Books by Alonzo Rothschild
PUBLISHED BY
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
“HONEST ABE.” A Study in Integrity based on the Early Life of
Abraham Lincoln.
LINCOLN, MASTER OF MEN. Illustrated.
“HONEST ABE”
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
From a woodcut by T. Johnson after a daguerreotype owned by Mr. Robert
T. Lincoln]
“HONEST ABE”
A STUDY IN INTEGRITY
BASED ON THE EARLY LIFE OF
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BY
ALONZO ROTHSCHILD
AUTHOR OF “LINCOLN, MASTER OF MEN”
[Illustration: colophon]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY META ROTHSCHILD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published September 1917_
IN MEMORY
OF
“DEAREST”
KATHERINE ROTHSCHILD
TO WHOM THE AUTHOR
OWES NOT LESS THAN
LINCOLN OWED HIS
“ANGEL MOTHER”
THIS BOOK IS
AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
CONTENTS
I. PINCHING TIMES 1
II. TRUTH IN LAW 41
III. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS 79
IV. DOLLARS AND CENTS 130
V. HONESTY IN POLITICS 195
ALONZO ROTHSCHILD 283
_Memoir by John Rothschild_
A LIST OF BOOKS CITED 307
NOTES 321
INDEX 361
ILLUSTRATIONS
ABRAHAM LINCOLN _Frontispiece_
From a woodcut by T. Johnson in the _Century Magazine_
for February, 1897, after a daguerreotype owned by Mr.
Robert T. Lincoln. It is not known when or where the
daguerreotype was taken, but it seems probable that it was
made either at St. Louis or at Washington when Lincoln
was in Congress, December, 1847,-March, 1849
_Alonzo Rothschild_ 285
From a photograph by Marceau, Boston
“HONEST ABE”
CHAPTER I
PINCHING TIMES
He who seeks to understand the character and achievement of Abraham
Lincoln must begin with a study of the man’s honesty. At the base of his
nature, in the tap-root and very fiber of his being, pulsed a fidelity
to truth, whether of thought or of deed, peculiar to itself. So
thoroughgoing was this characteristic that it seems to have begun in him
where in other men it generally leaves off. Politicians without number
have yielded a work-a-day obedience to the rules of honor, but there is
record of no other public leader in recent times who, among the
vicissitudes of a trying career, has endeavored to balance actions and
principles with such painstaking nicety. To trace these efforts from
Lincoln’s early years is to pass with him, pace for pace, over part of
the road that led to distinction. As we go we shall have to take account
of happenings, little as well as big; for every man is the sum of all
his parts, and in no other way may we hope to comprehend how the esteem
that began with a few rustic neighbors grew until it filled the heart of
a nation.
To what extent, if any, Lincoln inherited his uprightness of mind from
remote ancestors will probably never be known. The bare lines of the
genealogical chart afford no clues to the characters of the men and
women whose names appear there. If any of the threads spun out of their
several lives met and twined in the broad strand of blue that enriched
his, there is no way of identifying the spinners. Less obscure, though
perhaps of only passing interest, is what may be gleaned under this head
about two of Lincoln’s nearer relations. His father’s brothers, Mordecai
and Josiah, appear to have enjoyed general respect on account of their
probity. “They were excellent men,” said one who claimed to know them
intimately, “plain, moderately educated, candid in their manners and
intercourse, and looked upon as honorable as any men I have ever heard
of.”[i-1] Their younger brother Thomas, however, cannot be so readily
portrayed. He has, like his illustrious son, been, in turn, depreciated
and idealized to such a degree that the inquirer, who would reach safe
conclusions in respect to him, must tread warily through a maze of
contradictions.
Rejecting the praise as well as the blame of hearsay historians, and
following the testimony of those only who knew the man, we learn
from one that he was “honest”; from another that he “was regarded
as a very honest man”; and still another found him “always
truthful--conscientious.”[i-2] To these tributes must be added what one
who was doubly connected with Thomas Lincoln had to say about him:--
“I’m just tired of hearing Grandfather Lincoln abused,” said Mrs.
Dowling, the daughter of Dennis Hanks and Matilda Johnson, speaking to
an attentive listener, not many years ago. “Everybody runs him down.”
Then, going on to free her mind woman-fashion, she continued:--
“Uncle Abe got his honesty, and his clear notions of living, and his
kind heart from his father. Maybe the Hanks family was smarter, but some
of them couldn’t hold a candle to Grandfather Lincoln when it came to
morals. I’ve heard Grandfather Lincoln say, many a time, that he was
kind and loving, and kept his word, and always paid his way, and never
turned a dog from his door.”[i-3]
These qualities, so admirable in Thomas, were not lacking, it should be
mentioned, in that particular member of “the Hanks family,” his cousin
Nancy, with whom he mated.[i-4] She is said to have brought to the rude
Kentucky cabin, in which they began their married life, a sweetness of
spirit and a firmness of character that nicely supplemented his rugged
integrity. Yet here again traditions are more plentiful than facts, and
the repute of the little family, in those early days, so far as it
affords a point of departure for the study of Abraham Lincoln’s
straightforwardness, rests, in a manner, on the word of one neighbor,--a
man of standing, however,--according to whom “they were poor,” but “they
were true.”[i-5]
The poverty of the frontier, it has been said, is no poverty; but the
Lincolns were poor almost to a proverb. Their condition appears to have
been extreme, even for the primitive Kentucky settlement at
Elizabethtown where they made their first home. The young husband was a
carpenter by trade, but his new neighbors, with the self-reliance of
pioneers, managed to do for themselves most of the work wherewith he had
hoped to support his family. Its needs grew with the birth of a little
daughter, but not its resources, which he presently sought to eke out by
farming. The hut in Elizabethtown was abandoned for another hut and a
piece of tillable land that Thomas had bought,--presumably on
credit,--about fourteen miles away, near the Big South Fork of Nolin
Creek.[i-6] There, in the following winter, was born the boy who became
known to fame as Abraham Lincoln. He must have felt at an early age the
tooth of the “stinted living” in those “pinching times,” to which,
during later life, he once sadly referred; for his father did not
prosper with the hoe, any more than he had with the hammer. After a few
unfruitful years on Nolin Creek, Thomas relinquished the place for a
better farm, in the Knob Creek region, about fifteen miles distant,
acquired like its predecessor on easy terms. Yet the fortunes of the
family did not mend. Its luckless head “was always lookin’,” as Cousin
Dennis said, “fur the land o’ Canaan.” To his pioneer’s vision the There
ever seemed fairer than the Here. So removal followed removal,--now in
Kentucky, then into Indiana, and again into Illinois,--until, to borrow
one of Abraham’s little stories, the chickens, if there were any, might
have lain on their backs and crossed their legs to be tied, whenever
they saw the wagon sheets brought out.[i-7]
Thomas Lincoln’s futile shifts need not be set forth at length
here,[i-8] but certain aspects of his inability to get on in the world
have a peculiar significance. He responded with ready good nature to
calls upon his time or his hospitality; and though he appears to have
understood many things, he never learned how to turn his dealings with
the little world around him to his own account. The few business
ventures, in which he is said to have engaged, reveal how woefully he
was lacking in what has been called “money sense.” A typical instance,
related by his son many years after the event, may have suggested to the
narrator that there were at least two members of the Lincoln family who
had each a blind side in the direction of the almighty dollar. Here is
the story substantially as Abraham related it:--
“Father often told me of the trick that was played upon him by a ‘pair
of sharpers.’ It was the year before we moved from Kentucky to Indiana
that father concluded to take a load of pork down to New Orleans. He had
a considerable amount of his own, and he bargained with the relations
and neighbors for their pork, so that altogether he had quite a load. He
took the pork to the Ohio River on a clumsily constructed flat-boat of
his own make. Almost as soon as he pushed out into the river a couple of
sleek fellows bargained with him for his cargo, and promised to meet him
in New Orleans where they arranged to pay him the price agreed upon. He
eagerly accepted the offer, transferred the cargo to the strangers, and
drifted down the river, his head filled with visions of wealth and
delight. He thought that he was going to accomplish what he had set out
to do, without labor or inconvenience. Father waited about New Orleans
for several days, but failed to meet his whilom friends. At last it
dawned upon him that he had been sold, and all that he could do was to
come back home and face the music.”[i-9]
Consoling himself after such mishaps with the indolent philosophy of
“Luck is ag’in’ me,” and “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” Thomas
would return to his sporadic farming, or to what he liked better--his
rod and his gun. For there is a tradition that this unthrifty
fellow--honest and well-meaning though he was--had a distaste for manual
labor. When work had to be done he did it, after a fashion, nor did he
spare the boy who was growing up at his side; but further than that he
apparently did not go. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the father ever
found, along their limited horizon, the path which might have led either
him or his son to business success. They certainly did not enter upon
it. Yet if Thomas Lincoln failed to teach Abraham how to put money in
their purse, let it be remembered, to his lasting credit, that he did
show him how an empty sack might--despite a time-honored adage to the
contrary--stand upright.
Noteworthy as was the father’s influence on the boy’s character, that of
the mother appears to have been of deeper consequence. Lincoln’s
earliest recollections of her, as he recalled in later years, pictured
his sister and himself seated at her feet eagerly listening to the
books that she read or the tales that she told. The poor lady succumbed
early to the hardships of the Indiana backwoods; and the few facts that
are known concerning her brief life set forth but a meager story.[i-10]
If “the world knows nothing of its greatest men,” may this not be so, in
a measure, because it knows nothing of their mothers? The deficiency, as
far as Nancy Hanks is concerned, was supplied, for all time, in perhaps
the most pithy yet comprehensive tribute that a distinguished son ever
uttered to the memory of a parent. Looking down over his career from the
last eminence, and tracing it all back again to the frail, sweet-faced
woman whose life had flickered out before his wondering gaze, in the
cabin home of his boyhood, Lincoln once said, with moist eyes: “All that
I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”[i-11]
When she passed on, the lad, it is true, was not quite eleven years old;
nevertheless her teachings, during that first plastic period, had
evidently left their sterling impress in his nature.
Nor did the home influence for right living stop there. After an
interval of about a year, Thomas sought another mate. Leaving the little
ones to manage the household on Little Pigeon Creek as best they might,
he retraced his steps to Elizabethtown and offered himself in marriage
to Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnston. She is said to have refused him, in their
younger days, for Daniel Johnston, who, by a coincidence, had left her a
widow with as many children as waited for her visitor at home.[i-12] On
this occasion the lady listened more favorably to his proposal, yet she
pointed out an obstacle, saying: “Tommy Lincoln, I have no objection to
marrying you, but I cannot do it right off, for I owe several little
debts which must first be paid.” To which he replied: “Give me a list of
your debts.”
They amounted to about twelve dollars--not so mean a sum in those days
of small things as present standards might indicate. At any rate, within
a few hours our suitor had paid them, and had married the fair debtor.
The settlement of these little accounts was, in a way, the central
incident of their short courtship.[i-13] It puts one in mind of the good
repute enjoyed by the Lincolns, from the beginning, in Elizabethtown. If
the neighbor, who declared Thomas and his first wife to have been poor
but true, had seen him and his second wife set out for home in a
four-horse wagon loaded with her wealth of household belongings,--to say
nothing of the three blooming Johnston children,--there might have been
some hesitation about repeating the word “poor”; but in the face of
those receipted bills, there would probably have been no desire to
modify the word “true.”[i-14]
Sally Bush was a worthy successor to Nancy Hanks. A woman of strong
personality and high ideals, this stepmother--to use a designation that
she ennobled--is credited by not a few writers with exerting the larger
influence in the moulding of Abraham Lincoln’s character. They have gone
so far, some of them, as to assert that Lincoln himself, recognizing
this to be so, had her in mind and not her predecessor, when he uttered
that grateful acknowledgment to his “angel mother.”[i-15] This view is
hardly sustained by the language of the tribute, or by the facts; yet
Abraham apparently missed no opportunity for expressing in deeds, as
well as in words, what--to use his own phrases--he owed the “noble
woman” who had been “a good and kind mother”[i-16] to an orphaned boy.
Perhaps, after all, the controversy concerning the two women, if
controversy it may be called, is fairly disposed of by what Mr. Lincoln
told one of his acquaintances, Governor William Pickering, who some
years later thus restated their conversation. “Once when Lincoln
referred to the fact that he owed much to his mother, I asked, ‘Which
mother, Mr. Lincoln, your own or your stepmother?’ To which Mr. Lincoln
replied,--‘Don’t ask me that question, for I mean both, as it was mother
all my life, except that desolate period between the time mother died
and father brought mother into the home again. Both were as one mother.
Hence I simply say, mother.’”[i-17]
With one or the other of these conscientious women at his side, Abraham
Lincoln reached maturity. Almost every good man has had a good mother.
Here was one who had two. It is not surprising, therefore, that his
sense of right and wrong, after a few minor lapses, became developed to
uncommon acuteness at an early age, nor should it be accounted a miracle
that from the unsightly stumpage of a frontier clearing, emerged this
blossom which grew, with time, into the finest flower of
nineteenth-century honor.
Lincoln was brought up on the breast of things. The rugged actualities
of life in a new country, rather than the literature about life, entered
into his training; and when we name those colleges to which the world’s
great lights have severally owed their education, this man must be
credited to the most venerable, though perhaps least honored, among them
all,--the academy of hard knocks. Let us not infer, however, that the
back settlements in which he spent his youth were wholly beyond the
field of letters. Attending “A B C schools by littles,” as the
autobiography expresses it, and learning betimes how to read, the lad
lost no opportunity to borrow or acquire the few books within his reach.
Under the stimulation of first one mother, then the other, every volume
that he could lay hold of for fifty miles around was eagerly studied.
What this shifting library comprised will doubtless never be fully
known. It is said to have included--besides certain elementary
school-books[i-18]--the Bible, Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Æsop’s
“Fables,” the “Arabian Nights,” Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” Weems’s “Life
of Washington,” Ramsay’s “Life of Washington,” a history of the United
States, Weems’s “Life of Marion,” the “Speeches of Henry Clay,” with
which was probably incorporated a “Memoir” of the statesman, the “Life
of Benjamin Franklin,” Riley’s “Narrative of the Loss of the Brig
Commerce,” a few of Cooper’s “Leather Stocking Tales,” and the Revised
Laws of Indiana, with which were bound, besides other documents, the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States.[i-19] Some of these works, if not all of them, left an ethical
glow in the boy’s heart. Thoughtfully absorbing the light that streamed
from their pages, he caught glimpses here and there of a kinship that
linked the everyday doings in his commonplace world with the ideals in
his books.
A mishap to one of the borrowed volumes put these budding ideas of
rectitude to the test. While in Abraham’s keeping, a “Life of
Washington”[i-20] that belonged to a neighbor, Josiah Crawford by name,
was badly soaked one night during a rainstorm, which beat through the
chinks of the Little Pigeon Creek cabin. Carrying the damaged book back
to its owner, the boy acknowledged himself answerable for its
condition;--but how was he to pay the seventy-five cents which Crawford
demanded in settlement? Money was as scarce as literature at that time
with young Lincoln, so he agreed to work out the claim in the farmer’s
corn-field. “You see,” said Abraham, relating the incident to a friend,
“I am tall and long-armed, and I went to work in earnest. At the end of
the two days there was not a corn-blade left on a stalk in the field. I
wanted to pay full damage for all the wetting the book got, and I made a
clean sweep.”[i-21] This ample submission to the laws of mine and thine
was not, however, so graceful as it might have been. Our “long-armed”
boy appears to have been still far removed from sainthood in those days;
and, after the manner of boys, he nursed a grudge against Crawford for
his unneighborly, though perhaps rightful, treatment of the accident.
Having satisfied that thrifty person’s demands with the Scriptural “good
measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over,”
Abraham--so tradition has it--lampooned the man whenever occasion
offered,--now in humorous prose, now in doggerel rhymes,--until Josiah’s
“blue nose,” as well as certain other unlovely features, became the
laughing-stock of the neighborhood. Indeed, the gibes ran their merry
course--if we may believe one veracious chronicler--all the way to “the
Wabash and the Ohio.”[i-22]
This unseemly persecution of Crawford, on the heels of an honorable
settlement with him, narrowly saved the youthful Lincoln from occupying
a place in the world’s gallery of premature worthies beside the
copper-plate little Washington portrayed by Parson Weems. Nevertheless,
that myth-maker’s model boy, who could not tell a lie, had left a deep
impression in the mind of this real boy. To Abe’s uncritical faculties
the biography rang true in every detail. For its reverend author, with
all his faults, had the literary merit of apparent sincerity; and his
string of “curious anecdotes,” as the title-page called them, had not
yet been worn threadbare, to the verge of the ridiculous, by derisive
repetition. Weems’s Washington, boy and man, became Lincoln’s hero--a
cherished ideal which he never consented to modify, even after he had
outgrown the story of the cherry tree and that truthful little
hatchet-swinger.
Emulating the great Virginian, Abe carried himself, now consciously, now
unconsciously, as this paragon of his fancy might have done, even to
the point of leaving a hatchet, or more accurately speaking, an axe
anecdote for later generations to admire. During those toilsome Indiana
days,--so runs our tale,--the youth was engaged in clearing a piece of
woodland some distance from the house. Leaving home early, he made it a
practice to carry some luncheon and stay away until nightfall. The
picnic element in the expedition appealed to the taste of his frolicsome
stepsister, Matilda, whose frequent appeals for permission to accompany
him met with her mother’s peremptory refusals. Eluding maternal
vigilance one morning, the girl slyly followed Lincoln as he strode
through the forest, humming a tune, with his axe on his shoulder. At a
favorable moment she darted forward and, exerting cat-like agility,
leaped squarely upon him. Grasping a shoulder with each hand, she braced
her knee in the middle of his back, and brought the young woodsman
dexterously to the ground. Lincoln, taken by surprise, went down like a
log, carrying his assailant with him. As they fell the axe cut the
girl’s ankle, making a painful wound that bled freely. After an
improvised bandage had stanched the blood, Abe, mindful of Mrs.
Lincoln’s oft-repeated orders, looked down at the sobbing culprit and
asked:--
“‘Tilda, what are you going to tell mother about getting hurt?”
“Tell her I did it with the axe,” she answered. “That will be the truth,
won’t it?”
To which he responded:--
“Yes, that’s the truth, but it’s not all the truth. Tell the whole
truth, ’Tilda, and trust your good mother for the rest.”[i-23]
Whether ’Tilda did tell “the whole truth,” and whether Sally Bush
gathered her or Abraham or both of them to her heart, after the manner
of Augustine Washington in the Reverend Mr. Weems’s tale, is not
definitely known. Nevertheless, when the Plutarch that is to be runs his
parallel between these two greatest of Americans, the legendary hatchet
and the historic axe may become symbolic of how closely both these
heroes did actually hew to the line, in their early fondness for the
verities.
But if further youthful similarities shall be sought by that
hypothetical biographer, he will not linger over the next episode in
this chronicle of Lincoln’s moral growth. Abe had passed his nineteenth
birthday when “the great man” of the Little Pigeon Creek neighborhood,
old James Gentry, picked him out for a signal mark of confidence. That
gentleman’s son, Allen, was to make a trading voyage in a Mississippi
flat-boat laden with goods, and Lincoln was hired to share the
adventure. They planned to do business along the river all the way, if
necessary, to the Gulf. Drifting down the Ohio and thence on the broad
waters of the Mississippi as far as New Orleans, the young men made a
prosperous, though not entirely uneventful journey. Only one incident of
the expedition concerns us here. At certain landings they were paid for
their merchandise--as they discovered too late--in counterfeit money.
Gentry, lamenting over the matter, feared his father’s anger; whereupon
Lincoln consoled him with the suggestion that their employer would not
care how much bad money they took in, if they brought the correct amount
of good money home. “Never mind, Allen,” he continued; “it will
accidentally slip out of our fingers before we get to New Orleans, and
then old Jim can’t quarrel at us.”[i-24] This prophecy did, in fact,
come true. The counterfeits, we are told, “all went off like hot cakes”;
but to what extent the prophet helped to bring about so sweeping a
fulfillment is nowhere recorded. When he and his associates, however, on
their return, rendered an account of their stewardship in currency that
was not hopelessly discredited, old Mr. Gentry is said to have
pronounced on Lincoln what corresponded with the Scriptural
commendation,--“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
In this approval the candid historian cannot concur, yet he hesitates to
condemn. The demoralized condition of our currency throughout the
Mississippi Valley for over half a century, the bewildering variety of
counterfeit bills, to say nothing of wildcat notes, in circulation, and
the scarcity of good money, left people small choice but to accept at
varying discounts--unless too obviously spurious--what they were
offered, and pass it along again with as little loss as possible.[i-25]
One aspect of the trouble was later humorously set forth by Lincoln
himself, in his story of the steamboat captain who, running short of
fuel on the river, steered to a woodpile alongshore.
“Is that your wood?” he inquired of a man near by.
“Yes,” was the answer.
“Do you want to sell it?”
“Certainly.”
“Will you accept wildcat currency?”
“Certainly.”
“How will you take it?”
“Cord for cord.”[i-26]
The passing of depreciated or fraudulent currency, in the ordinary
course of business, was evidently not regarded, during those days of
loose financiering, with the severity of more recent times.[i-27]
Indeed, after Lincoln had become a lawyer, though the clients that
offered themselves were accepted or rejected with scrupulous
discrimination, he on one occasion employed his wit and ability to
secure the acquittal of a man charged, under suspicious circumstances,
with passing counterfeit money. “There was a pretty clear case against
the accused,” said Adlai E. Stevenson, who attended the trial, “but when
the chief witness for the people took the stand, he stated that his name
was J. Parker Green, and Lincoln reverted to this the moment he rose to
cross-examine:--Why J. Parker Green?--What did the J. stand
for?--John?--Well, why didn’t the witness call himself John P.
Green?--That was his name, wasn’t it?--Well, what was the reason he did
not wish to be known by his right name?--Did J. Parker Green have
anything to conceal; and if not, why did J. Parker Green part his name
in that way?--and so on. Of course the whole examination was farcical,”
Mr. Stevenson continued, “but there was something irresistibly funny in
the varying tones and inflections of Mr. Lincoln’s voice as he rang the
changes upon the man’s name; and at the recess the very boys in the
street took it up as a slogan, and shouted, ‘J. Parker Green!’ all over
the town. Moreover, there was something in Lincoln’s way of intoning his
questions which made me suspicious of the witness, and to this day I
have never been able to rid my mind of the absurd impression that there
was something not quite right about J. Parker Green. It was all
nonsense, of course; but the jury must have been affected as I was, for
Green was discredited, and the defendant went free.”[i-28] Perhaps, too,
some of the twelve good men and true, like the highly respected counsel
for the defense, could have severally recalled times when the exigencies
of trade had wafted into their hands worthless bank-bills that, somehow,
did not remain there.
Be that as it may, much water, in the language of the old byword, was to
flow down the Mississippi River before this clever attorney evolved from
the gawky young bow-hand on Gentry’s flat-boat. Another trading voyage
to New Orleans in the spring of 1831, shortly after he had begun life on
his own account, appears to have been as successful as the first one.
The crew comprised Lincoln, his stepbrother John D. Johnston, and his
cousin John Hanks, who accompanied them, however, but part way, leaving
the responsibility of the undertaking largely on Abraham’s shoulders.
Their employer, Denton Offutt, a breezy speculator,--free-handed,
optimistic, and given to superlatives,--conceived a warm admiration for
Abe. The young fellow certainly conducted himself well. His manly
qualities, his muscular powers, his unfailing good humor, his
resourcefulness on certain trying occasions, his fidelity to the trust
reposed in him, above all, his integrity, made so strong an impression
on Offutt that at the termination of the voyage he established a general
store at New Salem,[i-29] and placed Lincoln in charge of it with the
assertion that this model clerk had not his equal in the United States.
Offutt’s extravagant praise was, it is perhaps needless to say, not
wholly merited. A keener merchant might have hesitated to entrust the
management of his business, and of the neighboring mill that was
presently merged with the enterprise, to a young man of Lincoln’s
peculiar make-up. Abe had, it is true, learned something of storekeeping
during the old Gentryville days, in the grocery of his friend William
Jones; and a small stock of goods purchased there, when the Lincoln
family moved from Indiana to Illinois, had been profitably peddled, on
the way. Moreover, those trading trips to New Orleans had doubtless
contributed somewhat to his commercial training; but no amount of
experience could make a successful business man of one so lacking, as
was Tom Lincoln’s son, in aptitude for hiving the nimble sixpence. How
not to do so appears, in a sense, to have concerned him more. Yet the
scrupulous care with which he shut Offutt’s till against the sixpences
that did not belong there would, had it been combined with mercantile
ability, probably in the end have made the young clerk’s fortune. His
honesty became a by-word.
Two typical instances of uprightness in small things especially
impressed themselves on the memory of the neighborhood. It is said that
once, having sold a woman a bill of goods, he found after her departure
that she had paid six and a quarter cents more than the purchases
amounted to. When the store was closed at night, so the story goes, he
walked several miles into the country to give his customer the fourpenny
piece which balanced her over-payment. Here again Lincoln’s punctilious
honesty recalls that of Washington. It is related that a ferryman on the
General’s estate, in making change for a moidore, took out one and a
half pence too much. Discovering the over-charge when the accounts for
the week were made up, Washington wrapped three halfpence in a piece of
paper, and had them delivered to the traveler on his return.[i-30]
The other anecdote concerning Lincoln, that belongs in this group, tells
how one night, just before closing time, he hastily weighed, as he
thought, half a pound of tea for a belated customer. Looking at the
scales on the following morning, he discovered that a weight of four
ounces, instead of eight, had been used. To wrap up another quarter of a
pound of tea, close the store again, and deliver his parcel at the end
of a long walk before breakfast, was the only method of repairing the
error that presented itself to this primitive conscience.
The young clerk’s ethical creed during those New Salem days seems simple
enough. It has been preserved by a friend, who thus restates what he
gathered, under this head, in the course of conversation:
“Lincoln said he did not believe in total depravity, and, although it
was not popular to believe it, it was easier to do right than wrong;
that the first thought was: what was right? and the second: what was
wrong? Therefore it was easier to do right than wrong, and easier to
take care of, as it would take care of itself. It took an effort to do
wrong, and a still greater effort to take care of it. But do right and
it would take care of itself. Then you had nothing to do but to go ahead
and do right and nothing to trouble you.”[i-31]
Out of this philosophy developed--to borrow a cynical phrase--the acute
attacks of chronic integrity that attracted particular attention to
Lincoln, even in the midst of an honest, plain-dealing community. The
rude people around him, for the most part, led upright lives, and they
expected others to do likewise; yet his efforts to treat every man with
fairness were so pronounced as to evoke frequent comment among them.
Their talk crystallized, at last, in the sobriquet, “Honest Abe.” This
name, having been generally adopted throughout the New Salem vicinage,
fitted Lincoln so nicely that it clung to him, with slight variations,
in one form or another, until the end of his career.
Meanwhile Offutt did not prosper. He appears to have had too many irons
in the fire, and one of them, as we know, was under the care of a man
who had no particular talent for keeping irons, or anything else, at a
money-making glow. Neither the honesty nor the popularity of this
clerk--for the young fellow had gained the good-will of their
customers--sufficed to save the store from the general ruin in which
the owner’s several ventures became involved. Failure overtook the new
business before the end of its first year. As the place is sold out,
Offutt disappears from historic view; while Lincoln steps nearer to the
lime-light for a brief but bloodless essay at soldiering in the Black
Hawk War. Returning to New Salem upon the conclusion of the campaign, he
made an unsuccessful canvass, on a National Republican platform, for
election to the State Legislature. Then “without means and out of
business,” as he himself expressed it, but “anxious to remain with his
friends,” Lincoln looked about him for something to do. Stalwart of
frame, with well-knit muscles, he naturally came to the thought of again
earning a living by manual labor. The blacksmith’s trade, which several
of his forbears had creditably followed, was, for a time, seriously
considered. It had, in fact, almost been decided on, when two of those
new-found friends, the Herndon brothers, familiarly known as “Row” and
“Jim,” offered their general store for sale. James sold his interest to
William F. Berry, the son of a neighboring Presbyterian minister, and
Rowan soon after disposed of his share to Lincoln, receiving in lieu of
money “Honest Abe’s” promise to pay. When “Row” was asked how he came to
make such liberal terms with a penniless man whom he had known for so
short a time, he answered: “I believed he was thoroughly honest, and
that impression was so strong in me I accepted his note in payment of
the whole. He had no money, but I would have advanced him still more
had he asked for it.”[i-32]
Herndon was not the only New Salemite who was willing to transfer his
business, after this fashion, for a promissory note. Soon after the
transaction, a neighboring storekeeper, Reuben Radford by name, incurred
the displeasure of a local gang, “the Clary’s Grove boys,” to such an
extent that they made a riotous night of it in his place. On the
following morning, standing discouraged amid the débris of the
establishment, Radford sold it to the first comer, William G. Greene, a
youth who had been a sort of junior clerk in the Offutt store. As the
purchaser could not pay in cash the four hundred dollars agreed upon, he
gave his note. Then, growing nervous over the transaction, he turned for
comfort to his former associate. Lincoln said: “Cheer up, Billy. It’s a
good thing. We’ll take an inventory.”
They found that the flotsam and jetsam which had survived the storm,
amounted in value to $1200. Whereupon Berry and Lincoln offered Greene a
substantial profit on his bargain. This the young man eagerly accepted,
with the stipulation that the firm should assume his indebtedness to
Radford. There was a little more shuffling of notes, and the goods
passed into the hands of Berry and Lincoln.[i-33] They shortly
afterwards, in presumably the same manner, absorbed a small business
owned by James Rutledge. Combining these three stocks,--all acquired by
a few strokes of the pen,--Lincoln and his partner now had what the
junior member later ironically referred to as “_the_ store” of New
Salem.
Despite its virtual monopoly along certain lines, the new firm was
ill-adapted to succeed. Berry soon developed habits of idleness and
intemperance that would have been fatal to any business;[i-34] while
Lincoln, though ambitious and sober to an exceptional degree, was hardly
more effective. His keen interest in books, study, newspapers, politics,
funny stories, horse-races, wrestling-matches, feats of
strength,--anything, in short, but buying and selling,--left him far
from alert to what is commonly called the main chance. When one
remembers these pursuits, moreover, to have been the preoccupations of a
man who combined rigid integrity with a kindly nature, it is not
surprising to learn, as Cousin Dennis relates, that “he purty nigh
always got the wust of a trade.”[i-35] The rest is soon told. Berry and
Lincoln did not thrive. Giving up the struggle after several ineffectual
shifts, they sold out, early in 1834, to Alexander and William Trent.
The purchasers had no money, but they willingly gave notes, which the
sellers as willingly accepted. Before these obligations fell due,
however, the Trent brothers had disappeared, their few remaining goods
had been seized by creditors, and the business had come to an inglorious
close.
Berry’s death, soon after, left the surviving member of the firm to
face, alone, the consequences of their ill-starred venture. Yet he could
not bring himself to join in the censure which was heaped upon the young
man’s memory. With characteristic consideration for his partner’s
father, the Reverend John M. Berry, whom he held in affectionate
regard, Lincoln declared that William’s dissipation was a result rather
than a cause of their misfortunes; and took on his own shoulders the
burden of liabilities bound up in those unpaid notes to Herndon,
Radford, Greene, and Rutledge.
How serious the whole affair was may be gathered from this account of
it, given by the hapless debtor to a friend[i-36] of later days: “That
debt was the greatest obstacle I have ever met in life. I had no way of
speculating, and could not earn money except by labor, and to earn by
labor eleven hundred dollars, besides my living, seemed the work of a
lifetime. There was, however, but one way. I went to the creditors and
told them that if they would let me alone, I would give them all I could
earn, over my living, as fast as I could earn it.”[i-37]
During the next few months no surplus, it is perhaps needless to add,
was available for this purpose. In fact, the situation reduced itself to
a struggle for bread. Lincoln’s earnings from the office of local
postmaster, to which he had been appointed before the above “winked
out,” were of course meager in the extreme; but he contrived to pick up
a living by doing odd jobs about the neighborhood. Helping his
friends--now Hill, now Ellis--behind their counters, working in the
field as a farm laborer, splitting rails, lending a hand at the
mill,--briefly, making himself useful on all sides, in his big,
good-natured way, he just “kept,” to quote the autobiography, “soul and
body together.”[i-38]
Throughout this trying period, however, Lincoln did not lose sight of
his self-respect, or of the respect due to him from others. He began to
manifest that sensitive chastity of honor which recoils from doubt as
from a blow. So, when a patron of the post-office, upon payment of
certain arrears demanded an acknowledgment, “A. Lincoln, P.M.,”
responded: “I am somewhat surprised at your request. I will, however,
comply with it. The law requires newspaper postage to be paid in
advance, and now that I have waited a full year, you choose to wound my
feelings by insinuating that unless you get a receipt I will probably
make you pay it again.”[i-39]
The reputation for honesty, which Lincoln so jealously guarded, had
meanwhile opened to him another channel for occasional employment. This
opportunity came through John Calhoun, the surveyor of Sangamon County,
who, overburdened with business, was looking about for an assistant of
intelligence and unquestioned integrity. The latter qualification
appears to have been especially important at the time, owing to a mania
for speculation in land that had possessed the people of the region to
such a degree as almost to put a premium on jobbery. A man beyond the
reach of corruption was, therefore, what Calhoun sought when he offered
to make Abraham Lincoln one of his deputies. The honor must have been
not less flattering to the young National Republican, because it came,
as had the postmastership, from a Democratic source, and with the
assurance that his acceptance carried with it no obligation of party
service, nor restraint upon his freedom of political action. To
Lincoln’s declaration that he knew nothing whatever about surveying,
Calhoun responded with an offer to aid him. Books and material having
been procured, six weeks of earnest study ensued. For assistance in
learning the theory of the subject, Lincoln turned to his friend, Mentor
Graham, the local schoolmaster; for guidance in the practical
application of the rules, he depended on the surveyor himself. When the
period of preparation had reached its close, the new-fledged deputy is
said to have made his pathetic little speech: “Calhoun, I am entirely
unable to repay you for your generosity, at present. All that I have you
see on me, except a quarter of a dollar, in my pocket.”[i-40]
Such extreme poverty left Lincoln, of course, unable to pay cash for the
saddle-horse that his new duties obliged him to buy. He agreed to take
care of the bill by installments; he did so, but ran behind when only
ten dollars remained unpaid. Whereupon his creditor, a horse-dealer
named Thomas Watkins, who is described as “a high-strung man,” lost his
temper and sued for what was still due. Lincoln did not deny the debt.
He hastily raised the required sum and settled the suit.
A still more unpleasant experience followed, for the young surveyor was
destined to drain his cup of mortification to its dregs. One of the
Berry-Lincoln notes had passed into the hands of a certain Van Bergen,
who forthwith brought suit and obtained judgment. Levying on the horse,
saddle, and surveying instruments, he offered them for sale in
satisfaction of his claim. But Lincoln’s loyal friends were not disposed
to stand idly by while he was deprived of the means of earning a
livelihood. They bought the effects that had been seized, restored them
to their former owner, and took the place of the impatient Van Bergen
among his creditors.[i-41] The loans, so handsomely made, were in time
repaid by Lincoln, principal and interest, as were all the obligations
left in the train of his unfortunate business ventures. Disdaining to
take advantage of a recently enacted law for the relief of insolvent
debtors, he set himself resolutely to the task of seeing to it that no
man should lose a penny by reason of any note which contained his
signature. Yet the prospect might have appalled a stouter heart. At
times, when the seeming hopelessness of the undertaking was borne in
upon him, he referred to what was still to be paid, with whimsical
humor, as “the national debt.” How long the process of liquidation did,
in fact, take is not precisely known. Lincoln’s occasional payments on
account of these claims would doubtless have made a braver showing had
the only other demands upon him been for his own simple wants; but, in
addition to such outlays, the frequent aid extended to his parents, and
the requirements, after his marriage, of a growing family, all had to
come out of earnings that never, at their best, were munificent.
Nevertheless, through good times and bad, the load of indebtedness
became steadily lighter, until, after seventeen years or more of
self-denial, the last note, with its heavy accumulations of interest,
was paid.[i-42]
A less scrupulous man than Abraham Lincoln might have appreciably
shortened this debt-bound period from the very beginning. As deputy
surveyor under John Calhoun, and later, under that officer’s successor,
Thomas M. Neale, he doubtless had opportunities enough for employing his
knowledge of what was going on, together with his still unimpaired
credit, in profitable land speculations. But he could not bring himself
to mingle the pursuit of private gain with public duties; and he scorned
to use, on his own account, information derived from official
sources.[i-43] The same conscientious spirit so manifestly entered into
the doing of the work itself that he soon gained the confidence of those
who employed him. They believed in the young surveyor’s accuracy, as
well as in his fairness, to such an extent that disputes concerning
boundaries or corners were frequently submitted to him for arbitration;
and, what is of greater moment, his findings, we are told, were
invariably accepted by the conflicting parties as final. A quarrel of
this nature, about a corner, took place in the northern part of the
county. “After a good deal of disputing,” relates one of the owners, “we
agreed to send for Lincoln, and to abide by his decision. He came with
compass, flagstaff, and chain. He stopped with me three or four days and
surveyed the whole section. When in the neighborhood of the disputed
corner by actual survey, he called for his staff and, driving it in the
ground at a certain spot said, ‘Gentlemen, here is the corner.’ We dug
down into the ground at the point indicated and lo! there we found about
six or eight inches of the original stake sharpened at the end, and
beneath which was the usual piece of charcoal placed there by Rector,
the surveyor who laid the ground off for the Government many years
before.” So well had the work been done that in this instance, as in the
others, differences were at an end, and all concerned “went away
completely satisfied.”[i-44]
There is another aspect of Lincoln’s early life that should not be
overlooked. He was apparently never too busy for the contests of
strength and skill from which came some of his first sweet triumphs in
leadership. That these were won, for the most part, with ease must have
made defeat, when it did on rare occasions occur, peculiarly hard to
bear; yet he carried himself, according to all accounts,--whether victor
or vanquished,--as a man of honor should. In fact, save for a single
untoward act which must be charged to the hobbledehoy exuberance of his
youthful Indiana days,[i-45] Lincoln treated whatever happened at these
sports with the same extreme candor and nicety of good faith that marked
his business dealings. Perhaps the most notable instance is that of a
certain wrestling-match which took place during the Black Hawk War. At
the risk of telling a twice-told tale, the story is repeated here,--told
anew rather than repeated, for the later researches of an Illinois
historian have contributed not a few additional details.[i-46] They
reveal Lincoln in the full flower of sportsmanlike honesty.
Having been elected Captain of the Volunteers from Sangamon County, he
was ever ready to uphold the credit of his company in the rough pastimes
whereby the soldiers sought to relieve the tedium of that peculiar
campaign. Proud of their leader’s exploits, especially as a wrestler,
they boasted that no man in the army could throw him; and he, at the
same time, owed much of his ascendancy over their undisciplined natures
to the uniform success with which he downed all comers. But Antæus
himself met his match at last.
One evening on the march, our phalanx from Sangamon happened upon a
choice piece of camping-ground at about the time it was reached by a
company from St. Clair County. In the altercations which ensued a
disgraceful scuffle seemed imminent, when Lincoln proposed to William
Moore, the opposing commander, that they might settle their dispute
after the good old-fashioned method of single combat--captain against
captain. This suggestion met with a modified approval. As the officer
from St. Clair had no skill in wrestling, it was agreed that each
company should be represented by its stoutest champion. Accordingly,
Lincoln soon stood within a circle of excited men, facing a redoubtable
athlete from southern Illinois, in the person of private Lorenzo Dow
Thompson. Both combatants had won the confidence of their respective
friends, who hastened to back their faith with bets, eagerly offered and
as eagerly accepted. Nor were the gathering crowds of soldiers from
other companies slow to gratify their sporting tastes. “Up went
powder-horns, guns, watches, coats, horses, pay-rolls, and reputations
until,”--so runs the chronicle,--“there remained not one solitary
article of property in possession or expectancy thereof, which had not
been put into the pot on that match.” The referee, Captain Moore’s
brother Jonathan, announced, as he tossed up a coin for choice of
“holts,” that two falls in three would decide the match; and the men
grappled.
It did not take Lincoln long to discover that his record was in danger.
Calling to his friends, with characteristic frankness, he managed to
say: “This is the most powerful man I ever had hold of. He will throw me
and you will lose your all, unless I act on the defensive.”
Yet Thompson was too quick for him. All of Lincoln’s extraordinary
strength did not avail against the St. Clair man’s skill, and in a few
moments the pride of New Salem measured his six feet four inches on the
ground--fairly thrown. Their second round did not differ widely from the
first. After attempting his favorite devices in vain, the tall captain
again went to earth, this time, however, pulling his antagonist down on
top of him.
“Dog fall!” shouted Lincoln’s supporters, seizing on a pretext for
dispute.
“Fair fall!” defiantly retorted the others.
A general fight--and a serious one at that--seemed inevitable, when
Lincoln springing to his feet averted, for the second time in this
affair, a scene of bloodshed.
“Boys,” he cried, “give up your bets; if he has not thrown me fairly, he
could.”[i-47]
This frank admission put an end to all hopes of further resistance. The
“boys” reluctantly obeyed, and Captain Moore’s followers took possession
of their captured bivouac, laden with the spoils of victory.[i-48]
But were they the only victors? Marshaling the several elements which
went to make up this little drama, recalling what defeat meant to the
Sangamon chief, and how easy it might have been for him to hide his
discomfiture under cover of the mêlée which he had prevented, thoughtful
readers will perhaps agree that the true hero of the episode--all things
considered--did not rest that night in the camp of the St. Clair
rangers.[i-49]
Virile men, rude and cultured alike, admire a winner; but how their
hearts go out to him who can lose or win with equal grace! So it was in
Lincoln’s case. During what might be called his New Salem period, he
became the central figure of those occasional little gatherings at which
the settlers sought to amuse themselves. They made him preside over
horse-races, wrestling-matches, athletic games, and what not. Indeed,
even cock-fights seemed incomplete if he was missing from the judge’s
corner. Expert knowledge of these pastimes, applied with tact, good
nature, and ready wit, went far to make his decisions acceptable, even
had they not been pronounced by a muscular giant, who could always be
relied on to enforce compliance. More noteworthy, however, than all
other circumstances was the abiding faith of this entire community in
the young man’s squareness. Said one old resident, reviving precious
memories: “In the spring or summer of 1832, I had a horse-race with
George Warburton. I got Lincoln, who was at the race, to be a judge of
the race, much against his will, and after hard persuasion. Lincoln
decided correctly, and the other judge said, ‘Lincoln is the fairest
man I ever had to deal with. If Lincoln is in this county when I die, I
want him to be my administrator, for he is the only man I ever met with
that was wholly and unselfishly honest.’”[i-50]
As might have been expected, this talent for holding the scales with a
steady hand brought more serious duties. When arrangements were made,
from time to time, in approved frontier fashion, for the fist-fights
whereby these backwoodsmen sought to adjust their irreconcilable
differences, Lincoln, if not called upon to second one of the
principals, was usually named by both as referee. Such functions are, in
the nature of things, difficult to perform; yet he conducted himself,
according to all accounts, with spirit, and with painstaking fidelity to
the rules of fair play. It is said, moreover, that he officiated on
these occasions reluctantly--in fact, only after failing to bring about
settlements of the quarrels by peaceable means. For it was as arbitrator
between man and man that his ripening intuitions of equity--tempered by
kindly sympathies with both sides--had their largest scope. With such
precision--to quote from an ancient judicial oath--“as the herring’s
backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish,” did he draw the line
between conflicting interests. Even those who were inclined to demur at
his decisions usually came to see that a lean compromise was better than
a fat lawsuit. So, in one way and another, to not a few people along the
Sangamon, Abraham Lincoln became, after a fashion, the court of last
resort.[i-51] It would seem as if, at this early date, he himself might
have been found worthy of the eulogy pronounced by him, some years
later, on a departed friend: “In his intercourse with his fellow-men, he
possessed that rare uprightness of character, which was evidenced by his
having no disputes or bickerings of his own, while he was ever the
chosen arbiter to settle those of his neighbors.”[i-52]
So far, indeed, did Lincoln carry his peacemaking activities that the
local justice, with an eye to diminishing fees, complained of
interference. If this functionary, as seems likely, was Squire Bowling
Green, who had befriended our amateur judge in many ways, the situation
must have been peculiarly unpleasant. But, be that as it may, Lincoln
did not adjourn court. Taking the rebuke amiably, he explained how hard
it was for him to see his neighbors spend money in unnecessary
litigation and--what was more important still--how desirous he felt of
saving them from perhaps lifelong enmities which might be prevented.
That reply was far-reaching. It opened a window, so to say, in the
speaker’s heart, and threw a flood of light forward upon many things
which he did, and many more which he refrained from doing, throughout
the fruitful years that were to come.
What motives first directed Lincoln’s attention to the legal profession
as a career are not definitely known. Whether the bar took his fancy on
account of that ideal justice to which lawyers theoretically, at least,
dedicate themselves, or whether he was moved by more commonplace
incentives, such as a taste for study, the desire to gain a livelihood
by means of an honorable calling, aspirations to become a controlling
factor in other men’s affairs, and the like, can only be surmised.
Perhaps each of these considerations carried due weight. They certainly
all had time enough to make their presence felt. For, as far back as the
youthful days at Gentryville, we find Abraham, in his insatiable craving
for the printed page, poring over a copy of the Indiana Statutes.[i-53]
This volume was supplemented presently by such books as he could borrow
from Justice John Pitcher of Rockport, whose kindly interest in the lad
grew out of his admiration for a little composition on the American
government, which one of the young writer’s friends had submitted to
judicial criticism. “The world couldn’t beat it,” was Pitcher’s comment,
and thenceforth Lincoln had the run of his office.[i-54] At about the
same time came opportunities--or rather Abe made opportunities--for
seeing the law administered. Whenever sessions of the circuit court for
the adjoining county were held in Boonville, he would trudge over the
road--a matter of fifteen miles--to attend. What took place there
doubtless repaid him. Closely following every word and act in the rustic
drama of justice, as it unfolded itself before his fascinated gaze, he
seemed identified, so to say, with the proceedings. They took such hold
upon his mind that he rehearsed them at home, reënacting the court-room
scenes and holding mock-trials in which a certain gawky country boy
defended imaginary prisoners against unjust charges, with uniform
success. If he might only become a lawyer! But such a notion was out of
the question. His parents, as he explained to Judge Pitcher, were so
poor that they could not spare him long enough for study. And there the
matter rested while the years passed on. In fact, it was not until after
Lincoln had left home and had become a business man at New Salem that
his youthful ambition, dormant though never wholly forgotten during the
long intervening period, began to revive. While casting about for
something to do, on his return from the Black Hawk War, he again thought
of taking up this calling; but the idea was promptly dismissed because,
to quote his own opinion, he “could not succeed at that without a better
education.” Nevertheless, before many months had elapsed, a chance
occurrence during the ill-starred Berry partnership quickened into life,
beyond any previous experience, Lincoln’s desire to study law. How this
came about he himself, chatting once with an acquaintance, in a
reminiscent mood, thus related:--
“One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my
store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He
asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his
wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not
want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a
dollar for it. Without further examination, I put it away in the store,
and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came
upon the barrel, and emptying it upon the floor to see what it
contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of
Blackstone’s Commentaries. I began to read those famous works, and I had
plenty of time; for, during the long summer days, when the farmers were
busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I
read”--this he said with a sweeping gesture and a high pitch of
enthusiasm in his voice--“the more intensely interested I became. Never
in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I
devoured them.”[i-55]
Lincoln’s re-awakened appetite for legal lore was destined soon to be
gratified. After the store had, like that barrel of rubbish, passed into
the limbo of discarded things, he turned from his surveying during the
summer of 1834 long enough to make a second, and this time successful,
canvass for election to the State Legislature. While traveling over his
district, the young politician saw much of a fellow candidate on the
Whig ticket, Major John T. Stuart, with whom he had served two years
before through the Black Hawk War. Stuart, an attorney in reputable
practice at Springfield, conceived a high regard for Lincoln’s character
and ability. So that when Abraham confided to him his inclination for
the study of law, he met not only with instant encouragement, but with
equally prompt offers of assistance. Here, indeed, was the stuff out of
which lawyers at their best are made. Rigid honesty, a judicial
temperament, candor, and ambition, as well as the less salient
qualities,--common sense, perseverance, knowledge of human nature, and
keen sympathy with human affairs,--of all these the aspirant had given
abundant evidence. Nor could he be considered lacking in what, according
to Lord Eldon, constituted the prime requisite for a beginner who sought
distinction at the bar,--he was “not worth a shilling.”
This last attribute, however, hardly commended itself as an advantage to
Lincoln’s troubled mind. Poverty alone would probably not have stayed
his steps, but poverty staggering under a burden labelled “the national
debt,”--there was a prospect that gave him pause. What did he owe to his
creditors, what to himself? Pondering over these questions, he carried
them with him on a surveying expedition. All day long the pros and cons
of the matter jostled one another in his perplexed brain, without
result. Yet the time for a decision had come. On his way home, he swung
a pair of tired long legs across an old rail fence, and sat down
resolved to stay there until some conclusion should be reached.
Lincoln’s destiny truly trembled in the balance; but a controlling
thought, decisive enough to make one side outweigh the other, still
failed to present itself. In this dilemma he bethought himself of a way
out,--a way as freely utilized at the time, along our western frontier,
as it has been among the children of men from the beginning of recorded
days--the appeal to chance. Resting his Jacob’s-staff erect on the
ground, he determined to be guided by the direction in which it might
fall. If forward, he too would go forward into the new career that
beckoned him so alluringly; if backward, he would remain a surveyor. The
staff fell forward.[i-56]
Lincoln now began to study, if we may adopt his own phrase, “in good
earnest.” Availing himself of Major Stuart’s offer, he borrowed the
necessary textbooks, in their order, from that gentleman’s little
library at Springfield. This required an occasional journey of twenty
miles or more, each way, which our eager student appears to have
traveled, for the most part, on foot.[i-57] Days so spent, however, were
not wholly lost. As he strode across country with the precious volumes,
Abraham made frequent pauses for the reading of successive paragraphs,
which he recited aloud as he went.
Nor were these studies pursued with less zeal at home, though, in truth,
there seemed but few waking hours left for them. Between sessions of the
Legislature, which customarily made heavy drafts upon its members’ time,
Lincoln, facing the problem of how to live, “still mixed in the
surveying”--so runs his homely expression--“to pay board and clothing
bills.” Moreover, the postmastership with its occasional duties, as well
as sundry bread-and-butter jobs of a less exalted character, all crowded
their demands upon his attention. Yet some scraps of opportunity
remained. Employing these diligently, by day and by night, he worked his
way through Stuart’s collection.[i-58] To such good purpose, in fact,
did he study the Major’s books that, before the list was exhausted,
though “not lawyer enough to hurt” him, Lincoln had acquired skill
enough to draw up bills of sale, contracts, deeds, mortgages, and the
like, for his admiring neighbors. He even went so far as to represent
them before the local justice, in sundry suits whereby his reputation
was much enhanced, but not his income, for he made no charges whatever
on accounts of these activities. This seemingly Quixotic practice of
working without pay, at a time when poverty pressed sharply, was quite
in keeping with the young man’s kindly nature, and his biographer is
tempted to make the obvious comment. But here again, the hand of fact
rudely intervenes. Brushing away the gossamer web of romance, it points
to “an act concerning attorneys and counselors at law” in the statutes
of Illinois that expressly prohibited unlicensed persons from formally
practicing at the bar or from receiving fees for legal services.[i-59]
After awhile, however, this disability, as far as it concerned the New
Salem amateur, was, by the customary steps, removed. Before his second
year of preparation had elapsed,--in the spring of 1836,--the necessary
certificate of “good moral character” had been entered on the records of
the Sangamon County Circuit Court. In the following autumn a license was
issued, and later Abraham Lincoln’s name was duly inscribed on the roll
of attorneys.[i-60] So “Honest Abe,” at the age of twenty-eight, became
a full-fledged practitioner in that notable company of scholars that
have furnished mankind with some of its noblest and, at the same time,
with some of its most pernicious impulses. On which side this newcomer
would exercise his talents, none doubted who had observed him in any of
the makeshift occupations whereby he sustained himself while toiling up
the circuitous path that led to the portals of the Supreme Court.