BUSINESS REVERSES.—LINCOLN FOR THE SECOND TIME A CANDIDATE FOR THE
LEGISLATURE.—IS ELECTED.
Between his duties as deputy surveyor and postmaster, Lincoln had little
leisure for the store, and its management passed into the hands of
Berry. The stock of groceries was on the wane. The numerous obligations
of the firm were maturing, with no money to meet them. Both members of
the firm, in the face of such obstacles, lost courage; and when, early
in 1834, Alexander and William Trent asked if the store was for sale, an
affirmative answer was eagerly given. A price was agreed upon, and the
sale was made. Now, neither Alexander Trent nor his brother had any
money; but as Berry and Lincoln had bought without money, it seemed only
fair that they should be willing to sell on the same terms. Accordingly
the notes of the Trent brothers were accepted for the purchase price,
and the store was turned over to the new owners. But about the time
their notes fell due the Trent brothers disappeared. The few groceries
in the store were seized by creditors, and the doors were closed, never
to be opened again.
Misfortunes now crowded upon Lincoln. His late partner, Berry, soon
reached the end of his wild career, and one morning a farmer from the
Rock Creek neighborhood drove into New Salem with the news that he was
dead.
The appalling debt which had accumulated was thrown upon Lincoln’s
shoulders. It was then too common a fashion among men who became deluged
in debt to “clear out,” in the expressive language of the pioneer, as
the Trents had done; but this was not Lincoln’s way. He quietly settled
down among the men he owed, and promised to pay them. For fifteen years
he carried this burden—a load which he cheerfully and manfully bore, but
one so heavy that he habitually spoke of it as the “national debt.”
Talking once of it to a friend, Lincoln said: “That debt was the
greatest obstacle I have ever met in life. I had no way of speculating,
and could not earn money except by labor; and to earn by labor eleven
hundred dollars, besides my living, seemed the work of a lifetime. There
was, however, but one way. I went to the creditors, and told them that
if they would let me alone, I would give them all I could earn over my
living, as fast as I could earn it.” As late as 1848, so we are informed
by Mr. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln, then a member of Congress, sent home money,
saved from his salary, to be applied on these obligations. All the
notes, with interest at the high rates then prevailing, were at last
paid.
[Illustration:
FACSIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY LINCOLN WHILE POSTMASTER AT NEW
SALEM.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
From the collection of Mr. C. F. Gunther of Chicago.
]
With a single exception, Lincoln’s creditors seem to have been lenient.
One of the notes given by him came into the hands of a Mr. Van Bergen,
who, when it fell due, brought suit. The amount of the judgment was more
than Lincoln could pay, and his personal effects were levied upon. These
consisted of his horse, saddle and bridle, and surveying instruments.
James Short, a well-to-do farmer living on Sand Ridge, a few miles north
of New Salem, heard of the trouble which had befallen his young friend.
Without advising Lincoln of his plans, he attended the sale, bought in
the horse and surveying instruments for one hundred and twenty dollars,
and turned them over to their former owner. By this kind act of “Uncle
Jimmy,” the young surveyor was enabled to continue his business.
[Illustration:
JOHN CALHOUN, UNDER WHOM LINCOLN LEARNED SURVEYING.
From a steel engraving in the possession of R. W. Diller, Springfield,
Illinois. John Calhoun was born in Boston, Massachusetts, October
14, 1806. In 1830 he removed to Springfield, Illinois, and after
serving in the Black Hawk War was appointed surveyor of Sangamon
County. He was a Democratic Representative in 1838; Democratic
presidential elector in 1844; candidate for Governor before the
Democratic State Convention in 1846; Mayor of Springfield in 1849,
1850, and 1851. In 1854, President Pierce appointed him
Surveyor-General of Kansas, and he became conspicuous in Kansas
politics. He was president of the Lecompton Convention. He died at
St. Joseph, Missouri, October 25, 1859. Mr. Frederick Hawn, who was
his boyhood friend, and afterward married a sister of Calhoun’s
wife, is now living at Leavenworth, Kansas, at the age of
eighty-five years. In an interesting letter to the writer he says:
“It has been related that Calhoun induced Lincoln to study surveying
in order to become his deputy. Presuming that he was ready to
graduate and receive his commission, he called on Calhoun, then
living with his father-in-law, Seth R. Cutter, on Upper Lick Creek.
After the interview was concluded, Mr. Lincoln, about to depart,
remarked: ‘Calhoun, I am entirely unable to repay you for your
generosity at present. All that I have you see on me, except a
quarter of a dollar in my pocket.’ This is a family tradition.
However, my wife, then a miss of sixteen, says, while I am writing
this sketch, that she distinctly remembers this interview. After
Lincoln was gone she says she and her sister, Mrs. Calhoun,
commenced making jocular remarks about his uncanny appearance, in
the presence of Calhoun, to which in substance he made this
rejoinder: ‘For all that, he is no common man.’ My wife believes
these were the exact words.”
]
Lincoln never forgot a benefactor. He not only repaid the money with
interest, but nearly thirty years later remembered the kindness in a
most substantial way. After Lincoln left New Salem, financial reverses
came to James Short, and he removed to the far West to seek his fortune
anew. Early in Lincoln’s presidential term he heard that “Uncle Jimmy”
was living in California. One day Mr. Short received a letter from
Washington. Tearing it open, he read the gratifying announcement that he
had been commissioned an Indian agent.
[Illustration:
LINCOLN’S SURVEYING INSTRUMENTS.
Photographed for this work. After Lincoln gave up surveying, he sold
his instruments to John B. Gum, afterward county surveyor of Menard
County. Mr. Gum kept them until a few years ago, when he presented
the instruments to the Lincoln Monument Association, and they are
now on exhibition at the monument in Springfield, Illinois.
]
THE KINDNESS SHOWN LINCOLN IN NEW SALEM.
The kindness of Mr. Short was not exceptional in Lincoln’s New Salem
career. When the store had “winked out,” as he put it, and the
post-office had been left without headquarters, one of his neighbors,
Samuel Hill, invited the homeless postmaster into his store. There was
hardly a man or woman in the community who would not have been glad to
do as much. It was a simple recognition of Lincoln’s friendliness to
them. He was what they called “obliging”—a man who instinctively did the
thing which he saw would help another, no matter how trivial or homely
it was. In the home of Rowan Herndon, where he had boarded when he first
came to the town, he had made himself loved by his care of the children.
“He nearly always had one of them around with him,” says Mr. Herndon. In
the Rutledge tavern, where he afterwards lived, the landlord told with
appreciation how, when his house was full, Lincoln gave up his bed, went
to the store, and slept on the counter, his pillow a web of calico. If a
traveller “stuck in the mud” in New Salem’s one street, Lincoln was
always the first to help pull out the wheel. The widows praised him
because he “chopped their wood;” the overworked, because he was always
ready to give them a lift. It was the spontaneous, unobtrusive
helpfulness of the man’s nature which endeared him to everybody, and
which inspired a general desire to do all possible in return. There are
many tales told of homely service rendered him, even by the hard-working
farmers’ wives around New Salem. There was not one of them who did not
gladly “put on a plate” for Abe Lincoln when he appeared, or did not
darn or mend for him when she knew he needed it. Hannah Armstrong, the
wife of the hero of Clary’s Grove, made him one of her family. “Abe
would come out to our house,” she said, “drink milk, eat mush, cornbread
and butter, bring the children candy, and rock the cradle while I got
him something to eat.... Has stayed at our house two or three weeks at a
time.” Lincoln’s pay for his first piece of surveying came in the shape
of two buckskins, and it was Hannah who “foxed” them on his trousers.
His relations were equally friendly in the better homes of the
community; even at the minister, the Rev. John Cameron’s, he was
perfectly at home, and Mrs. Cameron was by him affectionately called
“Aunt Polly.” It was not only his kindly service which made Lincoln
loved; it was his sympathetic comprehension of the duties and joys and
sorrows and interests of the people. Whether it was Jack Armstrong and
his wrestling, Hannah and her babies, Kelso and his fishing and poetry,
the school-master and his books—with one and all he was at home. He
possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of entering into the
interests of others, a power found only in reflective, unselfish natures
endowed with a humorous sense of human foibles, and with great
tenderness of heart. Men and women amused Lincoln, but so long as they
were sincere he loved them and sympathized with them. He was human in
the best sense of that fine word.
LINCOLN’S ACQUAINTANCE IN SANGAMON COUNTY IS EXTENDED.
Now that the store was closed and his surveying increased, Lincoln had
an excellent opportunity to extend his acquaintance, for he was
travelling about the country. Everywhere he won friends. The surveyor,
naturally, was respected for his calling’s sake; but the new deputy
surveyor was admired for his friendly ways, his willingness to lend a
hand indoors as well as out, his learning, his ambition, his
independence. Throughout the county he began to be regarded as “a right
smart young man.” Some of his associates appear even to have
comprehended his peculiarly great character, and dimly to have foreseen
a splendid future. “Often,” says Daniel Green Burner, Berry and
Lincoln’s clerk in the grocery, “I have heard my brother-in-law, Dr.
Duncan, say he would not be surprised if some day Abe Lincoln got to be
Governor of Illinois. Lincoln,” Mr. Burner adds, “was thought to know a
little more than anybody else among the young people. He was a good
debater, and liked it. He read much, and seemed never to forget
anything.”
[Illustration:
LINCOLN IN THE SUMMER OF 1860.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
From a copy (made by E. A. Bromley of the Minneapolis “Journal” staff)
of a photograph owned by Mrs. Cyrus Aldrich, whose husband, now
dead, was a Congressman from Minnesota. We owe the photograph to the
courtesy of Mr. Daniel Fish of Minneapolis. In the summer of 1860
Mr. M. C. Tuttle, a photographer of St. Paul, wrote to Mr. Lincoln,
requesting that he have a negative taken and sent to him for local
use in the campaign. The request was granted, but the negative was
broken in transit. On learning of the accident, Mr. Lincoln sat
again, and with the second negative he sent a jocular note wherein
he referred to the fact, disclosed by the picture, that in the
interval he had “got a new coat.” A few copies of the picture were
made by Mr. Tuttle, and distributed among the Republican editors of
the State. It has never before been reproduced. Mrs. Aldrich’s copy
was presented to her by William H. Seward when he was entertained at
the Aldrich homestead (now the Minneapolis City Hospital) in
September, 1860. A fine copy of this same photograph is owned by Mr.
Ward Monroe of Jersey City, New Jersey.
]
[Illustration:
LINCOLN’S SADDLE-BAGS.—PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THIS BIOGRAPHY.
These saddle-bags, now in the Lincoln Monument at Springfield, are
said to have been used by Lincoln while he was a surveyor.
]
Lincoln was fully conscious of his popularity, and it seemed to him in
1834 that he could safely venture to try again for the legislature.
Accordingly he announced himself as a candidate, spending much of the
summer of 1834 in electioneering. It was a repetition of what he had
done in 1832, though on the larger scale made possible by wider
acquaintance. In company with the other candidates, he rode up and down
the county, making speeches at the public sales, in shady groves, now
and then in a log schoolhouse. In his speeches he soon distinguished
himself by the amazing candor with which he dealt with all questions,
and by his curious blending of audacity and humility. Wherever he saw a
crowd of men he joined them, and he never failed to adapt himself to
their point of view in asking for votes. If the degree of physical
strength was their test for a candidate, he was ready to lift a weight,
or wrestle with the countryside champion; if the amount of grain a man
could cradle would recommend him, he seized the cradle and showed the
swath he could cut. The campaign was well conducted, for in August he
was elected one of the four assemblymen from Sangamon. The vote at this
election stood: Dawson, 1390; Lincoln, 1376; Carpenter, 1170; Stuart,
1164.
[Illustration:
VIEW OF THE SANGAMON RIVER NEAR NEW SALEM.
Reproduced, by permission, from “Menard-Salem-Lincoln Souvenir Album,”
Petersburg, Illinois, 1893.
]
With one exception, the biographers of Lincoln have given him the first
place on the ticket in 1834. He really stood second in order. Herndon
gives the correct vote, although he is in error in saying that the chief
authority he quotes, a document owned by Dr. A. W. French of
Springfield, Illinois, is an “official return.” It is a statement, made
out in Lincoln’s writing, and certified to by the county clerk, of the
total number of votes cast in the whole county for each of the several
candidates for the legislature. The official returns are on file in the
Springfield court-house.