In the course of the debate on the Apportionment Bill, Mr. Lincoln had occasion to address the House in defence of "The Long Nine," who were especially obnoxious to the Democrats. The speech concluded with the following characteristic passage:—
"The gentleman had accused old women of being partial to the number nine; but this, he presumed, was without foundation. A few years since, it would be recollected by the House, that the delegation from this county were dubbed by way of eminence 'The Long Nine,' and, by way of further distinction, he had been called 'The Longest of the Nine.' Now," said Mr. Lincoln, "I desire to say to my friend from Monroe (Mr. Bissell), that if any woman, old or young, ever thought there was any peculiar charm in this distinguished specimen of number nine, I have as yet been so unfortunate as not to have discovered it." (Loud applause.)
But this Legislature was full of excitements. Besides the questions about the public debt and the bank-charters, the Democrats proposed to legislate the Circuit judges out of office, and reconstruct the Supreme Court to suit themselves. They did this because the Supreme judges had already decided one question of some political interest against them, and were now about to decide another in the same way. The latter was a question of great importance; and, in order to avoid the consequences of such a decision, the Democrats were eager for the extremest measures.
The Constitution provided that all free white maleinhabitantsshould vote upon six months' residence. This, the Democrats held, included aliens; while the Whigs held the reverse. On this grave judicial question, parties were divided precisely upon the line of their respective interests. The aliens numbered about ten thousand, and nine-tenths of them voted steadily with the Democracy. Whilst a great outcry concerning it was being made from both sides, and fierce disputes raged in the newspapers and on the stump, two Whigs at Galena got up an amicable case, to try it in a quiet way before a Whig judge, who held the Circuit Courts in their neighborhood. The judge decided for his friends, like a man that he was. The Democrats found it out, and raised a popular tumult about it that would have put Demetrius the silversmith to shame. They carried the case to the Supreme Court, where it was argued before the Whig majority, in December, 1889, by able and distinguished counsellors,—Judge Douglas being one of them; but the only result was a continuance to the next June. In the mean time Judge Smith, the only Democrat on the bench, was seeking favor with his party friends by betraying to Douglas the secrets of the consultation-room.
With his aid, the Democrats found a defect in the record, which sent the case over to December, 1840, and adroitly secured the alien vote for the great elections of that memorable year. The Legislature elected then was overwhelmingly Democratic; and, having good reason to believe that the aliens had small favor to expect from this court, they determined forthwith to make a new one that would be more reasonable. There were now nine Circuit judges in the State, and four Supreme judges, under the Act of 1835. The offices of the Circuit judges the Democrats concluded to abolish, and to create instead nine Supreme judges, who should perform circuit duties. This they called "reforming the judiciary;" and "thirsting for vengeance," as Gov. Ford says, they went about the work with all the zeal, but with very little of the disinterested devotion, which reformers are generally supposed to have. Douglas, counsel for one of the litigants, made a furious speech "in the lobby," demanding the destruction of the court that was to try his cause; and for sundry grave sins which he imputed to the judges he gave Smith—his friend Smith—as authority. It was useless to oppose it: this "reform" was a foregone conclusion. It was called the "Douglas Bill;" and Mr. Douglas was appointed to one of the new offices created by it. But Mr. Lincoln, E. D. Baker, and other Whig members, entered upon the journal the following protest:—
"For the reasons thus presented, and for others no less apparent, the undersigned cannot assent to the passage of the bill, or permit it to become a law without this evidence of their disapprobation; and they now protest against the re-organization of the judiciary: Because,
"1st. It violates the great principles of free government by subjecting the judiciary to the Legislature.
"2d. It is a fatal blow at the independence of the judges and the constitutional term of their offices.
"3d. It is a measure not asked for, or wished for, by the people.
"4th. It will greatly increase the expense of our courts, or else greatly diminish their utility.
"5th. It will give our courts a political and partisan character, thereby impairing public confidence in their decisions.
"6th. It will impair our standing with other States and the world.
"7th. It is a party measure for party purposes, from which no practical good to the people can possibly arise, but which may be the source of immeasurable evils.
"The undersigned are well aware that this protest will be altogether unavailing with the majority of this body. The blow has already fallen; and we are compelled to stand by, the mournful spectators of the ruin it will cause."
Mr. Lincoln was elected in 1840, to serve, of course, until the next election in August, 1842; but for reasons of a private nature, to be explained hereafter, he did not appear during the session of 1841-2.
In concluding this chapter, taking leave of New Salem, Vandalia, and the Legislature, we cannot forbear another quotation from Mr. Wilson, Lincoln's colleague from Sangamon, to whom we are already so largely in debt:—
"In 1838 many of the Long Nines were candidates for re-election to the Legislature. A question of the division of the county was one of the local issues. Mr. Lincoln and myself, among others, residing in the portion of the county sought to be organized into a new county, and opposing the division, it became necessary that I should make a special canvass through the north-west part of the county, then known as Sand Ridge. I made the canvass; Mr. Lincoln accompanied me; and, being personally well acquainted with every one, we called at nearly every house. At that time it was the universal custom to keep some whiskey in the house, for private use and to treat friends. The subject was always mentioned as a matter of etiquette, but with the remark to Mr. Lincoln, 'You never drink, but maybe your friend would like to take a little.' I never saw Mr. Lincoln drink. He often told me he never drank; had no desire for drink, nor the companionship of drinking men. Candidates never treated anybody in those times unless they wanted to do so.
"Mr. Lincoln remained in New Salem until the spring of 1837, when he went to Springfield, and went into the law-office of John T. Stuart as a partner in the practice of law, and boarded with William Butler.
"During his stay in New Salem he had no property other than what was necessary to do his business, until after he stopped in Springfield. He was not avaricious to accumulate property, neither was he a spendthrift. He was almost always during those times hard up. He never owned land.
"The first trip he made around the circuit after he commenced the practice of law, I had a horse, saddle, and bridle, and he had none. I let him have mine. I think he must have been careless, as the saddle skinned the horse's back.
"While he lived in New Salem he visited me often. He would stay a day or two at a time: we generally spent the time at the stores in Athens. He was very fond of company: telling or hearing stories told was a source of great amusement to him. He was not in the habit of reading much,—never read novels. Whittling pine boards and shingles, talking and laughing, constituted the entertainment of the days and evenings.
"In a conversation with him about that time, he told me, that, although he appeared to enjoy life rapturously, still he was the victim of terrible melancholy. He sought company, and indulged in fun and hilarity without restraint, or stint as to time; but when by himself, he told me that he was so overcome by mental depression that he never dared carry a knife in his pocket; and as long as I was intimately acquainted with him, previous to his commencement of the practice of the law, he never carried a pocket-knife. Still he was not misanthropic: he was kind and tender-hearted in his treatment to others.
"In the summer of 1837 the citizens of Athens and vicinity gave the delegation then called the 'Long Nine' a public dinner, at which Mr. Lincoln and all the others were present. He was called out by the toast, 'Abraham Lincoln, one of Nature's noblemen.' I have often thought, that, if any man was entitled to that compliment, it was he."
UNDER the Act of Assembly, due in great part to Mr. Lincoln's exertions, the removal of the archives and other public property of the State from Vandalia to Springfield began on the fourth day of July, 1839, and was speedily completed. At the time of the passage of the Act, in the winter of 1836-7, Mr. Lincoln determined to follow the capital, and establish his own residence at Springfield. The resolution was natural and necessary; for he had been studying law in all his intervals of leisure, and wanted a wider field than the justice's court at New Salem to begin the practice. Henceforth Mr. Lincoln might serve in the Legislature, attend to his private business, and live snugly at home. In addition to the State courts, the Circuit and District Courts of the United States sat here. The eminent John McLean of Ohio was the justice of the Supreme Court who sat in this circuit, with Judge Pope of the District Court, from 1839 to 1849, and after that with Judge Drummond. The first terms of these courts, and the first session of the Legislature at Springfield, were held in December, 1839. The Senate sat in one church, and the House in another.
Mr. Lincoln got his license as an attorney early in 1837, "and commenced practice regularly as a lawyer in the town of Springfield in March" of that year. His first case was that of Hawthorne vs. Wooldridge, dismissed at the cost of the plaintiff, for whom Mr. Lincoln's name was entered. There were then on the list of attorneys at the Springfield bar many names of subsequent renown. Judge Stephen T. Logan was on the bench of the Circuit Court under the Act of 1835. Stephen A. Douglas had made his appearance as the public prosecutor at the March term of 1836; and at the same term E. D. Baker had been admitted to practice. Among the rest were John T. Stuart, Cyrus Walker, S. H. Treat, Jesse B. Thomas, George Forquer, Dan Stone, Ninian W. Edwards, John J. Hardin, Schuyler Strong, A. T. Bledsoe, and Josiah Lamborn.
By this time Mr. Lincoln enjoyed considerable local fame as a politician, but none, of course, as a lawyer. He therefore needed a partner, and got one in the person of John T. Stuart, an able and distinguished Whig, who had relieved his poverty years before by the timely loan of books with which to study law, and who had from the first promoted his political fortunes with zeal as disinterested as it was effective. The connection promised well for Mr. Lincoln, and no doubt did well during the short period of its existence. The courtroom was in Hoffman's Row; and the office of Stuart & Lincoln was in the second story above the court-room. It was a "little room," and generally a "dirty one." It contained "a small dirty bed,"—on which Lincoln lounged and slept,—a buffalo-robe, a chair, and a bench. Here the junior partner, when disengaged from the cares of politics and the Legislature, was to be found pretty much all the time, "reading, abstracted and gloomy." Springfield was a small village, containing between one and two thousand inhabitants. There were no pavements: the street-crossings were made of "chunks," stones, and sticks. Lincoln boarded with Hon. William Butler, a gentleman who possessed in an eminent degree that mysterious power which guides the deliberations of party conventions and legislative bodies to a foregone conclusion. Lincoln was very poor, worth nothing, and in debt,—circumstances which are not often alleged in behalf of the modern legislator; but "Bill Butler" was his friend, and took him in with little reference to board-bills and the settlement of accounts. According to Dr. Jayne, he "fed and clothed him for years;" and this signal service, rendered at a very critical time, Mr. Lincoln forgot wholly when he was in Congress, and Butler wanted to be Register of the Land Office, as well as when he was President of the United States, and opportunities of repayment were multitudinous. It is doubtless all true; but the inference of personal ingratitude on the part of Mr. Lincoln will not bear examination. It will be shown at another place that Mr. Lincoln regarded all public offices within his gift as a sacred trust, to be administered solely for the people, and as in no sense a fund upon which he could draw for the payment of private accounts. Heneverpreferred his friends to his enemies, but rather the reverse, as if fearful that he might by bare possibility be influenced by some unworthy motive. He was singularly cautious to avoid the imputation of fidelity to his friends at the expense of his opponents.
In Coke's and Blackstone's time the law was supposed to be "a jealous mistress;" but in Lincoln's time, and at Springfield, she was any thing but exacting. Politicians courted her only to make her favor the stepping-stone to success in other employments. Various members of that bar have left great reputations to posterity, but none of them were earned solely by the legitimate practice of the law. Douglas is remembered as a statesman, Baker as a political orator, Hardin as a soldier, and some now living, like Logan and Stuart, although eminent in the law, will be no less known to the history of the times as politicians than as lawyers. Among those who went to the law for a living, and to the people for fame and power, was Mr. Lincoln. He was still a member of the Legislature when he settled at Springfield, and would probably have continued to run for a seat in that body as often as his time expired, but for the unfortunate results of the "internal-improvement system," the hopeless condition of the State finances, and a certain gloominess of mind, which arose from private misfortunes that befell him about the time of his retirement. We do not say positively that these were the reasons why Mr. Lincoln made no effort to be re-elected to the Legislature of 1840; but a careful study of all the circumstances will lead any reasonable man to believe that they were. He was intensely ambitious, longed ardently for place and distinction, and never gave up a prospect which seemed to him good when he was in a condition to pursue it with honor to himself and fairness to others. Moreover State politics were then rapidly ceasing to be the high-road to fame and fortune. Although the State of Illinois was insolvent, unable to pay the interest on her public debt, and many were talking about repudiating the principal, the great campaign of 1840 went off upon national issues, and little or nothing was said about questions of State policy. Mr. Lincoln felt and obeyed this tendency of the public mind, and from 1837 onward his speeches—those that were printed and those that were not—were devoted chiefly, if not exclusively, to Federal affairs.
In January, 1837, he delivered a lecture before the Springfield Lyceum on the subject of the "Perpetuation of our Free Institutions." As a mere declamation, it is unsurpassed in the annals of the West. Although delivered in mid-winter, it is instinct with the peculiar eloquence of the most fervid Fourth of July.
"In the great journal of things," began the orator, "happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquisition or establishment of them: they are a legacy bequeathed us by aoncehardy, brave, and patriotic, butnowlamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and, through themselves, us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights: 'tis ours only to transmit these—the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation—to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity,—all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
"How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years!
"At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
"I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of the latter. They are not the creature of climate; neither are they confined to the slaveholding or non-slaveholding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country."
The orator then adverts to the doings of recent mobs in various parts of the country, and insists, that, if the spirit that produced them continues to increase, the laws and the government itself must fall before it: bad citizens will be encouraged, and good ones, having no protection against the lawless, will be glad to receive an individual master who will be able to give them the peace and order they desire. That will be the time when the usurper will put down his heel on the neck of the people, and batter down the "fair fabric" of free institutions. "Many great and good men," he says, "sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair;but such belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle.1 What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen.... Another reason which oncewas, but which, to the same extent,is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon thepassionsof the people as distinguished from their judgment." This influence, the lecturer maintains, was kept alive by the presence of the surviving soldiers of the Revolution, who were in some sort "living histories," and concludes with this striking peroration:—
"But those histories are gone. Theycanbe read no more forever. Theywerea fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of timehas done,—the levelling of its walls. They are gone. Theywerea forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more rude storms, then to sink and be no more. Theywerethe pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, the descendants, supply their places with other pillars hewn from the same solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason—cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. Let those materials be moulded intogeneral intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular,a reverence for the Constitution and the laws; and that we improved to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington. Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest as the rock of its basis, and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, 'The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."'
1 The italics are the orator's.
1 The italics are the orator's.
These extracts from a lecture carefully composed by Mr. Lincoln at the mature age of twenty-eight, and after considerable experience in the public service, are worthy of attentive perusal. To those familiar with his sober and pure style at a later age, these sophomoric passages will seem incredible. But they were thought "able and eloquent" by the "Young Men's Lyceum" of Springfield: he was "solicited to furnish a copy for publication," and they were duly printed in "The Sangamon Journal." In the mere matter of rhetoric, they compare favorably with some of his other productions of nearly the same date. This was what he would have called his "growing time;" and it is intensely interesting to witness the processes of such mental growth as his. In time, gradually, but still rapidly, his style changes completely: the constrained and unnatural attempts at striking and lofty metaphor disappear, and the qualities which produced the Gettysburg address—that model of unadorned eloquence—begin to be felt. He finds the people understand him better when he comes down from his stilts, and talks to them from their own level.
Political discussions at Springfield were apt to run into heated and sometimes unseemly personal controversies. When Douglas and Stuart were candidates for Congress in 1838, they fought like tigers in Herndon's grocery, over a floor that was drenched with slops, and gave up the struggle only when both were exhausted. Then, as a further entertainment to the populace, Mr. Stuart ordered out a "barrel of whiskey and wine."
On the election-day in 1840, it was reported to Mr. Lincoln that one Radford, a contractor on the railroad, had brought up his men, and taken full possession of one of the polling-places. Lincoln started off to the precinct on a slow trot. Radford knew him well, and a little stern advice reversed proceedings without any fighting. Among other remarks, Lincoln said, "Radford, you'll spoil and blow if you live much longer." He wanted to hit Radford, but could get no chance to do so, and contented himself with confiding his intentions to Speed. "I intended just to knock him down, and leave him kicking."
The same year, Col. Baker was making a speech to a promiscuous audience in the court-room,—"a rented room in Hoffman's Row." It will be remembered that Lincoln's office was just above, and he was listening to Baker through a large hole or trap-door in the ceiling. Baker warmed with his theme, and, growing violent and personally offensive, declared at length, "that wherever there was a land-office, there was a Democratic newspaper to defend its corruptions." "This," says John B. Webber, "was a personal attack on my brother, George Webber. I was in the Court House, and in my anger cried, 'Pull him down!'" A scene of great confusion ensued, threatening to end in a general riot, in which Baker was likely to suffer. But just at the critical moment Lincoln's legs were seen coming through the hole; and directly his tall figure was standing between Baker and the audience, gesticulating for silence. "Gentlemen," said he, "let us not disgrace the age and country in which we live. This is a land where freedom of speech is guaranteed. Mr Baker has a right to speak, and ought to be permitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if I can prevent it." Webber only recollects that "some one made some soothing, kind remarks," and that he was properly "held until the excitement ceased," and the affair "soon ended in quiet and peace."
In 1838, or 1840, Jesse B. Thomas made an intemperate attack upon the "Long Nine," and especially upon Mr. Lincoln, as the longest and worst of them. Lincoln was not present at the meeting; but being sent for, and informed of what had passed, he ascended the platform, and made a reply which nobody seems to remember, but which everybody describes as a "terrible skinning" of his victim. Ellis says, that, at the close of a furious personal denunciation, he wound up by "mimicking" Thomas, until Thomas actually cried with vexation and anger. Edwards, Speed, Ellis, Davis, and many others, refer to this scene, and, being asked whether Mr. Lincoln could not be vindictive upon occasion, generally respond, "Remember the Thomas skinning."
The most intimate friend Mr. Lincoln ever had, at this or any other time, was probably Joshua F. Speed. In 1836 he settled himself in Springfield, and did a thriving business as a merchant. Ellis was one of his clerks, and so also was William H. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln's future partner. This store was for years Lincoln's familiar haunt. There he came to while away the tedious evenings with Speed and the congenial company that naturally assembled around these choice spirits. He even slept in the store room as often as he slept at home, and here made to Speed the most confidential communications he ever made to mortal man. If he had on earth "a bosom crony," it was Speed, and that deep and abiding attachment subsisted unimpaired to the day of Mr. Lincoln's death. In truth, there were good reasons why he should think of Speed with affection and gratitude, for through life no man rendered him more important services.
One night in December, 1839, Lincoln, Douglas, Baker, and some other gentlemen of note, were seated at Speed's hospitable fire in the store. They got to talking politics, got warm, hot, angry. Douglas sprang up and said, "Gentlemen, this is no place to talk politics: we will discuss the questions publicly with you," and much more in a high tone of banter and defiance. A few days afterwards the Whigs had a meeting, at which Mr. Lincoln reported a resolution challenging the Democrats to a joint debate. The challenge was accepted; and Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and Jesse B. Thomas were deputed by the Democrats to meet Logan, Baker, Browning, and Lincoln on the part of the Whigs. The intellectual encounter between these noted champions is still described by those who witnessed it as "the great debate." It took place in the Second Presbyterian Church, in the hearing of as many people as could get into the building, and was adjourned from night to night. When Mr. Lincoln's turn came, the audience was very thin; but, for all that, his speech was by many persons considered the best one of the series. To this day, there are some who believe he had assistance in the preparation of it. Even Mr. Herndon accused Speed of having "had a hand in it," and got a flat denial for his answer. At all events, the speech was a popular success, and was written out, and published in "The Sangamon Journal," of March 6, 1840. The exordium was a sort of complaint that must have had a very depressing effect upon both the speaker and his hearers:—
"Fellow-Citizens,—It is peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt a continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been conducted in this hall on several preceding ones. It is so, because on each of these evenings there was a much fuller attendance than now, without any reason for its being so, except the greater interest the community feel in the speakers who addressed them then, than they do in him who is to do so now. I am, indeed, apprehensive that the few who have attended have done so more to spare me of mortification, than in the hope of being interested in any thing I may be able to say. This circumstance casts a damp upon my spirits which I am sure I shall be unable to overcome during the evening.
"The subject heretofore and now to be discussed is the Sub-Treasury scheme of the present administration, as a means of collecting, safe-keeping, transferring, and disbursing the revenues of the nation, as contrasted with a National Bank for the same purposes. Mr. Douglas has said that we (the Whigs) have not dared to meet them (the Locos) in argument on this question. I protest against this assertion. I say we have again and again, during this discussion, urged facts and arguments against the Sub-Treasury which they have neither dared to deny nor attempted to answer. But lest some may be led to believe that we really wish to avoid the question, I now propose, in my humble way, to urge these arguments again; at the same time begging the audience to mark well the positions I shall take, and the proofs I shall offer to sustain them, and that they will not again allow Mr. Douglas or his friends to escape the force of them by a round and groundless assertion that we dare not meet them in argument.
"Of the Sub-Treasury, then, as contrasted with a National Bank, for the before-enumerated purposes, I lay down the following propositions, to wit:—
"1st. It will injuriously affect the community by its operation on the circulating medium.
"2d. It will be a more expensive fiscal agent.
"3d. It will be a less secure depository for the public money."
Mr. Lincoln's objections to the Sub-Treasury were those commonly urged by its enemies, and have been somewhat conclusively refuted by the operation of that admirable institution from the hour of its adoption to the present. "The extravagant expenditures" of Mr. Van Buren's administration, however, was a standard topic of the Whigs in those days, and, sliding gracefully off from the Sub-Treasury, Mr. Lincoln dilated extensively upon this more attractive subject. This part of his speech was entirely in reply to Mr. Douglas. But, when he came to answer Mr. Lamborn's remarks, he "got in a hard hit" that must have brought down the house.
"Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party and the Whigs is, that, although the former sometimes err in practice, they are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in principle; and, the better to impress this proposition, he uses a figurative expression in these words: 'The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the heart and head.' The first branch of the figure,—that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel,—I admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that looks but for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their hundreds of others, scampering away with the public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of 'running itch.' It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork-leg in the comic song did on its owner, which, when he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems to be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier who was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied, 'Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Cæsar ever had, but somehow or other, whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it.' So with Mr. Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their hands for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but, before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally vulnerable heels will run away with them."
But, as in the lecture before the Lyceum, Mr. Lincoln reserved his most impressive passage, his boldest imagery, and his most striking metaphor, for a grand and vehement peroration.
"Mr. Lamborn refers to the late elections in the States, and, from their results, confidently predicts every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next presidential election. Address that argument to cowards and knaves: with the free and the brave it will affect nothing. It may be true: if it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the wave of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare to resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of their efforts; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it, I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions, not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly, alone, hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before Heaven and in face of the world, I swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt that oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so: we still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending."
Considering that the times were extremely peaceful, and that the speaker saw no bloodshed except what flowed from the noses of belligerents in the groceries about Springfield, the speech seems to have been unnecessarily defiant.
In 1840 Mr. Lincoln was a candidate for presidential elector on the Harrison ticket, and stumped a large part of the State. He and Douglas followed Judge Treat's court all around the circuit, "and spoke in the afternoons." The Harrison club at Springfield became thoroughly familiar with his voice. But these one-sided affairs were not altogether suited to his temper: through his life he preferred a joint discussion, and the abler the man pitted against him, the better he liked it. He knew he shone in retort, and sought every opportunity to practise it. From 1838 to 1858, he seems to have followed up Douglas as a regular business during times of great political excitement, and only on one or two occasions did he find the "Little Giant" averse to a conflict. Here, in 1840, they came in collision, as they did in 1839, and as they continued to do through twenty or more years, until Lincoln became President of the United States, and Douglas's disappointments were buried with his body. Once during this Harrison campaign they had a fierce discussion before a meeting assembled in the market-house. In the course of his speech, Lincoln imputed to Van Buren the great sin of having voted in the New York State Convention for negro suffrage with a property qualification. Douglas denied the fact; and Lincoln attempted to prove his statement by reading a certain passage from Holland's "Life of Van Buren," containing a letter from Van Buren to one Mr. Fithian. Whereupon "Douglas got mad," snatched up the book, and, tossing it into the crowd, remarked sententiously, although not conclusively, "Damn such a book!"
"He was very sensitive," says Mr. Gillespie, "where he thought he had failed to come up to the expectations of his friends. I remember a case. He was pitted by the Whigs, in 1840, to debate with Mr. Douglas, the Democratic champion. Lincoln did not come up to the requirements of the occasion. He was conscious of his failure; and I never saw any man so much distressed. He begged to be permitted to try it again, and was reluctantly indulged; and in the next effort he transcended our highest expectations. I never heard, and never expect to hear, such a triumphant vindication as he then gave of Whig measures or policy. He never after, to my knowledge, fell below himself."
It must by this time be clear to the reader that Mr. Lincoln was never agitated by any passion more intense than his wonderful thirst for distinction. There is good evidence that it furnished the feverish dreams of his boyhood; and no man that knew him well can doubt that it governed all his conduct, from the hour when he astonished himself by his oratorical success against Posey and Ewing, in the back settlements of Macon County, to the day when the assassin marked him as the first hero of the restored Union, re-elected to his great office, surrounded by every circumstance that could minister to his pride, or exalt his sensibilities,—a ruler whose power was only less wide than his renown. He never rested in the race he had determined to run; he was ever ready to be honored; he struggled incessantly for place. There is no instance where an important office seemed to be within his reach, and he did not try to get it. Whatsoever he did in politics, at the bar, in private life, had more or less reference to this great object of his life. It is not meant to be said that he was capable of any shameful act, any personal dishonor, any surrender or concealment of political convictions. In these respects, he was far better than most men. It was not in his nature to run away from the fight, or to desert to the enemy; but he was quite willing to accept his full share of the fruits of victory.
Born in the humblest circumstances, uneducated, poor, acquainted with flatboats and groceries, but a stranger to the drawing-room, it was natural that he should seek in a matrimonial alliance those social advantages which he felt were necessary to his political advancement. This was, in fact, his own view of the matter; but it was strengthened and enforced by the counsels of those whom he regarded as friends.
[Miss Mary Lincoln. Wife of the President 270]
In 1839 Miss Mary, daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Ky., came to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, at Springfield. Like Miss Owens, Miss Todd had a stepmother, with whom she failed to "agree," and for that reason the Edwardses offered her a home with them. She was young,—just twenty-one,—her family was of the best, and her connections in Illinois among the most refined and distinguished people. Her mother having died when she was a little girl, she had been educated under the care of a French lady, "opposite Mr. Clay's." She was gifted with rare talents, had a keen sense of the ridiculous, a ready insight into the weaknesses of individual character, and a most fiery and ungovernable temper. Her tongue and her pen were equally sharp. High-bred, proud, brilliant, witty, and with a will that bent every one else to her purpose, she took Mr. Lincoln captive the very moment she considered it expedient to do so.
Mr. Lincoln was a rising politician, fresh from the people, and possessed of great power among them: Miss Todd was of aristocratic and distinguished family, able to lead through the awful portals of "good society" whomsoever they chose to countenance. It was thought that a union between them could not fail of numerous benefits to both parties. Mr. Edwards thought so; Mrs. Edwards thought so; and it was not long before Mary Todd herself thought so. She was very ambitious, and even before she left Kentucky announced her belief that she was "destined to be the wife of some future President." For a little while she was courted by Douglas as well as by Lincoln; but she is said to have refused the "Little Giant," "on account of his bad morals." Being asked which of them she intended to have, she answered, "The one that has the best chance of being President." She decided in favor of Lincoln, and, in the opinion of some of her husband's friends, aided to no small extent in the fulfilment of the prophecy which the bestowal of her hand implied. A friend of Miss Todd was the wife of an elderly but wealthy gentleman; and being asked by one of the Edwards coterie why she had married "such an old, dried-up husband, such a withered-up old buck," she answered that "He had lots of horses and gold." But Mary Todd spoke up in great surprise, and said, "Is that true? I would rather marry a good man, a man of mind, with hope and bright prospects ahead for position, fame, and power, than to marry all the horses, gold, and bones in the world."
Mrs. Edwards, Miss Todd's sister, tells us that Mr. Lincoln "was charmed with Mary's wit and fascinated with her quick sagacity, her will, her nature and culture." "I have happened in the room," she says, "where they were sitting often and often, and Mary led the conversation. Lincoln would listen, and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power,—irresistibly so: he listened, but never scarcely said a word.... Lincoln could not hold a lengthy conversation with a lady,—was not sufficiently educated and intelligent in the female line to do so."
Mr. Lincoln and Mary were engaged, and their marriage was only a question of time. But Mr. Lincoln's love-affairs were destined never to run smoothly, and now one Miss Matilda Edwards made her "sweet appearance," and brought havoc in her train. She was the sister of Ninian W. Edwards, and came to spend a year with her brother. She was very fair, and soon was the reigning belle. No sooner did Lincoln know her than he felt his heart change. The other affair, according to the Edwardses, according to Stuart, according to Herndon, according to Lincoln and everybody else, was a "policy match;" butthiswas love. For a while he evidently tried hard to go on as before, but his feelings were too strong to be concealed. Mr. Edwards endeavored to reconcile matters by getting his sister to marry Speed; but the rebellious beauty refused Speed incontinently (as she did Douglas too), and married Mr. Schuyler Strong. Poor Lincoln never whispered a word of his passion to her: his high sense of honor prevented that, and perhaps she would not have listened to him if it had been otherwise.
At length, after long reflection, in great agony of spirit, Mr. Lincoln concluded that duty required him to make a candid statement of his feelings to the lady who was entitled to his hand. He wrote her a letter, and told her gently but plainly that he did not love her. He asked Speed to deliver it; but Speed advised him to burn it. "Speed," said Mr. Lincoln, "I always knew you were an obstinate man. If you won't deliver it, I'll get some one else to do it." But Speed now had the letter in his hand; and, emboldened by the warm friendship that existed between them, replied, "I shall not deliver it, nor give it to you to be delivered. Words are forgotten, misunderstood, passed by, not noticed in a private conversation; but once put your words in writing, and they stand as a living and eternal monument against you. If you think you havewilland manhood enough to go and see her, and speak to her what you say in that letter, you may do that." Lincoln went to see her forthwith, and reported to Speed. He said, that, when he made his somewhat startling communication, she rose and said, "'The deceiver shall be deceived: woe is me!' alluding to a young man she had fooled." Mary told him she knew the reason of his change of heart, and released him from his engagement. Some parting endearments took place between them, and then, as the natural result of those endearments, a reconciliation.
We quote again from Mrs. Edwards:—
"Lincoln and Mary were engaged; every thing was ready and prepared for the marriage, even to the supper. Mr. Lincoln failed to meet his engagement. Cause, insanity!
"In his lunacy he declared he hated Mary and loved Miss Edwards. This is true, yet it was not his real feelings. A crazy man hates those he loves when at himself. Often, often, is this the case. The world had it that Mr. Lincoln backed out, and this placed Mary in a peculiar situation; and to set herself right, and free Mr. Lincoln's mind, she wrote a letter to Mr. Lincoln, stating that she would release him from his engagement.... The whole of the year was a crazy spell. Miss Edwards was at our house, say a year. I asked Miss Edwards if Mr. Lincoln ever mentioned the subject of his love to her. Miss Edwards said, 'On my word, he never mentioned such a subject to me: he never even stooped to pay me a compliment.'"
In the language of Mr. Edwards, "Lincoln went as crazy as a loon," and was taken to Kentucky by Speed, who kept him "until he recovered." He "did not attend the Legislature in 1841-2 for this reason."
Mr. Herndon devoutly believes that Mr. Lincoln's insanity grew out of a most extraordinary complication of feelings,—aversion to the marriage proposed, a counter-attachment to Miss Edwards, and a new access of unspeakable tenderness for the memory of Ann Rutledge,—the old love struggling with a new one, and each sending to his heart a sacrificial pang as he thought of his solemn engagement to marry a third person. In this opinion Mr. Speed appears to concur, as shown by his letter below. At all events, Mr. Lincoln's derangement was nearly, if not quite, complete. "We had to remove razors from his room," says Speed, "take away all knives, and other dangerous things. It was terrible." And now Speed determined to do for him what Bowlin Greene had done on a similar occasion at New Salem. Having sold out his store on the 1st of January, 1841, he took Mr. Lincoln with him to his home in Kentucky, and kept him there during most of the summer and fall, or until he seemed sufficiently restored to be given his liberty again at Springfield, when he was brought back to his old quarters. During this period, "he was at times very melancholy," and, by his own admission, "almost contemplated self-destruction." It was about this time that he wrote some gloomy lines under the head of "Suicide," which were published in "The Sangamon Journal." Mr. Herndon remembered something about them; but, when he went to look for them in the office-file of the "Journal," he found them neatly cut out,—"supposed to have been done," says he, "by Lincoln." Speed's mother was much pained by the "deep depression" of her guest, and gave him a Bible, advising him to read it, to adopt its precepts, and pray for its promises. He acknowledged this attempted service, after he became President, by sending her a photograph of himself, with this inscription: "To my very good friend, Mrs. Lucy G. Speed, from whose pious hands I received an Oxford Bible twenty years ago." But Mrs. Speed's medicine, the best ever offered for a mind diseased, was of no avail in this case. Among other things, he told Speed, referring probably to his inclination to commit suicide, "that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived, and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation, and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow-man, was what he desired to live for." Of this conversation he pointedly reminded Speed at the time, or just before the time, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
What took place after his return to Springfield cannot be better told than in the words of the friends of both parties. "Mr. Edwards and myself," says Mrs. Edwards, "after the first crash of things, told Mary and Lincoln that they had better not ever marry; that their natures, minds, education, raising, &c., were so different, that they could not live happy as man and wife; had better never think of the subject again. All at once we heard that Mr. Lincoln and Mary had secret meetings at Mr. S. Francis's, editor of 'The Springfield Journal.' Mary said the reason this was so, the cause why it was, was that the world, woman and man, were uncertain and slippery, and that it was best to keep the secret courtship from all eyes and ears. Mrs. Lincoln told Mr. Lincoln, that, though she had released him in the letter spoken of, yet she would hold the question an open one,—that is, that she had not changed her mind, but felt as always.... The marriage of Mr. Lincoln and Mary was quick and sudden,—one or two hours' notice." How poor Mr. Lincoln felt about it, may be gathered from the reminiscences of his friend, J. H. Matheny, who says, "that Lincoln and himself, in 1842, were very friendly; that Lincoln came to him one evening and said, 'Jim, I shall have to marry that girl.'" He was married that evening, but Matheny says, "he looked as if he was going to the slaughter," and that Lincoln "had often told him, directly and individually, that he was driven into the marriage; that it was concocted and planned by the Edwards family; that Miss Todd—afterwards Mrs. Lincoln—was crazy for a week or so, not knowing what to do; and that he loved Miss Edwards, and went to see her, and not Mrs. Lincoln."
The license to marry was issued on the 4th of November, 1842, and on the same day the marriage was celebrated by Charles Dresser, "M.G." With this date carefully borne in mind, the following letters are of surpassing interest. They are relics, not only of a great man, but of a great agony.
The first is from Mr. Speed to Mr. Herndon, and explains the circumstances under which the correspondence took place. Although it is in part a repetition of what the reader already knows, it is of such peculiar value, that we give it in full:—
W. H. Herndon, Esq.
Dear Sir,—I enclose you copies of all the letters of any interest from Mr. Lincoln to me.
Some explanation may be needed, that you may rightly understand their import.
In the winter of 1840 and 1841 he was unhappy about his engagement to his wife,—not being entirely satisfied that hisheartwas going with his hand. How much he suffered then on that account, none know so well as myself: he disclosed his whole heart to me.
In the summer of 1841 I became engaged to my wife. He was here on a visit when I courted her; and, strange to say, something of the same feeling which I regarded as so foolish in him took possession of me, and kept me very unhappy from the time of my engagement until I was married.
This will explain the deep interest he manifested in his letters on my account.
Louisville, Nov. 30, 1866.
If you use the letters (and some of them are perfect gems) do it care fully, so as not to wound the feelings of Mrs. Lincoln.
One thing is plainly discernible: if I had not been married and happy,—far more happy than I ever expected to be,—he would not have married.
I have erased a name which I do not wish published. If I have failed to do it anywhere, strike it out when you come to it. That is the word———.
I thank you for your last lecture. It is all new to me, but so true to my appreciation of Lincoln's character, that, independent of my knowledge of you, I would almost swear to it.
Lincoln wrote a letter (a long one, which he read to me) to Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, descriptive of his case. Its date would be in December, 1840, or early in January, 1841. I think that he must have informed Dr. D. of his early love for Miss Rutledge, as there was a part of the letter which he would not read.
It would be worth much to you, if you could procure the original.
Charles D. Drake, of St. Louis, may have his father's papers. The date which I give you will aid in the search.
I remember Dr. Drake's reply, which was, that he would not undertake to prescribe for him without a personal interview. I would advise you to make some effort to get the letter.
Your friend, &c.,
J. F. Speed.
The first of the papers from Mr. Lincoln's pen is a letter of advice and consolation to his friend, for whom he apprehends the terrible things through which, by the help of that friend, he has himself just passed.
My dear Speed,—Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude for the success of the enterprise you are engaged in, I adopt this as the last method I can invent to aid you, in case (which God forbid) you shall need any aid. I do not place what I am going to say on paper, because I can say it better in that way than I could by word of mouth; but, were I to say it orally before we part, most likely you would forget it at the very time when it might do you some good. As I think it reasonable that you will feel very badly sometime between this and the final consummation of your purpose, it is intended that you shall read this just at such a time. Why I say it is reasonable that you will feel very badly yet, is because of threespecial causesadded tothe general onewhich I shall mention.
The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous temperament, and this I say from what I have seen of you personally, and what you have told me concerning your mother at various times, and concerning your brother William at the time his wife died. The first special cause is yourexposure to bad weatheron your journey, which my experience clearly proves to be very severe on defective nerves. The second is theabsence of all business and conversationof friends, which might divert your mind, give it occasional rest from the intensity of thought which will sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare, and turn it to the bitterness of death.
The third isthe rapid and near approach of that crisis on which all your thoughts and feelings concentrate.
If from all these causes you shall escape, and go through triumphantly, without another "twinge of the soul," I shall be most happily but most egregiously deceived. If, on the contrary, you shall, as I expect you will at some time, be agonized and distressed, let me, who have some reason to speak with judgment on such a subject, beseech you to ascribe it to the causes I have mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous suggestion of the Devil.
"But," you will say, "do not your causes apply to every one engaged in a like undertaking?" By no means.The particular causes, to a greater or less extent, perhaps, do apply in all cases; but thegeneral one,—nervous debility, which is the key and conductor of all the particular ones, and without which they would be utterly harmless, though itdoespertain to you,—does notpertain to one in a thousand. It is out of this that the painful difference between you and the mass of the world springs.
I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you are unhappy: it is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should. What nonsense! How came you to court her? Was it because you thought she deserved it, and that you had given her reason to expect it? If it was for that, why did not the same reason make you court Ann Todd, and at least twenty others of whom you can think, and to whom it would apply with greater force than toher?Did you court her for her wealth? Why, you know she had none. But you say you reasoned yourself into it. What do you mean by that? Was it not that you found yourself unable to reason yourself out of it? Did you not think, and partly form the purpose, of courting her the first time you ever saw her or heard of her? What had reason to do with it at that early stage? There was nothing at that time for reason to work upon. Whether she was moral, amiable, sensible, or even of good character, you did not, nor could then know, except, perhaps, you might infer the last from the company you found her in.
All you then did or could know of her was her personalappearance and deportment; and these, if they impress at all, impress the heart, and not the head.
Say candidly, were not those heavenlyblack eyesthe whole basis of all your earlyreasoningon the subject? After you and I had once been at the residence, did you not go and take me all the way to Lexington and back, for no other purpose but to get to see her again, on our return on that evening to take a trip for that express object?
What earthly consideration would you take to find her scouting and despising you, and giving herself up to another? But of this you have no apprehension; and therefore you cannot bring it home to your feelings.
I shall be so anxious about you, that I shall want you to write by every mail. Your friend,
Lincoln.
Springfield, Ill., Feb. 3, 1842.
Dear Speed,—Your letter of the 25th January came to hand to-day. You well know that I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly than I do yours, when I know of them; and yet I assure you I was not much hurt by what you wrote me of your excessively bad feeling at the time you wrote. Not that I am less capable of sympathizing with you now than ever, not that I am less your friend than ever, but because I hope and believe that your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can once and forever be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object), surely, nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery. The death-scenes of those we love are surely painful enough; but these we are prepared for and expect to see: they happen to all, and all know they must happen. Painful as they are, they are not an unlooked-for sorrow. Should she, as you fear, be destined to an early grave, it is indeed a great consolation to know that she is so well prepared to meet it.. Her religion, which you once disliked so much, I will venture you now prize most highly.
But I hope your melancholy bodings as to her early death are not well founded. I even hope that ere this reaches you, she will have returned with improved and still-improving health, and that you will have met her, and forgotten the sorrows of the past in the enjoyment of the present. I would say more if I could, but it seems that I have said enough. It really appears to me that you yourself ought to rejoice, and not sorrow, at this indubitable evidence of your undying affection for her.
Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it. You know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite clear of hypo since you left, even better than I was along in the fall. I have seen———but once. She seemed very cheerful, and so I said nothing to her about what we spoke of.
Old Uncle Billy Herndon is dead, and it is said this evening that Uncle Ben Ferguson will not live. This, I believe, is all the news, and enough at that, unless it were better.
Write me immediately on the receipt of this.
Your friend as ever,
Lincoln.
Springfield, Ill., Feb. 13, 1842.
Dear Speed,—Yours of the 1st inst. came to hand three or four days ago. When this shall reach you, you will have been Fanny's husband several days. You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting; that I will never cease while I know how to do any thing.
But you will always hereafter be on ground that I have never occupied, and consequently, if advice were needed, I might advise wrong. I do fondly hope, however, that you will never again need any comfort from abroad. But, should I be mistaken in this, should excessive pleasure still be accompanied with a painful counterpart at times, still let me urge you, as I have ever done, to remember, in the depth and even agony of despondency, that very shortly you are to feel well again. I am now fully convinced that you love her as ardently as you are capable of loving. Your ever being happy in her presence, and your intense anxiety about her health, if there were nothing else, would place this beyond all dispute in my mind. I incline to think it probable that your nerves will fail you occasionally for a while; but once you get them firmly graded now, that trouble is over forever.
I think if I were you, in case my mind were not exactly right, I would avoid beingidle. I would immediately engage in some business, or go to making preparations for it, which would be the same thing.
If you went through the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure not to excite alarm in any present, you are safe beyond question, and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men.
I would desire you to give my particular respects to Fanny; but perhaps you will not wish her to know you have received this, lest she should desire to see it. Make her write me an answer to my last letter to her; at any rate, 1 would set great value upon a note or letter from her.
Write me whenever you have leisure.
Yours forever,
A. Lincoln.
P. S.—I have been quite a man since you left.
Springfield, Feb. 25, 1842.
Dear Speed,—Yours of the 16th inst., announcing that Miss Fanny and you are "no more twain, but one flesh," reached me this morning. I have no way of telling how much happiness I wish you both, though I believe you both can conceive it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now: you will be so exclusively concerned for one another, that I shall be forgotten entirely. My acquaintance with Miss Fanny (I call her this, lest you should think I am speaking of your mother) was too short for me to reasonably hope to long be remembered by her; and still I am sure I shall not forget her soon. Try if you cannot remind her of that debt she owes me,—and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her paying it.
I regret to learn that you have resolved to not return to Illinois. I shall be very lonesome without you. How miserable things seem to be arranged in this world! If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and, if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here; but I own I have no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times more sacred than you can owe to others, and in that light let them be respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to remain with her relatives and friends. As to friends, however,shecould not need them anywhere: she would have them in abundance here.
Give my kind remembrance to Mr. Williamson and his family, particularly Miss Elizabeth; also to your mother, brother, and sisters. Ask little Eliza Davis if she will ride to town with me if I come there again.
And, finally, give Fanny a double reciprocation of all the love she sent me. Write me often, and believe me
Yours forever,
Lincoln.
P. S.—Poor Easthouse is gone at last. He died a while before day this morning. They say he was very loath to die.
Springfield, Feb. 25, 1842.
Dear Speed,—I received yours of the 12th, written the day you went down to William's place, some days since, but delayed answering it till I should receive the promised one of the 16th, which came last night. I opened the letter with intense anxiety and trepidation; so much, that, although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at the distance of ten hours, become calm.
I tell you, Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar) are all the worst sort of nonsense. I fancied, from the time I received your letter of Saturday, that the one of Wednesday was never to come, and yet it did come, and, what is more, it is perfectly clear, both from its tone and handwriting, that you were much happier, or, if you think the term preferable, less miserable, when you wrote it, than when you wrote the last one before. You had so obviously improved at the very time I so much fancied you would have grown worse. You say that something indescribably horrible and alarming still haunts you. You will not say that three months from now, I will venture. When your nerves once get steady now, the whole trouble will be over forever. Nor should you become impatient at their being even very slow in becoming steady. Again you say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be realized. Weil, if it shall not, I dare swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt, that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that any thing earthly can realize. Far short of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them than that same black-eyed Fanny. If you could but contemplate her through my imagination, it would appear ridiculous to you that any one should for a moment think of being unhappy with her. My old father used to have a saying, that, "If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter;" and it occurs to me, that, if the bargain you have just closed can possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for applying that maxim to which my fancy can by any effort picture.
I write another letter, enclosing this, which you can show her, if she desires it. I do this because she would think strangely, perhaps, should you tell her that you received no letters from me, or, telling her you do, refuse to let her see them. I close this, entertaining the confident hope that every successive letter I shall have from you (which I here pray may not be few, nor far between) may show you possessing a more steady hand and cheerful heart than the last preceding it.
As ever, your friend,
Lincoln.
Springfield, March 27, 1842.
Dear Speed,—Yours of the 10th inst. was received three or four days since. You know I am sincere when I tell you the pleasure its contents gave me was and is inexpressible. As to your farm matter, I have no sympathy with you. I have no farm, nor ever expect to have, and consequently have not studied the subject enough to be much interested with it. I can only say that I am glad you are satisfied and pleased with it.