THE reader is already familiar with the name of James Rutledge, the
founder of New Salem, and the owner in part of the famous mill on the
Sangamon. He was born in South Carolina, and was of the illustrious
Rutledge family of that State. From South Carolina he emigrated to
Kentucky, and thence to Illinois. In 1828 he settled at New Salem, built
the mill and laid out the village in conjunction with Mr. Cameron,
a retired minister of the Cumberland Presbyterians. Mr. Rutledge's
character seems to have been pure and high; for wherever his name occurs
in the voluminous records before us,--in the long talks and the numerous
epistles of his neighbors,--it is almost invariably coupled with some
expression of genuine esteem and respect.
At one time, and along with his other business,--which appears to have
been quite extensive and various,--Mr. Rutledge kept the tavern, the
small house with four rooms on the main street of New Salem, just
opposite Lincoln's grocery. There Mr. Lincoln came to board late in
1832, or early in 1833. The family consisted of the father, mother,
and nine children,--three of them born in Kentucky and six in Illinois;
three grown up, and the rest quite young. Ann, the principal subject of
this chapter, was the third child. She was born on the 7th of January,
1813, and was about nineteen years of age when Mr. Lincoln came to live
in the house.
When Ann was a little maiden just turned of seventeen, and still
attending the school of that redoubtable pedagogue Min-ter Graham, there
came to New Salem a young gentleman of singular enterprise, tact, and
capacity for business. He is identical with the man whom we have already
quoted as "the pioneer of New Salem as a business point," and who built
the first storehouse there at the extravagant cost of fifteen dollars.
He took boarding with Mr. Rutledge's friend and partner, James Cameron,
and gave out his name as John McNeil. He came to New Salem with no other
capital than good sense and an active and plucky spirit; but somehow
fortune smiled indiscriminately on all his endeavors, and very soon--as
early as the latter part of 1832--he found himself a well-to-do and
prosperous man, owning a snug farm seven miles north of New Salem, and
a half-interest in the largest store of the place. This latter property
his partner, Samuel Hill, bought from him at a good round sum; for
McNeil now announced his intention of being absent for a brief period,
and his purpose was such that he might need all his available capital.
In the mean time the partners, Hill and McNeil, had both fallen in love
with Ann Rutledge, and both courted her with devoted assiduity. But the
contest had long since been decided in favor of McNeil, and Ann loved
him with all her susceptible and sensitive heart. When the time drew
near for McNeil to depart, he confided to Ann a strange story,--and, in
the eyes of a person less fond, a very startling story. His name was
not John McNeil at all, but John McNamar. His family was a highly
respectable one in the State of New York; but a few years before his
father had failed in business, and there was great distress at home. He
(John) then conceived the romantic plan of running away, and, at some
undefined place in the far West, making a sudden fortune with which to
retrieve the family disaster. He fled accordingly, changed his name to
avoid the pursuit of his father, found his way to New Salem, and--she
knew the rest. He was now able to perform that great act of filial piety
which he set out to accomplish, would return at once to the relief of
his parents, and, in all human probability, bring them back with him to
his new home in Illinois. At all events, she might look for his return
as speedily as the journey could be made with ordinary diligence; and
thenceforward there should be no more partings between him and his fair
Ann. She believed this tale, because she loved the man that told it;
and she would have believed it all the same if it had been ten times as
incredible. A wise man would have rejected it with scorn, but the girl's
instinct was a better guide; and McNamar proved to be all that he said
he was, although poor Ann never saw the proof which others got of it.
McNamar rode away "on old Charley," an antiquated steed that had seen
hard usage in the Black Hawk War. Charley was slow, stumbled dreadfully,
and caused his rider much annoyance and some hard swearing. On this
provoking animal McNamar jogged through the long journey from New Salem
to New York, and arrived there after many delays, only to find that his
broken and dispirited father was fast sinking into the grave. After
all his efforts, he was too late: the father could never enjoy the
prosperity which the long-absent and long-silent son had brought him.
McNamar wrote to Ann that there was sickness in the family, and he could
not return at the time appointed. Then there were other and still other
postponements; "circumstances over which he had no control" prevented
his departure from time to time, until years had rolled away, and Ann's
heart had grown sick with hope deferred. She never quite gave him up,
but continued to expect him until death terminated her melancholy watch.
His inexplicable delay, however, the infrequency of his letters, and
their unsatisfactory character,--these and something else had broken her
attachment, and toward the last she waited for him only to ask a release
from her engagement, and to say that she preferred another and a more
urgent suitor. But without his knowledge and formal renunciation of his
claim upon her, she did not like to marry; and, in obedience to this
refinement of honor, she postponed her union with the more pressing
lover until Aug. 25, 1835, when, as many persons believe, she died of a
broken heart.
Lincoln's friend Short was in some way related to the Rutledges, and
for a while Lincoln visited Ann two or three times a week at his house.
According to him, "Miss Rutledge was a good-looking, smart, lively girl,
a good housekeeper, with a moderate education, and without any of the
so-called accomplishments." L. M. Greene, who knew her well, talks about
her as "a beautiful and very amiable young woman;" and "Nult" Greene is
even more enthusiastic. "This young lady," in the language of the latter
gentleman, "was a woman of exquisite beauty; but her intellect was
quick, sharp, deep, and philosophic, as well as brilliant. She had
as gentle and kind a heart as an angel, full of love, kindliness, and
sympathy. She was beloved by everybody, and everybody respected and
loved her, so sweet and angelic was she. Her character was more than
good: it was positively noted throughout the county. She was a woman
worthy of Lincoln's love." McNamar, her unfortunate lover, says, "Miss
Ann was a gentle, amiable maiden, without any of the airs of your city
belles, but winsome and comely withal; a blonde in complexion, with
golden hair, cherry-red lips, and a bonny blue eye." Even the women
of the neighborhood united with the men to praise the name of this
beautiful but unhappy girl. Mrs. Hardin Bale "knew her well. She had
auburn hair, blue eyes, fair complexion; was a slim, pretty, kind,
tender, good-hearted woman; in height about five feet three inches, and
weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds. She was beloved by all who
knew her. McNamar, Hill, and Lincoln all courted her near the same time.
She died as it were of grief. Miss Rutledge was beautiful." Such was
Ann Rutledge, the girl in whose grave Mr. Lincoln said, "My heart lies
buried." When Mr. Lincoln first saw Ann, she was probably the most
refined woman with whom he had then ever spoken,--a modest, delicate
creature, fascinating by reason of the mere contrast with the rude
people by whom they were both surrounded. She had a secret, too, and a
sorrow,--the unexplained and painful absence of McNamar,--which no doubt
made her all the more interesting to him whose spirit was often even
more melancholy than her own. It would be hard to trace the growth of
such an attachment at a time and place so distant; but that it actually
grew, and became an intense and mutual passion, the evidence before us
is painfully abundant.
Mr. Lincoln was always welcome at the little tavern, at Short's on
the Sand Ridge, or at the farm, half a mile from Short's, where the
Rutledges finally abode. Ann's father was his devoted friend, and the
mother he called affectionately "Aunt Polly." It is probable that the
family looked upon McNamar's delay with more suspicion than Ann did
herself. At all events, all her adult relatives encouraged the suit
which Lincoln early began to press; and as time, absence, and apparent
neglect, gradually told against McNamar, she listened to him with
augmenting interest, until, in 1835, we find them formally and solemnly
betrothed. Ann now waited only for the return of McNamar to marry
Lincoln. David Rutledge urged her to marry immediately, without regard
to any thing but her own happiness; but she said she could not consent
to it until McNamar came back and released her from her pledge. At
length, however, as McNamar's re-appearance became more and more
hopeless, she took a different view of it, and then thought she would
become Abe's wife as soon as he found the means of a decent livelihood.
"Ann told me once," says James M. in a letter to R. B. Rutledge, in
coming from camp-meeting on Rock Creek, "that engagements made too far
ahead sometimes failed; that one _had_ failed (meaning her engagement
with McNamar), and gave me to understand, that, as soon as certain
studies were completed, she and Lincoln would be married."
In the summer of 1835 Ann showed unmistakable symptoms of failing
health, attributable, as most of the neighborhood believed, to the
distressing attitude she felt bound to maintain between her two lovers.
On the 25th of August, in that year, she died of what the doctors chose
to call "brain-fever." In a letter to Mr. Herndon, her brother
says, "You suggest that the probable cause of Ann's sickness was her
conflicts, emotions, &c. As to this I cannot say. I, however, have my
own private convictions. The character of her sickness was brain-fever."
A few days before her death Lincoln was summoned to her bedside. What
happened in that solemn conference was known only to him and the dying
girl. But when he left her, and stopped at the house of John Jones, on
his way home, Jones saw signs of the most terrible distress in his
face and his conduct. When Ann actually died, and was buried, his grief
became frantic: he lost all self-control, even the consciousness of
identity, and every friend he had in New Salem pronounced him insane,
mad, crazy. "He was watched with especial vigilance," as William Green
tells us, "during storms, fogs, damp, gloomy weather, for fear of an
accident." "At such times he raved piteously, declaring, among other wild
expressions of his woe, 'I can never be reconciled to have the snow,
rains, and storms to beat upon her grave!'"
About three-quarters of a mile below New Salem, at the foot of the main
bluff, and in a hollow between two lateral bluffs, stood the house of
Bowlin Greene, built of logs and weather-boarded. Thither the friends
of Lincoln, who apprehended a total abdication of reason, determined
to transport him, partly for the benefit of a mere change of scene, and
partly to keep him within constant reach of his near and noble
friend, Bowlin Greene. During this period of his darkened and wavering
intellect, when "accidents" were momentarily expected, it was discovered
that Bowlin Greene possessed a power to persuade and guide him
proportioned to the affection that had subsisted between them in former
and better times. Bowlin Greene came for him, but Lincoln was cunning
and obstinate: it required the most artful practices of a general
conspiracy of all his friends to "disarm his suspicions," and induce
him to go and stay with his most anxious and devoted friend. But at last
they succeeded; and Lincoln remained down under the bluff for two or
three weeks, the object of undisguised solicitude and of the strictest
surveillance. At the end of that time his mind seemed to be restored,
and it was thought safe to let him go back to his old haunts,--to the
study of law, to the writing of legal papers for his neighbors, to
pettifogging before the justice of the peace, and perhaps to a little
surveying. But Mr. Lincoln was never precisely the same man again. At
the time of his release he was thin, haggard, and careworn,--like one
risen from the verge of the grave. He had always been subject to fits
of great mental depression, but after this they were more frequent and
alarming. It was then that he began to repeat, with a feeling which
seemed to inspire every listener with awe, and to carry him to the fresh
grave of Ann at every one of his solemn periods, the lines entitled,
"Immortality; or, Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
None heard him but knew that he selected these curiously empty, yet
wonderfully sad, impressive lines, to celebrate a grief which lay
with continual heaviness on his heart, but to which he could not with
becoming delicacy directly allude. He muttered them as he rambled
through the woods, or walked by the roaring Sangamon. He was heard to
murmur them to himself as he slipped into the village at nightfall,
after a long walk of six miles, and an evening visit to the Concord
graveyard; and he would suddenly break out with them in little social
assemblies after noticeable periods of silent gloom. They came unbidden
to his lips, while the air of affliction in face and gesture, the moving
tones and touching modulations of his voice, made it evident that every
syllable of the recitation was meant to commemorate the mournful fate of
Ann. The poem is now his: the name of the obscure author is forgotten,
and his work is imperishably associated with the memory of a great man,
and interwoven with the history of his greatest Sorrow. Mr. Lincoln's
adoption of it has saved it from merited oblivion, and translated it
from the "poet's corner" of the country newspaper to a place in the
story of his own life,--a story that will continue to be written, or
written about, as long as our language exists.
Many years afterwards, when Mr. Lincoln, the best lawyer of his section,
with one exception, travelled the circuit with the court and a crowd
of his jolly brethren, he always rose early, be fore any one else was
stirring, and, raking together a few glowing coals on the hearth, he
would sit looking into them, musing and talking with himself, for hours
together. One morning, in the year of his nomination, his companions
found him in this attitude, when "Mr. Lincoln repeated aloud, and at
length, the poem 'Immortality,'" indicating his preference for the two
last stanzas, but insisting that the entire composition "sounded to him
as much like true poetry as any thing that he had ever heard."
In Carpenter's "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of President Lincoln,"
occurs the following passage:--?
"The evening of March 22, 1864, was a most interesting one to me. I was
with the President alone in his office for several hours. Busy with pen
and papers when I went in, he presently threw them aside, and commenced
talking to me of Shakspeare, of whom he was very fond. Little 'Tad,' his
son, coming in, he sent him to the library for a copy of the plays,
and then read to me several of his favorite passages. Relapsing into a
sadder strain, he laid the book aside, and, leaning back in his chair,
said,--
"'There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for years,
which was first shown to me when a young man by a friend, and which I
afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper, and learned by heart. I would,'
he continued, 'give a great deal to know who wrote it; but I have never
been able to ascertain.'
"Then, half closing his eyes, he repeated the verses to me:--
"'Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall lie.
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant's affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blest,--
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
[The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure, her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.]
The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep,
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
[The saint who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.]
So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed,
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
But it speeds from us all like a bird on the wing.
They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
They died, ay, they died: we things that are now,
That walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
And make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye,'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?'"
It was only a year or two after the death of Ann Rutledge that Mr.
Lincoln told Robert L. Wilson, a distinguished colleague in the
Legislature, parts of whose letter will be printed in another place,
that, although "he appeared to enjoy life rapturously," it was a
mistake; that, "when alone, he was so overcome by mental depression,
that he never dared to carry a pocket-knife." And during all Mr.
Wilson's extended acquaintance with him he never did own a knife,
notwithstanding he was inordinately fond of whittling.
Mr. Herndon says, "He never addressed another woman, in my opinion,
'Yours affectionately,' and generally and characteristically abstained
from the use of the word '_love._' That word cannot be found more than
a half-dozen times, if that often, in all his letters and speeches since
that time. I have seen some of his letters to other ladies, but he never
says 'love.' He never ended his letters with 'Yours affectionately,'
but signed his name, 'Your friend, A. Lincoln.'" After Mr. Lincoln's
election to the Presidency, he one day met an old friend, Isaac Cogdale,
who had known him intimately in the better days of the Rutledges at New
Salem. "Ike," said he, "call at my office at the State House about
an hour by sundown. The company will then all be gone." Cogdale went
according to request; "and sure enough," as he expressed it, "the
company dropped off one by one, including Lincoln's clerk."
"'I want to inquire about old times and old acquaintances,' began Mr.
Lincoln. 'When we lived in Salem, there were the Greenes, Potters,
Armstrongs, and Rutledges. These folks have got scattered all over the
world,--some are dead. Where are the Rutledges, Greenes, &c.?'
"After we had spoken over old times," continues Cogdale,--"persons,
circumstances,--in which he showed a wonderful memory, I then dared to
ask him this question:--
"'May I now, in turn, ask you one question, Lincoln?'
"'Assuredly. I will answer your question, if a fair one, with all my
heart.'
"'Well, Abe, is it true that you fell in love and courted Ann Rutledge?'
"'It is true,--true: indeed I did. I have loved the name of Rutledge to
this day. I have kept my mind on their movements ever since, and love
them dearly.'
"'Abe, is it true,'" still urged Cogdale, "that you ran a little wild
about the matter?'
"'I did really. I ran off the track. It was my first. I loved the woman
dearly. She was a handsome girl; would have made a good, loving wife;
was natural and quite intellectual, though not highly educated. I did
honestly and truly love the girl, and think often, often, of her now.'"
A few weeks after the burial of Ann, McNamar returned to New Salem.
He saw Lincoln at the post-office, and was struck with the deplorable
change in his appearance. A short time afterwards Lincoln wrote him
a deed, which he still has, and prizes highly, in memory of his great
friend and rival. His father was at last dead; but he brought back with
him his mother and her family. In December of the same year his mother
died, and was buried in the same graveyard with Ann. During his absence,
Col. Rutledge had occupied his farm, and there Ann died; but "the
Rutledge farm" proper adjoined this one to the south. "Some of Mr.
Lincoln's corners, as a surveyor, are still visible on lines traced by
him on both farms."
On Sunday, the fourteenth day of October, 1866, William H. Herndon
knocked at the door of John McNamar, at his residence, but a few feet
distant from the spot where Ann Rutledge breathed her last. After some
preliminaries not necessary to be related, Mr. Herndon says, "I asked
him the question:--
"'Did you know Miss Rutledge? If so, where did she die?'
"He sat by his open window, looking westerly; and, pulling me closer to
himself, looked through the window and said, 'There, by that,'--choking
up with emotion, pointing his long forefinger, nervous and trembling,
to the spot,--'there, by that currant-bush, she died. The old house in
which she and her father died is gone.'
"After further conversation, leaving the sadness to momentarily pass
away, I asked this additional question:--
"'Where was she buried?'
"'In Concord burying-ground, one mile south-east of this place.'"
Mr. Herndon sought the grave. "S. C. Berry," says he, "James Short (the
gentleman who purchased in Mr. Lincoln's compass and chain in 1834,
under an execution against Lincoln, or Lincoln & Berry, and gratuitously
gave them back to Mr. Lincoln), James Miles, and myself were together.
"I asked Mr. Berry if he knew where Miss Rutledge was buried,--the place
and exact surroundings. He replied, 'I do. The grave of Miss Rutledge
lies just north of her brother's, David Rutledge, a young lawyer of
great promise, who died in 1842, in his twenty-seventh year.'
"The cemetery contains but an acre of ground, in a beautiful and
secluded situation. A thin skirt of timber lies on the east, commencing
at the fence of the cemetery. The ribbon of timber, some fifty yards
wide, hides the sun's early rise. At nine o'clock the sun pours all
his rays into the cemetery. An extensive prairie lies west, the forest
north, a field on the east, and timber and prairie on the south. In this
lonely ground lie the Berrys, the Rutledges, the Clarys, the Armstrongs,
and the Joneses, old and respected citizens,--pioneers of an early day.
I write, or rather did write, the original draught of this description
in the immediate presence of the ashes of Miss Ann Rutledge, the
beautiful and tender dead. The village of the dead is a sad, solemn
place. Its very presence imposes truth on the mind of the living writer.
Ann Rutledge lies buried north of lier brother, and rests sweetly on
his left arm, angels to guard her. The cemetery is fast filling with
the hazel and the dead."
A lecture delivered by William H. Herndon at Springfield, in 1866,
contained the main outline, without the minuter details, of the
story here related. It was spoken, printed, and circulated without
contradiction from any quarter. It was sent to the Rutledges, McNeeleys,
Greenes, Short, and many other of the old residents of New Salem and
Petersburg, with particular requests that they should correct any
error they might find in it. It was pronounced by them all truthful
and accurate; but their replies, together with a mass of additional
evidence, have been carefully collated with the lecture, and the result
is the present chapter. The story of Ann Rutledge, Lincoln, and McNamar,
as told here, is as well proved as the fact of Mr. Lincoln's election to
the Presidency.