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Conversations with Lincoln
Little-Known Stories from Those Who Met America's 16th President
By GORDON LEIDNER Sourcebooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2016 Gordon Leidner
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3130-9
CHAPTER 1
BACK IN ILLINOIS
To gain a fuller understanding of President Abraham Lincoln in 1861, we must go back thirty years and envision a young man who was drifting silently alone down central Illinois's Sangamon River. This youth was twenty-two years old, poorly clad, and appeared to possess little more than a melancholy demeanor and a tall, muscular frame. All of his worldly belongings were in a battered old canoe. He had recently left the family farm and struck out on his own, looking forward to beginning a new chapter in life. His destination was the pioneer village of New Salem, Illinois, where he had been promised a job as store clerk by a local businessman.
The story of Abraham Lincoln's life up to the day he arrived in New Salem was fairly typical of young men in nineteenth-century rural America. He had been "raised to farm work" and acquired all the job skills he needed to survive on the prairie. Being a poor farmer's son, his formal education had totaled less than a year, but this was hardly an impediment to an aspiring village store clerk. Nevertheless, this drifter on the river was different — quite different from most men his age — in that he had a "peculiar ambition" to be "truly esteemed of my fellow men."
He was different in other ways too. Physically, he was a study in contrast. His immediate appearance was that of a dull laborer or farm hand, but when engaged in conversation, his entire demeanor changed. People were struck with his bright eye, his wit, and his sense of humor. Additionally, he had been blessed with an exceptional memory and an unquenchable desire to learn. He had an inherent sense of justice, accompanied by a genuine interest in helping those in need. Consequently, he had a positive impact on many lives, and for these reasons, people liked Abraham Lincoln. They remembered him.
Lincoln quickly made friends in New Salem. His unique ability to compose and tell funny stories always kept his listeners laughing. He was a conscientious store clerk who treated customers fairly, and it was while working as a store clerk that Lincoln earned the sobriquet "Honest Abe." Older men and women appreciated his willingness to help others and do favors for people in the community. The young men of the neighborhood admired his ability to outrun, outjump, and outwrestle nearly all of them. Young women found his awkward attempts to communicate with them amusing. Children adored him because he was always willing to tell a story or play a game.
While in New Salem, Lincoln worked at several jobs besides store clerk: boatman, mill hand, postmaster, volunteer soldier, election clerk, and surveyor. Although these jobs paid very little, they proved invaluable in honing Lincoln's people skills. As a postmaster, he became acquainted with virtually everyone in the community. As a volunteer militia officer in the Black Hawk War, he learned something of leadership and sacrifice. As a surveyor, he learned how to resolve disputes between neighbors.
When Lincoln was a child, he had always been interested in learning and was often in trouble with his father for taking time out from farm work to read. Now, as an adult in New Salem, he was able to read to his heart's content and borrowed books on a wide range of subjects, including grammar, history, mathematics, literature (especially Shakespeare), astronomy, and law. He was also interested in improving his ability at public speaking and joined a local debating club.
People in New Salem noticed Lincoln's efforts at self-improvement, and several of them encouraged him to run for the lower house of the Illinois State Legislature — which he did in 1832. Although he lost this election, he resolved to continue studying law and try again for the legislature.
Lincoln was self-conscious about his meager education and impoverishment and wanted to help others better themselves. Consequently, he joined the recently formed Whig Party, which he believed stood for economic and social progress, and ran again for the state legislature in 1834.
On his second attempt, he won the election. Lincoln journeyed south to take up temporary residence in the State Capitol of Vandalia and began his immersion in the legislative process as a member of the Whig constituency. After a productive term as a freshman legislator, he was reelected to another term in 1836. Thanks to his diligent studies of law, he was admitted to the Illinois bar and became the junior partner in fellow legislator John Todd Stuart's law practice. Although Lincoln's true love was politics, the state legislature only met for a few short months during the year, and the pay was paltry. Consequently, Lincoln's principal residence remained New Salem, and his primary vocation was attorney-at-law.
The job of attorney suited Lincoln well. He used his humor and story-telling skills to his advantage and developed into a talented speaker. Lincoln was, according to several of his peers, "the strongest jury lawyer we ever had in Illinois." His reputation as an honest lawyer was well deserved, and Circuit Judge David Davis would later attest to the fact that a dishonest case was poorly represented by Lincoln. As an attorney, he had plenty of opportunities to help people in need. To the chagrin of the other lawyers, he charged clients less than the customary fees when he felt people were in financial difficulty and charged nothing at all in particularly needy cases.
Lincoln was fond of New Salem, but the population of the village was dwindling, because people were moving away to more promising communities in the region. So in 1837, Lincoln decided to move to nearby Springfield, whose thirteen hundred inhabitants made it the second largest city in the state after Chicago. Upon arrival, he moved in with a man who would become one of his closest lifelong friends, Joshua F. Speed.
Lincoln won reelection to the legislature again in 1838, and thanks largely to his efforts in that governmental body, the capital of Illinois moved from Vandalia to Springfield the following year. Lincoln's legal business continued to prosper, and in 1839, he not only practiced law in Springfield, but also on the Eighth Judicial Circuit in surrounding counties. Lincoln's star was on the rise, both professionally and socially, and in that same year, he met John Todd Stuart's cousin, the sophisticated Mary Todd from Kentucky. A romantic relationship followed, and they became engaged in 1840, the same year Lincoln won his fourth term in the legislature.
After a stormy courtship, Lincoln and Mary Todd married in 1842 with a ring Lincoln gave to Mary inscribed with the sentiment, "Love is eternal." Their first son, Robert, was born in 1843, and a second son, Eddie, was born in 1846 — the year Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Lincoln moved to Washington, DC, and he began his two-year term in Congress. Although he did his best to represent his constituents, his term was rather uneventful except for his effort to introduce a bill that would end slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln had "always hated slavery," and although bills to end slavery in the District had been proposed by others before, they had all failed. Lincoln decided to write one that he hoped would receive greater bipartisan support. Although he wrote a draft of the bill and worked diligently to line up support, he soon discovered that he did not have enough political clout to guarantee its passage. Consequently, he did not formally introduce it to the House of Representatives for a vote.
In early 1849, after his single term in Congress, Lincoln decided to return to Illinois, put his political career on hold, and pursue law more diligently. While his law career became increasingly successful, the Lincolns were grieved by the death of their three-year-old son Eddie in 1850. This event had a significant impact on Lincoln, and although he had avoided church for many years, he started to develop a friendship with James Smith, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield. Mary joined the church, and Lincoln began to attend occasionally. He and Mary were soon cheered by the news that they were expecting another child. Willie was born in December of 1850, and another son, Tad, was born in 1853.
Even though Lincoln had stopped pursuing political office, he remained attentive to the hottest political topic of the time: slavery. He believed that slavery was a blight on the principles of equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence and declaimed his belief that the founding fathers had intended for the evil institution to die out. He became increasingly outraged with the Democratic Party's indifference to the spread of slavery into the new territories west of the Mississippi River. He advocated the preclusion of slavery in the western territories with the hope that most of the newly formed states west of the Mississippi would become free states, causing the balance of power in Congress to shift away from the South and allowing the nation to eventually eliminate slavery.
In 1854, one of Illinois's senators, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, pushed the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress, allowing the territories west of the Mississippi to decide for themselves whether slavery could spread there. Lincoln was incensed over this development and decided it was time to reenter the political arena in order to add his voice to those who condemned slavery.
An Illinois Senate seat was up for grabs in 1854, and Lincoln wanted it. He ran as a Whig candidate for that office but lost the race because the Democrats held a majority in the state legislature. In 1858, incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas's term was up for renewal, so Lincoln ran for the office again, this time as a Republican.
Lincoln had switched to the Republican Party, which had just been founded in 1854, because its antislavery beliefs effectively defied the proslavery Democratic Party. But Lincoln and the Republican Party of Illinois were significantly challenged, because the Democratic Party was very strong in Illinois, where the majority of the state's population was highly prejudiced against African Americans.
Lincoln and Douglas gained national attention as they stumped the state while debating the issue of slavery. Lincoln pleaded with Americans to return to the ideals of equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Although he avoided pushing for complete social equality between the races at this time, he nevertheless took the first step toward that end by declaring slavery a moral evil that should die. Douglas, in the meantime, demeaned African Americans and indifferently claimed that slavery was a local issue that should be decided by the states or territories.
Lincoln suffered defeat again, losing the Senate race to Douglas. However, his oratory skills during the debates launched him into the national limelight, and he became one of the nation's leading voices for the abolition of slavery. He was nominated as the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 1860 and defeated Stephen A. Douglas and two other candidates in the national presidential election in November of that year. The southern slave owners proclaimed that as president, Lincoln would force an end to slavery, so after the election, southern states began declaring their independence. Abraham Lincoln, the agreeable prairie lawyer and storyteller from Illinois, would soon, as president of the United States, hold the nation's fate in his hands.
The following stories illustrate Lincoln's growth in Illinois from an ungainly, twenty-two-year-old store clerk to one of the most influential men in the country. Although Lincoln became a powerful leader, he still retained his good nature, moral ascendancy, and the high esteem of all who knew him.
* * *
Lawyer Henry C. Whitney, in his book Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, presents a picture of the impoverished, awkwardly clad young Lincoln in New Salem in the early 1830s. The account clearly shows that not everyone who knew Lincoln at that time believed he was going to move up in the world.
When [Lincoln] first ran for the Legislature he presented this appearance: He wore a blue jeans coat, claw hammer style, short in both the sleeves, and in the tail: — in fact, it was so short in the tail he could not sit on it: homespun linen trousers, a straw hat and "stogy" boots.
Of course this was putting the best foot forward, but ordinarily, in his youthful days, when not posing as a candidate, he was dressed thus:
"He wore flax and tow-linen trousers — about three inches too short: one suspender; no vest or waistcoat. He wore a calico warmus, such as he had in the Black Hawk War: coarse brogans, color of the native hide; blue yarn stockings and straw hat, minus a band and turned up behind."
Judge Matheny informs me that when Lincoln first ran for the Legislature it was regarded as a joke; the boys wanted some fun: he was so uncouth and awkward, and so illy dressed, that his candidacy afforded a pleasant diversion for them, but it was not expected that it would go any further. It was found, however, during the canvass, that Lincoln knew what he was about and that he had running qualities: so Matheny told him he was sowing seeds of success: and that next year he would win. And he did.
* * *
Robert L. Wilson was a lawyer and fellow legislator whom twenty-five-year-old Lincoln befriended while living in New Salem. In 1834, Lincoln was still working various odd jobs, including store clerk and surveyor. In the following description, Wilson introduces the lanky, good-natured young man who had recently studied a surveying book so that he might become the county's deputy surveyor.
Mr. Lincoln had the monopoly of finding the lines, and when any dispute arose among the settlers, his compass and chain always settled the matter satisfactorily. He was a good woodsman, at home in the dense forest. He was a genial, fun-loving young man, always the center of the circle where ever he was. Every one knew him, and he knew every one. His stories and fun were fresh and sparkling, never tinctured with malevolence; he never told a story about an acquaintance with a view to hurt or hold up to ridicule, but purely for fun. The victim always enjoyed it as much as any one else, esteeming it rather a compliment, than a sarcasm, being entirely destitute of malice.
Mr. Lincoln at this time, was about twenty-four or five years old — six feet four inches high in his stockings, some stoop shouldered; his legs were long, feet large; arms long, longer than (those of) any man I ever knew. When standing straight and letting his arms fall down his sides, the points of his fingers would touch a point lower on his legs, nearly three inches, than was usual with other persons. I was present when a number of persons measured the lengths of their arms on their legs, as here stated, with that result; his arms were unusually long for his height, and the droop of his shoulders also produced that result. His hands were large and bony, caused no doubt by hard labor when young; he was a good chopper; the axe then in use was a great clumsy tool, usually made by the country blacksmith, weighing about six pounds, the handle being round and straight, which made it very difficult to hold when chopping, requiring a grip as strong as was necessary to wield a blacksmith's sledge hammer. This and running barefoot when young among stones, and stumps, accounts for his large hands and feet.
His eyes were a bluish brown, his face was long and very angular; when at ease (there was) nothing in his appearance marked or striking, but when enlivened in conversation or engaged in telling, or hearing some mirth-inspiring story, his countenance would brighten up, the expression would light up, not in a flash, but rapidly the muscles of his face would begin to contract, several wrinkles would diverge from the inner corners of his eyes, and extend down and diagonally across his nose; his eyes would sparkle, all terminating in an unrestrained laugh in which every one present, willing or unwilling, was compelled to take part.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Conversations with Lincoln by GORDON LEIDNER. Copyright © 2016 Gordon Leidner. Excerpted by permission of Sourcebooks, Inc..
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