THE START IN LIFE
In Illinois during the years of Lincoln's boyhood the red man was
retiring sullenly before the fatal advance of the white man's frontier.
Shooting, scalping, and plundering forays still occurred, and in the
self-complaisant reminiscences of the old settlers of that day the
merciless and mysterious savage is apt to lend to the narrative the
lively coloring of mortal danger.[34] In the spring of 1832 a noted
chief of the Sacs led a campaign of such importance that it lives in
history under the dignified title of "the Black Hawk war." The Indians
gathered in numbers so formidable that Governor Reynolds issued a call
for volunteers to aid the national forces. Lincoln, left unemployed by
the failure of Offut, at once enlisted. The custom then was, so soon as
there were enough recruits for a company, to elect a captain by vote.
The method was simple: each candidate stood at some point in the field
and the men went over to one or another according to their several
preferences. Three fourths of the company to which Lincoln belonged
ranged themselves with him, and long afterward he used to say that no
other success in life had given him such pleasure as did this one.
The company was attached to the Fourth Illinois Regiment, commanded by
Colonel Samuel Thompson, in the brigade of General Samuel Whiteside. On
April 27 they started for the scene of conflict, and for many days
endured much hardship of hunger and rough marching. But thereby they
escaped serious danger, for they were too fatigued to go forward on May
12, when the cavalry battalions rode out gallantly, recklessly, perhaps
a little stupidly, into ambush and death. It so happened that Lincoln
never came nearer to any engagement than he did to this one of
"Stillman's Run;" so that in place of military glory he had to be
content with the reputation of being the best comrade and story-teller
at the camp fire. He had, however, an opportunity to do one honorable
act: the brief term of service of the volunteers expired on May 27, and
most of them eagerly hastened away from an irksome task, without regard
to the fact that their services were still much needed, whereas Lincoln
and some other officers reënlisted as privates. They were made the
"Independent Spy Battalion" of mounted volunteers, were given many
special privileges, but were concerned in no engagement, and erelong
were mustered out of service. Lincoln's certificate of discharge was
signed by Robert Anderson, who afterward was in command at Fort Sumter
at the outbreak of the rebellion. Thus, late in June, Lincoln was again
a civilian in New Salem, and was passing from war to politics.
Nomination by caucus had not yet been introduced into Illinois,[35] and
any person who wished to be a candidate for an elective office simply
made public announcement of the fact and then conducted his campaign as
best he could.[36] On March 9, 1832, shortly before his enlistment,
Lincoln issued a manifesto "To the People of Sangamon County," in which
he informed them that he should run as a candidate for the state
legislature at the autumn elections, and told them his political
principles.[37] He was in favor of internal improvements, such as
opening roads, clearing streams, building a railroad across Sangamon
County, and making the Sangamon River straight and navigable. He
advocated a usury law, and hazarded the extraordinary argument that "in
cases of extreme necessity there could always be means found to cheat
the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect." A
law ameliorated by infractions is no uncommon thing, but this is perhaps
the only instance in which a law has been befriended on the ground that
it can be circumvented. He believed that every man should "receive at
least a moderate education." He deprecated changes in existing laws;
for, he said, "considering the great probability that the framers of
those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with
them." The clumsy phraseology of his closing paragraph coupled not badly
a frank avowal of ambition with an ingenuous expression of personal
modesty. The principles thus set forth were those of Clay and the Whigs,
and at this time the "best people" in Sangamon County belonged to this
party. The Democrats, on the other hand, did not much concern themselves
with principles, but accepted General Jackson in place thereof, as
constituting in himself a party platform. In the rough-and-tumble
pioneer community they could not do better, and for many years they had
controlled the State; indeed, Lincoln himself had felt no small loyalty
towards a President who admirably expressed Western civilization. Now,
however, he considered himself "an avowed Clay man,"[38] and besides the
internal improvement system he spoke also for a national bank and a high
protective tariff; probably he knew very little about either, but his
partisanship was perfect, for if there was any distinguishing badge of
an anti-Jackson Whig, it certainly was advocacy of a national bank.
After his return from the "war," Lincoln set about electioneering with
a good show of energy. He hardly anticipated success, but at least upon
this trial trip he expected to make himself known to the people and to
gain useful experience. He "stumped" his own county thoroughly, and is
said to have made speeches which were blunt, crude, and inartificial,
but not displeasing to his audiences. A story goes that once "a general
fight" broke out among his hearers, and one of his friends was getting
roughly handled, whereupon Lincoln, descending from the rostrum, took a
hand in the affray, tossed one of the assailants "ten or twelve feet
easily," and then continued his harangue. Yet not even thus could he
win, and another was chosen over his head. He had, however, more reason
to be gratified than disappointed with the result; for, though in plain
fact he was a raw and unknown youngster, he stood third upon a list of
eight candidates, receiving 657 votes; and out of 208 votes cast in his
own county he scored 205.[39] In this there was ample encouragement for
the future.
The political campaign being over, and legislative functions postponed,
Lincoln was brought face to face with the pecuniary problem. He
contemplated, not without approbation, the calling of the blacksmith;
but the chance to obtain a part interest in a grocery "store" tempted
him into an occupation for which he was little fitted. He became junior
partner in the firm of Berry & Lincoln, which, by executing and
delivering sundry notes of hand, absorbed the whole grocery business of
the town. But Lincoln was hopelessly inefficient behind the counter, and
Berry was a tippler. So in a year's time the store "winked out," leaving
as its only important trace those ill-starred scraps of paper by which
it had been founded. Berry "moved on" from the inconvenient
neighborhood, and soon afterward died, contributing nothing to reduce
the indebtedness. Lincoln patiently continued to make payments during
several years to come, until he had discharged the whole amount. It was
only a few hundred dollars, but to him it seemed so enormous that
betwixt jest and earnest he called it "the national debt." So late as in
1848, when he was a member of the House of Representatives at
Washington, he applied part of his salary to this old indebtedness.
During this "store"-keeping episode he had begun to study law, and while
"keeping shop" he was with greater diligence reading Blackstone and such
other elementary classics of the profession as he could borrow. He
studied with zeal and became absorbed in his books. Perched upon a
woodpile, or lying under a tree with his feet thrust upwards against the
trunk and "grinding around with the shade," he caused some neighbors to
laugh uproariously, and others to say that he was daft. In fact, he was
in grim earnest, and held on his way with much persistence.
May 7, 1833, Lincoln was commissioned as postmaster at New Salem. His
method of distributing the scanty mail was to put all the letters in his
hat, and to hand them out as he happened to meet the persons to whom
they were addressed. The emoluments could hardly have gone far towards
the discharge of "the national debt." His incumbency in this office led
to a story worth telling. When New Salem, and by necessity also the
post-office, like the grocery shop, "winked out," in 1836, there was a
trifling balance of sixteen or eighteen dollars due from Lincoln to the
government. Several years afterward, when he was practicing law in
Springfield, the government agent at last appeared to demand a
settlement. Lincoln went to his trunk and drew forth "an old blue sock
with a quantity of silver and copper coin tied up in it," the identical
bits of money which he had gathered from the people at New Salem, and
which, through many days of need in the long intervening period, he had
not once touched.
Fortunately an occupation now offered itself which was more lucrative,
and possessed also the valuable quality of leaving niches of leisure for
the study of the law. The mania for speculation in land had begun in
Illinois; great tracts were being cut up into "town lots," and there was
as lively a market for real estate as the world has ever seen. The
official surveyor of the county, John Calhoun, had more work than he
could do, and offered to appoint Lincoln as a deputy. A little study
made him competent for the work, which he performed for some time with
admirable accuracy, if the stories are to be believed. But he had not
long enjoyed the mild prosperity of this new career ere an untoward
interruption came from a creditor of the extinct grocery firm. This man
held one of the notes representing "the national debt," and now levied
execution upon Lincoln's horse and surveying instruments. Two friends,
however, were at hand in this hour of need, and Bolin Greene and James
Short are gratefully remembered as the men who generously furnished, in
that actual cash which was so scarce in Illinois, the sums of one
hundred and twenty-five dollars and one hundred and twenty dollars
respectively, to redeem these essential implements of Lincoln's
business.
The summer of 1834 found Lincoln again a candidate for the legislature.
He ran as a Whig, but he received and accepted offers of aid from the
Democrats, and their votes swelled the flattering measure of his
success. It has usually been stated that he led the four successful
candidates, the poll standing: Lincoln, 1,376; Dawson, 1,370; Carpenter,
1,170; Stuart, 1,164. But Mr. Herndon adduces evidence that Dawson's
number was 1,390, whereby Lincoln is relegated to the second place.
Holland tells us that he "shouldered his pack and on foot trudged to
Vandalia, then the capital of the State, about a hundred miles, to make
his entrance into public life." But the correcting pen of the later
biographer interferes with this dramatic incident also. For it seems
that, after the result of the election was known, Lincoln visited a
friend, Coleman Smoot, and said: "Did you vote for me?" "I did," replied
Smoot. "Then," said Lincoln, "you must lend me two hundred dollars!"
This seemed a peculiar _sequitur_, for ordinary political logic would
have made any money that was to pass between voter and candidate move
the other way. Yet Smoot accepted the consequence entailed in part by
his own act, and furnished the money, whereby Lincoln was able to
purchase a new suit of clothes and to ride in the stage to Vandalia.
The records of this legislature show nothing noteworthy. Lincoln was
very inappropriately placed on the Committee on Public Accounts and
Expenditures; also it is recorded that he introduced a resolution to
obtain for the State a part of the proceeds of the public lands sold
within it. What has chiefly interested the chroniclers is, that at this
session he first saw Stephen A. Douglas, then a lobbyist, and said of
him: "He is the least man I ever saw." Lincoln's part seems to have been
rather that of an observer than of an actor. The account given is that
he was watching, learning, making acquaintances, prudently preparing for
future success, rather than endeavoring to seize it too greedily. In
fact, there is reason to believe that his thoughts were intent on far
other matter than the shaping of laws and statutes. For to this period
belongs the episode of Ann Rutledge. The two biographers whose personal
knowledge is the best regard this as the one real romance of Lincoln's
life. Heretofore he had held himself shyly aloof from women's society,
but this maiden won his heart. She comes before posterity amid a glamour
of rhetorical description, which attributes to her every grace of form
and feature, every charm of character and intellect. She was but a
schoolgirl of seventeen years when two men became her lovers; a year or
more afterward she became engaged to one of them, but before they could
be married he made a somewhat singular excuse for going to New York on
family affairs. His absence was prolonged and his letters became few.
People said that the girl had been deceived, and Lincoln began to hope
that the way was clearing for him. But under the prolonged strain Miss
Rutledge's health broke down, and on August 25, 1835, she died of brain
fever. Lincoln was allowed to see her as she lay near her end. The
effect upon him was grievous. Many declared him crazy, and his friends
feared that he might go so far as to take his own life; they watched him
closely, and one of them at last kindly took him away from the scene of
his sufferings for a while, and bore him constant and cheering company.
In time the cloud passed, but it seems certain that on only one or two
other occasions in his life did that deep melancholy, which formed a
permanent background to his temperament, take such overmastering, such
alarming and merciless possession of him. He was afflicted sorely with
a constitutional tendency to gloom, and the evil haunted him all his
life long. Like a dark fog-bank it hung, always dull and threatening, on
the verge of his horizon, sometimes rolling heavily down upon him,
sometimes drawing off into a more or less remote distance, but never
wholly disappearing. Every one saw it in his face and often felt it in
his manner, and few pictures of him have been made so bad as not in some
degree to present it. The access of it which was brought on by this
unhappy love affair was somewhat odd and uncouth in its manifestations,
but was so genuine and sincere that one feels that he was truly
undergoing the baptism of a great sorrow.
At no other point is there more occasion to note this trait of
character, which presents a curious and interesting subject for study.
Probably no exhaustive solution is possible. One wanders off into the
mystery of human nature, loses his way in the dimness of that which can
be felt but cannot be expressed, and becomes aware of even dimmer
regions beyond in which it is vain to grope. It is well known that the
coarse and rough side of life among the pioneers had its reaction in a
reserved and at times morose habit, nearly akin to sadness, at least in
those who frequented the wilderness; it was the expression of the
influence of the vast, desolate, and lonely nature amid which they
passed their lives. It is true that Lincoln was never a backwoodsman,
and never roved alone for long periods among the shadowy forests and the
limit-less prairies, so that their powerful and weird influences,
though not altogether remote, never bore upon him in full force; yet
their effect was everywhere around him, and through others he imbibed
it, for his disposition was sensitive and sympathetic for such purposes.
That there was also a simple prosaic physical inducement cannot be
denied. Hardship and daily discomfort in all the arrangements of life
counted for something, and especially so the bad food, greasy,
unwholesome, horribly cooked, enough to afflict an ostrich with the blue
devils of dyspepsia. The denizen of the town devoured messes vastly
worse than the simple meal of the hunter and trapper, and did not
counteract the ill effect by hard exercise in the free, inspiring air.
Such facts must be considered, though they diminish the poetry which
rhetoricians and sentimentalists have cast over the melancholy of
Lincoln's temperament. Yet they fall far short of wholly accounting for
a gloom which many have loved to attribute to the mysticism of a great
destiny, as though the awful weight of his immense task was making
itself felt in his strange, brooding nature long years before any human
prophet could have forecast any part of that which was to come. In this
apparent vague consciousness of the oppression of a great burden of
toil, duty, and responsibility, casting its shadow so far before, there
is something so fascinating to the imagination of man that we cannot
quite forego it, or accept any explanation which would compel us
altogether to part with it. The shuddering awe and terrible sense of
fate, which the grandeur of the Greek tragedies so powerfully expresses,
come to us when we contemplate this strange cloud which never left
Lincoln in any year after his earliest youth, although some traits in
his character seemed often incomprehensibly to violate it, and like
rebellious spirits to do outrage to it, while, in fact, they only made
it the more striking, picturesque, and mysterious. But, after all
explanations have been made, the conclusion must be that there is no one
and only thread to guide us through the labyrinth to the heart of this
singular trait, and each of us must follow that which his own nature
renders intelligible or congenial for him. To us, who know the awful
closing acts of his life-drama, it seems so appropriate that there
should be an impressive unity, and so an inevitable backward influence
working from the end towards the beginning, that we cannot avoid, nor
would avoid, an instinctive belief that an occult moral and mental
condition already existed in the years of Lincoln's life which we are
now observing, although the profound cause of that condition lay wholly
in the future, in the years which were still far away. There is a charm
in the very unreason and mysticism of such a faith, and mankind will
never quite fail to fancy, if not actually to believe, that the life
which Lincoln had to live in the future wrought in some inexplicable way
upon the life which he was living in the present. The explanation is not
more strange than the enigma.
Returning now to the narrative, an unpleasant necessity is encountered.
It must be confessed that the atmosphere of romance which lingers around
this love-tale of the fair and sweet Ann Rutledge, so untimely taken
away, is somewhat attenuated by the fact that only some fifteen months
rolled by after she was laid in the ground before Lincoln was again
intent upon matrimony. In the autumn of 1836 Miss Mary Owens, of
Kentucky, appeared in New Salem,--a comely lass, with "large blue eyes,"
"fine trimmings," and a long and varied list of attractions. Lincoln
immediately began to pay court to her, but in an ungainly and morbid
fashion. It is impossible to avoid feeling that his mind was not yet in
a natural and healthy condition. While offering to marry her, he advised
her not to have him. Upon her part she found him "deficient in those
little links which make up the chain of woman's happiness." So she would
none of him, but wedded another and became the mother of some
Confederate soldiers. Lincoln did not suffer on this second occasion as
he had done on the first; and in the spring of 1838 he wrote upon the
subject one of the most unfortunate epistles ever penned, in which he
turned the whole affair into coarse and almost ribald ridicule. In fact
he seems as much out of place in dealing with women and with love as he
was in place in dealing with politicians and with politics, and it is
pleasant to return from the former to the latter topics.[40]
The spring of 1836 found Lincoln again nominating himself before the
citizens of Sangamon County, but for the last time. His party denounced
the caucus system as a "Yankee contrivance, intended to abridge the
liberties of the people;" but they soon found that it would be as
sensible to do battle with pikes and bows, after the invention of
muskets and cannon, as to continue to oppose free self-nomination to the
Jacksonian method of nomination by convention. In enjoying this last
opportunity, not only of presenting himself, but also of constructing
his own "platform," Lincoln published the following card:--
NEW SALEM, June 13, 1836.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL:--
In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication over the signature
of "Many Voters" in which the candidates who are announced in the
"Journal" are called upon to "show their hands." Agreed. Here's mine.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in
bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding
females).
If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my
constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will
on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will
is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will
best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for
distributing the proceeds of the sales of public lands to the several
States to enable our State, in common with others, to dig canals and
construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on
it.
If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White
for President.
Very respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
The canvass was conducted after the usual fashion, with stump-speaking,
fighting, and drinking. Western voters especially fancied the joint
debate between rivals, and on such exciting occasions were apt to come
to the arbitrament of fists and knives. But it is pleasant to hear that
Lincoln calmed rather than excited such affrays, and that once, when
Ninian W. Edwards climbed upon a table and screamed at his opponent the
lie direct, Lincoln replied by "so fair a speech" that it quelled the
discord. Henceforward he practiced a calm, carefully-weighed,
dispassionate style in presenting facts and arguments. Even if he
cultivated it from appreciation of its efficiency, at least his skill in
it was due to the fact that it was congenial to his nature, and that his
mind worked instinctively along these lines. His mental constitution,
his way of thinking, were so honest that he always seemed to be a man
sincerely engaged in seeking the truth, and who, when he believed that
he had found it, would tell it precisely as he saw it, and tell it all.
This was the distinguishing trait or habit which differentiates Lincoln
from too many other political speakers and writers in the country. Yet
with it he combined the character of a practical politician and a stanch
party man. No party has a monopoly of truth and is always in the right;
but Lincoln, with the advantage of being naturally fair-minded to a rare
degree, understood that the best ingenuity is fairness, and that the
second best ingenuity is the appearance of fairness.
A pleasant touch of his humor illumined this campaign. George Forquer,
once a Whig but now a Democrat and an office-holder, had lately built
for himself the finest house in Springfield, and had decorated it with
the first lightning-rod ever seen in the neighborhood. One day, after
Forquer had been berating Lincoln as a young man who must "be taken
down," Lincoln turned to the audience with a few words: "It is for you,
not for me, to say whether I am up or down. The gentleman has alluded to
my being a young man;[41] I am older in years than I am in the tricks
and trades of politicians. I desire to live, and I desire place and
distinction as a politician; but I would rather die now than, like the
gentleman, live to see the day when I should have to erect a
lightning-rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."
There are other stories of this campaign, amusing and characteristic of
the region and the times, but which there is not room to repeat. The
result of it was that Sangamon County, hitherto Democratic, was now won
by the Whigs, and that Lincoln had the personal satisfaction of leading
the poll. The county had in the legislature nine representatives, tall
fellows all, not one of them standing less than six feet, so that they
were nicknamed "the Long Nine." Such was their authority that one of
them afterward said: "All the bad or objectionable laws passed at that
session of the legislature, and for many years afterward, were
chargeable to the management and influence of 'the Long Nine.'" This
was a damning confession, for the "bad and objectionable" laws of that
session were numerous. A mania possessed the people. The whole State was
being cut up into towns and cities and house-lots, so that town-lots
were said to be the only article of export.[42] A system of internal
improvements at the public expense was pushed forward with incredible
recklessness. The State was to be "gridironed" with thirteen hundred
miles of railroad; the courses of the rivers were to be straightened;
and where nature had neglected to supply rivers, canals were to be dug.
A loan of twelve millions of dollars was authorized, and the counties
not benefited thereby received gifts of cash. The bonds were issued and
sent to the bankers of New York and of Europe, and work was vigorously
begun. The terrible financial panic of 1837 ought to have administered
an early check to this madness. But it did not. Resolutions of popular
conventions instructed legislators to institute "a general system of
internal improvements," which should be "commensurate with the wants of
the people;" and the lawgivers obeyed as implicitly as if each delegate
was lighting his steps by an Aladdin's lamp.
With this mad current Lincoln swam as wildly and as ignorantly as did
any of his comrades. He was absurdly misplaced as a member of the
Committee on Finance. Never in his life did he show the slightest
measure of "money sense." He had, however, declared his purpose to be
governed by the will of his constituents in all matters in which he knew
that will, and at this time he apparently held the American theory that
the multitude probably possesses the highest wisdom, and that at any
rate the majority is entitled to have its way. Therefore, in this
ambitious enterprise of putting Illinois at the very forefront of the
civilized world by an outburst of fine American energy, his ardor was as
warm as that of the warmest, and his intelligence was as utterly misled
as that of the most ignorant. He declared his ambition to be "the DeWitt
Clinton of Illinois." After the inevitable crash had come, amid the
perplexity of general ruin and distress, he honestly acknowledged that
he had blundered very badly. Nevertheless, no vengeance was exacted of
him by the people; which led Governor Ford to say that it is safer for a
politician to be wrong with his constituents than to be right against
them, and to illustrate this profound truth by naming Lincoln among the
"spared monuments of popular wrath."
"The Long Nine" had in this legislature a task peculiarly their own: to
divide Sangamon County, and to make Springfield instead of Vandalia the
state capital. Amid all the whirl of the legislation concerning
improvements Lincoln kept this especial purpose always in view. It is
said that his skill was infinite, and that he never lost heart. He
gained the reputation of being the best "log-roller" in the
legislature, and no measure got the support of the "Long Nine" without a
contract for votes to be given in return for the removal of the state
capital. It is unfortunate that such methods should enjoy the prestige
of having been conspicuously practiced by Abraham Lincoln, but the
evidence seems to establish the fact. That there was anything
objectionable in the skillful performance of such common transactions as
the trading of votes probably never occurred to him, being a
professional politician, any more than it did to his constituents, who
triumphed noisily in this success, and welcomed their candidates home
with great popular demonstrations of approval.[43]
A more agreeable occurrence at this session is the position taken by
Lincoln concerning slavery, a position which was looked upon with
extreme disfavor in those days in that State, and which he voluntarily
assumed when he was not called upon to act or commit himself in any way
concerning the matter. During the session sundry resolutions were
passed, disapproving abolition societies and doctrines, asserting the
sacredness of the right of property in slaves in the slave States, and
alleging that it would be against good faith to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia without the consent of the citizens of the
District. Two days before the end of the session, March 3, 1837,
Lincoln introduced a strenuous protest. It bore only one signature
besides his own, and doubtless this fact was fortunate for Lincoln,
since it probably prevented the document from attracting the attention
and resentment of a community which, at the time, by no means held the
opinion that there was either "injustice" or "bad policy" in the great
"institution" of the South. It was within a few months after this very
time that the atrocious persecution and murder of Lovejoy took place in
the neighboring town of Alton.
In such hours as he could snatch from politics and bread-winning Lincoln
had continued to study law, and in March, 1837, he was admitted to the
bar. He decided to establish himself in Springfield, where certainly he
deserved a kindly welcome in return for what he had done towards making
it the capital. It was a little town of only between one and two
thousand inhabitants; but to Lincoln it seemed a metropolis. "There is a
great deal of flourishing about in carriages here," he wrote; there were
also social distinctions, and real aristocrats, who wore ruffled shirts,
and even adventured "fair top-boots" in the "unfathomable" mud of
streets which knew neither sidewalks nor pavements.
Lincoln came into the place bringing all his worldly belongings in a
pair of saddle-bags. He found there John T. Stuart, his comrade in the
Black Hawk campaign, engaged in the practice of the law. The two
promptly arranged a partnership. But Stuart was immersed in that too
common mixture of law and politics in which the former jealous mistress
is apt to take the traditional revenge upon her half-hearted suitor.
Such happened in this case; and these two partners, both making the same
blunder of yielding imperfect allegiance to their profession, paid the
inevitable penalty; they got perhaps work enough in mere point of
quantity, but it was neither interesting nor lucrative. Such business,
during the four years which he passed with Stuart, did not wean Lincoln
from his natural fondness for matters political. At the same time he was
a member of sundry literary gatherings and debating societies. Such of
his work as has been preserved does not transcend the ordinary
productions of a young man trying his wings in clumsy flights of
oratory; but he had the excuse that the thunderous declamatory style was
then regarded in the West as the only true eloquence. He learned better,
in course of time, and so did the West; and it was really good fortune
that he passed through the hobbledehoy period in the presence of
audiences whose taste was no better than his own.
Occasionally amid the tedium of these high-flown commonplaces there
opens a fissure through which the inner spirit of the man looks out for
an instant. It is well known that Lincoln was politically ambitious; his
friends knew it, his biographers have said it, he himself avowed it.
Now and again, in these early days, when his horizon could hardly have
ranged beyond the state legislature and the lower house of Congress, he
uttered some sentences which betrayed longings of a high moral grade,
and indicated that office and power were already regarded by him as the
opportunities for great actions. Strenuous as ought to be the objection
to that tone in speaking of Lincoln which seems to proceed from beneath
the sounding-board of the pulpit, and which uses him as a Sunday-school
figure to edify a piously admiring world, yet it certainly seems a plain
fact that his day-dreams at this period foreshadowed the acts of his
later years, and that what he pleased himself with imagining was not the
acquirement of official position but the achievement of some great
benefit for mankind. He did not, of course, expect to do this as a
philanthropist; for he understood himself sufficiently to know that his
road lay in the public service. Accordingly he talks not as Clarkson or
Wilberforce, but as a public man, of "emancipating slaves," of
eliminating slavery and drunkenness from the land; at the same time he
speaks thus not as a politician shrewdly anticipating the coming popular
impulse, but as one desiring to stir that impulse. When he said, in his
manifesto in 1832, that he had "no other ambition so great as that of
being truly esteemed by his fellow-men," he uttered words which in the
mouths of most politicians have the irritating effect of the dreariest
and cheapest of platitudes; but he obviously uttered them with the
sincerity of a deep inward ambition, that kind of an ambition which is
often kept sacred from one's nearest intimates. Many side glimpses show
him in this light, and it seems to be the genuine and uncolored one.
In 1838 Lincoln was again elected a member of the lower house of the
legislature, and many are the amusing stories told of the canvass. It
was in this year that he made sudden onslaught on the demagogue Dick
Taylor, and opening with a sudden jerk the artful colonel's waistcoat,
displayed a glittering wealth of jewelry hidden temporarily beneath it.
There is also the tale of his friend Baker haranguing a crowd in the
store beneath Lincoln's office. The audience differed with Baker, and
was about to punish him severely for the difference, when Lincoln
dangled down through a trap-door in the ceiling, intimated his intention
to share in the fight if there was to be one, and brought the audience
to a more pacific frame of mind. Such amenities of political debate at
least tested some of the qualities of the individual. The Whig party
made him their candidate for the speakership and he came within one vote
of being elected.[44] He was again a member of the Finance Committee;
but financiering by those wise lawgivers was no longer so lightsome and
exuberant a task as it had been. The hour of reckoning had come; and the
business proved to be chiefly a series of humiliating and futile
efforts to undo the follies of the preceding two and a half years.
Lincoln shared in this disagreeable labor, as he had shared in the mania
which had made it necessary. He admitted that he was "no financier," and
gave evidence of the fact by submitting a bill which did not deserve to
be passed, and was not. It can, however, be said for him that he never
favored repudiation, as some of his comrades did.
In 1840[45] Lincoln was again elected, again was the nominee of the Whig
party for the speakership, and again was beaten by Ewing, the Democratic
candidate, who mustered 46 votes against 36 for Lincoln. This
legislature held only one session, and apparently Holland's statement,
that "no important business of general interest was transacted," is a
fair summary. Lincoln did only one memorable thing, and that
unfortunately was discreditable. In a close and exciting contest, he,
with two other Whigs, jumped out of the window in order to break a
quorum. It is gratifying to hear from the chronicler of the event, who
was one of the parties concerned, that "Mr. Lincoln always regretted
that he entered into that arrangement, as he deprecated everything that
savored of the revolutionary."[46]
The year 1840 was made lively throughout the country by the spirited
and rollicking campaign which the Whigs made on behalf of General
Harrison. In that famous struggle for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," the
log cabin, hard cider, and the 'coon skin were the popular emblems which
seemed to lend picturesqueness and enthusiasm and a kind of Western
spirit to the electioneering everywhere in the land. In Illinois Lincoln
was a candidate on the Whig electoral ticket, and threw himself with
great zeal into the congenial task of "stumping" the State. Douglas was
doing the same duty on the other side, and the two had many encounters.
Of Lincoln's speeches only one has been preserved,[47] and it leads to
the conclusion that nothing of value was lost when the others perished.
The effusion was in the worst style of the effervescent and exuberant
school of that region and generation. Nevertheless, it may have had the
greatest merit which oratory can possess, in being perfectly adapted to
the audience to which it was addressed. But rhetoric could not carry
Illinois for the Whigs; the Democrats cast the vote of the State.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] _The Good Old Times in McLean County_, passim.
[35] It was first advocated in 1835-36, and was adopted by slow degrees
thereafter. Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, 204.
[36] _Ibid._ 201.
[37] Lamon, 129, where is given the text of the manifesto; Herndon, 101;
N. and H. i. 101, 105; Holland, 53, says that _after_ his return from
the Black Hawk campaign, Lincoln "was applied to" to become a candidate,
and that the "application was a great surprise to him." This seems an
obvious error, in view of the manifesto; yet see Lamon, 122.
[38] N. and H. i. 102. Lamon regards him as "a nominal Jackson man" in
contradistinction to a "whole-hog Jackson man;" as "Whiggish" rather
than actually a Whig. Lamon, 123, 126.
[39] Herndon, 105. But see N. and H. i. 109.
[40] The whole story of these two love affairs is given at great length
by Herndon and by Lamon. Other biographers deal lightly with these
episodes. Nicolay and Hay scantly refer to them, and, in their
admiration for Mr. Lincoln, even permit themselves to speak of that most
abominable letter to Mrs. Browning as "grotesquely comic." (Vol. i. p.
192.) It is certainly true that the revelations of Messrs. Herndon and
Lamon are painful, and in part even humiliating; and it would be most
satisfactory to give these things the go-by. But this seems impossible;
if one wishes to study and comprehend the character of Mr. Lincoln, the
strange and morbid condition in which he was for some years at this time
cannot possibly be passed over. It may even be said that it would be
unfair to him to do so; and a truthful idea of him, on the whole,
redounds more to his credit than a maimed and mutilated one, even though
the mutilation seems to consist in lopping off and casting out of sight
a deformity. Psychologically, perhaps physiologically, these episodes
are interesting, and as aiding a comprehension of Mr. Lincoln's nature
they are indispensable; but historically they are of no consequence, and
I am glad that the historical character of this work gives me the right
to dwell upon them lightly.
[41] It is amusing-to compare this Western oratory with the famous
outburst of the younger Pitt which he opened with those familiar words:
"The atrocious crime of being a young man which the honorable gentleman
has with such spirit and decency charged upon me," etc., etc.
[42] For the whole history of the rise, progress, and downfall of this
mania, see Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, ch. vi.
[43] Ford, _Hist. of Illinois_, 186; Lamon, 198-201; Herndon, 176, 180.
N. and H., i. 137-139, endeavor to give a different color to this
transaction, but they make out no case as against the statements of
writers who had such opportunities to know the truth as had Governor
Ford, Lamon, and Herndon.
[44] N. and H. i. 160; Holland, 74; Lamon, 212; but see Herndon, 193.
[45] For the story of _The Skinning of Thomas_, belonging to this
campaign, see Herndon, 197; Lamon, 231; and for the Radford story, see
N. and H. i. 172; Lamon, 230.
[46] Lamon, 216, 217. Nicolay and Hay, i. 162, speak of "a number" of
the members, among whom Lincoln was "prominent," making this exit; but
there seem to have been only two besides him.
[47] N. and H. i. 173-177.