The Lincoln Story Book by Henry L. Williams

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"Not at all. The hardships of my early life gave me strong muscles."

And as there happened to be in the yard, by the doorway, a
chopping-block with the ax left stuck on the top as usual, he took it
out, swung, and poised it to get the unfamiliar heft, and chopped up
a stick lying handy. When he paused, from no more left to do, he held
out the implement straight, forming one line with his extended arm,
and not a nerve quivered any more than the helve or the blade. The
workers, who knew what hard work was, gazed with wonder at what they
could not have done for a moment. One of them gathered up the chips
and disposed of them for relics to the sightseers who welcomed such
tokens of the great ruler.

(An American visiting Mr. Gladstone's country seat, Hawarden, and
seeing the premier chopping a tree for health's sake, observed
humorously, having also seen Mr. Lincoln employed as above:
"Your Grand Old Man is going in at the same hole ours went out!")

* * * * *

HE USED TO BE "GOOD ON THE CHOP."

In the beginning of 1865, the President was wont to pay visits to the
James River, not merely to inspect the camps and the field-hospitals,
but to have a peep at "the promised _land_"--that is, Richmond,
still held by the rapidly melting and discouraged Southerners as the
"Last Ditch." In one of his strolls he came upon a gang of lumbermen
cutting up logs and putting up stockades and cabins for the wet
weather. Joining one group he chatted freely with the woodmen and as
one of themselves. Presently, he asked for the loan of an ax. The man
hesitating, since his blade had just been fine-edged, he explained
that he was one of the Jacks and "used to be good on the chop." Then
seizing the arm with familiarity he attacked a big log and, using it
as a broad-ax, shaped the rough-hewn sides till it was a perfect slab.
He handed back the tool and stalked off amid cheers.

* * * * *

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 Moliere 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.

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