Abraham Lincoln : the man of the people

Front matter

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Preface

To an American in sympathy with his country, loving her as she is, not wishing her essentially different, there can be few historical figures as attractive as Abraham Lincoln. Unequalled, since Washington, in service to the nation, he is unrivalled among our statesmen in the closeness with which he represents our land.

" He was the North, the South, the East, the West, The thrall, the master, all of us in one."

The biography of such a man can afford honesty. Some have omitted what was not pretty. Others have apologized for it. Many would like to improve the rugged and homely face with a touch of rouge or magnesia. Surely this is trivial. Let us not try to make our great man like other great men. Let us allow him to reach as high as the saints in one direction, and as high as Rabelais in another. Let him be the prairie male as well as the sage and martyr, the deft politician as well as the generous statesman. Paint him as he is. He will still be great, nobler vi PREFACE

than ever, because more real. Better the truth and strength and beauty that are, than any fiction less human and less profound. Following the real Lincoln from the hovel to the White House, from the village girls and the tavern stories to Gettysburg and the second inaugural, we live grandly, up and down, to the right and to the left, breathing the air of the plains, the mountains, the closet, the hospital, of poetic superstition and of the sanest wisdom, and we see that life is good, that our nation is good, and that it is well to know the truth.

Lincoln himself refused to read a life of Burke because he believed that biographies were indiscriminate eulogies. Praise and blame have small place, and suppression, none, in the story of a large soul. It is not when justice is done that the heavens fall.

Thirty-four years have passed since Lincoln's death. A generation, unborn when he was shot, is now thinking and writing. It starts without the passions of the strife. We no longer see the problems as black and white. One of us has said recently that the negro was freed in the South that he might be lynched in Ohio. We now see the threads of right and wrong distinct yet tangled, as Lincoln saw them, even when he stood in the centre of the storm. Those who weathered the gale have left their memories of

PREFACE vii

the pilot. The material is in. The opportunity is here for any who can use it.

The present biography is not a history of the Civil War. It is not an argument about emancipation or reconstruction. It is solely the personal history of Abraham Lincoln as it appears to one of his countrymen. To that particular reader an anecdote or a picturesque phrase often seems more important than a bill or a message to Congress. He has tried to select those incidents which are doubly true, because they are at once actual and significant, and this truth is as likely to inhere in the amusing as in the solemn.

To give credit for the sources of an impression, which is often breathed from the air of daily thought and conversation, is not easy, but a few words are due to the principal books on the subject. Nothing compares in value with Lincoln's own words, and the two volumes of his papers and correspondence are worth all that has been written about him. The official biography by Nicolay and Hay contains much valuable material not to be found elsewhere. Herndon has told the President's early life with refreshing honesty, and with more information than any one else. Lamon has shown vividly the side of Lincoln which naturally came out when he was in the company of his exuberant marshal. Whitney's " Life on the Circuit with Lincoln " is full viii PREFACE

of good stories of the western bar, and the President's relation to it. Nobody has made the politician's adroitness so real as Colonel McClure. Miss Tarbell has gathered some facts to supplement and correct Herndon and others. Morse's biography, in the American Statesmen Series, is an orderly and serious account of Lincoln's relation to the principal public questions. The other works are legion, but these have seemed, to the present writer, most fertile among the books dealing mainly with Lincoln. It is true, however, that a short impression, incidental to some other object, may be worth a volume. Thus flashes of the greatest value have been given by Emerson, Lowell, Greeley, Grant, Blaine, McClellan, and Sherman. Singularly enough, perhaps, almost nothing of worth has been written about Lincoln in foreign countries. It is probable, also, that in his own country, while flashes have been given by great compatriots, and indispensable records left by other contemporaries, most of the permanent lives, large and small, picturesque and technical, remain to be written.

N. H.

New York, July, 1899.

NOTE

The frontispiece to this volume, which is generally acknowledged to be the best portrait of Lincoln, is reproduced from a negative made at Springfield, Illinois, June, i860, by Alexander Hesler of Chicago. The negative is now owned by Mr. George B. Ayres of Philadelphia, who has very kindly placed his copyrighted enlargement at the disposal of the publishers.

I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. for permission to print the quotation from Lowell's " Commemoration Ode," and to Messrs. Small, Maynard, & Co. for their kindness in allowing me to use Whitman's poem, " Oh Captain, my Captain ! "

N. H.

Contents

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Preface . v

Note . , . . ix

Chapter II

When Lincoln was nearly twenty-one years ot age, his father, discouraged by another epidemic of the milk-sick, found occasion to move. He sold most of what belonged to the various branches of his family, aggregating thirteen persons, and put the rest into one wagon drawn by four oxen, who started off with their load in March, 1830. The driver was Abraham, but he was not content with one occupation. He had saved over ^30, and before leaving Gentryville he invested it all in articles which might be of use to the inhabitants of villages through which they were to pass. " A set of knives and forks was the largest item entered on the bill," says Captain Jones, the Gentryville grocer ; " the other items were needles, pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic necessities. 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 years afterward."

After two weeks of this kind of travel through the prairies and scattered villages, the thirteen relatives landed at a point about ten miles west of Decatur, Macon County, Illinois, a spot selected by John Hanks, a relative who already lived there. It was " just before the winter of the deep snow," which is accepted as a dividing line that makes the Lincolns pioneers. They speedily built a log cabin, in which they resided when that first winter in their new home brought them snow three feet deep, followed by rain which froze, after which the mercury remained at twelve below zero for two weeks. It was at Decatur that Lincoln made the first oratorical test of which anything is known. A man came to town and made a speech. John Hanks thereupon remarked that " Abe could beat it," John turned down a box, Lincoln mounted it, and did what John promised. The subject was the navigation of the Sangamon River.

That river saw the beginning of the first eventful trip of Abraham Lincoln's life. After spending the Illinois winter in odd jobs, largely railsplitting, for his father's benefit, the legal period for his emancipation arrived. After the separation Tom moved at least three times, and although he hereafter counts for little, he will appear later briefly in Abraham's life. The young man s first chance grew out of the fact that Denton Offut, a business man, asked John Hanks to take a boat-load of provisions and stock to New Orleans. John engaged Lincoln and his stepbrother, John Johnson, and Offut was to pay fifty cents a day besides a sum of ^60. Lincoln and Hanks started in a canoe down the Sangamon River in March, 1831, and landed at what is now Jamestown, five miles east of Springfield, where they were joined by Johnson, and all three went to Springfield to see Offut. That enterprising person had not prepared a boat, so the three young men constructed it themselves, taking " Congress land " timber and using the machinery of a neighboring mill. In four weeks it was ready, and the venturesome journey was begun. It was full of novelty, full of instruction, fun, and variety. . A passing magician offered to cook eggs in Lincoln's hat. The owner hesitated, but finally lent it, and explained that his delay " was out of respect for the eggs, not for my hat." When they reached New Salem, April 19, the boat stranded on Rutledge's mill-dam, and hung helplessly over it for a day and a night.

It was the ingenious Lincoln who finally solved the difficulty. He had the goods removed to another boat, and after their craft was empty he bored a hole in the end which projected over the dam, thus allowing the water which had leaked in to run out, and the boat slid over. The company proceeded. At Blue Banks it was necessary to take on board a number of hogs, but these animals proved refractory, turning and rushing past the men who were endeavoring to drive them into the boat. Lincoln therefore suggested that their eyes be sewed shut, and he held the head and Hanks the tail while Offut accomplished the operation. The hogs, not so easily discouraged, stood still, until the navigators carried them one by one to their appointed place. The many-colored trip down the Mississippi ended early in May in the arrival of the party in New Orleans. As it was Lincoln's first experience in a real city, and as he stayed until June, his mind must have received an avalanche of impressions, but nothing of interest has come down to us except a story, hopelessly exaggerated in the telling, of Lincoln's indignation at seeing a slave auction at which a vigorous and comely mulatto girl who was being sold had her flesh pinched and was made to trot up and down to show her soundness, like a horse. In June the four travellers took a steamboat up the river, disembarking at St. Louis, where Offut remained; Lincoln and his other two companions starting across Illinois on foot. At Edwardsville Hanks branched off toward Springfield, while Lincoln and Johnson followed the road to Coles County^ to which the father Thomas had meantime moved. Lincoln stopped there a short time, not doing anything more important than winning a victory from a well-known wrestler. In AuQ^ust he returned to New Salem, as he was under engagement to help dispose of a stock of goods which had been purchased by Offut. Awaiting their arrival he spent the life of an active but social village man of comparative leisure, interrupted by a few stray bits of work. Shortly after his return he was hanging about the polls on election day when Schoolmaster Graham, the clerk, wishing a substitute for his sick assistant, asked Lincoln if he could write. " Yes," was the reply, " I can make a few rabbit tracks." He also piloted a family on a flatboat down the rivers to Beardstown.

During his leisure he accomplished at least an increase of reputation for personal prowess by a wrestling match with one Jack Armstrong, leader of a gang of ordinary western toughs, known as the Clary Grove boys. On an attempt at foul play Lincoln, waxing indignant, seized Jack in his long arms and shook him readily. He also showed his good humor and tact by making him a friend, and later in life he saved one of the Armstrong family from the gallows. He also successfully taught Jack the golden rule in practice. Armstrong applied bad names to a stranger, who thereupon backed to a woodpile, seized a weapon, and knocked his insulter down. When Jack was preparing for vengeance Lincoln asked him what he would do himself if some one called him unpleasant names.

" Whip him, by ," said Armstrong.

" Well," said Lincoln, in substance, " this stranger was right on your own principles."

Even after Offut's return and Lincoln's instalment behind the counter of the store, he did not lack leisure. On the advice of Mentor Graham he procured Kirkham's grammar from a man in the neighborhood, and he also studied mathematics. He used to walk miles for a chance to argue at debating clubs. His intelligence, humor, and honesty had already made him popular. The grocery was full alike of his jokes and of his principles. He disliked waiting on women, but he took a man who swore in the store, when women were present, and rubbed smartweed in his eyes until his will was broken. He was also extremely punctilious in weights and change. Political discussion was his delight. In the uncertainty of parties his position cannot be precisely fixed at any one time. He was probably in succession " a whole-hog man," a " nominal Jackson man," and a Whig. The nominal Jackson men often voted with the Whigs, and, as Lincoln said later, he naturally " drifted " into the party along with his immediate associates. In March, 1832, he felt strong enough to announce himself as a candidate for the General Assembly. In accordance with the custom of the locality the youthful politician published a circular, giving his general opinions, astutely putting most emphasis on one which pleased local interest. These handbills were distributed among the voters, after grammatical errors had been corrected, at Lincoln's request, by a friend. A few extracts on the various topics covered, will best speak for themselves.

" Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be ; however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it — there is always 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 is estimated at $290,000 ; 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." *********

" It appears that the practice of loaning money at exorbitant rates of interest has already been opened as a field for discussion ; so I suppose I may enter upon it without claiming the honor, or risking the danger which may await its first explorer. It seems as though we are never to have an end to this baneful and corroding system, acting almost as prejudicially to the general interests of the community as a direct tax of several thousand dollars annually laid on each county for the benefit of a few individuals only, unless there be a law made fixing the limits of usury. A law for this purpose, I am of opinion, may be made without materially injuring any class of people. In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be means found to cheat the law ; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law on this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be such, that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be justified in cases of greatest necessity.

" Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works, both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves."

*********

"With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to be necessary. Many respectable men have suggested that our estray laws, the law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some others,, are deficient in their present form, and require alterations. But, considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others ; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most to the advancement of justice.

" 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 sometimes 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 renounce them.

" Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be 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 country ; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me tor 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.

" Your friend and fellow-citizen,

"A. Lincoln.

"Nr.w Salem, March 9, 1S32."

On the navigation question he gave many details. His emphasis of this subject was part of the general enthusiasm of a growing country seeking trade facihties, and, still in the early spring, before the election came on, this enthusiasm was whetted by the trip of the first steamboat which had ever gone down the Sangamon River, a feat which stirred the imagination of all the business men with visions of what might happen now that the stream was proved to be navioable. Lincoln was one of a number of citizens who went to meet and welcome this boat, the Talisman, at Beardstown, amid great excitement. Rowan Herndon, who was chosen to pilot the steamer from near Springfield to the Illinois River, which he did at an average speed of four miles a day, took Lincoln as his assistant, and each received ^40 for the job, after which Lincoln returned to New Salem.

Offut, however, was led away from that town by other enterprises, and by the summer of 1832 Lincoln was out of a job. He was, therefore, in the humor for anything when the Black Hawk War came along. The chief Black Hawk, in violation of a treaty, had crossed the Mississippi and marched up the Rock River Valley with about five hundred Indians on horseback, while the squaws and children went up the river in canoes. Governor Reynolds of Illinois called for one thousand mounted volunteers to help the United States troops under General Atkinson at Fort Armstrong. There was a company for Sangamon County and Lincoln, seeing nothing better to do, the election being still distant, enlisted. He was soon chosen captain by his comrades. To his first order he received the reply, " Go to the devil, sir." It was not a company amenable to discipline, and Captain Lincoln himself seems to have taken his duties lightly, since for breaking a general order forbidding the discharge of firearms within fifty yards of camp he was put under arrest and stripped of his sword for one day. A slightly heavier penalty was inflicted on him for the fault of his subordinates, who got so drunk on some liquor procured from the officers' quarters with the aid of a tomahawk and four buckets, that they were incompetent when a marching order was given. Lincoln, who was ignorant of the deed, was placed under arrest and carried a wooden sword for two days.

His technical knowledge was naturally slight. Marching with a front of over twenty men he wished to go through a gate. " I could not," he says himself, " remember the proper word of command 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.' "

One day a helpless old Indian strayed into the camp with a letter from General Cass. The volunteers, bitterly hating the red men, wished to kill him without investigation, but Lincoln saved his life and discovered that he was genuinely recommended by the general and entirely trustworthy. Another piece of magnanimity grew out of his defeat in a wrestling match with a man named Thompson, who threw him. The friends of Lincoln charged unfairness, but Abe declared that his opponent had acted squarely and proved himself the better man. On slighter evidence, the victor's own, there is a story that a Quaker named Wilson threw Lincoln twice out of three times, and beat him in a race for a five-dollar bill. What is certain is that he was fond of wrestling, very strong, and so competent that he was always backed against any celebrity who happened to be accessible.

As Lincoln was not in any of the engagements of this disgraceful little Indian war, it has little to do with the story of his life. When the volunteers were mustered out, May 27 and 28, he was one of few to reenlist, this time as a private in Captain Elijah Iles's company of Independent Rangers. He was mustered in by General Robert Anderson, who was to command Fort Sumter in the crucial days of 1861. He has left one impression of this war. After a skirmish his company came up in time to help bury five dead.

" I remember just how those men looked, as we rode up the little hill where their camp was. The red light of the morning 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." He paused, as if recalling the picture, and added, " I remember that one man had buckskin breeches on.

Lincoln's company was disbanded, July 10, at Whitewater, Wisconsin, and as his horse had been stolen he walked most of the way to Peoria, Illinois, where he and a companion bought a canoe, paddled down the Illinois River to Havana, sold it, and walked to New Salem. The election was at hand, and Lincoln lost no time in beginning political work of the ordinary kind, including some stump speeches. At the first of these, it is related, he interrupted himself to stop by forcible interference a fight in the audience in which a friend was being worsted by an opponent. He was running essentially as a Whig in a Democratic precinct, and he came in third on a list of twelve. As he says in his autobiography, " This was the only time Abraham was ever defeated on a direct vote of the people." His gift of popularity was proved by the fact that in his own precinct only 13 votes were cast against him, 10 not voting for representative, and the 12 candidates, out of a total vote of 300, standing thus: Abraham Lincoln, 277; John T. Stuart, 182; William Carpenter, 136; John Dawson, 105 ; E. D. Taylor, 88 ; Archer D. Herndon, 84 ; Peter Cartwright, 62 ; Achilles Morris, 27; Thomas M. Neal, 21; Edward Robeson, 15; Zachariah Peters, 4; Richard Dunston, 4.

This defeat raised the necessity of work again, and Lincoln, after a little thought of utilizing his physical strength as a blacksmith, and an unsuccessful attempt to secure a clerkship in any of the four New Salem stores, went into business in a more independent position by buying from Rowan Herndon his half interest in the store which he owned with William F. Berry. The terms were liberal, Herndon trusting Lincoln's honesty and taking the notes of the two owners. Almost immediately one of the rival merchants, Reuben Radford, by an attack from Clary's Grove, whose boys were so hostile to him that they took a night to smash his doors and windows and damage his goods, was put into a mood for selling out, which he did to William G. Green for a $400 note. At Green's request Lincoln made an inventory and then offered him ^650, and the deal went through, as usual in that vicinity, on credit. Notes bought and assigned also brought about the final move, the absorption of the third and last store by Berry and Lincoln.

The consolidated business did not thrive. Berry drank while Lincoln read and studied. One of his branches was law, an interest which had been dormant since his departure from Indiana. " One day," related Lincoln after his first nomination, " 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 he said 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 further examination, I put it away in the store, and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone's ' Commentaries.' 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, the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them."

The lack of business prosperity led the partners to take out March 6, 1833, a tavern license, to make it possible, or easier, to retail their liquors. To help perform this labor they hired a clerk, Daniel Green Burner, who has made the following statement about the business : —

" The store building of Berry and Lincoln was a frame building, not very large, one story in height, and contained two rooms. In the little back room Lincoln had a fireplace and a bed. There is where we slept. I clerked in the store through the winter of 1833-34, up to the 1st of March. While I was there they had nothing for sale but liquors. They may have had some groceries before that, but I am certain they had none then. I used to sell whiskey over their counter at six cents a glass — and charged it too. N. A. Garland started a store, and Lincoln wanted Berry to ask his father for a loan, so they could buy out Garland ; but Berry refused, saying this was one of the last things he would think of doing."

This transformation into a liquor business did not work either, and Lincoln was glad enough to be appointed postmaster at New Salem, on May 7 of this year 1833, by a Democratic administration, the office being too insignificant to make politics an objection, in Lincoln's own explanation. The mail arrived on horseback once a week, and the new postmaster carried it in his hat until he met the recipients or was able to call at their dwellings. The newspapers he was permitted to open and read as soon as they arrived. All this was pleasant, but not immediately very lucrative, so the postmaster and storekeeper indulged in odd jobs. He split rails and helped at the mill. As Rowan Herndon, with whom he had been living, removed to the country, Lincoln took up at the tavern kept by James Rutledge, who had a daughter named Ann. It was a small log house, covered with clapboards, containing four rooms. He stuck to Blackstone and got hold of Chitty and other law books. He was no observer of times or places. One day an old man, who had given him some of his irregular jobs, saw him on the woodpile, barefoot, in his flax or tow-linen pantaloons, several inches short, probably with one suspender, no vest or coat, calico shirt, and straw hat without a band, his big, rough, gentle face bent over a book.