ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
ages,  fighting  without  heart  or  hope,  an  army 
in  front  and  the  great  river  behind.  Black 
Hawk  escaped  the  fate  of  his  followers,  to  be 
captured  a  few  days  later  through  the  treach- 
ery of  his  allies.  He  was  carried  in  triumph 
to  Washington  and  presented  to  President 
Jackson,  to  whom  he  made  this  stern  and  de- 
fiant speech,  showing  how  little  age  or  disaster 
could  do  to  tame  his  indomitable  spirit :  "  I 
am  a  man,  and  you  are  another.  I  did  not 
expect  to  conquer  the  white  people.  I  took 
up  the  hatchet  to  avenge  injuries  which  could 
no  longer  be  borne.*  Had  I  borne  them 
longer  my  people  would  have  said  :  '  Black 
Hawk  is  a  squaw;  he  is  too  old  to  be  a  chief; 
he  is  no  Sac'  This  caused  me  to  raise  the 
war-whoop.  I  say  no  more  of  it;  all  is  known 
to  you."  He  returned  to  Iowa,  and  lived  to 
a  great  age.  When  he  died  he  received  the 
supreme  honors  paid  only  to  mighty  men  of 
war  among  his  people,  and  was  buried  on  the 
high  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  in  arms  and  in 
war-paint,  facing  the  rising  sun. 
It  was  on  the  16th  of  June,  a  month  before 
the  slaughter  of  the  Bad  Axe,  that  the  battalion 
to  which  Lincoln  belonged  was  finally  mus- 
tered out,  at  Whitewater,  Wisconsin.  His 
final  release  from  the  service  was  signed  by  a 
young  lieutenant  of  artillery,  Robert  Ander- 
son, who,  twenty-nine  years  later,  in  one  of  the 
most  awful  crises  in  our  annals,  was  to  sustain 
to  Lincoln  relations  of  prodigious  importance, 
on  a  scene  illuminated  by  the  flash  of  the 
opening  guns  of  the  civil  war.f  The  men 
started  home  the  next  day  in  high  spirits,  like 
*It  is  a  noteworthy  coincidence  that  President 
Lincoln's  proclamation  at  the  opening  of  the  war  calls 
for  troops  "  to  redress  wrongs  already  long  enough 
endured." 
t  A  story  to  the  effect  that  Lincoln  was  mustered 
into  service  by  Jefferson  Davis  has  for  a  long  time 
been  current,  but  the  strictest  search  in  the  records 
fails  to  confirm  it.  We  are  indebted  to  General  R.  C. 
Drum,  Adjutant-General  of  the  Army,  for  an  interest- 
ing letter  giving  all  the  known  facts  in  relation  to  this 
story.  General  Drum  says  :  "  The  company  of  the 
Fourth  Regiment  Illinois  Mounted  Volunteers,  com- 
manded by  Mr.  Lincoln,  was  with  others  called  out 
by  Governor  Reynolds,  and  was  organized  at  Richland, 
Sangamon  County,  Illinois,  April  21,  1832.  The  mus- 
ter-in roll  is  not  on  file,  but  the  records  show  that  the 
company  was  mustered  out  at  the  mouth  of  Fox  River, 
May  27,  1832,  by  Nathaniel  Buckmaster,  Brigade- 
Major  to  General  Samuel  Whiteside,  Illinois  Volun- 
teers. On  the  muster-roll  of  Captain  Elijah  Iles's 
company,  Illinois  Mounted  Volunteers,  A.  Lincoln 
(Sangamon  County)  appears  as  a  private  from  May 
27,  183:4,  to  June  16,  1832,  when  the  company  was 
mustered  out  of  service  by  Lieutenant  Robert  Ander- 
son, Third  United  States  Artillery  and  Colonel  (Assist- 
ant Inspector-General)  Illinois  volunteers.  Brigadier- 
General  Henry  Atkinson,  in  his  report  of  May  30, 
1832,  stated  that  the  Illinois  Volunteers  were  called 
out  by  the  Governor  of  that  State,  but  in  haste  and  for 
no  definite  period  of  service.  On  their  arrival  at  Otta- 
wa they  became  clamorous  for  their  discharge,  which 
the  Governor  granted,  retaining — of  those  who  were 
school-boys  for  their  holidays.  Lincoln  had 
need,  like  Horatio,  of  his  good  spirits,  for  they 
were  his  only  outfit  for  the  long  journey  to 
New  Salem,  he  and  his  mess-mate  Harrison  t 
having  had  their  horses  stolen  the  day  before 
by  some  patriot  over-anxious  to  reach  home. 
But,  as  Harrison  says,  "I  laughed  at  our  fate, 
and  he  joked  at  it,  and  we  all  started  off 
merrily.  The  generous  men  of  our  com- 
pany walked  and  rode  by  turns  with  us,  and  we 
fared  about  equal  with  the  rest.  But  for  this 
generosity  our  legs  would  have  had  to  do  the 
better  work ;  for  in  that  day  this  dreary  route 
furnished  no  horses  to  buy  or  to  steal ;  and 
whether  on  horse  or  afoot,  we  always  had  com- 
pany, for  many  of  the  horses'  backs  were  too 
sore  for  riding."  It  is  not  hard  to  imagine 
with  what  quips  and  quirks  of  native  fancy 
Lincoln  and  his  friends  beguiled  the  way 
through  forest  and  prairie.  With  youth,  good 
health,  and  a  clear  conscience,  and  even  then 
the  dawn  of  a  young  and  undefiled  ambition 
in  his  heart,  nothing  was  wanting  to  give  zest 
and  spice  to  this  long,  sociable  walk  of  a  hun- 
dred leagues.  One  joke  is  preserved,  and  this 
one  is  at  the  expense  of  Lincoln.  One  chilly 
morning  he  complained  of  being  cold.  "  No 
wonder,"  said  some  facetious  cavalier,  "there 
is  so  much  of  you  on  the  ground. "§  We  hope 
Lincoln's  contributions  to  the  fun  were  better 
than  this,  but  of  course  the  prosperity  of  these 
jests  lay  rather  in  the  liberal  ears  that  heard 
them  than  in  the  good-natured  tongues  that 
uttered  them. 
Lincoln  and  Harrison  could  not  have  been 
discharged  and  volunteered  for  a  further  period  of 
twenty  days  —  a  sufficient  number  of  men  to  form  six 
companies,  which  General  Atkinson  found  at  Otta- 
wa on  his  arrival  there  from  Rock  River.  General 
Atkinson  further  reports  that  these  companies  and 
some  three  hundred  regular  troops,  remaining  in  posi- 
tion at  Rock  River,  were  all  the  force  left  him  to  keep 
the  enemy  in  check  until  the  assemblage  of  the  three 
thousand  additional  Illinois  militia  called  out  by  the 
Governor  upon  his  (General  A.'s)  requisition,  to  ren- 
dezvous at  Ottawa,  June  12-15,  1832. 
"There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Captain  Iles's  com- 
pany, mentioned  above,  was  one  of  the  six  which  served 
until  June  16,  1832,  while  the  fact  is  fully  established 
that  the  company  of  which  Mr.  Lincoln  was  a  member 
was  mustered  out  by  Lieutenant  Robert  Anderson,  who, 
in  April,  1 861,  was  in  command  of  Fort  Sumter.  There 
is  no  evidence  to  show  that  it  was  mustered  in  by 
Lieutenant  Jefferson  Davis.  Mr.  Davis's  company 
(B,  First  United  States  Infantry)  was  stationed  at 
Fort  Crawford,  Wisconsin,  during  the  months  of  Jan- 
uary and  February,  1832,  and  he  is  borne  on  the  rolls 
as  '  absent  on  detached  service  at  the  Dubuque  mines 
by  order  of  Colonel  Morgan.'  From  March  26  to 
August  18,  1832,  the  muster-rolls  of  his  company 
report  him  as  absent  on  furlough." 
%  George  W.  Harrison,  who  gives  an  entertaining  ac- 
count of  his  personal  experiences  in  Lamon,  p.   116. 
§Dr.  Holland  gives  this  homely  joke,  p.  71,  but 
transfers  it  to  a  time  four  years  later,  when  Lincoln 
had  permanently  assumed  shoes  and  had  ahorse  of  his
260 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
altogether  penniless,  for  at  Peoria  they  bought 
a  canoe  and  paddled  down  to  Pekin.  Here 
the  ingenious  Lincoln  employed  his  heredi- 
tary talent  for  carpentry  by  making  an  oar 
for  the  frail  vessel  while  Harrison  was  provid- 
ing the  commissar\-  stores.  The  latter  goes 
on  to  say  :  "  The  river,  being  very  low,  was 
without  current,  so  that  we  had  to  pull  hard 
to  make  half  the  speed  of  legs  on  land ;  in 
fact,  we  let  her  float  all  night,  and  on  the 
next  morning  always  found  the  objects  still 
visible  that  were  beside  us  the  previous  even- 
ing. The  water  was  remarkably  clear  for  this 
river  ot  plants,  and  the  fish  appeared  to  be 
sporting  with  us  as  we  moved  over  or  near 
them.  On  the  next  day  after  we  left  Pekin 
we  overhauled  a  raft  of  saw-logs,  with  two 
men  afloat  on  it  to  urge  it  on  with  poles  and 
to  guide  it  in  the  channel.  We  immediately 
pulled  up  to  them  and  went  on  the  raft,  where 
we  were  made  welcome  by  various  demon- 
strations, especially  by  an  invitation  to  a  feast 
on  fish,  corn-bread,  eggs,  butter,  and  coffee, 
just  prepared  for  our  benefit.  Of  these  good 
things  we  ate  almost  immoderately,  for  it 
was  the  only  warm  meal  we  had  made  for 
several  days.  While  preparing  it,  and  after 
dinner,  Lincoln  entertained  them,  and  they 
entertained  us  for  a  couple  of  hours  very 
amusingly."  Kindly  human  companionship 
was  a  luxury  in  that  green  wilderness,  and 
was  readily  appreciated  and  paid  for. 
The  returning  warriors  dropped  down  the 
river  to  the  village  of  Havana — from  Pekin 
to  Havana  in  a  canoe  !  The  country  is  full  of 
these  geographical  nightmares,  the  necessary 
result  of  freedom  of  nomenclature  bestowed 
by  circumstances  upon  minds  equally  destitute 
of  taste  or  education.  There  they  sold  their 
boat, —  no  difficult  task,  for  a  canoe  was  a 
staple  article  in  any  river-town, —  and  again 
set  out  "  the  old  way,  over  the  sand-ridges, 
for  Petersburg.  As  we  drew  near  home,  the 
impulse  became  stronger  and  urged  us  on 
amazingly.  The  long  strides  of  Lincoln,  often 
slipping  back  in  the  loose  sand  six  inches 
every  step,  were  just  right  for  me  ;  and  he 
was  greatly  diverted  when  he  noticed  me 
behind  him  stepping  along  in  his  tracks  to 
keep  from  slipping."  Thus  the  two  comrades 
came  back  from  their  soldierings  to  their 
humble  homes,  from  which  Lincoln  was  soon 
to  start  on  the  way  marked  out  for  him 
by  Providence,  with  strides  which  no  com- 
rade, with  whatever  good-will,  might  hope  to 
follow. 
He  never  took  his  campaigning  seriously. 
The  politician's  habit  of  glorifying  the  petty 
incidents  of  a  candidate's  life  always  seemed 
absurd  to  him,  and  in  his  speech,  made  in 
1848,  ridiculing  the  effort  on  the  part  of  Gen- 
eral Cass's  friends  to  draw  some  political  ad- 
vantage from  that  gentleman's  respectable 
but  obscure  services  on  the  frontier  in  the 
war  with  Great  Britain,  he  estopped  any  fu- 
ture eulogist  from  painting  his  own  military 
achievements  in  too  lively  colors.  "  Did  you 
know,  Mr.  Speaker,"  he  said,  "  I  am  a  mili- 
tary hero  ?  In  the  days  of  the  Black  Hawk 
war  I  fought,  bled,  and  came  away.  I  was 
not  at  Stillman's  defeat,  but  I  was  about  as 
near  it  as  General  Cass  was  to  Hull's  surren- 
der ;  and,  like  him,  I  saw  the  place  very  soon 
afterwards.  It  is  quite  certain  I  did  not 
break  my  sword,  for  I  had  none  to  break,  but 
I  bent  my  musket  pretty  badly  on  one  occa- 
sion. If  General  Cass  went  in  advance  of  me 
picking  whortleberries,  I  guess  I  surpassed 
him  in  charges  on  the  wild  onions.  If  he  saw 
any  live  fighting  Indians,  it  was  more  than  I 
did,  but  I  had  a  good  many  bloody  struggles 
with  the  mosquitoes ;  and  although  I  never 
fainted  from  loss  of  blood,  I  can  truly  say  I 
was  often  very  hungry.  Mr.  Speaker,  if  ever 
I  should  conclude  to  doff  whatever  our  Dem- 
ocratic friends  may  suppose  there  is  of  black- 
cockade  Federalism  about  me,  and  thereupon 
they  shall  take  me  up  as  their  candidate  for 
the  Presidency,  I  protest  that  they  shall  not 
make  fun  of  me,  as  they  have  of  General 
Cass,  by  attempting  to  write  me  into  a  mili- 
tary hero." 
AN     UNSUCCESSFUL     CANVASS. 
The  discharged  volunteer  arrived  in  New 
Salem  only  ten  days  before  the  August  elec- 
tion, in  which  he  had  a  deep  personal  interest. 
Before  starting  for  the  wars  he  had  announced 
himself,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  time, 
by  a  handbill  circular,  as  a  candidate  for  the 
Legislature  from  Sangamon  County.*  He 
had  done  this  in  accordance  with  his  own 
natural  bent  for  public  life  and  desire  for 
usefulness  and  distinction,  and  not  without 
strong  encouragement  from  friends  whose 
opinion  he  valued.  He  had  even  then  con- 
siderable experience  in  speaking  and  thinking 
on  his  feet.  He  had  begun  his  practice  in 
that  direction  before  leaving  Indiana,  and 
continued  it  everywhere  he  had  gone.  Mr. 
William  Butler  tells  us  that  on  one  occasion, 
when  Lincoln  was  a  farm-hand  at  Island 
Grove,  the  famous  circuit-rider,  Peter  Cart- 
*  We  are  aware  that  all   former  biographers  have  dated  March  9,  1832,  and  the  "Sangamon  Journal" 
stated   that    Lincoln's  candidacy   for   the   Legislature  mentions    his    name   among   the    candidates  in  July, 
was    subsequent    to    his    return    from    the   war,   and  and  apologizes  for  having  accidentally  omitted  it  in 
a   consequence    of  his    service.     But  his    circular   is  May.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
261 
A.    LINCOLN  S     SURVEYING    INSTRUMENTS     AND     SADDLE-BAG. 
(IN     POSSESSION    OF     LINCOLN     MONUMENT    COLLECTION.) 
wright,  came  by,  electioneering  for  the  Legis- 
lature, and  Lincoln  at  once  engaged  in  a 
discussion  with  him  in  the  cornfield,  in  which 
the  great  Methodist  was  equally  astonished 
at  the  close  reasoning  and  the  uncouth  figure 
of  Mr.  Brown's  extraordinary  hired  man.  At 
another  time,  after  one  Posey,  a  politician  in 
search  of  office,  had  made  a  speech  in  Macon, 
John  Hanks,  whose  admiration  of  his  cousin's 
oratory  was  unbounded,  said  that  "  Abe 
could  beat  it."  He  turned  a  keg  on  end,  and 
the  tall  boy  mounted  it  and  made  his  speech. 
"  The  subject  was  the  navigation  of  the  San- 
gamon, and  Abe  beat  him  to  death,"  says  the 
loyal  Hanks.  So  it  was  not  with  all  the 
tremor  of  a  complete  novice  that  the  young 
man  took  the  stump  during  the  few  days  left 
him  between  his  return  and  the  election. 
He  ran  as  a  Whig.  As  this  has  been 
denied  on  authority  which  is  generally  trust- 
worthy, it  is  well  enough  to  insist  upon  the 
fact.  In  one  of  the  few  speeches  of  his 
which,  made  at  this  time,  have  been  re- 
membered and  reported,  he  said :  "  I  am  in 
favor  of  a  national  bank ;  I  am  in  favor  of  the 
internal  improvement  system,  and  of  a  high 
protective  tariff.  These  are  my  sentiments 
and  political  principles."  Nothing  could  be 
more  unqualified  or  outspoken  than  this 
announcement  of  his  adhesion  to  what  was 
then  and  for  years  afterwards  called  "  the 
American  System"  of  Henry  Clay.  Other 
testimony  is  not  wanting  to  the  same  effect. 
Both  Major  Stuart  and  Judge  Logan*  say 
that  Lincoln  ran  in  1832  as  a  Whig,  and  that 
his  speeches  were  unevasively  in  defense  of 
the  principles  of  that  party.  Without  dis- 
cussing the  merits  of  the  party  or  its  purposes, 
we  may  insist  that  his  adopting  them  thus 
openly  at  the  outset  of  his  career  was  an  ex- 
tremely characteristic  act,  and  marks  thus 
early  the  scrupulous  conscientiousness  which 
shaped  every  action  of  his  life.  The  State  of 
Illinois  was  by  a  large  majority  Democratic, 
*  The  Democrats  of  New  Salem  worked  for  Lin- 
coln out  of  their  personal  regard  for  him.  That  was 
the  general  understanding  of  the  matter  here  at  the 
time.     In  this  he  made  no  concession  of  principle 
hopelessly  attached  to  the  person  and  policy 
of  Jackson.  Nowhere  had  that  despotic  leader 
more  violent  and  unscrupulous  partisans  than 
there.  They  were  proud  of  their  very  servility, 
and  preferred  the  name  of  "  whole-hog  Jack- 
son men"  to  that  of  Democrats.  The  Whigs 
embraced  in  their  scanty  ranks  the  leading 
men  of  the  State,  those  who  have  since  been 
most  distinguished  in  its  history,  such  as  S.  J  
. 
Logan,  Stuart,  Browning,  Dubois,  Hardin, 
Breese,  and  many  others.  But  they  were 
utterly  unable  to  do  anything  except  by- 
dividing  the  Jackson  men,  whose  very  num- 
bers made  their  party  unwieldy,  and  by 
throwing  their  votes  with  the  more  decent 
and  conservative  portion  of  them.  In  this 
way,  in  the  late  election,  they  had  secured 
the  success  of  Governor  Reynolds  —  the  Old 
Ranger — against  Governor  Kinney,  who  rep- 
resented the  vehement  and  proscriptive  spirit 
which  Jackson  had  just  breathed  into  the 
party.  He  had  visited  the  General  in  Washing- 
ton, and  had  come  back  giving  out  threaten- 
ings  and  slaughter  against  the  WThigs  in  the 
true  Tennessee  style,  declaring  that  "  all 
Whigs  should  be  whipped  out  of  office  like 
dogs  out  of  a  meat-house " ;  the  force  of 
south-western  simile  could  no  farther  go.f 
But  the  great  popularity  of  Reynolds  and  the 
adroit  management  of  the  Whigs  carried  him 
through  successfully.  A  single  fact  will  show 
on  which  side  the  people  who  could  read 
were  enlisted.  The  "  whole-hog  "  party  had 
one  newspaper,  the  opposition  five.  Of  course 
it  would  have  been  impossible  for  Reynolds 
to  poll  a  respectable  vote  if  his  loyalty  to 
Jackson  had  been  seriously  doubted.  As  it 
was,  he  lost  many  votes  through  a  report 
that  he  had  been  guilty  of  saying  that  "he 
was  as  strong  for  Jackson  as  any  reasonable 
man  should  be."  The  Governor  himself,  in 
his  naive  account  of  the  canvass,  acknowl- 
edges the  damaging  nature  of  this  accusa- 
tion, and  comforts  himself  with  quoting  an 
indiscretion  of  Kinney's,  who  opposed  a  pro- 
jected canal  on  the  ground  that  "  it  would 
flood  the  country  with  Yankees." 
It  showed  some  moral  courage,  and  cer- 
tainly an  absence  of  the  shuffling  politician's 
fair-weather  policy,  that  Lincoln,  in  his  friend- 
less and  penniless  youth,  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  his  career,  when  he  was  not  embar- 
rassed by  antecedents  or  family  connections, 
and  when,  in  fact,  what  little  social  influence 
he  knew  would  have  led  him  the  other  way, 
chose  to  oppose  a  furiously  intolerant  majority, 
Whig  doctrines.     They  did  this  for  him  simply  be- 
cause he  was  popular  —  because  he  was  Lincoln. 
July  6,  1875.  Stephen  T.  Logan. 
whatever.     He  was  as  stiff  as  a  man  could  be  in  his         t  Reynolds's  "  My  Own  Times,"  p.  291.
262 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
and  to  take  his  stand  with  the  party  which 
was  doomed  to  long-continued  defeat  in 
Illinois.  The  motives  which  led  him  to  take 
this  decisive  course  are  not  difficult  to  imag- 
ine. The  better  sort  of  people  in  Sangamon 
County  were  Whigs,  though  the  majority 
were  Democrats,  and  he  preferred  through 
life  the  better  sort  to  the  majority.  The  pa- 
pers he  read  were  the  Louisville  "  Journal  " 
and  the  "  Sangamon  Journal,"  both  Whig. 
Reading  the  speeches  and  debates  of  the  day, 
he  sided  with  Webster  against  Calhoun,  and 
with  Clay  against  anybody.  Though  his 
notions  of  politics,  like  those  of  any  ill-educated 
young  man  of  twenty-two,  must  have  been 
rather  crude,  and  not  at  all  sufficient  to  live 
and  to  die  by,  he  had  adopted  them  honestly 
and  sincerely,  with  no  selfish  regard  to  his 
own  interests ;  and  though  he  ardently  desired 
success,  he  never  abated  one  jot  or  tittle  of 
his  convictions  for  any  possible  personal  gain, 
then  or  thereafter. 
In  the  circular  in  which  he  announced  his 
candidacy  he  made  no  reference  to  national 
politics,  but  confined  himself  mainly  to  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  practicability  of  improving 
the  navigation  of  the  Sangamon,  the  favorite 
hobby  of  the  place  and  time.  He  had  no 
monopoly  of  this  "  issue."  It  formed  the  bur- 
den of  nearly  every  candidate's  appeal  to  the 
people  in  that  year.  The  excitement  occa- 
sioned by  the  trip  of  the  Talisman  had  not  yet 
died  away,  although  the  little  steamer  was 
now  dust  and  ashes,  and  her  bold  commander 
had  left  the  State  to  avoid  an  awkward  meet- 
ing with  the  sheriff.  The  hope  of  seeing 
Springfield  an  emporium  of  commerce  was 
still  lively  among  the  citizens  of  Sangamon 
County,  and  in  no  one  of  the  handbills  of  the 
political  aspirants  of  the  season  was  that  hope 
more  judiciously  encouraged  than  in  the  one 
signed  by  Abraham  Lincoln.  It  was  a  well- 
written  circular,  remarkable  for  its  soberness 
and  reserve  when  we  consider  the  age  and 
the  limited  advantages  of  the  writer.  It  con- 
cluded in  these  words  : 
"  Upon  the  subjects  of  which  I  have  treated,  I  have 
spoken  as  I  have  thought.  I  may  be  wrong  in  regard 
to  any  or  all  of  them ;  but  holding  it  a  sound  maxim 
that  it  is  better  only  sometimes  to  be  right  than  at  all 
times  wrong,  so  soon  as  I  discover  my  opinions  to  be 
erroneous,  I  shall  be  ready  to  renounce  them.  .  .  . 
Every  man  is  said  to  have  his  peculiar  ambition. 
Whether  it  be  true  or  not,  I  can  say,  for  one,  that  I 
have  no  other  so  great  as  that  of  being  truly  esteemed 
of  my  fellow-men,  by  rendering  myself  worthy  of  their 
esteem.  How  far  I  shall  succeed  in  gratifying  this 
ambition  is  yet  to  be  developed.  I  am  young,  and 
unknown  to  many  of  you.  I  was  born  and  have  ever 
remained  in  the  most  humble  walks  of  life.  I  have  no 
wealthy  or  powerful  relations  or  friends  to  recommend 
me.  My  case  is  thrown  exclusively  upon  the  independ- 
ent voters  of  the    county ;    and,  if  elected,  they  will 
have  conferred  a  favor  upon  me,  for  which  I  shall  be 
unremitting  in  my  labors  to  compensate.  But  if  the 
good  people  in  their  wisdom  shall  see  fit  to  keep  me 
in  the  background,  I  have  been  too  familiar  with  dis- 
appointments to  be  very  much  chagrined." 
This  is  almost  precisely  the  style  of  his  later 
years.  The  errors  of  grammar  and  construc- 
tion which  spring  invariably  from  an  effort 
to  avoid  redundancy  of  expression  remained 
with  him  through  life.  He  seemed  to  grudge 
the  space  required  for  necessary  parts  of 
speech.  But  his  language  was  at  twenty-two, 
as  it  was  thirty  years  later,  the  simple  and 
manly  attire  of  his  thought,  with  little  attempt 
at  ornament  and  none  at  disguise.  There  was 
an  intermediate  time  when  he  sinned  in  the 
direction  of  fine  writing;  but  this  ebullition 
soon  passed  away,  and  left  that  marvelously 
strong  and  transparent  style  in  which  his  two 
inaugurals  wrere  written. 
Of  course,  in  the  ten  days  left  him  after  his 
return  from  the  field,  a  canvass  of  the  county, 
which  was  then  some  thousands  of  square 
miles  in  extent,  was  out  of  the  question.  He 
made  a  few  speeches  in  the  neighborhood  of 
New  Salem,  and  at  least  one  in  Springfield. 
He  was  wholly  unknown  there  except  by  his 
few  comrades  in  arms.  We  find  him  mentioned 
in  the  county  paper  only  once  during  the  sum- 
mer, in  an  editorial  note  adding  the  name  of 
Captain  Lincoln  to  those  candidates  for  the 
Legislature  who  were  periling  their  lives  on 
the  frontier  and  had  left  their  reputations 
in  charge  of  their  generous  fellowr-citizens  at 
home.  On  the  occasion  of  his  speaking  at 
Springfield,  mo^t  of  the  candidates  had  come  to- 
gether to  address  a  meeting  there  to  give  their 
electors  some  idea  of  their  quality.  These 
were  severe  ordeals  for  the  rash  aspirants  for 
popular  favor.  Besides  those  citizens  who 
came  to  listen  and  judge,  there  were  many 
whose  only  object  was  the  free  whisky  pro- 
vided for  the  occasion,  and  who,  after  potations 
pottle-deep,  became  not  only  highly  unparlia- 
mentary but  even  dangerous  to  life  and  limb. 
This  wild  chivalry  of  Lick  Creek  was,  however, 
less  redoubtable  to  Lincoln  than  it  might  be 
to  an  urban  statesman  unacquainted  with  the 
frolic  brutality  of  Clary's  Grove.  Their  gam- 
bols never  caused  him  to  lose  his  self-posses- 
sion. It  is  related  that  once,  while  he  was 
speaking,  he  saw  a  ruffian  attack  a  friend  of 
his  in  the  crowd,  and  the  rencontre  not  re- 
sulting according  to  the  orator's  sympathies, 
he  descended  from  the  stand,  seized  the  ob- 
jectionable fighting  man  by  the  neck,  "  threw 
him  some  ten  feet,"  then  calmly  mounted  to  his 
place,  and  finished  his  speech,  the  course  of 
his  logic  undisturbed  by  this  athletic  parenthe- 
sis. Judge  Logan  saw  Lincoln  for  the  first 
time  on  the  day  when  he  came  up  to  Spring-
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
field  on  his  canvass  this  summer.  He  thus 
speaks  of  his  future  partner:  "  He  was  a  very 
tall,  gawky,  and  rough-looking  fellow  then ; 
his  pantaloons  didn't  meet  his  shoes  by  six 
inches.  But  after  he  began  speaking  I  became 
very  much  interested  in  him.  He  made  a 
very  sensible  speech.  His  manner  was  very 
much  the  same  as  in  after  life ;  that  is,  the 
same  peculiar  characteristics  were  apparent 
then,  though  of  course  in  after  years  he 
evinced  more  knowledge  and  experience.  But 
he  had  then  the  same  novelty  and  the  same 
peculiarity  in  presenting  his  ideas..  He  had 
the  same  individuality  that  he  kept  through 
all  his  life." 
There  were  two  or  three  men  at  the  meet- 
ing whose  good  opinion  was  worth  more  than 
all  the  votes  of  Lick  Creek  to  one  beginning 
life :  Stephen  T.  Logan,  a  young  lawyer  who 
had  recently  come  from  Kentucky  with  the 
best  equipment  for  a  nisi  prius  practitioner 
ever  brought  into  the  State;  Major  Stuart, 
whom  we  have  met  in  the  Black  Hawk  war, 
once  commanding  a  battalion  and  then 
marching  as  a  private ;  and  William  Butler, 
afterwards  prominent  in  State  politics,  at  that 
time  a  young  man  of  the  purest  Western 
breed  in  body  and  character,  clear-headed 
and  courageous,  and  ready  for  any  emergency 
where  a  friend  was  to  be  defended  or  an 
enemy  punished.  We  do  not  know  whether 
Lincoln  gained  any  votes  that  day,  but  he 
gained  what  was  far  more  valuable,  the  act- 
ive friendship  of  these  able  and  honorable 
men,  all  Whigs  and  all  Kentuckians  like 
himself. 
The  acquaintances  he  made  in  his  canvass, 
the  practice  he  gained  in  speaking,  and  the 
added  confidence  which  this  experience  of 
measuring  his  abilities  with  those  of  others 
gave,  were  all  the  advantages  which  Lincoln 
derived  from  this  attempt.  He  was  defeated, 
for  the  only  time  in  his  life,  in  a  contest  before 
the  people.  The  fortunate  candidates  were 
E.  D.  Taylor,  J.  T.  Stuart,  Achilles  Morris, 
and  Peter  Cartwright,  the  first  of  whom  re- 
ceived 1 1 27  votes  and  the  last  815.*  Lin- 
coln's position  among  the  eight  defeated  can- 
didates was  a  very  respectable  one.  He  had 
657  votes,  and  there  were  five  who  fared 
worse,  among  them  his  old  adversary  Kirk- 
patrick.  What  must  have  been  especially 
gratifying  to  him  was  the  fact  that  he  received 
the  almost  unanimous  vote  of  his  own  neigh- 
borhood, the  precinct  of  New  Salem,  277 
votes  against  3,  a  result  which  showed  more 
strongly  than  any  words  could  do  the  extent 
of  the  attachment  and  the  confidence  which 
his  genial  and  upright  character  had  inspired 
among  those  who  knew  him  best. 
*  "  Sangamon  Journal,"  August  11,  1832. 
STOREKEEPER,    POSTMASTER    AND    SURVJ. 
Having  been,  even  in  so  slight  a  degree,  a 
soldier  and  a  politician,  he  was  unfitted  for  a 
day  laborer;  but  being  entirely  without  means 
of  subsistence,  he  was  forced  to  look  about 
for  some  suitable  occupation.  It  is  said  by 
Dr.  Holland  that  he  thought  seriously  at  this 
time  of  learning  the  trade  of  a  blacksmith, 
and  using  in  that  honest  way  the  sinew  and 
brawn  which  nature  had  given  him.  But  an 
opening  for  another  kind  of  business  occurred, 
which  prevented  his  entering  upon  any  merely 
mechanical  occupation.  Two  of  his  most  inti- 
mate friends  were  the  brothers  Herndon, 
called,  according  to  the  fashion  of  the  time, 
which  held  it  unfriendly  to  give  a  man  his 
proper  name,  and  arrogant  for  him  to  claim 
it,  "  Row  "  and  "  Jim."  They  kept  one  of 
those  grocery  stores  in  which  everything  sal- 
able on  the  frontier  was  sold,  and  which  seem 
to  have  changed  their  occupants  as  rapidly  as 
sentry-boxes.  "  Jim "  sold  his  share  to  an 
idle  and  dissolute  man  named  Berry,  and 
"  Row  "  soon  transferred  his  interest  to  Lin- 
coln. It  was  easy  enough  to  buy,  as  nothing 
was  ever  given  in  payment  but  a  promissory 
note.  A  short  time  afterwards,  one  Reuben 
Radford,  who  kept  another  shop  of  the  same 
kind,  happened  one  evening  to  attract  the 
dangerous  attention  of  the  Clary's  Grove 
boys,  who,  with  their  usual  prompt  and  practi- 
cal facetiousness,  without  a  touch  of  malice 
in  it,  broke  his  windows  and  wrecked  his  store. 
The  next  morning,  while  Radford  was  rue- 
fully contemplaing  the  ruin,  and  doubtless  con- 
cluding that  he  had  had  enough  of  a  country 
where  the  local  idea  of  neighborly  humor 
found  such  eccentric  expression,  he  hailed  a 
passer-by  named  Greene,  and  challenged  him 
to  buy  his  establishment  for  four  hundred  dol- 
lars. This  sort  of  trade  was  always  irresistible 
to  these  Western  speculators,  and  Greene  at 
once  gave  his  note  for  the  amount.  It  next  oc- 
curred to  him  to  try  to  find  out  what  the  prop- 
erty was  worth,  and  doubting  his  own  skill,  he 
engaged  Lincoln  to  make  an  invoice  of  it.  The 
young  merchant,  whose  appetite  for  specula- 
tion had  just  been  whetted  by  his  own  invest- 
ment, undertook  the  task,  and  finding  the  stock 
of  goods  rather  tempting,  offered  Greene  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  for  his  bargain,  which 
was  at  once  accepted.  Not  a  cent  of  money 
changed  hands  in  all  these  transactions.  By 
virtue  of  half  a  dozen  signatures,  Berry  and 
Lincoln  became  proprietors  of  the  only  mer- 
cantile establishment  in  the  village,  and  the  ap- 
parent wealth  of  the  community  was  increased 
by  a  liberal  distribution  of  their  notes  among 
the  Herndons,  Radford,  Greene,  and  a  Mr. 
Rutledge  whose  business  they  had  also  bought.
i6  
■ 
— ' — •- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
"*>,  % 
iff f -fa  hr 
') 
/-  as- 
Fortunately  for  Lincoln  and  for  the  world, 
the  enterprise  was  not  successful.  It  was  en- 
tered into  without  sufficient  reflection,  and 
from  the  very  nature  of  things  was  destined 
to  fail.  To  Berry  the  business  was  merely  the 
refuge  of  idleness.  He  spent  his  time  in  gos- 
sip and  drank  up  his  share  of  the  profits,  and 
it  is  probable  that  Lincoln  was  far  more  in- 
terested in  politics  and  general  reading  than 
*  The  following  is  an  extract  from  the  court  record  : 
"  March  6,  1833.  Ordered  that  William  F.  Berry,  in 
the  name  of  Berry  and  Lincoln,  have  license  to  keep 
a  tavern  in  New  Salem,  to  continue  twelve  months 
from  this  dale,  and  that  they  pay  one  dollar  in  addi- 
tion to  six  dollars  heretofore  prepaid  as  per  Treasurer's 
receipt,  and  that  they  be  allowed  the  following  rates, 
PLAN     OF     ROAD     SURVEYED 
in  the  petty  traffic  of  his  shop.  In  the  spring 
of  the  next  year,  finding  that  their  merchan- 
dise was  gaining  them  little  or  nothing,  they 
concluded  to  keep  a  tavern  in  addition  to 
their  other  business,  and  the  records  of  the 
County  Court  of  Sangamon  County  show  that 
Berry  took  out  a  license  for  that  purpose  on 
the  6th  of  March,  1833.*  But  it  was  even 
then  too  late  for  any  expedients  to  save  the 
viz. :  French  brandy,  per  pint,  25  ;  Peach,  18^  ;  Ap- 
ple, 12;  Holland  gin,  \%%  ;  Domestic,  12^;  Wine,  25; 
Rum,  18%  ;  Whisky,  12  j^  ;  Breakfast,  dinner,  or  sup- 
per, 25  ;  Lodging  for  night,  12*^  ;  Horse  for  night,  25; 
Single  feed,  12/^  ;  Breakfast,  dinner,  or  supper,  for 
stage  passengers,  37^. 
"  Who  gave  bond  as  required  by  law." 
f. 
{£*>    te*r*^jLtt 
ISUU-aS-  CLsi***>*-> 
**£?""  &c<^>  &*-*~z  yi 
/l*<_je^cu—    C^u^c^     t2o<2a^C4) 
/X 
&<f 
[surveyor's   report 
OF    ABOVE.] 
~~ZJSjO      (S^U^-^JBt^  6L4*JPCS
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
BY    A.    LINCOLN     AND    OTHERS 
moribund  partnership.  The  tavern  was  never 
opened,  for  about  this  time  Lincoln  and  Berry 
were  challenged  to  sell  out  to  a  pair  of  va- 
grant brothers  named  Trent,  who,  as  they  had 
no  idea  of  paying,  were  willing  to  give  their 
notes  to  any  amount.  They  soon  ran  away, 
and  Berry  expired,  extinguished  in  rum.  Lin- 
coln was  thus  left  loaded  with  debts,  and 
with  no  assets  except  worthless  notes  of  Berry 
and  the  Trents.  It  is  greatly  to  his  credit  that 
he  never  thought  of  doing  by  others  as  others 
had  done  by  him.  The  morality  of  the  frontier 
was  deplorably  loose  in  such  matters,  and 
most  of  these  people  would  have  concluded 
that  the  failure  of  the  business  expunged  its 
liabilities.  But  Lincoln  made  no  effort  even 
to  compromise  the  claims  against  him.  He 
promised  to  pay  when  he  could,  and  it  took 
the  labor  of  years  to  do  it ;  but  he  paid  at  last 
every  farthing  of  the  debt,  which  seemed  to 
him  and  his  friends  so  large  that  it  was  called 
among  them  "  the  national  debt." 
He  had  already  begun  to  read  elementary 
books  of  law,  borrowed  from  Major  Stuart 
and  other  kindly  acquaintances.  Indeed,  it 
is  quite  possible  that  Berry  and  Lincoln  might 
have  succeeded  better  in  business  if  the 
junior  member  of  the  firm  had  not  spent  so 
much  of  his  time  reading  Blackstone  and 
Chitty  in  the  shade  of  a  great  oak  just  outside 
the  door,  while  the  senior  quietly  fuddled  him- 
self within.  Eye-witnesses  still  speak  of  the 
grotesque  youth,  habited  in  homespun  tow, 
lying  on  his  back  with  his  feet  on  the  trunk 
of  the  tree,  and  poring  over  his  book  by  the 
hour,  "  grinding  around  with  the  shade,"  as 
it  shifted  from  north  to  east.  After  his  store, 
to  use  his  own  expression,  had  "  winked  out," 
he  applied  himself  with  more  continuous 
energy  to  his  reading,  doing  merely  what  odd 
jobs  came  to  his  hand  to  pay  his  current  ex- 
penses, which  were  of  course  very  slight.  He 
sometimes  helped  his  friend  Ellis  in  his  store ; 
sometimes  went  into  the  field  and  renewed 
his  exploits  as  a  farm-hand,  which  had  gained 
him  a  traditional  fame  in  Indiana  ;  sometimes 
employed  his  clerkly  hand  in  straightening 
up  a  neglected  ledger.  It  is  probable  that  he 
worked  for  his  board  oftener  than  for  any 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 35. 
other  compensation,  and  his  hearty  friendli- 
ness and  vivacity,  as  well  as  his  industry  in  the 
field,  made  him  a  welcome  guest  in  any  farm- 
house in  the  county.  His  strong  arm  was  al- 
ways at  the  disposal  of  the  poor  and  needy; 
it  is  said  of  him,  with  a  graphic  variation  of  a 
well-known  text,  "that  he  visited  the  fatherless 
and  the  widow  and  chopped  their  wood." 
In  the  spring  of  this  year,  1833,  he  was  ap- 
pointed Postmaster  of  New  Salem,  and  held 
the  office  for  three  years.  Its  emoluments 
were  slender  and  its  duties  light,  but  there 
was  in  all  probability  no  citizen  of  the  village 
who  could  have  made  so  much  of  it  as  he. 
The  mails  were  so  scanty  that  he  was  said  to 
carry  them  in  his  hat,  and  he  is  also  reported  to 
have  read  every  newspaper  that  arrived  ;  it  is 
altogether  likely  that  this  formed  the  leading 
inducement  to  his  taking  the  office.  His  in- 
cumbency lasted  until  New  Salem  ceased  to  be 
populous  enough  for  a  post-station  and  the 
mail  went  by  to  Petersburg.  Dr.  Holland  re- 
lates a  sequel  to  this  official  experience  which 
illustrates  the  quaint  honesty  of  the  man. 
Several  years  later,  when  he  was  a  practicing 
lawyer,  an  agent  of  the  Post-office  Department 
called  upon  him,  and  asked  for  a  balance  due 
from  the  New  Salem  office,  some  seventeen 
dollars.  Lincoln  rose,  and  opening  a  little 
trunk  which  lay  in  a  corner  of  the  room,  took 
from  it  a  cotton  rag  in  which  was  tied  up  the 
exact  sum  required.  "  I  never  use  any  man's 
money  but  my  own,"  he  quietly  remarked. 
When  we  consider  the  pinching  poverty  in 
which  these  years  had  been  passed,  we  may 
appreciate  the  self-denial  which  had  kept  him 
from  making  even  a  temporary  use  of  this 
little  sum  of  government  money. 
John  Calhoun,  the  Surveyor  of  Sangamon 
County,  was  at  this  time  overburdened  with 
work.  The  principal  industry  then  was  specu- 
lation in  land.  Every  settler  of  course  wanted 
his  farm  surveyed  and  marked  out  for  him, 
and  every  community  had  its  syndicate  of 
leading  citizens  wrho  cherished  a  scheme  of 
laying  out  a  city  somewhere.  In  many  cases 
the  city  was  plotted,  the  sites  of  the  princi- 
pal buildings,  including  a  court-house  and  a 
university,  were  determined,  and  a  sonorous
266 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
name  was  selected  out  of  Plutarch,  before  its 
location  was  even  considered.  For  this  latter 
office  the  intervention  of  an  official  surveyor 
was  necessary,  and  therefore  Mr.  Calhoun  had 
more  business  than  he  could  attend  to  without 
assistance.  Looking  about  for  a  young  man 
of  good  character,  intelligent  enough  to  learn 
surveying  at  short  notice,  his  attention  was 
soon  attracted  to  Lincoln. 
He  offered  young 
Abraham  a  book  containing  the  elements  of 
the  art,  and  told  him  when  he  had  mastered 
it  he  should  have  employment.  The  offer  was 
a  flattering  one,  and  Lincoln,  with  that  steady 
self-reliance  of  his,  accepted  it,  and  armed 
with  his  book  went  out  to  the  schoolmaster's 
(Menton  Graham),  and  in  six  weeks'  close 
application  made  himself  a  surveyor.* 
It  will  be  remembered  that  Washington  in 
<*y>f   d 
/&><£ 
X3tm<?&& 
0-*t-^. 
Osrtyf  !tf@*^Cf  J^   AST^L^   ^X^^>^L  ^^^ 
MARRIAGE     BOND     OF    THOMAS     LINCOLN. 
*  There  has  been  some  discussion  as  to  whether 
Lincoln  served  as  deputy  under  Calhoun  or  Neale. 
The  truth  is  that  he  served  under  both  of  them.  Cal- 
houn was  surveyor  in  1833,  when  Lincoln  first  learned 
the  business.  Neale  was  elected  in  1835,  and  imme- 
diately appointed  Lincoln  and  Calhoun  as  his  deputies. 
The  "  Sangamon  Journal  "  of  Sept.  12,  1835,  contains 
the  following  official  advertisement: 
Surveyor's  Notice. —  I  have  appointed  John  B. 
Watson,  Abram  Lincoln,  and  John  Calhoun  deputy 
surveyors  for  Sangamon  County.  In  my  absence  from 
town,  any  persons  wishing  their  lands  surveyed  will 
do  well  to  call  at  the  Recorder's  office  and  enter  his 
or  their  names  in  a  book  left  for  that  purpose,  stating 
township  and  range  in  which  they  respectively  live, 
and  their  business  shall  be  promptly  attended  to. 
T.  M.  Neale. 
An  article  by  Colonel  G.  A.  Pierce,  printed  April 
21,  1881,  in  the  Chicago  "  Inter-Ocean,"  describes  an 
interview  held  in  that  month  with  W.  G.  Green,  of 
Menard  County,  in  which  this  matter  is  referred  to. 
But  Mr.  Green  relies   more   on  the  document  in  his 
possession  than  on  his  recollection  of  what  took  place 
in  1833.  "  '  Where  did  Lincoln  learn  his  surveying? '  I 
asked.  *  Took  it  up  himself,'  replied  Mr.  Green,  *  as 
he  did  a  hundred  things,  and  mastered  it  too.  When 
he  acted  as  surveyor  here  he  was  a  deputy  of  T. 
M.  Neale,  and  not  of  Calhoun,  as  has  often  been 
said.  There  was  a  dispute  about  this,  and  many 
sketches  of  his  life  gave  Calhoun  (Candle-box  Calhoun, 
as  he  was  afterwards  known  during  the  Kansas  trou- 
bles and  election  frauds)  as  the  surveyor,  but  it  was 
Neale.'  Mr.  Green  turned  to  his  desk  and  drew  out  an 
old  certificate,  in  the  handwriting  of  Lincoln,  giving  the 
boundaries  of  certain  lands,  and  signed, '  T.  M.  Neale, 
Surveyor,  by  A.  Lincoln,  Deputy,'  thus  settling  the 
question.  Mr.  Green  was  a  Democrat,  and  has  leaned 
towards  that  party  all  his  life,  but  what  he  thought  and 
thinks  of  Lincoln  can  be  seen  by  an  indorsement  on 
the  back  of  the  certificate  named,  which  is  as  follows : 
Preserve  this,  as  it  is  from  the  noblest  of  God's  creation  — 
A.  Lincoln,  the  2d  preserver  of  his  country.  May  3, 
1865.—  Penned  by  W.  G.  Green,  who  taught  Lincoln  the 
English  grammar  in  1831.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
his  youth  adopted  the  same  profession,  but 
there  were  few  points  of  similarity  in  the  lives 
of  the  two  greatest  of  our  Presidents,  in  youth 
or  later  manhood.  The  Virginian  had  every 
social  advantage  in  his  favor,  and  was  by  na- 
ture a  man  of  more  thrift  and  greater  sagacity 
in  money  matters.  He  used  the  knowledge 
gained  in  the  practice  of  his  profession  so 
wisely  that  he  became  rather  early  in  life  a 
large  land-holder,  and  continually  increased 
his  possessions  until  his  death.  Lincoln,  with 
almost  unbounded  opportunities  for  the  selec- 
tion and  purchase  of  valuable  tracts,  made  no 
use  whatever  of  them.  He  employed  his  skill 
and  knowledge  merely  as  a  bread-winner,  and 
made  so  little  provision  for  the  future  that 
when  Mr.  Van  Bergen,  who  had  purchased 
the  Radford  note,  sued  and  got  judgment  on  it, 
his  horse  and  his  surveying  instruments  were 
taken  to  pay  the  debt,  and  only  by  the  gener- 
ous intervention  of  a  friend  was  he  able  to 
redeem  these  invaluable  means  of  living.  He 
was,  nevertheless,  an  excellent  surveyor.  His 
portion  of  the  public  work  executed  under  the 
directions  of  Mr.  Calhoun  and  his  successor,  T. 
M.  Neale,  was  well  performed,  and  he  soon 
found  his  time  pretty  well  employed  with  pri- 
vate business  which  came  to  him  from  San- 
gamon and  the  adjoining  counties.  Early  in 
the  year  1834  we  find  him  appointed  one  of 
three  "viewers"  to  locate  a  road  from  Salt 
Creek  to  the  county  line  in  the  direction  of 
Jacksonville.  The  board  seems  to  have  con- 
sisted mainly  of  its  chairman,  as  Lincoln  made 
the  deposit  of  money  required  by  law,  sur- 
veyed the  route,  plotted  the  road,  and  wrote 
the  report.* 
Though  it  is  evident  that  the  post-office 
and  the  surveyor's  level  were  not  making  a 
rich  man  of  him,  they  were  sufficient  to  enable 
him  to  live  decently,  and  during  the  year  he 
greatly  increased  his  acquaintance  and  his  in- 
fluence in  the  county.  The  one  followed  the 
other  naturally ;  every  acquaintance  he  made 
became  his  friend,  and  even  before  the  end 
of  his  unsuccessful  canvass  in  1832  it  had  be- 
*  As  this  is  probably  the  earliest  public  document  ex- 
tant written  and  signed  by  Lincoln,  we  give  it  in  full : 
March  3,  1834.  Reuben  Harrison  presented  the 
following  petition  :  We,  the  undersigned,  respectfully 
request  your  honorable  body  to  appoint  viewers  to 
view  and  locate  a  road  from  Musick's  ferry  on  Salt 
Creek,  via  New  Salem,  to  the  county  line  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Jacksonville. 
And  Abram  Lincoln  deposited  with  the  clerk  $10, 
as  the  law  directs.  Ordered,  that  Michael  Killion,  Hugh 
Armstrong,  and  Abram  Lincoln  be  appointed  to  view 
said  road,  and  said  Lincoln  to  act  as  surveyor. 
To  the  County  Commissioners'  Court  for  the 
county  of  Sangamon,  at  its  June  term,  1834.  We,  the 
undersigned,  being  appointed  to  view  and  locate  a 
road,  beginning  at  Musick's  ferry  on  Salt  Creek,  via 
New  Salem,  to    the  county  line  in  the   direction  to 
come  evident  to  the  observant  politicians  of 
the  district  that  he  was  a  man  whom  it  would 
not  do  to  leave  out  of  their  calculations. 
There  seemed  to  be  no  limit  to  his  popularity 
nor  to  his  aptitudes,  in  the  opinion  of  his  ad- 
mirers. Pie  was  continually  called  on  to  serve 
in  the  most  incongruous  capacities.  Old  resi- 
dents say  he  was  the  best  judge  at  a  horse- 
race the  county  afforded;  he  was  occasion- 
ally second  in  a  duel  of  fisticuffs,  though  he 
usually  contrived  to  reconcile  the  adversaries 
on  the  turf  before  any  damage  was  done ;  he 
was  the  arbiter  on  all  controverted  points  of 
literature,  science,  or  woodcraft  among  the 
disputatious  denizens  of  Clary's  Grove,  and 
his  decisions  were  never  appealed  from.  His 
native  tact  and  humor  were  invaluable  in  his 
work  as  a  peacemaker,  and  his  enormous 
physical  strength,  which  he  always  used  with 
a  magnanimity  rare  among  giants,  placed  his 
off-hand  decrees  beyond  the  reach  of  con- 
temptuous question.  He  composed  differ- 
ences among  friends  and  equals  with  good- 
natured  raillery,  but  he  was  as  rough  as  need 
be  when  his  wrath  was  roused  by  meanness 
and  cruelty.  We  hardly  know  whether  to 
credit  some  of  the  stories,  apparently  well- 
attested  by  living  witnesses,  of  his  prodigious 
muscular  powers.  He  is  said  to  have  lifted,  at 
Rutledge's  mill,  a  box  of  stones  weighing  over 
half  a  ton.  It  is  also  related  that  he  could 
raise  a  barrel  of  whisky  from  the  ground 
and  drink  from  the  bung  —  but  the  narra- 
tor adds  that  he  never  swallowed  the  whisky. 
Whether  these  traditions  are  strictly  true 
or  not,  they  are  evidently  founded  on  the 
current  reputation  he  enjoyed  among  his 
fellows  for  extraordinary  strength,  and  this 
was  an  important  element  in  his  influence. 
He  was  known  to  be  capable  of  handling  al- 
most any  man  he  met,  yet  he  never  sought  a 
quarrel.  He  was  everybody's  friend,  and  yet 
used  no  liquor  or  tobacco.  He  was  poor  and 
had  scarcely  ever  been  at  school,  yet  he  was 
the  best-informed  young  man  in  the  village. 
He  had  grown  up  on  the  frontier,  the  utmost 
Jacksonville,  respectfully  report  that  we  have  per- 
formed the  duties  of  said  view  and  location,  as  required 
by  law,  and  that  we  have  made  the  location  on  good 
ground,  and  believe  the  establishment  of  the  same  to 
be  necessary  and  proper. 
The  inclosed  map  gives  the  courses  and  distances 
as  required  by  law.  Michael  Killion,  Hugh  Arm- 
strong, A.  Lincoln. 
(Indorsement  in  pencil,  also  in  Lincoln's  handwrit- 
ing:) 
A.  Lincoln,  5  days  at  $3.00,  $15.00.  John  A.  Kel- 
soe,  chain-bearer,  for  5  days,  at  75  cents,  $3.75.  Rob- 
ert Lloyd,  at  75  cents,  $3.75.  Hugh  Armstrong,  for 
services  as  axeman,  5  days  at  75  cents,  $3.75.  A.  Lin- 
coln, for  making  plot  and  report,  $2.50. 
(On  Map.) 
Whole  length  of  the  road,  26  miles  and  70  chains. 
Scale,  2  inches  to  the  mile.
26S 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
fringe  of  civilization,  yet  he  was  gentle  and 
clean  of  speech,  innocent  of  blasphemy  or 
scandal.  His  good  qualities  might  have  ex- 
cited resentment  if  displayed  by  a  well-dressed 
stranger  from  an  Eastern  State,  but  the  most 
uncouth  ruffians  of  New  Salem  took  a  sort  of 
proprietary  interest  and  pride  in  the  decency 
and  the  cleverness  and  the  learning  of  their 
friend  and  comrade,  Abe  Lincoln. 
It  was  regarded,  therefore,  almost  as  a 
matter  of  course  ,that  Lincoln  should  be  a 
candidate  for  the  Legislature  at  the  next  elec- 
tion, which  took  place  in  August,  1834.  He 
was  sure  of  the  united  support  of  the  Whigs, 
and  so  many  of  the  Democrats  also  wanted 
to  vote  for  him  that  some  of  the  leading 
members  of  that  party  came  to  him  and  pro- 
posed they  should  give  him  an  organized  sup- 
port. He  was  too  loyal  a  partisan  to  accept 
their  overtures  without  taking  counsel  from 
the  Whig  candidates.  He  laid  the  matter  be- 
fore Major  Stuart,  who  at  once  advised  him 
to  make  the  canvass.  It  was  a  generous  and 
chivalrous  action,  for  by  thus  encouraging  the 
candidacy  of  Lincoln  he  was  endangering 
his  own  election.  But  his  success  two  years 
before,  in  the  face  of  a  vindictive  opposition 
led  by  the  strongest  Jackson  men  in  the  dis- 
trict, had  made  him  somewhat  confident,  and 
he  perhaps  thought  he  was  risking  little  by 
giving  a  helping  hand  to  his  comrade  in  the 
Spy  Battalion.  Before  the  election  Lincoln's 
popularity  developed  itself  in  rather  a  por- 
tentous manner,  and  it  required  some  exertion 
to  save  the  seat  of  his  generous  friend.  At  the 
close  of  the  poll,  the  four  successful  candi- 
dates held  the  following  relative  positions : 
Lincoln,  1376;  Dawson,  1370;  Carpenter, 
1170;  and  Stuart,  at  that  time  probably  the 
most  prominent  young  man  in  the  district, 
and  the  one  marked  out  by  the  public  voice 
for  an  early  election  to  Congress,  1164. 
LEGISLATIVE     EXPERIENCE.   MEETING     WITH 
STEPHEN     A.     DOUGLAS.    THE 
"  LONG    NINE." 
The  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  the  Legis- 
lature may  be  said  to  have  closed  the  pioneer 
portion  of  his  life.  He  was  done  with  the 
wild  carelessness  of  the  woods,  with  the  jolly 
ruffianism  of  Clary's  Grove,  with  the  petty 
chaffering  of  grocery  stores,  with  odd  jobs  for 
daily  bread,  with  all  the  uncouth  squalor  of 
the  frontier  poverty.  It  was  not  that  his  pecu- 
niary circumstanceswere  materially  improved. 
He  was  still,  and  for  years  continued  to  be, 
a  very  poor  man,  harassed  by  debts  which 
he  was  always  working  to  pay,  and  some- 
times in  distress  for  the  means  of  decent  sub- 
sistence.   But  from  this  time  forward  his  asso- 
ciations were  with  a  better  class  of  men  than 
he  had  ever  known  before,  and  a  new  feeling 
of  self-respect  must  naturally  have  grown  up 
in  his  mind  from  his  constant  intercourse 
with  them  —  a  feeling  which  extended  to  the 
minor  morals  of  civilized  life.  A  sophisticated 
reader  may  smile  at  the  mention  of  anything 
like  social  ethics  in  Vandalia  in  1834;  but, 
compared  with  Gentryville  and  New  Salem, 
the  society  which  assembled  in  the  winter  at 
that  little  capital  was  polished  and  elegant. 
The  State  then  contained  nearly  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  inhabitants,  and  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Legislature,  elected  purely  on 
personal  grounds,  nominated  by  themselves 
or  their  neighbors  without  the  intervention 
of  party  machinery,  were  necessarily  the  lead- 
ing men,  in  one  way  or  another,  in  their  sev- 
eral districts.  Among  the  colleagues  of  Lin- 
coln at  Vandalia  were  young  men  with 
destinies  only  less  brilliant  than  his  own. 
They  were  to  become  governors,  senators, 
and  judges ;  they  were  to  organize  the  Whig 
party  of  Illinois,  and  afterwards  the  Republi- 
can ;  they  were  to  lead  brigades  and  divisions 
in  two  great  wars.  Among  the  first  persons 
he  met  there — not  in  the  Legislature  proper, 
but  in  the  lobby,  where  he  was  trying  to 
appropriate  an  office  then  filled  by  Colonel 
Hardin — was  his  future  antagonist,  Stephen 
A.  Douglas.  Neither  seemed  to  have  any 
presentiment  of  the  future  greatness  of  the 
other.  Douglas  thought  little  of  the  raw  youth 
from  the  Sangamon  timber,  and  Lincoln  said- 
the  dwarfish  Vermonter  was  "  the  least  man 
he  had  ever  seen."  To  all  appearance,  Van- 
dalia was  full  of  better  men  than  either  of 
them —  clever  lawyers,  men  of  wit  and  stand- 
ing, some  of  them  the  sons  of  provident  early 
settlers,  but  more  who  had  come  from  older 
States  to  seek  their  fortunes  in  these  fresh 
fields. 
During  his  first  session  Lincoln  occupied 
no  especially  conspicuous  position.  He  held 
his  own  respectably  among  the  best.  One 
of  his  colleagues  tells  us  he  was  not  distin- 
guished by  any  external  eccentricity;  that  he 
wore,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  time, 
a  decent  suit  of  blue  jeans;  that  he  was 
known  simply  as  a  rather  quiet  young  man, 
good-natured  and  sensible.  Before  the  session 
ended  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  most 
of  the  members,  and  had  evidently  come 
to  be  looked  upon  as  possessing  more  than 
ordinary  capacity.  His  unusual  common-sense 
began  to  be  recognized.  His  name  does  not 
often  appear  in  the  records  of  the  year.  He 
introduced  a  resolution  in  favor  of  securing 
to  the  State  a  part  of  the  proceeds  of  the  sales 
of  public  lands  within  its  limits ;  he  took  part 
in  the  organization  of  the  ephemeral  "White"
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
party,  which  was  designed  to  unite  all  the 
anti-Jackson  elements  under  the  leadership 
of  Hugh  L.  White,  of  Tennessee ;  he  voted 
with  the  minority  in  favor  of  Young  against 
Robinson  for  senator,  and  with  the  majority 
that  passed  the  Bank  and  Canal  bills,  which 
were  received  with  such  enthusiasm  through- 
out Illinois,  and  which  were  only  the  precur- 
sors of  those  gigantic  and  ill-advised  schemes 
that  came  to  maturity  two  years  later,  and 
inflicted  such  incalculable  injury  upon  the 
State. 
Lincoln  returned  to  New  Salem,  after  this 
winter's  experience  of  men  and  things  at  the 
little  capital,  much  firmer  on  his  feet  than 
ever  before.  He  had  had  the  opportunity  of 
measuring  himself  with  the  leading  men  of 
the  community,  and  had  found  no  difficulty 
whatever  in  keeping  pace  with  them.  He 
continued  his  studies  of  the  law  and  survey- 
ing together,  and  became  quite  indispensable 
in  the  latter  capacity  —  so  much  so  that  Gen- 
eral Neale,  announcing  in  September,  1835, 
the  names  of  the  deputy  surveyors  of  San- 
gamon County,  places  the  name  of  Lincoln 
before  that  of  his  old  master  in  the  science, 
John  Calhoun.  He  returned  to  the  Legislature 
in  the  winter  of  1835-6,  and  one  of  the  first 
important  incidents  of  the  session  was  the 
election  of  a  senator  to  fill  the  vacancy  occa- 
sioned by  the  death  of  Elias  Kent  Kane. 
There  was  no  lack  of  candidates.  A  journal 
of  the  time  says  :  "  This  intelligence  reached 
Vandalia  on  the  evening  of  the  26th  Decem- 
ber, and  in  the  morning  nine  candidates  ap- 
peared in  that  place,  and  it  was  anticipated 
that  a  number  more  would  soon  be  in,  among 
them '  the  lion  of  the  North,'  who,  it  is  thought, 
will  claim  the  office  by  preemption."  *  It  is 
not  known  who  was  the  roaring  celebrity  here 
referred  to,  but  the  successful  candidate  was 
General  William  L.  D.  Ewing,  who  was  elected 
by  a  majority  of  one  vote.  Lincoln  and  the 
other  Whigs  voted  for  him,  not  because  he 
was  a  "  White  "  man,  as  they  frankly  stated, 
but  because  "  he  had  been  proscribed  by  the 
Van  Buren  party."  Mr.  Sernple,  the  candidate 
of  the  regular  Democratic  caucus,  was  beaten 
simply  on  account  of  his  political  orthodoxy. 
A  minority  is  always  strongly  in  favor  of 
independent  action  and  bitterly  opposed  to 
caucuses,  and  therefore  wre  need  not  be  sur- 
prised at  finding  Mr.  Lincoln,  a  few  days 
later  in  the  session,  joining  in  hearty  denun- 
ciation of  the  convention  system,  which  had 
already  become  popular  in  the  East,  and 
which  General  Jackson  was  then  urging  upon 
his  faithful  followers.  The  missionaries  of  this 
new  system  in  Illinois  were  the  shifty  young 
lawyer  from  Morgan  County,  who  had  just 
*  "  Sangamon  Journal,"  January  2. 
succeeded  in  having  himself  made  circuit  at- 
torney in  place  of  John  J.  Hardin,  Stephen 
A.  Douglas,  recently  from  Vermont,  and  a 
man  who  was  then  regarded  in  Vanda. 
a  far  more  important  and  dangerous  y 
than  Douglas,  Ebene/.er  Peck,  of  Chic 
He  was  looked  upon  with  distrust  and  suspi- 
cion for  several  reasons,  all  of  which  seemed 
valid  to  the  rural  legislators  assembled  there. 
He  came  from  Canada,  where  he  had  been  a 
member  of  the  provincial  parliament,  and  was 
therefore  imagined  to  be  permeated  with  secret 
hostility  to  republican  institutions;  his  garb, 
his  furs,  were  of  the  fashion  of  Quebec;  and  he 
passed  his  time  indoctrinating  the  Jackson  men 
with  the  theory  and  practice  of  party  organiza- 
tion, teachings  which  they  eagerly  absorbed, 
and  which  seemed  sinister  and  ominous  to  the 
Whigs.  He  was  showing  them,  in  fact,  the  way 
in  which  elections  were  to  be  won;  and  though 
the  Whigs  denounced  his  system  as  subversive 
of  individual  freedom  and  private  judgment, 
it  was  not  long  before  they  were  also  forced 
to  adopt  it,  or  be  left  alone  with  their  virtue. 
The  organization  of  political  parties  in  Illinois 
really  takes  its  rise  from  this  time,  and  in 
great  measure  from  the  work  of  Mr.  Peck 
with  the  Vandalia  Legislature.  There  was  no 
man  more  dreaded  and  disliked  than  he  was 
by  the  stalwart  young  Whigs  against  whom 
he  was  organizing  that  solid  and  disciplined 
opposition.  But  a  quarter  of  a  century  brings 
wonderful  changes.  Twenty-five  years  later 
Mr.  Peck  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 
these  very  men  who  then  reviled  him  as  a 
Canadian  emissary  of  tyranny  and  corrup- 
tion,—  with  S.  T.  Logan,  Browning,  and 
Dubois, —  organizing  a  new  party  for  victory 
under  the  name  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 
The  Legislature  adjourned  on  the  23d  of 
January,  having  made  a  beginning,  it  is  true, 
in  the  work  of  improving  the  State  by  statute, 
though  its  modest  work,  incorporating  canal 
and  bridge  companies  and  providing  for  pub- 
lic roads,  bore  no  relation  to  the  ambitious 
essays  of  its  successor.  Among  the  bills  passed 
at  this  session  was  an  Apportionment  act.  by 
which  Sangamon  County  became  entitled  to 
seven  representatives  and  two  senators,  and 
early  in  the  spring  nine  statesmen  of  the 
county  were  ready  for  the  field.  It  seems  sin- 
gular to  us  of  a  later  day  that  just  nine  prom- 
inent men  should  have  offered  themselves  for 
these  places,  without  the  intervention  of  any 
primary  meetings.  Such  a  thing,,  if  we  mis- 
take not,  was  never  known  again  in  Illinois. 
The  convention  system  was  afterwards  seen 
to  be  an  absolute  necessity  to  prevent  the  dis- 
organization of  parties  through  the  restle-s 
vanity  of  obscure  and  insubordinate  aspirants. 
But  the  nine  who  "  took  the  stump  "  in  San-
270 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
gamon  in  the  summer  of  1836  were  supported 
as  lovallv  and  as  energetically  as  if  they  had 
been  nominated  with  all  the  solemnity  of 
modern  days.  They  became  famous  in  the 
history  of  the  State,  partly  for  their  stature  and 
partly  for  their  influence  in  legislation.  They 
were  called  the  "  Long  Nine  "  ;  their  average 
height  was  oyer  six  feet,  and  their  aggregate 
altitude  -was  said  to  have  been  fifty-five  feet. 
Their  names  were  Abraham  Lincoln,  John 
Dawson,  Dan  Stone,  Ninian  W.  Edwards, 
William  F.  Elkin,  R.  L.  Wilson,  Andrew  Mc- 
Cormick  :  these  were  candidates  for  the  House 
of  Representatives,  and  Job  Fletcher  and 
Archer  Herndon  for  the  State  Senate. 
Mr.  Lincoln  began  his  canvass  with  the 
following  circular : 
"  New  Salem,  June  13,  1836. 
"  To  the  Editor  of  the  '  Journal. ' 
"  In  your  paper  of  last  Saturday  I  see  a  communi- 
cation over  the  signature  '  Many  Voters  '  in  which  the 
candidates  who  are  announced  in  the  '  Journal '  are 
called  upon  to  '  show  their  hands.'  Agreed.  Here's 
mine. 
u  I  go  for  all  sharing  the  privileges  of  the  Govern- 
ment who  assist  in  bearing  its  burdens.  Consequently 
I  go  for  admitting  all  whites  to  the  right  of  suffrage 
who  pay  taxes  or  bear  arms  (by  no  means  excluding 
females). 
"  If  elected,  I  shall  consider  the  whole  people  of 
Sangamon  my  constituents,  as  well  those  that  oppose 
as  those  that  support  me. 
"  While  acting  as  their  representative  1  shall  be 
governed  by  their  will  on  all  subjects  upon  which  I 
have  the  means  of  knowing  what  their  will  is,  and 
upon  all  others  I  shall  do  what  my  own  judgment 
teaches  me  will  best  advance  their  interests.  Whether 
elected  or  not,  I  go  for  distributing  the  proceeds  of 
the  sales  of  the  public  lands  to  the  several  States,  to 
enable  our  State,  in  common  with  others,  to  dig  canals 
and  construct  railroads  without  borrowing  money  and 
paying  interest  on  it. 
"  If  alive  on  the  first  Monday  in  November,  I  shall 
vote  for  Hugh  L.  White  for  President.* 
"  Very  respectfully, 
"A.  Lincoln." 
It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  a  more  auda- 
cious and  unqualified  declaration  of  princi- 
ples and  intentions.  But  it  was  the  fashion 
of  the  hour  to  promise  exact  obedience  to  the 
will  of  the  people,  and  the  two  practical  ques- 
tions touched  by  this  circular  were  the  only 
ones  then  much  talked  about.  The  question 
of  suffrage  for  aliens  was  a  living  problem  in 
the  State,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  naturally  took  lib- 
eral ground  on  it;  and  he  was  also  in  favor 
of  getting  from  the  sale  of  public  lands  a  por- 
tion of  the  money  he  was  ready  to  vote  for 
internal  improvements.  This  was  good  Whig 
doctrine  at  that  time,  and  the  young  politician 
did  not  fancy  he  could  go  wrong  in  following 
in  such  a  matter  the  lead  of  his  idol,  Henry 
Clay. 
*  This  phrase  seems  to  have  been  adopted  as  a  for- 
mula by  the  anti-Jackson  party.  The  "  cards  "  of  sev- 
eral candidates  contain  it. 
He  made  an  active  canvass,  and  spoke  fre- 
quently during  the  summer.  He  must  have 
made  some  part  of  the  campaign  on  foot,  for 
We  find  in  the  county  paper  an  advertisement 
of  a  horse  which  had  strayed  or  been  stolen 
from  him  while  on  a  visit  to  Springfield.  It 
was  not  an  imposing  animal,  to  judge  from  the 
description;  it  was  "plainly  marked  with  har- 
ness," and  was  "  believed  to  have  lost  some 
of  his  shoes  " ;  but  it  was  a  large  horse,  as 
suited  a  cavalier  of  such  stature,  and  "  trotted 
and  paced"  in  a  serviceable  manner.  In  July 
a  rather  remarkable  discussion  took  place  at 
the  county  seat,  in  which  many  of  the  leading 
men  on  both  sides  took  part.  Mr.  Ninian 
Edwards,  son  of  the  late  Governor,  is  said  to 
have  opened  the  debate  with  much  effect. 
Mr.  Early,  who  followed  him,  was  so  roused 
by  his  energetic  attack  that  he  felt  his  only 
resource  was  a  flat  contradiction,  which  in  those 
days  meant  mischief.  In  the  midst  of  great 
and  increasing  excitement  Dan  Stone  and 
John  Calhoun  made  speeches  which  did  not 
tend  to  pour  oil  on  the  waters  of  contention, 
and  then  it  came  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  turn.  An 
article  in  the  "  Journal"  states  that  he  seemed 
embarrassed  in  his  opening,  for  this  was  the 
most  important  contest  in  which  he  had  ever 
been  engaged.  But  he  soon  felt  his  easy  mas- 
tery of  his  powers  come  back  to  him,  and 
finished  by  making  what  was  universally  re- 
garded as  the  strongest  speech  of  the  day. 
One  of  his  colleagues  says  that  on  this  occa- 
sion he  used  in  his  excitement  for  the  first  time 
that  singularly  effective  clear  tenor  tone  of 
voice  which  afterwards  became  so  widely 
known  in  the  political  battles  of  the  West. 
The  canvass  was  an  energetic  one  through- 
out, and  excited  more  interest  in  the  district 
than  even  the  presidential  election  which  oc- 
curred some  months  later.  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
elected  at  the  head  of  the  poll  by  a  majority 
greatly  in  excess  of  the  average  majority  of 
his  friends,  which  shows  conclusively  how  his 
influence  and  popularity  had  increased.  The 
Whigs  in  this  election  effected  a  revolution  in 
the  politics  of  the  county.  By  force  of  their 
ability  and  standing  they  had  before  managed 
to  divide  the  suffrages  of  the  people,  even  while 
they  were  unquestionably  in  the  minority; 
but  this  year  they  completely  defeated  their 
opponents  and  gained  that  control  of  the 
county  which  they  never  lost  as  long  as  the 
party  endured. 
BEDLAM    LEGISLATION. 
If  Mr.  Lincoln  had  no  other  claims  to  be 
remembered  than  his  services  in  the  Legisla- 
ture of  1836-7,  there  would  be  little  to  say  in 
his  favor.    Its  history  is  one  of  disaster  to  the
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
271 
State.  Its  legislation  was  almost  wholly  un- 
wise and  hurtful.  The  most  we  can  say  for 
Mr.  Lincoln  is  that  he  obeyed  the  will  of  his 
constituents,  as  he  promised  to  do,  and  labored 
with  singular  skill  and  ability  to  accomplish 
the  objects  desired  by  the  people  who  gave  him 
their  votes.  The  especial  work  intrusted  to 
him  was  the  subdivision  of  the  county,  and  the 
project  for  the  removal  of  the  capital  of  the 
State  to  Springfield.*  In  both  of  these  he  was 
successful.  In  the  account  of  errors  and  follies 
committed  by  the  Legislature  to  the  lasting 
injury  of  the  State,  he  is  entitled  to  no  praise 
or  blame  beyond  the  rest.  He  shared  in  that 
sanguine  epidemic  of  financial  and  industrial 
quackery  which  devastated  the  entire  commu- 
nity, and  voted  with  the  best  men  of  the 
country  in  favor  of  schemes  which  appeared 
then  like  a  promise  of  an  immediate  millen- 
nium, and  seem  now  like  midsummer  madness. 
He  entered  political  life  in  one  of  those  eras 
of  delusive  prosperity  which  so  often  precede 
great  financial*  convulsions.  The  population 
of  the  State  was  increasing  at  the  enormous 
rate  of  two  hundred  per  centum  in  ten  years. 
It  had  extended  northward  along  the  lines 
of  the  wooded  valleys  of  creeks  and  rivers  in 
the  center  to  Peoria;  on  the  west  by  the 
banks  of  the  Mississippi  to  Galena;  on  the 
east  with  wide  intervals  of  wilderness  to 
Chicago. t  The  edge  of  the  timber  was  every- 
where pretty  well  occupied,  though  the  immi- 
grants from  the  forest  States  of  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee  had  as  yet  avoided  the  prairies. 
The  rich  soil  and  equable  climate  were  now 
attracting  an  excellent  class  of  settlers  from 
the  older  States,  and  the  long-neglected 
northern  counties  were  receiving  the  attention 
they  deserved.  The  war  of  Black  Hawk  had 
brought  the  country  into  notice;  the  utter 
defeat  of  his  nation  had  given  the  guarantee 
of  a  permanent  peace  ;  the  last  lodges  of  the 
Pottawatomies  had  disappeared  from  the 
country  in  1833.J:  The  money  spent  by  the 
General  Government  during  the  war,  and  paid 
to  the  volunteers  at  its  close,  added  to  the  com- 
mon prosperity.  There  was  a  brisk  trade  in 
real  estate,  and  there  was  even  a  beginning 
in  Chicago  of  that  passion  for  speculation  in 
town  lots  which  afterwards  became  a  frenzy. 
It  was  too  much  to  expect  of  the  Illinois 
Legislature  that  it  should  understand  that  the 
best  thing  it  could  do  to  forward  this  pros- 
perous tendency  of  things  was  to  do  noth- 
ing; for  this  is  a  lesson  which  has  not  yet 
been  learned  by  any  legislature  in  the  world. 
For  several  years  they  had  been  tinkering,  at 
first  modestly  and  tentatively,  at  a  scheme  of 
*  Lincoln  was  at  the  head  of  the  project  to  remove 
the  seat  of  government  to  Springfield;  it  was  entirely 
intrusted  to  him  to  manage.    The  members  were  all 
internal  improvements  which  should  not 
too  much  money.  Jn  1833  they  began  to 
grant  charters  for  railroads,  which  remained 
in  embryo,  as  the  stock  was  never  taken. 
Surveys  for  other  railroads  were  also  proposed, 
to  cross  the  State  in  different  directions;  and 
the  project  of  uniting  Lake  Michigan  with 
the  Illinois  River  by  a  canal  was  of  too  evi- 
dant  utility  to  be  overlooked.  In  fact,  the 
route  had  been  surveyed,  and  estimates  of 
cost  made,  companies  incorporated,  and  all 
preliminaries  completed  many  years  before, 
though  nothing  further  had  been  done,  as  no 
funds  had  been  offered  from  any  source.  But 
at  the  special  session  of  1835  a  law  was  passed 
authorizing  a  loan  of  half  a  million  dollars  for 
this  purpose ;  the  loan  was  effected  by  Gov- 
ernor Duncan  the  following  year,  and  in  June 
a  board  of  canal  commissioners  having  been 
appointed,  a  beginning  was  actually  made 
with  pick  and  shovel. 
A  restless  feeling  of  hazardous  speculation 
seemed  to  be  taking  possession  of  the  State. 
"  It  commenced,"  says  Governor  Ford,  in  his 
admirable  chronicle, §  "at  Chicago,  and  was 
the  means  of  building  up  that  place  in  a  year 
or  two  from  a  village  of  a  few  houses  to  be 
a  city  of  several  thousand  inhabitants.  The 
story  of  the  sudden  fortunes  made  there  ex- 
cited at  first  wonder  and  amazement ;  next,  a 
gambling  spirit  of  adventure;  and  lastly,  an 
all-absorbing  desire  for  sudden  and  splendid 
wealth.  Chicago  had  been  for  some  time  only 
one  great  town-market.  The  plots  of  towns 
for  a  hundred  miles  around  were  carried  there 
to  be  disposed  of  at  auction.  The  Eastern 
people  had  caught  the  mania.  Every  vessel 
coming  west  was  loaded  with  them,  their 
money  and  means,  bound  for  Chicago,  the 
great  fairy-land  of  fortunes.  But  as  enough 
did  not  come  to  satisfy  the  insatiable  greedi- 
ness of  the  Chicago  sharpers  and  speculators, 
they  frequently  consigned  their  wares  to  East- 
ern markets.  In  fact,  lands  and  town  lots 
were  the  staple  of  the  country,  and  were  the 
only  articles  of  export."  The  contagion  spread 
so  rapidly,  towns  and  cities  were  laid  out  so 
profusely,  that  it  was  a  standing  joke  that  be- 
fore long  there  would  be  no  land  left  in  the 
State  for  farming  purposes. 
The  future  of  the  State  for  many  years 
to  come  was  thus  discounted  by  the  fervid 
imaginations  of  its  inhabitants.  "  We  have 
every  requisite  of  a  great  empire,"  they  said, 
"  except  enterprise  and  inhabitants,"  and  they 
thought  that  a  little  enterprise  would  bring 
the  inhabitants.  Through  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1836  the  talk  of  internal  improve- 
elected  on  one  ticket,  but  they  all  looked  to  Lincoln 
as  the  head. — Stephen  T.  Logan.       t  Ford,  p.  102. 
X  Reynolds's  "  Life  and  Times."  §  Ford,  p.  181.
V- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
ments  grew  more  general  and  more  clamor- 
ous. The  candidates  for  office  spoke  about 
little  else,  and  the  only  point  of  emulation 
among  the  parties  was  which  should  be  the 
more  reckless  and  grandiose  in  its  promises. 
When  the  time  arrived  for  the  assembling  of 
the  Legislature,  the  members  were  not  left  to 
their  own  zeal  and  the  recollection  of  their 
campaign  pledges,  but  meetings  and  conven- 
tions were  everywhere  held  to  spur  them  up 
to  the  fulfillment  of  their  mandate.  The  reso- 
lutions passed  by  the  principal  body  of  dele- 
gates who  came  together  in  December  directed 
the  Legislature  to  vote  a  system  of  internal 
improvements  "commensurate  with  the  wants 
of  the  people,"  a  phrase  which  is  never  lack- 
ing in  the  mouth  of  the  charlatan  or  the 
demagogue. 
These  demands  were  pressed  upon  a  not 
reluctant  Legislature.  They  addressed  them- 
selves at  once  to  the  work  required  of  them, 
and  soon  devised,  with  reckless  and  unreason- 
ing haste,  a  scheme  of  railroads  covering  the 
vast  uninhabited  prairies  as  with  a  gridiron. 
There  was  to  be  a  railroad  from  Galena  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  River;  from  Alton  to 
Shawneetown  ;  from  Alton  to  Mount  Carmel; 
from  Alton  to  the  eastern  State  boundary — 
by  virtue  of  which  lines  Alton  was  to  take  the 
life  of  St.  Louis  without  further  notice ;  from 
Quincy  to  the  Wabash  River;  from  Bloom- 
ington  to  Pekin ;  from  Peoria  to  Warsaw  ;  —  in 
all,  one  thousand  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
of  railway.  Some  of  these  terminal  cities  were 
not  in  existence  except  upon  neatly  designed 
surveyors'  maps.  The  scheme  provided  also 
for  the  improvement  of  every  stream  in  the 
State  on  which  a  child's  shingle-boat  could 
sail ;  and  to  the  end  that  all  objections  should 
be  stifled  on  the  part  of  those  neighborhoods 
which  had  neither  railroads  nor  rivers,  a  gift 
of  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  voted  to 
them,  and  with  this  sop  they  were  fain  to  be 
content  and  not  trouble  the  general  joy.  To 
accomplish  this  stupendous  scheme,  the  Legis- 
lature voted  eight  million  dollars,  to  be  raised 
by  loan.*  Four  millions  were  also  voted  to 
complete  the  canal.  These  sums,  monstrous 
as  they  were,  were  still  ridiculously  inadequate 
to  the  purpose  in  view.  But  while  the  frenzy 
lasted  there  was  no  consideration  of  cost  or 
of  possibilities.  These  vast  works  were  voted 
without  estimates,  without  surveys,  without 
any  rational  consideration  of  their  necessity. 
The  voice  of  reason  seemed  to  be  silent  in  the 
Assembly;  only  the  utterances  of  fervid  proph- 
ecy found  listeners.  Governor  Ford  speaks 
of  one  orator  who  insisted,  amid  enthusiastic 
plaudits,  that  the  State  could  well  afford  to 
borrow  one  hundred  millions  for  internal  im- 
*  Ford's  "  History,"  p.  184. 
provements.  The  process  of  reasoning,  or 
rather  predicting,  was  easy  and  natural.  The 
roads  would  raise  the  price  of  land ;  the  State 
could  enter  large  tracts  and  sell  them  at  a 
profit ;  foreign  capital  would  be  invested  in 
land,  and  could  be  heavily  taxed  to  pay 
bonded  interest ;  and  the  roads,  as  they  were 
built,  could  be  operated  at  a  great  profit  to 
pay  for  their  own  construction.  The  climax 
of  the  whole  folly  was  reached  by  the  pro- 
vision of  law  directing  that  work  should  be 
begun  at  once  at  the  termini  cf  all  the  roads 
and  the  crossings  of  all  rivers. 
It  is  futile  and  disingenuous  to  attempt,  as 
some  have  done,  to  fasten  upon  one  or  the 
other  of  the  political  parties  of  the  State  the 
responsibility  of  this  bedlam  legislation.  The 
Governor  and  a  majority  of  the  Legislature 
were  elected  as  Jackson  Democrats,  but  the 
Whigs  were  as  earnest  in  passing  these  meas- 
ures as  their  opponents ;  and  after  they  were 
adopted,  the  superior  wealth,  education,  and 
business  capacity  of  the  Whigs«had  their  legiti- 
mate influence,  and  they  filled  the  principal 
positions  upon  the  boards  and  commissions 
which  came  into  existence  under  the  acts. 
The  bills  were  passed  by  a  large  majority,  and 
the  news  was  received  by  the  people  of  the 
State  with  the  most  extravagant  demonstra- 
tions of  delight.  The  villages  were  illumi- 
nated ;  bells  were  rung  in  the  rare  steeples  of 
the  churches ;  "  fire-balls,"  bundles  of  candle- 
wick  soaked  in  turpentine,  were  thrown  by 
night  all  over  the  country.  The  day  of  pay- 
ment was  far  away,  and  those  who  trusted 
the  assurances  of  the  sanguine  politicians 
thought  that  in  some  mysterious  way  the 
scheme  would  pay  for  itself. 
Mr.  Lincoln  is  continually  found  voting 
with  his  friends  in  favor  of  this  legislation,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  show  that  he  saw  any  dan- 
ger in  it.  He  was  a  Whig,  and  as  such  in  fa- 
vor of  internal  improvements  in  general  and 
a  liberal  construction  of  constitutional  law  in 
such  matters.  As  a  boy,  he  had  interested 
himself  in  the  details  of  local  improvements 
of  rivers  and  roads,  and  he  doubtless  went 
with  the  current  in  Vandalia  in  favor  of  this 
enormous  system.  He  took,  however,  no 
prominent  part  in  the  work  by  which  these 
railroad  bills  were  passed.  He  considered 
himself  as  specially  commissioned  to  procure 
the  removal  of  the  State  capital  from  "Vanda- 
lia to  Springfield,  and  he  applied  all  his  ener- 
gies to  the  accomplishment  of  this  work.  The 
enterprise  was  hedged  around  with  difficulties; 
for  although  it  was  everywhere  agreed,  except 
at  Vandalia,  that  the  capital  ought  to  be 
moved,  every  city  in  the  State,  and  several 
which  existed  only  on  paper,  demanded  to 
be  made  the  seat  of  government.    The  ques-
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
tion  had  been  submitted  to  a  popular 
vote  in  1834,  and  the  result  showed 
about  as  many  cities  desirous  of  open- 
ing their  gates  to  the  Legislature  as 
claimed  the  honor  of  being  the  birth- 
place of  Homer.  Of  these  Springfield 
was  only  third  in  popular  estimation, 
and  it  was  evident  that  Mr.  Lincoln 
had  need  of  all  his  wits  if  he  were  to 
fulfill  the  trust  confided  to  him.  It  is 
said  by  Governor  Ford  that  the  "  Long 
Nine  "  were  not  averse  to  using  the 
hopes  and  fears  of  other  members  in 
relation  to  their  special  railroads  to 
gain  their  adherence  to  the  Springfield 
programme,  but  this  is  by  no  means 
clear.  We  are  rather  inclined  to  trust 
the  direct  testimony  of  Mr.  Jesse  K. 
Dubois,  that  the  success  of  the  San- 
gamon County  delegation  in  obtaining 
the  capital  was  due  to  the  adroit  man- 
agement of  Mr.  Lincoln  —  first  in  in- 
ducing all  the  rival  claimants  to  unite 
in  a  vote  to  move  the  capital  from 
Vandalia,  and  then  in  carrying  a  direct 
vote  for  Springfield  through  the  joint 
convention  by  the  assistance  of  the 
southern  counties.  His  personal  author- 
ity accomplished  this  in  great  part.  Mr.  Du- 
bois says,  "He  made  Webb  and  me  vote  for  the 
removal,  though  we  belonged  to  the  southern 
end  of  the  State.  We  defended  our  vote  before 
our  constituents  by  saying  that  necessity  would 
ultimately  force  the  seat  of  government  to  a 
central  position.  But  in  reality  we  gave  the 
vote  to  Lincoln  because  we  liked  him,  because 
we  wanted  to  oblige  our  friend,  and  because 
we  recognized  him  as  our  leader."  To  do  this, 
they  were  obliged  to  quarrel  with  their  most 
intimate  associates,  who  had  bought  a  piece 
of  waste  land  at  the  exact  geographical  cen- 
ter of  the  State  and  were  striving  to  have  the 
capital  established  there  in  the  interest  of  their 
own  pockets  and  territorial  symmetry. 
The   bill  was   passed   only    a  short    time 
before    the    Legislature   adjourned,   and    the 
'"////'////////ffl/WM'/, 
fmmmk 
HON.    O.    H.    BROWNING.       (FROM    A    PHOTOGRAPH     BY    WAIDE.) 
"  Abraham  Lincoln  :  He  has  fulfilled  the  ex- 
pectations of  his  friends,  and  disappointed  the 
hopes  of  his  enemies  " ;  and  "  A.  Lincoln  : 
One  of  Nature's  noblemen." 
THE    LINCOLN-STONE    PROTEST. 
On  the  3d  of  March,  the  day  before  the 
Legislature  adjourned,  Mr.  Lincoln  caused  to 
be  entered  upon  its  records  a  paper  which 
excited  but  little  interest  at  the  time,  but 
which  will  probably  be  remembered  long 
after  the  good  and  evil  actions  of  the  Van- 
dalia Assembly  have  faded  away  from  the 
minds  of  men.  It  was  the  authentic  record 
of  the  beginning  of  a  great  and  momentous 
career. 
The  following  protest  was  presented  to  the 
House,  which  was  read  and  ordered   to  be 
Long  Nine  "  came  back  to  their  constituents, 
wearing  their  well-won  laurels.  They  were  spread  on  the  journals,  to  wit 
complimented  in  the  newspapers,  at  public 
meetings,  and  even  at  subscription  dinners. 
We  read  of  one  at  Springfield,  at  the  "  Rural 
Hotel,"  to  which  sixty  guests  sat  down,  where 
there  were  speeches  by  Browning,  Lincoln, 
Douglas  (who  had  resigned  his  seat  in  the 
Legislature  to  become  Register  of  the  Land 
Office  at  the  new  capital),  S.  T.  Logan,  Baker, 
and  others,  whose  wit  and  wisdom  were  lost 
to  history  through  the  absence  of  reporters. 
Another  dinner  was  given  them  at  Athens  a 
few  weeks  later.  Among  the  toasts  on  these 
occasions  were  two  which  we  may  transcribe : 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 36. 
"  Resolutions  upon  the  subject  of  domestic  slavery 
having  passed  both  branches  of  the  General  Assembly 
at  its  present  session,  the  undersigned  hereby  protest 
against  the  passage  of  the  same. 
"  They  believe  that  the  institution  of  slavery  is 
founded  on  both  injustice  and  bad  policy,  but  that 
the  promulgation  of  abolition  doctrines  tends  rather 
to  increase  than  abate  its  evils. 
"  They  believe  that  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  has  no  power  under  the  Constitution  to  inter- 
fere with  the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  different 
States. 
"  They  believe  that  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States  has  the  power,  under  the  Constitution,  to  abol- 
ish slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  but  that  the
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
JUDGE     STEPHEN    T.    LOGAN.        (FROM     THE     PORTRAIT     IN     POSSESSION     OF     HIS     DAUGHTER,    MRS.     L.    H.    COLEMAN.) 
power  ought  not  to  be  exercised,  unless  at  the  request 
of  the  people  of  the  District. 
"The  difference  between  these  opinions  and  those 
contained  in  the  above  resolutions  is  their  reason  for 
entering  this  protest. 
(Signed)  "  Dan  Stone, 
"  A.   Lincoln, 
"  Representatives  from  the  county  of  Sangamon."' 
It  may  seem  strange  to  those  who  shall 
read  these  pages  that  a  protest  so  mild  and 
cautious  as  this  should  ever  have  been  con- 
sidered either  necessary  or  remarkable.  We 
have  gone  so  far  away  from  the  habits  of 
thought  and  feeling  prevalent  at  that  time 
that  it  is  difficult  to  appreciate  such  acts  at 
their  true  value.  But  if  we  look  a  little  care- 
fully into  the  state  of  politics  and  public  opin- 
ion in  Illinois  in  the  first  half  of  this  century, 
we  shall  see  how  much  of  inflexible  conscience 
and  reason  there  was  in  this  simple  protest. 
The  whole  of  the  North-west  Territory  had, 
it  is  true,  been  dedicated  to  freedom  by  the 
ordinance  of  1787,  but  in  spite  of  that  famous 
prohibition  slavery  existed  in  a  modified  form 
throughout  that  vast  territory  wherever  there 
was  any  considerable  population.  An  act 
legalizing  a  sort  of  slavery  by  indenture  was 
passed  by  the  Indiana  territorial  Legislature 
in  1807,*  and  this  remained  in  force  in  the 
Illinois  country  after  its  separation.  Another 
act  providing  for  the  hiring  of  slaves  from 
Southern  States  was  passed  in  18 14,  for  the 
ostensible  reason  that  "  mills  could  not  be 
successfully  operated  in  the  territory  for  want 
of  laborers,  and  that  the  manufacture  of  salt 
could  not  be  successfully  carried  on  by  white 
laborers."!  Yet,  as  an  unconscious  satire 
upon  such  pretenses,  from  time  to  time  the 
most  savage  acts  were  passed  to  prohibit  the 
immigration  of  free  negroes  into  the  territory 
which  was  represented  as  pining  for  black 
labor.  Those  who  held  slaves  under  the 
French  domination,  and  their  heirs,  continued 
to  hold  them  and  their  descendants  in  servi- 
tude after  Illinois  had  become  nominally  a 
free  territory  and  a  free  State,  on  the  ground 
that  their  vested  rights  of  property  could  not 
have  been  abrogated  by  the  ordinance,  and 
under  the  rule  of  the  civil  law  partus  sequitur 
ventre  m. 
But  this  quasi-toleration  of  the  institution 
*  Edwards,  p.  179. 
t  Edwards,  p.  180.
ABRAJIAM  LINCOLN. 
was  not  enough  for  the  advocates  of  slavery. 
Soon  after  the  adoption  of  the  State  Constitu- 
tion, which  prohibited  slavery  "  hereafter,"  it 
was  evident  that  there  was  a  strong  under- 
current of  desire  for  its  introduction  into  the 
State.  Some  of  the  leading  politicians,  exag- 
gerating the  extent  of  this  desire,  imagined 
they  saw  in  it  a  means  of  personal  advance- 
ment, and  began  to  agitate  the  question  of  a 
convention  to  amend  the  Constitution.  At 
that  time  there  was  a  considerable  emigration 
setting  through  the  State  from  Kentucky  and 
Tennessee  to  Missouri.  Day  by  day  the  teams 
of  the  movers  passed  through  Illinois  settle- 
ments, and  wherever  they  halted  for  rest  and 
refreshment  they  would  affect  to  deplore  the 
short-sighted  policy  which,  by  prohibiting 
slavery,  had  prevented  their  settling  in  that 
beautiful  country.  When  young  bachelors 
came  from  Kentucky  on  trips  of  business  or 
pleasure,  they  dazzled  the  eyes  of  the  women 
and  excited  the  envy  of  their  male  rivals  with 
their  black  retainers.  The  early  Illinoisians 
were  perplexed  with  a  secret  and  singular 
sense  of  inferiority  to  even  so  new  and  raw  a 
community  as  Missouri,  because  of  its  pos- 
session of  slavery.  Governor  Edwards,  com- 
plaining so  late  as  1829  of  the  superior  mail 
facilities  afforded  to  Missouri,  says :  "I  can 
conceive  of  no  reason  for  this  preference,  un- 
less it  be  supposed  that  because  the  people  of 
Missouri  have  negroes  to  work  for  them  they 
are  to  be  considered  as  gentlefolks  entitled 
to  higher  consideration  than  us  plain  '  free- 
State  '  folks  who  have  to  work  for  ourselves." 
The  attempt  was  at  last  seriously  made  to 
open  the  State  to  slavery  by  the  Legislature 
of  1822-3.  Tne  Governor,  Edward  Coles  of 
Virginia,  a  strong  anti-slavery  man,  had  been 
— ~<£^V^C 
(from   silhouette 
POSSESSION     OF     HIS     SISTER.) 
elected  by  a  division  of  the  pro-slavery  party, 
but  came  in  with  a  Legislature  largely  against 
him.  The  Senate  had  the  requisite  pro-slavery 
majority  of  two- thirds  for  a  convention.  In 
the  House  of  Representatives  there  was  a 
contest  for  a  seat  upon  the  result  of  which  the 
two-thirds  majority  depended.  The  seat  was 
claimed  by  John  Shaw  and  Nicholas  Hanson, 
of  Pike  County.  The  way  in  which  the  con- 
test was  decided  affords  a  curious  illustration 
of  the  moral  sense  of  the  advocates  of  slavery. 
They  wanted  at  this  session  to  elect  a  senator 
and  provide  for  the  convention.  Hanson  would 
vote  for  their  senator  and  not  for  the  conven- 
tion.   Shaw  would  vote  for  the  convention,  but 
LOVEJOY  S    PRINTING-OFFICE,  ALTON,  ILLINOIS.     (AFTER   A  PHOTOGRAPH    IN    POSSESSION    OF    THE    LOVEJOY    MONUMENT    ASSOCIATION.^
276 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
HON'.  JOHN   1.  STUART. 
(FROM    THE    DAGUERREOTYPE    IN    POSSESSION     OF    HIS    WI 
not  for  Thomas,  their  candidate  for  senator. 
In  such  a  dilemma  they  determined  not  to 
choose,  but  impartially  to  use  both.  They 
gave  the  seat  to  Hanson,  and  with  his  vote 
elected  Thomas ;  they  then  turned  him  out, 
gave  the  place  to  Shaw,  and  with  his  vote 
carried  the  act  for  submitting  the  convention 
question  to  a  popular  vote.  They  were  not 
more  magnanimous  in  their  victory  than 
scrupulous  in  the  means  by  which  they  had 
gained  it.  The  night  after  the  vote  was  taken 
they  formed  in  a  wild  and  drunken  procession, 
and  visited  the  residences  of  the  Governor 
and  the  other  free-State  leaders,  with  loud  and 
indecent  demonstrations  of  triumph. 
They  considered  their  success  already  as- 
sured ;  but  they  left  out  of  view  the  value  of 
the  moral  forces  called  into  being  by  their 
in  5olent  challenge.  The  better  class  of  people 
in  the  State,  those  heretofore  unknown  in  pol- 
itics, the  schoolmasters,  the  ministers,  imrae- 
diately  prepared  for  the  contest,  which  became 
one  of  the  severest  the  State  has  ever  known. 
They  established  three  newspapers,  and  sus- 
tained them  with  money  and  contributions. 
The  Governor  gave  his  entire  salary  for  four 
years    to    the    expenses    of  this    contest,    in 
which  he  had  no  personal  interest 
whatever.  The  anti-slavery  mem- 
bers of  the  Legislature  made  up  a 
purse  of  a  thousand  dollars.  They 
spent  their  money  mostly  in  printer's 
ink  and  in  the  payment  of  active 
and  zealous  colporteurs.  The  result 
was  an  overwhelming  defeat  for  the 
slave  party.  The  convention  was 
beaten  by  eighteen  hundred  major- 
ity, in  a  total  vote  of  11,612,  and 
the  State  saved  forever  from  slavery. 
But  these  supreme  efforts  of  the 
advocates  of  public  morals,  un- 
influenced by  considerations  of 
personal  advantage,  are  of  rare  oc- 
currence, and  necessarily  do  not 
survive  the  exigencies  that  call  them 
forth.  The  apologists  of  slavery, 
beaten  in  the  canvass,  were  more 
successful  in  the  field  of  social  opin- 
ion. In  the  reaction  which  succeed- 
ed the  triumph  of  the  anti-slavery 
party,  it  seemed  as  if  there  had 
never  been  any  anti-  slavery  senti- 
ment in  the  State.  They  had  voted, 
it  is  true,  against  the  importation  of 
slaves  from  the  South,  but  they  were 
content  to  live  under  a  code  of  Dra- 
conian ferocity,  inspired  by  the  very 
spirit  of  slavery,  visiting  the  immi- 
gration of  free  negroes  with  penal- 
ties of  the  most  savage  description. 
Even  Governor  Coles,  the  public- 
spirited  and  popular  politician,  was  indicted 
and  severely  fined  for  having  brought  his  own 
freedmeh  into  the  State  and  having  assisted 
them  in  establishing  themselves  around  him 
upon  farms  of  their  own.  The  Legislature 
remitted  the  fine,  but  the  Circuit  Court  declared 
it  had  no  constitutional  power  to  do  so,  though 
the  Supreme  Court  afterwards  overruled  this 
decision.  Any  mention  of  the  subject  of 
slavery  was  thought  in  the  worst  possible 
taste,  and  no  one  could  avow  himself  opposed 
to  it  without  the  risk  of  social  ostracism. 
Every  town  had  its  one  or  two  abolitionists, 
who  were  regarded  as  harmless  or  dangerous 
lunatics,  according  to  the  energy  with  which 
they  made  their  views  known. 
From  this  arose  a  singular  prejudice  against 
New  England  people.  It  was  attributable  part- 
ly to  the  natural  feeling  of  distrust  of  strangers 
which  is  common  to  ignorance  and  provincial- 
ism, but  still  more  to  a  general  suspicion  that 
all  Eastern  men  were  abolitionists.  Mr.  Cook, 
whoso  long  represented  the  State  in  Congress, 
used  to  relate  with  much  amusement  how  he 
once  spent  the  night  in  a  farmer's  cabin,  and 
listened  to  the  honest  man's  denunciations  of 
that    Yankee  Cook.    Cook  was  a  Ken- 
PE. )
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
tuckian,  but  his  enemies  could  think  of  no 
more  dreadful  stigma  to  apply  to  him  than  that 
of  calling  him  a  Yankee.  Senator  McDougal 
once  told  us  that  although  he  made  no  pre- 
tense of  concealing  his  Eastern  nativity,  he 
never  could  keep  his  ardent  friends  in  Pike 
County  from  denying  the  fact  and  fighting 
any  one  who  asserted  it.  The  great  preacher, 
Peter  Cartwright,  used  to  denounce  Eastern 
men  roundly  in  his  sermons,  calling  them 
"  imps  who  lived  on  oysters  "  instead  of  hon- 
est corn-bread  and  bacon.  The  taint  of  slav- 
ery, the  contagion  of  a  plague  they  had  not 
quite  escaped,  was  on  the  people  of  Illinois. 
They  were  strong  enough  to  rise  once  in  their 
might  and  say  they  would  not  have  slavery 
among  them.  But  in  the  petty  details  of  every 
day,  in  their  ordinary  talk,  and  in  their  routine 
legislation,-  their  sympathies  were  still  with 
the  slave-holders.  They  would  not  enlist  with 
them,  but  they  would  fight  their  battles  in  their 
own  way. 
Their  readiness  to  do  what  came  to  be 
called  later,  in  a  famous  speech,  the  "  dirty 
work"  of  the  South  was  seen  in  the  tragic 
death  of  Lovejoy,  which  occurred  in  this  very 
year  of  1837.  He  had  for  some  years  been 
publishing  a  religious  newspaper  in  St.  Louis, 
but  finding  the  atmosphere  of  that  city  be- 
coming dangerous  to  him  on  account  of  the 
freedom  of  his  comments  upon  their  institu- 
tions, he  moved  to  Alton,  in  Illinois,  a  few 
miles  further  up  the  river.  His  arrival  excited 
an  immediate  tumult  in  that  place ;  a  mob 
gathered  there  on  the  day  of  his  arrival  —  it 
was  Sunday,  and  the  good  people  were  at 
leisure  —  and  threw  his  press  into  the  Missis- 
sippi. Having  thus  expressed  their  determina- 
tion to  vindicate  the  law,  they  held  a  meeting, 
and  cited  him  before  it  to  declare  his  intentions. 
He  said  they  were  altogether  peaceful  and 
legal ;  that  he  intended  to  publish  a  religious 
newspaper  and  not  meddle  with  politics.  This 
seemed  satisfactory  to  the  people,  and  he 
was  allowed  to  fish  out  his  press,  buy  new 
types,  and  set  up  his  paper.  But  Mr.  Lovejoy 
was  a  predestined  martyr.  He  felt  there 
was  a  "  woe  "  upon  him  if  he  held  his  peace 
against  the  wickedness  across  the  river.  He 
wrote  and  published  what  was  in  his  heart  to 
say,  and  Alton  was  again  vehemently  moved. 
A  committee  appointed  itself  to  wait  upon 
him  ;  for  this  sort  of  outrage  is  usually  ac- 
complished with  a  curious  formality  which 
makes  it  seem  to  the  participants  legal  and 
orderly.  The  preacher  met  them  with  an  un- 
daunted front  and  told  them  he  must  do  Irs 
duty  as  it  appeared  to  him  ;  that  he  was  ame- 
nable to  law,  but  nothing  else ;  he  even  spoke 
in  condemnation  of  mobs.  Such  language 
"  from  a  minister  of  the  gospel  "  shocked  and 
infuriated  the  committee  and  those  whom  they 
represented.  "  The  people  assembled,"  says 
Governor  Ford,  "and  quietly  took  the  p 
and  types  and  threw  them  into  the  river." 
We  venture  to  say  that  the  word  "  quietly" 
never  before  found  itself  in  such  company.  It 
is  not  worth  while  to  give  the  details  of  the 
bloody  drama  that  now  rapidly  ran  to  its 
close.  There  was  a  futile  effort  at  compromise, 
which  to  Lovejoy  meant  merely  surrender, 
and  which  he  firmly  rejected.  The  threats  of 
the  mob  were  answered  by  defiance  from  the 
little  band  that  surrounded  the  abolitionist.  A 
new  press  was  ordered,  and  arrived,  and  was 
stored  in  a  warehouse,  where  Lovejoy  and 
his  friends  shut  themselves  up,  determined  to 
defend  it  with  their  lives.  They  were  there- 
besieged  by  the  infuriated  crowd,  and  after  a 
short  interchange  of  shots  Lovejoy  was  killed, 
his  friends  dispersed,  and  the  press  once 
more  —  and  this  time  finally  —  thrown  into 
the  turbid  flood. 
These  events  took  place  in  the  autumn  of 
1837,  but  they  indicate  sufficiently  the  temper 
of  the  people  of  the  State  in  the  earlier  part  of 
the  year.  There  was  no  sympathy  nor  even 
toleration  for  any  public  expression  of  hostil- 
ity to  slavery.  The  zeal  of  the  followers  of 
Jackson,  although  he  had  ceased  to  be  Presi- 
dent, had  been  whetted  by  his  public  denun- 
ciations of  the  anti-slavery  propaganda;  little 
more  than  a  year  before  he  had  called  upon 
Congress  to  take  measures  to  "  prohibit  under 
severe  penalties  "  the  further  progress  of  such 
incendiary  proceedings  as  were  "calculated  to 
stimulate  the  slaves  to  insurrection  and  to 
produce  all  the  horrors  of  civil  war."  But  in 
spite  of  all  this,  the  people  with  uneasy  con- 
sciences continued  to  write  and  talk  and  peti- 
tion Congress  against  slavery,  and  most  of  the 
State  Legislatures  began  to  pass  resolutions 
denouncing  them.  Those  passed  by  the  Illinois 
Legislature  have  not  been  recorded,  but  they 
were  doubtless  as  vehement  as  possible,  for  a 
Legislature  so  deeply  engaged  in  financial 
legerdemain  as  this  never  fails  to  denounce 
with  especial  energy  anything  likely  to  injure 
the  prospects  of  trade.  The  resolutions  went 
the  way  of  all  buncombe ;  the  sound  and  fury 
of  them  have  passed  away  into  silence  ;  but 
they  woke  an  echo  in  one  sincere  heart  which 
history  will  be  glad  to  perpetuate. 
There  was  no  reason  that  Abraham  Lin- 
coln should  take  especial  notice  of  these  res- 
olutions, more  than  another.  He  had  done 
his  work  at  this  session  in  effecting  the  re- 
moval of  the  capital.  He  had  only  to  shrug 
his  shoulders  at  the  violence  and  untruth- 
fulness of  the  majority,  vote  against  them,  and 
go  back  to  his  admiring  constituents,  to  his 
dinners  and  his  toasts.     But  his  conscience
*78 
THE    SECOND    PAY  AT  GETTYSBURG. 
and  his  reason  forbade  him  to  be  silent  ;  he 
felt  a  word  must  be  said  on  the  other  side  to 
redress  the  distorted  balance.  He  wrote  his 
protest,  saying  not  one  word  he  was  not  ready 
to  stand  by  then  and  thereafter,  wasting  not 
a  syllable  in  rhetoric  or  feeling,  keeping  elose 
to  law  and  truth  and  justice.  When  he  had 
finished  it  he  showed  it  to  some  of  his  col- 
leagues  for  their  adhesion;  but  one  and  all 
refused,  except  Dan  Stone,  who  was  not  a 
candidate  for  reelection,  having  retired  from 
polities  to  a  seat  on  the  bench.  The  risk  was 
too  great  for  the  rest  to  run.  Lincoln  was 
twenty-eight  years  old  :  after  a  youth  of  sin- 
gular privations  and  struggles  he  had  arrived 
at  an  enviable  position  in  the  politics  and  the 
society  of  the  State.  His  intimate  friends, 
those  whom  he  loved  and  honored,  were 
Browning.  Butler,  Logan,  and  Stuart, —  Ken- 
tuckians  all,  and  strongly  averse  to  any  dis- 
cussion of  the  question  of  slavery.  The  public 
opinion  of  his  county,  which  was  then  little  less 
than  the  breath  of  his  life,  was  all  the  same  way. 
But  all  these  considerations  could  not  withhold 
him  from  performing  a  simple  duty — a  duty 
which  no  one  could  have  blamed  him  for  leav- 
ing undone.  The  crowning  grace  of  the  whole 
act  is  in  the  closing  sentence :  "The  difference 
between  these  opinions  and  those  contained 
in  the  said  resolutions  is  their  reason  for  en- 
tering this  protest."  Reason  enough  for  the 
Lincolns  and  Luthers. 
He  had  many  years  of  growth  and  devel- 
opment before  him.  There  was  a  long  dis- 
tance to  be  traversed  between  the  guarded 
utterances  of  this  protest  and  the  heroic  au- 
dacity which  launched  the  proclamation  of 
emancipation.  But  the  young  man  who  dared 
declare,  in  the  prosperous  beginning  of  his 
political  life,  in  the  midst  of  a  community 
imbued  with  slave-State  superstitions, that  "he 
believed  the  institution  of  slavery  was  founded 
both  on  injustice  and  bad  policy," — attacking 
thus  its  moral  and  material  supports,  while  at 
the  same  time  recognizing  all  the  constitutional 
guarantees  which  protected  it, —  had  in  him  the 
making  of  a  statesman  and,  if  need  be,  a  martyr. 
His  whole  career  was  to  run  in  the  lines  marked 
out  by  these  words,  written  in  the  hurry  of  a 
closing  session,  and  he  was  to  accomplish  few 
acts,  in  that  great  history  which  God  reserved 
for  him,  wiser  and  nobler  than  this. 
i^- 
z 
-!^"^5C. 
THE    SECOND    DAY   AT    GETTYSBURG 
BY    THE    CHIEF    OF    ART1LEERY    OF    THE    ARMY    OF    THE    POTOMAC. 
OX  June  30th  General  Meade atTaneytown 
received  information  that  the  enemy  was 
advan<  ingon  Gettysburg,  and  corps  command- 
ers were  at  once  instructed  to  hold  their  com- 
mand-, in  readiness  to  march  against  him.  The 
next  day,  July  1st,  Meade  wrote  to  Reynolds 
that  telegraphic  intelligence  from  Couch,  and 
the  movements  reported  by  Buford,  indicated 
a  concentration  of  the  enemy's  army  either  at 
Chambersburg,  or  at  some  point  on  a  line 
drawn  from  that  place  through  Heidlersburg 
to  York.  Under  these  circumstances,  Meade 
informed    Reynolds  that  he  had  not  yet  de- 
cided whether  it  was  his  best  policy  to  move 
to  attack  before  he  knew  more  definitely 
Lee's  point  of  concentration.  He  seems,  how- 
ever, soon  to  have  determined  not  to  advance 
until  the  movements  or  position  of  the  enemy 
gave  strong  assurance  of  success ;  and  that 
if  the  enemy  took  the  offensive,  he  would 
withdraw  his  own  army  from  its  actual  posi- 
tions and  form  line  of  battle  behind  Pipe 
Creek,  between  Middleburg  and  Manchester. 
The  considerations  probably  moving  him  to 
this  are  not  difficult  to  divine.  Examination 
of  the   map    [see   the  November  Century]
CARANCRO. 
365 
•'  ADJIEU." 
face  fixed  in  unconscious  reverie,  it  was  full  news  of  him,  I  hope,  for  the  sake  of  this  boy's 
of  a  grim,  unhappy  satisfaction.  soul,  it  will  come  quickly.''    So  spoke  the  cure 
"Self is  winning  or  dying  hard.    I  wish  no  alone,  to  his  cards. 
ill  to  Thanase;   but  if  there  is  to  be  any  bad  George  IV.  Cable, 
(To  be  concluded. ) 
Vol.   XXXI IT.—  49.
[BEGUN    IN     THE    NOVEMBER    NUMBER.] 
ABRAHAM    LINCOLN:    A    HISTORY.* 
BY     rOHN    G.    NICOLAY    AND    JOHN     HAY,    PRIVATE    SECRETARIES    TO    THE    PRESIDENT. 
LINCOLN    IX    SPRINGFIELD. 
MR.  LINCOLN  had  made  thus  far  very  lit 
tie  money  —  nothing  more,  in  fact,  than  a 
bare  subsistence  of  the  most  modest  character. 
But  he  had  made  some  warm  friends,  and  this 
meant  very  much  among  the  early  Illinoisi- 
ans.  He  had  become  intimately  acquainted, 
at  Vandalia,  with  William  Butler,  who  was 
greatly  interested  in  the  removal  of  the  capi- 
WIIXIAM     BUTLER.        (FROM     A     PHOTOGRAPH     TAKEN     ABOUT 
POSSESSION     OF     HIS    DAUGHTER,    MISS     SALOME     BUTLI 
tal  to  Springfield,  and  who  urged  the  young 
legislator  to  take  up  his  residence  at  the  new 
seat  of  government.  Lincoln  readily  fell  in 
with  this  suggestion,  and  accompanied  his 
friend  home  when  the  Legislature  adjourned, 
sharing  the  lodging  of  Joshua  F.  Speed,  a 
young  Kentucky  merchant,  and  taking  his 
meals  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Butler  for  several 
years. 
In  this  way  began  Air.  Lincoln's  residence 
in  Springfield,  where  he  was  to  remain  until 
called  to  one  of  the  highest  of  destinies  in- 
trusted to  men,  and  wheie  his  ashes  were  to 
rest  forever  in  monumental  marble.  It  would 
have  seemed  a  dreary  village  to  any  one  ac- 
customed to  the  world,  but  in  a  letter  written 
about  this  time,  Lincoln  speaks  of  it  as  a  place 
where  there  was  a  "  good  deal  of  flourishing 
about  in  carriages" — a  town  of  some  preten- 
sions to  elegance.  It  had  a  population  of  fif- 
teen hundred.  The  county  contained  nearly 
eighteen  thousand  souls,  of  whom  seventy- 
eight  were  free  negroes,  twenty  reg- 
istered indentured  servants,  and  six 
slaves.  Scarcely  a  perceptible  trace 
of  color,  one  would  say,  yet  we 
find  in  the  Springfield  paper  a 
leading  article  f  beginning  with  the 
startling  announcement,  "  Our  State 
is  threatened  to  be  run  over  with 
free  negroes."  The  county  was  one 
of  the  richest  in  Illinois,  possessed 
of  a  soil  of  inexhaustible  fertility, 
and  divided  to  the  best  advantage 
between  prairie  and  forest.  It  was 
settled  early  in  the  history  of  the 
State,  and  the  country  was  held  in 
high  esteem  by  the  aborigines.  The 
name  of  Sangamon  is  said  to  mean  in 
the  Pottawatomie  language  "  land  of 
plenty."|  Its  citizens  were  of  an  ex- 
cellent class  of  people,  a  large  major- 
ity of  them  from  Kentucky,  though 
representatives  were  not  wanting 
from  the  Eastern  States,  men  of  edu- 
cation and  character.  There  had 
been  very  little  of  what  might  be 
called  pioneer  life  in  Springfield. 
Civilization  came  in  with  a  reason- 
ably full  equipment  at  the  beginning. 
The  Edwardses  in  fair  top-boots  and 
ruffled  shirts ;  the  Ridgelys  brought 
their  banking  business  from  Maryland;  the 
Logans  and  Conklings  were  good  lawyers  be- 
fore they  arrived  ;  another  family  came  with 
a  cotton  manufactory  from  Kentucky,  which 
proved  its  aristocratic  character  by  never  do- 
ing any  work.  With  a  population  like  this,  the 
town  had,  from  the  beginning,  a  more  settled 
and  orderly  type  than  was  usual  in  the  South 
and  West.  A  glance  at  the  advertising  col- 
umns of  the  newspaper  will  show  how  much 
t  "  Sangamon  Journal,"  November  7,  1835. 
X  Reynolds's  "Life  and  Times,"  p.  237. 
1850, 
R.) 
Copyright  by  J.  G.  Nicolay  and  John  Hay,  1886.     All  rights  reserved.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
in 
JOSHUA    SPEED    AND    WIFE.       (FROM     A     PAINTING     BY     HEALY,     ABOUT     1864.) 
attention  to  dress  was  paid  in  the  new  capi- 
tal. "  Cloths,  cassinetts,  cassimeres,  velvet, 
silk,  satin,  and  Marseilles  vestings,  fine  calf 
boots,  seal  and  morocco  pumps,  for  gentle- 
men," and  for  the  sex  which  in  barbarism 
dresses  less  and  in  civilization  dresses  more 
than  the  male,  '•  silks,  bareges,  crepe  lisse, 
lace  veils,  thread  lace,  Thibet  shawls,  lace 
handkerchiefs,  fine  prunella  shoes,  etc."  It  is 
evident  that  the  young  politician  was  con- 
fronting a  social  world  more  formidably  cor- 
rect than  anything  he  had  as  yet  seen. 
Governor  Ford  began  some  years  before 
this  to  remark  with  pleasure  the  change  in 
the  dress  of  the  people  of  Illinois:  the  gradual 
disappearance  of  leather  and  linsey-woolsey, 
the  hunting-knife  and  tomahawk,  from  the 
garb  of  men  ;  the  deer-skin  moccasin  sup- 
planted by  the  leather  boot  and  shoe;  the 
leather  breeches  tied  around  the  ankle  re- 
placed by  the  modern  pantaloons  ;  and  the 
still  greater  improvement  in  the  adornment 
of  women,  the  former  bare  feet  decently  shod, 
and  homespun  frocks  giving  way  to  gowns 
of  calico  and  silk,  and  the  heads  tied  up  in 
red  cotton  turbans  disappearing  in  favor  of 
those  surmounted  by  pretty  bonnets  of  silk  or 
straw.    We  admit  that  these  changes  were  not 
unattended  with  the  grumbling  ill-will  of  the 
pioneer  patriarchs;  they  predicted  nothing  but 
ruin  to  a  country  that  thus  forsook  the  old 
ways  "  which  were  good  enough  for  their  fa- 
thers." But  with  this  change  in  dress  came 
other  alterations  which  were  all  for  the  bet- 
ter— a  growing  self-respect  among  the  young ; 
an  industry  and  thrift  by  which  they  could  buy 
good  clothes  ;  a  habit  of  attending  religious 
service,  where  they  could  show  them ;  a 
progress  in  sociability,  civility,  trade,  and 
morals.* 
The  taste  for  civilization  had  sometimes  a 
whimsical  manifestation.  Mr.  Stuart  said  the 
members  of  the  Legislature  bitterly  complained 
of  the  amount  of  game  —  venison  and  grouse 
of  the  most  delicious  quality  —  which  was 
served  them  at  the  taverns  in  Yandalia:  they 
clamored  for  bacon  —  they  were  starving,  they 
said,  "  for  something  civilized."  There  was 
plenty  of  civilized  nourishment  in  Springfield. 
Wheat  was  fifty  cents  a  bushel,  rye  thirty- 
three;  corn  and  oats  were  twenty-five,  pota- 
toes twenty-five;  butter  was  eight  cents  a 
pound,  and  eggs  were  eight  cents  a  dozen; 
pork  was  two  and  a  half  cents  a  pound. 
The  town  was  built  on  the  edge  of  the 
*  Ford's  "  History,"  p.  04.
268 
A  BRAHAM    L  WCOLN 
MRS.      LUCY     G.      SPEED,     MOTHER     OF    JOSHUA     SPEED 
(FRC 
;V     JOSEPH     BUSH.     ABOUT     1834.) 
woods,  the  north  side  touching  the  timber, 
the  south  encroaching  on  the  prairie.  The 
richness  of  the  soil  was  seen  in  the  mud  of 
the  streets,  black  as  ink,  and  of  an  unfathom- 
able depth  in  time  of  thaw.  There  were,  of 
course,  no  pavements  or  sidewalks ;  an  at- 
tempt at  crossings  was  made  by  laying  down 
large  chunks  of  wood.  The  houses  were  al- 
most all  of  wood,  and  were  disposed  in  rect- 
angular blocks.  A  large  square  had  been 
left  in  the  middle  of  the  town,  in  anticipation 
of  future  greatness,  and  there,  when  Lincoln 
began  his  residence,  the  work  of  clearing  the 
ground  for  the  new  State-house  was  already 
going  forward,  in  one  of  the  largest  houses 
looking  on  the  square,  at  the  north-west  cor- 
ner, the  county  court  had  its  offices,  and  other 
rooms  in  the  building  were  let  to  lawyers. 
One  of  these  was  occupied  by  Stuart  and 
Lincoln,  for  the  friendship  formed  in  the 
Black   Hawk  war  and  strengthened  at  Van- 
*  It  is  not  unworthy  of  notice  that  in  a  country  where 
military  titles  were  conferred  with  ludicrous  profusion 
and  borne  with  absurd  complacency,  Lincoln,  who  had 
dalia  induced  "Major"  Stuart  to  offer  a  part- 
nership to  "  Captain  "  Lincoln  * 
Lincoln  did  not  gain  any  immediate  em- 
inence at  the  bar.  His  preliminary  studies 
had  been  cursory  and  slight,  and  Stuart  was 
then  too  much  engrossed  in  politics  to  pay 
the  unremitting  attention  to  law  which  that 
jealous  mistress  requires.  He  had  been  a  can- 
didate for  Congress  the  year  before,  and  had 
been  defeated  by  W.  L.  May.  He  was  a 
candidate  again  in  1838,  and  was  elected  over 
so  agile  an  adversary  as  Stephen  Arnold 
Douglas.  His  paramount  interest  in  these 
canvasses  necessarily  prevented  him  from  set- 
ting to  his  junior  partner  the  example,  which 
Lincoln  so  greatly  needed,  of  close  and  steady 
devotion  to  their  profession.  It  was  only  sev- 
eral years  later  that  Lincoln  found  with  Judge 
Logan  the  companionship  and  inspiration 
which  he  required,  and  began  to  be  really  a 
lawyer.    During   the   first   year  or  two  he  is 
actually  been  commissioned,  and  had  served  as  cap- 
tain, never  used  the  designation  after  he  laid  down  his 
command.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
Y"j 
principally  remembered  in  Springfield  as  an 
excellent  talker,  the  life  and  soul  of  the  little 
gatherings  about  the  county  offices,  a  story- 
teller of  the  first  rank, a  good-natured,  friendly 
fellow  whom  everybody  liked  and  trusted.  He 
relied  more  upon  his  influence  with  a  jury 
than  upon  his  knowledge  of  law  in  the  few 
cases  he  conducted  in  court,  his  acquaintance 
with  human  nature  being  far  more  extensive 
than  his  legal  lore. 
THE    COLLAPSE    OF 
THE     SYSTEM. 
Lincoln  was  not  yet  done  with  Vandalia, 
its  dinners  of  game,  and  its  political  intrigue. 
The  archives  of  the  State  were  not  removed 
to  Springfield  until  1839,  and  Lincoln  re- 
mained a  member  of  the  Legislature  by  suc- 
cessive reflections  from  1834  to  1842.  He 
was  called  down  to  Vandalia  in  the  summer 
of  1837,  by  a  special  session  of  the  Legisla- 
ture. The  magnificent  schemes  of  the  fore- 
going winter  required  some  repairing.  The 
banks  throughout  the  United  States  had  sus- 
pended specie  payments  in  the  spring,  and 
as  the  State  banks  in  Illinois  were  the  fiscal 
agents  of  the  railroads  and  canals,  the  Gov- 
ernor called  upon  the  law-makers  to  revise 
their  own  work,  to  legalize  the  suspension, 
and  bring  their  improvement  system  within 
possible  bounds.  They  acted  as  might  have 
been  expected :  complied  with  the  former  sug- 
gestion, but  flatly  refused  to  touch  their  master- 
piece. They  had  been  glorifying  their  work 
too  energetically  to  destroy  it  in  its  infancy. 
It  was  said  you  could  recognize  a  legislator 
that  year  in  any  crowd  by  his  automatic  rep- 
etition of  the  phrase,  "  Thirteen  hundred  — 
fellow-citizens !  —  and  fifty  miles  of  rail- 
road !  "  There  was  nothing  to  be  done  but 
go  on  with  the  stupendous  folly.  Loans  were 
effected  with  surprising  and  fatal  facility, 
and  "  before  the  end  of  the  year,  work  had 
begun  at  many  points  on  the  railroads.  The 
whole  State  was  excited  to  the  highest  pitch 
of  frenzy  and  expectation.  Money  was  as 
plenty    as    dirt.    Industry,    instead    of  being 
'  Mfllfr  jjjjjjljg  EJ^jSffifl^gL  x  lM^ 
OFFICE    CHAIR     USED    IN    LINCOLN    AND    STUART'S    OFFICE. 
(IN     POSSESSION     OF    O.     H.     OLDROVD.) 
LINCOLN     AND     STUART  S     LAW-OFFICE,     SPRINGFIELD. 
stimulated,  actually  languished.  We  exported 
nothing,"  says  Governor  Ford,  "  and  every- 
thing from  abroad  was  paid  for  by  the  bor- 
rowed money  expended  among  us."  Not  only 
upon  the  railroads,  but  on  the  canal  as  well, 
the  work  was  begun  on  a  magnificent  scale. 
Nine  millions  of  dollars  were  thought  to  be 
a  mere  trifle  in  view  of  the  colossal  sum  ex- 
pected to  be  realized  from  the  sale  of  canal 
lands,  three  hundred  thousand  acres  of  which 
had  been  given  by  the  General  Government. 
There  were  rumors  of  coming  trouble,  and  of 
an  unhealthy  condition  of  the  banks ;  but  it 
was  considered  incivism  to  look  too  curiously 
into  such  matters.  One  frank  patriot,  who 
had  been  sent  as  one  of  a  committee  to  exam- 
ine the  bank  at  Shawneetown,  when  asked 
what  he  found  there,  replied  with  winning 
candor,  "  Plenty  of  good  whisky  and  sugar 
to  sweeten  it."* 
But  a  year  of  baleful  experience  destroyed 
a  great  many  illusions,  and  in  the  election  of 
1838  the  subject  of  internal  improvements 
was  treated  with  much  more  reserve  by  can- 
didates. The  debt  of  the  State,  issued  at  a 
continually  increasing  discount,  had  already 
attained  enormous  proportions  :  the  delirium 
of  the  last  few  years  was  ending,  and  sensible 
people  began  to  be  greatly  disquieted.  Nev- 
ertheless, Mr.  Cyrus  Edwards  boldly  made 
his  canvass  for  Governor  as  a  supporter  of 
the  system  of  internal  improvements,  and  his 
opponent,  Thomas  Carlin,  was  careful  not  to 
*  Ford's  "History,"  p.  197.
37° 
ABRAHAM  LIXCOLN. 
LINCOLN   S     INKSTAND. 
(FROM    THE    KEYES    LINCOLN    MEMORIAL    COLLECTION,    CHICAGO.) 
commit  himself  strongly  on  the  other  side. 
Carlin  was  elected,  and  finding  that  a  majority 
of  the  Legislature  was  still  opposed  to  any 
steps  backward,  he  made  no  demonstration 
against  the  system  at  the  first  session.  Lin- 
coln was  a  member  of  this  body,  and,  being 
by  that  time  the  unquestioned  leader  of  the 
Whig  minority,  was  nominated  for  Speaker, 
and  came  within  one  vote  of  an  election. 
The  Legislature  was  still  stiff-necked  and  per- 
verse in  regard  to  the  system.  It  refused  to 
modify  it  in  the  least,  and  voted,  as  if  in  bra- 
vado, another  eight  hundred  thousand  dollars 
to  extend  it. 
But  this  was  the  last  paroxysm  of  a  fever 
that  was  burnt  out.  The  market  was  glutted 
with  Illinois  bonds ;  one  banker  and  one 
broker  after  another,  to  whose  hands  they 
had  been  recklessly  confided  in  New  York 
and  London,  failed,  or  made  away  with  the 
proceeds  of  sales.  The  system  had  utterly 
failed ;  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  repeal  it, 
stop  work  upon  the  visionary  roads,  and  en- 
deavor to  invent  some  means  of  paying  the 
enormous  debt.  This  work  taxed  the  energies 
of  the  Legislature  in  1839,  and  for  some  years 
after.  It  was  a  dismal  and  disheartening  task. 
Blue  Monday  had  come  after  these  years  of 
intoxication,  and  a  crushing  debt  rested  upon 
a  people  who  had  been  deceiving  themselves 
with  the  fallacy  that  it  would  somehow  pay 
itself  by  acts  of  the  Legislature.  Many  were 
the  schemes  devised  for  meeting  these  op- 
pressive obligations  without  unduly  taxing  the 
voters  ;  one  of  them,  not  especially  wiser  than 
the  rest,  was  contributed  by  Mr.  Lincoln.  It 
provided  for  the  issue  of  bonds  for  the  pay- 
ment of  the  interest  due  by  the  State,  and  for 
the  appropriation  of  a  special  portion  of  State 
taxes  to  meet  the  obligations  thus  incurred. 
He  supported  his  bill  in  a  perfectly  character- 
istic speech,  making  no  effort  to  evade  his 
share  of  the  responsibility  for  the  crisis,  and 
submitting  his  views  with  diffidence  to  the 
approval  of  the  Assembly.  His  plan  was  not 
adopted  ;  it  was  too  simple  and  straightfor- 
ward, even  if  it  had  any  other  merits,  to  meet 
the  approval  of  an  assembly  intent  only  upon 
getting  out  of  immediate  embarrassment  by 
means  which  might  save  them  trouble  on  the 
stump  hereafter.  There  was  even  an  under- 
current of  sentiment  in  favor  of  repudiation. 
But  the  payment  of  the  interest  for  that  year 
was  provided  for  by  an  ingenious  expedient, 
which  shifted  upon  the  Fund  Commissioners 
the  responsibility  of  deciding  what  portion 
of  the  debt  was  legal,  and  how  much  interest 
was  therefore  to  be  paid.  Bonds  were  sold  for 
this  purpose  at  a  heavy  loss. 
This  session  of  the  Legislature  was  enliv- 
ened by  a  singular  contest  between  the  Whigs 
and  Democrats  in  relation  to  the  State  banks. 
Their  suspension  of  specie  payments  had  been 
legalized  up  to  "  the  adjournment  of  the  next 
session  of  the  Legislature."  They  were  not  now 
able  to  resume,  and  it  was  held  by  the  Demo- 
crats that  if  the  special  session  adjourned  sine 
die  the  charter  of  the  banks  would  be  forfeited, 
a  purpose  the  party  was  eager  to  accomplish. 
The  Whigs,  who  were  defending  the  banks, 
wished  to    prevent  the   adjournment  of  the 
LINCOLN  S    BOOKCASE. 
(FROM    THE    KEYES    LINCOLN     MEMORIAL     COLLECTION,   CHICAGO.)
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
MILTON     HAY, 
(FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  W.  F.  TRUESDELL.) 
special  session  until  the  regular  session  should 
begin,  during  the  course  of  which  they  ex- 
pected to  renew  the  lease  of  life  now  held 
under  sufferance  by  the  banks — in  which,  it 
may  be  here  said,  they  were  finally  successful. 
But  on  one  occasion,  being  in  the  minority, 
and  having  exhausted  every  other  parlia- 
mentary means  of  opposition  and  delay,  and 
seeing  the  vote  they  dreaded  imminent,  they 
tried  to  defeat  it  by  leaving  the  house  in  a 
body,  and,  the  doors  being  locked,  a  number 
of  them,  among  whom  Mr.  Lincoln's  tall  fig- 
ure was  prominent,  jumped  from  the  windows 
of  the  church  where  the  Legislature  was  then 
holding  its  sessions.  "  I  think,"  says  Mr. 
Gillespie,  who  was  one  of  those  who  per- 
formed this  feat  of  acrobatic  politics,  "  Mr. 
Lincoln  always  regretted  it,  as  he  depre- 
cated everything  that  savored  of  the  revolu- 
tionary." 
Two  years  later  the  persecuted  banks,  har- 
ried by  the  demagogues  and  swindled  by  the 
State,  fell  with  a  great  ruin,  and  the  financial 
misery  of  the  State  was  complete.  Nothing- 
was  left  of  the  brilliant  schemes  of  the  historic 
Legislature  of  1836  but  a  load  of  debt  which 
crippled  for  many  years  the  energies  of  the 
people,  a  few  miles  of  embankments  which 
the  grass  hastened  to  cover,  and  a  few  abut- 
ments which  stood  for  years  by  the  sides  of 
leafy  rivers,  waiting  for  the  bridges  and  the 
trains  which  were  never  to  come. 
During  the  winter  of  1 840-1  occurred  the 
first  clash  of  opinion  and  principle  between 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  life-long  adversary,  Mr. 
Douglas.  There  are  those  who  can  see  only 
envy  and  jealousy  in  that  strong  dislike  and 
disapproval  with  which  Mr.  Lincoln  always 
regarded  his  famous  rival,  and  we  regret  that 
one  of  his  biographers  has  taken  this  injurious 
view  of  the  matter.  But  we  think  that  few 
men  have  ever  lived  who  were  more  free  from 
those  degrading  passions  than  Abraham  Lin- 
coln, and  the  personal  reprobation  with  which 
he  always  visited  the  public  acts  of  Douglas 
arose  from  his  sincere  conviction  that  the  man 
was  essentially  without  fixed  political  morals. 
They  had  met  for  the  first  time  in  1834  at 
Vandalia,  where  Douglas  was  busy  in  getting 
the  circuit  attorneyship  away  from  John  J. 
Hardin.  He  held  it  only  long  enough  to  se- 
cure a  nomination  to  the  Legislature  in  1836. 
He  went  there  to  endeavor  to  have  the  capi- 
tal moved  to  Jacksonville,  where  he  lived,  but 
he  gave  up  the  fight  for  the  purpose  of  hav- 
ing himself  appointed  Register  of  the  Land 
Office  at  Springfield.  He  held  this  place  as  a 
means  of  being  nominated  for  Congress  the 
next  year ;  he  was  nominated  and  defeated. 
In  1840  he  was  engaged  in  another  scheme
372 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
>VILLIAM      HENRY      HARRISON 
[841.       (FROM     A     PAINTING    BY     HENRY     1NMAN,     IN     POSSESSION     OF     BENJAMIN     HARRISON.) 
to  which  we  will  give  a  moment's  attention, 
which  resulted  in  giving  him  a  seat  on  the 
Supreme  Bench  of  the  State,  which  he  used 
merely  as  a  perch  from  which  to  get  into 
Congress. 
There  had  been  a  difference  of  opinion  in 
Illinois  for  some  years  as  to  whether  the  Con- 
stitution, which  made  voters  of  all  white  male 
inhabitants  of  six  months'  residence,  meant  to 
include  aliens  in  that  category.  As  the  aliens 
were  nearly  all  Democrats,  that  party  insisted 
on  their  voting,  and  the  Whigs  objected.  The 
best  lawyers  in  the  State  were  Whigs,  and  so 
it  happened  that  most  of  the  judges  were  of 
that  complexion.  A  case  was  made  up  for 
decision  and  decided  adversely  to  the  aliens, 
who  appealed  it  to  the  Supreme  Court.  This 
case  was  to  come  on  at  the  June  term  in  1840, 
and  the  Democratic  counsel,  chief  among 
whom  was  Mr.  Douglas,  were  in  some  anxiety, 
as  an  unfavorable  decision  would  lose  them 
about  ten  thousand  alien  votes  in  the  Presi- 
dential election  in  November.  In  this  con- 
juncture one  Judge  Smith,  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  an  ardent  Democrat,  willing  to  enhance 
his  value  in  his  party,  communicated  to  Mr. 
Douglas  two  important  facts :  first,  that  a 
majority  of  the  court  would  certainly  decide 
against  the  aliens ;  and,  secondly,  that  there 
was   a  slight  imperfection  in  the  record   by 
which  counsel  might  throw  the  case  over  to  the 
December  term,  and  save  the  alien  vote  for 
Van  Buren  and  the  Democratic  ticket.  This 
was  done,  and  when  the  Legislature  came 
together-  with  its  large  Democratic  majority, 
Mr.  Douglas  handed  in  a  bill  "reforming" 
the  Judiciary  —  for  they  had  learned  that 
serviceable  word  already.  The  circuit  judges 
were  turned  out  of  office,  and  five  new  judges 
were  added  to  the  Supreme  Court,  who  were 
to  perform  circuit  duty  also.  It  is  needless  to 
say  that  Judge  Douglas  was  one  of  these, 
and  he  had  contrived  also  in  the  course  of 
the  discussion  to  disgrace  his  friend  Smith  so 
thoroughly  by  quoting  his  treacherous  com- 
munication of  matters  which  took  place  within 
the  court,  that  Smith  was  no  longer  a  possible 
rival  for  political  honors. 
It  was  useless  for  the  Whigs  to  try  to  pre- 
vent this  degradation  of  the  bench.  There 
was  no  resource  but  a  protest,  and  here  again 
Lincoln  uttered  the  voice  of  the  conscience 
of  the  party.  He  was  joined  on  this  occasion 
by  Colonel  E.  D.  Baker  *  and  some  others, 
who  protested  against  the  act  because 
"  1  st.  It  violates  the  principles  of  free  gov- 
ernment by  subjecting  the  Judiciary  to  the 
Legislature. 
*  The  same  who  was  afterwards  senator  from  Ore- 
gon, killed  at  Ball's  Bluff.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
373 
"  2d.  It  is  a  fatal  blow  at  the  independence 
of  the  judges  and  the  constitutional  term  of 
their  offices. 
"  3d.  It  is  a  measure  not  asked  for  or  wished 
for  by  the  people. 
"4th.  It  will  greatly  increase  the  expense 
of  our  courts  or  else  greatly  diminish  their 
utility. 
"  5th.  It  will  give  our  courts  a  political  and 
partisan  character,  thereby  impairing  public 
confidence  in  their  decisions. 
"  6th.  It  will  impair  our  standing  with  other 
States  and  the  world. 
"  7th.  It  is  a  party  measure  for  party  pur- 
poses from  which  no  practical  good  to  the 
people  can  possibly  arise,  but  which  may  be 
the  source  of  immeasurable  evils. 
"  The  undersigned  are  well  aware  that  this 
protest  will  be  altogether  unavailing  with  the 
majority  of  this  body.  The  blow  has  already 
fallen  ;  and  we  are  compelled  to  stand  by,  the 
mournful  spectators  of  the  ruin  it  will  cause." 
It  will  be  easy  to  ridicule  this  indignant  pro- 
test as  the  angry  outcry  of  beaten  partisans ; 
but  fortunately  we  have  evidence  which  can- 
not be  gainsaid  of  the  justice  of  its  sentiments 
and  the  wisdom  of  its  predictions.  Governor 
Ford,*  himself  a  Democratic  leader  as  able 
as  he  was  honest,  writing  seven  years  after 
these  events,  condemns  them  as  wrong  and 
impolitic,  and  adds,  "  Ever  since  this  reform- 
ing measure  the  Judiciary  has  been  unpopu- 
lar with  the  Democratic  majorities. 
Many  and  most  of  the  judges  have 
had  great  personal  popularity  —  so 
much  so  as  to  create  complaint  of 
so  many  of  them  being  elected  or 
appointed  to  other  offices.  But  the 
Bench  itself  has  been  the  subject 
of  bitter  attacks  by  every  Legisla- 
ture since."  It  had  been  soiled  by 
unclean  contact  and  could  not  be 
respected  as  before. 
LAW    IN    SPRINGFIELD. 
During  all  the  years  of  his  ser- 
vice in  the  Legislature,  Lincoln  was 
practicing  law  in  Springfield  in  the 
§==|?0  dingy  little  office  at  the  corner  of 
the  square.  A  youth  named  Milton 
Hay,  who  afterwards  became  one 
of  the  foremost  lawyers  of  the  State, 
had  become  acquainted  with  Lin- 
*  Ford's  "  History,"  p.  221. 
coin  at  the  County  Clerk's 
office     and     proposed    to 
study  law  with  him.     He 
was  at  once  accepted  as  a        J* 
pupil,    and     as    his     days     HARRISON 
TYLER. 
OLD  KNOX 
WlUCIJEBiSH    IN    MANHOOD 
PORTION     OF     BORDER     OF     HARRISON     CAMPAIGN     POSTER. 
(IN     POSSESSION     OF     BENJAMIN     HARRISON.) 
Vol.  XXXIIL— 50. 
were   otherwise  employed 
he  gave  his  nights  to  read- 
ing, and  as  his  vigils  were 
apt    to    be    prolonged    he 
furnished   a   bedroom  ad-  m  tmnmm  ujg. 
joining   the   office,   where  - 
Lincoln  often  passed  the 
night  with  him.    Mr.  Hay 
gives    this  interesting  ac- 
count  of  the  practice  of  [|Sf5| 
law  in  those  days :  SSHrllli, 
"In  forming  our  ideas  of  Lin-    harrison  and  tyler 
coin's  growth  and  development       ^lolt^oTo, 
as  a  lawyer,  we  must  remember    benjamin   harrison.) 
that  in  those  early  days  litigation 
was  very  simple  as  compared  with  that  of  modern  times. 
Population  was  sparse  and  society  scarcely  organized, 
land  was  plentiful  and  employment  abundant.  There 
was  an  utter  absence  of  the  abstruse  questions  and  com- 
plications which  now  beset  the  law.  There  was  no  need 
of  that  close  and  searching  study  into  principles  and  prec- 
edents which  keeps  the  modern  law-student  buried  in 
his  office.  On  the  contrary,  the  very  character  of  this  sim- 
ple litigation  drew  the  lawyer  into  the  street  and  neigh- 
borhood, and  into  close  and  active  intercourse  with  all 
classes  of  his  fellow-men.  The  suits  consisted  of  actions 
of  tort  and  assumpsit.  If  a  man  had  an  uncollectible 
debt,  the  current  phrase  was, '  I'll  take  it  out  of  his  hide. ' 
This  would  bring  on  an  action  for  assault  and  battery. 
The  free  comments  of  the  neighbors  on  the  fracas  or  the 
character  of  the  parties  would  be  productive  of  slan- 
der suits.  A  man  would  for  his  convenience  lay  down 
an  irascible  neighbor's  fence,  and  indolently  forget  to 
put  it  up  again,  and  an  action  of  trespass  would  grow 
out  of  it.  The  suit  would  lead  to  a  free  fight,  and  some- 
times furnish  the  bloody  incidents  for  a  murder  trial. 
"  Occupied  with  this  class  of  business,  the  half-legal, 
half-political  lawyers  were  never  found  plodding  in 
their  offices.  In  that  case  they  would  have  waited  long 
for  the  recognition  of  their  talents  or  a  demand  for 
their  services.  Out  of  this  characteristic  of  the  times 
also  grew  the  street  discussions  I  have  adverted  to. 
There  was  scarcely  a  day  or  hour  when  a  knot  of 
men  might  not  have  been  seen  near  the  door  of  some 
prominent  store,  or  about  the  steps  of  the  court-house, 
eagerly  discussing  a  current  political  topic  —  not  as 
a  question  of  news,  for  news  was  not  then  received 
quickly  or  frequently,  as  it  is  now,  but  rather  for  the 
sake  of  debate;  and  the  men  from  the  country,  the 
pioneers  and  farmers,  always  gathered  eagerly  about 
these  groups  and  listened  with  open-mouthed  interest, 
and  frequently  manifested  their  approval  or  dissent  in 
strong  words,  and  carried  away  to  their  neighborhoods 
a  report  of  the  debaters'  wit  and  skill.  It  was  in  these 
street  talks  that  the  rising  and  aspiring  young  lawyer 
found  his  daily  and  hourly  forum.  Often  by  good  luck 
or  prudence  he  had  the  field  entirely  to  himself,  and 
so  escaped  the  dangers  and  discouragements  of  a  de- 
cisive conflict  with  a  trained  antagonist." 
Mr.  Stuart  was  either  in  Congress  or  en- 
gaged in  actively  canvassing  his  district  a 
great  part  of  the  time  that  his  partnership 
with  Lincoln  continued,  so  that  the  young 
lawyer  was  thrown  a  good  deal  on  his  own
;74 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
%  SONGSTER. 
IMyTONLOGQlBltf 
COVER    OF    SONG    BOOK    USED    IN    HARRISON    CAMPAIGN. 
(IN     POSSESSION     OF     BENJAMIN     HARRISON.) 
resources  for  occupation.  There  was  not  enough 
business  to  fill  up  all  his  hours,  and  he  was  not 
at  that  time  a  close  student,  so  that  he  soon 
became  as  famous  for  his  racy  talk  and  good- 
fellowship  at  all  the  usual  lounging-places  in 
Springfield  as  he  had  ever  been  in  New  Sa- 
lem. Mr.  Hay  says,  speaking  of  the  youths 
who  made  the  County  Clerk's  office  their 
place  of  rendezvous,  "  It  was  always  a  great 
treat  when  Lincoln  got  amongst  us.  We  were 
sure  to  have  some  of  those  stories  for  which 
he  already  had  a  reputation,  and  there  was 
this  peculiarity  about  them,  that  they  were 
not  only  entertaining  in  themselves,  but  al- 
ways singularly  illustrative  of  some  point  he 
wanted  to  make."  After  Mr.  Hay  entered  his 
office,  and  was  busily  engaged  with  his  briefs 
and  declarations,  the  course  of  their  labors 
was  often  broken  by  the  older  man's  wise  and 
witty  digressions.  Once  an  interruption  oc- 
curred which  affords  an  odd  illustration  of 
the  character  of  discussion  then  prevalent. 
We  will  give  it  in  Mr.  Hay's  words  : 
"The  custom  of  public  political  debate,  while  it  was 
sharp  and  acrimonious,  also  engendered  a  spirit  of 
equality  and  fairness.  Every  political  meeting  was  a 
free  fight  open  to  everyone  who  had  talent  and  spirit, 
no  matter  to  which  party  the  speaker  belonged.  These 
discussions  used  often  to  be  held  in  the  court-room, 
just  under  our  office,  and  through  a  trap-door,  made 
there  when  the  building  was  used  for  a   store-house, 
we  could  hear  everything  that  was  said  in  the  hall  be- 
low. One  night  there  was  a  discussion  in  which  Baker 
took  part.  He  was  a  fiery  fellow,  and  when  his  im- 
pulsiveness was  let  loose  among  the  rough  element 
that  composed  his  audience,  there  was  a  fair  prospect 
of  trouble  at  any  moment.  Lincoln  was  lying  on  the 
bed,  apparently  paying  no  attention  to  what  was  going 
on.  Lamborn  was  talking,  and  we  suddenly  heard 
Baker  interrupting  him  with  a  sharp  remark,  then  a 
rustling  and  uproar.  Lincoln  jumped  from  the  bed 
and  down  the  trap,  lighting  on  the  platform  between 
Baker  and  the  audience,  and  quieted  the  tumult  as 
much  by  the  surprise  of  his  sudden  apparition  as  by 
his  good-natured  and  reasonable  words." 
He  was  often  unfaithful  to  the  Quaker  tra- 
ditions in  those  days  of  his  youth.  Those  who 
witnessed  his  wonderful  forbearance  and  self- 
restraint  in  later  manhood  would  find  it  diffi- 
cult to  believe  how  promptly  and  with  what 
pleasure  he  used  to  resort  to  measures  of  re- 
pression against  a  bully  or  brawler.  On  the 
day  of  election  in  1840,  word  came  to  him 
that  one  Radford,  a  Democratic  contractor, 
had  taken  possession  of  one  of  the  polling- 
places  with  his  workmen,  and  was  preventing 
the  Whigs  from  voting.  Lincoln  started  off  at 
a  gait  which  showed  his  interest  in  the  matter 
in  hand.  He  went  up  to  Radford  and  per- 
suaded him  to  leave  the  polls  without  a  mo- 
ment's delay.  One  of  his  candid  remarks  is 
remembered  and  recorded  :  "  Radford  !  you'll 
spoil  and  blow,  if  you  live  much  longer." 
Radford's  prudence  prevented  an  actual  col- 
lision, which,  it  must  be  confessed,  Lincoln  re- 
gretted. He  told  his  friend  Speed  he  wanted 
Radford  to  show  fight  so  that  he  might 
"  knock  him  down  and  leave  him  kicking."* 
Early  in  the  year  1840  it  seemed  possible 
that  the  Whigs  might  elect  General  Harrison 
to  the  Presidency,  and  this  hope  lent  added 
energy  to  the  party  even  in  the  States  where 
the  majority  was  so  strongly  against  them  as 
in  Illinois.  Lincoln  was  nominated  for  Presi- 
dential Elector  and  threw  himself  with  ardor 
into  the  canvass,  traversing  a  great  part  of 
the  State  and  speaking  with  remarkable  effect. 
Only  one  of  the  speeches  he  made  during  the 
year  has  been  preserved  entire :  this  was  an 
address  delivered  in  Springfield  as  one  of 
a  series  —  a  sort  of  oratorical  tournament 
participated  in  by  Douglas,  Calhoun,  Lam- 
born and  Thomas,  on  the  part  of  the  Demo- 
crats, and  Logan,  Baker,  Browning,  and  Lin- 
coln on  the  part  of  the  Whigs.  The  discussion 
began  with  great  enthusiasm  and  with  crowded 
houses,  but  by  the  time  it  came  to  Lincoln's 
duty  to  close  the  debate  the  fickle  public  had 
tired  of  the  intellectual  jousts,  and  he  spoke 
to  a  comparatively  thin  house.  But  his  speech 
was  considered  the  best  of  the  series,  and  there 
was  such  a  demand  for  it  that  he  wrote  it 
out,  and  it  was  printed  and  circulated  in  the 
*  Lamon,  p.  230.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
375 
spring  as  a  campaign  document.  It  was  a  re- 
markable speech  in  many  respects  —  and  in 
none  more  than  in  this,  that  it  represented 
the  highest  expression  of  what  might  be  called 
his  "  first  manner."  It  was  the  most  impor- 
tant and  the  last  speech  of  its  class  which  he 
ever  delivered  —  not  destitute  of  sound  and 
close  reasoning,  yet  filled  with  boisterous  fun 
and  florid  rhetoric.  It  was,  in  short,  a  rattling 
stump  speech  of  the  sort  then  universally  pop- 
ular in  the  West,  and  which  is  still  considered 
a  very  high  grade  of  eloquence  in  the  South. 
But  it  is  of  no  kindred  with  his  Inaugural  ad- 
dresses, and  resembles  the  Gettysburg  speech 
no  more  than  "The  Comedy  of  Errors  "  resem- 
bles "  Hamlet."  One  or  two  extracts  will  give 
some  idea  of  its  humorous  satire  and  its  lurid 
fervor.  Attacking  the  corruptions  and  defalca- 
tions of  the  administration  party  he  said,  "  Mr. 
Lamborn  insists  that  the  difference  between 
the  Van  Buren  party  and  the  Whigs  is  that, 
although  the  former  sometimes  err  in  practice 
they  are  always  correct  in  principle,  whereas 
the  latter  are  wrong  in  principle ;  and  the 
better  to  impress  this  proposition  he  uses  a 
figurative  expression  in  these  words, 
'  The  Democrats  are  vulnerable  in  the 
heel,  but  they  are  sound  in  the  heart 
and  head.'  The  first  branch  of  the 
figure- — that  is,  the  Democrats  are 
vulnerable  in  the  heel  —  I  admit  is 
not  merely  figuratively  but  literally 
true.  Who  that  looks  but  for  a 
moment  at  their  Swartwouts,  their 
Prices,  their  Harringtons,  and  their 
hundreds  of  others  scampering  away 
with  the  public  money  to  Texas,  to 
Europe,  and  to  every  spot  of  the  earth 
where  a  villain  may  hope  to  find  ref- 
uge from  justice,  can  at  all  doubt  that 
they  are  most  distressingly  affected  in 
their  heels  with  a  species  of  running 
itch.  It  seems  that  this  malady  of  their 
heels  operates  on  the  sound-headed 
and  honest-hearted  creatures  very 
much  as  the  cork  leg  in  the  comic 
song  did  on  its  owner,  which,  when 
he  once  got  started  on  it,  the  more 
he  tried  to  stop  it  the  more  it  would 
run  away.  At  the  hazard  of  wearing 
this  point  threadbare,  I  will  relate  an 
anecdote  which  seems  to  be  too  strik- 
ingly in  point  to  be  omitted.  A  witty 
Irish  soldier  who  was  always  boasting 
of  his  bravery  when  no  danger  was 
near,  but  who  invariably  retreated 
without  orders  at  the  first  charge  of 
the  engagement,  being  asked  by  his 
captain  why  he  did  so,  replied,  '  Cap- 
tain, I  have  as  brave  a  heart  as  Julius 
Caesar  ever  had,  but  somehow  or  other 
whenever  danger  approaches,  rny  cowardly  legs 
will  run  away  with  it.'  So  with  Mr.  Earn  horn's 
party  —  they  take  the  public  money  into  their 
hands  for  the  most  laudable  purpose  that  wise 
heads  and  honest  hearts  can  dictate;  but  before 
they  can  possibly  get  it  out  again,  their  rascally 
vulnerable  heels  will  run  away  with  them." 
The  speech  concludes  with  these  swelling 
words  : 
"  Mr.  Lamborn  refers  to  the  late  elections  in  the 
States,  and  from  their  results  confidently  predicts  every 
State  in  the  Union  will  vote  for  Mr.  Van  Buren  at  the 
next  Presidential  election.  Address  that  argument  to 
cowards  and  knaves:  with  the  free  and  the  brave  it  will 
affect  nothing.  It  may  be  true  ;  if  it  must,  let  it.  Many 
free  countries  have  lost  their  liberty,  and  ours  may 
lose  hers;  but  if  she  shall,  be  it  my  proudest  plume, 
not  that  I  was  the  last  to  desert,  but  that  I  never  de- 
serted her.  I  know  that  the  great  volcano  at  Wash- 
ington, aroused  and  directed  by  the  evil  spirit  that 
reigns  there,  is  belching  forth  the  lava  of  political  cor- 
ruption in  a  current  broad  and  deep,  which  is  sweep- 
ing with  frightful  velocity  over  the  whole  length  and 
breadth'of  the  land,  bidding  fair  to  leave  unscathed  no 
green  spot  or  living  thin g ;  while  on  its  bosom  are  riding, 
like  demons  on  the  wave  of  Hell,  the  imps  of  the  Evil 
Spirit,  and  fiendishly  taunting  all  those  who  dare  to 
resist  its  destroying  course  with  the  hopelessness  of 
SONG  BOOK. 
i I 
COVER    OF    SONG    BOOK    USED    IN    HARRISON    CAMPAIGN. 
(IN     POSSESSION     OF     BENJAMIN     HARRISON.)
376 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
their  efforts;  and  knowing  this,  I  cannot  deny  that 
all  may  be  swept  away.  Broken  by  it  I,  too,  may  be ; 
bow  to  it,  I  never  will.  The  probability  that  we  may 
fall  in  the  struggle  ought  not  to  deter  us  from  the  sup- 
port of  a  cause  we  believe  to  be  just.  It  shall  not  de- 
ter me.  If  ever  I  feel  the  soul  within  me  elevate  and 
expand  to  those  dimensions  not  wholly  unworthy  of 
its  almighty  architect,  it  is  when  I  contemplate  the 
cause  of  my  country,  deserted  by  all  the  world  beside, 
and  I  standing  up  boldly  alone,  hurling  defiance  at  her 
victorious  oppressors.  Here,  without  contemplating 
consequences,  before  Heaven,  and  in  face  of  the  world, 
I  swear  eternal  fealty  to  the  just  cause,  as  I  deem  it, 
of  the  land  of  my  life,  my  liberty,  aud  my  love.  And 
who  that  thinks  with  me  will  not  fearlessly  adopt  that 
oath  that  I  take  ?  Let  none  falter  who  thinks  he  is 
right,  and  we  may  succeed.  But  if  after  all  we  should 
fail,  be  it  so.  We' still  shall  have  the  proud  consolation 
of  saving  to  our  consciences,  and  to  the  departed  shade 
of  our  country's  freedom,  that  the  cause  approved  of 
our  judgment,  and  adored  of  our  hearts,  in  disaster,  in 
chains,  in  torture,  in  death,  we  never  faltered  in  de- 
fending." 
These  perfervid  and  musical  metaphors  of 
devotion  and  defiance  have  often  been  quoted 
as  Mr.  Lincoln's  heroic  challenge  to  the  slave 
power,  and  Bishop  Simpson  gave  them  that 
lofty  significance  in  his  funeral  oration.  But 
they  were  simply  the  utterances  of  a  young 
and  ardent  Whig,  earnestly  advocating  the 
election  of  "  old  Tippecanoe  "  and  not  unwill- 
ing, while  doing  this,  to  show  the  people  of 
the  capital  a  specimen  of  his  eloquence.  The 
whole  campaign  was  carried  on  in  a  tone 
somewhat  shrill.  The  Whigs  were  recovering 
from  the  numbness  into  which  they  had  fallen 
during  the  time  of  Jackson's  imperious  pre- 
dominance, and  in  the  new  prospect  of  suc- 
cess they  felt  all  the  excitement  of  prosperous 
rebels.  The  taunts  of  the  party  in  power, 
when  Harrison's  nomination  was  first  men- 
tioned, their  sneers  at  "  hard  cider  "  and  "  log- 
cabins, ,;  had  been  dexterously  adopted  as  the 
slogan  of  the  opposition,  and  gave  rise  to  the 
distinguishing  features  of  that  extraordinary 
campaign.  Log-cabins  were  built  in  every 
Western  county,  tuns  of  hard  cider  were  filled 
and  emptied  at  all  the  Whig  mass  meetings ; 
and  as  the  canvass  gained  momentum  and 
vehemence,  a  curious  kind  of  music  added  its 
inspiration  to  the  cause ;  and  after  the  Maine 
election  was  over,  with  its  augury  of  triumph, 
every  Whig  who  was  able  to  sing,  or  even  to 
make  a  joyful  noise,  was  roaring  the  inquiry, 
"Oh,  have  you  heard  how  old  Maine  went  ?" 
and  the  profane  but  powerfully  accented  re- 
sponse, "  She  went,  hell-bent,  for  Governor 
Kent,  and  Tippecanoe,  and  Tyler  too." 
It  was  one  of  the  busiest  and  most  enjoy- 
able seasons  of  Lincoln's  life.  He  had  grown 
by  this  time  thoroughly  at  home  in  political 
controversy,  and  he  had  the  pleasure  of  fre- 
quently meeting  Mr.  Douglas  in  rough-and- 
tumble  debate  in  various  towns  of  the  State 
as  they  followed  Judge  Treat  on  his  circuit. 
If  we  may  trust  the  willing  testimony  of  his 
old  associates,  Lincoln  had  no  difficulty  in 
holding  his  own  against  his  adroit  antagonist, 
and  it  was  even  thought  that  the  recollection 
of  his  ill  success  in  these  encounters  was  not 
without  its  influence  in  inducing  Douglas  and 
his  followers,  defeated  in  the  nation,  though 
victorious  in  the  State,  to  wreak  their  ven- 
geance on  the  Illinois  Supreme  Court. 
In  Lincoln's  letters  to  Major  Stuart,*  then  in 
Washington,  we  see  how  strongly  the  subject 
of  politics  overshadows  all  others  in  his  mind. 
Under  date  of  November  14, 1839,  he  writes : 
"  I  have  been  to  the  Secretary's  office  within  the 
last  hour,  and  find  things  precisely  as  you  left  them ; 
no  new  arrivals  of  returns  on  either  side.  Douglas 
has  not  been  here  since  you  left.  A  report  is  in  circu- 
lation here  now  that  he  has  abandoned  the  idea  of  go- 
ing to  Washington;  but  the  report  does  not  come  in 
very  authentic  form  so  far  as  I  can  learn.  Though, 
speaking  of  authenticity,  you  know  that  if  we  had 
heard  Douglas  say  that  he  had  abandoned  the  con- 
test, it  would  not  be  very  authentic.  There  is  no  news 
here.  Noah,t  I  still  think,  will  be  elected  very  easily. 
I  am  afraid  of  our  race  for  representative.  Dr.  Knapp 
has  become  a  candidate  ;  and  I  fear  the  few  votes  he 
will  get  will  be  taken  from  us.  Also  some  one  has 
been  tampering  with  old  squire  Wyckoff,  and  induced 
him  to  send  in  his  name  to  be  announced  as  a  candi- 
date. Francis  refused  to  announce  him  without  seeing 
him,  and  now  I  suppose  there  is  to  be  a  fuss  about  it. 
I  have  been  so  busy  that  I  have  not  seen  Mrs.  Stuart 
since  you  left,  though  I  understand  she  wrote  you  by 
to-day's  mail,  which  will  inform  you  more  about  her 
than  I  could.  The  very  moment  a  speaker  is  elected, 
write  me  who  he  is.    Your  friend,  as  ever." 
Again  he  writes,  on  New  Year's  Day,  1840, 
a  letter  curiously  destitute  of  any  festal  sug- 
gestions : 
"  There  is  a  considerable  disposition  on  the  part  of 
both  parties  in  the  Legislature  to  reinstate  the  law 
bringing  on  the  Congressional  elections  next  summer. 
What  motive  for  this  the  Locos  have,  I  cannot  tell. 
The  Whigs  say  that  the  canal  and  other  public  works 
will  stop,  and  consequently  we  shall  then  be  clear  of 
the  foreign  votes,  whereas  by  another  year  they  may 
be  brought  in  again.  The  Whigs  of  our  district  say 
that  everything  is  in  favor  of  holding  the  election  next 
summer,  except  the  fact  of  your  absence  ;  and  several 
of  them  have  requested  me  to  ask  your  opinion  on  the 
matter.    Write  me  immediately  what  you  think  of  it. 
"  On  the  other  side  of  this  sheet  I  send  you  a  copy 
of  my  Land  Resolutions,  which  passed  both  branches 
of  our  Legislature  last  winter.  Will  you  show  them 
to  Mr.  Calhoun,  informing  him  of  the  fact  of  their 
passage  through  our  Legislature  ?  Mr.  Calhoun  sug- 
gested a  similar  proposition  last  winter  ;  and  perhaps 
if  he  finds  himself  backed  by  one  of  the  States  he 
may  be  induced  to  take  it  up  again." 
After  the  session  opened,  January  20th,  he 
wrote  to  Mr.  Stuart,  accurately  outlining  the 
work  of  the  winter  : 
"  The  following  is  my  guess  at  what  will  be  done. 
The  Internal  Improvement  System  will  be  put  down 
in  a  lump  without  benefit  of  clergy.  The  Bank  will 
be  resuscitated  with  some  trifling  modifications." 
*  Copied  from  the  MS.  in  Major  Stuart's  possession, 
t  Noah  Matheny,  County  Clerk.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
377 
State  affairs  have  evidently  lost  their  interest, 
however,  and  his  soul  is  in  arms  for  the  wider 
fray.  "  Be  sure  to  send  me  as  many  Lives 
of  Harrison  as  you  can  spare.  Be  very  sure 
to  send  me  the  Senate  Journal  of  New  York 
for  September,  1814,"  —  he  had  seen  in  a 
newspaper  a  charge  of  disloyalty  made  against 
Mr.  Van  Buren  during  the  war  with  Great 
Britain,  but,  as  usual,  wanted  to  be  sure  of  his 
facts, —  "and  in  general,"  he  adds,  "send  me 
everything  you  think  will  be  a  good  war-club. 
The  nomination  of  Harrison  takes  first-rate. 
You  know  I  am  never  sanguine;  but  I  believe 
we  will  carry  the  State.  The  chance  for  doing 
so  appears  to  me  twenty-five  per  cent,  better 
than  it  did  for  you  to  beat  Douglas.  A  great 
many  of  the  grocery  sort  of  Van  Buren  men 
are  out  for  Harrison.  Our  Irish  blacksmith 
Gregory  is  for  Harrison.  You  have  heard  that 
the  Whigs  and  Locos  had  a  political  discus- 
sion shortly  after  the  meeting  of  the  Legisla- 
ture. Well,  I  made  a  big  speech  [the  one 
from  which  we  have  just  quoted]  which  is  in 
progress  of  printing  in  pamphlet  form.  To 
enlighten  you  and  the  rest  of  the  world,  I 
shall  send  you  a  copy  when  it  is  finished." 
The  sanguine  mood  continues  in  his  next 
letter,  March  1st: 
"  I  have  never  seen  the  prospects  of  our  party  so 
bright  in  these  parts  as  they  are  now.  We  shall  carry 
this  county  by  a  larger  majority  than  we  did  in  1836 
when  you  ran  against  May.  I  do  not  think  my  pros- 
pects individually  are  very  flattering,  for  I  think  it 
probable  I  shall  not  be  permitted  to  be  a  candidate ; 
but  the  party  ticket  will  succeed  triumphantly.  Sub- 
scriptions to  the  '  Old  Soldier  '  pour  in  without  abate- 
ment. This  morning  I  took  from  the  post-office  a 
letter  from  Dubois,  inclosing  the  names  of  sixty  sub- 
scribers, and  on  carrying  it  to  Francis  [Simeon  Fran- 
cis, editor  of  the  '  Sangamon  Journal ']  I  found  he  had 
received  one  hundred  and  forty  more  from  other  quar- 
ters by  the  same  day's  mail.  Yesterday  Douglas, having 
chosen  to  consider  himself  insulted  by  something  in 
the  '  Journal,'  undertook  to  cane  Francis  in  the  street. 
Francis  caught  him  by  the  hair  and  jammed  him 
back  against  a  market-cart,  where  the  matter  ended 
by  Francis  being  pulled  away  from  him.  The  whole 
affair  was  so  ludicrous  that  Francis  and  everybody 
else,  Douglas  excepted,  have  been  laughing  about  it 
ever  since." 
Douglas  seems  to  have  had  a  great  pro- 
pensity to  such  rencontres,  of  which  the  issue 
was  ordinarily  his  complete  discomfiture,  as 
he  had  the  untoward  habit  of  attacking  much 
bigger  and  stronger  men  than  himself.  He 
weighed  at  that  time  little,  if  anything,  over 
a  hundred  pounds,  yet  his  heart  was  so  val- 
iant that  he  made  nothing  of  assaulting  men 
of  ponderous  flesh  like  Francis,  or  of  great 
height  and  strength  like  Stuart.  He  sought  a 
quarrel  with  the  latter,  during  their  canvass  in 
1838,  in  a  grocery,  with  the  usual  result.  A 
bystander  who  remembers  the  incident  says 
that  Stuart  "jest  mopped  the  floor  with  him." 
In  the  same  letter  Mr.  Lincoln  gives  a  long 
list  of  names  to  which  he  wants  documents  to 
be  sent.  It  shows  a  remarkable  personal  ac- 
quaintance with  the  minutest  needs  of  the 
canvass  :  this  one  is  a  doubtful  Whig ;  that 
one  is  an  inquiring  Democrat;  that  other  a 
zealous  young  fellow  who  would  be  pleased 
by  the  attention;  three  brothers  are  mentioned 
who  "  fell  out  with  us  about  Early  and  are 
doubtful  now  "  ;  and  finally  he  tells  Stuart 
that  Joe  Smith  is  an  admirer  of  his,  and  that 
a  few  documents  had  better  be  mailed  to 
the  Mormons,  and  he  must  be  sure,  the  next 
time  he  writes,  to  send  Evan  Butler  his  com- 
pliments. 
It  would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  such  a  poli- 
tician as  this  were  slighted  by  his  constitu- 
ents, and  in  his  nextletter  we  find  how  ground- 
less were  his  forebodings  in  that  direction. 
The  convention  had  been  held;  the  rural 
delegates  took  all  the  nominations  away  from 
Springfield  except  two,  Baker  for  the  Senate, 
and  Lincoln  for  the  House  of  Representatives. 
"  Ninian,"  he  says,  meaning  Ninian  W.  Ed- 
wards, "  was  very  much  hurt  at  not  being 
nominated,  but  he  has  become  tolerably  well 
reconciled.  I  was  much,  very  much,  wounded 
myself,  at  his  being  left  out.  The  fact  is,  the 
country  delegates  made  the  nominations  as 
they  pleased,  and  they  pleased  to  make  them 
all  from  the  country,  except  Baker  and  me, 
whom  they  supposed  necessary  to  make  stump 
speeches.  Old  Colonel  Elkin  is  nominated 
for  Sheriff — that's  right." 
Harrison  was  elected  in  November,  and 
the  great  preoccupation  of  most  of  the  Whigs 
was,  of  course,  the  distribution  of  the  offices 
which  they  felt  belonged  to  them  as  the 
spoils  of  battle.  This  demoralizing  doctrine 
had  been  promulgated  by  Jackson,  and  acted 
upon  for  so  many  years  that  it  was  too  much 
to  expect  of  human  nature  that  the  Whigs 
should  not  adopt  it,  partially  at  least,  when 
their  turn  came.  But  we  are  left  in  no  doubt 
as  to  the  way  in  which  Lincoln  regarded  the 
unseemly  scramble.  It  is  probable  that  he 
was  asked  to  express  his  preference  among 
applicants,  and  he  writes  under  date  of  De- 
cember 17: 
"  This  affair  of  appointments  to  office  is  very  an- 
noying—  more  so  to  you  than  to  me  doubtless.  I  am. 
as  you  know,  opposed  to  removals  to  make  places  for 
our  friends.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  I  express  my  pref- 
erence in  a  few  cases  as  follows  :  for  Marshal,  first, 
John  Dawson,  second,  B.  F.  Edwards  ;  for  postmaster 
here,  Dr.  Henry;  at  Carlinville,  Joseph  C.  Howell."' 
The  mention  of  this  last  post-office  rouses 
his  righteous  indignation,  and  he  calls  for 
justice  upon  a  wrong-doer. 
"  There  is  no  question  of  the  propriety  of  removing 
the  postmaster  at  Carlinville.    I  have  been  told  by  so
?s 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
many  different  persons  as  to  preclude  all  doubt  of  its 
truth,  that  he  boldly  refused  to  deliver  from  his  office 
daring  the  canvass  all  documents  franked  by  Whig 
members  of  Congress." 
Once  more,  on  the  23d  of  January,  1S41, 
he  addresses  a  letter  to  Mr.  Stuart,  which 
closes  the  correspondence,  and  which  affords 
a  glimpse  ot  that  strange  condition  of  melan- 
cholia into  whose  dark  shadow  he  was  then  en- 
tering, and  which  lasted,  with  only  occasional 
intervals  of  healthy  cheerfulness,  to  the  time 
of  his  marriage.  We  give  this  remarkable  let- 
ter entire,  from  the  manuscript  submitted  to 
us  by  the  late  John  T.  Stuart : 
"Dear  STUART:  Yours  of  the  3d  instant  is  received, 
and  I  proceed  to  answer  it  as  well  as  I  can,  though  from 
the  deplorable  state  of  my  mind  at  this  time  I  fear  I 
shall  give  you  but  little  satisfaction.  About  the  mat- 
ter of  the  Congressional  election,  I  can  only  tell  you 
that  there  is  a  bill  now  before  the  Senate  adopting  the 
general  ticket  system  ;  but  whether  the  party  have  fully 
determined  on  its  adoption  is  yet  uncertain.  There  is 
no  sign  of  opposition  to  you  among  our  friends,  and 
none  that  I  can  learn  among  our  enemies ;  though  of 
course  there  will  be  if  the  general  ticket  be  adopted. 
The  Chicago  '  American,'  Peoria  '  Register,'  and  San- 
gamon '  Journal '  have  already  hoisted  your  flag  upon 
their  own  responsibility  ;  and  the  other  Whig  papers 
of  the  district  are  expected  to  follow  immediately.  On 
last  evening  there  was  a  meeting  of  our  friends  at 
Butler's,  and  I  submitted  the  question  to  them  and 
found  them  unanimously  in  favor  of  having  you  an- 
nounced as  a  candidate.  A  few  of  us  this  morning, 
however,  concluded  that  as  you  were  already  being 
announced  in  the  papers,  we  would  delay  announc- 
ing you,  as  by  your  authority,  for  a  week  or  two.  We 
thought  that  to  appear  too  keen  about  it  might  spur 
our  opponents  on  about  their  general  ticket  project. 
Upon  the  whole  I  think  I  may  say  with  certainty  that 
your  reelection  is  sure,  if  it  be  in  the  power  of  the 
Whip's  to  make  it  so. 
"For  not  giving  you  a  general  summary  of  news,  you 
must  pardon  me  ;  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  do  so.  I  am 
now  the  most  miserable  man  living.  If  what  I  feel  were 
equally  distributed  to  the  whole  human  family,  there 
would  not  be  one  cheerful  face  on  earth.  Whether  I 
shall  ever  be  better  I  cannot  tell ;  I  awfully  forebode  I 
shall  not.  To  remain  as  I  amis  impossible;  I  must 
die  or  be  better,  it  appears  to  me.  The  matter  you  speak 
of  on  my  account  you  may  attend  to  as  you  say,  unless 
you  shall  hear  of  my  condition  forbidding  it.  I  say  this 
because  I  fear  I  shall  be  unable  to  attend  to  any  busi- 
ness here,  and  a  change  of  scene  might  help  me.  If  I 
could  be  myself,  I  would  rather  remain  at  home  with 
Judge  Logan.  I  can  write  no  more.  Your  friend  as  ever. 
(Signed) 
A.  Lincoln. 
Lincoln's  marriage. 
The  foregoing  letter  brings  us  to  the  con- 
sideration  of  a  remarkable  passage  in   Lin- 
*  Mrs.  Lincoln  was  the  daughter  of  the  Hon.  Robert 
S.  Todd  of  Kentucky.  Her  great-uncle,  John  Todd, 
accompanied  General  George  Rogers  Clark  to  Illinois, 
and  was  present  at  the  capture  of  Kaskaskia  and  Vin- 
cennes.  In  December,  1 778,  he  was  appointed  by  Pat- 
rick Henry,  Governor  of  Virginia,  to  be  lieutenant  of 
the  county  of  Illinois,  then  a  part  of  Virginia.  He 
was  killed  at  the  battle  of  Blue  Licks,  in  1782.    His 
coin's  life.  It  has  been  the  cause  of  much 
profane  and  idle  discussion  among  those  who 
were  constitutionally  incapacitated  from  ap- 
preciating ideal  sufferings,  and  we  would  be 
tempted  to  refrain  from  adding  a  word  to 
what  has  already  been  said  if  it  were  possible 
to  omit  all  reference  to  an  experience  so  im- 
portant in  the  development  of  his  character. 
In  the  year  1840  he  became  engaged  to  be 
married  to  Miss  Mary  Todd,  of  Lexington, 
Kentucky,  a  young  lady  of  good  education 
and  excellent  connections,  who  was  visiting 
her  sister,  Mrs.  Ninian  W.  Edwards,  at 
Springfield.*  The  engagement  was  not  in  all 
respects  a  happy  one,  as  both  parties  doubted 
their  mutual  compatibility,  and  a  heart  so 
affectionate  and  a  conscience  so  sensitive  as 
Lincoln's  found  material  for  exquisite  self-tor- 
ment in  these  conditions.  His  affection  for  his 
betrothed,  which  he  thought  was  not  strong 
enough  to  make  happiness  with  her  secure; 
his  doubts,  which  yet  were  not  convincing 
enough  to  induce  him  to  break  off  all  rela- 
tions with  her ;  his  sense  of  honor,  which  was 
wounded  in  his  own  eyes  by  his  own  act ;  his 
sense  of  duty,  which  condemned  him  in  one 
course  and  did  not  sustain  him  in  the  oppo- 
site one  —  all  combined  to  make  him  pro- 
foundly and  passionately  miserable.  To  his 
friends  and  acquaintances,  who  were  unac- 
quainted with  such  finely  wrought  and  even 
fantastic  sorrows,  his  trouble  seemed  so  exag- 
gerated that  they  could  only  account  for  it  on 
the  ground  of  insanity.  But  there  is  no  neces- 
sity of  accepting  this  crude  hypothesis;  the 
coolest  and  most  judicious  of  his  friends  deny 
that  his  depression  ever  went  to  such  an  ex- 
tremity. Orville  H.  Browning,  who  was  con- 
stantly in  his  company,  says  that  his  worst 
attack  lasted  only  about  a  week  ;  that  during 
this  time  he  was  incoherent  and  distraught ; 
but  that  in  the  course  of  a  few  days  it  all 
passed  off,  leaving  no  trace  whatever.  "  I 
think,"  says  Mr.  Browning,  "  it  was  only  an 
intensification  of  his  constitutional  melan- 
choly ;  his  trials  and  embarrassments  pressed 
him  down  to  a  lower  point  than  usual." 
This  taint  of  constitutional  sadness  was  not 
peculiar  to  Lincoln ;  it  may  be  said  to  have 
been  endemic  among  the  early  settlers  of  the 
West.  It  had  its  origin  partly  in  the  circum- 
stances of  their  lives,  the  severe  and  dismal 
loneliness  in  which  their  struggle  for  existence 
for  the  most  part  went  on.     Their  summers 
brother  Levi,  Mrs.  Lincoln's  grandfather,  was  also  at 
that  battle,  and  was  one  of  the  few  survivors  of  it. 
Colonel  John  Todd  was  one  of  the  original  pro- 
prietors of  the  town  of  Lexington,  Ky.  While  en- 
camped on  the  site  of  the  present  city,  he  heard  of 
the  opening  battle  of  the  Revolution,  and  named  his 
infant  settlement  in  its  honor.  —  Arnold's  "Life  of 
Lincoln,"  p.  68.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
379 
were  passed  in  the  solitude  of  the  woods ;  in 
the  winters  they  were  often  snowed  up  for 
months  in  the  more  desolate  isolation  of  their 
own  poor  cabins.  Their  subjects  of  conversa- 
tion were  limited,  their  range  of  thoughts  and 
ideas  narrow  and  barren.  There  was  as  little 
cheerfulness  in  their  manners  as  there  was  in- 
centive to  it  in  their  lives.  They  occasionally 
burst  out  into  wild  frolic,  which  easily  assumed 
the  form  of  comic  outrage,  but  of  the  sustained 
cheerfulness  of  social  civilized  life  they  knew 
very  little.  One  of  the  few  pioneers  who  have 
written  their  observations  of  their  own  people, 
Mr.  John  McConnell,*  says,  "They  are  at  the 
best  not  a  cheerful  race ;  though  they  some- 
times join  in  festivities,  it  is  but  seldom,  and 
the  wildness  of  their  dissipation  is  too  often  in 
proportion  to  its  infrequency.  There  is  none  of 
that  serene  contentment  which  distinguishes 
the  tillers  of  the  ground  in  other  lands. .  .  . 
Acquainted  with  the  character  [of  the  pioneer,] 
you  do  not  expect  him  to  smile  much,  but 
now  and  then  he  laughs." 
Besides  this  generic  tendency  to  melancholy, 
very  many  of  the  pioneers  were  subject  in 
early  life  to  malarial  influences,  the  effect  of 
which  remained  with  them  all  their  days. 
Hewing  out  their  plantations  in  the  prime- 
val woods  amid  the  undisturbed  shadow  of 
centuries,  breaking  a  soil  thick  with  ages  of 
vegetable  decomposition,  sleeping  in  half- 
faced  camps,  where  the  heavy  air  of  the  rank 
woods  was  in  their  lungs  all  night,  or  in  the 
fouler  atmosphere  of  overcrowded  cabins,  they 
were  especially  subject  to  miasmatic  fevers. 
Many  died,  and  of  those  who  survived  a  great 
number,  after  they  had  outgrown  the  more  im- 
mediate manifestations  of  disease,  retained  in 
nervous  disorders  of  all  kinds  the  distressing 
traces  of  the  maladies  which  afflicted  their 
childhood.  In  the  early  life  of  Lincoln  these 
unwholesome  physical  conditions  were  espe- 
cially prevalent.  The  country  about  Pigeon 
Creek  was  literally  devastated  by  the  terrible 
malady  called  "  milk-sickness,"  which  carried 
away  his  mother  and  half  her  family.  His 
father  left  his  home  in  Sangamon  County  also, 
on  account  of  the  frequency  and  severity  of 
the  attacks  of  fever  and  ague  which  were  suf- 
fered there ;  and,  in  general,  Abraham  was 
exposed  through  all  the  earlier  part  of  his  life 
to  those  malarial  influences  which  made,  dur- 
ing the  first  half  of  this  century,  the  various 
preparations  of  Peruvian  bark  a  part  of  the 
daily  food  of  the  people  of  Indiana  and  Illi- 
nois. In  many  instances  this  miasmatic  poi- 
son did  not  destroy  the  strength  or  materially 
shorten  the  lives  of  those  who  absorbed  it  in 
their  youth ;  but  the  effects  remained  in  peri- 
odical attacks  of  gloom  and  depression  of 
*  "Western  Characters,"  p.  134. 
spirits  which  would  seem  incomprehensible  to 
thoroughly  healthy  organizations,  and  which 
gradually  lessened  in  middle  life,  often  to  dis- 
appear entirely  in  old  age. 
Upon  a  temperament  thus  predisposed  to 
look  at  things  in  their  darker  aspect,  it  might 
naturally  be  expected  that  a  love-affair  which 
was  not  perfectly  happy  would  be  productive 
of  great  misery.  But  Lincoln  seemed  espe- 
cially chosen  to  the  keenest  suffering  in  such 
a  conjuncture.  The  pioneer,  as  a  rule,  was 
comparatively  free  from  any  troubles  of  the 
imagination.  To  quote  Mr.  McConnell  t 
again:  "There  was  no  romance  in  his  [the 
pioneer's]  composition.  He  had  no  dreami- 
ness; meditation  was  no  part  of  his  mental 
habit;  a  poetical  fancy  would,  in  him,  have 
been  an  indication  of  insanity.  If  he  reclined 
at  the  foot  of  a  tree,  on  a  still  summer  day,  it 
was  to  sleep;  if  he  gazed  out  over  the  wav- 
ing prairie,  it  was  to  search  for  the  column  of 
smoke  which  told  of  his  enemies'  approach ;  if 
he  turned  his  eyes  towards  the  blue  heaven,  it 
was  to  prognosticate  to-morrow's  rain  or  sun- 
shine. If  he  bent  his  gaze  towards  the  green 
earth,  it  was  to  look  for  '  Indian  sign  '  or  buf- 
falo trail.  His  wife  was  only  a  helpmate ;  he 
never  thought  of  making  a  divinity  of  her." 
But  Lincoln  could  never  have  claimed  this 
happy  immunity  from  ideal  trials.  His  pub- 
lished speeches  show  how  much  the  poet  in 
him  was  constantly  kept  in  check;  and  at  this 
time  of  his  life  his  imagination  was  sufficiently 
alert  to  inflict  upon  him  the  sharpest  anguish. 
His  reverence  for  women  was  so  deep  and  ten- 
der that  he  thought  an  injury  to  one  of  them 
was  a  sin  too  heinous  to  be  expiated.  No  Ham- 
let, dreaming  amid  the  turrets  of  Elsinore,  no 
Sidney  creating  a  chivalrous  Arcadia,  was  fuller 
of  mystic  and  shadowy  fancies  of  the  worth 
and  dignity  of  woman  than  this  backwoods 
politician.  Few  men  ever  lived  more  sensi- 
tively and  delicately  tender  towards  the  sex. 
Besides  his  step-mother,  who  was  a  plain, 
God-fearing  woman,  he  had  not  known  many 
others  until  he  came  to  live  in  New  Salem. 
There  he  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  the 
best  people  the  settlement  contained,  and 
among  them  had  become  much  attached  to  a 
young  lady  named  Ann  Rutledge,  the  daugh- 
ter of  one  of  the  proprietors  of  the  place. 
She  died  in  her  girlhood,  and  though  there 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  any  engagement 
between  them,  he  was  profoundly  affected  by 
her  death.  But  the  next  year  a  young  lady 
from  Kentucky  appeared  in  the  village,  to 
whom  he  paid  such  attentions  as  in  his  opin- 
ion fully  committed  him  as  a  suitor  for  her 
hand.  He  admired  her,  and  she  seems  to  have 
merited  the  admiration  of  all  the  manhood 
t  "  Western  Characters,"  p.  126.
•*oo 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
there  was  in  New  Salem.  She  was  handsome 
and  intelligent  and  of  an  admirable  temper 
and  disposition.  While  they  were  together  he 
was  constant  in  his  attentions,  and  when  he 
was  at  Vandalia  or  at  Springfield,  he  continued 
ins  assiduities  in  some  of  the  most  singular 
love-letters  ever  written.  They  are  rilled  mostly 
with  remarks  about  current  politics,  and  with 
arguments  iioinsr  to  show  that  she  had  better 
% 
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pJjWill'  3§£»  IhalSftunw  and Wervnuttian  km  keen  axawied  io  ami 
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fiu&a  d  iht   fflcace,    Jo  Celebrate  and  Ratify  the  Marriage    oj 
now-  hoik  d  tfiu  county,  aecouUna  /o  ihe  iiduaf  cmkm  and  lam  o$  dAe    ma4e   cj 
Wm%  N.  W.  Matheny,  #letk  af  the:  $ aunty 
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of  said^auit  heteunto  affixed  at  gPEINO-FIELD  , 
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/S6£2^  ^/„-n^~  M.  ^&Wy  c&Zatc  *f  =4&&™my  .isfrfci  aA&^u/ 
«fif.  £X.  fSfyl^^ 
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MARRIAGE    CERTIFICATE    OF    ABRAHAM     LINCOLN. 
(IN     POSSESSION     OF     KEYES    LINCOLN     MEMORIAL    COLLECTION,     CHICAGO.) 
not  marry  him !  At  the  same  time  he  clearly 
intimates  that  he  is  at  her  disposition  if  she  is 
.so  inclined.  At  last,  feeling  that  his  honor 
and  duty  were  involved,  he  made  a  direct  pro- 
posal to  her,  and  received  an  equally  direct, 
kind,  and  courteous  refusal.  Not  knowing  but 
that  this  indicated  merely  a  magnanimous 
desire  to  give  him  a  chance  for  escape,  he  per- 
sisted in  his  offer,  and  she  in  her  refusal. 
When  the  matter  had  ended  in  this  perfectly 
satisfactory  manner  to  all  parties,  he  sat  down 
and  wrote,  by  way  of  epilogue  to  the  play,  a 
grotesquely  comic  account  of  the  whole  affair 
to  a  lady  with  whom  and  her  husband  he 
had  contracted  an  intimate  friendship  at  Van- 
dalia. This  letter  has  been  published  and 
severely  criticised  as  showing  a  shocking  lack 
of  gentleman-like  feeling.  But  those  who  take 
this  view  forget  that  he  was  writing  to  an  in- 
timate friend  of  a  matter  which  had  great- 
ly occupied  his  own  mind  for  a  year;  that 
he  mentioned  no  names, 
,_,  and  that  he  threw  such  an 
air  of  humorous  unreality 
about  the  whole  story  that 
the  lady  who  received  it 
never  dreamed  that  it  re- 
corded an  actual  occur- 
rence until  twenty-five 
years  afterwards,  when, 
having  been  asked  to  fur- 
nish it  to  a  biographer,  she 
was  warned  against  doing 
so  by  the  President  himself, 
who  said  there  was  too 
much  truth  in  it  for  print. 
The  only  significance  the 
episode  possesses  is  in 
showing  this  almost  ab- 
normal development  of 
conscience  in  the  young 
man  who  was  perfectly 
ready  to  enter  into  a  mar- 
riage which  he  dreaded 
simply  because  he  thought 
he  had  given  a  young  lady 
reason  to  think  that  he  had 
such  intentions.  While  we 
admit  that  this  would  have 
been  an  irremediable  error, 
we  cannot  but  wonder  at 
the  nobleness  of  the  char- 
acter to  which  it  was  pos- 
sible. 
In  this  vastly  more  se- 
rious matter,  which  was, 
we  may  say  at  once,  the 
crucial  ordeal  of  his  life, 
the  same  invincible  truth- 
fulness, the  same  innate 
goodness,  the  same  horror 
of  doing  a  wrong,  are  combined  with  an  ex- 
quisite sensibility  and  a  capacity  for  suffering 
which  mark  him  as  a  man  "picked  out  among 
ten  thousand."  His  habit  of  relentless  self- 
searching  reveals  to  him  a  state  of  feeling  which 
strikes  him  with  dismay ;  his  simple  and  in- 
flexible veracity  communicates  his  trouble  and 
his  misery  to  the  woman  whom  he  loves ;  his 
freedom,  when  he  has  gained  it,  yields  him 
nothing  but  an  agony  of  remorse  and  humili- 
ation. He  could  not  shake  off  his  pain,  like 
men  of  cooler  heads  and  shallower  hearts.  It 
y 
CM, 
lJ£>.e£t\
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
381 
PHOTOGRAPH     SENT    TO     MRS.     LUCY    G.     SPEED.       (IN     POSSESSION     OF    J.     B.     SPEED.) 
took  fast  hold  of  him  and  dragged  him  into 
awful  depths  of  darkness  and  torture.  The 
letter  to  Stuart,  which  we  have  given,  shows 
him  emerging  from  the  blackest  period  of  that 
time  of  gloom.  Immediately  after  this,  he 
accompanied  his  close  friend  and  confidant, 
Joshua  F.  Speed, to  Kentucky,  where,  in  away 
so  singular  that  no  writer  of  fiction  would  dare 
to  employ  the  incident,  he  became  almost 
cured  of  his  melancholy,  and  came  back  to 
Illinois  and  his  work  again. 
Mr.  Speed  was  a  Kentuckian,  carrying  on 
a  general  mercantile  business  in  Springfield — - 
a  brother  of  the  distinguished  lawyer,  James 
Speed,  of  Louisville,  who  afterwards  became 
Attorney-General  of  the  United  States.  He 
was  one  of  those  men  who  seem  to  have  to 
a  greater  extent  than  others  the  genius  of 
friendship,  the  Pythias,  the  Pylades,  the  Ho- 
ratios  of  the  world.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
say  that  he  was  the  only  —  as  he  was  certainly 
the  last — intimate  friend  that  Lincoln  ever 
had.  He  was  his  closest  companion  in  Spring- 
field, and  in  the  evil  days  when  the  letter  to 
Stuart  was  written  he  took  him  with  brotherly 
love  and  authority  under  his  special  care.  He 
closed  up  his  affairs  in  Springfield,  and  went 
Vol.  XXXIIL— 51. 
with  Lincoln  to  Kentucky,  and,  introducing 
him  to  his  own  cordial  and  hospitable  fam- 
ily circle,  strove  to  soothe  his  perturbed  spirit 
by  every  means  which  unaffected  friendli- 
ness could  suggest.  That  Lincoln  found  much 
comfort  and  edification  in  that  genial  com- 
panionship is  shown  by  the  fact  that  after 
he  became  President  he  sent  to  Mr.  Speed's 
mother  a  photograph  of  himself,  inscribed, 
"For  Mrs.  Lucy  G.  Speed,  from  whose  pious 
hand  I  accepted  the  present  of  an  Oxford 
Bible  twenty  years  ago."  But  the  principal 
means  by  which  the  current  of  his  thoughts 
was  changed  was  never  dreamed  of  by  him- 
self or  by  his  friend  when  they  left  Illinois. 
During  this  visit  Speed  himself  fell  in  love, 
and  became  engaged  to  be  married;  and  either 
by  a  singular  chance  or  because  the  maladies 
of  the  soul  may  be  propagated  by  constant 
association,  the  feeling  of  despairing  melan- 
choly, which  he  had  found  so  morbid  and  so 
distressing  an  affliction  in  another,  took  pos- 
session of  himself,  and  threw  him  into  the  same 
slough  of  despondency  from  which  he  had  been 
laboring  to  rescue  Lincoln.  Between  friends  so 
intimate  there  were  no  concealments,  and  from 
the    moment  Lincoln  found  his    services    as
3S2 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
nurse  and  consoler  needed,  the  violence  of  his 
own  sorrow  seemed  to  diminish.  The  two  young 
men  were  in  Springfield  togetherin  the  autumn, 
and  Lincoln  seems  by  that  time  to  have  laid 
aside  his  own  peculiar  besetments,  in  order  to 
minister  to  his  friend.  They  knew  the  inmost 
thoughts  of  each  other's  hearts  and  each  relied 
upon  the  honesty  and  loyalty  of  the  other  to  an 
extent  rare  among  men.  When  Speed  returned 
to  Kentucky,  to  a  happiness  which  awaited  him 
there,  so  bright  that  it  dazzled  and  blinded  his 
moral  vision,  Lincoln  continued  his  counsels 
and  encouragements  in  letters  which  are  re- 
markable for  their  tenderness  and  delicacy  of 
thought  and  expression.  Like  another  poet, 
he  looked  into  his  own  heart  and  wrote.  His 
own  deeper  nature  had  suffered  from  these 
same  fantastic  sorrows  and  terrors ;  of  his  own 
grief  he  made  a  medicine  for  his  comrade. 
While  Speed  was  still  with  him,  he  wrote  a 
long  letter,  which  he  put  into  his  hands  at 
parting,  full  of  wise  and  affectionate  reasonings, 
to  be  read  when  he  should  feel  the  need  of  it. 
He  predicts  for  him  a  period  of  nervous  de- 
pression —  first,  because  he  will  be  "  exposed 
to  bad  weather  on  his  journey,  and,  secondly, 
because  of  the  absence  of  all  business  and 
conversation  of  friends  which  might  divert  his 
mind  and  give  it  occasional  rest  from  the  in- 
tensity of  thought  which  will  sometimes  wear 
the  sweetest  idea  threadbare,  and  turn  it  to 
the  bitterness  of  death."  The  third  cause,  he 
says,  "  is  the  rapid  and  near  approach  of  that 
crisis  on  which  all  your  thoughts  and  feelings 
concentrate."  If  in  spite  of  all  these  circum- 
stances he  should  escape  without  a  "  twinge 
of  the  soul,"  his  friend  will  be  most  happily 
REV.    CHARLES     DRESSER,    WHO     MARRIED    ABRAHAM     LINCOLN 
AND    MARY    TODD.       (FROM     A     DAGUERREOTYPE.) 
GOV.    NINIAN     EDWARDS     (ABOUT     1822). 
FROM    AN     ENGRAVING    BY     H.    B.    HALL     &    SONS. 
deceived  ;  but,  he  continues,  "  if  you  shall,  as 
I  expect  you  will  at  some  time,  be  agonized 
and  distressed,  let  me,  who  have  some  reason 
to  speak  with  judgment  on  such  a  subject,  be- 
seech you  to  ascribe  it  to  the  causes  I  have 
mentioned,  and  not  to  some  false  and  ruinous 
suggestion  of  the  Devil."  This  forms  the  pre- 
lude to  an  ingenious  and  affectionate  argu- 
ment jn  which  he  labors  to  convince  Speed 
of  the  loveliness  of  his  betrothed  and  of  the 
integrity  of  his  own  heart ;  a  strange  task,  one 
would  say,  to  undertake  in  behalf  of  a  young 
and  ardent  lover.  But  the  two  men  under- 
stood each  other,  and  the  service  thus  ren- 
dered was  gratefully  received  and  remembered 
by  Speed  all  his  life.  Lincoln  wrote  again  on 
the  3d  of  February,  1842,  congratulating  Speed 
upon  a  recent  severe  illness  of  his  destined 
bride,  for  the  reason  that  "  your  present  dis- 
tress and  anxiety  about  her  health  must  for- 
ever banish  those  horrid  doubts  which  you 
feel  as  to  the  truth  of  your  affection  for  her." 
As  the  period  of  Speed's  marriage  drew  near, 
Lincoln's  letters  betray  the  most  intense  anx- 
iety. He  cannot  wait  to  hear  the  news  from 
his  friend,  but  writes  to  him  about  the  time 
of  the  wedding,  admitting  that  he  is  writing 
in  the  dark,  that  words  from  a  bachelor  may 
be  worthless  to  a  Benedick,  but  still  unable  to 
keep  silence.  He  hopes  he  is  happy  with  his 
wife,  "  but  should  I  be  mistaken  in  this,  should 
excessive  pleasure  still  be  accompanied  with 
a  painful  counterpart  at  times,  still  let  me  urge 
you,  as  I  have  ever  done,  to  remember  in  the
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
3»3 
depth  and  even  agony  of  despondency,  that 
very  shortly  you  are  to  feel  well  again."  Fur- 
ther on  he  says,  "If  you  went  through  the 
ceremony  calmly,  or  even  with  sufficient  com- 
posure not  to  excite  alarm  in  any  present,  you 
are  safe  beyond  question,"  seeking  by  every 
device  of  subtle  affection  to  lift  up  the  heart 
of  his  friend. 
With  a  solicitude  apparently  greater  than 
that  of  the  nervous  bridegroom,  he  awaited  the 
announcement  of  the  marriage,  and  when  it 
improved  at  the  very  time  1  had  so  much 
fancied  you  would  have  grown  worse.  You 
say  that  something  indescribably  horrible  and 
alarming  still  haunts  you.  You  will  not  say 
that  three  months  from  now,  i  will  venture." 
The  letter  goes  on  in  the  same  train  of  sym- 
pathetic cheer,  but  there  is  one  phrase  which 
strikes  the  keynote  of  all  lives  whose  ideals 
are  too  high  for  fulfillment:  "  It  is  the  pecul- 
iar misfortune  of  both  you  and  me  to  dream 
dreams  of  Elysium  far  exceeding  all  that  any- 
HOUSE    IN    WHICH     LINCOLN     WAS    MARRIED,    THEN     OWNED     BY    NINIAN     W.    EDWARDS,    NOW     OCCUPIED    AS    ST.    AGATHA  S     SCHOOL. 
came  he  wrote  (February  25th),  "  I  opened  the 
letter  with  intense  anxiety  and  trepidation  ;  so 
much  that,  although  it  turned  out  better  than 
I  expected,  I  have  hardly  yet,  at  the  distance 
of  ten  hours,  become  calm.  I  tell  you,  Speed, 
our  forebodings,  for  which  you  and  I  are  pecul- 
iar, are  all  the  worst  sort  of  nonsense.  I  fan- 
cied from  the  time  I  received  your  letter  of 
Saturday  that  the  one  of  Wednesday  was 
never  to  come,  and  yet  it  did  come,  and,  what 
is  more,  it  is  perfectly  clear,  both  from  its  tone 
and  handwriting,  that  .  .  .   you  had  obviously 
thing  earthly  can  realize."  But  before  long  a 
letter  came  from  Speed,  who  had  settled  with 
his  black-eyed  Kentucky  wife  upon  a  well- 
stocked  plantation,  disclaiming  any  further 
fellowship  of  misery  and  announcing  the  be- 
ginnings of  that  life  of  uneventful  happiness 
which  he  led  ever  after.  His  peace  of  mind 
has  become  a  matter  of  course ;  he  dismisses 
the  subject  in  a  line,  but  dilates,  with  a  new 
planter's  rapture,  upon  the  beauties  and  at- 
tractions of  his  farm.  Lincoln  frankly  answers 
that  he  cares  nothing  about  his  farm.   "  I  can
;S4 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
Midlife- 
IIP 
GLOBE     TAVERX,    SPRINGFIELD,    WHERE     LINCOLN     LIVED     AFTER     HIS     MARRIAGE. 
am  gladjiw/  are  satisfied  and 
only  say  that  I 
pleased  with  it.  But  on  that  other  subject,  to 
me  of  the  most  intense  interest  whether  in 
joy  or  sorrow,  I  never  had  the  power  to  with- 
hold my  sympathy  from  you.  It  cannot  be 
told  how  it  now  thrills  me  with  joy  to  hear    ask  you 
you  say  you  are  '  far  happier  than  you  ever 
expected  to  be.'  .  .  .  I  am  not  going  beyond 
the  truth  when  I  tell  you  that  the  short  space 
it  took  me  to  read  your  last  letter  gave  me 
more  pleasure  than  the  total  sum  of  all  I  have 
enjoyed  since  the  fatal  ist  of  January,  1841. 
Since  then  it  seems  to  me  I  should  have  been 
entirely  happy,  but  for  the  never-absent  idea 
that  there  is  one  still  unhappy  whom  I  have 
contributed  to  make  so.  That  still  kills  my  soul. 
I  cannot  but  reproach  myself  for  even  wishing 
myself  to  be  happy  while  she  is  otherwise." 
During  the  summer  of  1842  the  letters  of 
the  friends  still  discuss,  with  waning  intensity, 
however,  their  respective  affairs  of  the  heart. 
Speed,  in  the  ease  and  happiness  of  his  home, 
chief  gem   of  my  character; 
that  gem  I  lost,  how  and  where 
you  know  too  well.     I  have 
not  yet  regained  it;  and  until 
I  do  1  cannot  trust  myself  in 
any   matter  of  much   impor- 
tance.    I    believe   now,    that 
had  you  understood  my  case 
at  the  time  as  well  as  I  un- 
derstood yours  afterwards,  by 
the  aid  you  would  have  given 
me     I     should    have    sailed 
through  clear ;  but  that  does 
not   afford  me  confidence  to 
begin  that,  or  the  like  of  that, 
again."    Still,  he  was  nearing 
the  end  of  his  doubts  and  self- 
torturing    sophistry.     A    last 
glimpse  of  his  imperious  curi- 
osity,   kept    alive    by    saucy 
hopes  and  fears,  is  seen  in  his 
letter  to  Speed  of  the  5  th  of 
October.     He  ventures,  with 
a  genuine  timidity,  to  ask  a  question  which 
we  may  believe  has  not  often  been  asked  by 
one  civilized  man  of  another,  with  the  hope 
of  a   candid    answer,  since   marriages  were 
celebrated  with  ring  and  book.    "  I  want  to 
a  close  question  —  Are  you  now,  in 
feeling  as  well  adjudgment,  glad  you  are  mar- 
ried as  you  are  ?  From  anybody  but  me  this 
would  be  an  impudent  question,  not  to  be 
tolerated  ;  but  I  know  you  will  pardon  it  in 
me.  Please  answer  it  quickly,  as  I  am  impa- 
tient to  know."  It  is  probable  that  Mr.  Speed 
replied  promptly  in  the  way  in  which  such 
questionsmust  almost  of  necessity  be  answered. 
On  the  4th  of  November,  1842,  a  marriage 
license  was  issued  to  Lincoln,  and  on  the 
same  day  he  was  married,  the  ceremony  being 
performed  by  the  Rev.  Charles  Dresser. 
In  this  way  Abraham  Lincoln  met  and  passed 
through  one  of  the  most  important  crises  of  his 
life.  There  was  so  much  of  idiosyncrasy  in  it, 
that  it  has  been,  and  will  continue  to  be  for 
thanks  Lincoln  for  his  important  part  in  his    years  to  come,  the  occasion  of  endless  gossip 
welfare,  and  gives  him  sage  counsel  for  him- 
self. Lincoln  replies  (July  4th,  1842),  "I  could 
not  have  done  less  than  I  did.  I  always  was 
superstitious ;  1  believe  God  made  me  one  of 
the  instruments  of  bringing  your  Fanny  and 
you  together,  which  union  I  have  no  doubt 
he  foreordained.  Whatever  he  designs,  he 
will  do  for  me  yet."  A  better  name  than 
"  superstition  "  might  properly  be  applied  to 
this  frame  of  mind.  He  acknowledges  Speed's 
kind!}-  advice,  but  says,  "Before  I  resolve  to 
do  the  one  thing  or  the  other,  I  must  gain  my 
confidence  in  my  own  ability  to  keep  my 
resolves  when  they  are  made.  In  that  ability 
you  know  I  once  prided  myself,  as  the  only  or 
in  Sangamon  County  and  elsewhere.  Because 
it  was  not  precisely  like  the  experience  of 
other  people,  who  are  married  and  given  in 
marriage  every  day  without  any  ado,  a  dozen 
conflicting  stories  have  grown  up,  more  or  less 
false  and  injurious  to  both  contracting  parties. 
But  it  may  not  be  fanciful  to  suppose  that 
characters  like  that  of  Lincoln,  elected  for  great 
conflicts  and  trials,  are  fashioned  by  different 
processes  from  those  of  ordinary  men,  and 
pass  their  stated  ordeals  in  a  different  way. 
By  circumstances  which  seem  commonplace 
enough  to  commonplace  people,  he  was 
thrown  for  more  than  a  year  into  a  sea  of  per- 
plexities and  sufferings  beyond  the  reach  of
ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 
3«5 
the  common  run  of  souls.  It  is  as  useless  as 
it  would  be  indelicate  to  seek  to  penetrate  in 
detail  the  incidents  and  special  causes  which 
produced  in  his  mind  this  darkness  as  of  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  of  death.  There  was 
probably  nothing  worth  recording  in  them;  we 
are  only  concerned  with  their  effect  upon  a 
character  which  was  to  be  hereafter  for  all  time 
one  of  the  possessions  of  the  nation.  It  is 
enough  for  us  to  know  that  a  great  trouble 
came  upon  him,  and  that  he  bore  it  nobly 
after  his  kind.  That  the  manner  in  which  he 
confronted  this  crisis  was  strangely  different 
from  that  of  most  men  in  similar  circumstances 
need  surely  occasion  no  surprise.  Neither  in 
this  nor  in  other  matters  was  he  shaped  in 
the  average  mold  of  his  contemporaries.  In 
many  respects  he  was  doomed  to  a  certain 
loneliness  of  excellence.  Few  men  that  ever 
lived  have  had  his  stern  and  tyrannous  sense 
of  duty,  his  womanly  tenderness  of  heart,  his 
wakeful  and  inflexible  conscience,  which  was 
so  easy  towards  others  and  so  merciless  towards 
himself.  Therefore  when  the  time  came  for 
all  of  these  qualities  at  once  to  be  put  to  the 
most  strenuous  proof,  the  whole  course  of  his 
development  and  tendency  of  his  nature  made 
it  inevitable  that  his  suffering  should  be  of  the 
keenest  and  his  final  triumph  over  himself 
should  be  of  the  most  complete  and  signal  char- 
acter. In  that  struggle  his  youth  of  reveries 
and  day-dreams  passed  away.  Such  furnace- 
blasts  of  proof,  such  pangs  of  transformation, 
seem  necessary   for  the  exceptional  natures. 
i&n* 
HALLWAY    OF    THE     SPEED    HOMESTEAD. 
BRIG.-GEN.     JAMES    SHIELDS     (1851). 
(FROM    A    PHOTOGRAPH    IN    POSSESSION    OF   DAVID   DELANV,  ESQ.) 
The  bread  eaten  in  tears,  of  which  Goethe 
speaks,  the  sleepless  nights  of  sorrow,  are  re- 
quired for  a  clear  vision  of  the  celestial  powers. 
Fortunately  the  same  qualities  that  occasion 
the  conflict  insure  the  victory  also.  From  days 
of  gloom  and  depression,  such  as  we  have  been 
considering,  no  doubt  came  precious  results 
in  the  way  of  sympathy,  self-restraint,  and 
that  sober  reliance  on  the  final  triumph  of 
good  over  evil  peculiar  to  those  who  have 
been  greatly  tried  but  not  destroyed.  The 
late  but  splendid  maturity  of  Lincoln's  mind 
and  character  dates  from  this  time,  and, 
although  he  grew  in  strength  and  knowledge 
to  the  end,  from  this  year  we  observe  a  steadi- 
ness and  sobriety  of  thought  and  purpose,  as 
discernible  in  his  life  as  in  his  style.  He  was 
like  a  blade  forged  in  fire  and  tempered  in  the 
ice-brook,  ready  for  battle  whenever  the  bat- 
tle might  come. 
THE    SHIELDS    DUEL. 
An  incident  which  occurred  during  the  sum- 
mer preceding  Mr.  Lincoln's  marriage,  and 
which  in  the  opinion  of  many  had  its  influence 
in  hastening  that  event,  deserves  some  atten-
3S6 
ABRAHAM  LIXCOLN. 
political  parties  more  than  disgrace. 
The  currency  of  the  State  banks 
was  well-nigh  worthless,  but  it  con- 
stituted nearly  the  only  circulating 
medium  in  the  State.  In  the  mid- 
dle of  August  the  Governor,  Audit- 
or, and  Treasurer  issued  a  circular 
forbidding  the  payment  of  State 
taxes  in  this  depreciated  paper. 
This  order  was  naturally  taken  by 
the  Whigs  as  indicating  on  the 
part  of  these  officers  a  keener  in- 
terest in  the  integrity  of  their  sal- 
aries than  in  the  public  welfare, 
and  it  was  therefore  severely  at- 
tacked in  all  the  opposition  news- 
papers of  the  State.    The  sharpest 
THE    SPEED    HOMESTEAD    AT     FARMINGTON,     THREE     MILES     FROM     LOUISVILLE,     WHERE    LINCOLN     VISITED    IN     1841. 
tion,  if  only  from  its  incongruity  with  the  rest  of 
his  history.  This  was  the  farce  —  which  as- 
pired at  one  time  to  be  a  tragedy  —  of  his  first 
and  last  duel.  Among  the  officers  of  the  State 
Government  was  a  young  Irishman  named 
James  Shields,  who  owed  his  post  as  Auditor, 
in  great  measure,  to  that  alien  vote  which  the 
Democrats  had  overturned  the  Supreme  Court 
to  gain.  The  finances  of  the  State  were  in  a  de- 
plorable condition :  the  treasury  was  empty; 
auditor's  warrants  were  selling  at  half  their 
nominal  value  ;  no  more  money  was  to  be 
borrowed,  and  taxation  was  dreaded  by  both 
assault  it  had  to  endure,  however,  was  in  a 
communication,  dated  August  27th,  and  print- 
ed in  the  "  Sangamon  Journal "  of  September 
2d,  not  only  dissecting  the  administration  cir- 
cular with  the  most  savage  satire,  but  covering 
the  Auditor  with  merciless  personal  ridicule. 
It  was  written  in  the  dialect  of  the  country, 
dated  from  the  "  Lost  Townships,"  and  signed 
"  Rebecca,"  and  purported  to  come  from  a 
farmer  widow  of  the  county,  who  expressed 
in  this  fashion  her  discontent  with  the  evil 
course  of  affairs. 
Shields    was    a   man  of  inordinate  vanity