Chapter XV: Appendix: From the New York Evening Post, August 16, 1867

HIS LECTURE AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE IN 1860.

_To the Editor of The Evening Post_:

In October, 1859, Messrs. Joseph H. Richards, J. M. Pettingill, and S. W. Tubbs called on me at the office of the Ohio State Agency, 25 William Street, and requested me to write to the Hon. Thomas Corwin of Ohio, and the Hon. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, and invite them to lecture in a course of lectures these young gentlemen proposed for the winter in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn.

I wrote the letters as requested, and offered as compensation for each lecture, as I was authorized, the sum of $200. The proposition to lecture was accepted by Messrs. Corwin and Lincoln. Mr. Corwin delivered his lecture in Plymouth Church, as he was on his way to Washington to attend Congress; Mr. Lincoln could not lecture until late in the season, and the proposition was agreed to by the gentlemen named, and accepted by Mr. Lincoln, as the following letter will show:

“DANVILLE, ILLINOIS, _November 13, 1859_.

“JAMES A. BRIGGS, ESQ.

“DEAR SIR: Yours of the 1st inst., closing with my
proposition for compromise, was duly received. I will be on
hand, and in due time will notify you of the exact day. I
believe, after all, I shall make a political speech of it. You
have no objection?

“I would like to know in advance, whether I am also to speak in
New York.

“Very, very glad your election went right.

“Yours truly,

“A. LINCOLN.

“P.S.--I am here at court, but my address is still at
Springfield, Ill.”

In due time Mr. Lincoln wrote me that he would deliver the lecture, a political one, on the evening of the 27th of February, 1860. This was rather late in the season for a lecture, and the young gentlemen who were responsible were doubtful about its success, as the expenses were large. It was stipulated that the lecture was to be in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn; I requested and urged that the lecture should be delivered at the Cooper Institute. They were fearful it would not pay expenses--$350. I thought it would.

In order to relieve Messrs. Richards, Pettingill, and Tubbs of all responsibility, I called upon some of the officers of “The Young Men’s Republican Union,” and proposed that they should take Mr. Lincoln, and that the lecture should be delivered under their auspices. They respectfully declined.

I next called upon Mr. Simeon Draper, then president of “The Draper Republican Union Club of New York,” and proposed to him that his “Union” take Mr. Lincoln and the lecture, and assume the responsibility of the expenses. Mr. Draper and his friends declined, and Mr. Lincoln was left on the hands of “the original Jacobs.”

After considerable discussion, it was agreed on the part of the young gentlemen that the lecture should be delivered in the Cooper Institute, if I would agree to share one-fourth of the expenses, if the sale of the tickets (25 cents) for the lecture did not meet the outlay. To this I assented, and the lecture was advertised to be delivered in the Cooper Institute, on the evening of the 27th of February.

Mr. Lincoln read the notice of the lecture in the papers, and, without any knowledge of the arrangement, was somewhat surprised to learn that he was first to make his appearance before a New York audience, instead of a Plymouth Church audience. A notice of the proposed lecture appeared in the New York papers, and the _Times_ spoke of him “as a lawyer who had some local reputation in Illinois.”

At my personal solicitation MR. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT presided as chairman of the meeting, and introduced Mr. Lincoln for the first time to a New York audience.

The lecture was a wonderful success; it has become a part of the history of the country. Its remarkable ability was everywhere acknowledged, and after the 27th of February the name of Mr. Lincoln was a familiar one to all the people of the East. After Mr. Lincoln closed his lecture, Mr. David Dudley Field, Mr. James W. Nye, Mr. Horace Greeley, and myself were called out by the audience and made short speeches. I remember of saying then, “One of three gentlemen will be our standard-bearer in the presidential contest of this year: the distinguished Senator of New York, Mr. Seward; the late able and accomplished Governor of Ohio, Mr. Chase; or the ‘Unknown Knight’ who entered the political lists against the Bois Guilbert of Democracy on the prairies of Illinois in 1858, and unhorsed him--Abraham Lincoln.” Some friends joked me after the meeting as not being a “good prophet.” The lecture was over--all the expenses were paid, and I was handed by the gentlemen interested the sum of $4.25 as my share of the profits, as they would have called on me if there had been a deficiency in the receipts to meet the expenses.

Immediately after the lecture, Mr. Lincoln went to Exeter, N. H., to visit his son Robert, then at school there, and I sent him a check for $200. Mr. Tubbs informed me a few weeks ago that after the check was paid at the Park Bank he tore it up; but that he would give $200 for the check if it could be restored with the endorsement of “A. Lincoln,” as it was made payable to the order of Mr. Lincoln.

After the return of Mr. Lincoln to New York from the East, where he had made several speeches, he said to me, “I have seen what all the New York papers said about that thing of mine in the Cooper Institute, with the exception of the New York _Evening Post_, and I would like to know what Mr. Bryant thought of it;” and he then added, “It is worth a visit from Springfield, Illinois, to New York to make the acquaintance of such a man as WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.” At Mr. Lincoln’s request, I sent him a copy of the _Evening Post_ with a notice of his lecture.

On returning from Mr. Beecher’s Church, on Sunday, in company with Mr. Lincoln, as we were passing the post-office, I remarked to him, “Mr. Lincoln, I wish you would take particular notice of what a dark and dismal place we have here for a post-office, and I do it for this reason: I think your chance for being the next President is equal to that of any man in the country. When you are President will you recommend an appropriation of a million of dollars for a suitable location for a post-office in this city?” With a significant gesture Mr. Lincoln remarked, “I will make a note of that.”

On going up Broadway with Mr. Lincoln in the evening, from the Astor House, to hear the Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin, he said to me, “When I was East several gentlemen made about the same remarks to me that you did to-day about the Presidency; they thought my chances were about equal to the best.”

JAMES A. BRIGGS.

N.B.--The writers of Mr. Lincoln’s Biography have things considerably mixed about Mr. Lincoln going to the Five Points Mission School, at the Five Points, in New York, that he found his way there alone, etc., etc. Mr. Lincoln went there in the afternoon with his old friend Hiram Barney, Esq., and after Mr. B. had informed Mr. Barlow, the Superintendent, who the stranger with him was, Mr. Barlow requested Mr. Lincoln to speak to the children, which he did. I met Mr. Lincoln at Mr. Barney’s at tea, just after this pleasant, and to him strange, visit at the Five Points Mission School.

J. A. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lamon, c. i. p. 1.

[2] Addressed to J. W. Fell, March, 1872.

[3] Lamon, p. 7.

[4] In 1865, I saw many companies and a few regiments “mustered out” in Nashville, Tennessee. In the most intelligent companies, only one man in eight or nine could sign his name. Fewer still could read.--C. G. L.

[5] J. G. Holland, p. 22.

[6] J. G. Holland, “Life of Lincoln,” p. 28. The children probably slept on the earth. The writer has seen a man, owning hundreds of acres of rich bottom land, living in a log-hut, nearly such as is here described. There was only a single stool, an iron pot, a knife, and a gun in the cabin, but no bedstead, the occupant and his wife sleeping in two cavities in the dirt-floor. Such had been their home for years.

[7] Lamon, vol. i., pp. 31 and 40. Abraham’s father is said by Dennis Hanks (from whom Mr. Herndon, Lamon’s authority, derived much information) to have loved his son, but it is certain that, at the same time, he treated him very cruelly. Hanks admits that he had several times seen little Abraham knocked headlong from the fence by his father, while civilly answering questions put by travellers as to their way.

[8] W. H. Herndon, who was for many years the law-partner of Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to me, written not long after the murder of his old friend, earnestly asserted his opinion that the late President was a greater man than General Washington, founding his opinion on the greater difficulties which he subdued.--C. G. L.

[9] “Abraham’s poverty of books was the wealth of his life.”--J. G. HOLLAND.

[10] Lamon, p. 54.

[11] Holland and Lamon.

[12] _Vide_ Ripley and Dana’s “Cyclopædia;” also, article from the Boston “Commercial Advertiser,” cited by Lamon.

[13] Raymond, “Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln,” p. 25.

[14] Mr. Lincoln “spoke forgetfully” on this occasion. Owing to the drunkenness and insubordination of his men, which he could not help, he was once obliged to carry a wooden sword for two days.--Lamon, p. 104. On a previous occasion, he had been under arrest, and was deprived of _his sword_ for one day, for firing a pistol within ten steps of camp.--_Ibid._, p. 103.

[15] Holland, p. 53.

[16] Holland passes over the wisdom or unwisdom of these measures without comment. According to Ford (“History of Illinois”) and Lamon, the whole state was by them “simply bought up and bribed to support the most senseless and disastrous policy which ever crippled the energies of a growing country.” It is certain that, in any country where the internal resources are enormous and the inhabitants intelligent, enterprising, and poor, such legislation will always find favour.

[17] His biographies abound in proof of this. “He believed that a man, in order to effect anything, should work through organisations of men.”--Holland, p. 92. It is very difficult for any one not brought up in the United States to realise the degree to which this idea can influence men, and determine their whole moral nature.

[18] It is a matter of regret that, when Lincoln, long after, went to see his idol and ideal, he was greatly disappointed in him.--Holland, p. 95. Lamon denies this visit, but does not disprove it.

[19] Lamon, p. 275, says there can be no doubt that Mr. Lincoln _would_ have cheerfully made such a dishonourable and tricky agreement, but inclines to think he did not. It is very doubtful whether the compact, if it existed at all, was not made simply for the purpose of excluding the Democrats.

[20] Holland, p. 82. A picayune is six cents, or 3d.

[21] There were no free schools in South Carolina until 1852, and it was a serious crime to teach a negro to read.

[22] Arnold, “History of Lincoln,” p. 33.

[23] A law by which slaves who had escaped to free states were returned to their owners. The writer, as a boy, has seen many cruel instances of the manner in which the old slave law was carried out. But while great pains were taken to hunt down and return slaves who had escaped to free states, there was literally nothing done to return free coloured people who had been inveigled or carried by force to the South, and there sold as slaves. It was believed that, at one time, hardly a day passed during which a free black was not thus entrapped from Pennsylvania. The writer once knew, in Philadelphia, a boy of purely white blood, but of dark complexion, who narrowly escaped being kidnapped by downright violence, that he might be “sent South.” White children were commonly terrified by parents or nurses with “the kidnappers,” who would black their faces, and sell them. Even in the Northern cities, there were few grown-up negro men who had not, at one time or another, been hunted by the lower classes of whites through the streets in the most incredibly barbarous manner.

[24] Arnold, p. 95.

[25] George Bancroft, “Oration on Lincoln,” pp. 13, 14.

[26] David R. Locke, who, under the name of Petroleum V. Nasby, wrote political satires much admired by Mr. Lincoln.

[27] See Appendix.

[28] This honour had only been twice conferred before--once on Washington, and once by brevet on General W. Scott.--Badeau’s “Life of Grant.”

[29] Those who sympathised with the South were called Copperheads, after the deadly and treacherous snake of that name common in the Western and Southern United States.

[30] Sherman’s Report, 1865; also, Report of Secretary of War, 1865.

[31] Stephens’ Statement, Augusta, Georgia, “Chronicle,” June 17th, 1875. Quoted by Dr. Brockett, p. 579.

[32] It should be said that Meade, under Grant’s orders, was, however, now one of Lee’s most vigorous pursuers.

[33] _Vide_ Frank Moore’s “Rebellion Record,” 1864-5--Rumours and Incidents, p. 9.

[34] See “Trial and Sentence of Beal and Kennedy,” M’Pherson’s “Political History,” pp. 552, 553.

[35] The late Henry J. Raymond, then editor of the New York Times.

[36] “White people”--civilised, decent, kind-hearted people.

INDEX.

Abolitionism, 49, 66, 122, 126, 168.

Alabama, 145, 196.

Anti-slavery protest, 48, 50, 51;
resolutions, 59.

Baldwin, John, the smith, 27.

Barbarities, 186.

Black regiment, charge of the, 161.

Black’s (Judge) decision, 93.

Blockade declared, 108.

Booth, his plans, 221;
antecedents, 223;
death, 229.

Border ruffians and outrages, 68, 69, 71.

Buchanan, President, 92.

Bull Run, 113, 114.

Burnside, General, 142.

Cabinet, treason in the, 92.

Chancellorsville, battle of, 148.

Chattanooga, battle of, 164.

Clay, Henry, 57.

Compromises of 1826 and 1850, 66.

Confederate organisation in Europe, 117;
agents in Canada, 197;
proposals, 205.

Conspiracies, suspected, 88.

Copperheads, 96, 179;
book of, 237.

Colonisation of slaves proposed, 123.

Cost of the war, 219.

Davis, Jefferson, President of Confederacy, 94, 109;
escape of, 217.

“Dred Scott” decision, 73.

Douglas, Stephen, 47, 67, 69, 70, 74, 77, 84, 110.

Ellsworth and Winthrop, death of, 112.

Enlistment of coloured troops, 133.

Exhaustive effects of Northern incursions, 185.

Farragut, Admiral, 194.

Fox River anecdote, 95.

Fremont, 73, 169.

Gettysburg, battle of, 150.

Gloom of 1864, 179.

Grant, “Unconditional Surrender,” 137;
daring march, 157;
succession of victories, 158;
last battle, 212;
chase of Lee, 215.

Greeley, Horace, 79.

Hanks, Nancy, 9, 12, 15.

Hood, General, 188.

Hooker, General, 187.

Hicks, Governor, and Maryland, 107, 108.

Jackson, death of General Stonewall, 149.

Johnston, Mrs., Lincoln’s second mother, 18-20.

Jones of Gentryville, 26.

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 67.

Kidnapping negroes (note), 67.

Lecompton Constitution, 74.

Lincoln, Mordecai and Abraham, 10.

Lincoln, Thomas, his character, 12;
his marriage, 15.

Lincoln, Abraham, his family, 9, 10;
birth and birth-place, 9;
grandfather killed by Indians, 11;
schools, 15;
migrations, 16, 30;
hereditary traits, 13;
poverty and privations, 17;
education, 20;
death of his mother, 18;
acts as ferry-man, 25;
characteristics and habits in youth, 21, 22, 23, 25;
physical strength, 26, 33;
early literary efforts, 27;
temperance, 26;
earns a dollar, 29;
personal appearance, 31;
first public speech, 31;
splitting rails, 31;
postmaster, 43;
Black Hawk Indian war--a captain--quells a mutiny, 35-38;
love affairs, 45, 54;
entrance into political life, 41;
becomes a merchant, and studies law, 42;
surveying studies, 43;
legal experiences, 61, 62, 63;
personal popularity, 57;
elected to legislature, 44, 45, 70;
removal to Springfield, and practice of law, 53;
generosity, 57;
enters Congress--first speech, 58;
Presidential candidate, 54;
declines nomination to the Senate, 70;
“house-divided-against-itself” speech, 75;
nomination for Presidency, 79, 80, 81, 82;
lectures in New York and England, 79, 80, 81;
elected President, 85;
address at Springfield, 89;
inaugural speech, 97;
first Cabinet, 100;
wise forbearance, 103;
his mercy, 172, 175;
second election, 199;
assassination, 225;
death, 227;
funeral procession, 231;
lying in state, 231;
interment, 232;
general summary of character, 233-244;
wit and humour, 240, 241, 242.

Long Nine, the, 46, 47.

Mason and Sliddell affair, 131.

M‘Clellan, General, 115;
apathy of, 140.

Merrimac, the, 141.

Mexican war, 59.

Mexico, the French in, 167.

Nasby, Petroleum V., 236.

Negroes, reception of, 204.

Pea Ridge, battle of, 138.

Port Hudson, surrender of, 162.

Privations in the South, 185.

Proclamation of April 15, 1861, 105.

Prosperity of the North, 180.

Quantrill’s guerillas, 170.

Rebellion, breaking out of, 91, 94;
progress of, 111.

Religion and irreligion, 55, 56.

Republican party, origin of, 72.

Richmond, fall of, 213.

Riot in New York, 165.

Sanitary fairs, 182.

Secession, 86, 87, 93.

Seward, W. A., refuses to meet the Rebel Commissioners, 102.

Sherman’s march, 188, 193.

Shiloh, battle of, 138.

Slavery--slave trade, 103;
argument against, 71;
slave party, 64, 65.

Sumter, fall of Fort, 104.

Surrender of Confederate forces, 216.

Tennessee, the campaign in, 163.

Todd, Mary, 55.

Union troops attacked, 106.

Virginia’s secession, 109, 115.

War, organisation of, 113.

Wilderness, battle of the, 192.

Wilmot’s proviso, 66.