The Lincoln Story Book by Henry L. Williams

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"Why, general, if we were certain the office would always be held by
men as large as yourself (how cleverly he shunned the use of either
"great" or "grand!") or Mr. Wynkopp there, it would be appropriate
enough! But, if by chance a President as small as my opposite neighbor
should be elected, his high mightiness would be ridiculous!"

The quarrelers were hushed, thinking if Douglas, the Little Giant, had
preceded or should follow their colossus of six feet three!

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S OPINION AT THIRTY.

Diffident, but having been twice disappointed in love-making, Abraham
wrote in support of a Miss Owen rejecting him: "I should never be
satisfied with any one blockhead enough to have me."

* * * * *

THE BLANK BIOGRAPHY.

Lincoln had been reading from Edmund Burke's life, when he threw down
the book with disrelish. He fell into his habit of musing, and on
reviving, said to his associate, Herndon:

"I've wondered why book publishers do not have blank biographies on
their shelves, always ready for an emergency; so that if a man happens
to die, his heirs or his friends, if they wish to perpetuate his
memory, can purchase one already written--but with blanks. These
blanks _they_ can fill up with rosy sentences full of high-sounding
praise."

He sent the "Dictionary of Congress" his autobiography in a single
paragraph of fifty words--as an example(?).

* * * * *

"THE HOMELIEST MAN UNDER GOVERNMENT."

When General Lee surrendered to General Grant, one point was noticed
by the spectators which, it was held, distinguished the Cavalier from
the Puritan. Grant was in his fighting clothes and his every-day sword
by his side, while General Lee, dressed faultlessly as a soldier
should always be, carried a court sword, presented him as a honor by
the Southerners. So, in wars, Providence does not flourish the showy
weapon, but uses a strong and sharp blade without ornamental hilt.
Abraham Lincoln was the instrument of Heaven for work--ceaseless,
bloody work, hard, for it was that least to his taste.

From boyhood the looks of the wood-chopper and river boatman were
subjects of jeering. Whether the budding genius spurned such
adventitious aids as graces of person in his career, or was already
a philosopher who believed that handsome is that handsome does is a
winning motto, we may never know. It is enough that he joined in the
laugh and kept the ball rolling.

On the loss of a first love, one Annie Rutledge--a name he said he
always loved--his friends were alarmed for his health and sanity.
They took away the knife every man carried in the West, and discovered
it was the obligatory one presented to the ugliest man and not to be
disposed of otherwise than to one still homelier.

There is a record of the clerical gentleman to whom Lincoln was
justified in offering it, who died with it in his uncontested
possession, in Toronto.

As is the custom, an office-holder going out of his seat calls on the
President with his successor to transfer the seals and other tokens.
The unlucky man enumerated the good qualities of his substitute, and
was surprised that Mr. Lincoln should dilate upon his with excessive
regrets that he was going to leave the service. This Mr. Addison was
indeed a first-class servant, but uncommonly ill-favored.

"Yes, Addison," said the chief, "I have no doubt that Mr. Price is a
pearl of price, but--but nothing can compensate me for the loss of
_you_, for, when you retire, I shall be the homeliest man in the
government!"

* * * * *

BETTER LOOKING THAN EXPECTED.

(Related by the President to Grace Greenwood):

"As I recall it, the story, told very simply and tersely, but with
inimitable drollery, ran that a certain honest old farmer, visiting
the capital for the first time, was taken by the member of Congress
for his 'deestrict,' to some large gathering or entertainment. He went
in order to see the President. Unfortunately, Mr. Lincoln did not
appear; and the congressman, being a bit of a wag, and not liking to
have his constituent disappointed, designated Mr. R., of Minnesota.
He was a gentleman of a particularly round and rubicund countenance.
The worthy agriculturist, greatly astonished, exclaimed:

"Is that old Abe? Well, I du declare! He's a better-lookin' man than
I expected to see; but it do seem as how his troubles have druv him
to drink!'"

* * * * *

LINCOLN AND SUPERSTITION.

Childhood's impressions are ineffaceable, though they may be for a
time set aside. Abraham Lincoln with all his lofty mind, acquiesced in
the vulgar belief when he took his son Robert to have the benefit of a
"madstone," at a distance from where the boy was dog-bitten. He made
the pact with the Divine Power as to the Emancipation Act, with a
sincerity which robbed worldly wisdom of its sting, and he had dreams
and visions like a seer.

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S DREAM.

"Before any great national event I have always had the same dream. I
had it the other night. It is a ship sailing rapidly."--(To a friend,
in April, 1865. See "Ship of State," a pet simile.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S VISION.

Abraham Lincoln had been nominated for the Presidency. The
consummation of his ambition had naturally a deep impression upon him.
He came home and threw himself on the lounge, expressly made to let
him recline at full-length. It was opposite a bureau on which was a
pivoted mirror happening to be so tilted that it reflected him as he
lay.

"As I reclined," he says, "my eye fell upon the glass, and I saw two
images of myself, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler
than the other. I arose and lay down again with the same result. It
made me quite uncomfortable for a few minutes, but some friends coming
in, the matter passed out of my mind.

"The next day, while walking in the street, I was suddenly reminded
of the circumstances, and the disagreeable sensation produced by
it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same
position--as regards the mirror--and if the same effect was produced,
I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some
principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and
dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had
said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and
it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws
of nature, might surely give a sign to me, if one of His chosen
servants, even through the operation of a principle of optics."

This, seeing one's simulacrum, or double, was so common, especially
when looking-glasses were full of flaws, designedly cast faulty to
give "magical" effects for conjurors, that old books on the black art
teem with instances. Lincoln was right to demonstrate that the vision
was founded on fact, and no supernatural sight at all. His trying the
repetition was like Lord Byron's quashing a similar illusion, but of a
suit of clothes hung up to look like a friend whom he believed he saw
in the spirit. A more widely read man would have dismissed the "fetch"
like the President-elect, but with a laugh.

* * * * *

"IT IS A POOR SERMON THAT DOES NOT HIT SOMEWHERE."

President Lincoln was wont to carry his mother's old Bible about with
him in the Capital City. Often he would be consulting it in mental
plights. He said that the Psalms was the part he liked best. "The
Psalms have something for every day in the week, and something for
every poor fellow like me."

* * * * *

THE RELIGION OF FEELING.

Lincoln told a friend that he heard a man named Glenn say at an
Indiana church-meeting:

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; that is my
religion!"

* * * * *

THE TWO PRAYERS.

In Lincoln's inaugural address will be found the passage about the sad
singularity of the two contendants in the fratricidal combat being
Christians alike: "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same
God." The example is forthcoming. There is plenty of evidence that
the speaker always "took counsel of God." His words are: "I have been
driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I
have nowhere else to go." [Footnote: No longer was Lincoln's piety
held as hypocrisy, as in 1860, when a campaign song sneers at

How each night he seeks the closet,
There, alone, to kneel and pray.]

(Connect with the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee's avowal:
"I have never seen the day when I did not pray for the people of the
North.")

"Everybody thinks better than anybody."--(Lincoln.) (This is also
ascribed to Talleyrand. "It is only the rich who are robbed.")

* * * * *

"WE SHALL SEE OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN!"

For weeks after the death of his son Willie the inconsolable father
mourned in particular on that day in each week, and even the military
sights at Fortress Monroe to court a change failed to distract him.
He was studying Shakespeare. Calling his private secretary to him,
he read several passages, and finally that of Queen Constance's lament
over her lost child:

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see, and know, our friends in heaven.
(_King John, III., 4._)

"If that be true, I shall see my boy again!" He said:

"Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you
were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad
consciousness that it was not reality? Just so I dream of my boy
Willie!"

(Colonel Lamon, the presidential body-guard-in-chief, was the
recipient of this spiritual confidence.)

* * * * *

MORE PRAYING AND LESS SWEARING!

On accompanying Mrs. Pomeroy, military nurse, to her hospital, the
President discovered that the authorities of the house had forbidden
praying to the patients, or even reading the Bible to them, as it was
denominational. He promptly removed the restriction, and furthered the
visiting missionaries in holding prayer-meetings, read the Scriptures
to "his boys in blue," and pray with them as much as they pleased.

"If there was more praying," he said, "and less swearing, it would be
far better for our country."

* * * * *

GLOVES OR NO GLOVES.

An old acquaintance of the President's visited him at Washington. Each
man's wife insisted on the gentleman, her lord, donning gloves. For
they were going as a square party out in the presidential carriage,
and the Washingtonians would not accept a king as such unless he
dressed as a king. Mr. Lincoln, as a shrewd politician, and married
man, put his gloves in his pocket, not to don them until there was no
wriggling out of the fix; the other one had his on at the hotel where
the carriage came to take that couple up.

They went out and took seats in the vehicle, whereupon the newcomer,
seeing that his host was ungloved, went on the rule of leaving the
fence bars as you find them. He set to drawing off his kids at the
same time as Mr. Lincoln commenced to tug at his to get them on.

"No, no, no!" protested the caller, fetching away his kids, one at
a time, "it is none of my doings! Put up your mittens, Lincoln!"

And so they had their ride out without their hands being in guards.

* * * * *

THE USE OF BOOKS.

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't
very new, after all."--(By an Illinois clergyman, knowing Lincoln in
the 'Fifties.)

* * * * *

LINCOLN'S BOOK CRITICISM.

"For those who like this kind of book, this is the kind of book they
will like."--(New York _Times Book Review_, July 7, 1901.)

* * * * *

THE HAND-TO-HAND ENCOUNTER.

Toward the evident close of the struggle an English nobleman came to
Washington, credited to the embassy. This was somewhat impudent and
imprudent of him, too, as, in early times, he was prominent among the
British aristocrats who had supported the Confederate States. He had
assisted in their being declared belligerents--a sore point. He had
invested in the "Cotton Loan," and voted in sustenance of the Lairds
getting the rebel pirates out of the Mersey. Altogether, he must
have attended the regular White House reception from thinking his
hostility was unrecorded. But the President was clearly prepared for
the _fox-paw_! He spoke to the Briton smoothly enough, but when
the unsuspecting hand was placed in his grasp he gave it one of those
natural and not formal grips which left an impression on him forever.
The balladist's line was realized for him: "It is _hard_ to give
the hand where the heart can never be."

* * * * *

BETTER SOMETIMES RIGHT THAN ALL TIMES WRONG.

In 1832, when candidate for the Illinois legislative chambers, Lincoln
said he held it "a sound maxim better only sometimes to be right than
at all times wrong."

* * * * *

MAKING THE DAGGER STAB THE HOLDER.

Upon the first debate of the Lincoln-Douglas series, an admirer of
the former, having no doubt now "the stump speaker" would defeat the
meretricious parliamentarian, said:

"I believe, Abe, you can beat Douglas for the Senate."

"No, Len, I can't beat him for the Senate, but I'll make him beat
himself for the Presidency."

Douglas did gain the prize, but he lost his chances in the
presidential race by alienating the whole Southern vote.--(Related by
Mr. Leonard Swett, the "Len" above, to Mr. Augustus C. Buell.)

* * * * *

THE TAIL OF THE KITE.

"Congress, like the poor, is always with us!"--(To General Grant.
"Grant's Memoirs.")

* * * * *

NO DAY WITHOUT A LINE.

"I don't think much of a man not wiser to-day than he was
yesterday."--(A. Lincoln.)

* * * * *

TRUTH AND THE PEOPLE.

"The people are always much nearer the truth than politicians
suppose."--(A. Lincoln.)

* * * * *

"CALL ME 'LINCOLN.'"

Like the Friends, Abraham Lincoln had a dislike for handles to a name,
and at the first incurred criticism in fastidious Washington circles
by his using the last name and not the Christian one to familiars. To
an intimate friend he appealed:

"Now, call me 'Lincoln,' and I'll promise not to tell of the breach
of etiquette, if _you_ won't (Ah, how well he knew the vanity
of great men's Horatios!), and I shall have a resting spell from
_Mister_ Lincoln!"

* * * * *

THE ELOQUENT HAND.

The colonel of the famous Massachusetts Sixth, which fought its way
through Baltimore, risen in riot, B. F. Watson, led fifty men to
cleave their way through "the Plug-uglies," vile toughs. On reporting
at the capital he found Commanding General Scott receiving the mayor
of Baltimore, hastening to sue for the sacred soil not being again
trodden on by the ruthless foot of the Yankees. President Lincoln
happened in and, recognizing Colonel Watson, who was only second in
command then, complimented him on his "saving the capital," and
introduced him to the company. Presuming that his quality would awe
a young and amateur soldier, the unlucky mayor had the audacity to
require his confirmation of his story. He said that he had dared the
mob, and, to shield the soldiers, marched at their head, etc. But the
officer, still warm from his baptism of fire, truly replied that
he could not give a certificate of character. He related how the
riff-raff had assailed the volunteers, wonderfully forbearing about
not using their guns, and that the police and other officials had
sworn that they should not pass alive, while the head and front, as he
called himself, marched only a few yards--quitting on the pretext that
it was too hot for him!

"Many times," said Colonel Watson, "have I recalled the mayor's look
of intense disgust, the astonishing dignity of the commanding general,
and the expression, half-sad, half-quizzical, on the face of the
President at the evident infelicity of his introduction. If I did not
leave that distinguished presence with my reputation for integrity
unimpaired, the pressure of Abraham Lincoln's honest hand, as we
parted, deceived me."

* * * * *

WOMAN.

"Woman is man's best present from his Maker."--(A. Lincoln.)

* * * * *

TO THINK AND TO DO WELL.

"It is more than mortal to think and to do well on all occasions and
subjects."--(To Senator James F. Wilson.)

* * * * *

"SET THE TRAP AGAIN!"

To fix extreme abolition upon Abraham Lincoln, Senator Douglas lent
himself to assuring that his rival had taken part in a convention and
helped pass a certain resolution. This was a fraud, as there was no
such resolution passed, and Lincoln was not present.

"The main object of that forgery was to beat Yates and elect Harris
for Congress, object known to be exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at
the time.... The fraud having been apparently successful, both Harris
and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put
it to new uses. As the fisherman's wife, whose drowned husband was
brought home with his body full of eels, said, when asked what was
to be done with him: 'Take out the eels and set him again!' [Footnote:
See Colman's "Broad Grins."] So Harris and Douglas have shown a
disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which
they gained Harris' election, and set the fraud again, more than
once."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15,
1858.)

* * * * *

"NO ROYALTY IN OUR CARRIAGE."

From August to mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas warred on the
platform throughout Illinois, in a celebrated series of debates. As
the senator was in a high position, and expected to reap yet more
important honors, the Central Railroad corporation extended to him all
graces. A special car, the Pullman in embryo in reality, was at his
beck, and a train for his numerous friends if he spoke. On the other
hand, his rival, becoming more and more democratic in his leaning
to the grotesque, gloried in traveling even in the caboose of a
freight-train. He had no brass bands and no canteen for all comers;
on one occasion his humble "freighter" was side-tracked to let the
palace-cars sweep majestically by, a calliope playing "Hail to the
Chief!" and laughter mingling with toasts shouted tauntingly through
the open windows. The oppositionist laughed to his friends, and said:

"The gentleman in that decorated car evidently smelled no royalty in
our scow!"

He scoffed at these "fizzlegigs and fireworks," to employ his phrase.

But his keen sense of the ludicrous was not shared with his admirers.
On the contrary, the women saw nothing absurd in drowning him with
flowers and the men in "chairing him." Henry Villard relates that he
saw him battling with his supporters literally, and beseeching them
who bore him shoulder-high, with his long limbs gesticulating like a
spider's, for them to "Let me down!"

In another place, after Douglas had been galloped to the platform in
his carriage and pair, his antagonist was hauled up in a hayrack-wagon
drawn by lumbering farm-horses.

* * * * *

THE TRAP TO CATCH A DOUGLAS.

In the course of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the former, among his
friends, announced that at the next meeting he would put a "settler"
to his contestant, and "I don't care a continental which way he
answers it."

As he did not explain, all awaited the evening's speeches for
enlightenment. In the midst of Douglas' "piece," Lincoln begged to be
allowed a _leetle_ question. The Lincolnian "leetle questions"
were beginning to be rankling darts.

Formally, the question was: "Can the people of a United States
territory, in a lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of
the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the
foundation of a State constitution?"

In the homely way Lincoln put it, it ran:

"Suppose, _jedge_ (for Judge Douglas) there was a new town or
colony, just started in some Western territory; and suppose there was
precisely one hundred householders--voters, there--and suppose, jedge,
that ninety-nine did not want slavery and the one did. What would be
done about it?"

This was the argument about "Free Soil" and "squatter sovereignty"
in a nutshell.

The wily politician strove to avoid the loop, but finally admitted
that on American principles the majority must rule. This caused the
Charleston Convention of 1860 to split on this point, and Douglas
lost all hope of the Presidency.

* * * * *

PRACTISE BEFORE AND BEHIND "THE BAR."

The debate between Douglas and Lincoln, while marked by speeches
severe and stately, was interspersed with repartees and innuendoes as
might be awaited from former friends and become, by double rivalry,
fierce enemies.

The senator did not disdain to stoop to casting back at Lincoln's
humble beginning, and taunted him with having kept store and waited
_behind the bar_ before waiting before the bar judicial for his
turn to practise law. His adversary rose amid the laughter, and
rejoined:

"What the jedge (Judge Douglas) has said, gentlemen, is true enough.
I did keep a grocery, and sometimes I did sell whisky; but I remember
that in those days Mr. Douglas was one of my best customers for the
same. But the difference between us now is that I do not practise
behind the bar at present, while Mr. Douglas keeps right on
_before_ it."

* * * * *

CONNUBIAL AMITY.

"Mr. Douglas has no more thought of fighting me than fighting his
wife."--(Said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, at a rumor that
the senator would challenge him for some personality.)

* * * * *

THE MODEL WHISKY-BARREL.

During the Douglas-Lincoln series of debates, the former made a jest
counting upon his being President some day. He said that his father
was a cooper, yet, with prescience, had not taught him the paternal
craft, but made him a _cabinet_-maker. His adherents who counted
on office if he won loudly applauded. Douglas was a thick-set,
rotund man, whose florid gills revealed that he was a host for boon
companions. Lincoln was his antithesis, as tall, long-drawn, and
somber as the cold-water man he was rated. He rose, and at once shot
his shaft:

"I was not aware that Mr. Douglas' father was a cooper, but I doubt it
not, or that he was a good one. In fact, I am certain that he has made
one of the best whisky-casks I have ever seen!"

* * * * *

FIGHTING OUT OF ONE COAT INTO THE OTHER.

"I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated
men engaged in a fight, with their greatcoats on, which fight, after a
long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself
out of his own coat and into that of the other! If the two leading
parties of to-day are really identical with the two in the days of
Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two
drunken men."--(Letter declining a Jefferson banquet invitation,
Springfield, Illinois, April 6, 1859.)

* * * * *

THE PROMISING FACE!

"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians
of his party have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant
day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his
round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land offices, marshalships
and cabinet appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting
and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by
their greedy hands.... On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to
be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that
any cabbages were sprouting out."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Springfield,
Illinois, July 17, 1858.)

* * * * *

"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND."

This often-quoted passage was uttered in June, 1857, at Springfield,
Illinois, during Lincoln's congressional campaign:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this
government cannot endure permanently, half-slave and half-free. I do
not expect this house to fall: I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
one thing or the other."

* * * * *

THE CONCERT ON "DRED SCOTT."

The Supreme Court of the United States decided in a fugitive-slave
case, one Dred Scott, that no negro slave could be any State citizen;
that neither Congress nor a territorial organization can exclude
slavery; that the United States courts would not decide whether a
slave in a free State becomes free, but left that to the slave-holding
State courts. Lincoln, in debate with Senator Douglas, asserted that
the latter, Chief Justice Taney, and others, were in a league to
perpetuate slavery and extend it.

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