BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF M^nvQ M. Sag* 1891 Ai/M^s^^ .^.h^//i4o^ 5474 ..SPflNE'-L UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 092 906 001 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092906001 ^._,/^iJT€'-^(i-'>i-^ t^iUA^c^crCuy From Portrait by F. B. Carpenter. Engraved by F. Hatpin. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY JOSEPH Hr BARRETT, LL.D. JtiluatvateJ* IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. I CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY Copyriglit, 1903, by JOSEPH H. BARRETT. All rights reserved. /\, 1 14*^2.1^ PRESS OF THE ROBERT CI<.^.RKE CO. CINCINNATI, JJ. S. A. PREFACE. Before the meeting of the Republican National Con- vention of i860 I had undertaken, not of my own motion or at first willingly, to write a campaign biography of its nominee for the Presidency. I was confident that my subject would not be Mr. Seward, but had no presenti- ment that the choice of the convention would be Abra- ham Lincoln, whom I had then never met. In my first interview with him, soon after the adjournment of the convention (of which I was a member), he earnestly and even sadly insisted that there was no adequate material for such a work as was intended, yet he received me very kindly, and showed no unusual reserve in talking of either his earlier or maturer life. As to both periods, he readily gave such facts as my inquiries invited or suggested; introduced me to friends with whom he had been on intimate terms for more than twenty years; and put me in the way of exploring newspaper files and legislative journals in the Illinois State library for biographic material. He told me of his correspondence with one of his father's relatives in Rockingham County, Virginia, and (iii) iv PREFACE. with one of the Lincolns of Massachusetts, without obtaining positive proof of the relationship which later research has rendered certain. Recognizing that his parents were of humble life, and ranking himself with plain people, he distinctly claimed to be of a stock which, though it had produced no man of great emi- nence, had always been of good repute in general as to both character and capacity. At my request and in my presence (May 24, 1861) he sat for a daguerreotype, which was lithographically reproduced for the volume then in preparation, published the following month. My personal intercourse with Lincoln was continued later at Springfield, as well as during part of his journey to Washington the next winter, and in that city thence- forward during the rest of his days. While preparing to add a second part to the biography, for the canvass of 1864, access was given me to the needed official papers. With permission, copies were made of valuable documents, not all of which were then used, including autograph letters and papers of the President, General Scott, and General McClellan, not then generally acces- sible. Additional autograph manuscripts of Lincoln, Chase, and others are now printed for the first time. In the summer of 1865 there was added to the two parts thus produced a third and longer one, making a volume of over eight hundred pages. With all its defects, the book had an extraordinary sale. A more PREFACE. V deliberate and complete biography was then intended by the author as soon as freedom from interfering duties would permit. That time was long in coming, but the purpose thus deferred was never abandoned. It is now fulfilled, with the advantage gained from constantly accumulating materials, and with the aid of new lights and changed conditions favorable to a more dispas- sionate estimate of the men and events of one of the most exciting and momentous periods in human history. A reproduction of Halpin's engraving of the portrait of Lincoln by F. B. Carpenter serves as frontispiece to the first volume, with the artist's approval, given (March 27, 1900) a few weeks before his decease. Of the orig- inal painting. President Lincoln said: " I feel that there is more of me in this portrait than in any representation which has ever been made." Chief Justice Chase wrote (in 1866): "The likeness is very faithful and lifelike. Mr. Lincoln's countenance had great mobility, and its expression varied much. I have seen him often with that which you have given him. I think it also his best." The frontispiece of the second volume is a pho- togravure of the daguerreotype taken just after his nomination at Chicago — lithographed for a campaign biography, but otherwise never before published. J. H. BARRETT. LovELAND, Ohio, November, 1903. Table of Contents. CHAPTER I. PAGE Lineage — Lincoln Migrations i CHAPTER II. Parentage — ChiIvDhood in Kentucky — Youth in Indiana j CHAPTER III. Removal to Illinois — Captain in Black Hawk War — Postmaster, Surveyor, Legislator — Menard Legends 25 CHAPTER IV. Admitted to the Bar — Removal to SpRiNGifiELD — Law — Politics — Personalities 48 CHAPTER V. Mary Todd — Broken Engagement — Depression — Visit to Kentucky — Letter to Miss Speed — Law Case 61 CHAPTER VI. Temperance Address — Diiceiculty with Shields — Marriage — Congressional Aspirations — Annex- ation OP Texas — War with Mexico — Elected to Congress 7^ (vii) viii TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAGB In Congress — Speech on the Mexican War — Favors Nomination of Generai, Taylor — Speeches ON Internal Improvements and Presidential Nominees — Wilmot Proviso 84 CHAPTER VIII. In Congress — Speeches in New England — Second Session — Slavery Turmoil — No Office from Taylor — Whig Candidate for Senator 96 CHAPTER IX. Professional Work and Ways — Home and Family — Eulogy on Henry Clay — Railway and Reaper Cases "o CHAPTER X. The " Nebraska " Surprise ,...., 123 CHAPTER XI. First Anti-Nebraska Campaign — Peoria Speech — Trumbull Elected Senator 130 CHAPTER XII. Anti-Nebraska Coaution — Kansas Conflict — Re- publican Party Organized — Fremont Beaten by Buchanan — Dred Scott Decision — Cases in Court 139 CHAPTER XIII. The .Lecompton Constitution — Another Demo- CRATic Schism — : Lincoln a Candidate for Sen- ator — " House-Divided " Speech 156 TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER XIV. PAGE Thb; Lincoln-Douglas Debate 170 CHAPTER XV. On the Verge oe a New Epoch — Letters and Ad- dresses — Incidents and Portents — John Brown AT Harper's Ferry — Chaos in Congress 196 CHAPTER XVI. The Chicago Convention — Lincoln Nominated for President 216 CHAPTER XVII. The Presidential Canvass — A Quadrilateral Con- test 226 CHAPTER XVIII. South Carolina Leads a Revolt — Secession Tumult in the Gulf States — The President-Elect , Bides His Time 236 CHAPTER XIX. Embarrassments of President Buchanan — Major Robert Anderson and Fort Sumter — Plans for Pacification — " Confederate States " 250 CHAPTER XX. On the Way to the White House 260 CHAPTER XXI. Inauguration — Cabinet and Diplomatic Appoint- ments 277 X TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXII. PAGE First Forty Days — The Fort Sumter Problem. . . .285 CHAPTER XXIII. Loyal Uprising — President Lincoln's Proclama- tion — Four More States Revolt — The Capital Isolated 295 CHAPTER XXIV. Taking Up the Burden oj? War — President and Congress 309 CHAPTER XXV. A Battle — Outlook at Home and Abroad 331 CHAPTER XXVI. Congress — War-Making on Slave Soil — Affairs IN THE West — Army and Navy Operations on the Coast 344 CHAPTER XXVII. Army oe the Potomac — Ball's Bluff — McClellan Succeeds Scott — Message to Congress — The Trent Trouble 362 ILLUSTRATIONS. VOLUME I. Portrait o^ Abraham Lincoi,n^ jProm Portrait by Carpenter, Engraved by Halpin Frontispiece Facsimile oe Letter from Salmon P. Chase. . .Page 207 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. CHAPTER I. Lineage — Lincoln Migrations. President Lincoln's grandfather, a Kentucky pioneer who bore the same name and met a like fate, was the son of John Lincoln, a Virginia planter of good estate, who had removed from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley many years before the Revolution. The first of this line born in America was Mordecai Lincoln, grand- father of John, of Virginia, and son of Samuel Lincoln, a native of England, who was one of the early settlers of Massachusetts. The surname is ancient and honorable, having a common origin with the name of an English county, derived from that of a Roman settlement on the site of Lincoln City. The last syllable, with its trouble- some mute, is a shortening of the Latin colonia. There are instances in early New England documents in which a scribe has written " Linklon " or " Linkhorn " for Lin- coln, but none is found in which an autograph signature is thus deformed. The American general after whom one of the three original counties of Kentucky was 2 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. named used to be called " Linkhorn " by Southern soldiers. The same bad habit once prevailed more or less in England. On a pillar of the old cathedral of Winchester a small plate of brass, with an engraved inscription, commemorates a martial hero born in " Linkhorne sheire." * Samuel Lincoln, a native of Norfolk County, Eng- land, was eighteen years old when, in 1637, he settled at Hingham, on Massachusetts Bay. An older brother, Thomas " the weaver," \\'as already there, and another brother, Daniel, came near the same time. There were other Lincolns less nearly related to Samuel among the first proprietors there, including Thomas " the cooper," from whom descended General Benjamin Lincoln of the Revolution. All appear to have been good citizens of the early New England type — plain, industrious, relig- ious people, well esteemed by their neighbors. They or their immediate descendants were connected by mar- riage with a good share of the families in a community honored by many names of distinction. Of their Eng- lish ancestry little is definitely known. Hingham, beautiful in situation, on the southern shore of the bay, a few miles from Boston, had from the first a double industrial life of land and sea — not only farming and mechanic arts, but shipping also, for there were fisheries as well as coast trafific and travel, or even remoter ventures. The original settler did not always stick to the trade he had learned; there was a craving for independent tenure of land; and no virtuous method of gain was despised. If all came here to enjoy freedom of * Milner's History of Winchester, II., 75-6. LINEAGE — LINCOLN MIGRATIONS. 3 conscience, few lacked equal zeal to better their worldly condition. Samuel Lincoln had been apprenticed to a weaver, and may have followed this calling for a time, but we find him later described as a mariner. His oldest son, Samuel junior, was a carpenter, held local office, and served as a trooper in the King Philip War. His great-grandson, Levi Lincoln, a Harvard graduate, was Attorney General under President Jefiferson, and declined an appointment to the Supreme Bench from President Madison. He had a brother Abraham, of Worcester, who was a man of local note, and two sons, who were New England Governors — Levi Lincoln, junior, of Massachusetts, and Enoch Lincoln, of Maine. Another son of the immigrant Samuel, Mordecai Lincoln (1657-1727), was a busy and prosperous man — blacksmith, iron founder, owner of mills and lands — and became one of the richest colonists of his time. By his wife Sarah, daughter of Abraham Jones, of Hull, he had three sons — Mordecai, junior, Abraham, and Isaac, — and by a second marriage, late in life, he had a son Jacob, born in 171 1. Not far from this date the two oldest brothers, already of age, sought new homes in New Jersey, afterward crossing the Delaware — their local relation to Philadelphia being, all the while, like that of their immediate progenitors to Boston. In spite of Puritan and Quaker antagonism there was no impass- able gulf between the two communities. A Harvard graduate, who was a school teacher in Hingham when these two Lincoln brothers were boys, and who was the son of a partner of their father, had founded the first Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia; and here a youth 4 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. from Boston, named Benjamin Franklin, for some time attended on his ministration — not altogether with profit. * The second Mordecai married Hannah, daughter of Judge Richard Salter, of Monmouth County, New- Jersey. John Bowne, a near relative of her mother, left an estate substantial enough to support a protracted contest over its distribution, Mordecai Lincoln being one of the defendants. Disposing of his mining inter- ests in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1725, he bought and settled on a large tract of land in what is now Berks County, where he died in 1736. He fraternized with the Society of Friends, was a man of good condi- tion, and in legal papers was styled " gentleman." In his will he bequeathed to his son John three hundred acres of land in New Jersey, derived from the latter's maternal grandfather, Richard Salter, and divided the Berks County tract between three sons by a second mar- riage. The youngest of these, Abraham, resided all his life in the house his father had built near the city of Reading; served several terms in the Legislature, and was a member of the Convention which framed the first Constitution of Pennsylvania. In this region a generation of Lincolns and Boones grew up together, and the families were allied by mar- riage. Before Daniel Boone removed with his father to the Yadkin River country, in North Carolina, John Lincoln settled in the Upper Shenandoah Valley, where *Tlie preacher in question, of whom Franklin writes in his autobiography without giving his name, was the Rev. Jedidiah Andrews. LINEAGE — LINCOLN MIGRATIONS. 5 he bought six hundred acres of land near Harrisonburg, in the original county of Augusta, of which the chief town was Staunton, just across the Blue Ridge from Charlottesville, not then boasting of its University or its Jefferson. The next three generations of this family were to differ widely in environment from the three which preceded. The nearest capital towns were Phil- adelphia — accessible by wild and tedious ways, across the Potomac and South Mountain — and Williams- burg, Virginia, to which the journey was compara- tively easy. On the west were the great Alleghanies, and a world unknown beyond. Here pioneer life was to begin anew, without advantage from nearness of seaboard or city. John Lincoln lived until 1792, and had five sons: John and Jacob, who remained in Virginia, and Abra- ham, Isaac, and Thomas, who in early manhood moved on into remoter wilds across the mountains. Abraham entered three separate tracts of land in Kentucky, on one of which, in what is now Bullitt County, he settled about the year 1784. Here the rifle-shot of an Indian, who had stolen upon him unawares while at work, sud- denly ended his days. His widow and their five chil- dren, all of whom were born in Virginia, thereupon moved to the neighborhood of relatives in Washington County. The oldest son, Mordecai, aged about four- teen at the time of his father's death, was legal heir to his titles of land — a nominal estate of seventeen hundred acres, promising to be of a value greater than the estate of any of his American ancestors, but prov- ing, through conflicting or defective records and sur- veys, to be of little real worth. He became a man of 6 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. prominence and good standing. * Josiah, the second son, early removed to Harrison County, Indiana; and two daughters, Mary and Nancy, married and settled in Kentucky. The youngest son, Thomas, a mere child when the family came from Virginia, was the father of President Lincoln. *" I remember to have heard my uncle, Judge Paul I. Booker, remark to some hotheads when Lincoln was first elected President: 'I do not know Abraham Lincoln, but if he is as good a man as his uncle Mordecai, whom I served with in the Legislature of Ken- tucky, you need have no fears.' " — W. F. Booker, Clerk of Wash- ington County, Kentucky, to the writer, March 26, 1895. CHAPTER II. I 809- I 830. Parentage — Childhood in Kentucky — Youth in Indiana. Much has been inconsiderately written and said about Thomas Lincoln. The violent death of his father suddenly and sadly deranged the affairs of the family, and the loss of paternal care was especially unfortunate for one of such tender age. As he grew up, he became more unsettled and less thrifty than his brothers. Once, before he came to his majority, he went off to find his uncle Isaac in Eastern Tennes- see; succeeded in his quest; and worked for a year or more on his uncle's farm.* Later, he was employed for a time in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, where he learned carpentry, and perhaps cabinet-making, in which he afterward showed some skill. He was not lacking in an honest inclination to earn his own living, though he was too readily content with what barely sufficed for the simplest wants. Reared to labor, much in the open air, and used to hardship, he had great physical strength, with a certain robust relish for the rough life of the border. He had no opportunity for even rudimentary schooling, yet he could write his *It was probably a son of this uncle whose name appears in the following' quotation from the family record of a noted per- sonage: "Married, at Greenville, by Mordecai lyincoln, Esq., on the 17th day of May, 1827, Andrew Johnson to Eliza McCardal." (7) 8 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. name legibly, as proved by his signature to the bond given on procuring his marriage license. He was a religious man, with human limitations; companionable, having a store of shrewd maxims and apt stories; and withal one of those peaceable men who are not to be scornfully trifled with. An octogenarian clerk of court, who knew him during his residence in Elizabethtown, said more than fifty years afterward: " He was a hale, hearty-looking man, of medium height, rather clumsy in his gait, and had a kind-looking face. He was a moderately good house-carpenter, some of his work remaining to this day in the neighborhood. He was quite illiterate, and was regarded as a very honest man." On the I2th of June, 1806, when in his twenty-ninth year, Thomas Lincoln was married to Nancy Hanks, six years younger, whom he had known from her child- hood. The wedding was at " Beechland," near Spring- field, in Washington County — the place of Richard Berry, in whose family she had lived as a ward for many years. It appears from The Genealogy of the Hanks Family* — the best authority known on this subject — that she was born in Amelia County, Virginia, Feb- ruary 5, 1784, and was the youngest of nine children of Joseph Hanks by his wife Nancy, whose maiden name was Shipley. The father died in Nelson County, Ken- tucky, in 1793, and his will, of that date, naming all his children, is on file at Bardstown. Her mother dying not long after, Nancy went to live with Mrs. Berry, her mother's sister. This definite account of the parentage *MS., compiled by Mrs. Caroline Hanks Hitchcock, of Cam- bridge, Mass., to whom thanks are due for information kindly fur- nished to the author. PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 9 and early life of President Lincoln's mother sufficiently disposes of an unfortunate hallucination of Mr. Hern- don. According to the personal description of Nancy Hanks by those who knew her, — all substantially agree- ing, with one or two exceptions, due to mistaken iden- tity, — she was slight in form and rather above the medium height of her sex; her features were regular, her hair dark, and her brown eyes bright and gentle. She had a ready sense of the ludicrous, and there was a vein of pleasantry in her talk. She was amiable, devout, and naturally cheerful. Though living where education was slighted, she early learned to read — a slender fact on which weighty events were to depend. For a year or two the wedded pair lived in Elizabeth- town, where their first child, Sarah, was born, in 1807. The carpentry which detained them here being finished, the next year they went to live in another part of the county, occupying land in Nolin Creek valley, near "Hodgen's Mills" — bought before their marriage, and known to-day as Rock Spring Farm. Here, in a log cabin, their son Abraham was born on Sunday, the 12th day of February, 1809. Much of the State was yet as wild and woody as when the Lincolns first crossed the mountains. The third President was still in office, and the Emperor, of whom he had lately purchased " Louisiana," was at the height of his power. This very year Bolivar, the South American Liberator, visited England and our Republic, intent upon political schemes which were to have fruit on his own continent and in Mexico. Henry Clay was just rising to high rank in the party called Repub- lican, whose creed embraced the Resolutions of '98. 10 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. But what relation could these things have to the future of a child born in a corner so remote and of parents so obscure? A noted Illinois lawyer (Mr. U. F. Linder) said in 1865: "I was born within ten miles of the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, only a month later than he. I knew his father and his relatives in Kentucky. They were a good family. They were poor, — the very poor- est people of the middle class, I might say, — but they were true." Of this home on the Nolin, young Abraham was to remember little or nothing, for in three or four years the family moved to another farm near the confluence of Knob Creek with Rolling Fork, several miles east- ward. The latter stream, considerably larger than Nolin Creek, from which it is separated by highlands towered with a series of far-looking knobs, runs in an opposite direction, seeking Salt River and the Ohio. His parents still had like relations as before with Hodgenville and the Baptist Church organized there by the first settlers. In his second home he passed the more conscious years of his early childhood. Almost his earliest recollections were of sitting with his sister at his mother's feet, listening as she read from a book or told tales of imagination or experience. Here his education began, and when still quite young he eagerly read Robinson Crusoe, Aesop's Fables, Pil- grim's Progress, and other books common at plain fire- sides in the older States, but then rare in Kentucky. No public instruction was then available. For a time he and his sister walked a great distance to attend the school kept by a Catholic priest named Zachariah Riney — PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH, ii possibly a precursor of the Trappists, who founded the noted monastery at Gethsemane, in that region. Later, he in like manner became a pupil of Caleb Hazel, his mother's cousin-in-law, who occasionally exercised his gifts as a Baptist minister. Of both these teachers he always retained pleasant remembrance, though he was under their tuition but a few months in all. He was not yet eight years old when he left Kentucky. One of the last incidents he recalled of his life there was accompanying his mother in her parting visit to the grave of her youngest child, a son who died in infancy. Hard times came with the War of 1812, and lasted long. As some relief, the Government offered its wild lands north of the Ohio to new settlers on credit. There were serious troubles, too, about land titles in Kentucky; nor was its labor system kind to people who labored. Slavery was now firmly established there, and the man of small means had less chance of rising than of lapsing into the scorned class of " poor whites." Thomas Lincoln chose to live in a free State. That this was one of his motives for a change was explicitly declared by his son. * In spite of this fact (or in igno- rance of it) a Boston biographer has scornfully affirmed that " whatever poetic fitness there might be in such a motive, the suggestion is entirely gratuitous and with- out the shghtest foundation." f One of the authorities cited (Lamon) would have us believe there were very few slaves in that part of Kentucky, and no trouble whatever about slavery. A dififerent story was told by the noted Methodist *See "Complete Works," Nicolay and Hay, I., 639. tMorse's "Abraham Lincoln," I., lo-ii. 12 LINCOLN AND HLS PRESIDENCY. preacher, Rev. Peter Cartwright, — a native of Amherst County, Virginia, who removed near the same time from Kentucky to Illinois, avowedly because he was unwill- ing to bring up his children in the midst of slavery. He was Elder of the Salt River Circuit, Kentucky, in 1808, belonging to the old Western Conference, which met in that year at Liberty Hill, Tennessee, and at Cincinnati in 1809. In his Jubilee address at Lincoln, Illinois, September 24, 1869, he told of the refusal of the Con- ference in 1806 to admit to " the travelling connection " a South Carolina applicant, who owned two slaves, until he emancipated them, " which required expense addi- tional to the loss of his slaves." During the year 1808 he said " some feeling existed in the bounds of the Con- ference " in regard to slavery, " and several petitions were presented praying for the adoption of some more specific rule upon the subject." A rule was adopted that year requiring the expulsion of any member who bought or sold a slave or slaves " from speculative motives." * It is known that the anti-slavery leaven was als.o at work in the denomination to which Thomas Lincoln and his wife belonged. In the autumn of 1816 the family migrated a long distance westward across the Ohio, into the depths of the Indiana wilderness. A few weeks later the Terri- tory, with but sixty-five thousand inhabitants, mostly on the southern border, became a State. The quarter section already selected was sixteen miles from the nearest landing on the Ohio, and on this *" Fifty Years a Presiding Elder."— " I had been a preacher for several years,'' he said, " before I saw a shingle-roofed house of any description." PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 13 place, near Gentryville, there is now a station named Lincoln, twenty miles by railway from Rockport, on that river. The principal stream in the vicinity is Little Pigeon Creek. At first there were very few settlers within many miles. Years passed before a store was opened or the logs were hewn for the Little Pigeon Baptist meeting-house. Here, from his eighth year to his majority, Abraham Lincoln had his chief experience of pioneer life. The subjugators of a continental wilderness had always to begin with a very simple domestic shelter, and to live under hard conditions, that improved but slowly at the best. A prolonged contest — with the pitiless elements, with resisting nature, often with the unrelenting savage, — alone made the building of our republic possible. The doers of this work are true kin of the old heroes and demi-gods. Hercules, " by con- quering the lawless powers of nature," says Curtius, "prepared the soil for a rational order of life; he is the regular symbol of the pioneering agency of the earliest settlements." To descend from Hercules was a Grecian's glory. Bishop Meade, of Virginia, whose father, impover- ished by the Revolution, began life anew near Winches- ter, wrote: "The whole country was little less than a forest at that time. For a small sum he purchased a farm, with two unfinished log cabins, around which the wolves nightly howled. Laying aside the weapons of war, he took himself to hard labor with the axe, the maul, and other instruments, while my mother exchanged the luxuries of Lower Virginia for the economy and diligence of a Western housewife." 14 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. The historian of early Kentucky, Humphrey Mar- shall, spoke from personal knowledge when he said: " Much use was made of the skins of deer for dress, while the buffalo and bear skins were consigned to the floor for beds and covering." He describes pioneer fur- niture in general in almost the identical words which have been used to describe the interior of Thomas Lin- coln's log cabin: "A like workmanship comprised the table and the stool — a slab hewn with an axe, and sticks of a similar manufacture set in for legs supported both. When the bed was by chance or refinement ele- vated above the floor and given a fixed place, it was often laid on slabs placed across poles supported on forks set in the earthen floor; or where the floor was puncheons, the bedstead was hewed pieces pinned on upright posts or let into them by auger-holes. Other utensils and furniture were of a corresponding descrip- tion, applicable to the time." Through all that was worst in this rough life he saw and admired " that sort of Spartan virtue " essential in founding new countries. Many of our American ancestors in the oldest States passed through an experience not widely different. Gentryville is farther south than Louisville or St. Louis. Around its site the newcomers found a rich soil and much green turf beneath the forest trees, with some- times a luxurious undergrowth, forming almost impen- etrable thickets. Eerocious beasts prowled about; and there were deer, wild turkeys, and other game, furnish- ing an abundance of wholesome food. Young Abra- ham distinguished himself at an early day by a good rifle-shot, though he never acquired his father's zest for PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 15 hunting. Large of his age and strong, he did good service with the axe almost from the beginning of his Hoosier life. With young David Turnham for a com- panion, he watched for deer coming to the licks on the neighboring prairie, and made long trips on horseback to the nearest mill (save of hand-power) for grinding corn. On one of the latter occasions, when he was in his tenth year, as he said in i860, he met with an accident serious enough to be lastingly remembered. When urging his horse, which furnished the power at the mill for his own grist, a kick of the animal rendered him unconscious, and for some time he was thought to be dead. On reviving, he finished the interrupted word of command to the horse as though nothing had intervened — a mental phenomenon which he made the subject of philosophical comment in later life. During the first two years here, new settlers were gradually coming. The great event of the year 18 18 was the appearance of an epidemic known as " milk sickness," of which several persons died. The disease, still occasionally heard of, seems to have no recog- nized place in systems of pathology. Malarious poison enough was certainly inhaled or imbibed in these woods, but some evil power besides must have aggravated its effects. Mrs. Lincoln died on the 5th of October in this year, aged nearly thirty-five. It is not quite certain whether the mysterious malady was the cause, for there is a local tradition that she died of consumption. It is further noticeable that her son once spoke of " milk sickness " as being very much like quick consumption. There was no doctor within calling distance, and there was i6 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. no professional diagnosis of the case. An old resident of Spencer County, who knew her well during the two years she lived in Indiana, said, in 1862, that Mrs. Nancy Lincoln was a woman of superior mind, though she had but little education; that she had " great amiability and kindness of heart," was "quick-witted," with a "humor- ous turn" in her talk; and was "more energetic than her husband." The loss of his mother was the first great grief of young Abraham, then not quite ten years old. The love of reading acquired through her inspiration and help was of itself enough, in his condition, to justify his saying: " I owe all that I am or hope to be to my angel mother." His recollection of her seemed always to be quite clear and vivid, and he ever spoke of her with tenderness and reverence. What could be done as housekeeper by a girl of twelve, Sarah did for more than a year; but a matron's care was too visibly lacking, and the father decided to ask the help and hand of one he had early known as Sally Bush, now living in widowhood at Elizabethtown. She had married Daniel Johnston, the jailor, who died, leaving three children and little property. Evidently Thomas Lincoln was quite unconscious of any stain on his reputation where he was best known. All the gossip to the contrary, of which more than enough has been repeated by some writers, is plainly of later invention. In 1874 Samuel Haycraft, the veteran clerk of the court of Hardin County, said of this courtship and marriage: " I was born in this town on the 14th of August, 1795, and have a good memory of persons and things as they existed in 'auld lang syne.' I knew Thomas PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 17 Lincoln well* . . . His second wife was originally Miss Sally Bush, daughter of Christopher and Hannah 'Bush, and was raised in Hardin County, half a mile from Elizabethtown. She was married to Daniel John- ston on the 13th of March, 1806, and lived in Elizabeth- town, where he died early in April, 1814, of what was called 'cold plague.' . . . His widow continued to live here until the 2d of December, 1819. Thomas Lin- coln returned to this place on the ist day of Decem- ber, and inquired for the residence of Widow Johnston. She lived near the clerk's office. I was the clerk, and informed him how to find her. He was not slow to present himself before her, when the following courtship occurred. He said to her: " ' I am a lone man, and you are a lone woman. I have knowed you from a girl, and you have knowed me from a boy; and I have come all the way from Indiana to ask if you'll marry me right of?, as I've no time to lose.' "To which she replied: 'Tommy Lincoln, I have no objection to marrying you, but I can not do it right of?, for I owe several little debts which must first be paid.' "The gallant man promptly said: 'Give me a list of your debts.' " The list was furnished, and the debts were paid the same evening. The next morning, December 2d, 1819, I issued the license, and the same day they were married, bundled up, and started for home." ♦For Mr. Haycraft's personal description of Thomas I^iscoln (the passage omitted here), see ante, p. 8. i8 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. Surely this man could be very energetic whenever he would! " Mrs. Johnston, formerly Sally Bush " (continued the venerable clerk) " was tall, slender, very good look- ing, and was taken in those days to be quite a graceful and gay lady. She was very neat, and thought to have been a good match for Thomas Lincoln. His new wife added much to the comfort of his Indiana home, and she took great interest in the training and education of her stepson, Abraham." Dennis Hanks, who had moved to Indiana with rela- tives of Abraham's mother, lived in the family until he married one of the Johnston daughters; and the other became the wife of Levi Hall, whose mother was also a Hanks. The stepmother was indeed a very kind one, and for the lad especially she had an affection like that of an actual mother, as he fully appreciated then and after. The Baptist meeting-house and the school-house, both log structures, were presently built, not far away. It happened that two highways — one extended west- ward from Corydon through Spencer County in 1820, the other northwestward from Rockport a year or two later — crossed each other a mile and a half from Thomas Lincoln's cabin. A store was opened at the corners, and the Gentryville postofifice was established in 1824. William Jones soon became the leading store- keeper, succeeding James Gentry, after whom the place was named, and who continued to be its most promi- nent citizen. Some one else started a grocery there " saloon " being a refinement as yet unknown in the West. The blacksmith had earlier arrived; conveniences PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 19 were steadily increasing; and the settlement had now an assured position in the world. At the Gentry ville school in the winter of 1823-4 the teacher, in addition to the usual course, gave instruc- tion in " manners " — more rudimentary than the les- sons of Chesterfield. Whether due to this training or not, young Abraham, while lacking in personal graces, was politely deferential when speaking to a lady, it is said, touching his hat or cap — sometimes lifting it out- right, we may suppose, if his head-gear at the time hap- pened to be promptly manageable. In Indiana, how- ever, as in Kentucky, his school days were few. They ended altogether before he was seventeen. Except in reading, he found no greater delight as a boy than in going to have a talk with John Baldwin, the blacksmith, a famous story-teller. He also liked to listen to people who lounged at the store. He had a good friend in Mr. Jones, who lent him newspapers, and occasionally gave him something to do. At huskings and merry-makings he was not only noticeable for his figure, — very tall for his years, lank and sallow-faced, — but also for his humor and spirit. If he had just done a hard day's work, it made little difference. He had great physical strength and wonderful endurance. One of his pastimes was to attend the 'Squire's courts at Gentryville, and he would walk the long distance to the county court-house to witness a more stately trial. In 1825 he was employed for some months by a farmer and ferryman at the mouth of Anderson's Creek. This brought him into familiarity with the Ohio River and with new scenes of life and business. In the next year his sister, at the age of eighteen, was married to Aaron 20 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. Grigsby — a good match, apparently, for both; yet in a year she died in child-bed. Of this family, that left Kentucky ten years before, there remained in 1828 only the father and son, whom neither hardship nor malaria had dangerously affected. In the spring of 1828 Abraham gladly accepted the offer of Mr. Gentry to take charge, in connection with his son Allen, of a flatboat cargo of produce to be sold along the " sugar-coast " of Louisiana and in New Orleans. For a youth of nineteen, who was expected to bear the brunt of the undertaking, this commission was a great affair; and it gave him, for the first time, (in reality, not in dream,) a long outlook and excur- sion among far-off places and people. Of this voyage it is not known that he ever gave any detailed account beyond that of a single adventure — a memorable one — too briefly told. Looking back at this day through the intervening time, it has much more significance than his modest words would imply that it had in his own mind. In disposing of that part of their cargo intended for sale along the river in Louisiana, the boatmen lingered on their way, pausing at one and another plantation. Just below Baton Rouge, one night, they had cabled their craft to the shore, expecting to remain until morning. But their repose was disturbed by a party of seven negroes, who came on board with the evident purpose of surprising them in sleep, and taking possession of their boat. It was a fight for life, and surely a hope- less one but for the remarkable strength and dexterity of young Lincoln. The murderous looting party — the first of their race with whom he had come in direct con- PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 21 tact — were beaten off, and the victors made no delay in pulling out into the current, floating miles away when morning dawned. After successfully accomplishing their business in New Orleans, they undoubtedly gave some time to observation. Could they have omitted to visit the famous battle-ground of 181 5? The West was still proudly exulting in the glories of that field, in which the " hunters of Kentucky " so honorably shared. Jackson himself had lately made his excursion down the river, amid fireworks and huzzas, on invitation to a grand celebration at the scene of his victory, meant to give a good send-off to his candidacy in the Presi- dential canvass of this year. Returning by steamboat to Rockport, the young navigators were at home again before the end of June. From Lincoln's birth until the close of his Indiana life and his minority there are no contemporary letters or other writings of himself, or of any associate, to give material help to the biographer. No acquaintance of his in those years ever came to marked distinction. The local gossip of a later generation and the crude recollections of garrulous Dennis Hanks must not be taken at their face value, and they seldom touch the things we would most like to know. Through this haze, however, we may partly discover and securely infer that young Lincoln, like a stolen prince among herdmen, was of different mould from those around him — • freely associating with them, but having an independent life of his own. If he had associates that did not contribute to his refinement, he was never sub- ject to them, and could always rise above their influ- 22 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. ence. Drinking habits were prevalent, but he had no relish for strong liquors, and seldom if ever tasted any. He shrank from causing needless sufifering, and could not bear to see any wanton infliction of pain. This may have been one reason that he had so little to do with hunting and fishing. He was helpful to " the women folks," and in general was liked by them. The oft-told incident of his finding a drunken man lying in the road on a freezing night, and carrying him without help to a cabin, in spite of a companion's advice to " let the drunkard alone," illustrates the habitual kindness of Lin- coln in these as in later years. He joined in wrestling and other trials of strength and skill, and was usually the winner. He seems to have been credited with a strength of mind in proportion to his superior physical force and stature. He helped organize a debating club, and indulged elsewhere occasionally in at least a burlesque harangue. We may credit the report that under provocation he even wrote satiric " chronicles," and that one of these, said to have been preserved, is altogether genuine, though not in all respects commendable. It deserves no special outpouring of censure, however; and its good English and easy style prove that its author had no need to ask the aid of a schoolmaster, as related of Lincoln years later, in framing a political manifesto. He wrote two or three short contributions, which, under friendly encouragement, were sent to a newspaper editor, who published them. He was much given to reading when he could get a book and a chance — sometimes by day in the open air,' more commonly at night by the light of an open fire of PARENTAGE— CHILDHOOD— YOUTH. 23 of a tallow dip or taper in his loft. He transcribed pass- ages to be pondered over after the borrowed book was gone. He worked out " sums " in arithmetic with pen and ink, and practiced penmanship in a copy-book or on blank leaves, apparently furnished him by Mr. Jones or some one else from an old ledger. Among the latter exercises were eight lines, of which Mr. Herndon says: " Nothing indicates that they are borrowed, and I have always, therefore, believed that they were original with him." These were in fact the once famihar lines of an older date, beginning: " Time, what an empty vapor 'tis; And days, how swift they are; Swift as an Indian arrow flies. Or like a shooting star." Mr. Herndon says positively that certain lines, of which he found a copy in the neighborhood, — alleged to have been sung at Sarah's wedding in 1826 — were " com- ,1 posed in honor of the event by Abe himself," but the; production was not his, and his connection with thev paper at all lacks proof.* Having as yet no access to libraries, he borrowed a volume here and there as he could — including Ram- *The "tiresome doggerel," as Herndon calls it, begins: ' " When Adam was created He dwelt in Eden's shade," etc. An old and yellowed manuscript agreeing substantially with the Gentryville document, as far as the latter goes, but of greater length, is in possession of the present writer, to whom it came as a family relic, handed down from generation to generation since its date, August 21, 1786. It was written in Massachusetts, but its origin may have been more remote. 24 'LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. sey's Life of Washington and a History of the United States. Another was the pecuHar biography of Wash- ington by Weems, at one time very popular with young readers in the West, and notably mentioned by him in a speech at Trenton while on his last journey to the national capital. The book is a compound of fiction and fact, even the author's claim (on his title page) to have been " formerly rector of Mt. Vernon " being disputed by Bishop Meade. Imaginary conversations abound in its pages; unheroic realities are freely embel- lished, if not elevated, by incidental inventions; and the famous hatchet story is among the less ambitious orig- inal creations with a moral purpose. We may also add the Autobiography of Franklin, which would do much in this case to encourage a laudable ambition. * He as yet knew little of Shakespeare or Burns, afterward his favorite poets. The few novels within his reach tempted him little, though later he enjoyed the " Leather Stock- ing Tales " and other American fiction less permanently in repute. He found solid satisfaction in a copy of the " Statutes of Indiana," more especially from the fact — of much moment — that the volume also contained the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence. *Mr. J. L. Scripps stated in a biographical sketch submitted to Lincoln in i860, that the latter read at this period the "Life of Franklin," and Plutarch's "Lives." The Plutarch was first read much later, Lincoln said, but the Franklin reading was by silence affirmed. See letter in Cranbrook Press reprint of Scripps, p. 8. CHAPTER III. 1830-1837. Removal to Illinois — A Second Voyage to New Orleans — Captain in Black Hawk War — Surveyor, Post- master, Legislator — Menard Legends. To dwell in a frame house was not beyond the ambi- tion of Thomas Lincoln. Before the year 1829 was ended he had gathered the needed boards, sawn by hand — the saw-pit still awaiting the belated mill. But the house was never to be for him. Times were hard as ever. President Jackson implored Congress to relieve settlers who had taken lands under the credit system; but his voice was unheeded. Many had to sell improved lands at a loss or to abandon them altogether. And, besides, the Pigeon Creek community had another vis- itation this autumn from its old enemy, milk sickness. Finally, allured by favorable reports from his friend, John Hanks, who had gone to the Sangamon River country, in Illinois, Thomas Lincoln determined to fol- low him. The boards went to another farmer of the Gentryville neighborhood and made the Crawford house famous. What remained of the Lincoln farm (one-half had already reverted to the Government) passed into the possession of the more fortunate James Gentry. Sangamon County was organized in 1821, and Springfield, while as yet having little more than a paper (25) 26 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. existence, became the county seat. Farther up the Sangamon River, in Macon County, ten miles west of Decatur, the Lincoln family temporarily settled, early in the spring of 1830. The son assisted in building a cabin and fencing in a field of ten acres — probably his chief experience as a " rail-splitter." The few months that he spent in Macon County are otherwise of little interest, save as to the manner in which the sojourn ended. Afterward he never visited the place, (near which John Hanks, a successful farmer, remained for life,) nor did the rest of the family continue here long. The winter of 1830-31 was ever memorable to the early settlers of the State for its marvelous " deep snow." Before the immense floods of the following spring had fairly set in, "there came a man to that part of Macon County," said Lincoln in i860, " looking for hands to run a flatboat to New Orleans." It may not have been quite by chance that he there met one who was entirely competent for the service who had no pre- vious engagement. A bargain was closed with Lin- coln, to be assisted by John Johnston, his step-brother, and John Hanks. At the time appointed for meeting their employer (Denton Ofifutt) near Springfield, the waters spread far and wide, like a great sea, over which Lincoln voyaged, by canoe, gaining his " introduction to Sangamon County." A flatboat was built from timber which they cut in the woods and sawed at a mill; and after the launch all went well until the craft stuck fast on a dam at New Salem, twenty miles down the river. That was on the 1 8th of April, 1831. The gathered people watched the vain eflforts made, as the day wore on, until finally REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS. 2-j Lincoln's ingenuity prevailed. The cargo having been removed, holes were bored in that part of the boat pro- jecting over the dam; the water ran out as the rear was elevated, and a combination of main strength did the rest. Ofifutt was dehghted, bystanders applauded, and the re-loaded vessel resumed its course. The scene of this adventure was to have a more lasting relation to his life. Here OfTutt saw what seemed an inviting opportunity for business, in which young Lincoln, to whom he took a great liking, would be serviceable on his return from New Orleans, which happened in due time. In making two such voyages, Lincoln came to see, as would otherwise not have happened in his early expe- rience, what trouble had befallen the nation from the introduction of a race of men stolen from the midst of a barbarism that was dark and cruel, to serve as labor machines. Their presence as bondmen — indeed, their presence at all — had become a continued source of dis- turbance. One side of the case he had seen — one to excite his antipathy — when forced to an unwilling con- flict at Baton Rouge two years before. On his second trip he encountered enough of the worst visible features of slavery, beyond doubt, to excite a resentful sympathy for its victims. It is less certain that, as alleged, he vowed to " hit that thing if he ever got a chance, and hit it hard," or that a fortune-telling negress told him he would one day be President, and then all the negroes would be free. New Salem village was of very recent birth, having less than a score of cheap buildings, on a bluff over- hanging the Sangamon on the west. Two miles north, 28 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. down the valley, is the present town of Petersburg, not then existing or even platted, but which was ere long to absorb the very life-blood of the older settlement and to become the seat of a new county, Menard. In Lincoln's memory this valley as far as Concord, four miles farther on, had a secure place. His busy hours must have been haunted by visions of these bluffs and bottom lands; in solitary revery he must often have heard the roar of Sangamon Falls making monotonous lament while the ghosts of hopes and sorrows, of cares and joys, flitted in the thickening darkness of his spirit. He had floated down on the "deep snow" flood, he once said, and landed here like a piece of driftwood. Just before the State election, then occurring in August, he returned from a visit to his father (who had finally settled in Coles County), and was pressed into service as a clerk at the polls. It was here, in Clary's Grove precinct, that he cast his first vote. The viva voce method, according to the Kentucky code which Illinois had copied, was still in use. The poll-sheet dis- closes that Lincoln voted for James Turney, Whig, for Representative in Congress, as against Joseph Dun- can, Democrat, who was re-elected; for John ("Jack") Armstrong for Constable; and for Doling Green, later his warm friend, for Magistrate. Both the last were elected. Armstrong, as the champion wrestler, was soon after put forward to test the value of Ofifutt's brag- ging over the athletic powers of his clerk. Lincoln accepted the challenge of the constable; stakes were put up by the backers of each, and the entire community was astir over the contest. The wrestlers proved to be nearly equally matched. Both kept stoutly on their feet REMOVAI^ TO ILLINOIS. 29 during a long struggle. Then there was an alleged foul and a dispute, with angry excitement among the friends of each and stormy signs all around. Btit respectable Mr. Rutledge counseled peace; and under like circum- stances peace was probably never more easily secured. In truth, the newcomer had triumphed, as his com- petitor conceded with an amicable shake of the hand. Ever afterward Lincoln had the respect and good will of these people and a restraining influence over the most refractory spirits. The new store was hardly opened before bustling Ofifutt also took possession of the mill at the foot of the bluflf, rented from Cameron and Rutledge, two of the earliest adventurers here; and the business was further enlarged, if it was here that Lincoln was employed for a time in " a still at the head of a valley," as he once stated in debate. Young William G. Greene, * to whom the world is indebted for recollections of those days, was employed to help in these complicated aflairs, the two clerks becoming firm friends, fellow-lodgers at the store, and fellow-boarders at Rutledge's tavern. An- other acquaintance was a bright and genial, yet short- lived young fellow of bibulous habits, John Kelso, whose enthusiasm over Burns and Shakespeare was caught by his new associate. Doling Green, who lived ' a mile or two from the mill, had readable books, and gave Lincoln cordial welcome to his fireside. Farther away on the same river road was the farm of Bennett Abell, whose wife was a well-educated Kentuckian and among Lincoln's most esteemed acquaintances here. *Later of Tallula, Menard County— a wealthy farmer and banker. He died in 1894. 30 LINCOLN AND HLS PRESIDENCY. As the autumn and winter (183 1-2) passed, his twenty-third year closing, it became evident that an- other change of his lot was impending. In the spring a steamboat, " The Talisman," to test the navigability of the Sangamon River, made a first (and last) trip from St. Louis up to the Springfield landing. This was easy during the floods of the season. Lincoln was called upon to pilot the boat from Beardstown upward. At Springfield the enterprise found a welcome all aglow with brilliant expectations. While enthusiasm grew! and generous hospitalities were prolonged, the waters rapidly subsided. To return was now the labor. The same pilot had the troublesome though not profitless job of conducting the boat back to the steadier cur- rent of the Illinois. It was the last steam trip on the Upper Sangamon. OiTutt, losing heart in his com- bined undertakings, sold his store, gave up the mill, and departed to the unknown from whence he came, leaving his late clerk free to take a hand in the Indian war, now brewing. It was early a cherished purpose at the West and South to get the wild red man across the Mississippi. To do this, and to keep him there, counted for the time as an efifectual riddance. Black Hawk, a chief of the Sacs and Eoxes, had when young gone to Iowa with his tribe, under a treaty surrendering lands in the fair and fertile valley of Rock River — a treaty which he person- ally confirmed on coming to the chieftainship. With something of the ambition of Pontiac, though without his capacity, he later tried to unite other tribes with his own in attempting to re-possess the ceded land. Gath- CAPTAIN IN BLACK HAWK WAR. 31 ering a few hundred warriors in the spring of 183 1, he crossed over into his native valley and began a savage campaign, not free from the usual atrocities. Before encountering the regular troops stationed at Rock Island and the volunteers called out by the Governor of Illinois, however, Black Hawk and his marauders retreated beyond the Mississippi. After sufifering some retaliatory chastisement, Black Hawk sued for peace, and agreed to a treaty requiring him to remain quiet on his side of the river. These events happened while Lincoln was on his last flatboat expedition to New Orleans. He had scarcely returned from piloting " The Talis- man " back to Beardstown, in the spring of 1832, when news came that Black Hawk was again on the warpath in Rock River valley, and Governor Reynolds again called for volunteers to aid in repelling the invasion. Lincoln at once enlisted, as did enough of the " boys " of Clary's Grove and vicinity to form a company, and they were enrolled on the 21st of April as mounted vol- unteers. At Beardstown, the general rendezvous for the State troops, Lincoln was chosen Captain by vote of the company, much to his gratification as a token of personal favor. The regiments and the spy battalion levied by the Governor were under the command of General White- side, an experienced Indian fighter. Marching north- wardly to Oquawka, about eighty miles distant on the Mississippi, and thence into the Rock River valley, they advanced to Prophetstown, which was burnt, and con- tinued as far as Dixon's Ferry without overtaking the flying enemy. There was an alertness among the vol- 32 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. unters, an eagerness for giving battle, quite in contrast with the steadier move of the regulars, who were as yet far in the rear. Whiteside allowed two zealous bat- talions, lately added to his command, to make a recon- noissance under Major Stillman, on the 12th of May. Twelve miles above Dixon they pitched their camp for the night near an inviting creek, since known as Still- man's Run, which proved to be unexpectedly near Black Hawk's main force. When the Indian scouts were driven in, at dusk, the direction of the chase was suddenly reversed, followed by a panic among Still- man's men, which ended all prospect of a night's rest in camp. They rapidly countermarched, suffering con- siderable loss; but the red chief did not care to rush on three times his number at Dixon's Ferry, and was out of reach next morning. Whiteside's regulars and ex- pected supplies — the latter now greatly needed — had at last arrived. As the end of their brief term of enHst- ment drew near, the martial ardor of the volunteers had so diminished with increase of experience that few re-enlisted. Captain Lincoln's company was mustered out at the mouth of Fox River on the 27th of May. Of those honorably discharged there were, besides three Arm- strongs and two Clarys, John M. Rutledge and David Rutledge, (the former a nephew, the latter a son of James Rutledge,) and William G. Greene. There were some turbulent fellows under the young Captain's com- mand; his patience was occasionally tried pretty se- verely, and his utmost tact brought into play, where military training was almost unknown and discipline a word scarcely understood; for these men regarded indi- CAPTAIN IN BLACK HAWK WAR. 33 vidual bravery and good marksmanship the chief essen- tials in war, and were ill prepared, in advance of expe- rience, to blend readily the independence of a citizen with the subordination of a soldier. When the real issue came, and a positive assertion of authority was demanded, Lincoln maintained his supremacy fully as much, it would seem, by his qualities as a man as by virtue of his ofifice. One instance deserves to be spe- cially remembered, in which, single-handed against the men of his company, he prevailed in saving the life of a really harmless and friendly Indian, who had come into camp bearing a written passport from higher authority, but whom the soldiers believed to be a pretender or a spy, and were bent on summarily executing. The Cap- tain's bearing and his power on this occasion, accord- ing to accounts from some of the men in after years, impressed them as almost supernaturally grand. When his company was disbanded Lincoln promptly re-enlisted, and served as a private in the scouting bat- talion of Captain Early, of Springfield. There was some fighting in the vicinity of Galena, and again at Kellogg' s Grove in June. Black Hawk crossed the Wisconsin River in the latter part of July, and was finally over- taken on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, near the mouth of the Bad Axe River, and beaten there on the 2d of August. He was captured a few days afterward, to be received at Washington rather as a guest than as a prisoner. Already an old man, he survived for many years, comfortably sustaining the character of a hero in misfortune. Lincoln was not engaged in any battle or skirmish, and the scouting company which he joined was mustered out before the final defeat of Black Hawk. 3 34 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. In a war so meager in military exploit, it is curioti to note how many persons then or later distinguishe had part — Andrew Jackson being Commander-in-Chie ex-oMcio. Major-General Scott had set out with a sma^ body of regulars, to put an end to the affair by takinj the field in person. Arrived at Chicago, then beginnini to grow from a mere military fort into a thin, stragglinj village, he met a more formidable foe than he was seek ing, in the form of Asiatic cholera. He has himself tolc with some degree of indignation, even in remote recol lection, how he was deserted by the only surgeon of hi; command who had capacity in the medical line, and ha( to assume the additional characters of nurse and medi cal attendant for the sick soldiers in camp. He had no fully restored the health of his convalescents when new: came that Black Hawk was beaten and the war was over Other officers connected with this campaign were Zachary Taylor, then a Colonel of the regular army, anc in command of the post of Fort Crawford, at Prairie dt Chien; Jefferson Davis, later his son-in-law; Albert Sid- ney Johnston; Erasmus D. Keyes, a Lieutenant, latelj graduated; and Robert Anderson, then Lieutenant oi Artillery, acting as Assistant Inspector-General, bj whom the volunteers were mustered into the service, Of more immediate importance to Captain Lincoln were two men in the volunteer service, both residents of Springfield: Major John T. Stuart, an educated Ken- tuckian and an able lawyer, who first met Lincoln at Beardstown at the time of the mustering-in, and John Calhoun, of a proniinent Massachusetts family of Scotch descent, said to be related to the eminent Carolina statesman. POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 35 Before going to the war, Lincoln had announced himself a candidate for Representative in the Legisla- ture, avowing in his printed address substantially the principles of Henry Clay, and enlarging especially on the feasibility and great advantage of making the San- gamon River navigable by steamboats to the vicinity of Springfield. Stress was also laid upon education under a public school system, and upon legal restriction of the rates of interest. As the county was strongly Jack- sonian, he had little to hope as a candidate, even after his return with a popular military record; but he had been strongly encouraged at the outset by Mr. Rutledge and others, who had heard him speak at the debating club, and formed a high opinion of his capacity. They assured him that he would be benefited by running, even if defeated. He was beaten, but in his own precinct, out of the two hundred and eighty-four votes polled, he received two hundred and seventy-five. The prestige thus gained proved to be of essential value. His next adventure was joining with one Berry in "keeping store" — they buying cheap for credit the goods and good-will of one establishment after another, for New Salem already showed signs of coming disso- lution. The consolidated interests were found before spring to be in a bad way, and the summer of 1833 had scarcely begun when Berry departed, leaving all the responsibility to Lincoln, who manfully stood his ground, ultimately making good the claims of every creditor. As country storekeeper he but repeated an experience had by Patrick Henry and Andrew Jackson in their young days, without better success. Before the break-up Lincoln was appointed postmaster (May 7, 36 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. 1833), and served until the office at New Salem was closed (May 28, 1836), its business being transferred to Petersburg. His postal duties occupied little of his time and brought but a pennyworth of pay. At this juncture his war acquaintance, John Cal- houn, the Democratic Surveyor of Sangamon County, invited him to become his deputy, and put him in the way of the needed instruction. After a few weeks' study of Flint and Gibson he became a competent surveyor, and for the next two or three years found a good business in settling boundaries, laying out roads and making village plats. In the meantime he was preparing for admis- sion to the bar, as advised by Major Stuart, who loaned him text-books. All the while he assiduously kept up his historical and other reading. But the cardinal event of this period of his life was his election, two years after his first candidacy, as one of the four State Representa- tives from Sangamon County. Major Stuart and Cap- tain Lincoln canvassed the county as Whig candidates, making speeches and " mixing " with the people. No caucus nominations were made in those days, and there were six other candidates on the same side. Lincoln had over two hundred votes more than Stuart, and the two were the only Whigs elected. It may reasonably be imagined that a gentleman like Stuart more than once recalled, in the presence of his youthful colleague, what Jeflferson and Randolph thought of Patrick Henry at nearly the same age, as told by Wirt. " His manners," wrote Jefiferson, " had something of coarseness in them; his passion was music, dancing, and pleasantry. He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him. Mr. Henry had, a little POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 37 before, broken up his store, or rather it had broken him up; but his misfortunes were not to be traced either in his countenance or conduct." Omitting in the compar- ison both the music and the dancing, it may be added that in height and angularity the two were as alike as in the other features of this picture. A little later, when Henry applied for admission to the bar, Randolph (afterward the King's Attorney-General) " was so much shocked by Henry's very ungainly figure and address that he refused to examine him." These scruples were at length overcome, and Randolph became satisfied that it was an " erroneous conclusion which he had drawn from the exterior of the candidate." The young Illinois legislator was at least one not to escape attention, and before the close of his two years' term at Vandalia he had won the favor and influence that precede leadership. Stuart was now foremost among the Whig members of the House, of which James Semple, a Democrat, — afterward United States Senator — was the Speaker. The State was rapidly filling up; land speculation was bringing in Eastern money; it was an era of great expectations. Illinois, it was claimed, only needed liberal legislation toward developing her latent powers to rival the most pros- perous States. The Jackson party was in the ascend-, ant, but the measures adopted did not all accord with the Jackson policy. A new State bank, with a capital of one million and a half, was chartered; the old bank' at Shawneetown — in suspended animation during the last dozen years — was resuscitated; a loan was granted to the Illinois and Michigan Canal Company, organized in 1825; and several railway corporations, without State 38 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. aid, were created. Among the railways thus initiated were the Illinois Central and the Chicago and Galena lines. It was during the earlier session of this Legislature that Lincoln first met Stephen A. Douglas, not himself a member. " He was then," said Lincoln, " the least man I had ever seen." Short in stature, he was at that time exceptionally thin and meager. Late in the year 1833, while only in his twenty-first year, Douglas had come to Winchester, Illinois (his native State being Vermont), after a temporary stay at Cleveland, Ohio, Cincinnati, and places farther south. The next year he continued the study of law, begun at Cleveland, and took part in local politics. At this session an act, of which Douglas was an active lobby supporter, if not the originator, was passed, taking from the Governor the power of appointing State's Attorneys for the several judicial districts, and providing for their choice by the Legislature. Scarcely as yet an expert in the legal pro- fession, he presented himself as a candidate for State's Attorney in his district against John J. Hardin, a distin- guished Whig lawyer, then in office. The movement was so adroit that the younger aspirant distanced his surprised competitor by a majority of two votes in the joint assembly. To this period belongs a romance, with tragic end- ing, current among Menard traditions thirty years later. Its substance was then communicated to the writer, as follows: " Miss Ann Rutledge was a rosy-cheeked, blue- eyed, fair-haired girl, whose people were a branch of the family of that name so distinguished in the Carolinas, POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 39 and were regarded as rather aristocratic. She died in 1835, in the summer. The family left this section a few years later. Lincoln's attachment to Miss Rut- ledge and his extraordinary grief when she died were matters of current interest among the old settlers when I first knew him." While there are different versions of the story as ultinjately expanded and embellished, it is agreed that Ann had a lover named McNamar, to whom she was engaged, at least as early as 1832. In that or the next year he left for a visit to his former home in the State of New York, promising an early return. She never saw him again, and after two years, with only occasional and not reassuring communications from him, she died. The relations of the two were well known to Lincoln, who was a boarder at Rutledge's tavern, and his heart was moved by Ann's disappointment and prolonged sus- pense — for it appears that she still loved McNamar — " never quite gave him up." About this date Lincoln memorized the sad poem, " Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" which he afterward often recited. It may be that the briefer lines of Landor's " Rose Aylmer " would have better suited his mood had he known them. The sense of a great personal loss is not the basis of the most poignant grief. Profound sorrow springs rather from an infinite sympathy for the one who has endured all and is forever silent. During the three years in question, as storekeeper, captain of volunteers, postmaster and surveyor, he was struggling for existence and advancement, actively em- ploying his spare time not only in improving his general education, but also in preparation for law practice. He 40 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. was depressed by some unpleasant vicissitudes, such as the seizure of his horse, saddle and surveying imple- ments to satisfy a judgment against him on the notes which were so long a reminder of his " mercantile " experience. The obligations now changed hands, his friends, James Short and W. G. Greene, generously assuming the debts as more gracious creditors, releas- ing the property levied on. He was also " in politics," canvassing the county in 1834, getting elected to the Legislature, and attending its sessions during the next two winters at Vandalia. All the while he found little leisure for listless brooding. He had the same ambi- tious purposes, and used like methods to gain advance- ment, before and after the event which he lamented so deeply. There are other facts to be considered in this con- nection. In 1833, Lincoln met and was pleased with Miss Mary Owens, of Kentucky, then on a visit to her sister, his friend and neighbor, Mrs. Bennett Abell. The lady was somewhat older than himself, and there proved to be no special affinity between them, as is evident from the slight correspondence which followed a renewal of the acquaintance in 1836. This renewal occurred through the instrumentality of Mrs. Abell, who seems to have been trying her hand at match-making. Finally Lincoln brought the afifair to a crisis — rather awkwardly, it must be added — by writing a letter, in which he formally ofifered his hand in such terms as he honestly could, though hardly suited to persuade a romantic mind. Her negative response ended what seemed to be a sense of obligation or of virtual com- mitment on his part. The publication of these letters POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 41 was hardly needed on any account; yet they show him to have been at this time neither a very graceful wooer, nor one who had taken a vow of celibacy at the grave of another a few months before. Miss Owens was sen- sible and good-natured; and between them there was no misunderstanding. * As if all the other trials and toils of the time were not enough, it has been added that he wrote an "infidel book." A very few words will suffice for whatever there is of real basis for such a tale. According to all that is known of the matter, the "book" was nothing more than a number of manuscript pages, discussing in a rationalistic way some of the commonly received theo- logical opinions or dogmas — as "incarnation," "atone- ment," or the like — very probably going no farther than is now tolerated in many pulpits not reckoned as " orthodox." It is needless to intimate that he can have had no ambition to be known as an assailant of the Bible or the church. How wide was the range of his arguments can not be told with any certainty, for he permitted a friend to put the writing in the fire without ceremony. Nor is it very material. If we had it, we should be little wiser as to his maturer convictions. In 1836, Lincoln was again a candidate for Repre- sentative. Responding to a demand that the Whig can- didates should " show their hand," he said through the Springfield Journal, under date of June 13th: I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes *She married a well-to-do farmer, named Vineyard, not long after, settling at Weston, Mo., where she died in 1877. 42 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. or bear arms (by no means excluding females). If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon County my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me. While acting as their Representative, I shall be gov- erned by their will upon 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 advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for distrib- uting 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 the interest on it. If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President Martin Van Buren, the Democratic candidate, was opposed by a faction of the party, who supported Sen- ator White, of Tennessee, — a former personal friend of Jackson, but now alienated, — and with such success that the latter had the chagrin of seeing his own State lost to his favorite and carried by his recusant enemy. The Whigs had no regular nominee — in Massachusetts voting for Daniel Webster, and in other Whig States mostly for General W. H. Harrison. Their only chance for defeating Van Buren was in so dividing the elec- toral votes as to throw the election into the House of Representatives. It was in the spring of this year that Lincoln first became personally known to Mr. Joshua F. Speed, henceforward his warm and faithful friend. Mr. Speed, born near Louisville, Kentucky, in 1814, was a graduate of St. Joseph's College, at Bardstown. After an expe- rience of some years in the largest wholesale house in Louisville, he opened a store at Springfield, in 1835, on his own account. During the five or six years follow- POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 43 ing 1836 no one had a closer intimacy with Lincoln, who, before they met, already had a certain local fame at the county seat. " I heard him spoken of by those who knew him," said Mr. Speed, in 1882, " as a won- derful character. They boasted that he could out- wrestle any man in the county, and that he could beat any lawyer in Springfield speaking." Of what he thought was Lincoln's first speech at that place, Mr. Speed said: At that time there were but two parties, Whig and Democrat. Lincoln was a Whig and the leading man upon the ticket. I was then fresh from Kentucky, and had heard many of her great orators. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that I never heard a more effective speaker. He carried the crowd with him, and swayed them as he pleased. So deep an impression did he make that George Forquer, a man of much celebrity as a sarcastic speaker and great State reputation as an orator, rose and asked the people to hear him. He commenced his speech by saying that this young man would have to be taken down, and he was sorry that the task devolved upon him. He made what was called one of his slasher-gaff speeches, dealing much in ridicule and sar- casm. Lincoln stood near him with his arms folded, never interrupting him. When Forquer was done, Lincoln walked to the stand, and replied so fully and completely that his friends bore him from the court-house on their shoulders. So deep an impression did this first speech make upon me that I remember its conclusion now. Said he "The gen- ■ tleman commenced his speech by saying that this young man will have to be taken down, and he was sorry that the task devolved upon him. I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trades of a politician; but, live long or die young, I would rather die now than, like the gentle- man, change my politics, and simultaneously with the change receive an ofiSce worth $3,000 a year, and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God." 44 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. Forquer had been a Whig, but changed his politics, and had been appointed Register of the Land Office. Over his house was " the only lightning-rod in the town or county. Lincoln had seen it for the first time on the day before. Not understanding its properties, he made it a study that night by aid of a book, bought for the purpose, till he knew all about it." The Whigs elected their Legislative candidates in Sangamon County, with one exception, Lincoln receiv- ing more than an average vote. Each of the seven Representatives and two Senators thus chosen (the number being larger than at the last election) was over six feet in height, and hence they were called the "Long Nine." This was the most numerous representation from any county, and attracted much notice from the influence it wielded. Stephen A. Douglas was a Rep- resentative from Morgan County, having recently taken up his residence at Jacksonville. He was never again chosen to the Legislature, and, in fact, vacated his seat soon after the first session, to become Register of the Land Office at Springfield. As in the preceding House of Representatives, the Democrats had a majority; and Mr. Semple was again the Speaker. Lincoln was assigned a place on the Financial Committee. Besides the members already named, there were many who were afterward prominent in State or national politics, including James Shields, Augustus C. French, Robert Smith, John Dougherty, William A. Richardson, and John A. McClernand. At both sessions Lincoln came forward more actively, gradually becoming recognized as the Whig leader. Internal improvements were again a prominent sub- POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 45 ject of legislation. Under the excitement of the flush times of 1836, this business was indeed much overdone. Through subsequent mismanagement and the revulsion of the next year, the financial affairs of Illinois were presently tangled in a knot, which seemed about to be recklessly cut by a sharp stroke of repudiation. Doug- las was one of the most zealous for the improvements. Lincoln warmly favored them. The former, having retired from the Legislature before the crisis, did nothing to avert the discredit which came upon the State, though his party had the responsible ascendency. Lincoln was active, as the records of the second session show, in his efforts to maintain honest dealing and to provide some method for satisfying all creditors in good faith. At the first session charters were granted for a num- ber of railways, and provision was made for the comple- tion of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, from Chicago to Peru, in La Salle County, and for the improvement of the navigation of the Kaskaskia, Illinois, Rock, and Great and Little Wabash Rivers, with aid from the State requiring in the aggregate a loan of eight million dol- lars. Scarcely budded before the storm of 1837 came, these schemes were much more luxuriant in blossom than bountiful in fruit. Slavery agitation had begun anew, and in more deadly earnest, a few years before. In the South it had sprung from the roots of Nullification directly after that baneful growth had been felled to the ground. The dominant party in the Illinois Legislature, stimulated by a reference to the subject in President Jackson's annual message of December, 1836, adopted, near the day of 46 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. adjournment, a series of resolutions strongly Southern in tone, in regard to slavery and Abolitionism. Those who refused or hesitated to take this extreme ground were in danger of being called Abolitionists, and that was an opprobrium which few politicians felt able to bear. There was then httle anti-slavery sentiment in Central and Southern Illinois, at any rate, to sustain a Representative in refusing obsequious submission to such resolutions. Yet Lincoln could not honestly vote for them. He might have remained silent, but he chose to be frank and open. He entered his protest in the House journal, joined by only one other member, Dan Stone, a colleague from Sangamon County. The doc- ument bears the date of the last day of Andrew Jack- son's Presidency, March 3, 1837. In it Lincoln declared (for the language is his own) his belief: 1. 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 to abate its evils." 2. That "the Congress of the United States has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with the institu- tion of slavery in the dififerent States." 3. That "the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the Dis- trict of Columbia ; hut that the power ought not to be exer- cised unless at the request of the people of said District." It was near the close of the same session that an act was passed removing the State capital from Vandalia to Springfield, a measure due more to the exertions of Lincoln than of any other member, even of the " Long Nine." The first capital, Kaskaskia, was convenient enough, if not quite central, for the small population POSTMASTER, SURVEYOR, LEGISLATOR. 47 provided with a territorial government in 1809. On the admission of Illinois as a State in 1818, Vandalia, far up the Kaskaskia River, was laid out as the new seat of government. This was well to the southwest, in the heart of what has since been known as the " Egypt " of the State. But during the several years immediately preceding 1837, the center of population had gradually moved northward, as the middle and upper parts of the State were becoming more extensively settled. As usual in like cases, many rival towns were competing for the prize when the question arose as to another cap- ital, expected to be the permanent and final one. There was of course a formidable Vandalia interest opposed to change. But after a severe and protracted contest — the battle at one time seeming to all the Springfield party except Lincoln to have been irretrievably lost — the act for removal to their locality was passed, to take efifect July 4, 1839. CHAPTER IV. i 1837-1840. Admitted to the Bar — Removal to Springfield — Law, Politics and Personalities. Lincoln was admitted to the bar " in the autumn of 1836." * He began practice at Springfield as partner of Major John T. Stuart in the following spring, his residence there beginning (as he said to the writer in i860) " on the 15th of April." Boarding with William Butler, afterward State Treasurer, he shared the lodg- ings of Joshua F. Speed over the store of the latter, a recent comer from Ivouisville. As one of the Sanga- mon " Long Nine," known as the longest and most efficient in removing the capital, he was cordially wel- comed to the place which was ever after to be his home. While the State had made a great advance since 1830, its northern half was still but sparsely settled. Chi- cago was yet an unimportant if not unpromising vil- lage. Alton was eminently the ambitious town, hoping to surpass or even to supplant St. Louis. Springfield had now not more than twelve hundred inhabitants — a number soon to be largely exceeded. Its bar already ^ included several names that were to be distinguished in the profession and in public life. The United States District Court and the Supreme ♦These are his own words. Mr. Herndon gives a later date. (48) LAW— POLITICS— PERSONALITIES. 49 Court of Illinois soon came to hold their sessions here, and there were annually three terms of the Common Pleas Court of Sangamon County. Circuit practice as then prevalent also occupied several weeks each year in making the rounds of the dozen other coun- ties of the Eighth District, judges and lawyers travel- ing mainly by private conveyance. Roads were bad and tavern accommodations simple. The court-houses were neither sightly nor spacious. These pilgrimages had their adventures and tales, which a Chaucer might not have been tempted to idealize in rhyme, but which were not lacking in charm for the pilgrims. The ar- rival of court officers, attorneys, litigants, witnesses and jurors at the opening of a term was an epoch for the little village, nominal or real, in which justice had a local dwelling. Attending court was one of the chief diversions of a people having as yet neither drama, circus, menagerie, nor county fair. Of evenings and in daylight intermissions of court there were eager listeners as these errant knights interchanged stories, indulged in short, sharp debates, or bandied jokes and repartees. These were scenes which Lincoln was sel- dom inclined to shun. On such occasions he cast care to the winds, and might have been thought the hap- piest spirit of all. In his tours, however, he passed many hours or sometimes a whole day alone. Jogging along on horseback through arduous ways, made still more tedious by mud or flood, he was absorbed in medi- tation or profound study. Sometimes in a vehicle with one or two companions, he might seem to be rather thinking aloud than conversing, his mind wandering over a wide area, from his own obscure days and varied ■ 4 50 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. fortunes to higher topics of national life and human destiny. In general, his early practice involved few weighty questions or heavy stakes, and brought him scanty fees. Recalling his three or four years of intimate associa- tion with him, beginning in 1837, Mr. Speed said Lin- coln " was a social man, though he did not seek com- pany," adding, " after he had his home with me, on every winter's night at my store, by a big wood fire, no matter how inclement the weather, eight or ten choice spirits assembled, without distinction of party. It was a sort of social club without organization. They came there because they were sure to find Lincoln. His habit was to engage in conversation upon any and all subjects except politics." It happened, nevertheless, that one evening, in the winter preceding the Presidential canvass of 1840, he became involved in a political argument with Douglas, then Register of the Land Office at Springfield. As the discussion grew warm, Douglas sprang to his feet and said: " Gentlemen, this is no place to talk poli- tics; we will discuss the questions publicly with you." Not long after there was a meeting of Whigs, and a challenge to the Democrats for a joint debate between champions of the parties. This was accepted, the Dem- ocrats choosing on their part Messrs. Douglas, Lam- bom, Calhoun, and Jesse B. Thomas — former Senator from Illinois, and famed for his connection with the Missouri Compromise legislation. The Whigs elected as their speakers Messrs. Logan, Baker, Browning, and Lincoln. The debate took place in the Presbyterian LAW— POLITICS— PERSONALITIES. 51 church — where the Legislature held its sessions after the capital was removed until the completion of the new State House. Large audiences were present, each of the eight speakers having one night to himself. The date — January, 1840, — will sufficiently indicate the gen- eral nature of the discussion. General Harrison had already been nominated at Harrisburg for the Presi- dency; Van Buren's re-nomination was certain in the near future. Here, though little heard of in the wide land, was an opening cannonade — long locally famous as the "great debate" — in the remarkable campaign of the year just begun. Lincoln wrote his speech, though it was delivered without notes of any kind; and it was soon after printed, filling seven columns of the Sanga- mon Journal. The leading topic of all the speeches was Van Buren's sub-treasury method for " collecting, safe- keeping, transferring, and disbursing the revenues of the nation, as contrasted with a National Bank for the same purposes." Alleged extravagant expenditures — " gold spoons " for the White House and other incon- gruities in oppressively hard times — naturally found place among incidental diversions from the solid sub- ject. Lincoln, making the closing speech of the series, was of course expected to reply to whatever he thought needed such attention in the speeches of the other side. He unhesitatingly grappled with the stoutest arguments of the Democratic champions; but a little by-play of less gravity probably gave more pleasure to the audience. One specimen will illustrate this feature of his speech: Mr. Ivamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party and the Whigs is, that, although the former 52 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. sometimes err in practice, they are always correct in prin- ciple, whereas the latter are wrong in principle, and, the better to impress this proposition, he uses a figurative ex- pression 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, that 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 hun- dreds of others, scampering away with the public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot on earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they«re most distressingly aflfected in their heels with a spe- cies of "running itch"? It seems that the malady of their heels operates on the sound-headed and honest-hearted crea- tures very much like the cork leg in the comic song on its owner, which, when he had once started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the haz- ard of wearing the point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems to be too strikingly 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 with- out orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had, but, somehow or other, whenever danger approaches my cowardly legs will run away with it." So with Mr. Lambom'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 vul- nerable heels will run away with them. Referring, near the close of his speech, to Mr. Lam- bom's argument, founded upon the indications of re- cent State elections, that Van Buren was sure to be re-elected, Lincoln gave his imagination free range among bold metaphors in denunciation of the admin- istration — " the great volcano at Washington," that was " belching forth the lava of political corruption in LAW— POLITICS— PERSONALITIES 53 a current broad and deep," by which " all may be swept away." The probability that we may fall in the struggle [he said] ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me dilate 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 >vorld beside, and I standing up boldly, alone, hurling defi- ance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contem- plating consequences, before heaven and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who ithat thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take ? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so ; we still shall have the proud consolation of saying 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 defending. This was one of his first published speeches, not alto- gether faultless in style or in the main of much moment, yet, judged in the light of later history, there is some- thing more than mere declamation — something almost prophetic withal — in these final sentences. At this time he was in his third term as Representa- tive, to which he had been chosen in 1838. While he had been gaining a living practice at the bar, he had also been growing in prominence as a political leader, so that in the organization of the House of Repre- sentatives he was the choice of the Whigs for Speaker, and received a vote but slightly less than that of his Democratic competitor. He again served on the Finance Committee, which 54 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. had vexations enough in seeking to relieve the State from disastrous entanglements of its banking, loan and improvement system. Lincoln was not an expert finan- cier, certainly, nor did the methods he proposed find favor with the majority, except in the first element of financial wisdom, good faith with public creditors. He was chosen to the House of Representatives for the fourth time in 1840, and was again the candidate of the Whig minority for Speaker. Named for elector on the Harrison ticket, he spent much time in canvass- ing the central counties of the State especially, bearing the brunt of the Presidential battle on the Whig side, either Douglas or Calhoun being usually at hand to reply. Lincoln regarded the latter as the harder to meet. Illinois could not be wrested from the Demo- cratic party, but the efforts made were not wasted on so helpless a cause as Lamborn's predictions implied, and Van Buren's defeat brought with it the delusive prospect of better days for the Whigs. Douglas, then holding the comparatively lucrative position of Register of the Land Office, given him by Van Buren, continued to press forward with character- istic energy. He had already made one canvass as a Congressional candidate, and was beaten by Major Stuart (Lincoln's partner) by so close a vote that he was for some time disposed to contest the seat. A bill to abolish the Supreme and Circuit Courts of Illinois and providing a new judiciary organization — origi- nated and lobbied for by Douglas, and alleged to have a partisan object — was passed by the Legislature, Lincoln, Baker, and thirty-three other Whig members filing their protest against it. Dan Stone and the LAW— POLITICS— PERSONALITIES. 55 other Whig judges having thus been ousted, Douglas himself and other Democrats were appointed to the newly constituted bench. As a lawyer, Lincoln was always inclined to enter heartily into the cause of one whom he believed to be wronged, yet lacking means to secure legal redress on ordinary terms. Many cases which brought him little or no pecuniary return, afforded him more than com- pensating satisfaction in having protected the weak against tyrannous injustice. One instance was that of a poor widow, of whose pension arrears a greedy attor- ney had kept quite an undue share. When her case was stated to Lincoln, he not only interested himself in her behalf, but became indignant, and secured prompt retri- bution without legal process or fee. He was occasion- ally the attorney for a negro defendant whose freedom was in question, though at the risk of prejudice to his political standing. Without resorting to the courts, he secured the release of a free negro of Illinois, who had landed from a steamer in New Orleans in violation of a local law, and was to have been sold for want of means to pay his fine. Lincoln raised the needed money, him- self a contributor, choosing an immediate practical rem- edy without delaying justice by inflammatory talk. He was retained in a suit brought in Tazewell County in 1839 to enforce payment of a promissory note given in payment for a negro woman named Nance — a relic of the " vested rights " of certain Erench slaveholders before the Louisiana Purchase — the parties in court being residents of Illinois. Lincoln was counsel for the defendant; and judgment having been rendered for the plaintiff, an appeal was taken to the Illinois Supreme 56 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. Court. Before that tribunal he argued the case in 1841, maintaining that the contract was void for lack of con- sideration; that under the ordinance of 1789 and the Constitution of Illinois adopted in 1818, slavery had no lawful standing; and that Nance being legally a free woman, could not be the subject of a sale. His conten- tion was sustained by the court, and the question as to slavery in lUinois was settled. * He sometimes defended an alleged fugitive slave, but did not refuse to act as counsel for a Kentuckian seeking to reclaim certain slaves he had voluntarily brought into Illinois for temporary employment. His client, one Matteson, of Bourbon County, had put some of his slaves at work on a farm in Coles County, Illinois. It appears that these servants would have been willing to return to Kentucky when required by their master, but for philanthropic intervention through an appeal to the local court. It can hardly be supposed that Lincoln was at all disappointed in losing his case. It is a relief, however, to have so good a proof — after all that has been told to the contrary — that he had no invincible objection to a good client with a bad cause. At Danville, in Vermillion County, which borders on Indiana, he had a case in 1842, in which John J. Brown, his client, was the plaintifif, and Mr. Juneau, of Mil- waukee, was the defendant, whose attorney was John P. Usher, twenty years later Secretary of the Interior Department. It was a complicated case, growing out of a speculative transaction. Lincoln gained the suit not only in this first trial, but afterward on appeal to * Notwithstanding, it was later alleged by Douglas, in debate, that Illinois had been a slave state. LAW— POLITICS— PERSONALITIES. 57 the Supreme Court. Mr. Usher, who here met him for the first time and knew him well thenceforward, said of his manner of addressing a jury, that his voice was so smooth and attractive as never to become wearisome; that in posture and gesture he was not graceful or always dignified — sometimes placing one foot in a chair, or leaning on the back of one, sometimes stand- ing with his arms akimbo; but that he never failed of being listened to with close attention and lively interest from the beginning to the end of his argument. During his last term in the Legislature, Lincoln was for some time in a state of serious mental depression. As told by his friend Speed: In the winter of 1841 a gloom came over him till his friends were alarmed for his life. ... In his deepest gloom, and when I told him he would die unless he rallied, he said: "I am not afraid, and would be more than willing. But I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it." ... In the early summer of 1841 Mr. Lincoln came to Kentucky and spent several months at Farmington, the home of my mother, near this city (Louisville). He returned from this visit with restored health, and resumed his professional business in September. There was nothing really dangerous in these moods, as the event always proved — for this was neither the first nor the last of his experiences of like sort. One cause may be readily discerned by those who know the efifects of such a persistent malarious influence as he had always been exposed to. He was subject to glooms of the darkest blue, but without entirely losing self-control when they were at the worst. To Mr. Speed, who was 58 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. himself given to like depressions, he later suggested that it was only necessary to bear in mind that he would soon be well again, to retain his balance, and to live down the trouble. Those who knew him best were aware that what he specially needed at such a time was genial companionship, and that nothing would more quickly and completely dispel the mists than social sun- shine. Once before, in one of his darkest periods, this treatment had been successfully tried at New Salem. Plainly, his outlook for the future was not at this time such as to inspire cheerfulness. He had been three or four years at Springfield, gaining ground, to be sure, but not receiving an ample income. Major Stuart had taken his seat in Congress, and in April (1841) their partnership was to end. It must be remembered, too, that sedentary life could not but unfavorably afifect one hitherto wont to be much out of doors and to give vig- orous exercise to his robust physical powers. There was otherwise a great contrast between the life led here and that almost wild freedom enjoyed in the little Salem hamlet. He had at once passed into a greatly dififerent state of society. Now, too, he was at an age (past thirty) when to many minds the world begins to wear its most serious aspect, and when disappoint- ment over youthful dreams unrealized quite eclipses the satisfaction of partial success and dims the light of sanguine hope. Sensitiveness and modesty were as native to him as bold strength and courage — a seeming paradox, but a truth to be remembered in trying to comprehend a char- acter so unique. Two significant incidents of about this date may be taken as rather an illustration than a digres- LAW— POLITICS— PERSONALITIES. 59 sion. The exciting political canvass of 1840 had come to the final issue at the polls. On the line of railway then in construction, near by, there was a large gang of laborers, mostly of the " alien " class, whose right to vote had been denied, but sustained by the new Supreme Court organized under the " Douglas bill." The contractor who employed them was an ardent Democrat, and on election day it came to the ears of Lincoln that he had marched up his battahon of voters and taken possession of one of the polling places. It was not a question now whether these men should be allowed to vote; but that they should refuse honest voters access to the ballot-box was not to be borne with resignation. With true Berserker rage he hurried to the scene, faced the ofifenders, and — without need of blows — drove back the riotous crowd. From the statements of Mr. Speed, who gave the substance of this account from his own knowledge, it appears that Lincoln started, cudgel in hand, under an impulse to clear the way to the polls by force. The other incident also rests on the authority of Mr. Speed. One day Lincoln, Baker, Hardin, Speed and others were riding on horseback along the road, two-and-two, some distance from Springfield. In pass- ing a thicket of wild plum and crab apple trees, Lincoln and Hardin being in the rear, the former discovered by the roadside two young birds not old enough to fly. They had been shaken from their nest by a recent gale. " The old bird," said Mr. Speed, " was fluttering about and wailing as a mother ever does for her babes. Lin- coln stopped, hitched his horse, caught the birds, hunted the nest, and placed them in it. The rest of us rode on 6o LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. to a creek, and while the horses were drinking, Hardin rode up. ' Where is Lincoln?' said one. ' Oh, when I saw him last he had two little birds in his hand hunting for their nest.' In perhaps an hour he came. They laughed at him. He said, with much emphasis, ' Gen- tlemen, you may laugh, but I could not have slept well to-night if I had not saved those birds. Their cries would have rung in my ears.' " CHAPTER V. 1841. Mary Todd — A Broken Bngagement — Depression — Visit to Kentucky — Letter to Miss Speed — An Interesting Law Case. It was about the year 1839 that Lincoln first met Miss Mary Todd. Born at Lexington, Kentucky, De- cember 13, 1818, she was one of fpur daughters of Robert S. Todd by his first wife, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Parker. Mary was quite young at the time of her mother's death, and ere long came under the care of a stepmother. She received a good educa- tion in the higher schools of her native city, and learned to read and speak the French language in the private school of a French lady, nearly opposite the "Ash- land" mansion of Henry Clay. The house of her eldest sister at Springfield, after the latter's marriage to Mr. Edwards — colleague of Lincoln in the Legislature, and son of a former United States Senator — was open to Mary and her other sisters whenever they chose to be there, rather than with their stepmother and a number of brothers and sisters of the half-blood. Mary came to live there soon after her school-days at Lexington were ended. Major Stuart was her cousin, his mother being a daughter of Levi Todd, Mary's grandfather. Her sis- (61) 62 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. ters Frances and Anne were married in Springfield — the former to Dr. Wallace, and the other, later, to a successful merchant of that place, Mr. C. M. Smith. A young lady of unusual personal attractions and bright intellectual faculties, Mary was also of agreeable man- ners. She was not long without admirers, if she may not have been properly called the " belle " of the place. The higher and more exclusive circles of her native city to which she belonged were unsurpassed in social refinement and mental cultivation in any Southern community of the time west of the Alleghanies. Of all her sex with whom Lincoln had become ac- quainted, Mary Todd was undoubtedly the one best suited to win his admiration and a more tender regard. Aside from the dissimilarity in their earlier training and position, however, there was a considerable difference in their years, he being past thirty, and she little more than twenty. At his age, an attachment of this sort is likely to be very earnest; at hers, the spirits more vola- tile, with any young tendency to coquetry yet undis- ciplined, and with maidenly ways sometimes provoca- tive of resentment or despair in a sensitive lover. The lady was ambitious; dazzled by the glory of the great statesman to whom her father was a personal and poht- ical friend, her highest ideal of manhood was typified by the eloquent orator and expectant President. She received attentions from two persons who took a lead- ing part, on opposite sides, in the Harrison canvass — one tall and ungainly, yet amiable, modest, kind-hearted, already noted as a speaker and aspiring to a higher posi- tion than he had been given by prolonged legislative service; the other low in stature, but strong in energy MARY TODD— VISIT TO KENTUCKY. 63 and pluck, graceful in manner, bold, ready, and pleasing in speech, as ambitious as his rival, and deemed by his friends a more eloquent orator, though on what was to her the wrong side. She preferred the principles and habits of Lincoln to those of Douglas, as she avowed afterward; and if she was also influenced by ambition, her political intuition — famous in later life — was not now at fault. To a friend of her girlhood she wrote of her engagement, speaking plainly of the defects of her intended husband, in personal appearance especially, and adding: " But I mean to make him President of the United States. You will see that, as I always told you, I will yet be the President's wife." They were to have been married on New Year's day, 1841, but Lincoln failed to keep that engagement. Without being reasonably accounted for, his conduct was unpardonable. Months afterward it certainly was pardoned, hence it must have been somehow explained to the person who had a right to know the reason. Whether the alarming depression previously noticed as of this period began before or after the appointed wedding day — whether it was in this instance in some degree cause or effect — ■ is not clear. Lincoln was superstitious, and that New Year's fell on a Friday. Did that have any effect? How happened it, then, that the marriage subsequently took place on the same discred- ited day of the week? All that is said of the matter in his intimate correspondence with Mr. Speed reveals little more than that both these bachelors — like so many others (Thomas Carlyle, for one) — had a morbid dread or misgiving on coming directly in face of the matrimonial altar. 64 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. While absent in Kentucky during much of the sum- mer of 1 84 1, at the homestead of the Speed family, the invalid proved to be neither intractable nor unsuscep- tible to their well-advised remedies. There were out- door activities and trips to Lexington and elsewhere; new acquaintances were made; the two old friends con- fided to each other their very hearts; and Lincoln was introduced to a black-eyed lady whom Speed was to marry. If the terrible depression had any relation to Ann Rutledge — as Herndon imagined — not a breath of it was lisped, as naturally would have happened, to Speed, now or ever after. To him the legend was " all new " when Herndon made the suggestion to him — so he expressly said — in 1866. Lincoln and Speed returned to Illinois together, going by steamboat to St. Louis, and thence more directly to Springfield, where the former found busi- ness awaiting him and a tour of the circuit to be made. He was now apparently in as good spirits as ever; his company just as much sought; his talk just as entertaining. While in McLean County he wrote this letter, acknowledging the kindness received from his Farmington friends: Bloomington, III., September 2^, 1841. Miss Mary Speed, Louisville, Ky.: My Friend : — Having resolved to write to some of your mother's family, and not having the express permission of any one of them to do so, I have had some little difficulty in determining on which to inflict the task of reading what I now feel must be a most dull and silly letter ; but when I remembered that you and I were something of cronies while I was at Farmington, and that while there I was under the necessity of shutting you up in a room to prevent your com- MARY TODD— VISIT TO KENTUCKY. 65 mitting an assault and battery upon me, I instantly decided that you should be the devoted one. I assume that you have not heard from Joshua and my- self since we left, because I think it doubtful whether he has written. You remember there was some uneasiness about Joshua's health when we left. That little indisposition of his turned out to be nothing serious, and it was pretty nearly forgotten when we reached Springfield. We got on board the steamboat Lebanon in the locks of the canal about 12 o'clock M. of the day we left, and reached St. Louis the next Monday at 8 p. m. Nothing of interest happened during the passage, except the vexatious delays occasioned by the sandbars be thought interesting. By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A gentleman had purchased twelve ne- groes in different parts of Kentucky, and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient distance from the others, so that the negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trot- line. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery, where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any otherwhere ; and yet, amid all these distressing circumstances as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board. One whose offense, for which he had been sold, was an over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually, and the others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day. How true is it that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," or, in other words, that he renders the worst of human con- ditions tolerable, while he permits the best to be nothing better than tolerable. To return to the narrative. When we reached Spring- field, I stayed but one day, when I started on this tedious circuit, where I now am. Do you remember my going to the 66 LINCOLN AND HIS PRESIDENCY. city, while I was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it? Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much that about a week since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone, the consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither talk nor eat. I am literally "subsisting on savory remem- brances" — that is, being unable to eat, I am living upon the remembrances of the delicious dishes of peaches and cream we used to have at your house. When we left. Miss Fanny Henning was owing you a visit as I understand. Has she paid it yet? If she has, are you not convinced that she is one of the sweetest girls in the world? There is but one thing about her, so far as I could perceive, that I would have otherwise than it is — that is, something of a tendency to melancholy. This, let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault. Give her an assurance of my very highest regard when you see her. Is little Siss Eliza Davis at your house yet? If she is, kiss her "o'er and o'er again" for me. Tell your mother that I have not got her "present" with me, but I intend to read it regularly when I return home. I doubt not that it is really, as she says, the best cure for the blues, could one but take it according to the truth. Give my respects to all your sisters (including Aunt Emma) and brothers. Tell Mrs. Peay, of whose happy face I shall long retain a pleasant remembrance, that I have been trying to think of a name for her homestead, but as yet can not satisfy myself with one. I shall be very happy to receive a line from you soon after you receive this ; and in case you choose to favor me with one, address it to Charleston, Coles County, 111., as I shall be there about the time to receive it. Your sincere friend, A. IvINCOI-9 aJ^ ^ 'v-ft- <^ t^ r^ G7 OJ^ c-/-^ M^--^ J