Chapter II: Part 2

* * * * *

A MAN WHO CAN SCRATCH HIS SHINS WITHOUT STOOPING.

One of the want-to-knows had the impertinence to inquire of Mr. Lincoln his opinion of General Sheridan, not yet known, who had come out of the West early in 1864, to take command of the cavalry under General Grant as lieutenant-general.

"Have you not seen Sheridan?" The answer was in the negative. "Then I will tell you just what kind of a chap he is: One of those _long_-armed fellows, with _short_ legs, that can scratch their shins without having to stoop over to do it!"

* * * * *

STRUCK BY THE DEAD HAND.

Edwin Booth, the tragedian, brother of the regicide Wilkes, was at a friend's house. By the purest chance, dallying over the knickknacks, he picked up a plaster-cast of a hand. It was something more than a paper-weight, he was intuitively prompted, for he said, handling it reverently as Yorick's relict:

"By the way, whose is this?"

Before the cue could be given to hush or utter a subterfuge, some one blurted out:

"Abraham Lincoln's! Don't you know?"

"The murder was out!" and the distinguished guest, who suffered a long term for a crime wholly out of his ken, was silent for the evening.--(W. D. Howells.)

* * * * *

THIS CLINCHES IT.

A party accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none of the group could imitate.

He said that he had enough of the Dahlgreens, Columbiads, and Raphael repeaters--and that this was an American institution, which, "I guess, I understand better than all other weapons!"

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S FIRST LOVE-STORY.

In 1833, when Abraham was just over twenty, he fell in love with Anne, or Annie Rutledge, at New Salem. Her father kept the tavern where Lincoln boarded. But the girl was engaged to a dry-goods merchant, named McNeil. This man, pretending to be of a high old Irish family, likely to discountenance union to a publican's daughter, shilly-shallied, but finally went East to get his folks' consent. He acknowledged that he was parading under borrowed plumes, as he was a McNamara in reality. He stayed away so long that the maid-forlorn gave him up and listened to other suitors. Lincoln proposed, but waited till the apparent jilt was heard from. Then they were espoused. But a block to the match came in Lincoln having no position. Awaiting his efforts as a law student, the wedding was postponed; but, meanwhile, death came quick where fortune lagged. She died and left her lover broken-hearted. He seems then to have been smitten with the brown study afflicting him all his life, and by some, like Secretary Boutwell, affirmed to be independent of the surrounding grounds for depression and grief. Fears of suicide led his friends to watch him closely; and he was known to go and lie on the grave of the maid, whose name he said would dwell ever with him, while his heart was buried with her. The rival, McNamara, returned too late to redeem his vow, but lived in the same State many years, "a prosperous gentleman."

* * * * *

A PUT-UP JOB--OR CHANCE?

The ways of the petitioner are deep and mysterious. The Virginia (Illinois) _Enquirer_, March 1, 1879, had the following:

"John McNamer (Namara?) was buried last Sunday, near Petersburg, Menard County. He was an early settler and carried on business at New Salem. Abe Lincoln was the postmaster there and kept a store. It was here that, at the tavern, dwelt the fair Annie Rutledge, in whose grave Lincoln wrote that his heart was buried. As the story runs, the fair and gentle Annie was John's sweetheart, but Abe took 'a shine' to her, and succeeded in heading off Mac, and won her affections. During the war, a Kentucky lady went to Washington with her daughter to procure her son's pardon for being a guerrilla. The daughter was a musician. Sitting at the piano while her mother was sewing, she sang 'Gentle Annie.' While it was being charmingly rendered, Abe rose from his seat, crossed the room to a window, and gazed out for several minutes with that sad, 'far-away' look noticed as one of his particularities. When he returned to his seat he wrote a note which, as he said, was the pardon besought. The scene proves that Mr. Lincoln was a man of fine feelings, and that, if the occurrence was a put-up job on the lady's part, it accomplished the purpose all the same."

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S MARRIAGE.

In 1839, another Kentucky belle [Footnote: Addressing Kentuckians in a speech made at Cincinnati, in 1859, Lincoln said: "We mean to marry our girls when we have a chance; and I have the honor to say I once did have a chance in that way."] arrived in Illinois to follow the steps of her sister, who had found a conquest there. This Mrs. Edwards introduced Miss Mary Todd, and she became the belle of the Sangamon bottom. Lincoln was pitted against another young lawyer, afterward the eminent Stephen A. Douglas, but, odd as it appears, Miss Todd singled out the Ugly Duckling as the more eligible of the two. Whatever the reason--strange in a man knowing how to bide his time to win--Lincoln wrote to the lady, withdrawing from the contest, allowed to be hopeless by him. His friend Speed would not bear the letter, but pressed him to have a face-to-face explanation. The rogue--who was in the toils himself, and was shortly wedded--believed the parley would remove the, perhaps, imaginary hindrance. But Miss Todd accepted the deliverance; thereupon they parted--but immediately the reconciliation took place. The nuptials were settled, but here again Lincoln displayed a waywardness utterly out of keeping with his subsequent actions. He "bolted" on the wedding-day--New-year's, 1841. Searching for him, his friends--remembering the fit after the Rutledge death--found him in the woods like the Passionate Pilgrim of ancient romance. Luckily he was inspirited by them with a feeling that an irrepressible desire to live till assured that the world is "a little better for my having lived in it." Seeing what ensued, one could say then "Good _Speed_!" to his bosom friend of that name. But this friend married in the next year, and in his cold loneliness so doubled, Lincoln harked back to the flame. She ought never to have forgiven him for the slight, but it was not possible for her to repay him with poetic justice by rejoicing Stephen A. Douglas, as that gentleman had looked elsewhere for matrimonial recompense. Lincoln and Miss Todd, in 1842, renewed the old plight and never again were divided.

* * * * *

THE BURLESQUE DUEL.

Lincoln was plunged willy-nilly into the society he shunned at home, on entering the legislature at Springfield. A newspaper there published the account--from her side--of a young lady's difference with a noted politician, General James Shields. He married a sister of Lincoln's wife, and there was a feud between them. Shields flew to the editor to demand the name of the maligner, as he called the correspondent, or the editor must meet him with dueling weapon--or his horsewhip. In the Western States the whip was snapped at literary men as the cane was flourished in England at the date, 1842.

The editor consulted with Lincoln as a lawyer and a friend. With his enmity as to Shields, the friend promptly advised him to say "I did it!" This was, in fact, sheer justice, for it was Lincoln's wife who uttered the articles. And, by the way, their style and rustic humor were much in the vein of the "Widow Bedott" and the "Samantha" papers of later times. Mrs. Lincoln was not the mere housekeeper the scribes accuse her of being. Lincoln knew what was her value when he read his speeches first to her for an opinion, as Molière courted his stewardess for opinions. Sumner heeded her counsel.

Abraham championed the mysterious "Aunt 'Becca," who had characterized Shields as "a ballroom dandy floating around without heft or substance, just like a lot of cat-fur where cats have been fighting." Is not this quite Lincolnian?

Thus put forward, Lincoln received a challenge.

Trial by battle-personal still ruled. The politicians coupled with the necessity of going out with weapons to maintain an assertion in speech or publication were Jefferson Davis, Jackson, the President; Henry Clay, the amiable; Sam Houston, Sergeant S. Prentiss, etc.

Shields naturally challenged the lady's champion. As the challenged party, Lincoln, who had cooled in the interim, not only chose broadswords (not at all "the gentleman's arm in an affair of honor"), but, what is more, descanted on the qualities of the cutlas in such a droll manner and words that the second went off laughing. He imparted his unseemly mirth to his opponent's seconds, and all the parties concerned took the cue to soften down the irritation between two persons formerly "chums," and relatives so close.

The meeting took place by the river-side out of Alton, where the leaking out of the gallantry of Lincoln in taking up the cudgels for the lady led to an explanation, although no such enlightenment ought to be permitted on the ground. Besides, all was ludicrous--the broadswords intolerably broad.

The principals shook hands. But the plotters were not content with this peaceful ending. They had determined that the outside spectators on the town side of the river should be "in at the (sham) death." They rigged up a log in a coat and sheet like a man wounded and reclining in the bottom of a boat, and pretended it was one of the duelists, badly stricken, whom they were escorting to town for surgical assistance. The explosion of laughter receiving the two principals when the hoax was revealed caused the incident to be a sore point to both Lincoln and Shields.

* * * * *

"WANTING TO DANCE THE WORST WAY."

A Miss Mary Todd had come to visit a sister married in the neighborhood of Springfield. Lincoln was there as a member of the legislature sitting. He had eschewed society, though he liked it, in favor of study, but now rewarded himself for achieving this fruit of application by joining the movements around him. He made the acquaintance of Miss Todd, vivacious, sprightly, keenly insighted so as to divine he would prove superior in fate to Stephen Douglas, also courting her. Although unsuited by nature and his means to shine in the ballroom, Lincoln followed his flame thither. Using the vernacular, he asked for her hand, saying earnestly:

"Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you _the worst way._"

After he had led his partner to her seat, a friend asked how the clumsy partner had carried himself.

"He kept his word. He did dance the worst way!"

* * * * *

"THE STATUTE FIXES ALL THAT!"

Even Lincoln's marriage was to be accompanied by a diversion of that merry imp of incongruity always with him--as Shakespeare's most stately heroes are attended by a comic servant. He married Miss Mary Todd, of Kentucky, at Springfield, at the age of thirty-three. It was the first wedding performed with all the ceremonial of the Episcopalian sect. This was to the awe of the Honorable Judge Tom C. Brown, an old man, and friend and patron of our Abraham. He watched the ecclesiastical functionary to the point of Lincoln's placing the ring on his bride's finger, when the irate old stager exclaimed at the formula: "With this ring I thee endow with all my goods," etc.

"Grace to Goshen! Lincoln, the statute fixes all that!"

* * * * *

HE DID NOT KNOW HIS OWN HOUSE.

In 1842 Abraham Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd, a Kentucky lady, at Springfield, where he took a house for the wedded life. Previously, while qualifying for the bar, he had dwelt for study over a furniture-store.

On account of his attending the traveling court, which compelled a horse, since he could not afford the gig associated with the chief lawyers' degree of respectability, he was frequently and for long spells away from home. In one of these absences his wife deemed it fit for his coming dignity of pleader to have a second story and roof of a fashionable type set upon the old foundations. Under a fresh coat of paint, too, this renovation perplexed the home-comer when he drew up his horse before it. At the sound of the horse's steps he knew that some one was flying to the parlor window, but, affecting amazement, he challenged a passer-by:

"Neighbor, I feel like a stranger here. Can you tell me where Abraham Lincoln lives? He used to live here!"

* * * * *

THE ONLY ONE WHO DARED "PULL WOOL OVER LINCOLN'S EYES."

While Mr. Lincoln was living in Springfield, a judge of the city, who was one of the leading and most influential citizens of the place, had occasion to call upon him. Mr. Lincoln was not overparticular in his matter of dress, and was also careless in his manners. The judge was ushered into the parlor, where he found Mr. Lincoln sprawled out across a couple of chairs, reclining at his ease. The judge was asked to be seated, and, without changing his position in the least, Mr. Lincoln entered into conversation with his visitor.

While the two men were talking, Mrs. Lincoln entered the room. She was, of course, greatly embarrassed at Mr. Lincoln's offhand manner of entertaining his caller, and, stepping up behind her husband, she grasped him by the hair and twitched his head about, at the same time looking at him reprovingly.

Mr. Lincoln apparently did not notice the rebuke. He simply looked up at his wife, then across to the judge, and, without rising, said:

"Little Mary, allow me to introduce you to my friend, Judge So-and-so."

It will be remembered that Mrs. Lincoln's maiden name was Mary Todd, and that she was very short in stature.--_Leslie's Monthly._

* * * * *

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT.

The contrast between the statures of the Lincolns, man and wife, was palpable, but this hardly substantiates the story of the President appearing with his wife on the White House porch in response to a serenade, and his saying:

"Here I am, and here is Mrs. Lincoln. That's the long and short of it!"

* * * * *

"ALL A MAN WANTS--TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!"

In one of his messages to Congress, the President foretold and denounced the tendency of wealth acquired in masses and rapidly by the war contractors and the like as "approaching despotism." He saw liberty attacked in "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with--if not above--labor in the structure of government." It is never to be forgotten that neither he nor his Cabinet officers were ever upbraided for corruption; [Footnote: It is true that Lincoln's first war minister, Simon Cameron, was accused of smoothing the way to certain fat war contracts, a wit suggesting Simony as the term, but no charges were really brought. Lincoln said that if one proof were forthcoming, he would have the Cameronian head--but Mr. Cameron died intact.] some, like Secretary Stanton, though handling enormous sums, died poor men comparatively. It is in accordance with this honesty of the "Honest Old Abe" rule that he said to an old friend whom he met in New York in 1859:

"How have you fared since you left us?"

The merchant gleefully replied that he had made a hundred thousand dollars in business. "And--lost it all!" with a reflection of Lincoln's and the Western cool humor. "How is it on your part?"

"Oh, very well; I have the cottage at Springfield, and about eight hundred dollars. If they make me vice-president with Seward, as some say they will, I hope I shall be able to increase it to twenty thousand. That is as much as any man ought to want!"

* * * * *

"I'LL HIT THE THING HARD!"

In Coffin's "Lincoln," it is stated that when Lincoln and Offutt, boating to New Orleans, attended a slave auction for the first time, the former said to his companion:

"By the Eternal, if ever I get a chance to hit this thing, I'll hit it hard!"

The oath was General-President Jackson's, and familiar as a household word at the day. The promise is premature in a youth of twenty. Herndon, twenty-five years associated with Lincoln, doubts, but says that Lincoln did allude to some such utterance. But it is Dennis Hanks, cousin of Lincoln, who affirms that they two saw such a sight, and that he knew by his companion's emotion that "the iron had entered into his soul."

In 1841 Lincoln and Speed had a tedious low-water trip from Louisville to St. Louis. Lincoln says: "There were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me ... a _thing_ which has and continually exercises the power of making me miserable."

But his acts show that he "hit the thing hard." It could not recover from the telling stroke which rent the black oak--the Emancipation Act.

* * * * *

THE "LEX TALIONIS" CHRISTIANIZED.

Frederick Douglass, the colored men's representative, called on the President to procure a pledge that the unfair treatment of negro soldiers in the Union uniform should cease by retaliatory measures on the captured Confederates. But his hearer shrank, from the bare thought of hanging men in cold blood, even though the rebels should slay the negroes taken.

"Oh, Douglass, I cannot do that! If I could get hold of the actual murderers of colored prisoners, I would retaliate; but to hang those who have no hand in the atrocities, I cannot do _that_!"--(By F. Douglass, in _Northwestern Advocate_.)

* * * * *

THE SLAVE-DEALER.

"You have among you the class of native tyrants known as the slave-dealer. He watches your necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave at a speculating price. If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but, if you can help it, you drive him from your door. You despise him utterly; you do not recognize him for a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rolick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to go through the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet; but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse with him and his family."

"Those who deny the poor negro's natural right to himself and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death."--(Speech; Reply to Douglas, Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854.)

* * * * *

THE NEGRO HOME, OR AGITATION!

Lincoln was admitted to the law practise in 1837; he went into partnership with John F. Stuart. The latter elected to Congress, he united his legal talents with S. T. Logan's, a union severed in 1843, as both the associates were aiming to be congressmen also. Not being nominated, the consolation was in the courts, with Judge Herndon as partner. It was from this daily frequentation that the latter was enabled to write a "Life of Lincoln."

An old colored woman came to them for legal aid. Her case was a sad one. Brought from Kentucky, Lincoln's natal State, by a planter, Hinkle, he had set her and children free in Indiana, not fostering the waning oppression. Her son, growing up, had the rashness to venture on the steamboat down to New Orleans. His position was as bad as that of an Americanized foreigner returning into a despotic land. He was arrested and held for sale, having crossed a Louisiana law framed for such intrusions: a free negro could be sold here as if never out of bond. There was little time to redeem him, and Lincoln--whose view of the institution had not been enchanting--seized the opportunity to hit "and hit hard!" as he said in the same city on beholding a slave sale.

The office was in Springfield, the capital, and the state-house was over the way. While Lincoln continued to question and console the poor sufferer, his partner went over to learn of the governor what he could do in the matter. But there was no constitutional or even legal right to interfere with the doings of a sovereign State. This omission as regards humanity stung Lincoln, always tender on that score, and he excitedly vowed:

"By virtue of freedom for all, I will have that negro back--or a twenty years' agitation in Illinois, which will afford its governor a legal and constitutional right to interfere in such premises."

The only way to rescue the unfortunate young man was to make up a purse and recompense a correspondent at the city below, to obtain the captive and return him to his mother.

Such cases, of more often fugitive-slave matters, were not uncommon in the State. Lincoln was already linked with the ultras on the question, so that it was said by lawyers applied to, afraid as political aspirants:

"Go to that Lincoln, the liberator; he will defend a fugitive-slave case!"

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S VOW.

On the 17th of September, 1862, the Confederate inroad into Maryland was stopped by the decisive defeat of Antietam, and the raiders were sent to the retreat. Lincoln called the Cabinet to a special meeting, and stated that the time had come at last for the proclamation of freedom to the slaves everywhere in the United States. Public sentiment would now sustain--after great vacillation, and all his friends were bent upon it.

"Besides, I promised my God I would do it. Yea, I made a solemn vow before God that, if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slave!"

It was remarked that the signature appeared tremulous and uneven, but the writer affirmed that that was not "because of any uncertainty or hesitation on my part."

It was done after the public reception, and "three hours' handshaking is not calculated to improve a man's chirography."

He said to the painter of the "Signing the Emancipation Act," Mr. Carpenter:

"I believe that I am about as glad over the success of this work as you are!"

The original was destroyed in the great fire at Chicago, where it was under exhibition. The pen and the table concerned should be in the Lincoln Museum. The ink-stand was a wooden one, in private hands, and bought at public sale when Lincoln relics were not at the current high price.

* * * * *

"DEN I TAKES TO DE WOODS!"

Secretary Seward, as manager of the foreign relations, met much trouble from the disposition of the aristocratic realms of Europe to await eagerly for a breach by which to enter into interference without quarreling. He was also a great trouble-maker, having the innate repugnance of men of letters and voice to play second fiddle--since he was nominated on the trial ballot above Lincoln in the Presidential Convention. The black speck in the political horizon was San Domingo; the Abolitionists wanted to help her to attain liberty, in which case Mother Spain would assuredly come out openly against the United States and consequently ally with the Confederacy.

The statement of the dilemma--side with Spain, or the black republic--reminded the President of a negro story, quite akin.

A colored parson was addressing his hearers and drew a dreadful picture of the sinner in distress. He had two courses before him, however. But the exhorter asserted in a gush of novelty that:

"Dis narrer way leads on to destruction--and dat broad one to damnation--"

Feeling he was overshooting the mark by the dismay among his congregation, he paused, when an impulsive brother started up with bristling wool and staring eyes, and, making for the door, hallooed:

"In dat case, dis chile he takes to de woods!"

Mr. President elucidated the black prospect.

"I am not willing to assume any new responsibilities at this juncture. I shall, therefore, avoid going to the one place with Spain or with the negro to the other--but shall take _to the woods_!"

A strict and honest neutrality was therefore observed, and--San Domingo is still a bone of contention, though not with Spain, for it is an eye on our canal.

* * * * *

THE UNPARDONABLE CRIME.

The mass of examples of Lincoln's leniency, mercifulness, and lack of rigor, lead one to believe he could not be inexorable. But there was one crime to which he was unforgiving--the truckling to slavery. The smuggling of slaves into the South was carried on much later than a guileless public imagine. Only fifty years ago, a slave-trader languished in a Massachusetts prison, in Newburyport, serving out a five years' sentence, and still confined from inability to procure the thousand dollars to pay a superimposed fine. Mr. Alley, congressman of Lynn, felt compassion, and busied himself to try to procure the wretch's release. For that he laid the unfortunate's petition before President Lincoln. It acknowledged the guilt and the justice of his condemnation; he was penitent and deplored his state--all had fallen away from him after his conviction. The chief arbiter was touched by the piteous and emphatic appeal. Nevertheless, he felt constrained to say to the intermediary:

"My friend, this is a very touching appeal to my feelings. You know that my weakness is to be, if possible, too easily moved by appeals to mercy, and if this man were guilty of the foulest murder that the arm of man could perpetrate, I might forgive him on such an appeal. But the man who could go to Africa, and rob her of her children, and sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer, that he can never receive pardon at my hands. No! he may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine!"

* * * * *

BEYOND THE BOON.

The other slave-trade case is more tragic than the above.

It roused much excitement, as the conviction for slave-trading was the first under the special law in any part of the land. The object of the unique process was William Gordon. Sentenced to be hanged like a pirate, the most prodigious effort was made to have the penalty relaxed with a prospect that the term of imprisonment would be curtailed as soon as decent. It would seem that merchant princes were connected with the lucrative, if nefarious, traffic in which he was a captain. But the offense was so flagrant that the New York district attorney went to Washington to block mistaken clemency. He was all but too late, for the President had literally under his hand the Gordon reprieve. The powerful influence reached even into the executive study. Lawyer Delafield Smith stood firmly upon the need of making an example, and Mr. Lincoln gave way, but in despair at having to lay aside the pen and redoom the miserable tool to the gallows, where he was executed, at New York. "Mr. Smith," sighed the President, "you do not know how hard it is to have a human being die when you know a stroke of your pen may save him."

* * * * *

VAIN AS THE POPE'S BULL AGAINST THE COMET.

The potency of the Emancipation Act was so patent to the least politician that, long before 1863, when its announcement opened the memorable year for freedom, not only had its demonstration been implored by his friends, but some of his subordinates had tried to launch its lightning with not so impersonal a sentiment. To a religious body, pressing him to verify his title of Abolitionist, he replied:

"I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the pope's bull against the comet."

* * * * *

A VOLUNTEER CAPTAINCY WORTH TWO DOLLARS.

While he was a lumberer, Lincoln was in the employ of one Kirkpatrick, who "ran" a sawmill. In hiring the new man, the employer had promised to buy him a dog, or cant-hook, of sufficient size to suit a man of uncommon stature. But he failed in his pledge and would not give him the two dollars of its value for his working without the necessary tool. Though far from a grudging disposition, Lincoln cherished this in memory. When the Black Hawk War broke out and the governor called out volunteers, Sangamon County straightway responded and raised a company of rangers. This Kirkpatrick wished and strove to be elected captain, but Lincoln recited his grievance to the men, and said to his friend William Green (or Greene):

"Bill, I believe I can now make even with Kirkpatrick for the two dollars he owes me for the cant-hook."

Setting himself up for candidate, he won the post. It was a triumph of popularity which rejoiced him. As late as 1860, he said he had not met since that success any to give him so much satisfaction.

* * * * *

GETTING THE COMPANY COLUMN THROUGH "ENDWISE."

Captain Lincoln was drilling his men, marching the twenty or so "by the front," when he found himself before a gap in the fence through which he wanted to go.

He says: "I could not for the life of me remember the proper words of command--("By the right flank--file left--march.--Hardee's Tactics")--for getting my company endwise so that it could get through the gateway; as we came near the passage, I shouted:

"'Company, halt! break ranks! you are dismissed for two minutes, when you will fall in again on the other side of the gap!'"

* * * * *

REGULAR AND IRREGULAR.

In the Black Hawk War, Captain Lincoln came to cross-purposes with the regular army commissariat. The latter insisted on the fare and other service for the army being superior to what the Bucktail Rangers got; the latter, however, were empowered by the governor to forage rather freely, so that the settlers were said to fear more for their fowls through their protectors than from the Indians for their scalps. Once, when Lincoln's corps were directed to perform some duty which he did not think accrued to them, he did it. But he went to the army officer, to whom he reported, and said plainly:

"Sir, you forget that we are not under the orders and regulations of the War Department at Washington, but are simply volunteers under those of the governor of Illinois. Keep in your own sphere and there will be no difficulty! But resistance will be made to your unjust orders. Further, my men must be equal in all particulars to the regular army."--(William Greene, who was in the Rangers.)

* * * * *

KNOWING WHEN TO GIVE IN.

If you will refer to the table of the Presidents, you will see that Lincoln's origin is set down as "English." But with the noted English love of fair play is coupled the art of not knowing when a man is beaten. This descendant of John Bull differs from his ancestors on this head.

During the Black Hawk War, the soldiers in camp entertained themselves by athletic contests. The captain of the Sangamon company excelled all the others, regulars and volunteers, in bodily pastimes. This induced the men to challenge all the army, pitting Lincoln against the whole field, one down t'other come up! A man of another regiment, named Thompson, appeared, with whom the preliminary tussle to feel the enemy gave Lincoln a belief that he had tackled more than he could pull off this time. He intimated as much to his backers, who, with true Western whole-souledness, were betting not only all their money, but their "possibles" and equipment. Disbelieving him, though he had never shown the white feather, the first bout did terminate disastrously for Illinois. Lincoln was clearly "downed." The next, or settling bout, ended the same way--only Lincoln's supporters would not "see," and refused to pay up their bets. The whole company was about to lock horns on the decision, when Captain Lincoln spoke up:

"Boys, Thompson threw me fair and clean, and he did the same the next time, but not so clearly."

"In peace or in war," it was always the same "Honest Abe" of Sangamon.

* * * * *

A FRUITFUL SPEECH.

At the age of twenty, Lincoln was studying law in off hours, and used to walk over to Boonville, ten or twelve miles, the county court center, to watch how law proceedings were conducted. He was interested in one murder case, ably defended by John Breckenridge; in fact, Lincoln hanging around the court-room doors to see the lawyers come out, was impelled by his ingenuous admiration to hail him, and say:

"That was the best speech I ever heard." The advocate was naturally surprised at this frank outburst of the simple country lad. Years afterward, Breckenridge, [Footnote: Not the ex-vice-president and Confederate Cabinet officer of that name.] belonging to Texas, and having been an active Confederate, was in the position to implore the executive's clemency. It was granted him, while the donor reminded him of the far-off incident--which he still insisted included "the best speech I ever heard!" The beneficiary might have retorted that the plea for his own pardon was, in his mind, more effective in sparing a life.

* * * * *

A CAPTAIN CHALLENGED BY HIS MEN.

At the outset of the Black Hawk War, an outbreak of Indians in Illinois, the popularity of Abraham Lincoln induced the young men of the Sangamon Valley, in forming a company of mounted riflemen, to vote him as their captain. The forces were very irregular _irregulars_, did no fighting as a body, and were insubordinate to the last. Once it was in an ironically amusing manner. The commander had saved a friendly Indian from a beating, that being General Cass' order, as well as what his humanity prompted, though at the same time there had been Indian tragedy in his own family, and he had the racial Indian hatred in his blood. The mutineers threatened still to shoot the captive.

"Not unless you shoot _me!_" rejoined the taunted commander.

The men recoiled; but one voiced the general sentiment in:

"This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln, presuming on your rank!"

"If any of you think that, let him test it here and now!" was the reply, equally as oblivious of military decorum.

But they flinched, for he was larger and lustier than anybody else.

"You can level up," he said, guessing their reasoning; "choose your own weapons."

The more sane roared with laughter at this monstrous offer on the superior's part, and the good feeling was renewed between chief and file.

* * * * *

GENERAL McCLELLAN'S OPINION OF LINCOLN AS A LAWYER.

The whirligig of time brings about strange revenges, for a truth. General McClellan was chosen to visit the seat of the Crimean War to study the siege operations about Sebastopol. Returning and seeing no prospects in the air--of his professional line--he became superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He was acting for its president in December, 1855, when a bill was laid under his eyes. It was the demand of Abraham Lincoln, of the law firm of Lincoln & Herndon, Springfield, Illinois.

The firm had offered in October to act for the company to defend a suit brought by McLean County. Lincoln had won it. To prevent any demurrer about the fee of one thousand dollars, a fourth of that having been paid for the retainer, he had six members of the bar append their names to testify the charge was usual and just. Nevertheless Superintendent McClellan refused to pay, alleging that:

"This is as much as a first-class lawyer would charge!"

You see, Mr. Lincoln was still but "the one-horse lawyer of a one-horse town."

* * * * *

KENTUCKIANS ARE CLANNY.

Senator John C. S. Blackburn, of the United States Supreme Court, began his life as a lawyer at the age of twenty. This should have won him sympathy in his first case. It was before Justice McLean. Opposed to Mr. Blackburn was the chief of the Chicago bar, I. N. Arnold, afterward member of Congress, and author of the first biography of Abraham Lincoln. Blackburn was a Kentuckian, but the stereotyped reputation for courage does not include audacity in a court of law. He was nervous with this first attempt and made a mull of his presentment, when a gentleman of the bar, rising, and extending a tall, ungraceful figure, intervened and laid down the case on the young Kentuckian's lines so feebly offered and entangled that the hearers might be glad to be so disembarrassed of a feeling for the novice floundering. The bench sustained Blackburn's demurrer. Arnold was so vexed that he objected to the volunteer intervener, whereupon the befriended man learned it was one Abraham Lincoln, as unknown to him as he was to fame. Lincoln defended himself against the senior's spite, by saying he claimed the privilege of giving a newcomer the helping hand. No doubt the fellow Stateship backed his prompting. --(Related by Judge Isaac N. Arnold, member of Congress.)

* * * * *

NOT TO BE THOUGHT OF!

It has been seen that creditors treated the struggling Lincoln with the utmost forbearance, countering the adage that "forbearance is not acquittance." He was given the occasion to show how he was neighborly when the turn came. A client of his was long deferring settlement when the lawyer met him by chance on the courthouse steps, at Springfield.

He accosted him cordially, and remarked about an accident that had befallen him.

Cogdale had been blown up by gunpowder and lost a hand. He began to apologize for the business delay, showing that he was crippled manually as well as in his pursuits.

Lincoln plainly expressed his sympathy and sorrow.

"I have been thinking about that note of yours," faltered the unhappy man.

The lawyer drew the paper in question out of his wallet and forced it upon him.

"It is not to be _thought of!_" replied he, laughing in his droll yet saturnine mode.

Cogdale honestly added that he did not know when he really could pay.

But the donee hurried away, saying:

"If you had the money, I would not take it out of your only hand!"

* * * * *

"SKIN WRIGHT AND CLOSE!"

In more than one event the Lincolnian snappy and headlong manner was the fruit of study and deliberation. Apparently holding aloof from politics after his return from Washington, in 1849, Lincoln was earning a great name at the bar. His popularity was the wider as he did not disdain poor clients and often won a case without permitting any remuneration. There came to Lincoln & Herndon's office one day a poor widow. She was entitled to a pension of four hundred dollars, but the agent, one Wright, who had drawn it for her, retained one-half as his fee. This greed so stirred Mr. Lincoln that he at once went to the agent to demand disgorging of the money. On refusal, a suit was instituted for the recovery.

At the trial, with his buoyancy, Lincoln said to his partner:

"You had better stay, and hear me address the jury, as I am going to _skin_ Wright and get the money back."

He pleaded that there was no contract between the parties; that the man was not an authorized agent; his charge was unreasonable; he had never given the money due to the soldier's widow, but retained one-half. Next he expatiated on her husband, during the Revolutionary War, experiencing the hardships of the old Continentals at Valley Forge in the winter; barefoot in the deep snows; ill-clad against the rigors; their feet, cut by ice staining the ground, and so on.

The men in the box were also affected to tears, like the spectators, while the pension "shark" wriggled under the invectives. The verdict was in favor of the relict. Her advocate not only remitted his costs, but paid her fare home and for her stay in Springfield, so that she went off rejoicing.

Lincoln's partner had the curiosity to look at his brief, which concluded:

"_Skin Wright!_ Close!"--(Related by Mr. Herndon, present at the trial.)

* * * * *

HOOKING HENS IS LOW!

Mr. Lincoln had assisted in the prosecution of a fellow who stole some fowls. The lawyer jogged homeward in the company of the jury foreman. He eulogized the young man for his good work in the prosecution, and, when the other returned the compliment by speaking warmly of the jury's prompt and speedy deliverance of the verdict, the fereman replied:

"Yaas, the vagabond ought to be locked up. Why, when I was young and pearter than I am now, I didn't mind packing a sheep or two off on my back--but stealing hens--faugh! It is low and shows what the country is coming to!"

* * * * *

"THE STATE AGAINST MR. WHISKY!"

When Lincoln was a briefless barrister, frequenting the courts on their own peregrinations, to catch the eye of client or judge, he was at Clinton, Illinois, where a case came up of a very modern nature. To be sure, "the Shrieking Sisterhood" was then invented for the advocates of female suffrage and anti-slavery. But these twelve or fifteen young women presented themselves in custody for a novel charge. They had failed to induce a liquor dealer to restrict his license, and "smashed" his wine-parlor incontinently. Although public sympathy was theirs for the act, as well as for their youth, prettiness, and sex, none of the lawyers would take up their defense on account of the influence of the brewers' and distillers' agent. In this emergency, Abraham Lincoln stepped into the breach and volunteered to defend the defenseless.

"I would suggest, first," began he, "that there be a change in the indictment so as to have it read 'The State against Mr. Whisky!' instead of 'The State against these women.' This is the defense of these women. The man who has persisted in selling whisky has had no regard for their well-being or the welfare of their husbands and sons. He has had no fear of God or regard for man; neither has he any regard for the laws of the statute. No jury can fix any damages or punishment for any violation of the moral law. The course pursued by this liquor dealer has been for the demoralization of society. His groggery has been a nuisance. These women, finding all moral suasion of no avail with this fellow, oblivious to all, to all tender appeal and a like regardless of their tears and prayers, in order to protect their households and promote the welfare of the community, united to suppress the nuisance. The good of society demanded its suppression! They accomplished what otherwise could not have been done."--(_The Lincoln Magazine_.)

* * * * *

AS CLEAR AS MOONSHINE.

In 1858, Lincoln was committed to the political campaign which was a passing victory, superficial, to his opponent, Senator Douglas, to eventuate in his accession to the Presidency. So he had let legal strife fall into abeyance, during two years. He was, therefore, vexed to have an applicant for his renewing that line of business, but at once welcomed the suitor on learning her name. It was Hannah Armstrong. He was eager to see her. She was the wife of the bully of Clary's Grove, the locally noted wrestler, Jack Armstrong. After they had become friends, Lincoln had been harbored in their cottage, in the days when poverty held him down so he scarcely could get his head above water. The good soul had repaid his doing chores about her house, such as minding the baby, getting in the firewood, and keeping the highway cows out of her cabbage-patch, after her husband died, by darning his socks, filling up a bowl with corn-mush, at the period when it was a feast to have "cheese, bologna, and crackers," in the garret where he pored over law-books. Her news was painful. The baby, whose cradle Lincoln had rocked, was a man now, and was in what the vernacular phrased "pretty considerable of a tight fix."

It looked as though Mr. Lincoln would have difficulty in loosening the fix, far more to remove it.

At a camp-meeting, the young men had been riotous. Armstrong and a companion had been entangled in a fight for all comers, in which one man was seriously injured by some weapon. The companion, Norris, was tried and convicted for manslaughter of Metzgar, receiving the sentence of eight years' imprisonment. But Armstrong was to be indicted for murder, as the injuries were indicated as inflicted with a blunt instrument, and a witness affirmed that they were done by a slung-shot in Armstrong's hands. It was little excuse that he, like the rest implicated, was drunk at the time. Nevertheless, dissolute as was the young man of two-and-twenty, Lincoln did not need the woman's assurance that her son was incapable of murder so deliberate. Armstrong averred that any blow he struck was done with the naked fist. Furthermore, it was said that Metzgar was not left insensible on the field of battle, but was going home beside a yoke of oxen when the yoke-end cracked his skull; it was this, and no slung-shot, that caused his death the following day.

Recognizing that the complication forebode a strenuous task, Lincoln none the less accepted it and, assuring his old "Aunt Hannah" that he would not suffer her to talk of remuneration, he resumed the toga to contest the effort to take away Armstrong's life and release Norris, as convicted under error.

He closeted himself with the prisoner to hear his account, and upon that concluded he was guiltless. It has been said that Lincoln would never undertake a defense of a man he believed guilty. This held good in the present instance.

As the statement about the slung-shot blow was made by a man who disputed the ox-yoke accident, and that the fatal hurts were received in the free fight at the camp-meeting, it was necessary that he should be explicit. He had seen the blow and distinguished the weapon by the light of the moon.

Lincoln was accustomed from early life to relieve his brain when toiling or distressed, by the turning to a vein utterly opposed to those moods. His chief diversion from Blackstone and the statutes was his favorite author, Shakespeare. Hackett, the _Falstaff_ delighted in by our grandfathers, pronounced the President a better student of that dramatist than he expected to meet.

As the ancients drew fates, as it is called, from Virgil, and the medievals from the Bible, so the lawyer drew hints from his author. The process is to open at a page and read as a forecast the first line meeting the eye. The play-book opened at "Midsummer Night's Dream." To refresh himself after his speeches in rehearsal, Lincoln had been enjoying the humor of the amateur-actor clowns. So the line "leaping into sight" was on parallel lines with his thought.

"Does the moon shine that night?" So the text. Whereupon, _Nick Bottom_, a weaver, cries out: "A calendar! look in the almanack! find out moonshine!"

The pleader had his cue!

It was not necessary to postpone the trial on the ground that the debate upon the new charge prevented a fair jury in the district. Besides, the widow would grow mad in the long suspense, even if the prisoner bore it manfully, though sorrowing for her and his misspent life. The trial was indeed the event of the year at the courthouse. The witnesses for the prosecution repeated about Armstrong much the same story as had convicted Norris: Armstrong had led a reprehensible career, and the deliberate onslaught with a weapon after the fight could hardly have been made by an intoxicated man. It was vindictiveness from being worsted by the unhappy Metzgar in a fair fight. In vain was it cited that he and Metzgar had been friends and that the accuser was a personal enemy of the former.

The case looked so formidable--unanswerable, in short--that the State proctor's plea for condemnation might all but be taken for granted.

However highly the prisoner had been elated by his father's friend, his own, having promised to deliver him before sundown, he must have lost the lift-up. For he wore the abandoned expression of one forsaken by his own hopes as by his friends. Norris, in his cell, could have not been more veritably the picture of despair.

Lincoln rose for the final, without eliciting any emotion from him. He dilated on the evidence, which he asserted boldly was proof of a plot against an innocent youth. He called the principal witness back to the stand, and caused him definitely to repeat that he had _seen_ Armstrong strike the fatal stroke, with a slung-shot undoubtedly, and by "the light of the moon." The proof that his accusation was false was in the advocate's hand--the almanac, which the usher handed into the jury, while the judge consulted one on his desk.

The whole story was a fabrication to avenge a personal enmity, and the rock of the prosecution was blasted by the defense's fiery eloquence.

The arbiters went out for half an hour, but the audience, waiting in breathless impatience, discounted the result. The twelve filed in to utter the alleviating "Not guilty!" and the liberator was able to fulfil his pledge.

It was not sunset, and the prisoner was free to comfort his mother.

In vain did she talk of paying a fee, and the man supported the desire by alleging his intention to work the debt out. Lincoln said in the old familiar tongue:

"Aunt Hannah, I sha'n't charge you a _red_--I said 'without money or price!' And anything I can do for you and yours shall not cost you a cent."

Soon after, as she wrote to him of an attempt to deprive her of her land, he bade her force a case into the court; if adverse there, appeal to the Supreme Court, where his law firm would act, and he would fight it out.

(Regarding the rescued man, he enlisted in the war at the first call. He was still in the ranks two years later, when his mother, in her loneliness, begged for him of the President-commander-in-chief, for his release to come home. His leave was immediately written out by Lincoln's own hand, and the soldier went home from Kentucky. He remained a valuable citizen. It was Lincoln's speech and the moonbeam of inspiration that saved him.)

* * * * *

"NICE CLOTHES MAY MAKE A HANDSOME MAN--EVEN OF YOU!"

In 1832, Lincoln, elected to the Illinois legislative chamber, found himself in one of those anguishing embarrassments besetting him in all the early stages of his unflagging ascent from the social slough of despond. Unlike eels, he never got used to skinning. For the new station, however well provided mentally, he had no means to procure dress fit for the august halls of debate.

He was yet standing behind the counter in Offutt's general shop at New Salem, when an utter stranger strolled in, asked his name, though his exceptional stature and unrivaled mien revealed his identity, and announced his own name. Each had heard of the other. The newcomer was not an Adonis, perhaps, but he was one compared with the awkward, leaning Tower of Pisa "cornstalk," who carried the jack-knife as "the homeliest man in the section." Lincoln was doubly the _plainest_ speaker there and thereabouts.

"Mr. Smoot," began the clerk, "I am disappointed in you, sir! I expected to see a scaly specimen of humanity!"

"Mr. Lincoln, I am sorely disappointed in you, in whom I expected to see a _good-looking_ man!"

After this jocular exchange of greeting, the joke cemented friendship between them. The proof of the friendship is in the usefulness of it. Lincoln turned to this acquaintance in his dilemma.

This future President may have divined the saying of the similarly martyred McKinley--about "the cheap clothes making a cheap man." He summed up his situation:

"I must certainly have decent clothes to go there among the celebrities."

No doubt, the State capital had other fashions than those prevailing at Sangamon town, where even the shopkeeper's present attire, in which he had solicited suffrages, was scoffed at as below the mark. It was composed of "flax and tow-linen pantaloons (one Ellis, storekeeper, describes from eye-witnessing), I thought, about five inches too short in the legs, exposing blue-yarn socks (the original of the Farmers' _Sox_ of our mailorder magazines); no vest or coat; and but one suspender. He wore a calico shirt, as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogans, tan color."