Herndon's Lincoln; the true story of a great life

HERNDON'S LINCOLN

HERNDON'S LINCOLN

THE TRUE STORY OF A GREAT LIFE

Etiam in minimis major
THE HISTORY AND PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY

WILLIAM H. HERNDON

FOB TWENTY YEARS His FRIEND AND LAW
PARTNER

AND
JESSE WILLIAM WEIK, A. M,

VOL. Ill

THE HERNDON'S LINCOLN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

Jl

CHAPTER XIV.

Before Mr. Lincoln surrenders himself completely
to the public — for it is apparent he is fast approach
ing the great crisis of his career — it may not be
entirely inappropriate to take a nearer and more per
sonal view of him. A knowledge of his personal
views and actions, a glimpse through the doorway
of his home, and a more thorough acquaintance
with his marked and strong points as they devel
oped, will aid us greatly in forming our general es
timate of the man. When Mr. Lincoln entered the
domain of investigation he was a severe and per
sistent thinker, and had wonderful endurance; hence
he was abstracted, and for that reason at times was
somewhat unsocial, reticent, and uncommunicative.
After his marriage it cannot be said that he liked
the society of ladies; in fact, it was just what he did
not like, though one of his biographers says other
wise. Lincoln had none of the tender ways that
please a woman, and he could not, it seemed, by any
positive act of his own make her happy. If his
wife was happy, she was naturally happy, or made
herself so in spite of countless drawbacks. He was,
however, a good husband in his own peculiar way,
and in his own way only.

If exhausted from severe and long-continued

423

424 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

thought, he had to touch the earth again to renew
his strength. When this weariness set in he would
stop thought, and get down and play with a little
dog or kitten to recover ; and when the recovery came
he would push it aside to play with its own tail.
He treated men and women in much the same way.
For fashionable society he had a marked dislike,
although he appreciated its value in promoting the
welfare of a man ambitious to succeed in politics.
If he was invited out to dine or to mingle in some
social gathering, and came in contact with the ladies,
he treated them with becoming politeness; but the
consciousness of his shortcomings as a society man
rendered him unusually diffident, and at the very
first opportunity he would have the men separated
from their ladies and crowded close around him in
one corner of the parlor, listening to one of his
characteristic stories. That a lady* as proud and
as ambitious to exercise the rights of supremacy in
society as Mary Todd should repent of her mar
riage to the man I have just described surely need
occasion no surprise in the mind of anyone. Both
she and the man whose hand she accepted acted
along the lines of human conduct, and both reaped
the bitter harvest of conjugal infelicity. In deal
ing with Mr. Lincoln's home life perhaps I am
revealing an element of his character that has here-

* Mrs. Lincoln was decidedly pro-slavery in her views. One
day she was invited to take a ride with a neighboring family,
some of whose members still reside in Springfield. "If ever my
husband dies," she ejaculated during the ride, "his spirit will
never find me living outside the limits of a slave State."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 425

to fore been kept from the world; but in doing so I
feel sure I am treading on no person's toes, for all
the actors in this domestic drama are dead, and the
world seems ready to hear the facts. As his married
life, in the opinion of all his friends, exerted a pecul
iar influence over Mr. Lincoln's political career
there can be no impropriety, I apprehend, in throw
ing the light on it now. Mrs. Lincoln's disposition
and nature have been dwelt upon in another chapter,
and enough has been told to show that one of her
greatest misfortunes was her inability to control her
temper. Admit that, and everything can be ex
plained. However cold and abstracted her husband
may have appeared to others, however impressive,
when aroused, may have seemed his indignation in
public, he never gave vent to his feelings at home.
He always meekly accepted as final the authority
of his wife in all matters of domestic concern.*
This may explain somewhat the statement of
Judge Davis that, "as a general rule, when all the
lawyers of a Saturday evening would go home and
see their families and friends, Lincoln would find
some excuse and refuse to go. We said nothing,
but it seemed to us all he was not domestically
happy." He exercised no government of any kind
over his household. His children did much as

* One day a man making some improvements in Lincoln's yard
suggested to Mrs. Lincoln the propriety of cutting down one
of the trees, to which she willingly assented. Before doing
so, however, the man came down to our office and consulted
Lincoln himself about it. "What did Mrs. Lincoln say?" en
quired the latter. "She consented to have it taken away."
"Then, in God's name," exclaimed Lincoln, "cut it down to the
roots!"

426 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

they pleased. Many of their antics he approved,
and he restrained them in nothing. He never
reproved them or gave them a fatherly frown.
He was the most indulgent parent I have ever
known. He was in the habit, when at home on
Sunday, of bringing his two boys, Willie and
Thomas — or "Tad" — down to the office to remain
while his wife attended church. He seldom accom
panied her there. The boys were absolutely unre
strained in their amusement. If they pulled down
all the books from the shelves, bent the points of
all the pens, overturned inkstands, scattered law-
papers over the floor, or threw the pencils into the
spittoon, it never disturbed the serenity of their fa
ther's good-nature. Frequently absorbed in thought,
he never observed their mischievous but destructive
pranks — as his unfortunate partner did, who thought
much, but said nothing — and, even if brought to his
attention, he virtually encouraged their repetition
by declining to show any substantial evidence of
parental disapproval. After church was over the
boys and their father, climbing down the office stairs,
ruefully turned their steps homeward. They min
gled with the throngs of well-dressed people return
ing from church, the majority of whom might well
have wondered if the trio they passed were going
to a fireside where love and white-winged peace
reigned supreme. A near relative of Mrs. Lincoln,
in explanation of the unhappy condition of things
in that lady's household, offered this suggestion:

"Mrs. Lincoln came of the best stock, and was
raised like a lady. Her husband was her opposite,

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 427

in origin, in education, in breeding, in everything;
and it is therefore quite natural that she should
complain if he answered the door-bell himself
instead of sending the servant to do so; neither is
she to be condemned if, as you say, she raised
'merry war' because he persisted in using his own
knife in the butter, instead of the silver-handled
one intended for that purpose."* Such want of
social polish on the part of her husband of course
gave Mrs. Lincoln great offense, and therefore in
commenting on it she cared neither for time nor
place. Her frequent outbursts of temper precipi
tated many an embarrassment from which Lincoln
with great difficulty extricated himself.

Mrs. Lincoln, on account of her peculiar nature,
could not long retain a servant in her employ. The
sea was never so placid but that a breeze would
ruffle its waters. She loved show and attention,
and if, when she glorified her family descent or in
dulged in one of her strange outbreaks, the servant
could simulate absolute obsequiousness or had tact
enough to encourage the social pretensions, Mrs.

* A lady relative who lived for two years with the Lincolns
told me that Mr. Lincoln was in the habit of lying on the floor
with the back of a chair for a pillow when he read. One even
ing, when in this position in the hall, a knock was heard at
the front door and although in his shirt-sleeves he answered
the call. Two ladies were at the door whom he invited into the
parlor, notifying them in his open familiar way, that he would
"trot the women folks out." Mrs. Lincoln from an adjoining
room witnessed the ladies' entrance and overheard her hus
band's jocose expression. Her indignation was so instantaneous
she made the situation exceedingly interesting for him, and he
was glad to retreat from the mansion. He did not return till
very late at night and then slipped quietly in at a rear door.

428 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Lincoln was for the time her firmest friend. One
servant, who adjusted herself to suit the lady's ca
pricious ways, lived with the family for several years.
She told me that at the time of the debate be
tween Douglas and Lincoln she often heard the lat-
ter's wife boast that she would yet be mistress of
the White House. The secret of her ability to en
dure the eccentricities of her mistress came out in
the admission that Mr. Lincoln gave her an extra
dollar each week on condition that she would brave
whatever storms might arise, and suffer whatever
might befall her, without complaint. It was a rather
severe condition, but she lived rigidly up to her
part of the contract. The money was paid secretly
and without the knowledge of Mrs. Lincoln. Fre
quently, after tempestuous scenes between the mis
tress and her servant, Lincoln at the first oppor
tunity would place his hand encouragingly on the
latter's shoulder with the admonition, "Mary, keep
up your courage." It may not be without interest
to add that the servant afterwards married a man
who enlisted in the army. In the spring of 1865
his wife managed to reach Washington to secure
her husband's release from the service. After some
effort she succeeded in obtaining an interview with
the President. He was glad to see her, gave her a
basket of fruit, and directed her to call the next day
and obtain a pass through the lines and money to
buy clothes for herself and children. That night he
was assassinated.

The following letter to the editor of a newspaper
in Springfield will serve as a specimen of the per-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 429

plexities which frequently beset Mr. Lincoln when
his wife came in contact with others. What in this
instance she said to the paper carrier we do not
know; we can only intelligently infer. I have
no personal recollection of the incident, although
I knew the man to whom it was addressed quite well.
The letter only recently came to light. I insert it
without further comment.

[Private.]

"SPRINGFIELD, ILL., February 20, 1857.

"JOHN E. ROSETTE, ESQ.

"DEAR SIR: — Your note about the little para
graph in the Republican was received yesterday,
since which time I have been too unwell to notice
it. I had not supposed you wrote or approved it.
The whole originated in mistake. You know by
the conversation with me that I thought the estab
lishment of the paper unfortunate, but I always
expected to throw no obstacle in its way, and to
patronize it to the extent of taking and paying for
one copy. When the paper was brought to my
house, my wife said to me, 'Now are you going to
take another worthless little paper?' I said to her
evasively, 'I have not directed the paper to be left/
From this, in my absence, she sent the message to
the carrier. This is the whole story.

"Yours truly,

"A. LINCOLN/'

A man once called at the house to learn why
Mrs. Lincoln had so unceremoniously discharged his
niece from her employ. Mrs. Lincoln met him at
the door, and being somewhat wrought up, gave
vent to her feelings, resorting to such violent gest-

430 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

ures and emphatic language that the man was glad
to beat a hasty retreat. He at once started out to
find Lincoln, determined to exact from him proper
satisfaction for his wife's action. Lincoln was
entertaining a crowd in a store at the time. The
man, still laboring under some agitation, called him
to the door and made the demand. Lincoln lis
tened for a moment to his story. "My friend," he
interrupted, "I regret to hear this, but let me ask
you in all candor, can't you endure for a few
moments what I have had as my daily portion for
the last fifteen years?" These words were spoken so
mournfully and with such a look of distress that the
man was completely disarmed. It was a case that
appealed to his feelings. Grasping the unfortunate
husband's hand, he expressed in no uncertain terms
his sympathy, and even apologized for having
approached him. He said no more about the
infuriated wife, and Lincoln afterward had no better
friend in Springfield.

Mr. Lincoln never had a confidant, and therefore
never unbosomed himself to others. He never
spoke of his trials to me or, so far as I knew, to any
of his friends. It was a great burden to carry, but
he bore it sadly enough and without a murmur. I
could always realize when he was in distress, with
out being told. He was not exactly an early riser,
that is, he never usually appeared at the office till
about nine o'clock in the morning. I usually pre
ceded him an hour. Sometimes, however, he
would come down as early as seven o'clock — in
fact, on one occasion I remember he came down

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 431

before daylight. If, on arriving at the office, I found
him in, I knew instantly that a breeze had sprung
up over the domestic sea, and that the waters were
troubled. He would either be lying on the lounge
looking skyward, or doubled up in a chair with his
feet resting on the sill of a back window. He
would not look up on my entering, and only
anwered my "Good morning" with a grunt. I at
once busied myself with pen and paper, or ran
through the leaves of some book; but the evidence
of his melancholy and distress was so plain, and his
silence so significant, that I would grow restless
myself, and finding some excuse to go to the court
house or elsewhere, would leave the room.

The door of the office opening into a narrow hall
way was half glass, with a curtain on it working on
brass rings strung on wire. As I passed out on
these occasions I would draw the curtain across the
glass, and before I reached the bottom of the stairs
I could hear the key turn in the lock, and Lincoln
was alone in his gloom. An hour in the clerk's
office at the court-house, an hour longer in a neigh
boring store having passed, I would return. By
that time either a client had dropped in and Lin
coln was propounding the law, or else the cloud of
despondency had passed away, and he was busy in
the recital of an Indiana story to whistle off the
recollections of the morning's gloom. Noon hav
ing arrived I would depart homeward for my
dinner. Returning within an hour, I would find
him still in the office, — although his house stood
but a few squares away, — lunching on a slice of

432 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

cheese and a handful of crackers which, in my
absence, he had brought up from a store below.
Separating for the day at five or six o'clock in the
evening, I would still leave him behind, either sit
ting on a box at the foot of the stairway, enter
taining a few loungers, or killing time in the same
way on the court-house steps. A light in the office
after dark attested his presence there till late along
in the night, when, after all the world had gone to
sleep, the tall form of the man destined to be the
nation's President could have been seen strolling
along in the shadows of trees and buildings, and
quietly slipping in through the door of a modest
frame house, which it pleased the world, in a con
ventional way, to call his home.

Some persons may insist that this picture is too
highly colored. If so, I can only answer, they do
not know the facts. The majority of those who
have a personal knowledge of them are persistent
in their silence. If their lips could be opened and
all could be known, my conclusions and statements,
to say the least of them, would be found to be fair,
reasonable, and true. A few words more as to
Lincoln's domestic history, and I pass to a different
phase of life. One of his warmest and closest
friends, who still survives, maintains the theory
that, after all, Lincoln's political ascendancy and
final elevation to the Presidency were due more to
the influence of his wife than to any other person
or cause. "The fact," insists this friend, "that
Mary Todd, by her turbulent nature and unfortu
nate manner, prevented her husband from becom-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 433

ing a domestic man, operated largely in his favor;
for he was thereby kept out in the world of busi
ness and politics. Instead of spending his even
ings at home, reading the papers and warming his
toes at his own fireside, he was constantly out with
the common people, was mingling with the politi
cians, discussing public questions with the farmers
who thronged the offices in the court-house and
state house, and exchanging views with the loungers
who surrounded the stove of winter evenings in the
village store. The result of this continuous con
tact with the world was, that he was more thor
oughly known than any other man in his com
munity. His wife, therefore, was one of the unin
tentional means of his promotion. If, on the other
hand, he had married some less ambitious but more
domestic woman, some honest farmer's quiet
daughter, — one who would have looked up to and
worshipped him because he uplifted her, — the result
might have been different. For, although it
doubtless would have been her pride to see that he
had clean clothes whenever he needed them; that
his slippers were always in their place; that he was
warmly clad and had plenty to eat; and, although
the privilege of ministering to his every wish and
whim might have been to her a pleasure rather
than a duty; yet I fear he would have been buried
in the pleasures of a loving home, and the country
would never have had Abraham Lincoln for its
President."

In her domestic troubles I have always sympa
thized with Mrs. Lincoln. The world does not

434 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

know what she bore, or how ill-adapted she was
to bear it. Her fearless, witty, and austere nature
shrank instinctively from association with the calm,
imperturbable, and simple ways of her thoughtful
and absent-minded husband. Besides, who knows
but she may have acted out in her conduct toward
her husband the laws of human revenge? The
picture of that eventful evening in 1841, when she
stood at the Edwards mansion clad in her bridal
robes, the feast prepared and the guests gathered,
and when the bridegroom came not, may have
been constantly before her, and prompted her to a
course of action which kept in the background the
better elements of her nature. In marrying Lin
coln she did not look so far into the future as Mary
Owens, who declined his proposal because "he was
deficient in those little links which made up the
chain of woman's happiness."*

* Mrs. Lincoln died at the residence of her sister Mrs. Ninian
W. Edwards, in Springfield, July 16, 1882. Her physician during
her last illness says this of her : "In the late years of her life
certain mental peculiarities were developed which finally cul
minated in a sight apoplexy, producing paralysis, of which she
died. Among the peculiarities alluded to, one of the most singu
lar was the habit she had during the last year or so of her
life of immuring herself in a perfectly dark room and, for light,
using a small candle-light, even when the sun was shining
bright out-of-doors. No urging would induce her to go out into
the fresh air. Another peculiarity was the accumulation of
large quantities of silks and dress goods in trunks and by the
cart-load, which she never used and which accumulated until
it was really feared that the floor of the store-room would give
way. She was bright and sparkling in conversation, and her
memory remained singularly good up to the very close of her
life. Her face was animated and pleasing ; and to me she was
always an interesting woman ; and while the whole world was

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 435

By reason of his practical turn of mind Mr. Lin
coln never speculated any more in the scientific and
philosophical than he did in the financial world.
He never undertook to fathom the intricacies of
psychology and metaphysics.* Investigation into
first causes, abstruse mental phenomena, the science
of being, he brushed aside as trash — mere scientific
absurdities. He discovered through experience
that his mind, like the minds of other men, had its
limitations, and hence he economized his forces and
his time by applying his powers in the field of the
practical. Scientifically regarded he was a realist as
opposed to an idealist, a sensationist as opposed to
an intuitionist, a materialist as opposed to a
spiritualist.

There was more or less superstition in his nature,
and, although he may not have believed im
plicitly in the signs of his many dreams, he was
constantly endeavoring to unravel them. His mind
was readily impressed with some of the most absurd
superstitions. His visit to the Voodoo fortune-

finding fault with her temper and disposition, it was clear to
me that the trouble was really a cerebral disease." — Dr. Thomas
W. Dresser, letter, January 3, 1889, MS.

* "He was contemplative rather than speculative. He wanted
something solid to rest upon, and hence his bias for mathe
matics and the physical sciences. He bestowed more attention
on them than upon metaphysical speculations. I have heard
him descant upon the problem whether a ball discharged from
a gun in a horizontal position would be longer in reaching the
ground than one dropped at the instant of discharge from
the muzzle. He said it always appeared to him that they
would both reach the ground at the same time, even before he
had read the philosophical explanation." — Joseph Gillespie, let
ter, December 8, 1866, MS.

436 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

teller in New Orleans in 1831; his faith in the
virtues of the mad-stone, when he took his son
Robert to Terre Haute, Indiana, to be cured of the
bite of a rabid dog; and the strange double image
of himself which he told his secretary, John Hay, he
saw reflected in a mirror just after his election in
1860, strongly attest his inclination to superstition.
He held most firmly to the doctrine of fatalism all
his life. His wife, after his death, told me what I
already knew, that "his only philosophy was, what is
to be will be, and no prayers of ours can reverse the
decree." He always contended that he was doomed
to a sad fate, and he repeatedly said to me when we
were alone in our office: "I am sure I shall meet
with some terrible end." In proof of his strong
leaning towards fatalism he once quoted the case
of Brutus and Caesar, arguing that the former was
forced by laws and conditions over which he had no
control to kill the latter, and, vice versa, that the
latter was specially created to be disposed of by the
former. This superstitious view of life ran through
his being like the thin blue vein through the whitest
marble, giving the eye rest from the weariness of
continued unvarying color.*

For many years I subscribed for and kept on our
office table the Westminster and Edinburgh Review
and a number of other English periodicals. Besides
them I purchased the works of Spencer, Darwin,

* I have heard him frequently quote the couplet,

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 437

and the utterances of other English scientists, all of
which I devoured with great relish. I endeavored,
but had little success in inducing Lincoln to read
them. Occasionally he would snatch one up and
peruse it for a little while, but he soon threw it down
with the suggestion that it was entirely too heavy
for an ordinary mind to digest.* A gentleman in
Springfield gave him a book called, I believe,
"Vestiges of Creation," which interested him so
much that he read it through. The volume was pub-

* In 1856 I purchased in New York a life of Edmund Burke.
I have forgotten now who the author was, but I remember I
read it through in a short time. One morning Lincoln came
into the office and, seeing the book in my hands, enquired what
I was reading. I told him, at the same time observing
that it was an excellent work and handing the book over to him.
Taking it in his hand he threw himself down on the office sofa
and hastily ran over its pages, reading a little here and there.
At last he closed and threw it on the table with the exclama
tion, "No, I've read enough of it. It's like all the others.
Biographies as generally written are not only misleading, but
false. The author of this life of Burke makes a wonderful
hero out of his subject. He magnifies his perfections — if he
had any — and suppresses his imperfections. He is so faithful in
his zeal and so lavish in praise of his every act that one is
almost driven to believe that Burke never made a mistake or a
failure in his life." He lapsed into a brown study, but pres
ently broke out again, "Billy, I've wondered why book-publish
ers and merchants don't have blank biographies on their shelves,
always ready for an emergency ; so that, if a man happens to
die, his heirs or his friends, if they wish to perpetuate his mem
ory, can purchase one already written, but with blanks. These
blanks they can at their pleasure fill up with rosy sentences
full of high-sounding praise. In most instances they commemo
rate a lie, and cheat posterity out of the truth. History," he
concluded, "is not history unless it is the truth." This em
phatic avowal of sentiment from Mr. Lincoln not only fixes his
estimate of ordinary biography, but is my vindication in ad
vance if assailed for telling the truth.

438 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

lished in Edinburgh, and undertook to demonstrate
the doctrine of development or evolution. The
treatise interested him greatly, and he was deeply
impressed with the notion of the so-called
"universal law" — evolution; he did not extend
greatly his researches, but by continued think
ing in a single channel seemed to grow into a
warm advocate of the new doctrine. Beyond what
I have stated he made no further investigation into
the realm of philosophy. "There are no accidents,"
he said one day, "in my philosophy. Every effect
must have its cause. The past is the cause of the
present, and the present will be the cause of the
future. All these are links in the endless chain
stretching from the finite to the infinite." From
what has been said it would follow logically that he
did not believe, except in a very restricted sense,
in the freedom of the will. We often argued the
question, I taking the opposite view; he changed
the expression, calling it the freedom of the mind,
and insisted that man always acted from a motive.
I once contended that man was free and could act
without a motive. He smiled at my philosophy,
and answered that it was impossible, because the
motive was born before the man."

The foregoing thoughts are prefatory to the
much-mooted question of Mr. Lincoln's religious
belief. For what I have heretofore said on this sub
ject, both in public lectures and in letters which have
frequently found their way into the newspapers,
I have been freely and sometimes bitterly assailed,
but I do not intend now to reopen the discussion

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 439

or to answer the many persons who have risen up
and asked to measure swords with me. I merely
purpose to state the bare facts, expressing no opinion
of my own, and allowing each and every one to
put his or her construction on them.

Inasmuch as he was so often a candidate for pub
lic office Mr. Lincoln said as little about his religi
ous opinions as possible, especially if he failed to
coincide with the orthodox world. In illustration
of his religious code I once heard him say that
it was like that of an old man named Glenn, in
Indiana, whom he heard speak at a church meeting,
and who said: "When I do good I feel good,
when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion."

In 1834, while still living in New Salem and before
he became a lawyer, he was surrounded by a class
of people exceedingly liberal in matters of
religion. Volney's "Ruins" and Paine's "Age
of Reason" passed from hand to hand, and
furnished food for the evening's discussion in
the tavern and village store. Lincoln read both
these books and thus assimilated them into his own
being. He prepared an extended essay — called by
many, a book — in which he made an argument
against Christianity, striving to prove that the Bible
was not inspired, and therefore not God's revela
tion, and that Jesus Christ was not the son of
God. The manuscript containing these auda
cious and comprehensive propositions he intended
to have published or given a wide circulation
in some other way. He carried it to the
store, where it was read and freely discussed. His

440 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

friend and employer, Samuel Hill, was among the
listeners, and, seriously questioning the propriety of
a promising young man like Lincoln fathering such
unpopular notions, he snatched the manuscript from
his hands and thrust it into the stove. The book
went up in flames, and Lincoln's political future was
secure. But his infidelity and his sceptical views
were not diminished. He soon removed to Spring
field, where he attracted considerable notice by his
rank doctrine. Much of what he then said may prop
erly be credited to the impetuosity and exuberance
of youth. One of his closest friends, whose name is
withheld, narrating scenes and reviewing discussions
that in 1838 took place in the office of the county
clerk, says: "Sometimes Lincoln bordered on athe
ism. He went far that way, and shocked me. I was
then a young man, and believed what my good
mother told me .... He would come into the clerk's
office where I and some young men were writing
and staying, and would bring the Bible with him;
would read a chapter and argue against it .... Lin
coln was enthusiastic in his infidelity. As he grew
older he grew more discreet; didn't talk much be
fore strangers about his religion ; but to friends, close
and bosom ones, he was always open and avowed,
fair and honest; to strangers, he held them off
from policy." John T. Stuart, who was Lin
coln's first partner, substantially endorses the above.
"He was an avowed and open infidel," declares
Stuart, "and sometimes bordered on atheism;
. . . . went further against Christian beliefs and
doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard;

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 441

he shocked me. I don't remember the exact line
of his argument; suppose it was against the inherent
defects, so-called, of the Bible, and on grounds of
reason. Lincoln always denied that Jesus was the
Christ of God — denied that Jesus was the son
of God as understood and maintained by the Chris
tian Church." David Davis tells us this : "The idea
that Lincoln talked to a stranger about his religion
or religious views, or made such speeches and re
marks about it as are published, is to me absurd. I
knew the man so well; he was the most reticent,
secretive man I ever saw or expect to see. He had
no faith, in the Christian sense of the term — had
faith in laws, principles, causes and effects." An
other man* testifies as follows: "Mr. Lincoln told
me that he was a kind of immortalist; that he
never could bring himself to believe in eternal
punishment; that man lived but a little while
here; and that if eternal punishment were man's
doom, he should spend that little life in vigilant
and ceaseless preparation by never-ending prayer."
Another intimate friendf furnishes this: "In
my intercourse with Mr. Lincoln I learned that
he believed in a Creator of all things, who had
neither beginning nor end, possessing all power
and wisdom, established a principle in obedience to
which worlds move and are upheld, and animal and
vegetable life come into existence. A reason he gave
for his belief was that in view of the order and har
mony of all nature which we behold, it would have
been more miraculous to have come about by

* William H. Hannah. t I. W. Keys.

442 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

chance than to have been created and arranged by
some great thinking power. As to the Christian
theory that Christ is God or equal to the Creator, he
said that it had better be taken for granted; for by
the test of reason we might become infidels on that
subject, for evidence of Christ's divinity came to us
in a somewhat doubtful shape; but that the system
of Christianity was an ingenious one at least, and
perhaps was calculated to do good." Jesse W.
Fell, to whom Lincoln first confided the details
of his biography, furnishes a more elaborate account
of the latter's religious views than anyone else. In
a statement made September 22, 1870, Fell says: "If
there were any traits of character that stood out in
bold relief in the person of Mr. Lincoln they were
those of truth and candor. He was utterly incapable
of insincerity or professing views on this or any
other subject he did not entertain. Knowing such
to be his true character, that insincerity, much more
duplicity, were traits wholly foreign to his nature,
many of his old friends were not a little surprised
at finding in some of the biographies of this great
man statements concerning his religious opinions so
utterly at variance with his known sentiments. True,
he may have changed or modified these sentiments*

* "EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 27, 1865.
"FRIEND HERNDON :

"Mr Lincoln did not to my knowledge in any way change his
religious ideas, opinions, or beliefs from the time he left
Springfield to the day of his death. I do not know just what
they were, never having heard him explain them in detail ; but
I am very sure he gave no outward indication of his mind hav
ing undergone any change in that regard while here.

"Yours truly,

"JNO. G. NICOLA Y."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 443

after his removal from among us, though this is
hardly reconcilable with the history of the man, and
his entire devotion to public matters during his four
years' residence at the national capital. It is pos
sible, however, that this may be the proper solution
of this conflict of opinions; or it may be that, with
no intention on the part of any one to mislead the
public mind, those who have represented him as
believing in the popular theological views of the
times may have misapprehended him, as experience
shows to be quite common where no special effort
has been made to attain critical accuracy on a
subject of this nature. This is the more probable
from the well-known fact, that Mr. Lincoln seldom
communicated to any one his views on this subject;
but be this as it may, I have no hesitation whatever
in saying that whilst he held many opinions in
common with the great mass of Christian believers,
he did not believe in what are regarded as the
orthodox or evangelical views of Christianity.

"On the innate depravity of man, the character
and office of the great Head of the Church, the
atonement, the infallibility of the written revela
tion, the performance of miracles, the nature and
design of present and future rewards and punish
ments (as they are popularly called), and many
other subjects he held opinions utterly at variance
with what are usually taught in the Church. I
should say that his expressed views on these and
kindred topics were such as, in the estimation of
most believers, would place him outside the
Christian pale. Yet, to my mind, such was not the

444 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

true position, since his principles and practices and
the spirit of his whole life were of the very kind
we universally agree to call Christian; and I think
this conclusion is in no wise affected by the circum
stance that he never attached himself to any religi
ous society whatever.

"His religious views were eminently practical, and
are summed up, as I think, in these two proposi
tions : the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood
of man. He fully believed in a superintending and
overruling Providence that guides and controls the
operations of the world, but maintained that law
and order, and not their violation or suspension,
are the appointed means by which this Providence
is exercised.*

"I will not attempt any specification of either his
belief or disbelief on various religious topics, as
derived from the conversations with him at different
times during a considerable period; but as convey
ing a general view of his religious or theological
opinions, will state the following facts. Some eight
or ten years prior to his death, in conversing with
him upon this subject, the writer took occasion to
refer, in terms of approbation, to the sermons and
writings generally of Dr. W. E. Channing; and, find-

* "A convention of preachers held, I think, at Philadelphia,
passed a resolution asking him to recommend to Congress an
amendment to the Constitution directly recognizing the exist
ence of God. The first draft of his message prepared after this
resolution was sent him did contain a paragraph calling the
attention of Congress to the subject. When I assisted him in
reading the proof he struck it out, remarking that he had not
made up his mind as to its propriety." — MS. letter, John D. De-
frees, December 4, 1866.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 445

ing he was considerably interested in the statement
I made of the opinions held by that author, I pro
posed to present him (Lincoln) a copy of Channing's
entire works, which I soon after did. Subsequently
the contents of these volumes, together with the
writings of Theodore Parker, furnished him, as he
informed me, by his friend and law partner, William
H. Herndon, became naturally the topics of con
versation with us; and, though far from believing
there was an entire harmony of views on his part
with either of those authors, yet they were gener
ally much admired and approved by him.

"No religious views with him seemed to find any
favor except of the practical and rationalistic order;
and if, from my recollections on this subject, I was
called upon to designate an author whose views
most nearly represented Mr. Lincoln's on this sub
ject, I would say that author was Theodore Parker."

The last witness to testify before this case is sub
mitted to the reader is no less a person than Mrs.
Lincoln herself. In a statement made at a time and
under circumstances detailed in a subsequent chap
ter she said this: "Mr. Lincoln had no faith and
no hope in the usual acceptation of those words.
He never joined a Church; but still, as I believe, he
was a religious man by nature. He first seemed to
think about the subject when our boy Willie died,
and then more than ever about the time he went to
Gettysburg; but it was a kind of poetry in his
nature, and he was never a technical Christian."

No man had a stronger or firmer faith in Provi
dence — God — than Mr. Lincoln, but the continued

446 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

use by him late in life of the word God must not be
interpreted to mean that he believed in a personal
God. In 1854 he asked me to erase the word God
from a speech which I had written and read to him
for criticism because my language indicated a per
sonal God, whereas he insisted no such personality
ever existed.

My own testimony, however, in regard to Mr.
Lincoln's religious views may perhaps invite discus
sion. The world has always insisted on making an
orthodox Christian of him, and to analyze his say
ings or sound his beliefs is but to break the idol.
It only remains to say that, whether orthodox or
not, he believed in God and immortality; and even
if he questioned the existence of future eternal pun
ishment he hoped to find a rest from trouble and
a heaven beyond the grave. If at any time in his
life he was sceptical of the divine origin of the
Bible he ought not for that reason to be con
demned; for he accepted the practical precepts of
that great book as binding alike upon his head and
his conscience. The benevolence of his impulses,
the seriousness of his convictions, and the nobility
of his character are evidences unimpeachable that
his soul was ever filled with the exalted purity and
sublime faith of natural religion.

CHAPTER XV.

The result of the campaign of 1858 wrought
more disaster to Lincoln's finances than to his polit
ical prospects. The loss of over six months from
his business, and expenses of the canvass, made
a severe drain on his personal income. He was anx
ious to get back to the law once more and earn a
little ready money. A letter written about this
time to his friend Norman B. Judd, Chairman of
the Republican State Committee, will serve to
throw some light on the situation he found himself
in. "I have been on expenses so long, without
earning anything," he says, "that I am; absolutely
without money now for even household expenses.
Still, if you can put in $250 for me towards dis
charging the debt of the committee, I will allow
it when you and I settle the private matter between
us. This, with what I have already paid, with an
outstanding note of mine, will exceed my subscrip
tion of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordi
nary expenses during the campaign, all of which,
being added to my loss of time and business, bears
prettily heavily upon one no better off than I am.
But as I had the post of honor, it is not for me to
be over-nice." At the time this letter was written
his property consisted of the house and lot on

447

448 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

which he lived, a few law books and some household
furniture. He owned a small tract of land in Iowa
which yielded him nothing, and the annual income
from his law practice did not exceed $3,000; yet
the party's committee in Chicago were dunning
their late standard-bearer, who, besides the chagrin
of his defeat, his own expenses, and the sacrifice of
his time, was asked to aid in meeting the general
expenses of the campaign. At this day one is a
little surprised that some of the generous and
wealthy members of the party in Chicago or else
where did not come forward and volunteer their
aid. But they did not, and whether Lincoln felt
in his heart the injustice of this treatment or not,
he went straight ahead in his own path and said
nothing about it.

Political business being off his hands, he now con
ceived the idea of entering the lecture field. He
began preparations in the usual way by noting
down ideas on stray pieces of paper, which found a
lodgment inside his hat, and finally brought forth
in connected form a lecture on "Inventions." He
recounted the wonderful improvements in ma
chinery, the arts, and sciences. Now and then he
indulged in a humorous paragraph, and witticisms
were freely sprinkled throughout the lecture. Dur
ing the winter he delivered it at several towns in
the central part of the State, but it was so common
place, and met with such indifferent success, that he
soon dropped it altogether.* The effort met with

* "As we were going to Danville court I read to Lincoln a
lecture by Bancroft on the wonderful progress of man, delivered

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 449

the disapproval of his friends, and he himself was
filled with disgust. If his address in 1852, over the
death of Clay, proved that he was no eulogist, then
this last effort demonstrated that he was no lect
urer. Invitations to deliver the lecture — prompted
no doubt by the advertisement given him in the
contest with Douglas — came in very freely; but
beyond the three attempts named, he declined
them all. "Press of business in the courts"
afforded him a convenient excuse, and he retired
from the field.*

During the fall of 1859 invitations to take part
in the canvass came from over half-a-dozen States
where elections were to be held, Douglas, fresh
from the Senate, had gone to Ohio, and thither in
September Lincoln, in response to the demands of
party friends everywhere, followed.f He delivered

in the preceding November. Sometime later he told us — Swett
and me — that he had been thinking much on the subject and be
lieved he would write a lecture on 'Man and His Progress.'
Afterwards I read in a paper that he had come to either
Bloomington or Clinton to lecture and no one turned out. The
paper added, 'That doesn't look much like his being President.'
I once joked him about it; he said good-naturedly, 'Don't;
that plagues me.' " — Henry C. Whitney, letter, Aug. 27, 1867,
MS.

* "SPRINGFIELD, March 28, 1859.
"W. M. MORRIS, Esq.,

"DEAR SIR: — Your kind note inviting me to deliver a lecture
at Galesburg is received. I regret to say I cannot do so now;
I must stick to the courts awhile. I read a sort of lecture to
three different audiences during the last month and this; but
I did so under circumstances which made it a waste of no time
whatever.

"Yours very truly,

"A. LINCOLN."

t "He returned to the city two years after with a fame as
wide as the continent, with the laurels of the Douglas contest
on his brow, and the Presidency in his grasp. He returned-

450 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

telling and impressive speeches at Cincinnati and
Columbus,* following Douglas at both places. He
made such a favorable impression among his Ohio
friends that, after a glorious Republican victory, the
State committee asked the privilege of publishing
his speeches, along with those of Douglas, to be
used and distributed as a campaign document.
This request he especially appreciated, because after
some effort he had failed to induce any publisher in

greeted with the thunder of cannon, the strains of martial
music, and the joyous plaudits of thousands of citizens throng
ing1 the streets. He addressed a vast concourse on Fifth Street
Market; was entertained in princely style at the Burnet House,
and there received with courtesy the foremost citizens come to
greet this rising star. With high hope and happy heart he left
Cincinnati after a three days' sojourn. But a perverse fortune
attended him and Cincinnati in their intercourse. Nine months
after Mr. Lincoln left us, after he had been nominated for the
Presidency, when he was tranquilly waiting in his cottage
home at Springfield the verdict of the people, his last visit to
Cincinnati and the good things he had had at the Burnet House
were rudely brought to his memory by a bill presented to
him from its proprietors. Before leaving the hotel he had ap
plied to the clerk for his bill ; was told that it was paid, or
words to that effect. This the committee had directed, but after
wards neglected its payment The proprietors shrewdly sur
mised that a letter to the nominee for the Presidency would
bring the money. The only significance in this incident is in
the letter it brought from Mr. Lincoln, revealing his indigna
tion at the seeming imputation against his honor, and his greater
indigation at one item of the bill. 'As to wines, liquors, and
cigars, we had none, absolutely none. These last may have been
in Room 15 by order of committee, but I do not recollect them
at all.' " — W. M. Dickson, "Harper's Magazine," June, 1884.

* Douglas had written a long and carefully prepared article
on "Popular Sovereignty in the Territories," which appeared for
the first time in the September (1859) number of "Harper's
Magazine." It went back some distance into the history of
the government, recounting the proceedings of the earliest Con-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 451

Springfield to. undertake the enterprise,* thus prov
ing anew that "a prophet is not without honor, save
in his own country." In December he visited Kan
sas, speaking at Atchison, Troy, Leavenworth, and
other towns near the border. His speeches there
served to extend his reputation still further west
ward. Though his arguments were; repetitions of
the doctrine laid down in the contest with Douglas,
yet they were new to the majority of his Kansasf

grasses, and sought to mark out more clearly than had hereto
fore been done "the dividing line between Federal and Local
authority." In a speech at Columbus, O., Lincoln answered
the "copy-right essay" categorically. After alluding to the
difference of position between himself and Judge Douglas on
the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, he said : "Judge Douglas
has had a good deal of trouble with Popular Sovereignty. His
explanations, explanatory of explanations explained, are inter
minable. The most lengthy and, as I suppose, the most ma
turely considered of his long series of explanations is his great
essay in "Harper's Magazine."

* A gentleman is still living, who at the time of the debate
between Lincoln and Douglas, was a book publisher in Spring
field. Lincoln had collected newspaper slips of all the speeches
made during the debate, and proposed to him their publication
in book form ; but the man declined, fearing there would be no
demand for such a book. Subsequently, when the speeches
were gotten out in book for'm in Ohio, Mr. Lincoln procured a
copy and gave it to his Springfield friend, writing on the fly
leaf, "Compliments of A. Lincoln."

t How Mr. Lincoln stood on the questions of the hour, after
his defeat by Douglas, is clearly shown in a letter written
on the 14th of May, 1859, to a friend in Kansas, who had for
warded him an invitation to attend a Republican convention
there. "You will probably adopt resolutions," he writes, "in
the nature of a platform. I think the only danger will be the
temptation to lower the Republican standard in order to gather
recruits. I'n my judgment such a step would be a serious
mistake, and open a gap through which more would pass out
than pass in. And this would be the same whether the letting
down should be in deference to Douglasism or to the Southern

452 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

hearers and were enthusiastically approved. By
the close of the year he was back again in the dingy
law office in Springfield.

The opening of the year 1860 found Mr. Lin
coln's name freely mentioned in connection with
the Republican nomination for the Presidency. To
be classed with Seward, Chase, McLean, and other
celebrities was enough to stimulate any Illinois
lawyer's pride; but in Mr. Lincoln's case, if it had
any such effect, he was most artful in concealing it.
Now and then some ardent friend, an editor, for
example, would run his name up to the mast-head,
but in all cases he discouraged the attempt. "In
regard to the matter you spoke of," he answered
one man who proposed his name, "I beg that you
will not give it a further mention. Seriously, I do
not think I am fit for the Presidency."*

The first effort in his behalf as a Presidential aspi-

opposition element; either would surrender the object of the
Republican organization — the preventing of the spread and na
tionalization of slavery. This object surrendered, the organi
zation would go to pieces. I do not mean by this that no
Southern man must be placed upon our national ticket for 1860.
There are many men in the slave states for any one of whom
I could cheerfully vote, to be either President or Vice-Presi-
dent, provided he would enable me to do so with safety to the
Republican cause, without lowering the Republican standard.
This is the indispensable condition of a union with us ; it is idle
to talk of any other. Any other would be as fruitless to the
South as distasteful to the North, the whole ending in common
defeat. Let a union be attempted on the basis of ignoring the
slavery question, and magnifying other questions which the
people are just now caring about, and it will result in gaining
no single electoral vote in the South, and losing every one in
the North."— MS. letter to M. W. Delahay.
* Letter. March 5. 1859, to Thomas J. Pickett.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 453

rant was the action taken by his friends at a meet
ing held in the State House early in 1860, in the
rooms of O. M. Hatch, then Secretary of State.
Besides Hatch there were present Norman B. Judd,
chairman of the Republican State Committee,
Ebenezer Peek, Jackson Grimshaw, and others of
equal prominence in the party, "we all expressed
a personal preference for Mr. Lincoln," relates one
who was a participant in the meeting,* "as the
Illinois candidate for the Presidency, and asked him
if his name might be used at once in connection
with the nomination and election. With his char
acteristic modesty he doubted whether he could
get the nomination even if he wished it, and asked
until the next morning to answer us whether his
name might be announced. Late the next day he
authorized us, if we thought proper to do so, to
place him in the field." To the question from Mr.
Grimshaw whether, if the nomination for President
could not be obtained, he would accept the post of
Vice-President, he answered that he would not;
that his name having been used for the office of
President, he would not permit it to be used for
any other office, however honorable it might be.
This meeting was preliminary to the Decatur con
vention, and was also the first concerted action in
his behalf on the part of his friends.

In the preceding October he came rushing into
the office one morning, with the letter from New
York City, inviting him to deliver a lecture there, and

Jackson Grimshaw. Letter, Quincy, 111., April 28, 1866, MS.

454 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

asked my advice and that of other friends as to
the subject and character of his address. We all
recommended a speech on the political situation.
Remembering his poor success as a lecturer himself,
he adopted our suggestions. He accepted the invi
tation of the New York committee, at the same
time notifying them that his speech would deal
entirely with political questions, and fixing a day
late in February as the most convenient time.
Meanwhile he spent the intervening time in careful
preparation. He searched through the dusty vol
umes of congressional proceedings in the State
library, and dug deeply into political history. He
was painstaking and thorough in the study of his
subject, but when at last he left for New York we
had many misgivings — and he not a few himself —
of his success in the great metropolis. What effect
the unpretentious Western lawyer would have on
the wealthy and fashionable society of the great
city could only be conjectured. A description of
the meeting at Cooper Institute, a list of the names
of the prominent men and women present, or an
account of Lincoln in the delivery of the address
would be needless repetitions of well-known his
tory.* It only remains to say that his speech was

* On his return home Lincoln told me that for once in his
life he was greatly abashed over his personal appearance. The
new suit of clothes which he donned on his arrival in New
York were ill-fitting garments, and showed the creases made
while packed in the valise ; and for a long time after he be
gan his speech and before he became "warmed up" he imagined
that the audience noticed the contract between his Western
clothes and the neat-fltting suits of Mr. Bryant and others who
sat on the platform. The collar of his coat on the right side

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 455

devoid of all rhetorical imagery, with a marked sup
pression of the pyrotechnics of stump oratory. It
was constructed with a view to accuracy of state
ment, simplicity of language, and unity of thought.
In some respects like a lawyer's brief, it was logical,
temperate in tone, powerful — irresistibly driving
conviction home to men's reasons and their souls.
No former effort in the line of speech-making had
cost Lincoln so much time and thought as this one.
It is said by one of his biographers, that those
afterwards engaged in getting out the speech as a
campaign document were three weeks in verifying
the statements and finding the historical records
referred to and consulted by him. This is probably
a little over-stated as to time, but unquestionbly
the work of verification and reference was in any
event a very labored and extended one.* The day
following the Cooper Institute meeting, the leading
New York dailies published the speech in full, and
made favorable editorial mention of it and of the
speaker as well. It was plain now that Lincoln had
captured the metropolis. From New York he trav
elled to New England to visit his son Robert, who

had an unpleasant way of flying up whenever he raised his
arm to gesticulate. He imagined the audience noticed that
also. After the meeting closed, the newspaper reporters called
for slips of his speech. This amused him, because he had no
idea what slips were, and besides, didn't suppose the news
papers cared to print his speech verbatim.

* Mr. Lincoln obtained most of the facts of his Cooper Insti
tute speech from Eliott's "Debates on the Federal Constitu
tion." There were six volumes, which he gave to me when he
went to Washington in 1861.

456 THE L1FE OF LINCOLN.

was attending college. In answer to the many calls
and invitations which showered on him, he spoke at
various places in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
New Hampshire. In all these places he not only
left deep impressions of his ability, but he con
vinced New England of his intense earnestness in
the great cause. The newspapers treated him with
no little consideration. One paper* characterized
his speech as one of "great fairness," delivered with
"great apparent candor and wonderful interest.
For the first half hour his opponents would agree
with every word he uttered; and from that point
he would lead them off little by little until it seemed
as if he had got them all into his fold. He is far
from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his
voice is disagreeable; and yet he wins your atten
tion from the start. He indulges in no flowers of
rhetoric, no eloquent passages .... He displays
more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of
mankind than any public speaker we have heard
since Long Jim Wilson left for California."

Lincoln's return to Springfield after his dazzling
success in the East was the signal for earnest con
gratulations on the part of his friends. Seward was
the great man of the day, but Lincoln had demon
strated to the satisfaction of his friends that he was
tall enough and strong enough to measure swords
with the Auburn statesman. His triumph in New
York and New England had shown that the idea of
a house divided against itself induced as strong

* Manchester Mirror.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 457

cooperation and hearty support in prevention of a
great wrong in the East as the famous "irrepres
sible conflict" attracted warriors to Seward's stand
ard in the Mississippi valley. It was apparent now
to Lincoln that the Presidential nomination was
within his reach. He began gradually to lose his
interest in the law and to trim his political sails at
the same time. His recent success had stimulated
his self-confidence to unwonted proportions. He
wrote to influential party workers everywhere. I
know the idea prevails that Lincoln sat still in
his chair in Springfield, and that one of those
unlooked-for tides in human affairs came along and
cast the nomination into his lap; but any man who
has had experience in such things knows that great
political prizes are not obtained in that way. The
truth is, Lincoln was as vigilant as he was ambitious,
and there is no denying the fact that he understood
the situation perfectly from the start. In the man
agement of his own interests he was obliged to rely
almost entirely on his own resources. He had no
money with which to maintain a political bureau,
and he lacked any kind of personal organization
whatever. Seward had all these things, and, behind
them all, a brilliant record in the United States
Senate with which to dazzle his followers. But
with all his prestige and experience the latter was
no more adroit and no more untiring in pursuit of
his ambition than the man who had just delivered
the Cooper Institute speech. A letter written by
Lincoln about this time to a friend in Kansas serves
to illustrate his methods, and measures the extent

458 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

of his ambition. The letter is dated March 10, and
is now in my possession. For obvious reasons I
withhold the friend's name: "As to your kind
wishes for myself," writes Lincoln, "allow me to say
I cannot enter the ring on the money basis — first,
because in the main it is wrong; and secondly, I
have not and cannot get the money. I say in the
main the use of money is wrong; but for certain
objects in a political contest the use of some is both
right and indispensable. With me, as with yourself,
this long struggle has been one of great pecuniary
loss. I now distinctly say this: If you shall be
appointed a delegate to Chicago I will furnish one
hundred dollars to bear the expenses of the trip."
There is enough in this letter to show that Lincoln
was not only determined in his political ambition,
but intensely practical as well. His eye was con
stantly fastened on Seward, who had already freely
exercised the rights of leadership in the party. All
other competitors he dropped out of the problem.
In the middle of April he again writes his Kansas
friend: "Reaching home last night I found yours
of the 7th. You know I was recently in New Eng
land. Some of the acquaintances while there write
me since the election that the close vote in Connec
ticut and the quasi-defeat in Rhode Island are a
drawback upon the prospects of Governor Seward ;
and Trumbull writes Dubois to the same effect.
Do not mention this as coming from me. Both
these States are safe enough in the fall." But,
while Seward may have lost ground near his home,
he was acquiring strength in the West. He had

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 459

invaded the very territory Lincoln was intending to
retain by virtue of his course in the contest with
Douglas. Lincoln's friend in Kansas, instead of
securing that delegation for him, had suffered the
Seward men to outgeneral him, and the prospects
were by no means flattering. "I see by the dis
patches," writes Lincoln, in a burst of surprise,
"that, since you wrote, Kansas has appointed dele
gates and instructed for Seward. Don't stir them
up to anger, but come along to the convention and
I will do as I said about expenses." Whether the
friend ever accepted Lincoln's generous offer I do
not know,* but it may not be without interest to
state that within ten days after the latter's inaugu
ration he appointed him to a Federal office with
comfortable salary attached, and even asked for his
preferences as to other contemplated appointments
in his own State.f In the rapid, stirring scenes that

* This case illustrates quite forcibly Lincoln's weakness in
dealing with individuals. This man I know had written Lincoln,
promising to bring the Kansas delegation to Chicago for him
if he would only pay his expenses. Lincoln was weak enough
to make the promise, and yet such was his faith in the man
that he appointed him to an important judicial position and
gave him great prominence in other ways. What President or
candidate for President would dare do such a thing now?

t The following is in my possession :

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 13, 1861.
" , Esq.

"Mr DEAR SIR:

"You will start for Kansas before I see you again ; and when
I saw you a moment this morning I forgot to ask you about
some of the Kansas appointments, which I intended to do. If
you care much about them you can write, as I think I shall
not make the appointments just yet.

"Tours in haste,

"A. LINCOLN."

460 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

crowd upon each other from this time forward the
individuality of Lincoln is easily lost sight of.
He was so thoroughly interwoven in the issues
before the people of Illinois that he had become a
part of them. Among his colleagues at the bar he
was no longer looked upon as the Circuit-Court law
yer of earlier days. To them it seemed as if the
nation were about to lay its claim upon him. His
tall form enlarged, until, to use a figurative expres
sion, he could no longer pass through the door of
our dingy office. Reference has already been made
to the envy of his rivals at the bar, and the jealousy
of his political contemporaries. Very few indeed
were free from the degrading passion; but it made
no difference in Lincoln's treatment of them. He
was as generous and deferred to them as much as
ever. The first public movement by the Illinois
people in his interest was the action of the State
convention, which met at Decatur on the 9th and
10th of May. It was at this convention that Lin
coln's friend and cousin, John Hanks, brought in the
two historic rails which both had made in the Sanga-
mon bottom in 1830, and which served the double pur
pose of electrifying the Illinois people and kindling
the fire of enthusiasm that was destined to sweep
over the nation. In the words of an ardent Lincoln
delegate. "These rails were to represent the issue
in the coming contest between labor free and labor
slave ; between democracy and aristocracy. Little did
I think," continues our jubilant and effusive friend,
"of the mighty consequences of this little incident;
little did I think that the tall, and angular, and bony

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 461

rail-splitter who stood in girlish diffidence bow
ing with awkward grace would fill the chair once
filed by Washington, and that his name would echo
in chants of praise along the corridor of all coming
time." A week later the hosts were gathered for
the great convention in Chicago. David Davis had
rented rooms in the Tremont House and opened up
"Lincoln's headquarters." I was not a delegate,
but belonged to the contingent which had Lincoln's
interests in charge. Judge Logan was the Spring
field delegate, and to him Lincoln had given a letter
authorizing the withdrawal of his name whenever
his friends deemed such action necessary or proper.
Davis was the active man, and had the business man
agement^ in charge. If any negotiations were made,
he made them. The convention was held in a mon
ster building called the Wigwam. No one who has
ever attempted a description of it has overdrawn its
enthusiasm and exciting scenes. Amid all the din
and confusion, the curbstone contentions, the pro
miscuous wrangling of delegates, the deafening roar
of the assembled hosts, the contest narrowed down
to a neck-and-neck race between the brilliant states
man of Auburn and the less pretentious, but manly
rail-splitter from the Sangamon bottoms. With the
proceedings of the convention the world is already
well familiar. On the first ballot Seward led, but
was closely followed by Lincoln; on the second Lin
coln gained amazingly; on the third the race was an
even one until the dramatic change by Carter, of
Ohio, when Lincoln, swinging loose, swept grandly to
the front. The cannon planted on the roof of the

462 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Wigwam belched forth a boom across the Illinois
prairies. The sound was taken up and reverberated
from Maine to California. With the nomination
of Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, the convention
adjourned. The delegates — victorious and van
quished alike — turned their steps homeward, and
the great campaign of 1860 had begun. The day
before the nomination the editor of the Springfield
Journal arrived in Chicago with a copy of the Mis
souri Democrat, in which Lincoln had marked three
passages referring to Seward's position on the slav
ery question. On the margin of the paper he had
written in pencil, "I agree with Seward in his 'Irre
pressible Conflict/ but I do not endorse his 'Higher
Law' doctrine." Then he added in words under
scored. "Make no contracts that will bind me."
This paper was brought into the room where Davis,
Judd, Logan, and I were gathered, and was read to
us. But Lincoln was down in Springfield, some dis
tance away from Chicago, and could therefore not
appreciate the gravity of the situation ; at least so
Davis argued, and, viewing it in that light, the latter
went ahead with his negotiations. What the conse
quences of these! deals were will appear later on.
The news of his nomination found Lincoln at
Springfield in the office of the Journal. Naturally
enough he was nervous, restless, and laboring under
more or less suppressed excitement. He had been
tossing ball — a pastime frequently indulged in by
the lawyers of that day, and had played a few games
of billiards to keep down, as another has expressed
it, "the unnatural excitement that threatened to

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 453

possess him." When the telegram containing the
result of the last ballot came in, although appar
ently calm and undisturbed, a close observer could
have detected in the compressed lip and serious
countenance evidences of deep and unusual emo
tion. As the balloting progressed he had gone to
the office of the Journal, and was sitting in a large
arm-chair there when the news of his nomination
came. What a line of scenes, stretching from the
barren glade in Kentucky to the jubilant and en
thusiastic throng in the Wigwam at Chicago, must
have broken in upon his vision as he hastened from
the newspaper office to "tell a little woman down
the street the news!" In the evening his friends
and neighbors called to congratulate him. He
thanked them feelingly and shook them each by the
hand. A day later the committee from the conven
tion, with George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, at its
head, called, and delivered formal notice of his nom
ination. This meeting took place at his house.
His response was couched in polite and dignified
language, and many of the committee, who now
met him for the first time, departed with an im
proved impression of the new standard-bearer. A
few days later he wrote his official letter of accept
ance, in which he warmly endorsed the resolutions of
the convention. His actions and utterances so far
had begun to dissipate the erroneous notion prev
alent in some of the more remote Eastern States,
that he was more of a backwoods boor than a gen
tleman; but with the arrival of the campaign in
dead earnest, people paid less attention to the can-

464 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

didates and more to the great issues at stake,
Briefly stated, the Republican platform was a dec
laration that "the new dogma, that the Constitu
tion carries slavery into all the Territories, is a dan
gerous political heresy, revolutionary in tendency
and subversive of the peace and harmony of the
country; that the normal condition of all the Terri
tories is that of freedom; that neither Congress, the
territorial legislature, nor any individual can give le
gal existence to slavery in any territory; that the
opening of the slave trade would be a crime against
humanity." Resolutions favoring a homestead law,
river and harbor improvements, and the Pacific
railroad were also included in the platform. With
these the Republicans, as a lawyer would say, went
to the country. The campaign which followed was
one with few parallels in American history. There
was not only the customary exultation and enthu
siasm over candidates, but there was patient listening
and hard thinking among the masses. The slavery
question, it was felt, must soon be decided. Threats
of disunion were the texts of many a campaign
speech in the South : in fact, as has since been
shown, a deep laid conspiracy to overthrow the
Union was then forming, and was only awaiting the
election of a Republican President to show its hid
eous head. The Democratic party was struggling
under the demoralizing effects of a split, in which
even the Buchanan administration had taken sides.
Douglas, the nominee of one wing, in his despera
tion had entered into the canvass himself, making
speeches with all the power and eloquence at his

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 465

command. The Republicans, cheered over the
prospect, had joined hands with the Abolitionists,
and both were marching to victory under the
inspiration of Lincoln's sentiment, that "the further
spread of slavery should be arrested, and it should
be placed where the public mind shall rest in the
belief of its ultimate extinction."

As the canvass advanced and waxed warm I ten
dered my services and made a number of speeches
in the central part of the State. I remember, in the
midst of a speech at Petersburg, and just as I was
approaching an oratorical climax, a man out of
breath came rushing up to me and thrust a message
into my hand. I was somewhat frustrated and
greatly alarmed, fearing it might contain news of
some accident in my family; but great was my re
lief when I read it, which I did aloud. It was a
message from Lincoln, telling me to be of good
cheer, that Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana had
gone Republican.*

These were then October States, and this was the
first gun for the great cause. It created so much
demonstration, such a burst of enthusiasm and con
fusion, that the crowd forgot they had any speaker;
they ran yelling and hurrahing out of the hall, and I
never succeeded in finishing the speech.

* The handwriting of the note was a little tremulous, showing
that Lincoln was excited and nervous when he wrote it. Fol
lowing is a copy of the original MS. :

"SPRINGFIELD, ILL., October 10, 1860.

"DEAR WILLIAM : I cannot give you details, but it is entirely
certain that Pennsylvania and Indiana have gone Republican
very largely. Pennsylvania 25,000, and Indiana 5,000 to 10,000.
Ohio of course is safe. "Yours as ever,

N "A. LINCOLN/'

466 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

As soon as officially notified of his nomination*
Mr. Lincoln moved his headquarters from our office
to a room in the State House building, and there,
with his secretary, John G. Nicolay, he spent the
busy and exciting days of his campaign. Of course
he attended to no law business, but still he loved to
come to our office of evenings, and spend an hour
with a few choice friends in a friendly privacy
which was denied him at his public quarters.
These were among the last meetings we had with
Lincoln as our friend and fellow at the bar; and
they are also the most delightful recollections any
of us have retained of him.f At last the turmoil

* Following is Lincoln's letter of acceptance :

"SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 23. 1860.

"SiR : I accept the nomination tendered me by the conven
tion over which you presided, of Which I am formally apprised
in a letter of yourself and others, acting as a committee of
the convention for that purpose. The declaration of principles
which accompanies your letter meets my approval, and it shall
be my care not to violate it or disregard it in any part. Im
ploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due re
gard to the views and feelings of all who were represented in
the convention, to the rights of all the states and territories and
people of the nation, to the inviolability of the Constitution,
and the perpetual union, prosperity, and harmony of all, I am
most happy to cooperate for the practical success of the prin
ciples declared by the convention.

"Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen,

"HON. GEORGE ASHMUN." "ABRAHAM LINCOLN.-"

t One of what Lincoln regarded as the remarkable features
of his canvass for President was the attitude of some of his
neighbors in Springfield. A poll of the voters had been made
in a little book and given to him. On running over the names he
found that the greater part of the clergy of the city — in fact
all but three — were a.gainst him. This depressed him somewhat,
and he called in Dr. Newton Bateman, who as Superintendent
of Public Instruction occupied the room adjoining his own in the
State House, and whom he habitually addressed as "Mr. School-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 467

and excitement and fatigue of the campaign were
over: the enthusiastic political workers threw aside
their campaign uniforms, the boys blew out their
torches, and the voter approached the polls with
his ballot. On the morning of election day I
stepped in to see Mr. Lincoln, and was surprised to
learn that he did not intend to cast his vote. I
knew of course that he did so because of a feeling
that the candidate for a Presidential office ought not
to vote for his own electors ; but when I suggested
the plan of cutting off the Presidential electors and
voting for the State officers, he was struck with the
idea, and at last consented. His appearance at the
polls, accompanied by Ward Lamon, the lamented
young Ellsworth, and myself, was the occasion of no
little surprise because of the general impression
which prevailed that he did not intend to vote.
The crowd around the polls opened a gap as the
distinguished voter approached, and some even
removed their hats as he deposited his ticket and
announced in a subdued voice his name, "Abraham
Lincoln."

The election was held on the 6th of Novem
ber. The result showed a popular vote of 1,857,610
for Lincoln; 1,291,574 for Douglas; 850,022 for
Breckenridge; and 646,124 for Bell. In the elec-

master." He commented bitterly on the attitude of the preach
ers and many of their followers, who, pretending1 to be believers
in the Bible and God-fearing Christians, yet by their votes
demonstrated that they cared not whether slavery was voted
up or down. "God cares and humanity cares," he reflected,
"and if they do not they surely have not read their Bible
aright."

468 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

toral college Lincoln received 180 votes, Brecken-
ridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas 12.* Mr. Lincoln
having now been elected, there remained, before
taking up the reins of government, the details of his
departure from Springfield, and the selection of a
cabinet.

* Lincoln electors were chosen in seventeen of the free States,
as follows : Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Is
land, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, In
diana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Califor
nia, Oregon ; and in one State, — New Jersey, — owing to a fusion
between Democrats, Lincoln secured four and Douglas three of
the electors. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina,
and Texas went for Breckenridge ; Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Virginia for Bell ; while Douglas secured only one entire State —
Missouri.

CHAPTER XVI.

The election over, Mr. Lincoln scarcely had time
enough to take a breath until another campaign
and one equally trying, so far as a test of his
constitution and nerves was concerned, as the one
through which he had just passed, opened up before
him. I refer to the siege of the cabinet-makers and
office-seekers. It proved to be a severe and pro
tracted strain and one from which there seemed to
be no relief, as the President-elect of this renowned
democratic Government is by custom and prece
dent expected to meet and listen to everybody who
calls to see him. "Individuals, deputations, and
delegations," says one of Mr. Lincoln's biographers,
"from all quarters pressed in upon him in a man
ner that might have killed a man of less robust con
stitution. The hotels of Springfield were filled
with gentlemen who came with light baggage and
heavy schemes. The party had never been in
office. A clean sweep of the 'ins' was expected,
and all the 'outs' were patriotically anxious to take
the vacant places. It was a party that had never
fed; and it was voraciously hungry. Mr. Lincoln
and Artemus Ward saw a great deal of fun in it;
and in all human probability it was the fun alone
that enabled Mr. Lincoln to bear it."

469

470 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

His own election of course disposed of any claims
Illinois might have had to any further representa
tion in the cabinet, but it afforded Mr. Lincoln no
relief from the argumentative interviews and press
ing claims of the endless list of ambitious statesmen
in the thirty-two other states, who swarmed into
Springfield from every point of the compass. He
told each one of them a story, and even if he failed
to put their names on his slate they went away with
out knowing that fact, and never forgot the visit.*

* A newspaper correspondent who had been sent down from
Chicago to "write up" Mr. Lincoln soon after his nomination, was
kind enough several years ago to furnish me with an account of
his visit. As some of his reminiscences are more or less interest
ing, I take the liberty of inserting a portion of his letter. "A
what-not in the corner of the room," he relates, "was laden with
various kinds of shells. Taking one in my hand, I said, 'This,
I suppose, is called a Trocus by the geologist or naturalist.'
Mr. Lincoln paused a moment as if reflecting and then replied,
'I do not know, for I never studied either geology or natural
history.' I then took to examining the few pictures that hung
on the walls, and was paying more than ordinary attention to
one that hung above the sofa. He was immediately at my left
and pointing to it said, 'That picture gives a very fair repre
sentation of my homely face.' . . . The time for my departure
nearing, I made the usual apologies and started to go. 'You
cannot get out of the town before a quarter past eleven,' remon
strated Mr. Lincoln, 'and you may as well stay a little longer.'
Under pretence of some unfinished matters down town, however, I
very reluctantly withdrew from the mansion. 'Well,' said Mr.
Lincoln, as we passed into the hall, 'suppose you come over to
the State House before you start for Chicago.' After a mo
ment's deliberation I promised to do so. Mr. Lincoln, follow
ing without his hat, and continuing the conversation, shook
hands across the gate, saying, 'Now, come over.' I wended my
way to my hotel, and after a brief period was in his office at
the State House. Resuming conversation, he said, 'If the man
comes with the key before you go, I want to give you a book.' I

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

He had a way of pretending to assure his visitor
that in the choice of his advisers he was "free to
act as his judgment dictated," although David
Davis, acting as his manager at the Chicago conven
tion, had negotiated with the Indiana and Pennsyl
vania delegations, and assigned places in the cabi
net to Simon Cameron and Caleb Smith, besides
making other "arrangements" which Mr. Lincoln
was expected to ratify. Of this he was undoubt
edly aware, although in answer to a letter from
Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, congratulating him

certainly hoped the man would come with the key. Some con
versation had taken place at the house on which his book
treated, — but I had forgotten this, — and soon Mr. Lincoln ab
sented himself for perhaps two minutes and returned with a
copy of the debates between himself and Judge Douglas. He
placed the book on his knee, as he sat back on two legs of his
chair, and wrote on the fly-leaf, 'J. S. Bliss, from A. Lincoln.'
Besides this he marked a complete paragraph near the middle
of the book. While sitting in the position described little Willie,
his son, came in and begged his father for twenty-five cents.
'My son,' said the father, 'what do you want with twenty-five
cents?' T want it to buy candy with,' cried the boy. 'I cannot
give you twenty-five^ cents, my son, but will give you five cents,'
at the same time putting his thumb and finger into his vest
pocket and taking therefrom five cents in silver, which he placed
upon the desk before the boy. But this did not reach Willie's
expectations ; he scorned the pile, and turning away clambered
down-stairs and through the spacious halls of the Capitol, leav
ing behind him his five cents and a distinct reverberation of
sound. Mr. Lincoln turned to me and said, 'He will be back
after that in a few minutes.' 'Why do you think so?' said I.
'Because, as soon as he finds I will give him no more he will
come and get it.' After the matter had been nearly forgotten
and conversation had turned in an entirely different channel,
Willie came cautiously in behind my chair and that of his
father, picked up the specie, and went away without saying a
word."— J. S. Bliss, letter, Jan. 29, 1867, MS.

472 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

on his nomination, he said,* "It is indeed most grate
ful to my feelings that the responsible position
assigned me conies without conditions." Out of
regard to the dignity of the exalted station he was
about to occupy, he was not as free in discussing the
matter of his probable appointments with some of
his personal friends as they had believed he would
be. In one or two instances, I remember, the latter
were offended at his seeming disregard of the
claims of old friendship. My advice was not asked
for on such grave subjects, nor had I any right or
reason to believe it would be; hence I never felt
slighted or offended. On some occasions in our
office, when Mr. Lincoln had come across from the
State House for a rest or a chat with me, he would
relate now and then some circumstance — generally
an amusing one — connected with the settlement of
the cabinet problem, but it was said in such a way
that one would not have felt free to interrogate him
about his plans. Soon after his election I received
from my friend Joseph Medill, of Chicago, a letter
which argued strongly against the appointment of
Simon Cameron to a place in the cabinet, and
which the writer desired I should bring to Mr. Lin
coln's attention. I awaited a favorable opportunity,
and one evening when we were alone in our office
I gave it to him. It was an eloquent protest
against the appointment of a corrupt and debased
man, and coming from the source it did — the writer
being one of Lincoln's best newspaper supporters
— made a deep impression on him. Lincoln read

» Letter, May 21st, I860, MS.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 473

it over several times, but refrained from expressing
any opinion. He did say however that he felt him
self under no promise or obligation to appoint any
one; that if his friends made any agreements for
him they did so over his expressed direction and
without his knowledge. At another time he said
that he wanted to give the South, by way of placa-
tion, a place in his cabinet; that a fair division of the
country entitled the Southern States to a reasonable
representation there, and if not interfered with he
wTould make such a distribution as would satisfy all
persons interested. He named three persons who
would be acceptable to him. They were Botts, of
Virginia; Stephens, of Georgia; and Maynard, of
Tennessee. He apprehended no such grave dan
ger to the Union as the mass of people supposed
would result from the Southern threats, and said he
could not in his heart believe that the South de
signed the overthrow of the Government. This is
the extent of my conversation about the cabinet.^
Thurlow Weed, the veteran in journalism and poli
tics, came out from New York and spent several
days with Lincoln. He was not only the repre
sentative of Senator Seward, but rendered the Presi
dent-elect signal service in the formation of his
cabinet. In his autobiography Mr. Weed relates
numerous incidents of this visit. He was one day
opposing the claims of Montgomery Blair, who as
pired to a cabinet appointment, when Mr. Lincoln
inquired of Weed whom he would recommend.
"Henry Winter Davis," was the response. "David
Davis, I see, has been posting you up on this

474 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

question," retorted Lincoln. "He has Davis on
the brain. I think Maryland must be a good State
to move from." The President then told a story
of a witness in court in a neighboring county, who
on being asked his age replied, "Sixty." Being
satisfied he was much older the question was re
peated, and on receiving the same answer, the court
admonished the witness, saying, "The court knows
you to be much older than sixty." Oh, I under
stand now," was the rejoinder; "you're thinking of
those ten years I spent on the eastern shore of Mary
land; that was so much time lost and don't count."
Before Mr. Lincoln's departure from Springfield,
people who knew him personally were frequently
asked what sort of man he was. I received many
letters, generally from the Eastern States, show
ing that much doubt still existed in the minds of
the people whether he would prove equal to the
great task that lay in store for him. Among others
who wrote me on the subject was the Hon. Henry
Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States,
whom I had met during my visit to Washington
in the spring of 1858. Two years after Mr. Lin
coln's death, Mr. Wilson wrote me as follows: "I
have just finished reading your letter dated Decem
ber 21, 1860, in answer to a letter of mine asking
you to give me your opinion of the President just
elected. In this letter to me you say of Mr.
Lincoln what more than four years of observation
confirmed. After stating that you had been his
law partner for over eighteen years and his most
intimate and bosom friend all that time you say, 'I

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 475

know him better than he does himself. I know
this seems a little strong, but I risk the assertion.
Lincoln is a man of heart — aye, as gentle as a
woman's and as tender — but he has a will strong as
iron. He therefore loves all mankind, hates slavery
and every form of despotism. Put these together
— love for the slave, and a determination, a will, that
justice, strong and unyielding, shall be done when
he has the right to act, and you can form your own
conclusion. Lincoln will fail here, namely, if a ques
tion of political economy — if any question comes
up which is doubtful, questionable, which no man
can demonstrate, then his friends can rule him; but
when on justice, right, liberty, the Government,
the Constitution, and the Union, then you may
all stand aside: he will rule then, and no man can
move him — no set of men can do it. There is no
fail here. This is Lincoln, and you mark my pre
diction. You and I must keep the people right;
God will keep Lincoln right/ These words of
yours made a deep impression upon my mind, and I
came to love and trust him even before I saw him.
After an acquaintance of more than four years I
found that your idea of him was in all respects cor
rect — that he was the loving, tender, firm, and just
man you represented him to be; while upon some
questions in which moral elements did not so
clearly enter he was perhaps too easily influenced
by others. Mr. Lincoln was a genuine democrat
in feelings, sentiments, and actions. How patiently
and considerately he listened amid the terrible
pressure of public affairs to the people who

476 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

thronged his ante-room! I remember calling upon
him one day during the war on pressing business.
The ante-room was crowded with men and women
seeking admission. He seemed oppressed, careworn,
and weary. I said to him, 'Mr. President, you are
too exhausted to see this throng waiting to see you;
you will wear yourself out and ought not see these
people to-day/ He replied, with one of those
smiles in which sadness seemed to mingle, 'They
don't want much; they get but little, and I must
see them.' During the war his heart was oppressed
and his life burdened with the conflict between the
tenderness of his nature and what seemed to be the
imperative demands of duty. In the darkest hours
of the conflict desertions from the army were fre
quent, and army officers urgently pressed the execu
tion of the sentences of the law; but it was with
the greatest effort that he would bring himself to
consent to the execution of the judgment of the
military tribunals. I remember calling early one
Sabbath morning with a wounded Irish officer, who
came to Washington to say that a soldier who had
been sentenced to be shot in a day or two for deser
tion had fought gallantly by his side in battle. I
told Mr. Lincoln we had come to ask him to pardon
the poor soldier. After a few moments' reflection
he said, 'My officers tell me the good of the ser
vice demands the enforcement of the law; but it
makes my heart ache to have the poor fellows shot.
I will pardon this soldier, and then you will all join
in blaming me for it. You censure me for granting
pardons, and yet you all ask me to do so.' I say

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 477

again, no man had a more loving and tender nature
than Mr. Lincoln."

Before departing for Washington Mr. Lincoln
went to Chicago* for a few days' stay, and there by
previous arrangement met his old friend, Joshua F.
Speed. Both were accompanied by their wives,
and while the latter were out shopping the two
husbands repaired to Speed's room at the hotel.
"For an hour or more," relates Speed, "we lived
over again the scenes of other days. Finally
Lincoln threw himself on the bed, and fixing his
eyes on a spot in the ceiling asked me this ques
tion, 'Speed, what is your pecuniary condition? are
you rich or poor?' I answered, addressing him by
his new title, 'Mr. President, I think I can antici
pate what you are going to say. I'll speak candidly
to you on the subject. My pecuniary condition is
satisfactory to me now; You would perhaps call it
good. I do not think you have within your gift
any office I could afford to take/ Mr. Lincoln
then proposed to make Guthrie, of Kentucky, Sec
retary of War, but did not want to write to him —
asked me to feel of him. I did as requested, but
the Kentucky statesman declined on the ground of
his advanced age, and consequent physical inability
to fill the position. He gave substantial assurance

* A lady called one day at the hotel where the Lincolns were
stopping in Chicago to take Mrs. Lincoln out for a promenade
or a drive. She was met in the parlor by Mr. Lincoln, who,
after a hurried trip uptairs to ascertain the cause of the delay
in his wife's appearance, returned with the report that "She
will be down as soon as she has all her trotting harness on."

478 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

of his loyal sentiments, however, and insisted that
the Union should be preserved at all hazards."

Late in January Mr. Lincoln informed me that he
was ready to begin the preparation of his inaugural
address. He had, aside from his law books and
the few gilded volumes that ornamented the centre-
table in his parlor at home, comparatively no
library. He never seemed to care to own or collect
books. On the other hand I had a very respectable
collection, and was adding to it every day. To my
library Lincoln very frequently had access. When,
therefore, he began on his inaugural speech he told
me what works he intended to consult. I looked
for a long list, but when he went, over it I was
greatly surprised. He asked me to furnish him
with Henry. Clay's great speech delivered in 1850 ;
Andrew Jackson's proclamation, against Nullifica
tion; and a copy of the Constitution. He after
wards called for Webster's reply to Hayne, a speech
which he read when he lived at New Salem, and
which he always regarded as the grandest specimen
of American oratory. With these few "volumes,"
and no further sources of reference, he locked himself
up in a room upstairs over a store across the street
from the State House, and there, cut off from all
communication and intrusion, he prepared the
address. Though composed amid the unromantic
surroundings of a dingy, dusty, and neglected back
room, the speech has become a memorable docu
ment. Posterity will assign to it a high rank
among historical utterances; and it will ever bear
comparison with the efforts of Washington, Jeffer-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 479

son, Adams, or any that preceded its delivery from
the steps of the national Capitol.

After Mr. Lincoln's rise to national prominence,
and especially since his death, I have often been
asked if I did not write this or that paper for him ; if I
did not prepare or help prepare some of his speeches.
I know that other and abler friends of Lincoln
have been asked the same question.* To people
who made such enquiries I always responded, "You
don't understand Mr. Lincoln. No man ever
asked less aid then he; his confidence in his own
ability to meet the requirements of every hour was
so marked that his friends never thought of tender
ing their aid, and therefore no one could share his
responsibilities. I never wrote a line for him; he
never asked me to. I was never conscious of
having exerted any influence over him. He often
called out my views on some philosophical question,
simply because I was a fond student of philosophy,
and conceding that I had given the subject more
attention than he; he often asked as to the use of a
word or the turn of a sentence, but if I volunteered
to recommend or even suggest a change of lan
guage which involved a change of sentiment I
found him the most inflexible man I have ever
seen."

One more duty — an act of filial devotion —
remained to be done before Abraham Lincoln could

* "I know it was the general impression in Washington that
I knew all about Lincoln's plans and ideas, but the truth is, I
knew nothing. He never confided to me anything of his purposes."
— David Davis, statement, September 20, 1866.

480 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

announce his readiness to depart for the city of
Washington — a place from which it was unfortu
nately decreed he should never return. In the first
week of February he slipped quietly away from
Springfield and rode to Farmington in Coles County,
where his aged step-mother was still living. Here,
in the little country village, he met also the surviv
ing members of the Hanks and Johnston families.
He visited the grave of his father, old Thomas Lin
coln, which had been unmarked and neglected for
almost a decade, and left directions that a suitable
stone should be placed there to mark the spot.
Retracing his steps in the direction of Springfield
he stopped over-night in the town of Charleston,
where he made a brief address, recalling many of his
boyhood exploits, in the public hall. In the audi
ence were many persons who had known him first
as the stalwart young ox-driver when his father's
family drove into Illinois from southern Indiana.
One man had brought with him a horse which the
President-elect, in the earlier days of his law practice,
had recovered for him in a replevin suit; another
one was able to recite from personal recollection the
thrilling details of the famous wrestling match
between Lincoln the flat-boatman in 1830 and
Daniel Needham; and all had some reminiscence
of his early manhood to relate. The separation
from his step-mother was particularly touching.*

* Lincoln's love for his second mother was a most filial and
affectionate one. His letters show that he regarded the relation
truly as that of mother and son. November 4, 1851, he writes
her after the death of his father:

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 481

The parting, when the good old woman, with tears
streaming down her cheeks, gave him a mother's ben
ediction, expressing the fear that his life might be
taken by his enemies, will never be forgotten by those
who witnessed it. Deeply impressed by this fare
well scene Mr. Lincoln reluctantly withdrew from
the circle of warm friends who crowded around him,
and, filled with gloomy forebodings of the future,
returned to Springfield. The great questions of state
having been pretty well settled in his own mind, and
a few days yet remaining before his final departure,
his neighbors and old friends called to take leave of
him and pay their "best respects." Many of these
callers were from New Salem, where he had made
his start in life, and each one had some pleasant or
amusing incident of earlier days to call up when
they met. Hannah Armstrong, who had "foxed"
his trowsers with buckskin in the days when he
served as surveyor under John Calhoun, and whose
son Lincoln had afterwards acquitted in the trial for
murder at Beardstown, gave positive evidence of the
interest she took in his continued rise in the world.

"DEAR MOTHER :

"Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him. If
I were you I would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I
think you will not) you can return to your own home. Chapman
feels very kindly to you ; and I have no doubt he will make
your situation very pleasant.

"Sincerely your son,

"A. LINCOLN/'

On the 9th of the same month he writes his step-brother John
D. Johnston : "If the land can be sold so that I can get three
hundred dollars to put to interest for mother I will not object
if she does not. But before I will make a deed the money must
be had, or secured beyond all doubt at ten per cent."

482 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

She bade him good-bye, but was filled with a presen
timent that she would never see him alive again.
"Hannah," he said, jovially, "if they do kill me I
shall never die again." Isaac Cogsdale, another New
Salem pioneer, came, and to him Lincoln again
admitted his love for the unfortunate Anne Rut-
ledge. Cogsdale afterwards told me of this inter
view. It occurred late in the afternoon. Mr. Nic-
olay, the secretary, had gone home, and the throng of
visitors had ceased for the day. Lincoln asked
about all the early families of New Salem, calling up
the peculiarities of each as he went over the list.
Of the Rutledges he said: "I have loved the name
of Rutledge to this day. I have kept my mind on
their movements ever since." Of Anne he spoke
with some feeling: "I loved her dearly. She was a
handsome girl, would have made a good, loving
wife; she was natural, and quite intellectual, though
not highly educated. I did honestly and truly love
the girl, and think often of her now."

Early in February the last item of preparation for
the journey to Washington had been made. Mr. Lin
coln had disposed of his household goods and furni
ture to a neighbor, had rented his house ; and as these
constituted all the property he owned in Illinois
there was no further occasion for concern on that
score. In the afternoon of his last day in Spring
field he came down to our office to examine some
papers and confer with me about certain legal mat
ters in which he still felt some interest. On several
previous occasions he had told me he was coming over

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 483

to the office "to have a long talk with me," as he
expressed it. We ran over the books and arranged
for the completion of all unsettled and unfinished
matters. In some cases he had certain requests to
make — certain lines of procedure he wished me to
observe. After these things were all disposed of he
crossed to the opposite side of the room and threw
himself down on the old office sofa, which, after
many years of service, had been moved against the
wall for support. He lay for some moments, his
face towards the ceiling, without either of us speak
ing. Presently he inquired, "Billy," — he always
called me by that name, — "how long have we been
together?" "Over sixteen years," I answered.
"We've never had a cross word during all that
time, have we?" to which I returned a vehement,
"No, indeed we have not." He then recalled some
incidents of his early practice and took great pleas
ure in delineating the ludicrous features of many a
lawsuit on the circuit. It was at this last interview
in Springfield that he told me of the efforts that had
been made by other lawyers to supplant me in the
partnership with him. He insisted that such men
were weak creatures, who, to use his own language,
"hoped to secure a law practice by hanging to his
coat-tail." I never saw him in a more cheerful
mood. He gathered a bundle of books and papers
he wished to take with him and started to go ; but
before leaving he made the strange request that the
sign-board which swung on its rusty hinges at the
foot of the stairway should remain. "Let it hang

484 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

there undisturbed,"* he said, with a significant
lowering of his voice. "Give our clients to under
stand that the election of a President makes no
change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. If I
live I'm coming back some time, and then we'll go
right on practising law as if nothing had ever hap
pened." He lingered for a moment as if to take
a last look at the old quarters, and then passed
through the door into the narrow hallway. I accom
panied him downstairs. On the way he spoke of
the unpleasant features surrounding the Presidential
office. "I am sick of office-holding already," he
complained, "and I shudder when I think of the
tasks that are still ahead." He said the sorrow of
parting from his old associations was deeper than
most persons would imagine, but it was more marked
in his case because of the feeling which had become
irrepressible that he would never return alive. I
argued against the thought, characterizing it as an
illusory notion not in harmony or keeping with the

* In answer to the many inquiries made of me, T will say here
that during this last interview Mr. Lincoln, for the first time,
brought up the subject of an office under his administration. He
asked me if I desired an appointment at his hands, and, if so,
what I wanted. I answered that I had no desire for a Federal
office, that I was then holding the office of Bank Commissioner
of Illinois under appointment of Governor Bissel, and that if he
would request my retention in office by Yates, the incoming
Governor, I should be satisfied. He made the necessary recom
mendation, and Governor Yates complied. I was present at the
meeting between Yates and Lincoln, and I remember that the
former, when Lincoln urged my claims for retention in office,
asked Lincoln to appoint their mutual friend A. Y. Ellis post
master at Springfield. I do not remember whether Lincoln
promised to do so or not, but Ellis was never appointed.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 485

popular ideal of a President. "But it is in keeping
with my philosophy," was his quick retort. Our
conversation was frequently broken in upon by the
interruptions of passers-by, who, each in succession,
seemed desirous of claiming his attention. At
length he broke away from them all. Grasping my
hand warmly and with a fervent "Good-bye," he
disappeared down the street, and never came back
to the office again. On the morning following this
last interview, the llth day of February, the Presi
dential party repaired to the railway station, where
the train which was to convey them to Washington
awaited the ceremony of departure. The inten
tion was to stop at many of the principal cities along
the route, and plenty of time had been alloted for
the purpose. Mr. Lincoln had told me that a man
named Wood had been recommended to him by Mr.
Seward, and he had been placed in charge of the
party as a sort of general manager. The party,
besides the President, his wife, and three sons, Rob
ert, William, and Thomas, consisted of his brother-
in-law, Dr. W. S. Wallace, David Davis, Norman B.
Judd, Elmer E. Ellsworth, Ward H. Lamon, and
the President's two secretaries, John G. Nicolay and
John Hay. Colonel E. V. Sumner and other army
gentlemen were also in the car, and some friends of
Mr. Lincoln — among them O. H. Browning, Gov
ernor Yates, and ex-Governor Moore — started with
the party from Springfield, but dropped out at
points along the way. The day was a stormy one,
with dense clouds hanging heavily overhead. A
goodly throng of Springfield people had gath-

486 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

ered to see the distinguished party safely off.
After the latter had entered the car the people closed
about it until the President appeared on the rear
platform. He stood for a moment as if to suppress
evidences of his emotion, and removing his hat made
the following brief but dignified and touching
address;* "Friends: No one who has never been
placed in a like position can understand my feelings
at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this
parting. For more than a quarter of a century I
have lived among you, and during all that time I
have received nothing but kindness at your hands.
Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an
old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were
assumed. Here all my children were born ; and
here one of them lies buried. To you, dear friends,
I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange,
checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind.
To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more
difficult than that which devolved upon Washington.
Unless the great God who assisted him shall be
with and aid me, I must fail ; but if the same
omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed
and protected him shall guide and support me I
shall not fail — I shall succeed. Let us all pray that

* I was not present when Mr. Lincoln delivered his farewell
at the depot at Spring-field, and never heard what he said. I
have adopted the version of his speech as published in our pap
ers. There has been some controversy over the exact lan
guage he used on that occasion, and Mr. Nicolay has recently
published the speech from what he says Is the original MS.,
partly in his own and partly in the handwriting of Mr. Lincoln.
Substantially, however, it is like the speech as reproduced here
from the Springfield paper.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 487

the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.
To him I commend you all. Permit me to ask that
with equal sincerity and faith you will invoke his
wisdom and guidance for me. With these words
I must leave you, for how long I know not. Friends,
one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate
farewell."

At the conclusion of this neat and appropriate
farewell the train rolled slowly out, and Mr. Lincoln,
still standing in the doorway of the rear car, took
his last view of Springfield. The journey had been
as well advertised as it had been carefully planned,
and therefore, at every town along the route, and at
every stop, great crowds were gathered to catch a
glimpse of the President-elect.* Mr. Lincoln usu-

* "Before Mr. Lincoln's election in 1860 I, then a child of
eleven years, was presented with his lithograph. Admiring him
with my whole heart, I thought still his appearance would be
much improved should he cultivate his whiskers. Childish
thoughts must have utterance. So I proposed the idea to him,
expressir-g as well as I was able the esteem in which he was
held among honest men. A few days after I received this kind
and friendly letter:

" 'SPRINGFIELD, ILL.^ October 19, 1860.
" 'Miss GRACE BEDELL.

" 'My Dear Little Miss: — Your very agreeable letter of the
15th is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no
daughter. I have three sons — one seventeen, one nine, and one
seven. They with their mother constitute my whole family. As
to the whiskers, as I have never worn any, do you not think
that people would call it a piece of silly affectation were I to
begin wearing them now?

" 'I am your true friend and sincere well-wisher,

" 'A. LINCOLN/

"It appears I was not forgotten, for after his election to the
Presidency, while on his journey to Washington, the train
stopped at Westfleld, Chautauqua County, at which place I then

488 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

ally gratified the wishes of the crowds, who called
him out for a speech whether it was down on the
regular programme of movements or not. In all
cases his remarks were well-timed and sensibly
uttered. At Indianapolis, where the Legislature was
in session, he halted for a day and delivered a
speech the burden of which was an answer to the
Southern charges of coercion and invasion. From
Indianapolis he moved on to Cincinnati and Co
lumbus, at the last-named place meeting the Legis
lature of Ohio. The remainder of the journey con
vinced Mr. Lincoln of his strength in the affec
tions of the people. Many, no doubt, were full of
curiosity to see the now famous rail-splitter, but all
were outspoken and earnest in their assurances of
support. At Steubenville, Pittsburg, Cleveland,
Buffalo, Albany, New York, and Philadelphia he
made manly and patriotic speeches. These
speeches, plain in language and simple in illus
tration, made every man who heard them a
stronger friend than ever of the Government. He
was skilful enough to warn the people of the
danger ahead and to impress them with his ability
to deal properly with the situation, without in any
case outlining his intended policy or revealing the

resided. Mr. Lincoln said, 'I have a correspondent in this place,
a little girl whose name is Grace Bedell, and I would like to
see her.' I was conveyed to him ; he stepped from the cars,
extending his hand and saying, 'You see I have let these whis
kers grow for you, Grace,' kissed me, shook me cordially by
the hand, and was gone. I was frequently afterward assured
of his remembrance.' " — Grace G. Bedell, MS. letter, Dec. 14.
1866.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 489

forces he held in reserve.* At Pittsburg he advised
deliberation and begged the American people to
keep their temper on both sides of the line. At Cleve
land he insisted that "the crisis, as it is called, is an
artificial crisis and has no foundation in fact;" and
at Philadelphia he assured his listeners that under
his administration there would be "no bloodshed
unless it was forced upon the Government, and then
it would be compelled to act in self-defence." This
last utterance was made in front of Independence

* The following are extracts from Mr. Lincoln's letters writ
ten during the campaign in answer to his position with refer
ence to the anticipated uprisings in the Southern States. They
are here published for the first time:

[From a letter to L. Montgomery Bond, Esq., Oct. 15, I860.]

"I certainly am in no temper and have no purpose to embitter
the feelings of the South, but whether I am inclined to such a
course as would in fact embitter their feelings you can better
judge by my published speeches than by anything I would say
in a short letter if I were inclined now, as I am not, to define
my position anew."

[From a letter to Samuel Hay craft, dated, Springfield, 111., June
4, I860.]

"Like yourself I belonged to the old Whig party from its ori
gin to its close. I never belonged to the American party organi
zation, nor ever to a party called a Union party; though I
hope I neither am or ever have been less devoted to the Union
than yourself or any other patriotic man."
[Private and Confidential.]

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Nov. 13, 1860.

"HON. SAMUEL HAYCRAFT.

"My Dear Sir: — Yours of the 9th is just received. I can only
answer briefly. Rest fully assured that the good people of the
South who will put themselves in the same temper and mood
towards me which you do will find no cause to complain of me.

"Yours very truly,

"A. LINCOLN/'

490 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Hall, where, a few moments before, he had unfurled
to the breeze a magnificent new flag, an impressive
ceremony performed amid the cheers swelling from
the vast sea of upturned faces before him. From
Philadelphia his journey took him to Harrisburg,
where he visited both branches of the Legislature
then in session. For an account of the remainder
of this now famous trip I beg to quote from the
admirable narrative of Dr. Holland. Describing
the welcome tendered him by the Legislature at
Harrisburg, the latter says: "At the conclusion of
the exercises of the day Mr. Lincoln, who was
known to be very weary, was permitted to pass
undisturbed to his apartments in the Jones House.
It was popularly understood that he was to start
for Washington the next morning, and the people
of Harrisburg supposed they had only taken a tem
porary leave of him. He remained in his rooms
until nearly six o'clock, when he passed into the
street, entered a carriage unobserved in company
with Colonel Lamon, and was driven to a special
train on the Pennsylvania railroad in waiting for
him. As a matter of precaution the telegraph
wires were cut the moment he left Harrisburg, so
that if his departure should be discovered intelligence
of it could not be communicated at a distance. At
half -past ten the train arrived at Philadelphia, and
here Mr. Lincoln was met by a detective, who had
a carriage in readiness in which the party were
driven to the depot of the Philadelphia, Wilming
ton, and Baltimore railroad. At a quarter past
eleven they arrived and very fortunately found the

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 491

regular train, which should have left at eleven,
delayed. The party took berths in the sleeping-
car, and without change of cars passed directly
through Baltimore to Washington, where Mr. Lin
coln arrived at half-past six o'clock in the morning
and found Mr. Washburne anxiously awaiting him.
He was taken into a carriage and in a few minutes
he was talking over his adventures with Senator
Seward at Willard's Hotel." The remaining mem
bers of the Presidential party from whom Mr. Lin
coln separated at Harrisburg left that place on the
special train intended for him ; and as news of his safe
arrival in Washington had been already telegraphed
over the country no attempt was made to interrupt
their safe passage through Baltimore. As is now
generally well known many threats had up to that
time been made that Mr. Lincoln, on his way to
Washington, should never pass through Baltimore
alive. It was reported and believed that conspira
cies had been formed to attack the train, blow it up
with explosives or in some equally effective way dis
pose of the President-elect. Mr. Seward and others
were so deeply impressed with the grave features of
the reports afloat that Allan Pinkerton, the noted de
tective of Chicago, was employed to investigate the
matter and ferret out the conspiracy, if any existed.
This shrewd operator went to Baltimore, opened an
office as a stock-broker, and through his assistants
— the most adroit and serviceable of whom was a
woman — was soon in possession of inside informa
tion. The change of plans and trains at Harrisburg
was due to his management and advice. Some

492 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

years before his death Mr. Pinkerton furnished me
with a large volume of the written reports of his
subordinates and an elaborate account by himself
of the conspiracy and the means he employed to
ferret it out. The narrative, thrilling enough in
some particulars, is too extended for insertion here.
It is enough for us to know that the tragedy was
successfully averted and that Mr. Lincoln was safely
landed in Washington.

In January preceding his departure from Spring
field Mr. Lincoln, becoming somewhat annoyed, not
to say alarmed, at the threats emanating from
Baltimore and other portions of the country adja
cent to Washington, that he should not reach the
latter place alive, and that even if successful in
reaching the Capitol his inauguration should in some
way be prevented, determined to ascertain for him
self what protection would be given him in case an
effort should be made by an individual or a mob to
do him violence. He sent a young military officer
in the person of Thomas Mather, then Adjutant-
General of Illinois, to Washington with a letter to
General Scott, in which he recounted the threats he
had heard and ventured to inquire as to the prob
ability of any attempt at his life being made on the
occasion of his inauguration. General Mather, on
his arrival in Washington, found General Scott
confined to his room by illness and unable to see
visitors. On Mather calling a second time and
sending in his letter he was invited up to the sick
man's chamber. "Entering the room," related
Mather in later years, "I found the old warrior, griz-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 493

zly and wrinkled, propped up in the bed by an
embankment of pillows behind his back. His hair
and beard were considerably disordered, the flesh
seemed to lay in rolls across his warty face and
neck, and his breathing was not without great labor.
In his hand he still held Lincoln's letter. He was
weak from long-continued illness, and trembled very
perceptibly. It was evident that the message from
Lincoln had wrought up the old veteran's feelings.
'General Mather,' he said to me, in great agitation,
'present my compliments to Mr. Lincoln when you
return to Springfield, and tell him I expect him to
come on to Washington as soon as he is ready. Say
to him that I'll look after those Maryland
and Virginia rangers myself; I'll plant cannon at
both ends of Pennsylvania avenue, and if any of
them show their heads or raise a finger I'll blow
them to hell.' On my return to Springfield," con
cludes Mather, "I hastened to assure Mr. Lincoln
that, if Scott were alive on the day of the inaugura
tion, there need be no alarm lest the performance be
interrupted by any one. I felt certain the hero of
Lundy's Lane would give the matter the care and
attention it deserved."

Having at last reached his destination in safety,
Mr. Lincoln spent the few days preceding his inau
guration at Willa-rd's Hotel, receiving an uninter
rupted stream of visitors and friends. In the few
unoccupied moments allotted him, he was carefully
revising his inaugural address. On the morning of
the 4th of March he rode from his hotel with Mr.
Buchanan in an open barouche to the Capitol.

494 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

There, slightly pale and nervous, he was introduced
to the assembled multitude by his old friend
Edward D. Baker, and in a fervid and impressive
manner delivered his address. At its conclusion
the customary oath was administered by the vener
able Chief Justice Taney, and he was now clothed
with all the powers and privileges of Chief Magis
trate of the nation. He accompanied Mr. Bu
chanan to the White House and here the historic
bachelor of Lancaster bade him farewell, bespeak
ing for him a peaceful, prosperous, and successful
administration.

One who witnessed the impressive scene left the
following graphic description of the inauguration
and its principle incidents : "Near noon I found
myself a member of the motley crowd gathered
about the side entrance to Willard's Hotel. Soon
an open barouche drove up, and the only occupant
stepped out. A large, heavy, awkward-moving
man, far advanced in years, short and thin gray
hair, full face, plentifully seamed and wrinkled,
head curiously inclined to the left shoulder, a low-
crowned, broad-brimmed silk hat, an immense
white cravat like a poultice, thrusting the old-
fashioned standing collar up to the ears, dressed in
black throughout, with swallow-tail coat not of the
newest style. It was President Buchanan, calling to
take his successor to the Capitol. In a few minutes
he reappeared, with Mr. Lincoln on his arm; the
two took seats side-by-side, and the carriage rolled
away, followed by a rather disorderly and certainly
not very imposing procession. I had ample time to

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 495

walk to the Capitol, and no difficulty in securing
a place where everything could be seen and heard
to the best advantage. The attendance at the
inauguration was, they told me, unusually small,
many being kept away by anticipated disturbance,
as it had been rumored — truly, too — that General
Scott himself was fearful of an outbreak, and had
made all possible military preparations to meet
the emergency. A square platform had been built
out from the steps to the eastern portico, with
benches for distinguished spectators on three sides.
Douglas, the only one I recognized, sat at the
extreme end of the seat on the right of the narrow
passage leading from the steps. There was no
delay, and the gaunt form of the President-elect
was soon visible, slowly making his way to the
front. To me, at least, he was completely meta
morphosed — partly by his own fault, and partly
through the efforts of injudicious friends and
ambitious tailors. He was raising (to gratify a
very young lady, it is said) a crop of whiskers, of
the blacking-brush variety, coarse, stiff, and un
graceful; and in so doing spoiled, or at least
seriously impaired, a face which, though never
handsome, had in its original state a peculiar
power and pathos. On the present occasion the
whiskers were reinforced by brand-new clothes
from top to toe; black dress-coat, instead of the
usual frock, black cloth or satin vest, black panta
loons, and a glossy hat evidently just out of the
box. To cap the climax of novelty, he carried a

496 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

huge ebony cane, with a gold head the size of an
egg. In these, to him, strange habiliments, he
looked so miserably uncomfortable that I could not
help pitying him. Reaching the platform, his dis
comfort was visibly increased by not knowing what
to do with hat and cane; and so he stood there,
the target for ten thousand eyes, holding cane in
one hand and hat in the other, the very picture of
helpless embarrassment. After some hesitation
he pushed the cane into a corner of the railing, but
could not find a place for the hat except on the
floor, where I could see he did not like to risk it.
Douglas, who fully took in the situation, came to
rescue of his old friend and rival, and held the
precious hat until the owner needed it again;
a service which, if predicted two years before,
would probably have astonished him. The oath
of office was administered by Chief Justice Taney,
whose black robes, attenuated figure, and cadaver
ous countenance reminded me of a galvanized
corpst. Then the President came forward, and
read his inaugural address in a clear and distinct
voice. It was attentively listened to by all, but
the closest listener was Douglas, who leaned for
ward as if to catch every word, nodding his head
emphatically at those passages which most pleased
him. There was some applause, not very much
nor very enthusiastic. I must not forget to men
tion the presence of a Mephistopheles in the per
son of Senator Wigfall, of Texas, who stood with
folded arms leaning against the doorway of the

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 497

Capitol, looking down upon the crowd and the
ceremony with a contemptuous air, which suf
ficiently indicated his opinion of the whole per
formance. To him the Southern Confederacy was
already an accomplished fact. He lived to see it
the saddest of fictions."

CHAPTER XVII.

LINCOLN, the President, did not differ greatly from
Lincoln the lawyer and politician. In the latter
capacity only had his old friends in Illinois known
him. For a long time after taking his seat they
were curious to know what change, if any, his
exalted station had made in him. He was no
longer amid people who had seen him grow from
the village lawyer to the highest rank in the land,
and whose hands he could grasp in the confidence
of a time-tried friendship ; but now he was sur
rounded by wealth, power, fashion, influence, by
adroit politicians and artful schemers of every sort.
In the past his Illinois and particularly his Spring
field friends* had shared the anxiety and responsi-

* Lincoln, even after his elevation to the Presidency, always
had an eye out for his friends, as the following letters will
abundantly prove:

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, April 20, 1864.
"CALVIN TRUESDALE, ESQ.

"Postmaster, Rock Island, 111. :

"Thomas J. Pickett, late agent of the Quarter
master's Department for the Island of Rock Island, has been re
moved or suspended from that position on a charge of having
sold timber and stone from the island for his private benefit.
Mr. Pickett is an old acquaintance and friend of mine, and I will
thank you, if you will, to set a day or days and place on and at
which to take testimony on the point. Notify Mr. Pickett and

498

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 499

bility of every step he made; but now they were
no longer to continue in the partnership. Many of
them wanted no office, but all of them felt great
interest as well as pride in his future. A few
attempted to keep up a correspondence with him,
but his answers were tardy and irregular. Because
he did not appoint a goodly portion of his early
associates to comfortable offices, and did not in
terest himself in the welfare of everyone whom
he had known in Illinois, or met while on the cir
cuit, the erroneous impression grew that his eleva-

one J. B. Danforth (who as I understand makes the charge) to
be present with their witnesses. Take the testimony in writing
offered by both sides, and report it in full to me. Please do this
for me.

"Tours truly,

"A. LINCOLN.-"

The man Pickett was formerly the editor of a newspaper in
northern Illinois, and had, to use an expression of later days,
inaugurated in the columns of his paper Lincoln's boom for the
Presidency. When he afterwards fell under suspicion, no one
came to his rescue sooner than the President himself.

The following letter needs no explanation :

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 27, 1862.

"HoN. WASH. TALCOTT.

"My Dear Sir: — I have determined to appoint you collector. I
now have a very special request to make of you, which is, that
you will make no war upon Mr. Washburne, who is also my
friend, and of longer standing than yourself. T will even be
obliged if you can do something for him if occasion presents.

"Yours truly,

"A. LINCOLN."

Mr. Talcott, to whom it was addressed, was furnished a letter
of introduction by the President, as follows :

"The Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of
Internal Revenue will please see Mr. Talcott, one of the best
men there is, and, if any difference, one they would like better
than they do me.

"A. LINCOLN.-"

August 18. 1862.

500 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

tion had turned his head. There was no founda
tion for such an unwarranted conclusion. Lincoln
had not changed a particle. He was overrun with
duties and weighted down with cares ; his surround
ings were different and his friends were new, but he
himself was the same calm, just, and devoted friend
as of yore. His letters were few and brief, but they
showed no lack of gratitude or appreciation, as the
following one to me will testify:

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 3. 1862.

"DEAR WILLIAM : —

"Yours of January 30th is just received. Do

just as you say about the money matters. As

you well know, I have not time enough to write a

letter of respectable length. God bless you, says

"Your friend,

"A. LINCOLN/'*

His letters to others were of the same warm and
generous tenor, but yet the foolish notion prevailed
that he had learned to disregard the condition and
claims of his Springfield friends. One of the latter
who visited Washington returned somewhat dis
pleased because Mr. Lincoln failed to inquire after
the health and welfare of each one of his old neigh
bors. The report spread that he cared nothing for
his home or the friends who had made him what
he was. Those who entertained this opinion of the
man forgot that he was not exactly the property of

* On February 19, 1863, I received this despatch from Mr.
Lincoln :

"Would you accept a job of about a month's duration, at St
Louis, $5 a day and mileage. Answer.

"A. LINCOLN."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 501

Springfield and Illinois, but the President of all the
States in the Union.*

In this connection it may not be out of order to
refer briefly to the settlement by Mr. Lincoln of the
claims his leading Illinois friends had on him. As
before observed his own election to the Presidency
cancelled Illinois as a factor in the cabinet problem,
but in no wise disposed of the friends whom the pub
lic expected and whom he himself intended should
be provided for. Of these latter the oldest and
most zealous and effective was David Davis. f It is
not extravagance, taking their long association
together in mind, to say that Davis had done more
for Lincoln than any dozen other friends he had.
Of course, after Lincoln was securely installed in
office, the people, especially in Illinois, awaited his
recognition of Davis. What was finally done is
minutely told in a letter by Leonard Swett, which it
is proper here to insert :

* The following- letter from a disappointed Illinois friend will
serve to illustrate the perplexities that beset Lincoln in dispos
ing of the claims of personal friendship. It was written by a
man of no inconsiderable reputation in Illinois, where he at one
time filled a State office : "Lincoln is a singular man, and I
must confess I never knew him. He has for twenty years past
used me as a plaything to accomplish his own ends ; but the
moment he was elevated to his proud position he seems all at
once to have entirely changed his whole nature and become al
together a new being. He knows no one, and the road to his
favor is always open to his enemies, while the door is hermet
ically sealed to his old friends."

t "I had done Lincoln many, many favors, had electioneered
for him, spent my money for him, worked and toiled for him." —
David Davis, statement, September 20, 1866.

502 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

"CHICAGO, ILL., August 29, 1887.
"WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

"My Dear Sir: — Your inquiry in reference
to the circumstances of the appointment of David
Davis as one of the Justices of the Supreme Court
reached me last evening. In reply I beg leave to
recall the fact, that in 1860 the politicians of Illi
nois were divided into three divisions, which were
represented in the Decatur convention by the votes
on the nomination for Governor. The largest vote
was for Norman B. Judd, of Chicago, his strength in
the main being the northern part of the State. I
was next in order of strength, and Richard Yates the
third, but the divisions were not materially unequal.
The result was Yates was nominated, his strength
being about Springfield and Jacksonville, extending
to Quincy on the west, and mine was at Blooming-
ton and vicinity and south and southeast.

"These divisions were kept up a while after IVfr.
Lincoln's election, and were considered in the distri
bution of Federal patronage. A vacancy in the
United States Senate occurred early in 1861 by the
death of Stephen A. Douglas, and Governor Yates
appointed Oliver H. Browning, of Quincy, to fill the
vacancy. There was also a vacancy upon the Su
preme Bench of the United States to be filled from
this general vicinity by Mr. Lincoln in the early
part of his administration, and Judge Davis, of
Bloomington, and Mr. Browning, of Quincy, were
aspirants for the position. Mr. Browning had the
advantage that Lincoln was new in his seat, and Sen
ators were august personages ; and, being in the Sen
ate and a most courteous and able gentleman, Mr.
Browning succeeded in securing nearly all the sensa-
torial strength, and Mr. Lincoln was nearly swept
off his feet by the current of influence. Davis' sup
porters were the circuit lawyers mainly in the east
ern and central part of the State. These lawyers

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 5Q3

were at home, and their presence was not a living
force felt constantly by the President at Wash
ington.

"I was then living at Bloomington, and met Judge
Davis every day. As months elapsed we used to
get word from Washington in reference to the con
dition of things; finally, one day the word came
that Lincoln had said, 'I do not know what I may
do when the time comes, but there has never been a
day when if I had to act I should not have appointed
Browning/ Judge Davis, General Orme, and myself
held a consultation in my law-office at Bloomington.
We decided that the remark was too Lincolnian to
be mistaken and no man but he could have put the
situation so quaintly. We decided also that the
appointment was gone, and sat there glum over the
situation. I finally broke the silence, saying in sub
stance, The appointment is gone and I am going
to pack my carpet-sack for Washington/ 'No, you
are not/ said Davis. 'Yes, I am/ was my reply.
'Lincoln is being swept off his feet by the influence
of these Senators, and I will have the luxury of one
more talk with him before he acts/

"I did go home, and two days thereafter, in the
morning about seven o'clock — for I knew Mr.
Lincoln's habits well — was at the White House
and spent most of the forenoon with him. I
tried to impress upon him that he had been
brought into prominence by the Circuit Court
lawyers of the old eighth Circuit, headed by Judge
Davis. 'If/ I said, 'Judge Davis, with his tact
and force, had not lived, and all other things had
been - as they were, I believe you would not now
be sitting where you are/ He replied gravely,
'Yes, that is so/ 'Now it is a common law of
mankind/ said I, 'that one raised into prominence is
expected to recognize the force that lifts him, or, if
from a pinch, the force that lets him out. The Czar

504 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Nicholas was once attacked by an assassin; a kindly
hand warded off the blow and saved his life. The
Czar hunted out the owner of that hand and strewed
his pathway with flowers through life. The Emperor
Napoleon III. had hunted out everybody who even
tossed him a biscuit in his prison at Ham and has
made him rich. Here is Judge Davis, whom you
know to be in every respect qualified for this posi
tion, and you ought in justice to yourself and public
expectation to give him this place/ We had an ear
nest pleasant forenoon, and I thought I had the best
of the argument, and I think he thought so too.

"I left him and went to Willard's Hotel to think
over the interview, and there a new thought struck
me. I therefore wrote a letter to Mr. Lincoln and
returned to the White House. Getting in, I read it
to him and left it with him. It was, in substance,
that he might think if he gave Davis this place the
latter when he got to Washington would not give
him any peace until he gave me a place equally as
good ; that I recognized the fact that he could not
give this place to Davis, which would be charged to
the Bloomington faction in our State politics, and
then give me anything I would have and be just to
the party there ; that this appointment, if made,
should kill 'two birds with one stone;' that I would
accept it as one-half for me and one-half for the
Judge ; and that thereafter, if I or any of my friends
ever troubled him, he could draw that letter as a
plea in bar on that subject. As I read it Lincoln
said, Tf you mean that among friends as it reads I
will take it and make the appointment/ He at
once did as he said.

"He then made a request of the Judge after his
appointment in reference to a clerk in his circuit,
and wrote him a notice of the appointment, which
Davis received the same afternoon I returned to
Bloomington.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 505

Davis was about fifteen years my senior.
I had come to his circuit at the age of twenty- four,
and between him and Lincoln I had grown up lean
ing in hours of weakness on their own great arms
for support. I was glad of the opportunity to put
in the mite of my claims upon Lincoln and give it
to Davis, and have been glad I did it every day
since.

"An unknown number of people have almost
every week since, speaking perhaps extravagantly,
asked me in a quasi-confidential manner. 'How was
it that you and Lincoln were so intimate and he
never gave you anything?' I have generally said,
'It seems to me that is my question, and so long as
I don't complain I do not see why you should/ I
may be pardoned also for saying that I have not
considered every man not holding an office out of
place in life. I got my eyes open on this subject
before I got an office, and as in Washington I saw
the Congressman in decline I prayed that my latter
end might not be like his.

Yours truly,

"LEONARD SWETT."

Before his departure for Washington, Mr. Lin
coln had on several occasions referred in my pres
ence to the gravity of the national questions that
stared him in the face; yet from what he said I
caught no definite idea of what his intentions were.
He told me he would rely upon me to keep him
informed of the situation about home, what his
friends were saying of him, and whether his course
was meeting with their approval. He suggested
that I should write him frequently, and that arrange
ments would be made with his private secretary,
Mr. Nicolay, that my letters should pass through

506 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

the latter's hands unopened. This plan was ad
hered to, and I have every reason now to believe
that all my letters to Lincoln, although they con
tained no great secrets of state, passed unread into
his hands. I was what the newspaper men would
call a "frequent contributor." I wrote oftener than
he answered, sometimes remitting him his share of
old fees, sometimes dilating on national affairs, but
generally confining myself to local politics and news
in and around Springfield. I remember of writing
him two copious letters, one on the necessity of
keeping up the draft, the other admonishing him
to hasten his Proclamation of Emancipation. In
the latter I was especially fervid, assuring, him if he
emancipated the slaves, he could "go down the
other side of life filled with the consciousness of
duty well done, and along a pathway blazing with
eternal glory." How my rhetoric or sentiments
struck him I never learned, for in the rush of execu
tive business he never responded to either of the
letters. Late in the summer of 1861, as elsewhere
mentioned in these chapters, I made my first and
only visit to Washington while he was President.
My mission was intended to promote the prospects
of a brother-in-law, Charles W. Chatterton, who
desired to lay claim to an office in the Bureau of
Indian affairs. Mr. Lincoln accompanied me to
the office of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, —
William P. Dole of Paris, Illinois, — told a good
story, and made the request which secured the
coveted office — an Indian agency — in an amazingly
short time. This was one of the few favors I asked

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 507

of Mr. Lincoln, and he granted it "speedily — with
out delay; freely — without purchase; and fully —
without denial." I remained in Washington for
several days after this, and, notwithstanding the
pressure of business, he made me spend a good por
tion of the time at the White House. One thing he
could scarcely cease from referring to was the per
sistence of the office-seekers. They slipped in, he
said, through the half -opened doors of the Execu
tive Mansion; they dogged his steps if he walked;
they edged their way through the crow is and
thrust their papers in his hands when he rode;*
and, taking it all in all, they well-nigh worried him
to death. He said that, if the Government passed
through the Rebellion without dismemberment,
there was the strongest danger of its falling a prey
to the rapacity of the office-seeking class. "This
human struggle and scramble for office," were his
words, "for a way to live without work, will
finally test the strength of our institutions." A
good part of the day during my stay I would spend
with him in his office or waiting-room. I saw the
endless line of callers, and met the scores of digni
taries one usually meets at the White House, even
now ; but nothing took place worthy of special mem-
tion here. One day Horace Maynard and Andrew
Johnson, both senators from Tennessee, crrne in
arm-in-arm. They declined to sit down, but at

* He said that one day, as he was passing down Pennsylvania
avenue, a man came running after him, hailed him, and thrust
a bundle of papers in his hands. It angered him not a little, and
he pitched the papers back, saying, "I'm not going to open shop
here."

508 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

once set to work to discuss with the President his
recent action in some case in which they were inter
ested. Maynard seemed very earnest in what he
said. "Beware, Mr. President," he said, "and do
not go too fast. There is danger ahead." "I
know that," responded Lincoln, good-naturedly, "but
,1 shall go just so fast and only so fast as I think
I'm right and the people are ready for the step."
Hardly half-a-dozen words followed, when the pair
wheeled around and walked away. The day fol
lowing I left Washington for home. I separated
from Mr. Lincoln at the White House. He fol
lowed me to the rear portico, where I entered the
carriage to ride to the railroad depot. He grasped
me warmly by the hand and bade me a fervent
"Good-bye." It was the last time I ever saw him
alive.

Mrs. Ninian Edwards, who, it will be remembered,
was the sister of Mrs. Lincoln, some time before her
death furnished me an account of her visit to Wash
ington, some of the incidents of which are so charac
teristic that I cannot refrain from giving them room
here. This lady, without endeavoring to suppress
mention of her sister's many caprices and eccentric
ities while mistress of the White House, remarked
that, having been often solicited by the Lincolns to
visit them, she and her husband, in answer to the
cordial invitation, at last made the journey to
Washington. "One day while there," she relates,
"in order to calm his mind, to turn his attention
away from business and cheer him up, I took Mr.
Lincoln down through the conservatory belonging

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 509

to the Executive Mansion, and showed him the
world of flowers represented there. He followed me
patiently through. 'How beautiful these flowers
are! how gorgeous these roses! Here are exotics/
I exclaimed, in admiration, 'gathered from the
remotest corners of the earth, and grand beyond
description.' A moody silence followed, broken
finally by Mr. Lincoln with this observation: 'Yes,
this whole thing looks like spring; but do you know
I have never been in here before. I don't know
why it is so, but I never cared for flowers; I seem
to have no taste, natural or acquired, for such
things.' I induced him one day," continued
Mrs. Edwards, "to walk to the Park north of the
White House. He hadn't been there, he said, for a
year. On such occasions, when alone or in the com
pany of a close friend, and released from the
restraint of his official surroundings, he was wont to
throw from his shoulders many a burden. He was
a man I loved and respected. He was a good man,
an honest and true one. Much of his seeming dis
regard, which has been tortured into ingratitude,
was due to his peculiar construction. His habits,
like himself, were odd and wholly irregular. He
would move around in a vague, abstracted way, as if
unconscious of his own or any one else's existence.
He had no expressed fondness for anything, and ate
mechanically. I have seen him sit down at the
table absorbed in thought, and never, unless recalled
to his senses, would he think of food. But, however
peculiar and secretive he may have seemed, he was
anything but cold. Beneath what the world saw

510 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

lurked a nature as tender arid poetic as any I ever
knew. The death of his son Willie, which occurred
in Washington, made a deep impression on him.
It was the first death in his family, save an infant
who died a few days after its birth in Springfield.
On the evening we strolled through the Park he
spoke of it with deep feeling, and he frequently
afterward referred to it. When I announced my
intention of leaving Washington he was much
affected at the news of my departure. We were
strolling through the White House grounds, when he
begged me with tears in his eyes to remain longer.
'You have such strong control and such an influ
ence over Mary/ he contended, 'that when troub
les come you can console me.' The picture of
the man's despair never faded from my vision.
Long after my return to Springfield, on reverting
to the sad separation, my heart ached because I
was unable in my feeble way to lighten his
burden."

In the summer of 1866 I wrote to Mrs. Lincoln,
then in Chicago, asking for a brief account of her
own and her husband's life or mode of living while
at the White House. She responded as follows :*

"375 West Washington Street,

CHICAGO, ILL., August 28, 1866.

"HoN. WM. H. HERNDON.

"My Dear Sir: — Owing to Robert's absence
from Chicago your last letter to him was only
shown me last evening. The recollection of my

* From MSS. in Author's possession.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 51 1

beloved husband's truly affectionate regard for you,
and the knowledge of your great love and rever
ence for the best man that ever lived, would of it
self cause you to be cherished with the sincerest re
gard by my sons and myself. In my overwhelming
bereavement those who loved my idolized husband
aside from disinterested motives are very precious
to me and mine. My grief has been so uncontrol
lable that, in consequence, I have been obliged to
bury myself in solitude, knowing that many whom
I would see could not fully enter into the state of
my feelings. I have been thinking for some time
past 1 would like to see you and have a long con
versation. I wish to know if you will be in Spring
field next Wednesday week, September 4; if so, at
ten o'clock in the morning you will find me at the
St. Nicholas Hotel. Please mention this visit to
Springfield to no one. It is a most sacred one, as
you may suppose, to visit the tomb which contains
my all in life — my husband. . . . If it will not be
convenient, or if business at the time specified
should require your absence, should you visit Chi
cago any day this week I will be pleased to see
you. I remain,

"Very truly,

"MARY LINCOLN."

I met Mrs. Lincoln at the hotel in Springfield ac
cording to appointment. Our interview was some
what extended in range, but none the less interest
ing. Her statement made at the time now lies
before me. "My husband intended," she said,
"when he was through with his Presidential term, to
take me and our boys with him to Europe. After
his return from Europe he intended to cross the
Rocky Mountains and go to California, where the sol-

512 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

diers were to be digging out gold to pay the national
debt. During his last days he and Senator Sumner
became great friends, and were closely attached to
each other. They were down the river after Rich
mond was taken — were full of joy and gladness at
the thought of the war being over. Up to 1864
Mr. Lincoln wanted to live in Springfield, and if he
died be buried there also ; but after that and only
a short time before his death he changed his mind
sligMly, but never really settled on any particular
place. The last time I remember of his referring
to the matter he said he thought it would be good
for himself and me to spend a year or more travel
ling. As to his nature, he was the kindest man,
most tender husband, and loving father in the world.
He gave us all unbounded liberty, saying to me
always when I asked for anything, 'You know
what you want, go and get it/ and never asking if
it were necessary. He was very indulgent to his
children. He never neglected to praise them for
any of their good acts. He often said, 'It is my
pleasure that my children are free and happy, and
unrestrained by parental tyranny. Love is the
chain whereby to bind a child to its parents/

"My husband placed great reliance on my knowl
edge of human nature, often telling me, when about
to make some important -appointment, that he had
no knowledge of men and their motives. It was
his intention to remove Seward as soon as peace
with the South was declared. He greatly disliked
Andrew Johnson. Once the latter, when we were
in company, followed us around not a little. It

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 513

displeased Mr. Lincoln so much he turned abruptly
and asked, loud enough to be heard by others,
'Why is this man forever following me?' At an
other time, when we were down at City Point, John
son, still following us, was drunk. Mr. Lincoln in
desperation exclaimed, 'For God's sake don't ask
Johnson to dine with us.' Sumner, who was along,
joined in the request. Mr. Lincoln was mild in his
manners, but he was a terribly firm man when he
set his foot down. None of us, no man or woman,
could rule him after he had once fully made up his
mind. I could always tell when in deciding any
thing he had reached the ultimatum. At first he
was very cheerful, then he lapsed into thoughtful-
ness, bringing his lips together in a firm compres
sion. When these symptoms developed I fashioned
myself accordingly, and so did all others have to do
sooner or later. When we first went to Washing
ton many thought Mr. Lincoln was weak, but he
rose grandly with the circumstances. I told him
once of the assertion I had heard coming from the
friends of Seward, that the latter was the power
behind the throne; that he could rule him. He
replied, 'I may not rule myself, but certainly
Seward shall not. The only ruler I have is my con
science — following God in it — and these men will
have to learn that yet.'

"Some of the newspaper attacks on him gave him
great pain. I sometimes read them to him, but he
would beg me to desist, saying, 'I have enough to
bear now, but yet I care nothing for them. If I'm
right I'll live, and if wrong I'll die anyhow; so let

514 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

them fight at me unrestrained/ My playful re
sponse would be, 'The way to learn is to hear both
sides.' I once assured him Chase and certain others
who were scheming to supplant him ought to be
restrained in their evil designs. 'Do good to them
who hate you/ was his generous answer, 'and turn
their ill-will into friendship/

"I often told Mr. Lincoln that God would not let
any harm come of him. We had passed through
four long years — terrible and bloody years — un
scathed, and I believed we would be released from all
danger. He gradually grew into that belief him
self, and the old gloomy notion of his unavoidable
taking-off was becoming dimmer as time passed
away. Cheerfulness merged into joyfulness. The
skies cleared, the end of the war rose dimly into
view when the great blow came and shut him out
forever."

For a glimpse of Lincoln's habits while a resident
of Washington and an executive officer, there is no
better authority than John Hay, who served as one
of his secretaries. In 1866, Mr. Hay, then a mem
ber of the United States Legation in Paris, wrote
me an interesting account, which so faithfully
delineates Lincoln in his public home that I cannot
refrain from quoting it entire. Although the letter
was written in answer to a list of questions I asked,
and was prepared without any attempt at arrange
ment, still it is none the less interesting. "Lin
coln went to bed ordinarily," it begins, "from ten
to eleven o'clock, unless he happened to be kept up
by important news, in which case he would fre-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 515

quently remain at the War Department till one or
two. He rose early. When he lived in the country
at the Soldiers' Home he would be up and dressed,
eat his breakfast (which was extremely frugal, an
egg, a piece of toast, coffee, etc.), and ride into Wash
ington, all before eight o'clock. In the winter, at the
White House, he was not quite so early. He did
not sleep well, but spent a good while in bed.
'Tad' usually slept with him. He would lie around
the office until he fell asleep, and Lincoln would
shoulder him and take him off to bed. He pre
tended to begin business at ten o'clock in the morn
ing, but in reality the ante-rooms and halls were
full long before that hour — people anxious to get
the first axe ground. He was extremely unmethod
ical; it was a four years' struggle on Nicolay's part
and mine to get him to adopt some systematic rules.
He would break through every regulation as fast as
it was made. Anything that kept the people them
selves away from him he disapproved, although
they nearly annoyed the life out of him by unrea
sonable complaints and requests. He wrote very
few letters, and did not read one in fifty that he
received. At first we tried to bring them to his
notice, but at last he gave the whole thing over
to me, and signed, without reading them, the letters
I wrote in his name. He wrote perhaps half-a-
dozen a week himself — not more. Nicolay received
members of Congress and other visitors who had
business with the Executive office, communicated
to the Senate and House the messages of the Presi
dent, and exercised a general supervision over the

516 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

business. I opened and read the letters, answered
them, looked over the newspapers, supervised the
clerks who kept the records, and in Nicolay's absence
did his work also. When the President had any
rather delicate matter to manage at a distance from
Washington he rarely wrote, but sent Nicolay or me.
The House remained full of people nearly all day.
At noon the President took a little lunch — a biscuit,
a glass of milk in winter, some fruit or grapes in
summer. He dined between five and six, and we
went off to our dinner also. Before dinner was over,
members and Senators would come back and take
up the whole evening. Sometimes, though rarely,
he shut himself up and would see no one. Some
times he would run away to a lecture, or concert, or
theatre for the sake of a little rest. He was very
abstemious — ate less than any man I know. He
drank nothing but water, not from principle but be
cause he did not like wine or spirits. Once, in rather
dark days early in the war, a temperance committee
came to him and said that the reason we did not win
was because our army drank so much whiskey as to
bring the curse of the Lord upon them. He said it
was rather unfair on the part of the aforesaid curse,
as the other side drank more and worse whiskey than
ours did. He read very little. He scarcely ever
looked into a newspaper unless I called his attention
to an article on some special subject. He frequently
said, 'I know more about it than any of them.' It is
absurd to call him a modest man. No great man
was ever modest. It was his intellectual arrogance
and unconscious assumption of superiority that

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. S17

men like Chase and Sumner never could forgive.
I believe that Lincoln is well understood by the
people; but there is a patent-leather, kid-glove set
who know no more of him than an owl does of a
comet blazing into his blinking eyes.* Their esti
mates of him are in many cases disgraceful exhibi
tions of ignorance and prejudice. Their effeminate
natures shrink instinctively from the contact of a
great reality like Lincoln's character. I consider
Lincoln's republicanism incarnate — with all its faults
and all its virtues. As, in spite of some rudeness,
republicanism is the sole hope of a sick world, so
Lincoln, with all his foibles, is the greatest character
since Christ."

In 1863 Mr. Lincoln was informed one morning
that among the visitors in the ante-room of the
White House was a man who claimed to be his
relative. He walked out and was surprised to find

* Bancroft's eulogy on Lincoln never pleased the latter's life
long friends — those who knew him so thoroughly and well. Feb
ruary 16, 1866, David Davis, who had heard it, wrote me: "You
will see Mr. Bancroft's oration before this reaches you. It is
able, but Mr. Lincoln is in the background. His analysis of
Mr. Lincoln's character is superficial. It did not please me.
How did it satisfy you?" On the 22d he again wrote: "Mr.
Bancroft totally misconceived Mr. Lincoln's character in apply
ing 'unsteadiness' and confusion to it. Mr. Lincoln grew more
steady and resolute, and his ideas were never confused. Tf
there were any changes in him after he got here they were for
the better. I thought him always master of his subject. He
was a much more self-possessed man that I thought. He thought
for himself, which is a rare quality nowadays. How could
Bancroft know anything about Lincoln except as he Judged of
him as the public do? He never saw him, and is himself as cold
as an icicle. I should never have selected an old Democratic
politician, and that one from Massachusetts, to deliver an eu
logy on Lincoln."

518 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

his boyhood friend and cousin, Dennis Hanks.
The latter had come to see his distinguished rela
tive on a rather strange mission. A number of
persons living in Coles County, in Illinois, offended
at the presence and conduct of a few soldiers who
were at home from the war on furlough at the
town of Charleston, had brought about a riot, in
which encounter several of the latter had been
killed. Several of the civilian participants who had
acted as leaders in the strife had been arrested and
sent to Fort McHenry or some other place of con
finement equally as far from, their homes. The
leading lawyers and politicians of central Illinois
were appealed to, but they and all others who had
tried their hands had been signally unsuccessful in
their efforts to secure the release of the prisoners.
Meanwhile some one of a sentimental turn
had conceived the idea of sending garrulous old
Dennis Hanks to Washington, fondly believing that
his relationship to the President might in this last
extremity be of some avail. The novelty of the pro
ject secured its adoption by the prisoners' friends,
and Dennis, arrayed in a suit of new clothes, set out
for the national capital. I have heard him describe
this visit very minutely. How his appearance in
Washington and his mission struck Mr. Lincoln can
only be imagined. The President, after listening to
him and learning the purpose of his visit, retired to
an adjoining room and returned with an extremely
large roll of papers labelled, "The Charleston Riot
Case," which he carefully untied and gravely
directed his now diplomatic cousin to read. Subse-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 519

quently, and as if to continue the joke, he sent him
down to confer with the Secretary of War. He
soon returned from the latter's office with the report
that the head of the War Department could not be
found; and it was well enough that he did not
meet that abrupt and oftentimes demonstrative
official. In the course of time, however, the latter
happened in at the Executive Mansion, and there,
in the presence of Dennis, the President sought to
reopen the now noted Charleston case. Adopting
Mr. Hanks' version, the Secretary, with his char
acteristic plainness of speech, referring to the prison
ers, declared that "every d d one of them

should be hung." Even the humane and kindly
enquiry of the President, "If these men should
return home and become good citizens, who would
be hurt?" failed to convince the distinguished
Secretary that the public good could be promoted
by so doing. The President not feeling willing to
override the judgment of his War Secretary in
this instance, further consideration of the case
ceased, and his cousin returned to his home in
Illinois with his mission unaccomplished.*

Dennis retained a rather unfavorable impression
of Mr. Stanton, whom he described as a "frisky
little Yankee with a short coat-tail." "I asked
Abe," he said to me once, "why he didn't kick him
out. I told him he was too fresh altogether."

* The subsequent history of these riot cases I believe is that
the prisoners were returned to Illinois to be tried in the State
courts there ; and that by successive changes of venue and
continuances the cases were finally worn out.

520 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Lincoln's answer was, "If I did, Dennis, it would be
difficult to find another man to fill his place." The
President's cousin* sat in the office during the end
less interviews that take place between the head of
the nation and the latter's loyal subjects. He saw
modesty and obscurity mingling with the arrogance
of pride and distinction. One day an attractive
and handsomely dressed woman called to procure
the release from prison of a relative in whom she
professed the deepest interest. She was a good
talker, and her winning ways seemed to be making
a deep impression on the President. After listen
ing to her story he wrote a few lines on a card, en
closing it in an envelope and directing her to take
it to the Secretary of War. Before sealing it he
showed it to Dennis. It read: "This woman, dear
Stanton, is a little smarter than she looks to be."
She had, woman-like, evidently overstated her case.
Before night another woman called, more humble
in appearance, more plainly clad. It was the old
story. Father and son both in the army, the for
mer in prison. Could not the latter be discharged
from the army and sent home to help his mother?
A few strokes of the pen, a gentle nod of the head,
and the little woman, her eyes filling with tears and
expressing a grateful acknowledgment her tongue
could not utter, passed out.

* During this visit Mr. Lincoln presented Dennis with a silver
watch, which the latter still retains as a memento alike of the
donor and his trip to Washington.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Before passing to a brief and condensed view
of the great panorama of the war it will interest
the reader and no doubt aid him greatly in
drawing the portrait of Lincoln to call up for the
purpose two friends of his, whose testimony is not
only vivid and minute, but for certain reasons
unusually appropriate and essential. The two were
devoted and trusted friends of Lincoln; and while
neither held office under him, both were offered and
both declined the same. That of itself ought not
to be considered as affecting or strengthening
their statements, and yet we sometimes think that
friends who are strong enough to aid us, and yet
declining our aid, take care of themselves, are brave
enough to tell us the truth. The two friends of
Lincoln here referred to are Joshua F. Speed and
Leonard Swett. In quoting them I adhere strictly
to their written statements now in my possession.
The former, under date of December 6, 1866, says:
"Mr. Lincoln was so unlike all the men I had ever
known before or seen or known since that there
is no one to whom I can compare him. In all his
habits of eating, sleeping, reading, conversation,
and study he was, if I may so express it, regularly
irregular; that is, he had no stated time for eating,

521

522 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

no fixed time for going to bed, none for getting up.
No course of reading was chalked out. He read
law, history, philosophy, or poetry; Burns, Byron,
Milton, or Shakespeare and the newspapers, retain
ing them all about as well as an ordinary man
would any one of them who made only one at a
time his study. I once remarked to him that his
mind was a wonder to me; that impressions were
easily made upon it and never effaced. 'No,' said
he, 'you are mistaken; I am slow to learn, and slow
to forget that which I have learned. My mind is
like a piece of steel — very hard to scratch anything
on it, and almost impossible after you get it there
to rub it out/ I give this as his own illustration of
the character of his mental faculties; it is as good
as any I have seen from anyone.

"The beauty of his character was its entire sim
plicity. He had no affectation in anything. True
to nature, true to himself, he was true to everybody
and everything around him. When he was igno
rant on any subject, no matter how simple it might
make him appear, he was always willing to acknowl
edge it. His whole aim in life was to be true to
himself and being true to himself he could be false
to no one.

"He had no vices, even as a young man. Intense
thought with him was the rule and not, as with
most of us, the exception. He often said that he
could think better after breakfast, and better walk
ing than sitting, lying, or standing. His world-wide
reputation for telling anecdotes and telling them so
well was in my judgment necessary to his very ex-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 523

istence. Most men who have been great students,
such as he was, in their hours of idleness have
taken to the bottle, to cards or dice. He had no
fondness for any of these. Hence he sought relax
ation in anecdotes. So far as I now remember of
his study for composition, it was to make short sen
tences and a compact style. Illustrative of this it
might be well to state that he was a great admirer
of the style of John C. Calhoun. I remember read
ing to him one of Mr. Calhoun's speeches in reply
to Mr. Clay in the Senate, in which Mr. Clay had
quoted precedent. Mr. Calhoun replied (I quote
from memory) that 'to legislate upon precedent is
but to make the error of yesterday the law of to
day.' Lincoln thought that was a great truth and
grandly uttered.

"Unlike all other men, there was entire harmony
between his public and private life. He must be
lieve he was right, and that he had truth and jus
tice with him, or he was a weak man; but no man
could be stronger if he thought he was right.

"His familiar conversations were like his speeches
and letters in this: that while no set speech of his
(save the Gettysburg address) will be considered as
entirely artistic and complete, yet, when the gems
of American literature come to be selected, as many
will be culled from Lincoln's speeches as from any
American orator. So of his conversation, and so of
his private correspondence ; all abound in gems.

"My own connection or relation with Mr. Lincoln
during the war has so often been commented on,
and its extent so often enlarged upon, I feel impelled

524 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

to state that during his whole administration he
never requested me to do anything, except in my
own State, and never much in that except to advise
him as to what measures and policy would be most
conducive to the growth of a healthy Union senti
ment.

"My own opinion of the history of the Emancipa
tion Proclamation is that Mr. Lincoln foresaw the
necessity for it long before he issued it. He was
anxious to avoid it, and came to it only when' he
saw that the measure would subtract from its labor,
and add to our army quite a number of good fight
ing men. I have heard of the charge of duplicity
against him by certain Western members of Con
gress. I never believed the charge, because he has
told me from his own lips that the charge was false.
I, who knew him so well, could never after that
credit the report. At first I was opposed to the
Proclamation, and so told him. I remember well
our conversation on the subject. He seemed to
treat it as certain that I would recognize the wis
dom of the act when I should see the harvest of
good which we would ere long glean from it. In
that conversation he alluded to an incident in his
life, long passed, when he was so much depressed
that he almost contemplated suicide. At the time
of his deep depression he said to me that he had
'done nothing to make any human being remember
that he had lived,' and that to connect his name
with the events transpiring in his day and genera
tion, and so impress himself upon them as to link
his name with something that would redound to the

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 525

interest of his fellow man, was what he desired to
live for. He reminded me of that conversation, and
said with earnest emphasis, 'I believe that in this
measure [meaning his Proclamation] my fondest
hope will be realized/ Over twenty years had
passed between the two conversations.

"The last interview but one I had with him was
about ten days prior to his last inauguration. Con
gress was drawing to a close; it had been an impor
tant session; much attention had to be given to the
important bills he was signing; a great war was
upon him and the country; visitors were coming
and going to the President with their varying com
plaints and grievances from morning till night with
almost as much regularity as the ebb and flow of
the tide; and he was worn down in health and
spirits. On this occasion I was sent for, to come
and see him. Instructions were given that when I
came I should be admitted. When I entered his
office it was quite full, and many more — among
them not a few Senators and members of Congress
— still waiting. As soon as I was fairly inside, the
President remarked that he desired to see me as
soon as he was through giving audiences, and that
if I had nothing to do I could take the papers and
amuse myself in that or any other way I saw fit till
he was ready. In the room, when I entered, I ob
served sitting near the fireplace, dressed in humble
attire, two ladies modestly waiting their turn. One
after another of the visitors came and went, each
bent on his own particular errand, some satisfied and
others evidently displeased at the result of their

526 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

mission. The hour had arrived to close the door
against all further callers. No one was left in the
room now except the President, the two ladies, and
me. With a rather peevish and fretful air he turned
to them and said, 'Well, ladies, what can I do for
you?' They both commenced to speak at once.
From what they said he soon learned that one was
the wife and the other the mother of two men
imprisoned for resisting the draft in western Penn
sylvania. 'Stop/ said he, 'don't say any more.
Give me your petition.' The old lady responded,
'Mr. Lincoln, we've got no petition; we couldn't
write one and had no money to pay for writing one,
and I thought best to come and see you.' 'Oh/
said he, 'I understand your cases.' He rang his bell
and ordered one of the messengers to tell General
Dana to bring him the names of all the men in
prison for resisting the draft in western Pennsyl
vania. The General soon came with the list. He
enquired if there was any difference in the charges
or degrees of guilt. The General replied that he
knew of none. 'Well, then/ said he, 'these fellows
have suffered long enough, and I have thought so
for some time, and now that my mind is on the sub
ject I believe I will turn out the whole flock. So,
draw up the order, General, and I will sign it.' It
was done and the General left the room. Turning
to the women he said, 'Now, ladies, you can go.'
The younger of the two ran forward and was in
the act of kneeling in thankfulness. 'Get up.' he
said; "don't kneel to me, but thank God and go.'
The old lady now came forward with tears in her

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. $27

eyes to express her gratitude. 'Good-bye, Mr. Lin
coln/ said she; 'I shall probably never see you again
till we meet in heaven/ These were her exact
words. She had the President's hand in hers, and
he was deeply moved. He instantly took her right
hand in both of his and, following her to the door,
said, 'I am afraid with all my troubles I shall
never get to the resting-place you speak of; but
if I do I am sure I shall find you. That you wish
me to get there is, I believe, the best wish you
could make for me. Good-bye/

"We were now alone. I said to him, 'Lincoln,
with my knowledge of your nervous sensibility, it is
a wonder that such scenes as this don't kill you/
He thought for a moment and then answered in a
languid voice, 'Yes, you are to a certain degree
right. I ought not to undergo what I so often do.
I am very unwell now; my feet and hands of late
seem to be always cold, and I ought perhaps to be
.in bed; but things of the sort you have just seen
don't hurt me, for, to tell you the truth, that scene
is the only thing to-day that has made me forget
my condition or given me any pleasure. I have, in
that order, made two people happy and alleviated
the distress of many a poor soul whom I never
expect to see. That old lady/ he continued, 'was
no counterfeit. The mother spoke out in all the feat
ures of her face. It is more than one can often say
that in doing right one has made two people happy
in one day. Speed, die when I may, I want it said
of me by those who know me best, that I always
plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I

528 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

thought a flower would grow/ What a fitting sen
timent! What a glorious recollection!"

The recollections of Lincoln by Mr. Swett are in
the form of a letter dated January 17, 1866. There
is so much of what I know to be true in it, and it is
so graphically told, that although there may be some
repetition of what has already been touched upon
in the preceding chapters, still I believe that the
portrait of Lincoln will be made all the more life
like by inserting the letter without abridgment.

"CHICAGO, ILL., Jan. 17, 1866.

"WM. H. HERNDON, ESQ.
"Springfield, 111.

"Dear Sir: I received your letter today, asking
me to write you Friday. Fearing if I delay, you will
not get it in time, I will give you such hasty thoughts
as may occur to me to-night. I have mislaid your
second lecture, so that I have not read it at all, and
have not read your first one since about the time it
was published. What I shall say, therefore, will be
based upon my own ideas rather than a review of
the lecture.

''Lincoln's whole life was a calculation of the law
of forces and ultimate results. The whole world
to him was a question of cause and effect. He
believed the results to which certain causes tended ;
he did not believe that those results could be mate
rially hastened or impeded. His whole political
history, especially since the agitation of the slavery
question, has been based upon this theory. He
believed from the first, I think, that the agitation
of slavery would produce its overthrow, and he
acted upon the result as though it was present from
the beginning. His tactics were to get himself in

TUB LIFE OF LINCOLN. 529

the right place and remain there still, until events
would find him in that place. This course of action
led him to say and do things which could not be
understood when considered in reference to the
immediate surroundings in which they were done
or said. You will remember, in his campaign
against Douglas in 1858, the first ten lines of the
first speech he made defeated him. The sentiment
of the 'house divided against itself seemed wholly
inappropriate. It was a speech made at the com
mencement of a campaign, and apparently made for
the campaign. Viewing it in this light alone, noth
ing could have been more unfortunate or inappro
priate. It was saying just the wrong thing; yet
he saw it was an abstract truth, and standing by
the speech would ultimately find him in the right
place. I was inclined at the time to believe these
words were hastily and inconsiderately uttered, but
subsequent facts have convinced me they were
deliberate and had been matured. Judge T. L.
Dickey says, that at Bloomington, at the first
Republican Convention in 1856, he uttered the same
sentences in a speech delivered there, and that after
the meeting was over, he (Dickey) called his atten
tion to these remarks.

"Lincoln justified himself in making then by stat
ing they were true; but finally, at Dickey's urgent
request, he promised that for his sake, or upon his
advice, he would not repeat them. In the summer
of 1859, when he was dining with a party of his
intimate friends at Bloomington, the subject of his
Springfield speech was discussed. We all insisted
it was a great mistake, but he justified himself, and
finally said, 'Well, gentlemen, you may think that
speech was a mistake, but I never have believed it
was, and you will see the day when you will con
sider it was the wisest thing I ever said.'

"He never believed in political combinations,

530 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

and consequently, whether an individual man or
class of men supported or opposed him, never made
any difference in his feelings, or his opinions of his
own success. If he was elected, he seemed to
believe that no person or class of persons could
ever have defeated him, and if defeated, he believed
nothing could ever have elected him. Hence, when
he was a candidate, he never wanted anything done
for him in the line of political combination or man
agement. He seemed to want to let the whole
subject alone, and for everybody else to do the
same. I remember, after the Chicago Convention,
when a great portion of the East were known to be
dissatisfied at his nomination, when fierce conflicts
were going on in New York and Pennsylvania, and
when great exertions seemed requisite to harmonize
and mould in concert the action of our friends,
Lincoln always seemed to oppose all efforts made
in the direction of uniting the party. I arranged
with Mr. Thurlow Weed after the Chicago Conven
tion to meet him at Springfield. I was present at
the interview, but Lincoln said nothing. It was
proposed that Judge Davis should go to New York
and Pennsylvania to survey the field and see what
was necessary to be done. Lincoln consented, but
it was always my opinion that he consented reluc
tantly.

"He saw that the pressure of a campaign was
the external force coercing the party into unity.
If it failed to produce that result, he believed any
individual effort would also fail. If the desired
result followed, he considered it attributable to the
great cause, and not aided by the lesser ones. He
sat down in his chair in Springfield and made him
self the Mecca to which all politicians made pilgrim
ages. He told them all a story, said nothing, and
sent them away. All his efforts to procure a
second nomination were in the same direction. I

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 531

believe he earnestly desired that nomination. He
was much more eager for it than he was for the
first, and yet from the beginning he discouraged all
efforts on the part of his friends to obtain it. From
the middle of his first term all his adversaries were
busily at work for themselves. Chase had three or
four secret societies and an immense patronage
extending all over the country. Fremont was
constantly at work, yet Lincoln would never do
anything either to hinder them or to help himself.

"He was considered too conservative, and his
adversaries were trying to outstrip him in satisfying
the radical element. I had a conversation with him
upon this subject in October, 1863, and tried to
induce him to recommend in his annual message
a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. I
told him I was not very radical, but I believed the
result of the war would be the extermination of
slavery; that Congress would pass the amendment
making the slave free, and that it was proper at
that time to be done. I told him also, if he took
that stand, it was an outside position, and no one
could maintain himself upon any measure more
radical, and if he failed to take the position, his
rivals would. Turning to me suddenly he said, 'Is
not the question of emancipation doing well enough
now?' I replied it was. 'Well', said he, 'I have
never done an official act with a view to promote
my own personal aggrandizement, and I don't like
to begin now. I can see that emancipation is com
ing ; whoever can wait for it will see it ; whoever
stands in its way will be run over by it.'

"His rivals were using money profusely; jour
nals and influences were being subsidized against
him. I accidentally learned that a Washington
newspaper, through a purchase of the establishment,
was to be turned against him, and consulted him
about taking steps to prevent it. The only thing I

532 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

could get him to say was that he would regret to
see the paper turned against him. Whatever was
done had to be done without his knowledge. Mr.
Bennett of the Herald, with his paper, you know, is
a power. The old gentleman wanted to be noticed
by Lincoln, and he wanted to support him. A
friend of his, who was certainly in his secrets, came
to Washington and intimated if Lincoln would
invite Bennett to come over and chat with him, his
paper would be all right. Mr. Bennett wanted
nothing, he simply wanted to be noticed. Lincoln
in talking about it said, 'I understand it; Bennett
has made a great deal of money, some say not very
properly, now he wants me to make him respect
able. I have never invited Mr. Bryant or Mr.
Greeley here ; I shall not, therefore, especially invite
Mr. Bennett.' All Lincoln would say was, that he
was receiving everybody, and he should receive
Mr. Bennett if he came.

"Notwithstanding his entire inaction, he never
for a moment doubted his second nomination.
One time in his room discussing with him who his
real friends were, he told me, if I would not show
it, he would make a list of how the Senate stood.
Wrhen he got through, I pointed out some five or
six, and I told him I knew he was mistaken about
them. Said he, 'You may think so, but you keep
that until the convention and tell me then whether
I was right.' He was right to a man. He kept a
kind of account book of how things were progress
ing, for three or four months, and whenever I would
get nervous and think things were going wrong, he
would get out his estimates and show how every
thing on the great scale of action, such as the reso
lutions of legislatures, the instructions of delegates,
and things of that character, were going exactly as
he expected. These facts, with many others of a
kindred nature, have convinced me that he managed

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 533

his politics upon a plan entirely different from any
other man the country has ever produced.

"He managed his campaigns by ignoring men
and by ignoring all small causes, but by closely
calculating the tendencies of events and the great
forces which were producing logical results.

"In his conduct of the war he acted upon the
theory that but one thing was necessary, and that
was a united North. He had all shades of senti
ments and opinions to deal with, and the considera
tion was always presented to his mind, how can I
hold these discordant elements together?

"It was here that he located his own greatness
as a President. One time, about the middle of the
war, I left his house about eleven o'clock at night,
at the Soldiers' Home. We had been discussing
the discords in the country, and particularly the
States of Missouri and Kentucky. As we separated
at the door he said, 'I may not have made as great
a President as some other men, but I believe I
have kept these discordant elements together as
well as anyone could.' Hence, in dealing with men
he was a trimmer, and such a trimmer the world
has never seen. Halifax, who was great in his day
as a trimmer, would blush by the side of Lincoln ;
yet Lincoln never trimmed in principles, it was
only in his conduct with men. He used the pat
ronage of his office to feed the hunger of these
various factions. Weed always declared that he
kept a regular account-book of his appointments in
New York, dividing his various favors so as to give
each faction more than it could get from any other
source, yet never enough to satisfy its appetite.

"They all had access to him, they all received
favors from him, and they all complained of ill
treatment ; but while unsatisfied, they all had 'large
expectations,' and saw in him the chance of obtain
ing more than from anyone else whom they could

534 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

be sure of getting in his place. He used every
force to the best possible advantage. He never
wasted anything, and would always give more to
his enemies than he would to his friends ; and the
reason was, because he never had anything to spare,
and in the close calculation of attaching the factions
to him, he counted upon the abstract affection of
his friends as an element to be offset against some
gift with which he must appease his enemies.
Hence, there was always some truth in the charge
of his friends that he failed to reciprocate their
devotion with his favors. The reason was, that he
had only just so much to give away — 'He always
had more horses than oats/

"An adhesion of all forces was indispensable to
his success and the success of the country; hence
he husbanded his means with the greatest nicety of
calculation. Adhesion was what he wanted; if he
got it gratuitously he never wasted his substance
( paying for it.

"His love of the ludicrous was not the least
peculiar of his characteristics. His love of fun
made him overlook everything else but the point of
the joke sought after. If he told a good story that
was refined and had a sharp point, he did not like it
any the better because it was refined. If it was out
rageously vulgar, he never seemed to see that part
of it, if it had the sharp ring of wit; nothing ever
reached him but the wit. Almost any man that
will tell a very vulgar story, has, in a degree, a vul
gar mind ; but it was not so with him ; with all his
purity of character and exalted morality and sensi
bility, which no man can doubt, when hunting for
wit he had no ability to discriminate between the
vulgar and the refined substances from which he
extracted it. It was the wit he was after, the pure
jewel, and he would pick it up out of the mud or
dirt just as readily as he would from a parlor table.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 535

"He had great kindness of heart. His mind
was full of tender sensibilities, and he was extreme
ly humane, yet while these attributes were fully
developed in his character, and, unless intercepted
by his judgment, controlled him, they never did
control him contrary to his judgment. He would
strain a point to be kind, but he never strained it
to breaking. Most men of much kindly feeling
are controlled by this sentiment against their judg
ment, or rather that sentiment beclouds their judg
ment. It was never so with him ; he would be just
as kind and generous as his judgment would let
him be — no more. If he ever deviated from this
rule, it was to save life. He would sometimes, I
think, do things he knew to be impolitic and wrong
to save some poor fellow's neck. I remember one
day being in his room when he was sitting at his
table with a large pile of papers before him, and
after a pleasant talk he turned quite abruptly and
said, 'Get out of the way, Swett; to-morrow is
butcher-day, and I must go through these papers
and see if I cannot find some excuse to let these
poor fellows off/ The pile of papers he had were
the records of courts martial of men who on the
following day were to be shot. He was not exam
ining the records to see whether the evidence sus
tained the findings; he was purposely in search of
occasions to evade the law, in favor of life.

"Some of Lincoln's friends have insisted that he
lacked the strong attributes of personal affection
which he ought to have exhibited; but I think this
is a mistake. Lincoln had too much justice to run a
great government for a few favors ; and the com
plaints against him in this regard, when properly
digested, seem to amount to this and no more,
that he would not abuse the privileges of his situa
tion.

"He was certainly a very poor hater. He never

536 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

judged men by his like or dislike for them. If any
given act was to be performed, he could understand
that his enemy could do it just as well as anyone.
If a man had maligned him or been guilty of per
sonal ill-treatment, and was the fittest man for the
place, he would give him that place just as soon as
he would give it to a friend.

"I do not think he ever removed a man because
he was his enemy or because he disliked him.

"The great secret of his po\ver as an orator, in
my judgment, lay in the clearness and perspicuity
of his statements. When Mr. Lincoln had stated a
case it was always more than half argued and the
point more than half won. It is said that some one
of the crowned heads of Europe proposed to marry
when he had a wife living. A gentleman, hearing
of this proposition, replied, how could he? 'Oh,'
replied his friend, 'he could marry and then he could
get Mr. Gladstone to make an explanation about it.'
This was said to illustrate the convincing power of
Mr. Gladstone's statement.

"Mr. Lincoln had this power greater than any
man I have ever known. The first impression he
generally conveyed was, that he had stated the
case of his adversary better and more forcibly than
his opponent could state it himself. He then
answered that statement of facts fairly and fully,
never passing by or skipping over a bad point.

"When this was done he presented his own case.
There was a feeling, when he argued a case, in the
mind of any man who listened to it, that nothing
had been passed over; yet if he could not answer
the objections he argued, in his own mind, and him
self arrive at the conclusion to which he was lead
ing others, he had very little power of argumenta
tion. The force of his logic was in conveying to
the minds of others the same clear and thorough
analysis he had in his own, and if his own mind

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 537

failed to be satisfied, he had little power to satisfy
anybody else. He never made a sophistical argu
ment in his life, and never could make one. I
think he was of less real aid in trying a thoroughly
bad case than any man I was ever associated with.
If he could not grasp the whole case and believe in
it, he was never inclined to touch it.

"From the commencement of his life to its
close, I have sometimes doubted whether he ever
asked anybody's advice about anything. He would
listen to everybody; he would hear everybody; but
he rarely, if ever, asked for opinions. I never knew
him in trying a case to ask the advice of any lawyer
he was associated with.

"As a politician and as President, he arrived at
all his conclusions from his own reflections, and
when his opinion was once formed, he never
doubted but what it was right.

"One great public mistake of his character, as
generally received and acquiesced in, is that he is
considered by the people of this country as a frank,
guileless, and unsophisticated man. There never
was a greater mistake. Beneath a smooth surface
of candor and apparent declaration of all his
thoughts and feelings, he exercised the most exalted
tact and the wisest discrimination. He handled
and moved men remotely as we do pieces upon
a chess-board. He retained through life all the
friends he ever had, and he made the wrath of his
enemies to praise him. This was not by cunning
or intrigue, in the low acceptation of the term, but
by far-seeing reason and discernment. He always
told enough only of his plans and purposes to
induce the belief that he had communicated all,
yet he reserved enough to have communicated
nothing. He told all that was unimportant with a
gushing frankness, yet no man ever kept his real

538 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

purposes closer, or penetrated the future further
with his deep designs.

"You ask me whether he changed his religious
opinions towards the close of his life. I think not.
As he became involved in matters of the greatest
importance, full of great responsibility and great
doubt, a feeling of religious reverence, a belief in
God and his justice and overruling power increased
with him. He was always full of natural religion;
he believed in God as much as the most approved
Church member, yet he judged of Him by the same
system of generalization as he judged everything
else. He had very little faith in ceremonials or
forms. In fact he cared nothing for the form of
anything. But his heart was full of natural and
cultivated religion. He believed in the great laws
of truth, and the rigid discharge of duty, his
accountability to God, the ultimate triumph of the
right and the overthrow of wrong. If his religion
were to be judged by the lines and rules of Church
creeds he would fall far short of the standard; but
if by the higher rule of purity of conduct, of hon
esty of motive, of unyielding fidelity to the right,
and acknowledging God as the supreme ruler, then
he filled all the requirements of true devotion, and
his whole life was a life of love to God, and love
of his neighbor as of himself.

"Yours truly,

"LEONARD SWETT/'

CHAPTER XIX.

THE outlines of Mr. Lincoln's Presidential career
are alone sufficient to fill a volume, and his history
after he had been sworn into office by Chief Justice
Taney is so much a history of the entire country,
and has been so admirably and thoroughly told by
others, that I apprehend I can omit many of the
details and still not impair the portrait I have been
endeavoring to draw in the mind of the reader. The
rapid shifting of scenes in the drama of secession, tfie
disclosure of rebellious plots and conspiracies, the
threats of Southern orators and newspapers, all cul
minating in the attack on Fort Sumter, brought
the newly installed President face to face with the
stern and grave realities of a civil war.* Mr. Lin
coln's military knowledge had been acquired in the
famous campaign against the Indian Chief Black
Hawk on the frontier in 1832, the thrilling details

* "Lincoln then told me of his last interview with Douglas.
'One day Douglas came rushing in,' he related, 'and said he had
just got a telegraph despatch from some friends in Illinois urg
ing him to come out and help set things right in Egypt, and that
he would go, or stay in Washington, just where I thought he
could do the most good. I told him to do as he chose, but that
he could probably do best in Illinois. Upon that he shook hands
with me and hurried away to catch the next train. I never
saw him again.' " — Henry C. Whitney, MS. letter, November
13, 1866.

539

540 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

of which he had already given the country in a Con
gressional stump-speech; and to this store of expe
rience he had made little if any addition. It was
therefore generally conceded that in grappling with
the realities of the problem which now confronted
both himself and the country he would be wholly
dependent on those who had made the profession
of arms a life-work. Those who held such hastily
conceived notions of Mr. Lincoln were evidently
misled by his well-known and freely advertised
Democratic manners. Anybody had a right, it was
supposed, to advise him of his duty; and he was so
conscious of his shortcomings as a military Presi
dent that the army officers and Cabinet would run
the Government and conduct the war. That was the
popular idea. Little did the press, or people, or
politicians then know that the country lawyer who
occupied the executive chair was the most self-
reliant man who ever sat in it, and that when the
crisis came his rivals in the Cabinet, and the people
everywhere, would learn that he and he alone would
be master of the situation.

It is doubtless true that for a long time after his
entry into office he did not assert himself; that is,
not realizing the gigantic scale upon which the war
was destined to be fought, he may have permitted
the idea to go forth that being unused to the com
mand of armies he would place himself entirely in
the hands of those who were.* The Secretary of

* "I was in Washington in the Indian service for a few days
before August, 1861, and I merely said to Lincoln one day,
"Everything is drifting into the war. and I guess you will have

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 541

State, whose ten years in the Senate had acquainted
him with our relations to foreign powers, may have
been lulled into the innocent belief that the Execu
tive would have no fixed or definite views on in
ternational questions. So also of the other Cabinet
officers; but alas for their fancied security! It
was the old story of the sleeping lion. Old politi
cians, eying him with some distrust and want of con
fidence, prepared themselves to control his adminis
tration, not only as a matter of right, but believing
that he would be compelled to rely upon them for
support. A brief experience taught them he was
not the man they bargained for.

Next in importance to the attack on Fort Sum-
ter, from a military standpoint, was the battle of
Bull Run. How the President viewed it is best
illustrated by an incident furnished by an old friend*
who was an associate of his in the Legislature of
Illinois, and who was in Washington when the en
gagement took place. "The night after the battle,"
he relates, "accompanied by two Wisconsin Con
gressmen, I called at the White House to get the
news from Manassas, as it was then called, having
failed in obtaining any information at Seward's
office and elsewhere. Stragglers were coming with
all sorts of wild rumors, but nothing more definite
than that there had been a great engagement; and

to put me in the army.' He looked up from his work and said,
good-humoredly, 'I'm making generals now. In a few days I
will be making quartermasters, and then I'll fix you.' " — H. C.
Whitney, MS. letter, June 13, 1866.

* Robert L. Wilson, MS., Feb. 10, 1866.

542 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

the bearer of each report had barely escaped with
his life. Messengers bearing despatches to the
President and Secretary of War were constantly
arriving, but outsiders could gather nothing worthy
of belief. Having learned that Mr. Lincoln was at
the War Department we started thither, but found
the building surrounded by a great crowd, all as
much in the dark as we. Removing a short dis
tance away we sat down to rest. Presently Mr.
Lincoln and Mr. Nicolay, his private secretary, came
along, headed for the White House. It was pro
posed by my companions that as I was acquainted
with the President I should join him and ask for
the news. I did so, but he said that he had already
told more than under the rules of the War Depart
ment he had any right to, and that, although he could
see no harm in it, the Secretary of War had forbidden
his imparting information to persons not in the mili
tary service. These war fellows/ he said, complain-
ingly, 'are very strict with me, and I regret that I
am prevented from telling you anything; but I
must obey them, I suppose, until I get the hang of
things.' 'But, Mr. President/ I insisted, 'if you can
not tell me the news, you can at least indicate its
nature, that is, whether good or bad/ The sugges
tion struck him favorably. Grasping my arm he
leaned over, and placing his face near my ear, said, in

a shrill but subdued voice, 'It's d d bad/ It was

the first time I had ever heard him use profane lan
guage, if indeed it was profane in that connection ;
but later, when the painful details of the fight came
in, I realized that, taking into consideration the time

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 543

and the circumstances, no other term would have
contained a truer qualification of the world 'bad.' "

"About one week after the battle of Bull Run,"
relates another old friend — Whitney — from Illinois,
"I made a call on Mr. Lincoln, having no business
except to give him some presents which the nuns at
the Osage Mission school in Kansas had sent to him
through me. A Cabinet meeting had just adjourned,
and I was directed to go at once to his room. H*3
was keeping at bay a throng of callers, but, noticing
me enter, arose and greeted me with his old time
cordiality. After the room had been partially
cleared of visitors Secretary Seward came in and
called up a case which related to the territory of
New Mexico. 'Oh, I see/ said Lincoln: 'they have
neither Governor nor Government. Well, you see
Jim Lane; the secretary is his man, and he must
hunt him up.' Seward then left, under the impres
sion, as I then thought, that Lincoln wanted to get
rid of him and diplomacy at the same time. Sev
eral other persons were announced, but Lincoln
notified them all that he was busy and could not
see them. He was playful and sportive as a child,
told me all sorts of anecdotes, dealing largely in
stories about Charles James Fox, and enquired after
several odd characters whom we both knew in
Illinois. While thus engaged General James was
announced. This officer had sent in word that he
would leave town that evening, and must confer
with the President before going. 'Well, as he is
one of the fellows who make cannons,' observed
Lincoln, 'I suppose I must see him. Tell him

544 THE L1FE OF LINCOLN.

when I get through with Whitney I'll see him.'
No more cards came up, and James left about fivt
o'clock, declaring that the President was closeted
with 'an old Hoosier from Illinois, and was telling
dirty yarns while the country was quietly going to
hell/ But, however indignant General James may
have felt, and whatever the people may have
thought, still the President was full of the war.
He got down his maps of the seat of war," con
tinues Whitney, "and gave me a full history of the
preliminary discussions and steps leading to the
battle of Bull Run. He was opposed to the battle,
and explained to General Scott by those very maps
how the enemy could by the aid of the railroad re
inforce their army at Manassas Gap until they had
brought every man there, keeping us meanwhile suc
cessfully at bay. 'I showed to General Scott our
paucity of railroad advantages at that point/ said
Lincoln, and their plentitude, but Scott was obdurate
and would not listen to the possibility of defeat.
Now you see I was right, and Scott knows it, I
reckon. My plan was, and still is, to make a strong
feint against Richmond and distract their forces
before attacking Manassas. That problem Gen
eral McClellan is now trying to work out.' Mr.
Lincoln then told me of the plan he had recom
mended to McClellan, which was to send gunboats
up one of the rivers — not the James — in the direc
tion of Richmond, and divert the enemy there
while the main attack was made at Manassas. I
took occasion to say that McClellan was ambitious
to be his successor. 'I am perfectly willing/ he

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 545

answered, 'if he will only put an end to this
war/ "*

The interview of Mr. Whitney with the President
on this occasion is especially noteworthy because
the latter unfolded to him his idea of the general
plan formed in his mind to suppress the rebellion
movement and defeat the Southern army. "The
President," continues Mr. Whitney, "now explained
to me his theory of the Rebellion by the aid of
the maps before him. Running his long forefinger
down the map he stopped at Virginia. 'We must
drive them away from here (Manassas Gap)/ he
said, 'and clear them out of this part of the State
so that they cannot threaten us here (Washington)
and get into Maryland. We must keep up a good
and thorough blockade of their ports. We must
march an army into east Tennessee and liberate
the Union sentiment there. Finally we must rely
on the people growing tired and saying to their
leaders: 'We have had enough of this thing, we
will bear it no longer/ "

Such was Mr. Lincoln's plan for heading off the
Rebellion in the summer of 1861. How it enlarged
as the war progressed, from a call for seventy-five
thousand volunteers to one for five hundred thou
sand men and five hundred millions of dollars, is a
matter now of well-known history. The war once
inaugurated, it was plain the North had three things
to do. These were: the opening of the Mississippi
River; the blockade of the Southern ports; and

* This interview with Lincoln was written out during the
war, and contains many of his peculiarities of expression.

546 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

the capture of Richmond. To accomplish these
great and vital ends the deadly machinery of war
was set in motion. The long-expected upheaval
had come, and as the torrent of fire broke forth the
people in the agony of despair looking aloft cried
out. "Is our leader equal to the task?" That he
was the man for the hour is now the calm, unbiassed
judgment of all mankind.

The splendid victories early in 1862 in the south
west, which gave the Union cause great advance
toward the entire redemption of Kentucky, Tennes
see, and Missouri from the presence of rebel armies
and the prevalence of rebel influence, were counter
balanced by the dilatory movements and inactive
policy of McClellan, who had been appointed in No
vember of the preceding year to succeed the vener
able Scott. The forbearance of Lincoln in dealing
with McClellan was only in keeping with his well-
known spirit of kindness; but, when the time came
and circumstances warranted it, the soldier-states
man found that the President not only compre
hended the scope of the war, but was determined
to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy
himself. When it pleased him to place McClellan
again at the head of affairs, over the protest of such
a wilful and indomitable spirit as Stanton, he dis
played elements of rare leadership and evidence of
uncommon capacity. His confidence in the ability
and power of Grant, when the press and many of
the people had turned against the hero of Vicks-
burg, was but another proof of his sagacity and
sound judgment.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 547

As the bloody drama of war moves along we
come now to the crowning act in Mr. Lincoln's
career — that sublime stroke with which his name
will be forever and indissolubly united — the emanci
pation of the slaves. In the minds of many people
there had been a crying need for the liberation of
the slaves. Laborious efforts had been made to.
hasten the issuance by the President of the Eman
cipation Proclamation, but he was determined not
to be forced into premature and inoperative meas
ures. Wendell Phillips abused and held him up to
public ridicule from the stump in New England.
Horace Greeley turned the batteries of the New
York Tribune against him; and, in a word, he
encountered all the rancor and hostility of his old
friends the Abolitionists. General Fremont having
in the fall of 1861 undertaken by virtue of his
authority as a military commander to emancipate
the slaves in his department, the President annulled
the order, which he characterized as unauthorized
and premature. This precipitated an avalanche of
fanatical opposition. Individuals and delegations,
many claiming to have been sent by the Lord,
visited him day after day, and urged immediate
emancipation. In August, 1862, Horace Greeley
repeated the "prayer of twenty millions of peo
ple" protesting against any further delay. Such
was the pressure from the outside. All his life
Mr. Lincoln had been a believer in the doctrine of
gradual emancipation. He advocated it while in
Congress in 1848 ; yet even now, as a military neces
sity, he could not believe the time was ripe for the

548 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

general liberation of the slaves. All the coercion
from without, and all the blandishments from
within, his political household failed to move him.
An heroic figure, indifferent alike to praise and
blame, he stood at the helm and waited. In the
shadow of his lofty form the smaller men could
keep up their petty conflicts. Towering thus, he
overlooked them all, and fearlessly abided his time.
At last the great moment came. He called his
Cabinet together and read the decree. The deed
was done, unalterably, unhesitatingly, irrevocably,
and triumphantly. The people, at first profoundly
impressed, stood aloof, but, seeing the builder beside
the great structure he had so long been rearing,
their confidence was abundantly renewed. It was
a glorious work, "sincerely believed to be an act of
justice warranted by the constitution upon military
necessity," and upon it its author "invoked the
considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious
favor of Almighty God." I believe Mr. Lincoln
wished to go down in history as the liberator of the
black man. He realized to its fullest extent the
responsibility and magnitude of the act, and
declared it was "the central act of his administra
tion and the great event of the nineteenth century."
Always a friend of the negro, he had from boyhood
waged a bitter unrelenting warfare against his
enslavement. He had advocated his cause in the
courts, on the stump, in the Legislature of his State
and that of the nation, and, as if to crown it with
a sacrifice, he sealed his devotion to the great cause
of freedom with his blood. As the years roll slowly

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 549

by, and the participants in the late war drop grad
ually out of the ranks of men, let us pray that we
may never forget their deeds of patriotic valor; but
even if the details of that bloody struggle grow
dim, as they will with the lapse of time, let us hope
that so long as a friend of free man and free labor
lives the dust of forgetfulness may never settle on
the historic form of Abraham Lincoln.

As the war progressed, there was of course much
criticism of Mr. Lincoln's policy, and some of his polit
ical rivals lost no opportunity to encourage opposi
tion to his methods. He bore everything meekly
and with sublime patience, but as the discontent ap
peared to spread he felt called upon to indicate his
course. On more than one occasion he pointed out
the blessings of the Emancipation Proclamation or
throttled the clamorer for immediate peace. In the
following letter to James C. Conkling* of Springfield,
111., in reply to an invitation to attend a mass
meeting of "Unconditional Union" men to be held
at his old home, he not only disposed of the ad
vocates of compromise, but he evinced the most
admirable skill in dealing with the questions of the
day;

* "SPRINGFIELD, ILL., January 11, 1889.
"JESSE W. WEIK, ESQ.

"Dear Sir:

"I enclose you a copy of the letter dated August 26, 1863, by
Mr. Lincoln to me. It has been carefully compared with the
original and is a correct copy, except that the words commenc
ing 'I know as fully as one can know' to the words 'You say
you will fight to free negroes' were not included in the original,
but were telegraphed the next day with instructions to insert.
The following short note in Mr. Lincoln's own handwriting ac
companied the letter :

550 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, August 26, 1863.

"HON. JAMES C. CONKLING.
"My Dear Sir:

"Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting
of Unconditional Union men, to be held at the Cap
itol of Illinois, on the 3rd day of September, has
been received.

"It would be very agreeable to me to thus meet
my old friends at my own home; but I can
not, just now, be absent from here so long as a
visit there would require.

"The meeting is to be of all those who maintain
unconditional devotion to the Union; and I am
sure my old political friends will thank me for
tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those
other noble men, whom no partisan malice, or par
tisan's hope, can make false to the nation's life.

"There are those who are dissatisfied with me.
To such I would say: You desire peace; and you
blame me that we do not have it. But how can we
attain it? There are but three conceivable ways.

"First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms.
This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If

[Private.] " 'WAR DEPARTMENT,

" 'WASHINGTON CITY, D. C., August 27, 1862.
" 'My Dear Conkling:

" 'I cannot leave here now. Herewith is a letter instead. You
are one of the best public readers. I have but one suggestion —
read it very slowly. And now God bless you, and all good
Union men.

" 'Yours as ever,

" 'A. LINCOLN.'

"Mr. Bancroft, the historian, in commenting on this letter,
considers it addressed to me as one who was criticising Mr.
Lincoln's policy. On the contrary, I was directed by a meeting
of 'Unconditional Union' men to invite Mr. Lincoln to attend
a mass meeting composed of such men, and he simply took
occasion to address his opponents through the medium of the
letter.

"Yours truly,
"JAMES C. CONKLING."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 551

you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it,
a second way is, to give up the Union. I am
against this. Are you for it? If you are, you
should say so plainly. If you are not for force, nor
yet for dissolution, there only remains some imag
inable compromise. I do not believe any compromise,
embracing the maintenance of the Union, is now
possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite
belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military
— its army. That army dominates all the country
and all the people within its range. Any offer of
terms made by any man or men within that range
in opposition to that army is simply nothing for
the present, because such man or men have no
power whatever to enforce their side of a compro
mise, if one were made with them. To illustrate:
suppose refugees from the South, and peace men of
the North, get together in convention and frame
and proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration
of the Union; in what way can that compromise be
used to keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania?
Meade's army can keep Lee's army out of Pennsyl
vania, and I think can ultimately drive it out of
existence.

"But no paper compromise, to which the con
trollers of Lee's army are not agreed, can at all
affect that army. In an effort at such compromise
we should waste time, which the enemy would im
prove to our disadvantage; and that would be all.
A compromise, to be effective, must be made either
with those who control the rebel army, or with the
people first liberated from the domination of that
army by the success of our own army. Now allow
me to assure you that no word or intimation from
that rebel army or from any of the men controlling
it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever
come to my knowledge or belief.

"All changes and insinuations to the contrary

552 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

are deceptive and groundless. And I promise you
that, if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it
shall not be rejected and kept a secret from you. I
freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people,
according to the bond of service — the United States
Constitution, and that, as such, I am responsible
to them.

"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me
about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of
opinion between you and myself upon that subject.

"I certainly wish that all men could be free,
while I suppose you do not. Yet I have neither
adopted nor proposed any measure which is not
consistent with even your view, provided you are
for the Union. I suggested compensated emanci
pation; to which you replied you wished not to be
taxed to buy negroes. But I had not asked you to
be taxed to buy negroes, except in such way as to
save you from greater taxation to save the Union
exclusively by other means.

"You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation,
and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You
say it is unconstitutional — I think differently.
I think the constitution invests its Commander-
in-chief with the law of war in time of war. The
most that can be said, if so much, is that slaves
are property. Is there — has there ever been — any
question that by the law of war, property, both
of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed?

"And is it not needed wherever taking it helps
us or hurts the enemy? Armies the world over
destroy enemies' property when they cannot use it;
and even destroy their own to keep it from the
enemy. Civilized belligerents do all in their power
to help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few
things regarded as barbarous or cruel.

"Among the exceptions are the massacre of van
quished foes and non-combatants, male and female.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN,

"But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or
is not valid.

"If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is
valid, it cannot be retraced any more than the
dead can be brought to life. Some of you profess
to think its retraction would operate favorably for
the Union.

"Why better after the retraction than before the
issue?

"There was more than a year and a half of trial
to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation
issued, the last one hundred days of which passed
under an explicit notice that it was coming, un
less averted by those in revolt returning to their
allegiance.

"The war has certainly progressed as favorably
for us since the issue of the proclamation as before.

"*I know as fully as one can know the opinion
of others that some of the commanders of our
armies in the field who have given us our most im
portant successes believe the emancipation policy
and the use of the colored troops constituted the
heaviest blow yet dealt to the Rebellion, and that
at least one of these important successes could not
have been achieved when it was but for the aid of
black soldiers. Among the commanders holding
these views are some who have never had any
affinity with what is called abolitionism or with Re
publican party policies, but who held them purely
as military opinions. I submit these opinions as
being entitled to some weight against the objec
tions often urged that emancipation and arming the
blacks are unwise as military measures, and were
not adopted as such in good faith.*

"You say you will not fight to free negroes.
Some of them seem willing to fight for you ; but no
matter.

* See note p. 540.

554 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

"Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union.
I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in
saving the Union. Whenever you shall have con
quered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge
you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time
then for you to declare you will not fight to free
negroes.

"I thought that in your struggle for the Union,
to whatever extent the negroes should cease help
ing the enemy, to that extent it weakened the
enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think dif
ferently? I thought that whatever negroes can be
got to do as soldiers leaves just so much less for
white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it
appear otherwise to you?

"But negroes, like other people, act upon
motives. Why should they do anything for us, if
we will do nothing for them? If they stake their
lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest
motive — even the promise of freedom. And the
promise being made, must be kept.

"The signs look better. The Father of Waters
again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the
great North-west for it. Nor yet wholly to them.
Three hundred miles up they met New England,
Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way
right and left. The Sunny South too, in more
colors than one, also lent a hand.

"On the spot, their part of the history was jotted
down in black and white. The job was a great
national one ; and let none be barred who bore an
honorable part .in it. And while those who have
cleared the great river may well be proud, even that
is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been
more bravely and well done than at Antietam,
Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of
lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be
forgotten. At all the watery margins they have

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 555

been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad
bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow,
muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little
damp, they have been, and made their tracks,
thanks to all. For the great republic — for the prin
ciple it lives by and keeps alive — for man's vast
future — thanks to all.

"Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I
hope it will come soon and come to stay, and so
come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.
It will then have been proved that, among free
men, there can be no successful appeal from the
ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such
appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.
And then there will be some black men who can
remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched
teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they
have helped mankind on to this great consumma
tion; while I fear there will be some white ones,
unable to forget that, with malignant heart and de
ceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.

"Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy
final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dili
gently apply the means, never doubting that
a just God, in his own good time, will give us the
rightful result.

"Yours very truly,

"A. LINCOLN/'

The summer and fall of 1864 were marked by Lin
coln's second Presidential campaign, he, and Andrew
Johnson, of Tennessee, for Vice-President, having
been nominated at Baltimore on the 8th of June.
Fremont, who had been placed in the field by a con
vention of malcontents at Cleveland, Ohio, had
withdrawn in September, and the contest was left
to Lincoln and General George B. McClellan, the

556 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

nominee of the Democratic convention at Chicago.
The canvass was a heated and bitter one. Dissat
isfied elements appeared everywhere. The Judge
Advocate-General of the army (Holt) created a
sensation by the publication of a report giving con
clusive proof of the existence of an organized secret
association at the North, controlled by prominent
men in the Democratic party, whose objects were
the overthrow by revolution of the administration
in the interest of the rebellion.* Threats were rife

* "Mr. Lincoln was advised, and I also so advised him, that
the various military trials in the Northern and Border States,
where the couFts were free and untrammelled, were unconsti
tutional and wrong ; that they would not and ought not to
be sustained by the Supreme Court ; that such proceedings
were dangerous to liberty. He said he was opposed to hanging;
that he did not like to kill his fellow-man; that if the world
had no butchers but himself it would go bloodless. When Jo
seph E. McDonald went to Lincoln about these military trials
and asked him not to execute the men who had been convicted
by the military commission in Indiana he answered that he
would not hang them, but added, 'I'll keep them in prison
awhile to keep them from killing the Government.' I am fully
satisfied therefore that Lincoln was opposed to these military
commissions, especially in the Northern States, where every
thing was open and free." — David Davis, statement, Septem
ber 10, 1866, to W. H. H.

"I was counsel for Bowles, Milligan, et al., who had been
convicted of conspiracy by miliatry tribunal in Indiana. Early in
1865 I went to Washington to confer with the President, whom
I had known, and with whom in earlier days I had practised
law on the circuit in Illinois. My clients had been sentenced,
and unless the President interfered were to have been executed.
Mr. Hendricks, who was then in the Senate, and who seemed
to have little faith in the probability of executive clemency, ac
companied me to the White House. It was early in the even
ing, and so many callers and visitors had preceded us we antici
pated a very brief interview. Much to our surprise we found
Mr. Lincoln in a singularly cheerful and reminiscent mood. He

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 557

of a revolution at the North, especially in New York
City, if Mr. Lincoln were elected. Mr. Lincoln went
steadily on in his own peculiar way. In a preceding
chapter Mr. Swett has told us how indifferent he
appeared to be regarding any efforts to be made in
his behalf. He did his duty as President, and rested
secure in the belief that he would be re-elected
whatever might be done for or against him. The
importance of retaining Indiana in the column of
Republican States was not to be overlooked. How
the President viewed it, and how he proposed to se
cure the vote of the State, is shown in the following
letter written to General Sherman :

"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
"WASHINGTON, September 19, 1864.

"MAJOR GENERAL SHERMAN :

"The State election of Indiana occurs on the llth
of October, and the loss of it to the friends of the
Government would go far towards losing the whole
Union cause. The bad effect upon the November
election, and especially the giving the State govern
ment to those who will oppose the war in every

kept us with him till almost eleven o'clock. He went over the
history of my clients' crime as shown by the papers in the case,
and suggested certain errors and imperfections in the record.
The papers, he explained, would have to be returned for cor
rection, and that would consume no little time. 'You may go
home, Mr. McDonald,' he said, with a pleased expression, 'and
I'll send for you when the papers get back ; but 1 apprehend
and hope there will be such a jubilee over yonder,' he added,
pointing to the hills of Virginia just across the river, 'we shall
none of us want any more killing done.' The papers started
on their long and circuitous journey, and sure enough, before
they reached Washington again Mr. Lincoln's prediction of the
return of peace had proved true." — Hon. Joseph E. McDonald,
statement. August 28, 1888, to J. W. W.

558 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

possible way, are too much to risk if it can be
avoided. The draft proceeds, notwithstanding its
strong tendency to lose us the State. Indiana is
the only important State voting in October whose
soldiers cannot vote in the field. Anything you
can safely do to let her soldiers or any part of them
go home and vote at the State election will be
greatly in point. They need not remain for the
Presidential election, but may return to you at once.
This is in no sense an order, but is merely intended
to impress you with the importance to the army it
self of your doing all you safely can, yourself being
the judge of what you can safely do.

"Yours truly,

"A. LINCOLN."*

The election resulted in an overwhelming victory
for Lincoln. He received a majority of over four
hundred thousand in the popular vote — a larger
majority than had ever been received by any other
President up to that time. He carried not only
Indiana, but all the New England States, New
York, Pennsylvania, all the Western States, West
Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and the
newly admitted State of Nevada. McClellan car
ried but three states: New Jersey, Delaware, and
Kentucky. The result, as Grant so aptly expressed
it in his telegram of congratulation, was "a victory
worth more to the country than a battle won." A
second time Lincoln stood in front of the great
Capitol to take the oath of office administered by
his former rival, Salmon P. Chase, whom he himself
had appointed to succeed the deceased Roger B.

* Unpublished MS.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 559

Taney. The problem of the war was now fast work
ing its own solution. The cruel stain of slavery had
been effaced from the national escutcheon, and the
rosy morn of peace began to dawn behind the
breaking clouds of the great storm.* Lincoln, firm

* Bearing on the mission of the celebrated Peace Commis
sion the following- bit of inside history is not without interest:

"I had given notice that at one o'clock on the 31st of Janu
ary I would call a vote on the proposed constitutional amend
ment abolishing slavery in the United States. The opposition
caught up a report that morning that Peace Commissioners
were on the way to the city or were in the city. Had this
been true I think the proposed amendment would have failed,
as a number who voted for it could easily have been prevailed
upon to vote against it on the ground that the passage of such
a proposition would be offensive to the commissioners. Ac
cordingly I wrote the President this note:

" 'HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

" 'January 31, 1865.
" 'Dear Sir:

" 'The report is in circulation in the House that Peace
Commissioners are on their way or in the city, and is being used
against us. If it is true, I fear we shall lose the bill. Please
authorize me to contradict it, if it is not true.

" 'Respectfully,

" 'J. M. ASHLEY.'
To the President.

Almost immediately came the reply, written on the back of
my note:

" 'So far as I know there are no Peace Commissioners in the
city or likely to be in it. " 'A. LINCOLN/

January 31, 1865.

"Mr. Lincoln knew that the commissioners were then on
their way to Fortress Monroe, where he expected to meet them,
and afterwards did meet them. You see how he answered my
note for my purposes, and yet how truly. You know how he
afterwards met the so-called commission, whom he determined
at the time he wrote this note should not come to the city.
One or two gentlemen were present when he wrote the note, to
whom he read it before sending it to me." — J. M. Ashley, M. C.,
letter, November 23, 1866, MS.

560 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

but kind, in his inaugural address bade his mis
guided brethern of the South come back. With a
fraternal affection characteristic of the man, and
strictly in keeping with his former utterances, he
asked for the return of peace. "With malice
towards none, with charity for all," he implored
his fellow-countrymen, "with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us 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 orphans, to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations." With the
coming of spring the great armies, awakening from
their long winter's sleep, began preparations for the
closing campaign. Sherman had already made
that grandest march of modern times, from the
mountains of Tennessee through Georgia to the
sea, while Grant, with stolid indifference to public
criticism and newspaper abuse, was creeping stead
ily on through swamp and ravine to Richmond.
Thomas had defeated Hood in Tennessee, sending
the latter back with his army demoralized, cut in
pieces, and ruined. The young and daring Sher
idan had driven Early out of the Shenandoah
Valley after a series of brilliant engagements. The
"Kearsarge" had sunk the "Alabama" in foreign
waters. Farragut had captured Mobile, and the
Union forces held undisputed possession of the West
and the Mississippi Valley from the lakes to the gulf.
Meanwhile Sherman, undaunted by the perils of a
further march through the enemy's country, return-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 561

ing from the sea, was aiming for Richmond, where
Grant, with bull-dog tenacity, held Lee firmly in his
grasp. Erelong, the latter, with his shattered army
reduced to half its original numbers, evacuated
Richmond, with Grant in close pursuit. A few
days later the boys in blue overtook those in gray
at Appomattox Court-house, and there, under the
warm rays of an April sun, the life was at last
squeezed out of the once proud but now prostrate
Confederacy. "The sun of peace had fairly risen.
The incubus of war that had pressed upon the
nation's heart for four long, weary years was lifted;
and the nation sprang to its feet with all possible
demonstrations of joyous exultation."

Mr. Lincoln himself had gone to the scene of
hostilities in Virginia. He watched the various
military manoeuvres and operations, which involved
momentous consequences to the country ; he wit
nessed some of the bloody engagements participated
in by the army of the Potomac. Within a day
after its surrender he followed the victorious Union
army into the city of Richmond. In this unfortu
nate city — once the proud capital of Virginia — now
smoking and in ruins, he beheld the real horrors of
grim war. Here too he realized in a bountiful
measure the earnest gratitude of the colored people,
who everywhere crowded around him and with
cries of intense exultation greeted him as their
deliverer. He now returned to Washington, not
like Napoleon fleeing sorrowfully from Waterloo
bearing the tidings of his own defeat, but with joy
proclaiming the era of Union victory and peace

562 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

among men. "The war was over. The great
rebellion which for four long years had been assail
ing the nation's life was quelled. Richmond, the
rebel capital, was taken; Lee's army had surren
dered; and the flag of the Union was floating in
reassured supremacy over the whole of the National
domain. Friday, the 14th of April, the anniversary
of the surrender of Fort Sumter in 1861 by Major
Anderson to the rebel forces, had been designated
by the Government as the day on which the same
officer should again raise the American flag upon
the fort in the presence of an assembled multitude,
and with ceremonies befitting so auspicious an
occasion. The whole land rejoiced at the return
of peace and the prospect of renewed prosperity
to the country. President Lincoln shared this com
mon joy, but with a deep intensity of feeling which
no other man in the whole land could ever know.
He saw the full fruition of the great work which
had rested so heavily on his hands and heart for
four years past. He saw the great task — as
momentous as had ever fallen to the lot of man
— which he had approached with such unfeigned
diffidence, nearly at an end. The agonies of war
had passed away; he had won the imperishable
renown which is the reward of those who save their
country; and he could devote himself now to the
welcome task of healing the wounds which war had
made, and consolidating by a wise and magnani
mous policy the severed sections of our common
Union. His heart was full of the generous senti
ments which these circumstances were so well cal-

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 563

culated to inspire. He was cheerful and hopeful
of the success of his broad plans for the treatment
of the conquered people of the South. With all
the warmth of his loving nature, after the four
years of storm through which he had been com
pelled to pass, he viewed the peaceful sky on which
the opening of his second term had dawned. His
mind was free from forebodings and filled only with
thoughts of kindness and of future peace." But
alas for the vanity of human confidence ! The
demon of assassination lurked near. In the midst
of the general rejoicing at the return of peace Mr.
Lincoln was stricken down by the assassin, John
Wilkes Booth, in Ford's Theatre at Washington.
The story of his death, though oft repeated, is the
saddest and most impressive page in American his
tory. I cannot well forbear reproducing its painful
and tragic details here.*

"Mr. Lincoln for years had a presentiment that
he would reach a high place and then be stricken
down in some tragic way. He took no precautions
to keep out of the way of danger. So many
threats had been made against him that his friends
were alarmed, and frequently urged him not to go
out unattended. To all their entreaties he had the
same answer: 'If they kill me the next man will
be just as bad for them. In a country like this,
where our habits are simple, and must be, assassina-

* For the details of the assassination and the capture and
subsequent history of the conspirators, I am indebted to Mrs.
Gertrude Garrison, of New York, who has given the subject no
little study and investigation. J. W. W.

564 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

tion is always possible, and will come if they are
determined upon it.'

"Whatever premonition of his tragic fate he may
have had, there is nothing to prove that he felt the
nearness of the awful hour. Doomed men rise and
go about their daily duties as unoppressed, often,
as those whose paths know no shadow. On that
never-to-be-forgotten 14th of April President Lin
coln passed the day in the usual manner. In the
morning his son, Captain Robert Lincoln, break
fasted with him. The young man had just
returned from the capitulation of Lee, and he
described in detail all the circumstances of that
momentous episode of the close of the war, to
which the President listened with the closest
interest. After breakfast the President spent an
hour with Speaker Colfax, talking about his future
policy, about to be submitted to his Cabinet. At
eleven o'clock he met the Cabinet. General Grant
was present. He spent the afternoon with Gov
ernor Oglesby, Senator Yates, and other friends
from Illinois. He was invited by the manager of
Ford's theatre, in Washington, to attend in the
evening a performance of the play, 'Our Ameri
can Cousin/ with Laura Keene as the leading lady.
This play, now so well known to all play-goers,
in which the late Sothern afterward made fortune
and fame, was then comparatively unheralded.
Lincoln was fond of the drama. Brought up in a
provincial way, in the days when theatres were
unknown outside of the larger cities, the beautiful
art of the actor was fresh and delightful to him.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 565

He loved Shakespeare, and never lost an oppor
tunity of seeing his character rendered by the
masters of dramatic art. But on that evening, it is
said, he was not eager to go. The play was new,
consequently not alluring to him; but he yielded
to the wishes of Mrs. Lincoln and went. They
took with them Miss Harris and Major Rathbone,
daughter and stepson of Senator Harris, of New
York.

"The theatre was crowded. At 9:20 the Presi
dent and his party entered. The audience rose and
cheered enthusiastically as they passed to the 'state
box' reserved for them. Little did anyone present
dream that within the hour enthusiasm would
give place to shrieks of horror. It was ten o'clock
when Booth came upon the scene to enact the last
and greatest tragedy of the war. He had planned
carefully, but not correctly. A good horse awaited
him at the rear of the theatre, on which he
intended to ride into friendly shelter among the
hills of Maryland. He made his way to the Presi
dent's box — a double one in the second tier, at the
left of the stage. The separating partition had
been removed, and both boxes thrown into one.

"Booth entered the theatre nonchalantly, glanced
at the stage with apparent interest, then slowly
worked his way around into the outer passage lead
ing toward the box occupied by the President. At
the end of an inner passage leading to the box door,
one of the President's "messengers" was stationed
to prevent unwelcome intrusions. Booth presented
a card to him, stating that Mr. Lincoln had sent

566 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

for him, and was permitted to pass. After gaming
an entrance and closing the hall door, he took a
piece of board prepared for the occasion, and placed
one end of it in an indentation in the wall, about
four feet from the floor, and the other against the
molding of the door panel a few inches higher,
making it impossible for any one to enter from
without. The box had two doors. He bored a
gimlet hole in the panel of one, reaming it out with
his knife, so as to leave it a little larger than a
buckshot on the inside, while on the other side it
was big enough to give his eye a wide range.
Both doors had spring locks. To secure against
their being locked he had loosened the screws with
which the bolts were fastened.

"So deliberately had he planned that the very
seats in the box had been arranged to suit his
purpose by an accomplice, one Spangler, an
attache of the theatre. The President sat in the
left-hand corner of the box, nearest the audi
ence, in an easy arm-chair. Next him, on the right,
sat Mrs. Lincoln. A little distance to the right of
both, Miss Harris was seated, with Major Rathbone
at her left, and a little in the rear of Mrs. Lincoln,
who, intent on the play, was leaning forward, with
one hand resting on her husband's knee. The
President was leaning upon one hand, and with the
other was .toying with a portion of the drapery.
His face was partially turned to the audience, and
wore a pleasant smile.

"The assassin swiftly entered the box through
the door at the right, and the next instant fired.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 567

The ball entered just behind the President's left
ear, and, though not producing instantaneous death,
completely obliterated all consciousness.

"Major Rathbone heard the report, and an in
stant later saw the murderer, about six feet from
the President, and grappled with him, but his grasp
was shaken off. Booth dropped his pistol and drew
a long, thin, deadly-looking knife, with which he
wounded the major. Then, touching his left hand
to the railing of the box, he vaulted over to the
stage, eight or nine feet below. In that descent an
unlooked-for and curious thing happened, which
foiled all the plans of the assassin and was the
means of bringing him to bay at last. Lincoln's
box was draped with the American flag, and Booth,
in jumping, caught his spur in its folds, tearing it
down and spraining his ankle. He crouched as he
fell, falling upon one knee, but soon straightened
himself and stalked theatrically across the stage,
brandishing his knife and shouting the State motto
of Virginia, 'Sic semper tyrannis!' afterward
adding, 'The South is avenged!' He made his
exit on the opposite side of the stage, passing Miss
Keene as he went out. A man named Stewart, a
tall lawyer of Washington, was the only person
with presence of mind enough to spring upon the
stage and follow him, and he was too late.

"It had all been done so quickly and dramati
cally that many in the audience were dazed, and
could not understand that anything not a part of
the play had happened. When, at last, the awful
truth was known to them there ensued a scene, the

568 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

like of which was never known in a theatre before.
Women shrieked, sobbed, and fainted. Men cursed
and raved, or were dumb with horror and amaze
ment. Miss Keene stepped to the front and begged
the frightened and dismayed audience to be calm.
Then she entered the President's box with water
and stimulants. Medical aid was summoned and
came with flying feet, but came too late. The
murderer's bullet had done its wicked work well.
The President hardly stirred in his chair, and never
spoke or showed any signs of consciousness again.

"They carried him immediately to the house of
Mr. Petersen, opposite the theatre, and there
at 7:22 the next moring, the 15th of April, he
died.

"The night of Lincoln's assassination was a mem
orable one in Washington. Secretary Seward was
attacked and wounded while lying in bed with a
broken arm.

"The murder of the President put the authorities
on their guard against a wide-reaching conspiracy,
and threw the public into a state of terror. The
awful event was felt even by those who knew not
of it. Horsemen clattered through the silent
streets of Washington, spreading the sad tidings,
and the telegraph wires carried the terrible story
everywhere. The nation awakened from its dream
of peace on the 15th of April, 1865, to learn that
its protector, leader, friend, and restorer had been
laid low by a stage-mad 'avenger/ W. O. Stod-
dard, in his 'Life of Lincoln,' says: 'It was as if
there had been a death in every house throughout

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 569

the land. By both North and South alike the awful
news was received with a shudder and a momentary
spasm of unbelief. Then followed one of the most
remarkable spectacles in the history of the human
race, for there is nothing- else at all like it on record.
Bells had tolled before at the death of a loved ruler,
but never did all bells toll so mournfully as they did
that day. Business ceased. Men came together
in public meetings as if by a common impulse, and
party lines and sectional hatreds seemed to be
obliterated.

"The assassination took place on Friday evening,
and on the following Sunday funeral services were
held in all the churches in the land, and every
church was draped in mourning."

The death of Mr. Lincoln was an indescribable
shock to his fellow countrymen. The exultation of
victory over the final and successful triumph of
Union arms was suddenly changed to the lamenta
tions of grief. In every household throughout the
length and breadth of the land there was a dull and
bitter agony as the telegraph bore tidings of the
awful deed. The public heart, filled with joy over
the news from Appomattox, now sank low with a
sacred terror as the sad tidings from the Capitol
came in. In the great cities of the land all busi
ness instantly ceased. Flags drooped half-mast
from every winged messenger of the sea, from every
church spire, and from every public building.
Thousands upon thousands, drawn by a common
feeling, crowded around every place of public resort
and listened eagerly to whatever any public speaker

570 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

chose to say. Men met in the streets and pressed
each other's hands in silence, and burst into tears.
The whole nation, which the previous day had been
jubilant and hopeful, was precipitated into the
depths of a profound and tender woe. It was a
memorable spectacle to the world — a whole nation
plunged into heartfelt grief and the deepest sorrow.

The body of the dead President, having been em
balmed, was removed from the house in which the
death occurred to the White House, and there appro
priate funeral services were held. After the transfer
of the remains to the Capital, where the body was ex
posed to view in the Rotunda for a day, preparations
were made for the journey to the home of the de
ceased in Illinois. On the following day (April
21) the funeral train left Washington amid the si
lent grief of the thousands who had gathered to wit
ness its departure. At all the great cities along the
route stops were made, and an opportunity was
given the people to look on the face of the illustrious
dead. The passage of this funeral train westward
through country, village, and city, winding across
the territory of vast States, along a track of more
than fifteen hundred miles, was a pageant without a
parallel in the history of the continent or the world.
At every halt in the sombre march vast crowds, such
as never before had collected together, filed past the
catafalque for a glimpse of the dead chieftain's face.
Farmers left their farms, workmen left their shops,
societies and soldiers marched in solid columns,
and the great cities poured forth their population
in countless masses. From Washington the funeral

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. S7l

train moved to Baltimore, thence to Harrisburg,
Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleve
land, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, and at last
to Springfield.

As the funeral cortege passed through New York
it was reverently gazed upon by a mass of humanity
impossible to enumerate. No ovation could be so
eloquent as the spectacle of the vast population,
hushed and bareheaded under the bright spring
sky, gazing upon his coffin. Lincoln's own words
over the dead at Gettysburg came to many as the
stately car went by: "The world will little note
nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here."

It was remembered, too, that on the 22d of Feb
ruary, 1861, as he raised the American flag over
Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, he spoke of
the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence
which gave liberty not only to this country, but, "I
hope," he said, "to the world for all future time.
But if this country cannot be saved without giving
up that principle, I was about to say I would rather
be assassinated upon this spot than surrender it."

When he died the veil that hid his greatness was
torn aside, and the country then knew what it had
possessed and lost in him. A New York paper, of
April 29, 1865, said: "No one who personally knew
him but will now feel that the deep, furrowed sad
ness of his face seemed to forecast his fate. The
genial gentleness of his manner, his homely simplic
ity, the cheerful humor that never failed, are now
seen to have been but the tender light that played

572 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN

around the rugged heights of his strong and noble
nature. It is small consolation that he died at the
moment of the war when he could best be spared,
for no nation is ever ready for the loss of such a
friend. But it is something to remember that he
lived to see the slow day breaking. Like Moses, he
had marched with us through the wilderness.
From the height of patriotic vision he beheld the
golden fields of the future waving in peace and
plenty. He beheld, and blessed God, but was not
to enter in."

In a discourse delivered on Lincoln on the 23d of
that month, Henry Ward Beecher said :

"And now the martyr is moving in triumphal
march, mightier than when alive. The nation rises
up at every stage of his coming. Cities and states
are his pall-bearers, and the cannon speaks the hours
with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet
speaketh. Is Washington dead? Is Hampden
dead? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead?
Disenthralled of flesh, risen to the unobstructed
sphere where passion never comes, he begins his
illimitable work. His life is now grafted upon the
infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can
be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Ye people,
behold the martyr whose blood, as so many articu
late words, pleads for fidelity, for law, for liberty."

The funeral train reached Springfield on the 3d
of May. The casket was borne to the State House
and placed in Representative Hall — the very cham
ber in which in 1854 the deceased had pronounced
that fearful invective against the sin of human

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 573

slavery. The doors were thrown open, the coffin
lid was removed, and we who had known the illus
trious dead in other days, and before the nation lay
its claim upon him, moved sadly though and
looked the last time on the silent, upturned face
of our departed friend. All day long and through
the night a stream of people filed reverently by
the catafalque. Some of them were his colleagues
at the bar; some his old friends from New Salem;
some crippled soldiers fresh from the battle-fields
of the war; and some were little children who, scarce
realizing the impressiveness of the scent, were
destined to live and tell their children yet to be
born the sad story of Lincoln's death.

At ten o'clock in the morning of the second day,
as a choir of two-hundred-and-fifty voices sang
"Peace, Troubled Soul," the lid of the casket was shut
down forever. The remains were borne outside and
placed in a hearse, which moved at the head of a
procession in charge of General Joseph Hooker to
Oak Ridge Cemetery. There Bishop Matthew
Simpson delivered an eloquent and impressive
funeral oration, and Rev. Dr. Gurley, of Washing
ton, offered up the closing prayer. While the choir
chanted "Unveil Thy Bosom, Faithful Tomb," the
vault door opened and received to its final rest all
that was mortal of Abraham Lincoln.

"It was soon known that the murder of Lincoln
was one result of a conspiracy which had for its
victims Secretary Seward and probably Vice-Presi-
dent Johnson, Secretary Stanton, General Grant,
and perhaps others. Booth had left a card for Mr.

574 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Johnson the day before, possibly with the intention
of killing him. Mr. Seward received wounds, from
which he soon recovered. Grant, who was to have
accompanied Lincoln to the theatre on the night of
the assassination, and did not, escaped unassailed.
The general conspiracy was poorly planned and
lamely executed. It involved about twenty-five
persons. Mrs. Surratt, David C. Harold, Lewis
Payne, Edward Spangler, Michael O'Loughlin, J.
W. Atzerodt, Samuel Arnold, and Dr. Samuel
Mudd, who set Booth's leg, which was dislocated
by the fall from the stage-box, were among the
number captured and tried.

"After the assassination Booth escaped unmo
lested from the theatre, mounted his horse, and
rode away, accompanied by Harold, into Maryland.
Cavalrymen scoured the country, and eleven days
after the shooting discovered them in a barn on
Garrett's farm, near Port Royal on the Rappa-
hannock. The soldiers surrounded the barn and
demanded a surrender. After the second demand
Harold surrendered, under a shower of curses from
Booth, but Booth refused, declaring that he would
never be taken alive. The captain of the squad
then fired the barn. A correspondent thus describes
the scene:

" The blaze lit up the recesses of the great barn
till every wasp's nest and cobweb in the roof were
luminous, flinging streaks of red and violet across
the tumbled farm gear in the corner. They tinged
the beams, the upright columns, the barricades,
where clover and timothy piled high held toward

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. $?$

the hot incendiary their separate straws for the
funeral pile. They bathed the murderer's retreat in
a beautiful illumination, and, while in bold outlines
his figure stood revealed, they rose like an impene
trable wall to guard from sight the hated enemy
who lit them. Behind the blaze, with his eye to a
crack, Colonel Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing
upright upon a crutch. At the gleam of fire Booth
dropped his crutch and carbine, and on both hands
crept up to the spot to; espy the incendiary and
shoot him dead. His eyes were lustrous with fever,
and swelled and rolled in terrible beauty, while his
teeth were fixed, and he wore the expression of one
in the calmness before frenzy. In vain he peered,
with vengeance in his look; the blaze that made
him visible concealed his enemy. A second he
turned glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it and
extinguish it, but it had made such headway that
be dismissed the thought. As calmly as upon the
battle-field a veteran stands amidst the hail of ball
and shell and plunging iron, Booth turned and
pushed the door, carbine in poise, and the last
resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his
high, bloodless forehead.

" 'Just then Sergeant Boston Corbett fired through
a crevice and shot Booth in the neck. He was
carried out of the barn and laid upon the grass, and
there died about four hours afterwards. Before his
misguided soul passed into the silence of death he
whispered something which Lieutenant Baker bent
down to hear. "Tell mother I die for my country,"
he said, faintly. Reviving a moment later he re-

5/6 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

peated the words, and added, "I thought I did for
the best."

"His days of hiding and fleeing from his pursuers
had left him pale, haggard, dirty, and unkempt.
He had cut off his mustache and cropped his hair
close to his head, and he and Harold both wore the
Confederate gray uniform/

"Booth's body was taken to Washington, and a
post mortem examination of it held on board the
monitor "Montauk," and on the night of the 27th of
April it was given in charge of two men in a row-
boat, who, it is claimed, disposed of it in secrecy —
how, none but themselves know. Numerous stories
have been told of the final resting-place of that
hated dead man. Whoever knows the truth of it
tells it not.

"Sergeant Corbett, who shot Booth, fired with
out orders. The last instructions given by Colonel
Baker to Colonel Conger and Lieutenant Baker
were: 'Don't shoot Booth, but take him alive/
Corbett was something of a fanatic, and for a
breach of discipline had once been court-martialled
and sentenced to be shot. The order, however,
was not executed, but he had been drummed out
of the regiment. He belonged to Company L of
the Sixteenth New York Cavalry. He was Eng
lish by birth, but was brought up in this country,
and learned the trade of hat finisher. While living
in Boston he joined the Methodist Episcopal
Church. Never having been baptized, he was at a
loss to know what name to adopt, but after making
it a subject of prayer he took the name of Boston,

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 577

in honor of the place of his conversion. He was
ever undisciplined and erratic. He is said to be
living in Kansas, and draws a pension from the Gov
ernment.

"Five of the conspirators were tried, and three,
Payne, Harold, and Mrs. Surratt, were hanged.
Dr. Mudd was sent to the Dry Tortugas for a
period of years, and there did such good worlj
among the yellow-fever sufferers during an epi
demic that he was pardoned and returned to this
country. He died only about two years ago at his
home in Maryland, near Washington. Atzerodt
was sent to the Dry Tortugas also, and died there
years ago. John Surratt fled to Italy, and there
entered the Papal guards. He was discovered by
Archbishop Hughes, and by the courtesy of the
Italian Government, though the extradition laws
did not cover this case, was delivered over to the
United States for trial. At his first trial the jury
hung; at the second, in which Edwards Pierrepont
was the Government counsel, Surratt got off on the
plea of limitations. He undertook to lecture, and
began at Rockville, Md. The Evening Star, of
Washington, reported the lecture, which was widely
copied, and was of such a feeble character that it
killed him as a lecturer. He went to Baltimore,
where, it is said, he still lives. Spangler, the scene-
shifter, who was an accomplice of Booth, was sent
to the Dry Tortugas, served out his term and died
about ten years ago. McLoughlin, who was ar
rested because of his acquaintance with the conspi
rators, was sent to the Dry Tortugas and there died.

578 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

"Ford's Theatre was never played in after that
memorable night. Ten or twelve days after the
assassination Ford attempted to open it, but Stan-
ton prevented it, and the Government bought the
theatre for $100,000, and converted it into a medi
cal museum. Ford was a Southern sympathizer.
He ran two theatres until four years ago, one in
Washington and one in Baltimore. Alison Naylor,
the livery man who let Booth have his horse, still
lives in Washington. Major Rathbone, who was in
the box with Lincoln when he was shot, died within
the last four years. Stewart, the man who jumped
on the stage to follow Booth, and announced to the
audience that he had escaped through the alley,
died lately. Strange, but very few persons can now
be found who were at the theatre that night.
Laura Keene died a few years ago.

"Booth the assassin was the third son of the emi-
ment English tragedian Junius Brutus Booth, and
the brother of the equally renowned Edwin Booth.
He was only twenty-six years old when he figured
as the chief actor in this horrible drama. He be
gan his dramatic career as John Wilkes, and as a
stock actor gained a fair reputation, but had not
achieved any special success. He had played
chiefly in the South and West, and but a few times
in New York. Some time before the assassination
of Lincoln he had abandoned his profession on
account of a bronchial affection. Those who knew
him and saw him on that fatal Friday say that he
was restless, like one who, consciously or uncon
sciously, was overshadowed by some awful fate.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 579

He knew that the President and his party intended
to be present at Ford's theatre in the evening, and
he asked an acquaintance if he should attend the
performance, remarking that if he did he would see
some unusually fine acting. He was a handsome
man. His eyes were large and dark, his hair dark
and inclined to curl, his features finely moulded,
his form tall, and his address pleasing."

Frederick Stone, counsel for Harold after Booth's
death, is authority for the statement that the occa
sion for Lincoln's assassination was the sentiment
expressed by the President in a speech delivered
from the steps of the White House on the night of
April 11, when he said: "If universal amnesty is
granted to the insurgents I cannot see how I can
avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or at
lease suffrage on the basis of intelligence and
military service." Booth was standing before Mr.
Lincoln on the outskirts of the crowd. "That
means nigger citizenship," he said to Harold by
his side. "Now, by God! I'll put him through."
But whatever may have been the incentive, Booth
seemed to crave the reprehensible fame that
attaches to a bold and dramatically wicked deed.
He may, it is true, have been mentally unhinged,
but, whether sane or senseless, he made for him
self an infamous and endless notoriety when he
murdered the patient, forbearing man who had
directed our ship of state through the most tem
pestuous waters it ever encountered.

In the death of Lincoln the South, prostrate and
bleeding, lost a friend; and his unholy taking-off

580 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

at the very hour of the assumed supremacy of
the Union cause ran U'* iron into the heart of
the North. His sun went down suddenly, and
whelmed the country in a darkness which was felt
by every heart; but far up the clouds sprang apart,
and soon the golden light, flooding the heavens
with radiance, illuminated every uncovered brow
with the hope of a fair to-morrow. His name will
ever be the watchword of liberty. His work is
finished, and sealed forever with the veneration
given to the blood of martyrs. Yesterday a man
reviled and abused, a target for the shafts of malice
and hatred: to-day an apostle. Yesterday a
power : to-day a prestige, sacred, irresistible. The
life and the tragic death of Mr. Lincoln mark an
epoch in history from which dates the unqualified
annunication by the American people of the great
est truth in the bible of republicanism — the very
keystone of that arch of human rights which is des
tined to overshadow and remodel every government
upon the earth. The glorious brightness of that
upper world, as it welcomed his faint and bleeding
spirit, broke through upon the earth at his exit — it
was the dawn of a day growing brighter as the
grand army of freedom follows in the march of
time.

Lincoln's place in history will be fixed — aside
from his personal characteristics — by the events
and results of the war. As a great political leader
who quelled a rebellion of eight millions of people,
liberated four millions of slaves, and demonstrated
to the world the ability of the people to maintain

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 581

a government of themselves, by themselves, for
themselves, he will assuredly occupy no insignificant
place.

To accomplish the great work of preserving the
Union cost the land a great price. Generations of
Americans yet unborn, and humanity everywhere,
for years to come will mourn the horrors and sacri
fices of the first civil war in the United States;
but above the blood of its victims, above the bones
of its dead, above the ashes of desolate hearths, will
arise the colossal figure of Abraham Lincoln as the
most acceptable sacrifice offered by the nineteenth
century in expiation of the great crime of the seven
teenth. Above all the anguish and tears of that
immense hecatomb will appear the shade of Lin
coln as the symbol of hope and of pardon.

This is the true lesson of Lincoln's life: real
and enduring greatness, that will survive the cor
rosion and abrasion of time, of change, and of pro
gress, must rest upon character. In certain brilliant
and what is understood to be most desirable en
dowments how many Americans have surpassed
him. Yet how he looms above them all ! Not elo
quence, nor logic, nor grasp of thought; not states
manship, nor power of command, nor courage ; not
any nor all of these have made him what he is,
but these, in the degree in which he possessed them,
conjoined to those qualities comprised in the terms
character, have given him his fame — have made him
for all time to come the great American, the grand,
central figure in American — perhaps the world's —
history.

CHAPTER XX.*

Soon after the death of Mr. Lincoln Dr. J. G.
Holland came out to Illinois from his home in Mas
sachusetts to gather up materials for a life of the
dead President. The gentleman spent several days
with me, and I gave him all the assistance that lay
in my power. I was much pleased with him, and
awaited with not a little interest the appearance of
his book. I felt sure that even after my long and
intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln I never fully
knew and understood him, and I therefore wondered
what sort of a description Dr. Holland, after inter
viewing Lincoln's old-time friends, would make of his
individual characteristics. When the book appeared
he said this : "The writer has conversed with mul
titudes of men who claimed to know Mr. Lincoln
intimately: yet there are not two of the whole
number who agree in their estimate of him. The
fact was that he rarely showed more than one
aspect of himself to one man. He opened himself
to men in different directions. To illustrate the
effect of the peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's intercourse
with men it may be said that men who knew him
through all his professional and political life offered

* The substance of this chapter I delivered In the form of a
lecture to a Springfield audience in 1866. W. H. H.

582

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 583

opinions as diametrically opposite as these, viz.:
that he was a very ambitious man, and that he was
without a particle of ambition; that he was one of
the saddest men that ever lived, and that he was
one of the j oiliest men that ever lived; that he
was very religious, but that he was not a Christian;
that he was a Christian, but did not know it; that
he was so far from being a religious man or a Chris
tian that 'the less said upon that subject the better;'
that he was the most cunning man in America, and
that he had not a particle of cunning in him; that
he had the strongest personal attachments, and that
he had no personal attachments at all — only a
general good feeling towards everybody; that he
was a man of indomitable will, and that he was a
man almost without a will ; that he was a tyrant, and
that he was the softest-hearted, most brotherly man
that ever lived; that he was remarkable for his
pure-mindedness, and that he was the foulest in his
jests and stories of any man in the country; that
he was a witty man, and that he was only a retailer
of the wit of others; that his apparent candor and
fairness were only apparent, and that they were as
real as his head and his hands ; that he was a boor,
and that he was in all respects a gentleman; that he
was a leader of the people, and that he was always
led by the people; that he was cool and impassive,
and that he was susceptible of the strongest pas
sions. It is only by tracing these separate streams
of impression back to their fountain that we are
able to arrive at anything like a competent compre
hension of the man, or to learn why he came to be

584 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

held in such various estimation. Men caught only
separate aspects of his charater — only the frag
ments that were called into exhibition by their own
qualities."*

Dr. Holland had only found what Lincoln's
friends had always experienced in their relations
\vith him — that he was a man of many moods and

* I beg to note here in passing the estimate of Lincoln's mind
and character by one of his colleagues at the bar in Springfield
who still survives, but whose name, for certain reasons, I am
constrained to withhold. I still retain the original MS. written
by him twenty years ago. "I am particularly requested," he
says, "to write out my opinion of the mind of Abraham Lincoln,
late President of the United States, and I consent to do so
without any other motive than to comply with the request of a
brother lawyer, for, if I know myself, no other motive would
induce me to do it, because, while Mr. Lincoln and I were al
ways good friends, I believe myself wholly indifferent to the
future of his memory. The opinion I now have was formed by
a personal and professional acquaintance of over ten years, and
has not been altered or influenced by any of his promotions in
public life. The adulation by base multitudes of a living, and
the pageantry surrounding a dead, President do not shake my
well-settled convictions of the man's mental calibre. Physiolog
ically and phrenologically the man was a sort of monstrosity.
His frame was large, long, bony, and muscular ; his head, small
and disproportionately shaped. He had large, square jaws ;
large, heavy nose ; small, lascivious mouth ; and soft, tender,
bluish eyes. I would say he was a cross between Venus and
Hercules. I believe it to be inconsistent with the laws of human
organization for any such creature to possess a mind capable of
anything called great. The man's mind partook of the incon
gruities of his body. He had no mind not possessed by the
most ordinary of men. It was simply the peculiarity of his men
tal and the oddity of his physical structure, as well as the
qualities of his heart that singled him out from the mass of
men. His native love of justice, truth, and humanity led his
mind a great way in the accomplishment of his objects in life.
That passion or sentiment steadied and determined an other
wise indecisive mind."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 585

many sides. He never revealed himself entirely to
any one man, and therefore he will always to a
certain extent remain enveloped in doubt. Even
those who were with him through long years of
hard study and under constantly varying circum
stances can hardly say they knew him through and
through. I always believed I could read him as
thoroughly as any man, and yet he was so different
in many respects from any other one I ever met be
fore or since his time that I cannot say I compre
hended him. In this chapter I give my recollection
of his individual characteristics as they occur to me,
and allow the world to form its own opinion. If my
recollection of the man destroys any other person's
ideal, I cannot help it. By a faithful and lifelike
description of Lincoln the man, and a study of his
peculiar and personal traits, perhaps some of the
apparent contradictions met with by Dr. Holland
will have melted from sight.

Mr. Lincoln was six feet four inches high, and
when he left the city of his home for Washington
was fifty-one years old, having good health and no
gray hairs, or but few, on his head. He was thin,
wiry, sinewy, raw-boned; thin through the breast
to the back, and narrow across the shoulders ;
standing he leaned forward — was what may be
called stoop-shouldered, inclining to the consump
tive by build. His usual weight was one hun
dred and eighty pounds. His organization —
rather his structure and functions — worked slowly.
His blood had to run a long distance from his heart
to the extremities of his frame, and his nerve force

5g6 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

had to travel through dry ground a long distance
before his muscles were obedient to his will. His
structure was loose and leathery; his body was
shrunk and shrivelled; he had dark skin, dark hair,
and looked woe-struck. The whole man, body and
mind, worked slowly, as if it needed oiling. Phys
ically he was a very powerful man, lifting with ease
four hundred, and in one case six hundred, pounds.
His mind was like his body, and worked slowly but
strongly. Hence there was very little bodily or
mental wear and tear in him. This peculiarity in
his construction gave him great advantage over
other men in public life. No man in America —
scarcely a man in the world — could have stood
what Lincoln did in Washington and survived
through more than one term of the Presidency.

When he walked he moved cautiously but firmly ;
his long arms and giant hands swung down by his
side. He walked with even tread, the inner sides
of his feet being parallel. He put the whole foot
flat down on the ground at once, not landing on
the heel; he likewise lifted his foot all at once, not
rising from the toe, and hence he had no spring to
his walk. His walk was undulatory — catching and
pocketing tire, weariness, and pain, all up and down
his person, and thus preventing them from locating.
The first impression of a stranger, or a man who did
not observe closely, was that his walk implied
shrewdness and cunning — that he was a tricky man ;
but, in reality, it was the walk of caution and firm
ness. In sitting down on a common chair he was
no taller than ordinary men. His legs and arms

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 587

were abnormally, unnaturally long, and in undue
proportion to the remainder of his body. It was
only when he stood up that he loomed above other
men.

Mr. Lincoln's head was long, and tall from the
base of the brain and from the eyebrows. His
head ran backwards, his forehead rising as it ran
back at a low angle, like Clay's, and unlike Web
ster's, which was almost perpendicular. The size
of his hat measured at the hatter's block was seven
and one-eighth, his head being, from ear to ear, six
and one-half inches, and from the front to the back
of the brain eight inches. Thus measured it was
not below the medium size. His forehead was nar
row but high; his hair was dark, almost black, and
lay floating where his ringers or the winds left it,
piled up at random. His cheek-bones were high,
sharp, and prominent; his jaws were long and up-
curved; his nose was large, long, blunt, and a little
awry towards the right eye; his chin was sharp and
upcurved ; his eyebrows cropped out like a huge
rock on the brow of a hill; his long, sallow face was
wrinkled and dry, with a hair here and there on the
surface; his cheeks were leathery; his ears were
large, and ran out almost at right angles from his
head, caused partly by heavy hats and partly by
nature; his lower lip was thick, hanging, and under-
curved, while his chin reached for the lip upcurved;
his neck was neat and trim, his head being well
balanced on it; there was the lone mole on the
right cheek, and Adam's apple on his throat.

Thus stood, walked, acted, and looked Abraham

5 83 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

Lincoln. He was not a pretty man by any means,
nor was he an ugly one; he was a homely man,
careless of his looks, plain-looking and plain-acting.
He had no pomp, display, or dignity, so-called.
He appeared simple in his carriage and bearing.
He was a sad-looking man; his melancholy dripped
from him as he walked. His apparent gloom im
pressed his friends,* and created sympathy for
him — one means of his great success. He was

* Lincoln's melancholy never failed to impress any man who
ever saw or knew him. The perpetual look of sadness was his
most prominent feature. The cause of this peculiar condition
was a matter of frequent discussion among his friends. John
T. Stuart said it was due to his abnormal digestion. His liver
failed to work properly — did not secret bile — and his bowels
were equally as inactive. "I used to advise him to take blue-
mass pills," related Stuart, "and he did take them before he
went to Washington, and for five months while he was Presi
dent, but when I came on to Congress he told me he had ceased
using them because they made him cross." The reader can
hardly realize the extent of this peculiar tendency to gloom.
One of Lincoln's colleagues in the Legislature of Illinois is au
thority for the statement coming from Lincoln himself that
this "mental depression became so intense at times he never
dared carry a pocket-knife." Two things greatly intensified his
characteristic sadness : one was the endless succession of troub
les in his domestic life, which he had to bear in silence ; and
the other was unquestionably the knowledge of his own obscure
and lowly origin. The recollection of these things burned a deep
impress on his sensitive soul.

As to the cause of this morbid condition my Idea has always
been that it was occult, and could not be explained by any
course of observation and reasoning. It was ingrained, and,
being ingrained, could not be reduced to rule, or the cause
arrayed. It was necessarily hereditary, but whether it came
down from a long line of ancestors and far back, or was simply
the reproduction of the saddened life of Nancy Hanks, cannot
well be determined. At any rate it was part of his nature,
and could no more be shaken off than he could part with his
brains.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 589

gloomy, abstracted, and joyous — rather humorous —
by turns; but I do not think he knew what real joy
was for many years.

Mr. Lincoln sometimes walked our streets cheer
ily, he was not always gloomy, and then it was that
on meeting a friend he greeted him with plain
"Howd'y?" clasping his hand in both of his own,
and gave him a hearty soul-welcome. On a winter's
morning he might be seen stalking towards the
market-house, basket on arm, his old gray shawl
wrapped around his neck, his little boy Willie or
Tad running along at his heels asking a thousand
boyish questions, which his father, in deep abstrac
tion, neither heeded nor heard.* If a friend met or

* "i lived next door to the Lincoln for many years, knew the
family well. Mr. Lincoln used to come to our house, his feet
encased in a pair of loose slippers, and with an old, faded pair
of trousers fastened with one suspender. He frequently came
to our house for milk. Our rooms were low, and he said one
day, 'Jim, you'll have to lift your loft a little higher ; I can't
straighten out under it very well.' To my wife, who was short
of stature, he used to say that little people had some advant
ages : they required less 'wood and wool to make them com
fortable.' In his yard Lincoln had but little shrubbery. He
once planted some rose bushes, to which he called my attention,
but soon neglected them altogether. He never planted any vines
or fruit trees, seemed to have no fondness for such things.
At one time, yielding to my suggestion, he undertook to keep a
garden in the rear part of his yard, but one season's exper
ience sufficed to cure him of all desire for another. He kept his
own horse, fed and curried it when at home ; he also fed and
milked his own cow, and sawed his own wood. Mr. Lincoln and
his wife agreed moderately well. Frequently Mrs. Lincoln's
temper would get the better of her. If she became furious, as
she often did, her husband tried to pay no attention to her. He
would sometimes laugh at her, but generally he would pick up
one of the children and walk off. I have heard her say that

590 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

passed him, and he awoke from his reverie, some
thing would remind him of a story he had heard in
Indiana, and tell it he would, and there was no
alternative but to listen.

Thus, I repeat, stood and walked and talked this
singular man. He was odd, but when that gray
eye and that face and those features were lit up by
the inward soul in fires of emotion, then it was that
all those apparently ugly features sprang into
organs of beauty or disappeared in the sea of in
spiration that often flooded his face. Sometimes
it appeared as if Lincoln's soul was fresh from its
Creator.

I have asked the friends and foes of Mr. Lincoln
alike what they thought of his perceptions. One
gentleman of unquestioned ability and free from all
partiality or prejudice said, "Mr. Lincoln's percep
tions were slow, a little perverted, if not somewhat
distorted and diseased." If the meaning of this is
that Mr. Lincoln saw things from a peculiar angle
of his being, and from this was susceptible to
nature's impulses, and that he so expressed him
self, then I have no objection to what is said.

if Mr. Lincoln had remained at home more she could have
loved him better. One day while Mr. Lincoln was absent — he
had gone to Chicago to try a suit in the United States Court —
his wife and I formed a conspiracy to take off the roof and
raise his house. It was originally a frame structure one story
and a half high. When Lincoln returned he met a gentleman
on the sidewalk and, looking at his own house and manifesting
great surprise, inquired : 'Stranger, can you tell me where Lin
coln lives?' The gentleman gave him the necessary informa
tion, and Lincoln gravely entered his own premises." — State
ment, James Gourly, February 9, 1866.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 59!

Otherwise I dissent. Mr. Lincoln's perceptions
were slow, cold, clear, and exact. Everything came
to him in its precise shape and color. To some
men the world of matter and of man comes orna
mented with beauty, life, and action; and hence
more or less false and inexact. No lurking illusion
or other error, false in itself and clad for the
moment in robes of splendor, ever passed unde
tected or unchallenged over the threshold of his
mind — that point which divides vision from the
realm and home of thought. Names to him were
nothing, and titles naught — assumption always
standing back abashed at his cold, intellectual
glare. Neither his perceptions nor intellectual vis
ion were perverted, distorted, or diseased. He saw
all things through a perfect mental lens. There
was no diffraction or refraction there. He was not
impulsive, fanciful, or imaginative; but cold, calm,
and precise. He threw his whole mental light
around the object, and, after a time, substance and
quality stood apart, form and color took their appro
priate places, and all was clear and exact in his
mind. His fault, if any, was that he saw things
less than they really were; less beautiful and more
frigid. He crushed the unreal, the inexact, the
hollow, and the sham. He saw things in rigidity
rather than in vital action. He saw what no man
could dispute, but he failed to see what might have
been seen.

To some minds the world is all life, a soul be
neath the material; but to Mr. Lincoln no life was
individual that did not manifest itself to him. His

592 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

mind was his standard. His mental action was
deliberate, and he was pitiless and persistent in pur
suit of the truth. No error went undetected, no
falsehood unexposed, if he once was aroused in
search of the truth. The true peculiarity of Mr.
Lincoln has not been seen by his various biog
raphers; or, if seen, they have failed woefully to
give it that importance which it deserves. Newton
beheld the law of the universe in the fall of an
apple from a tree to the ground; Owen saw the
animal in its claw; Spencer saw evolution in the
growth of a seed; and Shakespeare saw human
nature in the laugh of a man. Nature was sugges
tive to all these men. Mr. Lincoln no less saw
philosophy in a story and an object lesson in a joke.
His was a new and original position, one which was
always suggesting something to him. The world
and man, principles and facts, all were full of sug
gestions to his susceptible soul. They continually
put him in mind of something. His ideas were odd
and original for the reason that he was a peculiar
and original creation himself.

His power in the association of ideas was as great
as his memory was tenacious and strong. His
language indicated oddity and originality of vision
as well as expression. Words and language are but
the counterparts of the idea — the other half of the
idea; they are but the stinging, hot, leaden bullets
that drop from the mould; in a rifle, with powder
stuffed behind them and fire applied, they are an
embodied force resistlessly pursuing their object.
In the search for words Mr. Lincoln was often at a

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 593

loss. He was often perplexed to give proper expres
sion to his ideas ; first, because he was not master of
the English language; and secondly, because there
were, in the vast store of words, so few that con
tained the exact coloring, power, and shape of his
ideas. This will account for the frequent resort by
him to the use of stories, maxims, and jokes in
which to clothe his ideas, that they might be com
prehended. So true was this peculiar mental vision
of his that, though mankind has been gathering,
arranging, and classifying facts for thousands of
years, Lincoln's peculiar standpoint could give him
no advantage over other men's labor. Hence he tore
down to their deepest foundations all arrangements
of facts, and constructed new ones to govern him
self. He was compelled from his peculiar mental
organization to do this. His labor was great and
continuous.

The truth about Mr. Lincoln is that he read less
and thought more than any ,man in his sphere in
America. No man can put his finger on any great
book written in the last or present century that he
read thoroughly. When young he read the Bible,
and when of age he read Shakespeare; but, though
he often quoted from both, he never read either
one through. He is acknowledged now to have
been a great man, but the question is what made
him great. I repeat, that he read less and thought
more than any man of his standing in America, if
not in the world. He possessed originality and
power of thought in an eminent degree. Besides
his well established reputation for caution, he was

594 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

concentrated in his thoughts and had great conti
nuity of reflection. In everything he was patient
and enduring. These are some of the grounds of
his wonderful success.

Not only were nature, man, and principle sug
gestive to Mr. Lincoln, not only had he accurate
and exact perceptions, but he was causative; his
mind, apparently with an automatic movement, ran
back behind facts, principles, and all things to their
origin and first cause — to that point where forces
act at once as effect and cause. He would stop in
the street and analyze a machine. He would whit
tle a thing to a point, and then count the number
less inclined planes and their pitch making the
point. Mastering and defining this, he would
then cut that point back and get a broad transverse
section of his pine-stick, and peel and define that.
Clocks, omnibuses, language, paddle-wheels, and
idioms never escaped his observation and analysis.
Before he could form an idea of anything, before
he would express his opinion on a subject, he must
know its origin and history in substance and qual
ity, in magnitude and gravity. He must know it
inside and outside, upside and downside. He
searched and comprehended his own mind and
nature thoroughly, as I have often heard him
say. He must analyze a sensation, an idea, and
run back in its history to its origin, and purpose.
He was remorseless in his analysis of facts and
principles. When all these exhaustive processes had
been gone through with he could form an idea and

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 595

express it; but no sooner. He had no faith, and
no respect for "say so's," come though they might
from tradition or authority. Thus everything had
to run through the crucible, and be tested by
the fires of his analytic mind; and when at last
he did speak, his utterances rang out with the clear
and keen ring of gold upon the counters of the un
derstanding. He reasoned logically through anal
ogy and comparison. All opponents dreaded his
originality of idea, his condensation, defintion, and
force of expression; and woe be to the man who
hugged to his bosom a secret error if Lincoln got
on the chase of it. I repeat, woe to him! Time
could hide the error in no nook or corner of space
in which he would not detect and expose it.

Though gifted with accurate and acute percep
tion, though a profound thinker as well as analyzer,
still Lincoln's judgment on many and minor mat
ters was oftentimes childish. By the word judg
ment I do not mean what mental philosophers
would call the exercise of reason, will — under
standing; but I use the term in its popular sense.
I refer to that capacity or power which decides on
the fitness, the harmony, or, if you will, the beauty
and appropriateness of things. I have always
thought, and sometimes said, Lincoln lacked this
quality in his mental structure. He was on the
alert if a principle was involved or a man's rights at
stake in a transaction; but he never could see the
harm in wearing a sack-coat instead of a swallow
tail to an evening party, nor could he realize the

596 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

offense of telling a vulgar yarn if a preacher hap
pened to be present.*

As already expressed, Mr. Lincoln had no faith.
In order to believe, he must see and feel, and thrust
his hand into the place. He must taste, smell, and
handle before he had faith or even belief. Such a
mind manifestly must have its time. His forte and
power lay in digging out for himself and securing
for his mind its own food, to be assimilated unto
itself. Thus, in time he would form opinions and
conclusions that no human power could overthrow.
They were as irresistible as the rush of a flood; as
convincing as logic embodied in mathematics. And
yet the question arises: "Had Mr. Lincoln great,
good common-sense?" A variety of opinions sug
gest themselves in answer to this. If the true test

* Sometime in 1857 a lady reader or elocutionist came to
Springfield and gave a public reading in a hall immediately
north of the State House. As lady lecturers were then rare
birds, a very large crowd greeted her. Among other things
she recited "Nothing to Wear," a piece in which is described
the perplexities that beset "Miss Flora McFlimsey" in her
efforts to appear fashionable. In the midst of one stanza, in
which no effort is made to say anything particularly amusing,
and during the reading of which the audience manifested the
most respectful silence and attention, some one in the rear seats
burst out into a loud, coarse laugh — a sudden and explosive
guffaw. It startled the speaker and audience, and kindled a
storm of unsuppressed laughter and applause. Everyone looked
back to ascertain the cause of the demonstration, and was
greatly surprised to find that it was Mr. Lincoln. He blushed
and squirmed with the awkward diffidence of a schoolboy, What
prompted him to laugh no one was able to explain. He was
doubtless wrapped up in a brown study, and, recalling some
amusing episode, indulged in laughter without realizing his
surroundings. The experience mortified him greatly.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 597

is that a man shall judge the rush and whirl of
human actions and transactions as wisely and accu
rately as though indefinite time and proper condi
tions were at his disposal, then I am compelled to
follow the logic of things and admit that he had no
great stock of common sense; but if, on the other
hand, the time and conditions were ripe, his com
mon-sense was in every case equal to the emerg
ency. He knew himself, and never trusted his dollar
or his fame in casual opinions — never acted hastily
or prematurely on great matters.

Mr. Lincoln believed that the great leading law
of human nature is motive. He reasoned all
ideas of a disinterested action out of my mind. I
used to hold that an action could be pure, disinter
ested, and wholly free from selfishness; but he di
vested me of that delusion. His idea was that all
human actions were caused by motives, and that at
the bottom of these motives was self. He defied
me to act without motive and unselfishly; and when
I did the act and told him of it, he analyzed and
sifted it to the last grain. After he had concluded,
I could not avoid the admission that he had demon
strated the absolute selfishness of the entire act.
Although a profound analyzer of the laws of human
nature he could form no just construction of the
motives of the particular individual. He knew but
little of the play of the features as seen in the "hu
man face divine." He could not distinguish between
the paleness of anger and the crimson tint of mod
esty. In determining what each play of the feat
ures indicated he was pitiably weak.

598 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

The great predominating elements of Mr. Lin
coln's peculiar character were: first, his great
capacity and power of reason; second, his con
science and his excellent understanding; third, an
exalted idea of the sense of right and equity;
fourth, his intense veneration of the true and the
good. His conscience, his heart and all the facul
ties and qualities of his mind bowed submissively
to the despotism of his reason. He lived and acted
from the standard of reason — that throne of logic,
home of principle — the realm of Deity in man. It
is from this point Mr. Lincoln must be viewed.
Not only was he cautious, patient, and enduring;
not only had he concentration and great continuity
of thought; but he had profound analytical power.
His vision was clear, and he was emphatically the
master of statement. His pursuit of the truth, as
before mentioned, was indefatigable. He reasoned
from well-chosen principles with such clearness,
force, and directness that the tallest intellects in the
land bowed to him. He was the strongest man I
ever saw, looking at him from the elevated stand
point of reason and logic. He came down from
that height with irresistible and crashing force.
His Cooper Institute and other printed speeches
will prove this; but his speeches before the courts
— especially the Supreme Court of Illinois — if they
had been preserved, would demonstrate it still more
plainly. Here he demanded time to think and pre
pare. The office of reason is to determine the truth.
Truth is the power of reason, and Lincoln loved
truth for its own sake. It was to him reason's food.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 599

Conscience, the second great quality of Mr. Lin
coln's character, is that faculty which induces in us
love of the just. Its real office^ is justice; right
and equity are its correlatives. As a court, it is in
session continuously; it decides all acts at all times.
Mr. Lincoln had a deep, broad, living conscience.
His reason, however, was the real judge; it told him
what was true or false, and therefore good or bad,
right or wrong, just or unjust, and his conscience
echoed back the decision. His conscience ruled his
heart; he was always just before he was generous.
It cannot be said of any mortal that he was always
absolutely just. Neither was Lincoln always just ;
but his general life was. It follows that if Mr. Lin
coln had great reason and great conscience he must
have been an honest man; and so he was. He was
rightfully entitled to the appellation "Honest Abe."
Honesty was his polar star.

Mr. Lincoln also had a good understanding; that
is, the faculty that comprehends the exact state of
things and determines their relations, near or remote.
The understanding does not necessarily enquire for
the reason of things. While Lincoln was odd and
original, while he lived out of himself and by him
self, and while he could absorb but little from
others, yet a reading of his speeches, messages, and
letters satisfies us that he had good understanding.
But the strongest point in his make-up was the
knowledge he had of himself; he comprehended and
understood his own capacity — what he did and why
he did it — better perhaps than any man of his day.
He had a wider and deeper comprehension of his

600 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

environments, of the political conditions especially,
than men who were more learned or had had the
benefits of a more thorough training.

He was a very sensitive man, — modest to the
point of difBdence, — and often hid himself in the
masses to prevent the discovery of his identity.
He was not indifferent, however, to approbation and
public opinion. He had no disgusting egotism and
no pompous pride, no aristocracy, no haughtiness,
no vanity. Merging together the qualities of his
nature he was a meek, quiet, unobtrusive gentle
man.

As many contradictory opinions prevail in refer
ence to Mr. Lincoln's heart and humanity as on the
question of his judgment. As many persons per
haps contend that he was cold and obdurate as that
he was warm and affectionate. The first thing the
world met in contact with him was his head and
conscience; after that he exposed the tender side
of his nature — his heart, subject at all times to his
exalted sense of right and equity, namely his con
science. In proportion as he held his conscience
subject to his head, he held his heart subject to his
head and conscience. His humanity had to defer
to his sense of justice and the eternal right. His
heart was the lowest of these organs, if we may call
them such — the weakest of the three. Some men
have reversed this order and characterized his heart
as his ruling organ. This estimate of Mr. Lincoln
endows him with love regardless of truth, justice,
and right. The question still is, was Lincoln cold
and heartless, or warm and affectionate ? Can a

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 6Q1

man be all heart, all head, and all conscience?
Some of these are masters over the others, some
will be dominant, ruling with imperial sway, and
thus giving character to the man. What, in the first
place, do we mean by a warm-hearted man? Is it
one who goes out of himself and reaches for others
spontaneously, seeking to correct some abuse to
mankind because of a deep love for humanity, apart
from equity and truth, and who does what he does
for love's sake? If so, Mr. Lincoln was a cold man.
If a man, woman, or child approached him, and the
prayer of such an one was granted, that itself was
not evidence of his love. The African was enslaved
and deprived of this rights; a principle was violated
in doing so. Rights imply obligations as well as
duties. Mr. Lincoln was President; he was in a
position that made it his duty, through his sense of
right, his love of principle, the constitutional obliga
tions imposed upon him by the oath of office, to
strike the blow against slavery. But did he do it
for love? He has himself answered the question:
"I would not free the slaves if I could preserve the
Union without it." When he freed the slaves there
was no heart in the act. This argument can be
used against his too enthusiastic friends.

In general terms his life was cold — at least char
acterized by what many persons would deem great
indifference. He had, however, a strong latent ca
pacity to love: but the object must first come in
rfie guise of a principle, next it must be right and
true — then it was lovely in his sight. He loved
humanity when it was oppressed — an abstract love

602 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

as against the concrete love centered in an individ
ual. He rarely used terms of endearment, and yet
he was proverbially tender and gentle. He gave
the key-note to his own character when he said:
"With malice towards none, with charity for all."
In proportion to his want of deep, intense love he
had no hate and bore no malice. His charity for
an imperfect man was as broad as his devotion to
principle was enduring.

"But was not Mr. Lincoln a man of great human
ity?" asks a friend at my elbow; to which I reply,
"Has not that question been answered already?"
Let us suppose it has not. We must understand
each other. What is meant by his humanity? Is
it meant that he had much of human nature in
him? If so, I grant that he was a man of humanity.
If, in the event of the above definition being unsatis
factory or untrue, it is meant that he was tender
and kind, then I again agree. But if the inference
is that he would sacrifice truth or right in the
slightest degree for the love of a friend, then he
was neither tender nor kind; nor did he have any
humanity. The law of human nature is such that it
cannot be all head, all conscience, and all heart in
one person at the same time. Our maker so consti
tuted things that, where God through reason blazed
the way, we might boldly walk therein. The glory
of Mr. Lincoln's power lay in the just and magnifi
cent equrpoise of head, conscience, and heart; and
here his fame must rest or not at all.

Not only were Mr. Lincoln's perceptions good;
not only was nature suggestive to him; not only

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 6Q3

was he original and strong; not only had he great
reason, good understanding; not only did he love
the true and the good — the eternal right; not only
was he tender and sympathetic and kind; — but, in
due proportion and in legitimate subordination, he
had a glorious combination of them all. Through
his perceptions — the suggestiveness of nature, his
originality and strength; through his magnificent
reason, his understanding, his conscience, his ten
derness, quick sympathy, his heart; he approxi
mated as nearly as human nature and the imperfect
ions of man would permit to an embodiment of the
great moral principle, "Do unto others as ye would
they should do unto you."

Of Mr. Lincoln's will-power there are two opin
ions also : one that he lacked any will ; the other
that he was all will. Both these contradictory
views have their vehement and honest champions.
For the great underlying principles of mind in man
he had great respect. He loved the true first, the
right second, and the good last. His mind strug
gled for truth, and his soul reached out for sub
stances. He cared not for forms, ways, methods —
the non-substantial things of this world. He could
not, by reason of his structure and mental organiza
tion, care anything about them. He did not have an
intense care for any particular or individual man—
the dollar, property, rank, orders, manners, or sim
ilar things ; neither did he have any avarice or other
like vice in his nature. He detested somewhat all
technical rules in law, philosophy, and other sciences
— mere forms everywhere — because they were, as a

504 THE L1FE OF LINCOLN.

general thing, founded on arbitrary thoughts and
ideas, and not on reason, truth, and the right.
These things seemed to him lacking in substance,
and he disregarded them because they cramped the
originality of his genius. What suited a little nar
row, critical mind did not suit Mr. Lincoln any
more than a child's clothes would fit his father's
body. Generally he took no interest in town affairs
or local elections; he attended no meetings that
pertained to local interests. He did not care — be
cause by reason of his nature he could not — who
succeeded to the presidency of this or that society
or railroad company; who made the most money;
who was going to Philadelphia, and what were the
costs of such a trip; who was going to be married;
who among his friends got this office or that — who
was elected street commissioner or health inspector.
No principle of truth, right, or justice being in
volved in any of these things he could not be
moved by them.* He could not understand why
men struggled so desperately for the little glory or
lesser salary the small offices afforded. He made

* A bitter, malignant fool who always had opposed Lincoln
and his friends, and had lost no opportunity to abuse them,
induced Lincoln to go to the Governor of Illinois and recom
mend him for an important office in the State Militia. There
being no principle at stake Lincoln could not refuse the request.
When his friends heard of it they were furious in their de
nunciation of his action. It mortified him greatly to learn
that he had displeased them. "And yet," he said, a few days
later, dwelling on the matter to me in the office, "I couldn't
well refuse the little the fellow asked of me. Sometimes I feel,"
he added, dryly, "that it's a good thing I wasn't born a
woman."

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 605

this remark to me one day in Washington: "If
ever this free people — this Government — is utterly
demoralized, it will come from this human struggle
for office — a way to live without work." It puz
zled him a good deal, he said, to get at the root of
this dreaded disease, which spread like contagion
during the nation's death struggle.

Because he could not feel a deep interest in the
things referred to, nor manifest the same interest in
those who were engaged in the popular scramble,
he was called indifferent — nay, ungrateful — to his
friends. This estimate of the man was a vary un
just as well as unfair one. Mr. Lincoln loved his
friends with commendable loyalty; in many cases
he clung to them tenaciously, like iron to iron
welded; and yet, because he could not be actively
aroused, nor enter into the spirit of their anxiety
for office, he was called ungrateful. But he was not
so. He may have seemed passive and lacking in
interest; he may not have measured his friendly
duties by the applicant's hot desire; but yet he was
never ungrateful. Neither was he a selfish man.
He would never have performed an act, even to pro
mote himself to the Presidency, if by that act any
human being was wronged. If it is said that he
preferred Abraham Lincoln to anyone else in the
pursuit of his ambition, and that because of this he
was a selfish man, then I can see no impropriety in
the charge. Under the same conditions we should
all be equally guilty.

Remembering that Mr. Lincoln's mind moved
logically, slowly, and cautiously, the question of his

606 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

will and its power is easily solved. Although he
cared but little for simple facts, rules, and methods,
he did care for the truth and right of principle. In
debate he courteously granted all the forms and
non-essential things to his opponent. Sometimes
he yielded nine points out of ten. The nine he
brushed aside as husks or rubbish; but the tenth,
being a question of substance, he clung to with all
his might. On the underlying principles of truth
and justice his will was as firm as steel and as tena
cious as iron. It was as solid, real, and vital as an
idea on which the world turns. He scorned to sup
port or adopt an untrue position, in proportion as
his conscience prevented him from doing an unjust
thing. Ask him to sacrifice in the slightest degree
his convictions of truth * — as he was asked to do
when he made his "house-divided-against-itself
speech" — and his soul would have exclaimed with
indignant scorn, "The world perish first !"

Such was Lincoln's will. Because on one line of
questions — the non-essential — he was pliable, and on
the other he was as immovable as the rocks, have
arisen the contradictory notions prevalent regarding
him. It only remains to say that he was inflexible
and unbending in human transactions when it was

* "Again, Mr. Lincoln seems to me too true and honest a man
to have his eulogy written, and I have no taste for writing
eulogies. I am sure that, if he were alive, he would feel that
the exact truth regarding himself was far more worthy of
himself and of his biographer than any flattering picture. I
loved the man as he was, with his rugged features, his coarse,
rebellious hair, his sad, dreamy eyes ; and I love to see him.
and I hope to describe him, as he was, and not otherwise." —
Robert Dale Owen, January 22. 1867, MS.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 607

necessary to be so, and not otherwise. At one mo
ment he was pliable and expansive as gentle air; at
the next as tenacious and unyielding as gravity itself.

Thus I have traced Mr. Lincoln through his per
ceptions, his suggestiveness, his judgment, and his
four predominant qualities : power of reason, un
derstanding, conscience, and heart. In the grand
review of his peculiar characteristics, nothing creates
such an impressive effect as his love of the truth.
It looms up over everything else. His life is proof
of the assertion that he never yielded in his funda
mental conception of truth to any man for any end.

All the follies and wrong Mr. Lincoln ever fell
into or committed sprang out of these weak points:
the want of intuitive judgment; the lack of quick,
sagacious knowledge of the play and meaning of
men's features as written on the face; the want of
the sense of propriety of things ; his tenderness and
mercy; and lastly, his unsuspecting nature. He
was deeply and sincerely honest himself, and as
sumed that others were so. He never suspected
men; and hence in dealing with them he was easily
imposed upon.

All the wise and good things Mr. Lincoln ever
did sprang out of his great reason, his conscience,
his understanding, his heart, his love of the truth,
the right, and the good. I am speaking now of his
particular and individual faculties and qualities, not
of their combination or the result of any combina
tions. Run out these qualities and faculties ab
stractly, and see what they produce. For instance,
a tender heart, a strong reason, a broad under-

608 TEE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

standing, an exalted conscience, a love of the true
and the good must, proportioned reasonably and
applied practically, produce a man of great power
and great humanity.

As illustrative of a combination in Mr. Lincoln's
organization, it may be said that his eloquence lay
in the strength of his logical faculty, his supreme
power of reasoning, his great understanding, and
his love of principle; in his clear and accurate vision;
in his cool and masterly statement of principles
around which the issues gather; and in the state
ment of those issues and the grouping of the facts
that are to carry conviction to the minds of men of
every grade of intelligence. He was so clear that
he could not be misunderstood or long misrepre
sented. He stood square and bolt upright to his
convictions, and anyone who listened to him would
be convinced that he formed his thoughts and utter
ances by them. His mind was not exactly a wide,
broad, generalizing, and comprehensive mind, nor
yet a versatile, quick, and subtle one, bounding here
and there as emergencies demanded; but it was deep,
enduring, strong, like a majestic machine running in
deep iron grooves with heavy flanges on its wheels.

Mr. Lincoln himself was a very sensitive man, and
hence, in dealing with others, he avoided wounding
their hearts or puncturing their sensibility. He
was unusually considerate of the feelings of other
men, regardless of their rank, condition, or station.
At first sight he struck one with his plainness, sim
plicity of manner, sincerity, candor, and truthfulness.
He had no double interests and no overwhelming

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 609

dignity with which to chill the air around his visitor.
He was always easy of approach and thoroughly
democratic. He seemed to throw a charm around
every man who ever met him. To be in his pres
ence was a pleasure, and no man ever left his com
pany with injured feelings unless most richly de
served.

The universal testimony, "He is an honest man,"
gave him a firm hold on the masses, and they trusted
him with a blind religious faith. His sad, melan
choly face excited their sympathy, and when the
dark days came it was their heart-strings that
entwined and sustained him. Sympathy, we are
told, is one of the strongest and noblest incentives
to human action. With the sympathy and love of
the people to sustain him, Lincoln had unlimited
power over them; he threw an invisible and weight
less harness over them, and drove them through
disaster and desperation to final victory. The trust
and worship by the people of Lincoln were the
result of his simple character. He held himself not
aloof from the masses. He became one of them.
They feared together, they struggled together, they
hoped together; thus melted and moulded into
one, they became one in thought, one in will, one
in action. If Lincoln cautiously awaited the full
development of the last fact in the great drama
before he acted, when longer waiting would be a
crime, he knew that the people were determinedly at
his back. Thus, when a blow was struck, it came
with the unerring aim and power of a bolt from
heaven. A natural king — not ruling men, but lead-

610 THE LIFE OF LINCOLN.

ing them along the drifts and trends of their own ten
dencies, always keeping in mind the consent of the
governed, he developed what the future historian
will call the sublimest order of conservative states
manship.

Whatever of life, vigor, force, and power of elo
quence his peculiar qualities gave him; whatever
there was in a fair, manly, honest, and impartial
administration of justice under law to all men at all
times; whatever there was in a strong will in the
right governed by tenderness and mercy; whatever
there was in toil and sublime patience; whatever
there was in these things or a wise combination of
them, Lincoln is justly entitled to in making up the
impartial verdict of history. These limit and define
him as a statesman, as an orator, as an executive of
the nation, and as a man. They developed in all
the walks of his life; they were his law; they were
his nature, they were Abraham Lincoln.

This long, bony, sad man floated down the Sanga-
mon river in a frail canoe in the spring of 1831.
Like a piece of driftwood he lodged at last, without
a history, strange, penniless, and alone. In sight of
the capital of Illinois, in the fatigue of daily toil he
struggled for the necessaries of life. Thirty years
later this same peculiar man left the Sangamon
river, backed by friends, by power, by the patriotic
prayers of millions of people, to be the ruler of the
greatest nation in the world.

As the leader of a brave people in their desperate
struggle for national existence, Abraham Lincoln
will always be an interesting historical character.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN. 61 1

His strong, honest, sagacious, and noble life will
always possess a peculiar charm. Had it not been
for his conservative statesmanship, his supreme con
fidence in the wisdom of the people, his extreme care
in groping his way among facts and before ideas,
this nation might have been two governments to-day.
The low and feeble circulation of his blood; his
healthful irritability, which responded so slowly to
the effects of stimuli; the strength of his herculean
frame; his peculiar organism, conserving its force;
his sublime patience ; his wonderful endurance ; his
great hand and heart, saved this country from divi
sion, when division meant its irreparable ruin.

The central figure of our national history, the
sublime type of our civilization, posterity, with the
record of his career and actions before it, will decree
that, whether Providence so ordained it or not,
Abraham Lincoln was the man for the hour.

THE END.

APPENDIX

UNPUBLISHED FAMILY LETTERS.

THE following letters by Mr. Lincoln to his relatives were at
one time placed in my hands. As they have never before been
published entire I have thought proper to append them here.
They are only interesting as showing Mr. Lincoln's affection
for his father and step-mother, and as specimens of the good,
sound sense with which he approached every undertaking.
The list opens with a letter to his father written from Wash
ington while a member of Congress:

"WASHINGTON, Dec. 24, 1848.
"My Dear Father:

"Your letter of the 7th was received night before last. I
very cheerfully send you the twenty dollars, which sum you
say is necessary to save your land from sale. It is singular
that you should have forgotten a judgment against you — and
it is more singular that the plaintiff should have let you forget
it so long, particularly as I suppose you have always had prop
erty enough to satisfy a judgment of that amount. Before you
pay it, it would be well to be sure you have not paid, or at least
that you cannot prove you have paid it.

"Give my love to Mother and all the Connections.
"Affectionately, your son,

"A. LINCOLN."

His step-brother, John D. Johnston, for whom Mr. Lincoln
always exhibited the affection of a real brother, was the recip
ient of many letters. Some of them were commonplace, but

613

614 APPENDIX.

between the lines of each much good, homely philosophy may
be read. Johnston, whom I knew, was exactly what his dis
tinguished step-brother charged — an idler. In every emer
gency he seemed to fall back on Lincoln for assistance. The
aid generally came, but with it always some plain but sensible
suggestion. The series opens as follows:

"SPBINGFIELD, Feb. 23, 1850.

"Dear Brother:

"Your letter about a mail contract was received yesterday.
I have made out a bid for you at $120, guaranteed it myself,
got our P. M. here to certify it, and send it on. Your former
letter, concerning some man's claim for a pension, was also
received. I had the claim examined by those who are prac
tised in such matters, and they decide he cannot get a pen
sion.

"As you make no mention of it, I suppose you had not
learned that we lost our little boy. He was sick fifteen days,
and died in the morning of the first day of this month. It was
not our first, but our second child. We miss him very much.
"Your Brother, in haste,

"A. LINCOLN."
"To JOHN D. JOHNSTON."

Following is another, which, however, bears no date:

"Dear Johnston:

"Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to
comply with now. At the various times when I have helped
you a little you have said to me, 'We can get along very 'well
now,' but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty
again. Now this can only happen by some defect in y.our con
duct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy,
and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you,
you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You
do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work
much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could
get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the
whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you, and still

APPENDIX. 615

more so to your children, that you should break the habit. It
is more important to them because they have longer to live,
and can keep out of an idle habit, before they are in it, easier
than they can get out after they are in.

"You are in need of some ready money, and what I propose
is that you shall go to work 'tooth and nail' for somebody
who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys
take charge of things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the
crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or in dis
charge of any debt you owe, that you can get, — and to secure
you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that for
every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May,
get for your own labor, either in money or as your own in
debtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if
you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get
ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In
this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead
mines, or the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to
go at it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles
County. Now if you will do this, you will be soon out of
debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep
you from getting in debt again. But if I should now clear you
out, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. You say
you would give your place in heaven for $70 or $80. Then
you value your place in heaven very cheap, for I am sure you
can, with the offer I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for
four or five months' work.

"You say, if I will furnish you the money, you will deed me
the land, and if you don't pay the money back you will deliver
possession. Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land,
how will you then live without it? You have always been kind
to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. On the con
trary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth
more than eight times eighty dollars to you.

"Affectionately,

"Your brother,

"A. LINCOLN.''

616 APPENDIX.

The following, written when the limit of Thomas Lincoln's
life seemed rapidly approaching, shows in what esteem his son
held the relation that existed between them:

"SPRINGFIELD, Jan'y. 12, 1851.

"Dear Brother:

"On the day before yesterday I received a letter from Har
riett, written at Greenup. She says she has just returned from
your house; and that Father is very low, and will hardly re
cover. She also says that you have written me two letters;
and that although you do not expect me to come now, you
wonder that I do not write. I received both your letters, and
although I have not answered them, it is not because I have
forgotten them, or [not] been interested about them, but be
cause it appeared to me I could write nothing which could do
any good. You already know I desire that neither Father or
Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sick
ness while they live; and I feel sure you have not failed to use
my name, if necessary, to procure a doctor, or anything else
for Father in his present sickness. My business is such that I
could hardly leave home now, if it were not, as it is, that my
own wife is sick a-bed (it is a case of baby-sickness, and I
suppose is not dangerous). I sincerely hope Father may yet
recover his health; but at all events tell him to remember to
call upon and confide in our great, and good, and merciful
Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity.
He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our
heads; and He will not forget the dying man who puts his
trust in Him. Say to him that if we could meet now it is
doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant;
but that if it be his lot to go now he will soon have a joyous
meeting with many loved ones gone before, and where the
rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join
them.

'Write me again when you receive this.

"Affectionately,

"A. LINCOLN.''

APPENDIX. 617

Lincoln's mentor-like interest in his step-mother and his
shiftless and almost unfortunate step-brother was in no wise
diminished by the death of his father. He writes:

"SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 31, 1851.

"Dear Brother:

"Inclosed is the deed for the land. We are all well, and
have nothing in the way of news. We have had no cholera
here for about two weeks.
"Give my love to all, and especially to Mother.

"Yours as ever,

"A. LINCOLN."

No more practical or kindly-earnest advice could have been
given than this:

"SHELBYVILLE, Nov. 4, 1851.
"Dear Brother:

"When I came into Charleston day before yesterday I
learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live,
and move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever
since, and cannot but think such a notion is utterly foolish.
What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land
richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and
wheat and oats without work? Will anybody there, any more
than here, do your work for you? If you intend to go to
work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you
do not intend to go to work you cannot get along anywhere.
Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no
good. You have raised no crop this year, and what you really
want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it. Part
with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never
after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you will
get for the land you spend in moving to Missouri, and the
other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of
land will be bought. Now I feel it is my duty to have no
hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on
your own account, and particularly on Mother's account. The
eastern forty acres I intend to keep for Mother while she lives;

618 APPENDIX.

if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support
her; at least it will rent for something. Her dower in the
other two forties she can let you have, and no thanks to me.

"Now do not misunderstand this letter. I do not write it in
any unkindness. I write it in order, if possible, to get you to
face the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you
have idled away all your time. Your thousand pretences for
not getting along better are all nonsense; they deceive
nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your
case.

"A word for Mother: Chapman tells me he wants you to go
and live with him. If I were you I would try it awhile. If
you get tired of it (as I think you will not) you can return to
your own home. Chapman feels very kindly to you; and I
have no doubt he will make your situation very pleasant.

"Sincerely your son,

"A. LINCOLN."

The list closes with this one written by Lincoln while on the
circuit:

"SHELBYVILLE, Nov. 9, 1851.

"Dear Brother:

"When I wrote you before, I had not received your letter.
I still think as I did; but if the land can be sold so that I get
three hundred dollars to put to interest for Mother, I will not
object if she does not. But before I will make a deed, the
money must be had, or secured beyond all doubt at ten per
cent.

"As to Abraham, I do not want him on my own account;
but I understand he wants to live with me so that he can go to
school and get a fair start in the world, which I very much
wish him to have. When I reach home, if I can make it con
venient to take, I will take him, provided there is no mistake
between us as to the object and terms of my taking him.

"In haste, as ever,

"A. LINCOLN."

APPENDIX. 619

AN INCIDENT ON THE CIRCUIT.

"In the spring term of the Tazewell County Court in 1847,
which at that time was held in the village of Tremont, I was
detained as a witness an entire week. Lincoln was employed
in several suits, and among them was one of Case vs. Snow
Bros. The Snow Bros., as appeared in evidence (who were
both minors), had purchased from an old Mr. Case what was
then called a "prairie team," consisting of two or three yoke
of oxen and prairie plow, giving therefor their joint note for
some two hundred dollars; but when pay-day came refused to
pay, pleading the minor act. The note was placed in Lincoln's
hands for collection. The suit was called and a jury im
panelled. The Snow Bros, did not deny the note, but pleaded
through their counsel that they were minors, and that Mr.
Case knew they were at the time of the contract and convey
ance. All this was admitted by Mr. Lincoln, with his peculiar
phrase, 'Yes, gentlemen, I reckon that's so.' The minor act
was read and its validity admitted in the same manner. The
counsel of the defendants were permitted without question to
state all these things to the jury, and to show by the statute
that these minors could not be held responsible for their con
tract. By this time you may well suppose that I began to be
uneasy. 'What!' thought I, 'this good old man, who con
fided in these boys, to be wronged in this way, and even his
counsel, Mr. Lincoln, to submit in silence!' I looked at the
court, Judge Treat, but could read nothing in his calm and dig
nified demeanor. Just then, Mr. Lincoln slowly got up, and in
his strange, half-erect attitude and clear, quiet accent began:
'Gentlemen of the Jury, are you willing to allow these boys to
begin life with this shame and disgrace attached to their char
acter? If you are, I am not. The best judge of human char
acter that ever wrote has left these immortal words for all of
us to ponder:

620 APPENDIX.

"Good name in man or woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine., 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that niches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed." '

"Then rising to his full height, and looking upon the defend
ants with the compassion of a brother, his long right arm
extended toward the opposing counsel, he continued: 'Gentle
men of the jury, these poor innocent boys would never have
attempted this low villany had it not been for the advice of
these lawyers.' Then for a few minutes he showed how even
the noble science of law may be prostituted. With a scathing
rebuke to those who thus belittle their profession, he con
cluded: 'And now, gentlemen, you have it in your power to
set these boys right before the world.' He plead for the young
men only; I think he did not mention his client's name. The
jury, without leaving their seats, decided that the defendants
must pay the debt; and the latter, after hearing Lincoln, were
as willing to pay it as the jury were determined they should.
I think the entire argument lasted not above five minutes." —
George W. Minier, statement, Apr. 10, 1882.

LINCOLN'S FELLOW LAWYERS.

Among Lincoln's colleagues at the Springfield bar, after his
re-entry into politics in 1854, and until his elevation to the Pres
idency, were, John T. Stuart, Stephen T. Logan, John A. Mc-
Clernand, Benjamin S. Edwards, David Logan, E. B. Herndon,
W. J. Ferguson, James H. Matheney, C. C. Brown, N. M.
Broadwell, Charles W. Keyes, John E. Rosette, S. T. Zane, J.
C. Conkling, Shelby M. Cullom, and G. M. Shutt. There were
others, notably John M. Palmer and Richard J. Oglesby, who
came in occasionally from other counties and tried suits with
and against us, but they never became members of our bar,
strictly speaking, till after the war had closed. — W. H. H.

APPENDIX. 621

THE TRUCE WITH DOUGLAS.— TESTIMONY OP
IRWIN.

"The conversation took place in the office of Lincoln &
Herndon, in the presence of P. L. Harrison, William H. Hern-
don, Pascal Enos, and myself. It originated in this way:
After the debate at Springfield on the 4th and 5th of October,
1854, William Jayne, John Cassiday, Pascal Enos, the writer,
and others whose names I do not now remember, filled out and
signed a written request to Lincoln to follow Douglas until he
'ran him into his hole' or made him halloo 'Enough,' and that
day Lincoln was giving in his report. He said that the next
morning after the Peoria debate Douglas came to him and
flattered him that he knew more on the question of Territorial
organization in this government than all the Senate of the
United States, and called his mind to the trouble the latter had
given him. He added that Lincoln had' already given him more
trouble than all the opposition in the Senate, and then proposed
to Lincoln that if he (Lincoln) would go home and not follow
him, he (Douglas) would go to no more of his appointments,
would make no more speeches, and would go home and
remain silent during the rest of the campaign. Lincoln did
not make another speech till after the election." — B. F. Irwin,
statement, Feb. 8, 1866, unpublished MS.

See ante, pp. 368-369.

THE BLOOMINGTON CONVENTION.

Following is a copy of the call to select delegates to the
Bloomington Convention held May 29, 1856, when the Repub
lican party in Illinois came into existence. It will be remem
bered that I signed Lincoln's name under instructions from him
by telegraph. The original document I gave several years ago
to a friend in Boston, Mass.:

622 APPENDIX.

"We, the undersigned, citizens of Sangamon County, who
are opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the
present administration, and who are in favor of restoring to
the general government the policy of Washington and Jefferson,
would suggest the propriety of a County Convention, to be
held in the city of Springfield on Saturday, the 24th day of
May, at 2 o'clock, P. M., to appoint delegates to the Blooming-
ton Convention.

"A. LINCOLN,

"W. H. HEBNDON and others."

The decided stand Lincoln took in this instance, and his
speech in the Convention, undoubtedly paved the way for his
leadership in the Republican party. — W. H. H.

AN OFFICE DISCUSSION— LINCOLN'S IDEA OF WAR.

One morning in 1859, Lincoln and I, impressed with the
probability of war between the two sections of the country,
were discussing the subject in the office. "The position taken
by the advocates of State Sovereignty," remarked Lincoln,
"always reminds me of the fellow who contended that the
proper place for the big kettle was inside of the little one."
To me, war seemed inevitable, but when I came to view the
matter squarely, I feared a difficulty the North would have in
controlling the various classes of people and shades of senti
ment, so as to make them an effective force in case of war: I
feared the lack of some great head and heart to lead us on
ward. Lincoln had great confidence in the masses, believing
that, when they were brought face to face with the reality of the
conflict, all differences would disappear, and that they would be
merged into one. To illustrate his idea he made use of this
figure: "Go to the river bank with a coarse sieve and fill it
with gravel. After a vigorous shaking you will observe that
the small pebbles and sand have sunk from view and fallen to
the ground. The next larger in size, unable to slip between

APPENDIX. 623

the wires, will still be found within the sieve. By thorough and
repeated shakings you will find that, of the pebbles still left in
the sieve, the largest ones will have risen to the top. Now,"
he continued, "if, as you say, war is inevitable and will shake
the country from centre to circumference, you will find that the
little men will fall out of view in the shaking. The masses will
rest on some solid foundation, and the big men will have climbed
to the top. Of these latter, one greater than all the rest will
leap forth armed and equipped — the people's leader in the con
flict." Little did I realize the strength of the masses when
united and fighting for a common purpose; and much less did
I dream that the great leader soon to be tried was at that very
moment touching my elbow! — W. H. H.

LINCOLN AND THE KNOW-NOTHINGS.

Among other things used against Lincoln in the campaign of
1860 was the charge that he had been a member of a Know-
Nothing lodge. When the charge was laid at his door he
wrote the following letter to one of his confidential political
friends. I copy from the original MS.:

[Confidential.]

"SPRINGFIELD, ILLS., July 21, 1860.

"HON. A. JONAS.

"My Dear Sir:

"Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as
good, or even better, men than I may have been in American
or Know-Knothing lodges; but, in point of fact, I never was in
one, at Quincy or elsewhere. I was never in Quincy but one
day and two nights while Know-Nothing lodges were in exist
ence, and you were with me that day and both those nights.
I had never been there before in my life; and never afterwards,
till the joint debate with Douglas in 1858. It was in 1854,
when I spoke in some hall there, and after the speaking you,

624 APPENDIX.

with others, took me to an oyster saloon, passed an hour there,
and you walked with me to, and parted with me at, the Quincy
House quite late at night. I left by stage for Naples before
daylight in the morning, having come in by the same route
after dark the evening previous to the speaking, when I found
you waiting at the Quincy House to meet me. A few days
after I was there, Richardson, as I understood, started the
same story about my having been in a Know-Nothing lodge.
When I heard of the charge, as I did soon after, I taxed my
recollection for some incident which could have suggested it;
and I remembered that, on parting with you the last night, I
went to the office of the Hotel to take my stage passage for
the morning, was told that no stage office for that line was
kept there, and that I must see the driver before retiring, to
insure his calling for me in the morning; and a servant was
sent with me to find the driver, who, after taking me a square
or two, stopped me, and stepped perhaps a dozen steps farther,
and in my hearing called to some one, who answered him,
apparently from the upper part of a building, and promised to
call with the stage for me at the Quincy House. I returned
and went to bed, and before day the stage called and took
me. This is all.

"That I never was in a Know-Nothing lodge in Quincy I
should expect could be easily proved' by respectable men who
were always in the lodges, and never saw me there. An affi
davit of one or two such would put the matter at rest.

"And now, a word of caution. Our adversaries think they
can gain a point if they could force me to openly deny the
charge, by which some degree of offence would be given to the
Americans. For this reason it must not publicly appear that
I am paying any attention to the charge,

"Yours truly,

"A. LINCOLN."

APPENDIX. 625

LINCOLN'S VIEWS ON THE RIGHTS OF SUFFRAGE.

At one time, while holding the office of attorney for the city
of Springfield, I had a case in the Supreme Court, which
involved the validity or constitutionality of a law regulating the
matter of voting. Although a city case, it really abridged the
right of suffrage. Being Lincoln's partner I wanted him to
assist me in arguing the questions involved. He declined to
do so, saying: "I am opposed to the limitation or lessening of
the right of suffrage; if anything, I am in favor of its extension
or enlargement. I want to lift men up — to broaden rather
than contract their privileges." — W. H. H.

THE BURIAL OF THE ASSASSIN BOOTH.

"Upon reaching Washington with the body of Booth — hav
ing come up the Potomac — it was at once removed from the
tug-boat to a gun-boat that lay at the dock at the Navy Yard,
where it remained about thirty-six hours. It was there
examined by the Sugeon-General and staff and other officers,
and identified by half a score of persons who had known him
well. Toward evening of the second day Gen. L. C. Baker,
then chief of the 'Detective Bureau of the War Department/
received orders from Secretary of War Stanton to dispose of
the body. Stanton said, 'Put it where it will not be disturbed
until Gabriel blows his last trumpet.' I was ordered to assist
him. The body was placed in a row-boat, and taking with
us one trusty man to manage the boat, we quietly floated down
the river. Crowds of people all along the shore were watching
us. For a blind we took with us a heavy ball and chain, and
it was soon going from lip to lip that we were about to sink
the body in the Potomac. Darkness soon came on, completely
concealing our movements, and under its cover we pulled
slowly back *o the old Penitentiary, which during the war was

626 APPENDIX.

used as an arsenal. The body was then lifted from the boat
and carried through a door opening on the river front. Under
the stone floor of what had been a prison cell a shallow grave
was dug, and the body, with the United States blanket for a
'winding-sheet,' was there interred. There also it remained till
Booth's accomplices were hanged. It was then taken up and
buried with his companions in crime. I have since learned
that the remains were again disinterred and given to his friends,
and that they now rest in the family burial-place in Baltimore,
Md." — From MS. of L. B. Baker, late Lieut, and A. Q. M.
1st D. G. Cav.

A TRIBUTE TO LINCOLN BY A COLLEAGUE AT
THE BAR.

"The weird and melancholy association of eloquence and
poetry had a strong fascination for Mr. Lincoln's mind. Taste
ful composition, either of prose or poetry, which faithfully con
trasted the realities of eternity with the unstable and fickle
fortunes of time, made a strong impression on his mind. In
the indulgence of this melancholy taste it is related of him that
the poem, 'Immortality,' he knew by rote and appreciated very
highly. He had a strange liking for the verses, and they bear
a just resemblance to his fortune. Mr. Lincoln, at the time of
his assassination, was encircled by a halo of immortal glory
such as had never before graced the brow of mortal man. He
had driven treason from its capital city, had slept in the palace
of its once proud and defiant, but now vanquished leader, and
had saved his country and its accrued glories of three-quarters
of a century from destruction. He rode, not with the haughty
and imperious brow of an ancient conqueror, but with the
placid complacency of a pure patriot, through the streets of the
political Babylon of modern times. He had ridden over battle
fields immortal in history, when, in power at least, he was the
leader. Having assured the misguided citizens of the South

APPENDIX. 627

that he meant them no harm beyond a determination to main
tain the government, he returned buoyant with hope to the
Executive Mansion where for four long years he had been held,
as it were, a prisoner.

"Weary with the stories of state, he goes to seek the relaxa
tion of amusement at the theatre; sees the gay crowd as he
passes in ; is cheered and graciously smiled upon by fair women
and brave men; beholds the gorgeous paraphernalia of the
stage, the brilliantly lighted scene, the arched ceiling, with its
grotesque and inimitable figuring to heighten the effect and
make the occasion one of unalloyed pleasure. The hearts of
the people beat in unison with his over a redeemed and ran
somed land. A pause in the play— a faint pistol shot is heard.
No one knows its significance save the hellish few who are in
the plot. A wild shriek, such as murder wrings from the heart
of woman, follows: the proud form of Mr. Lincoln has sunk iu
death. The scene is changed to a wild confusion such as no
poet can describe, no painter delineate. Well might the mur
dered have said and oft repeated:

"Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,—
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?'"

{From a speech *by Hon. Lawrence Weldon, at a bar-meet
ing held in the United States Court at Springfield, Ills., in
June, 1865.]

INDEX

ARMSTRONG, HANNAH — Applies
to Lincoln to defend her son,
358-359.

Armstrong, Jack — Wrestles with
Lincoln, 82-83.

BAKER, EDWARD D. — Speech in
Springfield church, 192 ;
finds a friend in Lincoln,
195-196 ; Congressional aspi
rations, 266, 269 ; elected to
Congress, 271 ; introduces
Lincoln at his inauguration,
494.
Baker, L. B. — Relates details of

burial of Booth, 625-626.
Bedell, Grace — Relates incident
of Lincoln and his whiskers,
487-488.

Beecher, Henry Ward — Dis
course of, on the death of
Lincoln, 572.

Bissell, William H.— Nominated
governor of Illinois, 383 ;
elected, 389.
Black Hawk War — Account of,

92-93.
Bliss, J. S. — Relates incident of

visit to Lincoln, 470-471.
Bloomington — Convention in, and

call for same, 621-622.
Bogue, Captain Vincent — Brings
the Talisman to Illinois, 86-
87.

Booth, John Wilkes— Assassinates
Lincoln, 563 — 567 ; escape,
capture, and death of, 574-
579 ; burial of, 625-626.
Browning, O. H. — Speaks in
Springfield church, 192.

Buchanan, James — Present at
Lincoln's inaugural, 493-494.

Butterfl eld, Justin N. — Appointed
Commissioner of Land Office,
301.

CALHOUN, JOHN — Appoints Lin
coln Deputy Surveyor, 119-
121 ; speaks in church, 192.

Calk, William— Emigrates from
Virginia to Kentucky, 8.

Campbell, A. — C ontributes
money to pay Lincoln's cam
paign expenses, 402.

Cartwright, Peter — Race of, for
Congress against Lincoln,
272-273.

Chicago, — Convention in, 461-
462.

Conkling, James C. — Letter of, to
J. W. Weik, 550; Lincoln's
letter to, in answer to "Un
conditional Union" men, 550 —
555.

Crawford, Elizabeth — Recollec
tions of Lincoln's early poe
try, 47 ; school exhibitions,
47-48.

Crawford, Josiah ("Blue Nose")
— Loans Lincoln "Weems'
Life of Washington," 40.

DAVIS, DAVID — Eulogy of, on Lin
coln, 335-336 ; recalls Lin
coln's religious views, 441 ;
appointed judge of Supreme
Court, 504-505 ; opinion of
Bancroft's eulogy on Lincoln,
517 ; opinion of Lincoln's
action in the military trials
in the Northern and Border
states, 556.

629

630

INDEX.

Decatur — Convention in, 460-461.
Defrees, John D. — Recalls Lin
coln's views on the recogni
tion of God in the Constitu
tion, 444.

Dickey, T. Lyle — Relates incident
of Lincoln's utterances at the
Bloomington convention, 399.
Dickson, W. M. — Furnishes ac
count of Lincoln's visit to
Cincinnati, 353-356.
Douglas, Stephen A. — First meet
ing of, with Lincoln, 163 ;
elected to the legislature,
173 ; takes part in debate in
Springfield church, 192 ; pays
his addresses to Mary Todd,
210-211 ; speech at Illinois
State, Fair, 367; breach of
agreement with Lincoln, 374 ;
speech at reception in Chica
go, July 9, 1858, 401 ; accepts
Lincoln's challenge for joint
debate, 402-403 ; contrasted
with Lincoln, 403 ; lawyer
and orator, 404 ; in the de
bate with Lincoln, 409-413 ;
article of, in "Harper's Mag
azine," 450 ; speeches of. in
campaign of 1860, 464 ; last
meeting with Lincoln, 539.
Dresser, Rev. Charles N. — Mar
ries Abraham Lincoln and
Mary Todd, 228.
Dresser, Thomas W., M. D. — At
tends Mrs. Lincoln in her
last illness, 434-435.
Dubois, Jesse K. — Recalls Lin
coln's "house-divided-against-

itself" speech, 397.
Duncan, John — Aids Lincoln to
capture ground-hog, 18.

EDWARDS, NINIAN W. — I'n the
debate with Early, 169 ; elect
ed to the legislature, 172.

Edwards, Mrs. Ninian W. — Vis
its the Lincolns in Washing
ton, 508-509.

Elkin, David — Preaches funeral
of Lincoln's mother, 28.

English, R. W. — Acts as mutual
friend in Lincoln-Shields
duel, 255.

FELL,, JESSE W. — Applies to Lin
coln for his autobiography, 4
-5 ; recalls Lincoln's religious
views, 442-446.

Francis, S i m e o n — W i f e of,
reconciles Lincoln and Mary
Todd, 226.

GENTRY, ALLEN — Accompanies
Lincoln on flat-boat to New
Orleans, 63.

Gentry, James — Buys Thomas
Lincoln's farm, 67.

Gentryville — Life and social
customs in, 63-64 ; supersti
tions of people in, 65-66.

Giddings, Joshua R. — In Con
gress with Lincoln, 291 ; let
ter from, to Lincoln, 386.

Gillespie, Joseph — Gives account
of senatorial election of 1854,
377.

Gollaher, Austin — Rescues Lin
coln from drowning, 18.

Graham, Mentor — First meeting
of, with Lincoln, 79 ; Anne
Rutledge attends school of,
131.

Greene, William G. — Assists Lin
coln in Offut's Store, 81 ;
sells Radford's store to Lin
coln & Berry, 107-108.

Grimshaw, Jackson — Recollec
tions by, of the first meeting
to propose Lincoln for the
Presidency, 453.

HALL, JAMES — Meeting of, with
Denton Offut in Baltimore,
85-86.

Hanks, Abraham — Journeys with
William Calk to Kentucky,
8.

Hanks, Dennis — Birth of, 13 ;
accompanies the Sparrows to
Indiana from Kentucky, 21 ;
his account of Thomas Lin-

INDEX.

631

coin's farm, 21-22 ; hunts
game with Abe, 22 ; visits
the President in Washington,
517-520.

Hanks, J o h n — Welcomes the
Lincoln family to Illinois, 69 ;
helps Abe to split rails, 70 ;
accompanies Lincoln and
John Johnston to New Or
leans, 72-74.

Hanks, Nancy — Her descent, 3 ;
what her son said of her, 4 ;
her marriage to Thomas Lin
coln, 5 ; description of her
person, 13 ; her mental qual
ities, 13-14 ; her death, 27-28.

Hardin, John J. — Appears as
mutual friend in Lincoln-
Shields duel, 255 ; nominated
Congressman, 269.

Hay, John — Accompanies Lin
coln to Washington, 485 ; his
account of Lincoln's life at
the White House, 514-517.

Haycraft, Samuel — Invites Lin
coln to visit Kentucky, 7 ;
describes the courtship and
marriage of Thomas Lincoln
and Sarah Bush Johnston, 29.

Hazel, Caleb — Lincoln attends
school of, 16.

Head, Rev. Jess e — Marries
Thomas Lincoln to Nancy
Hanks, 5.

Herndon,. Archer G. — Elected to
Legislature, 172.

Herndon, Rowan — With Lincoln
pilots the Talisman, 90 ; sells
his store interest to Lincoln,
106.

Herndon, William H. — M e e t s
Lincoln for the first time,
181 ; leaves the Jacksonville
college, 187; clerks in
Speed's store, 188 ; meets
Mary Todd, 209 ; forms part
nership with Lincoln, 266 ;
discusses slavery with Lin
coln in the law-office, 363-
364 ; writes editorials in

the Springfield Journal, 367-
369 ; recalls the article in the
Conservative, 3 6 9-3 7 \ ; ad
vises Lincoln to avoid the
Abolitionists, 371-372 ; de
scribes Lincoln and his
speech at Bloomington con
vention, 384-385 ; visits New
York and New England in
Lincoln's interests, 392 ; in
terviews Trumbull, Douglas,
Seward, Greeley, Beecher,
and others, 393-394 ; the
Boston letter to Lincoln, 394-
395 ; takes part in the cam
paign of 1860, 465 ; visits
Lincoln in Washington, 506-
508 ; recalls Lincoln's idea of
war, 622-623.

Hill, Samuel — Burns Lincoln's
Book on religion, 439-440.

Holland, Dr. John G. — Visits
Springfield, 582-583.

IRWIN, B. F. — Testimony of, re
garding truce between Lin
coln and Douglas, 621.

JAYNE., JULIA M. — Attends Mary
Todd at her wedding, 228 ;
assists in writing the "Re
becca" letters, 233-243.

Johnson, Andrew — Elected Vice-
President, 555.

Johnston, J o h n — Accompanies
Lincoln and John Hanks to
New Orleans, 74-75.

Johnston, Matilda — Incident of,
with her step-brother Abe,
33-34.

LAMBORN, JOSIAH — Speaks In
Springfield church, 192.

Lamon, Ward H. — Accompanies
Lincoln to Washington, 485-
490.

Letters — Scripps to Herndon, 2 ;
Lincoln to Haycraft, 7 ;
Claggett to Herndon, 10;
Pirtle to Herndon, 10 ;
Helm to Herndon, 14-15 ; J.

632

INDEX.

R. to W. H. Herndon, 79-
80; W. L. Wilson to Hern
don, 97 ; George W. Harrison
to Herndon, 98-100 ; Joseph
S. Wilson to Herndon, 101 ;
Mary S. Vineyard (nee
Owens) to Herndon, 148-
150 ; Lincoln to Mary S.
Owens, 152-155 ; Lincoln to
Mrs. O. H. Browning, 157-
161 ; Lincoln to editor
Sangamon Journal, 166 ; Lin
coln to Col. Robert Allen,
168-169 ; Speed to Herndon,
218 ; Lincoln to Speed, 219-
225 ; James H. Matheney and
Thomas W. Dresser to Jesse
W. Weik, 228 ; "Mr. Printer"

from "Rebecca ," 233-

242 ; John D. Whiteside to
editor Sangamon Journal,
243-247 ; E. H. Merryman to
editor Journal, 248-259 ;
Lincoln to Speed, 259-260 ;
Lincoln to R. S. Thomas,
267 ; Lincoln to Herndon,
281-286, 291-293 ; Lincoln to
office-seeker. 293-294 ; Eliza
beth Sawyer to J. W. Weik,
301 ; Lincoln to Speed, 313 ;
Lincoln to Justice M' Lean,
314 ; Lincoln to J. M. Brock-
man, 324 ; Lincoln to H.
Keeling, 326 ; Grant Good
rich to Herndon, 330-331;
Lord to Herndon, 345-346 ;
John H. Bryant to Herndon,
374 ; Lincoln to Robert
Mosely, 375 ; Lincoln to Ja
cob Harding, 376 ; Joseph
Gillespie to Herndon, 377;
Lincoln to Speed, 381 ; Joshua
R. Giddings to Lincoln, 386 ;
Lincoln to Harrison Maltby,
388; Horace Greeley to
Herndon, 391 ; Lyman Trum-
bull to Lincoln, 392-393;
Herndon to Lincoln, 394-
395; T. Lyle Dickey to
Herndon, 399 ; A. Campbell
to Lincoln and to J. W.

Weik, 402 ; Lincoln to J. O.
Cunningham, 409 ; Horace
Greeley to Lincoln and to
Herndon, 413 ; Lincoln to
Henry and to Asbury, 414 ;
Horace White to Herndon,
417-418 ; Lincoln to John B.
Rosette, 429 ; Thomas W.
Dresser to Jesse W. Weik,
434-435 ; Joseph Gillespie to
Herndon, 435 ; J. G. Nicolay,
to Herndon, 442 ; Jesse W.
Fell to Ward Lamon, 442-
445 ; John D. Defrees to
Herndon, 444 ; Lincoln to
Norman B. Judd, 447 ; Whit
ney to Herndon, and Lincoln
to Morris, 448-449 ; Lincoln
to Delahay, 451-452 ; Lincoln
to Pickett, 452 ; Grimshaw to
Herndon, 453 ; Lincoln to
Kansas delegate, 457-459 ;
Lincoln to George Ashmun,
466 ; J. S. Bliss to Herndon,
470-471 ; Lincoln to J. R.
Giddings, 471-472 ; Henry
Wilson to Herndon, 474-
477 ; Lincoln to his step
mother, 481 ; Lincoln to
Grace Bedell, 487 ; Lincoln
to L. Montgomery Bond and
to Samuel Haycraft, 489 ;
Lincoln to Calvin Truesdale
and to Wash. Talcott, 498-
499 ; Lincoln to Herndon,
500 ; Leonard Swett to
Herndon, 502-505 ; Mrs.
Mary Lincoln to Herndon,
510-511 ; John Hay to Hern
don, 514-517; David Davis to
Herndon, 517 ; Speed to
Herndon, 521-528 ; Leonard
Swett to Herndon. 528-538;
Whitney to Herndon, 539-
541; Robert L. Wilson to
Herndon, 541-543 ; James C.
Conkling to Jesse W. Weik,
549-550 ; Lincoln to James
C. Conkling, 550-555; Lin
coln to General Sherman,
557-558 ; J. M. Ashlev to

INDEX

633

Lincoln, and Lincoln to
Ashley, 559; Robert Dale
Owen to Herndon, 606 ; Lin
coln to his father, 613 ; to his
brother (John D. Johnston)
614-615, 616-618 ; Lincoln
to A. Jonas, 623-624.

Lincoln, Abraham (President's
Grandfather) — Emigrates
from Virginia to Kentucky,
7; killed by the Indians,
9.

Lincoln, Abraham — Birth of, 1 ;
modesty regarding origin, 1 ;
interview with J. L. Scripps,
2 ; ride with Herndon to
Menard County in 1850, 3 ;
reference to his mother, 3 ;
record in Bible, 4-5 ; Ken
tucky stories regarding his
paternity, 5 ; investigation of
same by J. W. Weik, 6 ; the
Inlow story, 6 ; the coon
story, 22-23; at Dorsey's
school 34-35 ; at Crawford's
school, 36-37 ; his school
essays, 37 ; his gallantry to
Kate Roby, 38 ; boyhood
books, 39-40 ; early poetry,
40-41 ; methods of study, 42-
43 ; intellectual traits, 44 ;
early attempts at public
speaking, 45 ; participates in
the Johnston-Grigsby fight,
46 ; marriage of his sister
Sarah, 48 ; writes a wedding
song, 49 ; the "Chronicle of
Reuben," 50-53 ; also sat
irizes William Grigsby, 55;
attends court at Booneville,
58; his injury at Gordon's
mill, 59-60 ; writes essays on
Government and Temperance,
61 ; borrows law-books of
John Pitcher, 61-62 ; makes
his first flat-boat trip to
New Orleans, 63 ; removes
to Illinois, 68 ; his pet dog,
68 ; splits the rails with
John Hanks, 70 ; speech in
answer to Posy, 71 ; meets

Denton Offut, 72; aids in
building and launching the
boat, 72-73 ; starts down
stream for New Orleans, 74 ;
the delay at New Salem, 74 ;
loads hogs, 75 ; arrives in
New Orleans, 76 ; witnesses
sale of slaves, 76 ; returns
to Illinois, 76 ; reappears in
New Salem 78-79 ; tells the
lizard story, 80 ; clerks in
Offut's store, 80-81 ; wrestles
with Jack Armstrong, 83 ;
studies in the store, 84-85 ;
meets the Talisman at
Beardstown, 87; assists
Rowan Herndon as pilot of
the Talisman, 89 ; becomes a
piece of floating driftwood,
92 ; captain of company
in Black Hawk War, 93-94*;
his company, 94-95 ; under
arrest, 95 ; defends the Indian,
96 ; wrestles with Thomson,
96-97 ; incidents of the cam
paign, 97-99 ; re-enlists as a
private, 99-100 ; return to
New Salem, 100-101 ; candi
date for the legislature, 102 ;
the canvass, 103-104 ; first
political speech, 104-105 ; ad
vocates the improvement of
the Sangamon river, 105 ;
defeated, 105; forms partner
ship with Berry in store, 106 ;
their operations, 107-108 ;
failure, 109 ; begins the study
of law, 110 ; application and
habits of study, 111-112 ; love
for story-telling, 113-114 ;
more poetry, 115; what A. Y.
Ellis recollected of him, 115-
116 ; referee in the McNabb
cock fight, 118 ; deputy sur
veyor under Calhoun, 119-
121 ; appointed postmaster
at New Salem, 123 ; prop
erty sold to satisfy Van
Burgen judgment, 123 ; comes
to the aid of Chandler, 124-
125 ; feats of strength, 125-

634

INDEX.

126 ; elected to the Legisla
ture, 126-127 ; courts Anne
Rutledge, 128-135 ; her death,
138 ; its effect on his mind,
139-140 ; Bowlin Green's
kindness, 140 ; learns the
lines, "O, why should the
spirit of mortal be proud?"
140 ; letter to Dr. Drake,
141 ; meets Mary Owens, 143
-144 ; courtship, 146 ; letters
to her, 151-155; letter to
Mrs. O. H. Browning, 157-
161 ; first term in the Legis
lature, 162 ; first meeting with
Stephen A. Douglas, 163 ;
his part of the legislation,
164 ; deputy surveyor under
Thomas M. Neale, 164 ;
candidate for the Legislature
again, 165; the handbill
favors "Woman's Rights,"
166 ; letter to Col. Robert
Allen, 168-169 ; the canvass,
169-170 ; reply to George
Forquer, 171-172 ; elected
and leads his ticket, 172 ; one
of the "Long Nine," 173 ;
champions internal improve
ments, 174-176 ; secures re
moval of the capital to Spring
field 176-177 ; signs the pro
test with Dan Stone, 178-180 ;
begins pratice with John
T. Stuart, 182-183 ; how their
office looked, 184 ; finds a
warm friend in Joshua F.
Speed, 185 ; boards with
William Butler, 185; in
Speed's store, 187 ; poetry,
189 ; speech before the
Young Men's Lyceum, 190 ;
speech In Presbyterian church,
192 ; nominated speaker in
the Legislature of 1838, 193;
stumps the district with Dick
Taylor, 194-195; defends
Edward D. Baker, 195-196;
caricatures Jesse B. Thomas,
197-198 ; In the campaign of
1840 — elector on the Presi

dential ticket, 198 ; again
elected to the Legislature,
199 ; caucus nominee of
Whigs for speaker, 199 ;
meets Mary Todd, 209; the
midnight of gloom, 215 ; goes
with Speed to Kentucky,
216'-217 ; letters to Speed,
219-225 ; meets and becomes
reconciled at house of Sim
eon Francis, 226-227 ; the
Shields letters in the Spring
field Journal, 233-243 ; the
duel with Shields, 243-260;
delivers a temperance speech,
260-262 ; meets Martin Van
Buren, 262-263 ; becomes
law partner of Stephen T.
Logan, 264 ; congressional
aspirations, 265 ; dissolves
partnership with Logan and
takes in William H. Hern-
don, 266 ; letters to Speed and
Thomas, 267-269 ; speaks in
Indiana during campaign of
1844, 270; nominated for
Congress against Peter Cart-
wright, 272 ; elected, 272-
273 ; takes his seat in Con
gress, 274 ; letter to Hern-
don, 275 ; introduces "Spot"
resolutions, 277 ; opposes
Mexican war — explains his
position in letters to Hern-
don, 277-286 ; speaks in Con
gress, 287-290 ; stumping
through New England, 290-
291; early married life, 295-
296 ; at Niagara Falls, 296-
297 ; invents the apparatus
to lift boats over shoals, 298
-299 ; candidate for Commis
sioner of Land Office, 300 ;
is offered territorial posts by
President Taylor, 302 ; an
interesting stage-ride to
Washington, 302-306 ; re
turns to the law, 307-308 ;
life on the circuit, 310-331 ;
methods of study, 332-338 ;
his mind, 339; speech in the

INDEX.

635

Wright case, 340-342 ; de
fends the ladies, 343-344 ;
trials and incidents on the
circuit, 345-351 ; the suit
against the Illinois Central
railroad, 351-352 ; meets
Edwin M. Stanton, 353-356 ;
defends William Armstrong,
357-359; last law-suit — din
ner at Arnold's in Chicago,
359-360 ; speaks before the
Scott Club, 361; talks with
John T. Stuart, 363 ; reads
political literature, 363-364 ;
anti-slavery ideas, 366-367 ;
answers Douglas, 367-369 ;
condemns the article in the
Conservative, 369-370 ; es
capes from the Abolitionists,
371-372 ; follows Douglas,
373; election to and resigna
tion from the Legislature,
375 ; letter from, to a news
paper man, 376 ; a candidate
for U. S. Senator in the Leg
islature, 377 ; appears before
the Governor of Illinois In
behalf of a negro, 378-379 ;
speech in behalf of the Free-
Soil cause, 379-380 ; an in
teresting letter to Speed,
381 ; speaks at the Bloom-
ington convention, 383-384;
also at the Springfield rati
fication, 385-386 ; stumps the
state, 386; demands for him
from outside, 387 ; endeav
ors to counteract the Fillmore
movement, 388 ; growth of his
political reputation, 390 ; feels
the injustice of Greeley's
treatment, 391 ; his dejection,
392 ; reads Theodore Parker's
sermons, 396 ; in the Repub
lican convention of 1858, 396 ;
nominated U. S. Senator,
396-397; prepares "house-
divided-against itself" speech,
397; reads it to friends in
State Library, 399-400; de
livers it in the convention,

400 ; challenges Douglas,
401-402 ; applies to A. Camp
bell for funds, 402 ; descrip
tion of, on the stump, 405-
408 ; real position on the
slavery question, 409-410 ;
incidents of debate and re
sults, 411-413 ; letters from
Greeley, 413 ; letters to Henry
and Asbury, 414 ; extract
from speech, 415-416 ; his
domestic delinquency, 423-
425 ; family government, 426
-427 ; curious letter to Ro
sette 429 ; carries his burdens
in silence, 429-432 ; part
played by his wife, 432-434 ;
his superstitious nature, 435—
436 ; estimate of biography,
437 ; writes a book against
the Christian religion at New
Salem, 439-440 ; testimony
of friends regarding his relig
ious views, 440-445 ; financial
result of debate with Douglas,
447_448; attempts to lecture,
448-449 ; enters campaign in
Ohio, 449-450 ; visits Kansas,
451 ; meeting of his friends
to propose him for the Presi
dency, 452-453; delivers
"Cooper Institute" speech,
453-455 ; speaks in New
England, 456 ; fastens his eye
on Seward, 457; writes inter
esting letters to a delegate,
458-459 ; attends the conven
tion at Decatur, 460-461;
receives news of his nomina
tion 463 ; accepts the nomi
nation, 463-464; in the cam
paign, 4 6 4-46 5 ; occupies room
in State House, 466 ; cast
ing his ballot, 467 ; struggles
with office-seekers, 469-470 ;
ratifies the agreements made
at Chicago, 471-472 ; forms
his cabinet, 473-474; visits
Chicago and meets Speed,
477 ; prepares his inaugural
address, 478-479 ; parts from

636

INDEX.

his step-mother, 480 ; last
days in Springfield, 482 ; last
interview with his law part
ner, 482-485 ; departs from
Springrfield, 485 ; journey to
Washington, 487-491 ; inau
gurated, 492-497 ; in the
White House, 498 ; letters to
friends, 498-500 ; disposes of
claims of David Davis, 501-
505; life in the White House,
514-517 ; recollections of his
conduct as President by Josh
ua F. Speed, 524-529 ; by
Leonard Swett, 529-538 ;
meets Douglas for last time,
539 ; his self-reliance, 540 ;
how he viewed the battle of
Bull Run, 541-545 ; compre
hends the scope of the war,
546 ; issues the Emancipation
Proclamation, 547-549 ; writes
letter to J. C. Conkling, 550-
555 ; renominated and re-
elected, 555-558 ; second in
augural, 559-560 ; visits the
army, 560-561 ; views the
dawn of peace, 562-563 ;
the assassination, 564-568 ;
funeral in Springfield, 572-
573 ; effect of his death, 579-
580 ; his place in history, and
the lesson of his life, 580-
581 ; description of his na
ture by Dr. Holland, 582-
584 ; estimate of, by a fellow
lawyer, 584 ; description of
person by Herndon, 585-588 ;
theory of his melancholy,
588 ; recalled by a neighbor,
589-590 ; analysis of mindand
character, 590-609 ; the man
for the hour, 611 ; how he
answered the Know-Nothing
charge, 623-624 ; his views
on the rights of suffrage, 625.

Lincoln, Josiah — P resent at
death of his father, 9.

Lincoln, Mary — Birth and de
scent, 206-207 ; mind and char
acteristics, 208-209 ; meets

Lincoln, 209 ; receives addres
ses of Douglas, 209-210 ; also
of Lincoln, 212-214 ; disap
pointed by Lincoln, 214-215 ;
the reconciliation, 226-227 ;
the marriage, 228-229 ; with
assistance of Julia Jayne,
writes "Rebecca" letters,
233-243 ; accompanies hus
band to Washington, 296 ;
contrasted with her husband,
426-427; married life, 427-
431 ; the unintentional means
of her husband's promotion,
432-433 ; her conduct and
her death, 434 ; letter to
Herndon, 510-511 ; her ac
count of her husband's na
ture and conduct at the
White House, 511-514.
Lincoln, Nancy — (See Nancy
Hanks).

Lincoln, Sarah — Birth of, 5 ;
mistake in name of, 5 ; ap
pearance and disposition, 16 ;
marries Aaron Grigsby, 16 ;
accompanies her brother Abe
to school, 16 ; death of, 50.

Lincoln, Sarah (Sarah Bush
Johnston) — marries Thomas
Lincoln, 29; cares for
Thomas Lincoln's children,
30-31; death of, 32.

Lincoln, Thomas — Description of,
11; religious belief, 11-12;
occupation and traits, 12 ;
dissatisfied with Kentucky,
18 ; moves to Indiana, 19-
20; how the family lived, 23
-24 ; his widowerhood, 28 ;
marries Sarah Bush Johns
ton, 29 ; removes to Illi
nois, 67-68 ; death of, 70-
71.

Littlefleld, John H. — Relates ex
periences as law-student in
Lincoln & Herndon's office,
315-319.

Logan, Stephen T. — Becomes
law partner of Lincoln, 264;
has Congressional aspira-

INDEX.

J37

tions, 265 ; style of dress ex
posed by Lincoln, 357.

MATHENEY, JAMES H. — Recol
lects some Lincoln poetry,
188-189 ; recalls incidents of
Hoffman's row, 189 ; attends
Lincoln as best man at the
marriage to Mary Todd,
228.

Mather, Thomas — Visits General
Scott in the interest of Lin
coln, 492-493.

McClellan, George B. — Defeated
by Lincoln for President in
1864, 555-556.

McDonald, Joseph E. — Recalls
the Wyant case, 344 ; visits
Lincoln in 1865, 556-557.

McGaughey, Edward W. — Com
petitor of Lincoln for Com
missioner of Land Office, 300.

McNamar, John — Helps Lincoln
prepar handbill, 102 ; courts
Anne Rutledge, 132 ; jour
neys to New York, 133-134;
recollections of Anne Rut-
ledge, 136.

Merryman, E. H. — Lincoln's sec
ond in the duel with Shields,
248 ; his account of the duel,
248-259.

Minier, George "W. — Relates an
incident of the circuit, 619-
620.

NELSON, THOMAS H. — Rides in
the stage with Lincoln, 303-
306.

New Salem — Description of, 77-
78 ; society of, 116-117.

Nicolay, John G. — Letter of, re
garding Lincoln's religious
views, 442 ; is appointed Lin
coln's private secretary, 466 ;
accompanies him to Wash
ington, 485.

OFFUT, DENTON — Meets Lincoln,
72 ; his business ventures in
New Salem, 81-83 ; disap

pears, 85 ; reappears in Balti
more, 86.

Oliphant, E. P. — Lines of, cele
brating the arrival of the
Talisman, 88-90.

Owens, Mary S. — Meets Lincoln,
143 ; described, 144-145 ; let
ters to W. H. Herndon, 148-
150 ; her estimate of Lincoln,
161.

PINKERTON, ALLAN — Unearths
conspiracy to prevent Lin
coln's safe journey to Wash
ington, 491-492.

Pitcher, John — Loans Lincoln
law-books, 61.

RICKARD, SARAH — Is courted by
Lincoln, 230.

Riney, Zachariah — Lincoln at
tends school of, 16.

Robey, Kate — In school with
Lincoln, 38; watches the
moon, 39.

Rutledge, Anne — Her parentage
and descent, 129 ; the affair
with John McNamar, 130-
135 ; devotion of Lincoln to,
137; death, 138.

SCRIPPS, J. L. — Narrates particu
lars of interview with Lin
coln, 2.

Shields, James — A u d i t o r of
State, 231-232 ; challenge to
Lincoln, and duel, 248-251.

Simpson, Bishop Matthew — De
livers oration at Lincoln's
funeral, 573.

Sparrow, Thomas and Betsy —
Emigrate from Kentucky to
Indiana, 21 ; death of, 27.

Speed, Joshua F. — Meets Lin
coln for the first time, 185 ;
introduces Lincoln to Mary
Todd, 209 ; account of the
courtship, 212-213 ; letter to
W. H. Herndon, 218; trib
ute to Lincoln, 521-528.

Springfield — Early society of,

638

INDtiX.

182 ; court and bar of, 186 ;
attitude of clergy toward
Lincoln, 466—467 ; lawyers of,
and Lincoln's colleagues at
the bar, 620.

Stanton, Edwin M. — Meets Lin
coln, 353-356.

Stephens, Alexander H. — What
Lincoln thought of him,
282.

Stone, Daniel — Elected to Legis
lature, 172 ; protests with
Lincoln against slavery res
olutions, 178-180.

Stuart, John T. — Admits Lin
coln to partnership, 183 ; en
deavors to retard Lincoln in
his movement toward aboli
tionism, 382-383 ; statement
of, regarding Lincoln's relig
ious views. 440-441.

Swett, Leonard— Describes Lin
coln arguing a case, 334 ;
interests himself in the cause
of David Davis, 502-505;
describes Lincoln, 528-538.

TALISMAN, THE — History and
disappearance of, 86-91.

Thomas, Jesse B. — Speech in
Springfield church, 192 ; is
caricatured by Lincoln, 197-
198.

Todd, Mary — (See Mary Lin
coln).

Trumbull, Lyman — Elected sena
tor, 377.

Turnham, David — Accompanies
Abe Lincoln to mill, 24-25 ;
loans him "Revised Statutes
of Indiana," 45.

VAN BUREN, MARTIN — Meeting
of with Lincoln, 262-263.

WEIK, JESSE W. — Investigates
stories of Lincoln's parent
age, 5-6.

Weldon, Lawrence — Tribute to
Lincoln, 626-627.

White, Horace — Recollects Lin
coln's speech at Beardstown,
111., 417-418.

Whiteside, John D.— Acts as
Shields' second in the duel
with Lincoln, 243 ; account
of duel, 243-247.

Whitney, Henry C. — Describes
Lincoln on the circuit, 349-
351 ; accompanies Lincoln
in debate with Douglas, 412 ;
conception of the rebellion,
543-546.

Wilson, Henry — Reminiscences
of Lincoln, 474-477.

Wilson, Robert L. — Recalls bat
tle of Bull Run, 541-543.

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