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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1
+by Abraham Lincoln
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1
+
+Author: Abraham Lincoln
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2653]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LINCOLN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION
+
+
+
+VOLUME 1.
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+Immediately after Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency, in an off-hand
+speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his admirers on
+the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows:
+
+"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong
+for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its
+existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion
+brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election,
+occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to
+the strain.... The strife of the election is but human nature
+practically applied to the facts in the case. What has occurred in this
+case must ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In
+any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall
+have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.
+Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn
+wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the
+election is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a
+common fort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven
+and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I
+have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.
+While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election and
+duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my
+countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good, it adds
+nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or
+pained by the result."
+
+This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is in a
+peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great statesman who
+made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in its lofty standard of
+morality. Lincoln's life, Lincoln's deeds and words, are not only of
+consuming interest to the historian, but should be intimately known to
+every man engaged in the hard practical work of American political life.
+It is difficult to overstate how much it means to a nation to have as the
+two foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln. It
+is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to feel that
+the highest ambition any American can possibly have will be gratified
+just in proportion as he raises himself toward the standards set by these
+two men.
+
+It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to advance
+the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse for doing poorly
+in the present; but it is an excellent thing to study the history of the
+great deeds of the past, and of the great men who did them, with an
+earnest desire to profit thereby so as to render better service in the
+present. In their essentials, the men of the present day are much like
+the men of the past, and the live issues of the present can be faced to
+better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the leaders of
+the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of Lincoln's
+life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and
+inefficiency--the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers
+alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if
+shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning
+moralist of unbalanced mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but
+has no power himself to do good and but little power to do ill--all these
+were as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic themselves. His
+life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom, because otherwise
+adherence to right will be mere sound and fury without substance; and
+that they must also act high-mindedly, or else what seems to be wisdom
+will in the end turn out to be the most destructive kind of folly.
+
+Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to leadership in
+his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty to a
+lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life, he also accepted human
+nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve
+results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a
+man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from
+mere self-seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more
+sane and healthy mind--a man less under the influence of that fantastic
+and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in reality
+profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work-a-day world refuse to
+do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the impossible.
+
+In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian draws an
+interesting distinction between the qualities needed for a successful
+political career in modern society and those which lead to eminence in
+the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral effort. He says:
+
+"....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres of
+statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate
+earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on
+an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a
+loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here
+likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician
+deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is
+in a great measure that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions of
+modern life, the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses
+secondary qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest
+intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the intelligent men
+of his time, and who pursues common ideals with more than common
+ability.... Tact, business talent, knowledge of men, resolution,
+promptitude and sagacity in dealing with immediate emergencies, a
+character which lends itself easily to conciliation, diminishes friction
+and inspires confidence, are especially needed, and they are more likely
+to be found among shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men
+of great original genius or of an heroic type of character."
+
+The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest
+American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this absolutely
+democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who actually
+combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus puts in
+antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western country
+lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world,
+and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide
+his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a leader
+who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation or any
+other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.
+
+THEODORE ROOSEVELT
+
+SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 22, 1905.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+"I have endured," wrote Lincoln not long before his death, "a great deal
+of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of
+kindness not quite free from ridicule." On Easter Day, 1865, the world
+knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really
+signified. Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by
+year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew
+him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real. This should not be. For
+Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more
+than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious. Invaluable is the example of
+the man, intangible that of the hero.
+
+And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness listened
+at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham Lincoln, yet
+there is for us another way whereby we may attain such knowledge--through
+his words--uttered in all sincerity to those who loved or hated him.
+Cold, unsatisfying they may seem, these printed words, while we can yet
+speak with those who knew him, and look into eyes that once looked into
+his. But in truth it is here that we find his simple greatness, his
+great simplicity, and though no man tried less so to show his power, no
+man has so shown it more clearly.
+
+Thus these writings of Abraham Lincoln are associated with those of
+Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and of the other "Founders of the
+Republic," not that Lincoln should become still more of the past, but,
+rather, that he with them should become still more of the present.
+However faint and mythical may grow the story of that Great Struggle, the
+leader, Lincoln, at least should remain a real, living American. No
+matter how clearly, how directly, Lincoln has shown himself in his
+writings, we yet should not forget those men whose minds, from their
+various view-points, have illumined for us his character. As this nation
+owes a great debt to Lincoln, so, also, Lincoln's memory owes a great
+debt to a nation which, as no other nation could have done, has been able
+to appreciate his full worth. Among the many who have brought about this
+appreciation, those only whose estimates have been placed in these
+volumes may be mentioned here. To President Roosevelt, to Mr. Schurz and
+to Mr. Choate, the editor, for himself, for the publishers, and on behalf
+of the readers, wishes to offer his sincere acknowledgments.
+
+Thanks are also due, for valuable and sympathetic assistance rendered in
+the preparation of this work, to Mr. Gilbert A. Tracy, of Putnam, Conn.,
+Major William H. Lambert, of Philadelphia, and Mr. C. F. Gunther, of
+Chicago, to the Chicago Historical Association and personally to its
+capable Secretary, Miss McIlvaine, to Major Henry S. Burrage, of
+Portland, Me., and to General Thomas J. Henderson, of Illinois.
+
+For various courtesies received, the editor is furthermore indebted to
+the Librarian of the Library of Congress; to Messrs. McClure, Phillips &
+Co., D. Appleton & Co., Macmillan & Co., Dodd, Mead & Co., and Harper
+Brothers, of New York; to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dana, Estes & Co., and
+L. C. Page & Co., of Boston; to A. C. McClure & Co., of Chicago; to The
+Robert Clarke Co., of Cincinnati, and to the J. B. Lippincott Co., of
+Philadelphia.
+
+It is hardly necessary to add that every effort has been made by the
+editor to bring into these volumes whatever material may there properly
+belong, material much of which is widely scattered in public libraries
+and in private collections. He has been fortunate in securing certain
+interesting correspondence and papers which had not before come into
+print in book form. Information concerning some of these papers had
+reached him too late to enable the papers to find place in their proper
+chronological order in the set. Rather, however, than not to present
+these papers to the readers they have been included in the seventh volume
+of the set, which concludes the "Writings."
+
+[These later papers are, in this etext, re-arranged into chronologic
+order. D.W.]
+
+October, 1905,
+A. B. L.
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
+
+AN ESSAY BY CARL SHURZ
+
+No American can study the character and career of Abraham Lincoln without
+being carried away by sentimental emotions. We are always inclined to
+idealize that which we love,--a state of mind very unfavorable to the
+exercise of sober critical judgment. It is therefore not surprising that
+most of those who have written or spoken on that extraordinary man, even
+while conscientiously endeavoring to draw a lifelike portraiture of his
+being, and to form a just estimate of his public conduct, should have
+drifted into more or less indiscriminating eulogy, painting his great
+features in the most glowing colors, and covering with tender shadings
+whatever might look like a blemish.
+
+But his standing before posterity will not be exalted by mere praise of
+his virtues and abilities, nor by any concealment of his limitations and
+faults. The stature of the great man, one of whose peculiar charms
+consisted in his being so unlike all other great men, will rather lose
+than gain by the idealization which so easily runs into the commonplace.
+For it was distinctly the weird mixture of qualities and forces in him,
+of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that which
+he had become with that which he had not ceased to be, that made him so
+fascinating a character among his fellow-men, gave him his singular power
+over their minds and hearts, and fitted him to be the greatest leader in
+the greatest crisis of our national life.
+
+His was indeed a marvellous growth. The statesman or the military hero
+born and reared in a log cabin is a familiar figure in American history;
+but we may search in vain among our celebrities for one whose origin and
+early life equalled Abraham Lincoln's in wretchedness. He first saw the
+light in a miserable hovel in Kentucky, on a farm consisting of a few
+barren acres in a dreary neighborhood; his father a typical "poor
+Southern white," shiftless and without ambition for himself or his
+children, constantly looking for a new piece of land on which he might
+make a living without much work; his mother, in her youth handsome and
+bright, grown prematurely coarse in feature and soured in mind by daily
+toil and care; the whole household squalid, cheerless, and utterly void
+of elevating inspirations... Only when the family had "moved" into the
+malarious backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a
+woman of thrift and energy, had taken charge of the children, the
+shaggy-headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old,
+"began to feel like a human being." Hard work was his early lot. When a
+mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on his father's
+clearing, or hired out to other farmers to plough, or dig ditches, or
+chop wood, or drive ox teams; occasionally also to "tend the baby," when
+the farmer's wife was otherwise engaged. He could regard it as an
+advancement to a higher sphere of activity when he obtained work in a
+"crossroads store," where he amused the customers by his talk over the
+counter; for he soon distinguished himself among the backwoods folk as
+one who had something to say worth listening to. To win that
+distinction, he had to draw mainly upon his wits; for, while his thirst
+for knowledge was great, his opportunities for satisfying that thirst
+were wofully slender.
+
+In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit but little, he was taught
+only reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. Among the people of
+the settlement, bush farmers and small tradesmen, he found none of
+uncommon intelligence or education; but some of them had a few books,
+which he borrowed eagerly. Thus he read and reread, AEsop's Fables,
+learning to tell stories with a point and to argue by parables; he read
+Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, a short history of the United
+States, and Weems's Life of Washington. To the town constable's he went
+to read the Revised Statutes of Indiana. Every printed page that fell
+into his hands he would greedily devour, and his family and friends
+watched him with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after his daily work,
+crouched in a corner of the log cabin or outside under a tree, absorbed
+in a book while munching his supper of corn bread. In this manner he
+began to gather some knowledge, and sometimes he would astonish the girls
+with such startling remarks as that the earth was moving around the sun,
+and not the sun around the earth, and they marvelled where "Abe" could
+have got such queer notions. Soon he also felt the impulse to write; not
+only making extracts from books he wished to remember, but also composing
+little essays of his own. First he sketched these with charcoal on a
+wooden shovel scraped white with a drawing-knife, or on basswood
+shingles. Then he transferred them to paper, which was a scarce
+commodity in the Lincoln household; taking care to cut his expressions
+close, so that they might not cover too much space,--a style-forming
+method greatly to be commended. Seeing boys put a burning coal on the
+back of a wood turtle, he was moved to write on cruelty to animals.
+Seeing men intoxicated with whiskey, he wrote on temperance. In
+verse-making, too, he tried himself, and in satire on persons offensive
+to him or others,--satire the rustic wit of which was not always fit for
+ears polite. Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some of his
+pieces were even deemed good enough for publication in the county weekly.
+
+Thus he won a neighborhood reputation as a clever young man, which he
+increased by his performances as a speaker, not seldom drawing upon
+himself the dissatisfaction of his employers by mounting a stump in the
+field, and keeping the farm hands from their work by little speeches in a
+jocose and sometimes also a serious vein. At the rude social frolics of
+the settlement he became an important person, telling funny, stories,
+mimicking the itinerant preachers who had happened to pass by, and making
+his mark at wrestling matches, too; for at the age of seventeen he had
+attained his full height, six feet four inches in his stockings, if he
+had any, and a terribly muscular clodhopper he was. But he was known
+never to use his extraordinary strength to the injury or humiliation of
+others; rather to do them a kindly turn, or to enforce justice and fair
+dealing between them. All this made him a favorite in backwoods society,
+although in some things he appeared a little odd, to his friends. Far
+more than any of them, he was given not only to reading, but to fits of
+abstraction, to quiet musing with himself, and also to strange spells of
+melancholy, from which he often would pass in a moment to rollicking
+outbursts of droll humor. But on the whole he was one of the people
+among whom he lived; in appearance perhaps even a little more uncouth
+than most of them,--a very tall, rawboned youth, with large features,
+dark, shrivelled skin, and rebellious hair; his arms and legs long, out
+of proportion; clad in deerskin trousers, which from frequent exposure to
+the rain had shrunk so as to sit tightly on his limbs, leaving several
+inches of bluish shin exposed between their lower end and the heavy
+tan-colored shoes; the nether garment held usually by only one suspender,
+that was strung over a coarse homemade shirt; the head covered in winter
+with a coonskin cap, in summer with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape,
+without a band.
+
+It is doubtful whether he felt himself much superior to his surroundings,
+although he confessed to a yearning for some knowledge of the world
+outside of the circle in which he lived. This wish was gratified; but
+how? At the age of nineteen he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans
+as a flatboat hand, temporarily joining a trade many members of which at
+that time still took pride in being called "half horse and half
+alligator." After his return he worked and lived in the old way until the
+spring of 1830, when his father "moved again," this time to Illinois; and
+on the journey of fifteen days "Abe" had to drive the ox wagon which
+carried the household goods. Another log cabin was built, and then,
+fencing a field, Abraham Lincoln split those historic rails which were
+destined to play so picturesque a part in the Presidential campaign
+twenty-eight years later.
+
+Having come of age, Lincoln left the family, and "struck out for
+himself." He had to "take jobs whenever he could get them." The first
+of these carried him again as a flatboat hand to New Orleans. There
+something happened that made a lasting impression upon his soul: he
+witnessed a slave auction. "His heart bled," wrote one of his
+companions; "said nothing much; was silent; looked bad. I can say,
+knowing it, that it was on this trip that he formed his opinion on
+slavery. It run its iron in him then and there, May, 1831. I have heard
+him say so often." Then he lived several years at New Salem, in
+Illinois, a small mushroom village, with a mill, some "stores" and
+whiskey shops, that rose quickly, and soon disappeared again. It was a
+desolate, disjointed, half-working and half-loitering life, without any
+other aim than to gain food and shelter from day to day. He served as
+pilot on a steamboat trip, then as clerk in a store and a mill; business
+failing, he was adrift for some time. Being compelled to measure his
+strength with the chief bully of the neighborhood, and overcoming him, he
+became a noted person in that muscular community, and won the esteem and
+friendship of the ruling gang of ruffians to such a degree that, when the
+Black Hawk war broke out, they elected him, a young man of twenty-three,
+captain of a volunteer company, composed mainly of roughs of their kind.
+He took the field, and his most noteworthy deed of valor consisted, not
+in killing an Indian, but in protecting against his own men, at the peril
+of his own life, the life of an old savage who had strayed into his camp.
+
+The Black Hawk war over, he turned to politics. The step from the
+captaincy of a volunteer company to a candidacy for a seat in the
+Legislature seemed a natural one. But his popularity, although great in
+New Salem, had not spread far enough over the district, and he was
+defeated. Then the wretched hand-to-mouth struggle began again. He "set
+up in store-business" with a dissolute partner, who drank whiskey while
+Lincoln was reading books. The result was a disastrous failure and a
+load of debt. Thereupon he became a deputy surveyor, and was appointed
+postmaster of New Salem, the business of the post-office being so small
+that he could carry the incoming and outgoing mail in his hat. All this
+could not lift him from poverty, and his surveying instruments and horse
+and saddle were sold by the sheriff for debt.
+
+But while all this misery was upon him his ambition rose to higher aims.
+He walked many miles to borrow from a schoolmaster a grammar with which
+to improve his language. A lawyer lent him a copy of Blackstone, and he
+began to study law.
+
+People would look wonderingly at the grotesque figure lying in the grass,
+"with his feet up a tree," or sitting on a fence, as, absorbed in a book,
+he learned to construct correct sentences and made himself a jurist. At
+once he gained a little practice, pettifogging before a justice of the
+peace for friends, without expecting a fee. Judicial functions, too,
+were thrust upon him, but only at horse-races or wrestling matches, where
+his acknowledged honesty and fairness gave his verdicts undisputed
+authority. His popularity grew apace, and soon he could be a candidate
+for the Legislature again. Although he called himself a Whig, an ardent
+admirer of Henry Clay, his clever stump speeches won him the election in
+the strongly Democratic district. Then for the first time, perhaps, he
+thought seriously of his outward appearance. So far he had been content
+with a garb of "Kentucky jeans," not seldom ragged, usually patched, and
+always shabby. Now, he borrowed some money from a friend to buy a new
+suit of clothes--"store clothes" fit for a Sangamon County statesman; and
+thus adorned he set out for the state capital, Vandalia, to take his seat
+among the lawmakers.
+
+His legislative career, which stretched over several sessions--for he
+was thrice re-elected, in 1836, 1838, and 1840--was not remarkably
+brilliant. He did, indeed, not lack ambition. He dreamed even of making
+himself "the De Witt Clinton of Illinois," and he actually distinguished
+himself by zealous and effective work in those "log-rolling" operations
+by which the young State received "a general system of internal
+improvements" in the shape of railroads, canals, and banks,--a reckless
+policy, burdening the State with debt, and producing the usual crop of
+political demoralization, but a policy characteristic of the time and the
+impatiently enterprising spirit of the Western people. Lincoln, no doubt
+with the best intentions, but with little knowledge of the subject,
+simply followed the popular current. The achievement in which, perhaps,
+he gloried most was the removal of the State government from Vandalia to
+Springfield; one of those triumphs of political management which are apt
+to be the pride of the small politician's statesmanship. One thing,
+however, he did in which his true nature asserted itself, and which gave
+distinct promise of the future pursuit of high aims. Against an
+overwhelming preponderance of sentiment in the Legislature, followed by
+only one other member, he recorded his protest against a proslavery
+resolution,--that protest declaring "the institution of slavery to be
+founded on both injustice and bad policy." This was not only the
+irrepressible voice of his conscience; it was true moral valor, too; for
+at that time, in many parts of the West, an abolitionist was regarded as
+little better than a horse-thief, and even "Abe Lincoln" would hardly
+have been forgiven his antislavery principles, had he not been known as
+such an "uncommon good fellow." But here, in obedience to the great
+conviction of his life, he manifested his courage to stand alone, that
+courage which is the first requisite of leadership in a great cause.
+
+Together with his reputation and influence as a politician grew his law
+practice, especially after he had removed from New Salem to Springfield,
+and associated himself with a practitioner of good standing. He had now
+at last won a fixed position in society. He became a successful lawyer,
+less, indeed, by his learning as a jurist than by his effectiveness as an
+advocate and by the striking uprightness of his character; and it may
+truly be said that his vivid sense of truth and justice had much to do
+with his effectiveness as an advocate. He would refuse to act as the
+attorney even of personal friends when he saw the right on the other
+side. He would abandon cases, even during trial, when the testimony
+convinced him that his client was in the wrong. He would dissuade those
+who sought his service from pursuing an obtainable advantage when their
+claims seemed to him unfair. Presenting his very first case in the United
+States Circuit Court, the only question being one of authority, he
+declared that, upon careful examination, he found all the authorities on
+the other side, and none on his. Persons accused of crime, when he
+thought them guilty, he would not defend at all, or, attempting their
+defence, he was unable to put forth his powers. One notable exception is
+on record, when his personal sympathies had been strongly aroused. But
+when he felt himself to be the protector of innocence, the defender of
+justice, or the prosecutor of wrong, he frequently disclosed such
+unexpected resources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, and rose to
+such fervor of appeal as to astonish and overwhelm his hearers, and make
+him fairly irresistible. Even an ordinary law argument, coming from him,
+seldom failed to produce the impression that he was profoundly convinced
+of the soundness of his position. It is not surprising that the mere
+appearance of so conscientious an attorney in any case should have
+carried, not only to juries, but even to judges, almost a presumption of
+right on his side, and that the people began to call him, sincerely
+meaning it, "honest Abe Lincoln."
+
+In the meantime he had private sorrows and trials of a painfully
+afflicting nature. He had loved and been loved by a fair and estimable
+girl, Ann Rutledge, who died in the flower of her youth and beauty, and
+he mourned her loss with such intensity of grief that his friends feared
+for his reason. Recovering from his morbid depression, he bestowed what
+he thought a new affection upon another lady, who refused him. And
+finally, moderately prosperous in his worldly affairs, and having
+prospects of political distinction before him, he paid his addresses to
+Mary Todd, of Kentucky, and was accepted. But then tormenting doubts of
+the genuineness of his own affection for her, of the compatibility of
+their characters, and of their future happiness came upon him. His
+distress was so great that he felt himself in danger of suicide, and
+feared to carry a pocket-knife with him; and he gave mortal offence to
+his bride by not appearing on the appointed wedding day. Now the
+torturing consciousness of the wrong he had done her grew unendurable.
+He won back her affection, ended the agony by marrying her, and became a
+faithful and patient husband and a good father. But it was no secret to
+those who knew the family well that his domestic life was full of trials.
+The erratic temper of his wife not seldom put the gentleness of his
+nature to the severest tests; and these troubles and struggles, which
+accompanied him through all the vicissitudes of his life from the modest
+home in Springfield to the White House at Washington, adding untold
+private heart-burnings to his public cares, and sometimes precipitating
+upon him incredible embarrassments in the discharge of his public duties,
+form one of the most pathetic features of his career.
+
+He continued to "ride the circuit," read books while travelling in his
+buggy, told funny stories to his fellow-lawyers in the tavern, chatted
+familiarly with his neighbors around the stove in the store and at the
+post-office, had his hours of melancholy brooding as of old, and became
+more and more widely known and trusted and beloved among the people of
+his State for his ability as a lawyer and politician, for the uprightness
+of his character and the overflowing spring of sympathetic kindness in
+his heart. His main ambition was confessedly that of political
+distinction; but hardly any one would at that time have seen in him the
+man destined to lead the nation through the greatest crisis of the
+century.
+
+His time had not yet come when, in 1846, he was elected to Congress. In
+a clever speech in the House of Representatives he denounced President
+Polk for having unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and he amused the
+Committee of the Whole by a witty attack upon General Cass. More
+important was the expression he gave to his antislavery impulses by
+offering a bill looking to the emancipation of the slaves in the District
+of Columbia, and by his repeated votes for the famous Wilmot Proviso,
+intended to exclude slavery from the Territories acquired from Mexico.
+But when, at the expiration of his term, in March, 1849, he left his
+seat, he gloomily despaired of ever seeing the day when the cause nearest
+to his heart would be rightly grasped by the people, and when he would be
+able to render any service to his country in solving the great problem.
+Nor had his career as a member of Congress in any sense been such as to
+gratify his ambition. Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great
+destiny for himself, it must have been weak at that period; for he
+actually sought to obtain from the new Whig President, General Taylor,
+the place of Commissioner of the General Land Office; willing to bury
+himself in one of the administrative bureaus of the government.
+Fortunately for the country, he failed; and no less fortunately, when,
+later, the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs.
+Lincoln's protest induced him to decline it. Returning to Springfield, he
+gave himself with renewed zest to his law practice, acquiesced in the
+Compromise of 1850 with reluctance and a mental reservation, supported in
+the Presidential campaign of 1852 the Whig candidate in some spiritless
+speeches, and took but a languid interest in the politics of the day.
+But just then his time was drawing near.
+
+The peace promised, and apparently inaugurated, by the Compromise of 1850
+was rudely broken by the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in
+1854. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories of
+the United States, the heritage of coming generations, to the invasion of
+slavery, suddenly revealed the whole significance of the slavery question
+to the people of the free States, and thrust itself into the politics of
+the country as the paramount issue. Something like an electric shock
+flashed through the North. Men who but a short time before had been
+absorbed by their business pursuits, and deprecated all political
+agitation, were startled out of their security by a sudden alarm, and
+excitedly took sides. That restless trouble of conscience about slavery,
+which even in times of apparent repose had secretly disturbed the souls
+of Northern people, broke forth in an utterance louder than ever. The
+bonds of accustomed party allegiance gave way. Antislavery Democrats and
+antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering
+sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The
+Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the
+hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a
+position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was
+not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery
+question stirred his soul in its profoundest depths; it was, as one of
+his intimate friends said, "the only one on which he would become
+excited"; it called forth all his faculties and energies. Yet there were
+many others who, having long and arduously fought the antislavery battle
+in the popular assembly, or in the press, or in the halls of Congress,
+far surpassed him in prestige, and compared with whom he was still an
+obscure and untried man. His reputation, although highly honorable and
+well earned, had so far been essentially local. As a stump-speaker in
+Whig canvasses outside of his State he had attracted comparatively little
+attention; but in Illinois he had been recognized as one of the foremost
+men of the Whig party. Among the opponents of the Nebraska Bill he
+occupied in his State so important a position, that in 1856 he was the
+choice of a large majority of the "Anti-Nebraska men" in the Legislature
+for a seat in the Senate of the United States which then became vacant;
+and when he, an old Whig, could not obtain the votes of the Anti-Nebraska
+Democrats necessary to make a majority, he generously urged his friends
+to transfer their votes to Lyman Trumbull, who was then elected. Two
+years later, in the first national convention of the Republican party,
+the delegation from Illinois brought him forward as a candidate for the
+vice-presidency, and he received respectable support. Still, the name of
+Abraham Lincoln was not widely known beyond the boundaries of his own
+State. But now it was this local prominence in Illinois that put him in
+a position of peculiar advantage on the battlefield of national politics.
+In the assault on the Missouri Compromise which broke down all legal
+barriers to the spread of slavery Stephen Arnold Douglas was the
+ostensible leader and central figure; and Douglas was a Senator from
+Illinois, Lincoln's State. Douglas's national theatre of action was the
+Senate, but in his constituency in Illinois were the roots of his
+official position and power. What he did in the Senate he had to justify
+before the people of Illinois, in order to maintain himself in place; and
+in Illinois all eyes turned to Lincoln as Douglas's natural antagonist.
+
+As very young men they had come to Illinois, Lincoln from Indiana,
+Douglas from Vermont, and had grown up together in public life, Douglas
+as a Democrat, Lincoln as a Whig. They had met first in Vandalia, in
+1834, when Lincoln was in the Legislature and Douglas in the lobby; and
+again in 1836, both as members of the Legislature. Douglas, a very able
+politician, of the agile, combative, audacious, "pushing" sort, rose in
+political distinction with remarkable rapidity. In quick succession he
+became a member of the Legislature, a State's attorney, secretary of
+state, a judge on the supreme bench of Illinois, three times a
+Representative in Congress, and a Senator of the United States when only
+thirty-nine years old. In the National Democratic convention of 1852 he
+appeared even as an aspirant to the nomination for the Presidency, as the
+favorite of "young America," and received a respectable vote. He had far
+outstripped Lincoln in what is commonly called political success and in
+reputation. But it had frequently happened that in political campaigns
+Lincoln felt himself impelled, or was selected by his Whig friends, to
+answer Douglas's speeches; and thus the two were looked upon, in a large
+part of the State at least, as the representative combatants of their
+respective parties in the debates before popular meetings. As soon,
+therefore, as, after the passage of his Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Douglas
+returned to Illinois to defend his cause before his constituents,
+Lincoln, obeying not only his own impulse, but also general expectation,
+stepped forward as his principal opponent. Thus the struggle about the
+principles involved in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or, in a broader sense,
+the struggle between freedom and slavery, assumed in Illinois the outward
+form of a personal contest between Lincoln and Douglas; and, as it
+continued and became more animated, that personal contest in Illinois was
+watched with constantly increasing interest by the whole country. When,
+in 1858, Douglas's senatorial term being about to expire, Lincoln was
+formally designated by the Republican convention of Illinois as their
+candidate for the Senate, to take Douglas's place, and the two
+contestants agreed to debate the questions at issue face to face in a
+series of public meetings, the eyes of the whole American people were
+turned eagerly to that one point: and the spectacle reminded one of those
+lays of ancient times telling of two armies, in battle array, standing
+still to see their two principal champions fight out the contested cause
+between the lines in single combat.
+
+Lincoln had then reached the full maturity of his powers. His equipment
+as a statesman did not embrace a comprehensive knowledge of public
+affairs. What he had studied he had indeed made his own, with the eager
+craving and that zealous tenacity characteristic of superior minds
+learning under difficulties. But his narrow opportunities and the
+unsteady life he had led during his younger years had not permitted the
+accumulation of large stores in his mind. It is true, in political
+campaigns he had occasionally spoken on the ostensible issues between the
+Whigs and the Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements, banks, and so
+on, but only in a perfunctory manner. Had he ever given much serious
+thought and study to these subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind so
+prolific of original conceits as his would certainly have produced some
+utterance upon them worth remembering. His soul had evidently never been
+deeply stirred by such topics. But when his moral nature was aroused,
+his brain developed an untiring activity until it had mastered all the
+knowledge within reach. As soon as the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
+had thrust the slavery question into politics as the paramount issue,
+Lincoln plunged into an arduous study of all its legal, historical, and
+moral aspects, and then his mind became a complete arsenal of argument.
+His rich natural gifts, trained by long and varied practice, had made him
+an orator of rare persuasiveness. In his immature days, he had pleased
+himself for a short period with that inflated, high-flown style which,
+among the uncultivated, passes for "beautiful speaking." His inborn
+truthfulness and his artistic instinct soon overcame that aberration and
+revealed to him the noble beauty and strength of simplicity. He
+possessed an uncommon power of clear and compact statement, which might
+have reminded those who knew the story of his early youth of the efforts
+of the poor boy, when he copied his compositions from the scraped wooden
+shovel, carefully to trim his expressions in order to save paper. His
+language had the energy of honest directness and he was a master of
+logical lucidity. He loved to point and enliven his reasoning by
+humorous illustrations, usually anecdotes of Western life, of which he
+had an inexhaustible store at his command. These anecdotes had not
+seldom a flavor of rustic robustness about them, but he used them with
+great effect, while amusing the audience, to give life to an abstraction,
+to explode an absurdity, to clinch an argument, to drive home an
+admonition. The natural kindliness of his tone, softening prejudice and
+disarming partisan rancor, would often open to his reasoning a way into
+minds most unwilling to receive it.
+
+Yet his greatest power consisted in the charm of his individuality. That
+charm did not, in the ordinary way, appeal to the ear or to the eye. His
+voice was not melodious; rather shrill and piercing, especially when it
+rose to its high treble in moments of great animation. His figure was
+unhandsome, and the action of his unwieldy limbs awkward. He commanded
+none of the outward graces of oratory as they are commonly understood.
+His charm was of a different kind. It flowed from the rare depth and
+genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feelings. Sympathy was
+the strongest element in his nature. One of his biographers, who knew
+him before he became President, says: "Lincoln's compassion might be
+stirred deeply by an object present, but never by an object absent and
+unseen. In the former case he would most likely extend relief, with
+little inquiry into the merits of the case, because, as he expressed it
+himself, it `took a pain out of his own heart.'" Only half of this is
+correct. It is certainly true that he could not witness any individual
+distress or oppression, or any kind of suffering, without feeling a pang
+of pain himself, and that by relieving as much as he could the suffering
+of others he put an end to his own. This compassionate impulse to help
+he felt not only for human beings, but for every living creature. As in
+his boyhood he angrily reproved the boys who tormented a wood turtle by
+putting a burning coal on its back, so, we are told, he would, when a
+mature man, on a journey, dismount from his buggy and wade waist-deep in
+mire to rescue a pig struggling in a swamp. Indeed, appeals to his
+compassion were so irresistible to him, and he felt it so difficult to
+refuse anything when his refusal could give pain, that he himself
+sometimes spoke of his inability to say "no" as a positive weakness. But
+that certainly does not prove that his compassionate feeling was confined
+to individual cases of suffering witnessed with his own eyes. As the boy
+was moved by the aspect of the tortured wood turtle to compose an essay
+against cruelty to animals in general, so the aspect of other cases of
+suffering and wrong wrought up his moral nature, and set his mind to work
+against cruelty, injustice, and oppression in general.
+
+As his sympathy went forth to others, it attracted others to him.
+Especially those whom he called the "plain people" felt themselves drawn
+to him by the instinctive feeling that he understood, esteemed, and
+appreciated them. He had grown up among the poor, the lowly, the
+ignorant. He never ceased to remember the good souls he had met among
+them, and the many kindnesses they had done him. Although in his mental
+development he had risen far above them, he never looked down upon them.
+How they felt and how they reasoned he knew, for so he had once felt and
+reasoned himself. How they could be moved he knew, for so he had once
+been moved himself and practised moving others. His mind was much larger
+than theirs, but it thoroughly comprehended theirs; and while he thought
+much farther than they, their thoughts were ever present to him. Nor had
+the visible distance between them grown as wide as his rise in the world
+would seem to have warranted. Much of his backwoods speech and manners
+still clung to him. Although he had become "Mr. Lincoln" to his later
+acquaintances, he was still "Abe" to the "Nats" and "Billys" and "Daves"
+of his youth; and their familiarity neither appeared unnatural to them,
+nor was it in the least awkward to him. He still told and enjoyed
+stories similar to those he had told and enjoyed in the Indiana
+settlement and at New Salem. His wants remained as modest as they had
+ever been; his domestic habits had by no means completely accommodated
+themselves to those of his more highborn wife; and though the "Kentucky
+jeans" apparel had long been dropped, his clothes of better material and
+better make would sit ill sorted on his gigantic limbs. His cotton
+umbrella, without a handle, and tied together with a coarse string to
+keep it from flapping, which he carried on his circuit rides, is said to
+be remembered still by some of his surviving neighbors. This rusticity
+of habit was utterly free from that affected contempt of refinement and
+comfort which self-made men sometimes carry into their more affluent
+circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln it was entirely natural, and all those
+who came into contact with him knew it to be so. In his ways of thinking
+and feeling he had become a gentleman in the highest sense, but the
+refining process had polished but little the outward form. The plain
+people, therefore, still considered "honest Abe Lincoln" one of
+themselves; and when they felt, which they no doubt frequently did, that
+his thoughts and aspirations moved in a sphere above their own, they were
+all the more proud of him, without any diminution of fellow-feeling. It
+was this relation of mutual sympathy and understanding between Lincoln
+and the plain people that gave him his peculiar power as a public man,
+and singularly fitted him, as we shall see, for that leadership which was
+preeminently required in the great crisis then coming on,--the leadership
+which indeed thinks and moves ahead of the masses, but always remains
+within sight and sympathetic touch of them.
+
+He entered upon the campaign of 1858 better equipped than he had ever
+been before. He not only instinctively felt, but he had convinced
+himself by arduous study, that in this struggle against the spread of
+slavery he had right, justice, philosophy, the enlightened opinion of
+mankind, history, the Constitution, and good policy on his side. It was
+observed that after he began to discuss the slavery question his speeches
+were pitched in a much loftier key than his former oratorical efforts.
+While he remained fond of telling funny stories in private conversation,
+they disappeared more and more from his public discourse. He would still
+now and then point his argument with expressions of inimitable
+quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly humor and witty irony; but his
+general tone was serious, and rose sometimes to genuine solemnity. His
+masterly skill in dialectical thrust and parry, his wealth of knowledge,
+his power of reasoning and elevation of sentiment, disclosed in language
+of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not seldom astonished his old
+friends.
+
+Neither of the two champions could have found a more formidable
+antagonist than each now met in the other. Douglas was by far the most
+conspicuous member of his party. His admirers had dubbed him "the Little
+Giant," contrasting in that nickname the greatness of his mind with the
+smallness of his body. But though of low stature, his broad-shouldered
+figure appeared uncommonly sturdy, and there was something lion-like in
+the squareness of his brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of his long
+hair. His loud and persistent advocacy of territorial expansion, in the
+name of patriotism and "manifest destiny," had given him an enthusiastic
+following among the young and ardent. Great natural parts, a highly
+combative temperament, and long training had made him a debater
+unsurpassed in a Senate filled with able men. He could be as forceful in
+his appeals to patriotic feelings as he was fierce in denunciation and
+thoroughly skilled in all the baser tricks of parliamentary pugilism.
+While genial and rollicking in his social intercourse--the idol of the
+"boys" he felt himself one of the most renowned statesmen of his time,
+and would frequently meet his opponents with an overbearing haughtiness,
+as persons more to be pitied than to be feared. In his speech opening
+the campaign of 1858, he spoke of Lincoln, whom the Republicans had dared
+to advance as their candidate for "his" place in the Senate, with an air
+of patronizing if not contemptuous condescension, as "a kind, amiable,
+and intelligent gentleman and a good citizen." The Little Giant would
+have been pleased to pass off his antagonist as a tall dwarf. He knew
+Lincoln too well, however, to indulge himself seriously in such a
+delusion. But the political situation was at that moment in a curious
+tangle, and Douglas could expect to derive from the confusion great
+advantage over his opponent.
+
+By the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories to the
+ingress of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South, but greatly alarmed
+the North. He had sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by appending
+to his Kansas-Nebraska Bill the declaration that its intent was "not to
+legislate slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it
+therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
+regulate their institutions in their own way, subject only to the
+Constitution of the United States." This he called "the great principle
+of popular sovereignty." When asked whether, under this act, the people
+of a Territory, before its admission as a State, would have the right to
+exclude slavery, he answered, "That is a question for the courts to
+decide." Then came the famous "Dred Scott decision," in which the
+Supreme Court held substantially that the right to hold slaves as
+property existed in the Territories by virtue of the Federal
+Constitution, and that this right could not be denied by any act of a
+territorial government. This, of course, denied the right of the people
+of any Territory to exclude slavery while they were in a territorial
+condition, and it alarmed the Northern people still more. Douglas
+recognized the binding force of the decision of the Supreme Court, at the
+same time maintaining, most illogically, that his great principle of
+popular sovereignty remained in force nevertheless. Meanwhile, the
+proslavery people of western Missouri, the so-called "border ruffians,"
+had invaded Kansas, set up a constitutional convention, made a
+constitution of an extreme pro-slavery type, the "Lecompton
+Constitution," refused to submit it fairly to a vote of the people of
+Kansas, and then referred it to Congress for acceptance,--seeking thus to
+accomplish the admission of Kansas as a slave State. Had Douglas
+supported such a scheme, he would have lost all foothold in the North.
+In the name of popular sovereignty he loudly declared his opposition to
+the acceptance of any constitution not sanctioned by a formal popular
+vote. He "did not care," he said, "whether slavery be voted up or down,"
+but there must be a fair vote of the people. Thus he drew upon himself
+the hostility of the Buchanan administration, which was controlled by the
+proslavery interest, but he saved his Northern following. More than
+this, not only did his Democratic admirers now call him "the true
+champion of freedom," but even some Republicans of large influence,
+prominent among them Horace Greeley, sympathizing with Douglas in his
+fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and hoping to detach him
+permanently from the proslavery interest and to force a lasting breach in
+the Democratic party, seriously advised the Republicans of Illinois to
+give up their opposition to Douglas, and to help re-elect him to the
+Senate. Lincoln was not of that opinion. He believed that great popular
+movements can succeed only when guided by their faithful friends, and
+that the antislavery cause could not safely be entrusted to the keeping
+of one who "did not care whether slavery be voted up or down." This
+opinion prevailed in Illinois; but the influences within the Republican
+party over which it prevailed yielded only a reluctant acquiescence, if
+they acquiesced at all, after having materially strengthened Douglas's
+position. Such was the situation of things when the campaign of 1858
+between Lincoln and Douglas began.
+
+Lincoln opened the campaign on his side at the convention which nominated
+him as the Republican candidate for the senatorship, with a memorable
+saying which sounded like a shout from the watchtower of history: "A
+house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government
+cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
+Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it
+will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
+Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
+place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the
+course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward,
+till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,--old as well as new,
+North as well as South." Then he proceeded to point out that the
+Nebraska doctrine combined with the Dred Scott decision worked in the
+direction of making the nation "all slave." Here was the "irrepressible
+conflict" spoken of by Seward a short time later, in a speech made famous
+mainly by that phrase. If there was any new discovery in it, the right
+of priority was Lincoln's. This utterance proved not only his
+statesmanlike conception of the issue, but also, in his situation as a
+candidate, the firmness of his moral courage. The friends to whom he had
+read the draught of this speech before he delivered it warned him
+anxiously that its delivery might be fatal to his success in the
+election. This was shrewd advice, in the ordinary sense. While a
+slaveholder could threaten disunion with impunity, the mere suggestion
+that the existence of slavery was incompatible with freedom in the Union
+would hazard the political chances of any public man in the North. But
+Lincoln was inflexible. "It is true," said he, "and I will deliver it as
+written.... I would rather be defeated with these expressions in my
+speech held up and discussed before the people than be victorious without
+them." The statesman was right in his far-seeing judgment and his
+conscientious statement of the truth, but the practical politicians were
+also right in their prediction of the immediate effect. Douglas
+instantly seized upon the declaration that a house divided against itself
+cannot stand as the main objective point of his attack, interpreting it
+as an incitement to a "relentless sectional war," and there is no doubt
+that the persistent reiteration of this charge served to frighten not a
+few timid souls.
+
+Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring the moral and philosophical side
+of the subject to the foreground. "Slavery is wrong" was the keynote of
+all his speeches. To Douglas's glittering sophism that the right of the
+people of a Territory to have slavery or not, as they might desire, was
+in accordance with the principle of true popular sovereignty, he made the
+pointed answer: "Then true popular sovereignty, according to Senator
+Douglas, means that, when one man makes another man his slave, no third
+man shall be allowed to object." To Douglas's argument that the
+principle which demanded that the people of a Territory should be
+permitted to choose whether they would have slavery or not "originated
+when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to
+choose upon his own responsibility," Lincoln solemnly replied: "No;
+God--did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his
+choice. On the contrary, God did tell him there was one tree of the
+fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of death." He did not,
+however, place himself on the most advanced ground taken by the radical
+anti-slavery men. He admitted that, under the Constitution, "the
+Southern people were entitled to a Congressional fugitive slave law,"
+although he did not approve the fugitive slave law then existing. He
+declared also that, if slavery were kept out of the Territories during
+their territorial existence, as it should be, and if then the people of
+any Territory, having a fair chance and a clear field, should do such an
+extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the
+actual presence of the institution among them, he saw no alternative but
+to admit such a Territory into the Union. He declared further that,
+while he should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the
+District of Columbia, he would, as a member of Congress, with his present
+views, not endeavor to bring on that abolition except on condition that
+emancipation be gradual, that it be approved by the decision of a
+majority of voters in the District, and that compensation be made to
+unwilling owners. On every available occasion, he pronounced himself in
+favor of the deportation and colonization of the blacks, of course with
+their consent. He repeatedly disavowed any wish on his part to have
+social and political equality established between whites and blacks. On
+this point he summed up his views in a reply to Douglas's assertion that
+the Declaration of Independence, in speaking of all men as being created
+equal, did not include the negroes, saying: "I do not understand the
+Declaration of Independence to mean that all men were created equal in
+all respects. They are not equal in color. But I believe that it does
+mean to declare that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal
+in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
+
+With regard to some of these subjects Lincoln modified his position at a
+later period, and it has been suggested that he would have professed more
+advanced principles in his debates with Douglas, had he not feared
+thereby to lose votes. This view can hardly be sustained. Lincoln had
+the courage of his opinions, but he was not a radical. The man who
+risked his election by delivering, against the urgent protest of his
+friends, the speech about "the house divided against itself" would not
+have shrunk from the expression of more extreme views, had he really
+entertained them. It is only fair to assume that he said what at the
+time he really thought, and that if, subsequently, his opinions changed,
+it was owing to new conceptions of good policy and of duty brought forth
+by an entirely new set of circumstances and exigencies. It is
+characteristic that he continued to adhere to the impracticable
+colonization plan even after the Emancipation Proclamation had already
+been issued.
+
+But in this contest Lincoln proved himself not only a debater, but also a
+political strategist of the first order. The "kind, amiable, and
+intelligent gentleman," as Douglas had been pleased to call him, was by
+no means as harmless as a dove. He possessed an uncommon share of that
+worldly shrewdness which not seldom goes with genuine simplicity of
+character; and the political experience gathered in the Legislature and
+in Congress, and in many election campaigns, added to his keen
+intuitions, had made him as far-sighted a judge of the probable effects
+of a public man's sayings or doings upon the popular mind, and as
+accurate a calculator in estimating political chances and forecasting
+results, as could be found among the party managers in Illinois. And now
+he perceived keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas found himself,
+between the Dred Scott decision, which declared the right to hold slaves
+to exist in the Territories by virtue of the Federal Constitution, and
+his "great principle of popular sovereignty," according to which the
+people of a Territory, if they saw fit, were to have the right to exclude
+slavery therefrom. Douglas was twisting and squirming to the best of his
+ability to avoid the admission that the two were incompatible. The
+question then presented itself if it would be good policy for Lincoln to
+force Douglas to a clear expression of his opinion as to whether, the
+Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, "the people of a Territory could in
+any lawful way exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of
+a State constitution." Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Douglas would
+answer: that slavery could not exist in a Territory unless the people
+desired it and gave it protection by territorial legislation. In an
+improvised caucus the policy of pressing the interrogatory on Douglas was
+discussed. Lincoln's friends unanimously advised against it, because the
+answer foreseen would sufficiently commend Douglas to the people of
+Illinois to insure his re-election to the Senate. But Lincoln persisted.
+"I am after larger game," said he. "If Douglas so answers, he can never
+be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." The
+interrogatory was pressed upon Douglas, and Douglas did answer that, no
+matter what the decision of the Supreme Court might be on the abstract
+question, the people of a Territory had the lawful means to introduce or
+exclude slavery by territorial legislation friendly or unfriendly to the
+institution. Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity of the
+proposition that, if slavery were admitted to exist of right in the
+Territories by virtue of the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, it
+could be kept out or expelled by an inferior law, one made by a
+territorial Legislature. Again the judgment of the politicians, having
+only the nearest object in view, proved correct: Douglas was reelected to
+the Senate. But Lincoln's judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by
+resorting to the expedient of his "unfriendly legislation doctrine,"
+forfeited his last chance of becoming President of the United States. He
+might have hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon from the
+South for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution; but that he
+taught the people of the Territories a trick by which they could defeat
+what the proslavery men considered a constitutional right, and that he
+called that trick lawful, this the slave power would never forgive. The
+breach between the Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth
+irremediable and fatal.
+
+The Presidential election of 1860 approached. The struggle in Kansas,
+and the debates in Congress which accompanied it, and which not
+unfrequently provoked violent outbursts, continually stirred the popular
+excitement. Within the Democratic party raged the war of factions. The
+national Democratic convention met at Charleston on the 23d of April,
+1860. After a struggle of ten days between the adherents and the
+opponents of Douglas, during which the delegates from the cotton States
+had withdrawn, the convention adjourned without having nominated any
+candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on the 18th of June. There was no
+prospect, however, of reconciling the hostile elements. It appeared very
+probable that the Baltimore convention would nominate Douglas, while the
+seceding Southern Democrats would set up a candidate of their own,
+representing extreme proslavery principles.
+
+Meanwhile, the national Republican convention assembled at Chicago on the
+16th of May, full of enthusiasm and hope. The situation was easily
+understood. The Democrats would have the South. In order to succeed in
+the election, the Republicans had to win, in addition to the States
+carried by Fremont in 1856, those that were classed as "doubtful,"--New
+Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, or Illinois in the place of either New
+Jersey or Indiana. The most eminent Republican statesmen and leaders of
+the time thought of for the Presidency were Seward and Chase, both
+regarded as belonging to the more advanced order of antislavery men. Of
+the two, Seward had the largest following, mainly from New York, New
+England, and the Northwest. Cautious politicians doubted seriously
+whether Seward, to whom some phrases in his speeches had undeservedly
+given the reputation of a reckless radical, would be able to command the
+whole Republican vote in the doubtful States. Besides, during his long
+public career he had made enemies. It was evident that those who thought
+Seward's nomination too hazardous an experiment would consider Chase
+unavailable for the same reason. They would then look round for an
+"available" man; and among the "available" men Abraham Lincoln was easily
+discovered to stand foremost. His great debate with Douglas had given
+him a national reputation. The people of the East being eager to see the
+hero of so dramatic a contest, he had been induced to visit several
+Eastern cities, and had astonished and delighted large and distinguished
+audiences with speeches of singular power and originality. An address
+delivered by him in the Cooper Institute in New York, before an audience
+containing a large number of important persons, was then, and has ever
+since been, especially praised as one of the most logical and convincing
+political speeches ever made in this country. The people of the West had
+grown proud of him as a distinctively Western great man, and his
+popularity at home had some peculiar features which could be expected to
+exercise a potent charm. Nor was Lincoln's name as that of an available
+candidate left to the chance of accidental discovery. It is indeed not
+probable that he thought of himself as a Presidential possibility, during
+his contest with Douglas for the senatorship. As late as April, 1859, he
+had written to a friend who had approached him on the subject that he did
+not think himself fit for the Presidency. The Vice-Presidency was then
+the limit of his ambition. But some of his friends in Illinois took the
+matter seriously in hand, and Lincoln, after some hesitation, then
+formally authorized "the use of his name." The matter was managed with
+such energy and excellent judgment that, in the convention, he had not
+only the whole vote of Illinois to start with, but won votes on all sides
+without offending any rival. A large majority of the opponents of Seward
+went over to Abraham Lincoln, and gave him the nomination on the third
+ballot. As had been foreseen, Douglas was nominated by one wing of the
+Democratic party at Baltimore, while the extreme proslavery wing put
+Breckinridge into the field as its candidate. After a campaign conducted
+with the energy of genuine enthusiasm on the antislavery side the united
+Republicans defeated the divided Democrats, and Lincoln was elected
+President by a majority of fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges.
+
+The result of the election had hardly been declared when the disunion
+movement in the South, long threatened and carefully planned and
+prepared, broke out in the shape of open revolt, and nearly a month
+before Lincoln could be inaugurated as President of the United States
+seven Southern States had adopted ordinances of secession, formed an
+independent confederacy, framed a constitution for it, and elected
+Jefferson Davis its president, expecting the other slaveholding States
+soon to join them. On the 11th of February, 1861, Lincoln left
+Springfield for Washington; having, with characteristic simplicity, asked
+his law partner not to change the sign of the firm "Lincoln and Herndon"
+during the four years unavoidable absence of the senior partner, and
+having taken an affectionate and touching leave of his neighbors.
+
+The situation which confronted the new President was appalling: the
+larger part of the South in open rebellion, the rest of the slaveholding
+States wavering preparing to follow; the revolt guided by determined,
+daring, and skillful leaders; the Southern people, apparently full of
+enthusiasm and military spirit, rushing to arms, some of the forts and
+arsenals already in their possession; the government of the Union, before
+the accession of the new President, in the hands of men some of whom
+actively sympathized with the revolt, while others were hampered by their
+traditional doctrines in dealing with it, and really gave it aid and
+comfort by their irresolute attitude; all the departments full of
+"Southern sympathizers" and honeycombed with disloyalty; the treasury
+empty, and the public credit at the lowest ebb; the arsenals ill supplied
+with arms, if not emptied by treacherous practices; the regular army of
+insignificant strength, dispersed over an immense surface, and deprived
+of some of its best officers by defection; the navy small and antiquated.
+But that was not all. The threat of disunion had so often been resorted
+to by the slave power in years gone by that most Northern people had
+ceased to believe in its seriousness. But, when disunion actually
+appeared as a stern reality, something like a chill swept through the
+whole Northern country. A cry for union and peace at any price rose on
+all sides. Democratic partisanship reiterated this cry with vociferous
+vehemence, and even many Republicans grew afraid of the victory they had
+just achieved at the ballot-box, and spoke of compromise. The country
+fairly resounded with the noise of "anticoercion meetings." Expressions
+of firm resolution from determined antislavery men were indeed not
+wanting, but they were for a while almost drowned by a bewildering
+confusion of discordant voices. Even this was not all. Potent
+influences in Europe, with an ill-concealed desire for the permanent
+disruption of the American Union, eagerly espoused the cause of the
+Southern seceders, and the two principal maritime powers of the Old World
+seemed only to be waiting for a favorable opportunity to lend them a
+helping hand.
+
+This was the state of things to be mastered by "honest Abe Lincoln" when
+he took his seat in the Presidential chair,--"honest Abe Lincoln," who
+was so good-natured that he could not say "no"; the greatest achievement
+in whose life had been a debate on the slavery question; who had never
+been in any position of power; who was without the slightest experience
+of high executive duties, and who had only a speaking acquaintance with
+the men upon whose counsel and cooperation he was to depend. Nor was his
+accession to power under such circumstances greeted with general
+confidence even by the members of his party. While he had indeed won
+much popularity, many Republicans, especially among those who had
+advocated Seward's nomination for the Presidency, saw the simple
+"Illinois lawyer" take the reins of government with a feeling little
+short of dismay. The orators and journals of the opposition were
+ridiculing and lampooning him without measure. Many people actually
+wondered how such a man could dare to undertake a task which, as he
+himself had said to his neighbors in his parting speech, was "more
+difficult than that of Washington himself had been."
+
+But Lincoln brought to that task, aside from other uncommon qualities,
+the first requisite,--an intuitive comprehension of its nature. While he
+did not indulge in the delusion that the Union could be maintained or
+restored without a conflict of arms, he could indeed not foresee all the
+problems he would have to solve. He instinctively understood, however,
+by what means that conflict would have to be conducted by the government
+of a democracy. He knew that the impending war, whether great or small,
+would not be like a foreign war, exciting a united national enthusiasm,
+but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon heat the animosities of party
+even in the localities controlled by the government; that this war would
+have to be carried on not by means of a ready-made machinery, ruled by an
+undisputed, absolute will, but by means to be furnished by the voluntary
+action of the people:--armies to be formed by voluntary enlistments;
+large sums of money to be raised by the people, through representatives,
+voluntarily taxing themselves; trust of extraordinary power to be
+voluntarily granted; and war measures, not seldom restricting the rights
+and liberties to which the citizen was accustomed, to be voluntarily
+accepted and submitted to by the people, or at least a large majority of
+them; and that this would have to be kept up not merely during a short
+period of enthusiastic excitement; but possibly through weary years of
+alternating success and disaster, hope and despondency. He knew that in
+order to steer this government by public opinion successfully through all
+the confusion created by the prejudices and doubts and differences of
+sentiment distracting the popular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire,
+mould, organize, unite, and guide the popular will that it might give
+forth all the means required for the performance of his great task, he
+would have to take into account all the influences strongly affecting the
+current of popular thought and feeling, and to direct while appearing to
+obey.
+
+This was the kind of leadership he intuitively conceived to be needed
+when a free people were to be led forward en masse to overcome a great
+common danger under circumstances of appalling difficulty, the leadership
+which does not dash ahead with brilliant daring, no matter who follows,
+but which is intent upon rallying all the available forces, gathering in
+the stragglers, closing up the column, so that the front may advance well
+supported. For this leadership Abraham Lincoln was admirably fitted,
+better than any other American statesman of his day; for he understood
+the plain people, with all their loves and hates, their prejudices and
+their noble impulses, their weaknesses and their strength, as he
+understood himself, and his sympathetic nature was apt to draw their
+sympathy to him.
+
+His inaugural address foreshadowed his official course in characteristic
+manner. Although yielding nothing in point of principle, it was by no
+means a flaming antislavery manifesto, such as would have pleased the
+more ardent Republicans. It was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing
+father speaking to his wayward children. In the kindliest language he
+pointed out to the secessionists how ill advised their attempt at
+disunion was, and why, for their own sakes, they should desist. Almost
+plaintively, he told them that, while it was not their duty to destroy
+the Union, it was his sworn duty to preserve it; that the least he could
+do, under the obligations of his oath, was to possess and hold the
+property of the United States; that he hoped to do this peaceably; that
+he abhorred war for any purpose, and that they would have none unless
+they themselves were the aggressors. It was a masterpiece of
+persuasiveness, and while Lincoln had accepted many valuable amendments
+suggested by Seward, it was essentially his own. Probably Lincoln
+himself did not expect his inaugural address to have any effect upon the
+secessionists, for he must have known them to be resolved upon disunion
+at any cost. But it was an appeal to the wavering minds in the North,
+and upon them it made a profound impression. Every candid man, however
+timid and halting, had to admit that the President was bound by his oath
+to do his duty; that under that oath he could do no less than he said he
+would do; that if the secessionists resisted such an appeal as the
+President had made, they were bent upon mischief, and that the government
+must be supported against them. The partisan sympathy with the Southern
+insurrection which still existed in the North did indeed not disappear,
+but it diminished perceptibly under the influence of such reasoning.
+Those who still resisted it did so at the risk of appearing unpatriotic.
+
+It must not be supposed, however, that Lincoln at once succeeded in
+pleasing everybody, even among his friends,--even among those nearest to
+him. In selecting his cabinet, which he did substantially before he left
+Springfield for Washington, he thought it wise to call to his assistance
+the strong men of his party, especially those who had given evidence of
+the support they commanded as his competitors in the Chicago convention.
+In them he found at the same time representatives of the different shades
+of opinion within the party, and of the different elements--former Whigs
+and former Democrats--from which the party had recruited itself. This
+was sound policy under the circumstances. It might indeed have been
+foreseen that among the members of a cabinet so composed, troublesome
+disagreements and rivalries would break out. But it was better for the
+President to have these strong and ambitious men near him as his
+co-operators than to have them as his critics in Congress, where their
+differences might have been composed in a common opposition to him. As
+members of his cabinet he could hope to control them, and to keep them
+busily employed in the service of a common purpose, if he had the
+strength to do so. Whether he did possess this strength was soon tested
+by a singularly rude trial.
+
+There can be no doubt that the foremost members of his cabinet, Seward
+and Chase, the most eminent Republican statesmen, had felt themselves
+wronged by their party when in its national convention it preferred to
+them for the Presidency a man whom, not unnaturally, they thought greatly
+their inferior in ability and experience as well as in service. The
+soreness of that disappointment was intensified when they saw this
+Western man in the White House, with so much of rustic manner and speech
+as still clung to him, meeting his fellow-citizens, high and low, on a
+footing of equality, with the simplicity of his good nature unburdened by
+any conventional dignity of deportment, and dealing with the great
+business of state in an easy-going, unmethodical, and apparently somewhat
+irreverent way. They did not understand such a man. Especially Seward,
+who, as Secretary of State, considered himself next to the Chief
+Executive, and who quickly accustomed himself to giving orders and making
+arrangements upon his own motion, thought it necessary that he should
+rescue the direction of public affairs from hands so unskilled, and take
+full charge of them himself. At the end of the first month of the
+administration he submitted a "memorandum" to President Lincoln, which
+has been first brought to light by Nicolay and Hay, and is one of their
+most valuable contributions to the history of those days. In that paper
+Seward actually told the President that at the end of a month's
+administration the government was still without a policy, either domestic
+or foreign; that the slavery question should be eliminated from the
+struggle about the Union; that the matter of the maintenance of the forts
+and other possessions in the South should be decided with that view; that
+explanations should be demanded categorically from the governments of
+Spain and France, which were then preparing, one for the annexation of
+San Domingo, and both for the invasion of Mexico; that if no satisfactory
+explanations were received war should be declared against Spain and
+France by the United States; that explanations should also be sought from
+Russia and Great Britain, and a vigorous continental spirit of
+independence against European intervention be aroused all over the
+American continent; that this policy should be incessantly pursued and
+directed by somebody; that either the President should devote himself
+entirely to it, or devolve the direction on some member of his cabinet,
+whereupon all debate on this policy must end.
+
+This could be understood only as a formal demand that the President
+should acknowledge his own incompetency to perform his duties, content
+himself with the amusement of distributing post-offices, and resign his
+power as to all important affairs into the hands of his Secretary of
+State. It seems to-day incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's
+calibre could at that period conceive a plan of policy in which the
+slavery question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly
+delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already formed their
+Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution preparing to fight
+for its independence, could be hoodwinked back into the Union by some
+sentimental demonstration against European interference; a policy which,
+at that critical moment, would have involved the Union in a foreign war,
+thus inviting foreign intervention in favor of the Southern Confederacy,
+and increasing tenfold its chances in the struggle for independence. But
+it is equally incomprehensible how Seward could fail to see that this
+demand of an unconditional surrender was a mortal insult to the head of
+the government, and that by putting his proposition on paper he delivered
+himself into the hands of the very man he had insulted; for, had Lincoln,
+as most Presidents would have done, instantly dismissed Seward, and
+published the true reason for that dismissal, it would inevitably have
+been the end of Seward's career. But Lincoln did what not many of the
+noblest and greatest men in history would have been noble and great
+enough to do. He considered that Seward was still capable of rendering
+great service to his country in the place in which he was, if rightly
+controlled. He ignored the insult, but firmly established his
+superiority. In his reply, which he forthwith despatched, he told Seward
+that the administration had a domestic policy as laid down in the
+inaugural address with Seward's approval; that it had a foreign policy as
+traced in Seward's despatches with the President's approval; that if any
+policy was to be maintained or changed, he, the President, was to direct
+that on his responsibility; and that in performing that duty the
+President had a right to the advice of his secretaries. Seward's
+fantastic schemes of foreign war and continental policies Lincoln brushed
+aside by passing them over in silence. Nothing more was said. Seward
+must have felt that he was at the mercy of a superior man; that his
+offensive proposition had been generously pardoned as a temporary
+aberration of a great mind, and that he could atone for it only by
+devoted personal loyalty. This he did. He was thoroughly subdued, and
+thenceforth submitted to Lincoln his despatches for revision and
+amendment without a murmur. The war with European nations was no longer
+thought of; the slavery question found in due time its proper place in
+the struggle for the Union; and when, at a later period, the dismissal of
+Seward was demanded by dissatisfied senators, who attributed to him the
+shortcomings of the administration, Lincoln stood stoutly by his faithful
+Secretary of State.
+
+Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of superb presence, of
+eminent ability and ardent patriotism, of great natural dignity and a
+certain outward coldness of manner, which made him appear more difficult
+of approach than he really was, did not permit his disappointment to
+burst out in such extravagant demonstrations. But Lincoln's ways were so
+essentially different from his that they never became quite intelligible,
+and certainly not congenial to him. It might, perhaps, have been better
+had there been, at the beginning of the administration, some decided
+clash between Lincoln and Chase, as there was between Lincoln and Seward,
+to bring on a full mutual explanation, and to make Chase appreciate the
+real seriousness of Lincoln's nature. But, as it was, their relations
+always remained somewhat formal, and Chase never felt quite at ease under
+a chief whom he could not understand, and whose character and powers he
+never learned to esteem at their true value. At the same time, he
+devoted himself zealously to the duties of his department, and did the
+country arduous service under circumstances of extreme difficulty. Nobody
+recognized this more heartily than Lincoln himself, and they managed to
+work together until near the end of Lincoln's first Presidential term,
+when Chase, after some disagreements concerning appointments to office,
+resigned from the treasury; and, after Taney's death, the President made
+him Chief Justice.
+
+The rest of the cabinet consisted of men of less eminence, who
+subordinated themselves more easily. In January, 1862, Lincoln found it
+necessary to bow Cameron out of the war office, and to put in his place
+Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely practical mind, vehement impulses,
+fierce positiveness, ruthless energy, immense working power, lofty
+patriotism, and severest devotion to duty. He accepted the war office
+not as a partisan, for he had never been a Republican, but only to do all
+he could in "helping to save the country." The manner in which Lincoln
+succeeded in taming this lion to his will, by frankly recognizing his
+great qualities, by giving him the most generous confidence, by aiding
+him in his work to the full of his power, by kindly concession or
+affectionate persuasiveness in cases of differing opinions, or, when it
+was necessary, by firm assertions of superior authority, bears the
+highest testimony to his skill in the management of men. Stanton, who
+had entered the service with rather a mean opinion of Lincoln's character
+and capacity, became one of his warmest, most devoted, and most admiring
+friends, and with none of his secretaries was Lincoln's intercourse more
+intimate. To take advice with candid readiness, and to weigh it without
+any pride of his own opinion, was one of Lincoln's preeminent virtues;
+but he had not long presided over his cabinet council when his was felt
+by all its members to be the ruling mind.
+
+The cautious policy foreshadowed in his inaugural address, and pursued
+during the first period of the civil war, was far from satisfying all his
+party friends. The ardent spirits among the Union men thought that the
+whole North should at once be called to arms, to crush the rebellion by
+one powerful blow. The ardent spirits among the antislavery men insisted
+that, slavery having brought forth the rebellion, this powerful blow
+should at once be aimed at slavery. Both complained that the
+administration was spiritless, undecided, and lamentably slow in its
+proceedings. Lincoln reasoned otherwise. The ways of thinking and
+feeling of the masses, of the plain people, were constantly present to
+his mind. The masses, the plain people, had to furnish the men for the
+fighting, if fighting was to be done. He believed that the plain people
+would be ready to fight when it clearly appeared necessary, and that they
+would feel that necessity when they felt themselves attacked. He
+therefore waited until the enemies of the Union struck the first blow.
+As soon as, on the 12th of April, 1861, the first gun was fired in
+Charleston harbor on the Union flag upon Fort Sumter, the call was
+sounded, and the Northern people rushed to arms.
+
+Lincoln knew that the plain people were now indeed ready to fight in
+defence of the Union, but not yet ready to fight for the destruction of
+slavery. He declared openly that he had a right to summon the people to
+fight for the Union, but not to summon them to fight for the abolition of
+slavery as a primary object; and this declaration gave him numberless
+soldiers for the Union who at that period would have hesitated to do
+battle against the institution of slavery. For a time he succeeded in
+rendering harmless the cry of the partisan opposition that the Republican
+administration were perverting the war for the Union into an "abolition
+war." But when he went so far as to countermand the acts of some
+generals in the field, looking to the emancipation of the slaves in the
+districts covered by their commands, loud complaints arose from earnest
+antislavery men, who accused the President of turning his back upon the
+antislavery cause. Many of these antislavery men will now, after a calm
+retrospect, be willing to admit that it would have been a hazardous
+policy to endanger, by precipitating a demonstrative fight against
+slavery, the success of the struggle for the Union.
+
+Lincoln's views and feelings concerning slavery had not changed. Those
+who conversed with him intimately upon the subject at that period know
+that he did not expect slavery long to survive the triumph of the Union,
+even if it were not immediately destroyed by the war. In this he was
+right. Had the Union armies achieved a decisive victory in an early
+period of the conflict, and had the seceded States been received back
+with slavery, the "slave power" would then have been a defeated power,
+defeated in an attempt to carry out its most effective threat. It would
+have lost its prestige. Its menaces would have been hollow sound, and
+ceased to make any one afraid. It could no longer have hoped to expand,
+to maintain an equilibrium in any branch of Congress, and to control the
+government. The victorious free States would have largely overbalanced
+it. It would no longer have been able to withstand the onset of a
+hostile age. It could no longer have ruled,--and slavery had to rule in
+order to live. It would have lingered for a while, but it would surely
+have been "in the course of ultimate extinction." A prolonged war
+precipitated the destruction of slavery; a short war might only have
+prolonged its death struggle. Lincoln saw this clearly; but he saw also
+that, in a protracted death struggle, it might still have kept disloyal
+sentiments alive, bred distracting commotions, and caused great mischief
+to the country. He therefore hoped that slavery would not survive the
+war.
+
+But the question how he could rightfully employ his power to bring on its
+speedy destruction was to him not a question of mere sentiment. He
+himself set forth his reasoning upon it, at a later period, in one of his
+inimitable letters. "I am naturally antislavery," said he. "If slavery
+is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember the time when I did
+not so think and feel. And yet I have never understood that the
+Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon that
+judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the
+best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
+United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor
+was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath
+in using that power. I understood, too, that, in ordinary civil
+administration, this oath even forbade me practically to indulge my
+private abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I did
+understand, however, also, that my oath imposed upon me the duty of
+preserving, to the best of my ability, by every indispensable means, that
+government, that nation, of which the Constitution was the organic law.
+I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tied to
+preserve the Constitution--if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I
+should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all
+together." In other words, if the salvation of the government, the
+Constitution, and the Union demanded the destruction of slavery, he felt
+it to be not only his right, but his sworn duty to destroy it. Its
+destruction became a necessity of the war for the Union.
+
+As the war dragged on and disaster followed disaster, the sense of that
+necessity steadily grew upon him. Early in 1862, as some of his friends
+well remember, he saw, what Seward seemed not to see, that to give the
+war for the Union an antislavery character was the surest means to
+prevent the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent
+nation by European powers; that, slavery being abhorred by the moral
+sense of civilized mankind, no European government would dare to offer so
+gross an insult to the public opinion of its people as openly to favor
+the creation of a state founded upon slavery to the prejudice of an
+existing nation fighting against slavery. He saw also that slavery
+untouched was to the rebellion an element of power, and that in order to
+overcome that power it was necessary to turn it into an element of
+weakness. Still, he felt no assurance that the plain people were
+prepared for so radical a measure as the emancipation of the slaves by
+act of the government, and he anxiously considered that, if they were
+not, this great step might, by exciting dissension at the North, injure
+the cause of the Union in one quarter more than it would help it in
+another. He heartily welcomed an effort made in New York to mould and
+stimulate public sentiment on the slavery question by public meetings
+boldly pronouncing for emancipation. At the same time he himself
+cautiously advanced with a recommendation, expressed in a special message
+to Congress, that the United States should co-operate with any State
+which might adopt the gradual abolishment of slavery, giving such State
+pecuniary aid to compensate the former owners of emancipated slaves. The
+discussion was started, and spread rapidly. Congress adopted the
+resolution recommended, and soon went a step farther in passing a bill to
+abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The plain people began to
+look at emancipation on a larger scale as a thing to be considered
+seriously by patriotic citizens; and soon Lincoln thought that the time
+was ripe, and that the edict of freedom could be ventured upon without
+danger of serious confusion in the Union ranks.
+
+The failure of McClellan's movement upon Richmond increased immensely the
+prestige of the enemy. The need of some great act to stimulate the
+vitality of the Union cause seemed to grow daily more pressing. On July
+21, 1862, Lincoln surprised his cabinet with the draught of a
+proclamation declaring free the slaves in all the States that should be
+still in rebellion against the United States on the 1st of January,1863.
+As to the matter itself he announced that he had fully made up his mind;
+he invited advice only concerning the form and the time of publication.
+Seward suggested that the proclamation, if then brought out, amidst
+disaster and distress, would sound like the last shriek of a perishing
+cause. Lincoln accepted the suggestion, and the proclamation was
+postponed. Another defeat followed, the second at Bull Run. But when,
+after that battle, the Confederate army, under Lee, crossed the Potomac
+and invaded Maryland, Lincoln vowed in his heart that, if the Union army
+were now blessed with success, the decree of freedom should surely be
+issued. The victory of Antietam was won on September 17, and the
+preliminary Emancipation Proclamation came forth on the a 22d. It was
+Lincoln's own resolution and act; but practically it bound the nation,
+and permitted no step backward. In spite of its limitations, it was the
+actual abolition of slavery. Thus he wrote his name upon the books of
+history with the title dearest to his heart, the liberator of the slave.
+
+It is true, the great proclamation, which stamped the war as one for
+"union and freedom," did not at once mark the turning of the tide on the
+field of military operations. There were more disasters, Fredericksburg
+and Chancellorsville. But with Gettysburg and Vicksburg the whole aspect
+of the war changed. Step by step, now more slowly, then more rapidly, but
+with increasing steadiness, the flag of the Union advanced from field to
+field toward the final consummation. The decree of emancipation was
+naturally followed by the enlistment of emancipated negroes in the Union
+armies. This measure had a anther reaching effect than merely giving the
+Union armies an increased supply of men. The laboring force of the
+rebellion was hopelessly disorganized. The war became like a problem of
+arithmetic. As the Union armies pushed forward, the area from which the
+Southern Confederacy could draw recruits and supplies constantly grew
+smaller, while the area from which the Union recruited its strength
+constantly grew larger; and everywhere, even within the Southern lines,
+the Union had its allies. The fate of the rebellion was then virtually
+decided; but it still required much bloody work to convince the brave
+warriors who fought for it that they were really beaten.
+
+Neither did the Emancipation Proclamation forthwith command universal
+assent among the people who were loyal to the Union. There were even
+signs of a reaction against the administration in the fall elections of
+1862, seemingly justifying the opinion, entertained by many, that the
+President had really anticipated the development of popular feeling. The
+cry that the war for the Union had been turned into an "abolition war"
+was raised again by the opposition, and more loudly than ever. But the
+good sense and patriotic instincts of the plain people gradually
+marshalled themselves on Lincoln's side, and he lost no opportunity to
+help on this process by personal argument and admonition. There never
+has been a President in such constant and active contact with the public
+opinion of the country, as there never has been a President who, while at
+the head of the government, remained so near to the people. Beyond the
+circle of those who had long known him the feeling steadily grew that the
+man in the White House was "honest Abe Lincoln" still, and that every
+citizen might approach him with complaint, expostulation, or advice,
+without danger of meeting a rebuff from power-proud authority, or
+humiliating condescension; and this privilege was used by so many and
+with such unsparing freedom that only superhuman patience could have
+endured it all. There are men now living who would to-day read with
+amazement, if not regret, what they ventured to say or write to him. But
+Lincoln repelled no one whom he believed to speak to him in good faith
+and with patriotic purpose. No good advice would go unheeded. No candid
+criticism would offend him. No honest opposition, while it might pain
+him, would produce a lasting alienation of feeling between him and the
+opponent. It may truly be said that few men in power have ever been
+exposed to more daring attempts to direct their course, to severer
+censure of their acts, and to more cruel misrepresentation of their
+motives: And all this he met with that good-natured humor peculiarly his
+own, and with untiring effort to see the right and to impress it upon
+those who differed from him. The conversations he had and the
+correspondence he carried on upon matters of public interest, not only
+with men in official position, but with private citizens, were almost
+unceasing, and in a large number of public letters, written ostensibly to
+meetings, or committees, or persons of importance, he addressed himself
+directly to the popular mind. Most of these letters stand among the
+finest monuments of our political literature. Thus he presented the
+singular spectacle of a President who, in the midst of a great civil war,
+with unprecedented duties weighing upon him, was constantly in person
+debating the great features of his policy with the people.
+
+While in this manner he exercised an ever-increasing influence upon the
+popular understanding, his sympathetic nature endeared him more and more
+to the popular heart. In vain did journals and speakers of the
+opposition represent him as a lightminded trifler, who amused himself
+with frivolous story-telling and coarse jokes, while the blood of the
+people was flowing in streams. The people knew that the man at the head
+of affairs, on whose haggard face the twinkle of humor so frequently
+changed into an expression of profoundest sadness, was more than any
+other deeply distressed by the suffering he witnessed; that he felt the
+pain of every wound that was inflicted on the battlefield, and the
+anguish of every woman or child who had lost husband or father; that
+whenever he could he was eager to alleviate sorrow, and that his mercy
+was never implored in vain. They looked to him as one who was with them
+and of them in all their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, who
+laughed with them and wept with them; and as his heart was theirs; so
+their hearts turned to him. His popularity was far different from that
+of Washington, who was revered with awe, or that of Jackson, the
+unconquerable hero, for whom party enthusiasm never grew weary of
+shouting. To Abraham Lincoln the people became bound by a genuine
+sentimental attachment. It was not a matter of respect, or confidence,
+or party pride, for this feeling spread far beyond the boundary lines of
+his party; it was an affair of the heart, independent of mere reasoning.
+When the soldiers in the field or their folks at home spoke of "Father
+Abraham," there was no cant in it. They felt that their President was
+really caring for them as a father would, and that they could go to him,
+every one of them, as they would go to a father, and talk to him of what
+troubled them, sure to find a willing ear and tender sympathy. Thus,
+their President, and his cause, and his endeavors, and his success
+gradually became to them almost matters of family concern. And this
+popularity carried him triumphantly through the Presidential election of
+1864, in spite of an opposition within his own party which at first
+seemed very formidable.
+
+Many of the radical antislavery men were never quite satisfied with
+Lincoln's ways of meeting the problems of the time. They were very
+earnest and mostly very able men, who had positive ideas as to "how this
+rebellion should be put down." They would not recognize the necessity of
+measuring the steps of the government according to the progress of
+opinion among the plain people. They criticised Lincoln's cautious
+management as irresolute, halting, lacking in definite purpose and in
+energy; he should not have delayed emancipation so long; he should not
+have confided important commands to men of doubtful views as to slavery;
+he should have authorized military commanders to set the slaves free as
+they went on; he dealt too leniently with unsuccessful generals; he
+should have put down all factious opposition with a strong hand instead
+of trying to pacify it; he should have given the people accomplished
+facts instead of arguing with them, and so on. It is true, these
+criticisms were not always entirely unfounded. Lincoln's policy had,
+with the virtues of democratic government, some of its weaknesses, which
+in the presence of pressing exigencies were apt to deprive governmental
+action of the necessary vigor; and his kindness of heart, his disposition
+always to respect the feelings of others, frequently made him recoil from
+anything like severity, even when severity was urgently called for. But
+many of his radical critics have since then revised their judgment
+sufficiently to admit that Lincoln's policy was, on the whole, the wisest
+and safest; that a policy of heroic methods, while it has sometimes
+accomplished great results, could in a democracy like ours be maintained
+only by constant success; that it would have quickly broken down under
+the weight of disaster; that it might have been successful from the
+start, had the Union, at the beginning of the conflict, had its Grants
+and Shermans and Sheridans, its Farraguts and Porters, fully matured at
+the head of its forces; but that, as the great commanders had to be
+evolved slowly from the developments of the war, constant success could
+not be counted upon, and it was best to follow a policy which was in
+friendly contact with the popular force, and therefore more fit to stand
+trial of misfortune on the battlefield. But at that period they thought
+differently, and their dissatisfaction with Lincoln's doings was greatly
+increased by the steps he took toward the reconstruction of rebel States
+then partially in possession of the Union forces.
+
+In December, 1863, Lincoln issued an amnesty proclamation, offering
+pardon to all implicated in the rebellion, with certain specified
+exceptions, on condition of their taking and maintaining an oath to
+support the Constitution and obey the laws of the United States and the
+proclamations of the President with regard to slaves; and also promising
+that when, in any of the rebel States, a number of citizens equal to one
+tenth of the voters in 1860 should re-establish a state government in
+conformity with the oath above mentioned, such should be recognized by
+the Executive as the true government of the State. The proclamation
+seemed at first to be received with general favor. But soon another
+scheme of reconstruction, much more stringent in its provisions, was put
+forward in the House of Representatives by Henry Winter Davis. Benjamin
+Wade championed it in the Senate. It passed in the closing moments of
+the session in July, 1864, and Lincoln, instead of making it a law by his
+signature, embodied the text of it in a proclamation as a plan of
+reconstruction worthy of being earnestly considered. The differences of
+opinion concerning this subject had only intensified the feeling against
+Lincoln which had long been nursed among the radicals, and some of them
+openly declared their purpose of resisting his re-election to the
+Presidency. Similar sentiments were manifested by the advanced
+antislavery men of Missouri, who, in their hot faction-fight with the
+"conservatives" of that State, had not received from Lincoln the active
+support they demanded. Still another class of Union men, mainly in the
+East, gravely shook their heads when considering the question whether
+Lincoln should be re-elected. They were those who cherished in their
+minds an ideal of statesmanship and of personal bearing in high office
+with which, in their opinion, Lincoln's individuality was much out of
+accord. They were shocked when they heard him cap an argument upon grave
+affairs of state with a story about "a man out in Sangamon County,"--a
+story, to be sure, strikingly clinching his point, but sadly lacking in
+dignity. They could not understand the man who was capable, in opening a
+cabinet meeting, of reading to his secretaries a funny chapter from a
+recent book of Artemus Ward, with which in an unoccupied moment he had
+relieved his care-burdened mind, and who then solemnly informed the
+executive council that he had vowed in his heart to issue a proclamation
+emancipating the slaves as soon as God blessed the Union arms with
+another victory. They were alarmed at the weakness of a President who
+would indeed resist the urgent remonstrances of statesmen against his
+policy, but could not resist the prayer of an old woman for the pardon of
+a soldier who was sentenced to be shot for desertion. Such men, mostly
+sincere and ardent patriots, not only wished, but earnestly set to work,
+to prevent Lincoln's renomination. Not a few of them actually believed,
+in 1863, that, if the national convention of the Union party were held
+then, Lincoln would not be supported by the delegation of a single State.
+But when the convention met at Baltimore, in June, 1864, the voice of the
+people was heard. On the first ballot Lincoln received the votes of the
+delegations from all the States except Missouri; and even the Missourians
+turned over their votes to him before the result of the ballot was
+declared.
+
+But even after his renomination the opposition to Lincoln within the
+ranks of the Union party did not subside. A convention, called by the
+dissatisfied radicals in Missouri, and favored by men of a similar way of
+thinking in other States, had been held already in May, and had nominated
+as its candidate for the Presidency General Fremont. He, indeed, did not
+attract a strong following, but opposition movements from different
+quarters appeared more formidable. Henry Winter Davis and Benjamin Wade
+assailed Lincoln in a flaming manifesto. Other Union men, of undoubted
+patriotism and high standing, persuaded themselves, and sought to
+persuade the people, that Lincoln's renomination was ill advised and
+dangerous to the Union cause. As the Democrats had put off their
+convention until the 29th of August, the Union party had, during the
+larger part of the summer, no opposing candidate and platform to attack,
+and the political campaign languished. Neither were the tidings from the
+theatre of war of a cheering character. The terrible losses suffered by
+Grant's army in the battles of the Wilderness spread general gloom.
+Sherman seemed for a while to be in a precarious position before Atlanta.
+The opposition to Lincoln within the Union party grew louder in its
+complaints and discouraging predictions. Earnest demands were heard that
+his candidacy should be withdrawn. Lincoln himself, not knowing how
+strongly the masses were attached to him, was haunted by dark forebodings
+of defeat. Then the scene suddenly changed as if by magic.
+
+The Democrats, in their national convention, declared the war a failure,
+demanded, substantially, peace at any price, and nominated on such a
+platform General McClellan as their candidate. Their convention had
+hardly adjourned when the capture of Atlanta gave a new aspect to the
+military situation. It was like a sun-ray bursting through a dark cloud.
+The rank and file of the Union party rose with rapidly growing
+enthusiasm. The song "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
+thousand strong," resounded all over the land. Long before the decisive
+day arrived, the result was beyond doubt, and Lincoln was re-elected
+President by overwhelming majorities. The election over even his
+severest critics found themselves forced to admit that Lincoln was the
+only possible candidate for the Union party in 1864, and that neither
+political combinations nor campaign speeches, nor even victories in the
+field, were needed to insure his success. The plain people had all the
+while been satisfied with Abraham Lincoln: they confided in him; they
+loved him; they felt themselves near to him; they saw personified in him
+the cause of Union and freedom; and they went to the ballot-box for him
+in their strength.
+
+The hour of triumph called out the characteristic impulses of his nature.
+The opposition within the Union party had stung him to the quick. Now he
+had his opponents before him, baffled and humiliated. Not a moment did
+he lose to stretch out the hand of friendship to all. "Now that the
+election is over," he said, in response to a serenade, "may not all,
+having a common interest, reunite in a common effort to save our common
+country? For my own part, I have striven, and will strive, to place no
+obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly
+planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the
+high compliment of a re-election, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that
+any other man may be pained or disappointed by the result. May I ask
+those who were with me to join with me in the same spirit toward those
+who were against me?" This was Abraham Lincoln's character as tested in
+the furnace of prosperity.
+
+The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended. Sherman was
+irresistibly carrying the Union flag through the South. Grant had his
+iron hand upon the ramparts of Richmond. The days of the Confederacy
+were evidently numbered. Only the last blow remained to be struck. Then
+Lincoln's second inauguration came, and with it his second inaugural
+address. Lincoln's famous "Gettysburg speech" has been much and justly
+admired. But far greater, as well as far more characteristic, was that
+inaugural in which he poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his
+great soul. It had all the solemnity of a father's last admonition and
+blessing to his children before he lay down to die. These were its
+closing words: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
+scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue
+until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty
+years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood
+drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
+said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, `The judgments
+of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none,
+with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see
+the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the
+nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
+his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
+and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
+
+This was like a sacred poem. No American President had ever spoken words
+like these to the American people. America never had a President who
+found such words in the depth of his heart.
+
+Now followed the closing scenes of the war. The Southern armies fought
+bravely to the last, but all in vain. Richmond fell. Lincoln himself
+entered the city on foot, accompanied only by a few officers and a squad
+of sailors who had rowed him ashore from the flotilla in the James River,
+a negro picked up on the way serving as a guide. Never had the world
+seen a more modest conqueror and a more characteristic triumphal
+procession, no army with banners and drums, only a throng of those who
+had been slaves, hastily run together, escorting the victorious chief
+into the capital of the vanquished foe. We are told that they pressed
+around him, kissed his hands and his garments, and shouted and danced for
+joy, while tears ran down the President's care-furrowed cheeks.
+
+A few days more brought the surrender of Lee's army, and peace was
+assured. The people of the North were wild with joy. Everywhere festive
+guns were booming, bells pealing, the churches ringing with
+thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes thronging the thoroughfares, when
+suddenly the news flashed over the land that Abraham Lincoln had been
+murdered. The people were stunned by the blow. Then a wail of sorrow
+went up such as America had never heard before. Thousands of Northern
+households grieved as if they had lost their dearest member. Many a
+Southern man cried out in his heart that his people had been robbed of
+their best friend in their humiliation and distress, when Abraham Lincoln
+was struck down. It was as if the tender affection which his countrymen
+bore him had inspired all nations with a common sentiment. All civilized
+mankind stood mourning around the coffin of the dead President. Many of
+those, here and abroad, who not long before had ridiculed and reviled him
+were among the first to hasten on with their flowers of eulogy, and in
+that universal chorus of lamentation and praise there was not a voice
+that did not tremble with genuine emotion. Never since Washington's
+death had there been such unanimity of judgment as to a man's virtues and
+greatness; and even Washington's death, although his name was held in
+greater reverence, did not touch so sympathetic a chord in the people's
+hearts.
+
+Nor can it be said that this was owing to the tragic character of
+Lincoln's end. It is true, the death of this gentlest and most merciful
+of rulers by the hand of a mad fanatic was well apt to exalt him beyond
+his merits in the estimation of those who loved him, and to make his
+renown the object of peculiarly tender solicitude. But it is also true
+that the verdict pronounced upon him in those days has been affected
+little by time, and that historical inquiry has served rather to increase
+than to lessen the appreciation of his virtues, his abilities, his
+services. Giving the fullest measure of credit to his great
+ministers,--to Seward for his conduct of foreign affairs, to Chase for
+the management of the finances under terrible difficulties, to Stanton
+for the performance of his tremendous task as war secretary,--and readily
+acknowledging that without the skill and fortitude of the great
+commanders, and the heroism of the soldiers and sailors under them,
+success could not have been achieved, the historian still finds that
+Lincoln's judgment and will were by no means governed by those around
+him; that the most important steps were owing to his initiative; that his
+was the deciding and directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently he
+whose sagacity and whose character enlisted for the administration in its
+struggles the countenance, the sympathy, and the support of the people.
+It is found, even, that his judgment on military matters was
+astonishingly acute, and that the advice and instructions he gave to the
+generals commanding in the field would not seldom have done honor to the
+ablest of them. History, therefore, without overlooking, or palliating,
+or excusing any of his shortcomings or mistakes, continues to place him
+foremost among the saviours of the Union and the liberators of the slave.
+More than that, it awards to him the merit of having accomplished what
+but few political philosophers would have recognized as possible,--of
+leading the republic through four years of furious civil conflict without
+any serious detriment to its free institutions.
+
+He was, indeed, while President, violently denounced by the opposition as
+a tyrant and a usurper, for having gone beyond his constitutional powers
+in authorizing or permitting the temporary suppression of newspapers, and
+in wantonly suspending the writ of habeas corpus and resorting to
+arbitrary arrests. Nobody should be blamed who, when such things are
+done, in good faith and from patriotic motives protests against them. In
+a republic, arbitrary stretches of power, even when demanded by
+necessity, should never be permitted to pass without a protest on the one
+hand, and without an apology on the other. It is well they did not so
+pass during our civil war. That arbitrary measures were resorted to is
+true. That they were resorted to most sparingly, and only when the
+government thought them absolutely required by the safety of the
+republic, will now hardly be denied. But certain it is that the history
+of the world does not furnish a single example of a government passing
+through so tremendous a crisis as our civil war was with so small a
+record of arbitrary acts, and so little interference with the ordinary
+course of law outside the field of military operations. No American
+President ever wielded such power as that which was thrust into Lincoln's
+hands. It is to be hoped that no American President ever will have to be
+entrusted with such power again. But no man was ever entrusted with it
+to whom its seductions were less dangerous than they proved to be to
+Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous care he endeavored, even under the most
+trying circumstances, to remain strictly within the constitutional
+limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary became
+indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him to cross it,
+he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures,
+justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that
+they might not pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time
+of peace. It is an unquestionable fact that during the reconstruction
+period which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving
+as dangerous precedents than during the war itself. Thus it may truly be
+said of him not only that under his guidance the republic was saved from
+disruption and the country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that,
+during the stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so
+conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as
+to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all things that
+concern the rights and liberties of the citizens. He understood well the
+nature of the problem. In his first message to Congress he defined it in
+admirably pointed language: "Must a government be of necessity too strong
+for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own
+existence? Is there in all republics this inherent weakness?" This
+question he answered in the name of the great American republic, as no
+man could have answered it better, with a triumphant "No...."
+
+It has been said that Abraham Lincoln died at the right moment for his
+fame. However that may be, he had, at the time of his death, certainly
+not exhausted his usefulness to his country. He was probably the only
+man who could have guided the nation through the perplexities of the
+reconstruction period in such a manner as to prevent in the work of peace
+the revival of the passions of the war. He would indeed not have escaped
+serious controversy as to details of policy; but he could have weathered
+it far better than any other statesman of his time, for his prestige with
+the active politicians had been immensely strengthened by his triumphant
+re-election; and, what is more important, he would have been supported by
+the confidence of the victorious Northern people that he would do all to
+secure the safety of the Union and the rights of the emancipated negro,
+and at the same time by the confidence of the defeated Southern people
+that nothing would be done by him from motives of vindictiveness, or of
+unreasoning fanaticism, or of a selfish party spirit. "With malice
+toward none, with charity for all," the foremost of the victors would
+have personified in himself the genius of reconciliation.
+
+He might have rendered the country a great service in another direction.
+A few days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed out to a friend the
+crowd of office-seekers besieging his door. "Look at that," said he.
+"Now we have conquered the rebellion, but here you see something that may
+become more dangerous to this republic than the rebellion itself." It is
+true, Lincoln as President did not profess what we now call civil service
+reform principles. He used the patronage of the government in many cases
+avowedly to reward party work, in many others to form combinations and to
+produce political effects advantageous to the Union cause, and in still
+others simply to put the right man into the right place. But in his
+endeavors to strengthen the Union cause, and in his search for able and
+useful men for public duties, he frequently went beyond the limits of his
+party, and gradually accustomed himself to the thought that, while party
+service had its value, considerations of the public interest were, as to
+appointments to office, of far greater consequence. Moreover, there had
+been such a mingling of different political elements in support of the
+Union during the civil war that Lincoln, standing at the head of that
+temporarily united motley mass, hardly felt himself, in the narrow sense
+of the term, a party man. And as he became strongly impressed with the
+dangers brought upon the republic by the use of public offices as party
+spoils, it is by no means improbable that, had he survived the
+all-absorbing crisis and found time to turn to other objects, one of the
+most important reforms of later days would have been pioneered by his
+powerful authority. This was not to be. But the measure of his
+achievements was full enough for immortality.
+
+To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has already become a
+half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance, grows to
+more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of
+outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot of popular heroes;
+but the Lincoln legend will be more than ordinarily apt to become
+fanciful, as his individuality, assembling seemingly incongruous
+qualities and forces in a character at the same time grand and most
+lovable, was so unique, and his career so abounding in startling
+contrasts. As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up
+passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man who,
+not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most
+unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented
+in our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mortals,
+unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own breast, and
+suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of
+our wars; who wielded the power of government when stern resolution and
+relentless force were the order of the day and then won and ruled the
+popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature; who was a
+cautious conservative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most
+sudden and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his
+homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous position of
+that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then
+thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and
+grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was
+murdered because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who,
+while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional
+passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and foe
+gathered to praise him which they have since never ceased to do--as one
+of the greatest of Americans and the best of men.
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE
+
+[This Address was delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical
+Institution, November 13, 1900. It is included in this set with the
+courteous permission of the author and of Messrs. Thomas Y. Crowell &
+Company.]
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+When you asked me to deliver the Inaugural Address on this occasion, I
+recognized that I owed this compliment to the fact that I was the
+official representative of America, and in selecting a subject I ventured
+to think that I might interest you for an hour in a brief study in
+popular government, as illustrated by the life of the most American of
+all Americans. I therefore offer no apology for asking your attention to
+Abraham Lincoln--to his unique character and the part he bore in two
+important achievements of modern history: the preservation of the
+integrity of the American Union and the emancipation of the colored race.
+
+During his brief term of power he was probably the object of more abuse,
+vilification, and ridicule than any other man in the world; but when he
+fell by the hand of an assassin, at the very moment of his stupendous
+victory, all the nations of the earth vied with one another in paying
+homage to his character, and the thirty-five years that have since
+elapsed have established his place in history as one of the great
+benefactors not of his own country alone, but of the human race.
+
+One of many noble utterances upon the occasion of his death was that in
+which 'Punch' made its magnanimous recantation of the spirit with which
+it had pursued him:
+
+  "Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet
+   The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew,
+   Between the mourners at his head and feet,
+   Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?
+
+          ...................
+
+  "Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
+   To lame my pencil, and confute my pen
+   To make me own this hind--of princes peer,
+   This rail-splitter--a true born king of men."
+
+Fiction can furnish no match for the romance of his life, and biography
+will be searched in vain for such startling vicissitudes of fortune, so
+great power and glory won out of such humble beginnings and adverse
+circumstances.
+
+Doubtless you are all familiar with the salient points of his
+extraordinary career. In the zenith of his fame he was the wise,
+patient, courageous, successful ruler of men; exercising more power than
+any monarch of his time, not for himself, but for the good of the people
+who had placed it in his hands; commander-in-chief of a vast military
+power, which waged with ultimate success the greatest war of the century;
+the triumphant champion of popular government, the deliverer of four
+millions of his fellowmen from bondage; honored by mankind as Statesman,
+President, and Liberator.
+
+Let us glance now at the first half of the brief life of which this was
+the glorious and happy consummation. Nothing could be more squalid and
+miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln was born--a one-roomed
+cabin without floor or window in what was then the wilderness of
+Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life which swiftly moved westward
+from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of schools and
+churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers, of all things
+which are generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of
+life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could
+keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever seeking,
+without success, to better his unhappy condition by moving on from one
+such scene of dreary desolation to another. The rude society which
+surrounded them was not much better. The struggle for existence was
+hard, and absorbed all their energies. They were fighting the forest, the
+wild beast, and the retreating savage. From the time when he could
+barely handle tools until he attained his majority, Lincoln's life was
+that of a simple farm laborer, poorly clad, housed, and fed, at work
+either on his father's wretched farm or hired out to neighboring farmers.
+But in spite, or perhaps by means, of this rude environment, he grew to
+be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four at nineteen, and fabulous
+stories are told of his feats of strength. With the growth of this
+mighty frame began that strange education which in his ripening years was
+to qualify him for the great destiny that awaited him, and the
+development of those mental faculties and moral endowments which, by the
+time he reached middle life, were to make him the sagacious, patient, and
+triumphant leader of a great nation in the crisis of its fate. His whole
+schooling, obtained during such odd times as could be spared from
+grinding labor, did not amount in all to as much as one year, and the
+quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible grade, including only
+the elements of reading, writing, and ciphering. But out of these simple
+elements, when rightly used by the right man, education is achieved, and
+Lincoln knew how to use them. As so often happens, he seemed to take
+warning from his father's unfortunate example. Untiring industry, an
+insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to rise above
+his surroundings, were early manifestations of his character.
+
+Books were almost unknown in that community, but the Bible was in every
+house, and somehow or other Pilgrim's Progress, AEsop's Fables, a History
+of the United States, and a Life of Washington fell into his hands. He
+trudged on foot many miles through the wilderness to borrow an English
+Grammar, and is said to have devoured greedily the contents of the
+Statutes of Indiana that fell in his way. These few volumes he read and
+reread--and his power of assimilation was great. To be shut in with a
+few books and to master them thoroughly sometimes does more for the
+development of character than freedom to range at large, in a cursory and
+indiscriminate way, through wide domains of literature. This youth's
+mind, at any rate, was thoroughly saturated with Biblical knowledge and
+Biblical language, which, in after life, he used with great readiness and
+effect. But it was the constant use of the little knowledge which he had
+that developed and exercised his mental powers. After the hard day's
+work was done, while others slept, he toiled on, always reading or
+writing. From an early age he did his own thinking and made up his own
+mind--invaluable traits in the future President. Paper was such a scarce
+commodity that, by the evening firelight, he would write and cipher on
+the back of a wooden shovel, and then shave it off to make room for more.
+By and by, as he approached manhood, he began speaking in the rude
+gatherings of the neighborhood, and so laid the foundation of that art of
+persuading his fellow-men which was one rich result of his education, and
+one great secret of his subsequent success.
+
+Accustomed as we are in these days of steam and telegraphs to have every
+intelligent boy survey the whole world each morning before breakfast, and
+inform himself as to what is going on in every nation, it is hardly
+possible to conceive how benighted and isolated was the condition of the
+community at Pigeon Creek in Indiana, of which the family of Lincoln's
+father formed a part, or how eagerly an ambitious and high-spirited boy,
+such as he, must have yearned to escape. The first glimpse that he ever
+got of any world beyond the narrow confines of his home was in 1828, at
+the age of nineteen, when a neighbor employed him to accompany his son
+down the river to New Orleans to dispose of a flatboat of produce--a
+commission which he discharged with great success.
+
+Shortly after his return from this his first excursion into the outer
+world, his father, tired of failure in Indiana, packed his family and all
+his worldly goods into a single wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen, and
+after a fourteen days' tramp through the wilderness, pitched his camp
+once more, in Illinois. Here Abraham, having come of age and being now
+his own master, rendered the last service of his minority by ploughing
+the fifteen-acre lot and splitting from the tall walnut trees of the
+primeval forest enough rails to surround the little clearing with a
+fence. Such was the meagre outfit of this coming leader of men, at the
+age when the future British Prime Minister or statesman emerges from the
+university as a double first or senior wrangler, with every advantage
+that high training and broad culture and association with the wisest and
+the best of men and women can give, and enters upon some form of public
+service on the road to usefulness and honor, the University course being
+only the first stage of the public training. So Lincoln, at twenty-one,
+had just begun his preparation for the public life to which he soon began
+to aspire. For some years yet he must continue to earn his daily bread
+by the sweat of his brow, having absolutely no means, no home, no friend
+to consult. More farm work as a hired hand, a clerkship in a village
+store, the running of a mill, another trip to New Orleans on a flatboat
+of his own contriving, a pilot's berth on the river--these were the means
+by which he subsisted until, in the summer of 1832, when he was
+twenty-three years of age, an event occurred which gave him public
+recognition.
+
+The Black Hawk war broke out, and, the Governor of Illinois calling for
+volunteers to repel the band of savages whose leader bore that name,
+Lincoln enlisted and was elected captain by his comrades, among whom he
+had already established his supremacy by signal feats of strength and
+more than one successful single combat. During the brief hostilities he
+was engaged in no battle and won no military glory, but his local
+leadership was established. The same year he offered himself as a
+candidate for the Legislature of Illinois, but failed at the polls. Yet
+his vast popularity with those who knew him was manifest. The district
+consisted of several counties, but the unanimous vote of the people of
+his own county was for Lincoln. Another unsuccessful attempt at
+store-keeping was followed by better luck at surveying, until his horse
+and instruments were levied upon under execution for the debts of his
+business adventure.
+
+I have been thus detailed in sketching his early years because upon these
+strange foundations the structure of his great fame and service was
+built. In the place of a school and university training fortune
+substituted these trials, hardships, and struggles as a preparation for
+the great work which he had to do. It turned out to be exactly what the
+emergency required. Ten years instead at the public school and the
+university certainly never could have fitted this man for the unique work
+which was to be thrown upon him. Some other Moses would have had to lead
+us to our Jordan, to the sight of our promised land of liberty.
+
+At the age of twenty-five he became a member of the Legislature of
+Illinois, and so continued for eight years, and, in the meantime,
+qualified himself by reading such law books as he could borrow at
+random--for he was too poor to buy any to be called to the Bar. For his
+second quarter of a century--during which a single term in Congress
+introduced him into the arena of national questions--he gave himself up
+to law and politics. In spite of his soaring ambition, his two years in
+Congress gave him no premonition of the great destiny that awaited
+him,--and at its close, in 1849, we find him an unsuccessful applicant to
+the President for appointment as Commissioner of the General Land
+Office--a purely administrative bureau; a fortunate escape for himself
+and for his country. Year by year his knowledge and power, his
+experience and reputation extended, and his mental faculties seemed to
+grow by what they fed on. His power of persuasion, which had always been
+marked, was developed to an extraordinary degree, now that he became
+engaged in congenial questions and subjects. Little by little he rose to
+prominence at the Bar, and became the most effective public speaker in
+the West. Not that he possessed any of the graces of the orator; but his
+logic was invincible, and his clearness and force of statement impressed
+upon his hearers the convictions of his honest mind, while his broad
+sympathies and sparkling and genial humor made him a universal favorite
+as far and as fast as his acquaintance extended.
+
+These twenty years that elapsed from the time of his establishment as a
+lawyer and legislator in Springfield, the new capital of Illinois,
+furnished a fitting theatre for the development and display of his great
+faculties, and, with his new and enlarged opportunities, he obviously
+grew in mental stature in this second period of his career, as if to
+compensate for the absolute lack of advantages under which he had
+suffered in youth. As his powers enlarged, his reputation extended, for
+he was always before the people, felt a warm sympathy with all that
+concerned them, took a zealous part in the discussion of every public
+question, and made his personal influence ever more widely and deeply
+felt.
+
+My brethren of the legal profession will naturally ask me, how could
+this rough backwoodsman, whose youth had been spent in the forest or on
+the farm and the flatboat, without culture or training, education or
+study, by the random reading, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law
+books, become a learned and accomplished lawyer? Well, he never did. He
+never would have earned his salt as a 'Writer' for the 'Signet', nor have
+won a place as advocate in the Court of Session, where the technique of
+the profession has reached its highest perfection, and centuries of
+learning and precedent are involved in the equipment of a lawyer. Dr.
+Holmes, when asked by an anxious young mother, "When should the education
+of a child begin?" replied, "Madam, at least two centuries before it is
+born!" and so I am sure it is with the Scots lawyer.
+
+But not so in Illinois in 1840. Between 1830 and 1880 its population
+increased twenty-fold, and when Lincoln began practising law in
+Springfield in 1837, life in Illinois was very crude and simple, and so
+were the courts and the administration of justice. Books and libraries
+were scarce. But the people loved justice, upheld the law, and followed
+the courts, and soon found their favorites among the advocates. The
+fundamental principles of the common law, as set forth by Blackstone and
+Chitty, were not so difficult to acquire; and brains, common sense, force
+of character, tenacity of purpose, ready wit and power of speech did the
+rest, and supplied all the deficiencies of learning.
+
+The lawsuits of those days were extremely simple, and the principles of
+natural justice were mainly relied on to dispose of them at the Bar and
+on the Bench, without resort to technical learning. Railroads,
+corporations absorbing the chief business of the community, combined and
+inherited wealth, with all the subtle and intricate questions they breed,
+had not yet come in--and so the professional agents and the equipment
+which they require were not needed. But there were many highly educated
+and powerful men at the Bar of Illinois, even in those early days, whom
+the spirit of enterprise had carried there in search of fame and fortune.
+It was by constant contact and conflict with these that Lincoln acquired
+professional strength and skill. Every community and every age creates
+its own Bar, entirely adequate for its present uses and necessities. So
+in Illinois, as the population and wealth of the State kept on doubling
+and quadrupling, its Bar presented a growing abundance of learning and
+science and technical skill. The early practitioners grew with its
+growth and mastered the requisite knowledge. Chicago soon grew to be one
+of the largest and richest and certainly the most intensely active city
+on the continent, and if any of my professional friends here had gone
+there in Lincoln's later years, to try or argue a cause, or transact
+other business, with any idea that Edinburgh or London had a monopoly of
+legal learning, science, or subtlety, they would certainly have found
+their mistake.
+
+In those early days in the West, every lawyer, especially every court
+lawyer, was necessarily a politician, constantly engaged in the public
+discussion of the many questions evolved from the rapid development of
+town, county, State, and Federal affairs. Then and there, in this regard,
+public discussion supplied the place which the universal activity of the
+press has since monopolized, and the public speaker who, by clearness,
+force, earnestness, and wit; could make himself felt on the questions of
+the day would rapidly come to the front. In the absence of that immense
+variety of popular entertainments which now feed the public taste and
+appetite, the people found their chief amusement in frequenting the
+courts and public and political assemblies. In either place, he who
+impressed, entertained, and amused them most was the hero of the hour.
+They did not discriminate very carefully between the eloquence of the
+forum and the eloquence of the hustings. Human nature ruled in both
+alike, and he who was the most effective speaker in a political harangue
+was often retained as most likely to win in a cause to be tried or
+argued. And I have no doubt in this way many retainers came to Lincoln.
+Fees, money in any form, had no charms for him--in his eager pursuit of
+fame he could not afford to make money. He was ambitious to distinguish
+himself by some great service to mankind, and this ambition for fame and
+real public service left no room for avarice in his composition. However
+much he earned, he seems to have ended every year hardly richer than he
+began it, and yet, as the years passed, fees came to him freely. One of
+L 1,000 is recorded--a very large professional fee at that time, even in
+any part of America, the paradise of lawyers. I lay great stress on
+Lincoln's career as a lawyer--much more than his biographers do because
+in America a state of things exists wholly different from that which
+prevails in Great Britain. The profession of the law always has been and
+is to this day the principal avenue to public life; and I am sure that
+his training and experience in the courts had much to do with the
+development of those forces of intellect and character which he soon
+displayed on a broader arena.
+
+It was in political controversy, of course, that he acquired his wide
+reputation, and made his deep and lasting impression upon the people of
+what had now become the powerful State of Illinois, and upon the people
+of the Great West, to whom the political power and control of the United
+States were already surely and swiftly passing from the older Eastern
+States. It was this reputation and this impression, and the familiar
+knowledge of his character which had come to them from his local
+leadership, that happily inspired the people of the West to present him
+as their candidate, and to press him upon the Republican convention of
+1860 as the fit and necessary leader in the struggle for life which was
+before the nation.
+
+That struggle, as you all know, arose out of the terrible question of
+slavery--and I must trust to your general knowledge of the history of
+that question to make intelligible the attitude and leadership of Lincoln
+as the champion of the hosts of freedom in the final contest. Negro
+slavery had been firmly established in the Southern States from an early
+period of their history. In 1619, the year before the Mayflower landed
+our Pilgrim Fathers upon Plymouth Rock, a Dutch ship had discharged a
+cargo of African slaves at Jamestown in Virginia: All through the
+colonial period their importation had continued. A few had found their
+way into the Northern States, but none of them in sufficient numbers to
+constitute danger or to afford a basis for political power. At the time
+of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there is no doubt that the
+principal members of the convention not only condemned slavery as a
+moral, social, and political evil, but believed that by the suppression
+of the slave trade it was in the course of gradual extinction in the
+South, as it certainly was in the North. Washington, in his will,
+provided for the emancipation of his own slaves, and said to Jefferson
+that it "was among his first wishes to see some plan adopted by which
+slavery in his country might be abolished." Jefferson said, referring to
+the institution: "I tremble for my country when I think that God is just;
+that His justice cannot sleep forever,"--and Franklin, Adams, Hamilton,
+and Patrick Henry were all utterly opposed to it. But it was made the
+subject of a fatal compromise in the Federal Constitution, whereby its
+existence was recognized in the States as a basis of representation, the
+prohibition of the importation of slaves was postponed for twenty years,
+and the return of fugitive slaves provided for. But no imminent danger
+was apprehended from it till, by the invention of the cotton gin in 1792,
+cotton culture by negro labor became at once and forever the leading
+industry of the South, and gave a new impetus to the importation of
+slaves, so that in 1808, when the constitutional prohibition took effect,
+their numbers had vastly increased. From that time forward slavery
+became the basis of a great political power, and the Southern States,
+under all circumstances and at every opportunity, carried on a brave and
+unrelenting struggle for its maintenance and extension.
+
+The conscience of the North was slow to rise against it, though bitter
+controversies from time to time took place. The Southern leaders
+threatened disunion if their demands were not complied with. To save the
+Union, compromise after compromise was made, but each one in the end was
+broken. The Missouri Compromise, made in 1820 upon the occasion of the
+admission of Missouri into the Union as a slave State, whereby, in
+consideration of such admission, slavery was forever excluded from the
+Northwest Territory, was ruthlessly repealed in 1854, by a Congress
+elected in the interests of the slave power, the intent being to force
+slavery into that vast territory which had so long been dedicated to
+freedom. This challenge at last aroused the slumbering conscience and
+passion of the North, and led to the formation of the Republican party
+for the avowed purpose of preventing, by constitutional methods, the
+further extension of slavery.
+
+In its first campaign, in 1856, though it failed to elect its candidates;
+it received a surprising vote and carried many of the States. No one
+could any longer doubt that the North had made up its mind that no
+threats of disunion should deter it from pressing its cherished purpose
+and performing its long neglected duty. From the outset, Lincoln was one
+of the most active and effective leaders and speakers of the new party,
+and the great debates between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858, as the
+respective champions of the restriction and extension of slavery,
+attracted the attention of the whole country. Lincoln's powerful
+arguments carried conviction everywhere. His moral nature was thoroughly
+aroused his conscience was stirred to the quick. Unless slavery was
+wrong, nothing was wrong. Was each man, of whatever color, entitled to
+the fruits of his own labor, or could one man live in idle luxury by the
+sweat of another's brow, whose skin was darker? He was an implicit
+believer in that principle of the Declaration of Independence that all
+men are vested with certain inalienable rights the equal rights to life,
+liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On this doctrine he staked his
+case and carried it. We have time only for one or two sentences in which
+he struck the keynote of the contest.
+
+"The real issue in this country is the eternal struggle between these two
+principles--right and wrong--throughout the world. They are the two
+principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and
+will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity,
+and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in
+whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You
+work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it.'"
+
+He foresaw with unerring vision that the conflict was inevitable and
+irrepressible--that one or the other, the right or the wrong, freedom or
+slavery, must ultimately prevail and wholly prevail, throughout the
+country; and this was the principle that carried the war, once begun, to
+a finish.
+
+One sentence of his is immortal:
+
+"Under the operation of the policy of compromise, the slavery agitation
+has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it
+will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A
+house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government
+cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
+Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect
+it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
+other; either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of
+it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
+is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
+forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well
+as new, North as well as South."
+
+During the entire decade from 1850 to 1860 the agitation of the slavery
+question was at the boiling point, and events which have become
+historical continually indicated the near approach of the overwhelming
+storm. No sooner had the Compromise Acts of 1850 resulted in a temporary
+peace, which everybody said must be final and perpetual, than new
+outbreaks came. The forcible carrying away of fugitive slaves by Federal
+troops from Boston agitated that ancient stronghold of freedom to its
+foundations. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which truly exposed
+the frightful possibilities of the slave system; the reckless attempts by
+force and fraud to establish it in Kansas against the will of the vast
+majority of the settlers; the beating of Summer in the Senate Chamber for
+words spoken in debate; the Dred Scott decision in the Supreme Court,
+which made the nation realize that the slave power had at last reached
+the fountain of Federal justice; and finally the execution of John Brown,
+for his wild raid into Virginia, to invite the slaves to rally to the
+standard of freedom which he unfurled:--all these events tend to
+illustrate and confirm Lincoln's contention that the nation could not
+permanently continue half slave and half free, but must become all one
+thing or all the other. When John Brown lay under sentence of death he
+declared that now he was sure that slavery must be wiped out in blood;
+but neither he nor his executioners dreamt that within four years a
+million soldiers would be marching across the country for its final
+extirpation, to the music of the war-song of the great conflict:
+
+   "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
+   But his soul is marching on."
+
+And now, at the age of fifty-one, this child of the wilderness, this farm
+laborer, rail-sputter, flatboatman, this surveyor, lawyer, orator,
+statesman, and patriot, found himself elected by the great party which
+was pledged to prevent at all hazards the further extension of slavery,
+as the chief magistrate of the Republic, bound to carry out that purpose,
+to be the leader and ruler of the nation in its most trying hour.
+
+Those who believe that there is a living Providence that overrules and
+conducts the affairs of nations, find in the elevation of this plain man
+to this extraordinary fortune and to this great duty, which he so fitly
+discharged, a signal vindication of their faith. Perhaps to this
+philosophical institution the judgment of our philosopher Emerson will
+commend itself as a just estimate of Lincoln's historical place.
+
+"His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense of
+mankind and of the public conscience. He grew according to the need; his
+mind mastered the problem of the day: and as the problem grew, so did his
+comprehension of it. In the war there was no place for holiday
+magistrate, nor fair-weather sailor. The new pilot was hurried to the
+helm in a tornado. In four years--four years of battle days--his
+endurance, his fertility of resource, his magnanimity, were sorely tried,
+and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even
+temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in
+the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American
+people in his time, the true representative of this continent--father of
+his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the
+thought of their mind--articulated in his tongue."
+
+He was born great, as distinguished from those who achieve greatness or
+have it thrust upon them, and his inherent capacity, mental, moral, and
+physical, having been recognized by the educated intelligence of a free
+people, they happily chose him for their ruler in a day of deadly peril.
+
+It is now forty years since I first saw and heard Abraham Lincoln, but
+the impression which he left on my mind is ineffaceable. After his great
+successes in the West he came to New York to make a political address.
+He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain people among
+whom he loved to be counted. At first sight there was nothing impressive
+or imposing about him--except that his great stature singled him out from
+the crowd: his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame; his face was of
+a dark pallor, without the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and
+rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; his deep-set
+eyes looked sad and anxious; his countenance in repose gave little
+evidence of that brain power which had raised him from the lowest to the
+highest station among his countrymen; as he talked to me before the
+meeting, he seemed ill at ease, with that sort of apprehension which a
+young man might feel before presenting himself to a new and strange
+audience, whose critical disposition he dreaded. It was a great
+audience, including all the noted men--all the learned and cultured of
+his party in New York editors, clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants,
+critics. They were all very curious to hear him. His fame as a powerful
+speaker had preceded him, and exaggerated rumor of his wit--the worst
+forerunner of an orator--had reached the East. When Mr. Bryant
+presented him, on the high platform of the Cooper Institute, a vast sea
+of eager upturned faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to see
+what this rude child of the people was like. He was equal to the
+occasion. When he spoke he was transformed; his eye kindled, his voice
+rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly. For an
+hour and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his hand. His
+style of speech and manner of delivery were severely simple. What Lowell
+called "the grand simplicities of the Bible," with which he was so
+familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no attempt at ornament
+or rhetoric, without parade or pretence, he spoke straight to the point.
+If any came expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the
+frontier, they must have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity
+of his utterances. It was marvellous to see how this untutored man, by
+mere self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, had outgrown
+all meretricious arts, and found his own way to the grandeur and strength
+of absolute simplicity.
+
+He spoke upon the theme which he had mastered so thoroughly. He
+demonstrated by copious historical proofs and masterly logic that the
+fathers who created the Constitution in order to form a more perfect
+union, to establish justice, and to secure the blessings of liberty to
+themselves and their posterity, intended to empower the Federal
+Government to exclude slavery from the Territories. In the kindliest
+spirit he protested against the avowed threat of the Southern States to
+destroy the Union if, in order to secure freedom in those vast regions
+out of which future States were to be carved, a Republican President were
+elected. He closed with an appeal to his audience, spoken with all the
+fire of his aroused and kindling conscience, with a full outpouring of
+his love of justice and liberty, to maintain their political purpose on
+that lofty and unassailable issue of right and wrong which alone could
+justify it, and not to be intimidated from their high resolve and sacred
+duty by any threats of destruction to the government or of ruin to
+themselves. He concluded with this telling sentence, which drove the
+whole argument home to all our hearts: "Let us have faith that right
+makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as
+we understand it." That night the great hall, and the next day the whole
+city, rang with delighted applause and congratulations, and he who had
+come as a stranger departed with the laurels of great triumph.
+
+Alas! in five years from that exulting night I saw him again, for the
+last time, in the same city, borne in his coffin through its draped
+streets. With tears and lamentations a heart-broken people accompanied
+him from Washington, the scene of his martyrdom, to his last
+resting-place in the young city of the West where he had worked his way
+to fame.
+
+Never was a new ruler in a more desperate plight than Lincoln when he
+entered office on the fourth of March, 1861, four months after his
+election, and took his oath to support the Constitution and the Union.
+The intervening time had been busily employed by the Southern States in
+carrying out their threat of disunion in the event of his election. As
+soon as the fact was ascertained, seven of them had seceded and had
+seized upon the forts, arsenals, navy yards, and other public property of
+the United States within their boundaries, and were making every
+preparation for war. In the meantime the retiring President, who had
+been elected by the slave power, and who thought the seceding States
+could not lawfully be coerced, had done absolutely nothing. Lincoln found
+himself, by the Constitution, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of
+the United States, but with only a remnant of either at hand. Each was
+to be created on a great scale out of the unknown resources of a nation
+untried in war.
+
+In his mild and conciliatory inaugural address, while appealing to the
+seceding States to return to their allegiance, he avowed his purpose to
+keep the solemn oath he had taken that day, to see that the laws of the
+Union were faithfully executed, and to use the troops to recover the
+forts, navy yards, and other property belonging to the government. It is
+probable, however, that neither side actually realized that war was
+inevitable, and that the other was determined to fight, until the assault
+on Fort Sumter presented the South as the first aggressor and roused the
+North to use every possible resource to maintain the government and the
+imperilled Union, and to vindicate the supremacy of the flag over every
+inch of the territory of the United States. The fact that Lincoln's
+first proclamation called for only 75,000 troops, to serve for three
+months, shows how inadequate was even his idea of what the future had in
+store. But from that moment Lincoln and his loyal supporters never
+faltered in their purpose. They knew they could win, that it was their
+duty to win, and that for America the whole hope of the future depended
+upon their winning; for now by the acts of the seceding States the issue
+of the election to secure or prevent the extension of slavery--stood
+transformed into a struggle to preserve or to destroy the Union.
+
+We cannot follow this contest. You know its gigantic proportions; that
+it lasted four years instead of three months; that in its progress,
+instead of 75,000 men, more than 2,000,000 were enrolled on the side of
+the government alone; that the aggregate cost and loss to the nation
+approximated to 1,000,000,000 pounds sterling, and that not less than
+300,000 brave and precious lives were sacrificed on each side. History
+has recorded how Lincoln bore himself during these four frightful years;
+that he was the real President, the responsible and actual head of the
+government, through it all; that he listened to all advice, heard all
+parties, and then, always realizing his responsibility to God and the
+nation, decided every great executive question for himself. His absolute
+honesty had become proverbial long before he was President. "Honest Abe
+Lincoln" was the name by which he had been known for years. His every
+act attested it.
+
+In all the grandeur of the vast power that he wielded, he never ceased to
+be one of the plain people, as he always called them, never lost or
+impaired his perfect sympathy with them, was always in perfect touch with
+them and open to their appeals; and here lay the very secret of his
+personality and of his power, for the people in turn gave him their
+absolute confidence. His courage, his fortitude, his patience, his
+hopefulness, were sorely tried but never exhausted.
+
+He was true as steel to his generals, but had frequent occasion to change
+them, as he found them inadequate. This serious and painful duty rested
+wholly upon him, and was perhaps his most important function as
+Commander-in-Chief; but when, at last, he recognized in General Grant the
+master of the situation, the man who could and would bring the war to a
+triumphant end, he gave it all over to him and upheld him with all his
+might. Amid all the pressure and distress that the burdens of office
+brought upon him, his unfailing sense of humor saved him; probably it
+made it possible for him to live under the burden. He had always been
+the great story-teller of the West, and he used and cultivated this
+faculty to relieve the weight of the load he bore.
+
+It enabled him to keep the wonderful record of never having lost his
+temper, no matter what agony he had to bear. A whole night might be
+spent in recounting the stories of his wit, humor, and harmless sarcasm.
+But I will recall only two of his sayings, both about General Grant, who
+always found plenty of enemies and critics to urge the President to oust
+him from his command. One, I am sure, will interest all Scotchmen. They
+repeated with malicious intent the gossip that Grant drank. "What does
+he drink?" asked Lincoln. "Whiskey," was, of course, the answer;
+doubtless you can guess the brand. "Well," said the President, "just
+find out what particular kind he uses and I'll send a barrel to each of
+my other generals." The other must be as pleasing to the British as to
+the American ear. When pressed again on other grounds to get rid of
+Grant, he declared, "I can't spare that man, he fights!"
+
+He was tender-hearted to a fault, and never could resist the appeals of
+wives and mothers of soldiers who had got into trouble and were under
+sentence of death for their offences. His Secretary of War and other
+officials complained that they never could get deserters shot. As surely
+as the women of the culprit's family could get at him he always gave way.
+Certainly you will all appreciate his exquisite sympathy with the
+suffering relatives of those who had fallen in battle. His heart bled
+with theirs. Never was there a more gentle and tender utterance than his
+letter to a mother who had given all her sons to her country, written at
+a time when the angel of death had visited almost every household in the
+land, and was already hovering over him.
+
+"I have been shown," he says, "in the files of the War Department a
+statement that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously
+on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words
+of mine which should attempt to beguile you from your grief for a loss so
+overwhelming but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation
+which may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I
+pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement
+and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and the lost, and
+the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice
+upon the altar of freedom."
+
+Hardly could your illustrious sovereign, from the depths of her queenly
+and womanly heart, have spoken words more touching and tender to soothe
+the stricken mothers of her own soldiers.
+
+The Emancipation Proclamation, with which Mr. Lincoln delighted the
+country and the world on the first of January, 1863, will doubtless
+secure for him a foremost place in history among the philanthropists and
+benefactors of the race, as it rescued, from hopeless and degrading
+slavery, so many millions of his fellow-beings described in the law and
+existing in fact as "chattels-personal, in the hands of their owners and
+possessors, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever."
+Rarely does the happy fortune come to one man to render such a service to
+his kind--to proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the
+inhabitants thereof.
+
+Ideas rule the world, and never was there a more signal instance of this
+triumph of an idea than here. William Lloyd Garrison, who thirty years
+before had begun his crusade for the abolition of slavery, and had lived
+to see this glorious and unexpected consummation of the hopeless cause to
+which he had devoted his life, well described the proclamation as a
+"great historic event, sublime in its magnitude, momentous and beneficent
+in its far-reaching consequences, and eminently just and right alike to
+the oppressor and the oppressed."
+
+Lincoln had always been heart and soul opposed to slavery. Tradition says
+that on the trip on the flatboat to New Orleans he formed his first and
+last opinion of slavery at the sight of negroes chained and scourged, and
+that then and there the iron entered into his soul. No boy could grow to
+manhood in those days as a poor white in Kentucky and Indiana, in close
+contact with slavery or in its neighborhood, without a growing
+consciousness of its blighting effects on free labor, as well as of its
+frightful injustice and cruelty. In the Legislature of Illinois, where
+the public sentiment was all for upholding the institution and violently
+against every movement for its abolition or restriction, upon the passage
+of resolutions to that effect he had the courage with one companion to
+put on record his protest, "believing that the institution of slavery is
+founded both in injustice and bad policy." No great demonstration of
+courage, you will say; but that was at a time when Garrison, for his
+abolition utterances, had been dragged by an angry mob through the
+streets of Boston with a rope around his body, and in the very year that
+Lovejoy in the same State of Illinois was slain by rioters while
+defending his press, from which he had printed antislavery appeals.
+
+In Congress he brought in a bill for gradual abolition in the District of
+Columbia, with compensation to the owners, for until they raised
+treasonable hands against the life of the nation he always maintained
+that the property of the slaveholders, into which they had come by two
+centuries of descent, without fault on their part, ought not to be taken
+away from them without just compensation. He used to say that, one way
+or another, he had voted forty-two times for the Wilmot Proviso, which
+Mr. Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved as an addition to every bill which
+affected United States territory, "that neither slavery nor involuntary
+servitude shall ever exist in any part of the said territory," and it is
+evident that his condemnation of the system, on moral grounds as a crime
+against the human race, and on political grounds as a cancer that was
+sapping the vitals of the nation, and must master its whole being or be
+itself extirpated, grew steadily upon him until it culminated in his
+great speeches in the Illinois debate.
+
+By the mere election of Lincoln to the Presidency, the further extension
+of slavery into the Territories was rendered forever impossible--Vox
+populi, vox Dei. Revolutions never go backward, and when founded on a
+great moral sentiment stirring the heart of an indignant people their
+edicts are irresistible and final. Had the slave power acquiesced in
+that election, had the Southern States remained under the Constitution
+and within the Union, and relied upon their constitutional and legal
+rights, their favorite institution, immoral as it was, blighting and
+fatal as it was, might have endured for another century. The great party
+that had elected him, unalterably determined against its extension, was
+nevertheless pledged not to interfere with its continuance in the States
+where it already existed. Of course, when new regions were forever
+closed against it, from its very nature it must have begun to shrink and
+to dwindle; and probably gradual and compensated emancipation, which
+appealed very strongly to the new President's sense of justice and
+expediency, would, in the progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas
+of the founders of the Republic, have found a safe outlet for both
+masters and slaves. But whom the gods wish to destroy they first make
+mad, and when seven States, afterwards increased to eleven, openly
+seceded from the Union, when they declared and began the war upon the
+nation, and challenged its mighty power to the desperate and protracted
+struggle for its life, and for the maintenance of its authority as a
+nation over its territory, they gave to Lincoln and to freedom the
+sublime opportunity of history.
+
+In his first inaugural address, when as yet not a drop of precious blood
+had been shed, while he held out to them the olive branch in one hand, in
+the other he presented the guarantees of the Constitution, and after
+reciting the emphatic resolution of the convention that nominated him,
+that the maintenance inviolate of the "rights of the States, and
+especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic
+institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to
+that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our
+political fabric depend," he reiterated this sentiment, and declared,
+with no mental reservation, "that all the protection which, consistently
+with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully
+given to all the States when lawfully demanded for whatever cause as
+cheerfully to one section as to another."
+
+When, however, these magnanimous overtures for peace and reunion were
+rejected; when the seceding States defied the Constitution and every
+clause and principle of it; when they persisted in staying out of the
+Union from which they had seceded, and proceeded to carve out of its
+territory a new and hostile empire based on slavery; when they flew at
+the throat of the nation and plunged it into the bloodiest war of the
+nineteenth century the tables were turned, and the belief gradually came
+to the mind of the President that if the Rebellion was not soon subdued
+by force of arms, if the war must be fought out to the bitter end, then
+to reach that end the salvation of the nation itself might require the
+destruction of slavery wherever it existed; that if the war was to
+continue on one side for Disunion, for no other purpose than to preserve
+slavery, it must continue on the other side for the Union, to destroy
+slavery.
+
+As he said, "Events control me; I cannot control events," and as the
+dreadful war progressed and became more deadly and dangerous, the
+unalterable conviction was forced upon him that, in order that the
+frightful sacrifice of life and treasure on both sides might not be all
+in vain, it had become his duty as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, as a
+necessary war measure, to strike a blow at the Rebellion which, all
+others failing, would inevitably lead to its annihilation, by
+annihilating the very thing for which it was contending. His own words
+are the best:
+
+"I understood that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my
+ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving by every indispensable
+means that government--that nation--of which that Constitution was the
+organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the
+Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often
+a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given
+to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might
+become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the
+Constitution through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I
+assumed this ground and now avow it. I could not feel that to the best
+of my ability I had ever tried to preserve the Constitution if to save
+slavery or any minor matter I should permit the wreck of government,
+country, and Constitution all together."
+
+And so, at last, when in his judgment the indispensable necessity had
+come, he struck the fatal blow, and signed the proclamation which has
+made his name immortal. By it, the President, as Commander-in-Chief in
+time of actual armed rebellion, and as a fit and necessary war measure
+for suppressing the rebellion, proclaimed all persons held as slaves in
+the States and parts of States then in rebellion to be thenceforward
+free, and declared that the executive, with the army and navy, would
+recognize and maintain their freedom.
+
+In the other great steps of the government, which led to the triumphant
+prosecution of the war, he necessarily shared the responsibility and the
+credit with the great statesmen who stayed up his hands in his cabinet,
+with Seward, Chase and Stanton, and the rest,--and with his generals and
+admirals, his soldiers and sailors, but this great act was absolutely his
+own. The conception and execution were exclusively his. He laid it
+before his cabinet as a measure on which his mind was made up and could
+not be changed, asking them only for suggestions as to details. He chose
+the time and the circumstances under which the Emancipation should be
+proclaimed and when it should take effect.
+
+It came not an hour too soon; but public opinion in the North would not
+have sustained it earlier. In the first eighteen months of the war its
+ravages had extended from the Atlantic to beyond the Mississippi. Many
+victories in the West had been balanced and paralyzed by inaction and
+disasters in Virginia, only partially redeemed by the bloody and
+indecisive battle of Antietam; a reaction had set in from the general
+enthusiasm which had swept the Northern States after the assault upon
+Sumter. It could not truly be said that they had lost heart, but faction
+was raising its head. Heard through the land like the blast of a bugle,
+the proclamation rallied the patriotism of the country to fresh
+sacrifices and renewed ardor. It was a step that could not be revoked.
+It relieved the conscience of the nation from an incubus that had
+oppressed it from its birth. The United States were rescued from the
+false predicament in which they had been from the beginning, and the
+great popular heart leaped with new enthusiasm for "Liberty and Union,
+henceforth and forever, one and inseparable." It brought not only moral
+but material support to the cause of the government, for within two years
+120,000 colored troops were enlisted in the military service and
+following the national flag, supported by all the loyalty of the North,
+and led by its choicest spirits. One mother said, when her son was
+offered the command of the first colored regiment, "If he accepts it I
+shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot." He was shot
+heading a gallant charge of his regiment.... The Confederates replied to
+a request of his friends for his body that they had "buried him under a
+layer of his niggers...;" but that mother has lived to enjoy thirty-six
+years of his glory, and Boston has erected its noblest monument to his
+memory.
+
+The effect of the proclamation upon the actual progress of the war was
+not immediate, but wherever the Federal armies advanced they carried
+freedom with them, and when the summer came round the new spirit and
+force which had animated the heart of the government and people were
+manifest. In the first week of July the decisive battle of Gettysburg
+turned the tide of war, and the fall of Vicksburg made the great river
+free from its source to the Gulf.
+
+On foreign nations the influence of the proclamation and of these new
+victories was of great importance. In those days, when there was no
+cable, it was not easy for foreign observers to appreciate what was
+really going on; they could not see clearly the true state of affairs, as
+in the last year of the nineteenth century we have been able, by our new
+electric vision, to watch every event at the antipodes and observe its
+effect. The Rebel emissaries, sent over to solicit intervention, spared
+no pains to impress upon the minds of public and private men and upon the
+press their own views of the character of the contest. The prospects of
+the Confederacy were always better abroad than at home. The stock
+markets of the world gambled upon its chances, and its bonds at one time
+were high in favor.
+
+Such ideas as these were seriously held: that the North was fighting for
+empire and the South for independence; that the Southern States, instead
+of being the grossest oligarchies, essentially despotisms, founded on the
+right of one man to appropriate the fruit of other men's toil and to
+exclude them from equal rights, were real republics, feebler to be sure
+than their Northern rivals, but representing the same idea of freedom,
+and that the mighty strength of the nation was being put forth to crush
+them; that Jefferson Davis and the Southern leaders had created a nation;
+that the republican experiment had failed and the Union had ceased to
+exist. But the crowning argument to foreign minds was that it was an
+utter impossibility for the government to win in the contest; that the
+success of the Southern States, so far as separation was concerned, was
+as certain as any event yet future and contingent could be; that the
+subjugation of the South by the North, even if it could be accomplished,
+would prove a calamity to the United States and the world, and especially
+calamitous to the negro race; and that such a victory would necessarily
+leave the people of the South for many generations cherishing deadly
+hostility against the government and the North, and plotting always to
+recover their independence.
+
+When Lincoln issued his proclamation he knew that all these ideas were
+founded in error; that the national resources were inexhaustible; that
+the government could and would win, and that if slavery were once finally
+disposed of, the only cause of difference being out of the way, the North
+and South would come together again, and by and by be as good friends as
+ever. In many quarters abroad the proclamation was welcomed with
+enthusiasm by the friends of America; but I think the demonstrations in
+its favor that brought more gladness to Lincoln's heart than any other
+were the meetings held in the manufacturing centres, by the very
+operatives upon whom the war bore the hardest, expressing the most
+enthusiastic sympathy with the proclamation, while they bore with heroic
+fortitude the grievous privations which the war entailed upon them. Mr.
+Lincoln's expectation when he announced to the world that all slaves in
+all States then in rebellion were set free must have been that the avowed
+position of his government, that the continuance of the war now meant the
+annihilation of slavery, would make intervention impossible for any
+foreign nation whose people were lovers of liberty--and so the result
+proved.
+
+The growth and development of Lincoln's mental power and moral force, of
+his intense and magnetic personality, after the vast responsibilities of
+government were thrown upon him at the age of fifty-two, furnish a rare
+and striking illustration of the marvellous capacity and adaptability of
+the human intellect--of the sound mind in the sound body. He came to the
+discharge of the great duties of the Presidency with absolutely no
+experience in the administration of government, or of the vastly varied
+and complicated questions of foreign and domestic policy which
+immediately arose, and continued to press upon him during the rest of his
+life; but he mastered each as it came, apparently with the facility of a
+trained and experienced ruler. As Clarendon said of Cromwell, "His parts
+seemed to be raised by the demands of great station." His life through
+it all was one of intense labor, anxiety, and distress, without one hour
+of peaceful repose from first to last. But he rose to every occasion.
+He led public opinion, but did not march so far in advance of it as to
+fail of its effective support in every great emergency. He knew the
+heart and thought of the people, as no man not in constant and absolute
+sympathy with them could have known it, and so holding their confidence,
+he triumphed through and with them. Not only was there this steady
+growth of intellect, but the infinite delicacy of his nature and its
+capacity for refinement developed also, as exhibited in the purity and
+perfection of his language and style of speech. The rough backwoodsman,
+who had never seen the inside of a university, became in the end, by
+self-training and the exercise of his own powers of mind, heart, and
+soul, a master of style, and some of his utterances will rank with the
+best, the most perfectly adapted to the occasion which produced them.
+
+Have you time to listen to his two-minutes speech at Gettysburg, at the
+dedication of the Soldiers' Cemetery? His whole soul was in it:
+
+"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
+continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
+proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
+great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived
+and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of
+that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final
+resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
+live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But
+in a larger sense we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot
+hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here
+have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The
+world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but it can
+never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be
+dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
+thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
+the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take
+increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
+measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
+not have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new birth
+of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, and for the
+people shall not perish from the earth."
+
+He lived to see his work indorsed by an overwhelming majority of his
+countrymen. In his second inaugural address, pronounced just forty days
+before his death, there is a single passage which well displays his
+indomitable will and at the same time his deep religious feeling, his
+sublime charity to the enemies of his country, and his broad and catholic
+humanity:
+
+"If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which
+in the Providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued
+through the appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to
+both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom
+the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those
+divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to
+Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge
+of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until
+all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of
+unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
+the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said three
+thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord
+are true and righteous altogether.'
+
+"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
+right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the
+work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall
+have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan to do all which
+may achieve, and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and
+with all nations."
+
+His prayer was answered. The forty days of life that remained to him
+were crowned with great historic events. He lived to see his
+Proclamation of Emancipation embodied in an amendment of the
+Constitution, adopted by Congress, and submitted to the States for
+ratification. The mighty scourge of war did speedily pass away, for it
+was given him to witness the surrender of the Rebel army and the fall of
+their capital, and the starry flag that he loved waving in triumph over
+the national soil. When he died by the madman's hand in the supreme hour
+of victory, the vanquished lost their best friend, and the human race one
+of its noblest examples; and all the friends of freedom and justice, in
+whose cause he lived and died, joined hands as mourners at his grave.
+
+
+
+
+THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+1832-1843
+
+
+
+
+1832
+ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF SANGAMON COUNTY.
+
+March 9, 1832.
+
+FELLOW CITIZENS:--Having become a candidate for the honorable office of
+one of your Representatives in the next General Assembly of this State,
+in according with an established custom and the principles of true
+Republicanism it becomes my duty to make known to you, the people whom I
+propose to represent, my sentiments with regard to local affairs.
+
+Time and experience have verified to a demonstration the public utility
+of internal improvements. That the poorest and most thinly populated
+countries would be greatly benefited by the opening of good roads, and in
+the clearing of navigable streams within their limits, is what no person
+will deny. Yet it is folly to undertake works of this or any other
+without first knowing that we are able to finish them--as half-finished
+work generally proves to be labor lost. There cannot justly be any
+objection to having railroads and canals, any more than to other good
+things, provided they cost nothing. The only objection is to paying for
+them; and the objection arises from the want of ability to pay.
+
+With respect to the County of Sangamon, some....
+
+Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through
+our country may be, however high our imaginations may be heated at
+thoughts of it,--there is always a heart-appalling shock accompanying the
+amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing
+anticipations. The probable cost of this contemplated railroad is
+estimated at $290,000; the bare statement of which, in my opinion, is
+sufficient to justify the belief that the improvement of the Sangamon
+River is an object much better suited to our infant resources.......
+
+What the cost of this work would be, I am unable to say. It is probable,
+however, that it would not be greater than is common to streams of the
+same length. Finally, I believe the improvement of the Sangamon River to
+be vastly important and highly desirable to the people of the county;
+and, if elected, any measure in the Legislature having this for its
+object, which may appear judicious, will meet my approbation and receive
+my support.
+
+It appears that the practice of loaning money at exorbitant rates of
+interest has already been opened as a field for discussion; so I suppose
+I may enter upon it without claiming the honor or risking the danger
+which may await its first explorer. It seems as though we are never to
+have an end to this baneful and corroding system, acting almost as
+prejudicially to the general interests of the community as a direct tax
+of several thousand dollars annually laid on each county for the benefit
+of a few individuals only, unless there be a law made fixing the limits
+of usury. A law for this purpose, I am of opinion, may be made without
+materially injuring any class of people. In cases of extreme necessity,
+there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other
+cases it would have its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a
+law on this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be
+such that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be justified
+in cases of greatest necessity.
+
+Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or
+system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important
+subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may
+receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the
+histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate
+the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital
+importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages
+and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the
+Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for
+themselves.
+
+For my part, I desire to see the time when education--and by its means,
+morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry--shall become much more
+general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power
+to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might
+have a tendency to accelerate that happy period.
+
+With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to be
+necessary. Many respectable men have suggested that our estray laws, the
+law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some others,
+are deficient in their present form, and require alterations. But,
+considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were
+wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they
+were first attacked by others; in which case I should feel it both a
+privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend
+most to the advancement of justice.
+
+But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great degree of
+modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already
+been more presuming than becomes me. However, upon the subjects of which
+I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in
+regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is
+better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon
+as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce
+them.
+
+Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or
+not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being
+truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their
+esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be
+developed. I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have
+ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or
+popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown
+exclusively upon the independent voters of the county; and, if elected,
+they will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall be unremitting
+in my labors to compensate. But, if the good people in their wisdom
+shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with
+disappointments to be very much chagrined.
+
+Your friend and fellow-citizen, A. LINCOLN.
+
+New Salem, March 9, 1832.
+
+
+
+
+1833
+TO E. C. BLANKENSHIP.
+
+NEW SALEM, Aug. 10, 1833
+E. C. BLANKENSHIP.
+
+Dear Sir:--In regard to the time David Rankin served the enclosed
+discharge shows correctly--as well as I can recollect--having no writing
+to refer. The transfer of Rankin from my company occurred as follows:
+Rankin having lost his horse at Dixon's ferry and having acquaintance in
+one of the foot companies who were going down the river was desirous to
+go with them, and one Galishen being an acquaintance of mine and
+belonging to the company in which Rankin wished to go wished to leave it
+and join mine, this being the case it was agreed that they should
+exchange places and answer to each other's names--as it was expected we
+all would be discharged in very few days. As to a blanket--I have no
+knowledge of Rankin ever getting any. The above embraces all the facts
+now in my recollection which are pertinent to the case.
+
+I shall take pleasure in giving any further information in my power
+should you call on me.
+
+Your friend, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR POSTAGE RECEIPT
+
+TO Mr. SPEARS.
+
+Mr. SPEARS:
+
+At your request I send you a receipt for the postage on your paper. 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.
+
+Respectfully, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+1836
+ANNOUNCEMENT OF POLITICAL VIEWS.
+
+New Salem, June 13, 1836.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE "JOURNAL"--In your paper of last Saturday I see a
+communication, over the signature of "Many Voters," in which the
+candidates who are announced in the Journal are called upon to "show
+their hands." Agreed. Here's mine.
+
+I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in
+bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the
+right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding
+females).
+
+If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my
+constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me.
+
+While acting as their representative, I shall be governed by their will
+on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will
+is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will
+best advance their interests. Whether elected or not, I go for
+distributing the proceeds of the sales of the public lands to the several
+States, to enable our State, in common with others, to dig canals and
+construct railroads without borrowing money and paying the interest on
+it. If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L.
+White for President.
+
+Very respectfully, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+RESPONSE TO POLITICAL SMEAR
+
+TO ROBERT ALLEN
+
+New Salem, June 21, 1836
+
+DEAR COLONEL:--I am told that during my absence last week you passed
+through this place, and stated publicly that you were in possession of a
+fact or facts which, if known to the public, would entirely destroy the
+prospects of N. W. Edwards and myself at the ensuing election; but
+that, through favor to us, you should forbear to divulge them. No one
+has needed favors more than I, and, generally, few have been less
+unwilling to accept them; but in this case favor to me would be injustice
+to the public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it.
+That I once had the confidence of the people of Sangamon, is sufficiently
+evident; and if I have since done anything, either by design or
+misadventure, which if known would subject me to a forfeiture of that
+confidence, he that knows of that thing, and conceals it, is a traitor to
+his country's interest.
+
+I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture of what fact or facts,
+real or supposed, you spoke; but my opinion of your veracity will not
+permit me for a moment to doubt that you at least believed what you said.
+I am flattered with the personal regard you manifested for me; but I do
+hope that, on more mature reflection, you will view the public interest
+as a paramount consideration, and therefore determine to let the worst
+come. I here assure you that the candid statement of facts on your part,
+however low it may sink me, shall never break the tie of personal
+friendship between us. I wish an answer to this, and you are at liberty
+to publish both, if you choose.
+
+Very respectfully, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO MISS MARY OWENS.
+
+VANDALIA, December 13, 1836.
+
+MARY:--I have been sick ever since my arrival, or I should have written
+sooner. It is but little difference, however, as I have very little even
+yet to write. And more, the longer I can avoid the mortification of
+looking in the post-office for your letter and not finding it, the
+better. You see I am mad about that old letter yet. I don't like very
+well to risk you again. I'll try you once more, anyhow.
+
+The new State House is not yet finished, and consequently the Legislature
+is doing little or nothing. The governor delivered an inflammatory
+political message, and it is expected there will be some sparring between
+the parties about it as soon as the two Houses get to business. Taylor
+delivered up his petition for the new county to one of our members this
+morning. I am told he despairs of its success, on account of all the
+members from Morgan County opposing it. There are names enough on the
+petition, I think, to justify the members from our county in going for
+it; but if the members from Morgan oppose it, which they say they will,
+the chance will be bad.
+
+Our chance to take the seat of government to Springfield is better than I
+expected. An internal-improvement convention was held there since we
+met, which recommended a loan of several millions of dollars, on the
+faith of the State, to construct railroads. Some of the Legislature are
+for it, and some against it; which has the majority I cannot tell. There
+is great strife and struggling for the office of the United States
+Senator here at this time. It is probable we shall ease their pains in a
+few days. The opposition men have no candidate of their own, and
+consequently they will smile as complacently at the angry snarl of the
+contending Van Buren candidates and their respective friends as the
+Christian does at Satan's rage. You recollect that I mentioned at the
+outset of this letter that I had been unwell. That is the fact, though I
+believe I am about well now; but that, with other things I cannot account
+for, have conspired, and have gotten my spirits so low that I feel that I
+would rather be any place in the world than here. I really cannot endure
+the thought of staying here ten weeks. Write back as soon as you get
+this, and, if possible, say something that will please me, for really I
+have not been pleased since I left you. This letter is so dry and stupid
+that I am ashamed to send it, but with my present feelings I cannot do
+any better.
+
+Give my best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Able and family.
+
+Your friend, LINCOLN
+
+
+
+
+1837
+SPEECH IN ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.
+
+January [?], 1837
+
+Mr. CHAIRMAN:--Lest I should fall into the too common error of being
+mistaken in regard to which side I design to be upon, I shall make it my
+first care to remove all doubt on that point, by declaring that I am
+opposed to the resolution under consideration, in toto. Before I proceed
+to the body of the subject, I will further remark, that it is not without
+a considerable degree of apprehension that I venture to cross the track
+of the gentleman from Coles [Mr. Linder]. Indeed, I do not believe I
+could muster a sufficiency of courage to come in contact with that
+gentleman, were it not for the fact that he, some days since, most
+graciously condescended to assure us that he would never be found wasting
+ammunition on small game. On the same fortunate occasion, he further
+gave us to understand, that he regarded himself as being decidedly the
+superior of our common friend from Randolph [Mr. Shields]; and feeling,
+as I really do, that I, to say the most of myself, am nothing more than
+the peer of our friend from Randolph, I shall regard the gentleman from
+Coles as decidedly my superior also, and consequently, in the course of
+what I shall have to say, whenever I shall have occasion to allude to
+that gentleman, I shall endeavor to adopt that kind of court language
+which I understand to be due to decided superiority. In one faculty, at
+least, there can be no dispute of the gentleman's superiority over me and
+most other men, and that is, the faculty of entangling a subject, so that
+neither himself, or any other man, can find head or tail to it. Here he
+has introduced a resolution embracing ninety-nine printed lines across
+common writing paper, and yet more than one half of his opening speech
+has been made upon subjects about which there is not one word said in his
+resolution.
+
+Though his resolution embraces nothing in regard to the constitutionality
+of the Bank, much of what he has said has been with a view to make the
+impression that it was unconstitutional in its inception. Now, although
+I am satisfied that an ample field may be found within the pale of the
+resolution, at least for small game, yet, as the gentleman has traveled
+out of it, I feel that I may, with all due humility, venture to follow
+him. The gentleman has discovered that some gentleman at Washington city
+has been upon the very eve of deciding our Bank unconstitutional, and
+that he would probably have completed his very authentic decision, had
+not some one of the Bank officers placed his hand upon his mouth, and
+begged him to withhold it. The fact that the individuals composing our
+Supreme Court have, in an official capacity, decided in favor of the
+constitutionality of the Bank, would, in my mind, seem a sufficient
+answer to this. It is a fact known to all, that the members of the
+Supreme Court, together with the Governor, form a Council of Revision,
+and that this Council approved this Bank charter. I ask, then, if the
+extra-judicial decision not quite but almost made by the gentleman at
+Washington, before whom, by the way, the question of the
+constitutionality of our Bank never has, nor never can come--is to be
+taken as paramount to a decision officially made by that tribunal, by
+which, and which alone, the constitutionality of the Bank can ever be
+settled? But, aside from this view of the subject, I would ask, if the
+committee which this resolution proposes to appoint are to examine into
+the Constitutionality of the Bank? Are they to be clothed with power to
+send for persons and papers, for this object? And after they have found
+the bank to be unconstitutional, and decided it so, how are they to
+enforce their decision? What will their decision amount to? They cannot
+compel the Bank to cease operations, or to change the course of its
+operations. What good, then, can their labors result in? Certainly none.
+
+The gentleman asks, if we, without an examination, shall, by giving the
+State deposits to the Bank, and by taking the stock reserved for the
+State, legalize its former misconduct. Now I do not pretend to possess
+sufficient legal knowledge to decide whether a legislative enactment
+proposing to, and accepting from, the Bank, certain terms, would have the
+effect to legalize or wipe out its former errors, or not; but I can
+assure the gentleman, if such should be the effect, he has already got
+behind the settlement of accounts; for it is well known to all, that the
+Legislature, at its last session, passed a supplemental Bank charter,
+which the Bank has since accepted, and which, according to his doctrine,
+has legalized all the alleged violations of its original charter in the
+distribution of its stock.
+
+I now proceed to the resolution. By examination it will be found that
+the first thirty-three lines, being precisely one third of the whole,
+relate exclusively to the distribution of the stock by the commissioners
+appointed by the State. Now, Sir, it is clear that no question can arise
+on this portion of the resolution, except a question between capitalists
+in regard to the ownership of stock. Some gentlemen have their stock in
+their hands, while others, who have more money than they know what to do
+with, want it; and this, and this alone, is the question, to settle which
+we are called on to squander thousands of the people's money. What
+interest, let me ask, have the people in the settlement of this question?
+What difference is it to them whether the stock is owned by Judge Smith
+or Sam Wiggins? If any gentleman be entitled to stock in the Bank, which
+he is kept out of possession of by others, let him assert his right in
+the Supreme Court, and let him or his antagonist, whichever may be found
+in the wrong, pay the costs of suit. It is an old maxim, and a very
+sound one, that he that dances should always pay the fiddler. Now, Sir,
+in the present case, if any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to them,
+choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people's money
+being used to pay the fiddler. No one can doubt that the examination
+proposed by this resolution must cost the State some ten or twelve
+thousand dollars; and all this to settle a question in which the people
+have no interest, and about which they care nothing. These capitalists
+generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people, and now
+that they have got into a quarrel with themselves we are called upon to
+appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.
+
+I leave this part of the resolution and proceed to the remainder. It will
+be found that no charge in the remaining part of the resolution, if true,
+amounts to the violation of the Bank charter, except one, which I will
+notice in due time. It might seem quite sufficient to say no more upon
+any of these charges or insinuations than enough to show they are not
+violations of the charter; yet, as they are ingeniously framed and
+handled, with a view to deceive and mislead, I will notice in their order
+all the most prominent of them. The first of these is in relation to a
+connection between our Bank and several banking institutions in other
+States. Admitting this connection to exist, I should like to see the
+gentleman from Coles, or any other gentleman, undertake to show that
+there is any harm in it. What can there be in such a connection, that
+the people of Illinois are willing to pay their money to get a peep into?
+By a reference to the tenth section of the Bank charter, any gentleman
+can see that the framers of the act contemplated the holding of stock in
+the institutions of other corporations. Why, then, is it, when neither
+law nor justice forbids it, that we are asked to spend our time and money
+in inquiring into its truth?
+
+The next charge, in the order of time, is, that some officer, director,
+clerk or servant of the Bank, has been required to take an oath of
+secrecy in relation to the affairs of said Bank. Now, I do not know
+whether this be true or false--neither do I believe any honest man cares.
+I know that the seventh section of the charter expressly guarantees to
+the Bank the right of making, under certain restrictions, such by-laws as
+it may think fit; and I further know that the requiring an oath of
+secrecy would not transcend those restrictions. What, then, if the Bank
+has chosen to exercise this right? Whom can it injure? Does not every
+merchant have his secret mark? and who is ever silly enough to complain
+of it? I presume if the Bank does require any such oath of secrecy, it
+is done through a motive of delicacy to those individuals who deal with
+it. Why, Sir, not many days since, one gentleman upon this floor, who,
+by the way, I have no doubt is now ready to join this hue and cry against
+the Bank, indulged in a philippic against one of the Bank officials,
+because, as he said, he had divulged a secret.
+
+Immediately following this last charge, there are several insinuations in
+the resolution, which are too silly to require any sort of notice, were
+it not for the fact that they conclude by saying, "to the great injury of
+the people at large." In answer to this I would say that it is strange
+enough, that the people are suffering these "great injuries," and yet are
+not sensible of it! Singular indeed that the people should be writhing
+under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found to
+raise the voice of complaint. If the Bank be inflicting injury upon the
+people, why is it that not a single petition is presented to this body on
+the subject? If the Bank really be a grievance, why is it that no one of
+the real people is found to ask redress of it? The truth is, no such
+oppression exists. If it did, our people would groan with memorials and
+petitions, and we would not be permitted to rest day or night, till we
+had put it down. The people know their rights, and they are never slow
+to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded. Let them call for an
+investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the call. But
+they have made no such call. I make the assertion boldly, and without
+fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does
+not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank. It has doubled
+the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with
+a sound circulating medium, and they are all well pleased with its
+operations. No, Sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the
+alarm (which, by the way, is a false one.) It is he, who, by these
+unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and
+direct. It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of
+the people's public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to make
+valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry. Mr. Chairman,
+this work is exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have
+interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the
+most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from
+honest men. I say this with the greater freedom, because, being a
+politician myself, none can regard it as personal.
+
+Again, it is charged, or rather insinuated, that officers of the Bank
+have loaned money at usurious rates of interest. Suppose this to be
+true, are we to send a committee of this House to inquire into it?
+Suppose the committee should find it true, can they redress the injured
+individuals? Assuredly not. If any individual had been injured in this
+way, is there not an ample remedy to be found in the laws of the land?
+Does the gentleman from Coles know that there is a statute standing in
+full force making it highly penal for an individual to loan money at a
+higher rate of interest than twelve per cent? If he does not he is too
+ignorant to be placed at the head of the committee which his resolution
+purposes and if he does, his neglect to mention it shows him to be too
+uncandid to merit the respect or confidence of any one.
+
+But besides all this, if the Bank were struck from existence, could not
+the owners of the capital still loan it usuriously, as well as now?
+whatever the Bank, or its officers, may have done, I know that usurious
+transactions were much more frequent and enormous before the commencement
+of its operations than they have ever been since.
+
+The next insinuation is, that the Bank has refused specie payments.
+This, if true is a violation of the charter. But there is not the least
+probability of its truth; because, if such had been the fact, the
+individual to whom payment was refused would have had an interest in
+making it public, by suing for the damages to which the charter entitles
+him. Yet no such thing has been done; and the strong presumption is,
+that the insinuation is false and groundless.
+
+From this to the end of the resolution, there is nothing that merits
+attention--I therefore drop the particular examination of it.
+
+By a general view of the resolution, it will be seen that a principal
+object of the committee is to examine into, and ferret out, a mass of
+corruption supposed to have been committed by the commissioners who
+apportioned the stock of the Bank. I believe it is universally
+understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly unless
+they have a motive to do otherwise. If this be true, we can only suppose
+that the commissioners acted corruptly by also supposing that they were
+bribed to do so. Taking this view of the subject, I would ask if the Bank
+is likely to find it more difficult to bribe the committee of seven,
+which, we are about to appoint, than it may have found it to bribe the
+commissioners?
+
+(Here Mr. Linder called to order. The Chair decided that Mr. Lincoln was
+not out of order. Mr. Linder appealed to the House, but, before the
+question was put, withdrew his appeal, saying he preferred to let the
+gentleman go on; he thought he would break his own neck. Mr. Lincoln
+proceeded:)
+
+Another gracious condescension! I acknowledge it with gratitude. I know
+I was not out of order; and I know every sensible man in the House knows
+it. I was not saying that the gentleman from Coles could be bribed, nor,
+on the other hand, will I say he could not. In that particular I leave
+him where I found him. I was only endeavoring to show that there was at
+least as great a probability of any seven members that could be selected
+from this House being bribed to act corruptly, as there was that the
+twenty-four commissioners had been so bribed. By a reference to the
+ninth section of the Bank charter, it will be seen that those
+commissioners were John Tilson, Robert K. McLaughlin, Daniel Warm, A.G.
+S. Wight, John C. Riley, W. H. Davidson, Edward M. Wilson, Edward L.
+Pierson, Robert R. Green, Ezra Baker, Aquilla Wren, John Taylor, Samuel
+C. Christy, Edmund Roberts, Benjamin Godfrey, Thomas Mather, A. M.
+Jenkins, W. Linn, W. S. Gilman, Charles Prentice, Richard I. Hamilton,
+A.H. Buckner, W. F. Thornton, and Edmund D. Taylor.
+
+These are twenty-four of the most respectable men in the State. Probably
+no twenty-four men could be selected in the State with whom the people
+are better acquainted, or in whose honor and integrity they would more
+readily place confidence. And I now repeat, that there is less
+probability that those men have been bribed and corrupted, than that any
+seven men, or rather any six men, that could be selected from the members
+of this House, might be so bribed and corrupted, even though they were
+headed and led on by "decided superiority" himself.
+
+In all seriousness, I ask every reasonable man, if an issue be joined by
+these twenty-four commissioners, on the one part, and any other seven
+men, on the other part, and the whole depend upon the honor and integrity
+of the contending parties, to which party would the greatest degree of
+credit be due? Again: Another consideration is, that we have no right to
+make the examination. What I shall say upon this head I design
+exclusively for the law-loving and law-abiding part of the House. To
+those who claim omnipotence for the Legislature, and who in the plenitude
+of their assumed powers are disposed to disregard the Constitution, law,
+good faith, moral right, and everything else, I have not a word to say.
+But to the law-abiding part I say, examine the Bank charter, go examine
+the Constitution, go examine the acts that the General Assembly of this
+State has passed, and you will find just as much authority given in each
+and every of them to compel the Bank to bring its coffers to this hall
+and to pour their contents upon this floor, as to compel it to submit to
+this examination which this resolution proposes. Why, Sir, the gentleman
+from Coles, the mover of this resolution, very lately denied on this
+floor that the Legislature had any right to repeal or otherwise meddle
+with its own acts, when those acts were made in the nature of contracts,
+and had been accepted and acted on by other parties. Now I ask if this
+resolution does not propose, for this House alone, to do what he, but the
+other day, denied the right of the whole Legislature to do? He must
+either abandon the position he then took, or he must now vote against his
+own resolution. It is no difference to me, and I presume but little to
+any one else, which he does.
+
+I am by no means the special advocate of the Bank. I have long thought
+that it would be well for it to report its condition to the General
+Assembly, and that cases might occur, when it might be proper to make an
+examination of its affairs by a committee. Accordingly, during the last
+session, while a bill supplemental to the Bank charter was pending before
+the House, I offered an amendment to the same, in these words: "The said
+corporation shall, at the next session of the General Assembly, and at
+each subsequent General Session, during the existence of its charter,
+report to the same the amount of debts due from said corporation; the
+amount of debts due to the same; the amount of specie in its vaults, and
+an account of all lands then owned by the same, and the amount for which
+such lands have been taken; and moreover, if said corporation shall at
+any time neglect or refuse to submit its books, papers, and all and
+everything necessary for a full and fair examination of its affairs, to
+any person or persons appointed by the General Assembly, for the purpose
+of making such examination, the said corporation shall forfeit its
+charter."
+
+This amendment was negatived by a vote of 34 to 15. Eleven of the 34 who
+voted against it are now members of this House; and though it would be
+out of order to call their names, I hope they will all recollect
+themselves, and not vote for this examination to be made without
+authority, inasmuch as they refused to receive the authority when it was
+in their power to do so.
+
+I have said that cases might occur, when an examination might be proper;
+but I do not believe any such case has now occurred; and if it has, I
+should still be opposed to making an examination without legal authority.
+I am opposed to encouraging that lawless and mobocratic spirit, whether
+in relation to the Bank or anything else, which is already abroad in the
+land and is spreading with rapid and fearful impetuosity, to the ultimate
+overthrow of every institution, of every moral principle, in which
+persons and property have hitherto found security.
+
+But supposing we had the authority, I would ask what good can result from
+the examination? Can we declare the Bank unconstitutional, and compel it
+to desist from the abuses of its power, provided we find such abuses to
+exist? Can we repair the injuries which it may have done to individuals?
+Most certainly we can do none of these things. Why then shall we spend
+the public money in such employment? Oh, say the examiners, we can
+injure the credit of the Bank, if nothing else, Please tell me,
+gentlemen, who will suffer most by that? You cannot injure, to any
+extent, the stockholders. They are men of wealth--of large capital; and
+consequently, beyond the power of malice. But by injuring the credit of
+the Bank, you will depreciate the value of its paper in the hands of the
+honest and unsuspecting farmer and mechanic, and that is all you can do.
+But suppose you could effect your whole purpose; suppose you could wipe
+the Bank from existence, which is the grand ultimatum of the project,
+what would be the consequence? why, Sir, we should spend several thousand
+dollars of the public treasure in the operation, annihilate the currency
+of the State, render valueless in the hands of our people that reward of
+their former labors, and finally be once more under the comfortable
+obligation of paying the Wiggins loan, principal and interest.
+
+
+
+
+OPPOSITION TO MOB-RULE
+
+ADDRESS BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN'S LYCEUM OF SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.
+
+January 27, 1837.
+
+As a subject for the remarks of the evening, "The Perpetuation of our
+Political Institutions" is selected.
+
+In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American
+people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of
+the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the
+fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of
+soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government
+of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the
+ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of
+former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found
+ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled
+not in the acquirement or establishment of them; they are a legacy
+bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and
+departed, race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they
+performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves us, of this
+goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys a political
+edifice of liberty and equal rights; it is ours only to transmit
+these--the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter
+undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation--to the latest
+generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task gratitude
+to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our
+species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
+
+How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach
+of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect
+some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a
+blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with
+all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest,
+with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from
+the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand
+years.
+
+At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer:
+If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from
+abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and
+finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die
+by suicide.
+
+I hope I am over-wary; but if I am not, there is even now something of
+ill omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which
+pervades the country--the growing disposition to substitute the wild and
+furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse
+than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. This
+disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists
+in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation
+of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts of outrages
+committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times. They have pervaded
+the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to
+the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they
+are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slave
+holding or the non-slave holding States. Alike they spring up among the
+pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving
+citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be,
+it is common to the whole country.
+
+It would be tedious as well as useless to recount the horrors of all of
+them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi and at St. Louis are
+perhaps the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the
+Mississippi case they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers--a
+set of men certainly not following for a livelihood a very useful or very
+honest occupation, but one which, so far from being forbidden by the
+laws, was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature passed but a
+single year before. Next, negroes suspected of conspiring to raise an
+insurrection were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State; then,
+white men supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers
+from neighboring States, going thither on business, were in many
+instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of
+hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and
+from these to strangers, till dead men were seen literally dangling from
+the boughs of trees upon every roadside, and in numbers almost sufficient
+to rival the native Spanish moss of the country as a drapery of the
+forest.
+
+Turn then to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim
+only was sacrificed there. This story is very short, and is perhaps the
+most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed
+in real life. A mulatto man by the name of McIntosh was seized in the
+street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and
+actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he
+had been a freeman attending to his own business and at peace with the
+world.
+
+Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more
+and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order,
+and the stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract
+anything more than an idle remark.
+
+But you are perhaps ready to ask, "What has this to do with the
+perpetuation of our political institutions?" I answer, It has much to do
+with it. Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a
+small evil, and much of its danger consists in the proneness of our minds
+to regard its direct as its only consequences. Abstractly considered,
+the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg was of but little consequence.
+They constitute a portion of population that is worse than useless in any
+community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is
+never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually
+swept from the stage of existence by the plague or smallpox, honest men
+would perhaps be much profited by the operation. Similar too is the
+correct reasoning in regard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis.
+He had forfeited his life by the perpetration of an outrageous murder
+upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city, and had
+he not died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law in a
+very short time afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it
+was as it could otherwise have been. But the example in either case was
+fearful. When men take it in their heads to-day to hang gamblers or burn
+murderers, they should recollect that in the confusion usually attending
+such transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is
+neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is, and that, acting upon the
+example they set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang or
+burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so: the
+innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law
+in every shape, alike with the guilty fall victims to the ravages of mob
+law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for
+the defense of the persons and property of individuals are trodden down
+and disregarded. But all this, even, is not the full extent of the evil.
+By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going
+unpunished, the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in
+practice; and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment,
+they thus become absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded
+government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension
+of its operations, and pray for nothing so much as its total
+annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love
+tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits,
+who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country,
+seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives
+endangered, their persons injured, and seeing nothing in prospect that
+forebodes a change for the better, become tired of and disgusted with a
+government that offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a
+change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by
+the operation of this mobocratic spirit which all must admit is now
+abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and
+particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken
+down and destroyed--I mean the attachment of the people. Whenever this
+effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of
+population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and
+thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw
+printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious
+persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend on it, this government
+cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will
+become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without
+friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship
+effectual. At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of
+sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the
+opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which for the
+last half century has been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom
+throughout the world.
+
+I know the American people are much attached to their government; I know
+they would suffer much for its sake; I know they would endure evils long
+and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it for
+another,--yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually
+despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons
+and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the
+alienation of their affections from the government is the natural
+consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.
+
+Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected.
+
+The question recurs, How shall we fortify against it? The answer is
+simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to
+his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in
+the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their
+violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support
+of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution
+and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred
+honor. Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on
+the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his
+children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every
+American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be
+taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in
+primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the
+pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of
+justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the
+nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave
+and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice
+unceasingly upon its altars.
+
+While ever a state of feeling such as this shall universally or even very
+generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and
+fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.
+
+When, I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me
+not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may
+not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I
+mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws,
+if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they
+continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously
+observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal
+provisions be made for them with the least possible delay, but till then
+let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.
+
+There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any
+case that may arise, as, for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism,
+one of two positions is necessarily true--that is, the thing is right
+within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all
+good citizens, or it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by
+legal enactments; and in neither case is the interposition of mob law
+either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.
+
+But it may be asked, Why suppose danger to our political institutions?
+Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? And why may we not
+for fifty times as long?
+
+We hope there is no sufficient reason. We hope all danger may be
+overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be
+extremely dangerous. There are now, and will hereafter be, many causes,
+dangerous in their tendency, which have not existed heretofore, and which
+are not too insignificant to merit attention. That our government should
+have been maintained in its original form, from its establishment until
+now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it
+through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through
+that period it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now it is
+understood to be a successful one. Then, all that sought celebrity and
+fame and distinction expected to find them in the success of that
+experiment. Their all was staked upon it; their destiny was inseparably
+linked with it. Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring
+world a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition which had
+hitherto been considered at best no better than problematical--namely,
+the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded they
+were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties,
+and cities, and rivers, and mountains; and to be revered and sung,
+toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves
+and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be
+forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful, and thousands
+have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught;
+and I believe it is true that with the catching end the pleasures of the
+chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already
+appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they too will seek a
+field. It is to deny what the history of the world tells us is true, to
+suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up
+amongst us. And when they do, they will as naturally seek the
+gratification of their ruling passion as others have done before them.
+The question then is, Can that gratification be found in supporting and
+in maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly
+it cannot. Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task
+they should undertake, may ever be found whose ambition would aspire to
+nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a Gubernatorial or a Presidential
+chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the
+eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a
+Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
+It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding
+story to story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of
+others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It
+scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious.
+It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it,
+whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen. Is
+it unreasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest
+genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost
+stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such an one does
+it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the
+government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate
+his designs.
+
+Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as
+willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet, that
+opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of
+building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.
+
+Here then is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such an one as could
+not have well existed heretofore.
+
+Another reason which once was, but which, to the same extent, is now no
+more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the
+powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had
+upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By
+this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature,
+and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength,
+were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive,
+while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of
+revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed
+exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of
+circumstances, the basest principles of our nature were either made to
+lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the
+noblest of causes--that of establishing and maintaining civil and
+religious liberty.
+
+But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the
+circumstances that produced it.
+
+I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever
+will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must
+fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the
+lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted,
+so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will,
+their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they
+cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the
+generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly
+every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The
+consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father,
+a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family--a
+history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in
+the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the
+very scenes related--a history, too, that could be read and understood
+alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.
+But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They
+were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do the
+silent artillery of time has done--the leveling of its walls. They are
+gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane
+has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk,
+despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded,
+to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated
+limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more.
+
+They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have
+crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply
+their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober
+reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future
+be our enemy. Reason cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason--must
+furnish all the materials for our future support and defense. Let those
+materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in
+particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws; and that we
+improved to the last, that we remained free to the last, that we revered
+his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted no hostile
+foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place, shall be that which to
+learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington.
+
+Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its
+basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution,
+"the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
+
+
+
+
+PROTEST IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE ON THE
+SUBJECT OF SLAVERY.
+
+March 3, 1837.
+
+The following protest was presented to the House, which was read and
+ordered to be spread in the journals, to wit:
+
+"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both
+branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned
+hereby protest against the passage of the same.
+
+"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both
+injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition
+doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.
+
+"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under
+the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the
+different States.
+
+"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under
+the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but
+that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the
+people of the District.
+
+"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said
+resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.
+
+"DAN STONE,
+
+"A. LINCOLN,
+
+"Representatives from the County of Sangamon."
+
+
+
+
+TO MISS MARY OWENS.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, May 7, 1837.
+MISS MARY S. OWENS.
+
+FRIEND MARY:--I have commenced two letters to send you before this, both
+of which displeased me before I got half done, and so I tore them up.
+The first I thought was not serious enough, and the second was on the
+other extreme. I shall send this, turn out as it may.
+
+This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business, after all;
+at least it is so to me. I am quite as lonesome here as I ever was
+anywhere in my life. I have been spoken to by but one woman since I have
+been here, and should not have been by her if she could have avoided it.
+I 've never been to church yet, and probably shall not be soon. I stay
+away because I am conscious I should not know how to behave myself.
+
+I am often thinking of what we said about your coming to live at
+Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There is a great
+deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom
+to see without sharing it. You would have to be poor, without the means
+of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently?
+Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is
+my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented; and
+there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to
+fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the
+way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What you have
+said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have misunderstood
+you. If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise, I much wish you
+would think seriously before you decide. What I have said I will most
+positively abide by, provided you wish it. My opinion is that you had
+better not do it. You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may
+be more severe than you now imagine. I know you are capable of thinking
+correctly on any subject, and if you deliberate maturely upon this
+subject before you decide, then I am willing to abide your decision.
+
+You must write me a good long letter after you get this. You have
+nothing else to do, and though it might not seem interesting to you after
+you had written it, it would be a good deal of company to me in this
+"busy wilderness." Tell your sister I don't want to hear any more about
+selling out and moving. That gives me the "hypo" whenever I think of it.
+
+Yours, etc.,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN BENNETT.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Aug. 5, 1837.
+JOHN BENNETT, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR:-Mr. Edwards tells me you wish to know whether the act to which
+your own incorporation provision was attached passed into a law. It did.
+You can organize under the general incorporation law as soon as you
+choose.
+
+I also tacked a provision onto a fellow's bill to authorize the
+relocation of the road from Salem down to your town, but I am not certain
+whether or not the bill passed, neither do I suppose I can ascertain
+before the law will be published, if it is a law. Bowling Greene,
+Bennette Abe? and yourself are appointed to make the change. No news. No
+excitement except a little about the election of Monday next.
+
+I suppose, of course, our friend Dr. Heney stands no chance in your
+diggings.
+
+Your friend and humble servant,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO MARY OWENS.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 16, 1837
+
+FRIEND MARY: You will no doubt think it rather strange that I should
+write you a letter on the same day on which we parted, and I can only
+account for it by supposing that seeing you lately makes me think of you
+more than usual; while at our late meeting we had but few expressions of
+thoughts. You must know that I cannot see you, or think of you, with
+entire indifference; and yet it may be that you are mistaken in regard to
+what my real feelings toward you are.
+
+If I knew you were not, I should not have troubled you with this letter.
+Perhaps any other man would know enough without information; but I
+consider it my peculiar right to plead ignorance, and your bounden duty
+to allow the plea.
+
+I want in all cases to do right; and most particularly so in all cases
+with women.
+
+I want, at this particular time, more than any thing else to do right
+with you; and if I knew it would be doing right, as I rather suspect it
+would, to let you alone I would do it. And, for the purpose of making
+the matter as plain as possible, I now say that you can drop the subject,
+dismiss your thoughts (if you ever had any) from me for ever and leave
+this letter unanswered without calling forth one accusing murmur from me.
+And I will even go further and say that, if it will add anything to your
+comfort or peace of mind to do so, it is my sincere wish that you should.
+Do not understand by this that I wish to cut your acquaintance. I mean
+no such thing. What I do wish is that our further acquaintance shall
+depend upon yourself. If such further acquaintance would contribute
+nothing to your happiness, I am sure it would not to mine. If you feel
+yourself in any degree bound to me, I am now willing to release you,
+provided you wish it; while on the other hand I am willing and even
+anxious to bind you faster if I can be convinced that it will, in any
+considerable degree, add to your happiness. This, indeed, is the whole
+question with me. Nothing would make me more miserable than to believe
+you miserable, nothing more happy than to know you were so.
+
+In what I have now said, I think I cannot be misunderstood; and to make
+myself understood is the only object of this letter.
+
+If it suits you best not to answer this, farewell. A long life and a
+merry one attend you. But, if you conclude to write back, speak as
+plainly as I do. There can neither be harm nor danger in saying to me
+anything you think, just in the manner you think it. My respects to your
+sister.
+
+Your friend,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+LEGAL SUIT OF WIDOW v.s. Gen. ADAMS
+
+TO THE PEOPLE.
+
+"SANGAMON JOURNAL," SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Aug. 19, 1837.
+
+In accordance with our determination, as expressed last week, we present
+to the reader the articles which were published in hand-bill form, in
+reference to the case of the heirs of Joseph Anderson vs. James Adams.
+These articles can now be read uninfluenced by personal or party feeling,
+and with the sole motive of learning the truth. When that is done, the
+reader can pass his own judgment on the matters at issue.
+
+We only regret in this case, that the publications were not made some
+weeks before the election. Such a course might have prevented the
+expressions of regret, which have often been heard since, from different
+individuals, on account of the disposition they made of their votes.
+
+To the Public:
+
+It is well known to most of you, that there is existing at this time
+considerable excitement in regard to Gen. Adams's titles to certain
+tracts of land, and the manner in which he acquired them. As I
+understand, the Gen. charges that the whole has been gotten up by a knot
+of lawyers to injure his election; and as I am one of the knot to which
+he refers, and as I happen to be in possession of facts connected with
+the matter, I will, in as brief a manner as possible, make a statement of
+them, together with the means by which I arrived at the knowledge of
+them.
+
+Sometime in May or June last, a widow woman, by the name of Anderson, and
+her son, who resides in Fulton county, came to Springfield, for the
+purpose as they said of selling a ten acre lot of ground lying near town,
+which they claimed as the property of the deceased husband and father.
+
+When they reached town they found the land was claimed by Gen. Adams.
+John T. Stuart and myself were employed to look into the matter, and if
+it was thought we could do so with any prospect of success, to commence a
+suit for the land. I went immediately to the recorder's office to
+examine Adams's title, and found that the land had been entered by one
+Dixon, deeded by Dixon to Thomas, by Thomas to one Miller, and by Miller
+to Gen. Adams. The oldest of these three deeds was about ten or eleven
+years old, and the latest more than five, all recorded at the same time,
+and that within less than one year. This I thought a suspicious
+circumstance, and I was thereby induced to examine the deeds very
+closely, with a view to the discovery of some defect by which to overturn
+the title, being almost convinced then it was founded in fraud. I
+discovered that in the deed from Thomas to Miller, although Miller's name
+stood in a sort of marginal note on the record book, it was nowhere in
+the deed itself. I told the fact to Talbott, the recorder, and proposed
+to him that he should go to Gen. Adams's and get the original deed, and
+compare it with the record, and thereby ascertain whether the defect was
+in the original or there was merely an error in the recording. As
+Talbott afterwards told me, he went to the General's, but not finding him
+at home, got the deed from his son, which, when compared with the record,
+proved what we had discovered was merely an error of the recorder. After
+Mr. Talbott corrected the record, be brought the original to our office,
+as I then thought and think yet, to show us that it was right. When he
+came into the room he handed the deed to me, remarking that the fault was
+all his own. On opening it, another paper fell out of it, which on
+examination proved to be an assignment of a judgment in the Circuit Court
+of Sangamon County from Joseph Anderson, the late husband of the widow
+above named, to James Adams, the judgment being in favor of said Anderson
+against one Joseph Miller. Knowing that this judgment had some
+connection with the land affair, I immediately took a copy of it, which
+is word for word, letter for letter and cross for cross as follows:
+
+Joseph Anderson, vs. Joseph Miller.
+
+Judgment in Sangamon Circuit Court against Joseph Miller obtained on a
+note originally 25 dolls and interest thereon accrued. I assign all my
+right, title and interest to James Adams which is in consideration of a
+debt I owe said Adams.
+
+his JOSEPH x ANDERSON. mark.
+
+As the copy shows, it bore date May 10, 1827; although the judgment
+assigned by it was not obtained until the October afterwards, as may be
+seen by any one on the records of the Circuit Court. Two other strange
+circumstances attended it which cannot be represented by a copy. One of
+them was, that the date "1827" had first been made "1837" and, without
+the figure "3," being fully obliterated, the figure "2" had afterwards
+been made on top of it; the other was that, although the date was ten
+years old, the writing on it, from the freshness of its appearance, was
+thought by many, and I believe by all who saw it, not to be more than a
+week old. The paper on which it was written had a very old appearance;
+and there were some old figures on the back of it which made the
+freshness of the writing on the face of it much more striking than I
+suppose it otherwise might have been. The reader's curiosity is no doubt
+excited to know what connection this assignment had with the land in
+question. The story is this: Dixon sold and deeded the land to Thomas;
+Thomas sold it to Anderson; but before he gave a deed, Anderson sold it
+to Miller, and took Miller's note for the purchase money. When this note
+became due, Anderson sued Miller on it, and Miller procured an injunction
+from the Court of Chancery to stay the collection of the money until he
+should get a deed for the land. Gen. Adams was employed as an attorney
+by Anderson in this chancery suit, and at the October term, 1827, the
+injunction was dissolved, and a judgment given in favor of Anderson
+against Miller; and it was provided that Thomas was to execute a deed for
+the land in favor of Miller and deliver it to Gen. Adams, to be held up
+by him till Miller paid the judgment, and then to deliver it to him.
+Miller left the county without paying the judgment. Anderson moved to
+Fulton county, where he has since died When the widow came to
+Springfield last May or June, as before mentioned, and found the land
+deeded to Gen. Adams by Miller, she was naturally led to inquire why the
+money due upon the judgment had not been sent to them, inasmuch as he,
+Gen. Adams, had no authority to deliver Thomas's deed to Miller until the
+money was paid. Then it was the General told her, or perhaps her son,
+who came with her, that Anderson, in his lifetime, had assigned the
+judgment to him, Gen. Adams. I am now told that the General is
+exhibiting an assignment of the same judgment bearing date "1828" and in
+other respects differing from the one described; and that he is asserting
+that no such assignment as the one copied by me ever existed; or if there
+did, it was forged between Talbott and the lawyers, and slipped into his
+papers for the purpose of injuring him. Now, I can only say that I know
+precisely such a one did exist, and that Ben. Talbott, Wm. Butler, C.R.
+Matheny, John T. Stuart, Judge Logan, Robert Irwin, P. C. Canedy and
+S. M. Tinsley, all saw and examined it, and that at least one half of
+them will swear that IT WAS IN GENERAL ADAMS'S HANDWRITING!! And
+further, I know that Talbott will swear that he got it out of the
+General's possession, and returned it into his possession again. The
+assignment which the General is now exhibiting purports to have been by
+Anderson in writing. The one I copied was signed with a cross.
+
+I am told that Gen. Neale says that he will swear that he heard Gen.
+Adams tell young Anderson that the assignment made by his father was
+signed with a cross.
+
+The above are 'facts,' as stated. I leave them without comment. I have
+given the names of persons who have knowledge of these facts, in order
+that any one who chooses may call on them and ascertain how far they will
+corroborate my statements. I have only made these statements because I
+am known by many to be one of the individuals against whom the charge of
+forging the assignment and slipping it into the General's papers has been
+made, and because our silence might be construed into a confession of its
+truth. I shall not subscribe my name; but I hereby authorize the editor
+of the Journal to give it up to any one that may call for it.
+
+
+
+
+LINCOLN AND TALBOTT IN REPLY TO GEN. ADAMS.
+
+"SANGAMON JOURNAL," SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Oct. 28, 1837.
+
+In the Republican of this morning a publication of Gen. Adams's appears,
+in which my name is used quite unreservedly. For this I thank the
+General. I thank him because it gives me an opportunity, without
+appearing obtrusive, of explaining a part of a former publication of
+mine, which appears to me to have been misunderstood by many.
+
+In the former publication alluded to, I stated, in substance, that Mr.
+Talbott got a deed from a son of Gen. Adams's for the purpose of
+correcting a mistake that had occurred on the record of the said deed in
+the recorder's office; that he corrected the record, and brought the deed
+and handed it to me, and that on opening the deed, another paper, being
+the assignment of a judgment, fell out of it. This statement Gen. Adams
+and the editor of the Republican have seized upon as a most palpable
+evidence of fabrication and falsehood. They set themselves gravely about
+proving that the assignment could not have been in the deed when Talbott
+got it from young Adams, as he, Talbott, would have seen it when he
+opened the deed to correct the record. Now, the truth is, Talbott did see
+the assignment when he opened the deed, or at least he told me he did on
+the same day; and I only omitted to say so, in my former publication,
+because it was a matter of such palpable and necessary inference. I had
+stated that Talbott had corrected the record by the deed; and of course
+he must have opened it; and, just as the General and his friends argue,
+must have seen the assignment. I omitted to state the fact of Talbott's
+seeing the assignment, because its existence was so necessarily connected
+with other facts which I did state, that I thought the greatest dunce
+could not but understand it. Did I say Talbott had not seen it? Did I
+say anything that was inconsistent with his having seen it before? Most
+certainly I did neither; and if I did not, what becomes of the argument?
+These logical gentlemen can sustain their argument only by assuming that
+I did say negatively everything that I did not say affirmatively; and
+upon the same assumption, we may expect to find the General, if a little
+harder pressed for argument, saying that I said Talbott came to our
+office with his head downward, not that I actually said so, but because I
+omitted to say he came feet downward.
+
+In his publication to-day, the General produces the affidavit of Reuben
+Radford, in which it is said that Talbott told Radford that he did not
+find the assignment in the deed, in the recording of which the error was
+committed, but that he found it wrapped in another paper in the
+recorder's office, upon which statement the Genl. comments as follows,
+to wit: "If it be true as stated by Talbott to Radford, that he found the
+assignment wrapped up in another paper at his office, that contradicts
+the statement of Lincoln that it fell out of the deed."
+
+Is common sense to be abused with such sophistry? Did I say what Talbott
+found it in? If Talbott did find it in another paper at his office, is
+that any reason why he could not have folded it in a deed and brought it
+to my office? Can any one be so far duped as to be made believe that
+what may have happened at Talbot's office at one time is inconsistent
+with what happened at my office at another time?
+
+Now Talbott's statement of the case as he makes it to me is this, that he
+got a bunch of deeds from young Adams, and that he knows he found the
+assignment in the bunch, but he is not certain which particular deed it
+was in, nor is he certain whether it was folded in the same deed out of
+which it was taken, or another one, when it was brought to my office. Is
+this a mysterious story? Is there anything suspicious about it?
+
+"But it is useless to dwell longer on this point. Any man who is not
+wilfully blind can see at a flash, that there is no discrepancy, and
+Lincoln has shown that they are not only inconsistent with truth, but
+each other"--I can only say, that I have shown that he has done no such
+thing; and if the reader is disposed to require any other evidence than
+the General's assertion, he will be of my opinion.
+
+Excepting the General's most flimsy attempt at mystification, in regard
+to a discrepance between Talbott and myself, he has not denied a single
+statement that I made in my hand-bill. Every material statement that I
+made has been sworn to by men who, in former times, were thought as
+respectable as General Adams. I stated that an assignment of a judgment,
+a copy of which I gave, had existed--Benj. Talbott, C. R. Matheny, Wm.
+Butler, and Judge Logan swore to its existence. I stated that it was
+said to be in Gen. Adams's handwriting--the same men swore it was in his
+handwriting. I stated that Talbott would swear that he got it out of
+Gen. Adams's possession--Talbott came forward and did swear it.
+
+Bidding adieu to the former publication, I now propose to examine the
+General's last gigantic production. I now propose to point out some
+discrepancies in the General's address; and such, too, as he shall not be
+able to escape from. Speaking of the famous assignment, the General
+says: "This last charge, which was their last resort, their dying effort
+to render my character infamous among my fellow citizens, was
+manufactured at a certain lawyer's office in the town, printed at the
+office of the Sangamon Journal, and found its way into the world some
+time between two days just before the last election." Now turn to Mr.
+Keys' affidavit, in which you will find the following, viz.: "I certify
+that some time in May or the early part of June, 1837, I saw at
+Williams's corner a paper purporting to be an assignment from Joseph
+Anderson to James Adams, which assignment was signed by a mark to
+Anderson's name," etc. Now mark, if Keys saw the assignment on the last
+of May or first of June, Gen. Adams tells a falsehood when he says it was
+manufactured just before the election, which was on the 7th of August;
+and if it was manufactured just before the election, Keys tells a
+falsehood when he says he saw it on the last of May or first of June.
+Either Keys or the General is irretrievably in for it; and in the
+General's very condescending language, I say "Let them settle it between
+them."
+
+Now again, let the reader, bearing in mind that General Adams has
+unequivocally said, in one part of his address, that the charge in
+relation to the assignment was manufactured just before the election,
+turn to the affidavit of Peter S. Weber, where the following will be
+found viz.: "I, Peter S. Weber, do certify that from the best of my
+recollection, on the day or day after Gen. Adams started for the Illinois
+Rapids, in May last, that I was at the house of Gen. Adams, sitting in
+the kitchen, situated on the back part of the house, it being in the
+afternoon, and that Benjamin Talbott came around the house, back into the
+kitchen, and appeared wild and confused, and that he laid a package of
+papers on the kitchen table and requested that they should be handed to
+Lucian. He made no apology for coming to the kitchen, nor for not
+handing them to Lucian himself, but showed the token of being frightened
+and confused both in demeanor and speech and for what cause I could not
+apprehend."
+
+Commenting on Weber's affidavit, Gen. Adams asks, "Why this fright and
+confusion?" I reply that this is a question for the General himself.
+Weber says that it was in May, and if so, it is most clear that Talbott
+was not frightened on account of the assignment, unless the General lies
+when he says the assignment charge was manufactured just before the
+election. Is it not a strong evidence, that the General is not traveling
+with the pole-star of truth in his front, to see him in one part of his
+address roundly asserting that the assignment was manufactured just
+before the election, and then, forgetting that position, procuring
+Weber's most foolish affidavit, to prove that Talbott had been engaged in
+manufacturing it two months before?
+
+In another part of his address, Gen. Adams says: "That I hold an
+assignment of said judgment, dated the 20th of May, 1828, and signed by
+said Anderson, I have never pretended to deny or conceal, but stated that
+fact in one of my circulars previous to the election, and also in answer
+to a bill in chancery." Now I pronounce this statement unqualifiedly
+false, and shall not rely on the word or oath of any man to sustain me in
+what I say; but will let the whole be decided by reference to the
+circular and answer in chancery of which the General speaks. In his
+circular he did speak of an assignment; but he did not say it bore date
+20th of May, 1828; nor did he say it bore any date. In his answer in
+chancery, he did say that he had an assignment; but he did not say that
+it bore date the 20th May, 1828; but so far from it, he said on oath (for
+he swore to the answer) that as well as recollected, he obtained it in
+1827. If any one doubts, let him examine the circular and answer for
+himself. They are both accessible.
+
+It will readily be observed that the principal part of Adams's defense
+rests upon the argument that if he had been base enough to forge an
+assignment he would not have been fool enough to forge one that would not
+cover the case. This argument he used in his circular before the
+election. The Republican has used it at least once, since then; and
+Adams uses it again in his publication of to-day. Now I pledge myself to
+show that he is just such a fool that he and his friends have contended
+it was impossible for him to be. Recollect--he says he has a genuine
+assignment; and that he got Joseph Klein's affidavit, stating that he had
+seen it, and that he believed the signature to have been executed by the
+same hand that signed Anderson's name to the answer in chancery. Luckily
+Klein took a copy of this genuine assignment, which I have been permitted
+to see; and hence I know it does not cover the case. In the first place
+it is headed "Joseph Anderson vs. Joseph Miller," and heads off
+"Judgment in Sangamon Circuit Court." Now, mark, there never was a case
+in Sangamon Circuit Court entitled Joseph Anderson vs. Joseph Miller.
+The case mentioned in my former publication, and the only one between
+these parties that ever existed in the Circuit Court, was entitled Joseph
+Miller vs. Joseph Anderson, Miller being the plaintiff. What then
+becomes of all their sophistry about Adams not being fool enough to forge
+an assignment that would not cover the case? It is certain that the
+present one does not cover the case; and if he got it honestly, it is
+still clear that he was fool enough to pay for an assignment that does
+not cover the case.
+
+The General asks for the proof of disinterested witnesses. Whom does he
+consider disinterested? None can be more so than those who have already
+testified against him. No one of them had the least interest on earth,
+so far as I can learn, to injure him. True, he says they had conspired
+against him; but if the testimony of an angel from Heaven were introduced
+against him, he would make the same charge of conspiracy. And now I put
+the question to every reflecting man, Do you believe that Benjamin
+Talbott, Chas. R. Matheny, William Butler and Stephen T. Logan, all
+sustaining high and spotless characters, and justly proud of them, would
+deliberately perjure themselves, without any motive whatever, except to
+injure a man's election; and that, too, a man who had been a candidate,
+time out of mind, and yet who had never been elected to any office?
+
+Adams's assurance, in demanding disinterested testimony, is surpassing.
+He brings in the affidavit of his own son, and even of Peter S. Weber,
+with whom I am not acquainted, but who, I suppose, is some black or
+mulatto boy, from his being kept in the kitchen, to prove his points; but
+when such a man as Talbott, a man who, but two years ago, ran against
+Gen. Adams for the office of Recorder and beat him more than four votes
+to one, is introduced against him, he asks the community, with all the
+consequence of a lord, to reject his testimony.
+
+I might easily write a volume, pointing out inconsistencies between the
+statements in Adams's last address with one another, and with other known
+facts; but I am aware the reader must already be tired with the length of
+this article. His opening statements, that he was first accused of being
+a Tory, and that he refuted that; that then the Sampson's ghost story was
+got up, and he refuted that; that as a last resort, a dying effort, the
+assignment charge was got up is all as false as hell, as all this
+community must know. Sampson's ghost first made its appearance in print,
+and that, too, after Keys swears he saw the assignment, as any one may
+see by reference to the files of papers; and Gen. Adams himself, in reply
+to the Sampson's ghost story, was the first man that raised the cry of
+toryism, and it was only by way of set-off, and never in seriousness,
+that it was bandied back at him. His effort is to make the impression
+that his enemies first made the charge of toryism and he drove them from
+that, then Sampson's ghost, he drove them from that, then finally the
+assignment charge was manufactured just before election. Now, the only
+general reply he ever made to the Sampson's ghost and tory charges he
+made at one and the same time, and not in succession as he states; and
+the date of that reply will show, that it was made at least a month after
+the date on which Keys swears he saw the Anderson assignment. But
+enough. In conclusion I will only say that I have a character to defend
+as well as Gen. Adams, but I disdain to whine about it as he does. It is
+true I have no children nor kitchen boys; and if I had, I should scorn to
+lug them in to make affidavits for me.
+
+A. LINCOLN, September 6, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+Gen. ADAMS CONTROVERSY--CONTINUED
+
+TO THE PUBLIC.
+
+"SANGAMON JOURNAL," Springfield, Ill, Oct.28, 1837.
+
+Such is the turn which things have taken lately, that when Gen. Adams
+writes a book, I am expected to write a commentary on it. In the
+Republican of this morning he has presented the world with a new work of
+six columns in length; in consequence of which I must beg the room of one
+column in the Journal. It is obvious that a minute reply cannot be made
+in one column to everything that can be said in six; and, consequently, I
+hope that expectation will be answered if I reply to such parts of the
+General's publication as are worth replying to.
+
+It may not be improper to remind the reader that in his publication of
+Sept. 6th General Adams said that the assignment charge was manufactured
+just before the election; and that in reply I proved that statement to be
+false by Keys, his own witness. Now, without attempting to explain, he
+furnishes me with another witness (Tinsley) by which the same thing is
+proved, to wit, that the assignment was not manufactured just before the
+election; but that it was some weeks before. Let it be borne in mind
+that Adams made this statement--has himself furnished two witnesses to
+prove its falsehood, and does not attempt to deny or explain it. Before
+going farther, let a pin be stuck here, labeled "One lie proved and
+confessed." On the 6th of September he said he had before stated in the
+hand-bill that he held an assignment dated May 20th, 1828, which in reply
+I pronounced to be false, and referred to the hand-bill for the truth of
+what I said. This week he forgets to make any explanation of this. Let
+another pin be stuck here, labelled as before. I mention these things
+because, if, when I convict him in one falsehood, he is permitted to
+shift his ground and pass it by in silence, there can be no end to this
+controversy.
+
+The first thing that attracts my attention in the General's present
+production is the information he is pleased to give to "those who are
+made to suffer at his (my) hands."
+
+Under present circumstances, this cannot apply to me, for I am not a
+widow nor an orphan: nor have I a wife or children who might by
+possibility become such. Such, however, I have no doubt, have been, and
+will again be made to suffer at his hands! Hands! Yes, they are the
+mischievous agents. The next thing I shall notice is his favorite
+expression, "not of lawyers, doctors and others," which he is so fond of
+applying to all who dare expose his rascality. Now, let it be remembered
+that when he first came to this country he attempted to impose himself
+upon the community as a lawyer, and actually carried the attempt so far
+as to induce a man who was under a charge of murder to entrust the
+defence of his life in his hands, and finally took his money and got him
+hanged. Is this the man that is to raise a breeze in his favor by
+abusing lawyers? If he is not himself a lawyer, it is for the lack of
+sense, and not of inclination. If he is not a lawyer, he is a liar, for
+he proclaimed himself a lawyer, and got a man hanged by depending on him.
+
+Passing over such parts of the article as have neither fact nor argument
+in them, I come to the question asked by Adams whether any person ever
+saw the assignment in his possession. This is an insult to common sense.
+Talbott has sworn once and repeated time and again, that he got it out of
+Adams's possession and returned it into the same possession. Still, as
+though he was addressing fools, he has assurance to ask if any person
+ever saw it in his possession.
+
+Next I quote a sentence,   "Now my son Lucian swears that when Talbott
+called for the deed, that he, Talbott, opened it and pointed out the
+error." True. His son Lucian did swear as he says; and in doing so, he
+swore what I will prove by his own affidavit to be a falsehood. Turn to
+Lucian's affidavit, and you will there see that Talbott called for the
+deed by which to correct an error on the record. Thus it appears that
+the error in question was on the record, and not in the deed. How then
+could Talbott open the deed and point out the error? Where a thing is
+not, it cannot be pointed out. The error was not in the deed, and of
+course could not be pointed out there. This does not merely prove that
+the error could not be pointed out, as Lucian swore it was; but it
+proves, too, that the deed was not opened in his presence with a special
+view to the error, for if it had been, he could not have failed to see
+that there was no error in it. It is easy enough to see why Lucian swore
+this. His object was to prove that the assignment was not in the deed
+when Talbott got it: but it was discovered he could not swear this
+safely, without first swearing the deed was opened--and if he swore it
+was opened, he must show a motive for opening it, and the conclusion with
+him and his father was that the pointing out the error would appear the
+most plausible.
+
+For the purpose of showing that the assignment was not in the bundle when
+Talbott got it, is the story introduced into Lucian's affidavit that the
+deeds were counted. It is a remarkable fact, and one that should stand
+as a warning to all liars and fabricators, that in this short affidavit
+of Lucian's he only attempted to depart from the truth, so far as I have
+the means of knowing, in two points, to wit, in the opening the deed and
+pointing out the error and the counting of the deeds,--and in both of
+these he caught himself. About the counting, he caught himself
+thus--after saying the bundle contained five deeds and a lease, he
+proceeds, "and I saw no other papers than the said deed and lease."
+First he has six papers, and then he saw none but two; for "my son
+Lucian's" benefit, let a pin be stuck here.
+
+Adams again adduces the argument, that he could not have forged the
+assignment, for the reason that he could have had no motive for it. With
+those that know the facts there is no absence of motive. Admitting the
+paper which he has filed in the suit to be genuine, it is clear that it
+cannot answer the purpose for which he designs it. Hence his motive for
+making one that he supposed would answer is obvious. His making the date
+too old is also easily enough accounted for. The records were not in his
+hands, and then, there being some considerable talk upon this particular
+subject, he knew he could not examine the records to ascertain the
+precise dates without subjecting himself to suspicion; and hence he
+concluded to try it by guess, and, as it turned out, missed it a little.
+About Miller's deposition I have a word to say. In the first place,
+Miller's answer to the first question shows upon its face that he had
+been tampered with, and the answer dictated to him. He was asked if he
+knew Joel Wright and James Adams; and above three-fourths of his answer
+consists of what he knew about Joseph Anderson, a man about whom nothing
+had been asked, nor a word said in the question--a fact that can only be
+accounted for upon the supposition that Adams had secretly told him what
+he wished him to swear to.
+
+Another of Miller's answers I will prove both by common sense and the
+Court of Record is untrue. To one question he answers, "Anderson brought
+a suit against me before James Adams, then an acting justice of the peace
+in Sangamon County, before whom he obtained a judgment.
+
+"Q.--Did you remove the same by injunction to the Sangamon Circuit Court?
+Ans.--I did remove it."
+
+Now mark--it is said he removed it by injunction. The word "injunction"
+in common language imports a command that some person or thing shall not
+move or be removed; in law it has the same meaning. An injunction
+issuing out of chancery to a justice of the peace is a command to him to
+stop all proceedings in a named case until further orders. It is not an
+order to remove but to stop or stay something that is already moving.
+Besides this, the records of the Sangamon Circuit Court show that the
+judgment of which Miller swore was never removed into said Court by
+injunction or otherwise.
+
+I have now to take notice of a part of Adams's address which in the order
+of time should have been noticed before. It is in these words: "I have
+now shown, in the opinion of two competent judges, that the handwriting
+of the forged assignment differed from mine, and by one of them that it
+could not be mistaken for mine." That is false. Tinsley no doubt is the
+judge referred to; and by reference to his certificate it will be seen
+that he did not say the handwriting of the assignment could not be
+mistaken for Adams's--nor did he use any other expression substantially,
+or anything near substantially, the same. But if Tinsley had said the
+handwriting could not be mistaken for Adams's, it would have been equally
+unfortunate for Adams: for it then would have contradicted Keys, who
+says, "I looked at the writing and judged it the said Adams's or a good
+imitation."
+
+Adams speaks with much apparent confidence of his success on attending
+lawsuits, and the ultimate maintenance of his title to the land in
+question. Without wishing to disturb the pleasure of his dream, I would
+say to him that it is not impossible that he may yet be taught to sing a
+different song in relation to the matter.
+
+At the end of Miller's deposition, Adams asks, "Will Mr. Lincoln now say
+that he is almost convinced my title to this ten acre tract of land is
+founded in fraud?" I answer, I will not. I will now change the
+phraseology so as to make it run--I am quite convinced, &c. I cannot
+pass in silence Adams's assertion that he has proved that the forged
+assignment was not in the deed when it came from his house by Talbott,
+the recorder. In this, although Talbott has sworn that the assignment
+was in the bundle of deeds when it came from his house, Adams has the
+unaccountable assurance to say that he has proved the contrary by
+Talbott. Let him or his friends attempt to show wherein he proved any
+such thing by Talbott.
+
+In his publication of the 6th of September he hinted to Talbott, that he
+might be mistaken. In his present, speaking of Talbott and me he says
+"They may have been imposed upon." Can any man of the least penetration
+fail to see the object of this? After he has stormed and raged till he
+hopes and imagines he has got us a little scared he wishes to softly
+whisper in our ears, "If you'll quit I will." If he could get us to say
+that some unknown, undefined being had slipped the assignment into our
+hands without our knowledge, not a doubt remains but that he would
+immediately discover that we were the purest men on earth. This is the
+ground he evidently wishes us to understand he is willing to compromise
+upon. But we ask no such charity at his hands. We are neither mistaken
+nor imposed upon. We have made the statements we have because we know
+them to be true and we choose to live or die by them.
+
+Esq. Carter, who is Adams's friend, personal and political, will
+recollect, that, on the 5th of this month, he (Adams), with a great
+affectation of modesty, declared that he would never introduce his own
+child as a witness. Notwithstanding this affectation of modesty, he has
+in his present publication introduced his child as witness; and as if to
+show with how much contempt he could treat his own declaration, he has
+had this same Esq. Carter to administer the oath to him. And so
+important a witness does he consider him, and so entirely does the whole
+of his entire present production depend upon the testimony of his child,
+that in it he has mentioned "my son," "my son Lucian," "Lucian, my son,"
+and the like expressions no less than fifteen different times. Let it be
+remembered here, that I have shown the affidavit of "my darling son
+Lucian" to be false by the evidence apparent on its own face; and I now
+ask if that affidavit be taken away what foundation will the fabric have
+left to stand upon?
+
+General Adams's publications and out-door maneuvering, taken in
+connection with the editorial articles of the Republican, are not more
+foolish and contradictory than they are ludicrous and amusing. One week
+the Republican notifies the public that Gen. Adams is preparing an
+instrument that will tear, rend, split, rive, blow up, confound,
+overwhelm, annihilate, extinguish, exterminate, burst asunder, and grind
+to powder all its slanderers, and particularly Talbott and Lincoln--all
+of which is to be done in due time.
+
+Then for two or three weeks all is calm--not a word said. Again the
+Republican comes forth with a mere passing remark that "public" opinion
+has decided in favor of Gen. Adams, and intimates that he will give
+himself no more trouble about the matter. In the meantime Adams himself
+is prowling about and, as Burns says of the devil, "For prey, and holes
+and corners tryin'," and in one instance goes so far as to take an old
+acquaintance of mine several steps from a crowd and, apparently weighed
+down with the importance of his business, gravely and solemnly asks him
+if "he ever heard Lincoln say he was a deist."
+
+Anon the Republican comes again. "We invite the attention of the public
+to General Adams's communication," &c. "The victory is a great one, the
+triumph is overwhelming." I really believe the editor of the Illinois
+Republican is fool enough to think General Adams leads off--"Authors most
+egregiously mistaken &c. Most woefully shall their presumption be
+punished," &c. (Lord have mercy on us.) "The hour is yet to come, yea,
+nigh at hand--(how long first do you reckon?)--when the Journal and its
+junto shall say, I have appeared too early." "Their infamy shall be laid
+bare to the public gaze." Suddenly the General appears to relent at the
+severity with which he is treating us and he exclaims: "The condemnation
+of my enemies is the inevitable result of my own defense." For your
+health's sake, dear Gen., do not permit your tenderness of heart to
+afflict you so much on our account. For some reason (perhaps because we
+are killed so quickly) we shall never be sensible of our suffering.
+
+Farewell, General. I will see you again at court if not before--when
+and where we will settle the question whether you or the widow shall have
+the land.
+
+A. LINCOLN. October 18, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+1838
+
+TO Mrs. O. H. BROWNING--A FARCE
+
+SPRINGFIELD, April 1, 1838.
+
+DEAR MADAM:--Without apologizing for being egotistical, I shall make the
+history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw you the subject
+of this letter. And, by the way, I now discover that, in order to give a
+full and intelligible account of the things I have done and suffered
+since I saw you, I shall necessarily have to relate some that happened
+before.
+
+It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my
+acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to pay a
+visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed to
+me that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with her on
+condition that I would engage to become her brother-in-law with all
+convenient despatch. I, of course, accepted the proposal, for you know I
+could not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but
+privately, between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with
+the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, thought
+her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to plodding life
+through hand in hand with her. Time passed on; the lady took her journey
+and in due time returned, sister in company, sure enough. This
+astonished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily
+showed that she was a trifle too willing, but on reflection it occurred
+to me that she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to come
+without anything concerning me ever having been mentioned to her, and so
+I concluded that if no other objection presented itself, I would consent
+to waive this. All this occurred to me on hearing of her arrival in the
+neighborhood--for, be it remembered, I had not yet seen her, except about
+three years previous, as above mentioned. In a few days we had an
+interview, and, although I had seen her before, she did not look as my
+imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over-size, but she now
+appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an "old maid,"
+and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation, but
+now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my
+mother; and this, not from withered features,--for her skin was too full
+of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles,--but from her want of
+teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion
+that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of
+infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty
+years; and in short, I was not at all pleased with her. But what could I
+do? I had told her sister that I would take her for better or for worse,
+and I made a point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to my
+word especially if others had been induced to act on it which in this
+case I had no doubt they had, for I was now fairly convinced that no
+other man on earth would have her, and hence the conclusion that they
+were bent on holding me to my bargain.
+
+"Well," thought I, "I have said it, and, be the consequences what they
+may, it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it." At once I determined
+to consider her my wife; and, this done, all my powers of discovery were
+put to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off
+against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, but for her
+unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this no woman
+that I have ever seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself
+that the mind was much more to be valued than the person; and in this she
+was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been
+acquainted.
+
+Shortly after this, without coming to any positive understanding with
+her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first saw me. During my
+stay there I had letters from her which did not change my opinion of
+either her intellect or intention, but on the contrary confirmed it in
+both.
+
+All this while, although I was fixed, "firm as the surge-repelling rock,"
+in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the rashness which
+had led me to make it. Through life, I have been in no bondage, either
+real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired to be
+free. After my return home, I saw nothing to change my opinions of her
+in any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time
+in planning how I might get along through life after my contemplated
+change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might
+procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much,
+perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter.
+
+After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, here I am,
+wholly, unexpectedly, completely, out of the "scrape"; and now I want to
+know if you can guess how I got out of it----out, clear, in every sense
+of the term; no violation of word, honor, or conscience. I don't believe
+you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the lawyer
+says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: After I had delayed
+the matter as long as I thought I could in honor do (which, by the way,
+had brought me round into the last fall), I concluded I might as well
+bring it to a consummation without further delay; and so I mustered my
+resolution, and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to relate,
+she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it through an affectation
+of modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the peculiar
+circumstances of her case; but on my renewal of the charge, I found she
+repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it again and
+again but with the same success, or rather with the same want of success.
+
+I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unexpectedly found
+myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to
+me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the
+reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at
+the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also
+that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have, had
+actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the
+whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a
+little in love with her. But let it all go. I'll try and outlive it.
+Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with
+truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance, made a fool
+of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of
+marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with any one who
+would be blockhead enough to have me.
+
+When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to amuse me.
+Give my respects to Mr. Browning.
+
+Your sincere friend, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+1839
+REMARKS ON SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS
+
+IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 17, 1839.
+
+Mr. Lincoln, from Committee on Finance, to which the subject was
+referred, made a report on the subject of purchasing of the United States
+all the unsold lands lying within the limits of the State of Illinois,
+accompanied by resolutions that this State propose to purchase all unsold
+lands at twenty-five cents per acre, and pledging the faith of the State
+to carry the proposal into effect if the government accept the same
+within two years.
+
+Mr. Lincoln thought the resolutions ought to be seriously considered. In
+reply to the gentleman from Adams, he said that it was not to enrich the
+State. The price of the lands may be raised, it was thought by some; by
+others, that it would be reduced. The conclusion in his mind was that
+the representatives in this Legislature from the country in which the
+lands lie would be opposed to raising the price, because it would operate
+against the settlement of the lands. He referred to the lands in the
+military tract. They had fallen into the hands of large speculators in
+consequence of the low price. He was opposed to a low price of land. He
+thought it was adverse to the interests of the poor settler, because
+speculators buy them up. He was opposed to a reduction of the price of
+public lands.
+
+Mr. Lincoln referred to some official documents emanating from Indiana,
+and compared the progressive population of the two States. Illinois had
+gained upon that State under the public land system as it is. His
+conclusion was that ten years from this time Illinois would have no more
+public land unsold than Indiana now has. He referred also to Ohio. That
+State had sold nearly all her public lands. She was but twenty years
+ahead of us, and as our lands were equally salable--more so, as he
+maintained--we should have no more twenty years from now than she has at
+present.
+
+Mr. Lincoln referred to the canal lands, and supposed that the policy of
+the State would be different in regard to them, if the representatives
+from that section of country could themselves choose the policy; but the
+representatives from other parts of the State had a veto upon it, and
+regulated the policy. He thought that if the State had all the lands,
+the policy of the Legislature would be more liberal to all sections.
+
+He referred to the policy of the General Government. He thought that if
+the national debt had not been paid, the expenses of the government would
+not have doubled, as they had done since that debt was paid.
+
+
+
+
+TO _________ ROW.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, June 11, 1839
+DEAR ROW:
+
+Mr. Redman informs me that you wish me to write you the particulars of a
+conversation between Dr. Felix and myself relative to you. The Dr.
+overtook me between Rushville and Beardstown.
+
+He, after learning that I had lived at Springfield, asked if I was
+acquainted with you. I told him I was. He said you had lately been
+elected constable in Adams, but that you never would be again. I asked
+him why. He said the people there had found out that you had been
+sheriff or deputy sheriff in Sangamon County, and that you came off and
+left your securities to suffer. He then asked me if I did not know such
+to be the fact. I told him I did not think you had ever been sheriff or
+deputy sheriff in Sangamon, but that I thought you had been constable. I
+further told him that if you had left your securities to suffer in that
+or any other case, I had never heard of it, and that if it had been so, I
+thought I would have heard of it.
+
+If the Dr. is telling that I told him anything against you whatever, I
+authorize you to contradict it flatly. We have no news here.
+
+Your friend, as ever,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH ON NATIONAL BANK
+
+IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 20, 1839.
+
+FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It is peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt a
+continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been conducted
+in this hall on several preceding ones. It is so because on each of
+those evenings there was a much fuller attendance than now, without any
+reason for its being so, except the greater interest the community feel
+in the speakers who addressed them then than they do in him who is to do
+so now. I am, indeed, apprehensive that the few who have attended have
+done so more to spare me mortification than in the hope of being
+interested in anything I may be able to say. This circumstance casts a
+damp upon my spirits, which I am sure I shall be unable to overcome
+during the evening. But enough of preface.
+
+The subject heretofore and now to be discussed is the subtreasury scheme
+of the present administration, as a means of collecting, safe-keeping,
+transferring, and disbursing, the revenues of the nation, as contrasted
+with a national bank for the same purposes. Mr. Douglas has said that we
+(the Whigs) have not dared to meet them (the Locos) in argument on this
+question. I protest against this assertion. I assert that we have again
+and again, during this discussion, urged facts and arguments against the
+subtreasury which they have neither dared to deny nor attempted to
+answer. But lest some may be led to believe that we really wish to avoid
+the question, I now propose, in my humble way, to urge those arguments
+again; at the same time begging the audience to mark well the positions I
+shall take and the proof I shall offer to sustain them, and that they
+will not again permit Mr. Douglas or his friends to escape the force of
+them by a round and groundless assertion that we "dare not meet them in
+argument."
+
+Of the subtreasury, then, as contrasted with a national bank for the
+before-enumerated purposes, I lay down the following propositions, to
+wit: (1) It will injuriously affect the community by its operation on the
+circulating medium. (2) It will be a more expensive fiscal agent. (3)
+It will be a less secure depository of the public money. To show the
+truth of the first proposition, let us take a short review of our
+condition under the operation of a national bank. It was the depository
+of the public revenues. Between the collection of those revenues and the
+disbursement of them by the government, the bank was permitted to and did
+actually loan them out to individuals, and hence the large amount of
+money actually collected for revenue purposes, which by any other plan
+would have been idle a great portion of the time, was kept almost
+constantly in circulation. Any person who will reflect that money is only
+valuable while in circulation will readily perceive that any device which
+will keep the government revenues in constant circulation, instead of
+being locked up in idleness, is no inconsiderable advantage. By the
+subtreasury the revenue is to be collected and kept in iron boxes until
+the government wants it for disbursement; thus robbing the people of the
+use of it, while the government does not itself need it, and while the
+money is performing no nobler office than that of rusting in iron boxes.
+The natural effect of this change of policy, every one will see, is to
+reduce the quantity of money in circulation. But, again, by the
+subtreasury scheme the revenue is to be collected in specie. I
+anticipate that this will be disputed. I expect to hear it said that it
+is not the policy of the administration to collect the revenue in specie.
+If it shall, I reply that Mr. Van Buren, in his message recommending the
+subtreasury, expended nearly a column of that document in an attempt to
+persuade Congress to provide for the collection of the revenue in specie
+exclusively; and he concludes with these words:
+
+"It may be safely assumed that no motive of convenience to the citizens
+requires the reception of bank paper." In addition to this, Mr. Silas
+Wright, Senator from New York, and the political, personal and
+confidential friend of Mr. Van Buren, drafted and introduced into the
+Senate the first subtreasury bill, and that bill provided for ultimately
+collecting the revenue in specie. It is true, I know, that that clause
+was stricken from the bill, but it was done by the votes of the Whigs,
+aided by a portion only of the Van Buren senators. No subtreasury bill
+has yet become a law, though two or three have been considered by
+Congress, some with and some without the specie clause; so that I admit
+there is room for quibbling upon the question of whether the
+administration favor the exclusive specie doctrine or not; but I take it
+that the fact that the President at first urged the specie doctrine, and
+that under his recommendation the first bill introduced embraced it,
+warrants us in charging it as the policy of the party until their head as
+publicly recants it as he at first espoused it. I repeat, then, that by
+the subtreasury the revenue is to be collected in specie. Now mark what
+the effect of this must be. By all estimates ever made there are but
+between sixty and eighty millions of specie in the United States. The
+expenditures of the Government for the year 1838--the last for which we
+have had the report--were forty millions. Thus it is seen that if the
+whole revenue be collected in specie, it will take more than half of all
+the specie in the nation to do it. By this means more than half of all
+the specie belonging to the fifteen millions of souls who compose the
+whole population of the country is thrown into the hands of the public
+office-holders, and other public creditors comprising in number perhaps
+not more than one quarter of a million, leaving the other fourteen
+millions and three quarters to get along as they best can, with less than
+one half of the specie of the country, and whatever rags and shinplasters
+they may be able to put, and keep, in circulation. By this means, every
+office-holder and other public creditor may, and most likely will, set up
+shaver; and a most glorious harvest will the specie-men have of it,--each
+specie-man, upon a fair division, having to his share the fleecing of
+about fifty-nine rag-men. In all candor let me ask, was such a system
+for benefiting the few at the expense of the many ever before devised?
+And was the sacred name of Democracy ever before made to indorse such an
+enormity against the rights of the people?
+
+I have already said that the subtreasury will reduce the quantity of
+money in circulation. This position is strengthened by the recollection
+that the revenue is to be collected in Specie, so that the mere amount of
+revenue is not all that is withdrawn, but the amount of paper circulation
+that the forty millions would serve as a basis to is withdrawn, which
+would be in a sound state at least one hundred millions. When one
+hundred millions, or more, of the circulation we now have shall be
+withdrawn, who can contemplate without terror the distress, ruin,
+bankruptcy, and beggary that must follow? The man who has purchased any
+article--say a horse--on credit, at one hundred dollars, when there are
+two hundred millions circulating in the country, if the quantity be
+reduced to one hundred millions by the arrival of pay-day, will find the
+horse but sufficient to pay half the debt; and the other half must either
+be paid out of his other means, and thereby become a clear loss to him,
+or go unpaid, and thereby become a clear loss to his creditor. What I
+have here said of a single case of the purchase of a horse will hold good
+in every case of a debt existing at the time a reduction in the quantity
+of money occurs, by whomsoever, and for whatsoever, it may have been
+contracted. It may be said that what the debtor loses the creditor gains
+by this operation; but on examination this will be found true only to a
+very limited extent. It is more generally true that all lose by it--the
+creditor by losing more of his debts than he gains by the increased value
+of those he collects; the debtor by either parting with more of his
+property to pay his debts than he received in contracting them, or by
+entirely breaking up his business, and thereby being thrown upon the
+world in idleness.
+
+The general distress thus created will, to be sure, be temporary,
+because, whatever change may occur in the quantity of money in any
+community, time will adjust the derangement produced; but while that
+adjustment is progressing, all suffer more or less, and very many lose
+everything that renders life desirable. Why, then, shall we suffer a
+severe difficulty, even though it be but temporary, unless we receive
+some equivalent for it?
+
+What I have been saying as to the effect produced by a reduction of the
+quantity of money relates to the whole country. I now propose to show
+that it would produce a peculiar and permanent hardship upon the citizens
+of those States and Territories in which the public lands lie. The
+land-offices in those States and Territories, as all know, form the great
+gulf by which all, or nearly all, the money in them is swallowed up.
+When the quantity of money shall be reduced, and consequently everything
+under individual control brought down in proportion, the price of those
+lands, being fixed by law, will remain as now. Of necessity it will
+follow that the produce or labor that now raises money sufficient to
+purchase eighty acres will then raise but sufficient to purchase forty,
+or perhaps not that much; and this difficulty and hardship will last as
+long, in some degree, as any portion of these lands shall remain
+undisposed of. Knowing, as I well do, the difficulty that poor people
+now encounter in procuring homes, I hesitate not to say that when the
+price of the public lands shall be doubled or trebled, or, which is the
+same thing, produce and labor cut down to one half or one third of their
+present prices, it will be little less than impossible for them to
+procure those homes at all....
+
+Well, then, what did become of him? (Postmaster General Barry) Why, the
+President immediately expressed his high disapprobation of his almost
+unequaled incapacity and corruption by appointing him to a foreign
+mission, with a salary and outfit of $18,000 a year! The party now
+attempt to throw Barry off, and to avoid the responsibility of his sins.
+Did not the President indorse those sins when, on the very heel of their
+commission, he appointed their author to the very highest and most
+honorable office in his gift, and which is but a single step behind the
+very goal of American political ambition?
+
+I return to another of Mr. Douglas's excuses for the expenditures of
+1838, at the same time announcing the pleasing intelligence that this is
+the last one. He says that ten millions of that year's expenditure was a
+contingent appropriation, to prosecute an anticipated war with Great
+Britain on the Maine boundary question. Few words will settle this.
+First, that the ten millions appropriated was not made till 1839, and
+consequently could not have been expended in 1838; second, although it
+was appropriated, it has never been expended at all. Those who heard Mr.
+Douglas recollect that he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression
+of pity for me. "Now he's got me," thought I. But when he went on to
+say that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of the
+French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions had
+been for the post-office, which I knew to be untrue; that ten millions
+had been for the Maine boundary war, which I not only knew to be untrue,
+but supremely ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough
+to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to
+go unexposed,--I readily consented that, on the score both of veracity
+and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or I were the more
+deserving of the world's contempt.
+
+Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party and
+the Whigs is that, although the former sometimes err in practice, they
+are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in
+principle; and, better to impress this proposition, he uses a figurative
+expression in these words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but
+they are sound in the head and the heart." The first branch of the
+figure--that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel--I admit
+is not merely figuratively, but literally true. Who that looks but for a
+moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their
+hundreds of others, scampering away with the public money to Texas, to
+Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find
+refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly
+affected in their heels with a species of "running itch"? It seems that
+this malady of their heels operates on these sound-headed and
+honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the comic song
+did on its owner: which, when he had once got started on it, the more he
+tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing
+this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems too
+strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier, who was always
+boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably
+retreated without orders at the first charge of an engagement, being
+asked by his captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I have as brave a
+heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever danger
+approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it." So with Mr.
+Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their hand for the most
+laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but
+before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally "vulnerable
+heels" will run away with them.
+
+Seriously this proposition of Mr. Lamborn is nothing more or less than a
+request that his party may be tried by their professions instead of their
+practices. Perhaps no position that the party assumes is more liable to
+or more deserving of exposure than this very modest request; and nothing
+but the unwarrantable length to which I have already extended these
+remarks forbids me now attempting to expose it. For the reason given, I
+pass it by.
+
+I shall advert to but one more point. Mr. Lamborn refers to the late
+elections in the States, and from their results confidently predicts that
+every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next
+Presidential election. Address that argument to cowards and to knaves;
+with the free and the brave it will effect nothing. It may be true; if
+it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours
+may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was
+the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great
+volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that
+reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a
+current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over
+the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed
+no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons
+on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly
+taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with the
+hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all
+may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
+The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us
+from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
+If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions
+not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate
+the cause of my country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing
+up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
+Here, without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the
+face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem
+it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks
+with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none falter
+who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall
+fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to
+our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that
+the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in
+disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in
+defending.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN T. STUART.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, December 23, 1839.
+DEAR STUART:
+
+Dr. Henry will write you all the political news. I write this about
+some little matters of business. You recollect you told me you had drawn
+the Chicago Masark money, and sent it to the claimants. A hawk-billed
+Yankee is here besetting me at every turn I take, saying that Robert
+Kinzie never received the eighty dollars to which he was entitled. Can
+you tell me anything about the matter? Again, old Mr. Wright, who lives
+up South Fork somewhere, is teasing me continually about some deeds which
+he says he left with you, but which I can find nothing of. Can you tell
+me where they are? The Legislature is in session and has suffered the
+bank to forfeit its charter without benefit of clergy. There seems to be
+little disposition to resuscitate it.
+
+Whenever a letter comes from you to Mrs.____________ I carry it to her,
+and then I see Betty; she is a tolerable nice "fellow" now. Maybe I will
+write again when I get more time.
+
+Your friend as ever, A. LINCOLN
+
+P. S.--The Democratic giant is here, but he is not much worth talking
+about. A.L.
+
+
+
+
+1840
+CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.
+
+Confidential.
+
+January [1?], 1840.
+
+To MESSRS ________
+
+GENTLEMEN:--In obedience to a resolution of the Whig State convention, we
+have appointed you the Central Whig Committee of your county. The trust
+confided to you will be one of watchfulness and labor; but we hope the
+glory of having contributed to the overthrow of the corrupt powers that
+now control our beloved country will be a sufficient reward for the time
+and labor you will devote to it. Our Whig brethren throughout the Union
+have met in convention, and after due deliberation and mutual concessions
+have elected candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency not only
+worthy of our cause, but worthy of the support of every true patriot who
+would have our country redeemed, and her institutions honestly and
+faithfully administered. To overthrow the trained bands that are opposed
+to us whose salaried officers are ever on the watch, and whose misguided
+followers are ever ready to obey their smallest commands, every Whig must
+not only know his duty, but must firmly resolve, whatever of time and
+labor it may cost, boldly and faithfully to do it. Our intention is to
+organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls
+in the coming Presidential contest. We cannot do this, however, without
+your co-operation; and as we do our duty, so we shall expect you to do
+yours. After due deliberation, the following is the plan of
+organization, and the duties required of each county committee:
+
+(1) To divide their county into small districts, and to appoint in each a
+subcommittee, whose duty it shall be to make a perfect list of all the
+voters in their respective districts, and to ascertain with certainty for
+whom they will vote. If they meet with men who are doubtful as to the
+man they will support, such voters should be designated in separate
+lines, with the name of the man they will probably support.
+
+(2) It will be the duty of said subcommittee to keep a constant watch on
+the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those
+in whom they have the most confidence, and also to place in their hands
+such documents as will enlighten and influence them.
+
+(3) It will also be their duty to report to you, at least once a month,
+the progress they are making, and on election days see that every Whig is
+brought to the polls.
+
+(4) The subcommittees should be appointed immediately; and by the last of
+April, at least, they should make their first report.
+
+(5) On the first of each month hereafter we shall expect to hear from
+you. After the first report of your subcommittees, unless there should
+be found a great many doubtful voters, you can tell pretty accurately the
+manner in which your county will vote. In each of your letters to us, you
+will state the number of certain votes both for and against us, as well
+as the number of doubtful votes, with your opinion of the manner in which
+they will be cast.
+
+(6) When we have heard from all the counties, we shall be able to tell
+with similar accuracy the political complexion of the State. This
+information will be forwarded to you as soon as received.
+
+(7) Inclosed is a prospectus for a newspaper to be continued until after
+the Presidential election. It will be superintended by ourselves, and
+every Whig in the State must take it. It will be published so low that
+every one can afford it. You must raise a fund and forward us for extra
+copies,--every county ought to send--fifty or one hundred dollars,--and
+the copies will be forwarded to you for distribution among our political
+opponents. The paper will be devoted exclusively to the great cause in
+which we are engaged. Procure subscriptions, and forward them to us
+immediately.
+
+(8) Immediately after any election in your county, you must inform us of
+its results; and as early as possible after any general election we will
+give you the like information.
+
+(9) A senator in Congress is to be elected by our next Legislature. Let
+no local interests divide you, but select candidates that can succeed.
+
+(10) Our plan of operations will of course be concealed from every one
+except our good friends who of right ought to know them.
+
+Trusting much in our good cause, the strength of our candidates, and the
+determination of the Whigs everywhere to do their duty, we go to the work
+of organization in this State confident of success. We have the numbers,
+and if properly organized and exerted, with the gallant Harrison at our
+head, we shall meet our foes and conquer them in all parts of the Union.
+
+Address your letters to Dr. A. G. Henry, R. F, Barrett; A. Lincoln, E. D.
+Baker, J. F. Speed.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN T. STUART.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, March 1, 1840
+DEAR STUART:
+
+I have never seen the prospects of our party so bright in these parts as
+they are now. We shall carry this county by a larger majority than we
+did in 1836, when you ran against May. I do not think my prospects,
+individually, are very flattering, for I think it probable I shall not be
+permitted to be a candidate; but the party ticket will succeed
+triumphantly. Subscriptions to the "Old Soldier" pour in without
+abatement. This morning I took from the post office a letter from Dubois
+enclosing the names of sixty subscribers, and on carrying it to Francis I
+found he had received one hundred and forty more from other quarters by
+the same day's mail. That is but an average specimen of every day's
+receipts. Yesterday Douglas, having chosen to consider himself insulted
+by something in the Journal, undertook to cane Francis in the street.
+Francis caught him by the hair and jammed him back against a market cart
+where the matter ended by Francis being pulled away from him. The whole
+affair was so ludicrous that Francis and everybody else (Douglass
+excepted) have been laughing about it ever since.
+
+I send you the names of some of the V.B. men who have come out for
+Harrison about town, and suggest that you send them some documents.
+
+Moses Coffman (he let us appoint him a delegate yesterday), Aaron
+Coffman, George Gregory, H. M. Briggs, Johnson (at Birchall's
+Bookstore), Michael Glyn, Armstrong (not Hosea nor Hugh, but a
+carpenter), Thomas Hunter, Moses Pileher (he was always a Whig and
+deserves attention), Matthew Crowder Jr., Greenberry Smith; John Fagan,
+George Fagan, William Fagan (these three fell out with us about Early,
+and are doubtful now), John M. Cartmel, Noah Rickard, John Rickard,
+Walter Marsh.
+
+The foregoing should be addressed at Springfield.
+
+Also send some to Solomon Miller and John Auth at Salisbury. Also to
+Charles Harper, Samuel Harper, and B. C. Harper, and T. J. Scroggins,
+John Scroggins at Pulaski, Logan County.
+
+Speed says he wrote you what Jo Smith said about you as he passed here.
+We will procure the names of some of his people here, and send them to
+you before long. Speed also says you must not fail to send us the New
+York Journal he wrote for some time since.
+
+Evan Butler is jealous that you never send your compliments to him. You
+must not neglect him next time.
+
+Your friend, as ever, A. LINCOLN
+
+
+
+
+RESOLUTION IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.
+
+November 28, 1840.
+
+In the Illinois House of Representatives, November 28, 1840, Mr. Lincoln
+offered the following:
+
+Resolved, That so much of the governor's message as relates to fraudulent
+voting, and other fraudulent practices at elections, be referred to the
+Committee on Elections, with instructions to said committee to prepare
+and report to the House a bill for such an act as may in their judgment
+afford the greatest possible protection of the elective franchise against
+all frauds of all sorts whatever.
+
+
+
+
+RESOLUTION IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.
+
+December 2, 1840.
+
+Resolved, That the Committee on Education be instructed to inquire into
+the expediency of providing by law for the examination as to the
+qualification of persons offering themselves as school teachers, that no
+teacher shall receive any part of the public school fund who shall not
+have successfully passed such examination, and that they report by bill
+or otherwise.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.
+
+December 4, 1840
+
+In the House of Representatives, Illinois, December 4, 1840, on
+presentation of a report respecting petition of H. N. Purple, claiming
+the seat of Mr. Phelps from Peoria, Mr. Lincoln moved that the House
+resolve itself into Committee of the Whole on the question, and take it
+up immediately. Mr. Lincoln considered the question of the highest
+importance whether an individual had a right to sit in this House or not.
+The course he should propose would be to take up the evidence and decide
+upon the facts seriatim.
+
+Mr. Drummond wanted time; they could not decide in the heat of debate,
+etc.
+
+Mr. Lincoln thought that the question had better be gone into now. In
+courts of law jurors were required to decide on evidence, without
+previous study or examination. They were required to know nothing of the
+subject until the evidence was laid before them for their immediate
+decision. He thought that the heat of party would be augmented by delay.
+
+The Speaker called Mr. Lincoln to order as being irrelevant; no mention
+had been made of party heat.
+
+Mr. Drummond said he had only spoken of debate. Mr. Lincoln asked what
+caused the heat, if it was not party? Mr. Lincoln concluded by urging
+that the question would be decided now better than hereafter, and he
+thought with less heat and excitement.
+
+(Further debate, in which Lincoln participated.)
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.
+
+December 4, 1840.
+
+In the Illinois House of Representatives, December 4, 1840, House in
+Committee of the Whole on the bill providing for payment of interest on
+the State debt,--Mr. Lincoln moved to strike out the body and amendments
+of the bill, and insert in lieu thereof an amendment which in substance
+was that the governor be authorized to issue bonds for the payment of the
+interest; that these be called "interest bonds"; that the taxes accruing
+on Congress lands as they become taxable be irrevocably set aside and
+devoted as a fund to the payment of the interest bonds. Mr. Lincoln went
+into the reasons which appeared to him to render this plan preferable to
+that of hypothecating the State bonds. By this course we could get along
+till the next meeting of the Legislature, which was of great importance.
+To the objection which might be urged that these interest bonds could not
+be cashed, he replied that if our other bonds could, much more could
+these, which offered a perfect security, a fund being irrevocably set
+aside to provide for their redemption. To another objection, that we
+should be paying compound interest, he would reply that the rapid growth
+and increase of our resources was in so great a ratio as to outstrip the
+difficulty; that his object was to do the best that could be done in the
+present emergency. All agreed that the faith of the State must be
+preserved; this plan appeared to him preferable to a hypothecation of
+bonds, which would have to be redeemed and the interest paid. How this
+was to be done, he could not see; therefore he had, after turning the
+matter over in every way, devised this measure, which would carry us on
+till the next Legislature.
+
+(Mr. Lincoln spoke at some length, advocating his measure.)
+
+Lincoln advocated his measure, December 11, 1840.
+
+December 12, 1840, he had thought some permanent provision ought to be
+made for the bonds to be hypothecated, but was satisfied taxation and
+revenue could not be connected with it now.
+
+
+
+
+1841
+TO JOHN T. STUART--ON DEPRESSION
+
+SPRINGFIELD, Jan 23, 1841
+
+DEAR STUART: I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were
+equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one
+cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I
+awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must
+die or be better, as it appears to me.... I fear I shall be unable to
+attend any business here, and a change of scene might help me. If I
+could be myself, I would rather remain at home with Judge Logan. I can
+write no more.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE.
+
+January 23, 1841
+
+In the House of Representatives January 23, 1841, while discussing the
+continuation of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, Mr. Moore was afraid the
+holders of the "scrip" would lose.
+
+Mr. Napier thought there was no danger of that; and Mr. Lincoln said he
+had not examined to see what amount of scrip would probably be needed.
+The principal point in his mind was this, that nobody was obliged to take
+these certificates. It is altogether voluntary on their part, and if
+they apprehend it will fall in their hands they will not take it.
+Further the loss, if any there be, will fall on the citizens of that
+section of the country.
+
+This scrip is not going to circulate over an extensive range of country,
+but will be confined chiefly to the vicinity of the canal. Now, we find
+the representatives of that section of the country are all in favor of
+the bill.
+
+When we propose to protect their interests, they say to us: Leave us to
+take care of ourselves; we are willing to run the risk. And this is
+reasonable; we must suppose they are competent to protect their own
+interests, and it is only fair to let them do it.
+
+
+
+
+CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.
+
+February 9, 1841.
+
+Appeal to the People of the State of Illinois.
+
+FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When the General Assembly, now about adjourning,
+assembled in November last, from the bankrupt state of the public
+treasury, the pecuniary embarrassments prevailing in every department of
+society, the dilapidated state of the public works, and the impending
+danger of the degradation of the State, you had a right to expect that
+your representatives would lose no time in devising and adopting measures
+to avert threatened calamities, alleviate the distresses of the people,
+and allay the fearful apprehensions in regard to the future prosperity of
+the State. It was not expected by you that the spirit of party would
+take the lead in the councils of the State, and make every interest bend
+to its demands. Nor was it expected that any party would assume to
+itself the entire control of legislation, and convert the means and
+offices of the State, and the substance of the people, into aliment for
+party subsistence. Neither could it have been expected by you that party
+spirit, however strong its desires and unreasonable its demands, would
+have passed the sanctuary of the Constitution, and entered with its
+unhallowed and hideous form into the formation of the judiciary system.
+
+At the early period of the session, measures were adopted by the dominant
+party to take possession of the State, to fill all public offices with
+party men, and make every measure affecting the interests of the people
+and the credit of the State operate in furtherance of their party views.
+The merits of men and measures therefore became the subject of discussion
+in caucus, instead of the halls of legislation, and decisions there made
+by a minority of the Legislature have been executed and carried into
+effect by the force of party discipline, without any regard whatever to
+the rights of the people or the interests of the State. The Supreme
+Court of the State was organized, and judges appointed, according to the
+provisions of the Constitution, in 1824. The people have never
+complained of the organization of that court; no attempt has ever before
+been made to change that department. Respect for public opinion, and
+regard for the rights and liberties of the people, have hitherto
+restrained the spirit of party from attacks upon the independence and
+integrity of the judiciary. The same judges have continued in office
+since 1824; their decisions have not been the subject of complaint among
+the people; the integrity and honesty of the court have not been
+questioned, and it has never been supposed that the court has ever
+permitted party prejudice or party considerations to operate upon their
+decisions. The court was made to consist of four judges, and by the
+Constitution two form a quorum for the transaction of business. With
+this tribunal, thus constituted, the people have been satisfied for near
+sixteen years. The same law which organized the Supreme Court in 1824
+also established and organized circuit courts to be held in each county
+in the State, and five circuit judges were appointed to hold those
+courts. In 1826 the Legislature abolished these circuit courts, repealed
+the judges out of office, and required the judges of the Supreme Court to
+hold the circuit courts. The reasons assigned for this change were,
+first, that the business of the country could be better attended to by
+the four judges of the Supreme Court than by the two sets of judges; and,
+second, the state of the public treasury forbade the employment of
+unnecessary officers. In 1828 a circuit was established north of the
+Illinois River, in order to meet the wants of the people, and a circuit
+judge was appointed to hold the courts in that circuit.
+
+In 1834 the circuit-court system was again established throughout the
+State, circuit judges appointed to hold the courts, and the judges of the
+Supreme Court were relieved from the performance of circuit court duties.
+The change was recommended by the then acting governor of the State,
+General W. L. D. Ewing, in the following terms:
+
+"The augmented population of the State, the multiplied number of
+organized counties, as well as the increase of business in all, has long
+since convinced every one conversant with this department of our
+government of the indispensable necessity of an alteration in our
+judiciary system, and the subject is therefore recommended to the earnest
+patriotic consideration of the Legislature. The present system has never
+been exempt from serious and weighty objections. The idea of appealing
+from the circuit court to the same judges in the Supreme Court is
+recommended by little hopes of redress to the injured party below. The
+duties of the circuit, too, it may be added, consume one half of the
+year, leaving a small and inadequate portion of time (when that required
+for domestic purposes is deducted) to erect, in the decisions of the
+Supreme Court, a judicial monument of legal learning and research, which
+the talent and ability of the court might otherwise be entirely competent
+to."
+
+With this organization of circuit courts the people have never
+complained. The only complaints which we have heard have come from
+circuits which were so large that the judges could not dispose of the
+business, and the circuits in which Judges Pearson and Ralston lately
+presided.
+
+Whilst the honor and credit of the State demanded legislation upon the
+subject of the public debt, the canal, the unfinished public works, and
+the embarrassments of the people, the judiciary stood upon a basis which
+required no change--no legislative action. Yet the party in power,
+neglecting every interest requiring legislative action, and wholly
+disregarding the rights, wishes, and interests of the people, has, for
+the unholy purpose of providing places for its partisans and supplying
+them with large salaries, disorganized that department of the government.
+Provision is made for the election of five party judges of the Supreme
+Court, the proscription of four circuit judges, and the appointment of
+party clerks in more than half the counties of the State. Men professing
+respect for public opinion, and acknowledged to be leaders of the party,
+have avowed in the halls of legislation that the change in the judiciary
+was intended to produce political results favorable to their party and
+party friends. The immutable principles of justice are to make way for
+party interests, and the bonds of social order are to be rent in twain,
+in order that a desperate faction may be sustained at the expense of the
+people. The change proposed in the judiciary was supported upon grounds
+so destructive to the institutions of the country, and so entirely at war
+with the rights and liberties of the people, that the party could not
+secure entire unanimity in its support, three Democrats of the Senate and
+five of the House voting against the measure. They were unwilling to see
+the temples of justice and the seats of independent judges occupied by
+the tools of faction. The declarations of the party leaders, the
+selection of party men for judges, and the total disregard for the public
+will in the adoption of the measure, prove conclusively that the object
+has been not reform, but destruction; not the advancement of the highest
+interests of the State, but the predominance of party.
+
+We cannot in this manner undertake to point out all the objections to
+this party measure; we present you with those stated by the Council of
+Revision upon returning the bill, and we ask for them a candid
+consideration.
+
+Believing that the independence of the judiciary has been
+destroyed, that hereafter our courts will be independent of the
+people, and entirely dependent upon the Legislature; that our
+rights of property and liberty of conscience can no longer be
+regarded as safe from the encroachments of unconstitutional
+legislation; and knowing of no other remedy which can be adopted
+consistently with the peace and good order of society, we call
+upon you to avail yourselves of the opportunity afforded, and, at
+the next general election, vote for a convention of the people.
+
+   S. H. LITTLE,
+   E. D. BAKER,
+   J. J. HARDIN,
+   E. B. WEBS,
+   A. LINCOLN,
+   J. GILLESPIE,
+
+   Committee on behalf of the Whig members of the Legislature.
+
+
+
+
+EXTRACT FROM A PROTEST IN THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE AGAINST THE
+REORGANIZATION OF THE JUDICIARY.
+
+February 26, 1841
+
+For the reasons thus presented, and for others no less apparent, the
+undersigned cannot assent to the passage of the bill, or permit it to
+become a law, without this evidence of their disapprobation; and they now
+protest against the reorganization of the judiciary, because--(1) It
+violates the great principles of free government by subjecting the
+judiciary to the Legislature. (2) It is a fatal blow at the independence
+of the judges and the constitutional term of their office. (3) It is a
+measure not asked for, or wished for, by the people. (4) It will greatly
+increase the expense of our courts, or else greatly diminish their
+utility. (5) It will give our courts a political and partisan character,
+thereby impairing public confidence in their decisions. (6) It will
+impair our standing with other States and the world. (7)It is a party
+measure for party purposes, from which no practical good to the people
+can possibly arise, but which may be the source of immeasurable evils.
+
+The undersigned are well aware that this protest will be altogether
+unavailing with the majority of this body. The blow has already fallen,
+and we are compelled to stand by, the mournful spectators of the ruin it
+will cause.
+
+[Signed by 35 members, among whom was Abraham Lincoln.]
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--MURDER CASE
+
+SPRINGFIELD June 19, 1841.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--We have had the highest state of excitement here for a week
+past that our community has ever witnessed; and, although the public
+feeling is somewhat allayed, the curious affair which aroused it is very
+far from being even yet cleared of mystery. It would take a quire of
+paper to give you anything like a full account of it, and I therefore
+only propose a brief outline. The chief personages in the drama are
+Archibald Fisher, supposed to be murdered, and Archibald Trailor, Henry
+Trailor, and William Trailor, supposed to have murdered him. The three
+Trailors are brothers: the first, Arch., as you know, lives in town; the
+second, Henry, in Clary's Grove; and the third, William, in Warren
+County; and Fisher, the supposed murdered, being without a family, had
+made his home with William. On Saturday evening, being the 29th of May,
+Fisher and William came to Henry's in a one-horse dearborn, and there
+stayed over Sunday; and on Monday all three came to Springfield (Henry on
+horseback) and joined Archibald at Myers's, the Dutch carpenter. That
+evening at supper Fisher was missing, and so next morning some
+ineffectual search was made for him; and on Tuesday, at one o'clock P.M.,
+William and Henry started home without him. In a day or two Henry and
+one or two of his Clary-Grove neighbors came back for him again, and
+advertised his disappearance in the papers. The knowledge of the matter
+thus far had not been general, and here it dropped entirely, till about
+the 10th instant, when Keys received a letter from the postmaster in
+Warren County, that William had arrived at home, and was telling a very
+mysterious and improbable story about the disappearance of Fisher, which
+induced the community there to suppose he had been disposed of unfairly.
+Keys made this letter public, which immediately set the whole town and
+adjoining county agog. And so it has continued until yesterday. The
+mass of the people commenced a systematic search for the dead body, while
+Wickersham was despatched to arrest Henry Trailor at the Grove, and Jim
+Maxcy to Warren to arrest William. On Monday last, Henry was brought in,
+and showed an evident inclination to insinuate that he knew Fisher to be
+dead, and that Arch. and William had killed him. He said he guessed the
+body could be found in Spring Creek, between the Beardstown road and
+Hickox's mill. Away the people swept like a herd of buffalo, and cut
+down Hickox's mill-dam nolens volens, to draw the water out of the pond,
+and then went up and down and down and up the creek, fishing and raking,
+and raking and ducking and diving for two days, and, after all, no dead
+body found.
+
+In the meantime a sort of scuffling-ground had been found in the brush in
+the angle, or point, where the road leading into the woods past the
+brewery and the one leading in past the brick-yard meet. From the
+scuffle-ground was the sign of something about the size of a man having
+been dragged to the edge of the thicket, where it joined the track of
+some small-wheeled carriage drawn by one horse, as shown by the
+road-tracks. The carriage-track led off toward Spring Creek. Near this
+drag-trail Dr. Merryman found two hairs, which, after a long scientific
+examination, he pronounced to be triangular human hairs, which term, he
+says, includes within it the whiskers, the hair growing under the arms
+and on other parts of the body; and he judged that these two were of the
+whiskers, because the ends were cut, showing that they had flourished in
+the neighborhood of the razor's operations. On Thursday last Jim Maxcy
+brought in William Trailor from Warren. On the same day Arch. was
+arrested and put in jail. Yesterday (Friday) William was put upon his
+examining trial before May and Lovely. Archibald and Henry were both
+present. Lamborn prosecuted, and Logan, Baker, and your humble servant
+defended. A great many witnesses were introduced and examined, but I
+shall only mention those whose testimony seemed most important. The
+first of these was Captain Ransdell. He swore that when William and
+Henry left Springfield for home on Tuesday before mentioned they did not
+take the direct route,--which, you know, leads by the butcher shop,--but
+that they followed the street north until they got opposite, or nearly
+opposite, May's new house, after which he could not see them from where
+he stood; and it was afterwards proved that in about an hour after they
+started, they came into the street by the butcher shop from toward the
+brickyard. Dr. Merryman and others swore to what is stated about the
+scuffle-ground, drag-trail, whiskers, and carriage tracks. Henry was
+then introduced by the prosecution. He swore that when they started for
+home they went out north, as Ransdell stated, and turned down west by the
+brick-yard into the woods, and there met Archibald; that they proceeded a
+small distance farther, when he was placed as a sentinel to watch for and
+announce the approach of any one that might happen that way; that William
+and Arch. took the dearborn out of the road a small distance to the edge
+of the thicket, where they stopped, and he saw them lift the body of a
+man into it; that they then moved off with the carriage in the direction
+of Hickox's mill, and he loitered about for something like an hour, when
+William returned with the carriage, but without Arch., and said they had
+put him in a safe place; that they went somehow he did not know exactly
+how--into the road close to the brewery, and proceeded on to Clary's
+Grove. He also stated that some time during the day William told him
+that he and Arch. had killed Fisher the evening before; that the way
+they did it was by him William knocking him down with a club, and Arch.
+then choking him to death.
+
+An old man from Warren, called Dr. Gilmore, was then introduced on the
+part of the defense. He swore that he had known Fisher for several
+years; that Fisher had resided at his house a long time at each of two
+different spells--once while he built a barn for him, and once while he
+was doctored for some chronic disease; that two or three years ago Fisher
+had a serious hurt in his head by the bursting of a gun, since which he
+had been subject to continued bad health and occasional aberration of
+mind. He also stated that on last Tuesday, being the same day that Maxcy
+arrested William Trailor, he (the doctor) was from home in the early part
+of the day, and on his return, about eleven o'clock, found Fisher at his
+house in bed, and apparently very unwell; that he asked him how he came
+from Springfield; that Fisher said he had come by Peoria, and also told
+of several other places he had been at more in the direction of Peoria,
+which showed that he at the time of speaking did not know where he had
+been wandering about in a state of derangement. He further stated that
+in about two hours he received a note from one of Trailor's friends,
+advising him of his arrest, and requesting him to go on to Springfield as
+a witness, to testify as to the state of Fisher's health in former times;
+that he immediately set off, calling up two of his neighbors as company,
+and, riding all evening and all night, overtook Maxcy and William at
+Lewiston in Fulton County; that Maxcy refusing to discharge Trailor upon
+his statement, his two neighbors returned and he came on to Springfield.
+Some question being made as to whether the doctor's story was not a
+fabrication, several acquaintances of his (among whom was the same
+postmaster who wrote Keys, as before mentioned) were introduced as sort
+of compurgators, who swore that they knew the doctor to be of good
+character for truth and veracity, and generally of good character in
+every way.
+
+Here the testimony ended, and the Trailors were discharged, Arch. and
+William expressing both in word and manner their entire confidence that
+Fisher would be found alive at the doctor's by Galloway, Mallory, and
+Myers, who a day before had been despatched for that purpose; which Henry
+still protested that no power on earth could ever show Fisher alive.
+Thus stands this curious affair. When the doctor's story was first made
+public, it was amusing to scan and contemplate the countenances and hear
+the remarks of those who had been actively in search for the dead body:
+some looked quizzical, some melancholy, and some furiously angry.
+Porter, who had been very active, swore he always knew the man was not
+dead, and that he had not stirred an inch to hunt for him; Langford, who
+had taken the lead in cutting down Hickox's mill-dam, and wanted to hang
+Hickox for objecting, looked most awfully woebegone: he seemed the
+"victim of unrequited affection," as represented in the comic almanacs we
+used to laugh over; and Hart, the little drayman that hauled Molly home
+once, said it was too damned bad to have so much trouble, and no hanging
+after all.
+
+I commenced this letter on yesterday, since which I received yours of the
+13th. I stick to my promise to come to Louisville. Nothing new here
+except what I have written. I have not seen ______ since my last trip,
+and I am going out there as soon as I mail this letter.
+
+Yours forever, LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+STATEMENT ABOUT HARRY WILTON.
+
+June 25, 1841
+
+It having been charged in some of the public prints that Harry Wilton,
+late United States marshal for the district of Illinois, had used his
+office for political effect, in the appointment of deputies for the
+taking of the census for the year 1840, we, the undersigned, were called
+upon by Mr. Wilton to examine the papers in his possession relative to
+these appointments, and to ascertain therefrom the correctness or
+incorrectness of such charge. We accompanied Mr. Wilton to a room, and
+examined the matter as fully as we could with the means afforded us. The
+only sources of information bearing on the subject which were submitted
+to us were the letters, etc., recommending and opposing the various
+appointments made, and Mr. Wilton's verbal statements concerning the
+same. From these letters, etc., it appears that in some instances
+appointments were made in accordance with the recommendations of leading
+Whigs, and in opposition to those of leading Democrats; among which
+instances the appointments at Scott, Wayne, Madison, and Lawrence are the
+strongest. According to Mr. Wilton's statement of the seventy-six
+appointments we examined, fifty-four were of Democrats, eleven of Whigs,
+and eleven of unknown politics.
+
+The chief ground of complaint against Mr. Wilton, as we had understood
+it, was because of his appointment of so many Democratic candidates for
+the Legislature, thus giving them a decided advantage over their Whig
+opponents; and consequently our attention was directed rather
+particularly to that point. We found that there were many such
+appointments, among which were those in Tazewell, McLean, Iroquois,
+Coles, Menard, Wayne, Washington, Fayette, etc.; and we did not learn
+that there was one instance in which a Whig candidate for the Legislature
+had been appointed. There was no written evidence before us showing us at
+what time those appointments were made; but Mr. Wilton stated that they
+all with one exception were made before those appointed became candidates
+for the Legislature, and the letters, etc., recommending them all bear
+date before, and most of them long before, those appointed were publicly
+announced candidates.
+
+We give the foregoing naked facts and draw no conclusions from them.
+BEND. S. EDWARDS, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO MISS MARY SPEED--PRACTICAL SLAVERY
+
+BLOOMINGTON, ILL., September 27, 1841.
+
+Miss Mary Speed, Louisville, Ky.
+
+MY FRIEND: By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for
+contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A gentleman
+had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was
+taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six
+together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and
+this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient
+distance from the others, so that the negroes were strung together
+precisely like so many fish upon a trotline. In this condition they were
+being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their
+friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of
+them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery
+where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and
+unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing
+circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and
+apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had
+been sold was an overfondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost
+continually, and the others danced, sang, cracked jokes, and played
+various games with cards from day to day. How true it is that 'God
+tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in other words, that he renders
+the worst of human conditions tolerable, while he permits the best to be
+nothing better than tolerable. To return to the narrative: When we
+reached Springfield I stayed but one day, when I started on this tedious
+circuit where I now am. Do you remember my going to the city, while I
+was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it?
+Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much that about a week
+since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone, the
+consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither
+talk nor eat.
+
+Your sincere friend, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+1842
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON MARRIAGE
+
+January 30, 1842.
+
+MY DEAR SPEED:--Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude for the
+success of the enterprise you are engaged in, I adopt this as the last
+method I can adopt to aid you, in case (which God forbid!) you shall need
+any aid. I do not place what I am going to say on paper because I can
+say it better that way than I could by word of mouth, but, were I to say
+it orally before we part, most likely you would forget it at the very
+time when it might do you some good. As I think it reasonable that you
+will feel very badly some time between this and the final consummation of
+your purpose, it is intended that you shall read this just at such a
+time. Why I say it is reasonable that you will feel very badly yet, is
+because of three special causes added to the general one which I shall
+mention.
+
+The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous temperament;
+and this I say from what I have seen of you personally, and what you have
+told me concerning your mother at various times, and concerning your
+brother William at the time his wife died. The first special cause is
+your exposure to bad weather on your journey, which my experience clearly
+proves to be very severe on defective nerves. The second is the absence
+of all business and conversation of friends, which might divert your
+mind, give it occasional rest from the intensity of thought which will
+sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to the bitterness
+of death. The third is the rapid and near approach of that crisis on
+which all your thoughts and feelings concentrate.
+
+If from all these causes you shall escape and go through triumphantly,
+without another "twinge of the soul," I shall be most happily but most
+egregiously deceived. If, on the contrary, you shall, as I expect you
+will at sometime, be agonized and distressed, let me, who have some
+reason to speak with judgment on such a subject, beseech you to ascribe
+it to the causes I have mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous
+suggestion of the Devil.
+
+"But," you will say, "do not your causes apply to every one engaged in a
+like undertaking?" By no means. The particular causes, to a greater or
+less extent, perhaps do apply in all cases; but the general one,--nervous
+debility, which is the key and conductor of all the particular ones, and
+without which they would be utterly harmless,--though it does pertain to
+you, does not pertain to one in a thousand. It is out of this that the
+painful difference between you and the mass of the world springs.
+
+I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you are
+unhappy; it is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should.
+What nonsense! How came you to court her? Was it because you thought
+she deserved it, and that you had given her reason to expect it? If it
+was for that why did not the same reason make you court Ann Todd, and at
+least twenty others of whom you can think, and to whom it would apply
+with greater force than to her? Did you court her for her wealth? Why,
+you know she had none. But you say you reasoned yourself into it. What
+do you mean by that? Was it not that you found yourself unable to reason
+yourself out of it? Did you not think, and partly form the purpose, of
+courting her the first time you ever saw her or heard of her? What had
+reason to do with it at that early stage? There was nothing at that time
+for reason to work upon. Whether she was moral, amiable, sensible, or
+even of good character, you did not, nor could then know, except,
+perhaps, you might infer the last from the company you found her in.
+
+All you then did or could know of her was her personal appearance and
+deportment; and these, if they impress at all, impress the heart, and not
+the head.
+
+Say candidly, were not those heavenly black eyes the whole basis of all
+your early reasoning on the subject? After you and I had once been at
+the residence, did you not go and take me all the way to Lexington and
+back, for no other purpose but to get to see her again, on our return on
+that evening to take a trip for that express object? What earthly
+consideration would you take to find her scouting and despising you, and
+giving herself up to another? But of this you have no apprehension; and
+therefore you cannot bring it home to your feelings.
+
+I shall be so anxious about you that I shall want you to write by every
+mail.
+
+Your friend,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 3, 1842.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--Your letter of the 25th January came to hand to-day. You
+well know that I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly than I do
+yours, when I know of them; and yet I assure you I was not much hurt by
+what you wrote me of your excessively bad feeling at the time you wrote.
+Not that I am less capable of sympathizing with you now than ever, not
+that I am less your friend than ever, but because I hope and believe that
+your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must and
+will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt
+as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can once and forever
+be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty has sent
+your present affliction expressly for that object), surely nothing can
+come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery. The
+death-scenes of those we love are surely painful enough; but these we are
+prepared for and expect to see: they happen to all, and all know they
+must happen. Painful as they are, they are not an unlooked for sorrow.
+Should she, as you fear, be destined to an early grave, it is indeed a
+great consolation to know that she is so well prepared to meet it. Her
+religion, which you once disliked so much, I will venture you now prize
+most highly. But I hope your melancholy bodings as to her early death
+are not well founded. I even hope that ere this reaches you she will
+have returned with improved and still improving health, and that you will
+have met her, and forgotten the sorrows of the past in the enjoyments of
+the present. I would say more if I could, but it seems that I have said
+enough. It really appears to me that you yourself ought to rejoice, and
+not sorrow, at this indubitable evidence of your undying affection for
+her. Why, Speed, if you did not love her although you might not wish her
+death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is
+no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a
+rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know
+the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it. You
+know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite clear of "hypo" since you
+left, even better than I was along in the fall. I have seen ______ but
+once. She seemed very cheerful, and so I said nothing to her about what
+we spoke of.
+
+Old Uncle Billy Herndon is dead, and it is said this evening that Uncle
+Ben Ferguson will not live. This, I believe, is all the news, and enough
+at that unless it were better. Write me immediately on the receipt of
+this.
+
+Your friend, as ever,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON DEPRESSION
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 13, 1842.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 1st instant came to hand three or four days
+ago. When this shall reach you, you will have been Fanny's husband
+several days. You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting; that I
+will never cease while I know how to do anything. But you will always
+hereafter be on ground that I have never occupied, and consequently, if
+advice were needed, I might advise wrong. I do fondly hope, however,
+that you will never again need any comfort from abroad. But should I be
+mistaken in this, should excessive pleasure still be accompanied with a
+painful counterpart at times, still let me urge you, as I have ever done,
+to remember, in the depth and even agony of despondency, that very
+shortly you are to feel well again. I am now fully convinced that you
+love her as ardently as you are capable of loving. Your ever being happy
+in her presence, and your intense anxiety about her health, if there were
+nothing else, would place this beyond all dispute in my mind. I incline
+to think it probable that your nerves will fail you occasionally for a
+while; but once you get them firmly guarded now that trouble is over
+forever. I think, if I were you, in case my mind were not exactly right,
+I would avoid being idle. I would immediately engage in some business,
+or go to making preparations for it, which would be the same thing. If
+you went through the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure
+not to excite alarm in any present, you are safe beyond question, and in
+two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men.
+
+I would desire you to give my particular respects to Fanny; but perhaps
+you will not wish her to know you have received this, lest she should
+desire to see it. Make her write me an answer to my last letter to her;
+at any rate I would set great value upon a note or letter from her.
+Write me whenever you have leisure. Yours forever, A. LINCOLN. P. S.--I
+have been quite a man since you left.
+
+
+
+
+TO G. B. SHELEDY.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Feb. 16, 1842.
+G. B. SHELEDY, ESQ.:
+
+Yours of the 10th is duly received. Judge Logan and myself are doing
+business together now, and we are willing to attend to your cases as you
+propose. As to the terms, we are willing to attend each case you prepare
+and send us for $10 (when there shall be no opposition) to be sent in
+advance, or you to know that it is safe. It takes $5.75 of cost to start
+upon, that is, $1.75 to clerk, and $2 to each of two publishers of
+papers. Judge Logan thinks it will take the balance of $20 to carry a
+case through. This must be advanced from time to time as the services are
+performed, as the officers will not act without. I do not know whether
+you can be admitted an attorney of the Federal court in your absence or
+not; nor is it material, as the business can be done in our names.
+
+Thinking it may aid you a little, I send you one of our blank forms of
+Petitions. It, you will see, is framed to be sworn to before the Federal
+court clerk, and, in your cases, will have [to] be so far changed as to
+be sworn to before the clerk of your circuit court; and his certificate
+must be accompanied with his official seal. The schedules, too, must be
+attended to. Be sure that they contain the creditors' names, their
+residences, the amounts due each, the debtors' names, their residences,
+and the amounts they owe, also all property and where located.
+
+Also be sure that the schedules are all signed by the applicants as well
+as the Petition. Publication will have to be made here in one paper, and
+in one nearest the residence of the applicant. Write us in each case
+where the last advertisement is to be sent, whether to you or to what
+paper.
+
+I believe I have now said everything that can be of any advantage. Your
+friend as ever, A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO GEORGE E. PICKETT--ADVICE TO YOUTH
+
+February 22, 1842.
+
+I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad
+memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your
+truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are. Notwithstanding
+this copy-book preamble, my boy, I am inclined to suggest a little
+prudence on your part. You see I have a congenital aversion to failure,
+and the sudden announcement to your Uncle Andrew of the success of your
+"lamp rubbing" might possibly prevent your passing the severe physical
+examination to which you will be subjected in order to enter the Military
+Academy. You see I should like to have a perfect soldier credited to
+dear old Illinois--no broken bones, scalp wounds, etc. So I think it
+might be wise to hand this letter from me in to your good uncle through
+his room-window after he has had a comfortable dinner, and watch its
+effect from the top of the pigeon-house.
+
+I have just told the folks here in Springfield on this 111th anniversary
+of the birth of him whose name, mightiest in the cause of civil liberty,
+still mightiest in the cause of moral reformation, we mention in solemn
+awe, in naked, deathless splendor, that the one victory we can ever call
+complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or
+one drunkard on the face of God's green earth. Recruit for this victory.
+
+Now, boy, on your march, don't you go and forget the old maxim that "one
+drop of honey catches more flies than a half-gallon of gall." Load your
+musket with this maxim, and smoke it in your pipe.
+
+
+
+
+ADDRESS BEFORE THE SPRINGFIELD WASHINGTONIAN
+TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 22, 1842.
+
+Although the temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years,
+it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a degree of
+success hitherto unparalleled.
+
+The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of
+hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed
+from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active, and powerful
+chieftain, going forth "conquering and to conquer." The citadels of his
+great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temple and
+his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been
+performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are
+daily desecrated and deserted. The triumph of the conqueror's fame is
+sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and
+calling millions to his standard at a blast.
+
+For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. That that success
+is so much greater now than heretofore is doubtless owing to rational
+causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do well to inquire
+what those causes are.
+
+The warfare heretofore waged against the demon intemperance has somehow
+or other been erroneous. Either the champions engaged or the tactics
+they adopted have not been the most proper. These champions for the most
+part have been preachers, lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and
+the mass of mankind there is a want of approachability, if the term be
+admissible, partially, at least, fatal to their success. They are
+supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very
+persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.
+
+And again, it is so common and so easy to ascribe motives to men of these
+classes other than those they profess to act upon. The preacher, it is
+said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union
+of the Church and State; the lawyer from his pride and vanity of hearing
+himself speak; and the hired agent for his salary. But when one who has
+long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have
+bound him, and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his right
+mind," a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up, with
+tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured,
+now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving
+children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with
+woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and
+a renewed affection; and how easily it is all done, once it is resolved
+to be done; how simple his language! there is a logic and an eloquence in
+it that few with human feelings can resist. They cannot say that he
+desires a union of Church and State, for he is not a church member; they
+cannot say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor
+shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks
+for pay, for he receives none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity
+in any way be doubted, or his sympathy for those he would persuade to
+imitate his example be denied.
+
+In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of champions that
+our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had the
+old-school champions themselves been of the most wise selecting, was
+their system of tactics the most judicious? It seems to me it was not.
+Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged
+in. This I think was both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic,
+because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything;
+still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business;
+and least of all where such driving is to be submitted to at the expense
+of pecuniary interest or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and
+drinker were incessantly told not in accents of entreaty and persuasion,
+diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother, but in the
+thundering tones of anathema and denunciation with which the lordly judge
+often groups together all the crimes of the felon's life, and thrusts
+them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him that they
+were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that
+they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers
+and murderers that infest the earth; that their houses were the workshops
+of the devil; and that their persons should be shunned by all the good
+and virtuous, as moral pestilences--I say, when they were told all this,
+and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow to acknowledge
+the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their
+denouncers in a hue and cry against themselves.
+
+To have expected them to do otherwise than they did to have expected them
+not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination with crimination,
+and anathema with anathema--was to expect a reversal of human nature,
+which is God's decree and can never be reversed.
+
+When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind,
+unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true
+maxim that "a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."
+So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him
+that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches
+his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason;
+and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in
+convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that
+cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his
+judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned
+and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues
+to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself,
+transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than
+steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than herculean force
+and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to penetrate
+the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must
+he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best
+interests.
+
+On this point the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance advocates
+of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and persuade are
+their old friends and companions. They know they are not demons, nor
+even the worst of men; they know that generally they are kind, generous,
+and charitable even beyond the example of their more staid and sober
+neighbors. They are practical philanthropists; and they glow with a
+generous and brotherly zeal that mere theorizers are incapable of
+feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts entirely; and out
+of the abundance of their hearts their tongues give utterance; "love
+through all their actions runs, and all their words are mild." In this
+spirit they speak and act, and in the same they are heard and regarded.
+And when such is the temper of the advocate, and such of the audience, no
+good cause can be unsuccessful. But I have said that denunciations
+against dramsellers and dram-drinkers are unjust, as well as impolitic.
+Let us see. I have not inquired at what period of time the use of
+intoxicating liquors commenced; nor is it important to know. It is
+sufficient that, to all of us who now inhabit the world, the practice of
+drinking them is just as old as the world itself that is, we have seen
+the one just as long as we have seen the other. When all such of us as
+have now reached the years of maturity first opened our eyes upon the
+stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor recognized by everybody,
+used by everybody, repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the
+first draught of the infant and the last draught of the dying man. From
+the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless
+loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians proscribed it in this, that,
+and the other disease; government provided it for soldiers and sailors;
+and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or "hoedown," anywhere about
+without it was positively insufferable. So, too, it was everywhere a
+respectable article of manufacture and merchandise. The making of it was
+regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he who could make most was the
+most enterprising and respectable. Large and small manufactories of it
+were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods of their owners
+were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town; boats bore it from
+clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation to nation; and
+merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with precisely the
+same feelings on the part of the seller, buyer, and bystander as are felt
+at the selling and buying of ploughs, beef, bacon, or any other of the
+real necessaries of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated
+but recognized and adopted its use.
+
+It is true that even then it was known and acknowledged that many were
+greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the injury arose from the
+use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing. The victims
+of it were to be pitied and compassionated, just as are the heirs of
+consumption and other hereditary diseases. Their failing was treated as
+a misfortune, and not as a crime, or even as a disgrace. If, then, what
+I have been saying is true, is it wonderful that some should think and
+act now as all thought and acted twenty years ago? and is it just to
+assail, condemn, or despise them for doing so? The universal sense of
+mankind on any subject is an argument, or at least an influence, not
+easily overcome. The success of the argument in favor of the existence
+of an overruling Providence mainly depends upon that sense; and men ought
+not in justice to be denounced for yielding to it in any case, or giving
+it up slowly, especially when they are backed by interest, fixed habits,
+or burning appetites.
+
+Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers fell, was
+the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and
+therefore must be turned adrift and damned without remedy in order that
+the grace of temperance might abound, to the temperate then, and to all
+mankind some hundreds of years thereafter. There is in this some thing
+so repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and
+feelingless, that it, never did nor ever can enlist the enthusiasm of a
+popular cause. We could not love the man who taught it we could not hear
+him with patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it, the
+generous man could not adopt it--it could not mix with his blood. It
+looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers
+overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded
+shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the
+benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too remote
+in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced
+to labor exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically.
+--Posterity has done nothing for us; and, theorize on it as we may,
+practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think
+we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.
+
+What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit to ask or to expect a
+whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of
+others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of
+which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal
+welfare at no more distant day! Great distance in either time or space
+has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
+Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead
+and gone are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less in
+the cases of others. Still, in addition to this there is something so
+ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to
+render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into
+ridicule. "Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if you
+don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment." "Be the powers, if
+ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist."
+
+By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the habitual drunkard to
+hopeless ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more enlarged philanthropy;
+they go for present as well as future good. They labor for all now
+living, as well as hereafter to live. They teach hope to all-despair
+to none. As applying to their cause, they deny the doctrine of
+unpardonable sin; as in Christianity it is taught, so in this they
+teach--"While--While the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may
+return." And, what is a matter of more profound congratulation, they, by
+experiment upon experiment and example upon example, prove the maxim to
+be no less true in the one case than in the other. On every hand we
+behold those who but yesterday were the chief of sinners, now the chief
+apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by sevens,
+by legions; and their unfortunate victims, like the poor possessed who
+were redeemed from their long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are
+publishing to the ends of the earth how great things have been done for
+them.
+
+To these new champions and this new system of tactics our late success is
+mainly owing, and to them we must mainly look for the final consummation.
+The ball is now rolling gloriously on, and none are so able as they to
+increase its speed and its bulk, to add to its momentum and its
+magnitude--even though unlearned in letters, for this task none are so
+well educated. To fit them for this work they have been taught in the
+true school. They have been in that gulf from which they would teach
+others the means of escape. They have passed that prison wall which
+others have long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to
+weigh opinions with them as to the mode of passing?
+
+But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who have suffered by
+intemperance personally, and have reformed, are the most powerful and
+efficient instruments to push the reformation to ultimate success, it
+does not follow that those who have not suffered have no part left them
+to perform. Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a
+total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems to me
+not now an open question. Three fourths of mankind confess the
+affirmative with their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge
+it in their hearts.
+
+Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what good the good of the
+whole demands? Shall he who cannot do much be for that reason excused if
+he do nothing? "But," says one, "what good can I do by signing the
+pledge? I never drank, even without signing." This question has already
+been asked and answered more than a million of times. Let it be answered
+once more. For the man suddenly or in any other way to break off from
+the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of years and
+until his appetite for them has grown ten or a hundredfold stronger and
+more craving than any natural appetite can be, requires a most powerful
+moral effort. In such an undertaking he needs every moral support and
+influence that can possibly be brought to his aid and thrown around him.
+And not only so, but every moral prop should be taken from whatever
+argument might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. When he
+casts his eyes around him, he should be able to see all that he respects,
+all that he admires, all that he loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him
+onward, and none beckoning him back to his former miserable "wallowing in
+the mire."
+
+But it is said by some that men will think and act for themselves; that
+none will disuse spirits or anything else because his neighbors do; and
+that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us
+examine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this position most
+stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and
+sit during the sermon with his wife's bonnet upon his head? Not a
+trifle, I'll venture. And why not? There would be nothing irreligious
+in it, nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable--then why not? Is it not
+because there would be something egregiously unfashionable in it? Then
+it is the influence of fashion; and what is the influence of fashion but
+the influence that other people's actions have on our actions--the strong
+inclination each of us feels to do as we see all our neighbors do? Nor
+is the influence of fashion confined to any particular thing or class of
+things; it is just as strong on one subject as another. Let us make it as
+unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance cause as for
+husbands to wear their wives' bonnets to church, and instances will be
+just as rare in the one case as the other.
+
+"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall not acknowledge
+ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkard's society, whatever our
+influence might be." Surely no Christian will adhere to this objection.
+If they believe as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to take on
+himself the form of sinful man, and as such to die an ignominious death
+for their sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely
+lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps eternal, salvation of
+a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their fellow-creatures. Nor is
+the condescension very great. In my judgment such of us as have never
+fallen victims have been spared more by the absence of appetite than from
+any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe
+if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts
+will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There
+seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to
+fall into this vice--the demon of intemperance ever seems to have
+delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of
+us but can call to mind some relative, more promising in youth than all
+his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems
+to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to
+slay, if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now
+be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest all can give aid
+that will; and who shall be excused that can and will not? Far around as
+human breath has ever blown he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons,
+and our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the
+living everywhere we cry, "Come sound the moral trump, that these may
+rise and stand up an exceeding great army." "Come from the four winds, O
+breath! and breathe upon these slain that they may live." If the
+relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount
+of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then
+indeed will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen.
+
+Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud. It has given
+us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other nation
+of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long-mooted
+problem as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the
+germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the
+universal liberty of mankind. But, with all these glorious results,
+past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth
+famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the
+orphan's cry and the widow's wail continued to break the sad silence that
+ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the
+blessings it bought.
+
+Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a stronger
+bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed; in
+it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By
+it no Orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it none wounded in
+feeling, none injured in interest; even the drammaker and dram-seller
+will have glided into other occupations so gradually as never to have
+felt the change, and will stand ready to join all others in the universal
+song of gladness. And what a noble ally this to the cause of political
+freedom, with such an aid its march cannot fail to be on and on, till
+every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching
+draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day when-all appetites controlled,
+all poisons subdued, all matter subjected-mind, all-conquering mind,
+shall live and move, the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation!
+Hail, fall of fury! Reign of reason, all hail!
+
+And when the victory shall be complete, when there shall be neither a
+slave nor a drunkard on the earth, how proud the title of that land which
+may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those
+revolutions that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly
+distinguished that people who shall have planted and nurtured to maturity
+both the political and moral freedom of their species.
+
+This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birthday of
+Washington; we are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the
+mightiest name of earth long since mightiest in the cause of civil
+liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is
+expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to the
+name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn
+awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it
+shining on.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, February 25, 1842.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 16th instant, announcing that Miss Fanny and
+you are "no more twain, but one flesh," reached me this morning. I have
+no way of telling you how much happiness I wish you both, though I
+believe you both can conceive it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you
+now: you will be so exclusively concerned for one another, that I shall
+be forgotten entirely. My acquaintance with Miss Fanny (I call her this,
+lest you should think I am speaking of your mother) was too short for me
+to reasonably hope to long be remembered by her; and still I am sure I
+shall not forget her soon. Try if you cannot remind her of that debt she
+owes me--and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her paying it.
+
+I regret to learn that you have resolved to not return to Illinois. I
+shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be
+arranged in this world! If we have no friends, we have no pleasure; and
+if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the
+loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here; but I own I have
+no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times more
+sacred than you can owe to others, and in that light let them be
+respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to remain
+with her relatives and friends. As to friends, however, she could not
+need them anywhere: she would have them in abundance here.
+
+Give my kind remembrance to Mr. Williamson and his family, particularly
+Miss Elizabeth; also to your mother, brother, and sisters. Ask little
+Eliza Davis if she will ride to town with me if I come there again. And
+finally, give Fanny a double reciprocation of all the love she sent me.
+Write me often, and believe me
+
+Yours forever,
+LINCOLN.
+
+P. S. Poor Easthouse is gone at last. He died awhile before day this
+morning. They say he was very loath to die....
+
+L.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON MARRIAGE CONCERNS
+
+SPRINGFIELD, February 25,1842.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--I received yours of the 12th written the day you went down
+to William's place, some days since, but delayed answering it till I
+should receive the promised one of the 16th, which came last night. I
+opened the letter with intense anxiety and trepidation; so much so, that,
+although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at a
+distance of ten hours, become calm.
+
+I tell you, Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar) are
+all the worst sort of nonsense. I fancied, from the time I received your
+letter of Saturday, that the one of Wednesday was never to come, and yet
+it did come, and what is more, it is perfectly clear, both from its tone
+and handwriting, that you were much happier, or, if you think the term
+preferable, less miserable, when you wrote it than when you wrote the
+last one before. You had so obviously improved at the very time I so
+much fancied you would have grown worse. You say that something
+indescribably horrible and alarming still haunts you. You will not say
+that three months from now, I will venture. When your nerves once get
+steady now, the whole trouble will be over forever. Nor should you
+become impatient at their being even very slow in becoming steady. Again
+you say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed so
+much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare swear it
+will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt
+that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of
+Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize. Far short
+of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them than
+that same black-eyed Fanny. If you could but contemplate her through my
+imagination, it would appear ridiculous to you that any one should for a
+moment think of being unhappy with her. My old father used to have a
+saying that "If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter"; and it
+occurs to me that if the bargain you have just closed can possibly be
+called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for applying that
+maxim to which my fancy can by any effort picture.
+
+I write another letter, enclosing this, which you can show her, if she
+desires it. I do this because she would think strangely, perhaps, should
+you tell her that you received no letters from me, or, telling her you
+do, refuse to let her see them. I close this, entertaining the confident
+hope that every successive letter I shall have from you (which I here
+pray may not be few, nor far between) may show you possessing a more
+steady hand and cheerful heart than the last preceding it. As ever, your
+friend,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, March 27, 1842
+
+DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 10th instant was received three or four days
+since. You know I am sincere when I tell you the pleasure its contents
+gave me was, and is, inexpressible. As to your farm matter, I have no
+sympathy with you. I have no farm, nor ever expect to have, and
+consequently have not studied the subject enough to be much interested
+with it. I can only say that I am glad you are satisfied and pleased
+with it. But on that other subject, to me of the most intense interest
+whether in joy or sorrow, I never had the power to withhold my sympathy
+from you. It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to hear you
+say you are "far happier than you ever expected to be." That much I know
+is enough. I know you too well to suppose your expectations were not, at
+least, sometimes extravagant, and if the reality exceeds them all, I say,
+Enough, dear Lord. I am not going beyond the truth when I tell you that
+the short space it took me to read your last letter gave me more pleasure
+than the total sum of all I have enjoyed since the fatal 1st of January,
+1841. Since then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy, but
+for the never-absent idea that there is one still unhappy whom I have
+contributed to make so. That still kills my soul. I cannot but reproach
+myself for even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise. She
+accompanied a large party on the railroad cars to Jacksonville last
+Monday, and on her return spoke, so that I heard of it, of having enjoyed
+the trip exceedingly. God be praised for that.
+
+You know with what sleepless vigilance I have watched you ever since the
+commencement of your affair; and although I am almost confident it is
+useless, I cannot forbear once more to say that I think it is even yet
+possible for your spirits to flag down and leave you miserable. If they
+should, don't fail to remember that they cannot long remain so. One
+thing I can tell you which I know you will be glad to hear, and that is
+that I have seen--and scrutinized her feelings as well as I could, and am
+fully convinced she is far happier now than she has been for the last
+fifteen months past.
+
+You will see by the last Sangamon Journal, that I made a temperance
+speech on the 22d of February, which I claim that Fanny and you shall
+read as an act of charity to me; for I cannot learn that anybody else has
+read it, or is likely to. Fortunately it is not very long, and I shall
+deem it a sufficient compliance with my request if one of you listens
+while the other reads it.
+
+As to your Lockridge matter, it is only necessary to say that there has
+been no court since you left, and that the next commences to-morrow
+morning, during which I suppose we cannot fail to get a judgment.
+
+I wish you would learn of Everett what he would take, over and above a
+discharge for all the trouble we have been at, to take his business out
+of our hands and give it to somebody else. It is impossible to collect
+money on that or any other claim here now; and although you know I am not
+a very petulant man, I declare I am almost out of patience with Mr.
+Everett's importunity. It seems like he not only writes all the letters
+he can himself, but gets everybody else in Louisville and vicinity to be
+constantly writing to us about his claim. I have always said that Mr.
+Everett is a very clever fellow, and I am very sorry he cannot be
+obliged; but it does seem to me he ought to know we are interested to
+collect his claim, and therefore would do it if we could.
+
+I am neither joking nor in a pet when I say we would thank him to
+transfer his business to some other, without any compensation for what we
+have done, provided he will see the court cost paid, for which we are
+security.
+
+The sweet violet you inclosed came safely to hand, but it was so dry, and
+mashed so flat, that it crumbled to dust at the first attempt to handle
+it. The juice that mashed out of it stained a place in the letter, which
+I mean to preserve and cherish for the sake of her who procured it to be
+sent. My renewed good wishes to her in particular, and generally to all
+such of your relations who know me.
+
+As ever,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, July 4, 1842.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 16th June was received only a day or two since.
+It was not mailed at Louisville till the 25th. You speak of the great
+time that has elapsed since I wrote you. Let me explain that. Your
+letter reached here a day or two after I started on the circuit. I was
+gone five or six weeks, so that I got the letters only a few weeks before
+Butler started to your country. I thought it scarcely worth while to
+write you the news which he could and would tell you more in detail. On
+his return he told me you would write me soon, and so I waited for your
+letter. As to my having been displeased with your advice, surely you
+know better than that. I know you do, and therefore will not labor to
+convince you. True, that subject is painful to me; but it is not your
+silence, or the silence of all the world, that can make me forget it. I
+acknowledge the correctness of your advice too; but before I resolve to
+do the one thing or the other, I must gain my confidence in my own
+ability to keep my resolves when they are made. In that ability you know
+I once prided myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem I
+lost--how and where you know too well. I have not yet regained it; and
+until I do, I cannot trust myself in any matter of much importance. I
+believe now that had you understood my case at the time as well as I
+understand yours afterward, by the aid you would have given me I should
+have sailed through clear, but that does not now afford me sufficient
+confidence to begin that or the like of that again.
+
+You make a kind acknowledgment of your obligations to me for your present
+happiness. I am pleased with that acknowledgment. But a thousand times
+more am I pleased to know that you enjoy a degree of happiness worthy of
+an acknowledgment. The truth is, I am not sure that there was any merit
+with me in the part I took in your difficulty; I was drawn to it by a
+fate. If I would I could not have done less than I did. I always was
+superstitious; I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing
+your Fanny and you together, which union I have no doubt He had
+fore-ordained. Whatever He designs He will do for me yet. "Stand still,
+and see the salvation of the Lord" is my text just now. If, as you say,
+you have told Fanny all, I should have no objection to her seeing this
+letter, but for its reference to our friend here: let her seeing it
+depend upon whether she has ever known anything of my affairs; and if she
+has not, do not let her.
+
+I do not think I can come to Kentucky this season. I am so poor and make
+so little headway in the world, that I drop back in a month of idleness
+as much as I gain in a year's sowing. I should like to visit you again.
+I should like to see that "sis" of yours that was absent when I was
+there, though I suppose she would run away again if she were to hear I
+was coming.
+
+My respects and esteem to all your friends there, and, by your
+permission, my love to your Fanny.
+
+Ever yours,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER FROM THE LOST TOWNSHIPS
+
+Article written by Lincoln for the Sangamon Journal in ridicule of James
+Shields, who, as State Auditor, had declined to receive State Bank notes
+in payment of taxes. The above letter purported to come from a poor
+widow who, though supplied with State Bank paper, could not obtain a
+receipt for her tax bill. This, and another subsequent letter by Mary
+Todd, brought about the "Lincoln-Shields Duel."
+
+
+
+
+LOST TOWNSHIPS
+
+August 27, 1842.
+
+DEAR Mr. PRINTER:
+
+I see you printed that long letter I sent you a spell ago. I 'm quite
+encouraged by it, and can't keep from writing again. I think the
+printing of my letters will be a good thing all round--it will give me
+the benefit of being known by the world, and give the world the advantage
+of knowing what's going on in the Lost Townships, and give your paper
+respectability besides. So here comes another. Yesterday afternoon I
+hurried through cleaning up the dinner dishes and stepped over to
+neighbor S______ to see if his wife Peggy was as well as mout be
+expected, and hear what they called the baby. Well, when I got there and
+just turned round the corner of his log cabin, there he was, setting on
+the doorstep reading a newspaper. "How are you, Jeff?" says I. He
+sorter started when he heard me, for he hadn't seen me before. "Why,"
+says he, "I 'm mad as the devil, Aunt 'Becca!" "What about?" says I;
+"ain't its hair the right color? None of that nonsense, Jeff; there
+ain't an honester woman in the Lost Townships than..."--"Than who?" says
+he; "what the mischief are you about?" I began to see I was running the
+wrong trail, and so says I, "Oh! nothing: I guess I was mistaken a
+little, that's all. But what is it you 're mad about?"
+
+"Why," says he, "I've been tugging ever since harvest, getting out wheat
+and hauling it to the river to raise State Bank paper enough to pay my
+tax this year and a little school debt I owe; and now, just as I 've got
+it, here I open this infernal Extra Register, expecting to find it full
+of 'Glorious Democratic Victories' and 'High Comb'd Cocks,' when, lo and
+behold! I find a set of fellows, calling themselves officers of the
+State, have forbidden the tax collectors, and school commissioners to
+receive State paper at all; and so here it is dead on my hands. I don't
+now believe all the plunder I've got will fetch ready cash enough to pay
+my taxes and that school debt."
+
+I was a good deal thunderstruck myself; for that was the first I had
+heard of the proclamation, and my old man was pretty much in the same fix
+with Jeff. We both stood a moment staring at one another without knowing
+what to say. At last says I, "Mr. S______  let me look at that paper."
+He handed it to me, when I read the proclamation over.
+
+"There now," says he, "did you ever see such a piece of impudence and
+imposition as that?" I saw Jeff was in a good tune for saying some
+ill-natured things, and so I tho't I would just argue a little on the
+contrary side, and make him rant a spell if I could. "Why," says I,
+looking as dignified and thoughtful as I could, "it seems pretty tough,
+to be sure, to have to raise silver where there's none to be raised; but
+then, you see, 'there will be danger of loss' if it ain't done."
+
+"Loss! damnation!" says he. "I defy Daniel Webster, I defy King Solomon,
+I defy the world--I defy--I defy--yes, I defy even you, Aunt 'Becca, to
+show how the people can lose anything by paying their taxes in State
+paper."
+
+"Well," says I, "you see what the officers of State say about it, and
+they are a desarnin' set of men. But," says I, "I guess you 're mistaken
+about what the proclamation says. It don't say the people will lose
+anything by the paper money being taken for taxes. It only says 'there
+will be danger of loss'; and though it is tolerable plain that the people
+can't lose by paying their taxes in something they can get easier than
+silver, instead of having to pay silver; and though it's just as plain
+that the State can't lose by taking State Bank paper, however low it may
+be, while she owes the bank more than the whole revenue, and can pay that
+paper over on her debt, dollar for dollar;--still there is danger of loss
+to the 'officers of State'; and you know, Jeff, we can't get along
+without officers of State."
+
+"Damn officers of State!" says he; "that's what Whigs are always
+hurrahing for."
+
+"Now, don't swear so, Jeff," says I, "you know I belong to the meetin',
+and swearin' hurts my feelings."
+
+"Beg pardon, Aunt 'Becca," says he; "but I do say it's enough to make Dr.
+Goddard swear, to have tax to pay in silver, for nothing only that Ford
+may get his two thousand a year, and Shields his twenty-four hundred a
+year, and Carpenter his sixteen hundred a year, and all without 'danger
+of loss' by taking it in State paper. Yes, yes: it's plain enough now
+what these officers of State mean by 'danger of loss.' Wash, I s'pose,
+actually lost fifteen hundred dollars out of the three thousand that two
+of these 'officers of State' let him steal from the treasury, by being
+compelled to take it in State paper. Wonder if we don't have a
+proclamation before long, commanding us to make up this loss to Wash in
+silver."
+
+And so he went on till his breath run out, and he had to stop. I
+couldn't think of anything to say just then, and so I begun to look over
+the paper again. "Ay! here's another proclamation, or something like
+it."
+
+"Another?" says Jeff; "and whose egg is it, pray?"
+
+I looked to the bottom of it, and read aloud, "Your obedient servant,
+James Shields, Auditor."
+
+"Aha!" says Jeff, "one of them same three fellows again. Well read it,
+and let's hear what of it."
+
+I read on till I came to where it says, "The object of this measure is to
+suspend the collection of the revenue for the current year."
+
+"Now stop, now stop!" says he; "that's a lie a'ready, and I don't want to
+hear of it."
+
+"Oh, maybe not," says I.
+
+"I say it-is-a-lie. Suspend the collection, indeed! Will the
+collectors, that have taken their oaths to make the collection, dare to
+end it? Is there anything in law requiring them to perjure themselves at
+the bidding of James Shields?
+
+"Will the greedy gullet of the penitentiary be satisfied with swallowing
+him instead of all of them, if they should venture to obey him? And
+would he not discover some 'danger of loss,' and be off about the time it
+came to taking their places?
+
+"And suppose the people attempt to suspend, by refusing to pay; what
+then? The collectors would just jerk up their horses and cows, and the
+like, and sell them to the highest bidder for silver in hand, without
+valuation or redemption. Why, Shields didn't believe that story himself;
+it was never meant for the truth. If it was true, why was it not writ
+till five days after the proclamation? Why did n't Carlin and Carpenter
+sign it as well as Shields? Answer me that, Aunt 'Becca. I say it's a
+lie, and not a well told one at that. It grins out like a copper dollar.
+Shields is a fool as well as a liar. With him truth is out of the
+question; and as for getting a good, bright, passable lie out of him, you
+might as well try to strike fire from a cake of tallow. I stick to it,
+it's all an infernal Whig lie!"
+
+"A Whig lie! Highty tighty!"
+
+"Yes, a Whig lie; and it's just like everything the cursed British Whigs
+do. First they'll do some divilment, and then they'll tell a lie to hide
+it. And they don't care how plain a lie it is; they think they can cram
+any sort of a one down the throats of the ignorant Locofocos, as they
+call the Democrats."
+
+"Why, Jeff, you 're crazy: you don't mean to say Shields is a Whig!"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Why, look here! the proclamation is in your own Democratic paper, as you
+call it."
+
+"I know it; and what of that? They only printed it to let us Democrats
+see the deviltry the Whigs are at."
+
+"Well, but Shields is the auditor of this Loco--I mean this Democratic
+State."
+
+"So he is, and Tyler appointed him to office."
+
+"Tyler appointed him?"
+
+"Yes (if you must chaw it over), Tyler appointed him; or, if it was n't
+him, it was old Granny Harrison, and that's all one. I tell you, Aunt
+'Becca, there's no mistake about his being a Whig. Why, his very looks
+shows it; everything about him shows it: if I was deaf and blind, I could
+tell him by the smell. I seed him when I was down in Springfield last
+winter. They had a sort of a gatherin' there one night among the
+grandees, they called a fair. All the gals about town was there, and all
+the handsome widows and married women, finickin' about trying to look
+like gals, tied as tight in the middle, and puffed out at both ends, like
+bundles of fodder that had n't been stacked yet, but wanted stackin'
+pretty bad. And then they had tables all around the house kivered over
+with [------] caps and pincushions and ten thousand such little
+knick-knacks, tryin' to sell 'em to the fellows that were bowin', and
+scrapin' and kungeerin' about 'em. They would n't let no Democrats in,
+for fear they'd disgust the ladies, or scare the little gals, or dirty
+the floor. I looked in at the window, and there was this same fellow
+Shields floatin' about on the air, without heft or earthly substances,
+just like a lock of cat fur where cats had been fighting.
+
+"He was paying his money to this one, and that one, and t' other one, and
+sufferin' great loss because it was n't silver instead of State paper;
+and the sweet distress he seemed to be in,--his very features, in the
+ecstatic agony of his soul, spoke audibly and distinctly, 'Dear girls, it
+is distressing, but I cannot marry you all. Too well I know how much you
+suffer; but do, do remember, it is not my fault that I am so handsome and
+so interesting.'
+
+"As this last was expressed by a most exquisite contortion of his face,
+he seized hold of one of their hands, and squeezed, and held on to it
+about a quarter of an hour. 'Oh, my good fellow!' says I to myself, 'if
+that was one of our Democratic gals in the Lost Townships, the way you 'd
+get a brass pin let into you would be about up to the head.' He a
+Democrat! Fiddlesticks! I tell you, Aunt 'Becca, he's a Whig, and no
+mistake; nobody but a Whig could make such a conceity dunce of himself."
+
+"Well," says I, "maybe he is; but, if he is, I 'm mistaken the worst
+sort. Maybe so, maybe so; but, if I am, I'll suffer by it; I'll be a
+Democrat if it turns out that Shields is a Whig, considerin' you shall be
+a Whig if he turns out a Democrat."
+
+"A bargain, by jingoes!" says he; "but how will we find out?"
+
+"Why," says I, "we'll just write and ax the printer."
+
+"Agreed again!" says he; "and by thunder! if it does turn out that
+Shields is a Democrat, I never will __________"
+
+"Jefferson! Jefferson!"
+
+"What do you want, Peggy?"
+
+"Do get through your everlasting clatter some time, and bring me a gourd
+of water; the child's been crying for a drink this livelong hour."
+
+"Let it die, then; it may as well die for water as to be taxed to death
+to fatten officers of State."
+
+Jeff run off to get the water, though, just like he hadn't been saying
+anything spiteful, for he's a raal good-hearted fellow, after all, once
+you get at the foundation of him.
+
+I walked into the house, and, "Why, Peggy," says I, "I declare we like to
+forgot you altogether."
+
+"Oh, yes," says she, "when a body can't help themselves, everybody soon
+forgets 'em; but, thank God! by day after to-morrow I shall be well
+enough to milk the cows, and pen the calves, and wring the contrary ones'
+tails for 'em, and no thanks to nobody."
+
+"Good evening, Peggy," says I, and so I sloped, for I seed she was mad at
+me for making Jeff neglect her so long.
+
+And now, Mr. Printer, will you be sure to let us know in your next paper
+whether this Shields is a Whig or a Democrat? I don't care about it for
+myself, for I know well enough how it is already; but I want to convince
+Jeff. It may do some good to let him, and others like him, know who and
+what these officers of State are. It may help to send the present
+hypocritical set to where they belong, and to fill the places they now
+disgrace with men who will do more work for less pay, and take fewer airs
+while they are doing it. It ain't sensible to think that the same men
+who get us in trouble will change their course; and yet it's pretty plain
+if some change for the better is not made, it's not long that either
+Peggy or I or any of us will have a cow left to milk, or a calf's tail to
+wring.
+
+Yours truly,
+REBECCA ____________.
+
+
+
+
+INVITATION TO HENRY CLAY.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Aug 29, 1842.
+
+HON. HENRY CLAY, Lexington, Ky.
+
+DEAR SIR:--We hear you are to visit Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 5th Of
+October next. If our information in this is correct we hope you will not
+deny us the pleasure of seeing you in our State. We are aware of the
+toil necessarily incident to a journey by one circumstanced as you are;
+but once you have embarked, as you have already determined to do, the
+toil would not be greatly augmented by extending the journey to our
+capital. The season of the year will be most favorable for good roads,
+and pleasant weather; and although we cannot but believe you would be
+highly gratified with such a visit to the prairie-land, the pleasure it
+would give us and thousands such as we is beyond all question. You have
+never visited Illinois, or at least this portion of it; and should you
+now yield to our request, we promise you such a reception as shall be
+worthy of the man on whom are now turned the fondest hopes of a great and
+suffering nation.
+
+Please inform us at the earliest convenience whether we may expect you.
+
+Very respectfully your obedient servants,
+
+   A. G. HENRY, A. T. BLEDSOE,
+   C. BIRCHALL, A. LINCOLN,
+   G. M. CABANNISS, ROB'T IRWIN,
+   P. A. SAUNDERS, J. M. ALLEN,
+   F. N. FRANCIS.
+   Executive Committee "Clay Club."
+
+(Clay's answer, September 6, 1842, declines with thanks.)
+
+
+
+
+CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT THE LINCOLN-SHIELDS DUEL.
+
+TREMONT, September 17, 1842.
+
+ABRA. LINCOLN, ESQ.:--I regret that my absence on public business
+compelled me to postpone a matter of private consideration a little
+longer than I could have desired. It will only be necessary, however, to
+account for it by informing you that I have been to Quincy on business
+that would not admit of delay. I will now state briefly the reasons of
+my troubling you with this communication, the disagreeable nature of
+which I regret, as I had hoped to avoid any difficulty with any one in
+Springfield while residing there, by endeavoring to conduct myself in
+such a way amongst both my political friends and opponents as to escape
+the necessity of any. Whilst thus abstaining from giving provocation, I
+have become the object of slander, vituperation, and personal abuse,
+which were I capable of submitting to, I would prove myself worthy of the
+whole of it.
+
+In two or three of the last numbers of the Sangamon Journal, articles of
+the most personal nature and calculated to degrade me have made their
+appearance. On inquiring, I was informed by the editor of that paper,
+through the medium of my friend General Whitesides, that you are the
+author of those articles. This information satisfies me that I have
+become by some means or other the object of your secret hostility. I
+will not take the trouble of inquiring into the reason of all this; but I
+will take the liberty of requiring a full, positive, and absolute
+retraction of all offensive allusions used by you in these
+communications, in relation to my private character and standing as a
+man, as an apology for the insults conveyed in them.
+
+This may prevent consequences which no one will regret more than myself.
+
+Your obedient servant,  JAS. SHIELDS.
+
+
+
+
+TO J. SHIELDS.
+
+TREMONT, September 17, 1842
+
+JAS. SHIELDS, ESQ.:--Your note of to-day was handed me by General
+Whitesides. In that note you say you have been informed, through the
+medium of the editor of the Journal, that I am the author of certain
+articles in that paper which you deem personally abusive of you; and
+without stopping to inquire whether I really am the author, or to point
+out what is offensive in them, you demand an unqualified retraction of
+all that is offensive, and then proceed to hint at consequences.
+
+Now, sir, there is in this so much assumption of facts and so much of
+menace as to consequences, that I cannot submit to answer that note any
+further than I have, and to add that the consequences to which I suppose
+you allude would be matter of as great regret to me as it possibly could
+to you.
+
+Respectfully,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO A. LINCOLN FROM JAS. SHIELDS
+
+TREMONT, September 17, 1842.
+
+ABRA. LINCOLN, ESQ.:--In reply to my note of this date, you intimate that
+I assume facts and menace consequences, and that you cannot submit to
+answer it further. As now, sir, you desire it, I will be a little more
+particular. The editor of the Sangamon Journal gave me to understand
+that you are the author of an article which appeared, I think, in that
+paper of the 2d September instant, headed "The Lost Townships," and
+signed Rebecca or 'Becca. I would therefore take the liberty of asking
+whether you are the author of said article, or any other over the same
+signature which has appeared in any of the late numbers of that paper.
+If so, I repeat my request of an absolute retraction of all offensive
+allusions contained therein in relation to my private character and
+standing. If you are not the author of any of these articles, your
+denial will be sufficient. I will say further, it is not my intention to
+menace, but to do myself justice.
+
+Your obedient servant, JAS. SHIELDS.
+
+
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF INSTRUCTIONS TO E. H. MERRYMAN,
+
+Lincoln's Second,
+
+September 19, 1842.
+
+In case Whitesides shall signify a wish to adjust this affair without
+further difficulty, let him know that if the present papers be withdrawn,
+and a note from Mr. Shields asking to know if I am the author of the
+articles of which he complains, and asking that I shall make him
+gentlemanly satisfaction if I am the author, and this without menace, or
+dictation as to what that satisfaction shall be, a pledge is made that
+the following answer shall be given:
+
+"I did write the 'Lost Townships' letter which appeared in the Journal of
+the 2d instant, but had no participation in any form in any other article
+alluding to you. I wrote that wholly for political effect--I had no
+intention of injuring your personal or private character or standing as a
+man or a gentleman; and I did not then think, and do not now think, that
+that article could produce or has produced that effect against you; and
+had I anticipated such an effect I would have forborne to write it. And I
+will add that your conduct toward me, so far as I know, had always been
+gentlemanly; and that I had no personal pique against you, and no cause
+for any."
+
+If this should be done, I leave it with you to arrange what shall and
+what shall not be published. If nothing like this is done, the
+preliminaries of the fight are to be--
+
+First. Weapons: Cavalry broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal
+in all respects, and such as now used by the cavalry company at
+Jacksonville.
+
+Second. Position: A plank ten feet long, and from nine to twelve inches
+broad, to be firmly fixed on edge, on the ground, as the line between us,
+which neither is to pass his foot over upon forfeit of his life. Next a
+line drawn on the ground on either side of said plank and parallel with
+it, each at the distance of the whole length of the sword and three feet
+additional from the plank; and the passing of his own such line by either
+party during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest.
+
+Third. Time: On Thursday evening at five o'clock, if you can get it so;
+but in no case to be at a greater distance of time than Friday evening at
+five o'clock.
+
+Fourth. Place: Within three miles of Alton, on the opposite side of the
+river, the particular spot to be agreed on by you.
+
+Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at liberty
+to make at your discretion; but you are in no case to swerve from these
+rules, or to pass beyond their limits.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, October 4, 1842.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--You have heard of my duel with Shields, and I have now to
+inform you that the dueling business still rages in this city. Day
+before yesterday Shields challenged Butler, who accepted, and proposed
+fighting next morning at sunrise in Bob Allen's meadow, one hundred
+yards' distance, with rifles. To this Whitesides, Shields's second, said
+"No," because of the law. Thus ended duel No. 2. Yesterday Whitesides
+chose to consider himself insulted by Dr. Merryman, so sent him a kind
+of quasi-challenge, inviting him to meet him at the Planter's House in
+St. Louis on the next Friday, to settle their difficulty. Merryman made
+me his friend, and sent Whitesides a note, inquiring to know if he meant
+his note as a challenge, and if so, that he would, according to the law
+in such case made and provided, prescribe the terms of the meeting.
+Whitesides returned for answer that if Merryman would meet him at the
+Planter's House as desired, he would challenge him. Merryman replied in
+a note that he denied Whitesides's right to dictate time and place, but
+that he (Merryman) would waive the question of time, and meet him at
+Louisiana, Missouri. Upon my presenting this note to Whitesides and
+stating verbally its contents, he declined receiving it, saying he had
+business in St. Louis, and it was as near as Louisiana. Merryman then
+directed me to notify Whitesides that he should publish the
+correspondence between them, with such comments as he thought fit. This
+I did. Thus it stood at bedtime last night. This morning Whitesides, by
+his friend Shields, is praying for a new trial, on the ground that he was
+mistaken in Merryman's proposition to meet him at Louisiana, Missouri,
+thinking it was the State of Louisiana. This Merryman hoots at, and is
+preparing his publication; while the town is in a ferment, and a street
+fight somewhat anticipated.
+
+But I began this letter not for what I have been writing, but to say
+something on that subject which you know to be of such infinite
+solicitude to me. The immense sufferings you endured from the first days
+of September till the middle of February you never tried to conceal from
+me, and I well understood. You have now been the husband of a lovely
+woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than the day you
+married her I well know, for without you could not be living. But I have
+your word for it, too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is
+manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a close question, "Are you
+now in feeling as well as judgment glad that you are married as you are?"
+From anybody but me this would be an impudent question, not to be
+tolerated; but I know you will pardon it in me. Please answer it
+quickly, as I am impatient to know. I have sent my love to your Fanny so
+often, I fear she is getting tired of it. However, I venture to tender it
+again.
+
+Yours forever,
+LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO JAMES S. IRWIN.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, November 2, 1842.
+JAS. S. IRWIN ESQ.:
+
+Owing to my absence, yours of the 22nd ult. was not received till this
+moment. Judge Logan and myself are willing to attend to any business in
+the Supreme Court you may send us. As to fees, it is impossible to
+establish a rule that will apply in all, or even a great many cases.
+We believe we are never accused of being very unreasonable in this
+particular; and we would always be easily satisfied, provided we could
+see the money--but whatever fees we earn at a distance, if not paid
+before, we have noticed, we never hear of after the work is done. We,
+therefore, are growing a little sensitive on that point.
+
+Yours etc.,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+1843
+
+RESOLUTIONS AT A WHIG MEETING AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, MARCH 1, 1843.
+
+The object of the meeting was stated by Mr. Lincoln of Springfield, who
+offered the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted:
+
+Resolved, That a tariff of duties on imported goods, producing sufficient
+revenue for the payment of the necessary expenditures of the National
+Government, and so adjusted as to protect American industry, is
+indispensably necessary to the prosperity of the American people.
+
+Resolved, That we are opposed to direct taxation for the support of the
+National Government.
+
+Resolved, That a national bank, properly restricted, is highly necessary
+and proper to the establishment and maintenance of a sound currency, and
+for the cheap and safe collection, keeping, and disbursing of the public
+revenue.
+
+Resolved, That the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the
+public lands, upon the principles of Mr. Clay's bill, accords with the
+best interests of the nation, and particularly with those of the State of
+Illinois.
+
+Resolved, That we recommend to the Whigs of each Congressional district
+of the State to nominate and support at the approaching election a
+candidate of their own principles, regardless of the chances of success.
+
+Resolved, That we recommend to the Whigs of all portions of the State to
+adopt and rigidly adhere to the convention system of nominating
+candidates.
+
+Resolved, That we recommend to the Whigs of each Congressional district
+to hold a district convention on or before the first Monday of May next,
+to be composed of a number of delegates from each county equal to double
+the n tuber of its representatives in the General Assembly, provided,
+each county shall have at least one delegate. Said delegates to be
+chosen by primary meetings of the Whigs, at such times and places as they
+in their respective counties may see fit. Said district conventions each
+to nominate one candidate for Congress, and one delegate to a national
+convention for the purpose of nominating candidates for President and
+Vice-President of the United States. The seven delegates so nominated to
+a national convention to have power to add two delegates to their own
+number, and to fill all vacancies.
+
+Resolved, That A. T. Bledsoe, S. T. Logan, and A. Lincoln be appointed a
+committee to prepare an address to the people of the State.
+
+Resolved, That N. W. Edwards, A. G. Henry, James H. Matheny, John C.
+Doremus, and James C. Conkling be appointed a Whig Central State
+Committee, with authority to fill any vacancy that may occur in the
+committee.
+
+
+
+
+CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.
+
+Address to the People of Illinois.
+
+FELLOW-CITIZENS:-By a resolution of a meeting of such of the Whigs of the
+State as are now at Springfield, we, the undersigned, were appointed to
+prepare an address to you. The performance of that task we now
+undertake.
+
+Several resolutions were adopted by the meeting; and the chief object of
+this address is to show briefly the reasons for their adoption.
+
+The first of those resolutions declares a tariff of duties upon foreign
+importations, producing sufficient revenue for the support of the General
+Government, and so adjusted as to protect American industry, to be
+indispensably necessary to the prosperity of the American people; and the
+second declares direct taxation for a national revenue to be improper.
+Those two resolutions are kindred in their nature, and therefore proper
+and convenient to be considered together. The question of protection is
+a subject entirely too broad to be crowded into a few pages only,
+together with several other subjects. On that point we therefore content
+ourselves with giving the following extracts from the writings of Mr.
+Jefferson, General Jackson, and the speech of Mr. Calhoun:
+
+"To be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate them
+ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the
+agriculturalist. The grand inquiry now is, Shall we make our own
+comforts, or go without them at the will of a foreign nation? He,
+therefore, who is now against domestic manufactures must be for reducing
+us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins
+and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of those;
+experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our
+independence as to our comfort." Letter of Mr. Jefferson to Benjamin
+Austin.
+
+"I ask, What is the real situation of the agriculturalist? Where has the
+American farmer a market for his surplus produce? Except for cotton, he
+has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove,
+when there is no market at home or abroad, that there [is] too much labor
+employed in agriculture? Common sense at once points out the remedy.
+Take from agriculture six hundred thousand men, women, and children, and
+you will at once give a market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now
+furnishes. In short, we have been too long subject to the policy of
+British merchants. It is time we should become a little more
+Americanized, and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of England,
+feed our own; or else in a short time, by continuing our present policy,
+we shall all be rendered paupers ourselves."--General Jackson's Letter
+to Dr. Coleman.
+
+"When our manufactures are grown to a certain perfection, as they soon
+will be, under the fostering care of government, the farmer will find a
+ready market for his surplus produce, and--what is of equal
+consequence--a certain and cheap supply of all he wants; his prosperity
+will diffuse itself to every class of the community." Speech of Hon. J.
+C. Calhoun on the Tariff.
+
+The question of revenue we will now briefly consider. For several years
+past the revenues of the government have been unequal to its
+expenditures, and consequently loan after loan, sometimes direct and
+sometimes indirect in form, has been resorted to. By this means a new
+national debt has been created, and is still growing on us with a
+rapidity fearful to contemplate--a rapidity only reasonably to be
+expected in time of war. This state of things has been produced by a
+prevailing unwillingness either to increase the tariff or resort to
+direct taxation. But the one or the other must come. Coming
+expenditures must be met, and the present debt must be paid; and money
+cannot always be borrowed for these objects. The system of loans is but
+temporary in its nature, and must soon explode. It is a system not only
+ruinous while it lasts, but one that must soon fail and leave us
+destitute. As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon
+finds his original means devoured by interest, and, next, no one left to
+borrow from, so must it be with a government.
+
+We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax,
+must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is now
+denied by no one. But which system shall be adopted? Some of our
+opponents, in theory, admit the propriety of a tariff sufficient for a
+revenue, but even they will not in practice vote for such a tariff; while
+others boldly advocate direct taxation. Inasmuch, therefore, as some of
+them boldly advocate direct taxation, and all the rest--or so nearly all
+as to make exceptions needless--refuse to adopt the tariff, we think it
+is doing them no injustice to class them all as advocates of direct
+taxation. Indeed, we believe they are only delaying an open avowal of
+the system till they can assure themselves that the people will tolerate
+it. Let us, then, briefly compare the two systems. The tariff is the
+cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in large parcels at a
+few commercial points, will require comparatively few officers in their
+collection; while by the direct-tax system the land must be literally
+covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of
+Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing.
+And, again, by the tariff system the whole revenue is paid by the
+consumers of foreign goods, and those chiefly the luxuries, and not the
+necessaries, of life. By this system the man who contents himself to
+live upon the products of his own country pays nothing at all. And
+surely that country is extensive enough, and its products abundant and
+varied enough, to answer all the real wants of its people. In short, by
+this system the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the wealthy
+and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring many who live at
+home, and upon home products, go entirely free. By the direct-tax system
+none can escape. However strictly the citizen may exclude from his
+premises all foreign luxuries,--fine cloths, fine silks, rich wines,
+golden chains, and diamond rings,--still, for the possession of his
+house, his barn, and his homespun, he is to be perpetually haunted and
+harassed by the tax-gatherer. With these views we leave it to be
+determined whether we or our opponents are the more truly democratic on
+the subject.
+
+The third resolution declares the necessity and propriety of a national
+bank. During the last fifty years so much has been said and written both
+as to the constitutionality and expediency of such an institution, that
+we could not hope to improve in the least on former discussions of the
+subject, were we to undertake it. We, therefore, upon the question of
+constitutionality content ourselves with remarking the facts that the
+first national bank was established chiefly by the same men who formed
+the Constitution, at a time when that instrument was but two years old,
+and receiving the sanction, as President, of the immortal Washington;
+that the second received the sanction, as President, of Mr. Madison, to
+whom common consent has awarded the proud title of "Father of the
+Constitution"; and subsequently the sanction of the Supreme Court, the
+most enlightened judicial tribunal in the world. Upon the question of
+expediency, we only ask you to examine the history of the times during
+the existence of the two banks, and compare those times with the
+miserable present.
+
+The fourth resolution declares the expediency of Mr. Clay's land bill.
+Much incomprehensible jargon is often used against the constitutionality
+of this measure. We forbear, in this place, attempting an answer to it,
+simply because, in our opinion, those who urge it are through party zeal
+resolved not to see or acknowledge the truth. The question of
+expediency, at least so far as Illinois is concerned, seems to us the
+clearest imaginable. By the bill we are to receive annually a large sum
+of money, no part of which we otherwise receive. The precise annual sum
+cannot be known in advance; it doubtless will vary in different years.
+Still it is something to know that in the last year--a year of almost
+unparalleled pecuniary pressure--it amounted to more than forty thousand
+dollars. This annual income, in the midst of our almost insupportable
+difficulties, in the days of our severest necessity, our political
+opponents are furiously resolving to take and keep from us. And for
+what? Many silly reasons are given, as is usual in cases where a single
+good one is not to be found. One is that by giving us the proceeds of
+the lands we impoverish the national treasury, and thereby render
+necessary an increase of the tariff. This may be true; but if so, the
+amount of it only is that those whose pride, whose abundance of means,
+prompt them to spurn the manufactures of our country, and to strut in
+British cloaks and coats and pantaloons, may have to pay a few cents more
+on the yard for the cloth that makes them. A terrible evil, truly, to
+the Illinois farmer, who never wore, nor ever expects to wear, a single
+yard of British goods in his whole life. Another of their reasons is
+that by the passage and continuance of Mr. Clay's bill, we prevent the
+passage of a bill which would give us more. This, if it were sound in
+itself, is waging destructive war with the former position; for if Mr.
+Clay's bill impoverishes the treasury too much, what shall be said of one
+that impoverishes it still more? But it is not sound in itself. It is
+not true that Mr. Clay's bill prevents the passage of one more favorable
+to us of the new States. Considering the strength and opposite interest
+of the old States, the wonder is that they ever permitted one to pass so
+favorable as Mr. Clay's. The last twenty-odd years' efforts to reduce
+the price of the lands, and to pass graduation bills and cession bills,
+prove the assertion to be true; and if there were no experience in
+support of it, the reason itself is plain. The States in which none, or
+few, of the public lands lie, and those consequently interested against
+parting with them except for the best price, are the majority; and a
+moment's reflection will show that they must ever continue the majority,
+because by the time one of the original new States (Ohio, for example)
+becomes populous and gets weight in Congress, the public lands in her
+limits are so nearly sold out that in every point material to this
+question she becomes an old State. She does not wish the price reduced,
+because there is none left for her citizens to buy; she does not wish
+them ceded to the States in which they lie, because they no longer lie in
+her limits, and she will get nothing by the cession. In the nature of
+things, the States interested in the reduction of price, in graduation,
+in cession, and in all similar projects, never can be the majority. Nor
+is there reason to hope that any of them can ever succeed as a Democratic
+party measure, because we have heretofore seen that party in full power,
+year after year, with many of their leaders making loud professions in
+favor of these projects, and yet doing nothing. What reason, then, is
+there to believe they will hereafter do better? In every light in which
+we can view this question, it amounts simply to this: Shall we accept our
+share of the proceeds under Mr. Clay's bill, or shall we rather reject
+that and get nothing?
+
+The fifth resolution recommends that a Whig candidate for Congress be run
+in every district, regardless of the chances of success. We are aware
+that it is sometimes a temporary gratification, when a friend cannot
+succeed, to be able to choose between opponents; but we believe that that
+gratification is the seed-time which never fails to be followed by a most
+abundant harvest of bitterness. By this policy we entangle ourselves.
+By voting for our opponents, such of us as do it in some measure estop
+ourselves to complain of their acts, however glaringly wrong we may
+believe them to be. By this policy no one portion of our friends can
+ever be certain as to what course another portion may adopt; and by this
+want of mutual and perfect understanding our political identity is
+partially frittered away and lost. And, again, those who are thus
+elected by our aid ever become our bitterest persecutors. Take a few
+prominent examples. In 1830 Reynolds was elected Governor; in 1835 we
+exerted our whole strength to elect Judge Young to the United States
+Senate, which effort, though failing, gave him the prominence that
+subsequently elected him; in 1836 General Ewing, was so elected to the
+United States Senate; and yet let us ask what three men have been more
+perseveringly vindictive in their assaults upon all our men and measures
+than they? During the last summer the whole State was covered with
+pamphlet editions of misrepresentations against us, methodized into
+chapters and verses, written by two of these same men,--Reynolds and
+Young, in which they did not stop at charging us with error merely, but
+roundly denounced us as the designing enemies of human liberty, itself.
+If it be the will of Heaven that such men shall politically live, be it
+so; but never, never again permit them to draw a particle of their
+sustenance from us.
+
+The sixth resolution recommends the adoption of the convention system for
+the nomination of candidates. This we believe to be of the very first
+importance. Whether the system is right in itself we do not stop to
+inquire; contenting ourselves with trying to show that, while our
+opponents use it, it is madness in us not to defend ourselves with it.
+Experience has shown that we cannot successfully defend ourselves without
+it. For examples, look at the elections of last year. Our candidate for
+governor, with the approbation of a large portion of the party, took the
+field without a nomination, and in open opposition to the system.
+Wherever in the counties the Whigs had held conventions and nominated
+candidates for the Legislature, the aspirants who were not nominated were
+induced to rebel against the nominations, and to become candidates, as is
+said, "on their own hook." And, go where you would into a large Whig
+county, you were sure to find the Whigs not contending shoulder to
+shoulder against the common enemy, but divided into factions, and
+fighting furiously with one another. The election came, and what was the
+result? The governor beaten, the Whig vote being decreased many
+thousands since 1840, although the Democratic vote had not increased any.
+Beaten almost everywhere for members of the Legislature,--Tazewell, with
+her four hundred Whig majority, sending a delegation half Democratic;
+Vermillion, with her five hundred, doing the same; Coles, with her four
+hundred, sending two out of three; and Morgan, with her two hundred and
+fifty, sending three out of four,--and this to say nothing of the
+numerous other less glaring examples; the whole winding up with the
+aggregate number of twenty-seven Democratic representatives sent from
+Whig counties. As to the senators, too, the result was of the same
+character. And it is most worthy to be remembered that of all the Whigs
+in the State who ran against the regular nominees, a single one only was
+elected. Although they succeeded in defeating the nominees almost by
+scores, they too were defeated, and the spoils chucklingly borne off by
+the common enemy.
+
+We do not mention the fact of many of the Whigs opposing the convention
+system heretofore for the purpose of censuring them. Far from it. We
+expressly protest against such a conclusion. We know they were
+generally, perhaps universally, as good and true Whigs as we ourselves
+claim to be.
+
+We mention it merely to draw attention to the disastrous result it
+produced, as an example forever hereafter to be avoided. That "union is
+strength" is a truth that has been known, illustrated, and declared in
+various ways and forms in all ages of the world. That great fabulist and
+philosopher Aesop illustrated it by his fable of the bundle of sticks;
+and he whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers has declared that
+"a house divided against itself cannot stand." It is to induce our
+friends to act upon this important and universally acknowledged truth
+that we urge the adoption of the convention system. Reflection will
+prove that there is no other way of practically applying it. In its
+application we know there will be incidents temporarily painful; but,
+after all, those incidents will be fewer and less intense with than
+without the system. If two friends aspire to the same office it is
+certain that both cannot succeed. Would it not, then, be much less
+painful to have the question decided by mutual friends some time before,
+than to snarl and quarrel until the day of election, and then both be
+beaten by the common enemy?
+
+Before leaving this subject, we think proper to remark that we do not
+understand the resolution as intended to recommend the application of the
+convention system to the nomination of candidates for the small offices
+no way connected with politics; though we must say we do not perceive
+that such an application of it would be wrong.
+
+The seventh resolution recommends the holding of district conventions in
+May next, for the purpose of nominating candidates for Congress. The
+propriety of this rests upon the same reasons with that of the sixth, and
+therefore needs no further discussion.
+
+The eighth and ninth also relate merely to the practical application of
+the foregoing, and therefore need no discussion.
+
+Before closing, permit us to add a few reflections on the present
+condition and future prospects of the Whig party. In almost all the
+States we have fallen into the minority, and despondency seems to prevail
+universally among us. Is there just cause for this? In 1840 we carried
+the nation by more than a hundred and forty thousand majority. Our
+opponents charged that we did it by fraudulent voting; but whatever they
+may have believed, we know the charge to be untrue. Where, now, is that
+mighty host? Have they gone over to the enemy? Let the results of the
+late elections answer. Every State which has fallen off from the Whig
+cause since 1840 has done so not by giving more Democratic votes than
+they did then, but by giving fewer Whig. Bouck, who was elected
+Democratic Governor of New York last fall by more than 15,000 majority,
+had not then as many votes as he had in 1840, when he was beaten by seven
+or eight thousand. And so has it been in all the other States which have
+fallen away from our cause. From this it is evident that tens of
+thousands in the late elections have not voted at all. Who and what are
+they? is an important question, as respects the future. They can come
+forward and give us the victory again. That all, or nearly all, of them
+are Whigs is most apparent. Our opponents, stung to madness by the
+defeat of 1840, have ever since rallied with more than their usual
+unanimity. It has not been they that have been kept from the polls.
+These facts show what the result must be, once the people again rally in
+their entire strength. Proclaim these facts, and predict this result;
+and although unthinking opponents may smile at us, the sagacious ones
+will "believe and tremble." And why shall the Whigs not all rally again?
+Are their principles less dear now than in 1840? Have any of their
+doctrines since then been discovered to be untrue? It is true, the
+victory of 1840 did not produce the happy results anticipated; but it is
+equally true, as we believe, that the unfortunate death of General
+Harrison was the cause of the failure. It was not the election of
+General Harrison that was expected to produce happy effects, but the
+measures to be adopted by his administration. By means of his death, and
+the unexpected course of his successor, those measures were never
+adopted. How could the fruits follow? The consequences we always
+predicted would follow the failure of those measures have followed, and
+are now upon us in all their horrors. By the course of Mr. Tyler the
+policy of our opponents has continued in operation, still leaving them
+with the advantage of charging all its evils upon us as the results of a
+Whig administration. Let none be deceived by this somewhat plausible,
+though entirely false charge. If they ask us for the sufficient and
+sound currency we promised, let them be answered that we only promised it
+through the medium of a national bank, which they, aided by Mr. Tyler,
+prevented our establishing. And let them be reminded, too, that their
+own policy in relation to the currency has all the time been, and still
+is, in full operation. Let us then again come forth in our might, and by
+a second victory accomplish that which death prevented in the first. We
+can do it. When did the Whigs ever fail if they were fully aroused and
+united? Even in single States, under such circumstances, defeat seldom
+overtakes them. Call to mind the contested elections within the last few
+years, and particularly those of Moore and Letcher from Kentucky, Newland
+and Graham from North Carolina, and the famous New Jersey case. In all
+these districts Locofocoism had stalked omnipotent before; but when the
+whole people were aroused by its enormities on those occasions, they put
+it down, never to rise again.
+
+We declare it to be our solemn conviction, that the Whigs are always a
+majority of this nation; and that to make them always successful needs
+but to get them all to the polls and to vote unitedly. This is the great
+desideratum. Let us make every effort to attain it. At every election,
+let every Whig act as though he knew the result to depend upon his
+action. In the great contest of 1840 some more than twenty one hundred
+thousand votes were cast, and so surely as there shall be that many, with
+the ordinary increase added, cast in 1844 that surely will a Whig be
+elected President of the United States.
+
+A. LINCOLN. S. T. LOGAN. A. T. BLEDSOE.
+
+March 4, 1843.
+
+
+
+
+TO JOHN BENNETT.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, March 7, 1843.
+FRIEND BENNETT:
+
+Your letter of this day was handed me by Mr. Miles. It is too late now
+to effect the object you desire. On yesterday morning the most of the
+Whig members from this district got together and agreed to hold the
+convention at Tremont in Tazewell County. I am sorry to hear that any of
+the Whigs of your county, or indeed of any county, should longer be
+against conventions. On last Wednesday evening a meeting of all the
+Whigs then here from all parts of the State was held, and the question of
+the propriety of conventions was brought up and fully discussed, and at
+the end of the discussion a resolution recommending the system of
+conventions to all the Whigs of the State was unanimously adopted. Other
+resolutions were also passed, all of which will appear in the next
+Journal. The meeting also appointed a committee to draft an address to
+the people of the State, which address will also appear in the next
+journal.
+
+In it you will find a brief argument in favor of conventions--and
+although I wrote it myself I will say to you that it is conclusive upon
+the point and can not be reasonably answered. The right way for you to do
+is hold your meeting and appoint delegates any how, and if there be any
+who will not take part, let it be so. The matter will work so well this
+time that even they who now oppose will come in next time.
+
+The convention is to be held at Tremont on the 5th of April and according
+to the rule we have adopted your county is to have delegates--being
+double your representation.
+
+If there be any good Whig who is disposed to stick out against
+conventions get him at least to read the arguement in their favor in the
+address.
+
+Yours as ever,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+JOSHUA F. SPEED.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, March 24, 1843.
+
+DEAR SPEED:--We had a meeting of the Whigs of the county here on last
+Monday to appoint delegates to a district convention; and Baker beat me,
+and got the delegation instructed to go for him. The meeting, in spite of
+my attempt to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates; so that in
+getting Baker the nomination I shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow
+who is made a groomsman to a man that has cut him out and is marrying his
+own dear "gal." About the prospects of your having a namesake at our
+town, can't say exactly yet.
+
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+TO MARTIN M. MORRIS.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, ILL., March 26, 1843.
+FRIEND MORRIS:
+
+Your letter of the a 3 d, was received on yesterday morning, and for
+which (instead of an excuse, which you thought proper to ask) I tender
+you my sincere thanks. It is truly gratifying to me to learn that, while
+the people of Sangamon have cast me off, my old friends of Menard, who
+have known me longest and best, stick to me. It would astonish, if not
+amuse, the older citizens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless,
+uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per
+month) have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and
+aristocratic family distinction. Yet so, chiefly, it was. There was,
+too, the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is
+a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose, with few exceptions got all
+that church. My wife has some relations in the Presbyterian churches,
+and some with the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would
+tell, I was set down as either the one or the other, while it was
+everywhere contended that no Christian ought to go for me, because I
+belonged to no church, was suspected of being a deist, and had talked
+about fighting a duel. With all these things, Baker, of course, had
+nothing to do. Nor do I complain of them. As to his own church going
+for him, I think that was right enough, and as to the influences I have
+spoken of in the other, though they were very strong, it would be grossly
+untrue and unjust to charge that they acted upon them in a body or were
+very near so. I only mean that those influences levied a tax of a
+considerable per cent. upon my strength throughout the religious
+controversy. But enough of this.
+
+You say that in choosing a candidate for Congress you have an equal right
+with Sangamon, and in this you are undoubtedly correct. In agreeing to
+withdraw if the Whigs of Sangamon should go against me, I did not mean
+that they alone were worth consulting, but that if she, with her heavy
+delegation, should be against me, it would be impossible for me to
+succeed, and therefore I had as well decline. And in relation to Menard
+having rights, permit me fully to recognize them, and to express the
+opinion that, if she and Mason act circumspectly, they will in the
+convention be able so far to enforce their rights as to decide absolutely
+which one of the candidates shall be successful. Let me show the reason
+of this. Hardin, or some other Morgan candidate, will get Putnam,
+Marshall, Woodford, Tazewell, and Logan--making sixteen. Then you and
+Mason, having three, can give the victory to either side.
+
+You say you shall instruct your delegates for me, unless I object. I
+certainly shall not object. That would be too pleasant a compliment for
+me to tread in the dust. And besides, if anything should happen (which,
+however, is not probable) by which Baker should be thrown out of the
+fight, I would be at liberty to accept the nomination if I could get it.
+I do, however, feel myself bound not to hinder him in any way from
+getting the nomination. I should despise myself were I to attempt it. I
+think, then, it would be proper for your meeting to appoint three
+delegates and to instruct them to go for some one as the first choice,
+some one else as a second, and perhaps some one as a third; and if in
+those instructions I were named as the first choice, it would gratify me
+very much. If you wish to hold the balance of power, it is important for
+you to attend to and secure the vote of Mason also: You should be sure to
+have men appointed delegates that you know you can safely confide in. If
+yourself and James Short were appointed from your county, all would be
+safe; but whether Jim's woman affair a year ago might not be in the way
+of his appointment is a question. I don't know whether you know it, but
+I know him to be as honorable a man as there is in the world. You have
+my permission, and even request, to show this letter to Short; but to no
+one else, unless it be a very particular friend who you know will not
+speak of it.
+
+Yours as ever,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+P. S Will you write me again?
+
+
+
+
+TO MARTIN M. MORRIS.
+
+April 14, 1843.
+FRIEND MORRIS:
+
+I have heard it intimated that Baker has been attempting to get you or
+Miles, or both of you, to violate the instructions of the meeting that
+appointed you, and to go for him. I have insisted, and still insist,
+that this cannot be true. Surely Baker would not do the like. As well
+might Hardin ask me to vote for him in the convention. Again, it is said
+there will be an attempt to get up instructions in your county requiring
+you to go for Baker. This is all wrong. Upon the same rule, Why might
+not I fly from the decision against me in Sangamon, and get up
+instructions to their delegates to go for me? There are at least twelve
+hundred Whigs in the county that took no part, and yet I would as soon
+put my head in the fire as to attempt it. Besides, if any one should get
+the nomination by such extraordinary means, all harmony in the district
+would inevitably be lost. Honest Whigs (and very nearly all of them are
+honest) would not quietly abide such enormities. I repeat, such an
+attempt on Baker's part cannot be true. Write me at Springfield how the
+matter is. Don't show or speak of this letter.
+
+A. LINCOLN
+
+
+
+
+TO GEN. J. J. HARDIN.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, May 11, 1843.
+FRIEND HARDIN:
+
+Butler informs me that he received a letter from you, in which you
+expressed some doubt whether the Whigs of Sangamon will support you
+cordially. You may, at once, dismiss all fears on that subject. We have
+already resolved to make a particular effort to give you the very largest
+majority possible in our county. From this, no Whig of the county
+dissents. We have many objects for doing it. We make it a matter of
+honor and pride to do it; we do it because we love the Whig cause; we do
+it because we like you personally; and last, we wish to convince you that
+we do not bear that hatred to Morgan County that you people have so long
+seemed to imagine. You will see by the journals of this week that we
+propose, upon pain of losing a barbecue, to give you twice as great a
+majority in this county as you shall receive in your own. I got up the
+proposal.
+
+Who of the five appointed is to write the district address? I did the
+labor of writing one address this year, and got thunder for my reward.
+Nothing new here.
+
+Yours as ever,
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+P. S.--I wish you would measure one of the largest of those swords we
+took to Alton and write me the length of it, from tip of the point to tip
+of the hilt, in feet and inches. I have a dispute about the length.
+
+A. L. A. L.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Writings of Abraham Lincoln,
+Volume 1, by Abraham Lincoln
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LINCOLN ***
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