UNDER the Act of Assembly, due in great part to Mr. Lincoln's exertions,
the removal of the archives and other public property of the State from
Vandalia to Springfield began on the fourth day of July, 1839, and was
speedily completed. At the time of the passage of the Act, in the winter
of 1836-7, Mr. Lincoln determined to follow the capital, and establish
his own residence at Springfield. The resolution was natural and
necessary; for he had been studying law in all his intervals of leisure,
and wanted a wider field than the justice's court at New Salem to begin
the practice. Henceforth Mr. Lincoln might serve in the Legislature,
attend to his private business, and live snugly at home. In addition to
the State courts, the Circuit and District Courts of the United States
sat here. The eminent John McLean of Ohio was the justice of the Supreme
Court who sat in this circuit, with Judge Pope of the District Court,
from 1839 to 1849, and after that with Judge Drummond. The first
terms of these courts, and the first session of the Legislature at
Springfield, were held in December, 1839. The Senate sat in one church,
and the House in another.
Mr. Lincoln got his license as an attorney early in 1837, "and commenced
practice regularly as a lawyer in the town of Springfield in March"
of that year. His first case was that of Hawthorne vs. Wooldridge,
dismissed at the cost of the plaintiff, for whom Mr. Lincoln's name was
entered. There were then on the list of attorneys at the Springfield bar
many names of subsequent renown. Judge Stephen T. Logan was on the bench
of the Circuit Court under the Act of 1835. Stephen A. Douglas had made
his appearance as the public prosecutor at the March term of 1836; and
at the same term E. D. Baker had been admitted to practice. Among the
rest were John T. Stuart, Cyrus Walker, S. H. Treat, Jesse B. Thomas,
George Forquer, Dan Stone, Ninian W. Edwards, John J. Hardin, Schuyler
Strong, A. T. Bledsoe, and Josiah Lamborn.
By this time Mr. Lincoln enjoyed considerable local fame as a
politician, but none, of course, as a lawyer. He therefore needed
a partner, and got one in the person of John T. Stuart, an able and
distinguished Whig, who had relieved his poverty years before by the
timely loan of books with which to study law, and who had from the first
promoted his political fortunes with zeal as disinterested as it was
effective. The connection promised well for Mr. Lincoln, and no doubt
did well during the short period of its existence. The courtroom was
in Hoffman's Row; and the office of Stuart & Lincoln was in the second
story above the court-room. It was a "little room," and generally a
"dirty one." It contained "a small dirty bed,"--on which Lincoln lounged
and slept,--a buffalo-robe, a chair, and a bench. Here the junior
partner, when disengaged from the cares of politics and the Legislature,
was to be found pretty much all the time, "reading, abstracted and
gloomy." Springfield was a small village, containing between one and two
thousand inhabitants. There were no pavements: the street-crossings were
made of "chunks," stones, and sticks. Lincoln boarded with Hon. William
Butler, a gentleman who possessed in an eminent degree that mysterious
power which guides the deliberations of party conventions and
legislative bodies to a foregone conclusion. Lincoln was very poor,
worth nothing, and in debt,--circumstances which are not often alleged
in behalf of the modern legislator; but "Bill Butler" was his friend,
and took him in with little reference to board-bills and the settlement
of accounts. According to Dr. Jayne, he "fed and clothed him for years;"
and this signal service, rendered at a very critical time, Mr. Lincoln
forgot wholly when he was in Congress, and Butler wanted to be Register
of the Land Office, as well as when he was President of the United
States, and opportunities of repayment were multitudinous. It is
doubtless all true; but the inference of personal ingratitude on the
part of Mr. Lincoln will not bear examination. It will be shown at
another place that Mr. Lincoln regarded all public offices within his
gift as a sacred trust, to be administered solely for the people, and as
in no sense a fund upon which he could draw for the payment of private
accounts. He _never_ preferred his friends to his enemies, but rather
the reverse, as if fearful that he might by bare possibility be
influenced by some unworthy motive. He was singularly cautious to
avoid the imputation of fidelity to his friends at the expense of his
opponents.
In Coke's and Blackstone's time the law was supposed to be "a jealous
mistress;" but in Lincoln's time, and at Springfield, she was any
thing but exacting. Politicians courted her only to make her favor the
stepping-stone to success in other employments. Various members of that
bar have left great reputations to posterity, but none of them were
earned solely by the legitimate practice of the law. Douglas is
remembered as a statesman, Baker as a political orator, Hardin as a
soldier, and some now living, like Logan and Stuart, although eminent
in the law, will be no less known to the history of the times as
politicians than as lawyers. Among those who went to the law for a
living, and to the people for fame and power, was Mr. Lincoln. He was
still a member of the Legislature when he settled at Springfield, and
would probably have continued to run for a seat in that body as often
as his time expired, but for the unfortunate results of the
"internal-improvement system," the hopeless condition of the State
finances, and a certain gloominess of mind, which arose from private
misfortunes that befell him about the time of his retirement. We do
not say positively that these were the reasons why Mr. Lincoln made no
effort to be re-elected to the Legislature of 1840; but a careful study
of all the circumstances will lead any reasonable man to believe that
they were. He was intensely ambitious, longed ardently for place and
distinction, and never gave up a prospect which seemed to him good when
he was in a condition to pursue it with honor to himself and fairness
to others. Moreover State politics were then rapidly ceasing to be
the high-road to fame and fortune. Although the State of Illinois was
insolvent, unable to pay the interest on her public debt, and many were
talking about repudiating the principal, the great campaign of 1840 went
off upon national issues, and little or nothing was said about questions
of State policy. Mr. Lincoln felt and obeyed this tendency of the public
mind, and from 1837 onward his speeches--those that were printed and
those that were not--were devoted chiefly, if not exclusively, to
Federal affairs.
In January, 1837, he delivered a lecture before the Springfield Lyceum
on the subject of the "_Perpetuation of our Free Institutions_." As a
mere declamation, it is unsurpassed in the annals of the West. Although
delivered in mid-winter, it is instinct with the peculiar eloquence of
the most fervid Fourth of July.
"In the great journal of things," began the orator, "happening under the
sun, we, the American People, find our account running under date of
the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the
peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards
extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.
We find ourselves under the government of a system of political
institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and
religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells
us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the
legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the
acquisition or establishment of them: they are a legacy bequeathed us
by a _once_ hardy, brave, and patriotic, but _now_ lamented and departed
race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to
possess themselves, and, through themselves, us, of this goodly land,
and to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of
liberty and equal rights: 'tis ours only to transmit these--the former
unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse
of time and untorn by usurpation--to the latest generation that fate
shall permit the world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers,
justice to ourselves, duty to posterity,--all imperatively require us
faithfully to perform.
"How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the
approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to
step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe,
Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own
excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander,
could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the
Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years!
"At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I
answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot
come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its
author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all
time, or die by suicide.
"I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now
something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for
law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to substitute
the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts,
and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.
This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now
exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be
a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts
of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times.
They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are
neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun
of the latter. They are not the creature of climate; neither are they
confined to the slaveholding or non-slaveholding States. Alike they
spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves and
the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever, then,
their cause may be, it is common to the whole country."
The orator then adverts to the doings of recent mobs in various parts
of the country, and insists, that, if the spirit that produced them
continues to increase, the laws and the government itself must fall
before it: bad citizens will be encouraged, and good ones, having no
protection against the lawless, will be glad to receive an individual
master who will be able to give them the peace and order they desire.
That will be the time when the usurper will put down his heel on
the neck of the people, and batter down the "fair fabric" of free
institutions. "Many great and good men," he says, "sufficiently
qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found,
whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a
gubernatorial or a presidential chair; _but such belong not to the
family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle._1 What! Think you these
places would satisfy an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon? Never!
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto
unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story upon the
monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it
is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the
footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns
for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the
expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen.... Another reason
which once _was_, but which, to the same extent, _is now no more_, has
done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful
influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the
_passions_ of the people as distinguished from their judgment." This
influence, the lecturer maintains, was kept alive by the presence of
the surviving soldiers of the Revolution, who were in some sort "living
histories," and concludes with this striking peroration:--
"But those histories are gone. They _can_ be read no more forever. They
_were_ a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do,
the silent artillery of time _has done_,--the levelling of its
walls. They are gone. They _were_ a forest of giant oaks; but the
all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and
there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage,
unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to
combat with its mutilated limbs a few more rude storms, then to sink and
be no more. They _were_ the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now
that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, the
descendants, supply their places with other pillars hewn from the same
solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so
no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason--cold, calculating,
unimpassioned reason--must furnish all the materials for our future
support and defence. Let those materials be moulded into _general
intelligence, sound morality_, and, in particular, _a reverence for the
Constitution and the laws_; and that we improved to the last, that we
revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted no
hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which
to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington. Upon these let the
proud fabric of freedom rest as the rock of its basis, and as truly as
has been said of the only greater institution, 'The gates of hell shall
not prevail against it."'
1 The italics are the orator's.
These extracts from a lecture carefully composed by Mr. Lincoln at the
mature age of twenty-eight, and after considerable experience in the
public service, are worthy of attentive perusal. To those familiar with
his sober and pure style at a later age, these sophomoric passages will
seem incredible. But they were thought "able and eloquent" by the "Young
Men's Lyceum" of Springfield: he was "solicited to furnish a copy for
publication," and they were duly printed in "The Sangamon Journal." In
the mere matter of rhetoric, they compare favorably with some of his
other productions of nearly the same date. This was what he would have
called his "growing time;" and it is intensely interesting to witness
the processes of such mental growth as his. In time, gradually, but
still rapidly, his style changes completely: the constrained and
unnatural attempts at striking and lofty metaphor disappear, and the
qualities which produced the Gettysburg address--that model of unadorned
eloquence--begin to be felt. He finds the people understand him better
when he comes down from his stilts, and talks to them from their own
level.
Political discussions at Springfield were apt to run into heated and
sometimes unseemly personal controversies. When Douglas and Stuart were
candidates for Congress in 1838, they fought like tigers in Herndon's
grocery, over a floor that was drenched with slops, and gave up the
struggle only when both were exhausted. Then, as a further entertainment
to the populace, Mr. Stuart ordered out a "barrel of whiskey and wine."
On the election-day in 1840, it was reported to Mr. Lincoln that one
Radford, a contractor on the railroad, had brought up his men, and taken
full possession of one of the polling-places. Lincoln started off to
the precinct on a slow trot. Radford knew him well, and a little stern
advice reversed proceedings without any fighting. Among other remarks,
Lincoln said, "Radford, you'll spoil and blow if you live much longer."
He wanted to hit Radford, but could get no chance to do so, and
contented himself with confiding his intentions to Speed. "I intended
just to knock him down, and leave him kicking."
The same year, Col. Baker was making a speech to a promiscuous audience
in the court-room,--"a rented room in Hoffman's Row." It will be
remembered that Lincoln's office was just above, and he was listening
to Baker through a large hole or trap-door in the ceiling. Baker warmed
with his theme, and, growing violent and personally offensive,
declared at length, "that wherever there was a land-office, there was
a Democratic newspaper to defend its corruptions." "This," says John B.
Webber, "was a personal attack on my brother, George Webber. I was in
the Court House, and in my anger cried, 'Pull him down!'" A scene of
great confusion ensued, threatening to end in a general riot, in which
Baker was likely to suffer. But just at the critical moment Lincoln's
legs were seen coming through the hole; and directly his tall figure
was standing between Baker and the audience, gesticulating for silence.
"Gentlemen," said he, "let us not disgrace the age and country in which
we live. This is a land where freedom of speech is guaranteed. Mr Baker
has a right to speak, and ought to be permitted to do so. I am here to
protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if I can prevent
it." Webber only recollects that "some one made some soothing, kind
remarks," and that he was properly "held until the excitement ceased,"
and the affair "soon ended in quiet and peace."
In 1838, or 1840, Jesse B. Thomas made an intemperate attack upon the
"Long Nine," and especially upon Mr. Lincoln, as the longest and worst
of them. Lincoln was not present at the meeting; but being sent for, and
informed of what had passed, he ascended the platform, and made a reply
which nobody seems to remember, but which everybody describes as a
"terrible skinning" of his victim. Ellis says, that, at the close of a
furious personal denunciation, he wound up by "mimicking" Thomas, until
Thomas actually cried with vexation and anger. Edwards, Speed, Ellis,
Davis, and many others, refer to this scene, and, being asked whether
Mr. Lincoln could not be vindictive upon occasion, generally respond,
"Remember the Thomas skinning."
The most intimate friend Mr. Lincoln ever had, at this or any other
time, was probably Joshua F. Speed. In 1836 he settled himself in
Springfield, and did a thriving business as a merchant. Ellis was one
of his clerks, and so also was William H. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln's future
partner. This store was for years Lincoln's familiar haunt. There he
came to while away the tedious evenings with Speed and the congenial
company that naturally assembled around these choice spirits. He even
slept in the store room as often as he slept at home, and here made to
Speed the most confidential communications he ever made to mortal man.
If he had on earth "a bosom crony," it was Speed, and that deep and
abiding attachment subsisted unimpaired to the day of Mr. Lincoln's
death. In truth, there were good reasons why he should think of Speed
with affection and gratitude, for through life no man rendered him more
important services.
One night in December, 1839, Lincoln, Douglas, Baker, and some other
gentlemen of note, were seated at Speed's hospitable fire in the store.
They got to talking politics, got warm, hot, angry. Douglas sprang up
and said, "Gentlemen, this is no place to talk politics: we will discuss
the questions publicly with you," and much more in a high tone of banter
and defiance. A few days afterwards the Whigs had a meeting, at which
Mr. Lincoln reported a resolution challenging the Democrats to a joint
debate. The challenge was accepted; and Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and
Jesse B. Thomas were deputed by the Democrats to meet Logan, Baker,
Browning, and Lincoln on the part of the Whigs. The intellectual
encounter between these noted champions is still described by those
who witnessed it as "the great debate." It took place in the Second
Presbyterian Church, in the hearing of as many people as could get into
the building, and was adjourned from night to night. When Mr. Lincoln's
turn came, the audience was very thin; but, for all that, his speech
was by many persons considered the best one of the series. To this day,
there are some who believe he had assistance in the preparation of it.
Even Mr. Herndon accused Speed of having "had a hand in it," and got
a flat denial for his answer. At all events, the speech was a popular
success, and was written out, and published in "The Sangamon Journal,"
of March 6, 1840. The exordium was a sort of complaint that must have
had a very depressing effect upon both the speaker and his hearers:--
"Fellow-Citizens,--It is peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt a
continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been conducted
in this hall on several preceding ones. It is so, because on each of
these evenings there was a much fuller attendance than now, without any
reason for its being so, except the greater interest the community feel
in the speakers who addressed them then, than they do in him who is to
do so now. I am, indeed, apprehensive that the few who have attended
have done so more to spare me of mortification, than in the hope of
being interested in any thing I may be able to say. This circumstance
casts a damp upon my spirits which I am sure I shall be unable to
overcome during the evening.
"The subject heretofore and now to be discussed is the Sub-Treasury
scheme of the present administration, as a means of collecting,
safe-keeping, transferring, and disbursing the revenues of the nation,
as contrasted with a National Bank for the same purposes. Mr. Douglas
has said that we (the Whigs) have not dared to meet them (the Locos) in
argument on this question. I protest against this assertion. I say we
have again and again, during this discussion, urged facts and arguments
against the Sub-Treasury which they have neither dared to deny nor
attempted to answer. But lest some may be led to believe that we really
wish to avoid the question, I now propose, in my humble way, to urge
these arguments again; at the same time begging the audience to mark
well the positions I shall take, and the proofs I shall offer to sustain
them, and that they will not again allow Mr. Douglas or his friends to
escape the force of them by a round and groundless assertion that we
dare not meet them in argument.
"Of the Sub-Treasury, then, as contrasted with a National Bank, for the
before-enumerated purposes, I lay down the following propositions, to
wit:--
"1st. It will injuriously affect the community by its operation on the
circulating medium.
"2d. It will be a more expensive fiscal agent.
"3d. It will be a less secure depository for the public money."
Mr. Lincoln's objections to the Sub-Treasury were those commonly urged
by its enemies, and have been somewhat conclusively refuted by the
operation of that admirable institution from the hour of its adoption
to the present. "The extravagant expenditures" of Mr. Van Buren's
administration, however, was a standard topic of the Whigs in those
days, and, sliding gracefully off from the Sub-Treasury, Mr. Lincoln
dilated extensively upon this more attractive subject. This part of his
speech was entirely in reply to Mr. Douglas. But, when he came to answer
Mr. Lamborn's remarks, he "got in a hard hit" that must have brought
down the house.
"Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party and
the Whigs is, that, although the former sometimes err in practice,
they are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong
in principle; and, the better to impress this proposition, he uses a
figurative expression in these words: 'The Democrats are vulnerable in
the heel, but they are sound in the heart and head.' The first branch of
the figure,--that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel,--I
admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that looks but
for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons,
and their hundreds of others, scampering away with the public money to
Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may
hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most
distressingly affected in their heels with a species of 'running itch.'
It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the sound-headed
and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork-leg in the comic
song did on its owner, which, when he had once got started on it, the
more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of
wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems to
be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier who
was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but
who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the
engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied, 'Captain,
I have as brave a heart as Julius Cæsar ever had, but somehow or other,
whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it.' So
with Mr. Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their hands
for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can
dictate; but, before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally
vulnerable heels will run away with them."
But, as in the lecture before the Lyceum, Mr. Lincoln reserved his most
impressive passage, his boldest imagery, and his most striking metaphor,
for a grand and vehement peroration.
"Mr. Lamborn refers to the late elections in the States, and, from their
results, confidently predicts every State in the Union will vote for Mr.
Van Buren at the next presidential election. Address that argument to
cowards and knaves: with the free and the brave it will affect nothing.
It may be true: if it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their
liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest
plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.
I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the
evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political
corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful
velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to
leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are
riding, like demons on the wave of hell, the imps of that evil spirit,
and fiendishly taunting all those who dare to resist its destroying
course with the hopelessness of their efforts; and, knowing this, I
cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may
be; bow to it, I never will. The probability that we may fall in the
struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe
to be just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me
elevate and expand to those dimensions, not wholly unworthy of its
almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country,
deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly, alone,
hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without
contemplating consequences, before Heaven and in face of the world, I
swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of
my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not
fearlessly adopt that oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is
right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so:
we still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences,
and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause
approved of our judgment and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in
chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending."
Considering that the times were extremely peaceful, and that the speaker
saw no bloodshed except what flowed from the noses of belligerents
in the groceries about Springfield, the speech seems to have been
unnecessarily defiant.
In 1840 Mr. Lincoln was a candidate for presidential elector on the
Harrison ticket, and stumped a large part of the State. He and Douglas
followed Judge Treat's court all around the circuit, "and spoke in the
afternoons." The Harrison club at Springfield became thoroughly familiar
with his voice. But these one-sided affairs were not altogether suited
to his temper: through his life he preferred a joint discussion, and
the abler the man pitted against him, the better he liked it. He knew he
shone in retort, and sought every opportunity to practise it. From 1838
to 1858, he seems to have followed up Douglas as a regular business
during times of great political excitement, and only on one or two
occasions did he find the "Little Giant" averse to a conflict. Here, in
1840, they came in collision, as they did in 1839, and as they continued
to do through twenty or more years, until Lincoln became President of
the United States, and Douglas's disappointments were buried with his
body. Once during this Harrison campaign they had a fierce discussion
before a meeting assembled in the market-house. In the course of his
speech, Lincoln imputed to Van Buren the great sin of having voted
in the New York State Convention for negro suffrage with a property
qualification. Douglas denied the fact; and Lincoln attempted to prove
his statement by reading a certain passage from Holland's "Life of Van
Buren," containing a letter from Van Buren to one Mr. Fithian. Whereupon
"Douglas got mad," snatched up the book, and, tossing it into the crowd,
remarked sententiously, although not conclusively, "Damn such a book!"
"He was very sensitive," says Mr. Gillespie, "where he thought he had
failed to come up to the expectations of his friends. I remember a case.
He was pitted by the Whigs, in 1840, to debate with Mr. Douglas, the
Democratic champion. Lincoln did not come up to the requirements of the
occasion. He was conscious of his failure; and I never saw any man so
much distressed. He begged to be permitted to try it again, and was
reluctantly indulged; and in the next effort he transcended our highest
expectations. I never heard, and never expect to hear, such a triumphant
vindication as he then gave of Whig measures or policy. He never after,
to my knowledge, fell below himself."
It must by this time be clear to the reader that Mr. Lincoln was never
agitated by any passion more intense than his wonderful thirst for
distinction. There is good evidence that it furnished the feverish
dreams of his boyhood; and no man that knew him well can doubt that it
governed all his conduct, from the hour when he astonished himself by
his oratorical success against Posey and Ewing, in the back settlements
of Macon County, to the day when the assassin marked him as the first
hero of the restored Union, re-elected to his great office, surrounded
by every circumstance that could minister to his pride, or exalt his
sensibilities,--a ruler whose power was only less wide than his renown.
He never rested in the race he had determined to run; he was ever ready
to be honored; he struggled incessantly for place. There is no instance
where an important office seemed to be within his reach, and he did not
try to get it. Whatsoever he did in politics, at the bar, in private
life, had more or less reference to this great object of his life. It
is not meant to be said that he was capable of any shameful act,
any personal dishonor, any surrender or concealment of political
convictions. In these respects, he was far better than most men. It was
not in his nature to run away from the fight, or to desert to the enemy;
but he was quite willing to accept his full share of the fruits of
victory.
Born in the humblest circumstances, uneducated, poor, acquainted with
flatboats and groceries, but a stranger to the drawing-room, it was
natural that he should seek in a matrimonial alliance those social
advantages which he felt were necessary to his political advancement.
This was, in fact, his own view of the matter; but it was strengthened
and enforced by the counsels of those whom he regarded as friends.
[Miss Mary Lincoln. Wife of the President 270]
In 1839 Miss Mary, daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Ky.,
came to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, at Springfield.
Like Miss Owens, Miss Todd had a stepmother, with whom she failed to
"agree," and for that reason the Edwardses offered her a home with them.
She was young,--just twenty-one,--her family was of the best, and her
connections in Illinois among the most refined and distinguished people.
Her mother having died when she was a little girl, she had been educated
under the care of a French lady, "opposite Mr. Clay's." She was gifted
with rare talents, had a keen sense of the ridiculous, a ready insight
into the weaknesses of individual character, and a most fiery and
ungovernable temper. Her tongue and her pen were equally sharp.
High-bred, proud, brilliant, witty, and with a will that bent every one
else to her purpose, she took Mr. Lincoln captive the very moment she
considered it expedient to do so.
Mr. Lincoln was a rising politician, fresh from the people, and
possessed of great power among them: Miss Todd was of aristocratic and
distinguished family, able to lead through the awful portals of "good
society" whomsoever they chose to countenance. It was thought that a
union between them could not fail of numerous benefits to both parties.
Mr. Edwards thought so; Mrs. Edwards thought so; and it was not long
before Mary Todd herself thought so. She was very ambitious, and even
before she left Kentucky announced her belief that she was "destined
to be the wife of some future President." For a little while she was
courted by Douglas as well as by Lincoln; but she is said to have
refused the "Little Giant," "on account of his bad morals." Being asked
which of them she intended to have, she answered, "The one that has the
best chance of being President." She decided in favor of Lincoln, and,
in the opinion of some of her husband's friends, aided to no small
extent in the fulfilment of the prophecy which the bestowal of her hand
implied. A friend of Miss Todd was the wife of an elderly but wealthy
gentleman; and being asked by one of the Edwards coterie why she had
married "such an old, dried-up husband, such a withered-up old buck,"
she answered that "He had lots of horses and gold." But Mary Todd spoke
up in great surprise, and said, "Is that true? I would rather marry
a good man, a man of mind, with hope and bright prospects ahead for
position, fame, and power, than to marry all the horses, gold, and bones
in the world."
Mrs. Edwards, Miss Todd's sister, tells us that Mr. Lincoln "was charmed
with Mary's wit and fascinated with her quick sagacity, her will, her
nature and culture." "I have happened in the room," she says, "where
they were sitting often and often, and Mary led the conversation.
Lincoln would listen, and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior
power,--irresistibly so: he listened, but never scarcely said a word....
Lincoln could not hold a lengthy conversation with a lady,--was not
sufficiently educated and intelligent in the female line to do so."
Mr. Lincoln and Mary were engaged, and their marriage was only a
question of time. But Mr. Lincoln's love-affairs were destined never
to run smoothly, and now one Miss Matilda Edwards made her "sweet
appearance," and brought havoc in her train. She was the sister of
Ninian W. Edwards, and came to spend a year with her brother. She was
very fair, and soon was the reigning belle. No sooner did Lincoln know
her than he felt his heart change. The other affair, according to the
Edwardses, according to Stuart, according to Herndon, according to
Lincoln and everybody else, was a "policy match;" but _this_ was love.
For a while he evidently tried hard to go on as before, but his feelings
were too strong to be concealed. Mr. Edwards endeavored to reconcile
matters by getting his sister to marry Speed; but the rebellious beauty
refused Speed incontinently (as she did Douglas too), and married Mr.
Schuyler Strong. Poor Lincoln never whispered a word of his passion to
her: his high sense of honor prevented that, and perhaps she would not
have listened to him if it had been otherwise.
At length, after long reflection, in great agony of spirit, Mr. Lincoln
concluded that duty required him to make a candid statement of his
feelings to the lady who was entitled to his hand. He wrote her a
letter, and told her gently but plainly that he did not love her. He
asked Speed to deliver it; but Speed advised him to burn it. "Speed,"
said Mr. Lincoln, "I always knew you were an obstinate man. If you won't
deliver it, I'll get some one else to do it." But Speed now had the
letter in his hand; and, emboldened by the warm friendship that existed
between them, replied, "I shall not deliver it, nor give it to you to be
delivered. Words are forgotten, misunderstood, passed by, not noticed
in a private conversation; but once put your words in writing, and they
stand as a living and eternal monument against you. If you think you
have _will_ and manhood enough to go and see her, and speak to her
what you say in that letter, you may do that." Lincoln went to see
her forthwith, and reported to Speed. He said, that, when he made his
somewhat startling communication, she rose and said, "'The deceiver
shall be deceived: woe is me!' alluding to a young man she had fooled."
Mary told him she knew the reason of his change of heart, and released
him from his engagement. Some parting endearments took place between
them, and then, as the natural result of those endearments, a
reconciliation.
We quote again from Mrs. Edwards:--
"Lincoln and Mary were engaged; every thing was ready and prepared
for the marriage, even to the supper. Mr. Lincoln failed to meet his
engagement. Cause, insanity!
"In his lunacy he declared he hated Mary and loved Miss Edwards. This is
true, yet it was not his real feelings. A crazy man hates those he loves
when at himself. Often, often, is this the case. The world had it that
Mr. Lincoln backed out, and this placed Mary in a peculiar situation;
and to set herself right, and free Mr. Lincoln's mind, she wrote a
letter to Mr. Lincoln, stating that she would release him from his
engagement.... The whole of the year was a crazy spell. Miss Edwards
was at our house, say a year. I asked Miss Edwards if Mr. Lincoln ever
mentioned the subject of his love to her. Miss Edwards said, 'On my
word, he never mentioned such a subject to me: he never even stooped to
pay me a compliment.'"
In the language of Mr. Edwards, "Lincoln went as crazy as a loon," and
was taken to Kentucky by Speed, who kept him "until he recovered." He
"did not attend the Legislature in 1841-2 for this reason."
Mr. Herndon devoutly believes that Mr. Lincoln's insanity grew out of a
most extraordinary complication of feelings,--aversion to the marriage
proposed, a counter-attachment to Miss Edwards, and a new access of
unspeakable tenderness for the memory of Ann Rutledge,--the old love
struggling with a new one, and each sending to his heart a sacrificial
pang as he thought of his solemn engagement to marry a third person. In
this opinion Mr. Speed appears to concur, as shown by his letter below.
At all events, Mr. Lincoln's derangement was nearly, if not quite,
complete. "We had to remove razors from his room," says Speed, "take
away all knives, and other dangerous things. It was terrible." And now
Speed determined to do for him what Bowlin Greene had done on a similar
occasion at New Salem. Having sold out his store on the 1st of January,
1841, he took Mr. Lincoln with him to his home in Kentucky, and kept
him there during most of the summer and fall, or until he seemed
sufficiently restored to be given his liberty again at Springfield, when
he was brought back to his old quarters. During this period, "he was at
times very melancholy," and, by his own admission, "almost contemplated
self-destruction." It was about this time that he wrote some gloomy
lines under the head of "Suicide," which were published in "The Sangamon
Journal." Mr. Herndon remembered something about them; but, when he
went to look for them in the office-file of the "Journal," he found them
neatly cut out,--"supposed to have been done," says he, "by Lincoln."
Speed's mother was much pained by the "deep depression" of her guest,
and gave him a Bible, advising him to read it, to adopt its precepts,
and pray for its promises. He acknowledged this attempted service, after
he became President, by sending her a photograph of himself, with this
inscription: "To my very good friend, Mrs. Lucy G. Speed, from whose
pious hands I received an Oxford Bible twenty years ago." But Mrs.
Speed's medicine, the best ever offered for a mind diseased, was of
no avail in this case. Among other things, he told Speed, referring
probably to his inclination to commit suicide, "that he had done nothing
to make any human being remember that he had lived, and that to connect
his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation, and so
impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would
redound to the interest of his fellow-man, was what he desired to live
for." Of this conversation he pointedly reminded Speed at the time, or
just before the time, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
What took place after his return to Springfield cannot be better told
than in the words of the friends of both parties. "Mr. Edwards and
myself," says Mrs. Edwards, "after the first crash of things, told Mary
and Lincoln that they had better not ever marry; that their natures,
minds, education, raising, &c., were so different, that they could not
live happy as man and wife; had better never think of the subject again.
All at once we heard that Mr. Lincoln and Mary had secret meetings at
Mr. S. Francis's, editor of 'The Springfield Journal.' Mary said the
reason this was so, the cause why it was, was that the world, woman
and man, were uncertain and slippery, and that it was best to keep the
secret courtship from all eyes and ears. Mrs. Lincoln told Mr. Lincoln,
that, though she had released him in the letter spoken of, yet she would
hold the question an open one,--that is, that she had not changed her
mind, but felt as always.... The marriage of Mr. Lincoln and Mary was
quick and sudden,--one or two hours' notice." How poor Mr. Lincoln felt
about it, may be gathered from the reminiscences of his friend, J.
H. Matheny, who says, "that Lincoln and himself, in 1842, were very
friendly; that Lincoln came to him one evening and said, 'Jim, I shall
have to marry that girl.'" He was married that evening, but Matheny
says, "he looked as if he was going to the slaughter," and that Lincoln
"had often told him, directly and individually, that he was driven into
the marriage; that it was concocted and planned by the Edwards family;
that Miss Todd--afterwards Mrs. Lincoln--was crazy for a week or so, not
knowing what to do; and that he loved Miss Edwards, and went to see her,
and not Mrs. Lincoln."
The license to marry was issued on the 4th of November, 1842, and on
the same day the marriage was celebrated by Charles Dresser, "M.G."
With this date carefully borne in mind, the following letters are of
surpassing interest. They are relics, not only of a great man, but of a
great agony.
The first is from Mr. Speed to Mr. Herndon, and explains the
circumstances under which the correspondence took place. Although it
is in part a repetition of what the reader already knows, it is of such
peculiar value, that we give it in full:--
W. H. Herndon, Esq.
Dear Sir,--I enclose you copies of all the letters of any interest from
Mr. Lincoln to me.
Some explanation may be needed, that you may rightly understand their
import.
In the winter of 1840 and 1841 he was unhappy about his engagement to
his wife,--not being entirely satisfied that his _heart_ was going with
his hand. How much he suffered then on that account, none know so well
as myself: he disclosed his whole heart to me.
In the summer of 1841 I became engaged to my wife. He was here on a
visit when I courted her; and, strange to say, something of the same
feeling which I regarded as so foolish in him took possession of me, and
kept me very unhappy from the time of my engagement until I was married.
This will explain the deep interest he manifested in his letters on my
account.
Louisville, Nov. 30, 1866.
If you use the letters (and some of them are perfect gems) do it care
fully, so as not to wound the feelings of Mrs. Lincoln.
One thing is plainly discernible: if I had not been married and
happy,--far more happy than I ever expected to be,--he would not have
married.
I have erased a name which I do not wish published. If I have failed
to do it anywhere, strike it out when you come to it. That is the
word------.
I thank you for your last lecture. It is all new to me, but so true
to my appreciation of Lincoln's character, that, independent of my
knowledge of you, I would almost swear to it.
Lincoln wrote a letter (a long one, which he read to me) to Dr. Drake,
of Cincinnati, descriptive of his case. Its date would be in December,
1840, or early in January, 1841. I think that he must have informed
Dr. D. of his early love for Miss Rutledge, as there was a part of the
letter which he would not read.
It would be worth much to you, if you could procure the original.
Charles D. Drake, of St. Louis, may have his father's papers. The date
which I give you will aid in the search.
I remember Dr. Drake's reply, which was, that he would not undertake to
prescribe for him without a personal interview. I would advise you to
make some effort to get the letter.
Your friend, &c.,
J. F. Speed.
The first of the papers from Mr. Lincoln's pen is a letter of advice and
consolation to his friend, for whom he apprehends the terrible things
through which, by the help of that friend, he has himself just passed.
My dear Speed,--Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude for
the success of the enterprise you are engaged in, I adopt this as the
last method I can invent to aid you, in case (which God forbid) you
shall need any aid. I do not place what I am going to say on paper,
because I can say it better in that way than I could by word of mouth;
but, were I to say it orally before we part, most likely you would
forget it at the very time when it might do you some good. As I think it
reasonable that you will feel very badly sometime between this and the
final consummation of your purpose, it is intended that you shall read
this just at such a time. Why I say it is reasonable that you will
feel very badly yet, is because of three _special causes_ added to _the
general one_ which I shall mention.
The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous temperament,
and this I say from what I have seen of you personally, and what you
have told me concerning your mother at various times, and concerning
your brother William at the time his wife died. The first special cause
is your _exposure to bad weather_ on your journey, which my experience
clearly proves to be very severe on defective nerves. The second is
the _absence of all business and conversation_ of friends, which might
divert your mind, give it occasional rest from the intensity of thought
which will sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare, and turn it to
the bitterness of death.
The third is _the rapid and near approach of that crisis on which all
your thoughts and feelings concentrate._
If from all these causes you shall escape, and go through triumphantly,
without another "twinge of the soul," I shall be most happily but most
egregiously deceived. If, on the contrary, you shall, as I expect you
will at some time, be agonized and distressed, let me, who have some
reason to speak with judgment on such a subject, beseech you to ascribe
it to the causes I have mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous
suggestion of the Devil.
"But," you will say, "do not your causes apply to every one engaged in a
like undertaking?" By no means. _The particular causes_, to a greater
or less extent, perhaps, do apply in all cases; but the _general
one_,--nervous debility, which is the key and conductor of all the
particular ones, and without which they would be utterly harmless,
though it _does_ pertain to you,--_does not_ pertain to one in a
thousand. It is out of this that the painful difference between you and
the mass of the world springs.
I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you are
unhappy: it is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should.
What nonsense! How came you to court her? Was it because you thought she
deserved it, and that you had given her reason to expect it? If it was
for that, why did not the same reason make you court Ann Todd, and at
least twenty others of whom you can think, and to whom it would apply
with greater force than to _her?_ Did you court her for her wealth? Why,
you know she had none. But you say you reasoned yourself into it. What
do you mean by that? Was it not that you found yourself unable to reason
yourself out of it? Did you not think, and partly form the purpose, of
courting her the first time you ever saw her or heard of her? What had
reason to do with it at that early stage? There was nothing at that time
for reason to work upon. Whether she was moral, amiable, sensible,
or even of good character, you did not, nor could then know, except,
perhaps, you might infer the last from the company you found her in.
All you then did or could know of her was her personal _appearance and
deportment_; and these, if they impress at all, impress the heart, and
not the head.
Say candidly, were not those heavenly _black eyes_ the whole basis of
all your early _reasoning_ on the subject? After you and I had once been
at the residence, did you not go and take me all the way to Lexington
and back, for no other purpose but to get to see her again, on our
return on that evening to take a trip for that express object?
What earthly consideration would you take to find her scouting and
despising you, and giving herself up to another? But of this you have no
apprehension; and therefore you cannot bring it home to your feelings.
I shall be so anxious about you, that I shall want you to write by every
mail. Your friend,
Lincoln.
Springfield, Ill., Feb. 3, 1842.
Dear Speed,--Your letter of the 25th January came to hand to-day. You
well know that I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly than I do
yours, when I know of them; and yet I assure you I was not much hurt by
what you wrote me of your excessively bad feeling at the time you wrote.
Not that I am less capable of sympathizing with you now than ever, not
that I am less your friend than ever, but because I hope and believe
that your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life
must and will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you
sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can
once and forever be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the
Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly for that object),
surely, nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasurable
measure of misery. The death-scenes of those we love are surely painful
enough; but these we are prepared for and expect to see: they happen to
all, and all know they must happen. Painful as they are, they are not
an unlooked-for sorrow. Should she, as you fear, be destined to an early
grave, it is indeed a great consolation to know that she is so well
prepared to meet it.. Her religion, which you once disliked so much, I
will venture you now prize most highly.
But I hope your melancholy bodings as to her early death are not well
founded. I even hope that ere this reaches you, she will have returned
with improved and still-improving health, and that you will have met
her, and forgotten the sorrows of the past in the enjoyment of the
present. I would say more if I could, but it seems that I have said
enough. It really appears to me that you yourself ought to rejoice, and
not sorrow, at this indubitable evidence of your undying affection for
her.
Why, Speed, if you did not love her, although you might not wish her
death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is
no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is
a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know
the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it.
You know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite clear of hypo since you
left, even better than I was along in the fall. I have seen------but
once. She seemed very cheerful, and so I said nothing to her about what
we spoke of.
Old Uncle Billy Herndon is dead, and it is said this evening that Uncle
Ben Ferguson will not live. This, I believe, is all the news, and enough
at that, unless it were better.
Write me immediately on the receipt of this.
Your friend as ever,
Lincoln.
Springfield, Ill., Feb. 13, 1842.
Dear Speed,--Yours of the 1st inst. came to hand three or four days ago.
When this shall reach you, you will have been Fanny's husband several
days. You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting; that I will
never cease while I know how to do any thing.
But you will always hereafter be on ground that I have never occupied,
and consequently, if advice were needed, I might advise wrong. I do
fondly hope, however, that you will never again need any comfort from
abroad. But, should I be mistaken in this, should excessive pleasure
still be accompanied with a painful counterpart at times, still let me
urge you, as I have ever done, to remember, in the depth and even agony
of despondency, that very shortly you are to feel well again. I am now
fully convinced that you love her as ardently as you are capable of
loving. Your ever being happy in her presence, and your intense anxiety
about her health, if there were nothing else, would place this beyond
all dispute in my mind. I incline to think it probable that your nerves
will fail you occasionally for a while; but once you get them firmly
graded now, that trouble is over forever.
I think if I were you, in case my mind were not exactly right, I would
avoid being _idle_. I would immediately engage in some business, or go
to making preparations for it, which would be the same thing.
If you went through the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient
composure not to excite alarm in any present, you are safe beyond
question, and in two or three months, to say the most, will be the
happiest of men.
I would desire you to give my particular respects to Fanny; but perhaps
you will not wish her to know you have received this, lest she should
desire to see it. Make her write me an answer to my last letter to her;
at any rate, 1 would set great value upon a note or letter from her.
Write me whenever you have leisure.
Yours forever,
A. Lincoln.
P. S.--I have been quite a man since you left.
Springfield, Feb. 25, 1842.
Dear Speed,--Yours of the 16th inst., announcing that Miss Fanny and you
are "no more twain, but one flesh," reached me this morning. I have no
way of telling how much happiness I wish you both, though I believe you
both can conceive it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now:
you will be so exclusively concerned for one another, that I shall be
forgotten entirely. My acquaintance with Miss Fanny (I call her this,
lest you should think I am speaking of your mother) was too short for me
to reasonably hope to long be remembered by her; and still I am sure I
shall not forget her soon. Try if you cannot remind her of that debt she
owes me,--and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her paying it.
I regret to learn that you have resolved to not return to Illinois.
I shall be very lonesome without you. How miserable things seem to be
arranged in this world! If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and,
if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the
loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here; but I own I have
no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times
more sacred than you can owe to others, and in that light let them be
respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to remain
with her relatives and friends. As to friends, however, _she_ could not
need them anywhere: she would have them in abundance here.
Give my kind remembrance to Mr. Williamson and his family, particularly
Miss Elizabeth; also to your mother, brother, and sisters. Ask little
Eliza Davis if she will ride to town with me if I come there again.
And, finally, give Fanny a double reciprocation of all the love she sent
me. Write me often, and believe me
Yours forever,
Lincoln.
P. S.--Poor Easthouse is gone at last. He died a while before day this
morning. They say he was very loath to die.
Springfield, Feb. 25, 1842.
Dear Speed,--I received yours of the 12th, written the day you went down
to William's place, some days since, but delayed answering it till I
should receive the promised one of the 16th, which came last night. I
opened the letter with intense anxiety and trepidation; so much, that,
although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at the
distance of ten hours, become calm.
I tell you, Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar)
are all the worst sort of nonsense. I fancied, from the time I received
your letter of Saturday, that the one of Wednesday was never to come,
and yet it did come, and, what is more, it is perfectly clear, both from
its tone and handwriting, that you were much happier, or, if you think
the term preferable, less miserable, when you wrote it, than when you
wrote the last one before. You had so obviously improved at the
very time I so much fancied you would have grown worse. You say that
something indescribably horrible and alarming still haunts you. You will
not say that three months from now, I will venture. When your nerves
once get steady now, the whole trouble will be over forever. Nor should
you become impatient at their being even very slow in becoming steady.
Again you say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed
so much is never to be realized. Weil, if it shall not, I dare swear it
will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt,
that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of
Elysium far exceeding all that any thing earthly can realize. Far short
of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them
than that same black-eyed Fanny. If you could but contemplate her
through my imagination, it would appear ridiculous to you that any one
should for a moment think of being unhappy with her. My old father
used to have a saying, that, "If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the
tighter;" and it occurs to me, that, if the bargain you have just closed
can possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one
for applying that maxim to which my fancy can by any effort picture.
I write another letter, enclosing this, which you can show her, if she
desires it. I do this because she would think strangely, perhaps, should
you tell her that you received no letters from me, or, telling her you
do, refuse to let her see them. I close this, entertaining the confident
hope that every successive letter I shall have from you (which I here
pray may not be few, nor far between) may show you possessing a more
steady hand and cheerful heart than the last preceding it.
As ever, your friend,
Lincoln.
Springfield, March 27, 1842.
Dear Speed,--Yours of the 10th inst. was received three or four days
since. You know I am sincere when I tell you the pleasure its contents
gave me was and is inexpressible. As to your farm matter, I have
no sympathy with you. I have no farm, nor ever expect to have, and
consequently have not studied the subject enough to be much interested
with it. I can only say that I am glad you are satisfied and pleased
with it.
But on that other subject, to me of the most intense interest whether in
joy or sorrow, I never had the power to withhold my sympathy from you.
It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to hear you say you
are "_far happier than you ever expected to be_." That much I know is
enough. I know you too well to suppose your expectations were not, at
least, sometimes extravagant, and, if the reality exceeds them all, I
say, Enough, dear Lord. I am not going beyond the truth when I tell you,
that the short space it took me to read your last letter gave me more
pleasure than the total sum of all I have enjoyed since that fatal 1st
of January, 1841. Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely
happy, but for the never-absent idea that there is _one_ still unhappy
whom I have contributed to make so. That still kills my soul. I cannot
but reproach myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise.
She accompanied a large party on the railroad cars to Jacksonville
last Monday, and on her return spoke, so that I heard of it, of having
enjoyed the trip exceedingly. God be praised for that.
You know with what sleepless vigilance I have watched you ever since the
commencement of your affair; and, although I am almost confident it is
useless, I cannot forbear once more to say, that I think it is even yet
possible for your spirits to flag down and leave you miserable. If they
should, don't fail to remember that they cannot long remain so. One
thing I can tell you which I know you will be glad to hear, and that is
that I have seen------and scrutinized her feelings as well as I could,
and am fully convinced she is far happier now than she has been for the
last fifteen months past.
You will see by the last "Sangamon Journal" that I have made a
temperance speech on the 22d of February, which I claim that Fanny
and you shall read as an act of charity to me; for I cannot learn that
anybody else has read it, or is likely to. Fortunately, it is not very
long, and I shall deem it a sufficient compliance with my request if one
of you listens while the other reads it.
As to your Lockridge matter, it is only necessary to say that there
has been no court since you left, and that the next commences to-morrow
morning, during which I suppose we cannot fail to get a judgment.
I wish you would learn of Everett what he would take, over and above a
discharge, for all trouble we have been at, to take his business out
of our hands and give it to somebody else. It is impossible to collect
money on that or any other claim here now, and, although you know I am
not a very petulant man, I declare I am almost out of patience with Mr.
Everett's endless importunity. It seems like he not only writes all
the letters he can himself, but gets everybody else in Louisville and
vicinity to be constantly writing to us about his claim. I have always
said that Mr. Everett is a very clever fellow, and I am very sorry
he cannot be obliged; but it does seem to me he ought to know we are
interested to collect his claim, and therefore would do it if we could.
I am neither joking nor in a pet when I say we would thank him to
transfer his business to some other, without any compensation for what
we have done, provided he will see the court cost paid, for which we are
security.
The sweet violet you enclosed came safely to hand, but it was so dry,
and mashed so flat, that it crumbled to dust at the first attempt
to handle it. The juice that mashed out of it stained a place in the
letter, which I mean to preserve and cherish for the sake of her who
procured it to be sent. My renewed good wishes to her in particular, and
generally to all such of your relations who know me.
As ever,
Lincoln.
Springfield, Ill., July 4, 1842.
Dear Speed,--Yours of the 16th June was received only a day or two
since. It was not mailed at Louisville till the 25th. You speak of the
great time that has elapsed since I wrote you. Let me explain that. Your
letter reached here a day or two after I had started on the circuit. I
was gone five or six weeks, so that I got the letters only a few weeks
before Butler started to your country. I thought it scarcely worth while
to write you the news which he could and would tell you more in detail.
On his return, he told me you would write me soon, and so I waited for
your letter. As to my having been displeased with your advice, surely
you know better than that. I know you do, and therefore will not labor
to convince you. True, that subject is painful to me; but it is not your
silence, or the silence of all the world, that can make me forget it. I
acknowledge the correctness of your advice too; but, before I resolve
to do the one thing or the other, I must gain my confidence in my own
ability to keep my resolves when they are made. In that ability you know
I once prided myself, as the only or chief gem of my character: that
gem I lost, how and where you know too well. I have not yet regained it;
and, until I do, I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance.
I believe now, that, had you understood my case at the time as well as I
understood yours afterwards, by the aid you would have given me I should
have sailed through clear; but that does not now afford me sufficient
confidence to begin that or the like of that again.