The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-03-15
STAMFORD
An Address on Lincoln-how He Looked
 Stumping for Temperance-The Day Before tue Assassination Horace
 Greeley-BattIe of Bull Ran Gossip of the Town. e

Greeley-BattIe of Bull Run-G Gossip | of the Town. ?. A very large audience packed the Congregational church Sunday to lis
 ten to Major Merwin's. discourse on Abraham Lincoln. The pulpit was ! draped with the American flag and just before the services began a dozen i old soldiers of the civil war came into ] the church headed by John W. Thomp- I son. Major Merwin is of course an old man. He has a white beard and | ne wore a black skull cap, which gave him the appearance of Hebrew Rabbi. He explained how it was that | he first met Abraham Lincoln. He ! had been featuring on temperance in Hartford. when a gentleman connected with one of the insurance companies of that city offered to give MT. Merwin | S200 and pay his expenses if he would
 go into Illinois, where there was. great | interest in the cause, and lecture. in | that State. He had delivered a 1ec- ture in the old State House at Spring l field, and when he finished the audi ence began to cry for Lincoln MT. Merwin had never seen or heard of the | man before When he stepped upon | the platform, MT. Merwin was. aston | ished.s He was the strangest looking, ! most unkeInpt, and oddly dressed man he had ever Seen-F .appearsNthat MT. | Lincoln had been in the basement of the state f1OOSee 'IOORllS some point on international law, and that he had requested the, janitor to tell him when Mr. Merwin should begin his address. This the janitor forgot to do for some time, but finally went to Lincoln and said: .'The speaking is going on in the | han-'' NIT. Lincoln put out his lamp 1 and reached for a coat. He took the first one his hands found It proved
 to be- the sjanitor,s. and was much too small The sleeves came down to his elbows, and his vest was some six | inches longer than his coat, and did | not meet the top of his pantaloons by some eight. inches. His suspenders were held to his neither garments with shirgle nails, and his stockings were down over his shoes. MT. Merwin
 thought the audiencee was trying to play a joke upon Him. Mr. Lincoln l in answering the call went to the desk and began to speak His subject was law, divine and human, and the neces- | sity of obeying the law. MT. Merwin says he never heard "a more powerful or more logical speaker. He had heard Phillips and Beecher and all the great orators of the day, but never be- foret such oratory and pathos. The audience was entirely oblivious to MT. Lincoln's appearance, but wholly rapt
 up in what he was saying. At the conclusion of his address he asked MT. Merwin to go home with him. The invitation was accepted and the two sat up until sunrise conversing with |
 man had never before met man who | was so optimistic in regard to the fu- ture- of the country Neither of the men noticed the flight of time until
 on looking out of the window it was seen that the sun was rising. MT. Lincoln asked Mr.. Merwin a great many questions about the people Of 1 Connecticut, and the prominent politic- ians; of the New England States. He was interested in the Maine law but had not seen a copy. Gideon Wells. who Afterwards became the Secretary of the Navy, was one Of the men Mr. Lincoln asked about The next day MT. Lincoln telegraph
 ed to Richard Yates at Jacksonville, | H.. saying he wanted to come down and s-visit him and fetch. young MT. Merwin with him. Yates replied come on. This man was afterwards Cover nor of Illinois and a Senator from that
 State.s MT. Merwin and Lincoln stumped the State together for 10
 weeks on the temperance question When they reached Jacksonville: they found two churches crowded with peo- t'ple waiting to hear the speakers and
 an overflow meeting of 5000 people in the park. The result of the campaign was that the State came within 5000 votes of going prohibition, and would have gone dry but for a large German vote in the northwestern part of the State.
 MT. Merwin told how it was that he happened to be in Washington the day Lincoln was killed. He said that MT. Lincoln was more afraid of Horace Greeley and the Tribune. which at that
 time was a paper of influence, than he was of Jeff Davis, Gen. Lee and
 the whole Confederate army. A prob lem which was giving Lincoln a. great
 deal of anxiety now that the war had closed. was what to do with the 200 600
 negroes, formerly slaves. now soldiers with arms in their hands. They had
 no homes. no property, and were cast out of the South. Gen. Butler pro posed that the United States acquire a
 strip of land 90 miles wide across the IsthmuS of Panama, and then Butler would take the negro soldiers down
 there and dig the Panama canal. It was on this question that MT. Lincoln
 was enga ged,. and he asked Major Mer- win to come to Washington and take
 a paper he was preparing to New York for Horace Greeley. to- look at and get his opinion. He~w also to stop at
 Philadelphia and. see Col. Mcclure of
 the Times of that city and get his opinion. Major Merwin arrived in Washington on Wednesday and went to the White House. He found it sur
 rounded with a great crowd of people,
 all anxious to see the President MT.
 Lincoln saw as many as he could, and worked on his paper when he had a chance. The crowd grew all the time and was larger at midnight than in the evening. The night before the as
 sassination MT. Lincoln worked, until 3
 o'clock in the morning to get his docu- ment ready During the evening Mrs. Lincoln came to the room to say that
 she had received box from the thea
 tre folks fo hear our American Cousin.
 and that she had accepted it. She told
 Abe the Grants were going and that
 he must go. ''But, Mary, my dear"
 said MT. Lincoln, ''to-morrow is Good Friday, a sort of a religious day, and
 do not think we had better go.'
 Mrs. Lincoln insisted and the world knows the result. It was at 2:30 on that same Friday that MT. Merwin left the President and started for Phil ade1phia. #
 Major Merwin- had a. good deal to say about MT. Lincoln's religious be- lief and asserted that at one time he