UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY the Class of 1901 founded by HARLAN HOYT HORNER and HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER - ,., :.:,;..; ;. ... Xincolnics familiar Saving* of Hbrabam Xincoin Collected and dtted b? t>enn2 Xlevvcllgn IClUllama Dew l?orh and london O. P. Putnam's Sons Ttbe Knichcrbochec COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Made in th= United States of America PREFACE. "To rule people," (says Professor Littre) "there is not so much need to know what they have done or are doing, as what they think and how they say it." It would, therefore, be better to be the voice of the people than their law-giver or their song-writer. Lincoln had many difficulties to con- tend with in his early attempts as an ora- tor. He faced backwoods hearers, he had to pierce dulness, ignorance, narrowness, and intellectual blindness. His thoughts were purely his own, but he was forced to couch them in everyday speech to use the tongue of the common people. His points, proofs, images, reasoning, tru- isms were taken from the familiar facts of iii i* preface daily life, but, being wrought upon by his own personal qualities and spirit of in- dependence, they became clear, compact, forceful, and convincing a foil is but an iron rod, but becomes a sword in the hand of a fencing master. Lincoln's Presidential speeches, when read aloud, or compared with the finest literary efforts, show clearly that he gained his secret spell from the great prose writers. Any man in the crowd could read out the Gettysburg address and all the others would catch the mean- ing and feel the mere melodious charm. The foreigner might thus make Lincoln intelligible, while Adams, Everett, or even Webster, not to say Choate, would be dis- cordant or perplexing. Lincoln proved that eloquence need not be born aristocratic or college bred. Though commonplace, his similes were nevertheless satisfying, explicit, and co- gent, plain but potent. A German legend avers that a treasure preface * buried in the Rhine will float up when the Right Word is spoken. Lincoln was the Magician who always spoke the Right Word, and treasures of valor, devotion, and loyalty were forthcoming in consequence thereof. His call to arms brought thou- sands in review before " Father Abraham," and his word sent them to " charge with a smile." His reference to the " weep- ing widows " and " mourning house- holds," when the gigantic fraternal duel was ended and victor and vanquished wished to unite to drive the usurper from Mexico, quelled the warlike spirit, opened the clenched fist, and folded it in prayer. Montesquieu has said, " Illuminate his- tory by laws " Abraham Lincoln irradi- ated the history of our country by scintillations of his wit, wisdom, and tren- chant satire, despite the thundercloud threatening to be the pall of American ambition, prosperity, and brotherhood. His speeches, addresses, proclamations were for the hosts and multitudes; his yi preface sayings were spoken to the individual. In youth he taught, and entertained his rude fellows, and set them examples; as a lawyer, he counselled the simple and righted the injured widow and orphan. On the eve of his inauguration, he delays to bid farewell to his parents ; at the height of the war, he reads the wounded into the last sleep from his mother's Bible. At his receptions, he passes by the office- seeker to say a pleasantry to the humble petitioner, and men were prouder that they had cracked jokes or split rails with " Honest Old Abe " than were those who had split hairs with him in Cabinet councils. The reader of this collection will cer- tainly cry out with the man who heard Shakespeare for the first time on the stage: "How full of quotations!" for few books and periodicals but have pointed a moral and adorned a tale with a Lincolnic. Never abstruse, far-fetched, or com- preface vi plex, " plain as a pike staff " and as penetrative, this colloquially delightful epigrammatist offers sentences apt and terse, pregnant with meaning, and " handy to have about the house " as " Mr. Toodles " says. They form a sensible " constant companion," a perpetual fount of pertinent application, relief, or inspira- tion for the desk, the lecture-stand, the rostrum, and even the pulpit, for our mar- tyred chief backed his patriotism with piety. To the life of Washington, Lincoln ascribed a great formative influence upon his own life and character. May it be said of the sayings of Lincoln that they have helped to " set the foot in the right place " towards the upbuilding of char- acter and true patriotism. THE EDITOR. 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Lincoln's own Childish Horoscope. (Scribbled in a blank-book made by his hand.) " Abraham Lincoln His hand and pen. He will be good but God knows when." Juvenile Poetry. (Written 1820, but it may be a copy- book motto, then popular, and often set by the teacher.) " Good boys who to their books apply Will all be great men by-and-by." Xincolnfc* 5 Respect for the Eggs, not the Hat. In Lincoln's youth, when his attire was as unmodish as his appearance, he at- tended the performance of an itinerant juggler. The latter produced a bag of eggs and offered to make an omelet in a hat without injury to the latter. The trick, though dating back to the Dark Ages, was new to the spectators in the village, but the absence of hats pre- vented a ready tender of the required adjunct, until Abraham, urged forward by the neighbors, as wearing what might pass for a hat, handed up his headgear. It was woolly, of low-crowned and broad- brimmed shape, and had seen the worst sort of weather. In fact, the wearer apologized in these terms: "Mister, the reason why I did not offer you my hat before was out of respect for your eggs, not from care for the hat ! " 6 Xincolnicd After the Wrong Man. At one time while Lincoln was engaged in chopping rails, the " bully of the county" (Sangamon, 111.), perhaps set on by some practical joker, came to " the boys " in the woods and, with set design, challenged " the greeny " (Lin- coln) to a fight. The great brawny, awkward boy laughed and drawled out: " I reckon, stranger, you 're after the wrong man. I never ft in my whole life." But the bully made for Abe, and in the first fall Lincoln came down on top of the heap. The champion was bruising and causing blood to flow down Lincoln's face, when a happy mode of warfare entered his original brain. He quickly thrust his hands into a convenient bunch of smart- weed and rubbed the same in the eyes of his opponent, who almost instantly begged for mercy. He was released, but his sight, for the time being, was extinct. No member of the trio possessed a pocket Xincolnica 7 handkerchief, so Lincoln tore from his own shirt front the surplus cloth, washed and bandaged the fellow's eyes and sent him home. John White, reprinted in Viroqua, Wis., Censor. Making the Wool Fly. On Lincoln's first trip to New Orleans on a flatboat, he, and his crew of one, were attacked by negroes at Baton Rouge. In a brisk hand-to-hand resistance, the thieves were repelled. After their flight Abraham's companion regretted that they had not carried guns. " If armed, would n't we have made the feathers fly ? " said he. " The wool, you mean ! " corrected the other, " as they were not that kind of black birds." If You Hit, Hit Hard ! On coming out of a slave auction sales- room in New Orleans, Lincoln, who had 8 OLincolntcs conducted a freighted flatboat down the Mississippi from Indiana, remarked to his crew: "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing [slavery], I '11 hit it hard." In a Whipping, the Whip-Hand Matters not. When Lincoln was 'prentice to the grocery business, at Thomas Affut's (Offutt?) store, 1831, a customer used language inadmissible in the presence of *' ladies." The young man remonstrated with the offender, but made voluble by the potations he had imbibed (for the gro- cery on the border was a drinking saloon as well), he persisted in his "cuss" words. When this language had driven out the ladies, the clerk was entertained with the same Billingsgate, upon which, getting his word in at a pause for breath, he said: " As you are set on getting a whipping, I may as well give it to you as any other Xincolnics 9 man"; thereupon he flung the customer out-of-doors (he is reported as having on a public occasion " thrown a man ten or twelve feet "), and following him up, gave him a thrashing. As the delinquent would not cry " quarter ! " he rubbed smartweed in his eyes till he " caved in." This smart- weed seems in frontier warfare to have taken the place of that dagger-of-mercy with which an obdurate knight was tickled when he would not sue for grace. It was made use of in another pugilistic exploit of our hero. The Long and the Short. When Lincoln was " keeping store," one of the gossiping frequenters of the place was a " Captain " Larkins, a great boaster. He was as short and stout as the young storekeeper was tall and lean. One day he was declaring that he had the best and fastest horse in town. " I ran him three mile* in nine minutes, and he never fetched a long breath." so Xtncolntcd Lincoln looked down over the bar on the little braggart, and asked: "But, Larkins, why do you not tell us how many short breaths he drew ? " A New Military Command. When Lincoln was Captain of the " Bucktail " Rangers in the Black Hawk War, 1832, he was as ignorant of military matters as his company was of drill or of tactics. The test came when his troop, formed by platoons, confronted a gate. The Captain had no idea of the proper order; but his wit did not desert him. He ordered: " This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in, on the other fide of that fence! " (He characterized this as " an endwise " movement.) Even in after years when the Law- giver had to be also Commander-in-Chief, he did not pretend to any military know- ledge. lincolnfcs n Let them Laugh, if it Works well. There is preserved in the Patent Office, at Washington, unless it has been re- moved to the National Lincoln Museum, a model, whittled out of wood, for a de- vice to enable a flatboat to overcome vari- ous riparian obstacles. It is of Abraham Lincoln's invention. It was a device of the days when he was a legislator and legal practitioner. But before that, his original turn of mind had led him in that same direction. While navigating a flat- boat of his own building, in 1831, on a salt creek not the Salt River of politi- cal renown Lincoln fitted the craft with sails made of boards and canvas, which succeeded fairly well in saving the hard work of poling, but which excited the merriment of the beholders. At Beards- town, the inhabitants turned out to line the bank and laugh at the apparition. Lincoln's companions were annoyed, but he said: " Let them laugh, so long as the thing works well." xs Xincolnic* < "An Old Woman's Dance Short and Sweet." 1 " My politics are short and sweet, like an old woman's dance." Maiden Speech, Pappsville or Rich- land, 111., 1832. No Ambition so Great as True Esteem. " Every man is said to have his pecu- liar ambition. Whether that be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly es- teemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem." Speech, 1832. "If Elected, Thankful; if not, All the Same." The first of the Lhicoln speeches in ao tive politics runs thus: 1 The Old World proverb is: " Short and sweet: a donkey's gallop." Zincolnfca 13 " Gentlemen and Fellow-citizens : T presume you all know who I am. I ami humble Abraham Lincoln. . . . My pol- itics are short and sweet, etc. ... I am in favor of the internal improvement sys- tem and a high protective tariff. ... If elected, I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same." 1832. "Better Sometimes Right than at All Times Wrong." " I hold it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right, than at all times to be wrong." Speech as candidate for the Illinois Legislature, March, 1832. Action Speaks Louder than Words. Lincoln's first speech in behalf of his endeavor to enter the Legislature in 1832 was made in the summer, after an auction sale at Pappsville, 111. Interrupted by a fight in the audience and seeingr that 14 Xincolnfcs one of his supporters was being " whip ped " he leaped off the improvised ros- trum and seizing the victor flung him " ten or twelve feet " from his prey. He then returned to finish his harangue amid such applause as would in the " wild West " always greet a manifestation of physical prowess. 1 Hence when the poll- ing came, such a master of fisticuffs se- cured the hearty support of the voters. The Best Way to Efface Un- pleasantness. " Meet face to face and converse to- gether the best way to efface unpleasant feeling." Letter to Judge Berdan, of Jackson- ville, 111., during the Lincoln cam- paign for the Legislature. 'The people there and then were of the mind of the boy in Punch, who, replying to the maternal reproach that he was behind another in education, said: "I cannot talk French like him, but I can punch his head 1 " Xfncolntcs 15 "A Mighty Handy Little Fellow." Lincoln is recorded as having said of the semicolon, that it was " a mighty handy little fellow." " I Want To The Worst Way." Lincoln's first love romance occurred in 1833. He was captivated by the village belle of New Salem, 111. She was a Miss Anne Rutledge, whose father kept the tavern. In another two years, they were engaged but she died a few months later. The effect on the suitor was profound and appears to have continued through life. 1 But, in 1839, while his friends were seeking distractions for him, and while he was engaged in the practice of law in Springfield, he met there a Miss Mary Todd. She came from his own native State, Kentucky. It is of note that 1 Those cruel romance-breakers, the physicians, however, ascribe the President's settled mel- ancholy to confirmed dyspepsia, due to the insufficient and irregular nutrition of his child- hood and of the early days of pecuniary want. 16 Xincolnfcs his rival in this suit was Stephen A. Douglas, afterwards his opponent in the political arena. Miss Todd made the dis- consolate one a happy man on the fourth of November, 1842. The wedding day had first been set for January, 184-1, but Lincoln seemed to regard it as "a fatal day " and it was postponed. Whatever the cause of the delay, friends saw that the swain's melancholy required some such remedy as was to be secured through the vivacity and attractiveness of the fair Kentuckian, and all were in a harmless conspiracy to bring about the match. One evening, at a party, 1 Lincoln ap- proached Miss Todd, seated among the wall-flowers, and timidly asked in his vernacular, which still clung to him and which he retained for effective expression through life: " I should like to dance with you the worst way ! " 1 Lelated by General Singleton, of Quincy, Illinois, a brother lawyer. Xfncolnics 17 The invitation was accepted, and the victim dragged her unlicked bear cub around with her in the whirls of the waltz ; the steps which might have won claps and whoops of applause on the cabin floor or the flatboat deck not being recognized as a la mode in Springfield When the lady was restored to her companions, one quizzically inquired: "Well, Mary, did not Mr. Lincoln dance with you ' the worst way ' ? " " The very worst," was her reply. It must be credited to her that she was almost the only person, at that early stage, to foresee supremacy in the un- couth man and to assert that he would one day attain to high station. A Lightning-Rod for a Guilty Conscience. In the campaign of 1836 Lincoln was attacked at Springfield by an old citizen, one Forquer, who had quitted the Whigs and had been appointed Land Office reg- istrar as if in recognition of his apostacy. i3 lincolnics Mr. Forquer had just completed a new house and had placed on it what was then a great novelty a lightning-rod. In his speech, Forquer undertook " to take the young man down." The young aspirant arose and replied as follows: " Mr. Forquer commenced his speech by announcing that ' the young man was to be taken down.' It is for you, fellow- citizens, not me, to say whether I am up or down I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction, but I would rather die now than, like this gentleman, live to see the day when I would change my politics for an office worth three thousand dollars a year, and then feel obliged to erect a lightning- rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God ! " The Rough Diamond Cuts the Polished One. As has been frequently noted, men without personal attractions, like Mira- Zincolnfcs 19 beau, George Wilkes, and others, have succeeded in winning their way by cul- tivating the purely conversational or oratorical graces. This is of great ad- vantage in those electioneering campaigns where the voters are canvassed man by man. In one of these conflicts Lincoln and his Democratic opponent, L. D. Ewing, contended in company far the ballot of a prominent farmer in Sangamon County. He was not at home when they called so the two set to work with the " gray mare." But neither made much progress till milking time when they both started out with her to help with the pail and stool. Arrived at the barn door, Mr. Ewing took the pail and insisted on doing the milking himself. While stroking the cow he natuially concluded he was making the master-stroke for the vote. But as he received no reply to the bits of speech delivered at intervals, he looked up finally only to see the hostess and his rival leaning on the bars at ease, in arnica- 20 Xfncolnice ble discussion. By the time his task was done, Lincoln had captivated the voter's better half and all that the other gleaned for his kindness was hearty thanks for giving her a chance " to have so pleasant, a talk with Mr. Lincoln ! " Told by Judge L. D. Swing, Chicago. Make the World Better for Your Having Lived in it. On account of the breaking of his mar- riage engagement, Lincoln fell into a state of gloom that was alarming to his friends, who assured him that he must rally or lose his life. He failed to at- tend the Legislature, of which he was member (1841), and neglected his pri- vate duties. On recovering, he said to his friend, Mr. Speed: " I have an inexpressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it." lincolntca 21 A Narrow Squeak for the Pig. During Lincoln's early days when he was poor and depressed by the profound despondency which so long afflicted him, he was riding one day through the sparsely settled parts of Indiana. His errand was of importance, and he was dressed in his best home-spun jeans. But he gave ear to a shrill cry of distress at which his companions only laughed. It was but a pig caught in the mud of a wallow, and sink- ing so fast that it would shortly cut its throat with its sharp feet or suffocate. Lincoln looked at the black gumbo mud, then at his good clothes, " the unique Sunday-go-to-meetings," and after a slight hesitation, turned back and extri- cated the little porker. When he went onwards, he was daubed with mud. But he explained to his friends that he thought of the poor farmer who could not afford such a loss and he thought also of the shote and could not resist the appeal. aa Xincolnfcs The Prize for Homeliness. Abraham Lincoln did not deceive him- self in regard to his facial blemishes. George Sand has said that every man is pleased with his face but never with his fortune. The President gives the lady the lie on that axiom. It may be premised that, on the border, a person remarkably ill-favored in lineaments was awarded a jack-knife as token of his preeminence in this line. Lincoln tells the story of how he be- came possessed of this undesirable trophy. "In the days when I used to be on the circuit [183-, travelling on horseback from one county court to another] I was once accosted by a stranger, who said: " ' Excuse me, sir, but I have an arti- cle which belongs to you/ ' How is that? ' I asked, considerably astonished. " The stranger took a jack-knife from his pocket. Xincolnics 23 ' This knife/ said he, ' was placed in my hands some years ago, with the injunction that I was to keep it until I found a man homelier-looking than I am myself. I have carried it from that time till this; allow me to say, sir, that you are fairly entitled to the property/ " As " below the lowest depth " there is a lower still, Lincoln was also able to make a happy deliverance of the token to another victim of fate. But the lat- ter, the Rev. William Hastings, re- joicing at its being the link which connected him with the President of the United States, proclaimed the fact at Toronto, Canada, where he lived and died (Feb., 1902), a revered minister of the Gospel. "Not One of the Sparrows is Forgotten." Another time when Lincoln was riding over the prairie with a party of law- court attendants, they noticed a couple 4 Xincolnicd of fledglings fluttering on the ground where they had fallen out of the nest. After the party had gone on a little dis- tance, Lincoln wheeled and rode back on their tracks. The others halted and watched him go to the spot and replace the nestlings. When he rejoined the cavalcade, one of the men bantered him about his char- itable act, saying: " Why did you bother yourself and delay us about such a trifle? " "My friend," was the response, "I can only say that I feel the better for it!" As there were several witnesses of this incident, accounts vary as to the number of birdlings, but, as usual, this variant proves the fact. Turn About Is Fair Play. " My only argument (in politics) is that ' turn about is fair play ' " (in re- gard to a candidate giving way to an- Xincolnfca 25 other candidate for the party good with the understanding that the relinquishing one represents the party in the next election). As a matter of fact, the opponent with- drew. [Letter held by Dr. Boal, Lacon, 111.] A Venture on Nothing. As a boy, Lincoln had often attracted attention and commendation by giving his spare time to reading. One inquirer as to the nature of his studies was surprised that he should answer " Law." It was the bending of the twig which inclined the tree. He had picked up a copy of " Blackstone " from the rubbish in the barrel of a second-hand clothes-and-odds dealer travelling through the country. With scarcely more than this provision, and what he had gleaned from odd vol- umes of the State Statutes, in 1837, at the age of twenty-eight, he arrived in 26 Xlncolnice Springfield to engage definitely in the practice of law. He rode on a hired horse and his property was contained in a pair of saddle-bags. He priced at the town stores the outfit for a single bed. It came to seventeen dollars, more than he could pay, but he proposed to Joshua F. Speed, the storekeeper, to buy the bed subj ect to payment at Christmas, by which time he hoped his law undertakings would be fruitful. The merchant naturally ob- jected that he might fail. " If I fail in this," was the sad reply, " I will probably never be able to pay you." The storekeeper kindly suggested that he should " room " with him as he had a double-bedded room; and a friend al- lowed him board " till his ship came in." The great problem of bed and board was thus solved for the aspirant. This action was what was called " neighborly " in those parts and in those days; and with- out giving grounds for Lincoln's refusing Xincolnicd 27 fees from needy clients, it prompted him to do unto others as he had been done by. " A Land of Free Speech." When Lincoln was in partnership with John T. Stuart, they had offices directly over the courtroom in Springfield. This allowed them to overhear the proceedings below them, much after the mode in which D'Artagnan, in the Musketeers, listened at the trap-hole in his floor to what went on beneath it. There was, indeed, a movable board, and at the aperture, re- clining at full length, Lincoln would take note of the progress of a case until the fit moment for his attendance. During a holiday of the bench, a crowd filled the courtroom and a friend of Lin- coln, Edward D. Baker, was addressing them, when something adverse in his harangue incited the unruly to assault the speaker and to pull him down. By a happy chance, Lincoln was lending his 28 Xincolntcd ear to the discussion, and, peering down through the hole in the floor, perceived the danger of his friend. Immediately, without delaying to run around and de- scend by the stairs, he thrust his big feet and long legs through the opening and dropped like a bolt out of the sky into the melee. Picking up a water-jug, and striking an attitude of defence, he shouted: " Hold on, gentlemen, this is a land of free speech! Mr. Baker has a right to be heard. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if J can prevent it." This dictum of the Deus ex machina imposed order and the orator was allowed to continue his speech. The Voice out of Proportion to the Body. Once during the argument in a lawsuit, in wLich Lincoln represented one party, Xtncolnics 29 the lawyer on the other side was a good deal of a talker, but was not reckoned as deeply profound or much of a thinker. He would say anything to a jury which happened to enter his head. Lincoln, in his address to the jury, referring to this, said: " My friend on the other side is all right, or would be all- right, were it not for the peculiarity I am about to chronicle. His habit of which you have witnessed a very painful specimen in his argument to you in this case of reckless assertion and statements without grounds, need not be imputed to him as a moral fault or as telling of a moral blemish. He can't help it. For reasons which, gentlemen of the jury, you and I have not the time to study here, as deplorable as they are sur- prising, the oratory of the gentleman com- pletely suspends all action of his mind. The moment he begins to talk, his mental operations cease. I never knew of but one thing which compared with my 30 Xincolnics friend in this particular. That was a small steamboat. Back in the days when I performed my part as a keel boatman [1830], I made the acquaintance of a trifling little steamboat which used to bustle and puff and wheeze about the Sangamon River. It had a five-foot boiler and a seven-foot whistle, and every time it whistled it stopped." [Argonaut.] "Settle It!" Squire Masters of Petersburg, 111., was once threatened with a lawsuit. He went to Springfield, where Lincoln was lo- cated [1837, etc.], and had a talk with him about the case. Lincoln told him, as an old friend, that if he could not settle the case he would undertake the defence, but he urged his friend to make an ami- cable adjustment. " What '11 you charge, Abe, to go into court for me?" said Mr, Masters. " Well," was Lincoln's reply, " it will Ifncolnice 31 cost you ten dollars; but I won't charge you anything if you can settle it between yourselves." The other party heard of the squire's visit to Lincoln, and agreed to settle. A Lawyer with a Conscience. A lawyer who studied in Mr. Lincoln's office tells a story illustrative of his love of justice. After listening one day for some time to a client's statement of his case, Lincoln, who had been staring at the ceiling, suddenly swung around in his chair, and said : " Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You '11 have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I could n't do it. All the time, while talking to that jury, I 'd be think- ing: ' Lincoln, you're a liar,' and I be- lieve I should forget myself and say it out loud." 32 Xtncotnics Tit for Tat. During the forties, when Lincoln was living in Springfield, practising law, there was among his patrons a judge, an in- fluential citizen, of whose dignity more care was taken by his associates than by him- self. On his part, the budding barrister (to use the English term) was still not over-particular as to appearance or attire; he would have agreed with Dr. Johnson who boldly averred that he had " no pas- sion for fine linen/' In his attitudes, also, he was, to put it mildly, careless. When the judge was ushered into the parlor he was, therefore, not astonished to see the long, attenuated figure spread over at least two chairs, reclining rather than sitting, quite at his ease. It is notice- able in those who have been brought up to hard work that they are apt to procure entire rest by lying prone; the boy Lin- coln was often seen reading or writing on the earth floor or on the unswept Xincolnicd 33 hearthstone. He did not change his posi- tion after the caller was seated, somewhat more decorously. Mrs. Lincoln, from the reply to her chance question put to the servant, suspected something of the mat- ter. She hurried into the presence of the two lawyers and found herself so shocked at the unseemly demeanor of her husband that she went up behind the sinner, plucked him by the hair (worn long in the far- Western style), and twitched his head up and around with a reminding look. The sufferer apparently did not notice the double rebuke; he simply looked at her and said, without changing a muscle: " Little Mary ! allow me to introduce you to my friend, Judge Butterfield ! " Now it is well known that nothing is more deeply felt or more warmly resented by undersized persons than any allusion to their stature. Lincoln habitually alluded to his partner as " the little woman." And, unfortunately, the discrepancy be- 34 Zincolnicd tween Mrs. Lincoln and her giant mate was of frequent remark and of continual consciousness, so that she came out of this encounter the humiliated one. The judge might conclude that this instance impugned the ancient saying that the " Eagle in the rostrum is a dove at home." Not Fate but Providence. " What is to be, will be ! or, rather, I have found out, all my life, as Hamlet says : ' There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.' " [Letter to Mr. John Butterfield, of Chicago, 1841.] This line from Hamlet would appeal to one who had exercised the woodman's art. With the felling axe, one rough-hews the log, but it is a superior hand that shapes all to the finish. In connection with this expression of belief in predestination, it may be re- lated that once during a conversation with Senator Dawes (Mass.) the President Xincolntca 35 took up the Senator's little boy in his arms and said to him, with humorous gravity : " My boy, never try to be President ! If you do, you never will be." This classes the President apart from the denier of the predestinarian doctrine who said in reply to an argument: "No! I believe that what will be, won't be ! " Lincoln's Favorite Shakespeare Play. Macbeth. The coincidence of the reg- icide has frequently been noted. Lincoln on Shakespeare. " The best judge of human nature that ever wrote." "Slow to Learn and Slow to Forget." An intimate friend of Lincoln, Mr. J. F. Speed, of Springfield, had remarked that Lincoln's mind was a wonder to him, 36 Xincolntca as impressions seemed easily made upon it and were never effaced. " No," corrected Lincoln, " you are mistaken. I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel very hard to scratch anything upon it, and almost impossible, after you get it there, to rub it out." The Chief Gem of Character is to Keep One's Resolves. " Before I resolve to do the one thing or the other, I must gain my confidence in my own ability to keep my resolves when they are made." [Letter to J. F. Speed, July, 1842.] " Hug a Bad Bargain all the Tighter." In another letter to Mr. Speed, Lincoln says that his father had a saying: " If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter ! " [Feb., 1842.] Xfncolnfc* 37 Representing by Proxy. The Whig primary convention held at Springfield, 111., in 1842, chose, as can- didates, Abraham Lincoln, Edward D. Baker and John J. Hardin. The last was the favorite and Lincoln had " a tax of considerable per cent, levied on his strength," as this man was to be elected. As it happened that Baker had the next term, and Lincoln the one following, in 1846, a cry of collusion was not unnatu- rally raised, but this is said to have been illusion. When the selection was decided by acclamation, Lincoln proposed that Baker should have the following term, but his generosity was received by a majority of but one vote. Lincoln said he felt like the young man who had been " cut out " but who was consolingly in- vited, when the other fellow married his " girl," to act as " best man." Historical Note. Of these three rivals and finally successful candidates, all met 38 lincolnicd violent deaths: Hardin was killed at the battle of Buena Vista, in the Mexican War, and Baker at Ball's Bluff, in the Civil War. Do not Wait to be Hunted Up and Pushed Forward. " Do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men ? " [Letter to Judge Herndon, 1848.] A Small Crop of Fight from a Big Piece of Ground. In a case of assault and battery, Lin- coln was assigned to the defence. The plaintiff made out a strong story of the injuries done him, which his appearance bore out. Having finished exhibiting his maltreated client, the district attorney handed him over to the defence for cross- examination. Lincoln had studied the Xincolnics 39 plaintiff rather than his evidence, and reasoned that he must break down the complaint or discredit the accusation. He conceived that the fellow was a conceited one who would by replying saucily seek to show himself " smart." " Well, my friend," demanded he, sud- denly, after a pause to " reckon him up," " how much ground did you and my client here fight over ? " " About six acres," answered the man, pertly. " Well, but do you not allow that was a mighty small crop of a fight to gather off such a big piece of ground ? " The result was a laugh which ended in " laughing the matter out of court." Told by Hon. Chauncey Depew, in Rice's Recollections. Litigation. " Discourage litigation ! There will still be business enough." Note* for a Lecture on the Law. 40 Xincolnfce Extempore Speaking. " Extempore speaking is the lawyer's avenue to the people." Notes for a Lecture on the Law. Diligence. " The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of any other calling, is Diligence." Notes for a Lecture on the Law. " Come and Help me Let Go ! " The law firm of Herndon and Lincoln [1843, etc.] had the defence in a capital case in which the judge had shown him- self adverse to them and to their client. Lincoln, who was the voice of his side, felt that the rulings were personal and said in the recess: " I have determined to ' crowd the court to the wall/ and to regain my position be- fore night." " Mad all over," he up- lincolnicd 41 at the end had " peeled the court from head to foot," figuratively declares his law partner. To clinch the argument, says the same reporter, he made use of a locally applicable simile. " In early days," said Lincoln, " a party of men went out hunting for a wild boar. But the game came upon them un- awares, and they, scampering away, climbed trees, all save one, who, seizing the animal by the ears, undertook to hold him. After holding him for some time and finding his strength giving way, he cried out to his companions in the trees: ' ' Boys, come down and help me let go!'" The scarified judge pretended to see his error and reversed his decision, and Lincoln's client was acquitted. Judge Herndon's Life. Suspicion and Jealousy. " Suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation." 42 lincolnicd Don't Contest a Clear Right. On inspecting the evidence exhibited to Lincoln by a lawyer bringing suit to enforce the specific execution of a con- tract, the advocate said: " As your client is j ustly entitled to a decree in his favor, I shall so repre- sent it to the court. It is against my principles to contest a clear matter of right." Legal Rights Are not always Moral Rights. A would-be client detailed to Lincoln, at Springfield, 111., a case in which he had a legal claim to a value of some hun- dreds of dollars. But his winning it would ruin a widow and afflict her six children. " We shall not take your case, though we can doubtless gain it for you," re- sponded Lincoln. " Some things that are right legally are not right morally. Xtncolntcs 43 But we will give you some advice for which we will charge nothing. [The " we " included his partner, Mr. Hern- don.] We advise a sprightly, energetic man like you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way." Coming into Court with Clean Hands. While Lincoln was a practising lawyer, he had lost a case from the defendant's producing a receipt for the sum in ques- tion. Lincoln immediately retired. The court sent for him, and the messenger found him in the neighborhood hotel washing his hands. " My hands are dirty from that ' slip- pery knave,' " said he, and, using the towel, " I want to return to court with clean hands." The Presidency Was so Big. Lincoln's first ambition when " clerk- ing it " in a country store was to be member of the State Assembly. Later 44 Xincolnfca he longed to be Congressman. Then at the time when the railroad magnate, Villard, made his acquaintance out West he said: " I did not consider myself quali- fied for the U. S. Senatorship and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was." He became convinced of that later,, but still he kept on saying to himself : ' * It is too big a thing for you, Abe ; you will never get it ! ' Mary [Mrs. Lincoln] insists that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States ! " This was followed, continues the narrator, by a roar of laughter, as he sat with his arms around his knees, shak- ing all over with mirth at his wife's am- bition. " Just think," he exclaimed, " of such a sucker 1 as me for President ! " 1 Sucker in this sense means a native or citizen of Illinois, the " Sucker State." The marshy nature of the land near the first settle- ments by the rich river bottom, full of mud-lish of the lamprey order, and their manner of feeding suggested the nickname, Xincolnics 45 "Keep the Pledge!" In the forties, the " teetotal " or tem- perance movement, originating in Great Britain, swept through the States even to the borders. At the front was an or- ganization called the " Washingtonians." It had been instituted at Washington, on the 22d of February, 1842. About 1846, Illinois experienced the agitation, akin to a religious revival. Abraham Lincoln was the lecturer to the society, in the South Fork schoolhouse, Sangamon County. He had, in his general-store ex- perience, seen the evils of the drink habit and the system fostering it. Among the together with the coincidence that, as the "suckers" ascend the stream and return at certain seasons, the natives of " Egypt," around Cairo, went up to work at times in the Galena lead mines but came home to till their farms. (Compare with General Washington's reply to Congress on being appointed Commander-in- Chief : " I declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the commission I am honored with. " June, 1776J 46 Xincolnfcs youth who assumed the blue ribbon and took the pledge was one Cleophas Breck- enridge, to whom the orator said, on dec- orating him: " Now, sonny, you keep that pledge and it will be the best act of your life ! " Never Drink Never a Drunkard. Lincoln used to repeat a remark of his stepmother's in reference to his early adoption and advocacy of the temperance movement : " Men become drunkards because they begin to drink; if they never began to drink they would never become drunkards/' If Any Man Thinks it Easy to be President, let him Try it ! There is an ancient saying, coeval with the Greeks, that the pleasure is in the race, not in the palm, its prize. Lincoln proved the truth of this as early as his election as Congressman and consequent Xincolntcd 47 arrival at the Mecca of all successful pol- iticians, Washington. He wrote to an intimate correspondent, in 1846, when his foot was at the ball, " Being elected .... has not pleased me as much as I expected." His friends were sure that he would distinguish himself there, but it was much more like an extinguish- ment; he, the man of the people from the start, actually ran counter to popularity by opposing the general desire for war with Mexico, at the bottom of which ques- tion lay the tremendous doctrine of " Free soil for free settlers." Under all the arguments, however, was the hunger for land land! and Texas had long been doomed to be clutched by the Northern eagle's claw. But, immediately after the war, and while the aroma of victory still clung to him, old " Rough and Ready " surely a hero after his own kind was nominated for President [1848], and Lincoln somewhat illogically stood up for Zachary Taylor. He made speeches on 48 Xincolnfcs his behalf in Massachusetts. He pleaded that the General, while the figurehead of the Whig party, held correct sound " Republican " principles. 1 This double- header was naturally applauded by num- bers of Messrs. Facing-both-ways. The result was that Gen. Zachary Taylor was our twelfth President. When Lincoln became the sixteenth, he learned thoroughly of " polished pertur- bation." Nine tenths of his callers were office-seekers for self or kin, or suppli- cants for contracts; his house was di- vided, as his wife's connections at least sympathized with the wrong side; and his responsibility weighed heavily upon him as he had no second no other-self no Mazarin, at the worst, with whom to share it. The Republican party as a concrete organ- ization did not come into existence till 1856 when it was built on the " free soil " ("squatter sovereignty") question. Xtncolnics 49 Too Slow for a Hearse! A portrait of Lincoln, seen in a St. Louis art exhibition, was the work of A. J. Conant, who, to keep his sitter in good countenance, used to " swap stories " with him. One of Lincoln's runs as follows : " There was a man from Missouri who went to a ' livery ' to get a horse to take him to a convention, where he expected to be made a delegate. The stable-keeper was of another political stripe, and nat- urally fobbed off upon him a horse cal- culated to break down before he reached his destination. On his return home, the disappointed Missourian asked the pro- prietor if he was training that animal to draw a hearse. ( ' Guess I ain't ' was the surly reply. " ' Well,' went on the other, " ' if you were, he would never do for it; for he would not get the corpse to the cemetery in time for the resurrection/ " so Xtncolnics The eminent story-teller was fond of this story so the relater proceeds, as he had twice been interrupted in the deliv- ery of it ; once by a railroad train " pulling out " as he began it, and again, at a great gun testing, by the ordnance going off just at the point of the narrative. He Wanted the Pork ! At a meeting during an electioneering campaign, one of the audience asked Lin- coln a question which he did not answer. This seemed singular as, usually, he was glad to reply and to show his readi- ness and ability to turn the tables when being " heckled." A supporter on the platform inquired the reason of his taciturnity. "I am after votes," whis- pered Lincoln with his ironical wink and working his lips like a horse when trying to get the bit between his teeth, " and that man's vote is as good as any other man's ! " OLtncoInics 51 "The Common-[Looking] People." Lincoln once dreamed that he was in a great assembly where the people made a lane for him to pass through. " He is a common-looking fellow," said one of them. " Friend," replied Lincoln in his dream, " the Lord prefers common-look- ing people that is why He made so many of them." Hapgood's Abraham Lincoln. The current quotation reads: "The Lord loves the poor more than the rich, because He (or He would not have) made so many of them." Lincoln's Early Library. The Bible, Dilworth's Spelling-book, Kirkham's Grammar, Euclid, Shake- speare, Volney's Ruins, Paine's Age of Reason, Blackstone, Illinois State Stat- utes, Burns, ^Esop's Fables, Life of Franklin, Pilgrim's Progress, Weems's Washington and Ramsay's, Riley's Nar- 52 Zincolnics rative, Holmes's Poems, Chas. Mackay's Poems, Cowper's Poems. Protection to Make a Great Country. " My fellow-citizens, I may not live to see it, but give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest country on earth." Reported by Mr. R. Grigsby, Speech in Indiana, 1844. Books Show our Thoughts are not New. An Illinois minister having observed to Congressman Lincoln that " Men of force can get on without books they do their own thinking," the other re- plied : " Yes ; but books serve to show that those original thoughts of his are n't very new." Taking More than My Share. When Congressman Lincoln paid his first visit in that capacity to the national capital, he had had no acquaintance with Xfncolnfcd 53 what was, in the North and East, esteemed " good society." In the House lobby and its sanctum for airing witticisms, as Well as in his boarding-house coffee-room, he speedily became the pre-eminent con- versationalist; but it could hardly be ex- pected that the " Hoosier " would adorn the drawing-room of the " first families." He seems to have been lured into these uncongenial haunts much as Voltaire's " Huron " was led through the salons of King Louis, although his shrewd innate sense and honest simplicity saved him from embarrassment no less creditably than was the case with Franklin, when the duchesses " smoked " him at his re- treat in Passy. It is recounted that, at a dinner, where the joint was the not uncommon leg of roast mutton, the inevitable currant jelly accompanying it was passed in its own glass. But the guest, in perfect innocence, took the latter and clung to it, eating of it steadily. The butler knew his business, 54 Xincolnfcs however, and, as in the epicurean anec- dote of the Two Salmons, simply sent a second glass of jelly on its rounds. It was still circulating when the offender, perceiving that something was wrong, laughed quietly at seeing that his neigh- bors took only a spoonful from the glass, and observed not inaudibly: " It seems that I took more than my share ! " He went on with the repast, the whole blunder and honest retrieve- ment being accepted as proving good manners at heart. No Military Hero. Although a member of Lincoln's Cabinet said that " The President is his own war minister; he directs personally the move- ments of the armies and is fond of strategy," yet he relieved himself of the su- perior command with the utmost readiness when the able Atlas appeared in General Grant. At all events, in earlier years Lincoln treated humorously his martial Xincolnics 55 experience during the " Black Hawk War." The Democratic candidate for President, when Lincoln was in Congress [184-6], was General Cass, for whom po- litical capital was attempted to be made of his conduct in that war. Lincoln de- scanted upon this claim as follows: " Mr. Speaker, did you know that I am a military hero? Yes, sir, in the days- of the Black Hawk War I fought, bled and came away. Speaking of General Cass's career reminds me of my own. I was not at Stillman's defeat; but I was about as near it as Cass was to Hull's sur- render, and like him I saw the place very soon afterward. It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to- break^ 1 but I bent my musket pretty badly. ... If Gen. Cass went in advance of me in picking whortle-berries, I guess I surpassed him in charges upon the wild Although captain of rangers at the outset, Lincoln enlisted as a private of volunteers on the second call 56 Xincolnics onions. If he saw any live fighting In- dians * it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes; and, although I never fainted from the loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. ... If I should ever turn Democrat and be taken up as a candidate by the Democratic party, I protest they shall not make fun of me as they have of General Cass by attempting to make me out a military hero." Between the Saddle and the Ground. It was providential that the Western statesman should have his vision widened. One may see the hand of Heaven, not the finger of Fate, beckoning him to that eventful tour in Massachusetts, in 1848, in which he met a powerful suggestion 1 The only Indian Lincoln's company cap- tured was a civilized one, whom he saved from Xtncolnics 57 for the great act of his life, the free- ing of the Southern slaves. In Tremont Temple, Boston, in September, he listened to the ringing speech of William H. Seward; and was prompted to say to the orator, that night: " Governor, I have been thinking about what you said. I reckon you are right! We have got to deal with this slavery question." The sincerity of his conversion to the extreme doctrine may be inferred from his selection of Seward for his Secretary of State, an honor that nearly cost Seward his life. Time came when the pupil and the leader were to move side by side, with the latter using the old war-cry : " All men, of any color, free ! " " Unite And the Race is Ours." " If all those who wish to keep up the character of the Union, who do not believe in enlarging our field, but in keep- 58 Xtncolnics vating our present possessions, making it a garden, improving the morals and edu- cation of the people, devoting the ad- ministrations to this purpose all real Whigs, friends of good honest govern- ment will unite, the race is ours." Speech at Worcester, Mass., 1848. Judging the Consequences Points out our Duty. " When divine or human law does not clearly point out what is our duty, we have no means of finding out what it is but using our most intelligent judgment of the consequences." Speech at Worcester, Mass., 1848. " Pantaloons Large Enough for any Man Small Enough for any Boy." "If the ' Free Soil ' platform held any other principle than opposition to the ex- tension of slavery in new territory, it lincolntca 59 was in such a general way that it was like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee pedler offered for sale, ' Large enough for any man small enough for any boy.' " Speech at Worcester, Mass., Sept., 1848. If Youth Would and Age Could. When Abraham Lincoln applied in 1848 to President Taylor, in whose election he had vigorously assisted, for the com- missionership of the Land Office, he was offered instead the governorship of Oregon Territory. The other place had been assigned to Mr. Justin Butterfield of Chicago. During the war, when the son of the successful office-seeker re- quested a military commission of Lincoln, now President, the latter, at the name, recurred to his rebuff and remarked: " I have hardly ever felt so bad at any failure, and I have often been sorry that I did not accept the governorship of Oregon." 60 Xfncolnicd " How fortunate that you declined, sir," responded the young man: " You might have come back as Senator [this was a sort of " rider" to the berth], but you would never have been President." " You are probably right," returned the President, reflecting. Elevate Men, Do Not Debase Them. " As I understand the spirit of our in- stitutions, it is designed to promote the elevation of men. I am therefore hostile to anything that tends to their debase- ment." To Rise, Improve Yourself. " The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him." Letter to Judge Herndon, July, 1848. Uincolnfcs 61 Stand with the Right ! " Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong." "Let none Falter Who Thinks He is Right." Military Glory. " Military glory that attractive rain- bow that rises in showers of blood; that serpent's eye that charms to destroy ! " "The Monarch of All He Surveyed." In the middle of the last century, E. F. Beale, afterwards General, was Sur- veyor-general to California, where he sur- veyed that is, conveyed a large tract of land to his own estate, and the fact was public property. He himself laughed with his censors on the ground that he laughs best who laughs last. This an- nexation was the basis of President Lin- coln's quotation that the ex-official was " Monarch of all he surveyed." "Work, Work, Work is the Main Thing." Abraham Lincoln's advice to a young man wishing to become a great lawyer. (1850). No Day Without its Gain. " I do not think much of a man who is not wiser to-day than he was yes- terday." All Nature a Mine. " All nature, the whole world, ma- terial, moral, intellectual, is a mine." Notes for a Lecture. There is Another Great Man of that Name ! At the National Republican Convention, held at Philadelphia, on the 17th June, 1856, Abraham Lincoln was proposed as nominee for the Vice-Presidency. The first ballot produced for him 110 votes. The promising news reached him at Ur- baria, 111., where he was attending court as a pleader. The telegram was so rare a feather for their townsman's cap that the cry arose: " He has become famous! " Lincoln read of the honor with incredu- lity, no doubt thinking that " there were strong men before Agamemnon," and remarked : " There is a distinguished man of that name in Massachusetts." Indeed, there was, the Governor of that State, Levi Lincoln, actually descended, like his namesake, from the Quaker Sam- uel Lincoln, of Hingham, Mass. " Slavery is a Curse to the White Man." " We will speak for freedom and against slavery, until everywhere, on this wide land, the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unre- quited toil. . . . Slavery is a curse to the white man, wherever it has existed. ' Speech at Charleston, 111., 1856. " Slavery is Wrong ! " The author proclaimed this sentiment as the profound central truth of the Re- publican party; the whole paragraph is: " Slavery is wrong, and ought to be dealt with as wrong." Speech at Springfield, 111., June, 1858. "No Man Good Enough to Govern Another.*' " I say that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other man's consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American Republicanism." No Moon, No Murder. In 1858, Lincoln was engaged in the campaign for the senatorship which later lifted him into his candidacy for the Presi- dency. But in spite of his having for the sake of this contest relinquished for the time the practice of law, he ac- Xincolnfcs 65 quiesced in an appeal for him to speak in the defence of the son of an old neigh- bor of Sangamon County, accused of murder. This Armstrong had been " mixed up " with some fighters, and, as one of them died from a blow, the con- spiring witnesses of the " chance-medley " affirmed that the blow was struck with an instrument in the accused man's hands. On the morning of the trial Lin- coln said to the mother of the prisoner, " Your son will be free before sun- down," and such was the local faith in " Honest Abe " that she awaited the re- sult with lessened anxiety. Lincoln had sifted out the evidence so that the sole dangerous point was from one witness, who persisted in repeating positively that he had seen the fatal blow struck, and declared the weapon to have been a slung-shot. Question. " How could you have seen him strike the fatal blow when, according to all the evidence, the quarrel occurred between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when there was no light of any kind?" The man quickly replied : " I saw it by the light of the moon, which was shining brightly." This seemed decisive, but the advocate, prepared at all points, said: " Gentlemen of the jury, I hold in my hand the proof that on the night of the supposed murder there was no moon in the sky!" He produced the almanac to convince the court, and the man was released to gladden his mother. Lincoln refused any fee for this service to a neighbor. Make a Man Beat Himself. On the eve of the first of the tilts in the demagogical debate of Lincoln and Douglas, a friend of the former assured him that he would beat the more prac- tised orator and obtain the senatorship if he made the best use of his opportunity. Xfncolnfcs 67 " No," was the answer. " I can't beat him for the Senate, but I '11 make him beat himself for the Presidency." " But/' adds Mr. Leonard Swett, who recounts the prophecy, " at that moment Lincoln had no more idea of being nomi- nated for and elected to that office [the Presidency] than of being crowned Em- peror of China." Mrs. Lincoln, however, had the thought twenty years earlier. Make Marks not to be Forgotten. The Douglas-Lincoln debates fixed the slavery problem as " the great and dur- able question of the age." Lincoln also thought that the destinies of the nation might hang upon it. In referring to that electioneering duel he said: " Though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone." 68 Xtncolnics " Revolutionize Through the Ballot- Box." Although Lincoln espoused the cause of freedom, he did not at once side with the extremists, and he was incorrectly ranked in 1858 with the Abolitionists. Indeed, he said flatly at the time of that agitation : " Let there be peace ! Revolutionize through the ballot-box; and restore the Government once more to the affections and hearts of men by making it express, as it was intended to do, the highest spirit of justice and liberty." " Win, or Die A-Trying!" When Judge H. W. Beckwith, of Dan- ville, came over to Ottawa, where the de- bates were to begin to which Lincoln had challenged his opposing candidate, Stephen A. Douglas, he found his friend looking careworn. Douglas had at first rejected the challenge, but later accepted it. His supporters and not a few of the Xincolnicd 69 Lincolnites supposed that the first en- counter would see " the Little Giant " (Douglas was a stumpy, thick-set man, like Daniel Webster in miniature) " chaw up Old Abe." But Lincoln threw off his sombreness and, accosting Mr. Beckwith with his old free and easy manner, asked after friends where he " hailed from," and, with a cer- tain familiar abruptness not unusual in him, said: " Come sit down, and I will tell you a story." He began by repeating some- thing like the passage in Crockett's Memoirs, accepted at that time in the West as realistic, of the boy fighting a fist-fight in the woods, and added: " You see, the other fellow is not saying a word. His arms are at his side, his fists are closely doubled up, his head is drawn to the shoulder, and his teeth are set firmly together. He is saving his wind for the fight, and, as sure as it /mmes off, he will win it, or die a-trying." 70 Ztncolntcs Inferable Evidence. In June, 1858, in the first of the Doug- las-Lincoln debates, the latter cited, in reference to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the proceedings under it by Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, and the Dred Scott decision by Chief Jus- tice Roger B. Taney, as resembling the frame of a house: " When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared Zincolnics 71 yet to bring such a piece in in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." A House Divided Cannot Stand. It was in this speech that Lincoln used the famous symbol of the " house di- vided against itself," which gave the key to the campaign he proposed " A house divided against itself cannot stand. I be- lieve this Government cannot endure per- manently half slave and half free. . . . I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." When his friends and advisers ob- jected to his using the expression of the "divided house," Lincoln said: 72 Xfncolnfce " That expression is a truth of all ex- perience. The proposition is indisputably true, and has been true for more than six thousand years, and I will deliver this speech as it is written. I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech than be victorious without it." Asked again, later, to recall his state- ment or to revise it, he replied: " If I had to draw a pen across my rec- ord and erase my whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased." Easier to Make a New Speech than an Old One. In the discussions of 1858, it was no- ticed that Douglas clinched his nails of rhetoric by repeated blows, while the younger contestant seldom repeated his images and allusions. It was a question Xtncolnics 73 of fertility of invention and of resources, like the composer Rossini, who, when writ- ing an opera in bed, preferred to com- pose an entire aria to getting off the couch and seeking some leaves which had blown beneath it. Practice Before and Behind the Bar. The Rev. Dr. Cuyler has cited Abraham Lincoln among the illustrious upholders of temperance and is justified in so doing. This does not conflict with the fact that the village stores with which Lincoln was connected as assistant and proprietor in his earlier years were groggeries as well as groceries it was in- evitable at the time. The bar was as set a fixture as the counter. Rum and whis- key were the two medicines most gener- ally used. The ex-bartender did not deny the fact although it was a light stigma to bear. Nevertheless, in the Douglas-Lin- coln debates, the former had the unkind- 74 Xincolnica ness to utter a slur about his adversary having more practice behind the bar than before it for Lincoln had but re- cently been admitted to plead in the courts. It was an allusion capable of happy retort. It was a common cry that Judge and Senator Douglas was a " judge of good liquor," as the saying goes. It was the era of good living, when Martin Van Buren was a " prince of good fellows." " This/' returned Lincoln with his in- cipient wink to accentuate the humor, " applies with similar force to my digni- fied opponent, as, while I have practised behind the bar, he has practised be- fore it ! " No Cabbages Sprouting on My Face. It was probably the contrast in the personal aspect of the champions of the Democratic and the Republican parties in 1858., in Illinois., that infused noticeable Xincolnics 75 heat into the utterances of both orators and that piqued the hearers; and, as the junior disputant pointed out, their ca- reers were unlike in progress and fruit. " With me," said Abraham Lincoln, " the race of ambition has been a flat fail- ure. [He had failed in a late election.] With Mr. Douglas, it has been one of splendid success. . . . All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certain to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his jolly, round, fruitful face, post- offices, land-offices, marshalships, and Cabinet appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out, in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot . . . bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but, with greedier anxiety, they rush about him, sustain him and give him marches, triumphal entries, and recep^ 76 Ztncolnlcs tions beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. " On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out! These are disadvantages .! / that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone." The pain and pitifulness of this self- depreciation lie in its truth the Ugly Duckling knew his physical imperfec- tions aesthetically and jested at them. " No Royalty in Our Carriage." Although in 1858 there were neither Wagner nor Pullman cars, a special train was provided for Senator Douglas, while Lincoln was consigned to an ordinary one. Once, when the decorated coaches flaunted by, the lowly candidate, side- tracked in a freight train, said: Ifncolnfcs 77 " The gentleman in that turnout evi- dently smelt no royalty in our carriage ! " " Hold My Coat while I Stone Stephen!" In the debate between Douglas and Lincoln, in 1858, the former, a practised and popular demagogue, led off with so captivating a discourse that his oppo- nent's adherents believed the battle was won and that their spokesman would not have a hearing from the enthralled crowd. But Lincoln got up as soon only as the cheers died away, looking taller and more angular than ever, and " shucking " his long linen duster, which he dropped on the arm of a young bystander, re- marked in his piping voice, which never- theless had a far-pervading tone: " Hold my coat while I stone Stephen ! " This pun annulled the good effect of the previous harangue, and the disputant was listened to with attention. 78 Xincolnicd It is interesting to recall that the two contestants should in youth have been rivals for the hand of the same woman. A further incident in their relations may be noted: At the inauguration of Lincoln, Douglas had the courtesy to hold Lin- coln's hat. Moreover, the " Roger " of the episode recorded on page 70, ad- ministered the oath of office, while the " James " also cited was the retiring President, Buchanan. Familiarize with Chains and You Prepare to Wear Them. " Our reliance [against tyranny] is the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defence is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Xincolnicd 79 Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you." Speech at Edwardsville, 111., Sept. 13, 1858. Fighting Proves Nothing. " I am informed that my distinguished friend [Douglas] yesterday became a lit- tle excited nervous perhaps, and said something about fighting, as though re- ferring to a pugilistic encounter between him and myself. . . . Well, I merely wish to say that I shall fight neither Judge Douglas nor his second. ... In the first place, a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this contest. . . . If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder. My second reason ... is that I don't 8o Xincolnics believe the Judge wants it himself. He and I are about the best friends in the world, and when we get together, he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. There- fore, when the Judge talked about fighting, he was not giving vent to any ill feeling of his own, but merely trying to excite well, enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience. And as I find he was tolerably successful, we will call it quits." Speech at Havana, 111., 1858. " Return to the Fountain ! " " My countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Inde- pendence; if you have listened to sugges- tions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been in- clined to believe that all men are not Xtncolnfcs 81 created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated in our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back! Return to the Fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's suc- cess. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity the Declaration of Independence." Speech at Beardsville, 111., Aug. 12, 1858. Characterized by Horace White, reporting it for the Chicago Tribune, as Lincoln's " greatest in- spiration." The Bulwark of Liberty. " What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not oui frowning battlements, our bustling sea- 82 Xincolntca coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny. Our re- liance is the love of liberty which God has planted in us." Speech at Edwardsville, 111., Sept. 13, 1858. " The Boy Who Did not Weigh as Much as Expected, and He Knew He Would n't!" In the Douglas-Lincoln debates, a flurry was originated by a trick fair enough perhaps as matters are in " love, war and politics." Resolutions adopted by a hole-in-a-corner " meeting of Ab- olitionists were attributed to a council at which Lincoln was, furthermore, ac- cused of presiding. The assertion, when disproved, greatly injured the Democratic cause. Horace Greeley, in a style quite Lincolnic, wrote on this blunder: " Douglas is like the man's boy who did not weigh as much as he expected, and Xincolnfcs 83 he always knew he would n't." 1 Lincoln capped the slip by doubting the genuine- ness of a document which his adversary produced after the Springfield " for- gery!" Playing Cuttlefish. " Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued, except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it; and thus it escapes." Speech at Charleston, 111., 1858. "The Eternal Struggle between Right and Wrong." " Slavery is the real issue. It will con- tinue in this country when these poor 1 The paragraph Greeley misquoted was thus printed in 1838. DEFINITE INFORMATION " Well, Robert, how much did your pig weigh ?" " It did not weitfh as much as I expected, and I always thought it, wouldn't." Detroit Spec- tator. 84 Xtncolntcs tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between two principles Right and Wrong throughout the world. . . . The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. . . . It is the same spirit that says: ' You work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it!' " No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their la- bor, or from one race of men as an apol- ogy for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principal." Last debate between Douglas and Lin- coln, 1858. Atalanta and the Apple. Lincoln lost the prize of the senator- ship of Illinois to his personal and politi- cal antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, by persisting in a course in regard to slavery Zincolntcs 85 which was counter to the advice of his immediate friends. He related the follow- ing story to illustrate that he perfectly well knew what was at stake. He saw that while Douglas, a " trimmer," might win the lesser office, he would damn him- self for the prospect of being the next President. It so fell out. The story runs in this guise: " There was an old farmer out our way, who had a fair daughter and a fine apple- tree, each of which he prized as ' the ap- ple of his eye.' " One of the courters ' sparking ' up for her hand was a dashing young fellow, while his rival next in consequence was but a plain person in face and speech, whom, however, the farmer favored, no doubt from ' Like liking Like/ (The dash- ing young chap was afterwards hanged, by the way.) One day, the two hap- pened to meet at the farmer's fence. It enclosed his orchard where the famous Baldwin flourished. That year was the 86 2,incolnfc0 off-year, but, as somewhiles occurs, the yield, though sparse, comprised some rare beauties. There was one, a ' whopper,' on which the farmer had centred his care as if for a human pet. He looked after it well, and saw it heave up into plumpness with joy. When Dashing Jack came up, he saw his fellow-beau just hefting a stone. ' What are you going to do with that rock? ' asked he, careless-like, though somehow or other interested, too, as we are in anything a rival does in the neigh- borhood of our sweetheart. ' Why, I was just a-going to see if I could knock off that big red apple, that is all.' "'You can't do it in the first try!' taunted the dasher. " ' Neither can you. Bet ! ' " Jack would not make any bet with plain John, but he took up a pebble and, contrmptously whistling through his fine regular teeth, shied, and, sure as fate! Xincolntcs 87 knocked the big Baldwin in the girth and sent it hopping off the limb. Then, as the victors are entitled to the spoil, he went in, picked up the fruit, and was walking up to the house when whom should he run up against but the old man ! Now, to see that apple off, and to see any man munching it like a crab, was too much for his nerves. He did not stop to say 4 Meal or Flour ? ' but, wearing these here copper-toed boots such as were a novelty in that section 'bout then, he raised the young man so that he and the apple, to which he clung, landed on this side of the fence together, in two-two's. "Then? well! then, the plain John swallowed a snicker or two, and went right in, condoled with the old fellow on his loss of the pet Baldy, and asked for the girl right slick. " Dashing Jack got the apple, but it was t' other who got the gal." Truly, Douglas secured the senator- ship, but Lincoln won the Presidency. 88 Xincolmcs (Another version substitutes a pear for the apple, but the gist is the same and the application thereof.) " After Larger Game." In the debates of 1858, Lincoln had impaled his adversary on the dilemma: " Could a Territory exclude slavery prior to a State constitution? " If Douglas said " No " he would offend the Illinois people and would lose the local prize; if he said " Yes/' he would offend the South and lose their votes in the coming Presi- dential election. Douglas answered eva- sively. He won the place in Washington for the time, but his " Freeport doctrine," or " unfriendly legislation," prohibited his carrying the South in the greater contest. In I860, when Lincoln had won the stake for which his rival had been play- ing, a friend recalled that, when the weap- ons were forged, he had objected to this Xtncolnicd 89 very one because it wounded the hand that made it, and sagely added: " We were both right, for the question lost Douglas the Presidency but lost you the senatorship." " I was after larger game," remarked the President. Demonstration More than Proof and Reason. " In the course of my law reading, I constantly came upon the word ' demon- strate.' I thought, at first, that I un- derstood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did not. I said to myself: What do I mean when I ' demonstrate * more than when I ' reason ' or ' prove ' ? How does ' demonstration ' differ from any other proof? I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find, but with no better result. You might as well have defined ' blue ' to a blind man. At last, I said: Lincoln, you 90 Xfncolnicd can never make a lawyer, if you do not understand what ' demonstrate ' means. I left my situation [law clerk] at Spring- field, went home to my father's house, and stayed there until I could give any proposition in the Six Books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what ' demon- strate ' means." Lincoln, to Dr. Gulliver, of Norwich, Conn., 1859. No Surrender. " The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or of a hundred defeats!" [Letter to Chairman Judd, Republican Convention, 1859-] American Public Opinion. " Public opinion in this country is everything." Speech in Ohio, 1859- Xtncolnics 91 Natural Perpetual Motion. " The mammoth and the mastodon have gazed on Niagara. In that long, long time, never still for a single moment, never dried, frozen, slept, or rested." Notes for a Lecture, 1859. (Alas! In fifty years, Niagara is threatened to be a dry bed, while the water, diverted for utilitarian uses, be- comes but the tailraces of mills and fac- tories. (" To what base uses we may turn!' 1 ) . "The Plain People." " I am most happy that the plain peo~ pie understand and appreciate this." Speech, in Ohio, 1859. " Wealth Is a Superfluity of What We Don't Need." President Lincoln to Locke (" Petro- leum V. Nasby.") 42 Kncolnicd " I Know that I am Right, because I Know that Liberty Is Right." Said to Newton Bateman, Supt. Public Instruction, Illinois, 1 860. "Faith in God is Indispensable to Successful Statesmanship." To N. Bateman, Supt. Public Instruc- tion, Illinois, Nov., I860. " Understanded of the People." Q. " How did you get this unusual power of putting things clearly? A. "Among my earliest recollections, I remember how I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. ... I can remember going into my little bedroom, after hear- ing the neighbors talk with my father, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their to me dark sayings. I could not sleep when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had Xincolnfca 9} caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had re- peated it over and over, and had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now when I am handling a thought till I have bounded it north, and bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded it west." To Dr. Gulliver, Norwich, Conn., 1859. The Ideal Income in the Fifties. On Lincoln's Eastern tour, with the view of making him known outside of his " section," he visited New York. Meet- ing another of " the Illini," who had pros- pered, and who told him that he had made a hundred thousand dollars, Lincoln ob- served : " I have the cottage [a two-story wooden frame house, with extension, eight rooms] in Springfield, and about eight thousand 94 Zincolnics dollars in money. If they make me Vice- President with Seward, as some say they will, I hope I shall be able to increase it to twenty thousand; and that is as much as any man ought to want." " Right makes Might." " Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we under- stand it." Speech at Cooper Institute, N. Y., I860. "Caesar an* Pompey Berry much Alike 'Specially Pompey!" " I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we should be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us we should not instantly give it up." Hf nee In tea 95 The Lincoln-Hamlin Anagram. At the time of the election of the Presi- dential ticket comprising Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, it was noted that the combination of the two names presented a peculiar result. For instance: Ham Lin Lin Coin Read up and down and then across. Now, again: Abra-Hamlin-Coln Can you find two other names of two other men whose official lives and whose names combine as these do? Whiskers, or No Votes ! Towards the end of his first Presiden- tial campaign, Lincoln, who had always been clean-shaven, a fashion which was pretty general in the fifties, astonished his friends by growing the hirsute 96 Efncolntcs adornment seen in his latest photographs. Asked by an intimate friend what had in- duced the adoption of the new mode, he answered : " Two young ladies at Buffalo wrote me that they wanted their fathers and beaux to vote for me, but I was so homely- looking that the men refused. The ladies insisted that if I would only grow whis- kers it would improve my appearance, and I would get four more votes! So I grew whiskers." Told by Mr. J. H. Littlefield. Rather be Assassinated than Sur- render Equal Rights. These prophetic lines appear in the speech of the President-elect made at In- dependence Hall, Philadelphia, on the 22d of February, 1861: " But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle [of equal rights], I was about to say I would Uincolntcs 9) rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it." (The plot, through apprehension of which the President was induced to en- ter the seat of Government surreptitiously, is now believed to have been a deception.) "A Hard Nut to Crack." " The authors of the Declaration of Independence meant it to be as, thank God, it is now proving itself a stumbling- block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left at least one hard nut to crack." The Chorus of the Union. (To the Southern States:) " We are not enemies, but friends. We 98 Xtncolntcs must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861. Take Time! " Nothing valuable can be lost by tak- ing time." Inaugural Address, 1861. The People Are the Rightful Masters. " Unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the re- quisite means or direct the contrary." Inaugural Address, 1861. Xincolnics 99 Owners of Our Country. " This country, with its institutions, be- longs to the people who inhabit it." Inaugural Address, 1861. Confidence in Popular Justice. " Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people." Inaugural Address, 1861. My War. One of the slanders current during the outset of the civil strife was that the President was merely the figure-head be- hind which the Cabinet officers exercised, in each capacity, an autocracy. But the facts have since proved that nearly every important act had the initiative in Lin- coln's brain, and nearly all the manifes- tation in force from his hand. In the annual report of Secretary Cameron, the advice was promulgated that the slaves ioo Ifncelnfcs should be armed in order to rise success* fully against their masters an idea em* bodied in the Emancipation Act, long helcf in abeyance by the President. When the latter came to that paragraph in the re^ port, he scratched it out with his pen, in- dignantly remarking : " This is a question which belongs ex- clusively to me." Letting Rooms in a House Afire ! After his inauguration, President Lin- coln was so continuously beset by office- seekers that he was almost compelled to neglect measures for the preservation of the Union. "If this keeps on," said he, "I shall be like a man who is busy let- ting lodgings at one end of his house while the other end is afire." "Accuse not a Servant to his Master." Lincoln's accessibility resembled that of the Oriental potentates, enjoined by their Xtncolnics 101 religion to hear all comers. Like them, too, he was mainly approached by per- sons with grievances, presented with a view of displacing some one from office that the complainant might be benefited. Lincoln once told an interested denouncer of this type to go home and read " Pro- verbs xiii., 10." On consulting the book the man found these words: " Accuse not a servant to his master, lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty." Either Prince or Premier must be Puppet. It was a curious fact that W. H. Sew- ard was proposed as candidate for the Presidency in I860, with Abraham Lin- coln as his Vice-President. Consequently, the former had prepared himself for the foremost position and, no doubt, it har- monized with his disposition, when made Lincoln's Secretary of State, to have to compose, according to tradition, the 102 lincolnics speeches to foreign ministers and even to home delegations. He furnished such a paper for the reception of the Swiss Min- ister, and sent it by messenger to the Chief's hands, who received it as he was chatting with some friends. He glanced at the document, and, raising his voice to imply that here was no state secret, said: " Oh, this is a speech Mr. Seward has written for me, eh? I guess I may try it before these gentlemen, and see how it will go." He read it with that spirit of burlesque in which, twenty years before, when a Congressman, he was wont to re- gale the boarding-house table with a parody of the members' " speechifying," and concluded: " There, / like it! It has the merit of originality ! " (Fortunately, his speeches were of his own emanation, and not in the character of the autograph of " John Phoenix," " which could be relied on as genuine, as it was written for him by one of his most intimate friends ! ") Xincolntcs 103 When Generals were in Excess. At the outset of the Civil War, military titles and promotions were the fruit of po- litical energy. The Chief of State mer- rily said that he had made so many brigadier-generals for non-military pur- poses that you could hardly throw a stone about the capital without hitting one. (The N. Y. Mercury correspondent cor- roborates this statement in his communi- cation to the War Bureau that at any hour a regiment could be formed at Wil- lard's Hotel bar composed entirely of of- ficers.) Sorry to Lose the Charger. A friend of a brigadier-general who had been captured by the enemy, horse, boots, and saddle, was thus condoled with by the President: " I am sorry about the horse." " What do you mean, sir ? " " Only that I can get a brigadier-gen- i(H Xincolnics eral any day they are more plentiful than drum-majors but those horses cost the Government a hundred and twenty dollars a head!" " File It Away in the Stove." 1 Secretary of War Stanton was both naturally and, by virtue of his office, belli- cose, and when pestered by a swarm of annoyances his temper was often carried to a high point. One day, he complained to President Lincoln of a major-general, who had accused him of favoritism in grossly abusive terms. His auditor ad- vised him to write a sharp rejoinder. " Prick him hard ! " were the words. Mr. Stanton read the draft surcharged by this backing, while the hearer kept favorably commenting: 1 Readers of " Mark Twain's " writings during the War, will recall his expressed belief that communications to Government officials at Washington were " filed away in the stove." Was this a coincidence or a Lincoln echo ? Kncclntcs 105 "Right! just it! score him deeply! That's first rate, Stanton!" But when the gratified author began folding up the paper to fit into an enve- lope the counsellor interrupted with: " What are you going to do with it now?" The Secretary was about to despatch it, of course. " Nonsense," said the President, " you don't want to send that letter. Put it in the stove ! That 's the way I do when I have written a letter while I am mad. It is a good letter, and you Ve had a good time writing it, and feel better. Now, burn it, and write again." Logic is Logic. At a ball at the White House, thieves made off with many of the hats and over- coats of the guests, so that, when ready to take leave, Vice-President Hamliti's head covering was not to be found. " I '11 tell you what, Hamlin," said a io6 Xincolnics friend ; " early in the evening I saw a man, possessed of keen foresight, hide hit hat up-stairs. I am sure he would be will- ing to donate it to the administration, and I will go and get it for you." When the hat was produced it was found to be very much after the style af- fected by Hamlin, but it bore a badge of mourning, which emblem the Vice-P resi- dent ripped off with his penknife. The party stood chatting merrily as they waited for the carriages to be driven up, when a man stepped directly in front of Mr. Hamlin and stood staring at the " tile " with which his head was covered. " What are you looking at, sir ? " asked Hamlin sharply. " Your hat," answered the man mildly. "If it had a weed on it, I should say it was mine." " Well, it has n't got a weed on it, has it? " asked the Vice-President. " No, sir," said the hatless man, " it hasn't." Xincolnfcs 107 "Then it isn't your hat, is it?" said the proud possessor of it. " No, I guess not," said the man as he turned to walk away. When this little scene was explained to President Lincoln, he laughed heartily and said: " That reminds me, Hamlin, of ' the stub-tailed cow/ " It was a long time ago, when I was pioneering and soldiering in Illinois [1832], and we put up a joke on some officers of the United States Army. My party and I were a long way off from the comforts of civilized life, and our only neighbors were the garrison of a United States fort. We did pretty well for ra- tions, had plenty of salt meat and flour, but milk was not to be had for love or money; and as we all longed for the deli- cacy, we thought it pretty mean that the officers of the fort, who had two cows -a stubbed-tailed one and a black and white one offered us no milk, though we threw out many and strong hints that it would io8 Xincolnics be acceptable. At last, after much consul- tation, we decided to teach them a lesson and to borrow or steal one of those cows, just as you choose to put it. But how it could be done without the cow being at once identified and recovered was the question. " At last we hit on a plan. One of our party was despatched a day's ride to the nearest slaughter-house, where he pro- cured a long red cow's tail to match the color of the stub-tailed cow, after possess- ing ourselves of which animal we neatly tied our purchase to the poor stub, and with appetites whetted by long abstinence we drank and relished the sweet milk which ' our cow ' gave. A few days after- ward we were honored by a call from the commander of the fort. ' ' Say, boys,' said he, ' we have lost one of our cows.' Of course we felt very sorry and expressed our regret accordingly. ' But,' continued the commander, ' I came over to say that if that cow of yours had a stub tail, I should say it was ours/ Zincolnics 109 " ' But she has n't a stub tail, has she? " asked we, sure of our point. " ' No/ said the officer, ' she certainly has not a stub tail.' " * Well, she is n't your cow then,' and our argument was unanswerable as was Hamlin." Tell a Horse's Points, not how Many Hairs in his Tail. So voluminous a report was made by a Congressional committee upon a new gun that the President pathetically said : " I should want a new lease of life to read this through. Why cannot an investiga- tory committee occasionally exhibit a grain of common sense? If I send a man to buy a horse for me, I expect to have him tell me his points, and not how many hairs he has on his tail." An Evasive Answer. A committee of Kentuckians went to see Abraham Lincoln in 1861, with ref- no Xtncoluics erence to the abolition of slavery. Many Kentuckians owned slaves. They were anxious to remain in the Union, but they did not want to lose their bondmen. The spokesman of the party was a tall man of about Lincoln's height. He made an eloquent speech, filled with fine sentiments and flowery metaphor, and closed with a crashing peroration. After he had fin- ished, Lincoln looked at him a moment and then said quietly: " Judge, I believe your legs are as long as mine." "A Little More Light and a Little Less Noise ! " At the outset of the war, when the cam- paign was conducted coincidently by the chief newspapers, a correspondent of a New York journal called to propose still another plan to the plan-ridden Presi- dent, who listened patiently, then said: " Your New York papers remind me of a little story. " Some years ago, there was a gentle- Xfncolnics m man travelling through Kansas on horse- back. There were few settlements and no roads, and he lost his way. To make matters worse, as night came on, a terrific thunderstorm arose, and peal on peal of thunder, following flashes of lightning, shook the earth or momentarily illumi- nated the scene. The terrified traveller then got off and led his horse, seeking to guide it as best he might by the flickering light of the quick flashes of lightning. All of a sudden, a tremendous crash of thun- der brought the man to his knees in terror, and he cried out: " ' O Lord ! if it 's all the same to you give us a little more light and a little less noise!'" Take One from Three and None Remain. In April, 1861, the patriot statesmen of the North were in a state of anxiety, as the least precipitate act might cause the wavering border States, such as Ten- ii2 Xincolnics nessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, to throw in their fortunes with the Carolinas, Geor- gia, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Nevertheless, a deputation, boiling over with impatience arising from patriotic wrath, urged the President to do some- thing at once. He replied with apparent irrelevance: " If you fire at three pigeons on a rail, and you kill one, how many will be left? " There was no delay in the answer: "Two!" "Oh, no," corrected he; "there would be none left; for the other two, frightened by the shot, would have flown away." Labor and Capital. " I ask a brief attention. It is to the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capi- tal; that nobody labors unless somebody Xtncolntcs 113 else owning capital somehow, by the use of it, induces him to labor. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and de- serves much the higher consideration." Presidential Message, 1861. How Long a Man's Legs Should Be. The shortest President was William H. Harrison, and the tallest was Abraham Lincoln. It was not the former, how- ever, who put the question of how long a man's legs should be, but some impertinent jack-a-dandy at a levee. The reply he received was as follows: " A man's legs should be long enough to reach from his body to the ground." What is Done for Others We Think on Most Pleasantly. In the fall of 1861, in behalf of a young Vermont soldier condemned to death for ii4 Xfncolnfc* sleeping on post, Mr. Chittenden, a gov- ernment officer, appealed first to the Sec- retary of War and finally to the President for the life of the youngster. One of the complaints of the martinets was that, on account of his merciful intercessions, the President was a poor Commander-in-chief. In this case, however, he promised to sus- pend the execution and to act personally. Mr. Chittenden demurred at imposing another burden on an over-burdened man. " Never mind," said Lincoln. " Scott's life is as valuable to him as that of any person in the land. You remember the remark of the Scotchman about the head of a nobleman who was beheaded: " ' It was no great head, but it was the only one he had/ MI The Vermonter was released and won 1 In the original story it is a Scotchwoman in the Highlands lamenting the decapitation of her laird. " It waur na mitch o' a head, but, puir body! it waur a 1 the head the laird had.' 1 Xincolntca 115 promotion in his regiment, but he refused it. He died as a private, in action at Lee's Mills. With his latest breath he thanked the President who had allowed him to fall like a soldier. Of this valiant end Mr. Chittenden acquainted the bene- factor, saying: " I wish this matter could be written into history." " None of that," broke in Lincoln. " You remember what Jeanie Deans said to the English Queen when begging for her sister's life: 1 ' ' It is not when we sleep saft and wake merrily that we think o* ither peo- ple's sufferings; but when the hour of trouble comes, and when the hour of death comes that comes to high and low oh, then, it is n't what we have done for our- sel's, but what we have done for ither* that we think on most pleasantly/ " 1 The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott. ix6 Xincolntcs "No Blood on My Skirts." One of the many stories showing the President's tenderness towards the class from which he had sprung is related by Mr. Thayer, who got it straight from a personal friend of Lincoln. The narrator had taken in hand the deliverance of a soldier, doomed to death for falling asleep on " sentry-go." Lincoln wrote the par- don, and remarked: " It is not to be wondered at that a boy raised on a farm, probably in the habit of going to bed at dusk, should, when re- quired to watch all night, fall asleep. I cannot consent to shoot him for such an act. I could not think of going into eternity with that poor young man's blood on my skirts." The soldier was killed at Fredericks- burg; and on his bosom was found a photograph of Lincoln with the legend: "God bless President Lincoln!" Kncolnlcs "7 It Does Not Hurt Me and Pleases Her. In October, 1861, General Phelps, in taking possession of Ship Island, near New Orleans, issued a proclamation man- umitting the slaves. 1 At this time, the President, while devoted to general free- dom, was not committed to the wholesale liberation. Yet he took no official notice of the premature act. The matter being brought insistently before him, he finally re j oined : " I feel about that a good deal as a man whom I will call Jones did about his wife. He was one of those meek men and had the reputaton of being ' hen- pecked.' At last, one day, his wife was 1 When, later, General Fremont, command- ing our army in the West, did a similar act, the President curbed him, stating that the Emancipation would be performed in due course, but by his own initiative. It was clear that not a few who aimed at the Presidential chair itched to hurl this thunderbolt. n8 Xincolnics seen switching him out of the house. A day or two afterwards, a friend met him on the street and said: ' ' Jones, I 've always stood up for you, as you know, but I am not going to do it any longer. Any man who will stand quietly and take a switching from his wife deserves to be horsewhipped/ ' ' Now, don't,' replies Jones, looking up with a wink and patting him on the back. ' Why, it did n't hurt me any, and you have no idea what a power of good it did Mary Ann/ "* Stanton Murdered Sleep ! Contrary to the expectation of the " in- telligent foreigner " who pried into our affairs when we were having our spring cleaning of traitors and the like parasites, it was not the Upstart from the West who 1 The original story is told of an English "navvv," lusty and amply able to endure, whose wife was by comparison frail and feeble. Xfncolnics 119 was the " Sir Anthony Absolute " of the capital, but Stanton, the Secretary of War. He was not always losing his tem- per, as he had never found it from the first slip immediately after swearing him- self into office. He was the bogey of the swarm of political beggars, and a predes- tined buffer not to say chevaux-de-frise for the badgered President. " Go to Stanton " was in the latter's mouth what " Get thee into the Bastille ! " was to King Louis XIV. of France. Lincoln said he got no rest between Stanton and the pest- erers. " No government could sleep soundly while such a man as Secretary Stanton was stamping about in the corri- dors kicking chairs over and snapping bell cords." It was asserted that the im- perious Anthony ruled the Caesar; but the former's private secretary, who often- est saw the two dignitaries together, totally denies this statement. At all events the superior had a high opinion of his lieutenant. lao Xtncolnfca If Stanton Said So, It Must Be Sol A Western committee was referred to Secretary Stanton; he jeered at their scheme to transfer Western and Eastern troops for one another, and on hearing that the committee had the President's ap- proval clinched his reply by averring dis- respectfully : " Then he is a dead-sure fool! " This was repeated to the President, who pondered a while and then, looking up, merely said : "If Stanton said I was a dead-sure fool, then I must be one, for Stanton is nearly always right and generally says what he means." But, in the interest of peace, he never- theless threw a sop to Cerberus, probably such a good story that even the Crying Philosopher would have laughed over it. Told by Mr. G. W. Julian. Xtncolnics 121 " Keep Silent, and We Will Get You Safe Across." In the sixties, one of the most-talked- about of men was the French rope-walker, Blondin, who crossed Niagara Falls on a rope, often carrying a man on his back. On being asked why the living burden kept so absolutely immovable, he grimly replied: " I tell him if he move, and it is life or death for one or both, I shall drop him ! So he cling tight ! " From the beginning of his occupation of the White House, Lincoln kept up the democratic tradition of " open house." Then began the endless stream of clients, which often angered the ushers and em- barrassed the chief. On one occasion, af- ter having listened with his unalterable patience to a delegation, the President said: " That reminds me of Blondin the acro- bat. Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had 122 Xincolnics put it on the back of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting to him: Blondin, stand up a little straighter ! stoop a little more! lean a little more to the north ! lean a little more to the south ' ? " No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Govern- ment is carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the best they can. Don't badger them. Keep silent, and we will get you safe across." Name the Brand of Whiskey and I '11 Send Some to All my Generals. The actual course of events quite over- came the old wise saws in Washington when, like the capital of Judea, " the ene- mies had cast a trench about it, and com- passed it round and kept it in on every side/' while, likewise, threaten- Xmcolnics 125 ing "to lay it even with the ground." Fault-finders and counsellors alike seemed as futile as the soldier-chiefs. Even when the news of the battle of Pittsburg Landing arrived, betokening a new light in the West, the cavillers still carped at " our only general," and belittled Grant by asserting that his spirit was due to be- ing fortified by whiskey. His chief sup- port, they had no hesitancy in declaring, was " leaning on the whiskey cask." To a deputation of Prohibitionists, our " First Consul " blandly replied with af- fected eagerness: " Gentlemen, if you can name the par- ticular brand of whiskey General Grant uses I shall thank you, for I just want to send a barrel to every one of my other generals a-field." Did His Work Well, but Always Squealed. Secretary Stanton laid before the Presi- dent some papers which appeared to show i24 Xincolnfcd that a certain Northern war governor, while zealously supporting the cause and furthering it from his State's means and men, liked to do things in his own way. Thwarted in this, he was apt to impede movements which the chief military office intended to direct wholly. The Executive read the documents, but did not share Mr. Stanton's apprehensions. On the contrary he smiled in his meaning way, and proceeded to say in his gentle, humorous voice: " Your Governor reminds me of a boy whom I once saw at a launching. When a ship is ready to be launched, you know, the keel hangs on but by one point, where a ' dog ' is to be knocked away. This was only a small concern, and, instead of a giant with a maul, a small boy was regu- larly employed to remove the shore. All he had to do was strike one smart blow, and lie right down in the hollow of the ways, whereupon the hull would slide clean over him in an instant. But the Xmcolnfcs 125 boy must needs begin to ' holler ' as soon as the mass glided over him, and you would think by the yelling he was being murdered all the time of the passage. I myself thought the hide was being scraped from his back; but he was not hurt at all. " The shipwright-boss told me that this lad was always chosen for the job, being ' peart ' and spry, that he did his feat well, never had been grazed even, but that he always hollered in that way. " Now, that 's the way with our Gov- ernor Blank. He will do his work right enough, but he must squeal! We get good work ; so let him do his squealing ! " Tackle One of Your Own Size . P. T. Barnum, the showman, endeavored to repeat the success he had met with all over the world in his exhibition of " Gen- eral Tom Thumb " by presenting another dwarf, " Commodore " Nutt. In 1862 they 126 Xincolnicd were at Washington, and in accordance with his usual method, in order to obtain a, good advertisement from our uncrowned head, Barnum " engineered " it so that he should be invited to the White House with his celebrity. The Cabinet were assem- bled and the President introduced the Lil- liputian to them. The manager relates: "After a little joking Mr. Lincoln bent down his long, lank body, and taking Nutt by the hand said: ' ' Commodore, permit me to give you a parting word of advice. When you are in command of your fleet, if you find yourself in danger of being taken pris- oner, I advise you to wad e ashore ! ' " The commodore let his gaze travel up the whole length of Mr. Lincoln's ex- tremely long legs, and replied, quietly: " ' I guess, Mr. President, you could do that better than I could ! ' " " Butler or No Butler, Here Goes ! " Early in 1862, before General Butler Xtncolnicd 127 had entire sway at New Orleans, and was yet acquiring repute for inflexibility and independence, a soldier under his flag was condemned to death. The circum- stances were such that his Congressman would not undertake the cause, and the Secretary of War, because of his severity, was deemed hopeless of approach by the grieving father who had hastened to the capital to endeavor to save his boy. In this dilemma, a passing sympathizer brought him into the Presidential pres- ence, where he pleaded for his son's life. Unfortunately, the President had lately rectived a somewhat impertinent letter from General Butler, praying him not to interfere in cases of discipline, as it un- dermined the morale of the army. The announcement of this fact completed the mourner's distress, and his cry of anguish was so poignant that the President snatched up his pen and, with the in- genuity of a benevolent Machiavelli, wrote : i28 Xmcolnlcs "J. S. is not to be shot until further orders from me." " Butler or no Butler, here goes ! " he added. Through his streaming tears the trem- bling father could hardly read the precious lines, but then was aghast to find that he had not received a pardon. Lincoln smiled at his fears and said: " I see you are not acquainted with me, old friend. If your son never looks on death till further orders from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than old Methuselah ! " Such instances of his mercy, and of his belief that " shooting did no good to any man," were numerous. No Going behind a Good Point. Congressman Kellogg came before President Lincoln on behalf of the son of a constituent. The young man, after gallantry as a soldier, had fallen under lincolnfcs 129 condemnation. Extenuating circumstances also pleaded for him, but the hearer was most touched by the record of his being wounded under the flag. " Kellogg, is there not something in the Bible about the shedding of blood re- mitting sins ? " The suitor assented. " Well, that is a good point, and there 's no going behind it ! " returned the arbi- ter, filling up and signing a pardon. It was more evidence in favor of his truism that the burden of the war fell " most heavily on the soldier." " How many Legs Will a Sheep Have?" President Lincoln replied to a depu- tation, one of many urging immediate slave-emancipation when the proposition was not yet framed as a bill: " If I issue a proclamation now, as you 9 130 Xincolnfcs suggest, it will be as ineffectual as the Pope's bull against the comet. It can- not be forced. Now, by way of illustra- tion, how many legs will a sheep have if you call his tail a leg? " They all answered: "Five." " You are mistaken, for calling a tail a leg does not make it so." "Prayer and Praise Go Together." In 1862, in the spring, the President suffered family bereavement and distress together with heart-rending news from the battle front, where the Union reverses were repeated. But at the very time when one son of Lincoln was laid to rest, and another was menaced with the same fate, the fall of Fort Donelson was re- ported. In his affliction, the father had been supported by a pious nurse who en- joined prayer upon him. lincolnicd 13 1 " There is nothing like prayer," she persisted. Beaming with the unexpected good news, he replied: " Yes, there is : praise ! Prayer and praise must go together." If I Were So Skeered I Should Go Home! In March, 1862, the Merrimac, the first ironclad known, attacked and destroyed half of the U. S. Navy at Newport News. 1 The alarm among the monetary and mer- cantile classes was at first paralyzing, 1 Early in 1862, there were rumors that a colossal engine of naval destruction was on the ways at Newport News ; but though it was generally believed probable that the invention of a novelty in maritime warfare was quite possible by an intelligent people like our South- ern brothers, the Government must have been misled either by want of , or by false information, and the rumor was mocked at in official circles. The Merrimnc was not onlv a floating battery but had a ramming prow like those of ancient i3 Xtncolnics but as soon as there was a revival of spirit, though not of courage, a deputation of New York financiers and merchants, representing untold wealth, hurried to the seat of government to demand of the Chief protection for the coast cities; the Merrimac was considered to be seaworthy. " Gentlemen," said Lincoln, after re- garding them and noting the evidences of rapid travel, their dismay at being near the battle-fields, and their expression of utter helplessness, " the Government has got no ship that I know of that can meet the Merrimac. [The Monitor was then galleys. On Saturday, the 8th of March, 1862, this unknown construction revealed herself to the eyes of the Federal sentinels at Fortress Monroe, and the lookouts on the men-of-war under it saw " The Horror of the War" which was contrary to all ideas of naval craft. It was a low-lying hulk, covered with railroad iron so as to be bomb-proof and as stated, supplied with a beak to pierce, and by the immense weight behind it to crush in any obstacle encountered when under full speed. The ironclad steadily charged the blockading squadron, singling out Xtncolnics 133 an unknown quantity.] There is no money in the treasury, and our credit is none of the best. I don't know anything that we can do, but if I had as much money as you say you have, and I was as skeered as you are, I 'd go home and protect my own property." Another version reads : " I 'd go home, build some war vessels, and present them to the Government." Old Commodore Vanderbilt had set the example by giving an ocean steamship. the Cumberland, as most worthy of her prowess. She stood the frigate's broadsides without the least injury and rammed and sank the vessel in less than an hour. The Congress also struck her colors to the monster, and then the victor slowly retired. Consternation was left in her wake for nothing seemed able to beat off this new engine of war. The next day, however she was faced with another and more novel machine for ocean action, the Monitor. While the rumors in regard to the formidable nature of the rebel ram Merrimac, were flying about, counter tales were circulated in New i34 JLlncolnfcs He Furnished the Stone for the Sling. Engineer Ericsson's plan for that nov- elty in naval warfare, the Monitor, was at first rejected by the Naval Board, but was upheld by President Lincoln, who maintained, against the opinion of the consulting engineers that the weight of armor was a matter of calculation. " On the Mississippi we used to figure to a pound what our flatboats and steamboats could carry." (He had built the former class with his own hands.) When the dread Merrimac, rebel iron- clad ram, was understood to be about to York about another strange vessel, built by Ericsson, the Monitor, which was hurried to the scene of action. The Merrimac came forth on Sunday morning to renew her terrible de- struction, and a duel ensued between the two champions. The little "cheese-box on a plank," the invention of the famous Swede, with two guns only in the turret, bore the ponderous broadsides with immunity and finally forced a retreat. The insignificant stickle-back had lincolnicd 135 issue from port, at Newport News, on the offensive, and the Monitor was not yet reported, though at sea, the President alone had faith in the latter. " I believed in the Monitor when her designs were first shown me. I caught some of the inventor's enthusiasm. I think she may be the veritable sling with the stone to smite this Philistine Merrimac in the forehead." The Confederate terror emerged, in- flicted vast damage on the Federal fleet, and retired for a renewal of the struggle, or rather for further devastation. In the meantime the Monitor arrived, threw her- self between ram and butt, and drove her giant adversary back into covert. " Throw but a stone the monster dies ! " conquered the hippopotamus. The Confederate champion was disabled and had to be towed into Norfolk. From that day on, the type of the Monitor, with certain modifications, prevailed in naval construction. She was like the Circas- sion in his chain mail compared to the Crusader in massive plate armor. 136 Xincoimc* The Assistant Secretary of the Navy acknowledged the inestimable debt to the inventor, Ericsson, and added that the credit for the actual construction of the terror-destroyer was entirely due to President Lincoln. Take to the Woods ! The Spanish difficulty, which has popped up ever since there was an Expansion movement, arose during the War. Santo Domingo was then at daggers drawn and fleshed with Old Spain; and the Cabinet held a consultation upon the point whether we should aid the monarchy and, in a way, suppress the filibustering actions, or openly espouse the cause of colonial free- dom. " Cuba free " was talked about, but even such expeditions as that of Lopez, which involved some of our daring citi- zens, had not implicated the Government. The Abolitionists, of course, sympathized with the revolted colony. The President was supposed to owe a great deal of his support to this class. Appealed to, he said: " That reminds me of the negro at the camp-meeting. The preacher was, in his excitement, rather confused in his quota- tions. He cited the text as offering the two roads, saying: ' Dar are two roads afore ye, brethren: de narrer road, which leadeth to destruction; and de broad road, which leadeth right on to damnation ! ' ' In dat case ' responded a hearer, rising to suit the action to the word, ' dis chile takes to de woods ! ' ' Hayti was recognized as an indepen- dent power, April, 1862, as had been done by Europe. The President advocated strict neutrality. "Ain't We Glad to Git Out of the Wilderness!" (Popular negro minstrel song of the time.) In June, 1862, the daring cavalry raid by Colonel Stuart, around the Union army 138 Xincolnic0 of McClellan, bringing Mars to the six- mile limit, threw the inhabitants of Wash- ington into consternation. To a person of consequence who made anxious inquiries of the Chief, the latter replied with ap- prehension rarely shown by him: " There is no news from the Army of the Potomac. I do not know whether we have any army ! " The interlocutor said fervently: "If we do right, I believe that God will lead us safely out of the Wilderness," the usual designation of the brush tan- gle about the Potomac River Valley. " My faith is greater than yours," re- joined Lincoln; "I, too, believe that if we do right God will lead us safely out of the Wilderness. I hope that a bright morning will follow this dark hour that now fills us with alarm. Indeed, my faith tells me it will be so." (The battle of Malvern Hill soon verified this faith.) Recounted by ex-Senator Jas. F. Wil- son. Xtncolnfcs 139 "Be on the Lord's Side." A member of the church, being at a Presidential reception, closed some re- marks with the pious hope that the Lord would be " on our side." " I am not at all concerned about that," commented the President, " for we know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side." Another Evasive Answer. In the darkest hours of the Virginia campaign, July, 1862, a New York Dem- ocratic M. C., John Gannon, of Buffalo, who had supported the Republican Chief through thick and thin, deemed himself therefore privileged beyond all other in- quisitors to receive intelligence of the movements of the army. The military situation was so critical that it was im- possible for an outsider to be given any MO Xincolnics information. The President looked -at Gannon a moment, and then, his eye catching the glint of the lustrous ivory front of the Congressman, whose face and forehead were as clean as a Chinaman's, returned : " Gannon, how clean you shave ! " "A Private Has as Much Right to Justice as a Major-General." Senator J. F. Wilson, in pleading the case of a soldier wrongfully accused of desertion, met with the cordial approba- tion of President Lincoln, but found the Secretary of War inexorable. The un- flagging advocate re-appealed " to Cae- sar " and procured an over-riding order which the Secretary, after another pro- test, finally obeyed. On reporting the sequel to the Chief, the latter said: " Well, I am glad you stuck to it, and that it ended as it did; for I meant it should so end if I had to give it per- sonal attention. A private soldier has as Xtncolnfcs 141 much right to justice as a major- general." True Intellectual Economy. " I never let any idea escape me, but write it on a scrap of paper, and put it in a drawer. In that way I save my best thoughts on a subj ect, and such things often come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out. To save the results of such mental action is true intellectual economy. It not only saves time and labor, but also the very best ma- terial the mind can supply for unexpected emergencies." 1 Lincoln to Senator Wilson, 1862. 1 An unconscious echo of this helpful hint to the art of composition is met witli in Henri Miirger, author of La Vie en Botutme. The French author also impressed on his brothers of the pen the wisdom of keeping a common- place book, as the time would come when its reservoir of ideas "written out" would be invaluable to the man of letters. So, "great wits jump." 142 Xincolnics Cheering Not Military. After the reverses of Bull Run, Aug. 2, 1862, the President went out to visit and encourage the soldiers. As he was about to review the command under Colonel (afterwards General) Sherman, the latter asked for a speech, but, in kindness to the civilian's ignorance, remarked that cheering was not military and that he hoped the orator would not draw out any boisterousness. The forces were raw re- cruits and were profoundly demoralized at the moment by a repulse, the vibration of which extended to Maine. According to Sherman, the speaker made " one of the neatest, best, and most feeling ad- dresses ever listened to." The hearers were strongly inclined to cheer, but the President checked them with the dry, droll remark : " Don't cheer, boys ! I confess that I rather like it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says it is n't military ; and I guess we hod better defer to hit opinion." Ifncolnics 143 " Old Inflexible " Foreseen. During the lax discipline at the outset of the war, a soldier ventured, in his su- perior's presence, to break ranks at a re- view and go up to the President and blurt out: " Mr. President, I have a cause for grievance. I went to speak to Colonel Sherman, and he threatened to shoot me." Repeating the charge, the hearer looked from the denunciator to the Colonel; then, bending his tall form towards the soldier, said in his thin, piping vjoice, which, how- ever, always " carried well," so that the regiment overhead: "Well, if I were you, and Colonel Sherman had threatened to shoot me, I would n't trust him ! for I believe he would do it ! " Save the Union ! " My paramount obj ect in this struggle is to save the Union." Rejoinder to Horace Greeley, Aug., 1862. On base of the Lincoln statue, Chicago. 144 Xtncolnics " My Hope of Success Is in God's Justice and Goodness." " My hope of success, in this great and terrible struggle, rests on that immovable foundation, the justice and goodness of God. And when events are very threat- ening, and prospects very dark, I still hope that all will be well in the end, be- cause our cause is just and God is on our side." To a deputation of clergy; the Rev. Dr. Gurley, present, the relater. The Quiet Past Versus the Stormy Present. " The dogmas of the quiet past are in- adequate to the stormy present." Presidential Message, Sept., 1862. "The Union First and Foremost Slavery Afterwards." In Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862, occurs the above passage demonstrating that the word had dis- placed the purse. Xfncolnicd 145 " Freedom Is the Last, Best Hope of Earth ! " Presidential Message, Sept., 1862. "Who Would Be Free, Themselves Must Strike ! " " Disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save ourselves." Presidential Message, Sept., 1862. "We Cannot Escape History." Presidential Message, Sept., 1862. The Butcher's Bill. " It is much, very much, that this would cost no blood at all." Message recommending the adoption of the resolutions concerning amnesty, of the united Houses, 1862. " To Have Good Soldiers, Treat Them Rightly." Said to Senator Jas. F. Wilson, 1862. 146 Xtncolntcs A Rule Without Exception. " When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives satisfactory evi- dence of the same, he can safely be par- doned, and there is no exception to the rule/* Lincoln, as to his Amnesty Act. What Use Is a Second Term to a Man Without a Country ? If there was any pang comparable to that experienced by President Lincoln when he suspended the Habeas Corpus Act it must have been when he con- sented to the Draft Act and imitated des- potic rulers, in tearing the hopes and the props of the home from the roof-tree. But he did not flinch and when the new military chief, General Grant, asked for three hundred thousand men to " fight it out on that line though it took all sum- mer," he could firmly state that he had called for five hundred thousand. It was then that he said in self-defence: "What Xfncolnfcd 147 use to me would be a second term if I had no country ? " One Dies but Once. A widow woman of his early acquaint- ance approached Lincoln, when President, to renew the friendship, for he had saved her son from a false charge of murder without any expense, though it had cost him precious time during his campaign for the senatorship in 1858. Like a good many persons in the West, who had known him in his despondent period and who were superstitious, she shared in the be- lief which his stepmother had also en- tertained that he was not destined to live to a great age. " Hannah Armstrong," he said, smil- ing, in his mysterious way, " if they do kill me, I shall never die another death ! " Lincoln's " Leg Cases." When the people in Washington saw the lights burning late in the Executive us Xtncolnfcs Mansion, though there was no Cabinet council, they would say, explanatorily, for the benefit of the stranger in the capital : " That is the President, sitting up over private business. It is his great heart. He is trying to reconcile it with military duty, I guess, going to try to let off some foolish or rash young fellow for the sake of his old folks." There was, for example, the case of a deserter, whose old father sent a despatch to Senator Jessenden, pleading that he could shortly provide proofs that the young man was not an offender, but im- ploring time. The operator strove to discover the whereabouts of the senator, as he had not his address. On finding him and communicating the intelligence, the senator promptly hastened to the President, and had the satisfaction of " redeeming the captive " on the eve of execution. Schuyler Colfax relates another of these Xtncolntcd 149 cases of clemency, but one which was not as deserving as the above. Judge Holt had the matter in hand and brought the papers to the President to have him sign the death-warrant. Lincoln's leniency was a football between himself and the War Department. " This case," said the Judge, " is one which comes exactly within your require- ments. The soldier does not deny his guilt; he will better serve the country dead than living, as he has no relations to mourn for him, and he is not fit to be in the ranks of patriots, at any rate." Mr. Lincoln's refuge of excuse was all swept away. Judge Holt expected, of course, that he would write " Approved " on the paper; but the President, running his long fingers through his hair, as he so often used to do when in anxious thought, replied, " Well, after all, Judge, I think I must put this with my leg cases." " Leg cases," said Judge Holt, with a frown at this supposed levity of the Presi- iso Xincolnfcs dent, in a case of life or death. " What do you mean by leg cases, sir?" " Why," replied Mr. Lincoln, " do you see these papers crowded into those pig- eon-holes? They are the cases that you call by that long title, ' cowardice in the face of the enemy,' but I call them, for short, my ' leg cases.' But I put it to you, and I leave it for you to decide for yourself: If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him ? " How true was the ancient saying: " It is wise to know when to play the j ester " ! This may remind one of the story told of King Henry of Navarre (Fourth of France) who, being seized with nervous trembling at the outset of a battle, cried to his staff: "Oh, cowardly custard of a body! do you quake now? I will take you to a hot corner where you will have something to shake for ! " whereupon he spurred into the heat of the conflict with his quivering body. Xfncolntcs 151 "Don't Swap Horses Crossing the Stream." In the troubled days when Washington and Richmond scowlingly confronted each other our " Delenda est Carthago ! " re- sounded in the Senates on the Potomac and on the James. The fleeting show of commanders for the Union forces, a new head quickly replacing a decapitated chief, emboldened the wire-pullers who had a supply of round puppets for the square hole. Driven to the wall by this persistent sinning against the hallowed rule never to retire a general under the enemy's fire, the President, nominally generalissimo, replied to an importunate trumpeter of still another Bonaparte: " There is a good old saying in the sec- tion of the country where I came from: ' Don't swap horses crossing the stream.' " The story in detail is as follows: Two men were travelling in the Blue Grass country where the rivers run bank- 152 Xincolntcd high during a freshet. They stopped at what was, in drier times, a ford. The clay had dyed the foaming waters the color of madder, and the crossing was only discernible to' the mind's eye. Nevertheless, relying on the intelligence of their horses both men rode into the an- gry waters. When a third of the way over, the excellence of their mounts in battling with the obstacles encountered elicited frank expressions of praise. When half- way over, the animals still meriting eul- ogy, spite of pitfalls, mudholes, and " sawyers," they paused and, ignoring their fix, continued to praise their steeds. Only, each commended the other's property. Totally unfit as was the time and the place for a " trade," they actually struck hands on an exchange of beasts and, what was more preposterous, though showing what accomplished horsemen they were, 1 'Though it may seem hard to believe, the writer has seen a Mexican, for exhibition in a race of some length, transfer himself from Ztncolnfcs 153 they undertook to change from one saddle to the other. It is needless to say that the attempt came to grief, as at the criti- cal moment, when neither was seated, a sudden swelling of the flood carried both off their standing and forced them to swim to shore. The horses were swept away and probably came to an anchorage under the bluffs. They had to cast about to make a fire and dry their clothes. Then in their buckskin breeches, fitting torturously tight, they tracked it home on foot, where they had to relate their rash adventure. Hence the tale and the moral : " Do not swap horses in crossing the stream." Plow Around the Log. The absolute newness of military con- one saddle to another without halt. The ques- tion being put to him in relation to this tale. "Leon, could you swap saddles in a flood?" He stoutly responded, not knowing the joke: " If it did not come over the bow to make the seat slippery, why certero ! cert!" >54 Xtncolnics scription in the United States and the indefatigable attempts of nearly all con- cerned to avoid their obligations gave rise to many contentions. A State governor, charged with his con-citizens' grievances and his own consequent embarrassments, rushed to Secretary Stanton and was re- ceived in a manner quite in accordance with that official's overbearing character; thereupon he hastened to the President to rehearse his reception as an additional matter to be remedied. To the amaze- ment of a friend he came from a three hours' interview appeased, and departed smilingly for home. His introductor no sooner saw the Chief than he eagerly inquired by what concessions he had pacified the irritated governor and sent him away in good humor. " Oh, I did not concede anything," ex- plained the President. " You know how the Illinois farmer managed the big log that lay in the middle of his field? To Xincclnics 155 the inquiries of his neighbors one Sun- day, he responded that he had got rid of the big log. ' How ever did you do it? It was too big to haul away, too knotty to split, too wet and soggy to burn; how ever did you do it?' ' Well, now, boys/ said the farmer, ' if you won't tell the secret, I '11 tell you how. I just plowed around it.' " Now," said Lincoln to the questioner, " don't tell anybody, but I just ' plowed around ' the governor. But it took me three mortal hours to do it, and I was afraid every minute that he would see what I was at." Related by General J. B. Fry. " I will Risk the Dictatorship." " I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. . . I have heard ... of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was 156 Xincolnics not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. . . What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship ! " Letter to General Hooker, Jan., 1863. Still Heard From. In the fall of 1 863, when General Burn- side had penetrated so far within the enemy's lines in Tennessee that his situ- ation was regarded as critical, a telegram reached headquarters stating that " firing was heard towards Knoxville. " " I am glad of it ! " exclaimed the President. Asked the cause of his glad- ness, he returned : " Because I am re- minded of Mrs. Sallie Ward, a neighbor of mine, who had a large family. Occa- sionally, one of her numerous progeny would be heard crying from some out-of- the-way place, upon which Mrs. Ward would exclaim: ' Thank the Lord, there 's one of my children is n't dead yet/ " Zfncolnfcs 157 Ncbility Not a Bar in our Army. A foreign officer who tendered his ser- vices to the country, and was promised a commission, thought it a clincher to an- nounce that he had other than military claims to the favor, and mentioned his letter of nobility. " Oh, never mind," said the President, " you will find that no obstacle to your advancement." " Take the People into our Confidence. 1 * In 1863, President Lincoln had full powers and was as nearly an autocrat as a constitutional ruler could be; but as far as possible, he in no way relaxed the frank and neighborly manner which he had imported from the free-and-easy West. A reporter once stated that he had been invited to attend a meeting of the war governors in Washington, and that the President had sanctioned the in- IBS Xincoinics vitation. But at the meeting one f the officials objected to the presence ^ an " outsider " and the reporter was ni?^ n g off when Lincoln intervened. " Wait a minute, young man/' said he, and then explained that he had consented to his being present " for I don't intend to say anything to-day that is secret in any sense," he continued, " and I thought we might just as well take the people into our confidence. However, it is for you gentlemen to say." The position had become so uncomfort- able for the newspaper man that he bowed himself out. He never knew what fur- ther was said about it, but that night Governor Buckingham gave him a report of the meeting. Better Say Nothing. At the opening of the war and during its progress, the national weakness for speeches on all occasions became a posi- Xincolnfcs 159 tive burden to public men, particularly as audiences always expected a speaker to be equipped with a full quiver of apposite remarks. It was truly said of the Presi- dent that " Abundat dulcibus vitiis (He abounds in pleasant thoughts)," but he knew also when to be silent. At one time in 1863, when all the prominent person- ages were called upon to make speeches, Lincoln at his turn sensibly said: " I appear before you, fellow-citizens, merely to thank you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while at least, were I to commence to make a speech. I do not appear before you for the purpose of doing so, and for several substantial isons. The most substantial of these is ^ I have no speech to make. In my ^tion it is somewhat important that I slicftild not say any foolish things. [A voice, ' If you can help it.'] It very of- ten happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at all. Believing that 160 Xincolnfcs is my present condition this evening, I must beg of you to excuse me from ad- dressing you further." A Trenchant Stroke of Wit. Under the most severe strain, the Presi- dent most invariably had recourse to humor. His rival, for a time, for popu- larity, General McClellan, was pro- nounced by him frankly " a pleasant and scholarly gentleman." Before being forced to remove him, for the failure of his " scholarly " plans to fruit, Lincoln said: " If the General has no use for the Army of the Potomac I should like to borrow it for a little while." When the same General, developing political pru- dence, kept silence in regard to the cam- paign paper known as "the Chi ca go Letter," Lincoln gave, as a reason, thaC the advocate of the spade and pick Mc- Clellan was an engineer officer by training was " entrenching." 3Lincolnfc3 161 " Paint Me With the Wart." When the Lord Protector of England sat for his likeness to Cooper, an eminent painter of the time, he protested on find- ing that the artist was going to draw him in profile: " No, a full face paint me with the wart!" In an equally frank way, though with his gentle irony, President Lincoln said to the portrait painter, Mr. Frank Carpenter: " Do you think you can make a hand- some picture of me ? " " A General, at Last." During the war the most indulgent critic of the military movements could not refrain from laughing at the long- drawn-out pageant of commanders in the Virginia Valley, from " Old Fuss-and- feathers " for even age and proven talent did not save General Scott, the patri- arch-general, from the American pro- pensity to bestow nicknames upon their 11 i62 Xincolnica servitors, as the Romans gave crowns to theirs to the " great arithmeticians who had never set a squadron in the field," much less handled an army of defence. When the Western Marius (New Car- thage had fallen to his arms) reached Washington, he was a disappointment the taciturn, cigar-smoking, statuesque Grant, who " promised no reviews for the amusement of the Washington ladies and no ' show business.' " He had a private interview with the President, of which he has given an ac- count in his Memoirs. At its close, Lin- coln said to an inquirer: " Thank God, we have a General, at last ! " Do Not Break, but Hold On ! " I have seen your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog grip." President Lincoln to General Grant, August, 1863. Xtncolnfcs 163 "Government Of the People, By the People, and For the People, Shall Not Perish ! " " Four-score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we can- .iiot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, ^ho struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note.^ nor long 164 Hfncoinics remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining be- fore us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and THAT GOVERN- MENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE, shall not perish from the earth." Address, dedicating the National Ceme- tery at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863. This speech contains but 266 word According to Edward Everett 1 it eclipse his own elaborate oration on the sa:ue 1 Fdward Everett was deemed at the time the foremost orator of the country. lincolnfcs 165 occasion. It was read from a few sheets of foolscap, but was the result of four or five espays to reach perfection. It lasted five minutes and will live forever. Unwittingly it was a verbal duel between colloquial and literary language. For a Soldiers' Cemetery. On visiting the cemetery of the Sol- diers' Home in Washington, the President aid: ' How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest! And women o'er the graves shall weep, Where nameless heroes calmly sleep/ " All Hands and No Mouths. " I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only i66 OLlncolnics and no hands; and if He had ever made another class that He intended should do all the work and no eating, He would have made them with hands only and no mouths." On the Women in the War. " I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that, if all that has been said i>y orators and poets, since the creation of the world, in praise of women, were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. God bless the women of America ! " At a Soldiers 1 Fair, at Washington, 186. "The Handsomest Man." A mother had obtained the pardon for her son, condemned by a court-martial, through personal intercession with the President. Her explanations justified giving the par- don. On leaving the room, she broke out: Xfncolnfcs 167 " I knew it was a ' Copperhead ' lie ! Why, they told me that Mr. Lincoln was an ugly-looking man, and it is a lie. He is the handsomest man I ever saw in my life." The glow of goodness had transfigured him, as has been noticed in other instances. By Thaddeus Stevens, the intercessor in question. The Pact with Divinity. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued New Year's day, 1863. In the preceding September the Confederates had been defeated at the battle of Antietam. Lincoln presented his draft of the procla- mation at the next Cabinet meeting, where he made the statement that he had made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee were driven back from Pennsylvania he would crown the result by the declara- tion of freedom to the slave. On signing the document he remarked: i68 OLincolntcs " This signature will be closely examined and if they find that my hand trembled they will say that I hesitated or was irres- olute. But," continued the author of that noblest gift to the negro, " it is not because of any uncertainty or hesitancy on my part only [it was after the New Year public reception], three hours' hand- shaking is not calculated to improve a man's chirography." " It Is My Object to Break up that Game." In September, 1863, a peculiar kind of sedition seethed in the army before Washington. It was stated to President Lincoln that a Major Key, on General McClellan's staff, had replied to a brother officer that " the game was to exhaust both armies by fruitless operations so that a compromise could be effected and slavery, as an institution, saved." Summoned before the President, as his chief, the Major did not deny his words Xincolnfcs 169 or their substance, but protested his loyalty. The judge said: "Gentlemen, if there is a ' game,' even among Union men, not to have our army take any advantage of the enemy it can, it is my object to break up that game." The offender was cashiered, and Lin- coln privately commented: " Dismissed, because I thought his silly, treasonable expressions were ' staff talk,' and I wished to make an example." " I Can Bear Censure, but Not Insult." A cashiered officer persisted several times in presenting to the President a plea for his reinstatement, and was finally as- sured that even his own statement did not justify a rehearing. His final application being met with silence he lost temper and blurted out: " Well, Mr. President, I see that you are fully determined not to do me justice." i?o Xlncolnics Without evincing any emotion Mr. Lincoln rose, laid some papers on the desk; and suddenly seizing the officer by the coat-collar, marched him to the door. After ejecting him into the hall, he said: " Sir, I give you fair warning never to show yourself here again! I can bear censure, but not insult." To the Army and the Navy. Nothing more plainly and loudly pro- claims the modesty of Lincoln than his eulogy of the Army and Navy when he publicly expressed his gratitude with- out taking one laurel-leaf to himself. What a contrast to the vainglorious bulle- tins of Napoleon. Lincoln's Tribute to the U. S. Army: " No part of the honor for the plan or the execution [of the ending of the Rebellion] is mine. To General Grant, his skilful offi- cers and brave men, it all belongs." 1865. Lincoln's Tribute to the U. S. Navy: In a paper dated 1864, intended to be Xlncolnlca 171 read at a sailors' fair at Baltimore, he commended the navy for its great ser- vices and efficiency. For Readiness in Emergency, Work for a Living. By the see-saw of fortune, the victories in the West, in 1863, counterbalanced the defeats in the East. Among the con- spicuous generals rose General Garfield, who executed feats in reinforcing, bring- ing up needed supplies, and a daring ride, worthy to be bracketed with General Sheridan's. Lincoln asked of a regular army offi- cer how it was that an amateur, like Gar- field, should accomplish in two weeks what a trained officer would have wanted two months to effect. " Because he was not educated at West Point," was the satirical reply. " No, that is not the reason. It is be- cause, when Garfield was a boy, he had to work for a living." i?2 Zincolnic* Trust the Poor. " No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not hon- estly earned." Set your Feet Right, and then Stand Firm ! One day when Lincoln was escorting two ladies to the Soldiers' Home they were all compelled to leave the carriage, owing to the bad condition of the road due to excessive rain. Mr. Lincoln placed three stones for stepping-stones from the curb to the vehicle. While assisting the ladies to firm land, he remarked: " All through life, be sure you put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm ! " " Keep Faith with Friend and Foe." " There have been men base enough Xfncolntcs 173 to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olus- tee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe." On July 30, 1863, the President issued an Executive order placing black soldiers on an equality with white. Unfortunately, the Secretary of War contravened this with an order of his own, which caused a confusion unhappy both for the colored soldiers and for the captured rebels, who were held man for man and treated pre- cisely as were the black prisoners by the Confederates that is, restored to the con- ditions during slavery. Previously, a cartel had allowed exchange without rec- ognizing the rebels as belligerents. Later, when there was the large number of captives from Vicksburg, etc., Stanton refused to exchange, because it would re- inforce the failing cause with sound men. 174 Xincolnice General Grant finally compelled the strict military rule to be complied with regardless of politics or policy. But the colored soldiers suffered more than the white ones. President Lincoln spoke the above words to some Western visitors on the definite repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1864. Go Home and Raise the Men ! It has long been asserted, and it is fairly proved, that the first nomination of Abraham Lincoln for President, and the determined prevention of his being shelved into the candidacy for Vice-P resi- dent in I860, was due to a concerted and well-matured plan elaborated by Mr. Me- dill of the Chicago Tribune, and by other writers and politicians of Illinois. This seems to be borne out by Mr. Medill's ac- count of an interview with the President in 1864. The call for more troops re- Zincolnfcs 175 volted the citizens of Chicago. Medill went with a deputation of Cook County citizens to demand a reduction of its quota. They argued in vain with Secretary Stan- ton and with General James B. Fry in the President's hearing. The question was finally referred to him. Mr. Medill relates that: " He suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face. 1 ' Gentlemen/ he said in a voice full of bitterness, ' after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument of bringing the war upon this country. . . It is you who are largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for emanci- pation, and I have given it to you. What- ever you have asked, you have had. " Now you come here, begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Go home, and raise your six thousand i?6 Xfncolnics extra men! Go home, and send us those men ! ' ' Abashed, they returned -home but raised and sent the men. Going Down with Colors Flying. It was considered very injudicious, po- litically, that almost coincident with Lin- coln's renomination for President he should issue a call for 500,000 more men. The Cabinet officers were mouthpieces for the objections. " Gentlemen," replied the President, " it is not necessary that I should be re- elected, but it is necessary that our brave boys should be supported and the country saved. If I go down under this measure, I will go down like the Cumberland l with my colors flying." 1 The IT. S. Ships Congress and Cumberland were sunk by the Confederate ram Merrimae, March, 1862. lincolnfcs 177 "With a Brave Army and a Just Cause" " Not expecting to see you again . . . I wish to express . . . my entire sat- isfaction with what you have done up to this time . . . And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you!" [Letter of the President to General Grant, April 30, 1864.], The Solemn Pride of Patriotic Sacrifice. Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21, 1864. MRS. BIXBY, Boston, Mass. DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a state- ment of the Adjutant-General of Massa- chusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should i?8 Lincoln ice attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the con- solation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may as- suage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. "I Want to See Her Spread Herself!" During the civil struggle, the agitation in Washington, which was almost be- leaguered, found vent in animated discus- sions, and, even in the White House, where the importance of the chief's re- pose should have preserved decorum, the ushers and guardians assembled in their waiting room to wrangle and debate. The baited President had issued special in- structions to stop these sessions, but they were unheeded from pure need of doing something to break the tension of waiting. One evening, the amateur congress was assembled, discussing the news and the more plentiful rumors, when they were amazed by the unannounced entrance of the President in his stockinged feet, un- ceremoniously carrying his shoes in his hand. The hubbub had helped him in his attempted stealthiness, for he was not a fairy-light walker. At the apparition of this " lean and slippered Pantaloon," the meeting promptly dissolved, the members seeming to melt away. Their dean alone stayed, the senior usher, Pendel, 1 Mr, Lincoln's own appointee whom he prized for his kindness to his children. The dis- turbed master shook his long bony finger at him and said: 1 Mr. Thomas F. Pendel, usher specially ap- pointed by President Lincoln in 1864, and in service in 1900. xSo Xincolnfcs " Pendel, you people remind me of the boy who set forty-three eggs under a hen. He then rushed indoors and told his mother what he had done. " ' But a hen cannot set on forty-three eggs/ remonstrated his mother. ' No, I guess not ; but I j ust want to see her spread herself! ' " That 's what I wanted to see you boys do, when I came in and caught you trans- gressing," concluded the President, as he returned to his own apartment. Shape Words to Turn to Men and Guns. In excusing himself from attending a mass meeting in New York in honor of General Grant, whose line of victories was beginning to point to the final one, the President wrote: " Grant and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial; and I trust that, at your meeting, you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns moving to his and their support." " Civil and Political Equality to Both Races." " The restoration of the rebel States to the Union must rest upon the principle of civil and political equality of both races; and it must be sealed by general amnesty." [Letter to General Wadsworth, 1864.] " Take the Responsibility and Act." General Grant himself relates that when the President invested the general from the West with the rank of Lieutenant-Gen- eral he stated that " all he wanted or ever had wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act." March 12, 1864. 1 82 Xincotnic* The Work a Duty the Gratitude to God. To a deputation of the Christian Com- mission, testifying to the debt they owed him, Lincoln said: " My friends, you owe me no gratitude for what I have done; and I, I may say, owe you no gratitude for what you have done; just as, in a sense, we owe no grati- tude to the men who fought our battles for us. I trust that this has been for us all a work of duty. All the gratitude is due to the great Giver of all good." " Got 'Em, for the Third Time ! " As the end of the Civil War approached, the capital was repeatedly thrilled by re- ports that " the backbone of the Rebel- lion " was broken at last. On hearing these rumors the President would only shrug one shoulder which, like a printer's, was higher than the other, and murmur: " ' Got 'em again, for the third time ! ' Xincolnics 183 He was reminded, he said, of a little incident which had occurred about 1820, and which was for years the talk of the neighborhood in Fulton County, 111. The Spoon River is one of the typical streams of the Mid- West. At times the water is high enough to float an ocean steamer " e'ena'most," and at others so low that the bed can easily be traced. It once happened that a little steamboat named the Utility left the Illinois River and, by some blunder, got into the Spoon, then running bank high. The nearest steamboat landing was at Havana, in Ma- son County, several miles from Lewistown, so the Fulton County folks were not accus- tomed to the sight of such craft, and the idea of a steamboat getting up the Spoon was not even dreamed of. One spring night the people heard strange and fear- ful sounds rising above the roaring of the waters of the freshets; they turned out of doors and stared with surprise to see, over the tree tops, a vessel spouting pitch- 1 84 Zfncolntcd pine smoke and flame, while the whistling was prodigious and uncanny. One of the old settlers, Sam Jenkins, had been ca- rousing for a week, and it was " about the season for him to see things." When he heard this terrible noise he staggered out of doors and spying the monster, looking like Vesuvius afloat, he threw up his palsied hands and yelled: " Boys, I have got 'em again, for the third time!" The river, capricious as ever, dropped suddenly from under the adventurous craft, so unhappily attracted to that point by the congenial name of Fulton, and left it high and dry on a sand bank. The ingenious proprietor landed her machin- ery and with it set up a saw-mill. The cabin furniture was disposed of in the neighborhood, and one Davidson, Sheriff of Fulton County, bought the shabby little rocking chair. Some years later, during a political campaign the political leader of the region, " Uncle Nat " Beadles, was Xincolntca 185 unable to offer his customary hospitality to the Democratic mouthpiece, Stephen A. Douglas, and it chanced that not only he, but Lincoln, also then a struggling law student, and the noted itinerant preacher Cartwright, also a candidate, had to sleep on soft feather ticks laid on the slab or puncheon floor of the David- son cabin. Lincoln rocked to and fro in the rude rocking chair, and naturally was much amused by the story attached to it. " I Count for Something ! " In 1864, Louis Napoleon III. foisted the Archduke Maximilian of Austria upon the Mexican republic as Emperor. Some of the Confederates talked of fall- ing into rank with their Federal foes, to oust the foreigner, and this front of the Americans, combined with the determined resentment of the Mexicans, compelled the intriguing French Emperor to abandon 1 86 Xmcolmcs his brother Caesar, in 1 867. Maximilian was then captured and shot by the na- tives. Sounded by a French notable, as to the status between France and the United States at the climax of this crowned fili- bustering, Lincoln replied: " There has been war enough. I know what the American people want; but, thank God! I count for something, and during my second term there will be no more fighting." One of the first orders of Andrew John- son, on his untimely accession to the Chair, in 1865, accelerated the downfall of Maximilian. A Knock-Down Argument. A private soldier had knocked down his captain, and a court-martial had sen- tenced him to the Dry Tortugas. His friends bestirred themselves in his be- half, and prevailed upon Judge Schofield, a personal friend of President Lincoln, to lincolnfcs 187 intercede in his behalf. Lincoln paid close attention to all that Schofield had to offer, and then said: " I tell you, Judge, you go right down to the Capitol, and get Congress to pass an act authorizing a private soldier to knock down his captain. Then come back here and I will pardon your man." The Judge saw the point, and withdrew. " I Am the Longest, but McClellan Is Better-Looking." An officer, on duty at Baltimore, at- tended a Democratic meeting and made a speech for General McClellan, who was then highly popular and a candidate for the coming Presidential election which gave Lincoln his second term. The Secre- tary of War suspended the officer, who thereupon presented himself to the Presi- dent for reinstatement. " When the military duties of an officer are fairly and faithfully performed," pronounced the arbiter, " he can manage i83 %incolnic0 his politics in his own way. 1 We have no more to do with that than with his re- ligion. . . Supporting General McClel- lan is no violation of army regulations, and, as a question of taste, choosing be- tween him and me well, I am the long- est, but McClellan is better-looking." Veniam Petimus Dam usque Vicissim, (Horace). When two Confederate agents in Can- ada, Thompson and Sanders, desiring to return home, craved permission of Secre- tary of War Stanton to pass through the Northern States, Lincoln gave the pass in these words: " Let us close our eyes and let them pass unnoticed/' 1 As Lincoln did not, in his days of military autocracy, pretend to any military knowledge, his inconsistency with tradition is pardonable, but the time-honored rule is Scriptural: "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life." (Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy, ii, 4.) Xtncolnics 189 They Ought to Know. Towards the close of the great conflict, surmises upon the length of time to which the war might be protracted were based on estimates of the hostile strength. On being asked point blank what he thought were the forces of the Confederates, the President replied offhand: " The Confederates have some 1,200,- 000 in the field." " Is it possible ! how did you find that out? " " Why," said Lincoln, " every Union general I ever heard tell when he has been ' licked ' says the rebels outnum- bered him three or four to one; now, we have at the present time about 400,000 men, and three times that number would be 1,200,000, wouldn't it?" The Bible the Best Gift to Man. " It [the Bible] is the best gift which God has ever given to man. All the igo lincolnics good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book. But for that book, we could not know right from wrong. All those truths de- sirable for men are contained in it." On the presentation of a Bible to the President by the colored people of Baltimore, July 4, 1864. The Cave of Adullam. After Lincoln was renominated in 1864 General Fremont, who, because of a grievance, had resigned from the army, also ran for the Presidency. An inter- locutor having referred to his strength, the President opened the Bible at the First Book of Samuel, and read: " And every one in distress and in debt, and discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men." Xfncolnfcs 191 A Little Man for a Big Business. At the second inauguration of Presi- dent Lincoln, in 1865, there was pointed out to him a famous little lad who played in the band of the Germantown Hospital as post drummer, Harry W. Stowman, aged eleven, " the Infant Drummer " of various theatrical advertisements. The President was always fond of children but then, what that is good was he not fond of ? and had the prodigy brought to him. He caught the little fellow up in his arms and, kissing him, said: " You are a very little man to be in this big war business." ( The editor well remembers " the In- fant Drummer." He was a standing at- traction in the theatre at Barnum's Mu- seum, New York City, called " the lecture room," in order not to offend the unco guid. When a tune was being played by the band he would execute a drum solo which went far to confirm the opinion of ig2 Xincolnics a certain German drum performer, who esteemed it the greatest of musical instru- ments. How his little hands could get so great a volume of sound out of the hollow sphere still remains a mystery.) Slipping down Unbeknownst. After the capitulation of General Lee, in April, 1865, the members of the Con- federate Cabinet scattered in all Southern directions. General Wilson, to whom Macon had surrendered, was chasing the President of the ex-Confederate States, who had not a last ditch for hiding. He asked for instructions in the dilemma should he capture the fugitive or let him escape? Grant referred in person to his Chief, who said: "This reminds me of a story: " There was once an Irishman who had signed a Father Mathews's temperance pledge. A few days later, he became terribly thirsty, and finally applied to a Xtncolntcd 193 bartender in a saloon for a glass of lemon- ade; and while it was being mixed, leaned over and whispered to him: " ' An' could n't yees put a little whis- key into it, all unbeknownst to mesilf ? ' " Now, General, if Jeff can get away unbeknownst to us, I shall be glad." Pluck a Thistle and Plant a Flower. In the spring of 1865, a number of men who had resisted the draft in west- ern Pennsylvania were pardoned in a batch, by the President. His friend Mr. J. H. Speed, who had heard the touching pleas of two women petitioners in the case, observed that he wondered why the President stood the anguish of such pleadings when he was, at heart, so sensitive. " I have, in that order/' said Lincoln, " made people happy and alleviated the distress of many a poor soul whcin I i94 Xincolnicd never expect to see. Speed, die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a ilower, when I thought a flower would grow." America the Treasury of the World. " Tell the miners from me that their prosperity is the prosperity of the na- tion; and we shall prove that we are in- deed the treasury of the world." President Lincoln to Schuyler Colfax, April, 1865. The Grip of an Honest Man. During the Civil War, Lord X made himself notorious by his persistent support of the lost cause, in spite of the Queen's imposition of neutrality upon her subjects. He upheld the building of privateers on the Mersey, the attempts to float the cotton loan in Lombard Street, Xincolnicd 195 and the frenetic canards in the hostile press. Notwithstanding this conduct, when the last shot was fired, he presented himself at the White House to participate in the public reception, and to receive one of the hearty hand-shakes for which the President was famed. The host knew all about this alien supporter of the Con- federacy, but with his most affable smile he extended his hand to the one eagerly advanced. It was without any warning, however, unless his conscience misgave him, that the Briton felt his knuckles crushed together in the Herculean grip. The disabled nobleman withdrew his hand as quickly as possible and so^n withdrew in person, greatly to the amusement of those who suspected the effective punish- ment given by the Eagle's talon. The Lincoln Grip. It was remarked with wonder that at the end of the public receptions in the Executive Mansion, when all the world 196 Xincolntcs could clasp the President's hand, he would respond as forcibly to the last comer as to the first. Questioned upon this singular fact, Lincoln explained: " The hardships of my early life gave me strong muscles." Fooling the People. " You may fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." The Lord's Judgments are True and Righteous. " Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn Xtncolnfcs 197 with the sword; as was said three thous- and years ago, so still it must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " Second Inaugural Address, 1865. 11 Let Us Judge Not Lest We Be Judged." This was the sacred text with which Lincoln rebuked the persons who clam- ored " We '11 hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree ! " when the ex-President of the crushed Southern Confederacy was captured at Irwinsville, Ga., after the fall of Macon. Divination by the Bible. On the second inauguration day of Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865, the gentleman who handed the Bible to the twice-chosen advocate of the people noted the place where the open book was kissed. The passage denoted, according to the 198 Xincointcd hallowed Sortes Biblia, the speedy quell- ing of the Rebellion, namely, Isaiah v., 26, 27: "And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth; and behold, they shall come with speed swiftly ; " and so on. The Modern Prometheus. In a conversation with Senator Clark (N. H.) the President observed of office- seekers : " It seems as if every visitor darted at me, and with finger and thumb carried off a portion of my vitality! Of twenty applicants, I make nineteen enemies ! " Seven Eighths Living on the Other Eighth. The Tite Barnacles in our midst were thus characterized by Lincoln: "Sitting here [in the White House], Xincolnica 199 where all the avenues of public patronage come together in a knot, it does seem to me that our people are fast approaching the point where it can be said that seven eighths of them are trying to find out how they may live at the expense of the other eighth/' To Senator Clark (N. H.), 1865. "Love Thine Enemies!" The Marquis of Chambrun, who was in the Presidential party on a trip outside the capital, as they neared the city on their return, heard Mrs. Lincoln observe with bitterness: " That city is filled with our enemies ! " Her husband promptly reproved her, saying: " Enough ! we must never speak of that!" Saturday, April 9, 1865. About the same time, when guiding the President through the Washington hospi- 200 Zincolnica tals, Dr. Jerome Walker, of Brooklyn, turned him from a ward containing pris- oners, saying: "They are rebels." Wherepon he was corrected with the words : " You mean they are Confederates." The Vast Future for America, " There are already among us those who, if the Union be preserved, will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions of population. The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day; it is for a vast future also." Lincoln's Last Act Was of Grace. It was the afternoon of the mournful day of April 14, 1865. A senator called at the Executive Man- sion to confer with the President, to whom news was pouring in that might make him take back his lugubrious saying that " he lincolntcd 201 would never know peace again." The Senator was J. B. Henderson of Missouri, and he was speaking in behalf of one Vaughn, a soldier in the regiment of Col- onel Green of the Confederate Army. When the cause was lost Colonel Green had instructed this soldier to carry letters to his family. The courier was captured, tried and sentenced as a spy, and despite two re-trials was under the shadow of the death penalty. The President listened to the suitor, who pointed out that at last the war was decidedly at an end: " This pardon, therefore, should be granted in the interest of peace and conciliation." The President fully agreed and said: " Go to Stanton and tell him this man must be released." But the Secretary of War, who often persisted in his opposition to his chief, was violently incensed and more than us- ually obdurate. When the repulsed ad- vocate returned empty-handed to the 202 Xtncolnfcd President, the latter was dressed for the visit to Ford's Theatre. At once he wrote an order to the same effect as his verbal message, saying to Mr. Henderson: " I think this will have precedence over Stanton ! " It was an unconditional release and pardon the last official act of the Presi- dent was one of grace. Cromwell said on his death-bed: " If once in grace is al- ways in grace, then am I safe ! "