DWIGHT L. MOODY
"There's no chance to get in there. There's six thousand persons inside, and two thousand outside."
This was said to Dr. Magoun, President of Iowa College, and myself, after we had waited for nearly an hour, outside of Spurgeon's Tabernacle, in London, in the hope of hearing Mr. Moody preach. Finally, probably through courtesy to Americans, we obtained seats. The six thousand in this great church were sitting as though spellbound. The speaker was a man in middle life, rugged, strong, and plain in dress and manner. His words were so simple that a child could understand them. Now tears came into the eyes of most of the audience, as he told some touching incident, and now faces grew sober as the people examined their own hearts under the searching words. There was no consciousness about the preacher; no wild gesture nor loud tone. Only one expression seemed applicable, "a man dead in earnest."
And who was this man whom thousands came tohear? Not a learned man, not a rich man, but one of the greatest evangelists the world has ever seen. Circumstances were all against him, but he conquered circumstances.
Dwight Lyman Moody was born at Northfield, Mass., Feb. 5, 1837. His father, a stone-mason and farmer, died when the boy was four years old, broken down with reverses in business. His mother was left with seven sons and two daughters, the eldest a boy only fifteen. What happened to this lad was well told by Mr. Moody, a few years since. "Soon after my father's death the creditors came in and took everything. One calamity after another swept over the entire household. Twins were added to the family, and my mother was taken sick. To the eldest boy my mother looked as a stay in her calamity; but all at once that boy became a wanderer. He had been reading some of the trashy novels, and the belief had seized him that he had only to go away, to make a fortune. Away he went. I can remember how eagerly she used to look for tidings of that boy; how she used to send us to the post-office to see if there was a letter from him, and recollect how we used to come back with the sad news, 'No letter!' I remember how in the evenings we used to sit beside her in that New England home, and we would talk about our father; but the moment the name of that boy was mentioned she would hush us into silence. Some nights, when the wind was very high, and the house, whichwas upon a hill, would tremble at every gust, the voice of my mother was raised in prayer for that wanderer, who had treated her so unkindly. I used to think she loved him better than all of us put together, and I believe she did.
"On a Thanksgiving day she used to set a chair for him, thinking he would return home. Her family grew up, and her boys left home. When I got so that I could write, I sent letters all over the country, but could find no trace of him. One day, while in Boston, the news reached me that he had returned. While in that city, I remember how I used to look for him in every store—he had a mark on his face—but I never got any trace. One day, while my mother was sitting at the door, a stranger was seen coming toward the house, and when he came to the door he stopped. My mother didn't know her boy. He stood there with folded arms and great beard flowing down his breast, his tears trickling down his face. When my mother saw those tears, she cried, 'Oh, it's my lost son!' and entreated him to come in. But he stood still, 'No, mother,' he said, 'I will not come in until I hear that you have forgiven me.' She rushed to the threshold, threw her arms around him, and breathed forgiveness."
Dwight grew to be a strong, self-willed lad, working on the farm, fond of fun rather than of study, held in check only by his devotion to his mother. She was urged to put the children intodifferent homes, on account of their extreme poverty, but by tilling their garden, and doing some work for their neighbors, she managed to keep her little flock together. A woman who could do this had remarkable energy and courage.
What little schooling Dwight received was not greatly enjoyed, because the teacher was a quick-tempered man, who used a rattan on the boys' backs. Years after, he told how a happy change was effected in that school. "After a while there was somebody who began to get up a movement in favor of controlling the school by love. I remember how we thought of the good time we should have that winter, when the rattan would be out of school. We thought we would then have all the fun we wanted. I remember who the teacher was—a lady—and she opened the school with prayer. We hadn't seen it done before, and we were impressed, especially when she prayed that she might have grace and strength to rule the school with love. The school went on several weeks, and we saw no rattan; but at last the rules were broken, and I think I was the first boy to break them. She told me to wait till after school, and then she would see me. I thought the rattan was coming out sure, and stretched myself up in warlike attitude. After school, however, she sat down by me and told me how she loved me, and how she had prayed to be able to rule that school by love, and concluded by saying, 'I want to ask you one favor, that is, if youlove me, try and be a good boy;' and I never gave her trouble again."
He was very susceptible to kindness. When an old man, who had the habit of giving every new boy who came into the town a cent, put his hand on Dwight's head, and told him he had a Father in heaven, he never forgot the pressure of that old man's hand.
Farming among Northfield rocks was not exciting work enough for the energetic boy; so with his mother's consent, he started for Boston, when he was seventeen, to look for work. He had the same bitter experience that other homeless boys have. He says, "I went to the post-office two or three times a day to see if there was a letter for me. I knew there was not, as there was but one mail a day. I had not any employment and was very homesick, and so went constantly to the post-office, thinking perhaps when the mail did come in, my letter had been mislaid. At last, however, I got a letter. It was from my youngest sister,—the first letter she ever wrote me. I opened it with a light heart thinking there was some good news from home, but the burden of the whole letter was that she had heard there were pickpockets in Boston, and warned me to take care of them. I thought I had better get some money in hand first, and then I might take care of pickpockets."
The homesick boy finally applied to an uncle, a shoe-dealer, who hesitated much about taking thecountry lad into his employ. He agreed to do so on the conditions that the boy would heed his advice, and attend regularly the Mount Vernon Church and Sunday-school. The preaching of Dr. Kirk, the pastor, was scholarly and eloquent, but quite above the lad's comprehension. His Sunday-school teacher, Mr. Edward Kimball, was a devoted man, and withal had the tact to win a boy's confidence. One day he came into the store where young Moody worked, and going behind the counter, placed his hand on the boy's shoulder and talked about his becoming a Christian. Such interest touched Dwight's heart, and he soon took a stand on the right side. Years afterward, Moody was the means of the conversion of the son of Mr. Kimball, at seventeen, just his own age at this time.
His earnest nature made him eager to do Christian work; but so poor was his command of language, and his sentences were so awkward, that he was not accepted to the membership of the church for a year after he had made his application. They thought him very "unlikely ever to become a Christian of clear and decided views of gospel truth; still less to fill any extended sphere of public usefulness." Alas! how the best of us sometimes have our eyes shut to the treasures lying at our feet.
He longed for a wider field of usefulness, and in the fall of 1856, when he was nineteen, started for Chicago, taking with him testimonials which secured him a place as salesman in a shoe store. He joinedPlymouth Church, and at once rented four pews for the young men whom he intended to bring in. Here, it is said, some of the more cultured assured him that his silence would be more effective for good than his speech! Certainly not encouraging to a young convert.
He offered his services to a mission school as a teacher. "He was welcome, if he would bring his own scholars," they said. The next Sunday, to their astonishment, young Moody walked in at the head of eighteen ragged urchins whom he had gathered from the streets. He distributed tracts among the seamen at the wharfs, and did not fear to go into saloons and talk with the inmates.
Finally he wanted a larger field still, and opened an old saloon, which had been vacated, as a Sunday-school room. It was in the neighborhood of two hundred saloons and gambling-dens! His heart was full of love for the poor and the outcasts, and they did not mind about his grammar. A friend came to see him in these dingy quarters, and found him holding a colored child, while he read, by the dim light of some tallow candles, the story of the Prodigal Son to his little congregation. "I have got only one talent," said the unassuming Moody. "I have no education, but I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want to do something for him. I want you to pray for me."
Thirteen years later, when all Great Britain was aflame with the sermons of this same man, he wrotehis friend, "Pray for me every day; pray now that the Lord will keep me humble."
Soon the Sunday-school outgrew the shabby saloon, and was moved to a hall, where a thousand scholars gathered. Still attending to business as a travelling salesman, for six years he swept and made ready his Sunday-school room. He had great tact with his pupils, and won them by kindness. One day a boy came, who was very unruly, sticking pins into the backs of the other boys. Mr. Moody patted him kindly on the head, and asked him to come again. After a short time he became a Christian, and then was anxious about his mother, whom Mr. Moody had been unable to influence. One night the lad threw his arms about her neck, and weeping told her how he had stopped swearing, and how he wanted her to love the Saviour. When she passed his room, she heard him praying, "Oh, God, convert my dear mother." The next Sunday he led her into the Sabbath-school, and she became an earnest worker.
He also has great tact with his young converts. "Every man can do something," he says. "I had a Swede converted in Chicago. I don't know how. I don't suppose he was converted by my sermons, because he couldn't understand much. The Lord converted him into one of the happiest men you ever saw. His face shone all over. He came to me, and he had to speak through an interpreter. This interpreter said this Swede wanted to have me give himsomething to do. I said to myself, 'What in the world will I set this man to doing? He can't talk English!' So I gave him a bundle of little handbills, and put him out on the corner of the greatest thoroughfare of Chicago, and let him give them out, inviting people to come up and hear me preach. A man would come along and take it, and see 'Gospel meeting,' and would turn around and curse the fellow; but the Swede would laugh, because he didn't know but he was blessing him. He couldn't tell the difference. A great many men were impressed by that man's being so polite and kind. There he stood, and when winter came and the nights got so dark they could not read those little handbills, he went and got a little transparency and put it up on the corner, and there he took his stand, hot or cold, rain or shine. Many a man was won to Christ by his efforts."
In 1860, when Moody was twenty-three, he made up his mind to give all his time to Christian work. He was led to this by the following incident. He says, "In the Sunday-school I had a pale, delicate young man as one of the teachers. I knew his burning piety, and assigned him to the worst class in the school. They were all girls, and it was an awful class. They kept gadding around in the schoolroom, and were laughing and carrying on all the while. One Sunday he was absent, and I tried myself to teach the class, but couldn't do anything with them; they seemed farther off than ever from anyconcern about their souls. Well, the day after his absence, early Monday morning, the young man came into the store where I worked, and, tottering and bloodless, threw himself down on some boxes.
"'What's the matter?' I asked.
"'I have been bleeding at the lungs, and they have given me up to die,' he said.
"'But you are not afraid to die?' I questioned.
"'No,' said he, 'I am not afraid to die; but I have got to stand before God and give an account of my stewardship, and not one of my Sabbath-school scholars has been brought to Jesus. I have failed to bring one, and haven't any strength to do it now.'
"He was so weighed down that I got a carriage and took that dying man in it, and we called at the homes of every one of his scholars, and to each one he said, as best his faint voice would let him, 'I have come to just ask you to come to the Saviour,' and then he prayed as I never heard before. And for ten days he labored in that way, sometimes walking to the nearest houses. And at the end of that ten days, every one of that large class had yielded to the Saviour.
"Full well I remember the night before he went away (for the doctors said he must hurry to the South); how we held a true love-feast. It was the very gate of heaven, that meeting. He prayed, and they prayed; he didn't ask them, he didn't think they could pray; and then we sung, 'Blest be the tie that binds.' It was a beautiful night in Junethat he left on the Michigan Southern, and I was down to the train to help him off. And those girls every one gathered there again, all unknown to each other; and the depot seemed a second gate to heaven, in the joyful, yet tearful, communion and farewells between these newly-redeemed souls and him whose crown of rejoicing it will be that he led them to Jesus. At last the gong sounded, and, supported on the platform, the dying man shook hands with each one, and whispered, 'I will meet you yonder.'
"From this," says Mr. Moody, "I got the first impulse to work solely for the conversion of men."
When he told his employer that he was going to give up business, he was asked, "Where will you get your support?"
"God will provide for me if he wishes me to keep on, and I shall keep on till I am obliged to stop," was the reply.
To keep his expenses as low as possible, he slept at night on a hard bench in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, and ate the plainest food. Thus was the devoted work of this Christian hero begun. He was soon made city missionary for a time. Then the civil war began, and a camp was established near Chicago. He saw his wonderful opportunity now to reach men who were soon to be face to face with death. The first tent erected was used as a place of prayer. Ministers and friends came to his aid. He labored day and night, sometimes eight or ten prayer-meetings being held at the same time in the various tents.
He did not desert these men on the field of battle. He was with the army at Pittsburgh Landing, Shiloh, Murfreesboro', and Chattanooga. Nine times, in the interests of the Christian Commission, he visited our men at the front, on his errands of mercy. He tells this incident in a hospital at Murfreesboro'.
"One night after midnight, I was woke up and told that there was a man in one of the wards who wanted to see me. I went to him, and he called me 'chaplain,'—I wasn't a chaplain,—and he said he wanted me to help him die. And I said, 'I'd take you right up in my arms and carry you into the kingdom of God, if I could; but I can't do it; I can't help you to die.'
"And he said, 'Who can?'
"I said, 'The Lord Jesus Christ can. He came for that purpose.' He shook his head and said, 'He can't save me; I have sinned all my life.'
"And I said, 'But he came to save sinners.' I thought of his mother in the north, and I knew that she was anxious that he should die right, and I thought I'd stay with him. I prayed two or three times, and repeated all the promises I could, and I knew that in a few hours he would be gone. I said I wanted to read him a conversation that Christ had with a man who was anxious about his soul. I turned to the third chapter of John. His eyes were riveted on me, and when I came to the fourteenthand fifteenth verses, he caught up the words, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.'
"He stopped me, and said, 'Is that there?' I said, 'Yes;' and he asked me to read it again, and I did so. He leaned his elbows on the cot and clasped his hands together, and said, 'That's good; won't you read it again?' I read it the third time, and then went on with the rest of the chapter. When I finished his eyes were closed, his hands were folded, and there was a smile on his face. Oh, how it was lit up! What a change had come over it. I saw his lips quiver, and I leaned over him, and heard in a faint whisper, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.'
"He opened his eyes and said, 'That's enough; don't read any more.' He lingered a few hours, and then pillowed his head on those two verses, and went up in one of Christ's chariots and took his seat in the kingdom of God."
On the 28th of August, 1862, Mr. Moody married Miss Emma C. Revell, a most helpful assistant in his meetings, and a young lady of noble character. A daughter and a son came to gladden their simple cottage, and there was no happier home in all Chicago. One morning he said to his wife, "I haveno money, and the house is without supplies. It looks as if the Lord had had enough of me in this mission work, and is going to send me back again to sell boots and shoes." But very soon two checks came, one of fifty dollars for himself, and another for his school. Six years after his marriage, his friends gave him the lease of a pleasant furnished house.
This home had a welcome for all who sought the true way to live. One day a gentleman called at the office, bringing a young man who had recently come out of the penitentiary. The latter shrunk from going into the office, but Mr. Moody said, "Bring him in." Mr. Moody took him by the hand, told him he was glad to see him, and invited him to his house. When the young man called, Mr. Moody introduced him as his friend. When his little daughter came into the room, he said, "Emma, this is papa's friend." She went up and kissed him, and the man sobbed aloud.
When she left the room, Mr. Moody said, "What is the matter?"
"Oh sir," was the reply, "I have not had a kiss for years. The last kiss I had was from my mother, and she was dying. I thought I would never have another kiss again."
No wonder people are saved from sin by visiting a home like this!
In 1863, those who had been converted under this beloved leader wanted a church of their ownwhere they could worship together. A building was erected, costing twenty thousand dollars. Four years later, Mr. Moody was made President of the Young Men's Christian Association, and Farwell Hall was speedily built.
He was loved and honored everywhere. Once he was invited to the opening of a great billiard hall. He saw the owners, and asked if he might bring a friend. They said yes, but asked who he was. Mr. Moody said it wasn't necessary to tell, but he never went without him. They understood his meaning, and said, "Come, we don't want any praying."
"You've given me an invitation, and I am going to come," he replied.
"But if you come, you needn't pray."
"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do," was the answer; "we'll compromise the matter, and if you don't want me to come and pray for you when you open, let me pray for you both now," to which they agreed.
Mr. Moody prayed that their business might go to pieces, which it did in a very few months. After the failure, one of the partners determined to kill himself; but when he was about to plunge the knife into his breast, he seemed to hear again the words of his dying mother, "Johnny, if you get into trouble, pray." That voice changed his purpose and his life. He prayed for forgiveness and obtained it.
In 1871, the terrible fire in Chicago swept awayMoody's home and church. Two years later, having been invited to Great Britain by two prominent Christian men, he decided to take his friend, Mr. Ira D. Sankey, who had already won a place in the hearts of the people by his singing, and together they would attempt some work for their Lord. They landed in Liverpool, June 17. The two friends who had invited them were dead. The clergy did not know them, and the world was wholly indifferent. At their first meeting in York, England, only four persons were present, but Mr. Moody said it was one of the best meetings they ever held. They labored here for some weeks, and about two hundred were converted.
From here they went to Sunderland and Newcastle, the numbers and interest constantly increasing. Union prayer meetings had been held in Edinburgh for two months in anticipation of their coming. When they arrived, two thousand persons crowded Music Hall, and hundreds were necessarily turned away. As a result of these efforts, over three thousand persons united with the various churches. In Dundee over ten thousand persons gathered in the open air, and at Glasgow nearly thirty thousand, Mr. Moody preaching from his carriage. The press reported all these sermons, and his congregations were thus increased a hundred-fold all over the country. The farmer boy of Northfield, the awkward young convert of Mount Vernon Church, Boston, had become famous. Scholarlyministers came to him to learn how to influence men toward religion. Infidels were reclaimed, and rich and poor alike found the Bible precious, from his simple and beautiful teaching.
In Ireland the crowds sometimes covered six acres, and inquiry meetings lasted for eight hours. Four months were spent in London, where it is believed over two and a half million persons attended the meetings.
Mr. Moody had been fearless in his work. When a church member who was a distiller became troubled in conscience over his business, he came and asked if the evangelist thought a man could not be an honest distiller.
Mr. Moody replied, "You should do whatever you do for the glory of God. If you can get down and pray about a barrel of whiskey, and say when you sell it, 'O Lord God, let this whiskey be blessed to the world,' it is probably honest!"
On his return to America, Mr. Moody was eagerly welcomed. Philadelphia utilized an immense freight depot for the meetings, putting in it ten thousand chairs, and providing a choir of six hundred singers. Over four thousand conversions resulted. In New York the Hippodrome was prepared by an expenditure of ten thousand dollars, and as many conversions were reported here. Boston received him with open arms. Ninety churches co-operated in the house-to-house visitation in connection with the meetings, and a choir of two thousand singers wasprovided. Mr. Moody, with his wonderful executive ability and genius in organizing, was like a general at the head of his army.
Chicago received him home thankfully and proudly, as was her right. A church had been built for him during his absence, costing one hundred thousand dollars.
For the past ten years his work has been a marvel to the world and, doubtless, to himself. Great Britain has been a second time stirred to its centre by his presence. His sermons have been scattered broadcast by the hundreds of thousands. He receives no salary, never allowing a contribution to be taken for himself, but his wants have been supplied. A pleasant home at his birthplace, Northfield, has been given him by his friends, made doubly dear by the presence of his mother, now over eighty years old. He has established two schools here, one for boys and another for girls, with three hundred pupils, trained in all that ennobles life.
The results from Mr. Moody's work are beyond computing. In his first visit to London a noted man of wealth was converted. He at once sold his hunting dogs and made his country house a centre of missionary effort. During Mr. Moody's second visit the two sons at Cambridge University professed Christianity. One goes to China, having induced some other students to accompany him as missionaries; the other, just married to a lord's daughter, has begun mission work among the slums in the East End of London.
The work of such a life as Mr. Moody's goes on forever. His influence will be felt in almost countless homes after he has passed away from earth. He has wrought without means, and with no fortuitous circumstances. He is a devoted student of the Bible, rising at five o'clock for study in some of his most laborious seasons. He is a man consecrated to a single purpose,—that of winning souls.
Mr. Moody died at his home at East Northfield, Mass., at noon, Friday, December 22, 1899. He was taken ill during a series of meetings at Kansas City, a few weeks previously, and heart disease resulted from overwork. He was conscious to the last. He said to his two sons who were standing by his bedside: "I have always been an ambitious man, not ambitious to lay up wealth, but to leave you work to do, and you're going to continue the work of the schools in East Northfield and Mount Hermon and of the Chicago Bible Institute." Just as death came he awoke as if from sleep and said joyfully, "I have been within the gate; earth is receding; heaven is opening; God is calling me; do not call me back," and a moment later expired. He was buried Tuesday, December 26, at Round Top, on the seminary grounds, where thousands have gathered yearly at the summer meetings conducted by the great evangelist.
In Gentryville, Indiana, in the year 1816, might have been seen a log cabin without doors or window-glass, a dirt floor, a bed made of dried leaves, and a stool or two and table formed of logs. The inmates were Thomas Lincoln, a good-hearted man who could neither read nor write; Nancy Hanks, his wife, a pale-faced, sensitive, gentle woman, strangely out of place in her miserable surroundings; a girl of ten, Sarah; and a tall, awkward boy of eight, Abraham.
The family had but recently moved from a similar cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky, cutting their way through the wilderness with an ax, and living off the game they could obtain with a gun.
Mrs. Lincoln possessed but one book in the world, the Bible; and from this she taught her children daily. Abraham had been to school for two or three months, at such a school as the rude country afforded, and had learned to read. Of quick mind and retentive memory, he soon came to know the Bible wellnigh by heart, and to look upon his gentle teacher as the embodiment of all the good precepts in the book. Afterward, when he governed thirty million people, he said, "All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. Blessings on her memory!"
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
When he was ten years old, the saintly mother faded like a flower amid these hardships of pioneer life, died of consumption, and was buried in a plain box under the trees near the cabin. The blow for the girl, who also died at fifteen, was hard; but for the boy the loss was irreparable. Day after day he sat on the grave and wept. A sad, far-away look crept into his eyes, which those who saw him in the perils of his later life well remember.
Nine months after this, Abraham wrote a letter to Parson Elkins, a good minister whom they used to know in Kentucky, asking him to come and preach a funeral sermon on his mother. He came, riding on horseback over one hundred miles; and one bright Sabbath morning, when the neighbors from the whole country around had gathered, some in carts and some on horseback, he spoke, over the open grave, of the precious, Christian life of her who slept beneath. She died early, but not till she had laid well the foundation-stones in one of the grandest characters in history.
The boy, communing with himself, longed to read and know something beyond the stumps between which he planted his corn. He borrowed a copy of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and read and re-read it till he could repeat much of it. Then some oneloaned him "Æsop's Fables" and "Robinson Crusoe," and these he pored over with eager delight. There surely was a great world beyond Kentucky and Indiana, and perhaps he would some day see it.
After a time Thomas Lincoln married a widow, an old friend of Nancy Hanks, and she came to the cabin, bringing her three children; besides, she brought what to Abraham and Sarah seemed unheard-of elegance,—a bureau, some chairs, a table, and bedding. Abraham had heretofore climbed to the loft of the cabin on pegs, and had slept on a sack filled with corn-husks: now a real bed would seem indeed luxurious.
The children were glad to welcome the new mother to the desolate home; and a good, true mother she became to the orphans. She put new energy into her somewhat easy-going husband, and made the cabin comfortable, even attractive. What was better still, she encouraged Abraham to read more and more, to be thorough, and to be somebody. Besides, she gave his great heart something to love, and well she repaid the affection.
He now obtained a much-worn copy of Weem's "Life of Washington," and the little cabin grew to be a paradise, as he read how one great man had accomplished so much. The barefoot boy, in buckskin breeches so shrunken that they reached only half way between the knee and ankle, actually asked himself whether there were not some great place inthe world for him to fill. No wonder, when, a few days after, making a noise with some of his fun-loving companions, a good woman said to him, "Now, Abe, what on earth do you s'pose'll ever become of ye? What'll ye be good for if ye keep a-goin' on in this way?" He replied slowly, "Well, I reckon I'm goin' to be President of the United States one of these days."
The treasured "Life of Washington" came to grief. One stormy night the rain beat between the logs of the cabin, and flooded the volume as it lay on a board upheld by two pegs. Abraham sadly carried it back to its owner, and worked three days, at twenty-five cents a day, to pay damages, and thus made the book his own.
The few months of schooling had already come to an end, and he was "living out," hoeing, planting, and chopping wood for the farmers, and giving the wages to his parents. In this way, in the daytime he studied human nature, and in the evenings he read "Plutarch's Lives" and the "Life of Benjamin Franklin." He was liked in these humble homes, for he could tend baby, tell stories, make a good impromptu speech, recite poetry, even making rhymes himself, and could wrestle and jump as well as the best.
While drinking intoxicants was the fashion all about him, taught by his first mother not to touch them, he had solemnly carried out her wishes. But his tender heart made him kind to the many who, inthis pioneer life, had been ruined through drink. One night, as he was returning from a house-raising, he and two or three friends found a man in the ditch benumbed with the cold, and his patient horse waiting beside him. They lifted the man upon the animal, and held him on till they reached the nearest house, where Abraham cared for him through the night, and thus saved his life.
At eighteen he had found a situation in a small store, but he was not satisfied to stand behind a counter; he had read too much about Washington and Franklin. Fifteen miles from Gentryville, courts were held at certain seasons of the year; and when Abraham could find a spare day he walked over in the morning and back at night, listening to the cases. Meantime he had borrowed a strange book for a poor country-lad,—"The Revised Statutes of Indiana."
One day a man on trial for murder had secured the able lawyer, John A. Breckenridge, to defend him. Abraham listened as he made his appeal to the jury. He had never heard anything so eloquent. When the court adjourned the tall, homely boy, his face beaming with admiration for the great man, pressed forward to grasp his hand; but, with a contemptuous air, the lawyer passed on without speaking. Thirty years later the two met in Washington, when Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United States; and then he thanked Mr. Breckenridge for his great speech in Indiana.
In March, 1828, the long-hoped-for opportunity to see the world outside of Gentryville had come. Abraham was asked by a man who knew his honesty and willingness to work, to take a flat-boat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He was paid only two dollars a week and his rations; and as a flat-boat could not come up the river, but must be sold for lumber at the journey's end, he was obliged to walk the whole distance back. The big-hearted, broad-shouldered youth, six feet and four inches tall, had seen in this trip what he would never forget; had seen black men in chains, and men and women sold like sheep in the slave-marts of New Orleans. Here began his horror of human slavery, which years after culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation.
Two years later, when he had become of age, Abraham helped move his father's family to Illinois, driving the four yoke of oxen which drew the household goods over the muddy roads and through the creeks. Then he joined his adopted brothers in building a log house, plowed fifteen acres of prairie land for corn, split rails to fence it in, and then went out into the world to earn for himself, his scanty wages heretofore belonging legally to his father. He did not always receive money for his work, for once, for a Mrs. Miller, he split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans, dyed with white walnut bark, necessary to make a pair of trowsers.
He had no trade, and no money, and must do whatever came to hand. For a year he worked for one farmer and another, and then he and his half-brother were hired by a Mr. Offutt to build and take a flat-boat to New Orleans. So pleased was the owner, that on Abraham's return, he was at once engaged to manage a mill and store at New Salem. Here he went by the name of "Honest Abe," because he was so fair in his dealings. On one occasion, having sold a woman a bill of goods amounting to two dollars and six and a quarter cents, he found that in adding the items, he had taken six and a quarter cents too much. It was night, and locking the store, he walked two or three miles to return the money to his astonished customer. Another time a woman bought a half pound of tea. He discovered afterward that he had used a four-ounce weight on the scales, and at once walked a long way to deliver the four ounces which were her due. No wonder the world, like Diogenes, is always looking for an honest man.
He insisted on politeness before women. One day as he was showing goods, a boorish man came in and began to use profanity. Young Lincoln leaned over the desk, and begged him to desist before ladies. When they had gone, the man became furious. Finding that he really desired to fight, Lincoln said, "Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may as well whip you as any other man," and suiting the action to the word, gave hima severe punishing. The man became a better citizen from that day, and Lincoln's life-long friend.
Years afterward, when in the Presidential chair, a man used profanity in his presence, he said, "I thought Senator C. had sent me a gentleman. I was mistaken. There is the door, and I wish you good-night."
Hearing that a grammar could be purchased six miles away, the young store-keeper walked thither and obtained it. When evening came, as candles were too expensive for his limited wages, he burnt one shaving after another to give light, and thus studied the book which was to be so valuable in after years, when he should stand before the great and cultured of the land. He took the "Louisville Journal," because he must be abreast of the politics of the day, and made careful notes from every book he read.
Mr. Offutt soon failed, and Abraham Lincoln was again adrift. War had begun with Blackhawk, the chief of the Sacs, and the Governor of Illinois was calling for volunteers. A company was formed in New Salem, and "Honest Abe" was chosen captain. He won the love of his men for his thoughtfulness of them rather than himself, and learned valuable lessons in military matters for the future. A strange thing now happened,—he was asked to be a candidate for the State Legislature! At first he thought his friends were ridiculing him, and said he should be defeated as he was not widely known.
"Never mind!" said James Rutledge, the president of their little debating club. "They'll know you better after you've stumped the county. Any how, it'll do you good to try."
Lincoln made some bright, earnest stump speeches, and though he was defeated, the young man of twenty-three received two hundred and seventy-seven votes out of the two hundred and eighty cast in New Salem. This surely was a pleasant indication of his popularity. It was a common saying, that "Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends."
The County-surveyor needed an assistant. He called upon Lincoln, bringing a book for him to study, if he would fit himself to take hold of the matter. This he did gladly, and for six weeks studied and recited to a teacher, thus making himself skilled and accurate for a new country. Whenever he had an hour's leisure from his work, however, he was poring over his law-books, for he had fully made up his mind to be a lawyer.
He was modest, but ambitious, and was learning the power within him. But as though the developing brain and warm heart needed an extra stimulus, there came into his life, at this time, a beautiful affection, that left a deeper look in the far-away eyes, when it was over. Ann Rutledge, the daughter of his friend, was one of the most intelligent and lovely girls in New Salem. When Lincoln came to her father's house to board, she was already engaged to a bright young man in the neighborhood,who, shortly before their intended marriage, was obliged to visit New York on business. He wrote back of his father's illness and death, and then his letters ceased.
Mouths passed away. Meantime the young lawyer had given her the homage of his strong nature. At first she could not bring herself to forget her recreant lover, but the following year, won by Lincoln's devotion, she accepted him. He seemed now supremely happy. He studied day and night, eager to fill such a place that Ann Rutledge would be proud of him. He had been elected to the Legislature, and, borrowing some money to purchase a suit of clothes, he walked one hundred miles to the State capitol. He did not talk much in the Assembly, but he worked faithfully upon committees, and studied the needs of his State.
The following summer days seemed to pass all too swiftly in his happiness. Then the shadows gathered. The girl he idolized was sinking under the dreadful strain upon her young heart. The latter part of August she sent for Lincoln to come to her bedside. What was said in that last farewell has never been known. It is stated by some that her former lover had returned, as fond of her as ever, his silence having been caused by a long illness. But on the twenty-fifth of August, death took her from them both.
Lincoln was overwhelmed with anguish; insane, feared and believed his friends. He said, "I cannever be reconciled to have the snow, rains, and storms beat upon her grave." Years after he was heard to say, "My heart lies buried in the grave of that girl." A poem by William Knox, found and read at this time, became a favorite and a comfort through life,—
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
Mr. Herndon, his law partner, said, "The love and death of that girl shattered Lincoln's purposes and tendencies. He threw off his infinite sorrow only by leaping wildly into the political arena." The memory of that love never faded from his heart, nor the sadness from his face.
The following year, 1837, when he was twenty-eight, he was admitted to the bar, and moved from New Salem to the larger town of Springfield, forming a partnership with Mr. J. P. Stuart of whom he had borrowed his law-books. Too poor even yet to pay much for board, he slept on a narrow lounge in the law-office. He was again elected to the legislature, and in the Harrison Presidential campaign, was chosen one of the electors, speaking through the State for the Whig party. To so prominent a position, already, had come the backwoods boy.
Four years after Ann Rutledge's death, he married, Nov. 4, 1839, Mary Todd, a bright, witty, somewhat handsome girl, of good family, from Kentucky. She admired his ability, and believed in his success; he needed comfort in his utter loneliness.Till his death he was a true husband, and an idolizing father to his children,—Robert, Willie, and Tad (Thomas).
In 1846, seven years after his marriage, having steadily gained in the reputation of an honest, able lawyer, who would never take a case unless sure he was on the right side, Mr. Lincoln was elected to Congress by an uncommonly large majority. Opposed to the war with Mexico, and to the extension of slavery, he spoke his mind fearlessly. The "Compromise measures of 1850," by which, while California was admitted as a free State, and the slave-trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, giving the owners of slaves the right to recapture them in any free State, had disheartened all lovers of freedom. Lincoln said gloomily to his law partner, Mr. Herndon, "How hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived for it!"
His father died about this time, his noble son sending him this message, "to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good 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."
In 1854, through the influence of Stephen A. Douglas, a brilliant senator from Illinois, theKansas-Nebraska Act was passed, whereby those States were left to judge for themselves whether they would have slaves or not. But by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it was expressly stated that slavery should be forever prohibited in this locality. The whole North grew to white heat. When Douglas returned to his Chicago home the people refused to hear him speak. Illinois said, "His arguments must be answered, and Abraham Lincoln is the man to answer them!"
At the State Fair at Springfield, in October, a great company were gathered. Douglas spoke with marked ability and eloquence, and then on the following day, Abraham Lincoln spoke for three hours. His heart was in his words. He quivered with emotion. The audience were still as death, but when the address was finished, men shouted and women waved their handkerchiefs. Lincoln and the right had triumphed. After this, the two men spoke in all the large towns of the State, to immense crowds. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill worked out its expected results. Blood flowed in the streets, as pro-slavery and anti-slavery men contested the ground, newspaper offices were torn down by mobs, and Douglas lost the great prize he had in view,—the Presidency of the United States.
When the new party, the Republican, held its second convention in Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, Abraham Lincoln received one hundred and ten votes for Vice President. What would NancyHanks Lincoln have said if she could have looked now upon the boy to whom she taught the Bible in the log cabin!
An incident occurred about this time which increased his fame. A man was murdered at a camp-meeting, and two young men were arrested. One was a very poor youth, whose mother, Hannah Armstrong, had been kind to Lincoln in the early years. She wrote to the prominent lawyer about her troubles, because she believed her son to be innocent. The trial came on. The people were clamorous for Armstrong to be hanged. The principal witness testified that "by the aid of the brightly shining moon, he saw the prisoner inflict the death-blow with a slung shot."
After careful questioning, Mr. Lincoln showed the perjury of the witness, by the almanac, no moon being visible on the night in question. The jury were melted to tears by the touching address, and their sympathy went out to the wronged youth and his poor old mother, who fainted in his arms. Tears, too, poured down the face of Mr. Lincoln, as the young man was acquitted. "Why, Hannah," he said, when the grateful woman asked what she should try to pay him, "I shan't charge you a cent; never." She had been well repaid for her friendliness to a penniless boy.
The next year he was invited to deliver a lecture at Cooper Institute, New York. He was not very well known at the East. He had lived unostentatiously inthe two-story frame-house in Springfield, and when seen at all by the people, except in his addresses, was usually drawing one of his babies in a wagon before his door, with hat and coat off, deeply buried in thought. When the crowd gathered at Cooper Institute, they expected to hear a fund of stories and a "Western stump speech." But they did not hear what they expected. They heard a masterly review of the history of slavery in this country, and a prophecy concerning the future of the slavery question. They were amazed at its breadth and its eloquence. The "New York Tribune" said, "No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."
After this Mr. Lincoln spoke in various cities to crowded houses. A Yale professor took notes and gave a lecture to his students on the address. Surprised at his success among learned men, Mr. Lincoln once asked a prominent professor "what made the speeches interest?"
The reply was, "The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style of your reasoning and your illustrations, which were romance, and pathos, and fun, and logic, all welded together."
Mr. Lincoln said, "I am very much obliged to you for this. It throws light on a subject which has been dark to me. Certainly I have had a wonderful success for a man of my limited education."
The sabbath he spent in New York, he found his way to the Sunday-school at Five Points. He wasalone. The superintendent noticing his interest, asked him to say a few words. The children were so pleased that when he attempted to stop, they cried, "Go on, oh! do go on!" No one knew his name, and on being asked who he was, he replied, "Abraham Lincoln of Illinois." After visiting his son Robert at Harvard College, he returned home.
When the Republican State Convention met, May 9, 1860, at Springfield, Ill., Mr. Lincoln was invited to a seat on the platform, and as no way could be made through the dense throng, he was carried over the people's heads. Ten days later, at the National Convention at Chicago, though William H. Seward of New York was a leading candidate, the West gained the nomination, with their idolized Lincoln. Springfield was wild with joy. When the news of his success was carried to him, he said quietly, "Well, gentlemen, there's a little woman at our house who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I am; and if you will excuse me, I will take it up and let her see it."
The resulting canvass was one of the most remarkable in our history. The South said, "War will result if he is elected." The North said, "The time has come for decisive action." The popular vote for Abraham Lincoln was nearly two millions (1,857,610), while Stephen A. Douglas received something over a million (1,291,574). The country was in a fever of excitement. The South made itself ready for war by seizing the forts. Beforethe inauguration most of the Southern States had seceded.
Sad farewells were uttered as Mr. Lincoln left Springfield for Washington. To his law partner he said, "You and I have been together more than twenty years, and have never passed a word. Will you let my name stay on the old sign till I come back from Washington?"
The tears came into Mr. Herndon's eyes, as he said, "I will never have any other partner while you live," and he kept his word. Old Hannah Armstrong told him that she should never see him again; that something told her so; his enemies would assassinate him. He smiled and said, "Hannah, if they do kill me, I shall never die another death."
He went away without fear, but feeling the awful responsibility of his position. He found an empty treasury and the country drifting into the blackness of war. He spoke few words, but the lines grew deeper on his face, and his eyes grew sadder.
In his inaugural address he said, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.... Physically speaking we cannot separate."
The conflict began April 12, 1861, by the enemy firing on Fort Sumter. That sound reverberated throughout the North. The President called for seventy-five thousand men. The choicest fromthousands of homes quickly responded. Young men left their college-halls and men their places of business. "The Union must and shall be preserved," was the eager cry. Then came the call for forty-two thousand men for three years.
The President began to study war in earnest. He gathered military books, sought out on maps every creek and hill and valley in the enemy's country, and took scarcely time to eat or sleep. May 24, the brilliant young Colonel Ellsworth had been shot at Alexandria by a hotel-keeper, because he pulled down the secession flag. He was buried from the east room in the White House, and the North was more aroused than ever. The press and people were eager for battle, and July 21, 1861, the Union army, under General McDowell, attacked the Confederates at Bull Run and were defeated. The South was jubilant, and the North learned, once for all, that the war was to be long and bloody. Congress, at the request of the President, at once voted five hundred thousand men, and five hundred million dollars to carry on the war.
Vast work was to be done. The Southern ports must be blockaded, and the traffic on the Mississippi River discontinued. A great and brave army of Southerners, fighting on their own soil, every foot of which they knew so well, must be conquered if the nation remained intact. The burdens of the President grew more and more heavy. Men at the North, who sympathized with the South,—for wewere bound together as one family in a thousand ways,—said the President was going too far in his authority; others said he moved too slowly, and was too lenient to the slave power. The South gained strength from the sympathy of England, and only by careful leadership was war avoided with that country.
General McClellan had fought some hard battles in Virginia—Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, and others—with varying success, losing thousands of men in the Chickahominy swamps, and after the battle of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, one of the severest of the war, when each side lost over ten thousand men, he was relieved of his command, and succeeded by General Burnside. There had been some successes at the West under Grant, at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, and at the South under Farragut, but the outlook for the country was not hopeful. Mr. Lincoln had met with a severe affliction in his own household. His beautiful son Willie had died in February. He used to walk the room in those dying hours, saying sadly, "This is the hardest trial of my life; why is it? why is it?"
This made him, perhaps, even more tender of the lives of others' sons. A young sentinel had been sentenced to be shot for sleeping at his post; but the President pardoned him, saying, "I could not think of going into eternity with the blood of the poor young man on my skirts. It is not to be wondered at that a boy raised on a farm, probably inthe habit of going to bed at dark, should, when required to watch, fall asleep, and I cannot consent to shoot him for such an act." This youth was found among the slain on the field of Fredericksburg, wearing next his heart a photograph of his preserver, with the words, "God bless President Lincoln."
An army officer once went to Washington to see about the execution of twenty-four deserters, who had been sentenced by court-martial to be shot. "Mr. President," said he, "unless these men are made an example of, the army itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the many."
"Mr. General," was the reply, "there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God's sake, don't ask me to add to the number, for I won't do it." At another time he said, "Well, I think the boy can do us more good above ground than under ground."
A woman in a faded shawl and hood came to see the President, begging that, as her husband and all her sons—three—had enlisted, and her husband had been killed, he would release the oldest, that he might care for his mother. Mr. Lincoln quickly consented. When the poor woman reached the hospital where her boy was to be found, he was dead. Returning sadly to Mr. Lincoln, he said, "I know what you wish me to do now, and I shall do it without your asking; I shall release your second son.... Nowyouhave one, andIone of theother two left: that is no more than right." Tears filled the eyes of both as she reverently laid her hand on his head, saying, "The Lord bless you, Mr. President. May you live a thousand years, and always be at the head of this great nation!"
Through all these months it had become evident that slavery must be destroyed, or we should live over again these dreadful war-scenes in years to come. Mr. Lincoln had been waiting for the right time to free the slaves. General McClellan had said, "A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present armies"; but Sept. 22, 1862, Mr. Lincoln told his Cabinet, "I have promised my God that I will do it"; and he issued the immortal Emancipation Proclamation, by which four million human beings stepped out from bondage into freedom. He knew what he was doing. Two years afterward he said, "It is the central act of my administration, and the great event of the nineteenth century."
The following year, 1863, brought even deeper sorrows. The "Draft Act," by which men were obliged to enter the army when their names were drawn, occasioned in July a riot in New York city, with the loss of many lives. Grant had taken Vicksburg on July 4, and General Meade had won at the dreadful three days' fight at Gettysburg, July 1-4, with a loss of more than twenty thousand on either side; but the nation was being held together at a fearful cost. When Mr. Lincolnannounced to the people the victory at Gettysburg, he expressed the desire that, in the customary observance of the Fourth of July, "He whose will, not ours, should everywhere be done, be everywhere reverenced with profoundest gratitude." He reverenced God, himself, most devoutly. "I have been driven many times upon my knees," he said, "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."
On Nov. 19, of this year, this battle-field was dedicated, with solemn ceremonies, as one of the national cemeteries. Mr. Lincoln made a very brief address, in words that will last while America lasts, "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is, rather, for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining for us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Emerson says of these words, "This, and one other American speech, that of John Brown to thecourt that tried him, and a part of Kossuth's speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with each other, and no fourth."
The next year, Feb. 29, 1864, the Hero of Vicksburg was called to the Lieutenant-Generalship of the army, and for the first time Mr. Lincoln felt somewhat a sense of relief from burdens. He said, "Wherever Grant is, things move." He now called for five hundred thousand more men, and the beginning of the end was seen. Sherman swept through to the sea. Grant went below Richmond, where he said, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
Mr. Lincoln had been re-elected to the Presidency for a second term, giving that beautiful inaugural address to the people, "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 widows and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, and the long war was ended. The people gathered in their churches to praise God amid their tears. Abraham Lincoln's name was on every lip. The colored people said of their deliverer, "He is eberywhere. He is like de bressed Lord; he walks de waters and de land."
An old colored woman came to the door of the White House and met the President as he was coming out, and said she wanted to see "Abraham the Second."
"And who was Abraham the First?" asked the good man.
"Why, Lor' bless you, we read about Abraham de First in de Bible, and Abraham de Second is de President."
"Here he is!" said the President, turning away to hide his tears.
Well did the noble-hearted man say, "I have never willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom."
Five days after the surrender of General Lee, Mr. Lincoln went to Ford's Theatre, because it would rest him and please the people to see him. He used to say, "The tired part of me is inside and out of reach.... I feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done."
While Mr. Lincoln was enjoying the play, John Wilkes Booth, an actor, came into the box behind him and fired a bullet into his brain; then sprang upon the stage, shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!" The President scarcely moved in his chair, and, unconscious, was taken to a house near by, where he died at twenty-two minutes past seven, April 15, 1865. Booth was caught twelve days later, and shot in a burning barn.
The nation seemed as though struck dumb; andthen, from the Old World as well as the New, came an agonizing wail of sorrow. Death only showed to their view how sublime was the character of him who had carried them through the war. While the body, embalmed, lay in state in the east room of the White House tens of thousands crowded about it. And then, accompanied by the casket of little Willie, the body of Abraham Lincoln took its long journey of fifteen hundred miles, to the home of his early life, for burial. Nothing in this country like that funeral pageant has ever been witnessed. In New York, in Philadelphia, and in every other city along the way, houses were trimmed with mourning, bells tolled, funeral marches were played, and the rooms where the body rested were filled with flowers. Hundreds of thousands looked upon the tired, noble face of the martyred President.
In Oak Ridge Cemetery, at Springfield, Illinois, in the midst of a dense multitude, a choir of two hundred and fifty singing by the open grave of him who dearly loved music,