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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnthOOhold 
 
c&he Tolitician become a (Man 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The Politician and the Man 
 
 BY 
 RAYMOND HOLDEN 
 
 MINTON, BALCH & COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 1929 
 
Copyright, 1929 
 
 BY 
 
 RAYMOND HOLDEN 
 
 Printed in the United States of America by 
 
 J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK 
 
\S) 
 
 
 ^73. 7^L ^3 
 
 3 H (s L l £L 
 
 TO 
 MY MOTHER 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 I wish to make, for help received in the preparation of this 
 book, grateful acknowledgment of the keen advice and faithful 
 services of my wife, Louise Bogan, and the generous support of 
 my sisters, Marian and Frances Holden. 
 
CONTENTS 
 PART ONE-THE BIRTH OF A POLITICIAN 
 
 CHAPTER I. A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD .... 3 
 
 CHAPTER 2. NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 22 
 
 CHAPTER 3. THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 35 
 
 CHAPTER 4. A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 50 
 
 CHAPTER 5. THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 70 
 
 CHAPTER 6. THE PERILS OF EVASION 85 
 
 CHAPTER 7. HUMILIATION AND MARRIAGE 97 
 
 CHAPTER 8. THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS I06 
 
 CHAPTER 9. A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP . . . . 1 28 
 
 CHAPTER 10. THE TOP OF THE LADDER 1 48 
 
 PART TWO— THE BIRTH OF A MAN 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 1 67 
 
 CHAPTER 2. A NATION AND ITS LEADER I98 
 
 CHAPTER 3. DISASTER 226 
 
 CHAPTER 4. THE LADDER IS BROKEN 247 
 
 CHAPTER 5. THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND .... 267 
 
 CHAPTER 6. VINDICATION AND OPPORTUNITY 287 
 
 CHAPTER 7. VICTORY 297 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE POLITICIAN BECOME A MAN Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 the gentleman from sangamon county 42 
 
 abraham lincoln at home 96 
 
 the lincoln who faced douglas 1 52 
 
 "the rail candidate" 172 
 
 "our PRESIDENTIAL merryman" 200 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN UNDER THE STRAIN OF WAR 21 4 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN ENTERING RICHMOND, APRIL 3RD, 1 865 . . 294 
 
PART ONE 
 THE BIRTH OF A POLITICIAN 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 
 
 IN the Old World Napoleon, being dead, had become easy 
 to laugh at. The Continent which he had kept in terror saw 
 the old systems of life dying away. In America, Daniel Webster 
 and John C. Calhoun were alive, and the old systems were still 
 young. But they were, under the skin, dying just the same. 
 
 Among the grassy prairies of Illinois, four thousand miles 
 from Europe, the new postmaster of the village of New Salem 
 went stalking about on an absurdly long pair of legs, carrying 
 his mail in his hat. It was the year 1833, the year which emanci- 
 pated the slaves of the British Empire, but the postmaster of 
 New Salem was not thinking about slavery. He had been born in 
 a slave state and thought little of it, one way or the other. His 
 name was Abraham Lincoln. As he walked or sat on a barrel 
 outside the store that served as a postofTice, he read a book on 
 surveying, or the latest copy of the Illinois Advocate and State 
 Register. In the book he read of rods, perches, chains, angles 
 and levels, to be translated into terms of prairie grass. In the 
 newspaper he read of high doings in Washington under the 
 hand of Andrew Jackson, of rewards offered for the return of 
 fugitive Negroes, of the curious bombastic noises being made in 
 Congress, of canals and railroads, money and the prices of 
 produce. 
 
 New Salem, Illinois, was a tiny station on the westward march 
 of the European race. Other than in the high thoughts of its 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 founders, there was no reason for its existence. Abraham Lincoln, 
 who, through the efforts of sympathetic friends, had just been in- 
 stalled in the postmastership of that village, to which he had come 
 by accident two years before, was in a bad way. The obscure prob- 
 lems of slavery did not bother him at all. The nationally advertised 
 question of a national bank only a little. But other things bothered 
 him a great deal. 
 
 He was twenty-four years old, out of work, heavily burdened 
 with debt as the result of an ambitious but unsuccessful plunge 
 into the local grocery business, still feeling a little persecuted 
 because the people of his own county had, the year before, 
 refused to send him as their representative to the legislature 
 at Vandalia, and utterly at a loss to know how, other than 
 through the exercise of that droll good humor which was 
 characteristic of him, he should go about making a place for 
 himself in the free and easy but often uncharitable world of the 
 pioneer. 
 
 As this depressed young postmaster wandered about New 
 Salem in the summer of 1833, with an inch or so of bare leg 
 showing between his socks and his trousers and another inch of 
 something not properly external showing between the top of his 
 pants and his coat, it would have been difficult for a casual visitor 
 to the town to understand his melancholy. For everywhere he 
 went people had a gay word for him, men went out of their way 
 to stop him and speak to him, and frequently, before waving 
 him on his way, could have been seen to be so affected by their 
 contact with him as to double up and give off roars of laughter. 
 And this hale and hearty intercourse was not limited to the 
 more reserved folk of New Salem proper, but extended itself 
 to the roughneck lads of nearby Clary's Grove who had taken 
 a liking to Abraham's penchant for exhibiting his strength, and 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 5 
 
 also to the surprising and barrier-destroying vulgarity of his 
 stories. 
 
 But the same qualities which gave Abraham his genius for 
 amusing himself and other people, for catching the light of the 
 common eye and showing it shining back from his own, were 
 sometimes a torment to him. Shining inward with their opposite 
 face they often made him solemn and sad, sent him sometimes 
 around corners to avoid meeting anyone, or walking aimlessly 
 along, talking to himself. It seemed to him at such times that no 
 one ever liked him for the right reason, that nothing he ever did 
 led him anywhere but to other states of poverty and helpless- 
 ness, never by any chance along the road toward preferment at 
 the hands of those fellow-beings who loved to hear his juicy 
 narratives of common life, his harangues, his jokes, but who never 
 seemed able to take him seriously. 
 
 And Abraham Lincoln had left the home of his unpromis- 
 ing father because he intended to be taken seriously. Thomas 
 Lincoln, in spite of a second wife who was a fine rugged spirit 
 and knew how to make something out of nothing, was always 
 moving about aimlessly. Sarah Bush Johnston had had a little 
 property and a lot of the sense of how to care for a family when 
 she married the widower of Nancy Hanks, but you would 
 scarcely know that to look at the household of Lincoln, senior, 
 now. Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles County, Illinois, where the old 
 man was living, was no place for a young man of twenty-four 
 who wanted to get on in the world, even if he could get on with 
 Thomas Lincoln. Besides, it was the third place in which Thomas 
 and Sarah had lived in three years. You could never make any- 
 thing of raw prairie earth if you kept on running about like 
 stray cattle all the time. 
 
 Abraham, coming home from an expedition piloting a flat- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 boat load of hogs and supplies down the Big River to New 
 Orleans the year before had paid a visit to the paternal cabin in 
 Goose Nest Prairie. One visit was enough. As a paternal cabin it 
 didn't amount to much. Abraham was through with that sort of 
 thing. The hut stood in die tall grass of an open, wind-swept 
 prairie, without a tree or a shrub around it, graced by the pres- 
 ence of neither stable nor outhouse. It was little better than a 
 hovel, and the other places where the family had lived had 
 been much the same, sometimes worse. As a homesteader, Thomas 
 Lincoln simply was not very bright. He had picked out a place 
 in Indiana once, and lived there till the "milk-sick" and the gen- 
 eral itch to be moving drove him out. It was a place from which 
 you had to go a mile to the spring for water. That sort of thing 
 was bound to tell in the long run. Abraham simply decided that 
 there were other ways of living, and that they were meant for 
 him. 
 
 For one thing, Abe liked to be where there were people. He 
 was as gregarious as a starling. The open, lonely country, the 
 wood full of screaming, fluttering hordes of wild pigeons, the 
 creeks with their fish, nights and misty mornings floating quietly 
 down the Great Mississippi, the glitter of the sun on the Ohio 
 in his boating days, the jungle-like darkness of the overhanging 
 virgin forest; these things meant a lot to him. But they were 
 woven together in his memory like a net into which his con- 
 sciousness bounced safely when it fell from the trapeze of human 
 companionship. They were protective, but they were not the 
 whole act. The high flying was the thing that gave him ideas. 
 As a matter of fact, it was his one idea. 
 
 He did not reflect much. He was like a barrel that was just 
 a barrel until somebody dipped something out of it. It took con- 
 versation and laughter, the look of eyes, antagonism or question, 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 7 
 
 to make Abraham conscious of what he thought. Somewhere in 
 him was a pattern of darkness and despair to which all his ac- 
 tions kept reverting. 
 
 No one ever came close enough to Abraham to know what 
 made that pattern. It was the mark, the effect, of something in his 
 heritage of unknown, early days. It was the bent twig that deter- 
 mined the inclination of his mind's tree. Perhaps his mother 
 Nancy Hanks, bright woman that she was, had bent it by some- 
 thing that she had been, or by having had no known father. Per- 
 haps some reproachful misunderstanding of his own boyish fires 
 had done the deed for Abe. Perhaps it was some disarrangement 
 of interior balance that came in the wake of his too early leap 
 to six-foot stature. No one ever learned. Probably not even Abra- 
 ham himself. 
 
 He was a little shy about his looks, sensitive that he scaled 
 six-feet four in his stocking feet, and yet a little boyishly proud 
 of the strength within his stature. He was bitterly annoyed that 
 he owed people hundreds of dollars merely because the men to 
 whom he and William Berry had sold out their grocery busi- 
 ness had skipped the country before the time had come to pay 
 off the note they gave in exchange for the stock and the good 
 will. Abraham was puzzled too about politics, and when he 
 wasn't talking to someone about the how and the why of the two 
 struggling parties, he didn't know that he had any idea what it 
 was all about. Give him someone to talk to and he could con- 
 vince the listener as well as himself, even of something that he 
 had never had in his head until he began talking. But you 
 couldn't talk all the time. 
 
 And here he was in New Salem, himself new, everyone 
 else new, nothing to do but new things, nowhere to go but new 
 places, the romantic life of established places and peoples lying 
 
.•^ 
 
 8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with its street-lamps, its frilled shirts, its glittering dinner ser- 
 vices, its great buildings and fine ladies and carriages, back be- 
 yond the Alleghanies, upstream against the current which was 
 carrying him along. 
 
 Abraham thought of pioneer life as an accident of birth, 
 not as a gift of freshness but as something to be outlived. He 
 wanted to be among the chosen, the leaders. He badly wanted 
 to. But he lacked confidence, and his occasional depressions, his 
 memory of his mother's illegitimacy, and his own distrust of 
 the passionate pleasure which he took in the sight of girls, 
 fortified the lack. He remembered his stay in Major Warnick's 
 house a few years back, in Menard County. He had frozen his 
 feet in the big snow. The Major was kind, but made Abe feel that 
 he was considered inferior. This projection of the idea of social 
 status so that it fell upon Abraham, was as disquieting to the 
 lank peasant in him as was Polly Warnick's projection of the 
 sense of her body into the region where a frightened young man 
 walked watching her and wanting to grab her with his greedy, 
 clammy hands. Women and mannered society both terrified the 
 overgrown frontier youth by making subtle demands upon him. 
 
 Abraham knew that he must improve himself, make himself 
 fit to take what he had resolved to get. He did not care much 
 about books or learning as such, but he wanted to know the face 
 of things. And that want set him to studying what books he could 
 get, asking questions of everyone, looking into everything, tak- 
 ing things apart to see what made them go. 
 
 It was a little difficult to tell what made New Salem go. It 
 did not go for very long, but, like a cheap watch, stopped ticking 
 before it had fairly got to running on time. The Sangamon River, 
 in spite of the fact that Lincoln had managed to pilot a steam- 
 boat up it in 1832, never became navigable. The annual incre- 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 9 
 
 ment of pioneers heaped itself elsewhere and there was no one 
 to trade with. There was no tradition to outwit the logic of 
 economics. New Salem was just a bad guess. It must have been 
 its few inhabitants that made it go. These Abraham could 
 and did know. He had not been a resident of the moribund 
 infant village very long before he knew everyone and everyone 
 knew him. 
 
 Very few men with a wide, back-slapping acquaintance fail 
 to think themselves important elements of their community. Lin- 
 coln, for all that sense of inferiority which the dark secret of 
 Jiis mind gave him, was no exception to this rule. He conceived 
 of himself now as a person with political possibilities, a man 
 who has got his salt and only needs to get near enough to the 
 bird's tail. 
 
 In 1833 Abraham Lincoln conceived of the tail of the bird 
 of politics as feathered with methods of interesting your neigh- 
 bors. In a frontier community national and international ideas 
 were no part of the scheme of things. You had to tell your friends 
 that you would see to it that the Sangamon River was made 
 navigable if it took an earthquake to do it. You had to make them 
 feel that, by guarding their interests, you would bring pros- 
 perity to their doors without any effort on their part. You had 
 to insist that you would see that they were helped when they 
 wanted to bother the government about things like the recovery 
 of stray cattle, and that the government was never allowed to 
 bother them even if their stray cattle knocked down the State 
 House. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln of New Salem, believed in what he heard 
 the most people saying. In Sangamon County, unlike most of 
 Illinois, they were upholding the National Bank. Abraham be- 
 lieved in a National Bank. President Jackson was willing to knock 
 
io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the country to bits, if he had to, by way of expressing his dis- 
 taste for such an anti-popular thing, and for the eastern pluto- 
 crats who were back of it and had been back of the finger-in- 
 the-pie Federalist idea ever since the day of Washington and 
 Hamilton. 
 
 Although the tradition in Abraham's family, such as it was, 
 was very much on the side of Jackson, life in Sangamon County 
 had led him out of the fold. The pioneers of Sangamon felt that 
 something had to be done to make things different. Lincoln, 
 with his ear to the ground, went with them. Most of the influ- 
 ential men he had met recently, men like William Jones, David 
 Turnham, and William Wood, all leaders of pioneer life, were 
 anti-Jackson men, National Republicans, devoted champions of 
 Henry Clay, although the measure of popular feeling in the 
 nation was illustrated in the election of 1832 when, for president, 
 Jackson received 219 electoral votes to 49 for Clay and 18 for other 
 candidates. Perhaps neither Abraham, nor these influential gen- 
 tlemen who talked about the "principles of George Washington" 
 understood how completely the National Government had, at the 
 start, been the oyster of the country's aristocrats. Abraham, at 
 least, whose contact with organized civilization had been as lim- 
 ited as that of a child, did not understand what had happened 
 at the presumably Olympian pow-wow in Philadelphia in 1787. 
 
 He did not know that the Constitutional Convention had 
 accomplished, not the formation of a government calculated to 
 run in the direction of abstract political science and the doctrines 
 of political philosophers, but of a protective institution made to 
 free business from its hampering obstacles, to stabilize public 
 credit, and to make private property safer than life. * Abraham 
 did not realize that he, as a representative of the poorer classes, 
 
 * Beard, Chas. A. Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD n 
 
 would have found no one in that convention acting for him, nor 
 even interested in him. 
 
 He did not understand, having been born in the wilderness 
 and educated in the lore of the backwoods, with trimmings by 
 Parson Weems, what the inauguration of his hero Washington 
 had portended. He could not very well see the nervous General, 
 standing up in 1789 in the presence of Senators and Representa- 
 tives — in his brown suit, trimmed with metal eagle buttons, his 
 white stockings, his sword and his bag — trying to get one of his 
 hands in his coat front so it wouldn't annoy him by hanging 
 at his side, holding his speech in the other hand and fumbling 
 at it all the time. Abraham would have been puzzled to have 
 been there and, with his usual quick apprehension, to have under- 
 stood that Washington thought he was being inaugurated presi- 
 dent of a colorless, party-less, half-utopian state in which the 
 people should not have very much to say and the politicians 
 should have nothing about which to differ. * 
 
 This original notion of the American Republic which had 
 been given to the world, had brought about the conditions which 
 made the National Bank an important issue in the world of 
 politics upon which Abraham Lincoln was entering in 1833. 
 The Confederation under which the American States were gov- 
 erned for ten years prior to the adoption of the Federal Con- 
 stitution had acquired a national debt of more than forty million 
 dollars, a tremendous sum in the America of the last half of the 
 eighteenth century. To this the government set up by the Con- 
 stitution in 1789, by a clever bargain, added thirty-odd millions 
 of state debts, mostly to men of wealth, contracted in the course 
 of the Revolutionary War. For the government under Wash- 
 ington, in spite of the fact that the General was a patriot and a 
 
 * Journal of William Maclay. 
 
12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Virginian, was a government in the interests of the merchant 
 princes and manufacturer barons of the seacoast states. And it 
 was to the interest of this group to concentrate power in the 
 hands of the National Government in order to have a central- 
 ized agency for the protection of the goose of commerce, 
 busy hatching its golden egg. The southern states, some 
 of whom had already paid their state debts and who cared 
 little about commerce, were very much disturbed at the 
 turn affairs were taking. Perhaps they saw, as one of their 
 leaders, Jefferson, did, how the small farmers, the laborers, 
 the patriot veterans of the war, were, each in their way, 
 being bled by the activities of the great commercial in- 
 terests.* 
 
 These unorganized Americans had been paid for their produce 
 and their services in Continental currency, of which, from the 
 expression, "not worth a continental," we know the value. They 
 had had no choice. The law and the propaganda of the time had 
 forced them to accept these bills.f When the state debts were 
 assumed by the federal government foresighted speculators got 
 busy telling everyone that the government would never redeem 
 the paper it had forced upon the impecunious, and offering to 
 buy it at from two to five shillings the pound. The impoverished 
 holders of this debased medium, many of them starving, were 
 only too eager to get what they could, not knowing that the 
 speculators had picked up information from inner sources that 
 the government was going to redeem the money at par. Thus at 
 even that early date was the man in the street and on the farm 
 being victimized by the professional acquisitor. And, in the time 
 of Washington and Hamilton, that sort of thing was done with- 
 
 * Simons, A. M. Social Forces in American History, 
 t Dewey, D. R. Financial History of the U. S. 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 13 
 
 out rebuke because most of the sufferers, being debtors without 
 property qualification, could not vote. 
 
 As Jefferson said, speaking of the beneficiaries of this pain- 
 ful trickery, "Men thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader 
 would follow of course the chief who was leading them to for- 
 tune, and become the zealous instrument of all his enterprises." 
 The speculators did follow and support the Federalist idea as 
 well under Hamilton as later. They followed to the extent, 
 at least, of being willing to see a National Bank established of 
 which the shares could be purchased in the proportion of seventy- 
 five per cent of their value by exchange for certificates of indebted- 
 ness, notes, that is, which the government or state had given to 
 wealthy lenders. Almost all of the stock of the bank went curi- 
 ously enough to the manufacturing and commercial states of the 
 North. And it was the vote of these states in Congress which 
 carried the measure establishing the National Bank. 
 
 The original National Bank, and the bank which was rechar- 
 tered in 18 16, after it had been subdued for five years through 
 the efforts of Jefferson and the states who wanted to do their 
 own banking, was unequivocally supported by the business in- 
 terests of the country and until the election of Andrew Jackson in 
 1828 had never been called to account for the arbitrary manner 
 in which it used its position, as the fiscal agent of the whole 
 people, to serve the acquisitive rapacity of an unscrupulous few. 
 
 By the election of 1832, which Abraham Lincoln, then twenty- 
 one, was old enough to observe, property restrictions upon voting 
 had in most states been abolished. It is not surprising that the 
 popular voice against the dreaded combinations of capital was, 
 in this election, pleasantly overwhelming. Yet Lincoln, because 
 of local interests, believed in the party which the voters had at 
 that time repudiated, the party which, whether openly or not, 
 
14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 certainly supported the aristocratic money regime that had been 
 so dear to Alexander Hamilton. But Abraham was not thinking 
 of himself as a supporter of anti-popular tyranny. To him the 
 issues were local, of personal, rather than of national importance. 
 He saw nothing of the background of injustice and knavery 
 which had done so much to create, not only the popular opposi- 
 tion to the Bank, but the grave and irreconcilable feeling of the 
 South, that the North was out for its blood. If he had, the gentle 
 justice of his nature might have been expected to oppose it. 
 At that stage of his career it would have been all but impossible 
 for a young frontiersman to be aware of the crass implications 
 of his nation's early history. 
 
 Abraham saw New Salem only, with a side glance at Vandalia 
 and Springfield. Fie saw Washington's nation as it was in Illinois 
 in 1833. This man Jackson, the first president to get away from 
 the genteel, drawing-room tradition of Europe, or the counting 
 house tradition of New England, brought with him the tang 
 and energy of something Europe could not have understood. But 
 Lincoln understood it, and distrusted it, not as humanity but as 
 leadership. Jackson was a westerner, but was he safe? After all, 
 if you wanted preferment, wasn't it better to try to fit into 
 what existed than to try, perhaps vainly, to lead something new, 
 to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear ? You could get a running 
 start that way. 
 
 The National Bank furore was a case in point. Good or bad, 
 four years of an administration opposed to that institution, had 
 left money in a very low state. That was hard on westerners. 
 Even if the present western president had thought he was help- 
 ing them when he opposed the bank, it was hard. No, Abraham 
 was not going to accept Jackson just because he was a frontiers- 
 man. You didn't have to accept him. There was Henry Clay. 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 15 
 
 He thought that opposition to the Bank was a crime, calculated 
 to ruin the country financially. For Jackson's opposition had put 
 the Bank, and hence credit, in a precarious position. He didn't 
 think that it was giving the people's resources over into the 
 hands of the money clique. And Henry Clay was no plutocratic 
 enemy of the common man. He was just a good National 
 Republican. And Abraham was a pretty good National Repub- 
 lican in many ways by this time. It needed but little to make 
 him solid. 
 
 President Jackson had certainly, in the previous December, 
 put a firm quietus on the lively sentiments of discord which were 
 being expressed in South Carolina over the right of the Federal 
 Government to collect duties in the ports of a state whose insti- 
 tutions were not benefited by the tariff, and whose social system 
 did not meet with approval everywhere. The Nullification Procla- 
 mation was a good thing for the Union which had been founded 
 by the Aristocrats of 1787 and which was now become too com- 
 fortable a hide for the organism of the common man of the 
 1830's to shed. But there were other issues. Abe Lincoln, child 
 of the western prairie, postmaster of New Salem, ex-Captain of 
 volunteers who had gone through the Black Hawk war and never 
 had a shot at a live Indian, defeated candidate for the state legis- 
 lature, greedy consumer of the newspapers of three states, never 
 let anyone who could tell about it afterwards know what he 
 thought of President Jackson. President Jackson represented the 
 undeveloped country and the common man, breaking a long line 
 of office-holding in the tradition of the Federalists. Lincoln was 
 of the West, and of the mass of the common man, but the way 
 to preferment in Sangamon County was not through the party 
 of Andrew Jackson. And Abe needed preferment very badly. 
 
 Anyone who had seen him repairing log cabins, splitting wood, 
 
16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 husking corn, milking, or killing pigs, to earn enough money to 
 get bread into his mouth during the past six months would 
 have known without a second look that Abraham needed prefer- 
 ment. It was his friends that helped him. They got him the post- 
 master's job which brought him a little return. They advised 
 him to study law, they helped him get through Flint and Gibson 
 on Surveying, and Kirkman's grammar in order that he might 
 assist the County Surveyor and thus earn a little more. And 
 every time anyone helped him it was fun for the helper as well 
 as help for Lincoln, because he knew the simple ways of human 
 contact and gave of himself as much as he ever got from anyone. 
 
 Abraham was not a very apt young man when it came to 
 books. He would much rather have talked than read, much 
 rather have lain flat on his back than bent over a table. He had 
 to read over everything he wanted two or three times before he 
 got it just right. But, once he had got it, it stayed with him and 
 a little of it was sure to come up the next time intercourse with 
 his fellow beings put the dipper in his barrel. He was no brighter 
 than the next man — years of huddling in lean-tos and cabins here 
 and there along the fantastic line of march of the Kentucky 
 pioneer, with never enough to eat, to wear, to find out, had seen 
 to that — but he was ambitious and persevering and he read, albeit 
 with distaste for the effort, whatever he could lay his hands on. 
 Anything, that is, so long as it represented something more than 
 mere abstract ideas, things which being lacking in himself, did 
 not appeal to him in the wit of others. What he learned, he 
 learned not from the quick anticipation of brilliance but from 
 the slow, painful, draught-horse pull of diligence and determin- 
 ation. 
 
 It was as a result of this struggle that Abraham learned the 
 rudiments of surveying, which knowledge had an important 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 17 
 
 bearing upon his career. In the first place he was able to get 
 the job of Assistant County Surveyor, assistant to a New Eng- 
 land Irishman named John Calhoun, who curiously enough 
 was not even remotely connected with the southern statesman 
 of that name. In the second place, Abraham's job took him about 
 the county more widely than his postmastership had permitted 
 him to travel. And he took his ready friendliness with him, 
 endearing people to him wherever he went, leaving with them 
 the recollection of an uncommon personality, the possessor of 
 which they would be bound to recognize as a friend even though 
 they saw him in the haughty distance of a political campaign. 
 
 At this time, East, West, North and South, everywhere in the 
 British Empire, the slaves were awaiting the operation of the 
 Emancipation Act. The haut monde of England was gossiping 
 about William the Fourth. The general public in that ancient 
 land was struggling through mingled emotions to understand 
 what was going on in its first reform parliament. The French, 
 having parted with Charles the Tenth without any especial pain, 
 had abolished the hereditary nobility and under Louis Philippe 
 were about to mourn the death of one who linked their memories 
 with what seemed a greater day, the Marquis de Lafayette. In 
 Germany revolt against the monarchic order had risen and been 
 suppressed and a boy of fifteen named Karl Marx was putting 
 two and two together. 
 
 Converging upon the sloping forehead of the postmaster- 
 surveyor of New Salem, Illinois, were the states and territorial 
 possessions of that confederacy called the United States of Amer- 
 ica, by the grace of God and considerable human chicanery, free 
 and independent. They were made up of some thirteen millions 
 of people, about a quarter of the number black, among whom 
 was distributed very unequally a considerable amount of actual 
 
18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 wealth. Most of the wealth, indeed practically all, was in the 
 hands of the members of a few social groups, consisting of the 
 hereditary gentry, the operators of great plantations, the great 
 merchants, and the living beneficiaries of the amazing amount 
 of profiteering which had gone on during the Revolution and 
 the War of 1812. These groups had taken fairly good care to 
 guard their accumulations by mutual intermarriage, and were 
 sitting at comfortable ease on the top of North American society. 
 Beneath them were other groups of potential financial power — 
 manufacturers, shippers and landowners on a smaller scale. Be- 
 neath these, only recently become convinced that their day was 
 at hand, were the small farmers, the laborers and artisans, the 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water. And in the South, largely 
 taking the place of these last, were some two and a half million 
 actual slaves. In the West, all about Abraham Lincoln, were 
 the members of the bottom and middle strata of society who had 
 dared to take advantage of that opportunity to shake off the 
 oppressive life of the eastern seaboard which the undeveloped 
 regions beyond the Alleghanies offered. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln busied himself among the stumpy, stony 
 farms, the mud wallows, the rubbish heaps, the cabins and shacks 
 of a people in a purely primitive state, helping to mark of? their 
 property, one's from another's, and thus to lay out the field for 
 a continuation of the eastern struggle for possession of the earth, 
 that Fortunatus purse without the development of which there 
 would be neither wealth nor the lack of it. Abraham's life and 
 that of his neighbors was on a very elementary scale, but beyond 
 its horizon, on the same chord of planet, was life in differing 
 stages, the states of man's development all existing at the same 
 time, as if the procession of human history were laid endwise 
 about the globe. There was the dining table and liveried-servant 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 19 
 
 life of the seacoast cities, the shirt-sleeve and kitchen-supper life 
 of the middleman and the small tradesman, the loaf and old 
 cheese life of the millhand and the laborer; there was the home- 
 spun, home-made sausage life of the small farmer, the pork- 
 barrel life of the sailor and wharfinger, the numb and lackadai- 
 sical corn-pone and hoe-cake life of the slave, under the golden 
 artifice of feudal culture which flourished on the great planta- 
 tions. 
 
 Across the Atlantic, where this golden artifice was first and 
 most widely achieved, civilization had reached so far that a 
 reaction had set in. Society had sent out its running roots into 
 the New World and the head of the plant was dying. The 
 apparent impossibility of maintaining concord among the workers 
 of a society bursting out into seemingly destructive eruptions of 
 machine inventiveness, had brought about violence and hatred 
 and social instability. Men were trying, like the late King Canute, 
 to bid the waves of an irresistible sea to stand back and suffer 
 them to hold the ground merely loaned them by an earlier tide. 
 
 Monarchy, the emblem of feudal life, seemed to be tottering 
 in England and on the Continent. The consequences of the 
 French Revolution had begun to herald the day of the bour- 
 geoisie. Disgruntled subjects were leaving their European homes 
 by the thousand, heading for the vast unoccupied and, for the 
 most part, ungoverned lands of North America, there, though 
 they did not know it, to begin anew a cycle which should lead 
 to imperial consolidation. It was the beginning of to-day. 
 
 And in that beginning, Abraham Lincoln was a poor anxious, 
 ambitious country boy, with a talent for human contacts and a 
 mind as inquiring as a mouse, biding his time in the besetting 
 nearness of debt and defeat. He went about with his surveying, 
 delivering his letters in person, though he was not required to, 
 
20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 talking of everything that came into his head. Everything except 
 the circumstances of the outer world of which he knew noth- 
 ing. He was building up a following. 
 
 He knew nothing about the outer world, but he was none 
 the less anxious to learn and know of it. He had said in a long 
 address to the inattentive voters of Sangamon County the year 
 before, that the state should give everybody an education so 
 that all might study the history of their own and other nations. 
 Abraham wanted to be informed, but he himself did not care 
 much about the business of being educated. He had not had as 
 good an education as many of his contemporaries, chiefly because 
 of a failure to avail himself of opportunities. He could have gone 
 to Robert Owen's communistic experimental colony at New 
 Harmony and worked for the excellent schooling which could 
 have been had there. If he had made half the effort to get into 
 the new Indiana University which he later made to get into 
 public office his name would have been on the rolls before 
 this. He might have gone after 1830 to Illinois, McKendrie, 
 Shurtleff or Knox colleges. He made no effort to do so. What- 
 ever the reasons, he had let these opportunities go by. When he 
 was a boy he had seemed to have no initiative. Now that he was 
 grown and could see the possible values of the opportunities he 
 had missed he was afraid to go back to them. He did not dare to 
 take himself out of the swim, to hide himself in the academic 
 life. He wanted to be on hand for the gathering of the crop of 
 good will which he had been sowing. 
 
 He felt that he must pound away at his rut, and keep him- 
 self ever in the public eye. And his good nature, his ability to 
 mix with all kinds of people, pleasant and cross, kept him 
 thoroughly in the public eye. So much so, indeed, that in 1834, 
 the people of New Salem of both parties urged him to run as 
 
A FRONTIER DEBTOR AND HIS WORLD 21 
 
 their candidate for the state legislature. He did not need urging, 
 only to be convinced by his elders that the time was ripe. 
 
 His wide popularity in the county helped him immeasurably. 
 This, ably seconded by a discreet failure to mention, during his 
 campaign, anything about issues unattractive to the democrats — 
 who by his silence had been led to become his supporters also — 
 and by a realization that proper recognition of the principles of 
 fair play in election brawls would be a popularizing asset, won 
 for Abraham Lincoln his first political victory. There was little 
 opposition. He was, it is true, suspected of having religious 
 beliefs, if any, which had been soured from the cream of frontier 
 orthodoxy by the lightnings of Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" 
 and Volney's "Ruins," but the voters did not care. They knew he 
 was a good fellow. They believed he was intensely local in feel- 
 ing, as indeed he was. They felt confident that he would trip 
 up anyone monkeying with the interests of Sangamon County, 
 though it were Andrew Jackson himself. 
 
 So Abraham, at twenty-five, was given the right to go from 
 the dead village of New Salem to the mudhole town of Van- 
 dalia, the capital, there to represent a couple of thousand simple 
 folk whoj like himself, had little or no knowledge of or concern 
 with any but local interests. 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
 NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 
 
 THE autumn of 1834 saw Abraham Lincoln's stock going up 
 rapidly. After the election of early August he held three 
 offices; that of postmaster of New Salem, that of Assistant Sur- 
 veyor of Sangamon County, and that of Representative for his 
 district in the General Assembly of Illinois, representing in that 
 body the National Republican voters of his vicinity and also the 
 Democrats. While the shackles were being removed from the 
 slaves of the British Empire, Abraham was rattling his own 
 and stepping out into public life with the very sincere and 
 friendly backing of an important section of the people of Illinois 
 behind him, the majority of whom were the descendants of 
 immigrants from slave states. 
 
 Although his taste for serving people and making himself gen- 
 erally useful was indulged by his possession of three practical 
 positions, the emoluments of those positions did not greatly 
 fatten his purse. In fact, it was at this time that the law began to 
 persecute him as a debtor. It took his horse and his surveying 
 instruments to satisfy one of the notes which his confidence in 
 his ability to be a storekeeper had induced him to give out, but 
 which his taste for carelessness had prevented him from paying. 
 This would have been an embarrassing situation for the Deputy 
 County Surveyor had not one of his many ardent friends and 
 supporters, James Short, bought in the equipment and returned 
 
 22 
 
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 23 
 
 it to him. But even with this kind aid there were moments when 
 the thought of debt and deficit set up a burning in his veins. 
 
 That burning, however, did not consume the ambition which 
 kept him forever at his books, studying the fundamentals of law, 
 the tricks of surveying, or the outer edges of the world's philo- 
 sophical opinion. Abraham had in some way picked up from 
 his life in the dirt-floored cabins of his youth, the essentials or 
 that attitude common to a society of relatively equal opportunity, 
 namely the belief that a man's first duty is to improve his social 
 condition. That he had not crystallized this belief before he 
 came to New Salem is apparent from his neglect of the educa- 
 tional opportunities offered him up to that time, but in the last 
 two years it had taken complete possession of him. Now, in the 
 late summer of 1834, it seemed to be bearing fruit. At least he 
 could now call himself, if he wished, the Honorable A. Lincoln. 
 
 The young man on the make is very likely, as a general rule, 
 to associate with social improvement the idea of marriage. But 
 in 1834 Abraham was in no position to consider marriage, even 
 if intimate contact with girls had been easy for him, which it 
 decidedly was not. There were plenty of girls in New Salem, and 
 other young men seemed to find little or no difficulty in becoming 
 engaged to them, but Lincoln was still reticent. The women with 
 whom he did allow himself to associate, up to this time, were 
 the matronly motherly type like Mrs. Hannah Armstrong, who 
 would sew his trousers for him and make him shirts. 
 
 In the previous year Abraham had boarded in the tavern of 
 James Rutledge, a log house of two rooms and loft, in which 
 lived Mr. Rutledge and nine little Rutledge's, occupying space 
 according to their ages, which ranged from four to twenty-five. 
 Lincoln was one of several boarders who added to the house- 
 hold burdens of Ann Rutledge and her older sister, Mrs. Rutledge 
 
24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 having decided that it would be more profitable to keep house for 
 the bachelor James Short of Sand Ridge, than for her own dense 
 family at the Tavern. 
 
 In New Salem, quite unlike many other parts of the world, 
 the difference between the top and bottom of the social ladder 
 was negligible. The Rutledge's were poor, among the poorest, 
 and so was Lincoln, but except in so far as lack of circumstantial 
 dignity depressed them it cannot be said that they suffered from 
 their poverty. Everyone in New Salem worked hard and appar- 
 ently thought little of it. 
 
 One of the other Rutledge boarders was wealthier than the 
 rest, having made several thousand dollars in the course of a 
 thrifty career among the log houses, by buying and selling land, 
 and by diligent use of a partnership in the only profitable store 
 in the neighborhood. This fellow-boarder of Lincoln's was John 
 McNamar of New York, who had come West to make enough 
 money for the transportation of the impoverished relatives whom 
 he intended to have follow him. In order that his family and 
 his family's creditors might not keep too close tabs upon him 
 and so interfere with the accumulation of sufficient cash, John 
 had passed in New Salem as John McNeil, an expedient not at 
 all uncommon among pioneers. 
 
 Ann Rutledge, a pretty blue-eyed girl of twenty, short and 
 plump, capable and vivacious, found time enough in the press 
 of her household duties to be interested in the promising young 
 man from New York, whose money and whose part owner- 
 ship of her father's farm must have enhanced his charms in her 
 eyes. Certainly she was willing, when John returned to New 
 York for his family, to consider herself engaged to marry him. 
 
 New York, however, was a long way off, and John McNamar 
 was no quicker than he might have been about making the trip. 
 
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 25 
 
 He took a fever on the way, which delayed him several weeks, 
 he had trouble with his father's creditors, and his father's ill- 
 health delayed him still more. Furthermore, he either did not 
 write or was the victim of the then common bad-luck attendant 
 upon the use of the frontier mails. Certainly Ann got few letters 
 from him and eventually none. When he returned to New Salem 
 it was too late. 
 
 Even in a pioneer community a popular young girl must dis- 
 like the appearance of being jilted. Even frontier folk, without 
 the economics of caste and credit to goad them may be tempted 
 to the exciting meannesses of hint and gossip. The people of New 
 Salem certainly did not hesitate to let Ann Rutledge know that 
 they thought her catch had gotten away from her, and Ann, 
 having in the shape of Samuel Hill, her fiance's partner in mer- 
 chandising, and in the distant awkwardness of the interested 
 Abraham Lincoln, enough birds in the hand to make the bush 
 seem of little consequence, was able to do some forgetting on her 
 own account. It may have hurt her, but she managed it. 
 
 Abraham had never before in his life been thrown so closely 
 into contact for so long a time with so appealing a girlish figure 
 as Ann Rutledge. He had always been able to avoid girls before. 
 He could not escape the constant presence of one who served him 
 and lived day and night under the same roof with him. Then 
 too, the sight of Ann's tenderness for John McNamar may have 
 served for the first time to make him feel that a girl is neither 
 a harpy nor an untouchable angel to the man who is the simple 
 master of his own emotions. Perhaps he unconsciously felt that 
 the bond of this young thing's engagement to his fellow-lodger, 
 put her in the class with those more matronly figures whom he 
 had dared to approach and to esteem. She, too, was set apart. 
 
 Whatever it was that loosened his tight grip upon himself, 
 
26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 it had begun to do its work during Abraham's period of board- 
 ing at the Rutledge Tavern, a brief period indeed, and followed 
 by no immediate reversal of behavior. At first, in fact, it merely 
 served to give the young and gawky frontiersman, more used 
 to flatboats, axes, wrestling matches and grocery store comedy, 
 than to the amenities of mixed society, a slightly different point 
 of view toward women. It permitted him when he went to call 
 on one of his fostering matrons, Mrs. Bennett Abell, to pay some 
 attention to a large and stately young lady from Kentucky who 
 was visiting in the Abell cabin, one of the kind whom Abraham 
 would have, prior to his residence at the Hotel Rutledge, jumped 
 through a window to escape. For Mary Owens, Mrs. Bennett 
 Abell's sister, was no little china girl to pretend you didn't see. 
 She was a woman of twenty-five, of more than average intelli- 
 gence, and almost double the size of an Ann Rutledge. Further- 
 more, she dressed smartly, bringing to the lackadaisical village 
 of New Salem such airs and graces as comparative wealth and 
 educational advantages had given her the taste and means to 
 adopt. If Ann Rutledge, the tavern-keeper's daughter repre- 
 sented for the novice Lincoln the appeal of shy, tender-hearted, 
 red-lipped girlhood, Mary Owens, the blue-grass lady, represented 
 the appeal of mundane, self-confident womanhood. Beyond the 
 appeal of Ann Rutledge was the melting warmth of personal 
 delight. Beyond the appeal of Mary Owens was the possibility 
 of lifelong social elevation. About her hung some of the mystery 
 of suavity and ease of manner to contrast with Ann's direct and 
 undistinguished brightness. 
 
 Ann Rutledge was engaged to another man and Mary Owens 
 appeared as definitely betrothed to a kind of life which marked 
 her quite as plainly against the trespass of the uncouth pioneer. 
 Miss Owens' first visit to New Salem was brief, thus removing 
 
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 27 
 
 her personage from the region of its influence upon Lincoln, 
 but leaving behind her the waxing mystery of something not 
 quite understood, which Abraham could not manage to believe 
 was beyond him. The new-born concentration upon Ann Rut- 
 lerge which the departure of both Miss Owens and McNamar 
 had effected did not at once swell with the richness of intimate 
 devotion. The situation was a little indefinite. In fact, many of 
 those who lived in close contact with Abraham and Ann were 
 not aware that any sort of understanding existed between them. 
 Everyone pitied Ann the loss of her lover John McNamar, of 
 whom she had been genuinely fond. Everyone liked Abraham 
 and surely would have been delighted to see him get a lovely 
 and popular girl, but the noticeable lack of people who knew 
 anything about his interest in Ann, seems to indicate that no 
 one believed in Abraham's interest in girls. Later events made 
 it seem probable that Abraham was none too confident of it 
 himself. 
 
 In the midst of this mild and circumscribed courtship in that 
 little backwoods village on the Sangamon, Abraham borrowed 
 two hundred dollars from Coleman Smoot, saying that the loan 
 was the natural consequence of that gentleman's having voted 
 for him. He bought himself a sixty-dollar suit of clothes, and 
 set out on the stagecoach for Vandalia, the capital and social 
 hub of Illinois. For the first time in his ambitious young life, 
 Abraham Lincoln could feel that he was dressed like a white 
 man. It made him very gay to think of himself, as the stage 
 rolled and creaked through the groves and prairies and over 
 the rolling hills, bearing its uproarious company of legislators 
 toward the well-stocked and expectant tipple-palaces which lined 
 the west bank of the Kaskaskia River down to the southeast of 
 New Salem. 
 
28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 For Abraham Lincoln this was the beginning of a new life, 
 the launching of a vessel sister to that less proud flatboat which 
 had stuck upon Cameron and Rutledge's milldam at New Salem 
 in May of 1831, in the course of a voyage to New Orleans. That 
 voyage had determined his residence during the last three years 
 and a half and so had paved the way for this new outset. Abra- 
 ham, not at all troubled by the fact that the new clothes he had 
 on had merely added to his burden of debt and could not, by 
 clothing him, make that burden more attractive, was buoyed up 
 by the quadruple success of the past year. He had been made 
 postmaster of New Salem and still held that simple office. He 
 had been appointed, and he remained, Deputy Surveyor of 
 Sangamon County. The people of the same county, Democrats 
 and Republicans alike, had sent him to represent them in the 
 Legislature. And, by no means least, he had been able to look 
 at women for the first time with something not entirely filial 
 in his eagerness. For the first time he had managed not to feel, 
 as an accompaniment to the eagerness, a cold tightness about 
 his heart and an unwilling lack of focus in his eyes. This accom- 
 plishment by no means ended for him the tyrannous reign of 
 women over his mind and heart. It was merely a loosening of 
 the sense of secret hurt which lived with him always, and which 
 women were forever baiting. 
 
 It was enough to give him an unusual gaiety as he entered 
 the muddy winter streets of dismal and miasmic Vandalia on its 
 bluff between the foggy bottoms of the Kaskaskia and the 
 swampy prairies of the West. The little town, with its ninety-odd 
 houses, only two of which were not of wood, was crowded with 
 legislators and their families, public officials in boots and long 
 coats, lobbyists in wide hats, lawyers with their bags, horses, 
 wagons, sheep, pigs, and all kinds of foot-encumbering fowl. 
 
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 29 
 
 The streets were entirely unpaved and shin-deep in a mixture of 
 mud and rubbish, the natural forage-ground of the local pork 
 supply. Over this wallow of thoroughfares streamed the flutter- 
 ing candlelight from taverns and liquor-groceries. There was 
 an atmosphere of excited tension blowing about the town. 
 Voices were brisk and loud on corners and in alleys. Everyone 
 had a pet scheme and everyone else must hear of it and, having 
 heard, must go and have a drink. Here were the forces of pioneer 
 life gathering together for their double attack; the one, forward 
 upon the undeveloped resources of their state, the other, back 
 against the strongholds of position and privilege. 
 
 Abraham went the rounds with his Sangamon contingent 
 thrilled, though not in consequence of the astounding flow of 
 liquor, by the spectacle of all these ambitious, scheming, power- 
 ful folk, roaring their welcome to a newcomer in the trade of 
 politics. Like many a more experienced legislator he did not 
 understand what it was all about, but he felt an exuberant real- 
 ization of the glorious tumult of his connection with it. This was 
 what men were best at, and he particularly. Everything about 
 him was quickened and heightened. He could feel his powers 
 overriding the lack of confidence which his financial and emo- 
 tional difficulties kept nourishing. 
 
 A stone's throw from the capital, great trees were still crashing 
 down under the frantic weight of hordes of wild pigeons. 
 Panthers slipped furtively and massively through the thickets, 
 performing their brutal economy as yet unthreatened. Every- 
 where was wilderness, the rivers undeveloped, the soil barely 
 turned, the villages mere camps. Across this wilderness came, 
 as yet, little of the manufactured products of the eastern seaboard. 
 There was cloth, there was liquor, there were shoes, utensils, 
 books, foodstuffs, but for the most part, liquor being a notable 
 
30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 exception, these things came in small quantities, and makeshifts 
 for them were contrived before the hearth of many a pioneer 
 cabin. The wind of organized industry had not yet risen in 
 Illinois and the legislators gathered in Vandalia in December, 
 1834, could not have dreamed of the sure internal evolution of 
 a new social and political force which was going on in the mills 
 and manufactories of the Middle Atlantic and New England 
 states. If any one of them did realize the changing status of the 
 free workman and the free employer in that region he gave it 
 no more thought than Illinois as a whole was, at that time, giv- 
 ing to slavery, which for all practical purposes was no thought 
 at all. 
 
 Not that agitation against slavery had not taken on impor- 
 tance. It had for many decades been a lively source of debate, 
 one which had engaged the attention of the pre-Revolutionary 
 colonists and which was by no means dead forty years after the 
 founding of the republic. But those who believed in the abolition 
 of slavery and were willing to say so in public were still con- 
 fined to the ranks of those Wilberforcian moralists whose tract- 
 able mind's eyes could be focussed exclusively upon one side of a 
 question. 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison, that curiously passionate messiah, 
 driven by the occlusive belief that slavery was not, merely, an 
 unfortunate survival of primitive social conditions, but a fearful 
 crime, taking to himself as best an Anglo-Saxon can, the role of 
 anarchist, had founded the Liberator in 1831, eventually coming 
 to advocate repudiation of the Constitution and dissolution of 
 the Union. Garrison's fervent and radical paper attempted, with 
 small but far-reaching success to inject into public life and politi- 
 cal activity the biblical moralities which were dear to the heart 
 of its founder, even if terribly confusing to the decent and sincere 
 
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 31 
 
 southern slaveholder. Garrison, although his paper had prac- 
 tically no circulation at first, was so vehement that he frightened 
 the great mass of unfanatical northerners and angered and dis- 
 gusted the greater part of the South. His influence therefore had, 
 even as early as 1834, done a great deal to keep the question of 
 abolition alive and to put it into politics. Furthermore, although 
 he was unwilling to admit that anyone else could be as firm and 
 sincere about the matter as he was himself, he had companions 
 of only a little less colorful frenzy. 
 
 Although the North, therefore, carried these nettles in its 
 pocket and had to be careful how it walked, and the South 
 could not swallow its rage entirely, the western states, for their 
 part, believed that there were more important things, and that 
 slavery would take care of itself. They had been interested in 
 President Jackson's amazingly firm hand held up in 1832 to 
 restrain South Carolina, not because South Carolina was a slave 
 state, nor because of the injury done that state by the tariff of 
 1828, which was sugar to the industrial North, but only salt to 
 the wounds of the slave states. What interested them in Old 
 Hickory's Nullification stand, was the matter of its bearing upon 
 the rights of individual states. They took great pride in their 
 sectional importance as foundation stones under the future 
 American life. And they did not want slavery to be a distraction. 
 Therefore, when they could, they ignored it. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln entered upon his duties as a member 
 of the Ninth General Assembly of the State of Illinois on De- 
 cember 1 st, 1834, he had never, to any living person, made a 
 single expression of opinion as to the Tightness or wrongness of 
 the institution which was the basis of the social organization 
 not only of his native state Kentucky, but of little less than half 
 of the people of the American nation. Abraham was tender- 
 
32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hearted, with that timidity which goes with emotional reticence. 
 He had a certain humility. "Why should the spirit of mortal be 
 proud?" became a favorite quotation with him. It is not unlikely, 
 therefore, that even at this time he regarded slavery as an 
 unfortunate arrangement between employer and employed. Even 
 this, however, is uncertain, as he had seen slaves in chains being 
 shipped down the Ohio River and had noted particularly that 
 they were the happiest people on the boat. It was not all a soul- 
 searing cruelty, then, although in 1837 he was able to speak of 
 the institution as an injustice. 
 
 Even if he did have misgivings about the position of the Negro 
 he had an excellent sense of how to keep himself in the public 
 eye and he must have known that there was no use whatever 
 of making an issue of something to which his public was so 
 indifferent. Although his silence on the subject of slavery may 
 have been due to an unconscious gesture of his extraordinary 
 genius for perceiving current mouth-and-ear values, Abraham's 
 failure to talk about other more fundamental issues was neither 
 due to tact or inadvertence. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln saw the world outward from New Salem, 
 through Vandalia and Springfield, not in the bird's-eye view of 
 time and space which would have let him see how man's need 
 to sustain himself makes of society what hunger makes of the 
 individual man, a hand for grasping and a mouth for taking in 
 food, and how, this being the case, control of the sources of 
 material supply, not hope nor ideal, nor golden rule, is the 
 circumstance which determines the course of a nation's develop- 
 ment. In 1834 railroads were still in their swaddling clothes, 
 although their development must have been foreseen by anyone 
 with a mind apt for the problems of national rather than local 
 progress. Abraham, admiring the idea, thought them too expen- 
 
NEW FRIENDS AND OLD CONFLICTS 33 
 
 sive, and recommended the all but impossible task of making 
 the Sangamon River navigable. 
 
 What the new Representative could not see, was the tre- 
 mendous effect of certain natural accidents and contingencies 
 along the developing course of American life. Agriculture was 
 still the prime concern of the majority of Americans, and most 
 westerners still thought of human life as essentially an agricul- 
 tural system. But in the East, across the Alleghanies, things were 
 happening to that system. In the very year of 1834 a new process 
 in the smelting of iron was devised which increased the output 
 of furnaces by almost half. This combined with the recent devices 
 by means of which steam had turned out to be capable of hauling 
 vehicles on rails, all of which required iron in their preparation, 
 immediately set the finger of popular interest pointing at the 
 production of that natural metal, and toward the possibilities of 
 its use to increase the wealth which resulted from manufactur- 
 ing. For the railroad could be extended more rapidly with a 
 more rapid production of iron, and the extension of it would 
 automatically extend the markets for factory products. 
 
 In the background, behind this new instrument of commerce, 
 hovered darkly the cloud which was before very long to resolve 
 itself into a storm of change. It was soon to become apparent 
 that you could not build railroads without money. Where was 
 the money to come from? At first everyone thought that the 
 states, perhaps assisted by the Federal Government, would provide 
 it. But it soon became apparent that there was great possibility 
 of private gain in the financing of railroads and like develop- 
 ments. It was not long before those powerful individuals who 
 recognized the fact and had the means to act upon their recog- 
 nition, were scheming to keep that gain from being diverted into 
 the impersonal maw of state and federal treasuries. And their 
 
34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 schemes were greatly aided by the existence of that perpetually 
 rancorous conflict between the state and the nation which divided 
 the people into those who wanted the Federal Government 
 strengthened at the expense of the state and those who did not. 
 The people, trying to escape the fangs of one wolf were prepared 
 to invite another to attend them. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 
 
 THE United States of America, in pursuit of what was then 
 believed to be their "manifest destiny," were, in the fourth 
 decade of the nineteenth century, hacking away at the great 
 mass of unsettled savage land to their west. Their cutting edge 
 was sickle-shaped, its deepest concavity being at the Mississippi 
 side of western Illinois and its horns running through Arkansas 
 to Texas and through Iowa to Wisconsin. Illinois was then the 
 driving point of advance, where the speed was least but the force 
 very great. Here it was that the two streams of westward migra- 
 tion were meeting and consolidating for further advance. The 
 southern stream, coming from Virginia, Kentucky and Ten- 
 nessee, had been the first to flow, but the development of the 
 Erie Canal in northern New York and the progress of steam 
 navigation on the great lakes had made it possible for a second 
 or northern current to set in. 
 
 In the middle of this decade, the population of Illinois con- 
 sisted chiefly of pioneers of southern birth. The French of 
 Vincennes and Kaskaskia were on the wane, having scarcely 
 outlasted their entertainment of the Marquis de Lafayette in 
 1824. The Yankee and the Pennsylvanian had as yet not put in 
 an appearance in anything like force. It was natural, therefore, 
 that the eighty-one members of the Ninth General Assembly of 
 the State of Illinois should have been mostly men of the southern 
 tradition. It is true that most of them had outgrown, if they 
 
 35 
 
36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 had ever known, the influences of that southern economy which, 
 under John C. Calhoun, had been making things warm for 
 President Jackson, but they were none the less men who had 
 neither understanding of nor use for the state of mind of the 
 more commercial New Englander. They were building up 
 within themselves a new point of view, neither southern nor 
 northern. 
 
 At ten o'clock in the morning of December ist, 1834, rubbing 
 elbows and exchanging pleasantries with his fifty-four fellow 
 members of the lower house, Abraham Lincoln entered the 
 dilapidated two-story brick capitol at Vandalia and was born 
 into political life, a life that was destined never again to take 
 its shackles from his brain. 
 
 Those who ten years before had built the curious edifice in 
 which Lincoln now found himself, milling about with his more 
 experienced but little less excited companions, had built in the 
 true pioneer tradition of living in the minute. They had built 
 profitably but not too well. Now from musty and leak-tarnished 
 ceilings the plaster was flaking off upon the head and the home- 
 spun of the lawmakers who transacted their business beneath it. 
 Bricks were loose in the walls and the floors creaked and sagged 
 under heavy feet until it seemed that the cement of tobacco juice 
 and fallen candle wax was the only thing that kept them from 
 going down. The winter wind from the river bottoms shook 
 at loose window-panes and generally contrived to make its way 
 through them. 
 
 Yet, scarcely conscious of this dilapidation, and unwilling to 
 lend his name to any measures for improvement (he voted 
 against a proposition to rent a better room than the all but un- 
 tenable one in which the Council of Revision did its work) sat 
 Abraham Lincoln, taking everything in with the eagerness of 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 37 
 
 a child asked to help hold the hose at a fire. He took his cue, 
 in voting, from Major John Stuart, leader of the Sangamon 
 County delegation and one of the leading Whigs of the state. 
 He was, being a neophyte, consoled by the gift of a place on the 
 most unimportant Committee in the House, that on Public 
 Accounts and Expenditures, a position which, if the honor did 
 not turn his head, must have made the young man feel a bit 
 sheepish, remembering his own sadly confused accounts and 
 expenditures. 
 
 Aside from the more or less perfunctory business of recording 
 his vote on measures brought up by his colleagues, Abraham's 
 chief business during this session of the Illinois Legislature was 
 that of watching, listening, and of weighing and balancing what 
 he saw and heard of men and their opinions, of indications of 
 strength and weakness in the lines of parties. He saw how im- 
 portant to the westerner was the question of the public lands, 
 those tracts which had, even before the adoption of the Con- 
 stitution, been entrused to the care of the government set up by 
 the Articles of Confederation. Devoted follower of Henry Clay 
 as Abraham was, he must have been puzzled to read of the 
 attitude on this very question of Clay's New England colleague, 
 Daniel Webster. Webster, in Congress, at Washington, shortly 
 before, in that magnificent piece of rhetoric which ended, 
 "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," 
 had supported a bill to restrict the sale of public lands, abolish 
 the public lands survey, and practically to put a stop to the easy 
 drift of potential labor into the freedom of the West. Webster 
 was reflecting the sentiments of industrial Massachusetts. 
 
 Whatever Abraham thought of this curious paradox ex- 
 pounded at Washington, he did, in January of 1835, introduce a 
 measure in the Illinois House of Representatives, suggesting that 
 
38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the Illinois members of the National Congress be instructed to 
 plead for an annual payment to their state of twenty per cent 
 of the proceeds of the sale of public lands lying within the bound- 
 aries of the state. He was trying to advance a pawn which might 
 be used to checkmate any later opposition to the schemes of 
 internal improvement which he had in mind. But, unfortunately, 
 none of Abraham's colleagues paid any attention to his motion. 
 It was promptly laid upon the table, and he himself had the 
 good sense to forget it. Perhaps, when the Federal Government 
 did divide among the states the surplus resulting from its sale 
 of lands thus paving the way, by over-inflation, for the panic of 
 1837, Abraham was glad of what had happened.* 
 
 During Lincoln's attendance in that enthusiastic school of 
 the politician, he got his first real inkling of the import of 
 various national issues, chief among them that poisonous matter 
 of the National Bank. For a gentleman from Madison County, 
 a staunch Democrat and an ardent supporter of President Jack- 
 son, introduced resolutions favoring Jackson's punitive attitude 
 toward the Bank bogey man. These resolutions immediately 
 started a furious wrangle in the House, to which Abraham lis- 
 tened in considerable bewilderment, such bewilderment indeed 
 that his votes on the various motions involved were confused and 
 even contradictory. He was trying very hard to consider the 
 matter, which he was fundamentally unable to understand, in 
 the light of party alignment. When party alignment was not 
 clear neither was Abraham. His confused voting was not nearly 
 so important as the schooling he got in the various methods of 
 seeking and wielding political advantage, both within the actual 
 confines of the House and in the all-important lobby outside, 
 
 • References to Lincoln's career in the Illinois Legislature are from the Journals of 
 the Illinois House of Representatives and from Beveridge, Albert J. Abraham Lincoln. 
 Vol. I. 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 39 
 
 where a man's talk was unrestricted, and always loud enough 
 to make the candle flames tremble, and to shake more plaster 
 from the ceilings. 
 
 The crowded and happy six weeks of this first session of the 
 Ninth General Assembly of Illinois did much to set Abraham 
 Lincoln on the course which he was to follow for the next 
 twenty years, many of whose incidents he was afterwards to look 
 back upon with annoyance, shame and dismay. The first step 
 in that course, when the Legislature adjourned on the 13th of 
 February, 1835, was a return to New Salem, which was like 
 returning to a bread crumb after a dream of cake. Abraham 
 was to miss the talk, the sense of action, the color and excite- 
 ment of those days in Vandalia and to realize that New Salem 
 was no longer large enough to hold a rising young politician 
 who was making friends among the men of importance in his 
 state and who had begun to make the attitudes and tricks of 
 legislative procedure a part of his way of looking at things. Per- 
 haps, as he rode in the stagecoach back to his all but motionless 
 post office, to his surveying instruments and his relatively unim- 
 portant village friends, he looked back with a little shudder half 
 of pride and half of misgiving at the boy that he had been, the 
 untutored son of an uneasy and impoverished frontiersman, the 
 frightened but adoring son of a mother with a past. He won- 
 dered a great deal about Nancy Hanks, his mother, who had 
 died when he was only nine. When the twenty-six-year old 
 legislator, in his Springfield tailored suit of clothes, returned to 
 the town which had given him the opportunity to climb out of 
 his past, he found himself believing that mixed with the darkness 
 of his mother's birth must have been the fact that no common ' 
 man like Thomas Lincoln had given him his character. Well, 
 he thought, there must be no slipping back. The candlelight 
 
40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 from the cabins of New Salem, coming around the bend of the 
 wagon track, meant hard, unpleasant work for him. For he had 
 now committed himself more surely than ever to the belief 
 that his political future would be greatly helped by a mastering 
 of the principles of law. For it was obvious, at this stage of 
 American life, that the only great reputations had been made 
 by military leaders, preachers, and finally lawyers. Abraham's 
 experiences as a Captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk "war" 
 of 1832, had convinced him that the military life was not always 
 a sure way to immediate fame, and he had no taste whatever 
 for the ways of the preacher. He had bought a copy of Black- 
 stone's "Commentaries" at an auction. To the law, therefore, 
 being sufficiently urged by friends who recognized how valuable 
 his sense of human values would be in a court room, the young 
 man had turned. And now his return to New Salem must mean 
 a period of terrific study, of Blackstone and other books lent 
 him by John Stuart, in order that he might master the funda- 
 mentals of the profession in the quickest possible time. The amaz- 
 ing abundance of lawyers on the frontier did not trouble him 
 at all, for if there were sometimes as many as a dozen to every 
 five hundred settlers, there was an unlimited expanse of land 
 in the offing upon which these settlers had their eyes. And wher- 
 ever there was land, if men were to dispute title of it with root 
 and rock and neighbor, there must be law, great quantities of 
 the barbed-wire mesh of legality. 
 
 This new enterprise was pleasant only because of what it 
 promised for his career. Abraham never enjoyed hard work, 
 though he knew how to get it done and he had no enthusiasm 
 for the law, as such. But the study took some of the flat taste from 
 the draughts of New Salem, which for ten months he had to 
 swallow. But a still greater bubble was provided by his increasing 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 41 
 
 interest in Ann Rutledge. Abraham was actually beginning to 
 find himself emotionally involved. John McNamar was still 
 away in New York, and his correspondence with his New Salem 
 fiancee had ceased. Abraham ought to know. He was the post- 
 master. If there had been a letter it would have been his hat 
 that carried it out to Sand Ridge, where the troubled Ann was 
 then living. 
 
 No letter came, Ann, wanting Abraham, still remembered 
 John. She was afraid to give him up, afraid that the next creak 
 of cart wheels might be under his return to claim her. And yet 
 he had not written her in over a year. Surely that gave her some- 
 thing like release. Abraham was not sure whether it did or 
 not, but he gave Ann to understand that if she could consider 
 her engagement to McNamar broken she might consider some- 
 thing like an engagement to Lincoln begun. Not to take effect 
 immediately. He would have to get himself made a lawyer first. 
 That would mean income, which was necessary. And Ann should 
 have an opportunity of going to the Woman's College at Jack- 
 sonville. These conditions were a soothing restraint upon the 
 importunities of Abraham's highly emotional nature. They let 
 him want the girl without fearing that he was yet entirely lost 
 in the want. They left a loophole for him, a thing which, later 
 experiences show, it was almost instinctive in him to provide. 
 In the spring of 1835 he did not know how severely he was to 
 be punished for his caution. 
 
 Abraham was now busier than he had been at any previous 
 time. He had the small and scarcely exacting duties of his post- 
 mastership, his surveying, his need to read the papers carefully 
 in order to know what was going on in the state and what was 
 to be expected of him at the next session of the legislature, if 
 there should be one. He had the constant bother of the difficult 
 
42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 principles of law crying to be got into his capacious but none too 
 ready skull. By no means least, though he may not have realized 
 it, was the unaccustomed strain put upon every bit of him by 
 his increasing devotion to Ann Rutledge. A young man who has 
 held himself aloof from girls, who has even cultivated what he 
 supposed to be a positive and honest distaste for them, cannot 
 come off unscathed when he feels the hard bud of that distaste 
 melting and ripening into the unexpected flower of consent. 
 
 Abraham did not come off unscathed. His health suffered 
 and made the work he had to do seem almost too hard to bear. 
 And when Ann Rutledge fell ill of one of those malignant fev- 
 ers which oppress the dwellers in simplicity when muggy sum- 
 mers come upon them, it must have seemed to Lincoln that he 
 was being made the victim of some distinct and painful per- 
 secution. No one will ever know what moments of self-blame 
 and agony he had, thinking, perhaps, that Ann's illness must be 
 due to his importunities upon her unsettled heart. No one will 
 ever know how he may have thought that as his mother, whom 
 he had worshipped, was taken away from him just when he 
 had begun to fear a cabin without her in it, so was Ann Rutledge, 
 at the height of his need of her, being threatened. It looked a 
 little as if Abraham's love was fatal to its object. 
 
 In August Ann died, and for a time neither friends, nor law, 
 nor transit, nor postomce, could get any use out of him. Ab- 
 raham was beside himself. Some thought that he had gone mad, 
 some that he was just sick. Abraham kept to himself, and the 
 darknesses kept at him like knives. It was ambition that brought 
 him back, with the help of a little rest, and the sympathetic min- 
 istration of those few friends who came as near as anyone could 
 to understanding him. He spent two weeks in the cabin of Bow- 
 ling Green, whose wife tended him as if he had been a child. 
 
Rohe Qentleman from Sangamon County (Lincoln in 1848) 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 43 
 
 Mrs. Green's tender care made it in time possible for the call 
 of Abraham's eagerness to get on to be heard in him. Back to 
 the village he went, albeit sadly. And his sadness, made so much 
 more depressing by the difficulty of commanding the energy 
 required to do anything, wandered about among the cabins with 
 him, making many of his friends marvel at the change in him. 
 That comparatively few knew of his involvement with Ann must 
 have exposed him not a little to quips and questions that hurt 
 deeply. That even some members of Ann's family doubted the 
 girl's preference for him must have been the bitterest circum- 
 stance of all. No one could realize that Ann or no Ann, Abra- 
 ham's condition was the result of a crisis, physical if not spiritual, 
 just that sort of crisis which no one ever understands to be taking 
 place in a young man. 
 
 From this crisis Abraham must have learned something, but 
 whatever things he learned, a knowledge of what women meant 
 to him was not among them. One might have thought that after 
 this tragic incident, as the gigantic figure in its flat soft hat went 
 about wiping the hot dust of New Salem alleys from its cheeks, 
 it would have been resolving into definite arrangement the ele- 
 ments of the tragedy which had taken place. But Abraham could 
 not do that. He was still too insecure, too frightened, and not 
 quite square enough with himself. To everyone else in New 
 Salem he was "Honest" Abe, but to his own heart he was, like 
 many men, deceitful and shifty. And that lack of honesty with 
 himself was to put him through the hoops of another mildly 
 bitter experience in the course of the very next summer. 
 
 Meanwhile the months which followed the death of Ann Rut- 
 ledge and Abraham's collapse were passing by. There was little 
 in them to bring cheer to the young law-student. There was 
 nothing but the now unsweetened business of delivering and 
 
44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 receiving mail, reading people's newspapers before they called 
 for them at the office, surveying, holding the chain and staring 
 off across the fields, reading Blackstone, eating and sleeping at 
 Henry Onstott's tavern — the very tavern where he had first seen 
 Ann — trying to live up to his gladly earned reputation as a wit 
 and a master of repartee, talking with everyone and thinking that 
 there was no longer anything to find out. 
 
 This painful existence was terminated in December by a call 
 from Governor Duncan for an extra session of the Legislature. 
 Once more Abraham journeyed to Vandalia, perhaps never in 
 his life so glad of an excuse to move, so glad to have public things 
 intrude upon his private bewilderment. Perhaps there was a little 
 bitterness in his approach to the public threshold of the tumble- 
 down capitol at Vandalia. Abraham had many friends in Spring- 
 field, among whom was his political adviser, John Todd Stuart. 
 Major Stuart was bent upon getting the state capital removed 
 from Vandalia to Springfield in the interests of Sangamon 
 County, whose merchants and farmers and professional men 
 would greatly benefit by the change. It was easy to enlist Abra- 
 ham's support for this measure. 
 
 There was to be a presidential election in 1836, and the ques- 
 tion of a continuation of Andrew Jackson's policies would then 
 be put before the people. The people of Sangamon County had 
 now become thoroughly Whig, and would oppose the candi- 
 dacy of Martin Van Buren, but the Democrats were planning 
 to put resolutions through the House of Representatives which 
 should indicate the sentiments of the State of Illinois and thus 
 aid in the national campaign. These resolutions, together with 
 the Democratic idea of party conventions, which the Whigs, in 
 a rather unimaginative remembrance of General Washington's 
 opinion, regarded with loathing, and the business of planting 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 45 
 
 seeds which should sprout into a crop of votes in favor of the 
 removal of the capital to Springfield when the next General 
 Assembly came to vote on it, were sufficient to keep Abraham 
 Lincoln busy and to take his mind off his troubles and uncer- 
 tainties. 
 
 Abraham, now beginning to realize the power of party align- 
 ment as compared with the doubtful value of alignments due 
 to personal friendship, voted automatically for every Whig reso- 
 lution and against every Democratic motion which had the ear- 
 marks of party about it. The plaster of political adherence, which 
 had been poured into him by his friends and his Sangamon 
 County contacts, was beginning to harden. He and Stuart, very 
 shrewdly however, supported measures favorable to other coun- 
 ties whenever the bringing of such a measure to roll call gave 
 them an opportunity to show that it was their votes which had 
 helped. These were some of the seeds which should be asked 
 to contribute their grain when the voting on the removal of 
 the capital to the seat of Sangamon County was taken up. 
 
 Thus was Abraham learning to pull an oar in the political 
 boat. He saw how others manipulated the sweep and found no 
 difficulty in appropriating to himself the tricks and the wiles of 
 the experienced. 
 
 When the extra session of the General Assembly was ad- 
 journed in February, 1836, Abraham returned to New Salem in 
 a frame of mind much better than that in which he had left 
 it the previous December. He was beginning to feel like a man 
 of importance. Sangamon County was going Whig very rapidly, 
 so Lincoln's judgment in casting his lot with that party was 
 vindicated. Furthermore, it was going so strongly Whig that 
 in the 1836 election it would not matter that he had lost, by his 
 spoken attitude in the legislature, the Democratic support which 
 
46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the astute silences of his previous campaign had gained for him. 
 He was beginning to hold political opinions of his own. He had 
 become something of a leader out of the fullness of his original 
 willingness to be led. At least, when the election of 1836 came 
 around, he made the remarkable statement that, "I go for all 
 sharing the privileges of government who assist in bearing its 
 burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the 
 right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means 
 excluding females)." # 
 
 Abraham was elected, without a struggle, save for an en- 
 counter at secondhand with Colonel Robert Allen, who passed 
 through New Salem, remarking as he went that he knew facts 
 which if made public would make it impossible for either Lin- 
 coln or his fellow Whig, Ninian W. Edwards, to be elected by 
 the people of the county. Abraham immediately, on hearing of 
 this underhanded attack, came out with a public letter to the 
 Colonel, in which was manifest that straightforward squareness 
 which characterized most of his contacts with the public. Colonel 
 Allen made no answer and thus lost the point of his attack. 
 Lincoln received the largest number of votes of any county 
 candidate. In September he put in his application for a license 
 to practice law. 
 
 As Major John T. Stuart, the former Whig leader of the 
 House of Representatives, had not been a candidate for reelection, 
 being busy with an attempt to get himself sent to the National 
 Congress, Abraham now found himself in the position of floor 
 leader of the Whig party in the lower house of the General As- 
 sembly of Illinois. He had said in the course of a campaign talk, 
 "I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction as a politician." 
 Now, recovering from his emotional setback of the previous 
 
 * Works, Vol. I, p. 131. 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 47 
 
 summer, he was very much alive; subject, it is true, to more than 
 usually frequent spells of moodiness, but none the less full of 
 life and determination. And the election of 1836 brought him to 
 the threshold of place and distinction as a politician. But the out- 
 ward elation with which he was now filled was again to lead 
 him into difficulties. Difficulties which, because of the protecting 
 scar upon his earlier wound, were to hurt him less than the 
 earlier ones, but which were to humiliate him in a way calculated 
 to bring out the undeveloped and unhappy childhood in his 
 heart. 
 
 Mary Owens, the Kentucky belle, had returned to New Salem 
 to visit her sister Mrs. Abell. It might have been supposed that 
 Lincoln, having become acquainted with Ann Rutledge and 
 Mary Owens at about the same time and having shown more 
 interest in Ann, would have thought of the impressive and gen- 
 teel Miss Owens with some distaste after the other's death. But 
 the fact is that to the people of New Salem it appeared that Lin- 
 coln was now smitten with the idea of Mary Owens. Abraham 
 himself admitted that he had told Mrs. Abell that 2 she would 
 get her sister back to New Salem he would marry her. Ann 
 Rutledge was not long in her grave, and there were tongues ready 
 to wag, even in deprecation of the conduct of so true a local 
 hero as Abraham. Abraham was certainly caught up in the 
 meshes of a definite interest in the stately Kentucky girl. Twice 
 he asked her to marry him and twice she put him off. Mary 
 was no fool, and she had seen this lanky suitor very intimately 
 during the summer of 1836. She found that he was, as she 
 phrased it, "deficient in those little links which make up the 
 chain of woman's happiness." She believed in the cult of polish 
 and refinement. Abraham knew nothing of either, however 
 golden might be his heart. 
 
48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 When the Legislature convened at Vandalia in December, 
 Lincoln had to leave New Salem with the sting of his lady's 
 repeated rejection of him clinging like a burr to the otherwise 
 fair surface of his prospects. He must have realized that an in- 
 ability to be convincing in his proposals, due to the fact that 
 although enamored of Miss Owens he was also afraid of giving 
 over his life to a woman, would be bound to leave him as it had 
 left him, an ardent friend, but a rejected suitor. And it was one 
 thing to feel cautious when that noticeable young woman was 
 in the same village, within easy reach of him, but in the woman- 
 less atmosphere of the Vandalia State House, calm reason was 
 a horse of another color. If he had hoped that his absence would 
 stimulate Mary to more interest in him he was disappointed. She 
 did not even write. 
 
 For a week Abraham indulged himself in the protective self- 
 pity due a man who does not feel very well. Then he had to do 
 something. He wrote: 
 
 Vandalia, December 13, 1836. 
 
 Mary: — I have been sick ever since my arrival, or I should have 
 written sooner. It is but little difference, however, as I have very little 
 even yet to write. . . . And more, the longer I can avoid the morti- 
 fication of looking in the post office for your letter and not finding it, 
 the better. You see I am mad about that old letter yet. I'll try you 
 once more, anyhow. 
 
 The new State House is not yet finished, and consequently the 
 legislature is doing little or nothing. The governor delivered an in- 
 flammatory political message, and it is expected there will be some 
 sparring between the parties about it, as soon as the two houses get 
 to business. . . . 
 
 Our chance to take the seat of government to Springfield is better 
 than I expected. An internal-improvement convention was held here 
 
THE TENDED TREE BEARS FRUIT 49 
 
 since we met, which recommended a loan of several millions of dollars, 
 on the faith of the state, to construct railroads. Some of the legislature 
 are for it, and some against it; which has the majority I cannot tell. 
 There is great strife and struggling for the office of United States 
 Senator here at this time. It is probable we shall ease the pains in a 
 few days. The opposition men have no candidate of their own, and 
 consequently they will smile as complacently at the angry snarl of 
 the contending Van Buren candidates and their respective friends as 
 the Christian does at Satan's rage. You recollect that I mentioned 
 at the outset of this letter that I had been unwell. That is the fact, 
 though I believe I am about well now; but that, with other things 
 I cannot account for, have conspired, and have gotten my spirits so 
 low that I feel I would rather be any place in the world than here. 
 I really cannot endure the thought of staying here ten weeks. Write 
 back as soon as you get this, and, if possible, say something that will 
 please me, for I really have not been pleased since I left you. This 
 letter is so dry and stupid that I am ashamed to send it, but with my 
 present feelings I cannot do any better. 
 
 Give my best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Able and family. 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 Lincoln.* 
 
 That was not exactly a letter to precipitate a woman's doubt- 
 ing mind. It did not change the situation between Abraham and 
 Mary Owens. But the Legislature was soon able to get down to 
 business in earnest and to involve Abraham's troubled mind to 
 a point which could, at least temporarily, exclude the thought 
 of women. 
 
 # Works, Vol. I, p. 133. 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 
 
 A THOUSAND miles from Vandalia, in a flourishing if 
 crowded and unattractive city of the Atlantic seaboard, 
 serious events were brewing. The merchants of New York, find- 
 ing themselves upon a receding wave of illusory prosperity, had 
 begun to see a different kind of breaker ahead. The year 1836 
 had been of a deceiving glitter to the financial world. Everywhere 
 in the nation, this mirage had spread. The Federal Government, 
 having made the naive mistake of paying off its national debt, 
 even felt so expansive that it began to divide up the surplus rev- 
 enue from the sale of public lands and to return it proportionately 
 to the states, a thing which in the previous year Abraham Lin- 
 coln had hoped to see come about. The Treasury Department 
 gleefully persuaded itself that nothing could prevent an annual 
 surplus of many millions of dollars, but the last installment due 
 the states was never paid. These were drops in the wave upon 
 which the merchants and financiers of the country had chosen 
 to ride. 
 
 Everywhere in the nation this amazing overconfidence was 
 as much in evidence as the exuberant breath of whisky was among 
 the gentlemen at die Illinois capital. Nor were the members of 
 the General Assembly of Illinois, free from the more abstract 
 stimulant. At Vandalia, measures were introduced, and passed 
 providing for the borrowing of millions of dollars on the state's 
 credit, for the undertaking of railroads, canals and other internal 
 
 50 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 51 
 
 improvements all on the grandest imaginable scale, with scarcely 
 a trace of orderly plan. In order to secure the votes of counties 
 whose natural features would exclude them from the benefit of 
 the millennial schemes propounded, it was agreed to pay into 
 the treasuries of those counties two hundred thousand dollars 
 each, in cash. Cash ! Why, said the ardent legislators, hiccoughing 
 into their handkerchiefs or coming in from the nearest bar, the 
 bankers of Europe and America will fall over one another in 
 their eagerness to lend the golden state of Illinois money which 
 everyone must be certain will pay at least ten per cent. Men in 
 the lobby with their glasses in their hands could prove that the 
 state could afford to borrow a hundred thousand dollars for 
 internal improvements and never notice it at all. Those mild, 
 if careful, members of the Vandalia madhouse who objected 
 that for a state whose citizens could not for the most part even 
 support their families it was a little indelicate to suggest the mak- 
 ing of waterways where even "nature had never attempted it," 
 were shouted down immediately. Nothing could stop the onrush 
 now. The Illinois Internal Improvement Act was passed, saddling 
 upon the state a burden of debt and disgrace from which it took 
 many years to recover. Abraham Lincoln's vote had helped to 
 pass it, though it would have passed even if he had voted "no." 
 And in New York City, frantic business men worked late 
 behind their oil lamps and candles, in the little gabled brick 
 offices of the lower city. They were trying to figure out that 
 the crash which had begun to seem inevitable, might, like the 
 prosperity of the year before, be merely a mirage. The drays 
 rattled on the cobbles outside their windows, the masts and spars 
 of ships loading and unloading made a fine tracery against the 
 sky at the end of every island street. Warehouses were piled high 
 with goods. But in the books, it was written what the element of 
 
52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 time could do. All this potential wealth could not liquidate itself 
 rapidly enough. The value of goods in warehouses shrank like 
 Alice after eating the cake. The momentum of expansion had 
 been too great, and the machine of commerce had not kept pace 
 with it. Right and left the blows fell. Merchants in the metropolis 
 failed for more than a hundred million dollars in a few weeks. 
 The contagion of panic spread throughout the country. The 
 banks began to suspend specie payment, the government, which 
 in the previous year had issued an order insisting that federal 
 revenues from the sale of public lands be paid only in specie, 
 found now that it had no revenues to collect, there being no 
 specie at large. And the national treasury was as empty as 
 Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Several states even went so far as 
 to repudiate their financial obligations, thus still further weaken- 
 ing the all but defunct public credit. 
 
 But in Vandalia, with bonfires and whisky and champagne 
 and glasses clattering against walls and ceilings, and brilliant 
 encomiums issuing from the majority of mouths, the panic was 
 as yet unnoticed. The Internal Improvement Act was passed. 
 There were grave protests, from many of Lincoln's friends, in 
 fact; men who saw the trouble that was in store, but even the 
 governor's veto could do nothing, such was the intricate play of 
 bargain and advantage among the greedy citizens of Illinois. 
 
 It was at this time that the question of slavery thrust itself 
 into unavoidable notice for the first time since Abraham Lin- 
 coln had entered public life. William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, 
 small as its circulation was, had aroused considerable storm both 
 North and South. Abolitionists were making trouble in many 
 places, though in small numbers, aided by a wholesale propa- 
 ganda of pamphlets and pictures. The southern states saw danger 
 to the union if such things were allowed to go on. They would 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 53 
 
 not answer for the results of the wrath which might be aroused 
 by the fanatics of the North. Feeling that something should be 
 done about it, the South passed resolutions and forwarded them 
 to the states of the North, where they were received with almost 
 universal sympathy. Indeed the majority of northern states trans- 
 mitted messages of good will in reply. The Governor of Illinois 
 placed before his legislature such of these resolutions as had come 
 to his notice. 
 
 In this form, therefore, was brought before the young Whig 
 floorleader a compendium of national opinion on the subject 
 of slavery and the rising agitation against it. Abraham must have 
 studied these resolutions, presenting as they did all points of 
 view from mere slick side-stepping to outspoken sympathy with 
 the trials of the states whose social system was based upon the 
 institution of slavery. He must have seen that not from any state 
 in the union had there come or was there likely to come at that 
 time, any statement of support for the violence and fanaticism of 
 the abolitionist. When the state of Illinois passed resolutions 
 condemning abolitionists and national interference with state 
 rights, in its General Assembly, under Abraham's very nose, he 
 must have known what he thought. 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln in January, 1837, was busy with some- 
 thing else. Under the watchful eye of the lobbying John T. 
 Stuart, as crafty a politician as you could have found in the 
 West, he was arranging his strings and his puppets for the play 
 which at that time meant everything to him. He had apparently 
 determined to identify himself with the future of the Whig city 
 of Springfield, and his one concern during this session was to 
 see that the Democratic Legislature was induced to vote for the 
 location of the new state capital in that Whig stronghold. That 
 was no mean task, and the fact that Abraham managed it sue- 
 
54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cessfully, in spite of powerful and aggressive influences from 
 other cities, well illustrates how much he had learned of the 
 tricks of parliamentary and unparliamentary manipulation in 
 the course of his brief experience as a law-maker. 
 
 So deeply concerned was Lincoln with this one issue, that 
 during the entire first session of the Tenth General Assembly, 
 every vote he made on every motion or resolution had a bear- 
 ing on the result of the final vote on the location of the state 
 capital. He took no part in the debate on the Internal Improve- 
 ment Bill, although he voted for it, and for many side issues 
 calculated to make other counties indebted to him for his vote. 
 He said nothing in opposition to the Democratic resolutions sup- 
 porting the Jackson Administration although he voted against 
 them. He said nothing in opposition to the House's resolutions 
 of sympathy with the South which declared that abolition soci- 
 eties were a menace, that the Constitution of the United States 
 guaranteed to the southern states the right to hold slaves, that 
 these states could not be deprived of that right without their 
 consent, and that the Federal Government could not, without 
 breach of faith, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia with- 
 out the consent of its citizens. Abraham said nothing at this time, 
 although he was one of six of the eighty-three voting members of 
 the General Assembly to vote against their adoption. Until the 
 capital of Illinois had been safely determined by vote of that same 
 Assembly, he was not going to say anything to stir up a distract- 
 ing fight. 
 
 Abraham, with his eye always upon the favors of Springfield, 
 his future home, did rise once, when the State Bank at Spring- 
 field was the subject of attack. His friends were closely connected 
 with the bank, and he could not allow any reflection upon it or 
 upon Springfield to go unchallenged. And in the course of the 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 55 
 
 sarcastic speech which he made on this occasion Abraham took 
 pains to mention by name and to flatter with honorable sug- 
 gestion, the officers of the Springfield Bank and the twenty-four 
 leading men of the state who had had charge of the apportion- 
 ment of the bank's stock. In this manner did the former strong 
 boy of New Salem, pave the way for his career as a lawyer in 
 the rising city of Springfield. 
 
 Late in February, almost at the close of the legislative session, 
 Abraham's tender offices on behalf of Springfield bore fruit. 
 The terrible waste of bargaining which had been indulged in 
 had thrown the balance on the young Whig leader's side, and 
 the voting went his way. Springfield was to be the new capital. 
 A few days later, Abraham's, business having been triumphantly 
 concluded, and there being nothing now to prevent the con- 
 sideration of other matters, he and Dan Stone, a fellow repre- 
 sentative from the County of Sangamon, in which Springfield 
 was located, presented to the House of Representatives of the 
 State of Illinois, the following protest against the resolutions of 
 sympathy with the slave-holding states which had been adopted 
 by the General Assembly six weeks before, with neither Stone 
 nor Lincoln doing more than voting "nay." 
 
 March 3, 1837. 
 
 Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed 
 both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the under- 
 signed hereby protest against the passage of the same. 
 
 They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both 
 injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doc- 
 trines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils. 
 
 They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power 
 under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in 
 the different States. 
 
56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power 
 under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, 
 but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request 
 of the people of the district. 
 
 The difference between these opinions and those contained in the 
 said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest. 
 
 Dan Stone 
 A. Lincoln. 
 Representatives from the County of Sangamon.* 
 
 Whatever the differences which Abraham and his colleague 
 had in mind and which seemed to them sufficient to warrant the 
 making of this protest six weeks after the resolutions against 
 which it protested, to the impartial observer at this late day they 
 seem extremely slight. The original resolutions stated that the 
 Constitution guaranteed slavery to the slave states, whereas Ab- 
 raham and Daniel did not affirm anything quite so definite, and 
 the protest of the gentlemen from Sangamon did style the insti- 
 tution of slavery an injustice and a bad policy, although qualify- 
 ing that designation by stating that advocacy of the abolition 
 of slavery was worse. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Lin- 
 coln and Stone presented this protest merely in fulfillment of 
 some political promise, possibly connected with the securing of 
 votes in favor of making Springfield the capital. It is not prob- 
 able, however, that Lincoln would have signed a protest calling 
 slavery an injustice unless he had believed it to be so. And al- 
 though there must have been many other members of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly who would have agreed with him, there were 
 none, other than his Sangamon colleague, who could be induced 
 to say so publicly. Lincoln did say so, although he waited until 
 
 * Works, Vol. I, p. 161. 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 57 
 
 he got his pet scheme safely through the mill before committing 
 himself. 
 
 On the 6th of March, 1827, having done its worst, the youth- 
 ful General Assembly of Illinois, adjourned the most important 
 session through which it had passed up to that time. The various 
 members made their last rounds of the bars and dining rooms, 
 closed up their bags, and to the infinite chagrin of the town, 
 quitted Vandalia until the next session. For most of them it must 
 have been a noticeable letdown, after the violent and rhapsodic 
 excitement of their three months' frenzy. For Vandalia it was 
 little less than a tragedy, for that unattractive town had done 
 much to make the legislators happy. A few more perfunctory 
 sessions and they would know it no more. The town's prestige 
 was to be transferred to a rival. Vandalia had indulged in a cam- 
 paign of internal improvement of its own, chiefly consisting in 
 the importation of many of the advantages of culture and lux- 
 ury, fine wines, new books for the members of the assembly, 
 music teachers, and private tutors for their children. These dis- 
 tinctions could not prevail against the Springfield lobby. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, with a license to practise law before the 
 bar of Illinois, just granted him by the State Supreme Court, 
 returned to New Salem, and to the friends who had raised him 
 from the station of a poor and untried youth to that of a prom- 
 ising and much talked of legislator. He had now made the first 
 notable success of his life, but it was a success whose value could 
 only be judged in terms of the future. It had not made over Ab- 
 raham's immediate life. He was still up to his ears in a flood of 
 indebtedness which was growing larger rather than smaller. He 
 had no money in his pocket and no prospect of any. And there 
 was his intention to move to Springfield, which must be justified 
 in the eyes of those friends of New Salem who in helping him 
 
58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 had been pleased to think that they were helping their village, 
 and there was Mary Owens, that powerful and compelling lady 
 whom he was not sure whether to regard as asset or liability. 
 
 Abraham found it possible, in his wanderings about the town 
 during the cold and blustery days, and the damp thawing days of 
 early March, to accumulate a horse and a pair of saddlebags, 
 a great deal of friendly confidence, but no money. And he was 
 not able to come to any definite agreement with the troubling 
 Mary Owens, who kept putting him off, feeling unconvinced of 
 the depth of her affectionate feeling for him. She was afraid that 
 he cared more for her than she for him and, although their 
 natures were by no means incompatible, Mary had her doubts 
 of the fun there would be in living with a man with no manners, 
 no polish, none of those little tender apprehensions which a wo- 
 man may reasonably expect even from a man of six-feet-four. 
 
 Without any definite acceptance of his suggestion of mar- 
 riage and with a refusal of it which he could not be certain was 
 not a joke the impecunious Abraham set off on his borrowed 
 horse for Springfield, there to make his permanent home and 
 to begin his career as a lawyer in partnership with the well- 
 known politico-legal Macchiavelli of the Sangamon, John Todd 
 Stuart, the handsomest man in Illinois. 
 
 Late in March, 1837, Joshua Speed, a good-looking and in- 
 telligent young merchant of the frontier, was standing in his 
 general store at Springfield. Stooping through the door came an 
 outrageously tall and gaunt-looking man of twenty-eight, upon 
 whose sloping forehead was set a wide-brimmed felt hat. Over 
 his arm the stranger carried a pair of saddlebags. His trousers 
 and coat were spattered with mud. His face wore a look of 
 trouble and bewilderment. It seemed to Speed that he had never 
 seen so sad a man. But there was something in the traveler's 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 59 
 
 manner that appealed to the storekeeper. It was a fortunate visit 
 for Abraham Lincoln, whose greatest worry at the moment was 
 based upon the lack of quilts and bedding for the bedstead which 
 he had just contracted for with the town's cabinetmaker, and 
 without which he would have no place to lay his head. He asked 
 the storekeeper what the stuff would cost. 
 
 Speed was so surprised to see the look of dejection increase 
 in Lincoln's face at the quotation of seventeen dollars, that he 
 began to figure out ways of helping the stranger. That was 
 Abraham Lincoln's quality. Merely to meet him was to want 
 to help him. That was one of the secrets of his command. He 
 was frank, he was abject, his face was unhappily tragic. When he 
 mentioned the fact that, although he was a duly elected member 
 of the General Assembly of Illinois, he had not the money to pay 
 for his bedding, the hearer wanted to make it easy for him. Ab- 
 raham's ungainly wistfulness seemed, without voice, to demand 
 consideration. He was like a child on a journey, marked for 
 the protection of all men. 
 
 Upstairs above his store Joshua Speed had a large room with 
 a large double bed in it, and plenty of covers on the bed. With- 
 out hesitation he offered Abraham a half share in the whole. 
 Abraham looked about the store, at the counters piled with 
 goods, at the great friendly fireplace in the rear. He took his 
 saddlebags and walked upstairs, deposited the bags on the floor 
 and came down again. 
 
 "Well, Speed, I'm moved," he said, and the melancholy was 
 gone from his face. The disarming friendliness of a boundless 
 relief spread itself in a smile upon his countenance. In the half- 
 comic intimacy of that double bed upstairs, Abraham and Joshua 
 were to learn the farther side of friendship together. And in 
 the half-tragic bustle of little Springfield, whose interests Lin- 
 
60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 coin had served, but whose heart was not immediately open in 
 return, the New Salem lawyer was to learn for a time the quality 
 of loneliness. There was John Stuart, his partner to be, ever 
 busy with his political affairs, and there was William Butler, 
 whose attention had been attracted by Lincoln's political activity. 
 And there were merchants, men with money, families of the 
 inner circle of Springfield's curious social life, who had heard 
 of the young politician and were grateful for what he had done 
 to help their town. But few of them made any attempt to ap- 
 proach his person. William Butler gave him board at his table 
 and said nothing very serious about repayment. Stuart gave his 
 junior partner all the work of the small office to attend to. This 
 work consisted chiefly in sitting in a rickety chair covered with 
 a buffalo robe, attending to an almost negligible correspondence, 
 the making of occasional legal papers and the few necessary 
 entries in the firm's books. In between the widely separated de- 
 mands of these tasks was plenty of time to use the same chair 
 and the same buffalo robe for study of the dull but necessary 
 principles of the law. In the meantime, Stuart himself chased 
 about the state after Stephen A. Douglas, trying, and in the 
 end successfully, to get himself elected to Congress over the 
 amazingly powerful little man whom Lincoln was later to 
 encounter. 
 
 Several times Abraham tried to write a letter to Mary Owens, 
 leaning like a schoolboy on the frail table which served the 
 office for a desk. But he was uncertain of his attitude and for 
 six weeks did not succeed. In May he managed to write: 
 
 . . . This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business, 
 after all; at least it is so to me. I am quite as lonesome here as I ever 
 was anywhere in my life. I have been spoken to by but one woman 
 since I have been here, and should not have been by her if she could 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 61 
 
 have avoided it. I've never been to church yet, and probably shall not 
 be soon. I stay away because I am conscious I should not know how to 
 behave myself. 
 
 I am often thinking of what we said about your coming to live at 
 Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There is a great 
 deal of flourishing about in carriages here which it would be your 
 doom to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor without 
 the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that 
 patiently? Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any 
 ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy 
 and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make 
 me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much 
 happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of dis- 
 content in you. What you have said to me may have been in the way 
 of jest, or I may have misunderstood you. If so, then let it be for- 
 gotten; if otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously before 
 you decide. What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided 
 that you wish it. My opinion is that you had better not do it. You have 
 not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more severe than you 
 now imagine. I know you are capable of thinking correctly on any 
 subject, and if you deliberate maturely upon this subject before you 
 decide, then I am willing to abide your decision. 
 
 You must write me a good long letter after you get this. You have 
 nothing else to do, and though it might not. seem interesting to you 
 after you had written it, it would be a good deal of company to me in 
 this "busy wilderness." Tell your sister I don't want to hear any more 
 about selling out and moving. That gives me the "hypo" whenever I 
 think of it. Yours, etc. Lincoln.* 
 
 The streets of Springfield through which Abraham walked 
 to mail this defensive and pleading letter, were, like those of 
 Vandalia, wide and unpaved. There were no sidewalks, only 
 here and there a few loose planks laid down to bridge dangerous 
 expanses impassable without damage because of either mud 
 
 ♦Works, Vol. I, p. 162. 
 
62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 or dust, according to the season. The usual scavengering hogs 
 rooted in the alleys and about the public square. It was a dismal 
 prospect for a lonely young man to contemplate. Things would 
 not be so bad, once the Legislature convened and Abraham went 
 back to Vandalia to fight against a repeal of the state capital 
 law, a thing which the representatives of other counties were 
 sure to attempt. It was still hard for this, the most popular Whig 
 in Sangamon County, to feel like anything but a failure when 
 he was not having direct contact with his fellow beings. 
 
 Women did not appear to be troubled when he passed them 
 in the street, however much his own internal arrangements were 
 stimulated by the passage. The clothes which he wore had 
 long since ceased to be new and there was little of the dashing 
 cavalier about their wearer. Human beings dig for their gold 
 only in the most prepossessing spots, so great is their fear of 
 being humiliated by having dug in vain. And Abraham Lin- 
 coln, at twenty-eight, was not one of those spots. To the timid, 
 his great receding brow and coarse black hair crowning a face 
 that suggested sorrow, was a terrifying thing. To the timid 
 even among pioneers sorrow suggested God and God sug- 
 gested hell fire. So the timid passed Abraham Lincoln by. The 
 bold saw only the massive and uncouth ruggedness of his giant 
 frame, and defended themselves against it by thinking it funny. 
 The heart within that frame was stung by avoidance and 
 mockery. It could not bear to be esteemed what it was not, and 
 it was not funny. It was grimly determined to be successful and 
 suave. 
 
 Evenings by the fireplace, at the back of Speed's store, it 
 was possible for Abraham to show what he was. Give him a 
 chance to open his mouth to men and they would know him. 
 They would forget his clothes, his figure, and they would not 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 63 
 
 have to forget the horrible daunting melancholy of his look, 
 for it would be gone. The beam of an assurance, taken by 
 assault, from the faces of listeners, could blot it out. Talk, which 
 came to Abraham as easily and as voluminously as water to fish, 
 seemed to carry him beyond himself. His wit and the appetizing 
 depth of his interpretation of the commonness of human life, 
 made him a very real figure to the group of lawyers and less- 
 sanctioned disputers who gathered with Lincoln and Speed 
 around the fire. But these qualities of his personality brought him 
 little discipline, and though they let men see him at his best, 
 they excited him to new ideas and enterprises in which his 
 ignorance often acted as a clog upon the driving force of the 
 ambition which incited him. A controversy in which the pathet- 
 ically eager young man appears not at his best occupied him 
 during most of that summer of his first year in Springfield. 
 
 The law business took him occasionally to other towns on 
 the Judicial Circuit, a special session of the Legislature in July 
 took him to Vandalia, # and a visit to New Salem thereafter 
 took him to the ample and troubling Mary Owens. From all 
 of these things he returned to the remarkable and unpromising 
 business of mud-slinging. Like water which has not had time 
 to find a tranquil level after being poured into its tank, the 
 nation was slopping back and forth, troubled by its own fluid 
 tendencies as well as by the irresistible gravity of economic con- 
 solidation. The financial panic which was sweeping the whole 
 world was particularly troublesome in the western states, many 
 of which had, by repudiating their obligations, lost the power 
 of borrowing money cheaply and had in consequence been thrust 
 into the open arms of those private capitalists with money to 
 
 * The capital had not yet been moved to Springfield in conformity with the recent 
 act of the Legislature. 
 
64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 lend at high rates. The beneficent socialized state which the 
 founding fathers had envisaged had failed to materialize. In- 
 stead it had been sandbagged during the struggle for and against 
 the National Bank. It had lain down never to rise again, while 
 private enterprise walked off with its clothes, ever after to go 
 about in them unsuspected. The nation had begun to reap the 
 results of the bargaining which it had indulged in during the 
 Constitutional Convention of 1787, the South having the flower 
 of the slave system which it had been awarded, the North the 
 golden bough of the tree of commerce, for whose nourishment 
 it had been willing to suffer slavery in those states that wanted 
 it. And that golden bough was growing like Jack's beanstalk, 
 making a thick prison ceiling above the heads of those young 
 men and women who had undertaken factory work as some- 
 thing of an economic lark preliminary to the actual business of 
 life. These young people, who had believed themselves free 
 began to see the tangle closing in above them and to realize 
 for the first time that there was no escape, that they were fac- 
 tory workers for good and all. All his life Abraham Lincoln 
 refused to believe that such a situation existed. 
 
 These workers did not see clearly what it was that had 
 brought about the change in their status. They did not see the 
 dragon corporation materializing above the branches like the 
 Cheshire cat. They did not see how everyone must bow down 
 to that dragon and offer it the inch which it should stretch out 
 into a mile of privilege. They did not see, nor did the western 
 prairie lawyer, with an eye to internal improvements, see, how 
 he too must feed the beast. Instead, he wandered about Spring- 
 field, or bent over law books in his little office at No. 4 Hoff- 
 man's Row, or else he hung about the office of Simeon Francis, 
 editor of the Sangamo Journal, the fiercely partisan organ of 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 65 
 
 the local Whigs. Abraham Lincoln, who saw, better than he 
 saw the state of life in the nation, what his own prospects re- 
 quired, saw that he must keep in the public eye. It was not 
 hard for him to make the admiring Mr. Francis more than 
 willing for him to get his personal publicity through the use 
 of the columns of the Sangamo Journal. Even before moving 
 to Springfield, Abraham had managed to cast the spell of his 
 personality over those columns and their editor. Now that the 
 promising young man had become a notable politician and 
 a partner of the big chief of all the Illinois Whigs, John T. 
 Stuart, Francis was willing to give his young friend some share 
 in the control of the paper's policies. 
 
 At this time a matter had come up which made Abraham 
 very anxious to have a public vehicle of expression. It was a 
 matter of striking a bushful of birds with the same stone, for it 
 was a matter of exposing a mean scoundrel, of advancing the 
 interests of his party, of indulging his taste for satirical invective, 
 and last but not least of keeping himself in the limelight. With 
 these things in mind he was quick to take advantage of Editor 
 Francis's expansive state of mind. 
 
 In the columns of the Sangamo Journal * he now launched a 
 voluminous and violent attack upon General James Adams, a 
 Springfield lawyer who appeared to be in fraudulent possession 
 of some land belonging to the widow of a former client. At the 
 same time, General Adams, whose personal popularity in the 
 county was very great, was running on the Democratic ticket 
 for judge of the probate court. Lincoln, being no longer on 
 the fence but a leader among the Whigs, did not need to think 
 twice to know that General Adams should not be elected. Fur- 
 thermore, although he never succeeded in convincing either the 
 
 * Sangamo Journal. June & July 1837, v. d. 
 
66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 public or the courts of law, Abraham convinced himself that 
 Adams had forged an assignment to himself of a judgment 
 against the widow's land. 
 
 Lincoln and Stuart, together with two other Whig attorneys, 
 set out to finish the General. They filed suit against him, as 
 representatives of the heirs of Joseph Anderson, deceased, the 
 former owner of General Adams' disputed land. The suit never 
 came to anything in the courts, but the echoes of it in the public 
 press reached all over the state, quite as the Whig defenders of 
 widows and orphans had supposed it would. But they had not 
 reckoned upon General Adams's personal following at the polls. 
 In spite of the malicious, though probably justified, campaign 
 which the Whigs carried on against him, the General polled an 
 unprecedented vote. The venomous attack, which had been 
 waged in the columns of the San gam o Journal in the form of 
 anonymous letters, was now continued over Abraham's signature. 
 When, in 1865, Lincoln closed his Second Inaugural Address 
 with the words, "with malice toward none, with charity for 
 all . . . " if he thought of the day thirty years before when he 
 had been laying about him with malicious and uncharitable 
 words, calling General Adams a forger, a traitor to his country, 
 a despoiler of widows and orphans, he must have smiled to 
 himself to understand how far he had gone upon the road of 
 humility and self-possession. 
 
 In 1837, however, Abraham was so busy with his vitriol that 
 he had little time to think of anything else. Certainly it kept 
 the rancorous uncertainties of his relations with Mary Owens 
 temporarily out of his heart. When he did think of Mary it 
 was to write her that he thought it would be a good plan if 
 she were to call off the whole thing, engagement or whatever it 
 was. He himself would, if she wished, go through with it, but 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 67 
 
 he felt that she would be better off not to wish it. He did not 
 desire to take the initiative either in calling the engagement on 
 or off. 
 
 "Do not understand by this," he wrote, "that I wish to cut 
 your acquaintance. I mean no such thing. . . . What I do wish is 
 that our further acquaintance shall depend upon yourself. . . . " * 
 
 If Mary had needed confirmation of her suspicions that Ab- 
 raham would not be much help as a husband, there, she must 
 have thought, it was, plain as day. Their relationship from that 
 time on did depend upon Mary, and Mary saw to it that it ceased, 
 rather to Abraham's chagrin. He had pictured himself as a 
 noble fellow, releasing from an unwilling heart a rather fright- 
 ened girl. Now he was undeceived by Mary's attitude of uncon- 
 cerned finality. He took out his annoyance by writing, flippantly, 
 the history of the affair to the wife of a friend in the hope that 
 the smart and rather unmanly things he said might convince 
 him that he was unaffected by the situation. 
 
 This is what he wrote of the woman who had been to him, 
 for more than a year, alternate desire and despair: 
 
 ... It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my 
 acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to pay 
 a visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed 
 to me that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with her on 
 condition that I would engage to become her brother-in-law with all 
 convenient despatch. I of course, accepted the proposal, for you know 
 I could not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but 
 privately, between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased 
 with the project. . . . Time passed on; the lady took her journey and 
 in due time returned, sister in company, sure enough. This astonished 
 me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily showed 
 
 ♦Works, Vol. I, p. 165. 
 
68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that she was a trifle too willing. ... In a few days we had an inter- 
 view, and, although I had seen her before she did not look as my 
 imagination had pictured her. I knew she was oversize, but she now 
 appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an "old 
 maid," and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appel- 
 lation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid 
 thinking of my mother ; # and this, not from withered features, — for 
 her skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles, — 
 but from her want of teeth, and from a kind of notion that ran in 
 my head that nothing could have commenced at infancy and reached 
 her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years; and in short, 
 I was not at all pleased with her. But what could I do? I had told 
 her sister that I would take her for better or for worse, and I made 
 a point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to my word, 
 especially if others had been induced to act on it, which in this case 
 I had no doubt they had, for I was now fairly convinced that no 
 other man would have her, and hence the conclusion that they were 
 bent on holding me to my bargain. ... 
 
 After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, here 
 I am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely, out of the "scrape"; and now 
 I want to know if you can guess how I got out of it — out, clear, in 
 every sense of the term; no violation of word, honor, or conscience. 
 . . . After I had delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in 
 honor do (which by the way, had brought me round into the last 
 fall), I concluded I might as well bring it to a consummation without 
 further delay; and so I mustered my resolution, and made the proposal 
 to her direct; but shocking to relate, she answered, No. At first I sup- 
 posed she did it through an affectation of modesty, which I thought 
 ill became her under the peculiar circumstances of the case; but on my 
 renewal of the charge, I found she repelled it with greater firmness 
 than before. I tried it again and again, but with the same success, or 
 rather with the same want of success. 
 
 * Abraham undoubtedly was not referring to Nancy Hanks Lincoln, but to his 
 stepmother. 
 
A JUGGLER HAS HIS HANDS FULL 69 
 
 I finally was forced to give it up; at which I found myself mortified 
 almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hun- 
 dred different ways. ... I then for the first time began to suspect that 
 I was really a little in love with her. But let it all go. I'll try and out- 
 live it. Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never 
 with truth be said of me. . . .* 
 
 ♦Works, Vol. I, p. 189 ff. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 
 
 SIXTY miles from Springfield on the banks of the Mississippi, 
 lay the city of Alton, Illinois. It had been one of the unsuc- 
 sessful candidates for the location of the new state capital and 
 was, in 1837, the wealthiest and most important city in the state. 
 Being on the great artery of North and South travel, and de- 
 pending for its commercial importance on the maintenance of 
 trade with the South, it was, in sentiment, strongly opposed to 
 any discussion of the abolition of slavery, as indeed were most 
 Illinois cities, though with less reason. 
 
 To this busy town, with his printing press and his type, had 
 come Elijah Lovejoy, a preacher from the Calvinistic preserves 
 of Massachusetts, ready to do a little poaching in the less austere 
 regions of the frontier. In November, 1837, Mr. Lovejoy was 
 busy, with all the ineptitude of the bombastic reformer, editing 
 a paper called the Observer, a paper devoted to the interests of 
 "righteousness." Righteousness was the Reverend Lovejoy's strong 
 point. He would have the nation righteous if he had to commit 
 crime to make it so. Like William Lloyd Garrison of the Liber- 
 ator, this reformer was one of those who have no eye for ob- 
 stacles. Both men acted upon a passionate but distressing prin- 
 ciple, the principle of implacable hostility. If the foundation of 
 your house turned out to be of base stuff, why, tear it out 
 without committing the venial sin of first removing the house 
 above it to a place of safety. That was their principle. 
 
 70 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 71 
 
 Love joy had not originally been outspoken in favor of aboli- 
 tion but he soon became so. He began to feel bricks falling about 
 his head as a result of his tugging at the underpinning, and he 
 immediately began flinging back the bricks into the air as fast 
 as they fell. When the local citizenry asked him please not to 
 speak against slavery and slaveholders in quite such violent 
 terms, he became inflamed and talked more loudly than before. 
 Mr. Love joy went wildly on his way, stung by his passionate be- 
 lief in the wrong of slavery and without the slightest sense of 
 the economic conditions which slavery represented, and which, 
 rather than the bestiality of slaveholders, served to perpetuate the 
 institution. In glowing terms he insulted the entire South of 
 which he knew nothing, except by hearsay. He vilified all 
 Catholics, although he knew as little of them as he did of 
 Southerners. He glorified in the righteousness which his own 
 views sustained. The citizens of several towns through which 
 he had passed made it wise for him to move on. Sometimes they 
 threw his press into the river, but he always found another. It 
 was high comedy, for a time; but it was comedy that had little 
 of the comic about it. And Mr. Love joy, always writing new 
 matter into his part, ended by acting in a tragedy. For he could 
 not continue with impunity. 
 
 On the night of November 7, 1837, a gathering of the citi- 
 zens of Alton, conscious of their wealth, their success, their 
 moral standing, exasperated by the editor's incendiary obstinacy 
 and frightened by his messianic mask, for the last time threw 
 his printing press into the Mississippi. It was the end of Love- 
 joy. In an attempt to defend his property against the mob 
 he fired into it. The mob, only too glad of an excuse, returned his 
 fire and dropped him where he stood. The emotional fool, driven 
 by a righteous impulse, became, in that moment, a cry of mar- 
 
72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tyr in the mouths of wiser and more compelling men, a cry that 
 brought the ill-chosen activity of the abolitionists more power 
 than it had ever had before. 
 
 While this tragedy was being enacted at Alton, Abraham 
 Lincoln was busy in Springfield with his vitriol, taking a last 
 fling at the crooked but unabashed General Adams. Abraham 
 had lost Mary Owens. The professions of loneliness and sadness 
 which he had made to her fell back upon him unrequited and 
 filled with their gnawing mischief the intervals between his 
 political activity, his legal business and his private studies. But 
 he was not going to be made a fool of by the girls. There must 
 be others somewhere, others less formidable than Miss Owens. 
 Girls in Springfield there certainly were, but they were not 
 easily approachable by a young man conspicuous for his awk- 
 wardness and his lack of manners. There was a little girl of 
 twelve at the house where Abraham ate his meals. She was Wil- 
 liam Butler's sister-in-law, Sarah Rickard. For a while, at least, 
 Abraham could enjoy her girlishness without any fear of com- 
 plications, and with a certain sense that he was being admired. 
 He need not think of her as an eligible bride. 
 
 Lincoln had recently returned to Springfield from Vandalia, 
 after a frantic session of the Legislature, convened by the Gov- 
 ernor in the hope of undoing some of the damage which Lin- 
 coln and his colleagues, in their advocacy of the Internal Im- 
 provement Act, had done to the State of Illinois. In this session, 
 Abraham, in spite of the plain fact that that act was impossible 
 in every way, voted against repealing it. Perhaps he was stung 
 to obstinacy by an insult which he had received from a fellow 
 legislator. General W. L. D. Ewing, Democrat, in the course of 
 a controversy arising out of the various attempts to repeal the 
 law which awarded the state capital to Springfield, had called 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 73 
 
 Lincoln a coarse and vulgar fellow. Perhaps, too, there was gall 
 in the fact that James Shields, Democrat, a distinguished member 
 of the lower house whom Lincoln hated and could not be 
 pleasant to, presented, as a remedy for the terrible financial sit- 
 uation into which the panic of 1837 had forced the state, a bill 
 which was preferred by the house to Lincoln's own. Abraham 
 had begun to realize that as a financier he was a bungler, but 
 he was not yet ready to let his political opponents prove it. And 
 even if he had bungled he had achieved political prominence. 
 That made him the equal of Ewing or Shields. And it made him, 
 in the face of this opposition, vengeful rather than humble. 
 
 When he returned from Vandalia to Springfield he was in 
 a very belligerent mood. He was in that state of mind which 
 makes a young man feel that the way out of defeat and humil- 
 iation is to pretend that you are neither defeated nor humiliated 
 but that you are, after all, right and that you will prevail. His 
 reason, when faced with crises, was so much shrewder than that 
 of many others, that he was inclined to forget the gaps of ignor- 
 ance and inexperience which lay like pitfalls in his path. When 
 he met these gaps, walking along his career like a fighting cock, 
 there was nothing to do but pretend that they were not there, 
 or that he had known about them all the time and was con- 
 tented to ignore them. Perhaps it was in this mood that Abraham 
 addressed the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, on the sub- 
 ject of the "Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." In this 
 speech, chiefly notable for the diligence with which its author 
 contrived to make ten high-flown and rhetorical words do the 
 work of one simple one, Abraham Lincoln made no direct men- 
 tion of the killing of Lovejoy in Alton, no mention of slavery, 
 no mention of the changes in the state of the nation which had 
 taken place since the national government had been conceived 
 
74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 by the "patriots of '76." Instead he said, "That our government 
 should have been maintained in its original form, from its 
 establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at." He 
 regarded the nation as finished, subject to no more exciting 
 experiment, no modification. "... The game is caught; 
 and . . . with the catching end the pleasures of the chase." # 
 He advised regarding the government as already perfected, and 
 resisting efforts to change or defy its laws. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Internal Improvement Law, which Abraham 
 had helped to pass, was making havoc of the finances of Ill- 
 inois. In fact, the chief business of the last session of the legis- 
 lature to meet in the old capital at Vandalia, was the problem of 
 how to get out from under that Old Man of the Sea. That ques- 
 tion, together with the ever present matter of how, where and 
 for whose benefit to run banks, and the struggle to prevent the 
 capital from going to Springfield, kept Abraham busy, and in 
 some degree satisfied, until the spring of 1839. Accompanying 
 discussion of these problems, which were close to his heart, 
 came wedges of new and wider issues, which at first he dismissed 
 with a perfunctory vote or a silence. Since the Love joy incident 
 at Alton the matter of slavery had been given considerable life, 
 and propositions treating of it in one way or another were intro- 
 duced into the sessions of the legislature of 1838. To a resolution 
 that no free state or its citizens ought to "interfere with the 
 property of slave-holding states . . . guarantied unto them by 
 the Constitution of the United States, and without which guar- 
 anty this Union, perhaps, would never have been formed," Lin- 
 coln gave his silent assent. He was willing to let it pass. 
 
 During the same session, although, as the leader of his county 
 
 * Works, Vol. I, p. 148. Date in works, however, is wrong. Speech was delivered 
 Jan. 1838. 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 75 
 
 delegation, Abraham presented a petition affirming the protests 
 of some six hundred citizens of Sangamon County against the 
 retailing of intoxicating liquors, it was his vote which killed 
 a temperance bill prepared in the House. He also voted against 
 a similar bill prepared in the Senate, a bill which, in spite of 
 his opposition, was passed. It was in support of the fatal Internal 
 Improvement Act that Abraham reached the height of his legis- 
 lative folly. Instead of admitting that it was a mistake, and, as 
 one of the chief authors of the mistake, helping to make amends 
 for it, he presented a report and resolutions suggesting that the 
 already bankrupt state borrow five millions of dollars to pur- 
 chase the government land lying within the confines of Illinois. 
 Although some of Abraham's best friends could not tolerate such 
 folly and left his side, his proposal was actually accepted by the 
 legislature. Thus a session which had had, as its chief business, 
 the task of lightening the financial burdens of the State, con- 
 cluded by accumulating, thanks to Abraham Lincoln, a still 
 greater burden. That was a considerable triumph, and in spite of 
 the unpleasant and inevitable consequences, it put Lincoln very 
 close to the head of his party in the state. And that was where 
 he was going, to the head. 
 
 In the meantime, Abraham's law partner, John T. Stuart, had 
 been elected to Congress by a majority of thirty-six votes in a total 
 polling of thirty-six thousand. It was a close shave, but the matter 
 had been arranged by a little trickery here and there. Stephen 
 A. Douglas, the defeated candidate, protested the election, and 
 would undoubtedly have won out, but for a confidential letter 
 circulated by Lincoln and five other Whigs asking the editors of 
 Whig Papers to investigate the possibility of proving any counter- 
 balancing fraud on Douglas's side. As it was, Douglas withdrew 
 his protest, rather to Lincoln's surprise and much to his relief. 
 
?6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Stuart was elected, and that meant that Lincoln would, for 
 a year, at least, bear the burden of whatever business came to 
 No. 4 Hoffman's Row. 
 
 Springfield, although extremely grateful to the adroit Mr. 
 Lincoln, clever politician, who had gained for the town the 
 immeasurable advantage of being the state capital, still had very 
 little to say to Mr. Lincoln, eligible bachelor. Occasionally parties 
 were given by the wives and friends of members of the group 
 which met in Speed's store, and Abraham, painfully, but with 
 a punctual eye to the possibilities involved, attended when he 
 could. But his rise from loneliness and social neglect was slow, 
 and it was not attended by the exciting crises which made poli- 
 tical life a foil for his sense of futility and inferiority. Abraham 
 loved companionship for its own sake and he would have liked 
 to regard women as equally with men the unembarrassed sub- 
 ject of it. He had already remarked that he saw no reason why 
 women should not vote, and it must have annoyed him con- 
 siderably to find that they did not return his respectful admira- 
 tion by finding him desirable and amusing. They liked and 
 admired him, but did not warm to him. It would have been hard 
 for him to believe that they were afraid of him. It was easier 
 to remember taunts like General Ewing's, who had called him 
 coarse and vulgar. Well, he would show them. He would have 
 "place and distinction as a politician." Even the women would 
 come around eventually. 
 
 It was ridicule that hurt Abraham most. He could never 
 stand that. When a gentleman of the Democratic faith, Mr. Jesse 
 Thomas, who believed that the Sangamon County delegation 
 in the State Legislature had been guilty of bad faith with the 
 people in promulgating the monstrous Internal Improvement 
 Act, said harsh things about all the delegation and especially 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 77 
 
 biting things of Lincoln, Abraham broke out with his vitriol 
 again. Mr. Thomas, surprised and hurt, wilted under the attack 
 like a pansy in a dry vase. The crowd, more interested in dramatic 
 performance than in political fact or innuendo, roared its ap- 
 proval of Abraham's violence. And sensing the approval, Abra- 
 ham enlarged upon his invective. The crowd was delighted 
 and remembered. That kind of man was one you could under- 
 stand. Abraham had won another victory, though the recollec- 
 tion of it afterward was always to fill him with something very 
 like shame. 
 
 At this time of his life, there were only two things which 
 could make the rising young lawyer do things of which he might 
 later be ashamed. His hatred of ridicule and contempt, when 
 those attitudes were turned against him, and his devotion to the 
 party organization upon which his rise depended. In the first 
 session of the Twelfth General Assembly of Illinois, a peculiar 
 situation arose. It was one which, Abraham's close connection 
 with the material interests of the city which was to provide 
 his livelihood during most of the next quarter century, was of 
 vital importance to him. 
 
 It happened that the Springfield State Bank, darling of the 
 Sangamon County Whigs, and long the recipient of favors from 
 the state legislature, held almost all of the scanty funds of the 
 State of Illinois. And the directors of that bank were very anxious, 
 in view of the dreadful financial condition of the country, to 
 keep as much of that money on deposit as they possibly could. 
 Furthermore, the salaries of all state officers and members of the 
 legislature were paid in notes of the Springfield Bank. If it had 
 no money, the legislators would suffer. But, if the current ses- 
 sion of the legislature should be allowed to adjourn before the 
 day on which the law required the next session to begin, there 
 
78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would be no way of avoiding the resumption of specie payments. 
 Such payments had been suspended by the previous session, the 
 suspension to last until the first meeting of the Twelfth Assembly 
 adjourned. The Whigs, who wanted to spare the Bank the pain- 
 ful necessity of parting with its cash, resolved that by seeing to 
 it that there was never a quorum in the house to vote adjourn- 
 ment, they would keep the session alive indefinitely. If it lasted 
 until the subsequent one pushed it out of existence and took its 
 place it could not be said to have adjourned. Consequently the 
 Springfield Bank would be absolved from the necessity of resum- 
 ing specie payment. 
 
 The Democrats had at that time a majority in both branches 
 of the legislature, but, unless all of them were present, could 
 not master a quorum in the House without some Whigs. Abra- 
 ham, when the Senate had managed to accumulate a quorum 
 and vote adjournment, passing the resolution along to the House, 
 saw to it that enough Whigs kept away from the session to nul- 
 lify any possible action. For a number of Democrats were sick. 
 The sergeant-at-arms was sent out about the town and through 
 the lobby to round up such missing members as he could, but 
 he received only threats. Dignified Whigs as much as told him 
 to go jump in the lake. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was jubilant. Night came on. The candle- 
 light flickered on the walls and over the scantily filled benches 
 of the lower house. The sound of winter night rumbled at the 
 darkened windows. The murmur of fugitive voices came from 
 the lobby, with now and then the sound of an angry harangue. 
 Occasionally the weary speaker, that same General Ewing who 
 had called Abraham a coarse and vulgar fellow, and who had 
 defeated him for the speakership, rose to question the members 
 or to receive a motion. Many of the Democrats slept in their 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 79 
 
 seats. Lincoln, in the dark hollow of his place, whispered to the 
 few Whig colleagues who had remained with him. 
 
 Suddenly the Speaker rose and announced the presence of a 
 quorum. Abraham, the Whig watchdog, was astounded and no 
 doubt incredulous. He and his companions found it hard to 
 believe that enough sick Democrats could have been routed from 
 their beds to make up for the Whig discrepancy. Perhaps with 
 some idea that a vote would show the quorum incomplete, Abra- 
 ham voted and so discovered his mistake. Although his vote 
 on the adoption of the Senate resolution for adjournment was 
 nay, it was too late, the motion had passed. Before it had been 
 made certain, however, Abraham and his friends, in a panic 
 of fear lest some further vote be taken, opened a window at the 
 back of the room and dropped out of sight of the House into 
 the blustery night which was coursing up and down upon the 
 street outside. # 
 
 It was in this boyish and lively manner that Abraham Lin- 
 coln was taking his lessons in the art of politics while at the 
 other end of the winter winds the violence and horror of na- 
 tional disaster was brewing. Perhaps, in Speed's store that eve- 
 ning, Abraham chuckled over his escapade, sharing the bravado 
 of it with the secure company of gay-hearted and like-minded 
 Whigs who were always to be found there. But the strange 
 demon of the hell of economics must have chuckled much more 
 gleefully, as he stirred the tar-pots of confusion and discord. 
 For the controversy over the National Bank and indeed the whole 
 question of the nation's finances, which had culminated in the 
 panic of 1837 and its subsequent stringencies, turned out to be 
 a splendid alloy for brimstone. And the recurring question of 
 slavery, especially in the hands of the newly arisen abolitionists 3 
 
 * Beveridge, Albert J. Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I, p. 276. 
 
80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was no mean flux for the sulphurous preparation with which the 
 country was destined to be deluged. It was during the genera- 
 tion just completed, which had paralleled the life of Abraham, 
 the pride of the Sangamon, that the country had taken an entirely 
 new and unforeseen course in its development. And that course 
 would have seemed to almost any public figure of 1787 to be 
 leading straight to damnation. 
 
 Those aristocratic merchants and financiers who had fitted 
 up the United States of America as a kind of armored golden 
 coach to be superimposed upon the humble philosophical run- 
 ning gear devised by Thomas Jefferson, had never supposed that 
 their vehicle would be called upon to travel roads of which they 
 knew nothing. But within thirty-five or forty years of the adop- 
 tion of the Constitution the whole course of American life had 
 shown unmistakable signs of change. The development of rail 
 transportation had begun. The improved iron industry was 
 galloping along in the wake of the steam cars. The Erie Canal 
 had not only opened the near Northwest, but had created a de- 
 mand for a tremendous amount of unskilled, non-agricultural 
 labor. The cotton gin, invented before 1800, had now begun to 
 show its full effect, having brought the Southern planter into 
 the exporting business, and having, to his sorrow, got him mixed 
 up with Northern capitalists to whom he had to entrust much 
 of his raw material for manufacture. And this increase of trade, 
 cotton spinning on a large scale, added to the North's already 
 great volume of wool, leather, lumber, and shipping business, 
 was bound to change the emphasis in Northern life from agri- 
 cultural to industrial. Already, in 1840, emigration from some 
 of the New England states to the West had ceased. There was 
 too much activity at home. In twenty years the manufacturing 
 class in Massachusetts had increased four times as much as the 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 81 
 
 agricultural, and even the slight increase in farmers had begun 
 to center itself upon thriving manufacturing towns. In New 
 England, which was doing the bulk of the nation's industrial 
 producing and'consequently getting the lion's share of the profits, 
 the agricultural life had already become, as it is everywhere to- 
 day, definitely subordinate to the factory and the mill. 
 
 The more manufacturing there was, the greater the per- 
 fection of railroads and steam vessels, which are purely assembled 
 manufactures. And the greater the perfection of railroads, steam 
 vessels, and other machines, the wider the field of market. Thus 
 the change in American life was feeding upon itself and swell- 
 ing up like Aesop's frog. No one had foreseen it and no one 
 could control it. The South, which was still in the agricultural 
 stage, by virtue of the great demand for that agricultural product, 
 raw cotton (not to mention rice, indigo and tobacco), could 
 merely rail against the injustice of it. The North, not at all con- 
 cerned with injustice which left in its mouth the meat end of 
 the bone of contention, was content to hop around finding new 
 ways of taking advantage of the situation and of strengthening 
 its own position. 
 
 The West, in whose heart the ambitious Lincoln sat, talk- 
 ing earnestly and amusingly with his friends before a great 
 fireplace of beech logs, was as yet neither fish, flesh nor fowl. 
 It was a breeding ground for new Americans, men with ideas 
 of getting on which were tinged with the hues of hope and free 
 from the hampering obstacles of tradition and privilege. As a 
 part of the nation, the West still embodied all stages in the devel- 
 opment of human society, from the primitive savagery of the 
 lean-to pioneer to the relatively advanced, if sadly limited, culture 
 of the gabled mansion of the thriving city. Every Westerner 
 knew, especially since Andrew Jackson's presidency, that he had 
 
82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a perfectly clear chance of sitting on top of the world, but 
 like the sadly muddled Abe Lincoln, he had no means of know- 
 ing where to give his allegiance save to political party, and no 
 means of deciding to which political party save in terms of the 
 influence of friends. Abraham Lincoln, like every other son of 
 pioneer parents, was born under a representative government. 
 It is plain that unless there are differing interests among a pop- 
 ulation there can be no reason whatever for representation. Al- 
 though they differed little among themselves, the interests of the 
 West were from the first different from those of North and 
 South, their economic as well as their social interests. The eco- 
 nomic interests were not at all clearly defined, but the social 
 were definite. The Westerner was neither akin to the industrial 
 aristocracy of the North nor to the family aristocracy of the 
 South. He was a compound of influences taken from both, influ- 
 ences which, as has been shown, seemed to meet on the frontier 
 of central Illinois. To develop sectional importance and to stake 
 it upon what looked like a winning horse was the prime concern 
 of the Westerner returning backwards along the stream of 
 national expansion. 
 
 It is not strange, therefore, that Abraham Lincoln, who came 
 to a central point of the frontier with Southern blood in his veins 
 and the additional linkage of Southern birth to turn him toward 
 the feudal, none the less accepted and let himself be carried 
 along by the tide of Northern influence, which though he did 
 not realize it, was based upon the new power of industry, the 
 not new but freshly empowered conceptions of gain and posses- 
 sion, and was to be, as if sprouting from the very root-stock of 
 his ambition, the essence of the future America. We cannot 
 blame a young Illinois lawyer, with a taste for power and a 
 talent for leadership, that he was present as an usher at the mar- 
 
THE NOVICE RAISES HIS VOICE 83 
 
 riage of our time with an old mean-spirited, gross-throated, plu- 
 tocratic villain of an industrial system who has kept his bride 
 in terror though in affluence. Abraham Lincoln did not invent 
 the life of to-day. But it would be well, if we are to understand 
 the amazing career of one of the most remarkable figures that 
 ever appeared in public life, to remember that he took great 
 pains to seek out an invitation to the ceremony. At the close of 
 his career in the Illinois legislature, it had become plain to Ab- 
 raham that the way to the top did not lead through the South. 
 Not because the South was cursed with what to many seemed 
 the inhuman institution of slavery, not because the plantation 
 system was against the grain of republican life, but because the 
 dominant caste, linked vaguely in his apprehensive mind, with 
 dead but Olympian Federalists, spoke at last only from the gilded 
 places of the North. This predilection on Lincoln's part for a 
 certain political cast is to some extent explained by a perusal of 
 his public activities in the Illinois legislature. He was on the side 
 of the ruling powers in practically all of his alignments — not the 
 ruling powers in the sense that they were victors in elections 
 necessarily, for more Democrats than Whigs were victorious in 
 Lincoln's early manhood, and he ceased early to vote for Dem- 
 ocrats even though friends of his. But Abraham never allowed 
 himself to show any signs of radical thought or action. His 
 vote was almost always given against the questioning of public 
 officials suspected of neglect or betrayal of the public interest. 
 His supposition was, apparently, that anyone in office is entitled 
 to the benefit of the doubt. The office holder, not the man in 
 the street, was the ingredient of his demos. In this frame of 
 mind, he regarded with something like horror, the accusations 
 hurled against the Springfield Bank, against the idea of a 
 National Bank, against the Southern slaveholder. Abraham 
 
84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was, in his thirtieth year, a thorough-going, out-and-out con- 
 servative. 
 
 The Whig party was the party of conservatism and Abraham 
 was now high in the councils of the party in his own state. He 
 had earned the respect and admiration of many of his fellow- 
 citizens, and was becoming known all over the state, not only 
 before the fireplace of Joshua Speed's store and in Sangamon 
 County. But there was trouble ahead, for his success had not 
 yet extended itself to the field of domestic life, and there he was 
 to meet something like a defeat whose shadow never left him. 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 THE PERILS OF EVASION 
 
 IN a sunny second story of a great red brick mansion near Louis- 
 ville, Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, the terror of the Legisla- 
 tive Halls of Illinois, lay stretched in bed. The covers of the bed 
 were of fine, well-cared for stuff, there were rich colors in the soft 
 carpet of the floor. The brilliant August sunlight fell upon the 
 polished wood of chairs and table and dresser. Through the 
 opened window came the sound of voices in the garden below. 
 There was the high, bright, tinkling of little Eliza Davis, laugh- 
 ing and chattering as she ran about in her full skirt and panta- 
 lettes. There was the soft sound of Negro voices from the slave 
 quarters, the scrape of horses' hoofs pawing at the drive, the voice 
 of the Negro coachman admonishing them, the sound of wind in 
 leaves heavy with Southern sun. 
 
 In the great hall downstairs, Mrs. Speed, the widowed mistress 
 of the house, was arranging flowers with the help of her daughter, 
 Mary. Both women wore black, tiers of stiff silk expanding bell- 
 like toward the polished floor. The pleasant walls and ceilings of 
 that spacious place were fittingly generous of silence and dignity. 
 The soft Southern accent of Mrs. Speed and her daughter as they 
 chatted together was a part of the air of the place. It was the 
 ceremony of summer morning in a Southern home, a home of 
 untroubled gentleness. 
 
 A well-dressed Negro slave, carrying a tray with a coffee pot, 
 cream pitcher, sugar bowl, and cup, slipped along the upper hall 
 
 85 
 
86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and knocked at Abraham Lincoln's bedroom door. He opened 
 the door and entered the room with a cheery word and a rich 
 Negro smile.* Abraham scarcely turned in bed. He lay back upon 
 his pillow, looking at the ceiling. Gloomily aware of the servant's 
 presence, and a little embarrassed by the obvious servitude, he sat 
 up awkwardly and took the tray. When the door had closed again 
 upon the Negro, Abraham swallowed his corTee and stared out 
 the window through the August morning haze, at the heavy line 
 of distant forest beyond the grain fields of the plantation. The 
 face which looked out was the face of a man haunted and ravaged, 
 the face of a fugitive who, in flight, is always looking backward 
 at the terror that pursues. It was a narrow face, broadened at the 
 top in a low receding forehead which sloped up into a shock of 
 wild black hair. The eyes were small but bright with relaxed 
 agony, circled by darkness that seemed not so much a color of 
 the skin as something coming from their own depths, — a reversal 
 of light. The lines which hung from the great straight nose across 
 the skull-like jaws had their tint of darkness, too. The full, wide 
 mouth with its pallid lips, was drawn and tense like the mouth of 
 someone holding fast to something. 
 
 This, in these (to him) unusual surroundings, was Abraham 
 Lincoln, the politician hero of many a doubtfully parliamentary 
 fracas in the capitals at Vandalia and Springfield, in Illinois. 
 Those altercations and argumentations that had kept Abraham, 
 as stone-breaking keeps a convict, from thinking too much of the 
 things beyond him, were over now. In the previous March the 
 legislature of Illinois had adjourned and its most dramatic and 
 picturesque member never sat in it again. His last few months as 
 an active legislator, in spite of an unusually large amount of that 
 sort of business which ordinarily did not fail to arouse and in- 
 
 ♦Speed, J. F. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. 1864. 
 
THE PERILS OF EVASION 87 
 
 terest him, had been for Abraham months of pain and anguish, — 
 listless, unhappy drudgery. In January, 1841, he had sent a letter 
 to Washington to Congressman John Stuart, his law partner. He 
 said, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel 
 were equally distributed on the whole human family, there would 
 not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better 
 I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is 
 impossible. I must die or be better, as it appears to me." # 
 
 It was in consequence of this misery and suffering that Abra- 
 ham had been invited to spend the best part of the late summer 
 at the family home of his devoted friend and Springfield bed- 
 fellow, Joshua Speed. Now, looking back over his agony from the 
 vantage point of a comfortable hospitality which made no de- 
 mands upon him, it seemed to Lincoln marvelous that he had been 
 able to survive the last eight months. He had tried to make his 
 political career all in all to him, and he had succeeded in making 
 it very important. But it was not all-important, however much he 
 would have liked to think it so. In spite of his boyish bravado 
 and his resolve not to let women make a monkey out of him, 
 Abraham had once more become emotionally involved. Sadly 
 enough it was his beloved politics that had brought about the 
 involvement. It was a by-product of his legislative activity and his 
 ardent Whig partisanship that had laid him low and brought 
 him to this peaceful convalescence in the Speed home at Louis- 
 ville. 
 
 For Abraham had risen high enough in the social scale of 
 Springfield not only to attend dances but to be permitted access 
 to the home of one of the Whig leaders of the state, Ninian W. 
 Edwards, son of the first governor of Illinois Territory. Joshua 
 Speed had introduced Lincoln into the Edwards household, which 
 
 * Lincoln to Jno. T. Stuart. Jan. 23, 1841. Works, I, 235. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was considered in Springfield one of the aristocratic fortresses of 
 the state. Perhaps even Speed, who was a prosperous young man 
 of a Kentucky plantation family, would not have presumed to let 
 Abraham gangle about in so fine a parlor as the Edwards' but 
 for the fact that Lincoln was at the time very well known for his 
 efforts to endow the aristocratic vicinity with a state capital, and 
 was also a partner of John T. Stuart whose mother had been sister 
 to Mrs. Edwards' father. 
 
 Abraham and Joshua Speed, though utterly unlike in back- 
 ground, were temperamentally extremely congenial. Each of these 
 two young bachelors, had the idea that there was something rather 
 horrible about unequivocal intimacy with women, and as they 
 lay in their great bed over Speed's store they had often talked over 
 what seemed to them the repulsive problem of marriage, specu- 
 lating on its real nature, and wondering if it were not too much 
 for a sensitive young man to stand.* They were both of them 
 strong, full-bodied, vigorous men, but like elephants faced with 
 mice, they felt in women the suggestion of some mysterious and 
 overpowering demand, and the feeling troubled them. But they 
 could not, either physically or socially, afford to go in for asceti- 
 cism. Hence the appearance of both of them at the Edwards 
 mansion, to call upon two young ladies who were visiting the 
 Kentucky matron who presided there. 
 
 One of these girls, whom her cousin Ninian had picked out 
 for Speed, was Miss Matilda Edwards, of Alton. The other was 
 Mary Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky, sister of Mrs. Edwards and 
 now, on account of difficulties with a stepmother at home, a per- 
 manent resident in the Edwards household, from which another 
 sister had already married Dr. William Wallace of Springfield. 
 Mary Todd, had just finished a very noticeable education in the 
 
 * Cf. Lincoln to Speed: Numerous letters, 1842. Works, Vol. I. 
 
THE PERILS OF EVASION 89 
 
 select establishment of Madame Mentelle, a French emigree who 
 had halted her emigration in the gentle town of Lexington.* 
 Madame Mentelle must have been reading the accounts of 
 Americans provided by European travelers of the early 19th cen- 
 tury, for she made no mistake in supposing that they were con- 
 scious of being a little uncouth and in need of just such a cosmo- 
 politan veneer as she could supply. With Mary Todd, the veneer 
 took a particularly hard and bright finish. As a little girl, she had 
 been something of an enfant terrible. Now she had acquired a 
 precise and accurate speech, a delicate and well-formed hand- 
 writing, and an apparent inability to keep from showing that she 
 could both speak and read French. To the society of Springfield, 
 which, in order to reach the Edwards' door, had to kick pigs out 
 of the way, and which was rather conscious of the offal on its 
 boots, such attainments as Mary Todd possessed seemed highly 
 desirable, the mark of a natural distinction. And Abraham Lin- 
 coln, the most recently elected member of Springfield society, had 
 not been able to ignore the glitter of the young lady from Madame 
 Mentelle's, who backed up her glitter with a plump and attractive, 
 if rather feline, appearance. 
 
 If Madame Mentelle had not been able to furnish her pupil with 
 the proper genius of a human heart, she had at least been able to 
 provide the stage directions necessary for a great lady. And a great 
 lady would be an excellent addition to the stock-in-trade of the 
 frontier politician. Abraham, caught perhaps as much by that as 
 the fullness of Mary Todd's figure and the sleek whiteness of her 
 shoulders, repeated his Mary Owens tactics. But this time, he 
 could not be quite so lackadaisical. There were other suitors in 
 the field, among them Stephen A. Douglas, the diminutive Lin- 
 coln of the Democrats. Perhaps as Abraham, from the Speed's 
 
 * Helm, Katherine Mary, Wife of Lincoln. 
 
9 o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 guestroom, looked back upon the horrible days of his uncertain 
 courtship of his second Kentucky belle, the thought of letting 
 Stephen A. Douglas take his girl away from him brought a gri- 
 mace of angry determination to the taut mouth. Perhaps a shud- 
 der, because things were worse than that. For it was not Douglas 
 who got Mary Todd, but Abraham Lincoln, and the horror that 
 had made him "the most miserable man living," was in the fact 
 that he, Abraham had simply been unable to accept her. He had 
 wanted her and had let her see it, but when she yielded and the 
 suitor's cup was full, something had snapped within him and the 
 fine nectar was turned to gall. Whatever the ceremony which 
 had been arranged for January i, 1841, whether it was a wedding,* 
 as Mrs. Edwards described it, a mere formal betrothal, or nothing 
 but a New Year's festivity, requiring Abraham's presence as 
 Mary's fiance (perhaps suggested to him with too much an air 
 of proprietorship), the fact was, — and Abraham had to shudder 
 every time he thought of it, — he had been unable to go through 
 with the ordeal. He had permitted arrangements to be made, but, 
 when the time came, without giving Mary any notice, he had gone 
 away, off somewhere into the country. He had been balky before, 
 but the matter had seemed settled. Abraham had unsettled it 
 again. And he had learned that evasion as well as performance 
 could carry its horror. He had simply gone to pieces. 
 
 Eight months later when most of the actual direct suffering 
 was over, Abraham was still not himself. He had not seen Mary 
 since that horrible day, but he had not lost his consciousness of 
 her. Even in his tender care at the hands of Speed and his sympa- 
 thetic family there was a certain sting, — for Lincoln, uncouth as 
 he was, had a conscience (that failure to rationalize one's acts), 
 and up to a certain point it made him unhappy. He could not, as 
 
 *CL Statement of Mrs. N. W. Edwards, Beveridge, I, 313-4. 
 
THE PERILS OF EVASION 91 
 
 he lay in bed drinking his morning coffee, brought him by a slave, 
 be certain that, back in Springfield, Mary Todd was not lying face 
 down upon her bed crying her heart out, or biting her handker- 
 chief in rage at being jilted. That hurt him almost as much as the 
 painful fact that he now had to make up his mind to leave things 
 as they were or go back and tell Mary that he was sorry and that 
 if she considered herself bound to him, he would marry her any- 
 way. Exactly what he had told Mary Owens, and now Mary 
 Owens was out of the picture. Perhaps, if he went back like a man, 
 this second Mary would say also that she could do without him, 
 in which case he might go freely with a free conscience, about the 
 businesses which it had come to be impossible for him to at- 
 tend. Freely, provided that freedom did not turn out to have a 
 sting of defeat in its tail. 
 
 Something had to be done, that was certain. Abraham knew 
 that he could not go on making himself sick and half-crazy as he 
 had done in his hysterical attempt to escape from the conse- 
 quences of his delinquency. He was now recovered enough to 
 know what he ought to do, but not to know how to find the will 
 to do it. He had sadly muddled his business as a legislator before 
 the adjournment in March, being absent on many important 
 occasions # and taking no part in the Assembly activities on most 
 of the days when he was present. Nor was it on the cards for him 
 to be reelected. He had let his law business go completely topsy- 
 turvy, to the patient distress of his partner. But Stuart was Mary 
 Todd's cousin and the firm had been dissolved. Abraham had 
 allowed his friends to become so concerned for him that they 
 went about hiding razors and carving knives and guns wherever 
 such weapons might catch his eye and suggest suicide to him. He 
 had further mystified his friend Speed by apparently paying court 
 
 *Jnls, H. R. State of 111. Session, 1840-41. Also Beveridge, I, 289. 
 
92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to little Sarah Rickard, now sixteen, the sister-in-law of William 
 Butler, with whom he boarded in Springfield. He had, in fact, 
 surprised even Sarah, by asking her to marry him,* perhaps know- 
 ing that she at least, being so young, would be more than likely 
 to delight him by asking him to wait a few years. Sarah must 
 indeed have been flattered, if she was not too frightened to notice, 
 by the juxtaposition in Lincoln's mind of herself and the idea of 
 suicide. 
 
 One day late in the summer, when Abraham had rested long 
 enough at the Speed mansion to convince himself that he was not 
 and was not going to be genuinely sick, but was merely allow- 
 ing himself to be hysterical, he packed up and returned to Spring- 
 field, not without considerable discussion with his friend Joshua 
 as to whether women should be married or not. For Joshua, like 
 Abraham, had his emotional difficulties. They were focussed, in 
 his case, not upon Miss Matilda Edwards, but upon a bright-eyed 
 and warm-fleshed young creature of Louisville, Fanny Henning. 
 Fanny was one of those girls whose beauty though decorous and 
 fine, at the same time suggests voluptuousness and undissembled 
 eagerness. That was the sort of girl that would be sure to attract 
 two such timid fauns as Abraham and Joshua. And in the attrac- 
 tion, they would be sure to find a boyish fear of inadequacy, a 
 thing which every boy feels at one time or another but is always 
 sure that no one else ever felt, since no one else could possibly 
 be guilty of the same dreadful sins. 
 
 Abraham was getting a little used to the idea of having failed 
 to go through with his emotional "crisis." It gave him some cour- 
 age to see Speed facing his approaching marriage to Fanny Hen- 
 ning in the same nervous manner. Speed was beginning to build 
 up a rational excuse for treating Fanny to a dose of Abraham's 
 
 * Herndon, Wm. H. (and Weik, Jesse W.) Herndon's Lincoln. I, 230. 
 
THE PERILS OF EVASION 93 
 
 jilting medicine. He kept explaining to himself and to Lincoln 
 that he was afraid he did not really love her and that no man 
 should marry a woman he was not sure he could give everything 
 to. When Fanny fell seriously ill, Abraham explained to his friend 
 that her illness was undoubtedly a disguised examination paper 
 from the Almighty, sent to resolve the doubts and prove the state 
 of mind of the worried Joshua. Abraham rather naively remarked, 
 in a letter to Speed, written after his return to Springfield "Why, 
 Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her 
 death, you would most certainly be resigned to it." # Perhaps what 
 neither Lincoln nor Speed realized was that the agony which the 
 prospective bridgegroom would have to go through if the ador- 
 able Fanny lived and continued to be adorable and in need of 
 being married, almost worked to the extent of making that same 
 bridegroom think that it would perhaps be better after all if she 
 were to die. 
 
 Back in Springfield, Abraham set himself to try and catch up 
 the loose threads of the old life which the great Todd-Lincoln 
 disaster had so sadly torn and snarled. Judge Stephen T. Logan 
 provided a new law-office to replace the partnership with Stuart, 
 Sarah Rickard continued to provide a little bewildered emotional 
 stimulus, the wild excitement of a full-fledged temperance move- 
 ment, then sweeping the country, provided the public activity 
 formerly centered in the legislature, and reminiscences of his trip 
 to Kentucky provided food for thought. It was on the steamer, 
 coming down the Ohio, on his way home from that visit that 
 Abraham had seen a group of slaves, on their way to new owners 
 in the South. He had seen them sit, chained together, being sep- 
 arated from wives, sweethearts, children, days of comparative 
 comfort, going to unknown regions, to new masters and untried 
 
 * Lincoln to Speed. Feb. 3, 1842. Works, I, 255. 
 
94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fellow-sufferers. And the thing that he had marvelled at was, as 
 he wrote to Speed's sister, Mary, a slaveholder herself, that they 
 were "the most cheerful people on board. One whose offence for 
 which he had been sold was an overfondness for his wife, played 
 the fiddle almost continually and others danced, sang, cracked 
 jokes, and played various games of cards from day to day. How 
 true it is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in 
 other words, that he renders the worst of human conditions 
 tolerable, while he permits the best to be nothing better than 
 tolerable." * 
 
 Now, in between fairly happy travels about the circuit over 
 which Lincoln's law firm practised, sitting, talking, arguing, 
 joking with men, the depressed and much humbled young man 
 got an occasional chance to exercise his gift for oratory in behalf 
 of the Washingtonian Society, an organization dedicated to the 
 business of ridding the world of the drunkard through the ex- 
 ample of drunkards who had thought better of their habits. In 
 common with most of those who believe that man has an intel- 
 lectual destiny to fulfill, Abraham did not like to see men debas- 
 ing themselves in any way. That was the root of his rather apa- 
 thetic objection both to slavery and to hard liquor. It was also 
 the root of his own sense of shame at not being able to go through 
 with things. That sense of shame was a little assuaged by large 
 draughts of the reformer's zeal, which Abraham took in the 
 form of such forensic pomp as "Happy day," he said, "when — all 
 appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected — 
 mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move, the monarch of 
 the world. Glorious consummation! Hail, fall of fury! Reign of 
 reason, all hail! And when the victory shall be complete, — when 
 there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on earth — how 
 
 * Lincoln to Mary Speed, Sept. 27, 1841. Works, I, 250-1. 
 
THE PERILS OF EVASION 95 
 
 proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the 
 birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that shall have 
 ended in that victory." # 
 
 There spoke the amateur of man's perfectability. There spoke 
 the young man who would not go back to what he had outlived. 
 There spoke the pioneer who had seen nine people sleeping on a 
 puncheon floor, — a few cold potatoes in the larder, the rain com- 
 ing in at the unwalled side of the lean-to, spring water a mile 
 away, the flies and the stench of human filth hanging moistly in 
 the air. There spoke the man who could not bear to believe that 
 the human race was as he had found it, as he himself, in some of 
 his activities, had seemed almost to prove it. "Make drinking un- 
 fashionable," he said, as others have said since with no greater 
 effect. But he was not yet quite ready to advocate, openly, making 
 slavery "unfashionable." 
 
 All this oratory had a very restorative efTect upon Abraham, 
 but even more effective was the news from Louisville that 
 Joshua Speed had survived his wedding night without dying of 
 mortification and that, moreover, the same apprehensive Joshua 
 had managed to find that in marriage there might be true delight. 
 How great a tribute to Fanny Henning that discovery was, in 
 view of the neurotic tendencies of Mr. Speed, perhaps neither 
 Joshua nor Abraham ever realized. It did a great deal to relieve 
 Abraham's mind, to learn that a man like himself could surrender 
 to a woman and yet have enough left to make a man capable of 
 standing up. 
 
 The good news from Louisville delighted Lincoln so that he 
 at once sat down and wrote a reply. A little of the crafty politician 
 crept into the closing paragraph: 
 
 * Address Before the Springfield Washingtonian Society, Feb. 22, 1842. Works, I, 
 261 ff. 
 
96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ... I tell you, Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I are 
 peculiar) are all the worst sort of nonsense. I fancied from the time 
 I received your letter of Saturday, that the one of Wednesday was 
 never to come, and yet it did come, and what is more, it is perfectly 
 clear both from its tone and its handwriting, that you were much 
 happier, or, if you think the term preferable, less miserable, when you 
 wrote it than when you wrote the last one before. You had so obviously 
 improved at the very time I so much fancied you would have grown 
 worse. You say that something indescribably horrible and alarming 
 still haunts you. You will not say that three months from now, I will 
 venture. When your nerves once get steady now, the whole trouble 
 will be over forever. . . . Again you say, you much fear that that 
 Elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be realized. 
 Well, if it shall not, I dare swear it will not be the fault of her who is 
 now your wife. I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune 
 of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all 
 that anything earthly can realize. . . . 
 
 "I write another letter, inclosing this, which you can show her if 
 she desires it. I do this because she would think strangely, perhaps, 
 should you tell her that you received no letters from me, or, telling 
 her you do, refuse to let her see them. I close this, entertaining the 
 confident hope that every successive letter I shall have from you 
 (which I pray may be not few, nor far between) may show you pos- 
 sessing a more steady hand and cheerful heart than the last preced- 
 ing it. As ever your friend, 
 
 Lincoln.* 
 
 * Lincoln to Speed. Feb. 25, 1842. Works, I, 276. 
 
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CHAPTER SEVEN 
 HUMILIATION AND MARRIAGE 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN was a politician and when not en- 
 gaged in some sort of political activity was pretty certain 
 to be noticeably unhappy. The fact that after 1841 he was no 
 longer a member of the Illinois legislature left him with only 
 law business, for which he did not greatly care, but which at 
 least gave him what he so much needed of contact with human 
 beings to whom his anecdotes and amusing tricks were val- 
 uable. Brief as had been his career upon the judicial circuit 
 over which the practice of Judge Logan's firm extended, Abra- 
 ham had made fast friends and was always glad to return to 
 them. But in spite of this break in the monotony of his no longer 
 official life, he was still troubled and melancholy, worried over 
 the case of Mary Todd. 
 
 Mary's and his friends were now divided into two factions. 
 On the one side were the Edwards, who, much as they admired 
 Abraham, rather felt that he did not belong in their sister's world. 
 On the other side were Abraham's devoted admirers and well- 
 wishers, Mr. and Mrs. Simeon Francis, the former the Whig 
 editor of the Sangamo Journal who depended on Abraham for 
 help in the shaping of his paper's policies and who could not 
 bear to see his young friend in the doldrums. Mrs. Francis, in 
 addition to her fondness for Abraham, was fond of match-mak- 
 ing, and she saw in the healing of the broken fortunes of the 
 two embroiled young people a beautiful chance to give herself 
 
 97 
 
98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 some real wholesome enjoyment. She accordingly invited Abra- 
 ham and Mary to her house without either of them knowing that 
 the other was coming. As Abraham was no great hand at resist- 
 ing any feminine blandishments when they were offered him, 
 it was not long before he had Mary Todd in his arms again, 
 and when he had her in his arms he could not seem to recall 
 the force of those terrors and misgivings which troubled him so 
 when he was away from the girl. They had kept him from get- 
 ting a marriage license and appearing at a prearranged cere- 
 mony, but, with Mary against his powerful breast, yielding with- 
 in his amazingly strong long arms, he could not even think 
 what they had been. 
 
 Even now, after reconciliation, Mary could not go about con- 
 stantly with her arms about his neck. Their meetings, because 
 of the humiliation of possible public sarcasm, were clandestine 
 and few. In between them, Abraham tortured himself as only 
 a nature given to moody depression can do. In the midst of his 
 tortures and pleasures he took what comfort he could from the 
 reassuring letters which came from that pleasantly surprised 
 Kentucky bridegroom, Joshua Speed, now no longer a store- 
 keeper in Springfield. And he got a great deal of satisfaction out 
 of a return to his favorite but dangerous sport of writing anony- 
 mous letters to the public press. The newspaper, naturally enough, 
 was the obsequious Sangamo Journal, but the effect of the letters 
 published in it was far more serious than Abraham had expected 
 it to be. He had merely tried to blow off a little personal and 
 party steam, which had accumulated to a dangerous pressure 
 within him during his political idleness. 
 
 It happened, as a natural course of events resulting from the 
 extravagant gusto of its legislators, that the State of Illinois went 
 bankrupt. The dream child of the Springfield Whigs, the State 
 
HUMILIATION AND MARRIAGE 99 
 
 Bank of Springfield, went to smash. In the spring of 1842 no- 
 body in Illinois could buy or sell anything excepting by exchange 
 of goods. Nobody had anything with which to pay taxes, as their 
 favorite money, the paper of the State Bank, was worthless. In 
 order to keep the state going, and in pursuance of an Illinois 
 law, the Governor and fiscal officials of the state issued a procla- 
 mation declaring that after a certain date bills of the State Bank 
 would not be accepted in payment of taxes. The collection of 
 Revenue was stopped until after the legislature had had a chance 
 to meet and decide what to do to get itself out of the hole into 
 which the combination of Whig enthusiasm and universal finan- 
 cial depression had sunk it. There was no question about the 
 legality and the necessity of just such a proclamation as was 
 issued. But it was issued by state officials who were Democrats. 
 Not only were they Democrats but one of them, James Shields, 
 State Auditor, upon whose shoulders fell the burden of send- 
 ing an explanatory memorandum to the tax collectors, was one 
 of Abraham's particular aversions. 
 
 Shields was a very popular and honorable lawyer, who had 
 seen much public service and was so well liked and respected 
 everywhere that he had been able to get himself elected to the 
 state legislature as a Democrat from a Whig district. That made 
 him very dangerous in Lincoln's eyes. And the fact that Shields, 
 an Irishman by birth, was of a pompous and officious disposition 
 and took himself very seriously, made him fair game, in Lin- 
 coln's opinion. As State Auditor, this zealous and patriotic public 
 servant had just issued a memorandum of great good sense and 
 considerable tact, designed to show the reasons why the refusal 
 to accept the notes of the defunct Bank had been an action 
 which the state government had to take. But reason and good 
 sense meant nothing to Abraham when a member of the op- 
 
ioo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 posite political party could be injured by ignoring those 
 qualities. 
 
 Lincoln sat down in the office of the Sangamo Journal and 
 wrote a sarcastic letter, signed "Rebecca" containing a lot of 
 clever backwoods burlesque, and insinuating that the only rea- 
 son why the Governor and Auditor Shields had suspended the 
 collection of taxes in Bank notes, was that they, as public offi- 
 cials, were so greedy that they insisted on having gold poured 
 into the state coffers where they could get at it for themselves. 
 "Rebecca" further stated, in direct opposition to the actual facts, 
 that there was no law justifying the State's position. It seems 
 impossible to believe that Abraham did not know this to be 
 mere quibbling. It is also hard to believe that he would have 
 made the same charges had his own signature appeared below 
 the published letter.* Fortunately for Lincoln at the moment, 
 Mr. Shields ignored the communication. 
 
 Abraham was not satisfied. Once more he put the pen in 
 "Rebecca's" hand and wrote a still more abusive burlesque, re- 
 peating his first charges and adding some new ones for good 
 measure. Again Shields controlled himself, and again Lincoln, 
 having tasted the delight of being witty without personal risk, 
 returned to scatter his favorite vitriol. Referring, in her third 
 letter, to Shields's circular to the tax collectors, in which the 
 Auditor had explained that the object of the refusal of the State 
 to accept the worthless Bank paper was the suspension of the 
 State's revenue for that year, the unknown "Rebecca" said, "I 
 say it's a lie, and not a well told one at that. It grins out like a 
 copper dollar. Shields is a fool as well as a liar. With him truth 
 is out of the question; and as for getting a good, bright, passable 
 lie out of him, you might as well try to strike fire from a cake 
 
 * Works, Vol. I, p. 283. 
 
HUMILIATION AND MARRIAGE 101 
 
 of tallow." Even after this amazing epistle had appeared Shields 
 made no effort to investigate. Irishman that he was, it took a 
 reflection upon his personal courage to set him going. Just such 
 a reflection appeared in the last "Rebecca" letter which the 
 Sangamo Journal printed on September 9, 1842. 
 
 But the last "Rebecca" letter was not written by Abraham. It 
 was the product of the pens of Miss Julia Jayne and her cousin 
 Miss Mary Todd, ardent Whig damsels of the town, who had 
 become so interested in Abraham's unfortunate idea of public 
 fun, that they too had begged leave to stick a needle into the 
 bear. It looks very much as if Abraham had been attempting to 
 show Mary what a big man he was politically, by way of making 
 up for what he had shown her of his personal smallness. Perhaps 
 Mary was additionally influenced to believe in her Abraham's 
 importance by a curious document, tied up with pink silk rib- 
 bons, which he handed her at this time. This was a carefully 
 prepared and beautifully written list of candidates for the state 
 legislature from 1832 to date, the number of votes each candi- 
 date had received being entered opposite his name. Lincoln's 
 name from his first candidacy on, showed a steady increase in 
 votes. In the election of 1840, he had received his greatest vote, 
 clearly proving that he was a rising figure. This unusual docu- 
 ment, Abraham had gone to the trouble of having certified by 
 the Clerk of the County Court, and he had tied the certification 
 to the document itself with a ribbon.* 
 
 Whatever proof of his political magnificence Abraham was 
 able to adduce for Mary's benefit, his permission for the two 
 girls to write the last letter does much to nullify. For Shields 
 was now aroused. He came to the Sangamo Journal and de- 
 manded to know the author of the letters. Upon being told, he 
 
 * Beveridge, Vol. I, pp. 343-4. 
 
102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 mounted a horse and, with a friend, rode after Lincoln, who was 
 attending court on the circuit. Unfortunately for Abraham some 
 of his friends, who were rather eager to see a duel, saw to it that 
 Shields did not reach him until after they did. Undoubtedly Abra- 
 ham's direct, face-to-face manner would have disarmed the 
 wrathy Auditor and brought about a reconciliation. But Captain 
 Merryman, who had taken Abraham under his wing as being a 
 chick incapable of handling an affair of honor with the proper 
 firmness and decorum, pushed the situation to a point from 
 which there was no turning back. By juggling the letters which 
 passed between the involved parties Merryman managed to keep 
 up the tension long after Shields's good sense and Abraham's 
 sense of humor would naturally have dissolved it. Abraham as 
 a matter of fact wrote out an apology which would have satis- 
 fied Shields had that gentleman been permitted to receive it. 
 Instead, a meeting on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, 
 at five o'clock in the evening, was arranged, the contestants to 
 fight with cavalry broadswords "of the largest size" over a plank 
 fixed in the ground. 
 
 The dueling party arrived at the appointed place at the 
 appointed time. Abraham, although showing a brave face, was 
 very much troubled, and a little puzzled to know exactly how he 
 had contrived to get into such an unsavory mess. He had chosen 
 broadswords because of his lack of the advantage of experience 
 and his possession of the advantage of size, feeling that, as he 
 did not really wish to hurt Shields, the largest weapon, consider- 
 ing his length of arm, would serve the best as a shield. Fortu- 
 nately for both the foolish Abraham and the nettled State Audi- 
 tor, reason prevailed, and friends of the two were able to arrange 
 a bloodless reconciliation. Abraham Lincoln walked away from 
 the dueling field that September evening, a changed man. He 
 
HUMILIATION AND MARRIAGE 103 
 
 had written his last anonymous letter, and he had been put 
 through one more hoop by that trainer of sad dogs, humilia- 
 tion. 
 
 He needed something, now, to restore his dignity, and he 
 was close to having made up his mind what that must be. To 
 help him be certain, he wrote to Speed in Louisville, telling of 
 his duel, and ending, ". . . The immense sufferings you endured 
 from the first day of September till the middle of February you 
 never tried to conceal from me, and I well understood. You have 
 now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. 
 . . . That you are happier now than the day you married her, I 
 well know, for without you could not be living. But I have your 
 word for it, too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is 
 manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a close question. 
 'Are you now in feeling as well as judgement glad that you are 
 married as you are?' From anybody but me this would be an 
 impudent question, not to be tolerated; but I know you will 
 pardon it in me. Please answer it quickly, as I am impatient 
 to know. . . . " * 
 
 This was early in October. Speed wrote back within a few 
 weeks, explaining in positive terms that this business of living 
 intimately with a woman continued to be all right. On Novem- 
 ber 4, 1842, hastily and with little preparation that could have 
 temped Abraham to escape, Mary Todd became his wife. If he 
 had believed that his grieving, easily hurt, but tempestuous 
 nature still needed the burnishing of punishment, Abraham had 
 found the place to get it. For Mary Todd was no angel. Charm- 
 ing and appealing as she was in person, she was no Fanny 
 Henning, and she soon contrived to make Abraham understand 
 that life in this world is a business of give and take, no personality 
 
 * Works, Vol. I, p. 297 ff. 
 
io 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 being free enough nor sufficiently highly sanctioned to disregard 
 the requirements of another. 
 
 There was no money in Abraham's pocket. He and his elite 
 bride had no wedding trip other than that slight and muddy 
 journey from the Edwards mansion to Mrs. Beck's Globe Tavern, 
 where they took up their abode without making any attempt at 
 housekeeping. Indeed it was about all Abraham could do to get 
 together the four dollars a week required for the Tavern board, 
 and he had to subtract most of that from what he had been 
 paying intermittently on his outstanding debts. Four dollars, 
 even in the Springfield of 1842, would not, after taking some- 
 thing out for food, supply very much space for two highstrung 
 people to walk about in. Yet Abraham and Mary managed to 
 endure the close quarters for a year. It was not an easy year, and 
 it was a revelation to Lincoln, who had conceived no idea of the 
 nature of a woman, and who found in Mary traits which have 
 contrived to make for more devoted husbands than he wish that 
 they were far, very far away. For Mary had, possibly as a pre- 
 liminary trace of a mental weakness which came over her in 
 later years, a violent temper which she was not able to control 
 and which when not going in full force, often showed itself 
 merely in the form of mean-spirited carping. Such was the price 
 of Abraham's entrance into the high circle of Springfield's 
 aristocracy, an elevation which did not appear to do his political 
 ambitions much good. If Abraham came to feel that Speed, in 
 telling him of the beauties of married life, had merely been 
 deceiving him, it would indeed not be strange. Certainly, after his 
 marriage he was never so frank and intimate with friend Joshua. 
 In fact, three months before the birth of his first child he wrote 
 Speed, who had heard of the coming event, that no such thing 
 was exoected. And this in spite of the fact that Abraham had 
 
HUMILIATION AND MARRIAGE 105 
 
 sworn to his friend that his first child should be Joshua Speed 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Perhaps Abraham's disappointment at failing for the second 
 time to receive his party's nomination as a candidate for the 
 national House of Representatives, was as much responsible for 
 the oversight as any domestic infelicity. Certainly, when, although 
 he had felt himself to be the leading Whig possibility, John J. 
 Hardin was nominated in his stead in 1843, and even Edward 
 Baker had beaten him in his own county, Abraham felt that 
 something was wrong. He felt very bitterly about that, but party 
 loyalty made him bow to the inevitable. In 1844, however, when 
 the same thing happened all over again, and the soft soap which 
 Lincoln had applied to the previously successful Hardin, failed 
 to produce the desired effect in the following year, he knew that 
 he was being persecuted. He was hurt, even more than he was 
 surprised. Just when he should have expected to find himself 
 sailing along into national prominence, supported by all the 
 Whigs who had been so loyal to him and so proud of him while 
 he was in the state legislature Abraham found himself being 
 neglected. People that he would have expected to find working 
 ardently for his advancement were working for themselves in- 
 stead. Even Judge Logan, his law partner, was becoming troubled 
 by Abraham's political ambitions. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the little room at the Globe Tavern, into which 
 in their moments of affection as well as those of distress, Abra- 
 ham and Mary Todd had been wedged, a son was born, but he 
 was not named for Joshua Speed. Mary had, as in other things, 
 asserted herself, and the boy's name was Robert Todd Lincoln. 
 With the advent of this youngster the mad scramble of the tiny 
 tavern room became impossible. The Lincolns moved, at first to 
 South Fourth Street, then to Eighth and Jackson Streets. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 
 
 ALTHOUGH the election of 1840, coming on the heels of 
 the financial depression for which it was easy to blame the 
 Democratic administrations of Jackson and Van Buren, had 
 brought Abraham Lincoln's party to the presidential chair, a 
 curious trick of fate intervened to unseat it after a month of 
 sovereignty. William Henry Harrison, a gentleman of Virginia, 
 died on the 4th of April, 1840, just thirty days after his inaugura- 
 tion, and the office of chief magistrate came into the hands of 
 John Tyler, also of Virginia, also a gentleman. Tyler, however, 
 upon reaching the pinnacle of office, displeased his followers, by 
 proving that he was not really a Whig at all but a good Southern 
 Democrat. He soon plunged the country into difficulties by 
 advocating, although for honorable reasons, the popular though 
 politically suspect principle of annexation of Texas. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was on the outs as an office holder at this 
 time, but the necessity of getting into office gave him an even 
 keener sense of contact with political issues than he could have 
 taken from the mere holding of an office won. He followed the 
 Texas struggle carefully, in search of new fuel for the Whig 
 wildfire. Texas had originally been a part of Mexico, but had 
 been largely settled by emigrants from the United States. In 
 1836, although in no sense other than racial a part of the United 
 States, the Texans had rebelled against the sovereignty of Mexico 
 and had, after much reverse and horrible suffering, won a victory 
 
 106 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 107 
 
 at San Jacinto which earned a promise of recognition of the 
 Texan Republic, and a doubtful assurance from General Santa 
 Anna, then the dictator of Mexico, that he would remain on the 
 southern side of the Rio Grande. 
 
 It was plain, at this time, that the United States of America 
 was going to grow, and that one of the points of national solidar- 
 ity was a popular enthusiasm for the ideal of expansion. But 
 behind the popular ideal were other influences which made what 
 appeared on the surface to be a perfectly natural tendency, a 
 dangerous thing to play with. 
 
 In the first place, there were among the Texans many who 
 were not averse to a little juggling of land values, gambling as 
 it were upon the turn of American acquisition. And even more 
 important was the fact that the South had begun to realize that 
 economics favored the manner of development which the North 
 had adopted, that the cotton states, if they were to compete with 
 the upper half of the nation, must be strengthened in some way. 
 There was no better way than in the development of Texas, an 
 ideal cotton-growing region. It is not strange that when the 
 presumably Whig president Tyler, advocated a scheme so ob- 
 viously in the interest of the South, a great hue and cry was 
 raised. With the exception of Daniel Webster, who was in the 
 midst of important negotiations, the entire cabinet resigned. Yet 
 the issue was not even then clearly an alignment of parties. The 
 South was eager, but the Whigs, both North and South, feared 
 to align themselves against slavery. And then too, American 
 blood had been valiantly shed in the liberation of Texas. No 
 political party could afford to stand up and say that that blood 
 was shed in vain. For the popular imagination was printed in 
 many colors with a picture of Travis and Crockett and Bowie, 
 dying in the midst of their massacred men in the ancient shelter 
 
io8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of the Alamo. However unsound the consequences of such hero- 
 ism might be, its overtones rang louder than public speeches. 
 Reason, if it would be listened to, must defer to the unreasonable 
 genius of legend. 
 
 In 1844, the Texas-Mexican question actually determined the 
 successor to the unpleasantly surprising and ineffectual Mr. Tyler. 
 One of Abraham Lincoln's idols, Henry Clay, was put forward 
 as the Whig candidate, and an inconspicuous Congressman, 
 James K. Polk, received the Democratic nomination. The Whigs 
 made the mistake of allowing their otherwise popular candidate 
 to declare himself against immediate annexation; the Demo- 
 cratic candidate made no bones about saying that he was very 
 much in favor of just that thing which Clay opposed. The mass 
 of voters North and South were interested in nothing else. Those 
 that did not wish the annexation of Texas on patriotic and 
 nationalistic grounds, desired it because it meant an addition to 
 the waning power of the South. Once again the pathetic figure 
 of the unlucky Henry Clay went down to unquestionable defeat. 
 In the northeastern states, from Pennsylvania to Maine, the elec- 
 toral vote was: Polk seventy-seven, Clay thirty-five. It was not, 
 then, a matter purely between North and South. 
 
 President Polk was soon in hot water. Texas was formally 
 annexed, although the Mexican government, which had not been 
 consulted, had notified Washington that such an act would be 
 considered a hostile one. The next step was for the administra- 
 tion to insist upon the boundaries of its new territory. The 
 Nueces River seemed to be the most logical line, but the admin- 
 istration insisted that it should be the Rio Grande, all the way 
 to the Gulf, and not only insisted but sent General Taylor to a 
 point on the Rio Grande opposite the Mexican town of Mata- 
 moras with instructions to prove that it was right. Upon the 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 109 
 
 Mexicans crossing the river, to resist what they regarded as an 
 act of aggression, there was a fight, which gave the President his 
 chance to announce to Congress that American blood had been 
 spilled on "American" soil. If the bodies of sixteen American 
 cavalrymen could make Mexican soil American, American it 
 was. Congress did not disagree. All but unanimously it passed 
 resolutions of war. 
 
 And in Illinois at this time, Abraham Lincoln, finally success- 
 ful, after a gap of Rwe years, in getting his party's nomination 
 as a candidate for election to represent in the National Congress 
 the Seventh District of Illinois, was going about on the stump 
 matching his wit and personality against a gruff old preacher 
 named Peter Cartwright. As between Democrats and Whigs at 
 this time, in so far as the State of Illinois was concerned, there 
 was very little difference of opinion to be aired. No candidate for 
 office could oppose the war and hope to live. Neither Lincoln nor 
 Cartwright differed from the mass of Illinoisians on the matter 
 of slavery, both of them believing that it was a bad thing but 
 not a hellish thing. Neither could say anything about it. Neither 
 could afford to be moderate in the matter of the boundary of 
 Oregon Territory, for expansion, not retraction, was the bait that 
 would catch the popular vote. 
 
 Abraham had not been idle in the years of disappointment 
 following his marriage, when his chief activity was on the circuit 
 of the Eighth Judicial District of his state as an itinerant lawyer. 
 His temporary absence from public office and the ensuing return 
 to common contact with men and things had done something to 
 dissipate the antipathy which his marriage into Springfield 
 "society" seemed to have aroused in his friends. And in his new 
 law partner, William H. Herndon, an enthusiastic and able 
 young man, passionately devoted to the Whig cause and more 
 
no ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 earnestly than his senior an opponent of slavery, Abraham had 
 found a lieutenant who could keep the new young Whigs in 
 line behind him. Small wonder then, that Abraham received, in 
 the election of 1846, the largest vote of his career. At last, under 
 the shadow of a cloud of national disgrace brought on by the 
 sultry nature of Mr. Polk's manner of administering the presi- 
 dency, Abraham Lincoln went to Washington. He had supported 
 the Mexican War and praised its deeds of heroism, finding that 
 easy in view of the fact that they were performed under the 
 command of two Whig Generals. He had promised nothing 
 other than that he would not seek to be a candidate to succeed 
 himself. He had named his second son, Edward Baker, after the 
 Whig Congressman whose trust he had juggled and all but 
 betrayed in attempting to remain in line for the nomination in 
 1843, after promising his colleague to withdraw. 
 
 The outbreak of the Mexican War having called his two 
 energetic fellow- Whigs, Hardin and Baker, to the front, Abraham 
 was left to proceed to Washington in distinct charge of the 
 destiny of the Whig part of Illinois. As far as representation in 
 Congress was concerned that part was only one-seventh. Abra- 
 ham, after his election, had had a chance to see a city of some 
 size when he went to Chicago as a delegate to the Rivers and 
 Harbors Convention of 1847, a gathering attended by prominent 
 men of both East and West. Abraham was more impressed by 
 the prominent men than he was by Chicago. His position as 
 Congressman-elect — the only Whig Congressman from Illinois — 
 gave him a sense of dignity and importance, a thing which he 
 could always use to advantage. Chicago had importance but no 
 dignity. It was a town, barely a quarter of a century of age, 
 lacking color, lacking an air of permanence, lacking almost 
 everything but bustle and opportunity. Abraham had his eye on 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS in 
 
 Washington, which he must have conceived to be a far different 
 sort of place, as indeed it was. 
 
 There has perhaps never been in the world a city enjoying 
 renown as the seat of a national capital which has done less to 
 repay with distinction, beauty, or any other quality the honor 
 conferred upon it than the city of Washington, D. C, had done 
 up to the time of the Civil War. True, it was the one city in the 
 country which had been laid out according to a carefully and 
 well-drawn up plan, but in 1847 there was very little but mud 
 and pigs to fill up many of the squares and circles which have 
 since become as they were designed to be, the seat of garden 
 plots and monuments, bronze, marble and living bloom. Most 
 of the official boarding houses and other residences were clus- 
 tered about Capitol Hill, where the unfinished seat of govern- 
 ment squatted with its temporary wooden dome like a decapi- 
 tated sphinx. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln brought his wife and oldest child by the 
 longest possible route from Springfield to the national capital, 
 this giving Horace Greeley a chance to rebuke him for collecting 
 from the government almost twice the travel allotment which 
 he should have had. He installed his small family in lodgings 
 on Capitol Hill on the site of the present Library of Congress. 
 After the long and tiring trip, it must have been very terrifying 
 to the simple middle-westerner and his uncertain-tempered wife 
 and their four-year-old child to emerge from an uncomfortable 
 train in a kind of ramshackle barn full of all sorts of unkempt 
 and dirty loafers and to be confronted by a roaring, gesticulating, 
 threatening horde of mad-hearted cab drivers. Whatever Mary 
 and the little boy felt, Abraham could afford to be amused. He 
 was, he thought, on the threshold of national prominence. Wash- 
 ington would have to recognize him as a political figure of no 
 
ii2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 mean degree, elected, though a Whig, from a Democratic state 
 by an all but overwhelming vote. There was personality in that. 
 The fact stood in the back of Abraham's once harassed and 
 troubled mind as the solvent of his sense of doom, his feeling 
 that secret things were lying in ambush waiting to thwart him. 
 He felt that he stood upon his own feet, that he had reached this 
 point in his career by virtue of his own indomitable effort. He 
 was glad to have arrived at his destination and felt that he could 
 now afford to forget that he had lived for years in terror of 
 deceit and treachery on the part of his friends, in suspicion of 
 hostility, and in bitterness at thought of the humiliations to 
 which he had been subjected. Well, at last these elements of 
 personal discord had been overridden. Abraham Lincoln had 
 reached Washington. 
 
 Before the end of the Congressional session he was able to 
 write home to his law partner Herndon, in Springfield: 
 
 ... "I suppose I am now one of the old men; and I declare on my 
 veracity, which I think is good with you, that nothing could afford me 
 more satisfaction than to learn that you and others of my young friends 
 at home were doing battle in the contest and endearing themselves to 
 the people and taking a stand far above any I have ever been able to 
 reach in their admiration. I cannot conceive that other men feel dif- 
 ferently. Of course I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young 
 once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back. I hardly 
 know what to say. The way for a young man to rise is to improve 
 himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to 
 hinder him. . . ." # 
 
 If Mary Lincoln had looked forward to her life in Washing- 
 ton as a partial reward for the pride she felt in having her 
 
 * Works. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 113 
 
 ungainly husband elected to the halls of the mighty, she must 
 have been somewhat disappointed. She did not appear to be 
 popular in Washington, kept to herself in Mrs. Sprigg's boarding 
 house, appearing only at meal times, and left the city for the 
 West again after a scant three months. Abraham had decided 
 that she interfered with his business. Her life could not have 
 been a very pleasant one, for new members are not apt to be 
 prominent socially in the life of the capital even though they 
 possess far greater store of graces than Mary Lincoln's husband 
 boasted. Washington was a sorry place, too, to get about in. 
 There was no means of transportation other than that provided 
 by the violent and exorbitant hacks which rushed up and down 
 the streets splashing everyone with mud. There were as many 
 backyard privies, pigpens, stables and dung heaps as there were 
 houses in the city of thirty thousand, and the small center of 
 public buildings was, during the sessions, crowded with har- 
 anguing politicians, many of them seldom sober. None of the 
 dwellings of the city had running water, there being no public 
 water supply. There were practically no sidewalks, and only two 
 streets with any pretense of pavement. 
 
 The uncouth city was more appealing to Abraham than it had 
 been to his wife. His fellow legislators soon became attached to 
 him because of his simple humanity and his ability to make life 
 seem as true and real and close at hand as the eye saw it and the 
 ear heard it. Time went by, but Abraham's way of seeing and 
 reproducing things in simple conversation, narrative and refer- 
 ence, preserved unbroken the unity of the moment. He would sit 
 by the fireplace in the post office of the House of Representatives 
 and draw to him men who would have sat through ten sessions in 
 the House without ever knowing that he was there. 
 
 Meanwhile, twenty-seven thousand American soldiers were 
 
ii4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 falling of wounds and disease in Mexico in furtherance of the 
 evident wishes of their masters, the people of the sovereign states 
 of the Union. The war itself had been popular, but Abraham 
 thought he detected an opportunity to prove that those responsi- 
 ble for it were not. He had supported the war and now, in the 
 Thirtieth Congress, was voting supplies and equipment to keep 
 it going, but the executive head of the nation was a Democrat, 
 while Zachary Taylor, the military hero of the hour, was a 
 Whig. Abraham knew what you could do with a set of circum- 
 stances like that. Not for nothing had he come in contact with 
 powerful Whigs in Washington who knew more about the shap- 
 ing of the party's destiny than you could learn in Illinois in a 
 dozen years. Before coming to Congress Abraham had not only 
 supported the war, but in the Sangamo ]ournd he had even 
 seen to it that President Polk was bludgeoned for being too easy 
 with Mexico. Now things were different. The Whig leaders had 
 concluded that the Democratic President could be made very 
 uncomfortable by merely raising the question of whether or not 
 the war was a just one. Mexico was pretty well subjugated by 
 this time and no one could accuse the carping Whigs of under- 
 mining the unanimity with which the administration must face 
 a National danger. 
 
 Abraham sat in his seat, in the crowded House of Repre- 
 sentatives, the worst seat in the entire hall, and bided his time. 
 All about him were lawyers, like himself and yet unlike him- 
 self. They were chiefly skilled exponents of the ungentle art of 
 getting what they wanted under the guise of serving the public. 
 Among them were men like John Quincy Adams, John Gorham 
 Palfrey, Robert C. Winthrop and George Ashmun of Massa- 
 chusetts, Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs of Georgia, 
 Joshua Giddings of Ohio, Williamson Cobb of Alabama, James 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 115 
 
 Dixon of Connecticut, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, Caleb 
 Smith of Indiana, and, in his own delegation from Illinois, 
 Orlando B. Ficklin, John A. McClernand, and Robert Smith. 
 The things they wanted were not always the same. Many were 
 interested only in the development of the West and the possi- 
 bilities of profit arising therefrom in railroads and increased 
 markets; others were interested chiefly in putting down slavery, 
 either on moral or economic grounds; others, like Abraham 
 himself, had little heed for anything but the aggrandizement of 
 party influence. Robert Winthrop, gentleman, scholar, and de- 
 votee of the curiously single interests of industrial Massachusetts, 
 was the Speaker of the house, and in his choice, the body of which 
 Abraham was now a member definitely lined itself up with a 
 majority against the President and hence against the Mexican 
 War. But it is notable that this political alignment was not 
 focussed against slavery, for the Southern Whigs, later supporters 
 of the Confederacy, like Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs, 
 voted for Winthrop as speaker, although John Gorham Palfrey 
 of Winthrop's own state, a minister, and an ardent anti-slavery 
 moralist, failed to do so. If Abraham considered the matter of 
 slavery as an issue of importance at this time he did very little 
 about it. The Mexican question was the burning issue of the 
 moment, the solidarity of parties being dependent on it. Opposi- 
 tion to it was, as we have seen, not a matter of section so much 
 as of party. 
 
 Before coming to Washington, before his election, in fact, 
 Abraham with that eagerness of his to put himself right in the 
 eyes of those whose support he expected, whether or not he was 
 in entire agreement with them, had written to a friend who was 
 an abolitionist, "... I never was much interested in the Texas 
 question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, 
 
n6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our 
 own model. On the other hand I never could very clearly see how 
 the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. ... I hold it 
 to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union 
 of the States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it 
 may seem), to let the slavery of the other states alone; while on 
 the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear that we should never 
 knowingly lend ourselves, directly or indirectly, to prevent that 
 slavery from dying a natural death — to find new places for it to 
 live in when it can no longer exist in the old. Of course, I am 
 not considering what would be our duty in cases of insurrection 
 among the slaves. To recur to the Texas question, I understand 
 the Liberty men (abolitionists) to have viewed annexation as a 
 much greater evil than ever I did; and I would like to convince 
 you if I could, that they could have prevented it if they had 
 chosen. . . ." # 
 
 Now, sitting in the National House of Representatives, with 
 the eyes of the nation, if not actually upon him, at least perfectly 
 willing and apt to look his way, the gentleman from Illinois, 
 putting slavery rather out of his mind as a rather distressing 
 question, saw the opportunity to strike a blow for consolidation 
 of the Whig party, which the abolitionist agitation in parts of 
 the North had already threatened with schism. Slavery was not 
 pleasant to think about. Abraham had, just before coming to his 
 post in Washington, rather half-heartedly acted as counsel for a 
 slaveholder named Matson, whose slaves had sued for liberty on 
 account of residence in Illinois. As was natural in a state like 
 Illinois, Matson, in spite of Lincoln's support, had lost his case 
 and, under indictment for a statutory offense, had fled the State 
 without paying Lincoln his fee. Just at the moment, therefore, 
 
 * Works, Vol. II, p. 10. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 117 
 
 slavery was an unpleasant subject. But here was the matter of 
 Texas coming to a head. 
 
 On the twenty-second of December, 1847, Abraham intro- 
 duced into the house a series of resolutions which were the begin- 
 ning of the end of another phase of his political career. He put 
 his head into the lion's mouth, and although the lion did not 
 bite, neither did the audience applaud the stunt. In these very 
 pointed resolutions Abraham questioned the statements made by 
 President Polk in his message to Congress proclaiming a state 
 of war with Mexico, May 11, 1846, and in subsequent messages. 
 Furthermore, the young congressman from the Sangamon de- 
 manded to be informed authoritatively, for the benefit of a 
 curious House of Representatives, whether or not the spot on 
 which the blood of American citizens had been overtly shed 
 was or was not American territory in any sense, however re- 
 mote. He also, very acidly, asked if it were not true that those 
 very American citizens whose blood was shed were members of 
 the armed forces of the United States of America sent into a 
 Mexican settlement in spite of the fact that their commanding 
 General, a Whig, had stated that no such step was necessary for 
 the defense of American interests. 
 
 These resolutions were not adopted by the House and no one 
 paid any special attention to them. They were merely a part of 
 the campaign of the Whig leaders, of whom Lincoln was an 
 instrument, against President Polk and the Democratic party. 
 As a further part of this same scheme of attack, Abraham voted, 
 to his everlasting loss, for resolutions introduced by Mr. Ashmun 
 of Massachusetts, in which the war with Mexico was described 
 as having been begun by the President "unnecessarily and un- 
 constitutionally." Without Lincoln's vote the resolution would 
 not have been adopted, as the vote was 82 to 81. Abraham fol- 
 
n8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 lowed this excited and enthusiastic Whig sniping with a long 
 address which he delivered before the House on January 12, 
 1848. In this address, aside from the fact that he called the Presi- 
 dent all kinds of unpleasant things, "a bewildered, confounded, 
 and miserably perplexed man," Abraham did little but repeat 
 the well-tried Whig arguments against the Administration's ac- 
 tion. He spoke as if from a sense of duty to his party, not with 
 that tremendous personal force which had many times before 
 enabled him to hold his hearers spellbound. As in the case of 
 Robert Matson and his slaves, Abraham lost the verdict. No one 
 commented on what he had said. No one seemed to think it 
 extraordinary that he had said anything. Except in Abraham's 
 home district in Illinois, the speech was forgotten, until its obiter 
 dicta on the subject of the right of revolt could be used against 
 him. This was a section of his speech in which he said, ". . . Any 
 people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the 
 right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form 
 a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most 
 sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate 
 
 the world " * 
 
 But that unusual remark was not what troubled the people of 
 Illinois, nor the fact that their Sangamon County representative 
 had called the President's remarks upon his Mexican policy the 
 "half-insane mumbling of a fever dream." What troubled them 
 was that their representative, in whom they had placed confi- 
 dence, and who had waved his hat and given godspeed to the 
 sons of Illinois, six thousand strong, departing for the front to 
 defend their country's interests (as they supposed), had stood up 
 in Congress and called the self-sacrifice of those heroes a cam- 
 paign of robbery and dishonor, rapine and murder. 
 
 * Works, Vol. II, p. 37. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 119 
 
 When Abraham learned through his faithful young partner, 
 Billy Herndon, how his constituents were interpreting his atti- 
 tude in Congress it bothered him a good deal. No one likes to 
 be misunderstood and to have his idea set at naught because he 
 has failed to take into consideration the inequalities of human 
 judgment. Abraham felt that the fact that he was vigorously 
 opposing what many good Americans believed to be an unjust 
 war should have earned him praise rather than blame. He did 
 not realize that what to one man may be a passionate moral issue, 
 to another may be villainy and betrayal. The young men at home 
 were more radical than Abraham had ever been. They would 
 have been glad to see Whig interests advanced, but they wished 
 to have their interests made Whig interests. Abraham was a 
 little different. He took the party as it was and asked no 
 questions. 
 
 In his unattractive and lonely room at Mrs. Sprigg's, Abraham 
 sat when he had nothing else to do, checking over lists of people 
 back home who must have Whig literature sent to them. He was 
 unofficially helping the Whig National Committee. Now that 
 Mary and little Bob had gone away he felt often out of sorts, 
 perhaps wanting, more than he disliked the tricks which his 
 wife's incalculable personality played with his environment, the 
 solace of someone to praise him. For he got no praise and little 
 attention of any kind in the serious conduct of his business at 
 the Capitol. When he was particularly lonely he would visit the 
 library of the Supreme Court, digging out sources and special 
 cases, or go wandering among the pathetic shops of the strange 
 city, looking for little things for his children, or carrying out 
 commissions for Mary, reminding himself thereby of the life 
 which he could neither quite do without nor quite be happy in. 
 Sometimes he wrote to the two little boys, whom he regarded 
 
120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with devoted and wondering pride. But when Mary hinted that 
 she would like to take a trip to New York or Boston during the 
 early summer, Abraham paid no attention. He was too much 
 absorbed with the political difficulties of the hour. It was fairly 
 plain to him that he had lost all chance of being asked to re- 
 consider his political promise not to run for Congress in the 
 following year. But here was a presidential election at hand and 
 the Whigs were on the point of choosing a candidate. 
 
 Abraham had joined with a number of Southern Whigs and 
 one member of Congress from Connecticut to form a society 
 called the Young Indians, and it was Alexander H. Stephens of 
 Georgia, one of the leaders of this group and one of Abraham's 
 few Congressional intimates, who had put forward the idea that 
 General Zachary Taylor was the man for the Whig Party to 
 nominate. And Zachary certainly was, in everything but fitness 
 for the office of President. In the first place, he was well known 
 as a Whig. In the second place, he was a Southerner and a slave- 
 holder and could thus command respect and votes in the South. 
 In the third place, he had just won the Mexican War, in spite 
 of being hampered by the jealousy of a Democratic president. 
 He was a popular idol. And most important of all, his candidacy 
 would help to dispel the unfortunate feeling which the Whig 
 condemnation of the war had bred in the heart of the nation. 
 These considerations, in the minds of Abraham and the Whig 
 leaders, outweighed the fact that the hearty old General could 
 scarcely either read or write and had never been known to have 
 any idea on any national subject. 
 
 Although Abraham must have known how unfitted "Old 
 Rough and Ready" Taylor was for the office once held by Wash- 
 ington and Thomas Jefferson, he was perfectly willing to throw 
 over his ancient idol, Henry Clay, and fight hard for the Gen- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 121 
 
 eraPs nomination. For with Abraham at this time, a weak and 
 ignorant Whig who could win was better than a high-principled 
 statesman, Whig though he might be, who had the habit of 
 losing. So the young politician from Illinois went to the Phila- 
 delphia Convention in June, 1848, and spent considerable time 
 trying to keep alternate Whig delegates from Illinois, who were 
 known to favor Henry Clay, from getting their seats. 
 
 He need not have troubled, for in spite of the outraged feel- 
 ings of the old warriors of the Whig party, General Taylor was 
 easily nominated, although for the sake of caution the convention 
 which did the trick was careful to avoid any statement of prin- 
 ciples. There were, in fact, no principles other than the principles 
 underlying a panic-struck desire to put down the incipient revolt 
 within the ranks of the Whig party which had arisen out of the 
 development of new interests in the northeastern states. Abraham 
 knew little or nothing of these interests, but he could not help 
 seeing the ominous signs of internal disruption in his party. He 
 supposed that the abolitionists were at the bottom of the trouble, 
 and he accordingly made a fairly careful study of the slavery 
 question and came out of the study with the conclusion that he 
 was right in thinking, as he always had thought, that slavery 
 could never be a national political problem. The thing to do, 
 therefore, was to strengthen and solidify the Whig Party, and 
 give the country the benefit of its leadership. 
 
 With these problems in mind, Abraham, unofficially a repre- 
 sentative of the Whig National Committee, and personally an 
 eager and ambitious young politician who thought he saw a 
 chance to make himself useful to the cause, set out in the summer 
 of 1848 upon a trip through the unknown territory of New 
 England, the seat of the rebellion among what had once been 
 Whig numbers. To the stronghold of Calvinistic industrialism, 
 
122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 came Abraham Lincoln, of the heterogeneous but aggressive 
 West, carrying, in his bag of tricks, the support and approval of 
 the leaders of Southern Whigdom, men who twelve years later 
 were to be leaders of a greater and more ominous revolt against 
 not a mere political party but the very existence of the United 
 States of America. And Abraham's listeners in the North, what 
 there were of them, were to be men of the stamp of James 
 Russell Lowell, whose anonymous "Biglow Papers" had been for 
 two years appearing in the Boston Courier and the Boston Stand- 
 ard and, almost simultaneously with Abraham's visit, appeared in 
 book form. The sarcastic remarks of Mr. Birdofreedom Sawin, 
 veteran of the Mexican War, who had lost a leg, an arm, an eye, 
 and four fingers in that sorry struggle, in deciding to support 
 Mr. Lincoln's candidate, old Rough and Ready, are worth listen- 
 ing to. Mr. Sawin had thought that his physical sacrifices might 
 have qualified him to run for the presidency himself, but he 
 apparently decided that as he had not lost his head Zachary 
 Taylor would be the better man. After explaining this fact the 
 rhyming hero said: 
 
 "Next thing you'll want to know, I s'pose, wut arguments I seem 
 "To see that makes me think this 'ere'll make the strongest team; 
 "Fust place, I've been consid'ble round in bar-rooms and saloons 
 "Agetherin' public sentiment, 'mongst Demmercrats and Coons, 
 "And 't aint ve'y often thet I meet a chap but wut goes in 
 "Fer Rough an' Ready, fair and square, hufs, taller, horns and skin." 
 
 This was the attitude to General Taylor, whom Abraham 
 Lincoln supported, of an intelligent portion of the New England 
 public. But Abraham was not dismayed, he went about the north- 
 eastern states, speaking where and when he could, avoiding all 
 mention of slavery and pleading with all the power of his amaz- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 123 
 
 ing personality for the safety and success of the Whig party. 
 Those who heard him were delighted with his presence and his 
 manner, but the newspapers did not often record what he said. 
 And yet he was relatively happy, because he was doing some- 
 thing, although he did not quite know what it was that he was 
 doing. For the moment, he was contributing to the eleventh hour 
 triumph of the party which he loved, not so much with tender- 
 ness as with dogged and insistent pertinacity. In reality he was 
 riding for a fall, into the brambles of neglect and bitterness. His 
 efforts and his beliefs, his sacrifice of the fine, honest sweetness 
 of his inner nature, were all to be in vain and to earn him nothing 
 but the depressing realization that he had been barking up the 
 wrong tree. 
 
 Back in Illinois, in Lincoln's own excessively Whig district, 
 where Billy Herndon had been whipping the young men into 
 line, Judge Logan, Abraham's former law partner and fellow- 
 Whig, had been decisively defeated as a candidate to succeed 
 Abraham in Congress. And in Massachusetts the Calvinistic in- 
 tellectuals, with a stern if limited moral sense, and little patience 
 with the slow accomplishments of economic determination, were 
 forming a new party, in the interests of New England thought, 
 New England society, and New England business, all of which 
 were definitely against the existence of slavery as a background 
 for the cotton business, in the upper reaches of which was situated 
 not only their prosperity, but even the seed of their apparent 
 moral sublimity. Abraham would not talk about the Whig 
 troubles in his own state, preferring to believe that everything 
 was as it should be, but he strenuously attacked the new Free 
 Soil party. And it was perhaps this very attack, this panic of 
 defense which his Whig loyalty imposed upon him, that led him 
 
124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 into the position from which that same Free Soil movement was 
 to pluck him, some years later, for its leader under the banner 
 and title of Republican. For in the course of his New England 
 campaign on the heels of the high-minded and astute Senator 
 William H. Seward of New York, Abraham came to realize that 
 there was more to the Whig problem than the mere creation of 
 an illusion favorable to its candidate. Seward, though a loyal 
 Northern Whig, was a practical humanitarian, who had some 
 of that Calvinistic sense of moral urgency which was quite for- 
 eign to Abraham, but which made the experienced and dignified 
 Senator almost a Free Soiler in his hatred of slavery. The power 
 of the speeches which Lincoln heard Seward deliver in the early 
 autumn of 1848 brought the young politician from Sangamon to 
 a place from which he might eventually save himself, though 
 nearly lost. Although his conclusion had no immediate effect 
 upon his method of campaigning, and remained in him merely 
 as food for thought, he said to Seward, ". . . You are right. We 
 have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much 
 more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing." * 
 
 After a trip through the near Northwest and a call at Niagara 
 Falls, where he had been joined by his wife, Abraham returned 
 home to a changed public opinion, to the bosom of a state which 
 now distrusted and all but disowned him because of his, to it, 
 inexplicable attitude toward the late war. He knew now that he 
 was politically dead, and, although he hoped for a resurrection in 
 the wake of a triumphant Zachary Taylor who surely would 
 reward his henchman's faithfulness, Abraham could see little to 
 be happy about. He was still in debt; his living expenses were 
 increasing, and his salary as a legislator would soon cease; his 
 law business was not prosperous. His father, always shiftless and 
 
 * Seward. Works, Memoirs, 19. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 125 
 
 improvident, was troubling him for help; Mary had domestic 
 troubles and could not keep servants in her employ; those friends 
 who had meant much to Lincoln had, many of them, been 
 estranged through the taking of different political paths; every- 
 thing seemed to cry out for readjustment and new consideration; 
 the face to face contacts which gave him his spark seemed dis- 
 connected and confused; his life in Springfield was not what it 
 had been; it was not the free, popular, vital thing of his early 
 days; but jealousy, suspicion, distrust, and plain dislike had en- 
 tered into it to confuse it more. With these things in his mind 
 Lincoln returned to Washington for the final session of Congress 
 knowing that even though Taylor was made President there 
 would be no Whig in Congress from Illinois and no Lincoln in 
 any office whatsoever. All Abraham could do in this final session 
 was to record through frequent support of the Wilmot Proviso, 
 which carried with it the declaration that slavery should not be 
 extended to any territories carved out of the spoils of the Mexican 
 War, his new belief that slavery was really a political issue. And 
 in addition to recording this change in his state of mind the 
 extraordinary excitement over slavery which had found its way 
 into a Congress that supposed the thing permanently dormant, 
 gave him, through speeches and debates, a new conception of 
 what the North believed slavery to be — a crime greater than 
 robbery or piracy, a thing which befouled the very Constitution 
 which fostered it. 
 
 Abraham, in this session, even went so far as to propose a 
 measure for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the District of 
 Columbia, but he kept his old feeling about the subject alive in 
 this proposal, by adding a provision for the giving over to their 
 masters by the District authorities of any fugitive slaves. He was 
 willing to admit that slavery was a problem, but he was still 
 
126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 unwilling to go the absolute lengths of the Free Soilers, and the 
 Free Soilers noticed his delinquency and later let him hear of 
 it. So Abraham fell between two fires, his District of Columbia 
 bill arousing the extreme Southerners to anxious protest under 
 John C. Calhoun, and the lukewarmness of it infuriating the 
 anti-slavery men of the North. This was an important if un- 
 happy point in Abraham's career, for it saw the apprehensible 
 beginning of the oft-forgotten Southern belief that it was the 
 North which was undermining and threatening the Union, and 
 the beginning of that disciplinary anger at his attitude which at 
 once showed the power of the Free Soilers and the necessity of 
 adjusting himself to their point of view. 
 
 Lincoln's District of Columbia bill was never introduced. The 
 last session of the Thirtieth Congress ended in a dark blaze of 
 bitterness under an ominous cloud. Retreating from the acerbity 
 of his personal disaster Abraham took refuge in plans for the 
 distribution of that party patronage which the hollow triumph 
 of Zachary Taylor, and indeed of all the Whigs but Lincoln, had 
 led him to expect might come his way. But there was bitterness 
 here too, for the office which he most desired — that of Commis- 
 sioner of the General Land Office — was given to another, in a 
 manner which made it plain to Lincoln that the men who had 
 promised and claimed to support him had been very lukewarm 
 in the act. Even his second choice, the Governorship of Oregon, 
 was not offered to him, and to make matters worse, he was 
 offered the secretaryship of that territory, a minor and humiliat- 
 ing position for the man who had given everything to save his 
 party. He had given everything but his true self which still lay 
 in the darkness of his heart, waiting to be discovered. And it had 
 some time to wait, while James Shields, Abraham's pet aversion 
 and his opponent in that half-comic near duel of 1841, was mov- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN FROM ILLINOIS 127 
 
 ing up through the Senate to higher things, and that other 
 enemy, the brilliant Stephen A. Douglas, was mounting toward 
 impressive leadership in the Democratic party. 
 
 A hurt and chastened man, creeping out of the shed husk of 
 the arrogant politician, returned to the no longer genial town of 
 Springfield, and once more took up the healing course of per- 
 sonal contact among the men in whose supposed interests their 
 actual living beings had been lost. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 
 A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 
 
 CRUSHED and again bewildered Abraham Lincoln the un- 
 successful politician shrank back into Abraham Lincoln the 
 successful human being. The body which carried both of these 
 potentialities about in its enormous frame was seen chiefly in 
 court rooms, in taverns on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, in the 
 all-too-short beds under the insufficient lamps and candles of 
 small-town inns. The business of Lincoln and Herndon as a law 
 firm kept the senior partner chiefly on the road, and a gay, 
 adventurous, genial, human road it was. It ran through the coun- 
 ties of central Illinois, through the lives of Illinois shopkeepers, 
 farmers, pioneering settlers, lawyers, bartenders, light women, 
 miscreants, doctors, loafers and bankers. It wound about the heart 
 of the new West, and its people were in the very act of creating 
 a new personality destined to find its way into and to enrich the 
 eventual figure of the typical American. It was its own food. It 
 took little or no color or substance from other times or other 
 places. It had in it little of the South, little of the North, little of 
 the East, although its components had come from all of those 
 regions. 
 
 To Abraham Lincoln, smarting under the rebuke which the 
 national capital appeared to have given him, it was home. Its 
 friendly tenderness met and clasped the tenderness of his own 
 life. He lived in it. Elsewhere he merely strove, struck out with 
 his hands like a drowning man. The little squares of Illinois 
 
 128 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 129 
 
 towns with their alternate mud and dust, their frame hotels, 
 post offices, court rooms, and schools and churches, were each of 
 them home to him. From long familiarity, their citizens knew 
 and acclaimed him. They saw in him the culmination not of 
 sophistication and scheming, but of their own simplicity. They 
 never saw, and would not have understood if they had seen, the 
 dark chambers of horror and despair which a larger world set 
 roaring in him with winds that were cold and impenetrable. 
 
 On a court day in any one of these towns, there would be in 
 some tavern of an evening a congregation of lawyers, judges and 
 court attendants, plaintiffs, defendants, and onlookers. There 
 would be a great roaring of voices unrestrained and exuberant. 
 There would be lulls and gusts of laughter, the clatter of glasses, 
 the scrape of boots, the creaking of chairs and the thunder of 
 nudged tables. There would be a smell of rum and whisky on 
 the air, penetrating the floating levels of tobacco smoke. Abraham 
 Lincoln, who would not have been responsible for either the 
 smell of liquor or the fumes of tobacco, but who liked to be 
 where they were, would have been sitting somewhere in the 
 midst of this uproar with his head and shoulders as far down in 
 his chair as he could possibly get them and his feet raised and 
 resting on the highest possible ledge, the mantelpiece if there 
 were one. At such times, and they were times which Abraham 
 sought to make as numerous as possible now — he did not even 
 go home to Springfield for the week-end when he could help 
 it — the tall, hollow-cheeked lawyer smiled. His eyes lighted up 
 with the enjoyment of his sense of being centered in humanity, 
 of being where voices spoke to a man and not to an idea. These 
 evenings, perhaps the happiest of Abraham's life, came at the end 
 of days in court rooms under the eyes of judges, juries, prose- 
 cutors, and litigants all of whom knew and liked Abraham Lin- 
 
130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 coin the lawyer and neither knew nor cared about Abraham 
 Lincoln the politician. That was why Lincoln was happy in this 
 life as he had never been able to be happy in the public life to 
 which his strange ambition to have place and distinction as a 
 politician had too often compelled him. Here on the circuit, 
 hidden by the thickets and groves of interior Illinois, Abraham 
 had escaped from himself into himself. That greedy, hurtful self 
 which conspired with the worldly appurtenances of political life 
 to shame and humiliate the tender, humane, genial and lively 
 self of the country lawyer was far away from him now. The years 
 he spent in this happy personalized seclusion taught him a great 
 deal about himself and above all revealed to him the fine triumph 
 which came with development of his ability to influence men by 
 force of living talk. In this development was the gem of that 
 creative gift which distinguished the last few years of his life. 
 Perhaps the gift had a better birth that it was conceived in the 
 peaceful refuge of the friendly provinces out of the way of the 
 shadow of fear which lay over the sophisticated world. Abraham 
 was so certain that he must now keep away from that world that 
 he even refused a highly advantageous offer to join a firm of 
 Chicago lawyers. He would remain hidden in the bush of the 
 Eighth Judicial Circuit where good fellowship and plain talk 
 could be his meat and drink, and where the disdainful finger of 
 polished sophistication could not find him. 
 
 Abraham remained then, for five years, making himself over. 
 But he never completely forgot his ambition, nor the sting of his 
 repeated failures in the face of it. During these five years, he 
 must have thought a great deal about the why and wherefor of 
 political occasions, but he saw little of national life and, though 
 an eager reader of the papers, read them in the light of an 
 Illinois sun. He had begun to understand his gifts of speech and 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 131 
 
 to make the most of them. His oration on the death of Henry 
 Clay was the first achievement in his career of real literary 
 distinction.* 
 
 But in spite of this development, his opinion on national 
 political issues remained a little hazy. He still, in spite of the 
 moribund state of that organization, believed in the Whig party 
 and thought, nationally, chiefly in terms of its advantage. But he 
 had begun to realize that the life of the nation was changing. 
 That commercial supremacy was completely displacing, as a 
 national interest, the earlier triumphs of what many had believed 
 to be pure philosophical democracy. As a matter of fact, it was 
 merely a change of distribution, not a change in supremacy. The 
 country had grown, and so had the interests of its financiers. 
 Where once there had been, only the lords of the plantation and 
 the lords of the counting house, now there had appeared the 
 lords of development. And as the West was the great center of 
 development, and as such, important alike to North and South, 
 Abraham Lincoln could not, as a Westerner, neglect considera- 
 tion of the conflicting powers eager for control of its develop- 
 ment. These powers were centered in the South which wanted 
 slavery extended wherever American territory was extended, in 
 pursuance of the tacit understanding that part of the United 
 States should be free and part slave, in the North which wished 
 to extend the region of its manufacturing and trading influence 
 and which could do so more readily under an industrial as op- 
 posed to a plantation civilization, and in the greater centers of 
 the New West where many an alert investor and seeker after 
 power sat like a spider in his web watching for the speculative 
 fly to come and feed him. Even at this early date in American 
 national history, the chief sources of wealth were, control of 
 
 ♦Eulogy on Henry Clay, July 16, 1852. Works, Vol. II, p. 155. 
 
132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 money, control of transportation, control of raw materials, con- 
 trol of manufactures, and, as human life has ever been a com- 
 modity, control of labor. The North and East, in the decade 
 before the Civil War, with the exception of the raw material 
 cotton, and the slave form of labor, held the whip hand over all 
 of these. In the West, looking toward the Pacific Coast, only 
 recently added to the American nation, lay the potential wealth 
 of railroads, and the consequent development of possible manu- 
 facturing and distributing centers along their routes. Thus the 
 control of the rising West was a matter of prime importance to 
 the commercial interests of both North and South. For if the 
 North got that control, the South, competing with free labor and 
 manufactures, would have little or no chance of extending the 
 institution by which it maintained its existence, the growing of 
 cotton by slave labor. 
 
 Lincoln had long since seen that money was the governing 
 force of his nation, and he had very shrewdly allied himself with 
 what he believed to be the side most likely to take and retain 
 control of the source of the national wealth. No one familiar with 
 the facts could believe that his naturally humane feelings against 
 slavery had anything to do with this allegiance. He did not 
 believe in abolition and was, even in 1854, a supporter of the 
 Fugitive Slave Law, that bane of the Calvinistic Northerner. He 
 believed, as he was willing to admit, that slavery was an evil 
 and should not be kept from dying a natural death. But he 
 did not believe that any active steps should be taken against 
 it. As property he felt a distaste for the idea of meddling with 
 slaves. 
 
 In 1854, although his views on slavery did not change, a 
 political occurrence of great importance served very radically to 
 change Abraham's use of die views he held. In January of that 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 133 
 
 year Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois, 
 Lincoln's arch-enemy and the most powerful of the Democrats, 
 although the one least liked by the South, presented to the 
 Senate a report on the subject of the Territory of Nebraska, look- 
 ing toward its admission into the union. It is not necessary to go 
 into this report in detail, although its consequences were storm 
 and fury in a nation which had for four years thought itself free 
 from volcanic disturbance. Senator Douglas's report suggested 
 that the Territory of Nebraska in coming into the Union, had the 
 right to decide whether or not it would permit slavery within 
 its boundaries. The Missouri Compromise, which in 1820 had 
 calmed the unrest of the nation and laid the matter of slavery 
 away from public view, had affirmed and been nationally recog- 
 nized to affirm that there should never be slavery in the Territory 
 now called Nebraska. Douglas's report was therefore, in a gen- 
 eral sense, a suggestion implying the repeal of that Compromise. 
 Perhaps never in American history has any man been more 
 abused and maligned than Douglas was, as a result of this radical 
 bombshell thrust into a Senate given to calling a spade anything 
 but a spade. Yet it is now plain to us that the Senator from 
 Illinois, ambitious as he was, was not guided solely by his desire 
 to obtain the nomination for the presidency in making his pro- 
 nouncement. It is true that he was not popular with the Southern 
 Democrats, but it is also true that his Nebraska scheme did not 
 immediately nor permanently make him so, and it is hard to 
 understand how he could have believed that it would. It is much 
 more probable that he had in mind the interests of his native 
 state and particularly of Chicago, in planning an organized gov- 
 ernment for a part of the Union essential to the successful com- 
 pletion of an Atlantic-Pacific railway. It has for far too long been 
 supposed that slavery was the cause of the Kansas-Nebraska 
 
i 3 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 controversy, and not merely, as in truth it was, a ramification 
 of it. * 
 
 It should be borne in mind that in 1854 the Whig party, the 
 party of Lincoln, was practically dead, though Abraham still 
 believed that he could detect signs of life in it. The Free Soilers 
 of the North had become a powerful faction and had all but 
 formed a new party, the Republican party of to-day. The nation 
 was in the throes of political schism. All parties needed an issue, 
 and all possible issues were concerned with the economic conse- 
 quences of national expansion. Nebraska Territory was the logi- 
 cal region of immediate national expansion. Its social structure 
 would determine the nature of its industrial development as a 
 state. The slave power, recognizing that a failure to get a fair 
 share in new territory for its peculiar institution would mean 
 danger to itself, sought to affirm its right to expand equally as 
 the "free-labor" wage-slavery of the North sent out new shoots. 
 The North recognized that it must capture the West or its hungry 
 industrial life would soon have no fields upon which to feed. 
 The Democratic party, powerful as it was, could not mean the 
 same thing to a Northerner that it did to a Southerner. The 
 Whig party could no longer mean anything to anybody, and 
 could not, therefore, provide a horse to which the industrial 
 interests of the North could attach their wagon. Two things were 
 therefore necessary — to strengthen party organization along the 
 Free Soil lines, using the wreckage of the Whig party where 
 possible, and to weaken the Democratic party, destroying Doug- 
 las and assimilating in the new Republican-Free Soil party those 
 who chose to follow the Northern idea. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln, therefore, still reluctant to call him- 
 self anything but a Whig, in spite of the fact that the Repub- 
 
 * Cf. Watkins, Albert. Lincoln, Douglas and the Nebraska Bill. 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 135 
 
 licans were using him, was put forward by his friends as a likely 
 stump speaker in the current Illinois campaign, there fell upon 
 him unwittingly the task of inventing party doctrine by the 
 simple expedient of negativing everything Douglas stood for. 
 Douglas was entirely indifferent about slavery, and not much 
 concerned whether it spread or not. He certainly did not openly 
 favor it. He was a liberal, progressive-minded man, well-disposed 
 toward Catholics, foreigners and other things antipathetic to the 
 then one hundred per cent American. After the stormy passage 
 of the bill which allowed the division of Nebraska Territory into 
 two territories, each to choose by popular referendum whether 
 or not it should have slavery, Senator Douglas, braving the storm 
 of abuse which the fiercely partisan North was heaping upon him 
 for his "traitorous" hostility to the time-sanctioned Missouri 
 Compromise, returned to Illinois to try to secure the nomination 
 for Senator for Abraham's arch-enemy, the Democrat James 
 Shields, thus making an Illinois victory for his Nebraska bill. 
 In this campaign, Douglas met Lincoln. And in Lincoln he met 
 a bitter, determined fighter, who by reason of his own mistakes 
 had twice gone down for the count and was reaching out for the 
 ropes again, supported by his anti-Nebraska friends who needed 
 his personal power as a stump speaker, who knew that no one 
 else could nullify the effect of the great intellectual powers of 
 the "Little Giant." 
 
 Lincoln spoke in answer to Douglas on a number of occasions 
 during 1854, making what was his most dignified and most im- 
 portant public speech up to that time at Springfield on October 
 fourth. In this carefully considered argument against the repeal 
 of the Missouri Compromise Abraham showed a grasp of the 
 facts of history which would not have been possible for him to 
 exhibit five years earlier. He made some mistakes, one of them 
 
136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a serious error of fact which he later had to admit was an error, 
 but on the whole his argument was clear, logical, and certainly 
 not ineffectual. But even this effort was, it now seems, a political 
 one. It was delivered, in the presence of Senator Douglas, for 
 the purpose of making the Senator's motives appear base. For 
 Abraham was determined to be a candidate for State Senator, 
 and the belief which the people of Illinois were allowed to re- 
 tain in him would be the index of his success when the state 
 legislature met in December to elect. Abraham was still insisting 
 that he was not an abolitionist and was undoubtedly sincere in 
 his protestations that all he cared about was not letting slavery 
 be extended. Much as he hated the Democratic candidate he 
 could not bring himself to be, in this speech, as vituperative and 
 absurdly sarcastic as he often had been, in the unfortunate and 
 ill-considered past which had held so many snakes in its grass. 
 Much as Abraham wished to be Senator himself, he was, for 
 almost the first time, fair-minded and generous in what he said. 
 And his fair-mindedness and generosity received as unpleasant 
 a reward as could possibly have been arranged for them. 
 
 In order to prevent the nomination of not Shields, whom the 
 Democrats discovered to be a hopeless standard-bearer, but ex- 
 Governor Matteson, whom they put forward as a likely Nebraska 
 man, it was necessary for Abraham to take the few votes left 
 to him on a late ballot and with bitterness in his heart beg their 
 sponsors to go for Lyman Trumbull. Abraham's ambition was 
 a personal one, but his loyalty to the party which served that 
 ambition, like the truly conservative state of mind that it was, 
 was stronger than his sense of duty to himself. This particular 
 instance of party loyalty was a bitter pill for Abraham to swal- 
 low, much as he was pleased that his action had brought about 
 the defeat of the Douglas candidate. The adroit politician that 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 137 
 
 he was, the skillful jury lawyer, realized that negatives would 
 not, by themselves, make a true victory. A temporary victory 
 had been gained in the defeat of the Nebraska candidate on 
 the heels of the passage of the bill to organize that territory, 
 but there were issues which the struggling politicians themselves 
 could not reckon with. 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas was undoubtedly sincere in his explana- 
 tion of the reasons why he did not think it a "crime" to organize 
 two new territories out of one which lay in a region supposedly 
 under a mandate against slavery and to allow those territories 
 to choose whether or not they would permit slavery within their 
 borders. The Senator believed, very reasonably, as it now appears, 
 that there could never be profitable exploitation of slave labor 
 either in Kansas or Nebraska, the two states which comprise 
 the then disputed territories. There is to this day no cotton- 
 growing enterprise of any importance in either of those states 
 and there never has been. And slavery in the United States was 
 never profitable on a large scale in the production of any other 
 raw material or any other form of manufacture. There seems 
 little doubt that no matter whether Kansas had voted slavery 
 up or down there would still have been no marked extension 
 of slavery in actual fact. 
 
 But slavery had in 1854 and 1855 become something more 
 than a question for logical determination. It had become the 
 mechanical advantage by which a large portion of the popula- 
 tion of the United States was to lift itself into political power. 
 By the late summer of 1855, the astute Lincoln, who a decade 
 and a half before had been mildly curious about the emotions 
 of slaves bound together and headed "down the river," had be- 
 come highly excited about the matter. He now found that slavery 
 made him miserable all of the time. He felt that something must 
 
138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 be done about it, and he was sure now that nothing peaceful 
 could be done about it. Slavery had become a political issue for 
 good and all and as such had finally approached close to Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's heart. 
 
 And on the newly organized territory of Kansas, a region 
 of rolling plains and watercourses studded with cottonwoods, of 
 buffaloes and antelopes, of fertile soil and immense agricultural 
 possibilities, the political wit and wisdom of the nation was focus- 
 sing the burning glass which it was accustomed to use in ex- 
 amining the problem of Negro slavery. Kansas was being settled, 
 but it had gotten off to a very bad start. Its first governor was 
 slow in getting to the scene of his official activities, having in- 
 dulged himself in a preliminary tour of inspection of his new 
 domain, and having taken the occasion to invest heavily and 
 questionably in the most likely looking real estate of the terri- 
 tory. Long after the northerly territory, which retained the name 
 of Nebraska, had been organized and started on a peaceful if 
 uninspiring career as a tangible part of the United States, Kansas 
 was in the grip of a furious domestic conflict which we are in 
 the habit, now, of referring to in terms of Lawrence, border 
 ruffians, James H. Lane, John Brown, Sharps rifles, and slavery. * 
 One of the first causes of the bitter strife has been for the most 
 part neglected. Lawrence was the center in Kansas of those 
 forces interested in making the Territory into a slaveless region 
 open to the exploitation of Northern industrial power. After 
 much ill-feeling it was sacked in 1856 by the forces of the pro- 
 slavery Kansas. Border ruffians were those gentlemen who be- 
 lieved that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had intended to make of 
 the erstwhile territory of Nebraska, two territories, one slave 
 and one free, and that any attempt to make the one called Kansas 
 
 * Isely, W. H. The Sharps Rifle Episode in Kansas History. See Bibliography. 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 139 
 
 a free territory was against the principles of the bill adopted 
 by the Congress of the United States and hence a kind of treason. 
 James H. Lane and John Brown were two eager champions of 
 the Northern cause, who did not hesitate in the course of their 
 activities against the crime of slavery to indulge themselves freely 
 in mayhem and murder, arson and pillage. Sharps rifles, known 
 as Beecher's bibles after the well-known preacher, who recom- 
 mended the settlement of Kansas by Northern men equipped 
 with the best firearms then obtainable, were provided for many 
 companies organized to emigrate to Kansas and paid for by 
 popular subscription, largely from the purses of New England 
 manufacturers and financiers interested in the possibility of the 
 construction of a transcontinental railroad. And slavery was the 
 supposed cause of all the trouble in Kansas. 
 
 But it should be remembered that the first serious trouble in 
 that troubled territory was due to the murder of one settler by 
 another over a matter of property that had nothing whatever 
 to do with slavery. It merely happened that the murderer was 
 a pro-slavery man and the victim a free soiler. The incident was 
 used to arouse the feeling already existing between the two 
 parties struggling for control of Kansas. Here were representa- 
 tives of the civilization of South and North aligned against one 
 another, recognizing a difference in interest and point of view 
 which was fundamental and which made it at the time, as it had 
 been for two generations, impossible for the two to agree. It 
 has been too often assumed that the only difference between 
 the North and the South was centered in the institution of Negro 
 slavery, but such is certainly not the case. The culture of the 
 South was based upon a sense of society essentially feudal, carry- 
 ing with it for those who entertained it a quality of mind 
 entirely unable to see life in the terms familiar to the bustling 
 
140 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 business man and shrewd small farmer of the North, who had 
 no upper layer of gilded folk to look up to for the pleasures 
 of admiration and respect. The agricultural limitations of the 
 South did certainly impose upon the dwellers in that part of the 
 United States a certain type of production, a certain source of 
 wealth and it is true that that system made it possible for the 
 once universal institution of slavery to survive beyond its rea- 
 sonable time. But slavery did not, as many have chosen to assert, 
 create the life of the South. Slavery itself took color and plausi- 
 bility from the social arrangement which fostered it. In i860, 
 when the slave system reached its culminating point, the popu- 
 lation of the slave-holding communities of the United States was 
 about twelve and a half millions and the number of slaveholders 
 was three hundred and eighty-four thousand. But nearly three 
 hundred thousand slave owners owned less than ten slaves and 
 could not therefore be considered to have been slave capitalists. 
 If we are to consider the struggle between North and South in 
 its true light, it is necessary to recognize that slave capital was 
 centered in the hands of a comparatively small group of powerful 
 plantation owners, just as in the North the wealth has always 
 been centered in the hands of a few who have used that wealth 
 to their own advantage in the exploitation of their less fortunate 
 fellow-citizens. It therefore might be said that the converse of 
 De Tocqueville's statement about the South, to the effect that it 
 was just like the North except for slavery, was true. The chief 
 resemblance between the North and the South was in slavery, 
 or rather in the concentration of its wealth in the hands of a 
 few powerful individuals. It was these individuals who were 
 running the South, and it was these individuals who were run- 
 ning the North. It was these very men, North and South, who 
 for their own interests and because a new land undeveloped is 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 141 
 
 so much raw, uncaptured wealth, were sending their fellow- 
 citizens with arms and slogans, politicians and lawyers to 
 preempt the choicest spots. It was these same leaders of American 
 life in the 1850's who were providing Abraham Lincoln, little 
 as he then realized it, with something to follow, and something 
 to right. 
 
 When Abraham met Stephen A. Douglas on the stump in 
 1854 and again in a later campaign, he did not realize, so forceful 
 and convincing was his own presentation of what he believed 
 to be the facts in the case, that Douglas, in claiming that Kansas 
 could never be a slave state even though the people voted for 
 slavery, had more right on his side than was vouchsafed to the 
 Lincolnian denials of the assertion. Neither did Douglas know 
 exactly why* that was so. Perhaps he only hoped that it was and 
 said it anyway. But there was a very good reason why it should 
 prove true. In 1856 the price of slaves in the slave-selling states 
 had risen to between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars. 
 As it was conservatively estimated that one slave was required 
 for the cultivation of every twenty acres of new land, and as 
 no plantation could be profitable that did not till many times 
 that area, it will be seen what an enormous outlay of capital 
 would be required to maintain slave labor in a vast territory 
 like Kansas. And capital was the one thing which the South 
 could not readily get hold of. The commercial activities of the 
 North during the first seventy-five years of American national 
 life had seen to that. There could be no way of utilizing slave 
 labor in the West without a drastic reduction in the price of 
 slaves. This was not possible, for the South, economically speak- 
 ing, was not a unit. Those states which could not successfully 
 produce cotton could produce Negroes for sale to the cotton 
 states. As these Negroes were their chief article of trade the 
 
i 4 2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 border states would not consider any measures looking to a 
 reduction in the price of slaves for the benefit of their neighbor 
 Southern states. 
 
 All of these extremely theoretical but very sound explana- 
 tions would have been at the time very dry food for the active 
 comprehension of Abraham Lincoln. He preferred to find out 
 what his opponent was going to say and either to prove him 
 wrong or make him appear ridiculous. After the campaign of 
 
 1854 Abraham's opponent was a composite personage, chiefly 
 Douglas, but otherwise anyone who favored the Nebraska Bill. 
 Abraham had now made the extension of slavery his chief bete 
 noir, but it was seconded in disgrace in his mind by the extension 
 of intolerant ideas, such as those represented by the strange 
 offshoot of the old Whig Party which was known as the Know- 
 nothings. The Knownothings were the current hundred per cent 
 Americans, avowing hostility to all foreigners and non-Protes- 
 tants. As the Knownothings, however, were an essential part of 
 any possible organization of political activity which might be- 
 come able to combat the influence of the slave power, although 
 there were differing opinions at large as to whether or not the 
 strange secret party favored slavery or not, it was rather awkward 
 for Abraham to dislike them so. But he did detest them and 
 what they stood for, for, whatever his shortcomings, he was a 
 human being as honest as they make them, with an unquench- 
 able distaste for any and all forms of hypocrisy. In August of 
 
 1855 he wrote to his old friend Joshua Speed, who had not 
 followed him politically at a very close distance: "I now do no 
 more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know- 
 nothing, that is certain. How could I be ? How can anyone who 
 abhors the oppression of the Negroes be in favor of degrading 
 classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 143 
 
 me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 
 'all men are created equal!' We now practically read it, 'all men 
 are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Knownothings get 
 control, it will read, 'all men are created equal except Negroes 
 and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this I shall 
 prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence 
 of loving liberty, — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can 
 be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." # 
 
 In 1856 Abraham Lincoln, the slow-moving conservative, was 
 still trying to believe that he was a Whig, although, as others 
 told him, there no longer was any such thing as a Whig. He 
 must have known that he could not keep out of the new move- 
 ment which was aligning the newly conceived Republican party 
 against the Knownothings for control of Northern political 
 power. It was a safe bet that some months after the rest of the 
 North and West had admitted the coming ascendency of the 
 Republicans Abraham would climb upon the bandwagon. For 
 the Republican party's first platform was chiefly concerned with 
 the question of Kansas and its possibilities as a slave or free 
 region. Early in 1856 Abraham took time from his pleasant legal 
 duties along the circuit to attend a convention at Decatur, Illi- 
 nois, which aimed to organize for the campaign of the summer. 
 Lincoln's radical Republican, abolitionist law partner, William 
 H. Herndon, really precipitated Abraham's entry into the ranks 
 of the Republicans by signing his name to a call for a meeting 
 which was unmistakably abolitionist. Herndon managed to get 
 Lincoln's approval of the liberty he had taken and the game was 
 on. Abraham entered the party on the understanding that it 
 was to be kept very, very conservative. His first active service as 
 a member of the Republican party was his appointment as a 
 
 * Beveridge. Lincoln, Vol. II, p. 354. 
 
144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 presidential elector at the Bloomington convention of May and 
 June, 1856. 
 
 At this time the country was in a highly excited state. Lincoln, 
 called upon as the great inspirational speaker, made an address 
 before the Bloomington convention — an address which he was 
 rather anxious to have listened to but equally anxious to keep 
 out of print. He made no notes and no one took it down at 
 the time. Our knowledge of it comes from a friend's account, 
 delivered long afterward and probably accurate enough in 
 substance.* 
 
 Abraham reviewed in this speech the troubled state of the 
 nation. He told, in his high-pitched, emotional voice, with all 
 the mastery of an actor, of the horrible violence reigning in 
 Kansas, trying to saddle upon that unwilling territory the curse 
 of extended slavery, of the attack of Preston Brooks upon Charles 
 Sumner in the Senate, taking care to say nothing of Sumner's 
 violent and abusive speech which had brought on the attack, 
 and also exaggerating its effects by saying that the gentleman 
 from Massachusetts was slowly dying; telling of the attack upon 
 Lawrence, Kansas, of the unjustifiable and bloody ways of the 
 border ruffians who had by trickery threatened to make slavery 
 legal in Kansas against the manifest wishes of the state, of the 
 intention of the Republicans not to interfere with slavery in the 
 slave states, and of the party's recognition of the justification of 
 the Fugitive Slave Law as a safeguard to legitimate Southern 
 interests. He told how slavery, being sanctioned by the Constitu- 
 tion, bad as it was, must be temporized with for the time being; 
 he said that Senator Douglas was the fiend behind the Kansas 
 outrages, behind the attack upon Senator Sumner; he explained 
 
 * Whitney, Henry Clay, author of Life of Lincoln, 1908, and Life on the Circuit 
 with Lincoln, 1892. 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 145 
 
 how the arrogant champions of the South must be met and over- 
 come; how the Union must be kept together, by a reasonable 
 appeal to public opinion if possible, but by force if necessary 
 
 That was a speech, delivered in Lincoln's own personal heart- 
 to-heart style, with all the weight of his hope of himself and his 
 tenderness for humanity behind it, which none could listen to 
 and remain unaffected, especially as it was carefully designed 
 to contain only the exhortations and strictures which those who 
 were present wished to hear and to believe in. Not only did it 
 make Lincoln one of the most important men in his party, 
 considering that he was not seeking any office at the moment, 
 but it attracted attention to him, by hearsay, all over the country, 
 the Republican sections of it at any rate. But at the same time 
 Lincoln was estranging, by his apparent readiness to serve the 
 new masters, who had shown him in the last senatorial election 
 that if he did not serve them they would crush him, some very 
 close friends among the old line Whigs who were destined to 
 give him much trouble and unhappiness before his tragic career 
 was ended. 
 
 When the presidential nominations for the 1856 election were 
 made the country was divided into three political sections of 
 importance; the Democrats, with James Buchanan as their candi- 
 date, the Americans (known as "Knownothings") with Millard 
 Fillmore as their candidate, supported also by the remains of the 
 old Whig party, and the new Republican party, with the adven- 
 turous John C. Fremont as their leader. The Democrats, like the 
 Knownothings and Republicans, protested that their wish was 
 to preserve the Union, but they contended that anti-slavery 
 agitation was the thing which most greatly endangered it. The 
 Knownothings, chiefly concerned with their antipathy to for- 
 eigners and non-Protestants, had attracted to their ranks many 
 
146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 old Whigs who saw plainly the danger to the nation of any such 
 opportunism as the Republicans had been displaying. The Re- 
 publicans were the representatives of the new capitalism of the 
 North and West, which feared the slave capital of the South as a 
 dog fears a sharer of his bone. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, the mouthpiece, the oratorical ace of the 
 "Black Republicans," was in his element in the campaign of 
 1856. Everywhere were great meetings to be addressed, crowds 
 about the platforms in squares and parks, bands playing, pro- 
 cessions by day and by torchlight, excitement, with no damping 
 sense of definite meaning, enthusiasm, at having something to 
 shout about and an excuse for shouting. Abraham felt fairly 
 certain of his party, quite naturally, as he never failed to hold 
 his audiences spellbound. It was, indeed, the spell which guided 
 his outpourings, rather than the reasoning behind them. He was 
 disappointed at having failed to receive the Republican nomina- 
 tion for the vice-presidency, for which he had been suggested, 
 but he was once more facing a relatively hopeful future. Even 
 the harassed home life, with the uncertain tempered Mrs. 
 Lincoln, who did not like Abraham's simple and homely house- 
 hold manners, and who quarrelled with all her servants as well 
 as with her husband, was easier and of a different atmosphere 
 when there was prospect of good connections ahead. And Abra- 
 ham's increasing value to the Republican party was certain to 
 lead to something. Both Abraham and Mary Lincoln understood, 
 though they may not have spoken much of what might be in 
 store, that after all the years of defeat and humiliation for the 
 erstwhile politician of the Sangamon, he was now on his way 
 to the front. Although he had lost the nomination for Vice- 
 President, he had received a hundred and ten votes on the first 
 ballot, so many more than he had expected that it must have 
 
A CIRCUIT LAWYER ON THE STUMP 147 
 
 given him the idea that, with a little care during the next four 
 years, those hundred and ten might be multiplied and trans- 
 formed into a nomination for the presidency itself. 
 
 But in 1856 Abraham had the job of selling to the country 
 an alarm over conditions in Kansas, conditions, not exaggerated 
 it is true, but caused by factors which the Republicans did not 
 admit, and whose responsibility was shared by North and South 
 alike. It was the Republican newspapers of the North that saw 
 to it that feeling over Kansas was kept high, and that the appar- 
 ent conflict between the interests of slave and free in that territory 
 was not allowed to slacken. But in spite of Abraham's eloquence 
 and his value to his party as a vote-getter for other candidates, 
 the election of 1856, which set the Springfield lawyer toward 
 the culmination of his career, saw a complete and fairly con- 
 vincing triumph for the Democrats, James Buchanan, that mild 
 and unpretentious bachelor, being elected with more than a score 
 of electoral votes to spare. 
 
 The die was cast, and the party of Lincoln was on the outs, 
 determined to fight, determined to resist any compromise which 
 would result in the salvation of the Union by giving equal con- 
 sideration both to South and North. 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 THE TOP OF THE LADDER 
 
 ALTHOUGH the nation-wide fear of the "blackness" of the 
 Black Republicans had asserted itself in the form of a 
 Democratic triumph in 1856, it was soon apparent that the forces 
 which had been unable to agree in their opposition to the politi- 
 cal power of the South and the Democrats of the North were 
 going to find a way of working together. Abraham Lincoln 
 watched the operation of these forces with keen and calculating 
 judgment as he went about his happy duties as a circuit lawyer, 
 duties which were rapidly becoming closely bound up with the 
 advancing interests of Northern and Western industrialism. He 
 had become counsel for the Illinois Central Railroad Company 
 and served them well, in return for which services the company 
 forced him to go to law in order to collect his fee of five thou- 
 sand dollars, a large one for the time, but certainly not excessive. 
 He had been invited to act as local counsel for the firm of John 
 H. Manny, reaper manufacturer, in a suit brought by Cyrus 
 McCormick for infringement of patents. When Lincoln, whose 
 reputation as a legal spell-binder and inspirational jury speaker, 
 was well-known to the Western bar, was asked to be of counsel 
 in this case it was assumed that the hearings would be in the 
 State of Illinois. The skillful and thoroughly trained lawyers 
 from the East who were managing the defense for Manny, 
 wanted to get local sympathy and they soon learned that Lincoln 
 was considered to have the key to the storehouse of that com- 
 
 148 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 149 
 
 modity. Accordingly one of the defense lawyers was sent to 
 Springfield to have a look at the prize package of the Illinois 
 bar. He found Abraham putting up a bed in one of the simple 
 rooms of the frame house at Eighth and Jackson Streets. The 
 lawyer was not impressed with Lincoln's qualifications as a 
 lawyer. He lacked, as always, the marks and manners of cultured 
 dignity. He answered the door in his shirt sleeves and was over- 
 cordial with the visitor when his errand had become apparent. 
 But he soon convinced the gentleman from the East that whether 
 or not he, Abraham, was a good court lawyer, he was at least 
 a human being who could make the sound of the human voice 
 a thing of importance beyond the mere meaning of its words. 
 A strange thing coming from a tall, gawky, yellow-faced, shock- 
 haired, shrill-voiced small-town home-owner. The Eastern law- 
 yer was impressed with the possibilities of that anomaly, and 
 went away leaving hard cash and a definite engagement of 
 Lincoln's services behind him. 
 
 Perhaps coming on top of his popular success on the stump, 
 the acclaim which he received after his first campaigning against 
 the Douglas idea, his new interest in political possibilities, the 
 apparent sincerity of the Republican party's successful overtures 
 in his direction, this new distinction gave added impetus to his 
 imagination. If it did, he was, as was not uncommon in his 
 experience, soon to receive a blow. For the reaper case was not 
 heard in Illinois at all but in Cincinnati, Ohio, whither Lincoln 
 duly journeyed in high excitement, with a speech already in 
 mind, and a very clear idea of how he was going to impress the 
 court. He was full of glee and boyish exuberance. He cracked 
 jokes with his brother counsel, one of whom was Edwin Stanton, 
 who was later to give Abraham a great deal of trouble as a 
 cabinet officer under him. But the eminent Eastern counsel, hav- 
 
150 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ing engaged Lincoln purely as an inspirational bait for Illinois 
 opinion, now that the case was to be heard in Ohio, had no use 
 for their curious acquisition. They shunned him when they 
 could, snubbed him constantly, and in court, for the sake of legal 
 expediency, ignored him entirely. 
 
 Abraham was something more than hurt. He felt that he had 
 been truly insulted, insulted because he was a lower order of 
 being who had presumed to walk with the chosen, the elegant 
 who had earned their eminence by diligent application to the 
 opportunities and demand of civilized education. He left Cin- 
 cinnati, resolved to improve both his mind and manner, to 
 become something more than the large frog in the little puddle 
 of Illinois which his experience convinced him was what he had 
 been up to this time. He went home feeling that he would prefer 
 never to see Cincinnati again, but realizing that he could not any 
 longer use his beloved Springfield, the confined domesticities 
 of his home, as sand in which to hide his head. Thus it was that 
 during the several years following the great reaper case fiasco, 
 Abraham Lincoln applied himself more carefully than ever to 
 the unpleasant task of learning what it was that made a finished 
 and polished product of a truly cultured and sophisticated man. 
 During these years he wavered a great deal, between unbounded 
 and sometimes unwarranted belief in himself and absolute and 
 humiliating disbelief. 
 
 In 1858 he gave himself, the state of Illinois, and the nation 
 at large an extremely good time by flinging himself furiously 
 but unsuccessfully into a state-wide speaking campaign, which, 
 because it attracted the most attention of any of Abraham's 
 struggles with Stephen A. Douglas has become known as the 
 Lincoln-Douglas debates. Up and down the state of Illinois went 
 the two candidates for Senator, Douglas in a private car, with 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 151 
 
 hosts of shouting advocates, a cannon for salutes, a beautiful 
 wife, a great voice, a quick wit, and a powerful confident am- 
 bition. Lincoln generally followed alone in a common coach, 
 often on the same train, with few followers, not much noise and 
 little pomp. The Republican candidate and his friendly press 
 seldom failed to mention the inequality between the two modes 
 of travel. That was rather in the spirit of the entire campaign. 
 No more than any campaign ever seen in this country was it a 
 campaign of real political issues. People will not attend political 
 meetings in tens of thousands merely to hear an abstract principle 
 expounded. Few of Senator Douglas's enthusiastic Democratic 
 supporters cared, in reality, whether "popular sovereignty" as a 
 means of determining the law of a state or territory was a good 
 thing or a bad one. Few of Lincoln's admiring retainers cared 
 whether or not the Dred Scott decision was the slave-power plot 
 which their candidate declared it. What the crowds turned out 
 for, what the thugs fought for inside and outside of the halls, 
 what the cannon roared for, what the fireworks were lit for, was 
 the special performance of the two candidates, the element of 
 personality and battle which invested the campaign. When 
 Douglas made a telling point, as he seldom failed to do, it was 
 accepted by the crowd as a right or left to the jaw might have 
 been and it had its effect not in the mind but in the emotions 
 of the crowd. So with Lincoln, too, who had the better of many 
 of the exchanges, having a better sense of what the crowd wanted 
 to hear and a better sense of humor. When the last joint debate 
 closed at Alton, Illinois, in October, 1858, not one person who 
 had listened to the series, not one person in the United States 
 was any nearer to a clear understanding of the issues involved, 
 but the country was stirred to a pitch of excitement which, under 
 the circumstances, was not a healthy state. Abraham had man- 
 
152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 aged to put Senator Douglas in an awkward position by an 
 extremely clever ruse, suggested to him by the ardent Republi- 
 can, Henry Asbury, of Quincy. He knew that Douglas was not 
 at heart a slavery man; he knew that if put in a position where 
 he would have to state his choice between the favor of Adminis- 
 tration at Washington, and the favor of the constituents in 
 Illinois who were considering his reelection, the enemy would 
 be in a bad predicament. In other words, Abraham saw that, 
 while it was necessary for Douglas to support his reiterated doc- 
 trine of popular sovereignty, it was also necessary for him to 
 support the Dred Scott decision, which had affirmed, from the 
 mouth of the United States Supreme Court, that a slave taken 
 by his master from a slave state to a free state did not thereby 
 become a free man. Lincoln saw, with some pain to himself, that 
 if Douglas as a Democrat were to support this decision it would 
 be difficult for him, as an advocate of popular sovereignty in 
 Kansas to say that a people could keep slaves out of their terri- 
 tory if they wished to do so. For they could not very well 
 keep all Southerners out, and they could not well forbid South- 
 erners from taking their slaves with them either singly or in 
 quantity. 
 
 Douglas very cleverly tried to get out of the position into 
 which Lincoln forced him, and he so far succeeded as to win 
 the senatorial election and return to Congress as a Senator from 
 Illinois. But as Lincoln had foreseen, his opponent's inability to 
 come out firmly for acceptance of the Dred Scott decision, greatly 
 weakened the Senator's position in the Democratic party. There- 
 fore, although the world in which Abraham's embarrassing ques- 
 tion belonged was an artificial world created purely by his own 
 imagination, that inspired politician succeeded by asking it, in 
 paving the way for the defeat of the Democratic party in i860, 
 
c&he Lincoln "Who fyaced HDouglas 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 153 
 
 possibly the most important election ever held in the United 
 States. 
 
 When the election of 1858 was over and Douglas's victory 
 was assured, Abraham realized what he had done. That he had 
 strengthened his party in the same old way, by sacrificing him- 
 self. But this time his ambition could not keep him from real- 
 izing that the sacrifice might not be permanent. It is very much 
 to be doubted that he actually thought when he was arranging 
 his trap for Douglas that the rebound from its spring would send 
 poor defeated Abraham along to triumph in i860. Ambition or 
 no, his sense of uncertainty, his feeling of inferiority would have 
 prevented his being very sure of that. But it may have let him 
 hope. And the hope was buoyed up by the increasing national 
 interest in his great talents, which the almost comic sequence of 
 debates with Douglas had created in him. But ambitious and 
 hopeful as he may have been, he still did not believe in himself 
 thoroughly. He had no focussed thought that could enable him 
 to say to himself, "This is what I think and therefore I have 
 power." He knew how to fight with that marvelous personality 
 of his, but he did not, even in 1859, know what he thought. He 
 merely knew what he did not like others to think, and only that 
 when for party reasons he confronted others where there were 
 people gathered to listen. 
 
 Now, on the ascent toward his greatest height, when some- 
 thing in the country other than the man's own determination was 
 helping to sweep him along, Abraham was in one of his unac- 
 countable moods of depression and could not see the brightness 
 of his own particular sky. The grave echoes of his earliest days 
 were sounding in him. He went about his business in Springfield 
 and on the circuit, hailed by his friends as a coming power, 
 but in his heart there was something that made him disbelieve 
 
i54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in it. The self-defeating vacillations of his father cropping up in 
 his own nature made him feel that there was no use trying, 
 that he, being what he was, could not have the thing he desired, 
 the "place and distinction as a politician" so long coveted, which 
 the presidential nomination would have assured him. In a curious 
 effort to resist the apparently inevitable onrush of his success, 
 he remained very obstinate, halting like a stubborn mule at 
 barriers his advocates wished him to take with a showy leap. It 
 was almost as if he were setting traps for himself trying to make 
 people disappointed in him, as he was now disappointed in 
 himself. 
 
 At home in the story and a half house in Springfield, from the 
 yard of which Mary had had most of the trees cut away and 
 which was entirely unrelieved by any grace of planting, past 
 which the bustled and wide-skirted gossips of the town went 
 on their way to market, picking their way gingerly among the 
 stones and caked mud ruts of the streets, Abraham sat in his 
 shirt sleeves with his back leaning against an overturned chair 
 back, his feet in the air, alternately staring at the stove and read- 
 ing a newspaper full of comment on the prospects of himself 
 and his party. He tried not to think of the issues, the labors 
 involved. He looked back into his memory, rather, at the filth 
 and squalor of his parental homes, in Kentucky, Indiana, and 
 Illinois, at the village of New Salem, now a village no more, at 
 the hills he had traversed surveying with John Calhoun, at the 
 towns of the circuit where, more than anywhere else, he had 
 of late found a perfectly equipped theater for the dear simple 
 figures of his sense of life. He thought of his market basket, 
 and the market to which he always carried it on week-days 
 when he was at home. He would do that again to-morrow. 
 Meat, green-truck, bags and packages, and the pleasant smell 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 155 
 
 of vapors from pickle barrels, whisky barrels, and great 
 cheeses. 
 
 Out in the world, built high over even the vapors of such 
 simple things as these, was a movement which was without his 
 help or approval carrying Abraham to a position in which he 
 would find it impossible to cover himself with the bushel of his 
 humility. Things were happening, the kind of things of which 
 he knew little or nothing, things which his jovial cracker-barrel 
 humor, and ready story-teller's wit, kept out of the gatherings 
 he attended and in which they might have been discussed. But 
 these things were pointing at Lincoln and calling out his name. 
 For Lincoln had proved himself a great stump speaker, an in- 
 spirational crowd swayer, and he had great personal popularity 
 in his own state, partly due to the settled conviction which his 
 public behavior had established, that he was as honest as the 
 day is long, and partly due to the mellow human geniality which 
 his nature exuded whenever he was not suffering from his beset- 
 ting melancholy. Furthermore, Abraham Lincoln had no per- 
 sonal enemies. There were men he hated and feared, like Shields 
 and Douglas, but even these men did not hate him, for they did 
 not fear him. Some did consider him a yokel, a clumsy country 
 lout, but then, there were times when he considered himself in 
 no better light. And in the ranks of his own party he was, where 
 not invested with the bright aura of mystery, universally liked 
 and trusted. And where the mystery was, there was also a certain 
 charm. The other powerful Republicans, William H. Seaward 
 of New York, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and Salmon P. 
 Chase of Ohio, were either out and out abolitionists or otherwise 
 tainted by extremism. What the party wanted was a conserva- 
 tive, tender-minded man who could influence the man in the 
 street and yet be influenced by the party managers, who stood 
 
156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 for nothing positive. More and more did Abraham's re- 
 luctance to side with the more radical measures of his party, 
 especially with regard to slavery, make it seem that he was the 
 man. 
 
 The East, at any rate, wanted to have a look at him, and 
 accordingly invited him to New York to address a meeting at 
 Cooper Union in February, i860. Abraham accepted a little 
 timidly but went boldly. He spoke, and spoke as if he were 
 Abraham Lincoln, not merely a Republican politician. But it was 
 not a very good speech and it added little to the strength of the 
 Republican party. Its most significant feature was Lincoln's very 
 timely condemnation of the raid of John Brown on Harper's 
 Ferry, a thing which, inasmuch as all of those who were praising 
 the perpetrator were Republicans, needed some definite disavow- 
 ing. Lincoln spent most of his time discussing the attitude of the 
 signers of the Constitution as to slavery, a laboriously contrived 
 syllogistic arrangement calculated to prove that the framers of 
 our august charter intended to say things about slavery which 
 they did not say. Abraham had before this had an opportunity 
 of studying the Federalist and other propaganda issued in sup- 
 port of the Constitution but he had unquestionably not gone into 
 the background and origins of that document as thoroughly as 
 many a school child of to-day has done. Indeed it would have 
 been very difficult for him to have done so. The papers of James 
 Madison which show so clearly the state of mind of the framers, 
 had been discovered following Madison's death, but were not in 
 Lincoln's day very easily accessible. The carefully edited records 
 of the Debates in the illegal Federal Convention which drafted 
 the Constitution and in the various State Conventions had not 
 been issued. Abraham would undoubtedly have been unpleas- 
 antly surprised, though he might not have changed his argument, 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 157 
 
 had he read the following paragraph from the work of an able 
 modern historian: 
 
 "To sum. up: the organic law of this nation was formulated 
 in secret session by a body called into existence through a con- 
 spiratory trick, and was forced upon a disfranchised people by 
 means of a dishonest apportionment in order that the interests 
 of a small body of wealthy rulers might be served. This should 
 not blind us to the fact that this small ruling class really repre- 
 sented progress, that a unified government was essential to that 
 industrial and social growth which has made this country pos- 
 sible. It also should not blind us to the fact that there was 
 nothing particularly sacred about the origin of this government 
 which should render any attempt to change it sacrilegious." # 
 
 In other words, what the framers thought about slavery was 
 very much beside the point. Abraham's Cooper Union speech was 
 notable chiefly in that it showed how staunch a Republican he 
 was, and that it at the same time sounded an extremely conserva- 
 tive keynote for the coming party campaign. For Lincoln made 
 it plain that he did not countenance any attitude toward slavery 
 which would give the lie to his repeated statements of intentions 
 pacific toward the South, pacific not unfortunately in the sense 
 of avoiding conflict, but of insisting that if conflict came it would 
 be the South's fault, exactly what the South was at the same time 
 saying of the North. At any rate Abraham was still not going to 
 have it said that he wanted to interfere with the time-sanctioned 
 institutions of the South. He was not going to shoot the neigh- 
 bor's cow, but he was going to see that it got no fresh pasture. 
 
 After the Cooper Union speech Lincoln went through New 
 England and made several speeches all similar in tone, on his 
 way to visit his son Robert, who, at Phillips-Exeter Academy, 
 
 * Simons, A. M. Social Forces in American History. New York, 1926. 
 
158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was getting the polish and suavity which his father had so often 
 suffered for the lack of. On the fourteenth of March Abraham 
 was back in Springfield, two hundred dollars richer for his Cooper 
 Union speech and politically a great deal stronger. His chance of 
 getting the presidential nomination was greatly increased by the 
 fact that although Seward of New York was the most likely 
 candidate, Horace Greeley, that tough-witted politician who was 
 the New Yor\ Tribune, and at the time one of the most powerful 
 influences in the East, would not have allowed Seward to be 
 nominated for the postmastership of Painted Post if he could 
 have helped it. And Greeley like all the others knew that the 
 West must be served. 
 
 While this set of circumstances did not necessarily point to 
 Lincoln, it pointed, for his followers, a way into the divine fracas 
 of Chicago. And although Abraham would have preferred to have 
 had it come about otherwise, a little fancy bargaining in the more 
 secluded conclaves of the Chicago convention secured the votes 
 of the Pennsylvania delegation, which were necessary for a nom- 
 ination. Abraham would have preferred not to have been tied 
 down by any convention promises, because he would have pre- 
 ferred a free hand, not essentially because he was averse to the 
 doubtful ethics involved in political trading. Indeed he had him- 
 self agreed to pay the expenses to the amount of one hundred dol- 
 lars of a delegate from Kansas who was, he knew, very much 
 in his favor. This fortunate fellow was Mark W. Delahay,* an 
 unscrupulous, wild-cat juggler of frontier interests who had 
 secretly kept Abraham informed of what was going on all through 
 the troubles in Kansas several years before. Furthermore, during 
 the previous year when Lincoln had ranged the state with Sen- 
 ator Douglas trying to defeat the "Little Giant" and to get the 
 
 * Works, Vol. V, 178. 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 159 
 
 senatorial nomination for himself, Abraham, in need of the sup- 
 port of the large German population, and realizing that the im- 
 portant Chicago Stoats Zeitung supported Senator Seward, bought 
 up the impoverished owner-editor of the Springfield Staats An- 
 zeiger and made a contract calling for the decisive support of 
 the Republican party so long as Lincoln had an interest in the 
 paper. The editor was Theodore Canisius, who lived up to his 
 bargain and was later rewarded by Abraham with a comfortable 
 place in the United States Consular Service. # 
 
 While Abraham's sense of personal honesty was extremely 
 high, there was nothing formal about it. More than an ethical 
 standard it was merely the natural product of a nature extremely 
 just and tender. It never allowed its possessor to impose upon 
 others, except upon the stump, when he considered that all bets 
 were off, but neither did it hinder him from indulging in profit- 
 able practices which, if formally incorrect, were not positively 
 injurious to any individual. A realization of this characteristic 
 makes it unnecessary to decide whether or not Abraham knew of 
 the more or less corrupt political bargains which gained him the 
 votes of Indiana and Pennsylvania in the Republican convention 
 of i860. Nor is it necessary to know whether or not he knew of 
 the action of his friend Ward Lamon, who issued, with the help 
 of some enthusiastic young Republicans, a great quantity of bogus 
 tickets to the convention hall and saw that they all got into the 
 hands of Lincoln admirers with good lungs who managed to get 
 into the hall in time to leave few seats for the Seward claque 
 and its legitimate tickets. Probably Abraham Lincoln did know 
 of these things, afterwards. Certainly he knew and was bound by 
 the compact with the Pennsylvania delegates, which provided for 
 the giving of a cabinet position to the very questionable Simon 
 
 * Barton, Wm. E. Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I, p. 422. 
 
i6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Cameron. Lincoln was not likely to have instigated such pro- 
 cedure but it is fairly certain that, in spite of his definite request 
 that he be committed by no promises, he did little to prevent their 
 being made or to discount any profit taken from the making. 
 
 While, in Chicago, Horace Greeley, the implacable foe of his 
 former law partner Seward, was bending every effort to keep 
 that able and intelligent man from getting the nomination, 
 Abraham remained in Springfield, dividing his time between 
 the dusty law office of Lincoln and Herndon, the office of 
 the Journal, and a handball court near the Journal office. Here 
 he waved his great palms about and disported himself like a boy 
 in an effort to conquer the chill of misgiving which kept coming 
 over him. While the great figure of the country lawyer was 
 bending to thrash a little ball against a brick wall, getting up a 
 grateful bodily warmth there at the heart of a fine spring day, 
 full of the smells of earth, dusty clothing, and bright air, the 
 mouth moist with living juices, the hair waving in the wind, the 
 long legs shifting and leaping, the face set in attitudes of tension 
 and of kindly laughter when a point was missed, the breath com- 
 ing with difficulty, and now and then gasping a loud joke to 
 the boys who watched while Abraham Lincoln was being Ab- 
 raham Lincoln, Horace Greeley, who had not at first been overly 
 interested in Lincoln, was coming to the conclusion that the lanky 
 son of Illinois was the only man who could be used as a focus 
 for enough balloting strength to keep Seward out. That was 
 enough, combined with the astuteness of the Lincoln faction, 
 who had been busy turning their irons in the fire and were now 
 ready to strike. On the second ballot Seward had slipped back a 
 little and for the first time in more than twenty years the ambi- 
 tious Abraham Lincoln began to come forward. On the third 
 ballot the results of the faction bargaining were apparent. Ab- 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 161 
 
 raham had three hundred and sixty-four out of four hundred and 
 sixty-six votes and thus became the Republican party's nominee 
 in the most important election ever held in the United States. 
 Who knows what state of mind that awkward body was carry- 
 ing about the handball court in Springfield between the messages 
 that came from Chicago. Belief and disbelief, pride and fear, hope 
 and despair were all there, mingling with the grimaces and 
 lights which showed in the lines of the gaunt, hurt face. 
 
 Abraham was in the Journal Office when he received the news 
 of his nomination. Although he had not felt able to remain in 
 the high tension atmosphere of his home while the anxiety of 
 waiting was upon him, his first thought was to go home and tell 
 Mrs. Lincoln, who, if we are to judge from her later performance, 
 must have been thinking of the nomination in terms of a trip 
 to New York for shopping and a fine array of new and dazzling 
 clothes which, though she seemed to care little, would be difficult 
 to pay for. Yet there is little doubt that she was genuinely 
 glad of Abraham's final success. She did not share his fear and 
 foreboding. It was the moment for which she had hoped but of 
 which she had long despaired. 
 
 Abraham was not yet elected, but the summer of i860 was 
 not in. very heavy leaf before it became apparent that his nomina- 
 tion was almost as good as his election. For that fierce warrior, 
 Stephen A. Douglas, handicapped alike by his own inflexible 
 determination and by the popular recollection of Abraham's fancy 
 bulldogging of the 1858 campaign, had lost the Southern half of 
 his own party. The Democratic convention in Charleston, South 
 Carolina, full of the increasing spirit of resentment which the 
 quite arbitrary attitude of the entire North had instilled into 
 the cotton states, had been unable to agree upon a candidate. 
 Douglas was after all a Northerner, and the North was ruining 
 
i62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the South. The protective tariff, which enabled the North to get 
 a high price for its manufactured products throughout the coun- 
 try, in the South as well as in the North, failed to protect the 
 South at all. It meant that the cotton states were forced to pay 
 more for the manufactured and other articles which they had 
 to purchase from the North, but were not enabled to get any 
 higher price for their cotton. That was the beginning of economic 
 ruin, and the high-handed Northern disregard of the fact was 
 at this time more responsible than the issue of slavery for the 
 irreconcilable differences between North and South which had 
 arisen in i860. Southern planters, who could get capital for their 
 enterprises nowhere but from Northern capitalists, and who were 
 now indebted to individuals in the North to the extent of hun- 
 dreds of millions of dollars, were being forced into a position 
 in which they could have no hope of shaking off this Northern 
 grip upon their system of life. It was obvious to the most heavily 
 involved that the North would soon hold a mortgage on the 
 entire South. Small wonder then that, although Southerners of 
 the slave power class had of late been Democrats, they could not 
 support Douglas, who was, though a Democrat, a Northerner, 
 and one who had shown that his loyalty was to the North. The 
 Democratic convention moved to Baltimore and tried again. Its 
 proximity to the Senate, where Douglas was conducting a bitter 
 campaign against Jefferson Davis, that able and devoted Missis- 
 sippian, was enough to split the gathering. It split, and one fac- 
 tion nominated Douglas; the slave-holding faction nominated 
 John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, Lincoln's own now estranged 
 state. From the moment of this rift in the Democratic party 
 which Abraham Lincoln had helped to bring about, there was 
 never any chance that that shrewd politician, Stephen A. Doug- 
 las, would be elected. 
 
THE TOP OF THE LADDER 163 
 
 There were not a few in the Republican party who did not 
 care for Lincoln as a candidate and regarded him merely as 
 a figurehead. Many indeed were afraid that he would make a 
 mess of the campaign and accordingly saw to it that he was not 
 allowed to take any part in it. It was the party, not the man, that 
 commanded strength at the polls in i860. And the party won, 
 carrying Abraham, against his belief, and even against the wish 
 of that simple reserved part of him which belonged in Spring- 
 field, into the presidency. Although he received little more than 
 one-third of the popular vote cast Abraham was in, and the Re- 
 publican party was so pleased that it was for the time being to 
 pat its overgrown candidate on the back, and make him feel that 
 he was the apple of its eye. But not for long. 
 
PART TWO 
 THE BIRTH OF A MAN 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 
 
 THE extravagant protests which the North was making, to 
 the effect that the South was crying before it was hurt, to 
 everyone's professed astonishment, though to no one's real sur- 
 prise, resulted in desperate action on the part of the South. The 
 leaders of opinion, at least of that opinion which found its way 
 into expression, in the cotton states, had quite rightly, considering 
 the fact that Abraham and his backers had said that continued 
 division of the Nation on the matter of slavery would inevitably 
 result in trouble, interpreted the election of Lincoln as a final 
 statement on the part of the North that it did not care what a 
 powerful group of Southerners thought and that it would pay 
 no attention to the accusations of that group to the effect that 
 it was not getting fair play. Whatever the logic of the Southern 
 position, it is hard to see how they could have felt any other 
 way. 
 
 The election of November, i860, though a triumph for the 
 Republican party in the sense that through the division of their 
 chief opponent they had come into power, was not to all appear- 
 ances a triumph for the nation. President Buchanan, vaguely 
 sensing the weight of the difficulties in which his administration 
 was to close, sat back and did nothing while his cabinet divided 
 its allegiance between the "conspirators" of the North and the 
 "plotters" of the South. Certain members of the cabinet went so 
 far as to strengthen with military resources the states which 
 
 167 
 
168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would be likely to side with the South in the event of conflict. 
 Senators began to resign and go home. Senator Crittenden, of 
 Kentucky, an honorable and patriotic gentleman who had of- 
 fended Lincoln shortly before by urging the people of Illinois 
 to prefer Douglas as their Senator, proposed a compromise with 
 a view to relieving the frightful and ominous tension which 
 hung over the Congress. It was Senator Crittenden's hope that 
 he might save the Nation, as it had been saved in 1820, and again 
 in 1850. Crittenden proposed that the Missouri Compromise line 
 of 36' 30", North of which slavery had presumably not been per- 
 mitted, be restored and extended all the way to the Pacific Coast, 
 slavery being recognized South of the line and not recognized 
 above it, but any state could be admitted either north or south 
 of the line with or without slavery if the matter was provided for 
 in the state constitutions. Crittenden's proposals also contained 
 articles affirming that Congress had no power to abolish slavery 
 in places under its exclusive jurisdiction and situated within the 
 limits of states that permit the holding of slaves; that congress 
 should not be allowed power to abolish slavery in the District of 
 Columbia without permission of the two states from which the 
 District had been taken. That Congress should not be permitted 
 to interfere with the transportation of slaves from one slave- 
 holding state or territory to another and that Congress should 
 indemnify the owners of fugitive slaves which were rescued and 
 consequently kept from their owners in spite of the national 
 Fugitive Slave Law. 
 
 These compromise suggestions contained nothing more drastic 
 than had been contained in the earlier Compromises on the sub- 
 ject of slavery and merely demanded recognition of the fact 
 that the nation was in danger, that it had no power short of war 
 to wipe out slavery, and that it was better to resort to the time- 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 169 
 
 honored national custom of compromise out of which the Con- 
 stitution itself had been formed, than to lose the benefit and 
 dignity of that position to which union had brought the unrec- 
 onciled and widely differing people of the United States. Such a 
 yielding, to anyone who seriously believed that slavery was a 
 civilized anomaly existing by virtue of special conditions certain 
 to change of their own momentum in good time, need not have 
 been unacceptable. The differences between North and South 
 were serious. The South, as Jefferson Davis well said, believed 
 that the trouble was in the fact that, through the election of the 
 Republican Party, "a sectional hostility has been substituted for 
 a general fraternity." In so far as there had never been previous 
 to the election of i860 a party alignment on purely Northern and 
 Southern lines, he was certainly right. But there were those in 
 the North, far removed from actual contact with the people, the 
 culture, the life and labor of the South, who believed, not unnat- 
 urally, that their abhorrence of slavery was a divinely inspired 
 state of mind marking them different from and morally better 
 than the misguided people of the cotton states. Abraham Lincoln 
 was against the spread of slavery, but he did not share with 
 the great number of members of his own party, this purely "holier 
 than thou" attitude. He was still concerned with the political 
 aspects. It was a question of control. Almost at the very moment 
 when the legislature of the State of South Carolina was cutting 
 the cord which bound it to the Union, Abraham, in Springfield, 
 from which he too was soon to sever himself, was telling the 
 party representatives who came to see him, that he would not 
 come out for the Crittenden compromise. He gave no reasons, 
 and consequently left it for posterity to form its own. They can 
 hardly be woven into one statement of fact. There were many in- 
 fluences. First, there was the leaning of the compromise toward 
 
170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Douglas's old principle of popular sovereignty. That in itself 
 was something which Douglas's opponent in that curious cam- 
 paign of 1858 could never give assent to. There was Senator 
 Crittenden's action in throwing the weight of his support to 
 Douglas, the wrong man, as Abraham thought, in that same 
 campaign. And, perhaps strongest of all, was Abraham's belief, 
 as yet unjustified, as yet vague and vacillating, that he was on the 
 right side, politically, though he was not perfectly sure why and 
 though he had to do much arguing with himself to maintain the 
 belief. Added to all these was a false notion of the sublimity of 
 the Constitution and an unwarranted assumption of insight into 
 the motives of its framers. 
 
 These elements combined to draw the curious picture of the 
 same man who had gone stumping through New England to 
 support the Southerner Zachary Taylor against the abolitionists 
 and mildly anti-slave natives of that canny region, now favor- 
 ing the biases and judgments of those very citizens by supporting, 
 whatever might be the differences between his reasons and theirs, 
 the principles of sectional hostility. Perhaps the spectacle of the 
 defeated Douglas, running out his term in the Senate by serving 
 on the Committee of Thirteen appointed to consider the differ- 
 ences between North and South, yielding his political beliefs 
 in an effort to find some way of saving the Union, meant nothing 
 to Abraham, even if he watched it. It is hard to believe that that 
 is the case and it is hard to believe that his decision on the mat- 
 ter of the Crittenden compromise, which even Republicans like 
 Seward might have been willing to accept, did not cause the 
 Republican party's new leader many qualms and misgivings be- 
 fore the summer of 1862. 
 
 Whatever it caused him then or after, his answer was given. 
 Two days after he had given it the Committee of Thirteen voted 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 171 
 
 on the compromise, the Republican members voting against it, 
 the party dictum having gone out. Seward, a member of the 
 Committee, who had leaned toward compromise, could not now 
 entertain the idea. His leader, who had offered him the post 
 of Secretary of State, had vetoed it. The chance for Seward to be 
 another Clay was gone. With Seward's vote in Committee went 
 all the other Republican votes. In the larger sense that was the 
 end. There were further attempts to reconcile the differences 
 between North and South, but the South had given up hope 
 and even Alexander H. Stephens found it impossible to have 
 any faith in Lincoln's remarks that he intended no harm to the 
 South. Lincoln's suggestion that he would be interested in ap- 
 pointing a few opposing Southerners to his cabinet met with no 
 response. 
 
 South Carolina had gone, and was feeling out the sentiment 
 of the other cotton states, who at first replied guardedly. As each 
 day passed and no rays of light were seen, other states began 
 to lean towards secession. In January, a conference of rep- 
 resentatives of these states met at Montgomery, Alabama, to set 
 up a new government. In the meantime the Federal garrisons 
 of the forts in Charleston harbor were left in a ticklish position, 
 South Carolina professing no longer to recognize the authority 
 of the Federal government and the Federal government, under 
 the wobbly James Buchanan, being unable to make up its mind 
 whether or not it wished to be aggressive as General Jackson once 
 had been, or pacificatory and weak. No steps were taken one 
 way or the other, the South Carolinians being unwilling to do 
 anything that appeared actively belligerent and the national 
 government trying hard to keep its eyes shut and see nothing. 
 The stock exchange in New York, like a thermometer in the 
 mouth of an infected patient, was indicative of serious ill. 
 
172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 And when the stock exchange looks bad, look for blood- 
 shed. 
 
 Meanwhile, the little village of Springfield, Illinois, was still 
 Springfield, and the problems of North and South were merely 
 newspaper issues there. On the day after the election of Jefferson 
 Davis to the Presidency of the Confederate States of America, 
 then in process of formation at Montgomery, two men to whom 
 Montgomery and its life was as remote as Constantinople, sat in 
 a little back room of a three story brick house facing the main 
 square of Springfield. 
 
 The trees of the square were sharp against a sad gray sky. 
 Under their branches stood saddle ponies hitched to iron posts, 
 carts with wheels like great bony haunches raising above their 
 bodies, their horses unhitched and tied to the axles, great-topped 
 buggies like enormous beetles. The vehicles looked lifeless and 
 old, the horses stood staring dejectedly at the ground. The chill of 
 a raw February afternoon was a little softened by the smell of 
 woodsmoke from the chimneys of the town. 
 
 In the little room up one flight of stairs beyond the rust- 
 streaked sign reading: Lincoln and Herndon, the two law part- 
 ners were talking over old times. The younger of the two men, a 
 stocky rather leonine personage of perhaps forty years, sat with 
 his feet on a long T-shaped table which was covered with un- 
 brushed green baize. On this table, scattered among the feet 
 of the lawyers, were several untidy bundles of legal looking pa- 
 pers. Occasionally the junior partner aimed a jet of tobacco juice 
 at a cuspidor between two windows which looked out into a 
 yard full of outhouses, piles of crates and boxes, old stove-pipe, 
 discarded shoes and other rubbish. 
 
 Lincoln, the senior partner, wore a shabby, shapeless suit of 
 black wool. There was still no gray in the great mass of his 
 
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 Z 
 
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THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 173 
 
 almost black hair, but the narrow face under the broad low- 
 forehead was now so deeply lined that it seemed almost to be 
 covered with scars. The small gray eyes seemed dimmed; they 
 wandered about and would not rest upon Herndon's. The small 
 chin was covered by a new growth of slight black beard. In 
 spite of the sadness of the eyes above it, the beard, as its owner 
 lay back full length upon the black horsehair sofa along the 
 wall farthest from the windows, bobbed up and down to the 
 time of a shrill laughter. 
 
 The long black slab of Abraham Lincoln, weary of imperfect 
 and unsatisfying judgments and decisions, of the struggle with 
 office seekers, of the importunities of Mrs. Lincoln, who wanted 
 this and that place for relatives of hers who because of Southern 
 sympathies needed protection, had been relaxing by recalling to 
 his partner's mind the pleasant days of riding the circuit as a 
 traveling lawyer in the eighth Judicial district of Central Illinois. 
 Those days were gone, with their simplicity and their single 
 kindly demand. Abraham had not thought of them merely as 
 days of earning a living, that living which the extravagant and 
 unwise ways of his wife, combined with constant payments on 
 old debts, had made so hard to accumulate. And his flier in 
 Congress in 1848 and 1849 h a d not swelled the depleted pocket- 
 book to any noticeable extent. Furthermore his stepbrother and 
 father out in Coles County seemed always in need of help. He 
 was a little disgusted with their shiftlessness but he could not al- 
 ways refuse them. Even this background of financial importunity 
 had not been able to make his circuit days seem days of drudgery. 
 The contact with simple, plain-spoken, plain-minded people 
 which they had given was worth more than anything else to him. 
 
 Those days were over now, and letting them go from him 
 was to Abraham a little like an unpracticed swimmer letting go 
 
i 7 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of a boat for the first time. Now, in his last days of the old life in 
 Springfield, he clung by means of anecdotes and reminiscence 
 to the fringes of the system of ordinary behavior and ordinary 
 thinking which the political accidents of national life had deter- 
 mined that he should leave. Now he remembered a story he had 
 told to the landlady of a bawdyhouse whom he was defending. 
 He had managed to get a change of venue for the lady and had 
 driven her and some of her girls across the prairie to the next 
 town. On the way they had sung songs and told stories to one 
 another. He repeated some of them now, for his junior partner's 
 adoring benefit. 
 
 The junior partner had heard it all before, but he laughed 
 as heartily as the narrator. He spat again and told a story of 
 his own. The senior partner lay back on the sofa for a while, with 
 his feet stretched out full length before him and his arms, which 
 were folded behind his great head of hair, making him look a 
 full foot larger than the actual six feet four which intervened 
 between his shoe soles and his scalp. Finally he flung himself into 
 a sitting posture with a jerk, slapped his knees and stood up, his 
 baggy coat falling clumsily down about his hips. He turned to 
 his companion and looked at him solemnly. The younger man 
 leaned back in his chair, his head outlined against the after- 
 noon light which came in through the two rain-splotched win- 
 dows that looked out upon the rubbish of the yard. There was 
 not much to say, and Lincoln said no more. The two exchanged 
 confidences. Lincoln insisted that his departure should make no 
 difference in the firm, and Herndon denied that he cared to 
 use his relationship to Lincoln as an excuse to get a soft political 
 job. # 
 
 Herndon looked up into his partner's face. He knew how 
 
 * Herndon, Wm. H. and Weik, Jesse W. Abraham Lincoln, 1888. 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 175 
 
 much his own ardent activity and his political ideas had helped 
 to stimulate the naturally sluggish flow of Lincoln's own. He 
 knew how much the side of the Republican party which he rep- 
 resented and which Lincoln had always been a little shy of, was 
 responsible for the political forces which were now taking the 
 better half of his firm away from him. That, and the ambitious 
 little woman in the strange cheerless house at Eighth and Jack- 
 son Streets, the once sparkling and socially distinguished Mary 
 Todd. 
 
 The two men stood for a moment, the taller looking over 
 Herndon's head, his glance going slowly about the old dusty 
 office in a sort of ocular farewell. Then they turned away and 
 clattered down the narrow wooden stairs, Lincoln talking in a 
 tone of disgusted depreciation of the exalted office of President of 
 the United States of America. So far it had been no fun at all, 
 he said, and he was afraid it would only get worse. After all, 
 there had been some people who couldn't conveniently get to 
 Springfield to make him miserable. They probably would all be 
 in Washington, never doubt it. He was sick of office holding al- 
 ready and the inauguration was still a month away. 
 
 As the two men stepped into the street, an old wind-blown 
 piece of the Illinois State Journal in a changing wind, ranged 
 back up the square and scuttled away from Lincoln and Hern- 
 don, carrying its depressing news of coming darkness. Abraham 
 and his partner walked on. Lincoln talking of the unpleasantness 
 of giving up a sheltered personal life, of which a man could know 
 the worst, and of surrendering to public service, out in the un- 
 protected open, where every passerby could stick his finger into 
 you until you got as bruised as a grocer's apple. 
 
 Every time an enthusiastic citizen would stop the two men 
 to shake hands with the newly bearded giant or to call out, with 
 
176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that excited effort of linking himself with someone marked out 
 for distinction, "Good luck!" or "Hello, Abe!" or "When do you 
 leave?", Lincoln would give Herndon a tragic, despairing look. 
 He would have liked to gather all that came to him and thump 
 them down on cracker-barrels in a circle about him, to stop the 
 march of their inquisitory fawning with a "Listen, did you ever 
 hear this one?" That would stop them. He was afraid of them 
 when he couldn't do that. Afraid they might be saying under 
 their breaths that Lincoln was not man enough for the job. 
 He was man enough to make them laugh, at any rate, and he 
 hankered to be able to prove that, if nothing else. 
 
 At the corner of Eighth Street Abraham turned and grasped 
 Herndon's hand, saying an affectionate good-bye. Herndon stood 
 watching him as he strode down the street. Although the junior 
 partner did not then know it, and it is very doubtful that Lin- 
 coln thought of it, these two were never again to walk over that 
 same ground together. 
 
 The home on Eighth and Jackson Streets had been rented, 
 not without considerable misgiving and more difficulty. Lincoln 
 believed that the tenants would "use it all up" before he ever 
 got back to it. 
 
 During the winter the family had moved downtown to the 
 Chenery House to board. The Chenery House was not a home. 
 There wasmt room enough in it to get away when you wanted 
 to, and six feet four of nervous, unhappy Lincoln could no longer 
 walk the streets of Springfield with his own child's heart-load 
 of oppression. Nor could he walk into a store and tell the boys 
 what such and such a thing reminded him of. The boys had a 
 feeling that the high and mighty politicians had now automat- 
 ically become Abraham's intimates, that the America of which 
 their fellow townsman had been elected Chief Magistrate, was 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 177 
 
 something which did not extend to Illinois. They treated him 
 as if he had changed, when he knew that he had not, even feared 
 that he had not. They deprived him, thus, of the only way he 
 knew how to make contact with life. 
 
 It was a bad winter, and the worst hour of its worst day was 
 the hour before eight o'clock on the morning of February 
 eleventh, 1861, the day before Abraham's fifty-second birthday. 
 In the Chenery house, on that eventful morning, there were too 
 many people doing too many things in too small a space. The 
 family was in an uproar as all families, and particularly nervous 
 ones, must be when they move, bag and baggage, even though 
 the move be merely to the seashore. And the Lincoln family, 
 mother and father and three sons, to say nothing of two recently 
 acquired young secretaries, was moving from the peaceful, 
 friendly town of Springfield to what many agreed was the only 
 genuine hell-on-earth then in existence, the terrified, uncertain, 
 arrogant, filthy, half-completed city of Washington. 
 
 And the nervous strain of the past year, crowning the power 
 of other years of apprehension and bitterness, had told upon 
 that family. Upon the lax and genial master of it, who through- 
 out its days had struggled for the place which his desire to 
 avenge himself for past humiliations told him he must fill, in 
 a world in which he really believed that he did not belong. 
 Upon the mother of the family, ambitious, arrogant, who had 
 had to urge her difficult husband always to the point of energy, 
 and who had, on the side, had to use her position to secure fat 
 places for the husbands of her relatives and friends. And upon 
 the children, least of all perhaps upon Robert, the oldest, who 
 had been away at school in New Hampshire imbibing through 
 contact with its sons the culture of the plutocratic North. 
 
 On the morning of February eleventh, Mrs. Lincoln, capable 
 
178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and energetic, although rather high-strung, busied herself with 
 the children, only Robert who was seventeen being old enough 
 to be personally responsible for his conduct in time of stress. 
 Willie was only ten and Thomas but seven. 
 
 The gigantic shallow-chested figure of Abraham himself 
 stalked nervously about the narrow confines of the coarsely fur- 
 nished suite at the Chenery House, seeing that everything was 
 ready. The trunks which he had roped and marked with his 
 own hands, had been piled into a cart and driven to the station 
 under the supervision of Nicolay and Hay, the two young sec- 
 retaries. There was an air of finality about it all. It seemed to 
 Abraham a little as if he were being dispossessed. 
 
 He never quite knew how everyone got out of that madhouse 
 of a hotel and into the carriages which were to carry the company 
 through the streets of Springfield. He did not know how they 
 ever got started on that dank and chilly morning, past the Square, 
 past the State House, the office of Lincoln and Herndon, Chatter- 
 ton's jewelry store, where he had bought Mary's wedding ring 
 with its inscription "Love is Eternal," past the Globe Tavern 
 where he had begun married life, past the friendly shops, the 
 homes of friends, and finally into the dismal yard of the Great 
 Western Railway Station. 
 
 That journey, with its smell of stale livery hacks, horses and 
 damp leather, its grind of iron-shod carriage wheels through the 
 sticky winter mud of the streets, the intermittent hollow, head- 
 achy rumble of the vehicle and hoofs over the wooden sidewalk 
 crossings, and the soggy penetrating chill of the overcast sunless 
 air, was not a pleasant journey for Abraham Lincoln. This was 
 being President, was it, to go cooped up in a black box of a stink- 
 ing, swaying hack, all folded up like a jackknife, feeling the 
 horror of too close confinement, the old inescapable claustropho- 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 179 
 
 bia? Was this the womb from which a man must issue into 
 the terrifying world of power and distinction, terrifying but 
 coveted ? 
 
 Long before eight o'clock, the scheduled hour of departure, 
 a crowd had begun to gather in the tiny waiting-room of the 
 station and to overflow into the muddy cinder-black yard between 
 the low flat-roofed brick building and the high-swung, hump- 
 backed train of cars, at the end of which a crushed looking loco- 
 motive with a funnel like a great black turnip was standing 
 belching acrid smoke. That smoke seemed to give to each drop 
 of moisture in the saturated air just enough weight of soot to 
 make it fall. Little grimy grains descended again and again upon 
 the heads and shoulders of the increasing crowd. 
 
 At five minutes past eight Abraham had to leave the hand- 
 shaking bee that was going on inside the station. The train with 
 a shriek of mislaced whistle and a clanging of bell, rolled for- 
 ward a little into place. Abraham, holding fast to a little black 
 satchel, and with a great gray rope of shawl knotted like a hawser 
 about the capstain of his head, his rumpled stovepipe beaver 
 resting on his ears, followed the railroad official to the back plat- 
 form of the last car of the train. There he stood, pulled up to his 
 full height, looking as an untrained actor looks at his audience, 
 at the crowd below him, while Mrs. Lincoln, with the help of 
 her brother-in-law and the two young secretaries, loaded the 
 excited children on board. 
 
 Abraham stared at the crowd and took off his hat. His adam's 
 apple moved convulsively under the shawl. The whole party 
 was on board now. The Governor of the State, ex-Governor 
 Moore, Lockwood Todd, Orville H. Browning, Colonel E. V. 
 Sumner, Captain John Pope, and a few other officers, Judge David 
 Davis, of the Circuit Court, Norman Judd, Elmer Ellsworth, 
 
180 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's personal friend and bodyguard, and 
 a number of others. Just as Mr. Wood, who represented the rail- 
 road was about to reach up proudly and pull the communication 
 cord to start the ship of state on its way toward the high seas of 
 administration, Lincoln leaned forward, resting his hands upon 
 the rail of the platform. 
 
 The crowd stood in silence waiting. Here and there some- 
 one coughed. Most of the thousand or so citizens who had come 
 to say good-bye to Springfield's favored son, stood with their hats 
 off in the mist, waiting for some sign to prove that it was a 
 greater thing to watch a President of the United States, whom 
 many men thought would be the last, standing on the rear plat- 
 form of a very unbeautiful railroad car, than to pass a long- 
 legged melancholy awkward giant on the street in Springfield 
 and say to him, "Hello, Abe!" 
 
 People were talking about the probability of there being a 
 revolution in the country. What would a revolution be like 
 anyway ? Wonder if Old Abe knows anything about revolutions ? 
 What does he think, anyway ? Maybe he'll say. Maybe someone'll 
 ride up to him the way they did one day when he was speak- 
 ing in the Square uptown and shout out, "Say, how would you 
 like to sleep with a nigger ?" 
 
 One or two in the crowd, a little bothered by the unwonted 
 silence of the reputed backwoods comedian, noting perhaps, the 
 look of sadness in his face and the beginning of a tear in his 
 eye, could be heard whispering, "He needn't take on so!" or 
 "Thinks he's God Almighty!" 
 
 As roots go into the earth, the little fibers of the gray breaths 
 of that gray thousand Americans went into the lusterless, life- 
 less air of that Illinois morning. 
 
 Then there was a general shifting of position, a more intent 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 181 
 
 staring of the upturned faces. Lincoln was speaking. His shrill, 
 high-pitched, tight-throated voice sounded through the mist 
 above the rhythmic "pssst-pssst" from the steam dome of the 
 engine up forward. 
 
 "My friends," he said : "no one not in my situation can appre- 
 ciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the 
 kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived 
 a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old 
 man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I 
 now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, 
 with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Wash- 
 ington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever 
 attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot 
 fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with 
 you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that 
 all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in 
 your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate 
 farewell." # 
 
 Lincoln's face was drawn with that dry melancholy which 
 in emotional people who are able to command their emotions, 
 often takes the place of actual tears. The group of men stand- 
 ing behind him said nothing. The crowd about the car was 
 silent for a moment. The drizzle had changed to thin gray snow. 
 
 The conductor of the train pulled the signal cord. The loco- 
 motive rang its bell and blew a damp white cloud from its shrill 
 whistle. The crowd, now waving and speaking collectively, ut- 
 tered a murmur of farewell which gradually mounted into a 
 shout of cheering. 
 
 The loose-jointed train humped itself and clanked slowly 
 away out of the damp cavern of the station yard, leaving the 
 
 *Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History. 
 
182 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 fellow-townsmen of Abe Lincoln to the simple daily rounds of 
 their mid-western life. That little train of a locomotive and two 
 cars carried Abraham Lincoln the plain country lawyer, the 
 cracker-barrel fun-maker, the politician, the maker of phrases, 
 out of the protective womb of his province into the whirlpool 
 world in which the broken pieces of the United States of America 
 were being ground to new shape. 
 
 As the train puffed swayingly along the uneven rails through 
 the snow-spotted prairies of Sangamon County, past wagons, 
 saddle-horses, and people on foot, all drawn to the tracks by the 
 hope of seeing the President-elect go by, Abraham Lincoln, 
 shocked into reaction by his own emotion, sat in the stuffy car 
 and operated with the keen knife of his wit upon the cancer of 
 sadness and nervous premonition which grew in his heart. He 
 called his friends Hill Lamon, Judge Judd, and Orville Brown- 
 ing to his seat and looked at them solemnly. 
 
 The children were staring out the windows in pleased ex- 
 citement, Mrs. Lincoln was brushing the wrinkles from her 
 fine new traveling dress and folding and putting away in the 
 rack the appurtenances which she had made a special trip to 
 New York to buy. Colonel Sumner and the other officers with 
 several others of the party were talking to Mr. Wood of the 
 railroad company about the itinerary and the probable time of 
 reaching one place or another, of the frequency of railroad 
 wrecks and the causes of them. 
 
 There was a general atmosphere of uncertain danger in the 
 stuffy, creaky little car that smelled of smoke and coal oil. Aside 
 from the prevalence of wrecks on the railroads of those days, 
 newspapers everywhere had for some time been printing vague 
 news of plots to keep the new President from being inaugurated. 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 183 
 
 Whether these stones were based on fact or were not, the editors 
 knew that the average American would think them better read- 
 ing than the complicated and mysterious deficiencies of old Mr. 
 Buchanan in the White House, or the obscure intentions of those 
 Southern gentlemen who, at Montgomery, Alabama, on Feb- 
 ruary eighth, had set up a government called the Confederate 
 States of America, and announced the severance of the ties which 
 bound the cotton states to the remaining states of the Union es- 
 tablished in 1787 by the Constitution. 
 
 Most members of the little retinue of the Honorable Abraham 
 Lincoln, en route for the chief magistracy of a Republic of eighty- 
 five years, which at the same time showed signs of going the 
 way all other republics had gone, believed that their friend's 
 enemies were bent upon his destruction. It is probable that some 
 of them — there was no great mind among them — believed that 
 the conference at Montgomery was convened for no other pur- 
 pose than that of devising ways to do away with Mr. Lincoln and 
 seize the government at Washington, for use as the capital of 
 the new Confederacy. 
 
 As Lincoln sat, looking up from his swaying jiggling chair at 
 Judd and Lamon, there was a twinkle in his gray eyes. He wasn't 
 going to make a hectic railroad trip any worse by thinking about 
 people chaining trees to the railroad track or burning bridges to 
 wreck his train. Moreover, the railroad official on board had as- 
 sured him that there was a pilot engine not far ahead and an 
 extra signal man at every curve. It was not fear that was bother- 
 ing Abraham, at least not fear of physical harm. He merely felt 
 that there was something conspicuously oflf about him which 
 the people whom he was going to rule would notice and deride. 
 It was as if he had forgotten to button himself up, or, as he did 
 when a sculptor had been doing a bust of him a few months 
 
184 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 before, forgotten to put his undershirt back on. Combined with 
 the personal anxiety, was a dreadful worry lest he should lose 
 the little black bag in which he was carrying the galley proofs 
 of his as yet secret inaugural address. But these troubles did not 
 beset him continuously. They even suggested anecdotes to him. 
 One of these he told now, beckoning the men closer to him. 
 
 When the story was finished, those who had listened to it 
 burst into violently subdued laughter and turned to cast an 
 ashamed eye at Mrs. Lincoln, who in her place at the other 
 end of the car could scarcely have heard them. Several of the 
 men who had been standing near-by and who had overheard the 
 high humor of the relation smiled deferentially but a little ner- 
 vously, looking at one another in surprise. Then some one asked 
 Lincoln a question, hoping to change the subject. But he would 
 not bother about politics. He waved them aside shaking his head 
 in objection. Then he lay back in his seat, with his shawl spread 
 over him, and tried to sleep. It would not work. His mind looked 
 too much upon himself. Sleep had no chance of taking him un- 
 awares. He kept thinking of the strange illusion of the two faces, 
 both Lincoln, but one pale and dim, which he had seen in a 
 mirror when lying down in his room not many days before. He 
 had believed that vision to be a mere illusion, in spite of the fact 
 that he had seen it more than once. He did not realize how sus- 
 ceptible his type of emotional system was to hallucinations and 
 unreal perceptions. He had always been a little superstitious, even 
 having taken his son to see the possessor of a toad-stone in the 
 hope of curing some minor trouble. He believed, rather more 
 actively than is generally considered healthy, in a definite and 
 presumably malign fate. So the vision worried him. His ambitious 
 but not too wise wife had thought it an omen, signifying that he 
 was to serve two terms as President, perhaps unconsciously in- 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 185 
 
 dulging her own hope. An illusion, Abraham concluded that it 
 was, but he could not quite rid himself of the sense of it. It was 
 a trifle ominous. 
 
 And surely it seemed that he was plunging into the course 
 of a very fateful series of events. God knows what kind of kettle 
 of fish that old doddering Buchanan would have cooked up by 
 the time March fourth came round. And what did those Southern 
 fellows want anyway? Did they really want to go against the 
 men who had made the Union? Why should they? Well, it 
 seemed as if some of them did. Queer people. 
 
 Lincoln sat up and rubbed his hand over his chin. The young 
 beard which he had grown during the preceding month felt 
 strange and pleasant to the touch. Perhaps he felt that it stood 
 between the naked, bewildered suffering of his heart and the 
 outer world of suave and polished men which he disliked, almost 
 feared, to face. 
 
 If I'm as ugly as they make out, he thought, this ought to be 
 a help. 
 
 When the train rattled into the station at Indianapolis, late 
 that afternoon, the cheers of a great crowd and the booming of 
 cannon roused the tender-minded Westerner to a sense of his 
 national prominence. The welcome made him, for a little, for- 
 get the seeming incongruity of his position. He forgot that he 
 was merely an uneducated, matter-of-fact, small-town lawyer and 
 stump speaker, and remembered that he had at least been chosen 
 by his party to lead the nation. 
 
 True, in the election which had made him President-elect 
 his opponents had received from the sovereign people a million 
 more votes than he had, but still no one man had received as 
 many as he did. He might as well pretend that there was no 
 worm of uncertainty in his heart. 
 
186 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 He stood on the back platform of the car and made a very 
 dignified speech in which he declared, without specifying what 
 liberty other than the liberty of holding slaves as property, had 
 been assailed, that . . . "not with politicians, not with Presidents, 
 not with office seekers, but with you, is the question: shall the 
 Union and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the 
 latest generations ?" 
 
 In the evening of the same day, feeling very awkward, but 
 glad to be away from the confining, sickening motion of the 
 crazy train, Lincoln fell a little below the dignity of his after- 
 noon address. Misgivings were coming into his mind again. 
 What right has Lincoln to be headed for Washington? There 
 must be a mistake. He could not, he thought, be wrong about 
 himself. His feelings were too simple to be wrong. It must be 
 that the people who had pushed him up and onto this fateful 
 train — Billy Herndon, Mary Todd, the party leaders, — it must 
 be they that were in error about him. All this in the back of 
 his head while he talked to the Indiana legislators, painfully con- 
 scious that he could not be at his best so long as his ability as a 
 catchword orator must be restrained by his sense of what was 
 owing the few days of presidential life left to old gray-headed 
 James Buchanan. 
 
 It was too much. Lincoln began to kick himself back into 
 flippancy to prevent himself from thinking too much about his 
 grievances. 
 
 He spoke to his audience of those who professed devotion to 
 the Union with the same voice by means of which they declared 
 that they would resist Federal coercion. What is coercion ? What 
 is force? Do they love the Union? And yet they would resist 
 it! ..."... In their view," he said, "the Union as a family 
 relation would seem to be no regular marriage, but rather a sort 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 187 
 
 of 'free-love' arrangement, to be maintained only on 'passional 
 attraction.' " 
 
 And next morning, when Abraham Lincoln woke up in his 
 hotel bed in Indianapolis, the Eastern papers, that had stood with 
 their mouths open, waiting for such crumbs of wisdom as a 
 famished and torn nation desired, made wry faces over the 
 mouthful their doubtful champion had dropped them. They con- 
 fessed the taste of gall. 
 
 All along the route thereafter the progress of Lincoln's badly- 
 balanced, jerky little train, which grew grimier every minute, 
 the impolitic angels of perversity and uncertainty galloped from 
 cow-catcher to tail lantern, seldom missing the great skull of 
 the President-elect. 
 
 At Cincinnati the six feet four of provincial lawyer, the big 
 man of Springfield, could not forget the unhappiness of his 
 earlier visit during which, because of having been ignored by 
 senior counsel in a law case in which he had been retained, 
 he had felt that sophistication in the person of an attorney with 
 a better education and a more polished manner had set its heel 
 upon him. 
 
 Even as President-elect of the nation, the site of that energetic 
 city on the Ohio River meant to Lincoln the sense of lost con- 
 fidence in himself, of sinking of the heart. He now addressed two 
 gatherings here, not in his happiest mood. He addressed his first 
 remarks across the river toward Covington, Kentucky, his native 
 state where dwelt many inclined to be Democrats and to lean 
 upon slavery with a moderately fraternal arm. To these feHow- 
 Americans, citizens to whose service he knew that he was devoted, 
 but who were not of his political faith, he still spoke as an out- 
 sider rather than as a national figure. He quoted from his Cin- 
 cinnati speech of 1859 and remarked that even in his new position 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 he saw no reason to retract a word of it. "'We mean,'" he 
 quoted, ' "to treat you as near as we possibly can, as Washington, 
 Jefferson, and Madison treated you. We mean to leave you alone, 
 and in no way to interfere with your institutions; to abide by 
 all and every compromise of the Constitution, and, in a word, 
 coming back to the original proposition, to treat you so far as 
 degenerate men, if we have degenerated, may, according to the 
 example of those noble fathers, Washington, Jefferson, and 
 Madison.' " 
 
 This was neither clever nor wise nor kind. It was a little 
 spiteful. The Kentuckians felt it and the hearts of those among 
 them who did not wish their economic reliance upon slavery to 
 dismember the Union, sank, for the time, out of reach of any 
 more words from Lincoln. They would have liked to know what 
 the new President meant when he said he would in no way 
 interfere with their institutions. Many of them felt that slavery 
 being their institution, had the same right to expand with the 
 new territory of their nation as did the more northern institution 
 of wholesale merchandising. The North regarded the former as 
 the South did the latter, as eminently distasteful. Those Ken- 
 tuckians, nor any other Southerners, were ever able to learn what 
 Mr. Lincoln had in mind. 
 
 To the German citizens of Cincinnati, in the same chill mood 
 unable to shake off the distaste for the city which had hurt him 
 and no longer needing votes, Lincoln said a few half-hearted 
 words, remarking that he could not tell at the moment what he 
 was going to do, that he did not, in fact, know. He referred to 
 "foreigners" and said that he saw no reason for keeping them 
 out of the country if they had any reason for wanting to come in. 
 
 The Germans were disappointed. To the last man, believing 
 him their friend, not merely thier acquaintance, they had voted 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 189 
 
 for him. The nation, when it read of what he was saying and 
 how sadly and weakly he was saying it, was equally disappointed. 
 Those who praised him, praised him because they believed he 
 was showing himself to be a weak though honest man who would 
 make the better tool for their purposes* 
 
 But whatever Lincoln said, however it saddened him to find 
 no higher words upon his tongue, however it made him con- 
 vinced that he was not the man for the job, there were thousands 
 upon thousands who wanted to see the rail-splitter, the back- 
 woodsman, the gawky giant who was going toward the crystal 
 chandeliers of the White House. 
 
 Everywhere that the little toy train went, it found curious 
 gazing crowds, some shouting, some silent, all unruly and eager 
 to get a look at the new President of whom such queer, chuckling, 
 behind-the-palm things were told. As the cars clattered along, 
 that unhappy man himself told stories to his friends, played with 
 the children, stared at his wife, lay back in his chair and slept, 
 and walked to the platform to wave his hand and say, as he 
 did at Steubenville, Ohio, and many other places, that the con- 
 fidence which people seemed to be placing in him was unfounded. 
 
 Sometimes, sick of the motion of the train and unhappy at 
 the direction it was taking, it would seem to him that he could 
 not go on. Then his speech would all but fail him and that 
 happy circumlocution about the nakedness of an idea, which is 
 the orator's very breath, would be beyond his power to com- 
 mand. 
 
 Then he would merely state solemn platitudes. He would say, 
 "We should all be bound by the majority of the American 
 people," knowing that the office toward which he was headed 
 had been secured to him by the vote of not more than one-third 
 of the adult males of his country. Sometimes, with a feeling of 
 
190 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tragic horror in his heart, he would find his mouth saying, "The 
 crisis, as it is called, is altogether an artificial crisis." 
 
 Occasionally, however, shaken into himself again by some 
 commonplace human incident of life on the way, he would re- 
 cover his wit a little, without recovering the sanity which usually 
 balanced it. At such times he would, while the crowds waited for 
 him to open his mouth, call for a little girl, for whom he said 
 he had grown his new beard, and ask her how she liked it, or, as 
 at Utica, New York, on the eighteenth of February, "I appear 
 before you that I may see you, and that you may see me, and I 
 am willing to admit that so far as the ladies are concerned I 
 have the best of the bargain, though I wish it to be understood 
 that I do not make the same acknowledgment concerning the 
 men." 
 
 By the time the exhausted party of pompous politicians, vain- 
 glorious military men, fidgety and scantily sympathetic children 
 and wife, obsequious secretaries, had reached the city of New 
 York, Lincoln was calmer, though perhaps not happier, than any 
 of them. Such worries as he had felt for the effect of his reticence 
 on national subjects were lessened with each crowd at each way- 
 side platform. He noticed that nobody really listened, that no 
 one ever seemed to know when he repeated at one halt the 
 words he had used at the previous one. He began to appreciate, 
 not without slight increase of inner sadness, that no one except 
 the politicians, the men whom he knew so well, cared what he 
 said, and then only that he said not too much. He felt something 
 like a "Wild Man of Borneo" being exhibited from a circus car. 
 
 And Lincoln would have felt much better about it all if 
 the terrible droning chorus of his heart had not, despite the gov- 
 ernment of his wit and his ready ability to assemble common 
 things into uncommon meanings, cried out, unquieted, "Lin- 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 191 
 
 coin's not the man! Lincoln's only a child, base as a child, awk- 
 ward as a child! He doesn't know anything really!" 
 
 As the black turnip of a locomotive, mounted on its squat 
 trucks, belching forth fire and smoke, waddling its clanking 
 drivers like a cat in agony, pulled its two frail cars into the depot 
 at Philadelphia on the afternoon of February twenty-first, 1861, 
 Lincoln felt that the inevitable horror was drawing very close 
 to him. Like an ambitious child bent upon being a champion 
 swimmer, he none the less did not want the water to be cold. 
 And the nearer he got to the great iron dome at Washington 
 which was the very vortex of his whirlpool waters, the colder did 
 their current seem to be. 
 
 Philadelphia, as it jerked backwards past him, while he stood 
 half dazed in the triumphal carriage which bore him from the 
 depot to the Continental Hotel, seemed to be all elbows and 
 hands, hats and beards, voices, bunting, motion and cold. At the 
 hotel he thanked the crowd for whatever it was that it had 
 shown him and repeated his earlier remarks as to the artificial 
 nature of the supposed national crisis. 
 
 "It is true, as your worthy Mayor has said," remarked Lin- 
 coln, "that there is a great anxiety amongst the citizens of the 
 United States at this time. I deem it a happy circumstance that 
 this dissatisfied portion of our fellow-citizens does not point us 
 to anything in which they are being injured or about to be in- 
 jured; for which reason I have felt all the while justified in 
 concluding that the crisis, the panic, the anxiety of the country 
 at this time is artificial." 
 
 If he had seen into the heart of many an honest Southerner, 
 a thing which he had not yet done, the honest Abraham Lincoln 
 would, politics or no politics, never have lent his tongue to the 
 
192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 uses of such quibbling as that; nor would he have believed that 
 his "political warfare" and no other man's was "in favor of 
 the teachings that come forth" from the sacred walls of the 
 Hall of Independence. 
 
 If by his repetition of the statement that there was nothing 
 really wrong with the country, Lincoln was trying to whistle 
 himself into the bravery of believing that the route he had to 
 walk was neither dark nor lonely, there were earnest, bustling 
 friends who were soon to shake him out of that bravery. 
 
 Abraham was sitting in his room at the Continental Hotel 
 in Philadelphia on the evening of February twenty-first taking 
 off his shoes. He thought he saw that in thirty seconds he would 
 be, with free toes, lying on his back in the middle of the floor 
 with a bed-pillow under his head, enjoying* himself hugely. Five 
 minutes without being molested had warmed him a little and 
 made him feel that he might, given time, be himself again, like 
 a fish thrown back into water after a bad time among the rocks. 
 At the end of the five minutes, however, he was lost. 
 
 A knock on the door and a question and answer brought into 
 the room Lincoln's friend Norman B. Judd, of Chicago, one of 
 the heavyweights of his entourage, who was followed by a 
 stately flash of man named Pinkerton. 
 
 Lincoln welcomed these two solemn gentlemen, who looked 
 as if they had been caught in a raid, with a pleasant story about 
 the men whose pigpen fence was so crooked that the pigs es- 
 caped into it every time they thought they were escaping out of 
 it. Meaning to say that the shoe laces, with which he was busy 
 were a bit like that fence. 
 
 When the President-elect had heard Judd's story and seen the 
 hopefully acquiescent nods of Mr. Pinkerton, he forgot his shoes. 
 These fellows were telling him that there was a plot against his 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 193 
 
 life and that he must, without anyone's knowledge, give 
 up the rest of his tour and take the eleven o'clock train 
 for Washington that very night, passing through Baltimore 
 without stopping, unexpected, unheralded and unrecognized. 
 It appeared that Baltimore was the scene of the proposed 
 plot. 
 
 Lincoln was genuinely troubled by this news. He remembered 
 now that Baltimore was the only city, Maryland the only state, 
 through which his way to the capital must lie, which had sent 
 him no official invitation and no greeting. That looked bad. And 
 yet, he thought, why should anyone plot against him? But it 
 did look rather bad. He saw what it would mean to his enemies 
 to have him sneak into Washington like that. They would call 
 him yellow-livered or worse. 
 
 He pondered a moment, thinking with something of a shud- 
 der of the jostling, damp-handed crowds that had swelled about 
 him everywhere. He began to see danger in their midst. Yet he 
 had planned to penetrate one to raise a flag over Independence 
 Hall on the following morning and to proceed into another one 
 at Harrisburg to deliver a speech. 
 
 He decided that whatever danger there might be he would 
 keep to this schedule, and if nothing went wrong, continue as 
 planned. 
 
 In the morning, tired and haggard, but perhaps a little 
 sharpened by the new brooding of his fear and anxiety, he went 
 through the flag-raising ceremonies and made a speech in which 
 he indirectly referred to the possibility of assassination. He was a 
 romantic soul and, although he could keep his mind from the 
 threatened danger, he felt that he must use it as a means of 
 drawing his audience closer to him. In doing so he unconsciously 
 drew the danger closer to his own heart. 
 
194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Just when he was ready to leave Philadelphia he received 
 word from Senator Seward in Washington that the supposed plot 
 had carried its noise to that place also. That confirmation, sketchy 
 as it was, settled Lincoln's mind. He thereupon decided to let 
 his managing friends arrange for a secret trip back to Phila- 
 delphia from Harrisburg that night, and for an even more secret 
 one from Philadelphia direct to Washington via Baltimore before 
 daylight. With that decision, unpleasant though it was, Lincoln's 
 spirits began to rise. 
 
 That evening, when Harrisburg had had its fill of speech- 
 making, handshaking and cannon-firing, Lincoln retired to his 
 room in the Jones House and summoned the members of his 
 retinue to his side. Mr. Judd explained the situation and told of 
 the plan for getting Lincoln through to Washington in secret. 
 Lincoln sat looking from face to face among his friends, trying 
 to make out what they thought of his decision. He paid little 
 attention to Colonel Sumner's soldierly remark that such a pro- 
 cedure as was proposed was nothing more or less than cowardice. 
 He had made his decision and he would stick to it. He now be- 
 lieved, at least partially, in his danger, and he determined to go 
 ahead and avoid it. 
 
 When that solemn meeting had disbanded with phrases and 
 grunts representing various gradations of opinion, Lincoln, with 
 only Lamon at his side, slipped from the hotel by a side door 
 and into a shuttered carriage in the dark. The two men were 
 driven hurriedly to a deserted railroad crossing outside of the 
 town, where stood unlighted, a single day coach hitched to an 
 engine panting under full steam. 
 
 The two left the carriage and climbed into the empty car, 
 fumbling about in it in the dark until they found and were 
 identified by the nervous railroad official who had the trip in 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 195 
 
 charge. This gentleman immediately pulled the signal for the 
 train to start. 
 
 Lincoln rather enjoyed the excitement. He sat in the dark 
 car and stretched his ungainly legs. The railroad official, who 
 had never heard any of his stories, and Lamon who had heard 
 them all, laughed equally at the diversion which he offered them. 
 
 At ten o'clock the train reached West Philadelphia. Here 
 there was another mysterious, melodramatic shift. Lincoln and 
 Lamon got out of the train and sat in a tightly sealed carriage, 
 almost suffocated by the odor of livery stable broadcloth steeped 
 in horse. Finally the carriage began to move. Lincoln had no idea 
 of its direction. For all he knew the driver might have been the 
 wrong man. 
 
 For nearly an hour the dizzy carriage rumbled in unmapped 
 circles through the City of Brotherly Love. Finally, when the 
 cramped position of the President-elect had begun to make him 
 feel a little tenderly about the idea of assassination, the carriage 
 creaked and growled- its way into the shadow of the Baltimore 
 depot. 
 
 A long train made up with sleepers and day coaches and 
 lighted dimly by oil lamps stood like a dead whale upon the 
 nearest track. The end door of the last car stood open and a man 
 leaned in its shadow. Lamon walked up to the man and whis- 
 pered in his ear. He then turned and beckoned to Lincoln, who 
 was bashfully standing there, gaunt as a lamppost, with a flat 
 soft hat on his massive head, his shawl wrapped in a rope about 
 his neck, and his short overcoat making his legs look like the 
 side posts of a ladder. 
 
 Lincoln climbed the high car steps, strode into the dimly- 
 lighted cavern above and quickly plunged between the curtains 
 of the berth which was hastily pointed out to him. He lay back 
 
196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 at full length, or as near it as a railroad berth of 1861 would 
 allow a man of six feet four to do so, and drew a deep breath. 
 Outside, in the aisle, Lamon, with the necessary tickets, was 
 telling the conductor that his traveling companion was sick and 
 could not be disturbed. 
 
 The sick man lay folded like a camp-stool in his bunk, now 
 and then poking his watchful companion outside and whispering 
 through the curtains whatever his present situation reminded 
 him of. In a bunk adjoining an enthusiastic detective lay with 
 his eyes open. 
 
 At half-past three on the morning of February twenty-third, 
 Lincoln, tossing in his berth, his head already troubled by mis- 
 givings as to the justice and wisdom of his manner of fooling 
 the people who had chosen him presumably to lead them, heard 
 the grind of brakes and the slow buckling into a full stop of the 
 loose-jointed line of cars. He looked out the window with one 
 eye. The detective was already on the platform looking about. 
 It was Baltimore. 
 
 Somewhere in the barn of a station an early passenger was 
 thumping cavernously on an empty booth, trying to interest 
 someone in selling him a ticket. There was a sound of steam, a 
 clink of couplings, the swing of a lantern. The car moved a 
 little. No one was in sight. The creosoty smell of engine smoke 
 drifted through the car. Occasionally a passenger snored. 
 
 Lincoln lay still, his heart beating very fast. Slowly the car 
 wheels ground the rails. The car moved ahead. It was off on its 
 journey through the supposedly malicious streets of Baltimore, 
 bound for the Washington depot. 
 
 The streets, lighted here and there with gas lamps, were 
 empty, as all streets, guilty or innocent, are likely to be at that 
 hour. Scarcely a man or beast saw the passage of that car along 
 
THE CUTTING OF THE CORD 197 
 
 the track, over the cobbles of the Maryland city. But Lamon and 
 the detective and Lincoln himself breathed more easily as the 
 car, hitched to another train, picked up speed and headed for 
 open country toward the Potomac. 
 
 At six o'clock the unfinished dome of the capitol stood up 
 against the dawn. Lincoln, sitting behind drawn curtains, saw 
 it with a sense both of relief and of regret. There was no way 
 out of it now, not even a fatal way. He would have to go through 
 the fog, cold as it was. 
 
 He was so tired, so sick at heart when he reached the station 
 at Washington that he scarcely cared for the excited caution of 
 Lamon and the detective. In the crowd getting from the train, 
 with his face partly muffled in his shawl, he walked like a man 
 in a daze. 
 
 Outside the station Senator Seward was waiting with a cab. 
 Everyone piled in and they drove unrecognized through the early 
 streets to the side door of Willard's Hotel, where the party 
 waited while Seward went around to the front door to get 
 Willard himself and sent him to meet his distinguished and 
 secret guest. 
 
 Lincoln had gone strangely silent. He looked very pale and 
 worn. He asked, almost tearfully, to be shown to his room and 
 left alone. When the door closed upon him he flung himself 
 down on the bed and lay as if exhausted, with his long black 
 forearm pressed upon his eyes. 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 A NATION AND ITS LEADER 
 
 FROM the adoption of the Federal Constitution until the 
 election of Abraham Lincoln under its provisions, no 
 decade showed more material progress than the decade imme- 
 diately preceding the latter event, the decade which provided 
 the occasion for Lincoln's rise to national prominence. The mind 
 of the American people, during this era, was turned very largely 
 in the direction of that material progress. Its frenzy, its peace, 
 its hope, its despair, its faith, its very activity, depended upon 
 prosperity. The Southern slaveholder's concern for his peculiar 
 institution was for the most part a concern for the sources of 
 his wealth, as the Northerner's concern with anti-slavery ideas 
 was a concern for its own fiscal potentialities. During this decade, 
 moral and ethical position was not given exclusively to either 
 North or South. The very party which advocated the retention 
 and fostering of slavery, advocated also the freedom of the seas, 
 the freedom of trade for the benefit not of nations and parties, 
 but of the whole civilized worlds The very party which pro- 
 fessed to regard slavery with horror, at the same time believed 
 in such doubtful business as the paying of a guaranteed subsidy 
 of almost a million dollars to a private steamship owner, and 
 was willing to consider the granting of franchises to New York 
 street railways if thereby it could get its cofTers enriched by 
 some hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, there was no one 
 
 * Stan wood. History of Presidential Elections, p. 203. 
 
 198 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 199 
 
 seat of morality, nor of reason nor of justice. There was a little 
 in all sections and in all sections much that was corrupt and 
 horrible. The unpleasant thing to contemplate is the fact that 
 men of all parties had then, as always, in order to keep the 
 machinery of the American political system in motion, to sub- 
 scribe to or wink at things which no truly unhampered man of 
 character could have countenanced privately. 
 
 It was this money-grubbing world, harassed by conflicting 
 notions about slavery and by incomplete recovery from the finan- 
 cial stringency of 1857 and 1858, over which the simple honesty 
 of Abraham Lincoln was called to rule. And Abraham had, and 
 continued to have, a conceived duty to wink at things with the 
 best of them, to countenance unholy things for the sake of the 
 power without which no party can run the government of the 
 United States, a government which by virtue of its very Con- 
 stitution is dedicated to the interests of those who have or covet 
 the power which comes from wealth. Unfortunately for Abra- 
 ham's peace of mind and for the peace of the country for the 
 next few years, the details of economic issues, of material cir- 
 cumstance, were and always had been since his first financial 
 failure, since his strangely ill-chosen advocacy of the Internal 
 Improvement Acts of Illinois, impossible for him to master. He 
 could master men, fortunately, and he learned to master himself, 
 thereby ultimately preserving the Union which the indecisive 
 and partisan activities of himself, his friends, and his enemies 
 had, up to 1861, done so much to undermine. 
 
 Abraham came to Washington under very depressing circum- 
 stances. For days he felt scared and strange, harassed by the 
 thought that everything he did must receive criticism that would 
 hurt him or praise that could not satisfy him. His cabinet ap- 
 pointments worried him terribly, and, even more terribly, the 
 
200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 importunities of the press and public that wanted to know what 
 they were. His inaugural address, which Senator Seward, desig- 
 nated to be Abraham's Secretary of State, did not like and wished 
 to modify, also worried him. He submitted to some of Seward's 
 modification of language- with a little quiet hurt, perhaps feeling 
 in his subordinate's suggestions a touch of humiliating criticism. 
 But Seward had threatened to kick over the traces and cause 
 hostility from the start of the administration by refusing to serve 
 as Secretary of State even though he had previously accepted the 
 offer of that post. The gentleman from New York must be 
 placated, everybody must be placated. 
 
 Washington was full of wild talk. The Confederate States 
 had got under way, and were something to be reckoned with 
 even if not recognized. It was all a misunderstanding. People 
 should not look at things as they did. The trouble looked serious, 
 but was it? Old Buchanan was not doing anything. The "Peace 
 Conference" had accomplished nothing but a suggestion of con- 
 stitutional amendment that looked a good* deal like an offspring 
 of the Crittenden compromise, dressed up in a plainer suit of 
 clothes. And Congress in the fine frenzy of its last days had, 
 unfortunately for the Republican party, adopted and prepared 
 for ratification by the states, an amendment based upon the sug- 
 gestion of the Peace Conference. It was an amendment from 
 which the South hoped little but from which the North hoped 
 much. It made things a little difficult for Abraham, who had 
 been so definite in his rejection of the Crittenden compromise 
 and who now was faced with a constitutional amendment, 
 almost, you might say, a part of the nation's law already — for 
 there was little doubt that sufficient states would ratify it — an 
 amendment which read: "No amendment shall be made to the 
 Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power 
 
&> 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 201 
 
 to abolish or interfere, within any state, with the domestic institu- 
 tions thereof, including that of persons held to labor service by 
 the laws of said State." 
 
 This was unlike the Crittenden Compromise, to which as a 
 matter of policy Abraham objected, and which the Congress had 
 just refused to submit to a vote of the people, in that it did not 
 say anything about the extension of slavery. As an amendment 
 it did not please Abraham, however, nor did it please the South 
 as a whole. Abraham felt that it was none the less a part of the 
 law of the nation, there being no doubt that sufficient states 
 would ratify it. He did not oppose it by any word of his. But as 
 a conciliatory measure it could not stem the tide of secession 
 which the election of "Black Republican" Lincoln had loosed in 
 the South. 
 
 By the fourth of March, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, 
 Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Texas had left the Union as 
 formally as failure of the Union to recognize the fact permitted. 
 It was a raw and blustery day that dawned upon the District of 
 Columbia, a little piece of Federal soil sandwiched in between 
 two still openly loyal but very doubtful states. And, nervous, 
 harassed, solemn and scared, six feet four of Abraham Lincoln 
 lay in Willard's Hotel wondering how he was ever going to 
 summon up, in that chill wind, sufficient warmth to make his 
 lined face, his taut, pained lips, move in appealing speech up 
 there on the great platform before the unfinished Capitol. There 
 was little reassurance for him in the atmosphere of the official 
 life of the city, now concerning itself, miraculously enough, 
 chiefly with him. Everyone was apprehensive. Those who were 
 not openly frightened appeared secretive and sullen. Where was 
 the light of genial, careless humanity? Everyone seemed to be 
 listening for a noise. Perhaps it was the boom of the artillery, 
 
202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 which the officious if capable General Scott had placed at favor- 
 able points to serve in case of riot, that people listened for. 
 Perhaps it was the wild throaty tumult of a mob, storming the 
 inaugural pavilion. Whatever it was, there was no sound but 
 the horrible rumble of carriage wheels, the clatter of hoofs, 
 through the dismal streets. And there was the beating of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln's heart, higher and more rapid than usual. 
 
 He never knew how he got through his Inaugural Address,, 
 nor what effect it had upon those who heard it. Everyone heard 
 the string-tight silence of political and human tension and few 
 the shrill, quivering voice of the new President. Everywhere in 
 the crowd, as' in Abraham's, voice, there was- real emotion. The 
 Chief Justice who administered the oath was the same who had 
 just after the last inauguration delivered the opinion of his court 
 in the Dred Scott case. Now he was crowning the man who had 
 most bitterly assailed his expressed opinion, whose hostility had 
 triumphed in the nation, whose activities could not but alienate 
 the already exasperated South. But Roger Taney loved his nation. 
 So did Stephen A. Douglas, another of Abraham's bitter enemies, 
 who as the gaunt man from the Sangamon spoke his concluding 
 words, stood behind him holding his hat as if in sign that he 
 would serve. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen," 
 said Lincoln, "and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil 
 war. The government will not assail you. You can have no con- 
 flict without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath 
 registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall 
 have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. . . . 
 We are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have 
 strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic 
 cords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot 
 grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 203 
 
 land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, 
 as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." There 
 spoke both Seward and Lincoln, the words Lincoln's, the emo- 
 tion his, the conciliatory idea Seward's. The speech, so great was 
 the occasion, had little intrinsic value. The awe and solemnity 
 of the occasion had much. Men remembered the occasion who 
 had not caught a word of the speech. When printed in the papers 
 it did not look like very much. It merely said, in rather half- 
 hearted words that the South should not make such a row, 
 because it could not point to any Constitutional guarantee of 
 which it had been denied the full protection. That of course was 
 quibbling, because, whether just or not in the eyes of Northern 
 Calvinists, the South believed that it had a grievance. It was 
 not just, though it may have been logical, to stand before some- 
 thing to which a friend was pointing in objection and say, "I 
 see nothing." The address went on to say that as the Constitu- 
 tion said nothing about the ability of any state or group of states 
 to get out of the Union it was impossible to get out. This, of 
 course, neglected to consider the fact that Union could in no case 
 ever be anything but a voluntary arrangement no matter what 
 the Constitution might say. If anyone wanted to get out badly 
 enough to risk everything in the act, could anything* but violence 
 stop it? But there was violence in the air, how great and how 
 horrible no one saw. Yet, said the address, ". . . The Union . . . 
 will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. ... In doing 
 this there need be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be 
 none unless it be forced upon the national authority." That was 
 that. "All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so 
 plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guarantees 
 and prohibitions in the Constitution, that controversies never 
 arise concerning them." Therefore, said the address, the question 
 
204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of the prohibition or protection of slavery in the territories, not 
 being mentioned in the Constitution, that question should not 
 be allowed to be a troublesome one. If a minority believed that 
 it was a troublesome question and demanded a settlement of it, 
 they should submit to the fact that the majority thought it other- 
 wise. That was logical, but the South could not be expected to 
 delight in the logic of it. 
 
 The cold March wind blew through these words and made 
 their edges sharp. The new President stepped down from the 
 platform, and after the ceremonies drove with old Mr. Buchanan, 
 as nervous as a rabbit in a dog kennel, through scattered platoons 
 of champing cavalry up the ugly length of Pennsylvania Avenue 
 to the White House. Nowhere was there any trace of the rebel- 
 lion and riot which so many, anxious for excitement, had 
 involuntarily feared. 
 
 Abraham and his buxom consort, he in enormous white kid 
 gloves, and she with red face and a great blue feather in her hair, 
 drove in the evening to the Inaugural Ball, a festivity but thinly 
 attended by the socially prominent of the city, a tawdry, bitter 
 entertainment, in which no one but Mrs. Lincoln took any in- 
 terest. It was her event and, like a horse in a race from which 
 all others are scratched, she made the most of it. But for Abraham 
 it was a torture. He did not like his gloves, he did not like the 
 formal atmosphere of the ball. He wished he were back in 
 Springfield. He began to realize the task ahead of him, and to 
 understand that introduction to it through the medium of an 
 unaccustomed social event, was the surest way of emphasizing 
 his unfitness of it. That day and that night, Abraham Lincoln 
 was not the only man in Washington who thought he was 
 unfitted for his office. 
 
 That first night in the White House, whatever it was for the 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 205 
 
 gratified Mary Todd, was not a happy one for Abraham. He 
 climbed out of it as early as he could and bearded the terrors of 
 his office, which, with a sinking of the heart he soon understood 
 to be no mere ghosts. If the new President had any hope of 
 temporizing with the fearful problems facing the national gov- 
 ernment, his hope was soon dispelled, for one of the first things 
 he learned on March 5, 1861, was that the Federal garrison at 
 Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, was running 
 short of provisions. Furthermore, it was the opinion of the 
 general commanding the armies of the United States, that Major 
 Anderson's garrison should be reinforced, if the post were to be 
 held, and immediately abandoned if it were not. This grave prob- 
 lem, involving as it did the question of the government's policy 
 toward the seceded states, took Abraham's mind away from the 
 sordid and depressing business of dealing with the hordes of 
 office seekers who were besieging the White House, while two 
 little Lincolns looked out of an upper window and wondered 
 what it was all about. 
 
 The President was a little timid about asserting an opinion 
 of his own in such a matter as this, and yet he was perplexed 
 because his time honored system of understanding men by facing 
 them and getting down to good human talk with them was 
 impossible in Washington on account of the lack of time, the 
 necessary enforcement of a certain constraining presidential 
 dignity, and the fact that there were entirely too many people to 
 be dealt with. The result was a terrible state of mind which left 
 him not knowing whom he could trust, and that very state of 
 mind made him occasionally take advice when it would have 
 been better to reject it, and occasionally reject advice which 
 would have been better taken. It sapped his already weakened 
 confidence in himself and left him unable to make up his mind 
 
206 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as he was constitutionally unable to let it be made up for 
 him. 
 
 President Lincoln had spent months in his little Springfield 
 home worrying over his cabinet appointments. When he an- 
 nounced them, after his arrival in Washington, it certainly looked 
 to the public as if he were trying to punish himself by giving 
 himself the most uncongenial and internally hostile set of advisers 
 a man could possibly have picked. Not one of them either sympa- 
 thized with or understood the man under whom they were to 
 serve. Each had his own ambitions, at least one was positively 
 corrupt. With all, possibly excepting Seward, self-interest was 
 the prime consideration. The first question which Abraham 
 Lincoln submitted to his advisers, was that of the course to be 
 pursued in South Carolina. As usual, Abraham himself was a 
 needle indicating the fluctuation of popular opinion. The country 
 itself, at least that part of it which was left after the estrangement 
 of the several Southern states did not know where it stood nor 
 what it wished. New York did not want war, much as it wanted 
 Northern supremacy. War was bad for business. But the financial 
 interests as well as the popular emotional interest of the North 
 did not want their section to appear frightened by the attitude 
 of South Carolina. Withdrawal of the Union forces from Fort 
 Sumter, Abraham thought, might be misconstrued by the coun- 
 try, South as well as North. Reinforcement might lead to war. 
 And, after all, had not the Republican party been faced for some 
 time with the idea of violence? Curiously enough, Seward, the 
 author of the "irrepressible conflict" idea, was the one member 
 of the cabinet who at the moment wished to avoid stirring up 
 the jingoes in either North or South. Abraham would have liked 
 to have his cabinet say that Sumter should be relieved, but when 
 first asked they said the opposite by a margin of five to two. So, 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 207 
 
 not feeling ready to make up his mind in the way he wished not 
 to, the President did nothing. He refused to meet Commissioners 
 sent from the South to discuss the question of Fort Sumter and 
 went on pretending to himself and everyone else that the situa- 
 tion was not so serious as it was made out to be. He knew what 
 he would have liked to think and do, but he lacked initiative 
 and could not act. Again after several weeks he consulted the 
 cabinet. Again the cabinet voted five to two, but this time in the 
 opposite direction, indicating that the disputed fort should be 
 relieved. That was apparently what Abraham wanted, but still 
 he was unable to assert himself and take the necessary action. 
 He gave orders to have a relief expedition prepared but nullified 
 the orders by allowing it to be understood that it was not con- 
 templated to use it. 
 
 When the first of April came around and it appeared beyond 
 question that the President was unable to force himself to take 
 a definite step, the honest, if misguided, Secretary of State, who 
 had never seen such a man as Lincoln before and could not be- 
 lieve that he was anything but a kind of occasionally inspired 
 simpleton, came to the conclusion that the government must have 
 a head and that he was the man. Accordingly, the Secretary, with 
 the best will in the world, but with an arrogant assumption that 
 in the light of our more favorable opportunity for judging 
 Abraham seems foolhardy, sent to Mr. Lincoln a private letter 
 long unknown to the public. It was entitled "Some thoughts for 
 the President's Consideration." This is what it said. It was dated 
 April first, 1861. 
 
 First: We are at the end of a month's administration, and yet 
 without a policy, either domestic or foreign. 
 
 Second: This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been un- 
 avoidable. The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet applica- 
 
208 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tions for patronage, have prevented attention to other and more grave 
 matters. 
 
 Third: But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for 
 both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on 
 the administration, but danger upon the country. 
 
 Fourth: To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office. But 
 how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forthwith, leav- 
 ing foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional action. 
 
 Fifth: The policy at home. I am aware that my views are singular, 
 and perhaps not sufficiently explained. My system is built upon this 
 idea as a ruling one, namely, that we must 
 
 Change the question before the public from one upon slavery, or 
 about slavery, for a question upon union or disunion: 
 
 In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, 
 to one of patriotism or union. 
 
 The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact 
 a slavery or party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper mani- 
 fested by the Republicans in the free states, and even by the Union 
 men in the South. 
 
 I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the 
 issue. I deem it fortunate that the last administration created the 
 necessity. 
 
 For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and reenforce all the 
 ports in the Gulf, and have the navy recalled from foreign stations to be 
 prepared for a blockade. Put the island of Key West under martial law. 
 
 This will raise distinctly the question of union or disunion. I would 
 maintain every fort and possession in the South. 
 
 (It should be borne in mind in reading the extraordinarily 
 belligerent and spread-eagle second section of Secretary Seward's 
 quaint letter, that Seward wished, as Lincoln did, to placate the 
 South if possible and conceived that one way of doing it would 
 be to show signs of national excursions and acquisitions in the 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 209 
 
 black belt of the West Indies. Mexico, for instance, had always 
 been close to the slave power's dreams of expansion and here at 
 the very moment, was Napoleon III of France sticking his finger 
 into the Mexican pie. Cuba and the other islands near it were 
 also dream children of the Southern mind. And here at this very 
 moment was Spain, watching like a hawk, the domestic strife 
 of the Santo Domingans, waiting, supposedly to seize the island. 
 Why should not the United States object to that, growling so 
 hard that the hawk would drop Cuba as it fled ? Seward thought 
 that nothing filled people's minds like a good noisy war. Hence:) 
 
 For Foreign Nations 
 
 I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categori- 
 cally, at once. 
 
 I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia and send 
 agents into Canada, Mexico and Central America to rouse a vigorous 
 continental spirit of independence on this continent against European 
 intervention. 
 
 And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and 
 France, 
 
 Would convene Congress and declare war against them. 
 
 But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecu- 
 tion of it. 
 
 For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and 
 direct it incessantly. 
 
 Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active 
 in it, or 
 
 Devolve it upon some member of his cabinet. Once adopted, debate 
 on it must end, and all agree and abide. 
 
 It is not my especial province; 
 
 But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility * 
 
 * Works (Lincoln), Vol. V, p. 280. 
 
2io ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 But the Secretary was so sure that responsibility would be 
 thrust upon him in the form of a grateful answer from his chief 
 that he began immediately to pull the wires. Under the name of 
 the President, he sent a dispatch to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 
 ordering an expedition to prepare to go to the relief of Fort 
 Pickens off the coast of Florida. "I would maintain every fort 
 and possession in the South," he had said. But he had also said 
 that the evacuation of Sumter would be desirable and he did not 
 wish any disturbance to be caused in the sensitive harbor of 
 Charleston, by the possible dispatch of the expedition which was 
 being held in readiness, pending the President's word "go," for 
 the relief or strengthening of Fort Sumter. Because of this, 
 Seward, in the dispatch over the President's name, directed that 
 the most powerful warship allotted to the Sumter expedition 
 should be transferred to the Fort Pickens expedition. Mr. Gideon 
 Welles, Connecticut editor, serving, as querulously as the rest 
 of Abraham's amazing cabinet, as Secretary of the Navy, got 
 word that someone was tampering with his department. 
 As he hated Seward more than any other current cabinet 
 officer he naturally suspected that suave statesman, and he was 
 furious. 
 
 The Secretary of State was dumbfounded at the reply he re- 
 ceived from the supposedly simple-minded and frightened 
 Abraham. For Lincoln, who had not the slightest doubt of what 
 he wanted to do, nor of the essential wisdom of what he had 
 stowed away in the inner recesses of his mind, merely lacked 
 the ability to see how things might be done. He had been going 
 about his business as if in a stupor, and it was no wonder that 
 Seward thought him incompetent. But Seward did not realize 
 that the Chief Executive was a splendid instinctive cook who 
 merely had an aversion to breaking eggs. In the present case, 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 211 
 
 the eggs from which a palatable omelet might have been made 
 were growing older without a crack in the shell while the sense 
 of a perfect dish lay closed within the fastnesses of Abraham's 
 strange nature. Seward's unbelievable communication came to 
 him in the midst of the turmoil of the White House, the two 
 little children running about underfoot, Mary fussing over state 
 dinners which he thought she should not give, the secretaries, 
 Nicolay and Hay, pestering him to have some order and system 
 about his official business, office seekers streaming in and hiding 
 behind the portieres to catch their game unawares, all the chairs 
 in his private apartments conspiring by their size and shape to 
 keep him from getting a comfortable five minutes sitting, serv- 
 ants puttering about, possibly laughing at him. 
 
 And here was this thing from Seward, not laughing at him, 
 but telling him plainly that he was dumb and incompetent and 
 had better hand over the reins to a real man. That was enough. 
 The shock of it broke the eggs and the omelet began to cook. 
 Someone had opposed him. He was furious, he was hurt, but 
 he was calm, and he would be magnanimous. As if he believed 
 that his presence where he was was a bitter and irrevocable mis- 
 take, he resolved to crucify himself upon the long, cruel arms of 
 public error. He would not lose his temper. Knowing humanity, 
 he would blame no one for anything. He himself was strong. 
 He knew, he felt, more about everything than any two of any- 
 one else. He could afford to be generous in spirit. He could 
 even afford that difficult performance of turning the other 
 cheek. And this because, deep down inside, he knew, he felt, he 
 was. 
 
 He did not wait long after receiving his Secretary's letter. 
 Putting on his strangely minute glasses and crossing his great 
 legs, his lips showing taut, he wrote: 
 
2i2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Executive Mansion, April i, 1861. 
 
 Hon. W. H. Seward. 
 
 My dear Sir: — Since parting with you I have been considering 
 your paper dated this day, and entitled "Some Thoughts for the Presi- 
 dent's Consideration." The first proposition in it is, "First, We are at 
 the end of a month's administration, and yet without a policy either 
 domestic or foreign." 
 
 At the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, I said: "The 
 power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the 
 property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the 
 duties and imposts." This had your distinct approval at the time; and, 
 taken in connection with the order I immediately gave General Scott, 
 directing him to employ every means in his power to strengthen and 
 hold the forts, comprises the exact domestic policy you now urge, with 
 the single exception that it does not propose to abandon Fort Sumter. 
 
 Again, I do not perceive how the reinforcement of Fort Sumter 
 would be done on a slavery or a party issue, while that of Fort Pickens 
 would be on a more national and patriotic one. 
 
 The news received yesterday in regard to St. Domingo certainly 
 brings a new item within the range of our foreign policy; but up to 
 that time we have been preparing circulars and instructions to min- 
 isters and the like, all in perfect harmony, without even a suggestion 
 that we had no foreign policy. 
 
 Upon your closing propositions — that "whatever policy we adopt, 
 there must be an energetic prosecution of it. 
 
 "For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and 
 direct it incessantly. 
 
 "Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active 
 in it, or 
 
 "Devolve it upon some member of his Cabinet. Once adopted, 
 debates on it must end, and all agree and abide" — I remark that if 
 this must be done, I must do it. When a general line of policy is 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 213 
 
 adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its being changed without 
 good reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still, 
 upon points arising in its progress I wish, and I suppose I am entitled 
 to have, the advice of all the Cabinet. 
 
 Your obedient Servant 
 
 A. Lincoln.* 
 
 The self-confident and for the moment stupid Seward, must 
 have been very much pained to receive that gentle and truly 
 considerate letter. For it left him in a curiously equivocal posi- 
 tion, the position of a man who has spent his money before it 
 was in the bank and is suddenly brought to the realization that 
 it is never going to reach the bank. He had sent orders to Brook- 
 lyn in the President's name. Now the President, in justice to his 
 Secretary of the Navy, desired to have those orders counter- 
 manded. Furthermore, the Secretary of State, either taking too 
 literally something which he had heard the President say or 
 assuming that he could make up Abraham's mind for him and 
 so direct indirectly the policy of the government, had let it be 
 understood even as far as the Southern commissioners who were 
 hoping to settle the Charleston harbor problem, that Fort Sumter 
 would be evacuated. It is true that Lincoln, as early as March 
 fifteenth, had said that although he had not fully determined to 
 withdraw Major Anderson and his command from Sumter, he 
 thought that that is what would be done in the end.f Now, 
 the unhappy Seward was confronted with the realization that 
 although the President still gave no positive signs of activity, he 
 did intend to keep the reins of government in his hands, and to 
 make decisions for himself. That was very aggravating. For 
 Seward did not believe his chief capable of making decisions in 
 
 * Works, Vol. V, p. 280. 
 
 t Crawford, Samuel W. The Genesis of the Civil War, p. 364. 
 
2i 4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 such a crisis. And it is not, all things considered, strange that 
 Seward should have held such an opinion. It is surprising that 
 he should have acted upon it as he did, but Abraham had cer- 
 tainly been indulging in some curious temporizing for a man 
 who had at heart so clear a sense of the right and wrong of 
 issues. It was unfortunate for his associates that that clarity did 
 not send up shoots nearer to the surface, where they might be 
 seen and hoped for. It was unfortunate for the nation as well. 
 For Seward's unwarranted assumption of power led to a con- 
 fusion of orders covering the two expeditions to Fort Sumter and 
 to Florida, with the result that both of them were failures. And 
 these failures, combined with President Lincoln's unfortunate 
 habit of human friendship for incompetent and unscrupulous 
 men which had permitted him to send Ward Lamon to South 
 Carolina as a kind of roving commissioner who committed him- 
 self far too deeply, made a situation which only needed added to 
 it the impetuosity of a few South Carolinians in order to pro- 
 duce war. 
 
 When Abraham found out that the Fort Pickens expedition 
 had been a misfire, he actually concluded that something must 
 be done, and having been forced by Seward into a position from 
 which he could not but admit that he must be the doer, made 
 April sixth, 1861, the day of his resolve to send the expedition 
 for the relief of Fort Sumter, which Seward had allowed the 
 South to believe would never be decided upon. And Charleston, 
 learning through private channels of the President's decision, 
 conceived that the North had acted with duplicity, and had 
 merely pretended that Sumter was to be evacuated in order to 
 gain time for military preparation. The South now presented 
 an ultimatum to Major Anderson, and that intelligent and 
 patriotic officer promised to evacuate the fort by April fifteenth, 
 
^Abraham Lincoln Under the Strain of IjOar 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 215 
 
 if not relieved before then. The South wanted the prestige of 
 the possession of the chief fort in one of its chief harbors, but 
 was very anxious to avoid responsibility for what appeared to 
 be inevitable war. President Davis, of the new Southern Con- 
 federacy, was anxious and careful. It was accident that produced 
 the overt act which began one of the most terrible wars of all 
 times, though no accident that the ground had been prepared 
 for such a conflict. 
 
 The accident was made up of several elements. One of these 
 was the fact that Seward's meddling had made it impossible for 
 the Sumter relief expedition to succeed, the Navy having con- 
 fused orders and assigned its most powerful vessel to the Florida 
 squadron. Another was in the impatience of the gentlemen who 
 in Charleston were charged with the matter of direct negotiation 
 between Major Anderson and the Southern government at Mont- 
 gomery. These gentlemen did not wait for final orders from 
 Jefterson Davis, but themselves assumed the responsibility of 
 deciding that Anderson's reply to their terms was not satisfactory 
 and of giving the order to fire upon the disputed fort. After that, 
 events controlled themselves and the men who had hoped they 
 would be otherwise. The first shell from Fort Johnson rose into 
 the air above the still dark harbor of Charleston at half past 
 four in the morning of April twelfth. It burst directly over the 
 astonished but resigned command of Major Anderson. It was 
 bad luck for the Major, but for the tall sad man in Washington 
 it was the best luck in the world. For the South, by mere chance, 
 had put itself in the wrong. 
 
 The State of Virginia had long looked with equal dismay 
 upon what it considered the unwarranted attempt of the Federal 
 Government to coerce the cotton states and upon the action of 
 these states in breaking the bonds which for three-quarters of a 
 
216 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 century had held them in Union. It had long and earnestly 
 attempted to find some way of satisfying its feeling for state 
 sovereignty and of at the same time stemming the tide of seces- 
 sion. As a result of a convention held with these objects in view 
 a resolution was presented to President Lincoln, to which, on the 
 day following the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the President 
 made answer as follows: 
 
 Hon. William Ballard Preston, Alexander H. H. Stuart, George W. 
 
 Randolph, Esq. 
 Gentlemen: — As a committee of the Virginia Convention now in 
 session you present me a preamble and resolution in these words : 
 
 "Whereas, in the opinion of this Convention, the uncertainty which 
 prevails in the public mind as to the policy which the Federal Execu- 
 tive intends to pursue toward the seceded States is extremely injurious 
 to the industrial and commercial interests of the country, tends to keep 
 up an excitement which is unfavorable to the adjustment of pending 
 difficulties, and threatens a disturbance of the public peace: therefore 
 
 "Resolved, that a committee of three delegates be appointed by this 
 Convention to wait upon the President of the United States, present 
 to him this preamble and resolution, and respectfully ask him to 
 communicate to this Convention the policy which the Federal Execu- 
 tive intends to pursue in regard to the Confederate States. 
 
 "Adopted by the Convention of the State of Virginia, Richmond, 
 April 8, 1861." 
 
 In answer I have to say that, having at the beginning of my official 
 term expressed my intended policy as plainly as I was able, it is with 
 deep regret and some mortification I now learn that there is great 
 and injurious uncertainty in the public mind as to what that policy is, 
 and what course I intend to pursue. Not having as yet seen the occa- 
 sion to change, it is now my purpose to pursue the course marked out 
 in the inaugural address. I commend a careful consideration of the 
 whole document as the best expression I can give of my purposes. 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 217 
 
 1 ' — — — 
 
 As I then and therein said, I now repeat: "The power confided in 
 me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places 
 belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; 
 but beyond what is necessary for these objects, there will be no inva- 
 sion, no using of force against or among people anywhere." By the 
 words "property and places belonging to the Government," I chiefly 
 allude to the military posts and property which were in the possession 
 of the Government when it came to my hands. 
 
 But if, as now appears to be true, in pursuit of a purpose to drive 
 the United States authority from these places, an unprovoked assault 
 has been made upon Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to 
 repossess if I can, like places which had been seized before the Gov- 
 ernment was devolved upon me. And in every event I shall, to the 
 extent of my ability, repel force by force. In case it proves true that 
 Fort Sumter has been assaulted, as is reported, I shall perhaps cause 
 the United States mails to be withdrawn from all the States which 
 claim to have seceded, believing that the commencement of actual war 
 against the Government justifies and possibly demands this. 
 
 I scarcely need to say that I consider the military posts and prop- 
 erty situated within the States which claim to have seceded as yet 
 belonging to the Government of the United States as much as they 
 did before the supposed secession. 
 
 Whatever else I may do for the purpose, I shall not attempt to 
 collect the duties and imposts by any armed invasion of any part 
 of the country; not meaning by this, however, that I may not land a 
 force deemed necessary to relieve a fort upon a border of the country. 
 
 From the fact that I have quoted a part of the inaugural address 
 it must not be inferred that I repudiate any other part, the whole of 
 which I reaffirm, except so far as what I now say of the mails may be 
 regarded as a modification.* 
 
 Here again, so sure was Abraham that there could be no two 
 ways of considering the difficulties which had arisen within 
 
 * Works, Vol. V, p. 282. 
 
218 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the Union, he considered it sufficient merely to reaffirm what he 
 had already said and which he hoped would have seemed explicit 
 to the people of the nation. It was not explicit, and it did not 
 explain why, if Fort Sumter was not to be relieved, it had not 
 been abandoned, nor why, if it were not to be abandoned it had 
 not been relieved before this. Nor did it explain to a people who 
 had supposed that there had been a promise to abandon the 
 fort, why an expedition had sailed with what appeared to be war- 
 like intent. Abraham was in a ticklish position. There was noth- 
 ing he could do but maintain the dignity of his position. And 
 such a course, with its official evasions, was certain to lose him 
 what he had hoped to save, but which he was now reconciled to, 
 the loss of the peace of the land. 
 
 The President's reception of the Virginia commissioners must 
 have left these gentlemen with little hope of reconciliation, little 
 hope of maintaining the Union which they preferred to dis- 
 union. If they needed anything more to convince them, they got 
 it on the fifteenth of April when Mr. Lincoln issued a procla- 
 mation calling out seventy-five thousand militia troops for the 
 purpose of suppressing the opposition to the administration of 
 the laws of the United States which had sprung up in some of 
 the states, and which had proved too powerful for the ordinary 
 course of judicial procedure. Ominously enough, the President 
 also called for an emergency session of Congress to consider 
 measures for the public safety. He had learned the fact, though 
 not the truth of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and he could 
 not now recede from the position which he had taken. He must 
 meet force with force. He did not then believe, nor did many 
 others, that the South could long resist. He did not believe that 
 non-resistance could have accomplished anything but loss of 
 prestige to the Federal government. Perhaps he realized that his 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 219 
 
 delay in coming to a decision not as to what should be done but 
 as to the fact of the doing, his hugging the maternal breast of 
 safe and nutritious silence unable to tear himself from his own 
 inner calm and to face the outer world which worked by decision 
 and command, had precipitated action which he would have 
 chosen to avoid. 
 
 Whatever he thought, the fat was in the fire. On April seven- 
 teenth, Virginia seceded from the Union of which it had been 
 the parent acre. Washington was suddenly confronted with an 
 enemy, directly across the Potomac, fortified by another potential 
 enemy to the North. For on the nineteenth of April, the Sixth 
 Massachusetts Regiment, answering the President's call, passed 
 through Baltimore, Maryland, on its way to the defense of the 
 capital. And Baltimore resisted its passage. Four of the soldiers 
 and a number of those who had tried to stop them were left 
 dead in the streets, a prominent citizen of the city among them, 
 a mere bystander. But the Regiment did succeed in getting to 
 Washington with their disquieting story. They were not imme- 
 diately followed by others. For bridges and railroad tracks had 
 been destroyed, as a result of the Baltimore riot, and the Mary- 
 land legislature was meeting. The governor begged Abraham 
 not to send any more troops through Maryland. Abraham was 
 worried and felt that, while the troops must come and Maryland 
 offered the only route, none the less that State must be placated 
 or it would soon be with the others aligned against him. He 
 arranged a compromise which would send troops to Annapolis 
 instead of through Baltimore, but, again growing timid, and 
 hearing that the Maryland legislature was to assemble at Annapo- 
 lis on the 25th, he ordered General Scott to watch what the 
 legislature did and if it showed any sign of opposing the United 
 States government and its laws, to go as far as he liked as soon 
 
220 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as he could. Bombardment was not forbidden. Fortunately for 
 the State of Maryland, and for that particular legislature, learn- 
 ing that Annapolis was full of Federal troops, the legislators 
 assembled at Frederick on the twenty-sixth. On the twenty-ninth, 
 both branches of the legislature voted against secession. 
 
 But there were other states to worry about, particularly Mis- 
 souri, which required a considerable amount of jockeying before 
 being definitely assured to the side of the North. Meanwhile, a 
 goodly number of soldiers having reached Washington and 
 eased Abraham's distracted mind, the public press of the North 
 was beginning to grow bloodthirsty. It howled for action, for a 
 concentrated blow to be struck at Richmond where, after the 
 secession of Virginia had been confirmed by the vote of its 
 people, it had been decided to locate the Confederate capital. 
 But Abraham could not yet be sure that this violence and bru- 
 tality apparently coming from the mouth of his people really did 
 represent the sentiment of that people's heart. As always, he 
 wandered about the White House, the War Department, his own 
 office, the streets at night, and the dark quivering alleys of his 
 memory as well, waiting for some voice to speak to him and 
 make him certain. He was still the conservative, cautious mirror 
 for mankind. He was not happier personally in his elevation to 
 high office, nor more able to seize and direct as a perfect admin- 
 istrator might be expected to do. One half of him felt calm and 
 serene, certain that there was good reason in his enduringly 
 careful and deep-principled temper why he had been chosen for 
 the place he held. The other half of him was a kind of unhappy 
 legal blur poured over him, filling the moments of activity 
 which joined him to his task keeping out the sharp sense of touch 
 which could have made him a leader. A leader at this crucial 
 moment of the war he was not. Only in the sense that his deeper 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 221 
 
 self could rise up and say no to anyone else's effort to take the 
 reins was he even the ghost of a leader. And yet his later actions 
 make it certain that, underneath, he had a more perfect equip- 
 ment for balancing the right and wrong of things, for guiding 
 the nation through its evil time, than anyone else then in public 
 life. But in 1861 and most of 1862, no one and no thing was 
 able to tear away the veil and let that equipment use itself, least 
 of all Abraham himself. Although his great instinctive intelli- 
 gence, that finest manifestation of human mind, made him 
 vastly the superior to all those about him, the superstructure of 
 timidity and fear which made him over-humble left him, even 
 three months after his inauguration, in the position of an appren- 
 tice, going to school to the politicians and backers who guided, 
 not the nation, but the party. 
 
 Although what he had said in some of his pre-inaugural 
 speeches made it seem otherwise, it is probable that he was not 
 unmindful of the fact that he had been elected by a very distinct 
 minority of the people whom he was called upon to govern. He 
 did not know how much support he could count on. And he 
 did know that a large number of those who had voted for him 
 did not sympathize with his conservative and pacific ideas. This 
 state of affairs made him feel that he must pursue two courses: 
 that he must learn what was expected of him, and that he must 
 gain the favor of at least a majority in the states still remaining 
 in the Union. 
 
 It was hard, in the early summer of 1861, to know just how 
 things stood. The North wanted to believe that its power was 
 irresistible and consequently could easily believe that it had a 
 huge trained army where it had, in reality, nothing but a horde 
 of doubtful volunteers built upon a nucleus of some few thousand 
 regulars. It was not positively known, but it was widely suspected 
 
222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 that the Confederate armies under General Beauregard, the hero 
 of Fort Sumter, were large and well trained and well equipped. 
 What should be done ? Abraham was afraid both to be aggressive 
 and to disregard the cries of those who bid him be so. He was 
 not yet sure of himself. He yielded. It seemed that the fear 
 which was to govern him at that crucial moment was the fear 
 that the North, in its jingoistic desire for activity, would get out 
 of hand and simply override him. Certainly the people of the 
 North were being well supported by their representatives in Con- 
 gress. Senators and members of the House alike, were, with 
 comparatively few exceptions, shouting for a quick and decisive 
 stroke. The only men in the nation who raised their voices 
 against such manifest foolishness were, unfortunately, the mili- 
 tary men, the experienced campaigners. They knew that you 
 could not raise an army of volunteers, equip it, officer it, train 
 and get it ready for the field in a few months. General Scott, 
 the Commanding General, knew this. Colonel William T. Sher- 
 man, who disapproved of Mr. Lincoln, but knew his military 
 matters, knew the same thing. He in fact refused a proffered 
 position in the War Department.* 
 
 The officers were overruled. General Irwin McDowell was 
 given orders, the Cabinet having said that it wanted action, to 
 attack the Confederate army which was operating in Virginia, 
 and which everyone supposed to be preparing for an advance 
 on Washington. A grand review of the greater part of Mc- 
 Dowell's force was held in Washington. Twenty-five thousand 
 men lined up for the President's inspection. Few men had ever 
 seen such an imposing military gathering. Small wonder that 
 there was a further violent outpouring of spread-eagle patriotism. 
 A man who has never seen a horse will think a pony he has 
 
 * Memoirs of Wm. T. Sherman, 1886, p. 199. 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 223 
 
 seen the greatest of its kind in the world. Whisky and banners, 
 music and high talk, made the occasion of that review a memor- 
 able one. High indeed were the hopes of those who waved fare- 
 well to General McDowell's army as it passed- on into Virginia. 
 
 Meanwhile, President Lincoln delivered his first message to 
 the special session of Congress which he had convened. In this 
 document he completely neglected to mention slavery, which had 
 been so important a part of his Inaugural Address. He now said 
 that the Union must be saved. He explained the idea of demo- 
 cratic government which, without any very studied knowledge 
 of the theory of government, he had chosen to adopt. It pro- 
 vided for a unified, centralized, all-powerful Federal state in 
 which the states were mere geographical units, all united by 
 common agreement and unable to get out of their agreement 
 singly or en masse. He declared that the Southern idea of state's 
 rights, state sovereignty, was entirely unjustifiable. He neglected 
 to admit that the nation, prior to the outbreak of war, had been 
 split in two by other than mere resistance to federal laws. The 
 South had been almost a separate nation, with different ideals, 
 different aims, different attitudes toward the systems of life. He 
 preferred, like many others of his time, to believe that the South 
 merely had decided upon a wilful and wasteful destruction of 
 the Union in which it had endured for three-quarters of a cen- 
 tury. Now he left slavery alone, as if to discard the last possible 
 reason for believing that the South had a grievance. He begged 
 Congress to give him for his disposal four hundred thousand 
 men and four hundred million dollars to be used in the cause of 
 liberty, for the preservation of the Union and the justification of 
 the democratic ideal, in which he believed that the majority of 
 people of all the states, including the seceded ones, had their 
 hope. 
 
224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Congress was but little moved and it did nothing immedi- 
 ately. It was too excited about the prospects of a great battle 
 within commuting distance. Senators and Representatives were 
 planning carriage parties and picnics in the wake of McDowell's 
 victorious advance toward Richmond. Wives and families were 
 to go along, to mingle with the crowds of camp followers, the 
 hopeful contractors, the equally hopeful ladies of the back streets 
 of Washington, the sutlers and stragglers which in the pictur- 
 esqueness of gregarious emergency behind a moving army make 
 up a part of the unhappy scene of war. 
 
 Abraham, with grave misgivings, and a humiliating sense of 
 having allowed himself to be bowled over, remained at home. 
 It was well for him that he did. As he drove alone in his carriage 
 just before dinner on July twenty-first, Secretary Seward was 
 looking for him with the sad news that General McDowell, after 
 a reasonably well-planned attack, had allowed his great numeri- 
 cal superiority to be nullified by the courage and determination 
 of the enemy leaders. The battle of Bull Run, the First Battle 
 of Manassas, turned into a rout of the great new Union army, 
 which, mixed with Congressmen, camp-followers, ladies and 
 children, turned tail and rushed in a panic for the sheltering city 
 of Washington. Abraham Lincoln's government paid dearly for 
 its ill-considered action. It became plain that the military men 
 were right, that you could not build an army overnight. 
 
 All that night, while Washington echoed with the feet of 
 fugitives and the ominous sounds of rumor, Abraham Lincoln 
 sat in his office, thinking hard. The curious shifts of conscious- 
 ness which went on within him were as they must always be 
 with the truest men, concerned chiefly with his emotions. And 
 those emotions, calm and unruffled as the outer shell of him 
 appeared in this crisis, boiled and roared so fiercely that they 
 
A NATION AND ITS LEADER 225 
 
 penetrated that shell at last and made him break into the world 
 of action with his inner self. The action took the form of the 
 resolve to appoint a new Commanding General, a Democrat for 
 good and sufficient reason, and to formulate a definite war policy 
 without asking anyone's advice. The General was the young 
 George B. McClellan. The policy was as yet untried, but its first 
 step was the calling out of an additional lot of volunteers, these 
 to serve not for months but for three years. It was no longer 
 possible to stake everything in a sudden blow that would crush 
 the Southern states. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 DISASTER 
 
 ONE day in February, 1862, Abraham Lincoln stepped out of 
 a room in the White House and closed a door behind him. 
 On the other side of that door lay his youngest son, Willie, with 
 eyes closed in death. Never again would the gay, clever, spoiled, 
 adorable child romp in his father's office, slide up and down the 
 halls, bump into office seekers, steal cookies from the pantry, 
 or run away with the hats of official visitors. The finger of what 
 Abraham could not persuade himself was not fate, had once more 
 pointed at him, and this time the point had pierced very close 
 to the torn edges of his heart. Once more the dreadful sense of 
 unhappiness which made everything seem futile had taken pos- 
 session of him. Believing in the quality, not of mercy, but of 
 unmerciful fate, the child of the Illinois prairies that had never 
 quite grown into the man, believed that he was singled out as 
 the instrument of human suffering, not that he was God, but 
 that he was a doomed son of God. The death of his son seemed 
 to him in the largest sense a symbol of the death of human hope. 
 Darkness came into the world through the breast of Abraham 
 Lincoln. Everything was now chaos which he, the chosen man, 
 was to bear without complaint. And what he had to bear was 
 so much heavier and sharper because of the simpleness of his 
 nature and the absence from it of the protective whorls of ration- 
 alization which stood between terror and the emotions of lesser 
 men. 
 
 226 
 
DISASTER 227 
 
 As Abraham walked in that great mansion with its formal 
 evidences of a life purely circumspect and public, the purely- 
 private and heedless pain of being a man contracted like a rope 
 about his heart. Things ran through his head like stampeding 
 cattle and he winced as each element of the stampede went by. 
 He saw the vague glory of his election, the apparently clear and 
 reasonable issue which separated what he had supposed to be a 
 wilful conspiring minority in the South and the rest of the 
 Constitution-loving nation. He saw the disquieting rumors which 
 had made his trip to the capital uneasy, the frightful strain of 
 breaking into the newness of official life that hurt his whole body 
 like a gigantic but still too small pair of shoes. He saw the re- 
 sistance which facts and events and states of mind other than 
 his own had offered to his unsatisfying though honorable avoid- 
 ance of the real issue. He saw again the gradual and ominous 
 withdrawal from Congress of the Senators and Representatives 
 of the cotton states, the apparently arrogant convention to which 
 they had repaired and out of which had come the Confederate 
 States of America, a name and a thing which might be read in 
 the papers but which might not be spoken. He saw the hesitancy 
 of Virginia, opposed both to himself and to the seceding states, 
 her effort to save the Union and to preserve her identity. He 
 saw with a trace of bitter anger how he had doubted her sin- 
 cerity, how, in the very moment of doubting, Fort Sumter had 
 been attacked and so had taken all value from his doubts. The 
 call to arms which had followed the fatal blunder of Charleston 
 harbor had hurt him terribly but he had listened to the voice 
 of his one god, the people, and had heard them in their ignorance 
 crying for revenge. It seemed that since then everything had slid 
 downhill as if on a tilted board and heaped up upon his breast, 
 stifling him, making him want to burrow down into the earth 
 
228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to get away. What could be in command ? What could be direct- 
 ing these calamities, tying his honest hands, nullifying his 
 passionate sincerity ? What could have blamed him so that it had 
 to punish him with a death more cruel than his own would have 
 seemed ? Could he be wrong and fatal, even in the midst of truth 
 and belief? Was there poison in his well-meaning touch? No 
 one else was so right, no one else was so straightforward, no one 
 else in such close and intimate contact with the sense of life 
 which lived in the common man, the broadcast seed of the 
 nation. Was there, then, some power, as yet unrecognized by his 
 genial consciousness, which singled him out, for his very excel- 
 lence, to bear the cross ? 
 
 Why had he, Abraham Lincoln, been given such a scourge as 
 the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War? 
 Perhaps for the same reason that he had himself selected a cabinet 
 which could not, by reason of its immiscible personalities, its 
 inherent belligerency, its very hostility to himself, be anything 
 but a scourge, a pile of hot stones to walk on, a hairshirt to wear. 
 Oppressed with his personal loss now, Abraham saw with a sink- 
 ing of heart the ferocity, the wild hysterical bitterness which 
 actuated so many of those who were in a position to consider 
 themselves his advisers. The irreconcilable Senators of the dread 
 Committee, Wade, Chandler and Trumbull; the Secretary of 
 War, whose position in the cabinet was part of the reason why 
 Abraham had secured the Republican nomination, and who had 
 turned out to be something of a crook, as everyone had long 
 supposed him,* and who had consequently been fired when the 
 scandal over him grew ripe; the Secretary of the Treasury, a 
 good man, but a bitter disbeliever in Abraham; the man chosen 
 to take Secretary Cameron's place, that very Stanton who had 
 
 * Stickney, A. Organized Democracy, p. 1 1 8 ff. 
 
DISASTER 229 
 
 insulted Abraham at Cincinnati in the Manny reaper case; all 
 these and others, were a kind of penitence for Abraham. Now 
 he felt the need of their lashes all the more, to assuage the oppo- 
 site pain of feeling that his son had died for his father's sins. 
 But was there not something which he did not quite understand 
 that led the members of Congress to grow ever more bitter 
 against him, to arrange power that could force his hand, to try 
 to drive him toward action in which he did not know how to 
 believe, toward open avowal of abolition principles, toward a 
 vengeful method of conducting a foolish war? And was there 
 not something, knowledge of which was as yet withheld from 
 him, that brought to his door such disasters as Bull Run; the 
 factional split within the Republican party at a time when the 
 very Republican Lincoln was honoring himself by trying to make 
 a government of all parties; the unpleasant mess in which the 
 quixotic General Fremont had allowed himself to be concerned 
 in Missouri ; the unrest in England over the attitude of the North 
 which had been aggravated by the famous Trent affair and had 
 not entirely been dispelled by the government's return of the 
 Confederate Commissioners taken from a British ship? And 
 what of the impossibility of satisfying the public demands for 
 military victory? 
 
 Here was Abraham torn by a personal sorrow that seemed 
 to have no sense in it, supposed to be running a government 
 that did not want to be run, supposed to be guiding a people 
 that persisted, he believed, in misunderstanding him, faced with 
 the undeniable fact that the states which had seceded and set 
 up a separate government and which no one would admit had 
 seceded were now in the position of having won the only im- 
 portant military engagement of the war, of having threatened 
 the national capital, of having enlisted the sympathy and aid, 
 
230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and almost won the recognition of several European powers. 
 And these were the states which Abraham and most Northerners 
 had fondly believed were being ruled by a little willful group of 
 serious capitalists. Now in this hour of trial it was perfectly plain 
 that to the last man they were united, and united as the re- 
 mainder of the original United States had never been. 
 
 The death of Willie was very nearly the last straw for the 
 President. He began to show signs of a return of that hysterical 
 collapse with the aid of which he had tried to escape from Mary 
 Todd twenty years before. But Abraham had grown, late as his 
 development had been. Much as he still inwardly yearned to sink 
 into the unexacting peace of the maternal bosom of madness, 
 he could not let himself go. He went about with a sting of pain 
 in the inside of his cheeks, and the beginning glitter of tears 
 in his eyes, trying to concentrate upon things which must be 
 done, saying nothing, speaking to no one that could be passed 
 by without speech. But he could not help thinking, and he could 
 not keep the thoughts from hurting. There was the matter of 
 General Stone, condemned by the monster Committee on the 
 Conduct of the War for some vague reason connected with his 
 conduct of a skirmish at Ball's Bluff. Stone had not been tried, 
 had not been told what charges were brought against him, 
 although it was permitted the public to know that he was 
 assumed to be a traitor who had led his soldiers into a deliberate 
 slaughter by way of helping the Confederacy. The General had 
 been thrown into prison and remained there for a long time. 
 Nothing was ever done about him. He was never cleared of the 
 charges, though he was eventually freed. Abraham could not 
 forget that he had made no protest against this absurd injustice 
 nor made any effort to exercise executive clemency. In fact he 
 had announced, for the sake of taking upon himself the blame 
 
DISASTER 231 
 
 for all acts of the administration, that he alone had been re- 
 sponsible for the General's arrest and confinement. He knew that 
 he had done this because Stone was displeasing to the Irreeon- 
 cilables in Congress and was distrusted by the abolitionists. 
 Abraham would not support the abolitionists, but he would do 
 things to placate them. But now to his tender mind, newly 
 bruised, his treatment of General Stone must have seemed mon- 
 strous. Two years later it would have been impossible. 
 
 And in the gloom of the White House rooms was the ever 
 present worry about the army. Seven months before, after the 
 fatal battle of Bull Run, he had called General McClellan to be 
 General-in-Chief of the military forces, displacing the field Gen- 
 eral McDowell, and the aged Staff General Scott. Seven months 
 had passed in agony. The Congress and the people clamoring for 
 action, the General declaring that the enemy was too strong for 
 him and that he must drill and strengthen his force more and 
 still more before attempting any aggressive campaign. Abraham 
 had hoped for McClellan, but he had constantly allowed himself 
 to be swayed by the pestering and ill-advised opinions of the 
 Committee and of public men. He had issued orders which 
 hampered the necessary freedom of the General, which were 
 based on political rather than military judgments. And he had 
 made himself very unpopular with McClellan and extremely 
 inimical to the Committee by his retention of that General in 
 command. 
 
 Yet he had appointed McClellan, more than for any conscious- 
 ness of his military qualifications, because the General was a 
 Democrat, and it was necessary for a minority President, as 
 Abraham was, to have the support of his chief opponents. In 
 supporting their Democratic General, the members of that party 
 would support the administration and its war. Unfortunately 
 
232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 for Abraham, and a thing which came home to him very pain- 
 fully now, the bitter members of Congress who opposed Mc- 
 Clellan because he was a Democrat, so terrified Lincoln that to 
 conciliate them he issued orders which laid him open to the 
 charge that he was deliberately hampering McClellan's work. 
 The President was thus between two fires. In giving McClellan 
 his support he infuriated the immoderate Republicans of Con- 
 gress. In modifying that support he infuriated McClellan and his 
 followers. And yet the war must be won. Was Abraham doomed, 
 by his very sense of mediation, his infinite and painstaking, if 
 often ill-advised care to be fair to everyone, to destroy the thing 
 he loved, the security of that mysterious mass which he supposed 
 to be the American nation? And was it not enough for every- 
 thing he did to hamper his dearest objects, but that everything 
 must also have an overtone in his personal life? Shutting his 
 eyes the harassed and weary man could see the silent tragic dark- 
 ness of that upstairs room where his little boy lay dead. His 
 little boy. Yes, his. Was he not in spite of his official and rather 
 monumental position, a man of flesh and blood, subject to pain 
 and sorrow, despair? There was nothing to help him, unless he 
 should confess humble obedience to the power that held the whip 
 above him and worship, as so many do, the somber darkness of 
 his particular scourge. 
 
 And how would that help? Abraham thought of the war. 
 The continuing delays of General McClellan, whose army must 
 be fairly well trained by now. He was beginning to have mis- 
 givings about McClellan. He remembered a call that he and 
 Secretary Seward had made at McClellan's house in the previous 
 fall. The General was out. The President and Mr. Seward sat 
 down to wait. When McClellan came in he was told that the 
 President was in the house waiting to see him. He went upstairs. 
 
DISASTER 233 
 
 Half an hour later, the callers, having heard him come in, again 
 sent word that they were waiting. A servant returned with word 
 that the General had gone to bed. # It stung Abraham's cheeks 
 even now to remember a thing like that. 
 
 Evidently people were still at their old tricks of trying to 
 prove him a lout, "a coarse and vulgar fellow." They were, were 
 they? Now what was McClellan going to do? Abraham had 
 told the people of his strange country that he was going to do 
 so and so in the matter of military affairs. After long hesitation, 
 he had delivered himself of a definite program. As a consequence 
 of it he had ordered McClellan to move forward on all his front 
 on February twenty-second. Abraham did not know just what 
 all McClellan's front was and he was himself a very amateurish 
 tactician, but he knew what the people were crying for. McClel- 
 lan, grown quite arrogant in his malicious resentment of presi- 
 dential interference, did not like the order and insisted that he 
 was not ready. He as much as refused to obey the rather absurd 
 order of his chief. Abraham, feeling perhaps that he had exceeded 
 his authority, weakened his position by backing down. Abraham 
 felt now that he needed a father, a real father, someone who 
 could advise him and whose advice he should instinctively know 
 was trustworthy. There seemed to be no such person on the 
 earth or in that reputed heaven above where the heavenly father 
 of the theologians, hitherto a stranger to Abraham, had his 
 seat. The nation, the nation, and no one to tell Abraham how to 
 save it, how to use the instinct in himself which needed no tell- 
 ing but which he could not seem to bring into forceful play. 
 And Willie was dead. That was bitter. It was unfair. But he 
 would bear it if he could. If they would only let him alone. 
 
 But they would not let him alone. In the midst of his grief, 
 
 * Thayer, Wm. R. The Life of John Hay, Vol. I, p. 126. 
 
234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his almost insane horror of the injustice of things, his bitter and 
 tragic resentment at the crucifixion of his own ideals, his reluctant 
 dread of the apparently inevitable admission that the evil in 
 which he had never believed was not only real but also triumph- 
 ant, in the midst of these tortures the fiendish Committee on the 
 Conduct of War demanded a conference with him, even before 
 his little son was buried. These gentlemen were out for McClel- 
 lan's scalp and wished to serve notice on Abraham that if he 
 so much as interfered with their wishes they would have his 
 scalp too. In other words, if he did not force McClellan to move 
 on Richmond, Congress would take the matter out of the Presi- 
 dent's hands. Abraham was practically, as he had been at several 
 other points in his life, unable to attend to business, so torn 
 was he by the personal disaster which had once more put its 
 terrible bulk in between the real deep instinctive self that made 
 the man, and the outer shell by which the man made timid and 
 unsatisfactory contact with the world of action. But he did not 
 immediately do what the Committee wished. He still clung 
 to a faint hope that he could save the nation and yet be fair to 
 McClellan. He was bewildered and vacillating, but he was not 
 inhuman. He pacified the frantic Congressmen by reorganizing 
 McClellan's army over the General's head in such away that the 
 council of subordinate generals within it should be made up of 
 the generals who were not personally favorable to nor influ- 
 enced by the unfathomable but able "Little Napoleon." This was 
 rather hard on McClellan, but it is doubtful if, given the state 
 of mind that the General had come to at that time, anything could 
 have given him the power of doing what must be done. 
 
 The President was still trying to play two games of cards at 
 the same time. The crafty politician of the Illinois days, anxious 
 for self and party advancement had largely been submerged in 
 
DISASTER 235 
 
 the man broadened by sense of his great responsibility. But the 
 tendency of the natural man to be everyone's friend, offering 
 equal justice to all, regardless of the right to that justice, seeking 
 to save itself by saving its world, now led Abraham Lincoln into 
 one of the darkest and most terrible positions he had ever occu- 
 pied. Almost simultaneous with the order which reorganized 
 General McClellan's command, went an order to that officer ap- 
 pearing to agree to his suggestion of sweeping on, instead of 
 directly toward Richmond, along the flank toward the sea. But 
 in this order Abraham had misgivings. He had felt a blow should 
 be struck at the Confederate armies concentrated in the locality 
 where the battle of Bull Run had been fought. He now, however, 
 for the moment, gave McClellan a free hand, free in sweep, 
 but rather constricted in the articulation of the fingers by the 
 various preliminary orders which had issued from the terrified 
 and muddled War Department, many of them at Lincoln's com- 
 mand. What McClellan did with this free hand was the last 
 straw. It broke the camel's back. The Confederates, anticipating 
 General McClellan's advance and feeling certain that he would 
 strike at Manassas, had already withdrawn from that point, show- 
 ing plainly that it was considered untenable, although McClellan 
 had considered it impregnable. But what did the infatuated Union 
 General do? He immediately upon learning of the Confederate 
 retreat, advanced upon the evacuated position and then, imme- 
 diately, like the King of France, returned whence he had come. 
 That was the end of the "Little Napoleon." Abraham, although 
 he did not understand what was going on or what had hap- 
 pened, was so bitterly disappointed at the loss of opportunity, and 
 the strange waste of time indulged in by General McClellan when 
 he had not the excuse of being definitely under orders, that the 
 President stepped out of character and in one of his rare rages, 
 
236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 returning to an earlier way of doing things, immediately re- 
 moved McClellan from the chief command and gave him the 
 reduced command of die Army of the Potomac only. Not only 
 did this stroke leave the armies of the United States without a 
 Commanding General, a state of decapitation in which they un- 
 fortunately remained for four amazing months, but the deliberate 
 insult offered to the sensitive honest, loyal, able, if fundament- 
 ally foolish McClellan, turned out to have political as well as 
 military overtones. It precipitated the popular feeling that Mc- 
 Clellan was being unjustly treated, a feeling which had hitherto 
 been confined only to anti-administration Democrats but which 
 now began to bear fruit in other orchards. 
 
 In this late spring of 1862, with McClellan and his Army of 
 the Potomac conducting its slow if scientific siege operations be- 
 fore Yorktown and the points which threatened Richmond, with 
 the constant conflict of opinions and desires in the Federal admin- 
 istration, the South, united as it was, was not in such a good 
 mood. It would have comforted Abraham much to know how 
 the press of the seceded states was condemning Jefferson Davis, 
 and even the wise and far-seeing Lee, then military adviser to 
 the Confederate President. General Johnston, the Southern Com- 
 mander, although he knew what sort of a fighter McClellan 
 was, had his trouble with his own President. They were the 
 same sort of troubles that McClellan was having with Mr. Lin- 
 coln. Conflicting orders, delayed actions, impertinent suggestions. 
 But with these handicaps Johnston did not have the strain of 
 imbecility in his nature which ruined McClellan as a Com- 
 mander. His fears were not, like McClellan's, groundless, for rlie 
 enemy which faced him did greatly outnumber him, and might, 
 even in the hands of so slow and inept a tactician as the "Little 
 Napoleon" had proved himself, be a serious threat against the 
 
DISASTER 237 
 
 Confederate capital. For the South, which in some ways appeared 
 to be winning the war, having won the important engagements 
 in Virginia, had also done some losing elsewhere. New Orleans 
 had fallen into Northern hands. Missouri had been cleared of 
 Confederate forces and was now unmistakably an element of 
 the Northern Union. Kentucky, that border state and birthplace 
 of Abraham Lincoln, land which its favored son was nursing 
 with every power at his command, was being weaned away from 
 its Southerly ties by the more or less successful applications of 
 force administered by that capable General George Thomas. 
 Ports in both South and North Carolina had been taken by the 
 Federal navy. The hitherto unknown General Grant, whom the 
 Federal War Department had done its best to snub, had struck 
 a serious blow on the Upper Mississippi, taking Fort Henry and 
 Fort Donelson and, in spite of blundering badly, had managed to 
 repel a terrible Confederate counter attack delivered at Pittsburg 
 Landing (Shiloh) in the doubtful state of Tennessee. 
 
 If the tortured Abraham, in his office at Washington, had been 
 able to realize the state of mind of the Confederacy and to dis- 
 regard the importunities of the various advisory groups which his 
 over-elaborate gentleness had suffered to grow up about him, 
 even so timid a warrior as McClellan might have been able to 
 embarrass the Confederacy in a manner which would have hast- 
 ened the end of the war. But to the President the instability of 
 the Union administration, his own administration, as it was, 
 seemed more terrifying than the difficulties in which the South 
 found itself seemed pleasing. And even now, Abraham, much as 
 he had learned, was unable to make up his mind on a point of 
 activity. He wavered between feeling that he had been unjust 
 to McClellan and feeling in terror of the Committee in Congress. 
 He offered to send General McDowell in support of McClellan, 
 
238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and then after making the promise, becoming terrified by rumors 
 of the whereabouts of the elusive "Stonewall" Jackson, recalled 
 McDowell to "protect" Washington, which was exactly what the 
 enemy had wanted him to do. This blunder permitted Jackson 
 to fight with his Confederate comrades against McClellan in the 
 Seven Days Battles along the Chickahominy. It not only allowed 
 Jackson to join the Army of Northern Virginia, under General 
 Lee, but, according to General Fitz-John Porter, one of McClel- 
 lan's subordinates in the advance toward Richmond, it indicated 
 a false position for the Federal forces, distributed in the expecta- 
 tion that General McDowell with forty thousand men was coming 
 from Washington, as President Lincoln had advised. # 
 
 Something was happening to Abraham. The death of his 
 son, the apparently destructive powers which rode rampant upon 
 any decision he made or allowed himself to be forced into, the 
 obvious inability of the paradoxical McClellan to succeed without 
 believing in the possibility of his success, the hatred and bitter- 
 ness of the leaders in Congress, the mistrust of the people whom 
 he thought he knew and understood, were building up the ap- 
 paratus of search in the unhappy President. He was beginning 
 not merely to believe in himself but to wonder what he was 
 really doing. His old system of listening to everyone and acting 
 upon a part of each one's advice, was about to be weighed in the 
 balance. Two days before the significant and disastrous battle of 
 Mechanicsville, which set the Army of the Potomac retreating 
 toward the James River the President made a hurried trip to 
 West Point, where he was closeted with the aged General Scott. 
 No one knows what conversation those two had.f 
 
 Whatever it was, the immediate result of it was the summon- 
 
 * Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, part i, p. 319 ff. 
 t Nicolay, John G. A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 306. 
 
DISASTER 239 
 
 ing from the West of a General who had made a name for him- 
 self in the Capture of Island No. Ten on the Mississippi, that 
 same John Pope, who as a Captain, had accompanied the Presi- 
 dent-elect on his journey from Springfield to Washington in the 
 previous February. General Pope, who was soon to prove himself 
 a trifle less competent than the preceding generals, was, in Ab- 
 raham's new plan, to take charge of a new army, devoted entirely 
 to the defense of Washington. 
 
 In the meantime it was necessary to have more men. The Sec- 
 retary of War, for some peculiar reason believing that the slight 
 advances made by the Union forces in the spring of 1862 foretold 
 an early end to hostilities had conveyed the impression that there 
 was not much need of further volunteers. Consequently, recruit- 
 ing had fallen of?. Even on June twenty-ninth, when General 
 McClellan was in full retreat, badly beaten on the Chickahominy 
 River, Secretary Stanton had joyously assumed that the Union 
 army would be in Richmond within two days. It was now neces- 
 sary, in order to counteract this dangerous impression, for Lin- 
 coln to send Secretary Seward on a visit to the governors and 
 prominent men of many of the Northern states from Massachu- 
 setts to Ohio, bearing a letter from the President in which he 
 indicated the need of one hundred thousand more troops to rein- 
 force the defeated McClellan without weakening any other front, 
 and thus make the capture of Richmond hypothetically possible, 
 "I expect," he said, "to maintain this contest until successful, 
 or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress 
 or the country forsake me: and I would publicly appeal to the 
 country for this new force were it not that I fear a general panic 
 and stampede would follow, so hard it is to have a thing under- 
 stood as it really is." 
 
 The troops were promised. But there was no peace. Trouble 
 
240 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 arose in Kentucky. There seemed no move possible for the re- 
 cently defeated Army of the Potomac to make without rein- 
 forcement, no hope of adequate reinforcement for many months, 
 no chance of affecting the strength of the Confederacy without 
 a movement of the Army of the Potomac, only the need and 
 ability to keep hammering away at the Southern armies in the 
 West, to keep juggling the still doubtful states, to push work on 
 the Pacific Railway in Missouri, to keep down the swelling tide 
 of impatience in the North. This impatience was perhaps repre- 
 sented in an extremely aggravated form by a letter which ap- 
 peared in the New Yor\ Tribune of August nineteenth signed 
 by Horace Greeley and entitled, "The Prayer of Twenty Mil- 
 lions." In this extraordinary letter, Greeley addressed the Presi- 
 dent through the medium of his paper, and suggested for the 
 benefit of the people that the administration was far too inter- 
 ested in sparing the feelings of Southern slaveholders, and that 
 it appeared certain that most of the Northern army, officers and 
 men, were more anxious to uphold slavery than to put down the 
 rebellion. This was not the only thorn in the President's side, 
 put there by the fact that he had deemed it wise to keep saying 
 that the war was solely for the purpose of saving the Union. 
 Liberal opinion in Europe had hoped that it really was a war 
 for the extermination of an illiberal system, that of slavery, and 
 in that hope had looked upon the North as a crusader. But Ab- 
 raham's political insistence upon the contrary had done much 
 to turn sympathy towards the South and to fortify the South's 
 complaints of coercion. Now, the President had reached a point 
 in his career at which it appeared that he would have to let go 
 of the safety valve upon his own emotions and those of his 
 people which he had been so carefully holding open. He saw that 
 it was necessary for him to hint at a change of policy. He paved 
 
DISASTER 241 
 
 the way in his dignified reply to Greeley. "... If I could save 
 the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I 
 could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I 
 could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also 
 do that. What I do about the colored race, I do because I believe 
 it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because 
 I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less 
 whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and 
 I shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the 
 cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and 
 I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true 
 views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of 
 official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed 
 personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free." # 
 
 The abolitionists, who had been the most outspoken critics 
 of the President, found nothing to sweeten their tempers in this. 
 Meanwhile, events which were destined to throw Abraham into 
 their arms were being prepared in the amazing battleground of 
 Virginia. The clever flanking tactics of the Confederate General 
 "Stonewall" Jackson, combined with the lowest ebb of Abraham 
 Lincoln's judgment to produce a calamity of the first magnitude 
 and to bring about the playing by the President of what he con- 
 sidered his last trump card. 
 
 Torn by the demands of the fiercest members of the Com- 
 mittee on the Conduct of the War, by his own uncertainty as to 
 what McClellan was capable of doing, by his desire to get the 
 Army out of McClellan's hands without hurting that General's 
 feelings more than they had already been hurt, Abraham allowed 
 himself to order the detachment of the main part of the Army 
 of the Potomac and the assignment of it to the command of 
 
 Lincoln to Greeley, Aug. 22, 1862. Works, Vol. VI, p. 123. 
 
242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 General Pope. On August thirtieth, it was made plain in what 
 degree the poetic General Pope was to avail himself of the Presi- 
 dent's support. For on that day, almost on the very site of the 
 first battle of Bull Run, within earshot of the Capitol at Wash- 
 ington, the Union Army, confused by the brilliant tactics of 
 Jackson and outgeneraled by the sagacious and determined Lee, 
 was almost totally ruined in a battle with the Confederates. Again, 
 it appeared, in spite of Generals, in spite of volunteers, in spite of 
 committees, in spite of the supposed righteousness of the North- 
 ern cause, Washington was seriously threatened. Something was 
 wrong. When, in the face of all this, Congress, which believed 
 that Pope's collapse was largely due to McClellan's supposed fail- 
 ure to support him properly, was informed that the President had 
 called McClellan to take command of the forces in defense of 
 Washington, it was aghast. The vindictive members of the Com- 
 mittee boiled with rage. The President explained to his Cabinet 
 that although he did feel that McClellan had acted badly, there 
 was no one else to turn to. This time Lincoln was not wrong. 
 McClellan spent the next weeks whipping the disorganized and 
 disgruntled Army into shape, forgetting as far as so petty a char- 
 acter could, his own grievances and the indignities which had 
 been heaped upon him, entirely overpowering the old criticism 
 which had had it that he was a traitor conducting all his cam- 
 paigns in the interest of the South. But McClellan could not do 
 more at this late date than faintly redeem himself in battle, what- 
 ever his services as an organizer. On the seventeenth of September 
 he faced General Lee's forces at Antietam Creek, outnumbering 
 the Confederates by about three to two. General Lee had invaded 
 Maryland and seemed irresistible. A victory would have hurt the 
 Union more than anyone can say. He was in a defensive posi- 
 tion and McClellan, with a broken and spasmodic attack opened 
 
DISASTER 243 
 
 against him. The Union commander was unable to get much 
 more than two-thirds of his men into action, preferring to remain 
 certain that he was outnumbered and needed reserves. Such was 
 not the case. McClellan did not succeed in driving the enemy 
 from the field, but he did succeed in making it necessary for 
 Lee to withdraw. He thus saved Maryland for the Union, and by 
 so much was it a Union victory, no more. That was not enough to 
 save McClellan, but it was enough for Abraham. Five days after 
 the battle the President threw a bombshell into a cabinet meeting. 
 He entered this meeting, the Secretaries bitterly wondering 
 what was to come, dissatisfied with the battle of Antietam, puz- 
 zled by the new aggressiveness in the hitherto vague and con- 
 ciliatory Abraham, and produced from under his arm the latest 
 volume of Artemus Ward, from which, before proceeding to 
 business he read aloud. Everyone except the Secretary of War 
 laughed heartily, but the tension still existed. Then, looking very 
 serious, very old and worn, the weary man rose to his full height 
 and disclosed to the men about him his plan for consolidating 
 the nation in a great effort to win the thus far disappointing war. 
 Abraham said to the cabinet officers, in his solemn, shrill but 
 earnest voice, standing without gesture as he spoke, that he had 
 been for a long time thinking over the relation of slavery to the 
 prosecution of the war and had come to the conclusion that now 
 was the time to do something about that issue. The gentlemen 
 would remember, he said, that previously he had read them a 
 memorandum on the subject, of which they had not approved, 
 and that the matter had consequently been dropped. Now, how- 
 ever, he made no pretense even of asking their advice; the 
 changed and much more resolute Lincoln merely announced to 
 them that, having at last secured something that looked like 
 a Union military success in the battle of Antietam, not a very 
 
244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 great success, it was true, he was about to issue a proclamation 
 emancipating the slaves of those states which on the following 
 January first should be in rebellion against the United States. # 
 The cabinet officers looked at one another in amazement. They 
 saw the uncertain, vacillating, driven, apparently dazed Abra- 
 ham standing before them with a bitterly determined look on 
 his face in so many words announcing to them, his chosen and 
 hitherto important advisers, that from that moment on he was to 
 be to all intents and purposes a virtual dictator. The President 
 read the proclamation, with its contradictions of his previous at- 
 titude and its plain declaration that its pronouncement was merely 
 delivered as a matter of military and political necessity. In this 
 document the President declared it to be his intention to recom- 
 mend to the next Congress (he had been very careful to wait 
 until Congress had adjourned before issuing his proclamation) 
 that they pass measures tendering pecuniary aid to states which 
 had ceased to be in rebellion against the United States and which 
 had adopted immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within 
 their limits. Irrespective of any action by Congress the President 
 proclaimed with a disregard of actualities which well indicated 
 the aggressive state of mind to which he had been driven, "that 
 on the first of January, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any 
 State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then 
 be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thencefor- 
 ward, and forever, free." He further declared that he himself 
 would announce on January first, 1863, what states were in re- 
 bellion against the United States and that states which then 
 were represented in the Congress of the United States by mem- 
 bers chosen "at elections wherein a majority of the qualified 
 
 * Report of Am. Hist. Assn., Vol. II, 1902. The Diary and Correspondence of 
 Salmon P. Chase. 
 
DISASTER 245 
 
 voters of such State shall have participated shall, in the absence 
 of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evi- 
 dence that such State and the people thereof are not then in 
 rebellion against the United States." The proclamation further 
 called the attention of Congress to an act of the previous spring 
 establishing as a new Article of War that no one in the military 
 or naval service of the United States should be allowed to use 
 any of their commands for the purpose of returning fugitive 
 slaves. It also mentioned, significantly, an act approved in July 
 which practically suspended the operation of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law, hitherto warmly upheld by the President. 
 
 In this extraordinary proclamation, Abraham offered no prece- 
 dent, no justification for the act which he was proclaiming, no 
 suggestion nor apology for the power he was assuming. Indeed 
 he could not have done so, and to have done so would have 
 weakened his position and made it too easy for the vindictives 
 who had wanted him to make an issue of slavery, to laugh at him 
 now and say that this was not the way to do it, that he was merely 
 making an emperor out of himself. 
 
 As if the Emancipation Proclamation, which— unless a great 
 deal had happened which was not likely to happen by January 
 first, could have no actual validity as far as freeing the slaves was 
 concerned — were not sufficient evidence of his new administrative 
 attitude, on the twenty-fourth of September Abraham issued 
 another proclamation suspending that time-honored privilege of 
 the free citizen of a free country, that of obtaining a writ of 
 habeas corpus in case of arrest. In this proclamation also there 
 was no suggestion of precedent nor of authority. It was the final 
 incident in the making of a new public man out of the private 
 misgivings and uncertainties of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 In the darkness of his room, in the loneliness of his stolen 
 
246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 walks about the nervous capital, the new note of determination 
 boiled and surged in Abraham's unhappy mind. He had asserted 
 himself, and that fact gave him strength and relief, but as must 
 always be the case with a man tied to inward darknesses, no 
 assertion can fail to have its undertow. What did it all mean? 
 Abraham Lincoln was President; he had fiddled along accepting 
 other people's ideas because he thought he had to; now he was 
 not going to do it any longer. Could he sustain himself in that 
 power which he was gathering to himself? Would the country 
 give him its support, or would he still meet with the bitter vio- 
 lence of factional prejudice? Horrible as the inner ramifications 
 of his new course might be, there was now no going back. 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 THE LADDER IS BROKEN 
 
 THE Emancipation Proclamation, issued by the President as 
 a means of uniting the nation, followed as it was by the 
 tactless proclamation suspending the writs of habeas corpus, did 
 not have the desired effect. The former manifesto united the 
 South but failed to please anyone in the North except the Boston 
 fanatics, who believed it a blow for freedom. The Democrats 
 ignored the slavery side of the proclamation and insisted on the 
 dictatorial power which it assumed. They gathered many new 
 supporters to their ranks by frightening them with talk of im- 
 perial arrogance. And for the moment, so confident was he of 
 his rightness, imperial arrogance was what Abraham intended. 
 He knew that he could use it to good advantage, because he saw 
 things as no one else saw them. Felt them, rather. Indeed that 
 unwavering, unshaken power, was what he now felt that he 
 must have. Why else should he have come around to these high- 
 handed declarations of principles in which he had never believed ? 
 He had been forced into them by the necessity of having power. 
 He had hoped that he could save the Union through kindliness 
 and gentleness, but men and facts had shown him that it would 
 not work. He had to be thrown very heavily to learn that lesson, 
 and he was not happy in it, now that it was learned, but he was 
 confident that he was now taking the only possible course. 
 
 But in November, 1862, after the elections of that year it 
 seemed that even the only possible course was not to be a suc- 
 
 247 
 
248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cessful one. For the most important states in the Union, except 
 Massachusetts, returned majorities against the administration. 
 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 
 Lincoln's own state, all went Democratic. They would not be 
 deluded by talk of Emancipation, perhaps realizing how little 
 benefit the slaves in the belligerent Southern Confederacy could 
 get from a proclamation issued by a foreign government unable 
 to do more than keep itself from military invasion. The people 
 of the North wanted either a military victory or a sudden end 
 to the war without any victory. And Abraham, who had been 
 trying to fight the war without admitting that battle is not a 
 democratic institution had failed utterly, because he had tried to 
 believe that the democratic spirit could do anything. He had not 
 realized, and was not soon to learn, that war is a business, essen- 
 tially feudal in its necessary organization, and must be run, if 
 at all, in the most hard-boiled, professional manner possible. 
 The unfortunate thing for the President was that the Confederate 
 States had already realized this and had adopted a military or- 
 ganization calculated to get the last drop of fighting out of a 
 small and poorly supplied citizenry. That citizenry was now 
 being drafted, and officered not by officers who held their places 
 as political plums but by serious soldiers. And those serious sol- 
 diers, about eighty thousand in number, met the vainglorious 
 plum-holders, and their retinue one hundred and twenty-five 
 thousand strong on December thirteenth, 1862, for no reason 
 whatever except that a battle would look well to the electorate. 
 The result was one of the most crushing and tragic disasters of 
 the entire war. General Burnside, who had replaced the dashing 
 but dilatory McClellan, very nearly contrived to lose, for Presi- 
 dent Lincoln, the entire army entrusted to him. As it was, he 
 was able to retreat across the Rappahannock with a loss of only 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 249 
 
 thirteen thousand men, as compared with the Confederate loss 
 of less than five thousand. 
 
 Nothing could have been worse for Abraham. The Commit- 
 tee in Congress was furious. They and many others in Congress 
 as well, believed that the President should get rid of his cabinet, 
 with the exception of the double-faced, though able, Secretary 
 Chase. Many even insisted that the President himself should 
 resign. Abraham shut himself up in his room and would see no 
 one. He could not seem to hide his clear conscience from the 
 accusing finger which pointed at him as bitterly as if his heart 
 had not been pure. In the first place, it was he who had insisted, 
 against the General's own wishes, that Burnside take up the 
 military command where Pope had left it. Burnside had not 
 believed in his ability to do the job. He had failed, and the hate- 
 ful Congressional Committee took good care to publish to the 
 country, after an examination into the cause of the slaughter at 
 Fredericksburg, a statement of the fact that the President had 
 forced General Burnside into a position which he felt unquali- 
 fied to occupy. The Committee openly continued its hostility 
 to Abraham and showed it in an effort to drive Secretary Seward, 
 now Abraham's right-hand man, out of the cabinet. That would 
 never do. The President had come to like Seward very much, 
 but even more than that, Seward commanded an element in the 
 Republican party which could not be let go. The administration 
 needed its support and without Seward would not get it. Chase 
 saved the day by getting himself into a hole. He had been trying 
 to play two hands at once : to appear friendly in both the cabinet 
 and the Committee, a very difficult feat. The Committee had 
 announced that it believed Seward was exerting a malign influ- 
 ence upon the administration. Seward had offered his resigna- 
 tion, in reply. The Cabinet and the Senatorial Committee, unfor- 
 
250 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tunately for Chase, convened to talk the matter over. Chase 
 had to defend Seward. But in doing so, he saw in the faces of 
 the astounded Senators who had often heard him revile the same 
 Secretary, that there was a nigger in the woodpile. It was now 
 Chase's turn to resign. It seemed to be his only way of getting out 
 of the difficulty that would, by embarrassing the President, put 
 himself once more in favor with the Committee. That was all 
 very well. But the President refused to accept the resignation of 
 either of his unhappy Secretaries. Thus did the formerly docile 
 and easily influenced Abraham, assert himself in his role of 
 dictator, at the same time strengthening his own hand and 
 weakening the alliance between the Committee and the Cabinet. * 
 But for all his assumption of dictatorial power, Abraham was 
 in a terrible position. He had destroyed and thrown away as 
 useless the ladder of tricks, submissions, bargains, suspicions, 
 recriminations, half truths and chicaneries, by which he had for- 
 merly supposed it necessary to climb, and there was nothing left 
 for him to do but cut his way out of his ambush with such 
 weapons as he could find at hand. And the first weapon he 
 found was a very blunt and dilapidated one. It was General 
 Hooker, who, within the disturbed and ill-fated Army of the 
 Potomac had been scheming against the incompetent and ner- 
 vous General Burnside, attempting, unbelievably enough, to dis- 
 grace the Commander and work his own way into the command- 
 ing position. He knew that he was at the time a popular figure 
 and that he had the support and confidence of the Congressional 
 Committee. He may have had some idea of accepting the Com- 
 mittee's hostility to Lincoln and of eventually working himself 
 in to the summit of national prominence by means of a military 
 coup d'etat which should leave him Dictator. Abraham's friends 
 
 * Stephenson, N. W. Lincoln. An Account of His Personal Life, 1922, p. 291 ff. 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 251 
 
 did not hesitate to tell him that this was what would happen if 
 Hooker were not suppressed. Abraham, remembering, perhaps, 
 what he had said in his salad days to his intimate friend Joshua 
 Speed, to the effect that he and Joshua were destined always to 
 dream of a world impossible of realization, continued his peni- 
 tential system of administrative control, hoping against hope that 
 a firm hand, combined with humility and resignation, might do 
 something to bring about a millennial state of affairs. In pursuit 
 of this happy end, the President did two extraordinary things. 
 He urged Thurlow Weed to go to Governor Seymour of New 
 York, one of the recently elected Democrats, and the leader of the 
 moderates in that party who favored the Union but did not favor 
 Abraham's method of governing it, and to say to the Governor 
 that he, Abraham Lincoln, would promise to do everything in 
 his power to secure for Seymour the presidential nomination 
 in 1864 provided that gentleman would now, without delay 
 or qualification, bring his Democratic following into a coalition 
 with Lincoln Republicans by way of forming a Union party, 
 devoted solely to the prosecution of the war. # The second thing 
 which the President did was to write a letter to "Fighting Joe" 
 Hooker, announcing that he had been placed at the head of the 
 Army of the Potomac and informing him that although this step 
 was taken for what appeared to be sufficient reasons, the Presi- 
 dent was not perfectly satisfied with Hooker's previous conduct. 
 Furthermore, Abraham announced to the General that he had 
 heard some talk about a dictatorship, but that he was willing 
 to take a chance on that if Hooker would first provide some 
 military victories. "Only those generals who gain successes can 
 set up as Dictators," said the President. If Hooker was surprised, 
 he was also pleased, and soon became extremely inflated. While 
 
 * Stephenson. Lincoln, p. 300 ff. 
 
252 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the nation waited for a victory, the General announced that 
 "The enemy is in my power and God Almighty cannot deprive 
 me of them." Abraham, metaphorically, looked the other way 
 and issued a proclamation very different from anything he had 
 ever said previously, indicating the great change which had come 
 over the relations between his inner and outer nature. 
 
 "... It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own 
 their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to con- 
 fess their sins- and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with 
 assured hope that genuine repentence will lead to mercy and 
 pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the 
 Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations 
 only are blessed whose God is the Lord : . . . " # 
 
 But the Lord was not yet won over, for Governor Seymour 
 would have none of the President's overtures, and General 
 Hooker, though able and energetic, was not capable of organiz- 
 ing a victory. Lee and Jackson were too much for him. At Chan- 
 cellorsville, ten miles west of Burnside's ill-chosen battleground 
 of Fredericksburg, the Union armies once more met with disaster, 
 disaster which again, as at Bull Run, came very near to being 
 a rout. As if this were not enough to throw the President's man- 
 ipulation of his precarious power off its balance, General Burn- 
 side, removed from the Army of the Potomac and sent to the 
 supposedly harmless command of the quiet Department of the 
 Ohio, again made trouble by arresting Clement L. Vallandigham, 
 the leader in that state of the extreme wing of the Democratic 
 party, commonly called "Copperheads," a group which sym- 
 pathized with the South and believed in obstructing the progress 
 of the war. Burnside, perhaps naturally, in view of the Presi- 
 dential pronouncements about civil liberties in time of war, be- 
 
 * Works, Vol. VI, p. 270. 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 253 
 
 lieved that he was doing what the administration would have had 
 him do. But maladroit that he was, he was wrong. His action 
 threw the President and the cabinet into despair. They could 
 not afford any such evidence of high-handed and presumably 
 unconstitutional action, but neither could they afford to repudiate 
 the actions of their subordinate. The country would have been 
 down on them, in the first event, for over-severity, and, in the 
 second, for weakness and too great lenience. The Lord almighty 
 was indeed still estranged. 
 
 Abraham was now back where he had been before, his poli- 
 tical strength very doubtful, one more General had turned out 
 to be just another blue suit with trimmings, the ferocious Com- 
 mittee was still growling. The President was angry, and took 
 refuge in a little unwarranted flippancy in the form of a "joke" 
 played on the captured Vallandigham. Instead of the sentence 
 of confinement which would have been natural in such a case, 
 Abraham decided, with a slightly acid gesture, that he would 
 banish the offending gentleman into the Confederacy, with which 
 his sympathies were supposedly enlisted. Meanwhile, General 
 Lee, resting after the terrible battle of Chancellorsville, which 
 had once more proved how easy it was to beat a Federal Army, 
 was formulating plans for a raid calculated to end the war in 
 favor of the South. He planned to invade Pennsylvania and cause 
 the withdrawal of the Union forces from Virginia, possibly even 
 to do battle with them in Pennsylvania and, having defeated 
 them, to advance on Philadelphia, cut off Washington and 
 threaten New York. 
 
 When it became apparent that this was General Lee's plan, 
 when it was recognized that the Federal forces had in two years 
 of war given no signs of any ability to beat the Confederates in 
 the Eastern theater of war, it became obvious that something 
 
254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 radical must be done. The press and the public clamored for the 
 restoration of McClellan to command, but Abraham, who saw 
 more than military strategy involved, would not listen. Yet it 
 was certain that Hooker, who wanted to attack Richmond while 
 Lee was moving northward, would not do. For Hooker had got- 
 ten into a quarrel with the figurehead Commanding General, 
 Halleck, in Washington, and had in annoyance asked to be 
 relieved of his position. He was speedily accommodated by the 
 President. It was taking a great risk to swap horses in midstream 
 like that, but the President felt that it was taking less risk than 
 would have been involved in urging Hooker to remain in com- 
 mand. For the situation was now serious. Lee had advanced into 
 Pennsylvania, and with the usual timidity of a thing so heart- 
 less as finance, the stock market and government securities were 
 both beginning to wobble. It is not the stomach upon which an 
 army moves. It is the pocketbook. Something had to be done. 
 On June thirtieth, 1863, the New York papers announced that 
 General George Gordon Meade had been placed in command of 
 the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 In Pennsylvania there was something approaching panic. No 
 one thought that Philadelphia could be saved. The Governors 
 of the adjacent states willingly supplied additional levies of 
 troops; Governor Seymour of New York, who had rejected Ab- 
 raham's political advances, replying with especial ardor to the 
 military demands which the occasion made upon his state. It 
 was plain that something was going to happen, and that that 
 something would either unite or destroy the elements of the 
 Union. General Lee, whom the North had reluctantly come to 
 believe invincible, and who held no very high opinion of the 
 Union Generals he had had to face, was having a comparatively 
 easy time in Pennsylvania, until General Stuart, his dashing and 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 255 
 
 picturesque cavalry leader, got lost behind the Union armies 
 and ceased to be able to supply him with information. As Gen- 
 eral Meade was taking command, the advance of the Army of 
 the Potomac located the Confederates at Gettysburg, Pennsyl- 
 vania, where General Buford's Union cavalry had made an attack. 
 The First and Eleventh Corps of General Meade's army en- 
 gaged the Confederates on July first but were badly beaten, the 
 Commanding General of the First Corps, Reynolds, being killed. 
 It soon became apparent to General Meade that there was going 
 to be a battle at Gettysburg whether he liked it or not. His corps 
 commanders were already engaged in struggling for position 
 at that point. The Confederates had been somewhat taken by 
 surprise, as they did not know that the Army of the Potomac 
 was concentrated so close to them. As there were, however, more 
 Confederates than Federals on hand when the first fighting took 
 place, the advantage was distincdy with the former. In fact, 
 if General Lee had had more definite information as to the 
 whereabouts of his enemy, he might have pushed his advantage 
 of July first and prevented the Federal forces from taking up 
 the very favorable position in Gettysburg which eventually, by its 
 desirability and strength, secured the victory. It appeared that 
 Lee, however, when he saw what he had to contend with and 
 realized the success of his first day's battle, assumed that it 
 was just the old Army of the Potomac all over again and that 
 he would be able to go through them as a hot knife goes through 
 butter, the result being a free road to the important centers of 
 the North, as well as Washington, and a consequent end to the 
 war. 
 
 General George Gordon Meade, whom the President had put 
 in command of the Army of the Potomac just before the pre- 
 liminary skirmishes at Gettysburg, was a man of rather higher 
 
256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 character in many respects than his predecessors in command. He 
 lacked some of the military instincts of General McClellan, but 
 his training had done as much as it could with a sensitive, over- 
 conscientious, tender-minded man, to make a general officer of 
 him. Like almost all other Union generals, he lacked initiative. 
 He seems to have shared with Lincoln that grave Old Testament 
 inability to be forceful, to initiate, as if conscious always of some 
 critical, vengeful presence in the next room. By the time General 
 Meade appeared on the field at Gettysburg, at one o'clock in 
 the morning of July second, his honest, homely face with its great 
 eyes bore all the marks of absolute exhaustion. The General had 
 had practically no sleep since taking command, so keenly did he 
 feel his responsibility. He was not the kind to exult in the fas- 
 cination of the difficult. There was little joy in his nature, un- 
 like his patron in the White House. His sorrow and horror were 
 unrelieved by the explanatory solvent of a keen and humorous 
 understanding of the relationship of human nature to its world. 
 General Meade was nervous and apprehensive, but brave and 
 determined. He had under him a far better trained, a far more 
 finely integrated army than any of his predecessors had com- 
 manded. He had the support and interest of his subordinates in 
 a degree which had never been approached by McClellan, Pope, 
 Burnside or Hooker. But he had the one great failing of the 
 Northern American, a failing which was particularly in evidence 
 among the men of Civil War times, due perhaps to the beginnings 
 of that very nationalization of the people which was Abraham 
 Lincoln's dearest interest. For General Meade, soldier that he 
 was, was unable to believe in himself. At the close of the sec- 
 ond day's battle at Gettysburg, on July second, after making 
 a number of minor mistakes saved from being major ones by the 
 swiftly changing attack of the enemy, he seriously considered a 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 257 
 
 retreat from the field. He was voted down in a council of his 
 officers, and remained to fight it out, to be given a victory which 
 he perhaps deserved but which he had assuredly himself not 
 earned, and which he could not appreciate when he had won it. 
 
 On the third of July, early in the afternoon, against the in- 
 stinct and advice of his subordinate, General Longstreet, Lee 
 ordered a charge against the Union center. He believed that the 
 comparatively fresh division of General Pickett, advancing in 
 column after a strenuous artillery preparation, could penetrate 
 and hold the Union lines. The story of this charge, ill-fated from 
 the start, with its heroic and needless slaughter, is too well known 
 to need repeating. It is enough to say that it succeeded in pene- 
 trating the Union Lines at the cost of its very identity. Pickett's 
 division was nearly annihilated and had to fall back. On both 
 sides it was recognized that the tide of battle had turned. The 
 Confederates knew what they had lost and feared that they 
 were going to lose still more. But General Meade, over-cautious, 
 failed to follow up the retreat of the assaulting column which 
 his Army had successfully thrown back. He was content to have 
 defended himself, a common failing in even great commanders. 
 Lee had done the same thing at Fredericksburg after putting 
 General Burnside to rout. It is not always easy to see the rea- 
 son why, after a difficult battle, it would be well to urge the 
 weary and poorly supplied troops who have secured a victory 
 into a pursuit of their retreating enemy. There may have been 
 reasons in General Meade's mind which we do not know. But 
 it is certain that his failure to follow up his victory was a sur- 
 prise to the enemy. 
 
 More than that, it was a source of great mortification to the 
 all but despairing Abraham, now living at the bosky Soldiers' 
 Home in the outskirts of Washington. More than a week after 
 
258 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the battle, which even critics of the administration had to admit 
 was a victory, when the Army of Northern Virginia under Gen- 
 eral Lee had safely retreated in good order across the Potomac, 
 Meade was not near enough to molest him in the slightest. Al- 
 though Abraham was probably wrong in thinking that the 
 capture of a large part of Lee's army would have resulted in 
 the immediate breakdown of the Confederacy, it is not hard to 
 understand his exasperation at the timidity of his General. For 
 on the Fourth of July, a rising officer in the West, Ulysses S. 
 Grant, had compelled the surrender of the city of Vicksburg, Mis- 
 sissippi, after a prolonged siege, capturing thirty thousand Con- 
 federate soldiers, and opening the Mississippi River to Northern 
 navigation from St. Louis to the Gulf. 
 
 Almost simultaneous with these two convincing victories of 
 Union arms came, from the very heart of the nation, threats 
 that all was not well. In many states of the Union, and especially 
 in New York, the operation of the compulsory service law was 
 resisted in fact as well as in spirit. In New York City, where it 
 was felt that discrimination was being made in the draft against 
 working men, especially those of foreign birth, Abraham's ex- 
 planation of the manner in which the Civil War was a war on 
 behalf of free labor, was for the moment forgotten. In his 
 first annual message to Congress, delivered December third, 1861, 
 when the war was young and its issues still in the formative stage, 
 the President had said, "... It is not needed nor fitting here, 
 that a general argument should be made in favor of popular 
 institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so 
 hackneyed as most others, to which I ask brief attention. It is 
 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 capital; that nobody labors 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 259 
 
 unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it, 
 induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether 
 it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and then induce them 
 to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to 
 it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally 
 concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers, or what 
 we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once 
 a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. 
 
 "Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor 
 as assumed; nor is there any such thing as a free man being 
 fixed for life, in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these 
 assumptions are false and all inferences from them are 
 groundless. 
 
 "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 deserves 
 much the higher consideration. Capital has it rights, which are 
 as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . " # 
 
 This was the opinion, sound enough in theory but not borne 
 out by the facts, which had come into the sensitive and human, 
 kind and common mind of the child of a prairie village who 
 had shaken off the shackles, not of labor, but of too much earth- 
 iness. It was what he hoped was true, and what one hopes is as 
 valuable to a stump speaker or a man in public office as what 
 exists. But Abraham did not realize what the new industrialism, 
 into which the labor of the North had been forced by that very 
 development which he thought of as a striking evidence of na- 
 tional growth and dignity, had come to be. He could not have 
 understood the state of mind of those who were writing to the 
 New York papers in the summer of 1863, urging that only work- 
 
 * Works, Vol. V, pp. 407 ff. 
 
260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ingmen should be drafted as the nation could get along without 
 them but never without the business man who ran things. # 
 
 It was this spirit, failing to recognize the truth of Abraham's 
 words, "Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the 
 higher consideration," which had crept into the social organiza- 
 tion of the metropolis of the North. And the laborer was unable 
 to reconcile with those words, the fact that a provision of the 
 Draft Law, allowed the man with capital to get out of military 
 service (by the payment of $300) while the laborer could do 
 nothing but serve. In New York City in certain congressional 
 districts, chiefly the Ninth, there was a large proportion of labor- 
 ers of foreign birth. In spite of the President's well-known anxiety 
 to have foreign immigrants feel that they were welcome in the 
 United States, these workers could not escape the feeling that 
 Abraham's party was against them. With the help of local Demo- 
 cratic blandishment they soon concluded to espouse the cause of 
 that, for the time being, headless party. In the elections of 1862, 
 the Ninth Congressional District of New York, had for instance, 
 returned a Democratic majority of three thousand. 
 
 On Saturday, July eleventh, the draft went into effect and 
 drawings were made. On Sunday, the lists were published. The 
 list for the Ninth District, containing almost entirely the names 
 of workingmen with families to support, made good Sunday 
 reading along Second Avenue. When Monday dawned, the feel- 
 ing ran high. Rioting broke out at the headquarters of the Ninth 
 District at Third Avenue and 46th Street. The building was set 
 on fire and wrecked. The fire department, which was in sym- 
 pathy with the rioters, let it burn. Mobs were forming every- 
 where. The Eighth District Headquarters was burned. The police 
 found that they could do little or nothing. A great crowd 
 
 *New Yor\ Times, July 15, 1863. 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 261 
 
 rushed up Fifth Avenue to Forty-third Street where there was 
 a large colored Orphan Asylum, and, believing that the colored 
 race was the cause of its woes, set fire to the building. Fortunately 
 the inmates escaped, but policemen, rioters and bystanders were 
 killed and injured. The office of Horace Greeley's Neu/ Yor\ 
 Tribune, being an abolition paper, was wrecked, from many 
 New York lampposts hung the mutilated bodies of Negroes. 
 Along Lexington Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue, Broad- 
 way, blew the smoke of fires. Railroad tracks coming into the 
 city were torn up. From Union Square to Fifty-ninth Street, 
 the streets were cleared of almost everyone but rioters. The 
 fourteenth and fifteenth of July passed with little abatement of 
 the fury. The city was in the hands of the mob, which now 
 numbered as many thugs and gunmen as it did indignant work- 
 ingmen. But it had no leader, and by the sixteenth, with the 
 arrival of some hastily detached soldiers who made a thorough 
 job of cleaning up, the city was itself again. But the attempt of 
 the federal government to substitute for the no longer active vol- 
 unteering a compulsory form of service had caused casualties of 
 more than a thousand, and property damage of considerably 
 more than a million dollars. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, isolated in the nation's capital among those 
 who had never conceived that character could be found in a man 
 who appeared to be at once lout, simpleton, vulgarian, and man 
 of straw, must have felt very keenly the blow struck by the 
 opposition to the draft in New York and elsewhere. It was as 
 if he had solved a mathematical problem to his own satisfaction 
 and then had suddenly been confronted with the fact that he had 
 made a mistake in copying down the figures. Well, there was a 
 troop of cavalry sitting about, with their horses saddled ready to 
 fall into formation about Abraham wherever he tried to go. 
 
262 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 How could he manage to get a moment to himself for thinking ? 
 Only among the bushes in the yard about the Soldier's Home, 
 the "Summer White House" of that fearful summer. Abraham 
 knew all the trees and most of the plants. He could walk about 
 among them and look at them or not look at them as he wished. 
 There was nothing to do but give New York a momentary 
 respite from the draft and adjust any little injustice which might 
 have crept in. The draft itself must go on. Men were not vol- 
 unteering any longer. They wanted to believe that the war was 
 over so they tried to believe it. They must be drafted. And if 
 there had been too big a quota given to workingmen's districts 
 in the big cities, that would have to be changed. It would not 
 do to let workingmen think he was against them. For he was 
 not. 
 
 The summer wore on. It was hot in Washington. Abraham, 
 at night, when he was not at the telegraph office, would sit alone 
 or with whatever members of the cabinet attended him, with 
 his feet on the windowsill and his shoes on the floor. He tried 
 to think of other things than the state of the nation, but it was 
 hard. He read whenever he got time, chiefly in Shakespeare. 
 James H. Hackett, the actor, had sent him a book. He relaxed 
 himself by writing a letter of thanks. The gift was months old 
 but there happened to be an evening in August when, reading 
 it, he could think of the giver and thus take his mind from 
 the field of battle, from the unknown quantity in the strange, 
 McClellan-like General Rosecrans who was getting himself into 
 trouble in Tennessee, from the silent, unquestioning, unanswer- 
 ing power of General Grant farther to the West, from the skill- 
 ful if not aggressive Meade, facing Lee in Virginia. 
 
 "... For one of my age," he wrote to Hackett, "I have seen 
 very little of the drama. The first presentation of Falstaff I ever 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 263 
 
 saw was yours here, last winter or spring. Perhaps the best com- 
 pliment I can pay is to say, as I truly can, I am very anxious to 
 see it again. Some of Shakespeare's plays I have never read, while 
 others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofes- 
 sional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard 111, Henry 
 VIII, Hamlet; and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals 
 Macbeth. It is wonderful. 
 
 "Unlike you gentleman of the profession, I think the soliloquy 
 in Hamlet commencing 'Oh, my offense is rank,' surpasses that 
 commencing 'To be or not to be.' But pardon this small attempt 
 at criticism. I should like to hear you pronounce the opening 
 speech of Richard HI. Will you not soon visit Washington again ? 
 If you do, please call and let me make your personal acquaint- 
 ance." 
 
 There was a kind of warmth in Abraham as he wrote that. 
 He was truly escaping from the tortures of public life into the 
 life of the artist, which, strangely enough, he felt — rather than 
 knew — was his life. The artist in him had grown of late. It 
 was soon to have its performance. But now, he heard only pleas 
 for pardon of this and that deserter, some of which he granted, 
 others of which he refused. He heard protestations of interfer- 
 ence and enmity from his generals, or queries from them as to 
 what they should do. He heard news of skirmishes and engage- 
 ments which meant nothing but loss of life. He heard from 
 Mary Todd, his wife, herself suffering from the torture of know- 
 ing that Union bullets were thinning the ranks of her own 
 family, and not being happy in the thought that her husband's 
 was the patron spirit above those bullets. She was summering in 
 the North, at Manchester, Vermont, and among the purveyors 
 of silk and lace in New York. Abraham heard her writing 
 to know why he wanted her to come home, and was it not 
 
264 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 dangerous with the hot weather, people said there was sickness 
 in Washington, hadn't she better stay away a little longer. # 
 
 September nineteenth and twentieth had a sound very differ- 
 ent from the opening speech of Richard III. Those days produced 
 a hollow, empty rumble from the West where the hysterical 
 General Rosecrans was suffering his army to be slaughtered, 
 almost annihilated, because of faulty orders and the General's 
 own panic, and only saved by the heroic and almost impossible 
 resistance of General Thomas after Rosecrans had abandoned the 
 field. In this battle the Confederate General Helm, Mrs. Lin- 
 coln's brother-in-law, was killed. It was just as well for Abraham 
 that Mary was away, although he would have liked to have Tad 
 to play with. 
 
 In October, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, whither General Rose- 
 crans, busy, bustling, incompetent and nervous, had retreated after 
 his mismanagement of the frightful battle of Chickamauga, the 
 armies under his command were rapidly starving, cut off from 
 supplies by the Confederate armies south of him and by the 
 natural physiognomy of the hill country in which he was situ- 
 ated. Once more something had to be done. This time it was 
 Grant, the hero of the West, who was put in command of the 
 operations in Tennessee. Grant immediately displaced Rosecrans 
 and gave the hero of Chickamauga, General Thomas, command 
 of the dying horses and starving men in Chattanooga while 
 Sherman approached with help and Grant himself hurried east 
 to take command. 
 
 The army under Grant, directed by Thomas, looked very dif- 
 ferent from the assemblage of cripples and mendicants which it 
 had seemed to be under the regime of Rosecrans. A general can 
 translate his hysteria into the hysteria and despair of an army. 
 
 ♦Works, Vol. VI, pp. 418, 422, etc. 
 
THE LADDER IS BROKEN 265 
 
 Another can calm a force of men and revive it as easily. Both 
 Grant and Thomas were inspirers of confidence, and in their 
 subordinate officers they were extremely fortunate. Grant found 
 a plan already made; indeed part of it was Rosecrans'. There 
 was nothing to do but wait for the arrival of Sherman with 
 reinforcements. 
 
 When Sherman did arrive, Grant lost no time in putting 
 his attack into execution. And in execution, the plan moved like 
 the inexplicable elements of a dream, but a dream punctuated 
 with the riotous thunder of heavy cannon, and the shattering, 
 wave-like sweep of musketry, the cries of officers in exhortation 
 and men in agony. The horrible losses and suffering on both 
 sides were no dream, but the energy and agility with which the 
 once-bewildered Union forces advanced under their clear-headed 
 commanders would have seemed like a dream to poor old Rose- 
 crans. In any case, Lookout Mountain, to the south, and Mission- 
 ary Ridge to the east of Chattanooga, both strongly intrenched 
 and fortified positions, were carried by the attack of the Union 
 troops, and the Confederate States army, so long triumphant in 
 Tennessee, was definitely driven back with severe loss. Further- 
 more, this victory led to the relief of General Burnside at Knox- 
 ville, where he had been threatened by General Longstreet. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day, 1863, thus made the first genuine Thanks- 
 giving Day in many, many years. It was especially the occasion 
 of thanksgiving to Abraham, who in the precarious exercise of 
 the power which he had assumed had at last been granted some- 
 thing like real military success. And he needed military suc- 
 cess, for without it he could not have maintained his position, 
 could not have justified his course. As it now turned out, the 
 President was able to reaffirm his policies and to feel strength- 
 ened in his support of them. The elections of 1863 had showed 
 
266 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 less of a Democratic trend in the North than had those of 
 1862. The Confederate armies had even in the East made no 
 substantial advance which had not been nullified by counter- 
 attack. In the West, the Mississippi had been opened, and the 
 border states were being cleared. Congress had been adjourned 
 since March, and Abraham had consequently been much freer 
 than for some time from the bitter gnat-like voices of the Com- 
 mittee, perpetually alert, their owners athirst for his blood. The 
 menace of England, sitting crouched like a lazy lion ready to 
 pounce in and acknowledge the sovereignty of the seceded states 
 as soon as the North was in a state not to retaliate, had been 
 largely relieved by the victories of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Stone's 
 River, and finally Chattanooga. And they had, fortunately, been 
 combined with the masterly tact of Charles Francis Adams, the 
 American minister to the Court of St. James. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 
 
 FOUR months after the battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 
 when the many thousand dead were safely underground,, 
 brother and brother, and the astonishing violence of their hos- 
 tility laid away with them, a gathering of people stood in the 
 new military cemetery to listen to one of the most celebrated 
 orators of the day, in an address of commemoration. Edward 
 Everett of Boston had been invited to deliver this long address 
 and had outdone himself in a scholarly, dignified and suitably 
 pompous effort, to which the audience, with much weary shift- 
 ing of feet and many yawns, listened in dutiful admiration. Not 
 the least attentive of the orator's listeners was Abraham Lincoln, 
 who had read Everett's speech some time before, the gentleman 
 having kindly sent him a copy of it. When Everett was almost 
 finished, Abraham took out his glasses and studied a paper which 
 he held in his own hand. He shifted about nervously. When it 
 came time for him to rise and face the throng on his own account 
 he held the paper before him, his glasses slightly tilted down- 
 ward on his nose. His great long body lifted its worn and aging 
 face into the November air and spoke what its intuitive sense 
 of arrangement had set down. The voice was high-pitched and 
 shrill yet smoothed and abraded with the fine grit of tenderness. 
 The stump speaker to whom it belonged, and whom everyone 
 expected either to tell a jocose narrative or to harangue the crowd 
 anent political issues, put off the stump manner and stood with- 
 
 267 
 
268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 out gesture, speaking. The thrust of head and neck, the quick 
 balance of throat to catch the shift of emotion in its muscle 
 was the only gesture. Was this Lincoln, the politician, or was it 
 the tragedian of a new theater? Was this the prairie boy grown 
 old and slowed into solemnity, or was it the unlocated artist 
 coming into his own, the artist of the common mind ? It was all 
 over so quickly, so few had had time to catch even a word, that 
 no one knew. No one but Abraham, who for once had felt com- 
 ing into him the amazement of emotional creation. Those two 
 or three minutes of simple speech were the password which let 
 Abraham Lincoln into his world. In their delivery, he must have 
 known. The presidency and its powers, its requirements, its 
 merely mechanical implications, its stress of surfaces, must have 
 seemed to him something very small indeed, for perhaps the 
 first time in his life. At last he had reached the height. He had 
 been born again, he had found what he wanted most, and 
 learned that he could do without it, having himself. 
 
 To the parasols, beaver stovepipes, flat derbies and flowered 
 bonnets below him, the artist said: "Four score and seven years 
 ago, our fathers brought forth on 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 other nation so conceived and so dedicated 
 can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
 We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final rest- 
 ing 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 can not dedicate — we can not con- 
 secrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 269 
 
 and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above 
 our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, 
 nor long 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 advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
 to the great task remaining before 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 re- 
 solve 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, for the people, shall not 
 perish from the earth." 
 
 There must have been joy in Abraham Lincoln's heart as he 
 stepped away from the inattentive audience which had not quite 
 understood him. He had joy of creation, that flowering in the 
 simple mind of the empirical sense of life. Between this creation 
 and its creator there was no long gap of modifying reason, no 
 blur of metaphysical distance. It did not matter, now, what any- 
 one thought, what enemies might do, Abraham had discovered 
 the world, and it had neither past nor future. 
 
 As he puffed back to the capital in the horrible little train, 
 he might well have thought, what did it matter if in perform- 
 ance he was wrong, so long as at any given moment he not only 
 saw but was the thing which he experienced? If he could talk 
 to the British Foreign Office for three minutes, there would no 
 longer be anything to fear from England, victories in the field 
 or no victories. If he could talk to all the people at once, Demo- 
 crats, rigid Republicans, Union men, he would be the people and 
 they would be, as he hoped they would be, united in him for the 
 prosecution of the war, which now seemed to him as to many 
 
270 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 others not in the military service to be on its last legs. And out 
 of the war must come that unity which, in his imaginative in- 
 ference, he had established as a reality already. But he could not 
 look into the eye of everything, nor shake its hand. Some things 
 had to be done through ambassadors, secretaries, generals, parties, 
 some things must be yielded to gain others, power must be as- 
 sumed strings must be pulled, men and their vagaries must be 
 allowed for. Louisiana, freed from Confederate armies, must be 
 jockeyed back into the Union, Arkansas too. There were elec- 
 tions coming, and votes from new districts, that had not, in 
 i860, been Lincoln districts, must be secured. To foster and nour- 
 ish just the right sort of government in the border states which 
 had been doubtful or definitely Southern, whether by trickery 
 or plain dealing, would in the end be justifiable. If Louisiana and 
 Arkansas wanted to come in, and wanted to come in with a 
 Lincoln bias, why look too closely into the antecedents of the 
 new state of mind in those states? Get them in, that was the 
 point. If they were falsely gotten in the trouble could be rec- 
 tified afterwards. If they were not, so much the better. The artist 
 had to lift himself by the bootstraps and get these things done. 
 In December, 1863, the President issued a long proclamation of 
 "Amnesty and Reconstruction" in which full pardon was offered 
 to those persons who had participated in the existing "rebellion" 
 (with some few exceptions), with restoration of their property, 
 excepting slaves, provided that they would merely subscribe 
 to an oath to defend the Constitution and the United States, and 
 to support acts of Congress, relative to slaves, which had been 
 passed during the "rebellion," as well as proclamations issued 
 by the president during the same period. This document also 
 announced that whenever one-tenth of the voters of any of the 
 seceded states should get together and reorganize a state govern- 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 271 
 
 ment, that government would be recognized as the true govern- 
 ment of the state and the state be accordingly considered back in 
 the Union. 
 
 To the group in Congress which objected to everything about 
 Abraham and believed that the seceded states should be punished 
 and humbled before being allowed any privileges, this seemed 
 pretty terrible. Congress considered a measure to take out of the 
 President's hands all right to have anything whatever to say 
 about the reconstruction of the Union. But some of Abraham's 
 enemies resisted the passage of this bill in the Senate, preferring 
 to wait for the man in the White House to twist himself up in 
 his own rope and blunder into hanging himself. Abraham was 
 quite ready to take a chance. In an extremely high-handed man- 
 ner, and with very questionable authority he nursed the new 
 government which was trying to set itself up in Louisiana. The 
 House of Representatives countered by passing a resolution of 
 censure against the President because he had not protested 
 the arrogant and nationally insulting manner in which Napo- 
 leon III had made Mexico safe for the French. Abraham 
 merely instructed his Minister in Paris to explain to the 
 Emperor's representative that the acts of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives were not the acts of the head of the American 
 government and consequently not the acts of the government 
 at all. 
 
 Abraham, thinking that the war was now nearly over, and 
 realizing that his Emancipation Proclamation was a measure sup- 
 ported by neither legality nor inevitable effect, but merely by the 
 fact of the nation's being in arms, understood very clearly that 
 when those arms had been laid aside, the dignity and force of 
 the Proclamation would be laid aside with them. Once the armies 
 were disbanded, few people could seriously regard it as either 
 
272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 constitutional or practical, in fact as anything but a political tour 
 de force, a mere wind that had made the man who was going 
 to shoot stoop to pick up his hat. Having lashed the country 
 into such a fury of controversy over the why and wherefore of 
 the war, having revised his own position, which had originally 
 ignored the slavery issue, it would be necessary for him in some 
 manner to preserve the dignity of his pronouncement and to give 
 it permanent effect. He realized, and his few friends in Congress 
 realized, that eventually it would be necessary to have a Con- 
 stitutional Amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United 
 States. Congress, as it existed, would never pass such an amend- 
 ment by the necessary two-thirds majority. Hence Abraham's 
 hurry to get the weakening southern states, who might desire 
 to return, once more into the fold, their representatives with their 
 votes seated in Congress. He must fortify himself. The opposition 
 in Congress saw what he was up to, knew that he had no legal 
 right to be up to it, and resisted him with a venom that was less 
 attractive than his illegality. Abraham did not care any longer. 
 He existed, as a man. He might well have said, "Je suis Vetat" 
 Except in so far as Abraham by virtue of his nature, his simple 
 commonness, did spiritually represent the people, there was, early 
 in 1864, no vestige of republican government in the United 
 States. And until the national elections of November, 1864, there 
 would be no way of telling whether or not Abraham really did 
 have a mandate from the people. In any case, Congress, insulted 
 singly and as a body, could not be expected to rejoice at the 
 dictatorship. All it could do would be to continue its policy of 
 waiting for Abraham to make a blunder with genuinely dis- 
 astrous consequences. In the first months of 1864 that blunder 
 looked very much on the horizon. In March, the useless figure- 
 head, General Halleck, having been discarded, a shabby short 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 273 
 
 little man, who walked as if the next step were going to send 
 him flat on his face, and looked like a reformed drunkard re- 
 considering the value of his reformation, but in whose blue eyes 
 there was a strange selfless light of determination, was given the 
 revived grade of Lieutenant General and made Commander-in- 
 Chief of all the forces of the United States. Immediately after his 
 appointment, Ulysses Grant, born Hiram, took his cigars and 
 moved into headquarters on the Virginia front, his plans largely 
 made, his eyes fixed on one thing only. But he did not share 
 either the President's or the people's confidence that with one 
 great stroke he could win the war. # This rather tarnished-looking 
 general, with his unpressed and stained uniform distinguished 
 from an ordinary soldier's only by its shoulder bars, knew, like 
 Abraham Lincoln, that he was one of the people and, unlike the 
 earlier Lincoln, had no desire to be anything else. He did not 
 care if there was hayseed in his hair. The only thing that he 
 enjoyed anywhere near so much as domestic life, whisky, cigars 
 and horses, was military activity. Not just military life. He hated 
 that, and thought that no decent man could be a soldier in peace 
 time. But war was like a good game of chess. And the Missouri 
 farmer, once a West Pointer, who had fought in the Mexican 
 War against his belief that it was a disgusting piece of national 
 rapacity, had a peculiar power, a soft quietness of command, 
 which was unlike anything the Northern armies had yet seen. 
 The people took from their army a sense of confidence in him, 
 the politicians of all parties trusted and admired him, perhaps 
 chiefly because he knew how to keep his mouth shut. And Ab- 
 raham's instinctive wisdom told him, without question, without 
 examination or proof, that he had found a man of his own temper 
 whose ways he could understand and trust. The result was that 
 
 * Richard H. Dana. Memoir, by C. F. Adams. Vol. Ill, pp. 271 fT. 
 
274 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the President, for the first time in his administration, gave his 
 Commander a free hand. 
 
 When General Grant took command of the Armies of the 
 United States he decided to locate his headquarters in Virginia, 
 and with very good reason. He admired and trusted Lincoln, but 
 he knew the President's ignorance of military matters and the 
 value which in Washington was put upon the political factors in 
 the war. Grant wanted none of these, and he felt that his only 
 salvation would be to be where he could throw all interference 
 overboard the minute it cropped up. Telegrams and promises 
 could not keep an army from disaster, but a man without poli- 
 tical ambition who knew what he was up to could do exactly 
 that. There were in Virginia at this time, the Army of the 
 Potomac under the capable General Meade, the victor of Gettys- 
 burg, who had learned much about the handling of a large 
 Army in the past ten months, and the Army of the James under 
 the unmilitary, bombastic and ambitious General Butler, the 
 most unpopular in the South of all Union generals. In that proud 
 region he was known as "Beast" Butler, not without some reason. 
 The Army of the Potomac on the first of May, 1864, numbered 
 approximately 120,000 men, of whom practically 100,000 were 
 equipped and ready for fighting. The Army of the James, num- 
 bered at the same time approximately 40,000. Against the two 
 forces were opposed the forces making up the defenses of the 
 James River approach to Richmond, City Point and Petersburg, 
 on the first of May numbering about 6,000, and the Army of 
 Northern Virginia, which numbered less than 60,000, under 
 General Lee. It was General Grant's plan that General Butler 
 should drive on Petersburg through City Point and then sweep 
 north toward Richmond, while he with the Army of the Potomac 
 should, by a concentrated advance by his own left flank, attack 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 275 
 
 the army of General Lee spread out north of Richmond. On the 
 third of May the Army of the Potomac began its advance by 
 crossing the Rapidan River into that uncharitable tangle of for- 
 est known as the Wilderness in the vicinity of which General 
 Hooker had been so badly defeated at Chancellorsville a year 
 earlier. Grant had hoped that, before Lee could discover his tac- 
 tics, he would have succeeded in passing his entire attacking force 
 through the Wilderness and thus would be enabled to bring to 
 the inevitable battle the superiority of strength and equipment 
 which in the tangles of the forest would have given him no 
 advantages. But Lee found out what was in the wind. He was not 
 afraid of Grant. He attacked the Union army in the depths 
 of the Wilderness on the fifth of May and arrested its ad- 
 vance. The Confederate army, weakened by prolonged cam- 
 paigning, threatened by imperfect systems of supply and 
 by dissension in their government to a degree far greater than 
 was realized by their opponents, none the less had the advan- 
 tage of a keen knowledge of the ways of the Wilderness and 
 of the type of fighting which the heavily wooded region with 
 its dense undergrowth made necessary. Although outnumbered 
 two to one, they managed to keep back the no longer 
 frivolous but now bitterly determined body of professional sol- 
 diers, officered by men of military science, which was opposing 
 them. They felt, they knew, that it was their last stand against 
 the tyrannous misconception of their very nature which in 
 the event of a Northern victory would dominate their govern- 
 ment. 
 
 In the eyes of any other general than Grant, the battles of 
 May fifth and sixth in the Wilderness would have been a North- 
 ern defeat. He had lost nearly 18,000 men in two days and had 
 failed to advance according to plan. But the blue-eyed little man 
 
2j6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in the frowsy coat and battered hat was no McClellan. He did 
 not, as General Lee believed he would, retreat from the field. 
 In fact, cheered by his men, who yet knew how long their dead 
 bodies might lie in that dismal thicket undiscovered, he renewed 
 the advance, moving toward Spottsylvania Court House, to the 
 south. On the eleventh, Generals Hancock, Wright and Burnside 
 attacked a salient in the enemy's lines a few miles north of 
 Spottsylvania. Again in two days' fighting the losses were fright- 
 ful and, as the army itself and the Northern public realized, 
 far out of proportion to the success attained. The Army of the 
 Potomac was gaining a little ground, and most important of 
 all it was not retreating. The officers of the Confederate army, 
 hearing from prisoners of discontent in the Union ranks, dis- 
 content with the terrible and apparently unprofitable carnage, be- 
 lieved that in the end Grant, like his predecessors, would abandon 
 his campaign. But he did not. Believing that he had been put 
 in command to fight, he fought, with a tenacity which earned 
 him the title of "butcher." Even after the "Bloody Angle," the 
 salient north of Spottsylvania, he kept on, his men fighting hand 
 to hand with bayonets and clubbed muskets against the South- 
 erners, hungry and ill-equipped, who were, none the less, fight- 
 ing on their own ground defending their homes. On the twelfth 
 of May General Hancock was in possession of Spottsylvania Court 
 House, and had, in spite of losses, taken many Confederate pris- 
 oners. On the eleventh, General Grant had wired to the demoted 
 General Halleck, now merely the swivel-chair Chief of Staff 
 in Washington, "We have now ended the sixth day of very 
 heavy fighting. The result to this time is much in our favor. 
 But our losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. 
 We have lost to this time, eleven general officers killed, wounded, 
 or missing, and probably twenty thousand men. I think the loss 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 277 
 
 of the enemy must be greater,* we having taken over four 
 thousand prisoners in battle, whilst he has taken but few, except 
 stragglers. I am now sending back to Belle Plain all my wagons 
 for a fresh supply of provisions and ammunition, and propose to 
 fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." 
 
 All summer! and twenty thousand men gone in six days! In 
 the telegraph office at the War Department in Washington, 
 where the anxious President was waiting for news, this seemed 
 incredible, almost too much to be borne. Lincoln believed that 
 Grant was right in using every effort to destroy, wear down, 
 and capture, the army of General Lee. It was that, and not Rich- 
 mond, which would ensure the downfall of the government 
 which had challenged the government of the United States. But 
 this slaughter was hard to bear. And it took General Grant far 
 more than all summer. On the third of June, the Commander 
 attacked in his front, in violation of all the laws of military 
 strategy, the Confederate position at Cold Harbor, Virginia. 
 Every man that went into that dreadfully ill-advised attack knew 
 how little chance there was of his living to fight another battle. 
 All had escaped the flanking volleys and thrusts of Lee in the 
 Wilderness, they had come unscathed out of the flames of the 
 burning woods that swept over the ground and destroyed the 
 wounded, groaning among the ferns, they had cheered their 
 Commander, and marched forward, in the teeth of an irresistible 
 resistance. Now they pinned slips of paper to their backs, that 
 those who found their bodies might know who they were and 
 to what quiet home to the northward they had once belonged. 
 The attack on Cold Harbor failed. Barely ten miles from Rich- 
 mond the greatest army ever thrown into battle on the American 
 continent was repulsed by a weary force of less than half its 
 
 ♦It was not. 
 
278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 size, fighting with tenacity and courage because it did not dare 
 to yield. General Grant's losses in the thirty days of his campaign 
 had now risen to nearly 60,000, a number as great as that of the 
 entire force which opposed him. He now knew that he had made 
 a mistake at Cold Harbor and determined to change the point 
 of attack. He moved his entire army to the south, across the 
 James River. 
 
 While this amazing struggle had been going on in the region 
 northeast of Richmond, General Sheridan with some 12,000 
 cavalry had made a successful raid within the Confederate lines 
 and had come to the very walls of Richmond, causing consider- 
 able dismay within the city. His advance did much damage to 
 the sources of supply of Lee's army and weakened- the opposition 
 to Grant by that much, but it was not yet enough. South of 
 Richmond, General Butler, acting on a plan of his own which 
 he thought beautiful, had got himself into a perfectly safe 
 but perfectly useless position between Petersburg and the Con- 
 federate capital. Far to the south, advancing into the lower 
 Confederacy from Tennessee with an army of one hundred 
 thousand experienced men, Wm. T. Sherman had driven 
 forward with the same vigor and ruthlessness which charac- 
 terized the movement of the Federal armies in the north. 
 He met with severe opposition, but advanced more rapidly 
 than did the army of the Potomac in the north. While 
 Grant was fighting at Cold Harbor, Sherman was taking up 
 a new position between Allatoona and Marietta in the wake 
 of the retreating, but not defeated, Confederate General 
 Johnston. 
 
 Except for Sherman's unquestionable advance, it seemed to 
 Lincoln, and he knew it must seem to his people, that there was 
 Jittle Union success to show for the horrible slaughter of the 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 279 
 
 early summer. Counting Butler's Army of the James, and the 
 forces under Sherman, at least 80,000 men had been lost to the 
 Union forces in less than two months. Many were grumbling, 
 the strangely unstable Horace Greeley was grumbling particu- 
 larly. Within the cabinet, troubles were still acute. Secretary 
 Chase, an able Treasurer, was being stirred about with the long 
 spoon of blandishment in the hope that he might jell into a 
 suitable leader for the opposition to Abraham in the elections of 
 the coming autumn. The President had tried not to notice this, 
 but he could not entirely ignore it. Even when a Kansas Senator 
 issued a circular definitely suggesting that Chase would make a 
 better President than Lincoln, the President refused to accept 
 Chase's resignation. He was so sure of himself that he felt that 
 he could afford a few thorns in his side. He was trying to win 
 the war and to secure his own acts. He had successfully ignored 
 and handled Congress. He could bide his time. But the biding, 
 even to an Abraham Lincoln serenely come into realization of 
 his powers, of the nature of his quality, was not easy. There were 
 rough stones in his path. In the middle of May, with the Re- 
 publican national convention only a few weeks distant, a fake 
 proclamation, supposedly from the President's hand, announcing 
 the practical failure of General Grant's campaign and proclaim- 
 ing a day of humiliation and prayer, got printed in some of the 
 Democratic papers in New York, notably the World and the 
 Journal of Commerce. Although the editors satisfactorily ex- 
 plained the error and duly announced the hoax in their pages, 
 Abraham, with the help of Secretary Seward, ordered the arrest 
 and imprisonment of these men and the suppression of the 
 papers. There could not have been a more dangerous move for 
 the President to make at this time. But he made it, and so great 
 was the confidence of the common man in his integrity and his 
 
28o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ability, that the incident hurt him nowhere that he had not 
 already been damaged. 
 
 Had it not been for the impatience of a certain radical group 
 in the fringes of the Republican party who could not wait for 
 the convention but got together about four hundred strong and 
 nominated General John C. Fremont independently for the Presi- 
 dency, Abraham might have been seriously threatened by a 
 schism within the nearer ranks of his party. He was not popular 
 in Congress, and the radical element, which had been so relent- 
 lessly opposed to him, would, perhaps, have controlled the 
 coming convention but for the fact that they became frightened 
 by the split which nominated Fremont and did not dare to 
 break away. When Grant had failed at Cold Harbor and the 
 Army of the Potomac once more stood shrouded in uncertainty, 
 the enemies of the President in Congress got together and once 
 more rebuked him by refusing to seat the Senators and Repre- 
 sentatives from the State of Arkansas, merely because Lincoln 
 had managed all by himself the reconstruction of that once 
 seceded state. At the same time Secretary Chase turned in one of 
 his recurring resignations. This time, so tense was the conflict 
 between Abraham and his enemies, he accepted it. And in accept- 
 ing it, a great weight was taken from his mind. Chase had been 
 a skillful Secretary, but he had been difficult to handle. It was 
 no longer necessary to handle him, and it was only necessary, in 
 order to placate the hostile ones who supported Chase to choose 
 as his successor, not a war Democrat or a Lincoln Republican, 
 but a radical Republican friendly with the Congressional ir- 
 reconcilables who at the same time should have ability. 
 Abraham happily found this man in Senator Fessenden, 
 a radical Republican and a gentleman cordially supported 
 by the financial interests of New York. That was rather a 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 281 
 
 stroke and it cost Abraham nothing, as Fessenden was an 
 able man. 
 
 This appointment did not placate the wrath of the irrecon- 
 cilables who were busy with their bill arrogating to themselves 
 all matters of reconstruction in states wishing to return to the 
 Union. Nor did what the President did to that bill, after its 
 passage in both houses, help to make him a pleasant sight in 
 their eyes. Abraham took the measure, which was handed to 
 him shortly before the adjournment of Congress, looked at it 
 and put it down again, remarking that the insistence in it by 
 Congress that slavery be prohibited in reconstructed states was 
 a matter in which Congress could not act, it having been stead- 
 fastly affirmed by the President even so far back as the Douglas 
 Debates that Congress had no power to regulate slavery within 
 the states or territories. The sponsors of the Reconstruction Bill 
 were furious. They could not see how the President, who was 
 advocating the same thing which he was forbidding Congress to 
 ordain, had any right to take such power to himself. But Abra- 
 ham was through with all considerations of legal right or wrong. 
 He was now something more than a country lawyer. He was a 
 national dictator. He was not only a dictator. He was a balance 
 wheel. He saw himself now in the position of correcting and 
 editing democracy when it went wrong, and in this vision of 
 himself, this personal apotheosis, there was, strangely enough, 
 no trace of the self-centered ambition, the tight-lipped individual 
 struggle for eminence, which had characterized the days of his 
 development. It is not strange that many about him, who saw in 
 his face, in his great hands, in the high gentle stoop of his body, 
 merely the flesh of a man, could not conceive how that flesh had 
 been lashed and scourged into a semblance of deity, of sub- 
 limated arbiter over the heads of mere men, whom Abraham's 
 
282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 flesh loved, understood, and pitied. Few of the President's con- 
 temporaries, indeed few men of any time, have had in them that 
 oversensitive awareness of suffering which alone can teach the 
 sufferer to profit by his pain, few have so richly lived with fear 
 that they have sold their peace and tortured their flesh to cast 
 out fear. Those few that have done so are artists in their kind, 
 as Abraham Lincoln was an artist in the management of himself 
 and the delineation through his actions of the genius, otherwise 
 inexpressible, of the common mind. 
 
 What he worked out as a system of government, studied in 
 its own light, was a direct contradiction of many of his own 
 beliefs, a direct disavowal of constitutional democracy. It would 
 not do for the average President to take Abraham Lincoln as 
 a pattern. The reason that the United States has had so few 
 distinguished and effectual Presidents is not that its government 
 is wrong, for its government is flexible, but that it has had, as 
 all the world has had, too few men honest enough to profit by 
 their own errors and their own defeats, few men courageous 
 enough to be unafraid of their own overthrow. 
 
 In the summer of 1864 Abraham Lincoln was confronted 
 with the possibility of his own overthrow, for his stock was very 
 low. Many who believed that they spoke for a majority of the 
 people, believed that those people wanted peace at any price and 
 that the President in insisting upon the recementing of the 
 Union only in combination with the abolishment of slavery, was 
 cheating a torn and wearied nation of its best desire, and in 
 apparent willfulness. For Abraham had permitted two gentlemen 
 to go to Richmond, with his sanction, and to sound out the 
 Confederate government on the subject of peace with restoration 
 of the Union, knowing that Jefferson Davis would refuse to 
 negotiate on such terms and that the refusal could be used in 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 283 
 
 refutation of the anti-Lincoln claims of the Democrats to the 
 effect that the President did not want peace and would make no 
 effort to secure it. Furthermore, Abraham had punctured Horace 
 Greeley's personal bubble by sending him to Canada to see two 
 Confederates who were supposed to be courting overtures of 
 peace in that place. Greeley had said that the President should 
 send an officer to negotiate with these gentlemen, but he had 
 not thought that he himself would be sent. He went, he saw, 
 and he got all mixed up. He ignored some of President Lincoln's 
 stipulations and put himself in a very embarrassing position. The 
 President immediately sent a note to Niagara Falls showing 
 plainly that he would accept any peace aiming at and assuring 
 a restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery, but none 
 under other than those conditions. The Confederate commis- 
 sioners saw that Greeley had been deluding them. The Con- 
 federates published their report of the affair, thereby putting 
 public opinion in the North into a more confused state than ever. 
 No one could decide whether the President had merely played 
 with the Southern commissioners or Greeley was just a plain 
 fool. Greeley could have made the President's position perfectly 
 clear if he had not preferred to take a smack in the mouth rather 
 than see one small leaf of laurel settle above the brow of the 
 man in the White House. Lincoln urged him to tell the truth 
 about the Canadian fiasco, but to tell it without saying that he 
 thought the war was hopeless. Abraham did not want the public 
 to know that a man in public life, editor of a great journal, was 
 in so despairing a state of mind. But Greeley would make noth- 
 ing public without saying what he thought, so Abraham was 
 left in the position of appearing to have made peace difficult 
 of attainment. On top of this misfortune, undaunted by the possi- 
 bility of personal loss, realizing that the armies must have more 
 
284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 men if the war was to be won, Abraham issued a proclamation 
 calling for the drafting of 500,000 more men. Two of the Con- 
 gressmen most hostile to the President now issued, with the help 
 of Greeley's Tribune, a paper which practically suggested to the 
 nation that Lincoln was a dangerous tyrant and should not be 
 allowed to be one. Of course Lincoln was a tyrant, and he had 
 no legal justification for many of the public acts of his office. 
 While professing the closest adherence to the principles of the 
 Constitution he was perpetually overriding the Constitution and 
 making a mockery of Constitutional government. But his reasons 
 for doing so, legally unjustifiable, were in the last analysis better 
 reasons than the more legal objections raised by his critics. Few 
 of his bitterest enemies seriously believed that he was ruining 
 the nation. They merely understood that the presidency was 
 spreading over them like a lava flow and their political per- 
 sonalities were being obliterated. They wished to think that the 
 high-handed tyranny of the President was harmful to the country 
 and superficially succeeded in making themselves believe so. But 
 they never convinced the voters that they were right. And after 
 all, democracy or no democracy, the voters will follow anyone 
 that looks like a leader, unless the systems and exigencies of 
 economic warfare take all the spirit out of them and make them 
 afraid of themselves — afraid of everybody and everything not 
 nationally advertised. In Lincoln's day, fortunately, the tight lid 
 of industrialism had not been clamped down upon the cauldron 
 of the common mind. There was still a sense of life, of func- 
 tional activity arising from it. 
 
 So it was that when the Republican Executive Committee, 
 supposing that the tide of popular favor had turned against 
 Abraham, marched to Washington for the purpose of asking 
 him to withdraw as their candidate, they marched back again 
 
THE ARTIST OF THE COMMON MIND 285 
 
 with a different idea in their heads. Abraham was able to con- 
 vince them that the thing to do was to win the war without con- 
 sidering the how or why, and to make them understand that if 
 anyone could do it, he could. He remained the Republican 
 candidate, though by no means sure that he would be reelected. 
 In fact he planned only for the few months remaining of his first 
 term. After that he supposed that it would be merely a question 
 of cooperating with his successor. 
 
 But the President's firmness, the firmness of a man who in 
 his time had learned all about vacillation, had gathered to his 
 support the curious abolitionists of the North, a group which was 
 all important to him. And the evidences of his increasing in- 
 tegrity had already earned him the support of the intellectuals 
 of the North. Yet it was not the support of these groups that 
 mattered most. It was the fact that just as the Democratic 
 national convention was meeting in Chicago to nominate Gen- 
 eral George B. McClellan and to declare that the war had been 
 an entire failure, news was received that General Sherman had 
 captured Atlanta, Georgia, with his army substantially intact. 
 The policy of determined ruthlessness, which the general had 
 followed, had triumphed over an exhausted and depleted South- 
 ern army, and the proudest city of Georgia was taken from the 
 Georgians with their pride. It was a splendid gift for Abraham 
 Lincoln, whatever tragedy it may have been to many a true 
 heart below the Mason-Dixon line. And it was not hard to 
 understand that it brought the end of the war much nearer. For 
 it was consequent upon the capture of Mobile by Admiral Farra- 
 gut, and the dashing raids of the Federal cavalry under Sheridan 
 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It did not matter that 
 General Grant, determined as ever, still sacrificing men on what 
 looked like a hopelessly unresponsive altar, was failing dismally 
 
286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 before Petersburg, Virginia, and that Lee's army was still in safe 
 control of Richmond. 
 
 The victories turned the tide. At the November elections 
 Abraham was treated to a clear and definite expression of the 
 esteem in which his capacities were held. He received the largest 
 electoral vote which had been given since the establishment of 
 the government. Evidently his people trusted him, Who had 
 learned so much, and his strong-arm tactics were approved. They 
 could have hurt no one but the people and now the people said, 
 "It does not hurt. Save us." 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 VINDICATION AND OPPORTUNITY 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN regarded his triumph calmly. To 
 him it was not a personal triumph, but merely an acknowl- 
 edgment by the people whom he governed, of the fact that there 
 truly was a nation called the United States of America. Many 
 in his political party regarded the election of 1864 as purely a 
 Republican party triumph. They did not see, as the President 
 saw, that the Democratic party had failed, not because its mem- 
 bers had gone over to the Republicans, but because circumstances 
 had made it impossible for the Democrats to vote the Democratic 
 ticket without appearing to destroy the nation. The great number 
 of Democratic votes which went to Lincoln were, then, not Re- 
 publican votes, but votes for the maintenance of the Union. 
 They were the expression of a feeling which had been growing 
 in the North for many years, a feeling that whatever the origins 
 of the nation had been, whatever its originators had intended, 
 there had appeared in its development an unnameable factor, 
 guided by neither party nor individual, but by that larger indi- 
 viduality which is compounded of the inapprehensible cells and 
 factors of social life on earth. It is this individuality, this col- 
 lective organism, which is a nation, and which controls men 
 and their economies and is not controlled by them, however 
 high the moral strength which they exert upon time and place 
 and life. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, without clearly understanding this, at the 
 
 287 
 
288 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 same time felt some sense of its truth. He himself remarked that 
 he had not controlled events but that events had controlled him. 
 It is plain that they had, and that, in the controlling, they had 
 found him to be what few can be, malleable stuff capable of 
 taking a high temper, despite the bed of ignorance, misconcep- 
 tion, weakness, unwonted ambition, from which that stuff had 
 been dug. The man who on the ninth of November, 1864, had 
 stepped out on a balcony of the White House, his secretary stand- 
 ing beside him, sheltering a candle in his hand; the man who 
 had lifted a face carven with darkness and light and said to 
 those enthusiastic admirers standing below on the damp grass, 
 ". . . I am thankful to God for this approval of the people; but 
 while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if 
 I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of per- 
 sonal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of anyone opposed 
 to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over anyone, but I 
 give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's 
 resolution to stand by free government and the rights of 
 humanity. . . ." that man was the same man who not many 
 years before in the struggle to shake off the hateful origins which 
 he felt clung to him like the smell of something rank, had 
 resorted to all kinds of tricks, had cast aside friends, and played 
 the dirty game of politics, merely to advance himself. He had 
 advanced himself, and when he reached the greatest point of 
 advance, partly by luck, partly by personality, partly by bargain- 
 ing on the part of his supporters, he had suddenly realized that 
 it was of no profit to a man to climb, except to reach something 
 which was reaching down toward him, trying to enter him, to 
 dissolve the net of circumstances woven by fear and shame, and 
 to release the flood of the heart upon the levels of human life. 
 Abraham Lincoln, now elected for the second time to the 
 
VINDICATION AND OPPORTUNITY 289 
 
 presidency of the world's most important republic, had served 
 for four years the creative power of national life, guarding its 
 interests with his most devoted belief. He thought of the nation 
 as an individual, as a kind of self of which his own was the 
 prototype. He shaped himself into this thought, with the con- 
 summate genius of his art, art created of that ramification of 
 intelligence with the guardianship of which he was charged, 
 made into a power, a serviceable limb. He contributed little or 
 nothing — less than nothing to the science of government, the 
 theory of the state. He overruled and destroyed many sacred 
 principles, justified in his own eyes by the almost mystic confi- 
 dence in his own rightness which after 1862 had seldom left him. 
 In the few months left him of life, he had many struggles to go 
 through, and now, doubly certain by virtue of the vote he had 
 received that he had a mandate from his people, he went through 
 those struggles with the utmost confidence and calm. 
 
 The vengeful members of Congress had not lessened their 
 cries for vengeance and humiliating retaliation upon the states 
 which had dared to assert their individuality and to set them- 
 selves up as a new nation. They were bent upon thwarting the 
 President's schemes for the restoration of state government in 
 the South. They took advantage of every illegality, every ques- 
 tionable act of the Chief Executive in fostering the little groups 
 of men, especially in Louisiana, who had gotten together for 
 the purpose of following Abraham Lincoln's call back into the 
 Union from whose protection they had been estranged. And 
 there were a number of things which, if emphasized in the 
 proper manner, would seem to be mountains instead of the mole- 
 hills that they were. 
 
 In December, 1864, Abraham had recommended to Congress 
 the passage of that same Constitutional Amendment, abolishing 
 
290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 slavery, which had been defeated before the election, defeated by 
 way of rebuke to him. Now he gently, but very firmly, advised 
 Congress that it would be well, in view of the results of the 
 election, to pass that amendment by the necessary majority. In 
 January, Congress had approved the amendment. Soon it was on 
 its way to the state legislatures for ratification, to be saved by 
 those legislatures which Abraham had so carefully been priming 
 against the day. But one severe disappointment was in store. 
 Congress would not recognize the government which Abraham 
 had set up in Louisiana. They persisted in that. Undaunted, but 
 not unhurt, Abraham went on with his hopes for humane and 
 generous-hearted reconstruction. He submitted to his cabinet a 
 message which he proposed to send to Congress, offering the 
 South $400,000,000 as a compensation for the liberation of their 
 slaves, to be paid, part on the abandonment of resistance to the 
 federal government, and part on the ratification by each return- 
 ing state of the new Thirteenth Amendment. But the cabinet, 
 believing that such a measure would never pass Congress and 
 would only serve as an antagonizing element, disapproved the 
 sending of the message. The President was very much pained. 
 He would have been more deeply pained than ever, could he 
 have lived to see what the Congress was to do with that matter 
 of reconstruction which was so dear to him, how it was to carry 
 on the charitable intentions of the deep heart of Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 During the first months of 1865 the military side of the war 
 was progressing slowly -*but surely in the direction of Northern 
 victory, victory but hardly triumph. Grant, continually reinforced, 
 continually attacking, plugging away at his job without moles- 
 tation and without protest, was being ably seconded by the 
 attrition of General Lee's forces, the lack of supplies in Rich- 
 
VINDICATION AND OPPORTUNITY 291 
 
 mond and throughout the South, and the fact that soldiers with 
 empty stomachs supported by a government with an empty 
 pocketbook, cannot do their best fighting. General Sherman, 
 after the fall of Atlanta, had marched to the sea, destroying 
 everything destructible and infuriating the citizens of Georgia 
 and South Carolina with the roughness of his tactics. He was 
 now pushing northward into North Carolina, only separated 
 from the retreating General Lee by the force of the Confederate 
 General Johnston, barely more than thirty thousand men. 
 
 Overtures looking toward peace had been made by the South- 
 ern government, on the suggestion of Mr. Blair, the father of 
 Lincoln's first Postmaster General, and- a sincere if self -centered 
 lover of the Union. President Davis had sent three commis- 
 sioners, among them Alexander Stephens, Abraham's most inti- 
 mate friend in the Thirtieth Congress of 1848, to discuss the 
 preliminaries to peace. The President, at the suggestion of Gen- 
 eral Grant, having now no fear that any dealings with represen- 
 tatives of the Confederacy would be deemed base and cowardly, 
 met the Confederate commissioners with Secretary of State 
 Seward at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, but as the gentlemen from 
 the South had not been instructed to make any arrangements 
 on any other terms than a recognition of the existence of two 
 separate governments, North and South, the conference came 
 to nothing. It did, however, serve as an opening wedge and con- 
 vinced the President that the South would come round in time. 
 Indeed if he had realized the terrible state of affairs in the 
 Southern Confederacy, the hunger and privation which the 
 proud people under Jefferson Davis had undergone in support 
 of their armies in the field, he must have known that the end 
 was in sight. 
 
 In March, General Lee let it be known that he would like 
 
292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to have a conference with General Grant for the purpose of 
 determining whether or not the difficulties between the bellig- 
 erent nations might not be adjusted. Grant wired Lincoln for 
 instructions and was told by the President, on the last day of 
 his first term in office, that General Grant should have no con- 
 ference with General Lee except for the purpose of discussing 
 terms of the surrender of Lee's army. For the moment the second 
 attempt of the Confederacy to save its life and identity by ending 
 the war, was thwarted. On the following day, under circum- 
 stances very different from those of four years before, a very 
 different man of the same name, stood up in Washington to 
 receive the oath of office from a former member of his cabinet, 
 a hostile and difficult person, whose infidelity had been rewarded 
 by Abraham Lincoln with the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme 
 Court. When Justice Chase had administered the oath, President 
 Lincoln, the second, in a firm high voice, graver in tone than had 
 been its habit years before, spoke briefly and honestly, with a 
 dignity which he had never exceeded. The artist was celebrating 
 his laureateship. This is what he said: 
 
 Fellow Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of 
 the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address 
 than there was at the first. Then, a statement, somewhat in detail, of a 
 course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration 
 of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly 
 called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still 
 absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little 
 that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which 
 all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; 
 and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With 
 high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 
 
 On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts 
 
VINDICATION AND OPPORTUNITY 293 
 
 were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it — 
 all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered 
 from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war 
 insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — 
 seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both 
 parties deprecated war; but one of them would ma\e war rather than 
 let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let 
 it perish. And the war came. 
 
 One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not dis- 
 tributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part 
 of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All 
 knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To 
 strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which 
 the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the govern- 
 ment claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial en- 
 largement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or 
 the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that 
 the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict 
 itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less 
 fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to 
 the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may 
 seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance 
 in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let 
 us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
 answered — that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has 
 His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it 
 must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom 
 the offence cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 
 of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, 
 but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now 
 wills to remove, and that He gives to both north and south this ter- 
 rible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we 
 discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the 
 
294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope 
 — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily 
 pass away. Yet, if God wills 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 with the sword, as was said three thousand 
 years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true 
 and righteous altogether." 
 
 With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in 
 the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
 work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who 
 shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do 
 all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among 
 ourselves, and with all nations. 
 
 That utterance, almost biblical in style, showed how calmly 
 now the ex-politician regarded the destiny of himself and his 
 nation. He saw the dream of his later years approaching reality, 
 a united nation proved strong enough to save itself, a people 
 made one through suffering and humiliation as he himself had 
 been made one with his inner self through a similar ordeal. 
 Happily for him, he saw only the* blessedness of unity, and not 
 the sinister balance of the economic factors of that unity. He 
 saw a united nation, almost on the brink of victory. But he 
 did not see how the very forces which had brought about that 
 union and that victory, had contrived to consolidate the powers 
 which should make of union a strength aligned against itself 
 and of victory, a triumph of the few who should be fortunate. 
 For the great production required of the North in order to supply 
 the armies in the field had resulted in the production of a cen- 
 tralized economic force which would be more benefited than the 
 common man by the saving of the Union. The sad man, who 
 
00 
 
 
 -0, 
 
 o 
 
 
 
VINDICATION AND OPPORTUNITY 295 
 
 had seen his own foolishness and how it had hurt him, and who 
 had outlived it, saw in his country now only the same triumph 
 over evil influences. He felt himself the father of its integrity, 
 but he did not realize, indeed had no way of realizing, that the 
 very strength which he gave it in helping to save it would make 
 of the United States of America an imperial state in which, so 
 great would be the power of centralization, the common man 
 would not only not be free but would lack even the power to 
 wish himself so. But he is not to be blamed for that. Abraham 
 Lincoln chose the side of power. That it turned out to be the 
 side of economic imperialism is no fault of his. But it is a tragic 
 circumstance. 
 
 On the third of April, 1865, Petersburg and Richmond, Vir- 
 ginia, were evacuated by the retreating armies of the heroic and 
 indomitable Lee. A few days later, amid the flames of the Con- 
 federate capital, Abraham Lincoln walked almost alone, eager 
 as a child looking at the scene of an accident, sitting in President 
 Davis's chair, running his hands over walls, trees, that had for 
 four years stood in sight of men willing to give their lives in 
 defense of beliefs which to him seemed wrong. Lee was holding 
 his line vigorously as he retreated. The Confederate government 
 had taken its papers and fled. Sherman was advancing in North 
 Carolina. And the smoke went up along the river from buildings 
 that had graced Richmond when Washington and Jefferson were 
 alive. On the ninth of April, unable to hold out any longer, the 
 armies under General Lee laid down their arms. Grant, the 
 stolid, determined fighter, by force of superior resources had 
 won. But he had the dignity to know that he had won as he had, 
 and he could not, any more than Lincoln could, exult. The 
 officers of the Confederate government, interpreting Northern 
 public opinion, were in flight. Sherman's imminent victory over 
 
296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Johnston would end all trace of military resistance on the part 
 of the South. A brave and heroic struggle was closing. And it 
 was none too soon. 
 
 Although the war was over, and the military enemy was dis- 
 banded, there was still an enemy. There were still many men in 
 Congress who could not accept Abraham's attitude toward the 
 South, men who wished, having won the war, to knock the 
 supine states upon the head and leave them forever incapable. 
 Abraham now had to fight with these. And the fight was not 
 to be an easy one. 
 
 The vision of attainment, clear and beautiful, was before 
 Abraham now. He went about his work, planning the campaign 
 against the hostile congressmen, with a tranquil joy shining in 
 his heart and climbing up through the long-tense nerves into that 
 face which was so grievously lined and saddened. Now that the 
 worst was over, the horrible doubts and tortures of the last few 
 years were gone, leaving in their wake a sense of pressure re- 
 moved, of inner springs released. The unconscious powers be- 
 hind his conscious deeds burned in him now. Their flush showed 
 in the background of his mind. He dreamed often and strangely. 
 Dreamed of persecution, of fate striking him down. It seemed 
 to him almost a protest of his inner self at having won too much. 
 But he laughed at the dreams and kept to his work o£ planning. 
 He had never been so much at ease, at peace with himself, never 
 before. 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 VICTORY 
 
 WASHINGTON, in the spring of 1865, was a far gayer 
 town than it had been in 1861. Everywhere men and 
 women were busy trying to forget how many of their sons and 
 brothers would never be with them again. The man in the street, 
 though perhaps not in Washington, at least elsewhere in the 
 North, was glad enough to see slavery abolished, but he would 
 have been gladder had the abolishment of it not led to years of 
 unsatisfying if glorious fighting. Now that the fighting, except 
 for that of General Sherman, was over, and it appeared certain 
 that the Confederacy was dead, it was hard to understand why 
 it had all been necessary. Well, there were always great deeds 
 to think about, great men to steal glimpses of as they went about 
 their business. There was the exciting sense of victory in the air 
 that gave to the ordinary routine of civilian life a holiday aspect. 
 There would be soldiers coming home, speeches, bands, balls, 
 hospital fairs. Everything would be unusual and disturbed. 
 Everyone would be a little off his head. They would be riding 
 after Jefferson Davis and his cabinet sooner or later. That would 
 be fun. Those fellows thought they were pretty important, didn't 
 they ? Well, we showed them. 
 
 In the alleyways, behind the dingy rows of dwellings beyond 
 Capitol Hill, coal black Negroes emptied swill for the cats and 
 dogs to nuzzle in, coal black Negroes as free as air, free to do 
 what no one else would do, free to do nothing else after four 
 
 297 
 
298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 years of fighting. In the restaurants and hotels, champagne corks 
 popped, and glasses were lifted in honor of a concluded war, of 
 enemies overcome, of a nation preserved. In the North the wheels 
 and spindles and gears of mills and factories and mines went 
 on turning with the new energy which the exigencies of war 
 had imposed upon them. They did not slow down to any peace- 
 ful jog, now that the war appeared over. They were destined 
 never to stop, they were the new lifeblood of the nation, and in 
 the pulse was the germ of a slavery destined for three-quarters 
 of a century at least to have no public enemies. The slaves of 
 the South had been freed and Southern capital destroyed. The 
 slaves of the North whom Abraham Lincoln had in the depths 
 of his heart believed he was honoring and helping by his course, 
 were by the inevitable outcome of the days which had made a 
 man of him, shackled the more firmly to their wheel. Northern 
 capital had been saved. 
 
 On Good Friday, the fourteenth of April, 1865, Abraham 
 Lincoln, having delivered his ultimatum t?o the irreconcilables of 
 the nation to the effect that the new state governments which 
 were being organized must be recognized, that, in so many 
 words, reconstruction must be left in- his hands, met his cabinet. 
 General Grant, his work done, was present by way of added 
 attraction. There was much apprehension in the air over the 
 coming quarrel between the President and Congress, but as 
 Congress was not then in session, Abraham was able to forget 
 it. General Grant was anxious on another point. There was still 
 no news from General Sherman. The President, with a strange 
 light of happiness on his face, remarked, "I have no doubt that 
 favorable news will soon come, for I had last night my usual 
 dream which has preceded nearly every important event of the 
 war. I seemed to be in a singular and indescribable vessel, but 
 
VICTORY 299 
 
 always the same and to be moving toward a dark and indefinite 
 shore." The secret depths which arranged the images of that 
 dream had perhaps guided his life and purpose more than he 
 knew, causing both the unhappiness and the singular half-mystic 
 joy. Now he talked of the seceded states, saying how fortunate 
 it was that the war was ending while Congress was not in 
 session so that there would be no danger for the moment of being 
 hampered by the unpleasant elements of that body. No one could 
 expect him, he said, to have vengeful feelings about the Southern 
 officials, even the worst of them. Surely no one did. The days 
 of the malicious and uncharitable Lincoln had long since passed 
 into the Lincoln of the Second Inaugural. 
 
 In the afternoon General Grant said good-bye to the President 
 and left for the north to see his children. The White House then, 
 for a little while, ceased to be the official residence of the Presi- 
 dent and became the home of Abraham Lincoln. Weary but 
 happy, the gigantic frame of that aging man, not yet sixty in 
 years but several hundred in his emotions, went upstairs to talk 
 things over with son Robert, enthusiastically returned from a 
 sinecure on the staff of General Grant. Late in the afternoon, 
 with no official guests, Abraham and Mary- Todd went out for 
 a drive. They talked over the past, Springfield, the strange train 
 of events which had brought the boy of New Salem to this day 
 and place; the days to come, when the duties of the Presidency 
 would be over. Abraham decided that, with the money they had 
 been able to save (it appeared like a saving as many of Mary's 
 clothing bills had not been paid and Abraham did not know of 
 them) they would return to Springfield and live in comfortable 
 quiet, fortified by the pleasure and unhampered by the exactions 
 of a small legal practice, with Billy Herndon as a partner. 
 
 After supper, the need of performing one public duty took 
 
3 oo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Abraham from his comfortable chair. A special performance had 
 been arranged at Ford's Theater. It was partly pain and partly 
 pleasure to go, for he wanted to be quiet and alone, but he loved 
 the theater. General Grant had felt able to get out of going be- 
 cause of his children; why should the President be worse off? 
 Well, the public would expect it. He might as well be reasonable. 
 "Mother, I suppose it's time to go, though I would rather stay," 
 he said to Mrs. Lincoln. 
 
 The party got into the carriage and drove off through the 
 dark streets of Washington to the theater. 
 
 THE END 
 
u^ 
 
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 New York: 1906. 
 Rutledge, Archibald. A Southerner Views Lincoln. Scribner's Magazine, 
 
 Feb., 1928. 
 Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. New York: 1926. 
 Sangamon Journal. Various dates, 1837. 
 Schaff, Morris. The Battle of the Wilderness. Boston: 1910. 
 Schouler, James. History of the United States. 7 vols. New York: 1913. 
 Schurz, Carl. Henry Clay. Boston: 1909. 
 
3 o 4 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Schuyler, R. L. Agreement in the Federal Convention. Pol. Sc. Quar., 
 
 vol. 31. 
 Schwab, John Christopher. The Confederate States of America. New 
 
 York: 1901. 
 Seligman, Edwin R. A. An Economic Interpretation of History. New 
 
 York: 1917. 
 Seward, William H. Wor\s. 5 vols. Boston: 1884. 
 Sherman, William T. Memoirs. New York: 1889. 
 Simons, A. M. Social Forces in American History. New York: 191 1. 
 Smith, William H. A Political History of Slavery. New York: 1903. 
 Speed, Joshua F. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. Louisville, Ky.: 
 
 1884. 
 Spring, Leverett W. The Career of a Kansas Politician. Amer. Hist. Rev., 
 
 vol. 4, no. 1. 
 Stan wood, Edward. A History of Presidential Elections. Boston: 1884. 
 Starr, John W. Lincoln and the Railroads. New York: 1927. 
 Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright. Lincoln: An Account of His Personal 
 
 Life. Indianapolis: 1922. 
 Stickney, Albert. Organized Democracy. Boston: 1906. 
 Thoreau, Henry David. Slavery in Massachusetts. 
 Townsend, William H. Lincoln the Litigant. Boston: 1925. 
 Tracy, Gilbert A., edit. Some Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Boston: 1917. 
 United States House of Representatives. Thirty-fourth Congress, First 
 
 Session, Report. No. 200. Report of the Special Committee Appointed 
 
 to Investigate Conditions in Kansas. 
 Watkins, Albert. Douglas, Lincoln, and the Nebraska Bill. Lincoln, Neb.: 
 
 1908. 
 Webster, Daniel. Wor\s. Boston, 1903. 
 Weik, Jesse W. The Real Lincoln. Boston: 1922. 
 Weston, George M. The Poor Whites of the South, 1856. 
 Wheeler, H. G. History of Congress, Biographical and Political. New 
 
 York: 1848. 
 Wilson, Woodrow. A History of the American People. New York: 1917. 
 Wright, Carroll D. Industrial Evolution of the United States. New York: 
 
 1901. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abell, Mrs. Bennett, 26, 47 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, 266 
 
 Adams, Genl. James, 65, 72 
 
 Adams John Quincy, 114 
 
 Allen, Col. Robert, 46 
 
 Alton, 111., 7ofI., 151 
 
 Anderson, Joseph, 66 
 
 Anderson, Maj. Robert, 2i3ff. 
 
 Annapolis, Md., 219 
 
 Antietam, Battle of, 242, 243 
 
 Appomattox Court House, Lee surrenders 
 
 at, 295 
 Armstromg, Hannah, 23 
 Army of the Potomac, 236^., 25 iff., 
 
 254ff., 274 
 Articles of Confederation, 37 
 Asbury, Henry, 152 
 Ashmun, George, 114, 117 
 Atlanta, Ga., Capture of, 285 
 Atlantic-Pacific, Railway, 133, 240 
 
 Baker, Edward, 105, no 
 Ball's Bluff, Battle of, 230 
 Baltimore, Md. 193, 219 
 Bank of Springfield, 55, 77$. 
 Bank of the U. S., 4, 9ff., 64, 79 
 Bank National, 4, 9ff., 64, 79 
 Beauregard, Genl. Pierre G. T„ 222 
 Berry, Wm., 7 
 "Biglow Papers," 122 
 Blair, F. P., 291 
 Boston, Mass., 122 
 
 Courier, 122 
 
 Standard, 122 
 Bowling Green, 42, 43 
 Breckenridge, John C, 162 
 Brooks, Preston, 144 
 Brown, John, 138, 139, 156 
 Browning, Orville H., 179 
 Buchanan, James, 145, 147, 167, 171, 
 
 203, 204 
 
 Buford, Genl. John, 255 
 
 Bull Run, Battle of (see Manassas), 224 
 
 Burnside, Genl. Ambrose, 248, 250, 252, 
 
 265 
 Butler, Genl. B. F., 274, 278, 279 
 Butler, Wm., 60, 72 
 
 Calhoun, John (of Illinois), 17, 154 
 
 Calhoun, John C, 3, 36, 126 
 
 Cameron, Simon, 159, 228 
 
 Canisius, Theodore, 159 
 
 Cart wright, Peter, 109 
 
 Catholics, opposition to, 71 
 
 Chancellorsville, Battle of 252, 253 
 
 Chandler, Sen. Zachariah, 228 
 
 Charles X (of France), 17 
 
 Charleston, S. C, 171, 2i4fL 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., 155, 249, 279, 292 
 
 Chattanooga, Battle of, 264-266 
 
 Chenery House (Springfield), 176 
 
 Chicago, 111., no, 133 
 
 Chickahoming River, 238, 239 
 
 Chickamauga, Battle of, 264 
 
 Circuit , Eighth Judicial, 109 
 
 Clary's Grove, 4 
 
 Clay, Henry, 10, i4ff., 108, 120, 121, 131 
 
 Cobb, Williamson, 114 
 
 Cold Harbor, Va., Grant fails at, 277 
 
 Coles County, 111. 5, 173 
 
 Committee of Thirteen, 170 
 
 Confederate States of America, formed 
 
 at Montgomery. 172 
 Congress, U. S., 3, 105, 109, 227, 280, 
 
 281 
 Congressional Committtee on conduct of 
 
 the war, 228, 234, 237, 249^. 
 Constitution (U.S.), 54, 74, 270 
 Constitutional Convention, 10, 64 
 "Copperheads," 252 
 Crittenden Compromise, i68fL, 201 
 Crittenden, John J., 168 
 
 305 
 
3°6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Davis, Judge David, 179 
 
 Davis, Eliza, 85 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 162, 169, 172, 215, 236, 
 
 282, 291, 297 
 Debt, National, 11 
 Delahay, Mark W., 158 
 Democratic Party, 44, 45, i34fT., 287 
 Dixon, James, 114, 115 
 Donelson, Fort, taking of, 237 
 Douglas, Stephen A., 60, 75, 89, 127, 133, 
 
 I34ff., I5iff., 161, 162, 168, 170 
 Draft Law of 1863, 260 
 Draft Riots, New York City, 26off. 
 Dred Scott Decision, 151 
 
 Edwards, Matilda, 88, 92 
 
 Edwards, Ninian W. 87 
 
 Ellsworth, Elmer, 179 
 
 Emancipation, in Great Britain, 3, 17 
 
 Emancipation Proclamation, 244-247 
 
 Everett, Edward, 267 
 
 Ewing, Genl. W. L. D., 72, 76, 78 
 
 Farragut, Admiral David G., at Mobile, 
 
 285 
 Federalist, The, 156 
 Fessenden, W. P., 280 
 Ficklin, Orlando B., 115 
 Ford's Theater, 300 
 Francis, Simeon, 64ff., 97 
 Fredericksburg, Battle of, 248 
 Free soilers, 126, 134 
 Fremont, John C., 145, 229, 280 
 Fugitive Slave Law, 132,168 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 30*?., 52, 70 
 
 Gettysburg, Battle of, 255^. 
 
 Giddings, Joshua, 114 
 
 Globe Tavern, 104 
 
 Goose Nest Prairie, 111., 5, 6 
 
 Grant, Genl. Ulysses S., 237, 258, 262, 
 
 264ft., 272ft., 298, 299 
 Greeley, Horace, no, 158, 160, 240, 
 
 241, 261, 279, 283 
 
 Hackett, James H., 262, 263 
 Halleck, Genl. Henry W., 254, 272, 276 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 10, i2fL 
 Hancock, Genl. W. S., 276 
 Hardin. John J., 105, no 
 
 Harrison, Wm. Henry, 106 
 
 Hay, John, 211 
 
 Helm, Ben Hardin, 264 
 
 Henning, Fanny, 92ff., 95, 103 
 
 Henry, Fort, taking of, 237 
 
 Herndon, William H., 109, 112, 119, 
 
 I72ff., 299 
 Hill, Samuel, 25 
 Hooker, Genl. Joseph, 25off. 
 
 Illinois Advocate, 3 
 Illinois Central Railroad, 148 
 Illinois State Journal, 175 
 Industrial Revolution, 19, 30 
 Internal Inprovement Act, 5 iff., 74, 76, 
 199 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 3, 9, 10, i3fL, 31, 36, 
 
 44, 81, 106 
 Jackson, Genl. Thos. J. ("Stonewall"), 
 
 238, 241, 242, 252 
 Jacksonville (111.) Women's College, 41 
 Jefferson, Thomas, I2ff., 80, 120, 188 
 Johnston, Genl. Jos. E., 236 
 Jones, Wm., 10 
 Judd, Norman, 179, 192, 194 
 
 Kansas Nebraska Act, 133ft. 
 Kentucky, 31, 240 
 Knox College, 20 
 "Knownothings," 142 
 
 Lafayette, Marquis de, 17, 35 
 
 Lamon, Ward H., 159 180, 194, 214 
 
 Lane, James H., 138, 139 
 
 Lee, Genl. Robert E., 236, 242fL, 252, 
 254ff., 262, 274ff. 
 Surrenders to Grant, 295 
 
 Liberator, The, 30, 52, 70 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 
 
 Postmaster of New Salem, 3, 4; and 
 slavery, 3, 4, 53, 55ff., 93, 116, 241; 
 reading, 3, 16; grocery business, 4; 
 trip to New Orleans, 6; freezes feet, 
 8; pilots steamboat on Sangamon, 8; 
 And National Bank, ioff., Black 
 Hawk war, 15, 40; surveying, 16; 
 and higher education, 20; elected to 
 Illinois Legislature, 21; and marriage, 
 23; and Ann Rutledge, 23 ff.; 4 iff.; in 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 Illinois Legislature, 3 iff.; and rail- 
 roads, 32; and Public Lands, 37; 
 law studies, 40; reelected to state 
 legislature, 46; liscensed to prac- 
 tice law, 58; moves to Spring- 
 field, 58; second inaugural, 66; 
 addresses Young men's Lyceum, 
 Springfield, 73; and Lovejoy, 73; and 
 liquor laws, 75; at Louisville, 85fL; 
 and Mary Todd, Sgfi; and Sarah 
 Rickard, 92,93; temperance views, 75, 
 94; "Rebecca" letters, 99fL; duel with 
 Shields, i02fL; fails to get nomi- 
 nation for congress, 105; goes to 
 congress, no; in Matson case, 116; 
 on Revolution, 118; campaigning for 
 Taylor in New England, 121; on the 
 Judicial Circuit, i28ff.; and Fugitive 
 Slave Law 132; joins Republicans, 
 143; debates with Douglas, i5off.; 
 Cooper Union Speech, 156-7; pre- 
 election bargaining, 158-9.; nomi- 
 nation, I59ff., and Crittenden Com- 
 promise, i68fT.; trip to Inauguraton, 
 I79fl.; and Seward, 2ooff.; inaugu- 
 ration, 202ff.; cabinet, 206; reply to 
 Seward's memorandum, 212; receives 
 Virginians, 216 attitude after Sumter, 
 217-18; death of Willie, 226fL; and 
 army affairs, 23off.; Emancipation 
 Proclamation, 243, 244; suspends 
 writs of Habeas Corpus, 245 assumes 
 dictatorial power, 250; after Gettys- 
 burg, 257; message to congress 
 (1861), 258; on capital and labor, 
 258; Gettysburg address, 267^.; Am- 
 nesty proclamation, 270; and Louis- 
 iana, 270, 289; and Reconstruction, 
 270; and Arkansas, 280; re-elected in 
 1864, 286; second Inaugural, 291; 
 in Richmond, 295; at Ford's Theater, 
 300 
 Lincoln, Mary Todd (see Todd, Mary) 
 Lincoln, Nancy (Hanks), 5, 7 
 Lincoln, Robert Todd, 105, in, 157, 
 
 i77fL 
 Linclon, Sarah Bush (Johnston) 5, 
 
 72, 89 
 Lincoln, "Tad," 178 
 Lincoln, Thomas, 5, 6, 124 
 
 Lincoln, Willie, 178, 226fT. 
 
 Logan, Stephen T., 93, 97 
 
 Longsteet, Genl. James, 257, 265 
 
 Lovejoy, Elijah, 7off. 
 
 Louis Philippe, 17 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 122 
 
 McClellan, Genl. George B., 225, 23 iff., 
 
 248, 285 
 McClernand, John A., 115 
 McDowell Genl. Irwin, 222ff., 231, 237^. 
 McKendrie College, 20 
 McNamar, John, 24ff., 41, 
 McNeil, John, 24ff., 41 
 Madison, James, 156 188 
 Manassas, First Battle of (Bull Run), 224, 
 
 229, 231, 235, 242 
 Manassas, Second Battle of, 242 
 Manny-McCormick Reaper Case, 1486°., 
 
 229 
 Marx, Karl, 17 
 Matson, Robert, 116, 118 
 Matteson, Gov., 136 
 Meade, Genl. Geo. G., 254^., 262 
 Mechanicsville, Battle of, 238 
 Mentelle, Mme., 89 
 Mexico, io6ff., 271 
 Missouri and Secession, 220 
 Missouri Compromise, 133, 135, 168 
 
 Napoleon, 3 
 
 Napoleon III, 209 
 
 National Republican Party, 10 
 
 Nebraska, i33fT. 
 
 New Harmony, Ind., 20 
 
 New Orleans, La., 6, 28, 237 
 
 New Salem, 111. 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 14, 17, 
 
 20, 21, 23ff. 40, 47, 154 
 New York Tribune, 158, 240, 261, 284 
 Nicolay, John G., 211 
 Nullification, 15 
 
 Observer, The, 70 
 
 Onstott, Henry, 44 
 
 Oregon Territory, 109 
 
 Owen, Robert, 20 
 
 Owens, Mary, 26, 27, 47fT., 58, 60S. 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 21 
 Palfrey, John G., 114, 
 
 115 
 
3 o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Peace Conference," 200 
 Peace overtures, 283 
 Petersburg, Va., 278, 286, 295 
 Philadelphia, Pa., 10, igifE. 
 Pickens, Fort, 210, 212, 214 
 Pickett, Genl. George, Charge at Getty- 
 burg, 257 
 Pinkerton, Allan, 192 
 Pittsburg Landing, Battle of (Shiloh), 237 
 Polk, James K., io8ff. 
 Pope, GenU John, 179, 239, 242, 249 
 Porter, General Fitz John, 238 
 Preston, Wm. Ballard, 216 
 
 Randolph, George W., 216 
 Republican Party, 143, 229, 287 
 Revolutionary War, 11, 18 
 Reynolds, Genl. John F., 255 
 Richmond, Va., Grant's campaign against, 
 
 274ff-; 
 
 Surrender of, 295 
 Rickard, Sarah, 72, 92 
 Rivers and Harbors Convention, no 
 Rosecrans, Genl. Wm. S., 26aff. 
 Rutledge, Ann, 23ff., 4 iff, 47 
 Rutledge, James, 23 
 
 San Jacinto, Battle of, 107 
 
 Sangamo Journal, 64ft. 97, 114 
 
 Sangamon County, 10, 15, 20, 21, 45, 84 
 
 Sangamon River, 8 
 
 Santa Anna, 107 
 
 Scott, Genl, Winfield, 212, 219, 222, 231 
 
 Seceding states, 201 
 
 Second Inaugural, 292 
 
 Seven Days Battles, 238 
 
 Seward, Wm. H., 124, 155, 159, 160, 
 
 171, 194, 20off., 2o6ff., 232, 239, 
 
 249 
 Seymour, Gov, Horatio, of New York, 251 
 Sheridan, Genl Philip, in the Shenandoah, 
 
 285 
 Sherman, Genl. Wm. T., 222, 265, 278fL, 
 
 298 
 Shields, James 73, 99fL, 126 
 Shiloh, Battle of (Pittsburg Landing), 237 
 Short, James, 22, 24 
 Shurtleff College, 20 
 Slavery, 3, 4, 3orL, 52, 116, 138, 140 
 Smith, Caleb, 115 
 
 Smith, Robert, 115 
 
 Smoot, Coleman, 27 
 
 South Carolina, 15, 31 
 
 Speed, Joshua, 58ff., 76, 84, 876*., 95, 142 
 
 Speed, Mary, 85,94 
 
 Spriggs, Mrs., boarding house of, 113, 119 
 
 Springfield, 111., 14, 44ff., 53fL, 72, 86, 
 
 127, 153, 154, I75ff., 299 
 Stanton, E. M., 149, 228, 239 
 Stephens, Alexander H., 114, 115, 120, 
 
 171, 291 
 Stone, Dan, 56 
 Stone Genl. Chas P., at Battle of Ball's 
 
 Bluff, 230, 231 
 Stuart, Alexander H. H., 216 
 Stuart, Genl. J. E. B., 254 
 Stuart, Maj. John T., 37, 40, 44, 45, 46, 
 
 53, 58, 60, 65, 75, 76, 87, 88, 90 
 Sumner, Charles, 144, 155 
 Sumner, Col. E. V., 179, 194 
 Sumter, Fort, 205, 208, 210, 2i2ff. 
 
 Taylor, Zachary, 114, 120, 121, 124 
 
 Texas, Struggle for Independence, io6£f. 
 
 Thirtieth Congress, n off. 
 
 Thomas, Genl. George H., 237, 264ff. 
 
 Thomas, Jesse, 76 
 
 Todd, Lock wood, 179 
 
 Todd, Mary, 88ff., 97^., ii2fL, 119, 120, 
 
 125, 154, 173, i74ff., 204, 211, 230, 
 
 263, 299, 300 
 Toombs, Robert, 114, 115 
 Trumbull, Lyman, 136 
 Turnham, David, 10 
 Tyler, John, io6ff. 
 
 Vallandigham, Clement L., 252, 253 
 Van Buren, Martin, 44, 49, 106 
 Vandalia, 111. 4, 14, 21, 27fL, 52, 57, 72, 
 
 86 
 Virginia Convention, 216 
 
 Wade, Sen. Benjamin, 228 
 
 War of 1 812, 18 
 
 Wallace, Dr. William, 88 
 
 Warnick, Maj., 8 
 
 Warnick, Polly, 8 
 
 Washington, D. C, 3, noff., 177 
 
 Washington, George, ioff., 120, 188 
 
 Washingtonian Society, 94 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 3, 37, 107 
 
INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 Weed, Thurlow, 251 William the Fourth, 17 
 
 Weems, Parson, 11 Wilmot, David, 115 
 
 Welles, Gideon, 210 Winthrop, Robert C, 114, 115 
 
 Whig Party, 37, 45, 46, 119 Wood, William, 10 
 
 Wilderness Campaign, 275, 276 Wright, Genl. H. G., 276 
 

 
-^f 
 
 
Lincoln as a Politician 
 
 MR. HOLDEN, in his Abraham Lincoln, The Politician and The 
 Man, passes up the idealistic and familiar style of many Lin- 
 coln biographers, and plunges directly and swiftly into his story an in- 
 tensely human and readable one. He deals with Lincoln, the small town 
 politician and regular in the party ranks, at first, and thence his rise 
 through fortuitious circumstances to the greatness that he grew to. 
 
 The writer disregards Lincoln myth; yet he does not seek to topple 
 a great man— perhaps the greatest American — one jot from his de- 
 served pedestal. All in all, Lincoln was very much -a man, capable, in- 
 telligent and with a wonderful mind and capacity for work. Likewise, 
 there is no gainsaying that he was an expert politician who perceived 
 and seized opportunities. Fortunately it was for our country that he 
 did ?o. Mr. Holden's is a worthwhile volume, notable for its clear, sane 
 treatment.— E. H. H. 
 
 THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS - 
 
 Sunday, February 9, 1930