How many of the almost seventeen million children who receive free
education in the public schools in the United States, and who assemble
once a year to repeat the imperishable sayings of Lincoln, realize
how he had to strain and struggle for the knowledge which is offered
daily to them as a gift?
No wonder that Lincoln became popular in New Salem, and that when
the little Black Hawk Indian war broke out he was elected captain of
the company which marched forth from the village in April, 1831, in
buckskin breeches and coon caps, with rifles, powder horns and blankets.
It was in that picturesque campaign that Lincoln, coming with his
company to a fence gate and not remembering the military word of
command necessary to get his company in order through such a narrow
space, instantly showed his ingenuity by shouting, “This company is
dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side
of the gate.”
A poor, old half-starved Indian crept into Lincoln’s camp for shelter.
The excited soldiers insisted on killing him. But Lincoln stood between
them and the frightened fugitive. At the risk of his own life he saved
the Indian. The soul of chivalry was in him.
He had no chance to fight, and he was compelled to wear a wooden
sword for two weeks because his company got drunk--he who afterwards
commanded Grant, Sherman and Sheridan--yet he returned to his village
a hero without having shed blood, for the world honors courage and
patience even in those who fail to reach the firing line.
V
After the war of 1812, which was fought while Lincoln was in his
rude Kentucky cradle, the continental spirit of the American people
gradually rose to a high pitch, which was intensified in 1823, when
the Monroe Doctrine was born and the Holy Alliance--not to say all
Europe--was warned against armed interference with even the humblest
republic of the Western Hemisphere.
A new sense of power inspired swaggering, bragging American politics.
So the Greeks bragged when Alexander overthrew Persia; so Christendom
bragged when Charles Martel smashed the Saracens and made possible
the Empire of Charlemagne; so the British bragged after Trafalgar and
Waterloo; so the Puritans bragged when Cromwell struck off the head of
King Charles.
The boastful spirit of America was encouraged by spread-eagle statesmen
in blue coats, brass buttons and buff waistcoats, who spoke as though
history began at Bunker Hill. Andrew Jackson, whose frontiersmen had
thrashed the trained British regiments at New Orleans, had succeeded
John Quincy Adams, the polished Harvard professor, in the White House.
It was a time of grand talk. The People--with a capital P--puffed out
their unterrified bosoms and made faces at the miserable rulers of
Europe. It was brave and honest, this strutting, defiant democracy, but
it took Charles Dickens some years later to show us the ridiculous side
of it, even though he went too far.
“Do you suppose I am such a d--d fool as to think myself fit for
President of the United States? No, sir!” was Jackson’s estimate of
himself in 1823. Yet there was the rough old hero in Washington’s chair
at last.
Hayne had talked in the United States Senate of nullifying the nation’s
laws in South Carolina, and Webster had thundered back his majestic
defence of the indivisible Union. Then South Carolina had attempted
nullification and threatened secession, to be promptly answered by
President Jackson with an effective promise of cold steel and powder,
and a gruff hint of the hangman’s noose.
Beyond the Allegheny Mountains were the new Western States, with
unpaved towns, frantic land booms, tall talk, and hero-hearted men
in coonskin caps pushing out with axes and rifles into the unsettled
national territories.
In the midst of this half-organized civilization Abraham Lincoln
listened to the slowly swelling voices of conflict that came to him in
his Illinois village from the Eastern and Southern States.
The great scattered West longed for means of transportation. Railroads,
canals, steamboats! They meant wealth and power to the pioneers and
the shrieking speculators. The Whigs under Henry Clay promised to raise
such a national revenue through a high protective tariff that a mighty
surplus of money could be divided among the States to carry on internal
improvements.
Lincoln was a Whig. He was for a high tariff and internal improvements.
Had he not personally piloted a steamboat from Cincinnati between
the crooked and overgrown banks of the Sangamon River, and had not
the imagination of that country taken fire as the vessel reached
Springfield? Railroads, canals, steamboats! And no recognition yet of
the issue of disunion that was to shake the continent and drench it
with blood.
After the return from the Black Hawk war Lincoln offered himself as a
candidate for the Legislature. His handbill, addressed to the voters,
dealt mainly with river navigation, railroads and usury.
“I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life,”
he wrote. “I have no wealthy or popular relatives or friends to
recommend me.”
Lincoln knew that public. He made his first speech in “a mixed jeans
coat, claw-hammer style, short in the sleeves and bob-tail; flax and
tow-linen pantaloons, and a straw hat.” First, he jumped from the
platform, caught a fighting rowdy by the neck and trousers, hurled him
twelve feet away, remounted the platform, threw down his hat, and made
his historic entrance into American politics in these words:
“Fellow citizens: I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham
Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate
for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old
woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the
internal improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my
sentiments and political principles. If elected I shall be thankful;
if not, it will be all the same.”
There is the Lincoln we love--simple, genuine, direct! He seemed to
feel to the day of his death that the public was not some distant
abstraction, to be approached fearfully and crawlingly; but men like
himself, with the same feelings and aspirations. It was because Lincoln
hated shams and sneaks, and had the root of kindly honor in his nature,
and because he saw, at the very bottom, all men more or less the same,
that he reached the average American heart as no one has reached it
before or since. He was humble enough--and humility is an inevitable
result of moral and spiritual intelligence--to believe that the honesty
he felt in himself stirred an equal honesty in others about him.
He was defeated in the election, but that was the only time the people
rejected him.
Failure did not sour Lincoln. He took odd jobs about the
village--Offutt’s had “petered out”--and for a time he considered the
blacksmith’s trade. But presently he became a partner in a general
store with an idle fellow named Berry, giving his note in payment of
his share. He and his partner bought out still another unsuccessful
store, paying for it with their notes. The end of it all was that
their business failed and Lincoln had to shoulder a debt that made him
stagger for many years.
He was not a good merchant. His fondness for study made him neglect
his store. Having secured copies of Blackstone and Chitty he spent his
days and nights studying law. He would go to the great oak just outside
of the door, lie on his back with his feet against the tree, and lose
himself in Blackstone for hours.
The store was a failure, and Lincoln went back to rail splitting and
farm work. But his law books were always with him. No hardship, no
disappointment, could persuade him to give up his pursuit of knowledge.
In 1833 he became postmaster of New Salem, often carrying the scanty
mail about in his hat and reading the newspapers before he delivered
them.
Meanwhile John Calhoun, the Surveyor of Sangamon County, wanted
an assistant, and he appointed the tall, story-telling, likeable
postmaster to the place. Lincoln knew nothing of surveying, but in six
weeks he got enough out of books to fit him for the work. His survey
maps are still models of accuracy and intelligence.
Once more he was a candidate for the Legislature, in 1834. This time he
was elected. He had to borrow money to buy clothes in which to make his
legislative appearance.