“A nation is but an attempt of many,To rise to the completer life of one;And they who live as models for the massAre simply of more value than they all.”
“A nation is but an attempt of many,To rise to the completer life of one;And they who live as models for the massAre simply of more value than they all.”
“A nation is but an attempt of many,
To rise to the completer life of one;
And they who live as models for the mass
Are simply of more value than they all.”
The people believed in Lincoln and that made him believe in himself, but they would never have believed in him if they had not seen the unchanging conduct that is necessary for human confidence. If the people had not believed in him he would never have had the confidence to develop his way of life, able at last to face the world-making problems of the great Civil War, and thus to hold to a course of conduct, which he knew to be right, against the hisses, slander and desperate intrigue of men and masses, who knew that he was making a civilization in America contrary to their mercenary interests and their customary moral standards.
Business men are devoted to the business game. Otherwise the play is poor business. So, the man whose happiness was in learning could not be a business man. The store did not pay. As Lincoln was compelled to earn his living at other work, the managementof the store was entirely in the hands of Berry, with whom it went from bad to worse until two brothers offered to buy out the business. The store was sold, not for cash, but for notes covering the amount.
When the notes became due, the two brothers fled. The store was closed by the creditors, the goods were auctioned off, and a heavy remaining debt was against Berry and Lincoln. Soon after this Berry died and all the debt was against Lincoln. Now was the time for him “to skip the country,” as was the custom. But he did not “clear out” and therewith beat his creditors out of the debt of eleven hundred dollars.
Lincoln told a friend that this debt, in many ways an unjust one, because he did not make it, was “the greatest obstacle I ever met in life. I had no way of speculating, and could not earn money, except by labor; and to earn by labor eleven hundred dollars, besides the interest and my living, seemed the work of a lifetime.” It did, indeed, take all he could earn above his living for seventeen years. But he did it. He paid the debt in full. The moral system in his soul was never sold for the mess of pottage in any temporary distress. “To thyself be true,” says Shakespeare, “and it follows, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” Many thinkthemselves to be an emotion, or a tired feeling, or a fool ambition, or a will to do something, but it is not so. My self is a system, an identity, an integrity, a consistency, that has no hour, or day, or year, but at least a life time.
One of Lincoln’s creditors, who was like Shylock, demanded his exact dues the exact time they were due. He sued Lincoln and got judgment, so that the surveyor’s tools, and everything by which he made his living were seized and put up for sale by auction.
Lincoln’s friends gathered at the sale without saying anything about what they would or would not do. The demand was for one hundred and twenty dollars. Very few could spare any such sum. But the things, horse, saddle, surveying instruments, etc., were all bought in by James Short, a farmer living on Sand Ridge, just north of New Salem. Then this farmer turned them all over to Lincoln. That benevolent farmer did not know what he was doing for his country when he did that, but it was a great deed.
A few years later James Short moved out to California. For some reason he had lost most of his property and had become a poor man. When Lincoln became president he heard of the distress “Uncle Jimmy” was in and one day the old man receiveda letter from Washington. Opening it, he found an appointment from Lincoln as commissioner to the Indians.
Lincoln belonged to the Whig political party, but he was appointed postmaster by the Democratic administration in 1833. That there was not much mail may be inferred from the fact that it would cost twenty-five cents, in those scarce times, to send a letter or the ordinary magazine of today from any distance around of four hundred miles. His kindliness of spirit is well illustrated in the fact that he delivered most of the mail himself, knowing how precious it was to the person addressed.
As postmaster, Lincoln had to make an accounting to the government for its share of money received, and this was to be receipted for by the postoffice agent. There was much chance for graft, and especially so in this case, as the agent to settle the business did not appear. It was not till Lincoln became a practicing lawyer in Springfield that the agentcalled upon him to close up his accounts as postmaster at New Salem.
The postoffice inspector produced a claim for seventeen dollars. Lincoln paused a moment as if perplexed to remember just what it was. A friend, seeing this, thought it was because Lincoln did not have the money, and so offered to lend him that amount. Without answering, Lincoln went to his trunk and brought out a package containing the exact amount, put away all that time, awaiting the business call of the postoffice agent.
As he turned over the money and received the receipt, he said, “I never use any man’s money but my own.”
It is interesting to note that both Washington and Lincoln became surveyors just before the opening of their great careers. It can be reasonably said that, by analogy, and even by contrast, they were also great surveyors for the rights of mankind.
Sangamon County was settling up so rapidly that John Calhoun, the official surveyor, could not do the required work. He had heard of Lincoln as being capable of doing almost anything required, so he sent for him to come and take the position of deputy surveyor.
Lincoln, so far, had studied human beings and law. He knew nothing about mathematics, muchless about surveying, probably not more than he knew about military tactics when he was elected captain. But he knew he could learn what any one else had learned. He bought a book on surveying and stayed with it almost day and night. He borrowed wherever he could hear of a book on surveying. In six weeks he had mastered the subject so that the many surveys he afterward made were never disputed and were always found to be correct.
It is said that he was too poor at first to buy a surveyor’s chain and so used a grapevine. But even a grapevine in the hands of Lincoln told the truth about measurements, and the town of Petersburg, Illinois, is proud of having been surveyed and laid out by Lincoln.
The Great Teacher in his “Sermon on the Mount,” said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” If that destitute boy had not hungered and thirsted after right knowledge, the whole history of America, after his time, would have been different. But what boy wouldread, or what other boy ever did read such a book as the “Revised Statutes of Indiana?” To be sure, not the boy who is most interested in getting merely the most pleasure out of life, but the one who has a great desire to be useful and worthwhile in the world.
The next book that deeply impressed his career and probably had most to do with developing him to influence profoundly the history of our country was that beginning of every lawyer’s life, “Blackstone’s Commentaries.”
This is the way Lincoln tells it himself: “One day a man, who was migrating to the West, drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel, for which he had no room in his wagon, which he said contained nothing of value. I did not want it, but, to oblige him, I bought it, and paid him, I think, a half-dollar. Without further examination I put it away in the store, and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and, emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries. I began reading those famous works and the more I read the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed.”
First Inauguration of Lincoln as President.
First Inauguration of Lincoln as President.
It was that interest which made the man and the great historical character of Lincoln. One lives according to his interest in life, and the meaning realized in him as humanity.
In 1834 Lincoln again tried for the legislature, and this time was elected. This gave him his long desired opportunity to study law. He borrowed books and read them incessantly until he mastered them. He never studied law with any one, as was the custom in those days. He did not require a teacher to lay out or explain his mental tasks.
To a young man who asked him, twenty years later, how to become a successful lawyer, he said, “Get books. Read and study them carefully. Work, work, work is the main thing.”
One of the first important law cases of Lincoln in its claims sounds remarkably like the unsolved problems of today, and shows how rights have to be developed year by year, how the public mind has to be built up from idea to idea like an individual mind.
A public-spirited attempt was made to build abridge across the upper Mississippi. The boatmen declared it to be an invasion of human rights, as they had vested interests at stake in the business they had built up, ferrying people across the river. They declared that a man was an enemy of the people who would try to destroy business. But Lincoln won the case against them in favor of building the bridge for the larger interest of the people.
In another significant case he set a legal precedent. A negro girl had been sold in the free territory of Illinois. A note had been given for her but the maker of the note could not pay it when it became due and was sued for it.
Lincoln defended the maker of the note on the ground that the note was invalid because a human being could not be bought and sold in Illinois. The case was carried to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that Lincoln’s view of the case was correct law.
Another experience has still greater significance as to the professional character of Lincoln. He was engaged as counsel in a reaper patent case. It was to be tried at Cincinnati. The opposing counsel was an eminent lawyer from the East. Lincoln’s friends were eager for him to win this case, as it would give him great renown and prestige.
His client had four hundred thousand dollars atstake, an enormous sum at that time, and the capitalist became frightened at the great talent arrayed against Lincoln. He called in the services of a correspondingly great Eastern lawyer, Edwin M. Stanton. This eminent man was shocked at the sight of his colleague, Lincoln. He took entire control of the case and not only ignored Lincoln, but openly insulted him. Lincoln, through an open door in the hotel, heard Stanton scornfully exclaim to the client who had employed Lincoln, “Where did that long-armed creature come from and what can he expect to do in this case?”
At another time Stanton spoke of Lincoln as “a long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent.”
Lincoln, completely discouraged and thrown out of any possible council with a man thus against him, quit the case and sorrowfully returned to Illinois.
And yet, only a few years later, in the great crisis of approaching disunion, Lincoln became President of the United States and he made Stanton his Secretary of War. Very soon Stanton learned to prize “the long-armed creature” as one of the noblest and greatest men in the world. No one of Lincoln’s colleagues ever questioned his superior leadership asthe supreme chief in a struggle profoundly affecting all civilization and human government.
When we consider how Lincoln worked his way up, through such destitution of knowledge and means, in twenty-five years, from a five-dollar suit before a justice of the peace to a five-thousand-dollar fee before the Supreme Court of the United States, we know that such progress does not come about by accident nor political fortunes, but by sheer interest and work.
Henry Cabot Lodge says, “Lincoln could have said with absolute truth, as Seneca’s Pilot says, in Montaigne’s paraphrase, ‘Oh, Neptune, thou mayest save me if thou wilt; thou mayest sink me if thou wilt; but whatever may befall I shall hold my tiller true.’”
The moral process of his life, in which the recorded incidents are only way-marks, is the only worthwhile interest for the American youth or for the newcomer to our shores.
Lincoln’s life-creed may be taken from a statement he has made of his personal duty. “I am not bound to win,” he said, “but I am bound to be true.I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right. I must stand with him while he is right, and I must part with him when he is wrong.”
That this does not mean infallible individual judgment executed at any cost as imperial individual will may be inferred from the beginning of the statement, but it does mean the infallible integrity of honest conscience and character.
Lincoln had a conscience that was like harmony in music, and he could not uphold a wrong thing any more than he could intentionally use a wrong figure and hope to solve correctly his problem.
As an illustrating incident, one of his clients wanted to bring suit against a widow with six children for six hundred dollars.
“Yes,” said Lincoln, “there is no reasonable doubt that I can win this case for you; I can set the whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can greatly distress a widow and her six fatherless children, and thereby gain six hundred dollars for you which I can see belongs to them with about as much right as to you, but I’ll give you a little advice for nothing. Try some other way to get six hundred dollars.”
Like the rich man who went away so disturbed from the advice of Christ, this man went away sorrowing.
In another instance Lincoln started in with a case believing his client innocent, then he reached the belief that the man was guilty. Turning to his associates in the case, he said, “Sweet, this man is guilty. You defend him. I can’t.” The large fee in the case was forfeited, but his self-respect, that nobility which carried him through many great dark hours, was saved.
Once, when out with his lawyer-companions, he climbed a tree, searching for a bird’s nest, out of which two fledgelings had fallen. His companions made sport of him for giving so much time and work to such worthless things, but he exclaimed with such genuine feeling as to silence them, “I could not have gone to sleep in peace if I had not restored those little birds to their mother.”
Lincoln liked to argue, and, to pass the time in a certain stage-coach ride, he was arguing that every act, no matter how kind, was always prompted by a selfish motive. About this time the stage passed a ditch in which a pig was stuck fast in the mud. Lincoln asked the driver to stop. He then jumped out and rescued the pig.
The passenger with whom Lincoln had been arguing thought that he now had proof for his own side of the case.
“Now look here,” he said as Lincoln climbed backinto the stage, “you can’t say that was a selfish act.”
“Yes, I can,” replied Lincoln. “It was extremely selfish. If I had left that little fellow sticking in the mud, it would have made me uncomfortable till I forgot it. That’s why I had to help him out.”
General Littlefield says that one day a client came in with a very profitable case for Lincoln. He told Lincoln his story. Lincoln listened a little while and his look went up to the ceiling in a very abstract way. Presently, he swung his chair around and said, “Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You’ll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn’t do it. If I was talking to the jury in favor of your case, I’d all the time be thinking, ‘Lincoln, you’re a liar,’ and I believe I’d forget myself and say it out loud.”
Coleridge in his “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” might well have had Lincoln in mind when he wrote,
“Farewell! Farewell! but this I tellTo thee, thou wedding guest!He prayeth well who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and smallFor the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”
“Farewell! Farewell! but this I tellTo thee, thou wedding guest!He prayeth well who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.
“Farewell! Farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and smallFor the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
That was Lincoln’s religion, to love his fellow-men and his country. In the turmoil of wrongs infesting the confusions that were bewildering all minds at the close of the Civil War, all now know that both North and South lost the noblest and most valued friend, the ablest and wisest restorer, anywhere to be found in all the vast regions of pain.
It would take a whole book to tell the stories of kindness and sympathy told by those who were neighbors and friends of Lincoln. All who knew him agree in saying how much he loved children and how considerate he was for the comfort of others.
While living in the Rutledge tavern he often took upon himself all kinds of discomforts to accommodate travellers. The Great Book says, “He who loses his life for my sake shall find it.” Lincoln seemed most of the time to forget that he had any life of his own in trying to do good to others. Many times he served ungrateful people, and many persons mistreated him who mistook his kindness for servility, but that didn’t change Lincoln. He kept right on doing good to others, until at last he lost his life, in the full meaning of that phrase, but we may be sure that somewhere else he has found it.
If a traveller became stuck in the mud, literally orfiguratively, Lincoln always seemed to be the first to see his need. If widows and orphans were suffering, he was the first to know it and relieve their wants.
Deeds of kindness often look like “bread cast upon the waters,” but we are assured that such is not lost, for it “shall return after many days.”
The effective way in which Lincoln sometimes turned upon those who “run him down” by sarcastic references to his poverty or looks is illustrated by his reply to George Forquer. Lincoln was to make his first speech in the Court House at Springfield, and he was to be answered by Forquer, a rather aristocratic citizen of the town who had been a Whig, but who had recently turned over to the Democrats and received the appointment to an important office. Incidentally, he had also put up a lightning rod to protect his rather showy house, and this fact was quite well known, because it was the first lightning rod to be put upon a house in that county.
Forquer rose to speak as Lincoln sat down, and his smile of derision seemed to show that he expected to demolish with ridicule the backwoodsman from New Salem.
Turning to Lincoln, he said, “The young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.”
He was a witty and sarcastic speaker. He did not try to argue but ridiculed Lincoln in the most offensive way. Lincoln’s friends feared for this onslaught, not knowing what Lincoln could say. But Lincoln said it so effectively in a few words, as he always seemed able to do, that his opponent lost and never recovered.
In closing a very short reply, Lincoln said, pointing his long, accusing finger at Forquer in a scathing rebuke:
“Live long or die young, I would rather die now than, like this gentleman, change my politics, and with the change receive an office with a salary of three thousand dollars a year, and then feel obliged to erect a lightning rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from the fear of an angry God.”
Lincoln’s fairness for all men, even when they were his opponents and the enemies of his cause, may be seen in his defense of Colonel Baker.
There was a bitter political campaign in progress, and Colonel Baker was making a speech to a roughcrowd in the courthouse. This building had been built to be a storehouse and directly over the speaker was a loft with a stairway near the speaker’s stand. Lincoln was sitting on the platform above as a more convenient place to hear the speaker than from the crowded floor below.
The speaker began to say things that annoyed the crowd. Suddenly the yell was raised to take him off the stand and put him out. The crowd surged forward when Lincoln’s long legs were seen to swing over the edge of the opening at the head of the stairs as if he had no time to use the steps. He alighted on his feet by the speaker’s side.
“Gentlemen,” cried Lincoln as he raised his hand to stop the oncoming rioters, “let us not disgrace the age and country in which we live. This is a land where the freedom of speech is guaranteed. Mr. Baker has a right to speak, and ought to be permitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if I can prevent it.”
The sudden appearance of this champion of human rights dropping down from above so unexpectedly, his perfect calmness and fairness and the well-known fact that he was no idle boaster, quieted the outbreak, and Colonel Baker finished his address in peace.
Joshua Speed tells how Lincoln rode into Springfield on a borrowed horse to attend his first session of the legislature with all his earthly possessions packed into his saddle bags. Lincoln came into the store owned by Speed and asked the price of a bedstead with its equipment of bedding. The price was named, Lincoln said that was no doubt cheap enough but that he could not buy it unless the storekeeper could wait for part of the pay until the money was earned.
Speed was greatly impressed with the earnest young man. He offered to share with him the room which he used over the store. He pointed to the stairway leading up to the room.
Lincoln went up the stairs and in a moment appeared at the stairway with beaming face.
“Well, Speed,” he said, “I am moved.”
Thus he made friends of all persons at once and they were not fairweather friends, but lifetime friends.
The homely old copybook text so familiar to our grandmothers, “Beauty is as beauty does,” applies well to the appearance of Lincoln, and to the first impressions received by those who saw him. Paraphrasing the poet, “none knew him but to love him, none knew him but to praise.” He was like one transformed in the animation and zeal of expressinghis profound sentiments of freedom, humanity and truth.
One who knew Lincoln well says, “He was one of the homeliest men ever seen when walking around, but while he was making a speech he was one of the handsomest men I have ever known.”
Lincoln’s quick wit never contained any sting and he lost no friends by it. On one occasion several of his friends got into an argument about the proper proportions of the body. They could agree on their theories in all respects excepting the relative length of the legs. Lincoln listened gravely to their arguments, and, as usual, some one asked him his opinion.
“It is of course one of the most important of problems, and doubtless was a source of great anxiety to the maker of man. But, after all is said and done, it is my opinion that man’s lower limbs, in order to combine harmony and service, should be at least long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”
At another time a very unhandsome man stopped Lincoln and peered offensively into his face.
“What seems to be the matter, my friend,” inquired Lincoln.
“Well,” replied the stranger, “I have always considered it my duty if ever I came across a man uglier than myself to shoot him on the spot.”
Lincoln took his hand in friendly agreement.
“Stranger, if this is really true, shoot me. If I thought I was uglier than you, I’d want to die.”
Senator Voorhees of Indiana said that he once heard Lincoln defeat a windy little pettifogging lawyer by telling a story. After showing how the fellow’s arguments were only empty words, he said, “He can’t help it. When his oratory begins it exhausts all his force of mind. The moment he begins to talk his mental operations cease. I never knew of but one thing that was similar to my friend in that respect. Back in the days when I was a keel boatman I became acquainted with a puffy little steamboat, which used to bustle and wheeze its way up and down the Sangamon River. It had a fivefoot boiler and a seven-foot whistle, so that every time it whistled that boat stopped.”
Even in business Lincoln could not refrain from expressing himself in a humorous way. A New York firm wrote him to know the financial reliability of one of their customers. He replied:
“I am well acquainted with your customer and know his circumstances. First, he has a wife and baby: these ought to be worth not less than $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $1.50, and three chairs at, say, $1.00.“Last of all, there is in one corner a large rathole, which will bear looking into.“Respectfully,“A. Lincoln.”
“I am well acquainted with your customer and know his circumstances. First, he has a wife and baby: these ought to be worth not less than $50,000 to any man. Secondly, he has an office in which there is a table worth $1.50, and three chairs at, say, $1.00.
“Last of all, there is in one corner a large rathole, which will bear looking into.
“Respectfully,
“A. Lincoln.”
All the great contemporaries who heard Lincoln tell stories agree that he never told one merely for the sake of the story or to raise a laugh, but always to carry some useful point or impress an idea. The aptness and wit of his stories often were more convincing than any argument or logic. We may be assured that any other kind of a Lincoln story is spurious, and none of his.
He had a case where two men had got into a fight. It was proven that Lincoln’s man had merely defended himself against the other’s attack. But the other attorney insisted that Lincoln’s man could have defended himself less violently.
Lincoln closed out the argument and won his case with a story.
“That reminds me,” said Lincoln, “of the man who was attacked by a farmer’s dog. He defendedhimself so violently with a pitchfork that he killed the dog.
“‘What made you kill my dog?’ demanded the angry farmer.
“‘Because he tried to bite me,’ replied the victim.
“‘Well, why didn’t you go at him with the other end of the pitchfork?’ persisted the farmer.
“‘Well, I would,’ replied the man, ‘if he had come at me with the other end of the dog.’”
One of the most singular, as well as undignified, experiences of Lincoln is closely involved in the most important measures of his life. This refers to the duel which he never fought with a man who was a stormy disturber for many years in many exalted yet unbecoming affairs.
In 1840 Lincoln became engaged to Miss Mary Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, who was visiting her sister, Mrs. Ninian Edwards of Springfield. She came of a noted and rather aristocratic family of Kentucky. That two persons, so unlike in ancestry, in social experience, and in education, should be attracted to each other has seemed to be mysteryenough to breed much speculation, a great number of curious stories, and much ungracious comment.
Lincoln was aware of these differences as much as any one, and this, if there were no other cause, would account for his seeming uncertainties, his hesitation and the delays in his courting affairs which have been the source of so much elaboration and explanation.
Lincoln had much social self-depreciation and he had a poetical fancy idealizing his own sensitiveness toward women. It may well be concluded that his judgment was helplessly unsettled from the impossibility of any foresight in a matter of such vital life-importance. The endless gossip that swarmed about Lincoln’s love affairs may well be dismissed as worthless in the presence of the facts.
Lincoln married Mary Todd November 4, 1842. During the summer before, in commercial and political affairs, there had arisen the greatest dissatisfaction with the money-interests and currency of the state. The current money had depreciated to half its value. Though the people had to use that kind of money in all their transactions, the state officers required their salaries to be paid in gold.
The auditor of the State was a young Irishman named James Shields. He was exceedingly vain, pompous and of violent temper. Therefore, he wasa shining mark for the wit of those opposed to the present management of the state.
In the “Sangamo Journal” there appeared an article of witty satire, ridiculing Shields and the financial methods of his political associates. It was signed, “Rebecca from Lost Townships.”
Shields became furious and demanded to fight the man responsible for it. The significance of this is rather in the peculiar popularity and yet unpopularity of such a man as Shields. His reckless adventures, his incessant boasting, and his whirlwind career of turmoil all loaded him with praise and ridicule for many a year.
Shields went into the Mexican War and came out with his own brand of glory. But it won popularity enough to make him Senator of the United States. As an indication of his amazing character, he wrote a preposterous letter to the man he defeated, declaring, that if Judge Breese had not been defeated, Shields would have killed him.
It can be imagined what the fury of such a man must have been against the “Rebecca” letters.
The next week another “Rebecca” letter appeared which was this time unmistakably written by some mischief-loving woman. She offered to settle the quarrel by marrying the aggrieved gentleman. This was too much for Shields and he stormed thenewspaper office to know whom he should hold responsible for the “Rebecca letters.”
The public taste and the public requirements of its individuals change, as all know, from generation to generation. The development of Lincoln’s life can be appreciated only as the community in which he lived is understood. The public custom is necessary to explain Lincoln’s part in this peculiar episode.
The truth in this clownish affair was that Lincoln had written the first letter, and two young ladies, one of them Mary Todd, were the authors of the second letter. Mary Todd was at that time estranged from Lincoln, and probably did not know that he was the writer of the first “Rebecca Letter.”
Shields sent his friend, General Whiteside, with a fiery demand to the editor of the paper to know the authors of the “Rebecca letters.” The editor at once consulted Lincoln, who told the editor to tell General Whitesides that Lincoln held himself responsible for the “Rebecca letters.”
Nothing suited Shields better. He began at onceto make public the most insulting letters to Lincoln and to issue the most fiery challenges to a duel.
Though duelling was at that time forbidden by law, yet so strong was public opinion that the one who refused to fight a duel was branded as a coward and would not only lose his usefulness with the public, but his opponent would thus gain corresponding prestige.
Lincoln so far conceded to this demand as to accept the challenge, but on such terms as to make the battle ridiculous rather than heroic. He had the right to choose the weapons and the conditions, so he chose “cavalry broadswords of the largest size,” and the fight was to be “across a board platform six feet wide.”
Lincoln felt keenly the stupidity of the whole affair, but it would be degrading to his political standing to refuse. Fortunately, Lincoln had a friend in Doctor Merryman, who was not only a witty writer, but he loved a fight, and he used his wit with a fervor that overwhelmed even such men as Shields and Whitesides in the final roundup.
However, the duel progressed so far that the parties thereto went to Alton and crossed over to Missouri for the fight. But friends arrived and persuaded Shields to withdraw the challenge. The next week Shields wrote a bombastic article in the “SangamoJournal” crowning himself as a hero and Lincoln as a coward. Then Dr. Merryman came to the rescue. The next week the “Sangamo Journal” had another version of the now ridiculous duel. It showed up the Shields’ side as so utterly absurd that the humor and tragic aspect of the affair among such prominent people became the sensation of the day. General Whitesides challenged Doctor Merryman and Merryman responded, with the declaration that his selection would be rifles at close range in the nearby fields. This would not do, because duelists could not hold office in Illinois and Whitesides was fund commissioner. His boasts proved that he was not afraid to lose his life but he did not want to give up his fat office.
The same thing happened to Shields. He challenged Mr. Butler, one of Lincoln’s close friends. Butler accepted at once, choosing “to fight next morning at sunrise in Bob Allen’s meadow, one hundred yards’ distance with rifles.”
Shields declined.
It was a burlesque and a comedy farce, and so it ingloriously ended.
But Shields had no less singular luck than he had singular friends. He was commissioned Brigadier-General in the Mexican War while still holding a state office and before he had ever seen a day’s service.At Cerro-gordo he was wounded and that wound was doubtless what made him United States Senator from Illinois. After serving one term in constant commotion with his associates, he removed to Minnesota and from there was returned to the Senate of the United States.
In the War of the Rebellion Lincoln appointed him Brigadier-General and he was again wounded in battle when his troops defeated Stonewall Jackson.
He moved into Missouri and from there was sent for the third time to the United States Senate. A few years later he became the subject of one of the bitterest and most disgraceful controversies in Congress over the question of voting him money and a pension.
Lincoln always seemed to be far more proud of his fist fight with Jack Armstrong of the Clary gang than of his near-duel with Shields and his political ring. He had many an occasion to refer to the Clary boys, but never to the Shields crowd.
It was not Lincoln’s disposition to have personal quarrels.
Only one other is known. He got into a verbal encounter with a man named Anderson at Lawrenceville. Anderson wrote him a harsh note demanding satisfaction.
Lincoln replied, “Your note of yesterday is received. In the difficulty between us of which you speak you say you think I was the aggressor. I do not think I was. You say my words ‘imported insult.’ I meant them as a fair set-off to your own statements, and not otherwise; and in that light alone I now wish you to understand them. You ask for my ‘present feelings on the subject.’ I entertain no unkind feeling toward you, and none of any sort upon the subject, except a sincere regret that I permitted myself to get into such altercation.”
Mr. Anderson was “satisfied” and henceforth counted himself as one of Lincoln’s friends.
Another example shows Lincoln’s idea of quarrels. It ought to be impressed upon every boy’s mind, as the belief of this great leader of men.
In the midst of the war a young officer had been court-martialed for a quarrel with one of his associates, and Lincoln had to give him an official reprimand. It was as follows:
“The advice of a father to his son, ‘Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee!’ is good, but not the best. Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than to be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.”
Lincoln and His Cabinet at the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln and His Cabinet at the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
But the Shields’ quarrel and its skyrocket burlesque had another effect probably of priceless consequence to Lincoln. There was a certain whole-souled, self-effacing championship in it of the two girls who had written the last “Rebecca letter.” Mary Todd appreciated it, and she had to express her appreciation to the man whom she knew loved her, but who feared that he could not make her happy. Merely to be made happy is not all that a real woman of true womanhood is concerned with in her choice of a husband. Doubtless, she saw in him qualities to love rather than form or manners. She had abundance of time to consider all things and we may well believe that she was wise and good in her choice. Considering their differences, it isreally a great testimony and tribute to her that so little could ever be found for cruel gossip about incompatibility and unhappiness in the Lincoln household.
Mary Todd ignored the coldness that Lincoln’s sensitiveness had brought between them, in the mutual adjustment of courtship, and she thanked him for keeping her out of the Shields’ gossip and controversy. The coldness disappeared and never returned. They were married, and we must believe that humanity owes her a priceless debt, that she was one of the three great souls who made the immortal man, that together in glory are three great names, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Sarah Bush Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln.
Greatness of mind, valued as worth while in historical characters, has always been characterized by simplicity and sympathy, especially as interested in children and in those without means for the needs of life. Lincoln said pityingly of the poor that the Lord surely loved them because he had made so many.
That Lincoln understood children and could talk to them is shown in his visit to Five Points Mission, then the most miserable spot in all the poverty-stricken sections of New York City. No one knows why he went there, alone and unannounced. Perhaps, knowing what was the lowest possible poverty in the frontier forests, he wanted to see what it was in the midst of the greatest wealth in America.
The manager of the Mission, seeing a stranger, in the rear of the house, who had been such an earnest listener to their exercises, asked him if he would like to speak a few words to the children.
We can hardly imagine his feelings as he arose to speak to those suffering little ones, so like his own hard childhood and yet subject to such different causes and conditions.
Feeling that he had used up his time, after speaking a few minutes, he stopped but they urged him to go on. Several times he ended his talk, but every time they cried out so persistently for him to go on that he spoke to them long over time.
No one knew who he was, but so impressive had been what he said that one of the teachers caught him at the door, begging to know his name. He replied simply, “Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.”
Adversity only made Lincoln stronger. In the midst of defeat he was at his best. In the midst of great moral success, in the profound trials of his country, his heart was mild and gentle as a child, and his eyes misty with supreme dreams of beauty and peace to lessen the suffering of humanity.
Once when Lincoln was speaking for Fremont, a brazen voice in the audience roared out above his own, “Is it true, Mr. Lincoln, that you came into the state barefoot and driving a yoke of oxen?”
The interruption had come in the midst of his strongest argument and was intended to throw him off of his subject.
His reply came back with a bound that it was trueand he believed he could prove it by at least a dozen men in the audience more respectable than the speaker. Then he seemed inspired by the question into a vision of this country as the home of the free and the land of opportunity.
In a great burst of eloquence, that carried the people with him, he showed how oppression had injured the oppressor as much as the oppressed, even as slavery had injured the master as it did the slave.
“We will speak for freedom and against slavery,” he said, “as long as the Constitution of our country guarantees free speech, until everywhere on this wide land the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil.”
This was before he had spoken in New York, where his speech at the Cooper Institute awoke the people of the Eastern States to realize that an intellectual political giant had at last come out of the West.
Lincoln’s long struggle to know and to be worth while culminated at last in a political career. The good opinion of associates grew into the favorablefriendship of his neighbors and that confidence widened to the community, then to the political district and so on.
In this age when thousands of dollars, and, in some instances, many hundred thousands of dollars used for campaign expenses is a common occurrence, it is interesting to read how Lincoln managed such things. He was elected four times to the Illinois legislature. One time the Whigs made up two hundred dollars to pay his campaign expenses. After the election he returned one hundred and ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents, to be given back to the subscribers, in which he explained, “I did not need the money. I made the canvass on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the house of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider, which some farm hands insisted I should treat them to.”
The history of Lincoln’s political battles belongs to those who would comment on his part in public affairs. We are interested here in a moral consideration of what built him up to a life used in the preservation of his nation, the intimate personal interests of his wonderful story, and how he stands as an ideal character of American manhood.
It is therefore sufficient for us to pass over the great political struggles that proved him to be the“Giant of the West,” and begin with him on the way to the White House.
Lincoln was not exactly as the prophet without honor in his own country, for he was beloved wherever he was known, but his neighbors were struck with surprise when he was nominated to be President of the United States.
One fine old gentleman, recently settled in Springfield from England, who had brought his old country ideas of propriety with him, was covered with astonishment.
“What!” he exclaimed, “Abe Lincoln nominated for President of the United States! A man that buys a ten-cent beefsteak for his breakfast, and carries it home himself! How is it possible!”
Lincoln’s vision of himself, expressed during a debate with Douglas, was not much more hopeful. Ponder over these words in which Lincoln with mingled humor, pathos and insight contrasted his own appearance with that of his adversary in the famous debates:
“There is still another disadvantage under which we labor.... It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate. Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party ... have been looking upon him as certainly,at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships and Cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle and upon principle alone.”
But the people were in earnest. It was realized by all that the fundamental interests of American progress were in the midst of a great crisis. They needed a reliable man and Lincoln was that man.
Campaign songs are usually very flat reading after the campaign is over, but they were then the carriers of the enthusiasm for a great cause.
The song sung in the state nominating-convention at Springfield, Illinois, had for its first verse and chorus the following lines: