An Involuntary Black Republican.
Sometime after Mr. Lincoln's well remembered passage of the rebel
Rubicon at Baltimore, some radical Republicans, who thought they saw
some signs of the President's backwardness in vindicating the Chicago
platform, went in committee to the White House to beg him to carry out
his principles--or rather to stretch them in Queen Dido's style.
"I don't know about it, gentlemen," replied Uncle Abe; "with a pretty
strong opposition at home and a rebellion at the South, we'd best push
republicanism rather slow. Fact is, I'm worse off than old blind Jack
Loudermill was when he got married on a short courtship. Some one asked
him a few days after, how he liked his new position. 'Dunno,' said he;
'I went it blind to start with, and ain't had a chance to feel my way to
a conclusion yet.' So it is with me. Perhaps you can see further than I
can, to me the future is dark and lowering; and we have now got to feel
every step of our way forward. Making Republicans used to be hard work,
and I don't see as I could do much at it now, unless I proselyte by
giving fat offices to weak-kneed opponents; but that," continued
Uncle Abe, with a sly look toward several of his old Illinois friends,
"would'nt be quite fair to those who believe that 'to the victors belong
the spoils.' Your idea about pushing things reminds me of the first
_black_ Republican I ever made."
And the President threw his left leg over his right and subsided into
that air of _abandon_ which denotes his pregnancy of a good story.
"You see, gentlemen," he began, "in my boyhood days, I had a slim chance
for schooling, and did'nt improve what I did have. Occasionally a Yankee
would wander into Kentuck, and open a school in the log building that
was a church and school house as well, and keep it till he got starved
out or heard of a better location. One Fall a bald headed, sour-visaged
old man came along and opened the school, and my people concluded I must
go; as usual the big boys soon began to test the master, who, though he
was a patient Jeffersonian Republican, seemed very tyrannical to us. My
good nature singled me out soon, as the scapegoat of the school, and I
got more than my share of the birch: at least, my back was as good as an
almanac, for every day of the week was recorded there. But, though this
record of past time was no pastime to me, I could stand it better than I
could the taunts and jibes of the boys out of school.
"One morning when a half dozen of us were warming before the broad
logwood fire, I noted a big fellow (who had got me flogged the day
before) standing on the side opposite, his back to the blaze: both hands
were partially open, one laid in the other; some would lay it to the
devil, but it was only the spirit of revenge which prompted me to pick
up a live coal, covered with ashes, and drop it into his hands. For a
moment he did'nt mind it, but it burned all the deeper; when it did burn
he jumped and bellowed like a stuck calf.
"'Who made that noise?' Demanded old Whitey? the master.
"'I made it,' replied the big fellow, rubbing his hands.
"'Why?' more angrily demanded old Whitey.
"'Some one put a coal of fire in my hand and burnt me,' sniffled the
booby.
"The big fellow, however, didn't know who did it. Some of the boys, who
had a lurking pity for me, said it snapt into his hand; but the master
'couldn't see it;' and at last it leaked out that 'Abe Lincoln done it.'
"So you see, gentlemen," said Uncle Abe, moralizing, "I got the blame of
a long score of supposititious shortcomings by one act of my own, pretty
much as I had to bear the sins of my whole party in the late canvass,
because of a few sins of my own."
"'Abraham, come up here!' thundered the master, (By the way, gentlemen,
my people always called me Abe--my wife still calls me plain Abe--but
that old fellow called me _Abraham_ so often and so severely that I
early dropped all claim to a definite appellative, and chose to be
indefinitely 'A. Lincoln.') * But to go on. I got a deserved threshing
that time, and a reputation withal for wickedness that saved all the
little rogues in school. At last, however, I determined to be even with
old Whitey, somehow.
"It wasn't long till I worked out an idea. Just over the master's desk
was a rude shelf, upon which he kept some books and a big-bellied bottle
of ink, which some admirer of his Jeffersonian-Republican principles had
presented him. I had observed that in stepping upon his desk platform,
he never touched or moved his chair, beyond leaning back in it, which
he always did, after taking his seat. So next day I robbed our old
long-tailed white horse of a few hairs and braided them in a three
stranded cord. While the master was gone out to his dinner, I put the
thin glass ink bottle upon the edge of the shelf propped a-cant, and
tied one end of the cord to the bottle, and the other end to the back
of his chair. The boys sympathized with me, and were in an extacy of
delight. Anon the master came. Without looking to the right or left, he
marched sternly to the chair, and hence saw not the repressed titter of
expectation that was ready to burst over the whole room. I stood just
outside of the door expecting the result; he sat down and then leaned
back. Down came the bottle, deluging the bald head in a shower
of Stygian blackness! Yes, gentlemen, I fancy that was the first
_black_ Republican ever made in Kentuck, but the conversion was too
sudden."
"How was that?" queried Cassius M. Clay.
"Why," replied Uncle Abe, "he afterwards married a widow and----twelve
negroes."
* When Mr. Lincoln was nominated, very many papers ran up
the name of "Abram Lincoln."
The Wrong Pig by the Ear.
I never knew a flash phrase worse used up than was one by Uncle Abe
attending one of the neighboring Circuit Courts above Springfield. He
was employed to aid a young County Attorney to prosecute some reputed
hog thieves. The crime of hog stealing had become so common that the
people were considerably excited and an example was determined on. The
first person tried was acquitted on a pretty clear _alibi_ or pretty
hard swearing. As the fellow thus acquitted was lounging round the Court
House, Uncle Abe was passing, and he hailed him.
"Well Mr. Lincoln, I reckon you got the wrong sow by the ear when you
undertook to pen me up."
"So it seems," replied Uncle Abe, blandly, "but really you must excuse
me, pigs are so very much alike! In fact, people up here don't all seem
to know their own."
"Wilkie, where does Old Abe Lincoln Live."
In "Clay times," as the old farmers of Sangamon still recall the period
of Henry Clay's powerful canvass for the Presidency, Uncle Abe had a
wide circuit practice. In travelling to the various courts, he generally
drove a horse and vehicle that some people will still remember. The
horse had belonged to an undertaker, and the "funeral business,"
together with years, had made him a grave and staid animal. His
_physique_ presented those angularities that characterized his master,
but unlike his owner, he was never known to perpetrate a joke or indulge
in a "horselaugh." The vehicle was neither buggy, nor Jersey wagon,
but had become, by virtue of alterations and repairs, what Uncle Abe
afterwards described the Union under the plan of free and Slave States
"neither one thing or the other." There was in fact an "eternal
fitness" in horse and man that was not exactly a "standing joke," but a
peripatetic one.
I would give all my expectation of a brigadiership for a portrait of
Uncle Abe seated in this strange "turnout," as he "might have been seen"
wending his meditative way across the prairies.
About this time Uncle Abe was nominated for Congress in the Sangamon.
Yet he did not forego his business, but prosecuted his legal course, as
well as all evil-doers who chanced to fall into his hands. He had
just started on a circuit trip, to be gone a month. Often, since Mr.
Lincoln's nomination for Congress, had Mrs. Lincoln begged him to add
a second story to their humble dwelling, but he pleaded poverty. But a
relation of Mrs. Lincoln's having died in Kentucky leaving her a
small legacy, she determined her husband should have a house worthy a
candidate for Congress. Doubtless she felt an inward satisfaction at the
thought of furnishing a good surprise for her husband on his return. So
she at once bought material, set mechanics at work, and in three weeks
metamorphosed the dwelling into what political pilgrims to Springfield
in 1860 will remember as a neat, two-story, clay-colored residence.
Uncle Abe arrived home just after dark, and drove up to what he thought
to be Eighth street, but not seeing his house, and thinking he had made
a mistake, he drove round on to the next street. Recognizing the houses
there; he again drove around to Eighth, and, passing his own house,
recognized that occupied by W------n, a clever tailor, who was standing
at his own gate.
"Why, is that you, Wilkie?" (said Uncle Abe patronizingly.) W------n,
assured him of his own identity, "Wilkie, where does Old Abe Lincoln
live now."
"Well," said W------n, "The Loco's say he's so sure of his election that
he's gone to Washington to select his seat; but Mrs. Lincoln lives now
in that beautiful new two-story house you have just passed." Uncle Abe
indulged in a quaint laugh, and then turned his ancient horse around,
alighted and asked if Mrs. Lincoln lived in the house before which he
stood. Mrs. Lincoln received him as a fond woman should receive her
lord, and the return was the cause of much pleasant badinage in social
circles.
Too Literal Obedience.
Gen. McClellan was complaining to Uncle Abe of one of his division
commanders, who had literally obeyed an order publicly given for the
purpose of hood-winking the rebels through the aid of the numerous
undetected spies known to lurk in the camp as well as the capital.
"That reminds me of a little story--a little thing that happened to me
when I was out in the Black Hawk war," said Uncle Abe.
"You see, after we brought the Foxes to terms, they were as sweet as
wild honey. The women especially tried to make a good thing out of the
defeat of their braves, by selling us moccasins, deerskin breeches, &c.
One squaw in particular, made beautiful breeches, and I concluded to
have a pair made. How she was to fit my spindles, puzzled me at first,
as the Indians are no tailors in any _measurable_ degree. At last I
bethought me of an old pair which I had in my saddle bag, and these I
gave to her that she might rip them open and use the parts for patterns.
When she brought the new ones home, I was not a little angry to find
that she had exactly imitated the old patch on the nether parts of the
new breeches."
Little Mac smiled in his peculiar grave way, and remarked that when he
gave an order for a similar purpose, he would tell this story by way of
a hint.
How Uncle Abe Felt.
Soon after Uncle Abe's defeat by Judge Douglas in 1848, (whereby Douglas
unwittingly made a President) some one asked Uncle Abe how he felt over
the result.
"Well," said he, "I feel a good deal like a big boy I knew in Kentuck.
After he'd got a terrible pounding by the school master, someone asked
him how he felt? 'Oh! said he, it hurt so awful bad, I couldn't laugh,
and I was too big to cry over it.' That's just my case."
It is presumed the questioner got an idea how a defeated politician
feels.