The Lincoln Story Book by Henry L. Williams

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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.

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