The Early Years Of Abraham Lincoln

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Title:     The Early Years Of Abraham Lincoln
Author: Goldwin Smith [More Titles by Smith]

Our readers need not be afraid that we are going to bore them with the Slavery Question or the Civil War. We deal here not with the Martyr President, but with Abe Lincoln in embryo, leaving the great man at the entrance of the grand scene. Mr. Ward H. Lamon has published a biography [Footnote: The Life of Abraham Lincoln from his Birth to his Inauguration as President. By Ward H. Lamon. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872] which enables us to do this, and which, besides containing a good deal that is amusing, is a curious contribution to political science, as illustrating, by a world-renowned instance, the origin of the species Politician. The materials for it appear to be drawn from the most authentic sources, and to have been used with diligence, though in point of form the book leaves something to be desired. We trust it and the authorities quoted in it for our facts.

After the murder, criticism, of course, was for a time impossible. Martyrdom was followed by canonization, and the popular heart could not be blamed for overflowing in hyperbole. The fallen chief "was Washington, he was Moses, and there were not wanting even those who likened him to the God and Redeemer of all the earth. These latter thought they discovered in his early origin, his kindly nature, his benevolent precepts, and the homely anecdotes in which he taught the people, strong points of resemblance between him and the Divine Son of Mary." A halo of myth naturally gathered round the cradle of this new Moses--for we will not pursue the more extravagant and offensive parallel which may serve as a set-off against that which was drawn by English Royalists between the death of Charles I. and the Crucifixion. Among other fables, it was believed that the President's family had fled from Kentucky to Indiana to escape the taint of Slavery. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the course of his migrations was not determined by high moral motives, and we may safely affirm that had he ever found himself among the fleshpots of Egypt, he would have stayed there, however deep the moral darkness might have been. He was a thriftless "ne'er do weel," who had very commonplace reasons for wandering away from the miserable, solitary farm in Kentucky, on which his child first formed a sad acquaintance with life and nature, and which, as it happened, was not in the slave-owning region of the State. His decision appears to have been hastened by a "difficulty," in which he bit off his antagonist's nose--an incident to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the family histories of Scripture heroes, or even in those of the Sainted Fathers of the Republic. He drifted to Indiana, and in a spot which was then an almost untrodden wilderness, built a _casa santa_, which his connection, Dennis Hanks, calls "that darned little half-faced camp"--a dwelling enclosed on three sides and open on the fourth, without a floor, and called a camp, it seems, because it was made of poles, not of logs. He afterwards exchanged the "camp" for the more ambitious "cabin," but his cabin, was "a rough, rough log one," made of unhewn timber, and without floor, door or window. In this "rough, rough," abode, his lanky, lean- visaged, awkward and somewhat pensive though strong, hearty and patient son Abraham had a "rough, rough" life, and underwent experiences which, if they were not calculated to form a Pitt or a Turgot, were calculated to season an American politician, and make him a winner in the tough struggle for existence, as well as to identify him with the people, faithful representation of whose aims, sentiments, tastes, passions and prejudices was the one thing needful to qualify him for obtaining the prize of his ambition. "For two years Lincoln (the father) continued to live alone in the old way. He did not like to farm, and he never got much of his land under cultivation. His principal crop was corn; and this, with the game which a rifleman so expert would easily take from the woods around him, supplied his table." It does not appear that he employed any of his mechanical skill in completing and furnishing his own cabin. It has already been stated that the latter had no window, door or floor. "But the furniture, if it might be called furniture, was even worse than the house. Three-legged stools served for chairs. A bedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one corner of the cabin, while the other end rested in the crotch of a forked stick stuck in the earthen floor. On these were laid some boards, and on the boards a shake-down of leaves, covered with skins and old petticoats. The table was a hewed puncheon supported by four legs. They had a few pewter and tin dishes to eat from, but the most minute inventory of their effects makes no mention of knives or forks. Their cooking utensils were a Dutch oven and a skillet. Abraham slept in the loft, to which he ascended by means of pins driven into holes in the wall." Of his father's disposition, Abraham seems to have inherited at all events the dislike to labour, though his sounder moral nature prevented him from being an idler. His tendency to politics came from the same element of character as his father's preference for the rifle. In after life we are told his mind "was filled with gloomy forebodings and strong apprehensions of impending evil, mingled with extravagant visions of personal grandeur and power." His melancholy, characterized by all his friends as "terrible," was closely connected with the cravings of his demagogic ambition, and the root of both was in him from a boy.

In the Indiana cabin Abraham's mother, whose maiden name was Nancy Hanks, died, far from medical aid, of the epidemic called milk sickness. She was preceded in death by her relatives, the Sparrows, who had succeeded the Lincolns in the "camp," and by many neighbours, whose coffins Thomas Lincoln made out of "green lumber cut with a whip saw." Upon Nancy's death he took to his green lumber again and made a box for her. "There were about twenty persons at her funeral. They took her to the summit of a deeply wooded knoll, about half a mile south-east of the cabin, and laid her beside the Sparrows. If there were any burial ceremonies, they were of the briefest. But it happened that a few months later an itinerant preacher, named David Elkin, whom the Lincolns had known in Kentucky, wandered into the settlement, and he either volunteered or was employed to preach a sermon, which should commemorate the many virtues and pass over in silence the few frailties of the poor woman who slept in the forest. Many years later the bodies of Levi Hall and his wife (relatives), were deposited in the same earth with that of Mr. Lincoln. The graves of two or three children, belonging to a neighbour's family, are also near theirs. They are all crumbled, sunken and covered with wild vines in deep and tangled mats. The great trees were originally cut away to make a small cleared space for this primitive graveyard; but the young dogwoods have sprung up unopposed in great luxuriance, and in many instances the names of pilgrims to the burial place of the great Abraham Lincoln's mother are carved on their bark. With this exception, the spot is wholly unmarked. The grave never had a stone, nor even a board, at its head or its foot, and the neighbours still dispute as to which of these unsightly hollows contains the ashes of Nancy Lincoln." If Democracy in the New World sometimes stones the prophets, it is seldom guilty of building their sepulchres. Out of sight, off the stump, beyond the range of the interviewer, heroes and martyrs soon pass from the mind of a fast-living people; and weeds may grow out of the dust of Washington. But in this case what neglect has done good taste would have dictated; it is well that the dogwoods are allowed to grow unchecked over the wilderness grave.

Thirteen months after the death of his Nancy, Thomas Lincoln went to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and suddenly presented himself to Mrs. Sally Johnston, who had in former days rejected him for a better match, but had become a widow. "Well, Mrs. Johnston, I have no wife and you have no husband, I came a purpose to marry you. I knowed you from a gal and you knowed me from a boy. I have no time to lose, and if you are willin', let it be done straight off." "Tommy, I know you well, and have no objection to marrying you; but I cannot do it straight off, as I owe some debts that must first be paid." They were married next morning, and the new Mrs. Lincoln, who owned, among other wondrous household goods, a bureau that cost forty dollars, and who had been led, it seems, to believe that her new husband was reformed and a prosperous farmer, was conveyed with her bureau to the smiling scene of his reformation and prosperity. Being, however, a sensible Christian woman, she made the best of a bad bargain, got her husband to put down a floor and hang doors and windows, made things generally decent, and was very kind to the children, especially to Abe, to whom she took a great liking, and who owed to his good stepmother what other heroes have owed to their mothers. "From that time on," according to his garrulous relative, Dennis Hanks, "he appeared to lead a new life." It seems to have been difficult to extract from him "for campaign purposes" the incidents of his life before it took this happy turn.

He described his own education in a Congressional handbook as "defective." In Kentucky he occasionally trudged with his little sister, rather as an escort than as a school-fellow, to a school four miles off, kept by one Caleb Hazel, who could teach reading and writing after a fashion, and a little arithmetic, but whose great qualification for his office lay in his power and readiness "to whip the big boys." So far the American respect for popular education as the key to success in life prevailed even in those wilds, and in such a family as that of Thomas Lincoln.

Under the auspices of his new mother, Abraham began attending school again. The master was one Crawford, who taught not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but "manners." One of the scholars was made to retire, and re-enter "as a polite gentleman enters a drawing room," after which he was led round by another scholar and introduced to all "the young ladies and gentlemen." The polite gentleman who entered the drawing room and was introduced as Mr. Abraham Lincoln, is thus depicted: "He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full height of six feet four inches. He was long, wiry and strong, while his big feet and hands and the length of his arms and legs were out of all proportion to his small trunk and head. His complexion was very swarthy, and Mr. Gentry says that his skin was shrivelled and yellow even then. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of an opossum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, but parted by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. Twelve inches remained uncovered, and exposed that much of shinbone, sharp, blue and narrow." At a subsequent period, when charged by a Democratic rival with being "a Whig aristocrat," he gave a minute and touching description of the breeches. "I had only one pair," he said, "and they were buckskin. And if you know the nature of buckskin when wet and dried by the sun they will shrink; and mine kept shrinking until they left several inches of my legs bare between the tops of my socks and the lower part of my breeches, and whilst I was growing taller they were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a blue streak around my legs, which can be seen to this day."

Mr. Crawford, it seems, was a martinet in spelling, and one day he was going to punish a whole class for failing to spell _defied_, when Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to a young lady by putting his finger with a significant smile to his eye. Many years later, however, and after his entrance into public life, Lincoln himself spelt _apology_ with a double p, _planning_ with a single n, and _very_ with a double r. His schooling was very irregular, his school days hardly amounting to a year in all, and such education as he had was picked up afterwards by himself. His appetite for mental food, however, was always strong, and he devoured all the books, few and not very select, which could be found in the neighbourhood of "Pigeon Creek." Equally strong was his passion for stump oratory, the taste for which pervades the American people, even in the least intellectual districts, as the taste for church festivals pervades the people of Spain, or the taste for cricket the people of England. Abe's neighbour, John Romine, says, "he was awful lazy. He worked for me; was always reading and thinking; used to get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in the harvest field that Abe had taken the stump, work was at an end. The lineaments of the future politician distinctly appear in the dislike of manual labour as well as in the rest. We shall presently have Lincoln's own opinion on that point.

Abe's first written composition appears to have been an essay against cruelty to animals, a theme the choice of which was at once indicative of his kindness of heart and practically judicious, since the young gentlemen in the neighbourhood were in the habit of catching terrapins and putting hot coals upon their backs. The essay appears not to have been preserved, and we cannot say whether its author succeeded in explaining that ethical mystery--the love of cruelty in boys.

In spite of his laziness, Abe was greatly in demand at hog-killing time, notwithstanding, or possibly in consequence of which, he contracted a peculiarly tender feeling towards swine, and in later life would get off his horse to help a struggling hog out of the mire or to save a little pig from the jaws of an unnatural mother.

Society in the neighbourhood of Pigeon Creek was of the thorough backwoods type; as coarse as possible, but hospitable and kindly, free from cant and varnish, and a better school of life than of manners, though, after all, the best manners are learnt in the best school of life, and the school of life in which Abe studied was not the worst. He became a leading favourite, and his appearance, towering above the other hunting shirts, was always the signal for the fun to begin. His nature seems to have been, like many others, open alike to cheerful and to gloomy impressions. A main source of his popularity was the fund of stories to which he was always adding, and to which in after life, he constantly went for solace, under depression or responsibility, as another man would go to his cigar or snuff box. The taste was not individual but local, and natural to keen-witted people who had no other food for their wits. In those circles "the ladies drank whiskey-toddy, while the men drank it straight." Lincoln was by no means fond of drink, but in this, as in every thing else, he followed the great law of his life as a politician, by falling in with the humour of the people. One cold night be and his companions found an acquaintance lying dead-drunk in a puddle. All but Lincoln were disposed to let him lie where he was, and freeze to death. But Abe "bent his mighty frame, and taking the man in his long arms, carried him a great distance to Dennis Hanks' cabin. There he built a fire, warmed, rubbed and nursed him through the entire night, his companions having left him alone in his merciful task." His real kindness of heart is always coming out in the most striking way, and it was not impaired even by civil war.

Though sallow-faced, Lincoln had a very good constitution, but his frame hardly bespoke great strength: he was six feet four and large-boned, but narrow chested, and had almost a consumptive appearance. His strength, nevertheless, was great. We are told that harnessed with ropes and straps he could lift a box of stones weighing from a thousand to twelve hundred pounds. But that he could raise a cask of whiskey in his arms standing upright, and drink out of the bung-hole, his biographer does not believe. The story is no doubt a part of the legendary halo which has gathered round the head of the martyr. In wrestling, of which he was very fond, he had not his match near Pigeon Creek, and only once found him anywhere else. He was also formidable as a pugilist. But he was no bully; on the contrary, he was peaceable and chivalrous in a rough way. His chivalry once displayed itself in a rather singular fashion. He was in the habit, among other intellectual exercises, of writing satires on his neighbours in the form of chronicles, the remains of which, unlike any known writings of Moses, or even of Washington, are "too indecent for publication." In one of these he assailed the Grigsbys, who had failed to invite him to a brilliant wedding. The Grigsby blood took fire, and a fight was arranged. But when they came to the ring, Lincoln, deeming the Grigsby champion too much overmatched, magnanimously substituted for himself his less puissant stepbrother, John Johnston, who was getting well pounded when Abe, on pretence of foul play, interfered, seized Grigsby by the neck, flung him off and cleared the ring. He then "swung a whiskey bottle over his head, and swore that he was the big buck of the lick,"--a proposition which it seems, the other bucks of the lick, there assembled in large numbers, did not feel themselves called upon to dispute.

That Abraham Lincoln should have said, when a bare-legged boy, that he intended to be President of the United States, is not remarkable. Every boy in the United States says it; soon, perhaps, every girl will be able to say it, and then human happiness will be complete. But Lincoln was really carrying on his political education. Dennis Hanks is asked how he and Lincoln acquired their knowledge. "We learned," he replies, "by sight, scent and hearing. We heard all that was said, and talked over and over the questions heard; wore them slick, greasy and threadbare. Went to political and other speeches and gatherings, as you do now; we would hear all sides and opinions, talk them over, discuss them, agreeing or disagreeing. Abe, as I said before, was originally a Democrat after the order of Jackson; so was his father, so we all were.... He preached, made speeches, read for us, explained to us, &c.... Abe was a cheerful boy, a witty boy; was humorous always, sometimes would get sad, not very often.... Lincoln would frequently make political and other speeches; he was calm, logical and clear always. He attended trials, went to court always, read the Revised Statutes of Indiana, dated 1824, heard law speeches, and listened to law trials. Lincoln was lazy, a very lazy man. He was always reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing poetry, and the like.... In Gentryville, about one mile west of Thomas Lincoln's farm, Lincoln would go and tell his jokes and stories, &c., and was so odd, original and humorous and witty, that all the people in town would gather around him. He would keep them there till midnight. I would get tired, want to go home, cuss Abe most heartily. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, and was a kind of newsboy." One or two articles written by Abe found their way into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot was on the first round of the ladder. It is right to say that his culture was not solely political, and that he was able to astonish the natives of Gentryville by explaining that when the sun appeared to set, it "was we did the sinking and not the sun."

Abe was tired of his home, as a son of Thomas Lincoln might be, without disparagement to his filial piety; and he was glad to get off with a neighbour on a commercial trip down the river to New Orleans. The trip was successful in a small way, and Abe soon after repeated it with other companions. He shewed his practical ingenuity in getting the boat off a dam, and perhaps still more signally in quieting some restive hogs by the simple expedient of sewing up their eyes. In the first trip the great emancipator came in contact with the negro in a way that did not seem likely to prepossess him in favour of the race. The boat was boarded by negro robbers, who were repulsed only after a fray in which Abe got a scar which he carried to the grave. But he saw with his own eyes slaves manacled and whipped at New Orleans; and though his sympathies were not far-reaching, the actual sight of suffering never failed to make an impression on his mind. "In 1841," he says, in a letter to a friend, "you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border." A negrophilist he never became. "I protest," he said afterwards, when engaged in the slavery controversy, "against the counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread which she earns with her own hands she is my equal and the equal of all others." It would be difficult to put the case better.

While Abraham Lincoln was trading to New Orleans his father, Thomas Lincoln, was on the move again. This time he migrated to Illinois, and there again shifted from place to place, gathering no moss, till he died as thriftless and poor as he had lived. We have, in later years, an application from him to his son for money, to which the son responds in a tone which implies some doubt as to the strict accuracy of the ground on which the old gentleman's request was preferred. Their relations were evidently not very affectionate, though there is nothing unfilial in Abe's conduct. Abraham himself drifted to Salem on the Sangamon, in Illinois, twenty miles north-west of Springfield, where he became clerk in a new store, set up by Denton Offutt, with whom he had formed a connection in one of his trips to New Orleans. Salem was then a village of a dozen houses, and the little centre of a society very like that of Pigeon Creek and its neighbourhood, but more decidedly western. We are told that "here Mr. Lincoln became acquainted with a class of men the world never saw the like of before or since. They were large men,--large in body and large in mind; hard to whip and never to be fooled. They were a bold, daring and reckless set of men; they were men of their own mind,--believed what was demonstrable, were men of great common sense. With these men Mr. Lincoln was thrown; with them he lived and with them he moved and almost had his being. They were sceptics all--scoffers some. These scoffers were good men, and their scoffs were protests against theology,--loud protests against the follies of Christianity; they had never heard of theism and the new and better religious thoughts of this age. Hence, being natural sceptics and being bold, brave men they uttered their thoughts freely.... They were on all occasions, when opportunity offered, debating the various questions of Christianity among themselves; they took their stand on common sense and on their own souls; and though their arguments were rude and rough, no man could overthrow their homely logic. They riddled all divines, and not unfrequently made them sceptics,--disbelievers as bad as themselves. They were a jovial, healthful, generous, true and manly set of people." It is evident that W. Herndon, the speaker, is himself a disbeliever in Christianity, and addicted to the "newer and better thought of this age." He gives one specimen, which we have omitted for fear of shocking our readers, of the theological criticism of these redoubtable logicians of nature; and we are inclined to infer from it that the divines whom they "riddled" and converted to scepticism must have been children of nature as well as themselves. The passage, however, is a life-like, though idealized, portrait of the Western man; and the tendency to religious scepticism of the most daring kind is as truly ascribed to him as the rest.

It seems to be proved by conclusive evidence that Mr. Lincoln shared the sentiments of his companions, and that he was never a member of any Church, a believer in the divinity of Christ, or a Christian of any denomination. He is described as an avowed, an open freethinker, sometimes bordering on atheism, going extreme lengths against Christian doctrines, and "shocking" men whom it was probably not very easy to shock. He even wrote a little work on "Infidelity," attacking Christianity in general, and especially the belief that Jesus was the Son of God; but the manuscript was destroyed by a prescient friend, who knew that its publication would ruin the writer in the political market. There is reason to believe that Burns contributed to Lincoln's scepticism, but he drew it more directly from Volney, Paine, Hume and Gibbon. His fits of downright atheism appear to have been transient; his settled belief was theism with a morality which, though he was not aware of it, he had really derived from the Gospel. It is needless to say that the case had never been rationally presented to him, and that his decision against Christianity would prove nothing, even if his mind had been more powerful than it was. His theism was not strong enough to save him from deep depression under misfortune; and we heard, on what we thought at the time good authority, that after Chancellorsville, he actually meditated suicide. Like many sceptics, he was liable to superstition, especially to the superstition of self-consciousness, a conviction that he was the subject of a special decree made by some nameless and mysterious power. Even from a belief in apparitions he was not free. "It was just after my election, in 1860," he said to his Secretary, John Hay, "when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great 'hurrah, boys!' so that I was well tired, I went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and, on looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass; but the illusion vanished. On lying down again I saw it a second time--plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got up and the thing melted away; and I went off and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it,--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home I told my wife about it; and in a few days afterwards I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously, to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'a sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term." The apparition is, of course, easily explained by reference to a generally morbid temperament and a specially excited fancy. The impression which it made on the mind of a sceptic, noted for never believing in anything which was not actually submitted to his senses, is an instance of the tendency of superstition to creep into the void left in the heart by faith, and as such may be classed with the astrological superstitions of the Roman Empire, and of that later age of religious and moral infidelity of which the prophet was Machiavelli. But if Mr. John Hay has faithfully repeated Lincoln's words, a point upon which we may have our doubts without prejudice to Mr. Hay's veracity, Mrs. Lincoln's interpretation of the vision is, to say the least, a very curious coincidence.

The flower of the heroic race in the neighbourhood of Salem, were the "Clary's Grove boys," whose chief and champion was Jack Armstrong. "Never," we are assured, "was there a more generous parcel of ruffians than those over whom Jack held sway." It does not appear, however, that the term ruffian is altogether misplaced. The boys were in the habit of "initiating" candidates for admission to society at New Salem. "They first bantered the gentleman to run a foot race, jump, pitch the mall, or wrestle; and if none of these propositions seemed agreeable to him, they would request to know what he would do in case another gentleman should pull his nose or squirt tobacco juice in his face. If he did not seem entirely decided in his views as to what should be done in such a contingency, perhaps he would be nailed in a hogshead and rolled down New Salem hill, perhaps his ideas would be brightened by a brief ducking in the Sangamon; or perhaps he would be scoffed, kicked and cuffed by a great number of persons in concert, until he reached the confines of the village, and then turned adrift as being unfit company for the people of that settlement." If the stranger consented to race or wrestle, it was arranged that there should be foul play, which would lead to a fight; a proper display of mettle in which was accepted as a proof of the "gentleman's" fitness for society. Abe escaped initiation, his length and strength of limb being apparently deemed satisfactory evidence of his social respectability. But Clary's Grove was at last brought down upon him by the indiscretion of his friend and admirer, Offutt, who was already beginning to run him for President, and whose vauntings of his powers made a trial of strength inevitable. A wrestling match was contrived between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong, and money, jackknives and whiskey were freely staked on the result. Neither combatant could throw the other, and Abe proposed to Jack to "quit." But Jack, goaded on by his partisans, resorted to a "foul," upon which Abe's righteous wrath blazed up, and taking the champion of Clary's Grove by the throat he "shook him like a child." A fight was impending, and Abe, his back planted against Offutt's store, was facing a circle of foes, when a mediator appeared. Jack Armstrong was so satisfied of the strength of Abe's arm, that he at once declared him the best fellow that ever came into the settlement, and the two thenceforth reigned conjointly over the roughs and bullies of New Salem. Abe seems always to have used his power humanely and to have done his best to substitute arbitration for war. A strange man coming into the settlement, on being beset as usual by Clary's Grove and insulted by Jack Armstrong, knocked the bully down with a stick. Jack being as strong as two of him was going to "whip him badly," when Abe interposed, "Well Jack, what did you say to the man?" Jack repeated his words. "And what would you do if you were in a strange place and you were called a d--d liar?" "Whip him, by ---." "Then that man has done to you no more than you have done to him." Jack acknowledged the golden rule and "treated" his intended victim. If there were ever dissensions between the two "Caesars" of Salem, it was because Jack "in the abundance of his animal spirits" was addicted to nailing people in barrels and rolling them down the hill, while Abe was always on the side of mercy.

Abe's popularity grew apace; his ambition grew with it; it is astonishing how readily and freely the plant sprouts upon that soil. He was at this time carrying on his education evidently with a view to public life. Books were not easily found. He wanted to study English Grammar, considering that accomplishment desirable for a statesman; and, being told that there was a grammar in a house six miles from Salem, he left his breakfast at once and walked off to borrow it. He would slip away into the woods and spend hours in study and thinking. He sat up late at night, and as light was expensive, made a blaze of shavings in the cooper's shop. He waylaid every visitor to New Salem who had any pretence to scholarship, and extracted explanations of things which he did not understand. It does not appear that the work of Adam Smith, or any work upon political economy, currency, or any financial subject fell into the hands of the student who was destined to conduct the most tremendous operations in the whole history of finance.

The next episode in Lincoln's life which may be regarded as a part of his training was the command of a company of militia in the "Black Hawk" war. Black Hawk was an Indian Chief of great craft and power, and, apparently, of fine character, who had the effrontery to object to being improved off the face of creation, an offence which he aggravated by an hereditary attachment to the British. At a muster of the Sangamon company at Clary's Grove, Lincoln was elected captain. The election was a proof of his popularity, but he found it rather hard to manage his constituents in the field. One morning on the march the Captain commanded his orderly to form the company for parade; but when the orderly called "parade," the men called "parade" too, but could not fall into line. They had found their way to the officers' liquor the evening before. The regiment had to march and leave the company behind. About ten o'clock the company set out to follow; but when it had marched two miles "the drunken ones lay down and slept their drink off." Lincoln, who seems to have been perfectly blameless, was placed under arrest and condemned to carry a wooden sword; but it does not appear that any notice was taken of the conduct of that portion of the sovereign people which lay down drunk on the march when the army was advancing against the enemy. Something like this was probably the state of things in the Northern army at the beginning of the civil war, before discipline had been enforced by disaster. The campaign opened with a cleverly-won victory on the part of Black Hawk, and a rapid retrograde movement on the part of the militia, as to which we will be content to say with Mr. Lamon, "of drunkenness no public account makes any mention, and individual cowardice is never to be imputed to American troops." Ultimately, however, Black Hawk was overpowered and most of his men met their doom in attempting to retreat across the Mississippi. "During this short Indian campaign," says one who took part in it, "we had some hard times, often hungry; but we had a great deal of sport, especially at nights--foot racing, some horse racing, jumping, telling anecdotes, in which Lincoln beat all, keeping up a constant laughter and good humour all the time, among the soldiers some card-playing and wrestling in which Lincoln took a prominent part. I think it safe to say he was never thrown in a wrestle. While in the army he kept a handkerchief tied around him all the time for wrestling purposes, and loved the sport as well as any one could. He was seldom if ever beat jumping. During the campaign Lincoln himself was always ready for an emergency. He endured hardships like a good soldier; he never complained, nor did he fear dangers. When fighting was expected or danger apprehended, Lincoln was the first to say 'Let's go.' He had the confidence of every man of his company, and they strictly obeyed his orders at a word. His company was all young men, and full of sport." The assertion as to the strict and uniform obedience of the company at its captain's word, requires, as we have seen, some qualification in a democratic sense. Whether Lincoln was ever beaten in wrestling is also one of the moot points of history.

In the course of this campaign one Mr. Thompson, whose fame as a wrestler was great throughout the west, accepted Lincoln's challenge. Great excitement prevailed, and Lincoln's company and backers "put up all their portable property and some perhaps not their own, including knives, blankets, tomahawks, and all the necessary articles of a soldier's outfit." As soon as Lincoln laid hold of his antagonist he found that he had got at least his match, and warned his friends of that unwelcome fact. He was thrown once fairly, and a second time fell with Thompson on the top of him. "We were taken by surprise," candidly says Mr. Green, "and being unwilling to put with our property and lose our bets, got up an excuse as to the result. We declared the fall a kind of a dog-fall--did so apparently angrily." A fight was about to begin, when Lincoln rose up and said, "Boys, the man actually threw me once fair, broadly so; and the second time, this very fall, he threw me fairly, though not so apparently so." This quelled the disturbance.

On the same authority we are told that Lincoln gallantly interfered to save the life of a poor old Indian who had thrown himself on the mercy of the soldiers, and whom, notwithstanding that he had a pass, they were proceeding to slay. The anecdote wears a somewhat melodramatic aspect; but there is no doubt of Lincoln's humanity, or of his readiness to protest against oppression and cruelty when they actually fell under his notice. It was also in keeping with his character to insist firmly on the right of his militiamen to the same rations and pay as the regulars, and to draw the legal line sharply and clearly when the regular officers exceeded their authority in the exercise of command.

Returning to New Salem, Lincoln, having served his apprenticeship as a clerk, commenced storekeeping on his own account. An opening was made for him by the departure of Mr. Radford, the keeper of a grocery, who, having offended the Clary's Grove boys, they "selected a convenient night for breaking in his windows and gutting his establishment." From his ruins rose the firm of Lincoln & Berry. Doubt rests on the great historic question whether Lincoln sold liquor in his store, and on that question still more agonizing to a sensitive morality--whether he sold it by the dram. The points remain, we are told, and will forever remain undetermined. The only fact in which history can repose with certainty is that some liquor must have been _given_ away, since nobody in the neighbourhood of Clary's Grove could keep store without offering the customary dram to the patrons of the place. When taxed on the platform by his rival, Douglas, with having sold liquor, Mr. Lincoln replied that if he figured on one side of the counter, Douglas figured on the other. "As a storekeeper," says Mr. Ellis, "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linen pantaloons--I thought about five inches too short in the legs--and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calico shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour; blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and without a band." It is recorded that he preferred dealing with men and boys, and disliked to wait on the ladies. Possibly, if his attire has been rightly described, the ladies, even the Clary's Grove ladies, may have reciprocated the feeling.

In storekeeping, however, Mr. Lincoln did not prosper; neither storekeeping nor any other regular business or occupation was congenial to his character. He was born to be a politician. Accordingly he began to read law, with which he combined surveying, at which we are assured he made himself "expert" by a six weeks' course of study. They mix trades a little in the West. We expected on turning the page to find that Mr. Lincoln had also taken up surgery and performed the Caesarean operation. The few law books needed for Western practice were supplied to him by a kind friend at Springfield, and according to a witness who has evidently an accurate memory for details, "he went to read law in 1832 or 1833 barefooted, seated in the shade of a tree and would grind around with the shade, just opposite Berry's grocery store, a few feet south of the door, occasionally lying flat on his back and putting his feet up the tree." Evidently, whatever he read, especially of a practical kind, he made thoroughly his own. It is needless to say that he did not become a master of scientific jurisprudence, but it seems that he did become an effective Western advocate. What is more, there is conclusive testimony to the fact that he was--what has been scandalously alleged to be rare, even in the United States--an honest lawyer. "Love of justice and fair play," says one of his brothers of the bar, "was his predominant trait. I have often listened to him when I thought he would state his case out of Court. It was not in his nature to assume or attempt to bolster up a false position. He would abandon his case first. He did so in the case of _Buckmaster for the use of Durham v. Beener & Arthur_, in our Supreme Court, in which I happened to be opposed to him. Another gentleman, less fastidious, took Mr. Lincoln's place and gained the case." His power as an advocate seems to have depended on his conviction that the right was on his side. "Tell Harris it's no use to _waste money on me_; in that case, he'll get beat." In a larceny case he took those who were counsel with him for the defence aside and said, "If you can say anything for the man do it. I can't. If I attempt it, the jury will see that I think he is guilty and convict him of course." In another case he proved an account for his client, who, though he did not know it, was a rogue. The counsel on the other side proved a receipt. By the time he had done Lincoln was missing; and on the Court sending for him, he replied, "Tell the judge I can't come; my hands are dirty, and I came over to clean them." Mr. Herndon, who visited Lincoln's office on business, gives the following reminiscence: --"Mr. Lincoln was seated at his table, listening very attentively to a man who was talking earnestly in a low tone. After the would-be client had stated the facts of the case, Mr. Lincoln replied, 'yes, there is no reasonable doubt but that I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighbourhood at logger heads; I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which rightly belongs, it appears to me, as much to the woman and her children as it does to you. You must remember that some things that are legally right are not morally right. I shall not take your case but will give you a bit of advice, for which I will charge you nothing. You seem to be a sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way.'" On one occasion, however, Lincoln, we believe it must be admitted, resorted to sharp practice. William Armstrong, the son of Jack Armstrong, of Clary's Grove, inheriting, as it seems, the "abundant animal spirits" of his father, committed, as was universally believed, a very brutal murder at a camp meeting, and being brought to trial was in imminent peril of the halter. Lincoln volunteered to defend him. The witness whose testimony bore hardest on the prisoner swore that he saw the murder committed by the light of the moon. Lincoln put in an almanac, which, on reference being made to it showed that at the time stated by the witness there was no moon. This broke down the witness and the prisoner was acquitted. It was not observed at the moment that the almanac was one of the year previous to the murder; and therefore morally a fabrication. Herculean efforts are made to prove that _two_ almanacs were produced and that Mr. Lincoln was innocent of any deception. But the best plea, we conceive, is, that Mr. Lincoln had rocked William Armstrong in the cradle.

There is one part of Lincoln's early life which, though scandal may batten on it, we shall pass over lightly, we mean that part which relates to his love affairs and his marriage. Criticism, and even biography, should respect as far as possible the sanctuary of affection. That a man has dedicated his life to the service of the public is no reason why the public should be licensed to amuse itself by playing with his heart-strings. Not only as a storekeeper, but in every capacity, Mr. Lincoln was far more happy in his relations with men than with women. He however loved, and loved deeply, Ann Rutledge, who appears to have been entirely worthy of his attachment, and whose death at the moment when she would have felt herself at liberty to marry him threw him into a transport of grief, which threatened his reason and excited the gravest apprehensions of his friends. In stormy weather especially he would rave piteously, crying that "he could never be reconciled to have the snow, rains and storms to beat upon her grave." This first love he seems never to have forgotten. He next had an affair, not so creditable to him, with a Miss Owens, of whom, after their rupture, he wrote things which he had better have left unwritten. Finally, he made a match of which the world has heard more than enough, though the Western Boy was too true a gentleman to let it hear anything about the matter from his lips. It is enough to say that this man was not wanting in that not inconsiderable element of worth, even of the worth of statesmen, strong and pure affection.

"If ever," said Abraham Lincoln, "American society and the United States Government are demoralized and overthrown, it will come from the voracious desire of office--this wriggle to live without toil, from which I am not free myself." These words ought to be written up in the largest characters in every schoolroom in the United States. The confession with which they conclude is as true as the rest. Mr. Lincoln, we are told, took no part in the promotion of local enterprises, railroads, schools, churches, asylums. The benefits he proposed for his fellow men were to be accomplished by political means alone "Politics were his world--a world filled with hopeful enchantments. Ordinarily he disliked to discuss any other subject." "In the office," says his partner, Mr. Herndon, "he sat down or spilt himself (_sic_) on his lounge, read aloud, told stories, talked politics--never science, art, literature, railroad gatherings, colleges, asylums, hospitals, commerce, education, progress--nothing that interested the world generally, except politics." "He seldom," says his present biographer, "took an active part in local or minor elections, or wasted his power to advance a friend. He did nothing out of mere gratitude, and forgot the devotion of his warmest partisans, as soon as the occasion for their services had passed. What they did for him was quietly appropriated as the reward of superior merit, calling for no return in kind." We are told that while he was "wriggling," he was in effect boarded and clothed for some years by his friend, Hon. W. Butler, at Springfield, and that, when in power, he refused to exercise his patronage in favour of his friend. On that occasion, his biographer tells us, that he considered his patronage a solemn trust. We give him credit for a conscientiousness above the ordinary level of his species on this as well as on other subjects. But his sense of the solemn character of his trust, though it prevented him from giving a petty place to the old friend who had helped him in the day of his need, did not prevent him, as President, from sometimes paying for support by a far more questionable use of the highest patronage in his gift.

The fact is not that the man was by nature wanting in gratitude or in any kindly quality, on the contrary, he seems to have abounded in them all. But the excitement of the game was so intense that it swallowed up all other considerations and emotions. In a dead season of politics, his depression was extreme. "He said gloomily, despairingly, sadly, 'How hard, oh! how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived for it. This world is dead to hope, deaf to its own death-struggle.'" Possibly this is the way in which "wriggling" politicians generally put the case to themselves.

Lincoln's fundamental principle was devotion to the popular will. In his address to the people of Sangamon County, he says, "while acting as their representative I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is, and upon all others I will do what my own judgment teaches me will advance their interests." "'It is a maxim,' with many politicians, just to keep along even with the humour of the people right or wrong." "This maxim," adds the biographer, "Mr. Lincoln held then, as ever since, in very high estimation." It may occur to some enquiring minds to ask what, upon those principles, is the use of having representation at all, and whether it would not be better to let the people themselves vote directly on all questions without interposing a representative to diminish their sense of responsibility, to say nothing of the sacrifice of the representative's conscience, which, in the cases of the statesmen here described, was probably not very great. With regard to Slavery, however, Mr. Lincoln showed forecast, if not conscientious independence. He stepped forth in advance of the sentiments of his party, and to his political friends appeared rash in the extreme.

Lincoln's first attempt to get elected to the State Legislature was unsuccessful. It however brought him the means of "doing something for his country," and partly averting the "death-struggle of the world," in the shape of the postmastership of New Salem. The business of the office was not on a large scale, for it was carried on in Mr. Lincoln's hat--an integument of which it is recorded, that he refused to give it to a conjurer to play the egg trick in, "not from respect for his own hat, but for the conjurer's eggs." The future President did not fail to signalize his first appearance as an administrator by a sally of the jocularity which was always struggling with melancholy in his mind. A gentleman of the place, whose education had been defective, was in the habit of calling two or three times a day at the post-office, and ostentatiously inquiring for letters. At last he received a letter, which, being unable to read himself, he got the postmaster to read for him before a large circle of friends. It proved to be from a negro lady engaged in domestic service in the South, recalling the memory of a mutual attachment, with a number of incidents more delectable than sublime. It is needless to say that the postmaster, by a slight extension of the sphere of his office, had written the letter as well as delivered it.

In a second candidature the aspirant was more successful, and he became one of nine representatives of Sangamon County, in the State Legislature of Illinois, who, being all more than six feet high, were called "The Long Nine." With his Brobdingnagian colleagues Abraham plunged at once into the "internal improvement system," and distinguished himself above his fellows by the unscrupulous energy and strategy with which he urged through the Legislature a series of bubble schemes and jobs. Railroads and other improvements, especially improvements of river navigation, were voted out of all proportion to the means or credit of the then thinly-peopled State. To set these little matters in motion, a loan of eight millions of dollars was authorized, and to complete the canal from Chicago to Peru, another loan of four millions of dollars was voted at the same session, two hundred thousand dollars being given as a gratuity to those counties which seemed to have no special interest in any of the foregoing projects. Work on all these roads was to commence, not only at the same time, but at both ends of each road and at all the river- crossings. There were as yet no surveys of any route, no estimates, no reports of engineers, or even unprofessional viewers. "Progress was not to wait on trifles; capitalists were supposed to be lying in wait to catch these precious bonds; the money would be raised in a twinkling, and being applied with all the skill of a hundred De Witt Clintons--a class of gentlemen at that time extremely numerous and obtrusive--the loan would build railroads, the railroads would build cities, cities would create farms, foreign capital would rush in to so inviting a field, the lands would be taken up with marvellous celerity, and the land tax going into a sinking fund, that, with some tolls and certain sly speculations to be made by the State, would pay principal and interest of debt without even a cent of taxation upon the people. In short, everybody was to be enriched, while the munificence of the State in selling its credit and spending the proceeds, would make its empty coffers overflow with ready money. It was a dark stroke of statesmanship, a mysterious device in finance, which, whether from being misunderstood or mismanaged, bore from the beginning fruits the very reverse of those it had promised." We seem here to be reading the history of more than one great railway enterprise undertaken by politicians without the red tape preliminaries of surveying or framing estimates, progress not deigning to wait upon trifles. This system of policy gave fine scope for the talents of the "log-roller," here defined as an especially wily and persuasive person, who could depict the merits of his scheme with roseate but delusive eloquence, and who was said to carry a gourd of "possum fat"--wherewith he "greased and swallowed" his prey. One of the largest of these gourds was carried by "honest Abe," who was especially active in "log-rolling" a bill for the removal of the seat of government from Vandalia to Springfield, at a virtual cost to the State of about six millions of dollars, which we were told would have purchased all the real estate in the town three times over. "Thus by log-rolling on the loud measure, by multiplying railroads, by terminating these roads at Alton, that Alton might become a great city in opposition to St. Louis; by distributing money to some of the counties to be wasted by the County Commissioners, and by giving the seat of government to Springfield--was the whole State bought up and bribed to approve the most senseless and disastrous policy which ever crippled the energies of a young country." We are told, and do not doubt, that Mr. Lincoln shared the popular delusion; but we are also told, and are equally sure, that "even if he had been unhappily afflicted with individual scruples of his own he would have deemed it but simple duty to obey the almost unanimous voice of his constituency." In other words, he would have deemed it his duty to pander to the popular madness by taking a part in financial swindling. Yet he and his principal confederates obtained afterwards high places of honour and trust. A historian of Illinois calls them "spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe it is to be a politician, but how disastrous it may be to the country to keep along with the present fervour of the people." It is instructive as well as just to remember that all this time the man was strictly, nay sensitively, honourable in his private dealings, that he was regarded by his fellows as a paragon of probity, that his word was never questioned, that of personal corruption calumny itself, so far as we are aware, never dared to accuse him. Politics, it seems, may be a game apart, with rules of its own which supersede morality.

Considering that, as we said before, this man was destined to preside over the most tremendous operations in the whole history of finance, it is especially instructive to see what was the state of his mind on economical subjects. He actually proposed to pass a usury law, having arrived, it appears, at the sage conviction that while to pay the current rent for the use of a house or the current fee for the services of a lawyer is perfectly proper, to pay the current price for money is to "allow a few individuals to levy a direct tax on the community." But this is an ordinary illusion. Abraham Lincoln's illusions went far beyond it. He actually proposed so to legislate that in cases of extreme necessity there might "always be found means to cheat the law, while in all other cases it would have its intended effect." He proposed in fact absurdity qualified by fraud, the established practice of which would, no doubt, have had a most excellent effect in teaching the citizens to reverence and the Courts to uphold the law. As President, when told that the finances were low, he asked whether the printing machine had given out, and he suggested, as a special temptation to capitalists, the issue of a class of bonds which should be exempt from seizure for debt. It may safely be said that the burden of the United States debt was ultimately increased fifty per cent through sheer ignorance of the simplest principles of economy and finance on the part of those by whom it was contracted.

Lincoln's style, both as a speaker and a writer, ultimately became plain, terse, and with occasional faults of taste, caused by imperfect education, pure as well as effective. His Gettysburg address and some of his State Papers are admirable in their way. Saving one very flat expression, the address has no superior in literature. But it was impossible that the oratory of a rising politician, especially in the West, should be free from spread-eagleism. Scattered through these pages we find such gems as the following:--

"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!" ... "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 to the burning sun of the latter." ... "That we improve 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." Washington's mind, when he rises from his grave at the Last Day, will be immediately relieved by the information that no Britisher has ever trodden on his bones.

In debate he was neither bitter nor personal in the bad sense, though he had a good deal of caustic humour and knew how to make an effective use of it.

Passing from State politics to those of the Union, and elected to Congress as a Whig, a party to which he had gradually found his way from his original position as a "nominal Jackson man," Mr. Lincoln stood forth in vigorous though discreet and temperate opposition to the Mexican War.

Some extra charges made by General Cass upon the Treasury for expenses in a public mission, afforded an opportunity for a hit at the great Democratic "war-horse." "I have introduced," said Lincoln, "General Cass's name here chiefly to show the wonderful physical capacity of the man. They show that he not only did the labour of several men at the same _time_, but that he often did it at several _places_, many hundred miles apart _at the same time_. And in eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful. From October, 1821, to May, 1822, he ate ten rations a day in Michigan, ten rations a day here in Washington, and nearly five dollars' worth a day besides, partly on the road between the two places. And then there is an important discovery in his example, the art of being paid for what one eats, instead of having to pay for it. Hereafter if any nice young man should owe a bill which he cannot pay in any other way, he can just board it out. Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay, and starving to death. The like of that could never happen to General Cass. Place the stacks a thousand miles apart, he would stand stock still midway between them, and eat them both at once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some at the same time. By all means make him President, gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously, if--if there is any left after he has helped himself."

Great events were by this time beginning to loom on the political horizon. The Missouri Compromise was broken. Parties commenced slowly but surely to divide themselves into Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery. The "irrepressible conflict" was coming on, though none of the American politicians--not even the author of that famous phrase--distinctly recognised its advent. Lincoln seems to have been sincerely opposed to slavery, though he was not an Abolitionist. But he was evidently led more and more to take anti-slavery ground by his antagonism to Douglas, who occupied a middle position, and tried to gain at once the support of the South and that of the waverers at the North, by theoretically supporting the extension of slavery, yet practically excluding it from the territories by the doctrine of squatters' sovereignty. Lincoln had to be very wary in angling for the vote of the Abolitionists, who had recently been the objects of universal obloquy, and were still offensive to a large section of the Republican party. On one occasion, the opinions which he propounded by no means suited the Abolitionists, and "they required him to change them forthwith. _He thought it would be wise to do so considering the peculiar circumstances of his case_; but, before committing himself finally, he sought an understanding with Judge Logan. He told the judge what he was disposed to do, and said he would act upon the inclination if the judge would not regard it as treading on his toes. The judge said he was opposed to the doctrine proposed, but for the sake of the cause on hand he would cheerfully risk his toes. _And so the Abolitionists were accommodated._ Mr. Lincoln quietly made the pledge, and they voted for him." He came out, however, square enough, and in the very nick of time with his "house divided against itself" speech, which took the wind out of the sails of Seward with his "irrepressible conflict." Douglas, whom Lincoln regarded with intense personal rivalry, was tripped up by a string of astute interrogations, the answers to which hopelessly embroiled him with the South. Lincoln's campaign against Douglas for the Senatorship greatly and deservedly enhanced his reputation as a debater, and he became marked out as the Western candidate for the Republican nomination to the Presidency. A committee favourable to his claims sent to him to make a speech at New York. He arrived "in a sleek and shining suit of new black, covered with very apparent creases and wrinkles acquired by being packed too closely and too long in his little valise." Some of his supporters must have moralized on the strange apparition which their summons had raised. His speech, however, made before an immense audience at the Cooper Institute, was most successful. And as a display of constitutional logic it is a very good speech. It fails, as the speeches of these practical men one and all did fail, their "common sense" and "shrewdness" notwithstanding, in clear perception of the great facts that two totally different systems of society had been formed, one in the Slave States and the other in the Free, and that political institutions necessarily conform themselves to the social character of the people. Whether the Civil War could, by any men or means, have been arrested, it would be hard to say; but assuredly stump orators, even the very best of them, were not the men to avert it. At that great crisis no saviour appeared. On May 10th, in the eventful year 1860, the Republican State Convention of Illinois, by acclamation, and amidst great enthusiasm, nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. One who saw him receive the nomination says, "I then thought him one of the most diffident and most plagued of men I ever saw." We may depend upon it, however, that his diffidence of manner was accompanied by no reluctance of heart. The splendid prize which he had won had been the object of his passionate desire. In the midst of the proceedings the door of the wigwam opened, and Lincoln's kinsman, John Hanks, entered, with "two small triangular 'heart-rails,' surmounted by a banner with the inscription, 'Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the Sangamon bottom, in the year 1830'." The bearer of the rails, we are told, was met "with wild and tumultuous cheers," and "the whole scene was simply tempestuous and bewildering."

The Democrats, of course, did not share the delight. An old man, out of Egypt, (the southern end of Illinois) came up to Mr. Lincoln, and said. "So you're Abe Lincoln?" "That's my name, sir." "They say you're a self- made man." "Well, yes what there is of me is self-made." "Well, all I have got to say," observed the old Egyptian, after a careful survey of the statesman, "is, that it was a d--n bad job." This seems to be the germ of the smart reply to the remark that Andrew Johnson was a self- made man, "that relieves the Almighty of a very heavy responsibility."

The nomination of the State Convention of Illinois was accepted after a very close and exciting contest between Lincoln and Seward by the convention of the Republican party assembled at Chicago. The proceedings seem to have been disgraceful. A large delegation of roughs, we are told, headed by Tom Shyer, the pugilist, attended for Seward. The Lincoln party, on the other side, spent the whole night in mustering their "loose fellows," and at daylight the next morning packed the wigwam, so that the Seward men were unable to get in.

Another politician was there nominally as a candidate, but really only to sell himself for a seat in the Cabinet. When he claimed the fulfilment of the bond, Lincoln's conscience, or at least his regard for his own reputation, struggled hard. "All that I am in the world--the Presidency and all else--I owe to that opinion of me which the people express when they call me 'honest old Abe.' Now, what will they think of their honest Abe when he appoints this man to be his familiar adviser?" What they might have said with truth was that Abe was still honest but politics were not.

Widely different was the training undergone for the leadership of the people by the Pericles of the American Republic from that undergone by the Pericles of Athens, or by any group of statesmen before him, Greek, Roman, or European. In this point of view, Mr. Lamon's book is a most valuable addition to the library of political science. The advantages and the disadvantages of Lincoln's political education are manifest at a glance. He was sure to produce something strong, genuine, practical, and entirely in unison with the thoughts and feelings of a people which, like the Athenians in the days of Pericles, was to be led, not governed. On the other hand, it necessarily left the statesman without the special knowledge necessary for certain portions of his work, such as finance, which was detestably managed during Lincoln's Presidency, without the wisdom which flows from a knowledge of the political world and of the past, without elevation, and comprehensiveness of view. It was fortunate for Lincoln that the questions with which he had to deal, and with which his country and the world proclaim him to have dealt, on the whole, admirably well, though not in their magnitude and importance, were completely within his ken, and had been always present to his mind. Reconstruction would have made a heavier demand on the political science of Clary's Grove. But that task was reserved for other hands.

[The end]
Goldwin Smith's essay: The Early Years Of Abraham Lincoln

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