It was not long before Lincoln became a favorite figure in
Springfield. The skill, the courage, and the good-will he had shown in
his management of the bill for the removal of the capital gave him at
once, of course, special prominence. The entire "Long Nine," indeed,
were regarded by the county as its benefactors, and throughout the
summer there were barbecues and fireworks, dinners and speeches
in their honor. "The service rendered Old Sangamon by the present
delegation" was a continually recurring toast at every gathering.
At one "sumptuous dinner" the internal improvement scheme in all its
phases was toasted again and again by the banqueters, "'The Long Nine'
of Old Sangamon--well done, good and faithful servants," drew forth
long applause. Among those who offered volunteer toasts at this dinner
were "A. Lincoln, Esq.," and "S.A. Douglas, Esq."
At a dinner at Athens, given to the delegation, eight formal toasts
and twenty-five volunteers are quoted in the report of the affair in
the "Sangamo Journal." Among them were the following:
A. Lincoln. He has fulfilled the expectations of his friends
and disappointed the hopes of his enemies.
A. Lincoln. One of nature's noblemen.
By A. Lincoln. Sangamon County will ever be true to her best
interests, and never more so than in reciprocating the good
feelings of the citizens of Athens and neighborhood.
Lincoln had not been long in Springfield before he soon was able to
support himself, a result due, no doubt, very largely to his personal
qualities and to his reputation as a shrewd politician. Not that he
made money. The fee-book of Lincoln and Stuart shows that the returns
were modest enough, and that sometimes they even "traded out" their
account. Nevertheless it was a satisfaction to earn a livelihood so
soon. Of his peculiar methods as a lawyer at this date we know very
little. Most of his cases are utterly uninteresting. The very first
year he was in Springfield, however, he had one case which created
a great sensation, and which, so far as we know, has been overlooked
entirely by his biographers. It is an admirable example of the
way Lincoln could combine business and politics as well as of his
merciless persistency in pursuing a man whom he believed unjust.
It seems that among the offices to be filled at the August election of
1837 was that of probate justice of the peace. One of the candidates
was General James Adams, a man who had come on from the East in the
early twenties, and who had at first claimed to be a lawyer. He had
been an aspirant for various offices, among them that of governor
of the State, but with little success. A few days before the August
election of 1837 an anonymous hand-bill was scattered about the
streets. It was an attack on General Adams, charging him with having
acquired the title to a ten-acre lot of ground near the town by the
deliberate forgery of the name of Joseph Anderson, of Fulton County,
Illinois, to an assignment of a judgment. Anderson had died, and the
widow, upon going to Springfield to dispose of the land, was surprised
to find that it was claimed by General Adams, and she employed Stuart
and Lincoln to look into the matter. The hand-bill, which went into
all of the details at great length, concluded as follows: "I have
only made these statements because I am known by many to be one of
the individuals against whom the charge of forging the assignment and
slipping it into the general's papers has been made; and because our
silence might be construed into a confession of the truth. I shall not
subscribe my name; but hereby authorize the editor of the 'Journal' to
give it up to any one who may call for it.".
After the election, at which General Adams had been elected, the
hand-bill was reproduced in the "Sangamo Journal," with a card signed
by the editor, in which he said: "To save any further remarks on
this subject, I now state that A. Lincoln, Esq., is the author of
the hand-bill in question." The same issue of the paper contained a
lengthy communication from General Adams, denying the charge of fraud.
The controversy was continued for several weeks. General Adams used,
mostly, the columns of the "Springfield Republican," filling six
columns of a single issue. He charged that the assault upon him was
the result of a conspiracy between "a knot of lawyers, doctors, and
others," who wished to ruin his reputation. Lincoln's answers to Adams
are most emphatic. In one case, quoting several of his assertions,
he pronounced them "all as false as hell, as all this community must
know." Adams's replies were always voluminous. "Such is the turn which
things have lately taken," wrote Lincoln, "that when General Adams
writes a book I am expected to write a commentary on it." Replying to
Adams's denunciation of the lawyers, he said: "He attempted to impose
himself upon the community as a lawyer, and he actually carried the
attempt so far as to induce a man who was under the charge of murder
to entrust the defence of his life to his hands, and finally took his
money and got him hanged. Is this the man that is to raise a breeze
in his favor by abusing lawyers? ... If he is not a lawyer, he _is_
a liar; for he proclaimed himself a lawyer, and got a man hanged by
depending on him." Lincoln concluded: "Farewell, General. I will see
you again at court, if not before--when and where we will settle the
question whether you or the widow shall have the land." The widow did
get the land, but this was not the worst thing that happened to Adams.
The climax was reached when the "Sangamo Journal" published a long
editorial (written by Lincoln, no doubt) on the controversy, and
followed it with a copy of an indictment found against Adams in Oswego
County, New York, in 1818. The offence charged in this indictment was
the forgery of a deed by Adams--"a person of evil name and fame and of
a wicked disposition."
Lincoln's victory in this controversy undoubtedly did much to impress
the community, not necessarily that he was a good lawyer, but rather
that he was a clever strategist and a fearless enemy. It was not, in
fact, as a lawyer that he was prominent in the first years after he
came to Springfield. Reëlected to the Assembly in 1838, and again in
1840, his real impress on the community was made as a politician.
The qualities which he had already shown in public life were only
strengthened as he gained experience and self-confidence. He was the
terror of the pretentious and insincere, and had a way of exposing
their shams by clever tricks which, to voters, were unanswerable
arguments. A case in point happened in 1840. It was considered
necessary, at that day, by a candidate to prove to the farmers that
he was poor and, like themselves, horny-handed. Those politicians who
wore good clothes and dined sumptuously were careful to conceal their
regard for the elegancies of life from their constituents. One of
the Democrats who in this campaign took particular pains to decry the
Whigs for their wealth and aristocratic principles was Colonel Dick
Taylor, generally known in Illinois as "ruffled-shirt Taylor." He was
a vain and handsome man, who habitually arrayed himself as gorgeously
as the fashion allowed. One day when he and Lincoln had met in debate
at a countryside gathering, Colonel Dick became particularly bitter
in his condemnation of Whig elegance. Lincoln listened for a time, and
then, slipping near the speaker, suddenly caught his coat, which
was buttoned up close, and tore it open. A mass of ruffled shirt,
a gorgeous velvet vest, and a great gold chain from which dangled
numerous rings and seals, were uncovered to the crowd. Lincoln needed
to make no further reply that day to the charge of being a "rag
baron."
Lincoln loved fair play as he hated shams; and throughout these early
years in Springfield are examples of his boldness in insisting that
friend and enemy have the chance due them. A most dramatic case of
this kind occurred at a political meeting held one evening in the
Springfield court-room, which at that date was temporarily in a hall
under Stuart and Lincoln's law office. Directly over the platform was
a trap-door. Lincoln frequently would lie by this opening during a
meeting, listening to the speeches. One evening one of his friends,
E.D. Baker, in speaking angered the crowd, and an attempt was made
to "pull him down." Before the assailants could reach the platform,
however, a pair of long legs dangled from the trap-door, and in an
instant Lincoln dropped down beside Baker, crying out, "Hold on,
gentlemen, this is a land of free speech." His appearance was so
unexpected, and his attitude so determined, that the crowd soon was
quiet, and Baker went on with his speech.
In all the intellectual life of the town he took a place. With a few
of the leading young men he formed a young men's lyceum. One of his
speeches before this body has been preserved in full. Its subject is
"The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions."[4] The speech has
not, however, any of the peculiarly original style which usually
characterized his efforts.
He came immediately to be a favorite figure in all sorts of local
affairs. What he said and did on these occasions is still recollected
by those interested in them. "When the seat of government was removed
from Vandalia to Springfield in 1836," says the Rev. Peter Wallace
of Chicago "I obtained the contract of taking down the court-house to
make a place for the State House. Lincoln, with others, was present
to receive the job. 'Peter,' he said to me, 'if you succeed as well
in building houses as you have in tearing this one down, you will make
your mark as a builder.'" Mr. Wallace tells, too, of hearing Lincoln
say in a speech, at the funeral of one of their friends: "I read in a
book whose author never errs, 'Woe unto you when all men shall speak
well of you.' Our friend will escape that woe, for he would be the
exception had he no enemies."
The most pleasing feature of his early life in the town was the way in
which he attached all classes of people to him. He naturally, from his
political importance and from his relation to Mr. Stuart, was admitted
to the most exclusive circle of society. But Lincoln was not received
there from tolerance of his position only. The few members left of
that interesting circle of Springfield in the thirties are emphatic in
their statements that he was recognized as a valuable social factor.
If indifferent to forms and little accustomed to conventional usages,
he had a native dignity and self-respect which stamped him at once as
a superior man. He had a good will, an easy adaptability to people,
which made him take a hand in everything that went on. His name
appears in every list of banqueters and merry-makers reported in the
Springfield papers. He even served as committee-man for cotillion
parties. "We liked Lincoln, though he was not gay," said one charming
and cultivated old lady to me in Springfield. "He rarely danced, he
was never very attentive to ladies, but he was always a welcome guest
everywhere, and the centre of a circle of animated talkers. Indeed, I
think the only thing we girls had against Lincoln was that he always
attracted all the men around him."
Lincoln's kindly interest and perfectly democratic feeling attached to
him many people whom he never met save on the streets. Indeed his life
in the streets of Springfield is a most touching and delightful study.
He concerned himself in the progress of every building which was put
up, of every new street which was opened; he passed nobody without
recognition; he seemed always to have time to stop and talk. He
became, in fact, part of Springfield street life, just as he had of
the town's politics and society. By 1840 there was no man in the town
better known, better liked, more sought for; though there were more
than one whose future was considered brighter.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: Reminiscences of Mr. Weir, a former resident of Sangamon
County, related by E.B. Howell of Butte, Montana.]
[Footnote 2: Summary condensed from Moses's "History of Illinois."]
[Footnote 3: The original of this letter is owned by E.R. Oeltjen of
Petersburg, Illinois.]
[Footnote 4: Lincoln's address on "The Perpetuation of Our Political
Institutions" is dated January 27, 1837, in most biographies, but
it was published in the "Sangamo Journal" of February 3, 1838. The
address is preceded by the following resolution:
"YOUNG MEN'S LYCEUM,
SPRINGFIELD, _January 27, 1837[8]_.
"_Resolved_, That the thanks of this Lyceum be presented to A.
Lincoln, Esq., for the lecture delivered by him this evening,
and that he be solicited to furnish a copy for publication.
"JAS. H. MATHENY, _Secretary_"
The confusion as to the date of the delivery of this address evidently
arises from the fact that the resolution here quoted bears the date of
"1837"--a mere slip of the pen, of course. In January, 1837, Lincoln
was in the legislature at Vandalia. He had not yet become a resident
of Springfield. According to Mr. Herndon, who was a member of the
Young Men's Lyceum, that society was not formed until the fall of
1837.]
[Illustration: THE WAVE "WENT OUT IN THREE SURGES, MAKING A CLEAN
SWEEP OF A BOAT."]