Lincoln, the Politician Part 2

Often mounting a real tree stump his quaint stories and impressive manner gathered all his fellow laborers. It is related that Lincoln's father and sometimes his employers, angered at the loss of labor, would drag the orator from his eminence. It was about this time that Lincoln said that his father taught him to work but never to love it.[33]

[33] _Ibid._, 36-40.

Lincoln's wit was no small part of his forensic eloquence. He was more ready at the beginning of his career than in after years to ridicule censorious conduct. So James Larkin found it, who was a great hand to brag. He stepped up before Abe, who was in the crowd, and boasted of his horse. "I have got the best horse in the country," he shouted to his young listener. "I ran him three miles in exactly three minutes, and he never fetched a long breath."

"I presume," said Abe, rather dryly, "that he fetched a good many short ones though."[34]

[34] Herndon, 1, 43.

Lincoln further found opportunity for exercising his oratorical talent in the speaking exhibitions at Gentryville. Public debates were no minor attraction to the community. Discussions as to whether the Indian or negro had the greater right to find fault with his treatment were frequent and intense. The closing day of school was duly celebrated by declamations, debates and dialogues. Many selections for these occasions came from the Kentucky "Preceptor," rich in such utterance as Pitt's "Speech on the Slave Trade."[35]

[35] Tarbell, 1, 36.

Lincoln was present on one occasion at a dramatic murder trial in which John V. Brackenridge appeared for the defendant.[36] Lincoln heard the polished and eloquent advocate as in a dream. After the trial the humble backwood speaker freely praised the eloquence of the mature advocate.

Brackenridge glancing at his awkward shabby admirer turned away without a word.

[36] Spencer County, 313.

Lincoln learned that ability does not always go hand in hand with sympathy. He crawled into his own world where pride was to have no home, where humble appearances were not to be despised. When Lincoln as President met this same Brackenridge, he simply said, "If I could, as I then thought, have made as good a speech as that, my soul would have been satisfied; for it was up to that time the best speech I had ever heard."[37]

[37] Herndon, 1, 49-50. Lamon, 67.

The people of Gentryville were largely of a rough hardy sort. Like other pioneers they were ready to escape the monotony of their life by engaging in exciting games. The rude joke, the vulgar gibe was prized.

To laugh loud was somewhat of a luxury to the hard working settler.

Refining influence was fairly unknown.

However, social distinctions gradually a.s.serted themselves with the progress of prosperity. Parties of some pretensions came into vogue, and distinctions were made in the guests invited. Lincoln, who had been welcomed at the ruder gatherings, log rollings and similar entertainments, was not in favor with those seeking social prominence.

Fond of popular applause, he resented this treatment, and in spite wrote satires and "chronicles," chastising the offenders.[38] These productions were coa.r.s.e, vulgar and even indecent, spiced with no lack of wit. They appealed to many, though it is said that some were shocked.

[38] Lamon, 63.

On one occasion Lincoln placed certain reflections on the Grigsby family where they could be readily discovered. Being found, they brought on a fight for the family honor. Lincoln had his stepbrother, Johnston, first stand "the brunt" of the contest. A terrible fight ensued, and when Lincoln saw that Grigsby was too much for Johnston, he burst through the ring, caught Grigsby, and threw him off some feet away. Then swinging a bottle of liquor over his head swore that he was "the big buck of the lick." "If any one doubts it," he shouted, "he has only to come on and whet his horns." A general engagement resulted, but soon the field was cleared and the wounded retired amid the exultant shouts of the victors.[39]

[39] _Ibid._, 64-65.

From such an origin Lincoln came. Biographers seek to illumine its poverty in vain. He was reared amid a shiftless family. No external inducement guided him in his wearisome journey. He was in the daily presence of vulgarity. He alone of all his companions started in a t.i.tanic conflict with an enslaving environment.

The store was the social center of the pioneer town, the place to hear the latest gossip. There the neighbors met to pa.s.s judgment on events of general and local interest. The proprietor was often the only possessor of the weekly newspaper. It was not as in later days the abode of loungers mainly. It played a big part in the education of the frontier community. It was the school of many men and the home of wit and wisdom.

Politics, religion and other problems were here subjected to the scrutiny of men blest with good sense and judgment.

The store drew the choice spirits in story telling, and its hero was the man who could best kindle laughter. In a community where this art was the highway to the general good will, Lincoln soon became the master among the many contestants for that distinction.

Wherever men congregated Lincoln sought supremacy. Political discussions were frequent. The newcomer soon tried his hand in the art of controversy. He gradually gained headway in the esteem of the soberminded for the clearness of his statements, for the keenness of his vision, and the honesty of his manner. Day by day he gathered strength and wisdom. It is improbable that any other young man so soon won the general good will or was so widely respected by all cla.s.ses of men. In this, even as a youth, he was unique. He had the splendid tact, the inherent humanity that appealed to the various elements that const.i.tuted the transitional frontier when it was evolving into a higher community.

There is very little satisfactory evidence of the political opinions of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana. Lamon states that his family were all Jackson Democrats; that Lincoln's employer, Jones, the grocery keeper of Gentryville, was a Jackson Democrat, and that Lincoln read papers that championed the principles of the Democratic party of that day, and that he was in the beginning a follower of that eminent political sage.[40] There is no corroboration of this testimony that Lincoln was ever avowedly an attendant in the school of Jackson. Lincoln frequently refers to the fact with pride that he was an old time Whig, and it might be inferred from his speeches and statements that he was a devoted follower of Clay from the very first. However, Lincoln was somewhat an admirer of Andrew Jackson. It may be that early in life he pa.s.sed through the several stages of political development, and was thus aided in becoming a tolerant politician.

[40] Lamon, 57, 123.

From childhood until 1829, Lincoln lived in Gentryville. In that year he made a trip by boat to New Orleans with Allen Gentry. It was on this venture that Lincoln had his first vital meeting with the members of the race in whose destiny he was to be so deeply concerned. While their boat was moored near Baton Rouge and they were fast asleep, they were startled by footsteps on board. They knew "that it was a gang of negroes come to rob, and perhaps to murder them. Allen, thinking to frighten the intruders, cried out, 'Bring the guns, Lincoln; shoot them.' Abe came without a gun, but he fell among the negroes with a huge bludgeon, and belabored them most cruelly," but "received a scar which he carried with him to his grave."[41] It is strange that this incident did not jaundice the youthful Lincoln against the unfortunate people. Though his life was endangered by these wayward sons of Ethiopia, it did not affect his sympathy in any degree for the burdened and oppressed race, nor change his judgment as to the injustice of their treatment.

[41] _Ibid._, 71, 72.

The origin of Lincoln's anti-slavery sentiments is somewhat of a mystery. That Stephen Douglas, reared in New England, should become the foremost champion of the Southern slavery policy, and that Abraham Lincoln, a son of Kentucky, that of the bondsman, baffles the wisdom of the historian.

Various efforts have been made to account for his views on the slavery issue. The claim that he derived them from his parents in Kentucky has been noted. Ida Tarbell enumerates the various abolition movements in the western domain that may have influenced him. In 1819, Charles...o...b..rn published a paper advocating emanc.i.p.ation. A few years after Benjamin Lundy issued the _Genius_ at Shelbyville. Scarcely one hundred miles from Gentryville the _Abolition Intelligencer_ was started. There were abolition societies in Kentucky and Illinois. The same author states that "it is not impossible that as Frederick Douglas first realized his own condition in reading a school speaker, the 'Columbian Orator,' so Abraham Lincoln first felt the wrong of slavery in reading his 'Kentucky' or 'American Preceptor.'"[42]

[42] Tarbell, 1, 35, 36.

Considering the slowness of communication, the casual appearances of even well-known journals, it is doubtful if Lincoln heard of the abolition movement to any serious extent. It is at least significant that Lincoln alone, of his entire family and of his a.s.sociates, saw the magnitude of the slavery evil. Like his sympathy for the suffering animal world, his anti-slavery sentiments baffle explanation. He hated the infliction of wrong instinctively.

There is a duality to the life of Lincoln that should command more attention. Intellectually, he lived in a world of his own, a world in which he found little companionship. Still he was not altogether the fruition of a subjective life. He shared the common pioneer craving for human society. It may have been rendered even more intense in his case by the loneliness of his mental existence. Neither the forest, prairie nor storm, the sunset or constellation were his friends as men were. He loved his kind more than nature.

During his last years in Indiana he lived fully the life of the people around him. Their ideals seemed his ideals. Athletic superiority was the road to respect and honor, and Lincoln became the foremost man in physical games. He first won renown as a wrestler. Stories of his superior strength were heralded far and wide and his place was unchallenged. He was a leader in the rude crowd where might was the test of standing. Living among men devoted to hunting, he seldom indulged in that common recreation. In this his individuality a.s.serted itself. He would not sanction suffering even in the animal world, and he seldom swerved from his convictions even in the day when the wolf howled at the cabin door.

The maturity of Lincoln's development at the time of his departure from Indiana has not received just consideration. Gaunt and awkward in appearance there was little in him to attract favorable attention. He was without trade or profession. Nothing appeared to distinguish him from the other members of the shiftless Lincoln and Hanks family. A stranger would hardly have chosen him as a future son of fortune, even from that humble crowd of wanderers. Uncouth in dress and manner, he would have found small favor in polite society, and among those who judge by things seen on the surface.

Viewed subjectively there is another Lincoln, a man of promise and inevitable distinction. Those who have dwelt extensively on the objective aspect of Lincoln have squandered sympathy on his want of education. For though poor in material things, he was rich in mental wealth, in the qualities that make manhood, in those virtues that survive the mutations of time, that future generations dwell on with ever increasing fondness. At the threshold of his majority he was already possessed of elemental ability and greatness. He was one of those rare souls that do not lose the golden ideals of youth with pa.s.sing years. The sneers of selfish men never changed the primal sweetness of his nature.

The fourteen years that Lincoln lived in Indiana were years of splendid fruition. By his peculiar process of self-development his mind had attained a maturity far beyond his age. He mingled freely in the world of men and events. He was close to the human heart, to the sorrows of the humble, to the mute and deep emotions of the lonely dweller on the western farms. He loved the plain people. He had the command of style, the ease and pith of statement that schools rarely give. Ready of speech, he could command the attention of the rough as well as the sober minded. He was already renowned as a dispenser of laughter through the magic of his stories. But above all he was rarely gifted with good sense, with a mind not easily diverted by false lights, by the glitter of objectivity. He went irresistibly to the root of things. A man of fine emotions, wanting in the small social amenities, he seldom went astray in the domain of reality.

It is also essential to mark the practical character of all his learning. His knowledge was all useful and vitalizing. His mind was not c.u.mbered with waste materials. His education was sound to the core, was all genuine, well calculated for a man in the very strife of life.

Judged by the standard of schools and universities he was not an educated man, but judged by the broader standard of thought and action he was supremely educated, the best educated man of his time. He served his apprenticeship in the school of experience and only needed opportunity to be of royal service to his fellowmen. Honest, homely and humble, he was in harmony with the average man of his time, and was well fitted to become a representative of the people.

CHAPTER III

THE POLITICAL HERO OF NEW SALEM

The immediate occasion for the departure of Thomas Lincoln from Indiana was the visitation of the mysterious ailment widely known as the "milk sick." The scant progress made by the family in Spencer County strengthened his desire to try his fortune in a new land,--a land that in the distance held forth alluring promises of betterment.

They arrived in Illinois at the transitional period when the progressive settler was putting on the clothing of civilization. The concentration of population scattered the obstacles of progress. The wilderness was subdued, and the worth of the prairie land proved. The howl of the wolf ever growing fainter and fainter marked the hurrying advance of another dominion.[43] Shyly but steadily style showed itself in the home, food and dress. Through the surface it betokened the coming of a settled community; it was the unfailing external sign of prosperity and of fellowship with religion and education.

[43] Ford, 94-95.

The old pioneer mourned the change. He saw the loom put away, and ribbons supplant the cotton frock. With saddened heart, he met the new civilization. To him, it was the doom of the old hospitality, of his freedom, the c.o.o.nskin cap; the deer shoes; the log cabin built with his own hands. "Hog and hominy" no longer waited on hunger. What his child named progress did not compensate him for the flight of the companions of his youth. The pioneer had in the name of civilization cleared the land of the Indian, who could not adapt himself to its way, and now the victor was in turn to yield to the same unrelenting monarch.

John Hanks was the path finder for the little colony. He selected a place close to Decatur as a home for the wanderers. Lincoln took a hand in making the cabin which soon housed his father and family. But rather than engage in manual labor, he was alert to show his skill as a speaker. "After Abe got to Decatur," says John Hanks, "or rather to Macon (my county), a man by the name of Posey came into our neighborhood, and made a speech; it was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down a box or keg, and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candidate. Abe wasn't. Abe beat him to death, his subject being the navigation of the Sangamon River. The man, after the speech was through, took Abe aside, and asked him where he had learned so much, and how he did so well. Abe replied, stating his manner and method of reading, and what he had read. The man encouraged Lincoln to persevere."[44]

[44] Lamon, 78.

Lincoln fretted under the tutorage of his father, and longed for the hour of his legal freedom. When that period came, he promptly joined John Hanks in guiding a flat boat to New Orleans for one Denton Offutt.[45]

[45] _Ibid._, 78-80.

Perhaps the most critical incident in the life of Lincoln was this second visit to New Orleans. Hitherto, with a single exception, his life was simple and close to nature and the human heart. Young as he was, the solemnity of the forest, the expanse of the prairie, the nearness to the heart of things, the problems of life and their seriousness already cut their lines in his sensitive organism. Knowing little of the mercantile world, in the realm of thought he was already master of those around him. There was something of Hamlet in this gaunt youth.