The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter VIII
The "Sangamon Chief," as Mr. Lincoln had been popularly named, was placed upon the legislative ticket again in 1840, and re-elected. At a special session of the previous legislature, held during 1839, Vandalia as the capital of the state had been forsaken, and Springfield received the legislature and the archives and offices of the state government. Mr. Lincoln was in the legislature, and, at the same time, at home. The fact reconciled him to holding an office which he felt to be a disadvantage to his business, for he could attend upon his duties at the State House, and, at the same time, have a care that his professional interests were not entirely sacrificed. In the only session held by the legislature of 1840, no important business of general interest was transacted. The democratic preponderance in the state had been partially restored and was still maintained, and although Mr. Lincoln was again the first man on the whig side and the candidate for speaker, for which office he was supported by more than the strength of his party, he was defeated as he had been in 1838. This session finished up Mr. Lincoln's connection with the legislature of the state, for, a1though urged by the people to represent them again, considerations of a private nature made him peremptory in his refusal to be again a candidate. It is recorded, however, that he was re-elected in 1854, and that he resigned before taking his seat. The election was made against his will, for a larger political life was already dawning upon him.
It was about this time that a strange incident in his private life occurred--one, certainly, which was quite in discord with his principles and feelings. A sharp, sarcastic poem appeared in the Sangamon Journal, edited at that time by Simeon Francis. The poem had an evident allusion to James Shields, a young lawyer of Springfield, and since a United States Senator from Illinois. General Shields was at that time hot-blooded and impulsive, and, instead of laughing off the matter, regarded it seriously, and demanded of Mr. Francis the author's name. Mr. Francis knew at once what the demand meant, and sought to delay his answer. He asked the young man for a day to consider whether he should reveal the name of his contributor or not. The request was granted, when Mr. Francis went to work to ascertain how he could lift the responsibility of the publication from his own shoulders, as the writer of the poem was a lady. On inquiry among the lady's friends, he ascertained that Mr. Lincoln was, at least, one of her admirers, and that he possibly bore a tenderer relation to her. Accordingly he went to Mr. Lincoln, and told him that he was in trouble, and explained to him the cause of his difficulty. It seemed certain that somebody would be obliged to fight a duel with Mr. Shields, or be branded by him as a coward; and Mr. Francis, though entirely responsible for the publication of a lady's poem shrank, in a very unworthy way, from the alternative.
As soon as Mr. Lincoln comprehended the case, and saw what Mr. Francis expected of him, he told the editor that if Mr. Shields should call again, and demand the author's name, to inform him that he, Lincoln, held himself responsible for the poem. The result was just what was expected, at least by Mr. Francis. Mr. Lincoln at once received a challenge and accepted it. There must have existed in that part of the country, at that time, a state of feeling on this subject which cannot now be comprehended among the people of the North. With a natural aversion to all violence and bloodshed, with a moral sense that shrank from the barbaric arbitrament of the duel, with his whole soul at war with the policy which seeks to heal a wound of honor by the commission of a crime, he walked with his eyes wide open into this duel. It is possible that he imagined Mr. Shields did not mean a duel by his question, or that he would not fight a duel with him; but he certainly knew that he made himself liable to a challenge, and intended to accept it if it came. Gallantry was, of course, the moving power. The lady's name was to be protected, and the editor who had been imprudent enough to publish her poem relieved from all responsibility on her account.
Mr. Lincoln selected broad-swords as the weapons for the encounter, and immediately took instruction in the exercise of that arm, of Dr. E.H. Merriman, a physician of Springfield. The place of meeting was Bloody Island, a disputed or neutral territory on the Mississippi River, lying between Illinois and Missouri. The meeting took place according to appointment, but friends interfered, determined that on such foolish grounds no duel should be fought, and no blood shed. The parties were brought together, and a reconciliation easily effected. Mr. Lincoln felt afterwards that he could have done, under the circumstances, no less than he did. He stated to a friend, however, that he selected broad-swords because his arms were long. He had not the slightest intention of injuring Mr. Shields, and thought that the length of his arms would aid him in defending his own person.
This incident does not seem to have been remembered against Mr. Lincoln, by any class of the community in which he lived. It was certainly a boyish affair, and was probably regarded and forgotten as such. Even the excitements of a great political campaign, like that which resulted in his election to the presidency, did not call it from its slumbers, and the American people were spared a representation of Mr. Lincoln's atrocities as a duelist.
Mr. Lincoln's law partnership with Mr. Stuart was dissolved in 1840, when he immediately formed a business association with Judge S.T. Logan of Springfield, one of the ablest and most learned lawyers in the state. He entered upon this new partnership with a determination to devote his time more exclusively to business than he had done, but the people would not permit him to do so. He was called upon from all quarters to engage in the exciting political canvass of 1840, and made many speeches.
In 1842, having arrived at his thirty-third year, Mr. Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd, a daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Kentucky. The marriage took place in Springfield, where the lady had for several years resided, on the fourth of November of the year mentioned. It is probable that he married as early as the circumstances of his life permitted, for he had always loved the society of women, and possessed a nature that took profound delight in intimate female companionship. A letter written on the eighteenth of May following his marriage, to J.F. Speed, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky, an early and a life-long personal friend, gives a pleasant glimpse of his domestic arrangements at this time. "We are not keeping house," Mr. Lincoln says in this letter, "but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by a widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a week... I most heartily wish you and your Fanny will not fail to come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a room prepared for you, and we'll all be merry together for a while." He seems to have been in excellent spirits, and to have been very hearty in the enjoyment of his new relation.
The private letters of Mr. Lincoln were charmingly natural and sincere, and there can be no harm in giving a passage from one written during these early years, as an illustration. Mr. Lincoln has been charged with having no strong personal attachments; but no one can read his private letters, written at any time during his life, without perceiving that his personal friendships were the sweetest sources of his happiness. To a particular friend, he wrote February 25th, 1842: "Yours of the sixteenth, announcing that Miss ---- and you 'are no longer twain but one flesh,' reached me this morning. I have no way of telling you how much happiness I wish you both, though I believe you both can conceive it. I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now, for you will be so exclusively concerned for one another that I shall be forgotten entirely. My acquaintance with Miss ---- (I call her thus lest you should think I am speaking of your mother,) was too short for me to reasonably hope to long be remembered by her; and still I am sure I shall not forget her soon. Try if you cannot remind her of that debt she owes me, and be sure you do not interfere to prevent her paying it.
"I regret to learn that you have resolved not to return to Illinois. I shall be very lonesome without you. How miserably things seem to be arranged in this world! If we have no friends we have no pleasure; and if we have them, we are sure to lose them, and be doubly pained by the loss. I did hope she and you would make your home here, yet I own I have no right to insist. You owe obligations to her ten thousand times more sacred than any you can owe to others, and in that light let them be respected and observed. It is natural that she should desire to remain with her relations and friends. As to friends, she could not need them anywhere;--she would have them in abundance here. Give my kind regards to Mr. ---- and his family, particularly to Miss E. Also to your mother, brothers and sisters. Ask little E. D--- if she will ride to town with me if I come there again. And, finally, give ---- a double reciprocation of all the love she sent me. Write me often, and believe me, yours forever, LINCOLN."
The kind feeling, the delicate playfulness, the considerate remembrance of all who were associated with the recipient of the missive, and the hearty, outspoken affection which this letter breathes, reveal a sound and true heart in the writer. It is true, indeed, that Mr. Lincoln had a friendly feeling toward everybody; and it is just as true that his personal friendships were as devoted and unselfish as those of a man of more exclusive feelings and more abounding prejudices.
Mr. Lincoln seems to have been thinking about a seat in Congress at this time. On the 24th of March, 1843, he wrote to his friend Speed: "We had a meeting of the whigs of the county here on last Monday, to appoint delegates to a district convention, and Baker[1] beat me, and got the delegation instructed to go for him. The meeting, in spite of my attempt to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates, so that, in getting Baker the nomination, I shall be 'fixed' a good deal like a fellow who is made groomsman to the man who has 'cut him out,' and is marrying his own dear gal."
In a subsequent letter, he writes: "In regard to the Congress matter here, you were right in supposing I would support the nominee. Neither Baker nor myself however, will be the man, but Hardin."[2]
It was Mr. Lincoln's rule and habit to "support the nominee." He was always a loyal party man. In the ordinary use of the word, Mr. Lincoln was not, and never became, a reformer. He believed that a man, in order to effect anything, should work through organizations of men. In a eulogy upon Henry Clay which he delivered in 1852, occurs the following passage: "A free people, in times of peace and quiet, when pressed by no common danger, naturally divide into parties. At such times, the man who is not of either party, is not, cannot be, of any consequence. Mr. Clay, therefore, was of a party." Whether his position was sound or otherwise, he believed it was, and always acted upon it. With as true a love of freedom and progress as any man--with a regard for popular rights never surpassed by professional reformers--he was careful to go no faster, and no farther, than he could take his party with him, and no faster and no farther than was consistent with that party's permanent success. He would endanger nothing by precipitancy. His policy was to advance surely, even if he was obliged to proceed slowly. The policy which distinguished his presidential career was the policy of his life. It was adopted early, and he always followed it.
With Mr. Lincoln's modest estimate of his own services, and with his friendly feelings toward all, it is not to be wondered at that he never made much money. It was not possible for him to regard his clients simply in the light of business. An unfortunate man was a subject of his sympathy, no matter what his business relations to him might be. A Mr. Cogdal, who related the incident to the writer, met with a financial wreck in 1843. He employed Mr. Lincoln as his lawyer, and at the close of the business, gave him a note to cover the regular lawyer's fees. He was soon afterwards blown up by an accidental discharge of powder, and lost his hand. Meeting Mr. Lincoln some time after the accident, on the steps of the State House, the kind lawyer asked him how he was getting along. "Badly enough," replied Mr. Cogdal, "I am both broken up in business, and crippled." Then he added, "I have been thinking about that note of yours." Mr. Lincoln, who had probably known all about Mr. Cogdal's troubles, and had prepared himself for the meeting, took out his pocket-book, and saying with a laugh, "well, you needn't think any more about it," handed him the note. Mr. Cogdal protesting, Mr. Lincoln said "if you had the money, I would not take it," and hurried away. At this same date, he was frankly writing about his poverty to his friends. as a reason for not making them a visit, and probably found it no easy task to take care of his family, even when board at the Globe Tavern was "only four dollars a week."
In the active discharge of the duties or his profession, in the enjoyments of his new domestic life, and in the intrigues of local politics, as betrayed in his letter to Mr. Speed, the months passed away, and brought Mr. Lincoln to the great political contest of 1844. Henry Clay, his political idol was the candidate of the whig party for the presidency, and he went into the canvass with his whole heart. As a candidate for presidential elector, he canvassed the state of Illinois, and afterwards went over into Indiana, and made a series of speeches there. The result of this great campaign to Mr. Clay and to the whig party was a sad disappointment. Probably no defeat of a great party ever brought to its members so much personal sorrow as this. Mr. Clay had the power of exciting an enthusiastic affection for his person that few political men have enjoyed. The women of the country were as much interested in his election as their brothers and husbands were, and wept at his defeat as if he had been their best and most intimate friend. Mr. Lincoln was among the heartiest of these mourners; but, while the event rendered his great political exemplar a hopeless man politically, the canvass itself had raised Mr. Lincoln to the proudest hight he had occupied. He had greatly strengthened the whig organization in the state, and had established his reputation as one of the most powerful political debaters in the country. His exposition of the protective system of duties, which was the principal issue of the canvass, was elaborate and powerful. He had thoroughly mastered his subject, and his arguments are still remembered for the copiousness of their facts, and the closeness and soundness of their logic.
Mr. Clay's defeat was the more a matter or sorrow with Mr. Lincoln because it was, in a measure, unexpected. No personal defeat could have been more dispiriting to him than this failure before the people of his political idol. He was not only disappointed but disgusted. With his strong convictions of the soundness of the principles of the whig party, and his belief in the almost immeasurable superiority of Mr. Clay over Mr. Polk, he doubtless had the same misgivings that have come to others, touching the capacity of the people for self-government, and realized the same distrust of the value of honors which could be so unworthily bestowed. It was to him a popular decision in the cause of political iniquity and bad government. It was not strange, therefore, in the first gush of his disappointment, that he made a new resolution to let politics alone, and attend more devotedly to the duties of his profession. But Mr. Lincoln's ambition, and Mr. Lincoln's friends, more powerful than his ambition, were not likely to permit this resolution to have a permanent influence upon his career.
Subsequently, Mr. Lincoln paid a personal visit to Mr. Clay, and it is possible that he needed the influence of this visit to restore a healthy tone to his feelings, and to teach him that the person whom his imagination had transformed into a demigod was only a man, possessing the full measure of weaknesses common to men. In 1846, Mr. Lincoln learned that Mr. Clay had agreed to deliver a speech at Lexington, Kentucky, in favor of gradual emancipation. He had never seen the great Kentuckian, and this event seemed to give him an excuse for breaking away from his business, and satisfying his curiosity to look his demigod in the face, and hear the music of his eloquence. He accordingly went to Lexington, and arrived there in time to attend the meeting.
On returning to his home from this visit, he did not attempt to disguise his disappointment. The speech itself was written and read. It lacked entirely the spontaneity and fire which Mr. Lincoln had anticipated, and was not eloquent at all. At the close of the meeting Mr. Lincoln secured an introduction to the great orator, and as Mr. Clay knew what a friend to him Mr. Lincoln had been, he invited his admirer and partisan to Ashland. No invitation could have delighted Mr. Lincoln more, but the result of his private interview with Mr. Clay was no more satisfactory than that which followed the speech. Those who have known both men, will not wonder at this, for two men could hardly be more unlike in their motives and manners than the two thus brought together. One was a proud man; the other was a humble man. One was princely in his bearing; the other was lowly. One was distant and dignified; the other was as simple and teachable as a child. One received the deference of men as his due; the other received it with an uncomfortable sense of his unworthiness.
A friend of Mr. Lincoln, who had a long conversation with him after his return from Ashland, found that his old enthusiasm was gone. Mr. Lincoln said that though Mr. Clay was most polished in his manners, and very hospitable, he betrayed a consciousness of superiority that none could mistake. He felt that Mr. Clay did not regard him, or any other person in his presence, as, in any sense, on an equality with him. In short, he thought that Mr. Clay was overbearing and domineering, and that, while he was apparently kind, it was in that magnificent and patronizing way which made a sensitive man uncomfortable.
It is quite possible that Mr. Lincoln needed to experience this disappointment, and to be taught this lesson. It was, perhaps, the only instance in his life in which he had given his whole heart to a man without knowing him, or been carried away by his imagination into an unbounded zeal on behalf of a personal stranger. It made him more cautious in the bestowal of his love. He was, certainly, from that time forward, more careful to look on all sides of a man, and on all sides of a subject, before yielding to either his devotion, than ever before. If he became slow in moving, it was because he saw more than his own side of every case and question, and recognized, in advance, such obstacles as would be certain to impede his progress.
Much has been said of Mr. Lincoln's kindness, and many suppose that he was not brave--that his patient and universal love of men was inconsistent with those sterner qualities which are necessary to make, not only a true hero, but a true man. An incident occurred during the Clay campaign which shows how ill-founded this estimate of Mr. Lincoln is. On the occasion of a great mass convention at Springfield, U.F. Linder, Esq., now a resident of Chicago, and a man of rare eloquence, made a speech which seemed to rouse the enthusiasm of the assemblage to the highest pitch. The speech was very offensive to some of the democrats who were present--who, indeed, proposed to make a personal matter of it. Mr. Linder being called out again, in the course of the meeting, was considered in personal danger, if he should attempt to respond. At this juncture, Mr. Lincoln and Colonel Baker took their places by his side, and, when he finished, conducted him to his hotel. The ruffians knew both men, and prudently refrained from interfering with them. On a previous occasion, Mr. Lincoln had protected the person of Colonel Baker himself. Baker was speaking in a court-house, which had once been a store-house, and, on making some remarks that were offensive to certain political rowdies in the crowd, they cried: "take him off the stand." Immediate confusion ensued, and there was an attempt to carry the demand into execution. Directly over the speaker's head was an old scuttle, at which it appeared Mr. Lincoln had been listening to the speech. In an instant, Mr. Lincoln's feet came through the scuttle, followed by his tall and sinewy frame, and he was standing by Colonel Baker's side. He raised his hand, and the assembly subsided immediately into silence. "Gentlemen," said Mr. Lincoln, "let us not disgrace the age and country in which live. This is a land where freedom of speech is guaranteed. Mr. Baker has a right to speak, and ought to be permitted to do so. I am here to protect him, and no man shall take him from this stand if I can prevent it." The suddenness of his appearance, his perfect calmness and fairness, and the knowledge that he would do what he had promised to do, quieted all disturbance, and the speaker concluded his remarks without difficulty.
Mr. Lincoln has already been spoken of as a strong party man, and his thorough devotion to his party, on some occasions, though very rarely, led him into hasty expressions and hasty actions, quite out of harmony with his usual self-poise and good nature. A scene occurred in the room occupied by Mr. Lincoln and his particular friend, Judge Davis, at Paris, on one occasion, which illustrates this. There was present, as a visitor, a young lawyer of the name of Constable, a gentleman of fine abilities, and at present a judge of the circuit court. Mr. Constable was a whig, but had probably been disappointed in some of his political aspirations, and did not feel that the party had treated him fairly. He was in the habit of speaking disparagingly of the policy of the party in the treatment of its own friends, and particularly of its young men, especially when he found whig leaders to listen to him. On this occasion he charged the party with being "old fogyish," and indifferent to rising men, while the democratic party was lauded for the contrast which it presented in this particular. Mr. Lincoln felt the charge as keenly as if it had been a personal one. Indeed, his own experience disproved the whole statement. Constable went on, and charged the whig party with ingratitude and neglect in his own case. Mr. Lincoln stood with his coat off, shaving himself before his glass. He had heard the charges without saying a word, but when Mr. Constable alluded to himself as having been badly treated, he turned fiercely upon him, and said, "Mr. Constable, I understand you perfectly, and have noticed for some time back that you have been slowly and cautiously picking your way over to the democratic party." Both men were angry, and it required the efforts of all the others present to keep them from fighting. Mr. Lincoln seemed for a time, as one of the spectators of the scene remarks, to be "terribly willing." Such instances as this have been very rare in Mr. Lincoln's life, and the fact that he was susceptible to the influence of such motives renders his notorious equanimity of temper all the more creditable to him. The matter was adjusted between him and Mr. Constable, and, not long afterwards, the latter justified Mr. Lincoln's interpretation of his motives, and was numbered among the democrats.