. We
were for Seward, the New York candidate. As soon as it was known Mr. Lin
coln was coming to Exeter, the Republican committee arranged for a meeting
at the Town Hall, which would hold about 800 people. There were about ninety
of us boys in the academy at that time. 'Bob' was a neat-looking boy, a favorite
in the school and popular with the girls of Exeter. We turned out in full force
for the meeting to see 'Bob's' father as well as to hear Mr. Lincoln speak. Prof.
Wentworth presided."
The dean smiled, as he recalled the scene of forty-nine years before and
described it.
"Judge Underwood of Virginia had accompanied Mr. Lincoln to Exeter.
He was a short man. Mr. Lincoln was very tall. They came on the stage
together. The contrast was striking. When they sat down Judge Underwood's
feet did not reach the floor. Mr. Lincoln's legs were so long he had trouble
in disposing of them and twisted them about under the chair to get them out of
the way. One of the boys leaned over and whispered: 'Look here! Don't
you feel kind of sorry for Bob?' We didn't laugh. We were sympathetic for
'Bob' because his father didn't make a better appearance. The girls whispered
to each other, 'Isn't it too bad Bob's got such a homely father.' "
The dean mused a few moments, calling back that impression of his student
days, and went on:
"Mr. Lincoln wore no beard at that time. His hair was mussed up. It stood
in all directions. As he sat there in the chair he looked as if he was ready to
fall to pieces and didn't care if he did. Judge Underwood spoke first, for about
twenty minutes. We didn't pay much attention to him. We were looking at
Mr. Lincoln. I remember I thought at the time he was the most melancholy
man I had ever seen. When Mr. Lincoln was introduced he got up slowly until
he stood there as straight as an arrow in that long black coat. He hadn't spoken
ten minutes until everybody was carried away. We forgot all about his looks.
Exeter was full of people of culture. It was a place to which people moved
when they retired from active life. The audience was one of educated, cultivated
people. I never heard such applause in that hall as Mr. Lincoln received that
night. He spoke nearly an hour. There was no coarseness, no uncouthness of
speech or manner. Every part fitted into the whole argument perfectly. As I
recall it, the Exeter speech followed closely the lines of the Cooper Union
address, which was on slavery. I suppose it had been carefully prepared. I
know it captured all of us. When the meeting closed we went up to the plat
form and shook hands with Mr. Lincoln, telling him how proud we were to
have the honor of meeting Bob's father. Mr. Lincoln has always been to me the
man I saw and heard in that town hall at Exeter."

They Heard the Final Debate
Sixteen years and three weeks after he had shocked the dignity and aroused
the resentment of that community by the farcical meeting with "Jim" Shields,
Abraham Lincoln came to Alton to meet Stephen A. Douglas in the greatest
debate duel in American history. A tablet in bronze on the front of the city hall
records the date, October 15, 1858, and the site of the platform. This city hall
had been built not long before. It presented the appearance of new brick walls
then. Now it is smart looking under the latest of several coats of paint. The
wooden platform built against the wall overlooked a large plaza. Two old residents
of Alton who attended the meeting brought back vividly the scene of that October
day. One of them, J. H. Yager, stood well back in the throng, thrilled by the
words of Lincoln and not missing the comments and the manner of those about
him. The other, Henry Guest McPike, was one of the twenty-five leaders of the
two parties who sat on the platform.
Better natural vantage for public speaking it would be difficult to find. To
the eastward the surface rises like an amphitheater, but with easy slope. South-
westward the open space extended to the bank of the Mississippi. From his
seat on the platform, while waiting for Douglas to fill his time, Lincoln could
look across to the island where he had sat on a log awaiting for seconds and peace
makers to determine whether the code required him to match broadswords with
Shields. Quite possibly the funny duel never occurred to Lincoln, for this was
the last of the seven joint debates, and, according to the local traditions, Lincoln
spoke with a great deal of spirit. He drove home his points with more than his
ordinary energy. He seemed to realize that this was his last chance at Douglas
and that he was completing the record.
"We could almost feel the war coming," said Mr. Yager, as he recalled the
degree in which Lincoln aroused the Republicans that day. The plaza is paved
with brick now. It is the center from which the seven Altons radiate up the
valleys and over the hills, occupying a considerable section of Illinois.
"There was no paving then," described Mr. Yager. "The surface was rougher
than it is there. Over on that corner was the Presbyterian Church. Lincoln and
Douglas were escorted from the hotel by committees made up of the principal
men of the two parties in Alton. Douglas came down that street from the old
Alton House on the arm of Judge H. W. Billings. R. P. Tansey, who afterwards
moved to St. Louis and became president of the Merchants' Exchange, was with
them, and Thomas Dimmock, the editor. Zephaniah B. Joab was another member
of the Democratic committee that day. Some of those who escorted Lincoln to
the stand were Gov. Cyrus Edwards, Col. F. S. Rutherford, George T. Brown,
Henry G. McPike and John M. Pearson of Godfrey."
Mr. Yager and Mr. McPike agreed that, notwithstanding the immensity of the
gathering, one of the greatest ever seen in Alton, the speakers could be heard
distinctly. They recalled the not altogether encouraging figure Lincoln presented
as he sat on the platform awaiting his turn to speak, and they also remembered
that Lincoln filled the Republicans with enthusiasm before he had spoken half a
dozen sentences. "We felt so good we didn't know what to do," said Mr. Yager.
"A house divided against itself can not stand. I believe this government can
not endure permanently half slave and half free," was the declaration which Lin-

46 A Reporter's Lincoln
coin had made at the beginning of his campaign, and which he had reiterated at
the several debates. Douglas had, as often, artfully interpreted this declaration
to mean that Lincoln was for disunion.
"In other words," Douglas would say when his turn came, "Mr. Lincoln
asserts as a fundamental principle of this government that there must be uniform
ity in the laws and domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union;
and he therefore invites all the nonslaveholding States to band together, organ
ize as one body and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia,
upon the Carolinas, upon slavery in all the slaveholding States in this Union, and
to persevere in that war until it is exterminated."
The meeting at Alton was to close the joint debates. Douglas, by the terms
of the agreement, had the advantage of closing at this final meeting. Standing
where he looked over the heads of his hearers to valleys and hills of a slave
State, Lincoln seemed to feel that he must make his position plain beyond all
misinterpretation. He repeated to his Alton hearers his "A house divided against
itself cannot stand." He quoted from Douglas the meaning attributed by the
latter to the declaration, and then, raising his voice above the usual tone, and
with impassioned manner, Lincoln exclaimed:
"He knows that is false!"
Recalling the words and the startling effect upon the listeners, Mr. Yager
said the Republicans raised a mighty shout. The Democrats looked at one
another in amazement. One of them, an eminently respectable citizen of Alton,
who stood beside Mr. Yager, burst out with: "That is disgraceful. I won't stay
here any longer." He made his way out of the crowd.

Three brothers, John Hitt, Emory Hitt and Robert R. Hitt, made hay one
summer forenoon of the year 1856, on the farm near Mount Morris. They
knocked off in time to reach Oregon, in Ogle County, for the speaking that
afternoon. Abraham Lincoln, John Wentworth and Martin P. Sweet addressed
an audience of 3000 people.
"Their object was to induce the people to vote for Fremont and Dayton,"
said John Hitt. "The people of Ogle County were convinced that day. I thought
that Mr. Lincoln was an intellectual giant. From that day I trusted him. I never
doubted that he was a safe leader."
Two years after that summer afternoon at Oregon, in Ogle County, Robert
R. Hitt was the stenographer who traveled with Mr. Lincoln and made the reports
of the joint debates between Lincoln and Douglas. John Hitt was present at the
last of the debates which was held at Alton. He recalled an interesting incident
of that day, which showed Robert R. Hitt to advantage as a diplomat, in which
capacity he afterward obtained much distinction, before his district placed him in
Congress for life.
"I was one of a party that dined with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln that day," said
John Hitt, "at the leading hotel in Alton. When the debate was over Judge
Trumbull led the party to the table. He occupied a seat at the head of the table.
To his right Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were seated. Horace White, who accompanied
Mr. Lincoln as the representative of the State Central Committee; Robert R.
Hitt, my brother, who was shorthand reporter for the Tribune, and I, were
seated opposited Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. Senator Trumbull conversed with Mr.
Lincoln in an animated manner. In reply to the question of Mr. Lincoln whether
any impression had been made upon the people, Mr. Trumbull said that public

They Heard the Final Debate 47
meetings in Madison County were usually undemonstrative, but he thought a
favorable impression had been made. Mrs. Lincoln invited Mr. White and my
brother Robert to go with Mr. Lincoln and herself to Springfield and rest for the
coming week. My brother Robert thanked Mrs. Lincoln for her courtesy, and said,
in declining, that he would never call at her house until she lived in the White
House. She laughed at the suggestion, and said there was not much prospect of
such a residence very soon."

Impressions Made on J. S. Ewing
James S. Ewing of the Bloomington bar, boy and man, through a decade
and a half saw much of Abraham Lincoln. His father owned and conducted the
National Hotel in Bloomington as early as 1844 and 1845. That was the only
substantial tavern in town, the place where everybody came to talk politics.
There Mr. Lincoln, John T. Stewart and the other lawyers stopped when they
came to Bloomington to attend the terms of court twice a year. Judge Samuel
H. Treat was the circuit judge at that early period.
"Mr. Lincoln stayed at my father's house," Mr. Ewing said. "I was a boy
of 9. I knew Mr. Lincoln as a boy of that age might. I was in the habit of
going to the trials to hear the speeches. It was in the nature of a show. Of
course I heard Mr. Lincoln try a great many cases. I knew him all through my
boyhood and to the time I was admitted to the bar. One of the most interesting
things I recall was a declaration I heard Mr. Lincoln make about temperance. I
was present in a room in the National Hotel when Senator Stephen A. Douglas
was in Bloomington in 1854 for the purpose of making a speech. Mr. Lincoln
came in to call on Mr. Douglas. There was a bottle of whiskey on the sideboard
or mantel. Mr. Douglas said, after the greetings:
"'Lincoln, won't you have something?'
" 'No,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'I guess not.'
"'What,' said Mr. Douglas, 'do you belong to a temperance society?'
" 'No,' replied Mr. Lincoln, 'I don't belong to any temperance society, but I
am temperate in this that I don't drink anything.'
"I believe," said Mr. Ewing, "that that was a statement of his exact position
on the temperance question. He didn't drink anything himself, but he didn't try
to dictate what any one else should do."

"Mr. Lincoln was fond of children. He took notice of boys, remembered
them and spoke to them by name," Mr. Ewing said. "My father was a Democrat.
He nicknamed one of my brothers 'Democrat' and he went by that name for years.
Mr. Lincoln was a Whig; one day he commented on the nickname 'Democrat.'
He said to my other brother, the one next to me, 'I'll call you Whig.' That was
Judge W. G. Ewing of Chicago. He never has gotten rid of the name Mr. Lin
coln bestowed upon him. He has always been called by his friends, 'Whig
Ewing,' instead of William Ewing. I only mention this to show the attention
Mr. Lincoln paid to boys, even to the extent of knowing their names. Although
Mr. Lincoln and my father differed in politics, they were great friends."

48 A Reporter's Lincoln
How the News Came
At the close of election day, 1860, Lyman Trumbull and Henry Guest McPike,
descendant of the old revolutionary hero, took the train at Alton for Springfield.
The issues were too exciting to rest until morning without knowing the result.
Trumbull was close to Lincoln. McPike, younger than either Lincoln or Trum
bull, had been much in their company. It was late at night when the Alton train
reached Springfield. Out in front of the old State capitol local orators were
addressing the people, and from time to time returns were read out. Trumbull
led the way to the telegraph office. Upstairs in a room were found Mr. Lincoln,
/esse K. DuBois and Edward Baker.
"Lincoln was sitting on a kind of sofa," said Mr. McPike, "Du Bois, who
was a stout man, was seated. Ed Baker was looking over the dispatches as they
came in and trying to figure out something conclusive from them. After
greetings all around Trumbull wanted to know how it looked. Mr. Lincoln was
very quiet, less excited than anybody else in the party.
" 'We are working now on New York State,' Baker said, in reply to Judge
Trumbull's question. 'We have just had something from New York City that
looks very well.'
" 'Well,' said Judge Trumbull, 'if we get New York that settles it.'
" 'Yes,' said Baker, 'that will settle it.'
"We sat there, nobody else saying much, but all listening to Baker as he
looked over the dispatches and commented on them. I don't know what time it
was, but it must have been very late, when Ed Baker got a dispatch and began to
tell what was in it. He was so excited he did not read clearly.
"'How is that?' shouted old Jesse, sitting up. He had been half asleep for
some time.
"Baker began again and read out the announcement that Lincoln had carried
New York.
"Du Bois jumped to his feet. 'Hey!' he shouted, and then began singing as
loud as he could a campaign song. 'Ain't You Glad You Jined the Republicans?'
"Lincoln got up and Trumbull and the rest of us. We were all excited. There
were hurried congratulations. Suddenly old Jesse grabbed the dispatch which
settled it out of Ed Baker's hands and started on a run for the door. We followed,
Baker after DuBois, I was next, and then came Trumbull, with Lincoln last. The
staircase was narrow and steep. We went down it, still on the run. DuBois
rushed across the street toward the meeting so out of breath he couldn't speak
plain. All he could say was "Spatch! 'spatch!' He was going over with the news
to the meeting. Ed Baker followed him. Lincoln and Trumbull stopped on the
sidewalk. " 'Well, I guess I'll go over to the speaking,' said Trumbull.
" 'Well, judge, good night. I guess I'll go down and tell Mary about it,' said
Lincoln, still perfectly cool, the coolest man in the party. Across the street 10,000
crazy people were shouting, throwing up their hats, slapping and kicking one
another. They had just heard the dispatch that old Jesse had grabbed from Ed
Baker. You never saw such a sight. And down the street walked Lincoln, with
out a sign of anything unusual."

The Lincoln Scrapbooks
The most popular form which interest in Lincolniana takes is the scrapbook.
Thousands of people keep Lincoln scrapbooks. They clip and paste the stories
and reminiscences of Lincoln that appear in the newspapers and magazines.
Some of them exercise selection. Others take everything they find about Lincoln,
making book after book. Library shelves are occupied with long rows of Lin
coln scrapbooks. Instead of the interest decreasing, there are to-day more of
these Lincoln scrapbooks being filled than ever before.
The first Lincoln scrapbook was made by Lincoln himself. It was about four
inches long and three inches wide — a memorandum book, in which Mr. Lincoln
pasted clippings from newspapers. He wrote on the first leaf of the book:
"The following extracts are taken from various speeches of mine, delivered at
various times and places, and I believe they contain the substance of all I have
said about 'negro equality.' The first three are from my answer to Judge Doug
las October 16, 1854, at Peoria."
Among his old Whig friends, many of them from Kentucky, who were numer
ous in the central part of Illinois, Mr. Lincoln had a good deal of trouble to meet
the artful argument of the Douglas men that the new Republican party in 1856
and 1858 meant "negro equality." A prominent man among these Kentucky
Whigs was Capt. James N. Brown, who called himself a "Lincoln Republican."
He had been in the Legislature. He was a man of much popularity in Sangamon
County. Capt. Brown was willing to identify himself with Lincoln's new party,
but he shied at the proposition to be a standard bearer by taking the Republican
nomination for the Legislature in 1858, although Lincoln was to be the candidate
for United States senator. Mr. Lincoln urged; Capt. Brown consented. But
when the captain got into the campaign he was met everywhere with the inquiry
how he, a Kentuckian, could stand for a man who said the negro was as good as
a white man.
Capt. Brown went to Lincoln and said he must have something that would
plainly define Lincoln's position, so that he could meet the charge that the
Republicans were black abolitionists. The captain said he understood the situa
tion very well, but he couldn't state it satisfactorily; he wanted an answer he
could read. Mr. Lincoln prepared the little scrapbook. He added to
the clippings a letter addressed to Capt. Brown. The candidate carried
the scrapbook through the remainder of the campaign of 1858, reading from
it to confound the Douglas men. Whenever, either on the stump or on
the street or in private conversation, Capt. Brown heard the charge of
"negro equality" made against Mr. Lincoln, he drew forth the book and read
"Lincoln's own words."

The second Lincoln scrapbook was made in 1858 by Robert R. Hitt. Mr.
Hitt not only reported the joint debates; he preserved the current newspaper
accounts, not excepting the efforts of the Douglas organs to throw discredit by
ridicule upon Mr. Lincoln. At Freeport Lincoln had the opening speech.
According to the Chicago Times clipping, the joint debate was introduced in this
way:

50 A Reporter's Lincoln
"Mr. Lincoln. 'Fellow-citizens, ladies and gentlemen — '
"Deacon Bross. 'Hold on, Lincoln, you can't speak yet. Hitt ain't here, and
there is no use of your speaking unless the Press and Tribune have a report.'

"Mr. Lincoln. 'Ain't Hitt here? Where is he?'
"A voice. 'Perhaps he is in the crowd.'
"Deacon Bross, after adjusting the green shawl around his classic shoulders
after the manner of McVicker in Brutus, advanced to the front of the stand and
spoke: 'If Hitt is in the crowd he will please to come forward. Is Hitt in the
crowd? If he is, tell him Mr. Bross, of the Chicago Press and Tribune, wants
him to come up here on the stand to make a verbatim report for the only paper
in the Northwest that has enterprise enough to publish speeches in full.'
"Joe Medill. 'That's the talk.'
"Herr Kreisman here wiped his spectacles and looked into the crowd to see
if he could distinguish Hitt.
"A voice. 'If Hitt isn't here, I know a young man from our town that can
make nearly a verbatim report, I guess. Shall I call him?'
"Deacon Bross. 'Is he here?'
"A voice. 'Yes, I see him; his name is Hitch.'
"Loud cries for Hitch were made and messengers ran wildly about inquiring
'Where is Hitch? Where is Hitch?'
"After a delay the moderators decided that the speaking must go on.
"Deacon Bross. 'Well, wait (bringing a chair), I'll report the speech, Lin
coln, you can now go on, I'll report you.' "

The idea of Deacon Bross making a verbatim report of Lincoln's speech was
calculated to inspire hilarity.
About the time of the Freeport meeting the Chicago Times had a grievance
against the deacon. At some gathering, so the story went, the deacon had neg
lected to see that Matteson of the Times had a chair. For weeks and months
afterward the Times printed in its reports of various occurrences this single line:
"And Deacon Bross spoke."
Sandwiched between paragraphs of Lincoln's speech at Freeport; injected
into proceedings of the School Board of Chicago, sown broadcast over the local
page was the inevitable line:
"And Deacon Bross spoke."
In its account of the closing of the Freeport meeting the Times said:
"During the delivery of Douglas' speech Mr. Lincoln was very uneasy; he
could not sit still nor would his limbs sustain him while standing. He was shiv
ering, quaking, trembling, and his agony during the last fifteen minutes of Judge
Douglas' speech was positively painful to the crowd who witnessed his behavior."
Then followed more and worse of this kind of abuse until the newspaper went
beyond the border of decency. Injected into the Times' report of the Freeport
debate was this:
"The reporter can not let this opportunity pass without returning his thanks
to Parson Lovejoy for his very gentlemanly conduct in leaning over him during
the latter part of Senator Douglas' speech and commanding, in a loud voice,
Mr. Turner to announce to the people that he would address them after the
adjournment of the meeting."
When the debate was over Lovejoy, who had been thoroughly aroused by

The Lincoln Scrapbooks 51
Douglas' reference to "the nigger" — Douglas said "nigger," not "negro," as
the Times reported him on that occasion — gathered the crowd in front of the
Brewster House and made such an impassioned appeal as those who listened to
it never forgot. Lovejoy was an artist who could paint word pictures, and a
musician who could touch the human chords. He was a master at showing the
emotions. He stood before that immense crowd that day and held up slavery in
its worst possible light. He told the story of the slave girl's flight from her
pursuers, and his hearers breathed so hard you could hear them, while their
dilated eyes gleamed with passion. Republicans with the spell on them went
from the Lovejoy meeting and said to Stenographer Hitt:
"Print Lovejoy's speech instead of Lincoln's."
With the help of an ancient scrapbook the late Congressman Robert R. Hitt
preserved the local color and the contemporaneous proportions of the joint
debates. Mr. Hitt was, in 1858, a law reporter. He had recently completed his
education at Asbury University. To obtain verbatim reports of the debates, the
Chicago Press and Tribune engaged Mr. Hitt. When Mr. Lincoln of Springfield
challenged Senator Douglas of Illinois to this series of joint debates, there was
derision among Democrats. The challenge was considered a bluff. Friends of the
senator professed to believe that Mr. Lincoln was not in earnest. When Mr.
Douglas accepted the challenge the prediction was common that Mr. Lincoln
"would find some hole to crawl out." The organ of Senator Douglas was the
Chicago Times. Its comment, as preserved in the scrapbook was in these words:
"If the Republican champion does not effect a timely retreat there will be
music at the times and places designated in Senator Douglas' reply to Mr. Lin
coln. But will Mr. Lincoln meet our senator? We should lik-e to know. It is
evident from the tone of the Republican papers that he and his friends have
determined that he shall not acquiesce in the very fair arrangement proposed. It
is even evident, we think, to all men cognizant of the facts, that had Mr. Lincoln
or his friends had any idea that his challenge would be accepted, it never would
have been sent. They waited until it seemed impossible for Senator Douglas to
accept their proffer before opening correspondence with him; and now that he
has signified his willingness to meet Mr. Lincoln in debate before the people at
one central point in each congressional district, the Republicans and their candi
date are fearing and trembling and soon will be begging. Lincoln will not meet
Douglas; this is what we think will come of the challenge?"

Immediately after the first debate at Ottawa there broke out a fierce news
paper controversy. The issue was the integrity of the stenographic report of
Lincoln's speech in the Douglas organ. Two papers printed what purported to
be verbatim reports of the debate. They were the Press and Tribune of Chicago
and the Chicago Times. But between the two reports, so far as Lincoln was
concerned, there was very great difference. Mr. Lincoln's Ottawa speech, as it
appeared in the Chicago Times, was a horrible mess. It abounded in ungrammat-
ical expressions. Sentences were run together in such a way as to make no sense.
Punctuation marks were either entirely omitted or misplaced. The friends of
Mr. Lincoln immediately charged the Democrats with the despicable trick of
misrepresenting him. They even went so far as to suggest that Douglas himself
had access to the manuscript of the stenographer, and that he distorted Lincoln's
speech so as to make his antagonist appear ridiculous. To this charge the
Democrats replied that Lincoln had been reported exactly as he spoke, and that

52 A Reporter's Lincoln
his speech had been printed as delivered. They made the counter charge that
Lincoln's speech was taken by a self-appointed committee of Republicans and
fixed up previous to publication. An extract from the ancient scrapbook is
peculiarly interesting. The Chicago Times, in conducting its side of the con
troversy, said:
"Any person who heard at Ottawa the speech of Abraham, alias Old Abe,
alias Abe, alias 'Spot' Lincoln, must have been astonished at the report of that
speech as it appeared in the Press and Tribune of this city. Our version of it
was literal. No man who heard it delivered could fail to recognize and acknowl
edge the fidelity of our reporters. We did not attempt, much, to 'fix up' the
bungling effort; that was not our business. Lincoln should have learned before
this to 'rake after' himself. Or, rather, to supersede the necessity of 'raking after,'
by taking heed to his own thoughts and experiences. If he ever gets into the
United States Senate, of which there is no earthly probability, he will have to do
that. In the congressional arena the words of debaters are snatched from their
lips, as it were, and immediately enter into and become a part of the literature
of the country. But it seems, from the difference between the two versions of
Lincoln's speech, that the Republicans have a candidate for the Senate of whose
bad rhetoric and horrible jargon they are ashamed, upon which, before they
would publish it, they called a council of 'literary' men, to discuss, reconstruct
and rewrite; they dare not allow Lincoln to go in print in his own dress; and
abuse us, the Times, for reporting him literally."

This controversy over the Democratic reports of Lincoln's speech was waged
with great bitterness until long after the seven debates were finished. Republi
cans were very sore about it. They held Douglas in a large degree responsible
for the unjust treatment. There was something in it which created great sympathy
for Lincoln. The American sense of fair play was outraged. Minor matters
which appeal to sentiment often go a long way in politics. There is scarcely
any doubt that this misrepresentation of Lincoln cost Douglas many votes, both
in the senatorial campaign and in the presidential campaign which followed two
years later. Republicans did not forgive and forget the apparently shabby treat
ment of their candidate until the war came on and Douglas with all his might
espoused the Union cause and came to the support of President Lincoln. That
was the atonement.
Mr. Hitt thought both sides were probably wrong to some extent in this
controversy. It is doubtful if Douglas personally had anything to do in the
first place with the misreporting of Lincoln. On the other hand, there is no doubt
that the organ of Douglas treated Lincoln in a way of which no self-respecting
newspaper would be guilty at this day. The accident of circumstances combined
with the purpose of partisanship to make Lincoln ridiculous. Some things which
do not appear in the histories may be told about the newspaper work on these
debates. Shorthand men who could follow political speakers of all kinds were not
numerous in those days. Douglas brought with him to Illinois for that campaign
a Philadelphia stenographer — a Mr. Sheridan. The reports of Douglas' speeches
which appeared in the Times were the work of Mr. Sheridan. Mr. Sheridan
did not report Mr. Lincoln for the Times. There was the greatest possible differ
ence in the two speakers. "There is no orator in America more correct in
rhetoric, more clear in ideas, more direct in purpose, in all his public addresses

The Lincoln Scrapbooks 53
than Stephen A. Douglas," his organ said in the course of the controversy. This
was but slightly exaggerated truth. People of this generation who read the
beautifully rounded periods and clean-cut sentences of Douglas may imagine
the words pouring forth in a rapid, unbroken stream. But Douglas was one of
the most measured of American orators. If he was in public life today he would
be the delight of beginners in stenography. He was distinct; he paused between
sentences; he used short sentences; he rarely exceeded 120 words a minute.
Every one at all versed in shorthand work will apreciate what that is. It means
a speed which the ordinary stenographic secretary of to-day can easily follow.
It was no trouble to report Douglas. "The Little Giant," as he was usually
called by his admirers, had a deep bass voice. No bass voice can go fast. His
sonorous tones filled out the time so that he did not seem to be speaking slowly.
Even-paced is probably a better expression than deliberate to describe his manner.
That Douglas uttered not nearly so many words as Lincoln in a given period is
apparent in the reports of the debates. Each had the same time. But Lincoln's
speeches occupy more space than Douglas'.

Lincoln was altogether different. His voice was clear, almost shrill. Every
syllable was distinct. But his delivery was puzzling to stenographers. He would
speak several words with great rapidity, come to the word or phrase he wished
to emphasize and let his voice linger and bear hard on that, and then he would
rush to the end of the sentence like lightning. To impress the idea on the
minds of his hearers was his aim; not to charm the ear with smooth, flowing
words. It was very easy to understand Lincoln. He spoke with great clearness.
But his delivery was very irregular. He would devote as much time to the word
or two which he wished to emphasize as he did to half a dozen less important
words following it. This peculiarity of Lincoln's delivery helped the Democrats
in carrying out a plan to belittle him. The Democratic organ, the Chicago
Times, called Lincoln's speech, "weak, faltering, childish twaddle," and endeavored
to make it appear so. At Ottawa, on the occasion of the opening debate, Douglas
spoke an hour. Lincoln followed with an hour and a half. Douglas closed in a
half hour. The reporting of Lincoln for the Democratic paper was done by
an English stenographer, who had the old style. His notes were almost
unintelligible to the American stenographers. They were written out, and the
editor of the Times, Mr. Sheehan, afterwards boasted editorially, "Lincoln's
speech was printed verbatim, just as it came from the reporter." A single sen
tence taken from the scrapbook copy of the Times' report will serve to show
how Lincoln was treated:
"I will remind him also of a piece of Illinois of the time, when the respected
party to which the judge belongs was displeased with a decision of the Supreme
Court of Illinois, because they had decided that the governor could not
remove a secretary of state, and he will not deny that he went in for overslaugh
ing that court by appointing five new judges, and it ended in his getting the name
of Judge in that very way, thus breaking down the Supreme Court, and when
he tells me about how a man who shall be appointed on such a principle, by
being questioned, I say judge, you know you have tried it, and when he seeks
that, the court will be prostituted below contempt."
This was very small business. The newspaper which would instruct its
telegraph editor and proofreader to follow an unrevised shorthand report with
that kind of fidelity in this day and generation would hurt itself more than the

54 A Reporter's Lincoln
orator it aimed to disgrace. But this was the way Lincoln was reported at
Ottawa, and the Douglas organ glorified in the showing. The Times continued
to print full reports, and continued to claim that it printed them just as they
came from the reporter. It was noticeable, however, that the report of Lincoln's
speech at Freeport, the second debate, was somewhat better. This may be
accounted for by the discovery on the part of the organ of Douglas that it had
made a mistake in its treatment of his antagonist. After the Freeport report,
the Times, acknowledging the improvement in the reading of the Lincoln speech,
said: "The debate at Freeport was remarkable, first for the immense ability dis
played by Douglas, second for the weakness of Lincoln. We grant that he
(Lincoln) spoke with rather more conspicuous fluency than is usual for him, but
he failed utterly of coming up to the mark."
It is noteworthy that while the Republicans from one end of Illinois to the
other denounced the Chicago Times' report of Lincoln's speeches, Senator
Douglas took occasion to address Mr. Hitt and to thank him for the accuracy
with which his speeches had been reported for the Press and Tribune.

Douglas and Lincoln did not travel together during the campaign of 1858.
They saw very little of each other until they met upon the platforms at the
appointed places. The first debate, at Ottawa, was on the 21st of August. The
seventh was at Alton, on the 15th of October. The others were scattered along
between these dates. The candidates had other engagements which kept them
apart. They were moving nearly all of the time. Lincoln made over sixty
speeches and Douglas made even more. The newspapers were well satisfied to
give the verbatim reports of the joint debates. That was enterprise enough for
those days. The newspapers did not attempt to give full reports of more than
two or three of the other speeches.
The way in which the reporting and the publishing of the debates was done
was very different from the methods of today. Two stenographers did the actual
reporting — Mr. Hitt for the Republicans and Mr. Sheridan for the Democrats,
Mr. Lincoln being taken for the Times by a third stenographer, an Englishman.
The wires were not used. An attempt to telegraph one of those joint debates
would have paralyzed the telegraph company of that period, and would have
bankrupted the newspaper. As soon as a debate was finished the reporters took
the first train they could get and traveled to Chicago. En route, and after their
arrival, they wrote out the speeches, which were published the second day after
the debate took place. The reports appeared simultaneously. Each paper seemed
to be satisfied not to be behind the other. No heroic effort was made by one to
beat the other. But to accomplish publication by the second day after the debate was
a feat which strained the resources of the two offices. On more than one of the
seven occasions the newspapers contained apologies to their readers for being
late in the morning because of the extra effort to get in the Lincoln and Douglas
speeches in full.

One particularly smart thing was done in connection with the Quincy debate.
A train for Chicago departed while the speaking was in progress. The assistant
of Mr. Hitt, a bright young man, picked up the notebook containing the report
up to a few minutes before train time, ran to the train and started for Chicago.

The Lincoln Scrapbooks 55
Mr. Hitt followed with the remainder of the notes on the next train after the
debate closed. When he reached Chicago he found that his assistant had
transcribed the greater part of the earlier portion of the debate and the matter
was already in type. It several times happened that Mr. Hitt did not see consider
able portions of the notes after taking them until the matter appeared in the
paper; the transcribing was done by the assistant, and the copy was rushed to the
printers. The charge was made by the Democrats that "Mr. Judd, Judge Logan,
Judge Davis, or some one else of great and conceded abilities," went over Lin
coln's speeches and fixed them up before publication. It is answered by the story
of the way in which the reporting and publishing was done. So also is answered
the Republican accusation that Douglas had access to the transcribed notes of
Lincoln's speeches and mutilated them before they appeared in the Democratic
paper. There was no time for revision or for putting up jobs with the manu
script by the principals in the debates. The misrepresentation of Lincoln in the
Times was in accordance with the purpose to make him appear ignorant and
uncouth in language beside Douglas. Among the reporters it was well under
stood that the report of Lincoln for the Times was to be done in a slovenly
manner, to carry out the Democratic estimate of Lincoln. Sheridan, who reported
Douglas for the Times, did not take Lincoln. He was above lending himself to
such a dishonorable practice. He frequently talked privately about this treat
ment of Lincoln, but did not go further than to express his confidential opinion
of it.

The whole three hours' debate ran between six and eight columns — long,
closely printed columns — of the four-page sheets of those days. There was
another striking difference between the two orators, and it was a difference which
impressed itself upon the reporters. Douglas had one great finished speech. He
made it seven times. Of course, he varied somewhat in his introductions and in
his specific replies to Lincoln's points. But his argument in defense of his general
position on the slavery question was much the same each time. There were
whole paragraphs which he repeated each time. Lincoln made seven speeches,
like so many chapters in a book, or distinct divisions of an argument. He did
not repeat himself. Douglas' speech was a carefully prepared effort. He ignored
interruptions. Lincoln spoke extemporaneously, having only the outline of his
argument in mind, answering suggestions from the audience and replying to
every new point advanced by Douglas.
The stenographers soon discovered that the senator was repeating himself
largely. Mr. Hitt carried with him copies of previous speeches, and when he
came to these repetitions he cut them out and pasted them in his report, thereby
saving himself much work of transcribing. Sheridan, looking on at this saving
of labor by means of a convenient bottle of mucilage, had his joke on more than
one occasion. "Hitt," he was wont to say, "mucilates Douglas for the Press and
Tribune, while (mentioning the name of the English stenographer) mutilates
Lincoln for the Times."

The joint debate which gave Lincoln the most satisfaction was the second —
the one at Freeport. There he took up the seven questions Douglas had pro
pounded at Ottawa, and answered them one by one. When he had done so he
said he would now put certain questions to Senator Douglas. To make the
questions more impressive he drew from his pocket a single slip of paper and read

56 A Reporter's Lincoln
the four questions slowly. The purpose of Lincoln's questions was to make
Douglas follow his great and fascinating doctrine of popular sovereignty to its
logical conclusion, or else confess himself a demagogue. Three of the questions
led up to the one which was the crucial test, in this form:
"Can the people of a territory of the United States in any lawful way, against
the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits
prior to the formation of a state constitution?"
If Douglas said "Yes" to this he parted company with the South, which was
insisting on the right, according to the Dred Scott decision, to take slaves into
the territories prior to the formation of a constitution. If Douglas said "No" he
confessed that the great political dogma on which he had a personal patent —
popular sovereignty, alias squatter sovereignty — was a delusion.
Douglas, when his turn came to speak, took up the slip of paper, Lincoln
having laid it down before him where he could not but take notice of it. He took
it up, read the questions one by one and answered them. When he came to the
all-important question he read it and threw down the slip of paper as if he was
disposing of a most trifling matter. He was a great actor. He could simulate
passion; he could assume wild rage and defiance. He would shake his head with
its mass of hair like a wild bull, and his admirers would cheer and cheer. But it
was all acting. Douglas was a veteran of debate. On this occasion, when he read
the question on which everything turned, he treated it as trifling, and after casting
it aside, he said:
"I answer, emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred
times, from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a territory
can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation
of a state constitution."
And a little further on he assumed to explain that the people of a territory
could control slavery, "because it cannot exist unless by police regulations. Those
regulations can only be established by the local legislature, and if the people
are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will, by
unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst."

The full realization of what Douglas had done did not come to most of those
who listened to him until afterward. His manner was well calculated to deceive.
He answered this question on which his future turned as if it was of the slightest
consequence. Lincoln undoubtedly knew what he was about, but the stories
which have been circulated in later years concerning the four questions are for
the most part apocryphal. Lincoln prepared the questions. He based them on a
report of a speech Douglas had made a few days before at Bloomington. A
copy of the Bloomington speech was before him, and after examining it carefully
he wrote the questions, believing that Douglas must answer just as he did. The
questions were no surprise to Douglas. They simply forced him to emphasize
what he had said to his followers at Bloomington. They drew him out, how
ever, very clearly on an occasion when all he said was sure to get into print,
under the fierce light of the debates, and to reach the whole country. The New
York Tribune and other Eastern papers were reprinting the debates in full or
nearly so. Some of Lincoln's friends claimed to have advised him strongly not
to present the questions, telling him that Douglas was sure to stick to his
popular sovereignty idea and that, if he did, he would certainly be elected senator.
But Lincoln went ahead. Years afterward, in the light of events which followed,

The Lincoln Scrapbooks 57
some of these friends concluded that Lincoln had the gift of foreknowledge and,
in 1858, was building for 1860 and the presidency. A story which fits in here may
be told. The evening after the debate closed the two champions were accom
panied by their respective friends to the depot to take the train. It was not long
after the railroad had reached Freeport. Douglas was surrounded by a throng
of enthusiastic and noisy admirers. Lincoln, as was usually the case, had with
him a smaller and quieter escort. Lincoln had little to say. While waiting for
the train he walked to the end of the platform and stood looking seriously toward
the west where the sun had just set. Some one asked him:
"Mr. Lincoln, how are you satisfied with the debate so far?"
"Douglas may have beaten me to-day for the Senate," was the reply, "but I
have stopped him from being president."
This story may be true. The fact is, however, it did not begin to have
circulation until four years after the Freeport meeting, when Lincoln was in the
White House and the popular demand for Lincoln stories had developed.
At the third debate, held at Jonesboro, a strongly Democratic locality, where
only about 2000 people were present, Lincoln pressed Douglas hard on the
answer to the Freeport questions. He insisted that Douglas must explain how in
the light of the Dred Scott decision the people of a territory could control the
introduction of slavery. Douglas' reply was ingenious, but it was not satisfactory.
It turned the South against him. Six weeks afterwards Douglas was burned in
effigy at Norfolk, Va.

President McKinley's Lincoln Story
Washington is an interesting center for news and gossip, but it is the worst
place in the country for the formation of judgment on public sentiment. It is
historically uncertain in that rescpect. A Washington correspondent wrote to
his editor that public sentiment in Washington indicated something. The editor
wrote back that public sentiment in Washington meant nothing. President
McKinley in crises never made the mistake of some of his predecessors, — that
sentiment in Washington was a safe guide as to conditions of sentiment in the
country at large. He, personally, went through many letters that came to the
White House. He did more of this than most presidents have done. He had a
selected list of newspapers representing all parts of the country and all shades
of politics. He read these, not trusting to any private secretary to cull for him.
One day a public man called at the White House and undertook to tell Mr.
McKinley what the sentiment in Washington was upon a pending question.
Mr. McKinley checked the visitor and asked him if he had ever heard the story
of President Lincoln and Leonard Swett. Mr. Swett had come to Washington
at a critical period and called at the White House. President Lincoln asked
him when he had arrived in the capital. Swett replied in a general way. Mr.
Lincoln repeated the inquiry in such form as to bring from Mr. Swett the
information that he had come in by the latest train, about an hour previous.
"Oh!" said Mr. Lincoln, "all right. How are things? If you had been in Washington
all day, I wouldn't ask you. You would have heard so much your opinion wouldn't
be worth anything."
"The national capital, or a state capital, is a bad place to form proper
estimates of public sentiment. You can hear too much," was President
McKinley's moral drawn from this Lincoln story.

58 A Reporter's Lincoln
How He Studied German
Of Lincoln getting up early and using the circuit clerk's office for study of
the German language, Luman Burr had a definite recollection. Mr. Burr was the
deputy clerk of McLean County, of which Bloomington is the seat. His service
extended from 1857 to 1862. During the early part of it Mr. Burr formed the
acquaintance of Mr. Lincoln.
"I was only a boy of 20 years, and just from the East," he said. "As the
deputy clerk, I came to know Mr. Lincoln, but not in an intimate way. I came
to know him so well, however, that the caricature of him in a book called 'The
Crisis,' by a man named Churchill, fills me with wrath.
"In the old Courthouse at Bloomington," continued Mr. Burr, "Judge Davis
had his desk in the same office with William McCuUough, the clerk of the Circuit
Court. Mr. Lincoln was a great friend of both of them. There was a large,
round table in the clerk's office, and in the winter time there was a good fire
in a big box stove. Mr. Lincoln had a habit of coming there mornings before
court to read or study. Other lawyers would drop in. Leonard Swett, William
H. Hanna, Asahel Gridley, John M. Scott, Ward H. Lamon and others were
often there. The conversation of such men to a young man just from a New
England farm was a revelation. I have heard Mr. Lincoln talk, tell stories, try
lawsuits and lecture. One morning, I recollect in particular, he was in the
clerk's office studying German. He looked up and said: 'Here is a curious thing:
the Germans have no word for thimble; they call it a finger hat (fingerhut).
And they have no word for glove; they call it a hand shoe (handschuh). And
then came one of Mr. Lincoln's inimitable laughs."

He Established Standard Gauge
President Lincoln, said L. D. Yager, the Alton (111.) attorney, is to be credited
with the establishment of what is known as standard gauge in railroad construc
tion. This Lincoln story is not only interesting in itself, but it is illustrative of
the faculty for settling controversies which Mr. Lincoln possessed. Mr. Lincoln
was the personification of fairness. If such a result had been within human
agency, President Lincoln would have averted the civil war by a settlement which
would have preserved the Union and gradually abolished slavery. Standard
gauge is 4 feet $y2 inches between rails. Many people have wondered about that
half inch.
"When the Union Pacific, the first transcontinental railroad project, reached
the stage of legislation there was necessary, of course, an enabling act," said
Mr. Yager. "One branch of Congress insisted that the rails should be 4 feet and
10 inches apart. The other body wanted a gauge of 4 feet and 7 inches. On an
issue, apparently so trivial, the Senate and House took opposing sides. The
question was taken to the White House by interested parties. President Lincoln
was asked to express his opinion as to the proper width for a transcontinental
railroad track. He took lyi inches from the wider gauge and added it to the
narrower gauge, making the width 4 feet 8J4 inches. In other words, he split the
difference. The compromise was accepted by the law-makers and standard gauge
was fixed thereby. Other railroads conformed to this government gauge, one
after another, until it became the almost universal width between rails."

The Bowl of Custard
When Lincoln "rode the circuit" Bloomington was a literary and social
center. Springfield might claim political pre-eminence, as the state capital, but
Bloomington performed the rites of hospitality in a way which charmed her
guests. The visiting lawyers were entertained during court weeks. Little parties
were given in their honor. And Lincoln was the life of these social gatherings.
"I was acquainted with Mr. Lincoln from 1845 to his election as president,"
said Mrs. Judith A. Bradner, when she was 95 years old. "I am happy to say
that I have entertained him in my house often when our city was but a village.
The lawyers would come to Bloomington twice a year to attend court for two
weeks. During court weeks here five of us ladies would entertain the lawyers
with parties. All of them seemed to enjoy these gatherings. When the two
weeks of court were up, Mr. Lincoln would say regretfully, 'Well, our parties
are through until fall.' The last time Mr. Lincoln visited us he was in fine
spirits. The ceilings in our house were not as high as they are nowadays. Mr.
Lincoln struck his head against the chandelier and then apologized, saying, 'We
haven't got these things at our house.' At another time he remarked, 'Ladies,
excuse me, but this is the nicest party we have had, and we did not have any
custard, either.'
The reference to the custard Mrs. Bradner explained. One of the stopping
places on the circuit was Barnett's tavern at Clinton.
"Mrs. Barnett," Mrs. Bradner said, "always made a large bowl of custard
for the visiting lawyers. One time when the lawyers arrived at Barnett's and
came to the table Mr. Lincoln pointed to the usual bowl of custard and said to
Judge Davis. 'Did you ever see anything keep like that custard? It looks just
as it did when we left it last fall.' The old lady made no more custard for the
lawyers."

Neither card playing nor dancing entered into the social entertainments
which the ladies of Bloomington provided for the lawyers during court week, as
Mrs. Bradner remembers. There was conversation and Mr. Lincoln was the
leading personality in the gathering. Occasionally there was singing. Mrs.
Bradner remembers that Mrs. David Davis stood by a chair and sang some of the
songs of that day. The words of one of these songs of the fifties Mrs. Bradner
repeated without any hesitation:
So Miss Myrtle is going to marry?
What a number of hearts she will break!
There's Tom Brown, Lord George and Sir Harry,
All dying of love for her sake.
'Tis the match we all must approve,
Let the gossips say what they can,
For she's really a charming woman,
And he's a most fortunate man.
Chorus — 'Tis a match that we all must approve,
Let the gossips say what they can,
Yes, she's really a charming woman,
And he's a most fortunate man.

60 A Reporter's Lincoln
She's studied both Latin and Greek,
And I'm told that she solved a problem
In Euclid before she could speak.
And the old lady spoke then;
"Had she been but a daughter of mine
I'd taught her to knit and to sew,
But her mother, a charming woman,
Couldn't think of such trifles, you know."
Chorus — 'Tis a match that we all must approve, etc.

"Mr. Lincoln never seemed to me to look awkward or to be careless about
his appearance but once, that I can remember," Mrs. Bradner said. "Mr. Douglas
came to Bloomington to make a speech and I went to hear him. As we got
near to the crowd I saw a man sitting on a log, stooping over with his hat on
the ground in front of him. I didn't recognized the man, but thought to myself
he looked rather careless. Once in a while the man would reach down, pick up
some paper, write on it, and throw it in his hat. When I came nearer I saw it
was Mr. Lincoln. I realized then that he was sitting back there taking notes of
what Mr. Douglas was saying.
"The time that Mr. Lincoln attended the party at our house and struck his
head against the chandelier, he passed it off so nicely it did not seem awkward
ness on his part. In fact, he hit the chandelier twice with his head. The second
time he said, 'Well, that was an awkward piece of business. You know we
haven't got those things at our house.'
"Mr. Lincoln was a kindly, patient man," said Mrs. Bradner. "I visited in
Springfield and knew of his home life. Mrs. Capt. Bradford was a neighbor of
the Lincolns. She told me that Mrs. Lincoln would put the baby in the carriage
and that Mr. Lincoln would wheel it up and down the street after the other men
had gone down to the business of their offices. Mrs. Bradford said to Mr.
Lincoln one day, 'I think that is pretty business for you to be engaged in, when
you ought to be down to your law office.' Mr. Lincoln looked at her and said
slowly, 'I promised.' And then he went on with the baby carriage."
"Mr. Lincoln was not so careless about how his clothes looked as some people
say," continued Mrs. Bradner. "I recollect one afternoon he was called on to go
to tea at somebody's house in Tremont. He had been lying on the grass read
ing. He said he couldn't go and as a reason showed a hole in the elbow of his
coat. The excuse wasn't accepted. Mr. Lincoln yielded and went to the tea, but
he sat through it with one hand over that hole in the elbow."
Mrs. Bradner told of a visit she made to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln at their
Springfield home.
"At the time Mr. Lincoln was elected," she said, "I was in Springfield with
my sister, Mrs. Albert Jones. We went to the Lincolns the next day to offer
our congratulations. Mr. Lincoln was in fine spirits. He told us he thought
he had a good joke on his wife. Pointing to Mrs. Lincoln he said, 'She locked
me out.' Mrs. Lincoln said to him: 'Don't ever tell that again.' But Mr. Lin
coln laughed and went on with the story. He said Mrs. Lincoln had said when
he went downtown in the evening to hear the returns that if he wasn't at home
by 10 o'clock she would lock him out. And she did so. But, Mr. Lincoln said
that when she heard the music coming to serenade them she turned the key in
a hurry."

Albert Blair's Three Vivid Impressions
Three vivid impressions Albert Blair of St. Louis received of Lincoln. He
was a native of Pike County, Illinois, a strongly Democratic section of the state,
a section where Douglas was a political idol.
"The Senator," said Mr. Blair, "opened his campaign in 1858, early in August,
by a speech at Pittsfield, the county town. His devoted constituents were present
in great numbers, and to my young eyes he seemed to be the greatest personage
in the nation — dignified, eloquent and masterful. The idea that Abe Lincoln, the
story-telling rail splitter, should presume to meet him in debate seemed
ridiculous. In October following I was present at Quincy, 111., where a joint
debate between the champions occurred. I was surprised at the very large
number of Republicans present, and their enthusiasm. The 'Little Giant' in
appearance and behavior that day disappointed me. His face was red, his voice
husky, and his temper irritable. Mr. Lincoln was treble-toned, buoyant and
aggressive. The manner in which at times he would tax "my friend Judge
Douglas," with a troublesome question, or answer him humorously with 'that
reminds me of a story,' or with some other form of telling repartee, all result
ing in tremendous laughter and applause, however it may have affected Mr.
Douglas certainly worried me very much, and, although I was too young to
appreciate the arguments of the respective disputants, I went away with an
improved opinion of the strength of the Republican party and of the capabili
ties of Abraham Lincoln.

"In 1859 and 1860 I was a student at Phillips-Exeter Academy, fitting for
Harvard College. Robert Lincoln was there at the same time as a student.
My interest in politics was strong, and I was still hoping that the great Illinois
Senator might gain the presidency. Early in 1860 Mr. Lincoln made a trip to
New York and New England. His speech at Cooper Institute, New York,
attracted great attention, and brought him prominently forward as a possible
nominee of the Republican party for the presidency. Naturally, his visit to
Exeter to see his son was a notable event in the annals of that old academic
town. On Saturday night of his stay he made a political speech in the town
hall. The audience was large, and composed of the best people. Hon. Amos
Tuck presided.
"By this time, as an Illinoisan, I was sensible with pride of the increasing
fame of Mr. Lincoln, and hoped he might make a good impression. With one of
Exeter's charming daughters I sat in the front row of seats, where I had the
best opportunity to hear and observe the speaker. We could not help noticing
his lankness of stature, and an occasional uncouth posture or gesture. Some of
his Western sayings must have sounded very odd to the precise easterlings.
The attitude of the pro-slavery leaders toward Mr. Douglas, he said, reminded
him of a story of a farmer out West who had a troublesome dog, and wished to
get rid of him. One bitter cold night the farmer decided to freeze the dog by
shutting him out in the cold; but somehow the dog would always find an
opportunity to get back within doors. Finally the farmer, in greater deterina-
tion, undertook personally to hold the dog on the north side of the house until

62 A Reporter's Lincoln
the poor creature should succumb. But the dog was the better stayer of the two,
and the farmer concluded to adjourn the killing until a more favorable season.
"During his speech Mr. Lincoln would occasionally put a question to the
audience and pause for a reply. In one instance he looked about from side to
side with an eager, expectant look; no reply coming, he good humoredly said,
'You people here don't jaw back at a fellow as they do out West.'
"These peculiarities did not detract from the general effect. Above the
grotesque and the humorous a lofty feeling was dominant. Whether in boldly
meeting the imperious legalism of the South, or in -laying bare the equivocations
of the Douglas doctrine, or in discussing generally the great issues before the
nation, there was ever the clear, earnest call to reason in behalf of human rights
which did not fail to impress every hearer.

"The month of February, 1865, shortly before the close of the war, and the
death of Mr. Lincoln, I spent in Washington. On one occasion I attended a
reception at the White House. It was a general reception, open to everybody.
The procession of visitors included soldiers and civilians of every rank. Mr.
Lincoln was stationed in one of the smaller rooms, and was attended by Judge
David Davis. In the same room were a number of handsomely dressed ladies,
including Mrs. Lincoln. The visitor was directed by officers first to enter the
ante-room, where he gave his name to a lieutenant, and was by the lieutenant
conducted and introduced to Judge Davis, and by Judge Davis to the president.
A handshake and a word was all that could be practically extended, and the visitor
was expected to move along to the larger East room. After my presentation
and handshake I, in company with a friend, who was familiar with the etiquette
of the White House, stepped aside from the line of exit and took my station for a few
moments near the group of ladies, in order that I might have an opportunity to
observe the president. I stood near enough to hear Mr. Lincoln in conversation
with Judge Davis, which necessarily was quite desultory. The interruptions
were incessant. Now it was 'How do you do, Colonel?' or 'My brave boy.' 'I
am glad to see you,' or some other word of cordial recognition. There was no
official starchiness or affectation. I was, in fact, impressed with the lack of
conventional tone and bearing. I heard Mr. Lincoln, in a most unaffected way,
and in a tone, if not loud, certainly not confined to the judge's hearing, exclaim to
Judge Davis, 'Judge, I never knew until the other day how to spell the word
'maintenance.' ' Then occurred a handshake, or howdy do with some visitor. 'I
always thought it was 'm-a-i-n, main, t-a-i-n, tain, a-n-c-e, ance — maintainance,'
but I find that it is 'm-a-i-n, main, t-e te, n-a-n-c-e, nance — maintenance.' ' This
was a spectacle! The President of a great nation at a formal reception, sur
rounded by many eminent people, statesmen, ministers, scholars, critics and ultra-
fashionable people — by all sorts — who honestly and unconcernedly, in the most
unconventional way, speaks before all as it were, of a personal thing illustrative
of his own deficiency.
"Whether on the platform in a Western town, or before a cultivated audience
in New England, or at the very seat of authority of a great nation, he was ever
the same, unaffectedly honest and open to every observer."

The Friend of the Boys
When William B. Thompson of the St. Louis bar was a boy he went fishing
with Abraham Lincoln. That was before Mr. Lincoln was a candidate for
president; earlier even than the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates. It was when
Mr. Lincoln was practicing law in Springfield and wanted a day off. Then he
would put the neighbors' boys into the family carryall, as many as could be
crowded in, and drive away to the banks of the Sangamon. The Lincoln whom
William B. Thompson remembered best was not the lawyer, the orator, the
candidate, the president, but the friend and associate of every boy on the street
where he lived in Springfield.
"I lived half a block from Mr. Lincoln's," said Mr. Thompson, "and visited
at the house, but more frequently I met Mr. Lincoln on the street as I went to
and from school. Mr. Lincoln was not an observant man on the street; in fact,
he hardly ever saw us unless we spoke to him. He walked along with his hands
behind him, gazing upward and noticing nobody. But it was usual for all of
the boys in the neighborhood to speak to him as we met him. He had endeared
himself to all of us by reason of the interest he took in us. When one of us
spoke to him as he was walking along in his absorbed manner he would stop
and acknowledge the greeting pleasantly. If the boy was small Mr. Lincoln
would often take him up in his arms and talk to him. If the boy was larger Mr.
Lincoln would shake hands and talk with him. It he didn't recall the face he
would ask the name, and if he recognized it he would say, 'Oh, yes; I remember
you.' If the boy was a comparative stranger Mr. Lincoln would treat him so
pleasantly that the boy always wanted to speak to Mr. Lincoln after that when
ever he met him.
"But besides showing interest in us, Mr. Lincoln was exceedingly popular
with the boys in the neighborhood because of the fishing trips of the Sangamon
river he took with us. He owned a bay horse, which was called a 'shaved-tail'
horse. He had a 'calash,' as the roomy vehicle was known. Into the calash Mr.
Lincoln would put all of the boys of the neighborhood who could crowd in, and
drive out to the Sangamon. We carried our lunches and spent the whole day.
After we were pretty well tired tramping about we spread out the lunches. Mr.
Lincoln sat down with us. When we had eaten he told us stories and enter
tained us with his funny comments. No boy who had accompanied Mr. Lincoln
on one of these fishing trips willingly missed another. Johnny Spriggs was one
of those boys. He lived in our block. His mother was a widow. John Spriggs
was hardly grown when four or five years afterward he went into the Union
Army. He became an officer of distinction. For a long time he was connected
with the Rice-Stix dry goods house in St. Louis. As long as he lived John
Spriggs remembered and told those stories he heard from Lincoln on our fish
ing trips. One of the neighbors was Jesse K. Du Bois, who had two boys, one
of whom became a United States senator from Idaho. John G. Ives had three
sons. Mr. Lincoln's boys were Robert and Tad. The neighborhood was well
built up and nearly every family had boys. We went to a school which was
called "the college." One of the principal teachers was Dr. Reynolds, father
of Judge George D. Reynolds of St. Louis, of the St. Louis Court of Appeals.
George attended the school. Boys came from the counties around Springfield
to prepare for college."

64 A Reporter's Lincoln
"A case that Mr. Lincoln had in court at Springfield about 1857 won him
great admiration from the boys," Mr. Thompson recalled. "Quinn Harrison was
charged with murder. Lincoln defended him. Harrison and Crafton, who was
killed, were young fellows. They lived at Pleasant Plains, in Sangamon County.
Harrison was a grandson of Peter Cartwright, the famous pioneer preacher and
circuit rider. Crafton was killed as the result of a quarrel. The feeling was quite
strong between the friends of the two young men. Harrison was prosecuted by
some of the ablest talent at the Springfield bar. My recollection is that James
A. Matheney, who was considered one of the strongest lawyers there at the time,
was -the prosecuting attorney. Mr. Lincoln saved Quinn Harrison, but it was a
very hard fight. We boys followed it throughout. All of us who were able
climbed to the windows. The others hung around the doors of the old court
house. We listened with most careful attention to everything Lincoln said. His
argument to the jury for Quinn Harrison made a lasting impression upon us.
At that time Lincoln had not become famous as a debater. Harrison was
acquitted. We boys agreed that Lincoln's speech and earnest manner did it,
rather than the evidence. 
"I think, perhaps, the Springfield boys recognized the power of Lincoln's
eloquence earlier than did some of their elders," continued Mr. Thompson,
thoughtfully. "Springfield in that day had a number of lawyers who had won
fame at the bar. Milton Hay, the brother of John Hay, had come up from
Belleville with a great reputation as a lawyer. John A. McClernand was known
in all that part of Illinois as the 'Grecian orator' because of the many quotations
from the classics he put into his speeches. McClernand was called the most
scholarly man at the Springfield bar.
"It was said that he had studied with the view of entering the priesthood,
but had taken up the law instead. Logan, Stuart, Edwards, Matheney and Conk-
ling were considered eminent lawyers. Some of them stood so high that they
did not have to go 'on the circuit.' Business came to them in Springfield. But
with the acquittal of Quinn Harrison all of the boys agreed that Mr. Lincoln was
their ideal. We took every opportunity to hear Lincoln speak. The campaign of
1858 was notable for the number of boys who attended whenever Lincoln spoke.
We talked politics. We knew all about the 'Kansas-Nebraska bill.' Stephen
A. Douglas was a favorite orator when the campaign opened. He was very
widely known. He had practised law in Jacksonville, Beardstown and Spring
field and was personally acquainted with every man of prominence. Lincoln
was not so well known. Some of the politicians belittled Lincoln. They did not think
he was up to the standard of Douglas, who had been quite a figure in the Senate. But
the Springfield boys followed the debate with great confidence in Mr. Lincoln.
They never forgot the Quinn Harrison speech. It wasn't long after the speak
ing opened in the campaign before public sentiment as to the relative strength
of Lincoln and Douglas in debate began to change. The older people began to
see Lincoln in the estimate the boys had put upon him. While Lincoln did not
succeed in winning the senatorship from Douglas, the feeling grew that his
position was the stronger. Lincoln's speeches in that campaign of 1858 made a
very strong impression.
"The day Mr. Lincoln left Springfied in 1861 to go to Washington for the
inauguration was the last time I saw him. All of the boys were at the station,
and the most enthusiastic cheering came from them. Some of the older people
looked very serious; they were predicting that Mr. Lincoln would not be allowed

The Friend of the Boys 65
to reach Washington; that he would be stopped if he tried to pass through Mary
land. Many believed there would be interference. I remember that I went up to
John Hay, who was going with Mr. Lincoln, and asked him if he had any doubt
about getting through. As we young fellows shouted our farewell to Mr. Lin
coln that day we felt as if we were parting from a personal friend to whom we
were deeply attached."

"Mr. Lincoln was liked by young and old because he liked both young and
old," George Perrin Davis of Bloomington said. He treasured an autograph
album in which distinguished men, who were the guests or friends of his father,
Mr. Justice David Davis, wrote their sentiments and names at his youthful
requests. Before Mr. Lincoln was nominated for president — indeed, just after
Mr. Lincoln had been beaten for the senatorship by Mr. Douglas — Geoge Perrin
Davis selected him for first place in the autograph album. And Mr. Lincoln
wrote: "My young friend, George Perrin Davis, has allowed me the honor of being
the first to write his name in this book. "A. LINCOLN.
"Bloomington, December 21, 1858."
Abraham Lincoln and George Perrin Davis, with a third of a century
between their ages, were friends. Mr. Lincoln was a visitor at the Davis home
from the earliest time that George Perrin Davis could remember. One year
George Perrin Davis "rode the circuit" day after day, week after week, the boy
companion of Mr. Lincoln.
"The eighth circuit," he said, "as established in 1847, extended on the north
from Woodford to the Indiana state line, south as far as Shelby and the western
counties were Sangamon, Logan and Tazewell. It had nearly 11,000 square
miles, about one-fifth of the whole state. There were no mail roads for many
years and but few bridges over the rivers. Courts were held in the various
counties twice a year, lasting from two or three days to a week. After court had
adjourned in one county, the judge rode to the next county seat, and was followed
by the state's attorney, whose authority extended over the whole circuit, and by
some of the lawyers to a few of the counties near their homes. Mr. Lincoln,
however, rode the entire circuit to all of the courts, which lasted about three
months in the spring and three in the fall. Most of the lawyers rode horseback.
After a few years my father, who was the circuit judge, and Mr. Lincoln were
able to afford a buggy. My father, who was a very heavy man, used two horses.
Mr. Lincoln had a one-horse open buggy and drove his horse, 'Old Buck,' as I
remember his name. In the fall of 1850, when I was 8 years old, my mother
went around the circuit with my father and Mr. Lincoln took me in his buggy. I
have a distinct recollection of Mr. Lincoln, the horse and the buggy, but can not
remember much of what Mr. Lincoln said."
Boylike, Mr. Davis received some impressions on that trip which he recalled
fifty years later. At Danville he saw his first coal fire, except in a forge, and
amused himself heating and bending the poker. At Springfield the state's
attorney, Mr. Campbell, delighted the boy with the gift of some percussion caps,
which Master George proceeded to explode upon the wheels of Mr. Lincoln's
buggy, getting some of the copper into his face. One incident was very
characteristic of the age of Mr. Lincoln's associate on the memorable trip. The

66 A Reporter's Lincoln
boy wished to know from his own observation how tall Mr. Lincoln was. And
the lawyer was obliging.
"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Davis, "was very tall, 6 feet 4^4 inches, as I measured
him although he gives it himself in his autobiography, addressed to Jesse W.
Fell, at 6 feet 4 inches nearly; but when he became much interested in his speech
he looked as if he was 8 feet high."
At the home of his friend, Judge Davis, Mr. Lincoln spent considerable time
in 1858, "while he was writing some of his debates with Mr. Douglas," George
Perrin Davis recalled. Most of Mr. Lincoln's speeches were not written out in
advance of delivery. Those for the joint debates were prepared with extra
ordinary care.
"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Davis, "did not care much about dress, though he
was always clean. I thought his clothes were too short for him, especially his
coat. For a necktie he wore an old-fashioned stiff stock, which clasped around
his neck. When he got interested in his speech he would take it off and unbutton
his shirt and give room for his Adam's apple to play up and down. He had a
clear voice that could be heard a great distance, every word of a sentence equally
clear, a great contrast to Mr. Douglas, who failed sometimes to send every word
the same distance. Mr. Lincoln was clean shaven until he was elected president."
The historical society at Bloomington preserves as one of its most valued
records the tribute paid by Senator Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana, who as a
young lawyer practiced in the courts of Illinois along the Indiana line and met
Mr. Lincoln and Judge Davis frequently. Of Lincoln and Douglas, Senator
Voorhees wrote:
"They made such an impression on me as no two other men whom I have
met in the tide of time or of whom I have read in the realm of history."

George T. M. Davis, the Alton editor, twenty-five years the friend of Lincoln,
left his family an unpublished autobiography. A limited number of copies was
printed and given to personal friends. In this way has been preserved the narra
tive of an incident revealing Lincoln, the father. Affection for his sons was a
marked trait of Mr. Lincoln. There are many stories illustrative of that. But
the methods Mr. Lincoln employed to instill into the minds of his boys the
cardinal virtues have received little attention from the biographers. Mr. Davis
told what he witnessed on one occasion:
"I made a visit on business one summer to Springfield, where Mr. Lincoln
resided. While I was standing on the sidewalk, on the shady side of the hotel
where I was stopping, Mr. Lincoln came along with his youngest pet boy, Tad,
who was holding on to the tip of the tail of father's frock coat. We drew up
chairs in the shade and at once engaged in talking politics. Tad changed his
position by taking refuge between his father's knees, and remained there a silent
listener during our conversation. In a short time Bob, who was considerably
older than Tad, came along, and, noticing us, also stopped and joined our circle.
In a side conversation that ensued between the two brothers, the purport of which
I had not noticed, something was said that induced their father to pause for a
moment in his talk with me, and, turning to the boys, he exclaimed:
" 'Tad, show Mr. Davis the knife I bought you yesterday,' and, turning to
me, he added, 'It's the first knife Tad ever had, and it's a big thing for him.'
"Tad hesitating and making no reply, his father asked. 'You haven't lost your
knife, have you?'

The Friend of the Boys 67
" 'No, but I ain't got any,' the boy said.
"'What has become of it?' inquired Mr. Lincoln in his quizzical and usual
smiling, pleasant way. There was another momentary pause on the part of
Tad, when he replied to his father, in the fullness of his childish simplicity, and
the truthfulness which was a prominent element of his birthright:
" 'Bob told me if he was me, he'd swap my knife for candy.'
"At this Mr. Lincoln gave one of his good-natured laughs, and turning to Bob
— who by this time bore somewhat the semblance of slight embarrassment —
but without the slighest change in either his merry tone or manner, asked:
"'Bob, how much did you pay for that candy?'
"Bob naming the price, his father said to him, 'Why, Tad's knife cost three
bits (37^4 cents); do you think you made a fair trade with Tad?'
"Bob, in a prompt and manly tone, which I shall never forget, answered his
father, 'No, sir,' and taking the knife out of his pocket, said 'Here, Tad, is your
knife,' which Tad, with evident delight, took back, but without a word of com
ment. Their father, however, said to the eldest:
" 'I guess, Bob, that's about right on your part, and now, Tad, as you've
got your knife, you must give back to Bob the candy he gave you for the knife.'
"Tad exclaimed, 'I can't, 'cause I ate up all the candy Bob give me, and I
ain't got no money to buy it.'
"'Oh!' said Mr. Lincoln, 'what will you do them? Bob must have his candy
back to make things square between you.'
"Tad was evidently in a quandary, and was at a loss how to get out of it,
but his father, after waiting a few moments, and without making the slightest
comment, handed Tad a bit (12J4 cents). Tad looked at it with a good deal of
satisfaction and shrieked out in his boyish glee:
" 'Come on, Bob, I'll get your candy back for you.'
"Both the father and I joined in a hearty laugh, and as the boys started off
Mr. Lincoln called out to them:
" 'Boys, I reckon that's about right between you. Bob, do you take Tad
right home as soon as he has paid you the candy.'
"Such was the sense and conviction of duty, justice, honor, integrity and
truthfulness of Abraham Lincoln."

Mr. Lincoln did not hesitate to tell the same story more than once, or to
vary it to make the application fit. He also modified or amended those apt say
ings, which will never die, in order that they might suit different occasions. Maj.
William K. Patrick of St. Louis recalled the story about the brand of whiskey
which Grant drank, but he obtained it from another source than the late Henry
T. Blow, and in somewhat different form from the version which William Hyde
used to tell. Mr. Hyde, afterwards editor, was a reporter of the Missouri Repub
lican when Mr. Blow brought the story to St. Louis from Washington, during
the war, and gave it local currency.
"The story as I heard it," said Maj. Patrick, "was that President Lincoln
made use of the inquiry in conversation with Capt. W. J. Kountz. Capt. Kountz,
a wealthy steamboatman from Pittsburg, had obtained from the secretary of the
treasury, through his Pennsylvania friends, a permit to buy cotton outside the
Union military lines and ship the same up North. Capt. Kountz presented the
permit to Gen. Grant, who refused to allow the agents of the captain to go
beyond the military lines around Memphis. The captain was very indignant at

68 A Reporter's Lincoln
being turned down, and took himself back to Washington. Calling on Mr. Lin
coln, he stated his case, and demanded that Gen. Grant be relieved as commander
of the Department of the Tennessee. To make his case as strong as possible,
he said that Gen. Grant was a hard drinker. Mr. Lincoln listened with his usual
patience to the tirade and asked Capt. Kountz what brand of whiskey Gen. Grant
used. The captain said he didn't know. Then Mr. Lincoln said: 'Find out and
let me know, so I can send a barrel to each of my generals.' "

Mr. Lincoln's different ways of telling the same story was illustrated in con
nection with the historic joint debates. At one of those meetings Mr. Douglas
said something half-way complimentary to Mr. Lincoln. When Mr. Lincoln
arose he acknowledged the consideration of Senator Douglas, and added he felt
a good deal as did the Hoosier who said he liked gingerbread better than any
body on this earth, and got less of it than anybody on this earth. In as much as
Senator Douglas had been anything but complimentary before that meeting, and
in as much as Mr. Lincoln had been unmercifully abused and misrepresented by
the opposition from the beginning of the debates up to that time, the Hoosier
story caught the popular sense of humor and made a great hit. That was in 1858.
Several years afterwards, while he was in the White House, President Lincoln
made use of the same story, but amplified it, showing its origin. The application
was as happy as that in response to Douglas' faint praise. A Southerner, who
had not gone with the Confederacy, but who had remained in Washington and
had gradually overcome his intense personal prejudices toward Mr. Lincoln after
several interviews with him, said to the president one day that he had heard
everything mean about him that could be said of a man except one failing; he
had never heard that Mr. Lincoln was too fond of the pleasures of life. Mr.
Lincoln looked thoughtful at his rather meager, if not begrudged, tribute, and
after a little hesitation said he was reminded of what a boy had said to him when
he was quite small.
"Once in awhile my mother used to get some sorghum and ginger and make
some gingerbread," was the way Mr. Lincoln told it. "It wasn't often, and it
was our biggest treat. One day I smelled the gingerbread and came into the
house to get my share while it was hot. My mother had baked me three ginger
bread men. I took them out under a hickory tree to eat them. There was a
family near us that was a little poorer than we were, and their boy came along
as I sat down.
" 'Abe,' he said, 'gimme a man?'
"I gave him one. He crammed it into his mouth in two bites and looked at
me while I was biting the legs from my first one.
" 'Abe,' he said, 'gimme that other'n.'
"I wanted it myself, but I gave it to him, and as it followed the first I said
to him, 'You seem to like gingerbread?'
" 'Abe,' he said, 'I don't suppose there's anybody on this earth likes ginger
bread better'n I do.' He drew a long breath before he added, 'and I don't suppose
there's anybody on this earth gets less'n I do.' "
The old Southerner who told this remarked that when Mr. Lincoln had
finished the story there didn't seem to be anything more to be said.

The Bixby Collection

Abraham Lincoln stands at the head of the class of American presidents in
penmanship, in spelling, in punctuation and in grammatical construction. "Awk
ward," "uncouth," "ungainly" are some of the adjectives used to describe him
physically. And yet when Mr. Lincoln took pen in hand he wrote "like copper
plate." The letters were distinct. The words were complete. The writing was
as easily read as print. There was mechanical finish and perfection about a
specimen of Mr. Lincoln's writing, whether he used the old quill, the pencil or
the pen. Eugene Field, the poet, wrote a style that was very like that of Mr.
Lincoln. At the age of 23 Mr. Lincoln could have qualified for teacher of pen
manship in a commercial college. At the age of 50, with the crowded law practice
and with the rush of political correspondence upon him, he did not do as fine
pen work as in his younger days. When he began law practice he had time to
carry out his liking for a beautifully written page. Some of the legal papers pre
pared in that period of his career are marvelously well done. The lines are
written as regularly as if the paper was ruled. Every "t" is crossed. Every
comma requisite is in place. Not a misspelled word can be found. Seldom
a correction was made after the first draft. As a rule interlineations in any
thing written by Mr. Lincoln — legal document, letter or speech — were rare, even
in the later days, when the exercise of care in the writing is not so evident.
Mr. Lincoln was not at all boastful of his superiority as a writer. The biogra
phers record that when, just old enough to vote, he was asked at the polling place
in New Salem if he could .write, he replied, "A little bit. I can make a few
rabbit tracks." This sounds like Mr. Lincoln, and yet it was strange that a
young man who wrote such an unusual hand as he did should have been asked
that question by one of his neighbors.
To write was a family characteristic of the Lincolns. The president had
first cousins, sons of his father's brother, who wrote in plain legible style much
better than the average person of their day. None of them wrote as well as did
Abraham Lincoln of Sangamon. Whence came this accomplishment? Lincoln
had it from the time he was a very young man. He was self educated, but this
gift of superior handwriting was an inheritance and it came with the steady
nerves and the equable disposition on the Lincoln side of the house.
While Mr. Lincoln did not make boast of his skill with the pen, he indirectly
let it be seen that he scrutinized the composition of the other fellow. In one
case, the papers of which have been preserved in the county where the trial took
place, Mr. Lincoln wrote that the indictment was bad, "in that it does not show
with sufficient certainty whether the defendant was the murderer of the mur
dered man."
Painstaking is not the word that applies to Lincoln's writing. The pen or
pencil moved over the page easily, naturally, readily. That is apparent from
the style of writing. Even stronger evidence is found in the volume of written
matter which Mr. Lincoln turned out. From the beginning of his career as a
lawyer down through the busiest days at the White House, Mr. Lincoln wrote
and wrote. There are in existence letters and papers of his penmanship in greater
number probably than any other president wrote. The letters number thousands.
Many of them bear evidence that they were not answers and need not have been

70 A Reporter's Lincoln
written and would not have been written by one to whom writing was irksome or
in any sense a task. Lincoln liked to write so well that he very seldom dictated
anything. When it was suggested to him, in 1858, during the campaign against
Douglas for the senatorship that he avail himself of the assistance of a young
newspaper man in the revision of his speeches for the press, Mr. Lincoln declined
with a smile.

In the extensive and widely varied collection of Lincoln papers possessed by
William K. Bixby of St. Louis are interesting revelations of this strong writing
habit of Mr. Lincoln. Whether in letter, law paper or state document, the com
position was simple and closely condensed. But this did not mean that Mr. Lin
coln wished to g«t through as quickly as possible. It indicated the habit of mind.
There are very few letters of Mr. Lincoln which exceed a single page.
Prince L. Hudgins was a lawyer in St. Louis who was charged with conspiring
against the government. In his letter to President Lincoln, Mr. Hudgins
explained that the charge against him was based on a speech he had made in
St. Joseph several months before the law under which he was being prosecuted
was enacted. Congressman King presented the petition and recommended the
pardon. The president wrote on the papers:
"Attorney General: Please see Mr. King and make out the pardon he asks.
Give this man a fair deal, if possible."
And then, probably after a little further conversation with the Missourian,
the president, in the kindness of his heart, added this to the indorsement:
"Gov. King leaves Saturday evening and would want to have it with him to
take along, if possible. Would wish it made out as soon as conveniently can
be." The attention which the president gave personally to even routine matters
is shown by the instructions and comments written by him upon these many
papers in the Bixby collection, the most of which have never been printed. Upon
the application for a judgeship at Plattsmouth, Utah, appears this in the well-
known hand:
"I knew George May when a boy and young man, then a little inclined to be
dissipated. If free from that now, he has intellect for almost any place. I
suppose the within names ought to be a sufficient voucher as to that.
A. LINCOLN."
"The within names" indorsing May are those of James Harlan, James F.
Wilson and James W. Grimes of Iowa. Harlan and Grimes were senators and
Wilson was a representative in Congress from Iowa.
Upon the application of Judge S. P. McCurdy of Missouri for an appoint
ment President Lincoln made an indorsement which reveals how well he remem
bered the sharp division between Missouri Republicans:
"This is a good recommendation for a territorial judgeship, embracing both
sides in Missouri and many other respectable gentlemen.
A. L."
Gov. Green Clay Smith of Kentucky presented in person, it appears from the
papers in Mr. Bixby's collection, an application for a pardon in behalf of William
Duke. Col. Duke wrote that "in a state of excitement he had accepted a com
mission to raise a regiment" for the Confederate cause, but had reconsidered
almost immediately, had taken the oath of allegiance and had given a bond of
$5000 for his loyalty. Mr. Lincoln wrote upon the papers:

The Bixby Collection 71
"William Duke is hereby pardoned for all offenses herein confessed by him
up to the time of his taking the oath and giving bond.
A. L."
Then he gave to Mr. Smith this note to the attorney general:
"Please make out and send for my signature a formal pardon according to
letter with my little indorsement which will be shown you by Gov. Green Clay
Smith." Upon the papers accompanying an application for a justice of the peace
appointment in Washington the president wrote:
"I do not recollect having acquaintance with Esquire Ferguson, but if the
commissioner of public buildings inclines to appoint him to any place I have
no objection.
A. L."
In forwarding the papers of Joseph M. Root of Ohio to the proper cabinet
officer the president wrote upon the back:
"Of course it is not proper for me to indulge my personal feelings, but I am
very partial to Mr. Root."
The papers which Mr. Bixby has in his collection come down to the last
days. There is the pardon of James McCan, granted on the 22d of March, 1865,
with this indorsement:
"On the request of Vice-President Johnson it is ordered that a special pardon
be made out in this case. A. LINCOLN."

The kindly consideration for others which was shown by President Lincoln
was marvelous. In the closing weeks of the war, with a multitude of matters
pressing for attention, he went on examining and indorsing this endless mail
conscientiously and thoughtfully. On the 9th of March, 1865, he sent an
unsuccessful candidate's papers to the Department of Justice with this written
by him on the back:
"This came to me at half-past 3 p. m., after the nomination for district attor
ney had been sent in. A. L."
Mr. Bixby has a letter written by Mr. Lincoln to O. H. Browning of Quincy,
upon a professional matter, which illustrates the aptitude of the writer in coin
ing phrases to express a great deal. The letter was sent in June, 1857:
"I learned that this note was given as a sort of 'insolvent fix-up' with his
creditors — a fact in his history I have not before learned of. Our interview ended
in the assurance he will pay it middle of June."
A copy of a telegram in his own hand-writing which Mr. Lincoln sent from
the War Department to Mrs. Lincoln while she was in Boston the 9th of
November, 1862, reads:
"Mrs. Cuthbert and Aunt Mary want to move to the White House because it
has grown so cold at Soldiers' Home. Shall they?
A. LINCOLN."

72 A Reporter's Lincoln
Robert Lincoln in Two Crises
The visit to his son at the Exeter institution was to have important bearing
upon Mr. Lincoln's political fortunes. At the time it was prompted probably with
no other motive than a father's solicitude for his eldest son. Robert Todd Lin
coln, in a reminiscent talk with Frederick W. Lehmann, told how unconsciously
at the time, he had been associated with two crises in his father's life. The first
was in the winter of 1859-60, a few months before the nomination. Mr. Lincoln
very much desired that Robert should go to Harvard. Like many other men who
had been denied advantages of higher education he was determined that his
son should have the best that the time afforded. The son was not so strongly
inclined toward Harvard. However, in accord with his father's wishes he went
on from Springfield to Cambridge. He quickly discovered that he lacked the
preparation for the high standards of the entrance examination. The Phillips-
Exeter Academy was the leading preparatory school for college in those days.
Thither Robert was sent, rather reluctantly on his own part, to be made ready
for Harvard. Mr. Lincoln was so deeply interested in his plans for his son's
education that one of the strong inducements to make the eastern trip and
speak at Cooper Institute in New York City was his desire to see how Robert
was progressing with his studies. From New York, Mr. Lincoln went to New
Hampshire. On the way to and from Exeter he made several speeches in New
England. Robert Lincoln said to Mr. Lehmann that the record of the balloting
at the Chicago convention a few months later showed that the Eastern States
which were the first to come over to the support of his father and insure the
nomination were those where the speeches on the Exeter trip were made.
The other crisis, in which he unconsciously had a part, Robert Lincoln said
to Mr. Lehmann was the night of the tragedy in Ford's Theater.
That day Robert Lincoln had come up to Washington from Virginia where
he had been doing staff duty. He went to the White House and after the
exchange of greetings was told of the plan to attend the theater that evening.
The President said there would be room for him in the box and asked him to be
one of the party. The son excused himself on the plea that he was tired and
would prefer to rest. Robert Lincoln told Mr. Lehmann that he learned after
wards the one vacant seat in the box which he would have occupied was directly
in front of the door by which Booth entered. He thought if he had gone to the
theater and had taken that chair he might have been in a position to save his
father's life.

The Courtship and Home Life
The true story of Abraham Lincoln's courtship, marriage and home life is
not the story that has been oft told with variations. It differs in detailed circum
stances and in general spirit from much that has been printed hitherto. The
ture story was told by Albert Stevenson Edwards. There was, at the time, no
one living so well qualified as Mr. Edwards to speak of Lincoln the lover, and
of Lincoln, the husband. Albert Stevenson Edwards was the son of Ninian W.
Edwards. His grandfather was Ninian Edwards, the pioneer governor of Illinois,
coming from Lexington, Ky. Ninian W. Edwards was educated at the pld
Transylvania University in Lexington. There he courted and married Elizabeth,
the oldest of a family of famous sisters. Ninian W. Edwards early made his
home in Springfield. Sisters of Mrs. Edwards came from Lexington to visit
her until one after another, three of them, Frances, Mary and Ann Todd, were
married and residing in Springfield. The third of these sisters became the wife
of Abraham Lincoln. She wore to the end of her troubled days the plain gold
band placed there by her husband, inscribed "Love is eternal." Town gossips
dealt harshly and unjustly with Mrs. Lincoln in the Springfield years. Writers
in Washington held this lady up to ridicule and adverse criticism. The makers of
Lincoln literature have followed this lead of misjudgment and misrepresentation,
even to the present. At the home of Ninian W. Edwards, Abraham Lincoln and
Mary Todd first met. There the acquaintance grew quickly into stronger senti
ment. There the courtship was seriously discouraged, but there, when family
reasoning was unavailing, the wedding fook place. And, finally, in that home
Mrs. Lincoln found refuge and peace after all of her sorrows in the closing
years of her life.

Albert Stevenson Edwards was a child witness of the marriage of his aunt to
Mr. Lincoln. He became the favorite nephew of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. In his
youth he spent many of his Saturdays and Sundays at the home of Mr. and Mrs.
Lincoln. In later years he lived in that home, having been, most fittingly, given
charge of it by the state. Sitting in the corner room of the home, with family
reminders all about him, with original letters and records at hand, Mr. Edwards
talked frankly about periods and events in the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln.
He was a man of the even-balanced Edwards temperament, not inclined to make
gossip and parade family history, and consenting only to the conversation because
he felt it a duty to correct so much of misrepresentation which has been published.
"The acquaintance of my father with Mr. Lincoln," Mr. Edwards said, "began
before Mr. Lincoln moved to Springfield. Dr. William Jayne's father and my
father went out from Springfield to New Salem on some business matter and there
saw Mr. Lincoln, then quite a young man, about 25 years old. They were a
good deal impressed with his brightness. Old Dr. Jayne said to my father, indi
cating Mr. Lincoln, 'That young man over there will be governor of Illinois
some day.' The acquaintance was renewed and strengthened when Mr. Lin
coln went to the Legislature in 1834. My father was attorney general of the state.
To the next Legislature Sangamon County sent a delegation to work for the
removal of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. That delegation was
composed of two senators and seven representatives. Sangamon was a large

74 A Reporter's Lincoln
county, much larger than it is now. The delegation was selected with care for
what it was expected to accomplish. Mr. Lincoln and my father were two of
the representatives. The other five were: William F. Elkins, Dan Stone, John
Dawson, Andrew McCormick, Robert L. Wilson. The state senators were:
Archer G. Herndon and Job Fletcher. This delegation was known as 'the long
nine,' because the most of them were men of extraordinary stature. My father
was a man 6 feet and 3 inches, only 1 inch shorter than Mr. Lincoln. McCormick
was a very large man. Elkins was the smallest. Together those nine men
measured 54 feet. The delegation was successful in what it undertook. On the
25th of February, 1837, the Legislature voted to remove the capital from Vanda
lia to Springfield. Three days later the account for the entertainment of the
legislators was presented to the Sangamon delegation."
Mr. Edwards crossed the room and took from the wall this framed record of
hospitality. Vandalia, 111., Feb. 28, 1837.
Colonel Dawson to E. Capps, Dr.:
81 bottles of champagne at $2.00 each  $162.00
Drinks  6.00
32 pounds almonds  8.00
14 pounds raisins  10.00
Cigars  10.00
Oysters  10.00
Apples  3.00
Eatables  12.00
Breakage  2.00
Sundries  50
Total  $223.50
Rec'd payment of N. W. Edwards, March 4th. E. CAPPS.
"Ebenezer Capps," explained Mr. Edwards, as he restored the bill to its
place among the relics of the Lincoln home, "was the principal storekeeper at
Vandalia. It was about that time Mr. Lincoln moved from New Salem to
Springfield. I have never heard why Mr. Lincoln made the change of residence.
I suppose it was because Springfield was the larger place, with more future to it.
My father from the beginning admired Mr. Lincoln and maintained friendship
with him all of the time afterward. Mr. Lincoln's first call at my father's house
was made in 1837. He was a frequent and welcome visitor there afterward,
except during the period of the courtship between my aunt and Mr. Lincoln."

"There is no foundation for that statement." Mr. Edwards said, with empha
sis, when reference was made to the story repeatedly published that the wedding
of Mr. Lincoln was postponed because of his failure to appear at the appointed
time. "My father entertained a great deal." Mr. Edwards continued. "He kept
open house, you might say, in those days, when the capital was being moved
and established in Springfield. The governor received a very small salary, $1500
or $1800 a year. My father was looked upon as a man of considerable means.
As a matter of public spirit, he undertook to supply the social courtesies deemed

The Courtship and Home Life 75
necessary at the new capital. He gave out that he would have four receptions
during the session, inviting the members of the Legislature, the state officers
and judges of the Supreme Court and leading lawyers, dividing them into four
lists. He carried out the programme to the letter, entertaining that first winter
the entire state government. There were many relatives of our family, young
ladies. Father was a great hand to have the house full of company. In the
Legislature of 1840 and 1842 were the young men who afterward became the
most distinguished in the state. Lincoln was about 30, bright and jolly, and a
great favorite with all of the young ladies at my father's. From 1837 to 1839
he was one of the most frequent visitors. There was nothing bashful about him.
The ladies would urge him to call again. My father had a relative here from
Alton, Matilda Edwards, daughter of Cyrus Edwards, a very bright girl. The
family thought that Lincoln was much taken with Matilda, but nothing came
of it beyond story-telling and fun-making. That first session of the Legislature
at Springfield the House of Representatives met in the Second Presbyterian
Church, the Senate in the First Methodist Church and the Supreme Court in the
Episcopal Church. You see, Springfield had obtained the capital before provision
had been made to take care of the Legislature. My father felt that it devolved
upon him to provide hospitality, and so it was that his home became the social
center. My mother's sisters came from Lexington to help do the entertaining.
Francis was the second and Mary was the third of the family. Mr. Lincoln met
Mary Todd soon after her arrival in 1839."

Mr. Edwards took up some family papers and showed this description of
Mary Todd as a young lady, given by one of her sisters:
"She had a plump, round figure and was rather short of stature. Her features
were not regularly beautiful, but she was certainly very pretty, with her lovely
complexion, soft brown hair, and clear blue eyes and intelligent bright face. She
was singularly sensitive. She was also impulsive, and made no attempt to con
ceal her feelings; indeed, it would have been an impossibility had she desired to
do so, for her face was an index to every passing emotion. Without desiring
to wound, she occasionally indulged in sarcastic, witty remarks, that cut like a
damascus blade, but there was no malice behind them. She was full of humor,
but never unrefined. Perfectly frank and extremely spirited, her candor of
speech and independence of thought often gave offense where none was meant,
for a more affectionate heart never beat."
If this is a true analysis of Mary Todd's character, and there is no reason to
doubt the sister's estimate, writers on Lincoln have done his wife injustice. Mr.
Lincoln's calls at the Edward's home became more frequent after the arrival of
Mary Todd. Other young lawyers flocked to the house, among them Stephen A.
Douglas, who was very much smitten with the little Kentucky girl. But it was
not many weeks before Mary Todd began to show decided preference for
Abraham Lincoln.
"My mother and my father both liked Mr. Lincoln," Mr. Edward's said. "Up
to the time of the courtship they had made Lincoln welcome and had encouraged
his visits. A cousin of my mother, John Todd Stuart, was the law partner of
Mr. Lincoln. But my mother and my father at that time didn't want Mary to
marry Mr. Lincoln. There was no objection to the match on the ground of Mr.
Lincoln's character or social standing. But Mr. Lincoln then hadn't $500 to his
name. He was just getting started in the practice of his profession. My mother

76 A Reporter's Lincoln
and my father felt that he could not support Mary as they thought she ought
to be maintained, and for that reason only they opposed the engagement. Mary
Todd might have married Douglas at any time. Shields paid her attention as
did others. But Lincoln and Mary fell in love with each other almost at their
first meeting in 1839. Mary was the belle of that period in the new capital. She
was full of jokes. I have heard them tell of her pranks. One day she was down
town with several other young ladies. Springfield had few sidewalks at that time.
Mary and her companions took a dray, climbed on and rode home to escape
walking through the mud. When my mother saw that things were becoming
serious between Lincoln and Mary, she treated him rather coldly. The invitations
to call were not pressed. This didn't have the effect my mother intended. Dur
ing 1841 and 1842 my mother did what she could to break up the match."

Springfield people remember Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, the eldest of the Todd
sisters, as a lady of far more than ordinary attractiveness. Mrs. Edwards' traits
especially fitted her to carry out her husband's spirit of hospitality. She was of
gentle, winning disposition, a charming hostess; she is remembered to this day
as having been the social leader at the new state capital. Mrs. Edwards did not
resort to measures strenuous or extreme to prevent the marriage of her spirited
sister, but she tried to avert it in her own way without hurting the feelings of
Mr. Lincoln.
Lincoln was 30 and Mary Todd was nearly 20 when their acquaintance began.
Lincoln's law practice was very small. He had been admitted to the bar only a
short time before. He felt the weight of the seriousness of the objection which
Mrs. Edwards raised. The girl was deeply in love with him. She was impulsive
and strong-willed. It fell to Lincoln to do some hard thinking for both of them.
That he had periods of depression and despondency, as he contemplated his
unfortunate financial condition and realized what was expected of him, is not
to be wondered. Mary Todd was highly educated for that day. Mr. Edwards
preserved an account of her school days, written to a sister of Mrs. Lincoln by
a schoolmate who remembered these facts:
"Mary was bright and talkative and warm-hearted. She was far advanced
over girls of her age in education. She was a pupil of the celebrated Mr. Ward.
He was a splendid educator; his requirements and rules were very strict, and
woe to her who did not conform to the letter. Mary accepted the condition of
things and never came under his censure. We occupied the same room, and I
can see her now as she sat on one side of a table, poring over her books, and I
on the other, with a candle between. She was very studious, with a retentive
memory and a mind that enabled her to grasp and thoroughly understand the
lessons she was required to learn. Mr. Ward required his pupils to recite some
of their lessons before breakfast. On a pleasant summer morning, nature would
hardly rebel, but what an ordeal to rise in winter by candlelight and make the
needful preparations to encounter the furious blasts! I have nothing but the
most pleasant memories of her at that time. I never saw any display of temper,
nor saw her reprimanded during the months I was an inmate of your father's
house." The education that Mary Todd received included the classics. She studied
Latin and Greek. From Ward she went to a finishing school kept by Mrs. Montell
for the favored daughters of the blue grass region. There she remained four

The Courtship and Home Life 77
years. Nothing but French was spoken at that school. All of her life Mrs. Lin
coln was a thorough French scholar, speaking and reading the language. She
read the best French authors. At this school of Mrs. Montell Mary Todd was
taught, with other accomplishments, dancing. She came heart free to the new
Illinois capital. One of her especial friends in Lexington had been Miss
Margaret Wickliffe, who became the wife of Gen. William Preston. The
father of the Todd sisters was Robert Smith Todd, descended from an
old colonial and revolutionary family. He was a merchant in Lexington,
and for some years president of a bank. His first wife, the mother
of Mrs. Lincoln, was a daughter of Maj. Robert Parker of Lexington.

Mary Todd, of the best blood of Kentucky, fascinating in appearance and in
manner, intellectual, educated with the best advantages that Lexington could
give, quickly fell in love with Abraham Lincoln, the young lawyer just starting
in his profession. Her bright sayings became the talk of the town. At least
one of them was at the expense of Mr. Lincoln. It is told that at a social gather
ing Mr. Lincoln approached the young lady and said to her:
"Miss Mary, I want to dance with you the worst way."
The pressing request was complied with. A little later one of the other
young ladies mischievously asked how Lincoln danced.
"The worst way," laconically replied Miss Mary.
She was Miss Mary, for there was between Mrs. Edwards and Mary Todd,
another sister, Frances, who also spent much of her time in Springfield, a guest
at the hospitable Edwards' home, and who married a Springfield resident, Dr.
Wallace. The Wallace wedding was one of the grand affairs of its time. Curiously
this marriage of the Wallaces has been described and pictured again and again,
even down to the immediate present, as the wedding of Abraham Lincoln and
Mary Todd, which was an altogether different kind of an affair. One of the
earliest biographers of Lincoln led off with a description of this Wallace wed
ding, mistaking it for the Lincoln wedding, and other writers have fallen into
the same error, making it contribute to the misrepresentation of Mrs. Lincoln
and using it as evidence of excessive display and vanity on the part of one who
was to marry a young man of no financial resources. The facts are that the
marriage of Lincoln and Mary Todd was an unostentatious affair, taking place
on short notice in the presence of a few relatives. The grand affair was the
wedding of the sister which preceded it only a few weeks. The biographer
Herndon made this mistake of confusing the Lincoln with the Wallace wedding.
Later writers have accepted his version.

"When Lincoln saw that his attentions to my aunt were looked upon coldly
by my mother and father, his visits to our house became less frequent," Mr.
Edwards said. "But that did not mean a suspension of the courtship. Lincoln
and Mary arranged to meet at the houses of mutual friends. One of the houses
where they were made welcome and where they met often was the residence
of Simeon Francis, who was editor of the Sangamo Journal, as it was then called.
Afterward Sangamo, the Indian form, was changed to Sangamon. There was no
break in the courtship and there was no setting of the date and then postponing
the marriage. The courtship was a long one because Lincoln was in no condition
to support a wife. The two remained loyal to each other, meeting from time to

78 A Reporter's Lincoln
time and waiting for Mr. Lincoln's circumstances to justify marriage. Very
shortly after Frances Todd married Dr. Wallace, Mary told my mother that Mr.
Lincoln and she were going to be married that night. At the same time Mr.
Lincoln met my father on the street and said that they were going to be married
that evening at the residence of Simeon Francis. My father said to Mr. Lincoln:
" 'That will never do. Mary Todd is my ward. If the marriage is going to take
place, it must be at my house.'
"There was an immediate change of plans. The arrangements were made for
a quiet wedding that Sunday evening. Word was sent to the relatives in Spring
field. The ceremony was performed in the presence of a few people thus hastily
summoned. 
The wedding took place on the 4th of November, 1842. Mr. Edwards was
present, but a child. His statements as to the circumstances are borne out by
the often-repeated recollections of Mrs. Lincoln's sisters. Mrs. Dr. Wallace said
again and again that there was only one ceremony arranged for, and that there
was absolutely no truth in the Herndon story that Lincoln disappeared and could
not be found when the hour came. Mrs. Wallace was as positive in her correc
tions of other misstatements made by Herndon and repeated by other writers
that the wedding was a large one, that Mrs. Lincoln wore a white silk dress, and
so on. The Lincoln marriage was a quiet one by the expressed preference of the
bride. According to the very clear and definite statement of Mrs. Wallace, Mr.
Lincoln and Mary Todd told Mrs. Edwards on a Sunday morning that they had
decided to be married that evening. Mr. Lincoln went in search of Mr. Edwards
and told him. Mrs. Wallace was sent for. The sisters hurried the preparations.
They yielded their objections and determined that Mary should have a home wed
ding, instead of going to the home of Mr. Francis. Mrs. Wallace, in telling of the
preparations, said she never worked harder in her life than she did that Sunday
in November, getting things ready for the marriage. Only a few persons were
present, as Mrs. Wallace clearly remembered. They were Mr. and Mrs. Ben
jamin Edwards, Maj. and Mrs. John Todd Stuart, Dr. John Todd and family,
Dr. and Mrs. Wallace, and, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, and
perhaps one or two others. The bride, Mrs. Wallace said, wore a simple white
muslin dress. The ceremony was performed by Rev. Mr. Dresser, who came up
to Mr. Edwards' house following the evening service at his church. After this
quiet marriage Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln went to the tavern and boarded until they
were able to furnish three or four rooms. In a few years they were able to buy
a story and a half house on South Eighth street, and that is the house, enlarged,
now known as the Lincoln home.

Following the lead of Herndon, most writers have made the marriage appear
unfortunate. They have represented Lincoln as unhappy in his home life. They
have attributed to Mrs. Lincoln the character of a high-tempered, extravagant,
ambitious, tormenting woman. They have assumed that Mr. Lincoln endured a
living martyrdom. Within the most recent revival of interest in all pertaining to
Mr. Lincoln there has been cast reproach upon Mrs. Lincoln. A sister's testi
mony to the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln is far at variance with some of
the printed statements.
"They understood each other thoroughly," is the language of one of Mrs.
Lincoln's sisters: "and Mr. Lincoln looked beyond the impulsive words and
manner and knew that his wife was devoted to him and to his interests. They

The Courtship and Home Life 79
lived in a quiet and unostentatious manner. Mrs. Lincoln was very fond of read
ing, and interested herself greatly in her husband's political views and aspira
tions. She was fond of home. She made nearly all her own and her children's
clothes. She was a cheerful woman, a delightful conversationalist and well
informed on the topics of the day."
This is the recollection based upon the observation of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln
some part of every day for six months at a time. The sisters and other near
relatives saw none of that unhappiness in the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln
which is so often mentioned.
The marriage ended all objection or antagonism toward Mr. Lincoln on the
part of his wife's relatives. Mr. Edwards preserves the autograph letter which
the father of Mrs. Lincoln wrote to Ninian W. Edwards in December, 1844,
showing the estimate he had put upon Mr. Lincoln as a son-in-law at that
early date. Mr. Todd wrote:
"I feel more than grateful that my daughters all have married gentlemen
whom I respect and esteem, and I should be pleased if it could ever be in my
power to give them a more substantial evidence of my feelings than in mere
words or professions. Whether it will ever be in my power I can not say, and
perhaps it matters little. I will be satisfied if they discharge all their duties and
make as good wives as I think they have good husbands."

After the marriage Mr. Lincoln never showed any trace of resentment
toward his wife's relatives for their opposition to the marriage. With Mrs.
Lincoln it was different. She had said a little defiantly to her brother-in-law,
Ninian W. Edwards, before the wedding, that she was going to marry a man
who would one day be president of the United States. In the years afterward she
would recall those long months of courtship without home sympathy and show
that the memory of the family opposition to her choice still rankled.
"After the marriage," said Mr. Edwards, "Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln visited at
our house. They were always invited there on social occasions. They went out
in Springfield society. I can remember that when I was a boy the trouble Mr.
Lincoln used to cause at social gatherings. He would get a crowd around him
in the gentlemen's room and start a conversation, with the result that the ladies
would be left alone downstairs, and would have to send some one to break up
Mr. Lincoln's party, in order to get the gentlemen downstairs. Mr. Lincoln and
my father were always very friendly. Mrs. Lincoln, I think, always was a little
cool toward my mother for the course she had taken to discourage the engage
ment. But my mother and Mr. Lincoln were very friendly. At the first inaugura
tion Mr. Lincoln insisted that my mother must come to Washington. At that
time my mother was at Andover, where my brother and sister were going to
school. When there was affliction, Mr. Lincoln always sent for my mother. He
had her come to the White House and remain some time after Willie's death."
The best kind of a witness to the home life of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln was Mr.
Edwards. "I used to come to their house Saturdays and Sundays almost every week,"
he said. "I never saw a more loving couple. I never heard a harsh word or
anything out the way. Mrs. Lincoln always spoke of him as Mr. Lincoln. She
was devoted to him. Mr. Lincoln was a home man. On Sundays he was to be
found here. He would go downtown for his mail, stop in at the drug store for
a few minutes, and then come home to stay."

80 A Reporter's Lincoln
Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were very unlike physically and temperamentally. Mrs.
Lincoln was a gentlewoman bred to all of the little niceties of life. Mr. Lincoln
had grown to manhood with no thought. of some. of the customs which Mrs.
Lincoln thought essential. Of several ways Mrs. Lincoln succeeded, after many
trials in "breaking" Mr. Lincoln. But he would get up and open the front door
when somebody knocked, instead of waiting for the girl to go. To one of her rela
tives Mrs. Lincoln complained of this habit of Mr. Lincoln as a great annoyance.
"Mary," said this young relative, "if I had a husband with a mind such as
yours has, I wouldn't care what he did."
Mrs. Lincoln showed the pleasure this tribute to her husband gave her, as
she replied, apologetically, "It is very foolish; it is a small matter to complain of."
"Mrs. Lincoln," said Mr. Edwards, "had more to do with making Mr. Lin
coln president than many people think."

FROM THE PRESS OF
KUTTERER-JANSEN SAINT LOUIS

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