Yaie University Litirary
II I'liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin

39002002934298

MJ"

s* o > iJLSriTss art

'¦-f

'>?- .?•

.' Ji"i

¦¦ 1- ¦'

''MM

'**¦'' ' fe-^l'^*^

y

^i#v^* ¦'
^P
..
sJjS)%h'j >
's
IM'l '
Ivffl'
n l; ',
SMSB^Wftffjffijfi^ 4^
!l*<;.r
^ 1
^^»l'
•kM
"
^»^
<, ',
( 1
^ 1
Eft" fl^W* •^'t
.H
¦ ' . H 1.. ,*
Tiu - t
i', .-'..t.,J;
.WljW'.f". ^ ¦ ^-^i ' '' r ... .
,-.,K;J-.- r ',1, , ' , , -, „ . r
',;i'DtA>' t I ,*- ' I* f ' "^^^ c, . J.
it.u'5. it'i'.^-.-i"'., i ':K,y'V. s ' ;, ,
M ./' --\" i "f,".- If- . .*' ."
fJ .( .1 r kt ,1 .. , .*
IK' ' 1 '''¦> ' ,"i I
YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
From a favorite photograph taken by Brady in 1864.

THE STORY-LIFE OF
LINCOLN A Biography Composed of
FIVE HUNDRED TRUE STORIES
Told by Abraham Lincoln and his Friends
selected from all authentic sources, and
fitted together in order, forming
HIS COMPLETE LIFE HISTORY
by
WAYNE WHIPPLE
Author of
"The Story of the White House and Its Home Life,"
"The Minute Man," "The Story of
Plymouth Rock," etc.

MEMORIAL EDITION
Issued to Commem.orate the 100th
Anniversary of Lincoln's Birth

ILLUSTRATED
with ISO engravings from Photographs, Paintings, Drawings and Manuscripts,
some of which have not before been published

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.,
Phil.a.delphia^ Chic.\go, Toronto.

copyr/cht 1908
By Wayne Whipple

Ca2a.3t9 t

TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER

(v)

',1

And so he came.
From prairie cabin up to Capitol,
One fair ideal led our chieftain on.
Forevermore he burned to do his deed
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.
He built the rail pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,
The conscience of him testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.
So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the step of earthquake shook the house,
Wresting the rafters from their ancient hold,
He held the ridge-pole up and spiked again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place-
Held the long purpose like a growing tree-
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise,
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a kingly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Lincoln and Other Poems, Edwin Markham.

(vi)

INTRODUCTION

The Lincoln Story and What It Has Done

The life-story of Abraham Lincoln is told in many lands
like a favorite Bible story. His career is as familiar among
the nations as that of his ancient prototype, Moses. No
man's life in all the history of the world shines out with so
many story-gems as the every-day life of Abraham Lincoln.
No incident in which he figured, even during the barren days
of his boyhood, was too homely or too trivial to be invested
with the quaint charm of his striking personality. The Lin
coln Story has its own original flavor — easy to enjoy, yet
impossible to describe.
His wonderful career abounds in the strong contrasts
which appeal to every one. He was born in a rude cabin which
is now radiant in reflected light from the White House. Other
Presidents began their lives in humble log cabins, but the fact
is not universally known. While it is true that Lincoln suf
fered many privations, the accounts of his extreme poverty
have been exaggerated by political friends and foes. His
enemies tried to make out that the Lincoln family belonged
to the weak and lazy class known in the South as " poor white
trash" — they even attempted to cast a stigma upon his
birth. But Abraham Lincoln was descended on both sides
from long lines of honest, thrifty and respected English and
American ancestors, of whom his imrfiediate family, with the
true pioneer's indifference to pedigree, knew little and cared
less. The poverty in which Lincoln grew up was like that of
most of the early settlers of the western wilds in which he
lived. Even the wealthier pioneers endured greater hardships
than the poorest laborers in the United States of the present
day. Lincoln's life was steeped in pathos. Long before his
(vii)

viii THE LINCOLN STORY
assassination, he showed the true martyr spirit. The humor
which people saw in him was like the rare comedy that
relieves the majestic tragedies of Shakespeare. He bubbled
over with funny stories because, beneath the surface, his soul
was seething with the sorrows of every-day life. He went
about trying to do good to every creature — from cutting wood
for a neighboring widow to climbing trees in patient search for
the bird's-nest from which two fledglings had fallen. When
his lawyer-companions laughed at him for wasting his time in
such a childish pursuit, he exclaimed, with deep feeling:
" I could not have slept if I had not restored those little
birds to their mother. ' '
Lincoln's friends assert that his face, in repose, was the
saddest they ever saw. " Just to gaze upon his unconscious ex
pression, ' ' they said, " would make you cry. ' ' He never could
see suffering without doing all he could to relieve it. With all his
jokes and stories, his great, hungering heart was full of sym
pathy for the troubles of others. During his sorrowing years
in the White House a new network of wrinkles and seams
harrowed his homely face, and his sunken eyes appeared to
deepen and sadden in their sockets. His kindly countenance
soon became a sensitive map of the Civil War, where Bull Run
and Chancellorsville left their wavering lines and indelible
marks. The loss of the soldiers' lives, the privations of the
prisoners, the agonies of the wounded, the anguish of the be
reaved — all traced their furrows in the rugged features of
the all-friendly face of "Father Abraham."
Especially during the heart-sickening years of the War,
President Lincoln manifested a feverish fondness for " some
thing funny. ' ' On a number of occasions he took from a
drawer in the long table, around which his Cabinet sat in
solemn conclave, "the latest thing" by "Artemus Ward,"
or "Petroleum V. Nasby, " the best known humorists of that
day. Several of the Secretaries, deficient in the sense of
humor, expressed their disapproval of such trifling in the
midst of their dignified deliberations. A Congressman once
took the President to task, claiming that such stories were
inconsistent with true concern for the country's welfare. Lin
coln replied with fervor :

AND WHAT IT HAS DONE ix

"You can not be more anxious than I am constantly;
and I say to you now that if it were not for this occasional
vent I should die. ' '
This saving sense of humor was like daily dew to the
drooping spirits of the careworn President," and its sustaining
freshness must .have had an inestimable influence in the final
preservation of the Union. Indeed, it is fair to question
whether Abraham Lincoln did not achieve more for humanity
by his shining example — teaching all the people to look on the
bright side during the darkest hours of calamity and defeat —
than by penning the Erhancipation Proclamation itself. It is
at least true that the White House, through Lincoln's adminis
tration, with its sublime sorrows and sufferings, became the
headquarters for the kind of fun-making that is now recognized
all over the world as "American humor. " As the wise saws
of "Poor Richard" and other quaint conceits of Franklitl, did
much to gain foreign recognition for the United States of
America in the early days of her independence, so the homely
stories and illustrations of Linc6ln again demonstrated that
"one touch of Nature makes the whole world kin." That
subtle play of humor and common-sense, radiating from the
White House, as its center, has projected itself all around the
globe and into the Twentieth Century, lubricating the wheels
of American commerce, diplomacy and progress, and estab
lishing the United States to-day in the highest among the
" Seats of the Mighty" as an acknowledged world power.
Lincoln used to protest against calling his commonplace
illustrations "Lincoln stories."
"I am not a manufacturer, " he explained, "but a retailer
of stories. ' '
Yet his genius made the stories of others his own. They
. were pat, pithy and to the point. He usually told a story to
enforce a truth, to save the time and temper so often lost
in arguing. Lincoln's stories rank about midway between
^sop's fables and the caricatures of the present day.
Lincoln and his friends have repeatedly stated that he
never told a story for the mere sake of telling a story, but to
illustrate an idea or impress a truth. Therefore a great in-

THE LINCOLN STORY

justice has unintentionally been done to Lincoln's memory by
wrenching his stories from their settings and printing them
indiscriminately, as in the common collections of Lincoln
stories and "yarns." Like a specimen of sea-life torn from
its shell, the beauty and charm of the Lincoln story is lost by
separating it from the occasion which produced it. Therefore
Lincoln stories cannot be true without the Lincoln settings.
Like uncut and unmounted gems, the collections of detached
stories lose their Lincoln luster and become dull, "stale, flat
and unprofitable." It is the endeavor of this Story-Life
to preserve the real Lincoln charm and flavor, and to illus
trate — as he was so fond of doing — the life-growth of the
master story-teller himself.
From almost inexhaustible mines of Lincoln material,
five hundred of the shortest and best narratives have been
gathered from about a hundred different sources, and strung,
like a necklace of precious stones, on the thread of Lincoln's
Hfe, forming a connected and complete biography of the
greatest of the Presidents. These authentic stories have been
chosen to illustrate the real life and characteristics, as well as
the genius, of Abraham Lincoln. Some of them are brim
ming over with fun; others, with tears. Many of them have
never before been published in any life of Lincoln, and some
are here presented for the first time in print. Many of the
finest passages from the great Lives of Lincoln are repeated
herein with the ready permissions of their authors and pub
lishers. Full credit is given in connection with each excerpt
and anecdote. Specific acknowledgment of all these kindnesses is made
on another page, also of the courtesies of a number of the great
collectors of Lincoln relics.
Therefore, The Story-Life of Lincoln is his life-story,
breathing, true and coherent, as told by his friends, his rela
tives, his acquaintances — a few of his enemies — but best of
all — ^by Abraham Lincoln himself.

PLAN OF THE BOOK

Lincoln was the Master Story Teller. Every "Lincoln
story" has a special bearing on his life. His personality v/as
so strong and peculiar that every event or incident in his life
has been the subject of a story — told by some friend or writer
of his life or of observations concerning him. A thousand
books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Every
person who knew or ever saw him has written about it in
books and magazines. Lincoln himself has told innumerable
stories which are repeated everywhere, like ^sop's fables,
because every story illustrates or impresses some truth or
idea. Indeed, they cannot be true Lincoln stories unless seen
with all their bearings on Lincoln's life or the events of his time.
There are many collections of so-called Lincoln stories
and "yarns" in which the tales are torn from their surround
ings and all the Lincoln flavor is gone. They seem dull, flat
and pointless.
Every true Lincoln story is a gem, but it must be shown
only with the Lincoln, setting.
Wayne Whipple has at last combined the Lincoln story
with Lincoln's life. He has spent years in hunting out
everything that has ever been said and written about Abra
ham Lincoln, especially everything which Lincoln ever told
of himself or that would shed light upon his own life and
character. He has collected the best stories from all the great Lives of
Lincoln; the best of the reminiscences of public men and
friends of Lincoln. He has interviewed those who knew Lin
coln, and he has chosen the best stories Lincoln himself told
— with a special bearing on his own life and the history of
his time. The five hundred stories composing The Story -Life of
Lincoln are connected with about as many events or incidents
(xi)

xii PLAN OF THE BOOK-
as they happened in his life. They are the cream of all the
Lincoln literature. They cannot help making the best Life
of Lincoln ever published because they are the choicest of
¦ everything that has been written or told about him.
In reading these stories, entertaining, sad and laugh
able, you follow Abraham Lincoln in a connected, continuous
life-story, through the hardships of his backwoods boyhood;
the struggles of his early manhood; his debates with Douglas;
his contest against slavery, his trials as War President, his
mastery of Stanton; his tenderness for the "Boys in Blue;"
and his final triumph and martyrdom. Never has his life-
history been so vividly told. It is all so graphic that it paints
a mental panorama of the great events before and during
the Civil War. You see it all as you never expected to see
it, and it makes such an indelible impression upon you that
you could not forget it even if you would.
The current events of Lincoln's time are given separately
side by side with the thrilling story-narrative to aid in making
The Story-Life of Lincoln of real historical and educational
value. The history of the time is thus hung upon Lincoln's
unique personality as a peg. Lincoln's life-story thus becomes
your country's history during that most important epoch
through which Lincoln lived.
The 150 illustrations are selected in the same manner.
They are from the best of all that Art affords' concerning
Abraham Lincoln. Many photographs and facsimiles which
have never before been reproduced are here added. While
the object of this great book is to amuse and entertain, the
highest aim is to make it of great and permanent value.
For all these reasons The Story-Life of Lincoln marks a
new era in fascinating biography.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction : The Lincoln Story and What It Has Done  vii
Plan of the Book  xi
List of Illustrations  13
Chapter I
Lincoln's Immediate Ancestors  17
Stories: — Abraham Lincoln, the President's Grandfather — Uncle Morde-
cai — Boyhood of Lincoln's Father — Nancy Hanks, Lincoln'? Mother —
Marriage of Lincoln's Father and Mother — How Tom and Nancy Lin
coln Began Life Together.
Chapter II
First Seven Years in Kentucky  22
Stories: — Birth of Abraham Lincoln — Cousin Dennis Hanks Tells about
"Nancy's Boy Baby" — The Little Boy's First Teachers — Little Abe's
Narrow Escape from Drowning — The Boy Meets a Soldier — Abe Goes
to Mill and "Thrashes" Three Boys — First Work on the Farm — Leav
ing "Old Kentucky." Chapter III
Fourteen Years in Indiana  30
Stories: — Moving to Indiana — The Home in Indiana — A Seven-year-old
Woodman — Death of Lincoln's Own Mother — The Delayed Funeral
Services — -"What Is Home without a Mother ?" — The Coming of the New
Mother — "Corn Dodgers and Common Doings" — Turkey Buzzard Pens,
Briar Root Ink, and Webster's Speller — At Hazel Dorsey's School —
"No Common Boy" — "Manners" and Spelling — "I Hung on It and It
Broke"— Some Schoolboy Rhymes — Writes and "Preaches" Ag&inst Cru
elty to Animals — "Abe Was a 'Mother's Boy' " — "The Best Boy I Ever
Saw" — How, What and When He Read — Lincoln Tells of His First
Love Story — Pioneer Superstitions — How He Came to Own Weems's
"Washington"— Bounding an Idea— Knocked down for Being "For-
(I)

Contents

PAGE
ward" — Sports and Amusements — An Interrupted Sentence — Influ
ences and Impressions — Hired Man Where His Sister Was Maid-
of-all-work — From Ferryman to Butcher — A Feat of Mercy and
Strength — How the Lad Worked and Studied — The Story of His First
Dollar — Early Death of Lincoln's Sister — Once When Abe Didn't Allow
Fair Play — In Jones's Grocery-Store and on the Stump — A Murder
Case at Boonville — "Tell Us How Many Short Breaths He Drew I" —
Abe Teaches Astronomy — How They Were "Treated" at Church — The
Little Yellow Dog as a Coon — "Tell the Whole Truth, 'Tilda" — First
Trip to New Orleans.
Chapter IV
Removal to Illinois  72
Stories: — Starting for IlIinois^As a Traveling Peddler — Wades Icy Waters
'to Rescue a Dog — Splitting the Historic Rails — Abe Starts out for
Himself — A Thousand Rails for a Pair of Trousers — "The Winter of
the Deep Snow" — Rail-splitting and Speech-making — Denton Offutt
Engages Hanks, Lincoln and Johnston — Building the Flatboat and Tell
ing Yarns^Lineoln Saves Three Lives — His First Sight of the "Horrors
of Human Slavery" — A Voodoo Prophecy — Abe Throws Needham, the
Champion Wrestler.
Chapter V
Six Years at New Salem  86
Stories:— A Stranger Who Could "Make a Few Rabbit Tracks"— Piloting
a Flatboat down Illinois River — Storekeeper and Miller — Encounters the
"Clary's .Gfoye Boys"— Meets Young Yates— Two Stories of "His Sensi
tive Honesty" — Borrows a Grammar and Masters It — Gives a Bully a
Dose of "Smartweed" — How Abe Induced His Fellow Clerk to Quit
Gambling — Becomes a Candidate for the First Time — A "Try" Weekly
Steamer — Why He Was Called "Honest Abe" — A "Raw" Captain in the
Black Hawk War — Risked His Life in Rescuing an Indian — A Gruesome
Picture — Half-starved but Good-natured Soldiers — Re-enlisted as a
"Dignified Private"— "The Strongest Man I Ever Met {"—Distinguished
, Men in the Black Hawk War— A Romantic but Doubtful Statement —
Romantic Story Officially Denied— Returning from the War— Humor
ous Reference to His Record— Only Time Lincoln Was Ever Defeated
by the People— Lincoln and Smoot— The Firm of Berry" & Lincoln-
Becomes Possessor of "Blackstone" — First Effort at Public Speaking-
The Store that "Winked Out"— Studying Law on the Woodpile—
"Chops up a House for 'Ab' Trent"— Introduced to "Shakespeare"' and
"Burns" — Junior Partner, Rail-splitter, Farm-hand and Postmaster 
"Anything for Me?"— A. Lincoln, Deputy Surveyor— A Picnic Where

contents

Lincoln Was Surveying — Clary's Grove Champion Becomes a Staunch
Friend — Where His Kindness of Heart Made Trouble — His First Real
Stump Speech, in the Campaign of 1834 — Love and Ambition — Smoot's
Responsibility — Law Student and Representative — Ann Rutledge, "Loved
and Lost"— "Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud ?"— "Ev'ry
Time He'd Talk 'bout Her He Cried" — Candidate Lincoln "Shows His
Hand" — Forquer's Lightning-rod — What He Did While His Rival
Milked — Taylor's "Bloated Aristocracy"— The "Long Nine" and the Re
moval of the Capital — The "Prime Mover" of the Capital — Lincoln the
Pettifogger — Settled out of Court — Banquets and Toasts — Leaving
New Salem,
Chapter VI
" The Law and the Lady"  143
Stories:— Moving to Springfield — Stuart & Lincoln^The Affair with
Mary Owens — $30,000.00 "without a Scratch of the Pen" — How Badde-
ley Was Deceived — Lincoln and Douglas Twenty Years before — Comes
down through the Ceiling and Demands Free Speech — "I Never Use
Any Man's Money"— "Which Will You Take ?"— Champion of the Op
pressed — "Nominal Winner the Real Loser" — Mary Todd and Her Two
Suitors — Description of Miss Todd — "Should Like to Dance the Worst
Way" — In Behalf of Jefferson the Actor — Offers to Pay Half Damages
Caused by His Funny Stories — In the "Log Cabin" Campaign — Drew
the Line at Stealing Hens — His Strength and Courage — Childlike Ten
derness— "The Worst of It in a Horse Trade !"— As Lawyer and Temper
ance Man— The Proper Length for a Man's Legs— The Broken Engage
ment, Mystery and Misery — An Untrue Story — Mary Todd's Cousin
Says, "No !"— "I Do Not Believe a Word of It !"— "No Truth in It !"—
What Lincoln Did With His First $500.00 Fee— Successful Appeal to
Rustic Prejudice— Logan & Lincoln— "I Should Forget Myself and Say
It out Loud"— Trivial Background for His Wit— Charity in Temper
ance Reform— "Rebecca" of the "Lost Townships"— An Absurd Duel
Avoided— Not the Slightest Intention of Injuring Shields— "Killing the
Dog Would Not Cure the Bite"— Married after Misunderstandings —
"The Statute Fixes All That !"— "His Heart Is as Large as His' Arms
Are Long,"
Chapter VII
In Politics and Congress  181
Stories:— Linco\n Declines Support for Governor of Illinois— Making Van
Buren Laugh "Till His Sides Were Sore"— Visits Indiana Home Mak
ing Speeches for Henry Clay— Verses about His Old Home— Elected
to Congress— "Can Compress the Most Words into the Smallest Ideas"—

CONTENTS

Lincoln to the House, Douglas to the Senate— Autobiography for the
Congressional Directory— Visits Henry Clay— "No Vices and Blamed
Few Virtues !"— Congressman Lincoln's Bill— The Mexican War and the
"Spot Resolutions"— Champion Story Teller of the Capitol— Legal Ser
vices Rendered Daniel Webster— "My Old Eyes Are Full of Tears
Yet!"— General Cass on Working and Eating— "The Upshot of This
Comet Business"— In the Thirtieth Congress and Afterwards — Sees
Niagara Falls— Lincoln's Patent for Buoying Vessels over River Shoals.
Chapter VIII
State Capital and Eighth Circuit  203
Stories: — "A Place for Everything" — "Giving away What He Couldn't
Keep" — How Lincoln Retaliated on Opposing Counsel — Studying Eu
clid and Telling Stories — "The Ogmathorial Court" and "Catchem &
Cheatem" — "If I'm Uglier Than You I Don't Want to Live !" — Lawyer
Lincoln Rescues a Pig — "A Seven-foot Whistle on a Five-foot
Boiler" — ^"I Cannot Argue This Case, Our Witnesses Have Been
Lying" — An Illustrious Pillow Fight — A Rating Not in "Dun" or
"Bradstreet" — How He Fared on the Circuit — Mrs. Lincoln Sur
prises Her Husband — "The Story Was Worth the Money!" — Never
a Clown or Court Jester — "Why Didn't You Go at Him With the. Other
End ?" — "Lincoln, I Thought You Was a Lawyer !" — "He Neyer Put No
Meanin' into 'em" — "Fairly Entitled" to the Prize — "Tell the Judge
My Hands Are Dirty" — "Try Your Hand at Making $600.00 in Some
Other Way" — "Trusted Providence Till the Britchin' Broke" — -"Skin
Defendant. Close"— "We Never Kill Less"— "Don't Shoot Too High"—
"Abe's Got That Fool Idee in His Head" — Masterful Kindness to His
Stepbrother— "He Will Not Forget the Dying Man"— Death of Thomas
Lincoln — Defends His Stepmother from Her Own Son — Always Glad
to See and Help His "Poor Relations"— "Why, Aunt's Heart Would Be
Broken!"— The "Pink-and- White Runaway"— Had to Withdraw the
"Colt"— "The Matter with the Whole World"— "It Was Just Like
Him!" — In the Court-room and at Home — "Mr. Lincoln Was the Most
Loving Husband and Father in the World."
Chapter IX
Enters Politics Again  237
Stories: — Evolution of a Great Idea in Lincoln's Mind — Returns to Poli
tics after the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise— "Bleeding Kansas"—
John Brown of Osawatomie— "The Power of Hope"— "A Question of
Interest"— "The Most Stupid Slave Knows"— The Peoria Speech— "The
State verstis Mr. Whiskey"— "These Boys Would Never Have Tried

CONTENTS

to Cheat"— Railroad, Repudiating $2,000.00, Pays $5,000.00— Herndon's
Half — First Meeting of Lincoln and Stanton — Why Lincoln Was a
"Dangerous Man" — Lincoln's "Lost Speech" — The Speech as After
ward Reproduced — ^"That Speech Puts Lincoln on the Track for the
Presidency" — Playing a Prank When He Heard of His Votes for Vice-
President — "A Prophet without Honor in His Own City."
Chapter X
The Battles of the Giants  258
Stories: — First and Oifiy Choice of Republicans of Illinois — Locking Horns
for the "Irrepressible Conflict" — The Great Rock Island Bridge Case —
Lawyer Lincoln's Letter to Hannah Armstrong — Saved by Lincoln with
an Almanac^Lawyer's Account of the Great Armstrong Trial — Douglas
Accepts Lincoln's Challenge — Dates of the Seven Debates — "Smelt No
Royalty in Our Carriage" — Average of 10,000 at Each Debate — At
Havana, Illinois — "Let Me Entreat You to Come Back!" — First Great
Debate at Ottawa, Illinois — "Hold My Coat While I Stone Stephen!" —
A Good Humored Retort — "Nasby" Contrasts Lincoln and Douglas —
Discussing the Dred Scott Decision — Conference over Lincoln's Pro
posed Questions — "Battle of i860 Worth a Hundred of This" — Second
Debate, at Freeport — "Thinness" of Douglas's Sophism — Douglas Falls
into Lincoln's Trap — "It's Too Big a Thing for You !" — McClellan with
Douglas against Lincoln — "You Can't Disprove a Proposition by Call
ing Euclid a Liar" — Douglas Like a Cuttlefish — How Lincoln Shook a
Witness— "The Judge on the Wrong Side of the Bar"— "Just Before
the Battle" at Quincy— Sixth Joint Debate— "A Chance to Breathe"—
The Last Debate, at Alton — Senator Trumbull in the Campaign —
"Hurt Too Bad to Laugh and Too Big to Cry"— "No Bar'l of Money"
for Lincoln in That Campaign— "It Gave Me a Hearing"— Parallel Ca
reers of Lincoln and Douglas— Called to Speak in Kansas and Ohio —
What Was Gained by Making the Contest.
Chapter XI
Widening Renown  299
Stories: — Speaking in Ohio— Another Great Murder Trial— "Bucking'' of
the Chess-board— John Brown at Harper's Ferry— Orator at Wisconsin
Fair — How He Came to Lecture at Cooper Institute — Stranger at
the Five Points Mission — The Cooper Institute Speech — What It Was
About — Defends the Republicans from the Charge of Complicity with
John Brown— "The Greatest Man Since St. Paul !"— Speaking in New
England— "What's the Use of Talking of Me for the Presidency ?"— "I
Do Not Think I'm Fit for the Presidency" — How the Rails Were
Brought in — A "Dismal" Portrait That "Put an End to Hope."

CONTENTS

Chapter XII
PAGE
Candidate for President  31?
67Dnt-.s;— "Carleton" Tells of Thurlow Weed and "the Mob"— "I Author
ize No Bargains" — How Lincoln Was Nominated — A Woman's Descrip
tion of the Nomination — The Candidate Receives the News — A Neigh
bor s Incredulity — Committee Formally Informs Mr. Lincoln — The
Speeches and Lincoln's Letter of Acceptance — Positions of the Three
Great Parties — Lincoln's Own Life-Story — "A Real Representative
Man" — "We Are Going to Have Some New Clothes" — The Wide-
Awakes of i860 — A Newsboy's Apology — A Call on Candidate Lin
coln — Lincoln-Hamlin Anagrams — The Great Springfield Convention — ¦
"They Have Not Read Their Bibles Aright"— Election Day— "Mary,
Mary! We Are Elected!" Chapter XIII
As President-Elect  346
Stories: — Begins "Cabinet Making" — Elected but Helpless — "Artemus
Ward" Visits the "President Eleck" — Daily "Levees" — An Optical
Omen — Hard Time with OflSce-seekers — A Little Girl Induces Lincoln
to Grow a Beard — Choosing a Secretary — Trade Reasons Against War —
News Item from a Springfield Paper — How Buchanan's Cabinet Planned
to Wreck the Government — President's Duty "to Run the Machine
as It Is" — "Latitude and Longitude," "Socks and Flapjacks" — Corre
spondence with A. H. Stephens — The Three Staunch Democrats in Bu
chanan's Cabinet — Seven Southern Sisters Secede — Stormy Session of
Buchanan's Cabinet — Why Did the South Secede? — Farewell to His
Old Stepmother — "Buchanan Is Giving the Case away."
Chapter XIV
The Journey to Washington  372
Stories: — Farewell to Springfield Friends — On the Way to Washington —
Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburg and Cleveland — Lincoln and the Coal-
heaver — Gives Tad a "Good Spanking" — New York State and City —
At Trenton, New Jersey— At Independence Hall on Washington's
Birthday — Why He Passed Through Baltimore in the Night — How
Robert Lost the Inaugural Address — A Railroad Official's Letter — Un
expectedly Met in Washington — Chaotic Condition of the Government.
Chapter XV
At the Helm of State  ,84
Stories: — The Morning before the Inauguration — The Inaugural Address 
Horace Greeley's Opinion— At the Head of the Crumbling Govern-

CONTENTS

ment — New President's First Perplexity — "Some Thoughts for the
President's Consideration" — A Plain but Kind Reproof — Confederate
Commissioners and "the Gage of Battle" — Instructions to Commander
at Fort Sumter — "The Slickest Glass Hack in Town" — Bombardment
and Surrender of Fort Sumter — "A Live Coal on the Heart 6i the
American People" — First Call for 7S,ooo Men — Virginia Secedes and
Seizes Harper's Ferry — Patriots' Day, 1861 — Maryland Protests — Room
to Bury 75,000 — ^"Why Don't They Come !" — Another Call for Sol
diers — Robert E. Lee's Account of the Offer of Command of Union
Army — Mild Measures and How They Were Received — "Renting
Rooms While the House Is On Fire" — How Good Boston People
Looked upon Lincoln — "Undertaking to Frighten the Devil with Cold
Pitch" — A Courteous Repulse — Douglas's Warning — Last Time Lincoln
Ever Saw Douglas — "I Don't Care, if You Will Fight for the Country" — •
"No Other Nations 'Sneakin' 'round' " — "I Guess Mary Will Have
Something for Us to Eat" — "The People Will Understand.'
Chapter XVI
Defiance, Disaster, Sorrow  415
Stories:— News of the First Battle of Bull Run— "This Nation_ Should
Be on the Lord's Side" — "Death-bed Repentance a Big Thing!" — ¦
' Stanton's Early Abuse of the President — "I Believe He Would Do
It!"_"You Can't Fool All the People All the Time"— "Darn You!
Who Commenced This Fuss?" — "There Is a Man in Here!" — "Sugar-
Coated" in a Message — "I Think I Can Beat You Both" — What Lincoln
Liked to Eat — "Whose Boots Do They Black?" — Only Times He Seemed
Happy — "Blunt as a Meat-ax and Keen as a Razor" — "You Are
Spoiling the Bust !" — John C. Fremont's Assumptions of Authority —
Death of Colonel Baker at Ball's Bluff— "There Is Meat in That, Gen
eral"— The "Trent" Affair and Its "White Elephants"— "Wilkes Had
No Right !" — -"Sumner Thinks He Runs Me" — Cameron, Secretary of
War, Sent to Russia — Cabinet Ministers and Skunks — Stanton Made
War Secretary — How Newspaper Stories Grow — The White House a
House of Mourning,
Chapter XVII
Lincoln and McClellan  439
Stories: — "Some Strange Operation of Magic" — "Enough to Tax the
Patience of Job !" — Lincoln Studies Strategy — McClellan's Account —
President's First General War Order — "Masterly Inactivity" oi' the
Army of the Potomac — "I Would Find Means to Prevent the 'Merri-
mac'" — His Unwavering Confidence in' the "Monitor" — President's De-

CONTENTS

light at the Victory of the "Monitor"— The Country's Debt to Lincoln for
the "Monitor's" Success— Lincoln's Intercession for a Faithful OfTicer-
Fiasco at Harper's Ferry— "I Could Permit No One to Couple 'Treason'
with My Name"— "A Convenient Mistake of Stanton's"— How Vallan-
dingham Hampered the President— "All Quiet along the Potomac"— "I
Will Hold McClellan's Horse"— "Special Talent for a Stationary En
gine"— McClellan and the Peninsular Campaign— How the Retreat
Looked from the South— "I Should Like to Borrow the Army for a
Day or Two"— Why Antietam Was a Drawn Battle — McClellan Re
called after Being Dismissed— McClellan and "Bap" McNabb's Little
Red Rooster— "McClellan's Bid for the Presidency,"
Chapter XVIII
The Emancipation Proclamation  . . . 474
Stories: — ^"Compensated Emancipation" Defeated in Delaware — A Little
Conundrum — Writing the Emancipation Proclamation — "A Divine Mes
sage by Way of Chicago !" — Lincoln's Own Story about the Proclama
tion — Stanton's Story of the First Reading — "I See No Reason What
ever !"— "Accuse Not a Servant unto His Master" — The Sleeping
Sentinel — "Why Don't You Go at Him with a 'Capias' or a 'Surre
butter'?" — "No Respecter of Persons" — Suitable Inscription for Green
backs — Defeat at Fredericksburg — Suspension of Habeas Corpus —
"Help Me Let This Hog Go !" — Signing the Emancipation Proclama
tion — Emancipation "Very Like a Whale" — The Emancipation Group.
Chapter XIX
"The Burden and Heat of the Day" . ,  494
Stories: — He Was Beset by Day and by Night — Fredericksburg and Antie
tam Compared — "I Must Bear This Load and Do My Best" — "Will
ingly Would I Exchange Places with the Soldier !"¦ — "Something That
Everybody Can Take" — "In the Silent Midnight Watches" — "Lincoln
Gave Me the Worst Fright of My Life!"— "If There's a Man out of
Hell That Suffers More Than I Do !" — The President and the Wounded
Boy — Contrast between Lincoln and Stanton — ^"Go Thou and Do Like
wise" — "Nothing Touches the Tired Spot" — "I Am Only a Retail
Dealer" in Stories— "If Anybody Wants to Kill Me He Will Do It"—
"Handsome Is That Handsome Does" — "Yet Aaron Got His Com
mission"— A Guarded Offer to "Nasby"— "Oh, What Will the Country
Say!" — The Night after Chancellorsville — Tad's Innocent Question —
Wise Military Suggestions to Hooker— "Bail out th? Potomac with a
Teaspoon !" — Frederick Douglass Calls on the President — "I Can Bear
Censure, but Not Insult"— "I'm Not Going to Open Shop Here !"— Two

CONTENTS

PAGE
Applications for Pardon— "Tell Me That Horse's Points"— His Own
Reasons for Telling Flis Stories — A Bullet through His Hat One Dark
Night — "Stanton's Nearly Always Right !" — Like a Tight-rope Walker
with a Man on His Back— "For God's Sake, Don't Ask Me!"— "This
War is Killing Me !" — Billy Brown Goes to Washington Just to See
Mr. Lincoln.
Chapter XX
Lincoln and Gettysburg  52"
Stories: — Lee's Invasion of Pennsylvania — The Battle of Gettysburg — "My
God ! Is That All ?"— Why He Was Not So Anxious— Goldwin Smith
and "Darky Arithmetic" — Recommending a Colonel for a Colored Regi
ment — "I Don't Believe Shooting Will Do Him Any Good" — Conscrip
tion Bill and the Draft Riot — The Quaker and the Draft — Dennis Hanks
Advises "Abe" to "Spank" Stanton — Humor of the Soldiers — "No
Influence with This Administration" — The Governor and the Squeal
ing Boy — Lincoln's Usual "Swear-Word" — "I 'Ploughed around' That
Governor for 'Three Mortal Hours' !" — First Great Sanitary Fair at
Chicago — "Nasby" Has an Interview with the President — Invited to
Speak at Gettysburg — Gettysburg Speech to be "Short, Short, Short !" —
On the Way to Gettysburg — President and Party at Gettysburg — An
Imperfect Tribute — Stanton's Opinion of the Gettysburg Speech.
Chapter XXI
Lincoln and Grant  554
Stories: — ^"I Can't Spare This Man, He Fights" — "You Were Right and
I Was Wrong" — Pemberton's Army Like Sykes's Yellow Dog — Statue
of Liberty and Grant's Whiskey — Distress over "Niggers" with "Jig
gers" — "He Cares for Us Soldiers" — "No Man's Shoulders Are Broad
Enough" — Judge Holt and Lincoln's "Leg Cases" — "Butler or No
Btitler, Here Goes !"¦ — The Amnesty Proclamation — "Going into Eter
nity with That Blood on My Skirts !" — Burning of the White House
Stables— "I Will Be Far Happier Than Here"— "More Light and Less
Noise" — First Meeting of Lincoln and Grant — The Military Situation
and the Monkey with Too Much Tail — Visit to City Point — England
and the Sangamon Barber— "That Old Grudge Stands !"— "I Will Make
a Fizzle Anyhow" — "Is This Bloody War Ever to End?" — "How Un
fortunate ! Those Mules Cost $200.00 Apiece" — "There Won't Be Any
Fun Till I Get There!"— The President's Narrow Escape— "I Will
Keep My Part of the Bargain" — "Would to God This Dinner Were
with Our Poor Prisoners !" — "Brother" Greeley as Peace Commis
sioner — Lincoln's Sublime Confidence in Grant — The President in the
Streets of the Capital — Lincoln's War Despatches — Tad's Tantrum —

lo CONTENTS

"Madam Knew Nothing of Him Whatever '—A Whimsical Excuse for
Granting a Pardon— Mrs. Bixby's Three Sons Return as from the
Dead.
Chapter XXII
Renominated, Elected, Inaugurated  586
Stories:— "V^hen the Presidential 'Grub' Gets Inside of a Man!"— How
Secretary Chase Took Advantage — "Never Get between the Woman's
Skillet and the Man's Ax-helve"— "Easier Than to Raise Another
Million Soldiers" — "I Should Have Done the Same Fool Thing" —
"Mr. Secretary, It Will Have To Be Done !" — The Poems of Oliver
Wendell Holmes— Will the Negro Soldier Fight ?—"Medill, You Are
Acting Like a Coward" — The Enemy's Strength Overestimated — "How
Clean You Shave !" — Forty Falsehoods to One Fact — "Glad of the
Chance to Finish This Big Job" — Confederates, Not "Rebels" — "The
Fremont Convention and the Cave of AduUam — "They Might Have
Made a Botch of It" — How the President Heard of His Renomina-
tion — "I'm the Longest but McClellan's Better Looking" — "I-'ve Lost
My Apple Overboard !" — "Free from Any Taint of Personal Tri-
¦ umph" — "Together We Can Makg Two Loyal Fathers Happy" —
"Long Abraham" Four Years Longer — Grant's Congratulations — "A
Pretty Mess You've Got Me into !" — Lincoln's Attention to Children —
The "Man Down South" and Some Offenders — "Want to Know All
about Sherman's Raid?"— "A Useful Little Chap"— Sherman's "Christ
mas Gift" to the Country — Lieutenant Tad — Lincoln and Three "Soldier
Boys" — The Hampton Roads Conference — An Unfortunate Precedent^
Lincoln Still Willing to Buy the Slaves— "It Was the Baby That Did
It"— Orders a Well Pumped out for Tad— The Second Inaugural—
A Sunburst— Chase Holds the Book as Douglas Held Lincoln's Hat.
Chapter XXIII
The End of the War  6i3
Stories:— Ahtr the Inaugural Ceremonies— Anna Dickinson and the Sun
beam—Sewing a Button on His Trousers— "There Was Such a Charm
about His Expression"— Sumner Tells of Lincoln's Love for the "Nasby
Letters"— A Great Wrong to Lincoln's Memory— Advises Stanton about
a Wrathful Letter— "God Bless the Women !"— "Nothing Like Getting
Used to Things"— Grant Captures Richmond and Intercepts Lee— "I Am
Troubled about the Negroes"— Strange Triumphal Entry— At the "White
House of the Confederacy"— "The End Has Almost Come !"— Return
ing from City Point— How Lincoln and His Cabinet Received the News
of Lee's Surrender— "The President's Life-preserver"— Behind the

CONTENTS

PACE
Scenes at a White House Serenade — From Lincoln's Last Speech —
Lincoln's Last Telegram — Secretary Stoddard Takes His Last Leave of
President Lincoln.
Chapter XXIV
Lincoln's Last Day  637
Stories:— The Morning of That Fateful Day— "What a Pity We Have to Fight
Such a Gallant Fellow !" — Dickens's Story of That Last Cabinet Meet
ing — "Well Done, Good and Faithful Servants !" — The Afternoon
Drive — Lincoln's Last Official Acts — "It's Best to Let Him Run"- —
Goes to the Theater Not to Disappoint People — Last Story and Last
Writing — Tragedy Described by Eye-Witness — How the Awful Crime
Was Committed — Pandemonium in the Theater — "They Have Killed
Papa Dead !" — The Flickering Light Goes Out.
CHAPTER XXV
The World in Mourning  657
Stories: — "O Captain ! My Captain !" — "Don't Cry So, Mamma, You Will
Break My Heart !" — How Greeley Was Saved from Making a Brutal
Attack on the Dying President — Richmond Receives News of the Assas
sination — "He Was Never Happy Here !" — "I Thought It Strange the
Stars Could Shine" — Wilkes Booth's Morbid Craving — The Funeral in
Washington — "Massa Sam's Dead, O Lord !" — Rewards Offered for
Apprehension of the Assassins — Bryant's Funeral Ode — Booth Shot in a
Burning Barn — The Burial at Springfield — Tributes to His Great
ness — An Astonishing Contrast — Tragic Fate of Five in Box That
Awful Night— Fate of the Assassins and Others— "Most Christlike Mortal
That Ever Wielded Power" — Real Sorrow in the South — End of
Mrs. Lincoln's Broken Life — Popular Sympathy in Canada — What
the English People Thought — Tributes in High Places — "Seeking to
Conquer, Not Persons, but Prejudices" — Emerson's Review of Lin
coln's Career — Abraham Lincoln, "The First American.''
Short Sayings of Abraham Lincoln  680
Index  .-  687
Special Acknowledgments  703

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SPECIAL ENGRAVINGS ON TINTED PAPER
Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States  Frontispiece
Killing of Lincoln's Grandfather, Abraham Lincoln  Opposite Page 17
Lincoln at the Slave Market in New Orleans  83
Captain Lincoln Defending the Indian  loi
Earliest Portrait of Abraham Lincoln  191
Edwiri M. Stanton  .'  249
Stephen A. Douglas  265
The Cooper Institute Portrait of Lincoln  307
Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln in the White House  400
Decisive Engagement between the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac"  450
First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the Cabinet (one of the
only photo-engravings reproduced direct from Carpenter's great painting).. 482
The Bombardment of Fredericksburg  486
President Lincoln and His Family, in the White House  526
Facsimiles of Two Letters Written by Abraham Lincoln  588
Reception in the East Room, Early in 1865  606
A Favorite Portrait of Lincoln and "Tad"  610
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
"From Prairie Cabin up to Capitol," Vignette  page vi
Facsimile Autograph  '.  x
Jesse Head, the Methodist Minister  20
Cabin in which Abraham Lincoln Was Born  22
Dennis Hanks, Lincoln's Cousin and Playmate  24
Map Showing Removals of the Lincoln Family  31
The Second House in Indiana  33
Abe's Ax  34
The Belated Funeral Sermon  37
Sarah Bush Lincoln, Abraham's Stepmother  43
A Leaf from Abraham's Flome-made Arithmetic  46
Josiah Crawford ("Old Blue-Nose")  $2
The Crawford Farm-house where Abe and His Sister Worked  58
Lying on his Stomach in Front of the Fireplace  6i
John Hanks, who Helned the Lincolns Build Their First Cabin in Illinois  72
The First Home in Illinois, Once Surrounded by the Historic Walnut Rails, 75
(13)

14 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Lincoln Wrestles with Needham, the County Champion  page 85
Mentor Graham, Who Helped Lincoln in Grammar and Surveying  86
Abe Throws Jack Armstrong, the Clary's Grove Bully  88
Clerking in Offutt's Store  9°
The Victim (Estep) Appeared  ^4
Studying Law in Berry & Lincoln's Store  ¦ ¦ 1^3
Maj. John T. Stuart, Who Encouraged Lincoln and Took him into Partnership 115
Andrew Jackson  ''^
Facsimile of a Sur/ey by Lincoln as Deputy Surveyor  Full Page 120
"Abe Would Come to Our House, Tell Stories and Joke People"  123
Grave of Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's "Loved and Lost"  130
Ninian W. Edwards, Lincoln's Friend and, Later, His Brother-in-law  137
The Old State Capitol of Illinois, at Vandalia . . ".  139
Mary S. Owens  ¦  '43
Facsimile of Page of Lincoln's Handwriting in Stuart & Lincoln's Charge Book. 148
William Henry Harrison  IS8
John Tyler  IS9
Joshua F. Speed, Lincoln's Most Intimate Friend, and His Wife  160
Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, afterwards Lincoln's Sister-in-law  167
Globe Tavern, in which Lincoln and His Wife Began Life together. .Full Page 179
Martin Van Buren  182
Peter Cartwright, the Eccentric Pioneer Preacher  185
Henry Clay, in His Home at Ashland, Kentucky  187
James K. Polk  192
Daniel Webster  193
General Zachary Taylor  197
Model of Lincoln's Invention for Buoying Vessels over River ShoalS.'  201
Lincoln's Desk-Bookcase and Chair  Full Page 204
Facsimile of Label Written by Lincoln for a Package of Papers  205
Lincoln's Saddle-bags  211
Leonard Swett, a Lawyer-friend on the Eighth Circuit  212
Judge David Davis, Judge on the Eighth Circuit  213
Lincoln's Home in Springfield, Illinois  217
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"  218
Stephen A. Douglas  222
Interior of Lincoln's Father's Last Home in Illinois  224
House in which Thomas Lincoln Died  227
Millard Fillmore  232
Lincoln, the "Plain, Country Lawyer"  Full Page 234
John Brown in the Days of the Struggles in Kansas  239
Franklin Pierce  242
Etched Portrait of Lincoln  245
Etched Portrait of Lincoln  246
Etching of Lincoln when He First Met Stanton  248
Lincoln in 1856 when He Made "the Lost Speech"  251

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 15

Etching from Photograph Taken the Same Year (1856)  page 253
Etched Portrait Made a Year Later  ,  254
Lincoln in 1857, the Earliest Portrait to be Widely Published  257
Norman B. Judd  261
A Lincoln-Douglas Debate  •  Full Page 274
George B. McClellan in 1858, Vice-President of the Illinois Central Railroad  284
Lincoln as He Looked ,during the Great Debates with Douglas  , . : : . 287
Lincoln in 1859, from Mrs. Lincoln's Favorite Photograph  Full Page 296
John Brown, Wounded and a Prisoner, at Harper's Ferry  Full Page 302
Lincoln, later in '59  304
Lincoln in i860, while Candidate for President  Full Page 314
The Wigwam at Chicago  Full Page 319
Richard Yates  325
Etching from Lincoln's First Widely Published Portrait  335
The Old State Capitol of Illinois  ^  336
William H. Seward  Full Page 344
"A Job for the New Cabinet Maker." One of the Earliest Cartoons of Lincoln. 346
James. Buchanan  358
Robert Toombs . . . . :  365
Jefferson Davis when Elected, President of the Confederacy  367
Capitol of the Confederacy, Montgomery, Alabama  Full Page 368
Lincoln in His .Inaugviration Suit, Early in 1861  Full Page 371
Railroad Station at which Lincoln Delivered His Farewell to Springfield...;.. 372\
Abraham Lincoln Delivering His First Inaugural Address  Full Page 387"
Colonel Henry Watterson  ,  392
The Capitol of the Confederacy at Richmond, Virginia  Full Page 399
"The White House" of the Confederacy  Full Page 403
Facsimile from Constitution of the Confederate States of America. .. .Full Page 405
Profile Portrait of Lincoln, with Beard, in 1861  413
First Battle of Bull Run  Full Page 416
Facsimile Card. From Original in the Collection of Judd Stewart, Esq  421,
General Winfield Scott  424
Lincoln in 1861, from One of the First Photographs with a Beard. .. .Full Page 428
Etching of Lincoln in '62  *.  433
Willie Lincoln, from a Rare Photograph Taken while Living in the White House 437
President Lincoln at General McClellan's Headquarters  443
Chauncey M. Depew  447
John Ericsson  ¦ ¦ ¦  448
Lincoln in '62. Vignette  454
The President at McClellan's Headquarters, after Antietarn  Full Page 467
The Secretary of War Advocating an Aggressive Policy  Full Page 47Q
Equestrian Statue of General McClellan  473
Lincoln in a Meditative Mood  477
Before Fredericksburg  487
Emancipation Group, Florence, Italy  Full Page 493

i6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Wendell Phillips  PAf-E 495
Bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Union Fleet, 1863  Full Page 503
Thaddeus Stevens  507
The Battle of Chancellorsville  Full Page 509
General Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson  5ll
Tad Lincoln, in "Citizen's Clothes"  5^3
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Army Nurse and Member of Sanitary Commission.. 518
A Popular Portrait of Lincoln because on Bank Notes and Postage Stamps. .. . 525
General Robert E. Lee  528
General George G. Meade  530
Edward Everett  S46
Facsimiles of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's Writing. .Two Full Pages S49, 550
Lieutenant-General Ulysses Simpson Grant  Full Page 553
The Capitol at Washington with Dome at Last Completed  Full Page 558
Facsimile of Card Written by President Lincoln  559
Facsimile of Note Written by Lincoln to Stanton  561
General Grant, from a War-time Photograph  569
Facsimile of a Pass Written by Lincoln  578
Facsimile of Famous Letter of President Lincoln to a Boston Mother. . .Full Page 585
Charles A. Dana  589
A Cartoon Posted during the Presidential Campaign of 1864  603
"Long Abraham" F'our Years Longer — A Caricature  604
General Sherman  .'  607
Lieutenant Tad in Uniform  611
Facsimile of Note from Lincoln Ordering a Well Pumped out for Tad  616
Miss Anna Dickinson  gjq
Charles Sumner  g2i
Jefferson Davis after the Fall of Richmond  625
Lincoln Entering the Confederate Capital  628
Leaving the Davis Mansion  Pull Page 629
General Jackson, C.S.A  (^.q
Etching of Lincoln in 1865  g^ j
Ford's Theater, where the Horrible Crime Was Committed  645
Facsimile of Lincoln's Last Writing, April 14, 1865  647
Plan of the Proscenium Box in which Lincoln Was Shot  648
The Blood-stained Play-bill  grg
Life Mask of Lincoln, by L. W. Volk, of Chicago  Full Page 654
Headlines in New York Herald the Morning after the Assassination  658
Horace Greeley  g-q
Ralph Waldo Emerson  g_g
Framed Photo from a Popular Portrait of Lincoln  Tailpiece 679

From The CenlHr\ Book of Famous -liiiiritaiis Elbridge S Brooks
KILLING OF LINCOLN'S PIONEER GRANDFATHER, ABRAHAM LINCOLN
A shot from the brush killed the father. Mordecai, reaching the cabin, seized the rifle, took deliberate aim at a white ornament
on the breast of the savage and broueht him down.

The Story-Life of Lincoln

CHAPTER I
Lincoln's Immediate Ancestors
Abraham Lincoln, the President's Grandfather, the Friend of
Daniel Boone
In the year 1780, Abraham Lincoln, a member of a respectable
and well-to-do family in Rockingham County, Virginia, started
westward to establish himself in the newly-explored country of
Kentucky. He entered several large tracts of fertile land, and
returning to Virginia disposed of his property there, and with his
wife and five children went back to Kentucky and settled in Jeffer
son County  There is little doubt that it was on account
of his association with the famous Daniel Boone that Abraham
Lincoln went to Kentucky. The families had for a century been
closely allied. There were frequent intermarriages among them —
both being of Quaker lineage. ....
The life of the pioneer Abraham Lincoln soon came to a
disastrous close. He had settled in Jefferson County, in the land
he had bought from the Government, and cleared a small farm in
the forest. One morning, in the year 1 784, he started with his three
sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, to the edge of the clearing, and
began the day's work. A shot from the brush killed the father;
Mordecai, the eldest son, ran instinctively to the house, Josiah to
the neighboring fort for assistance, and Thomas, the youngest, a
child of six, was left with the corpse of his father. Mordecai, reach
ing the cabin, seized the rifle, and saw through the loop-hole an
Indian in his war-paint stooping to raise the child from the ground.
He took deliberate aim at a white ornament on the breast of the
savage and brought him down. The little boy, thus released, ran
to the cabin, and Mordecai, from the loft, renewed his fire upon the
(17)

1 8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
savages, who began to show themselves from the thicket, until
Josiah returned with assistance from the stockade, and the assailants
fled. This tragedy made an indelible impression on the mind of
Mordecai. Either a spirit of revenge for his murdered father, or
a sportsmanlike pleasure in his successful shot, made him a deter
mined Indian stalker, and he rarely stopped to inquire whether the
red man who came within range of his rifle was friendly or hostile.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, pages i6 to 21.
Uncle Mordecai
So far as they are known, the Lincolns were all marked char
acters. Some reminiscences related of Mordecai, after he had
reached manhood, give a welcome glimpse of the boy who exhibited
such coolness and daring on the occasion that cost his father's life.
"He was naturally a man of considerable genius," says one who
knew him. "He was a man of great drollery, and it would almost
make you laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man
whose quiet, droll look excited in me the same disposition to laugh,
and that was Artemus Ward. Mordecai was quite a story-teller,'
and in this Abe resembled his 'Uncle Mord' as we called him. He
was an honest man, as tender-hearted as a woman, and to the last
degree charitable and benevolent. . . . Abe Lincoln had a
very high opinion of his uncle, and on one occasion remarked, 'I
have often said that Uncle Mord had run off with all the talents of
the family.' "
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page 40.
Boyhood of Lincoln's Father
From circumstantial evidence we must infer that Anna Lincoln
was a poor manager, or perhaps she suffered from some misfortune
All we know is that she abandoned the farm in Jefferson County
and moved south into the neighboring county of Washington when
she disappears from human knowledge. Her eldest son Mordecai
appears to have inherited his father's money, as the rules of primo
geniture prevailed in those days. He was sheriff of Washington
County, a member of the Kentucky Legislature, and tradition gives
him the reputation of an honorable and influential citizen .
Explanations are wanting for the circumstance that Thomas
the youngest son and brother of this prosperous family, whose

LINCOLN'S IMMEDIATE ANCESTORS

19

father was slain before his eyes when he was only six years old, was
turned adrift, without home or care, for at ten years of age we find
him "a wandering laboring boy" who was left uneducated and
supported himself by farm work and other menial employment, and
learned the trades of carpenter and cabinet-maker. But he must
have had good stuff in him, for when he was twenty-five years old
he had saved enough from his wages to buy a farm in Hardin
County. Local tradition, which, however, cannot always be trusted,
represents him to have been " an easy-going man, and slow to anger,
but when roused a formidable adversary." He was above the
medium height, had a powerful frame, and, like his immortal son,
had a wide local reputation as a wrestler.
Ths Trv.e Abraham Lincoln, William Eleroy Curtis, page 17.
Nancy Hanks, Lincoln's Mother
At the time of her marriage to Thomas Lincoln, Nancy was
in her twenty-third year. She was above the ordinary height in
stature, v/eighed about one hundred and thirty pounds, was slen
derly built, and had much the appearance of one inclined to
consumption. Her skin was dark; hair dark brown ; eyes gray and
small ; forehead prominent ; face sharp and angular, with a marked
expression of melancholy which fixed itself in the memory of every
one who ever saw or knew her. Though her life was seemingly
beclouded by a spirit of sadness, she was in disposition amiable
and generally cheerful. Mr. Lincoln himself said to me in 1851, on
receiving the news of his

father's death, that whatever
might be said of his parents,
and however unpromising the
early surroundings of his
mother may have been, she
was highly intellectual by
nature, had a strong memory,
acute judgment, and was cool
and heroic. From a mental standpoint she no doubt rose above
her surroundings, and had she lived, the stimulus of her nature
would have accelerated her son's success, arid she would have been
a much more ambitious prompter, than his father ever was.
Herndon's Lincoln 'William H. Herndon and Jesse "W, "Weik, Vol. I, page lo

Daniel Boone enters Kentucky  1769
Gieat emigration to Kentucky began  1783
Indian uprising there against whites  1786
Washington's first inauguration and adop
tion of the Constitution  1789
Population of XJ. S., 3,380,000 ist Census;
number of slaves. . . 700,000  1790
Kentucky admitted as a State  1792
Cotton-gin invented by Eli Whitney  I793
Great increase in producing cotton, and
consequent growth of slavery  I795
John Adams inaugurated President  i797
Removal of U. S. Capital to Washington. . . 1800

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Marriage of Lincoln's Father and Mother
I, Christopher Columbus Graham, now in my hundredth year,
and visiting the Southern Exposition in Louisville, where I live,
tell this . . I am one of the two living men who can proye that
Abraham Lincoln, or Linkhorn, as the family was miscalled, was
born in lawful wedlock, for I saw Thomas Lincoln marry Nancy
Hanks on the twelfth day of June, 1806. .1 was hunting roots
for my medicines, and just went to the wedding to get a good
supper, and got it.
Tom Lincoln was a carpenter, and a good one for those
days, when a cabin was built mainly with the ax, and not a
nail or bolt or hinge in it, only leathers and pins to the door,
and no glass, except in watches and spectacles and bottles.
Tom had the best set of tools in what was then and now Wash
ington County  Jesse Head, the good Methodist
minister that married them, was also
a carpenter or cabinet-maker by trade,
and as he was then a neighbor, they
were good friends. . .
While you pin me down to facts,
I will say that I saw Nancy Hanks
Lincoln at her wedding, a fresh-look
ing girl, I should say over twenty.
Tom was a respectable mechanic and
could choose,, and she was treated 'with
respect. I was at the infare, too, given by
John H. Parrott, her guardian, and
only girls with money had guardians
appointed by the court. We had
Jesse Head, the good Methodist minister bear-meat ; VCnison ' wild
that married them. ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^, ^^^^^ ^.^^ ^^^
tame— SO common that you could buy them at two bits a bushel;
maple sugar, swung on a string, to bite off for coffee or whiskey;
syrup in big gourds; peach-and-honey; a sheep that the two fam
ilies barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and
covered with green boughs to keep the juices in ; and a race for

LINCOLN'S IMMEDIATE ANCESTORS 21
the whiskey bottle. . . Our table was of the puncheons cut
from solid logs, and on the next day they were the floor of the
new cabin.
Signed Statement of Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1884.
Appended to The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida Ml Tarbell.
How Tom and Nancy Lincoln Began Life Together
" Looks didn't count them days, nohow. It was stren'th an'
work an' daredevil. A lazy man or a coward was jist pizen, an*
a spindlin' feller had to stay in the settlemints. The clearin's
hadn't no use fur him. Tom was strong, an' he wasn't lazy nor
afeerd o' nothin', but he was kind o' shif'less — couldn't git nothin'
ahead, an' didn't keer putickalar. Lots o' them kind o' fellers in
arly days, 'druther hunt an' fish, an' I reckon they had their use.
They killed off the varmints an' made it safe fur other fellers to go
into the woods with an ax.
"When Nancy married Tom he was workin' in a carpenter
shop. It wasn't Tom's fault he couldn't make a livin' by his trade.
Thar was sca'cely any money in that kentry. Every man had to
do his own tinkerin', an' keep everlastin'ly at work to git enough
to eat. So Tom tuk up some land. It was mighty ornery land, but
it was the best Tom could git, when he hadn't much to trade fur it.
"Pore? We was all pore, them days, but the Lincolns was
porer than anybody. ' Chdppin' trees an' grubbin' roots an' splittin'
rails an' huntin' an' trappin' didn't leave Tom no time 
It was aU he could do to git his f ambly enough to eat and to kiver
'em. Nancy was turrible ashamed o' the way they lived, but she
knowed Tom was doin' his best, an' she wasn't the pesterin' kind.
She was purty as a pictur an' smart as you'd find 'em anywhere.
She could read an' -write. The Hankses was some smarter'n the
Lincolns. Tom thought a heap o' Nancy, an' he was as good to her
as he knowed how. He didn't drink or swear or play cyards or
fight, an' them was drinkin', cussin,' quarrelsome days. Tom was
popylar, an' he could lick a bully if he had to. He jist couldn't
git ahead, somehow. "
Reminiscences of Lincoln's Cousin and Play-mate, Dennis Hanks, written down by Mrs. Eleanor
Atkinson, in X889. The American Magazine, Vol. LXV, February, 1908, page 361.

CHAPTER II
First Seven Years in Kentucky
Birth of Abraham Lincoln
Thomas Lincoln took his wife to a little log cabin in a hamlet
called EUzabethtown, probably because he thought it would be

In this cabin Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and here he spent the first four
years of his childhood.
more congenial for her than his lonely farm in Hardin County,
which was fourteen miles away ; and perhaps he thought that he could
earn a better living by carpenter work than by farming. Here
their first child, Sarah, was born about a year after the marriage.
(22)

FIRST SEVEN YEARS IN KENTUCKY 23
Thomas Lincoln either failed to earn sufficient money to meet
his household expenses or grew tired of his carpenter work, for,
two years later, he left EUzabethtown and moved his family to his
farm near HodgensviUe, on the Big South Fork of Nolen Creek. It
was a miserable place, of thin, unproductive soil and only partly
cleared. Its only attraction was a fine spring of water, shaded by a
little grove, which caused it to be called " Rock Spring Farm. "
The cabin was of the rudest sort, with a. single room, a single window,
a big fireplace and a huge outside chimney.
In this cabin Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809,
and here he spent the first four years of his childhood. It was a
far reach to the White House. Soon after his nomination for the
Presidency he furnished a brief autobiography to Mr. Hicks, an
artist who was painting his portrait, in which he said :
I was born February 12, 1809, in then Hardin County, Ken
tucky, at a point -within the now County of Larue, a mile or a mile
and a half from where Hodgen's mill now is. My parents being
dead, and my o'wn memory not ser-ving, I know no means of identi
fying the precise locality. It was on Nolen Creek.
T „ Q<; A. Lincoln.
June 14, 1860.
The precise spot has since been clearly identified, and the cabin
was still standing after his death.
The True Abraham Lincoln, William Eleroy Curtis, page 19.
Cousin Dennis Hanks Tells About "Nancy's Boy Baby"
"Tom an' Nancy lived on a farm about two miles from us,
when Abe was born. I ricoUect Tom comin' over to our house one
cold mornin' in Feb'uary an' sayin' kind o' slow, 'Nancy's got a
boy baby. '
" Mother got fiustered an' hurried up 'er work to go over to
look after the little feller, but I didn't have nothin' to wait fur, so
I cut an' run the hull two mile to see my new cousin.
"You bet I was tickled to death. Babies wasn't as common
as blackberries in the woods o' Kaintucky. Mother come over and
washed him an' put a yaller flannen petticoat on him, an' cooked
some dried berries with wild honey fur Nancy, an' sUcked things
up an'. went home. An' that's all the nuss'n either of 'em got. . .

24 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

" I rolled up in a b'ar skin an' slep' by the fire-place that night,
so's I could see the little feller when he cried and Tom had to get up
an' tend to him. Nancy let me hold him purty soon. Folks often
ask me if Abe was a good-lookin' baby. Well, now, he looked just
Uke any other baby, at fust — like red cherry pulp squeezed dry.
An' he didn't improve none as he growed older. Abe never was
much fur looks. I ricoUect how Tom joked about Abe's long legs
when he was toddlin' round the cabin. He growed out o' his clothes
faster'n Nancy could make 'em.
" But he was mighty good comp'ny, solemn as a papoose, but
interested in everything. An' he always did have fits o' cuttin'
up. I've seen him when he was a little feller, settin' on a stool,
starin' at a visitor. All of a sudden he'd bust out laughin' fit to
kill. If he told us what he was laughin' at, half the time we couldn't
see no joke  "Abe never give Nancy no trouble
after he could walk excep' to keep him in
clothes. Most o' the time we went bar 'foot.
Ever wear a wet buckskin glove? Them
moccasins wasn't no putection ag'inst the
wet. Birch bark -with hickory bark soles,
strapped on over yarn socks, beat buckskin
all holler, fur snow. Abe 'n' me got purty
handy contrivin' things that way. An' Abe
was right out in the woods, about as soon's
he was weaned, fishin' in the crick, settin'
Dennis Hanks, Lincohi's cousin traps fur rabbits an' muskrats, goin' on
paymae. coon-hunts with Tom an' me an' the dogs,
foUerin' up bees to find bee trees, an' drappin' corn fur his pappy.
Mighty inter estm' life fur a boy, but thar was a good many chances
he wouldn't live to grow up."
Lincoln's Boyhood, Eleanor Atkinson. The American Magazine, Vol. LXV, February, 1908, page
360. The Little Boy's First Teachers
When the little boy was about four years old the first real
excitement of his life occurred. His father moved from the farm on
Nolen Creek to another some fifteen miles northeast on Knob Creek,
and here the child began to go to school. At that day the schools •
in the West were usually accidental, depending upon the coming of

FIRST SEVEN YEARS IN KENTUCKY 25
some poor and ambitious young man who was -willing to teach a
few terms while he looked for an opening to something better. The
terms were irregular, their length being decided by the time the
settlers felt able to board the master and pay his small salary. The
chief qualifications for a schoolmaster seem to have been enough
strength to keep the "big boys" in order, though one high in
authority affirms that pluck went "for a heap sight more'n sinnoo
-with boys. " . .
Lincoln's first teacher, Zachariah Riney, was a Catholic. Of
his second teacher, Caleb Hazel, we know even less than of Riney.
Mr. GoUaher says that Abraham Lincoln, in those days when he was
his schoolmate, .was "an unusually bright boy at school, and made
splendid progress in his studies. Indeed, he learned faster than
any of his schoolmates. Though so young, he studied very hard.
He would get spicewood bushes, hack them up on a log, and burn
them two or three together, for the purpose of giving light by which
he might pursue his studies. "
Probably the boy's mother had something to do with the spice
wood illuminations. Tradition has it that Mrs. Lincoln took great
pains to teach her children what she knew, and that at her knee
they heard all the Bible lore, fairy tales, and country legends that
she had been able to gather in her poor life.
Besides the "ABC schools, " as Lincoln called them, the only
other medium of education in the country districts of Kentucky
in those days was "preaching. " Itinerants like the schoolmasters,
the preachers, of whatever denomination, were generally uncouth
and illiterate ; the code of morals they taught was mainly a healthy
one, and they, no doubt, did much to keep the consciences of the
pioneers awake. It is difficult to believe that they ever did much
for the moral training of young Lincoln, though he certainly got his
first notion of public speaking from them; and for years in his boyhood
one of his chief delights was to gather his playmates about him, and
preach and thump until he had his auditors frightened or in tears.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page is.
Little Abe's Narrow Escape from Drowning
The only one of young Lincoln's playmates now living is an
old man nearly a hundred years old, named Austin GoUaher, whose
mind is bright and clear, and who never tires of telling of the days

26 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

Lincoln and he were "little tikes" and played together. This old
man, who yet lives [1884] in the log house in which he has always
lived, a few miles from the old Lincoln place, tells entertaining
stories about the President's boyhood,
"I once saved Lincoln's life, " relates Mr. GoUaher. "We had
been going to school together one year ; but the next year we had
no school, because there were so few scholars to attend, there being
only about twenty in the school the year before.
"Consequently Abe and I had not much to do; but, as we did
not go to school and our mothers were strict with us, we did not get
to see each other very often. One Sunday morning my mother
waked me up early, saying she was going to see Mrs. Lincoln, and
that I could go along. Glad of the chance, I was soon dressed and
ready to go. After my mother and I got there, Abe and I played
all through the day.
"While we were wandering up and down the little stream
called Knob Creek, Abe said: 'Right up there' — pointing to the
east — 'we saw a covey of partridges yesterday. Let's go over.'
The stream was too wide for us to jump across. Finally we saw a
foot-log, and we concluded to try it. It was narrow, but Abe said,.
'Let's coon it. '
" I went first and reached the other side all right. Abe went
about half-way across, when he got scared and began trembling.
I hollered to him, 'Don't look down nor up nor sideways, but look
right at me and hold on tight ! ' But he fell off into the creek, and,
as the water was about seven or eight feet deep (I could not swim.,
and neither could Abe), I knew it would do'no good for me to go in
after him.
" So I got a stick — a long water sprout — and held it out to him.
He came up, grabbing with both hands, and I put the stick into
his hands. He clung to it, and I pulled him out on the bank,
almost dead. I got him by the arms and shook him well, and
then I rolled him on the ground, when the water poured out of his
mouth. " He was all right very soon. We promised each other that
we would never tell anybody about it, and never did for years.
I never told any one of it until after Lincoln was killed."
Best Lincoln Stories, J. E. Gallaher, page i6.

FIRST SEVEN YEARS IN KENTUCKY 27
The Boy Meets a Soldier
Of all these years of Abraham Lincoln's early childhood we
know almost nothing. He lived a solitary life in the woods, returning
from his lonesome little games to his cheerless home. He never
talked of those days to his most intimate friends. Once, when
asked what he remembered about the war [of 18 12] 'with Great
Britain, he replied:
" Nothing but this. I had been fishing one day and caught
a little fish which I was taking home. I met a soldier on the road,
and, having been always told at hoi-ne that we must be good to the
soldiers, I gave him my fish. "
This is only a faint glimpse, but what it shows is rather
pleasant — the generous child and the patriotic household. But
there is no question that these first years of his life had their last
ing effect upon the temperament of this great mirthful and
melancholy man.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 25.
Abe Goes to Mill and Thrashes Three Boys
" A mere spindle of a boy, " as one old gentleman describes the
little Abraham giving a good account of himself in possibly his
first impact 'with opposing strength. The lads of the neighborhood,
so runs the story, were sent after school hours to the mill with com
to be ground. While awaiting their turn, they passed the time, as
at the noon recesses, with frolics and fights. In these Lincoln did
not participate. " He was, " says Major Alexander Sympson, who tells the tale,
"the shyest, most reticent, most uncouth and awkward-appearing,
homeliest and worst dressed of any in the entire crowd." So
superlatively wretched a butt could not hope to look on long unmo
lested. He was attacked one day, as he stood near a tree, by a larger
boy -with others at his back. " But, " said the Major, "the very acme
of astonishment was experienced by the eagerly expectant crowd.
For Lincoln soundly thrashed the first, second, and third boy, in
succession; and then placed his back against the tree, defied the
whole crowd, and taunted them with cowardice."
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 3.

2 8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
First Work on the Farm
As soon as the child was strong enough to follow his father in
the fields, he was put to work at simple tasks ; bringing tools, carry
ing water, picking berries, dropping seeds. He learned to know
his father's farm from line to line, and years after, when President
of the United States, he recalled in a conversation at the White
House, in the presence of Dr. J. J. Wright of Emporia, Kansas, the
arrangement of the fields and an incident of his own childish expe
rience as a farmer's son. " Mr. President, " one of the visitors had
asked, " how would you like when the War is over to visit your old
home in Kentucky?" "I would like it very much," Mr. Lincoln
replied. "I remember that old home very well. Our farm was
composed of three fields. It lay in the valley surrounded by high
hills and deep gorges. Sometimes when there came a big rain in
the hills the water would come down through the gorges and spread
all over the farm. The last thing that I remember of doing there
was one Saturday afternoon;

Jefferson made President  1801
Ohio admitted as a State  1802
Importing of slaves forbidden  1808
Birth of Abraham Lincoln  1809
Madison made President  1809
First steamboat on the Ohio River  1811
War declared against Great Britain  1812
Jackson's victory at New Orleans
End of War of 1812  1815

the other boys planted the
corn in what we called the big
field ; it contained seven acres
— and I dropped the pumpkin
seed. I dropped two seeds in
every other hill and every other
row. The next Sunday morning there came a big rain in the hills;
it did not rain a drop in the valley, but the water coming through
the gorges washed ground, corn, pumpkin seeds and all clear off
the field. "
Tlie Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 17.
Leaving "Old Kentucky"
Almost his earliest recollections were of sitting with his sister
at his mother's feet, listening as she read from a book or told tales
of imagination or experience. Here his education began, and when
still qmte young he eagerly read Robinson Crusoe, ^sop's Fables,
Pilgrim's Progress, and other books common at plain firesides in
the older States, but then rare in Kentucky. He was not
yet eight years old when he left Kentucky. One of the last inci
dents he recalled of his life there was accompanying his mother

FIRST SEVEN YEARS IN KENTUCKY ' 29
on her parting visit to the grave of her youngest child, a son who
died in infancy.
Hard times came with the war of 181 2, and lasted long. As
some relief, the Government offered its wild lands north of the Ohio
to new settlers on credit. There were serious troubles, too, about
land titles in Kentucky; nor was its labor system kind to people
who labored. Slavery was now firmly established there, and the
man of small means had less chance of rising than of lapsing into
the scorned class of " poor whites. " Thomas Lincoln chose to live
in a free State. That this was one of his motives for a change was
explicitly declared by his son.
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, Vol. I, page lo.

CHAPTER III
Fourteen Years in Indiana
Moving to Indiana
Thomas Lincoln was something of a waterman. In the fre
quent changes of occupation, which had hitherto made his Hfe so
barren of good results, he could not resist the temptation to the
career of a flatboatman. He had accordingly made one, or perhaps,
two trips to New Orleans, in the company and employment of
Isaac Bush, who was probably a near relative of Sally Bush. It
was therefore very natural that when, in the fall of 1816, he finally
determined to emigrate, he should attempt to transport his goods
by water. He built himself a boat, which seems to have been none
of the best, and launched it on the Rolling Fork, at the mouth of
Knob Creek, a half-mile from his cabin. Some of his personal
property, including carpenter's tools, he put on board, and the rest
he traded for four hundred gallons of whiskey. With this crazy
boat and this singular cargo, he put out into the stream alone, and
floating with the current down the Rolling Fork, and then down
Salt River, reached the Ohio without any mishap. Here his craft
proved somewhat rickety when contending with the difficulties of
the larger stream, or perhaps there was a lack of force in the manage
ment of her, or perhaps the single navigator had consoled himself
during the lonely voyage by too frequent applications to a portion
of his cargo ; at all events, the boat capsized and the lading went to
the bottom. He fished up a few of the tools "and most of the
whiskey, " and, righting the little boat, again floated down to a
landing at Thompson's Ferry, two and a half miles west of Troy,
in Perry County, Indiana. Here he sold his treacherous boat, and,
leaving his remaining property in the care of a settler named Posey,
trudged off on foot to select " a location " in the wilderness. He did
not go far, but found a place that he thought would suit him, only
sixteen miles distant from the river. He then turned about, and
chalked all the way back to Knob Creek, in Kentucky, where he
took a fresh start with his wife and her children. Of the latter
(30)

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIAN.

G^VlStadlj&O}.

MAP SHOWING THE REMOVALS OF THOMAS LINCOLN WITH HIS FAMILY

32 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

there were only two, — Nancy (or Sarah), nine years of age, and
Abraham, seven. Mrs. Lincoln had given birth to another son
some years before, but he had died when only three days old. After
leaving Kentucky she had no more children.
This time Thomas Lincoln loaded what little he had left upon
two horses, and " packed through to Posey's. " Besides clothing and
bedding, they carried such cooking utensils as would be needed by the
way, and would be indispensable when they reached their destination.
The stock was not large. It consisted of " one oven and lid, one skillet
and lid, and some tin-ware. " They camped out during the nights,
and, of course, cooked their own food. ['Thomas] Lincoln's skill as
a hunter must now have stood him in good stead. . . .
When they got to Posey's, Lincoln hired a wagon, and loading.
on it the whiskey and other things he had stored there, went on
toward the place which has since become famous as the " Lincoln ',|
Farm. " He was now making his way through an almost untrodden
wilderness. There was no road, and for part of the distance not
even a foot -trail. He was slightly assisted by a path of a few miles
in length, which had been "blazed out" by an earlier settler named
Hoskins. But he was obliged to suffer long delays, and cut out a
passage for the wagon with his ax. At length, after many deten
tions and difficulties, he reached the point where he intended to
make his future home. It was situated between the forks of Big
Pigeon and Little Pigeon Creeks, a mile and a half east of Gentry-
ville, a village which grew up afterwards, and now numbers about
three hundred inhabitants. The whole country was covered with
a dense forest of oaks, beeches, walnuts, sugar-maples, and nearly I
all the varieties of trees that flourish in North America. The woods
were usually open, and devoid of underbrush; the trees were of the
largest growth, and beneath the deep shade they afforded was
spread out a rich greensward. The natural grazing was. very good,.
and hogs found abtmdant sustenance in the prodigious quantity of
mast. There was occasionally a little glade or prairie set down in
the midst of this vast expanse of forest. One of these, not far from
the Lincoln place, was a famous resort for the deer, and the hunters
knew it well for its numerous "licks." Upon this prairie the
militia "musters" were had at a later day, and from it the south
fork of the Pigeon came finally to be known as the " Prairie Fork. "
The Life of .Abraham Liticoln, Ward H. Lamon, page ig.

FOURTEEN "I'EARS IN INDIAN.\

33

The Home in Indiana
[Thomas] Lincoln laid off his curtilage on a gentle hillock
having a slope on every side. The spot was very beautiful, and
the soil was excellent. The selection was wise in every respect
but one. There was no water near, except what was collected in
holes in the ground after a rain ; but it was very foul, and had to be
strained before using. At a later period we find Abraham and his

Lincoln's second house was 4 "rough, rough log" one.
sister carrying water from a spring situated a mile away. Dennis
Hanks asserts that Tom Lincoln "riddled his land Hke a honey
comb, ' ' in search of good water, and was at last sorely tempted to em
ploy a Yankee, who came around with a divining-rod, and declared
that for the small consideration of five dollars in cash, he would
make his rod point to a cool, flowing spring beneath the surface.
Here [Thomas] Lincoln built "a half -faced camp,"— a cabin
enclosed on three sides and open on the fourth. It was built, not

34

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

of logs, but of poles, and was therefore denominated a "camp, " to
distinguish it from a "cabin. " It '^vas about fourteen feet square, '
and had no floor. It was no larger than the first house he lived in
' at EUzabethtown, and on the whole not as good a shelter. . ,
In the fall of 1 8 1 7 , Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came out from
Kentucky, and took up their abode in the old camp which the
Lincolns had just deserted for the cabin. Betsy was the aunt who
had raised Nancy Hanks. She had done the same in part for our
friend Dennis Hanks, who was the offspring of another sister, and
she now brought him with her. Dennis thus became the constant
companion of young Abraham; and all the other members of that
family, as originally settled in Indiana, being dead, Dennis remains
a most important witness as to this period of Mr. Lincoln's life.
Lincoln's second house was a "rough, rough log" one; the
timbers were not hewed ; and until after the arrival of Sally Bush,
in 1819, it had neither fioor, door, nor window. It stood about.
forty yards from what Dennis Hanks calls that "darned little half-
faced camp, " which was now the dwelling of the Sparrows. It was
"right in the bush," — in the heart of a virgin wilderness.- There
were only seven or eight older settlers in the neighborhood of the
two Pigeon Creeks. Lincoln had had some previous acquaintance
with one of them, a Mr. Thomas Carter ; and it is highly probable
that nothing but this trivial circumstance induced him'to settle here.
The Life of Abraham L-i'.icoln, Ward H, Lamon,.page 21.

A Seven- Year-Old Woodman
On arriving at the new farm an ax was put into the boy's
hands, and he was set to work to aid
in clearing a field for corn, and to help
build the "half -face camp" which for a
year was the home of the Lincolns.
There were few more primitive homes in
the wUderness of Indiana in 1816 thar..
this of young Lincoln's, and there were
few famiUes, even in that day, who were
forced to practise more make-shifts to
get a Hving. The cabin which took the
place of the "half -face camp" had but

ABE'S AX.

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA

35

one room, with a loft above. For a long time there was no win
dow, door or floor, not even the traditional deer-skin hung before
the exit; there was no oiled paper over the opening for light; there
was no puncheon covering on the ground.
The furniture was of their own manufacture. The table and
chairs were of the rudest sort — rough slabs of wood in which holes
were bored and legs fitted in. Their bedstead, or, rather, bed-
frame, was made of poles held up by two outer posts, and the ends
made firm by inserting the poles in auger-holes that had been bored
in a log which was part of the wall of the cabin; skins were its
chief covering. Little Abraham's bed was even more primitive.
He slept on a heap of dry leaves in the corner of the loft, to which
he mounted by pegs driven into the wall.
Their food, if coarse, was usually abundant ; the chief difficulty
in supplying the larder was to secure any variety. Of game
there was plenty — deer, bear, pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks, birds
of all lands. There were fish in the streams, and wild fruits of
many kinds in the woods in the summer, and these were dried for
winter use ; but the difficulty of raising and milling corn and wheat
was very great. Indeed, in many places in the West the first flour
cake was an historical event. Corn dodger was the every-day
bread of the Lincoln household, the wheat cake being a dainty
reserved for Sunday mornings.
Potatoes were the only vegetables raised in any quantity, and
there were times in the Lincoln family when they were the only
food on the, table; a fact proved to posterity by the oft-quoted
remark of Abraham to his father after the latter had asked a bless
ing over a dish of roasted potatoes — that they were "mighty poor
blessings." Th£ Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 54.
Death of Lincoln's Own Mother
In the fall of 1818, the scantily settled region in the vicinity
of Pigeon Creek — where the Lincolns were then Uving — suffered a
-visitation of that dread disease common in the West in early days,
and kno-wn in the vernacular of the frontier as ' 'the milk-sick.
Early in October of that year, Thomas and Besty Sparrow fell
ill of the disease and died -within a few days of each other. Thomas
Lincoln performed the services of undertaker. With his whip-

36 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
saw he cut out the lumber, and with commendable promptness he
nailed together the rude coffins to enclose the forms of the dead.
The bodies were borne to a scantily cleared knoll in the midst of the
forest, and there, without ceremony, quietly let down into the grave.
Meanwhile Abe's mother had also fallen a victim to the insidious
disease. Her sufferings, howe\'er, were destined to be of brief
duration. Within a week she too rested from her labors. "She
struggled on, day by day," says one of the household, "a good
Christian woman, and died on the seventh day after she was taken
sick. Abe and his sister Sarah waited on their mother, and did the
little jobs and errands required of them. There was no physician
nearer than thirty-five miles. The mother knew she was going to
die, and called the children to her bedside. She was very weak,
and the children leaned over her while she gave her last message.
Placing her feeble hand on little Abe's head she told him to be kind
and good to his father and sister; to both she said, 'Be good to one
another, ' expressing a hope that they might live, as they had been
taught by her, to love their kindred and worship God." Amid the
miserable surroundings of a home in the wilderness Nancy Hanks
passed across the dark river. Though of lowly birth, the victim.
of poverty and hard usage, she takes a place in history as the mother
of a son who liberated a race of men.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 22.
The Delayed Funeral Services
It was the custom of those days, and of that country, to have
a funeral sermon preached by way of memorial, any tirne within
the year following the death of a person. So, as soon as the good
mother was buried, Abraham Lincoln composed what he used to say
was his first letter, and addressed it to Parson Elkin, the Kentucky
Baptist preacher who had sometimes tarried with the Lincolns in
their humble home in Kentucky. It was a great favor to ask of
the good man; for his journey to preach a sermon over the grave
of Nancy Lincoln would take him one hundred miles or more, far
from his customary "stamping ground." But, in due time Abra
ham recei^'ed an answer to his letter, and the parson prornised to '
come when his calls of duty led him near the Indiana line
Eariy in the following summer, when the trees were the
greenest and the forest was most beautiful, the preacher came on

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA

37

his errand of kindness. It was a bright and sunny Sabbath morn
ing, when, due notice having been sent around through all the
region, men, women and children gathered from far and near to
hear the funeral sermon of Nancy Lincoln. There was the hardy
forest ranger, come from his far-wandering quests to hear. There
were farmers and their .families, borne hither in rude and home-

THE BELATED FUNERAL SERMON
The good preacher told of the virtues and the patiently bcirne sufferings of the departed
mother of Abraham Lincoln.
made carts, new-comers, some of them, and homesick for their
distant birthplaces. Two hundred of them, all told, some on foot
and some on horseback, and others drawn in ox-carts. AU were
intent on the great event of the season — the preaching of Nancy
Lincoln's funeral sermon.
The waiting congregation was grouped around on "down trees,"

38 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

stumps and knots of bunch-grass, or on wagon tongues, waiting for
the coming of the little procession. The preacher led the way from
the Lincoln cabin, followed by Thomas Lincoln, his son Abraham,
his daughter Sarah and Dennis Hanks, bereft of father and
mother, and now a member of the Lincoln household. Tears shone
on the sun-browned cheeks of the silent settlers as the good preacher
told of the virtues and the patiently borne sufferings of the departed
mother of Abraham Lincoln. And every head was bowed in
reverential solemnity as he lifted up his voice in prayer for the
motherless children and the widowed man. To Abraham, listening
as he did to the last words that should be said over the grave of his
mother, this was a very memorable occasion. He had fulfilled
a pious duty in bringing the preacher to the place where she was
laid, and as the words, wonderful to him, dropped from the speaker's
lips, he felt that this was the end, at least, of a lovely and gentle
life. He might be drawn into busy and trying scenes hereafter,
and he might have many and mighty cares laid on him, but that
scene in the forest by the lonely grave of his mother was never to be
forgotten. Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 21.
"What is Home without a Mother?"
The loss of his mother was the first great grief of young Abra
ham, then not quite ten years old. The love of reading acquired
through her inspiration and help was of itself enough, in his con
dition, to justify his saying:
"I owe all that I am or hope to be to my sainted mother."
His recollection of her seemed always to be quite clear and
vivid, and he ever spoke of her with tenderness and reverence.
What could be done as housekeeper by a girl of twelve, Sarah
did for more than a year; but a matron's care was too visibly
lacking, and the father decided to ask the help and hand of one he
had early known as Sally Bush, now living in widowhood at EUza
bethtown. She had married Daniel Johnston, the jailer, who
died, leaving three children and a little property.
"His widow continued to live here untU the second of December,
1 81 9. Thomas Lincoln returned to this place on the first day of
December, and inquired for the residence of Widow Johnston. She
lived near the clerk's office. I was the clerk, and informed him

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 39
how to find her. He was not slow to present himself before her,
when the following courtship occurred. He said to her :
" 'I am a lone man, and you are a lone woman. I have knowed
you from a girl, and you have knowed me from a boy ; and I have
come all the way from Indiana to ask if you'll marry me right off,
as I've no time to lose.'
"To which she replied: 'Tommy Lincoln, I have no objection
to marrying you, but I cannot do it right off, for I owe several
little debts 'which must first be paid.'
"The gallant man promptly said : 'Give me a list of your debts.'
"The list was furnished, and the debts were paid the same even
ing. The next morning, December 2, 181 9, I issued the license, and
the same day they were married, bundled up, and started for home. ' '
By the Court Clerk in Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, Vol. I, page i('>.
The Coming of the New Mother
Mrs. Johnston has been denominated a "poor widow," but
she possessed goods which, in the eyes of Tom Lincoln, were almost
of unparalleled magnificence. Among other things, she had a
bureau that cost forty dollars ; and he informed her, on their
arrival in Indiana, that, in his deliberate opinion, it was little less
than sinful to be the owner of such a thing. He demanded that
she should turn it into cash, which she positively refused to do.
She had quite a lot of other articles, however, which he thought well
enough in their way, and some of which were sadly needed in his
miserable cabin in the wilds of Indiana. Dennis Hanks speaks
with great rapture of the "large supply of household goods" which
she brought out with her. There was "one fine bureau, one table,
one set of chairs, one large clothes-chest, cooking utensils, knives,
forks, bedding and other articles." It was a glorious day for little
Abe and Sarah and Dennis when this wondrous collection of rich
furniture arrived in the Pigeon Creek settlement. But all this
wealth required extraordinary means of transportation; and
Lincoln had recourse to his brother-in-law, Ralph Krume, who
lived just over the line, in Breckinridge County. Krume came with
a four -horse team, and moved Mrs. Johnston, now Mrs. Lincoln,
'with her family and effects, to the home of her new husband in
Indiana. Her own goods furnished the cabin with
tolerable decency. She made Lincoln put down a floor, and hang

40 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

windows and doors. .It was in the depth of winter; and the chil
dren, as they nestled in the warm beds she provided them, enjo5ang
the strange luxury of security from the cold winds of December,
must have thanked her from the bottoms of their newly-com
forted hearts. She had brought a son and two daughters of her own
—John, Sarah, and Matilda ; but little Abe and his sister Nancy—
(whose name was speedily changed to Sarah), the ragged and hap
less little strangers to her brood, were given an equal place in her
affections. They were half naked, and she clad them from the
stores of clothing she had laid up for her own. They were dirty,
and she washed them ; they had been ill-used, and she treated them
with motherly tenderness. In her own modest language, she "made
them look a little more human." "In fact," says Dennis Hanks,
"in a few weeks all had changed; and where everything was want
ing, now all was snug and comfortable. She was a woman of great
energy, of remarkable good sense, very industrious and saving, and
also very neat and tidy in her person and manners, and knew
exactly how to manage children. She took an especial liking
to young Abe. Her love for him was warmly returned, and
continued to the day of his death. But few children love their
parents as he loved his stepmother. She soon dressed him up in
entire new clothes, and from that time on he appeared to lead a
new life. He was encouraged by her to study, and any wish on
his part was gratified when it could be done. The two sets of chil
dren got along finely together, as if they had all been the children
of the same parents."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 30,
"Corn Dodgers and Common Doings"
The family consisted now of his father and stepmother, his
sister Sarah, sometimes called Nancy, the three children of his
stepmother, and himself. The name of Mrs. Johnston's chUdren
were John, Sarah and Matilda. They all went to school together,
sometimes walking four or five miles, and taking with them, for
their dinner, cakes made of the coarse meal of the Indian corn
(maize) and known as "corn dodgers." The settlers used the
phrase "corn dodgers and common doings," to indicate ordinary
fare, as distinguished from the luxury of "white bread and chicken
fixings. " In these years Abe wore a cap made from the skin of the

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 41
coon or squirrel, buckskin breeches, a hunting shirt of deerskin, or a
linsey-woplsey shirt, and \ery coarse cowhide shoes. His food was
• the "corn dodger" and the game of the forests and prairies. The
tools he most constantly used were the ax, the maul, the hoe and
the plough. His life was one of constant and hard manual labor.
Tlie Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 22.
Turkey-Buzzard Pens, Briar-Root Ink, and Webster's Speller
As to the material with which the boy learned to write, " Uncle "
Dennis says: "Sometimes he would write -with a piece of charcoal,
or the p'int of a burnt stick, on the fence or floor. We got a little
paper at the country town, and I made ink out of blackberry briar-
root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas
¦would eat the paper after a while. I made his first pen out of a
turkey-buzzard feather. We had no geese them days. After he
learned to write he was scratchin ' his name everywhere ; sometimes
he would write it on the white sand down by the crick bank, and
leave it till the waves would blot it out.
"His first reading book was Webster's Speller. Then he got
hold of a book — I can't rikkilect the name. It told a yarn about
a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a fiatboat up to a rock, and
the rock was magnetized and drawed the nails out of his boat, an '
he got a duckin, ' or drownded, or suthin', I forget now. " (It was
the " Arabian Nights. ") "Abe would lay on the floor with a chair
under his head, and laugh over them stories by the hour. I told
him they was likely lies from end to end; but he learned to read
right well in them."
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page 32.
At Hazel Dorsey's School
Hazel Dorsey was Abe's first teacher in Indiana. He held
forth a mile and a half from the Lincoln farm. The school-house
was built of round logs, and was just high enough for a man to
stand erect under the loft. The fioor was of split logs, or what were
called puncheons. The chimney was made of poles and clay ; and
the windows were made by cutting out parts of two logs, placing
pieces of split boards a proper distance apart, and over the aperture
thus formed pasting pieces of greased paper to admit light. At
school Abe e-vinced ability enough to gain him a prominent place in

42 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the respect of the teacher and the affections of his fellow-scholars.
Elements of leadership in him seem to have manifested themselves
already. Nathaniel Grigsby — whose brother, Aaron, afterwards.'
married Abe's sister Sarah — attended the same school. He certi
fies to Abe's proficiency and worth in glowing terms.
"He was always at school early," writes Grigsby, "and
attended to his studies. He was always at the head of his class,
and passed us rapidly in his studies. He lost no time at home, and
when he was not at work was at his books. He kept up his studies
on Sunday, and carried his books with him to work, so that he might
read when he rested from labor." Now and then, the family
exchequer running low, it would be found necessary for the young
rail-splitter to stop school, and either work -with his father on the
farm, or render like service for the neighbors. These periods of
work occurred so often and continued so long, that all his school
days added together would not make a year.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, page 31.
"No, Common Boy"
Nearly a year more passed. The sermon by Parson Elkins
ceased to be a theme of conversation among the settlers. Abraham .
had continued to assist his father, and devote his leisure moments ¦'
to reading and writing. Time that other boys would spend in play
he employed in poring over books. If he had no new ones to
peruse he read old ones.
The long period of loneliness that had elapsed since his
mother's death served to make him doubly value the presence of
one who would fill her place well. He did not receive her as a
stranger. He did not cherish the least suspicion that she would
prove otherwise than a loving parent. He gave her his confidence
at once, and she bestowed on him such care and tender regard as
only a thoughtful, pious and faithful mother would. A mutual good.|
understanding and affection sprang up between them, and it was'*
never interrupted.
His new mother saw at once that he was no common boy.
She was struck with his intelligence, knowledge and uprightness. '.
She had never seen his like.
About this time, among the families that came into that region
to settie, was that of Mr. Andrew Crawford. He was a man of

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA

43

more culture than most of the settlers, and was able to teach read
ing, writing, and arithmetic as far as the "rule of three." His abil
ities becoming known, he was urged to open a school 
' ' Another chance for you to go to school. ' '
"Where?" "That man Crawford, that moved in a while ago, will begin
school next week, . . . and two miles will be just far enough
for you to walk to keep your legs limber. ' '
Thus was the way opened for Abraham to attend school again.
The Pioneer Boy, William M. Thayer, page 154.
"Manners" and Spelling
Abraham began his irregular attendance at the nearest school
very soon after he fell under the care of the second Mrs. Lincoln.
It was probably in the win
ter of 1819-20, she having
come out in December, 1819.
It has been seen that
was as much impressed
his mental precocity
by the good qualities of
heart. . .
The next teacher was An
drew Crawford. Mrs. Gentry
says he began as pedagogue
in the neighborhood in the
-winter of 1822-3, whilst most
of his other scholars are un
able to fix the exact date.
He " kept" in the same little
schoolhouse which had been the scene
the -windows were still adorned with the greased leaves of old
copybooks that had come down from Dorsey's time. Abe was now
in his fifteenth year, and began to exhibit symptoms of gallantry
toward the weaker sex, as we shall presently discover. He was
gro-wing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full
height of six feet four inches. He was long, -wiry and strong;
whUe his big feet and hands, and the length of his legs and arms,
were out of all proportion to his small trunk and head. His com-

Sarah Bush Lincoln, Abraham's stepmother.
the scene of Dorsey's labors, and

44 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

plexion was very swarthy, and Mrs. Gentry says that his skin was
shriveled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin
breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of an
opossum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs,
but failed by a large space to meet the top of his shoes. Twelve
inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much of " shin-bone, :
sharp, blue and narrow. " " He would always come to school thus,
good-humoredly and laughing," says his old friend, Nat Grigsby.
" He was always in good health, never was sick, had an excellent
constitution. "
Crawford taught "manners. " This was a feature of back
woods education to which Dorsey had not aspired, and Crawford
had doubtless introduced it as a refinement which would put to
shame the humbler efforts of his predecessor. One of the scholars
was required to retire, and re-enter as a polite gentleman is supposed
to enter a drawing-room. He was received at the door by another
scholar, and conducted from bench to bench, until he had been intro
duced to all the "young ladies and gentlemen" in the room. Abe
went through the ordeal countless times. If he took a serious view
of the business, it must have put him to exquisite torture; for he
was conscious that he was not a perfect type of manly beauty, -with
his long legs and blue shins, his small head, his great ears, and
shriveled skin. If, however, it struck him as at all funny, it must
have filled him with unspeakable mirth, and given rise to many
antics, tricks and sly jokes, as he was gravely led about, shame
faced and gawky, under the very eye of the precise Crawford,
to be introduced to the boys and girls of his most ancient
acquaintance. But, though Crawford inculcated manners, he by no means
neglected spelUng. Abe was a good speller, and liked to use his
knowledge, not only to secure honors for himself, but to help his
less fortunate schoolmates out of their troubles, and he was exceed
ingly ingenious in the selection of expedients for conveying pro
hibited hints.. One day Crawford gave out the difficult word '^defied.
A large class was on the fioor, but they all provokingly failed to
spell It. p-e-f-i-d-e, said one; d-e-f-y-d-e, said another; d-e-f-y-d,
d-e-f-y-e-d, cned another and another. But it was all wrong;
It w^ shame ul, that among aU these big boys and girls, nobody
could spell defied;" and Crawford's wrath gathered in clouds

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 45
over his terrible brow. He made the helpless culprits shake with
fear. He declared he would keep the whole class in all day and
all night, if "defied'-' was not spelled. There was among them a
Miss Roby, a girl fifteen years of age, whom we must suppose to
have been pretty, for Abe was evidently half in love -with her. " I
saw Lincoln at the -window," says she. "He had his finger in his
eye, and a smile on his face ; I instantly took the hint, that I must
change the letter y into an i. Hence I spelled the word, —
the class let out. I felt grateful to Lincoln for this simple
thing."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 33.
"I Hung on It and It Broke"
In 1823 Abraham Lincoln went briefiy to Crawford's school,
a log house, pleasing the teacher by his attention to the simple
course. The boy had read but a small library, principally " Weems'
Life of Washington, " which had impressed him deeply. This is
shown by Andrew Crawford, the Spencer County pedagogue. The
latter saw that a buck's head, nailed on the schoolhouse, was
broken in one horn, and asked the scholars who among them
broke it.
"I did it," answered young Lincoln promptly. "I did
not mean to do it, but I hung on it" — he was very tall and
reached it too easily — "and it broke!" Though lean, he
weighed fairly. " I wouldn't have done it if I had thought it
would break. ' '
Other boys of that class would have tried to conceal what they
did and would not have owned up until obliged to do so.
The Lincoln Story Book, Henry L. Williams, page g.
Some Schoolboy Rhymes
While at school it is doubtful if he was able to own an arithmetic.
His stepmother was unable to remember his ever having owned one.
She gave me, however, a few leaves from a book made and bound
by Abe, in which he had entered, in a large, bold hand, the tables
¦of weights and measures, and the "sums" to be worked out in
illustration of each table. Where the arithmetic was obtained I
could not learn. On one of the pages which the old lady gave me.

46

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

and just
underneath
the table
which tells
how many
pints there
are in a
bushel, the
f ac etious
young stu
dent had
scrawled
these four
lines of school
boy doggerel:
Abraham Lin
coln,
His hand and
pen.
He will be good,
But God knows
when.
On another
page were
found, in his
own hand, a
few lines
which it is
also said he
compos ed.
Nothing indi
cates that
they were
borrowed,
and I h a 'V e
always, there
fore, believed that they were original with him. Although a little'
irregular m metre, the sentiment would, I think, do credit to
an older head :

n-

- ^-
- ;-

7
-3

,1-

-0-

-'I

n-

2.-

' 1

A leaf from Abe's exercise book showing the '
doggerel."

' four lines of schoolboy

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 47
Time, what an empty vapor 'tis,
And days how swift they are :
Swift as an Indian arrow —
Fly on like a shooting star.
The present moment just is here.
Then slides away in haste,
That we can never say they're ours.
But only say they're past.
His penmanship, after some practice, became so regular in form
that it excited the admiration of other and younger boys. One of
the latter, Joseph C. Richardson, said that "Abe Lincoln was the
best penman in the neighborhood. " At Richardson's request he
made some copies for practice. During my visit to Indiana I met
Richardson, who showed these two lines, which Abe had prepared
for him : Good boys who to their books apply
Will all be great men by and by.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndori and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 37.
Writes and "Preaches" Against Cruelty to Animals
While in Crawford's school, the lad made his first essay in
writing compositions. The exercise was not required by the teacher,
but "he took it up on his own account, " as Nat Grigsby has said.
He first wrote short sentences against " cruelty to animals, " and at
last came forward with a regular composition on the subject. He
was very much annoyed and pained by the conduct of the boys,
who were in the habit of catching terrapins and putting coals of
fire on their backs. "He would chide us," says Nat, "tell us it
was wrong, and would write against it. "
One day his stepbrxjther, John Johnston, "caught a terrapin,
and brought it to the place where Abe was 'preaching, ' threw it
against the tree, and crushed the shell. It suffered much, quivered
all over. Abe then preached against cruelty to animals, contending
that an ant's life was as sweet to it as ours to us. "
Nat Grigsby and Matilda Johnston, as quoted by F. F. Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham
Lincoln, pages 65 and 72.
"Abe Was a 'Mother's Boy' "
As far as food and clothing were concerned, the boy had plenty
 "such as it was — corn dodgers, bacon, and game, some fish and

48

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

wild fruits. We had very little wheat flour. The nearest
mill was eighteen miles. A boss mill it was, with a plug [old horse]
puUin ' a beam around ; and Abe used to say his dog could stand and
eat the flour as fast as it was made, and then be ready for supper.
For clothing he had jeans. He was grown before he wore all-wool
pants. It was a new country, and he was a raw boy, rather a bright
and Ukely lad ; but the big world seemed far ahead of him. We were
all slow-goin ' folks. But he had the stuff of greatness in him. He
got his rare sense and sterling principles from both parents. . .
But Abe's kindUness, humor, love of humanity, hatred of slavery,
all came from his mother. I am free to say Abe was a 'mother's
boy.' "
Dennis Hanks, as quoted by F. F. Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, page 54.
"The Best Boy I Ever Saw"
His \'oracity for anything printed was insatiable. He would
sit in the twilight and read a dictionary as long as he could see. He
used to go to David Turnham's, the town constable, and devour the
"Revised Statutes of Indiana, " as boys in our day do the "Three
Guardsmen." Of the books he did not own he took voluminous
notes, filling his copy-book with choice extracts, and poring over
them until they were fixed in his memory. He wrought
his appointed tasks ungrudgingly, though without enthusiasm;
but when his employer's day was over, his own began.
John Hanks says : " When Abe and I returned to the house from
work he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread,
take down a book, sit down, cock his legs up as high as his head, and
read." The picture may be lacking in grace, but its truthfulness
is beyond question. The habit remained 'with him always. Some
of his greatest work in later years was done in this grotesque Wes
tern fashion, — "sitting on his shoulder-blades." . .
Mrs. Lincoln, not long before her death, gave striking testimony
of his winning and loyal character. She said to Mr. Herndon;
"I can say, w^hat scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, Abe
never ga\'e me a cross word or look, and never refused in fact or
appearance to do anything I asked him. His mind and mine—
what little I had— 'seemed to run together. I had a son
John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys, but I must

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 49
say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or
expect to see. "
Abraham Lincoln: .4 History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 35.
How, What and When He Read
With all his hard living and hard work, Lincoln was getting,
in this period, a desultory kind of education. Not that he received
much schooling. He went to school " by littles, " he says ; "in all it
did not amount to more than a year. " And, if we accept his own
description of the teachers, it was, perhaps, just as well that it was
only " by littles. " No qualification was required of a teacher beyond
"readin', writin', and ciphering to the rule of three." If a
straggler supposed to know Latin happened to sojourn in the neigh
borhood, he was looked upon as a " wizard. " But more or less of a
schoolroom is a matter of small importance if a boy has learned to
read and to think of what he reads. And that, this boy had learned.
His stock of books was small, but he knew them thoroughly, and
they were good books to know : the Bible, "^sop's Fables," "Robin
son Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," a "History of the
United States, " Weems's " Life of Washington, " and the " Statutes
of Indiana. "
Besides these books he borrowed many others. He once told
a friend that he " read through every book he had ever heard of in
that country, for a circuit of fifty miles. " From everything he read
he made long extracts, -with his turkey-buzzard pen and briar-root
ink. When he had no paper he would write on a board, and thus
preserve his selections until he secured a copybook. The wooden
fire-shovel was his usual slate, and on its back he ciphered with a
charred stick, shaving it off when it became too grimy for use. The
logs and boards in his vicinity he covered with his figures and quota
tions. By night he read and worked as long as there was light, and
he kept a book in a crack of the logs in his loft, to have it at hand at
peep of day. When acting as ferryman on the Ohio, in his nine
teenth year, anxious, no doubt, to get through the books of the
house where he boarded, before he left the place, he read every
night until midnight.
Every lull in his daily labor he used for reading, rarely going to
his work without a book. When ploughing or cultivating the rough

JO THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

fields of Spencer County, he found frequently a half hour for read
ing, for at the end of every long row the horse was allowed to rest,
and Lincoln had his book out and was perched on stump or fence,
almost as soon as the plough had come to a standstill. One of the
few people still left in Gentryville, who remembers Lincoln, Captain
John Lamar, tells to this day of riding to mill with his father, and
seeing, as they drove along, a boy sitting on the top rail of an old-
fashioned stake-and-rider or worm fence, reading so intently that he
did not notice their approach. His father turning to him, said:
"John, look at that boy yonder, and mark my words, he -will make
a smart man out of himself. I may not see it, but you'll see if my
words don't come true. " " That boy was Abraham Lincoln, " adds
Mr. Lamar impressively.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 29.

Lincoln Tells of His First Love Story
" Did you ever write out a story in your mind ? I did when I was
a little codger. One day a wagon with a lady and two girls and a
man broke down near us, and while they were fixing up, they cooked
in our kitchen. The woman had books and read us stories, and they
were the first of the kind I ever had heard. I took a great fancy to
one of the girls ; and when they were gone I thought of her a great
deal, and one day when I was sitting out in the sun by the house I
wrote out a story in my mind. I thought I took my father's horse
and followed the wagon, and finally I found it, and they were sur
prised to see me. I talked with the girl and persuaded her to elope
with me ; and that night I put her on my horse, and we started off
across the prairie. After several hours we came to a camp; and
when we rode up we found it was the one we left a few hours before,
and we went in. The next night we tried again, and the same thing
happened — the horse came back to the same place; and then we
concluded that we ought not to elope. I stayed until I had per
suaded her father to give her to me. I always meant to write that
story out and pubUsh it, and I began once ; but I concluded it was
not much of a story. But I think that was the beginning of love
with me. "
From an old Scrap-book.

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 51
Pioneer Superstitions
The minds of these people were filled with superstition.
If a dog ran directly across a man's path while he was hunting, it
was terrible " luck, " unless he hooked his two little fingers together,
and pulled with all his might, until the dog was out of sight. There
were wizards who took charmed twigs in their hands, and made them
point to springs of water, and all kinds of treasure, beneath the
earth's surface. There were "faith doctors," who cured diseases
by performing mysterious ceremonies and muttering cabalistic
words. If a bird alighted in a window, one of the family would
speedily die. If a horse breathed on a child, the child would have
the whooping-cough.. Everything must be done at certain times
and seasons, else it would be attended with "bad luck." They
must cut trees for rails in the early part of the day, and in " the light
of the moon ; " otherwise the fence would sink. Potatoes and other
roots were to be planted in the " dark of the moon, " but trees and
plants which bore their fruits above ground, must be "put out in
the light of the moon. " . It was even required to make
soap "in the light of the moon, " and, moreover, it must be stirred
only one way, and by one person. Nothing of importance was to
be begun on Friday and animals treated otherwise than
" according to the signs in the almanac" were nearly sure to die.
Such were the people among whom Abe grew to manhood.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 44.
How He Came to Own Weems's "Washington"
Among those -v^^hom Lincoln served in Indiana as "hired boy"
was Josiah Crawford, a well-to-do farmer Uving near Gentryville.
Mr. Crawford owned a copy of Weems's "Life of Washington," a
precious book in those days, and Lincoln borrowed it to read.
" Late in the night, before going to bed, he placed the borrowed
book in his only bookcase, the opening between two logs of the
walls of the cabin, and retired to dream of its contents. During
the night it rained; the water dripping over the 'mud-daubing'
on to the book, stained the leaves and warped the binding. Abe
valued the book in proportion to the interest he had in the hero,
and felt that the owner must value it beyond hi^ ability to pay.

52

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

It was with the greatest trepidation he took the book home and told
the story, and asked how he might hope to make restitution. Mr.
Crawford answered : ' Being as it is you,
Abe, I won't be hard on you. Come over
and shuck corn three days, and the book
is yours. ' Shuck corn three days and
receive a hero's hfe! He felt that the
owner was giving him a magnificent pres
ent. After reading the book he used to
tell the Crawf ords : ' I do not always in
tend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split
rails, and the like.' His whole mind was
devoted to books, and he declared he
was 'going to fit himself for a profession. '
These declarations were often made to
Mrs. Crawford, who took almost a mother's
interest in him, and she would ask: 'What do you want to be now?'
His answer was invariably : 'I'll be President. ' As he was generally
playing a joke on someone, she would answer: 'You'd make a
purty President with all your tricks and jokes, now, wouldn't
you?' He would then declare: 'Oh, I'll study and get ready, and
then the chance will come.'"
"A Hoosier" in The Early Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 62.

JOSIAH CRAWFORD
("Old Blue-Nose")
With whom Abe and his sister lived
as hired man and maid-of-all-work.

"Bounding" an Idea— "North, South, East and West"
All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clearness
in argument. " When he appeared in company, " says Nat Grigsby,
' 'the boys would gather and cluster aroimd him to hear him talk.
Mr. Lincoln was figurative in his speech, talks and conversation. He
argued much from analogy, and explained things hard for us to
understand, by stories, maxims, tales and figures. He would almost
always point his lesson or idea by some story that was plain and
near us, that we might instantly see the force and bearing of what
he said. " This ability to explain clearly and to illustrate by simple
figures of speech must be counted as the great mental acquirement
of Lincoln's boyhood. It was a power which he gained by hard
labor. Years later he related his experience to an acquaintance who
had been surprised by the lucidity and simpUcity of his speeches
and who had asked where he was educated.

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA si
" I never went to school more than six months in my life, " -he
said, "out I can say this: that among my earUest recollections I
remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when any
body talked to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think
I ever got angry at anything else in my life; but that always dis
turbed my temper ; and has ever since. I can remember going to
my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening
with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up
and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of
some of their, to me, dark sayings.
" I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt
for an idea until I had caught it ; and when I thought I had got it,
I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over ; tmtil I had
put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to
comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck
by me ; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought,
till I have bounded it north, and bounded it south, and bounded it
east, and bounded it west. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell. Vol. I. page 43.
Knocked Down for Being " Forward "
Thomas Lincoln loved his children, but he had a Spartan way
of concealing the fact — especially toward his son. He considered the
time wasted that Abe spent in study. It was a sign of "laziness. "
It was through the stepmother's influence with his father that Abe
was permitted to read as much as he did. The boy had such a
thirst for knowledge that it is doubtful if his father could have
prevented Abe's reading if he had tried harder to stop it.
Though bashful with women, Abraham was free and easy -with
those of his own sex. Dennis Hanks tells that Abe was always
ready with an answer, whether addressed or not. Sometimes he
would engage in long discussions with passing strangers. His
father had doubtless heard of his wasting his employers ' time and
hindering the other help by telling stories and making speeches.
Thomas Lincoln naturaUy felt called upon to discourage this "for
ward" spirit, for Dennis relates that his father once knocked Abe
down off the fence which he had mounted to answer the question

54 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

of a passer-by. Thomas Lincoln did not live to see his son achieve
much more than local renown.
Part of a Clipping from a Scrap-book. Sports and Amusements
Of course the boys hunted. Not that Abraham ever became a
true sportsman; indeed, he seems to have lacked the genuine
sporting instinct. In a curious autobiography, written entirely in
the third person, which Mr. Lincoln prepared at the request of a
friend in i860, he says of his exploits as a hunter:
"A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the
absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new
log cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot
through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled
the trigger on any larger game. ' '
But there were many other country sports which he enjoyed to
the full. He went swimming in the evenings, fished with the other
boys in Pigeon Creek, and caught chubs and suckers enough to
delight any boy ; he wrestled and jumped and ran races at the noon
rests. He was present at every country horse-race and fox-chase.
The sports he preferred were those that brought men together:
the spelling-school, the husking-bee, the "raising;" and of all these
he was the life by his wit, his stories, his good nature, his doggerel
verses, his practical jokes, and by a rough kind of politeness.
Mrs. Crawford, at whose home he worked some time, declared that
he always lifted his hat and bowed when he made his appearance.
There was, of course, a rough gallantry among the young people;
and Lincoln's old friends in Indiana have left many tales of how
he " went to see the girls, " of how he brought in the biggest backlog
and made the brightest fire ; then of how the young people, sitting
around it, watching the way the sparks fiew, told their fortunes. He
helped pare apples, shell corn, and crack nuts. He took the girls
to meeting and to spelling-school, though he was not often allowed
to take part in the spelUng match, for the one who "chose first"
always chose "Abe Lincoln, " and that was equivalent to winning,
as the others knew that " he would stand up the longest. "
The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 89.

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 55
An Interrupted Sentence
No feature of his backwoods life pleased Abe so well as going
to mill. It released him from a day's work in the woods, besides
affording him a much desired opportunity to watch the movement
of the mill's primitive and cumbersome machinery. It was on
many of these trips that David Turnham accompanied him. In
later years Mr. Lincoln related the following reminiscence of his
experience as a miller in Indiana. One day, taking a bag of corn,
he mounted the old flea-bitten gray mare and rode leisurely to
Gordon's mill. Arriving somewhat late, his turn did not come till
almost sundown. In obedience to the usual custom requiring each
man to furnish his own power he hitched the old mare to the arm,
and as the animal moved around, the machinery responded with
equal speed. Abe was mounted on the arm, and at frequent inter
vals made use of his whip to urge the animal on to better speed.
With a careless "Get up, you old hussy," he applied the lash at
each revolution of the arm. In the midst of the exclamation, or
just as half of it had escaped through his teeth, the old jade, resent
ing the continued use of the goad, elevated her shoeless hoof and,
striking the young engineer in the forehead, sent him sprawling to
the earth. Miller Gordon hurried in, picked up the bleeding,
senseless boy, whom he took for dead, and at once sent for his father.
Old Thomas Lincoln came — came as soon as embodied listlessness
could move — loaded the lifeless boy in a wagon and drove home.
Abe lay unconscious all night, but towards break of day the atten
dants noticed signs of returning consciousness. The blood begin
ning to flow normally, his tongue struggled to loose itself, his-frame
jerked for an instant, and he awoke, blurting out the words, "you
old hussy I" or the latter half of the sentence interrupted by the
mare's heel at the mill.
Mr. Lincoln considered this one of the remarkable incidents of
his life. He often referred to it, and we had many discussions in
our law office over the psychological phenomena involved in the
. operation. Without expressing my own views I may say that his
idea was that the latter half of the expression, "Get up, you old
hussy," was cut off by a suspension of the normal flow of his
mental energy, and that as soon as life's forces returned he uncon
sciously ended the sentence ; or, as he in plainer figure put it : "Just

56 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

before I struck the old mare my will through the mind had set the
muscles nf m>' tongue to utter the expression, and when her heels
came in contact with my head the whole thing stopped half-cocked,
as it were, and was only fired off when mental energy or force
returned.' '
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page so.
Influences and Impressions
The only outside infiuence which directed and stimulated him
in these ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from
his stepmother. These two ^vomen, both of them of unusual
earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or the other of them
at his side throughout his youth and young manhood. The ideal
they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that
if a boy is upright and industrious he may aspire to any place 'within
the gift of the country. The boy's instinct told him they were
right. Everything he read confirmed their teachings, and he culti
vated, in every way open to him, his passion to know and be some
thing. His zeal in study, his ambition to excel made their impres
sion on his acquaintances. Even then they pointed him out as a
boy who would "make something" of himself. In 1865, thirty-
five years after he left Gentryville, Wm. H. Herndon, for many
years a law partner of Lincoln, anxious to save all that was known
of Lincoln in Indiana, went among his old associates, and with a
sincerity and thoroughness worthy of grateful respect, interviewed
them. At that time there were still living numbers of the people
with whom Lincoln had been brought up. They all remembered
something of him. It is curious to note that all these people tell of
his doing something different from what other boys did, something
sufficiently superior to have made a keen impression upon them.
In almost every case each person had his own special reason for
admiring Lincoln. A facility in making rhymes and writing essays
was the admiration of many, who consid'ered it the more remarkable
because " essays and poetry were not taught in school. "
Many others were struck by the clever application he made
of this gift for expression. At one period he was employed as
a "hand" by a farmer who treated him unfairly. Lincoln took a
revenge unheard of in Gentryville. He wrote doggerel rhymes
about his employer's nose— a long and crooked feature about which

.hiMtktifi^

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 57
the O'wner was very sensitive. The 'wit he showed in taking revenge
for a social slight by a satire on the Grigsbys, who had failed to
invite him to a wedding, made a lasting impression in Gentryville.
That he should write so well as to be able to humiliate his enemies
more deeply than if he had resorted to the method of taking revenge
current in the country, and thrashed them, seemed to his friends a
mark of surprising superiority.
Very many of his old neighbors recalled his reading habits and
how well stored his mind was with information. His explanations
of natural phenomena were so familiar to his companions that he
sometimes was jeered at for them, though as a rule his listeners were
sympathetic, taking a certain pride in the fact that one of their
number knew as much as Lincoln did. " He was better read than
the world knows or is likely to know exactly, " said one old acquaint
ance. " He often and often commented or talked to me about what
he had read — seemed to read it out of the took as he went along —
did so with others. He was the learned boy among us unlearned
folks. He took great- pains to explain ; could do it so simply. He
was diffident, then, too. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 40.
Hired Man Where His Sister Was Maid-of-AU-Work
The Crawford family was rich in the possession of several books,
which Abe read through time and again, according to his usual
custom. One of them was the " Kentucky Preceptor, " from which
Mrs. Crawford insists that he " learned his school orations, speeches,
and pieces to write. " She tells us also that "Abe was a sensitive
lad, never coming where he was not wanted ; " . and that
" he was tender and kind, " like his sister, who was at the same time
her maid-of-all-work. It is likely that Abe was reconciled to his situation in this
family by the presence of his sister, and the opportunity it gave him
of being in the company of Mrs. Crawford, for whom he had a
genuine attachment. . After meals he " hung about, "
lingered long to gossip and joke with the women ; and these pleasant,
stolen confidences were generally broken up with the exclamation,
" Wellj this won't buy the child a coat!" and the long-legged
hired boy would stride away to join his master.
In the meantime Abe had become, not only the longest, but

58

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the strongest, man in the settlement. Some of his feats almost
surpass belief, and those who beheld them with their own eyes stood
literally amazed. Richardson, a neighbor, declares that he could
carry a load to which the strength of ''three ordinary men" would
scarcely be equal. He saw him quietly pick up and walk away with
"a chicken house, made up of poles pinned together, and covered,
that 'weighed at least six hundred, if not much more. " At another
time the Richardsons were building a corn-crib; Abe was there,
and, seeing three or four men preparing "sticks" upon which to
carry some huge posts, he relieved them of all further trouble by

THE CRAWFORD FARM-HOUSE
Abe did not like Josiah Crawford, ("Old Blue Nose,") but he "was reconcUed to his situation
m this family by the presence of his sister."
shouldering the posts, single-handed, and walking away -with them
to the place where they were wanted. " He could strike with a
maul, "'says old Mr. Wood, " a heavier blow than any man.
He could sink an ax deeper into wood than any man I ever saw. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 50.
From Ferryman to Butcher
-^ In 1825 Abraham was employed by James Taylor, who lived at
the mouth of Anderson's Creek. He was paid six dollars a month,

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 59
and remained for nine months. His principal business was the
management of a ferry-boat which Mr. Taylor had plying across
the Ohio, as well as Anderson's Creek. But, in addition to this, he
was required to do all sorts of farm-work, and even to perform some
menial services about the house. He was hostler, ploughman
and ferryman out of doors, and man-of -all-work 'within doors. He
ground corn with a hand-mill, or " grated" it when too young to be
ground; rose early, built fires, put on the water in the kitchen,
"fixed arotmd generally," and had things prepared for cooking
before the mistress of the house was stirring. He slept upstairs
'with young Green Taylor, who says that he usually read "till near
midnight, " not'withstanding the necessity for being out of his bed
before day. Green was somewhat disposed to ill-use the poor hired
boy, and once struck him -with an ear of hard corn, and cut a deep
gash over his eye. He makes no comment upon this ungenerous
act, except that " Abe got mad, " but did not thrash him.
Abe was a hand much in demand in " hog-killing,time. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 49.
One day, on being asked to kill a hog, he replied like the Irish- ,
man -with the violin, " that he had never done it, but he would try. "
" If you will risk the hog, " he said, " I will risk myself ! "
Becoming hog-slaughterer added this branch occupation to the
many of "the man-of -all -work. " Taylor sub-let him out in this
capacity for thirty cents a day, saying :
" Abe -will do one thing about as well as another. "
The Lincoln Story Book, Henry L. Williams, page 1 2 ,
A Feat of Mercy and Strength
John Baldwin, the blacksmith, was one of Abe's special friends
from his boyhood onward. Bald-win was a story-teller and a joker
of rare accompUshments ; and Abe, when a . . little feUow, would
sUp off to his shop and sit and listen to him by the hour. As he
grew up, the practice continued as of old, except that i\.be soon
began to exchange anecdotes with his clever friend at the anvil.
Dennis Hanks says Baldwin was his "particular friend," and that
" Abe spent a great deal of his leisure time with him. " Statesmen,
plenipotentiaries, famous commanders, have many times made the
White House at Washington ring with their laughter over the quaint

6o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

tales of John Baldwin, the blacksmith, deUvered second-hand by
his inimitable friend Lincoln.
Abe and Dave Turnham had one day been threshing wheat,—
probably for Turnham's father,— and concluded to spend the eve
ning at Gentryville. They lingered there until late in the night,
when, wending their way along the road toward Lincoln's cabin,
they espied something resembling a man lying dead or insensible
by the side of a mud-puddle. They roUeei the sleeper over, and
found in him an old and quite respectable acquaintance, hopelessly
drunk. All efforts failed to rouse him to any exertion on his o'wn
behalf. Abe's companions were disposed to let him lie in the bed
he had made for himself; but, as the night was cold and dreary, he
must have frozen to death had this inhuman proposition been
equally agreeable to everybody present. To Abe it seemed utterly
monstrous ; and, seeing he was to have no help, he bent his mighty
frame, and, taking the big man in his long arms, carried him a great
distance to Dennis Hanks's cabin. There he built a fire, warmed|;»
rubbed, and nursed him through the entire night, — his companion^
of the road having left him alone in his merciful task. The vasM;.
often told John Hanks that it was "mighty clever in Abe to tote
me to a warm fire that cold night, " and was very sure that Abe's
strength and benevolence had saved his life.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page S7- i-
How the Lad Worked and Studied <¦'
It will always be a matter of wonder. . that, from such
restricted and unpromising opportunities in early life, Mr. Lincoln
grew into the great man he was. The foundation of his education',;
was laid in Indiana . [where] he gave evidence of a nature
and characteristics that distinguished him from every associate
and surrounding he had. He was not peculiar or eccentric, and
yet a shrewd observer would have seen that he was decidedly -\
unique and original. Although imbued with a marked disUke for
manual labor, it cannot be truthfully said of him that he was indo
lent. From a mental standpoint he was one of the most energetic
young men of his day. He dwelt altogether in the land of thought.
His deep meditation and abstraction easily induced the belief among
his horny-handed companions that he was lazy. In fact, a neighbor,
John Romine, makes that charge.

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA

6i

"He worked for me," testifies the latter, "but was always
reading and thinking. I used to get mad at him for it. I say he
was a'wful lazy. He would laugh and talk^crack his jokes and
tell stories all the time; didn't love work half as much as his pay.
He said to me one day that his father taught him to work; but
he never taught him to love it."
His chief delight during the day, if unmolested, was to lie down
under the shade of some inviting tree to read" and study. At night.

Lying on his stomach in front of the open fireplace.
lying on his stomach in front of the open fireplace, with a piece of
charcoal he would cipher on a broad wooden shovel. When the
latter was covered over on both sides he would take his father's
dr a'wing-knif e or plane and shave it off clean, ready for a fresh supply
of inscriptions the next day. He often moved about the cabin 'with
a piece of chalk, writing and ciphering on boards and the flat sides

62 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

of hewn logs. When every bare wooden surface had been filled
with his letters and ciphers he would erase them and begin anew.
Thus it was always ; and the boy whom dull old Thomas Lincoln and
rustic John Romine conceived to be lazy was in reality the most
tireless worker in all the region around Gentryville. His step
mother told me he devoured everything in the book line within his
reach. If in his reading he came across anything that pleased his
fancy, he entered it down in a copy-book — a sort of repository in
which he was wont to store everything worthy of preservation.
" Frequently, " relates his stepmother, " he had no paper to write
his pieces down on. Then he would put them in chalk on a board
or plank, sometimes only making a few signs of what he intended to
write. When he got paper he would copy them, always bringing'
them to me and reading them. He would ask my opinion to
what he had read, and often explained things to me in his plain
language. "
He kept the Bible and "^sop's Fables" always within reach,,
and read them over and over again. These two volumes furnished
him with the many figures of speech and parables which he used,
with such happy effect in his later and public utterances.
No one had a more retentive memory. If he read or heard a
good thing it never escaped him. His powers of concentration were
intense. His thoughtful and investigating mind dug down
after ideas, and never stopped till bottom facts were reached. With
such a mental equipment the day was destined to come when the
world would need the services of his intellect and heart. That he.
was equal to the great task when the demand came is but another
striking proof of the grandeur of his character.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 38.
President Lincoln's Story of His First Dollar
Note.— This oft-told story can not be exactly as Lincoln related it, for the family never raised
produce enough to take down the river to sell. — W. W.
" Seward, " he said, " did you ever hear how I earned my first
dollar?" "No," I replied.
"Well," repUed he, "I was about eighteen years of age, and
belonged, as you know, to what they called down South the 'scrubs';
people who do not own land and slaves, and are nobody there; but
we had succeeded in raising, chiefiy by my labor, sufficient produce,

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 63
as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell. After
much persuasion I had got the consent of my mother to go, and had
constructed a flatboat large enough to take the few barrels of things
we had gathered to New Orleans. A steamer was going down the
river. We have, you know, no wharves on the western streams,
and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the landings they
were to go out in a boat, the steamer stopping, and taking them on
board. I was contemplating my new boat, and wondering whether
I could make it stronger or improve it in any part, when two men
¦with trunks came down to the shore in carriages, and looking at the
different boats, singled out mine, and asked, 'Who owns this?' I
answered modestly, 'I do. ' 'Will you, ' said one of them, 'take us
and our trunks out to the steamer?' 'Certainly,' said I. I was
very glad to have the chance of earning something, and supposed
that both of them would give me a couple of 'bits. ' The trunks
were put in my boat, the passengers seated themselves on them,
and I sculled them out to the steamer. They got on board, and I
lifted the trunks and put them on the deck. The steamer was about
to put on steam again, when I called out, 'You have forgotten to pay
me. ' Each of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar and
threw it on the bottom of my boat. I could scarcely believe my eyes
as I picked up the money. You may think it was a very little
thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most
important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the
poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day: that by honest
work I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful
boy from that time. "
Abraham Lincoln, His Life and Public Services, Mrs. P. A. Hanaford, page 156,
Early Death of Lincoln's Sister
Abraham's sister Nancy, or Sarah, as she was sometimes
called, was warmly attached to her brother. " It is said that her
face somewhat resembled his. In repose it had the gravity 'which
they both, perhaps, inherited from their mother, but it was capable
of being lighted almost into beauty by one of Abe's ridiculous
stories or rapturous sallies, of humor. She was a modest, plain,
industrious girl, and is kindly remembered by all who knew her.
She was married to Aaron Grigsby at eighteen, and died a year
after. Like Abe, she occasionally worked out at the houses of the

64 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

neighbors. She Ues buried, not with her mother, but in the yard
of the old Pigeon Creek Meeting-house. "
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page 7 1 .
Once When Abe Didn't Allow Fair Play
One quarrel, however, waxed so hot that, by common consent,
nothing would cool the fevered situation but blood-letting. And
this is how it happened. Abraham's only sister had died shortly
after marriage to Aaron Grigsby. Thereupon arose between the
Grigsbys and the Lincolns a feeling of ill-will, the cause of which is
not clear, nor is it material now. It was important enough then to
result in the exclusion of the tall young brother-in-law from the
joint wedding celebration of Aaron's two brothers — a memorable
entertainment, full to overflowing with feasting, dancing, and merry
making. Such a frolic was not to be had every day, and Abraham's
regret that he was not present to lead the fun, as was his wont,
must have been keen. The slight vexed him even more than did •
the disappointment, for the Grigsbys constituted "the leading
family" in the community. To punish them, he forthwith wrote
"The First Chronicles of Reuben," a narration in mock-scriptural
phrase, of an indelicate prank that is said to have been played upon
the young wedded couples, at his instigation. The public ridicule
which this brought down upon the family failed to appease the
satirist's wounded self-love; and he followed it, in rhyme, with an
onslaught even more stinging. The outraged honor of the Grigsbys
demanded satisfaction according to the Pigeon Creek code ; so the
eldest son, William, throwing discretion to the winds, issued a
challenge for a fight, which their tormentor readily accepted.
When the combatants were about to enter the ring, Abraham
chivalrously announced that as his antagonist was confessedly his
inferior in every respect, he would forego the pleasure of thrashing
him, and would let his stepbrother, John, do battle in his stead.
This offer, having, together with other magnanimous declarations,
been applauded by the spectators, was accepted by Grigsby., The
fight then began ; but, alas ! for Abraham's good resolutions. They
were not proof against his champion's defeat. By a singular co-in
cidence, moreover, Lincoln's biographers, as well as he, deviate just
a trifie, at this point, from the straight course, that is to say, all of
them save Mr. Lamon, who sticks to his text, and, in the face of

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 65

popular disapproval, describes the unworthy scene A\hich ensued.
"John started out with fine pluck and spirit," says he, "but in a
little while Billy got in some clever hits, and Abe began to exhibit
symptoms of great uneasiness. Another pass or two, and John
flagged quite decidedly, and it became evident that Abe was anxiously
casting about for some pretext to break the ring. At length, when
John was fairly down and Billy on top, and all the spectators cheer
ing, swearing, and pressing up to the very edge of the ring, Abe
cried out that Bill Boland showed foul play, and bursting out of the
crowd, seized Grigsby by the heels, and flung him off. Having
righted John and cleared the battle-ground of all opponents, he
swung a whiskey bottle over his head, and swore that he was 'the
big buck of the lick. ' It seems that nobody of the Grigsby faction,
not one in that large assembly of bullies, cared to encounter the
sweep of Abe's tremendously long and muscular arms, and so he
remained master of 'the lick. ' He was not content, however, with
a naked triumph, but vaunted himself in the most offensive manner.
He singled out the victorious but cheated Billy and, making sundry
hostile demonstrations, declared that he could whip him then and
there. Billy meekly said he did not doubt that, but that if Abe
would make things even between them by fighting with pistols, he
would not be slow to grant him a meeting. But Abe replied that
he was not going to fool away his life on a single shot ; and so Billy
was fain to put up with the poor satisfaction he had already re
ceived. " The question naturally suggested, as to whether Abraham
was justified in his behavior, may be disregarded here. Not so
the account of the incident itself, which, irrespective of ethics or
good taste, is essential to an understanding of what may be termed
the aggressive side of his character, during these formative days.
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page is.
In Jones's Grocery Store and on the Stump
No newspaper ever escaped him. One man in Gentryville,
Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, took a Louisville paper, and here Lincoln
went regularly to read and discuss its contents. All the men and
boys of the neighborhood gathered there, and everything which the
paper related was subjected to their keen, shrewd common sense.
It was not long before young Lincoln became the favorite member
of the group, the one listened to most respectfully. Politics were

66 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

warmly discussed by these Gentryville citizens, and it may be that
sitting on the counter of Jones's grocery Lincoln even argued on
slaver)-. It certainly was one of the live questions in Indiana at
that date.
Lincoln 'was not only winning in these days in the Jones grocery
store a reputation as a talker and story-teller; he was becoming
known as a backwoods orator. He could repeat with effect all the
poems and speeches in his various school-readers, he could imitate
to perfection the wandering preachers who came to Gentryville, and
he could make a political cpeech so stirring that he drew a crowd
about him every time he mounted a stump. The applause he won
was sweet ; and frequently he indulged his gifts when he ought to
have been at work — so thought his employers and Thomas his
father. It was trying, no doubt, to the hard-pushed farmers, to
see the men who ought to have been cutting grass or chopping wood
throw down their sickles or axes and group around a boy, whenever
he mounted a stump to develop a pet theory or repeat 'with varia
tions yesterday's sermon. In his fondness for speech-making he
attended all the trials of the neighborhood, and frequently walked
fifteen miles to Boonville to attend court.
He wrote as well as spoke, and some of his productions were
even printed, through the infiuence of his admiring neighbors.
Thus a local Baptist preacher was so struck with one of Abraham's
essays on temperance that he sent it to Ohio, where it appeared in
some paper. Another article, on " National Politics, " so pleased a
lawyer of the vicinity that he declared the " world couldn't beat it. "
The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln_ Ida M. Tarbell, page 72.
A Murder-Case at Boonville
One day a man was on trial for murder, and had secured for his
defense a lawyer of more than common ability named John Brecken-
ridge. Abraham Lincoln had been exceedingly interested in the
case from the beginning ; but when the time came for the prisoner's
counsel to speak in his defense, there was a surprise prepared for the
young Gentryville debater. He had never, untU that day, Ustened
to a really good argument, deUvered by a man of learning and
eloquence, but he had prepared himself to know and profit by such
an experience when it came to him. He listened as if he had him-

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 67
self been the prisoner whose life depended upon the success of Mr.
Breckenridge in persuading the jury of his innocence.
Abraham Lincoln learned much from the great speech ; but he
had yet a deep and bitter lesson to receive that day. The lines of
social caste were somewhat rigidly drawn at that time. A leading
lawyer of good family like Mr. Breckenridge was a "gentleman,"
and a species of great man not to be carelessly addressed by half-
clad boors from the new settlements.
Abe forgot all that; perhaps not knowing it very well. He
could not repress his enthusiasm over that magnificent appeal to
the judge and jury. The last sentence of the speech had hardly
died away before he was pushing through the throng towards the
gifted orator. Mr. Breckenridge was walking grandly out of the
court-room, when there stood in his path a gigantic, solemn- visaged,
beardless clodhopper, reaching out a long coatless arm, with an
immense hard hand at the end of it, while an agitated voice ex
pressed the heartiest commendation of the ability and eloquence of
his plea for his client.
Breckenridge was a small-souled man in spite of his mental
power and his training, for he did but glance in proud amazement
at the shabby, presumptuous boy, and then pass stupidly on without
speaking. He had imparted priceless instruction to a fellow who
had yet but a faint perception of the artificial barriers before him.
The two met again, at the city of Washington, in the year 1862,
under other circumstances, and then the President of the United
States again complimented Mr. Breckenridge upon the excellence
of his speech in the Indiana murder-case.
Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, William O. Stoddard, page 57.
"Tell Us How Many Short Breaths He Drew!"
There are many proofs that he was an authority on all subjects,
even the country jockeys bringing him their stories and seeking to in
spire his enthusiasm. Captain John Lamar, of Gentryville, who was
a small boy in the neighborhood when Lincoln was a young man,
is still fond of describing a scene he witnessed once, which shows
'with what care even the "heroes" of the country tried to impress
young Lincoln. " Uncle Jimmy Larkins, as everybody called him, "
says Mr. Lamar, "was a great hero in my childish eyes. Why, I

68 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

cannot now say, without it was his manners. There had been a
big fox-chase, and Uncle Jimmy was telling about it. Of course
he was the hero. I was only a little shaver, and I stood in front
of Uncle Jimmy, looking up into his eyes; but he never noticed
me. He looked at Abraham Lincoln and said: '-Abe, I've got the
best horse in the world; he won the race and never drew a long
breath. ' But Abe paid no attention to Uncle Jimmy, and I got
mad at the big overgrown fellow, and wanted him to listen to my
hero's story. Uncle Jimmy was determined that Abe should hear,
and repeated the story. ' I say, Abe, I have got the best horse in the
world ; after all that running he never drew a long breath. ' Then
Abe, looking down at my little dancing hero, said :
" 'Well, Larkins, why don't you tell us how many short
breaths he drew?' "
This raised a laugh on Uncle Jimmy, and he got mad, and de
clared he'd fight Abe if he wasn't so big. He jumped around until
Abe quietly said:
" 'Now, Larkins, if you don't shut up I'll throw you in that
water.' "
" I was very uneasy and angry at the way my hero was treated,
but I lived to change my views about heroes. "
The Early Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 8$.
Abe Teaches Astronomy
Miss Roby, whom he had known at Crawford's school, and
through whom he had saved the spelling-class from disaster, was
deeply interested.
"Abe, " she said, late one afternoon, "the sun's going down."
" Reckon not, " said Abe. " We're coming up, that's all. "
"Don't you s'pose I've got eyes?"
" Reckon so ; but it's the earth that goes round. The sun keeps
as still as a tree. When we're swung around so we can't see him
any more, all the shine's cut off and we call it night?"
"Abe, what a fool you are!"
It was all in vain to explain the matter any further. The
science of astronomy had not been taught at Crawford's, and was
not at aU popular in Indiana. Whatever sprinkling of it Abe had
found among his books, there was no use in trying to spread its'

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 69
-wild vagaries along the banks of the Ohio River. He knew alto
gether too much for his time.
Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, William O. Stoddard, page 6i
How They Were "Treated" at Church
Mrs. Elizabeth Crawford, a neighbor of the Lincolns, tells how
they used to go to meeting : "At that time we thought it nothing to
go eight or ten miles. The old ladies did not stop for the want of a
shawl, or riding-dress, or two horses in the winter-time ; but they
would put on their husbands ' old overcoats, wrap up their little
ones, and take one or two of them on their beasts, while their hus
bands would walk. . . .
" In winter-time they would hold church in some of the neigh
bors ' houses. At such times they were always treated with the
utmost kindness ; a bottle of whiskey, a pitcher of water, sugar and
a glass were set out, or a basket of apples, or turnips. . . .
Apples were scarce them times. Sometimes potatoes were used for
a ' treat. ' In old Mr. Linkhem's (Lincoln's) house a plate
of potatoes, washed and pared nicely, was handed round. "
Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy, Horatio Alger, Jr., page 47.
The Little Yellow Dog Masquerades as a Coon
Mr. Lincoln used to relate the following "coon" story:
His father had at home a little yellow house-dog, which invariably
gave the alarm if the boys undertook to slip away unobserved after
night had set in — as they oftentimes did — to go coon hunting. One
evening Abe and his stepbrother, John Johnston, "with the usual
complement of boys required in a successful coon hunt, took
the insignificant little cur with them. They located the coveted
coon, killed him, and then, in a sportive vein, sewed the hide on the
diminutive yellow dog. The latter struggled vigorously during
the operation of se-wing on, and, being released from the hands of
his captors, made a bee-line for home. Some larger and more
important canines on the way, scenting coon, tracked the little
animal home, and, possibly mistaking him for real coon, speedily
demolished him. The next morning old Thomas Lincoln discovered
lying in his yard the lifeless remains of yellow " Joe, " with a strong
proof of coon -skin accompaniment.
"Father was much incensed at his death," observed Mr. Lin-

7°

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

coin in relating the story, "but as John and I, scantily protected
from the morning wind, stood shivering in the doorway, we felt
assured that little yellow Joe would never be able again to sound
the alarm of another coon hunt. "
Herndon's Lincoln, William H, Herndon and Jesse W, Weik, Vol. I, page 19. (Foot-note.)
"Tell the Whole Truth, 'Tilda"
While still living near Gentryville, one morning when Lincoln
was going to work in the woods, with his ax over his shoulder, his
stepsister, MatUda Johnston, who had been forbidden by her mother
to follow him, slyly, and unknown to her mother, crept out of the
house and ran after him. Lincoln was already quite a long distance
from the house, among the trees, following a deer path, and whist
ling as he walked along.
He, of course, did not know the girl was coming after him, and
Matilda ran so softly that she made no noise to attract his atten
tion. When she came up close behind him she made a quick spring
and jumped upon his shoulders, holding on with both hands and
pressing her knees into his back, thus pulling him quickly down to
the ground. In falling, the sharp ax which Lincoln was carrying
fell also and cut her ankle very badly; as the blood ran out the
mischievous Matilda screamed with pain ; Lincoln at once tore off
some cloth to stop the blood from flowing, and bound up the wound
as well as he could. Then taking a long breath, he said :
" 'Tilda, I am astonished. How could you disobey mother so? "
'Tilda only cried in reply, and Lincoln continued: "What are
you going to tell mother about getting hurt? "
" Tell her I did it with the ax, " she sobbed. " That will be the
truth, won't it? " To which Lincoln replied manfully :
" Yes, that's the truth ; but it's not all the truth. You tell the
whole truth, 'Tilda, and trust your good mother for the rest. "
So 'Tilda went limping home and told her mother all the truth;
and the good woman felt so sorry for her that she did not even scold
her. Lincoln in Story, Silas G. Pratt, page 11.
Bow-Hand on a Flatboat— ^ Abe's First Trip to New Orleans
Abe had long since given up the idea of earning a Uving behind
the counter of Jones's store, or any other that he knew of. He was

FOURTEEN YEARS IN INDIANA 71
under bonds to his father, but he made an attempt to obtain
employment as a boat-hand on the river. His age was against him
in his flrst effort, but his opportunity was coming to him. In the
month of March, 1828, he hired himself to Mr. Gentry, the great man
of Gentryville. His duties were to be mainly performed at Gentry's
Landing, near Rockport, on the Ohio River. There was a great
enterprise on foot, or rather in the water, at Gentry's Landing, for a
flatboat belonging to the proprietor was loading with bacon and
other produce for a trading trip down the Mississippi to New
Orleans. She was to be under the command of young Allen Gentry,
but would never return to the Ohio, for flatboats are built to go
down 'with the stream and not for pulling against it.
The flatboat was cast loose from her moorings in April, and
swept away down the river, with Abraham Lincoln as manager of
the forward oar. No such craft ever had a longer or stronger pair
of arms pledged to keep her blunt nose well directed.
At the plantation of Madame Duchesne, six miles below Baton
Rouge, the flatboat was moored for the night against the landing,
and the keepers were sound asleep in their little kennel of a cabin.
They slept until the sound of stealthy footsteps on the deck aroused
Allen Gentry, and he sprang to his feet. There could be no doubt
as to the cause of the disturbance. A gang of negroes had boarded
the boat for plunder, and they would think lightly enough, now
they were discovered, of knocking the two traders on the head and
thro'wing them into the river.
"Bring the guns, Abe!" shouted Allen. "Shoot them!"
The intruders were not to be scared away by even so alarming
an outcry ; and in an instant more Abe was among them, not 'with
a gun but with a serviceable club. They fought well, and one of
them gave their tall enemy a wound, the scar of which he carried
-with him to his grave ; but his strength and agility were too much
for them. He beat them all off the boat, not killing any one man,
but convincing the entire party that they had boarded the wrong
"broad-horn." The trip lasted about three months, going and coming, and in
June the two adventurers were at home again, well satisfled with
their success.
Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, William O. Stoddard, page 60.

CHAPTER IV

Removal to Illinois

Starting for Illinois
The next autumn, John Hanks, the steadiest and most trust
worthy of his family, went to Illinois. Thoiigh an illiterate and
rather dull man, he had a good deal of solidity of character and
consequently some influence and con
sideration in the household. He settled
in Macon County, and was so well pleased
with the country, and especially with its
admirable distribution into prairie and
timber, that he sent repeated messages
to his friends in Indiana to come out and
join him. Thomas Lincoln was always
ready to move. He had probably by this
time despaired of ever owning any unen
cumbered real estate in Indiana, and the
younger members of the family had little
JOHN hanks to bind them to the place where they saw
The steadiest and most trustworthy nothing in the f uturc but hard work
of his family. ., , . .
and poor living. Thomas Lincoln
handed over his farm to Mr. Gentry, sold his crop of corn and hogs,
packed his household goods and those of his children and sons-
in-law into a single wagon, drawn by two yoke of oxen, the com
bined wealth of himself and Dennis Hanks, and started for the
new State. His daughter Sarah, or Nancy, for she was called by
both names, who married Aaron Grigsby a few years before, had
died in childbirth. The emigrating family consisted of the Lincolns,
John Johnston, Mrs. Lincoln's son, and her daughters, Mrs. Hall and
Mrs. Hanks, with their husbands.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 45.
(72)

;?^

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS 73
As a Traveling Peddler
Abe drove one of the teams, he tells us, and, accordingto a story
current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a fair peddler's busi
ness on the route. Captain WiUiam Jones, in whose father's store
Lincoln had spent so many hours in discussion and in story -telling,
and for whom he had worked the last winter in Indiana, says that
before leaving the State Abraham invested all his money, some
thirty-odd dollars, in notions. Though all the country through
which they expected to pass was but sparsely settled, he believed he
could dispose of them. "A set of knives and forks was the largest
item entered on the bill," says Captain Jones; "the other items
were needles, pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic neces
sities. When the Lincolns reached their new home near Decatur,
Illinois, Abraham wrote back to my father, stating that he had
doubled his money on his purchases by selling them along the road.
Unfortunately we did not keep that letter, not thinking how highly ¦«(
we would have prized it in years afterwards. "
The pioneers were a fortnight on their journey. All we know
of the route they took is from a few chance remarks of Lincoln's to
his friends to the effect that they passed through Vincennes, where
he saw a printing-press for the flrst time, and through Palestine,
where he saw a juggler performing sleight-of-hand tricks. They
reached Macon County, their new home, from the south. Mr. H.
C. Whitney says that once in Decatur, when he and Lincoln were
passing the court-house together, "Lincoln walked out a few feet
in front, and, after shifting his position two or three times, said,
partly to himself and partly to me, as he looked up at the building :
' Here is the exact spot where I stood by our wagon when we moved
from Indiana, twenty-six years ago ; this isn't six feet from the exact
spot. ' . He then told me he had frequently thereafter
tried to locate the route by which they had come, and that he had
decided that it was near the main line of the Illinois Central rail
road. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 49.
Wades Icy Waters to Rescue a Dog
Mr. Lincoln once described this journey to me. He said the
grounds had not yet yielded up the frosts of 'winter; that during

74 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the day the roads would thaw out on the surf ace and at night freeze
over again, thus making traveling, especially -with oxen, painfully
slow and tiresome. There were, of course, no bridges, and the party
were consequently driven to ford the streams, unless by a circuitous
route they could avoid them. In the early part of the day the
latter were also frozen sUghtly, and the oxen would break through
a square yard of thin ice at every step. Among other things which
the party brought with them was a pet dog, which trotted along
after the wagon. One day the little fellow fell behind and failed to
catch up until after they had crossed the stream. Missing him they
looked laack, and there on the opposite bank he stood, whining and
jumping about in great distress. The water %vas running over the
broken edges of the ice, and the poor animal was afraid to cross.
It would not pay to turn the oxen and wagon back to ford the stream
again in order to recover a dog, so the majority in their anxiety to
move forward, decided to go on without him.
t " But I could not endure the idea of abandoning even a dog, "
relates Lincoln. " Pulling off shoes and socks I waded across the
stream and triumphantly returned with the shivering animal under
my arm. His frantic leaps of joy and other evidences of a dog's
gratitude amply repaid me for all the exposure I had undergone. " '
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 59. (Foot-note.)
Splitting Historic Rails to Surround the Illinois Home
Two weeks of weary tramping over forest roads and muddy
prairie, and the dangerous fording of streams swollen by the Feb
ruary thaws, brought the party to John Hanks's place near -Decatur.
He met them with a frank and energetic welcome. He had already
selected a piece of ground for them, a few miles from his own, and
had the logs ready for their house. They numbered men enough
to build without calling in their

Indiana admitted as a State  1816
Monroe made President  1817
Illinois admitted as a State  '..... .. .1818
The Missouri Compromise  1820
Missouri admitted as a State  1821
J. 0- Adams made President  1825
Webster's Dictionary first published  T828
Jackson made President  i82g
Opening of the first steam railroad in the
United States, at Baltimore  1830

neighbors, and immediately put
up a cabin on the north fork
of the Sangamon River. The
family thus housed and shel
tered, one more bit of filial
work remained for Abraham
before his assuming his virile independence. With the assistance
of John Hanks he plowed fifteen acres, and split, from the

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS

75

tall walnut-trees of the primeval forest, enough rails to surround
them with a fence. Little did either dream, while engaged in this
work, that the day would come when the appearance of John Hanks
in a public meeting, with two of these rails on his shoulder, would

From The Life of Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
FIRST HOME IN ILLINOIS
Abe and John Hanks split the historic rails to surround this house and fifteen acres of ploughed land.
electrify a State convention, and kindle throughout the country
a contagious and passionate enthusiasm, whose results would reach
to endless generations.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 45.
Abe Starts Out for Himself
If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they
certainly were the most famous ones he or anybo'dy else ever split.
This was the last work he did for his father, for in the summer of

76 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

that year (1830) he exercised the right of majority and started
out to shift for himself. When he left his home he went empty-
handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years
of age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of
respectable clothes. He had no trade, no profession, no
spot of land, no patron, no influence. Two things recommended
him to his neighbors — he was strong, and he was a good fellow.
His strength made him a valuable laborer. Not that he was
f'jnd of hard labor. Mrs. Crawford says: "Abe was no hand to
pitch into work like killing snakes;" but when he did work it was
¦with an ease and effectiveness which compensated his employer
for the time he spent in practical jokes and extemporaneous speeches.
He would lift a3 much as three .ordinary men, and " My, how he
would chop!" says Dennis Hanks. "His ax would flash and bite
into a sugar tree, or sycamore, and down it would come. If you
heard him f ellin ' trees in a clearin ' you would say there was three
men at work, by the way the trees fell. "
His strength won him popularity, but his good nature, his wit,
his skill in debate, his stories, were still more efficient in gaining him
good-will. People liked to have him around, and voted him a good
fellow to work with. Yet such were the conditions of his life at this
time that, in spite of his popularity, nothing was open to him but
Jiard manual labor. To take the first job which he happened upon
— rail-splitting, plowing, lumbering, boating, store-keeping — and
make the most of it, thankful if thereby he earned his bed and board
find yearly suit of jeans, was apparently all there was before
Abraham Lincoln in 1830, when he started out for himself.
The Early Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page loi.
A Thousand Rails for a Pair of Brown Jeans Trousers
Mr. George Close, the partner of Lincoln in the rail-splitting
business, says that Lincoln was at this time a farm-laborer, working
from day to day, for different people, chopping wood, mauUng rails,
or doing whatever was to be done. The country was poor, and hard
work was the common lot ; the heaviest share fell to young unmar
ried men, -with whom it was a continual struggle to earn a liveUhood.
Lincoln and Mr. Close made about one thousand rails together for
James Hawks and WiUiam Miller, receiving their pay in homespun

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS 77
clothing. Lincoln's bargain with Miller's wife was that he should
have one yard of brown jeans (richly dyed with walnut bark) for
every four hundred rails made, until he should have enough for a
pair of trousers. As Lincoln was already of great altitude, the
number of rails that went to the acquirement of his pantaloons was
necessarily immense.
Life and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, WiUiam Dean Howells, page 24. (Foot-note.;
"The Winter of the Deep Snow"
It will be reccUected that an especial reason why Thomas
Lincoln removed froni Indiana to Illinois was, as Dennis Hanks
puts it, to get "where milk-sick was not." The new settlers did,
indeed, escape the "milk-sickness, " but they encountered a disease
which was nearly as bad. The fall of 1830 was an unusually severe
season for chills and fever, and Thomas and his family were so
sorely, afflicted -with it as to become thoroughly discouraged. Their
sorry little cabin presented a melancholy sight : the father and
mother both shaking at once, and the married daughter, who came
to minister to their sufferings, not much better off. So terribly did
they suffer that the father vowed a vow that as soon as he got able
to travel he would "git out o' thar!"
The winter season came on and was one of " ethereal mildness "
up to Christmas, when a terrible and persistent snowstorm set in,
and lasted -without intermission for forty-eight hours, leaving be
tween three or four feet on the ground on the level, a depth never
attained before nor since, and remaining so for over two months.
Its effect upon the rural districts was disastrous : the wheat crops
were totall}^ ruined ; cattle, hogs and even horses perished ; all sorts
of provisions gave out. There was no means of getting help from
abroad. In some places teams would bear up on the crust of the
snow; in others, there was no road communication at all, and
athletic men would be compelled to journey on foot to neighbors for
food. Many perished on the prairie from cold. Some even perished
in their houses from hunger. Selfishness was banished by the com
mon calamity. Charity was universal ; the whole interior districts
of the State were made akin by that one touch of nature — "the big
snow."
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 66.

78 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Rail- Splitting and Speech-Making
For a long time after beginning life on his own account Abe
remained in sight of the parental abode. He worked at odd jobs
in the neighborhood, or wherever the demand for his services called
him. As late as 1831 he was still in the same parts, and John Hanks
is authorit}'- for the statement that he "made three thousand rails
for Major Warnick, " walking daily three miles to his work. During
the intervals of leisure he read the few books obtainable, and con
tinued the practice of extemporaneous speaking to the usual audi
ence of undemonstrative stumps and voiceless trees. His first
attempt at public speaking after landing in lUinois is thus described
to me by John Hanks, whose language I incorporate :
" After Abe got to Decatur, or rather to Macon County, a man
by the name of Posey came into our neighborhood and made a
speech. It was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned
down a box and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candi
date—Abe wasn't. Abe beat him to death, his subject being the
navigation of the Sangamon River. The man, after Abe's speech
was through, took him aside and asked him where he had learned so
much and hov/ he could do so well. Abe repUed, stating his manner
and method of reading, and what he had read. The man encour
aged him to persevere. "
Herndon's Lincoln, WiUiam Ii. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 62.
Denton Offutt Engages Hanks, Lincoln and Johnston to Take
a Boat to New Orleans
For the first time we are now favored with the appearance on
the scene of a very important personage— one destined to exert no
little influence in shaping Lincoln's fortunes. It is Denton Oftutt,
a brisk and venturesome business man, whose operations extendecj
up and down the Sangamon River for many miles. Having heard
glowing reports of John Hanks's successful experience as a boat
man in Kentucky, he had come down the river to engage the
latter 's services to take a boat-load of stock and provisions to New
Orleans. " He wanted me to go badly, " observes Hanks, "but I waited
awhile before answering. I hunted up Abe, and I introduced him
and John Johnston, his stepbrother, to Offutt. After some talk

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS 79
we at last made an engagement with Offutt at flfty cents a day and
sixty dollars, to make the trip to New Orleans. Abe and I came
down the Sangamon River in a canoe in March, 1831 ; landed at
what is now called Jamestown, five miles east of Springfield, then
known as Judy's Ferry. "
Here Johnston joined them, and, lea-ving their canoe in charge
of one Uriah Mann, they walked to Springfield, where, after some
enquiry, they found the genial and enterprising Offutt regaling
himself -with the good cheer dispensed at the "Buckhorn" inn.
Offutt had agreed with Hanks to have a boat ready for
him and his two companions at the mouth of Spring Creek on their
arrival, but too many deep potations with the new-comers who
dail}- thronged about the "Buckhorn" had interfered with the exe
cution of his plans. Offutt met the three expectant na'vi-
gators on their arrival, and deep were his regrets over his failure
to provide the boat. The interview resulted in the trio engaging to
make the boat themselves.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse'W. Weik, Vol. I, page 62.
Building the Flatboat and Telling Yarns
Sangamontown, where Mr. Lincoln built the fiatboat, has,
since his day, disappeared from the earth ; but then it was one of the
flourishing settlements on the river of that name. Lincoln and his
friends, on arriving there in March, immediately began work.
There is still living (1895) in Springfield, Illinois, a man who helped
Lincoln at the raft -building — Mr. John Roll, a' well-known citizen,
and one who has been prominent in the material advancement of
the city. Mr. Roll remembers distinctly Lincoln's first appearance
in Sangamontown. " He was a tall, gaunt young man, " he says, " dressed in a suit
of blue homespun, consisting of a roundabout jacket, waistcoat, and
breeches which came to within about four inches of his feet. The ^
latter were encased in rawhide boots, into the top of which, most of
the time, his pantaloons were stuffed. He wore a soft felt hat which
had at one time been black, but now, as its owner dryly remarked,
' was sunburned until it was a combine of colors. ' " . . .
It took some four weeks to build the raft, and in that period
Lincoln succeeded in captivating the entire village by his story-
teUing. It was the custom in Sangamon- for the "men-folks" to

8o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

gather at noon and in the evening, when resting, in a convenient
lane near the mill. They had rolled out a long peeled log, on which
they lounged while they whittled and talked. Lincoln had not been
long in Sangamon before he joined this circle. At once be became
a favorite by his jokes and good humor. As soon as he appeared at
the assembly ground the men would start him to story-teUing.
So irresistibly droll were his yarns that, "whenever he'd end up
in his unexpected way the boys on the log would whoop and roll
off. " The result of the rolling off was to polish the old log like a
mirror. The men, recognizing Lincoln's part in this polishing,
christened their seat "Abe's log." Long after Lincoln had disap
peared from Sangamon "Abe's log" remained, and until it had
rotted away, people pointed it out, and repeated the droll stories
of the stranger.
The Early Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell. page 104.
iy Lincoln Saves Three Lives — A Thrilling Adventure
The fiatboat was done in about a month, and Lincoln and his
friends prepared to leave Sangamon. Before he started, however,
he was the hero of an adventure so thrilling that he won new laurels
in the community. Mr. Roll, who was a witness to the whole
exciting scene, tells the story :
"It was the spring following 'the winter of the deep snow.'
Walter Carman, John Seamon, myself, and at times others of the
Carman boys, had helped Abe in building the boat, and when we
had finished we went to work to make a dug-out, or canoe, to be
used as a small boat witTi the flat. We found a suitable log about an
eighth of a mile up the river, and with our axes went to work under
Lincoln's directions. The river was very high, fairly 'booming.'
After the dug-out was ready to launch we took it to the edge of the
water, and made ready to 'let her go,' when Walter Carman and
John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck the water, each one
anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they shot out from the
shore they found they were unable to make any headway against
the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Seamon was in
the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to ' head up-stream,'
and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves powerless
against the stream. At last they began to pull for the wreck of an
old flatboat, the first ever built on the Sangamon, which had sunk

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS 8i
and gone to pieces, leaving one of the stanchions sticking above the
water. Just as they reached it -Seamon made a grab, and caught
hold of the stanchion, when the canoe capsized, lea-ving Seamon
clinging to the old timber, and thro'wing Carman into the stream.
It carried him down 'with the speed of a mill-race. Lincoln raised
his voice above the roar of the flood, and yelled to Carman to swim
for an elm tree which stood almost in the channel, which the action
of the water had changed.
"Carman, being a good swimmer, succeeded in catching a
branch, and pulled himself up out of the water, which was very cold,
and had almost chilled him to death ; and there he sat, shivering and
chattering in the tree.
" Lincoln, seeing Carman safe, called out to Seamon to let
go the stanchion and s'wim for the tree. With some hesitation
he obeyed, and struck out, while Lincoln cheered and directed
him from the bank. As Seamon neared the tree he made one
grab for a branch, and, missing it, went under the water. Another
desperate lunge was successful, and he climbed up beside
Carman. "Things were pretty exciting now, for there were two men in
the tree, and the boat was gone. It was a cold, raw April day, and
there was great danger of the men becoming benumbed and falling
back into the water. Lincoln called- out to them to keep their
spirits up and he would save them.
" The village had been a,larmed by this time, and many people
had come down to the bank. Lincoln procured a rope and tied it
to a log. He called all hands to come and help roll the log into the
water, and, after this had been done, he, with the assistance of
several others, towed it some distance up the stream. A daring
young fellow by the name of 'Jim' Dorrell then took his seat on
the end of the log, and it was pushed out into the current, with
the expectation that it would be carried down stream against the
tree where Seamon and Carman were.
"The log was well directed, and went straight to the tree;
but Jim, in his impatience to help his friends, fell a victim to his
good intentions. Making a frantic grab at a branch, he raised him
self off the log, which was swept from under him by the raging
waters and he soon joined the other victims upon their forlorn
perch.

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

"The excitement on shore increased, and almost the whole
population of the village gathered on the river bank. Lincoln had
the log pulled up the stream, and, securing another piece of rope,
called to the men in the tree to catch it if they could when he should
reach the tree. He then straddled the log himself, and gave the
word to push out into the stream. When he dashed into the tree
he threw the rope over the stump of a broken limb, and let it play
until he broke the speed of the log, and gradually drew it back to
the tree, holding it there until the three now nearly frozen men had
climbed down and seated themselves astride. He then gave orders
to the people on the shore to hold fast to the end of the rope which
was tied to the log, and leaving his rope in the tree he turned the
log adrift. The force of the current, acting against the taut rope,
swung the log around against the bank and all 'on board' were
saved. "The excited people, who had watched the dangerous experi
ment with alternate hope and fear, now broke into cheers for Abe
Lincoln, and praises for his brave act. This adventure made quite
a hero of him along the Sangamon, and the people never tired of
telling of the exploit. "
The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell. page io6.
His First Sight of "The Horrors of Human Slavery"
Within four weeks the boat was ready to launch. Offutt was
sent for and was present when she slid into the water. It was the
occasion of much political chat and buncombe, in which the Whig
party and Jackson aUke were, strangely enough, lauded to the skies.
. . Many disputes arose, we are told, in which Lincoln took
part and found a good field for practice and debate.
A traveling juggler halted long enough in Sangamontown,
where the boat was launched, to give an exhibition of his art and
dexterity in the loft of Jacob Carman's house. In Lincoln's low-
crowned, broad-brimmed hat the magician cooked eggs. In ex
plaining the delay in passing up his hat, Lincoln droUy observes:
" It was outof respect for the eggs, not care for my hat. "
Ha\-ing loaded the vessel with pork in barrels, corn, and hogs,
these sturdy boatmen swung out into the stream. On April 19
(1831) they reached New Salem, a place destined to be an important
spot in the career of Lincoln. There they met with their first

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS 83
serious delay. The boat stranded on Rutledge 's mill-dam and hung
over it a day and a night.
"We unloaded the boat, " narrated one of the crew.
"That is, we transferred the goods from our boat to a borrowed
one. We then rolled the bartels forward ; Lincoln bored a hole in
the end (projecting) over the dam; the water which had leaked in
ran out and we slid over. "
Offutt was profoundly impressed -with this exhibition of Lin
coln's ingenuity. In his enthusiasm he declared to the crowd that
covered the hill, and had been watching Lincoln's operations,
that he would build a steamboat to plow up and down the Sanga
mon, and that Lincoln should be her captain. She would have
rollers for shoals and dams, runners for ice, and with Lincoln in
charge, "By thunder, she'd have to go!"
From the Sangamon they passed to the Illinois. At Beards-
town their unique craft, with its "sails made of planks and cloth, "
excited the amusement and laughter of those who saw them from
the shore. Once on the bosom of the broad Mississippi they glided
past Alton, St. Louis, and Cairo in rapid succession, tied up for a day
at Memphis, and made brief stops at Vicksburg and Natchez.
Early in May they reached New Orleans, where they lingered a
month, disposing of their cargo and vie-wing the sights which the
Crescent City afforded.
In New Orleans, for the first time, Lincoln beheld the true
horrors of human slavery. He saw "negroes in chains — whipped
and scourged." Against this inhumanity his sense of right and
justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened to
what he had often hfeard and read. No doubt, as one of his com
panions has said, "Slavery ran the iron into him then and there."
One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a
slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold.
She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders :
they pinched her flesh and made her trot up and down the room like
a horse, to show how she moved, and in ordt;r, as the auctioneer
said, that "bidders might satisfy themselves" whether the article
they were offering to buy was sound or not.
The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away
from the scene -with a deep feeling of "unconquerable hate. " Bid
ding his companions follow him, he said :

84 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

" Boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit
that thing (meaning slavery), I'll hit it hard!"
Herndon's Lincoln. WiUiam H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 64.
A Voodoo Prophecy
Lincoln often declared to his intimate friends that he was
from boyhood superstitious. He said that the near approach of the
important events in his life were indicated by a presentiment, or a
strange dream, or in some other mysterious way it was impressed
upon him that something important was to occur. There is a
tradition that on this visit to New Orleans he and his companion,
John Hanks, visited an old fortune teller, a Voodoo negress. Tradi
tion says that during the interview she became very much excited,
and after various predictions, exclaimed :
" You -will be Presiddit, and all the negroes will be free. "
That the old Voodoo negress should have foretold that the
visitor would be President is not at all incredible. She doubtless
told this to many aspiring lads, but the prophecy of the freedom of
the slaves requires confirmation.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 31.
Abe Throws Needham, the Champion Wrestler
Some time in June the party took passage on a steamboat
going up the river, and remained together until they reached St.
Louis, where Offutt left them, and Abe, Hanks and Johnston started
on foot for the interior of Illinois. At Edwardsville, twentj'-five
miles out. Hanks took the road to Springfield, and Abe and Johnston
took that to Coles County, where Tom Lincoln had moved since
Abraham's departure from home.
Scarcely had Abe reached Coles County, and begun to think
what next to turn his hand to, when he received a visit from a
famous wrestler, one Daniel Needham, who regarded him as a grow
ing rival, and had a fancy to try him a fall or two. He considered
himself "the best man" in the county, and the report of Abe's
achievements filled his big breast with envious pains. His greeting
was friendly and hearty, but his challenge was rough and peremp
tory. Abe. met him by public appointment in the "green
wood," at Wabash Point, where he threw Needham t-wice \vith
such ease that the latter's pri"de was more hurt than his body.

REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS

" Lincoln, " said he, " you have thrown me twice, but you can't
whip me. "
" Needham, " replied Abe, "are you satisfied that' I can throw
you? If you are not, and must be convinced through a thrashing,
I -will do that, too, for your sake. "
Needham surrendered -with such grace as he could command.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 8^,

WRESTLING WITH NEEDHAM

CHAPTER V

Six Years at New Salem

A Stranger Who Could "Make a Few Rabbit Tracks"
It was in August of the year 1831 that Lincoln left his father's
roof, and swung out for himself into the current of the world to
make his fortune in his own way. He went down to New Salem
again to assist Offutt in the business that lively speculator thought
of establishing there. He was more punctual than either his
employer or the merchandise,
and met with the usual re
ward of punctuality in being
forced to waste his time in
waiting for the tardy ones.
He seemed to the New Salem
people to be "loafing;" sev
eral of them have given that
description of him.
He did one day's work,
acting as clerk of a local elec
tion, a lettered loafer being
pretty sure of employment on
such an occasion.
Mrs. Lizzie H. Bell writes
of this incident: My father,
Mentor Graham, was on that
day, as usual, appointed to be
a clerk, and Mr. McNamee,
who was to be the other, was
sick and failed to come. They were looking around for a man to
fiU his place when my father noticed Mr. Lincoln and asked if he
could write. He answered that he could "make a few rabbit
tracks. "
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G, Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 78 and Foot-note
(86)

-|

MENTOR GRAHAM
The New Salem schoolmaster, who helped Lincoln in
his study of grammar and surveying.

S/.Y YEARS AT NEW SALEM 87
Piloting a Flatboat down Illinois River
A few days after the election Lincoln found employment
with one Dr. Nelson, who, after the style of dignitaries of later days,
started with his family and effects in his private conveyance — which
in this instance was a flatboat — for Texas. Lincoln was hired to
pilot the vessel through to the Illinois River. Arri-ving at Beardstown
the pilot was discharged, and returned on foot across the sand and
hills to New Salem.
Herndon's Lincoln, WiUiam H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 71.
Storekeeper and Miller
Offutt and his goods arrived at last, and Lincoln and he imme
diately got thei'n into position, and opened their door to what com
merce could be found in New Salem. There was clearly not enough
to satisfy the volatile mind of Mr. Offutt, for he soon bought Cam
eron's mill at the historic dam, and made Abraham superintendent
also of that branch of the business.
It is to be surmised that Offutt never inspired his neighbors
and customers with any deep regard for his solidity of character.
One of them says of him, with injurious pleonasm, that he "talked
too much with his mouth. " A natural consequence of his excessive
fluency was soon to be made disagreeably evident to his clerk.
He admired Abraham beyond measure, and praised him beyond
prudence. He said that Abe knew more than any man in the United States ;
and he was certainly not warranted in making such an assertion, as
his own knowledge of the actual state of science in America could
not have been exhaustive. He also said that Abe could beat any
man in the county running, jumping, or " wrastling. " This propo
sition, being less abstract in its nature, was far more readily
grasped b)^ the local mind, and was not Ukely to pass unchallenged.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 'Vol. I, page 78.
Encounters the "Clary's Grove Boys"
Public opinion at New Salem was formed by a crowd of ruf
fianly young fellows who were called the "Clary's Grove Boys."
Once or t-wice a week they descended upon the village and passed
the day in drinking, fighting and brutal horse-play. If a stranger

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

appeared in the place, he was Ukely to suffer a rude initiation into
the social life of New Salem at the hands of these jovial savages.
Sometimes he was nailed up in a hogshead and rolled down hill;
sometimes he was insulted into a fight and then mauled black and
blue; for, despite their pretensions to chivalry, they had no
scruples about fair play or any such superstition of civilization.

' ' ==^^- /m.''^':^^;^i'i^' '¦„„ n?

From .Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery, Noah Brooks.
ABE THROWS JACK ARMSTRONG
Lincoln, standing undismayed with his back to the wall, looked so formidable in his defiance that
an honest admiration took the place of momentary fury, and his initiation was over.
At first they did not seem inclined to molest young Lincoln.
His appearance did not invite insolence; his reputation for strength
and activity was a greater protection to him than his inoffensive
good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them um
brage. It led to a dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal
banter to a wrestUng-match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all
this " wooling and pulUng, " as he called it.

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 89
But Offutt's indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show
his mettle. Jack Armstrong, the leading bully of the gang, was
selected to throw him, and expected an easy victory. But he
soon found himself in different hands from any he had heretofore
engaged -with. Seeing he could not manage the tall stranger, his
friends swarmed in, and by kicking and tripping nearly succeeded in
getting Lincoln do-wn.
At this, as has been said of another hero, "the spirit of Odin
entered into him, " and putting forth his whole strength, he held the
pride of Clary's Grove in his arms like a child, and almost choked
the exuberant life out of him. For a moment a general fight seemed
ine-vitable; but Lincoln, standing undismayed -with his back to the
wall, looked so formidable in his defiance that an honest admiration
took the place of momentary fury, and his initiation was over.
As to Armstrong, he was Lincoln's friend and sworn brother as
soon as he recovered the use of his larynx, and the bond thus
strangely created lasted through life. Lincoln had no further
occasion to fight his own battles while Armstrong was there to act
as his champion 
This incident, tri'vial and vulgar as it may seem, was of great
importance in Lincoln's life. His beha-vior in this ignoble scuffle
did the work of years for him, in giving him the position he required
in the community where his lot was cast. He became from that
moment, in a certain sense, a personage, with a name and stand
ing of his own. The verdict of Clary's Grove was unanimous
that he was "the cleverest fellow that had ever broke into the
settlement. "
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 79.
Lincoln Meets Young Yates, the Future War-Governor, and Upsets
a Bowl of Milk
W. G. Greene tells us that while he was a student at the Illinois
College at Jacksonville, he became acquainted -with Richard Yates,
also a student there. On one occasion, while Yates was a guest of
Greene's during a vacation, the latter took him up to make him
acquainted -with Lincoln. They found Abe flat on his back on a
cellar-door, reading a newspaper. Greene introduced the two, and
thus the acquaintance began between the future War Governor of
Illinois and the future President.

90

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

On this same occasion, says Mr. Greene, Lincoln accepted an
in-vitation to go home and take dinner -^dth him and Yates. WhUe
they were at the table, Lincoln, in his awkwardness, managed to
upset his bowl of bread and milk. Mr. Greene well recollects the
confusion with w^hich the accident covered Mr. Lincoln, which

From Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery, Noah Brooks.
CLERKING IN OFFUTT'S STORE.
Greene's mother, the hostess, who was always attached to the un
gainly backwoodsman, tried to reUeve as best she could by declaring
It was her fault in setting the bowl at the wrong place at the table
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page 102.
Two Instances of His "Sensitive Honesty"
,^. . ^'"rl" ''°'^^'^ """^ ""^'^ ^°' °^^ ^""*^"^ ^nder the consciousness
that he had even unwittingly, defrauded anybody. On one occa
sion, while clerking m Offutt's store, . . . he sold a woman a little

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 91
bale of goods, amounting in value, by the reckoning, to two dollars
and twenty cents. He received the money and the woman went
away. On adding the items of the bill again to make himself sure
of correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents
too much. It was night and, closing and locking the store, he
started out on foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house
of his defrauded customer, and delivering over to her the sum whose
possession had so much troubled him, went home satisfied.
On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the
night, a woman entered and asked for a half pound of tea. The tea
was weighed out and paid for, and the store was left for the night.
The next morning Lincoln entered to begin the duties of the day,
when he discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw
at once that he had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took
a long walk before breakfast- to deliver the remainder of the tea.
These are humble incidents, but they illustrate the man's perfect
conscientiousness — his sensitive honesty — better, perhaps, than
they would if they were of greater moment.
Stories and speeches of Abraham Lincoln, PaulSelby, page 6i.
Borrows a Grammar and Masters It
Abe's duties in Offutt's store were not of a character to monopo
lize the whole of his time, and he soon began to think that here
was a fine opportunity to remedy some of the defects in his
education. [During the time he was working for Offutt, hands being scarce,
Lincoln turned in and cut down trees, and split enough rails for
Offutt to rnake a pen sufficiently large to contain a thousand hogs.]
He could read, write, and cipher as well as most men; but as his
popularity was growing daily, and his ambition keeping pace, he
feared that he might shortly be called to act in some pubUc capacity
which would require him to speak his own language with some
regard to the rules of grammar, — of which, according to his own
confession, he knew nothing at all. He mentioned his trouble to
the schoolmaster, saying,
" I have a notion to study English grammar. "
" If you expect to go before the public in any capacity, " replied
Mr. (Mentor) Graham, " I think it the best thing you can do. "
" If I had a grammar, " replied Abe, " I would commence now. "

92 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
There was no grammar to be had about New Salem; but the
schoolmaster, having kept the run of that species of property,
gladdened Abe's heart by telUng him that he knew where there
was one. Abe rose from the breakfast at which he was sitting, and learn
ing that the book was at Vaner's, only six miles distant, set off as
hard as he could tramp. It seemed to Mr. Graham a very little
while until he returned and announced, with great pleasure, that he
had a copy of Kirkham's Grarnmar. He then turned his immediate
and undivided attention to the study of it. Sometimes, when
business was not particularly brisk, he would lie under a shade-tree
in front of the store, and pore over the book; at other times a cus
tomer would find him stretched on the counter intently engaged in
the same way. But the store was a bad place for study ; and he
was often seen quietly slipping out of the village, as if he 'wished to
avoid observation, when, if successful in getting off alone, he would '
spend hours in the woods, "mastering a book," or in a state of
profound abstraction.
He kept up his old habit of sitting up late at night; but, as
lights . . . were expensive, the village cooper permitted him to
sit in his shop, where he burnt the shavings, and kept a blazing fire
to read by, when every one else was in bed. The Greenes lent him
books ; the schoolmaster gave him instruction in the store, on the
road, or in the meadows. Every visitor to New Salem who made the
least pretension to scholarship was waylaid by Abe, and required to
explain something which he could not understand.
The result of it all was, that the village and the surrounding
country wondered at his gro'wth in knowledge, and he soon became
as famous for the goodness of his understanding as for the muscular
power of his body, and the unfailing humor of his talk.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 95.
Gives a Bully a Dose of "Smartweed"
"While showing goods to two or three women in Offutt's store
one day, a bully came in and began to talk in an offensive manner,
using much profanity, and evidently wishing to provoke a quarrel.
Lincoln leaned o\'er the counter and begged him, as ladies were
present, not to indulge in such talk. The bully retorted that the
opportunity had come for which he had long sought, and he would

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 93
like to see the man who could hinder him from saying anything
he might choose to say. Lincoln, still cool, told him that if he
would wait until the ladies retired, he -would hear what he had to
say, and give him any satisfaction he desired.
"As soon as the women were gone, the man became furious.
Lincoln heard his boasts and his abuse for a time, and finding that
he was not to be put off without a fight, said, 'Well, if you
must be whipped, I suppose I may as well whip you as any other
man. '
"This was just what the bully had been seeking, he said, so out
of doors they went. Lincoln made short work of him. He threw
him upon the ground and held him there as if he were a child, and
gathering some "smartweed" which grew upon the spot, rubbed it
into his face and eyes until the fellow bellowed with pain.
"Lincoln did all this without a particle of anger, and when the
job was finished, went immediately for water, washed his victim's
face, and did everything he could to alleviate his victim's distress.
The upshot of the matter was that the man became his life-long
friend, and was a better man from that day. "
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page 99.
How Abe Induced his Fellow-Clerk to Quit Gambling
Denton Offutt's restless ambition demanded other worlds to
conquer than a small store, so he added to the list of mercantile
ventures a lease of the mill, and he then employed William G. Greene,
a son of a neighboring family, aged eighteen or nineteen years, as
an assistant. Between the two clerks a friendship and cordiality
sprang up which lasted as long as the life of the senior.
Each morning the two clerks, and sometimes the proprietor,
would wend their way down the slanting road which led to the
bottom land northward, and proceed up the State road for three-
quarters of a mile to a primitive farmstead owned by one Bowling
Green, where they would get their breakfast, generally of bread and
milk. They would greet their motherly hostess as " Aunt Nancy. "
At noon and evening they would repeat their custom, for Abe's
boarding-place was at this farm, and they slept on a narrow cot in
the loft of the store.
Lincoln's morals were singularly chaste and pure for that day.
Although the customs were well-nigh universal to drink, chew.

94

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

smoke and habitually swear, he indulged in none of these habits.
Mr. Greene avers that he never saw Lincoln take a drink of liquor
but once, and then he spat it out immediately ; that he never chewed
or smoked, and that he never swore but once in his presence. . .
WiUiam Greene was, Uke ordinary youth in those days, ad
dicted to petty gambUng, betting, etc. Lincoln perceived it, and
one day said to his
fellow-clerk :
"Billy, you
ought to stop gam
bling with Estep."
Greene replied,
"I'm ninety cents
behind and I can't
quit till I've won it
back." Said Lincoln,
"If I'll help you win
that back, will you
promise never to
gamble again ? "
Greene reflect
ed a moment and
made the promise.
Lincoln then said,
" Here are hats on
sale at seven dollars
each, and you need
The victim appeared. ^^g NoW, when
Estep comes, you dra-«^ him on by degrees, and finally bet him
one of those hats that I can lift a full forty -gallon barrel of whis
key, and take a drink out of the bung-hole. "
Accordingly they fixed the barrel so that the bung-hole wotild be
in the right pla'ce, and when the victim appeared, after a little par
leying and bantering, the bet was made; Lincoln then squatted
down and lifted one end of the barrel on one knee, and thenUfted
the other end on the other knee, and, stooping over, actually suc
ceeded in taking a drink out of the bung-hole, which he immediately
spat out. Greene thus won the hat and never gambled again,

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 95
Offutt soon "busted up," and left his creditors in the lurch;
and Lincoln did odd jobs when he could, for a time. He had an
assured home at Bowling Green's and another at Jack Armstrong's
(the Clary's Grove champion) ; and when under the stress of diffi
culties, he wended his way to one or the other -with perfect freedom,
and was a welcome guest.
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. 'Whitney, page 84.
Becomes a Candidate for the First Time
Before the winter was ended he had become the most popular
man in New Salem. Although he was but twenty -three years of age
in February, 1832; had never been at school an entire year; had
never made a speech, except in debating clubs or by the road,side ;
had read only the books he could pick up, and known only the men
of the poor, out-of-the-way towns in which he had lived, yet,
"encouraged by his great popularity among his immediate neigh
bors' " as he says, he announced himself in March, 1832, as a candi
date for the General Assembly of the State.
At that time the State of Illinois — as, indeed, the whole United
States — was convinced that the future of the country depended on
the opening of canals and railroads, and the clearing out of the rivers.
In the Sangamon country the population felt that a quick way of
getting to Beardstown on the Illinois River, to which point the
steamer came from the Mississippi, was, as Lincoln puts it in his
circular, using a phrase of his hero. Clay, " indispensably necessary. "
Of course a railroad was the dream of the settlers ; but when it was
considered seriously there was always, as Lincoln says, "a heart-
appalling shock accompanying the amount of its cost, which forces
us to shrink from our pleasing anticipations. "
."The probable cost of this contemplated railroad," he states
in his circular, "is estimated at two hundred and ninety thousand
dollars ; the bare statement of which, in my opinion, is sufficient
to justify the belief that the improvement of the Sangamon River
is an object much better suited to our infant resources."
The only preliminary expected of a candidate for the legislature
of Illinois at that date was an announcement stating his " sentiments
'with regard to local affairs. " The circular in which Lincoln complied
-with this custom was a document of about two thousand words,

96 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

. [in which he gave a dignified account of his experiences
on the Sangamon and beside it, as flatboatman and miller, which
he concluded as follows :]
" Finally, I beUeve the improvement of the Sangamon River to
be vastly important and highly desirable to the people of the
country ; and, if elected, any measure in the legislature having this
for its object, which may appear judicious, will meet my approba
tion and receive my support. "
The audacity of a young man in his position presenting
himself as a candidate for the legislature is fully equalled by the
humility of the closing paragraph of his announcement :
" But, fellow citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great
degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable
I have already been more presuming than becomes me. However,
upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have
thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them,
but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only some
times to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I
discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to announce
them. " Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether
it is true or not, I can say for one, that I have no other so great as
that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself
worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this
ambition is yet to be developed. I am young, and unknown to
many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most
humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or
friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the
independent voters of the county; and, if elected, they will have
conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my
labors to compensate. But, if the good people in their 'wisdom
shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar
with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
Very soon after Lincoln had distributed his hand-bills, en
thusiasm on the subject of the opening of the Sangamon rose to a
fever. TIte Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 125.

SIN YEARS AT NEW SALEM 97

A " Try"-Weekly Steamer- " Goes Up One Week, and Tries to
Come Down the Next!"
The early spring of 1832 brought to Springfield and New Salem
a most joyful announcement. It was the news of the coming of a
steamboat up the Sangamon River — proof incontestable that the
stream was navigable. . Great excitement and unbounded
enthusiasm followed this announcement. Springfield, New Salem
and all the other towns along the now interesting Sangamon were to
be connected by water with the outside world. Public meetings,
with the accompaniment of long subscription lists, were held ; the
merchants of Springfield advertised the arrival of goods " direct
from the East per steamer Talisman." The mails were promised
as often as once a week from the same direction; all the land
adjoining each enterprising and aspiring village along the river was
subdivided into town lots — in fact, the whole region began to feel
the stimulating effects of what, in later days, ^^'ould have been
called a "boom. "
.In response to the suggestion of Captain Bogue (master
of the steamboat Talis-man) , made from Cincinnati, a number of
citizens — Lincoln among them — had gone down the river to Beards
town to meet the vessel as she emerged from the Illinois. These
were armed with axes with long handles, to cut away, as Bogue had
recommended, "branches of trees hanging over from the banks."
After having passed New Salem, I (W H. Herndon) and other
boys on horseback followed the boat, riding along the river's bank
as far as Bogue's mill where she tied up. There we went aboard,
and, lost in boyish wonder, feasted our eyes on the splendor of her
interior decorations.
On the Talisman's arrival at Springfield, or as near Springfield
as the river ran, the crew of the boat were given a reception and
dance in the court-house. Then the receding waters
admonished her officers that, unless thej^ proposed spending the
remainder of the year there, they must head her down stream. In
this emergency recourse was had to my cousin Rowan Herndon,
who had had no little experience as a boatman, and who recom
mended the employment of Lincoln as a skilful assistant.
These two inland navigators undertook the contract of piloting
the vessel .... through the uncertain channel of the Sangamon

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

to the Illinois River. The average speed was four miles a day. . . .
Lincoln and- Herndon, in charge of the vessel, piloted her through
to Beardstow^n. They were paid forty dollars each, according to
contract, and bidding adieu to the Talisman s officers and crew,
set out on foot for New Salem again. A few months latter the
Talisman caught fire at the wharf in St. Louis and went up in flames,
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W, Weik, Vol, I, page 77.
Why He Was Called "Honest Abe"
The year that Lincoln was in Denton Offutt's store. . .was
one of great advances in many respects. He had made new and
valuable acquaintances, read many books, mastered the grammar
of his own tongue, won multitudes of friends, and become ready
for a step still further in advance. Those who could appreciate
brains respected him, and those whose ideas of a man related to his
muscles were devoted to him. It was while he was performing the
work of the store that he acquired the sobriquet, " Honest Abe" — a
characterization that he never dishonored, and an abbreviation that
he never outgrew. He was judge, arbitrator, referee, umpire,
authority, in all disputes, games and matches of man-flesh, horse
flesh, a paciflcator in all quarrels ; everybody's friend ; the best-
natured, the most sensible, the best-informed, the most modest and
unassuming, the kindest, gentlest, roughest, strongest, best fellow
in all New Salem and the region round about.
Life of Abraham Lincoln, J. G. Holland, page 47,
A "Raw" Captain in the Black Hawk War
One morning in April a messenger from the governor of the
State rode into New Salem, scattering circulars. These circulars.
contained an address from Governor Reynolds to the militia of the
northwest section of the State, announcing that the British band of
Sacs and other hostile Indians, headed by Black Hawk, had invaded
the Rock River country, to the great terror of the frontier inhabit
ants ; and calUng upon the citizens who were willing to aid in repel
ling them, to rendezvous at Beardstown 'within a week.
Preparations were quickly made, and by April 22nd the men
were at Beardstown. The day before, at Richland, Sangamon
County, Lincoln had been elected to the captaincy of the company
from Sangamon to which he belonged.

SIX YEARS .AT NEW SALEM 99
His friend Greene gave another reason than ambition to ex
plain his desire for the captaincy. One of the "odd jobs" which
Lincoln had taken since coming into Illinois was working in a saw
mill for a man named Kirkpatrick. In hiring Lincoln, Kirkpatrick
had promised to buy him a cant-hook -with wKich to move heavj''
logs. Lincoln had proposed, if Kirkpatrick would give him the two
dollars which the cant-hook would cost, to move the logs with a
a common handspike. This the proprietor had agreed to, but when
pay-day came he refused to keep his word.
When the Sangamon company of volunteers was formed,
Kirkpatrick aspired to the captaincy, and Lincoln, kno'wing it,
said to Greene :
" Bill, I believe I can now make Kirkpatrick pay that two
dollars he owes me on the cant-hook. I'll run against him for
captain. "
So Lincoln became a candidate. The vote was taken in a field
by directing the men, at the command, "march," to assemble
around the one they wanted for captain. When the order was given
three-fourths of the men gathered around Lincoln. In his curious
third-person biography Lincoln says he was elected, "to his own
surprise;" and adds, " He says he has not since had any success in
life which gave him so much satisfaction. "
Lincoln himself was not familiar 'with military tactics, and
made many blunders of which he used to tell afterwards with relish.
One of his early experiences in handling his company is particularl}'-
amusing. He was marching with a front of over twenty men across
a field, when he desired to pass through a gateway into the next
inclosure. " I could not for the life of me, " said he, " remember the proper
word for getting my company endwise, so that it could get through
the gate ; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'This company
is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the
other side of the gate!' "
Nor was it only his ignorance of the manual which caused him
trouble. He was so unfamiliar -with camp discipline that he once
had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Another
disgrace he suffered was on account of his disorderly company.
The men, unknown to him, stole a quantity of liquor one night, and
the next morning were too drunk to fall in when the order was given

loo THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
to march. For their lawlessness Lincoln wore a wooden sword tw-o
days. But none of these small difficulties injured his standing with
the company. Lincoln was tactful, and he joined his men in sports
as well as duties. They soon grew so proud of his quick wit and
great strength that they obeyed him because they admired him.
No amount of military tactics could Uave secured from the volun
teers the cheerful following he won by his personal qualities.
Tlie Early Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 134.
Risked His Life in Rescuing an Indian
Into the camp of the Sangamon company .there wandered
one day, a poor forlorn, solitary, hungry, and helpless old Indian
seeking charity.
"Injun white man's friend," he exclaimed, as he extended his
hand in supplication. "See — paper talks; from big white
war chief, " and he drew from his belt a letter, which he offered as
evidence of friendship.
But the soldiers into whose presence he had thrust himself had
no faith in such assurances; they had been looking for Indians;
here was one at last — no doubt a spy — perhaps Black Hawk
himself. " String him up ! Scalp him! Kill him!" they cried. " He's a
sure-enough Injun. He's what we're after. Rush him along, we'll
settle him ! " ,
In vain the poor old red man fluttered the letter in their faces.
" Me good Injun, " he protested ; " white chief say so. See 'um
talking paper. "
"Get out; can't play that forgery on us. Shoot him! Shoot
him!" the soldiers shouted, and with that they hustled the old
Indian about so roughly and made so much noise over their prize
that they aroused their captain, who came springing from his tent.
" What's all this row about? " he demanded.
At once his glance fell upon the badgered Indian, and, dashing
in among his men, he scattered them to right and left and placed
a protecting hand upon the red fugitive's shoulder.
"Stand back, aU of you!"^he shouted. "Aren't you ashamed
of yourselves — all of you pUin'g on one poor old redskin? What
are you thinking of? Would you kiU an unprotected man.?"

From Historic Amertcans, Elbridge S. Brooks.
CAPTAIN LINCOLN DEFENDING THE INDIAN
**I'll fight you all," said the captain, " one after the other, just as you come. Take it out
of me if you can, but you shan't touch this Injun."

SIX YEARS .-IT NEW SALEM

"A spy! He's a spy!" cried the discomfited soldiers, gathering
again about their prey. The poor old Indian read his fate in their
eyes. He crouched low at the captain's feet, recognizing in him his
only protector.
"Fall back, men; fall back!" the captain commanded. "Let
the Injun go. He hasn't done anything to you. He can't
hurt you. "
"What are you afraid of?" demanded one of the ringleaders,
brandishing his rifle. "Let us have him. We're not afraid, even
if you are a coward. "
The tall young captain faced his accuser and proceeded to roll
up his sleeves deliberately and with unmistakable meaning.
" Who says I'm a coward? " he demanded.
The implied challenge received no response. The Sangamon
boys knew the length and strength of those brawny arms.
"Get out, Cap'n; that's not fair," they said. "You're
bigger 'n we are, and heavier. You don't give us a show. "
" I'll give you all the show you want, boys, " said the captain.
" More'n you'll gi-ve this Injun. I'll tell you what : I'll flght you all,
oneafter the other, just as you come. Take it out of me if you can,
but you shan't touch this Injun. When a man comes to me for
help he's going to get it, if I have to lick all Sangamon County. "
There was no acceptance of that challenge, either. The
Indian, who proved to be one of the friendly Indians from General
Cass's Division, was given over to the captain; the men dispersed;
the trouble was over ; no man in the camp or all the camps together,
had any desire to try a wrestle with Capt. Abraham Lincoln, who
protected a fugitive Indian from the ferocity of that unruly set of
raw recruits . . at the risk of his life. "
Historic Americans, Elbridge S. Brooks, page 336.
Gruesome Picture Painted by Lincoln Himself
Many years afterward, — in fact, while Lincoln was President, —
he referred to those early scenes in a way that illustrates , . his
power of recalling the minutest incidents of his past life 
Particularly, he remembered his share in the Black Hawk War.
He referred to his part of the campaign lightly, and said tKat
he saw but very little fighting. But he remembered coming on a
camp of white scouts one morning just as the sun was rising.

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

The Indians had surprised the camp, and had killed and scalped
every man.
"I remember just how those men looked," said Lincoln, "as
we rode up the hill where the camp was. The red light of the morn
ing sun was streaming upon them as they lay, heads toward us, on
the ground, and every man had a round red spot on the top of his
head, about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his
scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque, and the red sunlight
seemed to paint everything all over. "
Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and added,
somewhat irrelevantly,
" I remember that one man had buckskin breeches on. "
The Every-Day Life of Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page io6.

J

Half-Starved but Good-Natured Soldiers
At times the soldiers were hard-pressed for food 
"At an old Winnebago town called Turtle Village," narrates a
member of the company, "after stretching our rations over nearly
four days, one of our mess, an old acquaintance of Lincoln, G. B.
Fanchier, shot a' dove, and> having a gill of flour left, we made a
gallon and a half of delicious soup in an old tin bucket that had been
lost by Indians. This soup we divided among several messes that
were hungrier than we were and our own mess, by pouring in each
man's cup a portion of it."
" At another time, in the extreme northern part of
Illinois, we had been very hungry for two days when we came upon
a new cabin on the edge of the prairie, that the family had vacated
from fear of losing their scalps. There were plenty of chickens
about the place that were hungrier than we ourselves were. . .
The others went to running, clubbing and shooting them as
long as they could be found. Whilst the killing was going on
I climbed to the ridge-pole of the smoke-house to see distinctly
what I saw obscurely from the ground, and behold! the
cleanest, sweetest jo-wl I ever saw — alone, half hid by boards and
ridge-pole, stuck up, no doubt, for future use. By this time
many of the chickens were on^the fire, broiling, for want of
grease or gravy to fry them in. Some practical fellow proposed
to throw in with the fowls enough bacon to convert broiling

.¦^&i&A

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 103
into frying; the proposition was adopted, and they were soon
fried. "We began to eat the tough, dry chickens -with alternating
mouthfuls of jowl, when Lincoln came to the repast with the query,
'"Eating chicken, boys?'
'"Not much, sir,' I responded.
'"It is much like eating saddle-bags, ' he said ; 'but I think the
stomach can accomplish much to-day; what have you got there
-with the skeleton, George?'
" 'We did have a sweet jowl of a hog, sir,' I answered, 'but you
are nearly too late for your share, ' at the same time making room
for him to approach the elm-bark dish. He ate the bacon a mo
ment, then commenced dividing by mouthfuls to the boys from
other messes, who came to 'see what Abe was at,' and saying many
quaint and funny things suited to the time and the jowl. "
The captain, it will be seen, by his "freedom without famiUar-
ity, " and his "courtesy without condescension," was fast making
inroads on the respect of his rude but appreciati\-e men.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 88.
Re-enlisted as a "Dignified Private"
The term for which the volunteers had enlisted had now ex
pired, and the majority, tiring of the service, the novelty of which
had worn off, and longing for the comforts and good cheer of their
homes, refused either to re-enUst or render further service. They
turned their faces homeward, each with his appetite for mUitary
glory well satiated.
But the war was not over, and the mighty Black Hawk was
still east of the Mississippi. A few remained and re-enlisted.
Among them was Lincoln. This time, eschewing the responsibility
of a captaincy . he entered the company of Elijah lies as
a dignified private . .
Mr. Lincoln had no home ; he had cut loose from his parents,
from the Hankses and the Johnstons; he left behind him no
anxious -wife and children; and no chair before a warm fireside
remained vacant for him.
"I was out of work," he said to me once, "and I could do
nothing better than to enUst again. "
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 90.

I04 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"The Strongest Man I Ever Met"
A trifling incident exhibited the force of his will and the
estimation in which Lincoln was held by his followers. There was
in Captain Henry L. Webb's company from Union County a very
strong and athletic man named Nathan M. Thompson, nicknamed
"Dow" Thompson. The question of comparative muscular
strength arising between him and Lincoln, they resorted to a wrest
ling match, in order to decide it.
After struggling for a while -with no advantage either way,
Lincoln said :
"This is the strongest man I ever met. "
Soon thereafter, amid great and growing excitement, Lincoln
was fairly thrown. This was for the first time in his Ufe. The
wrestlers took hold again, and a second time Lincoln was thrown.
Instantly a hundred men jerked oft" their coats crying,
"Foul!"
An equal number on the other side followed suit, crying,
" We'll see if it was. "
A deadly fight seemed imminent, but Lincoln commanded
attention, and said :
"Boys, this man can throw me fairly, if he didn't do it this
time; so let us give up that I was beaten fairly. "
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 97.
Distinguished Men in the Black Hawk War
In a war so meager in military exploit, it is curious to note how
many persons then or later distinguished had part — Andrew Jackson
being Commander-in-chief, e.x-ojficio. Major-General Scott had
set out with a small body of regulars, to put an end to the affair by
taking the field in person. Arrived at Chicago, then beginning to
grow from a mere military fort into a thin, straggUng village, he met
a more formidable foe than he was seeking, in the form of Asiatic
cholera. . He had iiot been fully restored to health , . .
when news came that Black Hawk was beaten and the war was over.
Other officers connected with this campaign were Zachary
Taylor, then a Colonel of the regular army, and in command of the
post of Fort Crawford, at Prairie du Chien; Jefferson Davis, later
his son-in-law; Albert Sidney Johnston; Erasmus D. Keyes, a

SIX YEARS .4 7 NEW S.ALEM 105
lieutenant, lately graduated; and Robert Anderson, then Lieu
tenant of Artillery, acting as Inspector-General, by whom the volun
teers were i-nustered into the service.
Of more immediate importance to Captain Lincoln were two
men in the volunteer service, both residents of Springfield; Major
John T. Stuart, an educated Kentuckian and an able la'wyer, who
first met Lincoln at Beardstown at the time of the mustering in ;
and John Calhoun, of a prominent Massachusetts family of
Scotch descent, said to be related to the eminent Carolina
statesman. Lincoln and His Presidency , Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 34.
A Romantic but Doubtful Statement
In the memoirs of Jefferson Davis by his wife, it is stated
that when this volunteer force was called out by Governor
Reynolds, General Winfield Scott was in command at Fort Snell-
ing, and dispatched thence to the seat of war two lieutenants to
muster in the Illinois Volun'teers.
One of these lieutenants was said to be a "very fascinating
young man of easy manners and affable disposition ;" while "the
other was equally pleasant and extremely modest;" it is further
stated that " a tall, homely young man, dressed in a suit of blue
jeans," presented himself to the lieutenants as the captain of a
company of volunteers, and was with the others duly sworn in;
and that the oath of allegiance was administered to the "young
man in jeans," by the "fascinating" young lieutenant first named.
This "fascinating" young officer was Jefferson Davis, who
was nearly a year the senior of Lincoln; his "extremely modest"
colleague was Robert Anderson, who at the beginning of the War
of Secession was in command at Fort Sumter ; and the tall, homely
young captain in "blue jeans" was Abraham Lincoln.
There may be a grain of truth in this romantic statement,
but it is doubtful. At the time Lincoln was elected captain, and
mustered into service, Scott was not at Fort Snelling ; he was in
the East, and did not reach Chicago until July 8. Lieut. Jefferson
Da'vis did not, at that time, come from Fort Snelling ; he had for
a considerable time been with Col. Zachary Taylor at Fort Craw
ford (Prairie du Chien).
Lincoln in the Black Hawk War. Collections of the State Historical Society o£ Wisconsin,
Vol. XI'V", page 123.

io6 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

Romantic Story Oflacially Denied
A story to the effect that Lincoln was mustered into service by
Jefferson Davis has for a long time been current, but the strictest
search in the records fails to confirm it. We are indebted to General
R. C. Drum, Adjutant-General of the Army, for an interesting letter
giving all the known facts in relation to this story. General Drum
says: "The company of the Fourth Regiment Illinois Mounted Vol
unteers, commanded by Mr. Lincoln, was, with others, called out by
Governor Reynolds, and was organized at Richland, Sangamon
County, Illinois, April 21, 1832. The muster-in roll is not on file,
but the records show that the company was mustered out at the
mouth of the Fox River, May 27, 1832, by Nathaniel Buckmaster,
Brigade-Major to General Samuel Whitesides's Illinois Volunteers.
On the muster-roll of Captain Elijah Iles's company, Illinois
Mounted Volunteers, A. Lincoln. .appears as a private from
May 27, 1832, to June 16, 1832, when the company was mustered
out of service by Lieutenant Robert Anderson . who in April,
1 86 1, was in com.mand of Fort Sumter. There is no evidence to
show that it was mustered in by Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Mr.
Davis's company (B, First United vStates Infantry) was stationed at
Fort Crawford, Wisconsin, during the months of January and
February, 1832, and he is borne on the rolls as 'absent on detached
service at the Dubuque mines by order of Colonel Morgan. ' From
March 26 to August 18, 1832, the muster rolls of Davis's company
report him as absent on furlough. "
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 96. (Foot-note.)
Returning with "Quips and Quirks" from the War
It was on the i6th of June, a month before the slaughter
of the Bad Axe, that the battalion to which Lincoln belonged
was at last mustered out, at Whitewater, Wisconsin.
The men started home the next day in high spirits, like school
boys for their hoUdays. Lincoln had need, Uke Horatio, of his
good spirits, for they were his only outfit for the long journey
to New Salem, he and his messmate Harrison having had their
horses stolen the day before by some patriot over-anxious to
reach home. But, as Harrison says:

SLY YEARS AT NEW SALEM 107
"I laughed at our fate, and he joked at it, and we all started
off merrily. The generous men of our cornpany walked and rode by
turns with us, and we fared about equal with the rest. But for this
generosity our legs would have had to do the better work; for in
that day this dreary route furnished no horses to buy or to steal ;
and, whether on horse or afoot, we always had company, for many
of the horses ' backs were too sore for riding. "
It is not hard to imagine with what quips and quirks of native
fancy Lincoln and his friends beguiled the way through forest and
prairie. With youth, good health, and a clear conscience, and even
then the dawning of a young and undefiled ambition in his heart,
nothing was wanting to give zest and spice to this long, sociable
walk of a hundred leagues.
Lincoln and Harrison could not have been altogether penniless,
for at Peoria they bought a canoe and paddled down to Pekin.
Here the ingenious Lincoln employed his hereditary talent for
carpentry by making an oar for the frail vessel while Harrison was
providing the commissary stores. The latter goes on to say :
"The river, being very low, was without current, so that we
had to pull hard to make half the speed of legs on land; in fact,
we let her float all night, and on the next morning always found the
objects still visible that were beside us the previous evening. The
water was remarkably clear for this river of plants, and the flsh
appeared to be sporting with us as we moved over or near them. J
On the next day after we left Pekin we overhauled a raft of saw-
logs, with two men afloat on it to urge it on with poles and to guide
it in the channel. We immediately pulled up to them and went on
the raft, where -we were made welcome by various demonstrations,
especially by an invitation to a feast on fish, corn-bread, eggs, butter
and coffee, just prepared for our benefit. Of these good things we
ate almost immoderately, for it was the only warm meal we had
made for several days. While preparing it, and after dinner,
Lincoln entertained them, and they entertained us for a couple
of hours very amusingly." . .
The returning warriors dropped down the river from Pekin to
Havana. . There they sold their boat, — no difficult task, for a
canoe was a staple article in any river-town, — and again set out,

/

io8 THE STORY LIFE OF LINCOLN
the old way, over the sand-ridges, for Petersburg. "As we drew
near home the impulse became stronger and urged us on amaz
ingly. The long strides of Lincoln, often slipping back in the
loose sand, six inches every step, were just right for me; and he
was greatly diverted ' when he noticed me behind him stepping
along in his tracks to keep from slipping."
Thus the two comrades came back from their soldierings to
their humble homes, from which Lincoln was soon to start on the
way marked out for him by Providence, with strides which no
comrade, with whatever good -will, might hope to follow.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page g6.
Humorous Reference to His Record in the Black Hawk War
When a member of Congress, Mr. Lincoln made a very amusing
campaign speech, in which, alluding to the custom of exaggerating
the military service of candidates, and ridiculing the extravagant
claims to heroism set up for General Lewis Cass, then a candidate
for the Presidency against General Zachary Taylor, he referred
with great good humor to his own services in the Black Hawk
War in the foUo'wing terms:
" By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am a military hero?
Yes, sir; in the days of the Black Hawk War I fought, bled and —
came away. Speaking of General Cass's career reminds me of my
own. I was not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about as near it as
Cass was to Hull's surrender; ahd, like him, I saw the place very
soon afterwards. It is quite certain I did not 'break my sword,'
for I had none to break ; but I hent my musket pretty badly on one
occasion. If Cass broke his sword, the idea is he broke it in
desperation. I bent my musket by accident. If General Cass
went in advance of me in picking whortleberries, I guess I
surpassed him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any
live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did ; but I had a good
many bloody struggles with mosquitoes, and, although I never
fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very
hungry. Mr. Speaker, if I should ever conclude to doff whatever
our Democratic friends may suppose there is of black-cockade
federalism about me, and thereupon they shall take me up as
their candidate for the Presidency, I protest they shall not make

SLX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 109
fun of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to
write me into a military hero."
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 37.
The Only Time Lincoln Was Ever Defeated on a Direct Vote
of the People
Lincoln must have reached home about August ist, for the
election was to occur in the second week of that month, and this
left him but ten days in which to push his claims for popular
indorsement. His friends, however, had been doing manful duty
for him during his three months ' absence, and he lost nothing
in public estimation by his prompt enlistment to defend he
frontier. Successive announcements in the Journal had by this
time swelled the list; of candidates to thirteen.
But Sangamon County was entitled to only four representa
tives, and when the returns came in Lincoln was among those
defeated. Nevertheless, he made a very respectable showing in
the race. The list of successful aspirants and their votes
was as follows :
E. D. Taylor. , . .. .. .1127
John T. Stuart.,.. .... . 991
Achilles Morris . .... ... . . 945
Peter Cartwright (the famous backwoods preacher) . . 815
Under the plurality rule, these four had been elected .
The returns show that the total vote of the county was about
2168. Comparing this with the vote (657) cast for Lincoln, we
see that he received nearly one-third of the total county vote,
notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding
the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood
of New Salem, notwithstanding the sharp competition. Indeed,
his talent and fitness for active practical politics were demonstrated
beyond question by the result in his home precinct of New Salem,
which, though he ran as a Whig, gave 277 votes for him and only
3 against him. Three months later it gave 185 for the Jackson and
only 70 for the Clay electors, proving Lincoln's personal popularity.
He remembered for the remainder of his life with great pride that
this was the only time he was ever beaten on a direct vote of the
people.

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

The result of the election brought him to one of the serious
crises of his life, which he forcibly stated in after years in the
following written words :
"He (Lincoln wrote of himself in the third person) was now
without means and out of business, but anxious to remain with his
friends, who had treated him with so much generosity, especially
as he had nothing elsewhere to go to. He studied what he should
do; thought of learning the blacksmith trade, thought of tr5dng
to study law, rather thought he could not succeed at that without
a better education."
A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, John G. Nicolay, page 35.
Lincoln and Smoot — Left-Handed Compliments but Right-Handed
Friendship
One day in 1832, while Lincoln was clerking for Offutt, a
stranger came into the store, and soon disclosed the fact that his
name was Smoot. Abe was behind the counter at the moment,
but, hearing the name, he sprang over and introduced himself. Abe
had often heard of Smoot and Smoot had often heard of Abe.
"Smoot," said Lincoln, after a steady survey of his person,
"I am very much disappointed in you; I expected to see an old
'Probst' of a feUow. " ("Probst, " it appears, was the most hideous
specimen of humanity in all that country.)
"Yes," replied Smoot, "and I am equally disappointed, for
I expected to see a good-looking man when I saw you. "
A few neat compliments like the foregoing laid the foundation
of a lasting intimacy between the two men.
Tlic Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 157.
A Wrecked Store, a Plucky Investment and the Firm of
Berry & Lincoln
After Lincoln had terminated his novitiate in mercantile life
with the downfaU of Offutt, his next mercantile .experi
ence was achieved in a mode peculiar to the business methods . .
of the frontier.
It occurred thus : Reuben Radford brought a stock of goods to
New Salem, and opened a store. He was duly warned against the
idiosyncrasies of the " Clary's Grove Boys, " but incorrectly reasoned

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM

that he could keep them under control if he limited their allowance
of drinks to' two each. It so happened that, upon the occasion of
their first visit to New Salem after his settlement there, he was on
a visit in the country three miles distant, and his young brother was
in charge. After the crowd drank twice around, the young clerk informed
them that he had reached the limit of his orders, and that the faucet
to the whiskey barrel was under an embargo till their next visit.
That was, to them, a strange condition of affairs, and not in accord
ance with the theory of government for which their fore
fathers "fit, " and they sought in vain to impress their view of the
case upon the warden of the indispensable spirits. But the youth
was rigid ahd declined to yield, "whereupon the crowd whipped out
their horse-pistols and made targets of the alluring whiskey bottles
which adorned the shelves, and in a few minutes spread ruin
throughout the store. "The boys" then made good use of the
exhilaration contained in an unlimited supply of whiskey, and
riot reigned supreme in that neighborhood until the "wee sma'
hours" of the next morning.
Shortly before day, Radford's peaceful sleep was disturbed by
the bacchanalian yelling of the rowdies en route for their homes, and
fearing danger at his store, he mounted his horse and rode post-haste
toward the little hamlet.
Billy Greene, then still a youth, was on his pony going early to
mill. Seeing Radford dash past him, his horse reeking 'with sweat,
he followed at a breakneck pace to learn the cause of such excite
ment. Radford reached his store, and, hastily alighting, stood on
the platform and gazed in at the open door with dismay upon
the broken bottles and other debris of the saturnalian debauch.
Greene rode up to the open window just as Radford in desper
ation exclaimed:
"I'll sell out this whole 'shebang' at the first offer I get."
Greene, at a venture, exclaimed,
"I offer $400."
"Done," said Radford, "the concern's yours."
" But I have no money, " said Greene.
"Never mind the money," said the disgusted merchant.
" Come right in and give me your note at six months, " which Greene
promptly and recklessly did.

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

Radford bestrode his steed and left young Greene " monarch of
all he surveyed." The store was directly opposite the hotel
(so-called) where Lincoln at that time abode. Just at this moment
Abe appeared at the wash-stand out of doors. Seeing the youthful
speculator and divining his "embarrassment of riches," Lincoln
said: " Hold on. Bill, till I get a bite of breakfast, and we'll take an
inventory and see what you've got. "
"I don't want any more inventory, " was the reply. "The
'Clary Grovers' have done all the inventoryin' / want."
But after breakfast Lincoln and Greene went through the stock
and found that it was worth seven hundred and fifty dollars at
least. Lincoln was out of a job just then, and one WUUam Berry
was also out of employment, but the possessor, just at that
juncture, of two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and a good horse,
saddle, and bridle.
In less than an hour from the time of the inventory the follow
ing trade was made : Berry & Lincoln formed a partnership and
bought out Greene ; Berry paid him two hundred and fifty dollars
in cash, and gave him the horse, saddle, and bridle, estimated at
one hundred dollars, assumed payment of his debt to Radford, and
Greene was to have the store receipts for that day. The new firm
then ^ went into possession and took in fifteen dollars and a
Spanish shilUng; and young Greene, highly elated by his first
business venture, rode home that night with two hundred and
sixty-five doUars and twelve and one-half cents, and a horse, saddle
and bridle, as the result of the investment of a boy's pluck and
enterprise. The firm of Berry & Lincoln next absorbed the stock and busi
ness of the moribund firm of James and Rowan Herndon. The
new enterprise was, however, greatly handicapped, first, by lack of
capital, and secondly, by the devotion of the senior partner to the
whiskey jug, and of the junior partner to "star-eyed science. "
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 88.
Becomes Possessor of "Blackstone" by Accident
His ambition to be a lawj^er was stimulated by a curious inci
dent that occurred soon after he went into partnership with Berry.

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM

"3

He related it himself to Mr. A. J. Conant, the artist, who painted his
portrait in Springfield in i860, in these words :
" One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in
front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and
household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for
which he had no room in his wagon, and which contained nothing
of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it,
and paid him,
I think, half a
dollar for it.
Without f u r -
ther examina
tion I put it
away in the
store and for
got all about
it. Some time
after, in over
hauling things,
I came upon
the barrel, and
emptying it on
the floor to see
what it con
tained, I found
at the bottom
of the rubbish
a complete edi
tion of Black-
stone's 'Com
mentaries. ' I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty
of time ; for during the long summer days, when the farmers were
busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between.
The more I read" — this he said with unusual emphasis — "the more
intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was
my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured
them. "
The True Abraham Lincoln. William Eleroy Curtis, page 63.

Devotion of the junior partner to " star-eyed science. "

114 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
His First Effort at Public Speaking.
About the year 1832 or 1833, Mr. Lincoln made one of his first
efforts at public speaking. A debating club, of which James Rut
ledge was president, was organized, and held regular meetings.
As he arose to speak, his tall form towered above the little
assembly. Both hands were thrust down deep in the pockets of
his pantaloons. A perceptible smile at once lit up the faces of the audience, for
all anticipated the relation of a humorous story. But he opened up
the discussion in splendid style, to the infinite astonishment of his
friends. As he warmed with his subject, his hands would forsake
his pockets and would enforce his ideas by awkward gestures, but
would very soon seek their easy resting-places. He pursued the
question with reason and argument so pithy and forcible that all
were amazed.
The president, at his fireside after the meeting, remarked to his
wife that there was more in Abe's head than wit and fun; that
he was already a fine speaker ; that all he lacked was culture to
enable him to reach the high destiny which he knew was in
store for him. From that time Mr. Rutledge took a deeper interest
in him. The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 121.
The Store that "Winked out," Leaving "the National Debt"
Fortunately for Lincoln and for the world, the store-enterprise
was not successful. It was entered into without sufficient refiection,
and from the very nature of things was destined to fail. To Berry
the business was merely the refuge of idleness. He spent his time
in gossip and drank up his share of the profits, and it is probable
that Lincoln was far more interested in politics and general reading
than in the petty traffic of his shop. In the spring of the next year,
finding that their merchandise was gaining them little or nothing,
they concluded to keep a tavern in addition to their other business,
and the records of the County Court of Sangamon County show
that Berry took out a license for that purpose on the 6th of March,
1833- But it was even then too late for any expedients to save the
moribund partnership. The tavern was never opened, for about
this time Lincoln and Berry were challenged to sell out to a pair of

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM

vagrant brothers named Trent, who, as they had no idea of paying,
were -willing to give their notes to any amount. They soon ran
away, and Berry expired, extinguished in rum.
Lincoln was thus left loaded with debts, and with no assets
except worthless notes of Berry and the Trents. It is greatly to his
credit that he never thought of doing by others as others had done
by him. The morality of the frontier was deplorably loose in such
matters, and most of these people would have concluded that the
failure of the business expunged its liabilities.
But Lincoln made no effort even to compromise the claims
against him. He promised to pay when he could, and it took the
labor of years to do it, but he paid at last every farthing of the debt,
which seemed to him and his friends so large that it was called
among them "the national debt. "
He had already begun to read elementary books of law, bor
rowed from Major Stuart and other' kindly acquaintances. Indeed,
it is quite possible that Berry and Lin
coln might have succeeded better in bus
iness if the junior member of the firm
had not spent so much of his time read
ing Blackstone and Chitty in the shade
of a great oak just outside the door,
while the senior quietly fuddled himself
-within. Eye-witnesses still (in 1880) speak
of the grotesque youth, habited in home
spun tow, lying on his back -with his feet
on the trunk of the tree, and poring over
his book by the hour, "grinding around
in the shade, " as it shifted from north to
east. .After his store, to use his own
expression, had "'winked out, " he applied
himself 'with more continuous energy to
his reading, doing merely what odd jobs came to his hand to pay
his current expenses, which were of course very slight.
He sometimes helped his friend ElUs in his store ; sometimes
went into the field and renewed his exploits as a farm hand, which
had gained him traditional fame in Indiana; sometimes employed
his clerkly hand in straightening up a neglected ledger. It is
probable that he worked for his board oftener than for any other

MAJOR JOHN T. STUART
Who first encouraged Lincoln to
study law and lent him law books.

ii6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
compensation, and his hearty friendliness and vivacity, as well as
his industry in the field, made him a welcome guest in any farm
house in the county. His strong arm was at the disposal of the
poor and needy; it is said of him, with a graphic variation of a
well-known text, "that he visited the fatherless and the widow
and chopped their wood."
Abraham Lincoln: .A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page in.
Studying Law on the Woodpile
It is not to be wondered that Lincoln succeeded in becoming
a prominent la'wyer under such unpromising circumstances. Russel
Godby, an old man who still survives (1890), tells the foUo'wing:
" We often employed Lincoln to do farm work for us. One day
I found him sitting barefoot on the summit of the woodpile, atten
tively reading a book. This was such an unusual thing for a farm
hand to be doing that I asked him,
'Say, Abe, what are you doing up there?"
" 'I'm studying,' he answered.
'Studying whatf I inquired.
'Law, sir, ' was the emphatic response. I stood awhile look
ing at him, sitting there as proud as Cicero. That was really too
much for me. "
Stories and Speeches of .Abraham Lincoln, Paul Selby, page 83.
"Chops Up a House for 'Ab' Trent"
One cold winter day, Lincoln saw a poor feUow named "Ab"
Trent hard at work "chopping up a house," which Mr. HiU had
employed him to convert into firewood. Ab was barefoot, and
shivered pitifully while he worked. Lincoln watched him a few
moments, and asked him what he was to get for the job. Ab
answered, "one doUar;" and, pointing to his naked and suffering
feet, said he wished to buy a pair of shoes.
Lincoln seized the ax, and, ordering the boy to comfort him
self at the nearest fire, chopped up the house so fast that Ab and
the owner were both amazed when they saw it done.
According to Mr. Rutledge, " Ab remembered this act with the
liveliest gratitude. Once he, being a 'cast-iron Democrat,' deter
mined to vote against his party and for Mr. Lincoln ; but the friends,
as he afterwards said with tears in his eyes, made him drunk and

SIX YEARS AT -NEW SALEM 117
he voted against Abe. Thus he did not even have an opportunity
to return the noble conduct of Mr. Lincoln by this small measure
of thanks."
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 152.
Kelso Introduces Lincoln to " Shakespeare " and " Bums "
There lived at New Salem at this time, and for some years
afterward, a festive gentleman named Kelso, a school-teacher, a
merchant, or a vagabond, according to the run of his somewhat
variable "luck." When other people got drunk at New Salem, it
was the usual custom to tussle and fight, and tramp each other's
toes, and pull each other's nose; but when Kelso got drunk, he
astonished the rustic community with copious quotations from
Robert Burns and William Shakespeare, — authors little known
among the literary men of New Salem.
Besides Shakespeare and Burns, Mr. Kelso was likewise very
fond of fishing, and could catch his game when no other man could
"get a bite." Mr. Lincoln hated fishing 'with all his heart. But
it is the testimony of the country-side, from Petersburg to Island
Grove, that Kelso "drew Lincoln after him by his talk;" that they
became exceedingly intimate; that they loitered away whole days
together, along the banks of the quiet streams; that Lincoln
learned to love inordinately our "divine William" and "Scotia's
bard. " Finally he and Kelso boarded at the same place.
Like Offutt, Kelso disappeared suddenly from New Salem.
.... Of Kelso a few faint traces have been found in Missouri
.... and but for the humble boy to whom he was once a gentle
master, , no human being would now bestow a thought upon his
name. In short, to use the expressive language of Mr. Lincoln
himself, Kelso literally " petered out. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 144.
Junior Partner, Rail- Splitter, Farm-Hand and Postmaster
Business was not so brisk in Berry & Lincoln's store that the
junior partner did not welcome an appointment as postmaster,
which he received in May, 1833, . . The duties of the office
were not arduous, for letters were few, and their comings far be
tween. At that date the mails were carried by four-horse post-
coaches from city to city, and on horseback from central points into

ii8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the country towns. The rates of postage were high (from six to
twenty-five cents for a "single sheet" letter). . . Though
supposed to arrive twice a week, it sometimes happened that a fort
night or more elapsed without any mail. Under these conditions
the New Salem post-office was not a serious care.
A large number of the patrons of the office lived in the country
— many of them miles away — but generally Lincoln delivered the
letters at their doors— [a "rural free delivery"]. These he would
carefully place in the crown of his hat, and distribute them from
house to house. Thus it was in a measure true that he kept the
New Salem post-office in his hat.
But whether the mail was delivered by the postmaster himself,
or the recipient came to the store to inquire, "Anything for me?"
it was the habit "to stop and 'visit awhile." He who received a
letter read it and told the contents ; if he had a newspaper, usually
the postmaster could tell him in advance what it contained, for one
of the perquisites of the early postmaster was the pri'vilege of reading
all printed matter before delivering it. Every day, then, Lincoln's
acquaintance in New Salem, through his position as postmaster, be
came more intimate. . As the position of postmaster brought
in only a small revenue, Lincoln was forced to take any odd work
he could get. He helped in other stores of the town, split rails,
and looked after the mill; but all this yielded only a scant and
uncertain support.
The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M, Tarbell, page 175.
"Anything for Me?"
One Elmore Johnson, an ignorant but ostentatious, proud man,
used to go to Lincoln's post-office every day — ^^sometimes three or
four times a day, if in town, — and inquire,
" Anything for me ? ' '
This bored Lincoln, yet it amused him. He fixed a plan,
wrote a letter to Johnson, as coming from a negress in Kentucky,
saying a good many things about "possums," dances, "comshuck-
ings, " etc., winding up with:
" Johns ', come and see me again and old master won't kick you
out of the kitchen any more!"
Elmore took it out and opened it, but couldn't read a word;
he went away and got some friends to read it ; they read it correctly

57 A' YEARS AT NEW SALEM

119

but he thought they were fooling him. He went to others with the
same result. At last he said he -would get Lincoln to read it.
It was almost too much for Lincoln, but he read it through.
The man never asked again, "Anything here for me?"
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H, Lamon, page 148,
A. Lincoln, Deputy-Surveyor
¦ When in the fall he had an opportunity to learn surveying, he
accepted it eagerly. . .
As the county of San
gamon was large, and
eagerly sought by im
migrants, the county
surveyor in 1833, one
John Calhoun, needed
deputies. With Lincoln, Cal-
hoim had little, if any,
personal acquaintance,
for they lived twenty
miles apart. Cal
houn had heard of him
(Lincoln) as an honest,
intelligent, and trust
worthy young man. One
day he sent word to
Lincoln by Pollard Sim
mons, who Uved in the
New Salem neighbor
hood, that he had de
cided to appoint him
deputy surveyor if he
would accept the posi
tion. It was a surprise to Lincoln. Calhoun was a "Jack
son man;" he was for Clay. What did he know about surveying,
and why should a Democratic official offer him a position of any
kind? He immediately went to Springfield, and had a talk with
Calhoun. He would not accept the appointment, he said, unless
he had the assurance that it involved no political obligation. This

ANDREW JACKSON

^^-ll«lc>

^
s.

(l20)

SIN YEARS AT NEW SALEM

assurance was given. The only difficulty then in the way was
the fact that he knew absolutely nothing of surveying. But
Calhoun, of course, understood this, and agreed that he should
have time to learn.
With the promptness of action with which he always undertook
anything he had to do, he procured Flint and Gibson's treatise on
surveying, and sought Mentor Graham for help. At the sacrifice
of some time, the schoolmaster aided him to a partial mastery of
the intricate subject. Lincoln worked literally day and night,
sitting up night after night until the cro'wing of the cock w^arned
him of the approach of dawn. So hard did he study that his friends
were greatly concerned at his haggard face. But in six weeks he had
mastered all the books within reach relating to the subject.
Reporting to Calhoun for duty (greatly to the amazement of that
gentleman), he was at once assigned to the territory in the north
west part of the county.
Lincoln's surveys had the extraordinary merit of being correct.
Frequently he was called upon to find the corner in contro
versy. His verdict was invariably the end of the dispute, so
general was the confidence in his honesty and skill. Lincoln's pay
as a surveyor was three dollars a day, more than he had ever before
earned. Good board and lodging could be obtained for
one dollar a week. But even three doUars a day did not enable
him to meet all his financial obligations. The heavy debts of the
store hung over him. He was obUged to help his father's family
in Coles County. The long distances he had to travel in his new
employment had made it necessary to buy a horse, and for it he had
gone into debt.
With a single exception, Lincoln's creditors seem to have been
lenient. One of the notes given by him came into the hands of a
Mr. Van Bergen, who, when it fell due, brought suit. The amount
of the judgment was more than Lincoln could pay, and his personal
effects were levied upon. These consisted of his horse, saddle and
bridle, and surveying instruments. James Short, a well-to-do
farmer, -without advising Lincoln of his plans, attended the sale,
bought in the horse and surveying instruments for one hundred
and twenty dollars, and turned them over to their former owner,
By this kind act of "Uncle Jimmy," the young surveyor was
enabled to continue his business.
The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page i8i.

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

A Picnic in the Neighborhood While Lincoln Was Surveying There
According to tradition, when he first took up the [surveying]
business he was too poor to buy a chain, and, instead, used a long,
straight grape-vine. Probably this is a myth, though surveyors
who had experience in the early days say it may be true. The
chains commonly used at that time were made of iron. Constant
use wore away and weakened the links, and it was no unusual thing
for a chain to lengthen six inches after a year's use. "And a good
grape-vine," to use the words of a veteran surveyor, " would give
quite as satisfactory results as one of those old-fashioned chains."
Lincoln frequently was obliged to be away for three or four
weeks at a time, laying new towns or locating new roads.
Every such trip added to his political capital. Such was his
reputation throughout the country that when he got a job ...
there was a picnic and jolly time in the neighborhood. Men and
boys gathered from far and near, ready to carry the chain, drive
stakes, and blaze trees, if they could only hear Lincoln's odd stories
and jokes. The fun was interspersed 'with foot races and wrestling
matches. To this day (1895) the old settlers in many a place in
Central Illinois repeat the incidents of Lincoln's sojourns in their
neighborhood while surveying their town.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, pages loo and 132.
The Clary's Grove Champion Becomes a Staunch Friend
But, after all, Lincoln had no friend more intimate than Jack
Armstrong, and none that valued him more highly. Until he finaUy
left New Salem for Springfield, he "rusticated" occasionally at
Jack's hospitable cabin, situated "four miles in the country," as
the polished metropolitans of New Salem would say.
Jack's wife, Hannah, . liked Abe, and enjoyed his visits
not less than Jack did.
" Abe would come out to our house, " she says, " drink milk, eat
mush, corn-bread and butter, bring the children candy, and rock
the cradle while I got him something to eat. . . I foxed his
pants; and made his shirts. He has gone -with us to
father's; he would tell stories, joke people, girls and boys, at
parties. He would nurse babies — do anything to accommodate

I-jMa

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM

123

anybody. I had no books about my house ; loaned him none.
We didn't think about books and papers. We worked; had to

^*" ' ~-~;!BP*^

"Abe would come to our house, tell stories and joke people."
live. Lincoln has stayed at our house two or three weeks at a time. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 150.

Where His Kindness of Heart Made Trouble
When a surveyor, Mr. Lincoln first platted the town of Peters
burg, Illinois. Some twenty or thirty years afterward the property-
owners along one of the outlying streets had trouble in fixing their
boundaries. They consulted the official plat and got no relief.

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

A committee was sent to Springfield to consult the distinguished
surveyor, but he failed to recall anything that would give them aid,
and could only refer them to the record. The dispute, therefore,
went into the courts.
While the trial was pending, an old Irishman named McGuire,
who had worked for some farmer during the summer, returned to
town for the winter. The case being mentioned in his presence, he
promptly said:
"I can tell you aU about it. I helped carry the chain when Abe
Lincoln laid out this town. Over there where they are quarreling
about the lines, when he was locating the street, he straightened up
from his instrument and said:
" 'If I rim that street right through, it will cut three or four feet
off the end of Blank's house. It's all he's got in the world and he
never could g^t another. I reckon it won't hurt anything out here
if I skew the line a little and miss him.' "
The line was "skewed," — hence the trouble, and more testi
mony furnished as to Lincoln's abounding kindness of heart that
would not willingly harm any human being.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yams and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 139.
His First Real Stump Speech
Here is a delightful description of the appearance of the candi
date and his style of address at the period :
I
"He wore a mixed jean coat, claw-hammer style, short in the
sleeves and bob-tail — ^in fact it was so short in the tail he could not
sit on it — flax and tow linen pantaloons, and a straw hat. I think he
wore a vest, but do not remember how it looked. He wore pot-
metal boots.
"His maiden effort on the stump was a speech on the occasion
of a public sale at Pappville, a village eleven miles off Springfield.
After the sale was over and speech-making had begun, a fight— a
"general fight," as one of the bystanders relates — ensued, and
Lincoln, noticing one of his friends about to succumb to the attack
of an infuriated ruffian, interposed to prevent it. He did so most
effectuaUy. Hastily descending from the rude platform, he edged
his way through the crowd, and seizing the bully by the neck and

SIX YEARS AT NEW S.ALEM 125
the seat of his trousers, threw him by means of his strength and long
arms, as one witness stoutly insists, 'twelve feet away.' Returning
to the stand, and throwing aside his hat, he inaugurated his cam
paign with the following brief, but juicy declaration :
" 'Fellow Citizens, I presume you all know who I am.
I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many
friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are
'short and sweet' like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a
national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system,
and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political
principles. If elected, I shall be thankful ; if not it will be all the
same.' "
Some old Love Stories, T. P. O'Connor, page 2g.

In the Field and on the Stump — The Campaign of 1834
Mr. Rowan Herndon tells of the following incidents : "Lincoln
came to my house, near Island Grove, during harvest. There were
some thirty men in the field. He got his dinner, and went out in
the field where the men were at work. I gave him an introduction,
and the boys said that they could not vote for a man unless he could
take a hand.
" 'Well, boys', said he, 'if that is all, I am sure of your votes. '
He took hold of the cradle, and led way all the round with perfect
ease. The boys -w^ere satisfied, and I don't think he lost a vote in
the crowd. " The next day there was speaking at Berlin. He went from
my house with Dr. Barnett, the man that had asked me who this
man Lincoln was. I told him that he was a candidate for the
Legislature. He laughed and said :
" 'Can't the party raise no better material than that?'
"I said, 'Go to-morrow, and hear all before you pronounce
judgment. '
"When he came back I said, 'Doctor, what do you say
now?' " 'Why, sir, ' said he, 'he is a perfect take in. He knows more
than aU of them put together. '
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 156.

126 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Love and Ambition
The honest and upright ambition of Abraham Lincoln to make
a man of himself needed no spurring. There were within^im
springs of life and thought as yet unopened and of whose existence
he was hitherto ignorant. These were now to be discovered to him,
and a new and strong incentive to exertion was to add its power to
the other forces which were urging him forward.
The third child of Mr. James Rutledge, Lincoln's devoted
friend and admirer, was a girl of high principle and uncommon
beauty. In all the country around there was no maiden to be com
pared with fair Ann Rutledge. Her mental accomplishments
were only such as could then be obtained in IlUnios by the daughter
of a country merchant of intelligence and property, but they were
sufficient. She could not fail to have admirers; and when, in the
second year of Lincoln's New Salem life, he came to board for a
while with her father, she was already promised in marriage to his
friend McNeil, a young and thriving trader and farmer of New Salem.
There came to her soon afterwards a strange, romantic history.
Her betrothed revealed to her the fact that his name was not Mc
Neil but McNamar, and that he had so concealed his identity in
coming West that he might build a fortune unknown to his family
and then return to care for his father in his old age. He was now
closing up his business, turning his property into money, and would
go to New York, and perform his purpose there, and come back to
wed the girl who had given him her heart.
She heard and she believed him, and he went away. He wrote
to her of his father's sickness and death. Then other letters came,
at longer and longer intervals, always promising to return and hold
ing her to her engagement, until at last their coming ceased entirely.
It was a cruel, a terrible thing to fall upon a girl of nineteen. The
one bitterer drop was added to her cup of trouble when she found
that, during all that time, she had been winning the heart of a
man whose faith could not be broken and whose integrity and
manly worth all other men acknowledged.
Ann was as true as she was beautiful, and she at last was com
pelled to tell her urgent suitor frankly what bond it was that bade
her not to love him. She could no longer love a man who had broken
his word. . . but she was slow to admit her right to take another

SIN YEARS AT NEW SALEM 127
in his place. And yet she had already taken him in, and Lincoln
knew it, and he gave to her all the unmeasured strength of his
first, whole-hearted love.
It was a loyal and manly thing to do. No other thing of which
he had shown himself capable told half so much for the growth of
his inner life or promised half so well.
Lincoln had something to live for. . . There was no need for any
urgent friend to prompt his political ambition now. He was thirst
ing for such honors as would mark him as a man fitted to court and
win Ann Rutledge. He announced himself as a candidate for
election to the State Legislature, issued a printed address to the
people of the county, and made a thorough stumping tour from
neighborhood to neighborhood. He spoke as he had never before
spoken, and was triumphantly elected, although there were other
strong candidates in the field.
Abraham Lincoln, the True Story of a Great Life, William O. Stoddard, page 99.
Smoot's Responsibility y
The proper sense of personal dignity forbade him to go to the
Capitol at Vandalia in the shabby clothing which was good
enough for his daily round of life and work in New Salem. .
Among his older acquaintances was a man named Smoot, as
dry a joker as himself, but better supplied with ready money. To
him Lincoln went one day, in company with another friend, Hugh
Armstrong. "Smoot, did you vote for me?"
"I did that very thing."
"Well, that makes you responsible. You must lend me the
money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent appear
ance in the Legislature."
"How much do you want?"
"About two hundred dollars, I reckon."
The honor of Sangamon County, and of New Salem in particular,
was at stake, and the new representative received his two hundred
dollars on the spot.
It is not difficult to guess whose eyes were among the first to
^ discover how great a difference good clothing could make in the
outer man of Ann Rutledge's tall lover.
Abraham. Lincoln, the True Story of a Great Life, William O. Stoddard, page 102.

1 28 THE STORY LIFE OF LINCOLN
Law Student and Representative
The best thing which Lincoln did in the canvass of 1834 was not
winning votes ; it was coming to a determination to read law, not
for pleasure, but as a business. In his autobiographical notes he
says: "During the canvass, in a private conversation, Major John T.
Stuart (one of his fellow candidates) encouraged Abraham to study
law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them
home with him and went at it in good earnest. He never studied
with anybody."
He seems to have thrown himself into the work with an almost
impatient ardor. As he tramped back and forth from Springfield,
twenty miles away, to get his law-books, he read sometimes forty
pages or more on the way. Often he was seen wandering at ran
dom across the fields, repeating alound the points in his last reading.
The rule he gave twenty years later to a young man who wanted
to know how to become a lawyer, was the one he practised :
"Get books and read and study them carefully. Begin with
Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' and after reading carefully through,
say, twice, take up Chitty's 'Pleadings,' Greenleaf's 'Evidence,' and
Story's 'Equity,' in succession. Work, work, work, is the main
thing." Having secured a book of legal forms, he was soon able to write
deeds, contracts, and all sorts of legal instruments; and he was
frequently called upon by his neighbors to perform services of this
kind. "In 1834," says Daniel Green Burner, Berry & Lincoln's clerk,
"My father, Isaac Burner, sold out to Henry Onstott, and he wanted
a deed written. I knew how handy Lincoln was that way, and
suggested that we get him. We found him sitting on a stump.
" ' All right,' said he, when informed what we wanted. 'If you
wUl bring me a pen and ink and a piece of paper I will write it here.'
I brought him these articles, and, picking up a shingle and putting
it on his knee for a desk, he wrote out the deed."
As there was no practising lawyer nearer than Springfield,
Lincoln was often employed to act the part of advocate before the
viUage squire, at that time Bowling Green. He realized that this
experience was valuable, and never, so far as known, demanded or
accepted a fee for his services in these petty cases.

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 129
The session of the ninth Assembly began December i, 1834, and
Lincoln went to the capital, then Vandalia, seventy-five miles south
east of New Salem, on the Kaskaskia River, in time for the opening.
When Lincoln first went to Vandalia it was a town of eight
hundred inhabitants.
The Assembly which he entered was composed of eighty -one
members — ^twenty-six senators and fifty-five representatives. As
a rule these men were of Kentucky, Tennessee or Virginia origin,
with here and there a Frenchman.
The ninth Assembly gathered in a more hopeful and ambitious
mood than any of its predecessors. Illinois was feeling well. The
State was free from debt. The Black Hawk War had stimulated
the people greatly, for it had brought a large amount of money into
circulation. In fact, the greater portion of the eight to ten million
dollars the war had cost, had been circulated among the Illinois
volunteers. Immigration, too, was increasing at a bewildering rate.
In the Northeast, Chicago had begun to rise.
To meet the rising tide of prosperity the Legislature of 1834 felt
that they must devise some worthy scheme, so they chartered a new
State bank. , But even more important to the State than
banks was a highway. For thirteen years plans of the Illinois
and Michigan canal had been constantly before the Assembly.
Now, however, the Assembly, fiushed by the first thrill of the coming
"boom," decided to authorize a loan of a half million on the credit
of the State.
Lincoln favored both these measures. . . He was
placed on the committee of public accounts and expenditures, and
attended meetings with great fidelity. But, neither as
a speaker nor as an auditor did he make any especial impression on
the body.
The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 197,
Ann Rutledge — "Loved and Lost"
It is not known precisely when Ann Rutledge told her suitor
that her heart was his, but early in 1835 it was publicly known that
they were solemnly betrothed. Even then the scrupulous maiden
waited for the return of the absent McNamar, that she might be
formally released from the obligation to him which he had so reck-

I30

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

lessly forfeited. Her friends argued with her that she was carrying
her scruples too far, and at last, as neither man nor letter came, she
permitted it to be understood that she Vould marry Abraham
Lincoln as soon as his legal studies should be completed.
That was a glorious summer for him; the brightest, sweetest,
hopefuUest he yet had known. It was also the fairest time he was

GRAVE OF LINCOLN'S "LOVED AND LOST"
" I can never be reconciled to have the snow, rain and storms beat upon her grave."
ever to see ; for even now, as the golden days came and went, they
brought an increasing shadow on their wings. It was a shadow that
was not to pass away. Little by little came indications that the
health of Ann Rutledge had suffered under the prolonged strain to
which she had been subjected. Her sensitive nature had been
strung to too high a tension and the chords of her life were beginning
to give way.

SIX YEARS AT NEW SALEM 131
There were those of her friends who said that she died of a
broken heart, but the doctors called it "brain fever."
On the 25th of August, 1835, just before'the summer died, she
passed away from earth. But she never faded from the heart of
Abraham Lincoln. . . In her early grave was buried the best
hope he ever knew, and the shadow of that great darkness was
never entirely lifted from him.
A few days before Ann's death a message from her brought
her betrothed to her bedside, and they were left alone. No one ever
knew what passed between them in the endless moments of that last
sad farewell; but Lincoln left the house with inexpressible agony
-written upon his face. He had been to that hour a man of mar
velous poise and self-control, but the pain he now struggled with
grew deeper and more deep, until, when they came and told him she
was dead, his heart and will, and even his brain itself, gave way.
He was utterly without help or the knowledge of possible help in
this world or beyond it. He was frantic for a time, seeming even
to lose the sense of his own identity, and all New Salem said that he
was insane. He piteously moaned and raved :
"I never can be reconciled to have the snow, rain, and storms
beat upon her grave . "
His best friends seemed to have lost their infiuence over him,
all but one ; for Bowling Green . managed to entice the
poor fellow to his own home a short distance from the village, there
to keep watch and ward over him until the fury of his sorrow should
wear away. There were well-grounded fears lest he might do him
self some injury, and the watch was vigilantly kept.
In a few weeks reason again obtained the mastery, and it was
safe to let him return to his studies and his work. He could indeed
work again, and he could once more study law, for there was a kind
of relief in steady occupation and absorbing toU, but he was not,
could not ever be, the same man.
Lincoln had been fond of poetry from boyhood, and had grad
ually made himself familiar with large parts of Shakespeare's plays
and the works of other great writers. He now discovered in a
strange collection of verses, the one poem which seemed best to
express the morbid, troubled, sore condition of his mind,
the lines by William Knox, beginning :
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
Abraham Lincoln, The True Story of a Great Life, William O. Stoddard, page 107.

132 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?"
With all his love of fun and frolic, with all his wit and humor,
with all his laughter and anecdotes, Lincoln, from his youth, was a
person of deep feeling, and there was always mingled with his mirth
sadness and melancholy. He always associated with the memory
of Ann Rutledge the plaintive poem which in his hours of melancholy
he so often repeated, and whose familiar first stanzas are as follows:
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave.
He passeth from Ufe to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid.
And the young and the old, and the low and the high
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. "
Lincoln loved at twilight, or when in the country, or in solitude,
or when with some confidential friend, to repeat this poem. I think
he exaggerated its merits, and I attribute his great love of the poem
to its association with Ann Rutledge. Several years passed after
the sad death of Miss Rutledge before he married. It is not im
possible that his devotion to her memory may have been, in part,
the cause of so long a delay.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 43.
"Ev'ry Time He'd Talk 'bout Her He Cried Dreadful"
"Abe's" nephew — or one of them — relates a story in connection
with Lincoln's first love (Ann Rutledge) . . . Said he one day,
in telUng his story :
"Us children, w'en we heerd Uncle 'Abe' wuz a-goin' to be
married, axed Gran'ma ef Uncle 'Abe' never hed hed a gal afore,
an' she says, sez she,
" 'Well, Abe wuz never a han' nohow to run 'round visitin'
much, or go with the gals, neither, but he did fall in love with a Ann
Rutledge, who lived out near Springfield, an' after she died he'd
come home, an' ev'ry time he'd talk 'bout her he cried dreadful. He
never could talk of her nohow 'thout he'd jes' cry an' cry, Uke a
young feller.'

57V YEARS AT NEW SALEM 133
"Onct he tol' Gran'ma they wuz goin' ter be hitched, they
havin' promised each other, an' thet is all we ever heerd 'bout it."
"Abe*' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 300.
Candidate Lincoln "Shows His Hand"
When he was again a candidate for the same office, there were
more political issues to be met, and Lincoln met them with char
acteristic honesty and boldness. During the campaign he issued
the foUo-wing letter: "New Salem, June 13, 1836.
"To the Editor of The Journal: "In your paper of last Saturday
I see a communication over the signature of 'Many Voters' in which
the candidates who are announced in the Journal are called upon to
'show their hands.'
"Agreed. Here's mine:
"I go in for all sharing the privileges of the government who
assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting
all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by
no means excluding females).
"If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my
constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
"While acting as their Representative, I shall be governed by
their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing
what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own
judgment teaches me will best advance their interests. Whether
elected or not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of
public lands to the several States to enable our State, in common
with others, to dig canals and construct raUroads without borrowing
money and paying interest on it.
"If alive on the first Monday in November, I shaU vote for
Hugh L. White, for President. "Very respectfully, "A. Lincoln."
This was just the sort of letter to. win the support of the plain-
spoken voters of Sangamon County. Lincoln not only received
more votes than any other candidate on the legislative ticket, but
the County, which had always been Democratic, was turned Whig.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 467.

134 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Forquer's Lightning-rod
In 1836, Lincoln was again a candidate for the Legislature, and
in this canvass he greatly distinguished himself. On one occasion
there was to be a public discussion among the opposing candidates,
held at the Court House at Springfield, and Lincoln, among others,
was advertised to speak. This was his first appearance "on the
stump" at the county seat. There lived at this time in the most
pretentious house in the town a prominent citizen with the name of
George Forquer. He had been long in public Ufe, had been a lead
ing Whig, the part.y to which Lincoln belonged, but had lately gone
over to the Democrats, and received from the Democratic admin
istration an appointment to the lucrative post of Register of the.
Land Office at Springfield. Upon his handsome new house he had
lately placed a lightning-rod, the first one ever put up in Sangamon
County. As Lincoln was riding into town with his friends they
passed the fine house of Forquer, and observed the novelty of the
lightning-rod, discussing the manner in which it protected the house
from being struck by lightning.
There was a very large meeting, and there was a great curiosity
to hear the orator from New Salem, who, as the "Clary's Grove Boys"
insisted, could make a better stump speech than any man at the
county seat.
There were seven Whig and seven Democratic candidates for
the lower branch of the Legislature, and after several had spoken,
it fell to Lincoln to close the discussion. He did it with great ability.
Forquer, though not a candidate, then asked to be heard for the
Democrats in reply to Lincoln. He was a good speaker, and well
known throughout the county. His special task that day was to
attack and ridicule the young countryman from New Salem. Turn
ing to Lincoln, who stood within a few feet of him, he said :
"This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry
that the task devolves upon me."
He then proceeded, in a very overbearing way, and with an
assumption of great superiority, to attack Lincoln and his speech.
He was fiuent and ready with the rough sarcasm of the stump,
and he went on to ridicule the person, dress, and arguments of Lin
coln with so much success that Lincoln's friends feared that he would

SIX YEARS IN NEW SALEM 135

be embarrassed and overthrown. The "Clary's Grove Boys," who
were present to cheer, applaud, and back Lincoln, could scarcely
be restrained from getting up a fight in behalf of their favorite.
They and aU his friends felt that the attack was ungenerous and
unmanly. Lincoln, however, stood calm, but his flashing eyes and pale
cheek indicated his indignation. As soon as Forquer had closed, he
took the stand and first answered his opponent's arguments, fully
and triumphantly. So impressive were his words and manner that
a hearer believes that he can remember to this day (i 880) and repeat
some of the expressions. Among other things he said:
" The gentleman commenced his speech by saying that 'this
young man,' alluding to me, must be taken down. I am not so
young in years as I am in the tricks and trades of a politician, but,"
said he, pointing to Forquer, "live long or die young, I would
rather die now, than, like the gentleman, change my politics, and
with the change receive an office worth three thousand dollars a
year, and then," continued he, "then feel obliged to erect a light
ning-rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an
offended God."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln Isaac N. Arnold, page 46.

Talked to His Hostess while His Rival Milked the Cow
In one of those campaigns, Lincoln and his Democratic oppo
nent, L. D. Ewing, contended in company for the ballot of a promi
nent farmer in Sangamon County. He was not at home, so they
both sought the influence of the farmer's wife. At milking
time they both started out to help her with pail and stool. Arrived
at the barn door, Mr. Ewing took the pail and insisted on doing the
milking himself, naturally thinking that this would be the master
stroke. But as he received no reply to the bits of talk he was able
to make at intervals, he looked up to see the hostess and his rival
leaning on the bars at ease, in amicable discussion. By the time his
task was done, Lincoln had captivated the voter's better half, and all
that his rival gained for his exertion was her thanks for the chance
to "have such a pleasant talk with Mr. Lincoln!"
Lincolnics, Henry LlewUyn Williams, page ig.

136 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Taylor's "Bloated Aristocrat"
Among the Democratic orators who canvassed Sangamon
County in 1836, was Colonel Dick Taylor. He was a . . very
pompous little gentleman, who rode about in his carriage, neatly
dressed, with very comspicuous ruffles to his shirt, with patent
leather boots, kid gloves, some diamonds and gold studs in his linen,
an immense watch-chain with many seals, charms, and pendants —
altogether in striking contrast with the plainly clad people whom
he addressed. Vain, and affecting to be, withal, an extreme
Democrat, he had much to say of "the bone and sinew," "the hard-
handed yeomanry of the land." He was very sarcastic on the Whig
aristocracy, the "rag barons," and the "silk stocking gentry."
Lincoln, the candidate of this so-called aristocracy, was dressed in
Kentucky jeans, coarse boots, checkered shirt buttoned round his
neck without a necktie, an old slouched hat, and certainly the last
thing he or his appearance could suggest would be that of anything
aristocratic. On one occasion when lincoln was present, Taylor, in the midst
of a violent harangue against the Whig aristocrats, made a gesture
so forcible that he tore the buttons off his vest, and the whole
magnificence of his ruffles, gold watch chain, seals, etc., burst forth,
fully exposed. Taylor paused in embarrassment. Lincoln, step
ping to the front, turning to Taylor, pointed to his ruffles and
exclaimed :
"Behold the hard-flsted Democrat! Look, gentlemen, at this
specimen of bone and sinew, and here, gentlemen, ' ' said he, laying his
great, bony hand, bronzed with work, on his own heart, "here at
your service," bowing, "here is your aristocrat! here is one of your
'silk stocking gentry' !" Spreading out his hands, "here is your ' rag
baron' with his lily-white hands. Yes, I suppose," continued he,
"I, according to my friend Taylor, am 'a bloated aristocrat.' "
The contrast was irresistibly ludicrous, and the crowd burst into
shouts of laughter and uproar. In this campaign the reputation
of Lincoln as a speaker was established, and ever afterwards he was
recognized as one of the great orators of the State.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 49.

SIX YEARS IN NEW SALEM 137

The " Long Nine," the Removal of the Capital, and the
" Lincoln-Stone Protest"
The Sangamon delegation to the Legislature, there being two
Senators and seven members of the House,— nine in all, and each
over six feet high — was known as the
"Long Nine," and Lincoln, being taUest
of aU, was called the "Sangamon Chief."
Among his colleagues from Sangamon
were Edward D. Baker, . . . and Ninian
W. Edwards, son of Governor Ninian
Edwards. Among his fellow-members of
the House were Stephen Arnold Douglas,
John J. Hardin, James Shields, . and
others who became prominent in the
State and nation. In this canvass Lincoln ninian w edwards
had received, as in 1834, the highest vote One of the - Long Nine - and hus-
given to any man on the ticket. ^^^^ °^ ^^^^ Todd's sister.
For the immediate constituents of Sangamon County, Lincoln
and the "Long Nine" succeeded in getting a law passed removing
the [State] capital from Vandalia to Springfield. A fellow-member,
one of the " Nine, " speaking of this measure, says:
"When our bill, to all appearance, was dead, and beyond
resuscitation . and our friends could see no hope, Lincoln
never for a moment despaired, but, collecting his colleagues in his
room for consultation, his practical common sense, his thorough
knowledge of human nature, made him an over-match for his com
peers, and for any man I have ever known. "
At this session, on the 3d of March, 1837, he began that series
of anti-slavery measures which were ended and consummated in the
Proclamation of Emancipation and the Amendment to the Con
stitution abolishing and prohibiting slavery forever throughout the
Republic. At this time it required courage to speak or write
against slavery. Resolutions of a violent pro-slavery character, and
denunciatory of " abolitionists " and all efforts to abolish and restrict
slavery, were carried through the Legislature by overwhelming
majorities. The people of Illinois, at that time, were made up
largely of emigrants from the slave States, and were filled with the
prejudices of that section, and the feeling against anti-slavery men

138 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
was violent, and almost universal. There then existed in Illinois a
body of laws against negroes, called "The Black Code," of most
revolting cruelty and severity.
Under these circumstances Lincoln jeopardized his popularity
by drawing up and signing a solemn protest against these resolu
tions. But among all the members of the house, over one hundred
in number, he found only one who had the courage to join him.
Abraham Lincoln and Dan Stone were the only ones who had
the nerve to express and record their protest against the injustice of
slavery. This protest, qualified as it was, to meet, if possible, the
temper of the times, declared that slavery is founded on injustice
and bad policy.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 50.
The " Prime Mover " of the Capital of Illinois
No event prior to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ever
happened in Illinois which created so much excitement as the
removal of the State Capital. The first measure was a joint resolu
tion to relocate by a joint convention of the two houses on a day
named. That day-was a red-letter day in the history of VandaUa,
for all the politicians in the State were there, each one advocating
his favorite location.
There were a dozen competing places, six actively so, and the
rest hoping that an emergency would arise that would bring one of
them to the front. The leading places were Springfield, Jackson
ville, Vandalia, Peoria, Alton and IlUopoUs (the center of the State).
When the first ballot was taken, intense excitement prevailed.
Lincoln's adroit tactics were felt and acknowledged throughout, and
Springfield received more votes than any two of its competitors
combined, on the first ballot, and continued to grow with every
ballot, securing the coveted prize on the fourth.
An appropriation of $50,000 was made towards providing a
capital building, and Springfield was required to obligate itself to
pay $50,000 toward the same object. It took herculean efforts to
raise this amount, and Doiiglas proposed a measure to release the
city from its obligation, but Lincoln opposed it. Said he:
" We have the benefit ; let us stand by our obligation like men."
The sum was divided into three instalments ; the first two were

SIX YEARS IN NEW SALEM

139

raised, but they had to borrow the last instalment from the State
Bank. To secure this a joint note was made, signed by every
citizen of the place.
This was Lincoln's last legislative ser-vice. During its existence
he gained much experience, became acquainted with the genius of
Illinois laws and polities, and the laws themselves, and the politi-

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M Tarbell
THE CAPITOE AT VANDALIA
Used as County Court-House after the removal of the State Capital, largely through
' Lincoln's influence, to Springfield.
cians, and was enabled to gauge, to some extent, his own merits and
abilities as a politician and public man.
Mr. Lincoln's statesmanship was in a chrysalis state. His
evolution from a backwoods youth to a man of affairs was not yet
complete. His training for his true mission in Ufe had just begun.
A Lincoln was not made in a day.
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. 'Whitney, page 14S.

I40 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Lincoln the "Pettifogger"
He had already begun to practice in an apprentice way, occa
sionally drawing deeds and bills of sale for his neighbors and " petti
fogging" before Justice Bowling Green; and biographers, better
acquainted with literary values than with law, have seized upon the
fact that he was not paid for this work to illustrate his generosity
and helpfulness. One of the recent histories states that, " poor as
he was, he never accepted a fee for such ser-vices, because he felt that
he was fully paid by the experience. "
Probably it more than paid him, but in view of the Illinois law
which imposes a hea-vy penalty on unlicensed persons who accept
compensation for attorney work, and in the light of similar pro
visions in the Indiana Revised Statutes, which Lincoln is supposed
to have memorized, chapter, page and verse, the attempt to praise
his forbearance makes a ludicrous virtue of necessity.
Lincoln, it will be remembered, protested that no pseudo-
partizans of his should never make fun of him by writing him into a
military hero ; but he could not protect himself on every side, and
his friends, the eulogists, have certainly done their best to make
him ridiculous.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 57.
Settled out of Court
Squire Masters of Petersburg, Illinois, was once threatened with
a lawsuit He went to Springfield and had a talk with Lincoln
about the case. Lincoln told him, as an old friend, that if he could
not settle the case he would undertake to defend it, but he urged
his friend to make an amicable adjustment.
" What'U you charge, Abe, to go into court for me?"
"WeU, " Lincoln repUed, "it will cost you ten dollars; but I
won't charge you anything if you can settle it between yourselves. "
The other party heard of the Squire's visit to Lincoln, and
agreed to settle.
Lincolnics, Henry Llewllyn Williams, page 30.
Banquets and Toasts for Lincoln and the "Long Nine"
The session ended on March, 6, 1837, and the "Long Nine"
mounted their horses and started for home, except Lincoln, who had
no horse to mount, and went by means of "Shanks' mare," as he

SLY YEARS IN NEW SALEM 141
termed it. Being long-legged and an excellent walker, he was
enabled to pick his way through comparatively dry fields and by
the roadside, thus avoiding the mud which his companions must
contend with, and so he managed to keep up with them for the
whole journey, which consumed four days. It is quite probable
that, in order to have the benefit of Lincoln's humor, they suited
their gait to his, and it is manifest to such as were familiar with the
"wild and woolly West, " in those days, that the literary entertain
ment of the journey was highly spiced, if not classical. The poorest
scintillation of wit of the journey reveals a border of sadness. The
future Emancipator, thinly clad for the season, shivered, as a cold
northeaster struck him, and said :
" Boys, I'm cold. "
"No wonder," was the unfeeling reply, animadverting on the
size of his feet, "there's so much of you on the ground. "
However, the "Long Nine" were received with great eclat at
Springfield. The keys and freedom of the little mud-begirt city
were accorded them, and free dinners galore were spread. At one
of these the following toast was proposed in honor of Mr. Lincoln :
"Abraham Lincoln; he has fulfilled the expectations of his
friends, and disappointed the hopes of his enemies;" and Lincoln
proposed this toast :
"All our friends: they are too numerous to mention now indi-
-vidually, while there is no one of them who is not too dear to be
forgotten or neglected. "
And Douglas, who was also there, having been appointed
Register of the Land Office, offered this toast :
"The winter's legislation: may its results prove no less
beneficial to the whole State than they have to our town. "
But the novelty wore off in a day or two, and the usual hum
drum of existence prevailed. Lincoln had had the lead in the
honors accorded, and, although his name was as sonorous and more
applauded than any, he was the only one of the " Long Nine" who
had no local habitation or home, and the necessity for achieving
one pressed remorselessly upon him.
Soon after leaving Springfield at this time, he visited Athens
[Illinois], where his colleague, Robert L. Wilson, of the " Long Nine, "
resided, and that community extended to Mr. Lincoln the com-
pUment of a banquet, at which he was accorded the toast :

142 THE STORY. -LIFE OR LINCOLN
"Abraham Lincoln; one of Nature's noblemen. "
One can scarcely credit the extreme rusticity which then pre
vailed. Those extremely raw "toasts" sound very like the pro
ceedings of a cross-roads debating club — in fact, Lincoln and his
surroundings smacked of the Justice of the Peace order of law
business, and the "log-cabin and hard cider" style of social life.
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 138.
Leaving New Salem
The time had come at last when he must leave the place where
he had lived for nearly six years — where he had evolved from a mere
adventurer to a lawyer and a legislator. He had served two terms
in the Legislature, and had acquired considerable distinction; he
had seen the rise, gro-wth, development and decay of New Salem;
and he probably foresaw its speedy downfall, for Petersburg had
been established, and was growing at the expense of the earlier
settlement. .
And so, immediately after the adjournment of the Legislature
in March, 1837, Lincoln sold his compass, chain, marking-pins, and
Jacob's staff; packed his little clothing and few effects into his
saddle-bags, borrowed a horse of his friend Bowling Green, and bade
adieu to the scene of so much of life, so much of sorrow, to him. In
less than a year from that time New Salem ceased to exist 
When Bowling Green died, Lincoln was invited by the Masons,
under whose auspices Green was buried, to make a funeral address,
he manfully attempted it and ignominiously failed. His feeHngs
overpowered him as the past rose in his memory, and the disinter
ested affection of his departed friend passed in review before him;
his sobs choked his utterance, and he withdrew from the mournful
scene to accompany Mrs. Green to her desolate home.
Lincoln the Citizen , Henry C. Whitney, page 1 20.

CHAPTER VI
"The Law and the Lady"
Moving to Springfield
Arrived at Springfield he glanced timidly at the few faces he
saw in the road (for Springfield contained not a thousand people) as
if to see whether his reception was to be cordial or frigid, but he
elicited no hint of what was thought of him, if anything he was
merely gazed at with a look of cold curiosity or indifference, and his
heart sank within him as he refiected on the past, and cast a mental
horoscope of the future.
His first stop was at the northwest corner of the public squacre,
at a hitching rack, where he threw the bridle rein over a pin, and
wearily taking off the saddle bags, gazed furtively up and down the
silent street, and then entered a store on the west side of the square,
apparently a little doubtful of his reception. But he was greeted .
. heartily by the proprietor with,
"Hello, Abe, just from Salem?"
Lincoln — " Howdy, Speed! Yes, this is my first show-up. "
Speed — " So you are to be one of us? "
Lincoln — " I reckon so if you will let me take pot luck with
you. "
¦ Speed—" All right, Abe ; it's better than Salem. "
Lincoln — " I just want to put my saddle pockets down here
till I put up my beast at Bill Butler's ; then I want to see you."
In five minutes he returned. "Well, Speed, I've been to
Gorman's and got a single bedstead ; now you figure out what it will
cost for a tick, blankets and so forth. "
Speed (after figuring) — " Say seventeen dollars or so. "
Lincoln's countenance fell. " I had no idee it would cost half
of that, and I can't pay; but if you can wait on me till Christmas,
and I make anything, I'll pay; if I don't I can't. "
Speed — " I can do better than that ; upstairs I sleep in a bed
big enough for two, and you just come and sleep with me till you
can do better. " (143)

144 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Lincoln (brightening up) — "Good; where is it?"
Speed — "Upstairs behind that pile of barrels — turn to the
right when you get up. "
Lincoln (returning joyously) — "WeU, Speed, I've moved. "
Life on the Circuit with Lincoln , Henry C, Whitney, page i s,
Stuart & Lincoln
The great service he had rendered the town of Springfield, in
carrying through the law for removing the capital to that place, was
gratefully appreciated, and his many friends urged him to come
there to live and practise law. His old friend, John T. Stuart, a
lawyer of established position and in good practice, offered him a
partnership. The offer he gladly accepted, and in April, 1837, he
removed to, and made his home in, Springfield. He had been
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court in the fall of 1836, but
his name does not appear on the roll of attorneys until 1837. On
the 27th of April of that year he entered into partnership with
Stuart, under the name of Stuart & Lincoln, and this partnership
continued until the 14th day of April, 1841.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N, Arnold, page 53.
The Affair with Mary Owens
About a mile below New Salem, on the crest of a hill over
looking the broad river bottom, and on a farm adjacent to that of
Bowling Green, lived Bennett Able and family, who had emigrated
there from Green County, Kentucky. Mrs. Able had been an Owens.
She had incurred the displeasure of her father by espousing a man
not of his choice; in point of fact she was superior to her husband
in education and refinement. Lincoln was a welcome visitor at the
Able household, and Mrs. Able had often remarked that she was
going to bring about a match between him and her sister Mary,
who had visited her in 1833, and remained a month, leaving an
excellent impression on the minds of all, as to her person and char
acter. She returned again in November, 1836, some fifteen months
after the death of Ann Rutledge. . WhUe she was not so
lovely a character and did not possess so sweet a disposition as Miss
Rutledge, she yet was a very handsome and brilliant girl, gifted -with
rare talents that had been cultivated, and polished with a high and
liberal education 

"THE LAW AND THE LADY'" 145
Mrs. Able was incautious enough to speak of her design so that
her sister heard of it ; she also heard that Lincoln had said if Mrs.
Abie's sister Mary ever came to New Salem again, he would have to
marry her.
"We'll see," soliloquized the Bluegrass beauty, "it takes two
to make such a bargain. "
Other beaux (if there were any) stood back, and Lincoln had
full swing ; and the courtship, such as it
was, progressed at cross-purposes.
Despite Lincoln's public career he was
bashful with the gentler sex; then he
was conscious of the wide disparity in
culture and style between Miss Owens
and himself. He gave no credit to his wealth of
talent in the comparison ; he merely took
a superficial glance at the account in
which everything was plus on the lady's
side, and minus on his side. . jj^j^y g owens
. . If Lincoln had dealt with
this estimable and refined young lady in a spirit of his usual
candor and naturalness, and had properly wooed her, there might
have been no difficulty in the way of a match. Lincoln felt a
sense of inferiority, for which the fair charmer gave no occasion,
and he only played at courting, not pressing his suit in the
manly and dignified way so characteristic of him in other rdles . . .
Lincoln wrote her some letters after he settled in Springfield
as a lawyer, but they were of a decidedly repelUng character ; and
the lady took him at his word. He felt beneath her in a social
sense, and the mistakes and misunderstandings that arose from this
anomalous condition of affairs prevented a matrimonial union
which would have been congenial and prosperous, for Miss Owens
was brilliant and amiable, and Lincoln had nearly every element to
make a good husband. . However that may be, Miss Owens,
whUe holding Lincoln in high esteem, as every one did, felt, as she
said years later, that " he was deficient in those minor attentions and
little civilities which constitute the chain of a woman's happiness. "
[Note. — I cannot refrain from saying that the letter to Mrs.

146 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Browning by Mr. Lincoln, about this estimable and refined lady,
should never have strayed beyond Mrs. Browning's desk. It was
an unworthy thing for her to give it to Mr. Herndon, and equally
unworthy for him and Lamon to give it to the world.]
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 115.
Thirty Thousand Dollars Handed to Him "without a Scratch
of the Pen"
In 1836 our backwoodsman, flatboat hand, captain, surveyor,
obtained a license to practise law, and, as might be expected, rose
rapidly. One anecdote will show the esteem in which he was held
in his neighborhood. A client came to him in a case relating to a
certain land claim and Lincoln said to him :
" Your first step must be to take thirty thousand dollars and go
and make a legal tender; it, of course, will be refused, but it is a
necessary step. "
" But, " said the man, " I haven't the thirty thousand to make
it with. "
"Oh, that's it; just step over to the bank with me, and I'll
get it." So into the bank they went, and Lincoln says to the cashier:
'We just want to take thirty thousand dollars to make a legal
tender with; I'll bring it back in an hour or two." The cashier
handed across the money to "Honest Abe" and without a scratch
of the pen in acknowledgment, he strode away with. the money, all
in the most sacred simplicity, made the tender, and brought it back
with as much nonchalance as if he had been borrowing a silver spoon
of his grandmother.
Men of Our Times, Harriet Beecher Stowe, page iS.
How Baddeley Was Deceived by Appearances
Shortly after he became associated with Stuart, the latter sent
him to try a case in McLean County for an Englishman named
Baddeley, giving him a letter of introduction which advised the
client that he could rely upon the bearer to try his case in the best
possible manner.
Baddeley inspected his counsel's partner with amazement and
chagrin. The young man was six feet four, awkward,, ungainly

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 147
and apparently shy. He was dressed in ill-fitting homespun clothes,
the trousers a little too short, and the coat a trifle too large. He
had the appearance " of a rustic on his first visit to the circus," and
as the client gazed on him, his astonishment turned to indignation
and rage. What did Stuart mean by sending a bumpkin of that
sort to represent him? It was preposterous, insulting, and not to be
endured. Without attempting to conceal his disgust, Baddeley uncere
moniously dispensed with Lincoln's services. History does
not relate whether the irate Englishman won or lost the cause, but
we know that he Uved to become one of Lincoln's most ardent
admirers. Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 80.
Lincoln and Douglas in Collision Nearly Twenty Years before their
Great Debates
Mr. Lincoln got his license as an attorney . . . and com
menced practice regularly as a lawyer in the town of Springfield.
His first case was that of Hawthorne vs. Wooldridge, dismissed at
the cost of the plaintiff, for whom Mr. Lincoln's name was entered.
There were then on the list of attorneys at the Springfield bar many
names of subsequent renown. Judge Stephen T. Logan was on the
bench of the Circuit Court. . Stephen A. Douglas had made his
appearance as public prosecutor at the March term of 1836 ; and at
the same term E. D. Baker had been admitted to practice. Among
the rest were John T. Stuart, . . .George Forquer, Dan Stone,
Ninian W. Edwards, John J. Hardin, and others.
By this time Mr. Lincoln enjoyed considerable local Tame as a
politician, but none, of course, as a lawyer. He therefore needed a
partner, and got one in the person of John T. Stuart, an able and
distinguished Whig, who had relieved his poverty years before by
the timely loan of books with which to study law. . The con
nection promised well for -Lincoln, and no doubt he did well during
the short period of its existence. The court-room was in Hoffman's
Row ; and the office of Stuart & Lincoln was in the second story just
above the court-room. . . Here the junior partner, when dis
engaged from the cares of politics and the Legislature, was to be
found pretty much all the time "reading, abstracted and gloomy. "
; Springfield was a small village, containing between one and

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

two thousand inhabitants. There were no pavements; the street-
crossings were made of "chunks," stones and sticks. Lincoln
boarded with Hon. WiUiam Butler. . He was very poor, worth
nothing, and in debt, . .but "BUI" Butier was his friend, and

A PAGE FROM CHARGE BOOK IN LINCOLN'S WRftlNG
took him in with little reference to board bills and the settlement
of accounts. . ^
In January, r'^'^/, Lincoln delivered a lecture before the Spring
field Lyceum on the subject of the Perpetuation of Our Free Institu
tions. As a mere declamation, it is unsurpassed in the annals of the
West. . . . This lecture, carefully composed by Mr. Lincoln at

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 149

the mature age of twenty -eight, and after considerable experience in
the pubUc service, is worthy of attentive perusal. . It was
thought "able and eloquent," by the_ Young Men's Lyceum of
Springfield; he was "solicited to furnish a copy for pubUcation, "
which was duly printed in The Sangamon Journal. .
One night in December, 1839, Lincoln, Douglas, Baker, and
some other gentlemen of note, were seated at Speed's hospitable
fire in the store. "They got to talking politics, got warm, hot,
angry. " Douglas sprang up and said :
' ' Gentlemen, this is no place to talk politics : we will discuss the
questions publicly with you. " .A few days afterwards the
Whigs had a meeting, at which Mr. Lincoln reported a resolution
challenging the Democrats to a joint debate. The challenge was
accepted. . The discussion was known as the great debate.
It took place in the Second Presbyterian Church in the hearing of as
many people as could get into the building. Lincoln's speech
was considered by many the best one of the series.
Lincoln and Douglas followed Judge Treat's court all around
the circuit, and spoke in the afternoons. Here, in 1840, they came
in collision, as they did in 1839, and as they continued to do for
twenty or more years.
Lincoln "was very sensitive," says Mr. Gillespie, "where he
thought he had failed to come up to the expectations of his friends.
I remember a case. He was pitted by the Whigs, in 1840, to debate
with Mr. Douglas, the Democratic champion. Lincoln did not
come up to the requirements of the occasion. He was conscious of
his failure; and I never saw any man so much distressed. He
begged to be permitted to try it again, and was reluctantly indulged ;
and in the next effort he transcended our highest expectations. I
never heard, and never expect to hear, such a triumphant vindica
tion as he then gave of Whig measures or policy. He never after
ward, to my knowledge, fell below himself."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon. page 223.
Comes Down Through the Ceiling and Demands Free Speech
In the same year [1840] Colonel Baker was making a speech
to a promiscuous audience in the court-roo,ni. . . It will be
remembered that Lincoln's office was just above, and he was

ISO THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
listening to Baker through a large hole, or trap-door, in the ceil
ing. Baker warmed with his theme, and, growing violent and
personally offensive, declared at length that "wherever there was
a land-office, there was a Democratic newspaper to defend its cor
ruptions. "
"This," said John B. Webber, "was a personal attack on my
brother, George Webber. I was in the court house, and in my
anger cried:
" 'PuUhim down!' "
A scene of great confusion ensued, threatening to end in a
general riot, in which Baker was likely to suffer.
But just at the critical moment Lincoln's legs were seen coming
through the hole ; and directly his tall figure was standing between
Baker and the audience, gesticulating for silence.
"Gentlemen," said he, "let us not disgrace the age and the
country in which we live. This is a land where freedom of speech
is guaranteed. Mr. Baker has a right to speak, and ought to be
permitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and no man shall
take him from this stand if I can prevent it. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 230.
"I Never Use Any Man's Money but My Own"
It was after he had become a lawyer and had been a legislator.
He had passed through a period of great poverty, and had acquired
his education in the law through many perplexities, inconveniences
and hardships, and had met with temptations such as few men
could resist, to make a temporary use of any money he might have
in his hands.
One day, seated in the law-office of his partner, the agent of the
Post-office Department entered and inquired if Abraham Lincoln
was within. Mr. Lincoln responded to his name, and was informed
that the agent had called to collect the balance due the Department
since the discontinuance of the New Salem office.
A shade of perplexity passed over Mr. Lincoln's face, which did
not escape the notice of friends present. One of them said at once:
" Lincoln, if you are in want of money, let us help you. "
He made no reply, but suddenly rose and pulled out from a pile
of books a little old trunk, and, returning to the table, asked the
agent how much he owed. The sum 'was named ; then Mr. Lincoln

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 151
opened the trunk, pulled out a little package of coins wrapped in a
cotton rag, and counted out the exact sum, amounting to more than
seventeen dollars.
After the agent had left the room, Lincoln remarked quietly :
"I never use any man's money but my own."
Stories and Speeches of .Abraham Lincoln, Paul Selby, page 62.
"Which Will You Take?"
A friend came to him to borrow a " bilecl' ' shirt. " I have only
two," said Lincoln, "the one I have just taken off, and the one I
have on; which will you take?"
As told by a friend who heard it.
The Champion of the Oppressed and Wronged
He was chosen to the Illinois House of Representatives for the
fourth time in 1840, and was again the candidate of the Whig
minority for Speaker. Named for elector on the Harrison ticket, he
spent much time in canvassing the central counties of the State
especially, bearing the brunt of the Presidential battle on the Whig
side, either Douglas or Calhoun being usually at hand to reply.
Lincoln regarded the latter as the harder to meet.
As a lawyer, Lincoln was always inclined to enter heartily into
the cause of one w^hom he believed to be wronged, yet lacking means
to. secure redress on ordinary terms. . One instance was that
of a poor 'widow, of whose pension arrears a greedy attorney had
kept quite an undue share. When her case was stated to Lincoln,
he not only interested himself in her behalf, but became indignant
and secured prompt retribution without legal process or fee.
He was occasionally the attorney for a negro defendant whose
freedom was in question, though at the risk of prejudice to his
political standing. Without resorting to the courts, he secured the
release of a free negro of Illinois, who had landed from a steamer in
New Orleans in violation of a local law, and was to have been sold
for want of means to pay his fine. Lincoln raised the needed money,
himself a contributor, choosing an immediate practical remedy
'without delaying justice by inflammatory talk.
He sometimes defended an aUeged fugitive slave. . He
was retained in a suit brought in Tazewell County. .to enforce
payment of a promissory note given in payment for a negro woman

IS2 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
named Nance, . the parties in court being residents of Illinois.
Lincoln was counsel for the defendant, and judgment having been
rendered for the other side, an appeal was taken to the Illinois
Supreme Court. Before that tribunal he argued the case in 1841,
maintaining that the contract was void for lack of consideration;
that under the ordinance of 1789 and the Constitution of Illinois
adopted in 1818, slavery had no lawful standing; and that Nance,
being legally a free woman, could not be the subject of a sale. His
contention was sustained by the court, and the question as to slavery
in Illinois was settled.
At Danville, in Vermilion County, which borders on Indiana,
he had a case for the plaintiff' of which John P. Usher (twenty years
later Secretary of the Interior) appeared for the defendant.
Lincoln gained the suit not only in this first trial, but afterward on
appeal to the Supreme Court. Mr. Usher, who here met him for
the first time and knew him well thenceforward, said of his manner
of addressing a jury, that his voice was so smooth and attractive as
never to become wearisome; that in posture and gesture he was
not graceful or always dignified — sometimes placing one foot in a
chair, or leaning on the back of one, sometimes standing with his
arms akimbo — but that he never failed to be heard with close atten
tion and lively interest from the beginning to the end of his argu
ment. During his last term in the Legislature, Lincoln was for some
time in a state of nervous mental depression. As told by his friend
Speed :
In the winter of 184 1 a gloom came over him till his friends were
alarmed for his life. In his deepest gloom, and when I told
him he would die unless he rallied, he said :
"I am not afraid, and would be more than willing, but I have
an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a
little better for my having lived in it. "
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol, I, page 54,
"The Nominal Winner Is Often the Real Loser"
If Stuart had been ambitious to accumulate a fortune, he
would have been disappointed with his par^tner ; for, with a people
as litigious as the early Illinois settlers, it was a simple matter to

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 153
stir up strife and hiake work for the lawyer, and Lincoln, instead of
egging clients into the courts, set his face against such practice.
"Discourage litigation," was his advice to lawyers. "Per
suade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out
to them how the nominal winner is often the real loser — in fees,
expenses and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a
superior opportunity of becoming a good man. There will always
be enough business. Never stir up litigation. A worse man can
scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly
a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in
search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife and put money
in his pocket ? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession
which should drive such men out of it. "
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 102.
Mary Todd, Her Two Suitors, and Her Ambition
It was about the year 1839 that Lincoln first met Miss Mary
Todd. Born at Lexington, Kentucky, December 13, 181 8, she was
one of four daughters of Robert S. Todd by his first wife. . . .
Mary was quite young at the time of her mother's death, and ere
long came under the care of a stepmother. She received a good
education in the higher schools of her native city, and learned to
read and speak the French language in the private school of a
French lady, nearly opposite the " Ashland " mansion of Henry Clay.
The house of her eldest sister at Springfield, after the latter's mar
riage to Mr. Edwards — colleague of Lincoln in the Legislature, and
son of a former United States Senator — was open to Mary, who
came there to Uve soon after her school-days at Lexington were
ended. Major Stuart was her cousin. A young lady of unusual
personal attractions and bright intellectual faculties, Mary was also
of agreeable manners. She was not long without admirers, if she
may not have been properly caUed the "beUe" of the place. The
higher and more exclusive circles of her native city to which she
belonged, were unsurpassed in social refinement and mental cul
tivation in any Southern community of the time west of the AUe-
ghanies. Of aU her sex with whom Lincoln had become acquainted, Mary

154 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Todd was undoubtedly the one best suited to win his admiration
and a more tender regard. Aside from the dissimilarity in their
earlier training and position, however, there was considerable in
their years, he being past thirty, and she little more than twenty.
At his age an attachment of this sort is likely to be very earnest.
The lady was ambitious ; dazzled by the glory of the great
statesman to whom her father was a personal and political friend,
her highest ideal of manhood was typified by the eloquent orator
and the expectant President. She received attentions from two
persons who took a leading part, on opposite sides, in the Harrison
canvass — one tall and ungainly, yet airiiable, modest and kind-
hearted, already noted as a speaker and aspiring to a higher position
than he had been given by prolonged legislative service ; the other,
low in stature, but strong in energy and pluck, graceful in manner,
bold, ready, and pleasing in speech, as ambitious as his rival, and
deemed by his friends a more eloquent orator, though on what was
to her the wrong side.
Mary Todd preferred the principles and habits of Lincoln to
those of Douglas, as she avowed afterward ; and if she was also
influenced by ambition, her political intuition — famous in later life
— was not now at fault. To a friend of her girlhood she wrote of
her engagement, speaking plainly of the defects of her intended
husband in his personal appearance especially, and adding :
" But I mean to make him President of the United States.
You will see that, as I always told you, I will yet be the President's
wife. "
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol, I, page 6i
A Description of Miss Todd
Mary Todd had a married sister — Mrs, Edwards — living in
Springfield ; and thither she came when she was in her twenty -first
year. "to avoid living under the same roof with a step
mother." And now I shall let the good Herndon describe her in
his own language :
" She was of average height, weighing, when I first saw her,
about one hundred and thirty pounds. She was rather compactly
built, and had a well-rounded face, rich dark-brown hair, and
bluish-gray eyes. In her bearing she was proud but handsome

'THE LAW AND THE LADY" 155

and -vdvacious. Her education had been in no wise defective.
She was a good conversationalist, using with equal fiuency the
French and English languages ; when she used a pen, its point was
sure to be sharp, and she wrote with wit and abiUty. She not only
had a quick intellect, but an intuitive judgment of men and their
motives. In her figure and physical proportions, in education,
bearing, temperament, history — in everything she was the exact
reverse of Lincoln." . .
A further point in Mary Todd's character has to be noticed.
This is what one of her sisters says of her :
" Mary was quick, gay and in the social world the more brilliant.
She loved show and power, and was one of the most ambitious
women I ever knew. She used to contend, when a girl, to her
friends in Kentucky, that she was destined to marry a President.
I have heard her say that myself, and after mingling in society in
Springfield, she repeated the seemingly absurd and idle boast. "
Some old Love Stories, T. P. O'Connor, page 46.
" I Should Like to Dance with You the Worst Way "
Lincoln made his first appearance in society in Springfield,
Illinois. It was not a prepossessing figure which he cut in a ball
room, but still he was occasionally found there. Miss Mary Todd,
who afterward became his wife, was the magnet which drew the
tall, awkward young man from his den. One evening Lincoln
approached Miss Todd, and said, in his peculiar idiom:
"Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you the worst way."
The young woman accepted the inevitable, and hobbled around
the room with him. When she returned to her seat, one of 'her
companions asked, mischievously:
\ "Well, Mary, did he ' dance with you the worst way?' "
"Yes," replied Miss Todd, "the very worst!"
Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 383.
Appears in Behalf of Jefferson, the Actor
Where he saw injustice he was quick to offer his services to the
wronged party. A pleasant example of this is related by Joseph
Jefferson in his "Autobiography." In 1839, Jefferson, then a lad

156 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
of ten years, traveled through Illinois with his father's theatrical
company. After playing at Chicago, Quincy, Peoria and Pekin,
the company went in the fall to Springfield, where the sight of the
Legislature tempted the elder Jefferson and his partner to remain
throughout the season. But there was no theater. Not to be
daunted they built one. But hardly had they completed it before
a religious revival broke out in the town, and the church people
turned all their influence against the theater. So effectually did
they work that a law was passed by the municipality imposing a
license which was practically prohibitory.
" In the midst of our trouble, " says Jefferson, a " young lawyer
called on the managers. He had heard of the injustice, and offered,
if they would place the matter in his hands, to have the license taken
off, declaring that he only desired to see fair play, and he would
accept no fee whether he failed or succeeded. The young lawyer
began his harangue. He handled the subject with tact, skill and
humor, tracing the history of the drama from the time when
Thespis acted in a cart to the stage of to-day. He illustrated his
speech with a number of anecdotes, and kept the council in a roar of
laughter. His good humor prevailed, and the exorbitant tax was
taken off. "
The "young lawyer" was Lincoln.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 248.
A Young Lawyer Offers to Pay Half the Damages Occasioned by His
Funny Stories
We know an old gentleman here, — a wagon-maker by trade, —
who commenced plying the same craft when young at Mechanics-
ville, near the town of Springfleld, Illinois, immortalized by Abraham
Lincoln. He knew him well when he was just a smart young lawy^
smarter than most of them, and so sought after in difficult cases. '
The cartwright had a case to win or lose, connected with his
trade. On the other side the best la-wyer of his little town was
employed and his own was no match for him. The eventful day
had come and his father-in-law quaked for the result.
" Son, " he said to him, " you've got just time. Take this letter
to my young friend, Abe Lincoln, and bring him back in the buggy
to appear in the case. Guess he'll come if he can!"

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 157
So he set off. He found the young lawyer, not in his office,
but at a street corner, surrounded by a troop of small urchins, he
laughing heartily at the fun. The letter was handed to him. But,
being otherwise engaged, he said: —
"All right, wait a minute, I must clean out these young'uns
at 'knucks' first!"
The operation went on amid peals of laughter. That concluded,
he proceeded to accompany the son-in-law of his friend to the
neighboring town. And the peals of ringing laughter continued,
as Abe recounted story after story in his inimitable way, so much
so, that the driver says to-day, he never had such a job to hold
his lines and guide his horse in his life. At length, so convulsed
was he that the horse guided himself — into the ditch — turned over
the vehicle, upset the occupants and smashed up the buggy.
"You stay behind and look after the buggy," said Lincoln,
"I'U walk on."
This he did in time for the court, went in and won the case.
" What am I to pay you? " inquired the delighted client.
"I hope you won't think ten or fifteen dollars too much,"
answered the young lawyer, "but I'U pay the half -hire of the buggy
and half the cost of getting it repaired. "
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Louisa A'hmuty Nash. The Green Bag, Vol. IX, November,
1897, page 479.
In the "Tippecanoe," "Log Cabin," "Hard Cider" Campaign
Early in 1840 it seemed possible that the Whigs might elect
General Harrison to the Presidency, and this hope lent added
energy to the party even in the States where the majority was so
strongly against them as in IlUnois. Lincoln was nominated for
Presidential elector and threw himself with ardor into the canvass,
traversing a great part of the State and speaking with remarkable
effect-. Only one of the speeches he made during the year has been
preserved entire. This was an address delivered in Springfield as
one of a series— a sort of oratorical tournament, participated in by
Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and Thomas on the part of the Demo
crats, and Logan, Baker, Browning and Lincoln on the part of the
Whigs. The discussion began with great enthusiasm and with crowded
houses, but by the time it came to Lincoln's duty to close the debate

158

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the fickle public had tired of intellectual jousts, and he spoke to a
comparatively thin house. But his speech was considered the best
of the series, and there was such a demand for it that he wrote
it out, and it was printed and circulated in the spring as a campaign
document. It was a remarkable speech in many respects — and in none
J — ,-  ,   „_^ more than this, that it
I I represented the highest
expression of what might
be called his "first man
ner." It was the most
important and the last
speech of its class which
he ever delivered — not
destitute of sound and
close reasoning, yet filled
with boisterous fun and
florid rhetoric. It was,
in short, a rattling stump
speech of the kind then
popular in the West.
One or two extracts
-will give some idea of its
humorous satire and its
lurid fervor. Attacking
the corruptions and de
falcations of the Ad
ministration he said :
"Mr. Lamborn in
sists that the difference
between the Van Buren
party and the Whigs is
that, although the for
mer sometimes err in practice they are always correct in principle,
whereas the latter are wrong in principle ; and the better to impress
this proposition he uses a figurative expression in these words,
'The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in
the heart and head.' .
"It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the sound-

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
(" Old Tippecanoe.")

"THE LAW AND THE LADY'

IS9

headed and honest -hearted creatures very much as the cork leg in
the comic song did on its owner, which, when he once got started on
it, the more he tried to stop it the more it would run away.
"At the hazard of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate
an anecdote which seems to be too strikingly in point to be omitted.
"A witty Irish soldier who was always boasting of his bravery
when no danger was
near, but who invariably
retreated without orders
at the first charge of the
engagement, being asked
by his -captain why he
did so, replied:
" 'Captain, I have as
brave a heart as Julius
Csesar ever had, but
somehow or other, when
ever danger approaches,
my cowardly legs will run
away with it.'
"So with Mr. Lam
born 's party — they take
the public money into
their hands for the most
laudable purpose that
wise heads and honest
hearts can dictate; but
before they can possibly
get it out again, their
rascally vulnerable heels
will run away with
them " ^^^^ TYLER
("And Tyler, too.")

The speech concludes with these swelling words :
"Mr. Lamborn refers to the late elections in the States, and from
their results confidently predicts every State in the Union will vote
for Mr. Van Buren at the next Presidential election. Address that
argument to cowards and slaves ; with the free and the brave it will

i6o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
effect nothing. It may be true; if it must, let it. Many free coun
tries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers, but if she shaU,
be it my proudest plume, not that I w^as the last to desert, but that
I never deserted her. I know the great volcano at Washington,
aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching
forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep,
which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and
breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot
or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the
wave of Hell, the imps of the Evil Spirit and fiendishly taunting all
those who dare to resist its destroying course wdth the hopelessness
of their efforts ; and knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be
swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it, I never will.
The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter
us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. It shall not
deter me.^j^If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to
those dilliensions not wholly unv/orthy of its almighty Architect, it
is wheii I contemplate standing up boldly alone, hurling defiance
at her 'victorious oppressors.
"Here, without contemplating consequences, before Heaven,
and in face of the world, I swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as
I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who
that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt that oath that I take ?
Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But
if after all we should fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud
consolation of- saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade
of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment
and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death,
we never faltered in defending."
These perfervid and musical metaphors of devotion and defi
ance have often been quoted as Mr. Lincoln's heroic challenge to the
slave power. But they were simply the utterances of
a young and ardent Whig, earnestly advocating the election of
"Old Tippecanoe." . The whole campaign was carried on in a
tone somewhat shrill. The Whigs were recovering from the numb
ness into which they had fallen during the time of Jackson's impe
rious predominance, and in the new prospect of success they felt all
the excitement of prosperous rebels.

THE LAW AND THE LADY" i6i

Garrison began to publish the "Liberator" 1831
Nullification in South Carolina  1832
Chicago founded  1833
McCormick's reaper. ........ 1834
Rise of Whig Party  1834
Coal extensively used  1835
Van Buren made President  1837
Business ^anic  1837
Repudiation of State debts  1838
Congress rejects petitions to abolish slav
ery in the District of Columbia  1838
Mormons settle Nauvoo, Illinois  1839
Cunard line of steamers to Europe estab
lished  1840
" Tippecanoe and Tyler too " campaign. . . 1840

The taunts of the party in power, when Harrison's nomination
was first mentioned, their sneers at "hard cider" and "log cabins,"
had been dexterously £idopted as the slogan of the opposition, and
gave rise to the distinguishing
features of that extraordinary
campaign. Log cabins were
built in every Western county,
tuns of hard cider were filled
and emptied at all the Whig
mass meetings ; and as the can
vass gained momentum a
curious kind of music added
its inspiration to the cause ;
and after the Maine election
was over, with its augury of triumph, every Whig who was able to
sing or even to make a joyful noise, was roaring the inquiry,
"Oh, have you heard how old Maine went?"
and the profane but powerfully accented response,
"She went,
HeU-bent,
For Governor Kent,
And 'Tippecanoe,'
And Tyler, too."
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 172.
Drew the Line at Stealing Hens
Lincoln had assisted in the prosecution of a man who had
appropriated some of his neighbor's hen-roosts. Jogging home along
the highway with the foreman of the jury, who had convicted the
hen-stealer, he complimented Lincoln on the zeal and ability of the
prosecution, and remarked:
"Why, when the country was young, and I w^as stronger than
I am now, I didn't mind packing off a sheep now and then — but,
stealing hens!'-' — ^the good man's scorn could not find words to
express his opinion of a man who would steal hens.
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Paul Selby, page 88.

i62 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
An Illustration of His Strength and Courage
The exciting canvass of 1840 had come to a final issue at the
poUs. On the line of railway then in construction near by, there was
a large gang of laborers, mostly of the "alien" class, whose right to
vote had been denied, but sustained by the new Supreme Court organ
ized under the " Douglas bill. ' ' The contractor who employed them
was an ardent Democrat, and on election day it came to the ears
of Lincoln that he had marched up his battalion of voters and
taken possession of one of the polling places. It was not a ques
tion now whether these men should be allowed to vote; but that
they should refuse honest voters access to the ballot-box was not
to be borne with resignation. With true Berserker rage he hurried
to the scene, faced the offenders, and — without need of blows —
drove back the riotous crowd. From the statements of Mr. Speed,
who gave the substance of this account from his own knowledge,
it appears that Lincoln started, cudgel in hand, under an impulse
to clear the way to the polls by force.
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H, Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 59.
Childlike Tenderness
One day Lincoln, Baker, Hardin, Speed and others were riding
on horsebackalongtheroad, two-and-two, some distance from Spring
field. In passing a thicket of wUd plum and crab -apple trees,
Lincoln and Hardin being in the rear, the former discovered by the
roadside two young birds not old enough to fiy. They had been
shaken from their nest by a recent gale.
"The old bird," said Mr. Speed, "was fluttering about and
wailing as a mother ever does for her babes. Lincoln stopped,
hitched his horse, caught the birds, hunted the nest, and placed
them in it. The rest of us rode on to a creek, and while the horses
were drinking, Hardin rode up.
" 'Where is Lincoln?' said one.
'Oh, when I saw him last he had two little birds in his hand
hunting for their nest.'
In perhaps an hour he came. They laughed at him. He said,
with much emphasis:
'Gentlemen, you may laugh, but I could not have slept well
to-night if I had not saved those birds. Their cries would have
rung in my ears. ' "
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 59.

"THE L.AW AND THE LADY" 163
"Got the Worst of It in a Horse Trade"
When Lincoln was a young lawyer in Illinois, he and a certain
judge got to bantering each other about trading horses ; and it was
agreed that the next morning at nine o'clock they should make a
trade, the horses to be unseen up to that hour, and no backing out,
under a forfeiture of twenty -flve dollars.
At the hour appoirited, the judge came up, leading the "sorri
est" looking specimen of a horse ever seen in those parts. In a few
minutes Mr. Lincoln was seen approaching with a wooden sawhorse
on his shoulder.
Loud were the shouts and laughter of the crowd, and both were
greatly increased when Lincoln, on surveying the judge's animal,
set down the sawhorse and exclaimed :
"Well, Judge, this is the first time I ever got the worst of it in a
horse trade."
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex, K. McClure, page 84.
As a Lawyer and a Temperance Man
No man ever believed in his calling more thoroughly than Lin
coln, and he had no patience with the much-mouthed charge that
honesty was not compatible with its practice.
"Let no young man choosing the law for a caUing yield to that
popular belief," he wrote. "If, in your judgment, you cannot be an
honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose
some other occupation rather than one in the choosing of which you
do, in advance, consent to be a knave . "
Lincoln never sought to make himself a general favorite, and
yet he had, not been long in New Salem before he was the most
popular man in town . He could tell a good story, make a
creditable stump speech, give an excellent account of himself in
contests of strength, and hold his own against all comers in the daily
debates at the -village forum. Moreover, he listened attentively
when other people talked, never boasted of his physical prowess,
and was tolerant of all intelligent opinion. His extreme popularity
'with men of his own age is particularly remarkable, however, when
we remember that- he neither drank nor smoked ; for young men are
apt to regard the use of tobacco and stimulants as essential to good-
f eUowship and manly cameraderie, and this was especially true of the
settler days.

i64 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Lincoln did not drink intoxicants because he did not like them,
and he did not smoke for a similar reason.
Judge Douglas once undertook to ridicule him on this subject.
"What! Are you a temperance man?" he inquired sneeringly.
"No," drawled Lincoln, with a smile, "I'm not a temperance
man, but I'm temperate in this, to wit: — I don't drink."
Lincoln tlie Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 33.
A Judicial Opinion as to the Proper Length for a Man's Legs
Whenever the people of Lincoln's neighborhood engaged in
dispute ; whenever a bet was to be decided ; when they differed on
points of religion or politics ; when they wanted to get out of trouble,
or desired advice regarding anything on the earth, below it, above it,
or under the sea, they went to "Abe."
Two fellows, after a hot dispute lasting some hours, over the
problem as to how long a man's legs should be in proportion to the
size of his body, stamped into Lincoln's office one day and put the
question to him.
Lincoln listened gravely to the arguments advanced by both
contestants, spent some time in "reflecting" upon the matter, and
then, turning around in his chair and facing the disputants, delivered
his opinion with all the gravity of a judge sentencing a fellow-being
to death. "This question has been a source of controversy," he said,
slowly and deliberately, "for untold ages, and it is alsout time it
should be definitely decided. It has led to bloodshed in the past,
and there is no reason to suppose it will not lead to the same in the
future. "After much thought and consideration, not to mention mental
worry and anxiety, it is my opinion, all side issues being swept
aside, that a man's lower limbs, in order to preserve harmony of
proportion, should be at least long enough to reach from his body to
the ground."
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 215.
The Broken Engagement — Mystery and Misery
Much to the surprise of Springfield society, however, the court
ship took a sudden turn. Whether it was caprice or jealousy, or
new attachment, or mature reflection, will always remain a mystery.

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 165
Every such case is a law unto itself, and neither science nor poetry
is ever able to analyze or explain its causes and effects. The con
flicting stories then current, and the varying conditions that j^et
exist, either fail to agree or to fit the sparse facts that came to light.
There remains no dispute, however, that the occurrence, whatever
shape it took, threw Mr. Lincoln into a deeper despondency than
any he had yet experienced, for on January 23, 1841, he wrote to
his law partner, John T. Stuart:
' ' For not giving you a general summary of the news you must
pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now the most
miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the
whole human family, there could not be one cheerful face on earth.
Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell ; I awfully forebode I
shall not. To remain as I am is impossible ; I must die or be better. ' '
Apparently his engagement to Miss Todd was broken off, but
whether that was the result or the cause of his period of gloom seems
still a matter of conjecture. His mind was so perturbed that he
felt unable to attend the sessions of the Legislature of which he was
a member; and after its close his intimate friend, Joshua F. Speed
carried him off for a visit to Kentucky. The change of scene and
surroundings proved of great benefit. He returned home about
midsummer very much improved, but not yet completely restored
to a natural mental equipoise.
While on their visit to Kentucky, Speed had likewise fallen in
love, and in the following winter had become afflicted with doubts
and perplexities akin to those from which Lincoln had suffered.
It now became his turn to give sympathy and counsel to his friend,
and he did this with a warmth and delicacy born of his own spiritual
trials, not yet entirely overmastered. He wrote letter after letter
to Speed to convince him that his doubts about not truly loving the
woman of his choice were all nonsense.
"Why, Speed, if you did not truly love her, although you might
not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it.
Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my per
tinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings.
If so-, you must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered on
that point, and how tender I am upon it. . . I am now fully

i66

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

convinced that you love her as ardently as you are capable of lo-ving
It is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dr§am
dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can
realize." When Lincoln heard that Speed was finaUy married, he wrote
him: "It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to hear you
say you are 'far hap
pier than you ever
expected to be.'
That much, I know,
is enough. I know
you too well to sup
pose your expecta
tions were not, at
least, sometimes ex
travagant ; and if
the reality exceeds
them all, I say,
'Enough, dear Lord.'
I am not going be
yond the truth when I tell you that the short space it took me to read
your last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all I
have enjoyed since the fatal first of January, 1841. Since then it
seems to me I should have been entirely happy, but for the never-
absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have con
tributed to make so. That still kills my soul. I cannot but re
proach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise."
.4 Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, John G. Nicolay, page 63.
An Untrue Story About Lincoln
The breaking of the engagement between Miss Todd and Mr.
Lincoln was known at the time to all their friends. Lincoln's
melancholy was evident to them all, nor did he, indeed, attempt
to disguise it. He wrote and spoke freely to his intimates of the
despair which possessed him, and of his sense of dishonor. The
episode caused a great amount of gossip,, as was to be expected.
After Mr. Lincoln's assassination and Mrs. Lincoln's sad death,

HBU^''^*'; ;^^k>^W

¦J

-K^«W-^

K^S

^ ^ -

^

" r
.J

%

iMM|Wp.-ft i^m^

K

^W

^^

^^^^i

^Bm
^hp
l»\
k ^^i
s
^p
n^H
l^if^HH
^
pp^
wk
JOSHUA F. SPEED AND HIS WIFE
"THE LAW AND THE LADY

167

various accounts of the courtship and marriage were circulated.
It remained, however, for one of Lincoln's law partners, Mr. W. H.
Herndon, to develop and circulate the most sensational of all the
versions of the rupture. According to Mr. Herndon, the engage
ment between the two was broken in the most violent and public
way possible, by Mr. Lincoln's failing to appear at the wedding.
Mr. Herndon even describes the scene in detail .
Mr. Herndon does not pretend to found his story on any per
sonal knowledge of the affair. He was in Springfield at the time,
a clerk in Speed's store, but did not have then, nor, indeed, did he
ever have, any social relations -with the families in which Mr. Lin
coln was always a welcome guest. His authority for the story is a
remark which he says Mrs. Ninian Edwards made to him in an
interview: "Lincoln and Mary were engaged; everything was'
ready and prepared for the marriage, even to the supper. Mr.
Lincoln failed to meet his engagement;- cause, insanity."
This remark, it should be noted, is not from a manuscript
written by Mrs. Edwards, but in a report
of an inter-view with her, written by Mr.
Herndon. Supposing, however, that the
statement was made exactly as Mr. Herndon
reports it, it certainly does not justify any
such sensational description as Mr. Herndon
gives. If such a thing had ever occurred, it
could not have failed to be known, of
course, even to its smallest details, by all
the relatives and friends of. both Miss Todd
and Mr. Lincoln. Nobody, however, ever
heard of this wedding party until Mr.
Herndon gave his material to the public.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 174,

MRS. NINIAN W. EDWARDS
Mary Todd's sister (later in life).

Mary Todd's Cousm Says " No !"
One of the closest friends of the Lincolns throughout their
Uves was a cousin of Mrs. Lincoln's, Mrs. Grimsley, afterwards
Mrs. Dr. Brown. Mrs. Grimsley lived in Springfield, in the most
intimate and friendly relations with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and the
first six months of their life in the White House she spent with

1 68 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
them. She was a woman of unusual culture, and of the rarest
sweetness and graciousness of character. Some months before
Mrs. Brown's death, in August, 1895, a copy of Mr. Herndon's
story was sent her, with a request that she write for publication
her knowledge of the affair. In her reply she said :
"Did Mr. Lincoln fail to appear when the invitations were
out, the guests invited, and the supper ready for the wedding?
I will say emphatically, 'No!'
"There may have been a little shadow of foundation for Mr.
Herndon's lively imagination to play upon, in that, the year
pre-vious to their marriage and when Mr. Lincoln and my cousin
Mary expected soon to be married, Mr. Lincoln was taken with
one of those fearful, overwhelming periods of depression, which
induced his friends to persuade him to leave Springfield. This
he did for a time ; but I arn satisfied he was loyal and true to Mary,
even though at times he may have doubted whether he was respond
ing as fully as a manly, generous nature should to such affection
as he knew my cousin was ready to bestow on him. And this
because it had not the overmastering depth of an early love. This
everybody here knows ; therefore I do not feel as if I were betraying
dear friends. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 176.
" I Do Not Believe a Word of This Dishonorable Story!"
Mrs, John Stuart, the wife of Lincoln's law partner at that
time, is still living (1895) in Springfield, a refined, cultivated,
intelligent woman, who remembers perfectly the life and events
of that day. When Mr. Herndon's story first came to her attention,
her indignation was intense. She protested that she had never
before heard of such a thing. . . . She wrote the following
statement :
"All I can say is that I unhesitatingly do not believe such
an event ever occurred. I thought I had never heard of this till
I saw it in Herndon's book, but I have since been told that Lamon
mentions the same thing. I read Lamon at the time he published,
and felt very much disgusted, but did not remember this particular
assertion. The first chapters of Lamon's book were purchased
from Herndon ; so Herndon is responsible for the whole.

'THE LAW AND THE LADY" 769

"Mrs. Lincoln told me herself aU the circumstances of her
engagement to Mr. Lincoln, of his illness, and the breaking off of
her engagement, of the renewal and her marriage. So I say I do
not beUeve one word of this dishonorable story about Mr. Lincoln. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M, Tarbell, Vol. I, page 177,
" Not a Word of Truth in It !"
Another prominent member in the same circle with Mr. Lincoln
and Miss Todd is Mrs. B. T. Edwards, the sister-in-law of Mr.
Ninian Edwards, who had married Miss Todd's sister. She came
to Springfield in 1839, and was intimately acquainted with Mr.
Lincoln and Miss Todd, and knew, as well as another could know,
their affairs. Mrs. Edwards is still (1895) living in Springfield, and
is a woman of the most perfect refinement and trustworthiness. In
answer to the question, "Is Mr. Herndon's description true?"
she writes :
"I am impatient to tell you that all he says about this
wedding — ^the time for which was fixed for the first day of January —
is a fabrication. He has drawn largely upon his imagination
in describing something which never took place. "
Two sisters of Mrs. Lincoln, who are still living (1895), Mrs.
Wallace of Springfield, and Mrs. Helm of EUzabethtown, Kentucky,
deny emphatically that any wedding was ever arranged between
Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd but the one which did take place.
" There is not a word of truth in it ! " Mrs. Wallace broke out,
impulsively, before the question about the non-appearance of
Mr. Lincoln had been finished. " I never was so amazed in my life
as when I read that story. Mr. Lincoln never did such a thing. "
As Mr. Joshua Speed was, all through this period, Mr. Lincoln's
closest friend, no thought or feeling of the one ever being concealed
from the other, Mrs. Joshua Speed, who is still living (1895) in
Louis-ville, Kentucky, was asked if she knew of the story. Mrs.
Speed listened in surprise to Mr. Herndon's tale. " I never heard
of it before, " she declared. " I never heard of it. "
While the above investigation was going on, a volunteer witness
to the falsity of the story appeared quite unexpectedly. The Hon.
H. W. Thornton of Millersburg, Illinois, was a member of the Twelfth
General Assembly, which met at Springfield in 1840. He wrote to

lyo THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the author declaring that Mr. Herndon's statement about the wed
ding must be false. According to the record taken from
the journals of the House by Mr. Thornton, and which have been
verified in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln was in his seat in the House on
that "fatal first of January," when he is asserted to have been grop
ing in madness, and he was also there on the following day.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 178.
• What Lincoln Did with his First Five-Hundred-Dollar Fee
Soon after Mr. Lincoln entered upon his profession at Spring
field he was engaged in a criminal case in which, it was thought, there
was but little chance of success. Throwing all his powers into it,
he came off victorious, and promptly received for his services five
hundred dollars. A legal friend caUing upon him the next morning,
found him sitting before a table upon which his money was spread
out, counting it over and over.
"Look here. Judge," said he. "See what a heap of money I've
got from the Blank case. Did you ever see anything like it ? Why,
I never had so much money in my life before, put it all together."
Then, crossing his arms upon the table, his manner sobering down,
he added :
"I have got just five hundred dollars ; if it were only seven hun
dred and fifty, I would go directly and purchase a quarter-section
of land, and settle it upon my old stepmother."
His friend said that if the deficiency was all he needed, he would
loan him the amount, taking his note, to which Mr. Lincoln instantly
acceded. His friend then said:
"Lincoln, I would not do just what you have indicated. Your
stepmother is getting old, and will not probably live many years, I
would settle the property upon her for her use during her lifetime,
to revert to you upon her death."
With much feeling, Mr. Lincoln replied :
"I shall do no such thing. It is a poor return at best for aU the
good woman's devotion and fidelity to me, and there is not going to
be any half-way business about it."
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Paul Selby, page 87.

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 171
A Successful Appeal to Rustic Prejudice
Once, when Lincoln was pleading a case, the opposing lawyer
had all the advantage of the law ; the weather was warm and his
opponent, as was admissible in frontier courts, pulled off his coat
and vest as he grew warm in the argument.
At that time shirts with buttons behind were unusual. Lincoln
took in the situation at once. Knowing the prejudices of the prim
itive people against pretension of all sorts, or any affectation of
superior social rank, he arose and said :
"Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think
you -will be at all influenced by the gentleman's pretended knowl
edge of the law, when you see he does not even know which side
of his shirt should be in front."
There was a general laugh, and Lincoln's case was won.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 69.
Logan & Lincoln
Lincoln's connection with Stuart was formally dissolved in
April, 1 841, and one with Logan formed which continued for four
years. It may almost be said that Lincoln's practice as a lawyer
dates from this time . Lincoln, although no longer in his first
youth, being then thirty -two years of age, had not yet formed those
habits of close application which are indispensable to permanent
success at the bar. He was not behind the greater part of his
contemporaries in this respect. Among all the law^yers of the cir
cuit who were then, or who afterwards became, eminent practitioners,
there were few indeed who in those days applied themselves with
any degree of persistency to the close study of legal principles.
One of these few was Stephen T. Logan .
Needing some one to assist him in his practice, Which was then
considerable, he invited Lincoln into partnership . The partner
ship continued about four years, but the benefit Lincoln derived
from it lasted all his life . He began for the first time to study
his cases with energy and patience; to resist the tendency, almost
universal at that day, to supply with florid rhetoric the attorney's
deficiency in law; in short, to educate, discipline, and train the
enormous faculty, hitherto latent in him, for close and severe
intellectual labor.

172 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Logan, who had expected that Lincoln's chief value to him
would be as a talking advocate before juries, was surprised to find
his new partner rapidly becoming a lawyer.
"He would study out his case and make as much of it as any
body," said Logan many years afterwards. "His ambition as a
lawyer increased ; he grew constantly. By close study of each case
as it came up, he got to be quite a formidable lawyer."
The character of the-man is in these words. He had vast con
cerns intrusted to him in the course of his life, and disposed of them
one at a time as they were presented. At the end of four years the
partnership w^as dissolved .
The old partners continued close and intimate friends . . . They
had the unusual honor, while they were still comparatively young
men, of seeing their names indissolubly associated in the map of
their State as a memorial to future ages of their friendship and their
fame, in the county of Logan, of which the city of Lincoln is the
county -seat.
They both prospered, each in his way, Logan rapidly gained a
great reputation and accumulated an ample fortune. Lincoln,
while he did not become rich, always earned a respectable livelihood,
and never knew the care of poverty or debt from that time forward.
His wife and he suited their style of living to their means, and were
equally removed from luxury and privation.
.Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 213.
"I Should Forget Myself and Say It out Loud"
A lawyer who studied in Mr. Lincoln's office tells a story illus
trative of the tenderness of Lincoln's conscience. After listening
one day for some time to a client's statement of his case, Lincoln,
who had been staring at the ceiling, suddenly swung round in his
chair and said :
"Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a
pretty bad one in equity and justice. You'll have to get some
other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn't do it. All the
time, while talking to that jury, I'd be thinking: 'Lincoln, you're
a liar,' and I believe I should forget myself and say it out loud. "
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 31.

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 173
A Trivial Background for His Wit
Mr. Lincoln was from the beginning of his circuit riding the light
and life of the court. The most trival circumstance furnished a
background for his wit. The following incident, which illustrates
his love of a joke, occurred in the early days of our acquaintance.
I, being at the time on the infant side of twenty-one, took particular
pleasure in athletic sports. One day when we were attending the
circuit court which met at Bloomington, Illinois, I was wrestling
near the court-house with some one who had challenged me to a
trial, and in the scuffle made a large rent in the rear of my trousers.
Before I had time to make any change I was called into court to
take up a case. The e-vidence was finished. I being the Prosecuting
Attorney at the time, got up to address the jury. Having on a short
coat my misfortune was rather apparent.
One of the lawyers, for a joke, started a subscription paper,
which was passed from one member of the bar to another as they
sat by a long table fronting the bench, to buy a pair of pantaloons
for Lamon, — he being, the paper said, "a poor but worthy young
man." Several put down their names with some ridiculous sub
scription, and finaUy the paper was laid by some one in front of Mr.
Lincoln, he being engaged in writing at the time. He quietly
glanced over the paper, and, immediately taking up his pen, wrote
after his name,
"I can contribute nothing to the end in view!"
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 16.
Charity in Temperance Reform
Closing extracts from Lincoln's address before the Washington-
ian Society of Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1842:
. "There is something so ludicrous in promises of good
or threats of evil a great way off as to render the whole subject with
which they are connected easily turned into ridicule.
"Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if you
don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment."
" 'Be the powers, if ye'U credit me so long I'll take another,
jist.' "By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the habitual
drunkard to hopeless ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more

174 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
enlarged philanthropy ; they go for present as well as future good.
They labor for all now living, as well as hereafter to live.
"Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud. It
has given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any
other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of
the long -mooted problem as to the capability of man to govern him
self. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow
and expand into the universal liberty of mankind. But, with all
these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its e'vils too.
It breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long,
long after, the orphan's cry and the widow's wail continued to break
the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable
price, paid for the blessings it brought.
"Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find
a stronger bondage broken, a 'viler slavery manumitted, a greater
tyrant deposed ; in it more of want supplied, more disease healed,
more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans star'ving, no widows
weeping. By it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest;
even the dram-maker and dram-seller will have glided into other
occupations so gradually as never to have felt the change, and will
stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness.
' 'And what a noble ally this to the cause of political freedom ;
with such an aid its march cannot fail to be on and on ; till every
son of earth shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching draught
of perfect liberty ....
"And when the victory shall be complete — when there shall be
neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth, — how proud the title of
that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle
of both those revolutions that have ended in that -victory
' ' This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of
Washington ; we are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the
mightiest name of earth, long since the mightiest in the cause of
civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name
no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the
sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let
none attempt it. In solemn awe we pronounce the name, and in
its naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on."
Early Speeches by Abraham Lincoln, page 80.

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" 175
"Rebecca" of the "Lost Townships"
An incident which occurred during the summer preceding Mr.
Lincoln's rnarriage, and which in the opinion of many had its influ
ence. in hastening that event, deserves some attention, if only from
its incongruity with the rest of his history. This was the farce —
which aspired at one time to be a tragedy — of his first and last duel.
Among the officers of the State Government was a young Irishman
named James Shields, who owed his post as Auditor, in a great
measure, to that alien vote to gain which the Democrats had over
turned the Supreme Court. The finances of the State were in a
deplorable condition, the treasury was empty; auditor's warrants
were selling at half their nominal value. The currency of the
State banks was well-nigh worthless, but it constituted nearly the
only circulating medium in the State.
In the middle of August the Governor, Auditor and Treasurer
issued a circular forbidding the payment of State taxes in this
depreciated paper. This order was naturally taken by the Whigs
as indicating on the part of these officers a keener interest in the
integrity of their salaries than in the public welfare, and it was
therefore severely attacked in all the opposition newspapers of the
State. The sharpest assault it had to endure, however, was in a com
munication, dated August 27, and printed in the Sangamon Journal
of September 2, not only dissecting the administration circular with
the most savage satire, but covering the Auditor with merciless
personal ridicule. It was written in the dialect of the country,
dated from the "Lost Townships," and signed "Rebecca," and
purported to come from a farmer widow of the county, who ex
pressed in this fashion her discontent with the evU course of affairs.
Shields was a man of inordinate vanity and a corresponding
irascibility. He was for that reason an irresistible mark for satire.
Through, a long life of somewhat conspicuous pubUc service, he
never lost a certain tone of absurdity . Even his honorable
wounds in battle, whUe they were productive of great pubUc ap
plause and political success, gained him scarcely less ridicule than
praise. He never could refrain from talking of them himself .
and for that reason he was a constant target for newspaper wits .
His fury against the unknown author of the satire was the

176 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
subject of much merriment in Springfield, and ' the next week
another letter appeared, from a different hand, but adopting the
machinery of the first, in which the widow offered to make up the
quarrel by marrying the Auditor, and this. happy com
promise was forthwith celebrated in very bad verses. In the change
of hands all the humor of the thing had evaporated, and nothing
was left but feminine mischief on one side and the exasperation of
wounded vanity on the other.
Abraham Lincoln: .A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 203.
An Absurd Duel Avoided
Shields, however, had talked so much about the matter that
he now felt imperatively called upon to act, and therefore he sent
General Whitesides to demand from the Journal the name of its
contributor. Mr. Francis, the editor, was in a quandary. Lincoln
had written the first letter, and the antic fury of Shields had induced
two young ladies who took a livel)'^ interest in Illinois politics
to follow up the game with attacks in prose and verse, which, how
ever deficient in wit and meter, were not wanting in pungency.
In his dilemma he applied to Lincoln, who, as he was starting
to attend court at Tremont, told him to give his name and withhold
the names of the ladies. As soon as Whitesides received this infor
mation, he and his fiery principal set out for Tremont, and as Shields
did nothing in silence, the news came to Lincoln's friends; two of
them, William Butler and Dr. Merryman, went off in a buggy
in pursuit. They soon came in sight of the others, but loitered in
the rear until e\-ening and then drove rapidly to Tremont, arriving
there some time in advance of Shields; so that in the ensuing
negotiations Abraham Lincoln had the assistance of friends whose
fidelity and whose nerve were equally beyond question.
It would be useless to recotmt all the tedious preliminaries of
the affair. Shields opened the correspondence . with bluster
ing and with threats ; his nature had no other way of expressing
itself. His first letter was taken as a bar to any explanation or
understanding, and he afterwards wrote a second, a little less offen
sive in tone, but without withdrawing the first . The par
ties, after endless talk, went to Alton and crossed the river to the
Missouri shore.
It seemed for a moment that the fight must take place. The

"THE LAW AND THE LADY" t'j'j
terms had been left by the code, as then understood in the West, to
Lincoln, and he certainly made no grudging use of his privilege.
The weapons chosen were ' 'cavalry broadswords of the largest size ;' '
and the combatants were to stand on either side of a board placed
on the ground, each to fight in a limit of six feet on his own side of
the board. It was evident that Lincoln did not desire the death of
his adversary, and did not intend to be materially injured himself.
The advantage morally was altogether against him. He felt keenly
the stupidity of the whole affair, but thought he could not avoid the
fight without degradation; while to Shields such a fracas was a
deUght. The duel came to its natural end . . Shields allowed himself
to be persuaded to withdraw his offensive challenge. Lincoln then
made the explanation he had been ready to make from the beginning :
avowing the one letter he had written, and saying that it had been
printed solely for political effect, and without any intention of
injuring Shields personally.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 205.
[The second "Rebecca" letter was written by Mary Todd and
a girl friend, Julia Jayne. — ^W. W.]
Had Not the Slightest Intention of Injuring Shields
Mr. Lincoln felt afterwards that he could have done, under the
circumstances, no less than he did. He stated to a friend, how
ever, that he selected broadswords because his arms were long.
He had not the slightest intention of injuring Mr. Shields, and
thought that the length of his arms would aid him in defending his
own person.
This incident does not seem, to have been remembered against
Mr. Lincoln by any class of the community in which he lived. It
was certainly a bo)n.sh affair, and was probably regarded and for
gotten as such. Even the excitements of a great political campaign
did not call it from its slumbers, and the American people were
spared a representation of Mr. Lincoln's atrocities as a duelist.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, J. G. Holland, page 89.
"Killing the Dog Would Not Cure the Bite"
Lincoln's quarrel with Shields was his last personal encounter.
In later years it became his duty to give an official reprimand to a

178 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
young officer who had been court-martialed for a quarrel with one
of his associates. The reprimand was probably the gentlest on
record :
"Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of
himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he
afford to take aU the consequences, including the vitiating of his
temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which
you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones,
though clearly your own.
"Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in con
testing for the right . Even kiUi ng the dog woul d not cure the bite . ' '
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories. Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 210.
Married, after Misunderstandings
In 1842, having arrived at his thirty -third year, Mr. Lincoln
married Miss Mary Todd, a daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd of
Lexington, Kentucky. The marriage took place in Springfield,
where the lady had for several years resided, on the fourth of Novem
ber of the year mentioned. It is probable that he married as early
as the circumstances of his life permitted, for he had always loved
the society of women, and possessed a nature that took profound
delight in intimate female companionship.
A letter written on the eighteenth of May f oUowing his marriage,
to J. F Speed, Esq., of Louis-viUe, Kentucky, an early and life-long
personal friend, gives a pleasant glimpse of his domestic arrange
ments at this time :
"We are not keeping house, " Mr. Lincoln says in this letter, "but
boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by" a
widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are now the same
Dr. WaUace occupied there, and boarding only costs four doUars
a week. . I niost heartily wish you and your family -wiU not
faU to come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we
wUl have a room prepared for you, and will aU be merry together
for a whUe."
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, J. G. Holland, page 90.
"The Statute Fixes All That !"
Lmcoln's . . . was the first wedding performed with aU the
ceremony of the EpiscopaUan sect. This was to the awe of the

¦-1

GLOBE TA'VERN

The first house on the left, was a boarding-house, kept bv a widow named Beck in tS,ii> TTpro tr,o Tin,.„i„„ i: .j j •.,.,. .
modest sum of $4.00 a week for the t^o. The g'rasslgroTn?^nTavld ^^^ieitr\^A%i.Slll^^ko'^^?^^I^i^^^ the

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Honorable Judge Tom C Brown, an old man and friend and patron
of Abraham. He watched the ecclesiastical functionary to the
point of Lincoln's placing the ring on the bride's finger. When
Lincoln repeated :
"With this ring I thee wed and with my worldly goods I thee
endow," the irate old stager exclaimed:
"Grace to Goshen! Lincoln, the statute fixes all that!"
The Lincoln Story Book, Henry L. Williams, page 45.
"His Heart Is as Large as His Arms Are Long "
After the Lincolns' marriage, by dint of untiring efforts and the
recognition of influential friends, the couple managed, through rare
frugality, to move along. In Lincoln's struggles, both in law and
for political advancement, his wife shared his sacriflces. She was
a plucky little woman and, in fact, endowed with a more restless
ambition than he. She was gifted with a rare insight into the
motives that actuate mankind, and there is no doubt that Lincoln's
success was, in a measure, attributable to her acuteness and the
stimulus of her influence.
His election to Congress within four years after their marriage
afforded her extreme gratiflcation. She loved power and promi
nence, and was inordinately proud of her tall, ungainly husband.
She saw in him bright prospects ahead, and his every move was
watched by her with the closest interest. If to other persons he
seemed homely, to her he was the embodiment of noble manhood,
and each succeeding day impressed upon her the wisdom of her
choice of Lincoln over Douglas — if in reality she ever seriously
accepted the latter's attentions.
"Mr. Lincoln may not be as handsome a figure, " she said one
day in Lincoln's office during her husband's absence, when the con
versation turned on Douglas, " but people are perhaps not aware
that his heart is as large as his arms are long. "
The Story of Lincoln's Life, in "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure,
page sio.

CHAPTER VII
In Politics and Congress
Lincoln Declines Support for Governor of Illinois
For eight successive years Lincoln had been a member of the
General Assembly of Illinois. It was quite long enough, in his
judgment, and his friends seem to have wanted to give him some
thing better, for in 1841 they offered to support him for Governor
of the State. This, however, he refused. His ambition was to go
to Washington. In 1842 he declined renomination for the assembly
and became a candidate for Congress. He did not wait to be asked,
nor did he leave his case in the hands of his friends. He frankly
announced his desire, and managed his own canvass. There was no
reason, in Mr. Lincoln's opinion, for concealing political ambition.
He recognized, at the same time, the legitimacy of the ambition of
his friends, and entertained no suspicion or rancor if they contested
places with him .
The Whigs of the various counties in the Congressional Dis
trict met on April 5, as they had been instructed to do, and chose
delegates. John J. Hardin of Jacksonville, Edward D. Baker and
Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, were three candidates for whom
these delegates were instructed.
To Lincoln's keen disappointment, the delegation from Sanga
mon County was instructed for Baker. A variety of social and per
sonal influences, besides Baker's popularity, worked against Lincoln.
"It would astonish, if not amuse, the older citizens," wrote
Lincoln to a friend, "to learn that I . have been put down here
as the candidate of pride, wealth and aristocratic family distinction."
He was not only accused of being an aristocrat, he was called a
"deist." He had fought, or been about to fight, a duel. His wife's
relations were Episcopalian and Presbj^erian .
The meeting that named Baker as its choice for Congress
appointed Lincoln one of the delegates to the convention.
"In getting Baker the nomination," Lincoln wrote to Speed, "I
(181)

i8j

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made a groomsman to a
man that has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear 'gal.' "
From the first, however, he stood bravely by Baker.
"I feel myself bound not to hinder him in any way from getting
the nomination ; I should despise myself were I to attempt it. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 192.
Making Van Buren Laugh "Till His Sides Were Sore"
Since 1 840 Lincoln had given less attention to politics than to
law practice. His partnership with Judge Logan — ^who also had
Congressional aspira
tions — w^as compara
tively brief. A new
one was formed with a
younger man, whom he
had known as a clerk in
Mr. Speed's store, and
who had now been re
cently admitted to the
bar, Mr. WiUiam H.
Herndon, who was
especially serviceable in
regard to office work,
the senior (Lincoln)
assuming the chief
labors of the court
room. Members of Congress
were to be elected in
1844, but Lincoln was
not now a candidate for
the nomination. He
gave way to his friend,
Edward D. Baker, as
did also Colonel Hardin.
Clay had a clear
field this year for the Presidential nomination. The friends of ex-
President Van Buren had been hoping for a like unanimity in his

MARTIN VAN BUREN

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS 183

favor on the Democratic side. He made a tour through the West,
of which Mr. Speed recalled an incident not out of place here :
"In 1843, when Mr. Van Buren and Commodore Paulding
-visited the West, and gave out that they would reach Springfield on
a certain day, but their friends knew from the condition of the roads
that their expectations would not be realized, a party was formed,
and Lincoln, though not of their politics, was pressed into the
ser-\dce. "They met Van Buren and his party at Rochester, in Sangamon
County, in an old barn of a hotel. Lincoln was charged to do his
best to entertain the distinguished guests. Well did he do his part.
. He soon got under way, and kept the company convulsed
with laughter till the small hours of the night.
"Mr. Van Buren stayed some days in Springfield, and repeatedly
said he never spent so agreeable a night in his life. He complained
that his sides were sore with laughter, and to more than one pre
dicted for that young man a brilliant future."
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency , Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 78.
Visits Indiana Home Making Speeches for Clay
Lincoln also supported Hardin energetically in the campaign
which followed. . He was true to his promise and after Hardin
was elected and in Washington he kept him informed of much that
went on in the district ; thus in an amusing letter, written in May,
1844, while the latter was in Congress, he tells of one disgruntled con
stituent who must be pacified, giving him, at the same time, a hint
as to the temper of the " Locofocos."
The resolution passed at the Pekin convention in 1843 was
remembered and respected by the Whigs when the time came to
nominate Hardin's successor. Baker was selected and elected, Lin
coln working for him as loyally as he had for Hardin. In this
campaign — ^that of 1844 — Lincoln was a presidential elector. He
went through the canvass with unusual ardor, for Henry Clay was
the candidate, and Lincoln shared the popular idolatry of the man.
His devotion was not merely a sentiment, however. He had been
an intelligent student of Clay's public life, and his sympathy was
all -with the principles of the "gallant Harry of the West."
Lincoln's speeches at this time were not confined to his own

1 84 THE STORY- LIFE OF LINCOLN
State. He made several in Indiana, being in-vited thither by prom
inent Whig politicians \\'ho had heard him speak in Illinois 
One was delivered at Rockport; another "from the door of a
harness shop" near Gentryville, Lincoln's old home in Indiana; and
a third at the "Old Carter School" in the same neighborhood. At
the delivery of the last many of Lincoln's old neighbors were present
and they still tell of the cordial way in which he greeted them and
inquired for old friends. After his speech he drove home with Mr.
Josiah Crawford, for whom he had once worked as a day laborer,
His interest in every f aniiUar spot — a saw-pit where he had once
worked — the old swimming pool, the town grocery, the mill, the
blacksmith shop, surprised and fiattered everybody.
"He w^ent round inspecting everything," declares one of his
hosts. So vivid were the memories which this -visit of Gentry-viUe
aroused, so deep were Lincoln's emotions, that he even attempted
to express them in verse .
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol, I, page 196.

Lincoln's Verses about His Old Home
The following is an extract from a very long original poem
written by Lincoln in 1844 whUe on a visit to the home of his child
hood: My childhood's home I see again
And sadden with the view ;
And still, as memory crowds the brain,
There's pleasure in it too.
Ah, Memory! thou midway world,
'Twixt earth and Paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise.
And freed from all that's earthy, vile,
Seems haUowed, pure and bright,
Like scenes in some enchanted isle
All bathed in liquid light.
Winnowings for Lincoln's Birthday, Agnes Mawson, page 87, note 26.

IN POLITICS .AND CONGRESS

Elected to Congress
In this campaign of 1844 Lincoln for the second time in his
political life met the slavery question. . The next year, 1845,
found the abolition sentiment stronger than ever . . In January
[1846] General Hardin suggested that since he and Lincoln were
the only persons mentioned as candidates, there should he no con
vention, but the selection be left to the Whig voters of the district.
Lincoln refused.
After General Hardin received this refusal he withdrew from
the contest, in a manly and generous letter which was warmly ap
proved by the Whigs of the district. Both men were so much
loved that a break between them would have been a disastrous thing
for the party . .
In May, Lincoln was notninated. His Dem
ocratic opponent w^as Peter Cartwright, the
famous Methodist exhorter, the most famous
itinerant preacher of the pioneer era. . .
Cartwright now made an energetic canvass, his
chief weapon against Lincoln being the old
charges of atheism and aristocracy; but they
failed of effect, and in August, Lincoln was
elected. The contest over, sudden and characteristic
J. .„ . . 1 1 . PETER CARTWRIGHT
disillusion seized him.
, . , _ The great "backwoods
Being elected to Congress, though 1 am preacher," defeated, by
grateful to our friends for having done it, has
not pleased me as much as I expected," he wrote Speed.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 199.
" He Can Compress the Most Words into the Smallest Ideas "
Lincoln's humor generally freed his criticisms of all offense.
" He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of
any man I ever met, " was perhaps the severest retort he ever
uttered; but history has considerately sheltered the identity of
the victim.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 218.

i86 . . THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Lincoln to the House and Douglas to the Senate, Each for the First Time
Before Lincoln's- departure for Washington to enter on his
duties as a member of Congress, the Mexican War had begun.
The volunteers had gone forward, and at the head of the regiments
from Illinois some of the bravest men and best legal talent in Spring
field had marched. Hardin, Baker, Bissell, and even the dramatic
Shields had enlisted. The issues of the war and the manner of its
prosecution were in every man's mouth. Naturally, therefore, a
Congressman -elect would be expected to publish his -views and define
his position early in the day.
Although, in common with the Whig party, opposing the decla
ration of war, Lincoln, now that hostilities had commenced, urged a
vigorous prosecution , He was the only Whig from Illinois . . .
In the Senate, Douglas had made his appearance for the first time . .
Robert C;. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was chosen Speaker. John
Quincy Adams, Horace Mann, Caleb Smith, Alexander H. Stephens,
Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb, and Andrew Johnson were important
members of' the House.
Herndon's Z.«'mco/m. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 260,
Autobiography for the Congressional Directory
Among the papers of the late Charles Lanman there is a sketch
of Mr. Lincoln, written in his own hand. Mr. Lanman was editor
of the Congressional Directory at the time that Mr. Lincoln was
elected to Congress, and, according to the ordinary custom, for
warded to him, as well as to all other members elect, a blank to be
filled out with facts and dates w^hich might be made the basis for a
biographical sketch in the Directory. Lincoln's blank was promptly
filled up in his own handwriting, with the following information:
"Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
" Education defective.
" Profession, la-wyer.
"Military service. Captain of Volunteers in Black Hawk War.
"Offices held: Postmaster at a very small office; four times a
member of the Illinois Legislature, and elected to the Lower House
of the next Congress. "
The True Abraham Lincoln, William Eleroy Curtis, page 59.

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS

187

n

si

K '».^

•^

?* ^

f-

Lincoln's Visit to Henry Clay at Ashland
In 1846, Mr. Lincoln learned that Mr. Clay had agreed to deliver
a speech at Lexington, Kentucky, in favor of gradual emancipation.
He had never seen the great Kentuckian, and this event seemed to
give him an excuse for breaking away from his business, and satisfy
ing his curiosity to
look his demigod in
the face, and hear
the music of his elo
quence. He accord
ingly went to Lex
ington, and arrived
there in time to at
tend the meeting.
On returning to
his home from this
visit, he did not at
tempt to disguise
his disappointment.
The speech itself
was written and i ^ofei^ .* •**. ?
read. It lacked
entirely the spon
taneity and fire
which Mr. Lincoln
had anticipated, and
was not eloquent at
all. At the close of
the meeting Mr.
Lincoln secured an
introduction to the
great orator, and as b * '^'fwr-^tfyjanMt mimiL^-.^SS^SLbJ^i^—.ii
Mr. Clay knew what henry clay
a friend to him Mr.
Lincoln had been, he invited his admirer and partizan to Ashland.
No invitation could have delighted Mr. Lincoln more, but the result
of his private interview with Mr. Clay was no more satisfactory
than that which followed the speech. Those who have known

1

»t

t.-?^

i88 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
both men will not wonder at this, for two men could hardly be
more unlike in their motives and manners than the two thus
brought together. One was a proud man ; the other was a humble
man. . . . One was distant and dignified and the other was as
simple and teachable as a child. . .
A friend of Mr. Lincoln, who had a long conversation with him
after his return from Ashland, found that his old enthusiasm was
gone. Mr. Lincoln said that though Mr. Clay was most polished in
his manners, and very hospitable, he betrayed a consciousness of
superiority that none could mistake. He felt that Mr. Clay did not
regard him, or any other person in his presence, as, in any sense, on an
equality with him. In short, he thought that Mr. Clay was over
bearing and domineering, and that, while he was apparently kind, it
was in that magnificent and patronizing way which made a sensi
tive man uncomfortable.
It is quite possible that Mr. Lincoln needed to experience this
disappointment, and to be taught this lesson. It was, perhaps,
the only instance in his life in which he had given his whole heart
to a man without knowing him. He was, certainly, from
that time forward, more careful to look on all sides of a man, and
on all sides of a subject, before yielding to either his devotion.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, J. G. Holland, page 95.
" A Man Who Has No Vices Has Blamed Few Virtues"
Lincoln set out for Washington from Ramsdell's Tavern in
Springfield early in the morning. The only other passenger in the
stage for a good portion of the distance was a Kentuckian, on his
way home from Missouri. Painfully impressed, no doubt, with
Lincoln's gravity and melancholy, he undertook to relieve the
general monotony of the ride by offering him a chew of tobacco.
With a plain,
"No, sir, thank you; I never chew," Liiicoln declined, and a
long period of silence followed.
Later in the day the stranger, pulling from his pocket a leather-
covered case, offered Lincoln a cigar, whioh he also politely declined
on the ground that he never smoked.
Finally, as they neared the station where the horses were to
be changed, the Kentuckian, pouring out a cup of brandy from a

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS

flask which had lain concealed in his satchel, offered it to Lincoln
with the remark,
"Well, stranger, seeing you don't smoke or chew, perhaps
you'll take a little of this French brandy. It's a fine article and a
good appetizer besides."
His tall and uncommunicative companion declined this last
and best e-vidence of Kentucky hospitality on the same ground as
the tobacco. When they separated that afternoon, the Kentuck
ian, transferring to another stage, bound for Louisville, shook
Lincoln warmly by the hand. "See here, stranger," he said, good-
humoredly, "you're a clever, but strange companion. I may never
see you again, and I don't want to offend you, but I want to say this :
My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has
blamed few virtues. Good -day."
• Lincoln enjoyed this reminiscence of the journey, and took great
pleasure in relating it.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 302.
Congressman Lincoln's Bill Which Never Came to a Vote
During the first session of his term Lincoln made three long
speeches carefully prepared and written out beforehand. He was
neither elated nor dismayed at the result. The next
year he made no set speeches, but in addition to the usual work of a
congressman, occupied himself with a bill that had for its object the
purchase and freeing of all the slaves in the District of Columbia.
Slavery was not only lawful in the national capital at that time,
but there was, to 'quote Mr. Lincoln's own graphic words,
' 'In -view from the windows of the Capitol , a sort of negro livery-
stable, where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept,
and finaUy taken to Southern markets, precisely Uke droves of
horses." To Lincoln and to other people who disapproved of slavery,
the idea of human beings held in bondage under the very shadow of
the dome of the Capitol seemed indeed a bitter mockery. He
did not then beUeve Congress had the right to interfere with slavery
in States that chose to have it; but in the District of Columbia the
power of Congress was supreme, and the matter was entirely differ
ent. His biU pro-vided that the Federal Government should pay
full value to the slave-holders of the District for all slaves in their

I90 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
possession and should at once free the older ones. The younger
slaves were to be apprenticed for a term of years, in order to make
them self-supporting, after which they also were to receive their
freedom. The bUl was very carefully thought out, and had the approval
of residents of the District who held the most varied views upon
slavery ; but good as it was, the measure was never allowed to come
to a vote, and Lincoln went back to Springfield, at the end of his
term, feeling doubtless that his efforts in behalf, of the slaves had
been all in vain.
While in Washington he lived very simply and quietly, taking
little part in the social life of the city, though cordially liked by all
who made his acquaintance. An inmate of the modest boarding-
house where he had rooms has told of the cheery atmosphere he
seemed to bring with him into the common dining-room, where
political arguments were apt to run high. He never appeared
anxious to insist upon his own views; and when others, less con
siderate, forced matters until the talk threatened to become too
furious he would interrupt with an anecdote or a story that cleared
the air and ended the discussion in a general laugh.
Sometimes for exercise he would go into a bowling-alley close
by, entering into the game with great zest, and accepting defeat and
victory with equal good-nature. By the time he had finished a
little circle would be gathered around him, enjoying his enjoyment,
and laughing at his quaint expressions and sallies of wit. . . .
His absolute and impartial fairness to friend and foe alike was
one of his strongest traits, governing every action of his life. If it
had not been for this he might possibly have enjoyed another term
in Congress, for there had been talk of re-electing him. But there
were many able young men in Springfield who coveted the honor,
and they had entered into an agreement among themselves that
each should be content with a single term. Lincoln of course re
mained faithful to his promise. His strict keeping of promises
caused him also to lose an appointment from President Taylor
as Commissioner of the General Land Office, which might easily
have been his, but for which he had agreed to recommend some
other Illinois man.
A few weeks later the President offered to make him governor of

1^'*""

> \
n
.It __J^ _J
1
e "'''mA, W^
k .*--iJr
Ibfe.
i 1
iHn^^r^s^^'^
,tlO
ilpi
i ^3iBnL
f «ig^n| ^^ 1 '^m^W^I^^^iSHkWm
%A- '. ; .
^
Kif ^^j^!3b. )j[^r^fi**fiH5yfc. %2^iK|^^M^i^H||
-1':^
1^^^
'y;>\amm
:'^i .•«^;:-
v'tvVfgrSMSSfi.- :'.-'•:¦- ¦..-:<.;¦'£;:¦ •,¦ ™;,_,,,S-:
¦¦¦¦ .'¦¦/¦^'-i's^'^H '¦;¦' -a.#^i^'''-'i!5fF*;H-;','-,>.i:'" '".¦^. '-. '.^ :•'¦¦':¦''. ':¦¦- ¦ i-y-'V'l*'^
' Wmik,
1
i''
•f:^.;;:,V;::;:
¦ ''' ---- -¦'¦ -^--  -^¦'
1
1 1
From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
THE EARLIEST PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
From a daguerreotype taken in 1848, when Lincoln was forty.
IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS 191
the new Territory of Oregon. This attracted him much more than
the other office had done, but he declined because his wife was
unwilling to live in a place so far away.
His career in Congress, while adding little to his fame at the
time, proved of great advantage to him in after life, for it gave him
a close knowledge of the workings of the Federal Government, and
brought him into contact with political leaders from all parts of the
Union. The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Nicolay, page 85.
The Mexican War, the "Spot Resolutions," and the Dissatisfaction of
Lincoln's Constituents
The Mexican War was drawing toward its close, and most of
the talking in Congress had relation to it. The whole Whig party
denounced it at the time, and the nation had been more than half
ashamed of it ever since. By adroit manoeuvres Polk had forced
the fight upon a weak and reluctant nation, and had made to his
own people false statements as to both the facts and the merits of
the quarrel. . .
Good strategy achieved a series of brilliant victories, and
fortunately for the Whigs General Taylor and General Scott, to
gether with a large proportion of the most distinguished regimental
officers, were of that party. This aided them essentially in their
policy, which was, to denounce the entering into the war but to vote
all necessary supplies for its 'vigorous prosecution.
Into this scheme of his party Lincoln entered with hea,rty
concurrence. A week after the House met he closed a letter to his
partner with the remark:
"As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have
concluded to do so before long," and what he said humorously
he probably meant seriously.
Accordingly he soon afterward (December 22, 1847) introduced
a series, which, under the nickname of the "Spot Resolutions,"
attracted some a;ttention. Quoting in his preamble sundry para
graphs of the President's message of May xi, 1846, to the purport
that Mexico had invaded "our territory," and had " shed the blood
of our citizens on our own soil," he then requested the President to
state "the spot" where these and other alleged occurrences had taken
place.

192

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

His first "little speech," was on "a post-office question of no
general interest;" and he found himself "about as badly scared and
no worse" than when he spoke in court. So a little later, January li,
1848, he ventured to call up his resolutions and to make a speech
upon them.
Lincoln's course concerning the w'ar and the administration
,  _  _  did not please his con
stituents. Many of his
critics remained dissatis
fied, and it is believed
that his course ccst the
next Whig candidate in
the district votes which
he could not afford to
lose. "To those who de
sire that I should be re
elected," he wrote to
Herndon, "as Mr. Clay
said of the annexation
of Texas, that personaUy
I would not object .
if it should so happen
that nobody else wishes
to he elected. ... To
enter myself as the com
petitor of others, or to
authorize any one so to
enter me, is what my
word and honor forbid."
It did so happen that-
Judge Logan, whose turn
it seemed to be, wished
the nomination and re
ceived it. He was, however, defeated, and probably paid the price
of Lincoln's scrupulous honesty.
Abraham Lincoln, John T. Morse, Jr., Vol. I, page 74.

JAMES K. POLK
The President to whom Lincoln's " Spot Resolutions '
were addressed.

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS

193

The Champion Story-Teller of the Capitol
During the Christmas holidays Mr. Lincoln found his way into
the small room used as the post-office of the House, where a few
jo-vial raconteurs used to meet almost every morning, after the mail
had been distributed into the members' boxes, to exchange such new
stories as any of them might have acquired since they last met.
After modestly standing at the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln
was "reminded" of a story, and by New Year's he was recognized
as the champion story-teller of the Capitol.
Mr. Lincoln boarded with Mrs. Spriggs, on Capitol Hill, where
he had as messmates the veteran Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio;
John Blanchard, John Dickey, A. R. Mcllvaine, John Strohm, and
James Pollock, of Pennsylvania; Elisha Embree of Indiana; and
P., W. Tompkins of Mississippi — all Whigs.
Reminiscenses of Abraham Lincoln, Ben: Perley Poore, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 217.

Legal Services Rendered Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster, who was then in the Senate, used occasionally
to have Mr. Lincoln at his pleasant
Saturday breakfasts, where the West
ern Congressman's humorous illus
trations of the events of the day,
sparkling with spontaneous and un
premeditated wit, would give great
delight to "the solid men of Boston"
assembled around the festive board.
At one time Mr. Lincoln had
transacted some legal business for
Mr. Webster connected with an em
bryo city laid out where Rock River
empties into the Mississippi.
Mr. Lincoln had charged Mr. Webster
for his legal services $io, which the
Great Expounder of the Constitution
regarded as too small a fee, and he
would frequently declare that he was stiU Mr, Lincoln's debtor.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Ben. Perley Poore, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 222

DANIEL WEBSTER

194 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"My Old Eyes Are Full of Tears Yet"
I digress from the Mexican War subject long enough to insert,
because in the order of time it belongs here, a characteristic letter
which he wrote me regarding a man who was destined at a later day
to play a far different role in the national drama. Here is is :
"Washington, Feb. 2, 1848.
"Dear William: "I just take up my pen to say that Mr. Stephens,
of Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice
like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an hour's
length I ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet.
If he writes it out anything like he delivered it our people shall see a
good many copies of it. "Yours truly,
"A. Lincoln."
"To W M. H. Herndon, Esq."
Herndon's Lincoln. William H, Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 268.
General Cass on Working and Eating
(From a speech in Congress, July 27, 1848.)
"Mr. Speaker, I adopt the suggestion of a friend, that General
Cass is a general of splendidly successful charges — charges,, to be
sure, not upon the public enemy, but upon the public treasury.
He was Governor of Michigan Territory, and ex-officio Superintend
ent of Indian Affairs, from the 9th of October, 1813, till the 31st of
July, 1 83 1 — a period of seventeen years, nine months, and twenty-
two days. During this period 'he received from the United States
treasury, for personal services and personal expenses, the aggregate
sum of ninety -six thousand and twenty-eight doUars, being an aver
age of fourteen dollars and seventy-nine cents per day for every day
of the time. This large sum was reached by assuming that he was
doing service at several different places, and in several different
capacities in the same pi ace, all at the same time.
"These accounts have already been discussed some here; but
when we are amongst them, as when we are in the Patent Office,
we must peep about a good deal, before we can see all the curiosities.
I shaU not be tedious with them. As to the large item of $1500 per
year — amounting in the aggregate to $26,715 — for office rent, cab

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS 195
hire, fuel, etc., I barely wish to remark that so far as I can discover
in the public documents, there is no evidence, by word or inference,
either from any disinterested witness or of General Cass himself,
that he ever rented or kept a separate office, ever hired or kept a
clerk, or even used any extra amount of fuel, etc., in consequence
of his Indian services. Indeed, General Cass's silence in regard to
these items, in his two long letters urging his claims upon the Gov
ernment, is, to my mind, almost conclusive that no such claims had
any real existence.
" But I have introduced General Cass's accounts here chiefly to
show the wonderful physical capacities of the man. They show that
he not only did the labor of several men at the same time, but that
he often did it at several places, many hundreds of miles apart, at
the same time.
"And at eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite wonder
ful. From October, 182 1, to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day in
Michigan, -ten rations a day here in Washington, and five dollars'
worth a day on the road between the two places ! And then there
is an important discovery in his example — ^the art of being paid for
what one eats, instead of ha-ving to pay for it. Hereafter, if any
nice young man should owe a bill which he cannot pay in any other
way, he can just board it out.
' ' Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt
between two stacks of hay and starving to death. The like of that
would never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand
miles apart, he would stand stock-still midway between them, and
eat them both at once, and the green grass along the line would be
apt to suffer some, too, at the same time. By all means make him
President, gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously — ^if — ^if there
is any left after he shall have helped himself."
Early Speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Military Heroes, page 173.
"What Will Be the Upshot of this Comet Business?"
Thomas H. Nelson, of Terre Haute, Indiana, relates the follow
ing: "Judge Abram Hammond, afterwards Governor of Indiana, and
myself, arranged to go from Terre Haute to Indianapolis in the stage
coach. As we stepped in we discovered that the entire back seat
was occupied by a long, lank individual whose head seemed to

196 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

protrude from one end of the coach and his feet from the other. He
was the sole occupant, and was sleeping soundly. Hammond
slapped him familiarly on the shoulder, and asked him if he had
chartered the coach that day.
'"Certainly not,' and he at once took the front seat, politely.
surrendering to us the place of honor and comfort. An odd-looking
fellow he was, with a twenty-five cent hat, and without vestor cravat.
' ' Regarding him as a good subject for merriment, we perpetrated
several jokes. He took them all with the utmost innocence and
good nature and joined in the laugh, although at his own expense.
We amazed him with words of great length and thundering sound.
After an astounding display of wordy pyrotechnics, the dazed and
bewildered stranger asked,
' ' ' What will be the upshot of this comet business ? '
' ' Late in the evening we reached Indianapolis and hurried to
Browning's Hotel, losing sight of the stranger altogether. We
retired to our room to brush our clothes.
"In a few minutes I descended to the portico, and there I saw
our long, gloomy fello^\- -traveler in the center of an admiring group
of lawyers, among whom were Judges McLean and Huntington,
Albert S. White, and Richard W. Thompson, who seemed to be
amused and interested in a story he was telling. I inquired of
Browning, the landlord, who the tall young man was.
" 'Abraham Lincoln of Illinois — a member of Congress,' was the
response. ' ' I was thunderstruck ; hastening upstairs I told Hammond the
startling news; together we sneaked away from that hotel by a
back door and went down an alley- to another house, thus avoiding
further contact \\ith our distinguished fellow-traveler.
"Years afterward, when the President-elect was on his way to
Washington, I was in the same hotel looking over the distinguished
party, when a long arm reached to my shoulder, and a shrill voice
exclaimed :
"'Hello, Nelson! Do you think, after all, the whole world is
going to follow the darned thing off?'
' ' The words were my own reply to his question about the comet
in the stage-coach years before.
"The speaker was Abraham Lincoln."
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 89.

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS

197

Lincoln in the Thirtieth Congress and Afterward — A Summary
The routine work assigned to Lincoln in the Thirtieth Congress
was on the committee on the post-office and post-roads. Several
reports were made by him from this committee. These reports,
'with a speech on internal improvements, cover his published work
in the House up to July.
As the Whigs were
to hold their national
convention for nomina
ting a candidate for the
presidency in June, Lin
coln gave considerable
time during the spring to
electioneering. In his
judgment the Whigs
could elect nobody but
General Taylor, and he
urged his friends in Illi
nois to give up Henry
Clay, to whom many of
them stiU clung.
"Mr. Clay's chance
for an election, " he wrote,
"is just no chance at all."
Lincoln went to the con
vention, which was held
in Philadelphia, and, as
he prophesied, "Old
Rough-and-Ready ' ' was
nominated. He went
back to Washington full
of enthusiasm. "In my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious
triumph," he wrote a friend. "One unmistakable sign is that aU the
odds and ends are with us — Barnburners, Native Americans,
Tyler men, disappointed office-seekers, Locofocos, and the Lord
knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which
way the wind blows,"

GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR
(" Old Rough-and-Ready.")
Lincoln's speeches in New England and elsewhere helped
make General Taylor President.

198 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
In connection with Alexander H. Stephens, of whom he had
become a warm friend, Toombs, and Preston, Lincoln formed the
first Congressional Taylor club, known as the "Young Indians."
Campaigning had already begun on the floor of Congress, and the
members were daily making speeches for the various candidates.
On July 27th he made a speech for Taylor. It was a boisterous
speech, full of merciless caricaturing, and deUvered with unmis
takable drollery. It kept the House in an uproar, and was repeated
the country over by the Whig press. The Baltimore American,
in giving a synopsis of it, called it the "crack speech of the day,"
and said of Lincoln:
"He is a very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man, and a
tremendous wag, withal. Mr. Lincoln's manner was so
good-natured, and his style so peculiar, that he kept the House in a
continuous roar of merriment for the last half hour of his speech.
He would commence a point in his speech far up one of the aisles,
and keep on talking, gesticulating, and walking until he would find
himself, at the end of a paragraph, down in the center of the area in
front of the clerk's desk. He would then go back again and take
another head and work down again. And so on, through his capi
tal speech." »
This speech, as well as the respect Lincoln's work in the Hoiise
had inspired among the leaders of the party, brought him an in-vita
tion to deliver several campaign speeches in New England at the close
of Congress, and he went there early in September. . Lin
coln, in the first speech he made, defined carefully his position on the
slavery question. This was at Worcester, Massachusetts, on Sep
tember 12th. Curiously enouth the meeting was presided
over by ex-Governor Levi Lincoln, a descendant, like Abraham
Lincoln, from the original Samuel of Hingham. There were many
brilliant speeches made ; but if we are to trust the reports of the day,
Lincoln's was the one which by its logic, its clearness, and its
humor, did most for the Whig cause.
"Gentlemen inform me," says one Boston reporter, who came
too late for the exercises, "that it was one of the best speeches ever
heard in Worcester, and that several Whigs who had gone off on the
'free soil' fizzle have come back again to the Whig ranks." , , , .

IN POLITICS .AND CONGRESS 199
After the speech at Worcester, Lincoln spoke at Lowell , Ded-
ham, Roxbury, Chelsea and Cambridge, and on September 22nd, in
Tremont Temple, Boston, following a splendid oration by Governor
Seward. His speech on this occasion was not reported, though the
Boston papers united in calling it "powerful and convincing."
His success at Worcester and Boston was such that invitations came
from all over New England asking him to speak.
But Lincoln won something in New England of vastly deeper
importance than a reputation for making popular campaign speeches.
Here for the first time he caught a glimpse of the utter impossibility
of ever reconciling the Northern con-viction that slavery was evil
and unendurable, and the Southern claim that it was divine and
necessary; and he began here to realize that something must be
done. Listening to Seward's speech in Tremont Temple, he seems to
have had a sudden insight into the truth, a quick illumination ; and
that night, as the two men sat talking, he said gravely to the great
anti-slavery advocate:
"Governor Seward, I have been thinking about v/hat you said
in your speech. I reckon 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."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol, I, page 216.
Sees Niagara Falls
It was late in September when Lincoln started westward from
his campaigning in New England. He stopped in Albany, N. Y.,
and in company 'with Thurlow Weed called on Fillmore, then candi
date for Vice-President. From Albany he went to Niagara. Mr.
Herndon once asked him what made the deepest impression on him
when he stood before the Falls.
"The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls,"
he responded, "was' where in the world did all that water come
from?" . . Published in his "Complete Works" is a frag
ment on Niagara which shows how deeply his mind was stirred
by the majesty of that mighty wonder :
"Niagara Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions
and millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every
effect is just as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would
anticipate without seeing it. If the water mo'ving onward in a great
river reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred
feet in descent in the bottom of the river, it is plain the water will
have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain
that the water, thus plunging, will foam and roar and send up a
mist continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be
perpetual rainbows. The mere physical side of Niagara FaUs is only
this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world's wonder. Its
power to excite refiection and emotion is its great charm.
"But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When
Columbus first sought this continent — ^when Christ suffered on the
cross — when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea, — nay, even
when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker; then as now,
Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct
giants whose bones fill the mounds of America have gazed on
Niagara, as ours do now Niagara is as strong and fresh
to-day as ten thousand years ago . The mammoth and the
mastodon, so long dead that fragments of their monstrous bones
alone testify that they ever lived, have gazed on Nia-^ara — in that
long, long time never stiU for a moment, never dried, never froze,
never slept, never rested."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 225.
"A. Lincoln's Imp'd Manner of Buoying Vessels"
One of Mr. Lincoln's early friends, W G. Greene, states that
the first time he ever saw Mr. Lincoln, " he was in the Sangamon
River, with his trousers rolled up five feet, more or less, trying to
pUot a flatboat over a mill-da.m. "
The practical and ingenious character of Lincoln's mind is
shown in the fact that several years after his river experience he
invented and patented a device for overcoming some of the diffi
culties in the navigation of western rivers with which this trip made
him familiar. The following interesting account of this invention
is given :
^.Occupying an ordinary and commonplace position in one of
the show-cases in the large hall of the Patent Office, is one little

IN POLITICS AND CONGRESS

20I

model which, in ages to come, 'will be prized as one of the most
curious and one of the most sacred relics in that vast museum of
unique and priceless things.
"This is a plain and simple model of a steamboat, roughly
fashioned in wood by the hand of Abraham Lincoln. It bears date
in 1849, when the inventor was known . as a successful lawyer

The model of Lmcoln's mvention, as it appears in the Patent Office at Washington
and a rising politician of Central Illinois. Neither his practice nor
his politics took up so much of his time as to prevent him from
giving some attention to contrivances which he hoped might be of
benefit to the world and of profit to himself.
" It is an attempt to make it an easy matter to transport vessels
over shoals and snags and 'sawyers.' The main idea is that of an
apparatus resembling a noiseless bellows, placed on each side of the

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

hull of the craft, just below the water-line, and worked by an odd
but not complicated system of ropes, valves and pulleys. When
the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or obstruction, these
bellows are to be filled -with air; and, thus buoyed up, the ship is
expected to fioat lightly and gaily over the shoal, which would other-
-wise have proved a serious interruption to her -voyage.
"The model, which is about eighteen or twenty inches long,
and has the appearance of having been whittled -with a knife out of
a shingle and a cigar-box, is built without any elaboration or orna
ment, or any extra apparatus^ beyond that necessary to show the
operation of buoying the steamer over the obstructions.
This model is carved as one might imagine a retired rail-splitter
would whittle, strongly but not smoothly, and evidently made with
a view solely to convey to the minds of the patent authorities, by
the simplest possible means, an idea of the purpose and plan of the
invention. "The label on the steamer's deck informs us that the patent
was obtained ; but we do not learn that the navigation of the west
ern rivers was revolutionized by this quaint conception. The
modest little model has reposed here many years ; and since it found
its resting-place here on the shelf, the shrewd inventor has found
it his task to guide the Ship of State over shoals more perilous, and
obstructions more obstinate than any prophet dreamed of when
Abraham Lincoln wrote his bold autograph on the prow of his
miniature steamer. "
The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, F. F, Browne, page 02.
[When Lincoln showed this model to a certain patent authority,
he said he ' ' reckoned it would work where the ground was a little
damp."— W. W.j

CHAPTER VIII
State Capital and Eighth Circuit
"A Place for Everything"
After a flying visit to Washington in the summer of 1849, Lin
coln settled down again to his old round of duties at Springfield,
steadied by political disappointment. Here he was frequently con
sulted as to the fiUing of offices in his district, and was characteris
tically candid in his replies. Many a poUtician would haA'-e been con
tent to urge the claims of his own friends on the attention of the
Administration, but Lincoln had a scrupulous sense of responsi
bility, and a single desire to serve the public good. His fairness of
spirit is humorously illustrated by the following, from a letter to the
Secretary of State :
"Mr. Bond I know to be, personally, every way worthy of the
office (in question) ; and he is very numerously and most respect
ably recommended. His paper I send to you ; and I solicit for his
claims a full and fair consideration. Having said this much, I add
that, in my individual judgment, the appointment of Mr. Thomas
-would be better. "¦
By mid-July he had apparently abandoned politics and become
once more immersed in the law. On his return from Washington he
had been offered a partnership in a Chicago law firm, but had
declined on the ground that he had a tendency toward consumption,
and he feared the effect of a town practice on his health.
In spite of the relentless logic of his thought, the senior partner
(of the firm of Lincoln & Herndon) was the least methodical
of men in matters of detail, and his junior, in whom he had hoped
to find balancing qualities, proved to be little better. Any order
which could be discovered in the office must, therefore, have been
due to the advent of some student-clerk who had taken chaos in
hand, swept out the room and sorted the papers. The office was on
the first floor (upstairs) of a brick building which faced the court
house across the public square, but it was a back room and its
(2°3)

From a photograph taken in the library of Major William H. Lambert, Germantown, Philadelphia.
LINCOLN'S DESK-BOOKCASE AND CHAIR

(204)

STATE CAPITAL .AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 205
windows overlooked the yard. Its furniture consisted of the baize-
covered table, a few chairs, an old-fashioned "secretary" and a
book-case containing a couple of hundred law-books.
Lincoln's real desk, in whose drawers and pigeon-holes, so to
speak, all his more important notes and memoranda were deposited,
was a tall silk hat. This figures in his business papers, for he writes,
somewhat unprofessionally, to a fellow-lawyer, whose correspond
ence he had neglected :
"When I received the letter, I put it in my old hat, and buying
a new one the next day, the old one was set aside, and so the letter
was lost sight of for a time."
On top of the secretary (desk) lay a bundle of papers, always
growing in bulk, and labeled:
Abraham Lincoln, Henry Bryan Binns, page 114.
"Giving Away What He Couldn't Get and Keep"
"As Lincoln entered the trial," relates one of his colleagues of
the bar (Leonard Swett) , ' 'where most lawyers would object he would
say he 'reckoned' it would be fair to let this in or that ; and some
times, when his adversary could not quite prove what Lincoln knew
to be the truth, he 'reckoned' it would be fair to admit the truth to
be so-and-so. When he did object to the court and when he heard
his, objections answered, he would often say, 'WeU, I reckon I must
be wrong.' "Now, about the time he had practised this three-fourths
through the case, if his adversary didn't understand him, he would
wake up in a few minutes and find himself beaten. He was as 'wise
as a serpent ' in the trial of a cause, but I have had too many scars
from his blows to certify that he was as 'harmless as a dove.'
"When the whole thing was unravelled the adversary would
begin to see that what he was so blandly giving away was simply
what he wouldn't get and keep. By gi-ving away six points and
carrying the seventh he carried his case, and the whole case hanging

2o6 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
on the seventh, he traded away everything which would give him
the lead in carrying that.
"Any man who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man would
very soon wake up with his back in a ditch."
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page 3,

How Lincoln Retaliated on Opposing Counsel
Judge Weldon told the writer that on one occasion a lawyer
challenged a juror because of his personal acquaintance with Mr.
Lincoln, who appeared for the other side. Such an objection was
regarded as more or less a refiection upon the honor of an attorney
in those days, and Judge Davis, who was presiding at the time,
promptly overruled the challenge; but when Lincoln rose to ex
amine the jury he gravely followed his adversary's lead and began
to ask the talesmen whether they were acquainted with his oppo
nent. After two or three had answered in the affirmative, however,
his Honor interfered.
"Now, Mr. Lincoln," he observed severely,' "you are wasting
time. The mere fact that a juror knows your opponent does not
disqualify him."
"No, your Honor," responded Lincoln dryly. "But I am afraid
some of the gentlemen may not know him, which would place me at
a disadvantage."
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 212.

Studying EucUd and Telling Stories in the "Wee Sma' Hours"
While a member of Congress and otherwise immersed in politics,
Lincoln seemed to lose all interest in the law. When he
returned, our practice was as extensive as that of any other firm at
the bar. I could notice a difference in Lincoln's movements
as a lawyer from this time forward. There was, of course, the
same riding on the circuit as before, but the courts had improved
in tone and morals, at least it appeared so to Lincoln.
Political defeat had wrought a marked effect on him. It went
below the skin and made a changed man of him. He was not
soured at his seeming political decline, but still he determined to

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 207
eschew politics from that time forward and devote himself entirely
to the law, .
No man had greater power of application than he. Once fixing
his mind on any subject, nothing could interfere with or disturb
him. Frequently I would go out on the circuit with him. We
usually, at the little country inns, occupied the same bed. In most
cases the beds were too short for him, and his feet would hang over
the foot-board. Placing a candle on a chair at the head of the bed,
he would read and study for hours I have known him to study in
this position till two o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile, I and
others who chanced to occupy the same room would be safely and
soundly asleep. On the circuit in this way he studied Euclid
until he could with ease demonstrate all the propositions in the six
books. In the role of a story-teller I regard Mr. Lincoln as
without an equal. I have seen him surrounded by a crowd number
ing 200 to 300 persons, all deeply interested in a story which, when
he had finished it, speedily found repetition in every grocery and
lounging -place within reach. His power of mimicry and his manner
of recital were unique. His countenance and all his features
seemed to take part in the performance As he neared the pith or
point of the story every vestige of seriousness disappeared from his
face. His little gray eyes sparkled ; a smile seemed to gather up,
curtain like, the corners of his mouth; his frame quivered with
suppressed excitement; and when the point— or "nub" of the
story, as he caUed it — came, no one's lauf h was heartier than his.
, Every recital was followed by its "storm of laughter and
chorus of cheers. " When Lincoln, Murray and Fngle met,
there was sure to be a crowd. All were more or less masters in
their art. I have known these story -telling jousts to con
tinue long after midnight — in some cases tUl the very smaU hours
of the morning.
I have seen Judge Treat, who was the impersonation of gravity
itself, sit up tiU the last and laugh untU, as he often expressed it, he
" almost shook his ribs loose. " The next day he would ascend the
bench and listen to Lincoln in a murder trial, with all the seeming
severity of an English judge in -wig and gown.
Herndon's Lincoln, W'illiam H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page soy.

2o8 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"The Ogmathorial Court" and the Firm of "Catchem & Cheatem"
Early in our practice a gentleman named Scott placed in my
hands a case of some importance. He had a demented sister who
possessed property to the amount of $10,000, mostly in cash. A
"conservator," as he was called, had been appointed to take charge
of the estate, and we were employed to resist a motion to remove
the conservator. A designing adventurer had become acquainted
with the unfortunate girl, and knowing that she had money, sough-t
to marry her, hence the motion.
Scott, the brother and conservator, before we entered on the
case, insisted that I should fix the amount of the fee. I told him that
it would be $250, adding, however, that he had better wait; it
might not give us much trouble, and in that event a less amount
would do. He agreed at once to pay $250, as he expected a hard
contest over the motion.
The case was tried inside of twenty minutes ; our success was
complete. Scott was satisfied, and cheerfully paid over the money
to me inside the bar, Mr. Lincoln looking on. Scott then went out,
and Mr. Lincoln asked,
"What did you charge that man? "
I told him $250. Said he, "Lamon, that is all wrong. The
service was not worth that sum. Give him back at least half of it."
I protested that the fee was fixed in advance ; that Scott was
perfectly satisfied, and had so expressed himself.
"That may be," retorted Mr. Lincoln, with a look of distress
and of undisguised displeasure, "but / am not satisfied. This is
positively wrong. Go, call him back and return half of the money
at least, or I will not have one cent of it for my share."
I did go, and Scott was astonished when I handed back half
the fee. This conversation attracted the attention of the lawyers and
the court. Judge David Davis, then on our Circuit Bench, caUed
Mr. Lincoln to him. The Judge never could whisper, but in this
instance he probably did his best. At aU events, in attempting to
whisper to Mr. Lincoln he trumpeted his rebuke in about these words
and in rasping tones that could be heard all over the court-room:
"Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are
impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 209
lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as
poor as Lazarus, and if you don't make people pay you more for
your services you will die ' as poor as Job's turkey ! '" .
But Lincoln was immovable. "That money," said he, "comes
out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve
than swindle her in this manner."
That evening the lawyers got together and tried Mr. Lincoln
before the mock tribunal called "The Ogmathorial Court." He
was found guilty and fined for his awful crime against the pockets
of his brethren of the bar. The fine he paid with great good humor,
and then kept the crowd of lawyers in uproarious laughter until after
midnight! He persisted in his revolt, however, declaring that with
his consent his firm should never during its life, or after its dissolu
tion, deserve the reputation enjoyed by those shining lights of the
profession, "Catchem & Cheatem."
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 17.
"If I'm an UgUer Man than You I Don't Want to Live ! "
Lincoln was, naturally enough, much surprised one day when
a, man of rather forbidding countenance drew a revolver and thrust
the weaponalmost into his face.
" What seems to be the matter? " inquired Lincoln, with all the
selfpossession he could muster.
"Well, " replied the stranger, who did not appear to be at all
excited, " some years ago I swore an oath that if I ever came across
an ugUer man than myself, I'd shoot him on the spot."
On hearing this Lincoln's expression lost aU suggestion of
anxiety. He said to the stranger :
" Shoot me, then, for if I am an ugUer man than you I don't
want to live. "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 6s.
Lawyer Lincoln Rescues a Pig
While Lincoln was practising law he used to go from one town
to another to try cases before different courts. There were no rail
roads in those days, and traveling "on the circuit" (going around
from court to court) was done mostly on horseback.
One day, when several lawyers besides Mr. Lincoln were travel
ing in this way, they came to a very muddy place in the road, and

2IO THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
at one side, near the rail fence, was a poor pig stuck fast, and squeal
ing as loud as possible.
The men thought this very funny and laughed at the unfor
tunate pig ; but Lincoln said,
"Let us stop and help the poor thing out."
"Oh, Abe," said one, "you must be crazy! Your clothes
would look pretty after you had lifted that dirty pig up, wouldn't
they?" The others all poked fun at Lincoln, and so they rode on until
they were out of sight and hearing of the suffering beast.
Lincoln rode on with them also, but little by little he went
slower. He was thinking about the pig and the farmer who owned
him. He thought : " What a pity for him to lose that pig ; he can't
afford it! It means shoes for his little children to wear next
'winter. " And then the memory of that pitiful squeal kept ringing
in his ears. So, after going quite a long distance -with the other
gentlemen, Lincoln turned his horse and rode back all alone, to see
if he could get the pig out. He fotmd the poor thing still deeper
than before in the mud and mire. So he took some rails from
the fence, and putting them down by the squealing animal, made.
a safe footing to stand on. Then he took two other rails, and,
putting them under the pig, pried him up out of the mud until he
could reach him -with his hands. Then he took hold of him, and,
pulling him out, placed him on the dry sand.
As the pig ran grunting off toward his home, Lincoln looked at
/lis soiled clothes with a satisfied smile, as much as to say, "Well,
•Si little water and brushing -will soon make the clothes look clean
again, and I don't care if the other fellows do laugh at me; the pig's
out of his misery, and Farmer Jones's children won't have to go
barefoot next winter. "
Lincoln in Story, Silas G. Pratt, page 57.
"A Seven-foot Whistle on a Five-foot Boiler"
Senator Voorhees told the following story of Lincoln's speech
to the jury in answer to an oratorical lawyer :
' ' I recall one story Lincoln told during the argument in a law
suit. The lawyer on the other side was a good deal of a glib
talker, but not reckoned as deeply profound or much of a thinker.

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT

He was rather reckless and irresponsible in his speechmaking also,
and would say anything to a jury which happened to enter his
head. Lincoln in his address to the jury, referring to all these,
said : "'My friend on the other side is all right, or would be all
right, were it not for the physico-mental peculiarity I am about to
explain :
" ' His habit — of which you have witnessed a very painful speci
men in his argument to you in this case — of reckless assertion and
statement without grounds, need not be imputed to him as a moral
fault or blemish.
He can't help it.
For reasons which,
gentlemen of the
jury, you and I
have not time to
study here, as de
plorable as they
are surprising, the
oratory of the gen
tleman completely
suspends all action
of his mind. The
moment he begins to talk his mental operations cease. I never
knew of but one thing which compared with my friend in this
particular. That was a steamboat. Back in the days when I
performed my part as a keel boatman I made the acquaintance
of a trifling Uttle steamboat which used to bustle and puff and
wheeze about in the Sangamon River. It had' a five -foot boUer
and a seven-foot whistle, and every time it whistled the boat
stopped.'" Newspaper clipping from an old scrap-book.

LINCOLN'S SADDLE-BAGS

"I Cannot Argue this Case —Our Witnesses Have Been Lying!"
Judge Davis said that one evening, as was the custom, Lincoln
and Swett came to his room in the hotel, and during the conversa
tion Lincoln spoke about as follows:
"Swett, Davis and I are old friends, and what we say here

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

'will never be repeated to our injury. Now, we have been engaged
in this trial for two days, and I am satisfied that our clients are
guilty, and that the witnesses for the State have told the truth.
It is my opinion that the best thing we can do for our clients is
to have them come in to-morrow morning, and plead guilty to
manslaughter, and let Da'vis give them
the lowest punishment. "
Mr. Swett said he would do nothing
of the kind. He said, "Mr. Lincoln, you
don't know what evidence I have got
in reserve to combat the witnesses of the
State." "I don't care, " replied Mr. Lincoln,
"what evidence you have got, Swett;
the witnesses for the State have told the
truth, and the jury will believe them. "
"Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Swett, "I
shall never agree to your proposition, and
propose to car ry on our defense to the end . "
" AU right, " repUed Mr. Lincoln.
They went on with the trial. The defendants put their wit
nesses on the stand and the time came for arguments. Then Mr.
Lincoln said to Mr. Swett,
" Now, Swett, I cannot argue this case, because our witnesses
have been lying, and I don't believe them. You can go on and
make the argument. "
Swett made the argument, the case went to the jury, and the
men were acquitted. The next day Mr. Lincoln went to Mr. Swett
and said:
" Swett, here is the $500 which I have received for defending
one of these men. It all belongs to you, take it. "
Of course Mr. Swett did not take the money, but it showed, as
Judge Davis said, that Mr. Lincoln felt he had done nothing to
earn the money.
Abraham Lincoln as an Advocate, W. Lewis Frazer. The Century Magazine, Vol. XLVII, Feb
ruary, 1894, "Open Letters," page 676,

LEONARD SWETT

An Illustrious Pillow Fight
It was while out on the circuit that he was seen for the first
time by a young man who afterward became one of the prominent

ww^

ST.ATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 213

la-wyers of Central Illinois. The latter, with a letter of introduction
from a friend, found him one evening at the tavern in the town
of Danville. "I was told," he relates, "that I would find Mr. Lincoln in
Judge Davis's room. I climbed the unbapistered stairway, and
to my timid knock two voices responded almost simultaneously,
" 'Come in!'
" Imagine my surprise, when the door opened, to find two men
undressed, or rather dressed for bed, engaged in a lively battle -with
pillows, flinging them at each other's head;
one, a low, heavy-set man, who, leaning against
the bed and puffing^ like a lizard, answered to
the description of Judge Davis; the other, a
man of tremendous stature, looking as if he
were at least seven feet tall, was incased in a
long garment, yellow as saffron, which reached
to his heels, and from beneath which protruded
two of the largest feet that, up to that time, it ^^^^^^ ^'^.^^ ^^.^^^
had ever been my privUege to see. This im- (Afterwards President of
mense shirt — for such it must have been — the united states
looked as if it had literally been chopped out '"^ °' ¦*
of the original bolt of flannel from which it had been made and
the pieces joined together in the dark without reference to fit or
measurement. The only thing that kept it from slipping off .the
gaunt, attenuated frame it so completely enveloped was the single
button at the throat. I cannot fully describe my sensations as
this apparition, with the modest announcement,
" 'My name is Lincoln, sir, ' strode across the room and grasped
my hand. "
Lincoln as a Lawyer, Jesse W. Weik. The Century Magazine, Vol. XLVI, June, 1904, page 285.
A Rating Not in "Dun" or "Bradstreet"
A New York firm applied to Abraham Lincoln some years before
he became President, for information as to the financial standing of
one of his neighbors. Mr. Lincoln replied :
"I am well acquainted with Mr. Blank, and know his cir
cumstances. " First of all, he has a wife and baby ; together they ought to be
worth $50,000 to any man.

214 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $i .50,
and three chairs worth, say, $1.00.
" Last of all, there is in one corner a large rat-hole, M'hich will
bear looking into. ' 'Respectfully,
"A. Lincoln. "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 377.
How He Fared on the Circuit
Courts lasted nearly six months in the year, and the judge and
lawyers generally contrived to spend as many Sabbaths at home as
they could. Lincoln did not join in this effort, but, contrariwise,
when he set out on a tour of the circuit, generally continued until
the end. Nothing could be duller than remaining on the Sabbath in a
country inn of that time after adjournment of court. Good cheer
had expended its force during
court week, and blank dulness
succeeded ; but Lincoln would
entertain the few lingering
roustabouts of the bar-room
with as great zest, apparently,
as he had previously enter
tained the court and bar, and
then would hitch up his horse,
" Old Tom, " as he was caUed,
and, solitary and alone, ride
off to the next term in course.
One would naturally sup-
.pose that the leading lawyer of the circuit, in a pursuit which
occupied nearly half his time, would make himself comfortable,
but he did not. His horse was as raw-boned and weird-looking
as himself, and his buggy, an open one, as rude as either ; his at
tire was that of an ordinary farmer or stock-raiser, whUe the sum-
total of his baggage consisted of a very attenuated carpet-bag, an
old weather-beaten umbrella, and a short blue cloak reaching to
his hips — a style which was prevalent during the Mexican War. . . .
He was utterly indifferent as to the appearance or merits of

Harrison inaugurated President and died. 1841
Vice-President Tyler became President . . . 1841
First line of telegraph completed  1844
First telegraphic message sent. May 24 . . , 1844
Polk made President  1845
President signs bill for annexation of
"Texas  1845
Discovery of ether by Morton  184s
Oregon boundary settled by treaty  1846
Elias Howe invents the sewing-machine . . 1846
War declared against Mexico (May i.s) . . . 1846
Mexican War  1846 and l84'7
Peace treaty with Mexico (February 2). . . . 1848
Discovery of gold in California (Spring) 1848
Mormons emigrate to Utah  1848
Emigrants and adventurers go to Cali
fornia  1849
Taylor made President  1849
Death of President Taylor (July 9)  1850
Fugitive Slave Law (in " Omnibus Bill ") 1850

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 215
any tavern or place he stopped at ; it was a matter of no consequence
to him whether a caravansary was good, bad, or indifferent — the
chief solicitude with him was the magnitude of the bill, for from
necessity he was very prudent in his expenditures, and so would
stop at the cheaper taverns. He did not, however, violate good
policy in that regard, and whenever it was convenient, roomed with
the judge while out on the circuit, the general knowledge of this
fact being helpful in the way of securing business from people who
argued therefrom that advantages accrued to him in consequence.
The judge told me he never saw Lincoln angry at poor accom
modations on the circuit but once. They arrived at Charleston on
a cold, wet afternoon, chilled through and uncomfortable ; the land
lord was away; there were no fires nor wood. Lincoln was thor
oughly incensed; he threw off his coat, went to the woodpile, and
cut wood with an ax for an hour. Davis built a fire and when the
landlord made his appearance late, Lincoln gave him a good scoring.
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 189.
Mrs. Lincoln Surprises Her Husband
Returning from one of his trips (on the Eighth Circuit) late one
night, Mr. Lincoln dismounted from his horse at the familiar corner
and then turned to go into the house, but stopped — a perfectly
unknown structure stood before him.
Surprised, he went across the way and knocked at
a neighbor's door. The famUy had retired, and so called out :
"Who's there?"
"Abe Lincoln, " was the reply. "I am looking for my house.
I thought it was across the way, but when I went away a few weeks
ago there was only a one-story house there, and now it is two. I
must be lost. "
His neighbors then explained that Mrs. Lincoln had added
another story during his absence. Mr. Lincoln laughed and went
to his remodeled house.
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 98.
"The Story Was Worth the Money"
The court-houses in which Lincoln practised were stiff, old-
fashioned wood or brick structures, usually capped by cupola or
tower, and fronted by verandas with huge Doric or Ionic pUlars .

LINCOLN'S HOME IN SPRINGFlED, ILLINOIS
The Lincolns Uved in this house most of their married Ufe. Their Uttle Edward died here. Once when Lincoln was
absent many weeks on "the Circuit,*' his wife had it raised half a story as a surprise to him. To this house he
hurried twice to teU "the little woman on Eighth street" of his nomination and of his election to the Presidency.

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 217

Few of the lawyers had offices in the town; and a comer of the
court-room, the shade of a tree in the court-yard, a sunny side of
the building, were where they met their clients and transacted
business. In the courts themselves there was a certain indifference to
formality engendered by the primitive surroundings, which, how
ever, the judges ne\'er allowed to interfere with the seriousness of
the work. Lincoln habitually, when not busy, whispered stories to his
neighbors, frequently to the annoyance of Judge Davis. If Lincoln
persisted too long the judge would rap on the chair and exclaim :
"Come, come, Mr. Lincoln, I can't stand this! There is no use
trying to carry on two courts ; I must adjourn mine or you yours,
and I think you will have to be the one. "
As soon as the group had scattered, the judge would call one
of the men to him and ask :
"What was that Lincoln was telling?"
" I was never fined but once for contempt of court, " says one
of the clerks of the court in Lincoln's day. "Davis fined me five
dollars. Mr. Lincoln had just come in, and leaning over my desk,
had told me a story so irresistibly funny that I broke out into a loud
laugh. The judge called me to order. 'This must be stopped, Mr.
Lincoln, you are constantly disturbing this court with your stories.'
Then to me, 'You may fine yourself five dollars for your dis
turbance. '
"I apologized, but told the judge that the story was worth the
money. In a few minutes the judge caUed me to him.
'"What was the story Lincoln- told you?' he asked.
" I told him and he laughed aloud in spite of himself.
'"Remit your fine,' he ordered. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 24S.
Lmcoln Was Never a Clown or Court Jester
Lincoln was a wit, and, as IngersoU said, he used any word
"which wit could disinfect, " but his reputation has suffered at the
hands of writers who have employed stories as stop-gaps in their
information. Of course, it is far easier and more amusing to attrib
ute a lively story to Lincoln than to give a true picture of the man ;

2X8

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

but the compilations which have been evolved on this principle, and
which picture his life on the circuit as a round of story -telling, are
made of whole cloth — some of which is stolen goods.
" Nothing can be more -absurd than to picture Lincoln as a
combination of buffoon and drummer, " protested one of his sur
viving contemporaries
J?' I '

SI. ~rl

f

hile discussing this
lb j ect with the writer.
te^^JJ™^M^l^ He was frequently the
' j^^T^'^^^^P^^ 1 ' e of our littie com-
. ?M^*y y ju.mV/' ffs I J my, keeping us good-
itured, making us see
the funny side of
ings, and generally
itertaining us ; but to
eate the impression
tl .at the circuit was a
L sr _^^8^* %'-f *^ ISSL '"^^^ °^ which Lincoln
!l ^^,^^%d^£ .J. Jisx^ g^s -^hg clov/n is ri-
1 culous. He was a
I wyer, engaged in
rious and dignified
3rk, and a man who
1 1. [t his responsibility
keenly." When Mr.
hmcoln first stayed at
the National Hotel [in
Bloomington] where
all the lawyers used
to stop . . and for
six or seven years
afterwards, Mr. James
Ewing, of the Illinois
bar, saw and heard him in the company of his associates almost
every term of court.
" In all my experience," Mr. Ewing informed the writer, "I
never heard Mr. Lincoln tell a story for its own sake or simply to
raise a laugh. He used stories to illustrate a point, but the idea that

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Whose story, " Uncle Tom's Cabin," begun as a serial in the
" National Era" in 1851, did much to arouse and unite anti-
slavery sentiment throughout the North. Lincoln once
introduced her as " the little woman that caused the War."

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 219
he sat around and matched yams like a commercial traveler is
utterly false. I never knew him to do such a thing, and I had
ample opportunity for noting him.
" Lincoln would soon have become a bore if he had traded on
his story -telling gifts, " remarked another authority. " He traveled
with the same men day after day, week after week, and month after
month. Even if his fund of anecdotes could have stood the strain,
we should not have been able to endure it, for no man exhausts
himself or others so qiuckly as your professional funny man. "
But those who have depicted Lincoln on the circuit as a sort of
end-man with an itinerant minstrel show have also done a similar
injustice to [Judge David] Davis.
Undoubtedly Davis enjoyed a good story,. .but to sup
pose that a man of his ability would select a mere jester for a friend,
or that Lincoln would have consented to serve as a court fool, is
preposterous. It was Judge Davis and a handful of men who had learned to
know and appreciate Lincoln as a lawyer — a small group of his
fellow practitioners on the Eighth Circuit ; Davis, the judge ; Swett
the advocate, and Logan, the leader of the bar, but especially Davis
— ^who forced Lincoln upon the Chicago Convention in i860, and
thus gave him to the nation.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 192.
" Why Didn't You Go at Him with the Other End ? "
Stories are more interesting than logic and far more effective
with the average audience, and Lincoln's juries usually heard some
thing from him in the way of an apt comparison or illustration
, which impressed his point upon their minds.
On one occasion when he was defending a case of assault and
battery it was proved that the plaintiff had been the aggressor, but
the opposing counsel argued that the defendant might have pro
tected himself without inflicting injuries on his assailan-t.
" That reminds me of the man who was attacked by a farmer's
dog, which he kiUed with a pitchfork, " commented Lincoln.
" 'What made you kiU my dog? " demanded the farmer.
" 'What made him try to bite me? " retorted the offender.
" 'But why didn't you go at him with the other end of the
oitchfork?" nersisted the farmer.

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

" 'Well, why didn't he come at me with his other end?" was
the retort.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 217.
" Lincoln, I Thought You Was a Lawyer "
Lincoln not only made effective use of stories with the jury,
but frequently employed them in arguing to the court, and he once
completely refuted a contention that custom makes law with an
anecdote drawn from his own experience :
"Old Squire Bagley from Menard, once came into my office
and said, 'Lincoln, I want your advice as a lawyer. Has a man
what's been elected a justice of the peace a right to issue a
marriage license?'
" I told him he had not.
" 'Lincoln, I thought you was a lawyer,' he retorted. 'Bob
Thomas and me had a bet on this thing, and we agreed to let you
decide it ; but if thet is your opinion, I don't want it, fer I know a
thunderin' sight better. I've been Squire now for eight years, and
I 've done it all the time ! ' "
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 218.
"He Never Put No Meanin' into His Stories"
' ' Ever heaf Judge Weldon tell that story about what Lincoln
said one day up to Bloomington when they was takin ' up a subscrip
tion to buy Jim Wheeler a new pair of pants? No? WeU, perhaps
I oughtn't to tell it to you. Ma says it ain't nice It makes me mad
to hear people objectin' to Mr. Lincoln's stories. Maybe he did
say words you wouldn't expect to hear at a Church supper, but
he never put no meanin' into 'em that wouldn't 'a' been fit for the
minister to put into a sermon, and that 's a blamed sight more'n you
can say of a lot of stories I've heard some of the people tell who
stick up their noses at Mr. Lincoln's yarns. "
He Knew Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 7.
"Fairly Entitled" to the Prize
Mr. Lincoln enjoyed a joke at his own expense. Said he :
" In the days when I used to be on the circuit, I was accosted in

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 221
the cars by a stranger who said, 'Excuse me, sir, but I have an
article in my possession which belongs to you.'
"'How is that?' I asked, considerably astonished,
" The stranger took a jack-knife from his pocket. ' This knife,'
said he, 'was placed in my hands some years ago, with the injunction
that I was to keep it until I found a man uglier than myself, I have
carried it from that time to this. Allow me to say, sir, that I think
you are fairly entitled to the property.' "
Stories and Speeclies of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 130.
"Tell the Judge That My Hands Are Dirty"
On another occasion, when it developed that his client had
indulged in fraudulent practices, he walked out of the court -room
and refused to continue the case. The judge sent a messenger,
directing him to return, but he positively declined.
" TeU the judge that my hands are dirty and I've gone to wash
them, " was his disgusted response.
Lincoln the Lawyer Frederick Trevor Hill, page 239.

"Try Your Hand at Making $600 in Some Other Way"
This conduct in the court-room was in entire keeping with his
office practice, where he declined time and again to undertake the
doubtful causes, discouraged litigation and discountenanced sharp
practices. ^^
"Yes, " Mr. Herndon reports him as advising a client, 'we can
doubtless gain your case for you ; we can set a whole neighborhood
at loggerheads; we can distress a widowed mother and her six
fatheriess children, and thereby get for you six hundred doUars to
which you seem to have a legal claim, but which rightfully belongs,
it .appears to me, as much to the w^oman and her children as it does
to you. 1 11
"You must remember, however, that some things legally
right are not morally right. We shall not take your case, but we
wiU give you a little advice for which we wiU charge you nothing.
You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. We would advise^you
to try your hand at making six hundred doUars m some other way.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 230.

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

"Trusted Providence till the Britchen Broke"
In the campaign of 1852, Lincoln,
in reply to Douglas' speech, wherein he
spoke of confidence in Providence,
replied :
"Let us stand by our candidate
(General Scott) as faithfully as he has
alw^ays stood by our country, and I
much doubt if we do not perceive a
slight abatement of Judge Douglas's
confidence in Pro-vidence, as well as the
people. "I suspect that confidence is not
more firmly fixed with the Judge
than it was with the old woman whose
horse ran away with her in the buggy.
She said she 'trusted in Pro-vidence
till the britchen broke,' and then
she 'didn't know what on airth to
do!'"
".46c" Lincolns Yams and Stories, ^cVitedh-y Co] Mex.
K, McClure, page 289.
"Skin Defendant. Close"
A successful jury lawyer must needs be something of an actor
at times, and during his apprentice years Lincoln displayed no little
histrionic ability in his passionate appeals to the juries. Indeed,
his notes in the Wright case show that he occasionally reverted to
first principles even after he had reached the age of discretion.
This case was brought on behalf of the widow of a Revolutionary
soldier whose pension had been cut in two by a rapacious agent,
who appropriated half the sum collected for his alleged services.
The facts aroused Lincoln's indignation, and his memorandum for
summing up to the jury ran as follows :
No contract. Not professional services. Unreasonable charge.
Money retained by defendant — not given by plaintiff. Revolutionary
War. Describe Valley Forge privations. Ice. Soldiers' bleeding feet.
Plaintiff's husband. Soldier leaving home for army. Skin ' De
fendant. Close."

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 223
Mr. Herndon, who quotes this memorandum, testifies that the
soldiers' bleeding feet and other pathetic properties were handled
very effectively, and the defendant was skinned to the entire
satisfaction of the jury. It was only occasionally, however, that
Lincoln indulged in fervid oratory, and his advice to Herndon shows
his belief in simplicity and reserve.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 215.
"We Never Kill Less"
Returning from off the circuit once he said to Mr. Herndon :
" Billy, I heard a good story while I was up in the country.
Judge D  was complimenting the landlord on the excellence
of his beef. 'I am surprised,' he said, 'that you have such
good beef. You must have to kill a whole critter when you want
any.' " 'Yes,' said the landlord, 'we never kill less than a whole
critter.' "
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol, I, page 317.
"Don't Shoot Too High"
"Don't shoot too high," Herndon reports him as saying.
"Aim lower and the common people will understand you. They
are the ones you want to reach — at least they are the ones you
ought to reach. The educated and refined people will understand
you, anyway. If you aim too high, your ideas will go over the
heads of the masses and only hit those who need no hitting. "...
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 216, '
"Abe's Got That Fool Idee in His Head"
William G. Greene was going to Kentucky on a visit, and as
his way would lie near to where Thomas Lincoln lived, Abraham
requested him to visit his father and deliver a letter. Greene did so,
and as he approached the cabin just before nightfall, his heart sank
within him, for he beheld the most wretched hovel he had en
countered in his journey. It was without a stable or outhouse of
any kind, and not a shrub or tree was in sight.
The proprietor appeared and, as soon as he learned the situa
tion, exclaimed cheerily:
"Get right down here, You're welcome, heartily welcome.

224

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

I'm right glad to see you. I'll make you and your beast so com
fortable that you'll stay with me a week. Here's just the place to
hitch your horse" (indicating a log of the cabin with a projecting
end); "I use it to dress deer-hides on, and I've got an iron kettle
here ; jest the thing for a feed-trough, and lots of shelled corn ; so
all you've got to do is to make yourself at home as long as you like. "
Greene said that Thomas Lincoln was one of the shrewdest

INTERIOR OF THOMAS LINCOLN'S ILLINOIS HOME
The remains of a spinning wheel stood in the corner. This belonged to Abraham's stepmother. With
this wheel she spun jeans to make his clothes while a youth, and dyed them with walnut.
ignorant men he ever saw — that he took in, at a glance, the feeUngs
of dismay which possessed the stranger as he rode up to the cabin,
and his host made it his task to dispel that feeling, and he did it . .
Seated before the rude hearth, Thomas Lincoln said :
" I s'pose Abe's still a-fooUn' hisself with eddication. I tried to
stop it, but he's got that fool idee in his head an' it can't be got out.
Now I hain't got no eddication, but I git along better than ef I had.
Take book-keepin' — why I'm the best book-keeper in the world!

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 225
Look up at that rafter thar. Ef I sell a peck o' meal I draw a black
line across, an' when they pay I take the dish-cloth an' jest rub it
out ; an' that thar's a heap better'n yer eddication. "
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. 'Whitney, page 74.
Abraham's Masterful Kindness to His Stepbrother
Abraham never lost sight of his parents. He continued to aid
and befriend them in every way, even when he could ill afford it,
and when his benefactions were imprudently used. He not only
comforted their declining years with every aid his affection could
suggest, but he did everything in his power to assist his stepbrother
Johnston — a hopeless task enough. The following rigidly truthful
letter -will show how mentor-like and masterful, as well as generous,
were the relations that Mr. Lincoln held to these friends and com
panions of his childhood:
"Dear Johnston: Your request for eighty dollars I do not think
it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have
helped you a little, you have said to me, 'we can get along very
well now,' but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty
again. Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct.
What that defect is I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you
are an idler.
"You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is,
that you shall go to work 'tooth and naU' for somebody who wiU
give you money for it. Let Father and the boys take charge of
things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop ; and you go
to work for the best money wages — or in discharge of any debt—
that you can get ; and to secure you a fair reward for your labor,
I now promise you that for every doUar you will, between this and
the first of next May, get for your own labor, either as money or as
discharging your own indebtedness, I wiU give you one other dollar.
By this, if you hire yourself at ten doUars a month, from me you wiU
get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In
this I do not mean you should go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines,
or the gold mines of California, but I mean for you to go at it for the
best wages you can get close to home, in Coles County.
"You say you would almost give your place in heaven for sev
enty or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very

2 26 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy
or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. You say if I will
furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and if you don't
pay the money back you will deliver possession. Nonsense. If you
can't now live with the land, how will you then Uve without it? You
have always been kind to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to
you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will
find it worth more than eighty times eighty dollars to you."
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 74.
" He Will Not Forget the Dying Man "
Lincoln wrote the following at the close of a letter to his step
brother, John Johnston, regarding his father , . , . who was ill :
" I sincerely hope Father may yet recover his health; but at all
events, tell him to remember to call upon, and confide in, our great
and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any
extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs
of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his
trust in Him. Say to him that, if we could meet now, it is doubtful
whether it would be more painful than pleasant, but if it is his lot to
go now, he will soon have a joyful meeting with loved ones gone
before, and where the rest of us, through the mercy of God, hope
ere long to join them. "
Stories and Speeches of .Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, pag^ 254.
Death of Thomas Lincoln — Another Letter to Johnston
Thomas Lincoln's final move was to Goose Nest Prairie, where
he died in 1851, at the age of seventy -three years, after a life which,
though not successful in any material or worldly point of view, was
probably far happier than that of his illustrious son, being unvexed
by enterprise or ambition.
Here is a later epistle, still more graphic and terse in statement,
which has the unusual merit of painting both confessor and penitent
to the life : "Shelbyville, Nov. 4, 1851.
"Dear Brother: When I came into Charleston, day before
yesterday, I heard that you were anxious to sell the land where you

ST.\TE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 227

live and move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since,
and cannot but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can
you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can
you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats with
out work? WiU anybody there, any more than here, do your work
for you? If you intend to go to work there is no better place than
right where you are ; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot
get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to
place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year, and w^hat
you reaUy want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it.

HOUSE IN -WTHCH THOMAS LINCOLN DIED, IN COLES COUNTY, ILLINOIS
Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never
after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you will get for
the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half
you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be
bought. ' ' Now, I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of
foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particu
larly on Mother's account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep
for Mother while she lives ; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for
enough to support her; at least it will rent for something. Her

2 28 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
dower in the other two forties she can let you have, and no thanks
to me, ' ' Now do not misunderstand this letter. I do not write it in any
unkindness. I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face the
truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away
all your time. Your thousand pretenses deceive nobody but your
self. Go to work is the only cure for your case. "
A volume of disquisition could not put more clearly before the
reader the difference between Abraham Lincoln and the common
run of Southern and Western rural laborers. He had the same dis
advantages that they had. He grew up in the midst of poverty and
ignorance; he was poisoned with the enervating malaria of the
Western woods, as all his fellows were, and the consequences of it
were seen in his character and conduct to the close of his life. But
he had, what very few of them had any glimmering notion of, a
fixed and inflexible will to succeed. He did not love work, prob
ably, any better than John Johnston ; but he had an innate self-
respect, and a consciousness that his self was worthy of respect,
that kept him from idleness as it kept him from all other vices, and
made him a better man every year that he lived.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 76.
Defends His Stepmother from Her' Own Son
From the following letter in possession of the writer, written to
his stepbrother, her o-wn son, it will be seen that Lincoln was more
chary of his stepmother's rights than her own flesh and blood. It
bears the superscription, "John D, Johnston, Charleston, Coles
County, Illinois," and is dated, -"Springfield, Nov. 25, 1851," and
reads as follows :
"Dear Brother: Your letter of the 22nd is just received. Your
proposal about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I want
or could claim for myself, but I am not satisfied with it on Mother's
account. I want her to have her living, and I feel that it is my duty,
to some extent, to see that she is not wronged. She had a right of
dower (that is the use of one-third for life) in the other two forties,
but it seems she has already let you take that, hook and line. She
now has the use of the whole east forty, as long as she lives ; and if

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 229
it be sold of course she is entitled to the interest on all the money it
brings as long as she lives; but you propose to sell it for three
hundred dollars, take one hundred away with you, and leave her
;two hundred, at 8 per cent., making her the enormous sum of sixteen
dollars a year ! Now, if you are satisfied with treating her in that
way, I am not. It is true, that you are to have that forty for two
hundred dollars at Mother's death; but you are not to have it before.
I am confident that the land can be made to produce for Mother at
least $30 a year, and I cannot, to oblige any Uving person, consent
that she shaU beput on an allowance of sixteen dollars a year.
"Yours, etc.,
"A. Lincoln."
A Biographical Sketch of His Excellency Abraham Lincoln, Late President of the United States,
Charles Henry Hart, LL. B., page S-
Always Glad to See and to Help His "Poor Relations"
One of the most beautiful traits of Mr. Lincoln was his consid
erate regard for the poor and obscure relatives he had left plodding
along in their humble ways of life. Wherever upon his circuit he
found them, he always went to their dweUings, ate with them,
and, when convenient, made their houses his home. He never as
sumed in their presence the slightest superiority to them, in the
facts and conditions of his life. He gave them money when they
needed and he possessed it.
Countless times he wks known to leave his companions at the
viUage hotel, after a hard day's work in the court-room, and spend
the evening with these old friends and companions of his humbler
days. . . .
A little fact in this connection will illustrate his ever-present
desire to deal honestly and justly with men. He had always a
partner in his professional life, and, when he went out upon the
circuit, this partner was usually at home. WhUe out, he frequently
took up and disposed of cases that were never entered at the office.
In these cases, after receiving his fees, he divided the money m
his pocket-book, labeling each sum (wrapped in a piece of paper,)
that belonged to his partner, stating his name, and the case on
which it was received. He could not be content to keep an account.
He divided the money so that if he, by any casualty, should fail
of an ODDortunitv to pay it over, there could be no dispute as to the

230 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
exact amount that was his partner's due. This seems trivial, nay
boyish, but it was like Mr. Lincoln.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, J. G. Holland, page S5.
"Why, Aunt's Heart Would Be Broken !"
I may take occasion to say here that Abe .... never put
on airs because of his elevation, nor looked down upon the humble
relatives whom he had left behind. Whenever in his joumeyings he
found himself near the residence of any of his poorer relatives, he
took special pains to visit them, and, if possible, to stay with them.
Often he pressed upon them money when they appeared to need
it — not with the air of a liberal patron, but with straightforward
friendliness and cordiality. Once when he was urged to remain at
the hotel with his professional friends, instead of making a call on
an aged aunt, he said :
"Why, Aunt's heart w^ould be broken if I should leave town
without calling upon her."
Let me add that this required something more than ordinary
good-natured consideration, for the aunt in question lived several
miles away, and her nephew had no horse at his command, but
walked all the way.
Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy, Horatio Alger, Jr., page 113.
The "Pink-and- White Runaway"
His sensitiveness to a child's wants made Mr, Lincoln a most
indulgent father. He continually carried his boys about with him,
and their pranks, even when they approached rebellion, seemed to be
an endless delight to him. Like most boys, they loved to run away,
and the neighbors of the Lincolns tell many tales of Mr. Lincoln's
captures of the culprits. One of the prettiest of all these is a story
of an escape Willie once made, when three or four years old, from
the hands of his mother, who was giving him a tubbing. He scam
pered out of the door without a vestige of a garment on him, flew up
the street, slipped under a fence into a great green field, and took
across it.
Mr. Lincoln was sitting on the porch, and discovered the pink-
and-white runaway, as he was cutting across the greensward. He
stood up, laughing aloud, while the mother enj;reated him to go in
pursuit; then he started in chase. Half-way across the field he

STATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 231

caught the child, and gathering him up in his long arms, he covered
his rosy form with kisses. Then mounting him on his back, the
chubby legs around his neck, he rode him back to his mother and
his tub.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 235.

Had to Withdraw the "Colt"
Mr. Alcott, of Elgin, Illinois, tells of seeing Mr. Lincoln coming
away from church unusually early one Sunday morning.
"The sermon could not have been more than half through,"
says Mr. Alcott. " 'Tad' was slung across his father's left arm like
a pair of saddle-bags, and Mr. Lincoln was striding along with delib
erate steps toward his home.
"On one of the street comers he encountered a group of .his
fellow-townsmen. Mr. Lincoln anticipated the question that was
about to be put by the group, and, taking his figure of speech from
practices with which they were only too familiar, said:
" 'Gentlemen, I entered this colt, but he kicked around so I had
to withdraw him. '
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 197.

"The Matter with the Whole World "
It was a frequent custom with Lincoln, this of carrying his
children on his shoulders. He rarely went down street that he did
not have one of his younger boys mounted oh his shoulder, while
another hung to the tail of his long coat. The antics of the boys
with their father, and the species of tyranny they exercised over
him, are still subjects of talk in Springfield.
Mr. Roland DUler, who was a neighbor of Mr. Lincoln, teUs one
of the best of the stories. He was caUed to the door one day by
hearing a great noise of chUdren crying, and there was Mr. Lincoln
striding by with the boys, both of them were waUing aloud:
"Why, Mr. Lincoln, what's the matter with the boys?" he
asked. " Just what's the matter with the whole world, " Lincoln repUed ;
" I've got three walnuts and each wants two. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 236.

232

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

" It Was Just Like Him! "
"My first strong impression of Mr. Lincoln," says a lady of
Springfield, "w^as made by one of his kind deeds. I was going with
a little friend for my first trip alone on the railroad cars. It was a
great event in my life. I had planned for it and dreamed of it for
weeks. 'The day came, but
as train time approached,
the hackman, through some
neglect, failed to call for
my trunk. As the minutes
went on, I realized in a
panic of grief, that I should
miss the train. I was
standing by the gate, my
hat and. gloves on, sobbing
as if my heart would break,
when Mr. Lincoln came by.
" 'Why, what's the
matter?' he asked, and I
poured out all my story.
'"How big's the
trunk? There's still time,
if it isn't too big.' And he
pushed through the gate
and up to the door. My
mother and I took him up
to my room, where my lit
tle old-fashioned trunk
stood, locked and tied.
"'Oh, ho! Wipe your
eyes and come quick.'
"And before I knew what he was going to do, he had shouldered
the trimk, was down stairs, and striding out of the yard. Down
the street he went, as fast as his long legs could carry him. I trot
ted behind, drying my tears as Lwent.
" We reached the station in time. Mr. Lincoln put me on the
train, kissed me good-bye, and told me to have a good time.
" It was just like him ! "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 77.

MILLARD FILLMORE

to

ST.ATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 233
In the Court-Room and at Home
We are aware that these stories detract something from the
character of the lawyer; but this inflexible, inconvenient, and
fastidious morality was to be of vast service afterwards to his
country and the world.
The Nemesis that waits upon men of extraordinary wit or
humor has not neglected Mr. Lincoln, and the young lawyers of
Illinois, who never knew him, have an endless store of jokes and
pleasantries in his name; some of them as old as Howleglass or'
Rabelais. As a specim.en we give the folio -.ving, well vouched for, as such
stories generally are : Lincoln met one day on the court-house steps
a young lawyer who had lost his case — his only one — and looked
very disconsolate. "What has become of your case?" Lincoln
asked. "Gone to hell," was the gloomy response. "Well, don't
give it up," Lincoln rejoined cheerfully; "you can try it again
there " — a quip that has been attributed to many wits in many ages,
and will doubtless make the reputation of jesters yet to be. .
Few of his forensic speeches have been preserved, but his con
temporaries all agree as to their singular ability and power. He
seemed absolutely at home in a court -room. Sometimes he
disturbed the court with laughter by his humorous or apt illus
trations, . but his usual and more successful manner was to
rely upon a clear, strong, lucid statement, keeping details in proper
subordination and bringing forward, in a way which fastened the
attention of court and jury alike, the essential point on which he
claimed a decision.
"Indeed," says one of his colleagues, "his statement often
rendered argument unnecessary, and often the court ^vould stop
him, and say :
" 'If that is the case, we will hear the other side.' "
Whatever doubts might be entertained as to whether he was the
ablest lawyer on the circuit, there was never any dissent from the
opinion that he was the one most cordially and generally liked. If
he did not himself enjoy his fuU share of the happiness of life, he
certainly diffused more of it among his fellows than is in the power
of most men. . . .
He did not accumulate wealth; as Judge Davis said, "He

LINCOLN, THE PLAIN COUNTRY LAWYER

(234)

ST.ATE CAPITAL AND EIGHTH CIRCUIT 235
seemed never to care for it. " He had a good income from his pro
fession, though the fees he received would bring a smile to the well-
paid lips of the great attorneys of to-day. The largest fee he ever
got was oneof $5000, from the Illinois Central Railway, and he had to
bring suit to compel them to pay it. He spent what he received in
the education of his children, in the care of his family, and in a plain
and generous way of living.
One who often visited him whites, referring to "the old-fash
ioned hospitality of Springfield. " "Among others I recall with a
sad pleasure, the dinners and evening parties given by Mrs. Lincoln.
In her modest and simple home, where everything was so orderly
and refined, there was always on the part of both host and hostess a
cordial and hearty Western welcome which put every guest per
fectly at ease. Their table was famed for the excellence of many
rare Kentucky dishes, and for the venison, wild turkeys, and other
game, then so abundant. Yet it was her genial manner and ever-
kind welcome, and Mr. Lincoln's wit and humor, anecdote and
unrivaled conversation, which formed the chief attraction. "
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. I, page 306.
"Mr. Lincoln Was the Most Loving Husband and Father in the World"
After his admission to the bar, Lincoln never dabbled in farm
ing, trading, or speculating. Besides his city homestead he owned
no real-estate except a lot presented to him in the town of Lincoln
(Illinois) — named in his honor — and a quarter section of bounty
land granted him for ser-vice in the Black Hawk War.
During the sessions of the Legislature and the courts, Mrs.
Lincoln in these years was wont to give occasional dinners and
evening parties. As a hostess she was gracious and affable as well
as liberal; perhaps no one in the city who entertained was more
generally popular than she.
While her father lived (his death occurred in 1849) there were
-visits with her husband to Lexington, Kentucky, where she had a
number of brothers and sisters of the half-blood. When there,
Lincoln would naturally call on Henry Clay if he was at the time
at Ashland (Clay's home). One such visit, perhaps it was the only
one, has been mentioned as chilling the hero -worshiper's devotion,
"if not effecting a complete disillusion. But this is an extravagant

236 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
overstatement, if it has any basis at all. There may have been an
unexpected distance in Clay's manner, . yet Lincoln was to
the last an admirer of the great orator and conciliator, who was his
earliest political master.
At the time of his election to Congress, Robert and Edward
were his only children — the former born August i, 1843, the latter
March 10, 1846. His family were with him during part of his first
term in Washington. " Eddie" died February i, 1850, and William
was born the 21st of December following. The youngest child, born
April 4, 1853, was given the name of his grandfather, Thomas,
though he was commonly called " Tad. "
Of their domestic life, according to Mr. W. H. Herndon, Mrs.
Lincoln said :
"Mr. Lincoln was the kindest man and most loving husband
and father in the world. He gave us all unbounded liberty. .
He was exceedingly indulgent to his children. . He was a
terribly firm man when he set his foot down. None of us — no man
or woman — could rule him after he had once made up his mind. "
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 112.

CHAPTER IX
Enters Politics Again
Evolution of a Great Idea in Lincoln's Mind
Judge T. Lyle Dickey of Illinois once told the Hon. William Pitt
Kellogg that when the excitement over the Kansas-Nebraska bill
first broke out, he was with Lincoln and several friends attending
court. One evening several persons, including himself and Lincoln,
were discussing the slavery question. Judge Dickey contended that
slavery was an institution which the Constitution recognized, and
which could not be disturbed. Lincoln argued that ultimately
slavery must beccn*^^tinct.
"After a whil^^^aj;^ Judge Dickey, "we went upstairs to bed.
There were two bedsm^tmr room, and I remember that Lincoln sat
up in his nightshirt on the edge of the bed arguing the point with
me. At last, we,, went to sleep. Early in the morning I woke up
and there was Lincoln half sitting up in bed.
" 'Dickey,',, he said, 'I tell you this nation cannot exist half
slave and half free.'
"Oh, Lincoln," said I, "goto sleep!"
As the months went on this idea took deeper root, and in
August, 1855, we find it expressed in a letter to George Robertson
of Kentucky :
"Our political problem now is, 'Can we as a nation continue
together permanently — forever — half slave and half free?' The
problem is too mighty for me. May God, in His mercy, superin
tend the solution. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 287.
Lincoln Returns to Politics after the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise
The famous Missouri Compromise was repealed. Almost all the
Northern people now began to feel as if matters were coming to a
serious crisis, and that some determined movement must be made
to check the extension of slavery.
Mr. Lincoln was very indignant at the passage of this bUl, and
(237)

238 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
thought it was time to give his attention again to political matters.
Illinois was to send a new Senator to Congress in place of General
Shields, whose six years were up.
Now the Legislature which was to choose the new Senator from
Illinois had not 3ret been elected. So Mr. Lincoln begged the people
of his State to choose such a Legislature as would send a Senator to
Congress who would oppose Mr. Douglas's measures. Mr. Douglas,
on the other hand, told the people that his measures were all right,
and that Congress had no power to make a law that slavery should
not exist in a certain portion of the United States. Thus the people
listened to Mr. Lincoln one day, and to Mr. Douglas another day.
The outcome was the election of Judge Trumbull for Senator,
a man much opposed to Mr. Douglas's bill. A great part of the
Legislat'are would have preferred Mr. Lincoln to anybody else ; but
Mf . Lincoln himself thought it would be better to send Judge Trum
bull, and it was through his influence that the Judge was nominated.
After this, the people of Illinois wanted to choose Mr. Lincoln
as Governor of the State ; but he did not wish to be nominated.
The Children's Life of .Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam page 75.
" Bleeding Kansas "
In 1854 a desperate struggle began between the North and the
South for the possession of Kansas, No sooner had President Pierce
signed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, thus making it a law, than bands
of men armed with rifles commenced to pour into the Territory,
resolved to win it either by fraud or by force. The first movement
came from the slaveholders of Missouri, who crossed the Missouri
River and took up lands in the new Territory.
Next the New England Aid Society of Boston sent out a body
of armed emigrants, who settled about thirty miles farther west, and
called their little cluster of tents and log-cabins Lawrence.
These rival sections soon set up governments to suit themselves.
The Free-state settlers had their headquarters at Topeka and
La'v-i'rence; the Slave-state at Leavenworth and Lecompton. From
1854 to 1859 that part of the country suffered so much from the
efforts of both parties to get control that it fairly earned the name of
"Bleeding Kansas." During the greater part of five years the
territory was torn by civil war ; the Free-state men denounced the

ENTERS POLITICS AGAIN

239

opposite party as " Border Ruffians;" the " Border Ruffians" called
the Free-state men "Abolitionists" and "Black Republicans."
In the course of this period of violence and bloodshed the Slave-
state men attacked Lawrence, plundered the town and burned some
of its chief buildings.
Leading Facts of American History, D. H. Montgomery, page 272.

John Brown of Osawatomie
Among all the brave and de
voted men of that struggle, none
was braver or more devoted and
none more dreaded by the " Border
Ruffians" than John Brown of
Osawatomie. He no more forgave
than he forgot the atrocious mur
der of one of his sons, and that
another had been driven to in
sanity by cruel treatment when a
prisoner  From that mo
ment he devoted his life, all that he
was, and all that he had, to one
single purpose — ^the extirpation of
slavery.
A Popular History of tlie United States, William
Cullen Bryant and Sydney Howard Gay, Vol. IV,
page 429.

JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE

" The Power of Hope "
' ' Free labor has the inspiration of hope ; pure slavery has no
hope. The power of hope upon human exertion and happiness is
wonderful. The slave-master himself has a conception of it, and
hence the system of tasks among slaves. The slave whom you can
not drive with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a
day, if you will task him to break a hundred, and promise him pay
for all he does over, he will break you a hundred and fifty. You
have substituted hope for the rod. And yet perhaps it does not
occur to you that to the extent of your gain in the case, you have
given up the slave system and adopted the free system of labor. ' '
Early Speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Notes on Government, July i, 1854, page 216.

240 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"A Question of Interest"
"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right
enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument and prove
equally that he may enslave A? You say A is white and B is black.
It is color, then; the lighter ha-ving the right to enslave the darker?
Take care. By this rule you are to be slave to the first man you
meet -with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color
exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of
the blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them? Take
care again. By this rule you are to be slave to the first man you
meet with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a
question of interest, and if you make it your interest you have the
right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his
interest he has the right to enslave you."
Early Speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Notes on Government, July i, 1854, page 217.
" The Most Stupid Slave Knows "
"The ant which has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest will
furiously defend the fruit of his labor against whatever robber assails
him. So plain that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled
for a master does constantly know that he is wronged. So plain
that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly
selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove
slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to
take the good of it by being a slave himself.
"Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial
of the equal rights of men, as I have,, in part, stated them; ours
began by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too
ignorant and vicious to share in government. Possibly so, said we ;
and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant and
vicious. "We proposed to give all a chance, and we expected the weak
to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser, and all better and happier
together. "We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at
it ; think of it ! Look at it in its aggregate grandeur of extent, of
country, and numbers of population — of ship and steamboat and
railroad. "
Early Speeches by .Abraham Lincoln, Notes on Government, July i, 1854, page 217.

ENTERS ¦ POLITICS AGAIN 241

The Peoria Speech Defining the Missouri Compromise and Its Repeal, the
Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850
"In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Com
promise is, a short history of the preceding kindred subjects will,
perhaps, be proper.
"When we established our independence, we did not own or
claim the country to which this compromise applies. Indeed,
strictly speaking, the Confederation of States then owned no
country at all; the States respectively owned the country within
their limits, and some of them owned territory beyond their strict
State limits. Virginia thus owned the Northwestern Territory — ^the
country out of which the principal part of Ohio, all Indiana, all
Illinois, all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been formed.
She also owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since been
formed into the State of Kentucky 
"We were then living under the Articles of Confederation,
which were superseded by the Constitution several years after
ward. The question of ceding the territories to the General Govern
ment was set on foot. Mr. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration
of Independence, and otherwise a chief actor in the Revolution, . .
who was, is, and perhaps will continue to be, the most distinguished
politician of our history ; a Virginian by birth and continued resi
dence, and withal a slaveholder, — conceived the idea of taking that
occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern
Territory. . . . The first ordinance (which the acts of Congress
were then called) for the government of the Territory provided that
slavery should iiever be permitted therein. . The Union .
is now what Jefferson foresaw and intended — ^the happy home of
teeming mUlions of free, white, prosperous people, and no slave
among them 
"But now new light breaks upon us. Now Congress declares
this ought never to have been, and the like, of it must never be
again. The sacred right of self-government is grossly -violated by it.
We even find some men who drew their first breath— and every
other breath of their lives— under this very restriction, now live in
dread of absolute suffocation if they should be restricted in the
" sacred right " of taking slaves to Nebraska. That perfect liberty
they, sigh for— the liberty of making slaves of other people—

242

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Jefferson never thought of, their own fathers never thought of, they
never thought of, themselves, a year ago. How fortunate for them
they did not sooner become sensible of their great misery! Oh,
how difficult it is to treat with respect such assaults upon all we
have ever really held sacred !
"But to return to history. In 1803 we purchased what was
 ...... then called Louisiana, of
France. It included the
present States of Louisi
ana, Arkansas, Missouri
and Iowa; also the Terri
tory of Minnesota, and the
present bone of conten
tion, Kansas and Ne
braska. Slavery already
existed among the
French at New^ Orleans,
and to some extent in St.
Louis. In 1 81 2 Louisiana
came into the Union as a
slave State without con
troversy. In 1818 or '19,
Missouri showed signs of
a wish to come in with
slavery. This was resisted
by the Northern members
of Congress ; and thus be
gan the first great slavery
agitation in the nation.
This controversy lasted
several months, and be
came very angry and ex
citing — the House of
Representatives voting steadily for the prohibition of slavery in
Missouri, and the Senate voting as steadily against it. Threats of
breaking up the Union w-ere freely made, and the ablest public men
of the day became seriously alarmed.
"At length a compromise was made, in which, as in all com
promises, both sides yielded something. It was a law, passed on

FRANEXIN PIERCE

ENTERS POLITICS .AGAIN 243

the 6th of March, 1820, providing that Missouri might come into
the Union with slavery, but that in all the remaining part of the
territory purchased of France, which lies north of thirty-six degrees
and thirty minutes north latitude, slavery should not be permitted.
This provision of law is the ' Missouri Compromise. ' ...
."Thus originated the, Missouri Compromise; and thus
it has been respected down to 1845, and even four years later. . . .
' ' But going back a little in point of time. Our war with Mexico
broke out in 1846. When Congress was about adjourning that
session, President Polk asked them to place two millions of dollars
under his control, to be used by him in the recess, if found prac
ticable and expedient, in negotiating a treaty of peace with Mexico,
and acquiring some part of her territory. A bill was duly gotten up
for the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly in the House of
Representatives, when a member by the name of Da-vid Wilmot, a
Democrat from Pennsylvania, moved as an amendment,
' ' ' Provided, that in any territory thus acquired there shall
never be slavery. '
"This is the origin of the far-famed 'Wilmot Pro-viso.' It
created a great flutter ; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bUl
and the bUl passed with it through the House. The Senate, how
ever, adjourned without final action on it, and so both appropriation
and proviso were lost for the time. . . .
"In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California.
This attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that on,
or soon after, the meeting of the new Congress in December, 1849,
she already had a population of nearly a hundred thousand, had
called a convention, formed a State Constitution excluding slavery,
and was knocking for admission into the Union. The Proviso men,
of course, were for letting her in, but the Senate, always true to the
other side, would not consent to her admission, so there California
stood, kept out of the Union because she would not let slavery into
her borders 
The Union now, as in 1820, was thought to be in danger. . .
A compromise was finaUy effected. The South got their fugitive-
slave law, and the North got California . as a free State. The
South got a provision that New Mexico and Utah, when admitted
as States, may come in with or without slavery as they may then

244 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
choose; and the North got the slave-trade abolished in the District
of Columbia. . .
"This is the 'Compromise of 1850.' 
"During this long period of time, Nebraska had remained sub
stantially an uninhabited country, but now emigration to and
settlement within it began to take place. The restriction of
slavery by the Missouri Compromise directly applies to it — in fact
was first made, and has since been maintained expressly for it.
On January 21, 1854, Judge Douglas introduces a new bill to give-
Nebraska territorial government. He accompanies this bill with a
report, in which last he expressly recommends that the Missouri
Compromise shall neither be affirmed nor repealed. Before long
the bill is -so modified as to make two territories instead of one,
calling the southern one Kansas.
' ' Also, about a month after the introduction of the bill on the
Judge's own motion, it is so amended as to declare the Missouri Com
promise inoperative and void; and substantially, that the people
who go and settle there, may establish slavery, or exclude it, as they
may see fit. In this shape the bill passed both branches of Congress
and becam.e a law.
"This is the 'Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. ' "
Early Speeches by .Abraham Lincoln, The Missouri Compromise, the Iniquity of its Repeal, and the
Propriety of its Restoration. From the Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator
Douglas. October 16, 1854, page 220.
"The State versus Mr. Whiskey"
In 1855 Lincoln was attending court at the town of Clinton,
Illinois. Fifteen ladies from a neighboring village in the county
had been indicted for trespass. Their offense consisted in sweep
ing down on one Tanner, the keeper of a saloon in the -village, and
knocking in the heads of his barrels. Lincoln was not employed
in the case, but sat watching the trial as it proceeded. In defending
the ladies, their attorney seemed to e-vince a little want of tact, and
this prompted one of the former to invite Mr. Lincoln to add a few
words to the jury, if he thought he could aid their case. He was
too gallant to refuse and, their attorney having consented, he made
use of the following argument :
"In this case I would change the order of indictment and have
it read :

ENTERS POLITICS .AGAIN

24S

as

"'The State vs. Mr. Whiskey,' instead of 'The State vs. The
Ladies. '
"And touching these there are three laws: 'The law of self-
protection; the law of the land, or statute law; and the moral
law, or law of God. '
"First, the law of self -protection is a law of necessity,
evinced by our forefathers in casting the tea
overboard and asserting their right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
' ' In this case it is the only defense the
ladies have, for Tanner neither feared God
nor regarded man. Second, the law of the
land, or statute law, and Tanner is recreant
to both. Third the moral law, or law of
God, and this is probably a law for the
violation of which the jury can fix no
punishment. "
Lincoln quoted some of his own obser
vations on the ruinous effects of whiskey in
society, and demanded its early suppression,
eluded, the Court, without awaiting the return of the jury, dis
missed the ladies, saying: "Ladies, go home, I will require no
bond of you, and if any fine is ever wanted of you, we will let you
know." Herndon s Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page 12.

'1v?:^

After he had con-

" These Boys Would Never Have Tried to Cheat Old Farmer Case "
The suit of Case vs. Snow, tried at the spring term of the Taze
well Circuit Court, illustrates both Mr. Lincoln's love of justice and
his adroitness in managing an ordinary case. He had brought an
action in behalf of an old man named Case against the Snow boys
to recover the amount of a note given them in payment for what
was known as a " prairie team. " This consists of a breaking plow
and two or three yoke of oxen, making up a team strong enough to
break up the strong, tough, thick turf of the prairie.
The defendants, the Snow boys, appeared by their counsel and
pleaded that they were infants, or minors, when the note was given.
On the trial Lincoln produced the note, and it was admitted that it

246

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

was given for the oxen and plo\A-. The defendants then offered to
prove that they were under twenty-one years of age when they
signed the note.
" Yes, " said Lincoln, " I guess that is true and we will admit it. "
" Is there a count in the declaration for oxen and plow, sold and
delivered? " inquired Judge Treat, the presiding judge.
"Yes, " said Lincoln, " and I have only two or three questions
to ask of the witness. " The witness had been called to prove the
age of the Snow boys.
"Where is that prairie team now?" said Lincoln.
" On the farm of the Snow boys. "
" Have you seen any one breaking
prairie with it lately ? ' '
"Yes," replied the witness, "the
Snow boys were breaking up with it last
week. "
" How old are the boys now?"
"One is a little over twenty-one, and
the other near twentv-three. "
"That is all, " said Mr. Lincoln.
"Gentlemen, " -said Lincoln to the
jury, "these boys would never have tried
to cheat old Farmer Case out of these oxen
and that plow, but for the advice of
counsel. It was bad advice, bad in morals and bad in law. The
law never sanctions cheating, and a lawyer must be very smart
indeed to twist it so that it will seem to do so. The judge will tell
you what your own sense of justice has already told you, that
these Snow boys, if they were mean enough to plead the baby act,
when they came to be men should have taken the oxen and plow
back. They can not go back on their contract and also keep what
the note was given for. ' '
The jury, without leaving their seats, gave a verdict for old
Farmer Case.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 85.
Railroad, Repudiating Bill for $2,000, Pays $5,000
Probably the most important lawsuit Lincoln and I conducted
was one in which we defended the Illinois Central Railroad in an

ENTERS POLITICS .AGAIN 247
action brought by McLean County, Illinois, in August, 1853, to
recover taxes alleged to be due the county from the road. The
Legislature had granted the road immunity from taxation, and this
was a case intended to test the constitutionality of the law. The
road sent a retainer of $250.
In the lower court the case was decided in favor of the railroad.
An appeal to the Supreme Court followed, and there it was argued
twice, and finally decided in our favor. This last decision was
rendered some time in 1855. Mr. Lincoln soon went to Chicago
and presented our bill for legal services. We only asked for $2 ,000
more. The official to whom he was referred looking at the bill,
expressed great surprise.
"Why, sir, " he exclaimed, " this is as much as Daniel Webster
himself would have charged! We cannot allow such a claim. "
Stung by the rebuff, Lincoln withdrew the bill, and started for
home. On the way he stopped at Bloomington. There he met
Grant Goodrich, Archibald WilUams, Norman B. Judd, O. H.
Browning, and other attorneys, who, on learning of his modest
charge for such valuable services rendered the railroad, induced him
to increase the demand to $5,000, and to bring suit for that sum.
This was done at once.
On the trial six lawyers certified that the biU was reasonable,
and judgment for that sum went by default. The judgment was
promptly paid. Lincoln gave me my half.
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page 20.
* [Note .—It is often stated that George B. McCleUan was the
railroad official who insuUed Lincoln by telling him that his biU
was "as much as a first-class attorney would have charged." But
McClellan, who was afterwards Vice-President of the Illinois Cen
tral Railroad, was in Europe at this time.— W W.]
Herndon's Half
" There was no order in the office at all. The firm of Lincoln &
Herndon kept no books. ... One day Mr. Lincoln received
$ s 000 as a fee in a railroad case. He came in and said :
" 'WeU, Billy,' addressing his partner, Mr. Herndon. 'Here
is our fee- sit down and let me divide.' He counted out $2,500

248

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

to his partner, and gave it to him with as much nonchalance as he
'would have given a few cents for a paper. Cupidity had no abiding
place in his nature. "
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. I, page 3 t ,^.

First Meeting of Lincoln and Stantpn
The two had met several years before, [1855] under conditions
that left no favorable impression in the recollection of either. As
associate counsel with George Harding, in the famous case of Mc-
Cormick vs. Manny, they had appeared for the defendant before
Judges McLean and Drummond, in the United States Circuit Court,
at Cincinnati. When the trial began, it was found that the plaintiff
had but two advocates. . The attorney for the defense
was obliged to withdraw a representative — but which one was
it to be? Mr. Harding, then in the
zenith of his fame as a patent lawyer,
had been retained especially to make
the technical argument. Choice for
the forensic address, therefore, lay be
tween Lincoln and Stanton. The lat
ter was selected, to Mr. Lincoln's keen
disappointment. . . . Lincoln's
chagrin, moreover, was greatly in
tensified by Stanton's behavior. It
was not true, as has been generally
reported, that the man from Spring
field was elbowed out of the case by
his Eastern colleague; but there can
be no doubt that what at best was a mortifying experience for
Lincoln became doubly so by reason of the other's rudeness. Our
prairie la'wyer, though he ranked high at home, made a poor
impression upon Stanton, who described him, in his acrid way,
as a "long, lank creature from lUinois, wearing a dirty linen duster
for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched
wide stains that resembled a map of the continent." What was
worse, Mr. Stanton made no secret of his disdain. The object of
it heard him inquiring, " Where did that long-armed creature come
from, and what can he expect to do in this case?"

From Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
EDWIN M. STANTON. SECRETARY OF WAR
From a bitter and abusive enemy Stanton became a loyal and devoted admirer of President Lincoln.
The Story of this transformation is of rare interest.

ENTERS POLITICS AGAIN 249
So gross, indeed, were the discourtesies to which Lincoln was
subjected from this quarter, that^is magnanimous soul for some
time harbored bitter feeling.
" I have never been so brutally treated as by that man Stan
ton, " was his comment on the affair.
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 224.
Why Lincoln Was a "Dangerous Man"
During the Presidential campaign of 1856 I lived in Northern
Illinois. As one who dabbled a little in politics and a good deal in
journalism, it was necessary for me to follow up some of the more
important mass meetings of the Republicans. At one of these
great assemblies -in Ogle County, to which the country people came
on horseback, in farm-wagons, or afoot, from far and near, there
were several speakers of local celebrity. Dr. Egan of Chicago,
famous for his racy stories, was one, and "Joe" Knox of Bureau
County, a stump speaker of renown, was another attraction.
Several other orators were "on the bills" for this long-advertised
"Fremont and Dayton rally," among them being a Springfield
la'wyer who had won some reputation as a shrewd, close reasoner
and a capital speaker on the stump. This was Abraham Lincoln,
popularly known as " Honest Abe Lincoln. " In those days he was
not so famous in our part of the State as the two speakers whom I
have named. Possibly he was not so popular among the masses
of the people ; but his ready 'wit, his unfailing good-humor, and the
candor which gave him his character for honesty, won for him the
admiration and respect of all who heard him. I remember once
meeting a choleric old Democrat striding away from an open-air
meeting where Lincoln was speaking, striking the earth 'with his
cane as he stumped along and exclaiming,
"He's a dangerous man, sir! a deuced dangerous man! He
makes you beUeve what he says in spite of yourself!"
It was Lincoln's manner. He admitted away his whole case
apparently, and yet, as his political opponents complained, he
usuaUy carried conviction with him. As he reasoned with his
audience, he bent his long form over the railing of the platform,
stooping lower and lower, as he pursued his argument, untU, hav
ing reached his point, he clinched it (usually with a question).

2 so THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
and then suddenly sprang upright, reminding one of the springing
open of a jack-knife blade.
Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln, Noah Brooks. Scribner's Monthly, Vol. XV, February, 1878,
page s6i.
Lincoln's "Lost Speech" Sealing the New Party at the
Bloomington Convention
In the interval between the Decatur meeting and the Bloom
ington Convention called for May 29 [1856], the excitement in the
country over Kansas grew almost to a frenzy. The new State was
in the hands of a pro-slavery mob, her Governor a prisoner, her
capital in ruins, her voters intimidated. . . The Convention
was opened by John M. Palmer, afterwards United States Senator,
in its chair, and in a very short time it had adopted a platform,
appointed delegates to the National Convention, nominated a State
ticket, completed, in short, all the work of organizing the Republican
party in Illinois. After this work of organizing and nominating was
finished, there was a call for speeches. The Convention felt the
need of some powerful amalgamating force which would weld its
discordant elements. . . Man after man was called to the
platform without producing any marked effect, when suddenly there
was a call raised of a name not on the program — "Lincoln" —
"Lincoln" — "give us Lincoln!" The crowd took it up and made
the hall ring until a tall figure rose in the back of the audience and
slowly strode down the aisle. As he turned to his audience there
came gradually a great change upon his face. "There was an
expression of intense emotion, " Judge Scott, of Bloomington once
told the author (Miss Tarbell). " It was the emotion of a great soul.
Even in stature he seemed greater. He seemed to realize it was a
crisis in his life. " .
He began his speech, then, deeply moved, and with a profound
sense of the importance of the moment  Starting from
the back of the broad platform on which he stood, his hands on
his hips, he slowly advanced towards the front, his eyes blazing,
his face white with passion, his voice resonant with the force of his
conviction. As he advanced he seemed to his audience fairly to
grow, and when at the end of the period he stood at the front line of
the stage, hands still on the hips, head back, raised on his tip toes,
he seemed like a giant inspired.

ENTERS POLITICS AGAIN

251

"At that moment he was the , handsomest man I ever saw,"
Judge Scott declared.
So powerful was his effect on his audience that men and women
wept as they cheered  As he went on there came upon the
Convention the \'ery emotion he sought to arouse.
" Everyone in that before incongruous assembly came to feel
as one man, ' ' says one of the auditors. He had made every man
of them pure Republican. He did something more. The indigna
tion which the outrages in Kan
sas and throughout the country
had aroused was uncontrolled.
Men talked passionately of war.
It w^as at this meeting that Lin
coln, after firing his hearers by
,an expression which became a
watchword of the campaign,
"We won't go out of the Union
and you shan't," poured oU on
the wTath of the opponents of
the Nebraska biU by advising
"ballots, not bullets!"
Nothing illustrates better
the extraordinary power of Lin
coln's speech at Bloomington
than the way he stirred up the
newspaper reporters. . . Of
course, aU leading newspapers
of the State leaning towards the
new party had reporters at the
Convention. Among these was Mr. Joseph MediU.
"I well remember," says Mr. MediU, "that after Lincoln sat
down and calm had succeeded the tempest, I waked out of a sort of
hypnotic trance and then thought of my report for the (Chicago)
Tribune. There was nothing written but an abbreviated intro
duction. " It was some sort of satisfaction to find that I had not been
'scooped,' as all the newspaper men present had been equally carried
away by the excitement caused .by the wonderful oration, and had
made no report or sketch of the speech. "

LINCOLN IN '56

252 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
The result of this excitement was when the Conven
tion was over there was no reporter present who had anything for
his newspaper. They all went home and wrote burning editorials
about the speech and its great principle, but as to reproducing it
they could not. Men came to talk of it all over Illinois 
Gradually it became known as Lincoln's " Lost Speech. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 292,
The Speech as Afterward Reproduced
[But Henry C. Whitney, a young attorney associated with
Lincoln both before and after this strange event, was able to make
notes during the delivery of this wonderful oration, which he
amplified afterward from conversations with other auditors and
with Lincoln himself, and has published the result in Lincoln's Early
Speeches, and from the "Lost Speech" the following is the closing
climax as reproduced by Mr. Whitney :]
" Did you ever, my friends, seriously refiect upon the speed
with which we are tending downwards? Within the memory of
men now present, the leading statesmen of Virginia could make
genuine red-hot abolitionist speeches in old Virginia! and, as I have
said, now even in ' free Kansas ' it is a crime to declare that it is
' free Kansas. ' The very sentiments that I and others have just
uttered, would entitle us, and each of us, to the ignominy and
seclusion of a dungeon; and yet I suppose that, like Paul, we were
' free bom. ' But if this thing is allowed to continue, it will be but
one step further to impress the sarne rule in Illinois. [Sensation^
"The conclusion of all is, that we must restore the Missouri
Compromise. We must highly resolve that Kansas shall he free!
[Great applause.] We must reinstate the birthday promise of the
Republic; we must reaffirm the Declaration of Independence; we
must make good in essence as w^ell as in form Madison's avowal that
' the word slave ought not to appear in the Constitution ; ' and we
must even go further, and decree that only local law, and not that
time-honored instrument, shall shelter a slave-holder. We must
make this a land of liberty in fact, as it is in name. But in seeking
to attain these results — so indispensable if the liberty which is our
pride and boast shall endure — ^we wUl be loyal to the Constitution
and to the ' flag of our Union, ' and no matter what our grievance —

ENTERS POLITICS .AGAIN

253

even though Kansas shall come in as a slave -State — and no matter
what theirs — even if we shall restore the Compromise — we will
SAY TO THE SOUTHERN DISUNIONISTS, We WON'T GO OUT OF THE
Union, and you SHAN'T! ! ! [This was the clima.x; the audience
rose to its feet en masse, applauded, stamped, ivaved handkerchiefs,
threw hats in tlie air, and ran riot for several minutes. The arch-
enchanter who wrought this transformation looked, meanwhile, like
the personification of political justice.']
Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, Early Speeches, page 301.
"That Speech Puts Lincoln on the Track for the Presidency"
It is now generally agreed that one of Mr. Lincoln's most
eloquent and impressive utterances was the speech he delivered at
the first Republican State Convention in Illinois, held at Bloom
ington, May 29, 1856. . . .
" Never was an audience more completely electrified by human
eloquence," wrote John L. Scripps to his paper (the Chicago
Tribune). "Again and again during its de
livery they sprang to their feet and upon
the benches and testified, by long-continued
shouts and the waving of hats, how deeply
the speaker had wrought upon their minds
and hearts. It fused the mass of incongru
ous elements into perfect homogeneity ; and
from that day to the present they have
worked together in harmonious and fra
ternal union.

During the Convention Mr. Lincoln was
the guest of Judge David Davis. A few
minutes after the delivery of his speech the
Convention adjourned, whereupon Mr. Lincoln left the hall in com
pany with Mr. (Henry C.) Whitney, who likewise was sojourning at
the Davis home.
"As I passed down stairs with the crowd," relates Whitney,
" Jesse K. Dubois, who had beein nominated State Auditor, seized me
by the arm with a painful grip and made an exclamation close to
my ear. Presently Lincoln got disentangled from the applauding
crowd, and he and I started off in the direction of Judge Davis's

2S4

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

house. As soon as we were out of hearing, Lincoln at once com
menced a line of remark upon the extraordinary scene we had just
witnessed, and whose prime mover he was, at the same time bending
his head down to make our conversation more confidential. In a
glow of enthusiasm I said in reply to a question by him :
" 'You know my statements about your speeches are not good
authority, so I will tell you what Dubois, who is not so enthusiastic
as I am, said to me as we came out of the hall :
" ' "Whitney, " said he, "that is the greatest speech ever made
in Illinois, and puts Lincoln on the track for the Presidency." ' "
Lincoln's Vote for Vice-President, Jesse W, Weik. The Century Magazine, Vol. LXXVI, June,
1908, page 186.
Playing a Boyish Prank When He Heard of His Votes for Vice-President
Twenty days after this incident (the "Lost Speech" at the
Bloomington Convention) the delegates to the first National Repub
lican Convention assembled in the city of Philadelphia to nominate
candidates for President and Vice-President 
Although, as we have seen, Mr. Lincoln was not in Philadelphia,
it is not difficult to account for his
presence elsewhere. The truth is that
he was in Illinois, diligently engaged
in following Judge Davis around the
circuit. At the very time of the Con
vention he was attending a special
term of court in Urbana.
Mr. Whitney relates that Judge
Davis and the non-resident lawyers
were quartered at the leading hostelry
of the place. Their slumbers in the
early dawn having too often been dis
turbed by the tones of a vibrant gong
summoning them to breakfast, they de
cided, one morning, that the offending instrument must be removed
or in some way forever silenced. By a majority vote Mr. Lincoln
was chosen to carry out this decree. Accordingly, a little earlier
than usual before noon that day, he was seen to leave the court-room
and hasten to the hotel. Slipping unobserved into the dining-room,
he managed to secure the gong, secreting it under his coat, and was

ENTERS POLITICS .{(,'. \IN 255
in the act of making pff with it when Whitney and Judge Davis
suddenly appeared on the scene. The former held in his hand a
copy of the Chicago Tribune, which had just reached town and con
tained the surprising and gratifying announcement that Mr. Lincoln
had received no votes for Vice-President at the Philadelphia Con
vention the day before.
" Great business this, " chuckled Davis, " for a man who aspires
to be Vice-Presiden'H|)f the United States!"
Lincoln only smiled. "Davis and I," declared Whitney,
"were greatly excited, but Lincoln was listless and indiffereht. His
orUy response was :
" 'Surely it ain't me ; there's another great man named Lincoln
down in Massachusetts. I reckon it's him.' "
Lincoln's Vote for Vice-President, Jesse'W. Weik. The Century Magazine Vol. LXXVI, June,
1908, page 189,
"A Prophet without Honor in His Own City"
To reconcile some otherwise irreconcilable incidents of Mr.
Lincoln's biography, an understanding of the political and social
bias of his neighbors is necessary. In 1856, we are advised by local
history that, although Herndon took extra pains to get up an enthu
siastic reception to his illustrious partner upon a distinguished
occasion, yet no one came except one obscure man, and the discom
fited partners turned off the gas and went home very meek and
chopfallen. Yet Lincoln had been his townmen's Congressman eight
years before, and had been five times elected by this same people to
the Legislature— the last time only two years before.
This inharmony between cause and effect had its basis in social
and political prejudice ; the early settlers of southern lUinois were
from the slave States, and they were wedged in between either
.slave-holding communities, or those having such affiliations, so that
the Yankees and Abolitionists were as much below par in southern
and central Illinois as they were in Kentucky or Missouri. This
prejudice invaded the sanctuary, and even when the theme was
abounding grace and universal brotherhood, it stiU w^as not tem
porarily laid aside. The virtue of fraternal love could not be
assumed, even in the fervor of reUgious zeal.
A Chadband of the "hardshell" order thus exclaimed in a

2s6 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
sermon: "The overwhelming torrent of free grace took in the mount
ings of Aishy, the isles of the sea and the uttermost ends of the
yearth. It took in the Eskimos and the Hottingtots, and some, my
dear hrethering, go so fur as to suppose it tuk in them air poor,
benighted Yankees; but I don't go that fur!"
Of course, when the Nebraska bill was passed, this feeling
became all the more rancorous, in view of the fact- that the adher
ents of the "Anti-Nebraska" party came ix^gm the ranks of the
hitherto "pure and undefiled" Democracy, as well as from the
moribund Whig party. The line of cleavage which had separated
the Whigs and Democrats now divided the Pro-Slavery Democrats
from the Anti-Extension of Slavery element, and the prejudices
became more intense and unyielding than before.
Lincoln the Citizen, Henry C. Whitney, page 162,

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
LINCOLN IN 1857
He sat for this photograph in the gallery of Alexander Hesler, Chicago. It was from this
that the first widely circulated cuts were made, and his disheveled hair occasioned gen
eral comment.

(257)

CHAPTER X
The Battles of the Giants
" The First and Only Choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the
United States Senate"
Only the preceding year, 1857, when Douglas, in a speech de
livered at Springfield, Illinois, had made an attempt to wriggle out
of the dilemma in which the Dred Scott decision had entangled
him, Lincoln had, a week later, before a popular meeting held at the
same place, thrust the sword of his logic through Douglas's adroit
sophistries, and incidentally pronounced his famous vindication of
the Declaration of Independence which deserves well to be remem
bered in the presence of latter-day problems :
"The assertion that all men are created equal' was of no
practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain, and
it was placed in the Declaration not for that but for future use.
Its authors meant- it to be as, thank God, it is now proving
itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after times might
seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of des
potism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants,
and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and
commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least
one nut hard to crack."
But these discussions had hardly attracted, beyond the bound
aries of Illinois, the attention they merited. It was only when the
Republican State Convention of Illinois, on the i6th of Jime, 1858,
passed, by imanimous acclamation, a resolve declaring Abraham
Lincoln to be "the first and only choice of the Republicans of
Illinois for the United States Senate, as the successor of Stephen
A. Douglas," that the eyes of the whole American people were
turned upon the combat between the two men, as an action which
gravely concerned them all.
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, page 86.
( = 58)

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 259

Locking Horns for "the Irrepressible Conflict"
Illinois was this year the arena of a peculiar contest. Senator
Douglas had taken so prominent and so efficient a part in the defeat
of the Lecompton abomination that a number of the leading
Republicans of other States were desirous that their Illinois brethren
should unite in choosing a Legislature pledged to return him, by a
vote substantially unanimous, to the seat he had so ably filled. But
it was hardly in human nature that those thus appealed to should,
because of one good act, recognize and treat as a friend one whom
they had known for nearly twenty years as the ablest, most inde
fatigable, and by no means the most scrupulous, of their adver
saries. They held a sort of State Convention therefore and pre
sented Abraham Lincoln as a Republican competitor for Mr.
Douglas's seat; and he opened the canvass at once, in a terse,
forcible and thoroughly "radical" speech, wherein he enunciated
the then startling, if not absolutely novel doctrine that the Union
cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. Said Mr. Lincoln :
" 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I
believe the Government cannot permanently endure half slave
and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not
expect the house to fall — ^but I do expect that it 'will cease to be
di-vided. It -will become all one thing or all the other. " . .
This almost prophetic statement, from one born in Kentucky,
and who had been known, prior to the appearance of the Dred Scott
decision, as a rather conservative Whig, was put forth, at Spring
field, Illinois, June 17, 1858, more than four months before Gover
nor Seward, as if under a like premonition of coming events, said
(at Rochester, New York, October 25, 1858) :
"Shall I teU you what this collision means? They
who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested
or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case
altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and
enduring forces ; and it means that the United States must and will,
sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or
entirely a free-labor nation. " .
Mr. Lincoln, in his brief Springfield speech, furnished the
shortest and sharpest exposition ever yet given of the doctrine
vaunted as "Popular Sovereignty," viz:

26o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"This necessity [for a popular indorsement of the policy em
bodied in the Nebraska-Kansas bill] had not been overlooked ; but
had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument
of 'Squatter Sovereignty, ' otherwise called the 'sacred right of self-
government;' which latter phrase, though expressive of the only
rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in the attempted
use of it, as to amount to just this: That, if any man choose to
enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. "
Mr. Douglas promptly joined issue; and a moral canvass of
unequalled interest, considering the smallness of the stake, was
prosecuted by these capable and practised debaters, before immense
audiences of their fellow-citizens up to the eve of the State election.
The American Conflict, Horace Greeley, Vol. I, page 301.
The Great Rock Island Bridge Case
One of the most interesting cases involving mechanical prob
lems which Lincoln ever argued was that of the Rock Island Bridge.
The case was a striking episode in the war long waged by
the Mississippi against the plains beyond. For decades the ri\'er
had been the willing burden-bearer of the West. Now, however,
the railroad had come. The Rock Island road had even dared to
bridge the stream to carry away the traffic which the river claimed.
In May, 1856, a steamboat struck one of the piers of the bridge,
and was wrecked and burned. One pier of the bridge was also
destroyed. The boat owners sued the railroad company. The
suit was the beginning of the long and violent struggle for commer
cial supremacy between St. Louis and Chicago. In Chicago it was
commonly believed that the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce had
bribed the captain of the boat to run upon the pier ; and it was said
that later, when the bridge itself was burned, the steamers gathered
near and whistled for joy.
The case was felt to involve the future course of Western com
merce, and when it was called in September, 1857, at Chicago,
people crowded there from all over the West. Norman B. Judd,
afterwards so prominent in the politics of the State, was the attorney
of the road, and he engaged Lincoln, among others, as counsel.
Lincoln made an address to the jury which those who remember it
declare to have been one of his strongest legal arguments.

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS

261

Lincoln succeeded in showing that had the pUot of the boat
been as familiar as he ought to have been with the river, he could
easUy have prevented the accident. His argument was full of nice
mathematical calculations clearly put, and was marked by perfect
candor. Indeed,' the honesty with which he admitted the points
made by the opposite counsel caused con
siderable alarm to some of his associates.
Mrs.. Norman B. Judd says that
Mr. Joseph B. Knox, who was also engaged
with Mr. Lincoln in the defense, dined at
her house the day that Lincoln made his
speech. " He sat down at the table in great ex
citement, " writes Mrs. Judd, "saying, 'Lin
coln has lost the case for us. The admissions
he made in r%ard to the currents in the Mis
sissippi at Rock Island and Moline will con
vince the court that a bridge at that point
will always be a serious and constant det
riment to navigation on the river. ' "
" 'Wait until you hear the conclusion of his speech, ' replied
Mr. Judd; 'you will find that his admission is a strong point instead
of a weak one, and on it he will found a strong argument that will
satisfy you. '
And, as it proved, Mr. Judd was right.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M, Tarbell, Vol. I, page 27s.

NORMAN B. JUDD
Manager of the Lincoln Presi
dential campaign in Illinois.

Lawyer Lincoln's Letter to Hannah Armstrong
"Springfield, III., Sept., 1857.
"Dear Mrs. Armstrong:
" I have just heard of your deep affliction, and the arrest of
your son for murder.
"I can hardly believe that he can be capable of the crime
aUeged against him.
"It does not seem possible. I am anxious that he should be
given a fair trial at any rate; and gratitude for your long-con
tinued kindness to me in adverse circumstances prompts me to offer
my humble services gratuitously in his behalf.

262 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" It will afford me an opportunity to requite, in a small degree,
the favors I received at your hand, and that of your lamented
husband, when your roof afforded me a grateful shelter, without
money and without price. "Yours truly,
"A. Lincoln."
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 254.
Saved by Lincoln with an Almanac
The time for the [Armstrong] trial arrived, and it drew together
a crowd of interested people. . . . The witnesses for the State were
introduced; some to testify of Armstrong's previous vicious
character ; and others to relate what they saw of the affair on the
night of the murder. His accuser testified in the most positive
manner, that he saw him make the dreadful thrust that killed his
"sdctim 
" Couldn't there be some mistake about this? " asked [Lincoln]
the counsel for the defense.
" None at all, " said the witness.
" What time in the evening was it? "
'¦* Between nine and ten o'clock. "
"Well, how far between? Was it quarter past nine, or half
past nine o'clock — or still later? Be more exact, if you please. "
"I should think it might have been about half past nine
o'clock," answered the witness.
"And you are sure that you saw the prisoner at the bar give
the blow? Be particular — and remember that you are under oath. "
" I am; there can be no mistake about it. "
"Wasn't it dark?"
"No; the moon was bright."
"Then it was not very dark, as there was a moon?"
" No, the moon made it light enough for me to see it all. "
"Be particular on this point. Do I understand you to say
that the murder was committed about half past nine o'clock, and
the moon was shining at the time? "
" Yes, that is what I mean to say. "
" Very weU ; that is aU. " ....
The counsel for the Commonwealth considered that the

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 263
evidence was too strong against Armstrong to admit of a reason
able doubt of his guilt ; therefore his plea was short and formal.
All eyes now turned to Lincoln. What could he say for the
accused, in the face of such testimony? Few saw any possible
chance for the supposed culprit to escape : his condemnation was
sure. Mr. Lincoln rose, while a deeply impressive stillness reigned
throughout the court-room. The prisoner sat 'with a worried, de
spairing look, such as he had worn ever since his arrest. . . .
His counsel [Lincoln] proceeded to review the testimony and
called attention to discrepancies in the statements of the principal
witness, which he showed to be inconsistent and indicating a
plot against an innocent man. Then, raising his clear, full voice to
a higher key, and lifting his long, wiry right arm above his head,
as if about to annihilate his client's accuser, he exclaimed:
" And he testifies that the moon was shining brightly when the
deed was perpetrated, between the hours of nine and ten o'clock,
when the moon did not appear on that night, as your Honor's almanac
'will show, until an hour or more later, and consequently the whole
story is a fabrication."

"Where is Mr. Lincoln?" inquired the acquitted son as the
crowd pressed around him. Then, seeing his attorney's tall form
on the other side of the room, he pushed through the assembly and
grasped his deliverer by the hand, but he could not speak. Tears
of gratitude fiUed the young man's eyes, expressing far more than he
could have done by words.
The Pioneer Boy, William M. Thayer, page 297.
A Lawyer's Account of the Great Armstrong Trial
Lincoln's skill as a cross-examiner effected some of his most
dramatic triumphs, and his cause celebre is undoubtedly the trial of
WiUiam Armstrong for the kiUing of James Metzker, ^here his
talents in this particular saved the day for his client.
The story of this now famous case has often been recounted,
and its dramatic features have been skilfully utiUzed in at least one
volume of fiction. [As in "The Graysons," by Edward Eggleston.]
The defendant, WiUiam Armstrong, popularly known as

2 64 THE STORY -LIFE OF' LINCOLN
"Duff', " was a youth of bad habits, and on August 29, 1857, \\hile
under the infiuence of liquor, he had quarreled with another young
man by the name of Metzker, and had beaten him severely. This
occurred during the afternoon ; but when the quarrel was renewed
late at night, one Norris joined in the fracas, and between him and
Armstrong, Metzker received injuries which resulted in his death.
Popular indignation against the accused was so violent in Mason
County that Armstrong's law-yer moved for a change of venue,
claiming that his client could not receive a fair trial in the local
court, and the judge was apparently of the same opinion, for he
removed the case to Beardstown, the county-seat of Cass County.
Despite the gloomy outlook, Lincoln took a hopeful view and
reassured the anxious mother. Not only \\-ere the facts against
his client, but the IlUnois law of that day did not permit a defendant
to testify in his own behalf, so that Armstrong was precluded from
giving his own version of the story and denying the testimony of
the accusing witnesses.
The Assistant Prosecuting Attorney was Mr. J. Henry ShaA\',
and Caleb J. Dillworth, another able lawyer, was associated with
him, but Lincoln scored against them at the start by securing a jury
of young men whose average age was not over twenty-five. Most of
the witnesses were also young, and these Lincoln handled so skil
fully on cross-examination that their testimony did not bear heavily
against the accused. Almost all of them were from the neighbor
hood of New Salem, and whenever the examiner heard a familiar
name he quickly took advantage of the opening to let the witness
know that he was familiar ^^'ith his home, knew his family, and
wished to be his friend. These tactics succeeded admirably, and
no \'ery damaging testimony was elicited until a man by the name
of Allen took the stand. This witness, however, swore that he
actually saw the defendant strike the fatal blow with a slung-shot or
some such weapon; and Lincoln, pressing him closely, forced him
to locate the hour of the assault as about eleven at night, and then
demanded that he inform the jury how he had managed to see so
clearly at that time of night.
" By the moonlight, " answered the witness, promptly.
"Well, was there light enough to see everything that hap
pened?" persisted the examiner.

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
From Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS
Called "Judge" Douglas and "The Little Giant," with whom Lincoln engaged in the great debates.
Douglas defeated Lincoln in the election for Senator in 1858, but Lincoln defeated him for the
Presidency in i860. Douglas held Lincoln's hat during Lincoln's first Inaugural Address.

B.ATTLES OF THE GIANTS 265
The witness responded that the moon was about in the same
place that the sun would be at ten o'clock in the morning and was
almost full — and the moment the words were out of his mouth the
cross-examiner confronted him with a calendar showing that the
moon, which at its best was only slightly past its first quarter on
August 29, had afforded practically no light at eleven o'clock and
that it had absolutely set at seven minutes after midnight. This
was the turning-point in the case, and from that point Lincoln
carried everything before him, securing an acquittal of the defendant
after a powerful address to the jury.
There is a singular myth connected with this case, to the effect
that Mr. Lincoln played a trick on the jurors by substituting an
old calendar for the one for the year of the murder, and virtually
manufacturing the testimony that carried the day. How such a
rumor started no one can say, but it goes far to prove the impos
sibility of ever successfully refuting a lie ; for, though repeatedly
exposed, it still persists on the Illinois circuit to-day. The facts are,
of course, that the calendar for August 29, 1857, shows the position
of the moon precisely as Lincoln claimed it, . .and an exhibit
of that sort would be examined by the judge and the opposing
lawyers as well as by the jury. Therefore Lincoln would have
been a fool as well as as a disreputable trickster, if he had resorted
to the asinine practice outlined in this siUy tale, which, practically
disproves itself.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 229.
[The same almanac story was told against General Benjamin
F- Butler, a celebrated criminal lawyer in Massachusetts.— :W. W.]
Douglas Accepts Lincoln's Challenge with — Regrets
With characteristic eagerness, Lincoln lost no time in beginning
the contest. The evening of the day on which his nomination was
made, he addressed the Convention in a speech which has since
-become famous because of its radical development of the test,
" A house divided against itself cannot stand. "
A lion indeed- . did the people make of the Democratic
leader three weeks later. Returning home to Chicago, with the
glory of his gaUant fight against the Administration fresh about him.

266 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
he opened his canvass there on the evening of July 9th, at a mag
nificent public reception.
The speech made by the Senator on that occasion, from a
balcony of the Tremont House, was a vigorous reply to Lincoln, of
whom, in the fiush of his pride, he spoke patronizingly as " a kind,
amiable, and intelligent gentleman." The speaker might have
added "alert" to this catalogue of good qualities, for Lincoln was
present at the meeting, and when Douglas had concluded, he
announced, in answer to calls for a speech, that he would reply from
the same place, on the following evening.
At the time appointed the audience for the most part returned,
but Douglas, not deigning to do so, went to a theater instead.
When he spoke in Bloomington, on the i6th of July, Lincoln was
again a watchful auditor, and the Senator's speech in Springfield,
the next day, was followed within a few hours by his opponent's
rejoinder to the Bloomington address. This continued, meeting
after meeting 
Then Lincoln, recalling his old tactics at close quarters, chal
lenged Douglas to a series of debates. In response, the latter having
accepted the proposition, stipulated that there be seven meetings,
at places and on dates specified by him.
When the challenge was received, the Democratic leader said
to certain of his political friends :
" I do not feel, between you and me, that I want to go into this
debate. The whole country knows me and has me measured.
Lincoln, as regards myself, is comparatively unknown, and if he
gets the best of this debate — and I want to say he is the ablest man
the Republicans have got, — I shall lose everything and Lincoln
will gain everything. Should I win, I shall gain but little. I do not
want to go into the debate with Abe. "
Moreover, after agreeing to the proposed meetings — for there
was no escape from them in 1858, any more than there had been in
1854 — he declared to some of his supporters who spoke slightingly
of his antagonist:
" Gentlemen, you do not know Mr. Lincoln. I have known
him long and well, and I know that I shall have anything but an
easy task. I assure you I would rather meet any other man in the
country, in this joint debate, than Abraham Lincoln. " . .

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 267
A more emphatic, if not so dignified, form of the coinment was
that in which it had been expressed privately, on several occasions :
"Of all the damned Whig rascals about Springfield, Abe
Lincoln is the ablest and most honest. "
Discussing the nominee with John W. Forney, Douglas had
observed ;
" I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party
— full of wit, facts, dates — and the best stump-speaker, with his
droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is
shrewd; and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won. "
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 94,
Dates of the Seven Debates
No one recognized .more clearly than Lincoln the difference
between himself and his opponent. "With me, " he said sadly, in
comparing the careers of himself and Douglas, "the race of ambition
has been a faUure — a flat failure. With him it has been one of
splendid success." . .
"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown, " he said; "all the
anxious politicians of the party, or who have been of his party for
years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant
day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in
his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships,
and Cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bmrst-
ing and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid
hold of by their greedy hands. ...
"On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be Presi
dent. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any
cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages, all taken
together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this
battle upon principle, and principle alone."
If one wiUtake a map of lUinois and locate the points of the
Lincoln and Douglas debates held between August 21 and October
15 1858, he wiU see that the whole State was traversed m the con
test The first took place at Ottawa, about seventy-five miles
southwest of Chicago, on August 21 ; the second at Freeport, near
the Wisconsin boundary, on August 27. The third was m the
extreme southern part of the State, at Jonesboro, on September 15.

268 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Three days later the contestants met one hundred and fifty miles
northeast of Jonesboro, at Charleston. The fifth, sixth and seventh
debates were held in the western part of the State; at Galesburg,
October 7 ; Quincy, October 13 ; and Alton, October 15.
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida ^I. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 309.
" Smelt No Royalty in Our Carriage "
Constant exposure and fatigue were unavoidable in meeting
these engagements. Both contestants spoke almost every day
through the intervals between the joint debates; and as railroad
communication in Illinois in 1858 was still very incomplete, they
were often obliged to resort to horse, carriage or steamer to reach
the desired points.
Judge Douglas succeeded, however, in making this difficult
journey something of a triumphal procession. . On the
Illinois Central Railroad he had always a special car, sometimes a
special train. Frequently he swept by Lincoln, side-tracked in an
accommodation or freight train.
"The gentleman in that car evidently smelt no royalty in our
carriage, " laughed Lincoln one day, as he watched from the caboose
of a laid-up freight train the decorated special of Douglas flying by.
It was only when Lincoln left the railroad and crossed the
prairie to speak at some isolated town, that he went in state. The
attentions he received were often very trying to him. He detested
what he called "fizzlegigs and fireworks," and would squirm in
disgust when his friends gave him a genuine prairie ovation.
Usually, when he was going to a point distant from the railway, a
' ' distinguished citizen' ' met him at the station nearest the place with
a carriage. When they were come within two or three miles of the
town, a long procession with banners and band would appear, wind
ing across the prairie to meet the speaker. A speech of greeting was
made, and then the ladies of the entertainment committee would
present Lincoln with flowers, sometimes even winding a garland
about his head and lank figure. At the Ottawa debate the
enthusiasm of his supporters was so great that they insisted on
carrying him from the platform to the house where he was to be
entertained. Powerless to escape from the clutches of his admirers
he could only cry :

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 269
"Don't, boys; let me down; come now, don't!"
On arrival at the towns where the joint debates were held,
Douglas was always met by a brass band and a salute of thirty -two
guns (the Union was composed of thirty-two States in 1858), and
was escorted to the hotel in the finest equipage to be had. Lincoln's
supporters took delight in showing their contempt for Douglas's
elegance by affecting a Republican simplicity, often carrying their
candidate through the streets on a high and unadorned hay -rick.
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 311,
Average of 10,000 People Attended Each Debate — Bands and Banners
The scenes in the towns on the occasion of the debates were
perhaps never equalled at any other of the hustings of this country.
No distance seemed too great for the people to go ; no vehicle too
slow or fatiguing. At Charleston there was a great delegation of
men, women and chUdren present which had come in a long pro
cession from Indiana by farm wagons, afoot, on horseback, and in
carriages. The crowds at three or four of the debates were for that day
immense. There were estimated to be from eight thousand to
fourteen thousand people at Quincy, some six thousand at Alton,
from ten thousand to fifteen thousand at Charleston, some twenty
thousand at Ottawa. Many of those at Ottawa came the night
before. When the crowd was massed at the place of the debate, the
scene was one of the greatest hubbub and confusion. On the
comers of the squares, and scattered around the outskirts of the
crowd, were "fakirs" of every description, selling pain-kiUers and
ague cures, watermelons and lemonade ; jugglers and beggars plied
their trades, and all the brass bands within twenty -five miles tooted
and pounded at "HaU Columbia, Happy Land," or "Columbia,
the Gem of the Ocean."
Conspicuous in the procession at all the points was what
Lincoln called the " Basket of Flowers, " thirty-two young girls in a
resplendent car, representing the Union. At Charleston a thirty-
third young woman rode behind the car, representing Kansas.
The mottoes at the different meetings epitomized the popular

2 70 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
conception of the issues and the candidates. Among the Lincoln
sentiments were : "Abe the Giant-Killer. "
" Westward the Star of Empire takes its way ;
The girls link on to Lincoln, their mothers were for Clay."
"Free Territories and Free Men,
Free Pulpits and Free Preachers,
Free Press and a Free Pen,
Free Schools and Free Teachers. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 312.

Douglas, then Lincoln, at Havana, Illinois
"The next morning, August 13th, we boarded the steamer
Editor and went to Havana, Mason County. Mr. Lincoln was in
excellent spirits. Several of his old Whig friends were on board, and
the journey was filled up with politics and story -telling.
From the beginning to the end of our travels the fund of anecdotes
never failed, and, wherever we happened to be, all the people
within ear-shot would begin to work their way up to this inimitable
story-teller. . .
"Although the intervals between the meetings were filled up
brimful with mirth in this way, Mr. Lincoln indulged very sparingly
in humor in his speeches. I asked him one day why he did not
oftener turn the laugh on Douglas. He replied that he was too
much in earnest, and that it was doubtful whether turning the laugh
on anybody really gained any votes.
"We arrived at Havana while Douglas was still speaking.
The deputation that met Mr. Lincoln at the (steamboat) landing
suggested that he should go up to the grove where the Democratic
meeting was going on and hear what Douglas was saying. But he
declined to do so, saying :
" 'The Judge was so put out by my listening to him at Bloom
ington and Clinton that I promised to leave him alone at his own
meetings for the rest of the campaign. I understand that he is
calling Trumbull and myself liars, and if he should see me in the

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 271
crowd he might be so ashamed of himself as to omit the most telUng
part of his argument. '
"I strolled up to the meeting just before its conclusion, and
there met a friend who had heard the whole. He was in a state of
high indignation. He said that Douglas must certainly have been
drinking before he came on the platform, because he called Lincoln
'a liar, a coward, a wretch, and a sneak.'
"When Mr. Lincoln replied, on the following day, he took
notice of Douglas's hard words in this way :
" 'I am informed that my distinguished friend yesterday
became a little excited, nervous (?) perhaps, and he said something
about fighting, as though looking to a personal encounter between
himself and me. Did anybody in this audience hear him use such
language?' ('Yes,' 'yes.') 'I am informed further, that somebody
in his audience, rather more excited or nervous than himself, took
off his coat and offered to take the job off Judge Douglas's hands
and fight Lincoln himself. Did anybody here witness that warlike
proceeding?' (Laughter and cries of 'yes.') 'Well, I merely desire to
say that I shall fight neither Judge Douglas nor his second. I shall
not do this for two reasons, w^hich I will explain. In the first place,
a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this election. It
might establish that Judge Douglas is a more muscular man than
myself, or it might show that I am a more muscular man than Judge
Douglas. But this subject is not referred to in the Cincinnati plat
form, nor in either of the Springfield platforms. Neither result
would prove him right or me wrong. And so of the gentleman who
offered to do his fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas
would not prove anything, it would certainly prove nothing for me
to fight his bottle-holder.
" 'My second reason for not having a personal encounter with
Judge Douglas is that I don't believe he wants it himself. He and I
are about the best friends in the world, and -when we get together he
would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. There
fore, when the Judge talked about fighting he was not giving vent to
any 'iU-feeling of his own, but was merely trying to excite— weU, let
us say enthusiasm agamst me on the part of his audience. And, as
I find he was tolerably successful in this, we wiU caU it quits.'
Horace 'White in Herndon's Lincoln, WiUiam H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page loi.

272 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" Let Me Entreat You to Come Back !"
" My countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflict
ing with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence ;
if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its
grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions ; if you
have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in
those inalienable rights in our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to
come back ! Return to the fountain whose ^^'aters spring close by
the blood of the Revolution. You may do anything
W'ith me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles;
you may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me
and put me to death. I charge you to drop every paltry
and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I
am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that
immortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of Independence."
Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln. Speech at Lewiston, 111., August 17, 1858. Douglas De
bate, Vol. I, page 127.
[The Chicago Tribune, commenting on this speech, called it
" Lincoln's greatest inspiration." — W. W,]
The First of the Great Lincoln-Douglas Debates, at Ottawa, Illinois
It was half past two in ' the afternoon before a great shout
announced the arrival of the champions, and a short, stout, but
powerfully built man forced his way through the crowd and, step
ping to the edge of the platform, bowed gracefully to the cheering
multitudes. There was confidence in every line of Douglas's
strong, clear-cut, clean-shaven face; confidence and complete self-
possession in his every movement — confidence and determination
in the glance he cast at his awkward rival, who, accompanied by his
host. Mayor Glover, and the Congressional candidate, Owen Love-
joy, clumsily acknowledged the genuine burst of acclamation which
greeted his appearance.
No time was wasted in introducing the speakers. Neither of
them required such a formality, and yet it is improbable that
a majority of the spectators had ever seen either man before.
Certainly Lincoln was not personally known to many men in
Illinois outside of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, and Douglas had spent
far more time in Washington than he had in his own State during
the last six years, while the population was increasing by leaps

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 273
and bounds. Douglas's reputation was, however, national in its
scope — every one knew his record — while Lincoln was compara
tively unknown. Such were the advantages and disadvantages
of the combatants as Douglas rose and, with a brief reference to the
vast audience confronting him, plunged at once into an argument
attacking Lincoln and the Black Republicans as Abolitionists in
disguise. Almost from his opening words the speaker assumed an
air of superiority, stating his facts in a convincingly authoritative
tone and belittling his adversary's political pretensions and gen
erally treating him "with such marked condescension that many of
Lincoln's friends, watching his dark, homely, care-worn face, began
to fear that he had displayed more courage than wisdom in courting
comparison with so brilliant a rival. Douglas was not slow to press
his advantage, and, encouraged by the laughter of his auditors, he
proceeded to attack his opponent's doctrines.
"Let me read a part of them," he continued, contemptuously.
"In his speech at Springfield to the convention vhich nominated
him for the Senate, Lincoln said : 'A house divided against itself
can not stand. I believe this Government can not endure per
manently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to
be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it
will .cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further
spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
beUef that it is the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates
will push it forward till it shall become lawful for all the States —
old as well as new — North as well as South!'
The words were scarcely uttered before a spontaneous burst of
cheering rent the air, swelUng to a mighty shout of approval and
admiration from thousands of lusty lungs.
For a moment Douglas stood disconcerted by the unwelcome
demonstration, but, almost immediately recovering his self-posses-
.sion, he savagely attacked the interrupters,
"I am delighted to hear you. Black Republicans!" he roared.
"I have no doubt that doctrine expresses your sentiments, and I
will prove to you now that it is revolutionary and destructive of
this Government!" From that moment, however, the orator changed his tactics,

From The True Story of Abraham Lincoln, Elbridge S. Brooks.
A LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE
Each debate lasted three hours, the speakers alternating. If Lincoln spoke first he had an hour, then
Douglas took an hour and a halt, and Lincoln spoke a half hour in closing. It 'was by the wit,
sound sense and good humor of his immediate half-hour replies that Lincoln scored so heavily
against Douglas before audiences of many thousands who could all hear Lincoln's voice. At first
Douglas attempted to confuse and worry his opponent with smart questions, until Lincoln, by
sharp retorts, put a stop to this annoyance. This illustration shows one of these unwarranted
interruptions. (274)

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 275
indulging in no further personal comments and devoting himself
to serious argument and pointed question until he again fixed the
attention of his hearers and, regaining his confidence and good
temper, closed his speech to a burst of well-earned cheering.
Then Lincoln slowly rose from his chair and faced the expect
ant multitude, presenting a contrast to his opponent almost as
painful as it was apparent. His long, lank figure was clothed in
garments as rusty and ill-fitting as the Judge's were fresh and well
made. His coarse black hair was disheveled, his sad, anxious face
displayed no confidence, his posture was an ungainly stoop, his
manner was abjection itself. For a moment he gazed over the
audience as though at a loss for words, and when at last be began
speaking another disappointment chilled his supporters' hopes.
His voice was unpleasantly high pitched," penetrating, and almost
shrUl, and his opening sentences, commonplace enough in them
selves, were uttered hesitatingly, as though he were groping for
words. Finally he took a note-book from his pocket and asked
permission of the audience to read part of a printed speech he
had made in 1854.
"Put on your specs!" called some one in the crowd, and the
audience roared, expecting a smart reply. But no repartee came
from the man whose reputation as a "wit and a jester was supposedly
assured. "Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so," he responded gravely. "I
am no longer a young man."
The disappointment of the speaker's friends was plainly -visible,
but even as they strove to conceal their embarrassment their cham
pion began to retrieve himself . Still speaking slowiy , but with gath
ering energy, he gradually straightened to his full height, his voice
lost something of its rasp and gained in volume and quality, his eyes
brightened, his face became more animated, his gestures freer, and
his words commenced to flow more easily. Little by little the
hopes of his supporters re-^ved and all signs of restlessness disap
peared, the audience Ustening silently and with growing interest,
for Lincoln's voice, carrying much further than his opponent's,
reached the very outskirts of the crowd. Those who had come
expecting to be amused by anecdotes had reason to feel aggrieved,
however, for no funny stories or drolleries of any kind fell from the

276 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
speaker's lips, yet the vast assemblage listened quietly to every
word he spoke. It was no sudden burst of eloquence nor any trick
of declamation which won that tribute of respectful silence, and yet
the man was eloquent "with his earnest sincerity, his simple logic,
his clear analysis, his orderly presentment of intelligent argument.
With steadily increasing force he spoke directly to those before him,
his wonderful eyes seeking individuals in the crowd and holding
them enthralled until each hearer felt himself the one distinguished
and specially addressed. There was no escaping him; he appealed
personally to all within sound of his voice, meeting his adversary's
arguments with a clarity and simplicity of statement that all could
grasp, until he dominated the audience, swaying it to his "will.
Then slowly, and almost imperceptibly, he passed to his peroration,
his sentences ringing out boldly and defiantly and arousing a tumult
of cheering that died down only to burst out again, swelling to shout
after shout of frenzied approbation as he closed.
With half an hour at his disposal for reply, Douglas struggled
hard to stem this tide of popular approval and regain his lost ad
vantage, but in vain. At the close of his rejoinder the audience
applauded and then — as though by common consent — stormed the
platform and carried his opponent off on their shoulders, five thou
sand men struggling to share in the ovation.
A Battle of the Giants, Frederick Trevor Hill, Collier's for February 9, 1907, page 14.
"Hold My Coat while I Stone Stephen !"
Douglas led off with so captivating a discourse that his oppo
nent's adherents believed the battle was won. . But Lincoln
got up as soon as the cheers died away, looking taller and more
angular than ever. Taking off his long linen duster, he dropped it on
the arm of a young bystander, remarking in his far-pervading voice :
"Hold my coat while I stone Stephen!"
This went far toward annulling the good effect of Stephen
A. Douglas's harangue and Lincoln was heard with keen attention.
Lincolnics, Henry Lle-wellyn Williams, page 77.
A Good-Humored Retort
"Fellow-Citizens : My friend. Judge Douglas, made the
startling announcement to-day that the Whigs are all dead.

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 277

"If that be so, fellow-citizens, you will now experience the
novelty of hearing a speech from a dead man ; and 1 suppose you
might properly say, in the language of the old hymn :
'Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound.' "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 115.
"Nasby" Contrasts Lincoln and Douglas
The difference between the two men was illustrated that day
in their opening remarks. Lincoln said (I quote from memory) :
"I have had no immediate conference with Judge Douglas, but
I am sure that he and I will agree that your entire silence when I
speak and he speaks will he most agreeable to us. "
Douglas said at the beginning of his speech: "The highest
complii-nent you can pay me is by observing a strict silence. /
desire rather to be heard than applauded. "
The inborn modesty of the one and the boundless vanity of the
other could not be better illustrated. Lincoln claimed nothing for
himself — Douglas spoke as if applause must follow his utterances.
The character of the two men was still better illustrated in their
speeches. The self-sufficiency of Douglas in his opening might
be pardoned, for he had been fed on applause ; . but his
being a popular idol could not justify the demagogy that saturated
the speech itself. Douglas was the demagogue all the way through.
There was no trick of presentation that he did not use. He sup
pressed facts, twisted conclusions, and perverted history. He
wriggled and turned and dodged; he appealed to prejudices; in
short, it was evident that what he was laboring for was Douglas and
nothing else. .
Lincoln, on the other hand, kept strictly to the questions at
issue, and no one could doubt but that the cause for which he was
speaking was the only thing he had at heart; that his personal
interests did not weigh a particle. He knew that the
people had intelligence enough to strike the average correctly. His
great strength was in trusting the people instead of considering
them as babes in arms. He did not process to know ever3rthing.
The audience admired Douglas, but they respected his simple-
minded opponent.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Da-vid R.Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 443-

2 78 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Discussing the Dred Scott Decision
From the moment of collision it was e-vident that a great
struggle was imminent, and, despite the applause and flattery of
his supporters, Douglas must have known in his heart of hearts that
he had at last met his match.
Brilliant and resourceful as he was in popular appeal, his
dexterity with the weapons of debate was more than offset by
Lincoln's better knowledge of law and his greater familiarity with
legal argument, and the contest hinged largely upon the effect of
the Dred Scott case decided by the Supreme -Court.
Dred Scott, it will be remembered, was a negro "whose Missouri
master, after a short residence in Illinois, had moved into what was
then Wisconsin Territory (now Minnesota) with the slave, and,
after li-ving there for a time, had returned to Missouri and sold
him. Scott thereupon sued in a Missouri court to establish his free
dom, claiming that his residence in the free State of Illinois and the
free Territory of Wisconsin had emancipated him. The first local
court sustained his contention, but the decision was reversed on
appeal. He was then sold to a man in New York, and began
another suit in the federal courts of St. Louis, which promptly
ruled against him.
The case was then appealed to the United States Supreme
Court at Washington, where the plaintiff was represented by
Montgomery Blair and George Ticknor Curtis, and the defendant
by Reverdy Johnson, whom Lincoln had hoped to meet in the
McCormick case, and after two elaborate hearings Scott was
declared a slave by a divided vote of the judges, two of whom wrote
dissenting opinions. This decision of the highest tribunal in the
.country was expected to settle the slavery issue, for it decreed pro
tection to slave-owners in the enjoyment of their property wherever
situated, as a constitutional right.
Lincoln, however, promptly challenged the authority of any
court to dispose of a great national issue such as the slavery ques
tion, and early in the debate with Douglas he forced the discussion
of this subject to the fore.
" In the field of argumentative statement, Mr. Webster at the
time of his death had no rival in America, " says Mr. Boutwell, " but

BATTLES OF THE GLANTS 279
he has left nothing more exact, explicit and convincing than this
extract from Lincoln's first speech in the great debate:
" 'If any man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be
allowed to object,'
which embodies the substance of the opinion of the Supreme Ccurt
of the United States in the Dred Scott case. "
Douglas instantly responded by declaring that those who
resisted the finding of the Court were traitors fomenting revolution,
and that his adversary's duty as a lawyer was to uphold the law and
discountenance resistance to its decrees. But Lincoln's reply was
so calm, fair, dignified, and professionally correct, that it not only
put his accuser completely in the wrong, but placed his opposition
on a high and perfectly legal plane :
"We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in
obedience to and respect for the judicial department of govern
ment, " he asserted. "But we think the Dred Scott decision is
erroneous. We know the Court that made it has often overruled
its own decisions and we shaU do what we can to have it overrule
this. We offer no resistance to it. If this important decision had
been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without
any apparent partizan bias and in accordance with legal public
expectation and the steady practice of the departments throughout
our history, and had been in no part based on assumed historical
facts which are not really true ; or if, wanting in some of these, it
had been before the Court more than once, and had there been
affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might
be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to
acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it
wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resist
ance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not
having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country. "
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 270.
The Conference over Lincoln's Proposed Questions
"The next joint debate was to take place at Freeport six days
later. In the interval, Mr. Lincoln addressed meetings in Henry,
MarshaU County ; Augusta, Hancock County ; and Macomb, McDon-

2 8o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
ough Count\' During this interval he prepared the answer to the
seven questions put to him by Douglas at Otta\\'a, and wrote the
four questions that he propounded to Douglas at Freeport. The
second of these, viz :
" 'Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful
way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Consti
tution ? '
was made the subject of a conference between Mr. Lincoln and a
number of his 'friends from Chicago, among whom were Norman B.
Judd and Dr. C. H. Ray, the latter the chief editor of the (Chicago)
Tribune. This conference took place at the town of Dixon. I was
not present, but Doctor Ray told me that all who were there
counseled Mr. Lincoln not to put that question to Douglas, because
he would answer it in the affirmative and thus probably secure his
re-election. . Mr. Lincoln replied that to draw an affirmative
answer from Douglas on this question was exactly what he wanted. "
Horace White in Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page io,S.
" The Battle of i860 Is Worth a Hundred of This "
"If he does that, " said Mr. Lincoln, "he can never be Presi
dent. " " But, " said the friends, "he may be Senator. "
"Perhaps," he replied, "but I am after larger game; the
battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 151.
The Second Debate, at Freeport — Its Fatal Question and Answer
Freeport, the place of their next meeting (August 27th), was
in a region where, as in the Ottawa district, even the "regular"
Democrats had repeatedly indorsed what Douglas was now calling-
Abolition sentiments.
The opening was made lively and picturesque by the arrival of
the Little Giant in a gay barouche drawn by four white horses and
loudly greeted by the throng; and still wilder applause hailed the
advent of Lincoln, whose chariot was a plain "prairie schooner."
This occasion is chiefiy memorable for one of the series of
questions propounded to Douglas and for the answer given, which
bore on his subsequent career with the power of inexorable fate.

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS

After some preliminary remarks, Lincoln said of the questions
asked of him at Ottawa :
"I now propose that I shall answer any of the interrogatories
upon condition that he will answer questions from me not exceeding
the same number. I give him an opportunity to respond. [A pause.]
The Judge remains silent. I will now say that I will answer his
interrogatories, whether he answers mine or not ; and after I have
done so, I shall propound mine to him. "
He then read the seven questions of Douglas, answering in
substance that he was " impliedly, if not expressly,
pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit
slavery in all the United States Territories ; and was not generally
opposed to the honest acquisition of territory."
After a fuller expression of his views on some of these points,
he propounded four questions to Douglas, of which the second was
as follows: "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful
way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
slavery from its limits?"
The friends of Lincoln were "thunderstruck" when they heard
this question read from the stand, feeling that this insured their
candidate's defeat.
When Douglas in his response came to this interrogatory, he
read it with assurance and exultation in his voice, promptly an
swered it in the affirmative, and was "immensely applauded." It
seemed as if this were just the opportunity he had longed for.
" It matters not, " he said, "what way the Supreme Court may
hereafter decide as to the abstract question as to whether slavery
may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the
people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it, as they
please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour
anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations. . . I
hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point."
Lincoln's questioning brought so expUcit and direct an answer
at this time — in spite of the Supreme Court's decision — as to make
a positive impression at the South. Douglas in vain tried to
remove it, even quoting from a speech made by Jefferson Davis in

282 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Maine, before the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed, as sustaining
his own view. He was not forgiven, and on no one did his Freeport
avowal take effect more adversely to Douglas than upon Jefferson
Davis himself. By forcing Douglas to commit himself upon this
question in exact terms, Lincoln counted on widening the breach in
the Democratic party to the advantage of the Republican cause,
whatever the first effect on himself. His sagacity in this will not
now be disputed.
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency , Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 177.
The "Thinness" of Douglas's Freeport Sophism
This rare sophism, "as thin," to use a Lincolnian illustration,
" as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a
pigeon that had been starved to death," had nevertheless served
Douglas's purpose with the Democrats of Illinois. But how had it
affected his popularity with the party at large, and, above all,
would it, as Lincoln had predicted, cost him the Presidency?
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 117.
Douglas Falls into Lincolh's Trap
The answ^er to this question required Douglas to interpret the
Dred Scott decision. If he replied in the negative the people of
Illinois would repudiate him, because they would not countenance
the idea that the mischief had been done and that slavery had
already been forced upon the Territories. If, on the other hand, he
answered that the Territories were still free to choose or reject
slavery, he would have to explain away the Dred Scott decision,
which guaranteed protection to slave property in the Territories as
a constitutional right; and this would displease the Southern Democ
racy, which was then listening to his every word to determine
whether he was or was not a safe Presidential candidate.
As soon as he had uttered it, Douglas must have seen that his
answer involved a gross blunder in law ; but if he had any doiibt on
the matter, Lincoln speedily dispelled it. ' How could the constitu
tional right of peaceful enjoyment of slave property guaranteed in
the Dred Scott case be canceled by police or any other hostile
legislation?' he demanded. Any such ordinance or law would be
contrary to the Constitution and absolutely void. Either Judge

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 283
Douglas's answer or the doctrine of the Supreme Court was bad law,
for the one was inconsistent with the other.
But illogical as it was, this fallacy caught the popular fancy,
and Douglas, seeing that it satisfied his constituents, held to it and
was elected to the Senate. Nevertheless, as Lincoln anticipated,
his blunder in law cost him the Presidency, and not long afterward
Judah Benjarhin, one of the most ardent and able representatives
of the South, arraigned him as a renegade and traitor.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 276.
"It's Too Big a Thing for You; You Will Never Get It!"
He and I met accidentally, about nine o'clock on a hot, sultry
evening, at a flag railroad station about twenty miles west of Spring
field, on my return from a great meeting at Petersburg in Menard
County. He had been driven to the station in a buggy and left
there alone. I was already there. The train that we intended to
take for Springfield was about due. After vainly waiting for half
an hour for its arrival, a thunderstorm compelled us to take refuge
in an empty freight car standing on a side track, there being no
buildings of any sort at the station. We squatted on the floor of
the car and fell to talking on all sorts of subjects. It was then and
there that he told me that, when he was clerking in a country store,
his highest political ambition was to be a member of the State
Legislature. " Since then, of course, " he said laughingly, ," I have
grown some, but my friends got me into this business [meaning the
canvass]. I did not consider myself qualified for the United States
Senate, and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was.
Now, to be sure, " he continued with another of his peculiar laughs,
" I am con"vinced,that I am good enough for it ; but in spite of it all,
I am saying to myself every day : 'It's too big a thing for you; you
"will never get it. ' Mary [his wife] insists, however, that I am going
to be Senator and President of the United States, too. " These last
words he followed "with a roar of laughter, with his arms around his
knees, and shaking all over with mirth at his wife's an^bition.
" Just think, " he exclaimed, " of such a Sucker as me as President ! "
Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. I, page 9^.
[Note. — "Sucker" is a name applied facetiously to a resident of
Illinois, as "Hoosier" is given to a native of Indiana. — W. W.]

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

McClellan, Vice-President of the Illinois Central Railroad,
with Douglas and against Lincoln
Another incident in point is recalled by Major Whitney:
"Lincoln and I," says he, "were at the Centralia agricultural
fair the day after the debate at Jonesboro. Night came on and we
were tired, having been on the fair grounds all day. We were to go
north on the Illinois Central Railroad. The train was due at mid
night and the depot was full of people. I managed to get a chair
for Lincoln in the office of the superin
tendent of the railroad, but small poli
ticians would intrude so that he could
get scarcely a moment's sleep. The
train came and was filled instantly. I
got a seat near the door for Lincoln
and myself. He was worn out and
had to meet Douglas the next day at
Charleston. An empty car, called a
saloon car, was hitched on to the rear of
the train and locked up. I asked the
conductor, who knew Lincoln and my
self well, — we were both attorneys of
the road, — if Lincoln could not ride in
that car; that he was exhausted and
needed rest ; but the conductor refused.
I afterwards got him in by a stratagem.
"At the same time, George B. McClellan in person [then Vice-
President of the road] was taking Douglas around in a special car
and special train; and that was the unjust treatment Lincoln got
from the Illinois Central Railroad ! ' '
Henry C. Whitney as quoted in Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 112.
"You Can't Disprove a Proposition by CalUng Euclid a Liar"
During this debate [at Charleston] many points made by
Lincoln were suggestive of his training : his figures of speech were
almost always drawn from his personal experience in the backwoods,
on the farm, or from his more recent studies in American history.
To one who has followed the history of the man, an examination
of these remarkable traces of Lincoln's mental habits and earlier

GEORGE B. McCLELLAN IN

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 285

pursuits is exceedingly interesting. For example, after he had
been admitted to the Bar, noticing the frequent use of the word
"demonstrate," and feeling that a mathematical proposition, as
demonstrated, was a good illustration of the power of tmth, he
manfully went at the study of Euclid, and, to use his own expres
sion, "collared" it before he left it.
In the debates with Douglas he was irritated with Douglas's
constant iteration of the charge that he, Lincoln, had endorsed
certain statements of Senator Trumbull's that were, as Douglas said,
untrue. Finally Lincoln said :
" Why, sir, there is not a single statement in Trumbull's speech
that depends on Trumbull's veracity. Why does not Judge
Douglas answer the facts? . . . If you have studied geometry
you remember that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all
the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Euclid has
shown how to work it out. Now, if you undertook to disprove that
proposition, to prove that it was erroneous, could you do it by
calling Euclid a liar?
"That is the way Judge Douglas answers Trumbull. "
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 177.
Douglas Like a Cuttlefish
(Part of Lincoln's reply to Douglas in the Debate at Charleston, September 18, 1858.)
"Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish — a small species of fish
that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throw
ing out a black fluid which makes the "ft'ater so dark the enemy
cannot see it; and thus it escapes. "
Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, Douglas Debate, Vol. II, page 33.
How Lincoln Shook a Witness
During the joint debates [at Charleston] Douglas accused Lin
coln of having, while in Congress, voted against the appropriation
for supplies to be sent the United States soldiers in Mexico. In
reply Lincoln said :
"This is a perversion of the facts. I was opposed to the policy
of the administration in declaring war against Mexico; but when
war was declared I never failed to vote for the support of any prop
osition looking to the comfort of our poor feUows who were main-

286 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
taining the dignity of our flag in a war that I thought unnecessary
and unjust." He gradually became more and more excited ; his voice thrilled
and his whole frame shook. Sitting on the stand was O. B. Ficklin,
[a Douglas man] who had served in Congress with Lincoln in 1847.
Lincoln reached back, took Ficklin by the coat-collar, back of
his neck, and in no gentle manner lifted him from his seat, as if he
were a kitten, and roared :
"Fellow-citizens, here is Ficklin, who was at that time in Con
gress with me, and he knows it is a lie. "
After the speaking was over, Ficklin, who had a warm personal
friendship with him, said :
"Lincoln, you nearly shook all the Democracy out of me
to-day. "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K, McClure, page 167.
" The Judge Was on the Wrong Side of the Bar "
I was in Macomb, Illinois, and heard that Lincoln and Douglas
were to have a joint debate in Galesburg. I determined to hear
that discussion, and, with much difficulty, for I was penniless,
managed to get there. Nearly every detail of that memorable
occasion has vanished from my memory except the introduction to
Lincoln's speech and the closing part of that of Douglas. I never
shall forget them.
Judge Douglas closed his speech with a very bitter attack upon
Lincoln's career. He said that Lincoln had tried everything and
had always been a failure. He had tried farming, and had failed
at that, — had tried flatboating, and had failed at that, — had tried
school-teaching, and had failed at that, — had sold liquor in a saloon,
and had failed at that, — had tried law, and had failed at that, — and
now he had gone into poUtics, and was doomed to make the worst
failure of aU. " That is the man," said Judge Douglas, "who wants
my place in the Senate. You don't know him in the northern part
of the State so well as we do who live in the southern part. "
That part of Judge Douglas's speech aroused my anger to white
heat, and I was provoked at Lincoln as he sat there and laughed
during its delivery. He seemed to be greatly amused by it. At
length he rose to reply. He came forward and said that he was very

LINCOLN IN i8s8
While the great debates were in progress, he sat for this ambrotype at Pittsfield, Illinois, October i,
just after making a speech in the public square.

(287>

288 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
much obliged to Judge Douglas for the very accurate history that he
had taken the trouble to compile. It was all true, — every word of
it. "I have, " said Lincoln, "worked on a farm; I have split rails;
I have worked on a flatboat; I have tried to practise law. There
is just one thing that Judge Douglas forgot to relate. He says that
I sold liquor over a counter. He forgot to tell you that, while I was
one side of the counter, the Judge was always on the other side."
[Some auditors state that Lincoln added: " But / have quit the
business!" — W W.]
That allusion to Judge Douglas's well-known infirmity set the
whole audience wild. The people rent the heavens with their shouts.
It was quite a long time before quiet was restored. Then Mr. Lincoln
delivered one of those masterly orations that made him famous.
Personal Recollections of .Abraham Lincoln, Thomas H. Tibbies. Success Magazine, Vol. IX, Febru
ary, 1906, page 137.
"Just Before the Battle" at Quincy
One of the appointments called me to Quincy (Illinois) on
the day when one of the great debates between Lincoln and Douglas
was to take place there, and on that occasion I was to meet Abraham
Lincoln myself. On the evening before the day of the debate, I
was on a railroad train bound for Quincy. The car in which I
traveled was full of men who discussed the question with great
animation. A member of the Republican State Committee accom
panied me and sat by my side.
All at once, after the train had left a way station, I observed a
great commotion among my fellow-passengers, many of whom
jumped from their seats and passed eagerly around a tall man who
had just entered the car. They addressed him in the most familiar
style: " Hello, Abe! How are you?" and so on. And he responded
in the same manner : " Good evening, Ben ! How are you, Joe ? Glad
to see you, Dick!" and there was much laughter at some things
he said, which, in the confusion of voices, I could not understand.
"Why," exclaimed my companion, the committee-man,
"there's Lincoln himself!" He pressed through the crowd and
introduced me to Abraham Lincoln, whom I then saw for the first
time. He received me "with an off-hand cordiality, like an old ac
quaintance, having been informed of what I was doing in the cam-

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 289
paign, and we sat down together. In a somewhat high-pitched but
pleasant voice he began to talk to me, telling me much about the
points he and Douglas had made in the debates at different places,
and about those he intended to inake at Quincjr on the morrow.
When, in a tone of perfect ingenuousness, he asked me — a
young beginner in politics — what I thought about this and that, I
should have felt very much honored by his confidence, had he per
mitted me to regard him as a great man. But he talked in so simple
and familiar a strain, and his manner and homely phrase were so
absolutely free from any semblance of self-consciousness or preten
sion to superiority, that I soon felt as if I had known hiixi all my
life, and we had long been close friends.
When we arrived at Quincy, we found a large number of friends
waiting for him, and there was much hand-shaking and many
familiar salutations again. Then they got him into a carriage,
much against his wish, for he said he would prefer to "foot it to
Browning's," an old friend's house, where he was to have supper
and a quiet night. But the night was by no means quiet outside.
The blare of brass bands and the shouts of enthusiastic and not in
all cases quite sober Democrats and Republicans, cheering and
hurrahing for their respective champions, did not cease until the
small hours.
The next morning the country people began to stream into
town for the great meeting, some singly, on foot or on horseback,
or small parties of men and women, and even children, in buggies
or farm wagons ; while others were marshaled in solemn procession
from outlying towns or districts "with banners and drums, many of
them headed by maidens in white "with tri-colored scarfs, who
represented the Goddess of Liberty and the different States of
the Union, and whose beauty was duly admired by everyone, includ
ing themselves. On the whole, the Democratic displays were much
more elaborate and gorgeous than those of the Republicans, and it
was said that Douglas had plenty of money to spend for such things.
He himself also traveled in what was called in those days "great
style," with a secretary and servants and a numerous escort of
somewhat loud companions, moving from place to place by special
train with cars specially decorated for the. occasion, all of which
contrasted strongly with Lincoln's extremely modest simpUcity.
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, page 89,

i()o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
The Sixth Joint Debate, at Quincy
The great debate took place in the afternoon on the open
square, where a large pine-board platform had been built for the
committee of arrangements, the speakers, and the persons they
"wished to have with them. I thus was favored with a seat on that
platform. In front of it many thousands of people were assembled.
Republicans and Democrats standing peaceably together, only
chaffing one another now and then in a good-tempered way.
As the champions arrived they were demonstratively cheered
by their adherents. The presiding officer agreed upon by the two
parties called the meeting to order and announced the program
of proceedings. Mr. Lincoln was to open with an allowance of an
hour, and Senator Douglas was to follow "with a speech of one hour
and a half, and Mr. Lincoln was to speak half an hour in conclu
sion. The first part of Mr. Lincoln's opening address was devoted
to a refutation of some things Douglas had said at previous meetings.
This refutation may, indeed, have been- required for the settlement
of disputed points, but it did not strike me as anything extraor
dinary, either in substance or in form 
There was, however, in all he said, a tone of earnest truthful
ness, of elevated, noble sentiment, and of kindly sympathy, which
added greatly to the strength of his argument, and became, as in
the course of his speech he touched upon the moral side of the
question in debate, powerfully impressive. Even when attacking
his opponent with keen satire or invective, which, coming from any
other speaker, would ha\'e sounded bitter and cruel, there was still
a certain something in his utterance making his hearers feel that
those thrusts came from a reluctant heart, and that he would much
rather have treated his foe as a friend.
When Lincoln had sat down amid the enthusiastic plaudits of
his adherents, I asked myself with some trepidation in my heart,
"What "will Douglas say now?" . .
No more striking contrast could have been imagined than that
between those two men as they appeared upon the platform. By
the side of Lincoln's tall, lank, and ungainly form, Douglas stood
almost like a dwarf, very short of stature, but square-shouldered
and broad-chested, a massive head upon a strong neck, the very
embodiment of force, combativeness, and staying power 

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 291
On the stage at Quincy he looked rather natty and well groomed in
excellently fitting broadcloth and shining linen. But his face
seemed a little puffy, and it was said that he had been drinking hard
"with some boon companions either on his journey or after his arrival.
The deep horizontal wrinkle between his keen eyes was unusually
dark and scowling. While he was listening to Lincoln's speech, a
contemptuous smile now and then flitted across his lips, and when
he rose, the tough parliamentary gladiator, he tossed his mane
"with an air of overbearing superiority, of threatening defiance, as
if to say, " How dare any one stand up against me? "
As I looked at him, I detested him deeply; but my detesta
tion was not free from an anxious dread as to what was to come.
His voice, naturally a strong baritone, gave forth a hoarse and rough,
and at times even something like a barking sound. His tone was,
from the very start, angry, dictatorial, and insolent in the extreme.
In one of his first sentences he charged Lincoln with "base insinua
tions, " and then he went on in that style with a wrathful frown on
his brow, defiantly shaking his head, clenching his fists, and stamping
his feet. No language seemed too offensive for him, and even
inoffensive things he would sometimes bring out in a manner which
sounded as if intended to be insulting; and thus he occasionally
called forth, instead of applause from his friends, demonstrations of
remonstrance from the opposition. But his sentences were well
put together, his points strongly accentuated, his argumentation
seemingly clear and plausible, his sophisms skilfully woven so as tc
throw the desired flood of darkness upon the subject and thus
beguile the tmtutored mind, his appeals to prejudice unprincipled
and reckless, but shrewdly aimed, and his invectives vigorous and
exceedingly trying to the temper of the assailed party. On the
whole, his friends were well pleased "with his performance, and
rewarded him -with vociferous cheers.
But then came Lincoln's closing speech of half an hour, which
seemed completely to change the temper of the atmosphere. He
replied to Douglas's arguments and attacks with rapid thrusts so
deft and piercing, "with humorous retort so quaint and pat, with
"witty illustrations so clinching, and he did it all so good-naturedly,
that the meeting, again and again, broke out into bursts of delight
by which even many of his opponents w^ere carried away, while the
scowl on Douglas's face grew darker and darker.
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, page 92.

292 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
" A Chance to Breathe "
I succeeded in obtaining an interview with him after the crowd
had departed. He sat in the room with his boots off to relieve his
very large feet from the pain occasioned by continuous standing, —
or to put it in his own words :
" I Uke to give my feet a chance to breathe. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Da-vid R. Locke (" Petroleum V. Nasby "). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 441.
The Seventh and Last Debate, at Alton
At their last joint discussion in October, at Alton, where
Love joy, twenty-one years before, had been killed because of his
fidelity to freedom, Lincoln, in closing the debate, said :
"Is slavery wrong? That is the real issue. That is the issue
that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge
Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between
these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world.
They are two principles that have stood face to face from the be
ginning of time ; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the
common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of
kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself.
It is the same spirit that says :
" 'You work, and toil, and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No
matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king
who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the
fruit of their labor, or from one race of men, as an apology for
enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle 
" Has anything ever threatened the existence of the Union,
save and except this very institution of slavery ? What is it that
we hold most dear among us? Our own liberty and prosperity.
What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity except this
institution of slavery? If this is true how do you propose to im
prove the condition of things by enlarging slavery? By spreading
it out and making it bigger?  That is no proper way of
treating what you regard as wrong. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page isi.
Senator Trumbull in the Campaign
" Mention should be made of the services of Senator Trumbull
in the campaign, Mr. TrumbuU was a political debater, scarcely.

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 293
if at all, inferior to either Lincoln or Douglas. He had given
Douglas more trouble in the Senate, during the three years he had
been there, than anybody else in that body. He had known
Douglas from his youth, and he knew all the joints in his armor.
He possessed a courage equal to any occasion, and he wielded a
blade of tempered steel 
"Douglas scented danger when Trumbull took the field, and
with his usual adroitness sought to gain sympathy by making it
appear that it was no fair game. At Havana he made a
rather moving remonstrance against this ' playing of two upon one, '
as he called it. Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at the same place,
thought it worth while to reply :
'"I understand,' he said, 'that Judge Douglas yesterday
referred to the fact that both Judge Trumbull and myself are making
speeches throughout the State to beat him for the Senate, and that
he tried to create sympathy by the suggestion that this was playing
two upon one against him. . . Judge Trumbull is a Republican
like myself, and he naturally feels a lively interest in the success of
his party. Is there anything wrong about that?'
" Douglas had as many helpers as Lincoln had. His complaint
implied that there was nobody on the Democratic side who was
anywhere near being a match for Trumbull, and this was the fact."
Horace 'White, quoted in Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II,
page 129.
"It Hurt Too Bad to Laugh, and He Was Too Big to Cry"
The immediate result of the campaign was the triumph of
Douglas, who had certainly made not only a very able and brilliant
but a splendidly gallant fight, with Republicans assailing him in
front and Administrationists in rear. Lincoln was disappointed.
His feelings had been so deeply engaged, and he had worked so
strenuously, and the result had been so much in doubt, that defeat
was trying. But he bore it with his wonted resolute equanimity.
He said he felt " like the boy that stumped his toe, — 'it hurt too bad
to laugh, and he was too big to cry. ' " In fact, there were encourag
ing elements. The popular vote stood: Republicans, 126,084;
Douglas Democrats, 121,940; Lecompton Democrats, 5,091. But
the apportionment of districts was such that the Legislature con
tained a majority for Douglas.

2 94 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
So the prestige of victory seemed separated from its fruits;
for the nation, attentively watching this duel, saw that the new
man had convinced upwards of four thousand voters more than had
the great leader of the Democracy. Douglas is reported to have
said that, during his sixteen years in Congress, he had found no man
in the Senate whom he w^ould not rather encounter in debate than
Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, John T. Morse, Jr., Vol. I, page 149.
No "Bar'l of Money" for Lincoln in That Campaign
The result of the campaign of 1858 wrought more disaster to
Lincoln's finances than to his political prospects. The loss of over
six months from his business, and the expenses of the canvass, made
a severe strain on his personal income. He was anxious to get back
to the law once more and earn a little ready money. A letter
written about this time to his friend Norman B. Judd, Chairman of
the Republican State Committee, will serve to throw some light on
the situation he found himself in.
"I have been on expenses so long without earning anything, "
he says, "that I am absolutely without money now for even house
hold expenses. Still, if you can put in $250 for me towards dis
charging the debt of the committee, I will allow it when you and I
settle the private matter between us. This, with what I have
already paid, with an outstanding note of mine, will exceed my
subscription of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordinary ex
penses during the campaign, all of which being added to my loss
of time and business, bears pretty heavily upon one no better off
than I am. But as I had the post of honor, it is not for me to be
over-nice. "
At the time this letter was written his property consisted of
the house and lot on which he lived, a few law books and some
household furniture. He owned a small tract of land in Iowa
which yielded him nothing, and the annual income from his law
practice did not exceed $3,000; yet the party's committee in
Chicago were dunning their late standard-bearer, who, besides the
chagrin of his defeat, his own expenses, and the sacrifice of his time,
was asked to aid in meeting the general expenses of the campaign.
At this day one is a little surprised that some of the generous and
wealthy members of the party in Chicago or elsewhere did not come

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 295
forward and volunteer their aid. But they did not, and whether
Lincoln felt in his heart the injustice_ of this treatment or not, he
went straight ahead in his own path and said nothing about it.
Herndon s Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page 157.
"It Gave Me a Hearing on the Great and Durable Question"
But able as were Lincoln's arguments, deep as was the impres
sion he had made, he was not elected to the senatorship. Douglas
won fairly enough ; though it is well to note that if the Republicans
did not elect a senator they gained a substantial number of votes
over those polled in 1856.
Lincoln accepted the result with a serenity inexplicable to his
supporters. To him the contest was but one battle in a "durable"
struggle. Little matter who won now, if in the end the right
triumphed. From the first he looked at the final result — not at the
senatorship. " I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish, " he said at Chicago
in July. " I do not pretend that I w^ould not like to go to the United
States Senate ; I make no such hypocritical pretense ; but I do say
to you that in this mighty issue it is nothing to you, nothing to the
mass of the people of this nation, w^hether or not Judge Douglas or
myself shall ever be heard of after this night ; it may be a trifie to
either of us, but in connection with this mighty question, upon
which hang the destinies of the nation perhaps, it is absolutely
nothing." The intense heat and fury of the debates, the defeat in Novem
ber, did not alter a jot this high view :
"I am glad I made the late race, " he wrote Dr. A. G. Henry.
" It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age
"which I would have had in no other way ; and though I now sink
out of view and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some
marks which shall tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am
gone."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell Vol. I, page 323.
Parallel Careers of Lincoln and Douglas
The careers of Lincoln and Douglas were closely connected.
In their professions and in their politics, they were rivals, and
finally became rival candidates for the Presidency.

LINCOLN IN 1859
Mrs. Lincoln pronounced this the best likeness ever taken of her husband.

(296)

BATTLES OF THE GIANTS 297
1839 — Both were admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of
Illinois on the same day.
1 84 1 — Both courted the same lady.
1846 — Both represented Illinois in Congress.
1858 — They were opposing candidates for United States
Senator. i860 — They were both candidates for the Presidency.
Winnowings for Lincoln's Birthday, Agnes Mawson, Note i6, page 86.
Called to Speak in Kansas and in Ohio
The close of his letter (to the Hon. N. B. Judd) :
"You are feeling badly, 'and this, too, shall pass away,' never
fear, ' ' shows that so far from feeling chagrin or depression over his
defeat, Lincoln had a word of cheer for his friends.
In the autumn of 1859 he visited Kansas, and the people of that
young commonwealth received him as one who had so eloquently
pleaded their cause should be received. . . .
In the autumn of 1859 Douglas visited Ohio and made a canvass
for the Democratic party. On his appearance, the cry arose at
once :
"Where is Lincoln, the man who beat him in Illinois? Send
for him!" Lincoln was sent for. He came and spoke with great abiUty,
at Columbus and at Cincinnati, and at the latter place addressed
himself especially to Kentuckians. He said, among other things,
that they ought to nominate for President "my distinguished
friend. Judge Douglas. " " In my opinion it is, " says he, " for you
to take him or be beaten. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 155.
Letter Explaining What Was Gained by Making the Contest
for the Senatorship
"Springfield, Ills., April 30, 1859.
"Hon. S. p. Chase.
"Dear Sir: Reaching home yesterday I found your kind note
of the 14th, informing me that you have given Mr. Whitney the
appointment he desired; and also mentioning the present encour
aging aspects of the Republican cause — and our Illinois canvass of
last year.

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

"I thank you for the appointment ; allow me also to thank you
as being one of the very few distinguished men whose sympathy
we in Illinois did receive last year, of all those whose sympathy we
thought we had reason to expect.
' ' Of course I would have preferred success ; but, failing in that, I
have no regrets for having rejected all advice to the contrary, and
resolutely made the struggle. Had we thrown ourseh'es into the
arms of Douglas, as re-electing him by our votes would have done,
the Republican cause would have been annihilated in Illinois, and,
as I think, demoralized and prostrated everywhere for years, if not
forever. As it is, in the language of Benton, 'we are clean,' and
the Republican star gradually rises higher everywhere.
"Yours truly,
"A. Lincoln."
From the original in the Collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

CHAPTER XI
Widening Renown
Speaking in Ohio
I met Lincoln again in 1859, in Columbus, Ohio, where he made
a speech, which was only a continuation of the Illinois debates of the
year before. ... It is curious to note in this speech that
Lincoln denied being in favor of negro suffrage, and took pains to
affirm his support of the law of Illinois forbidding the intermarriage
of whites and negroes. I asked him if such a denial were worth
while, to which he replied :
" The law means nothing. I shall never marry a negress, but
I have no objection to any one else doing so. If a white man wants
to marry a negro woman, let him if the negro woman can stand it."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke (" Petroleum V. Nasby "). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 446.
Another Great Murder Trial
Another murder case in which Lincoln defended the accused
occurred in August, 1859. The victim was a student in his own law
office, Greek Crafton. The murderer, Peachy Harrison, was the
grandson of Lincoln's old political antagonist, Peter Cartwright.
Both young men were connected with the best famiUes in the
county ; the brother of one was married to the sister of the other ;
they had been Ufelong friends. In an altercation upon some
political question hot words were exchanged, and Harrison, beside
himself, stabbed Crafton, who three days later died from the
wound. The best known lawyers of the State were engaged for the
case. Senator John M. Palmer and General A. McClernand were on
the side of the prosecution. Among those who represented the
defendant were Lincoln, Herndon, Logan, and Senator Shelby M.
CuUom. The tragic pathos of a case which involved, as this did, the
deepest affections of almost the entire community, reached its
climax in the appearance in court of the venerable Peter Cart'wright.
(299)

300 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
No face in Illinois was better known than his, no life had been spent
in a more relentless war on evil. Eccentric and aggressive as he
was, he was honored far and wide ; and when he arose in the witness
stand, his white hair crowned with this cruel sorrow, the most indif
ferent spectator felt that his examination would be unbearable.
It fell to Lincoln to question Cartwright. With the rarest gentle
ness he began to put his questions.
" How long have you known the prisoner? "
Cartwright's head dropped on his breast for a moment; then
straightening himself, he passed his hand across his eyes and an
swered in a deep, quavering voice:
" I have known him since a babe, he laughed and cried on mj'
knee. "
The examination ended by Lincoln drawing from the witness
the story of how Crafton had said to him, just before death :
"I am dying; I wUl soon part with all I love on earth, and I
want you to sa}' to my slayer 'that I forgive him. I want to leave
this earth with a forgiveness of all who have in any way injured me. "
This examination made a profound impression on the jury.
Lincoln closed his argument by picturing the scene anew, appeaHng
to the jury to practise the same forgiving spirit that the murdered
man had shown on his death-bed. It was undoubtedly to his
handling of the grandfather's evidence that Harrison's acquittal
was due.
Tlie Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 273.
The "Bucking" of the Chess-board
On one occasion Mr. Lincoln was engaged in a game of chess
with Judge Treat, when the irrepressible Tad entered the office to
bring his father home to supper. As Mr. Lincoln did not obey the
summons, Tad attempted one or two offensive movements against
the chess-board, but was warded off by the long outstretched arm
of his father. When a cessation of hostilities occurred, Mr. Lincoln,
intent on the game, feU off his guard. It was not long, however,
before the table suddenly bucked, sending the chess-board and pieces
to the floor. Judge Treat was naturally vexed, and strongly urged
the infliction of summary punishment upon the miscreant. But
Mr. Lincoln only said, as he calmly took his hat to go home :

WIDENING RENOWN 301
"Considering the position of your pieces. Judge, at the time
of the upheaval, I think you had no reason to complain. "
The Judge, however, has always said that he never could forgive
Lincoln for not chastising that urchin.
The Every-Day Life of Lincoln, F. F. Browne, page 206.
John Brown at Harper's Ferry
There now occurred another strange event which, if it had been
specially designed as a climax for the series. of great political sensa
tions since 1852, could scarcely have been more dramatic. This
was John Brown's invasion of Harper's Ferry in order to create a
slave insurrection 
On the 4th of July, 1859, John Brown, under an assumed name,
with two sons and another follower, appeared near Harper's Ferry,
and soon after rented the Kennedy farm, in Maryland, five miles
from town, where he made a pretense of cattle-dealing and mining,
but in reality collected secretly his rifles, revolvers, ammunition,
pikes, blankets, tents, and miscellaneous articles for a campaign.
His rather eccentric actions, and the irregular coming and going of
occasional strangers at his cabin, created no suspicion in the
neighborhood. . . . He appointed the attack for the 24th of
October; but for some unexplained reason he precipitated his
movement in advance of that date. From this point the move
ments exhibit no foresight or , completeness of preparation, no
diligent pursuit of an intelligent plan, nor skill to devise momentary
expedients ; only a blind impulse to act.
On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, Brown gave his final
orders, humanely directing his men to take no life where they could
avoid it. Placing a few pikes and other implements in his one-
horse wagon, he started with his company of eighteen followers at
eight o'clock in the evening, leaving five men behind. They cut
the 'telegraph wires on the way, and reached Harper's Ferry about
II,: o'clock. He himself broke open the armory gates, took the
wa'tchmen prisoners, and made that place his headquarters. Sepa
rating his men into small detachments, he took possession of, and
attempted to hold, the two bridges, the arsenal and the rifie-factory.
Next he sent. six of his men five miles into the country to bring in
several pi-prhinent slave-owners and their slaves, This wasaccom-

JOHN BROWN AFTER HIS CAPTURE

WIDENING RENOWN 303
plished before daylight, and all were brought as prisoners to Brown
at the armory 
Meanwhile, about midnight of Sunday, they detained the
railroad train three hours, but finally allowed it to proceed. A
negro porter was shot on the bridge. The town began to be alarmed.
Citizens were' captured at various points, and brought to swell the
number of prisoners at the armory, counting forty or fifty by morn
ing. Still, not until daylight, and even until the usual hour of
rising on -Monday morning, did the town comprehend the nature and
extent of the 'trouble.
What, n,ow, did Brown intend to do?  Both he and
his men gave everybody to undervStand without reserve that they
had come not to kill whites, but only to liberate slaves. Soon, also,
he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. But that cere
mony" did not make soldiers of them, as his favorite maxim taught.
They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining
themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reenforcement.
He gav.e his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as
hostages, and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would
exchange them for slaves.
Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect an
armistice, or compromise with the citizens, to stop bloodshed, on
condition that he be permitted to hold the armory and retain the
liberated negroes 
As the day dawned upon the town and the truth upon the
citizens, his situation in a military point of view was already hope
less — eighteen men against perhaps 1000 adults, and these eighteen
scattered in four or five squads, without means of mutual support,
communication, or even contingent orders! .... By Monday
noon the squad in the rifle-works, distant one mile from the armory,
had been driven out, killed, and captured. The other squads, not so
far from their leader, joined him at the armory, minus their losses.
Already he was driven to take refuge with his diminished force in
the engine-house, a low, strong, brick building in the armory yard,
where they barricaded doors and improvised loop-holes, and into
which they took with them ten selected prisoners as hostages. But
the expedient was one of desperation. By this movement Brown
literally shut himself up in his own prison, from which escape was
impossible.

304

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

A desultory fire was kept up through doors and loop-holes.
But now the whole country had become thoroughly aroused, and
sundry military companies from neighboring towns and counties
poured into Harper's Ferry. . President Buchanan also
took prompt measures; and on Monday night a detachment of
eighty marines from
the Washington
Navy Yard under
command of Brevet
Colonel Robert E.
Lee, of the United
States Army,
reached the scene
of action, and were
stationed in the
armory yard so as to
cut off the insurgents
from all retreat.
At dayUght on
Tuesday morning
Brown was sum
moned to surrender
at discretion, but he
refused. The in
stant the officer left
the engine-house a
storming party of
marines battered in
the doors ; in five
minutes the conflict
was over. One
marine was shot
dead in the assault ;
Brown fell under severe sword and bayonet wounds, two of his
sons lay dead or dying, and four or five of his men were
made prisoners, only two remaining unhurt. After an
experimental campaign of thirty-six hours ten men of Brown's total
force of twenty -two were killed ; fwe escaped, and seven were cap-

LINCOLN IN '59

WIDENING RENOWN 305
tured, tried and hanged. Of the towns-people, five had been killed
and eight wounded.
While John Brown's ability for military leadership was too
insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage
compelled the admiration of his enemies. Arraigned before a
Virginia court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason,
conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost
calculated to make him seem the accuser and the Commonwealth
the trembling culprit. He acknowledged his acts with frankness,
defended his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest con
viction, bore his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude. . .
He was convicted, sentenced and hanged on the 2nd of De
cember. Congress met a few days afterward, and the Senate
appointed an investigating committee to inquire into the seizure
of the United States armory and arsenal. Jefferson Davis,
of Mississippi; Mason, of Virginia; and Fitch, of Indiana, Demo
cratic members of the Senate investigating committee, sought dili
gently but unsuccessfully to find grounds to hold the Republican
party at large responsible for Brown's raid  Senator
Douglas, . . apparently with the object of still further setting
himself right with the South, and atoning for his Freeport heresy,
made a long speech in advocacy of a law to punish conspiracies in
one State or Territory against the government, people or property
of another; once more quoting Lincoln's Springfield speech, and
Seward's Rochester speech, as containing revolutionary doctrines.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. II, pages 190-210.
["John Brown's body" was taken by friends and buried at
North Elba, New York.— W. W.]
Orator of the Day at the Wisconsin State Fair
Mr. Lincoln's triumphs of physical strength led him into the
practice of almost unconsciously comparing himself, in this respect,
with other men. The habit is well illustrated in an incident related
by Governor John Wesley Hoyt, for many years secretary and man
ager of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. He escorted
Lincoln in the autumn of 1859, through the fair of the association, at
which the Illinois visitor had made the address.
He spent some time in one of the tents, watching the perform-

3o6 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
ance of a " strong man, " who tossed about huge iron balls, catching
and rolling them on his arms and back with remarkable brawn and
agility. The exhibition appeared to interest the orator of the day so
intensely that, at its conclusion, the manager introduced the athlete
to him. Mr. Lincoln stood looking down upon the man, who was very
short, as if wondering that one so much smaller than he could be so
much stronger. Then he said abruptly, in his quaint fashion:
" Why, I could Uck salt off the top of your hat ! "
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 27.
How He Came to Lecture at Cooper Institute
During the winter of 1859 several young men in New York . .
wanted a man who could draw a crowd and make a lecture a success,
they said, and asked me if I could name such a man. ... I
gave it as my decided opinion that Mr. Lincoln would be the best
man to fill Cooper Institute. The expense would be large, but the
young men decided to take the risk of inviting him. The compensa
tion offered was $200, which included all his expenses. The pro
posal made to him was promptly accepted, and on Mr. Lincoln's
arrival in New York he came directly to my office 
The introductory conversation was quickly over, and he im
mediately made himself at home, completely covering the sofa,
which was quite too small and short for his extended figure. I soon
saw he was a talker. He bubbled over with stories and jokes, and
speedily convinced me that I had made no mistake in recommending
him as a lecturer. After an hour's talk I asked hiin where he was
stopping in the city, and he said he had a quiet room in the Metro
politan Hotel where he could have a chance to think. I invited him
to be my guest in Brooklyn ; but he declined, saying he was afraid
he had made a mistake in accepting the 'call to New York, and feared
his lecture would not prove a success. He said he w^ould have to
give his whole time to it, otherwise he was sure he would make a
failure, in which case he would be very sorry for the young men who
had kindly invited him.
Abraham Lincoln: Tributes froTA His Associates, Edited by William Hayes Ward. Recollections,
Henry C. Bowen, page 26.
The stranger Who Talked in the Five Points Mission
When in New York he \isited one of the charitable institutions
of the city, known as the Five Points Home of Industry, and the

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
THE COOPER INSTITUTE PORTRAIT
While Lincoln was in New York to deliver his great speech in Cooper Institute, February 27, i860 he
was taken by the committee to Brady's gallery and this excellent portrait is the result. '

WIDENING RENOWN 307
¦ superintendent of the Sabbath-school there wrote this account of
the event : __
" One Sunday morning I saw a tall remarkable-looking man
enter the room and take a seat among us. He listened with fixed
attention to our exercises, and his countenance expressed such
genuine interest that I approached him and suggested that he might
be willing to say something to the children. He accepted the invita
tion with evident pleasure, and coming forward began a simple
address which at once fascinated every little hearer, and hushed the
room into silence. His language was strikingly beautiful and his
tones musical with intense feeling. The little faces would droop
into sad conviction as he uttered sentences of warning, and would
brighten into sunshine as he spoke cheerful words of promise. Once
or twice he attempted to close his remarks, but the imperative shout
of 'Go on ! Oh, do go on !' would compel him to resume.
" As I looked upon the gaunt and sinewy frame of the stranger
and marked his powerful head and determined features now touched
into softness by the impressions of the moment, I felt an irrepressible
curiosity to learn something more about him, and while he was
quietly leaving the room I begged to know his name. He cour
teously replied :
" 'I'm Abraham Lincoln frorn Illinois.' "
Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Foster, page 76.
The Cooper Institute Speech
We went to Cooper Institute and there w^as a crowd, as there
was at Beecher's church. We finally got on the stairway and far
in the rear of the great crowd, but my brother stood on the fioor,
and I sat on the ledge of the window-sill, -with my feet on his shoul
ders while I told him down there what was going on over yonder.
The first man that came on the platform and presided at that meet
ing was William Cullen Bryant, our dear old neighbor.
He took.his seat on the stage, the right of which was left vacant for
some one yet to come. Next came a very heavy man, but imme
diately foUo'wing him a tall, lean man.
Mr. Bryant arose and went toward him, bo-wing and smiling.
He was an awkward specimen of a man and all about me people
were asking, "Who is that?"
But no one seemed to know. I asked a gentleman who that

3o8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
man was, but he said he didn't know. He was an awkward
specimen indeed; one of the legs of his trousers was up about
two inches above his shoe ; his hair was disheveled and stuck out
like rooster's feathers ; his coat was altogether too large for him in
the back, his arms much longer than his sleeves, and -with his legs
t'wisted around the rungs of the chair — he was the picture of
embarrassment .
When Mr. Bryant arose to introduce the speaker of that eve
ning, he was known seemingly to few in that great hall. Mr. Bryant
said: . . "Gentlemen of New York, it is great honor that is
conferred upon me to-night, for I can introduce to you the next
President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. " Then through
that audience flew the query as to who Abraham Lincoln was.
There was but weak applause.
Mr. Lincoln had in his hand a manuscript. He had written it
with great care and exactness, and the speech which you read in his
biography is the one that he wrote, not the one that he delivered
as I recall it, and it is fortunate for the country that they did print
the one that he wrote. . He had read three pages and had
gone on to the fourth when he lost his place and then he began to
tremble and stammer. He then turned it over two or three
times, threw the manuscript upon the table, and, as they say in
the West, "let himseU go."
Now the stammering man who had created only silent derision
up to that point, suddenly flashed out into an angel of oratory and
the awkward arms and disheveled hair were lost sight of entirely in
the wonderful beauty and lofty inspiration of that magnificent
address. The great audience immediately began to follow his
thought, and when he uttered that quotation from (Frederick)
Douglass, " It is written in the sky of America that the slaves shall
some day be free, ' ' he had settled the question that he was to be
the next President of the United States.
The applause was so great that the building trembled and I
felt the "windows shake behind me.
Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women, Russell H. Conwell, page 354.
What the Cooper Union Speech Was about
Unquestionably the most effective piece of work he did that
winter was the address at Cooper Institute, New York, on February
27th, (i860) 

WIDENING RENOWN 309
Mr. Lincoln's audience was a notable one even for New York.
It included William Cullen Bryant, who introduced him, Horace
Greeley, David Dudley Field, and many more well known men of
the day 
The Cooper Union speech was founded on a sentence from one
of Douglas's Ohio speeches:
" Our fathers when they framed the government under which
we live understood this question just as well, and e\en better, than
we do now. "
Douglas claimed that the " fathers" held that the Constitution
forbade the Federal government controlling slavery in the Terri
tories. Lincoln, with infinite care, had investigated the opinions
and votes of each of the " fathers" — ^whom he took to be the thirty-
nine men who signed the Constitution — and showed conclusively
that a majority of them " certainly understood that no proper
division of local from Federal authority nor any part of the Con
stitution forbade the Federal government to control slavery in the
Federal Territories. "
Not only did he show this of the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, but he defied anybody to show that one of the '
seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the Constitution
ever held any such view.
It is doubtful if there were any persons present, even his best
friends, who expected that Lincoln would do more than interest his
hearers by his sound arguments. Many have confessed since that
they feared his queer manner and quaint speeches would amuse
people so much that they would fail to catch the weight of his logic.
But to the surprise of everybody Lincoln impressed his audience
from the start by his dignity and his seriousness.
" His manner was, to a New York audience, a very strange one,
but it was captivating," wrote an auditor. "He held the vast
meeting spellbound, and as one by one his oddly expressed but
trenchant and convincing arguments confirmed the soundness of his
political conclusions, the house broke out in wild and prolonged
enthusiasm. I think I never saw an audience more thoroughly
carried away by an orator. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 326.

310 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Lincoln Defends the Republicans from the Charge. of CompUcity
with John Brown
"You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves.
We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John
Brown ! ! John Brown was no Republican ; and you have failed to
implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. . . .
"John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insur
rection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among
slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was
so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly
enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corres
ponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassina
tion of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the op
pression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven
to liberate them. He ventures the attempt which ends in little else
than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and
John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry, were, in their philosophy,
precisely the same. The eagerness to cast the blame on old England
in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove
the sameness of the two things. "
Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address, February 27, i860.
"He's the Greatest Man since St. Paul !"
This is the testimony of one who was present on that historic
occasion. " When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He
was tall, tall — oh, how tall ! — and so angular and awkward that I
had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man. His
clothes were black and ill-fitting, badly wrinkled — as if they had
been jammed carelessly into a small trunk. His JDUshy head, with
stiff black hair thrown back, was balanced on a long and lean head-
stalk, and when he raised his hands in an opening gesture, I noticed
that they were very large. He began in a low tone of voice — as if
he were used to speaking out-doors, and was afraid of speaking too
loud. He said, 'Mr. Cheerman,' instead of 'Mr. Chairman,' and
employed many other words with an old-fashioned pronunciation.
I said to myself :
" 'Old fellow, you won't do ; it's all very well for the wild West,
but this will never go down in New York.'

WIDENING RENOWN 311
" But pretty soon he began to get into his subject ; he straight
ened up, made regular and graceful gestures ; his face lighted as with
an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his
clothes, his personal appearance, his individual peculiarities. Pres
ently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet with the rest, yelling like
a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful inan. In the close parts of
his argument, you could hear the gentle sizzling of the gas-burners.
When he reached a climax the thunders of applause were terrific.
It was a great speech.
" When I came out of the hall, my face glowing with excitement
ahd my frame all a-quiver, a friend with his eyes aglow, asked me
what I thought of Abe Lincoln the rail-splitter. I said :
" 'He's the greatest man since St. Paul.' And I think so vet. "
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 1 86.
Speaking in New England
The day following the Cooper Institute meeting, the leading
New York dailies published the speech in full, and made editorial
mention of it and of the speaker as well. It was plain now that
Lincoln had captured the metropolis. From New York he traveled
to New England to visit his son, Robert, who was attending college
(Phillips Academy at Exeter, N. H.). In answer to the many calls
and invitations which showered on him, he spoke at various places
in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. In .all these
places he not only left deep impressions of his ability, but he con
vinced New England of his intense earnestness in the great cause.
The newspapers treated him with no little consideration. One
paper [the Manchester, N. H., Mirror] characterized his speech as
one of "great fairness, " delivered with "great apparent candor and
wonderful interest. For the first half hour his opponents would
agree with every word he uttered ; and from that point he would
lead them off little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all
into the fold. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance,
and his voice is disagreeable ; and yet he wins your attention from
the start. He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent pas
sages. . . . . He displays more shrewdness, more knowledge
of the masses of mankind than any public speaker we have heard
since Long Jim Wilson left for California. "
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Vol. II, page i6s.

312 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"What's the Use of Talking of Me for the Presidency?"
The possibility of Abraham Lincoln becoming the Presidential
candidate of the Republican party in i860 was probably first dis
cussed by a few of his friends in 1856. The dramatic speech which
in May of that year gave hjm the leadership of his party in Illinois,
and the unexpected and flattering attention he received a few weeks
later at the Republican National Convention suggested the idea. . .
The impression Lincoln made two years later in the Lincoln and
Douglas debates kindled a different feeling. It convinced a number
of astute Illinois politicians that judicious effort would make
Lincoln strong enough to justify the presentation of his name as a
candidate in i860 on the ground of pure a^'ailability.
One of the first men to conceive this idea was Jesse W. Fell, a
local politician of Bloomington, Illinois. During the Lincoln and
Douglas debates Fell was traveling in the Middle and Eastern
States. One evening, soon after returning home, he met Lincoln
in Bloomington, where the latter was attending court, and drew
him into a deserted law-office for a confidential talk.
"I have been East, Lincoln, " said he, "as far as Boston, a.nd
up into New Hampshire, traveling in all the New England States,
save Maine; in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michi^^an and Indiana ; and everywhere I hear you talked about.
Very frequently I have been asked, 'Who is this man Lincoln of
your State, now canvassing in opposition to Senator Douglas?'
Being, as you know, an ardent Republican and your friend, I usually
told them we had in Illinois two giants instead of one ; that Douglas
was the little one, as they all knew, but that you were the big one,
\\'hich they didn't all know.
" But, seriously, Lincoln, Judge Douglas being widely known,
you are getting a national reputation through him, and the truth is I
have a decided impression that if your popular history and efforts
on the slavery question can be sufficiently brought before the people,
you can be made a formidable, if not a successful, candidate for the
Presidency. ' '
"What's the use of talking of me for the Presidency," was
Lincoln's reply, "whilst we have such men as Seward, Chase, and
others, who are so much better known to the people and whose
names are so intimately associated with the principles of the Repub-

WIDENING RENOWN 313

lican party? Everybody knows them; nobody scarcely outside of
Illinois knows me. Besides, is it not, as a matter of justice, due to
such men, who have carried this movement forward to its present
status, in spite of fearful opposition, personal abuse, and hard
names? I really think so. "
Fell continued his persuasions, and finally requested Lincoln
to furnish him with a sketch of his life which could be put out in
the East. The suggestion grated on Lincoln's sensibUities. He
had no chance. Why force himself?
" Fell, " he said, rising and wrapping his old gray shawl around
his tall figure, "I admit that I am ambitious and would like to be
President. I am not insensible of the compliment you pay me and
the interest you manifest in the matter, but there is no such good
luck in store for me as the Presidency of these United States. Besides,
there is nothing in my early history that would interest you or any
body else; and, as Judge Davis says, 'It won't pay.' Good night."
And he disappeared into the darkness.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol, I, page 334.
"I Do Not Think I Am Fit for the Presidency"
The opening of the year i860 found Mr. Lincoln's name freely
mentioned in connection with the Republican nomination for the
Presidency. To be classed with Seward, Chase, McLean and other
celebrities was enough to stimulate any Illinois lawyer's pride ; but
in Lincoln's case, if it had any such effect he was most artful in
concealing it. Now and then, some ardent friend, an editor, for
example, would run his name up to the masthead, but in all cases
he discouraged the attempt.
" In regard to the matter you spoke of, " he answered one man
who proposed his name, " I beg you will not give it further mention.
Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the Presidency. "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 128.
How the Rails Were Brought in
I may as well mention here the first public occasion on which
Mr. Lincoln's name was mentioned for the Presidency.
On the 9th and loth of May (i860) the Republican State Con
vention met at Decatur (Illinois). Mr. Lincoln was present as a

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
LINCOLN IN i860
From an ambrotype taken at Springfield, Illinois, August 13, i860. The original
ss now in the collection of Major WiUiam H. Lambert, Philadelphia.

(314/

WIDENING RENOWN 315
spectator, but he attracted the attention of Gov. Oglesby, who rose
and said :
" I am informed that a distinguished citizen of Illinois, and
one whom Illinois wUl ever delight to honor, is present ; and I wish
to move that this body invite him to a seat on the stand. "
Public interest and curiosity were aroused. Who was this dis
tinguished citizen?
The Governor paused a moment, and then uttered the name,
' ' Abraham Lincoln ."
Instantly there was a roar of applause, there was a rush to
where the astonished Lincoln sat, he was seized, and the crowd being
too dense to pass through, he was literally passed over the heads
and shoulders of the great throng until, breathless, he found himself
on the platform. Willing or unwilling, he was for the time being
" in the hands of his friends. "
Later on Gov. Oglesby rose once more and said: "There is
an old Democrat outside who has something which he wishes to pre
sent to the Convention. "
"What is it?" "What is it?." "Receive it!" shouts the
crowd. The door of the Wigwam opens, and an old man, bluff and
hearty, comes forward, bearing on his shoulder two small rails,
surmounted by a banner, with this inscription:

TWO RAILS
From a, lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks,
in the Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830.

This old man was John Hanks himself! His entrance was
greeted with tumultuous applause.
"Lincoln! Lincoln! A speech!" shouts the crowd.
Mr. Lincoln seemed amused. He rose at length and said :
"Gentlemen, I suppose you want to know something about
these things" (the raUs). "WeU, th^truth is, John Hanks and I did
make raUs in the Sangamon Bottom. I don't know whether we
made those raUs or not ; fact is, I don't think they are a credit to
their makers" (laughing as he spoke). "But I do know this: I
made rails then and I think I could make better ones than these

3i6 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
now." Before the Convention dissolved, a resolution was passed,
declaring that "Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republi
can Party of Illinois for the Presidency, and instructing the dele
gates to the Chicago Convention to use all honorable means to secure
his nomination, and to cast the vote of the State as a unit for him. "
Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy, Horatio Alger, Jr,, page 170,
A "Dismal" Portrait that "Put an End to Hope"
He returned from this tour on the 14th of March, and was soon
after busy with an important suit at Chicago, the last in which he
was to be actively engaged as counsel. This was a case which may
be classed among the celebrated, involving the title to certain val
uable real estate — land which the waves of Lake Michigan had
gradually extended in one quarter by removal of soil from another,
without the intervention of one party or the consent of the other.
The suit, that of Jones against Johnson, was tried before Judge
Drummond, of the United States District Court. The plaintiff,
who retained Lincoln in addition to other counsel, after once losing
the case, now had the satisfaction of obtaining a decision in his
favor. Lincoln was at home with his family three days before the
meeting of the Republican National Convention at Chicago, where
its delegates were already gathering. It was a quiet Sunday, the
like of which, to him, would never return. Said Mrs. Lincoln, a
week or two later, speaking of this occasion :
" We had before us a New York illustrated weekly, in which a
number of Presidential candidates were represented in a double -page
group, Mr. Seward's portrait being conspicuous over all, as that of
the coming man. Mr. Lincoln's picture was there, such as it was,
and it couldn't have been made more dismal. Half seriously I said
to him :
" 'A look at that face is enough to put an end to hope.' "
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 215.

CHAPTER XII
Candidate for President
"Carleton" Tells of Thurlow Weed and "the Mob"
Arriving in Chicago several days in advance of the assembling
of the Convention, I found a number of delegates from Missouri
actively advocating the nomination of Mr. Bates. In no city of the
Union had there been so rapid a development of Republican senti
ment as in St. Louis. The Republicans of that city believed, or
affected to beUeve, that with Mr. Bates they could secure the elec
toral vote of that State.
There was but one name on the lips of the Republicans of
lUinois — ^that of Abraham Lincoln.
Thurlow Weed had charge of Mr. Seward's affairs, and em
ployed all the means and appliances known to New York political
managers — even to enrolling delegates who reported themselves
from Texas. I discovered a band of claqueurs in the interests of
Mr. Seward, who hurrahed upon the streets and in the Convention at
every mention of his name. They overdid their part.
Norman B. Judd had charge of Mr. Lincoln's canvass, but there
had been no such systematic pulling of distant wires or organization
on his part. Nor was there need. It was manifest from the outset
that there was a ground-swell of public opinion, if I may use the
term, which promised to sweep all before it, and which rose, like
tides of the sea, during the second day of the Convention, brought
into quick action by the determination to devour Weed's organized
band. Arnold, in his Life of Lincoln, has narrated how this was done,
by the emplo)mient of a Dr. Ames, who had a voice sufficiently
powerful to be heard above the uproar of the Lake in the wildest
storm. He was a Democrat, but re'adily consented to shout for-
Lincoln. With an organized band he was placed at one end of
the Wigwam; another body was stationed at the opposite end.
Mr. Cook, of Ottawa, a delegate, was upon the platform. Whenever
(317)

3i8 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
he waved his handkerchief they were to cheer. It was that hand
kerchief which set the ten thousand lUinoisians in the Wigwam wUd
with enthusiasm.
During the Convention I chanced to sit at a small table with
Thurlow Weed, and had an excellent opportunity to study his face.
I doubt if during his long and eventful life he ever experienced a
greater disappointment or a keener sorrow. I saw him press his
fingers hard upon his eyelids to keep back the tears. His plans
all miscarried. It was the sinking of a great hope. The rail-
splitter, story teller — ^the ungainly uneducated practitioner of the
Sangamon bar . . . instead of the able, learned, classi
cal, polished senator, [and] Mr. Weed did not comprehend that the
mob in the Wigwam was the best possible representative of the
rising pubUc opinion.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Carleton Coffin, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice.
page 164. "I Authorize No Bargains"
Among my visitors in the early part of May was the Hon. Mr.
Alley, of Massachusetts, who gave me a deeply interesting inside
glimpse of the Chicago Republican Convention of i860. The popu
lar current had, at first, set very strongly in favor of Mr. Seward,
who, many supposed, would be nominated almost by acclamation.
The evening before the balloting the excitement was at the highest
pitch. Mr. Lincoln was telegraphed at Springfield, that his chances
with the Convention depended on obtaining the votes of two delega
tions which were named in the despatch; and that, to secure this
support, he must pledge himself, if elected, to give places in his
Cabinet to the respective heads of those delegations. A reply was
immediately returned over the wires, characteristic of the man.
It was to this effect :
" I authorize no bargains and ivill be bound by none.
"A. Lincoln."
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 119.
How Lincoln Was Nominated
The Republican National'Convention met, according to appoint
ment, at Chicago on May i6 (i860). A large temporary wooden
building, christened "The Wigwam," had been erected in which

CO t-t

THE WIGWAM, AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
In which the Repuhlican National Convention was held in May, i860, and Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency.

320 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
to hold its sessions, and it was estimated that ten thousand persons
were assembled in it to witness the proceedings. William H. Sew
ard of New York was recognized as the leading candidate, but Chase
of Ohio, Cameron of Pennsylvania, Bates of Missouri, and several
prominent Republicans from other States were known to have
active and zealous followers 
It was almost self-evident that in the coming November elec
tion victory or defeat would hang upon the result in the four
pivotal States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois.
. . . There was a chance that one or more of these four pivotal
free States might cast its vote for Douglas and popular sovereignty.
A candidate was needed, therefore, who could successfully
cope -with Douglas and the Douglas theory; and this ability had
been con-vincingly demonstrated by Lincoln. As a mere personal
choice, a majority of the convention wo Id have preferred Seward;
but in the four pivotal States there were many voters who believed
Seward's antislavery views to be too radical. They shrank appre
hensively from the phrase in one of the speeches that "there is
a higher law than the Constitution. " These pivotal States all lay
adjoining slave States, and their public opinion was infected with
something of the undefined dread of " abolitionism. " ...
When the Convention met, the fresh, hearty hopefulness of its
members was a most inspiring reflection of the public opinion in
the States that sent them. . . Few conventions have ever
been pervaded by such a depth of feeling, or exhibited such a
reserve of latent enthusiasm. . . Not alone the delegates
on the central platform, but the multitude of spectators as well,
felt that they were playing a part in a great historical event.
The temporary, and afterward the permanent organization,
was finished on the first day. On the second day the platform com
mittee submitted its work, embodying the carefully considered and
skilfully framed body of doctrines upon which the Republican
party, made up only four years before . . . was now able to find
common and durable ground of agreement.
The platform was about to be adopted -without objection
when a flurry of discussion arose over an amendment, proposed by
Mr. Giddings of Ohio, to incorporate in it that phrase of the Decla
ration of Independence which declares the right of all men to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Impatience was at once

.^-

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 32 1
manifested lest any change should produce endless delay and
dispute. " I believe in the Ten Commandments," commented a member,
"but I do not want them in a political platform;" and the proposi
tion was voted down. Upon this the old antislavery veteran felt
himself aggrieved, and, taking up his hat, marched out of the Con
vention 
On the third day it was certain that balloting would begin, and
crowds hurried to the Wigwam in a fever of curiosity. Having
gro-wn restless at the indispensable routine preliminaries, when Mr.
Evarts nominated William H. Seward of Ne% York for President,
-they greeted his name with a perfect storm of applause. Then Mr.
Judd nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, and in the tremendous
cheering that broke from the throats of his admirers and follow
ers the former demonstration dwindled to comparative feebleness.
Again and again these contests of lungs and enthusiasm were re
peated as the choice of New York was seconded by Michigan, and
that of Illinois by Indiana.
When other names had been duly presented, the cheering at
length subsided, and the chairman announced that balloting would
begin. Many spectators had provided themselves with tally-lists,
and when the first roll-call was completed were able at once to per
ceive the drift of popular preference". Cameron, Chase, Bates, Mc
Lean, Dayton and CoUamer were indorsed by the substantial votes
of their own States ; but two names stood out in marked superiority :
Seward, who had received one hundred and seventy -three and one-
half votes, and Lincoln, one hundred and two.
The New York delegation was so thoroughly persuaded of the
final success of their candidate that they did not comprehend the
significance of this first ballot. Had they reflected that their
delegation alone had contributed seventy votes to Seward's total,
they would have understood that outside of the Empire State, upon
this first sho'wing, Lincoln held their favorite almost an even race.
As the second ballot progressed, their anxiety visibly increased.
They watched mth eagerness as the complimentary votes first cast
for State favorites were transferred now to one, now to the other of
the recognized leaders in the contest, and their hopes sank when the
result of the second ballot was announced : Seward, one hundred

322 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
and eighty -four and one-half; Lincoln, one-hundred and eighty-one;
and a volume of applause, which was with difficulty checked by the
chairman, shook the Wigwam at this announcement.
Then followed a short interval of active caucusing in the
various delegations, while excited men went about rapidly inter
changing questions, solicitations and messages between delegations
from different States. Neither candidate had yet received a
majority of all the votes cast, and the third ballot was begun
amid a deep, almost painful suspense, delegates and spectators
alike recording each announcement of votes on their tally -sheets
¦with nervous fingers.
But the doubt was of short duration. The second ballot had
unmistakably pointed out the -winning man. Hesitating delega
tions and fragments from many States steadily swelled the Lincoln
column. Long before the secretaries made the official announce
ment, the totals had been figured up : Lincoln, two himdred and
thirty -one and one-half ; Seward, one hundred and eighty. Counting
the scattering votes, four hundred and sixty-five ballots had been
cast, and two hundred and thirty -three were necessary to a choice.
Seward had lost four and one-half, Lincoln had gained fifty and one-
half, and only one and one-half votes more were needed to made a
nomination. The Wigwam suddenly became as still as a church, and every
body leaned forward to see whose voice would break the spell.
Before the lapse of a minute, David K. Cartter sprang upon his
chair and reported a change of four Ohio votes from Chase to Lin
coln. Then the teller shouted a name toward a skylight, and the
boom of cannon from the roof of the Wigwam announced the nom
ination and started the cheering of the overjoyed lUinoisians down
the long Chicago streets; while in the Wigwam, delegation after
delegation changed its vote to the victor amid a tumult of hurrahs.
When quiet was somewhat restored, Mr. Evarts, speaking for
New York and for Seward, moved to make the nomination unani
mous, and Mr. Browning gracefuUy returned the thanks of IlUnois
for the honor the Convention had conferred upon the State. In the
afternoon the "Convention completed its work by nominating Han
nibal Hamlin of Maine for Vice-President ; and as the delegates sped
homeward in the night trains, they witnessed, in the bonfires and

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 323
cheering crowds at the stations, that a memorable Presidential
campaign was already begun.
A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, John G. Nicolay, page 144.
A Woman's Description of that Nomination Scene
It was my good fortune to be present at the National Conven
tion in Chicago, in i860, which nominated Mr. Lincoln for the Pres
idency. It was held in an immense building erected for the occa
sion, and kno-wn as the "Wigwam." I had undertaken to report
the proceedings for an editor friend and a seat was assigned me near
the platform, .... in the midst of the great reportorial army
collected from all parts of the country  From the
immensity of the Wigwam, the proceedings could not be heard
in the gallery, and seemed there like a gigantic pantomime. . . .
Women reporters were then almost unheard of; and incon
spicuous as I had endeavored to make myself by dressing in black,
like my brethren of the press, the marshal of the day spied me, after
the lower floor was densely packed 'with masculinity. In stentorian
tones that rang through the building, while his extended arm and
forefinger pointed me out, and made me the target for thousands of
eyes, he ordered me to withdraw my profane womanhood from the
sacred enclosure pro'vided for the men, and " go up higher. " I rose
mechanically to obey, but the crowd rendered this impossible. . .
The reporters about me then took the matter into their own hands,
and in a tumult of voices cavalierly bade me, "Sit still!" and the
marshal, "Dry up!" . . . and then I was left in peace 
I was well repaid for the annoyance, by being a near witness
of the electric scenes which followed the nomination of Mr. Lincoln
for the Presidency, on the third ballot.
Who that saw the tumultuous rapture of that occasion could
ever forget it! Men embraced each other, and fell on one another's
neck, and wept out their repressed feeling. They threw their hats
in air, and almost rent the roof -with their huzzahs. "Thousands
and thousands were packed in the streets outside, who stood pa
tiently recei-ving accounts of the proceedings within, from reporters
posted on the roof, listening at the numerous open skylights and
shouting them in detail to the crowd below. Sometimes, mes
sengers ran from these reporters at -the skylights to the eaves of the
building, thence to vociferate to the remote but patiently waiting

324 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
crowd outside what had just been said or done. They would then
take up the subsiding chorus of shouts within, and re-echo them
still more wildly, tmtil they drowned the city's multitudinous roar,
and were heard a mile away. The billows of this delirious joy
surged around me, as I sat amid the swaying, rocking forms of men
who had sprung to their feet and grasped each other by the hand,
or had fallen into one another's arms, and were laughing, crying
and talking incoherently.
I confess I was not en rapport with the insanity of gladness
raging around me. It seemed to me these demonstrations were
made rather because the antislavery principle had triumphed, than
because Mr. Lincoln himself was a special favorite. The great
majority knew him only as a country la'\^'yer, and not ^'ery distin
guished at that. But they also knew that he was intensely hostile
to human slavery, and had so avowed himself.
"Is it certain that Mr. Lincoln is an uncompromising anti-
slavery man?" I inquired of a Massachusetts reporter next me.
"There is no humbug about it? Mr. Lincoln is not antislavery
just now for the sake of getting votes, is he? Can you inform me? "
For answer, he took from his. pocketbook a little fragment of
newspaper, which contained this extract from his "Peoria, 111.,
Speech," made October i6, 1854, and passed it to me with the
simple query, "Do you think he can take the back track after
saying that?' ' This is the quotation :
"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — op
position to it, in the love of justice. These principles are in eternal
antagonism ; and when brought into collision as fiercely as slavery
extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must
follow ceaselessly.
"Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromise;
repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history;
you cannot repeal human nature. It -will still be in the abun
dance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of
the abundance of the heart his mouth wiU continue to speak."
My Story of the War, Mary A. Livermore, page sso.
The Candidate Receives the News of His Nomination
And while all this went on, where was Lincoln ? Too much of
a candidate, as he had told Swett, to go to Chicago, yet hardlv

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

32s

enough of one to stay away, he had ended by remaining in Spring
field, where he spent the week in restless waiting and discussion.
He drifted about the public square, went often to the telegraph
office, looked out for every returning visitor from Chicago, played
occasional games of ball, made fruitless efforts to read, went home
at unusual hours. He felt in his bones that he had a fighting chance,
so he told a friend, biit the chance was not so strong that he could
indulge in much exultation. By Friday morning he was tired and
depressed,' but still eager for news.
One of his friends, the Hon. James C. Conkling, returned early in
the day from Chicago, and Lincoln soon went around to his law office.
"Upon entering," says Mr. Conkling, "Lincoln threw himself
upon the office lounge, and remarked rather
wearily, " 'Well, I guess rUgobackto practising law. '
"As he lay there on the lounge, I gave
him such information as I had been able to
obtain. I told him the tendency was to drop
Seward; that the outlook for him was very
encouraging. He listened attentively, and
thanked me, saying I had given him a clearer
idea of the situation than he had been -able to,
get from any other source. He was not very
sanguine of the result. He did not express
the opinion that he would be nominated."
But he could not be quiet, and soon left
Mr. Conkling to join the throng around the
telegraph office, where the reports from the convention were com
ing in. The nominations were being reported, his own among the
others. Then news came that the balloting had begun. He could
hardly endure to wait for the result.
He remembered a commission his 'wife had given him that
morning, and started across the square to execute it. His errand
was done, and he was standing in the door of the shop, talking, when
a shout went up from the group at the telegraph office. The next
instant an excited boy came rushing pell-mell down the stairs of the
office, and, plunging through the crowd, ran across the square,
shouting, "Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln, you are nominated!' '

RICHARD YATES
Lincoln's friend when a
young man aud War Gov
ernor of Illinois while
Lincoln was President.

326 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
The cry was repeated on all sides. The people came fiocking
about him, half laughing, half crying, shaking his hand when they
could get it,^and one another's when they could not. For a few
minutes, carried away by excitement, Lincoln seemed simply one of
the proud and exultant crowd. Then, remembering what it all
meant, he said:
" My friends, I am glad to receive your congratulations, and as
there is a little woman down on Eighth Street who -will be glad to
hear the news, you must excuse me until I inform her. "
He slipped away, telegram in hand, his coat-tails flying out
behind, and strode towards home, only to find when he reached there
that his friends were before him, and the "little woman " already
knew the honor which for twenty years and more she had believed
and stoutly declared her husband deserved, and which a great
multitude of men had sworn to do their best to obtain for him,
at last had come.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, 'Vol. I, page 357.
A Neighbor's Incredulity
Some of Mr. Lincoln's immediate neighbors were taken as com
pletely by surprise as those in distant States. An old resident of
Springfield told me that there lived within a block or two of his
house, in that city, an Englishman, who, of course, still cherished to
some extent the ideas and prejudices of his native land. Upon
hearing of the choice at Chicago he could not contain his astonish
ment. " What ! " said he, " Abe Lincoln nominated for President of the
United States? Can it be possible! A man that buys a ten-cent
beefsteak for his breakfast, and carries it home himself ! "
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 121,
The Committee Formally Informs Mr. Lincoln and Is Informally
Entertained
On the morning after the adjournment of the Convention a
single passenger car, drawn by one of the fastest locomotives of the
lUinois Central road, glided out from the Grand Central depot,
bearing the Committee appointed by the Convention to notify Mr.
Lincoln of his nomination. There were in all, including
correspondents, about thirty persons.
The sun was setting when we reached Springfield. A crowd

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 327
was gathering in the public square, not to welcome the Committee
but to listen to a speech from John A. McClelland (afterwards
general), member of Congress from that district, in support of Mr.
Douglas. It was past eight o'clock Saturday evening when the Com
mittee called upon Mr. Lincoln at his home — a plain, comfortable,
two-storied house, a hallway in the center, a plain white paling in
front. The arrival of the Committee had awakened no enthusiasm
on the part of the townspeople. A dozen citizens gathered in the
street. One of Mr. Lincoln's sons was perched on the gatepost.
The Committee entered the room at the left hand of the hall.
Mr. Lincoln was standing in front of the fireplace, wearing a
black frock-coat. He bowed, but it was not gracefully done:
There was an evident constraint and embarrassment. He stood
erect, in a stiff and unnatural position, with downcast eyes. There
was a diffidence like that of an ungainly schoolboy standing alone
before a critical audience. Mr. Ashmun stated briefly the action
of the Convention and the errand of the Committee.
Then came the reply .... It was a sympathetic voice,
with an indescribable charm in the tones. . . . There was that
about him that commanded instant admiration. A stranger meet
ing him on a country road, ignorant of his history, would have said,
" He is no ordinary man. "
Mr. Lincoln's reply was equally brief. With the utterance of
the last syllable his manner instantly changed. A smile, like the
sun shining through the rift of a passing cloud sweeping over the
landscape, illuminated his. face, lighting up every homely feature,
as he grasped the hand of Mr. Kelley.
" You are a tall man. Judge. What is your height? "
"Six feet three."
"I beat you. I am six feet four without my high-heeled
boots. "
" Pennsylvania bows to Illinois. I am glad that we have found
a candidate for the Presidency whom we can look up to, for we have
been informed that there were only 'Little Giants' in Illinois," w^as
Mr. Kelley's graceful reply.
All embarrassment was gone. Mr. Lincoln was no longer the
ungainly schoolboy  Conversation flowed as freely

3 28 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

and laughingly as a meadow brook. There was a bubbling of
quaint humor, fragrant with Western idiom, making the hour ex
ceedingly enjoyable.
" Mrs. Lincoln wiU be pleased to see you, gentlemen, " said Mr.
Lincoln. "You 'will find her in the other room. You must be
thirsty after your long ride. You will find a pitcher of water in the
library. "
I crossed the hall and entered the library. There were miscel
laneous books on the shelves, two globes, celestial and terrestrial,
in the corners of the room, a plain table with writing materials upon
it, a pitcher of cold water, and glasses, but no wines or liquors.
There was humor in the invitation to take a glass of water, which
was explained to me by a citizen, who said that when it was known
that the Committee was coming, several citizens called upon Mr.
Lincoln and informed - him that some entertainment must be
provided. " Yes, that is so. What ought to be done ? Just let me know
and I will attend to it, " he said.
" Oh, we will supply the needful liquors, " said his friends.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lincoln, "I thank you for your kind
intentions, but must respectfully decline your offer. I have no
liquors in my house, and have never been in the habit of enter
taining my friends in that way. I cannot permit my friends to do
for me what I will not myself do. I shall provide cold water —
nothing else. "
What Mr. Lincoln's feelings may have been over his nomina
tion will never be known ; doubtless he was gratified, but there was
no visible elation. After the momentarily assumed dignity he was
himself again — plain Abraham Lincoln — man of the people.
Reminiscences of .Abraham Lincoln, Charles Carleton Coffin. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page
166. The Speeches and Lincoln's Letter of Acceptance
The next day, the excursion train arrived from Chicago with a
large number of delegates, and the Committee appointed by the
Convention, to make Lincoln acquainted with his nomination.
The deputation was received at Mr. Lincoln's house, and when
the guests had assembled in the parlor, Mr. Ashmun, the President
of the Convention, said:

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 329
"I have, sir, the honor, in behalf of the gentlemen who are
present, a committee appointed by the Republican Convention, re
cently assembled at Chicago, to discharge a most pleasant duty.
We have come, sir, under a vote of instructions to that Committee,
to notify you that you have been selected by the Convention of the
Republicans at Chicago, for President of the United States. They
instruct us, sir, to notify you of that selection, and that Committee
deem it not only respectful to yourself, but appropriate to the im
portant matter which they have in hand, that they should come
in person and present to you the authentic evidence of the ac
tion of that Convention ; and, sir, without any phrase which shall
either be considered personally plauditory to yourself, or which shall
have any reference to the principles involved in the questions which
are connected with your nomination, I desire to present to you the
letter which has been prepared, and which informs you of the nom
ination, and with it the platform, resolutions, and sentiments which
the Convention adopted. Sir, at your convenience we shall be glad
to receive from you such a response as it may be your pleasure to
give us. "
To this address Mr. Lincoln listened with grave attention and
replied :
"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee:
" I tender to you and through you to the Republican National
Convention, and all the people represented in it, my profoundest
thanks for the high honor done me, which you now formally an
nounce. Deeply, and even painfully sensible of the great responsi
bility which is inseparable from this high honor — a responsibility
which I could almost wish had fallen upon some one of the far more
eminent men and experienced statesmen whose distinguished
names were before the Convention, I shall, by your leave, consider
more fully the resolutions of the Convention denominated the plat
form, and without unnecessary or unreasonable delay, respond to
you, Mr. Chairman, in writing, not doubting that the platform will
be found satisfactory, and the nomination gratefully accepted.
"And now I will not longer defer the pleasure of taking you,
and each of you by the hand. "
After this response, it is proper to immediately add the lettei
in which Mr. Lincoln has since formally accepted the nomination :

330 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Springfield, Illinois, May 23, i860.
"Hon. George Ashmun,
"President of the Republican National Convention.
" Sir : I accept the nomination tendered me by the Convention
over which you presided, of which I am formally apprised in the
letter of yourself and others acting as a Committee of the Conven
tion for that purpose.
"The declaration of the principles and sentiments which ac
companies your letter meets my approval, and it shall be my care
not to 'violate it, or disregard it in any part.
"Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due
regard to the views and feelings of all who were represented in the
Convention, to the rights of all the States and Territories and people
of the nation, to the in-viol ability of the Constitution, and the per
petual union, harmony, and prosperity of all, I am most happy to
co-operate for the practical success of the principles declared by the
Convention. "Your obliged friend and fellow -citizen,
"Abraham Lincoln."
Life and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, W. D. Howells, page 90,
Positions Taken by the Three Great Parties on the Slavery Question
The Southern leaders gave repeated and earnest warnings:
"Gentlemen from the North! look well to your doings!
If you insist on your 'Squatter Sovereignty ' platform, in fuU view of
its condemnation by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, you
break up the Democratic party — nay, more: you break up the
Union ! The unity of the Democratic party is the last bond that
holds the Union together: that snapped, there is no other that
can be trusted for a year. "
Discarding that of the "Constitutional Union " party as mean
ing anything in general and nothing in particular, the Lincoln,
Douglas, and Breckenridge parties had deliberately planted them
selves, respectively, on the foUo-wing positions :
I. Liwco/n.— Slavery can only exist by virtue of municipal
law; and there is no law for it in the Territories, and no power to
enact one. Congress can establish or legaUze Slavery nowhere,
but is bound to prohibit it in or exclude it from any and every

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 331
Federal Territory, whenever and wherever there shall be necessity
or exclusion or prohibition.
2 . Douglas. — Slavery or No Slavery in any Territory is entirely
the affair of the white inhabitants of such Territory. If they choose
to have it, it is their right; if they choose not to have it, they have
a right to exclude or prohibit it. Neither Congress nor the people
of the Union, or any part of it, outside of said Territory, have any
right to meddle -with or trouble themselves about the matter.
3 . Breckenridge. — The citizen of any State has a right to migrate
to any Territory, taking with him anything which is property by
the law of his own State, and hold, enjoy, and be protected in the
use of such property in said Territory. And Congress is bound to
render such protection wherever necessary, whether with or without
the co-operation of the Territorial Legislature.
The American Conflict, Horace Greeley, page 322.
Lincoln's Own Life-Story
When Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency in i860,
a campaign bookmaker asked him to give the prominent features of
his life. He replied in the language of Gray's " Elegy, " that his life
presented nothing but
"The short and simple annals of the poor. "
He had, however, written for his friend Jesse W. Fell the fol
lowing :
"I was bom February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families
— second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in
my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom
now reside in Adams, some others in Macon counties, Illinois. My
paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rock
ingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a
year or two later, he was killed by Indians, — not in battle, but by
stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His
ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County,
Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England
family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a
simUarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi,
Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

332 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age ;
and he grew up literally without education. He removed from
Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth
year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into
the Union. It was a ^^ild region, with many bears and other wild
animals still in the woods. There I grew^ up. There were some
schools, so called ; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher
beyond 'readin,' writin' and cipherin' ' to the Rule of Three.
If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn
in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was
absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course,
when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could
read, write and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I
have not been to school since. The little advance I now haA^e
upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time
under the pressure of necessity.
' ' I was raised to farm A\'ork, which I continued till I was twenty-
two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year
in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in San
gamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of
clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War; and I was
elected a Captain of Volunteers — a success which gave me more
pleasure than any I have had since. I went [through] the campaign ,
was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was
beaten — the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The
next and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the
Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this Leg-
islati\-e period I had studied law^ and removed to Springfield to
practise it. In 1846 I was elected once to the lower House of Con
gress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854,
both inclusive, practised law more assiduously than ever before.
Always a Whig in politics ; §,nd - generally on the Whig electoral
tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics,
when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.
What I haA^e done since then is pretty well known.
"If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may
be said, I am, in height, six feet four inches nearly; lean in flesh,
weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 333
complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks
or brands recollected. "Yours very truly,
"A. Lincoln."
"J. W. Fell, Esq."
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 9.
"A Real Representative Man"
The opposition press found in Lincoln's obscurity abundant
editorial material. He was a "third-rate country lawyer, poorer
even than poor Pierce, " said the New York Herald. Of course,
he 'would be a "nullity" if he were elected. How could a man be
otherwise who had never done anything but deliver a few lectures
and get himself beaten by Douglas in the campaign of '58? They
hooted at his " coarse and clumsy jokes, " declared that he " could
not speak good grammar, " and that all he was really distinguished
for was rail-splitting, running a "broad-horn," and bearing the
sobriquet of "honest old Abe." The snobbishness of the country
came out in full. He was not a gentleman ; that is, he did not know
how to wear clothes, perhaps sat at times in shirt sleeves, tilted back
his chair. He could quote neither Latin nor Greek, had never
traveled, had no pedigree.
The Republican press took up the gauntlet. To the charge
that he would be a "nullity" the (New York) Tribune replied:
"A man who, by his own genius and force of character, has
raised himself from being a penniless and uneducated flatboatman
on the Wabash River to the position Mr. Lincoln now occupies is not
likely to be a nullity anywhere. "
And [William Cullen] Bryant answered all the sneering by a
noble editorial [in the New York Evening Post] in which he
claimed Mr. Lincoln to be "A Real Representative Man. "
Nevertheless the eagerness with which the Republican press
hastened to show that Lincoln was not the coarse backwoodsman
the Dernocrats painted him, showed how much they winced under
the charges. Reporters were sent West to describe his home, his
family, and his habits, in order to prove that he did not live in " low
Hoosier style." They told with great satisfaction that he wore
daily a broadcloth suit, "almost elegant;" they described his

334 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
modest home as a " mansion" and " an elegant two-story dwelling,"
and they never failed to note that Mrs. Lincoln spoke French fluently
and that he had a son in Harvard College. When they could with
reasonable certainty connect him with the Lincolns of Hingham,
Mass., they heralded his "good blood" with pride and marshaUed
the Lincolns who had distinguished themselves in the history of
the country.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 36s,
"We Are Going to Have Some New Clothes"
From the time of his nomination gifts poured in on him. Many
of these came in the form of wearing apparel. Mr. George Lincoln,
of Brooklyn, who in January carried a handsome silk hat to the
President-elect, the gift of a New York hatter, says that in receiving
the hat, Mr. Lincoln laughed heartily over the gifts of clothing and
remarked to Mrs. Lincoln :
"Well, wife, if nothing else comes out of this scrape, we are
going to have some new clothes, are we not? "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 375.
The Wide- Awakes of i860
The Republican campaign of i860 had one distinguishing
feature, — the Wide-Awakes, bands of torch-bearers who in a simple
uniform of glazed cap and cape, and carrying colored lanterns or
blazing coal-oil torches, paraded the streets  The uniform
attracted so much attention that a campaign club formed in Hart
ford adopted it. This club caUed itself the Wide-Awakes. Other
clubs took up the idea, and soon there were Wide-Awakes drilling
from one end of the North to the other.
A great many fantastic movements were invented by them, a
favorite one being a pecuUar zig-zag march — an imitation of the
party emblem — the rail fence. Numbers of the clubs adopted the
rules and drills of the Chicago Zouaves — one of the most popular
military organizations of the day. In the summer of i860 Colonel
EUsworth, the commanding officer of the Zouaves, brought them
East. The Wide-Awake movement was greatly stimulated by this
tour of the Zouaves.
Many of the clubs owned Lincoln raUs,  and the

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

335

"Originals," as the Hartford Wide-Awakes were called, possessed
the identical maul with which Lincoln had split the raUs for the
famous fence  It is still to be seen in Hartford, occu
pying a conspicuous place in the collection of the Connecticut His
torical Society.
Campaign songs set to familiar airs were heard on every hand.
One of the most ringing was E. C. Stedman's " Honest Abe of the
West, " sung to the air of " The Star Spangled Banner. " ....
(Chorus.) " Hurrah! for our cause — of all causes the best!
Hurrah! for Old Abe, Honest Abe of the West!"
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 370.
A Newsboy's Apology
I recall one day when he had just seated himself at a desk
with the latest messages before him when he heard a newsboy
on the street crying: "Here's yer Philadelphia Inquiry." He-
mimicked the peculiar pronunciation
and tone of the boy, and then said:
"Did' I ever tell you of the joke the
Chicago newsboys had on me? " Replying
negatively, he related: "A short time
before my nomination I was in Chicago
attending a law-suit. A photographer of
that city asked me to sit for a picture, and
I did so. This coarse, rough hair of mine
was in a particularly bad tousle at the
time, and the picture presented me in
all its fright. After my -nomination, this
being about the only picture of me there
was, copies were struck to show those
who had never seen me how I looked.
them around to seU, and had for their cry: 'Here's your Old Abe,
he'U look better when he gets his hair combed. ' "
Lincoln in the War Office, Albert B. Chandler. Collier's for February 9, 1907, page 15.

"Old Abe, he'll look better when
he gets his hair combed."
The newsboys carried

A Call on Candidate Lincoln
In the summer of i860, while on a business tour of the West, I
visited Springfield, IlUnois, At the solicitation of a mutiia] friend

336

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

I \\as taken to meet Abraham Lincoln, who had recently been nomi
nated for the Presidency. On our way to the State Capitol, where
Mr. Lincoln received his visitors, I asked my friend if Mr. Lincoln
really was the author of the many current stories and jokes attrib
uted to him. He said: " No, many of them are coarse, vulgar and
shallow; but while Mr. Lincoln is fond of different kinds of stories,
they must have wit and point to please him. "
When my friend and I were announced Mr. Lincoln promptly
received us. At our introduction he gave me a cordial grasp of the

THE OLD STATE CAPITOL OF ILLINOIS
Btult in Springfield after the removal of the Capital from Vandalia, largely through Lincoln's influence.
Here he received his visitors while Presidential candidate and President-elect .
hand, and I seem now, after many years, to feel the loose joints of
his long fingers. He said:
" I am glad to meet you, Mr. Carr, and if height has anything in
it I have a claim on your vote. "
"If the St. Louis paper tells the truth, this morning, " I said,
"I shall certainly have to vote for you. "
"What was that? " he asked.
"It says," I replied, "that you are called 'Honest Abe' to
distinguish you from the rest of the party!"
He laughed and said, " That Democratic editor is a good friend
of mine, but he is a great joker. "

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 337
He showed us a "Presidential Chair" just received, of which
different parts bore the names of the loyal States and blanks left for
those in doubt. He talked freely about the future and was deeply
interested in all I had to tell him of my observations in the East and
South. He seemed to know many of the persons whose names I
mentioned to him. He expressed keert regrets over the state of
affairs in the South, but told us he had strong faith in Providence
and the loyalty of the Northern people.
While we were still talking I noticed that he kept looking me
up and down as if taking a mental measurement. At last he asked,
" Mr. Carr, how taU are you? "
"Six feet two and a half," I replied. "And how tall are
you, Mr. Lincoln?"
He straightened up, with a little effort, saying,
"When I get the kinks all out I am six feet four inches. Now,
Mr. Carr, doesn't that entitle me to your vote?" he asked with a
friendly smile as we shook hands in parting.
I did vote for Lincoln — but it was for a better reason than
that. Related by Humphrey W. Carr, Esq., Jersey City, N. J.
Lincoln-Hamlin Anagrams
In the campaign the names of the candidates were sometimes
arranged thus:
Ham Lin
Lin Coin
and
A bra-Hamlin-Coln
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 95.
The Great Springfield Convention — "Our Lincoln Is the Man!"
That was an ever-to-be remembered day when, in August, i860,
the people of the great West, with one accord, arranged to visit
Abraham Lincoln, the candidate for the Presidency, at Springfield,
lUinois. Seventy thousand strangers poured into the prairie city.
They came from Indiana, Iowa, and the lakes. Thousands came
from Chicago. Men came in wagons, bringing their wives and
chUdren. They brought tents, camp kettles and coffee-pots. Says
a graphic writer who saw the scene ;

338 ^ THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" Every road leading to the city is crowded for twenty miles
with vehicles. The weather is fine, and a little overwarm. Girls
can dress in white, and bare their arms and necks without danger,
the women can bring their children.
"Everything that was ever done at any other mass-meeting
is done here. Locomotive-builders are making a boiler; black
smiths are heating and hammering their irons; the iron founders
are molding their patterns ; the rail-splitters are showing the people
how 'Uncle Abe ' used to split rails ; every other town has its wagon-
load of thirty-two girls in white to represent the States ; many bands
of music are playing; old men of the War of 1812, with their old
wives, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, are
here : making a procession of human beings, horses, and carriages
not less than ten miles in length. And yet the procession might
have left the town and the people would scarcely be missed.
"There is an immense wigwam, with galleries Uke a theater;
but there are people enough not in the procession to fill a dozen like
it. Half an hour is long enough to witness the moving panorama of
men and women, horses, carriages, representatives of trades, mottoes
and burlesques, and listen to the bands. "
There was a visitor from the East who became the hero of the
great day  He had brought a song to the great Spring
field assembly. He sang it when the people were in a receptive
mood ; it voiced their hearts and its infiuence was electric. As he
rose before the assembly on that August day, under the prairie sun
and sang — a stillness came over the great sea of the people. The
figures of the first verse filled the imagination, but the chorus was
like a bugle-call:
The Ship of State.
(Sung at the Springfield Convention.)
"Hark! hark! a signal gun is heard.
Just out beyond the fort;
The good old Ship of State, my boys.
Is coming into port
With shattered sails and anchors gone,
I fear the rogues will strand her ;
She carries now a sorry crew.
And needs a new commander.

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 339
Chorus
"Our Lincoln is the man!
Our Lincoln is the man!
With a sturdy mate
From the Pine-Tree State,
Our Lincoln is the man !
" We'll give her what repairs she needs —
A thorough overhauling ;
Her sordid crew shall be dismissed
To seek some honest calling.
Brave Lincoln soon shall take the helm.
On truth and right relying ;
In calm or storm, in peace or war.
He'll keep her colors flying.
Chorus
"Old Abram is the man!
Old Abram is the man!
With a sturdy mate
From the Pine-Tree State,
Old Abram is the man ! ' '
These words seem commonplace to-day, but they were trumpet-
notes then. " Our Lincoln is the man!" trembled on every tongue,
and a tumultuous applause arose that shook the air. The enthu
siasm grew ; the minstrel had voiced the people. . . .
Lincoln heard the song. He loved songs. One of his fa
vorite songs was " Twenty Years Ago. ' ' But this was the first time,
probably, that he had heard himself sung  The song
delighted him, but he, of all the thousands, was forbidden by his
position to express his pleasure in the song  But after
the scene was over, and the great mass of people began to melt
away, he sought the minstrel and said :
" Come to my room and sing me the song privately. I want to
hear you sing it."
So he listened to it in private, while it was being borne over the
prairies on tens of thousands of lips. Did he then dream that the

340 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
nations would one day sing the song of his achievements, that his
death would be tolled by the bells of all lands, and his dirge fill the
churches of Christendom with tears ? It may have been that his
destiny in dim outline rose before him, for the events of his life were
hurrying. In the Boyhood of Liticoln, Hezekiah Butterworth, page 252.
"These Men Will Find They Have Not Read Their Bibles Aright"
Mr. Newton Bateman, Superintendent of Public Instruction for
the State of Illinois, occupied a room [in the State Capitol] adjoining.
and opening into the Executive Chamber [which had been placed
at Mr. Lincoln's disposal]. Frequently this door was open during
Mr. Lincoln's receptions; and throughout the seven months or
more of his occupation, Mr. Bateman saw him nearly every day.
Often when Mr. Lincoln was tired he closed his door against all
intrusion, and called Mr. Bateman into his room for a quiet talk.
On one of these occasions Mr. Lincoln took up a book contain
ing a careful canvass of the city of Springfield in which he lived,
showing the candidate for whom each citizen had declared it his
intention to vote in the approaching election. Mr. Lincoln's
friends had, doubtless at his own request, placed the result of this
canvass in his hands. It was toward the close of October, and only
a few days before the election. Calling Mr. Bateman to a seat at
his side, having previously locked all the doors, he said :
"Let us look over this book. I wjsh particularly to see how
the ministers of Springfield are going to vote. "
The leaves were turned, one by one, and as the names were
examined, Mr. Lincoln frequently asked if this one and that were not
a minister, or an elder, or the member of such or such a church, and
sadly expressed his surprise on receiving an affirmative answer. In
that manner they went through the book, and then he closed it and
sat sUently for some minutes regarding a memorandum in pencil
which lay before him. At length he turned to Mr. Bateman with
a face full of sadness and said :
"Here are twenty -three ministers of different denominations,
and all of them are against me but three ; and here are a great many
prominent members of the churches, a very large majority of whom
are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian — God knows I

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 341
would be one — but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not so
understand this book ;" and he drew forth from his bosom a pocket
New Testament.
"These men well know, " he continued, "that I am for freedom
in the Territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution
and laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They
know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of
which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote
against me. I do not understand it at all. "
Here Mr. Lincoln paused — paused for long minutes, his features
surcharged with emotion. Then he rose and walked up and down
the room in the effort to retain or regain his self-possession. Stop
ping at last, he said, with a trembling voice and his cheeks wet with
tears :
"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and
slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it.
If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — ^I believe
I .am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everj^thing. I know I am
right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and
Christ is God. I have told them that 'a house divided against itself
cannot stand,' and Christ and reason say the same; and they will
find it so. Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted
down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with
God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come,
and I shall be vindicated ; and these men will find that they have
not read their Bibles aright. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, J. G. Holland, page 236.
Election Day in Springfield, Illinois
Election day in i860 fell on the 6th. . Mr. Lincoln, as
was his custom, came down to his room at the State House by eight
o'clock, where he went over his big mail as coolly as if it were not
election day and he a candidate for the Presidency of the United
States. - He had not been there long before his friends began to flock
in in such numbers that it was proposed that the doors be closed
and he be allowed to remain by himself, but he said he had never
done such a thing in his life as to close the door on his friends and

3.t2 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
that he did not intend to begin now, and so the day wore away in
the entertainment of visitors.
It had not been Mr. Lincoln's intention to vote, the obstacle
which he found in the way being that his own name headed the
Republican ticket and that he did not want to vote for himself.
One of his friends suggested that his name might be cut off and he
vote for the rest of the ticket. He fell in with this suggestion, and
late in the afternoon, when the crowd around the polls, which were
just across the street from his office, had subsided somewhat, he
went over to cast his ballot. He was recognized immediately and
his friends were soon about him, cheering wildly and contending
good-naturedly for an opportunity to shake his hand. Even the
Democrats, with their hands full of documents which they were
distributing, joined in this enthusiastic demonstration and cheered
at the top of their voices for their beloved townsman.
No returns were expected before seven o'clock, and it was a
little later than that when Mr. Lincoln returned from his supper to
the State House. The first dispatches were from different parts of
Illinois  After an hour or more news began to come from
Missouri. " Now, " said Lincoln, " they should get a few licks back at us."
But to everybody's surprise there was more good news from
Missouri than had been expected. Towards midnight news began
to come from Pennsylvania, . . then a telegram from Simon
Cameron, " Pennsylvania 70,000 for you. New York safe. Glory
enough." . . .
While waiting anxiously for something definite from New York,
a delegation of Springfield ladies came in to invite Mr. Lincoln and
his friends to a hall near by, where they had prepared refreshments
for all the Republican politicians of the town. The party had not
been there long before there came a telegram announcing that New
York City had gone Republican. Such a cheering was never
heard in Springfield before. The hall fuU of people, beside them
selves with joy, began a romping promenade around the tables,
singing at the top of their voices the popular campaign song :
"Oh, ain't you glad you joined the Republicans?"
Here at intervals further telegrams came from New York, all
announcing large majorities. The scene became one of the wildest

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 343
excitement, and Mr. Lincoln and his friends withdrew to a little
telegraph office on the square, where they could receive the reports
more quietly.-
Up to this time the only anxiety Mr. Lincoln had shown about
the election was in the returns from his own State and town. He
didn't " feel quite easy, "as he said, " about Springfield. " Towards
morning, however, the announcement came that he had a majority
in'his own precinct. Then it was that he showed the first emotion,
a jubilant chuckle, and soon

Maine Prohibition law passed  1851
Rise of the American or " Know-Nothing"
party  1852
Uncle Tom's Cabin published  1852
Pierce made President  1853
Passage of Kansas-Nebraska Bill  1854

Struggle begins in Kansas. John Brown 1855
Rise of the Republican party  1856
Buchanan made President  1857

Business panic  1857
Lincoln-Douglas Debates  1858
Discovery of silver in Colorado, and pe
troleum in Pennsylvania  1858 and 1859
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry .... 1859
Election of Abraham Lincoln  i860
Secession of South Carolina (Dec. 20). . . . i860

after he remarked cheerfully
to his friends, that he ' 'guessed
he'd go home now. " . .
But Springfield was not
content to go home. Cannon
banged until daylight, and on
every street corner and in
every alley could be heard
groups of men shouting at the
tops of their voices,
"Oh, ain't you glad you joined the Republicans?"
Twenty -four hours later and the result of that Tuesday's work
was known. Out of 303 electoral votes, Lincoln had received 180.
Of the popular vote he had received 1,866,452 — nearly half a million
over Douglas, a million over Breckenridge, a million and a quarter
over Bell. It was a victory, but there were facts abobit the victory
which startled the thoughtful. If Lincoln had more votes than any
one opposing candidate, they together had nearly a million over
him. Fifteen States of the Union gave him no electoral votes, and
in ten States he had not received a single popular vote.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol, I, page 384.
"Mary, Mary! We Are Elected!"
In November, on the day of the election, he said he was' calm
and sure of the result. The first news he received, mostly from New
York, was unfavorable, and he felt a little discouraged. Later the
dispatches indicated a turn in the tide, and when he learned of his
election he said his heart overflowed with thanksgiving to God for
His providential goodness to our beloved country. He continued :

WILLIAM H. SEWARD
Lincoln's Secretary of State. He had been the foremost of the Republican candidates for nomination
to the Presidency, having been for many years a political leader. Seward began by attempting to
manage the Lincoln Administration, but he was the first of the Cabinet to recognize the true great
ness of his chief, writing to his wife : * The President is the best of us."

(344)

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 345
" I cannot conceal the fact that I was a very happy man, " and
he added, with much feeling, "who could help being so under such
circumstances?" He then said that "the enthusiastic greetings of
his neighbors and friends during the evening, at the Club, " together
with the numerous telegrams which poured in upon him, "well-nigh
upset him with joy. "
At a late hour he left the Club rooms and went home to talk over
matters with his wife. Before going to the Club that evening to get
the election news as it came in, he said :
" I told my wife to go to bed, as probably I should not be back
before midnight. When at about twelve o'clock the news came
informing me of my election, I said: 'Boys, I think I will go home
now : for there is a little woman there who would like to hear
the news. ' The Club gave me three rousing cheers, and then
I left. On my arrival I went to my bedroom and found my
wife sound asleep. I gently touched her shoulder and said
'Mary;' she made no answer. I spoke again, a little louder,
saying, Mary, Mary! we are elected!' Well, . I then went
to bed, but before I went to sleep I selected every member of my
Cabinet, save one. I determined on Seward for my Secretary of
State, Chase for Secretary of the Treasury, Welles, whose acquaint
ance I made in Hartford, for Secretary of the Navy, and Blair and
others for the other positions. . . My Cabinet was sub
stantially fixed upon that night. I wanted Seward, for I had the
highest respect for him, and the .utmost confidence in his abUity.
I wanted Chase, also ; I considered him one of the ablest, best and
most reliable men in the country and a good representative of the
progressive, antislavery element of the party."
In a word, he said he "wanted all his competitors to have a
place in his Cabinet in order to create harmony in the party."
Abraham Lincoln: Tributes from His Associates, Edited by William Hayes Ward. Recollections,
Henry C. Bowen, page 31.

CHAPTER XIII

As President-Elect
Begins "Cabinet Making"
Most of the facts in relation to the formation of the Cabinet I
received from the
mouth of Mr. Lin
coln, who had ap
parently no conceal
ments on the subject.
On the day of the
Presidential election,
November 6, i860,
he said, the telegraph
operator at Spring
field invited him to
occupy his room and
obtain intelligence of
the result as it was
received. About
two o'clock on
Wednesday morning
sufficient information
had come in to leave
no doubt of his elec
tion. He then re
tired, but hardly to
sleep. Although fa
tigued and exhausted,
he got but little rest.
Oppressed with
the overwhelming re
sponsibility that was
upon him, which in
campaign he had not fully realized, he
(346)

From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 2,
A JOB FOR THE NEW CABINET-MAKER

the excitement of the

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT 347
felt the necessity of relief and assurance to sustain him in the not
distant future. He did, he said, what probably all his prede
cessors had done — looked about him at once for men on whom he
could depend, and who would be his support in the trials that
were before him. The reliable and marked men of the country were
in his mind, but there were many other things to be taken into con
sideration — different influences, sectional and political, to be rec
oncUed. He did not again sleep until he had constructed the
framework of his Cabinet. It was essentiaUy the same (Cabinet)
as that 'with which, four months later, he commenced his adminis
tration  He had in view a Republican, not a Whig
administration, and therefore required and formed a Republican
Cabinet 
The unhappy condition of the country during the winter of 1 860
-61 is not to be overstated. It was as well understood and as deeply
deplored at Springfield ... as at Washington, where Congress
frittered away its time, and pursued a course as, and scarcely less
reprehensible than the Administration which proclaimed its inability
to coerce a State. The President-elect witnessed the factious and
distmion proceedings with unutterable distress, but he was powerless.
Lincoln and Seward, Gideon Welles, page 37,
Elected but Helpless
Although the election of November 6th made Lincoln the
President-elect of the United States, for four months he could
exercise no direct influence on the affairs of the country. If the
South tried to make good her threat to secede in case he was elected,
he could do nothing to restrain her. The South did try, and at once.
With the very election returns the telegraph brought Lincoln the
news of disruption. Day by day the news continued, and always
more alarming. On November loth, the United States Senator from
South CaroUna resigned 
In his quiet office in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln read, in Janu-
* ary, reports of proceedings of conventions ... by aU of which
ordinances of secession were adopted. In February he saw
representatives of these same States unite in a general convention
at Montgomery, Alabama, and the newspapers told him how
promptly and inteUigently they went to work to found a new nation.

348 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
the Southern Confederacy, to provide it with a constitution and to
give it officers.
The rapid disintegration which followed the election of Mr.
Lincoln filled the North with dismay. There was a general demand
for some compromise which would reassure the South and stop
secession. It was the place of the Republicans, the conservatives
argued, to make this compromise. A furious clamor broke over
Mr. Lincoln's head. His election had caused the trouble; now
what would he do to quell it? How much of the Republican plat
form would he give up? Among the newspapers which pleaded
with the President-elect to do something to reassure the South the
most able was the New York Herald. Lincoln was a " sectional
President," declared the Herald, who out of 4,700,000 votes cast,
had received but 1,850,000 and whom the South had had no part
in electing. The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. I, page 3S7.
Artemus Ward Visits the "President Eleck"
I hav no politics. Not a one. I'm not in the business. . . .
I wouldn't giv two cents to be a congresser. The wuss insult I ever
received was when sertin citizens of Baldinsville axed me to rtm fur
the Legislater. Sez I, " My friends, dostest think I'd stoop to that
there?" They turned as white as a sheet. I spoke in my most
orfuUest tones; they knowed I wasn't to be trifled with. They
slunked out of site to onct.
There4, having no politics, I made bold to visit Old Abe at his
humstid in Springfield. I found the old feller in his parler sur
rounded by a perfeck swarm of orfice seekers. Knowin he had been
capting of a flatboat on the roarin Mississippy I thought I'd address
him in sailor lingo, so sez I :
"Old Abe, ahoy! Let out yer main-suls, reef hum the fore
castle & throw yer jib-poop overboard! Shiver my timbers my
harty!" (N. B. 'This is ginuine mariner langwitige. I know,
because I've seen sailor plays acted out by them New York theatre'
fellers.) Old Abe lookt up quite cross & sez,
" Send in yer petition by & by. I can't possibly look at it now.
Indeed I can't. It's onpossible, sir!"
"Mr. Linkin, who do you spect I air?" sed I.

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT 349
" A orfice-seeker, to be sure, " sed he.
"Wall, sir," sed I, "you's never more mistaken in j^our life;
you haint got a orfice I'd take under no cirucmstances. I'm A.
Ward. Wax figgers is my pcrfeshun. I'm the father of Twins,
and they look like me — botJi of them. I come to pay a friendly visit
to the President eleck of the United States. If so be you wants to
see me, say so, if not, say so & I'm off like a jug handle. "
" Mr. Ward, sit down. I am glad to see you, sir. "
" Repose in Abraham's Buzzum ! " said one of the orfice seekers,
his idee being to git orf a goak at my expense. . . . . Jest
at this pint of the conversation another swarm of orfice-seekers
arrove & cum pilin into the parler. Sum wanted post orfices, sum
wanted coUectorships, sum wanted furrin missions, and all wanted
sumthin. I thought Old Abe would go crazy. He had'nt more
than had time to shake hands with em before another tremenjis
crowd cum porein onto his premises. His house and dooryard was
now perfeckly overfiowed with orfice seekers, all clameruss for a
immejit inter-view -with Old Abe. One man from Ohio, who had
about seven inches of corn whisky into him, mistook me for Old
Abe and addrest me as "The Pra-hayrie Flower of the West!"
Thinks I you want a orfiss putty bad. Another man with a gold-
heded cane and a red nose told Old Abe he was "a seckind Wash
ington & the Pride of the BoundUss West. "
Sez I, "Squire, you wouldn't take a small post-orfiss if you
could git it, would you? "
Sez he, "A patrit is abuv them things, sir!"
"There's a putty big crop of patrits this season, aint there.
Squire? " sez I, when another crowd of orfiss seekers pcpred in. The
house, door-yard, barns, woodshed was now all fuU, and when
another crowcl cum I told 'em not to go away for want of room as the
hog-pen was still empty. One patrit from a smaU to-wn in Michygan
went up on top of the house, got into the chimney and slid into the
parler where Old Abe was endeverin to keep the hungry pack of
orfice-seekers from chawin him up aUve without benefit of clergy.
The minit he reached the fireplace he jumpt up, brusht the soot out
his eyes, and yelled: —
"Don't make any pintment at the Sptmkville postorfisstill
you've read my papers. All the respectful men in our town is
signers to that there dockyment ! "

3^o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Good God!" cried Old Abe, "they cum upon me from the
skize — down the chimneys and from the bowels of the yerth!"
He hacin't more'n got them words out of his deUkit mouth before
two fat orfiss seekers from Wisconsin, in endeverin to crawl atween
his legs for the purpuss of applyin for the toUgateship at Milwawky,
upsot the President eleck, & he would hev gone sprawling into the
fireplace if I hadn't caught him in these arms. But I hadn't more'n
stood him up strate before another man cum crashing down the
chimney, his head strikin me viliently again the inards and pros-
tratin my voluptoous form onto the fioor.
"Mr. Linkin," shouted the infatooated being, "my papers is
signed by every clergyman in our town, and like-wise the school
master!" Sez I, "You egrejis ass, " gittin up and brushin the dust from
my eyes, "I'll sign your papers -with this bunch of bones, if you
don't be a little more keerful how you make my bread basket a
depot in the future. How do you like that air perfumery? " sez I,
shoving my fist under his nose. "Them's the kind of papers I'll
giv you ! Them's the papers you want ! ' '
" But I workt hard for the ticket ; I toiled night and day. The
patrit should be rewarded."
"Virtoo, " sed I, holding the infatooated man by the coat-
collar, "virtoo, sir, is its own reward. Look at me!"
He did look at me, and qualed be4 my gase.
" The fact is, " I continued, lookin ' round on the hungry crowd,
"there is scarely a offiss for every ile lamp carrid round durin'
this campane. I wish there was furrin missions to be filled on
varis lonely islands where epydemics rage incessantly, and if I was
in Old Abe's place I'd send every mother's son of you to them.
What air you here for?" I continnered, warmin up considerable,
"can't you give Abe a minit's peace? Don't you see he's worrid
most to death? Go home, you miserable men, go home and till the
sile ! Go to peddlin tinware — go to choppin wood — go to bilin '
sope — stuff sassengers — black boots — git a clerkship on some
respectable manure cart ^anything for a honest living, but don't
come round here drivin Old Abe crazy by your outrajis cuttings
up! Go home. Stand not upon the order of your goin, but go
to onct! Ef in five minits from this time," sez I, pullin' out
my new sixteen dollar huntin cased watch and brandishin' it

AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 351
before their eyes, " Ef in five minits from this time a single sole
of you remains on these here premises, I'll go out to my cage near
by, and let my Boy Constructor loose ! & if he gits amung you,
you'll think old Solferino has cum again and no mistake!"
You ought to have seen them scamper  They run as
tho Satan hisself was arter them with a red hot ten pronged pitch
fork. In five minits the premises was clear.
"How kin I ever repay you, Mr. Ward, for your kindness?"
sed Old Abe, advancin and shakin me warmly by the hand. " How
kin I ever repay you, sir? "
"By gi-vin' the whole country a good, sound administration.
By poerin ile upon troubled waturs, North and South. By pur-
sooin ' a patriatic, firm, and just course, and then if any State wants
to secede, let 'em secesli!"
" How 'bout my Cabinit, Mister Ward, " sed Abe.
" Fill it up -with showmen, sir. Showmen is devoid of politics.
They haint got any principles. They know how^ to cater for the
public. They know what the public wants, North & South. Show
men, sir, is honest men. Ef you doubt their literary ability, look
at their posters, and see small bills ! Ef you want' a Cabinit as is a
Cabinit fill it up with showmen, but don't call on me. The moral
wax figger perfeshun mustn' be permitted to go down while there's
a drop of blood in these vains! A. Linkin, I wish you well! Ef
Powers or Walcott was to pick out a model for a beautiful man, I
scarcely think they'd sculp you ; but ef you do the fair thing by your
country you'll make as putty a angel as any of us ! A. Linkin, use
the talents which Nature has put into you judishusly, and firmly,
and all will be well ! A. Linkin , adoo ! ' '
He shook me cordyuUy by the hand — we exchanged picters,
so we could gaze upon each other's liniments, when far away from
one another — he at the helium of the ship of State, and I at the
helium of the show bizniss — admittance only 15 cents.
Complete 'Works of Artemus Ward, page loo.
Daily "Levees" of the President-Elect
Mr. Lincoln soon found, after his election, that his modest two-
story frame dwelling was altogether inadequate for the throng of
local callers and of visitors from a distance, and accordingly he gladly

35:^ THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
availed himself of the offer of the use of the Governor's room in the
Capitol building. On my arrival, he had already commenced
spending a good part of each day in it. He appeared daily except
Sundays, between nine and ten o'clock, and held a reception till
noon, to which all comers were admitted, -without even the formality
of first sending in cards. Whoever chose to call, received a hearty
greeting. At noon, he went home to dinner and reappeared about
two. Then his correspondence was given proper attention, and
-visitors of distinction were seen by special appointment at either
the State house or the hotel. Occasionally, but very rarely, he
passed some time in his law office. In the evening, old friends
called at his home for the exchange of news and political views. At
times, when important news was expected, he would go to the tele
graph or newspaper office after supper, and stay there till late.
Altogether, probably no other President-elect was as approachable
for everybody, at least during the first weeks of my stay. But he
found in the end, as was to be expected, that this popular practice
involved a good deal of fatigue, and that he needed more time for
himself; and the hours he gave up to the public were gradually
restricted. I was present almost daily for more or less time during his
morning receptions. I generally remained a silent listener, as I
could get at him at other hours when I was in need of information.
It was a most interesting study to watch the manner of his inter
course with callers. As a rule, he showed remarkable tact in dealing
with each of them, whether they were rough-looking Sangamon
County farmers, still addressing him familiarly as "Abe, " sleek and
pert commercial travelers, staid merchants, sharp politicians,
or preachers, lawyers, or other professional men. He showed a
very shrewd and quick perception of and adaptation to individual
characteristics and peculiarities. He never evaded a proper ques
tion, or failed to give a fit answer. He was ever ready for an argu
ment, which always had an original fiavor, and, as a rule, he got
the better in the discussion. There was, however, one limitation to
the freedom of his talks with his visitors. A great many of them
naturally tried to draw him out as to his future policy as President
regarding the secession movement in the South, but he would not
commit himself. The most remarkable and attractive feature of
those daily "levees," however, was his constant indulgence of his

AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 353
story-telUng propensity. Of course, all the visitors had heard of
it and were eager for the pri-vilege of listening to a practical illustra
tion of his pre-eminence in that line. He knew this and took
especial delight in meeting their -wishes. He never was at a loss
for a story or an anecdote to explain a meaning or enforce a point,
the aptness of which was always perfect. His supply was ap
parently inexhaustible, and the stories sounded so real that it was
hard to determine whether he repeated what he had heard from
others, or had invented himself.
Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol, I, page 142.
An Optical Omen
He related an incident which I 'will try to put on paper here, as
nearly as possible in his own words : —
" It was just after my election in i860, when the news had been
coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great 'Hur
rah boys!' so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest,
thro-wing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite
where I lay was a bureau — (and here he got up and placed the furni
ture to illustrate the position) — " and, looking in that glass, I saw
myself reflected, nearly at fuU length ; but my face, I' noticed, had
two separate and distinct images, the top of the nose of -one being
about three inches from the top of the other. I was a little bothered,
perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion
vanished. On lying down again I saw it a second time — plainer
if possible than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces
was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the
thing melted away, and I went off and, in the excitement of the
hour, forgot all about it — nearly, but not quite, for the thing would
once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as though some
thing uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that
night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I tried the
experiment again, when, siu-e enough, the thing came again ; but I
never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I
once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was some
what worried about it. She thought it was a ' sign ' that I was to be
elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the
faces was an omen that I shoiUd not see Ufe through the last term. "
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 220.

354 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
A Hard Time of It with the Office-Seekers
The Jacksonian "doctrine" that "to the victors belong the
spoils," was still so universally the creed of all politicians that it
was taken for granted there would be a change not only in all the
principal, but also in all the minor. Federal offices. It was also
expected that the other time-honored party practice .of a di-vision
of executive patronage among the several States would be carried
out. Accordingly, there appeared deputations from all the North
ern and Border States at Springfield to put in their respective claims
for recognition. Some of them came not only once, but several
times. . Almost every State presented candidates for the
Cabinet and for the principal diplomatic and departmental offices.
The hotel was the principal haunt of the place-hunters. The tricks,
the intrigues and the manoeuvres that were practised by them in
pursuit of their aims, came nearly all -within the range of my obser
vation, as it was my duty to furnish the earliest possible news of
their success or failure.
From what I have said, it will be understood that the President
elect had a hard time of it -with the office-seekers. But as he him
self was a thorough believer in the doctrine of rotation in office, he
felt it his duty to submit to this tribulation. The Cabinet appoint
ments were especially troublesome to him. There w^as
an intense struggle between Indiana and Illinois, most embarrassing
inasmuch as there were several candidates from his own State, all
intimate personal friends. Then came the bitter contest between
the Border States of Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland, and the
Pennsylvania cabal pro and contra Simon Cameron. Amid all these
perplexities, Lincoln displayed a good deal of patience and shrewdness
in dealing with these personal problems. His never -failing stories
helped many times to heal wounded feelings a,nd mitigate disap
pointments. But he gradually showed the wear and tear of these
continuous visitations, and finally looked so careworn as to excite
one's compassion.
Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. I, page 146,
A Little Girl Induces Mr. Lincoln to Grow a Beard
Little Grace Bedell, living at Westfield, New York, saw a por
trait of Lincoln during the Presidential campaign of i860. She

AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 355
said to her mother, " I think Mr. Lincoln would look better if he
wore whiskers and I'm going to write and tell him so. "
Grace's father was a Republican, but her two brothers were
Democrats. She wrote to "Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Esq.," and
told him how old she was ; where she lived ; that she was a Republi
can ; that she thought he would make a good President, but would
look better if he let his beard grow. If he would do this, she would
try to coax her brothers to vote for him. She said she thought the
rail fence around his cabin, in the picture, was very pretty and
wound up with:
" If you have not time to answer my letter, will you allow your
little girl to reply for you ? ' '
Lincoln was pleased with the letter and answered it at once,
as follows : "Springfield, 111., October 19, i860.
"Miss Grace Bedell:
"My dear little Miss: — Your very agreeable letter of the 15th
is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter.
I have three sons ; one seventeen ; one nine ; and one seven years of
age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to
whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people wquld
call it a piece of silly affectation if I should begin now?
" Your very sincere well-wisher,
"A. Lincoln."
When on the journey to Washington to be inaugurated, the
train stopped at Westfield. He spoke to ex-Lieutenant-Governor
Patterson, who accompanied the Presidential party, about his little
correspondent in that place. Some one called out and asked if
Grace Bedell was in the crowd that surged around the train. A way
was opened and Grace came, timidly but gladly, to speak to the
President-elect who let her see that he had grown a beard at her
request. Then reaching his long arms, he Ufted the little girl up
and kissed her, amid enthusiastic applause from the approving
multitude." "Abe Lincoln's Yarns andStories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 382.

3s6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
How Lincoln Chose a Secretary
When I was editor of a weekly paper in Illinois, in the late
fifties, I felt a great interest in a Springfield lawyer and ex-congress
man named Abraham Lincoln. I had heard him speak several
times. There was something in the man that commanded instant
attention, and every time you saw or heard him your respect in
creased. Everybody was talking about the coming nomination for the
Presidency, and one day I dashed off a little editorial suggesting
that Mr. Lincoln had had experience at Washington as a repre
sentative, was able and fearless, and would be a good man to lead
the nation in the crisis that we all could see impending. On reading
what I had written, before giving it to the printer, I felt that the
idea was such a good one as to be worth circulating beyond the con
fines of the rather limited clientele of my own paper. I had two
hundred and fifty proofs pulled, one of which I sent to each of the
papers in Illinois. Many of them printed it when I did, and thus
we started the Presidential boom of Mr. Lincoln.
During the campaign I supported him with all the strength of
my pen and tongue, but had received no recognition from him;
and, when I dropped in to see him, at Springfield, to pay my respects
after his election, I had no confidence that he would know anything
about me. He put out his long arm and gave me a pump-handle
shake, exclaiming:
"I'm glad to see you, young man. I rather suspect that you
are one of my good friends. Isn't it so?" I assured him it was.
"Why, of course it is," he said heartily. "I know that, per
haps better than you guess. How would you like to go to Wash
ington?" The suddenness of this proposal took my breath away. "Why,
why, I am pretty well satisfied where I am, Mr. Lincoln, " I answered
hesitatingly ; " but, if I could go on your personal staff, I — "
"Now, that's a compliment," he interrupted, laughing, "but
it happens to be just what I was thinking of. Go home and write
me a letter, so that we can get this thing down in black and white. "
I went home and wrote the letter, and, in a day or two, received
Mr. Lincoln's reply, appointing me one of his private secretaries.
In this offhand way he reshaped my life.
Success Magazine, William O. Stoddard, February, 1006.

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT 357
Trade Reasons against Civil War
Meanwhile, sundry well-intentioned men were doing what they
thought best to counteract the wave of hostility that had begun to
rise in the North  A Peace Congress assembled in
Washington to concert measures for the averting of war. Union
meetings were held in New York and other large cities in the free
States, everybody being desirous, apparently, of doing whatever
could reasonably be done, to pacify the South, angry at the election
of a " sectional " candidate 
It should be said, also, that in communities where the trade
and commerce of the Southern people had been large, there was
something like a panic at the near prospect of a war with the slave
States. Cotton, that great staple of the Gulf States, was one of the
great needs of the manufacturing States of the North. The
Southern States did not manufacture any goods, and their depend
ence on the North was also one reason why these latter should not
go to war. Thus the desire in the North for peace was natural
and strong.
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery , Noah Brooks, page 218.
News Item from the Springfield State Journal
"An old man hailing from Mississippi, dressed in plain home
spun, came to our city Saturday. He mingled freely with the Re
publican representatives, got their views, and seemed tp think we are
not quite so black as we are represented.
" He called on Mr. Lincoln, talked freely with him and heard
the President-elect express his sentiments and intentions. He
learned that Mr. Lincoln entertained none but the kindest feelings
towards the people of the South, and that he would protect the South
in her just rights.
" He had a long conversation and went away delighted. He
left the office of Mr. Lincoln in company with a friend, who com
municated this to us, and when outside the door he remarked, while
the tears stole down his furrowed cheeks :
" 'Oh ! if the people of the South could hear what I have heard,
they would love and not hate Mr. Lincoln : I wiU tell my friends at
home; but, ' he added sorrowfully, 'they wiU not beUeve me. '
"He said that he did wish every man in the South could be
personally acquainted with Mr. Lincoln."
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 1 33.

358

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

How Buchanan's Cabinet Planned to Wreck the Government
Meanwhile, the allies of treason and rebellion in the Cabinet
were doing what they could to make things easier for the Rebel
States when the final blow should come. John B. Floyd, a
Southern man, was Secretary of War, and he scattered the army all
over the South, , , . . so that it should not be at hand w^hen the
President should come
to the national Capital.
Floyd also moved large
quantities of arms and
munitions of war from
the forts and arsenals
of the North to those
in the South.
Mr. Isaac Toucey, a
Northern man, but com
pletely in the hands of
the conspirators, sent
the little na^vy of the
United States to the
four quarters of the
globe, so that no naval
force should be availa
ble when the conspiracy
should be ripe.
Howell Cobb, of
Georgia, afterwards a
general in the Rebel
army, was then Secre
tary of the Treasury,
and after he had pur
posely involved the
national finances in dif
ficulty, he resigned. He left the treasury empty.
Attorney-General Black had given his official opinion that
neither Congress nor the President could carry on any war against
any State.
James Buchanan, a weak old man, was nominally President,

JAMES BUCHANAN

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT 359
but the conspirators in the Cabinet carried f 01-ward their plans with
a high hand  The Southern Senators and Representa
tives, almost without exception, remained in Washington, occupy
ing their desks in the Senate and House, drawing pay and official
perquisites up to the last moment ; and, holding possession of the
Government as these men did, they were at the same time plotting
to overthrow it.
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 212.
The Duty of the President "to Run the Machine as It Is"
The uproar which raged about Mr. Lincoln soon became quite
as loud over "coercion" as over "compromise." Eaph passing
week made conciliation more difficult, saw new elements of disunion
realized. What was to be done with the seceding States ? What
was to be done about the forts and arsenals, custom-houses and post-
offices, they were seizing? If Mr. Lincoln, would not compromise,
was he going to let the States and the Federal property go, or was he
going to compel them to return with it? Did he propose to coerce
the South? Though the President-elect refused to give any expres
sion of opinion on the subject to the country, it was not because he
was not perfectly clear in his own mind. Secession he considered
impossible. "My opinion is," he wrote Thurlow Weed on December 17th,
" that no State can in any way lawfully get out of the Union without
the consent of the others ; and that it is the duty of the President
and other government functionaries to run the machine as it is. "
When Horace Greeley began a series of editorials in the (New
York) Tribtme contending that if seven or eight States sent agents to
Washington, saying, "We want to get out of the Union, " he should
feel constrained by his devotion to Human Liberty to say, "Let
them go. " Lincoln said nothing publicly, though in Springfield it
was beUeved that he considered the poUcy " dangerous and iUogical. "
He certainly was only amused at Fernando Wood's scheme to take
New York City out of the Union and make it a free city — another
Hamburg. " I reckon, " he said to a New Yorker in February, in discussing
the subject, " that it will be some time before the front door sets up
house-keeping on its own account. "
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell. Vol. I, page 305-

36o THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Latitude and Longitude," "Socks and Flapjacks"
" 'Think he was a big man, then? ' Nope — never did. Just as
I said, we all thought Douglas was oiir big man. You know I -felt
kind of sorry for Lincoln when they began to talk about him for
President. It seemed almost as if somebody was makin ' fun of him.
He didn't look like a President. I never had seen one, but we had
pictures of 'em from George Washington down, and they looked
somehow as if they were different kind of timber from us. ...
Now Mr. Lincoln he was just like your own folks — no trouble to talk
to him, no siree.
"None of us around town took much stock in his bein ' elected
at first — that is, none of the men ; the women was different. They
always believed in him, and used to say :
" 'You mark my word, Mr. Lincoln will be President. He's
just made for it, he's good, he's the best man ever lived and he ought
to be President. '
" It seems all right now, though. I reckon I learned somethin '
watchin ' him. . . Funniest thing to see him goin ' around in
this town — not a mite changed — and the whole United States a
watchin' him and the biggest men in the country runnin ' after him
and the reporters hangin ' around to talk to him and fellers makin '
his pictures in ile and every other way. That didn't make no differ
ence to him. . He had a room over there in the Court-
House — room on that comer there. I never looked up that it
wan't chuck full of people wantin ' him. This old town was full of
people all the time — delegations and committees and politicians
and newspaper men.
' ' He saw 'em all. Sometimes I used to step over and watch him
— didn't bother him a mite to see a big man — not a mite. He'd
jest shake hands and talk as easy and natural as if 'twas me — and
he didn't do no struttin' either. . Mr. Lincoln didn't put
on any airs. No, sir, and he didn't i^ut any of his old friends either.
Tickled to death to see 'em every time, and they all come — blamed if
every old man and woman in Sangamon County didn't trot up here
to see him. They'd all knowed him when he was keepin ' store down
to New Salem and swingin ' a chain — ¦.surveyed lots o' their towns for
'em — he had — and then he'd electioneered all over that county, too,
so they just come in droves to bid him good-by.

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT 361
" I was over there one day when old Aunt Sally Lowdy came in
the door. Aunt Sally li\-ed down near New Salem and I expect
she'd mended Mr. Lincoln's pants many a time; for all them old
women down there just doted on him and took care of him as if he
was their own boy. Well, Aunt Sally stood lookin' kind a scared
seein ' so many strangers and not knowin' precisely what to do, when
Mr. Ijncoln spied her. Quick as a wink he said, 'Excuse me, gen
tlemen,' and he just rushed over to that old woman and shook
hands with both of his'n and says:
" 'Now, Aunt Sally, this is real kind of you to come and see
me. How are you and how's Jake?' (Jake was her boy.) 'Come
right over here. '
"And he led her over, as if she was the biggest lady in Illinois
and says: " 'Gentlemen, this is a good old friend of mine. She can make
the best fiapjacks you ever tasted, and she's baked 'em for me many
a time.' "Aunt Sally was jest as pink as a rosy, she was so tickled.
And she says:
." 'Abe, . . I had to come and say good-by. . .
I thought I'd come and bring you a present. Knit 'em myself. '
" And I'll be blamed if that old lady didn 't pull out a great big
pair of yarn socks and hand 'em to Mr. Lincoln.
"Well, sir, it was the funniest thing to see Mr. Lincoln's face
pucker up and his eyes twinkle and twinkle. He took them socks
and held 'em up by the toes, one in each hand. They w^as the long
est socks I ever see.
( " 'The ladv got my latitude and longitude 'bout right, didn't
she, gentlemen?' he says, and then he laid 'em down and he took
Aunt Sally's hand and he says, tender-like:
" 'Aunt Sally, you couldn't a done nothin' which would have
pleased me better. I'U take 'em to Washington and wear 'em, and
think of you when I do it. '
"And I declare he said it so first thing I knew I was almost
blubberin', and I wan't the only one nuther, and I bet he did wear
'em in Washington. I can jest see him pullin' off his shoe and
showin ' them socks to Sumner or Seward or some other big bug
that was botherin ' him, when he wanted to switch off on another

362 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
subject and teUin' 'em the story about Aunt Sally and her flap
jacks." He Knew Lincoln, Ida M. Tartiell, page 13.
Correspondence with Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia
In his private correspondence Stephens spoke of receiving a
large number of letters from the Northern States discussing his
anti-secession speech, nearly all of them favorable. . One
of the letters was from President-elect Lincoln asking for a revised
copy of the speech. Stephens replied saying that his revision
amounted to no more than a glance over the reporters ' notes, which
were substantially correct. Ever since they had been Whigs to
gether in the House in the forties, Lincoln had admired Stephens,
and it is even said that he now considered the advisability of inviting
him to become a member of his Cabinet. In view of Lincoln's
position and that of Stephens on the slavery question, the story is
doubtful. . .
Shortly after Stephens's reply to Lincoln's request — a reply in
which he spoke of the country's "great peril," and declared that
" no man ever had heavier or greater responsibilities than you have
in the present momentous crisis," — Lincoln wrote as follows:
"For your eye only.
"Springfield, 111., Dec. 22, i860.
"Hon. a. H. Stephens.
"My dear Sir: — Your obliging answer to my short note is just
received, and for which please accept my thanks. I fully appreciate
the present peril the country is in, and the weight of responsibility
on me. ' ' Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Re
publican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with the
slaves or with them about the slaves? If they do, I wish to assure
you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no
cause for such fears.
"The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it
was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, that does
not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be ex
tended ; while we think it is wrong and ought to be abolished. That,

AS PRESIDENT-ELECT 363
I suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference
between us. ' ' Yours very truly,
"A. Lincoln."
Alexander H. Stephens, Louis Pendleton, page 164.
The Three Staunch Democrats in Buchanan's Cabinet
Some of the Northern Democrats who had stood by Buchanan
and his party until now, began to murmur at his supple willingness
to help the cause of Rebellion, now assuming formidable propor
tions. Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, resigned because the Presi
dent refused to send reinforcements to Major Anderson, who was
shut up with a little force in Fort Moultrie, Charleston Harbor. .
Mr. Black, too, resigned and Edwin M. Stanton, a staunch
Democrat and Unionist, was appointed in his place.
General John A. Dix, of New York, succeeded Howell Cobb as
Secretary of the Treasury. It was this unflinching Union man who,
while in the Cabinet of Buchanan, sent to the commander of a
threatened revenue cutter the famous despatch :
" If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot
him on the spot. "
Joseph Holt of Kentucky, also a strong Union man, took the
office of Secretary of War, made vacant by Floyd, who had added
official dishonesty to treason.
Stanton, in the Attorney-General's office, was a very different
sort of man from Black, who had retired to Pennsylvania. The
infamous Jacob Thompson, who kept the office of Secretary of the
Interior for the purpose, apparently, of helping his fellow-con
spirators in the slave States, advised a surrender of the forts in
Charleston Harbor and the withdrawal of Major Anderson and his
little force. Stanton said to the President :
" Mr. President, it is my duty, as your legal adviser, to say that
you have no right to give up the property of the Government or
abandon the soldiers of the United States to its enemies ; and the
course proposed by the Secretary of the Interior, if foUowed, is
treason, and wiU involve you and aU concerned in treason. "
For the first time treason had been called by its right name in
the Cabinet councils of James Buchanan. It was none too soon.
The traitors saw that their work in Washington must close ; the

364 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
times were ripe for open revolt; and while some waited until the
open secession of their States called them home, others hastened
southwards, eagerly taking part in what they fondly deemed to be
the formation of a new and prosperous Confederacy.
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 213.
Seven Southern Sisters Secede
It is not correct to say that the election of Lincoln was the
cause of the Rebellion ; it was rather the signal. To the Southern
leaders, it was the striking of the appointed hour. His defeat
would have meant only postponement. South Carolina led the
way. On December 17, i860, her convention came together, the
Palmetto flag waving over its chamber of conference, and on
December 20 it issued its "Ordinance." This declared that the
Ordinance of May 23, 1788, ratifying the Constitution, is "hereby
repealed, " and the "Union now subsisting between South Carolina
and other States, under the name of the United States of America,
is hereby dissolved."
A Declaration of Causes said that South CaroUna had " resumed
her position among the nations of the world as a separate and
independent State."
The language used was appropriate for the revocation of a
power-of -attorney. The people hailed this action with noisy joy,
unaccompanied by any regret or solemnity at the severance of the
old relationship. The newspapers at once began to publish "For
eign News" from the other States.
The new governor, a fiery Secessionist, . had already
suggested to Mr. Buchanan the impropriety of reinforcing the
national garrisons' in the forts in Charleston Harbor. He now
accredited to the President three commissioners to treat with him
for the delivery of the "forts, magazines, lighthouses, and other
real estate, with their appurtenances, in the limits of South Carolina ;
and also for the apportionment of public debt, and for a division
of all other property held by the Government of the United States
as agents of the Confederate States of which South Carolina was
recently a member. "
Meanwhile there was in the Harbor of Charleston a sort of
armed truce, which might at any moment break into war. Major
Anderson, in Fort Moultrie, and the State commander in the city

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT

36s

watched each other like two suspicious animals, neither sure when
the other will spring.
In short, in all the overt acts, the demeanor and the language
of this excitable State, there was such insolence, besides hostility,
that her emissaries must have been surprised at the urbane cour
tesy with which they were received, even by a President of Mr.
Buchanan's views.
After the secession of South Carolina the Gulf States hesitated
briefly. Mississippi followed first; her convention assembled
January 7, 1861, and on January 9
passed the Ordinance. The Florida
convention met January 3, and on
January 10 decreed the State to be "a
sovereign and independent nation."
. . The Alabama convention passed
its Ordinance on January II.
In Georgia the secessionists doubted
whether they could control a conven
tion, yet felt obliged to call one,
Toombs, Cobb, and Iverson labored
with tireless zeal throughout the State ;
but, in spite of aU their proselytizing,
Unionist feeling ran high and debate
was hot. Alexander H. Stephens
spoke for the Union with a warmth and
logic not surpassed by anything that
was said at the North. He and Her-
schel V Johnson both voted against
secession; yet, on January 18, when
the vote w^as taken, it showed 208 ayes against 89 nays. On Jan
uary 26 Louisiana foUowed; but it refused to submit the
Ordinance to the people for ratification.
The action of Texas, the only other State which seceded prior
to the inauguration of Lincoln, was delayed untU Febmary i.
There Governor Houston was opposing secession with such vigor as
remained to a broken old man, whereby he provoked Senator
Iverson to utter the threat of assassination: "Some Texan Brutus
may arise to rid his country of this old hoary -headed traitor. "
Abraham Lincoln, John T. Morse, Jr., Vol. I. page 1S4,

366 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
A Stormy Session of Buchanan's Cabinet
One day. Secretary Stanton referred to the meeting of the
Buchanan Cabinet called upon receipt of the news that Major
Anderson had evacuated Fort Moultrie, and gone to Fort Sumter.
"This little incident," said Stanton, "was the crisis of our
history, — ^the pivot upon which everything turned. Had he
remained at Fort Moultrie, a very different combination of circum
stances would have arisen. The attack on Sumter — commenced by
the South — united the North and made the success of the Confed
eracy impossible. I shall never forget, " he continued, " our coming
together by special summons that night. Buchanan sat in his arm
chair in a comer of the room, 'white as a sheet, with a cigar in his
mouth. The despatches were laid before us ; and so much violence
ensued that he had to turn us all out-of-doors. '"
Six Months in the White House. F. B. Carpenter, page 54.
Why Did the South Secede?
What took these seven States — soon to be followed by four
more — out of the Union? The answer is, it was their first convic
tion that slavery would thrive better by being separated from the
influence of the North; and, secondly, it was their belief in "States
Rights, " upheld by South Carolina as far back as Jackson's Presi
dency. According to that idea, any State was justified in sepa
rating itself from the United States whenever it became convinced
that it was for its interest to withdraw.
In this act of secession many of the people of the South took no
direct part, — a large number being, in fact, opposed to it, — a few
political leaders did the chief part of the work. Their aim was to
establish a great slave-holding republic, or nationality, of which
they should be head.
President Buchanan made no attempt to prevent the States
from seceding ; part of his Cabinet were Southern men, who were in
full sympathy with the Southern leaders, and the President did not
see how to act.
The seceded States seized the forts, arsenals, and other national
property within their limits, so far as they could do so. Fort Sumter,
commanded by Major Anderson of the United States army in

AS PRESIDENT-ELECT

367

Stripes

Charleston Harbor, was one of the few where the Stars and
remained fly
ing. President
Buchanan had
made an at
tempt to send
men and sup
plies to Major
Anderson by
the merchant
steamer Star of
the West (Janu
ary 9, 1861) ;
but the people
of Charleston
fired upon the-
steamer and
compelled her to
go back. All eyes
were now turned
toward Abra-'
ham Lincoln.
The great ques
tion was. What"
will he do when
he becomes
President ?
The Leading Facts of American History, D. H. Montgomery, page 282.
Says Farewell to His Old Stepmother and Visits His Father's Grave
And now lie began to think very tenderly of his friends and
relatives in Coles County, especially of his good stepmother and her
daughters. By the first of February he concluded that he could
not leave his home to assume the vast responsibilities that awaited
him without making them a visit. Accordingly, he left Springfield
on the first day of that month, and went straight to Charleston.
Early the next morning he repaired to his cousin, Dennis Hanks;
and jolly old friend Dennis had 'the satisfaction of seeing a grand

JEFFERSON DAVIS

FIRST CAPITOL OF THE CONFEDERACY, AT MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
Montgomery was the Capital of the first seven States that seceded. After Virginia and three other States seceded, making
eleven in the Southern Confederacy, the Capital was removed to Richmond.

.45 PRESIDENT-ELECT 369
' ' levee ' ' under his own roof. It was all very pleasant to Mr. Lincoln
to see such multitudes of famUiar faces, smiling upon his wonderful
successes. But the chief object of his solicitude was not here,
Mrs. Lincoln lived in the southern part of the county, and he was
all impatience to see her. As soon, therefore, as he had taken a
frugal breakfast with Dennis, he and Colonel Chapman started off in
a two-horse buggy toward Farmington, where his stepmother was
living with her daughter, Mrs. Moore. They had much difficulty in
crossing the Kickapoo River, ^A'hich was running full of ice; but
they finally made the dangerous passage, and arrived at Farmington
in safety. The meeting between him and the old lady was of a most
affectionate and tender character. She fondlbd him as her own
"Abe," and he her as his own mother. . . The parting
between Mr. Lincoln and his 'mother was very touching. She em
braced him with deep emotion, and said she was sure she would
never behold him again, for ghe felt that his enemies would assassi
nate him. He replied :
"No, no, Mother; they will not do that. Trust in the Lord
and all will be well ; we will see each other again. ' ' . Then Mr.
Lincoln and Colonel Chapman drove to the house of John Hall,
who lived on the old Lincoln farm where Abe split the celebrated
rails and fenced in the little clearing in 1830. Thence they went to
the spot where old Tom Lincoln was buried. The grave was un
marked and utterly neglected. Mr. Lincoln said he wanted to
"have it enclosed and a suitable tombstone erected. "
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ward H. Lamon, page 462.
"Buchanan is Giving the Case Away and I Can't Stop Him"
Even after the contest was over and he was implored to say
something to reassure the seceding South, heresisted the temptation
to interfere with his predecessor's administration, Icnowing ftdl well
that his advice would be disregarded and that it was hopeless to try
to save the situation with words alone.
It reminded him, he said, of one of his experiences on the circuit
when he saw a lawyer making frantic signals to head off an associate
who was making blundering admissions to the' jury, and who, con-

370 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
tinned utterly oblivious of the efforts which were being made to
check his ruinous work.
" Now, that's the way with Buchanan and me, " was his only
comment; " He's giving the case away and I can't stop him. "
As the time for action drew near and Lincoln was on the eve
of departure for Washington, he 'visited his law office to attend to
some business matters.
" After all these things were disposed of , " relates Mr. Herndon,
" he crossed to the opposite side of the room and threw himself down
on the old office sofa, which after many, years of ser'vice had been
moved against the wall for support. He lay there for some mo
ments, his face toward the ceiling, without either of us speaking.
He then recalled some incidents of his early practice
and took great pleasure in delineating the ludicrous features of
many a lawsuit on the circuit.
" Then he gathered up a bundle of books and papers he wished
to take with him, and started to go, but before leaving he made the
strange request that the sign-board which swung on its rusty hinges
at the foot of the stairway should remain.
" ' Let it hang there undisturbed, ' he said, with a significant
lowering of his voice. 'Give our clients to understand that the
election of a President makes no difference in the firm.
If I live I'm coming back some time, and then we'll go right on
practising law as if nothing had ever happened. '
" He lingered for a moment as if to take a last look at the old
quarters, and then passed into the narrow hall-way. "
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 2Q0.

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
LINCOLN IN 1 86 1
The JPresident-elect sat for this photograph in his inauguration clothes not long
before leaving for Washington.

(371)

CHAPTER XIV
The Journey to Washington
Farewell to Springfield Friends
The start on the memorable journey was made shortly after
eight o'clock on the morning of Monday, February ii. It was a
clear,, crisp winter day. Only about one hundred people, mostly
personal friends, were assembled at the station to shake hands for
the last time -with their distinguished townsman. It was not

RAILROAD STATION WHERE LINCOLN SAID GOOD-BYE TO SPRINGFIELD
strange that he yielded to the sad feelings which must have moved
him at the thought of what lay behind and what was before him,
and gave them utterance in a pathetic formal farewell to the gather
ing crowd, as follows :
" My Friends, — No one not in my position can appreciate the
sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am.
Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century ; here my chil-
(372)

THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 373
dren were born, and hfere'one of them lies buried. I know not how
soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me which is,
perhaps, greater than that which has devolved upon any other man
since the days of Washington. He would never have succeeded
except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times
relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid
which sustained him, and in the same Almighty Being I place my
reliance for support ; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that
I ma}' receive that Divine assistance, -without which I cannot suc
ceed, but 'with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an
affectionate farew^ell. "
I reproduce this here, as but for me it would not have been
preserved in the exact form in which it was delivered. It was
entirely extemporized, and, knowing this, I prevailed upon Mr.
Lincoln immediately after starting, to write it out for me on a
"pad. " I sent it over the wires from the first telegraph station.
Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. I, page 149.
On the Way to Washington — as Far as Indianapolis
As the train which bore Mr. Lincoln went whirling and shriek
ing through the country , people everywhere assembled at the rail
road stations. The ladies and girls waved their handkerchiefs and
threw bouquets into the cars, and the men and boys shouted for
"Lincoln and the Constitution" at the top of their voices. Wher
ever the cars stopped long enough, Mr. Lincoln would make his
appearance and say a few kind and pleasant words, and at places
where he remained for several hours he sometimes made speeches of
considerable length. At little villages, where the train only paused
for a moment, he repUed with bows and pleasant smiles to the
greetings which everywhere met him.
At Tolono, amid deafening applause, he said :
"I am leaving you on an errand of national importance,
attended, as you are aware, with considerable difficulties. Let us
believe, as some poet has expressed it :
'"Behind the cloud the sun is stiU shining.'
"I bid you an affectionate farewell."

374 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
At Indianapolis Mr. Lincoln found the Governor of the State
waiting for him in his carriage. The whole city had turned out to
do Mr. Lincoln honor, and he was escorted to the Bates House in
splendid style. In his address to the people from the balcony of
the hotel, he said :
" To the salvation of the Union there needs but one thing, — the
hearts of a people like yours. Of the people, when they rise in mass
in behalf of the Union and the liberties of their country, — truly ma}'
it be said :
" 'The gates of hell cannot prevail against them.' "
The Children's Life of Abraham. Lincoln, M, Louise Putnam, page 112.
At Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburg, and Cleveland
At Cincinnati Mr. Lincoln's reception was almost overwhelm
ing. He remained at Cincinnati till the next morning,
when he set off for Columbus, the capital of the State, attended
by a portion of the Ohio Legislature. . Upon their arrival
Mr. Lincoln was greeted by the Lieutenant-Governor.
To the Legislature he said :
" There has fallen upon me a task such as did not rest even upon
the Father of his Country; and so feeling, I cannot but turn and
look for the support without which it will be impossible for me to
perform that great task. I turn, then, and look to the great Ameri
can people, and to that God who has never forsaken them. "
The following morning Mr. Lincoln left Columbus, . and
in the evening reached Pittsburg, where he was met, as usual, by a
crowd of enthusiastic admirers. . In the morning he was
waited upon by the Mayor and Common Council of the city, to
whom, after an address of welcome on their part, he said, referring
to the tariff :
"The tariff is a question of national housekeeping. It is
to the Government what replenishing the meal tub is to the
family." 
From Pittsburg he went to Cleveland. Here the shouts and
cheers of the people blended with the thunders of cannon. . . .
Mr. Lincoln said, in closing :

THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 375
" If all do not join now to save the good old Ship of the Union
on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another
voyage. "
Tlie Children s Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 113.
Lincoln and the Coal-heaver
When Lincoln was on his way to assume the office of President,
the train was delayed at Freedom, Pennsylvania, by an accident to a
freight train that was a little way ahead, and, while he was there, I
saw him again. Some things happened that I have never seen in
print. He was accompanied by Major Sumner, whom I knew as
commander of the United States troops in Kansas, in 1856, and
Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, of the celebrated regiment of Zouaves.
Neither Major Sumner nor Colonel Ellsworth was tall, and, as they
stood beside Lincoln on the rear platform, while he made his ad
dress, they looked shorter than they really were. At the close of
Lincoln's short speech, a coal-heaver called out:
"Abe, they say you are the tallest man in the United States,
but I don't believe you are any taller than I am." Lincoln replied :
"Come up here and let us measure."
The coal-heaver pressed his way through the crowd and climbed
on the platform, where Lincoln and he stood back to back. Turn
ing to Colonel Ellsworth, Lincoln said :
"Which is the taller?"
Colonel Ellsworth, being so much shorter, could not tell, so he
climbed on the guard rail, and, putting his hand across the top of the
heads of the two men, said: "I believe that they are exactly the
same height. ' ' Then Lincoln and the coal-heaver turned around
and faced each other. The crowd shouted loudly when Lincoln took
the black, sooty hand of the coal-heaver in his and gave a hearty
hand-shake to the man who was his equal — in height.
Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln , Thomas H. Tibbies, Success Magazine, Vol, IX, Feb
ruary, 1906, page 137. Gives Tad a "Good Spanking"
The car in which the party was riding was an ordinary passenger
car of those days. No one would submit to riding in such a car
now. Mrs. Lincoln and the children were in the car. She sat on

376 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
the side next the platform and did not seem to notice anything that
was going on. There was a small boy in the seat with her who
became known as " Tad, " in after years. He was full of mischief.
He raised the car window an inch or two and tried to catch the
fingers of the boys outside as they stuck them under, by slamming it
down. When Lincoln went back into the car he told Tad to stop
that, but in a few minutes the boy was at the same trick again.
Lincoln spoke to him the second time. The boy obeyed, but was
soon at the same old trick again. Lincoln leaned over, drew the
boy across his knee, and gave him a good spanking, saying ;
"Why do you want to mash those boys' fingers?"
After a while the wreck ahead was cleared away and the train
pulled out. Lincoln came to the rear platform and acknowledged
the shouts of the people as the train passed between them. A man
standing near me said :
" He is not the kind of man that I expected to see, except that
he is tall. I expected to see a jolly -looking man. While he sat in
the car I watched him through a window. He looked sad enough
to be going to his death instead of to be inaugurated President of
the United States."
Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas H. Tibbies. Success Magazine,Vo\. IX, Febru
ary, 1906, page 137. New York State and City
The next morning Mr. Lincoln took his departure for Buffalo,
where he remained over Sunday, and on Monday morning left for
Rochester, at which place he spoke a few words to the assembled
crowd  At Syracuse the people had erected a very hand
some platform for Mr. Lincoln to stand upon while he addressed
them; but there was not time for him to ascend it. He said a few
kind words to them, however, and then proceeded to Utica. Here
the train paused only a few moments, and then sped on to Albany,
where a great procession escorted Mr. Lincoln to the State House. .
Mr. Lincoln next passed on to Troy, where he thanked the
people very kindly for their great reception. At Hudson he spoke
a few words, but had not time to ascend the beautiful platform
which they had erected for him. At Poughkeepsie great honors
were showered on him, and at Peekskill 

THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 377
Mr. Lincoln now proceeded to New York, where he arrived at
three in the afternoon. Business was suspended and all Broadway
was crammed with the immense throng which tried to catch a
glimpse of the future President, as he was being escorted to the
Astor House. Mr. Lincoln stepped upon the balcony of the hotel,
and showed himself to the excited multitude, who kept calling for
him ; but he was too tired to make a speech.
The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M, Louise Putnam, page 117.
At Trenton, New Jersey
At Trenton he was received by a portion of the Legislature
and escorted to the State House. Here he said :
" May I be pardoned if upon this occasion I mention that
away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to
read, I got hold of a small book, . . Weems's ' Life of Wash
ington.' I remember the accounts there given of the battlefields
and struggles for the liberties of the country ; and none fixed them
selves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at
Trenton, New Jersey. The crossing of the river, the contest with
the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time — all fixed
themselves upon my memory more than any single Revolutionary
event. . I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was,
that there must have been something more than common that these
men struggled for. " 
Addressing the other branch of the Legislature, he said :
"The man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I
am, none who would do more to preserve it, but it may be necessary
to put the foot down firmly. And if I do my duty and do right,
you will sustain me, will you not?"
He was answered with hearty cheers and cries of "Yes, yes,
we will ! ' '
The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 120.
At Independence Hall on Washington's Birthday
From Trenton Mr. Lincoln proceeded to Philadelphia, and was
escorted to the Continental Hotel. WhUe in this city he was
invited to raise the national fiag over Independence HaU, where the

378 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Declaration of Independence was first published to the world.
Before raising the fiag he said :
"I have <of ten pondered over the dangers which were incurred
by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that
Declaration of Independence. ... I have often inquired of
myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy
so long together. It was not the mere matter of separation of the
Colonies from the Mother-land, but that sentiment in the Declara
tion of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of
this country, but hope to all the world for all future time. It was
that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be
lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal
chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of
Independence. " Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis?
If it can, I shall consider myself one of the happiest men in the
world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that
principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be
saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. I have said
nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure
of Almighty God, to die by. "
He was escorted to a platform in front of the buUding, and the
cord was placed in his hands. The beautiful fiag arose to the top
of the staff, and he says himself :
" It floated gloriously to the wind without an accident, in the
bright, glowing sunshine of the morning. "
The Children s Lif e of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 121.
Mr. Lincoln Tells Why He Passed through Baltimore in the Night
"Mr. Judd, a warm personal friend of mine from Chicago, sent
for me to come to his room (at the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia,
February 21st). I went, and found there Mr. Pinkerton, a skUlful
police detective, also from Chicago, who had been employed for
some days in Baltimore watching or searching for suspicious persons
there. Pinkerton informed me that a plan had been laid for my
assassination, the exact time when I expected to go through Balti-

THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 379
more being publicly known. He was well informed as to the plan,
but did not know that the conspirators would have pluck enough to
execute it. He urged me to go right through with him to Wash
ington that night. I didn't like that. I had made engagements to
visit Harrisburg and go from there to Baltimore, and I resolved to
do so. I could not believe that there was a plot to murder me.
"I made arrangements, however, with Mr. Judd for my return
to Philadelphia the next night, if I should be convinced that there
was danger in going through Baltimore. I told them that if I
should meet at Harrisburg, as I had at other places, a delegation to
go on with me to the next place (Baltimore), I should feel safe and
go on. When I was making my way back to my room, through
crowds of people, I met Frederick Seward. We went together to
my room when he told me that he had been sent, at the instance
of his father and General Scott, to inform me that their detectives
in Baltimore had discovered a plot there to assassinate me. They
knew nothing of Mr. Pinkerton 's movements. I now believed such
a plot to be in existence."
Lossing's History of the Civil War, Vol, I, page 278,
How Robert Lincoln Lost His Father's Inaugural Address
Mr. Lincoln had prepared his first inaugural address in a room
over a store in Springfield. His only reference works were Henry
Clay's great Compromise Speech of 1850, Andrew Jackson's Procla
mation against Nullification, Webster's great Reply to Hayile, and a
copy of the Constitution.
When Mr. Lincoln started for Washington to be inaugurated,
the inaugural address was placed in a special satchel and guarded
with special care. At Harrisburg the satchel was given in charge
of Robert T. Lincoln, who accompanied his father. Before the
train started from Harrisburg the precious satchel was missing.
Robert thought he had given it to a waiter at the hotel, but a long
search faUed to reveal the bag with its precious document. Lincoln
was annoyed, angry, and finaUy in despair. He felt certain that
the address was lost beyond recovery, and, as it lacked only ten
days until the inauguration, he had no time to prepare another.
He had not even preserved the notes from which the original copy
had been written.
Mr. Lincoln went to Ward Lamon, his former law partner, then

38o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
one of his body-guard, and informed him of the loss in the foUo'wing
words :
" Lamon, I guess I have lost my certificate of moral character,
written by myself. Bob has lost the gripsack containing my
inaugural address."
The clerk at the hotel told Mr. Lincoln that he woiUd probably
find his missing satchel in the baggage-room. Arriving there, Mr.
Lincoln saw a satchel which he thought was his, and it was passed
out to him. His key fitted the lock, but, alas ! when it was opened
the bag contained only a soiled shirt, some paper collars and a bottle
of whiskey. A few minutes later the satchel containing the inau
gural address was found among the pile of baggage.
The recovery of the address reminded Mr. Lincoln of a story,
which is thus narrated by Ward Lamon in his "Recollections of
Abraham Lincoln " :
The loss of the address and the search for it was the subject of
a great deal of amusement. Mr. Lincoln said many funny things
in connection 'with the incident. One of them was that he knew a
fellow once who had saved up fifteen hundred dollars, and had
placed it in a private banking establishment. The bank soon
failed, and he afterward received ten per cent, of his investment.
He then took his one hundred and fifty dollars and deposited it in a
sa'vings bank, where he was sure it would be safe. In a short time
this bank also failed, and he received at the final settlement ten per
cent, on the amount deposited. When the fifteen dollars was paid
over to him, he held it in his hand and looked at it thoughtfully,
then he said:
" Now, darn you ! I have got you reduced to a portable shape,
so I'll put you in my pocket. "
Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Lincoln took his address
from the bag and carefully placed it in the inside pocket of his vest,
but held on to the satchel with as much interest as if it still con
tained his " certificate of moral character. "
Abe Lincoln's Yarns and Stories. Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page in.
A Railroad Oflficiars Letter
On the night of February 9th [r86i] I sent you a letter, as fol
lows :
"Allan Pinkerton, Esq., Chicago, Illinois.
"Yours of the 6th inst., received. I am informed that a son

THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 381
of a distinguished citizen of Maryland suid he had taken an oath
with others to assassinate Mr. Lincoln before he gets to Washington,
and they may attempt to do it while he is passing over our road.
I think you had better look after this man if possible. This infor
mation is perfectly reliable. I have nothing more to say at this
time. I shall try and see you in a few days.
"On the night of the 22nd of February, 1861, Mr. Kenny and
yourself met Mr. Lincoln at the West Philadelphia depot, and took
him in a carriage over to the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore
Railroad depdt. Mr. Lincoln took a berth in the sleeping car, and
at eleven p.m. the train left the depot for Washington. I met you
in our depdt at Baltimore, went into the" sleeping car and whispered
in your ear ' all is right, ' which seemed to be welcome news to
you — it certainly was to me. Mr. Lincoln arrived in Washington
without even the officers of the train knowing that he was aboard.
(Signed) "William Stearns."
(Master Machinist of the Philadelphia,
Wilmington iSr Baltimore R. R.)
Extract from a letter to Allan Pinkerton, in History and Passage of Abraham Lincoln from Harris
burg, Pa., to Washington, D. C, — on the 22nd and 23d of February, 1861, page 21.
Unexpectedly Met in Washington
On the afternoon of the 23d (of February), Mr. Seward came
to my seat in the House of Representatives, and told me he had no
information from his son nor anyone else in respect of Mr. Lincoln's
movements, and that he could have none, as the wires were all cut,
but he thought it very probable he would arrive in the regular train
from Philadelphia, and he suggested that we would meet in the
dipdt to receive him. We were promptly on hand; the train
arrived on time, and with strained eyes we watched the descent of
the passengers. But there 'was no Mr. Lincoln among them ; though his arrival
was by no means certain, yet we were much disappointed. But
as there was no telegraphic connection, it was impossible for us to
have any information. It was no use to speculate. Sad, disap
pointed, and under the empire of conflicting emotions we separated
to go to our respective homes ; but agreeing to be at the depdt on the
arrival of the New York train the next morning before dayUght,

382 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
hoping either to meet the President or get information as to his
movements. I was on hand in season, but to my great disappointment,
Governor Seward did not appear. I planted myself behind one of
the great pillars in the old Washington and Baltimore depot, where
I could see and not be observed. Presently the train came rum
bling in on time. It was a moment of great anxiety to me.
As I have stated, I stood behind the pillar awaiting the arrival
of the train. When it came to a stop I watched with fear and
trembling to see the passengers descend. I saw every car emptied,
and there was no Mr. Lincoln. I was well-nigh in despair, and when
about to leave I saw slowly emerge from the last sleeping-car three
persons. I could not mistake the long, lank form of Mr. Lincoln, and
my heart bounded with joy and gratitude. He had on a soft low-
crowned hat, a muffler around his neck, and a short bob-tailed over
coat. Any one who knew him at that time could not have failed to
recognize him at once 
The only persons that accompanied Mr. Lincoln were Pinkerton,
the well-known detective . and Ward H. Lamon. When they
were fairly on the platform and a short distance from the car, I
stepped forward and accosted the President:
"How are you, Lincoln?"
At this unexpected and rather familiar salutation the gentle
men were apparently somewhat startled, but Mr. Lincoln, who
recognized me, relieved them at once by remarking in his peculiar
voice :
"This is only Washburne!"
Then we all exchanged congratulations and walked out to the
front of the depot, where I had a carriage in waiting. Entering the
carriage (all four of us) we drove rapidly to Willard's Hotel, entering
on Fourteenth street, before it was fairly daylight. The porter
showed us into the little receiving room at the head of the stairs, and
at my direction went totheoffice to have Mr. Lincoln assigned a room.
We had not been in the hotel more than two minutes before
Governor Seward hurriedly entered, much out of breath and some
what chagrined to think he had not been up in season to be at the
depot on the arrival of the train. The meeting of these two great
men, under the extraordinary circumstances which surrounded
them, was full of emotion and thankfulness.

THE JOURNEY TO W.ASHINGTON 383
I soon took my leave . . and as I passed out the outside door,
the Irish porter said to me with a smiling face :
"And faith, it is you that brought us a Prisident!"
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Elihu B. Washburne. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 36,
Chaotic Condition of the Government
The condition of the Government when Lincoln reached Wash
ington may be described as chaotic. Bewildered and intimidated
by threats of secession, most of the political leaders in the North
had lost their heads, and their Babel of incoherences merely aggra
vated the hopeless confusion. During the first weeks of December,
i860, at least forty bills, each promising national salvation, were
introduced into the House and Senate, and more futile propositions
were probably never submitted to a legislative body. Every form
of weak-kneed compromise from sentimental sop to abject surrender
had its nervous advocate, and between Andrew Johnson's puerile
scheme of giving the Presidency to the South and the Vice-Presi
dency to the North, and vice versd, every alternate four years, and
Daniel Sickles 's wild-eyed pother about New York City's separa
tion from the Union, every phase of political dementia was painfully
exhibited. It was not only the mental weaklings who collapsed under the
strain. There were men of force and character among the panic-
stricken. . . . President Buchanan employed his legal tal
ents to such poor advantage that he virtually argued against his
own client, noting prohibitions, negations, and general impotency
in every line of the Constitution, but not seeing one word of help in
it for the government he represented. As Seward remarked, his
long and argumentative message to Congress in December, i860,
conclusively proved, first, that no State had the right to secede
unless it wanted to, and, second, that it was the President's duty
to enforce the law tmless somebody opposed him. . .
Seward himself, able lawyer though he was, completely lost
his head a few months later, his particular mania taking the suicidal
form of averting the civil perils by instigating a foreign war.
And Horace Greeley, almost beside himself with grief and fear,
quavered out empty suggestions for conciliation which only in
creased the public perplexity.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 293.

CHAPTER XV
At the Helm of State
The Morning before the Inauguration
Daybreak of March 4, 1861, found the city of Washington astir.
The Senate, which had met at seven o'clock the night before, was
still in session; scores of persons who had come to see the inau
guration of the first Republican President, and who had been unable
to find other bed than the floor, were walking the streets ; the
morning trains were bringing new crowds. Added to the stir of
those who had not slept through the night were sounds unusual in
Washington — the clatter of cavalry, the tramp of soldiers.
All this morning bustle of the city must have reached the
ears of the President-elect, at his rooms at Willard's Hotel, where,
from an early hour he had been at work. An amendment to
the Constitution of the United States had passed the Senate in the
all-night session, and as it concerned the subject of his Inaugural,
he must incorporate a reference to it in the address. Then he had
not replied to the note he had received two days before from Mr.
Seward, asking to be released from his promise to accept the port
folio of State. He could wait no longer.
" I can't afford, " he said to Mr. Nicolay, his secretary, "to let
Seward take the first trick. "
And he despatched the following letter:
"My dear Sir: — Your note of the 2nd instant, asking to 'with
draw your acceptance of my invitation to take charge of the State
Department, was duly received. It is the subject of the most
painful solicitude to me, and I feel ;constrained to beg that you will
countermand the withdrawal. The public interest, I think, de
mands that you should ; and my personal feelings are deeply inter
ested in the same direction. Please consider and answer by 9 a.m.
to-morrow. Your obedient servant, "A. Lincoln."
(384)

AT THE HELM OF ST.ATE 385
At noon, Mr. Lincoln's work was interrupted. The President
of the United States was announced. Mr. Buchanan had come to
escort his successor to the Capitol. The route of the procession was
the historic one over which almost every President since Jefferson
had traveled to take his oath of office; but the scene Mr. Lincoln
looked upon as his carriage rolled up the avenue was very different
from that upon which one looks to-day. No great blocks lined the
streets ; instead, the buildings were low, and there were numerous
vacant spaces. Instead of asphalt, the carriage passed over cobble
stones. Nor did the present stately and beautiful approach to the
Capitol exist. The west front rose abrupt and stiff from an unkept
lawn. The great building itself was still uncompleted, and high
above his head Mr. Lincoln could see the swinging arm of an enor
mous crane rising from the unfinished dome.
But, as he drove that morning from Willard's to the Capitol,
the President-elect saw far more significant sights than these.
Closed about his carriage, " so thickly, " complained the newspapers,
"as to hide it from view," was a protecting guard. Stationed at
intervals along the avenue were platoons of soldiers. At every
corner were mounted orderlies. On the very roof-tops were groups
of riflemen. When Lincoln reached the north side of the Capitol,
where he descended to enter the building, .he found a board tunnel,
strongly guarded at its mouth, through which he passed into the
building. . . .
Arm in arm with Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Lincoln passed through
the long tunnel erected for his protection, entered the Capitol, and
passed into the Senate Chamber, filled to overflowing with Senators,
members of the Diplomatic Corps and visitors. The contrast
between the two men as they entered struck every observer. "Mr.
Buchanan was so 'withered and bowed 'with age, " wrote George W.
Julian of Indiana, who was among the spectators," that in contrast
¦with the towering form of Mr. Lincoln he seemed little more than
half a man. "
A few moments' delay, and the movement from the Senate
towards the east front began,' the justices of the Supreme Court,
in cap and gown, leading the procession. As soon as the large
company was seated on the platform erected on the east portico of
the Capitol, Mr. Lincoln arose and advanced to the front, where he

386 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
was introduced by his friend, Senator Baker of Oregon. He carried
a cane and a little roll — the manuscript of his Inaugurab Address.
There was a moment's pause after the introduction, as he vainly
looked for a spot ^^'here he might place his high silk hat. Stephen
A, Douglas, the political antagonist of his whole public life, the man
who had pressed him hardest in the campaign of i860, was seated
just behind him. Douglas stepped forward quickly, and took the
hat which Mr. Lincoln held helplessly in his hand.
"If I can't be President," he whispered smilingly to Mrs.
Brown, a cousin of Mrs. Lincoln and a member of the President's
party, " I at least can hold his hat. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page i.
The Inaugural Address
The Inaugural had but one general theme. Some points of it
are detachable as indicating the purposes and policy which the new
President had in mind at the beginning ; while as a whole it is one
of his most impressive papers. He said :
' 'Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern
States, that by the accession of a Republican administration their
property and their peace and personal security are endangered.
There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension.
Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while
existed and been open to inspection. It is found in nearly all the
published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote
from one of those speeches when I declare that ' I have no purpose,
directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in
the States where it exists. ' I believe I have no lawful right to do so ;
and I have no inclination to do so. "
He cited also a resolution of the convention which nominated
him, as " clear and emphatic" on this matter, and continued :
"I now reiterate these sentiments ; and in doing so I only press
upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which
the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no
section are to be in any wise endangered by the incoming administra
tion. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently -vvith
the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully

From The True Story of Abraham Lincoln, Elbridge S. Brooks.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN DELIVERING HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 186 1
Seated behind Lincoln, from left to right: Chief -Justice Taney, President Buchanan, Mrs. Lincoln, and
Senator Baker. Senator Douglas is standing behind Mr. Justice Taney, holding Lincoln's hat.
(387)

388 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
given to all States when lawfully demanded, for -vx'hatever cause,
as cheerfully to one section as to another.
"I take the official path to-day with no mental reservations,
and -with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any
hypercritical rules."
He then took -up the matter of Disunion, arguing in the most
forcible manner against the right of a State to secede 
Argument, persuasion, entreaty followed: - -',
"Physically speaking, we can not separate; we can not remove
our respective sections from each other, nor ^biiild an impassable
wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced^ and go
out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the
different parts of our country can not do this. They pan not but
remain face to face; and intercourse, .either amicable or hostile,
must .continue bet'ween them. Is it possible, then, to make that
intercourse niore advantageous or more satisfactory after separa
tion than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can
make laws ? Can treatiesbe more faithfully enforced between aliens
than laws can among friends ? Suppose you go to war, you cannot
fight always ; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain
oh either, you cease fighting; the identical question as to terms of
intercourse are again upon you. ....
"If it were admitte^. that you who are dissatisfied hold the
right side in the dispute, there is still no single reason for precipitate
action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance
in Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still com
petent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulties. '.
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government wUl
not assaU you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves
the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy
the Government ; while I shall have the most solemn one to ' pre
serve, protect and defend' it.
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must
not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living

AT THE HELM OF STATE 389
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature."
After bowing response to the applause of his auditors, he
turned to Chief -Justice Taney, at his side, and repeated from his
lips the required official oath. Then followed a salute from the
cannons of the battery near at hand while the procession re-formed
and began its return march to the White House.
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. I, page 279.
Horace Greeley on the Inaugural Address
The strong point of the Inaugural is its frank and plump denial
of the fundamental Secession dogma that our Union is a league,
formed in 1787.
"The Union is much older than the Constitution," says Mr.
Lincoln truly and pertinently. Had the Constitution been rejected
by the States, the Union would nevertheless have subsisted. Ours
is ' ' one country ' ' — made so by God and His Providence, revealed
through the whole of its history ; its " more perfect Union ' ' is but
a step in its development — not the cause of its existence. Hence,
Secession is not "the dissolution of a league, " as Mr. Jefferson Davis
asserts, but a treasonable, though futile, effort to disorganize and
destroy a nation.
Mr. Lincoln's rejection of Disunion as physically impossible — as
forbidden by the geography and topography of our country — is a
statesmanlike conception that had not before been so clearly appre
hended or so forcibly set forth.
Mr. Lincoln fondly regarded his Inaugural as a resistless prof
fering of the olive-branch to the South; the conspirators every
where interpreted it as a challenge to war. And when the former
had taken the oath, solemnly administered to him by Chief -Justice
Taney, the two Presidents wended their way back, duly escorted,
to the White House, at whose door Mr. Buchanan bade Mr. Lincoln
a cordial good-bye, retiring to the residence of his friend and bene
ficiary, Robert Ould, whom he had made U. S. District Attorney,
and who, though from Maryland, soon after fled to Richmond, and
entered at once the military service of the Confederacy.
The American Conflict, Horace Greeley, page 427.

3 go THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
At the Head of the Crumbling Government
It was in the midst of all this deplorable helplessness and dis
traction that Lincoln assumed his duties as head of the crumbling
government, and of all the earnest supporters of the Union, he alone
displayed any calmness or presence of mind, and his Inaugural
Address contained almost the first decisive utterance on the legal
aspect of the situation.
No State could, of its own motion, lawfully withdraw from the
Union, he declared with firmness. It was not necessary that the
Constitution should contain any express provision forbidding such
action. Perpetuity was implied, if not expressed, in the funda
mental law of all national governments. No government proper
ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. But
if the United States was not a government proper, but a mere asso
ciation of States bound by an agreement in the nature of a contract,
then the law of contracts applied. One party to a legal contract
might violate it, break it, so to speak, but mutual consent of all the
parties was necessary before it could be lawfully rescinded.
Lincoln the Lawyer, Frederick Trevor Hill, page 29s,
The New President's First Perplexity
On the 28th of February Major Anderson's case had become
so desperate that he wrote a letter to the War Department at
Washington, describing the perils of his situation and saying that,
in his opinion, it would require a force of twenty thousand men to
throw reinforcements into his garrison in season to save him from
starvation. This letter was not received by the Department untU
the 4th day of March. The next day it was presented to President
Lincoln, who immediately laid the case before General Scott.
The Government had not such a body of men at its disposal ; neither
could it raise them before the garrison would be out of provisions.
The President was in a sad dilemma. He did not want to use
force against the Rebels if he could help it. He had told them in
. his Inaugural Address that there would be no war unless they began
it. After a great deal of reflection and a conference with
General Scott, the President concluded that he would reinforce Fort
Pickens because he thought he had men enough at his
command to do this; and perhaps by the time this was accom-

AT THE HELM OF STATE 391
plished, a way might be devised for reinforcing Fort Sumter 
He ordered this expedition to sail at once, and also despatched
another order to the commander of the Sabine, and Fort Pickens
was at length amply reinforced.
Governor Pickens of South CaroUna was now informed that
provisions would be sent to Fort Sumter, — peaceably, if possible,
but otherwise by force. At all events the garrison was to be pro
visioned. The Children's Life of .Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 136.
"Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration"
The men Lincoln had invited to become members of his political
family each thought himself greater than his chief. They should
have heard the voice and seen the hand of a man born to command.
From the day Abraham Lincoln entered the White House to the
hour he went thence to his death, there was not a moment ^^'hen
he did not control the situation and all his official dependents.
Mr. Seward was the first to yield to his own presumption.
One of the most extraordinary incidents that ever passed between a
ruler and his subordinate came about within thirty days after the
beginning of the new Administration.
On April i Mr. Seward submitted to Mr. Lincoln a memoran
dum, entitled "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration. "
He began this by saying: "We are at the end of a month's admin
istration, and yet without a policy, either foreign or domestic. "
Then follows a series of remarkable suggestions. They are for the
most part flimsy and irrelevant; but two of them are so ridiculous
that I quote them as specimens. Mr. Seward writes as follows :
"We must change the question before the public from one
upon slavery, or about slavery, to one upon union or disunion, and
I would demand explanations from Spain and France, energetic
ally, at once, . and, if satisfactory explanations are not
received from Spain and France, I would convene Congress and
declare war against them. I would seek explanations
from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada,
Mexico, and Central America to arouse a vigorous spirit of conti
nental independence on this continent against European inter
vention. "

39 =

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Indeed ! At the very moment this advice was seriously given
the President by the Secretary of State the Southern Confederacy
had been established, and Europe was most keen for a pretext to
interfere to effect the dissolution of the Union and defeat the Repub
lican form of government in America. The Government of the
United States had only to menace France and Spain, to wink its
eye at England and Russia, to raise up a four-sided alliance of
monarchy against democracy and bring down upon itself the navies
of Europe, and thus assure and con
firm the Government of the Southern
Confederacy. In closing his astonishing advice,
Mr. Seward adds:
" But 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 on some member of his
Cabinet. "Once adopted, all debates on it
must end, and all apree and abide.
"It is not in my special province; but I neither seek to evade
nor assume responsibility. "
If Mr. Seward had blandly said: "Mr. Lincoln, you are a
failure as President ; just turn Over the management of affairs to
me, and the rest shaU be forgiven, " he could hardly have spoken
more offensively.
Report of Lecture on Abraham Lincoln, Henry Watterson.

HENRY WATTERSON

The President's Plain but Kind Reproof
Now let us see how a great man carries himself at a critical
moment under extreme provocation. Here is the answer Mr.
Lincoln sent Mr. Seward that very night:

AT THE HELM OF STATE 393
"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
President's Consideration.' The first proposition in it is, 'we are
at the end of a month's administration and yet Avithout a policy,
either domestic or foreign. '
"At the beginning of that month, in the Inaugural, I said : ' The
power confided to 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 Gen
eral Scott, directing him to employ every means in his power to
strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact domestic policy
you urge, with the single exception that it does not propose to
abandon Fort Sumter. . . .
"Upon your closing propcsitions that 'whatever policy we
adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it;'
'It must be somebody's business;'  ' Either the President
must do it . or devolve it upon some member of his
Cabinet ; "Once adopted, debates must end, and all agree and abide ; '
I remark that if this be done I must do it. When a general line of
policy is 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 suppose
I am entitled to have, the advice of all the Cabinet.
"Your obedient servant,
"A. Lincoln."
Nicolay and Hay state that in this letter not a word was
omitted that was necessary, and there is not an allusion in it that
could be dispensed with. It concluded the argument. Mr. Lincoln
never mentioned it. From that time on the understanding between
them was cordial and agreeable. About eight weeks later, on May 2 1 ,
Mr. Seward placed before the President the draft of a letter of in
structions to Charles Francis Adams, United States Minister to
England. Mr. Lincoln did not scruple to change its character and
purpose by altering the text. . . It is well understood that if
that letter had gone as Mr. Seward wrote it, a war with England

394 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
would ha\'e been inevitable. . Even in the substitution of
one word for another, Mr. Lincoln evinced a grasp both upon the
situation and the language, of which Mr. Seward, with all his
experience and learning, appears to have been oblivious. It is said
that in considering this document, sitting with his head bowed and,
pencil in hand, Mr. Lincoln was heard to repeat softly to himself :
" One Avar at a time — one war at a time. "
Report of Lecture oa .Abraham Lincoln, Henry Watterson.
Confederate Commissioners and " the Gage of Battle "
It was on the 12th of March, 1861, that the Rebel or Con
federate States sent Commissioners to the United States to adjust
matters in reference to secession. Mr. Seward refused to receive
them, on the ground that they had not withdrawn from the Union,
and were unable to do so unless it were by the authority of a
national convention acting according to the Constitution of the
United States. On the 9th of April the Commissioners left,
declaring in a letter that they "accepted the gage of battle. " As
yet there was no decided policy in the North, and prominent Demo
crats like Douglas were not in favor of compelling the seceding States
to remain. Mr. Everett was preaching love, forgiveness and union,
Avhile the Confederates were seizing on " all the arsenals, forts,
custom-houses, post-offices, ships, ordnance, and material of war
belonging to the United States, within the seceding States. " In
fact, the South knew exactly what it meant to do, and was doing it
vigorously, whUe the North was entirely undecided. In the spring
of 1 86 1, Congress had adjourned without making any preparations
for the tremendous and imminent crisis.
Abraham Lincoln and the .Abolition of Slavery in the United States, Charles Godfrey Leland, page 102,
Instructions to the Commander at Fort Sumter
"War Department, Washington, April 4, 1861,
"Sir: "Your letter of the ist instant occasions some anxiety to the
President. On the information of Captain Fox, he had supposed
you could hold out till the 1 5th instant without any great incon
venience, and had prepared an expedition to relieve you before that
period.

AT THE HELM OF STATE 395
"Hoping still that you will be able to sustain yourself till the
nth or 12th instant, he has entire confidence that you will act
as becomes a patriot and a soldier under all circumstances.
"Whenever, if at all, in your judgment, to save yourself and
your command, a capitulation becomes necessary, you are author
ized to make it. ' 'Respectfully, "Simon Cameron, Secretary of War.
"To Major Robt. Anderson, United States Army."
The above was drafted by the President and signed by the
Secretary of War.
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Patil Selby, page 262.
"The Slickest Glass Hack in Town"
President Lincoln had not been in the White House very long
before Mrs. Lincoln was seized with the idea that a fine closed
carriage would be the proper thing for " the first lady in the land. "
The President did not care much about it, but told his wife to order
whatever she wanted.
Lincoln forgot all about the new vehicle, so he was overcome
with astonishment one afternoon when, having acceded to Mrs.
Lincoln's desire to go driving, he found a beautiful shining carriage
standing before the door of the White House. Mrs. Lincoln
watched him with an amused smile while he surveyed it, but the
only remark he made was :
"Well, Mary, that's about the slickest glass hack in town,
isn't it?"
" .Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 156.
Bombardment and Surrender of Fort Sumter
General Beauregard, who commanded the Rebel forces at
Charleston, was ordered to demand the instant surrender of Fort
Sumter. Major Anderson refused to comply. Beauregard, who
knew that the garrison was nearly starved out, now asked the
Major when he would evacuate the fort. . . Major Anderson
replied that he would evacuate by noon of the 15th, unless before
that time he should receive supplies or instructions from his Gov
ernment. But the Rebels knew that supplies were on their way to

396 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
the fort though the Major himself knew nothing about it. So the
Rebels sent an instant reply that they should open their batteries
upon the fort within one hour, unless the Major surrendered.
The South Carolinians had been engaged for about three
months in erecting batteries against this fort and strengthening
those already there. . . All this had been going on under the
Major's eyes, but he was powerless to stop it. . . The fort was
in an unfinished condition, with only a few light guns in position
when he took possession, while the enemy's guns were of very
heavy calibre. Thus the brave Major was in a poor condition to
sustain a siege.
The Rebel batteries began the bombardment on Friday, the
12th of April, at half -past four o'clock in the morning. The Major
took it with the utmost coolness, and made every preparation for
the safety of his men before he allowed any return fire to be made,
then defiantly ran up the glorious old Stars and Stripes, and left the
enemy to bang away, while he made preparations for breakfast.
At half past six the garrison all partook of this meal as leisurely as
though nothing was the matter. After breakfast Major Anderson
divided his men into three reliefs; each relief was to work four
hours at a time. . . All this time the Rebels had been pouring
shot and shell into the fort.
At seven o'clock the garrison was ready to reply. . . . During
the first four hours the firing was kept up with such rapidity that
the Rebels thought the fort must have been secretly reinforced.
The enthusiasm of the men was great. . Meanwhile the scene
within the fort became terrific. Heavy splinters of wood and iron
were flying in every direction ; red-hot shot came pouring in, setting
the wood-work on fire, blinding and suffocating the men with the
smoke ; thirty-two pounders tore up the ground at their feet, cov
ering them with mud and earth, and a ninety-six pounder came
bursting in just above the magazine.
On Friday, while the fire was at its hottest, somebody looking
through the port-holes descried the vessel of the fieet which the
President had sent. Our ships were off the bar and dipped their
flag. Major Anderson ordered Fort Sumter's fiag to be dipped in
return ; his order was obeyed by some of our brave f eUows, amid
the bursting of shells in every direction.

AT THE HELM OF STATE 397
About noon, on Friday, it was discovered that all the cartridges
were used up. Thereupon the men stripped off their shirt-sleeves,
tore up their sheets and blankets, and a party of five shut themselves
up in a magazine and began to sew for dear life, making cartridges,
and at it they kept until every available piece of cloth in the fort
had been used. At last. Major Anderson, fearing that the magazine
would be entirely surrounded with fiames, set the men to work taking
out the powder. They rolled out ninety-six barrels through the
raging fire, at the peril of their lives. All the wood -work
within the fort now burned so rapidly that it was useless to attempt
to put it out, and the danger became so great that all this powder
had to be thrown into the sea, except three barrels, which the men
managed to protect with wet mattresses.
The smoke was now so thick that the men could not see one
another, and they were obliged to cover their mouths with wet
cloths and throw themselves on the ground, faces downward, in
order to breathe. They had nothing to eat but salt pork, which was
served to them at the guns. Thus these brave men fought on for
thirty-four hours. At length the fiagstaff was shot away. . . One
of the officers rushed out and brought away the fiag, nailed it to
the staff, and planted it on the ramparts.
About this time General Wigfall came up to one of the em
brasures with his handherchief tied to his sword for a flag of truce,
and, in the name of General Beauregard, demanded the surrender of
the fort. Major Anderson, thinking it would be madness to remain
any longer, acceded to Beauregard's demand, and marched out of
the fort on Sunday afternoon, with colors flying and drums beating,
bringing away all company and private property, and saluting the
dear old flag with fifty guns. [The men had spent Sunday morning
making cartridges with which to fire this salute.] When the last
gun was fired the flag was lowered ; but some of its brave defenders
lived to see it raised again. At the firing of the last gun an accident
happened, by which one man was kUled and several were wounded.
This was the only death at the fort during the bombardment,
although several men were wounded at different times within the
fort. The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 139,

398 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"A Live Coa! on the Heart of the American People"
This first firing on the American fiag acted like the tap of the
drum, calling all the South to arms in a frenzy, and sweeping away
all the remnants of attachment to the old Union lingering in it.
But the North was, to their amazement, not paralyzed or struck
down, nor did the Democratic sympathizers with the South arise
and crush " Lincoln and his minions. " On the contrary, the news
of the fall of Fort Sumter was " a live coal on the heart of the Amer
ican people ; ' ' and such a tempest of rage swept in a day over
millions as had never before been witnessed in America. Those
who can recall the day on which the news of the insult to the flag
was received, and how it was received, have the memory of the
greatest conceivable outburst of patriotic passion. For a time, all
party feelings were forgotten ; there was no inore thought of for
giveness, or suffering secession ; the whole people rose up and cried
out for war.
Hitherto, the press had railed at Lincoln for wanting a policy ;
and yet if he had made one step towards suppressing the Rebels,
" a thousand Northern newspapers Avould have pounced upon him
as one provoking war." Now, however, his policy was formed,
shaped, and made glowing hot by one terrible blow.
Abraham Lincoln and the .Abolition of Slavery in the United States, Charles Godfrey Leland, page 104.
First Call for 75,000 Men
On April 15, 1 86 1, he issued a proclamation announcing that,
as the laws of the United States were being opposed, -and the exe
cution thereof obstructed in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, by combinations too
powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial pro
ceedings, he, the President of the United States, called forth the
militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate of 75,000,
in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be
duly executed.
Abraham Lincoln and tlie .Abolition of .Slavery in the United States, Charles Godfrey Leland, page 105.
Virginig. Secedes and Seizes Harper's Ferry
But if Sumter unified the sentiment of the North, it did no
less for the South. Henceforth there was but one voice in the

THE CAPITOL OF THE CONFEDERACY, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

400 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Southern States, and that for the Confederacy. . In Vir
ginia a convention was in session A\-hose members up to that day
were in the main for the Union. On April 1 7 that convention passed
an ordinance of secession.
The next day the arsenal at Harper's Ferry was seized by the
State, and the Southern Confederacy at Montgomery was informed
that Virginia Ax'as open to its troops. The line of hostility had
reached the \'er)' boundaries of Washington. The bluffs across the
Potomac, now beautiful in the first green of spring, on which Mr.
Lincoln looked every morning from his window in the White House,
were no longer in his country. They belonged to the enemy.
With the news of the secession of Virginia there reached Wash
ington on Thursday, April 18, a rumor that a large Confederate
force was marching on the city. Now there were not more than
2500 armed men in Washington. Regiments were known to be on
their way from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, but nobody could
say when they A\'ould arrive. Women and- children were
sent out of the city. At the White House, Mrs. Lincoln was urged
to go with her boys, but she refused positively.
" I am as safe as Mr. Lincoln, and I shall not leave him, " was
her stout answer.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. 11, page 36.
Patriots' Day, 1861 -'¦m,.««...^,„„  nm
Governors and legislatures vied with each other in proffers of
men and money to the Government. The Governor of Rhode
Island, who was not a Republican, not only promptly raised the
quota of men required, but actually led it to Washington and to the
battlefield. The same feeling of self-sacrificing patriotism nerved
the heart and arm of privates as well as officers.
"Among the privates in Rhode Island's first regiment was one
worth a miUion doUars, who destroyed a passage ticket for a voyage
to Europe on a tour, of observation and pleasure, to shoulder a
musket in defense of his country and her laws. "
On marched the loyal' soldiers of New England to defend the
Capital of their country. As Governor Andrew said to the Mayor of
Baltimore, "Their march through New York was triumphal. "

' ",1 '

^\»

»'

V \ w .

^¦>''i i '*•>

'l1

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell,
MRS. MARY TODD LINCOLN
Wife of the President.

AT THE HELM OF STATE 401
But "bloody Baltimore" chose to re-enact the scenes of the
I gth of April, 1775, and on the 1 9th of April, 1 86 1 ,
"The streets our soldier-fathers trod
Blushed with their children's gore ;
We saw the craven rulers nod
And dip in blood the. civic rod.
Shall such things be, O righteous God !
In Baltimore?" —Bayard Taylor.
.Abraham Lincoln, His Life and Public Services, Mrs. P. A. Hanaford, 'page 38.
Maryland Protests
The confusion and alarm of the city [Washington] was greatly
increased on Friday by news received from Baltimore. The Sixth
Massachusetts, en route to the Capital, had reached there that day,
and had been attacked as it marched through by a mob of Southern
sympathizers. Four of its members had been killed and many
wounded. " No troops should go through Maryland, " the people of Balti
more declared, "whose purpose was to invade Virginia and coerce
sister States. "
That evening about five o'clock the regiment reached Washing
ton. Dusty, torn, and bleeding, they marched two by two through
a great crowd of silent people to the Capitol. Behind them there
came, in single line, seventeen stretchers bearing the wounded.
The dead had been left behind.
Early the next day, Saturday, the 20th, a delegation of Balti
more men appeared at the White House. They had come to beg
Mr. Lincoln to bring no more troops through their city. After a
long discussion, he sent them away with a note to the Maryland
authorities, suggesting that the troops be marched around Balti
more. But as he gave them the letter, Mr. Nicolay heard him say
laughingly :
"If I grant you this concession, that no troops shall pass
through the city, you will be back here to-morrow, demanding that
none shall be marched around it."
The President was right. That afternoon, and again on Sun
day and Monday, committees sought him, protesting that Maryland

40 2 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
soil should not be "polluted" by the feet of soldiers marching
against the South. The President had but one reply :
' ' We must have troops ; and as they can neither crawl under
Maryland nor fly over it they must come across it. ' '
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 37.
Room to Bury Seventy-five Thousand
Some secession sympathizers went to see the President, and
told him they thought there ought to be a cessation of hostilities
until Congress should assemble ; they also told him that if any more
troops should be marched through Maryland, seventy-five thousand
persons would contest their passage. President Lincoln very
quietly replied . that there would be no cessation of hostilities
until the Rebellion was crushed, and he presumed there was room
enough on the soil of Maryland to bury seventy-five thousand men.
The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 161.
"Why Don't They Come! "
By Tuesday, April 23, a new terror was added to the situation —
that of famine. The country around had been scoured for pro
visions, and supplies were getting short. If Washington was to
be besieged, as it looked, what was to be done about food? The
Government at once ordered that the fiour at the Georgetown mills,
some 25,000 barrels, be seized and sold according to the discretion
of the military authorities.
In its distress it was to Mr. Lincoln that the city turned. The
fiber of the man began to show at once. Bayard Taylor happened
to be in Washington at the very beginning of the alarm, and called
on the President.
"His demeanor was thoroughly calm and collected," Taylor
wrote to the New York Tribune, "and he spoke of the present crisis
with that solemn, earnest composure which is the sign of a soul not
easily perturbed. I came away from his presence cheered and
encouraged. "
HoweA'er, the suspense of the days when the Capital was
isolated, the expected troops not arriving, and an hourly attack
feared, wore on Mr, Lincoln greatly.
" I begin to believe, " Mr. Hay heard him say bitterly, one day.

THE "WHITE HOUSE" OF THE CONFEDERACY
Occupied by Jefferson Davis and family, at Richmond, Virginia. President Lincoln called here, just after the capture
of Richmond, and rested a while.

404 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
to some Massachusetts soldiers, "that there is no North. The
Seventh Regiment (New York) is a myth, Rhode Island is an
other. You are the only real thing. "
And again, after pacing the floor of his deserted office for a half
hour, he "was heard to exclaim to himself, in an anguished tone :
"Why don't they come! Why don't they come!"
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 39.
.: Another Call for Soldiers
In a few days it was evident that the Rebellion was assuming
colossal proportions, and therefore President Lincoln, on May 3d,
issued another call for 42,000 three-year volunteers, and ordered the
addition of 22,114 officers and men to the regular army, and i8,oco
seamen to the navy. This demand was promptly responded to.
On the 1 8th of April, a plot had been discovered by which the
secessionists in Washington, aided by Virginia, hoped to fire the
city, seize the -President and Cabinet, and all the machinery of gov
ernment. Byprompt action, this plan was. .crushed. A part of it
was to burn the' railway bridges, and riiake the roads impassable,
and this was successfully executed.
Yet, in the face of this audacious attack, the Democratic press
of the North and the Rebel organs of the South continued to storm
at the President for irritating the secessionists. . . . But at this
time several events occurred which caiised -great anger among loyal
men; one was the loss of the, great, national armory at Harper's
Ferry, and also of Gosport Navy Yard, with 2 ,000 cannon and several
large ships. Owing to treachery this navy yard, with about ten
.million dollars' worth of property, ^ffas lost. . , r-,- ' ' . ••
During this montji the War was, to a degree, organized.
Abraham Lincoln and ihe A^blitiotf of Slavery in |te United States, Charles Godfiey Leland, page in.
Robert E. Lee's Account of the Offer of Comma'nd of the
' " tTnion Army.
I have never seen the account (of the offer to General Lee of
the command of the Federal army) just as I had it from Mr. Blair.
The following is an accurate — I think a very nearly verbatim — report
of it: Mr. Blair : I come to you on the part of President Lincoln to

'/n.Ij '-'

4,

^m

Mf> Ao

fiTele>r rfe- ¦'¦Hf~r->^,..J cay At^^r-y-^ .^t.^^x.jt.'^.e.yf^

« cO

IJ-it

PREAMBLE OF CONSTITUTION OF THE " C. S. A. "
C405)
4o6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
ask whether any inducement that he can offer will prevail on you
to accept the command of the Union army.
Colonel Lee : If I owned the four millions of slaves, I would
cheerfully sacrifice them to the preservation of the Union, but to
lift my hand against my own State and people is impossible.
The most valuable testimony concerning this question, however
is that of General Lee himself, as given in a letter addressed to
Reverdy Johnson of date February 25, 1868. In this letter he uses
the following language :
" I never intimated to any one that I desired the command of
the United States Army, nor did I ever have a conversation but with
one gentleman, Mr. Francis Preston Blair, on the subject, which was
at his invitaton, and, as I understood, at the instance of President
Lincoln. " After listening to his remarks I declined the offer he made me
to take command of the army that was to be brought into the field,
stating, as candidly and courteously as I could, that, though opposed
to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in the inva
sion of the Southern States.
" I went directly from the interview with Mr. Blair to the office
of General Scott — told him of the proposition that had been made
to me and my decision. Upon reflection after returning home, I
concluded that I ought no longer to retain any commission I held
in the United States army, and on the second morning thereafter
I forwarded my resignation to General Scott.
" Two days afterward, on the invitation of the Governor of
Virginia, I repaired to Richmond, found that the convention then
in session had passed the ordinance withdrawing the State from
the Union, and accepted the commission of commander of its forces
which was tendered me. These are the simple facts of the case."
Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, A. L. Long (formerly Military Secretary to General Lee) , page 92.
Mild Measures and How They Were Received
Governor Hicks of Maryland suggested to President Lincoln
that the controversy between North and South might be referred to
Lord Lyons, the British Minister, for arbitration. . . The Presi
dent replied, through Mr. Seward, ...
"That no domestic contention whatever that may arise among
the parties of this Republic ought in any case to be referred to any

AT THE HELM OF STATE 407
foreign arbitrament, least of all to the arbitrament of a European
monarchy. "
It is certain that by his humane and wise policy, which many
attributed to cowardice. President Lincoln prevented much blood
shed and devastation, but also preserved the State of Maryland.
In such a crisis harshly aggressive measures in Maryland would
have irritated millions on the border, and perhaps have brought
the War farther north. As it was, peace and order were soon
restored in Baltimore, when the regular use of the highway through
that city was resumed.
On the 19th of April, 1861, the President issued another proc
lamation, declaring the blockade of the ports of the seceding States.
This was virtually an answer to one from Jefferson Davis, offering
letters of marque to all persons "who might desire to aid the Rebel
government, and enrich themselves by depredations upon the rich
and extended commerce of the United States." It may be re
marked that the first official words of Jefferson Davis were singu
larly ferocious, threatening fire, brigandage and piracy, disguised as
privateering, in all their terrors.
It may be doubted if there was in those wild days in all North
America one man who to such wise forbearance added such firmness
and moral courage as President Lincoln manifested. By it he pre
served Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and if mod
eration could have availed, he might have kept Virginia.
Strange as it seems, while the seceding States w^ere threatening
officially, and hastening to carry out all the outrages of war, the
Legislature of Virginia resolved that President Lincoln's mild
message announced a policy of tyranny and " coercion, " and in spite
of the gentlest letter of explanation ever written by any ruler who
was not a coward, the State (East Virginia) marched out of the
Union with drums beating and fiags fiying.
Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States, Charles Godfrey Leland, page 107.
" Renting Rooms While the House is on Fire "
When, on his first arrival in Washington as President, Lincoln
found himself besieged by office-seekers while the War was breaking
out, he said :
" I feel like a man letting lodgings at one end of the house while
the other end is on fire. "
" Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 384.

4o.^ THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
How Some Good Boston People Looked upon Lincoln
Among my recollections of this period I especially cherish that
of an interview with President Abraham Lincoln, arranged for us
by our kind friend. Governor Andrew. The President was laboring
at this time under a terrible pressure of doubt and anxiety. He
recei\'ed us in one of the drawing rooms of the AA^hite House, where
we were invited to take seats, in full view of Stuart's portrait of
Washington. The conversation took place mostly between the
President and Governor Andrew.. I remember well the sad expres
sion of Mr. Lincoln's deep blue eyes, the only feature of his face
which could be called other than plain. Mrs. Andrew, being of the
company, inquired when we could have the pleasure of seeing Mrs.
Lincoln, and Mr. Lincoln named to us the day of her reception. He
said to Governor Andrew, d propos of I know not what, " I once
heerd 'George' Sumner tell a story.'' The unusual pronunication
fixed in my memory this one unimportant sentence. The talk,
indeed, ran mostly on indifferent topics.
When 'we had taken leave, and were out of hearing, Mr. (James
Freeman) Clarke said of Mr. Lincoln,
" We have seen it in his face ; hopeless honesty — that is all ! "
He said it as if he felt that it was far from enough.
None of us knew then — how could we have known? — how
deeply God's wisdom had touched and inspired that devout and
patient soul. At the moment few people praised or trusted him.
"Why did he not do this, or that, or the other? He a President
indeed! Look at this war, dragging on so slowly! Look at our
many defeats and rare victories ! ' ' Such was the talk that one con
stantly heard regarding him. The most charitable held that he
meant well. Governor Andrew was one of the few whose faith in
him never wavered.
Reminiscences, Julia Ward Howe, page 271,
"Undertaking to Frighten the DevU with Cold Pitch"
The reserve with which he (Lowell) speaks of the President's
policy is the wise tone to be adopted in a private article. In his
private letters, where such caution is not needed, he gives expression
openly to his impatience. In a letter . he says :
"I confess that my opinion of the Government does not rise, to

AT THE HELM OF STATE 409
say the least. If we are saved it will be God's doing, not man's;
and will He save those who are not worth saving ? Lincoln may be
right, for aught I know, — prudence is certainly a good drag upon
"virtue, — but I guess an ounce of Fremont is worth a pound of long
Abraham. Mr. Lincoln seems to have the theory of carrying on
war 'without hurting the enemy. He is incapable, apparently, of
understanding that they ovight to be hurt. The doing good to those
that despitefuUy entreat us was not meant for enemies of the com
monwealth. The devil's angels are those that do his work, and for
such there is a lake of fire and brimstone prepared. We have been
undertaking to frighten the devil with cold pitch."
James Russell Lowell, Horace E. Scudder. page 29.
A Courteous Repulse
There was an ignorant man who once applied to President
Lincoln for the post of Doorkeeper to the House. This man had no
right to ask Lincoln for anything. It was necessary to repulse
him. But Lincoln repulsed him gently and whimsically, without
hurting his feelings, in this way :
" So you want to be Doorkeeper to the House, ch? "
"Yes, Mr. President."
" Well, have you ever been a doorkeeper? Ha\-e you ever had
any experience in doorkeeping ? ' '
"AA^ell, no — no actual experience, sir."
"Any theoretical experience? Any instructions in the duties
and ethics of doorkeeping ?
"Um— no."
"Have you ever attended lectures on doorkeeping?"
"No, sir."
" Have you read any text-books on the subject? "
"No."
" Have you con'versed with any one who has read such a book? "
"No, sir; I'm afraid not, sir. "
"Well, then, my friend, don't you see that you haven't a single
qualification for this important post?" said Lincoln, in a reproach
ful tone. "Yes, I do," said the applicant, and he took leave humbly,
almost gratefully.
Clipping from a Scrap-book.

4IO THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Douglas's Warning to the President
At this time there occurred an interesting private incident in
Lincoln's life. His old adversary, Judge Douglas, whom he warmly
respected as a brave adversary, had passed his life in pandering to
slavery, and, as regards the War, had been the political Mephis-
topheles who had made much of the mischief. But when Sumter
was fired on, all that was good and manly in his nature was aroused,
and he gave all his support to his old enemy. " During the brief
remainder of his Ufe, his devotion to the cause of his country was
unwearied. He was done with his dreams of power, " but he could
yet do good. He was of service in inducing great numbers of
Democrats, who still remained proslavery men in principle, to
fight for the Union. . . Judge Douglas warned the
President . . that, instead of calling on the country for 75,000
men, he should have asked for 200,000.
"You do not know the dishonest purposes of those men as I
do, " he impressively remarked.
Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States, Charles Godfrey Leland, page no.
The Last Time Lincoln Ever Saw Douglas.
"One day Douglas came rushing in," said Lincoln, "and said
he had just got a telegraph dispatch from some friends in Illinois
urging him to come out and help set things right in 'Egypt ' (South
ern Illinois) . He said that he would go, or stay in Washington, just
where I thought he could do the most good.
" I told him to do as he choose, but that probably he could do
best in Illinois. Upon that he shook hands with me, and hurried
away to catch the next train. I never saw him again. "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page ii6.
"I Don't Care— if You wUl Fight for the Country"
I called on Lincoln at the White House to make acknowledg
ments for my appointment as a Major-General. When he handed
me the commission, with some kindly words of compliment, I
replied :
" I do not know whether I ought to accept this. I received my
orders to prepare my brigade to march to Washington while trying
a cause to a jury. I stated the fact to the court and asked that the
case might be continued, which was at once consented to, and I left,

AT THE HELM OF STATE 4"
to come here the second morning after, my business in utter con
fusion. " He said:
"I guess we both wish we were back trying cases," with a
quizzical look upon his countenance,
I said: " Besides, Mr. President, you may not be aware that I
was the Breckenridge candidate for Governor of my State in the last
campaign, and did all I could to prevent your election. "
"All the better," said he. "I hope your example will bring
many of the same sort with you. ' '
"But," I answered, "I do not think that I can support the
measures of your administration, Mr. President."
" I do not care whether you do or not, " was the reply, "if you
will fight for the country. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin F. Butler, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 139.
" No Other Nations 'Sneakin' Round ' "
The members of the Cabinet were one day solemnly debating
a rather serious international problem. The President was in the
minority, as was frequently the case, and he was " in a hole, " as he
afterwards expressed it. He didn't want to argue the points raised,
preferring to settle the matter in a hurry, and an apt story was
his only salvation.
Suddenly the President's face brightened.
"Gentlemen, " said he, addressing those seated at the Cabinet
table, "the situation just now reminds me of a fix I got into some
thirty years ago when I was peddling 'notions' on the way from
Indiana to lUinois. I didn't have a large stock, but I charged large
prices, and I made money. Perhaps you don't see what I'm
driving at ? "
Secretary of State Seward was wearing a most gloomy expres
sion; Secretary of the Treasury Chase was indifferent and cynical,
while the others of the Presidential advisers resigned themselves to
hearing the inevitable "story."
" I don't propose to argue this matter," the President went on
to say, . . "but this little story of mine wiU make some things
which are now in the dark show up more clearly. .
"Just before we left Indiana and were crossing into IlUnois, "
continued Mr. Lincoln solemnly, . "we came across a smaU
farmhouse full of children. These ranged in age from seventeen

412 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
years to seventeen months, and all were in tears. The mother
of the family was red-headed and red-faced, and the whip she held
in her right hand led to the inference that she had been chastis
ing her brood. The father of the family, a meek-looking, mild-
mannered, tow-headed chap, was standing in the front door, — to
all appearances awaiting his turn.
" I thought there wasn't much use in asking the head of that
house if she wanted any 'notions. ' She was too busy. It was
evident that an insurrection had been in progress, but it was pretty
well quelled when I got there. . She saw me when I came
up, and from her look I thought she surmised that I intended to
interfere. Advancing to the doorway — roughly pushing her hus
band aside — she demanded my business.
' ' ' Nothing, ma'am, ' I answered as gently as possible. ' I merely
dropped in, as I came along, to see how things were going. '
" 'Well, you needn't wait,' she said in an irritated way;
'there's trouble here, and lots of it, too, but I kin manage my own
affairs without the help of outsiders. This is jest a family row, but
I'll teach these brats their places ef I hev to lick the hide off ev'ry
one of them. I don't do much talkin', but I run this house, an'
I don't want no one sneakin' round tryin' to find out how I do it
either. '
" That's the case here with us, " the President said in conclusion.
"We must let the other nations know that we propose to settle our
family row in our own way, an' teach these brats (the seceding
States) their places, if we have to ' lick the hide off ' each and every
one of them. And, like the old woman, we don't want any
'sneakin' round' by other countries that would Uke to find out
how we are to do it, either. Now, Seward, you write some diplo
matic notes to that effect. "
And the Cabinet session closed.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 430.
"I Guess Mary Will Have Something for Us to Eat"
Before parting I told Mr. Lincoln that I had a Germ^an brother-
in-law with me in Washington, Mr. Henry Meyer, a young merchant
from Hamburg, and an ardent friend of this country, who would be
proud to pay his respects to the President. Could I bring him for
a moment? " Certainly, " said Mr. Lincoln, "bring him to-morrow

AT THE HELM OF STATE

413

about lunch time and lunch with me. I guess Mary (Mrs. Lincoln)
'will have something for us to eat." Accordingly the next day I
brought my brother-in-law, who was greatly astonished at this
unexpected invitation to lunch with the President, and much
troubled about the etiquette to be observed. I found it difficult
to quiet him with
the assurance
that in this case
there was no
etiquette at all.
But he was still
more astonished
when Mr. Lincoln,
instead of waiting
for a ceremonious
bow, shook him
by the hand
like an old ac
quaintance and
said in his hearty
way that he was
glad to see the
brother-in-law^ of
"this young man
here, " and that
he hoped the
Americans treat
ed him well, Mrs.
Lincoln —
"Mary," as the
President again
called her — was
absent, being
otherwise en-.
gaged; and there were no other guests. So we had Mr. Lincoln at
the table all to ourselves. He seemed to be in excellent spirits,
asking many questions about Hamburg, which my brother-in-law,
who spoke English fluently, answered in an entertaining manner,
and Mr. Lincoln found several occasions for inserting funny stories,

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
LINCOLN IN '61.

414 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
at which not only we, but he himself, too, laughed most heartily.
As we left the White House, my companion could hardly find words
to express his puzzled admiration for the man who, having risen
from the bottom of the social ladder to one of the most exalted sta
tions in the world, had remained so perfectly natural and so abso
lutely unconscious of how he appeared to others — a man to whom it
did not occur for a single moment that a person in his position
might put on a certain dignity to be always maintained, and who
bore himself with such genial sincerity and kindliness that the dig
nity was not missed, and that one would have regretted to see him
different. The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, page 243.
"The People Will Understand"
The eyes of princes, nobles, aristocrats, of dukes, earls, scholars,
statesmen, warriors, all turned on the plain backwoodsman with his
simple sense, his imperturbable simplicity, his determined self-
reliance, his impracticable and incorruptible honesty, as he sat amid
the war of confiicting elements, with unpretending steadiness,
striving to guide the national ship through a channel at whose perils
the world's oldest statesmen stood aghast. The brilliant courts of
Europe leveled their opera-glasses at the phenomenon. Fair
ladies saw that he had horny hands and disdained white gloves.
Dapper diplomatists were shocked at his system of etiquette; but
all statesmen, who knew the terrors of that passage, were wiser
than court ladies and dandy diplomatists, and watched him with a
fearful curiosity, simply asking, " Will that awkward old backwoods
man really get that ship through? "
Sooth to say, our own politicians were somewhat shocked with
his state-papers at first. Why not let us make them a little more'
conventional, and file them to a classical pattern ?
" No, " was his reply, "I shall write them myself. The people
will understand thein. "
Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Watchman and Reflector, Littell's Living Age, Vol.
LXXX, February 6, 1864, page 283,

CHAPTER XVI
Defiance, Disaster, Sorrow
News of the First Battle of Bull Run
On Sunday, July 2 1 , when the battle of Bull Run was fought, the
military telegraph-line had reached Fairfax Court-house, and an
improvised office had been opened at that point. Communication
with General McDowell's headquarters at the front was maintained
by means of a corps of mounted couriers, organized by Andrew
Carnegie, under the immediate direction of William B. Wilson, who
then served as our manager. These couriers passed back and forth
all day long between Fairfax and the front. Lincoln hardly left
his seat in our office and waited 'with deep anxiety for each succeed
ing despatch. At all times during the awful day. General Scott would
confer with the President or Secretary Cameron for a short period,
and then depart to put into effect some urgent measures for protect
ing the Capital. . . .
All the morning and well along into the afternoon, General
McDowell's telegrams . were more or less encouraging, and Lincoln
and his advisers waited 'with eager hope, believing that Beauregard
was being pushed back to Manassas Junction ; but all at once the
despatches ceased coming. At first this was taken to mean that
McDowell was mo'ving farther away from the telegraph, and then,
as the silence became prolonged, a strange fear seized upon the
assembled watchers that perhaps all was not well. Suddenly the
telegraph-instrument became alive again and the short sentence
"Our army is retreating, " was spelled out in the Morse characters.
This brief announcement was followed by meager details concern
ing the first great disaster that had befallen our troops and the
panic that followed.
The crowded telegraph office was quickly deserted by all except
the operators, but Lincoln returned at intervals until after mid
night, and shortly afterwards the outlying office at Fairfax Court
house was abandoned. When morning dawned, our demoralized
(415)

FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN

On Sunday, July 21, 1861, occurred this flrst great battle of the War, resulting in the complete
defeat of the Union army, which fled in panic from the field.

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 417
troops began to straggle, and then to pour, in an ever-increasing
stream of frightened humanity over Long Bridge into Washington,
the immediate capture of which seemed then to be, and really
was, -within the power of the Confederate army, if only they had
pressed their advantage. Consternation reigned supreme, and all
realized that a great crisis of the War, the next after Sumter, was
upon us.
The dark clouds that settled at that time upon Lincoln's already
wrinkled brow were destined never to lift their heavy weight, except
for that all too brief period of exaltation, just before his tragic end
ing, when Grant had pushed Lee to Appomattox, and Richmond
was at last in our hands.
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, David Homer Bates, page 88,
" This Nation Should Be on the Lord's Side "
A member of the church, at a reception, closed his remarks
with the pious hope that "the Lord is on our side. "
" I am not at all concerned about that, " commented the Presi
dent, " for we know that the Lord is always on the side of the right.
But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation
should be on the Lord's side. "
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 139.
"Death-bed Repentance a Big Thing!"
The name of a most virulent and dishonest official was men
tioned — one who, though very brilliant, was very bad.
"It's a big thing for Blank," said Lincoln, "that there is
such a thing as death-bed repentance."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke (" Petroleum V. Nasby"). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 451.
Stanton's Early Abuse of the President
In 'view of the fault-finding and distrust which then
marked the conduct of those who stood nearest to the President,
it is not surprising that an outsider so prejudiced as Mr. Stanton
should indulge in adverse criticism.
"No one," he wrote (in 1861), " can imagine the deplorable
condition of this city, and the hazard of the government, who did
not witness the weakness and panic of the Administration, and the
painful imbecility of Lincoln." , , , ,

41 8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
During the week that was ushered in by the defeat at Bull
Run, Mr. Stanton wrote : —
"The imbecility of this Administration culminated in that ca
tastrophe ; an irretrievable misfortune and national disgrace, never
to be forgotten, are to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pur
suits and national bankruptcy, as the result of Lincoln's running
the machine for five months. . It is not unlikely that some
change in the War and Navy Departments may take place, but none
beyond those two departments until Jeff Davis turns out the whole
concern. "
This correspondence was not given out until some years after
the close of the War. . . Mr. Stanton, however, at the time,
made no secret of his hostility. . According to at least
two chroniclers, he spoke of the President as "a low, cunning
clown. " According to another, he habitually referred to Mr. Lincoln
as the " original gorilla, " and often said that Du Chaillu was a fool
to wander all the way to Africa in search of what he could easily
have found at vSpringfield, Illinois. In short, from the day of the
first meeting in Cincinnati, until deep into the first year of the War,
he looked upon Lincoln with contempt.
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 22s.
"I Believe He Would Do It I"
An officer, having had some trouble with Sherman, being very
angry, presented himself before Mr. Lincoln, who was visiting the
camp, and said:
" Mr. President, I have a cause of grievance. This morning I
went to Colonel Sherman and he threatened to shoot me. "
" Threatened to shoot you? Well (in a stage whisper), if I were
you, I wouldn't trust him — for I believe he would do it. "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 191.
"You Can't Fool AU the People All the Time"
Lincoln was a strong believer in the virtue of dealing honestly
with the people.
" If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, " he
said to a caller at the White House, "you can never regain their
respect and esteem.

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 419
"It is true you may fool all the people some of the time; you
can even fool some of the people all the time ; but you can't fool all
of the people all the time. "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns andStories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 184.
"Dam You! Who Commenced This Fuss?"
President Lincoln was at all times an advocate of peace, pro
vided it could be obtained honorably and with credit to the United
States. As to the cause of the Civil War, which side of Mason and
Dixon's line was responsible for it, who fired the first shots, who
were the aggressors, etc., Lincoln did not seem to bother about; he
wanted, above all things, to preserve the Union  To
illustrate his feeling in the matter he said :
"Now this reminds me of a story I heard once, when I lived
in Illinois. A vicious bull in a pasture took after everybody who
tried to cross the lot, and one day the neighbor of the owner was
the victim. This man was a speedy fellow and got to a friendly
tree ahead of the bull, but not in time to climb the tree. So he led
the enraged animal a merry race around the tree, finally succeeding
in getting the bull by the taU.
" The bull, being at a disadvantage, not able either to catch the
man or release his tail, was mad enough to eat nails ; he dug up the
earth with his feet, scattered gravel all around, bellowed until you
could hear him for two miles or more, and at length broke into
a dead run, the man hanging onto his tail all the time.
" While the bull, much out of temper, was legging it to the best
of his ability, his tormentor, still clinging to the tail, asked, 'Darn
you, who commenced this fuss?'
" It's our duty to settle this fuss at the earUest possible moment,
no matter who commenced it. That's my idea of it. "
"Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns andStories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure. page 157.
"There Is a Man in Here !"
An old friend of Mr. Lincoln once related to me another of his
stories which shows not a little of his character. This gentleman
was conversing with the President at a time during the War when
things looked very dark. On taking leave, he asked the President

420 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
what he should say to their friends in Kentucky — what cheering
news he could give them of him. Mr. Lincoln replied :
" That reminds me of a man who prided himself greatly on his
game of chess, having seldom been beaten. He heard of a machine
called the 'Automaton Chess Player, ' which was beating every one
who played against it. So he went to try his skUl with the machine.
He lost the first game, so with the second, and the third. Then,
rising in astonishment from his seat, he walked around the machine
and looked at it a few minutes. Then, stopping and pointing at it,
he exclaimed, 'There is a man in there. '
"Tell my friends, " said Mr. Lincoln, "there is a man in here!"
Anecdotes of the Civil War, Brevet Major-General E. D. Townsend, page 91.
"Sugar-Coated" in a President's Message
In the July following Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, an extra
session of Congress was called. In the message then sent in,
speaking of secession, and the measures taken by the Southern
leaders to bring it about, there occurs the following sentence :
"With rebellion thus sugar-coated, they have been drugging
the public mind of their section for more than thirty years; until,
at length, they have brought many good meii to a willingness to
take up arms against the Government, " etc.
Mr. Defrees, the Government printer, told me that when the
message was being printed, he was a good deal disturbed by the use
of the term " sugar-coated, " and finally went to the President about
it. He told Mr. Lincoln frankly that he ought to remember
that a message to Congress was a different affair from a speech at
a mass-meeting in IlUnois; that the messages became a part of
history, and should be written accordingly.
" What is the matter now? " inquired the President.
"Why," said Mr. Defrees, "you have used an undignified
expression in the message ; " and then, reading the paragraph aloud,
he added, " I should alter the structure of that, if I were you. "
" Defrees, " replied Mr. Lincoln, "that word expresses precisely
my idea, and I am not going to change it. The time wiU never come
in this country when people won't know exactly what 'sugar-coated'
means ! ' '
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 126.

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW

421

"I Think I Can Beat You Both"
On another occasion, Mr. Defrees states that a certain sentence
of another message was very awkwardly constructed. Calling the
President's attention to it in the proof copy, the latter acknowl
edged the force of the objection raised, and said :
" Go home, Defrees, and see if you can better it. "
The next day Mr. Defrees took in to him his amendment. Mr.
Lincoln met him by saying :
" Seward found the same fault that you did, and he has been
rewriting the paragraph also. "
Then reading Mr. Defrees's version, he said :
"I believe you have beaten Seward; but, 'I jings,' I think I
can beat you both. "
Then, taking up his pen, he wrote the sentence as it was finally
printed. Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 181.
What Lincoln Liked to Eat
" The President seemed never to lose his relish for the things he
liked when a boy.

He seemed especially
fond of bacon. He
needed plenty of good,
strengthening food, for
his duties and cares
required almost super
human strength and
physical endurance.
From early in the
morning till twelve at
night, almost without
ceasing, his work went
on. He took but little
fresh air. An occa
sional drive, a rare
horseback ride, a short walk to the War Department were aU.
That he didn't collapse under the terrible strain was almost
miraculous." Related by a confidential servant in the White House.

ASKING FOR A PRIVATE JOB

y

422 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

"Whose Boots Do They Black?"
Another foreign nobleman sought my intercession, of whose
genuineness I became fully convinced. He was a young German
count whose identity was vouched for by a member of the Prussian
Legation. Moreover, there were no smartnesses at all in his talk.
He had a long row of ancestors, whom he traced back for several
hundred years. He was greatly impressed with the importance of
this fact, and thought it would weigh hea^vily in securing him a
position in our army. If he could only have an "audience" with
the President and lay his case before him, he believed the result
could not be doubtful. He pursued me so arduously with the
request for a personal introduction to Mr. Lincoln, that at last I
succumbed and promised to introduce him, if the President per
mitted. The President did permit. The count spoke English
moderately well, and in his ingenuous way he at once explained to
Mr. Lincoln how high the nobility of his family was, and that they
had been counts so-and-so many centuries. " Well, " said Mr.
Lincoln, interrupting him, "that need not trouble you. That will
not be in your way, if you behave yourself as a soldier. " The poor
count looked puzzled, and when the audience was over, he asked
me what in the world the President could have meant by so strange
a remark. Another saying of Mr. Lincoln, of a similar kind, made the
rounds at the time and was very much enjoyed. I cannot vouch
for the truth of the anecdote, but it is so strikingly Lincolnesque
that there is a strong probability in its favor. I have never seen it
mentioned anywhere, and so I may be pardoned for inserting it here.
It was to this effect: An Englishman, who had traveled far and
wide over the United States, called upon Mr. Lincoln and told him
of the impressions he had received of various parts of the country.
Speaking of social conditions and habits, he said, among other
things, that to his astonishment he had heard that many gentlemen
in America were in the habit of blacking their own boots. " That
is true, " said Mr. Lincoln, "but would gentlemen in your country
not do that?" "No, certainly not, " the EngUshman replied with
emphasis. "WeU!" said 'Mr. Lincoln quietly, "whose boots do they
black?"
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, page 33g.

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 423
The Only Times He Ever Seemed Happy
"About the only recreation he seemed to enjoy was romping
about the White House, playing with Tad; playing horse, blind-
man's buff, and cantering through the rooms with the boy on his
shoulders, and boisterous games, like that. During those short
play-spells were the only times the President ever seemed really
happy. ' '
Related by a confidential servant in the White House.
"Blunt as a Meat-Ax and Keen as a Razor"
Those who accuse Lincoln of frivolity never knew him. I
never saw a more thoughtful face. I never saw a more dignified face.
He had humor of which he was totally tmconscious, but it was not
frivolity. He said wonderfully witty things, but never from a
desire to be witty. His wit was entirely illustrative. He used it
because, and only because, at times he could say more in this way,
and better illustrate the idea with which he was pregnant. He
never cared how he made a point so that he made it, and he never
told a story for the mere sake of telling a story. When he did it,
it was for the purpose of illustrating and making clear a point. He
was essentially epigrammatic and parabolic. He was a master of
satire, which was at times as blunt as a meat-ax, and at others as
keen as a razor, but it was always kindly, except when some horrible
injustice was its inspiration, and then it was terrible. Weakness
he was never ferocious with, but intentional ¦wickedness he never
spared. In this interview the name came up of a recently deceased
politician of Illinois, whose undeniable merit was blemished by
overweening vanity. His funeral was largely attended :
"If General Blank had known how big a funeral he would
have, " said Mr. Lincoln, " he would have died years ago. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 44i.
"You are Spoiling the Bust !"
A reference was made to Jones the sculptor. . . . Looking
up, the President said :

424

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

"Jones teUs a good story of General Scott, of whom he once
made a bust. Having
a fine subject to start
with, he succeeded in
giving great satisfac
tion. At the closing
sitting he attempted to
define and elaborate
the lines and markings
of the face. The Gen
eral sat patiently ; but
when he came to see
the result, his counte-
' nance indicated decid
ed displeasure. " 'Why, Jones,
what have you been
doing?' he asked.
" 'Oh,' rejoined
the sculptor, 'not much,
I confess. General; I
have been working
out the details of the
face a little more, this
morning.'
GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT " 'Details,' CX-
claimed the General
warmly; 6/an^ the details ! Why, man, you are spoiling the bust !' "
Six Months in the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 34.

John C. Fremont's Assumptions of Authority
The most popular military appointment Lincoln made before
McClellan was that of John C. Fremont to the command of the
Department of the West. Republicans appreciated it, for had not
Fremont been the first candidate for their party for the Presidency?
The West was jubilant; Fremont's explorations had years before
made him the hero of the land along the Mississippi. 'The Cabinet
was satisfied. . . . Lincoln himself "thought well of Fremont, "

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 425
believed he could do the work to be done ; and he had already had
experience enough to discern that his great trouble was to be, not
finding major-generals — he had "more pegs than holes to put them
in," he said one day — ^but finding major-generals who could do the
thing they were ordered to do.
Fremont had gone to his headquarters at St. Louis, Missouri,
late in July. Before a month had passed the gravest charges of
incompetency and neglect of duty were made against him. It was
even intimated to the President that the General was using his posi
tion to work up a Northwestern Confederacy. Mr. Lincoln had
listened to all these charges but taken no action, when, on the morn
ing of August 30, he was amazed to read it in his newspaper that
Fremont had issued a proclamation declaring, among other things,
that the property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of
Missouri who should take up arms against the United States, or who
should be directly proved to have taken an active part with its
enemies in the field, would be confiscated to public use and their
slaves, if they had any, declared freemen.
Fremont's proclamation astonished the country as much as it
did the President. In the North it elicited almost universal satis
faction. This was striking at the root of the trouble — slavery.
But in the Border States, particularly in Kentucky, the Union party
was dismayed. The only possible method of keeping those sections
in the Union was not to interfere with slavery. Mr. Lincoln saw
this as clearly as his Border State supporters. It was well known
that this was his policy. He felt that Fr6mont had not only defied
the policy of the Administration, he had usurped power which be
longed only to the legislative part of the Government. He had a
good excuse for reprimanding the General, even for removing him.
Instead, he wrote him, on September 2, a most kindly letter.
In the meantime, Lincoln's letter reached Fremont. After a
few days the General replied that he wished the President would
make the general order modifying the clause of the proclamation
which referred to the liberation of slaves. This letter he sent by his
wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, a woman of ambition and of great
energy of character.
"WhUe Fremont was in command of the Department, Mrs.
Fremont was the real chief of staff, " says Col. George F. Leighton.
"She was a woman of strong personality, having inherited much of

426 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
the brains and force of character of her distinguished father, Senator
Benton. "
Mrs. Fremont .... started East, deeply indignant that
Mr. Lincoln should ask her husband to modify his proclamation.
When she reached Washington, she learned that Mr. Blair had gone
to St. Louis. Jumping to the conclusion that it was with an order
to remove her husband she hastened to Mr. Lincoln. It was mid
night, but the President gave her an audience. Without waiting
for an explanation she violently charged him with sending an enemy
to Missouri, to look into Fremont's case, and threatening that if
Fremont desired to he could set up a government for himself.
"¦ I had to exercise all the rude tact I have to avoid quarreling with
her, " said Mr. Lincoln afterwards.
The day after this interview Lincoln sent the order modifying
the clause as Fremont had requested. When this was made public
a perfect storm of denunciation broke over the President. The
whole North felt outraged. There was talk of impeaching Lincoln
and of replacing him with Fremont. Great newspapers criticised
his action, warning him to learn whither he was tending. Influen
tial men in all professions spoke bitterly of his action 
The hardest of these criticisms to bear were those from his old
friends in Illinois, nearly all of whom supported Fremont.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 6t.
Death of Colonel Baker at Ball's Bluff
October 21, 1861, I was in Washington. The Army of the Po
tomac was in camp on Arlington Heights  The afternoon
was lovely — a rare October day. I learned early in the day that
something was going on up the Potomac near Edwards' Ferry, by
the troops under General Banks'. . It was near sunset
when, accompanied by a fellow-correspondent, I went once more to
ascertain what was taking place. . . .
While waiting. President Lincoln came in, recognized us,
reached out his hand, spoke of the beauty of the afternoon, while
waiting for the return of the young lieutenant who had gone to
announce his arrival. The lines were deeper in the President's
face than when I saw him in his own home, the cheeks more sunken.
They were lines of care and anxiety 

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 427
"Please to walk this way," said the lieutenant. . .
Five minutes passed, and then Mr. Lincoln, unattended, with bowed
head, and tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, his face pale and
wan, his heart heaving with emotion, passed through the room. He
almost fell as he stepped into the street, and we sprang involuntarily
from our seats to render assistance, but he did not fall. With both
hands pressed upon his heart he walked down the street, not return
ing the salute of the sentinel pacing his beat before the door.
At that moment the finale of the terrible disaster at Ball's
Bluff was going on — the retreat to the river, the plunge into the
swirling water to escape the murderous fire flaming upon them
from the rifles of the victorious Confederates. It was the news of
the death of Colonel E. D. Baker which stunned President Lincoln.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Carleton Coffin. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice,
page 171. "There Is Meat in That, General"
When I returned to Washington, Lincoln sent for me, and after
greetings said :
" General, you are out of a job ; now, if we only had the troops,
I would like to have an expedition either against Mobile, New
Orleans, or Galveston. FiUing up regiments is going on very
slowly. ' ' I said :
" Mr. President, you gave me permission to tell you when I
differed from the action of the Administration. " He said hastily :
" You think we are wrong, do you? "
I said, "Yes, in this: You are making this too much of a
party war. That perhaps is not the fault of the Administration, but
the result of political conditions. AU the northern Governors are
Republicans, and they of course appoint only their Republican
friends as officers of regiments, and then the officers only recruit
RepubUcans. Now this war cannot go on as a party war. You
must get the Democrats in it, and there are thousands of patriotic
Democrats who would go into it if they could see any opportunity on
equal terms with Republicans."
He said: "There is meat in that. General," a favorite ex
pression of his, "what is your suggestion?"
I said : " Empower me to raise volunteers for the United States
and to select the officers, and I wiU go to New England and raise a

From The Life oj Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
LINCOLN IN 1861
From a photograph taken when he began to let his beard grow. This was the subject
of humorous comment and caricature by the press generally.

(428)

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 429
division of 6,000 men in sixty days. If you will give me power to
select the officers I shall choose all Democrats. And if you put
epaulets on their shoulders they' will be as true to the country as I
hope I am. ' '
He said: " Draw such an order as you want, but don't get me
into any scrape with the Governors about the appointments of the
officers if you can help it. "
The order was signed, the necessary funds were furnished the
next day, and I started for New England ; in ninety days I had 6,000
men enlisted, and was ordered to make preparations for an expedi
tion to Ship Island, and the last portion of that expedition sailed
on the 2 sth of February, 1862.
Before I left Washington I called on the President to take leave
of him. He received me very cordially, and said:
" Good-bye, General; get into New Orleans if you can, and the
backbone of the rebellion will be broken. It is of more importance
than anything else that can now be done ; but don't interfere with
the slavery question, as Fremont has done at St. Louis, and as your
man Phelps has been doing on Ship Island."
I said : " May I not arm the negroes? "
He said : " Not yet ; not yet. "
I said : " Jackson did. "
He answered : " Not to fight against their masters, but with
them. "
I replied: "I will wait for the word or the necessity, Mr.
President.'' " That's right; God be with you. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin F. Butler, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 140.
The " Trent " Affair and Its " White Elephants "
After BaU's Bluff, the grumbling against inaction in the Army
of the Potomac increased until public attention was suddenly dis
tracted by an incident of an entirely new character, and one which
changed the discouragement of the North over the repeated military
failures and the inactivity of the army into exultation.
This incident was the capture, on November 8, by Captain
Wilkes, of the warship San Jacinto, of two Confederate Commission
ers to Europe, Messrs. Mason and Slidell. Captain WUkes had stop
ped the British royal mail packet Trent, one day out from Havana,

430 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
and taken the envoys with their secretaries from her. It was not
until November 15 that Captain Wilkes put into Hampton Roads
and sent the Navy Department wdrd of his performance.
Of course the message was immediately carried to Mr. Lincoln
at the White House. A few hours later Benson J. Lossing called
on the President, and the conversation turned on the news. Mr.
Lincoln did not hesitate to express himself.
" I fear the traitors will prove to be ' white elephants, ' " he said.
"We must stick to American principles concerning the rights of
neutrals. We fought Great Britain for insisting by theory and
practice on the right to do exactly what Captain Wilkes has done.
If Great Britain shall now protest against the act and demand their
release, we must give them up, apologize for the act as a violation
of our doctrines and thus forever bind her over to keep the peace in
relation to neutrals, and so acknowledge that she has been in the
wrong for sixty years. " ....
Early in December, word reached America that England was
getting ready to go to war in case we did not give up the Com
missioners. The news aroused the deepest indignation, and the
determination to keep Mason and Slidell was for a brief time stronger
than ever. Common sense was doing its work, however.
It was on Christmas day that Seward finally had his answer
ready. It granted the British demand as to the surrender of the
prisoners, though it refused an apology — on the ground that Captain
Wilkes had acted without orders.
Lincoln's first conclusion was the real ground on which the
Administration submitted :
"We must stick to American principles concerning the rights
of neutrals. "
The country grimaced at the conclusion. It was to many, as
Chase declared it was to him, " gall and wormwood. "
Lowell's verse [in " Biglow Papers"] best expressed the popu
lar feeling: " We give the critters back, John,
'Cos Abram thought 'twas right ;
It warn't your buUyin' clack, John,
Provokin' us to fight. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 71.

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 431
"WiUies Had No Right to Turn His Quarter-Deck into a Prize-Court"
I often heard the Attorney-General (Bates) say on his return
from important Cabinet meetings that the more he saw of Mr.
Lincoln the more he was impressed with the clearness and vigor
of his intellect and the breadth and sagacity of his views, and he
would add :
" He is beyond question the master-mind of the Cabinet. "
No man could talk with him on public questions without being
struck with the singular lucidity of his mind and the rapidity with
which he seized upon the essential point.
A day or two after the news came of the stopping of the English
steamer Trent by Admiral Wilkes, and the forcible capture of Mason
and Slidell, the President walked into the Attorney -General's room,
and as he seated himelf , said to that officer :
"I'm not getting much sleep out of that exploit of WUkes's, and
I suppose we must look up the law of the case. I am not much of a
prize lawyer, but it seems to me pretty clear that if Wilkes saw fit
to make that capture on the high seas he had no right to turn his
quarter-deck into a prize court."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Titian J. CofEey, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 245.
"Sumner Thinks He Runs Me "
Although himself a most polished, even a fastidious, gentleman,
Senator Sumner never allowed Lincoln's homely ways to hide
his great qualities. Sumner
gave Lincoln the respect and
esteem at the start which
others accorded only after ex
perience. The Senator was
most tactful, too, in his deal
ings with Mrs. Lincoln, and
soon had a firm footing in the
household. That he was
proud of this, and perhaps a
little boastful, there is no
doubt. Lincoln himself
appreciated this.
"Sumner thinks he
runs me, " he said, with an amused twinkle, one day
The Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida, M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 73-

LEADING EVENTS IN 1861
Steamer " Star of the West " fired on by
Secessionists  X^°" ^
Formationof the Southern Confederacy. . Feb. 4
Jefferson Davis elected President of C.S.A. Feb. 18
Bombardment of Fort Sumter by Con
federates  Apr. 13
Lincoln calls for 75,000 soldiers  '. Apr. is
Seizure of Harper's Ferry by Confeder
ates  Apr. 18
Bloodshed at Baltimore, (Sixth Massa
chusetts Regiment)  Apr. 19
Confederates seize Norfolk Navy Yard . . Apr. 20
Secession of East Virginia, Arkansas.
Tennessee and North Carolina, making
II Confederate States  May and June
Battle of Bull Run (E. Virginia), Confed
erate victory   July 31
Trent Affair, Union capture of Mason
and Slidell  Nov. 8

432 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Cameron, Secretary of War, Sent to Russia
Before the Trent affair was settled another matter came up to
harass Mr. Lincoln. This time it was trouble in his official
family. Mr. Cameron, his Secretary of War, had bcome even more
obnoxious to the public than Fremont or McClellan. Like Seward,
Cameron had been one of Lincoln's competitors at the Chicago
convention in i860. His appointment to the Cabinet, however, had
not been made, like Seward's, because of his eminent fitness. It was
the one case in which a bargain had been made before the nomi
nation. This bargain was not struck by Mr. Lincoln, but by his
friend and ablest supporter at Chicago, Judge David Davis.
Soon after the extra session of Congress assembled in July, a
committee was appointed to look into the contracts the War De
partment was making. The Secretary of War, it was
clear, had not been able to manage his department without great
scandal. The matter was too serious a one for Mr. Lin
coln to o\'erlook. The public would not have permitted him to
overlook it, even if he had been so disposed.
Nine months of this sort of experience convinced Mr. Lincoln
that Cameron was not the man for the place, and he took advan
tage of a remark which the Secretary, probably in a moment of
depression, had made to him more than once, that he wanted a
"change of position, " and made him Minister to Russia.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 76.
Cabinet Ministers and Skunks
The skill and success with which Mr. Lincoln would dispose of .
an embarrassing question or avoid premature committal to a policy
advocated by others is well known. He knew how to send applicants
away in good humor even when they failed to extract the desired
response. A story told of him after General Cameron's retirement from the
War Department illustrates this habit. Every one knows that Mr.
Lincoln's Cabinet was chosen chiefiy from his rivals for the Presi
dential nomination. But the exigencies of the War de
manded, in the opinion of a good many Republicans, a reorganiza
tion of the Cabinet based on the special fitness of each member for
the great ^^¦ork in hand. Of this opinion were some of the leading

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW

433

Republican Senators. After the retirement of General Cameron
they held a caucus and appointed a committee to wait on the Presi
dent. . . Since the President had decided to select a new
War Minister, they thought the occasion 'was opportune to change
the whole seven Cabinet ministers. They therefore earnestly
advised him to make a clean sweep and select seven new men, and so
restore the waning confidence of the country.
The President listened with patient courtesy, and when the
Senators had concluded, he said, with a characteristic gleam of
humor in his eye :
"Gentlemen, your request for a
change of the whole Cabinet because I
have made one change reminds me of a
story I once heard in Illinois of a farmer
who was much troubled by skunks.
They annoyed his household at night,
and his wife insisted that he should take
measures to get rid of them. One
moonlight night he loaded his old
shot-gun and stationed himself in the
yard to watch for the intruders, his
wife remaining in the house anxiously
awaiting the result.
" After some time she heard the shot-gun go off, and in a few
minutes the farmer entered the house.
"'What luck had you?' she asked.
" 'I hid myself behind the woodpile, ' said the old man, 'with
the shot-gun pointed toward the hen-roost, and before long there
appeared not one skunk but seven. 1 took aim and blazed away,
killed one, and he raised such a fearful smell that I concluded it was
best to let the other six go. ' "
With a hearty laugh the Senators retired, and nothing more was
heard of Cabinet reconstruction.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Titian J. Coiley, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 23s.

Stanton Made Secretary of War
What change, if any, Mr. Stanton's attitude had undergone by
January, 1862, is not known. Howbeit, on the 13th of that month,
the President, brushing personal feeUngs aside, nominated him to

434 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
succeed Simon Cameron as Secretary of War. . It (the
appointment) was promptly accepted and as promptly confirmed.
The elevation of Mr. Stanton to an important place in the
Lincoln Cabinet was a surprise to the nation. And his consent
. aroused the still greater wonder of his own friends. One
of them . . asked the new Secretary :
"What wiU you do?"
Mr. Stanton, ignoring the purport of the question, answered,
among other things :
" I -will make Abe Lincoln President of the United States. "
He clearly believed himself summoned . . to strengthen
the hands of an impotent President.
However grossly Edwin M. Stanton may have misjudged Mr.
Lincoln, his confidence in himself was well founded. His
firmness degenerated, at times, into sheer obstinacy ; his enthusiasm,
into intolerance ; his strength of will, into arrogance. No one who
knew the man courted an encounter with him. Only a master of
masters could control such an embodiment of force.
There appeared to be abundant ground for their comforting pre
diction that "Stanton would run away with the whole concern."
Strangely enough, the President showed no alarm. He was merely
reminded of a little story.
" We may have to treat him, " said he, " as they are sometimes
obliged to treat a Methodist minister I know out West. He gets
wrought up to so high a pitch of excitement in his prayers and
exhortations, that they have to put bricks into his pockets to
keep him down. We may be obliged to serve Stanton the same
way, but I guess we'll let him jump awhile first. "
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 227,
How Newspaper Stories Grow
From January, 1862, until the close of the War, the telegraphic
reins of Government were held by a firm and skilful hand in the War
Department and in their guiding influence upon the affairs of the
nation were all-powerful for good. Dating, also, from the appoint
ment of Stanton to the Cabinet, Lincoln began to make the War
Department telegraph office his lounging-place, and during the
winter of 1862 we saw him daily, although our office at that time

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW 435
was crowded and inconvenient. It was in the first-floor rear room
that I first heard one of his humorous remarks. General Robert C.
Schenck, who after the War became minister to England (but who is
perhaps better remembered as the author of a treatise on the gentle
art of playing poker, of which game the English public became
enamored about that time), was in command of our forces near
Alexandria. One evening he sent a telegram from Drains-ville,
Virginia, announcing a slight skirmish with the enemy, resulting
in the capture of thirty or forty prisoners, all armed Avith Colt's
revolvers. As Lincoln read the message, he turned to the operator
who had handed it to him, and said, with a twinkle in his eye,
that the newspapers were given to such exaggeration in publishing
army news that we might be sure when General Schenck's dispatch
appeared in print next day all the little Colt's revolvers would have
grown into horse pistols.
Lincoln in tlie Telegraph Office, David Homer Bates. Century Magazine, Vol. LXXIV, May, 1007,
page 129. The White House Becomes a House of Mourning
The children. Tad and WilUe, were constantly receiving presents.
WilUe was so delighted -with a little pony that he insisted on riding
it every day. The weather was changeable, and exposure resulted
in a severe cold which deepened into fever. He was very sick and
I was summoned to his bedside. It was sad to see the boy suffer.
Always of a delicate constitution, he could not resist the inroads of
disease. The days dragged wearily by, and he grew weaker and
more shadow-like. He was his mother's favorite child— she doted
on him. . When able to be about, he was almost
constantly by her side. When I would go in her room, almost
always I found blue-eyed WilUe there, reading, or curied up in a
chair with pencil and paper in hand. He had a decidedly liter
ary taste, and was a studious boy. (A short time before his
death, he wrote a simple poem, " Lines on the Death of Colonel
Edward Baker, " which he sent to the editor of the National Repub
lican.) Finding that WilUe continued to grow worse, Mrs. Lincoln
determined to withdraw her cards of invitation and postpone the
reception. Mr. Lincoln thought that the cards had better not be
¦withdrawn . At least he advised that the doctor be consulted before

436 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
any steps were taken. Accordingly Dr. Stone was called in. He
pronounced Willie better, and said that there was every reason for
an early recovery. He thought, since the invitations had been
issued, it would be best to go on -with the reception. Willie, he
insisted, was in no immediate danger. Mrs. Lincoln was guided by
these cotmsels, and no postponement was announced.
On the evening of the reception Willie was suddenly taken
worse. His mother sat by his bedside a long while, holding his
feverish hand in her own, and watching his labored breathing. Still
the doctor claimed there was no cause for alarm.
I arranged Mrs. Lincoln's hair, then assisted her to dress. Her
dress was white satin trimmed 'with black lace. The train was very
long, and she swept through the room, Mr. Lincoln was standing
with his back to the fire, his hands behind him, and his eyes on the
carpet. His face wore a solemn, thoughtful look. The rustling of
the satin dress attracted his attention. He looked at it ; then in his
quaint, quiet way remarked,
"Whew! our cat has a long tail to-night. " Mrs. Lincoln did
not reply. The President added :
" Mother, it is my opinion that if some of that tail was nearer
the head, it would be in better style, " and he glanced at her bare
arms and neck. She had a beautiful neck and arm, and low dresses
were becoming to her. She turned away with a look of offended
dignity, and presently took the President's arm and both went
down-stairs to their guests, leaving me alone with the sick boy.
The reception was a large and brilliant one, and the rich notes
of the Marine Band, in the apartments below, came to the sick
room in soft, subdued murmurs, like the wild, faint sobbing of far-
off spirits. Some of the young people suggested dancing, but Mr.
Lincoln met the suggestion with an emphatic veto 
During the evening, Mrs. Lincoln came up-stairs several times,
and stood by the bedside of the suffering boy. She loved him -with
a mother's heart, and her anxiety was great. The night passed
slowly ; morning came, and Willie was worse. He lingered a few
days and died. God called the beautiful spirit home, and the house
of joy was turned into the house of mourning.
I was worn out with watching, and was not in the room when
Willie died, but was immediately sent for. I assisted in washing and
dressing him, and then laid him on the bed, when Mr. Lincoln came

DEFIANCE, DISASTER, SORROW

437

in. I never saw a man so bowed down -with grief. He came to the
bed, lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long
and earnestly, murmuring,
" My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has caUed
him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then
we loved him so. It is hard — hard — to have him die ! "
Great sobs choked his utterance. He buried his head in his
hands, and his tall frame was
convulsed with emotion. I stood
at the foot of the bed, my eyes
full of tears, looking at the man
in silent, awe-stricken wonder.
His grief unnerA-ed him, and made
him a weak, passive child. I did
not dream that his rugged na
ture could be so moved ; I shall
never forget those solemn mo
ments. . . There is a gran
deur as well as a simplicity about
the picture that will never
fade. Mrs. Lincoln was incon
solable. In one of her
paroxysms of grief the President
kindly bent over his wife, took
her by the arm, and gently led
her to the -window. With a sol
emn, stately gesture he pointed
to the lunatic asylum, saying:
"Mother, do you see that
large, white building on the hill
yonder? Try and control your grief, or it will drive you mad, and
we may have to send you there. "
Mrs. Lincoln was so completely overwhelmed 'with sorrow that
she did not attend the funeral. . . The White House w-as
draped in mourning.
Nathaniel Parker Willis, the genial poet, wrote a beautiful
sketch of WilUe Lincoln, which closed as follows :

WILLIE LINCOLN
From a photograph in the collection of
Charles W. McLellan, Esq.

438 ' THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
" The funeral was very touching. Of the entertainments in the
East Room the boy had been a most life-gi-ving variation 
He was his father's favorite. They were intirnates — often seen
hand in hand. And there sat the man, -with a burden on the brain
at which the world marvels — bent now with the load at both heart
and brain — staggering under a blow like the taking from him of
his child. His men of power sat around him — McClellan, with a
moist eye when he bowed to the prayer, as I could see from where I
stood ; and Chase and Seward, -with their austere features at work ;
and senators, ambassadors and soldiers, all struggling with their
tears — great hearts sorro-wing -with the President as a stricken man
and a brother. That God may give him strength for all his burdens
is, I am sure, the prayer of a nation. "
This sketch was much admired by Mrs. Lincoln. I copy it
from the scrap-book in which she pasted it, with many tears, with
her O'wn hands.
Behind the Scenes, Elizabeth Keckley (Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House),
page 98.

CHAPTER XVII
Lincoln and McClellan
" Some Strange Operation of Magic "
Lincoln's kindness and patience in dealing with the generals
who did not succeed is the wonder of all who study the history of
the Civil War. The letters he wrote to them show, better than
whole volumes of description could do, the hopeful and forbearing
spirit in which he sought to aid them.
First among these unsuccessful generals was George B. Mc
Clellan, who had been called to Washington after the Battle of Bull
Run and placed in charge of the great raw army of three years'
volunteers that was pouring so rapidly into the city. McClellan
proved a wonderful organizer. Under his skilful direction the
raw recruits went to their camps of instruction, fell without delay
or confusion into brigades and divisions, were supplied with equip
ments, horses and batteries, and put through a routine of drill, tactics
and reviews that soon made this Army of the Potomac, as it was
called, one of the best prepared armies the world has ever seen —
a perfect fighting machine of over 150,000 men and more than 200
guns. General McClellan excelled in getting soldiers ready to fight,
but he did not succeed in leading them to fruitful victory. At first
the Administration had great hopes of him as a commander. He
was young, enthusiastic, winning, and on arriving in Washington
seemed amazed and deeply touched by the confidence reposed in
him: "I find myself, " he wrote to his wife, "in a new and strange
position here, President, Cabinet, General Scott and all, deferring
to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become
the power of the land. "
His rise in mUitary rank had equaled the inventions of fairy
tales. He had been only a captain during the Mexican War. Then
he resigned. Two months after volunteering for the CivU War he
(439)

440 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
found himself a Major-General in the Regular Army. For a short
time his zeal and activity seemed to justify this amazing good
fortune. In a fortnight, however, he began to look upon himself
as the principal savior of his country. He entered upon a quarrel
with General Scott which soon drove that old hero into retirement
and out of his pathway. He looked upon the Cabinet as a set of
" geese, " and seeing that the President was kind and unassuming in
discussing military affairs, he formed the habit of expressing con
tempt for him in letters to confidential friends. This feeling grew
until it soon reached a mark of open disrespect ; but the President's
conduct toward him did not change. Mr. Lincoln's nature was too
forgiving, and the responsibility that lay upon him was too heavy
for personal resentment.
The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Nicolay, page 172.
"Enough to Tax the Patience of Job!"
It was not in the West alone that the President was suffering
disappointment. At the time when Fremont received the order
retiring him, McClellan had been in command of the Army of the
Potomac for over three months. His force had been increased until
it numbered over 168,000 men. He had given night and day to
organizing and drilling this army, and it seemed to those who
watched him that he now had a force as near ready for battle as an
army could be made ready by anything save actual fighting. Mr.
Lincoln had fully sympathized with his young general's desire to
prepare the Army of the Potomac for the field, and had given him
repeated proofs of his support.
McClellan, however, seems to have felt from the first that Mr.
Lincoln's kindness was merely a personal recognition of his own
mUitary genius. He had conceived th^ idea that it was he alone
who was to save the country.
" The people call upon me to save the country, " he wrote to his
wife. "I must save it, and cannot respect anything that is in the
way." .... "The President cannot or wiU not see the true
state of affairs."
Lincoln, in his anxiety to know the details of the work in
the army, went frequently to McCleUan's headquarters. That the
President had a serious purpose in these visits McCleUan did not see.

¦LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 441

" I enclose a card just received from 'A. Lincoln,'" he wrote to
his wife one day, " it shows too much deference to be seen outside. ' '
In another letter to Mrs. McCleUan he spoke of being "in
terrupted" by the. President and Secretary Seward, "who had
nothing particular to say," and again of concealing himself, "to
dodge aU enemies in the shape of 'broAVsing' Presidents, etc. " His
plans he kept to himself, and when in the Cabinet meetings, to which
he was constantly summoned, military matters were discussed, he
seemed to feel that it was an encroachment on his special business.
" I am becoming daily more disgusted with this Administration
—perfectly sick of it, " he wrote early in October; and a few days
later: "I was obliged to attend a meeting of the Cabinet at 8 p.m.,
and was bored and annoyed. There are some of the greatest geese
in the Cabinet I have ever seen — -enough to tax the patience of
Job." The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 6g.
Lincoln Studies Strategy WhUe McClellan Is 111
ToAvards the end of December McClellan fell ill. The long-
expected advance was out of the question until he recovered. Dis
tracted at this idea, the President for the first time asserted himself
as Commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States .
This hesitancy about exercising his military authority came 'from
Lincoln's consciousness that he knew next to nothing about the
business of fighting. When he saAA' that those supposed to know
something of the science did nothing, he resolved to learn the subject
himself as thoroughly as he could.
"He gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military
situation, " say Nicolay and Hay, his secretaries. " He read a
large number of strategical works. He pored over the reports from
the various departments and districts .of the field of war. He held
long conferences with eminent generals and admirals, and as
tonished them by the extent of his special knowledge and the keen
intelligence of his questions."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 83.
McClellan's Account of His Relations with Lincoln
My relations Avith Mr. Lincoln were generally very pleasant, and
I seldom had trouble Avith him when we could meet face to face.

442 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLh
The difficulty always arose behind my back. I believe that he liked
me personally, and certainly he was much influenced by me when
we Avere together. During the early part- of my command in
Washington he often consulted with me before taking important
steps or appointing general officers. . . .
When Stanton Avas made Secretary of War I knew nothing of
the matter until the nomination had already gone to the Senate.
Next day the President came to my house to apologize for not
consulting me on the subject. He said that he knew Stanton to be
a friend of mine and assumed that I would be glad to have him
Secretary of War, and that he feared that if he told me beforehand
"some of those fellows would say that I had dragooned him into
it." Officially my association Avith the President was very close
until the severe attack of illness in December, 1861. I was often
sent for to attend formal and informal Cabinet meetings, and at all
hours whenever the President desired to consult Avith me on any
subject; and he often came to my house, frequently late at night,
to learn the last news before retiring. His fame as a narrator of
anecdotes Avas fully deserved, and he always had something h
propos on the spur of the moment.
Late one night, when he was at my house, I received
a telegram from an officer commanding a regiment on the
upper Potomac. The despatch related to some very desperate
fighting that had been done during the day, describing in
magniloquent terms the severe nature of the contest, fierce
bayonet-charges, etc., and terminated with a very small list of
killed and wounded, quite out of proportion Avith his description
of the struggle.
The President quietly listened to my reading of the telegram,
and then said that it reminded him of a notorious liar, who attained
such a reputation as an exaggerator that he finally instructed his
servant to stop him, when his tongue Avas running too rapidly, by
pulling his coat or touching his feet. One day the master was relat
ing wonders he had seen in Europe, and described a building which
was about a mile long and a half-mile high. Just then the servant's
heel came down on the narrator's toes, and he stopped abruptly.
One of the listeners asked how broad this remarkable building
might be; the narrator modestly replied, "About a foot!" . . . .

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN

443

Long before the war, when vice-president of the Illinois Cen
tral Railroad Company, I knew Mr. Lincoln, for he was one of the
counsel of the company. More than once I have been Avith him in

'^M

from. The Reminiscenses of Carl Schurz.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT GENERAL McCLELLAN'S HEADQUARTERS

out-of-the-way county -seats where some important case wa.s being
tried, and, in the lack of sleeping accommodations, have spent the
night in front of a stove listening to the unceasing floAV of anecdotes

444 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
from his lips. He was never at a loss, and I could never quite make
up my mind how many of them he really had heard before, and
hoAv many he invented on the spur of the moment. His stories
were seldom refined, but were always to the point.
McClellan's Own Story, page t6o.
President Lincoln's First General War Order
President Lincoln was not wanting in a correct estimate of the
power vested in him by the Constitution and the laws, nor was he
wanting in Avill or in dignity of character to assert his authority
Avhen it was directly questioned. But he found it difficult to deal
with the indirect insubordination which ignored or neglected his
orders, and which baffled his purposes by groundless excuses and
unnecessary delays. He sought to persuade Avithout commanding,
and for a time carried this to the verge of an abdication of authority.
He had placed the destinies of the country in the hands of a young
man Avho had never fought a battle, and who, at the time of
Stanton's appointment, gave little promise of any intention ever
to fight one. He believed that the army should move, but still left
General McClellan to decide when it should move. Foreign inter
vention Avas imminent, and even the war spirit in the North might
not be proof against hope too long deferred. But the young General,
while giving out indications at various times of an intended early
advance, was never ready. Mr. Lincoln saw that McClellan was
wanting either in capacity or earnestness, but was not Avilling to
say so harsh a thing.
Stanton was emotional and sympathetic too, but he had no
tenderness for indifference or insubordination  He
thought when the President asserted his authority, it would be
obeyed. He took office Avith the intention of urging that course
upon Mr. Lincoln, and of supporting him in it  Mc
Clellan declares in his " Own Story " that he had smooth sailing with
the Administration until shortly before Stanton became Secretary
of War, when difficulties commenced, which culminated soon after
his appointment. Mr. Lincoln had temporized with McClellan in the exercise of
that large charity Avhich "hopeth all things, believeth all things,
and endureth all things. "
At that time the lower Potomac Avas blockaded, the Baltimore

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 445

and Ohio Railroad obstructed, and the Capital besieged, while
180,000 troops Avere idling in camp. In the West the Rebels had
been aggressive, and although they had not had their own way in
Missouri and Kentucky, no general plan of campaign was yet
visible. Stanton soon found that McClellan was as stubborn against his
persuasions as he had been against those of Mr. Lincoln. Then
commenced the long struggle between the Government and General
McClellan, which, at its height, threatened the integrit}' both of the
Government and of the Army.
As mere suggestions and exhortations to McClellan to take
some steps toward raising the siege of the Capital produced no
effect, the President issued the foUoAving order:
"Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C.
"January 27, 1862.
" President' s General War Order, No. i.
"Ordered: That the 22nd day of February, 1862, be the day
for a general movement of the land and naval forces of the United
States against the insurgent forces. That especially the army at
and about Fortress Monroe, the Army of the Potomac, the Army
of Western Virginia, the army near MunfordAille, Kentucky, the
army and flotilla near Cairo, and a naval force in the Gulf of Mexico,
be ready to move on that day.
"That all other forces, both land and naval, with their respect
ive commanders, obey existing orders for the time, and be ready to
obey additional orders when duly given.
"That the heads of departments, and especially the Secretaries
of War and of the Navy, AAith all their subordinates and the
General-in -chief with all other commanders and subordinates of
land and naval forces, Avill severally be held to their strict and full
responsibilities for the prompt execution of this order.
"A. Lincoln."
. It was Mr. Lincoln's first exercise of his authority as
Commander-in-chief. Lif e and Public Services of Edwin M . Stanton, George C. Gorham, Vol, I, page 338.

446 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Masterly Inactivity" of the Army of the Potomac
During Mr. Stanton's first week in the War Department General
McClellan had laid before him orally his opinion as to the part the
Army of the Potomac should execute, in a general plan of operations
of all the armies. This was to transport that army down the Po
tomac and lower Chesapeake, and advance upon the Rebel capital
from that direction. The Secretary instructed him to develop his
plans to the President, which he did. They were disapproved, and,
on the 31st day of January, the President issued his order, "that
all the disposable forces of the Army of the Potomac, after safely
providing for the defense of Washington, be formed into an expedi
tion for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a point upon
the railroad, southwestAvard of what is known as Manassas Junction,
all details to be in the discretion of the General-in-chief , and the
expedition to move before or on the 22nd day of February next. "
This order was never revoked and never obeyed. General Mc
Clellan asked leave to submit his views as to the tAvo opposing plans.
These must have been presented fully already, in the long confer
ences which had been held Avith him by the President and the Secre
tary. Nevertheless, he was granted the desired permission, and on
the 3d of February he submitted a long paper in which he gave
his reasons in support of his own plan as against the plan of Mr.
Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln at the same time addressed him the following
letter :
"Executive Mansion, Washington,
"February 3, 1862.
"Major-General McClellan:
"My dear Sir. — You and I have distinct and different plans
for a movement of the Army of the Potomac — ^yours to be down
the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to Urbana, and across land
to the terminus of the railroad on the York River ; mine to move
directly to a point on the railroad southwest of Manassas.
"If you will give me satisfactory answers to the foUoAving
questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours :
" ist. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure
of time and money than mine ?
"2nd. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than
mine?

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN

AA1

"3d. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than
mine? "4th. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that it
would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while
mine would ?
"5th. In case of disaster, would not a safe retreat be more
difficult by your plan than by mine? Yours truly, "A. Lincoln."
In McClellan's "views" he named the total force necessary for
his plans to be from 110,000 to 140,000. He informs us in his final
report that "this letter must have produced some effect upon the
mind of the President, since the execution of his order was not
required, " that is to say, it was treated by him as not revoked,
because it was not imperatively enforced. ...
No other plan was taken, and, as a consequence, there was no
pushing it, either vigorously or otherwise. The Rebels evacuated
their Potomac batteries at their own will and pleasure ten days later,
when, unmolested and Avithout the knowledge of McClellan, they
also evacuated Manassas and Winchester.
Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton, George C. Gorham, Vol. I, page 338
"I Would Find Means to Prevent the
'Merrimac' "
The late Schuyler Colfax told me
that he was present at an interview
accorded to the representatives of
the moneyed interests of New York,
when the Merrimac escaped from
Hampton Roads and was supposed
to be making its way to that port.
The delegation arose one after
another, one man stating that he was
worth $10,000,000, and another that
he represented $50,000,000, and
another that he was worth several
miUions of dollars and represented
many times as many miUions more ;
and that they had paid their chauncey m. depew
taxes, subscribed to the
Govemment's loans, and ought to be protected.

448

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Mr. Lincoln said: "Well, gentlemen, the Government has no
vessel as yet, that I know of, that can sink the Merrimac, and our
resources, both of money and credit, are strained to the utmost.
But if I had as much money as you say you have got, and was
as 'skeered' as you seem to be, I would find means to prevent the
Alerrimac ever reaching my property. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Chauncey M. Depew, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page
433. The President's Unwavering Confidence in the "Monitor"
The President expressed his belief in the Monitor to Captain
Fox, the adviser of Captain Ericsson who constructed it.
"I am not prepared for disastrous results, why should I be?
We haA^e three of the most effective vessels in Hampton Roads, any
number of small craft that will hang on the stern of the Merrimac
like small dogs on the haunches of
a bear. They may not be able to
tear her doAvn, but they will inter
fere with the comfort of her voy
age. Her trial trip will not be a
pleasure trip, I am certain. We
have had a big share of bad luck
already, but I do not believe the
future has any such misfortunes in
store as you anticipate. "
Said Captain Fox :
" If the Merrimac does not
sink our ships, who is to prevent
her from dropping her anchor in
the Potomac where that steamer
lies, . and throwing her
hundred-pound shells into this
room, or battering down the waUs
of the Capitol?"
"The Almighty, Captain,"
answered the President, excitedly, but without the least affectation.
"I expect set-backs, defeats; we have had them and shall have
them. They are common to all wars. But I have not the
slightest fear of any result which shall fatally impair our military

JOHN ERICSSON
Inventor and builder of the "Monitor.'

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 449

and naval strength, or give other poAvers any right to interfere in
our quarrel. The destruction of the Capitol would do both. I do
not fear it, for this is God's fight, and He wUl win it in His own
good time. He avUI take care that our enemies do not push us
too far. "Speaking of ironclads," said the President, "you do not
seem to take the little Monitor into account. I believe in the
Monitor and her commander. If Captain Worden does not give a
good account of the Monitor and of himself, I shaU have made a
mistake in following my judgment for the first time since I have
been here. Captain. I have not made a mistake in following my
clear judgment of men since this war began. I foUowed that
judgment when I gave Worden the command of the Monitor. I
Avould make the appointment over again to-day. The Monitor
should be in Hampton Roads now. She left New York eight days
ago  "The Monitor was one of my inspirations; I believed in her
formerly when that energetic contractor first showed me Ericsson's
plans. Captain Ericsson's plain but rather enthusiastic demon
stration made my conversion permanent. It was called a fioating
battery then; I called it a raft. I caught some of the inventor's
enthusiasm and it has been growing upon me. I thought then, and
I am confident now, that it is just what we want. I am sure that
the Monitor is still afloat, and that she will yet give a good account
of herself. Sometimes I think she may be the veritable sling that
will yet smite the Merrimac Philistine in the forehead. "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 192,
The President's Delight at the Victory of the "Monitor" over the
"Merrimac"
Three days after the emancipation meeting of the 6th of March,
I returned to Washington and made my report to Mr. Lincoln. He
was in high spirits over the event which, in the preceding day, had
taken place in Hampton Roads. It was the epoch-making naval
battle between the Merrimac and the Monitor — ^the introduction
of the ironclad war-vessel to the history of the world. There
was, indeed, ample reason for congratulating ourselves upon a
narrow escape from incalculable disaster. On March Sth the

450 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
famous Merrimac, an old vessel which had been sunk in Norfolk
Harbor and then raised by the Rebels, and which had been covered
by a thick coat of metal plates and armed with an iron ram and a
formidable battery, steamed out of the mouth of Elizabeth River,
sunk or destroyed a number of United States men-of-war assembled
in Hampton Roads, without being harmed in the least by their
artillery, and thus demonstrated her ability to overpower any war
ship in our navy then afloat. When the news reached Washington,
the members of the Cabinet rushed to the White House in a state
of utter- consternation. Some of them already saw that dreadful
monster, carrying an apparently inAOilnerable armament, easily
break up our blockade of Southern ports, or lay our seaport cities
under contribution, or ascend the Potomac, and, with its shells,
drive the government out of the National Capital. The next
morning the terrible dragon came forth from Norfolk Harbor
again to continue the work of unimpeded ruin. Then, all of a
sudden, an insignificant-looking thing, resembling a small "raft
with a large iron cheese-box" upon it, appeared on the scene and
bade defiance to the Rebel demon. It was the celebrated Monitor,
which, under the orders of the Government, had been built by the
famous engineer, Ericsson, and which had been quietly towed from
New York to Hampton Roads. The savior arrived in good time.
The Monitor proved as invulnerable as the Merrimac, and even
more effective. After a duel between the two champions, lasting
several hours, the Merrimac retreated into Elizabeth River, and
the Monitor remained in undisturbed possession of the field.
When I saw Mr. Lincoln the next day, his mind was still so full
of the great event that it gave him CAident delight to tell me the
whole story. He described Aividly the arrival of the first tidings
of disaster, and his own and the several Cabinet members' dismay
at the awful prospect thus opened, and their sighs of relief when the
telegraph announced the appearance of "the little cheese-box"
which drove the Rebel Goliath off the field.
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. II, page 327,
The Country's Debt to Lincoln and Worden for the " Monitor's " Success
The fight of the Monitor and Merrimac changed all the con
ditions of naval warfare.
After the victory was gained, the President, Captain Fox and

The Encounter at Short Range.

Monitor
Fron Bat les a d Leaders of the Civil War.
DECISIVE ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC
This encounter of the "David and Golith" of the Civil War greatly encoiu-aged the whole country, delighted the heart of the President, and revolutionized
naval warfare by illustrating what could be done with armored battleships.

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 451
others went on board the Monitor, and Captain Worden was re
quested by the President to narrate the history of the encounter.
Captain Worden did so in a modest manner, and apologized
for not being able better to provide for his guests. The President
smilingly responded :
"Some uncharitable people say that 'old Bourbon' is an indis
pensable element in the fighting qualities of some of our generals in
the field, but, Captain, after the account we have heard to-day, no
one will say that any 'Dutch courage' is needed on board the
Monitor." " It never has been, sir, " modestly observed the captain.
Captain Fox then gave a description of what he saw of the
engagement and characterized it as indescribably grand. Then,
turning to the President, he continued :
" Now, standing here on the deck of this battle-scarred vessel,
the first genuine irpnclad — the victor in the first fight of ironclads
— ^let me make a confession, and perform an act of simple justice :
"I never fully believed in armored vessels until I saw this
battle. I know all the facts which united to give us the Monitor.
I withhold no credit from Captain Ericsson, her inventor, but I
know that the country is principally indebted to President Lincoln
for the construction of the vessel, and for the success of her trial to
Captain Worden, her commander."
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 194.
The President's Intercession Prevents the Dismissal of a Faithful Officer
(Captain) Eckert, accompanied by Sanford, went to the War
Department that afternoon, and was ushered into the Secretary 's
presence, and . . stood for at least ten minutes while Stanton con
tinued to write at his desk, without looking up to see who his caUers
were. Finally Stanton turned and asked Eckert what he wanted.
The latter replied, " Mr. Sanford tells me that you have sent for
me, and I am here. "
Then Stanton, in a loud voice, said he understood that Captain
Eckert had been neglecting his duties, and was absent from his
office much of the time, and allowed newspaper men to have access
to the telegraphic office ; also that he was an unfit person for the
important position he occupied 

452 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Eckert replied that he had not neglected his duties ; that he had
attended to them strictly and faithfully ; that any statements to the
contrary were false ; that for over three months he had been at his
post of duty almost constantly, and had hardly taken off his clothes
during that time except to change his linen ; that he had remained
in his office many times all night long, and that he seldom slept in
his bed at his hotel ; and, finally, inasmuch as it appeared that his
services Avere not acceptable, he insisted^upon his resignation being
accepted. Just then Eckert felt an arm placed on his shoulder, and, sup
posing it to be that of Sanford, AA'ho had all this time remained
standing AAith him, turned around, and was surprised to find that,
instead, it was the hand of the President, who had entered the
room while the discussion was going on.
Lincoln, still with his hand on the Captain's shoulder, said to
Stanton :
"Mr. Secretary, I think you must be mistaken about this
young man neglecting his duties, for I have been a daily caller at
General McClellan's headquarters for the last three or four months,
and I have always found Eckert at his post. I have laeen there
often before breakfast, and in the evening as well, and frequently
late at night, and several times before dawn, to get the .latest news
from the army. Eckert Avas always there, and I never observed
any reporters or outsiders in the office." ....
Stanton was so impressed by the intercession of Lincoln, San
ford and Brough that he quietly took from his desk a package of
papers, and opening one, said,
"I believe this is your resignation, is it not, sir?"
Captain Eckert said it was ; whereupon Stanton tore it up and
dropped the pieces on the floor. He then opened another paper
and said: " This is the order dismissing you from the army, which I had
already signed, but it will not Be executed."
He then tore up the order of dismissal and said :
" I owe you an apology, Captain, for not having gone to General
McClellan's office and seen for myself the situation of affairs. You
are no longer Captain Eckert; I shall appoint you a major as soon

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 453
as the commission can be made out, and I shall make you a
further acknowiedgment in another manner. "
So, from that Sunday afternoon, in February, 1862, until just
before the close of the War, Eckert 's military title was "Major."
The additional acknoAvledgment referred to by Secretary Stanton
consisted of a horse and carriage, purchased for Eckert's use in the
performance of his official duties.
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, David Homer Bates, page 133.
The Fiasco at Harper's Ferry
The President, under the inspiration received on the preceding
night, hoped anxiously for further news. His confidence in the
success of the movement was unabated ; he felt that the enemy had
already been surprised, and that — at least in confidential official
circles — ^he might say that McClellan had occupied important posi
tions in Virginia, and that troops enough to resist any force that
could be thrown against him were already en rotite for Harper's
Ferry, where a pontoon bridge, that would carry them all in bri
gades, had already been thrown. But as the shadows lengthened
those who knew him well could not fail to notice indications of
unusual anxiety. He paced the floor of the Executive Chamber ; he
was restless, and not as he had been through the earlier hours of
the day, ready to greet Aisitors with a smile and a cheering word. It
was evident that his confidence was fading, and that he was under
the influence of misgi'vings lest his General had again deluded him
and disappointed the country. . . . Soon after dark Mr. Stan
ton came from the War Department and handed him. a dispatch he
had just received from the General. It was dated Sandy Hook,
3.30 P.M., and read as follows:
"The lift-lock is too small to permit the canal-boats to enter
the river, so that it is impossible to construct the permanent bridge
as I intended. I shall probably be obliged to fall back on the safe
and slow plan of merely covering the reconstruction of the railroad.
This Avill be done at once, but will be tedious. I cannot, as things
now are, be sure of my supplies for the forces necessary to seize
Winchester, which is probably reinforced from Manassas. The
wiser plan is to reliuild the railroad bridge as rapidly as possible, and
then act according to the state of affaks, "

454

THE STORY -LIFE OF. LINCOLN

It Avill be observed that this dispatch contained no intimation
that the orders for the advance of troops to sustain those who had
been posted in Virginia against the alleged threatened advance from
Manassas had been countermanded.

LINCOLN IN '62

Before leaving the Department Stanton had replied as follows :
" If the lift-lock is not big enough, why cannot it be made big
enough? Please answer immediately. "
The reply to AA'hich was as follows, and bore date 10.30 p.m. :
" It can be enlarged, but entire masonry must be destroyed and

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 4SS
rebuilt, and new gates made — an operation impossible at the present
stage of water, and requiring many weeks at any time. The railroad
bridge can be rebuilt many weeks before this could be done. "
This failure and the ridiculous excuse for it — that the engineers
had neglected to ascertain the width of the lock through which the
boats they were concentrating were to pass, — gave rise to a popular
fear that the sacrifices and scandals of Ball's Bluff were to be
repeated on a grander scale near Harper's Ferry.
At 9.30 P.M. of the same day the President received a telegram
in which McClellan asserted that he knew he "had acted wisely,"
and that the President "would cheerfully agree with him when he
explained, " but the kernel of the message Avas found in the following
passage :
" It is impossible for many days to more than supply the troops
now here and at Charlestown. We could not supply and move to
Winchester for many days, and had I moved more troops here they
would have been at a loss for food on the Virginia side. "
Here was a "change of base."  The President was
now compelled to doubt whether McClellan had ever considered a
plan with a view to its execution, . . . and that it was evident he
would not execute movements directed by his superiors. Now, with
extreme gravity and emphasis, he added, the time has come when
such a plan for a movement toward Richmond must be adopted
and be promptly executed by McClellan or his successor 
Mr. Stanton could, when greatly irritated, find relief in the
use of forcible expletives, but it was not so with the great-hearted,
patient, long-suffering President, with whom it was my privilege to
converse on the night of the 2 7th. He was more restless than I had
ever seen him, and I think more dejected, though he had not yet
been adAised of the countermanding by McClellan of all orders for
the forwarding of troops. His position was pitiable. He knew
that the army was aware that Scott had recommended McClellan's
advancement and approved his abUity; that he (McCleUan) had
placed his confidential friends in every important command of the
Army of the Potomac ; and that, whether true or false, the country
had been made to believe that the rank and file of the army so wor
shiped their "Little Commander" that to displace him might

4s6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
produce consequences Avhich he AA'as not willing to risk ; yet this was
a measure he must iioav contemplate.
The next day he requested an early interview with the General
and Senators Ben Wade and Andrew Johnson were present.
They were henceforth unreserved in their denunciation of
the General as " treacherous " or "incompetent ;" and of the puerility
of his explanations. It Avas probably due to the unrestained ex
pression of their indignation that the public so soon learned that the
President had a practicable plan of campaign which would be
enforced. Lincoln and Stanton, William D. Kelley, M.C., page 25.
"I Could Permit No One to Couple the Word Treason with My Name"
It was a part of Mr. Stanton's policy — -only too well carried
out — to prevent frequent personal interviews between the President
and myself ; he was thus enabled to say one thing to the President
and exactly the opposite to me. A few days later, on the Sth of
March, the President sent for me at an early hour in the morning,
about half -past scA^en, and I found him in his office. He appeared
much concerned about something and soon said that he wished to
talk with me about "a very ugly matter. " I asked what it was;
and, as he still hesitated, I said that the sooner and more directly
such things were approached the better.
He then referred to the Harper's Ferry affair (the boats being
too wide for the lift-locks, etc.), upon AA'hich I found that the Secre
tary had deceived me when he said the President was satisfied. I
told him what had passed between the Secretary and myself,
at Avhich he AA-as much surprised. He told me that he had never
heard of my memorandum or of any explanation on my part. I
then gave him my statement of the matter, with which he expressed
himself entirely satisfied.
He then adverted to the more serious — and "ugly" — matter,
and now the effects of the intrigues by which he had been sur
rounded became apparent. He said that it had been represented
to him (and he certainly conveyed to me the distinct impression that
he regarded these representations as well founded) that my plan of
campaign was conceived with the traitorous intent of
removing its defenders from Washington, and thus giving over to
the enemy the Capital and the Government, thus left defenseless.

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 457
It is difficult to understand that a man of Lincoln's intelligence
could give ear to such abominable nonsense. I was seated when he
said this, concluding with the remark that it did look to him much
like treason. Upon this I arose, and, in a manner perhaps not
altogether decorous towards the Chief Magistrate, desired that he
should retract the expression, telling him that I could permit no one
to couple the word treason with my name. He was much agitated,
and at once disclaimed any idea of considering me a traitor, and said
that he merely repeated Avhat others had said, and that he did not
believe a word of it. I suggested caution in the use of language,
and again said that I would permit no doubt to be throAvn upon rtiy
intentions, Avhereupon he again apologized and disclaimed any pur
pose of impugning my motives 
Before leaving this subject I avUI call attention to the fact that
my official report contained the statement that the Secretary had
assured me of the President's approval of my action when I returned
from the upper Potomac, and that this assertion Avas never denied.
Moreover, no other statement made in the memorandum was ever
denied or objected to either by the President or the Secretary and
that m.emorandum shoAvs very clearly that there was no ground of
dissatisfaction with my conduct, but that I did precisely what I
told them I should do under given circumstances.
McClellan's Own Story, page I9S.

That Discrepancy a "Convenient Mistake" of Stanton's
At this time I received the following letter from the President :
"Washington, April 9, 1862.
"My dear Sir: — Your despatches complaining that you are
not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me
very much.
" I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to
leave Banks at Manassas Junction ; but when that arrangement was
broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was con
strained to substitute something for it myself. And allow me to
ask, Do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond
via Manassas Junction to this city to be entirely open, except what

4s8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
resistance could be presented by less than 20,000 unorganized
troops ? This is a question Avhich the country Avill not allow me to
evade. ".There is a curious mystery about the number of troops now
with you. When I telegraphed you on the 6th, saying you had over
a hundred thousand with you, I had just obtained from the Secre
tary of War a statement, taken, as he said, from your own returns,
making 108,000 then with you and en route to you. You now say
you Avill have but 85,000 when all en route to you shall have reached
you. How can the discrepancy of 23,000 be accounted for? .
" I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is
with you by this time, and if so, I think it is the precise time for you
to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you
— that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements
than you can by reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell
you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am power
less to help this. You will do me the justice to remember that I
always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead
of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting, and not surmount
ing, a difficulty ; that we would fight the same enemy and the same
or equal entrenchments at either place. The country avUI not fail
to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to move upon
entrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.
" I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to
you in greater kindness of feeling than now, or with a fuller purpose
to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consist
ently can. But you must act. "Yours very truly,
"A. Lincoln."

. . . As regards the discrepancy of 23,000 men, it is sufficient
to say that my estimate was made from the actual latest returns of
the men present for duty, and was correct. I have no doubt that
the number furnished the President was the aggregate — present and
absent — a convenient mistake not unfrequently made by the Secre
tary of War.
McClellan's Own Story, page 276

LINCOLN AND< McCLELLAN 459
How Vallandigham and Others Hampered the President
To avoid misinterpretation and misrepresentation, I pause to
say that I allude to no Democrat Avho believed, as Jackson had done,
that the Union was a blessing worth preserving, when I refer to
the leaders of the reactionary force of that day. They were
Northern proslavery disunionists who preferred the destruction of
the Union to the destruction of slavery, of Avhich Clement L. Val-
'landigham was a brilliant type. They sought the advantages of
union and organization, and established secret orders — such as the
"Knights of the Golden Circle;" and when addressing meetings
of illiterate men in opposition to the enforcement of the draft, to the
suspension of the habeas corpus, to the enlistment of colored troops
in the army, or to any other vital measures, not infrequently spoke
of President Lincoln as a "mulatto buffoon." In their familiar
parlance those who supported the Administration, in its efforts to
save the country, were characterized as " Black Republican Dis
unionists" and "nigger lovers," and, if they wore the national
uniform, as " Lincoln's hirelings. "
But for the instant, earnest and persistent co-operation of
national Democrats, the Government could not, I believe, have
crushed the rebellion and restored the Union. Dix and Stanton
were Democrats who had served till the close of Buchanan's admin
istration in his Cabinet ; Morton, of Indiana, and Tod and Brough,
of Ohio, who were distinguished for courage and energy among the
illustrious group of War Governors, had been life-long Democrats,
and I might add the names of hundreds of Democrats of State or
national reputation who promptly sought service in the Union
army. But the highest enthusiasm for the national cause was
exhibited by the rank and file Avho, ignoring party names or dis
tinctions, Avith the jubilant shout :
"We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,"
swarmed into the Union camps of every State, and illustrated
the popular devotion to the country and flag by compelling the
President to accept the services of tens of thousands of men for
whom he had not called, but whose services would CAidently be
needed. Yet the headquarters of the General-in-chief (McClellan)
soon became a rendezvous for the master-spirits of the reactionary
force. Here frequent conferences were held, in which Messrs.

46o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Vallandigham and others were conspicuous. These meetings
were characterized by a prominent Democrat (Moses F. Odell of
New York), Avho revolted from their objects, as a "continuing
caucus for the consideration of plans of resistance to all measures
which proposed to strengthen the army or the navy; to proAide
means for their pay, sustenance, the munitions of war, and means
of transportation ; and to devise means of embarrassing the Govern
ment by constitutional quibbles and legal subtleties. "
Lincoln and Stanton, WilUam D. Kelley, M, C, page s,
" All Quiet along the Potomac "
"All quiet along the Potomac,'' they say,
Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro.
By a rifleman hid in the thicket,
'Tis nothing — a private or two now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle ;
Not an officer lost — only one of the men.
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle,
"All quiet along the Potomac" to-night.
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming.
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon.
Or the light of the watch-fire, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh of the gentle night-wind
Through the forest-leaves softly is creeping ;
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes.
Keep guard, for the army is sleeping.
There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack ; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep.
For their mother: " May Heaven defend her!"
All Quiet along the Potomac, Ethel Lynn Beers, in Stedman's An American Anthology, page 454.

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 461
"I Will Hold McClellan's Horse"
General McClellan had little or no conception of the greatness
of Abraham Lincoln. As time went on, he began to shoAV his con
tempt of the President, frequently alloAving him to wait in the ante
room of his house while he transacted business with others. [On
one occasion McClellan went up stairs to bed, leaving the President
and an attendant waiting below. — ^W. W.]
The discourtesy Avas so open that McClellan's staff" noticed it,
and newspaper correspondents commented on it. The President
was too keen not to see the situation, but he was strong enough to
ignore it. It was a battle he wanted from McClellan, not deference.
" I will hold McClellan's horse, if he will only bring us success, "
he said one day.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McCKirc, page 241.
" A Special Talent for a Stationary Engine "
Because of McClellan's "masterly inactivity" the words, "All
quiet along the Potomac ' ' became a by-word of bitterness through
out the North.
Lincoln said one day with a sad smile :
" McClellan is a great engineer, but he has a special talent for a
stationary engine."
w. w. McClellan and the Peninsular Campaign
In the Peninsula, McClellan's hallucinations as to the over
whelming strength of the enemy in front of him continued. He
drilled and reviewed and dug entrenchments, like the practical
engineer that he was, and imperiously demanded more men, more
guns and more support from Washington, where cabals in his imagi
nation were always at work to hinder the fruition of his simplest
plans. Stanton once declared that if McClellan "had a million men he
would swear the enemy had two million, and then he would sit
down in the mud and yell for three. "
In his (McCleUan's ) private letters at this time he wrote of
Washington as that "sink of iniquity" and of Lincoln, Stanton and
their associates as those "treacherous hounds, " but in May, detach
ments of his army met bodies of Confederates, and some expensive

462 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
fighting was indulged in in an effort to open the way to Richmond.
In June the Union advance guard had reached a point Avithin four
miles of the secession capital. Because of the extreme delibera
tion of his movements the Confederates were enabled to mass a large
army in front of him, and after a number of sanguinary engagements
in which victory seemed to rest Avith the Union army, its commander
withdrew to Harrison 's Landing, and thus disappointingly ended
the campaign, ill-starred from the moment it was undertaken.
The army had come nearer to Richmond than it was destined
to do again for three years. It had fought bravely in a number of
engagements and displayed at many points personal courage and
collective morale superior to that of the force arrayed against it, but
the movement had failed — McClellan declared, because of the omis
sion of Washington to sustain him with the necessary number of
troops. Lincoln's personal disappointment at the result reached the
stage of the severest distress, but he did not give way to discourage
ment. His communications to McClellan were indulgent and fatherly,
Avhile the General busily employed himself in a work for which he
thought himself entitled to a great deal of credit, that of "saving"
his army. Mr. Lincoln, unable to gain an intelligible opinion of the
situation from conflicting reports, determined to visit the camp in
person, and upon the Sth of July arrived at Harrison's Landing.
He came back little cheered by what he had seen. The public
patience was becoming well exhausted, as was also the President's.
So favorably impressed was he by this time with Halleck's military
abilities, that on July ii, 1862, that General was brought to Wash
ington to take the post of General-in-chief, an office which while
he held it, as Nicolay and Hay observe, was never more than
a chief -of-staff to the President. Mr. Lincoln had now become
his own General-in-chief, and held that post masterfully until
Grant came forward to lend his commanding genius to the work
of solving the problems of the war.
Abraham Lincoln, ElUs Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D., page 233.
How the Retreat Looked from the Southern Side
Perhaps if McClellan had known that he was fighting eighty-one
thousand men and not two hundred thousand be might have acted

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 463
with more confidence. Mr. Lincoln telegraphed June 26th that
his suggestion of the probability of his being overwhelmed by two
hundred thousand men, and talking about where the responsibility
would belong, pained him very much.
The Washington War Secretary [Stanton] was confident of
Federal success as late as the evening of June 29th, for he tele
graphed Hon. William H. Seward, at New York, that his inference
is, from Avhat has taken place around Richmond, that McClellan will
be in the city within two days ; and the day after, to General Wool,
at Fort Monroe, that McClellan had a favorable position near Rich
mond, and that it looked more like occupying that city than any
time before.
At 11.30 on the night of June 30th [1862] the Union Army
Commander [McClellan] had begun to realize that his "change of
base, " as he termed it, would not be attended with favorable results,
and telegraphed Mr. Stanton that he feared he would be' forced to
abandon his material in order to save his men, under cover of the
gunboats, and that if none of them escaped, they would at least
have done honor to the country.
On July ist his army was at Haxall's plantation, on the James,
and McClellan says he dreaded the result if he was attacked ; that if
possible he would retire that night to Harrison's Bar, where the
gunboats could aid in covering his position.
" I now pray for time [wrote McCleUan]. We have failed to
win only because overpowered by superior numbers. "
On July 2nd McClellan's army had succeeded in reaching Har
rison's Landing. He told Mr. Lincoln that if he were not attacked
during that day his men would be ready to repulse the enemy on
the morrow. On the same day he received a dispatch from President Lincoln
in that vein of humor for which he was remarkable :
" If you think you are not strong enough to take Richmond
just now, I do not ask you to. Try just now to save the army
material and personnel, and I wiU strengthen it for the offensive
again as fast as I can. The governments of eighteen States offered
me a new levy of three hundred thousand, which I accepted. "
And in a letter of the same date, with reference to sending him
re-enforcements, Mr. Lincoln adds a postscript ;

464 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" If at any time you feel able to take the offensive, you are not
restrained from doing so. "
McClellan resumed the habit he contracted in West
Virginia of issuing proclamations. On July 4th the following was
read to his army from the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac,
camped near Harrison's Landing:
"Soldiers of the Army of the Potomac: Your achieve
ments of the last ten days have illustrated the ability and endurance
of the American soldier. Attacked by vastly superior forces, and
Avithout hope of reinforcements, you have succeeded in changing
your base of operations by a flank movement, regarded as the most
hazardous of military expedients. You have saved all your mate
rial, all your trains, and all your guns, except a few lost in battle.
Upon your march you have been assailed day after day with des
perate fury by men of the same race and nation, skillfully massed
and led, and under every disadvantage of numbers, and necessarily
of position also. You have in every conflict beaten back your foes
A\-ith enormous slaughter. (Signed) "Geo. B. McClellan,
"Maj or-General C ommanding . ' '
By a series of brilliant movements General Lee had driven an
army superior to his in numbers, from the gates of his capital, and
had fully restored himself in the confidence of his people by the exer
cise of military genius and by his personal conduct and supervision
of the troops on the battlefield. It might be said of him, as Addison
Avrote of the great Marlborough, that
"His mighty soul inspired repulsed battalions to engage.
And taught a doubtful battle where to rage. "
General Lee, Fitzhugh Lee, His Nephew and Cavalry Commander, page 169.
"I Should Like to Borrow the Army for a Day or Two"
In November, 1862, I found myself in Washington, whither I
had been summoned to attend a council of women connected Avith
the Sanitary Commission. It was a gloomy time all over the
coimtry. The heart of the people had grown sick Avith hope de
ferred ; and the fruitless undertakings and timid, dawdling policy
of General McClellan had perplexed and discouraged all loyalists,

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 465
and strengthened and made bold all traitors. The army was
always entrenched or entrenching. Its advance was forbidden by
the autumnal rains and the policy of its commanding General,
Avhatever that might have been. The Rebel army was in front, and
every day a new crop of rumors Avas harvested in reference to its
purpose. One hour, "Washington was safe!" and "All was quiet
on the Potomac!" The next, "The Rebels were marching on to
Washington!" "They were blocking our river communications!"
"They were threatening to overwhelm our forces!" or, "They had
already taken our position!" Despondency sat on every face.
" I wonder whether McClellan means to do anything ! " said Mr.
Lincoln one day to a friend. " I should like to borrow the army of
him for a day or two. "
My Story of the War, Mary A. Livermore, page 554,
Why Antietam Was a Drawn Battle
When the Woman's Council adjourned, we were glad to accept
an invitation to call on the President in a body. The President had
appointed an early hour for our reception.
I shall never forget the shock which his presence gave us.
Not more ghastly or rigid was his dead face, as he lay in his coffin,
than on that never-to-be-forgotten night. His introverted look and
his half -staggering gait were like those of a man walking in sleep.
He seemed literaUy bending under the Aveight of his burdens. A
deeper gloom rested on his face than on that of any person I had
ever seen. He took us each by the hand mechanically, in an awk
ward, absent way, until my friend Mrs. Hoge, of Chicago, and my
self were introduced, when the name of the city of our residence
appeared to catch his attention, and he sat down between us.
"So you are from Chicago!" he said, familiarly; "you are not
scared by Washington mud, then ; for you can beat us all to pieces
in that." ...
It was explained to him that we were all identified with the
Sanitary Commission, and that we had called, before separating
to our Avidely divergent homes, to obtain from him some word of
encouragement — something to cheer and stimulate.
"I have no word of encouragement to give!" was his sad and

466 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
blunt reply. "The military situation is far from bright; and the
country knows it as well as I do. "
There was no attempt at question or answer ; but a momentary
deep and painful silence settled on his auditors.
"The fact is, " he continued after a pause, "the people haven't
yet made up their minds that we are at'war Avith the South. They
haven't buckled down to the determination to fight this war
through; for they have got the idea into their heads that we are
going to get out of this fix, somehow, by strategy! That's the
word — strategy! General McClellan thinks he is going to whip the
Rebels by strategy; and the army has got the same notion. They
have no idea that the War is to be carried on and put through
by hard, tough fighting, that it will hurt somebody ; and no head
way is going to be made while this delusion lasts. "
Some one ventured to remonstrate against this, and reminded
the President how hundreds of thousands had rushed to arms at the
call of the country ; how bravely the army and navy had fought at
Forts Henry and Donelson, Pea Ridge, Shiloh and New Orleans;
and how gloriously they had triumphed.
He admitted this, but returned to his first statement.
"The people haven't made up their minds that we are at war,
I tell you!" he repeated, with great positiveness.
"They think there is a royal road to peace, and that General
McClellan is to find it. The army has not settled down into the
conviction that we are in a terrible war that has got to be fought
out — no ; and the officers haven't either. When you came to Wash
ington, ladies, some two weeks ago, but very few soldiers came
on the trains with you — that you will all remember. But when you
go back you will find the trains and every conveyance crowded
A\ith them. You won't find a city on the route, a town, or a village,
where soldiers and officers on furlough are not plenty as blackberries.
There are whole regiments that have two-thirds of their men absent
— a great many by desertion, and a great many on leave granted by
company officers, which is almost as bad.
"General McClellan is all the time calling for more troops,-
more troops ; and they are sent to him ; but the deserters and fur-
loughed men outnumber the recruits. To fill up the army is like
undertaking to shovel fleas. You take up a shovelful" (suiting
the Avord to an indescribably comical gesture), "but before you can

"V — '. 'C.^^ ^>'^^,.~. --^r'^^^/^^^-'-.-T*^- \r>=^C^-:^^3^ zr:3(*v^

<^

/lu.iIS.t...

^u^lT

/¦^v,>

t

I >

¦-I-^ ".

From Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN VISITS GENERAL McCLELLAN'S HEADQUARTERS JUST AFTER THE
BATTLE OF ANTIETAM
* Little Mac " stands directly facing the President.
(467)

468 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
dump them anywhere they are gone. It is like trying to ride a
balky horse. You coax, and cheer, and spur, and lay on the whip ;
but you don't get ahead an inch — there you stick! "
" Do you mean that our men desert?" we asked, incredulously;
for in our glorifying of the s61diers avc had not conceived of our men
becoming deserters.
" That is just AA'hat I mean ! " replied the President. " And the
desertion of the army is just now the most serious evil we have to
encounter. At the battle of Antietam, General McClellan had the
names of about one hundred and eighty thousand men on the
army rolls. Of these, seventy thousand were absent on leave
granted by company officers, Avhich, as I said before, is almost as bad
as desertion. For the men ought not to ask for furloughs Avith the
enemy drawn up before them, nor ought the officers to grant them.
" About twenty thousand more were in the hospital, or were
detailed to other duties, lea\ing only some ninety thousand to give
battle to the enemy. General McClellan went into the fight with
this number. But in tAA'o hours after the battle cominenced thirty
thousand had straggled or deserted, and so the battle was fought
AAith sixty thousand — and as the enemy had about the same number
it proved a drawn game. The Rebel army had coiled itself up in
such a position that if McClellan had only had the seventy thou
sand absentees, and the thirty thousand deserters, he could have
surrounded Lee, captured the A\-hole Rebel army, and ended the War
at a stroke AAithout a battle.
"We haA'e a Stragglers' Camp out here in Alexandria, in con
nection Avith the Convalescent Camp, and from that camp in three
months General Butler has returned to their regiments seventy -five
thousand deserters and stragglers who have been arrested and sent
there. Don't you see that the country and the army fail to realize
that AA-e are engaged in one of the greatest AA-ars the world has ever
seen, and AA-hich can only be ended by hard fighting? General Mc
Clellan is responsible for the delusion that is untoning the whole
army — that the South is to be conquered by strategy. "
"Is not death the penalty of desertion?" we inquired.
"Certainly it is. "
" And does it not lie Avith the President to enforce this penalty? "
"Yes."" Why not enforce it then? Before many soldiers had suffered

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN , 469
death for desertion, this wholesale depletion of the army would be
ended. "
" Oh, no, no!" replied the President, shaking his head ruefully.
"That can't be done; it would be unmerciful, barbarous. "
" But is it not more merciful to stop desertions, so that AA'hen
a battle comes off it may be decisive, instead of being a draAvn
game, as you say Antietam Avas?"
" It might seem so. But if I should go to shooting men by
scores for desertion, I should have such a hullabaloo about my ears
as I haven't had yet, and I should deserve it. You can't order men
shot by dozens or twenties. People won't stand it and they ought
not to stand it. No, aa-c must change the condition of things in
some other way. "
My Story of the War, Mary A. Livermore, page 555,
McClellan Recalled by Lincoln after Being Dismissed from His Command
Note of Explanation. — This order of September 2, 1862, was the
last order ever issued to General McClellan giviiig him any command.
He seems never to have known that it actually appeared in two
forms within twenty-four hours, first as an order from the President
by direction of the Secretary of War, second as a simple order of Gen
eral Halleck. The history of its origin and modification is obscure.
When these events are seen in close relation every honest
mind must be filled with amazement at the duplicity with which
McClellan was surrounded.
On the morning of September i , McClellan Avent up from
Alexandria to Washington, and now Halleck verbally placed him in
charge of the defences of Washington, but expressly forbade him to
exercise any control over the troops of the Army of the Potomac or
the Army of Virginia. . . .
Early in the morning of September 2 , the President, accompanied
by General Halleck, went to General McClellan's house and found him
alone. They told him the Capital was lost. The President asked
him if "imder the circumstances" (to Avit, the recent treatment of
Stanton and Halleck, and the insul'fing general order of August 30)
he would "resume command and do the best that could be done. "
The instant acceptance of this vast responsibility by McClellan puts
at rest a falsehood published on the authority of General Burnside,
that McClellan proposed to make conditions, took time to consider,

THE SECRETARY OF WAR ADVOCATING AN IMPORTANT MEASURE
From left to right: — Lincoln, Seward, Chase, Welles, and Stanton (standing).

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 471
and finally only yielded to the persuasions of others in accepting the
command. This story was a pure fabrication — one of thousands
which were directed against McClellan, and which a deluded public
Avidely accepted as true.
General McClellan has contented himself Avith a brief account of
this remarkable interview, in which Mr. Lincoln, with deep emotion,
threw himself and the salvation of the Capital and the Union on the
General whom his subordinates had cajoled, slandered, deceived,
and represented to the people as disgraced. The terms of the trust
imposed on him were unlimited. The simple words "resume com
mand" were ample. Two honest minds were in contact, and each
trusted the other. Mr. Lincoln then intended to give to McCleUan
discretionary powers over military matters, and neither of them
stopped to choose words.
General McClellan went SAviftly to work. General Halleck
went to inform Secretary Stanton of the overthrow of their plans
by the recall of McClellan to command.
When he (Lincoln) left McClellan, the simple, loyal soldier and
servant of the people, he had to face men of a very different char
acter. The Cabinet meeting which now followed was in many re
spects the most remarkable ever held in Washington. Mr. Lincoln
entered it knowing his men. He knew that Mr. Chase and Mr. Stan
ton were Presidential cai^didates, guiding, each in his own peculiar
way, their official conduct and acts as his rivals for the next nomina
tion. He was perfectly aware that in this critical time they were
ready to throw on him all the responsibility of the impending ruin,
the loss of the Ca;pital, if that were to be, the end of the Union itself
which might possibly follow. That they would seek to save their
own reputations at any cost to his Avas a matter of course with such
men. He had this advantage in meeting them, that McClellan's
confidence had reassured him, while they were still in a state of wild
alarm. McCleUan's Own Story, page 538.
McCleUan and "Bap" McNabb's Little Red Rooster
According to Judge Herndon, Lincoln told him, in 1865, the
story of his experience with General McClellan, comparing it to a
certain cock-fight he once witnessed in New Salem.
" 'Bap' McNabb was famous for his abUity in raising and

472 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
buying roosters of prime fighting quality, and AA'hen his birds fought
the attendance was large. . . . One night there was a fight
on the schedule. . . Bap brought a little red rooster whose
fighting qualities had been Avell advertised for days in advance,
and much interest was manifested in the outcome. . . .
"They formed a ring and tossed in their fowls — Bap's red
rooster along Avith the rest. But no sooner had the little beauty
discovered what was to be done than he dropped his tail and ran.
"The crowd cheered, while Bap, in disappointment, picked him
up and started away, losing his quarter (the entrance fee), carrying
his dishonored fowl home and throwing him down there in chagrin. "
"The Uttle rooster, out of sight of all rivals, mounted a wood
pile and proudly flirting out his feathers, crowed with all his might.
¦ Bap looked on in deep disgust.
'Yes, you little cuss,' he exclaimed spitefully, 'you're great
on dress parade, but you're not worth a darn in a fight!' "
" Abe" Lincoln's Yams and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 91.
"McClellan's Bid for the Presidency"
General Frank P Blair, who was very close to the President
Avhile the War lasted, told Richard Vaux this story :
" Mr. Lincoln had become impatient at McClellan 's delay on the
Peninsula, and asked Frank Blair to go with him to see the com
manding general. The country was a volcano, smoking and ready
for eruption. "The distinguished visitors arrived on a hot day, and went at
once to McClellan's headquarters. They were received with scant
courtesy. Lincoln sat silent and uncomfortable, with his long and
sinewy limbs doubled up like a jack-knife, until the General broke
the silence by saying,
" Mr. President, have you received the letter I mailed you yes
terday?' 'No, ' Lincoln replied, 'I must have passed it on the way. '
" McClellan then requested the chief -of -staff to find a copy of the
letter. It was speedUy produced, and the General read his vitu
perative attack on Stanton, with reflections on the conduct of the
War. Lincoln's peaceful smile vanished. When the letter was
ended he rose quickly and went out looking neither to right nor left,
and not waiting for any farewell. He seemed oppressed with a

LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN

473

consciousness of the dangers of the military as Avell as the political
situation. He drove slowly with General Blair over to the boat
that was to convey them from Harrison's Landing back to Wash
ington. When the vessel had started, Lincoln, for the first time
since leaving McClellan's tent, broke the silence and said:
"Frank, I understand the man noAv. That letter is Mc
Clellan's bid for the Presidency. I Avill stop that game. Now is
the time to issue the proclamation emancipating the slaves."
Recollections of Lincoln, James M. Scovel, Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. LXIII, February, 1899,
page 289.

STATUE OF McCLELLAN IN CITY HALL SQUARE. PHILADELPHIA

CHAPTER XVIII
The Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln's "Compensated Emancipation" Defeated in > Delaware
By no means the least of the evils of slavery was a dread which
had haunted every Southern household from the beginning of the
Government that the slaves might one day rise in revolt and take
sudden vengeance on their masters. This vague terror was greatly
increased by the outbreak of the Civil War  Not only
were the people of the South battling for the principle of slavery ;
their slaves were a great source of military strength. They were
used by the Confederates in building forts, hauling supplies, and
in a hundred ways that added to the effectiveness of the armies
in the field. On the other hand, the very first result of the War
was to give adventurous or discontented slaves a chance to escape
into Union camps, where, even against orders to the contrary,
they found protection for the sake of the help they could give as
cooks, servants, or teamsters, the information they brought about
the movements of the enemy, or the great service they were able to
render as guides. Practically therefore, at the very start, the
War created a bond of mutual sympathy between the Southern
negro and the Union volunteer. . . .
At some points this became a positive embarrassment to
Union commanders. A few days after General Butler took com
mand of the Union troops at Fortress Monroe .... the
agent of a Rebel master came to insist on the return of three slaves,
demanding them under the Fugitive Slave Law. Butler replied
that since their master claimed Virginia to be a foreign country
and no longer a part of the United States, he could not at the same
time claim that the Fugitive Slave Law was in force, and that his
slaA^es would not be given up unless he returned and took the oath
of allegiance to the United States. In reporting this, a newspaper
pointed out that as the breastworks and batteries which had risen
so rapidly for Confederate defense were built by slave labor,
negroes AA'ere undoubtedly "contraband of war," like powder
(474)

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 475
and shot, and other military supplies, and should no more be
given back to the Rebels than so. many cannon or guns. The
idea was so pertinent and the justice of it so plain that the name
"contraband" sprang at once into use.
In dealing with this perplexing subject Mr. Lincoln kept in
mind one of his favorite stories : the one on the Methodist Presid-
, ing Elder who was riding about his circuit during the spring fresh
ets. A young and anxious companion asked how they should ever
be able to cross the swollen waters of Fox River, which they Avere
approaching, and the Elder quieted him by saying that he made
it a rule of his life never to cross Fox River until he came to it.
The President, following this rule, did not immediately decide
the question. On the general question of slavery, the President's
mind was fully made up. He felt that he had no right to interfere
with slavery where slavery was lawful, just because he himself did
not happen to like it, for he had sworn to do all in his power to
"preserve, protect and defend the Government and its laws," and
slavery was lawful in the Southern States. When freeing the
slaves should become necessary in order to preserve the Govern
ment, then it would be his duty to free them ; until that time came,
it was equally his duty to let them alone 
Long ago he had considered and in his OAvn mind adopted a
plan of dealing with the slavery question. . . . While a
member of Congress, he had proposed for the District of Columbia,
that on condition of the slave-owners voluntarily giving up their
slaves, they should be paid a fair price for them by the Federal
Government. Delaware was a slave State, and seemed an excellent place in
which to try this experiment of "Compensated Emancipation," as
it was called ; for there were, all told, only 1 798 slaves left in that
State. Without any public announcement of his purpose, he
offered to the citizens of Delaware, through their representative
in Congress, four hundred dollars for each of these slaves, the
payment to be made, not all at once, but yearly, during a period of
thirty-one years. He believed that if Delaware could be induced
to accept this offer, Maryland might follow her example, and that
afterward other States would allow themselves to be led along the
same easy way. The Delaware House of Representatives voted
in favor of the proposition, but five of the nine members of the

476 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
DelaAA'are Senate scornfully repelled the "abolition bribe, " as they
chose to call it, and the project withered in the bud.
The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Nicolay, page 184.
A Little Conundrum
President Lincoln replied to a deputation, one of many who
called to urge immediate slave-emancipation when the proposition
was not yet framed as a bill :
" If I issue a proclamation now, as you suggest, it will be .
ineffectual. . . It cannot be forced. Now, by way of illustra
tion, hoAv many legs will a sheep haA'e if you call his tail a leg? "
They all answered: "Five."
" You are mistaken, " said Lincoln, " for calling a tail a leg does
not make it one."
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 129.
Writing the First Draft of the Emancipation Proclamation
Until A'ery recently it has not been known, except by a few
persons, that Lincoln AATote the first draft of the Emancipation
Proclamation Avhile seated at Major Eckert's desk in the cipher
room of the War Department telegraph office.
Some of the incidents connected with the writing of the immor
tal docuiTient have now been recorded by Eckert, as follows :
" As you know, the President came tO' the office every day and
invariably sat at my desk while there. Upon his arrival early one
morning in June, 1862, shortly after McClellan's 'ScA^en Days' Fight,'
he asked me for some paper, as he wanted to write something special.
I procured some foolscap and handed it to him. He then sat down
and began to A\-rite. I do not recall Avhether the sheets were loose
or had been made into a pad. There must have been at least a
quire. He Avould look out of the window a while and then put his
pen to paper, but he did not write much at once. He would study
between times and when he had made up his mind he would put
down a line or two, and then sit quiet for a few minutes. After a
time he Avould resume his waiting, only to stop again at intervals
to make some remark to me or to one of the cipher operators as a
fresh dispatch from the front Avas handed to him.
" Once his eye Avas arrested by the sight of a large spider-web
stretched from the lintel of the portico to the side of the outer win-

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAM.ATION

¦477

dow-sill. This spider-web was an institution of the cipher-room
and harbored a large colony of exceptionally big ones. We fre
quently watched
their antics, and
Assistant -Secre-
tary Watson
dubbed them
'Major Eckert's.
lieutenants. '
Lincoln com
mented on the
web, and I told
him that my
lieutenants would soon re
port and pay
their respects to
the President.
Not long after a
big spider ap
peared at the
cross-roads and
tapped several
times on the
strands, where
upon five or six
others came out
from different
dire ctions .
Then what
seemed to be a
great confab
took place, after
which they
separated, each on a different strand of the web. Lincoln was
much interested in the performance, and thereafter, while working
at the desk, would often watch for the appearance of his visitors.
"On the first day Lincoln did not cover one sheet of his spe
cial Avriting paper (nor indeed on any subsequent day). When

THINKING IT OATER

478 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
ready to leave, he asked me to take charge of what he had Avritten
and not alloAV any one to see it. I told him I would do this with
,,ieasure and would not read it myself. ' Well, ' he said, 'I should
be glad to know that no one will see it, although there is no ob
jection to your looking at it ; but please keep it locked up until I
call for it to-morrow. ' I said his wishes AA'ould be strictly complied
Avith. "When he came to the office on the following .day he asked for
the papers, and I unlocked my desk and handed them to him and he
again sat down to write. This he did nearly every day for several
weeks, always handing me Avhat he had written when ready to leave
the office each day. Sometimes he would not write more than a
line or two, and once I observed that he had put question-marks
on the margin of what he had written. He would read over each
day all the matter he had previously written and revise it, studying
carefully each sentence.
"On one occasion he took the papers away with him, but he
brought them back a day or two later. I became much interested
in the matter and was impressed with the idea that he was engaged
upon something of great importance, but did not know what it was
until he had finished the document and then for the first time he told
me that he had been writing an order giving freedom to the slaves in
the South, for the purpose of hastening the end of the War. He said
he had been able to work at my desk more quietly and command his
thoughts better than at the White House, where he was frequently
interrupted. I still have. in my possession the inkstand which he
used at that time and which, as you know, stood on my desk until
after Lee's surrender. The pen he used was a small barrel-pen
made by Gillott — such as were supplied to the cipher operators. "
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, David Homer Bates, page 138,
"A Divine Message by Way of Chicago"
He was just as ready to answer, instanter, the affirmation of his
opponents as he was to present and vindicate his own. This
striking peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's mental operations throws a
fiood of light upon the searching questions he propounded to the
Chicago ministers who called on him, in September, 1862, to demand
of him a proclamation of emancipation. After listening to their
appeal, he replied, pointedly;

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAM.ATION 479
"Now, gentlemen, if I cannot enforce the Constitution down
South, how am I to enforce a mere Presidential proclamation?
Won't the world sneer at it as being as powerless as the Pope's bull
against the comet? " and they went aAvay sorrowing, in the erroneous
belief that he had decided the case adA'^ersely 
One of these ministers felt it his duty to make a more searching
appeal to the President's conscience. Just as they were retiring, he
turned and said to Mr. Lincoln :
" What you have said to us, Mr. President, compels me to say
to you in reply, that it is a message to you from our Divine Master,
through me, commanding you, sir, to open the doors of bondage
that the slave may go free ! "
Mr. Lincoln replied, instantly, — "That may be, sir, for I have
studied this question, by night and by day, for weeks and for
months, but if it is, as you say, a message from your Divine Master,
is it not odd that the only channel he could send it by was the
roundabout route by way of that awful wicked city of Chicago?"
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page
334.
Lincoln's OAAm Story about the Emancipation Proclamation
"It had got to be midsummer, 1862, " said he. "Things had
gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end
of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing ; that
we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or
lose the game!
"I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation
policy ; and, without consultation with or knowledge of the Cabinet,
I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and, after much
anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject. This
was the last of July or the first part of August, 1862 
This Cabinet meeting took place, I think on a Saturday. All were
present excepting Mr. Blair, the Postmaster-General, who . . .
came in subsequently.
" I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and
had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the
subject-matter of a proclamation before them; suggestions . .
would be in order, after they had heard it read. .... Various
suggestions were offered. Secretary Chase wished the language

48o THE STORY -LIFE VF LINCOLN
stronger in reference to the arming of the blacks. Mr. Blair, after
he came in, deprecated the policy, on the groimd that it would cost
the Administration the fall elections. Nothing, however, Avas
offered that I had not fully anticipated and settled in my own mind,
until Secretary ScAvard spoke. He said in substance:
'"Mr. President, I approA'e of the proclamation, but I question
the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of the
public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that
I fear the effect of so important a step. It may be viewed as the
last measure of an exhausted Government, a cry for help; the
GoA^ernment stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethi
opia stretching forth her hands to the Government. ' His idea, ' ' said
the President, "AA'as that it \^'Ould be considered our last shriek, on
the retreat. "'Now,' continued Mr. SeAvard, 'while I approve the measure,
I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue, until you can give it to the
country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as it
would be now, upon the greatest disasters of the War!' "
Mr. Lincoln continued : " The wisdom of the vicAvs of the Secre
tary of State struck me with A^ery great force. It Avas an aspect of
the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely
overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the proclama
tion aside, as you do your sketch for a picture, waiting for a victory.
From time to time I added or changed a line, touching it up here
and there, anxiously Avatching the progress of events. "
"Well, the next news we had was of Pope's disaster at BuU
Run (second Battle of BuU Run, August 30, 1862). Things looked
darker than ever. Finally, came the week of the battle of Antietam.
I determined to wait no longer. The news came, I think, on Wed
nesday, that the advantage Avas on our side. I was then staying
at the Soldiers' Home. Here I finished writing the second draft
of the preliminary proclamation ; came up on Saturday ; called the
Cabinet together to hear it, and it was published the following
Monday. "
At the final meeting of September 20th another interesting
incident occurred in connection with Secretary Seward. The Presi
dent had written the important part of the proclamation in these
words :

THE EMANCIPATION PROCL.AMATION 481
" That, on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and sixty -three, all persons held as slaves
• vrithin any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then,
thenceforward,, and forever free ; and the Executive Government
of the United States, including the military and naval abithority
thereof, Avill recognize the freedom of such persons, and Avill do
no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any
efforts they may make for their actual freedom. ' '
"When I finished reading this paragraph, " resumed Mr.
Lincoln, " Mr. Seward stopped me and said, 'I think, Mr. President,
that you should insert after the word 'recognize, ' in that sentence,
the words "and maintain.' I replied that I had already fully
considered the import of that expression, in this connection,
but I had not introduced it, because it was not my way to promise
what I was not entirely sure that I could perform, and I was not
prepared to say that I thought we were exactly able to maintain
this." " But, " said he, "Seward insisted that we ought to take this
ground ; and the words finally went in ! "
" It is a somewhat remarkable fact, " he subsequently remarked,
"that there were just one hundred days between the dates of the
two proclamations issued upon the 22nd of September and the ist
of January. I had not made the calculation at the time. "
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 20.
Stanton's Story of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation
to the Cabinet
" I was more discouraged after Antietam than at any other
period, and the future seemed more obscure to me then than at any
prcAious time. But I kept on my daily work, and on the 22 nd of
September, 1S62, I had a sudden and peremptory call to a
Cabinet meeting at the White House. They did not usually
require me to attend those meetings, as my duties were so
exacting. "I had to be constantly at my post, and it was only on rare and
important occasions that I was caUed to such meetings. I went
immediately to the White House, entered the room and found the
historic War Cabinet of Abraham Lincoln assembled, every member

482 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
being present. The President hardly noticed me as I came in.
He was reading a book of some kind, Avhich seemed to amuse him.
It was a little book. He finally turned to us and said:
"'Gentlemen, did you ever read anything from Artemus Ward ?
Let me read you a chapter that is very funny.'
"Not a member of the Cabinet smiled; as for myself I was
angry, and looked to see what the President meant.
' ' It seemed to me like buffoonery. He, however, concluded to
read us a chapter from Artemus Ward, which he did with great
deliberation. HaAing finished, he laughed heartily without a
member of the Cabinet joining in the laughter.
"'Well,' he said, 'let's have another chapter,' and he read
another chapter, to our great astonishment.
"I was considering whether I should rise and leave the meeting
abruptly, AA^hen he threw his book down, heaved a long sigh, and
said: '"Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain
that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and
you need this medicine as much as I do.'
" He then put his hand in his tall hat that sat upon the table,
and pulled out a little paper. Turning to the members of the
Cabinet, he said :
"Gentlemen, I have called you here upon very important'
business. I have prepared a little paper of much significance.
I have made up my mind that this paper is to issue ; that the time
is come when it should issue ; that, the people are ready for it to
issue. It is due to my Cabinet that you should be the first to hear
and know of it, and if any of you have any suggestions to make as
to the form of this paper or its composition, I shall be glad to hear
them. But the paper is to issue.'
"And to my astonishment, " said the Secretary, "he read the
Emancipation Proclamation of that date, which was to take effect
the first of January following, containing the vital provision that
on January.!, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or
designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion
against the United States, shall be then henceforward and forever
free." And the Secretary, turning to me, smiled and said : " I have
always tried to be calm, but I think I lost my calmness for a moment.

r:^

^
-^^^^
gjT
4
1
n
¦
i|
v^
A-^m
^-"^ J
B
4. ^^1
1
sj. ¦ . ¦'¦•••.- '*
^^^H
i\ Offdf
WL/^M
HIB
j^«^.^^pi||^H
RI^H^
¦H
%>- -£
s <S<
.^^K,,.
^1
r»3
Hh
¦^^^ ^<
H
V
'"wj^H
1
L^^l * ^\
H
¦
1
iHHjjj^HHriv^l
H|^
1
^¦'"¦'' "
h^^^^^I
^^^^^^^^^H^^H
^^^^^^^9
wKj^BtKHB^^BB^ t I^Id
^^^^^^H
K?^™"^r^
V 1^,
^¦H
A|g
I^Bw J
^H
'W
miml
jp'^^j
HH|
^H
^HHK^h
H
M
Wm
^H^m
¦HMr.ai-
>l
HHHI
D"
^
jhI
^1
From the famous painting, by Prank B. Carpenter, in the Capitol at Washington. This illustrious artist spent six months in the White House naintinff
this great picture, which has been reproduced especially for this book. ^
FIRST READING OF ,THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION TO THE CABINET
From left to right— Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War (seated); Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury (standing); President Lincoln and Gideon
WeUes, Secretary of the Navy (seated); Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior (standing); William H. Seward, Secretary of State (seated)- Mont
gomery Blair, Postmaster-General (standmg) ; and Edward Bates, Attorney-General (seated) -'=uj, uioni
THE EMANCIPATION PROG LAM. \TION 483
and with great enthusiasm I arose, approached the President,
extended my hand and said:
'"Mr. President, if the reading of chapters of Artemus Ward is
a prelude to such a deed as this, the book should be filed among the
archives of the nation, and the author should be canonized. Hence
forth I see the light and the country is saved. ' And all said ' Amen. '
"And Lincoln said to me in a droll way, just as I was leaving,
'Stanton, it would have been too early last spring.'
" And as I look back upon it I think the President was right. "
Interview with Judge Hamilton Ward, in Lockport Journal, May 21, 1893.
"I See No Reason Whatever!"
The favorite poem of the President was, as is well known,
" Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" A member of Con
gress from Ohio came into his presence in a state of unutterable
intoxication, and sinking into a chair, exclaimed in tones that welled
up fuzzy through a gallon or more of whiskey that he contained,
" Oh, why should (hie) er spirit of mortal be proud? "
"My dear sir," said the President, regarding him closely, "I
see no reason whatever ! ' '
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke (" Petroleum V. Nasby"). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 451.
"Accuse Not a Servant unto His Master"
To a man who came to him complaining of his superior officer,
hoping to benefit by the discharge of that official, Lincoln said,
shortly :
" Go home and read Proverbs xxx, lo. "
The man went and looked up the reference, finding these words :
"Accuse not a servant unto his master, lest he curse thee, and
thou be found guilty. ' '
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page loi.
The Sleeping Sentinel
The incidents here .woven into verse relate to William Scott, a
young soldier from the State of Vermont, who, while on duty as a
sentinel at night, fell asleep, and, having been condemned to die,
was parcioned by the President :

484 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Within a prison's dismal walls, where shadows veiled decay —
In fetters, on a heap of straw, a youthful soldier lay ;
Heart-broken, hopeless, and forlorn, with short and feverish breath.
He waited but the appointed hour to die a culprit's death,
'Twas night. — In a secluded room, AAith measured tread, and sIoav,
A statesman of commanding mien paced gravely to and fro.
Oppressed, he pondered on a land by civil discord rent;
On brothers armed in deadly strife — it was the President.
The woes of thirty millions filled his burdened heart with grief ;
Embattled hosts, on land and sea, acknowledged him their chief ;
And yet, amid the din of war, he heard the plaintive cry
Of that poor soldier, as he lay in prison doomed to die.
'Twas morning. On a tented field, and through the heated haze,
Flashed back, from lines of burnished arms, the sun's effulgent blaze;
While from a somber prison-house, seen slowly to emerge,
A sad procession o'er the sward moved to a muffied dirge.
And in the midst with faltering step, and pale and anxious face.
In manacles, betAveen tAvo guards, a soldier had his place ;
A youth, led out to die, — it was not death but shame
That smote his gallant heart with dread, and shook his manly frame.
Still on, before the marshall'd ranks, the train pursued its way
Up to the designated spot, whereon a coffin lay —
His coffin! And with reeling brain, despairing, desolate.
He took his station by its side, abandoned to his fate.
Yet once again. In double file advancing then, he saw
Twelve comrades, sternly set apart to execute the law —
But saw no more; his senses swam, deep darkness settled round.
And, shuddering, he awaited now the fatal volley's sound.
Then suddenly was heard the noise of steeds' and wheels' approach,
And, rolling through a cloud of dust, appeared a stately coach.
On, past the guards, and through the field, its rapid course was bent.
Till, halting, 'mid the lines was seen the nation's President !

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 485
He came to save that stricken soul, now waking from despair ;
And from a thousand voices rose a shout that rent the air;
The pardoned soldier understood the tones of jubilee,
And, bounding from his fetters, blessed the hand that made him free.

The Sleeping Sentinel, Francis DeHaes Janvier, The Speaker's Garland, Vol. I, page 13.
"Why Don't You Go at Hun with a 'Capias' or a 'Surrebutter ?"
General (afterward President) Garfield, of Ohio, received from
the President the account of the capture of Norfok, with the follow
ing preface: "By the way, Garfield," said Mr. Lincoln, "you never heard,
did you, that Chase, Stanton and I had a campaign of our own?
We went down to Fortress Monroe in Chase's revenue cutter and
consulted with Admiral Goldsborough as to the feasibility of taking
Norfolk by landing on the north shore and making a march of eight
miles. The Admiral said, very positively, there was no landing
on that shore, and we should have to double the cape and approach
the place from the south side, which would be a long and difficult
journey. I thereupon asked him if he had ever tried to find a land
ing and he replied that he had not.
" Now," said I, "Admiral, that reminds me of a chap out West
who had studied law but had never tried a case. Being sued, and
not having confidence in his ability to manage his own case, he
employed a fellow-lawyer to manage it for him. He had only a
confused idea of the meaning of law terms, but was anxious to make
a display of learning, and in the trial constantly made suggestions to
his lawyer, who paid no attention to him. At last, fearing that his
lawyer was not handling the opposing counsel very weU, he lost all
patience and, springing to his feet, cried out :
" 'Why don't you go at him with a capias, or a surrebutter or
something, and not stand there like a confounded old nudum-
pactumV "
Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's Stories, Edited by J. B,. McClure, page 58.
" No Respecter of Persons "
Senator J. F. Wilson, in pleading the cause of a soldier wrong
fully accused of desertion, and finding the Secretary of War inex
orable, "appealed to Caesar," and procured an overriding order

486 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
from the President which Stanton finally obeyed. On reporting
the result to Mr. Lincoln, the latter said :
"Well, I am glad you stuck to it, and that it ended as it did;
for I meant it should so end, though I had to give it personal.
attention. A private soldier has as much right to justice as a
Major-General." Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 140,
A Suitable Inscription for Greenbacks
At a Cabinet meeting once the advisability of putting on green-'
backs a legend similar to the " In God We Trust " on the silver coins
was discussed, and the President was asked what his view was. He
replied :
"If you are going to put a legend on the greenback, I would
suggest that of Peter and John : ' Silver and gold have I none, but
such as I have give I thee.' " [Acts Ui, 6.]
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 400.
Informed of the Defeat at Fredericksburg
I. made all speed to the Tribune office, Avhere I was told there
would be no use in trying to send my report by telegraph, as the
Government censor at the main telfegraph office had been ordered by
the Secretary of War not to allow any news from Fredericksburg to
be transmitted Avithout previous submission to and special approval
by him. But there was time to send it by special messenger on the
night train, Avhich was done. It may as well be mentioned here that
my account met the same fate as that of the first battle of Bull Run,
I had stated in it as strongly as possible that the Army of the
Potomac had suffered another great, general defeat ; that an inex
cusable, murderous blunder had been made in attempting to over
come the enemy by direct attack; and that the Union cause was
threatened by the greatest disaster yet suffered, in consequence of
the perilous situation in which the defeat left the army. The editor
was afraid to let the Tribune solely assume the whole responsibility
for what would no doubt prove a great shock to the loyal public,
lest I might be mistaken in my opinion, and, accordingly the report
was very much modified, but was printed as an extra issue the fol
lowing morning.

Xs^'^ .. iru

From Battles and Leaders of the Civil War THE BOMBARDMENT OF FREDERICKSBURG, DECEMBER ii, 1862

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

487

My duty being thus fully discharged, I went to Willard's Hotel
for my supper. At the entrance I met Senator Henry Wilson of
Massachusetts. He . surmised that I was from the front, and
greeted me with the questions :
" Have you come from the army? What is the news? Have
we won the fight? '¦'
I answered: "Senator, you know whatever news I have be
longs to my paper, but, for the sake of the cause, I Avill tell you in

BEFORE FREDERICKSBURG

strict confidence that Burnside is defeated, and in such a bad plight
that I think you can render no greater service to the country than
to go at once to the White House and tell the President.
I do not hesitate to say to him, through you, that, in my deliberate
judgment, he ought not to wait for information, but instantly order
the army back to the north bank " [of the Rappahannock].

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

After supper I went back to the Tribune office, but had hardly
entered it when the Senator reappeared, and, taking me aside, told
me that he had seen the President, who desired me to come with him
to the White House at once. . . The Senator informed me
on the way that he had not given my message to the President.
We found Mr. Lincoln in the old reception-room on the second
floor, opposite the landing. He greeted me with a hearty hand
shake, saying, " I am much obliged to you for coming, for we are
very anxious and have heard very little." He then asked me to
giA'e him, as far as my personal knowledge permitted, a general
outline of what had happened, which I did as fully as I could in a
few minutes. He followed up my account with one question after
another for over half an hour. . . He was very careful not
to ask anything so as to imply criticism of anybody, although I
ventured to mingle a good deal of censure with my statements of
facts. But his questions and the expression of his face showed that
he belicA^ed I Avas aiming to tell the truth, and that he felt growing ¦
anxiety. When he ended the intervicAV by repeating his thanks,
I made bold to say as earnestly as I could: "Mr. President, it is,
of course, not for me to offer adAice to you, but I hope my sincere
loyalty may be accepted as my excuse for taking the liberty of telling
you what is not only my conviction but that of every general officer
I saw during and after the flghting, that success is impossible and
that the worst disaster yet suffered by our forces will befall the
Army of the Potomac if the attack is renewed, and unless the army
is withdrawn at once to the north side." The President
took no offense, but, with a melancholy smile, remarked,
" I hope it is not so bad as all that, ' ' whereupon we took our leave.
Memoirs of Henry Villard, Vol. I, page 388,
Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
In order to prevent in some degree the mischief which Rebel
sympathizers were doing by giving the enemy aid and comfort the
President was obliged to resort to a measure which created great
excitement among his enemies, as well as among some of his friends.
This measure was called "the suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus. "
Habeas and corpus are two Latin words meaning " you may have

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAM.ATION 489
the body ; ' ' and the intention of the writ is to deliver a person Avho
has been falsely imprisoned. Thus, when any one thinks he has
been imprisoned from some unjust cause or upon false accusation,
he appeals to the writ of habeas corpus. This writ commands the
sheriff, or any one else to whom it may be directed, to have the body
of the person who has been deprived of his liberty immediately
before some competent tribunal. The person who restrained the
said prisoner must also be present, and he must also bring with him
the cause of the restraint, that all parties may be then and there
lawfully judged.
This Act was originally passed in England to prevent the king
from becoming a despot, and unlawfully imprisoning his subjects;
and it was regarded so valuable by those persons who made the
Constitution of the United States that they said it should never be
suspended, " unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the pubUc
safety may require it. "
Mr. Lincoln thought the time had come when the public safety
did require it, and he thought the Constitution gave him a right to
suspend it ; accordingly he suspended it whenever he thought proper. '
Many persons called him a despot, and said we should yet lose all
our freedom, and the days of terror would come here, as they came
in France in the time of the French Revolution.
Let us see now who the persons were that Mr. Lincoln deprived
of the writ of habeas corpus. In the early part of May (1861) the
President, who knew that the small portion of Florida which we
stUl held in our possession was infested with traitors, directed the
commander of our forces in that region to remove everybody from
the United States forts that he suspected or considered dangerous,
and to allow nobody to exercise any authority which was incon
sistent with the authority of the United States ; he also authorized
him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, if he should find it neces
sary. That is, if the commander thought the public safety required
that a man should be imprisoned, he could not be released until
President Lincoln himself thought proper to give him up. Mr.
Lincoln said :
"You may not 'have the body,' untU I think proper to deliver
up the man."
The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page i6i.

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

"Come Down and Help Me Let This Hog Go I"
The wholesale butchery at the battle of Fredericksburg made
Mr. Lincoln almost broken-hearted. Governor Curtin of Pennsyl
vania expressed regrets that his description of that battle had
affected him so sadly. He remarked :
" I Avould give all I possess to know how to rescue you from this
terrible War. ' '
Then Mr. Lincoln's wonderful recuperative powers began to
assert themselves, and the marvelous man was "himself again."
His whole aspect suddenly changed, and he relieved his mind by
telling a story.
"This reminds me, Governor," he said, "of an old farmer I
used to know, out in Illinois. He took it into his head to go into
hog-raising, so he sent out to Europe and imported the finest breed
of hogs that he could buy.
"The prize hog was put in a pen and the farmer's two mis-
.chievous boys, James and John, were told to be sure not to let it out.
But James let the brute out the very next day. The hog went
straight for the boys and drove John up a tree. Then it went for
the seat of James's trousers, and the only way the boy could save
himself Avas by holding on to the porker's tail.
"The hog would not give up his hunt, nor the boy his hold!
¦After they had made a good many circles around the tree the boy's
courage began to give out, and he shouted to his brother :
" 'I say John, come down quick and help me let go this hog!'
"Now, Governor, that is exactly my fix. I wish some one
would come and help me let the old hog go. "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 196,
The Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation
The roll containing the Emancipation Proclamation was taken
to Mr. Lincoln at noon on the first day of January, 1S63, by Secre
tary Seward and his son Frederick. As it lay unroUed before him,
Mr. Lincoln took a pen, dipped it in the ink, moved his hand to the
place for the signature, held it a moment, then removed his hand
and dropped the pen. After a little hesitation he again took up the

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAM.ATION 491
pen and went through the same movement as before. Mr. Lincoln
then turned to Mr. Seward and said :
" I have been shaking hands since nine o'clock this morning,
and my right arm is almost paralyzed . If my name ever goes into
history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand
trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the docu
ment hereafter will say, ' He hesitated.' "
He then turned to the table, took up the pen again, and slowly,
firmly, wrote Abraham Lincoln, with which the whole world is now
familiar. He then looked up, smiled, and said :
"ThatwiUdo!"
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page iS8.
Emancipation " Very Like a Whale "
At last the Emancipation Proclamation was a fact. But there
was little rejoicing in the heart of the man who had framed and
given it to the world. In issuing it, all he had dared hope was that
in the long run it would give greater gain than loss. He was not
confident that this would be so, but he was willing to risk it.
" Hope* and fear and doubt contended over the new policy in
uncertain conflict," he said
months later. As he had
foreseen, dark days followed.
There were mutinies in the
army; there was ridicule;
there was a long interval of
waiting for results. Nothing
but the greatest care in en
forcing the Proclamation
could make it a greater good
than evU, and Mr. Lincoln
now turned all his energies
to this new task.
"We are like whalers,"
he said one day, "who have been long on a chase; we have at last
got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we
steer, or with one 'flop' of his taU he wiU send us aU into
eternity."
The Life of Abraham. Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 126.

LEADING EVENTS IN 1862
Union victory at Fort Henry, Tenn  Feb. 6
Grant takes Fort Donelson, Tenn  Feb. 16
The "Monitor" defeats the "Merrimac". . Mar. g
Grant's victory at Shiloh, (Pittsburg
Landing) Tenn  Apr. 6 and 7
Farragut takes New Orleans  Apr. 25
Union forces driven from Shenandoah
VaUey  ¦ ¦ ¦  ¦ .• • • June
"The Seven Days' Battles," near Rich
mond, Va  June 25 to July 1
The President calls for 300,000 men to
serve three years  July 2
The President calls for 300,000 more men
for nine months' special service  Aug. 4
Pope's campaign and defeat in Virginia August
Second Battle of Bull Run (Union defeat) Aug. 30
Confederates capture Harper's Ferry. . . . Sept. 15
Union victory at Antietam  Sept. 17
Confederate victory at Fredericksburg Dec. 13

492 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
The Emancipation Group
Amidst thy sacred effigies
Of old renown give place,
O city. Freedom-loved ! to his
Whose hand unchained a race.
Take the worn frame, that rested not
Save in a martyr's grave ;
The care-lined face, that time forgot.
Bent to the kneeling slave.
Let man be free ! The mighty word
He spake was not his own ;
An impulse from the Highest stirred
These chiseled lips alone.
The cloudy sign, the flery guide.
Along his pathway ran.
And Nature, through his voice, denied
The ownership of man
We rest in peace where these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife and pain ;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
O symbol of God's will on earth
As it is done above !
Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.
Stand in thy place and testify
To coming ages long
That truth is stronger than a lie
And righteousness than wrong.
Lines for the Unveiling of the Emancipation Statue in Boston, 1879, John G. Whittier. Complete
Poetical Works, page 429.

STATUE OF EMANCIPATION, FLORENCE, ITALY

(493)

CHAPTER XIX
"The Burden and Heat op the Day"
He Was Beset by Night and by Day
Week after week and month after month, the President faced
the future, never betraying a fear that the Union Avould not triumph
in the end, but grieved sorely at the long delay. Many who were
not so sure came to him with their troubles. He was beset by
night and by day by people who had advice to give or complaints
to make. They besought him to dismiss this or that General, to
order such and such a military movement ; to do a hundred things
that he, in his great Avisdom, felt were not right, or for which the
time had not yet come.
The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Nicolay, page 183.
Fredericksburg and Antietam Compared
On the 3d of January, .1S63, Harper's Weekly appeared with a
cartoon representing Columbia indignantly demanding of President
Lincoln and Secretary of, War Stanton that they restore her sons
killed in that battle. Below the picture is the reading matter :
"Columbia: Where, are my,- 15,00c sons — murdered at Fred
ericksburg?" The battle of Fredericksburg was fought on December 13th,
1862, between General Burnside, commanding the Army of the
Potomac, and General Lee's force. The Union' troops, time and
again, assaulted the heights where the Confederates had taken
position, but. were driven back with frightful losses. The enemy,
being behind breastworks, suffered comparatively little. At the
beginning of the fight the Confederate line 'was broken, but the
result of the engagement was disastrous to the Union cause. Burn
side had 1,152 killed, 9,101 wounded, and 3,234 missing, a, total of
13,487. General Lee's losses, all told, were not much more than
5,000 men.
Burnside had succeeded McClellan in command of the Army
(494)

THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY"

495

of the Potomac, mainly, it was said, through the influence of
Secretary of War Stanton. Three months before, McCleUan had
defeated Lee at Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the war, Lee's
losses footing up more than 13,000 men. At Fredericksburg, Bum-
side had about 120,000 men; at Antietam, McClellan had about
80,000. It had been maintained that Burnside should not have
fought this battle.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. MeClure, page 311.
" I Must Bear This Load and Do My Best "
How wofuUy the friends had exaggerated the power of such a
proclamation as they prayed the President to issue, is well shown in
the reminiscences of Moncure D. Conway, published on August
30th, in which he tells of the interview betAveen the President,
Senator Williams, Wendell Phillips, himself (Conway) and others,
which occurred on the 24th of  ^
January, 1863.
The object of this delegation ^
was to complain of the failure of :
the Emancipation Proclamation, '
and Mr. Phillips, as its spokesman,
hinted that "the Northern people,
now generally antislavery, were
not satisfied that it was being hon
estly carried out by the nation's
agents and generals in the South. "
The President said he "had not
expected much from it at first,
and, consequently, had not been
disappointed," and gave it as his
impression that "the masses of
the country generally are only
dissatisfied at our lack of mUitary
successes. " He did not hesitate in the course of the interview with
these distinguished men to say that "most of us here present have
been nearly all our Uves working in minorities and many have got
into a habit :of being dissatisfied;" and when this conclusion was
deprecated, he added : " At any rate, it has been very rare that an
opportunity of running this Administration has been lost. " And

WENDELL PHILLIPS

496 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
when Mr. Phillips patronizingly said : " If we see this Administration
earnestly working to free the country from slavery and its rebellion,
we will show you how we can run it in another four years of power, "
to which, possibly remembering Mr. Phillips's description of him as
a mosaic, and a "man who had never walked a straight line in
his life," Mr. Lincoln said:
" Oh, Mr. Phillips, I have ceased to have any personal feelings
or expectation in that matter — I don't say I never had any — so
abused and borne upon as I have been;" and Mr. Conway tells us
that his last utterance to the delegation as it left him was :
" I must bear this load which the country has entrusted to me
as well as I can, and do my best. "
Lincoln and Stanton, William D. Kelley, M.C, Appendix, page 87,
"How Willingly Would I Exchange Places with the Soldier!"
No one except those who saw him daily at that time can realize
hoAv the nation's woes and trials bore upon him. . . . One
morning, calling upon him at an early hour on business, I found him
so pale and careworn that I inquired the cause. He replied, telling
me of bad ncAvs received at a late hour of the night, and not yet
printed, adding that he had not closed his eyes nor breakfasted ; and
then he said, with an anguished expression which I shall never
forget :
" How willingly would I exchange places to-day with the
soldier who sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Potomac ! ' '
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 336.
"Something That Everybody Can Take"
The President was feeling indisposed, and had sent for his
physician, who soon informed him that his trouble was A^arioloid,
or a mild form of smallpox.
"They're aU over me. Is it contagious?" asked Mr. Lincoln.
"Yes," answered the doctor, "very, indeed."
"Oh!" said a visitor who had called to see the President, "I
can't stop. "
" Don't be in a hurry, sir, " said the President, placidly.
"Thank you, sir — I'll caU again!" the visitor called back as he
left abruptly. " Some people, " exclaimed the Executive, smiling as he looked

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 497
after the retreating caller, " some people do not take very well to
my Proclamation, but now, I am happy to say, I have something
that everybody can take. "
Stories and Speeches of .Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page isi.
" In the Silent Midnight Watches "
It was the duty of the guard to stand watch throughout the
night. He said that the President always spoke kindly to him on
going to his little bedroom in the southwest corner of the second
story of the White House.
"When awakened — sometimes we had to rouse him after he
had fallen into a deep sleep — he never betrayed the least annoyance
and always treated the messenger most kindly. This is surely a
searching test of one's temper.
"Often after a day of great suspense the President used to
moan in his sleep. During the day he bore up and did all he could
to hearten and comfort others, but at night, while off his guard, in
sleep he seemed to betray his real sentiments and it was frightful to
hear him then. It made me feel as though I were listening at the
key-hole to state secrets, or, at least, taking an unfair advantage of
the Great-heart of the White House. "
Written from memory of a narrative by a member of Lincoln's Life-Guard.
" Lincoln Gave Me the Worst Fright of My Life ! "
Lincoln visited my Department twice while I was in command.
He was personally a very brave man, and gave me the worst fright
of my life. He came to my headquarters and said :
"General, I should like to ride along your lines and see them,
and see the boys and how they are situated in camp. "
I said, "Very well, we will go after breakfast."
I happened to have a very tall, easy-riding, pacing horse, and as
the President was rather long-legged, I tendered him the use of
him while I rode beside him on a pony. He was dressed, as was his
custom, in a black suit, a swallow-tail coat, and tall silk hat. As
there rode on the other side of him at first Mr. Fox, the Secretary of
the Navy, who was not more than five feet six inches in height, the
President stood out as the central figure of the group. Of course,
the staff officers and orderly were behind,
32

498 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
When we got to the line of entrenchment, from AA^hich the line
of Rebel pickets was not more than 300 yards, he towered high above
the works, and as Ave came to the several encampments the boys
all turned out and cheered him lustily. Of course, the enemy's
attention was AvhoUy directed to this performance, and with the
glass it could be plainly seen that the eyes of their officers Avere
fastened upon Lincoln ; and a personage riding down the lines cheered
by the soldiers was a very unusual thing, so the enemy must have
known that he Avas there.
Both Mr. Fox and myself said to him :
" Let us ride on the side next to the enemy, Mr. President.
You are in fair rifle-shot of them and they may open flre ; and they
must know you, being the only person not in uniform, and the cheer
ing of the troops directs their attention to you. "
"Oh, no," he said, laughing, "the Commander-in-chief of the
army must not show any cowardice in the presence of his soldiers,
whatever he may feel. "
And he insisted on riding the whole six miles, which was about
the length of my entrenchments, in that position, amusing himself
at intervals, where there was nothing more attractive, in a sort of
competitive examination of the commanding General in the science
of Engineering, much to the amusement of my engineer-in-chief.
General Weitzel, who rode on my left, and who was kindly disposed
to prompt me while the examination was going on, which attracted
the attention of Mr. Lincoln, who said,
" Hold on, Weitzel, I can't beat you, but I think I can beat
Butler."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. Benjamin F. Butler. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 146.
"If There Is a Man out of Hell That Suffers More than I Do! "
The next day my friend, Mrs. Hoge, and myself had another
interview Avith the President, on business entrusted to us. If we
were shocked the night before at his haggard face, how much more
were we pained when the broad light of day revealed the ravages
which care, anxiety and overwork had wrought. In our despondent
condition it was difficult to control our feeUngs so as not to weep
before him. Our unspoken thought ran thus: "Our national
affairs must be in the very extremity of hopelessness if they thus

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 499
prey on the mind and life of the President. The country has been
slain by treason — he knows it, and that it cannot recover itself. "
Our business ended, before we withdrew we made one more
attempt to draw encouraging words from the reluctant head of the
nation. "Mr. President," we said timidly, "we find ourselves greatly
depressed by the talk of last evening; you do not consider our
national affairs hopeless, do you? Our country is not lost? "
" Oh, no ! " he said with great earnestness, "our affairs are by no
means hopeless, for we have the right on our side. We did not
want this War, and we tried to avoid it. We were forced into it ;
our cause is a just one, and now it has become the cause of freedom."
(The Emancipation Proclamation had then been promulgated.)
"And let us also hope it is the cause of God, and then we may be
sure it must ultimately triumph. But between that time and now
there is an amount of agony and suffering and trial for the people
that they do not look for, and are not prepared for. "
No one can ever estimate the suffering endured by President
Lincoln during the War. I saw him several times afterwards, and
each time I was impressed anew with the look of pain and weariness
stereotyped on his face.
"I envy the soldier sleeping in his blanket on the Potomac,"
he would say, in his torture. And sometimes, Avhen the woes of the
country pressed most heavily on him, he enAied the dead soldier
sleeping in the cemetery.
"Whichever way the War ends, " he said to a friend of mine,
"I have the impression that / shall not last long after it is over."
After the dreadful repulse of our forces at Fredericksburg,
when the slaughter was terrific, the agony of the President wrung
from him the bitter cry :
" Oh, if there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do,
I pity him!"
My Story of the War, Mary A. Livermore, page 560.
The President and the Wounded Boy
As one stretcher was passing Mr. Lincoln, he heard the voice of
a lad calling to his mother in agonizing tones. His great heart
filled. He forgot the crisis of the hour. Stopping the carriers he
knelt, and bending over the boy asked tenderly :

Soo THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"What can I do for you, my poor child?"
" Oh, you AA-ill do nothing for me, " the boy replied. " You are
a Yankee. I cannot hope my message to my mother will ever
reach her. "
Mr. Lincoln, in tears, Avith a voice of tenderest love, convinced
the boy of his sincerity, and the lad gave his good-bye Avords without
reserve. These the President directed to be copied and sent that night,
under a fiag of truce, into the enemy's lines.
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 175.
Contrast between Lincoln's Manner and Stanton's — An Oft-Repeated
Occurrence
"As we entered the Secretary's office, Mr. Stanton was writing
at his desk. General Hoffman said :
" 'Mr. Secretary, this is the lady I spoke to you about. She
Avishes to consult you about releasing her son, Avho is a prisoner of
Avar, wounded, and in the hospital at Fort McHenry?' The General
then turned and left the room. I was standing near the door of the
office. Mr. Stanton neither looked at me nor spoke. After a
minute or two the Secretary turned round in his chair, and ab
ruptly, in a severe tone, said :
" 'So you are the woman Avho has a son a prisoner of w"ar in
Fort McHenry. ' "
" 'I am so unfortunate, ' I said.
" The Secretary then answered in a still louder and sterner tone
of voice, leaving me standing all the time:
" ' I have nothing to say to you, and no time to waste on you.
If you have raised up sons to rebel against the best Government
under the sun, you and they must take the consequences. ' "
"I attempted to say to. him, " continued the lady, "that my
son was a mere boy, scarely seventeen years old, and had entered
the Confederate service without my knowledge and approval, but
before I had uttered five Avords he fairly yelled at me, as if in an
insane rage:
" I don't Avant to hear a word from you. I've no time to waste
on you. I Avant you to go at once. I'll do nothing for you. '
"I left, " she said, "and am thankful I got out of Washington
alive. Oh! why are such men intrusted with power?"

" THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 501
And she sobbed as if her heart would break.
After a brief silence, I asked her if she could go to Washington
again. "What! to see that man? No, sir! not for aU Washington,"
she exclaimed, before she had given me a moment for explanation.
I drew up, next day, a paper addressed to the President,
concisely stating the case, and asking a parole for the boy. She
signed it ; the surgeon certified it. She was advised to call on the
President, and given directions how and when to get an interview.
After an absence of three days, she returned to Fort McHenry.
Her whole countenance was luminous with joy. Handing
to me the same official envelope which had enclosed the document
prepared for her to present to the President, she pointed to an order
written in pencil upon it, and exclaimed with deep emotion: " My
boy is free! Thank God for such a President! He is the soul of
goodness and honor. "
The order was as follows: "Executive Mansion,
"March 13, 1863.
"To the Commandant at Fort McHenry:
"General: — You will deliver to the bearer, Mrs. Winston, her
son, now held a prisoner of war in Fort McHenry, and permit her to
take him where she will, upon his taking the proper parole never
again to take up arms against the United States.
"Abraham Lincoln."
I asked her how the President received her when she met him.
"With the kindness of a brother," she replied. "When I was
ushered into his presence he was alone. He immediately arose,
and, pointing to a chair by his side, said:
" ' Take this seat, madam, and then tell me what I can do for
you.' "I took the envelope, and asked him if he would read the
inclosures. "
" 'Certainly, ' said he, and he proceeded to read the statements
I had signed, very deliberately. When he had finished reading he
turned to me, and, with emotion, said :
" 'Are you, madam, the unhappy mother of this wounded and
imprisoned son?'
'"lam" I said.

502 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

" 'And do you believe he wUl honor his parole if I permit him to
take it and go with you ? '
" 'I am ready, Mr. President, to peril my personal liberty upon
it, ' I replied.
" 'You shall have your boy, my dear madam, ' he said. 'To
take him from the ranks of rebellion and give him to a loyal mother
is a better investment for this Government than to give him up\to
his deadly enemies. ' Then taking the envelope, he wrote with his
own pencil the order which you see upon it. As he handed it to me,
he said: " 'There! Give that to the commanding officer of Fort
McHenry, and you wUl be permitted to take your son where you will ;
and may God grant he may prove a great blessing to you and an
honor to his country. ' "
Reminiscences oi Abraham Lincoln, E. W. Andrews. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page sos-
"Go Thou and Do Likewise"
Critics have arraigned Mr. Lincoln for lack of dignity; and he
used to acknoAvledge in reply, that he had never enjoyed a quarter's
education in any dignity school whatever. While his Western
training, so full as it had been of independent individuality, appeared
to make the requirements of etiquette always chafe and gall him,
you can imagine how astonished was Lord Lyons, the stately
British Minister, when he presented the autograph letter from
Queen Victoria, announcing, as is the custom of European mon
archies, the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and adding that what
ever response the President would make he would immediately
transmit to his royal mistress.
Mr. Lincoln responded instantly, by shaking the marriage
announcement at the bachelor minister before him, saying :
"Lyons, go thou and do likewise !"
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 346.
"Nothing Touches the Tired Spot"
Early in April, 1S63, I accompanied the President, Mrs.
Lincoln, and their youngest son, "Tad," on a visit to the Army of
the Potomac — Hooker then being in command, with headquarters
on Falmouth Heights, opposite Fredericksburg.
The infantry reviews were held on several different days. On

From Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.
BOMBARDMENT OF FORT SUMTER BY THE UNION FLEET, APRIL 7, 1863
The monitors engaged were the "Weehawken," "Passaic," "Montauk," "CatskiU," "Nahant." "Patansco "
and "Nantucket." fow^,
Because^ of popular clamor this demonstration was made against Forts Sumter and Moultrie in Charleston Harbor.

"Admiral Dupont never showed greater courage or patriotism than when he saved his ships and men, and sac
rificed himself to the clamor and disappointment evoked by his defeat."

504 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
April Sth Avas the revicAv of the Fifth Corps, under Meade; the
Second, under Couch ; the Third, under Sickles, and the Sixth, under
SedgAAick. It Avas reckoned that these four corps numbered some
60,000 men, and it A\'as a splendid sight to witness their grand
martial array as they AVOund over hills and rolling ground, coming
from miles away, their arms shining in the distance, and their
bayonets bristling like a forest on the horizon as they marched
away. The President expressed himself as delighted with the
appearance of the soldiery, and he Avas much impressed by the
parade. . It was noticeable that the President merely
touched his hat in return salute to the officers, but uncovered to
the men in the ranks. . After a few days the weather
grew warm and bright . and the President became more
cheerful and even jocular. I remarked this one evening as we sat
in Hooker's headquarters, after a long and laborious day of review
ing. Lincoln replied :
"It is a great relief to get away from Washington and the
politicians. But nothing touches the tired spot."
On the 9th the First Corps, commanded by General Reynolds,
was reviewed by the President on a beautiful plain at the north of
Potomac Creek, about eight miles from Hooker's headquarters.
We rode thither in an ambulance over a rough corduroy road ; and
as we passed over some of the more difficult portions of the jolting
way, the ambulance driver, who sat well in front, occasionally let
fiy a volley of suppressed oaths at his wild team of six mules.
Finally Mr. Lincoln, leaning forward, touched the man on the
shoulder, and said:
" Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian? "
The man, greatly startled, looked around and replied :
"No, Mr. President, I'm a Methodist."
"Well, " said Lincoln, " I thought you must be an Episcopalian
because you swear just like Governor Seward, who is a church
warden. "
The driver swore no more.
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 45,
"I Am Only a Retail Dealer" in Stories
Lincoln very seldom invented a story. Once he said to me:
"You speak of Lincoln stories. I don't think that is a correct

" THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY " 505
phrase. I don't make the stories mine by telling them. I am only
a retail dealer. "
Numberless stories were repeated to him as being from him, but
he once said that, so far as he knew, only about one-sixth of all
those which were credited to him had ever been told by him. He
never forgot a good story, and his apt application of those which
lay in his mind gave them peculiar crispness and freshness. Here
is a case in point :
In 1863, a certain captain of volunteers was on trial in Wash
ington for a misuse of the funds of his company. The accused
officer made only a feeble defense, and seemed to treat the matter
with indifference. After a while, however, a new charge — ^that of
disloyalty to the Government — came into the case. The accused
Avas at once excited to a high degree of indignation, and made a
vigorous defense. He appeared to think lightly of being conAicted
of embezzling, but to be called a traitor was more than he could
bear. At the breakfast-table, one morning, the President, who had
been reading an account of this case in the newspaper, began to
laugh and said :
"This fellow reminds me of a juror in a case of hen-stealing
which I tried in Illinois many years ago. The accused man was
summarily convicted. After adjournment of court, as I was riding
to the next town, one of the jurors in the case came cantering up
behind me, and complimented me on the vigor with which I had
pressed the prosecution of the hen-thief. Then he added :
" 'Why, when I was young, and my back was strong, and the
country was new, I didn't mind taking off a sheep now and then.
But stealing hens! Oh, Jerusalem!'
" Now this captain has evidently been stealing sheep, and
that is as much as he can bear. "
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 289.
"If Anybody Wants to Kill Me, He Will Do It"
One foggy night in the spring of 1863, being at the White House,
Lincoln asked me if I would not walk over to General Halleck's
headquarters with him ; as we passed out of the family part of the
house, the President turned back and from a number of walking-
sticks in a corner selected a heavy one, shod and tipped with

So6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
historic iron bolts from some ship, I believe. He never used a cane
in walking, and as he took this he said, dropping his voice to a
serio-comic and confidential whisper, "Mother" — he nearly always
called his wife "Mother" — "has got a notion into her head that I
shall be assassinated, -and to please her I take a cane when I go over
to the War Department nights — ^when I don't forget it. " . . . .
Crossing the street beyond the department building, the
slouching figure of a man near the Winder building attracted my
notice and I scarcely paid any attention to the President's chat . . .
When we returned, an hour or two later, I was positively scared by
the shadows made by the trees . The President noticed this,
perhaps, for when we had reached the house in safety, he said,
" Now own up that I scared you by putting plots and assassinations
into your head, when we went out. " I confessed I was worried and
that I should not have thought of danger if he had not mentioned it.
He laughed and said that that was human nature. Then he added
more seriously :
" I long ago made up my mind that if anybody wants to kUl
me, he Avill do it. If I wore a shirt of mail and kept myself sur
rounded by a body-guard, it would be all the same. There are a
thousand w^ays of getting at a man if it is desired that he should be
killed. Besides, in this case, it seems to me, the man who would
come after me (Vice-President Hamlin) would be just as objection
able to my enemies — if I have any. "
Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln, Noah Brooks, Scribner's Monthly, Vol. XV, March, 1878,'
page 674.
"Handsome Is That Handsome Does"
He said to a Congressional committee : " Here I am, surrounded
by many men more eager to make money out of the nation's distress
than to put a shoulder to the wheel and lift the Government hub
out of the mire. Do you wonder I get depressed when I stand here
and feel how hard it is to die, unless I can make the world under
stand that I would be wilUng to die if I could be sure I am doing
my work towards Ufting the burdens from all mankind. "
He said to General Campbell : " I am as happy as if our armies
had won a victory against the Rebels. Mr. Stevens brought one of
his constituents to me yesterday, a lady seventy-five years of
age, Avhose son, only nineteen years old, was sentenced to be shot

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY'

S07

¥-'^

THADDEUS STEVENS

to-morrow at noon for sleeping at his post. I took till to-day
to examine into the case. I cannot
consent that a farmer lad, brought
up to keep early hours in going to
bed and resting, shall be shot to
death for being found asleep when
he ought to have been awake. I
pardoned the boy, and I sent a mes
senger early this morning with the wel
come news to the boy's regiment. The
mother, like Niobe, all tea.rs, has just
left me, and as she went out my heart
came up in my throat when, between
her tears, she went up to old Thad
Stevens, who had helped her save her
son's life, and said, between her sobs,
'You told me Mr. Lincoln was ugly.
How could you say so, Mr. Stevens,- for
I think he has one of the most beauti
ful faces I ever saw!' "
Then the President laughed his
sweet, soft laugh, as merry as a boy ; but there were tears in his eyes.
Recollections of Lincoln, James M. Scovel. Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. LXIII, February, 1899,
page 281. " Yet Aaron Got His Commission, You Know "
Scripture stories and incidents were also used by Lincoln to
illustrate his argument or to enforce a point. Judge E — ¦ — had been
concerned in a certain secret organization of "radical" Republicans,
'whose design was to defeat Lincoln's renomination. When this
futile opposition had died out, the Judge was pressed by his friends
for a profitable office. Lincoln appointed him, and to one who
remonstrated against such a display of magnanimity, he replied :
" Well, I suppose Judge E  , having been disappointed before,
did behave pretty ugly ; but that wouldn't make him any less fit for
this place; and I have scriptural authority for appointing him.
You remember that when the Lord was on Mount Sinai getting out
a commission for Aaron, that same Aaron was at the foot of the
mountain making a false god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron
got his commission, you know. "
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 290.

5o8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
A Guarded Offer to "Nasby"
Lincoln also seized eagerly upon everything that Orpheus C.
Kerr wrote, and he knew it all by heart.
It was in 1863 that I received a letter from Lincoln, which
illustrates two points in his character; viz., his reckless generosity,
and the caution which follows close at its heels. This is the con
clusion of the letter :
"Why don't you come to Washington and see me? Is there
no place you want ? Come on and I will give you any place you ask
for — that you are capable of filling — and fit to fill. "
He had read a letter of mine which pleased him, and
the generosity of his nature prompted him to write me to come see
him, and that was supplemented by an offer to give me any place
I asked for. After he had finished the letter and added his signature,
it occurred to him that to promise a man of whom he knew but little
any place that he might ask for, was rather risky. So he
added a dash, and likewise the saving clause, " tliat you are capable
of filling, " and, to guard himself entirely, — "and fit to fill. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 448.
"Oh, What Win the Country Say!"
Early in May (1863) the country was anxiously waiting for
news from Chancellorsville. The grand movement had been only
partially successful, but everybody expected to hear that the first
repulse was only tejnporary, and that the army was pressing on
gloriously to Richmond. One bright afternoon, in company with
an old friend of Lincoln's, I waited in one of the family rooms of the
White House, as the President had asked us to go to the Navy Yard
with him to see some experiments in gunnery. A door opened and
Lincoln appeared, holding an open telegram in his hand. The
sight of his face and figure was frightful. He seemed stricken Awith
death. Almost tottering to a chair, he sat down, and then I
mechanically noticed that his face was of the same color as the waU
behind him — not pale, not even sallow, but gray, like ashes. Ex
tending the dispatch to me, he said, in a sort of far-away voice :
"Read it — news from the army."
The telegram was from General Butterfield, I think, then chief-
of -staff to Hooker. It was very brief, simply saying that the Army

"STONEWALL" JACKSON AT THE BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE
General Jackson kept right up with his own advance, mingling his frequent cries of " press forward "
with short prayers of praise and thanksgiving. He rode forward, in his unrestrainable impa
tience, one hundred yards beyond his line of battle. All at once he found himself under the fire
of the Union guns. Turning to regain his lines he was shot by his own men and mortally
wounded. He died a few days later at Guiney's Station.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol VII, page 103.
(S°9)

5IO THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
of the Potomac had " safely "recrossed the Rappahannock and was
low at its old position on the north bank of that stream. The
President's friend. Dr. Henry, an old man and somewhat impres
sionable, burst into tears, — not so much, probably, at the news, as
on account of its effect upon Lincoln. The President regarded the
old man for an instant with dry eyes and said,
"What will the country say? Oh, what Avill the country say!"
Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln, Noah Brooks. Scribner's Monthly, Vol. XV, March, 1879,
page 674.
The Night after Chancellorsville — "Darkest Just before Day"
Did he never at any time reel or stagger under his burden?
Oh yes, once. He could feel a hit or a stab at any time; but the
things which hurt him, that made him suffer, that were slowly killing
him, as he himself declared, did not interfere with the perpetual
efficiency of his work. If there were hours when despondency came
and when he doubted the result, . . he did not tell anybody ;
but there was one night when his wrestle with despair was long and
terrible. In the opinion of Edwin M. Stanton, concurred in by other
good judges, the darkest hoiir of the Civil War came in the first
week of May, 1863. The Army of the Potomac, under General
Hooker, had fought the bloody battle of Chancellorsville. The
record of their dead and wounded told how bravely they had fought,
but they were defeated, losing the field of battle, and seventeen thou
sand men.
The country was weary of the long War, with its draining taxes
of gold and blood. Discontent was everywhere raising its head,
and the opponents of the Lincoln Administration were savage in
their denunciations. Many of his severest critics were men of un
questioned patriotism. The mail desk in the Secretary's office at
the White House was heaped with letters, as if the President could
read them. He knew their purport well enough without reading.
He knew of the forever vacant places in a hundred thousand house
holds before ChanceUorsviUe. If more than a third of each day's
mail already consisted of measureless denunciation ; if another large
part was made up of piteous pleas for peace, for a termination of the
long murder of the Civil War, what would it be when tidings of this
last slaughter should go out and send back echoes from the heart-

'THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY

511

stricken multitude? Had not enough been endured, and was there
not imminent peril that the country would refuse to endure any
more? This question was, perhaps, the darkest element in the prob
lem presented "to Mr. Lincoln.
There were callers at the White House the day on which the
news of the defeat was brought ; but they were not the customary
throng. Members
of the Senate and
House came, with
gloomy faces; the
members of the
Cabinet came to con
sult or to condole
Avith the President.
There were Army
and Navy officers,
but only such as were
sent for. The house
was as if a funeral
were going forward,
and those who
entered or felt it
trod softly, as people
always do around a
coffin, for fear they
may Avake the dead.
That night, the
last visitors in Lin
coln's room were
Stanton and Halleck.
They went away to
gether in silence,
at somewhere near
nine o'clock, and the President was left alone. Not another soul
was on that floor except the one secretary, who was busy with the
mail in his room across the hall from the President's ; and the doors
of both rooms were ajar, for the night -was warm. The silence was
so deep that the ticking of a clock would have been noticeable ; but
another sound came and that was almost as regular and ceaseless.

THOMAS J. ("STONEWALL") JACKSON
The Confederate General.

512 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
It Avas the tread of the President's feet as he strode sloAvly back
and forth across the chamber in AA'hich so many Presidents of the
United States had done their work. Was he to be the last of the
line? The last President of the entire United States? At that hour
that A'ery question had been asked of him by the battle of Chancel
lorsville. If he had wavered, if he had failed in faith or courage or
prompt decision, then the nation, and not the Army of the Potomac
would have lost its great battle.
Ten o'clock came, without a break in the steady march. . .
Eleven o'clock came and then another hour of that ceaseless march
so accustomed the ear to it that when, a little after twelve, there
was a break of se\'eral minutes, the sudden silence made one put
down his letters and listen.
The President may have been at his table writing, or he may —
no man knows or can guess ; but at the end of the minutes, long or
short, the tramp began again. Two o'clock, and he was walking yet,
and when a little after three, the secretary's task was done and he
slipped noiselessly out, he turned at the hea^d of the stairs for a
moment. It was so — the last sound he heard he went down was
the footfall in Lincoln's room.
The young man had to return early, and he was there again
before eight o'clock The President's room door was open and he
went in. There sat Mr. Lincoln eating breakfast alone. He had
not been out of his room ; but there was a kind of cheery, hopeful,
morning light on his face instead the funereal battle -cloud of Chan
cellorsville. He had watched all night, but a dawn had come, for
beside his cup of coffee lay the written draft of his instructions to
General Hooker to push forward, to fight again. There was a
decisive battle won that night in that long vigil with disaster and
despair. Only a few weeks later the Army of the Potomac fought
it over again as desperately — and the}'' won it — at Gettysburg.
Abraham Lincoln: Tributes of His Associates, Edited by William Hayes Ward, Lincoln's Vieil
William O. Stoddard (Private Secretary), page 46. '
Tad's Innocent Question
Amid the cheering men at Chancellorsville, one of the volun
teers lustily called out to the President :
"Send along more greehbacks!"

¦THE BURDEN AND HE.AT OF THE DAY"

S13

Lincoln was greatly amused by the incident and explained to
Tad that soldiers had
not been paid.
Tad thought for a
moment, then said, in
his innocence, "Why didn't
Governor Chase print
some more green
backs ? ' '
Stories and Speeches of Abra
ham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby,
page 185. ["Governor" Chase
was then Secretary of
the Treasury. — W.W.]

Wise Military Suggestions
to "Fighting Joe"
Hooker
On the 5th of June,
1863, Lincoln warns
General Hooker not to
run any risk of being
entangled on the Rap
pahannock "like an ox
jumped half over a
fence and liable to be
torn by dogs, front
and rear, without a fair
chance to gore one way or kick the other. ' '
On the loth he warns Hooker not to go south of the Rappa
hannock upon Lee's moving north of it.
" I think Lee's army, and not Richmond is your true objective
point. If he comes toward the upper Potomac, follow on his flank,
and on the inside tFack, shortening your lines while he lengthens his.
Fight him, too, when opportunity offers. If he stay where he is,
fret him, and fret him. "
On the 14th again he says ;

From a photograph in the collection of Isaac Markens, Esq.
THOMAS LINCOLN
Nicknamed '*Tad" by his father. He died in Chicago, July
16, 1871, at the age of eighteen, just after his return
from Europe.

SM THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" So far as Ave can make out here, the enemy have Milroy sur
rounded at Winchester and Tyler at Martinsburg. If they could
hold out for a fcAV days, could you help them? If the head of Lee's
army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim
somewhere; could you not break him?"
Stories and Speeches of .Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 1 88.
"Bail out the Potomac with a Teaspoon"
An officer of Ioav volunteer rank persisted in telling and re
telling his troubles to the President on a summer afternoon when
Lincoln was tired and careworn. After listening patiently, he
finally turned upon the man, and, looking wearily out upon the
broad Potomac in the distance, said in a peremptory tone that
ended the interview:
"Now, my man, go away, go away! I cannot meddle in your
case. I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon
as to attend to all the details of the army. "
" .Abe " Lincoln s Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K, McClure, page 162.
Frederick Douglass Calls on the President
My first interview with Mr. Lincoln was in the summer of 1863,
soon after the Confederate States had declared their purpose to treat
colored soldiers as insurgents, and their purpose not to treat any
such soldiers as prisoners of war subject to exchange like other
soldiers. My visit to Mr. Lincoln was in reference to this threat of
the Confederate States.
I was somewhat troubled with the thought of meeting one so
august and high in authority, especially as I had never been in the
White House before, and had never spoken to a President of the
United States before. But my embarrassment soon vanished when
I met the face of Mr. Lincoln.
When I entered he was seated in a low chair, surrounded by a
multitude of books and papers, his feet and legs were extended in
front of his chair. On my approach he slowly drew his feet in from
the different parts of the room into which they had strayed, and he
began to rise, and continued to rise until he looked down upon
me, and extended his hand and gave me a welcome.
I began, with some hesitation, to tell him who I was and what

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 515
I had been doing, but he soon stopped me, saying in a sharp, cordial
A^oice :
" You need not tell me who you are, Mr. Douglass, I know who
you are, Mr. Sewell has told me all about you. "
He then invited me to take a seat beside him. Not wishing
to occupy his time and attention, seeing that he was busy, I stated
to him the object of my call at once. I said :
"Mr. Lincoln, I am recruiting colored troops. I have
assisted in filling up two regiments in Massachusetts, and am now
at work in the same way in Pennsylvania, and have come to say this
to you, sir, if you wish to make this branch of the service success
ful you must do four things:
"First, ,. give the colored soldiers the same pay that
you give white soldiers.
"Second, . . compel the Confederate States to treat
colored soldiers, when taken prisoners, as prisoners of war." . .
To this little speech Mr. Lincoln listened with earnest attention
and with every apparent sympathy, and replied to each point in his
own peculiar, forcible way.
Now, as to pay, we had to make some concession to prejudice.
"But," said he,
" I assure you, Mr. Douglass, that in the end they shall have
the same pay as white soldiers."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 185.
" I Can Bear Censure, but Not Insult "
A cashiered officer persisted several times in presenting to the
President a plea for his reinstatement and was finally told that
even his own statement did not justify a re-hearing. His final appli
cation being met with silence, he lost his temper and blurted out :
"WeU, Mr. President, I see that you are fully determined not
to do me justice."
Without evincing any emotion, Mr. Lincoln rose, laid some
papers on the desk, and suddenly seizing the officer by the coat-
collar, marched him to the door. After ejecting him into the hall,
he said: " Sir, I give you fair warning never to show yourself here again!
I can bear censure, but not insult. "
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 169,

Si6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"I'm Not Going to Open Shop Here!"
President Lincoln Avas passing doAvn Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington one day when a man came running after him, hailed
him, and thrust a bundle of papers in his hands. This angered
the President not a little, and he pitched the papers back, saying:
"I'm not going to open shop here!"
" Abe " Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 306,
Two AppUcations for Pardon, with Opposite Results
I had an opportunity during the War of witnessing the recep
tion by the President of two applications for pardon, which met
Avith widely different fates. The case of the first was this:
A young man, belonging to a Virginia family of most treason
able character, remained in Washington when the rest of the house
hold went Avith the Confederacy. Though he took no active part
with the loyalists of the Capital, he was so quiet and prudent as to
allay their suspicions concerning him, and finally to gain their
confidence. He opened a market and kept for sale the very best
quality of meats, supplying many of the families of prominent
officers of the Government, and for a time the family at the White
House. He even managed to obtain a sort of intimacy in some of
these households, through the intrigues of disloyal servants. As
afterwards appeared, he possessed himself of information that was
valuable to the Rebels, and which he imparted to them promptly
and unreservedly.
When Lee moved up into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863,
this young man was suddenly missing  "He was unex
pectedly called away by business," was assigned as the reason for
his absence. During that June raid . . . the young man was
taken prisoner by General Kilpatrick's men. . . He was recog
nized, was proved to be a spy, and but for the President's leniency
would have been hanged. Instead ... he was sentenced to
twenty years' imprisonment. . . Every wire was pulled that
was supposed to have any power to open his prison door 
At last the President himself was besieged.
It was in the President's room, while waiting my turn for an
interview, that I learned the above facts. Two persons were plead
ing in his behalf — a man and a woman. ... It was a very

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 517
plausible story as they told it. "Their truly loyal young kinsman
had gone into Maryland to buy beeves for the Washington market
was 'gobbled up' with his fine, fat kine by Stuart (the Confederate),
who confiscated his property and impressed its owner into his cav
alry. And then, as if that were not calamity enough for one day,
he was captured again by Kilpatrick, who . supposed him
to be a rebel like the rest. "
The President listened impatiently and with a darkening
face. "There is not a word of this true!" he burst in, abruptly and
sternly, " and you know it as well as I do. He was a spy, he has
been a spy, he ought to be hanged as a spy. From the fuss you
folks are making about him, who are none too loyal, I am convinced
that he was more valuable to the enemy than we have yet suspected.
You are the third set of persons that has been to me to get him
pardoned. Now I'll tell you what — if any of you- come bothering
me any more about his being set at liberty, that will decide his fate.
I Avill have him hanged, as he deserves to be. You ought to bless
your stars that he got off with a whole neck; and if you don't want
to see him hanged as high as Haman, don't you come to me again
about him."
The petitioners, as may be imagined, " stood not upon the
order of their going, but went at once, " and after their departure
the President narrated the facts which I have given. ; ,
The other case was of a different character. I was in the ante
chamber of the President's room one morning, waiting the exit of
Secretary Stanton, who was holding an interview with Mr. Lincoln.
.... There were some fifty men in attendance, and, besides
myself, only one woman. She Avas sitting in the corner of the
anteroom, Avith her face to the wall. She was poor looking,
shabbily but neatly dressed, middle-aged, sunburnt, and careworn.
Her hands were tightly clenching a handkerchief, which she held
close against her breast, with the evident effort to master the
emotion that was shaking her whole frame, and she was weeping.
I saw by her manner that she was in trouble, and my heart went
out to her.
Putting my arm about her, I stooped and said as kindly as
I could:

Si8

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

"My poor woman, I am afraid you are in trouble; can I do
anything to help you?" . .
" Oh, " said she, " I am in great trouble. My husband is to be
shot, and if I cannot get him pardoned nobody can comfort me. "
A kindly appearing man stepped forward, a country neighbor
of the poor woman, and told her story. Her husband was a major
of an Illinois regiment, and had served two years in the army with
honor and fidelity. His colonel . was a hard man, and, when
intoxicated, abusive, uncontrollable, and profane. . WhUe
under the influence of strong drink, he had come fiercely in colUsion
with the major, and a most profane and angry altercation ensued
in the presence of half the regiment.
Foul epithets Avere hurled back and
forth until the colonel called the
major a 'coward,' with numerous
obscene and profane prefixes. . .
The major was a sober man,
reticent, somewhat unpopular, very
cool, and slow to anger; but this
stung him.
"Take that back. Colonel," he
demanded, fiercely, drawing his re
volver, "or you are a dead man. "
The colonel repeated the insult,
even more offensively. Before the
bystanders could interfere, the
colonel fell dead by the major's
hand. For this he was tried, con
victed, sentenced to be shot, and Avas then lying in jail awaiting
his death. He had Avritten his wife a farewell letter, entreating
her to be reconciled to the event — a brief epistle which she gave
me to read — full of tenderness for her and accusation for himself,
but evincing great manliness.
Senator Henderson of Missouri was to introduce my friends
and myself to the notice of the President, and we entreated that he
would also escort this poor woman, and give her an immediate
opportunity to present her petition. He gladly consented. I
sought to allay her agitation.
"Won't you talk for me," she entreated, "I am so tired; I

" THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 519
can't think; do beg the President not to allow my husband to be
shot." ...
Immediately we were ushered into the apartment, . two of us
leading the trembling wife between us as if she were a child learning
to walk. The townsman of the woman was first introduced, saying :
" This woman, Mr. President, will tell you her story. "
But instead, she dropped tremblingly into a chair, only half
alive ; and, lifting her white face to the President's with a beseeching
look, more eloquent than words, her colorless lips moved without
emitting a sound. Seeing she was past speech, I spoke quickly in
her behalf, stating her case, and urging her prayer for her husband's
life with all the earnestness I felt. ' All the while the hungry eyes
of the woman were riveted on the President's face, and tearless
sobs shook her frame. . . .
The President was troubled.
"Oh, dear, dear!" he said, passing his hand over his face and
through his hair. "These cases will kill me! I wish I didn't have
to hear about them! What shall I do? You make the laws,"
turning to the members of Congress in the room, "and then you
come 'with heart-broken women and ask me to set them aside.
You have decided that if a soldier raises his hand against his
superior officer, as this man has done, he shall die ! Then if I leave
the laws to be executed, one of these distressing scenes occurs, which
almost kills me. " . .
The attendant of the wife gave the President an abstract of
the case, which had been furnished by the major's counsel and
AA'hich the President began gloomily to run over. . . .
He had turned over some half-dozen pages . . when he
suddenly dropped it, sprang forward in his chair, his face brightened
almost into beauty, and he rubbed his hands together joyfully.
" Oh, " said he, "I know all about it now ! I know all about it !
This case came before me ten days ago, and I decided it then.
Without any solicitation I have changed his sentence of death to
two years' imprisonment ... at Albany. Major Blank has been
a brave man, and a good man, and a good soldier, and he had had
great provocations for a year.
"Your husband knows all about it before now," he said,
addressing the wife ; " and when you go back you must go by way

S20 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
of Albany and see him. Tell him to bear his imprisonment like a
man, and take a new start in the world when it is over. "
The major's wife did not at first comprehend, but I explained
to her. She attempted to rise, and made a motion as if she were
going to kneel at the President's feet; but instead she only slid
helplessly to the floor before him, and for a long time lay in a dead
faint. The President was greatly moved. He helped raise her;
and when she Avas taken from the room, he paced back and forth
for a few moments before he could attend to other business.
"Poor woman!" he exclaimed, "I don't believe she would
have lived if her husband had been shot. What a heap of trouble
this War has made ! ' '
My Story of the War, Mary A. Livermore, page s66.
" Tell Me That Horse's Points "
So voluminous a report was made , by a Congressional com
mittee upon a new gun that the President pathetically said :
" I should want a new lease of life to read this through. Why
can't an investigating -committee show a grain of common-sense?
If I send a man to buy a horse for me, I expect him to tell me that
horse's points — not how many hairs he has in his tail. "
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 109.
Lincoln's Own Reasons for TelUng Stories
On the evening of Friday, June 26th (1863), Colonel John D.
Van Buren, his son. Major Blank and I turned about nine o'clock
from the highAvay into the winding roads of the Soldiers' Home . . .
After the servant returned and announced that the President
would receive us, we sat for some time in painful silence. At length
we heard slow, shuffling steps come down the uncarpeted stairs and
the President entered the room as we respectfully rose from our
seats. That pathetic figure has ever remained indelible in my
memory. His tall form was bowed, his hair disheveled; he Avore
no necktie or collar, and his feet were partly incased in very loose,
heelless sUppers. It was very evident that he had got up from his
bed, or had been very nearly ready to get into it when we were
announced, and had hastily put on some clothing and those slippers
that had made the fiip-flap sound on the bare stairs.

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 521
It was the face that, in every line, told the story of anxiety and
weariness. The drooping eyelids, looking almost SAVoUen; the
dark bags beneath the eyes; the deep marks about the large and
expressive mouth; the flaccid muscles of the jaws, were all so
majestically pitiful that I could almost have fallen on my knees
and begged pardon for my part in the cruel presumption and
impudence that had thus invaded his repose. . . . Colonel Van
Buren, in fitting words, conveyed the message from Governor
Seymour, asking the President in Governor Seymour's name,
to pay no attention to the newspaper statements as to the
Governor's unfriendliness, and assured the President of the
Governor's fixed intention to fulfil any constitutional call upon
him for funds to support the Government. The President replied
that he had attached no importance to the rumors referred to,
and that he needed no formal assurances that the Governor
would do all in his power to aid him. . . .
Deeply moved by the President's evident fatigue, and by
his cordial treatment of us in spite of our presumptuous call.
Colonel Van Buren and I Avere about rising to make our
adieux when, to our dismay, the Major slapped the President on
his knee and said:
" Mr. JPresident, tell us one of your good stories. "
If the floor had opened and dropped me out of sight, I should
have been happy.
The President drew himself up, and turning his back, as far as
possible, upon the Major, Avith great dignity addressed the rest of us,
saying :
" I believe I have the popular reputation of being a story-teller,
but I do not deserve the name in its general sense ; for it is not the
story itself, but its purpose, or effect, that interests me. I often
avoid a long and useless discussion by others or a laborious explana
tion on my own part by a short story that illustrates my point of
view. So, too, the sharpness of a refusal or the edge of a rebuke
may be blunted by an appropriate story, so as to save the wounded
feeling and yet serve the purpose. No, I am not simply a story
teller, but story-telling as an emollient saves me much friction and
distress. "

522 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
These are almost his exact words, of which I made a record
that very night.
Lincoln on His Own Story-telling, Colonel Silas W. Burt. The Century Magazine, Vol. LXXIII,
February, 1907, page 501-
" A Bullet Through His Hat One Dark Night "
From early youth Lincoln had presentiments that he would die
a violent death, or that his last days would be marked by some great
tragic event. From the time of his first election to the Presidency,
his closest friends tried to make him understand that he was in
constant danger of assassination, but, in spite of his presentiments,
he had such splendid courage that he only laughed at their fears.
During the summer months he lived at the Soldiers' Home,
some miles from Washington, and he frequently made the trip
between the White House and the Home without guard or escort.
Secretary of War Stanton and Ward Lamon, Marshal of the Dis
trict (of Columbia), were almost constantly alarmed over Mr.
Lincoln's carelessness in exposing himself to danger.
They warned him time and again, and provided a suitable body
guard to attend him. But Mr. Lincoln would often give his guards
men the slip, and, mounting his favorite riding horse, " Old Abe, "
Avould set out alone after dark. . . While riding out to
the Home one night he was fired upon by some one in arnbush, the
bullet passing through his high hat. Mr. Lincoln would not admit
that the man that fired that shot had tried to kill him. He always
attributed it to an accident, and begged his friends to say nothing
about it.
The Story of Lincoln's Life, from "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K.
McClure, page 497. " Stanton's Nearly Always Right ! "
Some of the biographers are enthusiastic admirers of Mr.
Stanton, Avho seems never, until the close of the War, to have enter
tained cordial feelings toward the President. On some occasions
Mr. Lincoln's patience with the Secretary of War is rather aston
ishing than admirable. A committee, headed by Mr. Lovejoy,
brought the Secretary an important order of the President's
and met with a flat refusal to obey.
" But we have the President's order, " said Lovejoy.

"THE BURDEN AND HEAT OF THE DAY" 523
"Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?" said Stanton.
"He did, sir."
"Then he is a blanked fool, " said the irate Secretary.
The conversation was immediately reported to the President.
"Did he say I was a blanked fool?" asked the President, at
the close of the recital.
"He did, sir, and repeated 'it. "
After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President said :
" If Stanton said I was a blanked fool, then I must be one, for
he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I
will step over and see him. "
The President probably Avished to conceal from strangers, at
some sacriflce of personal dignity, the possibility of divisions in the
Cabinet. The Saturday Review. Editorial on Rice's Reminiscences, Vol, LXIII, November 6, i886, page 624.
The President Like a Tight-Rope Walker with a Man on His Back
When differences in the Cabinet became dangerous enough to
threaten its dissolution, he ceased to call his constitutional advisers
together, and for over a year they had no formal Cabinet session.
Twenty United States Senators called upon him in a body, intent on
complaining of Stanton's conduct of the War. The President's
sense of humor did not desert him, and he told a story about
Blondin crossing Niagara.
" Would you, " said he, " when certain death waited on a single
false step, would you cry out, ' Blondin, stoop a little more ! Go a
little faster ! Slow up ! Lean more to the north ! Lean a little more
to the south?' No ; you would keep your mouths shut.
"Now, we are doing the best we can. We are pegging away at
the Rebels. We have just as big a job on hands a was ever intrusted
to mortal hands to manage. The Government is carrying an
immense weight; so, don't badger it. Keep silent, and we will get
you safe across. "
No delegation of Senators ever again attempted to dictate to
Abraham Lincoln the manner in which our end of the Civil War
should be conducted.
Recollections of Lincoln, James M. Scovel. Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. LXIII, February, 1899,
page 278.

524 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"For God's Sake, Don't Ask Me!"
A Union officer, in conversation one day, told this story:
' ' The first week I was Avith my command there were twenty-
four deserters sentenced by court-martial to be shot, and the war
rants for their execution were sent to the President to be signed.
He refused. I went to Washington and had an interview. I said:
' ' ' Mr. President, unless these men are made an example of,
the army itself is in danger Mercy to the few is cruelty to the
many.' "He replied: 'Mr. General, there are already too many weep
ing widows in the United States. For God's sake don't ask me to
add to the number, for I won't do it!' "
" Abe " Lincoln's Yams and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 215.
"This War is Killing Me"
When Mrs. Stowe called to see Lincoln towards the close of the
War, she says that she spoke of the great relief he must feel .at the
prospect of an early close of the War and the establishment of peace.
And he said, in a sad way,
"No, Mrs. Stowe, I shall never live to see peace; this War is
killing me;" and he had a presentiment that he would not live
long that he had put his whole life into the War, and that when it
Avas over he would then collapse.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, 'Renry "^a.! A 'Beecher. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice,
page 251.
Billy Brown Goes to Washington Just to See Mr. Lincoln
"That night I footed it up to the Soldiers' Home where Mr.
Lincoln was livin' then, right among the sick soldiers in their tents.
"There was lots of people settin' around in a little room,
waitin' fer him, but there wa 'n't anybody there I knowed and I was
feelin' a little funny, when a door opened and out came little John
Nicolay. He came from down this way, so I just went up and
says, 'How'd you do, John; where's Mr. Lincoln?'
"Well, John didn't seem over glad to see me.
'Have you an appointment with Mr. Lincoln?' he says.
'No sir,' I says; 'I ain't, and it ain't necessary. Maybe it's
all right and fittin' for them as wants post-offices to have appoint
ments, but I reckon Mr. Lincoln's old friends don't need 'em, so

THE BURDEN AND HEAT ^ OF THE DAY"

525

you just trot along, Johnnie, and tell him Billy Brown's here and
see what he says.' Well, he kind of fiushed up and set his lips
together, but he knowed me, and so he went off.
"In about two minutes the door popped open and out came Mr.
Lincoln, his face all lit up. He saw me first thing, and he laid hold of
me, and just shook my hands fit to kill. 'Billy,' he says, 'now I am
glad to see you.
Come right in. You're
goin' to stay to supper
with Mary and me.'
Didn't I know it?
Think bein' President
would change him? —
not a mite. Well, he
had a right smart of
people to see, but as
soon as he was through
we went out on the
back stoop and set
down and talked and
talked. He asked me
about pretty nigh
everybody in Spring
field. I just let loose
and told him about
the weddin's and
births and the funerals
and the buildin', and
I guess there wan't a
yarn I'd heard in the
three years and a half
he had been away that
I didn't spin for him. Laugh — you ought to ha' heard him laugh
— just did my heart good, for I could see what they'd been doin'
to him. Always was a thin man, but, Lordy, he was thinner'n
ever now, and his face was kind a drawn and gray — enough to
make you cry.
"Well, we had supper and then talked some more, and about
ten o'clock I started down town. Wanted me to stay all night, but

A FAVORITE PORTRAIT
From a photograph by Brady, and made familiar because
reproduced on postage stamps and bank-notes.

526 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
I says to myself, 'Billy, don't you overdo it. You've cheered him
up, and you better light out and let him remember it when he's
tired.' So I said, 'Nope, Mr. Lincoln, can't, goin' back to Spring-'
field to-morrow. Ma don't like to have me away and my boy ain't;
no great shakes keepin' store.'
"'Billy,' he says, 'what did you come down here for?'
"'I came to see you, Mr. Lincoln.'
'"But you ain't asked me for anything, Billy. What is it?.
Out with it. Want a post-office?' he said, gigglin', for he knowed
I didn't. "'No, Mr. Lincoln, just wanted to see you — felt kind a lone
some — been so. long since I'd seen you, and I was afraid I'd forgit
some of them yarns if I didn't unload soon.'
"Well, sir, you ought to seen his face as he looked at me.
"'Billy Brown,' he says, slow-like, 'do you mean to tell me
you came all the way from Springfield, Illinois, just to have a AT.sit
with me, that you ain't got no complaints in your pockets, nor a.ny
advice up your sleeve?'
" 'Yes, sir,' I says, 'that's about it, and I'll be durned if I
wouldn't go to Europe to see you, if I couldn't do it no other way,
Mr, Lincoln.' "Well, sir, I never was so astonished in my life. He just
grabbed my hand and shook it nearly off, and the tears just poured'
down his face, and he says,
'"Billy, you never'U know what good you've done me. I'm
homesick, Billy, just plumb homesick, and it seems as if this War
never would be over. Many a night I can see the boys a-dyin'
on the fields and can hear their mothers cryin' for em' at home,
and I can't help 'em, Billy. I have to send them down there.
We've got to save the Union, Billy, we've got to. ' ''
He Knew Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, page 29.

^;^srl-v

PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS FAMILY IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Reading from left to right: " Tad," the President, Robert, Mrs. Lincoln. The portrait of Willie, who died
in the White House, hangs just back of Robert's head.

CHAPTER XX
Lincoln and Gettysburg
Lee's Invasion of Pennsylvania
After the battle of Chancellorsville, Hooker reorganized the
Army of the Potomac. The following generals were assigned to the
command of the several corps of the army: to the First, Reynolds;
to the Second, Hancock; to the Third, Sickles; to the Fifth,
Meade ; to the Sixth, Sedgwick ; to the Eleventh, Howard ; and to
the Twelfth, Slocum. . . .
At the same time Lee divided his nine divisions of the Army of
Northern Virginia, hitherto brought together in two army corps
commanded by Longstreet and Jackson, into three army corps of
three divisions each. Longstreet retained the command of the
First, Ewell was assigned to the Second, and A. P. Hill to the Third.
While Lee was engaged in reorganizing his army he was at the
same time busy in planning an invasion of Maryland and Pennsyl
vania. Such an invasion promised relief to Pemberton's army
besieged by Grant at Vicksburg. It was also thought that a cam
paign on Northern soil would be helpful to the Confederate cause
abroad. The time seemed favorable for a movement of this kind.
It was known that in May and June Hooker's army would lose
about fifteen thousand men by the expiration of their term of service.
Moreover, defeat at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, it was
supposed, had so dampened the ardor of the North with reference
to the War as to make the enlistment of new troops more and more.
difficult. On the other hand, Lee was receiving enthusiastic recruits.
To his men, fiushed with victory and eager for an aggressive cam
paign on Northern soil, no task seemed too great. . At length
all was ready. Lee was at the head of a solid, strong, effective
body of men. . . On May 28th Hooker informed President
Lincoln that the Army of Northern Virginia was about to make an
advance northward  (527)

528

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

On June 22nd, Lee's force was so AveU in hand that he ordered
Ewell to cross the
Potomac and move his
columns toward the
Susquehanna. ' ' If Harrisburg comes
Avithin your means,"
he added, " capture it. "
Meanwhile Hooker
AA'as making his Avay
northAvard, covering
the Capital in his
march. He
desired to use the gar
rison at Harper's Ferry
in a movement on Lee's
communications, but
Halleck refused to give
his 'consent, and on the
28th, Hooker, regard
ing this refusal as an
indication that his plans
would continue to be
thwarted by Halleck,
asked to be relieved of
his command, and the
request was granted.
Fifth Corps, was made

general ROBERT E. LEE

commanding the

General Meade
Hooker's successor.
Gettysburg and Lincoln, Henry Sweetser Burrage, pages 3 to 15.

The Battle of Gettysburg and the President's Bitter Disappointment
The country could not rally so quickly from the blow of Chan-
cellorsAalle. From every side came the despairing cry,
"Abraham Lincoln, giA^e us a man!"
But he h^'.d no man of whom he 'felt surer than he did of
Hooker, and for two months longer he tried to sustain that General.
A fundamental difficulty existed, however — what Lincoln called a

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 529
"family quarrel" — an antagonisni between Halleck and Hooker,
which caused constant friction. . .
The trouble between Halleck and Hooker reached a climax at a
critical moment. On June 3d, Lee had slipped from his position on
the Rappahannock and started north. Hooker had followed him
with great skill. Both armies were well north of the Potomac, and
a battle was imminent when, on June 28th, angered by Halleck's
refusal of a request. Hooker resigned.
During the days when Hooker was chasing Lee northward, the
President had spent much of his time at the telegraph office ....
and one of his most constant inquiries was :
"Where's Meade?" "What's the Fifth Corps doing?"
He had seen, no doubt, that he might be obliged to displace
Hooker, and was observing the man he had in mind for the posi
tion. At all events, it was Meade whoin he now ordered to take
charge of the army.
The days following were ones of terrible suspense at Wash
ington. The North, panic-stricken by the Southern invasion, was
clamoring at the President for a hundred things. Among other
demands was a strongly supported one for the recall of McClellan.
Col. A. K. McClure, of Philadelphia, among others, urged Lincoln
to restore McClellan. ...
Lincoln's view of the matter is fully shown by the telegram
which he sent in reply to one from Colonel McClure :
"War Department,
"Washington City, June 30, 1863.
"A. K. McClure, Philadelphia:
' ' Do we gain anything by opening one leak to stop another ? Do
we gain anything by quieting one clamor merely to open another,
and probably a larger one?
"A. Lincoln."
Three days after his appointment, Meade met Lee at Gettys
burg, in Pennsylvania, and after three days of hard fighting defeated
him. During these three terrible days — the ist, 2nd and 3d of July
— Mr. Lincoln spent most of his time in the telegraph office.
" As the telegrams came in . . . he seemed to feel the need
of talking to some one. Finally a telegram came from Meade saying

53°

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

that under such and such circumstances he Avould engage the enemy
at such and such a time.
" 'Yes', said the President bitterly, 'he will be ready to fight a
magnificent battle
when there is no
enemy there to
fight!' "
Perhaps Lin
coln never had a
harder struggle to
do what he thought
to be just than he
did after Meade
allowed Lee to
escape across the
Potomac. . . .
In a telegram to
Simon Cameron . .
he says: "I would give
much to be relieved
of the impression
that Meade, Couch,
Smith and all, since
the battle of Get-
tysbur g , have
striven only to get
Lee over the river
general GEORGE G. MEADE wlthout another
fight." . . He
Avrote Meade a letter in which he put frankly all his discontent. .
He never sent the letter. Thinking it over in his dispassionate way,
he evidently concluded that it would not repair the misfortune and
that it might dishearten the General. He smothered his regret, and
went on patiently and loyally for many months in the support of his
latest experiment.
Tlic Life of .Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 139

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 531
"My God ! Is That AH?"
Lincoln watched the operations of the armies in the field with
the deepest interest, the keenest insight, and the widest comprehen
sion. The congratulatory order which General Meade published to
his troops after the battle of Gettysburg was telegraphed to the War
Department. During those days and nights of anxiety, Lincoln
clung to the War Office, and devoured every scrap of news as it
came over the telegraph wires. He hoped for and expected sub
stantial fruits from our dearly bought victory at Gettysburg.
I saw him read General Meade's congratulatory order. When
he came to the sentence about " driving the invaders from our soil, "
an expression of disappointment settled upon his face, his hands
dropped upon his knees, and in tones of anguish he exclaimed :
" 'Drive the invaders from our soil!' My God! Is that all?"
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, James B. Pry. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 402.
Why He Was Not So Anxious about Gettysburg and Vicksburg
I beg to give a significant conversation of his in my presence,
in July, 1863, in Washington, D. C, on the Sunday after the Battle
of Gettysburg. General Sickles, of New York, had lost a leg on the
second day at Get'tysburg, while in command of the Third Corps,
and arrived in Washington on the Sunday following (July 5th).
As a member of his staff I called to see him, and while there Mr.
Lincoln also called, with his son Tad, and remained an hour or more.
He greeted Sickles very heartily and kindly, of course, and compli
mented him on his stout fight at Gettysburg, and then, after inquir
ing about our killed and wounded generally, passed on to the ques
tion as to what Meade was going to do with his victory. They
discussed this pro and con at some length, Lincoln hoping for great
results if Meade only pressed Lee actively, but Sickles was dubious
and diplomatic, as became so astute a man. And then, presently.
General Sickles turned to him, and asked what he thought during
the Gettysburg campaign, and whether he was not anxious about it.
Mr. Lincoln gravely replied, no, he was not ; that some of his
Cabinet and many othel-s in Washington were, but that he himself
had had no fears. General Sickles inquired how this was, and
seemed curious about it. Mr. Lincoln hesitated, but finally replied:
"Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of your cam-

532 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
paign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and nobody
could tell what Avas going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of
our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door, and got
down on my knees before Almighty God, and prayed to him mightily
for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him this w^as His war, and our
cause His cause, but that we couldn't stand another Fredericksburg
or Chancellorsville. And I then and there made a solemn vow to
Almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg I
would stand by Him. And He did and I will. And after that — I
don't know how it was and I can't explain it — but soon a sweet
comfort crept into my soul that things would go all right at Gettys
burg, and that is why I had no fears about you. "
He said this solemnly and pathetically, as if from the very
depths of his heart, and both Sickles and I Avere deeply touched by
his manner. Presently General Sickles asked him what news he had from
Vicksburg. He answered, he had none worth mentioning, but that
Grant was still " pegging away" down there, and he thought a good
deal of him as a general and wasn't going to remove him, though
urged to do so.
"Besides," he added, "I have been .praying over Vicksburg
also, and believe our Hea\'enly Father is going to give us victory
there too, because Ave need it, in order to bisect the Confederacy
and have 'the Mississippi flow unvexed to the sea.' "
Of course he did not know that Vicksburg had already fallen,
July 4th, and that a gunboat was soon to arrive at Cairo with the
great news that was to make that Fourth of July memorable in
history forever.
Abraham Lincoln: Tributes from His .Associates, Edited by William Hayes Ward. Lincoln's Faith
in Prayer, Gen. James F. Rusling, LL. D., page 22.
Goldwin Smith and " Darky Arithmetic "
It was an agreeable surprise to learn that the chief of the visiting
party was Prof. Goldwin Smith, one of the firmest of our EngUsh
friends. As the President rose to greet them, he was the very impersona
tion of easy dignity, notwithstanding the negligee of his costume;
and w ith a tact that never deserted him, he opened the conversation
with an inquiry as to the health of John Bright, whom he said

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 533
he regarded as the friend of our country, and of freedom every
where. There were two of Mr. Lincoln's devoted friends who lived in
dread of his little stories. Neither of them was gifted with humor.
. . They were Senator Wilson and Mr. Stanton, Secretary
of War ; and as Professor Smith closed a statistical statement '(of the
enormous war losses) the time came for the Massachusetts Senator
to bite his lips, for the President, crossing his legs in such a manner
as to show that his blue stockings were long as well as thick, said
that in settling such matters we must resort to "darky" arith
metic. " 'To darky arithmetic!' " exclaimed the dignified representa
tive of the learning and higher thought. " I did not know,
Mr. President, that you have two systems of arithmetic ? ' '
" Oh, yes, " said the President, " I will illustrate that point by a
little story: Two young contrabands, as we have learned to call
them, were seated together, when one said,
" 'Jim, do you know 'rithmetic?' "
Meanwhile Senator Wilson's right foot was playing a quick but
quiet kind of devil's tattoo. Had he known a thousand stories he
would not have told one of them to Professor Smith and his
grave looking British friends, and he was mortified that the Presi
dent, who in all essential things had few superiors in easy dignity of
manner, should so inopportunely indulge in such frivolity.
" Jim answered, 'No; what is 'rithmetic?'
" 'Well, ' said the other, 'it's when you add up things. When
you have one and one, and you put them together, they makes two.
And when you substracts things. When if you have two things,
and you takes one away, only one remains. '
" 'Isdat 'rithmetic?'
" 'Well, 'taint true den; it's no good'
" Here a dispute arose, when Jim said :
" 'Now, you, spose three pigeons set on that fence, and some
body shoot one of dem, do t'other two stay thar? I guess not, dey
files away quicker'n odder feller faUs ; ' and, Professor, trifling as the
story seems, it illustrates the arithmetic you must use in estimating
the actual losses resulting from our great battles. The state
ments you refer to give the killed, wounded and missing at the -first

534 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
roll-call after the battle, Avhich always exhibits a greatly exaggerated
total, especially in the column of missing. "
It was a piece of rare good fortune that brought Goldwin Smith
and his friends to my side, just after I had taken my usual seat at the
dinner-table. . . The gentleman next me had evidently
parted from him before he left the Executive Chamber, and I could
not help hearing the conversation between them.
"Professor," said he, "can you give me the impression Presi
dent Lincoln made upon you? "
"Yes, " said he; "it was an agreeable one. Such a person is
quite unknown to our official circles. . Indeed I think his
place in history will be unique  How wonderfully he is
endowed and equipped for the performance of the duties of the
chief executive officer of the United States at this time ! "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, William D. Kelley. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 286.
Recommending a Colonel for a Colored Regiment
, "I personaUy wish Jacob Freese, of New Jersey, appointed
colonel of a colored regiment, and this regardless of whether he can
tell the exact color of Julius Ceesar's hair. "
A note from the President to the Secretary of War.
"Well, I Don't BeUeve Shooting WUl Do Him Any Good"
A Senator — the Hon. Mr. Kellogg — while staying in Wash
ington, received a despatch from the army one evening to the effect
that a young townsman, who had been induced to enlist through his
instrumentality, had, for a serious misdemeanor, been convicted by
a court-martial, and was to be shot the next day. Greatly agitated,'
Mr. KeUogg went to the Secretary of War, and urged a reprieve'. ^
The Secretary replied:
" Too many cases of this kind have been let off, and it is time
an example was made. "
Finding that all his arguments were in vain, Mr. KeUogg said:
" WeU, Mr. Secretary, the boy is not going to be shot—oi that I
give you fair warning!"
Leaving the War Department, he went directly to the White
House, although the hour was late. After a long parley with the
sentry on duty, he passed in. The President had retired ; but the
Senator pressed his way through all obstacles to his sleeping apart-

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 535
ment. In an excited manner he stated that the despatch announc
ing the hour of execution had but just reached him.
" This man must not be shot, Mr. President, " said he. " I can't
help what he may have done. Why, he is an old neighbor of mine ;
I can't allow him to be shot ! "
Mr. Lincoln had remained in bed, quietly listening to the pro
testations of his old friend, who had been in Congress with him, and
at length said :
"Well, I don't believe shooting will do him any good. Give
me that pen. "
And so saying he caused another poor fellow's lease of life to be
prolonged.
Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Foster, page 99.
The Conscription Bill and the Draft Riot in New York
Congress passed another very important bill for the prosecution
of the War, called the Conscription Bill. This gave the President
power to create a national army by enrolling and drafting the militia
of the whole country. Every State was required to raise its qvwta
of men according to its population. When this great army was
raised, it was to be entirely at the control of the President.
By this act all able-bodied men who were citizens, or who had
declared their intention of becoming citizens of the United States,
between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, were liable to be
drafted as soldiers. Those who chose to pay three hundred dollars
or furnish a substitute could remain at home. There were also some
other exemptions, such as the only son of a widow, or the only son
of aged and infirm parents, who were dependent on their boy for
support. The draft was ordered to take place in July, and it was publicly
proclaimed how many men each State would be required to furnish.
As a general thing the loyal people approved of the draft, and
thought it was the best and fairest way to raise men to carry on the
War  Some of the President's enemies made a
great noise about the draft and said it was a very despotic measure,
because it favored the rich and oppressed the poor.
" Any rich man, " said they, " can pay his three hundred dollars
and stay at home ; but if a poor man be drafted, he must go whether
he wants to or not. "

536 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
But these grumblers did not do much mischief, and the draft
went quietly on in all places but NeAv York and Chicago. At Ncav
York there Avas a shameful riot and mob.
The names of all the men liable to be drafted were withdrawn
and placed in a wheel. A man appointed to draw the names was
blindfolded, and every precaution Avas taken to prevent cheating.
The wheel Avas turned, and as many names as were required were
draAvn from the Avhole number. It was like a lottery; nobody
knew whether he should be drafted or not till his name was called.
But nearly everybody took the matter very good-naturedly, and
most of those AA'ho were drafted went; but some paid the three
hundred dollars and stayed at home.
In New York, how^ever, things did not go very smoothly. The
draft began there on the nth of July, Avhich Avas Saturday. No
disturbance occurred on that day; but on Sunday some bad men
put their heads together to see if they could not break up the draft,
which was no sooner commenced on Monday morning than a gang
of these fellows burst into one of the buildings where the business
was going on, broke the wheel in pieces, tore up the lists of names,
and set the office on fire. The excitement quickly spread all over
the city. The police did their best to restrain it, but they were
almost powerless against such angry mobs as were now filling the
streets. The city authorities called out the militia, but unfor
tunately there Avere but few soldiers available. Nearly all had
gone to Pennsyh'ania to repel Lee's invasion ; for this was
only a few days after the battle of Gettysburg.
The mob knew the city was in a crippled condition and took
advantage of it. For four days they seemed to have
their own way. They burned building after building, among others .
an orphan asylum for colored children. Negroes were hanged,
beaten to death and mutilated in various ways. Of course,
during the riot the draft could not proceed. It was resumed, how
ever, in a few weeks; and as soon as the mob knew that the city
was now in a position to defend itself, no more opposition was made.
The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 233.
The Quaker and the Draft
When the draft was made, my name was one that was drawn
along with those of several other young Friends [Quakers], two

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 537
others in our little meeting. It created a good deal of excitement
among us. The two others paid their three hundred dollars each,
but I felt it right to do nothing, feeling that I could not go myself
nor give money to hire others to go. The proper military officer
came out and notified me that I would be expected to report in the
military camp at Lafayette (Indiana) for training, on a certain day.
I told him that I could not conscientiously be there, that as I could
not fight it would not do any good for me to report. Then he
demanded the three hundred dollars. To this I replied :
" If I believed that war is right I would prefer to go myself
than to hire some one else to be shot in my place. "
He told me I would either have to come or pay the three
hundred dollars, or he would be forced to sell my property. As I
was firm in my decision he went out and looked over the
farm, selecting the stock that he proposed to sell and then sat down
and commenced Avriting bills for the public sale of our horses,
cattle and hogs. While he was writing, dinner was ready, and when
we sat down to the table we insisted on his eating with us. We
tried to keep up a pleasant conversation on various subjects, making
no reference to the work he was engaged in. After dinner he
turned to me and said :
"If you would get mad and order me out of the house, I could
do this work much easier, but here you are, feeding me and my
horse while I am arranging to take your property from you. I tell
you it's hard work!' '
We told him we had no unkind feelings toward him, as we
supposed he was only obeying the orders of those who were superior
to him. I went out again to my work and when he had prepared
the sale bills, he placed one on a large tree by the roadside in front
of the house, and then rode around and placed the others in different
places in the neighborhood.
A few days before the time had arrived for the sale I was at
Lafayette. The officer came to me and said :
"The sale is postponed. I don't know when it will be. You
can go on using your horses. "
I heard nothing more about it for several years. After the
War closed I learned that Governor Morton, who was in Wash
ington about that time, spoke to President Lincoln about it and he
ordered the sale to be stopped.
Autobiography of .Allen Jay, The American Friend, Seventh Month 2, 1908, page 421.

538 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Dennis Hanks Advises the President to "Spank" Secretary Stanton
Old Dennis Hanks was sent to Washington by persons inter
ested in securing the release from jail of seve'ral men accused of
being " copperheads. " It was thought old Dennis might have some
influence with the President. The latter heard Dennis's story and
then said :
" I Avill send for Mr. Stanton. It is his business. "
Secretary Stanton came into the room, stormed up and down,
and said the men ought to be punished more than they were. Mr.
Lincoln sat in his chair and waited for the tempest to subside, and
then quietly said to Stanton that he would like to have the papers
next day. When he was gone, Dennis said :
" 'Abe, ' if I was as big and as ugly as you are, I would take him
over my knee and spank him. "
The President replied :
" No, Stanton is an able and valuable man for this nation, and
I am glad to bear his anger for the service he can give the people. "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns andStories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 236.
[Note. — While waiting for the papers Dennis Hanks was hand
somely entertained at the White House. The President greatly
enjoyed talking over old times, and gave the playmate of his boy
hood a watch which "Old Dennis" treasured and exhibited until
his dying day, which was about thirty years later. — W. W.]
Humor of the Soldiers
Anything that savored of the Avit and humor of the soldiers was
especially welcome to Lincoln. His fondness for good stories is a
well -accepted tradition, but any incident that showed that "the
boys" Avere mirthful and jolly in all their privations seemed to
commend itself to him. He used to say that the grim grotesqueness
and extravagance of American humor were its most striking char
acteristics. There was a story of a soldier in the Army of the Po
tomac, carried to the rear of battle vrith both legs shot off, who,
seeing a pie -woman hovering about, asked,
" Say, old lady, are them pies sewed or pegged? "
And there was another of a soldier at the battle of Chancellors-
Aalle, whose regiment, waiting to be called into the flght, was taking
coffee. The hero of the story put to his lips the crockery mug which

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 539
he had carried, with infinite care, through several campaigns. A
stray bullet just missing the coffee-drinker's head, dashed the mug
into fragments, and lef.t only the handle on his finger. Turning his
head in that direction, the soldier angrily growled,
"Johnny, you can't do that again!"
Lincoln, relating these two stories together, said, " It seems as
if neither death nor danger could quench the grim humor of the
American soldier. ' '
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 292.
"No Influence with This Administration"
On the table near him he kept a package of blank cards, such
as one finds on every hotel counter. On these were written, in lead
pencil, some of the most important orders of the War. Very often
he would address Secretary Stanton with a penciled request,
" if the exigencies of the service Avould permit, " to " let up " on some
chaplain, ciAUlian or soldier who complained of the rough treatment
of the Secretary of War. Stanton sometimes granted these re
quests, but just as often he would tear up the card in the face of the
applicant, and tell him to go back to Mr. Lincoln and tell him he'd
"be blanked if he would do it." . . . When Lincoln would again
be appealed to he would simply look up or down on the 'victim of
Stanton's wrath, and say, quizzically,
"'Well, I never did have much influence vvith this administration."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, ]cimesM..Qcovel, Lippincott's Magazine, Yol. LXIV, August,
1889, page 246,
The Northern Governor and the Squealing Boy
I recall an anecdote by which he pointed out a marked trait in
one of our Northern Governors, . . [who] was earnest, able and
untiring in keeping up the war spirit in his State, and in raising and
equipping troops; but he always wanted his own way, and illy
brooked the restraints imposed by the necessity of conforming to a
general system. Though devoted to the cause, he was at times over
bearing and exacting in his intercourse with the general government.
Upon one occasion he complained and protested more bitterly
than usual, and warned those in authority that the execution of
their orders in his State would be beset by difficulties and dangers.
The tone of his dispatches gave rise to an apprehension that he
might not co-operate fuUy with the enterprise in hand. The Secre-

540 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
tary of War, therefore, laid the dispatches before the President for
advice or instructions. They did not disturb Lincoln in the least.
In fact, they rather amused him. After reading all the papers, he
said in a cheerful and re-assuring tone :
"Never mind, never mind; those dispatches don't mean any
thing. Just go right ahead. The Governor is like a boy I saw once
at a launching. When everything was ready they picked out a boy
and sent him under the ship to knock away the trigger and let her go.
At the critical moment everything depended on the boy. He had
to do the job well by a direct, vigorous blow, and then lie flat and
keep still while the ship slid over him.
" The boy did everything right, but he yelled as if he were being
murdered from the time he got under the keel until he got out.
I thought the hide was all scraped off his back ; but he wasn't hurt
at all. The master of the yard told me that this boy was always
chosen for that job, that he did his work well, that he never had
been hurt, but that he always squealed in that Avay.
"That's just the way with Governor Blank. Make up your
minds that he is not hurt, and that he is doing his work right, and
pay no attention to his squealing. He only wants to make you
understand how hard his task is, and that he is on hand perform
ing it." Time proved that the President's estimate of the Governor
was correct.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. James B. Fry. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 400.
Lincoln's Usual "Swear- Word"
On one occasion, Lincoln, when entering the telegraph office,
was heard to remark to Secretary Seward, " By jings! Governor, we
are here at last." Turning to him in a reproving manner, Mr.
Seward said, " Mr. President, where did you learn that inelegant
expression?" Without replying to the Secretary, Mr. Lincoln ad
dressed the operators, saying :
"Young gentlemen, excuse me for swearing before you. 'By
jings' is swearing, for my good mother taught me that anything that
had a 'by' before it was swearing."
The only time, however, that Lincoln was ever heard really
to swear in the telegraph office was on the occasion of his receiving

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 541
a telegram from Burnside, who had been ordered a week before
to go to the relief of Rosecrans, at Chattanooga, then in great
danger of an attack from Bragg. On that day Burnside tele
graphed from Jonesboro, farther away from Rosecrans than he was
when he received the order to hurry toward him. When Burnside 's
telegram was placed in Lincoln's hands he said, "Damn Jonesboro."
He then telegraphed Burnside : "September 21, 1863.
"If you are to do any good to Rosecrans it will not do to
waste time with Jonesboro. . . . "A. Lincoln."
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, David Homer Bates, page 201.
" 'Ploughed Around' That Governor for 'Three Mortal Hours' "
Upon one occasion the Governor of a State came to my office
bristling with complaints in relation to the number of troops re
quired from his State, the details for drafting the men, and the plan
of compulsory service in general. I found it impossible to satisfy
his demands, and accompanied him to the Secretary of War's office,
whence, after a stormy interview with Stanton, he went alone to
press his ultimatum upon the highest authority. After I had
waited anxiously for some hours, expecting important orders or
decisions from the President, or at least a summons to the White
House for explanation, the Governor returned, and said with a pleas
ant smile that he was going home by the next train, and merely
dropped in en route to say good-bye. Neither the business he came
upon nor his interview with the President was alluded to. As soon
as I could see Lincoln, I said :
" Mr. President, I am very anxious to learn how you disposed of
Governor Blank. He went to your office from the War Department
in a towering rage. I suppose you found it necessary to make large
concessions to him, as he returned from you entirely satisfied."
" Oh, no, " he replied, " I did not concede anything. You know
how that Illinois farmer managed the big log that lay in the middle
of his field! To the inquiries of his neighbors one Sunday, he
announced that he had got rid of the big log.
" 'Got rid of it ! ' said they, ' how did you do it? It was too big
to haul out, too knotty to split, and too wet and soggy to bum.
What did you do?'

542 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" 'Well, now. boys', replied the farmer,' if you won't divulge the
secret, I'll tell you how I got rid of 'it — / ploughed around it."
" Now, " said Lincoln, " don't tell anybody, but that's the way
I got rid of Governor Blank. I ploughed around him, but it took
me three mortal hours to do it, and I was afraid every minute he'd
see what I was at. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, James B. Fry. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 399.
The First Great Sanitary Fair, at Chicago
It would not be possible to describe in detail the rare and
beautiful articles that attracted throngs of people to this haU.
The most noteworthy of all, and that in which the widest interest
Avas felt, Avas the original manuscript of President Lincoln's "Procla
mation of Emancipation" of the four million slaves of the South,
This was the gift of the President to the Fair, who accompanied it
with the following characteristic letter :
"Executive Mansion,
'Washington, Oct. 26, 1863.
"To the Ladies having in charge the Northwestern Fair for the Sani
tary Commission, Chicago, III.
" According to the request made in your behalf, the original
draft of the Emancipation Proclamation is herewith enclosed.
The formal words at the top, and at the conclusion, except the
signature, you perceive, are not in my handwriting. They were
written at the State Department, by whom I know not. The
printed part was cut from a copy of the preliminary Proclamation,
and pasted on merely to save writing. I had some desire to retain
the paper ; but if it shall contribute to the relief or comfort of the
soldiers, that is better. "Your obedient servant, "A. Lincoln."
This manuscript was purchased for three thousand dollars, by
Thomas B. Bryan for the Chicago Soldiers' Home, of which associa
tion he was President. It was finely Uthographed, and copies were
sold by the Board of Managers for the benefit of a permanent home
for invalid Illinois soldiers, thousands of dollars accruing to the
fund from their sale. The original manuscript was finally placed in

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 543
the archives of the Chicago Historical Society for safe keeping, and
was there burned at the time of the great confiagration.
My Story of the War, Mary A. Livermore, page 429.
"Nasby" Has an Interview with the President
Church of St.  , November the ist, 1863.
I felt it my dooty to visit Washington. The miserable con-
dishon the Dimokrasy find themselves into, sinse the elecshen,
makes it necessary that suthin be did, and therefore I determined to
see what cood be effectid by a persnel intervew with the President.
Interdoosin myself, I opened upon him delikitly, thus :
" Linkin, " sez I, " ez a Dimekrat, a free-born Dimekrat, who is
prepared to die with neetnis and dispatch, and on short notis, fer
the inalienable rite of free speech knoin also that you er a goriller,
a feendish ape, a thirster after blud, I speek. "
" Speek on, " says he.
"I am a Ohio Dimekrat," says I, "who hez repoodiatid
Vallandigum, "
" Before or since the elecshen, did yoo repoodiate him? " sez he.
" Sinse, " retortid I.
" I thot so, " sed he. " I would hev dun it, too, hed I bin you, "
continnered he with a goriller-like grin.
" We air now in favor uv a wiggerus prosecushen uv the war,
and we want you to so alter yoor polisy that we kin act with you
corjelly, " sez I.
"Say on, " sez he.
" I will. We don't want yoo to change yoor polisy materially.
We air modrit. Anxshus to support you, we ask yoo to adopt the
foUerin trifling changis :
" Restoar to us our habis corpusses, as good ez new.
"Arrest no more men, wimmin, and children for opinyun's saik.
" Repele the ojus conflsticashen bill, wich irrytaits the Suthern
mind and flres the Suthern hart.
" Do away with drafts and conskripshens.
"Revoak the Emansipashen Proclamashen, and give bonds
that you'll never ishoo another.
" Do away with tresury noates and sich, and pay nuthin but
gold.

544 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Protect our davAl^ers frum nigger eqAvality.
" Disarm yoor nigger soljers, and send back the niggers to
their owners, to conciliate them.
"Offer to assoom the War indetednis uv the South, and plej
the Guverment to remoonerate our Suthrin brethren for the losses
they have sustaned in this onnatrel Avar.
" Call a convenshen uv Suthern men and sech gileless Northern
men ez F. Peerce, J. Bookannun, Fernandywood, and myself, to
agree upon the terms uv reunion. "
" Is that all? " sez the goriller.
" No, " says I promptly. " Ez a garantee uv good faith to us,
we shel insist that the best haff uv the orifises be given to Dimekrats
who repoodiate Vallandigum. Do this, Linkin, and yoo throw lard
ile on the trubbled waters. Do this and yoo rally to yoor support
thowsends uv noble Dimekrats, who went out uv offis with Bookan-
non, and hev bin gettin ther whisky on tick ever sinse. We hev
maid sakrifises. We hev repoodiated Vallandigum — ^we care not
ef he rots in Canady ; we are willing to jine the War party, reservin
to ourselvs the poor privilidg uv dictatin how and on wat prinsip-
ples it shel be carried on. Linkin! Goriller! Ape! I hev dun."
The President replide that he would give the matter serious
considerashen. He wood menshen the idee uv resinin to Seward,
Chais, and Blair, and Avood addres a serculer to the postmasters,
et settry, and see how menny uv them wood be Avillin to resine to
accomodait Dimekrats. He hed no dout sevral wood do it to wunst.
" Is ther any littel thing I kin do fer you? "
" Nothin pertikler. I wood acept a small postorifis, if sitooatid
vrithin ezy range uv a distilry. My politikle daze is well-nigh over.
Let me but see the old party wunst moar in the assendency; let
these old eyes once moar behold the Constooshn ez it is, the Union
ez it wuz, and the nigger ware he ought 2 be, and J will rap the
mantel uv privit life arownd me, and go in2 delirum tremens happy.
I hev no ambishen. I am in the seer and yellow leef. These
whitnin lox, them sunken cheek, warn me that age and whisky hev
dun ther perfeck Avork, and that I shel soon go hents. Linkin,
scorn not my words. I hev sed. Adoo. "
So sayin, I Avavd my hand impressively, and walkd away.
Petroleum V Nasby,
Pastor uv sed Church, in charge.
Divers \'iews, Opinions and Prophecies, Petroleum V. Nasby (David R. Locke), page 128.

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 545
The President InArited to Speak at Gettysburg
Mr. David Wills, of Gettysburg, first suggested the creation
of a national cemetery on the battle-field, and under Governor
Curtin 's directions and co-operation he purchased the land for
Pennsylvania and other States interested, and superintended the
improvements. It had been intended to hold the dedication cere
mony on October 23, 1S63, but Edward Everett, who was chosen to
deliver the oration, had engagements for that time, and at his
suggestion the occasion was postponed to November 1 9th.
On November 2nd, Mr. Wills wrote the President a formal
invitation to take part in the dedication.
"These groimds [said his letter in part] will be consecrated and
set apart to this sacred purpose by appropriate ceremonies on
Thursday, the 19th inst. Hon. Edward Everett will deliver the
oration. I am authorized by the governors of the different States
to invite you to be present, and to participate in these ceremonies,
which will doubtless be very imposing and solemnly impressive.
It is the desire that, after the oration, you, as Chief Executive of
the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by
a few appropriate remarks." . . .
There is no decisive record of when Mr. Lincoln wrote the
first sentences of his proposed address. He probably followed his
usual habit in such matters, using great deliberation in arranging
his thoughts, and molding his phrases mentally, waiting to reduce
them to writing until they had satisfactory form.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, John G. Nicolay. The Century Magazine, Vol. XXA^, February,
1894, page S96.
The Gettsyburg Speech to Be "Short, Short, Short !"
One November day, — it chanced to be the Sunday before the
dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg — I had an
appointment to go with the President to Gardner, the photog
rapher on Seventh Street, to fulfil a long-standing engagement.
Mr. Lincoln carefully explained that he could not go on any other
day Avithout interfering with the public business and the photog
rapher's business, to say nothing of his liability to be hindered
by curiosity -seekers, " and other seekers, " on the way thither.
Just as we were going down the steps of the White House, the
President suddenly remembered that he wanted a paper, and after

546

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

hurrying back to his office, soon rejoined me with a long envelope
in his hand. When we were fairly started, he said that the envelope
held an advance copy of Edward Everett's address to be delivered
at the Gettysburg dedication on
the following Thursday. Drawing
it out, I saw that it was a one-page
supplement to a Boston paper, and
that Mr. Everett's address nearly
covered both sides of the sheet.
The President expressed his
admiration for the thoughtfulness
of the Boston orator who had sent
this copy of this address in order
that Mr. Lincoln might not trav
erse the same lines that the chosen
speaker of the great occasion
might have laid out for himself.
When I exclaimed at its length,
the President laughed and quoted
the line,

EDWARD EVERETT

"Solid men of Boston, make no long orations, "
which he said he had met somewhere in a speech by Daniel Webster.
He said that there was no danger that he should get upon the lines
of Mr. Everett's oration, for what he had ready to say was very
short, or as he emphatically expressed it, — " short, short, short ! " In
reply to a question as to the speech having been already written,
he said it was written, "but not finished." He had brought the
paper with him, he explained, hoping that a few minutes of leisure
Avhile waiting for the movements of the photographer and his
processes would give him a chance to look over the speech.
Glimpses of Lincoln in War Time, Noah Brooks. The Century Magazine, Vol. XXVII, January,
189s, page 46s.

On the Way to Gettysburg
When Lincoln was on his way to the National Cemetery at
Gettysburg, an old gentleman told him that his only son fell on
Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and he was going to look at the
spot, Mr. Lincoln replied:

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 547
"You have been called to make a terrible sacrifice for the
Union, and a visit to that spot, I fear, wUl open your wounds afresh. "
" But, oh, my dear sir, if we had reached the end of such sacri
fices and had nothing left for us to do but to place garlands on the
graves of those who have already fallen, we could give thanks even
amidst our tears ; but when I think of the sacrifices of life yet to be
offered, and the hearts and homes yet to be made desolate before this
dreadful war is over, my heart is like lead within me, and I feel at
times like hiding in deep darkness. ' '
At one of the stopping places a beautiful little girl having a
bunch of rosebuds in her hand was held up to an open window of
the President's car lisping, " Flowerth for the Prethident. "
The President stepped to the window, took the rosebuds, bent
down and kissed the child, saying:
"You are a sweet little rosebud yourself! I hope your life
will open into perpetual beauty and goodness. "
" Abe " Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K, McClure, page 357.
The President and Party at Gettysburg
The President's special train left Washington at noon of
Wednesday the i8th. Three members of the Cabinet — Mr. Seward,
Secretary of State; Mr. Usher, Secretary of the Interior; and Mr.
Blair, Postmaster General — accompanied the President, as did the
French minister, M. Mercier; the Italian minister, M. Bertinatti,
and several legation secretaries and attaches. Mr. Lincoln had also
with him his private secretary, Mr. Nicolay, and his assistant
private secretary. Colonel John Hay, Captain H. A. Wise of the
navy, and Mrs. Wise (daughter of Edward Everett), were also of
the party; likewise a number of newspaper correspondents from
Washington, and a military guard of honor to take part in the
Gettysburg procession. . . .
No accident or delay occurred, and the party arrived in Gettys-
burg about nightfall. According to invitation, Mr. Lincoln went to
the house of Mr. Wills, whUe the members of his Cabinet, and other
distinguished persons of his party, were entertained elsewhere. . . .
It was after the breakfast hour on the morning of the 1 9th that
the Avriter, Mr. Lincoln's private secretary, went to the upper room
which Mr. Lincoln occupied in the house of Mr. Wills, to report for

548 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
duty, and remained with the President Avhile he finished writing
the Gettysburg address, during the short leisure he could utilize
for the purpose before being called to take his place in the procession
which was announced on the program promptly at ten o'clock.
There is neither record, evidence, nor well-founded tradition
that Mr. Lincoln did any Avriting, or made any notes, on the journey
between Washington and Gettysburg. . . Mr. Lincoln carried
in his pocket the autograph manuscript of so much of his address
as he had written at Washington. . It fills one page of the
letter paper at that time habitually used in the Executive Mansion,
containing the plainly printed blank heading. .
The time occupied in this final writing was probably about an
hour, for it is not likely that he left the breakfast table before nine
o'clock, and the formation of the procession began at ten. . .
At about eleven o'clock the Presidential party reached the
platform. Mr. Everett, the orator of the day, arrived fully half an
hour later. . . It was noon before Mr. Everett began his
address, after which, for two hours, he held the assembled multitude
in rapt attention with his eloquent description and argument, his
polished diction, his carefully studied and practised delivery.
When he had concluded and the band had performed the usual
musical interlude. President Lincoln rose to fill the part assigned
him. It was entirely natural for every one to expect that this
would consist of a few perfunctory remarks, the mere formality of
official dedication. . . . They were, therefore, totally unpre
pared for what they heard, and could not immediately realize that
his words, and not those of the carefully selected orator, were to
carry the concentrated thought of the occasion like a trumpet-peal
to farthest posterity.
The newspaper records indicate that when Mr. Lincoln began
to speak he held in his hand the manuscript first draft of his address.
But it is the distinct recollection of the writer, who sat
within a lew feet of him, that he did not read from the written
pages. . That it was not mere mechanical reading is more
definitely confirmed by the circumstance that Mr. Lincoln did not
deUver the address in the exact form in which his first draft was
written. It was taken down in shorthand by the reporter for the
"Associated Press, " telegraphed to the principal cities, and printed
on the foUowing morning in the leading newspapers : [Page 551.]

FACSIMILE OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
As written by Lincoln for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Fair at Baltimore, in April, 1864.
aX7

(549)

/^jBi^lc^n^^-, Jt^n^ et#^**«-ot?» ^lw>^>«-t*o fhr>.**v,i^^Ctp.,
/TtAveV ^$)^.gtr ^./tCcCt -p^^u^ c>CcatJ '^e^oo, vJcC/^-^rrg^

From Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
(550)

LINCOLN AND GETTYSBURG 551
{The Address as Delivered, Applauded and Reported.)
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal. [Applause.] Now we
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are
met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a
portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add
or detract. [Applause.] The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
[Applause.] It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on.
[Applause.] 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 here gave the last
full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that the dead
shall not have died in vain [Applause] ; that the nation shall, under
God, have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the
people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the
earth. [Long continued applause.]
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, John G. Nicolay. The Century Magazine, Vol. XXV, February,
1894, page 597. An Imperfect Tribute
An exquisite story of rare pathos, recently published in a maga
zine, has been widely and justly admired. It is entitled " The Per
fect Tribute" and deals with Lincoln's address at Gettysburg. In
it "the perfect tribute" is supposed to consist in the failure of the
hearers of that great speech to applaud when the President ceased
speaking, so enchanted were they, one and all, with the beauty of
the sentiments expressed by the distinguished and popular orator.
But the exact reverse was the fact. The auditors applauded re
peatedly, as is shown in the stenographic report above quoted.
Lincoln is represented in this story as deeply disappointed

552 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
because of the lack of appreciation manifested by the crowd, as he
had fondly hoped those words would live— although he is represented
to have dashed them off in a few moments on the train to Gettys
burg! Edward Everett was not on the train that day, and other dis
crepancies appear, as to certain well-known facts connected with
the occasion. No details concerning Abraham Lincoln are insig
nificant, especially those connected with that immortal address.
It had been proven and published by one of the President's secre
taries, that Lincoln did no writing on the way to Gettysburg and
facsimiles were given showing that the address had been written
at the White House.
It is also true that Lincoln thought slightingly of this speech.
He said to his friend Lamon, "It Avon't scour," meaning that it
AA'ould not be a lasting production. His hearers did not begin to
appreciate it until they read it in the newspapers. These are not
minor considerations ; they are facts too well established to be
disregarded even in fiction. Above all, had it been true that the
speech was received without applause, it was a belittling concep
tion of Lincoln's mind and character to represent him as brooding
and sighing over it like a schoolgirl on graduation day.
" The Perfect Tribute " is a beautiful story, but it is an imperfect
tribute to the manhood and genius of Abraham Lincoln.
w. w.
Stanton's Opinion of the Gettysburg Speech
I remember going into Mr. Stanton's room in the War Depart
ment on the day after the Gettysburg celebration, and he said,:
"Have you seen these Gettysburg speeches?"
" No, " I said, " I didn't know you had therh. "
He said, " Yes, and the people will be delighted with them.
Edward Everett has made a speech that wUl make many columns
in the newspapers, and Mr. Lincoln's perhaps forty or fifty Unes.
Everett's is the speech of a scholar, polished to the last possibility.
It is elegant and it is learned; but Lincoln's speech wiU be read
by a thousand men where one reads Everett's, and wUl be remem
bered as long as anybody's speeches are remembered who speaks
the English language."
Lincoln and His Cabinet, A lecture before the New Haven Colony Historical Society Charles A.
Dana, page 36. "

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

(SS3)

CHAPTER XXI
Lincoln and Grant
"I Can't Spare This Man— He Fights"
While in the East the President had been experimenting with
men, in the West a man had been painfully and silently making
himself. His name was Ulysses S. Grant. iThe President had
known nothing of his coming into the army. No political party
had demanded him ; indeed he had found it difficult at first," West
Point graduate though he was and great as the need of trained
service was, to secure the lowest appointment. He had taken
Avhat he could get, however, and from the start he had always done
promptly the thing asked of him ; more than that, he seemed always
to be looking for things to do. It was these habits of his that
brought him at last, in February of 1862, to the command of a
movement in which Lincoln was deeply interested. This was the
capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, near the mouth of the
Tennessee River.
' ' Our success or failure at Fort Donelson is vastly import£.nt,
and I beg you to put your soul in the effort, " Lincoln wrote . .
to Halleck and Buell, then in command of Missouri and Tennessee.
WhUe the President was .writing his letters. Grant, in front of Fort
Donelson, Avas writing a note to the Confederate commander, who
had asked for terms of capitulation :
"No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can
be accepted. I propose to move immediately on your works. "
To the harassed President at Washington these words must
have been like a war-cry. He had spent the winter in a vain effort
to inspire his supposed great generals with the very spirit breathed
in the words and deeds of this unknown officer in the West.
Grant was now made a Major-General and entrusted with
larger things. He always brought about results, but in spite of this
the President saw there was much opposition to him.
Finally, on July i6th . . . Grant was put at the head of the
(SS4)

LINCOLN AND GRANT 555
armies of the West. . Men came to the President urging
his removal. Lincoln shook his head.
" I can't spare this man, " he said, " he fights."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 142.
"You Were Right and I Was Wrong"
About nine days after Vicksburg had fallen the President sent
the following letter to General Grant, who was deeply touched by its
frank and manly character, and the sincerity of its tone :
"Executive Mansion,
"Washington, D. C, July lo, 1863.
"My Dear General:
"I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I
write th s now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inesti
mable services you have done the country. I wish to say a word fur
ther. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought
you should do what you finally did — march the troops across the
neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go- below ; and
I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better
than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed.
When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf and vicinity,
I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks;
and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it
was a mistake. I now wish to make a personal acknowledgment
that you were right and I was AArong. "A. Lincoln."
Lincoln and Grant, Horace Porter, The Century Magazine, Vol. VIII, October, 1S85, page 040.
Pemberton's Army and Sykes's Yellow Dog
Grant's successes brought Avith them the usual number of
jealousies and rivalries. Political generals had their advocates in
Washington to plead their cause, while Grant stood without friends
at court. His detractors gathered at times a great deal of strength
in their efforts to supplant him with a general of their own choosing,
and Lincoln was beset by many a delegation who insisted that
nothing would harmonize matters in the West but Grant's removal.
This nagging continued even after his great triumph at Vicksburg.
Lincoln always enjoyed telling the General, after the two had
become personally intimate, how the cross-roads wiseacres had

556 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
criticised his campaigns. One day, after dwelling for some time on
this subject, he said to Grant:
" After Vicksburg I thought it was about time to shut down on
this sort of thing, so one day, when a delegation came to see me and
had spent half an hour in trying to show me the fatal mistake you
had made in paroling Pemberton's army, and insisting that the
Rebels would Adolate their paroles and in less than a month confront
you again in the ranks, and have to be whipped all over again, I
thought I should get rid of them best by telling them a story about
Sykes's dog.
" 'Have you ever heard about Sykes's yellow dog?' said T to
the spokesman of the delegation. He said he hadn't.
" 'Well, I must tell you about him,' said I. Sykes had a
yellow dog he set great store by, but there were a lot of small boys
around the village, and that's always a bad thing for dogs, you
know. These boys didn't share Sykes's views, and they were not
disposed to let the dog have a fair show. Even Sykes had to admit
that the dog was getting unpopular ; in fact it was soon seen that a
prejudice was growing up against that dog that threatened to wreck
all his future prospects in life. The boys, after meditating how
they could get the best of hiin, finally fixed up a cartridge with a
long fuse, put the cartridge in a piece of meat, dropped the meat in
the road in front of Sykes's door, and then perched themselves on a
fence a good distance off Avith the end of the fuse in their hands.
Then they whistled for the dog. When he came out he scented the
bait, and bolted the meat, cartridge and all. The boys touched off
the fuse with a cigar and in about a second a report came from that
dog that sounded like a small clap of thunder. Sykes came bound
ing out of the house, and yelled :
"'What's up! Anything busted?'
"There was no reply except a snicker from the small boys
roosting on the fence, but as Sykes looked up he saw the whole air
filled with pieces of yellow dog. He picked up the biggest piece he
could find, a portion of the back with a part of the tail still hanging
to it, and after turning it around and looking it all over he said :
" 'Well, I guess he'll never be much account again — as a dog!'
" 'And I guess Pemberton's forces will never be much account
again — as an army!'
"The delegation began looking around for their hats before I

LINCOLN AND GRANT SSI
had quite got to the end of the story, and I was never bothered any
more after that about superseding the commander of the Army of
the "Tennessee."
Lincoln and Grant, Horace Porter, TPie Century Magazine, Vol. VIII, October, 1885, page 940,
The Statue of Liberty and Grant's Favorite Brand of Whiskey
Armed with a letter from General Grant and with my report, I
presented myself at the White House. There was no delay, no
obstructive formality.
My call was so timed that the multitude of visitors as well as
the clerks — "the boys," as Mr. Lincoln called them — were gone
for the day, and the President was sitting by his office desk alone .
. . Mr. Lincoln immediately began to ask me questions about
his "fighting General," as he already called Grant.
After the President had been questioning me for some time,
he quickly turned the conversation and asked me what I
had seen since my arrival in the city. I reported a visit to the
Capitol, then in process of construction, whereupon Mr. Lincoln
asked what the workmen were doing. I told him that they were
about to raise the statue of Liberty to the dome, and that on the
Senate wing they were preparing pillars for installation.
The President remarked that there were some people who
thought the work on the Capitol ought to stop on account of the
War, people who begrudged the expenditure and the detention of
the workmen from the army. He went on to say that in his judg
ment the finishing of the Capitol would be a symbol to the nation
of the preservation of the Union.
" If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the
Union shall go on. "
At another time he interrupted his inquiries to ask if Grant had
told me of the raid made upon him — the President — in Washington.
I replied that I had not heard of it.
"Well, " said Mr. Lincoln, "you know a raid in Washington is
different from what you military men mean by a raid. With you
it is an attack by the enemy — the capture of soldiers and supplies;
vrith us it is an attack by our friends in Congress seeking to influence
a change in policy. "
"A company of Congressmen came to me to protest that
Grant ought not to be retained as a commander of American

•Mti\,

THE CAPITOL AT LAST FINISHED— WITH THE STATUE OF LIBERTY IN PLACE

LINCOLN AND GRANT 559

citizens. I asked what was the trouble. They said he was not fit-
to command such men. I asked why, and they said he sometimes
drank too much and was unfit

fi£^ ,a^V^!^^,

A CARD OF INTRODUCTION

for such a position. I then
began to ask them if they
'knew what he drank, what
brand of whiskey he used,
telling them most seriously
that I wished they would -find
out. They .conferred Avith
each other and concluded
they could not tell what
brand he used. I urged them " Y..^ Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen
to ascertain and let me know,
for if it made fighting generals
like Grant, I should like to get some of it for distribution among
some of the other generals."
Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, John Eaton, Ph.D., LL.D,, page 87.
Real Distress over a Few "Niggers" Troubled with "Jiggers"
According to my appointment, I returned to the White House
next morning and received the copy of my report. The President
left me in no doubt as to the satisfaction with which he had read
the information contained therein. He spoke at some length about
the efforts that had been made in the East to meet the Negro
question; how he had urged deportation and colonization, and of
the failure of such efforts to solve the difficulty. His sympathy
vnth the suffering caused by some of the mistakes was very evident.
He told me, for instance, that the negroes in the Cow Island settle
ment on the coast of Hayti were suffering intensely from a pest of
"jiggers," from which there seemed to be no escape or protection.
His distress was as keen as it was sincere, and I have often thought
of it as an illustration of his kindness of heart, which found no detail
too insign'ficant upon Avhich to expend itself. The spectacle of the
President of the United States, conducting the affairs of the nation
in the midst of civil war and genuinely affected by the discomfort
occasioned a little group of negroes by an insect no bigger than a
pin-head, Avas a spectacle that has stayed by me all my life.
Grant, Lincoln and ihn Fn^imon, John Eaton, Ph.D., LL.D., page 91,

S6o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"He Cares for Us Soldiers"
Severe as Lincoln could be with any disposition to shirk what
he considered a just and necessary demand, strenuously as he
insisted that the ranks must be kept full, he never came to regard
the army as a mere machine, never forgot the individual men who
made it up. Indeed, he Avas the one man in the Government who,
from first to last, Avas big enough to use both his head and his heart.
From the outset, he Avas the personal friend of every soldier he sent
to the front, and somehow every man seemed to know it. No doubt
it was on Lincoln's visits to the camps around Washington, in the
early days of the War, that the body of the soldiers got this idea.
They never forgot his friendly hand-clasp, his hearty "God bless
you," his remonstrance against the youth of some fifteen-year-old
boy masquerading as twenty, his jocular remarks about the height
of some soldier towering above his own six feet four. ... He
inquired into every phase of camp life, and the men knew it and said
to one another,
" He cares for us; he makes us fight, but he cares. "
Reports of scores of cases where he interfered personally rto
secure some favor or ri^ht for a soldier found their way to the army
and gave solid foundation to this impression that he was the soldiers'
friend. From the time of the arrival of the first troops in Wash
ington, in April, 1861, the town was full of men, all of them wanting
to see the President. At first they w-ere gay and curious merely,
their requests trival ; but later when the army had settled down to
steady fighting, and Bull Run and the Peninsula and Antietam and
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville had cut and scarred and aged
it, the soldiers who haunted Washington were changed. They
stumped about on crutches. They sat pale and thin in the parks,
empty sleeves pinned to their breasts ; they came to the White
House begging for furloughs to see dying parents, for release to
support a suffering family.
No man will ever know how many of these soldiers Abraham
Lincoln helped^ Little cards are constantly turning up in different
parts of the country, treasured by private soldiers, on which he
had written ' some brief note to a proper authority, intended to
help a man out of a difficulty. Here is one ;

LINCOLN AND GRANT

S6i

^2.t--»V

/^Ojt-" ^ f^>-<^. y^^T^''^^,

"The Pittsbm-gh boy," had enlisted at seventeen. He had
been ill with a long fever. He wanted a furlough, and with a
curious trust that anything could be done if he could only get to the
President, he had slipped into the White House and by chance met
Lincoln who listened to his story and gave him this note.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 149.
"No Man's Shoulders Are Broad Enough"
He was as tender-hearted as a girl. He asked me if the masses
of the people in Ohio held him in any way personally responsible for
the loss of their friends in the army.
"It is a good thing for individuals, " he said, "that there's a
government to shove over their acts upon. No man's shoulders are
broad enough to bear Avhat must be. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke ( "Petroleum V. Nasby" ). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 451.
Four Reprieves, Judge Holt and the "Leg Cases"
In the earlier years of the War all the death penalties of courts-
martial had to be sent up to the President, as commander-in-chief,
for his approval. When Judge Holt, the Judge-Advocate-General
of the Army, laid the first case before the President, and explained
it, he replied :
"Well, I will keep this a fcAv days until I have more time to
look up the testimony. "
That seemed quite reasonable. When the Judge explained
the next case, Mr. Lincoln said :
36

S62 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" I must put this by until I can settle in my mind whether this
soldier can better serve the country dead than living. "
To the third, he answered :
"The general commanding that brigade is to be here in a few
days to consult with Stanton and myself about military matters;
I will wait until then, and talk the matter over with him. "
Finally there Avas a very flagrant case of a soldier, Avho, in a
crisis of battle, demoralized his regiment by his cowardice, throwing
down his gun and hiding behind a friendly stump. When tried for
his cowardice there was no defense. The court-martial, in examin
ing his antecedents, found that he had neither father nor mother
living, nor wife nor child; that he was unfit to wear the loyal
uniform, and that he was a thief who stole continually from his
comrades. "Here," said Judge Holt, "is a case which comes exactly
within your requirements. He does not deny his guilt; he will
better serve his country dead than living, as he has no relations to
mourn for him, and he is not fit to be in the ranks of patriots, at
an\ rate. "
Mr. Lincoln's refuge of excuse was all swept away. Judge Holt
expected, of course, that he would write " approved" on the paper;
but the President, running his long fingers through his hair, as he
so often used to do when in anxious thought, replied :
"Well, after aU, Judge, I think I must put this with my leg
cases. "
"Leg cases," said Judge Holt, with a frown at this supposed
levity of the President, in a case of life and death. "What do you
mean by 'leg cases,' sir? "
"Why, why!" replied Mr. Lincoln, "do you see those papers
crowded into those pigeon-holes? They are the cases that you call
by that long title, 'Cowardice in the face of the enemy,' but I call
them, for short, my ' leg cases.' But I put it to you, and I leave it
for you to decide for yourself: if Almighty God gives a man a
cowardly pair of legs — how can he help their running away with
him?" Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page
341-

LINCOLN AND GRANT 563
"Got Generals Enough— Bring Us Some Hard-Tack"
Lincoln particularly liked a joke at the expense of the dignity
of some high civil or military official. One day, not long before his
second inauguration, he asked me if t had heard about Stanton's
meeting a picket on Broad River, South Carolina, and then told this
story :
" General Foster, then at Port Royal, escorted the Secretary up
the river, taking a quartermaster's tug. Reaching the outer lines
on the river, a picket roared from the bank, 'Who have you got on
board that tug?' The severe and dignified answer was, 'The Sec
retary of War and Major-General Foster. ' Instantly the picket
roared back, 'We've got major-generals enough up here — why don't
you bring us up some hardrtack? "
The story tickled Lincoln mightily, and he told it until it was
replaced by a new one.
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 291.
" Butler or No Butler, Here Goes! "
A Congressman went up to the White House one morning on
business, and saw in the anteroom, always crowded with people in
those days, an old man crouched all alone in a corner, crying as if
his heart would break. As such a sight was by no means uncom
mon, the Congressman passed into the President's room, transacted
his business, and went away. The next morning he was obliged to
go again to the White House, and he saw the same old man crying
as before in the corner. He stopped and said to him :
"What's the matter?"
The old man told him the story of his son — a soldier in General
Butler's army — that he had been convicted by a court-martial of an
outrageous crime and sentenced to be shot next week, and his Con
gressman was so convinced of the man's guilt that he would not
intervene. "Well,. . . .1 will take you in, after I have finished my
business, and you can tell Mr. Lincoln all about it. "
On being introduced into Mr. Lincoln's presence, he was
accos'ted with :
" Well, my old friend, what can I do for you to-day? "
The old man then repeated his story to Mr. Lincoln. A cloud
of sofrow came over the President's face as he said :

564 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

"I am sorry to say I can do nothing for you. Listen to this
telegram received from General Butler yesterday :
" 'President Lincoln: I pray you not to interfere with the
courts-martial of the army. You will destroy all discipline among
our soldiers. — B. F. Butler." '
Every word of this dispatch seemed like the death kneU of
despair to the old man's newly awakened hopes. Mr. Lincoln
watched his grief for a minute, and then exclaimed :
" By jings, Butler or no Butler, here goes!" — writing a few words
and handing them to the old man :
"Job Smith is not to be shot untU further orders from me.
"Abraham Lincoln."
"Why," said the old man, "I thought it was to be a pardon;
but you say 'not to be shot tiU further orders,' and you may order
him shot next week. "
Mr. Lincoln smiled at the old man's fears and replied:
"Well, my- old friend, I see you are not very well acquainted
with me. If your son never looks on death tUl further orders come
from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than
Methuselah. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page
343. Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation
Congress met at the usual time, in the last month of 1863 ; and
the President sent in his annual message, in which he offered another
inducement to the Rebels to lay down their arms and return to their
allegiance to the United States. This is called the Proclamation of
Amnesty (or pardon), and you shall have the President's own words:
"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do
proclaim, declare, and make known to all persons who have directly
or by implication participated in the existing Rebellion, except as
hereinafter excepted, that a full pardon is hereby granted to them
and each of them, with restoration of all rights of property, except
as to slaves, and in property cases where rights of third parties shall

LINCOLN AND GRANT 565
have intervened, and upon the condition that every such person
shall take and subscribe an oath and thenceforward keep and main
tain said oath inviolate, — an oath which shall be registered for
permanent preservation, and shall be of the tenor and effect follow
ing, to wit :
" 'I,  , do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God,
that I will faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder, and
that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support all acts of
Congress passed during the existing Rebellion with reference to
slaves so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void, by
Congress or the decision of the Supreme Court ; and that I will in
Uke manner abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the
President made during the existing Rebellion, having reference to
slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision
of the Supreme Court. So help me God.' "
[Civil, military and naval officers under the so-called Confed
erate government, especially those who left positions of honor and
trust to aid and abet the Rebellion were not included in the general
terms of this proclamation.]
Thus, you see that although the enemies of the good President
accused him of prolonging the War for his own purposes, — and some
of them went so far as to declare that he might have had peace long
before if he had desired it, — this was so far from being true that he
was constantly planning every means he could think of to induce
the Rebels to cease fighting before they were conquered and com
pelled to surrender.
I have told you of the various ways in which he tried to show
the Southern people that they could gain nothing by the War, but in
the end must lose everything, slaves and all. Now, as a last resort,
he told them that if they would only take this oath of allegiance to
the -Government of the United States and keep it, he would pardon
them. In other words, he would forget that they had ever been
Rebels, — for amnesty comes from a Greek word which means to
forget. The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, M. Louise Putnam, page 242.

S66 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
" Think of Going into Eternity with the Blood of That Poor Young Man
on My Skirts"
A personal friend of President Lincoln is authority for this :
" I called on him one day. He had just written a pardon for a
young man who had been sentenced to be shot for sleeping at his
post. He remarked as he read it to me :
" 'I could not think of going into eternity with the blood of
that poor young man on my skirts. ' Then he added :
" 'It is not to be wondered at that a boy, raised on the farm,
probably in the habit of going to bed at dark, should, when required
to watch, fall asleep ; and I cannot consent to shooting hirn for such
an act.' "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 416.
Burning of the White House Stables and Loss of the Boys' Ponies
Wednesday night, February loth (1864) was an exciting one
at the White House, the stables belonging to the mansion being
burned to the ground. The loss most severely felt was of the two
'ponies, one of which had belonged to Willie Lincoln, the President's
second son, who died in 1862, and the other to Tad, the youngest,
and pet of his father, who in
his infancy nicknamed him
"Tadpole," subsequently
abbreviated to " Taddie, " and
then "Tad." His real name
was Thomas, named for the
father of Mr. Lincoln.
Upon Tad's learning
of the loss, he threw him
self at full length upon
the fioor, and could not be comforted. The only aUusion I
ever heard the President make to Willie was on this occasion, in
connection with the loss of his pony; John Hay, the assistant
private secretary, told me that he was rarely known to speak of his
lost son.
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 44,
**I Will Be Far Happier Than I Have Ever Been Here"
In 1864, when one of my soldiers was unjustly sentenced and
his gray-haired mother pleaded with me to use what influence I

LEADING EVENTS IN 1863
Union victory at Mtirfreesboro»
Tenn  Dec. 31 to Jan. 2
Emancipation Proclamation  Jan. i
Confederate victory at ChanceilorsvUle,
Va.,  May 2-3
Union victory at Gettysburg, Pa  July 1-3
Grant captures Vicksburg, Miss  July 4
Draft riots in New York  July 13-16
Confederate victory at Chickamauga,
Ga.  Sept. 19-20
Union victory at Lookout Mountain,
Tenn  Nov. 24-25

LINCOLN AND GRANT 567
would have with the President, I went to Washington and told the
story to the President. He said he had heard something about it
from Mr. Stanton, and he said he would investigate the matter, and
he did afterward decide that the man should not be put to death.
At the close of that interview I said to the President :
" I beg your pardon, Mr. Lincoln, but is it not a most exhausting
thing to sit here hearing all these appeals and have all of this
business on your hands?"
He laid his head on his hand, and, in a somewhat wearied
manner, said, with a deep sigh :
"Yes, yes; no man ought to be ambitious to be President of
the United States ; and, " said he, " when this war is over — and that
won't be very long — I tell my Tad that we will go back to the farm,
where I was happier as a boy when I dug potatoes at twenty-five
cents a day than I am now ; I tell him I will buy him a mule and a
pony and he shall have a little cart and he' shall make a little garden
in a field all his own. " And the President's face beamed as he arose
from his chair in the delight of excitement as he said :
" Yes, I will be far happier than I have ever been here. "
Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women, Russell H. Conwell, page 356,
"A Little More Light and a Little Less Noise"
Wednesday, March 2nd (1864), I had an unusuaUy long and
interesting sitting from the President. . . The news had
been recently received of the disaster under General Seymour in
Florida. Many newspapers openly charged the President with
having sent the expedition with primary reference to restoring the
State in season to secure its vote at the forthcoming Baltimore
Convention. Mr. Lincoln was deeply wounded by these charges. .
A few days afterward an editorial appeared in the New
York Tribune, which was known not to favor Lincoln's renomina
tion, entirely exonerating him from blame. I took the article to
him in his study, and he expressed much gratification at its
candor. In connection with newspaper attacks he told, during the
sitting, this story :
" A traveler on the frontier found himself out of his reckoning
one night in a most inhospitable region. A terrific thunderstorm
came up, to add to his trouble. He floundered along until at

568 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
length his horse gave out. The lightning afforded him the only
clcAv to his way, but the peals of thunder Avere frightful. One bolt,
AA'hich seemed to crush the earth beneath him, brought him to his
knees. By no means a praying man, his petition was short and to
the point :
" '0 Lord, if it's all the same to you, give us a little more light
and a little less noise. ' ' '
Six Months in the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 4.S.
First Meeting of Lincoln and Grant
The first time the two men saw each other was about one
o'clock on the .9th of March, 1864, when General Grant called upon
the President at the White House to receive the commission con
stituting him Lieutenant-General of the armies. The General had
arrived in Washington from the West the day before, and was on
his way to establish his headquarters in Virginia. The interview
took place in the Cabinet room. There were present, besides the
members of the Cabinet, General Halleck, a member of Congress,
two of General Grant's staff-officers, his eldest son, Frederick D.
Grant, and the President's private secretary. Lincoln, in handing
the General his commission, read with much feeling a few words
which he had written for the occasion, ending with the remark.
" As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain
you. I scarcely need add that, with what I here speak for the
nation, goes my own hearty personal concurrence. "
The General took the commission very much as a graduate
steps up and takes his diploma from the president of his college.
He had written a brief reply on a sheet of paper which he drew from
his pocket and read. It closed as follows :
" I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devoMng
upon me ; and I know that if they are met it will be due to those
armies, and above all to the favor of that Providence which leads
both nations and men. "
Lincoln and Grant, Horace Porter, The Century Magazine ,^01.^111, October, 1885, page 940,
The Military Situation and the Monkey with Too Much Tail
Just after receiving my commission as Lieutenant-General, the
President caUed me aside to speak to me privately. After a brief
reference to the military situation, he said he thought he could

LINCOLN AND GRANT

569

illustrate what he wanted to say by a story, which he related as
follows :
" At one time there was a great war among the animals, and one
side had great difficulty in getting a commander who had sufficient
confidence in himself. Finally, they found a monkey, by the name
of Jocko, who said that he thought he could command their army
if his tail could be made a little longer. So they got more tail and
spliced it on to his caudal appendage. He looked at it admiringly,
and then thought he ought to have a little more still. This was
added, and again he called for more. The splicing process was re
peated many times, until they had coiled Jocko's tail around the
room, filling all the space. Still he called for more tail, there being
no other place to coil it,
they began w^rapping
it around his shoul
ders. He continued
his call for more, and
they kept on winding
the additional tail
about him until its
weight broke him
down. "
I saw the point,
and, rising from my
chair, replied:
"Mr. President, I
will not call for more
assistance unless I
find it impossible to do
with what I already
have." Reminiscences of Abraham Lin
coln, Ulysses S. Grant. Edited by
Allen Thorndike Rice, page i.

From Abraham
John Hay.

A Visit to City Point
On March 20, 1S64,
the General invited
the President to visit him at City Point.

Lincoln: A History, John G. Nicolay and

GENERAL GRANT
Trom a War-time Photograph.

The invitation was ac-

570 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
cepted the next day, and the President arrived at the headquar
ters of the armies on the 22nd, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln
and their youngest son, Tad. . . Upon the arrival of the
steamboat [the River Queen] at the wharf at City Point, General
Grant and several members of his staff went aboard to welcome the
Presidential party. The President gave each one a hearty greet
ing, and in his frank and cordial way said many complimentary
things about the hard work that had been done during the long
winter's siege, and how fully the country appreciated it. When
asked how he was, he said :
" I am not feeling very well. I got pretty badly shaken up on
the bay coming down, and am not altogether over it yet. "
" Let me send for a bottle of champagne for you, Mr. President "
said a staff-officer; "that's the best remedy I know of for sea
sickness. "
" No, no, my young friend, " replied the President, " I've seen
many a man in my time seasick ashore from drinking that very
article. "
That was the last time any one screwed up sufficient courage
to offer hirn wine.
Lincoln andGrant, Horace Porter, The Century Magazine, Vol. VIII, October, i88s, page 942.
England and the Sangamon Barber
Upon the return to headquarters at City Point, he sat for
awhile by the camp-fire; and as the smoke curled about his head
during certain shif tings of the wind, and he brushed it away from
time to time by waving his hand in front of his face, he entertained
the General-in-chief and several members of his staff by talking in a
most interesting manner about public affairs, and illustrating the
subjects mentioned with his incomparable anecdotes.
At first his manner was grave and his language much more
serious than usual. . . After awhile he spoke in a less serious
v'ein, and said:
" England will live to regret her inimical attitude toward us.
After the collapse of the Rebellion, John Bull will find that he has
injured himself much more seriously than us. His action reminds
me of a barber in Sangamon County in my State. He had just
gone to bed when a stranger came along and said he must be shaved ;
that he had a four days' beard on his face, and was going to take a

LINCOLN AND GRANT 571
girl to a ball, and that beard must come off. Well, the barber got
up reluctantly and dressed, and seated the man in a chair with a
back so low that every time he bore down on him he came near
dislocating the victim's neck He began by lathering his face,
including his nose, eyes and ears, stropped his razor on his boot,
and then made a drive at the man's countenance as if he had
practised mowing in a stubble-field. He cut a bold swath across
the right cheek, carrying away the beard, a pimple, and two warts.
The man in the chair ventured to remark :
"'You appear to make everything level ar. you go.'
"'Yes,' said the barber, 'and if this handle don't break, I guess
I'll get away with most of what's there.'
"The man's cheeks were so hollow that the barber couldn't get
down into the valleys with the razor, and the ingenious idea occurred
to him to stick his fingers in the man's mouth and press out the
cheeks. Finally he cut clear through the cheek and into his own
fingers. He pulled the finger out of the man's mouth, snapped
the blood off it, glared at him, and cried :
" 'There, you lantern-j awed cuss, you've made me cut my finger ! '
" And so England will discover that she has got the South into
a pretty bad scrape by trying to administer to her, and in the end
she will find that she has only cut her own finger. "
Campaigning with Grant, Horace Porter, page 406.
"Mind, That Old Grudge Stands!"
After the laugh that followed this story had exhausted itself.
General Grant asked :
"Mr. President, did you at any time doubt the final success of
the cause ? ' '
"Never for a moment," was the prompt and emphatic reply
as Mr. Lincoln leaned forward in his camp-chair and enforced his
words by a vigorous gesture of his right hand.
"Mr. Seward, when he visited me last summer, gave a very
interesting account of the complications and embarrassments
arising from the Mason and Slidell affair, when those commission
ers were captured on board the English vessel Trent, " remarked
General Grant.
"Yes," said the President; "Seward studied up all the Avorks
ever written on international law, and came to Cabinet meetings

572 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
loaded to the muzzle with the subject. We gave due consideration
to the case, but at that critical period of the War it Avas soon decided
to deliver up the prisoners. It was a pretty bitter pill to swallow,
but I contented myself with believing that England's triumph in
the matter wotUd be short-lived, and that after ending our War
successfully we would be so powerful that we could call her to
account for all the embarrassments she had inflicted upon us. I felt
a good deal like the sick man in Illinois who was told he probably
hadn't many days longer to live and he ought to make peace with
any enemies he might have. He said the man he hated worst of
all was a fellow named Brown, in the next vdllage, and he guessed
he had better begin on him. So Brown was sent for, and when he
came the sick man began to say, in a voice as meek as Moses's,
that he wanted to die at peace with all his fellow-creatures, and he
hoped he and Brown could now shake hands and bury all their
enmity. The scene Avas becoming altogether too pathetic for
Brown, who had to get out his handkerchief and wipe the gathering
tears from his eyes. It wasn't long before he melted and gave his
hand to his neighbor, and they had a regular love-feast of for
giveness. After a parting that would have softened the heart of
a grindstone. Brown had about reached the room door, when the
sick man rose up on his elbow^ and called out to him :
" 'But see here. Brown, if I should happen to get well, mind,
that old grudge stands!'
" So I thought that if this nation should happen to get well we
might want that old grudge against England to stand. "
Campaigning with Grant, Horace Porter, page 406.
"I WiU Make a Fizzle, Anyhow"
Upon one occasion, when the President was at my headquar
ters at City Point, I took him to see the work that had been done on
the Dutch Gap Canal. After taking him around and showing him
all the points of interest, explaining how, in blowing up one portion
of the work that was being excavated, the explosion had thrown
the material back into, and filled up, a part already completed, he
turned to me and said :
" Grant, do you know what this reminds me of ? Out in Spring
field, Illinois, there was a blacksmith named Blank. One day,

LINCOLN AND GRANT 573
when he did not have much to do, he took a piece of soft iron
that had been in his shop for some time, and for which he had no
special use, and, starting up his fire, began to heat it. When he
got it hot he carried it to the anvil and began to hammer it, rather
thinking he would weld it into an agricultural implement. He
pounded- away for some time until he got it fashioned into some
shape, when he discovered that the iron would not hold out to com
plete the implement he had in mind.
"He then put it back into the forge, heated it up again, and
recommenced hammering, with an ill-defined notion that he would
make a claw-hammer, but after a time he came to the conclusion
that there was more iron there than was needed to form a hammer.
Again he heated it, and thought he would make an ax. After
hammering and welding it into shape, knocking the oxidized iron
off in fiakes, he concluded there was not enough of the iron left to
make an ax that would be of any use. He was now getting tired and
a little disgusted at the results of his various essays. So he filled
his forge full of coal, and after placing the iron in the center of the
heap, he took the bellows and worked up a tremendous blast, bring
ing the iron to a white heat. Then with his tongs he lifted it from
the bed of coals, and thrusting it into a tub of water near by, ex
claimed with an oath,
" 'Well, if I can't make anything else of you, I will make a fizzle,
anyhow. " '
Reminiscences of Abraham^ Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 2.
"Is This Bloody War Ever to End?"
The morning after the bloody battle of the Wilderness, I saw
him walk up and down the Executive Chamber, his long arms
behind his back, his dark features contracted still rnore with gloom ;
and as he looked up, I thought his face the saddest one I had ever
seen. He exclaimed:
"Why do we suffer reverses after reverses! Could we have
avoided this terrible, bloody war ! Was it not forced upon us ! Is
it ever to end ! ' '
But he quickly recovered, and told me the sad aggregate of
those days of bloodshed. Of course it is perfectly well known that
the battle of the WUderness, then claimed as a drawn battle, was,
on the contrary, a bloody reverse to our arms, our loss in killed and

574 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Avounded alone being fifteen thousand more than the Confederates'.
Hope beamed on his face as he said :
" Grant wUl not fail us now ; he says he 'will fight it out on that
line,' and this is now the hope of our country. "
An hour afterward, he w'as teUing story after story to con
gressional visitors at the White House, to hide his saddened heart
from their keen and anxious scrutiny.
Reminiscences of .Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page Z31.
"How Unfortunate ! Those Mules Cost Us $200 Apiece
The generals of the army were not ahvays pleased with his
calling them so familiarly, "my generals, " as I can illustrate by an
incident. Walking up Pennsylvania Avenue one evening with several
other members (of Congress), on the road to the White House, a
courier who had just dashed across the Long Bridge, haUed us, and
told us the news he was taking to the War Department. It seems
that in the gray of that very morning a Rebel raid in Falls Church,
a little hamlet a dozen miles away, had surprised and captured a
brigadier-general, and twelve army mules, and had got into the
Rebel lines before they could be recaptured. As we were going to
the ExecutiA'e Chamber, we thought we would tell Mr. Lincoln the
news in advance ; but he said, instantly, on hearing it :
" HoAV unfortunate ! I can fill his place with one of my generals
in five minutes, but those mules cost us $200 apiece. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Schuyler Colfax. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 339.
"There Won't Be Any Fun tiU I Get There!"
I was designated by the Secretary of War as a sort of special
escort to accompany the President from Washington to Gettysburg
upon the occasion of the first anniA^ersary of the battle at that place.
At the appointed time I went to the White House, where I found
the President's carriage at the door to take him to the station; but
he was not ready. When he appeared it was rather late, and I
remarked that he had no time to lose in going to the train.
"Well, " said he, " I feel about that as the convict in one of our
Illinois towns felt when he was going to the gallows. As he passed
along the road in custody of the sheriff, the people, eager to see the

LINCOLN AND GRANT 575
execution, kept crowding and pushing past him. At last he called
out: " 'Boys, you needn't be in such a hurry to get ahead, there
won't be any fun till I get there.' "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, James B. Fry. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 402.
The President's Narrow Escape
One night, when there were indications that an attack would
be made, I was on guard at the War Department. At three o'clock
in the morning, I heard loud cries in the street, sounding nearer ahd
nearer to the department. My first impression was that Early's
raiders had broken in and were coming to burn and pillage.
On opening the door upon the street, a large herd of beef cattle was
seen wending its way to the commissary's corral and the herders were
making the outcry. These cattle had been pastured some miles out
in Maryland, and narrowly escaped being captured by Early.
There had been no stampede in Washington. People did not
seem to think there was much danger of a catastrophe. The
Confederates left some of the forts ; and two or three houses under
the guns of Fort Stevens, on the turnpike-road to Brookville,
Maryland, were battered down, to dislodge some of the enemy's
sharp-shooters who found shelter there while trying to pick off our
gunners. It was related of President Lincoln that he rode out to Fort
Stevens while the skirmishing was going on, and, heedless of danger,
mounted the parapet to get a good view. While standing there, his
tall frame presenting a prominent target, a bullet passed between
him and a young lady who was standing by his side  He
was then induced to descend under cover.
Anecdotes of the Civil War, Brevet Major-General E. D. Townsend, page log
"I WUl Keep My Part of the Bargain"
Tad, as he was universally called, almost always accompanied
his father upon the various excursions down the Potomac.
Once on the way to Fortress Monroe, he became very troublesome.
The President was much engaged in conversation with the party
who accompanied him, and he at length said :
" Tad, if you wiU be a good boy, and not disturb me any more
tiU we get to Fortress Monroe, I wiU give you a dollar. "

576 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
The hope of reward was effectual for a while in securing silence,
but, boy-like. Tad soon forgot his promise, and was as noisy as ever.
Upon reaching their destination, however, he said very promptly:
" Father, I AA-ant my dollar. "
Mr. Lincoln turned to him with the inquiry :
"Tad, do you think you have earned it?"
"Yes, " Avas the sturdy reply.
Mr. Lincoln looked at him half reproachfully for an instant,
and then taking from his pocket a dollar note, he said :
" Well, my son, at any rate I Avill keep my part of the bargain."
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 93.
"Would to God This Dinner Were with Our Poor Prisoners in
Andersonville!"
When we reached the left of the line Ave turned off toward the
hospitals, which were quite extensive and kept in most admirable
order by my medical director. Surgeon McCormack.
The President passed through all the wards, stopping and
speaking very kindly to some of the poor fellows as they lay on their
cots, and occasionally administered a few words of commendation
to the ward master.
Sometimes when reaching a patient who showed much suffering
the President's eyes Avould glisten with tears. The effect of his
presence upon these sick men was wonderful, and his visit did great
good, for there was no medicine which was equal to the cheerfulness
which his visit so largely inspired.
I accompanied him to Fort Monroe, and afterward to Fort
Wool, Avhich is on the middle ground between the channels at Hamp
ton Roads. As we sat at dinner, before we took the boat for Wash
ington, his mind seemed to be preoccupied, and he hardly did
justice to the best dinner our resources could provide for him.
I said, " I hope you are not unweU; you do not eat, Mr. President."
" I am weU enough, " was the reply, " but would to God this dinner
or provisions like it were with our poor prisoners in Andersonville."
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin F. Butler. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 148.
"Brother Greeley" as Peace Commissioner
One of the cleverest minor political moves which Mr. Lincoln
ever made was an appointment he once gave Horace Greeley. Mr.
Greeley never approved of Mr. Lincoln's manner of conducting the

LINCOLN AND GRANT 577
War, and he sometimes abused the President roundly for his delibera
tion. As the War went on, Greeley grew mpre and more irritable,
because the Administration did not make peace on some terms.
Finally, in July, 1S64, he received a letter from a pretended agent
of the Confederate authorities in Canada, saying :
" I am authorized to state to you for your use only, not the
public, that two ambassadors of Davis and Company are now in
Canada with full and complete powers for a peace, and Mr. Sanders
requests that you come on immediately to me at Cataract House to
have a private interview; or, if you will send the President's pro
tection for him and two friends, they will come on and meet you.
He says the whole matter can be consummated by me, them, and
President Lincoln. "
This letter was followed the next day by a telegram, saying:
" Will you come here? Parties have full power. "
Upon receiving this letter, Mr. Greeley wrote to President
Lincoln, more or less in the strain of the articles that he had pub
lished in the Tribune. He complained bitterly of the way the
business of the Government was managed in the great crisis, and
told the President that-now there was a way open to peace.
Mr. Lincoln immediately responded by asking Mr. Greeley to be
himself the representative and to go to Niagara Falls.
" If you can find any person anywhere, " the President Avrote,
" professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing,
for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment
of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me
with you, and that if he really brings such proposition he shall at
the least have safe conduct Avith the paper (and Avithout publicity,
if he chooses) to the point where you shaU have meet him. The
same, if there be two or more persons."
Mr. Greeley went to Niagara, but his mission ended in nothing
except that the poor man, led astray by too great confidence, faUed
in his undertaking, and was almost universaUy laughed at. I saw
the President not long after that, and he said, with a funny twinkle
in his eye:
" I sent Brother Greeley a commission. I guess I. am about
even vrith him now. "
Recollections of the Civil War. Charles A. Dana, page 178.

578 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

Lincoln's Sublime Confidence in Grant
Upon the AA^hole, the summer of 1864 was the most discouraging
period of the Avar. Battle had foUoAved upon battle ; our soldiers
were laying down their lives in unnumbered thousands, and still
resistance was strong. Vigorous leaders in the South were resolute,
and their people responded to them with remarkable vigor and
determination. Disaffection had grown in the North. Confederate
agencies were at work on Canadian soil* Lincoln's own friends had
begun to criticise him, — sometimes for being too slow, sometimes
for being too fast. The disaffection began to organize. True, he
had been renominated, but there was an effort making in some
quarters to find some one else to run, as it was declared, to save the
Union. Of all this the President spoke freely. To me, as to others who
hav^e recorded the phrase, he
remarked that he "thought
it might be risky, — swapping
horses in mid-stream. " .
" Do you know, " queried
the President, "what General
Grant thinks of the effort now
making to nominate him
From Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen. L J j '
FACSIMILE OF PASS BY LINCOLN Has he spokcu of it to you? "
I answered that I knew
nothing ; that I had been so far away from Grant since the opening
of the campaign that I had not heard what he thought.
"Well," said Lincoln, "the disaffected are trying to get him
to run, but I don't think they can do it. If he is the great general
Ave think he is, he must have some consciousness of it, and know
that he cannot be satisfied with himself, and secure the credit due
for his great generalship, if he does not finish his job. I do not
believe, " he repeated, "that they can get him to run. " . .
It was distinctly not the personal rivalry with Grant which
Mr. Lincoln dreaded, but rather the loss which our cause would
suffer if Grant could be induced to go into politics before the mili-
tarv situation was secure. This the President made unmistakably
plain to me. His confidence in Grant was one of the finest things

Pe>X?>o A/^*^ ife;;#x*-^

LINCOLN AND GRANT 579
I ever witnessed. The generals, he said, had failed him, one after
the other, until Grant had come to the front.
" Before Grant took coi-nmand of the Eastern forces, " said the
President, "we did not sleep at night here in Washington. We
began to fear the Rebels Avould take the Capital, and once in posses
sion of that, we feared that foreign countries might acknowledge
the Confederacy. Nobody could foresee the evil that might come
from the destruction of records' and of property. But since Grant
has assumed command on the Potomac, I have made up my mind
that whatever it is possible to have done, Grant will do, and what
ever he doesn't do, I don't believe is to be done. And now," he
added with emphasis, " Ave sleep at night. "
Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, John Eaton. Ph.D., LL.D., page 184.
The President in the Streets of the Capital
August 12th (1864). I see the President almost every day,
as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of
town. He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season,
but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north of
the city, the Soldiers' Home, a United States military establish
ment. I saw him this morning about 8.30 coming in to business,
riding on Vermont Avenue, near L Street. He always has a com
pany of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn and held
upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against his
personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party
makes no show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle
generally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dressed in
plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and
looks about as ordinary in attire, etc., as the commonest man. A
lieutenant, with yellow stripes, rides at his left, and following
behind, two by two, come the cavalry men, in their yellow-striped
jackets. They are generally going at a slow trot, as that is the
pace set 'them by the one they wait upon. The sabres and accoutre
ments clank, and the entirely unornamental cortege, as it trots
towards Lafayette Square, arouses no sensation, only some curious
stranger stops and gazes. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's
dark brown face, with the deep-cut lines, the eyes always look to
me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We have got so
that we exchan2:e bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes the

58o THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always
accompany him, with draAvn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out
evenings — and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early —
he turns off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the
Secretary of War, on K Street, and holds conference there. If in
his barouche, I can see from my window he does not alight, but sits
in his vehicle, and Mr. Stanton comes out to attend him. Some
times one of his sons (Tad), a boy of ten or twelve, accompanies
him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in the summer I occa
sionally saw the President and his Avife, toward the latter part of
the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride through the
city. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in complete black, with a long
crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses,
and they nothing extra. They once passed me very close, and I saw
the President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his
look, though abstracted, happened to be directed steadily in my
eye. He bowed and. smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well
the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures
have caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this
man's face. There is something else there. One of the great
portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.
specimen Days, Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works, page 43.
Lincoln's War Despatches
During the entire War, the files of the War Department tele
graph office were punctuated with short, pithy despatches from
Lincoln. For instance, on May 24, 1862, Mr. Lincoln sent ten or
twelve telegrams to various generals; on May 25, as many more;
and from one to a dozen on nearly every succeeding day for months.
It is also worthy of remark that Lincoln's numerous telegrams, even
those sent by him during his two weeks ' visit to City Point in March
and April, 1S65, and the less than a half dozen he sent after his
return to Washington, were almost without exception in his own
handwriting, his copy being remarkably neat and legible, with
seldom an erasure or correction.
While Mr. Lincoln was sometimes critical and even sarcastic
when events moved slowly, or when unsatisfactory results that
seemed to be demanded by the immediate conditions were lacking,

LINCOLN AND GRANT 581
yet he never failed to commend when good news came, as in the
following : "August 17, 1864, 10.30 A.M.
"Lieutenant-General Grant, City Point, Va. : — I have seen
your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold
where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog
grip and chew and choke as much as possible. "A. Lincoln."
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, David Homer Bates, page 123.
Tad's Tantrum and How His Father Quieted It
The day after the review of Burnside's division, some photog
raphers from Brady's gallery came up to the White House to make
some stereoscopic studies for me of the President's office. They
requested a dark closet in which to develop pictures ; and without
a thought that I was infringing upon anybody's rights, I took them
to an unoccupied room of which little Tad had taken possession
a few days before, and, with the aid of a couple of servants, had
fitted up as a miniature theater, with stage, curtains, orchestra,
stalls, parquet, and aU. Knowing that the use required would
interfere with none of his arrangements, I led the way to this
apartment. Everything went on well, and one or two pictures had been
taken, when suddenly there Avas an uproar. The operator came
back to the office, and said that Tad had taken great offense at the
occupation of his room wdthout his consent, and had locked the
door, refusing all admission. The chemicals had been taken inside
and there was no way of getting at them, he having carried off the
key. In the midst of this conversation Tad burst in in a fearful
passion. He laid all the blame upon me, — said that I had no right
to use his room, and that the men should not go in even to get their
things. He had locked the door, and they should not go there
again — " they had no business in his room ! "
Mr. Lincoln had been sitting for a photograph, and was stiU in
the chair. He said, very mildly :
" Tad, go and unlock the door. "
Tad went off muttering into his mother's room, refusing to
obey. I followed him into the passage, but no coaxing would

S82 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
pacify him. Upon my return to the President, I found him still
sitting patiently in the chair, from which he had not risen. He said :
" Has not the boy opened that door? "
I replied that we could do nothing with him — he had gone off
in a great pet. Mr. Lincoln's lips came together firmly, and then,
suddenly rising, he strode across the passage with the air of one
bent on punishment, and disappeared in the domestic apartments.
Directly he returned with the key to the theater, which he unlocked
himself. "There," said he, "go ahead; it is all right now."
He then went back to his office, followed by myself, and
resumed his seat.
"Tad," said he, half apologetically, "is a peculiar child. He
was violently excited when I went to him. I said, 'Tad, do you
know you are making your fa'ther a great deal of trouble?' He
burst into tears, instantly giving me up the key. ' '
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 91.
"The Madam Knew Nothing of Him Whatever"
The party consisted of a lady and two gentlemen. She had
come to ask that her husband, who was a prisoner of war, might be
permitted to take the oath and be released from confinement. To
secure a degree of interest on the part of the President, one of the
gentlemen claimed to be ah acquaintance of Mrs. Lincoln 
The President proceeded to ask what position the lady's husband
held in the Rebel service.
"Oh, " said she, "he was a captain. "
"A captain!" rejoined Mr. Lincoln, "indeed! — rather too big a
fish to set free simply upon his taking the oath. If he was an
officer, it is proof positive that he has been a zealous Rebel ; I can
not release him. "
Here the lady's friend reiterated the assertion of his acquaint
ance with Mrs. Lincoln. Instantly the President's hand was upon
the bell-rope. An usher answered the summons.
"Cornelius, take this man's name to Mrs. Lincoln, and ask her
what she knows of him. "
The boy promptly returned with the reply that " the Madam"
(as she was called by the servants) knew nothing of him whatever.
The man said it was very strange.

LINCOLN AND GRANT 583
" WeU, it is just as I expected, " said the President. The party
made one more attempt to enlist his sympathy, but without effect.
"It is of no use," was the reply; "I cannot release him."
The trio withdrew, the lady in high displeasure.
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 40.
A Whimsical Excuse for Granting a Pardon
As Lieutenant-Governor Ford, of Ohio, entered the White
House his attention was attracted by a poorly-clad young woman
who was violently sobbing. . . .
Her story was this: She and her brother were foreigners, and
orphans. They had been in this country several years. Her
brother enlisted in the army, but, through bad infiuences, was in
duced to desert. He was captured, tried, and sentenced to be
shot — the old story. The poor girl had obtained the signatures of
some persons A-.'ho had formerly known him to a petition for a par
don, and, alone, had come to Washington to lay the case before
the President. Thronged as the waiting-rooms always were, she
had passed the long hours of two days trying in vain to get an
audience, and had at length been ordered away by the servants.
Mr. Ford made the young woman accompany him into the
President's office. When they were seated he said to her:
"When the President comes back he will sit down in that arm
chair. I shaU get up to speak to him, and as I do so you must
force yourself betvveen us, and insist upon his examining your
papers, telling him it is a case of life and death."
These instructions were carried out to the letter. Mr. Lincoln
v-'as at first somewhat surprised at the apparent forwardness of
the young woman, but, observing her distress, he ceased convers
ing with his friend, and commenced an examination of the document
she had placed in his hands. Glancing from it to the face of the
petitioner, whose tears had broken foith afresh, he studied its ex
pression for a moment, and then his eye fell upon her scanty but
neat diess. Instantly his face lighted up.
"My poor girl," said he, "you have come here with no Gov
ernor, or Senator, or member of Congress, to plead your cause. You
seem honest and truthful, — I'll be whipped if I don't pardon your
brother — for," he added with much emphasis, "you don't wear
hoops!" Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 295.

584 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Mrs. Bixby Receives Her Three Sons Again as from the Dead
For this single sheet on which is written, in the great War
President's familiar hand, a collector would gladly pay many
hundreds of dollars. It will go down to posterity as one of the
finest expressions of condolence and sympathy ever penned in our
language 
Yet, while recognizing the beauty of Lincoln's letter, the
investigator of historical facts must find that, by a chain of curious
circumstances, the letter was written under a misapprehension;
that the woman to whom it was addressed had not lost five sons in
the War, although she doubtless believed, at the time, that she had ;
and, although five Bixby brothers served their country in the great
struggle, only two lost their lives in it 
On September 24, 1864, Adjutant-General William Schouler,
in a report to Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, submitted the
following suggestions regarding Mrs. Lydia Bixby of Boston :
" About ten days ago Mrs. Bixby came to my office and showed
me five letters from five different company commanders, and each
letter informed the poor woman of the death of one of her sons.
Her last remaining son was recently killed in the fight on the
Weldon railroad. . Each of her sons, by his good conduct
had been made a sergeant. ' '
To this report Governor Andrew applied this indorsement :
" This is a case so remarkable that I really wish a
letter might be written her by the President of the United States,
taking notice of so well deserved a noble mother of five dead heroes. "
In accordance with this recommendation. President Lincoln .
. turned aside from the overwhelming cares and anxieties of
his high place of responsibility and duty, and indited the now
famous letter to Mrs. Bixby.
A Rare Lincoln Letter and Its Curious Story, Boston Sunday Globe, April 12, 1908.
[Note. — Through the confusing of two famiUes of Bixbys, the
error occurred. Mrs. Lydia Bixby, after receiving the treasured
letter, had the unspeakable joy of receiving three of her sons back
as from the grave. This beautiful letter is given in facsimile on
the opposite page. — W. W,]

• e^ f7?i^ tUc^, (iiOJt^. 0\ci^^
^fo^ -'2«^^.n,-*.tA^-^^^*H^.- (LjL j C«..wk^ /ty.,x^
(r/* ye^c -fr-a»*<*i></»'wfc-w^^ fltvi-©^ ^AoiM-t. Mn^ -w*-^ -^'^ C'^JUT'^^y^.t^e'C
'7>v.e.^v>v«-t^ vfi^liju £ov*^ 0,>\,^^cU, £»-<^^ Ol^'^^^oL 'tiCi, .,^ott*n»>^ -fiyr^.'^i*.
:;t!^i,ec*:: ^Jv^t^ff -^ ^<'~*^ -^^ -^^-^ J^colo^ J^ C»St£^ v„ j^-vut^^r^.^U^
LINCOLN'S FAMOOS LETTER TO A BOSTON MOTHER
A copy of this letter hangs on the wall in Brasenose College, Oxford University, England, as a model of
pure and exquisite diction which has never been excelled.

(585)

CHAPTER XXII
Renominated, Elected, Inaugurated
"When the Presidential 'Grub' Gets Inside of a Man!"
When he Avas a candidate for renomination he did not disguise
his anxiety to remain in the White House for four years more, to
finish, as he expressed it, the great job the people had given him
to do. It was not Fremont he feared, nor the Wade-Davis Manifesto,
nor was he afraid of the numerous and powerful malcontents inside
his OAA'n party, headed by Chase and Greeley. But he did fear, as he
told me, that General Grant's name would be sprung upon the
Baltimore convention. Indeed, such an effort AA'as made, and
Missouri did cast her solid vote for Grant for President, but Grant
wisely and stubbornly refused to countenance this movement, and
by telegraph forbade it . The President learned that one of Grant's
staff was at Willard's Hotel. He sent his carriage. The officer was
brought to the White House and ushered into the library. Lincoln
said : "Colonel, does Grant want to be President? "
" No, sir, " quickly replied the staff officer.
" Do you know for certain? "
" Yes, I do. You knoAv how close I have been to Grant for three
years. That he has the last infirmity of noble minds, ambition, I
cannot deny. There may be lurking in his mind thoughts of the
Presidency in the dim future. But right well I know, Mr. Lincoln,
that he is so loyal to you, to whom he OAves so much, that there is no
power on earth that can drag his name into this Presidential canvass.
McClellan's career was a lesson to him. He said to me, within a
AA'eek, 'I regard Abraham Lincoln as one of the world's greatest
men, and he is without question the greatest man I ever met.'
Grant's whole soul, Mr. Lincoln, is bent on your re-election, and his
one fixed idea is under your lead as President, to conquer the
RebeUion, and aid you in restoring and rebuilding the country and
perpetuating the Union. " (586)

RENOMIN.ATED, ELECTED, INAUGUR.ATED 587
"Ah, Colonel," said Lincoln, "you have lifted an aAAfful load
from my mind. I was afraid of Grant, because we are all human;
although I would rather be beaten by him than by any living man.
When the Presidential grub gets inside of a man it hides itself and
burrows deep. That basilisk is sure to kill. "
Recollections of Lincoln, James M. Scovel. Lippincatt' s Magazine, Vol. LXIII, page 282.
How Secretary Chase Took Advantage of His Position
When Lincoln's supporters called his attention to the practices
by which the man in the Treasury was advancing his political for
tunes, at the expense of the Administration, he told them :
" I have determined so far as possible to shut my eyes to every
thing of the sort. Mr. Chase makes a good Secretary, and I shall
keep him where he is. If he becomes President, all right. I hope
we may never have a Avorse man. ' '
Then, turning to the less pleasing aspect of the affair, he con
tinued :
" I have observed with regret his plan of strengthening himself.
Whenever he sees that an important matter is troubling me, if I
am compelled to decide in a way to give offense to a man of some
influence, he always ranges himself in opposition to me and per
suades the victim that he has been hardly dealt with, and that he
would have arranged it very differently. It was so with General
Fremont, with General Hunter when I annulled his hasty proc
lamation, with General Butler Avhen he was recalled from New
Orleans, with these Missouri people when they called the other day.
I am entirely indifferent as to his success or failure in these schemes,
so long as he does his duty at the head of the Treasury Department. "
These citations, furthermore, would be i-ncomplete without one
of those homely stories whereby the President was Avont to point his
remarks. He narrated it to Henry J. Raymond Avhen the famous
editor called his attention to the danger that might arise from
Chase's candidacy.
"Raymond, " said he, "you were brought up on a farm, were
you not? Then you know what a 'chin fiy' is. My brother and
I were once plowing corn on a farm, I driving the horse, and he
holding the plow. The horse was lazy, but on one occasion rushed
across the field so that I with my long legs could scarcely keep pace

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

with him. On reaching the end of the furrow, I found an enormous
'chin fly ' fastened upon the horse and I knocked it off. My brother
asked me what I did that for. I told him I didn't want, the old
horse bitten in that way. 'Why, ' said my brother, 'that's all that
made him go ! '
"Now, if Mr. Chase has a Presidential 'chin fly' biting him,
I'm not going to knock it off, if it wiU only make his Department
go."
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 208.
[Secretary Chase tendered and withdrew his resignation once
too often, for Lincoln finally surprised him and the whole country
by accepting it one day in June, 1864. The President shortly
nominated Chase for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, an office which he filled with distinguished ability
until his death in 1S73. — W. W.]
"Never Get Between the Woman's SkUlet and the Man's Ax-Helve"
The strifes and jars in the Republican party at this time(i864)
disturbed him more than anything else, but he avoided taking sides
with any faction. I asked him why he did not take some
pronounced position in one trying encounter between two very
prominent Republicans.
" I learned, " said he, " a great many years ago, that in a fight
between man and wife, a third party should never get betvi^een the
woman's skillet and the man's ax-helve. "
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, David R. Locke (" Petroleum V. Nasby "). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 45 t-
"Easier Than to Raise Another Million Soldiers"
Lincoln was a supreme politician. He understood politics
because he understood human nature. I had an illustration of
this in the spring of 1864. The Administration had decided that
the Constitution of the United States should be amended so that
slavery should be prohibited. This was not only a change in our
national policy, it was also a most important military measure. It
was intended not merely as a means of abolishing slavery for
ever, but as a means of affecting the judgment and the feelings
and the anticipations of those in rebellion. It was believed that

'Hr

'^'N-

'^¦- '—' liff^-' >^-'^ XltT'^

f^-

f
From originals in the collection of Major WilUam H. Lambert.
FACSIMILES OF TWO LETTERS IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A CANE
The President was unable to decipher the name of the sender (Wm. O. Snider), so he cut out the signature and pasted it at the top of his reply, and enclosed
it to Governor Curtin for safe delivery.
RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED

589

such an amendment to the Constitution would be equivalent to
new armies in the field, that it would be worth at least a million
men, that it Avould be an intel
lectual army that would tend to
paralyze the enemy and break the
continuity of his ideas.
In order thus to amend the
Constitution, itwas necessary first
to have the proposed amendment
approved by three-fourths of the
States. When that question came
to be considered, the issue was
seen to be so close that one State
more was necessary. The State
of Nevada w^as organized and
admitted to the Union to answer
that purpose. I have sometimes
heard people complain of Nevada
as superfluous and petty, not
big enough to be a State; but
when I hear that complaint, I
always hear Abraham Lincoln saying:
"It is easier to admit Nevada than to raise another million
soldiers." Recollections of the Civil War, Charles A. Dana, page 174.
"I Suppose I Should Have Done the Same Fool Thing"
I was in Washington once more in 1864. My busi
ness was to secure a pardon for a young man from Ohio, Avho had
deserted under rather peculiar circumstances. When he enlisted
he was under engagement to a young girl, and went to the front
very certain of her faithfulness, as a young man should be, and he
made an excellent soldier. . ' It is needless to say that the
young girl had another lover whom she had rejected for the young
yolunteer. Taking advantage of the absence of the
favored suitor, the discarded one renewed his suit with great
vehemence, and rumors reached the young man at the front that
his love had gone over to the enemy, and that he was in danger of
losing her altogether.

CHARLES A. DANA
Assistant Secretary of War under
Lincoln and Stanton.

590 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
He immediately applied for a furlough, which was refused him,
and, half mad and reckless of consequences, deserted. He found the
information he had received to be partially true, but he came in
time. He married the girl, but was immediately arrested as a
deserter, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be shot.
I stated the circumstances, giving the young fellow a good
character, and the President at once signed a pardon.
" I want to punish the young man — probably in less than a
year he will wish I had withheld the pardon. We can't tell, though.
I suppose Avhen I was a young man I should have done the same
fool thing."
Reminiscences of .Abraham Lincoln, Pavid R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Kasby"). Edited by Allen
Thorndike Rice, page 449.
"Mr. Secretary, It Will Have to Be Done"
I will cite one instance in relation to Stanton :
After compulsory military service was resorted to, States and
districts tried to fill their quotas, and save their own citizens from
being drafted into the army, by voting bounties to buy men where-
ever they could be found. The agent appointed by a county in one
of the Middle States, and supplied with bounty money, learned that
some Confederate prisoners of war at Chicago were about to be
released and enlisted in our army for service against the Indians in
the Northwest. The thrifty thought occurred to the agent to pay
these prisoners a bounty for what they were going to do without
any pay at all, and in return for this payment have them credited
as soldiers furnished by his county. Being an acquaintance of
Lincoln, the agent obtained from him an order to have the men
credited as desired. But the Secretary of War refused to have the
credits aUowed. Indignant and disappointed, the agent returned
to the President, who reiterated the order, but without effect.
Then Lincoln went in person to Stanton's office, and I was caUed
there by the latter to state the facts in the case.
I reported to the two high officials, as I had previously done to
the Secretary alone, that these men already belonged to the United
States, being prisoners of war ; that they could not be used against
the Confederates ; that they had no relation whatever to the county
to which it was proposed they should be credited ; that all that was
necessary toward enlisting them in our army for Indian service was

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 591
the Government's release of them as prisoners of war; that to give
them bounty and credit them to a county which OAved some of its
own men for service against the Confederates would waste money
and deprive the army operating against a powerful enemy of that
number of men, etc.
Stanton said :
" Now, Mr. President, those are the facts, and you must see
that your order cannot be executed. "
Lincoln sat upon a sofa, with his legs crossed, and did not say a
word untU the Secretary's last remark. Then he said in a someAvhat
positive tone :
"Mr. Secretary, I reckon you'll 'have to execute the order."
Stanton replied with asperity :
" Mr. President, I cannot do it. The order is an improper one,
and I cannot execute it. "
Lincoln fixed his eye upon Stanton, and in a firm voice, and
with an accent that clearly showed his determination, he said :
" Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done. "
Stanton then realized that he was overmatched. He had made
a square issue with the President and been defeated, notwith
standing the fact that he was in the right. Upon an intimation
from him I withdrew and did not witness his surrender. A few
minutes after I reached my office I received instructions from the
Secretary to carry out the President's order. Stanton never men
tioned the subject to me afterward, nor did I ever ascertain the
special, and no doubt sufficient, reasons which the President had
for his action in the case.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, General Janies B. Fry, Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice.
page 396. The Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes
One of Lincoln's favorite poems was Holmes's "Last Leaf;"
and one November day we were driving out to the Soldiers ' Home,
near Washington, when the aspect of the scene recalled the lines to
his mind. He slowly and with excellent judgment recited the
whole poem. Enlarging upon the pathos, wit and humor of Holmes,
I found that the President had never seen a copy of the genial
doctor's works, so far as he could remember, although he was not
certain that he had not. I offered to lend him my copy of the
poems, a little blue-and-gold book ; and the next time I went to the

592 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
White House I took it with me. About a Aveek after leaving the
book Avith the President, I called at the house one evening, and
finding him alone, we settled down for a quiet chat. He took from
a draAver in his table the blue-and-gold Holmes, and went over the
book Avith me with much gusto, reading or reciting several poems
that had struck his fancy. He expressed his surprise at finding
that some of the verses which he admired most had been drifting
about in the newspapers Avithout the name of the author attached
to them; and it was in this Avay, he said, that he had found
"The Last Leaf," although he did not know that Dr. Holmes was
the author. Finally, he said that he liked " Lexington" as well as
anything in the book, "The Last Leaf" alone excepted, and he
began to read the poem ; but when he came to the stanza beginning,
' ' Green be the graA^es where her martyrs are lying !
Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their rest, "
his voice faltered, and he gave me the book with the whispered
request, "You read it; I can't." Months afterward, when several
ladies were in the Red Parlor one evening, calling upon Mrs. Lincoln,
he recited that poem without missing a word so far as I could
remember it. And yet I do not believe he ever saw the text of
"Lexington" except during the few busy days when he had
my book.
Glimpses of Lincoln in War Time, Noah Brooks. The Century Magazine, Vol. XXVII, January,
1895-, page 46. Will the Negro Soldier Fight?
It had been represented to the President that the negro soldier
Avould not fight. Quick as a flash Mr. Lincoln turned to the " doubt
ing Thomas ' ' and said :
"The Fifty -fourth Massachusetts, under Colonel Shaw, was
at Fort Wagner. The fighting was hot, and the firing from the fort
was very disastrous to our boys. The colors were shot away, and
the colonel asked for a man who would bring back the flag. A black
soldier came forward and agreed to return with the flag. He
crawled on his hands and knees, and, wrapping the colors around his
body, crawled back, riddled with bullets. And three cheers went up
for the color-bearer of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. Do you
tell me, " continued Mr. Lincoln, "that a black soldier won't fight?"
The A'isitor Avas sUenced.

RENOMIN.ATED, ELECTED, INAUGUR.ATED 593
He cited another instance, — thus: A colonel on the CA^e of
battle gave his color-bearer the regimental fiag, saying, " Defend it,
protect it, die for it, if need be, but never surrender it. " The black
color-bearer replied, "Colonel, I will return this fiag with honor, or
/ will report to God the reason why. " He died in defending the fiag.
Personal Recollections of .Abraham Lincoln, James M. Scovel. Lippincatt' s Magazine, Vol.
XLIV, August, 1889, page 246,
"MediU, You Are Acting Like a Coward"
Joseph MediU, for many years editor of the Chicago Tribune,
not long before his death, told the following story about the "talk
ing to" President Lincoln gave himself (MediU) and tvvo other
Chicago gentlemen who went to Washington to see about reducing
Chicago's quota of troops after the call for extra men was made by
'the President in 1864:
"When the call for extra troops came, Chicago
revolted. She had already sent 22,000 up to that time, and was
drained. When the new call came there were no young men to go.
The citizens held a mass meeting and appointed
three persons, of whom I was one, to go to Washington and ask
Stanton to give Cook County a new enrolment.
" On reaching Washington, we went to Stanton with our state
ment. He refused entirely to give us the desired aid. Then we
went to Lincoln.
" 'I cannot do it,' he said, 'but I will go with you to the War
Department, and Stanton and I will hear both sides. '
"So we all went over to the War Department together.
Stanton and General Fry were there, and they, of course, contended
that the quota should not be changed.' The argument went on for
some time and was finally referred to Lincoln, who had been sitting
silently listening.
"I shall never forget how he suddenly lifted his head and
turned on us a black and frowning face.
"'Gentlemen,' he said in a voice fuU of bitterness, 'after
Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing war on
this country. '
" ' You called for war until we had it. You called for emanci
pation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked, you
have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call
38

594 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
for men, which I have made to carry out the war which you have
demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a
right to expect better things of you. '
" ' Go home and raise your 6,000 extra men. And you, MedUl,
you are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune have had
more infiuence than any other paper in the Northwest in making
this Avar. You can infiuence great masses, and yet you cry to be
spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and
send us those men. '
"I couldn't say anything. It was the first time I ever was
whipped, and I didn't have an answer. We all got up and went out,
• and when the door closed one of my colleagues said :
" 'Well, gentlemen, the "old man" is right. We ought to be
ashamed of ourselves. Let us never say anything about this, but
go home and raise the men.'
" And we did — 6,000 men — making 28,000 in the War from a city
of 1 56,000. But there might have been crape on every door, almost
in Chicago, for every family had lost a son or a husband. I lost two
brothers. It was hard for the mothers. "
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 187.
The Enemy's Strength Overestimated
Towards the close of the great conflict, surmises upon the
length of time to which the War might be protracted were based on
estimates of the enemy's strength. On being asked, point-blank,
how strong he deemed the Confederates to be, the President replied
offhand :
"They have some 1,200,000 in the field."
"Is it possible! How did you find that out?"
" Why, " said Lincoln, " every Union general I ever heard tell-
when he was licked — says the Rebels outnurnbered him three or
four to one; now, we have at the present time about 400,000 men,
and three times that number would be 1,200,000, wouldn't it?"
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 189.
"How Clean You Shave !"
His skill in parrying troublesome questions was wonderful,
I was in Washington at a critical period of the War, when the late
John Ganson, of Buffalo, one of the ablest lawyers in our State, and

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGUR.ATED 595
who, though elected as a Democrat, supported all Mr. Lincoln's
war measures, called on him for explanations.
Mr. Ganson was very bald, with a perfectly smooth face, and
had a most direct and aggressive way of stating his views, or of
demanding what he thought he was entitled to. He said :
"Mr. Lincoln, I have supported all your measures, and think
I am entitled to your confidence. We are voting and acting in the
dark in Congress, and I demand to know — I think I have a right to
ask and to know — ^what is the present situation, and what are the
prospects and conditions of the several campaigns and armies. "
Mr. Lincoln looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then
said: "Ganson, how clean you shave!"
Most men would have been offended, but Ganson was too broad
and intelligent a man not to see the point and retire at once from
the field.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Chauncey M. Depew. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page
432. Forty Falsehoods to One Fact
It has been well said by a profound critic of Shakespeare, and
it occurs to me as very appropriate in this connection, that "the
spirit which held, the woe of Lear and the tragedy of Hamlet would
have broken had it not also had the humor of The Merry Wives of
Windsor or the merriment of a Midsummer-Night' s Dream. This is
as true of Mr. Lincoln as it was of Shakespeare. . . Mr.
Beecher once observed to me . that he " thought in figures, "
or, in other words, that an argument habitually took on that form
in his mind. This was pre-eminently true of Mr. Lincoln. The
"points" of his argument were driven home in this way as they
could be in no other. In the social circle this had full play. I
never knew him to sit down with a friend for a five minutes' chat
without being " reminded " of one or more incidents about somebody
alluded to in the course of the conversation.
In a corner of his desk he kept a copy of the latest humorous
work; and it was frequently his habit, when greatly fatigued,
annoyed, or depressed, to take this up and read a chapter, with
great relief.

596 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
One Saturday evening I was Avith him from seven o'clock till
nearly twelve. It had been one of his most trying days, and
he was almost worn out. Pushing everything aside, he said
to one of the party :
" Have you seen the 'Nasby' papers? "
" No, I have not, " was the reply, " who is Nasby? "
"There is a chap out in Ohio, " returned the President, "who
has been writing a series of letters in the newspapers over the
signature of /Petroleum V. Nasby.' Some one sent me a pamphlet
collection of them the other day. I am going to write to 'Petroleum'
to come down here, and I intend to tell him if he will communicate
his talent to me, I will swap places with him!"
Thereupon he arose, went to a drawer in his desk, taking out
the "Letters" sat down and read one to the company, finding in
the enjoyment of it the temporary excitement and relief which
another man would have found in a glass of wine.
Just here I may say with propriety, and feel that it is due to
Mr. Lincoln's memory to state, that during the entire period of my
stay in Washington, after witnessing his intercourse with almost all
classes of people, including governors, senators, members of Con
gress, officers of the army, and familiar friends, I cannot recollect
to have heard him relate a circumstance to any of them that would
have been out of place uttered in a lady's drawing-room! I am
aware that a different impression prevails, founded, it may be, in
some instances upon facts ; but where there is one fact of the kind
I am persuaded that there are forty falsehoods, at least. At any
rate, what I have stated is voluntary testimony, from a standpoint,
I submit, entitled to respectful consideration. "
Reminiscences of Lincoln, Henry J. Raymond, page 228.
Glad of "the Chance to Finish the Big Job"
He was naturally a doubter. He had a " spirit touched to fine
issues," and felt keenly and intensely the woes of others. Dur
ing the spring following Curtin 's re-election as governor of Pennsyl
vania, I found the President, fresh as a May morning, looking out
of the east window of the White House, on the fragrant, opening
bloom of the lilac bushes beneath his window. Only that day he
had received the assurance that the spirit of nationality had proved

RENOMIN.ATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 597
stronger than the power of fiction, and was fully informed that
Chase, Ben Wa^e, and "Pathfinder" Fremont were aU out of the
Presidential race, and his nomination before the June convention
to be held at Baltimore would be practically unanimous. As I
entered the room, he rose and pushed a chair, with his feet, across
the room, close to his own. There was a suspicious moisture in his
eyes as he grasped both of my hands in both of his own (a habit of
Mr. Lincoln's when greatly moved by joy or sorrow).
" God bless you, young man, " he exclaimed. " How glad I am
you came! This is the happiest day of my life; for I no longer
doubt the practical unanimity of the people, Avho are willing I
should have the chance to finish the big job I undertook nearly
four years ago. "
Personal Reminiscences of Abraliam Lincoln, James M. Scovel. Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XLIV,
August, 1889, page 249. Confederates, not "Rebels"
While guiding the President through the Washington hospitals.
Dr. Jerome Walker, of Brooklyn, turned him from a ward contain
ing prisoners, saying: "They are Rebels."
Whereupon Mr. Lincoln corrected him with :
"You mean ' they are Confederates.' "
Lincolnics, Henry Llewellyn Williams, page 199.
The Fremont Convention and the Cave of Adullam
There were others not so honest who, for personal reasons,
disliked the President, To these it was impossible to stand quietly
by and see Mr. Lincoln made his own successor without one last
effort to prevent it. The result of informal consultations among
them was the publication of a number of independent calls for a
mass convention of the people to meet at Cleveland, Ohio, on the
3 ist of May, a week before the assembling of the Republican Con
vention a'fc Baltimore. . The object stated in their call
was in order then and there to recommend the nomination of John
C. Fr6mont for the Presidency of the United States and to assist in
organizing for his election. They denounced "the imbecile and
vacUlating policy of the present Administration in the conduct of
the War, " etc., etc.
[Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips were expected to be

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

present, but faUed to appear. A few others, opposed to Lincoln on
personal and other grounds, participated in the -incoherent and
rather absurd " deliberations" of this petty "mass meeting." W.W.]
The whole proceeding, though it excited some indignation
among the friends of Mr. Lincoln, was regarded by the President
himself only with amusement. On the morning after the Con
vention, a friend, giving him an account of it, said that, instead of
the many thousands who had been expected, there were present at
no time more than four hundred men.
The President, struck by the number mentioned, reached for
the Bible which commonly lay on his desk, and after a moment's
search, read these Avords :
"And every one that was in distress, and every one that was
in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves
unto him ; and he became a captain over them ; and there were with
him about four hundred men." (I. Sam. xxii, 2.)
[Note. — This, it will be remembered, Avas several years in
advance of the famous reference to the Cave of Adullam in the
British Parliament.]
Abraham Lincoln: .A History, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. IX, pages 29 to 41.
"They Might Have Made a Botch of It by Trying to Swap"
These public letters [to Horace Greeley and James C. Conkling]
are Lincoln's most remarkable state papers. . By means
of them he convinced the people of his own rigid mental honesty,
put reasons for his actions into their mouths, gave them explanation,
Avhich were demonstrations. They believed in him because he had
been frank with them, and because he tried to make matters so clear
to them, used words which they could understand. . . .
Scarcely less important than these letters in convincing the people
of the wisdom of his policy Avere Lincoln's stories and sayings. In
February, 1864, just after the popular demand for his renomination
began to develop, the New York Evening Post published some two
columns of Lincoln's stories. The New York Herald jeered at the
collection as the "first electioneering document" of the campaign,
and reprinted them as a proof of the unfitness of Lincoln for the
Presidency. But jeer as it would, the Herald could not hide from
its readers the wit and philosophy of the jokes. Every one of them

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 599
had been used to explain a point or to. settle a question, and under
their laughter was concealed some of the man's soundest reasoning.
Indeed, at that very moment the Herald might have seen, if it-
had been more discerning, that it Avas a Lincoln saying going up and
do .vn the country that was serving as one of the strongest arguments
for his renomination, the remark that it was never best to swap
horses while crossing a stream. Lincoln had used it in speaking of the
danger of changing Presidents in the middle of the War. He might
have written a long message on the value of experience in a national
crisis, and it would have been meaningless to the masses ; but this
homely figure of swapping horses in the middle of the stream ap
pealed to their huriior and their common sense. It was repeated
over and over in the newspapers of the country.
The Union Convention was set for June. As the time ap
proached, Lincoln enthusiasm grew. It was fed by Grant's steady
beating back of Lee toward Richmond. The country, wild with joy,
cried out that before July Grant would be in the Confederate capital
and the War would be ended. The Union Convention
met in June. That it would nominate Lincoln was a foregone con
clusion. . Thirty States and Territories were for him, —
only one dissenting delegation, Missouri whose radical Union repre
sentatives gave twenty-two votes for Grant. On the second reading
of the vote this ballot was changed, so that the final vote stood
506 for Lincoln. The President took his renomination calmly.
"I do not allow myself to suppose," he said to a delegation
from the National Union League which came to congratulate him,
"that . they have concluded to decide that I am either the
greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded
that it is not best to swap horses while crossing a river, and have
further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might
not make a botch of it by trying to swap. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 192.
How the President Heard of His Renomination
The next evening, when I caUed on the President at home, I
was astonished by his jokingly rallying me on my failure to send
him word of his nomination. It appeared that nobody had ap
parently thought it worth whUe to telegraph him the result of the
baUoting for the Presidential nominee of the Convention. Probably

6oo THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
each of the many men who would have been glad to be the sender of
pleasant tidings to the President, but had thought that some other
man would surely anticipate him by a telegram of congratulation.
It turned out that the President, haAring business at the War
Department, met Major Eckert, superintendent of the military
bureau of telegraphs, Avho congratulated him on his nomination.
" What ! Am I renominated ? " asked the surprised chief. . .
Mr. Lincoln expressed his gratification, and asked Major Eckert if
he would kindly send word over to the White House when the
name of the candidate for Vice-President should have been agreed
upon. Lincoln, later on, Avas informed by Major Eckert that
Johnson had been nominated, and made an exclamation that
emphatically indicated his disappointment thereat. WhUe
we were talking over some of the curious details of the convention
a band came to the White House, and a messenger brought up the
information that the members of the Ohio delegation to the Balti
more Convention desired to pay their respects to the President,
whereupon he Avent to the door, hat in hand, and when the cheering
and music subsided, spoke as follows :
"Gentlemen: I am very much obliged to you for this com
pliment. I have just been saying, and as I have just said it, I will
repeat it : The hardest of all speeches which I have to make is an
answer to a serenade. I never know what to say on such occasions.
I suppose that you have done me this kindness in connection with
the action of the Baltimore Convention which has recently taken
place and with which, of course, I am very well satisfied. [Laughter
and applause.] "What we want still more than Baltimore conventions or
Presidential elections is success under General Grant. [Cries of
"Good," and applause.] I propose that you constantly bear in
mind that the support you owe to the brave officers and soldiers in
the field is of the very first importance, and we should bend all our
energies to that point.
" Now, without detaining you any longer, I propose that you
help me to close up what I am now saying with three rousing cheers
for General Grant and the officers and soldiers under his command."
The . "three rousing cheers" were given, Lincoln himself
leading off and waving his hat as enthusiastically as anybody else.
Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page isg.

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 6oi
"I'm the Longest, but McClellan's Better Looking"
One evening in September, 1864, I was invited by a few friends
to go with them to a Democratic meeting, and listen to a distin
guished orator who was to advocate the claims of McClellan. As
I could not well refuse, I agreed to go for a few minutes only. To
my surprise and annoyance, I was called on by the audience for a
speech, and the calls were so persistent that I was placed in a most
embarrassing position. Forced to say something, I contented
myself with a brief expression of my high regard for McClellan as a
soldier, and a statement of my intention to vote for him. I made
no reference to Mr. Lincoln, and soon left the hall.
Next day an order came from Secretary Stanton directing me
to be mustered out of the service. No reason was assigned, nor
opportunity given for defense. As I was and had always been an
unwavering Union man, as I had a brother and three sons in the
military service of the Union, and as I had learned that my action
at the meeting, when reported to Secretary Stanton, had made him
very angry and caused him to utter severe threats against me, I
determined to go to Washington to know the reason of this attempt
to disgrace me. As no other pretext could be given for such action,
I resolved to appeal to the President.
I gave my papers setting forth these facts into the hands of a
personal friend, a Republican member of Congress, with the request
that he would ask Mr. Lincoln whether the revocation of my com
mission was by his orders, knowledge, or consent. He did so.
The President immediately replied : " I know nothing about it.
Of course Stanton does a thousand things in his official character
which I can know nothing about, and which it is not necessary that
I should know anything about. "
Having heard the case, he then added :
" WeU, that's no reason. Andrews has as good a right to hold
on to his Democracy, if he chooses, as Stanton had to throw his
overboard. If I should muster out aU my generals who avow them
selves Democrats there would be a sad thinning out of commanding
officers in the army. No ! " he continued, "when the military duties
of a soldier are fully and faithfully performed, he can manage his
poUtics in his own way ; we've no more to do with them than with his
reUgion. TeU this officer he can return to his post, and if there is

6o2 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
no other or better reason for the order of Stanton than the one he
suspects, it shall do him no harm; the commission he holds wUl
remain as good as new. Supporting General McClellan for the Presi
dency is no violation of army regulations, and as a question of taste
in choosing between him and me, well, I'm the longest, but he's
better looking!"
And so I resumed my service, and was never afterward molested
by the Secretary of War.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, E. W. Andrews. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 516,
"I've Lost my Apple Overboard !"
During a public reception, a farmer from one of the border
counties of Virginia told the President that the Union soldiers, in
passing his farm, had helped themselves, not only to hay, but his
horse, and he hoped the President would urge the proper officer to
consider his claim immediately.
Mr. Lincoln said this reminded him of an old acquaintance of
his. Jack Chase, a lumberman on the Illinois, a steady, sober man,
and the best raftsman on the river. It was quite a trick to take the
logs over the rapids ; but he was skilful with a raft, and always kept
her straight in the channel. Finally a steamer was put on, and
Jack was made captain of her. He always used to take the wheel
going through the rapids. One day, when the boat was plunging and
wallowing along in the boiling current, and Jack's utmost vigilance
was being exercised to keep her in the narrow channel, a boy pulled
his coat tail and hailed him with :
"Say, Mister Captain! I wish you would just stop your boat
a minute — I've lost my apple overboard !' '
"Abe" Lincolns Yarns andStories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page no.
"Free from Any Taint of Personal Triumph"
About midnight on the day of the election it was certain that
Lincoln had been re-elected, and the few gentlemen left in the office
congratulated him very Avarmly on the result. Lincoln took the
matter very calmly, showing not the least elation or excitement, but
said that he would admit that he was glad to be reUeved of all
suspense, and that he Avas grateful that the verdict of the people was
likely to be so full, clear, and unmistakable that there could be no
dispute.

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED

603

About two o'clock in the morning a messenger came over to
the War Office from the White House wdth the news that a crowd of
Pennsylvanians were serenading his empty chamber, Avhereupon he
went home; and, in answer to repeated calls, he made a happy
little speech full of good feeling and cheerfulness. He wound up
his rema:rks by saying :

A CAMPAIGN POSTER IN 1864
Representing McClellan, Lincoln's Democratic rival, struggling to keep Lincoln and Davis
from rending the Union asunder.
" If I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of
personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed
to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, 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. "
Washington in Lincoln's Time, 'Noa.h.'Brooks, pa.ge 2iS,
"I BeUeve We Can Manage It Together and Make Two Loyal
Fathers Happy"
Attorney -General Bates, who w^as a Virginian by birth,
heard one day that a young Virginian, the son of an old friend, had

6o4

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

r«l

been captured across the Potomac, was a
prisoner of war and was not in good health.
Knowing the boy's father to be in his heart
a Union man, Mr. Bates conceived the idea
of having the son paroled and sent home, of
course under promise not to return to the
army. He went to see the President and
said : " I have a personal favor to ask. I
Avant you to give me a prisoner. ' '
And he told him of the case. The Presi
dent said :
" Bates, I have an almost parallel case.
The son of an old friend of mine in Illinois ran
off and entered the Rebel army. The young
fool has been captured, is a prisoner of war,
and his broken-hearted father has asked me
to send him home, promising of course to
keep him there. I have not seen my way
clear to do it, but if you and I unite our
infiuence with this Administration, I be
lieve we can manage it together and make
two loyal fathers happy. Let us make them
our prisoners. "
And he did so.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Titian J.Coffey. Edited by
Allen Thorndike Rice, page 244.
"Long Abraham" Four Years Longer
Lincoln's second election was the re
ward of his courage and genius. General
George B. McClellan, his opponent in 1864,
upon the platform that "the War is a
failure," carried but three States, New Jer
sey, Delaware and Kentucky. The States
Avhich did not think the War a failure were
those in New England, New York, Pennsyl
vania, the Western Commonwealths, West
Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas,

"3

iTu Harptr s 11 <.ll
Nov. 26, 1864
"Long Abraham a little longer"

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGUR.ATED 605
and the new State of Nevada, admitted into the Union on October
31, 1864. President Lincoln's popular majority over McClellan,
who never did much toward making the War a success, was more
than four hundred thousand.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns andStories. Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page i6i.
General Grant's Congratulations
As soon as the result of the Presidential election of 1 864 Avas
known, General Grant telegraphed from City Point his congratu
lations and added :
"The election, having passed off quietly, . . isa victory
worth more to the country than a battle won.
"U. S. Grant."
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns andStories, Edited by Col. Alex, K. McClure, page 292,
" A Pretty Mess You've Got Me Into ! "
One day, a persevering office-seeker called on Mr. Lincoln, and,
presuming on the activity he had shown in behalf of the party ticket,
asserted as a reason why the office should be given him, that he had
made Mr. Lincoln President.
" So you made me President, did you? " asked Mr. Lincoln Avith
a twinkle in his eye.
" I think I did, " said the applicant.
"Then a pretty mess you've got me into, that's all!" replied
the President, and closed the discussion.
Winnowings for Lincoln's Birthday, Agnes Mawson, page 82.
President Lincoln's Attention to Children
It was not only in matters of life and death that Mr.
Lincoln was merciful. He was kind at heart toward all the world.
I never heard him say an unkind thing about anybody. Now and
then he would laugh at something jocose or satirical that somebody
had done or said, but it was always pleasant humor. He would
never allow the wants of any man or woman to go unattended to
if he could help it. I noticed his sweetness of nature particularly
with his little son, a child at that time perhaps seven or nine years
old, who used to roam the Departments and whom everybody
called "Tad. " He had a defective palate, and couldn't speak' very
plainly. Often I have sat by his father, reporting to him some

6o6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
important matter that I had been ordered to inquire into, and he
would have this boy on his knee. WhUe he would perfectly under
stand the report, the striking thing about him was his affection for
the child.

LEADING EVENTS IN 1864
Sherman destroys Meridian, Miss  February
Grant made Lieutenant-General  March 3
Battle of the Wilderness, Va. (claimed
by both sides)  May s-7
Siege of Petersburg, Va., begun  June
The "ICearsarge" sinks the "Alabama" June 19
E rly burns Chambersburg, Pa  July 30
Confederate success at the Petersburg
Mine, Virginia  July 30
Farragut enters Mobile Bay  August s
Sherman takes Atlanta, Ga  September 2
Union victory at Winchester, Va. . . September 9
Union victory at Cedar Creek, Va.
("Sheridan's Ride")  October 19
Sherman's march from Atlanta to
Savannah  Nov. 12 to Dec. 2r
Union victory, under Thomas, at
Nashville, Jenn  Dec. 15-16
Sherman takes Savannah, Ga  Dec. 21

He was good to every
body. Once" there was a great
gathering at the White House
on New Year's Day, and all
the diplomats came in their
, uniforms, and all the officers
of the Army and Navy in
Washington were in full cos
tume. A little girl of mine
said, "Papa, couldn't you
take me over to see that ? " I
said, " Yes ; " so I took her over
and put her in a corner, where
she beheld this gorgeous show. When it was finished, I went up
to Mr. Lincoln and said, "I have a little girl here who wants to
shake hands with you. ' ' He went over to her, and took her up and
kissed her and talked to her. She will never forget it if she lives to
be a thousand years old.
Recollections of the Civil War, Charles A. Dana, page 184,
The "Man Down South" and Some Offenders
Once, at a reception in the White House, I joined the long
queue of people, shook hands with the President, received the usual
"Glad to see you, sir," and passed on. Later in the evening,
meeting me, he declared that he had not seen me before, and
explained his preoccupation of manner, while the people were
shaking hands with him, by saying that he was "thinking of a man
down South." It afterwards came out that the "man down
South" was Sherman.
Once, when a visitor used profane language in his presence, he
rose and said, " I thought Senator C. had sent me a gentleman. I
was mistaken. There is the door, and I wish you good night. "
At another time, a delegation from a distant State waited on
him with a written protest against certain appointments. The
paper contained some reflections upon the character of Senator

Reproduced, from, a steel engraving in the collection of John Brosnan.
RECEPTION IN THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE, IN 1865
General and Mrs. Grant are being presented to the President and Mrs. Lincoln. Vice-President Johnson, Admiral Farragut and Secretary Stanton are also
in the central group. Other distinguished persons are to be seen, from left to right, as follows: Secretary Seward, General Burnside, General Sher
man, General Hancock, General Halleck, General Butler, General Banks, Governor Curtin, General Meade, General Sheridan, Senator Sumner, and ¦
Secretary Welles.

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED

607

Baker, Lincoln's old and beloved friend. With great dignity, the
President said :
" This is my paper which you have given me? " Assured that
it was, he added,
" To' do with as I please? "
"Certainly, Mr, President."
Lincoln stooped to the fire-place behind him, laid it on the
burning coals, 'turned and said,
"Good day, gentlemen."
Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln, Noah Brooks. Scribner's Monthly,Vnl. XV, March. 1878, page OoS,
" Want to Know AU About Sherman's Raid ? "
Lincoln always
composed slowly, and
he often wrote and
re-wrote his more
elaborate productions
several times. I hap
pened to be with him
often while he was
composing his message
to Congress, which
was sent in while Sher
man was on his march
through Georgia.
There was much
speculation asto where
Sherman had gone,
and the secret was very
well preserved. The
President hoped, from
day to day, that Sher
man would be heard
from, or that some
thing would happen
to enlighten " and pos
sibly congratulate, the
country," as he put
it. But December came and there were no tidings trom Sher

GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

6o8 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
man, though everybody was hungry with expectation, and feverish
Avith anxiety.
The President's message was first written with pencil on stiff
sheets of white pasteboard, or box-board, a good supply of which he
kept by him. These sheets, five or six inches wicie, couM be laid
on the writer's knee, as he sat comfortably in his arm-chair, in his
favorite position, with his legs crossed. One night, taking one of
these slips out of his drawer, AA^th a great affectation of confidential
secrecy, he said :
" I expect you Avant to know all about Sherman's raid? "
Naturally I answered in the affirmative, when he said :
"Well, then, I'll read you this paragraph from my message."
The paragraph, however, was curiously non-committal, merely
referring to " General Sherman's attempted march of three hundred
miles directly through the insurgent region," and gave no indication
whatever of the direction of the march, or of the point from which
news from him was expected.
Laying the paper down and taking off his spectacles, the Presi
dent laughed heartily at my disappointment, but added, kindly,
" Well, my dear fellow, that's all that Congress will know about
it, anyhow. "
He took a simple-hearted pleasure in considering some of his
best "hits. " Occasionally, he would tell his more intimate friends
of a sharp saying that he had uttered during that day ; and once he
wrote out for publication an interview he had just had with two
ladies. . . He thought he " had got the best of the argument, "
he said, though he granted the petition of the ladies. In that
writing, I remember, he did not use capital letters when he men
tioned the days of the week ; and he said that with him punctuation
was a matter of feeling, not of education. But his punctuation was
always good, and he was addicted to what the printers call "close
punctuation." Washington in Lincoln's Time, Noah Brooks, page 2g8.
"A Useful Little Chap"
During the early part of the winter of 1864-5 ^'^ sent for me
"to hear a story. " It was written on one of his pasteboard sheets,
in pencil, and after I came into the room, he asked me to wait until
he had finished it, as it was not quite all written . I give it,
as follows :

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 609
"The President's Last, Shortest and Best Speech.
"On Thursday of last week two ladies from Tennessee came
before the President asking the release of their husbands held as
prisoners of war at Johnson's Island. They were put off till Friday,
when they came again and yrere again put off till Saturday. At
each of the interAdews one of the ladies urged that her husband was
a religious man. On Saturday the President ordered the release of
the prisoners, and then said to the lady :
' ' ' You say your husband is a religious man ; tell him when you
meet him, that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but
that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight
against their government, because, as they think, that Government
does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread on the sweat
of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people
can get to heaven. ' "A. Lincoln."
" Now ! " said he, when he had read it. " It occurred to me that
that was worth printing. What do you think? . Don't wait
and send it to California in your correspondence, " he added. "I've
a childish desire to see it in print right away."
Lincoln showed a surprising amount of gratification over this
trifle and set his signature at the bottom of the page of manu
script, at my suggestion, in order to authenticate the autograph.
. . After the phrase, " You say your husband is a religious man, "
Lincoln inserted a semicolon, and calling my attention to it, he
said, " Is that the correct punctuation mark, or should that sen
tence be set off by itself with a full stop?" Reassured on that
point he added,
"With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of
rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say that I
have a great respect for the semicolon; it's a useful little chap."
Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln, Noah Brooks. Scribner's Monthly, Vol. XV, February, 1878,
page s66.
Savannah, Sherman's "Christmas Gift" to the Country
,• -Mr, Lincoln was the last man in the North to relax efforts. Al
though he had an army of nearly a million men enrolled at the time

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

of his re-election, he called, on December 19th, for 300,000 volun
teers to serve for one, two or three years,
A week after this call Sherman "came out" and presented the
country Savannah as a Christmas gift. The letter Lincoln wrote
him. is worthy to be placed beside the one he wrote to Grant after
Vicksburg :
" Executive Mansion,
"Washington, December 26, 1S64.
"My dear General Sherman:
"Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of
Savannah. " When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast,
I Avas anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better
judge, and remembering that ' nothing risked, nothing gained, '
I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the
honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went further than to
acquiesce. " And taking the work of General Thomas into the count, as it
should be taken, it is indeed a great success. Not only does it afford
the obvious and immediate military advantages; but in shovi'ing
to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger
part in an important new service, and yet leaving enough to van
quish the old opposing force of the whole, — Hood's army, — it brings
those who sat in darkness to see a great light. But what next?
" I suppose it will be safe if I leave General Grant and yourself
to decide. " Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole
army — officers and men. " ' ' Yours very truly,
"A. Lincoln."
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol, II, page 208.
Lieutenant Tad and His Sentinels
Tad, having been sportively commissioned a lieutenant in the
United States Army by Secretary Stanton, procured several muskets
and drilled the men-servants of the house in the manual of arms
without attracting the attention of his father. And one night he
put them all on duty, relieving the regular sentries, who, seeing the

IHL IA\0RliL lOi'.lRAll Ol- IINC <)I ^ AND "TM)
They were looking at an album in the photograph gaUery instead of Bible, as is sometimes stated.

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED

6ii

lad in full uniform, or perhaps, appreciating the joke, gladly went
to their quarters. His brother objected ; but Tad insisted upon his
rights as an officer. The President laughed but declined to inter
fere, but when the lad f. ' -
had lost his little au- <
thority in his boyish ¦
sleep, the Commander-in- ; .
chief of the Army and ;
Navy of the United
States went down and
personally discharged the
sentries his son had put
on the post.
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns

Stories. Edited by Col. Ale
McClure, page i8i

and K.

Lincoln and Three "Soldier
Boys"
A story is told of his
interview with William
Scott, a boy from a Ver
mont farm, who, after
marching forty-eight
hours without sleep, vol
unteered to stand guard
for a sick comrade. (See
"The Sleeping Sentinel, "
pages 48 3-5 . ) Weariness
overcame him, and he
was found asleep at his
post, within gunshot of the enemy. He was tried and sentenced
to be shot. Mr. Lincoln heard of the case, and went himself to the
tent where young Scott was kept under guard. He talked to him
kindly, asking about his home, his schoolmates, and particularly
about his mother. The lad took her picture from his pocket, and
showed it to him without spe?Lking. Mr. Lincoln was much
affected. As he rose to leave he laid his hand on the prisoner's
shoulder. " My boy, " he said, " you are not going to be shot to-morrow.

From the original photograph in the collection of Isaac
Markens, Esq.
LIEUTENANT TAD LINCOLN

6i2 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep awake.
I am going to trust you and send you back to your regiment. Now,
I want to know AAhat you intend to pay for all this? "
The lad, overcome Avith gratitude, could hardly say a word, but,
crowding down his emotions, managed to answer that he did not
know. He and his people AAcre poor; they Avould do what they
could. There was his pay, and a little in the savings bank. They
could borrow something by a mortgage on the farm. Perhaps his
comrades would help. If Mr. Lincoln would Avait until pay day
possibly they might get together five or six hundred dollars. Would
that be enough? The kindly President shook his head.
"My bill is a great-deal more than that," he said. "It is a
very large one. Your friends cannot pay it, nor your family, nor
your farm. There is only one man in the world vA'ho can pay it, and
his name is William Scott. If from this day he does his duty so
that when he comes to die he can truly say, 'I have kept the promise
I gave the President. I have done my duty as a soldier, ' then the
debt will be paid. "
Young Scott went back to his regiment, and the debt was
fully paid a few months later, for he fell in battle.
Mr. Lincoln's own son became a soldier after leaving college.
The letter his father wrote to General Grant in his behalf shows how
careful he was that neither his official position nor his desire to give
his boy the experience he wanted, should work the least injustice to
others.
"Executive Mansion,
"Washington, January 19, 1865.
"Lieutenant-General Grant:
" Please read and answer this letter as though I was not Presi
dent, but only a friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year,
having graduated at Harvard, wishes to see something of the War
before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to
give him a commission to which those who have already served
long are better entitled, and better qualified to hold. Could he,
without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into
your military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public,
furnishing the necessary means? If no, say so without the least

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 613

hesitation, because I am as anxious and as deeply interested that
you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.
"Yours truly, "A. Lincoln."
His interest did not cease with the life of a young soldier.
Among his most beautiful letters are those he wrote to sorrowing
parents who had lost their sons in battle; and when his personal
friend, young Ellsworth, one of the first and most gallant to fall,
was kiUed at Alexandria, the President directed that his body be
brought to the White House, where his funeral was held in the great
East Room.
The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Nicolay, page 216.
[Note. — ^Robert Lincoln became his widowed mother's reli
ance and comforter during the long years of her great bereavement
and affiiction, and superintended his young brother Tad's education.
He was Secretary of War from 1881-S5, and United States Minister
to England, 18S9-93.— W. W.]
The Hampton Roads Conference as Reported "Down South"
The Hampton Roads Conference, at which the North was
represented by Lincoln and Seward and the South by Stephens,
Campbell and Hunter, took place on February 3, 1S65, in the saloon
of the steamer which had brought the President of the United
States to Fortress Monroe.
The discussion was preceded by friendly reminiscences of former
acquaintance and association, Lincoln responding to Stephens's
remarks in a " cheerful and cordial manner. " It is even related that
Lincoln was ready with his inevitable joke. Observing the slender
Stephens removing his great coat and muffier, he remarked that the
Georgian was the "smallest nubbin to come out of so much husk"
that he ever beheld. Stephens does not mention this in his own
account, but he refers to a characteristic anecdote told by Lincoln
during the Conference.
When the evils of immediate emancipation were adverted to —
in case that policy should be pressed — especially the sufferings of
the women and children and the old and infirm slaves who would
not be able to support themselves, Lincoln admitted the difficulty,
but in order not to commit himself directly while yet suggesting

6 14 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
his individual view, he said that at the moment he felt at liberty only
to tell the story of the Illinois farmer and his hogs.
The successful policy of this farmer, as the story revealed, was
not to pen his hogs and provide food for them, but to turn them out
and "let 'em root!"
This was precisely the policy that finally prevailed, although
great numbers of idling negroes long waited in vain for the "forty
acres and a mule" that had been promised them by irresponsible
carpet-baggers. Alexander H. Stephens, Louis Pendleton, page 332,
An Unfortunate Precedent to Cite
Jefferson Davis insisted on being recognized as President of
the Confederacy in negotiating with the United States Government
at the Hampton Roads Conference.
Mr. Hunter, one of the Confederate commissioners, referred to
the correspondence between Charles the First and his Parliament
as a precedent for this negotiation between a constitutional ruler
and rebels. Mr. Lincoln's face wore that indescribable expression which
generaUy preceded his hardest hits, and he remarked :
"Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward,
for he is posted in such things, and I don't profess to be ; but my
only distinct recoUection of the matter is, that Charles lost his head."
".Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure, page 120.
Lincoln StUl WUling to Buy All the Slaves
It is said that after the Hampton Roads Conference, Lincoln
took Alexander H. Stephens aside, and, showing him a sheet of
paper, he said :
" Stephens, let me Avrite 'Union ' at the top of that page, and you
may write beloAA- it A\'hatever else you please. "
Mr. Lincoln took Avith him to Hampton Roads two documents
that are still shown in his own handwriting ; one of them a joint
resolution to be passed by the two Houses of Congress appropriating
the four hundred millions, the other a proclamation to be issued by
himself, as President, A\-hen the joint resolution should have been
passed.

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED 615

Mr. Lincoln next day, after returning to Washington, submitted
these two documents to the members of his Cabinet. All but Mr.
Seward were against him. So he said :
"Gentlemen, how long is the War going to last? It will not
end in less than a hundred days, will it? It costs now four miUions
a day. That avUI be four hundred miUions, over and above the loss
of life and property. But you seem to be against it, so I will not
urge this matter further. "
From a Report at the time. "It Was the Baby That Did It"
"Late one afternoon the President was going through the
passage to his private room to get a cup of tea. On the way he
heard a baby cry. He instantly went back to his office and rang
the beU. " 'Daniel,' said he, 'is there a woman with a babA^ in the
anteroom ? '
"I said there Avas, . . and it was a case of life and death.
Said he :
" 'Send her to me at once.'
' ' She went in, told her story, and the President pardoned her
husband. As the woman came out from his presence, the tears
streaming down her cheeks, and her lips moving in prayer, I went
up to her, and, pulling her shawl, said:
" 'Madam, it Avas the baby that did it.' "
Related by a V?hite House messenger to F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House
page 132,
Orders a Well Pumped out to Recover a Lost Plaything for Tad
The fire-engine, Hibernia, and some of its company went from
Philadelphia to Washington during the War and remained at the
Capital for some time to be in readiness for any emergency.
Tad Lincoln, in playing around the White House, lost his ball,
or some other toy, down a well. The President, yi^ith his custom
ary indulgence, wrote the accompanying note to the chief engineer
of the Hibernia to come and pump out the well and restore to the
"chUd of the nation" his lost plaything. This was attended to

6i6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Avith cheerful alacrity. This characteristic request was written
only six weeks before the fatal fourteenth of April.
w. w.

From original in possession of Judd Stewart, Esq,
THE PRESIDENT'S CARD TO THE ENGINEER OF THE FIRE-ENGINE
" HIBERNIA "
The Second Inaugural
At the horizon of that applauding multitude were arrayed
those battalions which Grant had summoned for the campaign
about to open, and among them several negro companies. Between
these lines of men and the columns which upheld the platform, the
eye met a compact mass, the aspect of which was rough and
energetic ; in its midst stood a multitude of negroes but yesterday
freed, and for the first time admitted to take part in a national
solemnity. When the hurrahs had ceased, Mr. Lincoln began reading his
address, and hardly had he read the first sentence, when none could
question its immense success.
The utterance, in almost a religious manner, of his thought,
seemed to speak out the very sentiments of all his listeners, and the
condemnation of slavery which he was pronouncing, intermitted
here and there with Biblical quotations, seemed tinged with some
thing of the eloquence of the prophets.
"Fondly do we hope," he concluded, "fervently do we pray,

RENOMINATED, ELECTED, INAUGURATED ti'j
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if
God wills that it continue untU the wealth piled by the bondman's
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and
that every drop of blood drawn by 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 lasting peace among our
selves and with all nations. "
As Mr. Lincoln was thus invoking the aid of the Almighty on
behalf of the holy cause he was defending, little did he know how
near his eloquent prayer was being granted.
Personal Recollections of Mr. Lincoln, The Marquis de Chambrun. Scribner's Magazine, Vol. XIII,
January, 1893, page 26.
A Sunburst when Lincoln Took the Oath of Office
While the ceremonies of the second Inauguration were in pro
gress, just as Lincoln stepped forward to take the oath of office, the
sun, which had been obscured by rain-clouds, burst forth in splendor.
Reminiscences, Noah Brooks in Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, page 165.
Chase Holds the Book as Douglas Held Lincoln's Hat Four Years before
Three months after the appointment [of Chase to the Chief-
Justiceship of the Supreme Court] Lincoln entered the Eastern
Portico of the Capitol for his second Inauguration. If his thoughts,
as he stepped upon the platform, reverted to the incidents of that
other ceremony which had taken place on the same spot, just four
years before, he may have missed the defeated rival, who then came
forward to hold the President's hat while he took the oath of office.
Douglas, indeed, had closed his last earthly canvass ; but another
proud opponent of the victorious Magistrate stood beside him, as if
to take the "Little Giant's" place. It was Salmon P Chase. By
virtue of his new office, he administered the oath and held the book
for Abraham Lincoln to kiss.
Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Rothschild, page 221,

CHAPTER XXIII
The End of the War
After the Inaugural Ceremonies
March 4 (1865), the President very quietly rode down to the
Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon,
either because he wished to be on hand to sign bills or to get rid of
marching in line vrith the absurd procession, the muslin temple of
liberty, and pasteboard monitor. I saw him on his return, at three
o'clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-
horse barouche, and looked very much worn and tired ; the lines,
indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of
life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face ; yet
all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness,
underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that
he is one to be attached to, for his combination of purest, heartiest
tenderness, and native Western form of manliness.) By his side
sat his little boy of ten years. There were no soldiers, only a lot of
civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders,
riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four years ago,
he rode down and back again surrounded by. a dense mass of armed
cavalrymen, eight deep, with drawn sabres ; and there were sharp
shooters stationed at every corner along the route.) I ought to
make mention of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never
before was such a compact jam in front of the White House; all
the grounds filled, and away out to the spacious sidewalks. I was
there, as I took a notion to go — was in the rush inside Avith the
croAvd — surged along the passage-ways, the Blue and other rooms,
and through the great East Room. Crowds of country people, some
very funny. Fine music from the Marine Band. Off in a side place
I saw Mr. Lincoln, dressed in black, with white gloves and a claw
hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking
very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything to be some
where else.
specimen Days, Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works, page 63.
(618)

THE END OF THE W.AR

)i9

Anna Dickinson and the Sunbeam
In conversation the next day, the President asked :
"Did you notice that sun
burst?" [As Lincoln Avas about to
take the oath.] " It made my heart
jump." Later in the month. Miss Anna
Dickinson, in a lecture delivered in
the hall of the House of Representa
tives, eloquently alluded to the sun
burst as a happy omen. The Presi
dent sat directly in front of the
speaker, and from the reporters ' gal
lery behind her I had caught his eye
soon after he sat dow-n. When Miss
Dickinson referred to the sunbeam,
he looked up to me, involuntarily,
and I thought his eyes were suffused
with moisture. Perhaps they were;
but the next day he said :
" I wonder if Miss Dickinson saw me wink at you ? "
Reminiscences , Noah Brooks, as quoted in Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln Paul Selby,
page I 66. Sewing a Button on His Trousers
One of the President's life-guard Avho was on duty early in 1S65,
saw much of Mr. Lincoln, day and night, for several months.
Early one morning he tapped on the President's bed-room door.
To his surprise he found the President of the United States, in
dishabille and carpet slippers, sewing a button on his trousers.
With a twinkle, Mr. Lincoln exclaimed :
" All right. Just wait a minute while I repair damages. "
w. w.

ANNA DICKINSON

"There Was Such a Charm about His Expression"
The relations between Mr: Lincoln and the members of his
Cabinet were always friendly and sincere on his part. He treated
every one of them with unvarying candor, respect, and kindness ;
but, though several of them were men of extraordinary force and
self-assertion — ^this was true especially of Mr. Seward, Mr. Chase,

620 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
and Mr. Stanton — and though there was nothing of selfhood or
domination in his manner toward them, it was always plain that he
was the master and they the subordinates. They constantly had
to yield to his will in questions where responsibility fell upon him.
If he ever yielded to theirs, it was because they convinced him that
the course they advised was judicious and appropriate. I fancied
during the whole time of my intimate intercourse with him and
with them that he was always prepared to receive the resignation of
any one of them. He was calm, equable, uncomjplaining.
In the discussion of important questions, whatever he said showed
the profoundest thought, even when he was joking. He seemed to
see every side of every question. He was never impatient, he
never was in a hurry, and he never tried to hurry anybody else.
To every one he was pleasant and cordial. Yet they all felt it was
his word that went at last; that every case was open until he
gave his decision.
This~rimpression of authority, of reserve force, Mr. Lincoln
always gave to those about him. Even physically he was impres
sive. According to the record measurements, he was six feet four
inches in height. That is, he was at least four inches taller than the
tall, ordinary man. When he rode out on horseback to review ah
army, as I have frequently seen him do, he wore usually a high hat,
and then he looked like a giant. There was no waste or excess of
material about his frame; nevertheless, he was very strong and
muscular. Mr. Lincoln's face was thin, and his features were large. His
hair was black, his eyebrows heavy, his forehead square and well
developed. His complexion was dark and quite sallow. His
smile was something most lovely. I have never seen a woman's
smile that approached it in its engaging quality ; nor have I ever
seen another face Avhich would light up as Mr. Lincoln's did when
something touched his heart or amused him. I have heard it said
that he was ungainly, that his step was awkward. He never im
pressed me as being awkward. In the first place, there was such
a charm and beauty about his expression, such good humor and
friendly spirit looking from his eyes, that when you were near him
you never thought whether he was awkward or graceful ; you
thought of nothing except : What a kindly character this man has !
Then, too, there was such shrewdness in his kindly features that one

THE END OF THE WAR

621

did not care to criticise him. His manner was always dignified,
and even if he had done an awkward thing the dignity of his char
acter would have made it seem graceful and becoming. . .
The great quality of his appearance was benevolence and
benignity; the vrish to do somebody some good if he could; and
yet there Avas no flabby philanthropy about Abraham Lincoln.
He was all solid, hard, keen intelligence combined with goodness.
Indeed, the expression of his face and of his bearing which impressed
one most, after his benevolence and benignity, was his intelligent
understanding. You felt that here was a man who saw through
things, who understood, and you respected him accordingly.
Recollections of the Civil War, Charles A. Dana, page 171,
Senator Sumner Tells of Lincoln's Love for "Nasby's Letters"
I had occasion to see President Lincoln very late in the evening
of March 17, 1S65. The interview was in the famUiar room
known as his office, and also used for Cabinet meetings. I did not
take leave of him until some time
after midnight, and the business was
not entirely finished. As I rose, he
said: "Come to me when I open shop
in the morning ; I will have the order
Avritten, and you shall see it. "
" When do you open shop? " said I.
"At nine o'clock, " he replied.
At the hour named I was in the
same room that I had so recently
left. Very soon the President entered,
stepping quickly with the promised
order in his hand, which he at once
read to me. It was to disapprove
and annul the judgment and sentence
of a court-martial in a case that had
excited much feeling. WhUe I was
making an abstract of the order for
communication by telegraph to the
anxious parties, he broke into a quotation from Nasby. Finding
me less at home than himself with his favorite humorist, he said

62 2 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
pleasantly, "I must initiate you," and then repeated with enthu
siasm the message he had sent to the author :
" For the genius to write these things I would gladly give up
my office. "
Rising from his seat, he opened a desk behind, and, taking
from it a pamphlet collection of the ("Nasby") "Letters" already
published, proceeded to read from it with infinite zest while his
melancholy features grcAV bright. It was a delight to see him
surrender so completely to the fascination. Finding that I
listened, he read for more than twenty minutes, and, was still
proceeding, Avhen it occurred to me that there must be many
at the door Avaiting to see him on graver matters. Taking ad
vantage of a pause, I rose, and, thanking him for the lesson of
the morning, went away. Some thirty persons, including senators
and representatives, Avere in the antechamber as I passed out.
Introduction to The Struggles of Petroleum V. Nasby, Charles Sumner, page 14.
A Great Wrong to Lincoln's Memory
Dr. Holland, in his "Life of Abraham Lincoln," I regret to
observe, has thought it worth while to notice the reports, which in
one way and another have obtained circulation, that the President
habitually indulged, in ordinary conversation, in a class of objec
tionable stories. The biographer, it is true, attempts to palUate
this, on the ground that it was no innate love of impurity which
prompted such relations, but a keen relish for wit, in any form, the
lack of refining influence in early life, and his experience as a lawyer,
which necessarily induced professional familiarity with the foulest
phases of human nature.
Mr. Lincoln, I am convinced, has been greatly wronged in this
respect. Every foul-mouthed man in the country gave currency
to the slime and filth of his own imagination by attributing it to
the President. It is but simple justice to his memory that I should
state that, during the entire period of my stay in Washington, after
witnessing his intercourse with nearly all classes of inen, embracing
governors, senators, members of Congress, officers of the army, and
intimate friends, I cannot recollect to have heard him relate a
circumstance to any of them which would have been out of place
uttered in a ladies' drawing-room. And this testimony is not
unsupported by that of others, well entitled to consideration, Dr.

THE END OF THE WAR 623
Stone, his family physician, came in one day to see my studies.
Sitting in front of that of the President, — with whom he did not
sympathize politically, — he remarked, with much feeling:
"It is the province of a physician to probe deeply the interior
lives, of men ; and I affirm that Mr. Lincoln is the purest hearted
man with whom I ever came in contact. "
Secretary Seward, who of the Cabinet officers Was most intimate
with the President, expressed the same sentiment in still stronger
language. He once said to the Rev. Dr. Bellows:
"Mr. Lincoln is the best man I ever knew!"
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 79.
Advises Stanton about a Wrathful Letter
One day Secretary Stanton came to him with a wrathful letter
written to a Major-General who had accused him of favoritism.
While Stanton was reading the letter, which was full of sharp retorts,
Lincoln interrupted him with favorable comments such as :
"That's right; give it to him, Stanton ! "^" Just what he
deserves!"— "Prick him hard !"—" Score him!"— "That's first
rate!"— "Good for you!" — and so on. • ¦
While Stanton, much gratified, was folding up the letter and
putting it into its envelope, the President asked him :
"What are you going to do with it now? "
"Why, send it, of course, " repUed Stanton, looking blank.
" Don't do it, " said Lincoln, laughing.
"But you said it was just what he deserved," demurred the
Secretary. "Yes, I believe he does deserve it, but you don't want to send
such a letter as that. Put in it the stove! That's the way I do when
I have written a letter while I am mad.- It is a good letter, and you
have had a good time writing it, and you feel better, don't you?
It has done you good and answered its purpose. Now burn it!"
w. w. "God Bless the Women of America!"
A fair for the benefit of the soldiers, held at the Patent Office,
Washington, caUed out Mr. Lincoln as an interested visitor; and
he was not permitted to retire without giving a word to those in
attendance.

624 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"In this extraordinary War," said he, "extraordinary devel
opments have manifested themselves, such as have not been seen in
former Avars; and among these manifestations nothing has been
more remarkable than these fairs for the relief of suffering soldiers
and their families. And the chief agents in these fairs are the
women of America.
"I am not accustomed to use the language of eulogy; I have
never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I
must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since
the creation of the world, in praise of women, were applied to the
women of America, it Avould not do them justice for their conduct
during the War. I avUI close by saying :
" God bless the women of America ! "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 172,
"Nothing Like Getting Used to Things"
A recent number of the New York Tribune contained an
account, from a correspondent within the Rebel lines, of an elabo
rate conspiracy, matured in Richmond, to abduct or assassinate — if
the former were found impracticable — the person of the President.
A secret organization, composed, it was stated, of 500 or 1,000 men,
had solemnly sworn to accomplish the deed,
Mr. Lincoln had not seen or heard of this account, so at his
request I gave him the details. Upon the conclusion,' he smiled
incredulously and said :
" Well, even if true, I do not see what the Rebels would gain by
killing or getting possession of me. I am but a single individual,
and it would not help their cause or make the least difference in the
progress of the War. Everything would go right on just the same.
" Soon after I was nominated at Chicago, I began to receive
letters threatening my Ufe. The first one or two made me a little
uncomfortable, but I came at length to look for a regular instalment
of this kind of correspondence in every week's mail, and up to
Inauguration Day I was in constant receipt of such letters. It is
uncommon thing to receive them now; but they have ceased to
give me any apprehension. "
I expressed some surprise at this, but he repUed in his peculiar
way: " Oh, there is nothing like getting used to things, "
Six Monthi at the Whili' House, F. B. Carpenter, page 62,

THE END OF THE W.AR

62s

Grant Captures Richmond and Intercepts Lee's Army
Jefferson Davis had issued a last appeal to "fire the Southern
heart," but the situation at Richmond was becoming desperate.
Flour cost a thousand dollars a barrel in Confederate money, and
neither the fiour nor the raoney AVas sufficient for their needs.
Squads of guards Avere sent into the streets with directions to arrest
every able-bodied man ^^^j^^^^j^.,.;^,- ,, ..,-,^,..-, ,.. , -^ ^...>«i_j,.^., ,.,..
they met, and force
him to work in defense
of the town. It is said
that the medical boards
were ordered to
excuse no one from
military service who
was well enough to
bear arms for even
ten days . Human na
ture will not endure a
strain like this, and
desertion grew too
common to punish.
Nevertheless the
city kept up its defense
until April 3 .
The Rebel Government
hurried aw-ay toward
the South, and Lee
bent all his energies to
saving his army and
taking it to j oin General
Johnston, who still held
out against Sherman.
Grant pursued him with such energy that he did not even allow
himself the pleasure of entering the captured Rebel capital. The
chase continued six days. On the evening of April 8 the Union
army succeeded in planting itself squarely across Lee's Une of re
treat; and the marching and fighting of his army were over
forever 

JEFFERSON DAVIS AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR

626 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Fire and destruction attended the fiight of the Confederates
from Richmond. Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, carrying with
them their more important state papers, left the doomed city on
one of the crowded and overloaded railroad trains on the nif ht of
April 2, beginning a southward flight that ended only with Mr.-
Davis's capture about a month later.
The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, Helen Nicolay. page 271,
"I Am Troubled about the Negroes"
Being then in Washington, the President sent for the writer,
and said: "General Butler, I am troubled about the negroes. We are
soon to have peace. We have got some one hundred and odd
thousand negroes who have been trained to arms. When peace
shaU come I fear lest these colored men shall organize themselves
in the South, especially in the States where the negroes are in pre
ponderance in numbers, into guerrilla parties, and w'e shall have
down there a warfare between the whites and the negroes. In the
course of reconstruction of the Government it will becorr e a question
of how the negro is to be disposed of. Would it not be possible to
export them to soi-ne place, say Liberia, or South America, and
organize them into communities to support themselves? Now,
General, I wish you would examine the practicability of such
exportation. . . . Will you give this your attention, and,
at as early a day as possible, report to me your views upon the
subject?" I replied, "Willingly," and bowed and retired.
After some few days . I repaired to the President's
office in the morning and said to him,
" I have come to report to you on the question you haA'e sub
mitted to me, Mr. President. "
He exhibited great interest, and said, " Well, what do you think
of it?" I said, " Mr. President, I assume that if the negro is to be sent
away on shipboard you do not propose to enact the horrors of the
middle passage, but would give the negroes the air-space that the
law provides for emigrants?"
He said, "Certainly."
"Well, then, here are some calculations which wiU show you

THE END OF THE WAR 627

that if you undertake to export all of the negroes — and I do not see
how you can take one portion differently from another — negro
children will be born faster than your whole naval and merchant
vessels, if substantially all of them were devoted to that use, can
carry them from the country, "
He examined my tables carefully for some considerable time,
and then looked up sadly and said :
"Your deductions seem to be correct. General. But what can
we do?"
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin F. Butler. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 1 50.
A Strange Trixmiphal Entry into a Conquered Capital
. . . There was a small house on the landing, and behind it
were some twelve negroes digging with spades. Their leader was
an old man. . He raised himself to an upright position
as we landed and put his hands up to his eyes. Then he dropped
his spade and sprang forward.
"Bress de Lord," he said, "dere is de great Messiah! I
knowed him as soon as I seed him. He's been in my heart fo' long
yeahs, an' he's cum at las' to free his chillun from deir bondage —
Glory, Hallelujah!" And he fell on his knees before the President
and kissed his feet. The others followed his example, and in a
minute Mr. Lincoln was surrounded by these people, who had
treasured up the recollection of him caught from a photograph, and
had looked up to him for four years as the one who was to lead them
out of captivity.
Mr. Lincoln looked down at the poor creatures at his feet ; he
was much embarrassed at his position.
" Don't kneel to me, " he said. " That is not right. You must
kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter
enjoy." ...
His face was lit up "with a divine look as he said these words.
In his enthusiasm he seemed the personification of manly
beauty, and that sad face of his looked down in kindness upon these
ignorant blacks. : He really seemed of another world.
It was a minute or two before I could get the negroes to rise
and leave the President.
" Yes, Massa, " said the old man. . . " 'Scuse us, sir. We
means no disrespec' to Mass' Lincoln; Ave means all love and grati-

628

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

tude. " And then joining hands together in a ring, they sang a
hymn, beginning, "O, all ye people, clap your hands!"
The President and all of us listened respectfully. Four

LINCOLN ENTERING RICHMOND, LEADING TAD
minutes at most hi,d passed away since we first landed, Avhen the
streets Avere entirely deserted. . Now the streets seemed to be
suddenly alive with the colored race. They seemed to spring from

THE END OF THE WAR 629
the earth. They came tumbling and shouting from over the hill
and from the Avater-side,. where no one was seen as we had passed.
The crowd immediately became very oppressive. We needed
the marines to keep them off. I ordered twelve of the boat's crew
to fix bayonets to their rifles and to surround the President, all of
which was quickly done ; but the crowd poured in so fearfully that
I thought we all stood a chance of being crushed to death.
I now realized the imprudence of landing without a large body of
marines ; and yet, this seemed to me, after all, the fittest way for Mr.
Lincoln to come among the people he had redeemed from bondage.
What an ovation he had, to be sure! . They all
had their souls in their eyes, and I don't think I ever looked upon a
scene where there were so many passionately happy faces.
At length the President spoke. He could not move for the
mass of people — he had to do something.
" My poor friends, " he said. " You are free — free as air. You
can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it ; it will come to
you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as
He gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of
it for so many years. But you must try to deserve this priceless
boon. Let the world see that you merit it, and are able to maintain
it by your good works. Don't let your joy carry you into excesses.
Learn the laws and obey them; obey God's commandments and
thank Him for giving you liberty, for to Him you owe all things.
There, now, let me pass on. I have but Uttle time to spare. I
want to see the Capitol, and must return at once to Washington to
secure you that liberty which you seem to prize so highly. "
Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, Admiral Porter, page 29s. '
At the "White House of the Confederacy"
The procession reached Weitzel 's headquarters — the mansion
from which Jefferson Davis had taken his quick departure the pre
vious Sunday.
President Lincoln wearily ascended the steps and by chance
dropped into the very chair usually occupied by Mr. Davis when
at his writing table.
Such was the entrance of the Chief of the Republic into the
Capital of the late Confederacy. There was no sign of exultation

From Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.
LEAVING THE DAVIS MANSION
"The White House of the Confederacy," after the taking of Richmond.

THE END OF THE WAR 631

no elation of spirit, but, on the contrary, a look of unutterable
weariness, as if his spirit, energy and animating force were
wholly exhausted 
Later in the afternoon I saw President Lincoln riding through
the streets, taking a hasty glance at the scene of desolation and woe.
There was no smile upon his face. Paler than ever his counte
nance, deeper than ever before the lines upon his forehead. The
driver turned his horses towards the landing. The visit to the
Capital of the Confederacy was ended.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Carleton Coffin. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice,
page 183, "The End Has Almost Come! "
The next time j. met Mr. Lincoln was early on the morning of
April 7, 1865, in the log cabin now standing in Fairmount Park,
Philadelphia, and then known as "Grant's Headquarters at City
Point." I was in search of a pass to get through the lines to the
army, to see my brother, and, as I hoped, to witness the last fight
of the Army of the Potomac. As I entered the room, a voice from
behind the open door called my name, and as I turned, Mr. Lincoln
rose from a desk and pleasantly made a few inquiries about myself.
He then said, " Oh! let me give you the latest news, " and picking
up a paper which lay on his table, he read to me Sheridan's telegram
to General Q;rant, repeated word for word by the latter to the
President, in which the capture of seven thousand men and five
generals, including Ewell and Custis Lee, was reported. This was
the famous dispatch in Avhich Sheridan said that if the thing was
pushed, he thought Lee would surrender, to which Lincoln, in his
characteristic style, laconically replied, "Let the thing be
pushed. "
Mr. Lincoln was, of course, intensely delighted with the suc
cess of the Army of the Potomac in hemming in Lee's army, and,
rubbing his hands together in satisfaction, he remarked with a
smile upon his dear face such as I had never before seen,
"The end has almost come!"
Personal Notes and Reminiscences of Lincoln, H. S. Huidekoper, page 19,
Returning from City Point
Evening came on quickly. Passing before Mount Vernon, I
remember saying to him: "Mount Vernon and Springfield, the

632 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
memories of Washington and your own, those of the Revolutionary
and Civil Wars ; these are the spots and names America shall one
day equally honor. " This remark appeared to call him to himself.
" Springfield ! " answered he. " How happy, four years hence, will I
be to return there in peace and tranquillity ! "
ArriA^ed at the Potomac w^harf , our party was forced to disperse.
Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, Senator Sumner and myself drove home in
the same carriage. We were nearing Washington when Mrs.
Lincoln, who had hitherto remained silently looking at the town
a short distance off, said to me :
"That cit}^ is filled Avith our enemies. "
On hearing this the President raised his arin and somewhat
impatiently retorted, "Enemies! We must never speak of that."
This was on the evening of April 9th.
Personal Recollections of Mr. Lincoln, The Marquis de Chambrun. Scribner's Magazine, Vol. XIII,
January, 1S93, page 34.
How Lincoln and His Cabinet Received the News of Lee's Surrender
On the day the news of General Lee's surrender at Appomattox
Court-House was received, so an intimate friend of President Lincoln
relates, the Cabinet meeting was held an hour earlier than usual.
Neither the President nor any member of the Cabinet was able,
for a time, to give utterance to his feelings.
At the suggestion of Mr, Lincoln, they all dropped on their
knees and offered, in silence and in tears, their humble and heart
felt acknowledgments to the Almighty for the triumph He had
granted to the national cause.
" Abe^' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex, K, McClure, page 419.
"The President's Life-Preserver"
Mr. Lincoln's laugh stood by itself. The neigh of a wild horse
on his native prairie is not more undisguised and hearty. A group
of gentlemen, among whom was his old friend and associate, Isaac
N. Arnold, were one day conversing in the passage near his office,
while awaiting admission. A congressional delegation had pre
ceded them and presently an unmistakable voice was heard
through the partition, in a burst of mirth. Mr. Arnold remarked, "
as the sound died away :
" That laugh has been the President's life-preserver!' '
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 150,

THE END OF THE WAR 633

Behind the Scenes at a White House Serenade
The same care which Lincoln bestowed on his messages and
letters was given to his speeches, though it is not likely that any one
of these was elaborated as much as the Gettysburg Address. He
was afraid, it seemed to me, of being betrayed into using undignified
expressions when called out without due preparation. Once, being
notified that he was to be serenaded, just after some notable military
or political event, he asked me to come to dinner, "so as to be on
hand and see the fun afterwards, " as he said.
He excused himself as soon as we had dined, and, while the
bands were playing, the crowds cheering and the rockets burst
ing outside the house, he made his re-appearance in the parlor,
vrith a roll of manuscript in his hand. Perhaps noticing a look of
surprise on my face, he said, " I know what you are thinking about.
You think it mighty queer that an old stump-speaker Uke myself
should not be able to address a crowd like this outside without a
written speech. But you must remember I am, in a certain sense,
talking to the country, and I have to be mighty careful. Now,
the last time I made an off-hand speech, in answer to a serenade, I
used the phrase, as appUed to the Rebels, 'turned taU and ran.'
Some very nice Boston folks, I am grieved to hear, were very
much outraged by that phrase, which they thought improper. So
I resolved to make no more impromptu speeches if I could help it. "
Hearing that speech from the inside of the White House was
like seeing a play from behind the scenes. The immense concourse
in front of the house was Uluminated with fireworks. The air was
rent with the noise of cheers, music and exploding rockets and
bombs. Just as we went upstairs, an unusual yeU, mingled with
laughter and cheers, caused the President to pause and ask what
that might be. Little Tad, then about eleven years old, de
lirious vrith excitement, had seized a captured Rebel flag which had
been given him, and leaning as far out of the window as possible,
was waving it with might and main, to the wonderment and delight
of the crowd beneath. At that moment old Edward, the faithful
doorkeeper, in great consternation, seized the lad by the ampler
portion of his small trousers, and plucked him from the window-siU.
HowUng with anger, he fled to his father, who had scarcely com
posed his laughing features when he advanced to the large open

634 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
window over the main entrance. When Lincoln began to read his
speech, he held a candle in his left hand and the manuscript in the
right hand, but, speedily becoming embarrassed by the difficulty cf
managing the candle and the speech, he made a comical motion a ith
his left foot and elbow, Avhich I construed to mean that I should
hold the candle for him, which I did. As he read, he dropped the
slips of manuscript on the floor, and Tad, scurrying about, gathered
them up as they drifted about, like big butterflies, from the Presi
dent's hand. After the speech Avas over, and the crowds were
cheering tremendously, the President, who continued to stand at
the window-sill, addressing his candle-bearer, said,
"That was a pretty fair speech, I think, but you threw some
light on it."
Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln, Noah Brooks. Scribner's Monthly, yo\. XV, February, 1878,
page 567. From Lincoln's Last Speech
This carefully worded, wise and memorable production Avas
delivered Tuesday evening, April ii, 1865, in response to a serenade
at the White House:
"Fellow Citizens: We meet this evening not in sorrow, but
in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond,
and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a
righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression cannot be
restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all bless
ings flow must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving
is being prepared and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those
whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked.
Their honors must not be parceled out with the others. I myself
was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much
of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or
execution, is mine. To General Grant, his skiUul officers and brave
men, all belongs. The gaUant navy stood ready, but was not in
reach to take active part.
"By these recent successes, the re-inauguration of national
authority, reconstruction, which has had a large share of thought
from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It
is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike the case of a Avar between
mdependent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat

THE END OF THE WAR 635
with. No man has authority to give up the Rebellion for any other
man. We simply must begin with and mold from disorganized and
discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment
that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, the
manner and means of reconstruction.
"In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my
duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South.
I am considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that
action wdll be proper. "
[During the reading of this speech Tad had recovered from his
wrath over his recent humiliation- and caught the sheets of his
father's speech as Lincoln let them drop, sometimes tugging im
patiently at his father's coat-tails, with, " Give me another paper.
Papa!" The President, before retiring from before the crowd, called
on the serenading band to play " Dixie, " saying joyously: "Wehave
a right to that tune now. " When he turned back into the White
House Mrs. Lincoln called his attention to the fact that he might
easily have been shot while speaking, and begged him not to expose
himself so recklessly again. This was Tuesday night, April i ith.
— W. W.] Lincoln's Last Telegram
Mr. Lincoln's last telegram was one transmitted to Major-
General Weitzel, in command at Richmond, on the 12th of April,
in which he ordered that "the gentlemen who had acted as the
Legislature of Virginia in the support of the Rebellion be not
aUowed to assemble even in their individual capacity. " The
following is the dispatch :
" I have just seen Judge Campbell's letter to you of the 7th.
He assumes, as it appears to me, that I have called the insurgent
Legislature of Virginia together, as the rightful Legislature of the
State, to settle all differences with the United States. I have done
no such thing. I spoke of them not as a Legislature but as 'the
gentlemen who have acted as the Legislature of Virginia in the
support of the Rebellion.' I did this on purpose to exclude the
assumption that I was recognizing them as a rightful body. I dealt
with them as men having power de facto to do a specific thing,, to

636 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
wit: "to withdraw the Virginia troops and other support from
resistance to the general Government," for which, in the paper
handed to Judge Campbell, I promised a special equivalent, to wit:
a remission to the people of the State except in certain cases, of the
confiscation of their property. I meant this and no more. Inas
much, however, as Judge Campbell misconstrues this and is still
pressing for an armistice, contrary to the explicit statement of the
paper I gave him, and particularly as General Grant has since
captured the Virginia troops, so that giving a consideration for
their vrithdrawal is no longer applicable, let my letter to you and
the paper to Judge Campbell both be withdrawn or countermanded
and he be notified of it. Do not allow them to assemble, but if any
have come, allow them safe return to their homes. "
Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton, George C. Gorham, Vol. II, page 242.
Secretary Stoddard Takes His Last Leave of President Lincoln
"The President is w-aiting to see you, sir. He is in the room
beyond the library. I'll shake hands AAith you now, sir. I'm going
out and I'll not be at the door. "
"All right, Edward, I'll go in and see him. '.'
I shook hands with Old Edward and walked slow-ly on through
the shadowy hall to the room where I was to say good-bye to
Abraham Lincoln. It was just the place for a quiet, farewell talk.
"Yes, Mr. Lincoln," I said, "all my arrangements are made,
and I'm off to-night. "
"Take these things with you, then," — passes, letters, orders
for transportation he put in my hand — "and now there's just one
thing I want to say. The War is over. . . . Now, what
I Av ant you to do is this : Do all you can, in any and every way you
can, to get the ballot into the hands of the freedmen. . . Will you ? "
He spoke of the Southern people in the friendliest and most
hopeful manner. They had no better friend than he, nor wiser.
.... The parting grasp of his iron hand all but crushed mine,
while those deep, mournful eyes beamed down upon me warmly,
full of good-will.
' ' Good-bye ; ' ' the White House days have become as a dream
of the night, when it is ended — and I never saw his face again.
Inside the White House in War Times, William 0. Stoddard, page 243.

CHAPTER XXIV
Lincoln's Last Day
The Morning of That Fateful Day
"The War is over." Throughout the breadth of the North
this was the jubilant cry with which people greeted one another on
the morning of April 14, 1865. For ten days reports of victories had
been coming to them; Petersburg evacuated, Richmond fallen,
Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet fled, Lee surrendered, MobUe cap
tured. Nothing of the Confederacy, in short, remained but Johns
ton's army, and it \vas generally believed that its surrender to
Sherman was but a matter of hours. How completely the conflict
was at an end, however, the people of the North had not reaUzed
untU they read in their newspapers, on that Good Friday morning,
the order of the Secretary of War suspending the draft, stopping
the purchase of miUtary supplies and remoAdng military restrictions
from trade. The War was over indeed.
One man before all others in the nation felt and showed his
gladness that day — ^the President, Abraham Lincoln. There
was a marked change in his appearance. All through i S63 and 1 864
his thin face had day by day grown more haggard, its lines had
deepened, its pallor had become a more ghastly gray. His eye,
always sad when he was in thought, had a look of unutterable grief.
Through all these months Lincoln was, in fact, consumed by sorrow.
" I think I shall never be glad again, " he said once to a friend.
But as one by one the weights lifted, a change came OA^er him ; his
form straightened, his face cleared, the lines became less accentu
ated. " His whole appearance, poise, and bearing had marvellously
chknged, " says the Hon. James Harlan. "He Avas, in fact, trans
figured. That indescribable sadness Avhich had prcAdously seemed
to be an adamantine element of his very being, had been suddenly
changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy, as if
conscious that the great purpose of his life had been achieved. "
Never since he had become convinced that the end of the War
(637)

638 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
was near had Mr. Lincoln seemed to his friends more glad, more
serene, than on the 14th of April. The morning was soft and sunny
in Washington, and as the spring was early in 1865, the Judas trees
and the dogwood were blossoming on the hillsides, the willows were
green along the Potomac, and in the parks and gardens the lilacs-
bloomed — a day of promise and joy to which the whole town
responded. . The suspension of the draft and the presence of
Grant in town — come this time not to plan new campaigns, but to
talk of peace and reconstruction — seemed to furnish special reason
for celebrating. At the White House the family party which met at breakfast
was unusually happy. Captain Robert Lincoln, the President's
oldest son, then an aide-de-camp on Grant's staff, had arrived that
morning, and the closing scenes of Grant's campaign were dis
cussed Avith the deepest interest by father and son.
Later in the morning the Cabinet met, Friday being its regular
day. General Grant Avas invited to remain to its session. 'There
was the greatest interest at the moment in General Sherman's move
ments, and Grant Avas plied with questions by the Cabinet. The
President was least anxious of all. The ncAVS Avould soon come, he
said, and it would be favorable. He had no doubt of this, for the
night before he had had a dream which had preceded nearly every
important event of the war.
" He said it was in my Department, it related to the water, "
Secretary Welles afterward wrote: "that he seemed to be in a
singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, and that he
was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore ;
that he had had this singular dream preceding the firing on Sumter,
the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicks
burg, Wilmington, etc. . Victory did not always follow his ,
dream, but the event and results were important. He had no doubt
that a battle had taken place, or was about being fought, 'and
Johnston will be beaten, for I had this strange dream again last
night. It must relate to Sherman; my thoughts are in that
direction, and / know of no other very im.portant event which is likely
just now to occur.' "
The greater part of the meeting was taken up with a discussion
of the policy of reconstruction. . The President warned them

LINCOLN'S LAST DA]' 639
emphatically, Mr. Welles says, that he did not sympathize with and
would not participate in any feelings of hate and vindictiveness. .
" He hoped there would be no persecution, no bloody work,
after the War was over. None need expect he would take any part
in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. Frighten
them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them off, said he,
throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. Enough lives have been
sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect
harmony and union. There was too much desire on the part of our
very good friends to be masters, to interfere with and dictate, to
those States, to treat the people not as fellow-citizens ; there was too
little respect for their rights. He didn't sympathize in these
feelings. "
The impression he made on all the Cabinet that day was
expressed twenty-four hours later by Secretary Stanton :
" He was more cheerful and happy than I had ever seen him,
rejoiced at the near prospect of a firm and durable peace at home
and abroad, manifested in marked degree the kindness and hu
manity of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that
so eminently distinguished him. "
The Life of Abraham Lincoln. Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, pages 230 to 23s.
"What a Pity We Have to Fight Such a GaUant Fellow !"
Mr. Lincoln was generous by nature, and though his whole
heart was in the War, he could not but respect the valor of those
opposed to him. His soul was too great for narrow, selfish views or
partisanship. Brave by nature himself, he honored bravery in
others, even his foes. Time and again I have heard him speak in the
highest terms of the soldierly qualities of such brave Confederate
Generals as Lee, "StonewaU" Jackson and Joseph E. Johnston.
Jackson was his ideal soldier.
" He is a brave, honest, Presbyterian soldier, " were the Presi
dent's words. " What a pity that we should have to fight such a
gaUant f eUow ! If we only had such a man to lead the armies of
the North, the country would not be appaUed with so many dis
asters. "  ¦ -u-
The very morning of the day on which he was assassinated, his
son. Captain Robert Lincoln, came into the room with a portrait
of General [Robert E.] Lee in his hand. The President took the

640

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

picture, laid it on the table before him, scanned the face thought
fully, and said : "It is a good face;
it is the face of a noble,
noble, brave man. I am
glad that the War is over
at last. ' ' Looking up at
Robert, he continued:
" Well, my son, you
have returned safely
from the front. The
War is now closed, and
we soon will live at
peace with the brave
men that have been
fighting against us. I
trust that the era of
good feeling has re
turned AA'ith the end of
the War, and that
henceforth we shall live
in peace. Now, listen
to me, Robert: You
must lay aside your
uniform and return to
college. I wish you to
read law for three
years, and at the end
of that time I hope we
shall be able to tell Avhether you avUI make a lawyer or not. "
His face Avas more cheerful than I had seen it for a long while,
and he seemed to be in a generous, forgiving mood.
Behind the Scenes, Elizabeth Keckley, page 36.
Dickens's Story of Lincoln's Last Cabinet Meeting
Charles Dickens, writing from Washington to John Foster, in
1868, mentioned having dined Avith Senator Sumner, the only other
guest being Secretary Stanton, from Avhom he had this "curious
little story" about the last Cabinet meeting of President Lincoln:

•STONEWALL" JACKSON, CONFEDERATE GENERAL
" A brave, honest, Presbyterian soldier."

LINCOLN'S LAST DAY 641

"Mr. Stanton, on lea-ving the council with the Attorney-Gen
eral, said to him:
" ' That is the most satisfactory Cabinet meeting I have attended
for many a long day. What an extraordinary change in Mr.
Lincoln !'
' ' The Attorney -General replied :
" 'We all saw it before you came in. While Ave were waiting
for you he sat with his chin down on his breast : '
" ' Gentlemen, something very extraordinary is going to hap
pen, and that very soon.'
' ' To which the Attorney-General had observed :
" 'Something very good, sir, I hope?' when the President
answered very gravely :
" 'I don't know — I don't knoAv. But
it Avill happen, and shortly too. '
"As they were aU iinpressed by his
manner, the Attorney-General took him up
again. " ' Have you received any information,
sir, not yet disclosed to us ? '
" 'No, ' answered the President, 'but
I have had a dream. And I have had
the same dream three times: once the
night preceding the battle of Bull Run,
once on the night preceding such another' (naming a battle also
not favorable to the North) .
" His chin sank on his breast again, and he sat reflecting.
" 'Might one ask the nature of this dream, sir?' said the Attor
ney-General. " 'Well,' replied the President, without lifting his head or
changing his attitude, ' I am on a great, broad, rolling river — and
I am in a boat — and I drift — and I drift— but this is not business, '
suddenly raising his voice and looking around the table as Mr.
Stanton entered :
" 'Let us proceed to business, gentlemen. '
"Mr. Stanton and the Attorney-General said, as they walked
on together, it would be curious to notice whether anything ensued
on this, and they agreed to notice."

()42 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Of those who met at this council, one of the latest survivors
Avas the Hon. James Speed, of Louisville, then Attorney-General.
His attention having been called to this account from Dickens, its
verity was confirmed in a letter . in which Mr. Speed said:
"I cannot attempt to give in better words than Mr. Dickens an
account of that Cabinet meeting, although it made an indelible
impression upon my memory. Even after the lapse of so many
years the picture can be recalled to my mind's eye as clearly as
though the circumstances occurred but yesterday; and I fondly
cling to the memory of Mr. Lincoln's personal appearance as I saw
him that day, Avith cleanly shaved face, well brushed clothing, and
neatly combed hair and whiskers. In fact, the contrast was so
great as to cause each member of the Cabinet to remark it. I well
remember that Mr. Stanton said to me as we went down the stairs
together, " Didn't our chief look grand to-day?"
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D., Vol. II, page 355.
"WeU Done, Good and Faithful Servants !"
In April, 1865, 1 was sent with the Government excursion from
Washington to Charleston to take part in the ceremony of raising
over Fort Sumter the flag that had been lowered there in April,
1 86 1. When I reported to Stanton upon my return, he gave me a
detailed account of the awful tragedy which had been enacted in
the national Capital during our absence. He said that he had never
felt so sensible of his deep affection for Lincoln as he did during their
final interview . At last they could see the end of bloody fratricidal
AA-ar. Peace was dawning upon their beloved country. 'Well done,
good and faithful servants!" was upon the lips of the nation. As
they exchanged congratulations, Lincoln, from his greater height,
dropped his long arm upon Stanton's shoulders, and a hearty em
brace terminated their rejoicings over the close of the mighty
struggle. Stanton Avent home happy.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, James B. Fry. Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page 403.
The Afternoon Drive with Mrs. Lincoln
After the Cabinet meeting he went to drive with Mrs. Lincoln,
expressing a wish that no one should accompany them, and evi
dently desiring to converse alone with her.

LINCOLN'S LAST DA)- ^ 643

" Mary, " said he, " we have had a hard time of it since we came
to Washington, but the War is over, and with God's blessing we may
hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back
to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. "
He spoke of his old Springfield home, and recollections of his
early days, his little brown cottage, the law office, the court-room,
the green bag for his briefs and laAv papers, his adventures Avhen
riding on the circuit, came thronging back to him. The tension
under which he had so long been kept was removed and he was like
a boy out of school.
"We have laid by," said he to his wife, "some money, and
during this term we will try and save up more, but shall not have
enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois, and I will open
a law-office at Springfield or Chicago, and practise law, and at least
do enough to help give us a livelihood. "
Such were the dreams, the day-dreams of Lincoln, the last day
of his life. In imagination he was again in his prairie home,
among his law-books, and in the courts with his old friends.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Isaac N. Arnold, page 429,
Mrs, Lincoln noticed that the President, during their afternoon
drive , was in unusually good spirits, and remarked to him
that he was in a like mood just before the fatal illness of their son
Willie. But no kindly premonition warned her of the particular
danger to be avoided . . In the joyous excitement of the time
even the devotee seemed to forget the wonted associations of Good
Friday. Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, Joseph H, Barrett, LL.D., Vol, II, page 357.
Lincoln's Last Official Acts of Mercy
During the afternoon the President signed a pardon for a
soldier sentenced to be shot for desertion, remarking as he did so :
" Well, I think the boy can do us more good above ground than
underground. "
He also approved an application for the discharge, on taking
the oath of allegiance, of a Rebel prisoner, on whose petition he
wrote :
"Let it be done. "
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 218.

644 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
"It's Best to Let Him Run"
On the afternoon of the 14th of April— it was Good Friday — I
got a telegram from the Provost Marshal in Portland, Me., saying:
"I have positive information that Jacob Thompson will pass
through Portland to-night, in order to take a steamer for England.
What are your orders?"
Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, had been Secretary of the
Interior in President Buchanan's administration. He was a con
spicuous secessionist, and for some time had been employed in
Canada as a semi-diplomatic agent of the Confederate Government.
He had been organizing all sorts of trouble and getting up raids, of
which the notorious attack on St. Albans, Vt., was a specimen.
I took the telegram and went down and read it to Mr. Stanton.
His order was prompt: "Arrest him!" But as I was going out of
the door he called to me and said: " No, wait; better go over and
see the President. "
At the White House all the work of the day was over, and I
went into the President's business room without meeting any one.
Opening the door, there seemed to be no one there, but, as I was
turning to go out, Mr. Lincoln called to me from a little side room,
where he was Avashing his hands :
"HaUo, Dana!" said he. "What is it? What's up?"'
Then I read him the telegram from Portland.
"What does Stanton say?" he asked.
"He says arrest him, but that I should refer the question to
.you." "Well," said the President slowly, wiping his hands, "no, I
rather think not. When you've got an elephant by the hind leg,
and he's trying to run away, it's best to let him run. "
Recollections of the Civil War, Charles A. Dana, page 273.
Lincoln Goes to the Theater in Order Not to Disappoint People
It was late in the afternoon when he returned from his drive,
and as he left the carriage he saw going across the lawn toward the
Treasury a group of friends, among them Richard Oglesby, then
Governor of Illinois.
" Come back, boys, come back, " he shouted.

LLNCOLN'S L.AST DAY

64s

The party turned, joined the President on the portico, and
went up to his office with him.
"How long we remained there I do not remember," says
Governor Oglesby. " Lincoln got to reading some humorous book;
I think it was by 'John Phoenix.' They kept sending for him to
come to dinner. He promised each time to go, but would continue
reading the book. Finally he got a sort of peremptory order that
he must come to dinner at once. It was explained to me by the
old man at the door that they were going to
hav^e dinner and then go to the theater. "
A theater party had been made up by
Mrs. Lincoln for that evening — General and
Mrs. Grant being her guests — to see Laura
Keene, at Ford's Theater, in " Our American
Cousin. " Miss Keene was ending her season
in Washington that night with a benefit.
The box had been ordered in the morning,
and unusual preparations had been made to
•'receive the Presidential party. The parti
tion between the two upper proscenium boxes
at the left of the stage had been removed,
comfortable upholstered chairs had been put
in, and the front of the box had been draped
with fiags. The manager, of course, took
the afternoon papers that the "President
the "Hero of Appomattox" would attend
that evening.
By eight o'clock the house was filled Avith the half-idle, half-
curious crowd of a holiday night. Many had come simply to see
General Grant, whose face was then unfamiliar in Washington.
Others, strolling down the street, had dropped in because they
had nothing better to do. The play began promptly, the house
following its nonsensical fun with friendly eyes and generous
applause, one eye on the President's box.
The Presidential party was late. Indeed it had not left the
house until after eight o'clock, and then it was made up differently
from what Mrs. Lincoln had expected, for in the afternoon she had
received word that General and Mrs. Grant had decided to go north
that night. It was suggested then that the party be given up, but

FORD'S THEATER
care to announce in
and his lady, " and
Miss Keene's benefit

646 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
the fear that the public would be disappointed decided the President
to keep the engagement. Two young friends, the daughter of
Senator Ira Harris and his stepson. Major H. R. Rathbone, had
been invited to take the place of General and Mrs. Grant.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 235.
Lincoln's Last Story and His Last Writing »
The last story told by Mr. Lincoln was drawn out by a circum
stance which occurred just before the interview with Messrs. Colfax
and Ashmun. . . Marshal Lamon of Washington had called
upon him with an application for the pardon of a soldier. After a
brief hearing the President took the application, and when about to
write his name upon the back of it, he looked up and said :
" Lamon, have you ever heard how the Patagonians eat oysters?
They open them and throw the shells out of the window until the
pile gets higher than the house, and then they move, " adding:
" I feel to-day like commencing a new pile of pardons, and I
may as well begin it just here."
At the subsequent interview with Messrs. Colfax and Ashmun,
Mr. Lincoln was in high spirits. The uneasiness felt by his friends
during his visit to Richmond was dwelt upon, when he sportively
repUed that he supposed he should have been uneasy also, had any
other man been President and gone there; but as it was, he felt no
apprehension of danger whatever. "
Turning to vSpeaker Colfax, he said :
"Sumner has the gavel of the Confederate Congress, which he
got at Richmond, and intended to give to the Secretary of War, but
I insisted he must give it to you, and you tell him from me to hand
it over. "
Mr. x\shmun, who was the presiding officer of the Chicago Con
vention in 1S60, alluded to the gavel used on that occasion, saying
he had preserved it as a valuable memento. Mr. Ashmun then
referred to a matter of business connected Avith a cotton claim
preferred by a client of his, and said that he desired to have a com
mission appointed to examine and decide upon the merits of the
case. Mr. Lincoln replied with considerable warmth of manner,
" I have done with commissions. I believe they are con-

LINCOLN'S LAST DAY 647

trivances to cheat the Government out of every pound of cotton
they can lay their hands on. "
Mr. Ashmun's face flushed, and he replied that he hoped the
President meant no personal imputation. Mr. LincPln saw that he
had wounded his friend, and he instantly repUed :
"You did not understand me, Ashmun. I did not mean what
you inferred. I take it aU back. . . I apologize to you, Ash
mun. "
He then engaged to see Mr. Ashmun early the next morning,
and taking a card, he wrote:
These were his last written Avords. Turning to Mr. Colfax
he said :
" You will accompany Mrs. Lincoln and me to the theater, I
hope?" Mr. Colfax pleaded other engagements, — expecting to start on
his Pacific trip the next morning. The party passed out on the
portico together, the President saying at the A'ery ] ast :
"Colfax, don't forget to tell the people of the mining regions
what I told you this morning about the development when peace
comes;" then shaking hands with both gentlemen, he followed Mrs.
Lincoln into the carriage, leaning forward, at the last moment', to
say as they were driven off :
" I AviU telegraph you, Colfax, at San Francisco. "
Six Months at the White House. F. B. Carpenter, page 284,

6a8

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

The Tragedy Described by an Eye-Witness
About the middle of the first act the President and party
arrived, and were received with loud and hearty applause. The
band played "Hail to the Chief!" which stopped the performance
for a few minutes while they were
proceeding to their seats. On reach
ing the box the President took a
large arm-chair in front and to the
left as they entered; Mrs. Lincoln
took a chair in front to the right,
and Miss Harris one near Mrs. Lin
coln, but not quite as far forward.
Major Rathbone was seated farther
back than the ladies, on an old-
fashioned sofa that ran along the
Avail on the extreme right.
About the middle of the third act
a shot was heard, and immediately
thereupon rang out John Wilkes
Booth's cry, "Sic semper tyrannis!"
— not after he reached the stage, as
has been stated in some accounts;
neither did he jump from the box
full height, with arms outspread and
upstr etched, as we often see him in
illustrations. On the contrary, he
placed both hands upon the rail of the box and swung himself over
in that manner, thereby lessening the fall by the distance of his
own height. One of his spurs caught in the American colors
with which the box was draped, and he probably landed his whole
weight on one foot. On striking the stage he pitched forward
on all fours, and I then saw the blade of a long stiletto or dagger
glisten in the footlights, as his hand lay on the floor. He quickly
rose to his feet and took one or two uncertain steps, then, turning
his face to the audience, made a grand flourish with the dagger, and
was off the stage in a flash.
Next came the piercing and horrifying shriek of Mrs. Lincoln,
and then arose a fearful commotion. Directly efforts were made

Arrangement of the double box
where Lincoln was shot.

LINCOLN'S LAST DAY 649

by some parties to get into the box from the outside, but the door
was barred from the inside. I next noticed a military officer
standing on the shoulders of another man and endeavoring to climb
up to the box from the stage.
Meantime the President had remained sitting in his chair with
his head bent forward, but I distinctly saw him rise once to his feet
and in a dazed sort of way attempt to take a step or two. He was
not upright, but half erect. Just then Major Rathbone came to his
assistance, and, supported by the latter, he sank back into the chair.
About this time I noticed Miss Laura Keene, who had reached the
box from the private way back of the stage, and Avho Avas said to
have brought a glass of water which might refresh the President.
The bar against the door having been removed, from the inside,
several people Avent into the box from the dress circle, and Uttle
more could be distinguished thereafter.
Strangely enough, an assassination plot seemed to have been
understood at once, for word was passed around that the place
would be blown up. There Avas a general rush to vacate the theater, '
and from our position Ave were necessarily about the last ones that
could possibly leave the place. On nearing the door-Avay we saw
men approaching from the passage-way back of the box Avith the
form of the President, carried on an improvised stretcher — as it
now seems to me a window shutter or something of that nature —
and we stopped to let them pass. They were hastening from the
building as well as they could, and the President's head was thrown
back and hanging somewhat down. He was quite unconscious,
seemed perfectly limp, and was bleeding slightly from the wound
in his head. Just as they passed by I glanced on the floor, and,
seeing a crimson blotch on a piece of paper, I picked it up. That
the marks thereon are the life-blood of Abraham Lincoln is as
certain as that he was shot on the date and in the place mentioned.
As the place remained brilliantly lighted and there seemed to
be no immediate danger, we went back to the President's box, where
almost the first thing that attracted the notice of my companion
and myself was the pistol which Booth had used, lying on the floor
only about three or four feet back of the chair in which Mr. Lincoln
sat. I recall the weapon as a single-barreled percussion -cap
affair, of the Derringer type, shorter and more compact than

6so

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

the dueling pistols so much

FORD'S THEATRE 1

t. xrii, — -Hiom iW

——'•-r-j^ii^

Friday Evonlpg, AprU 14th. 1B65 ;

JOfeB07OTTa

jmi-UMliRJfM^. '

'^

PESsfTTof Mu. mrm codbuy

PATRIOTIC SONC AND CHORUS
HONOaiOOUR SOlBIEas I

. ;eow?|^^;adams '
[.cslir's IVcikly, Maruh 20. igoS.
LINCOLN'S PLAY-BILL
" That the marks thereon are the life-blood
of Abraham Lincoln is certain."

A .Yew Story of the .Assassination of Lincoln,
lOO'S, page 302.

in favor among gentlemen of the
old school in those days.
As we started to leave the
theater we met, at the head of
the stairway, a policeman, avUo
inquired if we Avere present at the
time of the shooting, etc., and
said we had better give our names
and addresses, as it might be
necessary to call us as witnesses.
I drew the pistol out of my pocket
and gave it to the policeman to
take charge of against the chance
of its being called for as evi
dence. Within an hour's time a
continuous line of pickets from
one fortification to another was
thrown around Washington, or at
least such was stated to have been
the case. Orders were issued for
bidding any one to leave the city,
and all precautions possible were
taken to prevent escape; but
Wilkes Booth had within a half
hour's time crossed the eastern
branch of the Potomac, dashed on
past the military asylum, and
thence into Maryland. At the
bridge the sentry demanded the
password, but Booth replied with
a plausible explanation and im
mediately gave spurs to his horse.
He had ridden this horse re
peatedly over the same ground
during several preceding weeks,
as a sort of rehearsal of his
fiight.
W. H. Taylor. Leslie's Weekly, Vol. CVI, March 26,

LINCOLN'S L.AST DAY 651
How the Awful Crime Was Committed
It was at the close of the second act that (John Wilkes) Booth
and his two fellow -conspirators appeared at the door. Booth said,
" I think he will come down now, " and they aligned themselves to
await his coming. Their communications with each other were in
whispered tones. Finding that the President would remain until
the close of the play, they then began to prepare to assassinate him
in the theater. The neatly dressed man called the time three times
in succession at short intervals, each time a little louder than before.
Booth now entered the saloon, took a drink of whiskey, and then
went at once into the theater. He passed quickly along next to the
wall behind the chairs, and having reached a point near the door
that led to the passage behind the box, he stopped, took a small
pack of visiting cards from his pocket, selected one and replaced the
others; stood a second Avith it in his hand, and then showed it to
the President's messenger, who was sitting just below him, and,
then, without waiting, passed through the door from the lobby into
the passage, closing and barring it after him. Taking a hasty, but
careful, look through the hole which he had had made in the door for
the purpose of assuring himself of the President's position, cocking
his pistol and with his finger on the trigger, he pulled open the door,
and stealthily entered the box, where he stood right behind and
within three feet of the President. The play had advanced to the
second scene of the third act, and whilst the audience was intensely
interested. Booth fired the fatal shot — ^the ball penetrating the
skull on the back of the left side of the head, inflicting a wound in
the brain. As soon as Booth had flred his pistol, and was satisfled that his
end was accomplished, he cried out, " Revenge for the South!" and
throwing his pistol down, he took his- dagger in his right hand, and
placed his left on the balustrade preparatory to his leap of twelve
feet to the stage. Just at this moment Major Rathbone sprang
forward and tried to catch him. In this he failed, but received a
severe cut on his arm from a back-handed thrust of Booth's dagger.
Time was everything now to the assassin. He must make good his
escape whUst the audience stood dazed, and before it had time to
comprehend clearlv what had happened. With his left hand on
the raiUng, he boldly leaped from the box to the stage. The front of

652 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
the box had been draped for the occasion with the American flag,
which was stretched across its front, and reached down nearly or
quite to the floor. In the descent Booth's spur caught in the flag,
tearing out a piece which he dragged nearly half way across the
stage. The flag, however, was avenged for the double insult which
he had put upon it; for by this entanglement his descent Avas
deflected, causing him to strike the stage obliquely, and partially
to fall, thus fracturing the fibula of his left leg, on account of which
injury his flight was impeded, and his permanent escape made
impossible. As he recovered himself from his partial fall and
started to run across the stage with his dagger brandished aloft, he
. . . quickly passed out at a little back door opening into the
alley where he had left his horse, and, though closely pursued, suc
ceeded in mounting, and rode rapidly away.
The Assassination of Lincoln, General T. M. Harris, page 38.
Pandemonium in the Theater
On the evening of the 14th of April, 1865, a few minutes after
ten o'clock, I was in company with a friend walking on Pennsylvania
Avenue, when a man running down Tenth Street approached us,
wildly exclaiming: "My God, the President is killed at Ford's
Theater!" Calling to my friend tp follow me I ran to the theater,,
two blocks away, perceiving, as I neared it, increasing evidences of
the wildest excitement, which reached its climax in the auditorium.
How it Avas that I worked my Avay through the shouting crowd that
filled the house, and found myself over the footlights on the stage,
I am unable to describe.
The first person to whom I addressed a rational word was a
detective, now one of the oldest in the city. I asked him who had
done the shooting. When he mentioned the name of Wilkes Booth
I scouted the idea ; but others insisted that Booth had been recog
nized in the man who had leaped from the President's box, and
rushed across the stage. Excited crowds during the War were
nothing new to me, but I had never witnessed such a scene as was
now presented. The seats, aisles, galleries, and stage were fiUed
with shouting, frenzied men and women, many running aimlessly
over one another; a chaos of disorder beyond control, had any
visible authority attempted its exercise. The spot upon which the

LINCOLN'S LAST DA Y 653

eyes of aU would turn was the fatal upper stage box, opposite to
which I now stood. Access to it was guarded, but presently a man
in the uniform of an army surgeon was assisted by numerous arms
and shoulders to climb into the box to join the medical men already
there. I was told that Laura Keene, immediately after the shot was
fired, had left the stage and gone to the assistance of Mrs. Lincoln,
and I soon caught a glimpse of that unhappy lady who had
apparently arisen from her husband's side. She stood in view for
a moment, then throwing up her arms, with a mournful cry, she
disappeared from sight of the stage. I now made my way toAvard
the box exit to await the descent of Miss Keene, hoping to learn
from her the President's condition. I met her at the foot of the
staircase leading from the box, and alone. Making a motion to
arrest her progress, I begged her to tell me if Mr. Lincoln was still
alive. "God only knows!" she gasped, stopping for a moment's rest.
The memory of that apparition will never leave me. Attired, as I
had so often seen her, in the costume of her part in " Our American
Cousin, " her hair and dress were in disorder, and not only was her
gown soaked in Lincoln's blood, but her hands, and even her cheeks
where her fingers had strayed, were bedaubed with the sorry stains !
But lately the central figure in the scene of comedy, she now
appeared the incarnation of tragedy. Preparations were now made
to remove the President to a neighboring house, . . and the
theater was soon cleared and left in possession of the troops which
had arrived.
Recollections of Lincoln's Assassination, Seaton Munroe. North American Review, Vol. CLXII,
April, 1898, page 424.
"They Have Killed Papa Dead!"
Probably about twenty minutes before eleven o'clock, I
stepped up to the door in answer to another ring at the bell. Who
should be there but Isaac Newton, the Commissioner of Agriculture.
: I admitted him inside the door, and at once closed it.
He said to me, "They have shot the President. And the buUet, "
he said, "has entered the left side of his head." I immediately
hurried upstairs to Captain Robert Lincoln's room. He had
just come from the front that morning, where he had been doing
duty on the staff of General Grant, ... I simply said, " Captain,

From Tlie Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell.
LIFE MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Made by Leonard W. Volk, the sculptor, of Chicago.

(6S4)

LINCOLN'S LAST DAY 655

there has something happened to the President ; you had better go
down to the theater and see what it is. "
He said to me, "Go and caU Major Hay." I went, and said
to him, " Major, Captain Lincoln wants to see you at once. The
President has been shot. " He was a handsome young man with a
bloom on his cheeks just like that of a beautiful young lady.
When I told him the news, he turned deathly pale, the color entirely
leaving his cheeks. He said to me, " Don't allow anybody to enter '
the house. " I said, "Very good. Major. . Nobody shaU come in. "
They took their departure immediately for the theater. They had
been gone probably half , an hour, when poor little Tad returned
from the National Theatre and entered through the east door of the
basement of the White House. He came up the stairAvay and ran to
me, while I was in the main vestibule, standing at the window, and
before he got to me he burst out crying, " O Tom Pen ! Tom Pen!
they have killed Papa dead, they've killed Papa dead!" and burst
out crying again.
At nearly twelve o'clock that night I got Tad somewhat
pacified, and took him into the President's room, which is in the
southwest portion of the building. I turned down the coA^er of his
little bed, and he undressed and got in. I covered him up and lay
down beside him, put my arm around him, and talked to him until
he fell into a sound sleep,
Ah ! that was a sad night for the nation, and to me it was simply
¦ awful, for I loved Mr. Lincoln probably better than I loved any one
else in the world.
Thirty-six Years in the White House, Thomas F. Pendel, Doorkeeper, page 42.
The FUckering Light Goes Out .
' The first floor of the house where Mr. Lincoln had just been
carried was composed of three rooms, opening on the same corridor.
It was in the third, a smaU room, that the dying man lay.
His face, lighted by a gas-jet, under which the bed had been
moved, was pale and livid. His body had already the rigidity of
death. At intervals only the stiU audible sound of his breathing
could be faintly heard, and at intervals again it would be lost
entirely. The surgeons did not entertain hope that he might
recover a moment's consciousness. Judge WiUiam T. Otto, a
thirty years' friend of Mr, Lincoln's, was standing at the bedside

6s6 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
holding his hand ; around the bed stood also the Attorney-General,
Mr. Speed, and the Rev. Mr. Gurney, pastor of the church Mr.
Lincoln usually attended.
Leaning against the wall stood Mr. Stanton, who gazed now
and then at the dying man's face, and who seemed overwhelmed
with emotion. From time to time he wrote telegrams or gave orders
which, in the midst of the crisis, assured the preservation of peace.
 The remaining members of
the Cabinet and several
senators were pacing up and
down the corridor. Thus the
night passed on. At last, to
ward seven o'clock in the
morning, the surgeon an
nounced that death was at
hand, and at twenty minutes
after seven the pulse ceased beating.
Every one present seemed then to emerge from the stupor in
which the hours of the night had been spent. Mr. Stanton
approached the bed, closed Mr. Lincoln's eyes, and dravring the
sheet over the dead man's head, uttered these words in a very low
voice :
"He is the man for the ages."
Personal Recollections of Mr. Lincoln, The Marquis de Chambrun. Scribner's Magazine, Vol. XIII,
January, 1803, Page 37.

LEADING EVENTS TO APRIL, 1865
Union capture of Ft. Fisher, N. C  Jan. is
Union capture of Charleston, S. C. ... Feb. iS
Sheridan's raid on Lynchburg, Va. . . . March
Union victory at Five Forks, Va  April i
Union capture of Petersburg, Va  April 2
Grant takes Richmond, Va  April 3
Lee surrenders to Grant (Appomattox) April 9
General Anderson raises Union flag
over Ft. Sumter  April 14
Assassination of President Lincoln .... April 14

CHAPTER XXV
The World in Mourning
0 Captain ! My Captain !
0 Captain ! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won.
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring ;
But O heart ! heart I heart !
O the bleeding drops of red.
Where on the deck my Captain lies.
Fallen cold and dead.

0 Captain I My Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ;
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon 'd wreaths — for you the shores
a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning ;
Here Captain ! dear father !
This arm beneath your head !
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.

•My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor wUl,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won ;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells 1
But I Avith mournful tread.
Walk the deck my Captain Ues,
Fallen cold and dead.
Memories of President Lincoln, Walt AVhitman 1865. Leaves of Grass, page 262.
r6e7A

658

THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN

ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT LINCOLN

The President Shot at the Theatre
last Evening.

SECRETARY SEWARD
DABGEBED IN HIS BED

BUT

HOT MORTALLY WOUNDED.

Clarence and Prederlck
Seward Badly Hurt.

ESCAPE OF THE ASSASSINS.,

Intense Excitement In ;;
Washington.

aBE

SCENE AT THE DEATHIiEO OF MR.r
LINCOLN.

J. Wilkes Booth, the Actor, the Allegeii|
Assassin of the President,
So., &c., £0.
From the N. Y. Herald, April is, 1865.

"Don't Cry So, Mamma— You Will Break
My Heart!"
Returning to Mrs. Lincoln's
room I found her in a new paroxysm
of grief. Robert was bending over
his mother Avith tender affection, and
little Tad was crouched at the foot of
the bed with a world of agony in his
young face. I shall never forget the
scene — ^the wails of a broken heart,
the unearthly shrieks, the terrible
conviUsions, the wild tempestuous
outbursts of grief from the soul.
I bathed Mrs. Lincoln's head with
cold water, and soothed the terrible
tornado as best I could. Tad's grief
at his father's death was as great as
the grief of his mother, but her ter
rible outburst awed the boy into
silence. Sometimes he would throw
his arms around her neck and ex
claim, between his sobs :
" Don't cry so. Mamma, don't
cry, or you will make me cry too!
You Avill break my heart ! "
Mrs. Lincoln could not bear to
hear Tad cry, and when he would
plead w-ith her not to break his heart
she would calm herself with a great
effort and clasp her child in her arms.
Behind the Scenes, Elizabeth Keckley, page igi.
How Greeley Was Saved from a Brutal
Attack on the Dying President
I have never seen in print this
story of that fearful night when Lin
coln was killed. But one hears it
freely repeated in conversation and I
see no reason why it should not be
printed now.

THE WORLD IN MOURNING

6S9

With the news of the murder of Lincoln, there came to New
York every other terrible message. The office of the (New York)
Tribune, of course, received echoes from all the dispatches AAjhich
shoAved the alarm at Washington. There were orders for the arrest
of this man, there were suspicions of the loyalty of that man. No
one knew w^hat the morrow might bring.
In the midst of the anxieties of such hours, to Mr. [Sydney
Howard] Gay, the acting editor of that paper, there entered the
foreman of the typesetting room. He brought with him the proof
of Mr. Greeley's leading article, as he had left it before leaAdng the
city for the day. It was a brutal, bitter, sarcastic, personal attack
on President Lincoln, — ^the man who, when Gay read the article,
was dying in Washington.
Gay read the article, and asked the foreman if he had any
private place where he could lock up the type, to Avhich no one but
himself had access. The foreman said he had. Gay bade him tie
up the type, lock the gaUey with
this article , in his cupboard, and
teU no one what he had told him.
Of course no such article appeared
in the Tribune the next morning.
But when Gay arrived on the
next day at the office, he was met
with the news that "the old man"
wanted him, with the intimation
that "the old man" was very
angry. Gay waited upon Greeley.
"Are you there, Mr. Gay? I
have been looking for you. They
teU me that you ordered my leader
out of this morning's paper. Is it
your paper or mine? I should like
to know if I cannot print what I
choose in my own newspaper. " This in great rage.
"The paper is yours, Mr. Greeley. The article is m type up
stairs, and you can use it when you choose. Only this Mr. Greeley :
I know NeAV York, and I hope and believe, before God, that there is
so much virtue in New York that if I had let f-);^^^-^^°-^^^
this morning's paper, there would not be one brick left upon another

HORACE GREELEY

66o THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
in the Tribune office noAv. Certainly I should be sorry if there
Avere. "
.Mr. Greeley w^as coAved. He said not a Avord, nor ever alluded
to the subject again.
James Russell Lowell and His Friends, Edward Everett Hale, page 17S.
Richmond Receives News of the Assassination
During this period of waiting came the news of the assassination.
of Mr. Lincoln. Perhaps I ought to chronicle that the announce
ment was received Avith demonstrations of sorrow. If I did, I
should be lying for sentiment's sake. Among the higher officers
and the most intelligent and conservative men, the assassination
caused a shudder of horror at the heinousness of the act, and at the
thought of its possible consequences; but among the thoughtless,
the desperate and the ignorant, it was hailed as a sort of retributive
justice. In maturer years I have been ashamed of what I felt and
said when I heard of that aAvful calamity. However, men ought to
be judged for their feelings and their speech by the circumstances
of their surroundings. For four years we had been flghting. In
that struggle, all Ave loved had been lost. Lincoln incarnated to us
the idea of oppression and conquest. We had seen his face overthe
coffins of our brothers and relatives and friends, in the flames of
Richmond, in the disaster at Appomattox. In blood and flame and
torture the temples of our lives Avere tumbling about our heads.
We Avere desperate and \andictiA'e, and AvhosocA^er denies it
forgets or is false. We greeted his death in a spirit of reckless
hate, and hailed it as bringing agony and bitterness to those
Avho were the cause of our own agony and bitterness. To us,
Lincoln was an inhuman monster. Grant a butcher, and Sherman
a fiend. Time taught us that Lincoln was a man of marvelous humanity,
Appomattox and what followed revealed Grant in his matchless
magnanimity, and the bitterness toward Sherman was softened in
subsequent years. But, Avith our feelings then, if the news had
come that all three of these had been engulfed in a common disaster
with ourselves, we should have felt satisfaction in the fact, and
should not have questioned too closely how it had been brought
about. We were poor, starved, conquered, despairing; and to
expect men to have no malice and no vindictiveness at such a time

THE WORLD IN MOURNING 66 1

is to look for angels in human form. Thank God, such feelings do
not last long, at least in their fiercest intensity.
The End of an Era, John S. Wise, page 454,
"He Never Was Happy after He Came Here"
Little Tad's frantic grief after his father had been shot was
alluded to in the Washington correspondence of the time. For
twenty-four hours the Uttle feUow was absolutely inconsolable.
Sunday morning, however, the sun rose in unclouded splendor, and
in his simpUcity he looked upon this as a token that his father was
happy. " Do you think my father has gone to heaven? " he asked of a
gentleman who had called upon Mrs. Lincoln.
" I have not a doubt of it, " was the reply.
"Then, " he exclaimed in his broken way, "I am glad he has
gone there, for he never was happy after he came here. This was
not a good place for him ! "
Six Months at the White House, F. B. Carpenter, page 293.
I Thought It Strange the Stars Could Shine
The War was over !
My father and mother talked of it across the table, and the
men talked of it at the store, and earth, sky and water called to each
other in glad relief, " The War is over!"
But there came a morning when my father walked up from the
railroad station very fast, and looking very serious. He pushed
right past me as I sat in the door-way. I followed him into the
kitchen where my mother was washing dishes, and heard him say:
"They have killed Lincoln!" and then he burst into tears.
I had never seen my father shed tears — ^in fact, I had never
seen a man cry. There is something terrible in the grief of a man.
Soon the church-bell across the road began to toll. It tolled all
that day. Three men — I can give you their names — rang the bell
all day long, tolling, slowly tolling, tolling, tolling until night came
and the stars came out. I thought it a little curious that the stars
should come out, for Lincoln was dead; but they did, for I saw them
as I trotted by my father's side down to the post-office.
Little Journeys to the Homes of .American Statesmen, Elbert Hubbard, page 42S.

662 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"Wilkes Booth's Morbid Craving for Notoriety"
Although the conspiracy was of considerable magnitude, it
was not more than sufficient to satisfy WUkes Booth's morbid
craving for notoriety. He had signally failed as an actor and was
known to be a man of moody disposition, suffering from the pangs
of disappointed ambition, and for some reason embittered' against
authority of any kind. He had a little following of kindred spirits,
who revolved around him as a central figure and to whom he posed
as a kind of oracle on the occasion of their pot-house assemblages.
A friend of mine named Christie, who was doorkeeper of the House
of Representatives for many years, knew one of this band very well,
and he used to tell Christie some of the wise utterances of Wilkes
Booth, one of which was :
"The fame of the youth who fired the Ephesian dome will
outlive that of the pious fools who reared it. "
At the time of Booth's capture he was found to have kept, in
his flight, a diary, in which his egotism was greatly in evidence. It
was rather a disjointed affair, full of wild and ardent expressions.
He had seen newspaper comments and was surprised and deeply
grieved at not finding himself glorified in the affair. The foUoAving
just as written by him, gives a good idea of the matter :
"A colonel was at his side. I shouted 'Sic semper' before I
fired. In jumping broke my leg. Passed all the pickets, "and so
on. Toward the last he wrote:
" After being hunted like a dog through swamps, etc., etc., I am
here in despair, and why? For doing what Brutus was honored
for, — ^what made Tell a hero. " Farther on he says :
" I am abandoned with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the
world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great. "
The personnel of this organization under Wilkes Booth as a
guiding spirit was what might have been expected. Payne and
Atzerodt were just ordinary thugs without a vestige of character.
Herold was a young, foppish sort of fellow, none too well established
as compos mentis. Sam Arnold and Miles O'Laughlin were Con
federate common soldiers and ready enough to take orders from
Booth, 'but when it came to facing the issue they were found wanting.
Altogether, they were a wretched lot until we consider John H.
Surratt and his mother, who were of decent family, and ought to
have known better than to be found in such associations.

THE WORLD IN MOURNING

663

Dr. Mudd was accessory after the fact and not before it, if he
had any guilty knowledge of the conspiracy. Where his sympa
thies really were, however, was readily conjectured, for he harbored
Booth and afforded him every surgical and friendly assistance in his
power. Spangler was a scene shifter at the theatre, and no one had
the remotest idea that he was connected with the assassination
understandingly. One thing that made Booth's act seem perfidious and dastardly
beyond expression was the fact that about three weeks before that
time he was at the White House and specially introduced. The
President greeted him very cordially, and taking him by the hand
said : "Mr. Booth, I am proud to meet you as a son of the elder
Booth. "
A New Story of the Assassination of Lincoln, W. H. Taylor, Leslie's Weekly, Vol. CVI, March 26
1908, page 302. '
The Funeral in Washington and the Long, Sad Journey
(Over 25,000,000 people attended Lincoln services that sad Wednesday.)
On Wednesday, April 19th, the funeral of the dead President
took place at the White House, in the midst of an assemblage of the
chief men of the nation. From the mansion in which the beloved
Lincoln had suffered and toiled so much for the good of the people,
his form was carried to the Capitol, . . in the Rotunda of
which he lay in state for one day, guarded by a company of high
officers of the army and navy. ' . . Thousands of men,
women and children passed through the great building, to take their
last look upon the face of Lincoln, white in his coffin.
The funeral train left Washington on the 21st of April, and
traversed nearly the same route that had been passed over by the
train that bore him, as President-elect, from Springfield to Wash
ington, four years before, it was a funeral unique, wonderful.
Nearly two thousand miles were traversed ; the people lined the
entire distance, almost without interval, standing with uncovered
h.1 ,ds, mute with grief, as the somber cortege swept by. Even night
and filling showers did not keep them away from the line of the sad
procession. Watch-fires blazed along the route in the darkness,
and by day every device that could lend picturesqueness to the
mournful scene and express the woe of the people was employed.
In some of the larger cities the coffin of the illustrious dead

664 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
Avas lifted from the funeral train and carried through from one end
to the other, attended by mighty processions of citizens, forming a
funeral pageant of proportions so magnificent and imposing that
the world has never since seen the like.
Thus honored in his funeral, guarded to his grave by famed and
battle-scarred generals of the army, Lincoln's body was laid to rest
at last near his old home.
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of Slavery, Noah Brooks, page 458.
"Massa Sam's Dead I 0 Lord!"
A Southern correspondent of the New York Tribune, the week
following the assassination, wrote :
" I never saw such sad faces, or heard such heavy heart-beatings
as here in Charleston (South Carolina) the day the news came.
The colored people Avere like children bereaved of a parent. I saw
one old woman going up the streets, wringing her hands, and saying
aloud as she walked, looking straight before her, so absorbed in her
grief that she noticed no one :
" 'O Lord! O Lord! O Lord! Massa Sam's dead! Massa
Sam's dead!'
" 'Who's dead. Aunty?'
" 'Massa Sam's dead!' she said, not looking at me.
" 'Who's Massa Sam?' said I.
" 'Uncle Sam, ' she said. 'O Lord ! O Lord ! '
" Not quite sure that she meant the President, I spoke again :
" 'Who's Massa Sam, Aunty? '
" 'Mr. Lincum, ' she said, and resumed Avringing her hands,
mourning in utter hopelessness of sorrow. "
Men of Our Times, Harriet Beecher Stowe, page 95.
Rewards Offered for Apprehension of the President's Assassins
"War Department, Washington, April 20, 1865.
"Maj, Gen. John A. Dix, New York:
' ' The murderer of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln,
is still at large. Fifty thousand dollars reward will be paid by this
Department for his apprehension in addition to any reward offered
by municipal authorities or State Executives.
"Twenty-five thousand dollars reward will be paid for the
apprehension of G. W. Atzerodt, sometimes called ' Port Tobacco, '

THE WORLD IN MOURNING 665
one of Booth's accomplices. Twenty-five thousand dollars reward
will be paid for the apprehension of David C. Herold, another of
Booth's accomplices.
"All persons harboring or secreting said persons, or either of
them, or aiding or assisting their concealment or escape, will be
treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and the
attempted assassination of the Secretary of State, and shall be sub
ject to trial before a military cominissioner, and the punishment
of death. ' ' Let the stain of innocent blood be removed from the land by
the arrest and punishment of the murderers.
"All good citizens are exhorted to aid public justice on this
occasion. Every man should consider his own conscience charged
with this solemn duty, and rest neither night nor day until it be
accomplished. "Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War."
- Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Edited by Paul Selby, page 244.
Bryant's Funeral Ode
(Written for the Funeral Services held in New York City,)
O, slow to smite and swift to spare.
Gentle and merciful and just !
Who in the fear of God didst bear
The sword of power, a nation's trust.
In sorrow by thy bier we stand.
Amid the awe that husheth all.
And speak the anguish of a land
That shook with horror at thy fall.
Thy task is done ; the bonds are free ;
We bear thee to an honored grave,
Whose proudest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.
Pure was thy life ; its bloody close
Has placed thee with the Sons of Light
Among the noble hearts of those
Who perished in the cause of Right.
Abraham Lincoln, William Cullen Bryant. Winnowings for Lincoln's Birthday, Agnes Mawson,
page 60.

666 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

Booth Shot in a Burning Barn — What Became of His Body?
Booth, with David C. Herold, a fellow-conspirator, made his
way into Maryland, where, eleven days after the assassination, the
two were discovered in a barn on Garrett's farm near Port Royal
on the Rappahannock. The barn was surrounded by a squad of
cavalryiiien, who called upon the assassins to surrender. Herold
gave himself up and was roundly cursed and abused by Booth, who
declared that he never would be taken alive.
The cavalrymen then set fire to the barn and as the flames
leaped up the figure of the assassin could be plainly seen. Colonel
Conger saw him standing upright upon a crutch with a carbine in
his hands. When the fire first blazed up, Booth crept on his hands
and knees to the spot, evidently for the purpose of shooting the man
who had applied the torch, but the blaze prevented him from seeing
any one. .
His eyes shone with the light of fever, but he was pale as death
and his general appearance was haggard and unkempt. He had
shaved off his mustache and his hair was closely cropped. Both he
and Herold wore the uniforms of Confederate soldiers.
The last orders given to the squad pursuing Booth were :
" Don't shoot Booth,, but take him alive. "
Just as Booth started to the door of the barn this order was
disobeyed by a sergeant named Boston Corbett, who fired through
a crevice and shot Booth in the neck. The wounded man was
carried out of the barn and died four hours afterward where they
had laid him. Before he died he whispered to Lieutenant Baker,
" Tell mother I died for my country ; I thought I did for the best. "
What became of Booth's body has always been and probably
always will be a mystery. Many different stories are told concern
ing its final resting-place, but all that is known positively is that
the body was first taken to Washington and a post-mortem exami
nation of it held on the monitor Montauk. On the night of April
2 yth it was turned over to two men, who took it in a rowboat and
disposed of it secretly. How they disposed of it none but them
selves know, and they have never told.
The Story of Lincoln's Life, in "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure,
page 507.

THE WORLD IN MOURNING 667

The Burial at Springfield
It was on May 4th, fifteen days after the funeral in Washington,
that Abraham Lincoln's remains finally rested in Oakland Cemetery,
a shaded and beautiful spot, two miles from Springfield. Here, at
the foot of a woody knoll, a vault had been prepared ; and thither
. attended by a great concourse of military and civic dignitaries, by
governors of States, members of Congress, officers of the army and
naAry, delegations from orders, from cities, from churches, by the
friends of his youth, his young manhood, his maturer years, was
Lincoln carried and laid, by his side his little son [Willie, whose
casket had been removed from Washington with that of his father].
The solemn rite was followed by dirge and prayer, by the reading of
his last Inaugural Address, and by a noble funeral oration by
Bishop Simpson.
Then, as the beautiful day drew toward evening, the vault
was closed, and the great multitudes slowly returned to their duties.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 260.
Tributes to His Greatness
The funeral pageant was at an end, but the mourning was not
silenced. From every corner of the earth came to the family and to
the Government tributes to the greatness of the character and life
of the murdered man. Medals were cast, tablets engraved, parch
ments engrossed. At the end of the year, when the State Depart
ment came to publish the diplomatic correspondence of 1865, there
was a volume of over 700 pages, containing nothing but expressions
of condolence and sympathy on Lincoln's death. Nor did the
mourning and the honor end there. From the day of his death
untU now the world has gone on rearing monuments to Abraham
Lincoln. The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Ida M. Tarbell, Vol. II, page 260.
The Astonishing Contrast
There is an astonishing contrast between the perfect sweetness
and kindness of Mr. Lincoln's sentiments and utterances, whether
private or public, individual or official, in reference to the Rebels
and the RebeUion, and theirs about him. Doubtless no loyal citizen
of the United vStates was so uniformly kind in feeling and decorous
and even courteous in expression about the Rebels ; and doubtless

668 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
no such citizen was so odiously bespattered Avith the most hateful
and vulgar and ferocious insult and abuse, both public and private.
To give the quotations to prove the point would be simply disgusting.
They were sprinkled through the newspapers and the public docu
ments of the Rebellion from beginning to end of it.
A compend and a proof at once of the whole of them Avas that
private bundle of letters threatening death, and marked in Mr.
Lincoln's own handwriting, "Assassination,"
and kept in his private cabinet. And the assassination itself and
the circumstances connected with it, constituted another proof and
specimen, still more overwhelming.
Never since the times of the Christian martyrs has history
recorded a contrast more humiliating to humanity, between his kind
words and kind intentions on the one hand, and infamous abusive-
ness and deliberate bloodthirsty ferocity in those who slew the best
and kindest friend they had in the world.
Men of Our Times, Harriet Beecher Stowe, page 97.
Tragic Fate of the Five m the Box That Night
No one, not even the comedian on the stage, could ever remem
ber the last words of the piece that were uttered that night — the
last Abraham Lincoln heard upon earth. The whole performance
remains in the memory of those who heard it a vague phantas
magoria, the actors the thinnest of specters. The awful tragedy in
the box makes cA^erything else seem pale and unreal. Here were
five human beings in a narrow space — the greatest man of his time,
in the glory of the most stupendous success in our history, the idol
ized chief of a nation already mighty, with illimitable vistas of
grandeur to come; his beloved wife, proud and happy; a pair of
betrothed lovers, with all the promise of felicity that youth, social
position, and wealth could give them; and this young actor, hand
some as Endymion upon Latmos, the pet of his little world. The
glitter of fame, happiness and ease was upon the entire group, but
in an instant everything was changed with the blinding swiftness of
enchantment. Quick death was to come to the central figure of
that company — the central figure, we believe, of the great and good
men of the century. Over all the rest the blackest fates hovered

THE WORLD IN MOURNING . 669

menacingly— fates from which a mother might pray that kindly
death would save her chUdren in infancy. One was to wander with
the stain of murder on his soul, with the curses of a w^orld upon his
name, with a price set upon his head, in frightful physical pain, till
he died a dog's death in a burning barn ; the stricken wife was to
pass the rest of her days in melancholy and madness ; of those tAvo
jpfoung lovers, one was to slay the other, and then end his life a
raving maniac.
Abraham Lincoln: A History, John G, Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. X, page 294.

Fate of the Assassins and Others
The conspiracy to assassinate the President involved, alto
gether, twenty -five people. Among the number captured and tried
were: David C. Herold, G. W. Atzerodt, Louis Payne, Edw^ard
Spangler, Michael O'Loughlin, Samuel Arnold, Mrs. Surratt, and
Dr. Samuel iVIudd, the physician who set Booth's leg, which was
broken by his fall from the stage box. Of these, Herold, Atzerodt,
Payne and Mrs. Surratt were hanged. Dr. Mudd was deported to
the Dry Tortugas. While there, an epidemic of yellow fever broke
out and he rendered such good service that he was granted a pardon.
He died a number of years ago in Maryland.
John Surratt, the son of the woman who was hanged, made his
escape to Italy, where he became one of the Papal Guard in the
Vatican, at Rome. His presence there was discovered by Arch
bishop Hughes, and, although there were no extradition laws to
cover his case, the Italian Government gave him up to the United
States authorities. He had two trials. At the first the jury
disagreed; the long delay before the second trial allowed him to
escape by pleading the statute of limitation. Spangler and
O'Laughlin were sent to the Dry Tortugas and served their time.
Ford, the owmer of the theater in Avhich the President was
assassinated, was a Southern sympathizer, and when he attempted
to reopen his theater after the great national tragedy Secretary
Stanton refused to allow it. The Government afterward bought the
theater and turned it into a national museum.
The Story of Lincoln's Life, in" Abe" Lincoln's Yams and Stories, Edited by Col. Alex. K. McClure,
page soS,

670 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"The Most ChristUke Mortal That Ever Wielded Power"
The narratives of these events must give place to the brief
record of a story so sad that in its presence all other sorrows seemed
light, — a tragedy which overtopped all other horrors of the war.
 While the hearts of all the patriotic people
throughout the land were rejoicing in the triumph of the Union
cause, and while the nation's stage was being cleared of the dram£f*-
of the Rebellion, the bullet of an assassin pierced the brain of
Abraham Lincoln, and in a few hours the hand that had written the
sublime words of the Inaugural of 1861, the Emancipation Procla
mation, and the Address at Gettysburg, was pulseless, and the great
heart that had prompted them had ceased to beat.
The Avorld Avas appalled. Grief and rage contended for the
mastery in the minds of the people. Amid the sobs of the nation
the remains of the noble dead — the gentlest and most Christlike
mortal that ever Avielded power in all the tide of time — were borne
to his Western home.
Mr. Lincoln died shortly after seven o'clock on the morning of
the 15th of April, and at eleven o'clock of that day the oath of office
was administered by Chief Justice Chase to "Vice-President John
son, upon whom the powers and duties of the Presidential office
devolved under the Constitution.
Life and Public Services of Edwin M . Stanton, George C. Gorham, Vol. II. page i68.
Real Sorrow in the South over Lincoln's Death
Northerners take a very narrow-minded view who suppose that
Lincoln is not appreciated in the South. As a matter of fact, he
was esteemed by thousands of liberal-minded supporters during the
days of the bloody conflict as the best friend the Southern people
had in the North. His assassination was almost universally
deprecated, and his death was deeply regretted by intelligent
Southerners everywhere.
My earliest recollections are coupled with the Civil War. I had
six half-brothers in the Confederate army, every one of whom
except one received "Yankee lead" in his body. Some of them
were wounded several times ; one was killed at Vicksburg ; another
died of his wounds in camp; and two others went to premature
graves, without doubt, as a result of their wounds, several years

THE WORLD IN MOURNING 671
after the War. The earliest event that I remember was when the
f.mily all dressed up and went to town and I saw three of my
brothers march away from Eldorado, Arkansas, to join the Confed
erate army at the front. My next recollection was hearing the
boom of the cannon on a still evening at the bombarding of Vicks
burg, which must have been sixty or seventy mUes away. The s;.d
face of my mother as she sat with tear-filled eyes in the twilight on
that occasion and pressed me to her bosom is indelibly stamped on
my memory. Perhaps this incident is emphasized by the fact that,
a few days later, came the news that one of my brothers, who was
only seventeen years of age, had been cut in two by a cannon-ball
while carrying the colors of his company.
I am sure that all of, my six brothers were among the most
ardent supporters of the " Lost Cause;" and I am equally sure that
they all regarded Lincoln very much as the North regarded General
Lee, as a good, honest and true man, but on the wrong side. When
the news of his assassination came a gloom was cast over our house
hold, and I remember hearing my stepfather say, with great
seriousness, to my mother: "This is the most terrible thing that
could have happened to the South. They wiU accuse our people of
having killed him, though Ave all know that he is the best friend the
South ever h ,d in the North. " .
Correspondence of Thomas Sheppard Meek.
End of Mrs. Lincoln's Broken Life
Mrs. Lincoln died at the residence of her sister, Mrs. Ninian W.
Edwards, in Springfield (IlUnois), July 16, 1882. Her physician
during her last Ulness says of her :
"In the late years of her life certain mental peculiarities were
developed which finally culminated in a slight apoplexy, producing
•paralysis, of which she died. Among the peculiarities alluded to,
one of the most singular was the habit she had during the last year
or so of her life of immuring herself in a perfectly dark room and,
for Ught, using a smaU candle-light, even when the sun was shining
bright out-of-doors. No urging would induce her to go out into
the fresh air.
" Another peculiarity was the accumulation of large quantities
of silks and dress goods in trunks and by the cart-load, which she

672 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
never used and accumulated until it was really feared that the floor
of the store-room would give way.
" She was bright and sparkling in conversation, and her memory
remained singularly good up to the close of her life. Her face was
animated and pleasing; and to me she was always an interesting
woman ; and while the world was finding fault with her temper and
disposition, it was clear to me that the trouble was really a cerebral
disease. "
Herndon's Lincoln, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik. Vol. II, page 144.
Popular Sympathy and Mourning in Canada
The long and terrible Civil War in the United States was now
drawing to a close. The immense military strength of the North at
length fairly crushed out the Southern revolt. General Lee, Avith his
war-worn army, surrendered ; Jefferson Davis, the ill-starred presi
dent of the Confederacy, was captured; and slavery was dead.
Generals Grant and Sherman were haUed as the saAdours of the
republic. But this hour of the nation's triumph was dashed with horror
and grief by the cowardly and cruel murder of its civic head — the
simple, honest, magnanimous Abraham Lincoln. All Christen
dom shuddered with abhorrence at the foul assassination. The heart
of Canada was deeply stirred. Crowded meetings for the expression
of the national sympathy were held, and the utmost detestation of
the crime was avowed. Amid tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and
mourning emblems, the obsequies of the martyred president were
celebrated throughout the land. And much of the growing estrange
ment of recent years between the two nations was overcome by this
exhibition of popular sympathy and good -will.
A Popular History of the Dominion of Canada, William H. Withrow, D.D., F. R. S, C, page 467.
What the English People Thought of Lincoln
It was like this : I was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England,
during the Civil War in America. My native town and all the large
towns around it were dependent on American cotton for their
existence. Lancashire was the cotton-weaving county. When the
War began, cotton stopped coming from the States, and what you
know as the CiAdl War Avas known to my people as " The Cotton

THE WORLD IN MOURNING 673
Famine." And what a famine that was no one will ever know
except those who took part in it. . * . . The story seems almost too
horrible to relate. . . . My father said that when I was born there
was but half a loaf in the house, and many of his neighbors had gone
south to beg their bread from door to door. . . . First the news
came that the War could not last and that Lincoln would settle it
quickly. The mills were put on short time, three days a week.
'Then came two days ; then they closed altogether. . Hundreds
of half -famished men and women gathered around the one or two
daily newspapers, hoping against hope and expecting every morning
that the Federals had taken Richmond, but it was long delayed.
Mills closed, stores closed, mines closed. The question in
every home, on every street corner, on every pallid lip, from the
old man to the child that could not understand it all, was,
"Has Lee surrendered yet?"
Do you want to know which side they were on? Let me tell
you. It was in Glosup, near Manchester, that a cotton broker got
up and made a speech in one of the relief meetings. He hoped
"that the South would smash Lincoln and the North into cocked
hats." He never finished that speech. I have met him on the
cotton exchange many a time, and he bears a mark on his face that
even the chUdren caU "the Lincoln mark. "
It was of no use for an aristocrat to attempt to argue with these
hungry, desperate men. They had been too long already under the
power of lord and landlord, which is a synonym for oppression in
that country. They had worked too long at poorhouse wages not
to feel a thriU of pride and fellowship that they were counted worthy
to suffer with you for liberty's sake. . . There were 2,300,000
people in that county dependent on the results of that long-drawn-
out war. Abraham Lin.coln's proclamation of Uberty to the slaves is the
best known foreign document to the cotton operatives of Lan
cashire. Many a boy and giri can repeat it off-hand. I remember
the Government inspector of schools addressing our school of twelve
hundred scholars once, and he asked the question: "Whom do you
regard as the greatest man outside of England?" and a hundred
voices shouted in chorus, "Abraham Lincoln," as if "Old Abe"
were stUl Hving The second question was: "Who do you think

674 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
was the greatest man that this country of ours has produced?"
Here a medley arose, amid whicl? John Bright, W. E. Gladstone, and
Tom BroAvn were prominent. One little fellow said :
" My dad says Lincoln's bigger 'n 'm all. " 
In one corner of the great Cotton Exchange in Manchester is a
little stand, and under a glass globe is a miniature bale of raw cotton,
and behind it the legend in gilt lettering :

Part of the First Bale of Free Cotton
Was shipped from West Virginia, U. S., to Liverpool, 1865.
Free Cotton is King. But -what did it cost?

The story of that bale of cotton is soon told. People from all
the toAvns "footed it" to Liverpool and got a "lurry" (flat wagon),
and trimmed it with flowers and bunting, and placed the bale of
cotton in the center of the wagon, and the flag that you know so well
newly vindicated in liberty, and the flag under which I was born,
and which, in spite of all its mistakes and blunders of the 1 770's, is a
glorious flag, and between them the picture that you love, that my
father loved, that you suffered for, that my folks suffered for, the
plain picture that appeals to plain people in all the world — ¦
Abraham Lincoln.
My Story of Abraham Lincoln, James E. Holden. The Outlook, Vol. LXX, March 22, 1899, page 718.
' ¦ I ¦
Tributes in High Places
A Russian of high rank said of Lincoln: "That is the only
living ruler whom I sincerely reverence. . . He is a patriot,
a statesman, a great-hearted, honest man. "
Disraeli said in the English House of Commons: "In the char
acter of the victim, and in the very accessories of his almost latest
moments, there is something so homely and so innocent that it takes
the subject, as it were, out of the pomp of history, and out of the
ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the heart of nations, and
appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind. " Mr. John Stuart
MUl, the distinguished English philosopher . termed Mr.
Lincoln "the great citizen who afforded so noble an example of the
qualities befitting the first magistrate of a free people, and who, in

THE WORLD IN MOURNING

67s

the most trying circumstances, had graduaUy won not only the
admiration, but almost the personal affection of all who love freedom
or appreciate simplicity or uprightness. "
Dr. Merle d' Aubign6, the historian of the Reformation, wrote:
"Who can say that the President did not lay down his life by the
firmness of his devotion to a great duty? The name of Lincoln
wiU be one of the greatest that history has to inscribe on its annals. ' '
The French historian, Henri Martin, wrote of Lincoln: "This
man will stand out, in the traditions of his country and the world,
as an incarnation of the people. "
The author of "Abraham Lincoln" concludes her chapter
about him in these simple words: "He listened to all, heard all,
weighed all, and in his own time acted by his own honest convictions
in the fear of God, and thus simply and purely he did the greatest
work that has been done in modern times. "
Men of Our Times, Harriet Beecher Stowe, page 98.
"Seeking to Conquer, Not Persons, but Prejudices"
Strange mingling of mirth and tears, of the tragic and grotesque,
of cap and crown, of Socrates and Rabelais, of .^sop and Marcus
Aurelius, of all that is gentle and just, humorous and honest, mer
ciful, wise, laughable, lovable and divine, and all consecrated to
the use of man ; while through all, and over all, an overwhelming
sense of obligation, of chivalric loyalty to truth, and upon all the
shadow of the tragic end 
Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is
easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity.
But if you wish to know what a man really is, giA^e him power.
This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having al
most absolute power, he never abused it, except on the side of mercy.
Wealth could not purchase, power could not awe this divine,
this loving man. He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong.
Hating slavery, pitying the master — seeking to conquer, not persons
but prejudices — he was the embodiment of the self-denial, the
courage, the hope, and the nobility of a nation. He spoke, not to
inflame, not to upbraid, but to convince. He raised his hands, not
to strike, but in benediction. He longed to pardon. He loved to
see the pearls of joy on the cheeks of a wife whose husband he had
rescued from death.

676

THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN

Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest Civil War. He
is the gentlest memory of our world.
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, Robert G. IngersoU. . Edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, page,
307. Emerson's Review of Lincoln's Career
¦The President stood before us as a man of the people. He was
thoroughly American, Kentuckian born, working on a
farm, a fiatboatman, a captain in the Black Hawk War, a country
lawyer, a Representative in the rural Legislature of Illinois;^ — on
such modest foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid '.' .
A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune' attended
him. He offered no shining quali-
,'' ties at the first encounter; he
" -^•p' did not offend by superiority. He
had a face and manner which
disarmed suspicion, which in
spired confidence, which confirmed
^- good Avill. He was a man without
vices. He had a strong sense of
duty which it was very easy for
him to obey . ..
Then he had a vast good na
ture, which made him tolerant and
accessible to all ; fair-minded, lean
ing to the claim of the petitioner.
And how this good nature
became a noble humanity, in.
many a tragic case which the
events of the War brought to him,
every one will remember ; and with
what increasing tenderness he
dealt when a whole race was
thrown on his compassion. The poor negro said of him on an
impressive occasion, "Massa Linkum am eberywhere."
Then this broad good humor, running easily into jocular talk,
in which he delighted and in which he excelled, wa's a rich gift to
this wise man'. It enabled him to keep his Secret ; to meet eve'ry "
kind of man and every' rank in society; to take off the edge of the '

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

THE WORLD IN MOURNING 677

severest decisions; to mask his own purpose and sound his com
panion; and to catch with true instinct the temper of every com
pany he addressed. And more than all, it is to a man of severe
labor, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative,
good as sleep, and is the protection- of the overdriven brain against
rancor and insanity.
He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised
as pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first
but as jests ; and only later, by the very acceptance and adoption
they find in the mouths of mUlions, turn out to be the wisdom of
the hour. . . .
His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense
of mankind, and of the public conscience. ... If ever a man was
fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slan
der, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed no state secrets ; the
nation has been in such ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted,
that no secret could be kept Every door was ajar, and we know
all that befell.
Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the War. . . In
four years — four years of battle -days — his endurance, his fertility
of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found
wanting . . . He is the true history of the American people of his
time. Step by step he walked before them ; slow wdth their slow
ness, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of this
continent ; an entirely public man ; father of his country, the pulse
of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their
minds articulated by this tongue . Only Washington can com
pare with him in fortune.
From the Remarks at the Funeral Services held in Concord (Massachusetts), April 19th, 1865,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, in the Riverside Literature Series, page 77-
Abraham Lincoln — " The First American "
Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,
Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head.
Wept with the passion of an angry grief :
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart wUl beat and burn.
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.

678 THE STORY-LIFE OF LINCOLN
Nature, they say, doth dote.
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan.
Repeating us by rote :
For him her Old- World moulds aside she thrcAV,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed.
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ;
One whose meek fiock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth.
But by his clear-grained human worth.
And brave old wisdom of sincerity !
They knew that outward grace is dust ;
They could not choose but trust
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill.
And supple-tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind.
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined.
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind.
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. .
I praise him not ; it were too late ;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time.
And can his fame abide.
Still patient in his simple faith sublime.
Till the wise years decide.

THE WORLD IN MOURNING

679

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour.
But at last silence comes ;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower.
Our children shall behold his fame.
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man.
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame.
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration.
Lowell, page 344.

The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell

SHORT SAYINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

"Work, work, work!"
" One war at a time. "
" Give the boys a chance. "
" We cannot escape history. "
" Hold on with a bull-dog grip. "
" AU in that one word, Thorough.' '
"Il can bear censure, but not insult!"
" Never regret what you don't write. "
" Better hatch the egg than smash it. "
" More pegs than holes to put them in. "
"I'm nothing, but- truth is everything. "
" Let none falter who thinks he is right. "
"Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise."
" Freedom is the last, best hope of earth. "
" Don't swap horses in crossing a stream. "
"This nation should be on the Lord's side. "
"We are indeed the treasury of the world. "
" Let us have faith that right makes might. "
"I'm glad of the chance to finish this big job. "
" Public opinion in this country is everything. "
" Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. "
"I am free from any taint of personal triumph."
(CSo)

SHORT SAYINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 68i

"Calling a sheep's taU a leg doesn't make it so."
" Wealth is a superfluity of what we don't need. "
" If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. "
" With malice toward none, with charity for aU. "
"Like a seven-foot whistle on a five-foot boUer. "
"The gentleman smelt no royalty in our carriage. "
"Many have got into a habit of being dissatisfied. "
"Let them laugh, as long as the thing works weU."
" I know.I am right because I know Liberty is right. "
"Disenthrall ourselves, then we shaU save ourselves. "
"I wiU hold McCleUan's horse if he wiU win a battle!"
" Is a man to blame for having a pair of cowardly legs? "
" I count for something and there will be no more fighting. "
"When you can't remove an obstacle, plough around it!"
" Honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. "
"That some are rich shows that others may become rich. "
" Being elected has not pleased me so much as I expected. ' '
"If you have made a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter!"
"I call these weekly receptions my 'public opinion baths. ' "
"Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe. "
"Discourage litigation. There will still be business enough."
"My politics are short and sweet, like an old woman's dance. "
" If elected I shall be thankful, if not it will be all the same. "
"With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. "
" God bless my mother! All I am or hope to be I owe to her."
"You haven't a stray post-office in your pocket, have you?"

682 THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
"We might just as well take the people into our confidence."
" My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. "
" Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. "
" What use to me would be a second term if I had no country? "
"With a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you!"
"Faith in God is indispensable to successful statesmanship."
"In the corner there's a rat-hole that will bear looking into. "
"When you have written a wrathful letter — put it in the stove!"
" There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob
law. " " Suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situa
tion. "
"If ever I get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I'll hit it
hard!" "Never get between the woman's skillet and the man's ax-
helve." "These men will find that they have not read their Bibles
aright." " Shakespeare was the best judge of human nature tha,t ever
wrote. "
"It is unnecessary to remind your lordship that this means
'War.' " ¦
"It is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be
wrong. ' '
"My boy, never try to be President! If you do, you never
wiUbe." "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy
present. "

SHORT SAYINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 683
"A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-
general. "
" I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have
learned." " I authorize no bargains for the Presidency, and will be bound
by none. "
"This government cannot endure permanently half slave and
half free. "
"Sending men to that army is Uke shoveling fieas across a
barnyard." " This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it. "
"If men never began to drink they would never become
drunkards. "
" Don't shoot too high — aim low and the common people will
understand. "
"I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy
little fellow. "
" For those who like this kind of book, this is the kind of book
they wiU like. "
" For thirty years I have been a temperance man, and am too
old to change. "
" I do not think much of a man who is not wiser to-day than he
was yesterday. ' '
" Gold is good in its place ; but loving, brave patriotic men are
better than gold. "
" The Lord must love the common people — that's why he made
so many of them. "
" Better give your path to a dog— even kiUing the dog would
not cure the bite.
" Now, sonny, keep that (temperance) pledge and it wUl be the
best act of your life. "

684 ' THE STORY -LIFE OF LINCOLN
" No man is good enough to govern another man without that
other man's consent. "
"He can compress the most Avords into the smallest ideas of
any man I ever met."
" Would you undertake to disprove a proposition in Euclid by
calling Euclid a liar?"
"It AAill be some time before the front door sets up housekeep
ing on its own account ! ' '
"It is the same spirit that says: 'You work and toil and earn
bread and I avUI eat it.' "
"If Minnehaha means 'Laughing Water,' 'Weeping Water'
must be 'M.inneboohoo!' ' '
"I am like the boy that stumped his toe: hurt too much to
laugh and too big to cry.' '
" Meet face to face and converse together — the best way to
efface unpleasant feeling."
"Trusted in Providence till the britchin broke, and then didn't
know what on airth to do ! "
"As our troops can neither crawl under Maryland, nor fly over
it, they must come across it. "
' ' I feel like a man letting lodgings at one end of the house
while the other end is on fire."
" I believe I have made some mark which will t6ll for the cause
of liberty long after I am gone. "
" Until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by
another, drawn with the sword. "
" Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — oppo
sition to it, in the love of justice. "
" Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you pre
pare your own limbs to wear them. "
"I'm making generals now. In a few days I'll be making
quartermasters, and then I'll fix you. "

SHORT S.AYINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 685

" That government of the people, by the people, and for the
people, shall not perish from the earth. "
To several "weighty" men from the upper part of Delaware:
"Didn't the State tip up when you got off ? "
" I want it said of me that I plucked a thistle and planted a
flower where I thought a flower would grow. "
" Let not him who is homeless pull down the house of another,
but let him labor diligently to build one for himself. "
" Take all of the Bible upon reason that you can, and the bal
ance on faith, and you will live and die a better man. "
" A man has no time to spend in quarrels. If any man ceases
to attack me I never remember the past against him. "
' "There are already too many Aveeping widows in the United
States. For God's sake don't ask me to make any more ! "
"Like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee peddler offered for
sale, 'Large enough for any man — small enough for any boy.' ' '
" Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor,
lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages are sprout
ing out. ' '
" You may fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of
the time. "
"If this country cannot be saved without giving up that
principle, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than sur
render it. "
"Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises;
repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history;
you cannot repeal human nature. "
" If all that has been said in praise of woman were applied to the
women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct
during this war. God bless the women of America ! "

INDEX

"A B C Schools," 25.
"A. Lincoln's Imp'd Manner of Buoying
AAessels," 200—202.
Abolitionists, 185, 239, 255.
Abraham (family name), Lincoln's
grandfather killed by Indian, 17.
"Abraham," "Father,'' viii, 459.
Adams, Charles Francis, Minister to
England, 393.
Adams, John Quincy, 186.
Addresses, see Speeches.
Alger, Horatio, Jr., stories, 69, 230, 316.
"All Quiet along the Potomac," poem,
460.
Alley, John B., story, 318.
Almana?, current story about Lincoln's
use of, 265.
Alton, Illinois, seventh Lincoln-Douglas
Debate, 268," 269, 292.
Amnesty Proclamation, 564, 565.
Ancestry, English and American, vii.
Ancestry, Quaker, 17.
Anderson, Major Robert, 105, 106, 363,
364, 366, 367, 390, 395-397.
Andersonville, Confederate prison, 576.
Andrew, Gov. John A., 400, 408, 584.
Andrews, E. W., stories, 502, 602.
Antietam, 465-468, 480, 494, 560,
638.
Antislavery, Thomas Lincoln's prin
ciples, 29, Abraham's, 83; Lincoln-
Stone Protest, 137, 138; 185; bill in
Congress, i8g, 190; 256; premature
action, 425, 429.
Appomattox, Va., 417, 632, 645, 660.
Armstrong, Hannah, 122, 123, 261.
Armstrong, Jack, Clary's Grove bully,
89, 95, 122, 123.

Armstrong, William ("Duff"), 261-265.
Armstrong Murder Trial, 261-265.
Army, Pemberton's, 555-557.
Army of Northern Virginia, 527.
Army of the Potomac, 439-469, 486,
488, 502, 508, 510, 512, 527, 538,
631.
Army of the Tennessee, 557.
Army of Western Virginia, 445.
Arnold, Isaac N., stories, 41, 84, 109,
1321 ^35, 136. 138, 144, 246, 280,
292, 297, 643.
Arnold, Samuel, one of Booth's accom
plices, 662, 669.
"Artemus Ward" (Charles F. Browne),
viii, 348-351, 482, 483.
Ashmun, George, Chairman convention
nominating Lincoln, and of com
mittee notifying him, 327-330,
646, 647.
Atkinson, Mrs. Eleanor, stories, 21, 24.
"Atlanta to the sea," Sherman's march,
606—610.
Atzerodt, G. W. ("Port Tobacco"), one
of Booth's accomplices, 662, 664,
669.
Autobiography, Lincoln's, for Congress,
186; after nomination for Presi
dency, 331, B
Bad Axe, Battle in Black Hawk War, 106.
Baker, Col. Edward D,, 137, 149, 157,
162, 181, 186, 386, 387, 427, 435.
Baldwin, John, blacksmith, 59, 60.
Ball's Bluff, Battle of, 426, 427, 429,
455-
Baltimore, 378, 379, 381, 400-404, 407,
597, 600.

(687)

688

INDEN

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 444, 453.
Band, Marine, or President's, 436, 618.
Barrett, Joseph H., stories, 29, 39, 105,
152, 154, 162, 183, 236, 282, 316,
389, 642, 643.
Bateman, Newton, 340.
Bates, David Homer, stories, 417, 435,
453. 476-478, 541. 581.
Bates, Edward, Attorney-General, 317,
320, 321, 431. 603, 604,
Beardstown, Illinois, 87, 95, 98.
Beauregard, G. T., Confederate Gen
eral, 395-397.
Bedell, Grace, induces Lincoln to wear
beard, 355.
Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, stories, 307,
524-
Beers, Ethel Lynn, poem, 460.
Bell, John, candidate for President, 343.
Berry, William, partner, 112, 114, 115,
117.
Binns, Henry Bryan, story, 205.
Bixby, Mrs. Lydia, letter from President
Lincoln, 584, 585.
Black, Jeremiah S., 358, 363.
Black Hawk, 98, 103.
Black Hawk War, 98-106, 108, 129.
"Black Republicans," 273, 459.
"Blackstone," first set of, 112, 113, 115,
128.
Blair, Francis P., 404, 406, 472, 473.
Blair, Montgomery, Postmaster-Gen
eral, 278, 345, 426, 479, 544, 547.
Bloomington, Illinois, 173, 218, 220,
247, 250—254, 266, 270, 312.
Bloomington Convention, 250, 251, 253,
254-
Boone, Daniel, friend of grandfather, 17,
19.
Booth, John Wilkes, 648-652, 658, 663,
664-666.
"Border Ruffians," 239.
Bowen, Henry C, stories, 306, 345.
Breckenridge, John, murder case at
Boonville, 66, 67,

Breckenridge, John C, candidate for
President, 330, 331, 343.
Bridge, Rock Island, 260, 261.
Bright, John, 532, 674.
Brooks, Elbridge S., story, 10 1.
Brooks, Noa'i, stories, 38, 250, 285, 311,
353. 357. 359. 364, 5°4. 5°5. 506,
51°. 539. 546, 563, 592, 600, 603,
607, 608, 609, 617, 619, 634, 664.
Brown, John, 239, 301-305, 310.
Browne, Francis F., stories, 18, 41, 47,
48, 64, 90, 93, 102, 202, 301.
Browning, O. H., 157, 247, 322.
Bryant, William Cullen, 307, 309, 333,
665.
Bryant and Gay, stories, 239.
Buchanan, James, 304, 358, 363, 366,
369. 370. 383, 385. 387. 389. 459.
544-
Buchanan's Cabinet, 358, 363, 366, 459.
Bull Run, Battles of, viii, 415-417, 439,
480, 486, 560, 638, 641.
Burnside, Gen. Ambrose E., 487, 494,
495. 541, 581.-
Burrage, Henry Sweetser, story, 528.
Burt, Col. Silas W., story, 522.
Bush, Isaac, 30.
Bush, Sally, 30, 34, 38 (see Lincoln).
Butler, Gen. Benj. F., stories, 265, 410,
411, 429. 474, 497. 498, 563. 564,
576, 626, 627.
Butterworth, Hezekiah, story, 340.

Cabinet, Lincoln's, 345-347. 35'. 39i.
392, 393. 404. 411, 412, 430. 432-
434. 439. 440. 441, 45°. 461, 479-
483, Sii. 523. 568, 615, 623, 632,
638, 640-642, 656.
Calhoun, John, county surveyor, 105,
119-121, 157.
Calls for troops, 398, 404, 410.
Cameron, Simon, Secretary of War,
320, 321, 342, 354, 395, 415. 432-
434.

INDE.X

689

Campaigns, Lincoln's (1832), 95, 96,
109; (1834), 125, 127; (1836),
134; (1840), 157; (1841 and '42),
181; (1843 ^"<i '44)' 183; (1844
and '45), 185; (1846) elected to
Congress, 185, 186; (1852), 222;
return to politics, (1854), 237, 238;
Peoria speech (1856), 241-244;
Bloomington Convention (1856),
250-274; for U, S, Senator (1858),
258-295; mottoes and anagrams,
270, 337; first Presidential, 317-
345, 386; second Presidential, 586-
614.
Capitol, Illinois State, Vandalia, 139;
Springfield (old), 336, 352.
Capital of Illinois, Lincoln's work for
removal, 137-139, 144-
Caricatures, "cabinet making," 346;
campaign poster in 1864, 603 ;
"Long Abraham," 604.
Carnegie, Andrew, 415.
Carpenter, F. B., stories, 318, 326, 366,
420, 424, 481, 566, 568, 576, 582,
583, 615, 623, 624, 632, 647, 661.
Carr, Humphrey W., story, 335-337.
Cartter, David K., 322.
Cartwright, Rev. Peter, 109, 185, 299,
300.
Cass, General Lewis, loi, 108, 109, 194,
195. 363-
"Catchem and Cheatem," 209.
Chambrun, Marquis de, stories, 617,
632, 656.
Chancellorsville, Battle of, viii, 508-512,
514, 527. 532, 560.
Chandler, Albert B., story, 335.
Charleston, IlUnois, fourth Lincoln-
Douglas Debate, 268, 269, 285,
367.
Charleston Harbor, 363, 367, 503, 642.
Chase, Salmon P., Secretary of the
Treasury, 297, 313, 321, 322, 345.
438, 479. 48s. 513. 544. 586. 587.
• 588, 597, 617, 619. 67°'

Chicago, 104, 105, 129, 203, 249, 251,
255. 257, 260, 265, 267, 272, 280,
316. 317-325. 337. 432. 465, 478,
479. 542, 593. 594, 624, 643, 646.
City Point, 569-573, 631.
Clarke, James Freeman, Rev., 408.
Clay, Henry, 109, 119, 187, i'88, 192,
197. 235-
Cobb, Howell, 186, 358, 365.
Coffey, Titian J., stories, 431, 433, 604.
Coffin, Charles Carleton ("Carleton"),
stories, 318, 328, 427, 631,
Colfax, Schuyler, Congressman, after
wards Speaker and Vice-President,
stories, 447, 479, 496, 502, 562,
564, 574, 646, 647.
Coi-nmissioners, Confederate, 394.
Compromise, Missouri, see Missouri
Compromise.
Compromise of 1850, 241, 244.
Confederacy, Southern, 348, 364, 365,
368, 394, 399. 400, 403, 405-407,
461, 474, 475. 514, 515. 516, 517,
527. 532, 577, 591. 594, 597. 599.
625, 637, 670, 671.
Congress, Lincoln in, 185, 186, 189-199.
Conkling, James C, 325, 598.
Conscription Bill, 535-537, 543-
Conwell, Russell H., Rev., stories, 308,
567-
Cooper Institute, or Union, Lincoln
speaks at^ 306-311.
Corbett, Boston, claimed to have shot
Wilkes Booth, 666.
"Cotton Famine" in England during
the Civil War, 672-674.
Crawford, Andrew, teacher, 42-45. 47-
Crawford, Fort, Prairie du Chien, Wis.,
104, 106.
Cra-«rford, Josiah ("Old Blue Nose"),- 51,
52, 184.
Crawford, Mrs. Josiah (Elizabeth),
stories, 52, 57, 69, 76.
Curtis, William Eleroy, stories, 19, 23,
113, 186.

6go

INDEX

D
Dana, Charles A., Assistant Secretary
of War, stories, 552, 577, 589, 606,
621, 644,
Da'vis, David, Judge and Senator, 206,
208, 209, 211, 215, 217, 219, 223,
¦ 233, 253, 255, 432.
Davis, Jefferson, 104-106, 305, 367,
389. 407, 418, 577, 614, 625, 637,
672.
Dayton, Wm. L., candidate for Vice-
President, 249, 254, 321.
Debates, Lincoln-Douglas, 258-292.
Declaration of Independence, 272, 378.
Defrees, Public Printer, 420, 421.
Delaware, 474, 475, 685.
Democrats, 109, 119, 133, 134, 136, 158,
183, 185, 249, 266, 286, 289, 293,
m, 336. 427, 429. 459. 460, 543.
Depew, Chauncey M., stories, 448, 595.
Deserters, 468.
Dickens, Charles, story, 640-642.
Dickey, Judge T. Lyle, 237.
Dickinson, Anna, 619.
Dix, Gen, John A., 363, 459, 664.
"Dixie," 635.
Donelson, Fort, 466, 554.
Dorsey, Hazel, first teacher in Indiana,
41, 43. 44-
Douglas, Stephen A., Judge, Senator
and rival, 137, 138, 141, 147, 149,
151, 157, 164, 180, 222, 238, 241-
244, 259-292, 309, 312, 330, 331,
343, 386, 387, 394, 410.
Douglass, Fredeiick, 514, 515.
Draft, resistance to, 535-537, 543-
Dred Scott Decision, see Scott, Dred.
Du Pont, Admiral Samuel F., 503.
E
Farly, Jubal A., Confederate general,
575-
East Room, White House, 438, 6x8.
Eaton, Gen. John, stories, 559, 578,
579-

Eckert, Major T. T., 45^-453. 476-478,
600.
Edward, "Old," White House servant,
633. 636.
Edwards, Mrs, N. W., Mrs. Lincoln's
sister, 167, 671.
Edwards, Ninian W., brother-in-law,
137-
Election to the Presidency (i860), 341-
347; (1864), 602-605.
Elizabethtown, parents' home, 23.
Elkin, Rev. ("Parson") preaches
mother's funeral sermon, 37, 42.
Ellsworth, Col. Elmer E., 334, 375, 613.
Emancipation of slaves, premature,
425, 429; "compensated," 474, 475,
614, 615.
Emancipation Proclamation, 474-493,
497, 499, 542, 543-
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, remarks on
Lincoln, 676, 677.
England's attitude, 570-572.
Ericsson, Captain John, 448—451.
Euclid, 207, 284.
Evarts, William M., 321, 322.
Everett, Edward, 394, 545-552.
Ewing, James, of Illinois bar, story, 218.
Ewing, L. D., opponent, 135.

Facsimiles of Lincoln's handwriting:
leaf from lesson book, 46 ; certificate . . ,
of survey, 120; page from charge
book of Stuart & Lincoln, 148;
office label, 205; request for place
for friend, 42 1 ; Gettysburg Address,
549, 550; passes, 559, 561, 578;
letter to Mrs. Bixby, 585; two
letters, 588; order. 616; last -written
words, 647.
Fairfax Court-house, 415-417.
"Father Abraham," viii, 459.
Fell, Jesse W., 312, 331.
Fillmore, Millard, 199, 232.
Floyd, John B., 358, 363,

INDEX

691

Ford's Theater, 645-653, 669.
Forquer, George, lightning-rod story,
134, 135-
Fort Crawford, see Crawford, Fort.
Fort Donelson, see Donelson, Fort.
Fort Henry, see Henry, Fort.
Fort McHenry, see McHenry, Fort.
Fort, or Fortress Monroe, see Monroe,
Fortress.
Fort Snelling, see Snelling, Fort.
Fort Stevens, see Stevens, Fort.
Fort Sumter, see Sumter, Fort.
Fort Wagner, see Wagner, Fort.
Foster, Ernest, stories, 307, 535.
Fox, Capt. G. v.. Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, 448-451, 497, 498.
Franklin, Benjamin, compared to Lin
coln, ix.
Fredericksburg, 486-488, 494, 499, 502
514, 527. 560.
Freeport, Illinois, second Lincoln-Doug
las Debate, 267, 280-283.
Fremont, John C, 249; first conven
tion, 254, 409, 424—426, 429, 432,
586; "Cave of Adullam," 597.
Fremont, Mrs. Jessie Benton, 425,
426.
Fry, Gen. James B., stories, 531, 540,
542, 591-
Fugitive Slave Law, 474.
Funeral services, 663-667. G
Galesburg, Ilhnois, fifth Lincoln-Doug
las Debate, 268, 286.
GaUaher, J. E., story, 26.
Ganson, John, 594, 595.
Garfield, James A., General, afterwards
President, 485.
Gentry, for whom Gentryville was
named, 71, 72.
Gentry, Allen, 71.
Gentry, Mrs. Allen (Kate Roby), 43.
Gentryville, Indiana, home, 32, 50, 51,
56, 57, 60, 6s, 66, 67, 70, 73, 184.

Gettysburg, town, battle, cemetery,
address, 527-532; 545-552; 574.'
638, 670.
Giddings, Joshua R., 193, 320, 321.
Globe Tavern, 178, 179.
Godby, Russel, neighbor, 116, 120.
Goldsborough, Admiral L. M., 485.
GoUaher, Austin, playmate, 25, 26.
Gorham, George C, stories, 445, 447,
636, 670.
Graham, Dr. C. C, signed statement
concerning marriage of Lincoln's
parents, 20, 21.
Gra.ham, Mentor, teacher, 86, 91, 92,
121.
Grant, Gen. U. S., 417, 527, 532. 553-
581, 600. 605, 612, 613, 625, 631,
636, 638, 645, 646, 660. 672.
Greeley, Horace, stories, 259, 260, 309,
i3^, 359. i?'3 389. 576, 577, 586,
597, 598, 658-660.
Green, "Aunt Nancy," 93.
Green, BowHng, <)t,, 95, 128, 142, 144.
Greenbacks, 486, 512, 513.
Greene, William G., fellow clerk, 89,
90, 93, 94, 99, III, 112, 200, 223,
224.
Grigsby, Aaron, married Sarah Lin
coln, 42, 57, 64, 65, 72.
Grigsby, Nat or Nathaniel, 42, 47, 52,
57. 64, 65. H
Habeas Corpus, Suspension of Writ, 459,
488, 489.
Hale, Edward Everett, story, 658-
660.
Halleck, General Henry W., 469, 471,
5°5, 528, 529, 568.
Hamlin, Hannibal, Vice-President,
322, 506.
Hampton Roads, Va., 447-451, 576,
613, 614.
Hanaford, Mrs. P. A., stories, 63, 401.
Hancock, Gen. Winfield S., 527.

69:

INDEN

Hanks, Dennis, cousin and playmate,
21, 23, 24, 34, 38, 39, 41, 48, 53, 59,
72, 76, 77,367,369, 538-
Hanks, John, companion, 48, 60, 72,
74, 75, 78, 84, 315-
Hanks, Nancy, mother, 19; marriage,
20 (see Lincoln).
Hardin, John J., 137, 162, 181, 182, 183,
185, 186.
Harding, George, 248.
Harper's Ferry, Va., 301-305, 310, 400,
404, 453-456, 528.
Harris, Gen. T. M., story, 652.
Harris, Miss Clara W., 646, 648, 669.
Harrisburg, Pa., 379-381.
Harrison, William Henry, "Old Tippe
canoe," 157— 161.
Harrison's Landing, 462-464, 473.
Havana, Illinois, 107, 270.
Hay, John, 402, 547, 655.
Hazel, Caleb, second teacher, 25.
Head, Rev. Jesse, married Lincoln's
parents, 20.
Henry, Fort, 554.
Herndon, Judge William H., partner,
48, 56, 97, 168, 169, 192, 194, 221,
223, 236, 247, 255, 299, 370, 471.
Herndon, William H., and Jesse W.
Weik, stories, 36, 42, 47, 56, 62,
70, 74, 78, 79, 84, 87, 98, 103,
186, 189, 194, 206, 207, 223, 280,
293, 672.
Herndon, Rowan, 97, 112, 125.
Herold, David C, one of Booth's accom
plices, 662, 665, 666, 669.
Hill, Frederick Trevor, stories, 140, 147,
153, 164, 185, 206, 219, 220, 221,
223, 265, 276, 279, 283, 370, 383,
39°-
History Tables, see Tables of Leading
Events.
HodgensviUe, born near, 23.
Holden, James E., story, 672-674 .
Holland, J. G., stories, 98, 177, 178, 188,
230, 341.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Lincoln's love
for his poems, 591, 592.
Holt, Joseph, Judge-Advocate-General,
363, 561. 562.
Honesty, stories about Lincoln's, 90,
91, 98, 108, 115, 138, 140, 143, 145,
146, 150, 151, 153, 157, 162, 170,
192, 203, 249.
Hooker, Gen. Joceph H. ("Fighting
Joe"), 502, 510-512, 513, 514, 527-
529-
Houston, Governor, 365.
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 408.
Howells, W. D., stories, 77, 330.
Hubbard, Elbert, story, 661.
Huidekoper, Gen. H. S., story, 631.
Hull's surrender (General Cass), 108.
Humor, Lincoln's, viii, ix.
Humor of the soldiers, 538, 539.

lies, Elijah, Captain in Black Hawk
War, 103, 106.
Illinois Central Railroad, 73, 235, 246,
247, 268, 284, 326, 443.
Inaugural Addresses, 379; firs^^ Inaug
ural 384-389; second Inaugural,
616-619.
Independence Hall, PhiladeJphia, ad
dress, 376, 379.
Indiana Revised Statutes, 48, 140.
IngersoU, Col. Robert G., story, 675,
676.
Invention, Lincoln's, 200-202.
Iverson, Senator Alfred, 365.

Jackson, Andrew, 104, 109, iig, 379,
459-
Jackson, Thomas J. ("Stonewail"),
Confederate general, 509, 5x1, 527,
639, 640.
Janvier, Francis DeHaes, poem, "The
Sleeping Sentinel," 483-485.
Jay, Allen, story, 536, 537.

INDEX

693

Johnson, Andrew, Vice-President, 186,
383, 6oo, 670.
Johnson, Herschel V., 364.
Johnson, Reverdy, 278, 406.
Johnston, Albert Sidney, Confederate
general, 104, 625,
Johnston, John D., stepbrother, 40, 47,
6g, 72, 78, 79, 84, 225, 226, 228.
Johnston, Joseph E., Confederate gen
eral, 639.
Johnston, Matilda, 40, 47, 70, 72.
Johnston, Sarah, 40, 72.
Johnston ("Widow"), Mrs. Daniel
(Sally Bush), 38; married, 39 (see
Lincoln).
Jones, Capt. William, proprietor of store,
73-
Jonesboro, Illinois, third Lincoln-Doug
las Debate, 267, 268, 284.
Jones's "Grocery Store," Gentryville,
65, 66, 70.
Judd, Norman B., 247, 260, 261, 297,
317, 378- K
Kansas, "Bleeding,'' 238, 239, 252,
297.
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 237, 238, 242,
244, 256, 260, 282.
Keckley, Elizabeth, stories, 438, 640,
658.
Keene, Laura, 645-653.
Kelley, William D., stories, 327, 456,
460, 496, 534.
Kelso, friend, 117.
Kerr, Orpheus C, 508.
Kilpatrick, Gen. Judson, 516, 517.
Kirkpatrick, employer and rival, 99.
"Knights of the Golden Circle," 459.
Knob Creek, early home on, 24, 26, 30.

Lamar, Capt. John, stories, 50, 67.
Lamon, Ward H., 173, 208, 379, 382,
522, 646.

Lamon, Ward HiU, stories, 32, 34, 40,
45. 51, 58, 59, 60, 85, 92, 110, 114,
117, 119, 123, 125, 149, 150, 173,
209, Zii, 369-
Lecompton, Kansas, 238, 259, 293.
Lee, Fitzhugh, story, 464.
Lee, Robert E., 304, 404—407, 417, 494,
495, 513. 514. 516, 527-531, 536,
625, 632, 637, 639, 640, 672.
"Leg Cases," Lincoln's, 562 563..
Leland, Charles Godfrey, stories 394,
398, 404, 407, 410.
Letters, Lincoln's, first, 36; to Mrs.
Browning, 145; to Stuart, 165;
to Speed, 165, 178 ; to Herndon, 192,.
194; to Secretary of State, 203; to
a fellow-lawyer, 205 ; to a New York
firm, 213; to steijbrother, 225—229;
to Hannah Armstrong, 261; to
N. B. Judd, 297; to S. P. Chase,
298; of acceptance, 330; to Fell,
333; to Grace Bedell, 355 ; to Thur
low Weed, 359; to A. H. Stephens,
362; to Seward, 384, 393; to
"Nasby,'- 508; to ladies of Sanitary
Fair, 542; to Grant, 555, 581, 612;
to Greeley, 577; to Mrs. Bixby,
585; to Gov. Curtin, 588; to W.
O. Snider, 588; to Sherman (Dec.
26, 1864), 610.
Lightning-rod, story of Forquer's, 134,
135-
Lincoln, Abrahapn, grandfather, 17.
Lincoln, Abraham, birth, 23 ; babyhood,
24; moves to Knob Creek, 24;
first teachers, 2 5 ; saved from
drowning, 26; first farm work, 28;
leaves Kentucky, 29; helps build
camp with ax at seve.i years, 34;
helpsbuild cabin, 35; writes first
letter, 36; gets Parson Elkin to
preach mother's funeral sermon,
37; encouraged by stepmother, 40;
reads "Arabian Nights," 41 ; goes to
school, 4 1-4 7 ; six feet four inches

694

INDEN

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
at 14 years, 43 ; spelling, 44 ; devours
"Revised Statutes,'' 48; reads all
the books he can borrow, 49 ; acts as
ferryman, 49; reads while plowing,
50 ; first love story, 50 ; superstitions,
51; "pulls fodder" for Weems's
"Washington," 51; "bounds" an
idea, 52; sports, etc., 54; kicked by
horse, 55; writes satirical rhymes,
56, 57; acts as hired man, 57; feats
of strength, 58 ; ferryman and
butcher, 59 ; saves drunkard's life,
60; studies by firelight, 61; shaves
off shovel, etc., to cipher on, 62;
earns first dollar, 63 ; takes to the
"stump,'- 65; "writes for the press,
66; attends court at Boonville, 66;
"teaches" astronomy, 68 ; goes coon-
hunting, 69 ; first trip to New
Orleans, 71; starts for Illinois, 72;
acts as peddler, 73 ; helps build
father's cabin and splits rails, 74, 75 ;
starts out for self at twenty-one,
75; splits rails, 76; "winter of the
deep snow," 77; hired by Offutt,
78; saves three lives, 80; flat-
boat lodges, 83 ; second trip to
New Orleans, 83 ; first view of hor
rors of slavery, 84 ; throws Need
ham, 85 ; arrives at New Salem, 86 ;
acts as pilot, 87 ; defeats Armstrong
89 ; meets Yates, 90 ; clerks in
Offutt's store, 91; studies gram
mar, 9 1 ; becomes a candidate for
first time, 95; elected captain in
Black Hawk War, 99 ; saves an
Indian from death, 100; re-enlists,
103; walks home, 107; defeated,
109; storekeeper, 112; begins to
study law, 113; store "winks out,"
115; postmaster, 118; surveyor,
119-124; first real stump speech,
124; enters campaign of 1834, 125;
devoted to Ann Rutledge, 126;

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
borrows $200 of Smoot, 127; goes
to Legislature, 129; distracted over
death of Miss Rutledge, 131; "Oh,
why should the spirit of mortal be
proud?" 132; candidate in 1836,
133; retaliates on Forquer, 134,
and Taylor, 136; "Long Nine," 137;
Lincoln-Stone protest (1837), 138;
removal of capital, 139; does petty
law business, 140; banqueted for
leading in removal of State capi
tal to Springfield, 141; leaves New
Salem, 142 ; settles in Springfield,
144 ; becomes partner to Stuart, 144 ;
encounters Douglas,- 147; defends
Baker and demands free speech,
150; meets Mary Todd, 153; works
in Harrison campaign (1840), 157;
breaks engagement with Miss Todd,
165; invests first big fee for step
mother, 170; dissolves with Stuart,
goes into partnership with Logan,
171; delivers great temperance ad
dress (1842), 173 ; becomes involved
with Shields, 175; duel avoided,
177; married (1842, aged 33), 178,
180; declines support for Governor,
181; visits "old home" in Indiana,
183; elected to Congress, 185;
visits Henry Clay, 187; piepaies
bill against slavery in District of
Columbia, 189; presents "Spot"
resolutions, 191 ; speaks against
Cass, 194; speaks in New England
for Taylor, 197; sees Niag£ ra Falls,
199; gets invention patented, 200;
flying visit to Washington (1849),
203; returns to law, 203; studies
Euclid, 207; travels circuit, 214;
opposes Douglas in 1852, 222;
farewell letter to dying father, 226;
writes to stepbrother, 225, 226, 228;
family record, 236; returns to
politics, 237 ; makes great speech at

INDEX

69s

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
Peoria (1854), 241; defends fifteen
women in liquor case (1855), 244;
collects $5,000 fee of I. C. R.R.,247 ;
first meets Stanton, 248; speaks
in cai-npaign of 1856, 249; makes
"lost" speech at Bloomington,
1856, 250; receives no votes for
Vice-President (1856), 255; nomi
nated by Republicans for Senator
(1857), 258; "house divided"
speech, 259; Rock Island Bridge
case, 260; offers legal aid to Han
nah Armstrong, 261; great Arm
strong murder trial (1858), 262-
265; challenges Douglas to debate,
266; seven joint debates, 267-292;
speaks in Kansas and Ohio (1859),
297; wins another great murder
case, 299 ; speaks at Wisconsin fair,
305 ; makes Cooper Institute speech
(February 27, i860), 307-3 11; speaks
in New England, 311; first choice
of Republicans of Illinois for Presi
dency, 316; nominated at Chicago,
322; speech and letter of accept
ance, 329, 330; writes life-story
for Fell, 331-333; great conven
tion at Springfield (August, i860),
337; elected (November 6, i860),
341; begins "cabinet-making" that
night, 345; receives office-seekers
and others, 348-3 54 ; strange optical
illusion, 353; grows a beard, 355;
engages Stoddard as secretary, 356;
looks on, helpless, while Bu
chanan's Cabinet tries to wreck the
Government, 358, and Southern
States secede, 364 ; corresponds with
Alexander H. Stephens, 362; says
farewell to his aged stepmother,
367, 369; takes final leave of his law
office, 370; fareweU to Springfield,
372; travels to Washington, speak
ing at Indianapolis, Cincinnati,

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
Pittsburg, Cleveland, Buffalo, New
York City, Trenton, Philadelphia,
and Harrisburg, passing through
Baltimore in the night, 372-383;
raises flag over Independence Hall,
Philadelphia, 3 7 7 ; loses Inaugural
address at Harrisburg, 379;
reaches Washington, (February 23,
1861), 382; writes to Seward, 384;
delivers Inaugural, 386-389;
attempts to relieve Fort Sumter,
391; replies to Seward's assump
tions, 393; instructs Major Ander
son at Fort Sumter, 395 ; issues call
for 75,000 men (April 15, 1861),
398 ; confers with Maryland men
who protest, 40 1 ; anxious days, 402 ;
another call for soldiers, 404 ; sends
F. P. Blair to R. E. Lee, 406 ; mild
i-neasures angrily received, 407;
last interview with Douglas, 410;
declines foreign intervention, 411;
persists in plain, simple mes
sages, 414, 420; receives news of
first battle of Bull Run (July 21,
1861), 415-417; hampered by Fre
mont's premature antislavery
proclamation, 425; takes right
stand in "Trent affair" against
popular clamor, 429-431; gets rid
of obnoxious Secretary of War,
432; appoints Stanton, 433 ; incon
solable grief over death of Willie,
435-438; patient with McClellan,
439-473; studies strategy, 441;
visits McClellan's headquarters,
442, 452, 461, 467, 472; issues first
general War Order, 444 ; deeply
interested in the Monitor, 447-
451; distressed over blunders at
Harper's Ferry, 453-457; dis
appointment over Antietam, 465-
469 ; dismisses McClellan and re
calls him, 469-471; stops McClel-

596

INDEX

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
lan's "game,'- 473; experiments
with "compensated" Emancipa
tion, 474-476; writes first draft
of Emancipation Proclamation,
476; reads Proclamation to Cabi
net, 481 ; receives news of defeat at
Fredericksburg, 488 ; suspends writ
of habeas corpus, 489 ; signs Eman
cipation Proclamation (January i,
1863), 491; suffers from an attack
of smallpox, 496; -visits Butler's
department, 497; receives formal
notice of betrothal of Prince and
Princess of Wales, 502 ; visits
Hooker's headquarters, 504 ; deep
distress over defeat at Chancellors
ville, 508-512; gives wise military
advice to Hooker, 513; narrowly
escapes assassination, 522; tells
senators the Blondin story, 523 ;
appoints Meade to succeed Hooker,
resigned, 528; bitter disappoint
ment over battle of Gettysburg,
531; sends original of Emancipa
tion Proclamation to Sanitary
Fair, Chicago, 542; delivers ad
dress at Gettysburg, 548 ; writes
letter to Grant (July 10, 1863),
555 ; issues Amnesty Proclamation,
564; first meeting with Grant,
(March 9, 1864), 568; visits Grant
at City Point (March, '64), 570;
sends Greeley to Niagara as peace
commissioner, 577; writes famous
letter to a bereaved Boston mother,
584 ; plans the admission of Nevada,
589; enforces Stanton's obedience
590; renominated for President,
598; re-elected, 602; congratulates
Sherman, 610; arranges for Robert
to become one of Grant's aides, 612 ;
Hampton Roads Conference, 613-
615; second Inaugural, 616, 617;
Inauguration reception, 618 ; enters

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
Richmond, 627-631; returns from
City Point, 63 1 ; comes back to
Washington, 632; receives news of
Lee's surrender, 634; responds. to
serenade (Tuesday evening, April
II, 1865), 635; sends last telegram,
635; meets Cabinet for the last
time, 638-642; goes driving with
his wife, 642, 643 ; last official acts,
643, 644; goes to theater, 645-
648; last writing, 647; received
with great enthusiasm at theater,
648; assassinated, 648-653 ; carried
across the street, 655 ; death on the
morning of April 15, 1865, 656;
funeral in White House, Wednes
day (April 19), 663, cortkge to
Springfield, 111., 664; burial, 667.
Lincoln, Mrs. Mary Todd, wife, 178,
180, 215, 235, 236, 283, 316, 326,
328, 334, 345, 353. 375. 386, 387,
400, 412-414, 435-438, 502, 506,
525. 582, 632, 635, 642, 643, 645,
647, 648, 653, 658, 661, 671, 672.
Lincoln, Edward, son, 236.
Lincoln, Gov. Levi, 198.
Lincoln, Josiah, uncle, 17, 18.
Lincoln, Mordecai, uncle, 17, 18.
Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, mother, mar
riage, 20; pioneer housekeeping, 21,
24, 25, 29; sickness and death, 36,
37, 38.
Lincoln, Robert Todd, eldest son, 236,
311, 334, 379, 380, 612, 613, 638,
639, 640, 653, 655, 658.
Lincoln, Sarah, or Nancy, sister, born,
22, 32, 38, 39, 42, 57; marriage and
death, 63.
Lincoln, Sally Bush Johnston, step
mother, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45. 48,
S3, 62, 70, 72, 227-229, 367, 369.
Lincoln, Thomas, father, 17, 19; mar
ried Nancy Hanks, 19, 20, 21, 30,
33, 38; married Sally Bush Johns-

INDEN

697

Lincoln, Thomas — Continued
ton, 39, 43, S3, 55, 61, 69, 72, 77,
223-225; death, 226, 227, 369.
Lincoln, Thomas ("Tad"), youngest
son, 231, 236, 30D, 376, 435, 502,
512, 5x3, 531, 566, 567, 575, 576,
580, 581, 582, 610, 611, 6x5, 6x6,
633-635, 653, 654, 666.
Lincoln, William, son, 230, 236, 435-
438, 566, 667.
Livermore, Mary A., stories, 324, 465,
469, 498, 520, 543-
Locke, David R. ("Petroleum V.
Nasby"), stories, viii, 277, 292, 299,
4x7, 423, 483, 508, 544, 561, 588,
59°-
Logan, Judge Stephen T., partner,
147, 171, 172, 299.
"Long Nine," The, 137, 140, 141.
Longstreet, Confederate general, 527.
Lossing, Benson J., stories, 379, 430.
"Lost Speech," Lincoln's, 250-254.
Lowell, James Russell, 408, 430 ; Com
memoration Ode, 677-679.
Lyons, Lord, British Ambassador 406,
502. M
McClellan, George B., 247, 284, 432, 438,
439-473. 476, 494, 495, 601, 603.
"McClellan's Own Story, "441-444, 456—
458, 467, 469, 471-
McCormick versus Manny, reaper case,
248, 278.
McClure, Col. Alex. K., editor, stories,
124. 133. 155. 163, 164, 171, 178,
180, 209, 2x4, 222, 231, 232, 286,
355. 380, 395, 407, 412, 419. 461,
472, 486, 495, 522, 524, 529, 538,
547. 566, 594. 602, 605, 614, 632,
666.
McClure, J. B., editor, story, 485.
McDowell, Gen. Irvin, 415-417.
McHenry, Fort, 500-502.
•McNamar, John (alias McNeil), 126, 129.

Manassas, 415-417, 446, 453, 454, 457,
458.
Mann, Horace, 186.
Maryland, 400-404, 475, 527.
Mason and Slidell, Confederate com
missioners, 429.
Massachusetts, Sixth Regiment, 400,
401, 404,
Meade, Gen. George G., 504, 527-531.
MediU, Joseph, editor, 593, 594.
"Merrimac," The, 447-451.
Messages, 420, 421, 607, 608.
M:,xican War, 186, 191, 243, 285, 439.
Ministers of Springfield against Lincoln,
340, 341-
Missouri Compromise, 138, 237, 238,
241-244, 324.
"Mjnitor," The, 448-451.
Monitors, "Montauk,'- and others, 503.
Monroe, Fortress, 445, 463, 485, 575,
576, 613.
"Montauk," i-nonitor, 503, 666.
Montgomery, Alabama, 347, 368, 400.
Montgomery, D. H., stories, 238, 367.
Morse, John T., Jr., stories, 192, 294,
365-
Morton, Oliver P., Governor of Indiana,
459, 537-
Mudd, Dr. Samuel, who set Booth's leg,
663, 669.
Munroe, Seaton, story, 652, 653.
N
"Nasby," "Petroleum Vesuvius," see
Locke, D. R.
Nash, Louise A., story, 157.
"National debt," Lincoln's, 114, 115.
Needham, champion wrestler, 84, 85.
Nelson, Thomas H., comet story, 195.
Nevada, admission of, 588, 589.
New England, Lincoln speaks in, 198,
199, 311.
New Orleans, Lincoln's first trip to, 71;
second trip, 83 ; battles at, 28, 466.
New Salem, 82, 86-142, 471.

698

INDEX

Niagara Falls, Lincoln visits, 199;
Greeley meets Confederate com
missioners, 577.
Nicolay, Helen, stories, 191, 440, 474—
476, 494, 613, 626.
Nicolay, John G., stories, no, 166,
323, 384. 401, 524, 545. 551-
Nicolay and Hay, stories, 18, 27, 49,
72, 75, 86, 87, 89, 106, 108, 116,
161, 172, 176, 177, 226, 228, 235,
3°5. 393. 598. 669.
Nolen Creek, birthplace, 23.
Norfolk, 450, 485. 0
Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson, story, 462.
O'Connor, T. P., stories, 125, 155.
Office-seekers, 348-353, 354, 407.
Offutt, Denton, employer, 78, 79, 83,
84, 86, 87, 93, 95, 98, no, 117.
Oglesby, Gov. Richard, 315, 644, 645.
"Ogmathorial Court," 209.
O'Loughlin, Michael or Miles, one of
Booth's accomplices, 662, 669.
Ottawa, Illinois, first Lincoln-Douglas
Debate, 267, 268, 269, 272-277, 317.
Ould, Robert, 389.
Owens, Mary S., 144, 145,

Pappville, Illinois, first stump speech,
124.
Parrott, John H., Nancy Hanks's guar
dian, 20.
Payne, Louis, one of Booth's accom
plices, 662, 669.
Pea Ridge, Battle of, 466.
Pendel, Thomas F., doorkeeper of
White House, story, 653-655.
Pendleton, Louis, stories, 363, 614.
Pemberton, Confederate general, 527,
555. 556-
Peninsula, campaign on, 461, 560.
Peoria Speech (1854), 241-244, 324.
Petersburg, Illinois, 108, 123, 140, 142.

Pettifogger, Lincoln as, 140.
"Phoenix," John" (George Horatio
Derby), 645.
Phillips, Wendell, 495, 496.
Pickens, Governor, 390, 391.
Pierce, Franklin, 242, ^^t,, 544.
Pigeon Creek, settlement between Big
and Little Fork, home in Indiana,
32, 39. 54, 64.
Pinkerton, Allan, 378, 380-382.
Polk, James K., 192.
Poore, Ben: Perley, 193.
Porter, Admiral David, story, 629.
Porter, Gen. Horace, stories, 555, 557,
568, 57°-572-
Postmaster, Lincoln as, 1x7-119.
Prairie Fork, south fork of Pigeon Creek,
home, 32.
Pratt, Silas G., stories, 70, 2x0.
Presidency, Lincoln mentioned for, 253,
254, 312-314, 316.
Proviso, Wilmot, see Wilmot Proviso.
Putnam, M. Louise, stories, 238, 374,
375. 377. 378, 391. 397, 402, 489,
536, 565-

Quaker ancestry of Lincoln, 17.
Quaker, The, and the draft, 536, 537,
Quincy, Illinois, sixth Lincoln-Douglas
Debate, 268, 269, 288-291.
R
Radford, Reuben, store at New Salem,
110-112.
Rappahannock River, 446,486-488, 513,
666.
Rathbone, Major H. R., 646, 648-651.
Raymond, Henry J., stories, 587, 596.
"Rebecca" of the "Lost Townships,"
175-177-
Relations, kindness to, 229, 230.
Removals, Lincoln's, to Knob Creek (at
four years), 24 ; to Indiana (at seven
years), 30; to new cabin (at eight

INDEX

699

Removals, Lincoln's — Continued
years), 34; to Illinois (at twenty-
one years), 72; to New Salem (at
twenty-two years), 86; to Spring
field (at twenty-eight years), 143.
Lepublicans, 249, 250; first National
Convention of, 254; 258, 273, 288,
289, 293, 297, 298, 305, 310, 312,
313. 316, 333, 342, 343. 347, 355.
384. 427.
Reynolds, Governor of Illinois, 98, 106.
Lhymes, Lincoln's, 46, 47 ; Lincoln's
"copies," 47; "Chronicles of Reu
ben," 56; about his old home, 184.
lichardson, Joseph C, neighbor, 47, 58.
Richmond, Va., 399, 403, 406, 417, 455,
463, 513, 599, 625-631, 646, 660.
(.iney, Zachariah, first teacher, 25.
liots, draft, 535, 536.
River Queen" (steamboat), 570.
{.oby, Kate, schoolmate, 45, 68.
lock Island Bridge Case, 260, 261.
lock Spring Farm, birthplace, 23.
loll, John, stories, 79-82.
lolling Fork, 30.
lomine, John, neighbor, 60; story, 61,
62.
lothschild, Alonzo, stories, 27, 65, 249,
267, 282, 284, 306, 418, 434, 588,
617.
lusling, Gen. James F., story, 532.
lutledge, Ann, 126, 127, 129-133, 144.
lutledge, James, 114, 116, 126.
lutledge's dam, 83, 200.
lutledge's tavern, 112,

laint Louis, 260, 278, 317, 425, 426.
lanford, E. S., 451, 452.
iangamon, county, river, town, 78, 79,
80, 82, 83, 95-99, loi, ^33. 137.
211, 315. 360, 57°-
anitary Commission, 464, 465, 542,
543-
anitary Fair, 543,

Savannah captured, 609, 610,
Sayings, short, of Lincoln, 680-685,
Schenck, Gen. R. C, 435.
Schurz, Gen. Carl, stories, 258, 289, 291,
414, 422, 450.
Scott, Dred, 258, 278, 279, 282.
Scott, WiUiam ("The Sleeping Senti
nel"), 483-485, 611. ^
Scott, Gen. Winfield, 104, 191, 222, 379,
390. 415. 424. 439. 440, 455-
Scovel, James M., stories, 473, 507, 523,
539. 587. 593-
Secession, 364, 365, 369, 389, 394,
398.
Secretaries, 356, 384, 393, 401, 402, 441,
462, 510-512, 524, 547, 552.
Selby, Paul, stories, 91, xx6, 151, 161,
170, 196, 215, 221, 226, 262, 277,
313. 357. 395, 410, 418, 421, 449,
451, 49°, 491. 497, 5°°. 513. 514,
624, 665.
"Sentinel," "Sleeping," The, 483-485,
611, 612.
"Seven Days Battle," 476.
Seward, Frederick, 379, 490, 658.
Seward, William H., Secretary of State,
62, 199, 259, 313, 316, 3x7-322,
325, 344, 345, 361, 379, 381, 382,
384, 391, 392, 411, 412, 42X, 430,
432, 438, 441, 463, 480, 481, 490,
491, 504, 540, 547, 6x3, 6x5, 619,
623, 658, 665.
Seymour, Gov. Horatio, 521.
Shakespeare, Lincoln's knowledge of,
117, 595-
Sheridan, Gen. Phihp H., 631.
Sherman, Gen. W. T., 418, 606-610, 638,
660, 672.
Shields, James, 137, 175, 176.
Shiloh, Battle of, 466. ¦
Short, James ("Uncle Jimmy"), be
friends Lincoln, 12 1.
Sickles, Gen. Daniel, 383, 504, 531, 532.
Sixth Massachusetts, see Massachusetts
Sixth.

700

INDEX

Slavery, reason for Thomas Lincoln's
removal, 29; Abe sees with "un
conquerable hate," 83; 237, 239-
244, 252, 255, 256, 474, 475.
Slidell and Mason, Confederate com
missioners, 429-431.
Smallpox, Lincoln's attack, 496.
Smith, Goldwin, 532-534.
Smoot, friend, ixo, 127.
Snelling, Fort, 105.
Soldiers' Home, 480, 520, 522, 524, 579-
Spangler, Edward, one of Booth's
accomplices, 662, 669.
Speeches, and parts of speeches, by
Lincoln, 108, 125, 150, 153, 158-
160, 173, 174, 191, 192. 194, 195,
2X1, 222, 239, 240, 241-244, 245,
252, 258, 259, 260, 271, 277, 279,
281, 285, 286, 288; Cooper In
stitute, 306-311, 3x5; of accept
ance, 329; farewell to Springfield,
372, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378; first
Inaugural, 386-388; Gettysburg,
548-552; to serenade, 600-609;
second Inaugural, 616, 617; to
negroes in Richmond, 621 ; last ad
dress, 634, 635.
Speed, James, Attorney-General, 640-642.
Speed, Joshua F., most intimate friend,
143, 162, 165, 166, 169, 178.
"Spot Resolutions," 191, 192.
Springfield, lUinois, 79, 84, 97, 122, 124,
128, X34, 137, 138, 14°, 141, 143-
180, 188, 203-236, 237-256, 261,
297, 3°°, 318, 325. 326, 327-373;
farewell, 374; 526, 631, 643; burial,
667.
Stanton, Edwin M., Secretary of War,
248, 363, 417, 418, 433, 434, 442,
444, 446, 451, 459, 461, 463, 469-
471, 472, 481-483, 485, 486, 500,
510, 511, 522, 523, 533, 538, 539,
541, 552, 563, 567, 580, 590, 59T,
601, 637, 639, 640, 641, 642, 644.
646, 656, 665,

"Star of the West," fired on, 367,
Statue, Emancipation, Boston,. 492;
Florence, Italy, 493.
Stephens, Alexander H., 186, 194, 362,
365. 613, 614.
Stevens, Fort, 575.
Stevens, Thaddeus, 506, 507.
Stoddard, William O., Lincoln's secre
tary, stories, 67, 69, 71, 127, 131,
356, 512, 636.
Stone, Dan, antislavery protest, 137,
138.
Stories, Lincoln's, why told, viii, ix, x;
183, 193, 207, 215, 218, 220, 223,
353. 413. 443. 504, 5°S. 52°-522,
676, 677.
Stowe, Mrs. H. B., stories, 146, 2x8,
4x4, 524, 664, 668, 675.
Stragglers' Camp, Alexandria, Va., 468.
Stuart, Major John T., 105, 109, 115,
128, 144, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153,
165, x68.
"Sugar-coated," in message, 420.
Sumner, Charles, 361, 431, 621, 622,
632, 640.
Sumter, Fo-.-t, 366, 391, 394-397, 398,
417. 5°3, 642.
Surratt, John H., one of Booth's
accomplices, 662, 669.
Surratt, Mrs, Mary E., 662, 669.
Surveyor, Lincoln as, iig-124, 142, 360,
Swett, Leonard, 205, 211, 212, 324,

Tables of leading events: 1769-1800, 19;
1801-1815, 28; 1816-1830, 74; 1831
-1840,161; 1841-1850,214; 1851
¦-i860, 343; 1861, 431; 1862, 491;
1863, 566; 1864, 606; to April,
1865, 656.
"Talisman" (steamboat), 97, 98.
Taney, Chief-Justice, Roger B., 387,
389-
TarbeU, Ida M., stories, 21, 25, 28, 35.
5°. 52. 53, 54. 57. 66, 68, 73, 76, 80,

INDEX

701

Tarbell, Ida M. — Continued
82, 96, 100, 118, 121,122, X29, 156,
167, 168, 170, 182, 184, 185, 199,
200, 217, 220, 231, 237, 252, 261,
268, 269, 270, 29s, 300, 309, 326,
334, 335. 343. 348, 359, 362, 386,
400, 402, 404, 426, 430, 431, 432,
441, 491. 526, 530, 555, 561, 599,
610, 639, 646, 667.
Taylor, Bayard, 401, 402.
Taylor, Col. "Dick," "Bloated Aristo
crat," 136.
Taylor, James (Anderson's Creek), 58,
59-
Taylor, W. H., stories, 650, 662, 663.
Taylor, Zachary ("Old Rough and
Ready"), 104, xgi, 197, 198.
Temperance, 94, 163, 164, 173, 174,
188, 189, 244, 245, 328, 570.
Thayer, William M., stories, 43, 263.
Thompson, Jacob, 363, 644.
Thompson, Nathan M. ("Dow"), wrest
ler, 104.
Tibbies, Thomas H., stories, 288, 375,
376-
Todd, Mary, 153, 154, 155, 165, 167,
169; married, 1842, to Lincoln, see
Lincoln, Mary Todd.
Todd, Robert S., Mrs. Lincoln's father,
153. 235-
Toombs, Robert, x86, 365.
•Toucey,. Isaac,,, 358.
Townsend, Gen. E. D., stories, 420, 575.
Treat, Judge, 207, 300.
"Trent Affair," 429-431.
Trent brothers, 1x5, 116.
'!,Trumbull, Lyman, Judge and Senator,
238, 285, 292, 293.
Turnham, David, town constable, 48,
55. 60.
Tyler, John, 159, 161.
U
Usher, John P., Secretary of the Inte
rior, 152, 547.

VaUandigham, Clement L., 459, 460,
543, 544-
Van Buren, Col. John D., 520, 521.
Van Buren, Martin, 159, 182, 183.
Vandalia, Illinois, 129, 137, -ijg.
Verses, Lincoln's schoolboy rhymes, 46,
47; "Chronicles of Reuben," 56;
on old home, 184.
Vice-President, votes for Lincoln for,
254, 255.
Vicksburg, 527, 532, 555, 556, 638, 670,
671.
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 502.
Villard, Henry, stories, 283, 353, 354,
373.488.
Virginia secedes, 398-400, 403-405,407.
W
Wade, Ben, 586, 597.
Wade-Davis Manifesto, 586.
Wagner, Fort, 592, 593.
War of 18x2, 27, 29.
War Order, Lincoln's first, 444, 445.
Ward, "Artemus," see "Artemus Ward,"
Ward, Judge Hamilton, interview, 483.
Washburne, Elihu B,, 382, 383.
Washington, George, Weems's Life of,
51; speech about (February 22,
1842)1174; speaks of , in farewell to
Springfield, 373; at Columbus, O.,
374; at Trenton, N. J., 377; raises
flag at Independence HaU (Feb
ruary 22, 1861), 378.
Webster, Daniel, 193, 247, 278, 379.
Weed, Thurlow, 199, 3x7, 3x8, 359.
Weik, Jesse W. (with W. H. Herndon —
which see — co-author of Herndon's
Lincoln.), 2x3, 254, 255.
Weitzel, General Godfrey, 498, 629,
635-
Weldon, Judge, 206, 220.
Wells, Gideon, Secretary of the Navy,
345,347,

702

INDEX

Whig, 119, 133, 134, 136, 149, 157, 158,
160, 161, 175, 181, 183, 185, 186,
191, 197, 198, 256, 267, 276.
White, Horace, stories, 271, 280, 293.
White, Hugh L., 133,
White House, vii, viii, ix, 59, 167, 389,
400, 401, 408, 410, 418, 450, 478,
487, 488, 490,-491, 497, 505, 510,
511, 522, 534, 541, 545, 548, 552,
557, 560, 561, 566, 568, 573, 574,
579, 596, 600, 603, 606, 613, 615,
6x8, 633-635, 637-647, 653, 658,
661, 663.
"White House of the Confederacy," 403,
629—631.
Whitman, Walt, 580, 618, 657.
Whitney, Henry C, stories, 77, 95, 104,
1x2, 139, 142, 144, 146, 215, 225,
252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 284, 297.
Whittier, John G., poem, "The Eman
cipation Group," 492.
"Wide Awakes" of i860, 334.
Wigwam, Chicago, 317-324; Spring
field, 338.
Wilderness, The, Battle of, 573.
Wilkes, Charles, Captain of the San
Jacinto, "Trent Affair," 429-431.

Williams, Henry L., stories, 45, 59, 140,
172, 180, 276, 417, 476, 483, 486,
515, 520, 597.
Willard's Hotel, 382, 384, 385, 487,
586.
Wills, Judge David, 545, 547.
Wilmot Proviso, The, 241, 243.
Wilson, Senator Henry (afterwards
Vice-President), 487, 488.
Winchester, Va., 453, 455, 5x4.
"Winter of the deep snow," in Illinois,
77-
Winthrop, Robert C, Speaker, x86.
Wise, John S., story, 661.
Withrow, W. H., D.D,, story, 672.
Wood, Fernando, 359, 544.
Worden, Capt. John L,, 450, 451.
Wright Case, "Skin defendant,''

Yates, Richard, War Governor of
Illinois, 89, 90, 325.

Zouaves, Chicago, 334, 375.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasant duty to make acknowledgment here of many kindnesses re
ceived at the hands of "Lincoln" publishers, authors and collectors, who have
generously placed valuable materials at disposal for use in this mosaic of stories
and pictures. Thanks, first of all, are due Miss Ida M. Tarbell and her publishers,
The McCluee Company, for permission to use many stories and illustrations
from The Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, and
The Life of Abraham Lincoln.
To The McClure Company, also, with the concurrence of the family of General
Carl Schurz, for valued extracts and one engraving from
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz; and for an excerpt from
Lincoln and Other Poems, by Edwin Markham.
To the cordial liberality of The Century Company for a wide range of materials
for The Story-Life, chosen from what might be termed the Century Lincoln Library,
as follows :
Abraham Lincoln: A History, by John G. Nicolay and John Hay;
A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, by John G. Nicolay;
The Boys' Life of . Abraham Lincoln, by Helen Nicolay;
The Century Book of Famous Americans, by Elbridge S. Brooks ;
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, by many participants and writers ;
Washington in Lincoln's Time, by Noah Brooks;
Campaigning with Grant, by General Horace Porter, LL.D. ;
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, by David Homer Bates, and
Lincoln the Lawyer, by Frederick Trevor Hill.
Also, for a number of interesting extracts from Scribner's Monthly (before
the founding of The Century Magazine), and from The Century also, contributed
thereto by Noah Brooks, General Horace Porter, W. Lewis Frazer, Colonel Silas
W. Burt, and by two of Lincoln's great biographers, John G. Nicolay and Jesse
W. Weik. To Houghton, Mifflin & Company, for like liberality in permitting almost
carte" blanche selections from many of their indispensable standard authors, one
of-- whom is F. B. Carpenter, painter of the great Emancipation picture in the
Capitol, whose
Six Monihs at' the White House was a pioneer revelation of Lincoln's life there.
fftfe'tollectiongave a strong impetus to the publishing of Lincoln's stories. Car
penter's book was a kind of "story life" of Lincoln for six months at least.
(703)

704 SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lincoln, Master of Men, by Alonzo Rothschild, the ablest addition to Lincoln
literature which has yet appeared in the twentieth century.
Abraham Lincoln, by John T. Morse, Jr.;
Memoirs, by Henry Villard ;
Essay, by Carl Schurz ; Remarks, by Ralph Waldo Emerson ; Essay, by James
Russell Lowell (in the famous Riverside Literature Series) ;
Reminiscences, by Julia Ward Howe;
The Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton, by George C. Gorham.
The End of an Era, by John S. Wise, of Virginia (viewing Lincoln from a
Southern standpoint) ;
James Russell Lowell, by Horace E. Scudder;
James Russell Lowell and His Friends, by Edward Everett Hale (author of
The Man without a Country), whose cohtribution is a new story of Lincoln and
Greeley, and one of the most graphic in The Story-Life;
All Quiet along the Potomac, by Ethel Lynn Beers, in
An American Authology, edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman ;
The Emancipation Group, by John G. Whittier, and the excerpt from the
Commemoration Ode, by James Russell Lowell, from the
Complete Works of both of those great poets.
To A. C. McClurg & Co., for the privilege of choosing from
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Isaac N. Arnold;
The Children's Life of Abraham Lincoln, by M. Louise Putnam;
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, by Ward Hill Lamon.
To D. Appleton & Company, for permission to select from their edition of
Herndon's Lincoln, by William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik;
Recollections of the Civil War, by Charles A. Dana;
General Lee, by his Nephew, Fitzhugh Lee;
Anecdotes of the Civil War, by Brevet Major-General E. D. Townsend;
In the Boyhood of Lincoln, by Hezekiah Butterworth;
Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, by Admiral Porter;
Lincoln in Story, by Silas G. Pratt,
To J. B. Lippincott Company, for selections from
The True Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleroy Curtis;
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, by James M. Scovel in '
Lippincott's Magazine. -'
To G. P, Putnam's Sons, for stories and four illustrations from
Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of American Slavery, by. Noah Brooks;
Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States, by Charles
Godfrey Leland;
Little Journeys to the Homes of Apierican Statesmen, by Elbert. Hubbard;
Lincolnics: Familiar Sayings of Abraham Lincoln, by Henry Llewellyn Williams-
Lincoln and Stanton, by William D. KeUey, M. C. ;
Gettysburg and Lincoln, by Henry Sweetser Burrage.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 705
To E. P. Dutton & Co., for an extract from
Abraham Lincoln, by Henry Bryan Binns,
To T. Y. Crowell & Co., for a story and an illustration from
Historic Americans, by Elbridge S. Brooks, and for several extracts from
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, reprinted from the Independent and edited
by the Rev. William Hayes Ward, D.D.
To G. W. Dillingham, for a number ot stories from
The Lincoln Story Book, by Henry L, Williams;
The Book of Artemus Ward, and
Behind the Scenes, by Elizabeth Keckley (once a slave), for years a seam
stress in the White House.
To The Robert Clarke Company, for a liberal allowance of stories from
Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, by Joseph H. Barrett, LL.D,
To LoTHROP, Lee & S hep ard Company, for two full-page illustrations from
The True Story of Abraham Lincoln, by Elbridge S. Brooks, and for two
selections from
The Struggles of Petroleum V. Nasby, by David R. Locke, and its introduc
tion by Charles Sumner.
To A. D. Worthington & Co., for graphic narrations from
My Story of the War, by Mary A. Livermore.
To The Neale Publishing Company, for a selection from
Thirty-six Years in the White House, by Thomas F. Pendel, Doorkeeper.
To William Beverly Harison, for several reprint selections from
Winnowings for Lincoln's Birthday, by Agnes Mawson.
To the Judge Company, for a cartoon from
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and two extracts and a cut from
A New Story of the Assassination of Lincoln, by W. H. Taylor in
Leslie's Illustrated Weekly.
To GiNN & Company, for two extracts from
The Leading Facts of American History, by D. H. Montgomery.
To George W. Jacobs & Company, for excerpts from
Abraham Lincoln, by EUis Paxson Oberholtzer, and
Alexander H. Stephens, by Louis Pendleton.
To Thompson & Thomas, for stories and letters from
Stories and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Paul Selby.
To Harper & Brothers, for the use of a cartoon from Harper's Weekly.
To Longmans, Green & Company, for selections and facsimiles from
Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, by Gen. John Eaton, Ph.D., LL.D.
To Charles Scribner's Sons, for an extract from Bryant and Gay's
A Popular History of the United States.

7o6 SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Cassell & Company, Limited, for two extracts from
Abraham Lincoln, by Ernest Foster.
To Wiliam Briggs, Toronto, for one selection from
A Popular History of the Dominion of Canada, by William H. Withrow,
D.D., F.R.S.C.
To Chapman & Hall, London, for two selections from
Some Old Love Stories, by T. P. O'Connor.
To The John C. Winston Company, for stories from
Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women, by Russell H. Conwell, and
The Autobiography of Allen Jay, and illustrations from many standard works.
To Mrs. Henry C. Whitney and Major William H. Lambert, for selections
from Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, and
Lincoln the Citizen, by Henry C. Whitney.
To William O. Stoddard, the celebrated author of many juvenile stories, and
the only living secretary to President Lincoln, for permission to select at will from
Abraham Lincoln, the True Story of a Great Life,
Inside the White House in War Times,
The Boyhood of Lincoln, and
Lincoln at Work.
To F. F. Browne, for a number of stories from
The Every-Day Life of Lincoln.
To Colonel Alexander K. McClure, for permission to use numerous selec
tions from
Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times of which he is the author, and from
"Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, edited by him.
To Miss Ida M. Tarbell, for excerpts from her
He Knew Lincoln, and from
Lincoln's Boyhood, by Mrs. Eleanor Atkinson, both stories having appeared in
The American Magazine.
To The Outlook, for a good part of
My Story of Abraham Lincoln, by James E. Holden.
To Collier's Weekly, for the privilege of quoting selections from
A Battle of the Giants, by Frederick Trevor Hill, and
Lincoln in the War OtBce, by Albert B. Chandler.
To The North American Review, for part of
Recollections of Lincoln's Assassination, by Seaton Munroe.
To Success Magazine, for extracts from
Reminiscences, by Thomas H. Tibbies and William O. Stoddard.
To Littell's Living Age, for an extract from a reprinted article by Harriet
Beecher Stowe.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 707
To The Saturday Review, for a paragraph from its editorial on
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Allen Thorndike Rice.
To The Boston Sunday Globe, for parts of
A Rare Letter and Its Curious Story.
To The Watchman and Reflector, for a short story by Harriet Beecher
Stowe. To The Green Bag, for a story entitled
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, by Louise A'hmuty Nash.
To Current Literature Publishing Co., for a number of brief extracts from
the Centenary Edition of the
Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln.
To the Librarian and Assistants of the Free Library of Philadelphia;
To the Librarian and Assistants of the Mercantile Library of Philadelphia;
To the Librarian and Assistants of the Friends' Free Library of Germantown,
Philadelphia ;
To the Librarian and Assistant of the Library Company of Philadelphia
— to each and all for many courtesies and attentions ;
And to the Librarian and Assistants of the Historical Society of Pennsyl
vania, for permission to reproduce an
Original Letter by Abraham Lincoln, and for other kindnesses.
To General Henry Shippen Huidekoper, for a story from his valuable
Notes and Recollections of Abraham Lincoln.
To the Honorable George B. McClellan, Mayor of New York City, for per
mission to make numerous selections from his distinguished father's book, entitled
McClellan's Own Story.
To Colonel Henry Watterson, for the use of a report from his great lecture on
Abraham Lincoln.
To the family of the Marquis de Chambrun, for several stories from his
Personal Recollections of Mr. Lincoln.
To the Honorable Reed Smoot, United States Senator from Utah, for informa
tion concerning his relative, Lincoln's friend Smoot, of whom two stories are
given herein.
To the Honorable Robert Todd Lincoln; and to Major William H. Lambert
and Messieurs Charles W. McLellan, Judd Stewart, and Francis D. Tandy, of
The Lincoln Fellowship, for the use of originals from their collections and for
courteous suggestions in aid of this publication.
To Messieurs Isaac Markens and John Brosnan, of New York; Truman
H. Bartlett, the sculptor, of Boston, and Lowrie McClurg, of Chicago, for the
loan of originals, and for other helpful courtesies.

7oS SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, for access to letters in the
History and Evidence of the Passage of Abraham Lincoln from Harrisburg,
Pa., to Washington, D. C, on the twenty-second and twenty-third of February, iS6i.
To several friends who "knew Lincoln" and gave their valuable aid in this
published work, but are too modest in refusing to allow credits therefor.
And, finally, to the publishing successors and owners of plates and rights in
the following books, whose publishers have discontinued business or have not
replied to requests for permission :
The Life and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, by W. D. Howells;
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by J. G. Holland.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ward H. Lamon;
Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy, by Horatio Alger, Jr. ;
A Biographical Sketch of His Excellency, Abraliam Lincoln, by Charles Henry
Hart, LL.B.;
Anecdotes of Abraham Lincoln, by J. B. McClure;
Abraham Lincoln, His Life and PubUc Services, by Mrs. P. A. Hanaford;
Men of Our Times, by Harriet Beecher Stowe;
The American ConAict, by Horace Greeley;
The Pioneer Boy, by William M. Thayer;
Best Lincoln Stories, by J. E. Gallaher;
Lincoln and Seward, by Gideon Welles;
Reminiscences of Lincoln, by Henry J. Raymond;
Lincoln and His Cabinet, A Lecture before the New Haven Colony Historical
Society, by Charles A. Dana;
The Assassination of Lincoln, by General T. M. Harris ;
Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, by A. L. Long, his Military Secretary;
Lossing's Pictorial History of the Civil War, by Benson J. Lossing;
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by distinguished men of his time; edited
by Allen Thorndike Rice, giving short stories by : Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the Hon.
Elihu B. Washburne, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, Charles Carleton Coffin, Frederick
Douglass, Maj. Ben : Perley Poore, Titian J. Coffey, the Rev. Dr. Henry Ward
Beecher, the Hon. William D. Kelley, Col. Robert G. IngersoU, the Hon. Schuyler
Colfax, the Hon. Charles A. Dana, Gen. James B. Fry. the Hon. Chauncev M.
Depew, David R. Locke ("Petroleum V. Nasby"), Leonard Swett, E. W. Andrews,
and John B. Alley.

YALE UNIVERSITY

1^*2 98 6

f^^S