Fifty Years of Public Service Part 7

When I determined to abandon the hard work on the farm to enter the study of law at Springfield, my father being so close to Mr.

Lincoln, I went to him for advice. He expressed a willingness to take me into his own office as a student, but said that he was absent on the circuit so much that he would advise me to enter the law office of Stuart and Edwards, two prominent Springfield lawyers, of whom I have written more at length in an earlier chapter. There I would have the advantage of the constant supervision of one or the other member of the firm.

From that time until he left Springfield never to return, I had constant means of observing Lincoln as a lawyer. I was at times a.s.sociated with him as a junior counsel in the trial of law suits.

I was employed in a murder case which Lincoln and Logan were defending, I being the boy lawyer in the case. They made a wonderful defence. I do not know whether the defendant was guilty or not, but I do know that he was acquitted.

During my life I have been acquainted with very many able lawyers, and I have no hesitation in saying that Lincoln was the greatest trial lawyer I ever knew. He was a man of wonderful power before a court or jury. When he was sure he was right, his strength and resourcefulness were well-nigh irresistible. In the court-room he was at home. He was frank with the court, the juries, and the lawyers, to such an extent that he would state the case of the opposite side as fairly as the opposing counsel could do it; he would then disclose his client's case so strongly, with such honestly and candor, that the judge and jury would be almost convinced at once in advance of the testimony. Judge Davis once said that the framework of Lincoln's mental and moral being was honesty, and that a wrong cause was poorly defended by him.

The story is told that a man offered to employ him in a case and told him the facts, which did not satisfy Lincoln that there was any merit in it. He said to him: "I can gain your case; I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which it appears to me as rightfully belongs to them as to you. I will not take your case, but I will give you a little advice for nothing. You seem to be a sprightly young man, and I advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way."

Mr. Lincoln was for a time employed by the Illinois Central Railroad as one of its attorneys. In a case in one of the counties of Judge Davis's circuit to which the railroad was a party, it was announced that the company was not ready for trial, and the court inquired the reason; to which Mr. Lincoln replied that Captain McClellan was absent. The court asked, "Who is Captain McClellan?" Lincoln replied that all he knew about him was that he was the engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad.

What a strange juggling of destiny and of fate! In little more than two years McClellan's fame had become world-wide as the general in charge of all the armies of the Republic, only to prove in the estimation of many people the most stupendous failure as a commander in all our military history; Davis had become a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; and Lincoln had reached the Presidency.

In the trial of the murder case to which I have referred, I never saw more striking evidence of Mr. Lincoln's power over a court.

There came a question of the advisability of certain testimony which was very vital to the defendant. The question was thoroughly argued by Judge Logan and Mr. Lincoln until the court took a recess for dinner at noon. The Judge announced that he would render his decision when the court reconvened. The courthouse was filled on the reconvening of court in the afternoon, and the Judge began rendering his opinion on the point in dispute. It seemed to Mr.

Lincoln and those present that he was about to decide against the admissibility of the evidence. Lincoln sprang to his feet.

Apparently he towered over the Judge, overawing him. He made such a tremendous impression that the court apparently gave way, and decided the point in the defendant's favor.

Mr. Lincoln was not only a great statesman, but he was one of the ablest, most astute, and shrewdest politicians whom I have ever known. From my earliest recollection of him he took keen interest in public affairs and was the foremost public man or politician in his section of the State. He was not among the first to join the Republican party. He clung to the old Whig party as long as a vestige of it remained. Almost immediately after he drifted into the Republican party, he became its recognized leader in Illinois, and his public utterances attracted the attention of the Nation to him.

I recollect having heard him utter the memorable words in the Republican Convention of my State in 1858:

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

What words of wisdom! He looked through the veil between him and the future and saw the end more clearly than any other man in public life. This was a carefully prepared speech, in which every word was weighed. Some of his friends, to whom it was read, advised him not to use the clause I have quoted, "a house divided against itself." He was wiser than any of them. With a self-reliance born of earnest conviction he said that the time had come when the sentiments should be uttered, and that if he should go down because of their utterance by him, then he would go down linked with the truth.

I listened to much of the great debate between Lincoln and Douglas, the greatest political debate which ever took place in this country.

I have always felt that Lincoln never expected to be elected to the Senate in 1858. I think he saw more clearly than any of us that the advanced position which he took in that debate made his election to the Senate at that time impossible. He was then fighting for a great principle. He did carry a majority of the popular vote, but Douglas secured a majority of the Legislature.

His defeat apparently affected him little, if at all. I felt very badly when it became apparent that Douglas had secured a majority of the Legislature. I met Lincoln on the street one day, and said: "Mr. Lincoln, is it true that Douglas has a majority of the Legislature?" His reply was an affirmative. I then expressed the great sorrow and disappointment that I felt. He placed a hand upon my shoulder, and said: "Never mind, my boy; it will all come right." I believe that he then felt certain that the position he took in that memorable debate would make him the logical candidate of the Republican party for the Presidency in 1860, which it did.

And two years from that very day the Republican party celebrated its first national victory in his election as President of the United States.

It has been said that Mr. Lincoln never went to school; and he never did to any great extent, but in a broad sense of the word, he was an educated man. He was a student, a thinker; he educated himself, and mastered any question which claimed his attention.

There was no man in this country who possessed to a greater degree the power of a.n.a.lyzation.

He was a student all his life. One incident that occurred in Springfield, some years before he finally left, will serve as an ill.u.s.tration.

An old German came through the town and claimed that he could teach us all to read and speak German in a few weeks. A cla.s.s was organized for the purpose of studying German. Lincoln became a member of the cla.s.s, and I also was in it, and I can see him yet going about with the German book in his pocket, studying it during his leisure moments in court and elsewhere. None of the rest of us learned much, but Lincoln mastered it, as he did every other subject which engaged his attention.

His home life was a pleasant one. I often visited at his home, and so far as my observation went, I do not hesitate to say that not the slightest credence should be given to the many false stories that have from time to time appeared, manufactured largely by those who desired to write something new and sensational concerning the life of President Lincoln in his home, and concerning Mrs. Lincoln.

Mr. Lincoln was regarded generally as an ungainly man, and so he was; and yet on occasions he appeared to me to be superior in dignity and n.o.bility to almost any other man whom I have ever seen.

I was present when the committee from the National Convention, that gave his first nomination for President, came to Springfield to notify him of his nomination. He stood in the rear of a double parlor in his home, and as the Hon. George F. Ashmun, president of the convention, presented the members of the delegation one by one to him, I thought that he looked what he was--the superior of any man present. Many of the eminent men composing that delegation had believed that Lincoln was some sort of a monster. I stood among them after they had met him and listened to their comments.

The lofty character, the towering strength, the majesty of the man had made a great impression upon them. They had come expecting to see a freak; they discovered one of the princes of men.

In this connection, I must be permitted to refer to another occasion.

It so happened that I was in Washington when the President's son Willie died. The funeral ceremony took place in the East Room of the White House, in the presence of the President and his cabinet and a few other friends. When the ceremony was about concluded and President Lincoln stood by the bier of his dead boy, with tear- drops falling from his face, surrounded by Seward, Chase, Bates, and others, I thought I never beheld a n.o.bler-looking man. He was at that time truly, as he appeared, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief, possessing the power and responsibilities of a President of a great Nation, yet with quivering lips and face bedewed with tears, from personal sorrow.

The morning that Abraham Lincoln left his home in Springfield never to return is not to be forgotten. It was early on the morning of the eleventh of February, dark and gloomy, with a light snow falling.

There was a large crowd of his neighbors and friends at the station to bid him good-bye. He held a sort of impromptu reception in the little railroad station. There was no noisy demonstration. As I recollect it now, it was a solemn leave-taking. Just before the train pulled out, Mr. Lincoln appeared on the rear platform of his car. Every head was bared, as if to receive a benediction, as he uttered his farewell address:

"My Friends: No one not in my situation can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have pa.s.sed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the a.s.sistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed; with that a.s.sistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."

I was not present at the first inauguration of President Lincoln, but I visited Washington many times during the years that he was President, and, knowing him as well as I did, and having known both Nicolay and Hay, his secretaries, in Springfield, I naturally spent much time around the executive offices. I had many conversations with him during the early years of the war. He had no military education, but he soon demonstrated that he was in fact the real commander-in-chief. He liked General McClellan, and stuck to him until McClellan had demonstrated his absolute inefficiency for command. McClellan was a great organizer. He made the Army of the Potomac the most perfect fighting machine, I might almost say, that was ever known in military history. But there he stopped.

He could organize, but he could not and did not, despite the urging and the anxiety of Mr. Lincoln, push forward his army to victory.

I knew something of Mr. Lincoln's anxiety at the failure of McClellan to inaugurate an aggressive campaign.

The late O. M. Hatch of Illinois told me of a rather interesting incident which occurred on one occasion when the President, accompanied by Mr. Hatch, visited McClellan's army a few days prior to the battle of Antietam in September, 1862. They spent the night in a tent, and, rising very early, at the President's suggestion they took a walk before sunrise about the great camp, inspecting the field, the artillery, the quarters, and all the appurtenances of the army. Lincoln was in a pensive mood, and scarcely a word was spoken. Finally, just as the sun was rising, they reached a commanding point; the President stopped, placed his left hand upon Mr. Hatch's shoulder, and slowly waving his right in the direction of the great city of tents, seriously inquired: "Mr. Hatch, what is all this before us?"

"Why, Mr. President," was the surprised reply, "this is General McClellan's army."

"No, Mr. Hatch, no," returned Lincoln soberly, "this is General McClellan's body-guard."

It will be understood what these utterances signified: they expressed perfectly the prevailing belief that McClellan had failed to appreciate the purpose for which that magnificent fighting machine had been created.

I think I am justified in saying that after the earlier contests of the war had proven that great soldiers and great generals were not always great leaders, President Lincoln became the able director, the actual commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States.

He planned and ordered the larger movements of the War, and he held the reins above and about all his armies, scarcely relaxing his watchful care for a moment,--until events demonstrated the wisdom with which he confided the military interests of our beloved country and the conduct of the war to Ulysses S. Grant.

Some of us remember with what persistence during the Winter of 1862 and 1863 many newspapers and a large share of the Northern people joined in the cry of "On to Richmond!" Censure and criticism ran riot even among Northern Republicans. In a three-line memorandum the President showed the fallacy of that outcry, when he wrote: "Our prime object is the enemy's army in front of us, and not with or about Richmond at all, unless it be incidental to the main object." At a later day he said to Hooker: "I think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your sure objective point."

Modest and simple as he always was, never seeking power with inordinate ambition, simply that he might use power; still he was never afraid to a.s.sume responsibility when it was his duty to a.s.sume it.

I called on him one evening at the Soldiers' Home. We spent the evening together, and naturally we talked of the war. He discussed almost all of his generals, beginning with McClellan. At that time McClellan was down on the James, and Pope was in the saddle in Virginia. Pope, he feared, would be whipped, unless he could get more troops, and he was trying to get McClellan back in order to save Pope. At that time he had not yet lost his faith in McClellan, but he was complaining that McClellan was never ready for battle.

After making all possible preparations, and with the enemy in front, he would overestimate the size of the enemy's force, and demand more troops. Yet Mr. Lincoln said that he would rather trust McClellan to get his army out of a tight place than any other general that he had.

After his election he invited his princ.i.p.al compet.i.tors for the nomination to enter his cabinet. He had not the slightest jealousy of any living man. He was not afraid, as some of our Presidents have been, to have his cabinet composed of the greatest men of his time. He was a bigger man than any of them, and no thought of jealousy ever entered his mind. Both Seward and Chase fancied they were greater men than Lincoln, and each of them, at the beginning at least, entertained the idea that on him rested the responsibility of the administration. Seward felt that he should have been the nominee of his party. Chase felt perfectly sure that he, and not Lincoln, should have been President.

Before many months had pa.s.sed, Seward was compelled to acknowledge that Mr. Lincoln was the superior of any of them, as he expressed it in a letter to his wife. He soon became one of the most devoted friends and loyal supporters of the President. The publication of the diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1865, shows that Mr. Lincoln was the leader of them all, and was in fact the real head of every department of his administration.

Chase was an able man, and loyal to the Union; but, unlike Seward, he was never loyal to the President personally, and was constantly plotting in his own interest to supplant Lincoln as the nominee of his party in 1864,--a most reprehensible course on the part of a cabinet officer. This did not give concern to Mr. Lincoln in the slightest degree. He cared very little what Mr. Chase said or thought of him personally, so long as he was doing his duty as Secretary of the Treasury.

I was in Washington the latter part of February, 1864, before he was nominated the second time. I happened to hear of the Pomeroy letter in behalf of Mr. Chase, and I learned with amazement that Chase was conspiring with his friends to secure the nomination for the Presidency, and was untrue and unloyal to his chief. I felt justly indignant. I saw Mr. Lincoln and talked with him about it with great earnestness. I told him that Chase should be turned out. He answered by saying: "Let him alone; he can do no more harm in here than he can outside."

If things did not go to suit him, Chase was in the habit of tendering his resignation every few days. It was not accepted; but he offered it once too often, and, very much to his surprise and chagrin, it was promptly accepted; and Chase was relegated to private life, where he belonged, and where he should have remained.

Chief Justice Taney pa.s.sed away unmourned, the most pathetic and desolate figure in the Civil War, with his long, faithful, and distinguished service on the bench forgotten. Chase's friends, and Chase himself, at once commenced overtures of friendship toward Mr. Lincoln, in the interest, solely, of securing Chase's appointment as Chief Justice. Considerable pressure was brought to bear in behalf of Chase. The President would give no intimation as to what he intended to do, although I myself believe that he all the time intended appointing him to the vacant position, and that the so- called pressure on the part of Sumner and other radicals had little, if any, influence with him.

During this period, after the death of Chief Justice Taney, Chase was not at all averse to writing the President the most friendly letters. One day his secretary brought him a letter from Mr. Chase.

The President asked, "What is it about?" "Simply a kind and friendly letter," the secretary answered. Mr. Lincoln, without reading it, replied with his shrewd smile: "File it with his other recommendations."

Chase was finally appointed Chief Justice of the United States.

After his conduct as a member of the cabinet, I do not believe we have ever had another President, except Lincoln, magnanimous enough to have made that appointment under similar circ.u.mstances. Lincoln entertained a very exalted opinion of Chase's ability as a lawyer and a man. He believed that he possessed the qualifications of a great Chief Justice, and the appointment was made entirely free from any personal feelings or prejudices.

I happened to be alone in Mr. Nicolay's room in the White House when Mr. Chase called to thank the President for his nomination.

He came into Mr. Nicolay's room first, and inquired of me if the President was in. I told him I did not know, but his room was next to the one we were in, and he might ascertain for himself. Knowing of Chase's disparaging remarks concerning Mr. Lincoln, and of his disloyalty as a member of his cabinet, I was very curious to hear what he would have to say to the President. He left the door ajar, and I overheard the conversation. Mr. Chase proceeded to thank the President for his nomination. Mr. Lincoln's reply was brief, merely that he hoped Mr. Chase would get along well and would do his duty. Very few words pa.s.sed between them, and the interview closed.

Montgomery Blair was Postmaster-General in President Lincoln's cabinet. He was appointed from the District of Columbia. He was a man of considerable ability, and was thoroughly loyal to the President. Montgomery Blair became exceedingly unpopular among certain cla.s.ses, not only on his own account, but because of his brother Frank, whose home was in Missouri. I thought his remaining in the cabinet was injuring the Administration, and I told Mr.

Lincoln, in a conversation I had with him at the White House, that under all the circ.u.mstances Montgomery Blair should be relieved from office; that he was unpopular; that the people were not for him. Mr. Lincoln seemed annoyed, even to the extent of petulance (a rare thing with him), that I should say anything against Montgomery Blair. He a.s.serted that Blair was a loyal man, was doing his full duty as Postmaster-General, and that he would not turn him out.