from gossip's point of view, as how it had been broken off. Possibly, as
many people have asserted, it was brought about by an event of which, in
the irony of fate, Lincoln ever after felt ashamed.(1) An impulsive,
not overwise politician, James Shields, a man of many peculiarities, was
saucily lampooned in a Springfield paper by some jaunty girls, one of
whom was Miss Todd.
Somehow,--the whole affair is very dim,--Lincoln acted as their literary
adviser. Shields demanded the name of his detractor; Lincoln assumed
the responsibility; a challenge followed. Lincoln was in a ridiculous
position. He extricated himself by a device which he used more than once
thereafter; he gravely proposed the impossible. He demanded conditions
which would have made the duel a burlesque--a butcher's match with
cavalry broadswords. But Shields, who was flawlessly literal, insisted.
The two met and only on the dueling ground was the quarrel at last
talked into oblivion by the seconds. Whether this was the cause of the
reconciliation with Miss Todd, or a consequence, or had nothing to do
with it, remains for the lovers of the unimportant to decide. The only
sure fact in this connection is the marriage which took place November
4, 1842.(2)
Mrs. Lincoln's character has been much discussed. Gossip, though with
very little to go on, has built up a tradition that the marriage was
unhappy. If one were to believe the half of what has been put in print,
one would have to conclude that the whole business was a wretched
mistake; that Lincoln found married life intolerable because of the
fussily dictatorial self-importance of his wife. But the authority
for all these tales is meager. Not one is traceable to the parties
themselves. Probably it will never be known till the end of time what
is false in them, what true. About all that can be disengaged from this
cloud of illusive witnesses is that Springfield wondered why Mary Todd
married Lincoln. He was still poor; so poor that after marriage they
lived at the Globe Tavern on four dollars a week. And the lady had been
sought by prosperous men! The lowliness of Lincoln's origin went ill
with her high notions of her family's importance. She was downright,
high-tempered, dogmatic, but social; he was devious, slow to wrath,
tentative, solitary; his very appearance, then as afterward, was
against him. Though not the hideous man he was later made out to be--the
"gorilla" of enemy caricaturists--he was rugged of feature, with a lower
lip that tended to protrude. His immense frame was thin and angular; his
arms were inordinately long; hands, feet and eyebrows were large; skin
swarthy; hair coarse, black and generally unkempt. Only the amazing,
dreamful eyes, and a fineness in the texture of the skin, redeemed the
face and gave it distinction.(3) Why did precise, complacent Miss Todd
pick out so strange a man for her mate? The story that she married
him for ambition, divining what he was to be--like Jane Welsh in the
conventional story of Carlyle--argues too much of the gift of prophecy.
Whatever her motive, it is more than likely that she was what the
commercialism of to-day would call an "asset." She had certain qualities
that her husband lacked. For one, she had that intuition for the main
chance which shallow people confound with practical judgment. Her soul
inhabited the obvious; but within the horizon of the obvious she was
shrewd, courageous and stubborn. Not any danger that Mary Lincoln would
go wandering after dreams, visions, presences, such as were drifting
ever in a ghostly procession at the back of her husband's mind. There
was a danger in him that was to grow with the years, a danger that the
outer life might be swamped by the inner, that the ghosts within might
carry him away with them, away from fact--seeking-seeking. That this
never occurred may be fairly credited, or at least very plausibly
credited, to the firm-willed, the utterly matter-of-fact little person
he had married. How far he enjoyed the mode of his safe-guarding is a
fruitless speculation.
Another result that may, perhaps, be due to Mary Lincoln was the
improvement in his fortunes. However, this may have had no other source
than a distinguished lawyer whose keen eyes had been observing him
since his first appearance in politics. Stephen T. Logan "had that
old-fashioned, lawyer-like morality which was keenly intolerant of any
laxity or slovenliness of mind or character." He had, "as he deserved,
the reputation of being the best nisi prius lawyer in the state."(4)
After watching the gifted but ill-prepared young attorney during several
years, observing the power he had of simplification and convincingness
in statement, taking the measure of his scrupulous honesty--these were
ever Lincoln's strong cards as a lawyer--Logan made him the surprising
offer of a junior partnership, which was instantly accepted. That was
when his inner horizon was brightening, shortly before his marriage. A
period of great mental energy followed, about the years 1842 and 1843.
Lincoln threw himself into the task of becoming a real lawyer under
Logan's direction. However, his zeal flagged after a time, and when the
partnership ended four years later he had to some extent fallen back
into earlier, less strenuous habits. "He permitted his partner to do all
the studying in the preparation of cases, while he himself trusted to
his general knowledge of the law and the inspiration of the surroundings
to overcome the judge or the jury."(5) Though Lincoln was to undergo
still another stimulation of the scholarly conscience before finding
himself as a lawyer, the four years with Logan were his true student
period. If the enthusiasm of the first year did not hold out, none the
less he issued from that severe course of study a changed man, one who
knew the difference between the learned lawyer and the unlearned. His
own methods, to be sure, remained what they always continued to be,
unsystematic, not to say slipshod. Even after he became president his
lack of system was at times the despair of his secretaries.(6) Herndon,
who succeeded Logan as his partner, and who admired both men, has a
broad hint that Logan and Lincoln were not always an harmonious firm.
A clash of political ambitions is part explanation; business methods
another. "Logan was scrupulously exact and used extraordinary care in
the preparation of papers. His words were well chosen, and his style
of composition was stately and formal."(7) He was industrious and very
thrifty, while Lincoln had "no money sense." It must have annoyed, if it
did not exasperate his learned and formal partner, when Lincoln signed
the firm name to such letters as this: "As to real estate, we can
not attend to it. We are not real estate agents, we are lawyers. We
recommend that you give the charge of it to Mr. Isaac S. Britton,
a trust-worthy man and one whom the Lord made on purpose for such
business."(8)
Superficial observers, then and afterward, drew the conclusion that
Lincoln was an idler. Long before, as a farm-hand, he had been called
"bone idle."(9) And of the outer Lincoln, except under stress of need,
or in spurts of enthusiasm, as in the earlier years with Logan, this
reckless comment had its base of fact. The mighty energy that was in
Lincoln, a tireless, inexhaustible energy, was inward, of the spirit; it
did not always ramify into the sensibilities and inform his outer life.
The connecting link of the two, his mere intelligence, though constantly
obedient to demands of the outer life, was not susceptible of great
strain except on demand of the spiritual vision. Hence his attitude
toward the study of the law. It thrilled and entranced him, called into
play all his powers--observation, reflection, intelligence--just so
long as it appeared in his imagination a vast creative effort of the
spiritual powers, of humanity struggling perilously to see justice done
upon earth, to let reason and the will of God prevail. It lost its
hold upon him the instant it became a thing of technicalities, of mere
learning, of statutory dialectics.
The restless, inward Lincoln, dwelling deep among spiritual shadows,
found other outlets for his energy during these years when he was
establishing himself at the bar. He continued to be a voracious reader.
And his reading had taken a skeptical turn. Volney and Paine were now
his intimates. The wave of ultra-rationalism that went over America in
the 'forties did not spare many corners of the land. In Springfield, as
in so many small towns, it had two effects: those who were not touched
by it hardened into jealous watchfulness, and their religion naturally
enough became fiercely combative; those who responded to the new
influence became a little affected philosophically, a bit effervescent.
The young men, when of serious mind, and all those who were reformers by
temperament, tended to exalt the new, to patronize, if not to ridicule
the old. At Springfield, as at many another frontier town wracked by
its growing pains, a Young Men's Lyceum confessed the world to be out of
joint, and went to work glibly to set it right. Lincoln had contributed
to its achievements. An oration of his on "Perpetuation of Our Free
Institutions,"(10) a mere rhetorical "stunt" in his worst vein now
deservedly forgotten, so delighted the young men that they asked to have
it printed--quite as the same sort of young men to-day print essays on
cubism, or examples of free verse read to poetry societies. Just what
views he expressed on things in general among the young men and others;
how far he aired his acquaintance with the skeptics, is imperfectly
known.(11) However, a rumor got abroad that he was an "unbeliever,"
which was the easy label for any one who disagreed in religion with the
person who applied it. The rumor was based in part on a passage in an
address on temperance. In 1842, Lincoln, who had always been abstemious,
joined that Washington Society which aimed at a reformation in the use
of alcohol. His address was delivered at the request of the society.
It contained this passage, very illuminating in its light upon the
generosity, the real humility of the speaker, but scarcely tactful,
considering the religious susceptibility of the hour: "If they (the
Christians) believe as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to
take on himself the form of sinful man, and as such die an ignominious
death, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser
condescension for the temporal and perhaps eternal salvation of a large,
erring and unfortunate class of their fellow creatures! Nor is the
condescension very great. In my judgment such of us as have never fallen
victims have been spared more from the absence of appetite than from any
mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe, if
we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will
bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class."(12) How
like that remark attributed to another great genius, one whom Lincoln
in some respects resembled, the founder of Methodism, when he said of a
passing drunkard: "There goes John Wesley, except for the Grace of God."
But the frontier zealots of the 'forties were not of the Wesley type.
The stories of Lincoln's skeptical interests, the insinuations which
were promptly read into this temperance address, the fact that he was
not a church-member, all these were seized upon by a good but very
narrow man, a devoted, illiterate evangelist, Peter Cartwright.
In 1846, this religious issue became a political issue. The Whigs
nominated Lincoln for Congress. It was another instance of personal
politics. The local Whig leaders had made some sort of private
agreement, the details of which appear to be lost, but according to
which Lincoln now became the inevitable candidate.(13) He was nominated
without opposition. The Democrats nominated Cartwright.
Two charges were brought against Lincoln: that he was an infidel,
and that he was--of all things in the world!--an aristocrat. On these
charges the campaign was fought. The small matter of what he would do at
Washington, or would not do, was brushed aside. Personal politics with
a vengeance! The second charge Lincoln humorously and abundantly
disproved; the first, he met with silence.
Remembering Lincoln's unfailing truthfulness, remembering also his
restless ambition, only one conclusion can be drawn from this silence.
He could not categorically deny Cartwright's accusation and at the same
time satisfy his own unsparing conception of honesty. That there was
no real truth in the charge of irreligion, the allusions in the Speed
letters abundantly prove. The tone is too sincere to be doubted;
nevertheless, they give no clue to his theology. And for men like
Cartwright, religion was tied up hand and foot in theology. Here was
where Lincoln had parted company from his mother's world, and from its
derivatives. Though he held tenaciously to all that was mystical in
her bequest to him, he rejected early its formulations. The evidence of
later years reaffirms this double fact. The sense of a spiritual world
behind, beyond the world of phenomena, grew on him with the years; the
power to explain, to formulate that world was denied him. He had no
bent for dogma. Ethically, mystically, he was always a Christian;
dogmatically he knew not what he was. Therefore, to the challenge to
prove himself a Christian on purely dogmatic grounds, he had no reply.
To attempt to explain what separated him from his accusers, to show how
from his point of view they were all Christian--although, remembering
their point of view, he hesitated to say so--to draw the line between
mysticism and emotionalism, would have resulted only in a worse
confusion. Lincoln, the tentative mystic, the child of the starlit
forest, was as inexplicable to Cartwright with his perfectly downright
religion, his creed of heaven or hell--take your choice and be quick
about it!--as was Lincoln the spiritual sufferer to New Salem, or
Lincoln the political scientist to his friends in the Legislature.
But he was not injured by his silence. The faith in him held by too many
people was too well established. Then, as always thereafter, whatever
he said or left unsaid, most thoughtful persons who came close to him
sensed him as a religious man. That was enough for healthy, generous
young Springfield. He and Cartwright might fight out their religious
issues when they pleased, Abe should have his term in Congress. He was
elected by a good majority.(14)
VI. UNSATISFYING RECOGNITION
Lincoln's career as a Congressman, 1847-1849, was just what might have
been expected--his career in the Illinois Legislature on a larger scale.
It was a pleasant, companionable, unfruitful episode, with no political
significance. The leaders of the party did not take him seriously as a
possible initiate to their ranks. His course was that of a loyal member
of the Whig mass. In the party strategy, during the debates over the
Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso, he did his full party duty, voting
just as the others did. Only once did he attempt anything original--a
bill to emancipate the slaves of the District, which was little more
than a restatement of his protest of ten years before--and on this point
Congress was as indifferent as the Legislature had been. The bill was
denied a hearing and never came to a vote before the House.(1)
And yet Lincoln did not fail entirely to make an impression at
Washington. And again it was the Springfield experience repeated. His
companionableness was recognized, his modesty, his good nature; above
all, his story-telling. Men liked him. Plainly it was his humor, his
droll ways, that won them; together with instant recognition of his
sterling integrity.
"During the Christmas holidays," says Ben Perley Poore, "Mr. Lincoln
found his way into the small room used as the Post Office of the House,
where a few genial reconteurs used to meet almost every morning after
the mail had been distributed into the members' boxes, to exchange such
new stories as any of them might have acquired since they had last met.
After modestly standing at the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln was
reminded of a story, and by New Year's he was recognized as the champion
story-teller of the Capital. His favorite seat was at the left of the
open fireplace, tilted back in his chair with his long legs reaching
over to the chimney jamb."(2)
In the words of another contemporary, "Congressman Lincoln was very fond
of howling and would frequently. . . meet other members in a match game
at the alley of James Casparus. . . . He was an awkward bowler, but
played the game with great zest and spirit solely for exercise and
amusement, and greatly to the enjoyment and entertainment of the other
players, and by reason of his criticisms and funny illustrations. . . .
When it was known that he was in the alley, there would assemble numbers
of people to witness the fun which was anticipated by those who knew
of his fund of anecdotes and jokes. When in the alley, surrounded by a
crowd of eager listeners, he indulged with great freedom in the sport of
narrative, some of which were very broad."(3)
Once, at least, he entertained Congress with an exhibition of his humor,
and this, oddly enough, is almost the only display of it that has come
down to us, first hand. Lincoln's humor has become a tradition. Like
everything else in his outward life, it changed gradually with his slow
devious evolution from the story-teller of Pigeon Creek to the author
of the Gettysburg Oration. It is known chiefly through translation. The
"Lincoln Stories" are stories someone else has told who may or may not
have heard them told by Lincoln. They are like all translations, they
express the translator not the original--final evidence that Lincoln's
appeal as a humorist was in his manner, his method, not in his
substance. "His laugh was striking. Such awkward gestures belonged to no
other man. They attracted universal attention from the old sedate down
to the schoolboy."(4) He was a famous mimic.
Lincoln is himself the authority that he did not invent his stories.
He picked them up wherever he found them, and clothed them with the
peculiar drollery of his telling. He was a wag rather than a wit. All
that lives in the second-hand repetitions of his stories is the
mere core, the original appropriated thing from which the inimitable
decoration has fallen off. That is why the collections of his stories
are such dreary reading,--like Carey's Dante, or Bryant's Homer. And
strange to say, there is no humor in his letters. This man who
was famous as a wag writes to his friends almost always in perfect
seriousness, often sadly. The bit of humor that has been preserved
in his one comic speech in Congress,--a burlesque of the Democratic
candidate of 1848, Lewis Cass,--shorn as it is of his manner, his tricks
of speech and gesture, is hardly worth repeating.(5)
Lincoln was deeply humiliated by his failure to make a serious
impression at Washington.(6) His eyes opened in a startled realization
that there were worlds he could not conquer. The Washington of the
'forties was far indeed from a great capital; it was as friendly to
conventional types of politician as was Springfield or Vandalia. The man
who could deal in ideas as political counters, the other man who knew
the subtleties of the art of graft, both these were national as well as
local figures. Personal politics were also as vicious at Washington as
anywhere; nevertheless, there was a difference, and in that difference
lay the secret of Lincoln's failure. He was keen enough to grasp the
difference, to perceive the clue to his failure. In a thousand ways,
large and small, the difference came home to him. It may all be
symbolized by a closing detail of his stay. An odd bit of incongruity
was the inclusion of his name in the list of managers of the Inaugural
Ball of 1849. Nothing of the sort had hitherto entered into his
experience. As Mrs. Lincoln was not with him he joined "a small party of
mutual friends" who attended the ball together. As one of them relates,
"he was greatly interested in all that was to be seen and we did not
take our departure until three or four o'clock in the morning."(7)
What an ironic picture--this worthy provincial, the last word for
awkwardness, socially as strange to such a scene as a little child,
spending the whole night gazing intently at everything he could see,
at the barbaric display of wealth, the sumptuous gowns, the brilliant
uniforms, the distinguished foreigners, and the leaders of America, men
like Webster and Clay, with their air of assured power, the men he had
failed to impress. This was his valedictory at Washington. He went home
and told Herndon that he had committed political suicide.(8) He had met
the world and the world was too strong for him.
And yet, what was wrong? He had been popular at Washington, in the same
way in which he had been popular at Springfield. Why had the same sort
of success inspired him at Springfield and humiliated him at
Washington? The answer was in the difference between the two worlds.
Companionableness, story-telling, at Springfield, led to influence; at
Washington it led only to applause. At Springfield it was a means; at
Washington it was an end. The narrow circle gave the good fellow an
opportunity to reveal at his leisure everything else that was in him;
the larger circle ruthlessly put him in his place as a good fellow and
nothing more. The truth was that in the Washington of the 'forties,
neither the inner nor the outer Lincoln could by itself find lodgment.
Neither the lonely mystical thinker nor the captivating buffoon could do
more than ripple its surface. As superficial as Springfield, it lacked
Springfield's impulsive generosity. To the long record of its obtuseness
it had added another item. The gods had sent it a great man and it had
no eyes to see. It was destined to repeat the performance.
And so Lincoln came home, disappointed, disillusioned. He had not
succeeded in establishing the slightest claim, either upon the country
or his party. Without such claim he had no ground for attempting
reelection. The frivolity of the Whig machine in the Sangamon region
was evinced by their rotation agreement. Out of such grossly personal
politics Lincoln had gone to Washington; into this essentially corrupt
system he relapsed. He faced, politically, a blank wall. And he had
within him as yet, no consciousness of any power that might cleave the
wall asunder. What was he to do next?
At this dangerous moment--so plainly the end of a chapter--he was
offered the governorship of the new Territory of Oregon. For the first
time he found himself at a definite parting of the ways, where a sheer
act of will was to decide things; where the pressure of circumstance was
of secondary importance.
In response to this crisis, an overlooked part of him appeared. The
inheritance from his mother, from the forest, had always been obvious.
But, after all, he was the son not only of Nancy and of the lonely
stars, but also of shifty, drifty Thomas the unstable. If it was not
his paternal inheritance that revived in him at this moment of confessed
failure, it was something of the same sort. Just as Thomas had always
by way of extricating himself from a failure taken to the road, now
Abraham, at a psychological crisis, felt the same wanderlust, and he
threatened to go adrift. Some of his friends urged him to accept. "You
will capture the new community," said they, "and when Oregon becomes a
State, you will go to Washington as its first Senator." What a
glorified application of the true Thomasian line of thought. Lincoln
hesitated--hesitated--
And then the forcible little lady who had married him put her foot down.
Go out to that far-away backwoods, just when they were beginning to get
on in the world; when real prosperity at Springfield was surely within
their grasp; when they were at last becoming people of importance, who
should be able to keep their own carriage? Not much!