Lincoln and Herndon

Contents

"The Genius op Discord" 53

The Revolt op Douglas 127

ILLUSTRATIONS

Foreword

Whoso sends forth another Lincoln book, of which there nre so many, must show cause why it should be read. It is believed that the present volume will prove its own excuse for being, by virtue of the new material which it contains, if for no other reason. It is not a biography of Lincoln, nor a detailed account of the life of Herndon, but a study of their personal and political fellowship in working out the solution of a great human problem; and it should be judged by its spirit, its purpose, and its record of facts.

Every study of the kind, by the very nature of its material, presents difficulties in the matter of arrangement and form, not all of which have been overcome in this instance. Letters impede the narrative, when they do not divert attention from it, so that what is gained in color is lost in movement; and the aim has been to repeat as little as possible of what every biographer and historian must recite. Many figures cross the page, to each of whom the author has meant to be just, though it has not been easy to keep the balance when they were so often unjust to each other. Also; in view of the real service of Herndon to Lincoln, it has required some effort to be charitable to those members of the writing fraternity who have so persistently belittled the junior member of the firm.

For the use of the Herndon-Parker letters, here published for the first time, my thanks are due to Mr. F. B. Sanborn, whose wealth of such materials is only surpassed by his generosity to his younger fellow students. He it was who saw the value of those intense and vivid letters as revealing much of the inner history of the period, making some things clear that had hitherto been dim — though he need not be held to account for the use here made of them. INIy thanks are also due to Mr. Horace White, for the letters of Mr. Herndon written during the last year of his life; to Mr. Jesse W. Weik, for access to the Herndon manuscripts ; and to Mr, Henry B. Rankin, whose reminiscences and suggestions were invaluable. Similarly, the Illinois Historical Society was most helpful, and Mrs. Annie Fleury, a daughter of Mr. Herndon, rendered every aid within her power.

Such a study suggests many reflections. One who looks back over that stormy era, when the life of the nation hung in a balance, will have no need to walk the floor for fear of the future, assured that should an hour of danger strike a man will step forth to meet it. Having weathered such a storm, this republic has nothing to fear except a decay of man. liood, a forgetting of principles, and a fading of ideals. Once divided in all save name, it is now united in fact, in spirit, in historic memories, and patriotic hopes — Lincoln himself a "mystic cord of memory," of more power for the safety and sanctity of the nation than its army and navy. So it will be in times to come, if its citizens "here highly resolve" to follow no leader who, in his private character and public counsels, does not practice a like moderation, justice, firmness, and gentleness of spirit.

If this book, written by the son of a Southern soldier, assists, even in a little way, to a clearer understanding of the greatest figure in our history, who was at once a child of the South and a leader of the North, it will have done what it was sincerely meant to do. J. F. N.

September 4, 1910

INTEODUCTION

Before leaving America on what was to be his last journey, in January, 1859, Theodore Parker communicated to me his wish that I should be one of his three executors, with special charge of the posthumous publication of his writings. The other two executors, John Manley of Boston and Frederick May of Dorchester — a first cousin of Mrs. Bronson Alcott — were capable men of business, and good friends of mine, as of Parker, but not specially devoted to scholarship and letters. I acted with them in the settlement of the estate, and was ready to proceed with the literary task ; but Mrs. Parker had formed the opinion that Joseph Lyman, another good friend of Parker, was the proper person for editor; and I did not press my claim as executor. Perhaps in recognition of this conduct, but with no previous notice to me, Mrs. Parker, at her death, years after, bequeathed me all her husband's manuscripts, copyrights, and correspondence, so far as the same had been preserved in her own hands — many of the original letters having been returned to the writers or destroyed.

Among those originals I found the whole of the five years' correspondence between Parker and Herndon, the law-partner of Abraham Lincoln for more than twenty years. I saw the historical and political value of this peculiar interchange of opinion and fact, by which Parker was brought near the mind of one of his latest friends, who was to complete the work of slave-emancipation — in which Parker had been active for nearly twenty years before his death — and was to die as the second great martyr in the cause of American emancipation. But it was not convenient for me to edit these letters ; nor was the time ripe for this, thirty years ago. This Mr. Newton has now done with research and discretion, collating, correcting, and combining the mass of material accumulated since Lincoln's death, and contributing his own verdict on the characters and events of the crisis. He has added new material, bearing on the relations between Lincoln and Herndon, to whom earlier writers have by no means done justice ; but who in this book stands revealed in his actual character, as the most important witness and chronicler of his partner's career. He writes from his own point of \iew, and w^ith the advantage that lapse of time gives to the seeker after that most elusive chameleon, historical truth. It is a work w^ell done, and will stand the test of after years, which unsparingly judge the mere eulogy or invective that would pass for biography.

In the volume now completed, my early and beloved friend, Theodore Parker, becomes almost a shadowy figure in the vast drama of national regeneration ; since he died, like Moses, within sight of the Promised Land that he was never to enter. But his work has been so well done, and was so heartily recognized by Herndon, in these enthusiastic and picturesque letters, that this shadow stands for something substantial, which the many volumes of Parker's discourses will certify and make good. He appears here as in some sort the inspirer of Herndon, and through him of Liricoln — the grandest personage of our long unfolding drama, and one of the most tragic. At the memorial meeting for Lincoln in Concord, April 19, 1865, where Emerson gave his raatchess eulogy, it fell to me to express the general sentiment in verse, thus :

The Power that sways the world with love, (Though War and Wrath His angels are).

Throned thee, all earthly kings above.

On threatened Freedom 's flaming car — To frighten tyrants, near and far.

His purpose high thy course impelled

O'er War's red height and smoldering plain;

When awe, when pity thee withheld.

He gave thy chafing speeds the rein, Till at thy feet lay Slavery slain.

Then ceased thy task — another hand

Takes up the burden thou lay'st down:

Sorrowing and glad, the rescued land Twofold awards thy just renown — The victor's and the martyr's crown.

There was an earlier martyr, without whose sacrifice in the van of the conflict, the strife would have been less sharp at first, but more prolonged and doubtful — the figure, yet more tragic, of John Brown. That singular association of resemblance by contrast, calls up each of these two with the other; so like in their aims and their persistence, so different in their method and appeal. They stood for the Old and the New Testament — for severe justice and for mercy that tempers justice. Brown, like Lincoln, was originally and always for the Union. Both saw that negro slavery was the grand foe to a perfect Union, and for that reason they resisted and overthrew it.

P. B. Sanborn Concord, Mass., Sept. 20, 1910

7 know Lincoln better than he knows himself. I know this seems a little strong, hut I risk the assertion. Lincoln is a man of heart — aye, as gentle as a woman's and as tender — hut he has a will strong as iron. He therefore loves all mankind, hates slavery and every form of despotism. Put these together — love for the slave, and a determination, a will, that justice, strong and unyielding , shall he done when he has the right to act and you can form your own conclusion. Lincoln will fail here, namely, if a question of political economy — if any question comes up which is doubtful, questionable, which no man can demonstrate, then his friends can rule him; but when on Justice, Bight, Liberty, the Government, the Constitution, and the Union, then you may all stand aside: he will rule then, and no man can move him — no set of ynen can do it. There is no failure here. This is Lincoln, and you mark my prediction. You and I must keep the people right; God will keep Lincoln right. — W. H. Herndon in Letter to Hon. Henry Wilson, December 21, 1860.

Chapter I

" Lincoln & Herndon " — so read the old law shingle which hung in the bare stairway opposite the Court House Square, in Springfield. It had hung there for many years, inviting the passerby, when the senior member of the firm was suddenly called from his dingy back office to a task the greatest ever committed to human hands, leaving Herndon to pursue the practice alone. The junior partner was not unwilling to have it so, being devoid of an itch for office, and having devoted years of tireless and self-effacing labor in behalf of his friend and chief, who was also the embodiment of the principles nearest to his own heart. They parted, and a great war rolled between them, but that did not sever the tie which time and sorrow and devotion to a mighty cause had woven. Though one was taken and the other left, the old shingle still hung in the stairway, at the request of Lincoln, until death dissolved the partnership.

So far little has been written about Herndon, and some have spoken of him in a tone as supercilious as it is unjust. This is unfortunate, as though he were worthy of notice only by virtue of accident, whereas one can hardly know Lincoln without knowing his partner, his loyal friend, his indefatigable fellow-worker. It was a notable partnership, more for its political than for its legal activity, but it will appear more notable when the service of the junior partner is known. Neither man was a learned lawyer, as that phrase is now used, but both were honest, able, and just, and each in his own key was truly and impressively eloquent when expounding or defending the fundamental rights of man. If we may not say that Herndon was a genius, he was at least "^ a man of exceptional ability, and it is believed that when the spirit and details of his service to Lincoln are known, he will be held in lasting and grateful memory.

Those who attempt, as historians, to recall the men of former times, must be just, and so far W. H. Hemdon has not had his due. The present study is no apotheosis of him, but a portrayal of the man as he was, in private habit and public capacity, with particular reference to his service to Lincoln as friend and adviser, and later as biographer. No effort is made to enter into the purely technical aspects of their professional career. That has been done by another. Besides many reminiscences, one entire volume has been devoted to that special theme, and the details need not be repeated.^ Our concern here is with the personal and political side of their partnership, their mutual confidence and inspiration, their influence upon each other, and the manner in which they settled by anticipation, in a country law office, the problem which later was to shake the minds of reflecting men and rend the nation. To this end some account must be given of Mr. Herndon, his antecedents, his environment, his personal history, and the qualities of his mind.

Herndon genealogy, if we eared to follow it, would take us far back and is perhaps part legendary. Among the names inscribed on the roll of Battle Abbey, as having come with William the Conqueror, is that of Heriview, the ancestor of the Herons, as they were afterwards called — one of whom is said to have followed Kjng Richard in his crusade. One branch of the family assumed the suffix ' ' don, ' ' and the name so written means " Bird of the Hills." The first of the family known, authentically, to have settled in this coun-

1 Lincoln the Lawyer, by F. T. Hill (1906) — a book well conceived and admirable in many ways, but not free from error, nor exempt from grave injustice to Mr. Herndon. More than once the author is guilty of thinly disguised disrespect to Mr. Herndon, hardly crediting him with any ability as a lawyer at all. Nor is he justified in saying that Herndon was "unfortunately not the most reliable of chroniclers." This is to err, aa so many have done who did not know the man.

try was William Herndon, who patented lands in St. Stephens parish, New Kent County, Virginia, as early as 1654, and who three years later married Catherine Digges, a daughter of the Governor of the Colony. This Herndon is a very real figure, a man of substance and quality, and was the foresire of a large family to be found in various parts of the South.

But we need go no further back than 1795, when Archer G. Herndon was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, and whose family moved to Green County, Kentucky, when he was about ten years of age. In 1816 this sturdy, keenminded, rollicking youth married Rebecca Johnson, a young widow whose maiden name was Day, and their first child, v/ William Henry, was bom at Greensburg, Kentucky, December 28, 1818 — three months after Nancy Hanks Lincoln died in a lonely log cabin in the wilderness of Indiana. Two years later Archer Herndon moved with his wife and babe to Troy, Madison County, Illinois, where one child was born to them. The following year, 1821, they came to Sangamon County, arriving in a cart drawn by one mule, and settled on what is now German Prairie, five miles northeast of Springfield. This was nine years before Thomas Lincoln left his cabin in Indiana and came to Illinois — the land of " full-grown men," as the word means.

Archer Herndon and Thomas Lincoln were typical of the men who settled southern Illinois ; and it was the southern part of the State that shaped the early history and laws of the commonwealth. Even as late as 1836 Chicago was a village of less than half a thousand folk huddled about a fort, and the northern counties were sparsely populated. Illinois was a Free State, by ordinance of Congress — with the exception of a few French families, who were allowed by special enactment to retain their slaves — and, strangely enough, it was for this very reason that its early settlers, though of Southern origin, chose it for a home. And so it remained, despite the effort made in 1822-3, to change it to a Slave State — Archer Herndon taking an active part on the side of slavery. The prevailing sentiment was of a peculiar color.

Many of the pioneers were poor and wished to find a country where their labor would not be degraded by contact with slave labor/ while others hated the negro either in freedom or slavery, and were decidedly averse to living with him as their equal before the law; and they were almost unanimously bitter in condemning any one suspected of favoring emancipation. Hence the drastic " Black Code," aimed at the free negro, which remained on the statute books until long after the Civil War.-

Archer Herndon lived on German Prairie until 1825, when he removed to Springfield and engaged in mercantile pursuits until 1836. During that time he erected the first regular tavern in the town, and attained to prominence as a Democratic politician. He was a " character " in his day, intense by nature, positive in his likes and dislikes, akin to the roysterer in both manners and morals, albeit a man of many excellent qualities. In the meantime his oldest son, "William Henry, was growing up — a robust, sinewy lad, with large angular features, deep-set dark eyes, crowned with a shock of blue-black hair — and he was inclined, at times, to imitate his father in certain habits in which a father least cares to have his son follow him. Indeed, father and son were so much alike that their relations were often difficult, and would have been impossible but for the sweet diplomacy of a good and wise mother.

Young Herndon first saw Lincoln in 1832, when the steamer Talisman was puffing and wheezing about in the Sangamon, in her effort to force the passage and prove that the river was navigable. Rowan Herndon of New Salem — a cousin of William — who was chosen to pilot the steamer from near Springfield to the Illinois River, selected Lincoln as his assistant; and together they ran the Talisman, which Lincoln afterwards described as having '' a five-foot boiler and a seven-foot whistle, so that every time the whistle blew the

1 See letter from W. H. Herndon to Theodore Parker, Feb. 16, 1856, in a subsequent chapter.

2 History of Illinois, by Governor Ford, pp. 30-50 (1854); Negro Servitude in Illinois, by N. D. Harris, Chap. I-IV (1904).

boat stopped." When the steamer left New Salem, William Herndon and other boys followed it, riding on horseback along the bank — a leisurely enough journey, for the gallant craft averaged only four miles a day. At Bogue's Mill the boat tied up, and the boys went aboard a^d explored the splendors of her interior decorations. There Herndon met his future partner, and the incident lost none of its comedy when in after years the two men were wont to talk over old times. They did not become well acquainted, however, until Lincoln made his second race for the Assembly two years later.

Lincoln returned to New Salem and lived with Rowan Herndon, buying from Herndon his half interest in the store which he owned with Berry. Failing in this enterprise, he became by turns a postmaster who carried his office in his hat, and a surveyor whose outfit was sold for debt ; reading Blackstone at odd hours, but most of all the newspapers ; also Gibbon, Volney, and Paine, under whose tutelage he became a rude denier of the rude theology of his day. Young Herndon frequently met him iu those days, while visiting his cousin, and at the Rutledge Tavern where Lincoln lived after Rowan Herndon moved to the country. ^^How far the early rationalism of Lincoln influenced the later views of Herndon, is not known; but something in the gentle, studious giant attracted the lad, and in the summer of 1834 the boy more than once accompanied him in his canvass for the Assembly, listening to his stories. The Herndon and Rutledge families were friends, and in a village where there were few secrets everyone followed the courtship of Lincoln and Ann Rutledge like a story-book, until it ended with the return of IMcNamar, who found his sweetheart dead and Lincoln broken-hearted. Herndon knew Ann Rutledge, and her death, which divided the life of Lincoln into before and after, touched him deeply, as may be seen in a lecture delivered by him in 1866, in Avliich he first told the story.

During his first term in the Assembly Lincoln said little, and learned much. He was a candidate for re-election in 1836, Archer G. Herndon running for State Senator on the

Democratic ticket in the same campaign. Both men were elected and became members of the famous ' ' Long Nine, ' ' by whose strategy the capital was moved from Vandalia to Springfield — which event Herndon celebrated, in his best manner, by opening a barrel of rum. Meanwhile, William Herndon was studying in the schools of Springfield, and serving at odd times as clerk in Joshua Speed's store. One of his teachers was John C. Calhoun, a gifted and lovable man under whom Lincoln had served as assistant surveyor, and who afterwards became famous, or infamous, in connection with the fraudulent Lecompton constitution in Kansas.^ In the autumn of that year, 1836, Herndon entered the preparatory department of the Illinois College, at Jacksonville — five months before Lincoln rode into Springfield on a borrowed horse, with a pair of saddle-bags containing two or three law books and a few pieces of clothing, to make the new capital his home and Joshua Speed's store his headquarters.

Lincoln had served with Major John T. Stuart in the Black Hawk War — sworn into the service, it is said, by Jefferson Davis- — and Stuart now offered him a partnership at law, having loaned him books the while and induced him to move to Springfield. This offer was gladly accepted, and while Lincoln was only beginning the practice he did much of the work of the office, Stuart being deeply immersed in politics. At least nearly all the papers of the firm were written by him, though he had little love for such labor, and less or-

1 When that document was transmitted by President Buchanan to Congress, on Feb. 2, 1858, it bore a note, " Beceived from J. C. CalJioun, Esq., duly certified by Mm, ' ' recommending that Kansas be made a Slave State under it. A committee from the Legisature getting a hint of the fraudulent election returns, found them secreted in a candle-box under a wood-pile near Calhoun 's office ; so he was known as John Candlebox Calhoun. Better for him and for his country had he remained a surveyor and a school-teacher in Illinois; but Herndon, who loved him, left this story out of the record.

2 ' ' Then a tall, gawky, slab-sided, homely young man, dressed in a suit of blue jeans, presented himself as captain of a company of recruits, and was sworn in by Jefferson Davis. ' ' — Life of Jefferson Davis, by his wife, Vol. I, p. 132 (1890).

der in doing it. They mixed law with politics, both partners serving in the Assembly, and in the autumn of 1837 Stuart, after an exciting contest, defeated Douglas for Congress. This left Lincoln with all the work to do, besides the duty of helping his partner politically — a kind of industry congenial to him, which was no doubt one reason why Stuart chose him as managing clerk. He knew how to play the game of politics according to the rules thereof, and was not over-nice as to methods when no moral principle was involved,^ On one issue, however, he had courageous convictions, nor did he at any time permit his Machiavellian shrewdness to over-reach them.

Slavery had become a question about which men in Illinois picked their words with care. So intense was the feeling that in March, 1837 — one month before Lincoln entered the office of Stuart — the Assembly passed a resolution expressing disapproval of the formation of Abolition societies and of the doctrines advocated by them. Many men who hated slavery sympathized in part with this action, on the ground that such agitation tended more to irritate men than to convince them, thus making the situation doubly difficult. An orator who expended his fiery eloquence in denouncing the evil, without suggesting any practical way of dealing with it, was felt to be " as one who beat the air. ' ' Still the resolution of the Assembly, passed with great enthusiasm, glibly ignored the moral principle involved, and it required some courage for Lincoln to file protest against it. But he did so in words so well-chosen and far-sighted that he had no need to alter them for thirty years. He held that slavery " is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of aboli-

1 Governor Ford, writing of this period, and having in mind the wild schemes of internal improvement, could see nothing in Lincoln and Douglas but "dexterous jugglers and managers in politics, spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe it is to be a politician, but how disastrous it may be to the community, to keep along with the fervor of the people, right or wTong. " — Uistory of Illinois, pp. 181-198 (1854). It should be added, in mitigation, that this indictment included all the "Long Nine," as well as others, naming the list; and in face of the record this arraigimient does not seem unjust.

^1^^ tion doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate the evils. ' ' On that basis he stood firm, and neither the allurements of good-fellowship nor the blandishments of office could move him.

Shortly afterwards Elijah Lovejoy, editor of the St. Louis Observer, a religious weekly, was driven from that city by a mob for expressing anti-slavery sentiments in his paper. Unwisely, as many thought, he established his paper at Alton, Illinois, only twenty miles distant by steamer, with the result that a mob attacked his press and he was shot while defending it. Not satisfied with this brutal crime, the mob threatened to attack Illinois College at Jacksonville, because its president, Edward Beecher, had stood guard with Lovejoy the night here the tragedy.^ Excitement was at fever heat, and indignation meetings were held throughout the State. At a gathering of students, notable for its intensity of feeling, William Herndon, in a speech long remembered by his fellow students, denounced not only the enslavement of men, but the attempt to gag the press by mob rule.

^ The elder Herndon, who was intensely pro-slavery in his views, fearing that his son had become infected with the poison of abolitionism, withdrew the lad from college, remarking that he would have no part in the education of " a

d Abolitionist pup ! " It was as he had suspected. The

lad came home an enthusiastic and radical Abolitionist, bold and outspoken, as was his way always, and the passion for liberty and justice exploded in him wliat faith he had in the religion of the church — as it exploded the faith of so many men of his ardent and vivid type in those days. At any rate, he was thereafter a rationalist, or perhaps one should say natu-

1 See the Autobiography of Julian M. Sturtevant, edited by his son, Chap. XV (1896). Also, Illinois College and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Illinois, by C. H. Reramelkamp, a paper before the Illinois Historical Society (1909). Dr. Sturtevant was a professor in the Illinois College at the time of Lovejoy 's death, and was his personal friend. Lovejoy may have been rash and unwise, as men count wisdom, but he had a soul of fire, and his name is written among the martyrs of liberty. See Memoir of Lovejoy, by Joseph and Owen Lovejoy, introduction by .lohn Quincy (1838).

ralist. There was a break between father and son, and the boy left liome, though he remained religiously loyal to his mother, visiting her almost every day. He was again employed by Joshua Speed as a clerk in his store, probably at the suggestion of Lincoln, to whom he confided his new religious and political faith. Writing of the time immediately following, Mr. Herndon says : ^

On my return to Springfield from college, I hired to Joshua F. Speed as clerk in his store. My salary, seven hundred dollars per annum, was considered good pay. Speed, Lincoln, Charles R. Hurst, and I slept in the room upstairs over the store. I had worked for Speed before going to college, and after hiring to him this time again, continued in his employ for several years. The young men who congregated about the store formed a society for the encouragement of debate and other literary efforts. Sometimes we would meet in a lawyer's office and often in Speed's room. Besides the debates, poems and other original productions were read. Unfortunately we ruled out the ladies. ... I have forgotten the name of the society — if it had any — and can only recall a few of its leading spirits. Lincoln, James Matheney, Noah Rickard, Evan Butler, IMilton Hay, and Newton Francis were members. I joined also. Matheney was secretary. We were favored with all sorts of literary productions. Lincoln one night entertained us with a few lines in rhyme intended to illustrate some weakness in woman — her frailty, perhaps. Unfortunately, the manuscript has not been preserved. . . . Besides this organization we had a society in Springfield, which contained and commanded all the culture and talent of the place. LTnlike the other one, its meetings were public, and reflected great credit on the community. We called it the " Young Men's Lyceum." Late in 1837, Lin coin delivered before the society a carefully prepared address on " The Perpetuation of Our Free Institutions." The inspiration and burthen of it was law and order. (Tt was brought out by the l)urning of a negro by a mob at St. Louis a few weeks before.) IMatheney was appointed by the Lyceum to request of Lincoln a copy of his address and to see to its publication. . . . Tt was published in