Project Gutenberg's The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Helen Nicolay

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Title: The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln

Author: Helen Nicolay

Release Date: September 21, 2008 [EBook #1815]

Last Updated: February 4, 2013

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOYS' LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ***

Produced by Dianne Bean, and David Widger

THE BOYS' LIFE OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN
 by Helen Nicolay

Contents

I. A PRESIDENT'S CHILDHOOD
II. CAPTAIN LINCOLN.
III. LAWYER LINCOLN
IV. CONGRESSMAN LINCOLN
V. THE CHAMPION OF FREEDOM
VI. THE NEW PRESIDENT
VII. LINCOLN AND THE WAR
VIII. UNSUCCESSFUL GENERALS
IX. FREEDOM FOR THE SLAVES
X. THE MAN WHO WAS PRESIDENT
XI. THE TURNING POINT OF THE WAR
XII. THE CONQUEROR OF A GREAT
REBELLION
XIII. THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL
 I. A PRESIDENT'S CHILDHOOD
Abraham Lincoln's forefathers were pioneers—men who left their homes to
open up the wilderness and make the way plain for others to follow them. For
one hundred and seventy years, ever since the first American Lincoln came from
England to Massachusetts in 1638, they had been moving slowly westward as
new settlements were made in the forest. They faced solitude, privation, and all
the dangers and hardships that beset men who take up their homes where only
beasts and wild men have had homes before; but they continued to press steadily
forward, though they lost fortune and sometimes even life itself, in their
westward progress. Back in Pennsylvania and New Jersey some of the Lincolns
had been men of wealth and influence. In Kentucky, where the future President
was born on February 12, 1809, his parents lived in deep poverty Their home
was a small log cabin of the rudest kind, and nothing seemed more unlikely than
that their child, coming into the world in such humble surroundings, was
destined to be the greatest man of his time. True to his race, he also was to be a
pioneer—not indeed, like his ancestors, a leader into new woods and unexplored
fields, but a pioneer of a nobler and grander sort, directing the thoughts of men
ever toward the right, and leading the American people, through difficulties and
dangers and a mighty war, to peace and freedom.
The story of this wonderful man begins and ends with a tragedy, for his
grandfather, also named Abraham, was killed by a shot from an Indian's rifle
while peaceably at work with his three sons on the edge of their frontier clearing.
Eighty-one years later the President himself met death by an assassin's bullet.
The murderer of one was a savage of the forest; the murderer of the other that far
more cruel thing, a savage of civilization.
When the Indian's shot laid the pioneer farmer low, his second son, Josiah, ran
to a neighboring fort for help, and Mordecai, the eldest, hurried to the cabin for
his rifle. Thomas, a child of six years, was left alone beside the dead body of his
father; and as Mordecai snatched the gun from its resting-place over the door of
the cabin, he saw, to his horror, an Indian in his war-paint, just stooping to seize
the child. Taking quick aim at a medal on the breast of the savage, he fired, and
the Indian fell dead. The little boy, thus released, ran to the house, where
Mordecai, firing through the loopholes, kept the Indians at bay until help arrived
from the fort.
 It was this child Thomas who grew up to be the father of President Abraham
Lincoln. After the murder of his father the fortunes of the little family grew
rapidly worse, and doubtless because of poverty, as well as by reason of the
marriage of his older brothers and sisters, their home was broken up, and
Thomas found himself, long before he was grown, a wandering laboring boy. He
lived for a time with an uncle as his hired servant, and later he learned the trade
of carpenter. He grew to manhood entirely without education, and when he was
twenty-eight years old could neither read nor write. At that time he married
Nancy Hanks, a good-looking young woman of twenty-three, as poor as himself,
but so much better off as to learning that she was able to teach her husband to
sign his own name. Neither of them had any money, but living cost little on the
frontier in those days, and they felt that his trade would suffice to earn all that
they should need. Thomas took his bride to a tiny house in Elizabethtown,
Kentucky, where they lived for about a year, and where a daughter was born to
them.
Then they moved to a small farm thirteen miles from Elizabethtown, which
they bought on credit, the country being yet so new that there were places to be
had for mere promises to pay. Farms obtained on such terms were usually of
very poor quality, and this one of Thomas Lincoln's was no exception to the rule.
A cabin ready to be occupied stood on it, however; and not far away, hidden in a
pretty clump of trees and bushes, was a fine spring of water, because of which
the place was known as Rock Spring Farm. In the cabin on this farm the future
President of the United States was born on February 12, 1809, and here the first
four years of his life were spent. Then the Lincolns moved to a much bigger and
better farm on Knob Creek, six miles from Hodgensville, which Thomas Lincoln
bought, again on credit, selling the larger part of it soon afterward to another
purchaser. Here they remained until Abraham was seven years old.
About this early part of his childhood almost nothing is known. He never
talked of these days, even to his most intimate friends. To the pioneer child a
farm offered much that a town lot could not give him—space; woods to roam in;
Knob Creek with its running water and its deep, quiet pools for a playfellow;
berries to be hunted for in summer and nuts in autumn; while all the year round
birds and small animals pattered across his path to people the solitude in place of
human companions. The boy had few comrades. He wandered about playing his
lonesome little games, and when these were finished returned to the small and
cheerless cabin. Once, when asked what he remembered about the War of 1812
with Great Britain, he replied: "Only this: I had been fishing one day and had
caught a little fish, which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and
having always been told at home that we must be good to soldiers, I gave him
my fish." It is only a glimpse into his life, but it shows the solitary, generous
child and the patriotic household.
It was while living on this farm that Abraham and his sister Sarah first began
going to A-B-C schools. Their earliest teacher was Zachariah Riney, who taught
near the Lincoln cabin; the next was Caleb Hazel, four miles away.
In spite of the tragedy that darkened his childhood, Thomas Lincoln seems to
have been a cheery, indolent, good-natured man. By means of a little farming
and occasional jobs at his trade, he managed to supply his family with the
absolutely necessary food and shelter, but he never got on in the world. He found
it much easier to gossip with his friends, or to dream about rich new lands in the
West, than to make a thrifty living in the place where he happened to be. The
blood of the pioneer was in his veins too—the desire to move westward; and
hearing glowing accounts of the new territory of Indiana, he resolved to go and
see it for himself. His skill as a carpenter made this not only possible but
reasonably cheap, and in the fall of 1816 he built himself a little flatboat,
launched it half a mile from his cabin, at the mouth of Knob Creek on the waters
of the Rolling Fork, and floated on it down that stream to Salt River, down Salt
River to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to a landing called Thompson's Ferry on
the Indiana shore.
Sixteen miles out from the river, near a small stream known as Pigeon Creek,
he found a spot in the forest that suited him; and as his boat could not be made to
float up-stream, he sold it, stored his goods with an obliging settler, and trudged
back to Kentucky, all the way on foot, to fetch his wife and children—Sarah,
who was now nine years old, and Abraham, seven. This time the journey to
Indiana was made with two horses, used by the mother and children for riding,
and to carry their little camping outfit for the night. The distance from their old
home was, in a straight line, little more than fifty miles, but they had to go
double that distance because of the very few roads it was possible to follow.
Reaching the Ohio River and crossing to the Indiana shore, Thomas Lincoln
hired a wagon which carried his family and their belongings the remaining
sixteen miles through the forest to the spot he had chosen—a piece of heavily
wooded land, one and a half miles east of what has since become the village of
Gentryville in Spencer County. The lateness of the autumn made it necessary to
put up a shelter as quickly as possible, and he built what was known on the
frontier as a half-faced camp, about fourteen feet square. This differed from a
cabin in that it was closed on only three sides, being quite open to the weather on
the fourth. A fire was usually made in front of the open side, and thus the
necessity for having a chimney was done away with. Thomas Lincoln doubtless
intended this only for a temporary shelter, and as such it would have done well
enough in pleasant summer weather; but it was a rude provision against the
storms and winds of an Indiana winter. It shows his want of energy that the
family remained housed in this poor camp for nearly a whole year; but, after all,
he must not be too hastily blamed. He was far from idle. A cabin was doubtless
begun, and there was the very heavy work of clearing away the timber—cutting
down large trees, chopping them into suitable lengths, and rolling them together
into great heaps to be burned, or of splitting them into rails to fence the small
field upon which he managed to raise a patch of corn and other things during the
following summer.
Though only seven years old, Abraham was unusually large and strong for his
age, and he helped his father in all this heavy labor of clearing the farm. In after
years, Mr. Lincoln said that an ax "was put into his hands at once, and from that
till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most
useful instrument—less, of course, in ploughing and harvesting seasons." At first
the Lincolns and their seven or eight neighbors lived in the unbroken forest.
They had only the tools and household goods they brought with them, or such
things as they could fashion with their own hands. There was no sawmill to saw
lumber. The village of Gentryville was not even begun. Breadstuff could be had
only by sending young Abraham seven miles on horseback with a bag of corn to
be ground in a hand grist-mill.
About the time the new cabin was ready relatives and friends followed from
Kentucky, and some of these in turn occupied the half-faced camp. During the
autumn a severe and mysterious sickness broke out in their little settlement, and
a number of people died, among them the mother of young Abraham. There was
no help to be had beyond what the neighbors could give each other. The nearest
doctor lived fully thirty miles away. There was not even a minister to conduct the
funerals. Thomas Lincoln made the coffins for the dead out of green lumber cut
from the forest trees with a whip-saw, and they were laid to rest in a clearing in
the woods. Months afterward, largely through the efforts of the sorrowing boy, a
preacher who chanced to come that way was induced to hold a service and
preach a sermon over the grave of Mrs. Lincoln.
Her death was indeed a serious blow to her husband and children. Abraham's
sister, Sarah, was only eleven years old, and the tasks and cares of the little
household were altogether too heavy for her years and experience. Nevertheless
they struggled bravely through the winter and following summer; then in the
autumn of 1819 Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky and married Sarah
Bush Johnston, whom he had known, and it is said courted, when she was only
Sally Bush. She had married about the time Lincoln married Nancy Hanks, and
her husband had died, leaving her with three children. She came of a better
station in life than Thomas, and was a woman with an excellent mind as well as
a warm and generous heart. The household goods that she brought with her to
the Lincoln home filled a four-horse wagon, and not only were her own children
well clothed and cared for, but she was able at once to provide little Abraham
and Sarah with comforts to which they had been strangers during the whole of
their young lives. Under her wise management all jealousy was avoided between
the two sets of children; urged on by her stirring example, Thomas Lincoln
supplied the yet unfinished cabin with floor, door, and windows, and life became
more comfortable for all its inmates, contentment if not happiness reigning in the
little home.
The new stepmother quickly became very fond of Abraham, and encouraged
him in every way in her power to study and improve himself. The chances for
this were few enough. Mr. Lincoln has left us a vivid picture of the situation. "It
was," he once wrote, "a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still
in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so-called, but no
qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and
cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin
happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard."
The school-house was a low cabin of round logs, with split logs or
"puncheons" for a floor, split logs roughly leveled with an ax and set up on legs
for benches, and holes cut out in the logs and the space filled in with squares of
greased paper for window-panes. The main light came in through the open door.
Very often Webster's "Elementary Spelling-book" was the only text-book. This
was the kind of school most common in the middle West during Mr. Lincoln's
boyhood, though already in some places there were schools of a more
pretentious character. Indeed, back in Kentucky, at the very time that Abraham, a
child of six, was learning his letters from Zachariah Riney, a boy only a year
older was attending a Catholic seminary in the very next county. It is doubtful if
they ever met, but the destinies of the two were strangely interwoven, for the
older boy was Jefferson Davis, who became head of the Confederate government
shortly after Lincoln was elected President of the United States.
As Abraham had been only seven years old when he left Kentucky, the little
beginnings he learned in the schools kept by Riney and Hazel in that State must
have been very slight, probably only his alphabet, or at most only three or four
pages of Webster's "Elementary Spelling-book." The multiplication-table was
still a mystery to him, and he could read or write only the words he spelled. His
first two years in Indiana seem to have passed without schooling of any sort, and
the school he attended shortly after coming under the care of his stepmother was
of the simplest kind, for the Pigeon Creek settlement numbered only eight or ten
poor families, and they lived deep in the forest, where, even if they had had the
money for such luxuries, it would have been impossible to buy books, slates,
pens, ink, or paper. It is worthy of note, however, that in our western country,
even under such difficulties, a school-house was one of the first buildings to rise
in every frontier settlement. Abraham's second school in Indiana was held when
he was fourteen years old, and the third in his seventeenth year. By that time he
had more books and better teachers, but he had to walk four or five miles to
reach them. We know that he learned to write, and was provided with pen, ink,
and a copy-book, and a very small supply of writing-paper, for copies have been
printed of several scraps on which he carefully wrote down tables of long
measure, land measure, and dry measure, as well as examples in multiplication
and compound division, from his arithmetic. He was never able to go to school
again after this time, and though the instruction he received from his five
teachers—two in Kentucky and three in Indiana—extended over a period of nine
years, it must be remembered that it made up in all less than one twelve-month;
"that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year." The fact that
he received this instruction, as he himself said, "by littles," was doubtless an
advantage. A lazy or indifferent boy would of course have forgotten what was
taught him at one time before he had opportunity at another; but Abraham was
neither indifferent nor lazy, and these widely separated fragments of instruction
were precious steps to self-help. He pursued his studies with very unusual
purpose and determination not only to understand them at the moment, but to fix
them firmly in his mind. His early companions all agree that he employed every
spare moment in keeping on with some one of his studies. His stepmother tells
us that "When he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down
on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he
would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book,
in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them." He spent long
evenings doing sums on the fire-shovel. Iron fire-shovels were a rarity among
pioneers. Instead they used a broad, thin clapboard with one end narrowed to a
handle, arranging with this the piles of coals upon the hearth, over which they set
their "skillet" and "oven" to do their cooking. It was on such a wooden shovel
that Abraham worked his sums by the flickering firelight, making his figures
with a piece of charcoal, and, when the shovel was all covered, taking a
drawing-knife and shaving it off clean again.
 The hours that he was able to devote to his penmanship, his reading, and his
arithmetic were by no means many; for, save for the short time that he was
actually in school, he was, during all these years, laboring hard on his father's
farm, or hiring his youthful strength to neighbors who had need of help in the
work of field or forest. In pursuit of his knowledge he was on an up-hill path; yet
in spite of all obstacles he worked his way to so much of an education as placed
him far ahead of his schoolmates and quickly abreast of his various teachers. He
borrowed every book in the neighborhood. The list is a short one: "Robinson
Crusoe," "Aesop's Fables," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Weems's "Life of
Washington," and a "History of the United States." When everything else had
been read, he resolutely began on the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," which Dave
Turnham, the constable, had in daily use, but permitted him to come to his house
and read.
Though so fond of his books; it must not be supposed that he cared only for
work and serious study. He was a social, sunny-tempered lad, as fond of jokes
and fun as he was kindly and industrious. His stepmother said of him: "I can say,
what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say, Abe never gave me a cross
word or look, and never refused... to do anything I asked him.... I must say.. that
Abe was the best boy I ever saw or expect to see."
He and John Johnston, his stepmother's son, and John Hanks, a relative of his
own mother's, worked barefoot together in the fields, grubbing, plowing, hoeing,
gathering and shucking corn, and taking part, when occasion offered, in the
practical jokes and athletic exercises that enlivened the hard work of the
pioneers. For both work and play Abraham had one great advantage. He was not
only a tall, strong country boy: he soon grew to be a tall, strong, sinewy man. He
early reached the unusual height of six feet four inches, and his long arms gave
him a degree of power as an axman that few were able to rival. He therefore
usually led his fellows in efforts of muscle as well as of mind. That he could
outrun, outlift, outwrestle his boyish companions, that he could chop faster, split
more rails in a day, carry a heavier log at a "raising," or excel the neighborhood
champion in any feat of frontier athletics, was doubtless a matter of pride with
him; but stronger than all else was his eager craving for knowledge. He felt
instinctively that the power of using the mind rather than the muscles was the
key to success. He wished not only to wrestle with the best of them, but to be
able to talk like the preacher, spell and cipher like the school-master, argue like
the lawyer, and write like the editor. Yet he was as far as possible from being a
prig. He was helpful, sympathetic, cheerful. In all the neighborhood gatherings,
when settlers of various ages came together at corn-huskings or house-raisings,
or when mere chance brought half a dozen of them at the same time to the post-
office or the country store, he was able, according to his years, to add his full
share to the gaiety of the company. By reason of his reading and his excellent
memory, he soon became the best story-teller among his companions; and even
the slight training gained from his studies greatly broadened and strengthened
the strong reasoning faculty with which he had been gifted by nature. His wit
might be mischievous, but it was never malicious, and his nonsense was never
intended to wound or to hurt the feelings. It is told of him that he added to his
fund of jokes and stories humorous imitations of the sermons of eccentric
preachers.
Very likely too much is made of all these boyish pranks. He grew up very like
his fellows. In only one particular did he differ greatly from the frontier boys
around him. He never took any pleasure in hunting. Almost every youth of the
backwoods early became an excellent shot and a confirmed sportsman. The
woods still swarmed with game, and every cabin depended largely upon this for
its supply of food. But to his strength was added a gentleness which made him
shrink from killing or inflicting pain, and the time the other boys gave to lying in
ambush, he preferred to spend in reading or in efforts at improving his mind.
Only twice during his life in Indiana was the routine of his employment
changed. When he was about sixteen years old he worked for a time for a man
who lived at the mouth of Anderson's Creek, and here part of his duty was to
manage a ferry-boat which carried passengers across the Ohio River. It was very
likely this experience which, three years later, brought him another. Mr. Gentry,
the chief man of the village of Gentryville that had grown up a mile or so from
his father's cabin, loaded a flatboat on the Ohio River with the produce his store
had collected—corn, flour, pork, bacon, and other miscellaneous provisions—
and putting it in charge of his son Allen Gentry and of Abraham Lincoln, sent
them with it down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to sell its cargo at the
plantations of the lower Mississippi, where sugar and cotton were the principal
crops, and where other food supplies were needed to feed the slaves. No better
proof is needed of the reputation for strength, skill, honesty, and intelligence that
this tall country boy had already won for himself, than that he was chosen to
navigate the flatboat a thousand miles to the "sugar-coast" of the Mississippi
River, sell its load, and bring back the money. Allen Gentry was supposed to be
in command, but from the record of his after life we may be sure that Abraham
did his full share both of work and management. The elder Gentry paid Lincoln
eight dollars a month and his passage home on a steamboat for this service. The
voyage was made successfully, although not without adventure; for one night,
after the boat was tied up to the shore, the boys were attacked by seven negroes,
who came aboard intending to kill and rob them. There was a lively scrimmage,
in which, though slightly hurt, they managed to beat off their assailants, and
then, hastily cutting their boat adrift, swung out on the stream. The marauding
band little dreamed that they were attacking the man who in after years was to
give their race its freedom; and though the future was equally hidden from
Abraham, it is hard to estimate the vistas of hope and ambition that this long
journey opened to him. It was his first look into the wide, wide world.
 II. CAPTAIN LINCOLN.
By this time the Lincoln homestead was no longer on the frontier. During the
years that passed while Abraham was growing from a child, scarcely able to
wield the ax placed in his hands, into a tall, capable youth, the line of frontier
settlements had been gradually but steadily pushing on beyond Gentryville
toward the Mississippi River. Every summer canvas-covered moving wagons
wound their slow way over new roads into still newer country; while the older
settlers, left behind, watched their progress with longing eyes. It was almost as if
a spell had been cast over these toil-worn pioneers, making them forget, at sight
of such new ventures, all the hardships they had themselves endured in subduing
the wilderness. At last, on March 1, 1830, when Abraham was just twenty-one
years old, the Lincolns, yielding to this overmastering frontier impulse to
"move" westward, left the old farm in Indiana to make a new home in Illinois.
"Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams," Mr. Lincoln wrote
in 1860; "and Abraham drove one of the teams." They settled in Macon County
on the north side of the Sangamon River, about ten miles west of Decatur, where
they built a cabin, made enough rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and
cultivated the ground, and raised a crop of corn upon it that first season. It was
the same heavy labor over again that they had endured when they went from
Kentucky to Indiana; but this time the strength and energy of young Abraham
were at hand to inspire and aid his father, and there was no miserable shivering
year of waiting in a half-faced camp before the family could be suitably housed.
They were not to escape hardship, however. They fell victims to fever and ague,
which they had not known in Indiana, and became greatly discouraged; and the
winter after their arrival proved one of intense cold and suffering for the
pioneers, being known in the history of the State as "the winter of the deep
snow." The severe weather began in the Christmas holidays with a storm of such
fatal suddenness that people who were out of doors had difficulty in reaching
their homes, and not a few perished, their fate remaining unknown until the
melting snows of early spring showed where they had fallen.
In March, 1831, at the end of this terrible winter, Abraham Lincoln left his
father's cabin to seek his own fortune in the world. It was the frontier custom for
young men to do this when they reached the age of twenty-one. Abraham was
now twenty-two, but had willingly remained with his people an extra year to
give them the benefit of his labor and strength in making the new home.
 He had become acquainted with a man named Offut, a trader and speculator,
who pretended to great business shrewdness, but whose chief talent lay in
boasting of the magnificent things he meant to do. Offut engaged Abraham, with
his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston, and John Hanks, to take a flatboat from
Beardstown, on the Illinois River, to New Orleans; and all four arranged to meet
at Springfield as soon as the snow should melt.
In March, when the snow finally melted, the country was flooded and
traveling by land was utterly out of the question. The boys, therefore, bought a
large canoe, and in it floated down the Sangamon River to keep their
appointment with Offut. It was in this somewhat unusual way that Lincoln made
his first entry into the town whose name was afterward to be linked with his
own.
Offut was waiting for them, with the discouraging news that he had been
unable to get a flatboat at Beardstown. The young men promptly offered to make
the flatboat, since one was not to be bought; and they set to work, felling the
trees for it on the banks of the stream. Abraham's father had been a carpenter, so
the use of tools was no mystery to him; and during his trip to New Orleans with
Allen Gentry he had learned enough about flatboats to give him confidence in
this task of shipbuilding. Neither Johnston nor Hanks was gifted with skill or
industry, and it is clear that Lincoln was, from the start, leader of the party,
master of construction, and captain of the craft.
The floods went down rapidly while the boat was building, and when they
tried to sail their new craft it stuck midway across the dam of Rutledge's mill at
New Salem, a village of fifteen or twenty houses not many miles from their
starting-point. With its bow high in air, and its stern under water, it looked like
some ungainly fish trying to fly, or some bird making an unsuccessful attempt to
swim. The voyagers appeared to have suffered irreparable shipwreck at the very
outset of their venture, and men and women came down from their houses to
offer advice or to make fun of the young boatmen as they waded about in the
water, with trousers rolled very high, seeking a way out of their difficulty.
Lincoln's self-control and good humor proved equal to their banter, while his
engineering skill speedily won their admiration. The amusement of the
onlookers changed to gaping wonder when they saw him deliberately bore a hole
in the bottom of the boat near the bow, after which, fixing up some kind of
derrick, he tipped the boat so that the water she had taken in at the stern ran out
in front, and she floated safely over the dam. This novel method of bailing a boat
by boring a hole in her bottom fully established his fame at New Salem, and so
delighted the enthusiastic Offut that, on the spot, he engaged its inventor to come
back after the voyage to New Orleans and act as clerk for him in a store.
The hole plugged up again, and the boat's cargo reloaded, they made the
remainder of the journey in safety. Lincoln returned by steamer from New
Orleans to St. Louis, and from there made his way to New Salem on foot. He
expected to find Offut already established in the new store, but neither he nor his
goods had arrived. While "loafing about," as the citizens of New Salem
expressed it, waiting for him, the newcomer had a chance to exhibit another of
his accomplishments. An election was to be held, but one of the clerks, being
taken suddenly ill, could not be present. Penmen were not plenty in the little
town, and Mentor Graham, the other election clerk, looking around in perplexity
for some one to fill the vacant place, asked young Lincoln if he knew how to
write. Lincoln answered, in the lazy speech of the country, that he "could make a
few rabbit tracks," and that being deemed quite sufficient, was immediately
sworn in, and set about discharging the duties of his first office. The way he
performed these not only gave general satisfaction, but greatly interested Mentor
Graham, who was the village schoolmaster, and from that time on proved a most
helpful friend to him.
Offut finally arrived with a miscellaneous lot of goods, which Lincoln opened
and put in order, and the storekeeping began. Trade does not seem to have been
brisk, for Offut soon increased his venture by renting the Rutledge and Cameron
mill, on whose historic dam the flatboat had come to grief. For a while the care
of this mill was added to Lincoln's other duties. He made himself generally
useful besides, his old implement, the ax, not being entirely discarded. We are
told that he cut down trees and split rails enough to make a large hogpen
adjoining the mill, a performance not at all surprising when it is remembered that
up to this time the greater part of his life had been spent in the open air, and that
his still growing muscles must have eagerly welcomed tasks like this, which
gave him once more the exercise that measuring calico and weighing out
groceries failed to supply. Young Lincoln's bodily vigor stood him in good stead
in many ways. In frontier life strength and athletic skill served as well for
popular amusement as for prosaic toil, and at times, indeed, they were needed for
personal defence. Every community had its champion wrestler, a man of
considerable local importance, in whose success the neighbors took a becoming
interest. There was, not far from New Salem, a settlement called Clary's Grove,
where lived a set of restless, rollicking young backwoodsmen with a strong
liking for frontier athletics and rough practical jokes. Jack Armstrong was the
leader of these, and until Lincoln's arrival had been the champion wrestler of
both Clary's Grove and New Salem. He and his friends had not the slightest
personal grudge against Lincoln; but hearing the neighborhood talk about the
newcomer, and especially Offut's extravagant praise of his clerk, who, according
to Offut's statement, knew more than any one else in the United States, and could
beat the whole county at running, jumping or "wrastling," they decided that the
time had come to assert themselves, and strove to bring about a trial of strength
between Armstrong and Lincoln. Lincoln, who disapproved of all this "woolling
and pulling," as he called it, and had no desire to come to blows with his
neighbors, put off the encounter as long as possible. At length even his good
temper was powerless to avert it, and the wrestling-match took place. Jack
Armstrong soon found that he had tackled a man as strong and skilful as himself;
and his friends, seeing him likely to get the worst of it, swarmed to his
assistance, almost succeeding, by tripping and kicking, in getting Lincoln down.
At the unfairness of this Lincoln became suddenly and furiously angry, put forth
his entire strength, lifted the pride of Clary's Grove in his arms like a child, and
holding him high in the air, almost choked the life out of him. It seemed for a
moment as though a general fight must follow; but even while Lincoln's fierce
rage compelled their respect, his quickly returning self-control won their
admiration, and the crisis was safely passed. Instead of becoming enemies and
leaders in a neighborhood feud, as might have been expected, the two grew to be
warm friends, the affection thus strangely begun lasting through life. They
proved useful to each other in various ways, and years afterward Lincoln made
ample amends for his rough treatment of the other's throat by saving the neck of
Jack Armstrong's son from the halter in a memorable trial for murder. The
Clary's Grove "boys" voted Lincoln "the cleverest fellow that had ever broke
into the settlement," and thereafter took as much pride in his peaceableness and
book-learning as they did in the rougher and more questionable
accomplishments of their discomfited leader.
Lincoln himself was not so easily satisfied. His mind as well as his muscles
hungered for work, and he confided to Mentor Graham, possibly with some
diffidence, his "notion to study English grammar." Instead of laughing at him,
Graham heartily encouraged the idea, saying it was the very best thing he could
do. With quickened zeal Lincoln announced that if he had a grammar he would
begin at once at this the schoolmaster was obliged to confess that he knew of no
such book in New Salem. He thought, however, that there might be one at
Vaner's, six miles away. Promptly after breakfast the next morning Lincoln set
out in search of it. He brought the precious volume home in triumph, and with
Graham's occasional help found no difficulty in mastering its contents. Indeed, it
is very likely that he was astonished, and even a bit disappointed, to find so little
mystery in it. He is reported to have said that if this was a "science," he thought
he would like to begin on another one. In the eyes of the townspeople, however,
it was no small achievement, and added greatly to his reputation as a scholar.
There is no record of any other study commenced at this time, but it is certain
that he profited much by helpful talks with Mentor Graham, and that he
borrowed every book the schoolmaster's scanty library was able to furnish.
Though outwardly uneventful, this period of his life was both happy and
profitable. He was busy at useful labor, was picking up scraps of schooling, was
making friends and learning to prize them at their true worth; was, in short,
developing rapidly from a youth into a young man. Already he began to feel
stirrings of ambition which prompted him to look beyond his own daily needs
toward the larger interests of his county and his State. An election for members
of the Illinois legislature was to take place in August, 1832. Sangamon County
was entitled to four representatives. Residents of the county over twenty-one
years of age were eligible to election, and audacious as it might appear, Lincoln
determined to be a candidate.
The people of New Salem, like those of all other Western towns, took a keen
interest in politics; "politics" meaning, in that time and place, not only who was
to be President or governor, but concerning itself with questions which came
much closer home to dwellers on the frontier. "Internal improvements," as they
were called—the building of roads and clearing out of streams so that men and
women who lived in remote places might be able to travel back and forth and
carry on trade with the rest of the world—became a burning question in Illinois.
There was great need of such improvements; and in this need young Lincoln saw
his opportunity.
It was by way of the Sangamon River that he entered politics. That uncertain
watercourse had already twice befriended him. He had floated on it in flood-time
from his father's cabin into Springfield. A few weeks later its rapidly falling
waters landed him on the dam at Rutledge's mill, introducing him effectively if
unceremoniously to the inhabitants of New Salem. Now it was again to play a
part in his life, starting him on a political career that ended only in the White
House. Surely no insignificant stream has had a greater influence on the history
of a famous man. It was a winding and sluggish creek, encumbered with
driftwood and choked by sand-bars; but it flowed through a country already
filled with ambitious settlers, where the roads were atrociously bad, becoming in
rainy seasons wide seas of pasty black mud, and remaining almost impassable
for weeks at a time. After a devious course the Sangamon found its way into the
Illinois River, and that in turn flowed into the Mississippi. Most of the settlers
were too new to the region to know what a shallow, unprofitable stream the
Sangamon really was, for the deep snows of 183031 and of the following winter
had supplied it with an unusual volume of water. It was natural, therefore, that
they should regard it as the heaven-sent solution of their problem of travel and
traffic with the outside world. If it could only be freed from driftwood, and its
channel straightened a little, they felt sure it might be used for small steamboats
during a large part of the year.
The candidates for the legislature that summer staked their chances of success
on the zeal they showed for "internal improvements." Lincoln was only twenty-
three. He had been in the county barely nine months. Sangamon County was
then considerably larger than the whole State of Rhode Island, and he was of
course familiar with only a small part of it or its people; but he felt that he did
know the river. He had sailed on it and been shipwrecked by it; he had,
moreover, been one of a party of men and boys, armed with long-handled axes,
who went out to chop away obstructions and meet a small steamer that, a few
weeks earlier, had actually forced its way up from the Illinois River.
Following the usual custom, he announced his candidacy in the local
newspaper in a letter dated March 9, addressed "To the People of Sangamon
County." It was a straightforward, manly statement of his views on questions of
the day, written in as good English as that used by the average college-bred man
of his years. The larger part of it was devoted to arguments for the improvement
of the Sangamon River. Its main interest for us lies in the frank avowal of his
personal ambition that is contained in the closing paragraph.
"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition," he wrote. "Whether it be
true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly
esteemed of my fellowmen by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far
I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young,
and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in the most
humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to
recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of
the county; and if elected, they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I
shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their
wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with
disappointments to be very much chagrined."
He soon had an opportunity of being useful to his fellow-men, though in a
way very different from the one he was seeking. About four weeks after he had
published his letter "To the People of Sangamon County," news came that Black
Hawk, the veteran war-chief of the Sac Indians, was heading an expedition to
cross the Mississippi River and occupy once more the lands that had been the
home of his people. There was great excitement among the settlers in Northern
Illinois, and the governor called for six hundred volunteers to take part in a
campaign against the Indians. He met a quick response; and Lincoln, unmindful
of what might become of his campaign for the legislature if he went away, was
among the first to enlist. When his company met on the village green to choose
their officers, three-quarters of the men, to Lincoln's intense surprise and
pleasure, marched over to the spot where he was standing and grouped
themselves around him, signifying in this way their wish to make him captain.
We have his own word for it that no success of his after life gave him nearly as
much satisfaction. On April 21, two days after the call for volunteers had been
printed, the company was organized. A week later it was mustered into service,
becoming part of the Fourth Illinois Mounted Volunteers, and started at once for
the hostile frontier.
Lincoln's soldiering lasted about three months. He was in no battle, but there
was plenty of "roughing it," and occasionally real hardship, as when the men
were obliged to go for three days without food. The volunteers had not enlisted
for any definite length of time, and seeing no prospect of fighting, they soon
became clamorous to return home. Accordingly his and other companies were
mustered out of service on May 27, at the mouth of Fox River. At the same time
the governor, not wishing to weaken his forces before the arrival of other
soldiers to take their places, called for volunteers to remain twenty days longer.
Lincoln had gone to the frontier to do real service, not for the glory of being
captain. Accordingly, on the day on which he was mustered out as an officer he
re-enlisted, becoming Private Lincoln in Captain Iles's company of mounted
volunteers, sometimes known as the Independent Spy Battalion. This
organization appears to have been very independent indeed, not under the
control of any regiment or brigade, but receiving orders directly from the
commander-in-chief, and having many unusual privileges, such as freedom from
all camp duties, and permission to draw rations as much and as often as they
pleased. After laying down his official dignity and joining this band of privileged
warriors, the campaign became much more of a holiday for the tall volunteer
from New Salem. He entered with enthusiasm into all the games and athletic
sports with which the soldiers beguiled the tedium of camp, and grew in
popularity from beginning to end of his service. When, at length, the
Independent Spy Battalion was mustered out on June 16, 1832, he started on the
journey home with a merry group of his companions. He and his messmate,
George M. Harrison, had the misfortune to have their horses stolen the very day
before, but Harrison's record says:
"I laughed at our fate, and he joked at it, and we all started of merrily. The
generous men of our company walked and rode by turns with us, and we fared
about equal with the rest. But for this generosity, our legs would have had to do
the better work, for in that day this dreary route furnished no horses to buy or to
steal, and whether on horse or afoot, we always had company, for many of the
horses' backs were too sore for riding."
Lincoln reached New Salem about the first of August, only ten days before the
election. He had lost nothing in popular esteem by his prompt enlistment to
defend the frontier, and his friends had been doing manful service for him; but
there were by this time thirteen candidates in the field, with a consequent
division of interest. When the votes were counted, Lincoln was found to be
eighth on the list—an excellent showing when we remember that he was a
newcomer in the county, and that he ran as a Whig, which was the unpopular
party. In his own home town of New Salem only three votes had been cast
against him. Flattering as all this was, the fact remained that he was defeated,
and the result of the election brought him face to face with a very serious
question. He was without means and without employment. Offut had failed and
had gone away. What was he to do next? He thought of putting his strong
muscles to account by learning the blacksmith trade; thought also of trying to
become a lawyer, but feared he could not succeed at that without a better
education. It was the same problem that has confronted millions of young
Americans before and since. In his case there was no question which he would
rather be—the only question was what success he might reasonably hope for if
he tried to study law.
Before his mind was fully made up, chance served to postpone, and in the end
greatly to increase his difficulty. Offut's successors in business, two brothers
named Herndon, had become discouraged, and they offered to sell out to Lincoln
and an acquaintance of his named William F. Berry, on credit, taking their
promissory notes in payment. Lincoln and Berry could not foresee that the town
of New Salem had already lived through its best days, and was destined to
dwindle and grow smaller until it almost disappeared from the face of the earth.
Unduly hopeful, they accepted the offer, and also bought out, on credit, two
other merchants who were anxious to sell. It is clear that the flattering vote
Lincoln had received at the recent election, and the confidence New Salem felt
in his personal character, alone made these transactions possible, since not a
dollar of actual money changed hands during all this shifting of ownership. In
the long run the people's faith in him was fully justified; but meantime he
suffered years of worry and harassing debt. Berry proved a worthless partner; the
business a sorry failure. Seeing this, Lincoln and Berry sold out, again on credit,
to the Trent brothers, who soon broke up the store and ran away. Berry also
departed and died; and in the end all the notes came back upon Lincoln for
payment. Of course he had not the money to meet these obligations. He did the
next best thing: he promised to pay as soon as he could, and remaining where he
was, worked hard at whatever he found to do. Most of his creditors, knowing
him to be a man of his word, patiently bided their time, until, in the course of
long years, he paid, with interest, every cent of what he used to call, in rueful
satire upon his own folly, his "National Debt."
 III. LAWYER LINCOLN
Unlucky as Lincoln's attempt at storekeeping had been, it served one good
purpose. Indeed, in a way it may be said to have determined his whole future
career. He had had a hard struggle to decide between becoming a blacksmith or a
lawyer; and when chance seemed to offer a middle course, and he tried to be a
merchant, the wish to study law had certainly not faded from his mind.
There is a story that while cleaning up the store, he came upon a barrel which
contained, among a lot of forgotten rubbish, some stray volumes of Blackstone's
"Commentaries," and that this lucky find still further quickened his interest in
the law. Whether this tale be true or not it seems certain that during the time the
store was running its downward course from bad to worse, he devoted a large
part of his too abundant leisure to reading and study of various kinds. People
who knew him then have told how he would lie for hours under a great oak-tree
that grew just outside the store door, poring over his book, and "grinding around
with the shade" as it shifted from north to east.
Lincoln's habit of reading was still further encouraged by his being appointed
postmaster of New Salem on May 7, 1833, an office he held for about three
years—until New Salem grew too small to have a post-office of its own, and the
mail was sent to a neighboring town. The office was so insignificant that
according to popular fable it had no fixed abiding-place, Lincoln being supposed
to carry it about with him in his hat! It was, however, large enough to bring him
a certain amount of consideration, and, what pleased him still better, plenty of
newspapers to read—newspapers that just then were full of the exciting debates
of Clay and Webster, and other great men in Congress.
The rate of postage on letters was still twenty-five cents, and small as the
earnings of the office undoubtedly were, a little change found its way now and
then into his hands. In the scarcity of money on the frontier, this had an
importance hard for us to realize. A portion of this money, of course, belonged to
the government. That he used only what was rightfully his own we could be very
sure, even if a sequel to this post office experience were not known which shows
his scrupulous honesty where government funds were concerned. Years later,
after he had become a practising lawyer in Springfield, an agent of the Post-
office Department called upon him in his office one day to collect a balance due
from the New Salem post-office, amounting to about seventeen dollars. A shade
of perplexity passed over his face, and a friend, sitting by, offered to lend him
the money if he did not at the moment have it with him. Without answering,
Lincoln rose, and going to a little trunk that stood by the wall, opened it and took
out the exact sum, carefully done up in a small package. "I never use any man's
money but my own," he quietly remarked, after the agent had gone.
Soon after he was raised to the dignity of postmaster another piece of good
fortune came in his way. Sangamon County covered a territory some forty miles
long by fifty wide, and almost every citizen in it seemed intent on buying or
selling land, laying out new roads, or locating some future city. John Calhoun,
the county surveyor, therefore, found himself with far more work than he could
personally attend to, and had to appoint deputies to assist him. Learning the high
esteem in which Lincoln was held by the people of New Salem, he wisely
concluded to make him a deputy, although they differed in politics. It was a
flattering offer, and Lincoln accepted gladly. Of course he knew almost nothing
about surveying, but he got a compass and chain, and, as he tells us, "studied
Flint and Gibson a little, and went at it." The surveyor, who was a man of talent
and education, not only gave Lincoln the appointment, but, it is said, lent him the
book in which to study the art. Lincoln carried the book to his friend Mentor
Graham, and "went at it" to such purpose that in six weeks he was ready to begin
the practice of his new profession. Like Washington, who, it will be
remembered, followed the same calling in his youth, he became an excellent
surveyor.
Lincoln's store had by this time "winked out," to use his own quaint phrase;
and although the surveying and his post-office supplied his daily needs, they left
absolutely nothing toward paying his "National Debt." Some of his creditors
began to get uneasy, and in the latter part of 1834 a man named Van Bergen, who
held one of the Lincoln-Berry notes, refusing to trust him any longer, had his
horse, saddle, and surveying instruments seized by the sheriff and sold at public
auction, thus sweeping away the means by which, as he said, he "procured bread
and kept soul and body together." Even in this strait his known honesty proved
his salvation. Out of pure friendliness, James Short bought in the property and
gave it back to the young surveyor, allowing him time to repay.
It took Lincoln seventeen years to get rid of his troublesome "National Debt,"
the last instalment not being paid until after his return from his term of service in
Congress at Washington; but it was these seventeen years of industry, rigid
economy, and unflinching fidelity to his promises that earned for him the title of
"Honest Old Abe," which proved of such inestimable value to himself and his
country.
 During all this time of trial and disappointment he never lost his courage, his
steady, persevering industry, or his determination to succeed. He was not too
proud to accept any honest employment that offered itself. He would go into the
harvest-field and work there when other tasks were not pressing, or use his
clerkly hand to straighten up a neglected ledger; and his lively humor, as well as
his industry, made him a welcome guest at any farm-house in the county.
Whatever he might be doing, he was never too busy to help a neighbor. His
strong arm was always at the service of the poor and needy.
Two years after his defeat for the legislature there was another election. His
friends and acquaintances in the county had increased, and, since he had
received such a flattering vote the first time, it was but natural that he should
wish to try again. He began his campaign in April, giving himself full three
months for electioneering. It was customary in those days for candidates to
attend all manner of neighborhood gatherings—"raisings" of new cabins,
horseraces, shooting-matches, auctions—anything that served to call the settlers
together; and it was social popularity, quite as much as ability to discuss political
questions, that carried weight with such assemblies. Lincoln, it is needless to say,
was in his element. He might be called upon to act as judge in a horse-race, or to
make a speech upon the Constitution! He could do both. As a laughing
peacemaker between two quarrelsome patriots he had no equal; and as contestant
in an impromptu match at quoit-throwing, or lifting heavy weights, his native
tact and strong arm served him equally well. Candidates also visited farms and
outlying settlements, where they were sometimes unexpectedly called upon to
show their mettle and muscle in more useful labor. One farmer has recorded how
Lincoln "came to my house near Island Grove during harvest. There were some
thirty men in the field. He got his dinner, and went out in the field where the men
were at work. I gave him an introduction, and the boys said that they could not
vote for a man unless he could make a hand. 'Well, boys,' said he, 'if that is all, I
am sure of your votes.' He took hold of the cradle and led the way all the round
with perfect ease. The boys were satisfied, and I don't think he lost a vote in the
crowd."
Sometimes two or more candidates would meet at such places, and short
speeches would be called for and given, the harvesters throwing down their
scythes meanwhile to listen, and enlivening the occasion with keen criticisms of
the method and logic of the rival orators. Altogether the campaign was more
spirited than that of two years before. Again there were thirteen candidates for
the four places; but this time, when the election was over, it was found that only
one man in the long list had received more votes than Abraham Lincoln.
 Lincoln's election to the legislature of Illinois in August, 1834, marks the end
of the pioneer period of his life. He was done now with the wild carelessness of
the woods, with the rough jollity of Clary's Grove, with odd jobs for his daily
bread—with all the details of frontier poverty. He continued for years to be a
very poor man, harassed by debts he was constantly laboring to pay, and
sometimes absolutely without money: but from this time on he met and worked
with men of wider knowledge and better-trained minds than those he had known
in Gentryville and New Salem, while the simple social life of Vandalia, where he
went to attend the sessions of the legislature, was more elegant than anything he
had yet seen.
It must be frankly admitted that his success at this election was a most
important event in his life. Another failure might have discouraged even his
hopeful spirit, and sent him to the blacksmith-shop to make wagon-tires and
shoe horses for the balance of his days. With this flattering vote to his credit,
however, he could be very sure that he had made a wise choice between the
forge and the lawyer's desk. At first he did not come into special notice in the
legislature. He wore, according to the custom of the time, a decent suit of blue
jeans, and was known simply as a rather quiet young man, good-natured and
sensible. Soon people began to realize that he was a man to be reckoned with in
the politics of the county and State. He was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840,
and thus for eight years had a full share in shaping the public laws of Illinois.
The Illinois legislature may indeed be called the school wherein he learned that
extraordinary skill and wisdom in statesmanship which he exhibited in later
years. In 1838 and 1840 all the Whig members of the Illinois House of
Representatives gave him their vote for Speaker, but, the Democrats being in a
majority, could not elect him.
His campaign expenses were small enough to suit the most exacting. It is
recorded that at one time some of the leading Whigs made up a purse of two
hundred dollars to pay his personal expenses. After the election he returned the
sum of $199.25, with the request that it be given back to the subscribers. "I did
not need the money," he explained. "I made the canvass on my own horse; my
entertainment, being at the houses 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."
One act of his while a member of the legislature requires special mention
because of the great events of his after-life. Even at that early date, nearly a
quarter of a century before the beginning of the Civil War, slavery was proving a
cause of much trouble and ill-will. The "abolitionists," as the people were called
who wished the slaves to be free, and the "pro-slavery" men, who approved of
keeping them in bondage, had already come to wordy war. Illinois was a free
State, but many of its people preferred slavery, and took every opportunity of
making their wishes known. In 1837 the legislature passed a set of resolutions
"highly disapproving abolition societies." Lincoln and five others voted against
it; but, not content with this, Lincoln also drew up a paper protesting against the
passage of such a resolution and stating his views on slavery. They were not
extreme views. Though declaring slavery to be an evil, he did not insist that the
black people ought to be set free. But so strong was the popular feeling against
anything approaching "abolitionism" that only one man out of the five who
voted against the resolution had the courage to sign this protest with him.
Lincoln was young, poor, and in need of all the good-will at his command.
Nobody could have blamed him for leaving it unwritten; yet he felt the wrong of
slavery so keenly that he could not keep silent merely because the views he held
happened to be unpopular; and this protest, signed by him and Dan Stone, has
come down to us, the first notable public act in the great career that made his
name immortal.
During the eight years that he was in the legislature he had been working
away at the law. Even before his first election his friend John T. Stuart, who had
been major of volunteers in the Black Hawk War while Lincoln was captain, and
who, like Lincoln, had reenlisted in the Independent Spy Battalion, had given
him hearty encouragement. Stuart was now practising law in. Springfield. After
the campaign was over, Lincoln borrowed the necessary books of Stuart, and
entered upon the study in good earnest. According to his own statement, "he
studied with nobody. ... In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license, and on
April 15, 1837, removed to Springfield and commenced the practice, his old
friend Stuart taking him into partnership."
Lincoln had already endeared himself to the people of Springfield by
championing a project they had much at heart—the removal of the State capital
from Vandalia to their own town. This was accomplished, largely through his
efforts, about the time he went to Springfield to live. This change from New
Salem, a village of fifteen or twenty houses, to a "city" of two thousand
inhabitants, placed him once more in striking new relations as to dress, manners,
and society. Yet, as in the case of his removal from his father's cabin to New
Salem six years earlier, the change was not so startling as would at first appear.
In spite of its larger population and its ambition as the new State capital,
Springfield was at that time in many ways no great improvement upon New
Salem. It had no public buildings, its streets and sidewalks were still unpaved,
and business of all kinds was laboring under the burden of hard times.
As for himself, although he now owned a license to practise law, it was still a
question how well he would succeed—whether his rugged mind and firm
purpose could win him the livelihood he desired, or whether, after all, he would
be forced to turn his strong muscles to account in earning his daily bread.
Usually so hopeful, there were times when he was greatly depressed. His friend
William Butler relates how, as they were riding together on horseback from
Vandalia to Springfield at the close of a session of the legislature, Lincoln, in one
of these gloomy moods, told him of the almost hopeless prospect that lay
immediately before him. The session was over, his salary was all drawn, the
money all spent; he had no work, and did not know where to turn to earn even a
week's board. Butler bade him be of good cheer, and, kind practical friend that
he was, took him and his belongings to his own home, keeping him there for a
time as his guest. His most intimate friend of those days, Joshua F. Speed, tells
us that soon after riding into the new capital on a borrowed horse, with all his
earthly possessions packed in a pair of saddle-bags, Lincoln entered the store
owned by Speed, the saddle-bags over his arm, to ask the price of a single bed
with its necessary coverings and pillows. His question being answered, he
remarked that very likely that was cheap enough, but, small as the price was, he
was unable to pay it; adding that if Speed was willing to credit him until
Christmas, and his experiment as a lawyer proved a success, he would pay then.
"If I fail in this," he said sadly, "I do not know that I can ever pay you." Speed
thought he had never seen such a sorrowful face. He suggested that instead of
going into debt, Lincoln might share his own roomy quarters over the store,
assuring him that if he chose to accept the offer, he would be very welcome.
"Where is your room?" Lincoln asked quickly. "Upstairs," and the young
merchant pointed to a flight of winding steps leading from the store to the room
overhead.
Lincoln picked up the saddle-bags, went upstairs, set them down on the floor,
and reappeared a moment later, beaming with pleasure. "Well, Speed," he
exclaimed, "I am moved!" It is seldom that heartier, truer friendships come to a
man than came to Lincoln in the course of his life. On the other hand, no one
ever deserved better of his fellow-men than he did; and it is pleasant to know
that such brotherly aid as Butler and Speed were able to give him, offered in all
sincerity and accepted in a spirit that left no sense of galling obligation on either
side, helped the young lawyer over present difficulties and made it possible for
him to keep on in the career he had marked out for himself.
The lawyer who works his way up from a five-dollar fee in a suit before a
justice of the peace, to a five-thousand-dollar fee before the Supreme Court of
his State, has a long and hard path to climb. Lincoln climbed this path for
twenty-five years, with industry, perseverance, patience—above all, with that
self-control and keen sense of right and wrong which always clearly traced the
dividing line between his duty to his client and his duty to society and truth. His
perfect frankness of statement assured him the confidence of judge and jury in
every argument. His habit of fully admitting the weak points in his case gained
him their close attention to his strong ones, and when clients brought him
questionable cases his advice was always not to bring suit.
"Yes," he once said to a man who offered him such a case; "there is no
reasonable doubt but that I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole
neighborhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and her six
fatherless children, and thereby gain for you six hundred dollars, which
rightfully belongs, it appears to me, as much to them as it does to you. I shall not
take your case, but I will give you a little advice for nothing. You seem a
sprightly, energetic man. I would advise you to try your hand at making six
hundred dollars in some other way."
He would have nothing to do with the "tricks" of the profession, though he
met these readily enough when practised by others. He never knowingly
undertook a case in which justice was on the side of his opponent. That same
inconvenient honesty which prompted him, in his store-keeping days, to close
the shop and go in search of a woman he had innocently defrauded of a few
ounces of tea while weighing out her groceries, made it impossible for him to do
his best with a poor case. "Swett," he once exclaimed, turning suddenly to his
associate, "the man is guilty; you defend him—I can't," and gave up his share of
a large fee.
After his death some notes were found, written in his own hand, that had
evidently been intended for a little lecture or talk to law students. They set forth
forcibly, in a few words, his idea of what a lawyer ought to be and to do. He
earnestly commends diligence in study, and, after diligence, promptness in
keeping up the work. "As a general rule, never take your whole fee in advance,"
he says, "nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand you are
more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case as if
something were still in prospect for you as well as for your client." Speech-
making should be practised and cultivated. "It is the lawyer's avenue to the
public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to
bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet, there is not a more fatal
error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one,
upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of
the law, his case is a failure in advance." Discourage going to law. "Persuade
your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the
nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a
peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There
will still be business enough." "There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are
necessarily dishonest. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a
moment yield to the popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if, in
your own judgment, you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest
without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation rather than one in the
choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave."
While becoming a lawyer, Lincoln still remained a politician. In those early
days in the West, the two occupations went hand in hand, almost of necessity.
Laws had to be newly made to fit the needs of the new settlements, and therefore
a large proportion of lawyers was sent to the State legislature. In the summer
these same lawyers went about the State, practising before the circuit courts,
Illinois being divided into what were called judicial circuits, each taking in
several counties, and sometimes covering territory more than a hundred miles
square. Springfield and the neighboring towns were in the eighth judicial circuit.
Twice a year the circuit judge traveled from one county-seat to another, the
lawyers who had business before the court following also. As newspapers were
neither plentiful nor widely read, members of the legislature were often called
upon, while on these journeys, to explain the laws they had helped to make
during the previous winter, and thus became the political teachers of the people.
They had to be well informed and watchful. When, like Mr. Lincoln, they were
witty, and had a fund of interesting stories besides, they were sure of a welcome
and a hearing in the courtroom, or in the social gatherings that roused the various
little towns during "court-week" into a liveliness quite put of the common. The
tavern would be crowded to its utmost—the judge having the best room, and the
lawyers being put in what was left, late comers being lucky to find even a
sleeping-place on the floor. When not occupied in court, or preparing cases for
the morrow, they would sit in the public room, or carry their chairs out on the
sidewalk in front, exchanging stories and anecdotes, or pieces of political
wisdom, while men from the town and surrounding farms, dropping in on one
pretext or another, found excuse to linger and join in the talk. At meal-times the
judge presided at the head of the long hotel table, on which the food was
abundant if not always wholesome, and around which lawyers, jurors, witnesses,
prisoners out on bail, and the men who drove the teams, gathered in friendly
equality. Stories of what Mr. Lincoln did and said on the eighth judicial circuit
are still quoted almost with the force of law; for in this close companionship men
came to know each other thoroughly, and were judged at their true value
professionally, as well as for their power to entertain.
It was only in worldly wealth that Lincoln was poor. He could hold his own
with the best on the eighth judicial circuit, or anywhere else in the State. He
made friends wherever he went. In politics, in daily conversation, in his work as
a lawyer, his life was gradually broadening. Slowly but surely, too, his gifts as an
attractive public speaker were becoming known. In 1837 he wrote and delivered
an able address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield. In December,
1839, Stephen A. Douglas, the most brilliant of the young Democrats then in
Springfield, challenged the young Whigs of the town to a tournament of political
speech-making, in which Lincoln bore a full and successful share.
The man who could not pay a week's board bill was again elected to the
legislature, was invited to public banquets and toasted by name, became a
popular speaker, moved in the best society of the new capital, and made, as his
friends and neighbors declared, a brilliant marriage.
 IV. CONGRESSMAN LINCOLN
Hopeful and cheerful as he ordinarily seemed, there was in Mr. Lincoln's
disposition a strain of deep melancholy. This was not peculiar to him alone, for
the pioneers as a race were somber rather than gay. Their lives had been passed
for generations under the most trying physical conditions, near malaria-infested
streams, and where they breathed the poison of decaying vegetation. Insufficient
shelter, storms, the cold of winter, savage enemies, and the cruel labor that killed
off all but the hardiest of them, had at the same time killed the happy-go-lucky
gaiety of an easier form of life. They were thoughtful, watchful, wary; capable
indeed of wild merriment: but it has been said that although a pioneer might
laugh, he could not easily be made to smile. Lincoln's mind was unusually sound
and sane and normal. He had a cheerful, wholesome, sunny nature, yet he had
inherited the strongest traits of the pioneers, and there was in him, moreover,
much of the poet, with a poet's great capacity for joy and pain. It is not strange
that as he developed into manhood, especially when his deeper nature began to
feel the stirrings of ambition and of love, these seasons of depression and gloom
came upon him with overwhelming force.
During his childhood he had known few women, save his mother, and that
kind, God-fearing woman his stepmother, who did so much to make his
childhood hopeful and happy. No man ever honored women more truly than did
Abraham Lincoln; while all the qualities that caused men to like him—his
strength, his ambition, his kindliness—served equally to make him a favorite
with them. In the years of his young manhood three women greatly occupied his
thoughts. The first was the slender, fair-haired Ann Rutledge, whom he very
likely saw for the first time as she stood with the group of mocking people on the
river-bank, near her father's mill, the day Lincoln's flatboat stuck on the dam at
New Salem. It was her death, two years before he went to live at Springfield,
that brought on the first attack of melancholy of which we know, causing him
such deep grief that for a time his friends feared his sorrow might drive him
insane.
Another friend was Mary Owens, a Kentucky girl, very different from the
gentle, blue-eyed Ann Rutledge, but worthy in every way of a man's affections.
She had visited her sister in New Salem several years before, and Lincoln
remembered her as a tall, handsome, well-educated young woman, who could be
serious as well as gay, and who was considered wealthy. In the autumn of 1836,
her sister, Mrs. Able, then about to start on a visit to Kentucky, jokingly offered
to bring Mary back if Lincoln would promise to marry her. He, also in jest,
agreed to do so. Much to his astonishment, he learned, a few months later, that
she had actually returned with Mrs. Able, and his sensitive conscience made him
feel that the jest had turned into real earnest, and that he was in duty bound to
keep his promise if she wished him to do so. They had both changed since they
last met; neither proved quite pleasing to the other, yet an odd sort of courtship
was kept up, until, some time after Lincoln went to live in Springfield, Miss
Owens put an end to the affair by refusing him courteously but firmly. Meantime
he lived through much unhappiness and uncertainty of spirit, and made up his
mind "never again to think of marrying": a resolution which he kept—until
another Kentucky girl drove it from his thoughts.
Springfield had by this time become very lively and enterprising. There was a
deal of "flourishing around in carriages," as Lincoln wrote Miss Owens, and
business and politics and society all played an active part in the life of the little
town. The meetings of the legislature brought to the new capital a group of
young men of unusual talent and ability. There was friendly rivalry between
them, and party disputes ran high, but social good-humor prevailed, and the
presence of these brilliant young people, later to become famous as Presidential
candidates, cabinet ministers, senators, congressmen, orators, and battle heroes,
lent to the social gatherings of Springfield a zest rarely found in larger places.
Into the midst of this gaiety came Mary Todd of Kentucky, twenty-one years
old, handsome, accomplished and witty—a dashing and fascinating figure in
dress and conversation. She was the sister of Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, whose
husband was a prominent Whig member of the legislature—one of the "Long
Nine," as these men were known. Their added height was said to be fifty-five
feet, and they easily made up in influence what they lacked in numbers. Lincoln
was the "tallest" of them all in body and in mind, and although as poor as a
church mouse, was quite as welcome anywhere as the men who wore ruffled
shirts and could carry gold watches. Miss Todd soon singled out and held the
admiration of such of the Springfield beaux as pleased her somewhat wilful
fancy, and Lincoln, being much at the Edwards house, found himself, almost
before he knew it, entangled in a new love-affair. In the course of a twelvemonth
he was engaged to marry her, but something, nobody knows what or how,
happened to break the engagement, and to plunge him again in a very sea of
wretchedness. Nor is it necessary that we should know about it further than that
a great trouble came upon him, which he bore nobly, after his kind. Few men
have had his stern sense of duty, his tenderness of heart, his conscience, so easy
toward others, so merciless toward himself. The trouble preyed upon his mind
until he could think of nothing else. He became unable to attend to business, or
to take any part in the life around him. Fearing for his reason as well as for his
health if this continued, his good friend Joshua F. Speed carried him off, whether
he wished or no, for a visit to his own home in Kentucky. Here they stayed for
some time, and Lincoln grew much better, returning to Springfield about
midsummer, almost his old self, though far from happy.
An affair that helped to bring the lovers together again is so out of keeping
with the rest of his life, that it would deserve mention for that reason, if for no
other. This is nothing less than Lincoln's first and only duel. It happened that
James Shields, afterward a general in two wars and a senator from two States,
was at that time auditor of the State of Illinois, with his office at Springfield. He
was a Democrat, and an Irishman by birth, with an Irishman's quick temper and
readiness to take offense. He had given orders about collecting certain taxes
which displeased the Whigs, and shortly after Lincoln came back from Kentucky
a series of humorous letters ridiculing the auditor and his order appeared in the
Springfield paper, to the great amusement of the townspeople and the fury of
Shields. These letters were dated from the "Lost Townships," and were supposed
to be written by a farmer's widow signing herself "Aunt Rebecca." The real
writers were Miss Todd and a clever friend, who undertook them more for the
purpose of poking fun at Shields than for party effect. In framing the political
part of their attack, they had found it necessary to consult Lincoln, and he
obligingly set them a pattern by writing the first letter himself.
Shields sent to the editor of the paper to find out the name of the real
"Rebecca." The editor, as in duty bound, consulted Lincoln, and was told to give
Lincoln's name, but not to mention the ladies. Shields then sent Lincoln an angry
challenge; and Lincoln, who considered the whole affair ridiculous, and would
willingly have explained his part in it if Shields had made a gentlemanly inquiry,
chose as weapons "broadswords of the largest size," and named as conditions of
the duel that a plank ten feet long be firmly fixed on edge in the ground, as a line
over which neither combatant was to pass his foot upon forfeit of his life. Next,
lines were to be drawn upon the ground on each side of the plank, parallel with
it, at the distance of the whole length of the sword and three feet additional. The
passing of his own line by either man was to be deemed a surrender of the fight.
It is easy to see from these conditions that Lincoln refused to consider the
matter seriously, and determined to treat it as absurdly as it deserved. He and
Shields, and their respective seconds, with the broadswords, hurried away to an
island in the Mississippi River, opposite Alton; but long before the plank was set
up, or swords were drawn, mutual friends took the matter out of the hands of the
seconds, and declared a settlement of the difficulty.
The affair created much talk and merriment in Springfield, but Lincoln found
in it more than comedy. By means of it he and Miss Todd were again brought
together in friendly interviews, and on November 4, they were married at the
house of Mr. Edwards. Four children were born of this marriage: Robert Todd
Lincoln, August 1, 1843; Edward Baker Lincoln, March 10, 1846; William
Wallace Lincoln, December 21, 1850; and Thomas Lincoln, April 4, 1853.
Edward died while a baby; William, in the White House, February 20, 1862;
Thomas in Chicago, July 15, 1871; and the mother, Mary Lincoln, in
Springfield, July 16, 1882. Robert Lincoln was graduated from Harvard during
the Civil War, serving afterward on the staff of General Grant. He has since been
Secretary of War and Minister to England, and has held many other important
positions of trust.
His wedding over, Lincoln took up again the practical routine of daily life. He
and his bride were so poor that they could not make the visit to Kentucky that
both would so much have enjoyed. They could not even set up a little home of
their own. "We are not keeping house," he wrote to a friend, "but boarding at the
Globe Tavern," where, he added, their room and board only cost them four
dollars a week. His "National Debt" of the old New Salem days was not yet all
paid off, and patiently and resolutely he went on practising the economy he had
learned in the hard school of experience.
Lincoln's law partnership with John T. Stuart had lasted four years. Then
Stuart was elected to Congress, and another one was formed with Judge Stephen
T. Logan. It was a well-timed and important change. Stuart had always cared
more for politics than for law. With Logan law was the main object, and under
his guidance and encouragement Lincoln entered upon the study and practical
work of his profession in a more serious spirit than ever before. His interest in
politics continued, however, and in truth his practice at that time was so small as
to leave ample time for both. Stuart had been twice elected to Congress, and very
naturally Lincoln, who served his party quite as faithfully, and was fully as well
known, hoped for a similar honor. He had profited greatly by the companionship
and friendly rivalry of the talented young men of Springfield, but their talent
made the prize he wished the harder to gain. Twice he was disappointed, the
nomination going to other men; but in May, 1846, he was nominated, and in
August of the same year elected, to the Thirtieth Congress. He had the
distinction of being the only Whig member from his State, the other Illinois
congressmen at that time all being Democrats; but he proved no exception to the
general rule that a man rarely comes into notice during his first term in the
National House of Representatives. A new member has much to learn, even
when, like Lincoln, long service in a State legislature has taught him how the
business of making laws is carried on. He must find out what has been done and
is likely to be done on a multitude of subjects new to him, must make the
acquaintance of his fellow-members, must visit the departments of government
almost daily to look after the interests of people from his State and congressional
district. Legally he is elected for a term of two years. Practically a session of five
or six months during the first year, and of three months during the second,
further reduce his opportunities more than one-half.
Lincoln did not attempt to shine forth in debate, either by a stinging retort, or
burst of inspired eloquence. He went about his task quietly and earnestly,
performing his share of duty with industry and a hearty admiration for the ability
of better-known members. "I just take my pen," he wrote enthusiastically to a
friend after listening to a speech which pleased him much, "to say that Mr.
Stephens, of Georgia, is a little slim, pale-faced consumptive man, with a voice
like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length I ever
heard. My old withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet."
During the first session of his term Lincoln made three long speeches,
carefully prepared and written out beforehand. He was neither elated nor
dismayed at the result. "As to speech-making," he wrote William H. Herndon,
who had now become his law partner, "I find speaking here and elsewhere about
the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak
in court."
The next year he made no set speeches, but in addition to the usual work of a
congressman occupied himself with a bill that had for its object the purchase and
freeing of all slaves in the District of Columbia. Slavery was not only lawful at
the national capital at that time: there was, to quote Mr. Lincoln's own graphic
words, "in view from the windows of the Capitol a sort of negro livery-stable,
where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to
Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses."
To Lincoln and to other people who disapproved of slavery, the idea of human
beings held in bondage under the very shadow of the dome of the Capitol
seemed indeed a bitter mockery. As has already been stated, he did not then
believe Congress had the right to interfere with slavery in States that chose to
have it; but in the District of Columbia the power of Congress was supreme, and
the matter was entirely different. His bill provided that the Federal Government
should pay full value to the slave-holders of the District for all slaves in their
possession, and should at once free the older ones. The younger ones were to be
apprenticed for a term of years, in order to make them self-supporting, after
which they also were to receive their freedom. The bill was very carefully
thought out, and had the approval of residents of the District who held the most
varied views upon slavery; but good as it was, the measure was never allowed to
come to a vote, and Lincoln went back to Springfield, at the end of his term,
feeling doubtless that his efforts in behalf of the slaves had been all in vain.
While in Washington he lived very simply and quietly, taking little part in the
social life of the city, though cordially liked by all who made his acquaintance.
An inmate of the modest boarding-house where he had rooms has told of the
cheery atmosphere he seemed to bring with him into the common dining-room,
where political arguments were apt to run high. He never appeared anxious to
insist upon his own views; and when others, less considerate, forced matters
until the talk threatened to become too furious, he would interrupt with an
anecdote or a story that cleared the air and ended the discussion in a general
laugh. Sometimes for exercise he would go into a bowling-alley close by,
entering into the game with great zest, and accepting defeat and victory with
equal good-nature. By the time he had finished a little circle would be gathered
around him, enjoying his enjoyment, and laughing at his quaint expressions and
sallies of wit.
His gift for jest and story-telling has become traditional. Indeed, almost every
good story that has been invented within a hundred years has been laid at his
door. As a matter of fact, though he was fond of telling them, and told them well,
he told comparatively few of the number that have been credited to him. He had
a wonderful memory, and a fine power of making his hearers see the scene he
wished to depict; but the final charm of his stories lay in their aptness, and in the
kindly humor that left no sting behind it.
During his term in Congress the Presidential campaign of 1848 came on.
Lincoln took an active part in the nomination and election of General Zachary
Taylor—"Old Rough and Ready," as he was called—making speeches in
Maryland and Massachusetts, as well as in his own home district of Illinois. Two
letters that he wrote during this campaign have special interest for young
readers, for they show the sympathetic encouragement he gave to young men
anxious to make a place and a name for themselves in American politics.
"Now as to the young men," he wrote. "You must not wait to be brought
forward by the older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have
got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?
You young men get together and form a 'Rough and Ready' club, and have
regular meetings and speeches.... Let every one play the part he can play best—
some speak, some sing, and all 'holler.' Your meetings will be of evenings; the
older men, and the women, will go to hear you; so that it will not only contribute
to the election of 'Old Zach,' but will be an interesting pastime, and improving to
the intellectual faculties of all engaged."
In another letter, answering a young friend who complained of being
neglected, he said:
"Nothing could afford me more satisfaction than to learn that you and others
of my young friends at home are doing battle in the contest and taking a stand far
above any I have ever been able to reach.... I cannot conceive that other old men
feel differently. Of course I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young
once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back. I hardly know what to
say. The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can,
never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you that
suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There may
sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will
succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood
over the attempted injury. Cast about and see if this feeling has not injured every
person you have ever known to fall into it."
He was about forty years old when he wrote this letter. By some people that is
not considered a very great age; but he doubtless felt himself immensely older,
as he was infinitely wiser, than his petulant young correspondent.
General Taylor was triumphantly elected, and it then became Lincoln's duty,
as Whig member of Congress from Illinois, to recommend certain persons to fill
government offices in that State. He did this after he returned to Springfield, for
his term in Congress ended on March 4, 1849, the day that General Taylor
became President. The letters that he sent to Washington when forwarding the
papers and applications of people who wished appointment were both
characteristic and amusing; for in his desire not to mislead or to do injustice to
any man, they were very apt to say more in favor of the men he did not wish to
see appointed than in recommendation of his own particular candidates.
This absolute and impartial fairness to friend and foe alike was one of his
strongest traits, governing every action of his life. If it had not been for this, he
might possibly have enjoyed another term in Congress, for there had been talk of
reelecting him. In spite of his confession to Speed that "being elected to
Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not
pleased me as much as I expected," this must have been flattering. But there
were many able young men in Springfield who coveted the honor, and they had
entered into an agreement among themselves that each would be content with a
single term. Lincoln of course remained faithful to this promise. His strict
keeping of promises caused him also to lose an appointment from President
Taylor as Commissioner of the General Land Office, which might easily have
been his, but for which he had agreed to recommend some other Illinois man. A
few weeks later the President offered to make him governor of the new Territory
of Oregon. This attracted him much more than the other office had done, but he
declined because his wife was unwilling to live in a place so far away.
His career in Congress, while adding little to his fame at the time, proved of
great advantage to him in after life, for it gave him a close knowledge of the
workings of the Federal Government, and brought him into contact with political
leaders from all parts of the Union.
 V. THE CHAMPION OF FREEDOM
For four or five years after his return from Congress, Lincoln remained in
Springfield, working industriously at his profession. He was offered a law
partnership in Chicago, but declined on the ground that his health would not
stand the confinement of a great city. His business increased in volume and
importance as the months went by; and it was during this time that he engaged in
what is perhaps the most dramatic as well as the best known of all his law cases
—his defense of Jack Armstrong's son on a charge of murder. A knot of young
men had quarreled one night on the outskirts of a camp-meeting, one was killed,
and suspicion pointed strongly toward young Armstrong as the murderer.
Lincoln, for old friendship's sake, offered to defend him—an offer most
gratefully accepted by his family. The principal witness swore that he had seen
young Armstrong strike the fatal blow—had seen him distinctly by the light of a
bright moon. Lincoln made him repeat the statement until it seemed as if he were
sealing the death-warrant of the prisoner. Then Lincoln began his address to the
jury. He was not there as a hired attorney, he told them, but because of
friendship. He told of his old relations with Jack Armstrong, of the kindness the
prisoner's mother had shown him in New Salem, how he had himself rocked the
prisoner to sleep when the latter was a little child. Then he reviewed the
testimony, pointing out how completely everything depended on the statements
of this one witness; and ended by proving beyond question that his testimony
was false, since, according to the almanac, which he produced in court and
showed to judge and jury, THERE WAS NO MOON IN THE SKY THAT
NIGHT at the hour the murder was committed. The jury brought in a verdict of
"Not guilty," and the prisoner was discharged.
Lincoln was always strong with a jury. He knew how to handle men, and he
had a direct way of going to the heart of things. He had, moreover, unusual
powers of mental discipline. It was after his return from Congress, when he had
long been acknowledged one of the foremost lawyers of the State, that he made
up his mind he lacked the power of close and sustained reasoning, and set
himself like a schoolboy to study works of logic and mathematics to remedy the
defect. At this time he committed to memory six books of the propositions of
Euclid; and, as always, he was an eager reader on many subjects, striving in this
way to make up for the lack of education he had had as a boy. He was always
interested in mechanical principles and their workings, and in May, 1849,
patented a device for lifting vessels over shoals, which had evidently been
dormant in his mind since the days of his early Mississippi River experiences.
The little model of a boat, whittled out with his own hand, that he sent to the
Patent Office when he filed his application, is still shown to visitors, though the
invention itself failed to bring about any change in steamboat architecture.
In work and study time slipped away. He was the same cheery companion as
of old, much sought after by his friends, but now more often to be found in his
office surrounded by law-books and papers than had been the case before his
term in Congress. His interest in politics seemed almost to have ceased when, in
1854, something happened to rouse that and his sense of right and justice as they
had never been roused before. This was the repeal of the "Missouri
Compromise," a law passed by Congress in the year 1820, allowing Missouri to
enter the Union as a slave State, but positively forbidding slavery in all other
territory of the United States lying north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes,
which was the southern boundary-line of Missouri.
Up to that time the Southern States, where slavery was lawful, had been as
wealthy and quite as powerful in politics as the Northern or free States. The
great unoccupied territory lying to the west, which, in years to come, was sure to
be filled with people and made into new States, lay, however, mostly north of 36
degrees 30 minutes; and it was easy to see that as new free States came one after
the other into the Union the importance of the South must grow less and less,
because there was little or no territory left out of which slave States could be
made to offset them. The South therefore had been anxious to have the Missouri
Compromise repealed.
The people of the North, on the other hand, were not all wise or disinterested
in their way of attacking slavery. As always happens, self-interest and moral
purpose mingled on both sides; but, as a whole, it may be said that they wished
to get rid of slavery because they felt it to be wrong, and totally out of place in a
country devoted to freedom and liberty. The quarrel between them was as old as
the nation, and it had been gaining steadily in intensity. At first only a few
persons in each section had been really interested. By the year 1850 it had come
to be a question of much greater moment, and during the ten years that followed
was to increase in bitterness until it absorbed the thoughts of the entire people,
and plunged the country into a terrible civil war.
Abraham Lincoln had grown to manhood while the question was gaining in
importance. As a youth, during his flatboat voyages to New Orleans he had seen
negroes chained and beaten, and the injustice of slavery had been stamped upon
his soul. The uprightness of his mind abhorred a system that kept men in
bondage merely because they happened to be black. The intensity of his feeling
on the subject had made him a Whig when, as a friendless boy, he lived in a
town where Whig ideas were much in disfavor. The same feeling, growing
stronger as he grew older, had inspired the Lincoln-Stone protest and the bill to
free the slaves in the District of Columbia, and had caused him to vote at least
forty times against slavery in one form or another during his short term in
Congress. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, throwing open once more to
slavery a vast amount of territory from which it had been shut out, could not fail
to move him deeply. His sense of justice and his strong powers of reasoning
were equally stirred, and from that time until slavery came to its end through his
own act, he gave his time and all his energies to the cause of freedom.
Two points served to make the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of special
interest to Lincoln. The first was personal, in that the man who championed the
measure, and whose influence in Congress alone made it possible, was Senator
Stephen A. Douglas, who had been his neighbor in Illinois for many years.
The second was deeper. He realized that the struggle meant much more than
the freedom or bondage of a few million black men: that it was in reality a
struggle for the central idea of our American republic—the statement in our
Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." He made no public
speeches until autumn, but in the meantime studied the question with great care,
both as to its past history and present state. When he did speak it was with a
force and power that startled Douglas and, it is said, brought him privately to
Lincoln with the proposition that neither of them should address a public
meeting again until after the next election.
Douglas was a man of great ambition as well as of unusual political skill.
Until recently he had been heartily in favor of keeping slavery out of the
Northwest Territory; but he had set his heart upon being President of the United
States, and he thought that he saw a chance of this if he helped the South to
repeal the Missouri Compromise, and thus gained its gratitude and its votes.
Without hesitation he plunged into the work and labored successfully to
overthrow this law of more than thirty years' standing.
Lincoln's speech against the repeal had made a deep impression in Illinois,
where he was at once recognized as the people's spokesman in the cause of
freedom. His statements were so clear, his language so eloquent, the stand he
took so just, that all had to acknowledge his power. He did not then, nor for
many years afterward, say that the slaves ought to be immediately set free. What
he did insist upon was that slavery was wrong, and that it must not be allowed to
spread into territory already free; but that, gradually, in ways lawful and just to
masters and slaves alike, the country should strive to get rid of it in places where
it already existed. He never let his hearers lose sight of the great underlying
moral fact. "Slavery," he said, "is founded in the selfishness of man's nature;
opposition to it in his love of justice." Even Senator Douglas was not prepared to
admit that slavery was right. He knew that if he said that he could never be
President, for the whole North would rise against him. He wished to please both
sides, so he argued that it was not a question for him or for the Federal
Government to decide, but one which each State and Territory must settle for
itself. In answer to this plea of his that it was not a matter of morals, but of "State
rights"—a mere matter of local self-government—Mr. Lincoln replied, "When
the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs
himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government—that
is despotism."
It was on these opposing grounds that the two men took their stand for the
battle of argument and principle that was to continue for years, to outgrow the
bounds of the State, to focus the attention of the whole country upon them, and,
in the end, to have far-reaching consequences of which neither at that time
dreamed. At first the field appeared much narrower, though even then the reward
was a large one. Lincoln had entered the contest with no thought of political
gain; but it happened that a new United States senator from Illinois had to be
chosen about that time. Senators are not voted for by the people, but by the
legislatures of their respective States and as a first result of all this discussion
about the right or wrong of slavery it was found that the Illinois legislature,
instead of having its usual large Democratic majority, was almost evenly
divided. Lincoln seemed the most likely candidate; and he would have
undoubtedly been chosen senator, had not five men, whose votes were absolutely
necessary, stoutly refused to vote for a Whig, no matter what his views upon
slavery might be. Keeping stubbornly aloof, they cast their ballots time after
time for Lyman Trumbull, who was a Democrat, although as strongly opposed to
slavery as Lincoln himself.
A term of six years in the United States Senate must have seemed a large prize
to Lincoln just then—possibly the largest he might ever hope to gain; and it must
have been a hard trial to feel it so near and then see it slipping away from him.
He did what few men would have had the courage or the unselfishness to do.
Putting aside all personal considerations, and intent only on making sure of an
added vote against slavery in the Senate, he begged his friends to cease voting
for him and to unite with those five Democrats to elect Trumbull.
"I regret my defeat moderately," he wrote to a sympathizing friend, "but I am
not nervous about it." Yet it must have been particularly trying to know that with
forty-five votes in his favor, and only five men standing between him and
success, he had been forced to give up his own chances and help elect the very
man who had defeated him.
The voters of Illinois were quick to realize the sacrifice he had made. The five
stubborn men became his most devoted personal followers; and his action at this
time did much to bring about a great political change in the State. All over the
country old party lines were beginning to break up and re-form themselves on
this one question of slavery. Keeping its old name, the Democratic party became
the party in favor of slavery, while the Northern Whigs and all those Democrats
who objected to slavery joined in what became known as the Republican party. It
was at a great mass convention held in Bloomington in May, 1856, that the
Republican party of Illinois took final shape; and it was here that Lincoln made
the wonderful address which has become famous in party history as his "lost
speech." There had been much enthusiasm. Favorite speakers had already made
stirring addresses that had been listened to with eagerness and heartily
applauded; but hardly a man moved from his seat until Lincoln should be heard.
It was he who had given up the chance of being senator to help on the cause of
freedom. He alone had successfully answered Douglas. Every one felt the fitness
of his making the closing speech—and right nobly did he honor the demand. The
spell of the hour was visibly upon him. Standing upon the platform before the
members of the convention, his tall figure drawn up to its full height, his head
thrown back, and his voice ringing with earnestness, he denounced the evil they
had to fight in a speech whose force and power carried his hearers by storm,
ending with a brilliant appeal to all who loved liberty and justice to
 Come as the winds come when forests are rended;
Come as the waves come when navies are stranded;

and unite with the Republican party against this great wrong.
The audience rose and answered him with cheer upon cheer. Then, after the
excitement had died down, it was found that neither a full report nor even
trustworthy notes of his speech had been taken. The sweep and magnetism of his
oratory had carried everything before it—even the reporters had forgotten their
duty, and their pencils had fallen idle. So it happened that the speech as a whole
was lost. Mr. Lincoln himself could never recall what he had said; but the
hundreds who heard him never forgot the scene or the lifting inspiration of his
words.
Three weeks later the first national convention of the Republican party was
held. John C. Fremont was nominated for President, and Lincoln received over a
hundred votes for Vice-President, but fortunately, as it proved, was not selected,
the honor falling to William L. Dayton of New Jersey. The Democratic candidate
for President that year was James Buchanan, "a Northern man with Southern
principles," very strongly in favor of slavery. Lincoln took an active part in the
campaign against him, making more than fifty speeches in Illinois and the
adjoining States. The Democrats triumphed, and Buchanan was elected
President; but Lincoln was not discouraged, for the new Republican party had
shown unexpected strength throughout the North. Indeed, Lincoln was seldom
discouraged. He had an abiding faith that the people would in the long run vote
wisely; and the cheerful hope he was able to inspire in his followers was always
a strong point in his leadership.
In 1858, two years after this, another election took place in Illinois, on which
the choice of a United States senator depended. This time it was the term of
Stephen A. Douglas that was drawing to a close. He greatly desired reelection.
There was but one man in the State who could hope to rival him, and with a
single voice the Republicans of Illinois called upon Lincoln to oppose him.
Douglas was indeed an opponent not to be despised. His friends and followers
called him the "Little Giant." He was plausible, popular, quick-witted, had
winning manners, was most skilful in the use of words, both to convince his
hearers and, at times, to hide his real meaning. He and Lincoln were old
antagonists. They had first met in the far-away Vandalia days of the Illinois
legislature. In Springfield, Douglas had been the leader of the young Democrats,
while Lincoln had been leader of the younger Whigs. Their rivalry had not
always been confined to politics, for gossip asserted that Douglas had been one
of Miss Todd's more favored suitors. Douglas in those days had no great opinion
of the tall young lawyer; while Lincoln is said to have described Douglas as "the
least man I ever saw"—although that referred to his rival's small stature and
boyish figure, not to his mental qualities. Douglas was not only ambitious to be
President: he had staked everything on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
and his statement that this question of slavery was one that every State and
Territory must settle for itself, but with which the Federal Government had
nothing to do. Unfortunately, his own party no longer agreed with him. Since
Buchanan had become President the Democrats had advanced their ground.
They now claimed that while a State might properly say whether or not it would
tolerate slavery, slavery ought to be lawful in all the Territories, no matter
whether their people liked it or not.
A famous law case, called the Dred Scott case, lately decided by the Supreme
Court of the United States, went far toward making this really the law of the
land. In its decision the court positively stated that neither Congress nor a
territorial legislature had power to keep slavery out of any United States
Territory. This decision placed Senator Douglas in a most curious position. It
justified him in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but at the same time it
absolutely denied his statement that the people of a Territory had a right to settle
the slavery question to suit themselves. Being a clever juggler with words, he
explained away the difference by saying that a master might have a perfect right
to his slave in a Territory, and yet that right could do him no good unless it were
protected by laws in force where his slave happened to be. Such laws depended
entirely on the will of the people living in the Territory, and so, after all, they had
the deciding voice. This reasoning brought upon him the displeasure of President
Buchanan and all the Democrats who believed as he did, and Douglas found
himself forced either to deny what he had already told the voters of Illinois, or to
begin a quarrel with the President. He chose the latter, well knowing that to lose
his reelection to the Senate at this time would end his political career. His fame
as well as his quarrel with the President served to draw immense crowds to his
meetings when he returned to Illinois and began speech-making, and his
followers so inspired these meetings with their enthusiasm that for a time it
seemed as though all real discussion would be swallowed up in noise and
shouting.
Mr. Lincoln, acting on the advice of his leading friends, sent Douglas a
challenge to joint debate. Douglas accepted, though not very willingly; and it
was agreed that they should address the same meetings at seven towns in the
State, on dates extending through August, September, and October. The terms
were that one should speak an hour in opening, the other an hour and a half in
reply, and the first again have half an hour to close. Douglas was to open the
meeting at one place, Lincoln at the next.
It was indeed a memorable contest. Douglas, the most skilled and plausible
speaker in the Democratic party, was battling for his political life. He used every
art, every resource, at his command. Opposed to him was a veritable giant in
stature—a man whose qualities of mind and of body were as different from those
of the "Little Giant"—as could well be imagined. Lincoln was direct, forceful,
logical, and filled with a purpose as lofty as his sense of right and justice was
strong. He cared much for the senatorship, but he cared far more to right the
wrong of slavery, and to warn people of the peril that menaced the land. Already
in June he had made a speech that greatly impressed his hearers. "A house
divided against itself cannot stand," he told them. "I believe this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to
be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be
divided. It will become all one thing or all the other"; and he went on to say that
there was grave danger it might become all slave. He showed how, little by little,
slavery had been gaining ground, until all it lacked now was another Supreme
Court decision to make it alike lawful in all the States, North as well as South.
The warning came home to the people of the North with startling force, and
thereafter all eyes were fixed upon the senatorial campaign in Illinois.
The battle continued for nearly three months. Besides the seven great joint
debates, each man spoke daily, sometimes two or three times a day, at meetings
of his own. Once before their audiences, Douglas's dignity as a senator afforded
him no advantage, Lincoln's popularity gave him little help. Face to face with the
followers of each, gathered in immense numbers and alert with jealous
watchfulness, there was no escaping the rigid test of skill in argument and truth
in principle. The processions and banners, the music and fireworks, of both
parties were stilled and forgotten while the people listened to the three hours'
battle of mind against mind.
Northern Illinois had been peopled largely from the free States, and southern
Illinois from the slave States; thus the feeling about slavery in the two parts was
very different. To take advantage of this, Douglas, in the very first debate, which
took place at Ottawa, in northern Illinois, asked Lincoln seven questions, hoping
to make him answer in a way that would be unpopular farther south. In the
second debate Lincoln replied to these very frankly, and in his turn asked
Douglas four questions, the second of which was whether, in Douglas's opinion,
the people of any Territory could, in any lawful way, against the wish of any
citizen of the United States, bar out slavery before that Territory became a State.
Mr. Lincoln had long and carefully studied the meaning and effect of this
question. If Douglas said, "No," he would please Buchanan and the
administration Democrats, but at the cost of denying his own words. If he said,
"Yes," he would make enemies of every Democrat in the South. Lincoln's friends
all advised against asking the question. They felt sure that Douglas would
answer, "Yes," and that this would win him his election. "If you ask it, you can
never be senator," they told Lincoln. "Gentlemen," he replied, "I am killing
larger game. If Douglas answers he can never be President, and the battle of
1860 is worth a hundred of this."
Both prophecies were fulfilled. Douglas answered as was expected; and
though, in actual numbers, the Republicans of Illinois cast more votes than the
Democrats, a legislature was chosen that rejected him to the Senate. Two years
later, Lincoln, who in 1858 had not the remotest dream of such a thing, found
himself the successful candidate of the Republican party for President of the
United States.
To see how little Lincoln expected such an outcome it is only necessary to
glance at the letters he wrote to friends at the end of his campaign against
Douglas. Referring to the election to be held two years later, he said, "In that day
I shall fight in the ranks, but I shall be in no one's way for any of the places." To
another correspondent he expressed himself even more frankly: "Of course I
wished, but I did not much expect, a better result... . I am glad I made the late
race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I
could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall be
forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil
liberty long after I am gone."
But he was not to "sink out of view and be forgotten." Douglas himself
contributed not a little toward keeping his name before the public; for shortly
after their contest was ended the reelected senator started on a trip through the
South to set himself right again with the Southern voters, and in every speech
that he made he referred to Lincoln as the champion of "abolitionism." In this
way the people were not allowed to forget the stand Lincoln had taken, and
during the year 1859 they came to look upon him as the one man who could be
relied on at all times to answer Douglas and Douglas's arguments.
In the autumn of that year Lincoln was asked to speak in Ohio, where Douglas
was again referring to him by name. In December he was invited to address
meetings in various towns in Kansas, and early in 1860 he made a speech in
New York that raised him suddenly and unquestionably to the position of a
national leader.
It was delivered in the hall of Cooper Institute, on the evening of February 27,
1860, before an audience of men and women remarkable for their culture, wealth
and influence.
Mr. Lincoln's name and words had filled so large a space in the Eastern
newspapers of late, that his listeners were very eager to see and hear this rising
Western politician. The West, even at that late day, was very imperfectly
understood by the East. It was looked upon as a land of bowie-knives and
pistols, of steamboat explosions, of mobs, of wild speculation and wilder
adventure. What, then, would be the type, the character, the language of this
speaker? How would he impress the great editor Horace Greeley, who sat among
the invited guests; David Dudley Field, the great lawyer, who escorted him to the
platform; William Cullen Bryant, the great poet, who presided over the meeting?
The audience quickly forgot these questioning doubts. They had but time to
note Mr. Lincoln's unusual height, his rugged, strongly marked features, the clear
ring of his high-pitched voice, the commanding earnestness of his manner. Then
they became completely absorbed in what he was saying. He began quietly,
soberly, almost as if he were arguing a case before a court. In his entire address
he uttered neither an anecdote nor a jest. If any of his hearers came expecting the
style or manner of the Western stump-speaker, they met novelty of an unlooked-
for kind; for such was the apt choice of words, the simple strength of his
reasoning, the fairness of every point he made, the force of every conclusion he
drew, that his listeners followed him, spellbound. He spoke on the subject that he
had so thoroughly mastered and that was now uppermost in men's minds—the
right or wrong of slavery. He laid bare the complaints and demands of the
Southern leaders, pointed out the injustice of their threat to break up the Union if
their claims were not granted, stated forcibly the stand taken by the Republican
party, and brought his speech to a close with the short and telling appeal:
"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it."
The attention with which it was followed, the applause that greeted its telling
points, and the enthusiasm of the Republican journals next morning showed that
Lincoln's Cooper Institute speech had taken New York by storm. It was printed
in full in four of the leading daily papers of the city, and immediately reprinted
in pamphlet form. From New York Mr. Lincoln made a tour of speech-making
through several of the New England States, where he was given a hearty
welcome, and listened to with an eagerness that showed a marked result at the
spring elections. The interest of the working-men who heard these addresses was
equaled, perhaps excelled, by the pleased surprise of college professors and men
of letters when they found that the style and method of this self-taught popular
Western orator would stand the test of their most searching professional
criticism.
One other audience he had during this trip, if we may trust report, which,
while neither as learned as the college professors, nor perhaps as critical as the
factory-men, was quite as hard to please, and the winning of whose approval
shows another side of this great and many-sided man. A teacher in a Sunday-
school in the Five Points district of New York, at that time one of the worst parts
of the city, has told how, one morning, a tall, thin, unusual-looking man entered
and sat quietly listening to the exercises. His face showed such genuine interest
that he was asked if he would like to speak to the children. Accepting the
invitation with evident pleasure, he stepped forward and began a simple address
that quickly charmed the roomful of youngsters into silence. His language was
singularly beautiful, his voice musical with deep feeling. The faces of his little
listeners drooped into sad earnestness at his words of warning, and brightened
again when he spoke of cheerful promises. "Go on! Oh, do go on!" they begged
when at last he tried to stop. As he left the room somebody asked his name.
"Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois," was the courteous reply.
 VI. THE NEW PRESIDENT
Lincoln's great skill and wisdom in his debate with Douglas turned the eyes of
the whole country upon him; and the force and logic of his Cooper Institute
speech convinced every one that in him they had discovered a new national
leader. He began to be mentioned as a possible candidate for President in the
election which was to take place that fall to choose a successor to President
Buchanan. Indeed, quite a year earlier, an editor in Illinois had written to him
asking permission to announce him as a candidate in his newspaper. At that time
Lincoln had refused, thanking him for the compliment, but adding modestly: "I
must in candor say that I do not think myself fit for the Presidency." About
Christmas time, 1859, however, a number of his stanchest Illinois friends urged
him to let them use his name, and he consented, not so much in the hope of
being chosen, as of perhaps receiving the nomination for Vice-President, or at
least of making a show of strength that would aid him at some future time to
become senator. The man most talked about as the probable Republican
candidate for President was William H. Seward, who was United States senator
from New York, and had also been governor of that State.
The political unrest continued. Slavery was still the most absorbing topic, and
it was upon their stand for or against slavery that all the Presidential candidates
were chosen. The pretensions and demands of the Southern leaders had by this
time passed into threats. They declared roundly that they would take their States
out of the Union if slavery were not quickly made lawful all over the country, or
in case a "Black Republican" President should be elected. The Democrats,
unable to agree among themselves, split into two sections, the Northerners
nominating Stephen A. Douglas for President, while delegates who had come to
their National Convention from what were called the Cotton States chose John
C. Breckinridge. A few men who had belonged to the old Whig party, but felt
themselves unable to join the Republicans or either faction of the Democrats,
met elsewhere and nominated John Bell.
This breaking up of their political enemies into three distinct camps greatly
cheered the Republicans, and when their National Convention came together in
Chicago on May 16, 1860, its members were filled with the most eager
enthusiasm. Its meetings were held in a huge temporary wooden building called
the Wigwam, so large that 10,000 people could easily assemble in it to watch the
proceedings. Few conventions have shown such depth of feeling. Not only the
delegates on the central platform, but even the spectators seemed impressed with
the fact that they were taking part in a great historical event. The first two days
were taken up in seating delegates, adopting a "platform" or statement of party
principles, and in other necessary routine matters. On the third day, however, it
was certain that balloting would begin, and crowds hurried to the Wigwam in a
fever of curiosity. The New York men, sure that Seward would be the choice of
the convention, marched there in a body, with music and banners. The friends of
Lincoln arrived before them, and while not making so much noise or show, were
doing good work for their favorite. The long nominating speeches of later years
had not then come into fashion. "I take the liberty," simply said Mr. Evarts of
New York, "to name as a candidate to be nominated by this convention for the
office of President of the United States, William H. Seward," and at Mr.
Seward's name a burst of applause broke forth, so long and loud that it seemed
fairly to shake the great building. Mr. Judd, of Illinois, performed the same office
of friendship for Mr. Lincoln, and the tremendous cheering that rose from the
throats of his friends echoed and dashed itself against the sides of the Wigwam,
died down, and began anew, until the noise that had been made by Seward's
admirers dwindled to comparative feebleness. Again and again these contests of
lungs and enthusiasm were repeated as other names were presented to the
convention.
At last the voting began. Two names stood out beyond all the rest on the very
first ballot—Seward's and Lincoln's. The second ballot showed that Seward had
lost votes while Lincoln had gained them. The third ballot was begun in almost
painful suspense, delegates and spectators keeping count upon their tally-sheets
with nervous fingers. It was found that Lincoln had gained still more, and now
only needed one and a half votes to receive the nomination. Suddenly the
Wigwam became as still as a church. Everybody leaned forward to see who
would break the spell. A man sprang upon a chair and reported a change of four
votes to Lincoln. Then a teller shouted a name toward the skylight, and the boom
of a cannon from the roof announced the nomination and started the cheering
down the long Chicago streets; while inside delegation after delegation changed
its votes to the victor in a whirlwind of hurrahs. That same afternoon the
convention finished its labors by nominating Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for
Vice-President, and adjourned—the delegates, speeding homeward on the night
trains, realizing by the bonfires and cheering crowds at every little station that a
memorable Presidential campaign was already begun.
During this campaign there were, then, four Presidential candidates in the
field. In the order of strength shown at the election they were:
1. The Republican party, whose "platform," or statement of party principles,
declared that slavery was wrong, and that its further spread should be prevented.
Its candidates were Abraham Lincoln of Illinois for President, and Hannibal
Hamlin of Maine for Vice-President.
2. The Douglas wing of the Democratic party, which declared that it did not
pretend to decide whether slavery was right or wrong, and proposed to allow the
people of each State and Territory to choose for themselves whether they would
or would not have it. Its candidates were Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for
President, and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President.
3. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, which declared that slavery
was right, and whose policy was to extend it, and to make new slave States. Its
candidates were John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and Joseph
Lane of Oregon for Vice-President.
4. The Constitutional Union party, which ignored slavery in its platform,
declaring that it recognized no political principles other than "the Constitution of
the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." Its
candidates were John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of
Massachusetts for Vice-President.
In enthusiasm the Republicans quickly took the lead. "Wide Awake" clubs of
young men, wearing caps and capes of glazed oilcloth to protect their clothing
from the dripping oil of their torches, gathered in torchlight processions miles in
length. Fence rails, supposed to have been made by Lincoln in his youth, were
set up in party headquarters and trimmed with flowers and lighted tapers.
Lincoln was called the "Rail-splitter Candidate," and this telling name, added to
the equally telling "Honest Old Abe," by which he had long been known in
Illinois, furnished country and city campaign orators with a powerful appeal to
the sympathy and trust of the working-people of the United States. Men and
women read in newspaper and pamphlet biographies the story of his humble
beginnings: how he had risen by simple, earnest work and native genius, first to
fame and leadership in his own State, and then to fame and leadership in the
nation; and these titles quickly grew to be much more than mere party
nicknames—to stand for a faith and trust destined to play no small part in the
history of the next few years.
After the nominations were made Douglas went on a tour of speech-making
through the South. Lincoln, on the contrary, stayed quietly at home in
Springfield. His personal habits and surroundings varied little during the whole
of this campaign summer. Naturally he gave up active law practice, leaving his
office in charge of his partner, William H. Herndon. He spent the time during the
usual business hours of each day in the governor's room of the State-house at
Springfield, attended only by his private secretary, Mr. Nicolay. Friends and
strangers alike were able to visit him freely and without ceremony, and few went
away without being impressed by the sincere frankness of his manner and
conversation.
All sorts of people came to see him: those from far-away States, East and
West, as well as those from nearer home. Politicians came to ask him for future
favors, and many whose only motives were friendliness or curiosity called to
express their good wishes and take the Republican candidate by the hand.
He wrote no public letters, and he made no speeches beyond a few words of
thanks and greeting to passing street parades. Even the strictly private letters in
which he gave his advice on points in the campaign were not more than a dozen
in number; but all through the long summer, while welcoming his throngs of
visitors, listening to the tales of old settlers, making friends of strangers, and
binding old friends closer by his ready sympathy, Mr. Lincoln watched political
developments very closely, not merely to note the progress of his own chances,
but with an anxious view to the future in case he should be elected. Beyond the
ever-changing circle of friendly faces near him he saw the growing unrest and
anger of the South, and doubtless felt the uncertainty of many good people in the
North, who questioned the power of this untried Western man to guide the
country through the coming perils.
Never over-confident of his own powers, his mind must at times have been
full of misgivings; but it was only on the night of the election, November 6,
1860, when, sitting alone with the operators in the little telegraph-office at
Springfield, he read the messages of Republican victory that fell from the wires
until convinced of his election, that the overwhelming, almost crushing weight
of his coming duties and responsibilities fell upon him. In that hour, grappling
resolutely and alone with the problem before him, he completed what was really
the first act of his Presidency—the choice of his cabinet, of the men who were to
aid him. People who doubted the will or the wisdom of their Rail-splitter
Candidate need have had no fear. A weak man would have chosen this little band
of counselors—the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the half-
dozen others who were to stand closest to him and to be at the head of the great
departments of the government—from among his personal friends. A man
uncertain of his own power would have taken care that no other man of strong
nature with a great following of his own should be there to dispute his authority.
Lincoln did the very opposite. He had a sincere belief in public opinion, and a
deep respect for the popular will. In this case he felt that no men represented that
popular will so truly as those whose names had been considered by the
Republican National Convention in its choice of a candidate for President. So,
instead of gathering about him his friends, he selected his most powerful rivals
in the Republican party. William H. Seward, of New York, was to be his
Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, his Secretary of the Treasury;
Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, his Secretary of War; Edward Bates, of
Missouri, his Attorney-General. The names of all of these men had been before
the Convention. Each one had hoped to be President in his stead. For the other
three members of his Cabinet he had to look elsewhere. Gideon Welles, of
Connecticut, for Secretary of the Navy; Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, for
Postmaster-General; and Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, for Secretary of the Interior,
were finally chosen. When people complained, as they sometimes did, that by
this arrangement the cabinet consisted of four men who had been Democrats in
the old days, and only three who had been Whigs, Lincoln smiled his wise,
humorous smile and answered that he himself had been a Whig, and would
always be there to make matters even. It is not likely that this exact list was in
his mind on the night of the November election; but the principal names in it
most certainly were. To some of these gentlemen he offered their appointments
by letter. Others he asked to visit him in Springfield to talk the matter over.
Much delay and some misunderstanding occurred before the list was finally
completed: but when he sent it to the Senate, on the day after his inauguration, it
was practically the one he had in his mind from the beginning.
A President is elected by popular vote early in November, but he is not
inaugurated until the following fourth of March. Until the day of his
inauguration, when he takes the oath of office and begins to discharge his duties,
he is not only not President—he has no more power in the affairs of the
Government than the humblest private citizen. It is easy to imagine the anxieties
and misgivings that beset Mr. Lincoln during the four long months that lay
between his election and his inauguration. True to their threats never to endure
the rule of a "Black Republican" President, the Cotton States one after the other
withdrew their senators and representatives from Congress, passed what they
called "Ordinances of Secession," and declared themselves to be no longer a part
of the United States. One after another, too, army and navy officers stationed in
the Southern States gave up to the Southern leaders in this movement the forts,
navy-yards, arsenals, mints, ships, and other government property under their
charge. President Buchanan, in whose hands alone rested the power to punish
these traitors and avenge their insults to the government he had sworn to protect
and defend, showed no disposition to do so; and Lincoln, looking on with a
heavy heart, was unable to interfere in any way. No matter how anxiously he
might watch the developments at Washington or in the Cotton States, no matter
what appeals might be made to him, no action of any kind was possible on his
part.
The only bit of cheer that came to him and other Union men during this
anxious season of waiting, was in the conduct of Major Robert Anderson at
Charleston Harbor, who, instead of following the example of other officers who
were proving unfaithful, boldly defied the Southern "secessionists," and moving
his little handful of soldiers into the harbor fort best fitted for defense, prepared
to hold out against them until help could reach him from Washington.
In February the leaders of the Southern people met at Montgomery, Alabama,
adopted a Constitution, and set up a government which they called the
Confederate States of America, electing Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi,
President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President. Stephens was
the "little, slim pale-faced consumptive man" whose speech in Congress had
won Lincoln's admiration years before. Davis had been the child who began his
schooling so near to Lincoln in Kentucky. He had had a far different career.
Good fortune had carried him to West Point, into the Mexican War, into the
cabinet of President Franklin Pierce, and twice into the Senate. He had had
money, high office, the best education his country could give him—everything,
it seemed, that had been denied to Lincoln. Now the two men were the chosen
heads of two great opposing factions, one bent on destroying the government
that had treated him so kindly; the other, for whom it had done so little, willing
to lay down his life in its defense.
It must not be supposed that Lincoln remained idle during these four months
of waiting. Besides completing his cabinet, and receiving his many visitors, he
devoted himself to writing his inaugural address, withdrawing himself for some
hours each day to a quiet room over the store of his brother-in-law, where he
could think and write undisturbed. The newspaper correspondents who had
gathered at Springfield, though alert for every item of news, and especially
anxious for a sight of his inaugural address, seeing him every day as usual, got
not the slightest hint of what he was doing.
Mr. Lincoln started on his journey to Washington on February 11, 1861 two
days after Jefferson Davis had been elected President of the Confederate States
of America. He went on a special train, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and their
three children, his two private secretaries, and about a dozen personal friends.
Mr. Seward had suggested that because of the unsettled condition of public
affairs it would be better for the President-elect to come a week earlier; but Mr.
Lincoln allowed himself only time comfortably to fill the engagements he had
made to visit the State capitals and principal cities that lay on his way, to which
he had been invited by State and town officials, regardless of party. The morning
on which he left Springfield was dismal and stormy, but fully a thousand of his
friends and neighbors assembled to bid him farewell. The weather seemed to add
to the gloom and depression of their spirits, and the leave-taking was one of
subdued anxiety, almost of solemnity. Mr. Lincoln took his stand in the waiting-
room while his friends filed past him, often merely pressing his hand in silent
emotion. The arrival of the rushing train broke in upon this ceremony, and the
crowd closed about the car into which the President-elect and his party made
their way. Just as they were starting, when the conductor had his hand upon the
bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln stepped out upon the front platform and made the
following brief and pathetic address. It was the last time his voice was to be
heard in the city which had so long been his home:
"My Friends: No one not in my situation can appreciate my feeling of sadness
at this parting. To this place and the kindness of these people I owe everything.
Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old
man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not
knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than
that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being
who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.
Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere
for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care
commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an
affectionate farewell."
The conductor gave the signal, the train rolled slowly out of the station, and
the journey to Washington was begun. It was a remarkable progress. At almost
every station, even the smallest, crowds had gathered to catch a glimpse of the
face of the President-elect, or at least to see the flying train. At the larger
stopping-places these crowds swelled to thousands, and in the great cities to
almost unmanageable throngs. Everywhere there were calls for Mr. Lincoln, and
if he showed himself; for a speech. Whenever there was time, he would go to the
rear platform of the car and bow as the train moved away, or utter a few words of
thanks and greeting. At the capitals of Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey,
and Pennsylvania, and in the cities of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York,
and Philadelphia, halts of one or two days were made, the time being filled with
formal visits and addresses to each house of the legislature, street processions,
large evening receptions, and other ceremonies.
Party foes as well as party friends made up these expectant crowds. Every eye
was eager, every ear strained, to get some hint of the thoughts and purposes of
the man who was to be the guide and head of the nation in the crisis that every
one now knew to be upon the country, but the course and end of which the
wisest could not foresee. In spite of all the cheers and the enthusiasm, there was
also an under-current of anxiety for his personal safety, for the South had openly
boasted that Lincoln would never live to be inaugurated President. He himself
paid no heed to such warnings; but the railroad officials, and others who were
responsible for his journey, had detectives on watch at different points to report
any suspicious happenings. Nothing occurred to change the program already
agreed upon until the party reached Philadelphia; but there Mr. Lincoln was met
by Frederick W. Seward, the son of his future Secretary of State, with an
important message from his father. A plot had been discovered to do violence to,
and perhaps kill, the President-elect as he passed through the city of Baltimore.
Mr. Seward and General Scott, the venerable hero of the Mexican War, who was
now at the head of the army, begged him to run no risk, but to alter his plans so
that a portion of his party might pass through Baltimore by a night train without
previous notice. The seriousness of the warning was doubled by the fact that Mr.
Lincoln had just been told of a similar, if not exactly the same, danger, by a
Chicago detective employed in Baltimore by one of the great railroad
companies. Two such warnings, coming from entirely different sources, could
not be disregarded; for however much Mr. Lincoln might dislike to change his
plans for so shadowy a danger, his duty to the people who had elected him
forbade his running any unnecessary risk. Accordingly, after fulfilling all his
engagements in Philadelphia and Harrisburg on February 22, he and a single
companion took a night train, passed quietly through Baltimore, and arrived in
Washington about daylight on the morning of February 23. This action called
forth much talk, ranging from the highest praise to ridicule and blame. A
reckless newspaper reporter telegraphed all over the country the absurd story
that he had traveled disguised in a Scotch cap and a long military cloak. There
was, of course, not a word of truth in the absurd tale. The rest of the party
followed Mr. Lincoln at the time originally planned. They saw great crowds in
the streets of Baltimore, but there was now no occasion for violence.
In the week that passed between his arrival and the day of his inauguration
Mr. Lincoln exchanged the customary visits of ceremony with President
Buchanan, his cabinet, the Supreme Court, the two houses of Congress, and
other dignitaries.
Careful preparations for the inauguration had been made under the personal
direction of General Scott, who held the small military force in the city ready
instantly to suppress any attempt to disturb the peace and quiet of the day.
On the morning of the fourth of March President Buchanan and Citizen
Lincoln, the outgoing and incoming heads of the government, rode side by side
in a carriage from the Executive Mansion, or White House, as it is more
commonly called, to the Capitol, escorted by an imposing procession; and at
noon a great throng of people heard Mr. Lincoln read his inaugural address as he
stood on the east portico of the Capitol, surrounded by all the high officials of
the government. Senator Douglas, his unsuccessful rival, standing not an arm's
length away from him, courteously held his hat during the ceremony. A cheer
greeted him as he finished his address. Then the Chief Justice arose, the clerk
opened his Bible, and Mr. Lincoln, laying his hand upon the book, pronounced
the oath:
"I, Abraham Lincoln, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the
office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Amid the thundering of cannon and the applause of all the spectators,
President Lincoln and Citizen Buchanan again entered their carriage and drove
back from the Capitol to the Executive Mansion, on the threshold of which Mr.
Buchanan, warmly shaking the hand of his successor, expressed his wishes for
the personal happiness of the new President, and for the national peace and
prosperity.
 VII. LINCOLN AND THE WAR
It is one thing to be elected President of the United States,—that means
triumph, honor, power: it is quite another thing to perform the duties of
President,—for that means labor, disappointment, difficulty, even danger. Many
a man envied Abraham Lincoln when, in the stately pomp of inauguration and
with the plaudits of the spectators ringing about him, he took the oath of office
which for four years transforms an American citizen into the ruler of these
United States. Such envy would have been changed to deepest sympathy if they
could have known what lay before him. After the music and cannon were dumb,
after the flags were all furled and the cheering crowds had vanished, the shadows
of war fell about the Executive Mansion, and its new occupant remained face to
face with his heavy task—a task which, as he had truly said in his speech at
Springfield, was greater than that which rested upon Washington.
Then, as never before, he must have realized the peril of the nation, with its
credit gone, its laws defied, its flag insulted. The South had carried out its threat,
and seven million Americans were in revolt against the idea that "all men are
created equal," while twenty million other Americans were bent upon defending
that idea. For the moment both sides had paused to see how the new President
would treat this attempt at secession. It must be constantly borne in mind that the
rebellion in the Southern States with which Mr. Lincoln had to deal was not a
sudden revolution, but a conspiracy of slow growth and long planning. As one of
its actors frankly admitted, it was "not an event of a day. It is not anything
produced by Mr. Lincoln's election.... It is a matter which has been gathering
head for thirty years." Its main object, it must also be remembered, was the
spread of slavery. Alexander H. Stephens, in a speech made shortly after he
became the Confederate Vice-President, openly proclaimed slavery to be the
"corner-stone" of the new government. For years it had been the dream of
southern leaders to make the Ohio River the northern boundary of a great slave
empire, with everything lying to the south of that, even the countries of South
and Central America, as parts of their system. Though this dream was never to
be realized, the Confederacy finally came to number eleven States (Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Texas,
Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia), and to cover a territory of more
than 750,000 square miles—larger than England, Scotland, Ireland, France,
Spain, Germany and Switzerland put together, with a coast line 3,500 miles long,
and a land frontier of over 7,000 miles.
President Buchanan's timidity and want of spirit had alone made this great
rebellion possible, for although it had been "gathering head for thirty years" it
was only within the last few months that it had come to acts of open treason and
rebellion. President Buchanan had opportunity and ample power to crush it when
the conspirators first began to show their hands. Instead he wavered, and
delayed, while they grew bold under his lack of decision, imagining that they
would have a bloodless victory, and even boasting that they would take
Washington for their capital; or, if the new President should thwart them and
make them fight, that they would capture Philadelphia and dictate the peace they
wanted from Independence Hall.
By the time Mr. Lincoln came into office the conspiracy had grown beyond
control by any means then in the hands of a President, though men on both sides
still vainly hoped that the troubles of the country might be settled without
fighting. Mr. Lincoln especially wished to make very sure that if it ever came to
a matter of war, the fault should not lie with the North.
In his inaugural address he had told the South that he would use the power
confided to him to hold and occupy the places belonging to the Government, and
to collect the taxes; but beyond what might be necessary for these objects, he
would not use force among the people anywhere. His peaceful policy was
already harder to follow than he realized. Before he had been President twenty-
four hours word came from Major Anderson, still defying the conspirators from
Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, that his little garrison was short of food, and
must speedily surrender unless help reached them. The rebels had for weeks
been building batteries to attack the fort, and with Anderson's report came the
written opinions of his officers that it would require an army of 20,000 men to
relieve it. They might as well have asked for twenty thousand archangels, for at
that time the entire army of the United States numbered but 17,113 men, and
these were doing duty, not only in the Southern and Eastern States, but were
protecting settlers from Indians on the great western frontier, and guarding the
long Canadian and Mexican boundaries as well. Yet Anderson and his men could
not be left to their fate without even an attempt to help them, though some of the
high military and naval officers hastily called into council by the new President
advised this course. It was finally decided to notify the Confederates that a ship
carrying food, but no soldiers, would be sent to his relief. If they chose to fire
upon that it would be plainly the South, and not the North, that began the war.
Days went on, and by the middle of April the Confederate government found
itself forced to a fatal choice. Either it must begin war, or allow the rebellion to
collapse. All its claims to independence were denied; the commissioner it sent to
Washington on the pretense that they were agents of a foreign country were
politely refused a hearing, yet not one angry word, or provoking threat, or a
single harmful act had come from the "Black Republican" President. In his
inaugural he had promised the people of the South peace and protection, and
offered them the benefit of the mails. Even now, all he proposed to do was to
send bread to Anderson and his hungry soldiers. His prudent policy placed them
where, as he had told them, they could have no war unless they themselves chose
to begin it.
They did choose to begin it. The rebellion was the work of ambitious men,
who had no mind to stop at that late day and see their labor go for nothing. The
officer in charge of their batteries was ordered to open fire on Fort Sumter if
Anderson refused to surrender; and in the dim light of dawn on April 12, 1861,
just as the outline of Fort Sumter began to show itself against a brightening sky,
the shot that opened the Civil War rose from a rebel battery and made its slow
and graceful curve upon Sumter. Soon all the batteries were in action, and the
fort was replying with a will. Anderson held out for a day and a half, until his
cartridges were all used up, his flagstaff had been shot away, and the wooden
buildings inside the fort were on fire. Then, as the ships with supplies had not
yet arrived, and he had neither food nor ammunition, he was forced to surrender.
The news of the firing upon Fort Sumter changed the mood of the country as
if by magic. By deliberate act of the Confederate government its attempt at
peaceable secession had been changed to active war. The Confederates gained
Fort Sumter, but in doing so they roused the patriotism of the North to a firm
resolve that this insult to the flag should be redressed, and that the unrighteous
experiment of a rival government founded upon slavery as its "cornerstone,"
should never succeed. In one of his speeches on the journey to Washington Mr.
Lincoln had said that devoted as he was to peace, it might become necessary to
"put the foot down firmly." That time had now come. On April 15, the day after
the fall of Fort Sumter, all the newspapers of the country printed the President's
call to arms, ordering out 75,000 militia for three months, and directing
Congress to meet in special session on July 4, 1861. The North rallied instantly
to the support of the Government, and offered him twice the number of soldiers
he asked for.
Nothing more clearly shows the difference between President Lincoln and
President Buchanan than the way in which the two men met the acts of the
Southern Rebellion. President Buchanan temporized and delayed when he had
plenty of power. President Lincoln, without a moment's hesitation accepted the
great and unusual responsibility thrust upon him, and at once issued orders for
buying ships, moving troops, advancing money to Committees of Safety, and for
other military and naval measures for which at the moment he had no express
authority from Congress. As soon as Congress came together on July 4, he sent a
message explaining his action, saying: "It became necessary for me to choose
whether, using only the existing means.... which Congress had provided, I should
let the Government fall at once into ruin, or whether availing myself of the
broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of insurrection, I would
make an effort to save it with all its blessings for the present age and for
posterity." Congress, it is needless to say, not only approved all that he had done,
but gave him practically unlimited powers for dealing with the rebellion in
future.
It soon became evident that no matter how ready and willing to fight for their
country the 75,000 volunteers might be, they could not hope to put down the
rebellion, because the time for which they had enlisted would be almost over
before they could receive the training necessary to change them from valiant
citizens into good soldiers. Another call was therefore issued, this time for men
to serve three years or during the war, and also for a large number of sailors to
man the new ships that the Government was straining every nerve to buy, build
and otherwise make ready.
More important, however, than soldiers trained or untrained, was the united
will of the people of the North; and most important of all the steadfast and
courageous soul of the man called to direct the struggle. Abraham Lincoln, the
poor frontier boy, the struggling young lawyer, the Illinois politician, whom
many, even among the Republicans who voted to elect him President, thought
scarcely fit to hold a much smaller office, proved beyond question the man for
the task gifted above all his associates with wisdom and strength to meet the
great emergencies as they arose during the four years' war that had already
begun.
Since this is the story of Mr. Lincoln's life, and not of the Civil War, we
cannot attempt to follow the history of the long contest as it unfolded itself day
by day and month by month, or even to stop to recount a list of the great battles
that drenched the land in blood. It was a mighty struggle, fought by men of the
same race and kindred, often by brother against brother. Each fought for what he
felt to be right; and their common inheritance of courage and iron will, of
endurance and splendid bravery and stubborn pluck, made this battle of brothers
the more bitter as it was the more prolonged. It ranged over an immense extent
of country; but because Washington was the capital of the Union, and Richmond,
Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, and the desire of each side was to
capture the chief city of the other, the principal fighting ground, during the
whole war, lay between these two towns, with the Alleghany Mountains on the
west, and Chesapeake Bay on the east. Between the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi River another field of warfare developed itself, on which some of the
hardest battles were fought, and the greatest victories won. Beyond the
Mississippi again stretched another great field, bounded only by the Rocky
Mountains and the Rio Grande. But the principal fighting in this field was near
or even on the Mississippi, in the efforts made by both Unionists and
Confederates to keep and hold the great highway of the river, so necessary for
trade in time of peace, and for moving armies in time of war.
On this immense battle-ground was fought one of the most costly wars of
modern times, with soldiers numbering a million men on each side; in which,
counting battles and skirmishes small and great, an average of two engagements
a day were fought for four long years, two millions of money were used up every
twenty-four hours, and during which the unholy prize of slavery, for which the
Confederate States did battle, was completely swept away.
Though the tide of battle ebbed and flowed, defeat and victory may be said to
have been nearly evenly divided. Generally speaking, success was more often on
the side of the South during the first half of the war; with the North, during the
latter half. The armies were equally brave; the North had the greater territory
from which to draw supplies; and the end came, not when one side had beaten
the other, man for man, but when the South had been drained of fighting men
and food and guns, and slavery had perished in the stress of war.
Fortunately for all, nobody at the beginning dreamed of the length of the
struggle. Even Lincoln's stout heart would have been dismayed if he could have
foreseen all that lay before him. The task that he could see was hard and
perplexing enough. Everything in Washington was in confusion. No President
ever had such an increase of official work as Lincoln during the early months of
his administration. The halls and ante-rooms of the Executive Mansion were
literally crowded with people seeking appointment to office; and the new
appointments that were absolutely necessary were not half finished when the
firing on Fort Sumter began active war. This added to the difficulty of sifting the
loyal from the disloyal, and the yet more pressing labor of organizing an
immense new army.
Hundreds of clerks employed in the Government Departments left their desks
and hurried South, crippling the service just at the time when the sudden increase
of work made their presence doubly needed. A large proportion of the officers of
the Army and Navy, perhaps as many as one-third, gave their skill and services
to the Confederacy, feeling that their allegiance was due to their State or section
rather than to the general government. Prominent among these was Robert E.
Lee, who had been made a colonel by Lincoln, and whom General Scott had
recommended as the most promising officer to command the new force of
75,000 men called out by the President's proclamation. He chose instead to
resign and cast his fortunes with the South, where he became the head of all the
Confederate armies. The loss to the Union and gain to the Confederate cause by
his action is hard to measure, since in him the Southern armies found a
commander whose surpassing courage and skill inspired its soldiers long after all
hope of success was gone. Cases such as this gave the President more anxiety
than all else. It seemed impossible to know whom to trust. An officer might
come to him in the morning protesting devotion to the Union, and by night be
gone to the South. Mr. Lincoln used to say at this time that he felt like a man
letting rooms at one end of his house while the other end was on fire.
The situation grew steadily worse. Maryland refused to allow United States
soldiers to cross her territory, and the first attempt to bring troops through
Baltimore from the North ended in a bloody riot, and the burning of railroad
bridges to prevent help from reaching Washington. For three days Washington
was entirely cut off from the North, either by telegraph or mail. General Scott
hastily prepared the city for a siege, taking possession of all the large supplies of
flour and provisions in town, and causing the Capitol and other public buildings
to be barricaded. Though President Lincoln did not doubt the final arrival of
help, he, like everyone else, was very anxious, and found it hard to understand
the long delay. He knew that troops had started from the North. Why did they
not arrive? They might not be able to go through Baltimore, but they could
certainly go around it. The distance was not great. What if twenty miles of
railroad had been destroyed, were the soldiers unable to march? Always calm
and self-controlled, he gave no sign in the presence of others of the anxiety that
weighed so heavily upon him. Very likely the visitors who saw him during those
days thought that he hardly realized the plight of the city; yet an inmate of the
White House, passing through the President's office when the day's work was
done and he imagined himself alone, saw him pause in his absorbed walk up and
down the floor, and gaze long out of the window in the direction from which the
troops were expected to appear. Then, unconscious of any hearer, and as if the
words were wrung from him by anguish, he exclaimed, "Why don't they come,
why don't they come?"
The New York Seventh Regiment was the first to "come." By a roundabout
route it reached Washington on the morning of April 25, and, weary and travel-
worn, but with banners flying and music playing, marched up Pennsylvania
Avenue to the big white Executive Mansion, bringing cheer to the President and
renewed courage to those timid citizens whose fright during this time had almost
paralyzed the life of the town. Taking renewed courage they once more opened
their houses and the shops that had been closed since the beginning of the
blockade, and business began anew.
The greater part of the three months' regiments had been ordered to
Washington, and the outskirts of the capital soon became a busy military camp.
The great Departments of the Government, especially of War and Navy, could
not immediately handle the details of all this sudden increase of work. Men were
volunteering rapidly enough, but there was sore need of rations to feed them,
money to pay them, tents to shelter them, uniforms to clothe them, rifles to arm
them, officers to drill them, and of transportation to carry them to the camps of
instruction where they must receive their training and await further orders. In
this carnival of patriotism and hurly-burly of organization the weaknesses as
well as the virtues of human nature quickly showed themselves; and, as if the
new President had not already enough to distress and harass his mind, almost
every case of confusion and delay was brought to him for complaint and
correction. On him also fell the delicate and serious task of deciding hundreds of
novel questions as to what he and his cabinet ministers had and had not the right
to do under the Constitution.
The month of May slipped away in all these preparatory vexations; but the
great machine of war, once started, moved on as it always does, from arming to
massing of troops, and from that to skirmish and battle. In June small fights
began to occur between the Union and Confederate armies. The first large battle
of the war took place at Bull Run, about thirty-two miles southwest of
Washington, on July 21, 1861. It ended in a victory for the Confederates, though
their army was so badly crippled by. its losses that it made no further forward
movement during the whole of the next autumn and winter.
The shock of this defeat was deep and painful to the people of the North, not
yet schooled to patience, or to the uncertainties of war. For weeks the
newspapers, confident of success, had been clamoring for action, and the cry,
"Forward to Richmond," had been heard on every hand. At first the people
would not believe the story of a defeat; but it was only too true. By night the
beaten Union troops were pouring into the fortifications around Washington, and
the next day a horde of stragglers found their way across the bridges of the
Potomac into the city.
 President Lincoln received the news quietly, as was his habit, without any
visible sign of distress or alarm, but he remained awake and in his office all that
Sunday night, listening to the excited tales of congressmen and senators who,
with undue curiosity, had followed the army and witnessed some of the sights
and sounds of battle; and by dawn on Monday he had practically made up his
mind as to the probable result and what he must do in consequence.
The loss of the battle of Bull Run was a bitter disappointment to him. He saw
that the North was not to have the easy victory it anticipated; and to him
personally it brought a great and added care that never left him during the war.
Up to that time the North had stood by him as one man in its eager resolve to put
down the rebellion. From this time on, though quite as determined, there was
division and disagreement among the people as to how this could best be done.
Parties formed themselves for or against this or that general, or in favor of this or
that method and no other of carrying on the war. In other words, the President
and his "administration"—the cabinet and other officers under him—became,
from this time on, the target of criticism for all the failures of the Union armies,
and for all the accidents and mistakes and unforeseen delays of war. The self-
control that Mr. Lincoln had learned in the hard school of his boyhood, and
practised during all the long struggle of his young manhood, had been severe and
bitter training, but nothing else could have prepared him for the great
disappointments and trials of the crowning years of his life. He had learned to
endure patiently, to reason calmly, never to be unduly sure of his own opinion;
but, having taken counsel of the best advice at his command, to continue in the
path that he felt to be right, regardless of criticism or unjust abuse. He had daily
and hourly to do all this. He was strong and courageous, with a steadfast belief
that the right would triumph in the end; but his nature was at the same time
sensitive and tender, and the sorrows and pain of others hurt him more than did
his own.
 VIII. UNSUCCESSFUL GENERALS
So far Mr. Lincoln's new duties as President had not placed him at any
disadvantage with the members of his cabinet. On the old question of slavery he
was as well informed and had clearer ideas than they. On the new military
questions that had come up since the inauguration, they, like himself, had to rely
on the advice of experienced officers of the army and navy; and since these
differed greatly, Mr. Lincoln's powerful mind was as able to reach true
conclusions as were men who had been governors and senators. Yet the idea
lingered that because he had never before held high office, and because a large
part of his life had been passed in the rude surroundings of the frontier, he must
of necessity be lacking in power to govern—be weaker in will, without tact or
culture—must in every way be less fitted to cope with the difficult problems so
rapidly coming upon the administration.
At the beginning even Secretary Seward shared this view. Mr. Lincoln must
have been surprised indeed, when, on the first day of April, exactly four weeks
after his inauguration, his Secretary of State, the man he justly looked upon as
the chief member of his cabinet, handed him a paper on which were written
"Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." It was most grave and
dignified in language, but in substance bluntly told Mr. Lincoln that after a
month's trial the Administration was without a policy, domestic or foreign, and
that this must be remedied at once. It advised shifting the issue at home from
slavery to the question of Union or disunion; and counseled the adoption of an
attitude toward Europe which could not have failed to rouse the anger of the
principal foreign nations. It added that the President or some member of his
cabinet must make it his constant duty to pursue and direct whatever policy
should be adopted, and hinted very plainly that although he, Mr. Seward, did not
seek such responsibility, he was willing to assume it. The interest of this
remarkable paper for us lies in the way Mr. Lincoln treated it, and the measure
that treatment gives us of his generosity and self-control. An envious or a
resentful man could not have wished a better opportunity to put a rival under his
feet; but though Mr. Lincoln doubtless thought the incident very strange, it did
not for a moment disturb his serenity or his kindly judgment. He answered in a
few quiet sentences that showed no trace of passion or even of excitement; and
on the central suggestion that some one person must direct the affairs of the
government, replied with dignity "if this must be done, I must do it," adding that
on affairs of importance he desired and supposed he had a right to have the
advice of all the members of his cabinet. This reply ended the matter, and as far
as is known, neither of them ever mentioned the subject again. Mr. Lincoln put
the papers away in an envelope, and no word of the affair came to the public
until years after both men were dead. In one mind at least there was no longer a
doubt that the cabinet had a master. Mr. Seward recognized the President's kindly
forbearance, and repaid it by devotion and personal friendship until the day of
his tragic death.
If, after this experience, the Secretary of State needed any further proof of Mr.
Lincoln's ability to rule, it soon came to him, for during the first months of the
war matters abroad claimed the attention of the cabinet, and with these also the
untried western man showed himself better fitted to deal than his more
experienced advisers. Many of the countries of Europe, especially France and
England, wished the South to succeed. France because of plans that Emperor
Napoleon III had for founding French colonies on American soil, and England
because such success would give her free cotton for her mills and factories.
England became so friendly toward the rebels that Mr. Seward, much irritated,
wrote a despatch on May 21, 1861, to Charles Francis Adams, the American
Minister at London, which, if it had been sent as he wrote it, would almost
certainly have brought on war between the two countries. It set forth justly and
with courage what the United States government would and would not endure
from foreign powers during the war with the South, but it had been penned in a
heat of indignation, and was so blunt and exasperating as to suggest intentional
disrespect. When Mr. Seward read it to the President the latter at once saw this,
and taking it from his Secretary of State kept it by him for further consideration.
A second reading showed him that his first impression was correct. Thereupon
the frontier lawyer, taking his pen, went carefully over the whole dispatch, and
by his corrections so changed the work of the trained and experienced statesman
as entirely to remove its offensive tone, without in the least altering its force or
courage.
Once again during 1861 the country was in serious danger of war with
England, and the action of President Lincoln at this time proved not only that he
had the will to be just, even when his own people were against him, but had the
skill to gain real advantage from what seemed very like defeat. One of the
earliest and most serious tasks of the Government had been to blockade the
southern ports, in order to prevent supplies from foreign countries reaching the
southern people, especially the southern armies. Considering the great length of
coast to be patrolled, and the small size of the navy at the commencement of the
struggle, this was done with wonderful quickness, and proved in the main
effective, though occasionally a rebel boat managed to slip in or out without
being discovered and fired upon by the ships on guard.
In November Captain Charles Wilkes learned that Ex-Senators J. M. Mason
and John Slidell, two prominent Confederates bound on an important mission to
Europe, had succeeded in reaching Cuba, and from there had taken passage for
England on the British mail steamer Trent. He stopped the Trent and took Mason
and Slidell prisoners, afterward allowing the steamer to proceed on her way. The
affair caused intense excitement both in England and in the United States, and
England began instant preparations for war. Lord Lyons, the British Minister at
Washington, was instructed to demand the release of the prisoners and a suitable
apology within one week, and if this were refused, to close his legation and
come home. It was fortunate that Lord Lyons and Mr. Seward were close
personal friends, and could, in spite of the excitement of both countries, discuss
the matter calmly and without anger. Their conferences were brought to an end
by Mr. Lincoln's decision to give up the prisoners. In the North their capture had
been greeted with extravagant joy. Newspapers rang with praises of Captain
Wilkes; his act was officially approved by the Secretary of the Navy, and the
House of Representatives passed a resolution thanking him for his "brave, adroit,
and patriotic conduct." In the face of all this it must have been hard indeed for
Mr. Lincoln to order that Mason and Slidell be given up; but though he shared
the first impulse of rejoicing, he soon became convinced that this must be done.
War with England must certainly be avoided; and Captain Wilkes, by allowing
the Trent to proceed on her voyage, instead of bringing her into port with the
prisoners, had put it out of the power of his Government to prove, under
international law, that the capture was justified. Besides all else, the President's
quick mind saw, what others failed to note, that by giving up the prisoners as
England demanded, the United States would really gain an important diplomatic
victory. For many years England had claimed the right to stop and search vessels
at sea when she had reason to believe they carried men or goods hostile to her
interests. The United States denied the right, and yet this was exactly what
Captain Wilkes had done in stopping the Trent. By giving up the prisoners the
United States would thus force England to admit that her own claim had been
unjust, and bind her in future to respect the rights of other ships at sea. Excited
American feeling was grievously disappointed, and harsh criticism of the
Administration for thus yielding to a foreign country was not wanting; but
American good sense soon saw the justice of the point taken and the wisdom of
Mr. Lincoln's course.
 "He that is slow to anger," says the proverb, "is better than the mighty, and he
that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." Great as was his self-control in
other matters, nowhere did Mr. Lincoln's slowness to anger and nobility of spirit
show itself more than in his dealings with the generals of the Civil War. He had
been elected President. Congress had given him power far exceeding that which
any President had ever exercised before. As President he was also Commander-
in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. By proclamation he could
call forth great armies and he could order those armies to go wherever he chose
to send them; but even he had no power to make generals with the genius and the
training necessary to lead them instantly to success. He had to work with the
materials at hand, and one by one he tried the men who seemed best fitted for the
task, giving each his fullest trust and every aid in his power. They were as eager
for victory and as earnest of purpose as himself, but in every case some
misfortune or some fault marred the result, until the country grew weary with
waiting; discouragement overshadowed hope, and misgiving almost engulfed his
own strong soul. Then, at last, the right men were found, the battles were all
fought, and the war was at an end.
His kindness and patience in dealing with the generals who did not succeed is
the wonder of all who study the history of the Civil War. The letters he wrote to
them show better than whole volumes of description could do the helpful and
forbearing spirit in which he sought to aid them. First among these unsuccessful
generals was George B. McClellan, who had been called to Washington after the
battle of Bull Run and placed in charge of the great new army of three years'
volunteers that was pouring so rapidly into the city. McClellan proved a
wonderful organizer. Under his skilful direction the raw recruits went to their
camps of instruction, fell without confusion or delay into brigades and divisions,
were supplied with equipments, horses and batteries, and put through a routine
of drill, tactics and reviews that soon made this Army of the Potomac, as it was
called, one of the best prepared armies the world has ever seen—a perfect
fighting machine of over 150,000 men and more than 200 guns. General
McClellan excelled in getting soldiers ready to fight, but he did not succeed in
leading them to fruitful victory. At first the administration had great hopes of
him as a commander. He was young, enthusiastic, winning, and on arriving in
Washington seemed amazed and deeply touched by the confidence reposed in
him. "I find myself," he wrote to his wife, "in a new and strange position here,
President, cabinet, General Scott, and all, deferring to me. By some strange
operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land." His rise in
military rank had equaled the inventions of fairy tales. He had been only a
captain during the Mexican war. Then he resigned. Two months after
volunteering for the Civil War he found himself a Major General in the Regular
Army. For a short time his zeal and activity seemed to justify this amazing good
fortune. In a fortnight however he began to look upon himself as the principal
savior of his country. He entered upon a quarrel with General Scott which soon
drove that old hero into retirement and out of his pathway. He looked upon the
cabinet as a set of "geese," and seeing that the President was kind and
unassuming in discussing military affairs, he formed the habit of expressing
contempt for him in letters to confidential friends. This feeling grew until it soon
reached a mark of open disrespect, but the President's conduct toward him did
not change. Mr. Lincoln's nature was too forgiving, and the responsibility that
lay upon him was too heavy for personal resentment. For fifteen months he
strove to make McClellan succeed even in spite of himself. He gave him help,
encouragement, the most timely suggestions. He answered his ever-increasing
complaints with unfailing self-control. It was not that he did not see McClellan's
faults. He saw them, and felt them keenly. "If Gen. McClellan does not want to
use the army, I would like to borrow it," he said one day, stung by the General's
inactivity into a sarcasm he seldom allowed himself to use. But his patience was
not exhausted. McClellan had always more soldiers than the enemy, at Antietam
nearly double his numbers, yet his constant cry was for re-enforcements.
Regiments were sent him that could ill be spared from other points. Even when
his fault-finding reached the height of telegraphing to the Secretary of War, "If I
save this army now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other
persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army," the
President answered him kindly and gently, without a sign of resentment, anxious
only to do everything in his power to help on the cause of the war. It was of no
avail. Even the great luck of finding a copy of General Lee's orders and knowing
exactly what his enemy meant to do, at a time when the Confederate general had
only about half as many troops as he had, and these were divided besides, did
not help him to success. All he could do even then was to fight the drawn battle
of Antietam, and allow Lee to get away safely across the Potomac River into
Virginia. After this the President's long-suffering patience was at an end, but he
did not remove McClellan until he had visited the Army of the Potomac in
person. What he saw on that visit assured him that it could never succeed under
such a general. "Do you know what that is?" he asked a friend, waving his arm
towards the white tents of the great army. "It is the Army of the Potomac, I
suppose," was the wondering answer. "So it is called," replied the President, in a
tone of suppressed indignation. "But that is a mistake. It is only McClellan's
bodyguard." On November 5, 1862, McClellan was relieved from command, and
this ended his military career.
There were others almost equally trying. There was General Fremont, who
had been the Republican candidate for President in 1856. At the beginning of the
war he was given a command at St. Louis and charged with the important duty
of organizing the military strength of the northwest, holding the State of
Missouri true to the Union, and leading an expedition down the Mississippi
River. Instead of accomplishing all that had been hoped for, his pride of opinion
and unwillingness to accept help or take advice from those about him, caused
serious embarrassment and made unending trouble. The President's kindness and
gentleness in dealing with his faults were as marked as they were useless.
There was the long line of commanders who one after the other tried and
failed in the tasks allotted to them, while the country waited and lost courage,
and even Mr. Lincoln's heart sank. His care and wisdom and sorrow dominated
the whole long persistent struggle. That first sleepless night of his after the battle
of Bull Run was but the beginning of many nights and days through which he
kept unceasing watch. From the time in June, 1861, when he had been called
upon to preside over the council of war that decided upon the Bull Run
campaign, he devoted every spare moment to the study of such books upon the
art of war as would aid him in solving the questions that he must face as
Commander-in-Chief of the armies. With his quick mind and unusual power of
logic he made rapid progress in learning the fixed and accepted rules on which
all military writers agree. His mastery of the difficult science became so
thorough, and his understanding of military situations so clear, that he has been
called, by persons well fitted to judge, "the ablest strategist of the war." Yet he
never thrust his knowledge upon his generals. He recognized that it was their
duty, not his, to fight the battles, and since this was so, they ought to be allowed
to fight them in their own way. He followed their movements with keenest
interest and with a most astonishing amount of knowledge, giving a hint here,
and a suggestion there, when he felt that he properly could, but he rarely gave a
positive order.
There is not space to quote the many letters in which he showed his military
wisdom, or his kindly interest in the welfare and success of the different
generals. One of the most remarkable must however be quoted. It is the letter he
wrote to General Joseph Hooker on placing him in command of the Army of the
Potomac in January, 1863, after McClellan's many failures had been followed by
the crushing defeat of the army under General McClellan's successor, General
Burnside, at the battle of Fredericksburg, on December 13, 1862.
"I have placed you," he wrote on giving General Hooker the command, "at the
head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear
to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there
are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe
you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you
do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have
confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You
are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but
I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken
council of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you
did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable
brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently
saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it
was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those
generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is
military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support
you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done
and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided
to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding
confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can, to
put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any
good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now, beware of
rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward
and give us victories."
Perhaps no other piece of his writing shows as this does how completely the
genius of the President rose to the full height of his duties and responsibilities.
From beginning to end it speaks the language and breathes the spirit of the great
ruler, secure in popular confidence and in official authority.
Though so many of the great battles during the first half of the war were won
by the Confederates, military successes came to the North of course from time to
time. With such fine armies and such earnest generals the tide of battle could not
be all one way; and even when the generals made mistakes, the heroic fighting
and endurance of the soldiers and under-officers gathered honor out of defeat,
and shed the luster of renown over results of barren failure. But it was a weary
time, and the outlook was very dark. The President never despaired. On the most
dismal day of the whole dismal summer of 1862 he sent Secretary Seward to
New York with a confidential letter full of courage, to be shown such of the
governors of free States as could be hastily summoned to meet him there. In it he
said: "I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am
conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsake me," and he
asked for 100,000 fresh volunteers with which to carry on the war. His
confidence was not misplaced. The governors of eighteen free States offered him
three times the number, and still other calls for troops followed. Soon a popular
song, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong," showed
the faith and trust of the people in the man at the head of the Government, and
how cheerfully they met the great calls upon their patriotism.
So, week after week and month after month, he faced the future, never
betraying a fear that the Union would not triumph in the end, but grieving sorely
at the long delay. Many who were not so sure came to him with their troubles.
He was beset by night and by day by people who had advice to give or
complaints to make. They besought him to dismiss this or that General, to order
such and such a military movement; to do a hundred things that he, in his great
wisdom, felt were not right, or for which the time had not yet come. Above all,
he was implored to take some decided and far-reaching action upon slavery.
 IX. FREEDOM FOR THE SLAVES
By no means the least of the evils of slavery was a dread which had haunted
every southern household from the beginning of the government that the slaves
might one day rise in revolt and take sudden vengeance upon their masters. This
vague terror was greatly increased by the outbreak of the Civil War. It stands to
the lasting credit of the negro race that the wrongs of their long bondage
provoked them to no such crime, and that the war seems not to have suggested,
much less started any such attempt. Indeed, even when urged to violence by
white leaders, as the slaves of Maryland had been in 1859 during John Brown's
raid at Harper's Ferry, they had refused to respond. Nevertheless it was plain
from the first that slavery was to play an important part in the Civil War. Not
only were the people of the South battling for the principle of slavery; their
slaves were a great source of military strength. They were used by the
Confederates in building forts, hauling supplies, and in a hundred ways that
added to the effectiveness of their armies in the field. On the other hand the very
first result of the war was to give adventurous or discontented slaves a chance to
escape into Union camps, where, even against orders to the contrary, they found
protection for the sake of the help they could give as cooks, servants, or
teamsters, the information they brought about the movements of the enemy, or
the great service they were able to render as guides. Practically therefore, at the
very start, the war created a bond of mutual sympathy between the southern
negro and the Union volunteer; and as fast as Union troops advanced and
secession masters fled, a certain number found freedom in Union camps.
At some points this became a positive embarrassment to Union commanders.
A few days after General Butler took command of the Union troops at Fortress
Monroe in May, 1861, the agent of a rebel master came to insist on the return of
three slaves, demanding them under the fugitive-slave law. Butler replied that
since their master claimed Virginia to be a foreign country and no longer a part
of the United States, he could not at the same time claim that the fugitive slave
law was in force, and that his slaves would not be given up unless he returned
and took the oath of allegiance to the United States. In reporting this, a
newspaper pointed out that as the breastworks and batteries which had risen so
rapidly for Confederate defense were built by slave labor, negroes were
undoubtedly "contraband of war," like powder and shot, and other military
supplies, and should no more be given back to the rebels than so many cannon or
guns. The idea was so pertinent, and the justice of it so plain that the name
"contraband" sprang at once into use. But while this happy explanation had more
convincing effect on popular thought than a volume of discussion, it did not
solve the whole question. By the end of July General Butler had on his hands
900 "contrabands," men, women and children of all ages, and he wrote to inquire
what was their real condition. Were they slaves or free? Could they be
considered fugitive slaves when their masters had run away and left them? How
should they be disposed of? It was a knotty problem, and upon its solution might
depend the loyalty or secession of the border slave States of Maryland, West
Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, which, up to that time, had not decided
whether to remain in the Union or to cast their fortunes with the South.
In dealing with this perplexing subject. Mr. Lincoln kept in mind one of his
favorite stories: the one on the Methodist Presiding Elder who was riding about
his circuit during the spring freshets. A young and anxious companion asked
how they should ever be able to cross the swollen waters of Fox River, which
they were approaching, and the elder quieted him by saying that he made it the
rule of his life never to cross Fox River until he came to it. The President,
following this rule, did not immediately decide the question, but left it to be
treated at the discretion of each commander. Under this theory some
commanders admitted black people to their camps, while others refused to
receive them. The curt formula of General Orders: "We are neither negro stealers
nor negro catchers," was easily read to justify either course. Congress greatly
advanced the problem, shortly after the battle of Bull Run, by passing a law
which took away a master's right to his slave, when, with his consent, such slave
was employed in service or labor hostile to the United States.
On the general question of slavery, the President's mind was fully made up.
He felt that he had no right to interfere with slavery where slavery was lawful,
just because he himself did not happen to like it; for he had sworn to do all in his
power to "preserve, protect and defend" the government and its laws, and slavery
was lawful in the southern States. When freeing the slaves should become
necessary in order to preserve the Government, then it would be his duty to free
them; until that time came, it was equally his duty to let them alone.
Twice during the early part of the war military commanders issued orders
freeing slaves in the districts over which they had control, and twice he refused
to allow these orders to stand. "No commanding general should do such a thing
upon his responsibility, without consulting him," he said; and he added that
whether he, as Commander-in-Chief, had the power to free slaves, and whether
at any time the use of such power should become necessary, were questions
which he reserved to himself. He did not feel justified in leaving such decisions
to commanders in the field. He even refused at that time to allow Secretary
Cameron to make a public announcement that the government might find it
necessary to arm slaves and employ them as soldiers. He would not cross Fox
River until he came to it. He would not take any measure until he felt it to be
absolutely necessary.
Only a few months later he issued his first proclamation of emancipation; but
he did not do so until convinced that he must do this in order to put down the
rebellion. Long ago he had considered and in his own mind adopted a plan of
dealing with the slavery question—the simple, easy plan which, while a member
of Congress, he had proposed for the District of Columbia—that on condition of
the slave-owners voluntarily giving up their slaves, they should be paid a fair
price for them by the Federal government. Delaware was a slave State, and
seemed an excellent place in which to try this experiment of "compensated
emancipation," as it was called; for there were, all told, only 1798 slaves left in
the State. Without any public announcement of his purpose he offered to the
citizens of Delaware, through their representative in Congress, four hundred
dollars for each of these slaves, the payment to be made, not all at once, but
yearly, during a period of thirty-one years. He believed that if Delaware could be
induced to accept this offer, Maryland might follow her example, and that
afterward other States would allow themselves to be led along the same easy
way. The Delaware House of Representatives voted in favor of the proposition,
but five of the nine members of the Delaware senate scornfully repelled the
"abolition bribe," as they chose to call it, and the project withered in the bud.
Mr. Lincoln did not stop at this failure, but, on March 6, 1862, sent a special
message to the Senate and House of Representatives recommending that
Congress adopt a joint resolution favoring and practically offering gradual
compensated emancipation to any State that saw fit to accept it; pointing out at
the same time that the Federal government claimed no right to interfere with
slavery within the States, and that if the offer were accepted it must be done as a
matter of free choice.
The Republican journals of the North devoted considerable space to
discussing the President's plan, which, in the main, was favorably received; but it
was thought that it must fail on the score of expense. The President answered
this objection in a private letter to a Senator, proving that less than one-half day's
cost of war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars
each, and less than eighty-seven days' cost of war would pay for all in Delaware,
Maryland, the District of Columbia, Kentucky and Missouri. "Do you doubt," he
asked, that taking such a step "on the part of those States and this District would
shorten the war more than eighty-seven days, and thus be an actual saving of
expense?"
Both houses of Congress favored the resolution, and also passed a bill
immediately freeing the slaves in the District of Columbia on the payment to
their loyal owners of three hundred dollars for each slave. This last bill was
signed by the President and became a law on April 16, 1862. So, although he had
been unable to bring it about when a member of Congress thirteen years before,
it was he, after all, who finally swept away that scandal of the "negro livery-
stable" in the shadow of the dome of the Capitol.
Congress as well as the President was thus pledged to compensated
emancipation, and if any of the border slave States had shown a willingness to
accept the generosity of the government, their people might have been spared the
loss that overtook all slave-owners on the first of January, 1863. The President
twice called the representatives and senators of these States to the White House,
and urged his plan most eloquently, but nothing came of it. Meantime, the
military situation continued most discouraging. The advance of the Army of the
Potomac upon Richmond became a retreat; the commanders in the West could
not get control of the Mississippi River; and worst of all, in spite of their
cheering assurance that "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
thousand strong," the people of the country were saddened and filled with the
most gloomy forebodings because of the President's call for so many new troops.
"It had got to be midsummer, 1862," Mr. Lincoln said, in telling an artist
friend the history of his most famous official act. "Things had gone on from bad
to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of
operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and
must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of
the emancipation policy, and without consultation with, or the knowledge of the
cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious
thought, called a cabinet meeting upon the subject.... I said to the cabinet that I
had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice,
but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to
which would be in order after they had heard it read."
It was on July 22 that the President read to his cabinet the draft of this first
emancipation proclamation, which, after announcing that at the next meeting of
Congress he would again offer compensated emancipation to such States as
chose to accept it, went on to order as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy of the United States, that the slaves in all States which should be in
rebellion against the government on January 1, 1863, should "then,
thenceforward and forever be free."
Mr. Lincoln had given a hint of this intended step to Mr. Seward and Mr.
Welles, but to all the other members of the cabinet it came as a complete
surprise. One thought it would cost the Republicans the fall elections. Another
preferred that emancipation should be proclaimed by military commanders in
their several military districts. Secretary Seward, while approving the measure,
suggested that it would better be postponed until it could be given to the country
after a victory, instead of issuing it, as would be the case then, upon the greatest
disasters of the war. "The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me
with very great force," Mr. Lincoln's recital continues. "It was an aspect of the
case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The
result was that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch
for a picture, waiting for a victory."
The secrets of the administration were well kept, and no hint came to the
public that the President had proposed such a measure to his cabinet. As there
was at the moment little in the way of war news to attract attention, newspapers
and private individuals turned a sharp fire of criticism upon Mr. Lincoln. For this
they seized upon the ever-useful text of the slavery question. Some of them
protested indignantly that the President was going too fast; others clamored as
loudly that he had been altogether too slow. His decision, as we know, was
unalterably taken, although he was not yet ready to announce it. Therefore, while
waiting for a victory he had to perform the difficult task of restraining the
impatience of both sides. This he did in very positive language. To a man in
Louisiana, who complained that Union feeling was being crushed out by the
army in that State, he wrote:
"I am a patient man, always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of
repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still, I must save this
government if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as
well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any
available card unplayed." Two days later he answered another Louisiana critic.
"What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or
would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rosewater?
Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the
contest leaving any available means unapplied? I am in no boastful mood. I shall
not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is
my sworn duty, as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice.
What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing."
 The President could afford to overlook the abuse of hostile newspapers, but he
also had to meet the criticisms of over-zealous Republicans. The prominent
Republican editor, Horace Greeley, printed in his paper, the "New York
Tribune," a long "Open Letter," ostentatiously addressed to Mr. Lincoln, full of
unjust accusations, his general charge being that the President and many army
officers were neglecting their duty through a kindly feeling for slavery. The open
letter which Mr. Lincoln wrote in reply is remarkable not alone for the skill with
which he answered this attack, but also for its great dignity.
"As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant to leave
anyone in doubt.... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,
and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I
would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I
would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe
what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe
doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be
errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I
have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend
no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere
could be free."
He was waiting for victory, but victory was slow to come. Instead the Union
army suffered another defeat at the second battle of Bull Run on August 30,
1862. After this the pressure upon him to take some action upon slavery became
stronger than ever. On September 13 he was visited by a company of ministers
from the churches of Chicago, who came expressly to urge him to free the slaves
at once. In the actual condition of things he could of course neither safely satisfy
them nor deny them, and his reply, while perfectly courteous, had in it a tone of
rebuke that showed the state of irritation and high sensitiveness under which he
was living:
"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by
religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will.... I
hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would
reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be
supposed he would reveal it directly to me.... What good would a proclamation
of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to
issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative,
like the Pope's bull against the comet." "Do not misunderstand me.... I have not
decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves; but hold the matter under
advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind by day and
night more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do."
Four days after this interview the battle of Antietam was fought, and when,
after a few days of uncertainty it was found that it could be reasonably claimed
as a Union victory, the President resolved to carry out his long-matured purpose.
Secretary Chase in his diary recorded very fully what occurred on that ever-
memorable September 22, 1862. After some playful talk upon other matters, Mr.
Lincoln, taking a graver tone, said:
"Gentlemen: I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation
of this war to slavery, and you all remember that several weeks ago I read to you
an order I had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by
some of you, was not issued. Ever since then my mind has been much occupied
with this subject, and I have thought, all along, that the time for acting on it
might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time.
I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the
rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been
driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion.
When the rebel army was at Frederick I determined, as soon as it should be
driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I
thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to anyone, but I made the
promise to myself, and—[hesitating a little]—to my Maker. The rebel army is
now driven out, and I am going to fulfil that promise. I have got you together to
hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter,
for that I have determined for myself. This I say, without intending anything but
respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this
question.... I have considered them as thoroughly and carefully as I can. What I
have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say. If there is
anything in the expressions I use, or in any minor matter which any one of you
thinks had best be changed, I shall be glad to receive the suggestions. One other
observation I will make. I know very well that many others might, in this matter
as in others, do better than I can; and if I was satisfied that the public confidence
was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any
constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I
would gladly yield it to him. But, though I believe that I have not so much of the
confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things
considered, any other person has more; and however this may be, there is no way
in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here; I must do the best
I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to
take."
It was in this humble spirit, and with this firm sense of duty that the great
proclamation was given to the world. One hundred days later he completed the
act by issuing the final proclamation of emancipation.
It has been a long-established custom in Washington for the officials of the
government to go on the first day of January to the Executive Mansion to pay
their respects to the President and his wife. The judges of the courts go at one
hour, the foreign diplomats at another, members of Congress and senators and
officers of the Army and Navy at still another. One by one these various official
bodies pass in rapid succession before the head of the nation, wishing him
success and prosperity in the New Year. The occasion is made gay with music
and flowers and bright uniforms, and has a social as well as an official character.
Even in war times such customs were kept up, and in spite of his load of care,
the President was expected to find time and heart for the greetings and questions
and hand-shakings of this and other state ceremonies. Ordinarily it was not hard
for him. He liked to meet people, and such occasions were a positive relief from
the mental strain of his official work. It is to be questioned, however, whether, on
this day, his mind did not leave the passing stream of people before him, to dwell
on the proclamation he was so soon to sign.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon, after full three hours of such greetings
and handshakings, when his own hand was so weary it could scarcely hold a pen,
the President and perhaps a dozen friends, went up to the Executive Office, and
there, without any pre-arranged ceremony, he signed his name to the greatest
state paper of the century, which banished the curse of slavery from our land,
and set almost four million people free.
 X. THE MAN WHO WAS PRESIDENT
The way Mr. Lincoln signed this most important state paper was thoroughly in
keeping with his nature. He hated all shams and show and pretense, and being
absolutely without affectation of any kind, it would never have occurred to him
to pose for effect while signing the Emancipation Proclamation or any other
paper. He never thought of himself as a President to be set up before a multitude
and admired, but always as a President charged with duties which he owed to
every citizen. In fulfilling these he did not stand upon ceremony, but took the
most direct way to the end he had in view.
It is not often that a President pleads a cause before Congress. Mr. Lincoln did
not find it beneath his dignity at one time to go in person to the Capitol, and
calling a number of the leading senators and representatives around him, explain
to them, with the aid of a map, his reasons for believing that the final stand of
the Confederates would be made in that part of the South where the seven States
of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and
West Virginia come together; and strive in this way to interest them in the sad
plight of the loyal people of Tennessee who were being persecuted by the
Confederate government, but whose mountainous region might, with a little
help, be made a citadel of Union strength in the very heart of this stronghold of
rebellion.
In his private life he was entirely simple and unaffected. Yet he had a deep
sense of what was due his office, and took part with becoming dignity in all
official or public ceremonies. He received the diplomats sent to Washington
from the courts of Europe with a formal and quiet reserve which made them
realize at once that although this son of the people had been born in a log cabin,
he was ruler of a great nation, and more than that, was a prince by right of his
own fine instincts and good breeding.
He was ever gentle and courteous, but with a few quiet words he could silence
a bore who had come meaning to talk to him for hours. For his friends he had
always a ready smile and a quaintly turned phrase. His sense of humor was his
salvation. Without it he must have died of the strain and anxiety of the Civil War.
There was something almost pathetic in the way he would snatch a moment from
his pressing duties and gravest cares to listen to a good story or indulge in a
hearty laugh. Some people could not understand this. To one member of his
cabinet, at least, it seemed strange and unfitting that he should read aloud to
them a chapter from a humorous book by Artemus Ward before taking up the
weighty matter of the Emancipation Proclamation. From their point of view it
showed lack of feeling and frivolity of character, when, in truth, it was the very
depth of his feeling, and the intensity of his distress at the suffering of the war,
that led him to seek relief in laughter, to gather from the comedy of life strength
to go on and meet its sternest tragedy.
He was a social man. He could not fully enjoy even a jest alone. He wanted
somebody to share the pleasure with him. Often when care kept him awake late
at night he would wander through the halls of the Executive Mansion, and
coming to the room where his secretaries were still at work, would stop to read
to them some poem, or a passage from Shakspere, or a bit from one of the
humorous books in which he found relief. No one knew better than he what
could be cured, and what must be patiently endured. To every difficulty that he
could remove he gave cheerful and uncomplaining thought and labor. The
burdens he could not shake off he bore with silent courage, lightening them
whenever possible with the laughter that he once described as the "universal
joyous evergreen of life."
It would be a mistake to suppose that he cared only for humorous reading.
Occasionally he read a scientific book with great interest, but his duties left him
little time for such indulgences. Few men knew the Bible more thoroughly than
he did, and his speeches are full of scriptural quotations. The poem beginning
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" was one of his favorites, and Dr.
Holmes's "Last Leaf" was another. Shakespere was his constant delight. A copy
of Shakespere's works was even to be found in the busy Executive Office, from
which most books were banished. The President not only liked to read the great
poet's plays, but to see them acted; and when the gifted actor Hackett came to
Washington, he was invited to the White House, where the two discussed the
character of Falstaff, and the proper reading of many scenes and passages.
While he was President, Mr. Lincoln did not attempt to read the newspapers.
His days were long, beginning early and ending late, but they were not long
enough for that. One of his secretaries brought him a daily memorandum of the
important news they contained. His mail was so enormous that he personally
read only about one in every hundred of the letters sent him.
His time was principally taken up with interviews with people on matters of
importance, with cabinet meetings, conferences with his generals, and other
affairs requiring his close and immediate attention. If he had leisure he would
take a drive in the late afternoon, or perhaps steal away into the grounds south of
the Executive Mansion to test some new kind of gun, if its inventor had been
fortunate enough to bring it to his notice. He was very quick to understand
mechanical contrivances, and would often suggest improvements that had not
occurred to the inventor himself.
For many years it has been the fashion to call Mr. Lincoln homely. He was
very tall, and very thin. His eyes were deep-sunken, his skin of a sallow pallor,
his hair coarse, black, and unruly. Yet he was neither ungraceful, nor awkward,
nor ugly. His large features fitted his large frame, and his large hands and feet
were but right on a body that measured six feet four inches. His was a sad and
thoughtful face, and from boyhood he had carried a load of care. It was small
wonder that when alone, or absorbed in thought, the face should take on deep
lines, the eyes appear as if seeing something beyond the vision of other men, and
the shoulders stoop, as though they too were bearing a weight. But in a moment
all would be changed. The deep eyes could flash, or twinkle merrily with humor,
or look out from under overhanging brows as they did upon the Five Points
children in kindliest gentleness. In public speaking, his tall body rose to its full
height, his head was thrown back, his face seemed transfigured with the fire and
earnestness of his thought, and his voice took on a high clear tenor tone that
carried his words and ideas far out over the listening crowds. At such moments,
when answering Douglas in the heat of their joint-debate, or later, during the
years of war, when he pronounced with noble gravity the words of his famous
addresses, not one in the throngs that heard him could say with truth that he was
other than a handsome man.
It has been the fashion, too, to say that he was slovenly, and careless in his
dress. This also is a mistake. His clothes could not fit smoothly on his gaunt and
bony frame. He was no tailor's figure of a man; but from the first he clothed
himself as well as his means allowed, and in the fashion of the time and place. In
reading the grotesque stories of his boyhood, of the tall stripling whose trousers
left exposed a length of shin, it must be remembered not only how poor he was,
but that he lived on the frontier, where other boys, less poor, were scarcely better
clad. In Vandalia, the blue jeans he wore was the dress of his companions as
well, and later, from Springfield days on, clear through his presidency, his
costume was the usual suit of black broadcloth, carefully made, and scrupulously
neat. He cared nothing for style. It did not matter to him whether the man with
whom he talked wore a coat of the latest cut, or owned no coat at all. It was the
man inside the coat that interested him.
In the same way he cared little for the pleasures of the table. He ate most
sparingly. He was thankful that food was good and wholesome and enough for
daily needs, but he could no more enter into the mood of the epicure for whose
palate it is a matter of importance whether he eats roast goose or golden
pheasant, than he could have counted the grains of sand under the sea.
In the summers, while he was President, he spent the nights at a cottage at the
Soldiers' Home, a short distance north of Washington, riding or driving out
through the gathering dusk, and returning to the White House after a frugal
breakfast in the early morning. Ten o'clock was the hour at which he was
supposed to begin receiving visitors, but it was often necessary to see them
unpleasantly early. Occasionally they forced their way to his bedroom before he
had quite finished dressing. Throngs of people daily filled his office, the ante-
rooms, and even the corridors of the public part of the Executive Mansion. He
saw them all, those he had summoned on important business, men of high
official position who came to demand as their right offices and favors that he had
no right to give; others who wished to offer tiresome if well-meant advice; and
the hundreds, both men and women, who pressed forward to ask all sorts of help.
His friends besought him to save himself the weariness of seeing the people at
these public receptions, but he refused. "They do not want much, and they get
very little," he answered. "Each one considers his business of great importance,
and I must gratify them. I know how I would feel if I were in their place." And at
noon on all days except Tuesday and Friday, when the time was occupied by
meetings of the cabinet, the doors were thrown open, and all who wished might
enter. That remark of his, "I know how I would feel if I were in their place,"
explained it all. His early experience of life had drilled him well for these
ordeals. He had read deeply in the book of human nature, and could see the
hidden signs of falsehood and deceit and trickery from which the faces of some
of his visitors were not free; but he knew, too, the hard, practical side of life, the
hunger, cold, storms, sickness and misfortune that the average man must meet in
his struggle with the world. More than all, he knew and sympathized with that
hope deferred which makes the heart sick.
Not a few men and women came, sad-faced and broken-hearted, to plead for
soldier sons or husbands in prison, or under sentence of death by court-martial.
An inmate of the White House has recorded the eagerness with which the
President caught at any fact that would justify him in saving the life of a
condemned soldier. He was only merciless when meanness or cruelty were
clearly proved. Cases of cowardice he disliked especially to punish with death.
"It would frighten the poor devils too terribly to shoot them," he said. On the
papers in the case of one soldier who had deserted and then enlisted again, he
wrote: "Let him fight, instead of shooting him."
 He used to call these cases of desertion his "leg cases," and sometimes when
considering them, would tell the story of the Irish soldier, upbraided by his
captain, who replied: "Captain, I have a heart in me breast as brave as Julius
Caesar, but when I go into battle, Sor, these cowardly legs of mine will run away
with me."
As the war went on, Mr. Lincoln objected more and more to approving
sentences of death by court-martial, and either pardoned them outright, or
delayed the execution "until further orders," which orders were never given by
the great-hearted, merciful man. Secretary Stanton and certain generals
complained bitterly that if the President went on pardoning soldiers he would
ruin the discipline of the army; but Secretary Stanton had a warm heart, and it is
doubtful if he ever willingly enforced the justice that he criticized the President
for tempering with so much mercy.
Yet Mr. Lincoln could be sternly just when necessary. A law declaring the
slave trade to be piracy had stood on the statute books of the United States for
half a century. Lincoln's administration was the first to convict a man under it,
and Lincoln himself decreed that the well-deserved sentence be carried out.
Mr. Lincoln sympathized keenly with the hardships and trials of the soldier
boys, and found time, amid all his labors and cares, to visit the hospitals in and
around Washington where they lay ill. His afternoon drive was usually to some
camp in the neighborhood of the city; and when he visited one at a greater
distance, the cheers that greeted him as he rode along the line with the
commanding general showed what a warm place he held in their hearts.
He did not forget the unfortunate on these visits. A story is told of his
interview with William Scott, a boy from a Vermont farm, who, after marching
forty-eight hours without sleep, volunteered to stand guard for a sick comrade.
Weariness overcame him, and he was found asleep at his post, within gunshot of
the enemy. He was tried, and sentenced to be shot. Mr. Lincoln heard of the case,
and went himself to the tent where young Scott was kept under guard. He talked
to him kindly, asking about his home, his schoolmates, and particularly about his
mother. The lad took her picture from his pocket, and showed it to him without
speaking. Mr. Lincoln was much affected. As he rose to leave he laid his hand on
the prisoner s shoulder. "My boy," he said, "you are not going to be shot to-
morrow. I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep awake. I am
going to trust you, and send you back to your regiment. Now, I want to know
what you intend to pay for all this?" The lad, overcome with gratitude, could
hardly say a word, but crowding down his emotions, managed to answer that he
did not know. He and his people were poor, they would do what they could.
There was his pay, and a little in the savings bank. They could borrow something
by a mortgage on the farm. Perhaps his comrades would help. If Mr. Lincoln
would wait until pay day possibly they might get together five or six hundred
dollars. Would that be enough? The kindly President shook his head. "My bill is
a great deal more than that," he said. "It is a very large one. Your friends cannot
pay it, nor your family, nor your farm. There is only one man in the world who
can pay it, and his name is William Scott. If from this day he does his duty so
that when he comes to die he can truly say 'I have kept the promise I gave the
President. I have done my duty as a soldier,' then the debt will be paid." Young
Scott went back to his regiment, and the debt was fully paid a few months later,
for he fell in battle.
Mr. Lincoln's own son became a soldier after leaving college. The letter his
father wrote to General Grant in his behalf shows how careful he was that
neither his official position nor his desire to give his boy the experience he
wanted, should work the least injustice to others:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, January 19th, 1865.
Lieutenant-General Grant:
Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but only a
friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated at Harvard,
wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do not wish to put him in the
ranks, nor yet to give him a commission, to which those who have already
served long are better entitled, and better qualified to hold. Could he, without
embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your military family
with some nominal rank, I and not the public furnishing the necessary means? If
no, say so without the least hesitation, because I am as anxious and as deeply
interested that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.
Yours truly,
A. Lincoln.
His interest did not cease with the life of a young soldier. Among his most
beautiful letters are those he wrote to sorrowing parents who had lost their sons
in battle; and when his personal friend, young Ellsworth, one of the first and
most gallant to fall, was killed at Alexandria, the President directed that his body
be brought to the White House, where his funeral was held in the great East
Room.
Though a member of no church, Mr. Lincoln was most sincerely religious and
devout. Not only was his daily life filled with acts of forbearance and charity;
every great state paper that he wrote breathes his faith and reliance on a just and
merciful God. He rarely talked, even with intimate friends, about matters of
belief, but it is to be doubted whether any among the many people who came to
give him advice and sometimes to pray with him, had a better right to be called a
Christian. He always received such visitors courteously, with a reverence for
their good intention, no matter how strangely it sometimes manifested itself. A
little address that he made to some Quakers who came to see him in September,
1862, shows both his courtesy to them personally, and his humble attitude
toward God.
"I am glad of this interview, and glad to know that I have your sympathy and
prayers. We are indeed going through a great trial, a fiery trial. In the very
responsible position in which I happen to be placed, being a humble instrument
in the hands of our Heavenly Father as I am, and as we all are, to work out His
great purposes, I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to
His will, and that it might be so I have sought His aid; but if, after endeavoring
to do my best in the light which he affords me, I find my efforts fail, I must
believe that for some purpose unknown to me, He wills it otherwise. If I had had
my way, this war would never have been commenced. If I had been allowed my
way, this war would have been ended before this; but we find it still continues,
and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of His own,
mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited understandings we
may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe that He who made
the world still governs it."
Children held a warm place in the President's affections. He was not only a
devoted father; his heart went out to all little folk. He had been kind to babies in
his boyish days, when, book in hand, and the desire for study upon him, he
would sit with one foot on the rocker of a rude frontier cradle, not too selfishly
busy to keep its small occupant lulled and content, while its mother went about
her household tasks. After he became President many a sad-eyed woman
carrying a child in her arms went to see him, and the baby always had its share in
gaining her a speedy hearing, and if possible a favorable answer to her petition.
When children came to him at the White House of their own accord, as they
sometimes did, the favors they asked were not refused because of their youth.
One day a small boy, watching his chance, slipped into the Executive Office
between a governor and a senator, when the door was opened to admit them.
They were as much astonished at seeing him there as the President was, and
could not explain his presence; but he spoke for himself. He had come, he said,
from a little country town, hoping to get a place as page in the House of
Representatives. The President began to tell him that he must go to Captain
Goodnow, the doorkeeper of the House, for he himself had nothing to do with
such appointments. Even this did not discourage the little fellow. Very earnestly
he pulled his papers of recommendation out of his pocket, and Mr. Lincoln,
unable to resist his wistful face, read them, and sent him away happy with a
hurried line written on the back of them, saying: "If Captain Goodnow can give
this good little boy a place, he will oblige A. Lincoln."
It was a child who persuaded Mr. Lincoln to wear a beard. Up to the time he
was nominated for President he had always been smooth-shaven. A little girl
living in Chautauqua County, New York, who greatly admired him, made up her
mind that he would look better if he wore whiskers, and with youthful directness
wrote and told him so. He answered her by return mail:
Springfield, ILL., Oct. 19, 1860.
Miss Grace Bedelt,
My dear little Miss: Your very agreeable letter of the fifteenth is received. I
regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter. I have three sons, one
seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age. They, with their mother,
constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, never having worn any, do you
not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin now?
Your very sincere well-wisher,
A. Lincoln.
Evidently on second thoughts he decided to follow her advice. On his way to
Washington his train stopped at the town where she lived. He asked if she were
in the crowd gathered at the station to meet him. Of course she was, and willing
hands forced a way for her through the mass of people. When she reached the
car Mr. Lincoln stepped from the train, kissed her, and showed her that he had
taken her advice.
The Secretary who wrote about the President's desire to save the lives of
condemned soldiers tells us that "during the first year of the administration the
house was made lively by the games and pranks of Mr. Lincoln's two younger
children, William and Thomas. Robert the eldest was away at Harvard, only
coming home for short vacations. The two little boys, aged eight and ten, with
their western independence and enterprise, kept the house in an uproar. They
drove their tutor wild with their good-natured disobedience. They organized a
minstrel show in the attic; they made acquaintance with the office-seekers and
became the hot champions of the distressed. William was, with all his boyish
frolic, a child of great promise, capable of close application and study. He had a
fancy for drawing up railway time-tables, and would conduct an imaginary train
from Chicago to New York with perfect precision. He wrote childish verses,
which sometimes attained the unmerited honors of print. But this bright, gentle
and studious child sickened and died in February, 1862. His father was
profoundly moved by his death, though he gave no outward sign of his trouble,
but kept about his work, the same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed afterwards
to pour out its fulness on his youngest child. 'Tad' was a merry, warm-blooded,
kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, and full of odd fancies and inventions, the
'chartered libertine' of the Executive Mansion." He ran constantly in and out of
his father's office, interrupting his gravest labors. Mr. Lincoln was never too
busy to hear him, or to answer his bright, rapid, imperfect speech, for he was not
able to speak plainly until he was nearly grown. "He would perch upon his
father's knee, and sometimes even on his shoulder, while the most weighty
conferences were going on. Sometimes, escaping from the domestic authorities,
he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the whole evening, dropping to sleep
at last on the floor, when the President would pick him up, and carry him
tenderly to bed."
The letters and even the telegrams Mr. Lincoln sent his wife had always a
message for or about Tad. One of them shows that his pets, like their young
master, were allowed great liberty. It was written when the family was living at
the Soldiers' Home, and Mrs. Lincoln and Tad had gone away for a visit. "Tell
dear Tad," he wrote, "that poor Nanny Goat is lost, and Mrs. Cuthbert and I are
in distress about it. The day you left, Nanny was found resting herself and
chewing her little cud on the middle of Tad's bed; but now she's gone! The
gardener kept complaining that she destroyed the flowers, till it was concluded
to bring her down to the White House. This was done, and the second day she
had disappeared and has not been heard of since. This is the last we know of
poor Nanny."
Tad was evidently consoled by, not one, but a whole family of new goats, for
about a year later Mr. Lincoln ended a business telegram to his wife in New York
with the words: "Tell Tad the goats and Father are very well." Then, as the
weight of care rolled back upon this greathearted, patient man, he added, with
humorous weariness, "especially the goats."
Mr. Lincoln was so forgetful of self as to be absolutely without personal fear.
He not only paid no attention to the threats which were constantly made against
his life, but when, on July 11, 1864, the Confederate General Early appeared
suddenly and unexpectedly before the city with a force of 17,000 men, and
Washington was for two days actually in danger of assault and capture, his
unconcern gave his friends great uneasiness. On the tenth he rode out, as was his
custom, to spend the night at the Soldiers' Home, but Secretary Stanton, learning
that Early was advancing, sent after him, to compel his return. Twice afterward,
intent upon watching the fighting which took place near Fort Stevens, north of
the city, he exposed his tall form to the gaze and bullets of the enemy, utterly
heedless of his own peril; and it was not until an officer had fallen mortally
wounded within a few feet of him, that he could be persuaded to seek a place of
greater safety.
 XI. THE TURNING POINT OF THE WAR
In the summer of 1863 the Confederate armies reached their greatest strength.
It was then that, flushed with military ardor, and made bold by what seemed to
the southern leaders an unbroken series of victories on the Virginia battlefields,
General Lee again crossed the Potomac River, and led his army into the North.
He went as far as Gettysburg in Pennsylvania; but there, on the third of July,
1863, suffered a disastrous defeat, which shattered forever the Confederate
dream of taking Philadelphia and dictating peace from Independence Hall. This
battle of Gettysburg should have ended the war, for General Lee, on retreating
southward, found the Potomac River so swollen by heavy rains that he was
obliged to wait several days for the floods to go down. In that time it would have
been quite possible for General Meade, the Union commander, to follow him and
utterly destroy his army. He proved too slow, however, and Lee and his beaten
Confederate soldiers escaped. President Lincoln was inexpressibly grieved at
this, and in the first bitterness of his disappointment sat down and wrote General
Meade a letter. Lee "was within your easy grasp," he told him, "and to have
closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended
the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. ... Your golden
opportunity is gone and I am distressed immeasurably because of it." But Meade
never received this letter. Deeply as the President felt Meade's fault, his spirit of
forgiveness was so quick, and his thankfulness for the measure of success that
had been gained, so great, that he put it in his desk, and it was never signed or
sent.
The battle of Gettysburg was indeed a notable victory, and coupled with the
fall of Vicksburg, which surrendered to General Grant on that same third of July,
proved the real turning-point of the war. It seems singularly appropriate, then,
that Gettysburg should have been the place where President Lincoln made his
most beautiful and famous address. After the battle the dead and wounded of
both the Union and Confederate armies had received tender attention there. Later
it was decided to set aside a portion of the battlefield for a great national military
cemetery in which the dead found orderly burial. It was dedicated to its sacred
use on November 19, 1863. At the end of the stately ceremonies President
Lincoln rose and said:
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a
new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final
resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot
hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have
consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall
not perish from the earth."
With these words, so brief, so simple, so full of reverent feeling, he set aside
the place of strife to be the resting place of heroes, and then went back to his
own great task—for which he, too, was to give "the last full measure of
devotion."
Up to within a very short time little had been heard about Ulysses S. Grant,
the man destined to become the most successful general of the war. Like General
McClellan, he was a graduate of West Point; and also like McClellan, he had
resigned from the army after serving gallantly in the Mexican war. There the
resemblance ceased, for he had not an atom of McClellan's vanity, and his
persistent will to do the best he could with the means the government could give
him was far removed from the younger general's faultfinding and complaint. He
was about four years older than McClellan, having been born on April 27, 1822.
On offering his services to the War Department in 1861 he had modestly written:
"I feel myself competent to command a regiment if the President in his judgment
should see fit to intrust one to me." For some reason this letter remained
unanswered, although the Department, then and later, had need of trained and
experienced officers. Afterward the Governor of Illinois made him a colonel of
one of the three years' volunteer regiments; and from that time on he rose in
rank, not as McClellan had done, by leaps and bounds, but slowly, earning every
promotion. All of his service had been in the West, and he first came into general
notice by his persistent and repeated efforts to capture Vicksburg, on whose fall
the opening of the Mississippi River depended. Five different plans he tried
before he finally succeeded, the last one appearing utterly foolhardy, and
seeming to go against every known rule of military science. In spite of this it was
successful, the Union army and navy thereby gaining control of the Mississippi
River and cutting off forever from the Confederacy a great extent of rich
country, from which, up to that time, it had been drawing men and supplies.
The North was greatly cheered by these victories, and all eyes were turned
upon the successful commander. No one was more thankful than Mr. Lincoln.
He gave Grant quick promotion, and crowned the official act with a most
generous letter. "I do not remember that you and I ever met personally," he
wrote. "I write this now as a grateful acknowledgement for the almost
inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further."
Then, summing up the plans that the General had tried, especially the last one,
he added: "I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal
acknowledgement that you were right and I was wrong."
Other important battles won by Grant that same fall added to his growing
fame, and by the beginning of 1864 he was singled out as the greatest Union
commander. As a suitable reward for his victories it was determined to make him
Lieutenant-General. This army rank had, before the Civil War, been bestowed on
only two American soldiers—on General Washington, and on Scott, for his
conquest of Mexico. In 1864 Congress passed and the President signed an act to
revive the grade, and Grant was called to Washington to receive his commission.
He and Mr. Lincoln met for the first time at a large public reception held at the
Executive Mansion on the evening of March 8. A movement and rumor in the
crowd heralded his approach, and when at last the short, stocky, determined
soldier and the tall, care-worn, deep-eyed President stood face to face the crowd,
moved by a sudden impulse of delicacy, drew back, and left them almost alone
to exchange a few words. Later, when Grant appeared in the great East Room,
the enthusiasm called forth by his presence could no longer be restrained, and
cheer after cheer went up, while his admirers pressed about him so closely that,
hot and blushing with embarrassment, he was forced at last to mount a sofa, and
from there shake hands with the eager people who thronged up to him from all
sides.
The next day at one o'clock the President, in the presence of the cabinet and a
few other officials, made a little speech, and gave him his commission. Grant
replied with a few words, as modest as they were brief, and in conversation
afterward asked what special duty was required of him. The President answered
that the people wanted him to take Richmond, and asked if he could do it. Grant
said that he could if he had the soldiers, and the President promised that these
would be furnished him. Grant did not stay in Washington to enjoy the new
honors of his high rank, but at once set about preparations for his task. It proved
a hard one. More than a year passed before it was ended, and all the losses in
battle of the three years that had gone before seemed small in comparison with
the terrible numbers of killed and wounded that fell during these last months of
the war. At first Grant had a fear that the President might wish to control his
plans, but this was soon quieted; and his last lingering doubt on the subject
vanished when, as he was about to start on his final campaign, Mr. Lincoln sent
him a letter stating his satisfaction with all he had done, and assuring him that in
the coming campaign he neither knew, for desired to know, the details of his
plans. In his reply Grant confessed the groundlessness of his fears, and added,
"Should my success be less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is, the
fault is not with you."
He made no complicated plan for the problem before him, but proposed to
solve it by plain, hard, persistent fighting. "Lee's army will be your objective
point," he instructed General Meade. "Where Lee goes there you will go also."
Nearly three years earlier the opposing armies had fought their first battle of Bull
Run only a short distance north of where they now confronted each other.
Campaign and battle between them had swayed to the north and the south, but
neither could claim any great gain of ground or of advantage. The final struggle
was before them. Grant had two to one in numbers; Lee the advantage in
position, for he knew by heart every road, hill and forest in Virginia, had for his
friendly scout every white inhabitant, and could retire into prepared
fortifications. Perhaps the greatest element of his strength lay in the conscious
pride of his army that for three years it had steadily barred the way to Richmond.
To offset this there now menaced it what had always been absent before—the
grim, unflinching will of the new Union commander, who had rightly won for
himself the name of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
On the night of May 4, 1864, his army entered upon the campaign which, after
many months, was to end the war. It divided itself into two parts. For the first six
weeks there was almost constant swift marching and hard fighting, a nearly
equally matched contest of strategy and battle between the two armies, the
difference being that Grant was always advancing, and Lee always retiring.
Grant had hoped to defeat Lee outside of his fortifications, and early in the
campaign had expressed his resolution "to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer"; but the losses were so appalling, 60,000 of his best troops melting
away in killed and wounded during the six weeks, that this was seen to be
impossible. Lee's army was therefore driven into its fortifications around the
Confederate capital and then came the siege of Richmond, lasting more than
nine months, but pushed forward all that time with relentless energy, in spite of
Grant's heavy losses.
In the West, meanwhile, General William T. Sherman, Grant's closest friend
and brother officer, pursued a task of almost equal importance, taking Atlanta,
Georgia, which the Confederates had turned into a city of foundries and
workshops for the manufacture and repair of guns; then, starting from Atlanta,
marching with his best troops three hundred miles to the sea, laying the country
waste as they went; after which, turning northward, he led them through South
and North Carolina to bring his army in touch with Grant.
Against this background of fighting the life of the country went on. The end of
the war was approaching, surely, but so slowly that the people, hoping for it, and
watching day by day, could scarcely see it. They schooled themselves to a
dogged endurance, but there was no more enthusiasm. Many lost courage.
Volunteering almost ceased, and the government was obliged to begin drafting
men to make up the numbers of soldiers needed by Grant in his campaign
against Richmond.
The President had many things to dishearten him at this time, many
troublesome questions to settle. For instance, there were new loyal State
governments to provide in those parts of the South which had again come under
control of the Union armies—no easy matter, where every man, woman and
child harbored angry feelings against the North, and no matter how just and
forbearing he might be, his plans were sure to be thwarted and bitterly opposed
at every step.
There were serious questions, too, to be decided about negro soldiers, for the
South had raised a mighty outcry against the Emancipation Proclamation,
especially against the use of the freed slaves as soldiers, vowing that white
officers of negro troops would be shown small mercy, if ever they were taken
prisoners. No act of such vengeance occurred, but in 1864 a fort manned by
colored soldiers was captured by the Confederates, and almost the entire garrison
was put to death. Must the order that the War Department had issued some time
earlier, to offset the Confederate threats, now be put in force? The order said that
for every negro prisoner killed by the Confederates a Confederate prisoner in the
hands of the Union armies would be taken out and shot. It fell upon Mr. Lincoln
to decide. The idea seemed unbearable to him, yet, on the other hand, could he
afford to let the massacre go unavenged and thus encourage the South in the
belief that it could commit such barbarous acts and escape unharmed? Two
reasons finally decided him against putting the order in force. One was that
General Grant was about to start on his campaign against Richmond, and that it
would be most unwise to begin this by the tragic spectacle of a military
punishment, however merited. The other was his tender-hearted humanity. He
could not, he said, take men out and kill them in cold blood for crimes
committed by other men. If he could get hold of the persons who were guilty of
killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different; but he
could not kill the innocent for the guilty. Fortunately the offense was not
repeated, and no one had cause to criticize his clemency.
Numbers of good and influential men, dismayed at the amount of blood and
treasure that the war had already cost, and disheartened by the calls for still more
soldiers that Grant's campaign made necessary, began to clamor for peace—were
ready to grant almost anything that the Confederates chose to ask. Rebel agents
were in Canada professing to be able to conclude a peace. Mr. Lincoln, wishing
to convince these northern "Peace men" of the groundlessness of their claim, and
of the injustice of their charges that the government was continuing the war
unnecessarily, sent Horace Greeley, the foremost among them, to Canada, to talk
with the self-styled ambassadors of Jefferson Davis. Nothing came of it, of
course, except abuse of Mr. Lincoln for sending such a messenger, and a lively
quarrel between Greeley and the rebel agents as to who was responsible for the
misunderstandings that arose.
The summer and autumn of 1864 were likewise filled with the bitterness and
high excitement of a presidential campaign; for, according to law, Mr. Lincoln's
successor had to be elected on the "Tuesday after the first Monday" of
November in that year. The great mass of Republicans wished Mr. Lincoln to be
reelected. The Democrats had long ago fixed upon General McClellan, with his
grievances against the President, as their future candidate. It is not unusual for
Presidents to discover would-be rivals in their own cabinets. Considering the
strong men who formed Mr. Lincoln's cabinet, and the fact that four years earlier
more than one of them had active hopes of being chosen in his stead, it is
remarkable that there was so little of this.
The one who developed the most serious desire to succeed him was Salmon P.
Chase, his Secretary of the Treasury. Devoted with all his powers to the cause of
the Union, Mr. Chase was yet strangely at fault in his judgment of men. He
regarded himself as the friend of Mr. Lincoln, but nevertheless held so poor an
opinion of the President's mind and character, compared with his own, that he
could not believe people blind enough to prefer the President to himself. He
imagined that he did not want the office, and was anxious only for the public
good; yet he listened eagerly to the critics of the President who flattered his
hopes, and found time in spite of his great labors to write letters to all parts of
the country, which, although protesting that he did not want the honor, showed
his entire willingness to accept it. Mr. Lincoln was well aware of this. Indeed, it
was impossible not to know about it, though he refused to hear the matter
discussed or to read any letters concerning it. He had his own opinion of the taste
displayed by Mr. Chase, but chose to take no notice of his actions. "I have
determined," he said, "to shut my eyes, so far as possible, to everything of the
sort. Mr. Chase makes a good Secretary, and I shall keep him where he is. If he
becomes President, all right. I hope we may never have a worse man," and he not
only kept him where he was, but went on appointing Chase's friends to office.
There was also some talk of making General Grant the Republican candidate
for President, and an attempt was even made to trap Mr. Lincoln into taking part
in a meeting where this was to be done. Mr. Lincoln refused to attend, and
instead wrote a letter of such hearty and generous approval of Grant and his
army that the meeting naturally fell into the hands of Mr. Lincoln's friends.
General Grant, never at that time or any other, gave the least encouragement to
the efforts which were made to array him against the President. Mr. Lincoln, on
his part, received all warnings to beware of Grant in the most serene manner,
saying tranquilly, "If he takes Richmond, let him have it." It was not so with
General Fremont. At a poorly attended meeting held in Cleveland he was
actually nominated by a handful of people calling themselves the "Radical
Democracy," and taking the matter seriously, accepted, although, three months
later, having found no response from the public, he withdrew from the contest.
After all, these various attempts to discredit the name of Abraham Lincoln
caused hardly a ripple on the great current of public opinion, and death alone
could have prevented his choice by the Republican national convention. He took
no measures to help on his own candidacy. With strangers he would not talk
about the probability of his reelection; but with friends he made no secret of his
readiness to continue the work he was engaged in if such should be the general
wish. "A second term would be a great honor and a great labor; which together,
perhaps, I would not decline," he wrote to one of them. He discouraged
officeholders, either civil or military, who showed any special zeal in his behalf.
To General Schurz, who wrote asking permission to take an active part in the
campaign for his reelection, he answered: "I perceive no objection to your
making a political speech when you are where one is to be made; but quite
surely, speaking in the North and fighting in the South at the same time are not
possible, nor could I be justified to detail any officer to the political campaign...
and then return him to the army."
He himself made no long speeches during the summer, and in his short
addresses, at Sanitary Fairs, in answer to visiting delegations, and on similar
occasions where custom and courtesy obliged him to say a few words, he kept
his quiet ease and self-command, speaking heartily and to the point, yet avoiding
all the pitfalls that beset the candidate who talks.
When the Republican national convention came together in Baltimore on June
7, 1864, it had very little to do, for its delegates were bound by rigid instructions
to vote for Abraham Lincoln.
He was chosen on the first ballot, every State voting for him except Missouri,
whose representatives had been instructed to vote for Grant. Missouri at once
changed its vote, and the secretary of the convention read the grand total of 506
for Lincoln, his announcement being greeted by a storm of cheers that lasted
several minutes.
It was not so easy to choose a Vice-President. Mr. Lincoln had been besieged
by many people to make known his wishes in the matter, but had persistently
refused. He rightly felt that it would be presumptuous in him to dictate who
should be his companion on the ticket, and, in case of his death, his successor in
office. This was for the delegates to the convention to decide, for they
represented the voters of the country. He had no more right to dictate who should
be selected than the Emperor of China would have had. It is probable that Vice-
President Hamlin would have been renominated, if it had not been for the
general feeling both in and out of the convention that, under all the
circumstances, it would be wiser to select some man who had been a Democrat,
and had yet upheld the war. The choice fell upon Andrew Johnson of Tennessee,
who was not only a Democrat, but had been appointed by Mr. Lincoln military
governor of Tennessee in 1862.
The Democrats at first meant to have the national convention of their party
meet on the fourth of July; but after Fremont had been nominated at Cleveland
and Lincoln at Baltimore, they postponed it to a later date, hoping that
something in the chapter of accidents might happen to their advantage. At first it
appeared as if this might be the case. The outlook for the Republicans was far
from satisfactory. The terrible fighting and great losses of Grant's army in
Virginia had profoundly shocked and depressed the country. The campaign of
General Sherman, who was then in Georgia, showed as yet no promise of the
brilliant results it afterward attained. General Early's sudden raid into Maryland,
when he appeared so unexpectedly before Washington and threatened the city,
had been the cause of much exasperation; and Mr. Chase, made bitter by his
failure to receive the coveted nomination for President, had resigned from the
cabinet. This seemed, to certain leading Republicans, to point to a breaking up of
the government. The "Peace" men were clamoring loudly for an end of the war;
and the Democrats, not having yet formally chosen a candidate, were free to
devote all their leisure to attacks upon the administration.
Mr. Lincoln realized fully the tremendous issues at stake. He looked worn and
weary. To a friend who urged him to go away for a fortnight's rest, he replied, "I
cannot fly from my thoughts. My solicitude for this great country follows me
wherever I go. I do not think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not
free from these infirmities, but I cannot but feel that the weal or woe of this great
nation will be decided in November. There is no program offered by any wing of
the Democratic party but that must result in the permanent destruction of the
Union."
The political situation grew still darker. Toward the end of August the general
gloom enveloped even the President himself. Then what he did was most
original and characteristic. Feeling that the campaign was going against him, he
made up his mind deliberately the course he ought to pursue, and laid down for
himself the action demanded by his strong sense of duty. He wrote on August 23
the following memorandum: "This morning, as for some days past, it seems
exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected. Then it will
be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between
the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such
ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward."
He folded and pasted the sheet of paper in such a way that its contents could
not be seen, and as the cabinet came together handed it to each member
successively, asking him to write his name across the back of it. In this peculiar
fashion he pledged himself and his administration to accept loyally the verdict of
the people if it should be against them, and to do their utmost to save the Union
in the brief remainder of his term of office. He gave no hint to any member of
his cabinet of the nature of the paper thus signed until after his reelection.
The Democratic convention finally came together in Chicago on August 29. It
declared the war a failure, and that efforts ought to be made at once to bring it to
a close, and nominated General McClellan for President McClellan's only
chance of success lay in his war record. His position as a candidate on a platform
of dishonorable peace would have been no less desperate than ridiculous. In his
letter accepting the nomination, therefore, he calmly ignored the platform, and
renewed his assurances of devotion to the Union, the Constitution, and the flag
of his country. But the stars in their courses fought against him. Even before the
Democratic convention met, the tide of battle had turned. The darkest hour of the
war had passed, and dawn was at hand, and amid the thanksgivings of a grateful
people, and the joyful salute of great guns, the real presidential campaign began.
The country awoke to the true meaning of the Democratic platform; General
Sherman's successes in the South excited the enthusiasm of the people; and when
at last the Unionists, rousing from their midsummer languor, began to show their
faith in the Republican candidate, the hopelessness of all efforts to undermine
him became evident.
 XII. THE CONQUEROR OF A GREAT
REBELLION
The presidential election of 1864 took place on November 8. The diary of one
of the President's secretaries contains a curious record of the way the day passed
at the Executive Mansion. "The house has been still and almost deserted.
Everybody in Washington and not at home voting seems ashamed of it, and stays
away from the President. While I was talking with him to-day he said: 'It is a
little singular that I, who am not a vindictive man, should always have been
before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness. Always
but once. When I came to Congress it was a quiet time; but always besides that
the contests in which I have been prominent have been marked with great
rancor.'"
Early in the evening the President made his way through rain and darkness to
the War Department to receive the returns. The telegrams came, thick and fast,
all pointing joyously to his reelection. He sent the important ones over to Mrs.
Lincoln at the White House, remarking, "She is more anxious that I am." The
satisfaction of one member of the little group about him was coupled with the
wish that the critics of the administration might feel properly rebuked by this
strong expression of the popular will. Mr. Lincoln looked at him in kindly
surprise. "You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I," he said.
"Perhaps I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid. A man has not time to
spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember
the past against him." This state of mind might well have been called by a higher
name than "lack of personal resentment."
Lincoln and Johnson received a popular majority of 411,281, and 212 out of
233 electoral votes—only those of New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky, twenty-
one in all, being cast for McClellan.
For Mr. Lincoln this was one of the most solemn days of his life. Assured of
his personal success, and made devoutly confident by the military victories of
the last few weeks that the end of the war was at hand, he felt no sense of
triumph over his opponents. The thoughts that filled his mind found expression
in the closing sentences of the little speech that he made to some serenaders who
greeted him in the early morning hours of November 9, as he left the War
Department to return to the White House:
 "I am thankful to God for this approval of the people; but while deeply
grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude
is free from any taint of personal triumph.... It is no pleasure to me to triumph
over anyone, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's
resolution to stand by free government and the rights of humanity."
Mr. Lincoln's inauguration for his second term as President took place at the
time appointed, on March 4, 1865. There is little variation in the simple but
impressive pageantry with which the ceremony is celebrated. The principal
novelty commented on by the newspapers was the share which the people who
had up to that time been slaves, had for the first time in this public and political
drama. Associations of negro citizens joined in the procession, and a battalion of
negro soldiers formed part of the military escort. The central act of the occasion
was President Lincoln's second inaugural address, which enriched the political
literature of the nation with another masterpiece. He said:
"Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the
presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was
at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued,
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which
public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of
the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of
the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon
which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it
is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the
future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert
it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted
altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city
seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide
effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would
make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war
rather than let it perish. And the war came.
"One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves
constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was,
somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest
was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war;
while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it.
"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has
already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease
with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier
triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible,
and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may
seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing
their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be
not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been
answered fully.
"The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of
offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom
the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those
offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having
continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives
to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—
fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet; if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind
up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and
lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
The address ended, the Chief Justice arose, and the listeners who, for the
second time, heard Abraham Lincoln repeat the solemn words of his oath of
office, went from the impressive scene to their several homes in thankfulness
and confidence that the destiny of the nation was in safe keeping.
Nothing would have amazed Mr. Lincoln more than to hear himself called a
man of letters; and yet it would be hard to find in all literature anything to excel
the brevity and beauty of his address at Gettysburg or the lofty grandeur of this
Second Inaugural. In Europe his style has been called a model for the study and
imitation of princes, while in our own country many of his phrases have already
passed into the daily speech of mankind.
His gift of putting things simply and clearly was partly the habit of his own
clear mind, and partly the result of the training he gave himself in days of boyish
poverty, when paper and ink were luxuries almost beyond his reach, and the
words he wished to set down must be the best words, and the clearest and
shortest to express the ideas he had in view. This training of thought before
expression, of knowing exactly what he wished to say before saying it, stood
him in good stead all his life; but only the mind of a great man, with a lofty soul
and a poet's vision; one who had suffered deeply and felt keenly; who carried the
burden of a nation on his heart, whose sympathies were as broad and whose
kindness was as great as his moral purpose was strong and firm, could have
written the deep, forceful, convincing words that fell from his pen in the later
years of his life. It was the life he lived, the noble aim that upheld him, as well as
the genius with which he was born, that made him one of the greatest writers of
our time.
At the date of his second inauguration only two members of Mr. Lincoln's
original cabinet remained in office; but the changes had all come about gradually
and naturally, never as the result of quarrels, and with the single exception of
Secretary Chase, not one of them left the cabinet harboring feelings of
resentment or bitterness toward his late chief. Even when, in one case, it became
necessary for the good of the service, for Mr. Lincoln to ask a cabinet minister to
resign, that gentleman not only unquestioningly obeyed, but entered into the
presidential campaign immediately afterward, working heartily and effectively
for his reelection. As for Secretary Chase, the President was so little disturbed by
his attitude that, on the death of Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the United
States Supreme Court, he made him his successor, giving him the highest
judicial office in the land, and paying him the added compliment of writing out
his nomination with his own hand.
The keynote of the President's young life had been persevering industry. That
of his mature years was self-control and generous forgiveness. And surely his
remark on the night of his second election for President, that he did not think
resentment "paid," and that no man had time to spend half his life in quarrels,
was well borne out by the fruit of his actions. It was this spirit alone which made
possible much that he was able to accomplish. His rule of conduct toward all
men is summed up in a letter of reprimand that it became his duty, while he was
President, to send to one young officer accused of quarreling with another. It
deserves to be written in letters of gold on the walls of every school and college
throughout the land:
 "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 be bitten by him in
contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite."
It was this willingness of his to give up the "lesser things," and even the things
to which he could claim an equal right, which kept peace in his cabinet, made up
of men of strong wills and conflicting natures. Their devotion to the Union, great
as it was, would not have sufficed in such a strangely assorted official family;
but his unfailing kindness and good sense led him to overlook many things that
another man might have regarded as deliberate insults; while his great tact and
knowledge of human nature enabled him to bring out the best in people about
him, and at times to turn their very weaknesses into sources of strength. It made
it possible for him to keep the regard of every one of them. Before he had been
in office a month it had transformed Secretary Seward from his rival into his
lasting friend. It made a warm friend out of the blunt, positive, hot-tempered
Edwin M. Stanton, who became Secretary of War in place of Mr. Cameron. He
was a man of strong will and great endurance, and gave his Department a record
for hard and effective work that it would be difficult to equal. Many stories are
told of the disrespect he showed the President, and the cross-purposes at which
they labored. The truth is, that they understood each other perfectly on all
important matters, and worked together through three busy trying years with
ever-increasing affection and regard. The President's kindly humor forgave his
Secretary many blunt speeches. "Stanton says I am a fool?" he is reported to
have asked a busy-body who came fleet-footed to tell him of the Secretary's
hasty comment on an order of little moment. "Stanton says I am a fool? Well"—
with a whimsical glance at his informant—"then I suppose I must be. Stanton is
nearly always right." Knowing that Stanton was "nearly always right" it made
little difference to his chief what he might say in the heat of momentary
annoyance.
Yet in spite of his forbearance he never gave up the "larger things" that he felt
were of real importance; and when he learned at one time that an effort was
being made to force a member of the cabinet to resign, he called them together,
and read them the following impressive little lecture:
"I must myself be the judge how long to retain in, and when to remove any of
you from his position. It would greatly pain me to discover any of you
endeavoring to procure another's removal, or in any way to prejudice him before
the public. Such endeavor would be a wrong to me, and much worse, a wrong to
the country. My wish is that on this subject no remark be made, nor question
asked by any of you, here, or elsewhere, now, or hereafter."
This is one of the most remarkable speeches ever made by a President.
Washington was never more dignified; Jackson was never more peremptory.
The President's spirit of forgiveness was broad enough to take in the entire
South. The cause of the Confederacy had been doomed from the hour of his
reelection. The cheering of the troops which greeted the news had been heard
within the lines at Richmond, and the besieged town lost hope, though it
continued the struggle bravely if desperately. Although Horace Greeley's peace
mission to Canada had come to nothing, and other volunteer efforts in the same
direction served only to call forth a declaration from Jefferson Davis that he
would fight for the independence of the South to the bitter end, Mr. Lincoln
watched longingly for the time when the first move could be made toward peace.
Early in January, 1865, as the country was about to enter upon the fifth year of
actual war, he learned from Hon. Francis P. Blair, Sr., who had been in
Richmond, how strong the feeling of discouragement at the Confederate capital
had become. Mr. Blair was the father of Lincoln's first Postmaster-General, a
man of large acquaintance in the South, who knew perhaps better than anyone in
Washington the character and temper of the southern leaders. He had gone to
Richmond hoping to do something toward bringing the war to a close, but
without explaining his plans to anyone, and with no authority from the
government, beyond permission to pass through the military lines and return. His
scheme was utterly impracticable, and Mr. Lincoln was interested in the report of
his visit only because it showed that the rebellion was nearing its end. This was
so marked that he sent Mr. Blair back again to Richmond with a note intended
for the eye of Jefferson Davis, saying that the government had constantly been,
was then, and would continue to be ready to receive any agent Mr. Davis might
send, "with a view of securing peace to the people of our one common country."
Hopeless as their cause had by this time become, the Confederates had no
mind to treat for peace on any terms except independence of the southern States;
yet, on the other hand, they were in such straits that they could not afford to
leave Mr. Lincoln's offer untested. Mr. Davis therefore sent north his Vice-
President, Alexander H. Stephens, with two other high officials of the
Confederate government, armed with instructions which aimed to be liberal
enough to gain them admittance to the Union lines, and yet distinctly announced
that they came "for the purpose of securing peace to the two countries." This
difference in the wording of course doomed their mission in advance, for the
government at Washington had never admitted that there were "two countries,"
and to receive the messengers of Jefferson Davis on any such terms would be to
concede practically all that the South asked.
When they reached the Union lines the officer who met them informed them
that they could go no farther unless they accepted the President's conditions.
They finally changed the form of their request, and were taken to Fortress
Monroe. Meantime Mr. Lincoln had sent Secretary Seward to Fortress Monroe
with instructions to hear all they might have to say, but not to definitely conclude
anything. On learning the true nature of their errand he was about to recall him,
when he received a telegram from General Grant, regretting that Mr. Lincoln
himself could not see the commissioners, because, to Grant's mind, they seemed
sincere.
Anxious to do everything he could in the interest of peace, Mr. Lincoln,
instead of recalling Secretary Seward, telegraphed that he would himself come to
Fortress Monroe, and started that same night. The next morning, February 3,
1865, he and the Secretary of State received the rebel commissioners on board
the President's steamer, the River Queen.
This conference between the two highest officials of the United States
government, and three messengers from the Confederacy, bound, as the
President well knew beforehand, by instructions which made any practical
outcome impossible, brings out, in strongest relief, Mr. Lincoln's kindly
patience, even toward the rebellion. He was determined to leave no means
untried that might, however remotely, lead to peace. For four hours he patiently
answered the many questions they asked him, as to what would probably be
done on various subjects if the South submitted; pointing out always the
difference between the things that he had the power to decide, and those that
must be submitted to Congress; and bringing the discussion back, time and
again, to the three points absolutely necessary to secure peace—Union, freedom
for the slaves, and complete disbandment of the Confederate armies. He had
gone to offer them, honestly and frankly, the best terms in his power, but not to
give up one atom of official dignity or duty. Their main thought, on the contrary,
had been to postpone or to escape the express conditions on which they were
admitted to the conference.
They returned to Richmond and reported the failure of their efforts to
Jefferson Davis, whose disappointment equalled their own, for all had caught
eagerly at the hope that this interview would somehow prove a means of escape
from the dangers of their situation. President Lincoln, full of kindly thoughts, on
the other hand, went back to Washington, intent on making yet one more
generous offer to hasten the day of peace. He had told the commissioners that
personally he would be in favor of the government paying a liberal amount for
the loss of slave property, on condition that the southern States agree of their
own accord to the freedom of the slaves. (*) This was indeed going to the
extreme of liberality, but Mr. Lincoln remembered that notwithstanding all their
offenses the rebels were American citizens, members of the same nation and
brothers of the same blood. He remembered, too, that the object of the war,
equally with peace and freedom, was to preserve friendship and to continue the
Union. Filled with such thoughts and purposes he spent the day after his return
in drawing up a new proposal designed as a peace offering to the States in
rebellion. On the evening of February 5 he read this to his cabinet. It offered the
southern States $400,000,000 or a sum equal to the cost of war for two hundred
days, on condition that all fighting cease by the first of April, 1865. He proved
more liberal than any of his advisers; and with the words, "You are all against
me," sadly uttered, the President folded up the paper, and ended the discussion.
* Mr. Lincoln had freed the slaves two years before as a
military necessity, and as such it had been accepted by all.
Yet a question might arise, when the war ended, as to
whether this act of his had been lawful. He was therefore
very anxious to have freedom find a place in the
Constitution of the United States. This could only be done
by an amendment to the Constitution, proposed by Congress,
and adopted by the legislatures of three-fourths of the
States of the Union. Congress voted in favor of such an
amendment on January 31, 1865. Illinois, the President's own
State, adopted it on the very next day, and though Mr.
Lincoln did not live to see it a part of the Constitution,
Secretary Seward, on December 18, 1865, only a few months
after Mr. Lincoln's death, was able to make official
announcement that 29 States, constituting a majority of
three-fourths of the 36 States of the Union, had adopted it,
and that therefore it was the law of the land.

Jefferson Davis had issued a last appeal to "fire the southern heart," but the
situation at Richmond was becoming desperate Flour cost a thousand dollars a
barrel in Confederate money, and neither the flour nor the money were sufficient
for their needs. Squads of guards were sent into the streets with directions to
arrest every able-bodied man they met, and force him to work in defense of the
town. It is said that the medical boards were ordered to excuse no one from
military service who was well enough to bear arms for even ten days. Human
nature will not endure a strain like this, and desertion grew too common to
punish. Nevertheless the city kept up its defense until April 3. Even then,
although hopelessly beaten, the Confederacy was not willing to give in, and
much needless and severe fighting took place before the final end came. The
rebel government hurried away toward the South, and Lee bent all his energies
to saving his army and taking it to join General Johnston, who still held out
against Sherman. Grant pursued him with such energy that he did not even allow
himself the pleasure of entering the captured rebel capital. The chase continued
six days. On the evening of April 8 the Union army succeeded in planting itself
squarely across Lee's line of retreat; and the marching and fighting of his army
were over for ever. On the next morning the two generals met in a house on the
edge of the village of Appomattox, Virginia, Lee resplendent in a new uniform
and handsome sword, Grant in the travel-stained garments in which he had made
the campaign—the blouse of a private soldier, with the shoulder-straps of a
Lieutenant-General. Here the surrender took place. Grant, as courteous in victory
as he was energetic in war, offered Lee terms that were liberal in the extreme;
and on learning that the Confederate soldiers were actually suffering with
hunger, ordered that rations be issued to them at once.
Fire and destruction attended the flight of the Confederates from Richmond.
Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, carrying with them their more important state
papers, left the doomed city on one of the crowded and overloaded railroad
trains on the night of April 2, beginning a southward flight that ended only with
Mr. Davis's capture about a month later. The legislature of Virginia and the
governor of the State departed hurriedly on a canal-boat in the direction of
Lynchburg, while every possible carriage or vehicle was pressed into service by
the inhabitants, all frantic to get away before their city was "desecrated" by the
presence of the Yankees. By the time the military left, early on the morning of
April 3, the town was on fire. The Confederate Congress had ordered all
government tobacco and other public property to be burned. The rebel General
Ewell, who was in charge of the city, asserts that he took the responsibility of
disobeying, and that the fires were not started by his orders. Be that as it may,
they broke out in various places, while a mob, crazed with excitement, and wild
with the alcohol that had run freely in the gutters the night before, rushed from
store to store, breaking in the doors, and indulging in all the wantonness of
pillage and greed. Public spirit seemed paralyzed; no real effort was made to put
out the flames, and as a final horror, the convicts from the penitentiary,
overpowering their guards, appeared upon the streets, a maddened, shouting,
leaping crowd, drunk with liberty.
It is quite possible that the very size and suddenness of the disaster served in a
measure to lessen its evil effects; for the burning of seven hundred buildings, the
entire business portion of Richmond, all in the brief space of a day, was a
visitation so sudden, so stupefying and unexpected as to overawe and terrorize
even evildoers. Before a new danger could arise help was at hand. Gen. Weitzel,
to whom the city surrendered, took up his headquarters in the house lately
occupied by Jefferson Davis, and promptly set about the work of relief; fighting
the fire, issuing rations to the poor, and restoring order and authority. That a
regiment of black soldiers assisted in this work of mercy must have seemed to
the white inhabitants of Richmond the final drop in their cup of misery.
Into the rebel capital, thus stricken and laid waste, came President Lincoln on
the morning of April 4. Never in the history of the world has the head of a
mighty nation and the conqueror of a great rebellion entered the captured chief
city of the insurgents in such humbleness and simplicity. He had gone two weeks
before to City Point for a visit to General Grant, and to his son, Captain Robert
Lincoln, who was serving on Grant's staff. Making his home on the steamer that
brought him, and enjoying what was probably the most restful and satisfactory
holiday in which he had been able to indulge during his whole presidential
service, he had visited the various camps of the great army, in company with the
General, cheered everywhere by the loving greetings of the soldiers. He had met
Sherman when that commander hurried up fresh from his victorious march from
Atlanta; and after Grant had started on his final pursuit of Lee the President still
lingered. It was at City Point that the news came to him of the fall of Richmond.
Between the receipt of this news and the following forenoon, before any
information of the great fire had reached them, a visit to the rebel capital was
arranged for the President and Rear Admiral Porter. Ample precautions for their
safety were taken at the start. The President went in his own steamer, the River
Queen, with her escort, the Bat, and a tug used at City Point in landing from the
steamer. Admiral Porter went in his flagship; while a transport carried a small
cavalry escort, as well as ambulances for the party. Barriers in the river soon
made it impossible to proceed in this fashion, and one unforeseen accident after
another rendered it necessary to leave behind the larger and even the smaller
boats; until finally the party went on in the Admiral's barge rowed by twelve
sailors, without escort of any kind. In this manner the President made his entry
into Richmond, landing near Libby Prison. As the party stepped ashore they
found a guide among the contrabands who quickly crowded the streets, for the
possible coming of the President had already been noised through the city. Ten
of the sailors armed with carbines were formed as a guard, six in front, and four
in rear, and between them the President and Admiral Porter, with the three
officers who accompanied them, walked the long distance, perhaps a mile and a
half, to the centre of the town.
Imagination can easily fill in the picture of a gradually increasing crowd,
principally of negroes, following the little group of marines and officers with the
tall form of the President in its centre; and, when they learned that it was indeed
"Massa Lincum," expressing their joy and gratitude in fervent blessings and in
the deep emotional cries of the colored race. It is easy also to imagine the sharp
anxiety of those who had the President's safety in their charge during this
tiresome and even foolhardy march through a town still in flames, whose white
inhabitants were sullenly resentful at best, and whose grief and anger might at
any moment break out against the man they looked upon as the chief author of
their misfortunes. No accident befell him. He reached General Weitzel's
headquarters in safety, rested in the house Jefferson Davis had occupied while
President of the Confederacy; and after a day of sightseeing returned to his
steamer and to Washington, there to be stricken down by an assassin's bullet,
literally "in the house of his friends."
 XIII. THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL
Refreshed in body by his visit to City Point and greatly cheered by the fall of
Richmond, and unmistakable signs that the war was over, Mr. Lincoln went back
to Washington intent on the new task opening before him—that of restoring the
Union, and of bringing about peace and good will again between the North and
the South. His whole heart was bent on the work of "binding up the nation's
wounds" and doing all which lay in his power to "achieve a just and lasting
peace." Especially did he desire to avoid the shedding of blood, or anything like
acts of deliberate punishment. He talked to his cabinet in this strain on the
morning of April 14, the last day of his life. "No one need expect that he would
take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them," he
exclaimed. Enough lives had been sacrificed already. Anger must be put aside.
The great need now was to begin to act in the interest of peace. With these words
of clemency and kindness in their ears they left him, never again to come
together under his wise chairmanship.
Though it was invariably held in check by his vigorous common-sense, there
was in Mr. Lincoln's nature a strong vein of poetry and mysticism. That morning
he told his cabinet a strange story of a dream that he had had the night before—a
dream which he said came to him before great events. He had dreamed it before
the battles of Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. This time it
must foretell a victory by Sherman over Johnston's army, news of which was
hourly expected, for he knew of no other important event likely to occur. The
members of the cabinet were deeply impressed; but General Grant, who had
come to Washington that morning and was present, remarked with matter-of-fact
exactness that Murfreesboro was no victory and had no important results. Not
the wildest imagination of skeptic or mystic could have pictured the events under
which the day was to close.
It was Good Friday, a day observed by a portion of the people with fasting and
prayer, but even among the most devout the great news of the week just ended
changed this time of traditional mourning into a season of general thanksgiving.
For Mr. Lincoln it was a day of unusual and quiet happiness. His son Robert had
returned from the field with General Grant, and the President spent an hour with
the young captain in delighted conversation over the campaign. He denied
himself generally to visitors, admitting only a few friends. In the afternoon he
went for a long drive with Mrs. Lincoln. His mood, as it had been all day, was
singularly happy and tender. He talked much of the past and future. After four
years of trouble and tumult he looked forward to four years of quiet and normal
work; after that he expected to go back again to Illinois and practice law. He was
never more simple or more gentle than on this day of triumph. His heart
overflowed with sentiments of gratitude to Heaven, which took the shape, usual
to generous natures, of love and kindness to all men.
From the very beginning there had been threats to kill him. He was constantly
receiving letters of warning from zealous or nervous friends. The War
Department inquired into these when there seemed to be ground for doing so, but
always without result. Warnings that appeared most definite proved on
examination too vague and confused for further attention. The President knew
that he was in some danger. Madmen frequently made their way to the very door
of the Executive Office; sometimes into Mr. Lincoln's presence; but he himself
had so sane a mind, and a heart so kindly even to his enemies, that it was hard
for him to believe in political hatred deadly enough to lead to murder. He
summed up the matter by saying that since he must receive both friends and
strangers every day, his life was of course within the reach of any one, sane or
mad, who was ready to murder and be hanged for it, and that he could not
possibly guard against all danger unless he shut himself up in an iron box, where
he could scarcely perform the duties of a President.
He therefore went in and out before the people, always unarmed, generally
unattended. He received hundreds of visitors in a day, his breast bare to pistol or
knife. He walked at midnight, with a single Secretary or alone, from the
Executive Mansion to the War Department and back. In summer he rode through
lonely roads from the White House to the Soldiers' Home in the dusk of the
evening, and returned to his work in the morning before the town was astir. He
was greatly annoyed when it was decided that there must be a guard at the
Executive Mansion, and that a squad of cavalry must accompany him on his
daily drive; but he was always reasonable, and yielded to the best judgment of
others.
Four years of threats and boastings that were unfounded, and of plots that
came to nothing passed away, until precisely at the time when the triumph of the
nation seemed assured, and a feeling of peace and security settled over the
country, one of the conspiracies, seemingly no more important than the others,
ripened in a sudden heat of hatred and despair.
A little band of desperate secessionists, of which John Wilkes Booth, an actor
of a family of famous players, was the head, had their usual meeting-place at the
house of Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, the mother of one of the number. Booth was a
young man of twenty-six, strikingly handsome, with an ease and grace of
manner which came to him of right from his theatrical ancestors. He was a
fanatical southerner, with a furious hatred against Lincoln and the Union. After
Lincoln's reelection he went to Canada, and associated with the Confederate
agents there; and whether or not with their advice, made a plan to capture the
President and take him to Richmond. He passed a great part of the autumn and
winter pursuing this fantastic scheme, but the winter wore away, and nothing
was done. On March 4 he was at the Capitol, and created a disturbance by trying
to force his way through the line of policemen who guarded the passage through
which the President walked to the East front of the building to read his Second
Inaugural. His intentions at this time are not known. He afterwards said he lost
an excellent chance of killing the President that day.
After the surrender of Lee, in a rage akin to madness, he called his fellow-
conspirators together and allotted to each his part in the new crime which had
risen in his mind. It was as simple as it was horrible. One man was to kill
Secretary Seward, another to make way with Andrew Johnson, at the same time
that he murdered the President. The final preparations were made with feverish
haste. It was only about noon of the fourteenth that Booth learned that Mr.
Lincoln meant to go to Ford's Theatre that night to see the play "Our American
Cousin." The President enjoyed the theatre. It was one of his few means of
recreation, and as the town was then thronged with soldiers and officers all eager
to see him, he could, by appearing in public, gratify many whom he could not
personally meet.
Mrs. Lincoln asked General and Mrs. Grant to accompany her. They accepted,
and the announcement that they would be present was made in the evening
papers, but they changed their plans and went north by an afternoon train. Mrs.
Lincoln then invited in their stead Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, daughter
and stepson of Senator Ira Harris. Being detained by visitors, the play had made
some progress when the President appeared.. The band struck up "Hail to the
Chief," the actors ceased playing, the audience rose and cheered, the President
bowed in acknowledgment, and the play went on again.
From the moment he learned of the President's intention Booth's actions were
alert and energetic. He and his confederates were seen in every part of the city.
Booth was perfectly at home in Ford's Theatre. He counted upon audacity to
reach the small passage behind the President's box. Once there, he guarded
against interference by arranging a wooden bar, to be fastened by a simple
mortice in the angle of the wall and the door by which he entered, so that once
shut, the door could not be opened from the outside. He even provided for the
chance of not gaining entrance to the box by boring a hole in the door, through
which he might either observe the occupants, or take aim and shoot. He hired at
a livery stable a small fleet horse.
A few moments before ten o'clock, leaving his horse at the rear of the theatre,
in charge of a call-boy, he entered the building, passing rapidly to the little
hallway leading to the President's box. Showing a card to the servant in
attendance, he was allowed to enter, closed the door noiselessly, and secured it
with the wooden bar he had made ready, without disturbing any of the occupants
of the box, between whom and himself yet remained the partition and the door
through which he had bored the hole.
No one, not even the actor who uttered them, could ever remember the last
words of the piece that were spoken that night—the last that Abraham Lincoln
heard upon earth; for the tragedy in the box turned play and players alike to the
most unsubstantial of phantoms. For weeks hate and brandy had kept Booth's
brain in a morbid state. He seemed to himself to be taking part in a great play.
Holding a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, he opened the box door, put
the pistol to the President's head, and fired. Major Rathbone sprang to grapple
with him, and received a savage knife wound in the arm. Then, rushing forward,
Booth placed his hand on the railing of the box and vaulted to the stage. It was a
high leap, but nothing to such a trained athlete. He would have got safely away,
had not his spur caught in the flag that draped the front of the box. He fell, the
torn flag trailing on his spur; but though the fall had broken his leg, he rose
instantly brandishing his knife and shouting, "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" fled rapidly
across the stage and out of sight. Major Rathbone shouted, "Stop him!" The cry,
"He has shot the President!" rang through the theatre, and from the audience,
stupid at first with surprise, and wild afterward with excitement and horror, men
jumped upon the stage in pursuit of the assassin. But he ran through the familiar
passages, leaped upon his horse, rewarding with a kick and a curse the boy who
held him, and escaped into the night.
The President scarcely moved. His head drooped forward slightly, his eyes
closed. Major Rathbone, not regarding his own grievous hurt, rushed to the door
to summon aid. He found it barred, and someone on the outside beating and
clamoring to get in. It was at once seen that the President's wound was mortal.
He was carried across the street to a house opposite, and laid upon a bed. Mrs.
Lincoln followed, tenderly cared for by Miss Harris. Rathbone, exhausted by
loss of blood, fainted, and was taken home. Messengers were sent for the
cabinet, for the Surgeon-General, for Dr. Stone the President's family physician,
and for others whose official or private relations with Mr. Lincoln gave them the
right to be there. A crowd of people rushed instinctively to the White House, and
bursting through the doors shouted the dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and
Major Hay who sat together in an upper room.
The President had been shot a few minutes after ten o'clock. The wound
would have brought instant death to most men. He was unconscious from the
first moment, but he breathed throughout the night, his gaunt face scarcely paler
than those of the sorrowing men around him. At twenty-two minutes past seven
in the morning he died. Secretary Stanton broke the silence by saying, "Now he
belongs to the ages."
Booth had done his work thoroughly. His principal accomplice had acted with
equal audacity and cruelty, but with less fatal result. Under pretext of having a
package of medicine to deliver, he forced his way to the room of the Secretary of
State, who lay ill, and attacked him, inflicting three terrible knife wounds on his
neck and cheek, wounding also the Secretary's two sons, a servant, and a soldier
nurse who tried to overpower him. Finally breaking away, he ran downstairs,
reached the door unhurt, and springing upon his horse rode off. It was feared that
neither the Secretary nor his eldest son would live, but both in time recovered.
Although Booth had been recognized by dozens of people as he stood before
the footlights brandishing his dagger, his swift horse soon carried him beyond
any hap-hazard pursuit. He crossed the Navy Yard bridge and rode into
Maryland, being joined by one of his fellow-conspirators. A surgeon named
Mudd set Booth's leg and sent him on his desolate way. For ten days the two
men lived the lives of hunted animals. On the night of April 25 they were
surrounded as they lay sleeping in a barn in Caroline County, Virginia. Booth
refused to surrender. The barn was fired, and while it was burning he was shot
by Boston Corbett, a sergeant of cavalry. He lingered for about three hours in
great pain, and died at seven in the morning. The remaining conspirators were
tried by military commission. Four were hanged, including the assailant of
Secretary Seward, and the others were sentenced to imprisonment for various
lengths of time.
Upon the hearts of a people glowing with the joy of victory the news of the
President's death fell as a great shock. In the unspeakable calamity the country
lost sight of the great national successes of the past week; and thus it came to
pass that there was never any organized celebration in the North over the
downfall of the rebellion. It was unquestionably best that it should be so. Lincoln
himself would not have had it otherwise, for he hated the arrogance of triumph.
As it was, the South could take no offense at a grief so genuine; and the people
of that section even shared, to a certain extent, in the mourning for one who, in
their inmost hearts, they knew to have wished them well.
Within an hour after Mr. Lincoln's body was taken to the White House the
town was shrouded in black. Not only the public buildings, the shops, and the
better class of dwellings were draped in funeral decorations; still more touching
proof of affection was shown in the poorest class of homes, where laboring men
of both colors found means in their poverty to afford some scanty bit of
mourning. The interest and veneration of the people still centered at the White
House, where, under a tall catafalque in the East Room the late chief lay in the
majesty of death, rather than in the modest tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue,
where the new President had his lodgings, and where the Chief Justice
administered the oath of office to him at eleven o'clock on the morning of April
15.
It was determined that the funeral ceremonies in Washington should be held
on Wednesday, April 19, and all the churches throughout the country were
invited to join at the same time in appropriate observances. The ceremonies in
the East Room were simple and brief, while all the pomp and circumstance that
the government could command were employed to give a fitting escort from the
Executive Mansion to the Capitol, where the body of the President lay in state.
The procession moved to the booming of minute guns, and the tolling of all the
bells in Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria; while, to associate the pomp
of the day with the greatest work of Lincoln's life, a detachment of colored
troops marched at the head of the line.
When it was announced that he was to be buried at Springfield every town and
city on the way begged that the train might halt within its limits, to give its
people opportunity of showing their grief and reverence. It was finally arranged
that the funeral cortege should follow substantially the same route over which
Lincoln had come in 1861 to take possession of the office to which he added a
new dignity and value for all time. On April 21, accompanied by a guard of
honor, and in a train decked with somber trappings, the journey was begun. At
Baltimore, through which, four years before, it was a question whether the
President-elect could pass with safety to his life, the coffin was taken with
reverent care to the great dome of the Exchange, where, surrounded with
evergreens and lilies, it lay for several hours, the people passing by in mournful
throngs. The same demonstration was repeated, gaining constantly in depth of
feeling and solemn splendor of display in every city through which the
procession passed. In New York came General Scott, pale and feeble, but
resolute, to pay his tribute of respect to his departed friend and commander.
Springfield was reached on the morning of May 3. The body lay in state in the
Capitol, which was richly draped from roof to basement in black velvet and
silver fringe, while within it was a bower of bloom and fragrance. For twenty-
four hours an unbroken stream of people passed through, bidding their friend
and neighbor welcome home and farewell. At ten o'clock on the morning of May
4 the coffin lid was closed, and vast procession moved out to Oak Ridge, where
the town had set apart a lovely spot for his grave. Here the dead President was
committed to the soil of the State which had so loved and honored him. The
ceremonies at the grave were simple and touching. Bishop Simpson delivered a
pathetic oration, prayers were offered, and hymns were sung, but the weightiest
and most eloquent words uttered anywhere that day were those of the Second
Inaugural, which the Committee had wisely ordained to be read over his grave,
as centuries before, the friends of the painter Raphael chose the incomparable
canvas of "The Transfiguration" to be the chief ornament of his funeral.
Though President Lincoln lived to see the real end of the war, various bodies
of Confederate troops continued to hold out for some time longer. General
Johnston faced Sherman's army in the Carolinas until April 26, while General E.
Kirby Smith, west of the Mississippi River, did not surrender until May 26.
As rapidly as possible Union volunteer regiments were disbanded, and soon
the mighty host of 1,000,000 men was reduced to a peace footing of only 25,000.
Before the great army melted away into the greater body of citizens its soldiers
enjoyed one final triumph—a march through the capital of the nation,
undisturbed by death or danger, under the eyes of their highest commanders and
the representatives of the people whose country they had saved. Those who
witnessed the solemn yet joyous pageant will never forget it; and pray that their
children may never see its like. For two days this formidable host marched the
long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, starting from the shadow of the Capitol
and filling the wide street as far as Georgetown, its serried ranks moving with
the easy yet rapid pace of veterans in cadence step. As a mere spectacle this
march of the mightiest host the continent has ever seen was grand and imposing,
but it was not as a spectacle alone that it affected the beholder. It was no holiday
parade. It was an army of citizens on their way home after a long and terrible
war. Their clothes were worn, and pierced with bullets, their banners had been
torn with shot and shell, and lashed in the winds of many battles. The very
drums and fifes had called out the troops to night alarms, and sounded the onset
on historic fields. The whole country claimed these heroes as part of themselves.
They were not soldiers by profession or from love of fighting; they had become
soldiers only to save their country's life. Now, done with war, they were going
joyously and peaceably back to their homes to take up the tasks they had
willingly laid down in the hour of their country's need.
Friends loaded them with flowers as they swung down the Avenue—both men
and officers, until some were fairly hidden under their fragrant burden.
Grotesque figures were not absent, as Sherman's legions passed with their
"bummers" and their regimental pets. But with all the shouting and the joy there
was, in the minds of all who saw it, one sad and ever-recurring thought—the
memory of the men who were absent, and who had, nevertheless, so richly
earned the right to be there. The soldiers in their shrunken companies thought of
the brave comrades who had fallen by the way; and through the whole vast army
there was passionate unavailing regret for their wise, gentle and powerful friend
Abraham Lincoln, gone forever from the big white house by the Avenue—who
had called the great host into being, directed the course of the nation during the
four years that they had been battling for its life, and to whom, more than to any
other, this crowning peaceful pageant would have been full of deep and happy
meaning.
Why was this man so loved that his death caused a whole nation to forget its
triumph, and turned its gladness into mourning? Why has his fame grown with
the passing years until now scarcely a speech is made or a newspaper printed
that does not have within it somewhere a mention of his name or some phrase or
sentence that fell from his lips? Let us see if we can, what it was that made
Abraham Lincoln the man that he became.
A child born to an inheritance of want; a boy growing into a narrow world of
ignorance; a youth taking up the burden of coarse and heavy labor; a man
entering on the doubtful struggle of a local backwoods career—these were the
beginnings of Abraham Lincoln if we look at them only in the hard practical
spirit which takes for its motto that "Nothing succeeds but success." If we adopt
a more generous as well as a truer view, then we see that it was the brave hopeful
spirit, the strong active mind, and the great law of moral growth that accepts the
good and rejects the bad, which Nature gave this obscure child, that carried him
to the service of mankind and the admiration of the centuries as certainly as the
acorn grows to be the oak.
Even his privations helped the end. Self-reliance, the strongest trait of the
pioneer was his by blood and birth and training, and was developed by the
hardships of his lot to the mighty power needed to guide our country through the
struggle of the Civil War.
The sense of equality was his also, for he grew from childhood to manhood in
a state of society where there were neither rich to envy nor poor to despise, and
where the gifts and hardships of the forest were distributed without favor to each
and all alike. In the forest he learned charity, sympathy, helpfulness—in a word
neighborliness—for in that far-off frontier life all the wealth of India, had a man
possessed it, could not have bought relief from danger or help in time of need,
and neighborliness became of prime importance. Constant opportunity was
found there to practice the virtue which Christ declared to be next to the love of
God—to love one's neighbor as oneself.
In such settlements, far removed from courts and jails, men were brought face
to face with questions of natural right. The pioneers not only understood the
American doctrine of self-government—they lived it. It was this understanding,
this feeling, which taught Lincoln to write: "When the white man governs
himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs
another man, that is more than self-government that is despotism;" and also to
give utterance to its twin truth: "He who would be no slave must consent to have
no slave."
Lincoln was born in the slave State of Kentucky. He lived there only a short
time, and we have reason to believe that wherever he might have grown up, his
very nature would have spurned the doctrine and practice of human slavery. Yet,
though he hated slavery, he never hated the slave-holder. His feeling of pardon
and sympathy for Kentucky and the South played no unimportant part in his
dealings with grave problems of statesmanship. It is true that he struck slavery
its death blow with the hand of war, but at the same time he offered the
slaveowner golden payment with the hand of peace.
Abraham Lincoln was not an ordinary man. He was, in truth, in the language
of the poet Lowell, a "new birth of our new soil." His greatness did not consist in
growing up on the frontier. An ordinary man would have found on the frontier
exactly what he would have found elsewhere—a commonplace life, varying only
with the changing ideas and customs of time and place. But for the man with
extraordinary powers of mind and body—for one gifted by Nature as Abraham
Lincoln was gifted, the pioneer life with its severe training in self-denial,
patience and industry, developed his character, and fitted him for the great duties
of his after life as no other training could have done.
His advancement in the astonishing career that carried him from obscurity to
world-wide fame—from postmaster of New Salem village to President of the
United States, from captain of a backwoods volunteer company to Commander-
in-Chief of the Army and Navy, was neither sudden nor accidental, nor easy. He
was both ambitious and successful, but his ambition was moderate, and his
success was slow. And, because his success was slow, it never outgrew either his
judgment or his powers. Between the day when he left his father's cabin and
launched his canoe on the headwaters of the Sangamon River to begin life on his
own account, and the day of his first inauguration, lay full thirty years of toil,
self-denial, patience; often of effort baffled, of hope deferred; sometimes of
bitter disappointment. Even with the natural gift of great genius it required an
average lifetime and faithful unrelaxing effort, to transform the raw country
stripling into a fit ruler for this great nation.
Almost every success was balanced—sometimes overbalanced, by a seeming
failure. He went into the Black Hawk war a captain, and through no fault of his
own, came out a private. He rode to the hostile frontier on horseback, and
trudged home on foot. His store "winked out." His surveyor's compass and
chain, with which he was earning a scanty living, were sold for debt. He was
defeated in his first attempts to be nominated for the legislature and for
Congress; defeated in his application to be appointed Commissioner of the
General Land Office; defeated for the Senate when he had forty-five votes to
begin with by a man who had only five votes to begin with; defeated again after
his joint debates with Douglas; defeated in the nomination for Vice-President,
when a favorable nod from half a dozen politicians would have brought him
success.
Failures? Not so. Every seeming defeat was a slow success. His was the
growth of the oak, and not of Jonah's gourd. He could not become a master
workman until he had served a tedious apprenticeship. It was the quarter of a
century of reading, thinking, speech-making and lawmaking which fitted him to
be the chosen champion of freedom in the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of
1858. It was the great moral victory won in those debates (although the
senatorship went to Douglas) added to the title "Honest Old Abe," won by truth
and manhood among his neighbors during a whole lifetime, that led the people
of the United States to trust him with the duties and powers of President.
And when, at last, after thirty years of endeavor, success had beaten down
defeat, when Lincoln had been nominated, elected and inaugurated, came the
crowning trial of his faith and constancy. When the people, by free and lawful
choice, had placed honor and power in his hands, when his name could convene
Congress, approve laws, cause ships to sail and armies to move, there suddenly
came upon the government and the nation a fatal paralysis. Honor seemed to
dwindle and power to vanish. Was he then after all not to be President? Was
patriotism dead? Was the Constitution only a bit of waste paper? Was the Union
gone?
The outlook was indeed grave. There was treason in Congress, treason in the
Supreme Court, treason in the army and navy. Confusion and discord were
everywhere. To use Mr. Lincoln's forcible figure of speech, sinners were calling
the righteous to repentance. Finally the flag, insulted and fired upon, trailed in
surrender at Sumter; and then came the humiliation of the riot at Baltimore, and
the President for a few days practically a prisoner in the capital of the nation.
But his apprenticeship had been served, and there was to be no more failure.
With faith and justice and generosity he conducted for four long years a war
whose frontiers stretched from the Potomac to the Rio Grande; whose soldiers
numbered a million men on each side. The labor, the thought, the responsibility,
the strain of mind and anguish of soul that he gave to this great task, who can
measure? "Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair weather sailor," as
Emerson justly said of him. "The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado.
In four years—four years of battle days—his endurance, his fertility of
resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting." "By his
courage, his justice, his even temper, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in
the centre of a heroic epoch."
What but a lifetime's schooling in disappointment, what but the pioneer's self-
reliance and freedom from prejudice, what but the clear mind, quick to see
natural right and unswerving in its purpose to follow it; what but the steady self-
control, the unwarped sympathy, the unbounded charity of this man with spirit so
humble and soul so great, could have carried him through the labors he wrought
to the victory he attained?
With truth it could be written, "His heart was as great as the world, but there
was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong." So, "with malice toward
none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gave him to see the
right" he lived and died. We who have never seen him yet feel daily the
influence of his kindly life, and cherish among our most precious possessions the
heritage of his example.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Helen Nicolay

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