BEING A BRIEF MEMOIR BY THE HONORABLE AND VENERABLE MAN KNOWN IN THESE
PAGES AS JOSIAH TRAYLOR, WHO SAW THE GREAT PROCESSION OF EVENTS BETWEEN
ANDREW JACKSON AND WOODROW WILSON AND ESPECIALLY THE MAKING AND THE END
OF LINCOLN.
Now, as I have done often sitting in the chimney corner at the day's end,
I look back at my youth and manhood and tell, with one eye upon the
clock, of those years of fulfillment in the progress of our beloved
pilgrim. There are four and twenty of them that I shall try to review in
as many minutes. At this distance I see only the high places--one looming
above another like steps in a stairway.
The years of building and sentiment ended on the fourth of November,
1842, when he and Mary Todd were joined in marriage. Now, like one having
taken note of the storm clouds, he strengthens the structure.
Mary tried to teach him fine manners. It was a difficult undertaking.
Often, as might have been expected, she lost her patience. Mary was an
excellent girl, but rather kindlesome and pragmatic. Like most of the
prairie folk, for instance, Abe Lincoln had been accustomed to reach
for the butter with his own knife, and to find rest in attitudes
extremely indolent and unbecoming. He enjoyed sprawling on the floor in
his shirt-sleeves and slippers with a pillow under his head and a book in
his hand. He had a liking for ample accommodation not fully satisfied by
a bed or a lounge. Mary undertook to turn him into new ways and naturally
there was irritation in the house, but I think they got along very well
together for all that. Mary grew fond of him and proud of his great
talents and was a devoted wife. For years she did the work of the house
and bore him children. He milked the cow and took care of the horse when
he was at home.
Annabel and I, having just been married, went with him to Washington on
our wedding-tour in 1847. He was taking his seat in Congress that year.
We were with him there when he met Webster. Lincoln was deeply impressed
by the quiet dignity of the great man. We went together to hear Emerson
lecture. It was a motley audience--business men, fashionable ladies and
gentlemen, statesmen, politicians, women with their knitting, and
lion-hunters. The tall, awkward orator ascended the platform, took off
his top-coat and drew a manuscript from his pocket. He had a narrow,
sloping forehead, a prominent nose, gray eyes and a skin of singular
transparency. His voice was rich and mellow but not strong. Lincoln
listened with rapt attention to his talk about Democracy. It was a
memorable night. He spoke of it often. Such contact with the great
spirits of that time, of which he studiously availed himself in
Washington, was of great value to the statesman from Illinois. His
experiences on the floor were in no way important to him, but since 1914
I have thought often of what he said there, regarding Polk's invasion of
Mexico, unauthorized by Congress as it was:
"The Provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to
Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons:
kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars,
pretending generally that the good of the people was the object. This our
convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions
and they proposed to so frame the constitution that no man should hold
the power of bringing this oppression upon _us_."
The next year he stumped Massachusetts for "Zach" Taylor and heard
Governor Seward deliver his remarkable speech on Slavery which contained
this striking utterance:
"Congress has no power to inhibit any duty commanded by God on Mount
Sinai or by His Son on the Mount of Olives."
On his return home Lincoln confessed that we had soon to deal with that
question.
I was in his office when Herndon said:
"I tell you that slavery must be rooted out."
"What makes you think so?" Mr. Lincoln asked.
"I feel it in my bones," was Herndon's answer.
After that he used to speak with respect of "Bill Herndon's bone
philosophy."
His term in Congress having ended, he came back to the law in partnership
with William H. Herndon--a man of character and sound judgment. Those
days Lincoln wore black trousers, coat and stock, a waistcoat of satin
and a Wellington high hat. He was wont to carry his papers in his hat.
Mary had wrought a great change in his external appearance.
They used to call him "a dead square lawyer." I remember that once
Herndon had drawn up a fictitious plea founded on a shrewd assumption.
Lincoln carefully examined the papers.
"Is it founded on fact?" he asked.
"No," Herndon answered.
Lincoln scratched his head thoughtfully and asked:
"Billy, hadn't we better withdraw that plea? You know it's a sham and
generally that's another name for a lie. Don't let it go on record. The
cursed thing may come staring us in the face long after this suit has
been forgotten."
On the whole he was not so communicative as he had been in his young
manhood. He suffered days of depression when he said little. Often, in
good company, be seemed to be thinking of things in no way connected
with the talk. Many called him a rather "shut-mouthed man."
Herndon used to say that the only thing he had against Lincoln was his
habit of coming in mornings and sprawling on the lounge and reading aloud
from the newspaper.
The people of the town loved him. One day as we were walking along the
street together we came upon a girl dressed up and crying in front of her
father's door.
"What's the matter?" Lincoln asked.
"I want to take the train and the wagon hasn't come for my trunk," said
she.
Lincoln went in and got the trunk and carried it to the station on his
back, with people laughing and throwing jokes at him as he strode along.
When I think of him his chivalry and kindness come first to mind.
He read much, but his days of book study were nearly ended. His learning
was now got mostly in the school of experience. Herndon says, and I think
it is true, that he never read to the end of a law book those days. The
study of authorities was left to the junior partner. His reading was
mostly outside the law. His knowledge of science was derived from
Chambers's _Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation_.
He was still afraid of the Abolition Movement in 1852 and left town to
avoid a convention of its adherents. He thought the effort to resist by
force the laws of Kansas was criminal and would hurt the cause of
freedom. "Let us have peace and revolutionize through the ballot-box,"
he urged.
In 1854 a little quarrel in New York began to weave the thread of
destiny. Seward, Weed and Greeley had wielded decisive power in the party
councils of that state. Seward was a high headed, popular idol. His plans
and his triumphant progress absorbed his thought. Weed was dazzled by the
splendor of this great star. Neither gave a thought to their able
colleague--a poor man struggling to build up a great newspaper. An
office, with fair pay, would have been a help to him those days. But he
got no recognition of his needs and talents and services. Suddenly he
wrote a letter to Weed in which he said:
"The firm of Seward, Weed and Greeley is hereby dissolved by the
resignation of its junior member."
When Greeley had grown in power and wisdom until his name was known and
honored from ocean to ocean, they tried to make peace with him, but in
vain.
Then suddenly a new party and a new Lincoln were born on the same day in
1856 at a great meeting in Bloomington, Illinois. There his soul was to
come into its stateliest mansion out of its lower vaulted past. For him
the fulness of time had arrived. He was prepared for it. His intellect
had also reached the fulness of its power. Now his great right hand was
ready for the thunderbolts which his spirit had been slowly forging. God
called him in the voices of the crowd. He was quick to answer. He went up
the steps to the platform. I saw, as he came forward, that he had taken
the cross upon him. Oh, it was a memorable thing to see the smothered
flame of his spirit leaping into his face. His hands were on his hips. He
seemed to grow taller as he advanced. The look of him reminds me now of
what the famous bronze founder in Paris said of the death-mask, that it
was the most beautiful head and face he had ever seen. What shall I say
of his words save that it seemed to me that the voice of God was in them?
I never saw an audience so taken up and swept away. The reporters forgot
to report. It is a lost speech. There is no record of it. I suppose it
was scribbled with a pencil on scraps of paper and on the backs of
envelopes at sundry times, agreeably with his habit, and committed to
memory. So this great speech, called by some the noblest effort of his
life, was never printed. I remember one sentence relating to the Nebraska
bill:
"Let us use ballots, not bullets, against the weapons of violence, which
are those of kingcraft. Their fruits are the dying bed of the fearless
Sumner, the ruins of the Free State Hotel, the smoking timbers of the
Herald of Freedom, the Governor of Kansas chained to a stake like a
horse-thief."
In June, 1858, he took the longest step of all. The Republican State
Convention had endorsed him for the United States Senate. It was then
that he wrote on envelopes and scraps of paper at odd moments, when
his mind was off duty, the speech beginning:
"A house divided against itself must fall. Our Government can not long
endure part slave and part free."
I was among the dozen friends to whom he read that speech in the
State House library. One said of those first sentences: "It is a fool
utterance." Another: "It is ahead of its time." Another declared that it
would drive away the Democrats who had lately joined the party. Herndon
and I were the only ones who approved it.
Lincoln had come to another fork in the road. For a moment I wondered
which way he would go.
Immediately he rose and said with an emphasis that silenced opposition:
"Friends, this thing has been held back long enough. The time has come
when these sentiments should be uttered, and if it is decreed that I
shall go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to
the truth."
His conscience had prevailed. The speech was delivered. Douglas, the
Democratic candidate, came on from Washington to answer it. That led to
Lincoln's challenge to a joint debate. I was with him through that long
campaign. Douglas was the more finished orator. Lincoln spoke as he split
rails. His conscience was his beetle. It drove his arguments deep into the
souls of his hearers. The great thing about him was his conscience.
Unless his theme were big enough to give it play in noble words he could
be as commonplace as any one. He was built for a tool of God in
tremendous moral issues. He was awkward and diffident in beginning a
speech. Often his hands were locked behind him. He gesticulated more with
his head than his hands. He stood square-toed always. He never walked
about on the platform. He scored his points with the long, bony, index
finger of his right hand. Sometimes he would hang a hand on the lapel
of his coat as if to rest it. Perspiration dripped from his face. His
voice, high pitched at first, mellowed into a pleasant sound.
One sentence in Lincoln's speech at Ottawa thrust "The Little Giant" of
Illinois out of his way forever. It was this pregnant query:
"Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful way and
against the wish of any citizen of the United States exclude slavery from
its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?"
He knew that Douglas would answer yes and that, doing so, he would
alienate the South and destroy his chance to be President two years
later. That is exactly what came to pass. "The Little Giant's" answer
was the famous "Freeport Heresy." He was elected to the Senate but was
no longer possible as a candidate for the Presidency.
I come now to the last step in the career of my friend and beloved
master. It was the Republican convention of 1860 in Chicago. I was a
delegate. The New Yorkers came in white beaver hats enthusiastic for
Seward, their favorite son. He was the man we dreaded most. Many in the
great crowd were wearing his colors. The delegations were in earnest
session the night before the balloting began. The hotel corridors were
thronged with excited men. My father had become a man of wealth and great
influence in Illinois. I was with him when he went into the meeting of
the Michigan delegates and talked to them. He told how he came West in a
wagon and saw the spirit of America in the water floods of Niagara and
went on to the cabin village of New Salem and saw again the spirit of
America in the life of the boy, Abe Lincoln, then flowing toward its
manhood. When he sat down the Honorable Dennis Flanagan arose and told of
meeting the Traylor party at the Falls when he was driving an ox-team, in
a tall beaver hat; how he had remembered their good advice and cookies
and jerked venison.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am willing to take the word of a man whose name
is hallowed by my dearest recollections. And believing what he has said
of Abraham Lincoln I am for him on the second ballot."
The green Irish lad, whom I remember dimly, had become a great political
chieftain and his words had much effect. There was a stir among the
delegates. I turned and saw the tall form of Horace Greeley entering
the door. His big, full face looked rather serious. He wore gold-bowed
spectacles. He was smooth-shaven save for the silken, white, throat beard
that came out from under his collar. His head was bald on top with soft,
silvered locks over each ear. He was a picturesque and appealing figure.
They called on him to speak. He stepped forward and said slowly in a
high-pitched drawl:
"Gentlemen, this is my speech: On your second ballot vote for Abraham
Lincoln of Illinois."
He bowed and left the room and visited many delegations, and everywhere
expressed his convictions in this formula. Backed by his tremendous
personality and influence the simple words were impressive. I doubt not
they turned scores of men from Seward to the great son of Illinois.
Then--the campaign with its crowds, its enthusiasm, its Vesuvian
mutterings. There was a curious touch of humor and history in its
banners. Here are three of them:
"Menard County for the Tall Sucker."
"We are for old Abe the Giant-Killer."
"Link on to Lincoln."
Then--those last days in Springfield.
He came to the office the afternoon before he left and threw himself on
the lounge and talked of bygone days with Herndon.
"Billy, how long have we been together?" he asked.
"Sixteen years."
"Never a cross word."
"Never."
"Keep the old sign hanging. A little thing like the election of a
President should make no change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. If
I live I'm coming back some time and then we'll go right on with the
practice of the law as if nothing had happened."
Then--that Monday morning in Springfield when at eight o'clock on the
eleventh of February the train bore him toward the great task of his
life. Hannah Armstrong, who had foxed his trousers in New Salem, and
the venerable Doctor Allen and the Brimsteads, and Aleck Ferguson, bent
with age, and Harry Needles and Bim and their four handsome children, and
my father and mother, and Betsey, my maiden sister, and Eli Fredenberg
were there in the crowd to bid him good-by.
A quartet sang. Mr. Lincoln asked his friends and neighbors to pray for
his success. He was moved by the sight of them and could not have said
much if he had tried. The bell rang. The train started. He waved his hand
and was gone. Not many of us who stood trying to see through our tears
were again to look upon him. The years of preparation were ended and
those of sacrifice had begun.
Now, we are at the foot of the last hill. For a long time I had seen it
looming in the distance. Those days it filled my heart with a great fear.
Now, how beautiful, how lonely it seems! Oh, but what a vineyard in that
very fruitful hill! I speak low when I think of it. Harry Needles and I
were on our way to Washington that fateful night of April 14, 1865. We
reached there at an early hour in the morning. We made our way through
the crowded streets to the little house opposite Ford's Theatre. An
officer who knew me cleared a way for us to the door. Reporters,
statesmen, citizens and their families were massed in the street waiting
with tear-stained faces for the end. Some of them were sobbing as we
passed. We were admitted without delay. A minister and the doctor sat by
the bedside. The latter held an open watch in his hand. I could hear it
ticking the last moments in an age of history. What a silence as the
great soul of my friend was "breaking camp to go home." Friends of the
family and members of the Cabinet were in the room. Through the open door
of a room beyond I saw Mrs. Lincoln and the children and others. We
looked at our friend lying on the bed. His kindly face was pale and
haggard. He breathed faintly and at long intervals. His end was near.
"Poor Abe!" Harry whispered as be looked down at him. "He has had to die
on the cross."
To most of those others Lincoln was the great statesman. To Harry he was
still the beloved Abe who had shared his fare and his hardships in many a
long, weary way.
The doctor put his ear against the breast of the dying man. There was a
moment in which we could hear the voices in the street. The doctor rose
and said: "He is gone."
Secretary Stanton, who more than once had spoken lightly of him, came to
the bedside and tenderly closed the eyes of his master, saying:
"Now, he belongs to the ages."
We went out of the door. The sound of mourning was in the streets. A
dozen bells were tolling. On the corner of Tenth Street a quartet of
negroes was singing that wonderful prayer:
"Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home."
One of them, whose rich, deep bass thrilled me and all who heard it, was
Roger Wentworth, the fugitive, who had come to our house with Bim, in the
darkness of the night, long before.
THE END