Lincoln Part 3

Years afterward the doggerel was still remembered in southern Indiana. According to one settler, parts of it were known "better than the Bible-better than Watts hymns."

If the whole episode had any significance, it indicated that Lincoln needed to break away from home. He realized this as well as anyone. He longed to become a steamboat man and asked a neighbor, William Wood, to go with him to the Ohio River and give him a recommendation to a ship's captain. "Abe," Wood said, "your age is against you-you are not 21 yet." "I know that," the young man replied, "but I want a start." Unwilling to break the law or to offend his neighbor, Thomas Lincoln, Wood did make some discreet, though unsuccessful, inquiries in Abraham's behalf in Rockport.

But Abraham still legally owed Thomas Lincoln another year of labor, and he remained with his father out of obligation and with his stepmother out of affection. Early in 1830 he helped them move from Spencer County, Indiana, into Macon County, Illinois. John Hanks had already settled there and sent back glowing reports of the fertility of the Illinois lands, and Dennis Hanks was eager to move with his family. A rumor of a new outbreak of the milk sickness in southern Indiana triggered the Lincolns' decision to go with them. Selling his land, his hogs, and his corn, Thomas Lincoln gathered up his household, and in March started off in a wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen.

Abraham did his best to keep the company cheerful, making jokes as he goaded on the oxen. Such roads as there were proved almost impa.s.sable; the ground was still frozen from winter, and it melted a little each day only to freeze back at night. When the party crossed the Wabash River at Vincennes, the river was so high that the road was covered with water for half a mile at a stretch. Everywhere the streams were swollen, and usually there were no bridges. At one crossing Lincoln's favorite little fice dog jumped from the wagon, broke through the ice, and began struggling for his life. "I could not bear to lose my dog," Lincoln recalled many years later, "and I jumped out of the waggon and waded waist deep in the ice and water[,] got hold of him and helped out and saved him."

After pa.s.sing through the village of Decatur, which consisted of fewer than a dozen log cabins, the Lincolns went on about ten miles to a tract of land on the north bank of the Sangamon River, which John Hanks had staked out for them. That summer they broke up fifteen acres of land, and Abraham and John Hanks split the rails to fence them in. Abraham already felt so much at home in Illinois that he signed a pet.i.tion, along with forty-four other "qualified voters," asking for a change of polling place for elections-even though he had not lived in the state the six months required to qualify as an elector.

That summer, too, he made his first political speech, addressing a campaign meeting in front of Renshaw's store in Decatur. Two established politicians, candidates for the state legislature, made addresses, and when they failed to follow custom and offer the crowd something to drink, the boys about the store urged Lincoln to reply, expecting him to ridicule the candidates' stinginess. It was a small affair, but a notable step in Abraham's continuing effort to distance himself from his father. To put himself forward and make a public speech was something that Thomas Lincoln would never have dreamed of doing. But Abraham had for several years been reading anti-Jackson National Republican newspapers, like the Louisville Journal, and he ardently favored Henry Clay's "American System," which called for internal improvements, a protective tariff, and a national bank. He surprised his audience at Decatur, which had been expecting some rude political humor, with a plea for improving the Sangamon River for transportation. Showing no evidence of stage fright except for frequently shifting his position to ease his feet, he ended with an eloquent picture of the future of Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln was now a man, both physiologically and legally, and ready to leave the family nest forever. How he would support himself was not clear. He was willing to try anything-so long as it was not his father's occupations of farming and carpentry. So when Denton Offutt, a bustling, none too scrupulous businessman, asked him and John Hanks to take another flatboat loaded with provisions down to New Orleans, Lincoln, having nothing better to do, promptly accepted. When he went over to the river landing at Sangamo Town to help build the boat for Offutt, he left his father's house for good. He did not yet know who he was, or where he was heading, but he was sure he did not want to be another Thomas Lincoln.

CHAPTER TWO

A Piece of Floating Driftwood

The years after Abraham Lincoln left his father's household were of critical importance in shaping his future. In 1831 he was essentially unformed. It was not clear to him or to anybody else what career he might ultimately follow. His strong body and his ability to perform heavy manual labor equipped him only to be a farmer-his father's occupation, which he despised. In the next ten years he tried nearly every other kind of work the frontier offered: carpenter, riverboat man, store clerk, soldier, merchant, postmaster, blacksmith, surveyor, lawyer, politician. Experience eliminated all but the last two of these possibilities, and by the time he was thirty the direction of his career was firmly established.

I

Lincoln arrived at New Salem, which was to be his home for the next six years, by accident. He was, he used to tell fellow residents, "a piece of floating driftwood," accidentally lodged by the floodwaters of the Sangamon River. He first saw the village in April 1831, when the flatboat that he, John Hanks, and John D. Johnston had constructed for Offutt became lodged on the milldam that John Camron and James Rutledge had erected across the river. Loaded with barrels of bacon, wheat, and corn, the flatboat was too heavy to float over the dam, and it began taking on water at an ominous rate. The whole village turned out to watch as the crew frantically struggled to save the boat and the cargo. The young giant Lincoln attracted their special attention as he worked in the water, with his "boots off, hat, coat and vest off. Pants rolled up to his knees and shirt wet with sweat and combing his fuzzie hair with his fingers as he pounded away on the boat." Unable to budge the flatboat, he bored a hole in the bow and unloaded enough of the barrels in the rear so that the stern rose up. When the water poured out through the hole, the whole boat lifted and floated over the dam. Townsmen marveled at Lincoln's ingenuity, and Offutt, even more deeply impressed, vowed that, once the trip down the Mississippi was completed, he would set up a store in New Salem and make Lincoln the manager.

In late July, back from New Orleans, Lincoln returned to New Salem, to find that Offutt, characteristically, had not lived up to his great promises. There was as yet no store, though a stock of goods had been ordered from St. Louis. Now living-as he later expressed it-"for the first time, as it were, by himself," Lincoln had to take odd jobs to tide him over the summer, but, fortunately, laborers were always in demand on the frontier.

New Salem was a place for which young Abraham Lincoln was perfectly suited. Founded only two years earlier, on a high bluff above the Sangamon River, by the mill owners Camron and Rutledge, it was in 1831 not so much a frontier settlement as a commercial village that supplied the needs of the surrounding rural areas, like Clary's Grove and Concord. In addition to the sawmill and the gristmill, both powered by the river, New Salem counted a blacksmith's shop, a cooper's shop, an establishment for carding wool, a hatmaker, one or more general stores, and a tavern. With about one hundred residents, who occupied a dozen or so houses and stores, it was the largest community Lincoln had ever lived in.

Everyone grew very fond of this hardworking and accommodating young man, so able and so willing to do any kind of work. Quickly he established himself with the men of the town, who gathered daily at the store run by Samuel Hill and John McNeil, to exchange news and gossip. They welcomed Lincoln because, like his father, he had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes and stories. One concerned an Indiana Baptist preacher who, dressed in old-fashioned baggy pantaloons and a shirt fastened only at the collar, announced his text: "I am the Christ, whom I shall represent today." Then a little blue lizard ran up his leg, and the preacher, unable to slap him away and unwilling to stop his sermon, loosened his pants and kicked them off. But the lizard proceeded up the minister's back, and this time, without missing a word, he opened his collar b.u.t.ton and swept off his shirt, too. The congregation looked dazed, but one old lady rose up and shouted: "If you represent Christ then I'm done with the Bible."

When no women were present, his stories sometimes took on a scatological tone. For instance, he recounted an anecdote he attributed to Colonel Ethan Allen, famed for his role in the American Revolution. Allegedly making a visit to England after the war, Allen found his hosts took great pleasure in ridiculing Americans, and George Washington in particular, and, to irritate their guest, hung a picture of the first President in the toilet. (In telling the story, Lincoln called it "the Back House.") Allen announced that they had found a very appropriate place for the picture, because "there is nothing that will Make an Englishman s.h.i.t so quick as the sight of Genl Washington."

Such stories had no special point. Unlike Lincoln's later anecdotes, they were not used to ill.u.s.trate any argument or to ridicule any particular person. Lincoln repeated them because he thought they were funny and because he had grown up in a household where swapping stories was an accepted way of pa.s.sing the time. Told at great length, with much mimicry and many gestures, his stories eased his acceptance by the predominantly masculine society of New Salem; it was the rare man who could fail to be amused when this shambling youth with the mournful visage began to spin out one of his tales. As he talked, one old-timer remembered, "his countenance would brighten up, the expression would light up not in a flash but rapidly, the muscles would begin to contract. Several wrinkles would diverge from the inner corners of his eyes, and extend down and diagonally across his nose, his eyes would sparkle, all terminating in an unrestrained laugh in which every one present willing or unwilling were compelled to take part."

In September, when Offutt's store finally opened, Lincoln had to gain acceptance from a different group. As a trading center, New Salem attracted farmers and laborers from the surrounding communities who came in to have their corn ground at the mill, to buy supplies, or to have a few drinks at the "groceries" (as stores that also sold liquor were known). These visitors came closer to being traditional frontiersmen than the relatively sedentary inhabitants of the village. None were wilder than the boys from Clary's Grove, a few miles to the west, whose leader was the stalwart Jack Armstrong. Uninhibited, ignorant, careless of rules and proprieties, these roughnecks were always ready for fun and a frolic. They could be generous and good-natured. For their friends, as Herndon remarked, they "could trench a pond, dig a bog, build a house," and they melted with sympathy for defenseless women and the invalid. But much of their time in New Salem was spent in devilment, like c.o.c.kfighting and ganderpulling (a contest to see which rider could snap off the head of a live gander suspended from a tree limb). Above all, they valued physical strength.

When Offutt, enchanted with his new a.s.sistant, began boasting that Lincoln was not merely the smartest man in New Salem but also the strongest, the Clary's Grove boys called his bluff. They cared not at all about Lincoln's mental superiority, but they dared him to test his strength in a wrestling match with their champion, Jack Armstrong. Lincoln was reluctant, because he said he did not like all the "wooling and pulling" of a wrestling match, but the urging of his employer and the taunts of his rivals obliged him to fight. In the collective memory of New Salem residents, the contest was an epic one, and various versions survived: how Armstrong defeated Lincoln through a trick; how Lincoln threw Armstrong; how Armstrong's followers threatened collectively to lick the man who had defeated their champion until Lincoln volunteered to take them all on, but one at a time. The details were irrelevant. What mattered was that Lincoln proved that he had immense strength and courage, and that was enough to win the admiration of the Clary's Grove gang. Thereafter they became Lincoln's most loyal and enthusiastic admirers.

At the same time, the better-educated, more stable residents of New Salem came to think highly of this new arrival. Though the village was close to the frontier, a surprising number of the inhabitants were people of some culture and education. Dr. John Allen, for instance, was a graduate of Dartmouth College, and at least five residents had attended Illinois College, in nearby Jacksonville. Those without formal education often had intellectual interests. Fat, lazy Jack Kelso, for example, had a remarkable mastery of the writings of Burns and Shakespeare, which he could recite by the hour. Though self-educated, Mentor Graham conducted the town's only school. All were struck by Lincoln's unabashed eagerness to learn. They were also impressed by his partic.i.p.ation in the New Salem debating club, which James Rutledge had started. When he first took the floor, with both hands thrust deeply into his pockets, Lincoln spoke diffidently, but as he proceeded, his voice grew more a.s.sured, he started using his hands for awkward gestures, and, one partic.i.p.ant remembered, "he pursued the question with reason and argument so pithy and forcible that all were amazed."

Town worthies grew convinced that this was a young man with a future. They noted his painstaking attention to his duties at Offutt's store, which were presently extended to include management of the nearby gristmill and the sawmill. "He was among the best clerks I ever saw," schoolmaster Graham recalled; "he was attentive to his business-was kind and considerate to his customers and friends and always treated them with great tenderness-kindness and honesty." They took satisfaction in the great interest he showed in town affairs. For instance, he regularly attended the sessions of the local court, over which the corpulent Bowling Green, the justice of the peace, presided. Always looking for amus.e.m.e.nt, Green initially allowed the awkward young man to make informal comments on cases before the court because he told anecdotes that, as one contemporary recalled, produced "a spasmotic [sic] shaking of the fat sides of the old law functionary." But soon he came to recognize that Lincoln had not merely a sense of humor but a strong, logical mind. Presently neighbors began to rely on him for legal advice, and, following a book of forms, he was able to draft simple legal doc.u.ments, like deeds and receipts.

In the spring of 1832, Green, James Rutledge, the president of the debating club, and several other residents suggested that Lincoln run for the state legislature. Their choice was not as extraordinary as it might initially appear. The future of New Salem was linked to the Sangamon River, which swirled under the bluff on which the town was located. Down the river went the surplus bacon, corn, and wheat of the area-just the commodities that Lincoln's flatboat had carried-and if the sluggish stream was improved, steamboats could bring up the river manufactured goods, salt, iron, and the dozens of other commodities that residents required. But the prospect that New Salem might become a commercial entrepot for central Illinois was threatened by a plan to build a railroad from the readily navigable Illinois River to Jacksonville and Springfield, bypa.s.sing New Salem altogether. New Salem needed a man in the legislature to represent its interests, and n.o.body could do that better than Lincoln, with his practical experience as a riverboat man.

At his friends' urging, Lincoln in March 1832 announced himself a candidate for the state legislature. The move was another demonstration of the young man's supreme self-confidence, his belief that he was at least the equal, if not the superior, of any man he ever met. To be sure, the post he was seeking was not an elevated one. No special qualifications were required of state legislators, who dealt mostly with such issues as whether cattle had to be fenced in or could enjoy free range. Previous legislative experience was not a necessity and, indeed, might be considered a disadvantage. Nor did candidates have to have the backing of a strong political party or powerful patrons. As yet, Illinois politics was in a state of flux. While many residents strongly admired Andrew Jackson, who was seeking a second term as President, others, including Lincoln, almost worshiped Henry Clay, the rival candidate for that office. Differences between these two leaders over a national bank, the protective tariff, and federal support for "internal improvements"-meaning improvement of roads, ca.n.a.ls, and rivers-would soon lead to the formation of Democratic and Whig parties, but in 1832 these national issues had not yet spilled over into Illinois local politics, which remained a matter of voters choosing their personal favorites for office.

Nevertheless, Lincoln's decision to announce himself a candidate for the state legislature in March 1832 was a revealing one. Less than a year earlier he had been, in his own words, a "friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat-at ten dollars per month." He was now settled in New Salem, but, at the age of twenty-three, he was only a clerk in a small country store, a young man with less than a year of formal education and with no experience in the workings of government. As one contemporary remarked, "Lincoln had nothing only plenty of friends." Hardly known outside of his little community, he would have to compete for votes in the entire county, contesting with men of far greater age and experience.

Other candidates had influential politicians present their names to the electorate, but Lincoln, lacking such support, appealed directly to the public in an announcement published in Springfield's Sangamo Journal. In drafting and revising it, he probably had some a.s.sistance from John McNeil, the storekeeper, and possibly from schoolmaster Mentor Graham, and they may have been responsible for its somewhat orotund quality. Lincoln began by challenging the proposed railroad project. "However high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it," he warned there was "a heart appalling shock accompanying the account of its cost." As an alternative he urged the improvement of the Sangamon River, which would be "vastly important and highly desirable to the people of this county," and he vouched for the practicability of this project by adducing his experience on the river, which was as extensive as that of "any other person in the country."

On other issues as well Lincoln spoke for the New Salem community. Chronically short of cash and needing credit, its businessmen were obliged to borrow at very high rates of interest, and Lincoln pledged to support a law against such usury, "this baneful and corroding system." But even as a very young man he recognized the limits of the possible. Usury legislation might have a useful symbolic effect, but, he noted wryly, it would not materially injure anyone because "in cases of extreme necessity there could always be means found to cheat the law." Like other New Salem residents, he favored improving education, "the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in," though he offered no plan or program.

In a concluding paragraph Lincoln spoke for himself, rather than for his community, and here he employed his distinctive style, avoiding highfalutin language in favor of simplicity and directness. He declared that his only object was "that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem." How well he would succeed "is yet to be developed." "I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life," he reminded voters, in what was to become part of his standard appeal; on at least thirty-five other public occasions before 1860 he referred to himself as "humble" Abraham Lincoln. If elected, he would work hard for the people. But defeat would not be unbearable, because he was "too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

II

Lincoln's announcement was timely, because within days of its publication news spread that "the splendid, upper cabin steamer Talisman" had left Cincinnati on a voyage to demonstrate the navigability of the Sangamon River. After traveling down the Ohio and up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers to Beardstown, the vessel would push up the Sangamon to Portland Landing, about six miles from both New Salem and Springfield. The whole region was overjoyed.

Lincoln, along with several other residents of Springfield and New Salem, went to Beardstown and worked hard for several days cutting back the brush that overhung the river and removing obstructions where it flowed into the Illinois. When the Talisman arrived at Beardstown, he took charge, because, as he had said in his political announcement, he knew the Sangamon River better than anyone else, and he triumphantly piloted the steamer upstream to Portland Landing on March 24. Probably he joined in the celebration at the Springfield courthouse two days later.

News that the Sangamon was rapidly dropping put an end to the celebrations, and within a week the Talisman, with Lincoln again at the helm, beat a hasty retreat down the river. The water level was so low that a portion of the milldam at New Salem had to be destroyed to allow the vessel to pa.s.s through on its way back to Beardstown. The whole Talisman adventure impressively boosted Lincoln's reputation; it both demonstrated his skill as a river pilot and proved his political sagacity in urging that if the Sangamon was going to be navigable it would have to be improved with state support.

But Lincoln's promising political career was interrupted by the collapse of Offutt's business ventures. Offutt was, as one New Salem resident characterized him, "a gasy-windy-brain rattling man," full of visionary plans. On the verge of bankruptcy, he asked Lincoln to split enough rails to build a pen, at the base of the New Salem bluff, for a thousand hogs, which he was confident he would sell down the river. Even when his funds were exhausted, Offutt announced to the farmers of the Sangamon region that he was importing 3,000 or 4,000 bushels of seed corn, which he would sell for a dollar a bushel, along with cottonseed brought up from Tennessee. Undercapitalized and overextended, Offutt's enterprises faltered in the spring of 1832 and then, as Lincoln said later, "petered out."

Left without a job, Lincoln was saved by the outbreak of the Black Hawk War. The Sauk and Fox Indians, who had been tricked into moving west of the Mississippi River, ceding their vast tribal lands in northwestern Illinois, repudiated their treaty with the federal government, and in May one of their leaders, Black Hawk, returned to Illinois with about 450 warriors and 1,500 women and children, to reclaim their tribal homeland. Immediately the frontier was ablaze with alarm. When Governor John Reynolds called for volunteers to a.s.sist the federal troops in repelling the invasion, men rushed to offer their services, some out of patriotism, some out of long-cherished animosity toward Indians, and some who knew that military service would aid their political careers. In Lincoln's case all these motives were at work-with the added inducement that the pay of a militiaman would be very welcome to a man with no other means of support.

On April 21 he and other volunteers from the New Salem neighborhood met near Richland and were sworn in to service. As was customary, the men of the company elected their own officers. William Kirkpatrick, the owner of a sawmill, announced his candidacy, but some of the Clary's Grove boys proposed Lincoln. Both candidates stepped out in front, on the village green, and the men formed a line behind their favorite. To Lincoln's delight, two-thirds of the groups fell in line behind him, and most of the others presently deserted Kirkpatrick and joined them. The election was one of the proudest moments of his life. Many years later, after he had served four terms in the state legislature, had been elected to Congress, and had twice been nominated for the United States Senate, Lincoln said this election as militia captain was "a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since."

Lincoln tried with moderate success to secure some discipline in his company, and his task was made easier because Jack Armstrong was his first sergeant. He learned a little about close-order drill, but not enough to master the more complicated commands. Once when he found his company marching directly into a fence, he could not remember how to order them to pa.s.s through the narrow gate. With considerable presence of mind he called a halt, dismissed the company for two minutes, and ordered them to re-form on the other side of the fence. He did not hesitate to use physical strength to preserve order. When an old Indian, bearing a certificate of good character from American authorities, stumbled into camp, Lincoln's men talked of killing him, saying, "The Indian is a d.a.m.ned spy" and "We have come out to fight the Indian and by G.o.d we intend to do so." Drawing himself up to his full height, Lincoln stepped in front of the shivering Indian and offered to fight anyone who wanted to hurt the old man. Grumbling, the soldiers let the Indian slip away.

His service in the Black Hawk War was neither particularly dangerous nor heroic. Later, for political reasons, he used to poke fun at his military record. In 1848, when the Democrats nominated Lewis Ca.s.s, of Michigan, for President, emphasizing his alleged military record in the War of 1812, Lincoln reminded listeners that he, too, was a military hero. "Yes sir," he declared; "in the days of the Black Hawk war, I fought, bled, and came away." He invited comparison of his martial efforts with those of the Michigan governor. If Ca.s.s, as alleged, broke his sword in anger after Detroit was needlessly surrendered to the British, Lincoln joked, "It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break; but I bent a musket pretty badly on one occasion." "If he saw any live, fighting indians, it was more than I did," Lincoln conceded; "but I had a good many b.l.o.o.d.y struggles with the musquetoes; and, although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry."

At the time, however, Lincoln was proud of his military service, and he enjoyed the hearty comradeship of men-at-arms. When his first month's enlistment expired, he, along with several other members of his company, signed up for another twenty days, this time serving as a private, and at the end of that period he reenlisted for another month. "I was out of work... and there being no danger of more fighting, I could do nothing better than enlist again," he explained afterward. He served until July 10, when he was honorably discharged.

His service in the Black Hawk War gave him some acquaintance with military life and his first experience as a leader of men. Meeting volunteers from different parts of the state was useful to him politically, for it extended his reputation. While he was in the army, he came into contact with a number of the rising young political leaders of the state, like Orville Hickman Browning, a cautious, conservative Quincy lawyer, who would become one of his most influential and critical friends. More important was his acquaintance with John Todd Stuart, a Springfield lawyer, who served as major in the same battalion as Lincoln. Handsome, polished, and well educated, Stuart was apparently the opposite of Lincoln in every way, but he saw great promise in his New Salem friend.

The most immediate benefit Lincoln derived from his brief military service was his compensation of about $110, plus the $14 bounty he received for enlisting. This was the total extent of his resources as he returned to New Salem, in time for a brief campaign before the election for the state legislature on August 6. The canva.s.s was an informal one, and Lincoln, like the other twelve candidates, traveled about Sangamon County, introducing himself and soliciting votes. He was an odd-looking figure, his swarthy complexion now deeply sunburned, so that, as he told his listeners, he was "almost as red as those men I have been chasing through the prairies and forests on the Rivers of Illinois." On the campaign trail, as one observer remembered, "he wore a mixed jeans coat, clawhammer style, short in the sleeves and bob-tail-in fact it was so short in the tail he could not sit on it; flax and towlinen pantaloons, and a straw hat."

When he attended political rallies, members of the Clary's Grove gang, who had recently been his companions in arms, often accompanied him. At his maiden speech, in Pappsville, a village eleven miles west of Springfield, a fight broke out in the crowd, and Lincoln saw one of his supporters attacked. Quitting the platform, he strode into the audience, seized the a.s.sailant by the neck and the seat of his trousers, and, as one witness recalled, threw him twelve feet away. As usual, memory is elastic, but there is no doubt that Lincoln, who now stood six feet and four inches tall, was strong enough to intimidate any rival.

In his speeches the candidate made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was, as he said, "a stanch anti-Jackson, or Clay, man." But for the most part he discussed local issues, like the need to improve the Sangamon River, and avoided larger questions by announcing, "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance."

When the votes were counted, Lincoln ran eighth in a field of thirteen candidates, the top four of whom were elected. He was, of course, disappointed, and years later he made a point of noting that this election was the only time he "was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people." He could take comfort, however, from the returns from his own New Salem precinct, where he received 277 of 300 votes cast.