During the Harrison Presidential campaign of 1840, Lincoln said, in a
speech at Springfield, Illinois:
“Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers;
but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was last to
desert, but that I never deserted her.
“I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed
by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of
political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping
with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land,
bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing.
“I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be;
bow to it I never will.
“The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us
from the support of a cause which we believe to be just. It shall never
deter me.
“If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those
dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I
contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside,
and I standing up boldly alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious
oppressors.
“Here, without contemplating consequences, before heaven, and in the
face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem
it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love; and who that thinks
with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?
“Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed.
“But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so; we have the proud
consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of
our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and,
adorned of our hearts in disaster, in chains, in death, we never
faltered in defending.”
“ABE’S” “DEFALCATIONS.”
Lincoln could not rest for as instant under the consciousness that, even
unwittingly, he had defrauded anybody. On one occasion, while clerking
in Offutt’s store, at New Salem, he sold a woman a little bale of goods,
amounting, by the reckoning, to $2.20. He received the money, and the
woman went away.
On adding the items of the bill again to make himself sure of
correctness, he found that he had taken six and a quarter cents too
much.
It was night, and, closing and locking the store, he started out on
foot, a distance of two or three miles, for the house of his defrauded
customer, and, delivering to her the sum whose possession had so much
troubled him, went home satisfied.
On another occasion, just as he was closing the store for the night, a
woman entered and asked for half a pound of tea. The tea was weighed
out and paid for, and the store was left for the night.
The next morning Lincoln, when about to begin the duties of the day,
discovered a four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw at once that he
had made a mistake, and, shutting the store, he took a long walk before
breakfast to deliver the remainder of the tea.
These are very humble incidents, but they illustrate the man’s perfect
conscientiousness--his sensitive honesty--better, perhaps, than they
would if they were of greater moment.