Abraham Lincoln

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY
BRAND WHITLOCK

ILLUSTRATED

BOSTON

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
MCMXVI

Copyright, 1909, 1916

BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPOBATED)

8. J. PAHKHILL <fc Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.

I

TO
E L B.

3555U

PREFACE

To compress between the covers of a little
book like this the whole story of Abraham
Lincoln, to present within such limitations a
life so epical, a character so original and yet so
universal, is obviously impossible. It would be
impossible, indeed, in a work of a score of
volumes. The fascinating subject has already
yielded a whole literature. In the List of Lin-
colniana in the Library of Congress, compiled
by Mr. George Thomas Ritchie, there are al
ready a thousand titles. Almost any phase of
Lincoln's remarkable personality is worth a
volume by itself. Mr. Hill, for instance, has
written a charming book on " Lincoln the Law-
yer," devoted in the main to what, in many re-
spects, is the most interesting period of his life;
namely, those years when Tie was on the old
Eighth Circuit. Mr. Bates's reminiscences of

9

PREFACE

"Lincoln in the Telegraph Office" are most
delightful. The student will wish to read
Herndon's racy pages, — though he would bet
ter take some of them with a grain of salt, — for
these supply the biographers with all that is
known of the early life of the subject. He will
wish, too, to read Lamon, who used Herndon's
materials; he will wish to peruse the pious pages
of Holland; and he will find valuable the data
which but for Miss Tarbell might otherwise
have been lost. He will -find Nicolay and
Hay's monumental work authoritative, if not
definitive; and he will not like to miss the fine
flavor of that latest volume, so sympathetic, so
full of insight, that has come to us from over
the sea in Mr. Binns's most excellent Life. He
will wish to read, also, the intimate personal
sketches Walt Whitman has scattered all
through his prose; and above all, of course, he
will wish to read Lincoln's speeches, letters,
messages, and State papers, where, better than
any other words can give it, is to be found the
expression of his noble personality.

10

PREFACE

To all these works, to all those cited in the
Bibliography, the present writer owes, and
wishes to express, his gratitude and acknowl
edgments. All he knows, aside from some
personal recollections of Springfield friends, he
got from them. He makes no claim of original
research or new material: he has contributed
nothing of his own save the labour of condensa
tion and a love of the subject which finds it hard
to resist the temptation to write at as great a
length as any of them. He would, however,
urge the reader to get the other books about the
greatest American, and to seek out for himself
the secret that was in his wonderful and beauti
ful life, — the secret that, let us hope, was re
vealed to America for the saving of the world.

BRAND WHITLOCK.
TOLEDO, October 20, 1908

11

CHRONOLOGY

1809

February 12. Abraham Lincoln was born on the
Big South Fork of Nolin Creek, in Hardin, now
LaRue County, Kentucky.

1816

Removed with his parents to Indiana, settling on
Little Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville, Spencer
County.

1818
Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother, died.

1819
His father married Sarah Bush Johnston.

1828
Went to New Orleans on a flatboat.

1830
The Lincolns went to Illinois, settling near Decatur,

Macon County.

Abraham split the historic rails,

15

CHRONOLOGY

1831

Went to New Orleans on a flatboat.
July. Went to New Salem, Sangamon County.
Clerk in store.

1832

March. Announced himself candidate for legisla
ture.

Captain in Black Hawk War.
July. Mustered out.
August. Defeated for election.

1833
Engaged in business with Berry. Began to study

law.

The firm of Lincoln & Berry failed.
May. Postmaster of New Salem. Deputy surveyor

of Sangamon County.

1834
Again candidate for legislature, and elected.

1835
Was at Vandalia as member of legislature. Met

Stephen A. Douglas.
Fell in love with Anne Rutledge, who died. Was

plunged into melancholia.

16

CHRONOLOGY

1836

Love affair with Mary Owens.

Re-elected to legislature. Leader of "Long Nine."
Worked for Internal Improvement bubble, and
succeeded in having State capital removed to
Springfield.

Protested against resolutions condemning abolition
ism.

Admitted to the bar.

1837

Settled in Springfield, forming partnership with
John T. Stuart.

1838

Re-elected to legislature. Minority candidate for
Speaker.

1840

Candidate for Presidential elector on Whig ticket.
Stumped the State for Harrison. Had encoun
ters with Douglas.

Re-elected to legislature, and again minority candi
date for Speaker.

1841

He and Douglas rivals for hand of Mary Todd.
Engagement with Mary Todd broken. Ill and al
most deranged. Visited his friend Joshua Speed
in Kentucky.

Challenged to a duel by James T. Shields.

17

CHRONOLOGY

April 14. Formed law partnership with Judge Ste
phen T. Logan.
Refused Whig nomination for governor.

1842
November 4. Married to Mary Todd.

1843

September 20. Formed law partnership with Wil
liam H. Herndon.

1844

Candidate for Presidential elector on Whig ticket,
and stumped Illinois and Indiana for Henry Clay.

1846

Elected to the Thirtieth Congress over Peter Cart-
wright.

1847

In Congress. Introduced famous "Spot" Resolu
tions.

1848
Presidential elector on Whig ticket, and stumped

New England for Taylor.

December. Attended second session of the Thirtieth
Congress. Voted for Wilmot Proviso and Ash-
mun's amendment.

Introduced bill abolishing slavery in District of Co
lumbia.

18

CHRONOLOGY

Sought appointment as commissioner of General
Lands Office, and failed.

Declined appointment as Territorial Governor of
Oregon.

Went back to Springfield, disappointed and disillu
sioned.

1849

Practised law on old Eighth Judicial Circuit of Illi
nois.

1852

Campaigned for Scott.

1854

Roused by repeal of Missouri Compromise and pas
sage of Kansas-Nebraska bill.
Attacked Douglas's position.
November. Elected to legislature against his will.

1855

January. Resigned from legislature to become can
didate for United States senator.
February. Defeated for United States senator.

1856
May 29. Spoke at Bloomington Convention, which

organised the Republican party in Illinois.
Received 110 votes for Vice-President in Republican
Convention at Philadelphia.
19

CHRONOLOGY

Candidate for Presidential elector on Republican

ticket, and campaigned for Fremont.
Attacked Douglas's position.

1858
June 16. Nominated for United States Senate by

Republicans in State Convention.
July 24. Challenged Douglas to joint debate.
Great debate with Douglas.
Carried Illinois for Republicans on popular vote, but

lost a majority of the legislative districts.

1859

January. Defeated for Senate by Douglas before

legislature.
Spoke that fall in Ohio, and in December in Kansas.

1860
February 27. Delivered notable address at Cooper

Institute, New York.
Spoke also in New England.
May 9. Named by Illinois Convention at Decatur

as "Rail" candidate for President.
May 16. Nominated for President by Republicans

at Chicago.
November. Elected.

1861

February 11. Left Springfield for Washington.
March 4. Inaugurated as President.

20

CHRONOLOGY

April 13. Fall of Fort Sumter.

April 15. Issued call for volunteers, and convened

Congress in extraordinary session for July 4.
July 21. Battle of Bull Run.
July 25. Appointed McClellan to command Army

of Potomac.
November 1. Appointed McClellan commander-in-

chief, under the President, of all armies.
December 3. Message to Congress.
December 25. Ordered the return of Mason and Sli-

dell, captured Commissioners of the Confederacy,

and averted war with England.

1862

January 13. Appointed Edwin M. Stanton Secre
tary of War.

Sent special message to Congress, recommending
gradual compensated emancipation of slaves.

July 11. Appointed Halleck general-in-chief.

September 22. Issued preliminary proclamation of
emancipation after battle of Antietam.

December. Message to Congress again urging
gradual compensated emancipation.

Superseded McClellan in command of Army of the
Potomac by Burnside.

December 13. Burnside defeated at Fredericksburg.

1863

January 1. Issued Emancipation Proclamation.

21

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

January 26. Appointed Hooker to succeed Burn-
side.

May 2. Hooker lost battle of Chancellorsville.

June 27. Appointed Meade to succeed Hooker.

July 1-4. Battle of Gettysburg.

July 4. Fall of Vicksburg.

September 19-20. Battle of Chickamauga.

November 19. Delivered address at dedication of
the National Cemetery on the battlefield of Gettys
burg.

November 24-25. Grant won battles of Lookout
Mountain and Missionary Ridge.

December 8. Message to Congress and Proclama
tion of Amnesty.

1864
March 3. Commissioned Grant lieutenant-general

and placed him in command of all the armies.
June 7. Renominated for President by Republican

National Convention at Baltimore.
August 23. Had premonition of defeat.
November 8. Re-elected.

1865
February 1. Hampton Roads Peace Conference

with Confederate Commissioners.
March 4. Inaugurated as President a second time.
March 22. Visited Grant at City Point.

22

CHRONOLOGY

April 4. Entered Richmond.

April 14. Shot in Ford's Theatre at 10.20 o'clock

in the evening.

April 15. Died at 7.2£ o'clock in the morning.
May 4. Buried in Springfield.

23

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE story of Lincoln, perfect in its unities,
appealing to the imagination like some old
tragedy, has been told over and over, and will
be told over and over again. The log cabin
where he was born, the axe he swung in the
backwoods, the long sweep to which he bent on
the flatboat in the river, the pine knot at mid
night, — these are the rough symbols of the
forces by which he made his own slow way.
Surveyor and legislator, country lawyer riding
the circuit, politician on the stump and in Con
gress, the unwearied rival of Douglas, finally,
as the lucky choice of a new party, the Presi
dent, — the story is wholly typical of these
States in that earlier epoch when the like was
possible to any boy. But the story does not

27

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

end here. He is in the White House at last,
but in an hour when realised ambitions turn to
ashes, the nation is divided, a crisis confronts
the land, and menaces the old cause of liberty.
We see him become the wise leader of that old
cause, the sad, gentle captain of a mighty war,
the liberator of a whole race, and not only the
saviour of a republic, but the creator of a na
tion; and then, in the very hour of triumph, —
the tragedy for which destiny plainly marked
him. Rightly told, the story is the epic of
America.

It was like him to have little interest in his
forbears. In the brief autobiographical notes
of 1859 he mentioned the Lincolns of Massa
chusetts, but he did not know that with them he
was descended from those Lincolns who came
from England about 1635. The genealogists
trace the line down to that Abraham who, in
Kentucky in 1788, was killed by the Indians.
The tragedy separated the family. Thomas,
the youngest son, was only ten. He did not

28

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

even know how to read. He worked as he
could, became a carpenter, and in 1806 married
his cousin, Nancy Hanks, whose pathetic
young figure has emerged from mystery as the
daughter of Joseph Hanks and his Quaker
wife, Nannie Shipley, whose sister Mary was
Thomas Lincoln's mother.

At Elizabethtown a daughter was born.
Then they moved to a farm on the Big South
Fork of Nolin Creek, three miles from
Hodgensville, in what was then Hardin, now
LaRue, County. And here in a cabin, on
February 12, 1809, their second child was born.
They named him Abraham, after old Abraham,
his grandfather, who had been killed by the In
dians. When he was four years old, his father
removed to Knob Creek, then, in 1816, aban
doned his clearing, and went to Indiana. He
staked off a claim on Pigeon Creek, near Gen-
tryville, Spencer County, and built a "half-
faced camp" of unhewn logs, without floor, en
closed on three sides, the open front protected
only by skins. Here they lived for a whole

29

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

year. Then Thomas and Betsy Sparrow came,
and Dennis Hanks, and they reared a log
cabin. The life was hard, but Abraham could
play and sometimes hunt with his cousin Den
nis, though he was too tenderhearted to kill,
and after one day shooting a wild turkey, he
never afterward, as he was able to record in
1860, "pulled the trigger on any larger game."
Despite the abounding game, however, the fare
was poor; and one day, after the "blessing" had
been said over the monotonous potatoes, the boy
looked up with that expression which in later
years foretold a joke, and said, "I call these
mighty poor blessings."

In 1818 the settlement was swept by the
dreaded "milk-sick." Thomas and Betsy
Sparrow died of it; then Thomas Lincoln's
wife fell ill. LShe lived a week, and, calling the
children to her bed of skins and leaves, she told
them "to love their kindred and worship God,"
and so died. There were no ceremonies at this
most miserable funeral, and the winter that
came upon the grave in the forest, where

SO

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Thomas Lincoln laid his wife in the rude coffin
he had made, beat on a desolate home. The
motherless children shivered in a cabin without
a floor, and the sorrow of it all, the mystery of
death, the loneliness of the woods, made a dark
impression on the sensitive boy.

But back in Kentucky there was a widow,
Sarah Buck Johnston, once a sweetheart of
Thomas Lincoln. He went to court her, and
in December, 1819, they were married. Her
household goods — among them "a walnut bu
reau valued at fifty dollars" — improved the
cabin, and the family, augmented by her three
children, began life anew. This motherly
housewife dressed the forlorn little Lincolns in
her own children's clothes, and for the first time
they knew the luxury of a feather bed. And,
best miracle of all, she inspired Thomas to lay
a floor, mend doors, cut windows, and plaster
the chinks in the cabin walls. She had what
poor Nancy Hanks had lacked, — the robust
strength for rude labour. She was a "very tall
woman, straight as an Indian, of fair complex-

31

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ion, . . . handsome, sprightly, talkative and
proud." And between her and the young Ab
raham there grew a love which was to last all
his life : she said he was the best son woman ever
had. Thomas Lincoln had little patience with
"book learning," and, failing to interest Abra
ham in carpentry, hired him out to neighbours.
He went to school, as he said, "by littles," —
scarcely a year in all; but he learned "reading,
writing and ciphering to the Rule o' Three,"
became an excellent penman, and, it is said,
corrected the spelling and the pronunciation of
the family name, which in the settlement was
"Linkhern" or "Linkhorn." The new mother
encouraged him to study at home, and he read
"every book he heard of within a circuit of fifty
miles," — Murray's English Reader, the Bible,
.ZEsop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, The Pil
grim's Progress, a History of the United
States, and Weems's Life of Washington.
This last book he had borrowed of Josiah Craw
ford, and one night, through carelessness, it
was stained and warped by rain. Crawford

32

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

made him pull fodder for three days at twenty-
five cents a day to pay for the volume, and the
boy in revenge bestowed on him the enduring
nickname of "Blue Nose."

From these books he made extracts in brier-
root ink with a pen made from a buzzard's
quill. Sometimes he figured with charcoal on
the wooden fire-shovel, shaving it off white and
clean when it was covered. He studied by the
firelight, and was up with his book at dawn.
He read everything, even the Revised Statutes
of Indiana; and, if he did not commit its con
tents to memory, — for so preposterously has
the legend grown, — he must have studied the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitu
tion. He would mount a stump and harangue
the field hands, telling even then his stories or
imitating to the life the last itinerant preacher
who had passed that way. He wrote, too,
articles on "Temperance," on "Government,"
and on "Cruelty to Animals." Unkindness he
could not endure, and unkindness was not un
common among those thoughtless folk. Thus

33

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

he made friends — even of the town drunkard,
whose life he saved one night by dragging him
from a ditch. He even attempted rhymes and
satire, not always in the best taste, avenging
himself on Blue Nose Crawford and o% the
Grigsbys for not inviting him to a wedding.
Of course, he attended court over at Boonville,
walking fifteen miles to watch the little come
dies and tragedies. Once he was bold enough
to congratulate counsel for defence in a murder
trial, and years afterward, in the White House,
the greatest of the Presidents said to that law
yer, "I felt that, if I could ever make as good
a speech as that, my soul would be satisfied."
He said his "father taught him to work, but
never taught him to love it." He preferred the
pioneer sports, — running and wrestling, — but
he did work, and worked hard, making rails,
ploughing, mowing, doing everything. At
nineteen he attained his extraordinary physical
growth, "six feet, two inches tall, weighing one
hundred and fifty pounds — with long arms and
legs, huge and awkward feet and hands, a slen-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

der body and small head." Surely, an un
gainly figure, almost grotesque, in coon-skin
cap, linsey-woolsey shirt, and buckskin breeches
so short that they exposed his shins. He was
said tp be * 'equal to three men," able to "lift and
bear a pair of logs." He could "strike with a
maul a heavier blow — could sink an axe deeper
into wood than any man I ever saw."

In 1828 he went for the first time out into
the world as bowman on a flatboat, down to
New Orleans. It was an adventure for him, of
course, — at Baton Rouge a fight with negroes,
at New Orleans the levees and the slave mart.

Thus he grew and came to manhood, with
some knowledge of books, some knowledge of
men, some knowledge of life. His learning
was tainted with the superstitions that were rife
in the settlement, and always, in a measure,
they clung to him, to merge in later years into
the mysticism of his poetic nature. There had
been sorrows, too : his sister Sarah had married
and died in child-birth; then in 1829 the milk-
sick again, and the call of the West.

35

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

In March, 1830, they set out for Illinois.
The tall young Abraham, in coonskin cap and
buckskins, strode beside the huge wagon, wield
ing a long gad over the oxen. They were two
weeks on the way, over roads that froze by
night and thawed by day, but at last they all
arrived safely in the Sangamon country, even
the dog which, left behind one morning after
they had forded a stream, looked with such re
proachful eyes that the tender-hearted Abra
ham waded to his rescue back through the icy
waters. John Hanks met them five miles
north-west of Decatur, in Macon County; and
on a bluff overlooking the muddy Sangamon
they built a cabin, split rails, fenced in fifteen
acres, and broke the virgin prairie. Abraham
was twenty-one and free. He remained in
Macon County, however, that winter, splitting
rails, "four hundred for every yard of jeans
dyed with walnut juice necessary to make him
a pair of trousers," and all of them for history,
and in the spring found a patron in Denton
Offut, an adventurer who engaged him, with

36

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Hanks, to take a boat-load of provisions to
New Orleans. At New Salem the boat
grounded on a dam, and but for Lincoln's inge
nuity would have been broken up. The inci
dent moved Lincoln to invent and ultimately,
in 1849, to patent an apparatus to lift vessels
over shoals, and it introduced him to New
Salem with eclat, for the people gathered and
cheered the young navigator when he cleverly
contrived to get his boat off the dam and on its
way. At New Orleans he spent a month on
the levee, among the half-savage rivermen ; and
the slave mart brought home to him in all poign
ancy and pity the institution he had already be
gun to study and, perhaps, to hate.

In August he was back at New Salem, "a
piece of floating driftwood," as he said, await
ing Offut, who was to open a store. The vil
lage had a busy land office, twenty log cabins,
and a hundred inhabitants. In seven years it
had vanished from the earth. Here Lincoln
loafed about, a river boatman out of a job, un
til election day, and then, naturally, loafed

37

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

about the polls. Mentor Graham, village
schoolmaster, clerk of elections, needed an as
sistant, and, looking up, saw the tall, young
stranger. "Can you write ?" he asked. "I can
make a few rabbit tracks," said Lincoln. He
did the work to Graham's satisfaction, and,
while the voters straggled up, "spun a stock of
Indiana yarns." They made a hit, and New
Salem long afterwards repeated his stories,
even those, perhaps, that would better not have
been repeated. Offut opened his store, put
Lincoln in charge, bragged of him, and claimed
that he could outrun, whip, or throw any man
in Sangamon County. The "Clary's Grove
Boys" — the name itself suggests their charac
ter — issued promptly from their strip of tim
ber, declaring that Jack Armstrong was "a bet
ter man than Lincoln." Lincoln said he did
not like to "tussle and scuffle," and despised
"pulling and wooling," but he was badgered
into it, and gave their champion a famous
thrashing. The victory established him in
New Salem, and the Clary's Grove Boys

38

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

formed the nucleus of his political following.
Before long he had part in a picturesque scene,
piloting the first steamboat, the Talisman, up
the Sangamon. There was a banquet at
Springfield to celebrate the event, but Lincoln
was not invited. Only the "gentlemen" were
asked, and Lincoln was but a pilot. Within a
year Oifut failed, and Lincoln found himself
floating driftwood again.

A young man in the Illinois of 1832, who
was ambitious, given to stump -speaking, to the
reading of history and of law, and to arguing in
country stores, must necessarily have found a
lively interest in politics. So it was with Lin
coln. From youth he had been attracted by
the romantic figure of Henry Clay, and had
adopted most of his political principles. If he
was not a Whig, he was Whiggish, as Lamon
puts it. To one of Clay's principles, that of
gradual, compensated emancipation, he clung
with devotion all his life. In March, there
fore, of the year under notice, he announced
himself as a candidate for the legislature, de-

39

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

claring in favour of "at least a moderate educa
tion" for every man, and a law against usury,
though "in cases of extreme necessity there
could always be means found to cheat the law.
. . . My case is thrown exclusively upon the
independent voters of the county. . . . But if
the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to
keep me in the background, I have been too
familiar with disappointments to be very much
chagrined."

Here, indeed, with the people he had to leave
his case, for his campaign was presently inter
rupted by the Black Hawk War. The old
chief of the Sacs, who gave his name to this last
Indian uprising in Illinois, had broken the
treaties by which the tribes had gone beyond
the Mississippi, and, asserting that "land can
not be sold," appeared at the head of his braves
in war paint on the ancestral hunting-grounds
in northern Illinois. Governor Reynolds
called for volunteers, and Lincoln was among
the first to respond. The Clary's Grove Boys,
glad of a chance of fun and fighting, enlisted

40

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

enthusiastically, and elected Lincoln captain, —
"a success," he afterwards wrote, "which gave
me more pleasure than any I have had since."
His enjoymentfof the whole experience, indeed,
seems to have been keen. But withal there
were weariness and hardship. He was learn
ing something of the gentle art of ruling men,
though with his company, impatient of disci
pline, the art was not so gentle, after all ; and
there is an instance in which Captain Lincoln
had to face his whole command, mutinous and
threatening, and to put his own body between
them and a poor friendly Indian who, with safe
conduct from General Cass, had taken refuge
in camp. When his company was mustered
out, he re-enlisted immediately as a private.
He saw no fighting and killed no Indians, and
was able long afterward to convulse Congress
by a humorous account of his "war record."
The war ended in July, and he got back to New
Salem in time to stump the county before the
election in August, when he was defeated,—
"the only time," as he said in the Autobiog-

41

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

raphy, "I have ever been beaten by the peo
ple."

Failing of employment in the three village
groceries, he and a man named Berry bought
out one of them, giving their notes for the pur
chase price. Then, by the same means, they
bought out the other two, and thus had a
monopoly. But unlike some monopolies, even
when procured by such financiering, this did
not succeed. Then the firm secured a license
to sell liquor, — an incident of the business in
those days, — but Berry drank up the liquor
himself, while Lincoln, his heels cocked up on
the counter, or sprawling under a tree outside
the door, was reading Shakespeare, Burns,
Gibbon, Rollin, and a little later Paine and
Voltaire. It is said that he wrote a mono
graph on Deism which was burned by a friend,
who just then had more political sense than
Lincoln, though later on neither he nor any man
could have had more. Next he was deep in
Blackstone. He had found the book in a
barrel of rubbish he had obligingly bought from

42

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

some poor fellow in trouble, and nothing had
ever so interested and absorbed him. He be
gan, too, with the help of Mentor Graham, the
study of English grammar.

With both members of the firm thus preoc
cupied, it is not surprising that in the spring
of 1833 the business "winked out," to use Lin
coln's phrase. He was not a "business man"
then or ever. Soon Berry died, and Lincoln
was left alone with the firm's indebtedness,
about twelve hundred dollars, — to him an ap
palling sum. But, with the humour that saved
every situation to him, he called it "the national
debt," and, paying it as he could, he was thus
referring to it as late as 1848, sending home
part of his salary as Congressman to apply
on it.

In May he was commissioned postmaster
of New Salem. The office was so small that
old Andrew Jackson must have overlooked it,
— so small, indeed, that Lincoln distributed the
letters from his hat and read the newspapers
before he delivered them. But he was scrupu-

43

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

lous always, and years afterward, when a gov
ernment agent came to Springfield to make
settlement, Lincoln from his trunk drew forth
"an old blue sock with a quantity of silver and
copper coin tied up in it," and was able to turn
over the identical moneys he had collected in his
official capacity, which, often and sorely as he
had needed money, he had never touched.

And now he got a better chance. With the
wild speculation in Illinois lands, John Cal-
houn, county surveyor, had more than he could
do, and offered Lincoln a post as deputy. Lin
coln knew nothing of surveying, but said he
could learn, and, bargaining for political free
dom, — Calhoun was a Democrat, — he mastered
the science and went to work. His surveys
were accurate, and he was doing well, when
suddenly "the national debt" loomed before him
in the sinister figure of a man who held notes
of the extinct firm. But he found friends, and
James Short and Bowling Green, justice of the
peace, redeemed for him his horse and survey
ing instruments which the creditor had levied

44

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

on. Indeed, the whole story of those New
Salem days is the story of the kindness, the
helpfulness, that always prevail among the
poor. One picture reveals it all. Hannah
Armstrong, the wife of that Jack whom Lin
coln thrashed, always had milk and mush or
cornbread for him. He would "bring the chil
dren candy, and rock the cradle while she got
him something to eat." And, when Lincoln
got buckskins as his first pay for surveying
Hannah "foxed" them on his trousers. In
1834 Lincoln again offered himself for the leg
islature. All that summer he was electioneer
ing, making speeches, lifting and throwing
weights, wrestling, cradling in the harvest
fields, telling stories. He was elected this time,
at the head of the poll; and an old friend of
the Black Hawk War, Major John T. Stuart,
was one of the successful candidates on the
ticket with him. Stuart loaned him law books,
and Lincoln began to practise, in the small way
of the pettifogger, before Squire Bowling
Green.

45

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

When the legislature convened at Vandalia,
he was there, making "a decent appearance"
in new clothes, for the purchase of which an
other New Salem friend had loaned the money.
He spent the winter there, reading in the State
library, and learning otherwise of laws and the
curious making of them. He was assigned, in
appropriately, it would seem, to the House
Committee on Finance, Many of the men he
met were cast for big parts in the drama just
then opening in Illinois, among them a dashing
youth of twenty-two, lately come from Ver
mont, with but thirty-seven cents in his pocket,
but already admitted to the bar and running for
office, — Stephen A. Douglas, whom Lincoln
noted as "the least man I ever saw." For
twenty-eight years this least man was to be his
rival, even in love, though he was not his rival
in the love which then was filling Lincoln's sus
ceptible heart. Back in New Salem he had left
Anne Rutledge, a pretty maid with auburn
hair and blue eyes. But Anne was already
betrothed. Her lover, James McNamar, had

46

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

gone back East, promising to return. After
a while his letters ceased. Then there was
rumour, while Anne waited — and Lincoln al
ways at her side, wooing her, even at the quilt
ing bees. She sang for him, and sometimes,
one could wish, songs more cheerful than those
hymns the chroniclers report. It seems prob
able that the verses, "Oh, why should the spirit
of mortal be proud?" were learned from her,
and that they owed their almost morbid fascina
tion for him to an association with this phase
and period. Soon Anne sickened, and in
August died. New Salem said it was of a
broken heart, but toward the end she sent for
Lincoln, and he was at the bedside, alone with
her.

After her death there settled upon him a ter
rible despondency. That fall and winter he
wandered alone in the woods, along the Sanga-
mon, almost crazed with sorrow. "The very
thought of the rains and snows falling upon
her grave filled him with indescribable grief."
His friends watched him, and at last, when on

47

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the very verge of insanity, Bowling Green took
him to his home, nursed him back to health, and
the grief faded to that temperamental melan
choly which, relieved only by his humour, was
part of the poet there was in him, part of the
prophet, the sadness that so early baptised him
in the tragedy of life, and taught him pity for
the suffering of a world of men.

In July he was running for the legislature
again. "I go for all sharing the privileges of
the government who assist in bearing its bur
dens," he said in his address. "Consequently,
I go for admitting all whites to the right of
suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no
means excluding females). ... If elected, I
shall consider the whole people of Sangamon
my constituents, as well those that oppose as
those that support me. While acting as their
representative I shall be governed by their will
on all subjects upon which I have the means of
knowing what their will is ; and upon all others
I shall do what my own judgment teaches me
will best advance their interests."

48

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The whole theory of representative govern
ment was never more clearly understood, never
more clearly expressed. Even then he had an
occult sense of public opinion, knew what the
general mind was thinking. Always funda
mentally democratic, he was so close to the
heart of humanity that intuitively he measured
its mighty pulsations, and believed that the
public mind was not far from the right. Years
afterward, expressing his belief in the people's
judgment as the one authority in affairs, he
asked, "Is there any better or equal hope?"

One incident of that bitter campaign must
be given. George Forquer, a Whig, about
the time he changed his politics and became a
Democrat, received appointment as register of
the Land Office. His house, the finest resi
dence in Springfield, was distinguished for its
lightning rod, the first that Lincoln or Spring
field had ever seen. At a meeting held near
Forquer's home, Lincoln spoke, and, when he
had done, Forquer announced that "he would
have to take the young man down." Lincoln

49

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

stood by with folded arms, endured the attack,
and then, replying spiritedly, concluded by say
ing: "The gentleman has seen fit to allude to
my being a young man; but he forgets that I
am older in years than I am in the tricks and
trades of politicians. I desire to live, and I
desire place and distinction, but I would rather
die now than, like the gentleman, live to see
the day that I would change my politics for an
office worth three thousand dollars a year, and
then feel compelled to erect a lightning rod to
protect a guilty conscience from an offended
God."

The Whig ticket was elected, Lincoln lead
ing the poll. The Sangamon delegation, seven
representatives and two senators, each over six
feet tall, were known as the "Long Nine."
"All of the bad or objectionable laws passed
at that session," says one of them, "and for
many years afterwards, were chargeable to the
management and influence of the 'Long
Nine.' ' An extensive system of public im
provements was being urged, — canals and rail-

50

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

roads, to be paid for from the proceeds of the
sale of public lands, as Lincoln said, " without
borrowing money and paying the interest on
it." This wonderful scheme was to develop
Illinois immediately, and the people were
dazzled by it. Lincoln, infatuated like the
rest, was already dreaming of the governor
ship, confiding to a friend his purpose to be
come the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." At
Vandalia he was the leader of the Long Nine,
and laboured to advance this project. The
Assembly voted to construct the system of rail
roads and canals, and authorised an immediate
loan of $12,000,000. Such a colossal scheme,
making or blasting communities, afforded, of
course, infinite opportunity for local and spe
cial legislation. In such an atmosphere of
manoeuvre, Lincoln was wholly in his element.
None knew human nature better than he, none
was more expert in log-rolling, and he and his
"Long Nine" rolled their logs so skilfully that
they succeeded in removing the capital of Il
linois to Springfield.

51

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

And yet, while all this showed that he knew
perhaps more of the tricks and trades of the
politicians than he had admitted in his en
counter with Forquer, he was true to principle.
When the legislature adopted resolutions
"highly disapproving" of "the formation of
abolition societies and the doctrines promul
gated by them," Lincoln voted against them;
and, while nothing more was demanded of him,
— certainly half so much could not have been
expected of a mere politician, — he drew up a
protest against the resolutions, and inducing
his colleague, Dan Stone, to sign it with him,
had the protest entered upon the journal for
March 3, 1837. The protest was cautiously
worded, but it did declare that "the institution
of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad
policy."

When the "Long Nine" went home in
March, taking the capital with them, a celebra
tion was arranged, the like of which Spring
field had not seen since that day the Talisman
came up the Sangamon. There was a ban-

52

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

quet, and, though Lincoln was as much the
pilot in this enterprise as he had been in the
other, the fact did not exclude him: rather it
gave him place at the head of the board. He
was toasted as "one of nature's noblemen/' as
one who "has fulfilled the expectations of his
friends and disappointed the hopes of his ene
mies," and, of course, he made a speech. It
is not strange that after this he should remove
to Springfield, for he had finished his law stud
ies, and March 24, 1836, had been "certified as
of good moral character" for admission to the
bar.

II

THE new capital of Illinois in the spring of
1837 was a town of less than two thousand in
habitants, deep in mud, and yet to Lincoln, en
tering one morning the store of Joshua Speed
with all his belongings in his saddle-bags,
it was a metropolis. Speed said the young
man had the saddest face he ever saw; though
when told that he could share Speed's bed in a
room above, and Lincoln had shambled up,
dropped his saddle-bags, and shambled down
again, Speed smiled at the dry way in which
Lincoln remarked, —

"Well, Speed, I'm moved."

But the town was not so small that it could
not boast social distinctions. The Todds,
Stuarts, and Edwardses were there, and, with
the Lambs, Mathers, Opdykes, Forquers, and
Fords, were the leaders of the provincial aris
tocracy. Lincoln observed all this, and soon

54

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

was writing to a girl he had been in love with
that there "is a good deal of flourishing about
in carriages here," though he wrote this, it
seems, in warning rather than in entreaty, ex
plaining that, as his wife, she "would be poor,
without the means of concealing her poverty."
This latest love was Mary Owens, to whom
quixotically he felt himself bound, but erelong
he wrote: "If you feel yourself in any degree
bound to me, I am now willing to release you,
provided you wish it ; while, on the other hand,
I am willing to bind you faster, if I can be con
vinced that it will in any considerable degree
add to your happiness." This cautious letter
naturally ended the affair, as it was probably
intended to do. Mary Owens never took his
attentions too seriously. While she respected
him, she considered him " deficient in those
little links which make up the chain of woman's
happiness."

Meanwhile he had begun to practise law.
His old friend of the Black Hawk War, Major
John T. Stuart, who had loaned him law books,

55

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

took him into partnership. To Stuart, as to
so many lawyers, the law was but a milieu for
politics; he was contesting the Congressional
election with Douglas, and, as Lincoln himself
was thinking more of politics than of law, it is
not strange that the business suffered. Lin
coln spent his time at Speed's store, talking
politics and arguing religion. He delivered
a highly rhetorical address before "The Young
Men's Lyceum" on "The Perpetuation of our
Free Institutions," and in the Presbyterian
church he engaged in a formal partisan debate
with Douglas, Calhoun, Lamhorn, and
Thomas. In 1838 he was again elected to the
legislature, and was minority candidate for
Speaker. The panic of 1837 had brought to
Illinois the hour of reckoning for the internal
improvement bubble, and in that session Lin
coln, again on the Finance Committee, trying
to repair the mischief he had helped to make,
owned that he was "no financier," and admitted
his "share of the responsibility in the present
crisis." In 1840 he was again elected, and

56

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

again defeated for Speaker, and nothing more
important befell during that session than his
joining other Whigs in an ignominious flight
through the window in order to break a
quorum. In the campaign he had had many
exciting engagements, — one, for instance, with
Jesse B. Thomas, a Democrat who in a speech
attacked the "Long Nine," Lincoln especially.
Lincoln replied, and with that talent which
years before had amused Gentryville, mimicked
Thomas in voice and manner, while the crowd
roared with delight. Carried away, he ex
posed Thomas to such scathing ridicule that
the poor fellow actually wept. The event was
destined to live in local annals as "the skinning
of Thomas," but it was a triumph of which
Lincoln was so ashamed that he hunted up
his victim, implored forgiveness, and tried to
heal the wounds he had inflicted. Less and less
thereafter did he resort to the unworthy weap
ons he could wield so skilfully, but more and
more invoked the power of reason and of his
own kindly humour.

57

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

He had, too, conflicts with Douglas, as he
was destined to have for a quarter of a century,
for in that year of the gay campaign for
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too," Lincoln was on
the Whig, and Douglas on the Democratic,
electoral ticket. The campaign had hardly
ended with the triumph of Harrison than the
two entered into another rivalry, — this time for
the hand of a woman. Mary Todd, a Ken
tucky girl, had come to Springfield to visit her
sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, and in the
local aristocracy that "flourished about in car
riages" soon was the reigning belle, with Lin
coln and Douglas in her train. In the pursuit
of a proud, clever girl, who "spoke French
or English with equal fluency," the brilliant,
dashing Douglas might have been expected to
distance the slow, ungainly Lincoln. Some
account for her preference for Lincoln on the
strained hypothesis that she had determined to
marry a future President, which is absurd, be
cause Douglas then seemed more likely than
any unknown young man in Springfield to

58

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

reach that lofty chair, and it was not many
years before he seemed the likeliest man in all
America. But Mary Todd made her own
choice, and she and Lincoln were engaged to
be married on New Year's Day, 1841. But,
after the day was set, Lincoln was filled with
uncertainty. Springfield intimated a new at
tachment, another pretty face. The day came,
the wedding was not solemnised. Now there
came upon him again that black and awful mel
ancholy. He neglected the law, neglected the
legislature, and wandered about, as before, in
utter gloom, actually, it is said, contemplating
suicide. "I am now the most miserable man
living," he wrote to Stuart. "If what I feel
were equally distributed to the whole human
family, there would not be one cheerful face on
earth. ... To remain as I am is impossible.
I must die or be better, as it appears to me."

To distract him, Joshua Speed, probably the
closest friend he ever had, took him away to
Kentucky, and there, amid new scenes, he im
proved, though he bemoaned the fact "that he

59

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

had done nothing to make any human being re
member that he had lived." Speed himself
was engaged to be married, and, curiously
enough, had an experience of uncertainty
similar to Lincoln's. On his return to Spring
field, Lincoln wrote Speed a series of letters,
arguing against Speed's feelings, perhaps at
the same time arguing against his own, and
when Speed was married at last, and happy,
he wrote: "It cannot be told how it thrills me
with joy to hear you say you are 'far happier
than you ever expected to be.' . . . Your last
letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum
of all I have enjoyed since that fatal first of
January, 1841. . . . I cannot but reproach
myself for even wishing to be happy when she
is otherwise. She accompanied a large party
on the railroad cars to Jacksonville last Mon
day, and on her return spoke, so that I heard of
it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly.
God be praised for that!"

About this time occurred another incident
that influenced this odd courtship. The Audi-

60

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

tor of State, James Shields, a "gallant, hot
headed bachelor from Tyrone County, Ire
land," afterwards a general and senator from
three States, had had his vanity wounded by the
publication in the Sangamon Journal of "Let
ters from Lost Townships." These political
lampoons were exactly of a style and humour to
please Lincoln, and, when he learned that their
author was Mary Todd, he was moved himself
to write another in like vein. Shields de
manded the name of the author. The timid
editor consulted Lincoln, who embraced the op
portunity of chivalry by taking on himself the
whole responsibility. There followed a chal
lenge from Shields, and, observing every ab
surdity of the code of honour, a duel was ar
ranged, Lincoln choosing "cavalry broadswords
of the largest size." The duelling ground was
near Alton, and principals and seconds had
repaired there, when "friends effected an ar
rangement." The affair got into the news
papers, and Lincoln was so ashamed of the
escapade that no one ever dared mention it in

61

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

his presence. "If all the good things I have
ever done," he said, "are remembered as long
and well as my scrape with Shields, it is plain I
shall not soon be forgotten." But it helped
to bring him and Mary Todd together, and on
November 4, 1842, they were married. If it
was a marriage not ideally happy, it may be
conjectured that a happier one would have
interfered with that career for which destiny
was preparing him.

In April, 1841, Stuart having been sent to
Congress, Lincoln accepted the opportunity to
end the partnership and formed another with
Judge Stephen T. Logan, a little, weazened
man, with high, shrill voice and a great plume
of yellowed white hair, but picturesque in his
old cape, and accounted the best lawyer in Il
linois. He loved money, and kept most of the
earnings ; but this did not trouble Lincoln, who
loved men more than money, and regarded
wealth as "simply a superfluity of things we
don't need." Contact with Logan made him
a closer student and an abler practitioner of

62

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the law, but two such strong personalities could
not long work side by side, and in 1843 Lin
coln formed a partnership with William H.
Herndon, a young radical, already consorting
with the abolitionists, and afterwards Lincoln's
biographer. The partnership endured until
Lincoln's death. But the struggle was hard,
and Lincoln and his bride were perforce frugal,
"not keeping house," as he wrote to Speed,
"but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is
very well kept by a widow lady of the name of
Beck. Our room and boarding only costs us
four dollars a week. ... I am so poor and
make so little headway in the world that I drop
back in a month of idleness as much as I gain
in a year's sowing." In 1841 he might have
had the nomination for governor, but, after
his experience of the internal improvement
dream, he had foregone his ambition to become
the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." He had an
eye, however, as doubtless his ambitious wife
had, on the political field, and already was cast
ing glances toward Congress. He met pp-

63

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

position, of course. On Washington's Birth
day, 1842, during the Washingtonian temper
ance movement, in an address on "Temper
ance" he deplored the Pharisaical attitude of
some church members toward the drunkard,
saying, "If we take the habitual drunkards, as
a class, their heads and hearts will bear an ad
vantageous comparison with those of any other
class." The whole admirable address is con
ceived in a tone of the highest humanitarian-
ism, quite distinct from that of the professional
reformer of other persons, — a tone which Lin
coln, of all men, must have despised. He was
full of a wise and gentle tolerance that sprang
equally from his knowledge and his love of
men. He said about this time, when "ac
cused" of being a "temperance" man, "I am
temperate in this, to wit: I don't drink."
But so temperate an address was certain to fall
short of the demands of the more intemperate
of the temperance reformers. He was criti
cised, and because of this, and because his wife,
as an Episcopalian, a Todd and kin to the

64

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Edwardses, was an "aristocrat," and because
he had "once talked of fighting a duel," he had
to postpone his Congressional ambitions.
There were, besides, "political complications."
He stood aside for Hardin and for Baker, and
it was said that there was an agreement among
them — Hardin, Baker, Lincoln, and Logan —
that "they should in turn have the coveted hon
our." In 1844 he was on the Whig electoral
ticket, and not only stumped Illinois for Henry
Clay, but went over into Indiana and had the
satisfaction of speaking at Gentryville, where
he was so moved by memories that he ex
pressed his sentiments in verse, which, if not
poetical in form, were, as he himself pleaded,
poetic in feeling.

At last, in 1846, he was nominated and
elected to Congress. His Democratic oppo
nent was old Peter Cartwright, the pioneer
Methodist preacher, who did not hesitate to
use the Washington Birthday address against
Lincoln, or to charge atheism, going back for
evidence to the New Salem days and the mono-

65

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

graph in the Tom Paine style Lincoln was said
to have written.

The charge of atheism was not altogether
lacking in foundation, for, while deeply and in
a poetic and mystic way profoundly religious,
Lincoln never united with any church, and his
theological opinions were not orthodox. Then
and down to his death he seems to have been
Unitarian in belief, and said that whenever any
church would inscribe over its altar, as the sole
qualification for membership, the words of
Jesus, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy soul, and with all thy might, and with
all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thy
self," he would join that church. Surely, as
far as man may, in a complicated civilisation
which dares not take Christianity too literally,
he exemplified this religion.

When, in 1847, Lincoln took his seat in the
Thirtieth Congress, he found there the last
of the giants of the old days, — Webster, Cal-
houn, and Clay, and old John Quincy Adams,
dying in his seat before the session ended.

66

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Douglas was there, too, to take his new seat
in the Senate. Lincoln, soon a favourite for
his stories and for the quaint manner of which
he was so unconscious, was among those in
vited to Webster's breakfasts, and became the
friend of Joshua R. Giddings. The Whigs
were in a majority, as a result of popular dis
approval of President Folk's course in a war
of which America has always felt half-ashamed,
and, while criticising the President, neverthe
less made what capital they could out of the
brilliant victories the Whig generals, Scott and
Taylor, had achieved, and voted them supplies.
With this course Lincoln was in sympathy.
"By way of getting the hang of the House,"
he wrote Herndon, "I made a little speech,
. . . and was about as badly scared, and no
worse, as I am when I speak in court. . . .
As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish
myself, I have concluded to do so before long."
This half-humorous promise he kept by intro
ducing the famous "Spot" Resolutions, so
called because after quoting the President's as-

67

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

sertions that Mexico had first ' 'invaded our
territory," and "shed the blood of our citizens
on our own soil," they requested the Presi
dent in a series of adroit questions to inform the
House on what "spot" all this had occurred.
The searching interpellation was met by silence
in the White House. On January 12, 1848,
Lincoln called up the resolutions and spoke in
their support. They were not acted upon, but
they served to expose Folk's duplicity and to
make their author known.

That spring he was writing home to Hern-
don to organise all the "shrewd, wild boys
about town" in "Old Rough and Ready's"
cause, — although but thirty-nine, he was al
ready feeling old, — and, after he had helped to
nominate Taylor in June, he delivered on the
floor of Congress a stump speech that kept the
House roaring with its ridicule of the Demo
cratic candidate. "By the way, Mr. Speaker,
did you know I am a military hero? Yes, sir,
in the days of the Black Hawk War, I fought,
bled, and came away. ... It is quite certain

68

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I did not break my sword, for I had none to
break ; but I bent my musket pretty badly on
one occasion. If Cass broke his sword, the
idea is, he broke it in desperation. I bent the
musket by accident. If General Cass went in
advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess
I surpassed him in charges upon wild onions.
If he saw any live Indians, it was more than
I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles
\vith mosquitoes ; and, although I never fainted
from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often
very hungry."

He was on the electoral ticket and stumped
New England and Illinois for Taylor. The
New England speeches were full of moral
earnestness, and most significant was the fact
that, after hearing Governor Seward speak in
Boston, he said: "I reckon you are right.
We have got to deal with this slavery ques
tion, and got to give much more attention to
it hereafter than we have been doing." In
December he went back to Washington for the
second session, and stood consistently for the

69

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Wilmot Proviso, designed to exclude slavery
from territory acquired from Mexico, and while
in Congress, as he afterwards said, voted for
the principle "about forty-two times." And
he introduced, and almost succeeded in passing,
an act excluding slavery from the District of
Columbia.

But, as he had known all along, his opposi
tion to the Mexican War had been displeasing
to his constituents, who would rather be warlike
than right. Besides introducing "the Spot
Resolutions," he had voted for Ashmun's
amendment, which declared that "the war had
been unnecessarily and unconstitutionally com
menced by the President." But he would not
"skulk": he had "voted for the truth rather
than for a lie." It cost him his renomination,
and, when Logan was nominated to succeed
him, Lincoln's course lost the district even to
him. He tried to obtain the appointment as
commissioner of the General Lands Office, but
failed. Then he was offered the governor
ship of the new Territory of Oregon, and

70

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

thought of accepting, but his wife fortunately
said "no," and he went back to Springfield and
out on the muddy roads of the old Eighth Cir
cuit, a saddened, disillusioned, and disap
pointed man.

His figure, garbed in black, became familiar
to Springfield, as he strode along, usually with
one of his boys tugging at him, between his
dwelling in Eighth Street and his dingy law
office on the Square. Though clean in dress
and person and with the most orderly of minds,
he was not orderly in his affairs. He carried
most of his legal documents in his high hat;
and there is a direction, written in his own
hand, on a bundle of papers, "When you can't
find it anywhere else, look into this." He kept
poor accounts, forgot to enter charges in his
books, but, when money was paid in, he divided
it, put half of it in his pocket, and left the
other labelled "Herndon's half." He could
not exact retainers or charge large fees, and he
needed money in those days. His father had
moved three times, and when he died, in 1851,

71

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

there was a mortgage on the farm in Coles
County to be raised, his mother to help, and a
shiftless stepbrother, John Johnston, to ex
postulate with in letters deeply interesting.
Besides, the "national debt" still hung over
him, though about this time he succeeded in
paying the last of it. But he was working
hard, and rapidly developing into one of the
best lawyers in Illinois.

What joy there was for him in a life that
carries the impression of having been destined
for great sacrifice came to him on the old
Eighth Judicial Circuit. Here, in an uncom
monly active practice, he encountered such men
as Leonard Swett, Judge Logan, Edward D.
Baker, O. H. Browning, Hichard J. Oglesby,
and John M. Palmer. Twice a year, spring
and fall, the lawyers went out on the circuit in
the train of Judge David Davis, massive and
able. Lincoln was Davis's favourite. When
he arrived at a tavern, Davis would look about
and ask, "Where's Lincoln?" and his great
form shook with delight over Lincoln's droller-

72

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ies. The stories now and then disturbed the
dignity of the court, for, if Lincoln were not
engaged in the case on trial, he would have a
knot of men about him in the court-room.
More than once Davis was forced to say:
"Mr. Lincoln, I can't stand this. There is no
use trying to carry on two courts : I must ad
journ mine, or you yours." But a few min
utes later he would beckon one of the group to
the bench, and ask, "What was that story Lin
coln was telling?"

The impression, however, that Lincoln was
a mere story-teller, a raconteur, a lawyer who
practised by his wits, is inaccurate. He was
fundamentally serious and a man of dignity:
he was not given to uncouth familiarities.
Men referred to him affectionately as "Hon
est Abe" or "Old Abe," but they addressed
him always as "Mr. Lincoln." His humour,
never peccant, was close to his brooding mel
ancholy, and saved every situation in a life he
knew so profoundly as to feel its tragedy and
its tears. It was not for his stories that men

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

loved him: it was for his kindliness, his simplic
ity, his utter lack of self-consciousness. Of
course there was the mysterious influence of his
personality, and the fascination of a nature
that seemed complex only because, in the midst
of many complexities, it was, after all, so sim
ple. All his life long he strove to make things
clear, and to men, to juries, to statesmen, dip
lomats, and whole peoples he was ever explain
ing, and he told his stories to help this purpose.
Thus he drew interested groups about him, on
the public square, in the court-room, in the
tavern.

These taverns were dreadful places by all
accounts, with cooking bad enough to make
any man melancholy, but Lincoln was the last
to complain of the inconveniences. He liked
the life, with its roving, careless freedom and
its comradeship. They all sat at table to
gether, — lawyers, jurymen, litigants, witnesses,
even prisoners, if they had friends who could
get them out on bail; and Lincoln liked the
foot of the table as well as the head, where the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

huge Davis presided. He would sleep two in
a bed or eight in a room, and in the evenings
he would sit with them all in a Bohemian socia
bility, though now and then, when his melan
choly was on him, he would slip away, perhaps
to pore over problems in Euclid in order to
learn the meaning of "demonstrate," or to
study German, or to attend some little magic
lantern show given for the children, — pathetic
evidence of his restricted opportunities, for it
was his destiny to be fond of the theatre.

But he was not always mild, he was not al
ways funny. He could be terrible when
aroused, and nothing so aroused him as un
truth or injustice. He was dreadful in cross-
examination, as many of the stories show, and
he had a subtle, almost occult power over wit
nesses and over juries. "If I can clean this
case of technicalities," he once remarked to
Herndon, "and get it properly swung to the
jury, I'll win it." And, surely, no one could
swing cases to juries better than he. He had,
in the first place, an extraordinarily sympa-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

thetic and profound knowledge of human na
ture. Part of this was intuitive, some inex
plicable element of the almost feminine gentle
ness that was in him. Part of it came from his
wide experience with almost primitive men.
Then there was the commanding dignity of his
presence: men might describe him as homely,
but when stirred, when in the heat and passion
of forensic effort, his features lighted up with
a strange beauty. And there was his drudg
ing, laborious determination to make things
clear; and, above all, there was his honesty of
statement, of motive, of method, so that courts
and juries believed what he said, and this, with
that baffling power of the great personality,
made him the ideal jury lawyer. He knew
that a cause well stated is half won, and he had
mastered the art of putting a question so that
it answered itself. He was no quibbler, he was
impatient of technicalities, and he was ready to
make concessions all the time, quietly sitting
there in the barren court-room, admitting this
or that, "reckoning he must be wrong," that

76

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

"that ought to be conceded," or that "that's
about right," until, as Leonard Swett said,
"about the time he had practised through three-
quarters of the case in this way, his adversary
would wake up to find himself beaten."

He was a poor lawyer when he was on the
wrong side of a case, and many times refused,
and sometimes abandoned, causes in which he
could not believe. Once, indeed, discovering
in the very midst of a trial that his client had
acted fraudulently, he stalked out of the court
room in disgust, and, when sent for by the
judge, returned the answer that he "had gone
out to wash his hands." He never was a good
prosecutor: he had too much human sympathy;
and he was no better business man then than
in New Salem days. His charges were so
small that Herndon and the other lawyers, and
even Davis, who was avaricious, expostulated
with him. His income was little more than
two or three thousand a year. His name ap
pears in the Illinois Reports in one hundred
and seventy-three cases, — a record entitling

77

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

him to first rank among the lawyers of his
State. He was engaged in causes of the first
importance, like that of the Illinois Central
Railroad Company v. The County of McLean,
in which for the railroad he successfully resisted
an attempt to tax land ceded to the railroad by
the State, — and had to sue to recover his modest
fee of $5,000, — the Rock Island bridge case,
and the McCormick reaper patent litigation.
In this case he was of counsel with Edwin M.
Stanton, who, in the federal court at Cincin
nati, treated him contemptuously, referring
to him as "that giraffe," and prevented him
from delivering the argument he had so solici
tously prepared. To a man of Lincoln's sen
sitiveness such an experience was intensely
painful, and it shows how great he was that,
despite the protestations of friends who re
called it all to him, and more besides, he ap
pointed Stanton his War Secretary. In this
case he was paid $2,000, and this and the fee
in the Illinois Central case were the largest he
ever received.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Two of his great murder cases must always
be recalled when his legal career is mentioned.
In May, 1858, he defended William, or "Duff,"
the son of his old foe and friend, Jack Arm
strong. This youth, wild as the wildest of the
Clary's Grove Boys had ever been, was charged
with murder, and on the trial at Beardstown
a witness told how, by moonlight, he had seen
the blow struck. It was a pretty desperate
case for William, and for Hannah, his mother,
who had "foxed" the buckskins on Lincoln's
trousers; but Lincoln, remembering old bene
fits, reassured her, and, subjecting the pros
ecuting witness to one of his dreadful cross-
examinations, confronted him with the almanac
of the year of the murder, and by it showed
that, at the hour at which the witness claimed
to have seen Armstrong strike the blow, the
moon, only in its first quarter, had already set.
The boy was acquitted, and Lincoln would
have no fee but old Hannah's tears and grati
tude. The next year he appeared on behalf
of "Peachy" Harrison, charged with the mur-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

der of Greek Crafton, and it must have been a
dramatic moment when the aged Peter Cart-
wright took the witness-stand and turned to
face Lincoln, against whom he had waged a
campaign for Congress so long before. Cart-
wright was Harrison's grandfather, and the
white head of the old pioneer Methodist
preacher drooped to his breast as Lincoln had
him tell how, as he lay dying, Greek Crafton
had said, "I want you to say to my slayer that
I forgive him." After such a scene and with
such a dying declaration to build upon, Lin
coln was sure to make a speech that would touch
the hearts of the jury with the forgiveness and
the pity he himself felt for all souls in trouble ;
and Harrison was acquitted. This was the
last scene of that experience at the bar which
made him the great lawyer he was, prepared
him for the mighty legal argument with Doug
las, and fitted him to try and to win the great
cause of humanity before the people and the
world.

80

Ill

LINCOLN was losing interest in politics,
when, in May, 1854, the abrogation of the Mis
souri Compromise aroused him. He was out
on the circuit when the news of the Kansas-
Nebraska bill came. All evening at the tavern
he denounced it, and at dawn, when his room
mate, Judge Dickey, awoke, there he was, sit
ting on his bed. "I tell you, Dickey," Lincoln
exclaimed, "this nation cannot exist half -slave
and half- free!" From that hour he was more
serious, more solitary, more studious than ever
before.

Douglas, whose new leadership had done
this, came home in the fall to face an angry
constituency. In Chicago he was hissed and
hooted, but he set to work to win back his Il
linois. He spoke in Springfield, and Lincoln
replied a few days later in a speech that aston-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ished even those who knew him best and loved
him most. The abolitionists were so delighted
that Owen Love joy, whose father had met
death in the cause at Alton, immediately ar
ranged a meeting of the "friends of liberty," in
tending to invite Lincoln to speak. Herndon
was in their counsels, and, though radical as
any of them, was more of a politician. He
knew the danger to Lincoln of openly consort
ing just then with the abolitionists, and hur
riedly sent his law partner word to "take Bob
and drive somewhere into the country, and stay
till this thing is over." Lincoln, already
dreaming of the Senate, and wary, discreet,
politic, took Bob in his buggy, and drove to
Tazewell County, where Davis was holding
court. Thus he escaped the dilemma. The
next day Douglas spoke again, and Lincoln re
plied at Peoria. "Judge Douglas," he said,
"frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm,
paraphrases our argument by saying, 'The
white people of Nebraska are good enough to
govern themselves, but they are not good

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

enough to govern a few miserable negroes.'
Well, I doubt not that the good people of
Nebraska are, and will continue to be, as good
as the average of people elsewhere. I do not
say to the contrary. What I do say is, that
no man is good enough to govern another man
without that other's consent."

These speeches were really the first of the
great debate. They showed anti-Nebraska
men and abolitionists that they had a champion
on fire with the passion of a great cause, and
the Little Giant so recognised their power that
he proposed a truce, which Lincoln good-
naturedly accepted. It was agreed that
neither should speak again during the cam
paign, and it was like Douglas, on his way
home, to stop in Princeton and deliver a long
address.

That fall, 1854, against his will, Lincoln was
nominated and elected to the legislature, but,
when he saw that many Democrats were in
revolt, he resigned. "I have really got it into
my head to try to be a United States senator,"

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

he wrote to a friend; "and if I could have your
support my chances would be reasonably good.
I should like to be remembered affectionately
by you, and also to have you make a mark for
me with the anti-Nebraska members down
your way." He had forty-five votes on the
first ballot, February 8, 1855, Shields, the
Democrat, his old duelling antagonist, forty-
one, Trumbull, anti-Nebraska Democrat, five,
with a few scattering. But the anti-Nebraska
Democrats, holding the balance of power,
would not go to Lincoln, and he generously
urged his following to vote for Trumbull, which
they did, and Trumbull was elected.

Though disappointed, Lincoln knew that the
struggle was only begun. The nation was
aroused. Within a year the Republican party
had suddenly sprung into being, there was
bloodshed in Kansas, Sumner had been as
saulted in the Senate, and Lincoln watched the
growing flame with interest and concern.
When the first Republican State Convention
met in Bloomington on May 29, 1856, there

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

were cries all over the hall for "Lincoln! Lin
coln!" He went forward, and launched into a
speech that so charmed and electrified his audi
ence that even the reporters sat spell-bound,
forgetting to take it down. The burden of
his utterance was, ' 'Kansas shall be free!" and
he concluded in a passage of highest spirit:
"We will say to the Southern disunionists, we
won't go out of the Union, and you
SHAN'T!"

He was done, at last, with the Whigs, and
committed to the Republicans. But when he
went back to Springfield, and he and Herndon
had called a "mass" meeting, only one other be
sides himself and Herndon was present. Lin
coln spoke, nevertheless, dryly remarking that
the meeting was larger than he knew it would
be, for, while he had been sure that he and
Herndon would attend, he had not been sure
any one else would. And then he concluded:
"While all seems dead, the age itself is not.
It liveth as surely as our Maker liveth. Un
der all this seeming want of life and motion, the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

world does move, nevertheless. Be hopeful,
and now let us adjourn and appeal to the
people."

Three weeks afterwards, in the Republican
National Convention at Philadelphia, he re
ceived 110 votes for Vice-President, and,
though he observed that "it must have been the
great Lincoln of Massachusetts" they were vot
ing for, he was already known to the nation,
and entered into the campaign as an elector for
Fremont with such earnestness that, even
though they lost in that campaign, his enthusi
astic friends at home said he was "already on
the track for the presidency."

With the contest of 1858 approaching, he
was confident of success. The pro-slavery
leaders of Kansas, by an unfair vote, forced
the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution
allowing slavery in that State, but, when Presi
dent Buchanan urged Congress to admit Kan
sas with this constitution, Douglas broke with
the administration, opposed the Lecompton
Constitution, and voted against the admission

86

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

of Kansas. If this angered Buchanan and the
South, it delighted the Republicans. Many of
them thought they saw a chance to gain a bril
liant and notable convert ; and Horace Greeley,
editor of the New York Tribune,, honest, well-
meaning, blundering, urged the Republicans
of Illinois to put up no candidate against
Douglas.

But Lincoln knew men and he knew politics
better than Greeley, and, above all, he knew
Douglas. The Illinois Republicans knew
Douglas, too, and when they met at Spring
field, June 16, 1858, they resolved that "Hon.
Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice
for United States Senator." Lincoln had
been expecting the nomination, and he was
ready. For weeks he had been pondering his
speech of acceptance, jotting it down bit by bit,
as it came to him in moments of inspiration, on
scraps of paper, and, after his curious custom,
bestowing them in his hat. At last he wrote
it out and read it to a few friends, all of whom,
except the radical Herndon, opposed his de-

87

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

livering it in that form. But he was wiser
than they, and remarking that, though he might
have "to go down with it," he would "rather
be defeated with that . . . speech than to be
victorious without it," held to his own purpose
and his own counsel. He delivered the speech
in the Hall of the House of Representatives in
Springfield the day after his nomination, and
he stated the issue clearly, to the consterna
tion of friends and the delight of enemies, in
his exordium: —

"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Con
vention: — If we could first know where we are
and whither we are tending, we could better
judge what to do and how to do it. We are
now far into the fifth year since a policy was
initiated with the avowed object and confident
purpose of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy that agita
tion has not only not ceased, but has constantly
augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease
until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.
CA house divided against itself cannot stand.'

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I believe this government cannot endure, per
manently half-slave and half-free. I do not
expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not
expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one
thing or all the other. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it,
and place it where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction; or its advocates will push it for
ward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new, North as well as
South."

The speech, which really went no further
than to advocate a return to the principle of
the old Missouri Compromise, was regarded as
radical, even revolutionary. Douglas replied
to it on July 9 at Chicago, and found it full of
difficulties, so compact was it of accurate his
tory and logical argument, but he could per
vert some of Lincoln's sayings into "abolition
ism," and he could express indignation at Lin
coln's disrespect for courts and lack of "rev-

89

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

erence for the law," implied in bis strictures on
the Dred Scott decision.

These speeches, in the picturesque phrase of
Illinois politicians, "set the prairies on fire."
After Lincoln had rejoined at Chicago and,
a week later, Douglas had spoken at Bloom-
ington and at Springfield, Lincoln replying on
the evening of each day, it was evident that
there was to be a battle of the giants. On
July 24 Lincoln sent Douglas a challenge to
meet him in a series of joint debates. If Lin
coln knew Douglas, Douglas knew Lincoln.
"I shall have my hands full," he said to his
friends. "He is the strong man of his party,
— full of wit, facts, dates, — and the best stump
speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in
the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd,
and, if I beat him, my victory will be hardly
won." He was loath to accept. He had ex
pected to come home to an easy, triumphant
campaign, in the warmth of approval for his
really gallant stand against Buchanan: he did
not wish, as he saw Lincoln had adroitly forced

90

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

him to do, to discuss his own record, — the Dred
Scott decision, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and
the moral issue of slavery; and it was only
human in him to be disappointed when he found
himself confronted by such a task as Lincoln
set for him. But the advantage was with him:
he had the prestige of great success ; the power
of money, which always supports the conserva
tive and aristocratic side, was with him ; and he
had proved himself the equal in debate of Sew-
ard, Chase, and Sumner. Then, too, he was
rather unscrupulous in the use of his wonder
ful arts. No one realised more than Lincoln
the apparent disparity. "With me," he said,
with that sad expression in his face, "the race
of ambition has been a failure — a flat failure.
With him it has been one of splendid success."
Besides, he was slow in his mental processes:
he used to talk to Herndon of "the long, la
boured movements" of his mind. But Doug
las accepted, and seven debates were set, — at
Ottawa, August 21; Freeport, August 27;
Jonesboro', September 15; Charleston, Sep-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

tember 18; Galesburg, October 7; Quincy,
October 13; and Alton, October 15.

In lofty spirit, Lincoln entered these de
bates, and the high course he took he held unto
the end. Seeming to realise that he was the
champion of the American ideal, he would
stoop no lower, and the tone he adopted was
kind, impersonal, and fair. It was a new thing
in those days to eliminate bitter personalities
from political discussion, but he did it, though
he did not eliminate his humour and his droller
ies. "Think nothing of me," he said, conclud
ing an eloquent speech at Beardstown on
August 12, the week before the formal debate
began, "take no thought for the political fate
of any man whomsoever, but come back to the
truths that are in the Declaration of Independ
ence. You may do anything with me you
choose, if you will but heed these sacred princi
ples. . . . While pretending no indifference to
earthly honours, I do claim to be actuated in
this contest by something higher than an anxi
ety for office. I charge you to drop every

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

petty and insignificant thought for any man's
success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge
Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that
immortal emblem of humanity — the Declara
tion of American Independence."

Douglas began the debate with condescen
sion and affected tolerance. He travelled in
state, accompanied by his beautiful wife, on
special trains which the Illinois Central Rail
road provided. Everywhere he was received
with ceremony. Salutes were fired, he was
escorted royally to hotel and public square,
where, in open air, the debates were held. The
radicals then, as ever, had little money to ex
pend, and could not contrive such magnificent
receptions for their long, lank champion; and,
if they could, he would not have liked them.
Even when they did appear with banners and
devices, and with floats in which girls in white
rode in allegorical figures, he was embarrassed
and distressed. He detested "fizzlegigs and
fireworks," and, when at Ottawa his supporters
grew so enthusiastic that they bore him from

93

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the platform on their shoulders, he cried in dis
may, "Don't, boys; let me down; come now,
don't."

The crowds were enormous. There were
fakirs vending ague cures, painkillers, water
melons and lemonade; jugglers and beggars;
and bands from everywhere crashing out pa
triotic tunes. Hotels, boarding-houses, and
livery stables were overflowing. At Ottawa
thousands encamped along the bluff and on the
bottom lands, and that night "the camp fires,
spread up and down the valley for a mile, made
it look as if an army were gathered about us."
At Charleston a great delegation of men,
women, and children in carriages, buggies,
wagons, on foot and horseback, came from In
diana in a long caravan that wound over the
prairie for miles, sending up a great cloud of
dust.

At Freeport Douglas misrepresented the in
cident at Ottawa, and taunted Lincoln with
the charge that he was "so frightened by the
questions put to him that he could not walk."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

But Lincoln bore this with his inexhaustible
good humour, though it must have been mad
dening to have the adroit Douglas twist and
turn his every utterance and lead him off con
stantly into irrelevancies and side issues. But
these methods soon reacted. Almost in the
beginning Douglas, in his efforts to fasten upon
Lincoln the odium of abolitionism, charged him
with having been a subscriber in 1856 to an
abolition platform. The paper he read was
soon proved to be a forgery. "The Little
Dodger was cornered and caught," as the news
papers said ; and even Greeley came out against
him, and wrote Herndon that Douglas was
"like the man's boy who, he said, didn't weigh
so much as he expected, and he always knew he
wouldn't." All this served Lincoln's purpose
well, and thereafter, whenever he had to quote a
document, he paused long enough to explain
with elaborate sarcasm that, "unless there was
some mistake on the part of those with whom
the document originated and which he had been
unable to detect," it was authentic.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

He was able with more deadly effect to
counter on those questions which Douglas
charged had so frightened Lincoln that he had
to be borne from the platform. For in the
second debate at Freeport he put four ques
tions to Douglas, and in the third at Jonesboro'
three others, on which, as events proved, the
whole debate, and indeed, one might almost
say, the fate of the nation itself, turned. Here
was the lawyer again, the wily cross-examiner,
the profound jurist, the clear-eyed statesman,
who could look further into the future than any
of them; for, as with the "house divided"
speech, his friends urged him not to put the
questions, especially the second, saying it would
cost him the senatorship. But Lincoln was
willing to risk that. "I am after larger game,"
he said: "the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred
of this."

The second question was this: "Can the
people of a United States territory in any law
ful way, against the wish of any citizen of the
United States, exclude slavery from its limits

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

prior to the formation of a state constitution?"
Lincoln believed that if Douglas, in applying
his doctrine of popular sovereignty, should an
swer "no," he would lose Illinois and the sen-
atorship; if he answered "yes>" he would alien
ate the South and lose the Presidency. And
he was right. Douglas, in a remarkably adroit
reply, answered "yes." His delighted follow
ers celebrated the manner in which he had es
caped "Lincoln's trap," and claimed the vic
tory already won. But, when the news reached
the South, protests were heard, and, as there
the "Freeport doctrine" became known, so in
evitably Douglas's chances for 1860 waned.
At Alton, in the last of the great engage
ments, when Douglas proclaimed himself the
living representative of Henry Clay and of the
true Whig policy, Lincoln replied that there
was but one issue between them, — "Is slavery
right or wrong?" And he closed in the same
high spirit in which he had begun : —

"It is the eternal struggle between these two
principles — right and wrong — throughout the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

world. They are the two principles that have
stood face to face from the beginning of time,
and will ever continue to struggle. The one is
the common right of humanity, and the other
the divine right of kings. . . . Whenever the
issue can be distinctly made and all extraneous
matter thrown out, so that men can fairly see
the real differences between the parties, this
controversy will soon be settled, and it will be
done peaceably, too."

The fatigue of any campaign is great, even
in these days of luxury and convenience in
travel: in those it would seem to have been be
yond human endurance. The protagonists
spoke nearly every day in the intervals between
debates, and Lincoln, to whom the conserva
tives with their means were no more kind in
that day than they would be in this, had to find
rest when he could, often on the miserable rail
way coaches of those days, wrapped in his
shawl. There were, besides, in this furious
campaign many others speaking, — Chase, the
red abolitionist of Ohio, Senator Trumbull,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Owen Love joy, Oglesby, and Palmer. The
election was on November 2, and in the popular
vote Lincoln had a plurality, the Republicans
polling 126,084, the Douglas-Democrats 121,-
940, and the Buchanan Democrats 5,091 votes.
But, owing to the legislative apportionment,
the Democrats carried a majority of the As
sembly districts, and there in January Douglas
was re-elected senator, having 54 to Lincoln's
46 votes.

Of course, Lincoln was disappointed, but
still he could joke. He felt "like the boy that
stumped his toe — it hurt too bad to laugh, and
he was too big to cry." But he was glad he
made the race. "It gave me a hearing on the
great and durable question of the age which I
would have had in no other way; and though
I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten,
I believe I have made some marks which will
tell for the cause of civil liberty long after
I am gone." But he was not to sink out of
view. He received congratulations from all
parts of the nation, and invitations to speak.

99

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Most of the invitations he declined. His law
practice had been neglected; the canvass had
cost more money than he could afford; he was
"absolutely without money even for household
expenses." To recoup his losses, he prepared
a lecture on "Discoveries, Inventions, and Im
provements" ; but soon realising that he was not
a success outside the political field, and seeming
to require a moral question to bring out his
powers, he abandoned the lecture field almost
immediately. But, when Douglas appeared
in the gubernatorial campaign in Ohio in 1859,
he could not resist the temptation to reply to
his old antagonist, and he spoke in Columbus
and in Cincinnati before tremendous audiences.
In December he spoke in Kansas, and then ac
cepted an invitation to deliver an address,
February 27, 1860, at Cooper Institute in New
York.

It was a notable speech, delivered before a
distinguished audience, presided over by Wil
liam Cullen Bryant. Lincoln was at first un
comfortable and embarrassed: he "imagined

100

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

that the audience noticed the contrast between
his Western clothes and the neat-fitting suit
of Mr. Bryant and others who sat on the plat
form." But Horace Greeley said next day in
the Tribune, "No man ever made such an im
pression in his first appeal to a New York
audience."

From New York he went to New England.
His speeches there were not so formal as the
Cooper Institute address, but they made as
deep an impression, and he went home with a
national reputation. Men were inquiring
about him. The strange story of his life ap
pealed to the imagination of the North, and
his Illinois friends urged him to let them set
about the work so congenial to them. "What's
the use of talking about me whilst we have
such men as Seward, Chase, and others?" he
said to Jesse Fell, who sought data for a biog
raphy. Fell pleaded. At last Lincoln rose,
wrapped his old grey shawl about him : "Fell,
I admit that I am ambitious and would like to
be President. I am not insensible to the con>

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

pliment you pay me and the interest you mani
fest in the matter, but there is no such good luck
in store for me as the Presidency of these
United States. Besides, there is nothing in
my early history that would interest you or
anybody else." But Davis, Swett, Logan,
Palmer — the lawyers who had known him on
the circuit, and loved him — urged the more be
cause of their love. At last he consented, and
was quietly occupied during the spring with
that wire-pulling at which he was so adept.
He went, as a spectator, to the State Conven
tion at Decatur on May 9, and when a banner
was borne in, inscribed "Abraham Lincoln, the
Rail Candidate for President in 1860," sup
ported by two well- weathered fence rails dec
orated with ribbons, "from a lot of 3,000 made
by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the
Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830," the con
vention went wild. Lincoln, of course, made
a speech, and the State delegation was in
structed to "use all honourable means" to se
cure his nomination.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The National Convention met in Chicago a
week later, and Davis, Swett, Judd, Palmer,
Logan, and Oglesby were there. The town
was filled with a turbulent crowd. Processions
trailed in the streets all night, shouting for the
several candidates. But night and day, with
out rest, without sleep, Lincoln's friends
worked, — "like nailers," as Oglesby said.
Surely, they left nothing undone, even to dis
regarding Lincoln's own expressed wishes, and
entering into a bargain with Simon Cameron,
of Pennsylvania, which was to plague Lincoln
later. Cameron was Pennsylvania's candi
date, as Chase was Ohio's, and Seward New
York's. Indeed, Seward, who in his "higher
law" and "irrepressible conflict" utterances had
taken ground as advanced as Lincoln, was by
all considered as sure of the nomination. But
so well did the friends of Lincoln work that on
May 16, on the third ballot, he received 231%
votes, Seward 180, with 53% scattering, and
he was nominated. At the announcement of
the result a frenzied partisan shouted: "Hal-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

lelujah! Abe Lincoln's nominated!" and a
cannon boomed from the top of the huge wig
wam in which the convention assembled, but
the convention could not hear it for the amazing
demonstration the delegates made, — a demon
stration that spread outside, literally all over
Illinois.

Meanwhile, down in Springfield, with rising
and falling hopes, now confident, now plunged
in his constitutional melancholy, Lincoln was
waiting. When the news came, he was found
playing handball. Looking at the telegram a
moment, he said, "There is a little woman down
on Eighth Street who will be glad to hear this
news," and strode away to tell her.

And down in Washington Douglas was say
ing, "There won't be a tar barrel left in Illinois
to-night."

The notification, so great a ceremony in these
days, was prompt and simple. A day later,
in the evening, the committee was received by
Lincoln in the parlour of his home. The com
mittee had its own misgivings, which the tall,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

gaunt figure, with its drooping shoulders,
standing awkwardly and with downcast eyes on
the hearthstone, did not do much to reassure,
until he began to speak. Then the bronze face
caught a new light from the grey eyes, through
which the great soul looked out upon the com
mittee, and an hour later the distinguished gen
tlemen departed, all delighted.

The Democrats, splitting at Charleston, had
adjourned to Baltimore and nominated Doug
las and Johnson. The bolters nominated
Breckenridge and Lane. There was a fourth
ticket, Bell and Everett, representing the
"Constitutional Union" party. Douglas made
a vigorous canvass, but that second question
Lincoln had put to him in the Freeport debate
would not down. The radical Southerners
would none of him, but supported Brecken
ridge.

During the campaign Lincoln remained
quietly in Springfield. The governor's rooms
in the State House were placed at his disposal,
and here he met his callers, talked and joked

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

and whispered with them, was skilful, wary,
and discreet in all he said and in the very little
he wrote, and, when embarrassing questions
were asked, he told a story or had the private
secretary he had newly installed make a stereo
typed reply, referring to his record and his
speeches. The abolitionists, of course, were no
more satisfied with him than the radicals of
any cause ever are with their representatives
when the cause arrives, though Chase supported
him, and Seward, with a sincerity that pleased
him. Perhaps nothing more distressed him
than the attitude of the Springfield preachers.
Of the twenty-three in the town, twenty were
against him. "These men well know," he said,
"that I am for freedom, and yet with this
book," indicating the New Testament, "in their
hands, in the light of which human bondage
cannot live a moment, they are going to vote
against me. I do not understand it at all."
In November he received a total popular vote
of 1,866,452, and 180 electoral votes, all of the
eighteen Northern States except New Jersey,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

which gave part of her vote to Douglas. The
Little Giant polled 1,375,157 votes, but in the
electoral college had but 12 votes, three in New
Jersey and nine in Missouri. Breckenridge
had 72 electoral votes, carrying all the Southern
States except Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennes
see, which gave their 39 electoral votes to Bell.
Four days after the election the South began
to execute its threat of secession. The South
Carolina senators resigned, by Christmas the
palmetto flag floated over every federal build
ing in that State, and early in January the
South Carolinians had fired on the Star of the
West as she entered Charleston harbour with
supplies for Fort Sumter. Meanwhile Lin
coln had to wait in Springfield while the great
conspiracy matured, while the impotent
Buchanan let the very government slip from
his weak hands, while Greeley aided the disin
tegration of the nation by his silly editorials,
while men were for peace at any price, even
Seward anxious for compromise, and the busi
ness interests of the East, timid as ever, for

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

anything that would save their sacred stock
market. By February, seven of the Southern
States — South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas —
had declared themselves out of the Union and
formed the Confederate States of America,
with Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, as Presi
dent, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia,
Vice-President.

Well might Lincoln appear "more distracted
and absent-minded" and "sorrowful unto
death," with a "preternatural expression of ex
quisite grief" in his eyes; well might he say, "I
shall never be glad any more." But, if sad, he
was calm during this trying interregnum, and
did not take seriously the coarse editorials in
Southern newspapers, referring to him as
"Lincoln, the beast," the "Illinois ape," etc.
He was at work on his inaugural address, and
at the same time troubled with his cabinet ap
pointments. The trade Judge Davis had
made at Chicago with Cameron, the political
boss of Pennsylvania, already plagued him.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

But the time passed at last; and, after a pil
grimage to the grave of his father in Coles
County and a visit to his stepmother, early on
Monday morning, February 11, he left Spring
field for Washington. His old friends and
neighbours went down to the railway station to
see him off, and stood patiently, bareheaded in
the rain, while, with tears streaming down his
dark cheeks, he made his touching little fare
well speech from the platform of the coach : —
"My friends, no one, not in my situation, can
appreciate my feeling of sadness at this part
ing. To this place, and the kindness of these
people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a
quarter of a century and have passed from a
young to an old man. Here my children have
been born and one is buried. I now leave, not
knowing when or whether ever I may return,
with a task before me greater than that which
rested upon Washington. Without the assist
ance of that Divine Being who ever attended
him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance,
I cannot fail. Trusting to Him who can go

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

with me, and remain with you, and be every
where for good, let us confidently hope that all
will yet be well. To His care commending
you, as I hope in your prayers you will com
mend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."
On the way he stopped at Indianapolis, Cin
cinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Buffalo, Al
bany, and New York, and everywhere to the
waiting crowds made short, informal ad
dresses, warily avoiding any announcement of
policy. At Philadelphia on Washington's
Birthday, in celebration of the admission of
Kansas as a free State, he raised a new flag of
thirty-four stars over Independence Hall. He
was deeply moved, and spoke fervently of
"that sentiment in the Declaration of Inde
pendence which gives liberty not alone to the
people of this country, but hope to all the world
for all future times; . . . which gave promise
that in due time the weights would be lifted
from the shoulders of all men, and that all
should have an equal chance." And then "If
this country cannot be saved without giving up

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

that principle, I was about to say I would
rather be assassinated on this spot than surren
der it."

This reference to assassination was signifi
cant. Detectives claimed to have discovered a
plot to kill him as he passed through Baltimore.
He insisted on fulfilling his engagement to ad
dress the legislature at Harrisburg, then con
sented to go on that night, incognito. The
next morning the country heard that he was
safe in the capital. Even then and the nine
succeeding days, men were betting in hotel cor
ridors that he would never be inaugurated.
Those were trying days. The office-seekers,
willing to take the chance of assassination, had
already begun their descent upon him.

Inauguration Day, March 4, 1861, dawned
in brilliant sunshine. At noon President
Buchanan, "far advanced in years, in low-
crowned, broad-brimmed silk hat, an immense
white cravat, with swallow-tail coat not of the
newest style," waited on Lincoln to escort him
to the Capitol and place upon the strong shoul-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ders of the great Westerner the burden which
had been too heavy for the infirm old diplomat.
They drove together down Pennsylvania Ave
nue. The ceremonies were held in the eastern
portico of the new Capitol, and on the tempo
rary platform distinguished officialdom had
gathered. The crowd, small because of the
rumour of tragedy, — old Winfield Scott had
posted troops, and was ready, "if any of them
show their heads or raise a finger," to "blow
them to hell," — awaited in unsympathetic si
lence. Lincoln, attired in new clothes, his so
ber face changed by the beard that had not yet
grown sufficiently to justify the predictions of
the little girl who had naively advised it, was
plainly embarrassed, and stood for an awkward
moment holding in one hand his high hat and in
the other a large gold-headed ebony stick.
But Douglas, his old rival, was there, and, step
ping promptly forward, relieved him of hat
and cane and held them for him, — a graceful
incident, the significance of which was not lost.
The ceremonies were brief. Edward D.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Baker, dearest of old Springfield friends, now
senator from Oregon, formally presented him,
and, after he had read his inaugural address,
the aged Chief Justice Taney, who had written
the Dred Scott decision, in his black robes ad
ministered the oath to the new President, who
was forever to overthrow the doctrine on which
that decision was based.

He read his address, so long and eagerly
awaited, read it distinctly, so that all could hear,
— hear him say that misunderstandings had
caused differences, disavow any intention to
interfere with the existing privilege of slavery,
and even declare himself in favour of a new
fugitive slave law. But he was firm. "The
Union of these States is perpetual," he said,
and "no State, upon its own mere motion, can
lawfully get out of the Union." "I shall take
care, as the Constitution itself expressly en
joins upon me, that the laws of the Union be
faithfully executed in all the States," and he
was determined "to hold, occupy, and possess
the property and places belonging to the Gov-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ernment and to collect the duties and imposts."
And he closed with the beautiful passage,
founded upon Seward's suggestion: "I am
loath to close. We are not enemies, but
friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living heart and hearth
stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union when again touched, as
surely they will be, by the better angels of our
nature."

114

IV

WHEN Lincoln drove from his inaugural to
the White House, it was, indeed, to face a task
greater than that which rested upon Washing
ton, as great surely as ever rested on any man.
He realised his task fully, but his way, he said,
was "plain as a turnpike road." He was, first
of all, tormented by the office-seekers, so ter
rible an affliction to every executive in these
States, and in bitterness he said, "This human
struggle and scramble for office will finally test
the strength of our institutions." But the dif
ficulties of cabinet making at least were done,
and the next day he sent to the Senate these
names: William H. Seward, Secretary of
State; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the
Treasury; Simon Cameron, Secretary of War;
Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb
B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; Edward

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Bates, Attorney- General; and Montgomery
Blair, Postmaster-General.

That same day, the very first thing, the
whole issue was presented to him in a letter
from Major Anderson, with his little band,
hungry in Fort Sumter. He wanted pro
visions. The place could be held only by
20,000 disciplined troops. The army num
bered but 16,000 men. What was he to do?
General Scott said "evacuation." Lincoln re
plied, "When Anderson goes out of Fort Sum
ter, I shall have to go out of the White
House." While he pondered, the country
clamoured, Congress demanded the Ander
son correspondence, which he refused, his mil
itary advisers differed, his cabinet differed.
The days went by. Meanwhile Seward, cheer
fully joining in the assumption that he, and
not Lincoln, was the man of the hour, had
taken it upon himself to assure the Confed
erate Commissioners, then in Washington, that
Sumter would be evacuated. When he
learned that Lincoln had decided otherwise, he

116

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

laid before him, on April 1, "Some Thoughts
for the President's Consideration," in which,
after complaining of the "lack of policy," he
proposed to make war on Spain and France,
to "seek explanations from Great Britain and
Russia," and suggested that the direction of
this policy be devolved by the President "on
some member of his cabinet," concluding with
modest significance, "It is not in my especial
province ; but I neither seek to evade or assume
responsibility." This astounding proposal
Lincoln received in his kind, magnanimous
spirit. "As to the policy, I remark that if this
must be done, I must do it. ... When a gen
eral line of policy is adopted, I apprehend
there is no danger of its being changed without
good reason, or continuing to be a subject of
unnecessary debate; still, upon points arising
in its progress I wish, and suppose I am en
titled to have, the advice of all the cabinet."
Thus Seward learned, as the nation was to
learn, who was master, and how great and
wise and capable he was, and two months later

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Seward acknowledged the superiority. "Ex
ecutive force and vigour are rare qualities," he
wrote; "the President is the best of us."

A few days later the relief for Fort Sumter
sailed from New York harbour. The Presi
dent had scrupulously notified the Governor
of South Carolina that the relief would be at
tempted, but by a blunder of the President's
own the warship Powhatan was sent to Fort
Pickens instead. When the news that the ex
pedition had sailed reached Charleston, Beau-
regard demanded surrender, and then gave the
order to reduce the fort. On April 12 the
bombardment began, as Anderson and his men
were eating the very last of their rations.
They fought gallantly, but on the morning of
the 13th their guns were silenced. All the
time the three transports of the relief expe
dition had been lying outside the bar, awaiting
the Powhatan. With her assistance the fort
could have been relieved, for the night was
very dark. It was a grievous blunder, for
which Lincoln assumed the whole responsibil-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ity. It is a question for debate what history
would have been, had this blunder not oc
curred, — one of those perhaps useless questions
which never can be answered. Lincoln has
been criticised for having delayed so long, but
miltary advisers had told him that evacuation
was inevitable, his cabinet was against the at
tempt, public opinion was compromising and
opposed to any overt act. But, whatever the
result otherwise might have been, the effect
was instantaneous. The whole North arose,
a unity at last in its mighty wrath. Douglas
promptly assured the President of his support,
and telegraphed his followers that he had given
his pledge to "sustain the President in the ex
ercise of all his constitutional functions to pre
serve the Union and maintain the government,
and defend the Federal Capital." No more
talk of compromise or concession, nor more dis
cussion of the right or wrong of slavery. Lin
coln, for that issue, had substituted the issue
of Union, and he had forced the Confederacy
into the position of aggressor. On the 15th

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

came his proclamation calling for 75,000 vol
unteers and convening Congress in extra ses
sion for July 4. The response was electrical.
Hundreds of thousands of men all over the
North offered themselves in the Union cause,
glad that the long anxiety was over. This
temper was not softened when, on April 19,
the Sixth Massachusetts was assaulted in the
streets of Baltimore. Twelve rioters and four
soldiers were killed, and many wounded. It
was a trying time. All about the little Dis
trict of Columbia lay Maryland, full of seces
sion sentiment, protesting against the passage
of any more troops through Baltimore.
There was great danger of the capture of
Washington, and with the capital in its hands
the Confederacy would be certain of European
recognition. At the White House they could
get no news. The wires to the North had been
cut, and Lincoln, awaiting the Seventh New
York, groaned: "Why don't they come!
Why don't they come!"

In this crisis, if, as always, conciliatory, he
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

was firm. If troops could not march through
Baltimore, they could march around it; and,
when there were protests against the troops
crossing the "sacred" soil of Maryland, he re
plied that his soldiers could neither fly over the
State nor burrow under it, and that Maryland
must learn that "there was no piece of Ameri
can soil too good to be pressed by the foot of a
loyal soldier as he marched to the defence of
the capital of his country." Gradually, senti
ment in Maryland changed, especially when
business in Baltimore was affected; and, when
soldiers enough arrived in Washington to in
sure the defence of the capital, union sentiment
in Maryland was stimulated and grew until the
end of the war, keeping her in the Union.

And now, while visiting the camps about
Washington, consulting with officers, hobnob
bing with private soldiers in his simple West
ern way, joking, listening to queries and com
plaints, gaining that personal love which they
bore him through the whole war, Lincoln was
constantly brooding over his mighty problem.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

His task just then was to prevent further de
fections from the Union, to prevent European
recognition of the Confederacy, and to create
an army and navy that could reassert the
national power throughout the States in re
bellion. Slowly, cautiously, patiently, with
many blunders and mistakes, in the midst of
misunderstanding, noisy criticism, and malig
nant abuse, he made his way. It was a tri
umph of diplomacy that he prevented Ken
tucky from following Virginia in secession;
and, while he was not so successful with other
States, — for, by June, Arkansas, North Caro
lina, and Tennessee had joined the Confed
eracy, — he did save not only Kentucky, but
Missouri. The secession of Virginia was a
disastrous blow. The capital of the Confed
eracy was removed to Richmond, and the Old
Dominion gave its great son, Robert E. Lee,
to command the Southern army, and for four
years the stars and bars were to fly in defiance,
almost in the President's face, from the hills
across the Potomac.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

With growing mastery President Lincoln
watched over men and events, tempered with
his kindliness and caution Seward's diplomacy,
studied the science of war while the army and
navy were being organised; and driven in
April to suspend the writ of habeas corpus,
thereby, on the one hand, bringing down on his
head the criticism that he was a dictator and
usurper, and, on the other, that he was not
tyrannical enough, he was ready, when Con
gress convened on the Fourth of July, to give
to it and to the people his reasons for the
course he was following. The army was
anxious to move, the North was clamouring,
and Lincoln decided to seize Arlington
Heights across the Potomac. On May 23 the
movement began, the Heights were occupied,
the enemy fled, the flag was lowered, but it cost
the life of young Ellsworth, a dashing com
mander of Zouaves whom Lincoln had known
and loved back at Springfield. Then for
weeks the army lay inactive, while the North,
led by Greeley, cried, "On to Richmond!"

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The enemy had intrenched at Manassas Junc
tion, and General Scott opposed an advance,
saying that the army was not ready; but Lin
coln, nevertheless, ordered the movement.
There were delays, but at last, on July 21,
McDowell was ready to attack Beauregard.
It was a hot Sunday of brilliant sunshine, and
by afternoon reports were so encouraging that
Lincoln went for a drive; but that night with
his cabinet and General Scott in the telegraph
office, where he was to spend so many anxious
hours during the rest of his life, there came the
report from McDowell, "Our army is retreat
ing," and soon he knew of the first great dis
aster of Bull Run. At dawn, in a drizzling
rain, demoralised troops began to pour into
Washington over Long Bridge. If the blow
staggered the North, it sobered and steadied
it. The nation realised that it was in a real
war, and it set itself, with grim determination,
to the great task. Congress voted men and
money, and Lincoln called to the command of
the Army of the Potomac the young general,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

George B. McClellan, who had been winning
successes in Western Virginia, and electrify
ing the North by Napoleonic despatches.
These despatches, his youth, and his dash had
made him popular. He was a man of engag
ing personality, an efficient organiser and engi
neer, though Lincoln was soon to remark that
his especial talent was as a stationary engineer.
McClellan came in the brilliant style in which
he always moved, and out of the remnants of
the militia who had fled from Bull Run and out
of the new volunteers pouring into camp — in
telligent artisans of the North, hardy farmers
of the West, come to fight for principle — he
proceeded to create one of the finest armies in
history.

Fremont, in command in the West, took it
upon himself that fall to issue a proclamation
emancipating the slaves of non-Union men in
Missouri. If the act pleased the abolitionists,
it created consternation in the Border States
and added to Lincoln's burden. He revoked
the proclamation, of course, and thereby saved

125

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland to the
Union. The abolitionists, mightily offended,
talked of impeachment. They saw the moral
issue of slavery rather than the political issue
of union ; and the clamour, led by Greeley, was
long and loud. The troubles in Missouri were
long to exasperate the patient man in the
White House. It was the beginning of that
period, destined to last so long, when he was
constantly distressed by the childish piques and
prides of his generals, who, considering them
selves competent to command armies, could not
even command themselves. But his patience
never was exhausted, — not even by the imperti
nence of Buell, who failed to move into east
ern Tennessee and stop the depredations of
Confederate soldiers who were harrying and
even hanging the loyal residents. But there
was one general who was not so, — Grant in the
West, taking Fort Henry, then Donelson, and
in February, 1862, sending his famous des
patch to Buckner: ''No terms except uncon
ditional and immediate surrender. I propose

126

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

to move immediately upon your works."
What balm to that weary spirit! They urged
him, of course, to remove Grant; but "this man
fights," he said. Then the "good" people told
him that Grant drank. "Do you know what
brand of whiskey ?" he asked. "I'd like to send
a barrel to each of my other generals." But it
was too soon for Grant. There were yet
long months of McClellan and his successors,
and the only victories worth while were that of
the Monitor over the Merrimac, March 9,
1862, and the capture of New Orleans in
April.

McClellan, meanwhile, had been organising
and intrenching his 168,000 men. Lincoln
watched him intently, intelligently, and with
the sympathy of a father, visiting him at his
headquarters, giving him all he asked, but all
his solicitude and kindness were lost. To
McClellan the President's friendly visits were
merely "interruptions" of his tremendous
thoughts and large schemes; the cabinet were
"the greatest geese" ; and, being obliged to at-

127

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

tend their meeting, he was "bored and an
noyed." But the President and the country
were patient. The people had learned a lesson
from Bull Run, and were no longer crying,
"On to Richmond!" Every day there were
guard-mounts and parades, and now and then
reviews, brilliant military spectacles wherein
McClellan excelled, which all Washington
went out to see. It was a gay holiday time for
every one but Lincoln, for whom there never
was gayety and were never more to be holi
days.

But when the autumn moved by, with its
glorious weather, and nothing was done, the
muttering began and increased to wrath and
new dismay by the end of October, when on the
21st the blunder of Ball's Bluff occurred.
Lincoln was at McClellan's headquarters when
the news came from up the Potomac that his
old friend, Colonel Edward D. Baker, had
been killed. It was a terrible blow. C. C.
Coffin saw him, "unattended, with bowed head
and tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, his

128

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

face pale and wan, his breast heaving with emo
tion/' pass through the room. "With both
hands pressed upon his heart, he walked down
the street, not returning the salute of the senti
nel pacing his beat before the door." The
fault here was not McClellan's, and, though
the nation grumbled, Lincoln had not lost faith
in him, and when on October 31 the aged Gen
eral Scott, who had won his spurs nearly half a
century before at Lundy's Lane, retired, he
raised McClellan to the post of commander-in-
chief, under the President, of the armies of the
United States.

But now for a space he was to be distracted
from the concern McClellan's immobility
caused him by another difficulty, which for a
time seemed likely to plunge the nation into
war with England. On November 8 Captain
Wilkes, commanding the warship San Jacinto,
overhauled the British royal mail packet
Trent, one day out from Havana, brought her
to by a shot across her bows, and took from her
Mason and Slidell, commissioners from the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Confederacy on their way to Europe. When
the news was made public, the nation was in
a high state of jubilation. But Lincoln saw
the mistake; he feared the captured commis
sioners would "prove to be white elephants."
If there were bluster and jingoism in England,
so there were in America, and public sentiment
favoured the keeping of the commissioners and
braving another war. Of this feeling Seward
himself partook, and Lincoln took upon him
self the burden of diplomacy, and by his kind
ness moderated the too offensive tone Seward
was apt to adopt in his dealings with Lord
Palmerston. He had, however, by his ex
quisite tact and almost preternatural knowl
edge of men, won to his side the proud and rad
ical Sumner, chairman of the Senate Commit
tee on Foreign Relations, and, though as Lin
coln said slyly, "Sumner thinks he runs me,"
he really "ran" Sumner. While the country
raged, Lincoln kept silent. Sumner was in
correspondence with Cobden and with Bright,
whose portrait hung in the President's execu-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

tive chamber, struggling for the people's cause
in England as Lincoln was in America. The
British ultimatum, demanding immediate resti
tution and apology, was presented, and on
Christmas morning Lincoln convened his cab
inet. Sumner was present with urgent letters
from Bright and Cobden, speaking of "your
country, the great hope of humanity," and
urging a "courageous stroke" to save "you and
us." Lincoln was ready for the courageous
stroke. Mason and Slidell were released, war
was averted, and sentiment in England was so
softened and appeased that John Stuart Mill
doubtless reflected the best of it when he wrote,
"Is there any one capable of a moral judgment
or feeling who will say that his opinion of
America and American statesmen is not raised
by such an act done on such grounds?"

Lincoln had made no reference to this crit
ical affair in his message to Congress in De
cember: he knew how to keep silence just as
he knew how to explain ; but there was in that
message a splendid paragraph expressing his

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

views on the labour question, — a paragraph
which shows that, if he were not a political
economist, he was, what is greater, a lover of
humanitjr, and knew instinctively that the
cause of the workers of the world was the cause
of democracy everywhere, and that the war he
was in was a war in that cause.

"Labour," he said, "is prior to and independ
ent of Capital. Capital is only the fruit of
Labour, and could never have existed if La
bour had not first existed. Labour is the su
perior of Capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration. Capital has its rights, which
are as worthy of protection as any other rights.
Nor is it denied that there is, and probably
always will be, a relation between Capital and
Labour producing mutual benefit. The error
is in assuming that the whole Labour of a com
munity exists within that relation. A few
men own Capital, and that few avoid Labour
themselves, and with their capital hire or buy
another few to labour for them. A large ma
jority belong to neither class — neither work

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

for others, nor have others working for them.
. . . Many independent men everywhere in
these states, a few years back in their lives,
were hired labourers. The prudent, penniless
beginner in the world labours for wages awhile,
saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land
for himself, then labours on his own account
another while, and at length hires another new
beginner to help him. This is the generous
and just and prosperous system which opens
the way to ail — gives hope to all, and conse
quent energy and progress and improvement
of condition to all. No men living are more
worthy to be trusted than those who toil up
from poverty — none less inclined to take or
touch aught which they have not honestly
earned. Let them beware of surrendering a
political power which they already possess,
and which, if surrendered, will surely be used
to close the door of advancement against such
as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens
upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost."
Far as he could see into the future, he could
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

not foresee the great change which, with eco
nomic evolution, was to come over America
and the world, — a change that would sweep
away the individualistic system which, in the
beginning, the fathers had admirably met in
their political constitution, — the system which
he hoped to perfect. Perhaps he confused
then, as most do to-day, political liberty with
economic liberty; but he had before him the
great ideal of equality of opportunity so beau
tifully imagined in the immortal Declaration,
and so constantly before the mind of our ideal
ist, whose dream and passion it became. In
that war this superiority, the right of man as
against the right of property, was at stake, and
in a sense it was fortunate that the rights of
property were then contended for by a com
pact section rather than by capitalists scattered
everywhere, by a class easily recognised rather
than by one that merged its identity in the
whole mass of the people, for it made the issue
clear.

But the cause was being carried forward

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

with tremendous difficulty, and almost, one
might say, by Lincoln alone.

The trouble he had feared from his redemp
tion of Davis's unauthorised promise to Cam
eron at Chicago had been present for some
time: if Cameron was not all he should be in
the War Office, he was exactly what Lincoln
had expected him to be, and January 11, 1862,
Lincoln offered him the post of minister to
Russia. Cameron accepted, and on the 13th
Lincoln appointed Edwin M. Stanton Sec
retary of War. Stanton was a Democrat, a
friend of McClellan, and had never ceased, it
seems, to speak of Lincoln with that gross abuse
with which he had greeted him in the McCor-
mick case at Cincinnati in 1859. But, with
all his revilings and insults, he did not hesitate
promptly to accept, as a man of finer nature
might have done, though a man of finer na
ture would, of course, never have been so in
solent as Stanton was. But if he was insolent,
truculent, and brow-beating, with all the petty
tyrannies and injustices of the bully, and if

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

he often sorely tried the patient President, he
was an honest man who broke the ring of con
tractors, and he was a prodigious worker.
And he soon learned — as Seward had learned
and as McClellan was about to learn — that
Lincoln was master; and, though it was im
possible that he should do it gracefully, as
Seward did, he recognised that mastery and
superiority. The appointment of Stanton is
but another of many instances of Lincoln's
ability to rise above all personal feelings and
considerations. He had no thought for him
self, for his personal or political fortune: he
was wholly absorbed in the great cause. He
needed men, and he took them whenever and
wherever he could get them, no matter who
they were. Surely, he dwelt at high spiritual
altitudes !

Meanwhile, for six months, McClellan had
been preparing to advance; but there was no
advance. With American humour the North
accepted the daily bulletins, until "All quiet
along the Potomac" passed into the fixities of

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

common speech. The President met the sit
uation with his almost divine patience, and,
though in distress, that humour which lay so
near the sadness in his nature, as it does in all
great natures, came to his relief, and epito
mised the situation in his observation "that if
General McClellan did not want to use the
army, he would like to borrow it." He had
recognised his own want of knowledge of the
art of war, if it is an art, and in McClellan
he reposed a confidence which it was not Mc-
Clellan's nature to appreciate. In December
he had ventured to ask McClellan, "if it was
determined to make a forward movement of
the Army of the Potomac, . . . how long
would it require to actually get it in motion?"
And to this, after waiting ten days, McClellan
returned a disrespectful reply. Then Mc
Clellan fell ill. The President was in despair.
But he undertook the study of the military
problem himself, and by the time McClellan
recovered, in January, he had a plan which he
proposed; namely, to move directly upon the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

enemy at Centreville and Manassas, and to
press him back upon Richmond, in order to
capture that city. McClellan's plan was to
move by way of Urbana and West Point,
using the York River as a base. Upon the
relative merits of the two plans a difference
arose that continues to this day. There was
a long discussion between Lincoln and his re
calcitrant general, which lengthened the de
lay. The North divided into factions, the one
accusing "The Virginia Creeper" — the nick
name with which American humour inevitably
provided him — of disloyalty, the other criticis
ing Lincoln for his civilian interference with
the inscrutable science of war. But Lincoln,
unmoved by McClellan's conduct or by politi
cal clangour, in his "General War Order No.
1" directed that February 22, 1862, "be the
day for a general movement of the land and
naval forces of the United States against the
insurgent forces." The critics laughed, but
Lincoln had, as always, his own purpose. On
January 31 he ordered McClellan to seize and

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

occupy a point near Manassas Junction, and
this forced the issue. McClellan remon
strated, and then began that long exchange
of letters and despatches which, better than
other words can do, reveals the characters of
the two men. Lincoln was all patience, kind
ness, humour: McClellan was querulous, petty,
and sometimes positively insulting. Wash
ington's birthday came: McClellan did not
move. By March Johnston had evacuated
Manassas. Then the President relieved Mc
Clellan of command, though he retained him
at the head of the Army of the Potomac.

Those were dark days. The burden Lin
coln bore so patiently was tremendous, and
was made wearier by the advice which was so
copiously tendered him. Abuse and criticism
he could endure: the newspapers he did not
often read, for, as he said, "I know more about
it than they do"; but he could not escape ad
vice. Besides the daily calls of senators and
representatives, Congress had created a Com
mittee on the Conduct of the War, and the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

politicians who composed that inquisitorial
body could jauntily dispose of the most intri
cate military problems in the midst of their
political schemes, and Lincoln had to surrender
useful time and employ the greatest tact with
them. The newspapers and the pulpits in the
churches were full of counsel, — and of abuse
because it was not heeded, — and there were, of
course, delegations of clergymen and of bank
ers. "Money!" he exclaimed one day when
Chase, whom he allowed to manage the finances
in his own way, wished to present a delegation
of financiers, — "money! I don't know any
thing about money! I never had enough of
my own to fret me, and I have no opinion about
it, anyway." And he bore it all patiently, even
meekly, and went on his high, lonely way.

Besides all this, there were sombre shadows
in the private chambers of the White House.
Willie and Tad were ill with the typhoid fever,
and night after night, after a day half -crazed
by the cares of a nation, he spent watching by
their beds. When Willie died, it was a blow

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

that overwhelmed him, and for a month he
seemed likely to sink under the grief of this
affliction. It proved to be one of the great
inner crises of his life. Always religious in
the highest sense, he seems at this time to have
gained deeper insight into the mysteries of the
spiritual life. "Why is it? Why is it?" he
would cry out in despair, as he sat watching
at the child's bedside; and, if the pious nurse
who shared those weary vigils with him trans
lated his experience into the terms of her own
understanding, it is probable that her sympa
thy, if not her theology, comforted him.

From that hour on his tender heart was
tenderer, and yearned in growing love over the
nation, South as well as North, and in a thou
sand beautiful and pathetic individual in
stances softened the severities of that war
which, by some strange and inscrutable fate,
this most peaceful of men was called upon to
wage. He himself expressed a sense of this
incongruity in a letter to a Quaker, when he
said, "Engaged as I am, in a great war, I

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

fear it will be difficult for the world to under
stand how fully I appreciate the principles of
peace inculcated in this letter and everywhere
by the Society of Friends."

While this war was being fought for the
Union, the question of slavery was, neverthe
less, as every one knew, at the bottom of it;
and Lincoln had early seen that the two issues
could not long be separated. As long as could
be, he refrained from interference with the in
stitution, but the question arose in many forms.
Slaves were constantly seeking refuge in
Union camps, and what to do with them was a
problem which military commanders in the
field dealt with as their principles or their
prejudices or their politics moved them. Gen
eral Ben Butler held them as "contraband of
war," — a legal trick that delighted the North
and gave the slaves a new sobriquet; McClel-
lan threatened to put down any uprising of the
blacks with an "iron hand" he seemed to reserve
for that exclusive purpose; Halleck sent the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

fugitives out of camp; Buell and Hooker al
lowed their owners to take them.

But abolition sentiment was growing, and
from press and pulpit there were adjurations
to "set the slaves free." The torrent of ad
vice, muddied by abuse, poured on him. With
the ease with which those to whom the people
have neglected to delegate the authority know
how to exercise it, his advisers informed him of
the people's will; and to this the preachers, in
their delegations, added that it was the will of
God. But he held his own counsel, thinking
out a way. It was the essence of his Border
State policy to avoid offence to the people
there, where slavery made a problem of ex
quisite delicacy.

On March 6, 1862, he sent a special message
to Congress, recommending the adoption of a
joint resolution that "the United States ought
to co-operate with any state which may adopt
gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such
state pecuniary aid ... to compensate for the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

inconvenience, both public and private, pro
duced by such change of system.'* The resolu
tion was finally adopted, but the Border States
would have none of it. On March 10 he in
vited to the White House the Congressmen
from those States, hoping to win them to his
view, which had as its object the disposition he
had held to since boyhood; namely, gradual
compensated emancipation. But the border
members were deaf to his pleadings. Again,
on July 12, he besought them, but two-thirds
of them were opposed to the plan.

In the midst of this difficulty, May 9, 1862,
General Hunter proclaimed martial law in
Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, and
"the persons in these states, heretofore held as
slaves, . . . forever free." Lincoln revoked
this order, as he had Fremont's, adding firmly,
"I further make known that, whether it be
competent for me as Commander-in- Chief of
the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of
any state or states free, and whether at any
time, in any case, it shall have become a neces-

144

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

sity indispensable to the maintenance of gov
ernment to exercise such supposed power, are
questions which, under my responsibility, I
reserve to myself."

In his proclamation cancelling Hunter's or
der, he referred again to the "solemn proposal
of the nation" of gradual emancipation to the
Border States, and added: "To the people of
these states I now earnestly appeal. I do not
argue; I beseech you to make the arguments
for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be
blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you
a calm and enlarged consideration of them,
ranging, if it may be, far above personal and
partisan politics. This proposal makes com
mon cause for a common object, casting no re
proaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee.
The change it contemplates would come as
gently as the dews from Heaven, not rending or
wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it?
So much good has not been done by one effort
in all past time, as in the providence of God
it is now your high privilege to do. May the

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

vast future not have to lament that you have
neglected it!"

The scheme, of course, was impractical.
Union slaveholders were not ready to give up
their property, and even the most radical of
abolitionists were not ready to buy them in
order to set them free. But even then, as back
in New Salem, Lincoln was not a business
man: he was a dreamer, a humanitarian, with
a vision of free men that subordinated consid
erations of property.

Then, relinquishing his old dream, he began
to think of emancipation. Constantly he was
urged to it. Constantly he argued with his
callers, his volunteer advisers, in his clever way
weighing the reasons and the chances. While
he travailed in the agony of this problem, in
the midst of all his woes there was, of course,
always Greeley, — "Brother Greeley," as he
called him.

On August 19, 1862, Greeley published in
his newspaper an address to the President,
under the imposing title of "The Prayer of

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

20,000,000 of People," demanding immediate
emancipation. It was an unfair and foolish
paper, but if the editor did not, as he imagined,
represent twenty millions of people, he did rep
resent the extreme group of radicals in the
Republican party, and they could make as
great an outcry as twenty millions. To this
paper Lincoln thought fit to reply, in order to
explain, not to Greeley, — for that would have
been impossible, — but to the people. The let
ter is really one of his great state papers, and
it has been said that "it did more to steady
the loyal sentiment of the country in a very
grave emergency than anything that ever came
from Lincoln's pen." Its essence is found in
these words : "My paramount object is to save
the Union, and not either to save or destroy
slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would
do it. And if I could save it by freeing some,
and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
... I have here stated my purpose, according

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

to my view of official duty, and I intend no
modification of my oft-expressed personal
wish, that all men everywhere shall be free."

The spirit and the sense were all lost on the
oblivious Greeley, who retorted with abuse.
But the abolitionists did not cease their agita
tion, and to a committee of Chicago preachers
that waited on him in September, to reveal to
him the will of God, Lincoln said:—

"If it is probable that God would reveal His
will to others on a point so connected with my
duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it
directly to me. . . . These are not, however,
the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be
granted that I am not to expect a direct revela
tion. I must study the plain physical facts
of the case, ascertain what is possible, and
learn what appears to be wise and right."

And he continued: —

"What good would a proclamation of eman
cipation from me do, especially as we are now
situated? I do not want to issue a document
that the whole world will see must necessarily

148

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the
comet."

Meanwhile, at Major Eckert's desk in the
cipher-room of the War Department telegraph
office, this silent, self-reliant man, without in
timates, without friends, who bore almost alone
on his mighty shoulders the burden of the na
tion's war, had been writing the Emancipa
tion Proclamation. It was thus that he was
accustomed to spend such moments of respite
as he could snatch from the never-ending
stream of tormentors in the White House,—
the office-seekers, politicians, and volunteers of
sage advice. Ever since June, shortly after
McClellan's terrible "Seven Days' Fight," he
had been sitting at that desk, deep in thought,
now gazing out the window at a colony of
spiders, now writing a few sentences. All
these months he had been at work, with his
slow but accurate thought and slow and clear
writing, preparing the most momentous docu
ment in American history since Thomas Jef
ferson had written the Declaration. No one

149

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

knew what he was writing: his cabinet had no
notion. He was waiting for the right time,
waiting for a victory.

He waited long, in his great patience and his
great anguish. Far back in April he had writ
ten McClellan: "Your dispatches complain
ing that you are not properly sustained, while
they do not offend me, do pain me very much.
. . . The country will not fail to note, is now
noting, that the present hesitation to move
upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of
Manassas repeated. I beg to assure you that
I have never written you or spoken to you in
greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with
a fuller purpose to sustain you so far as, in
my more anxious judgment, I consistently can.
But you must act." In May, sick of waiting,
he had wired, "Is anything to be done?"
Then, when the cautious "Little Mac" was
ready, at last, the enemy had abandoned the
intrenchments. He advanced, fighting, all the
while demanding reinforcements, which caused
Lincoln to remark that "sending troops to Mc-

150

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Clellan is like shovelling fleas across a barn
yard." He had waited, the only friend Mc-
Clellan had left in Washington, and the one
McClellan most flouted and contemned, un
til August, when McClellan's campaign ended
in fiasco, and the movement on Richmond was
abandoned. It was a disaster which deepened
the careworn aspect of that sad countenance,
but still alone in his mighty trial he struggled
on. Halleck and Pope were tried; and the
defeats at Cedar Mountain and the second
battle of Bull Run were the result. Then, at
last, on September 17 McClellan fought and
won the battle of Antietam. It was not so
great a victory, nor did McClellan press Lee
after it had been won, but it could be called a
victory; and Lincoln felt it might serve to in
dicate the moment for which, almost supersti-
tiously, he had been waiting.

About the end of July he had told his cabinet
of his determination to issue the proclamation.
He had told them that he did not desire them
to offer any advice, — he had so much advice!

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

— but that they might make suggestions as to
details. They had been naturally silent. He
had the news from Antietam at the Soldiers'
Home, where he lived in the summer, and driv
ing into Washington on Saturday, September
20, he called his cabinet together. To Stan-
ton's undisguised disgust, he first read to them
from Artemus Ward, on the "Highhanded
Outrage at Utica," had his laugh, as did the
cabinet, "except Stanton, of course," and then,
growing solemn, he read the Proclamation.
It was preliminary only, and did not promise
universal emancipation; he still must save the
Border States. It proclaimed that on Jan
uary 1, 1863, "all persons held as slaves within
any state or designated part of a state, the
people whereof shall then be in rebellion
against the United States, shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever, free"; and that
"the Executive will, on the first day of Jan
uary aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the
states and part of states, if any, in which the

152

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

people thereof respectively shall then be in
rebellion against the United States."

It was all his own. "I must do the best
I can," he said, "and bear the responsibility of
taking the course which I feel I ought to take."
The proclamation was published on September
22.

He had kept his secret well, and the country
was taken by surprise. The act was, though
not wholly or heartily, sustained by the people
and by Congress, though the radical abolition
ists even then were not satisfied; they com
plained that he had been "forced" to do it, or
had "drifted with events," or some such thing.

Then came the fall elections, with such Re
publican losses in the Northern States that
Congress would have been lost to the adminis
tration, had it not been for gains in the West
and in the Border States, and the prospect
deepened in gloom with the approach of win
ter. As a result of these reverses at the polls
— so discouraging that Greeley, with his un-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

erring instinct for the wrong thing, was favour
ing foreign intervention — there were dissen
sions in the cabinet and the party, and these led
Seward to tender his resignation. Lincoln
held it until he could secure also the resignation
of Chase, and then remarking, "Now I can ride;
I have a pumpkin in each end of my bag," he
got both secretaries to reconsider and with
draw their resignations, and avoided a cabinet
crisis.

On Congress he once more urged his old
policy of gradual compensated emancipation.
"Fellow citizens," he wrote, "we cannot escape
history. We of this Congress and this admin
istration shall be remembered in spite of our
selves. No personal significance or insignifi
cance can spare one or another of us. The
fiery trial through which we pass will light
us down, in honour or dishonour, to the latest
generation. We say we are for the Union.
The world will not forget that we say this.
We know how to save the Union. The world
knows we know how to save it. We — even

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

we here — hold the power and bear the responsi
bility. In giving freedom to the slave, we as
sure freedom to the free — honourable alike in
what we give and what we preserve. We shall
nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope
of earth. Other means may succeed; this
could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful,
generous, just — a way which, if followed, the
world will forever applaud, and God must for
ever bless."

But they were not to be persuaded. And the
lonely man in the White House, with eyes more
deeply sunken, bronzed face ashen and deeply
furrowed, tall form bent, went about his duty,
asking help nor counsel of any one. "I need
successes more than I need sympathy," he said.

On New Year's Day, 1863, after the great
public reception was over, Lincoln, in the mid
dle of the afternoon, signed the final Proclama
tion of Emancipation. His hand was swollen
from shaking the hands of the long line that
had passed through the East Room, and he
remarked to Seward, when he had dipped his

155

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

pen and was holding it over the broad sheet
spread out before him on the cabinet table:
"If they find my hand trembled, they will say,
'he had some compunction.' But, anyway, it
is going to be done!" Then slowly and care
fully he wrote his name. "If my name is ever
remembered," he said, "it will be for this act,
and my whole soul is in it."

If the radical abolitionists could still find
cause for complaint in the fact that he had
signed it in the afternoon instead of the morn
ing, and if the country could divide over the
constitutionality of the measure and resume the
ridicule and abuse which are the right of the
Republic, — for many dreary, anxious months
were to elapse before events justified the act,
—it was well received by the people, if not by
the government, of England. The sailing of
the privateer Alabama, which the British gov
ernment permitted or did not prevent, not
withstanding American protests, proved al
most, if not quite, as serious as the earlier in
cident of the Trent, and strained the feeling

156

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

between the two countries ; and the embarrass
ment at their own failure did not improve the
temper of the British ministers. The govern
ment might perhaps have recognised the Con
federacy if it could have found excuse, and the
starving cotton-mill workers in Lancashire,
idle because of the Northern blockade of
Southern ports, could have furnished the ex
cuse. But English Radicalism, led by Cob-
den and Bright, knew that the cause which
Lincoln was representing was their cause, —
the cause of the people, and of labour through
out the world; and it was a splendid and in
spiring proof of the solidarity of labour that
six thousand men at Manchester sent the Presi
dent an address congratulating and encourag
ing him. In his grateful acknowledgment,
Lincoln referred to the act of the men of Lan
cashire as, under the circumstances of their
suffering, "an instance of Christian heroism
which had not been surpassed in any age or in
any country." Similar meetings were held in
London and Sheffield, and a notable one by

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the Trades Unions at St. James's Hall in
March

Thus, if governments and principalities and
powers and the great and strong and power
ful of the earth were sneering in opposition, the
great heart of the people everywhere was with
him who bore their cause so bravely; and when,
a few years later, those British mechanics gave
their pennies to erect a modest monument to
his memory, they erected, perhaps, the most
beautiful and significant memorial ever given
him, when they inscribed on it his name as a
"Lover of Humanity."

158

V

AFTER Antietam, Lincoln came as near to
losing patience with McClellan as he ever came
with any one; but he wrote him another kind
letter about what he considerately called "over-
cautiousness," and finally, long after every one
had lost faith, relieved him of his command and
devolved it on Burnside. The result was an
other failure. On December 13, 1862, Lee
defeated Burnside at Fredericksburg. All
day Lincoln had been in the telegraph office, in
dressing-gown and slippers, forgetting even to
eat, and, when at night the dreadful news came,
— more than ten thousand dead and wounded,
— he was close on despair: "If there is any
man out of perdition who suffers more than I
do," he said, "I pity him."

Then on January 26, 1863, he put "Fight
ing Joe" Hooker in Burnside's place, writing
him: "I have heard, in such way as to believe

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

it, of your recently saying that both the army
and the government need a dictator. Of
course, it was not for this, hut in spite of it,
that I have given you the command. Only
those generals who gain successes can set up as
dictators. What I now ask of you is military
success, and I will risk the dictatorship."
Hooker read the letter with tears in his eyes.
But that splendid army, too, was to meet de
feat. Hooker, though a good lieutenant, was
a poor chief, and when, May 2, he met Lee at
Chancellorsville, "though the Federals fought
like devils," he was beaten in a bloody battle.
When the wires bore the news to Lincoln, his
face went ghastly grey, and, with hands clasped
behind his back, he paced the floor, saying pite-
ously : "My God ! My God ! What will the
country say! What will the country say!"

But he put all this behind him, and fixed his
sad eyes, sinking deeper and deeper into their
caverns, on the future. In the telegraph office
he began to ask: "Where's Meade? What's
the Fifth Corps doing?" And when Hooker,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

angry with Halleck, resigned, he appointed
Meade in his place. On July 1 the armies of
Meade and Lee grappled in a death struggle
at Gettysburg. Those three terrible days Lin
coln was in the telegraph office, anxiously lean
ing over the shoulder of the operator who re
ceived the story, — Cemetery Ridge, Little
Round Top, Gulp's Hill, and, at last, the mag
nificent, forlorn charge of Pickett. Then his
hopes rose. He knew that Meade had won a
notable victory. And yet Meade, too, like
McClellan after Antietam, failed to pursue,
and Lee got away across the Potomac. Lin
coln felt this failure deeply. He had always
believed that, if Lee crossed the Potomac, his
army could be destroyed and the war ended.
Now the failure to reap all the fruits of the
noble victory, bought at such an awful price
of human life, would indefinitely prolong the
war.

But, when he received Grant's despatch an
nouncing the fall of Vicksburg, his spirits rose
with the nation's spirits, and he issued a

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

proclamation, one of that series he wrote, in
the solemn style of the old prophets, often in
sorrow appointing days of "fasting and
prayer," now for the second time, in gladness,
naming August 6 as "a day for National
Thanksgiving, praise and prayer."

These victories, in the East and in the West,
falling by a striking coincidence on the day
in the spirit of which the war was being car
ried on, brought him encouragement when he
was in need of encouragement. The times had
been full of embarrassment; volunteer enlist
ments had ceased, he had been obliged to re
sort to the hateful draft, and this, in July, had
brought on riots in New York. Then there
were the "Copperheads," and the "Knights of
the Golden Circle," with their secret oaths, and
Vallandigham, court-martialed for treason and
sentenced to imprisonment. Lincoln,

"slow to smite and swift to spare,"

was not much concerned over the Copperheads,
and he disposed of all the arguments about

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Vallandigham by saying, "Must I shoot a
simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while
I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who
induces him to desert?" And then (with a
humorous chuckle, no doubt) he modified the
sentence, and ordered Vallandigham to be con
ducted within the Confederate lines.

But Gettysburg and Vicksburg turned the
tide; and in good spirits he summed up the
situation in a letter to friends in Springfield,
which must have sounded pleasantly familiar
to the old neighbours he would have liked so
much to visit once more : "The signs look bet
ter. The Father of Waters rolls unvexed to
the sea. ... 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. . . . 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.
. . . Still, let us not be oversanguine of a
speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

let us diligently apply the means, never doubt
ing that a just God, in his own good time, will
give us the rightful result."

The letter, passing suddenly from gay to
grave, was characteristic. He was not always
sad. Not a day passed, not the darkest hour,
that he did not have his joke or tell his story.
This habit distressed the literal Seward, the
irascible Stanton, and others; and yet when
Congressman Ashley said severely, "Mr. Presi
dent, I didn't come in here this morning to
hear stories: it is too serious," the light died out
of the sensitive face as he said, "If it were not
for this occasional vent, I should die." He
liked, as we have seen, the humour of Artemus
Ward, of Orpheus C. Kerr, and of "Petroleum
V. Nasby," though he was not a great reader.
Herndon says he "read less and thought more
than any man who ever lived." But he had
favourites, — Burns, whose point of view was
like his own, and Byron and Bacon. The
lines, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal
be proud?" he had loved ever since they had

164

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

been associated in his mind with Anne Rut-
ledge, and he liked to recite Shakespeare,
though in his writings he quoted little. He
was fond of the theatre, and sometimes went
to the play, sometimes to concerts. He was
delighted with the acting of James H.
Hackett, and wrote him, after a friendliness
had sprung up between them: "For one of
my age I have seen very little of the drama.
I think nothing equals Macbeth; it is wonder
ful." When the letter got into print, and cer
tain of the elect sneered at him, he wrote:
"Those comments constitute a fair specimen
of what has occurred to me through life. I
have endured a great deal of ridicule without
much malice; and have received a great deal
of kindness not quite free from ridicule. I am
used to it."

As he went about the White House, in the
telegraph office, out at the Soldiers' Home,
even on trips to headquarters at the front, Tad
was usually with him. He would sit in his lap
or hang on his chair even while the President re-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ceived important callers, and we have intimate
pictures of him, late in the evening, when, worn
by the trials each day brought in abundance,
he would lift the sleepy boy in his great arms
and bear him off to bed. "All well, including
Tad's pony and the goats," he wired Mrs. Lin
coln at Manchester, Vermont, and later he
found time to send this intelligence: "Tell
dear Tad poor Nanny goat is lost. . . . The
day you left Nanny was found resting herself
and chewing her little cud on the middle of
Tad's bed, but now she's gone." With this
parental love there was the parental concern,
and in him there was an occult strain that ex
pressed itself in little superstitions. He was,
for instance, curiously affected by dreams,
which at times became portents and omens to
him. Thus in June, 1863, he wired to Mrs.
Lincoln at Philadelphia: "Think you had
better put Tad's pistol away. I had an ugly
dream about him." The tremendous strain
was wearing on his nerves. His health had
suffered ; under his mighty burden he was tired,

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

and he slept badly, especially at the White
House. Because of the callers — who of course
asked "only a minute" of his time, which meant,
as he explained, that, if he could hear and
grant the request in that time, a minute would
suffice — and because of the long weary nights
in the War Office, hanging intently on the
next click of the telegraph, regular hours were
impossible. He ate little, — a glass of milk and
biscuit or some fruit at luncheon; and though
he dined at six, as he told Mrs. Stowe, he "just
browsed round a little now and then."

Much of his time was spent in the telegraph
office. There, when he was not looking over
despatches or writing them, or studying war
maps, he would chat with the operators, or
perhaps only lean back in his chair, with his
long legs stretched to a table, and gaze moodily
out into Pennsylvania Avenue. The soldiers
almost individually he had on his heart with a
love that was personal. The long list of the
telegrams he sent from that office are but a
beautiful repetition of pardon and forgive-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ness. One finds orders to commanders in the
field to postpone the executions of death sen
tences pronounced on deserters, — precious
fruits of that day's audience at the White
House. He knew how those boys at the front
suffered from homesickness. He had, indeed,
at his own heart, all his life, a pain not unlike
nostalgia, — the pain that comes of the knowl
edge of life and of the suffering men make for
their brothers in the world, a pain that filled
him with a vast and tender pity. "Will you
please hurry off the above? To-morrow is the
day of execution," he frequently wrote to
Major Eckert in transmitting such despatches.
And he took infinite pains to seek out, in all
those vast armies, some hapless individual of
whom he had imperfectly heard. "If there is

a man by the name of K under sentence to

be shot, please suspend execution until further
orders, and send record," he wired to Meade,
and similarly to other generals.

"But that does not pardon my boy," a father
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

said to him one day, in disappointment at what
seemed to him a mere postponement.

"My dear man," Lincoln replied, "do you
suppose I will ever give orders for your boy's
execution?"

He was constantly visiting the hospitals, and
just a week before his assassination, as he was
about to enter a ward occupied by sick and
wounded prisoners, the attendant said, "Mr.
President, you won't want to go in there : they
are only rebels." He laid his hand on the at
tendant's shoulder, and said, "You mean Con
federates'3 and went on in. Such was the more
than paternal love and tenderness that brooded
in his great heart. No wonder the soldiers
called him "Father Abraham," and the South,
in after years, learned that it had lost its best
friend.

Thus, through trial and sorrow and disap
pointment, under the most tremendous respon
sibility that ever weighted a leader, he came
to that great character which made him wholly

169

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

and completely a Man. They sneered at him
for his lack of education, and yet he might
have been said to be almost perfectly educated.
Certainly he was cultured ; for had he not wis
dom, pity, love, humour, shrewdness, and a
rarely sympathetic imagination, that enabled
him to put himself in every other man's place?
These qualities, with what is denoted by the
phrase "common sense," though in him, surely,
it was rather an uncommon sense, combined in
perfect equilibrium to make him the ideal
American. He came to fullest expression,
perhaps, in the beautiful address at the dedica
tion of the National Cemetery on the battle
field of Gettysburg, November 19, 1863. Ed
ward Everett delivered the formal oration, and
then Lincoln, having been asked to make a
"few appropriate remarks," arose, and "in an
unconscious and absorbed manner" slowly put
on his spectacles and read the immortal words.
Those who heard were disappointed. Seward
and others thought he had not proved equal to
the occasion, and were glad that Everett had

170

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

been there to save the day. Everett's ora
tion is neglected, if not forgotten, but literature
will imperishably preserve these noble lines: —
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the prop
osition that all men are created equal. Now
we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met upon a great battlefield of that war. We
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as
a final resting place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedi
cate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow
this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here, have consecrated it far
above our poor power to add or detract. The
world will little note, nor long remember, what
we say here ; but it can never forget what they
did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedi
cated to the great task remaining before us;
—that from these honoured dead, we take in
creased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion; — that
we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain, that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The tide had turned, but more than eighteen
weary months were to pass before it would be
at the flood of victory. Lincoln was spending
anxious hours in the War Office, his attention
just then focussed on the maps of south-east
ern Tennessee. He was trying to force Burn-
side to unite with Rosecrans, and move on
Bragg. Burnside got to Knoxville and
halted. On September 19, without waiting
longer, Rosecrans had to give battle, and the
armies clashed stubbornly on the field of Chick-

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

amauga. After two days of fiercest fighting,
Rosecrans withdrew, and the battle would have
been a Confederate victory but for Thomas,
who held the Federal left and earned his name
of "The Rock of Chickamauga." Thomas
covered Rosecrans's withdrawal to Chatta
nooga, where, though demoralised, he found he
had not been so badly worsted as he had
thought. Lincoln telegraphed to him: "Be
of good cheer, we have unstinted confidence in
you. . . . We shall do our utmost to assist
you." And he did his utmost. He pricked
Burnside forward, ordered Sherman up, and,
when Rosecrans's alarms came to him at the
Soldiers' Home, he rode to Washington by
moonlight, and there in the War Office was
devised the remarkable plan of transporting
by rail the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps under
Hooker. In twelve days these veterans from
the Army of the Potomac were at Chattanooga.
Wisest act of all, he put Thomas in Rose
crans's place, and Grant in command of the
military division of the Mississippi. Grant

173

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

came, and, with Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan,
and Hooker under him, on November 24 and
25 fought and won the battles of Lookout
Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Thus East
Tennessee was cleared of Confederate occu
pation, and its loyal inhabitants freed from
their long thraldom. The President had good
reason now to issue his third proclamation of
National Thanksgiving. The document, in its
high and solemn style, breathes his own spirit :
"No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any
mortal hand worked out these great things.
They are the gracious gifts of the most high
God, who, while dealing with us in anger for
our sins, hath, nevertheless, remembered
mercy." Nor could his pity forget "all those
who have become widows, orphans, mourners
or sufferers in this lamentable civil strife."

Meade, no nearer Richmond than ever, had
gone into winter quarters, and now for a while
Lincoln was to be burdened more with politics
than with war. On December 8, 1863, he sent
to Congress his third annual message, which

174

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

surprised every one by its "Proclamation of
Amnesty." The proposed amnesty, offered
in his own conciliatory spirit, was to be em
braced on taking an oath to "support, protect
and defend" the Constitution and the Union.
At first the proclamation was received in good
temper, but soon this changed. The politi
cians were jealous of the legislative preroga
tive, and were incapable of the forgiving spirit
of Lincoln. They still hated the "rebels/' as
they called the Southerners who were trying
so hard to secede, though Lincoln seldom called
them that. And even those who could put
away revenge felt that it was unsafe to restore
to the Southerners all rights of citizenship
upon mere protestation of loyalty. The ques
tion, too, was involved in many difficulties,
among them the granting of suffrage to the
negroes, in which, by the way, if at all, Lin
coln believed only to a limited extent. Con
gress took up the subject in fiery spirit, and
eventually passed a bill which was much more
exacting than the President's, and beyond that

175

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

retained in the power of Congress the whole
execution of the policy of reconstruction. Of |
this bill Lincoln could not approve, and it thus
may be said to have inaugurated that unfor
tunate policy which inflamed the wounds al
ready made, and which, conceived in hatred,
under the great law of moral equivalents pro
duced its ugly results of hatred long after he
was gone, — a policy that would have been so
wisely otherwise, had he lived to imbue it with
his great spirit! But in these troubles he had
consolation. At last, in Grant, whom he had
been watching ever since Donelson, he had
found a general. Congress created the grade
of lieutenant-general, — a rank not held by any
one since Washington, save Scott, and then
only by brevet, — and on March 3, 1864, Lin
coln gave Grant his commission and placed
him in command of all the armies. A few days
later Grant arrived in Washington, and these
two Westerners met for the first time. The
President looked at the square jaw, the de
termined face, and knew that he had found his

176

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

man. Grant, his headquarters with the Army
of the Potomac, started on that long and ter
rible campaign which was to end only with
the fall of Richmond. "The particulars of
your plan I neither know nor seek to know,"
Lincoln wrote him; and Grant replied, "Should
my success be less than I desire and expect, the
least I can say is, the fault is not with you."
Strange, comforting words from a general,
especially a general in Virginia ! He gave Lee
battle immediately, and for two days the dread
ful swamps in the Wilderness were the scene
of such carnage that Grant could say, "More
desperate fighting has not been seen on this
continent." From Spottsylvania he wired, "I
propose to fight it out on this line if it takes
all summer." But his despatches were few
and laconic. To Lincoln the waiting in the
War Office for news was sometimes a strain.
"This man doesn't telegraph much," he re
marked. The terrible sacrifice of life sad
dened him, and, after bloody Cold Harbour, a
groan went up from the North ; and yet he sent

m

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Grant word, "Hold on with a bull-dog grip,
and chew and choke as much as possible."
And Grant held on, and, if the country could
not realise it, Lincoln, with Grant before Rich
mond, felt that the end was sure.

For one day, early in July, the President
himself was under fire. Grant had left the
capital uncovered, and Lee detached Early's
cavalry to dash into Maryland and, if possible,
capture Washington. Lew Wallace held him
back, however, at the Monocacy, and saved the
capital and the cause. There were skirmishes
as desperately close as Fort Stevens, four miles
from Lincoln's summer cottage at the Soldiers'
Home, and twice he visited the fortifications
and witnessed the fighting through glasses, his
tall form a conspicuous target for sharp
shooters. An officer was killed within a few
feet of where he stood, and Stanton ordered the
President — rather sharply, it may be suspected
— to remain in Washington. When Early got
closer, his men recognised the tattered flag of
the Sixth Corps, and the veterans Grant had

178

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

sent were there to save Washington. The
crisis was short, but it had been big with dan
ger. On September 3, 1864, came word from
Sherman that " Atlanta is ours, and fairly
won." A month later Sheridan made his ride
to Winchester. Then came Farragut's dar
ing victory in Mobile Bay.

These successes were sorely needed, for with
the approach of the presidential campaign of
1864 the administration seemed to totter. The
news of the fall of Atlanta and of Farragut's
victory came just as the Democrats in conven
tion were declaring the war to be a failure.
Early in the year there had been serious op
position to Lincoln's renomination. Chase
was graceless enough to be an avowed candi
date for the Presidency against the man in
whose cabinet he sat, but Lincoln was indif
ferent. He had a keen insight into the moods
of the public mind, and an almost unerring
instinct as to public opinion, and took little ac
count of the politicians, for he sustained in
timate relations with the people. The differ-

179

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ence with Chase finally sent the Secretary of
the Treasury out of the cabinet, and the Presi
dent appointed William Pitt Fessenden of
Maine to the vacancy. But the President
never cherished ill feeling. When the aged
Chief Justice Taney died, not long after, he
appointed Chase to his place on the Supreme
Court. Many of the radicals in his party were
against him, — Fremont, and Wendell Phillips,
and, of course, Greeley. But William Lloyd
Garrison, Owen Love joy, and Oliver Johnson,
wiser, more practical than the rest, supported
him warmly, though the radicals and some of
the Missouri malcontents held a factional con
vention at Cleveland, May 31, and nominated
Fremont for President.

Lincoln did nothing to bring about his own
renomination, and by the time the Republican
Convention met at Baltimore, June 7, opposi
tion had ceased, and he was renominated, with
Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, for Vice-
President. Lincoln was pleased, of course,
and said to a delegation, come with congratu-

180

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

lations, that he supposed that it had been "con
cluded that it is not best to swap horses while
crossing the river."

But he was to meet heavy opposition. Val-
landigham, from his asylum in Canada, was
running for Governor of Ohio on the Demo
cratic ticket, the cry for peace was going up,
Greeley was writing in his Tribune about "our
bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country,"
and the "prospect of new rivers of human
blood." Lincoln's friends were losing hope,
and Leonard Swett expressed their feeling
when he wrote, "Unless material changes can
be wrought, Lincoln's election is beyond any
possible hope." But, while Lincoln humanly
desired re-election, he would not listen to his
friends when they proposed politicians'
methods of bringing it about. He would not
allow office-holders to influence their em
ployees, he would not use patronage to buy
votes, nor would he stop the draft, but in the
very midst of the campaign approved an order
calling for 500,000 men. "I cannot run the

181

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

political machine," he said. "I have enough
on my hands without that. It is the people's
business — the election is in their hands. If
they turn their backs to the fire and get
scorched in the rear, they'll find they have to
sit on the blister."

The old melancholy settled black upon him.
He felt certain of defeat. On August 23,
1864, he wrote this memorandum: "This
morning, as for some days past, it seems ex
ceedingly probable.that this administration will
not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty
to so co-operate with the President-elect as to
save the Union between the election and the in
auguration, as he will have secured his elec
tion on such ground that he cannot possibly
save it afterward. A. Lincoln." He showed
it to no one, but sealed it and had the cabinet
members sign their names on the envelope.
Then he put it away, — curious evidence of his
utter devotion to duty, on the one hand, and of
the strain of superstition that was in him; for

182

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

in the act there must have been some half -un
conscious effort to propitiate the fates.

And yet, despite abuse and vilification such
as few men have endured in silence, despite
the foolish advice of panic-stricken friends, he
kept his head, and went on, alone, in his own
way. He was accused of prolonging the war
for inscrutable purposes of his own, and, when
a man known as "Colorado Jewett" wrote
Greeley that two ambassadors, representing
Jefferson Davis, were on the Canadian side at
Niagara Falls, ready and willing to negotiate
a peace, Greeley wrote the President an hys
terical letter, urging that representatives be
sent to meet them. Lincoln "just thought" he
would let Greeley "go up and crack that nut
for himself," and promptly appointed him to
negotiate this peace. Greeley for once was
taken aback and demurred, but Lincoln with
keen satisfaction insisted, and Greeley had to
go, — for Lincoln was adamant when once his
purpose was fixed, — and, after days of nego-

183

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

tiations mysterious and secret, the whole thing
fell through, the "representatives of Davis &
Co." had no authority whatever, and Greeley
succeeded, as the wise President had foreseen,
only in making himself ridiculous. The news
papers published the correspondence, though
not all of it. Greeley would not consent to
publication unless elisions were made of items
reflecting on him, and this Lincoln magnan
imously waived, even though the publication
in that form did him an injustice. But the
incident, ridiculous as it was, convinced the
people that there was no such chance of peace
as Greeley and the Democrats contended.

The Democratic Convention, late in August,
met at Chicago, and nominated McClellan for
the Presidency on a peace platform, and his
chances then seemed excellent; but Farragut's
victory in Mobile, the fall of Atlanta, and
Sheridan's ride disposed of their claim that the
war was a failure. Though McClellan re
pudiated this platform declaration, his chances
waned as the campaign advanced, and when

184

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the October elections were over, with their Re
publican gains, Vallandigham defeated in
Ohio, and all that, it was evident that Lincoln's
forebodings had no basis. On the night of
November 8, 1864, he sat in the telegraph
office with his cabinet officers about him, and,
while the returns were coming in, he read at
intervals from Nasby's latest "Letters from
Confederate X Roads." Stanton was indig
nant, and grumbled at the President's trifling.
But the President was serene, and for the mo
ment happy, in the vindication the people had
given him. His mighty faith was justified,
the prayer that was his very habit of thought
had been answered, and his weary eyes at last
saw, not far off, the end of the war.

At two o'clock in the morning, to serenaders
at the White House, he spoke simply: "If I
know my heart, my gratitude is free from any
taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn
the motives of any one opposed to me. It is
no pleasure to me to triumph over any one,
but I give thanks to the Almighty for this

185

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

evidence of the people's resolution to stand by
free government and the rights of humanity."
He had a plurality of 494,567, and received
212 votes in the electoral college to McClellan's
21.

186

VI

AT last, the end was in sight. Grant
was beleaguering Petersburg, Sherman had
marched from Atlanta to the sea, Thomas had
shattered the Confederate army at Nashville,
the stars and bars had been swept from the
ocean. There was in the heart of Lincoln, as
in the heart of every one, an ineffable longing
for peace, but he demanded a "peace worth
winning." "The war," he said in his message
to Congress, "will cease on the part of the
Government whenever it shall have ceased on
the part of those who began it." And he
would never be a party to the re-enslavement
of any of those emancipated by his Proclama
tion: "If the people should, by whatever
mode or means, make it an executive duty to
re-enslave such persons, another and not I
must be their instrument to perform it." He

187

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

urged the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing
slavery, and when, with the assistance of
Democratic votes, the amendment was
adopted, there were cheers and a mighty dem
onstration which Speaker Colfax's gavel could
not silence or abate, the House adjourned in
''honour of this immortal and sublime event,"
and artillery roared its salutes from Capitol
Hill. Then crowds swarmed into the White
House, and Lincoln expressed his gratitude
that "the great job is ended."

All the while the agitation for peace went
on, and finally, as the result of Francis P.
Blair's efforts, early in February the President
went with Seward to Hampton Roads, and
there on board the steamer River Queen met
the Peace Commissioners of the Confederacy,
Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter,
and John A. Campbell. For five hours they
talked, but it came to nothing. Lincoln would
enter into no agreement with "parties in arms
against the Government." He would do noth
ing, say nothing, that might be construed as a

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

recognition of the Confederacy as a treating
power. Hunter found a precedent in the case
of Charles I of England, who had treated
"with the people in arms against him." Lin
coln gazed across the water. "I do not profess
to be posted in history," he said in his dry, in
imitable way; "on all such matters I will turn
you over to Seward. All I distinctly recol
lect about the case of Charles I is that he lost
his head!"

It was perhaps only what Lincoln had ex
pected. And yet, if he brought back from
Hampton Roads nothing tangible, he brought
back the conviction that the Southern cause
was lost, and that the Southerners knew it;
for, reader of men that he was, those sad eyes
had penetrated the masque of pride worn by
the Confederate Commissioners and read the
hopelessness in their hearts. His own heart
was centred on forgiveness, amity, and gener
osity. He feared that the vindictive spirit he
found about him, now when the triumph should
come, would keep alive the ugly hatred the

189

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

war had generated in nearly every breast but
his, This beautiful spirit he breathed into his
second inaugural address, comparable in dig
nity and in literary beauty only to the Gettys
burg address. On the 4th day of March, 1865,
from the east portico of the Capitol, to an audi
ence assembled under conditions far different
from those which had existed four years be
fore, he read the enduring words : "Fondly do
we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondmen's two hundred
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,
and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago,
so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether.*
With malice toward none, with charity for all,
with firmness in the right as God gives us to
see the right, let us strive on to finish the work
we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds;

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

to care for him who shall have borne the battle,
and for his widow and his orphan, — to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and last
ing peace among ourselves and with all na
tions."

About the middle of that month of March,
Lincoln had word from Grant telling him he
was about to close in on Lee and end the war.
Then on the 20th Grant telegraphed: "Can
you not visit City Point for a day or two? I
would like very much to see you, and I think
the rest would do you good." Rest ! For this
weary man! Could it be? "I am afraid," he
had said to some wroman who, taking the hand
that had signed the pardon of her husband
and her son, had gone down on her knees and
spoken of meeting him in heaven, — "I am
afraid with all my troubles I shall never get
to the resting place you speak of." He was
deeply moved. Speed was there, the old
friend, whom the war had separated from him.
It was the close of a hard day, and Speed
remonstrated with him for yielding to such

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

demands upon his sympathies. He had wear
ily half agreed, saying that he was ill, that his
hands and feet were always cold, and that he
ought to be in bed. And yet such scenes as
that through which he had just passed con
soled him, after all. "It is more than one can
often say," he told Speed, "that in doing right,
one has made two people happy in one day."
And so he accepted Grant's invitation.
Mrs. Lincoln and his beloved Tad went with
him; and they all were happy as the River
Queen dropped down the Potomac, and as
cended the James to City Point, where Grant
had his headquarters. While he was there,
Sherman came up from North Carolina, and
with him and Grant the President conferred.
The generals felt that each must fight another
battle to end the war, but Lincoln pleaded for
"no more bloodshed." He was there in touch
with the final movements of the army on that
night of awful thunderstorms which Grant
chose for his last general advance against Lee,
and the moment the news came that the Con-

192

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

federate capital had fallen and that Jefferson
Davis had fled he said, "I want to go to Rich
mond." And so, on the morning of April 4,
with Admiral Porter and little Tad, he went
aboard the River Queen; but obstructions
placed in the James by the Confederates dur
ing the siege deterred them, and, leaving
the steamer, the President went on in the ad
miral's barge. They stopped long enough to
let Tad disembark and gather some spring
flowers from the river-banks, and then went on
to Richmond.

Thus, after four years of war, with Tad and
the admiral and his little escort of sailors,
simply, on foot, he entered the abandoned
capital. The city was in utter demoralisation,
parts of it in flames, fired by the flying Con
federates; but he walked in safety, bringing
with him not the vengeance of a conqueror,
but the love of a liberator. The negroes
flocked to see him, greeting him with supersti
tious reverence, bursting into tears, shouting
veritable hosannas. "Mars' Lincoln he walk

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

de yearf lak de Lo'd!" shouted one; and an
other, falling on his knees to kiss his feet, cried,
"Bress de Lo'd, dere is de great Messiah!"
And there was no more significant moment,
perhaps, in all history than that which recog
nised political liberty in America, when an
aged negro, baring his white wool, made rever
ent obeisance, and Lincoln in acknowledgment
lifted his high hat.

The guard rescued him, however, from the
crowd, and conducted him to the Confederate
Mansion, the late residence of Jefferson Davis.
He remained in Richmond two days, discuss
ing the details of the restoration of Federal
authority. His counsel was all for kindness,
forgiveness. "Once get them to ploughing,"
he said to Porter, "and gathering in their own
little crops, eating popcorn at their own fire
sides, and you can't get them to shoulder a
musket again for half a century." To the
military governor he said, "Let them down
easy." And when, at Libby Prison, some one
declared that Jefferson Davis ought to be

194

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

hanged, he said, "Judge not, that ye be not
judged." It was in this temper, the expres
sion of a spiritual development far beyond
that of any of his contemporaries, a develop
ment that centuries hence will still be in ad
vance of the world of men, that he was already
preparing to "bind up the nation's wounds."
He went back to City Point, and thence, on
hearing that Seward had been injured by be
ing thrown from his carriage, he hastened on
to Washington. There he heard of Lee's sur
render at Appomattox. Two days later, to a
large crowd at the White House, he delivered
a carefully prepared address on the rehabilita
tion of the Southern States. In this speech
he outlined the policy of reconstruction he in
tended to pursue, and had already applied in
the case of Louisiana. He had been bitterly
criticised, as usual. The address was full of
his pungent personality, marked by his quaint
and trenchant style. "Concede," he said,
"that the new government of Louisiana is only,
to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl,

195

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the
egg than by smashing it." It was the last
speech he ever made.

It was little Tad who said that his father had
never been happy since they came to Washing
ton. He had, indeed, under that awful
burden, grown rapidly old, his laughter had
failed, he had become more and more detached,
more abstracted, his grey eyes were veiled, as
though his physical, like his spiritual, vision
were turned inward. Dreadful dreams had
haunted him. On the night of the 13th he had
one which oppressed him: he "was in a singular
and indescribable vessel — moving toward a
dark and indefinite shore." In the morning
— it was Good Friday, April 14, the fourth
anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter
— he told this dream to his cabinet, then turned
to business. Grant was present, having come
up from Appomattox. They wished to know
about Sherman's movements.

But now, at last, he was happy, sharing with
the people he loved the gladness that came with

196

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the end of the war. The sadness in his face
was giving way to an expression of lofty seren
ity, of sweet and quiet joy. That day he was
especially cheerful. The nation in its noisy
American way, with bands and bonfires and
bells, with illuminations and resolutions and
speeches, was celebrating the victory down in
Charleston harbour. Henry Ward Beecher
was delivering the oration at the ceremony of
raising the Union flag once more over black
ened Sumter. All Washington was celebrat
ing, the draft had been suspended, Grant was
in town, the war was over ; and in the cabinet
Lincoln would hear of nothing but amnesty,
reconciliation, fraternal love. There were no
more "rebels," he said: they were "our fellow-
citizens."

He drove out with Mrs. Lincoln in the soft
sunshine of the spring day. The trees were
blossoming; the lilacs, which Walt Whitman
has forever associated with the fragrant mem
ory of him, were in bloom, and, as they drove
together, he spoke of the future. He had

197

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

saved a little money during his Presidency,
they would save a little more, go back to
Springfield, and he would practise law again.
And yet to the wife by his side this joy was
portentous. He had been like this, she re
membered, just before Willie died.

They drove back to the White House in the
waning afternoon, and, seeing some old friends
from Illinois on the lawn, he called to them.
Richard Oglesby was among them, and they
went to the President's office, where he read
to them some book of humour, — John Phoenix,
perhaps, — and laughed and loitered, and was
late to dinner. For the evening Mrs. Lincoln
had arranged a theatre party, with General
and Mrs. Grant as her guests. They were
going to Ford's Theatre, to see Laura Keene
play in Our American Cousin. The manager
of the theatre, with an eye to business, had
advertised the fact that "The President and
his Lady" and "The Hero of Appomattox and
Mrs. Grant" would be there; and, when Stan-
ton learned of it, he tried to dissuade them, for

198

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the secret service had heard rumours of threat
ened assassination. He was so vigorous that
he succeeded with Grant, who withdrew his
acceptance of the invitation, and left for Bur
lington, New Jersey, to see his daughter
Nellie. But Lincoln laughed at Stanton.
The party was reorganised. He took with
him Major Rathbone, "because Stanton in
sists upon having some one to protect me."
Miss Harris, the daughter of a New York
senator, was asked, and about nine o'clock the
party entered the presidential box at the
theatre. The holiday mood was on him still.
He enjoyed the performance with that keen
relish the play always afforded him, and
laughed and joked and was delightful.

At twenty minutes after ten o'clock there
was a pistol-shot. Some thought, in the mo
ment's flash, that it was all part of the play.
And then two men were struggling in the
President's box. There was the sickness of
the confusion of tragedy, and a woman's voice
shrieking : —

199

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

"He has killed the President!"

A man leaped from the box, caught his spur
in the American flag that draped it, and then,
rising from the stage where he had heavily
fallen, he brandished a dagger, cried out with
awful theatricalism, "Sic semper tyrannis!"
and, stalking lamely, crossed the stage and
disappeared. Then horror and chaos in the
theatre and in the city.

They bore the President from the theatre,
and some lodger, leaving a house just across
the street, said, "Take him up to my room."
Thither they bore him, to the lodger's bed, and
watched all the night through. The bullet,
entering at the back of the head, had passed
through his brain. He never was conscious
any more, and in the morning, at twenty-two
minutes after seven o'clock, while the crowds
were straining their eyes on the bulletins and
the dawn had come after the blackest and most
horrid night Washington had ever known, he
died; and Stanton, at his bedside, said, —

200

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

"Now he belongs to the ages."

All that night the city had been in uproar,
drums beating the long roll, soldiers ransack
ing everywhere. Seward had been almost
mortally stabbed. There were awful rumours
that Vice-President Johnson was killed, and
Grant and Stanton. The city shuddered with
the fear of some vast, unknown conspiracy.
The blow had been struck so suddenly, no effi
cient pursuit had been made. But, as the day
progressed, it was learned that the plot had
succeeded only in the President's case. Se
ward was desperately wounded, but could re
cover. The others were safe. Grant was
hastening back from New Jersey. Johnson
had taken the oath, and was President.

The assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a
melodramatic actor, one in most ways un
worthy of the great name he bore. He was
a fanatic in the Southern cause, and long, it
seemed, cherished the plot he had at last so
successfully executed that he struck down the

201

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

dearest life in America. At the stage door of
the theatre he had had a horse in waiting, and
had ridden off into Maryland.

All over the North, that next day, the peo
ple were dumb with grief and rage. The il
luminations, the festoons, the arches, the Stars
and Stripes with which they had decorated
whole towns, mocked them now, and they took
them down or hid them away under the black
of their mourning. Men met in the street, and
stood mute, gazing at each other with tears
running down their cheeks, and even those who
had hated and maligned and opposed him un
derstood him now in the transfiguration
through which his last sacrifice revealed him.
They folded the body of Abraham Lincoln in
the flag, and bore it from that lodging-house
in Tenth Street to the White House, and after
that to the Capitol, where it lay in state. Then
began that long, strange funeral procession
homeward, when it was borne back over the
very route he had taken in 1861 when he went
to Washington to take up his task, with pauses

202

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

and funeral marches and lyings in state in
city and capital. Night, storm, and rain made
no difference to the crowds. At New York,
when the bells tolled midnight, a German
chorus began to sing the Integer Vitae; and,
as the train sped through the wide country,
little groups of farmers could be seen, dim
figures in the night, watching it sweep by, wav
ing lanterns in sad farewell.

Long before the procession ended, the as
sassin, at bay in a barn in Virginia, had been
shot down by a soldier, a fanatic in the Union
cause, Boston Corbett. But, in the face of
Abraham Lincoln, the sweeping thousands
that looked upon it as it was slowly borne
homeward through the States saw forgiveness
and peace. He was buried May 4, 1865, with
stately civil and military ceremonies, in Oak
Ridge Cemetery at Springfield.

His beautiful dream was not to be.
Shrewd, logical realist though he was, never
theless he was essentially an idealist, and his

203

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ideal was too high, too far. Mutual forgive
ness, immediate reconciliation, brotherly love,
were not for his contemporaries, and their
hatred bore its inevitable fruit in the bitter
days of reconstruction that followed. Because
they could not understand him, the men of his
time reviled and ridiculed him, measured him
by the standards with which they measured
themselves, and, in judging him, judged only
themselves. Themselves impractical, they
thought him impractical who was the most
practical of men; thought him ignorant who
was the wisest of men; sneered at him as un
educated, — him on whom degrees and doctors'
hoods would have appeared pinchbeck and
ridiculous ! And his fate, in life, in death, was
the lonely fate — and the immortal glory of all
the prophets and saviours of the world. As
the scenes in the great war receded, as the per
spective lengthened and passions cooled, men
came to see how great, how mighty, how orig
inal he was. As slowly they grew in the

204

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

national spirit he breathed into them, as man
kind in its upward striving reached toward
his stature, they began to recognise in him not
only the first, but the ideal American, realising
in his life all that America is and hopes and
dreams. And more and more, as time goes
on, he grows upon the mind of the world. The
figure of Washington, the first of American
heroes, has taken on the cold and classic isola
tion of a marble statue. But Lincoln, even
though inevitable legend has enveloped him in
its refracting atmosphere, remains dearly
human, and the common man may look upon
his sad and homely face and find in it that
quality of character which causes him to re
vere and love him as a familiar friend, one of
the common people whom, as he once humor
ously said, God must have loved "because he
made so many of them." Thus he remains
close to the heart, just as if he had lived on
through the years, essentially and forever
human, not alone the possession of our own

205

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

people, but of all people ; not of a nation only,
but of the whole human brotherhood he loved
with such perfect devotion, and of that human
ity to which he gave his life.

206

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The books, sketches, essays, and poems on Lin
coln, as was intimated in the Preface, are already
legion. Besides, his life is written all over and
through the history of our nation during the critical
period to which slavery brought it. It would be
impossible to name them all, perhaps it would be
impracticable to read them all. Historical works
dealing with his times and with the war, all of which
must certainly take him into account, are therefore
omitted, together with much else of interest. But
the following titles have been selected as being, it is
thought, the leading Lives and books bearing directly
on his career. Those considered most valuable are
marked with an asterisk.

I. * LIVES AND SPEECHES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
AND HANNIBAL HAMLIN. By William Dean
Howells and John L. Hayes. (Columbus, Ohio,
1860: Follett, Foster & Co.)

II. POLITICAL DEBATES BETWEEN HON. ABRAHAM
LINCOLN AND HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, IN THE
CELEBRATED CAMPAIGN OF 1858, IN ILLINOIS, ETC.
(Columbus, Ohio, 1860: Follett, Foster & Co.)

207

BIBLIOGRAPHY

III. LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ETC. By Joseph
H. Barrett. (Cincinnati, 1865: Moore, Wilstach
& Baldwin.)

IV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, HIS LIFE AND PUBLIC
SERVICES. By Phrebe A. C. Hanaford. (Boston,
1865 :B. B. Russell & Co.)

V. THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF ABRAHAM
LINCOLN, ETC. By Henry J. Raymond. (New
York, 1865: Derby & Miller.)

VI. THE HISTORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE
OVERTHROW OF SLAVERY. By Isaac N. Arnold.
(Chicago, 1866: Clarke & Co.)

VII. * Six MONTHS AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ETC. By Francis B. Car
penter. (New York, 1866: Kurd & Houghton.)

VIII. * LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By J. G.
Holland. (Springfield, Mass., 1866: C. Bill.)

IX. * THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, FROM HIS
BIRTH TO HIS INAUGURATION AS PRESIDENT. By
Ward H. Lamon. (Boston, 1872: J. R. Osgood
&Co.)

X. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ABOLITION OF
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. By Charles G.
Leland. (New York, 1879: G. P. Putnam's
Sons.)

208

BIBLIOGRAPHY

XI. * REMINISCENCES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN BY
DISTINGUISHED MEN OF HIS TIME. Edited by
Allan Thorndike Rice. (New York, 1886: North
American Publishing Co.)

XII. * ABRAHAM LINCOLN, A HISTORY. By John
C. Nicolay and John Hay. (New York, 1890:
The Century Company.)

XIII. * HERNDON'S LINCOLN, THE TRUE STORY OF
A GREAT LIFE, ETC. By William H. Herndon and
Jesse W. Weik. (Chicago, 1889: Belford, Clarke
& Co.) Same, with Emendations. (New York,
1892: D. Appleton & Co.)

XIV. LIFE ON THE CIRCUIT WITH LINCOLN, ETC.
By Henry C. Whitney. (Boston, 1892: Estes &
Lauriat.)

XV. * ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By John T. Morse,
Jr. (Boston and New York, 1893: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.)

XVI. * COMPLETE WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Edited by John C. Nicolay and John Hay. (New
York, 1894: The Century Company.)

XVII. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE DOWNFALL OF
AMERICAN SLAVERY. By Noah Brooks. (New
York, 1894: G. P. Putnam's Sons.)

209

BIBLIOGRAPHY

XVIII. * ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE
PEOPLE. By Norman Hapgood. (New York,
1899: The Macmillan Company.)

XIX. * THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By Ida
M. Tarbell. (New York, 1900 : The Doubleday
& McClure Co.)

XX. * LINCOLN, THE LAWYER. By Frederick
Trevor Hill. (New York, 1906: The Century
Company.)

XXI. * LINCOLN, MASTER OF MEN, A STUDY OF
CHARACTER. By Alonzo Rothschild. (Boston
and New York, 1906: Hough ton, Mifflin & Co.)

XXII. * LINCOLN IN THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE.
By David Homer Bates. (New York, 1907: The
Century Company.)

XXIII. * ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By Henry Bryan
Binns. (London: J. M. Dent & Co.; New York,
1907 :E. P. Dutton&Co.)

XXIV. * THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES OF
1858. Volume I. of Lincoln Series; Collections
of the Illinois State Historical Library, Vol. III.
Edited by Edwin Erie Sparks. (Springfield,
Illinois, 1908.)

210

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