not because I have forgotten them, or been uninterested about them, but
because it appeared to me that I could write nothing which would do any
good. You already know I desire that neither father nor mother shall be in
want of any comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live; and I
feel sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to procure a
doctor, or anything else for father in his present sickness. My business
is such that I could hardly leave home now, if it was not as it is, that
my own wife is sick abed. (It is a case of baby-sickness, and I suppose is
not dangerous.) I sincerely hope father may recover his health, but at
all events, tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and
good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity.
He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads, and He
will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that
if we could meet now it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful
than pleasant, but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a
joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us,
through the help of God, hope ere long to join them.
Write to me again when you receive this.
Affectionately,
A. LINCOLN.
PETITION ON BEHALF OF ONE JOSHUA GIPSON
TO THE JUDGE OF THE SANGAMON COUNTY COURT,
MAY 13, 1851.
TO THE HONORABLE, THE JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURT
IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SANGAMON AND STATE OF ILLINOIS:
Your Petitioner, Joshua Gipson, respectfully represents that on or about
the 21st day of December, 1850, a judgment was rendered against your
Petitioner for costs, by J. C. Spugg, one of the Justices of the Peace
in and for said County of Sangamon, in a suit wherein your Petitioner
was plaintiff and James L. and C. B. Gerard were defendants; that said
judgment was not the result of negligence on the part of your Petitioner;
that said judgment, in his opinion, is unjust and erroneous in this, that
the defendants were at that time and are indebted to this Petitioner in
the full amount of the principal and interest of the note sued on, the
principal being, as affiant remembers and believes, thirty-one dollars
and eighty two cents; and that, as affiant is informed and believes, the
defendants succeeded in the trial of said cause by proving old claims
against your petitioner, in set-off against said note, which claims
had been settled, adjusted and paid before said note was executed. Your
Petitioner further states that the reasons of his not being present at
said trial, as he was not, and of its not being in his power to take an
appeal in the ordinary way, as it was not, were that your Petitioner then
resided in Edgar County about one hundred and twenty miles from where
defendants resided; that a very short time before the suit was commenced
your Petitioner was in Sangamon County for the purpose of collecting debts
due him, and with the rest, the note in question, which note had then been
given more than a year, that your Petitioner then saw the defendant J.
L. Gerard who is the principal in said note, and solicited payment of the
same; that said defendant then made no pretense that he did not owe the
same, but on the contrary expressly promised that he would come into
Springfield, in a very few days and either pay the money, or give a new
note, payable by the then next Christmas; that your Petitioner accordingly
left said note with said J. C. Spugg, with directions to give defendant
full time to pay the money or give the new note as above, and if he did
neither to sue; and then affiant came home to Edgar County, not having the
slightest suspicion that if suit should be brought, the defendants would
make any defense whatever; and your Petitioner never did in any way learn
that said suit had been commenced until more than twenty days after it had
been decided against him. He therefore prays for a writ of Certiorari.
HIS
JOSHUA x GIPSON
MARK
TO J. D. JOHNSTON.
SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 31, 1851
DEAR BROTHER: Inclosed is the deed for the land. We are all well, and
have nothing in the way of news. We have had no Cholera here for about two
weeks.
Give my love to all, and especially to Mother.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
TO J. D. JOHNSTON.
SHELBYVILLE, Nov. 4, 1851
DEAR BROTHER:
When I came into Charleston day before yesterday I learned that you are
anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to Missouri. I have been
thinking of this ever since, and cannot but think such a notion is utterly
foolish. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land richer?
Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without
work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If you
intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you
are; if you do not intend to go to work you cannot get along anywhere.
Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have
raised no crop this year, and what you really want is to sell the land,
get the money and spend it. Part with the land you have, and, my life upon
it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you
will get for the land you spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half
you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought.
Now I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I
feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on Mother's
account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for Mother while she
lives; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support
her; at least it will rent for something. Her dower in the other two
forties she can let you have, and no thanks to me.
Now do not misunderstand this letter. I do not write it in any unkindness.
I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face the truth, which
truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away all your time.
Your thousand pretenses for not getting along better are all nonsense;
they deceive nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your
case.
A word for Mother: Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him.
If I were you I would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I think
you will not) you can return to your own home. Chapman feels very kindly
to you; and I have no doubt he will make your situation very pleasant.
Sincerely yours,
A. LINCOLN.
Nov. 4, 1851
DEAR MOTHER:
Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him. If I were you I
would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I think you will not) you
can return to your own home. Chapman feels very kindly to you; and I have
no doubt he will make your situation very pleasant.
Sincerely your son,
A. LINCOLN.
TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.
SHELBYVILLE, November 9, 1851
DEAR BROTHER:--When I wrote you before, I had not received your letter.
I still think as I did, but if the land can be sold so that I get three
hundred dollars to put to interest for Mother, I will not object, if she
does not. But before I will make a deed, the money must be had, or secured
beyond all doubt, at ten per cent.
As to Abram, I do not want him, on my own account; but I understand he
wants to live with me, so that he can go to school and get a fair start in
the world, which I very much wish him to have. When I reach home, if I can
make it convenient to take, I will take him, provided there is no mistake
between us as to the object and terms of my taking him. In haste, as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.
SPRINGFIELD, November 25, 1851.
DEAR BROTHER:--Your letter of the 22d is just received. Your proposal
about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I want or could
claim for myself; but I am not satisfied with it on Mother's account--I
want her to have her living, and I feel that it is my duty, to some
extent, to see that she is not wronged. She had a right of dower (that is,
the use of one-third for life) in the other two forties; but, it seems,
she has already let you take that, hook and line. She now has the use of
the whole of the east forty, as long as she lives; and if it be sold, of
course she is entitled to the interest on all the money it brings, as long
as she lives; but you propose to sell it for three hundred dollars, take
one hundred away with you, and leave her two hundred at 8 per cent.,
making her the enormous sum of 16 dollars a year. Now, if you are
satisfied with treating her in that way, I am not. It is true that you are
to have that forty for two hundred dollars, at Mother's death, but you are
not to have it before. I am confident that land can be made to produce for
Mother at least $30 a year, and I can not, to oblige any living person,
consent that she shall be put on an allowance of sixteen dollars a year.
Yours, etc.,
A. LINCOLN.
1852
EULOGY ON HENRY CLAY,
DELIVERED IN THE STATE HOUSE AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JULY 16, 1852.
On the fourth day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and oppressed
colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the Atlantic coast of
North America, publicly declared their national independence, and made
their appeal to the justice of their cause and to the God of battles for
the maintenance of that declaration. That people were few in number and
without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within the
first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance was
yet problematical, while the bloody struggle between those resolute rebels
and their haughty would-be masters was still waging,--of undistinguished
parents and in an obscure district of one of those colonies Henry Clay
was born. The infant nation and the infant child began the race of life
together. For three quarters of a century they have travelled hand in
hand. They have been companions ever. The nation has passed its perils,
and it is free, prosperous, and powerful. The child has reached his
manhood, his middle age, his old age, and is dead. In all that has
concerned the nation the man ever sympathized; and now the nation mourns
the man.
The day after his death one of the public journals, opposed to him
politically, held the following pathetic and beautiful language, which I
adopt partly because such high and exclusive eulogy, originating with a
political friend, might offend good taste, but chiefly because I could not
in any language of my own so well express my thoughts:
"Alas, who can realize that Henry Clay is dead! Who can realize that never
again that majestic form shall rise in the council-chambers of his country
to beat back the storms of anarchy which may threaten, or pour the oil of
peace upon the troubled billows as they rage and menace around! Who
can realize that the workings of that mighty mind have ceased, that the
throbbings of that gallant heart are stilled, that the mighty sweep of
that graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of that eloquent
tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is hushed hushed for
ever! Who can realize that freedom's champion, the champion of a civilized
world and of all tongues and kindreds of people, has indeed fallen! Alas,
in those dark hours of peril and dread which our land has experienced, and
which she may be called to experience again, to whom now may her people
look up for that counsel and advice which only wisdom and experience and
patriotism can give, and which only the undoubting confidence of a nation
will receive? Perchance in the whole circle of the great and gifted of
our land there remains but one on whose shoulders the mighty mantle of
the departed statesman may fall; one who while we now write is doubtless
pouring his tears over the bier of his brother and friend brother, friend,
ever, yet in political sentiment as far apart as party could make them.
Ah, it is at times like these that the petty distinctions of mere party
disappear. We see only the great, the grand, the noble features of the
departed statesman; and we do not even beg permission to bow at his
feet and mingle our tears with those who have ever been his political
adherents--we do [not] beg this permission, we claim it as a right, though
we feel it as a privilege. Henry Clay belonged to his country--to the
world; mere party cannot claim men like him. His career has been national,
his fame has filled the earth, his memory will endure to the last syllable
of recorded time.
"Henry Clay is dead! He breathed his last on yesterday, at twenty minutes
after eleven, in his chamber at Washington. To those who followed his lead
in public affairs, it more appropriately belongs to pronounce his eulogy
and pay specific honors to the memory of the illustrious dead. But all
Americans may show the grief which his death inspires, for his character
and fame are national property. As on a question of liberty he knew no
North, no South, no East, no West, but only the Union which held them all
in its sacred circle, so now his countrymen will know no grief that is not
as wide-spread as the bounds of the confederacy. The career of Henry Clay
was a public career. From his youth he has been devoted to the public
service, at a period, too, in the world's history justly regarded as a
remarkable era in human affairs. He witnessed in the beginning the throes
of the French Revolution. He saw the rise and fall of Napoleon. He was
called upon to legislate for America and direct her policy when all Europe
was the battlefield of contending dynasties, and when the struggle for
supremacy imperilled the rights of all neutral nations. His voice spoke
war and peace in the contest with Great Britain.
"When Greece rose against the Turks and struck for liberty, his name was
mingled with the battle-cry of freedom. When South America threw off the
thraldom of Spain, his speeches were read at the head of her armies by
Bolivar. His name has been, and will continue to be, hallowed in two
hemispheres, for it is
"'One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die!'
"To the ardent patriot and profound statesman he added a quality possessed
by few of the gifted on earth. His eloquence has not been surpassed. In
the effective power to move the heart of man, Clay was without an equal,
and the heaven-born endowment, in the spirit of its origin, has been
most conspicuously exhibited against intestine feud. On at least three
important occasions he has quelled our civil commotions by a power and
influence which belonged to no other statesman of his age and times. And
in our last internal discord, when this Union trembled to its centre, in
old age he left the shades of private life, and gave the death-blow to
fraternal strife, with the vigor of his earlier years, in a series
of senatorial efforts which in themselves would bring immortality by
challenging comparison with the efforts of any statesman in any age. He
exorcised the demon which possessed the body politic, and gave peace to a
distracted land. Alas! the achievement cost him his life. He sank day by
day to the tomb his pale but noble brow bound with a triple wreath, put
there by a grateful country. May his ashes rest in peace, while his spirit
goes to take its station among the great and good men who preceded him."
While it is customary and proper upon occasions like the present to give
a brief sketch of the life of the deceased, in the case of Mr. Clay it is
less necessary than most others; for his biography has been written and
rewritten and read and reread for the last twenty-five years; so that,
with the exception of a few of the latest incidents of his life, all is
as well known as it can be. The short sketch which I give is, therefore,
merely to maintain the connection of this discourse.
Henry Clay was born on the twelfth day of April, 1777, in Hanover County,
Virginia. Of his father, who died in the fourth or fifth year of Henry's
age, little seems to be known, except that he was a respectable man and
a preacher of the Baptist persuasion. Mr. Clay's education to the end of
life was comparatively limited. I say "to the end of life," because I
have understood that from time to time he added something to his education
during the greater part of his whole life. Mr. Clay's lack of a more
perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally, teaches
at least one profitable lesson: it teaches that in this country one
can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient
education to get through the world respectably. In his twenty-third
year Mr. Clay was licensed to practise law, and emigrated to Lexington,
Kentucky. Here he commenced and continued the practice till the year
1803, when he was first elected to the Kentucky Legislature. By successive
elections he was continued in the Legislature till the latter part of
1806, when he was elected to fill a vacancy of a single session in the
United States Senate. In 1807 he was again elected to the Kentucky House
of Representatives, and by that body chosen Speaker. In 1808 he was
re-elected to the same body. In 1809 he was again chosen to fill a vacancy
of two years in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was elected to the
United States House of Representatives, and on the first day of taking his
seat in that body he was chosen its Speaker. In 1813 he was again elected
Speaker. Early in 1814, being the period of our last British war, Mr. Clay
was sent as commissioner, with others, to negotiate a treaty of peace,
which treaty was concluded in the latter part of the same year. On his
return from Europe he was again elected to the lower branch of Congress,
and on taking his seat in December, 1815, was called to his old post-the
Speaker's chair, a position in which he was retained by successive
elections, with one brief intermission, till the inauguration of John
Quincy Adams, in March, 1825. He was then appointed Secretary of State,
and occupied that important station till the inauguration of General
Jackson, in March, 1829. After this he returned to Kentucky, resumed the
practice of law, and continued it till the autumn of 1831, when he was by
the Legislature of Kentucky again placed in the United States Senate. By
a reelection he was continued in the Senate till he resigned his seat and
retired, in March, 1848. In December, 1849, he again took his seat in the
Senate, which he again resigned only a few months before his death.
By the foregoing it is perceived that the period from the beginning of Mr.
Clay's official life in 1803 to the end of 1852 is but one year short
of half a century, and that the sum of all the intervals in it will not
amount to ten years. But mere duration of time in office constitutes the
smallest part of Mr. Clay's history. Throughout that long period he has
constantly been the most loved and most implicitly followed by friends,
and the most dreaded by opponents, of all living American politicians. In
all the great questions which have agitated the country, and particularly
in those fearful crises, the Missouri question, the nullification
question, and the late slavery question, as connected with the newly
acquired territory, involving and endangering the stability of the Union,
his has been the leading and most conspicuous part. In 1824 he was first
a candidate for the Presidency, and was defeated; and, although he was
successively defeated for the same office in 1832 and in 1844, there has
never been a moment since 1824 till after 1848 when a very large portion
of the American people did not cling to him with an enthusiastic hope and
purpose of still elevating him to the Presidency. With other men, to
be defeated was to be forgotten; but with him defeat was but a trifling
incident, neither changing him nor the world's estimate of him. Even those
of both political parties who have been preferred to him for the highest
office have run far briefer courses than he, and left him still shining
high in the heavens of the political world. Jackson, Van Buren, Harnson,
Polk, and Taylor all rose after, and set long before him. The spell--the
long-enduring spell--with which the souls of men were bound to him is a
miracle. Who can compass it? It is probably true he owed his pre-eminence
to no one quality, but to a fortunate combination of several. He was
surpassingly eloquent; but many eloquent men fail utterly, and they are
not, as a class, generally successful. His judgment was excellent;
but many men of good judgment live and die unnoticed. His will was
indomitable; but this quality often secures to its owner nothing better
than a character for useless obstinacy. These, then, were Mr. Clay's
leading qualities. No one of them is very uncommon; but all together are
rarely combined in a single individual, and this is probably the reason
why such men as Henry Clay are so rare in the world.
Mr. Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of eloquence
do, of types and figures, of antithesis and elegant arrangement of words
and sentences, but rather of that deeply earnest and impassioned tone
and manner which can proceed only from great sincerity, and a thorough
conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause. This
it is that truly touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard
Mr. Clay never failed to be moved by it, or ever afterward forgot the
impression. All his efforts were made for practical effect. He never spoke
merely to be heard. He never delivered a Fourth of July oration, or a
eulogy on an occasion like this. As a politician or statesman, no one was
so habitually careful to avoid all sectional ground. Whatever he did he
did for the whole country. In the construction of his measures, he
ever carefully surveyed every part of the field, and duly weighed every
conflicting interest. Feeling as he did, and as the truth surely is, that
the world's best hope depended on the continued union of these States,
he was ever jealous of and watchful for whatever might have the slightest
tendency to separate them.
Mr. Clay's predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep devotion
to the cause of human liberty--a strong sympathy with the oppressed
everywhere, and an ardent wish for their elevation. With him this was a
primary and all-controlling passion. Subsidiary to this was the conduct
of his whole life. He loved his country partly because it was his own
country, and mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a
zeal for its advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such
the advancement, prosperity, and glory of human liberty, human right, and
human nature. He desired the prosperity of his countrymen, partly because
they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to the world that free men
could be prosperous.