Chapter XIX (1)

IT was now but a few weeks until Mr. Lincoln was to become the constitutional ruler of one of the great nations of the earth, and to begin to expend appropriations, to wield armies, to apportion patronage, powers, offices, and honors, such as few sovereigns have ever had at command. The eyes of all mankind were bent upon him to see how he would solve a problem in statesmanship to which the philosophy of Burke and the magnanimity of Wellington might have been unequal. In the midst of a political canvass in his own State but a few years before, impressed with the gravity of the great issues which then loomed but just above the political horizon, he had been the first to announce, amid the objections and protestations of his friends and political associates, the great truth, that "a house divided against itself cannot stand;" that the perpetuity of the Union depended upon its becoming devoted either to the interests of freedom or slavery. And now, by a turn of fortune unparalleled in history, he had been chosen to preside over the interests of the nation; while, as yet unseen to him, the question that perplexed the founders of the government, which ever since had been a disturbing element in the national life, and had at last arrayed section against section, was destined to reach its final settlement through the fierce struggle of civil war. In many respects his situation was exceptionally trying. He was the first President of the United States elected by a strictly sectional vote. The party which elected him, and the parties which had been defeated, were inflamed by the heat of the canvass. The former, with faith in their principles, and a natural eagerness for the prizes now within their reach, were not disposed to compromise their first success by any lowering of their standard or any concession to the beaten; while many of the latter saw in the success of the triumphant party an attack on their most cherished rights, and refused in consequence to abide by the result of the contest. To meet so grave an exigency, Mr. Lincoln had neither precedents nor experience to guide him, nor could he turn elsewhere for greater wisdom than he possessed. The leaders of the new party were as yet untried in the great responsibilities which had fallen upon him and them. There were men among them who had earned great reputation as leaders of an opposition; but their eloquence had been expended upon a single subject of national concern. They knew how to depict the wrongs of a subject race, and also how to set forth the baleful effects of an institution like slavery on national character. But was it certain that they were equally able to govern with wisdom and prudence the mighty people whose affairs were now given to their keeping?

Until the day of his overthrow at Chicago, Mr. Seward had been the recognized chief of the party; had, like Mr. Lincoln, taught the existence of an irrepressible conflict between the North and the South, and had also inculcated the idea of a law higher than the Constitution, which was of more binding force than any human enactment, until many of his followers had come to regard the Constitution with little respect. It was this Constitution which Mr. Lincoln, having sworn to preserve, protect, and defend, was to attempt to administer to the satisfaction of the minority which had elected him, and which was alone expected to support him. To moderate the passions of his own partisans, to conciliate his opponents in the North, and divide and weaken his enemies in the South, was a task which no mere politician was likely to perform, yet one which none but the most expert of politicians and wisest of statesmen was fitted to undertake. It required moral as well as intellectual qualities of the highest order. William of Orange, with a like duty and similar difficulties, was ready at one time and another to give up the effort in despair, although aided by "the divinity that hedges round a king." Few men believed that Mr. Lincoln possessed a single qualification for his great office. His friends had indicated what they considered his chief merit, when they insisted that he was a very common, ordinary man, just like the rest of "the people,"--"Old Abe," a rail-splitter and a story-teller. They said he was good and honest and well-meaning; but they took care not to pretend that he was great. He was thoroughly convinced that there was too much truth in this view of his character. He felt deeply and keenly his lack of experience in the conduct of public affairs. He spoke then and afterwards about the duties of the Presidency with much diffidence, and said, with a story about a justice of the peace in Illinois, that they constituted his "great first case misunderstood." He had never been a ministerial or an executive officer. His most intimate friends feared that he possessed no administrative ability; and in this opinion he seems to have shared himself, at least in his calmer and more melancholy moments.

Having put his house in order, arranged all his private business, made over his interest in the practice of Lincoln & Herndon to Mr. Herndon, and requested "Billy," as a last favor, to leave his name on the old sign for four years at least, Mr. Lincoln was ready for the final departure from home and all familiar things. And this period of transition from private to public life--a period of waiting and preparing for the vast responsibilities that were to bow down his shoulders during the years to come--affords us a favorable opportunity to turn back and look at him again as his neighbors saw him from 1837 to 1861.

Mr. Lincoln was about six feet four inches high,--the length of his legs being out of all proportion to that of his body. When he sat down on a chair, he seemed no taller than an average man, measuring from the chair to the crown of his head; but his knees rose high in front, and a marble placed on the cap of one of them would roll down a steep descent to the hip. He weighed about a hundred and eighty pounds; but he was thin through the breast, narrow across the shoulders, and had the general appearance of a consumptive subject. Standing up, he stooped slightly forward; sitting down, he usually crossed his long legs, or threw them over the arms of the chair, as the most convenient mode of disposing of them. His "head was long, and tall from the base of the brain and the eyebrow;" his forehead high and narrow, but inclining backward as it rose. The diameter of his head from ear to ear was six and a half inches, and from front to back eight inches. The size of his hat was seven and an eighth. His ears were large, standing out almost at right-angles from his head; his cheek-bones high and prominent; his eyebrows heavy, and jutting forward over small, sunken blue eyes; his nose long, large, and blunt, the tip of it rather ruddy, and slightly awry toward the right-hand side; his chin, projecting far and sharp, curved upward to meet a thick, material, lower lip, which hung downward; his cheeks were flabby, and the loose skin fell in wrinkles, or folds; there was a large mole on his right cheek, and an uncommonly prominent Adam's apple on his throat; his hair was dark brown in color, stiff, unkempt, and as yet showing little or no sign of advancing age or trouble; his complexion was very dark, his skin yellow, shrivelled, and "leathery." In short, to use the language of Mr. Herndon, "he was a thin, tall, wiry, sinewy, grizzly, raw-boned man," "looking woe-struck." His countenance was haggard and careworn, exhibiting all the marks of deep and protracted suffering. Every feature of the man--the hollow eyes, with the dark rings beneath; the long, sallow, cadaverous face, intersected by those peculiar deep lines; his whole air; his walk; his long, silent reveries, broken at long intervals by sudden and startling exclamations, as if to confound an observer who might suspect the nature of his thoughts--showed he was a man of sorrows,--not sorrows of to-day or yesterday, but long-treasured and deep,--bearing with him a continual sense of weariness and pain.

He was a plain, homely, sad, weary-looking man, to whom one's heart warmed involuntarily, because he seemed at once miserable and kind.

On a winter's morning, this man could be seen wending his way to the market, with a basket on his arm, and a little boy at his side, whose small feet rattled and pattered over the ice-bound pavement, attempting to make up by the number of his short steps for the long strides of his father. The little fellow jerked at the bony hand which held his, and prattled and questioned, begged and grew petulant, in a vain effort to make his father talk to him. But the latter was probably unconscious of the other's existence, and stalked on, absorbed in his own reflections. He wore on such occasions an old gray shawl, rolled into a coil, and wrapped like a rope around his neck. The rest of his clothes were in keeping. "He did not walk cunningly,--Indian-like,--but cautiously and firmly." His tread was even and strong. He was a little pigeon-toed; and this, with another peculiarity, made his walk very singular. He set his whole foot flat on the ground, and in turn lifted it all at once,--not resting momentarily upon the toe as the foot rose, nor upon the heel as it fell. He never wore his shoes out at the heel and the toe more, as most men do, than at the middle of the sole; yet his gait was not altogether awkward, and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along thus silent, abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as curiosity: "his melancholy," in the words of Mr. Herndon, "dripped from him as he walked." If, however, he met a friend in the street, and was roused by a loud, hearty "Good-morning, Lincoln!" he would grasp the friend's hand with one or both of his own, and, with his usual expression of "Howdy, howdy," would detain him to hear a story: something reminded him of it; it happened in Indiana, and it must be told, for it was wonderfully pertinent.

After his breakfast-hour, he would appear at his office, and go about the labors of the day with all his might, displaying prodigious industry and capacity for continuous application, although he never was a fast worker. Sometimes it happened that he came without his breakfast; and then he would have in his hands a piece of cheese, or Bologna sausage, and a few crackers, bought by the way. At such times he did not speak to his partner or his friends, if any happened to be present: the tears were, perhaps, struggling into his eyes, while his pride was struggling to keep them back. Mr. Herndon knew the whole story at a glance: there was no speech between them; but neither wished the visitors to the office to witness the scene; and, therefore, Mr. Lincoln retired to the back office, while Mr. Herndon locked the front one, and walked away with the key in his pocket. In an hour or more the latter would return, and perhaps find Mr. Lincoln calm and collected; otherwise he went out again, and waited until he was so. Then the office was opened, and every thing went on as usual.

When Mr. Lincoln had a speech to write, which happened very often, he would put down each thought, as it struck him, on a small strip of paper, and, having accumulated a number of these, generally carried them in his hat or his pockets until he had the whole speech composed in this odd way, when he would sit down at his table, connect the fragments, and then write out the whole speech on consecutive sheets in a plain, legible handwriting.

His house was an ordinary two-story frame-building, with a stable and a yard: it was a bare, cheerless sort of a place. He planted no fruit or shade trees, no shrubbery or flowers. He did on one occasion set out a few rose-bushes in front of his house; but they speedily perished, or became unsightly for want of attention. Mrs. Wallace, Mrs. Lincoln's sister, undertook "to hide the nakedness" of the place by planting some flowers; but they soon withered and died. He cultivated a small garden for a single year, working in it himself; but it did not seem to prosper, and that enterprise also was abandoned. He had a horse and a cow: the one was fed and curried, and the other fed and milked, by his own hand. When at home, he chopped and sawed all the wood that was used in his house. Late one night he returned home, after an absence of a week or so. His neighbor, Webber, was in bed; but, hearing an axe in use at that unusual hour, he rose to see what it meant. The moon was high; and by its light he looked down into Lincoln's yard, and there saw him in his shirt-sleeves "cutting wood to cook his supper with." Webber turned to his watch, and saw that it was one o'clock. Besides this house and lot, and a small sum of money, Mr. Lincoln had no property, except some wild land in Iowa, entered for him under warrants, received for his service in the Black Hawk War.

Mrs. Wallace thinks "Mr. Lincoln was a domestic man by nature." He was not fond of other people's children, but was extremely fond of his own: he was patient, indulgent, and generous with them to a fault. On Sundays he often took those that were large enough, and walked with them into the country, and, giving himself up entirely to them, rambled through the green fields or the cool woods, amusing and instructing them for a whole day at a time. His method of reading is thus quaintly described. "He would read, generally aloud (couldn't read otherwise),--would read with great warmth, all funny or humorous things; read Shakspeare that way. He was a sad man, an abstracted man. He would lean back, his head against the top of a rocking-chair; sit abstracted that way for minutes,--twenty, thirty minutes,--and all at once would burst out into a joke."

Mrs. Col. Chapman, daughter of Dennis Hanks, and therefore a relative of Mr. Lincoln, made him a long visit previous to her marriage. "You ask me," says she, "how Mr. Lincoln acted at home. I can say, and that truly, he was all that a husband, father, and neighbor should be,--kind and affectionate to his wife and child ('Bob' being the only one they had when I was with them), and very pleasant to all around him. Never did I hear him utter an unkind word. For instance: one day he undertook to correct his child, and his wife was determined that he should not, and attempted to take it from him; but in this she failed. She then tried tongue-lashing, but met with the same fate; for Mr. Lincoln corrected his child as a father ought to do, in the face of his wife's anger, and that, too, without even changing his countenance or making any reply to his wife.

"His favorite way of reading, when at home, was lying down on the floor. I fancy I see him now, lying full-length in the hall of his old house reading. When not engaged reading law-books, he would read literary works, and was very fond of reading poetry, and often, when he would be, or appear to be, in deep study, commence and repeat aloud some piece that he had taken a fancy to, such as the one you already have in print, and 'The Burial of Sir John Moore,' and so on. He often told laughable jokes and stories when he thought we were looking gloomy."

Mr. Lincoln was not supremely happy in his domestic relations: the circumstances of his courtship and marriage alone made that impossible. His engagement to Miss Todd was one of the great misfortunes of his life and of hers. He realized the mistake too late; and when he was brought face to face with the lie he was about to enact, and the wrong he was about to do, both to himself and an innocent woman, he recoiled with horror and remorse. For weeks together, he was sick, deranged, and on the verge of suicide,--a heavy care to his friends, and a source of bitter mortification to the unfortunate lady, whose good fame depended, in a great part, upon his constancy. The wedding garments and the marriage feast were prepared, the very hour had come when the solemn ceremony was to be performed; and the groom failed to appear! He was no longer a free agent: he was restrained, carefully guarded, and soon after removed to a distant place, where the exciting causes of his disease would be less constant and active in their operation. He recovered slowly, and at length returned to Springfield. He spoke out his feelings frankly and truly to the one person most interested in them. But he had been, from the beginning, except in the case of Ann Rutledge, singularly inconstant and unstable in his relations with the few refined and cultivated women who had been the objects of his attention. He loved Miss Rutledge passionately, and the next year importuned Miss Owens to be his wife. Failing in his suit, he wrote an unfeeling letter about her, apparently with no earthly object but to display his levity and make them both ridiculous. He courted Miss Todd, and at the moment of success fell in love with her relative, and, between the two, went crazy, and thought of ending all his woes with a razor or a pocket-knife. It is not impossible that the feelings of such a man might have undergone another and more sudden change. Perhaps they did. At all events, he was conscientious and honorable and just. There was but one way of repairing the injury he had done Miss Todd, and he adopted it. They were married; but they understood each other, and suffered the inevitable consequences, as other people do under similar circumstances. But such troubles seldom fail to find a tongue; and it is not strange, that, in this case, neighbors and friends, and ultimately the whole country, came to know the state of things in that house. Mr. Lincoln scarcely attempted to conceal it, but talked of it with little or no reserve to his wife's relatives, as well as his own friends. Yet the gentleness and patience with which he bore this affliction from day to day, and from year to year, was enough to move the shade of Socrates. It touched his acquaintances deeply, and they gave it the widest publicity. They made no pause to inquire, to investigate, and to apportion the blame between the parties, according to their deserts. Almost ever since Mr. Lincoln's death, a portion of the press has never tired of heaping brutal reproaches upon his wife and widow; whilst a certain class of his friends thought they were honoring his memory by multiplying outrages and indignities upon her, at the very moment when she was broken by want and sorrow, defamed, defenceless, in the hands of thieves, and at the mercy of spies. If ever a woman grievously expiated an offence not her own, this woman did. In the Herndon manuscripts, there is a mass of particulars under this head; but Mr. Herndon sums them all up in a single sentence, in a letter to one of Mr. Lincoln's biographers: "All that I know ennobles both."

It would be very difficult to recite all the causes of Mr. Lincoln's melancholy disposition. That it was partly owing to physical causes there can be no doubt. Mr. Stuart says, that in some respects he was totally unlike other people, and was, in fact, a "mystery." Blue-pills were the medicinal remedy which he affected most. But whatever the history or the cause,--whether physical reasons, the absence of domestic concord, a series of painful recollections of his mother, of his father and master, of early sorrows, blows, and hardships, of Ann Rutledge and fruitless hopes, or all these combined, Mr. Lincoln was the saddest and gloomiest man of his time. "I do not think that he knew what happiness was for twenty years," says Mr. Herndon. "Terrible" is the word which all his friends use to describe him in the black mood. "It was terrible! It was terrible!" says one and another.

His mind was filled with gloomy forebodings and strong apprehensions of impending evil, mingled with extravagant visions of personal grandeur and power. His imagination painted a scene just beyond the veil of the immediate future, gilded with glory yet tarnished with blood. It was his "destiny,"--splendid but dreadful, fascinating but terrible. His case bore little resemblance to those of religious enthusiasts like Bunyan, Cowper, and others. His was more like the delusion of the fatalist, conscious of his star. At all events, he never doubted for a moment but that he was formed for "some great or miserable end." He talked about it frequently and sometimes calmly. Mr. Herndon remembers many of these conversations in their office at Springfield, and in their rides around the circuit. Mr. Lincoln said the impression had grown in him "all his life;" but Mr. Herndon thinks it was about 1840 that it took the character of a "religious conviction." He had then suffered much, and, considering his opportunities, achieved great things. He was already a leader among men, and a most brilliant career had been promised him by the prophetic enthusiasm of many friends. Thus encouraged and stimulated, and feeling himself growing gradually stronger and stronger, in the estimation of "the plain people," whose voice was more potent than all the Warwicks, his ambition painted the rainbow of glory in the sky, while his morbid melancholy supplied the clouds that were to overcast and obliterate it with the wrath and ruin of the tempest. To him it was fate, and there was no escape or defence. The presentiment never deserted him: it was as clear, as perfect, as certain, as any image conveyed by the senses. He had now entertained it so long, that it was as much a part of his nature as the consciousness of identity. All doubts had faded away, and he submitted humbly to a power which he could neither comprehend nor resist. He was to fall,--fall from a lofty place, and in the performance of a great work. The star under which he was born was at once brilliant and malignant: the horoscope was cast, fixed, irreversible; and he had no more power to alter or defeat it in the minutest particular than he had to reverse the law of gravitation.

After the election, he conceived that he would not "last" through his term of office, but had at length reached the point where the sacrifice would take place. All precautions against assassination he considered worse than useless. "If they want to kill me," said he, "there is nothing to prevent." He complained to Mr. Gillespie of the small body-guard which his counsellors had forced upon him, insisting that they were a needless encumbrance. When Mr. Gillespie urged the ease and impunity with which he might be killed, and the value of his life to the country, he said, "What is the use of putting up the _gap_ when the fence is down all around?"

"It was just after my election in 1860," said Mr. Lincoln to his secretary, John Hay, "when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great 'hurrah boys!' so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber.

"Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and, in looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass; but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time,--plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away; and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it,--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home, I told my wife about it: and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'a sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term."

In this morbid and dreamy state of mind, Mr. Lincoln passed the greater part of his life. But his "sadness, despair, gloom," Mr. Herndon says, "were not of the kind that leads a badly-balanced mind into misanthropy and universal hate and scorn. His humor would assert itself from the hell of misanthropy: it would assert its independence every third hour or day or week. His abstractedness, his continuity of thought, his despair, made him, twice in his life, for two weeks at a time, walk that narrow line that divides sanity from insanity.... This peculiarity of his nature, his humor, his wit, kept him alive in his mind.... It was those good sides of his nature that made, to him, his life bearable. Mr. Lincoln was a weak man and a strong man by turns."

Some of Mr. Lincoln's literary tastes indicated strongly his prevailing gloominess of mind. He read Byron extensively, especially "Childe Harold," "The Dream," and "Don Juan." Burns was one of his earliest favorites, although there is no evidence that he appreciated highly the best efforts of Burns. On the contrary, "Holy Willie's Prayer" was the only one of his poems which Mr. Lincoln took the trouble to memorize. He was fond of Shakspeare, especially "King Lear," and "The Merry Wives of Windsor." But whatever was suggestive of death, the grave, the sorrows of man's days on earth, charmed his disconsolate spirit, and captivated his sympathetic heart. Solemn-sounding rhymes, with no merit but the sad music of their numbers, were more enchanting to him than the loftiest songs of the masters. Of these were, "Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?" and a pretty commonplace little piece, entitled "The Inquiry." One verse of Holmes's "Last Leaf" he thought was "inexpressibly touching." This verse we give the reader:--

"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year On the tomb."

Mr. Lincoln frequently said that he lived by his humor, and would have died without it. His manner of telling a story was irresistibly comical, the fun of it dancing in his eyes and playing over every feature. His face changed in an instant: the hard lines faded out of it, and the mirth seemed to diffuse itself all over him, like a spontaneous tickle. You could see it coming long before he opened his mouth, and he began to enjoy the "point" before his eager auditors could catch the faintest glimpse of it. Telling and hearing ridiculous stories was one of his ruling passions. He would go a long way out of his road to tell a grave, sedate fellow a broad story, or to propound to him a conundrum that was not particularly remarkable for its delicacy. If he happened to hear of a man who was known to have something fresh in this line, he would hunt him up, and "swap jokes" with him. Nobody remembers the time when his fund of anecdotes was not apparently inexhaustible. It was so in Indiana; it was so in New Salem, in the Black-Hawk War, in the Legislature, in Congress, on the circuit, on the stump,--everywhere. The most trifling incident "reminded" him of a story, and that story reminded him of another, until everybody marvelled "that one small head could carry all he knew." The "good things" he said were repeated at second-hand, all over the counties through which he chanced to travel; and many, of a questionable flavor, were attributed to him, not because they were his in fact, but because they were like his. Judges, lawyers, jurors, and suitors carried home with them select budgets of his stories, to be retailed to itching ears as "Old Abe's last." When the court adjourned from village to village, the taverns and the groceries left behind were filled with the sorry echoes of his "best." He generally located his little narratives with great precision,--in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois; and if he was not personally "knowing" to the facts himself, he was intimately acquainted with a gentleman who was.

Mr. Lincoln used his stories variously,--to illustrate or convey an argument; to make his opinions clear to another, or conceal them altogether; to cut off a disagreeable conversation, or to end an unprofitable discussion; to cheer his own heart, or simply to amuse his friends. But most frequently he had a practical object in view, and employed them simply "as labor-saving contrivances."

It was Judge Davis's opinion, that Mr. Lincoln's hilarity was mainly simulated, and that "his stories and jokes were intended to whistle off sadness." "The groundwork of his social nature was sad," says Judge Scott; "but for the fact that he studiously cultivated the humorous, it would have been very sad indeed. His mirth to me always seemed to be put on, and did not properly belong there. Like a plant produced in the hot-bed, it had an unnatural and luxuriant growth."

Although Mr. Lincoln's walk among men was remarkably pure, the same cannot be said of his conversation. He was endowed by nature with a keen sense of humor, and he found great delight in indulging it. But his humor was not of a delicate quality; it was chiefly exercised in hearing and telling stories of the grosser sort. In this tendency he was restrained by no presence and no occasion. It was his opinion that the finest wit and humor, the best jokes and anecdotes, emanated from the lower orders of the country people. It was from this source that he had acquired his peculiar tastes and his store of materials. The associations which began with the early days of Dennis Hanks continued through his life at New Salem and his career at the Illinois Bar, and did not desert him when, later in life, he arrived at the highest dignities.

Mr. Lincoln indulged in no sensual excesses: he ate moderately, and drank temperately when he drank at all. For many years he was an ardent agitator against the use of intoxicating beverages, and made speeches, far and near, in favor of total abstinence. Some of them were printed; and of one he was not a little proud. He abstained himself, not so much upon principle, as because of a total lack of appetite. He had no taste for spirituous liquors; and, when he took them, it was a punishment to him, not an indulgence. But he disliked sumptuary laws, and would not prescribe by statute what other men should eat or drink. When the temperance men ran to the Legislature to invoke the power of the State, his voice--the most eloquent among them--was silent. He did not oppose them, but quietly withdrew from the cause, and left others to manage it. In 1854 he was induced to join the order called Sons of Temperance, but never attended a single meeting after the one at which he was initiated.

Morbid, moody, meditative, thinking much of himself and the things pertaining to himself, regarding other men as instruments furnished to his hand for the accomplishment of views which he knew were important to him, and, therefore, considered important to the public, Mr. Lincoln was a man apart from the rest of his kind, unsocial, cold, impassive,--neither a "good hater" nor a fond friend. He unbent in the society of those who gave him new ideas, who listened to and admired him, whose attachment might be useful, or whose conversation amused him. He seemed to make boon-companions of the coarsest men on the list of his acquaintances,--"low, vulgar, unfortunate creatures;" but, as Judge Davis has it, "he used such men as tools,--things to satisfy him, to feed his desires." He felt sorry for them, enjoyed them, extracted from them whatever service they were capable of rendering, discarded and forgot them. If one of them, presuming upon the past, followed him to Washington with a view to personal profit, Mr. Lincoln would probably take him to his private room, lock the doors, revel in reminiscences of Illinois, new stories and old, through an entire evening, and then dismiss his enchanted crony with nothing more substantial than his blessing. It was said that "he had no heart;" that is, no personal attachments warm and strong enough to govern his actions. It was seldom that he praised anybody; and, when he did, it was not a rival or an equal in the struggle for popularity and power. His encomiums were more likely to be satirical than sincere, and sometimes were artfully contrived as mere stratagems to catch the applause he pretended to bestow, or at least to share it in equal parts. No one knew better how to "damn with faint praise," or to divide the glory of another by being the first and frankest to acknowledge it. Fully alive to the fact that no qualities of a public man are so charming to the people as simplicity and candor, he made simplicity and candor the mask of deep feelings carefully concealed, and subtle plans studiously veiled from all eyes but one. He had no reverence for great men, followed no leader with blind devotion, and yielded no opinion to mere authority. He felt that he was as great as anybody, and could do what another did. It was, however, the supreme desire of his heart to be right, and to do justice in all the relations of life. Although some of his strongest passions conflicted more or less directly with this desire, he was conscious of them, and strove to regulate them by self-imposed restraints. He was not avaricious, never appropriated a cent wrongfully, and did not think money for its own sake a fit object of any man's ambition. But he knew its value, its power, and liked to keep it when he had it. He gave occasionally to individual mendicants, or relieved a case of great destitution at his very door; but his alms-giving was neither profuse nor systematic. He never made donations to be distributed to the poor who were not of his acquaintance and very near at hand. There were few entertainments at his house. People were seldom asked to dine with him. To many he seemed inhospitable; and there was something about his house, an indescribable air of exclusiveness, which forbade the entering guest. It is not meant to be said that this came from mere economy. It was not at home that he wished to see company. He preferred to meet his friends abroad,--on a street-corner, in an office, at the Court House, or sitting on nail-kegs in a country store.

Mr. Lincoln took no part in the promotion of local enterprises, railroads, schools, churches, asylums. The benefits he proposed for his fellow-men were to be accomplished by political means alone. Politics were his world,--a world filled with hopeful enchantments. Ordinarily he disliked to discuss any other subject. "In his office," says Mr. Herndon, "he sat down, or spilt himself, on his lounge, read aloud, told stories, talked politics,--never science, art, literature, railroad gatherings, colleges, asylums, hospitals, commerce, education, progress, nothing that interested the world generally," except politics. He seldom took an active part in local or minor elections, or wasted his power to advance a friend. He did nothing out of mere gratitude, and forgot the devotion of his warmest partisans as soon as the occasion for their services had passed. What they did for him was quietly appropriated as the reward of superior merit, calling for no return in kind. He was always ready to do battle for a principle, after a discreet fashion, but never permitted himself to be strongly influenced by the claims of individual men. When he was a candidate himself, he thought the whole canvass and all the preliminaries ought to be conducted with reference to his success. He would say to a man, "Your continuance in the field injures me" and be quite sure that he had given a perfect reason for his withdrawal. He would have no "obstacles" in his way; coveted honors, was eager for power, and impatient of any interference that delayed or obstructed his progress. He worked hard enough at general elections, when he could make speeches, have them printed, and "fill the speaking trump of fame" with his achievements; but in the little affairs about home, where it was all work and no glory, his zeal was much less conspicuous. Intensely secretive and cautious, he shared his secrets with no man, and revealed just enough of his plans to allure support, and not enough to expose their personal application. After Speed left, he had no intimates to whom he opened his whole mind. This is the unanimous testimony of all who knew him. Feeling himself perfectly competent to manage his own affairs, he listened with deceptive patience to the views of others, and then dismissed the advice with the adviser. Judge Davis was supposed to have great influence over him; but he declares that he had literally none. "Once or twice," says he, "he asked my advice about the almighty dollar, but never about any thing else."

Notwithstanding his overweening ambition, and the breathless eagerness with which he pursued the objects of it, he had not a particle of sympathy with the great mass of his fellow-citizens who were engaged in similar scrambles for place. "If ever," said he, "American society and the United States Government are demoralized and overthrown, it will come from the voracious desire of office,--this wriggle to live without toil, work, and labor, from which I am not free myself." Mr. Lincoln was not a demagogue or a trimmer. He never deserted a party in disaster, or joined one in triumph. Nearly the whole of his public life was spent in the service of a party which struggled against hopeless odds, which met with many reverses and few victories. It is true, that about the time he began as a politician, the Whigs in his immediate locality, at first united with the moderate Democrats, and afterwards by themselves, were strong enough to help him to the Legislature as often as he chose to go. But, if the fact had been otherwise, it is not likely that he would have changed sides, or even altered his position in any essential particular, to catch the popular favor. Subsequently he suffered many defeats,--for Congress, for Commissioner of the Land Office, and twice for Senator; but on this account he never faltered in devotion to the general principles of the party, or sought to better his fortune by an alliance with the common enemy. It cannot be denied, that, when he was first a candidate for the Legislature, his views of public policy were a little cloudy, and that his addresses to the people were calculated to make fair weather with men of various opinions; nor that, when first a candidate for United States Senator, he was willing to make a secret bargain with the extreme Abolitionists, and, when last a candidate, to make some sacrifice of opinion to further his own aspirations for the Presidency. The pledge to Lovejoy and the "House-divided Speech" were made under the influence of personal considerations, without reference to the views or the success of those who had chosen and trusted him as a leader for a far different purpose. But this was merely steering between sections of his own party, where the differences were slight and easily reconciled,--manoeuvring for the strength of one faction today and another to-morrow, with intent to unite them and lead them to a victory, the benefits of which would inure to all. He was not one to be last in the fight and first at the feast, nor yet one to be first in the fight and last at the feast. He would do his whole duty in the field, but had not the slightest objection to sitting down at the head of the table,--an act which he would perform with a modest, homely air, that disarmed envy, and silenced the master when he would say, "Friend, go down lower." His "master" was the "plain people." To be popular was to him the greatest good in life. He had known what it was to be without popularity, and he had known what it was to enjoy it. To gain it or to keep it, he considered no labor too great, no artifice misused or misapplied. His ambition was strong; yet it existed in strict subordination to his sense of party fidelity, and could by no chance or possibility lure him into downright social or political treasons. His path may have been a little devious, winding hither and thither, in search of greater convenience of travel, or the security of a larger company; but it always went forward in the same general direction, and never ran off at right-angles toward a hostile camp. The great body of men who acted with him in the beginning acted with him at the last.

On the whole, he was an honest, although a shrewd, and by no means an unselfish politician. He

................."Foresaw
Which way the world began to draw,"

and instinctively drew with it. He had convictions, but preferred to choose his time to speak. He was not so much of a Whig that he could not receive the support of the "nominal" Jackson men, until party lines were drawn so tight that he was compelled to be one thing or the other. He was not so much of a Whig that he could not make a small diversion for White in 1836, nor so much of a White man that he could not lead Harrison's friends in the Legislature during the same winter. He was a firm believer in the good policy of high "protective tariffs;" but, when importuned to say so in a public letter, he declined on the ground that it would do him no good. He detested Know-Nothingism with all his heart; but, when Know-Nothingism swept the country, he was so far from being obtrusive with his views, that many believed he belonged to the order. He was an anti-slavery man from the beginning of his service in the Legislature; but he was so cautious and moderate in the expression of his sentiments, that, when the anti-Nebraska party disintegrated, the ultra-Republicans were any thing but sure of his adherence; and even after the Bloomington Convention he continued to pick his way to the front with wary steps, and did not take his place among the boldest of the agitators until 1858, when he uttered the "House-divided Speech," just in time to take Mr. Seward's place on the Presidential ticket of 1860.

Any analysis of Mr. Lincoln's character would be defective that did not include his religious opinions. On such matters he thought deeply; and his opinions were positive. But perhaps no phase of his character has been more persistently misrepresented and variously misunderstood, than this of his religious belief. Not that the conclusive testimony of many of his intimate associates relative to his frequent expressions on such subjects has ever been wanting; but his great prominence in the world's history, and his identification with some of the great questions of our time, which, by their moral import, were held to be eminently religious in their character, have led many good people to trace in his motives and actions similar convictions to those held by themselves. His extremely general expressions of religious faith called forth by the grave exigencies of his public life, or indulged in on occasions of private condolence, have too often been distorted out of relation to their real significance or meaning to suit the opinions or tickle the fancies of individuals or parties.

Mr. Lincoln was never a member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ, or the inspiration of the Scriptures in the sense understood by evangelical Christians. His theological opinions were substantially those expounded by Theodore Parker. Overwhelming testimony out of many mouths, and none stronger than that out of his own, place these facts beyond controversy.

When a boy, he showed no sign of that piety which his many biographers ascribe to his manhood. His stepmother--herself a Christian, and longing for the least sign of faith in him--could remember no circumstance that supported her hope. On the contrary, she recollected very well that he never went off into a corner, as has been said, to ponder the sacred writings, and to wet the page with his tears of penitence. He was fond of music; but Dennis Hanks is clear to the point that it was songs of a very questionable character that cheered his lonely pilgrimage through the woods of Indiana. When he went to church at all, he went to mock, and came away to mimic. Indeed, it is more than probable that the sort of "religion" which prevailed among the associates of his boyhood impressed him with a very poor opinion of the value of the article. On the whole, he thought, perhaps, a person had better be without it.

When he came to New Salem, he consorted with freethinkers, joined with them in deriding the gospel history of Jesus, read Volney and Paine, and then wrote a deliberate and labored essay, wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs. The essay was burnt, but he never denied or regretted its composition. On the contrary, he made it the subject of free and frequent conversations with his friends at Springfield, and stated, with much particularity and precision, the origin, arguments, and objects of the work.

It was not until after Mr. Lincoln's death, that his alleged orthodoxy became the principal topic of his eulogists; but since then the effort on the part of some political writers and speakers to impress the public mind erroneously seems to have been general and systematic. It is important that the question should be finally determined; and, in order to do so, the names of some of his nearest friends are given below, followed by clear and decisive statements, for which they are separately responsible. Some of them are gentlemen of distinction, and all of them men of high character, who enjoyed the best opportunities to form correct opinions.

James H. Matheny says in a letter to Mr. Herndon:--

"I knew Mr. Lincoln as early as 1834-7; know he was an infidel. He and W. D. Herndon used to talk infidelity in the clerk's office in this city, about the years 1837-40. Lincoln attacked the Bible and the New Testament on two grounds: first, from the inherent or apparent contradictions under its lids; second, from the grounds of reason. Sometimes he ridiculed the Bible and New Testament, sometimes seemed to scoff it, though I shall not use that word in its full and literal sense. I never heard that Lincoln changed his views, though his personal and political friend from 1834 to 1860. Sometimes Lincoln bordered on atheism. He went far that way, and often shocked me. I was then a young man, and believed what my good mother told me. Stuart & Lincoln's office was in what was called Hoffman's Row, on North Fifth Street, near the public square. It was in the same building as the clerk's office, and on the same floor. Lincoln would come into the clerk's office, where I and some young men--Evan Butler, Newton Francis, and others--were writing or staying, and would bring the Bible with him; would read a chapter; argue against it. Lincoln then had a smattering of geology, if I recollect it. Lincoln often, if not wholly, was an atheist; at least, bordered on it. Lincoln was enthusiastic in his infidelity. As he grew older, he grew more discreet, didn't talk much before strangers about his religion; but to friends, close and bosom ones, he was always open and avowed, fair and honest; but to strangers, he held them off from policy. Lincoln used to quote Burns. Burns helped Lincoln to be an infidel, as I think; at least, he found in Burns a like thinker and feeler. Lincoln quoted 'Tam O'Skanter.' 'What! send one to heaven, and ten to hell!' &c.

"From what I know of Mr. Lincoln and his views of Christianity, and from what I know as honest and well-founded rumor; from what I have heard his best friends say and regret for years; from what he never denied when accused, and from what Lincoln has hinted and intimated, to say no more,--he did write a little book on infidelity at or near New Salem, in Menard County, about the year 1834 or 1835. I have, stated these things to you often. Judge Logan, John T. Stuart, yourself, know what I know, and some of you more.

"Mr. Herndon, you insist on knowing something which you know I possess, and got as a secret, and that is, about Lincoln's little book on infidelity. Mr. Lincoln did tell me that he did write a little book on infidelity. This statement I have avoided heretofore; but, as you strongly insist upon it,--probably to defend yourself against charges of misrepresentations,--I give it you as I got it from Lincoln's mouth."

From Hon. John T. Stuart:--

"I knew Mr. Lincoln when he first came here, and for years afterwards. He was an avowed and open infidel, sometimes bordered on atheism. I have often and often heard Lincoln and one W. D. Herndon, who was a freethinker, talk over this subject. Lincoln went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard: he shocked me. I don't remember the exact line of his argument: suppose it was against the inherent defects, so called, of the Bible, and on grounds of reason. Lincoln always denied that Jesus was the Christ of God,--denied that Jesus was the Son of God, as understood and maintained by the Christian Church. The Rev. Dr. Smith, who wrote a letter, tried to convert Lincoln from infidelity so late as 1858, and couldn't do it."

William H. Herndon, Esq.:--

"As to Mr. Lincoln's religious views, he was, in short, an infidel,... a theist. He did not believe that Jesus was God, nor the Son of God,--was a fatalist, denied the freedom of the will. Mr. Lincoln told me a thousand times, that he did not believe the Bible was the revelation of God, as the Christian world contends. The points that Mr. Lincoln tried to demonstrate (in his book) were: First, That the Bible was not God's revelation; and, Second, That Jesus was not the Son of God. I assert this on my own knowledge, and on my veracity. Judge Logan, John T. Stuart, James H. Matheny, and others, will tell you the truth. I say they will confirm what I say, with this exception,--they all make it blacker than I remember it. Joshua F. Speed of Louisville, I think, will tell you the same thing."

Hon. David Davis:--

"I do not know any thing about Lincoln's religion, and do not think anybody knew. The idea that Lincoln talked to a stranger about his religion or religious views, or made such speeches, remarks, &c., about it as are published, is to me absurd. I knew the man so well: he was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw, or expect to see. He had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term,--had faith in laws, principles, causes, and effects--philosophically: you [Herndon] know more about his religion than any man. You ought to know it, of course."

William H. Hannah, Esq.:--

"Since 1856 Mr. Lincoln told me that he was a kind of immortalist; that he never could bring himself to believe in eternal punishment; that man lived but a little while here; and that, if eternal punishment were man's doom, he should spend that little life in vigilant and ceaseless preparation by never-ending prayer."

Mrs. Lincoln:--

"Mr. Lincoln had no hope and no faith in the usual acceptance of those words."

Dr. C. H. Ray:--