suddenly revealed--all the passionateness of the forest shadow, the
unfathomable gloom laid so deep at the bottom of his soul--he was
carried through his spiritual eclipse by the loving comprehension of two
fine friends. New Salem was not all of the sort of Clary's Grove. Near
by on a farm, in a lovely, restful landscape, lived two people who
deserve to be remembered, Bowlin Green and his wife. They drew Lincoln
into the seclusion of their home, and there in the gleaming days of
autumn, when everywhere in the near woods flickered downward, slowly,
idly, the falling leaves golden and scarlet, Lincoln recovered his
equanimity.(11) But the hero of Pigeon Creek, of Clary's Grove, did not
quite come hack. In the outward life, to be sure, a day came when the
sunny story-teller, the victor of Jack Armstrong, was once more what
Jack would have called his real self. In the inner life where alone
was his reality, the temper which affliction had revealed to him was
established. Ever after, at heart, he was to dwell alone, facing,
silent, those inscrutable things which to the primitive mind are things
of every day. Always, he was to have for his portion in his real self,
the dimness of twilight, or at best, the night with its stars, "never
glad, confident morning again."
IV. REVELATIONS
From this time during many years almost all the men who saw beyond the
surface in Lincoln have indicated, in one way or another, their vision
of a constant quality. The observers of the surface did not see it.
That is to say, Lincoln did not at once cast off any of his previous
characteristics. It is doubtful if he ever did. His experience was
tenaciously cumulative. Everything he once acquired, he retained, both
in the outer life and the inner; and therefore, to those who did not
have the clue to him, he appeared increasingly contradictory, one thing
on the surface, another within. Clary's Grove and the evolutions from
Clary's Grove, continued to think of him as their leader. On the other
hand, men who had parted with the mere humanism of Clary's Grove, who
were a bit analytical, who thought themselves still more analytical,
seeing somewhat beneath the surface, reached conclusions similar to
those of a shrewd Congressman who long afterward said that Lincoln was
not a leader of men but a manager of men.(1) This astute distinction
was not true of the Lincoln the Congressman confronted; nevertheless, it
betrays much both of the observer and of the man he tried to observe. In
the Congressman's day, what he thought he saw was in reality the shadow
of a Lincoln that had passed away, passed so slowly, so imperceptibly
that few people knew it had passed. During many years following 1835,
the distinction in the main applied. So thought the men who, like
Lincoln's latest law partner, William H. Herndon, were not derivatives
of Clary's Grove. The Lincoln of these days was the only one Herndon
knew. How deeply he understood Lincoln is justly a matter of debate;
but this, at least, he understood--that Clary's Grove, in attributing
to Lincoln its own idea of leadership, was definitely wrong. He saw in
Lincoln, in all the larger matters, a tendency to wait on events, to
take the lead indicated by events, to do what shallow people would have
called mere drifting. To explain this, he labeled him a fatalist.(2) The
label was only approximate, as most labels are. But Herndon's effort
to find one is significant. In these years, Lincoln took the
initiative--when he took it at all--in a way that most people did not
recognize. His spirit was ever aloof. It was only the every-day, the
external Lincoln that came into practical contact with his fellows.
This is especially true of the growing politician. He served four
consecutive terms in the Legislature without doing anything that had
the stamp of true leadership. He was not like either of the two types of
politicians that generally made up the legislatures of those days--the
men who dealt in ideas as political counters, and the men who were
grafters without in their naive way knowing that they were grafters.
As a member of the Legislature, Lincoln did not deal in ideas. He was
instinctively incapable of graft A curiously routine politician, one who
had none of the earmarks familiar in such a person. Aloof, and yet, more
than ever companionable, the power he had in the Legislature--for he had
acquired a measure of power--was wholly personal. Though called a Whig,
it was not as a party man but as a personal friend that he was able to
carry through his legislative triumphs. His most signal achievement was
wholly a matter of personal politics. There was a general demand for
the removal of the capital from its early seat at Vandalia, and rivalry
among other towns was keen. Sangamon County was bent on winning
the prize for its own Springfield. Lincoln was put in charge of the
Springfield strategy. How he played his cards may be judged from the
recollections of another member who seems to have anticipated that noble
political maxim, "What's the Constitution between friends?" "Lincoln,"
he says, "made Webb and me vote for the removal, though we belonged
to the southern end of the state. We defended our vote before our
constituents by saying that necessity would ultimately force the seat
of government to a central position; but in reality, we gave the vote
to Lincoln because we liked him, because we wanted to oblige our friend,
and because we recognized him as our leader."(3)
And yet on the great issues of the day he could not lead them. In 1837,
the movement of the militant abolitionists, still but a few years old,
was beginning to set the Union by the ears. The illegitimate child
of Calvinism and the rights of man, it damned with one anathema every
holder of slaves and also every opponent of slavery except its own
uncompromising adherents. Its animosity was trained particularly on
every suggestion that designed to uproot slavery without creating an
economic crisis, that would follow England's example, and terminate the
"peculiar institution" by purchase. The religious side of abolition came
out in its fury against such ideas. Slave-holders were Canaanites. The
new cult were God's own people who were appointed to feel anew the joy
of Israel hewing Agag asunder. Fanatics, terrible, heroic, unashamed,
they made two sorts of enemies--not only the partisans of slavery,
but all those sane reformers who, while hating slavery, hated also the
blood-lust that would make the hewing of Agag a respectable device of
political science. Among the partisans of slavery were the majority
of the Illinois Legislature. Early in 1837, they passed resolutions
condemning abolitionism. Whereupon it was revealed--not that anybody
at the time cared to know the fact, or took it to heart--that among
the other sort of the enemies of abolition was our good young friend,
everybody's good friend, Abe Lincoln. He drew up a protest against
the Legislature's action; but for all his personal influence in other
affairs, he could persuade only one member to sign with him. Not his
to command at will those who "recognized him as their leader" in the
orthodox political game--so discreet, in that it left principles for
some one else to be troubled about! Lincoln's protest was quite too far
out of the ordinary for personal politics to endure it. The signers
were asked to proclaim their belief "that the institution of slavery is
founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of
abolition doctrines tends rather to promote than to abate its evils."(4)
The singular originality of this position, sweeping aside as vain both
participants in the new political duel, was quite lost on the little
world in which Lincoln lived. For after-time it has the interest of a
bombshell that failed to explode. It is the dawn of Lincoln's intellect.
In his lonely inner life, this crude youth, this lover of books in a
village where books were curiosities, had begun to think. The stages of
his transition from mere story-telling yokel--intellectual only as the
artist is intellectual, in his methods of handling--to the man of ideas,
are wholly lost. And in this fact we have a prophecy of all the years
to come. Always we shall seek in vain for the early stages of Lincoln's
ideas. His mind will never reveal itself until the moment at which
it engages the world. No wonder, in later times, his close associates
pronounced him the most secretive of men; that one of the keenest of his
observers said that the more you knew of Lincoln, the less you knew of
him.(5)
Except for the handicap of his surroundings, his intellectual start
would seem belated; even allowing for his handicap, it was certainly
slow. He was now twenty-eight. Pretty well on to reveal for the first
time intellectual power! Another characteristic here. His mind worked
slowly. But it is worth observing that the ideas of the protest were
never abandoned. Still a third characteristic, mental tenacity. To
the end of his days, he looked askance at the temper of abolitionism,
regarded it ever as one of the chief evils of political science. And
quite as significant was another idea of the protest which also had
developed from within, which also he never abandoned.
On the question of the power of the national government with regard to
slavery, he took a position not in accord with either of the political
creeds of his day. The Democrats had already formulated their doctrine
that the national government was a thing of extremely limited powers,
the "glorified policeman" of a certain school of publicists reduced
almost to a minus quantity. The Whigs, though amiably vague on most
things except money-making by state aid, were supposed to stand for a
"strong central government". Abolitionism had forced on both parties a
troublesome question, "What about slavery in the District of Columbia,
where the national government was supreme?" The Democrats were prompt
in their reply: Let the glorified policeman keep the peace and leave
private interests, such as slave-holding, alone. The Whigs evaded, tried
not to apply their theory of "strong" government; they were fearful
lest they offend one part of their membership if they asserted that
the nation had no right to abolish slavery in the District, fearful of
offending others if they did not. Lincoln's protest asserted that "the
Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia but the power ought not to
be exercised, unless at the request of the District." In other words,
Lincoln, when suddenly out of the storm and stress that followed Ann's
death his mentality flashes forth, has an attitude toward political
power that was not a consequence of his environment, that sets him
apart as a type of man rare in the history of statesmanship. What other
American politician of his day--indeed, very few politicians of any
day--would have dared to assert at once the existence of a power and
the moral obligation not to use it? The instinctive American mode of
limiting power is to deny its existence. Our politicians so deeply
distrust our temperament that whatever they may say for rhetorical
effect, they will not, whenever there is any danger of their being taken
at their word, trust anything to moral law. Their minds are normally
mechanical. The specific, statutory limitation is the only one that for
them has reality. The truth that temper in politics is as great a factor
as law was no more comprehensible to the politicians of 1837 than,
say Hamlet or The Last Judgment. But just this is what the crude young
Lincoln understood. Somehow he had found it in the depths of his own
nature. The explanation, if any, is to be found in his heredity. Out
of the shadowy parts of him, beyond the limits of his or any man's
conscious vision, dim, unexplored, but real and insistent as those
forest recesses from which his people came, arise the two ideas: the
faith in a mighty governing power; the equal faith that it should use
its might with infinite tenderness, that it should be slow to compel
results, even the result of righteousness, that it should be tolerant of
human errors, that it should transform them slowly, gradually, as do the
gradual forces of nature, as do the sun and the rain.
And such was to be the real Lincoln whenever he spoke out, to the end.
His tonic was struck by his first significant utterance at the age of
twenty-eight. How inevitable that it should have no significance to the
congregation of good fellows who thought of him merely as one of their
own sort, who put up with their friend's vagary, and speedily forgot it.
The moment was a dreary one in Lincoln's fortunes. By dint of much
reading of borrowed books, he had succeeded in obtaining from the
easy-going powers that were in those days, a license to practise law. In
the spring of 1837 he removed to Springfield. He had scarcely a dollar
in his pocket. Riding into Springfield on a borrowed horse, with all the
property he owned, including his law books, in two saddlebags, he went
to the only cabinet-maker in the town and ordered a single bedstead.
He then went to the store of Joshua F. Speed. The meeting, an immensely
eventful one for Lincoln, as well as a classic in the history of genius
in poverty, is best told in Speed's words: "He came into my store, set
his saddle-bags on the counter and inquired what the furnishings for a
single bedstead would cost. I took slate and pencil, made a calculation
and found the sum for furnishings complete, would amount to seventeen
dollars in all. Said he: 'It is probably cheap enough, but I want to
say that, cheap as it is, I have not the money to pay; but if you will
credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a
success, I will pay you then. If I fail in that I will probably never
pay you at all.' The tone of his voice was so melancholy that I felt for
him. I looked up at him and I thought then as I think now that I never
saw so gloomy and melancholy a face in my life. I said to him: 'So small
a debt seems to affect you so deeply, I think I can suggest a plan by
which you will be able to attain your end without incurring any debt. I
have a very large room and a very large double bed in it, which you are
perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.' 'Where is your room?'
he asked. 'Up-stairs,' said I, pointing to the stairs leading from the
store to my room. Without saying a word, he took his saddle-bags on his
arm, went upstairs, set them down on the floor, came down again, and
with a face beaming with pleasure and smiles exclaimed, 'Well, Speed,
I'm moved.'"(6)
This was the beginning of a friendship which appears to have been the
only one of its kind Lincoln ever had. Late in life, with his gifted
private secretaries, with one or two brilliant men whom he did not meet
until middle age, he had something like intimate comradeship. But
even they did not break the prevailing solitude of his inner life. His
aloofness of soul became a fixed condition. The one intruder in that
lonely inner world was Speed. In the great collection of Lincoln's
letters none have the intimate note except the letters to Speed. And
even these are not truly intimate with the exception of a single group
inspired all by the same train of events. The deep, instinctive reserve
of Lincoln's nature was incurable. The exceptional group of letters
involve his final love-affair. Four years after his removal to
Springfield, Lincoln became engaged to Miss Mary Todd. By that time he
had got a start at the law and was no longer in grinding poverty. If not
yet prosperous, he had acquired "prospects"--the strong likelihood of
better things to come so dear to the buoyant heart of the early West.
Hospitable Springfield, some of whose best men had known him in the
Legislature, opened its doors to him. His humble origin, his poor
condition, were forgiven. In true Western fashion, he was frankly put
on trial to show what was in him. If he could "make good" no
further questions would be asked. And in every-day matters, his
companionableness rose to the occasion. Male Springfield was captivated
almost as easily as New Salem.
But all this was of the outer life. If the ferment within was constant
between 1835 and 1840, the fact is lost in his taciturnity. But there is
some evidence of a restless emotional life.
In the rebound after the woe following Ann's death, he had gone questing
after happiness--such a real thing to him, now that he had discovered
the terror of unhappiness--in a foolish half-hearted courtship of a
bouncing, sensible girl named Mary Owens, who saw that he was not really
in earnest, decided that he was deficient in those "little links that
make up a woman's happiness," and sent him about his business--rather,
on the whole, to his relief.(7) The affair with Miss Todd had a
different tone from the other. The lady was of another world socially.
The West in those days swarmed with younger sons, or the equivalents
of younger sons, seeking their fortunes, whom sisters and cousins were
frequently visiting. Mary Todd was sister-in-law to a leading citizen
of Springfield. Her origin was of Kentucky and Virginia, with definite
claims to distinction. Though a family genealogy mounts as high as the
sixth century, sober history is content with a grandfather and great
grandfather who were military men of some repute, two great uncles who
were governors, and another who was a cabinet minister. Rather imposing
contrasted with the family tree of the child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy
Hanks! Even more significant was the lady's education. She had been to a
school where young ladies of similar social pretensions were allowed to
speak only the French language. She was keenly aware of the role marked
out for her by destiny, and quite convinced that she would always in
every way live up to it.
The course of her affair with Lincoln did not run smooth. There were
wide differences of temperament; quarrels of some sort--just what,
gossip to this day has busied itself trying to discover--and on January
1, 1841, the engagement was broken. Before the end of the month he
wrote to his law partner apologizing for his inability to be coherent
on business matters. "For not giving you a general summary of news,
you must pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now the most
miserable man living. If what I feel were distributed to the whole human
family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall
ever be better, I can not tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To
remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me
. . . a change of scene might help me."
His friend Speed became his salvation. Speed closed out his business and
carried Lincoln off to visit his own relations in Kentucky. It was the
devotion of Bowlin Green and his wife over again. But the psychology
of the event was much more singular. Lincoln, in the inner life, had
progressed a long way since the death of Ann, and the progress was
mainly in the way of introspection, of self-analysis. He had begun to
brood. As always, the change did not reveal itself until an event in the
outward life called it forth like a rising ghost from the abyss of his
silences. His friends had no suspicion that in his real self, beneath
the thick disguise of his external sunniness, he was forever brooding,
questioning, analyzing, searching after the hearts of things both within
and without..
"In the winter of 1840 and 1841," writes Speed, "he was unhappy about
the 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 knew 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....
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."
Whether or not Speed was entirely right in his final conclusion, it is
plain that he and Lincoln were remarkably alike in temperament; that
whatever had caused the break in Lincoln's engagement was repeated in
his friend's experience when the latter reached a certain degree of
emotional tension; that this paralleling of Lincoln's own experience
in the experience of the friend so like himself, broke tip for once
the solitude of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward
terror. Both men were deeply introspective. Each had that overpowering
sense of the emotional responsibilities of marriage, which is bred in
the bone of certain hyper-sensitive types--at least in the Anglo-Saxon
race. But neither realized this trait in himself until, having blithely
pursued his impulse to the point of committal, his spiritual conscience
suddenly awakened and he asked of his heart, "Do I truly love her? Am I
perfectly sure the emotion is permanent?"
It is on this speculation that the unique group of the intimate letters
to Speed are developed. They were written after Lincoln's return to
Springfield, while Speed was wrestling with the demon of self-analysis.
In the period which they cover, Lincoln delivered himself from that same
demon and recovered Serenity. Before long he was writing: "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, to whom it would apply with greater force
than to her? Did you court her for her wealth? Why, you said 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?" And much more of the same shrewd sensible sort,--a picture
unintentionally of his own state of mind no less than of his friend's.
This strange episode reveals also that amid Lincoln's silences, while
the outward man appeared engrossed in everyday matters, the inward
man had been seeking religion. His failure to accept the forms of his
mother's creed did not rest on any lack of the spiritual need. Though
undefined, his religion glimmers at intervals through the Speed letters.
When Speed's fiancee fell ill and her tortured lover was in a paroxysm
of remorse and grief, Lincoln wrote: "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 feel a presentment 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. . . Should
she, as you fear, be destined to an early grave, it is indeed a great
consolation to know she is so well prepared to meet it."
Again he wrote: "I was always superstitious. I believe God made me one
of the instruments of bringing you and your Fanny together, which union
I have no doubt lie had foreordained. Whatever He designs He will do for
me yet. 'Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord' is my text now."
The duality in self-torture of these spiritual brethren endured in all
about a year and a half, and closed with Speed's marriage. Lincoln was
now entirely delivered from his demon. He wrote Speed a charming letter,
serene, affectionate, touched with gentle banter, valiant though with
a hint of disillusion as to their common type. "I tell you, Speed, our
forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar) are all the worst sort
of nonsense. . You say you much fear that that elysium of which you have
dreamed so much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare
swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I have no
doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to
dream dreams of elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can
realize."(8)
V. PROSPERITY