BLOOMINGTON, ILL., September 27, 1841.
Miss Mary Speed, Louisville, Ky.
MY FRIEND: By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat
for contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A
gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky,
and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and
six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each,
and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient
distance from the others, so that the negroes were strung together
precisely like so many fish upon a trotline. In this condition they
were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their
friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many
of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual
slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless
and unrelenting than any other; and yet amid all these distressing
circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and
apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he
had been sold was an overfondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost
continually, and the others danced, sang, cracked jokes, and played
various games with cards from day to day. How true it is that ‘God
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,’ or in other words, that he renders
the worst of human conditions tolerable, while he permits the best to
be nothing better than tolerable. To return to the narrative: When we
reached Springfield I stayed but one day, when I started on this tedious
circuit where I now am. Do you remember my going to the city, while I
was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it?
Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much that about a week
since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone, the
consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither
talk nor eat.
Your sincere friend, A. LINCOLN.
1842