F 
 
 IDA M. TARE ELL 
 
BOY SCOUTS 
 LIFE OF LINCOLN 
 
Other Books 
 By THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 FATHER ABRAHAM 
 
 HE KNEW LINCOLN 
 
 IN LINCOLN S CHAIR 
 
 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
LINCOLN BEGINS His CAREER AS A PUBLIC SERVANT 
 
BOY SCOUTS 
 
 LIFE OF LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 
 IDA M. TARBELL 
 
 Jfteto 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All right* reserved 
 
Mdli TED Itf IHfi UWira) 3J ATES OF AMERICA 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 19*1, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Stt up and electrotyped. Published October, 19*1. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & IVCB Company 
 New York. U. S. A. 
 
w 
 c 
 
 TO 
 F. S. T. 
 
 48348 
 
A PIONEER BOY 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 HE FINDS His KINGDOM ........ 26 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 STARTING OUT FOR HIMSELF ....... 46 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 A GREAT DECISION .......... 76 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE CALL OF His COUNTRY ....... 97 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE FIGHT OF His LIFE ........ 119 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE BIG GIANT OF ILLINOIS ..... . . 144 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 ARMED WITH A SINGLE PURPOSE ...... 172 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 STEADY IN STORMS .......... I99 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 VICTORY! 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Lincoln begins his career as a public servant . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 They had to cut their road as they went .... 10 
 
 Facsimile of lines from Lincoln s copy-book. . . 20 
 
 Running a ferry across the great Ohio 21 
 
 Map showing Lincoln s supposed line of march in 
 
 Black Hawk War 61 
 
 Facsimile of map of Albany, made by Lincoln . . 69 
 
 Facsimile of a report of a road survey by Lincoln . . 73 
 
 The earliest known portrait of Lincoln . . . . 115 
 
 Lincoln in February, 1860, at the time of the Cooper 
 
 Institute speech 148 
 
 Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac . . . 197 
 
 Mr. Lincoln and his son "Tad" 227 
 
 Statue of Lincoln, made by George Gray Barnard . 245 
 
BOY SCOUTS 
 LIFE OF LINCOLN 
 
BOY SCOUTS 
 
 LIFE OF LINCOLN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 A PIONEER Boy 
 
 Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, 
 It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the 
 earth. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 "np> OM LINCOLN has bought a farm;" that 
 is what all his Kentucky relatives half- 
 
 *- brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and 
 cousins, were saying to one another. To be sure, 
 Tom was a carpenter, but in those days in Ken 
 tucky it was in 1803 that the farm was bought 
 people felt rightly that the great business of a man, 
 as in all newly settled countries, was clearing and 
 breaking the land, opening roads, driving out In 
 dians and wild beasts. 
 
 As Tom was only twenty-three years old and since 
 he was five had been an orphan with no settled home, 
 this buying of a farm was an event in the family. It 
 meant that he was going to settle down ; perhaps that 
 he was getting ready to marry. And, as a matter of 
 fact, that is what it did mean, for on June 12, 1806, 
 
2/ & :-! : B v y: ScifiY/ .//<? o/ L/WCO/H 
 
 he was married to a girl called Nancy Hanks, like 
 himself an orphan, dependent upon her kinsfolk a 
 sister of the man with whom he had learned his 
 trade, Joseph Hanks of Elizabethtown. 
 
 A wedding was a great event in those days. Peo 
 ple came from long distances, often remaining over 
 night for the infare or reception. The day after 
 Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln s wedding, an 
 infare was given jointly by her guardian and her 
 uncle, Richard Berry, at the latter s home near 
 Springfield, Kentucky. The supper was long talked 
 of. There was every luxury that pioneer life af 
 forded roast venison, bear steak, barbacued sheep, 
 roasted wild turkeys and ducks; fruit and maple 
 syrups served in big gourds; peaches and honey a 
 dozen dishes unknown to a feast in our day. 
 
 Tom and Nancy Lincoln did not go to live at once 
 on their farm, but for two years remained in Eliza 
 bethtown, thirteen miles away, Tom getting his land 
 ready for cultivation and plying his trade as he 
 could. When they finally moved into the country, 
 they carried with them a little girl, a year old. And 
 here on this farm, a year later, the I2th of Febru 
 ary, 1809, a boy was born. He was named after his 
 grandfather Abraham Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The cabin home where the little boy was born was 
 similar to the first homes of most of the Kentucky 
 settlers in those early days. It was built of oak 
 logs, ten to a side, forming walls about seven feet 
 in height. The openings between the logs were 
 chinked with mortar of clay and stones, making a 
 solid wall, warm in winter and cool in summer. At 
 
A Pioneer Boy 3 
 
 one end of the cabin was a big outside chimney, its 
 base of logs and clay, its stack of the flat stones of 
 that part of the world. Inside, over the great fire 
 place was a mantel. A crane swung from one side, 
 on which the pots were hung. And there was a wide 
 stone hearth. There was but one window and one 
 door in this cabin, and the window never had other 
 covering than a dressed deerskin or oiled paper, 
 glass being almost unknown in Kentucky at that 
 time. 
 
 The little boy never knew much of his birth 
 place because, when he was between four and five 
 years old, his father moved to a new farm some 
 fifteen miles to the east a much larger piece of 
 land, over two hundred acres, and much more in 
 teresting as it was surrounded by high hills and was 
 heavily wooded with sycamore, oak, beech, hickory 
 all the trees of that part of the world. 
 
 The woods were full of wild fowl, and big and 
 little animals. The land was cut by picturesque ra 
 vines and threaded by a brook, so clear that you 
 could see a pebble at the bottom. Knob Creek the 
 stream was called. At the northern boundary of 
 the farm it emptied into the Rolling Fork of the 
 Salt River, a stream which flows into the Ohio west 
 of Louisville. 
 
 By the time a boy was five years old in those 
 pioneer days he began to help his father and mother, 
 and little Abraham soon was bringing in wood and 
 carrying water to the field where his father worked, 
 picking berries in the summer and nuts in the fall 
 and, when planting was going on, dropping seeds. 
 
4 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 One of the few things about this farm he remem 
 bered when he grew up was a disaster that came to 
 seeds he had dropped. His father was planting 
 corn in what they called the big field seven acres 
 lying in the valley along the creek. Little Abraham 
 followed him and into every other hill of every other 
 row he dropped two pumpkin seeds. The field must 
 have seemed pretty big to a seven-year-old boy, and 
 he must have felt almost as discouraged as his father 
 probably did when, just after the planting was fin 
 ished, a big rain sent the water rushing down all 
 the gorges on the farm, flooding the entire valley 
 and of course washing out the pumpkin seeds as well 
 as the corn. 
 
 But life on the farm was not all work, nor was it 
 lonely. Abraham had not only his sister Sarah as a 
 companion, but he had a schoolmate, Austin Golla- 
 her ; and when school was not in session which was 
 much of the time, the term rarely being over three 
 months of the year they visited back and forth 
 whenever their mothers would consent, and on these 
 visits had many adventures. The most exciting was 
 one Sunday when they were looking for partridges 
 which Abraham had seen a few days before. Knob 
 Creek was high that day, and they wanted to cross 
 it. In the effort to walk a log, Abraham Lincoln 
 fell in. Neither of the boys could swim, and it was 
 only the courage and quick wit of Austin Gollaher 
 that saved his playmate. Seizing a long pole, he 
 succeeded in getting his drowning companion ashore. 
 He thought he was dead when he had landed him, 
 and was badly scared; but he was a good Scout, 
 
A Pioneer Boy 5 
 
 though he had none of the fine training that a Scout 
 gets in our days. "I rolled and pounded him in 
 dead earnest," he used to say in telling the story, 
 u then I got him by the arms and shook him, the 
 water meanwhile pouring out of his mouth. By 
 this means I succeeded in bringing him to, and he 
 soon was all right." 
 
 It was not only partridges that drew the boys to 
 the woods. Part of the education of the pioneer 
 was to know the tracks of animals, the call and 
 flight of birds and fowls, the spots where the biggest 
 berries grew, the pools fish loved. Every sound of 
 earth and air, every change of color in the tree or 
 the ground, every print of hoof or claw, every trail 
 of snake, must be recognized. Abraham and Aus 
 tin learned to know where a fox had passed, a deer 
 had drunk, an eagle nested. They knew the honk of 
 the wild goose, the song of the cardinal bird, and no 
 doubt they ran from many a real or imaginary bear, 
 and killed snakes that were their friends as well as 
 those that were their enemies. 
 
 There was not much schooling, though both 
 boys, as long as they lived, remembered the names 
 of two of their teachers Zachariah Riney and 
 Caleb Hazel. Abraham learned much more at 
 home than he did at school, for his mother was am 
 bitious that her children should have opportunities 
 that she and her husband had never had. It was in 
 the long evenings that most of her teaching was 
 done. Sitting on the doorstep, looking over the 
 lovely land in the summer, or before the great roar 
 ing fire in the stone fireplace in the winter, Nancy 
 
6 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 and Tom Lincoln told their children all the stories 
 they knew stories of the Bible, of their own lives 
 and of the lives of all their forebears. In these long 
 evenings the children learned of the tragedy of the 
 Garden of Eden, how the boy Moses was rescued 
 from the bullrushes and grew up to be one of the 
 great men of the land. They became acquainted 
 with Isaac and Jacob and Samuel and David and 
 Goliath the good men and the bad men of the Old 
 Testament. They heard the beautiful story of the 
 Christ and His Disciples, and were taught to repeat 
 chapter after chapter of the wise and beautiful songs 
 and proverbs and teachings of the great Book. 
 
 It was in these evenings, on the doorstep or by the 
 fire that Sarah and Abraham Lincoln learned all 
 they knew of the families of their father and mother. 
 There were many tales of hardship and of thrilling 
 adventure, for both Thomas Lincoln and Nancy 
 Hanks had been carried from Virginia into Ken 
 tucky when very little children. Their families had 
 traveled in great oxcarts, on horseback and on foot, 
 in company with other pioneers, along a famous 
 highway called the Old Wilderness Road. There 
 were still Indians and dangerous beasts in the woods 
 so that every mile of the journey had to be made in 
 watchfulness. 
 
 The story which they remembered longest was 
 that of the death of their own grandfather Lincoln, 
 for whom Abraham was named. Grandfather Lin 
 coln had come to Kentucky with his family when 
 Thomas was only about two years old. There were 
 four older children half brothers and half sisters 
 
A Pioneer Boy 7 
 
 of Thomas. Like all the pioneers of those days, 
 they went for safety to live in what was called a 
 stockade, made by arranging the log cabins of a 
 group of settlers around a small court. The cabins 
 were connected by high stout fences. There was but 
 one entrance to a stockade, and no openings in the 
 outside wall of these cabins excepting for rifle. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a rich man for those days, 
 and he had taken up in Kentucky over 3,000 acres 
 of land, in scattered tracts. One of these tracts he 
 had set about clearing, with the help of his sons. 
 Little Thomas was of course too young to handle an 
 ax, but he usually went with his father and brothers 
 into the clearing. One day when they were at work, 
 an Indian from ambush killed Abraham Lincoln. 
 The two older boys ran for help, leaving Thomas 
 by his dead father. Just as the savage was seizing 
 the child, the oldest boy, who had reached the cabin 
 and found a rifle, shot him dead, thus saving his 
 little brother from scalping or captivity. 
 
 Thomas Lincoln told many stories of his wan 
 derings after his father s death, and of all he 
 had seen and heard in Tennessee and Kentucky and 
 of the trips he had made down the Ohio to the Mis 
 sissippi and so on down to New Orleans. He had 
 many thrilling stories of hunting to tell them, for he 
 was a splendid shot, and of mighty fights with quar 
 relsome bullies, in all of which he was victorious. 
 
 He talked to the children, no doubt, of their coun 
 try, the United States, which had declared its inde 
 pendence only thirty-three years before Abraham 
 Lincoln was born. He told them what he knew of 
 
8 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 their Virginia relatives who had fought in the Rev 
 olution, what he knew of George Washington and 
 what he had seen and heard of the attempt of Aaron 
 Burr and his friends to seize Texas and set up a 
 kingdom, in which he hoped some day to include 
 even the very State of Kentucky. 
 
 There were great tales to tell around the fire in 
 those days of the things the pioneer and his friends 
 had seen and of which they had been a part. 
 
 When young Abraham Lincoln was seven years 
 old, his first venture in pioneer traveling came. His 
 father was disappointed with his life on Knob Creek, 
 and thought that he might improve his chances by 
 moving north into the territory of Indiana, which 
 was expected soon to become a State. One of his 
 half brothers, Josiah Lincoln, had already settled 
 in Indiana, and a visit to him had convinced Thomas 
 Lincoln that he would do well to try his fortune 
 there. So, in 1816, he began his preparations to 
 move by building a flatboat and by selling his title 
 to the land on Knob Creek, taking in exchange a 
 little money and a large amount of produce that he 
 hoped to be able to sell as he traveled. 
 
 Late in the summer, Abraham and Austin had the 
 excitement of seeing this boat loaded and launched 
 on the Rolling Fork, and of watching Thomas Lin 
 coln float out of sight on his journey. 
 
 When he returned, several weeks later, he had 
 a fine story of adventure to tell. His journey had 
 been safe until he reached the Ohio River, where, 
 almost at once, he was caught in the tides and 
 swamped. With a great deal of hard work, he 
 
A Pioneer Boy 9 
 
 righted his boat, rescued his hogsheads and his tools 
 and made his way across the river, finally landing 
 near the town of Troy, Indiana. 
 
 Here he stored the freight he had saved, sold his 
 boat, and started northwest afoot into what is now 
 known as Spencer County. He told them that after 
 traveling about sixteen miles he had come upon a 
 beautiful piece of rolling land, heavily wooded with 
 hickory, oak, walnut, and sugar maples trees so 
 old and large that they had in many places crowded 
 out underbrush, making an open forest, fit for graz 
 ing. He told them how this land lay between the 
 forks of a big creek, known as Pigeon Creek, along 
 the banks of which were many openings or prairies. 
 He described how he had marked off a quarter sec 
 tion by cutting brush at the corners and burning 
 them, to indicate that the land had been taken, and 
 then how, to legalize this preemption, he had walked 
 still farther west to Vincennes, where the land of 
 fice of Indiana was then located, and had entered 
 his claim. Now he was back and they were to start 
 at once for their new home. 
 
 There was a great bustle of packing, in which 
 the children, of course, took their part. They 
 helped load all the family possessions feather 
 beds, coverlets, furniture, the Dutch oven, pots and 
 skillets and the plow, into a wagon. Finally, when 
 all was ready, the sad part came, the saying of good- 
 bys Abraham to his friend Austin, and, saddest of 
 all, a visit with their mother to the grave of a baby 
 brother who had died only a few months before. 
 
 The journey northward was full of joy and in- 
 
lo Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 terest for the children. They camped at night in 
 strange and beautiful places. They crossed the 
 great river, team and all, on a ferry. The river 
 must have seemed like a sea to the children. Land 
 ing on the other side, they took up their route 
 through an almost unbroken wilderness. Only a 
 bridle path ran through this part of the country. 
 They had to cut their road as they went. 
 
 It was in October when they reached their new 
 land and went about making a shelter which would 
 do them until they could build a home. Of course 
 the most important matter was to choose a proper 
 site, one with good drainage and abundant water. 
 
 The place where the Lincolns settled, while it 
 would be called flat by those accustomed to high 
 hills and mountains, was a rolling land, and they 
 chose a beautiful, well-drained knoll for their home. 
 Unfortunately, they discovered after their clearing 
 was made that there was no permanent supply of 
 water near. One of the tragedies of this new home 
 was the fact that they never succeeded in getting a 
 good well, although Thomas Lincoln exhausted him 
 self in the search, digging in all directions. There 
 were seasons in the year when young Abraham and 
 his sister were obliged to carry water for at least a 
 mile. 
 
 On the southwest slope of this knoll they made 
 their camp. It was what the woodsman knows as 
 a half-faced camp. Two strong, straight trees 
 about fourteen feet apart, standing to the east and 
 west, were chosen and trimmed and hewn to serve 
 as corner posts. The east, west, and north sides 
 
A Pioneer Boy n 
 
 were then inclosed in log-cabin fashion, a lighter 
 timber being cut than for a permanent building. 
 These sides were made tight with clay, the roof with 
 sod and branches of trees. There was no chimney 
 in the half-faced camp, but in front on the open 
 south side a big fireplace was made, and here a fire 
 was kept burning night and day, whatever the 
 weather, as a guard against prowling wolves, bears, 
 and wild cats. 
 
 Most of the cooking was done in what was known 
 as a Dutch oven, a large iron pot, standing on three 
 long legs and furnished with an iron cover and a 
 handle. A big bed of coals was raked in front of 
 the high pile of logs which were always burning 
 in the fireplace, and on these the pot was placed. 
 No better cooking utensil was ever devised for stew 
 or roast than the Dutch oven, but you must have 
 a bed of coals such as only a fireplace will give. 
 
 A half-faced camp can be made livable, even in 
 winter, except under two conditions when a south 
 wind blows the smoke into the shelter and when a 
 drenching rain soaks everything, inside and out. 
 Then camp life becomes a test of courage and cheer 
 fulness. Before the winter was over the Lincoln 
 family often underwent this test. 
 
 A shelter provided, the next task was to clear 
 land enough for the next season s crop, cut a boun 
 tiful supply of wood, build a smokehouse and a camp 
 for their few animals, and begin preparing the tim 
 ber for the permanent home, which they hoped to 
 build at once. Of course, while this was going on, 
 they had to keep themselves in food. This was not 
 
12 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 difficult. The forest around them was full of wild 
 fruits and nuts and of all kinds of game ducks, 
 geese, turkeys, grouse, quail, pheasants. Not far 
 away was a "deer lick," long famous in the coun 
 try. Tom Lincoln was so good a shot that the 
 smokehouse was always hung with hams and shoul 
 ders of bear and venison. 
 
 In all the work Abraham took his part. The ax 
 was put into his hands as soon as they arrived in 
 Indiana, and he was so strong and so willing that 
 he was soon able to swing it with skill. It was only 
 from hunting that he held back. He had no taste 
 for killing things. Just before he was eight years 
 old he shot his first turkey and it was his last. He 
 never shot deer or bear, though he always took his 
 part in guarding family and neighbor when there 
 was danger from prowling wolves. But if he did 
 not kill, he did know how to skin and butcher ani 
 mals. Curing and tanning the hides of the bear and 
 deer and wolf they took was almost as important 
 to the family as the meat, for it was from these skins 
 that a large part of their clothing, as well as bed 
 and floor coverings, were made. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a grown boy before he had 
 other trousers than those made from buckskin most 
 of which he had no doubt prepared himself. His 
 cap was fashioned from a coonskin, the tail hang 
 ing down behind; and as for his shoes, they were 
 like the Indians mocassins, made of hides. 
 
 By the end of the first year their permanent home 
 was ready a generous log cabin with loft, big fire 
 place, windows, and doors. Into this went the fur- 
 
A Pioneer Boy 13 
 
 nishings which at odd times Thomas Lincoln had 
 been making. He was not only a fairly good car 
 penter, but a cabinetmaker as well, and out of the 
 timber which he had hewn he made stools, tables, 
 beds the kind of furnishings which men, thrown 
 Robinson Crusoe-like into the woods, provide for 
 their needs. 
 
 Hardly had they moved out of their half-faced 
 camp into the new home when an aunt and uncle 
 of the children from Kentucky moved into it Betsy 
 and Thomas Sparrow. They brought with them 
 a grandson, a boy some ten years older than Abra 
 ham, Dennis Hanks. 
 
 The coming of the Sparrows was a great comfort 
 to the Lincolns, for it means company close at hand. 
 Betsy was a sister of Nancy Lincoln, and the two 
 women were glad to be together. Uncle Thomas 
 and Dennis were two more pairs of strong arms to 
 help Thomas Lincoln in settling, and Dennis was 
 a lively and congenial companion for the children. 
 
 The second winter in Indiana was much more 
 cheerful and comfortable than the first had been, 
 and life for the Lincolns would have continued to 
 improve if a few months later, in the spring of 1818, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow had not fallen ill and died 
 of a malignant malarial fever, which was ravaging 
 Spencer County. People called this disease the 
 "milk sick," because it was popularly supposed to 
 be caused by the milch cows eating poisonous herbs. 
 As medicines and doctors were almost unknown, 
 the illness which, properly cared for, might have 
 been cured, was usually fatal 
 
14 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 Hardly were Uncle Thomas and Aunt Betsy in 
 their graves when Mrs. Lincoln was taken away by 
 the same disease. Poor Nancy and Abraham ! It 
 was a sorry day for them when they walked behind 
 the green pine box which their father had made for 
 their mother s coffin and saw her buried on a wooded 
 knoll, only a half mile from their home. 
 
 It was a dismal funeral, for there was no min 
 ister to read the Scriptures or say a prayer. Only 
 a few neighbors were there, and some of them had 
 recently been bereaved in the same way. Among 
 these were two boys, schoolmates of Abraham, 
 whose mother, a friend of Mrs. Lincoln, had died 
 only a few days before. 
 
 Abraham could not get over the grief of having 
 his mother buried without a funeral service, and 
 months later, a minister being in the vicinity, it was 
 by his request that services were finally held over 
 the little grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. 
 
 The winter following all this grief was a hard 
 one for the children. Sarah Lincoln was only eleven 
 years old, and there was too much hard work 
 for a child of her age. There were only a few 
 neighbors, all at a distance and all heavily burdened 
 by work and by illness. After a year Thomas Lin 
 coln decided that he ought to seek another mother 
 for his children, and, returning to Kentucky, he 
 asked a woman whom he had known as a girl, Sarah 
 Bush Johnston, now a widow with three children, to 
 be his wife. 
 
 It was a great day for Sarah and Abraham Lin 
 coln when their new mother arrived. She brought 
 
A Pioneer Boy i$ 
 
 with her a big load of better furniture than they had 
 ever seen and many a comfort which they had not 
 known. If they had had any dread of a stepmother, 
 it passed at once. She took the two children as 
 her own and made them a tender and careful mother. 
 Abraham came to love her as he had loved his 
 own mother. 
 
 From this time not only life at home was happier, 
 but things were much more promising without. 
 There was a little more land cleared every year and 
 put into crops. Their stock increased. Opportu 
 nities for carpenter and cabinet work were multi 
 plying, for Indiana had been admitted into the 
 Union soon after the Lincolns settled in Spencer 
 County, and the valley of Pigeon Creek was filling 
 up with settlers. A town, Gentryville, had sprung 
 up only a mile and a half away. This meant soci 
 ety, and it meant work. In the good way of the 
 pioneer, they helped the newcomers clear their land, 
 dig wells, and build houses. Much of the furniture 
 of the valley was made by Thomas Lincoln chests 
 of drawers, corner cupboards, stools, tables, spin 
 ning wheels. The community had grown so fast 
 that when Abraham was eleven years old, a church 
 was built under the direction of his father. In all 
 of this work Abraham helped; indeed, before he was 
 eighteen years old he was able not only to handle an 
 ax but all kinds of tools, even independently of his 
 father s direction. 
 
 But it was not only at home, on the farm and in 
 the carpenter shop that he worked. His father 
 hired him out to various neighbors. In one family, 
 
1 6 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 the Crawfords, he spent several months. Every 
 where that he went to live, he became a favorite, for 
 not only was he a strong and willing worker, doing 
 his part cheerfully, but he was most helpful about 
 the house. He might be tired by a hard day 
 in the fields, but his quick eye saw an empty wood- 
 box or water pail, and he quickly filled it. Many 
 a tired woman in a family where he worked had 
 him to thank for a "lift." Much he might easily 
 have shirked if his spirit had not been so kindly, his 
 desire to lend a hand where it was needed so constant 
 and natural. It was not a kind deed a day with him; 
 it was a kind deed whenever there was a chance for 
 one and he had an eye for the chance. 
 
 He was not kind to his friends alone. Any one 
 in trouble, anything suffering, was sure of his help 
 and championship. Many of his companions were 
 cruel to animals; he would not allow it. He would 
 lecture them, even fight them, to stop it. Anything 
 that was helpless he would champion. There was 
 a good deal of drunkenness in the country , and 
 people were often hard-hearted toward men who 
 had drunk themselves helpless and insensible. One 
 night, when young Lincoln and some of his friends 
 were going home after spending the evening in their 
 nearest town, Gentryville, they passed a man, drunk 
 to insensibility in the road. They could not arouse 
 him and Abraham s companions decided to let him 
 lie where he was good enough for him, was their 
 idea. The night was cold, and the man, if he had 
 not frozen to death, would certainly have suffered 
 from his exposure. Lincoln refused to go on, and, 
 
A Pioneer Boy 17 
 
 taking the man in his big arms, carried him a long 
 distance to a cabin, where he helped build a fire and 
 restore the half-frozen wretch. Such acts of kind 
 ness gave him a great reputation in the neighbor 
 hood. People not only admired his strength, but 
 they admired still more his kindness. He was 
 "clever," they said. 
 
 People liked him, too, because he was "good com 
 pany." He loved to talk, to tell stories, to discuss, 
 to play games. Wherever he went he brightened 
 things, made them more interesting. His father 
 had always been a famous story-teller and Abraham 
 was like him. He remembered all the stories he 
 heard and told them with pantomime and mimicry 
 that set everybody into shouts of laughter. He took 
 his part in all the games they played particularly 
 did he like the spelling match, the debate, and the 
 exhibitions in school. He loved to run races, to 
 wrestle, to swim, to jump, play slap jack, town ball, 
 I spy, to pitch horseshoes, to hurl a hammer or a 
 maul. Whatever the game spelling or wrestling, 
 debating or lifting weights, he excelled. 
 
 In all these contests, he played square. There is 
 only one story told of him in which his fairness can 
 be questioned, and several of his old friends who saw 
 the fight for it was a fight always defended what 
 he did. Lincoln and one of his friends, William 
 Grigsby, fell into a dispute over a pup which both 
 boys claimed and which, as a matter of fact, had been 
 given Lincoln. Grigsby angrily dared Lincoln to 
 fight him. 
 
 "I can lick, Bill, so what s the use fighting?" Lin- 
 
1 8 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 coin said, but Grigsby insisted and finally Lincoln 
 proposed to put his stepbrother, John Johnston, in 
 his place, it being understood that the pup went to 
 the winner. Grigsby and Johnston went to it, but 
 when Lincoln saw that his substitute was getting 
 the worst of it, he suddenly seized Grigsby by the 
 collar and the seat of his trousers and threw him over 
 the heads of the crowd that had collected ! 
 
 The defense his friends made for his action was 
 that Grigsby knew the dog belonged to Lincoln when 
 he claimed it. 
 
 His love of fun and of talk often interfered with 
 work. 
 
 "When Abe started fooling," one of his old 
 friends said, "the boys would throw down their tools 
 and join him, and so they would when he started 
 talking." The only real trouble that Thomas Lin 
 coln had with his son was keeping him steadily at his 
 tasks. And this was the only complaint of those for 
 whom he worked. He had one task with which this 
 propensity never interfered, and that was going to 
 the mill. Flour and meal were not bought at the 
 store in those days as now. The pioneer raised 
 his own corn and wheat and sent it at intervals to 
 be ground. It was generally an all-day task, for 
 the mills were at some distance and you must await 
 your turn when you arrived, and the process was 
 slow. The grain was put between two heavy round 
 millstones and to these were attached a long pole 
 or sweep which was turned by the horse which had 
 brought the grain. 
 
 Of course the waiting for his turn gave young 
 
A Pioneer Boy 19 
 
 Lincoln a fine time for talk and fun. One of the 
 most curious experiences of his boyhood and one of 
 which he often talked when he grew up came to him 
 while grinding corn. He was urging the horse to a 
 quicker pace, and started to say, "Get up, you old 
 hussy," when the horse kicked him, knocking him 
 unconscious in the middle of his sentence. His com 
 panion could not bring him to, and, frightened, ran 
 for help. It was some hours before he regained 
 consciousness, and when he came to himself he called 
 out the end of the sentence which which had been 
 broken by the kick of the horse "you old hussy." 
 Mr. Lincoln used often to wonder how it could be 
 that his mind, after hours of what was called com 
 plete unconsciousness, could take up its work at the 
 very point where it had dropped it. 
 
 People not only liked but they trusted him. He 
 never lied, never tried to shirk the blame for a mis 
 take. Over the door of the little log school on 
 Pigeon Creek a fine pair of antlers were fastened. 
 One day Lincoln carelessly seized one of the prongs 
 and attempted to swing back and forth from it. His 
 weight was too much and it broke with him. When 
 the teacher came in he was very angry and demanded 
 to know who had broken the antlers. Lincoln did 
 not hesitate. "I did," he confessed. "I did not 
 mean to do it, but I hung on it and it broke. I 
 wouldn t have done it if I d thought it d a broke." 
 
 As time went on and Abraham grew older and 
 stronger, work outside of Pigeon Creek Valley was 
 offered him. The winter he was seventeen he passed 
 in the settlement at the mouth of Anderson Creek 
 
2O Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 where it flows into the Ohio a place near where 
 he and his father had landed in 1816 running a 
 ferry across the great river. 
 
 Keeping the ferry meant that Abraham saw all 
 the new settlers coming into Indiana by this route, 
 and heard their stories and their discussions. He 
 talked with men and women going to the north and 
 south on visits and business, with traveling preachers, 
 
 A/ 
 
 FACSIMILE OT LINES FROM LINCOLN S COPT BOOK. 
 
 teachers and politicians; and of course he learned 
 all about the river traffic of the Ohio. 
 
 The Ohio was the highway of Indiana and all the 
 neighboring States. It was by it the settlers received 
 their news and their goods, and it was by it they 
 sent out the produce they raised. Every description 
 of boat known at that time could be seen on the 
 river. Great flatboats loaded with produce, floating 
 down to New Orleans, passed. Trading boats, car 
 rying furniture, groceries, clothes, harness, wagons, 
 plows, kitchen utensils everything that the general- 
 store keepers of the settlements dealt in tied up 
 
A Pioneer Boy 21 
 
 for business. "Arks" and "Sleds" a primitive kind 
 of houseboat made by building a small cabin on a 
 flatboat, with families on their decks, the women 
 cooking or washing or sewing, the children playing 
 beside them floated by. And now and then came a 
 steamboat. The first was seen on the Ohio River 
 when Abraham was only three years old, but by this 
 time, 1826, there were many of them. 
 
 The river life fascinated young Lincoln. Why 
 should he not go to New Orleans, too? Other boys 
 did. Boys no older than he went with produce they 
 had raised themselves. In his leisure time he put 
 in a piece of tobacco not far from the ferry. He 
 went back home with the idea buzzing in his mind, 
 -and began working with all his might to raise enough 
 potatoes, corn, and bacon to justify an expedition. 
 His father and mother were doubtful about the un 
 dertaking. They naturally feared some harm might 
 come to him, but he was so eager and worked so 
 hard that they finally consented. 
 
 When his produce was ready, Abraham went to 
 Anderson s ferry and built a flatboat not very 
 large, but sufficient for what he had to carry. While 
 he was working on this boat one day, and wondering 
 if it were stanch enough for the trip, two strangers 
 rode down to the river bank and hired him to take 
 them out with their luggage to a passing steamer 
 there were no wharves at the small river towns in 
 those days, so that passengers rowed out, the steamer 
 stopping when hailed. He sculled them out, and 
 they jumped on board without paying him. 
 
 "You have forgotten to pay me," he called after 
 
22 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 them. They had forgotten, and each man threw 
 him a silver half dollar. He could scarcely believe 
 his eyes. Never before had he earned half that 
 much in a day, and even then it went to his father. 
 But this was his. It put hope into him and it made 
 him thoughtful. If money was to be earned by 
 being on hand when and where people needed help, 
 he proposed to earn more. 
 
 Whether Abraham took this flatboat that he had 
 built to New Orleans or not, we do not know. It is 
 quite possible that he gave up this trip because he 
 had an opportunity to go about this time as a hand 
 with one of his acquaintances, an older man, who was 
 making the trip on a much larger boat than he could 
 have possibly built. A little later, too, he went down 
 the river to New Orleans on a journey of which he 
 often talked when he grew to be a man. This trip 
 was made as a "bow hand" on a trading boat that 
 Mr. Gentry, the leading citizen of Gentryville, was 
 sending down, in care of his own son, and he hired 
 Abraham to go along for eight dollars a month and 
 his passage back. 
 
 To take a flatboat as large as that the Gentrys 
 built down the Ohio and the Mississippi was a task 
 that called for both brains and muscle. The boat 
 was fully forty feet in length, with a double bottom 
 of stout oak planks. It had a rough shelter on the 
 deck. It was provided with two pairs of stout long 
 oars at bow and stern, a check post and coil of rope, 
 and what was called a setting pole for steering. The 
 current of the river would carry such a .boat as this 
 from four to six miles an hour. The crew s work 
 
A Pioneer Boy 23 
 
 was largely piloting. There were many bends in 
 the river, the winds were capricious and the currents 
 tricky, and in many places the traffic crowded. It 
 called for skillful steering. They traded as they 
 traveled, tying up wherever they thought there was a 
 chance for a market, exchanging their boat s load 
 of bacon, potatoes, and cloth for cotton, tobacco, and 
 sugar. 
 
 The boys spent a little time sight-seeing in New 
 Orleans, disposed of their boat, and came back by 
 steamer. Going to Europe nowadays would not 
 have meant more to a boy than these trips to New 
 Orleans did to Abraham Lincoln. When he came 
 back to take up his tasks on the farm and at the car 
 penter s bench he had more to think and talk about 
 than ever before in his life. 
 
 The river was the great world to him and he was 
 eager to follow it. The greatest man on the river, 
 as he had seen him, was the pilot. Why should he 
 not be a pilot? He talked it over with an older 
 friend in whom he had confidence, and it was only 
 at his insistence that he gave up the dream. His 
 friend believed that it was Abraham s duty to stay 
 with his father until he was twenty-one, so reluctantly 
 he gave up his ambition to be a river pilot and re 
 mained at home until he was of age. 
 
 For twenty-one years his life was almost en 
 tirely that of a laborer. What did he learn from 
 this hard pioneer work? He knew how to swing 
 an ax as well as any man in the West, to select and 
 prepare trees for cabins and rails and timber. He 
 could use tools, and plan and build. He could 
 
24 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 handle a horse, a plow, a scythe, a flail could build 
 and steer a flatboat. His eye was keen for every 
 moving thing. He could see a hundred sights that 
 none but the woodsman ever sees. He knew the 
 ways of bears and deer, partridges and pheasants, 
 the songs of scores of birds. He was weather-wise 
 and weather-hardened, he had known cold and hun 
 ger and weariness. It had seasoned and trained him 
 until he could lift a weight, run a race, and wrestle 
 with any man in all the country. 
 
 He knew men by constant association with 
 them, laboring by their side in clearing land, in 
 building, planting, harvesting, and trading. He 
 had learned to get on with people people of all 
 sorts stupid, quarrelsome, cowardly. He had 
 learned to make himself first among people by 
 kindness, courage, helpfulness, cheerfulness, hon 
 esty, loyalty. 
 
 He had learned the meaning of labor. He saw 
 that it was by labor that new lands are opened; men 
 and women fed, clothed, and sheltered, homes made 
 possible, cities built, a country made great. He 
 saw that all progress and happiness come from 
 man s power to labor, and he learned to despise the 
 man that did not do his part in carrying out this 
 law of God and man. 
 
 He was a man, every inch of him, by the time 
 he was twenty-one, the kind of man that the pioneer 
 understands and admires. But there was another 
 side to Abraham Lincoln at twenty-one that few of 
 those about him understood. It was something that 
 made them say sometimes that he was "different" 
 
A Pioneer Boy 25 
 
 from the rest of them. For in these years, while 
 he was learning the life of the laborer and practic 
 ing it, shoulder to shoulder, with his elders as well 
 as with those of his own age, he had been carrying 
 on another life, a life in his mind. The activities 
 of this mind life of his had been as constant as the 
 activities of his physical life. It had had as many 
 handicaps and as many hardships, and just as the life 
 of the pioneer which he had known had had a definite 
 goal the settling and the development of the coun 
 try, so Abraham Lincoln had had in the life of his 
 mind a goal. He wanted to understand things 
 to know what was in books. He wanted to be able 
 to explain what he had learned to others, to persuade 
 and move them. Quite as early as the day when the 
 ax had been put into his hand, he had had this ambi 
 tion. He had never given it up any more than he 
 had been allowed to give up the ax. How far had 
 he gone by this time in this mind life? How had 
 he been able, laboring by day as he did, to carry it 
 on? How far was he on his way toward being an 
 educated man, a man of influence with other men? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HE FINDS HIS KINGDOM 
 
 My mind to me a kingdom is. 
 
 EDWARD DYBR. 
 
 DID you ever hear of a "blab" school? That 
 is what the settlers of southwestern Indiana 
 called the school that Abraham Lincoln at 
 tended when he was a boy. If you had lived there 
 you could not have passed the log schoolhouse with 
 out knowing that the name fitted, for as you ap 
 proached you would have heard a steady hum of 
 voices, growing louder as you passed by, which you 
 would have known could only have come from every 
 body talking together. And so it was. The pupils 
 were studying out loud. There were so few books 
 that the teacher was obliged to read each lesson 
 aloud and the boys and girls repeated it after him. 
 It is probable that Abraham Lincoln never owned a 
 schoolbook in those days. The habit he learned 
 in the u blab" school stayed with him, for all his life 
 he loved to read aloud, and when he was preparing 
 a speech he would repeat over and over the argument 
 and struggle with sentences until he had them in a 
 form where they sounded right. 
 
 The schools were as poor in furniture and conve 
 niences as in books. Everything that the pupils used 
 
 26 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 27 
 
 was homemade. The benches were made of 
 puncheons, set in rough logs, so were the tables. 
 And as for blackboards, globes, reference books, 
 and pictures there were none. The only branches 
 that the teachers attempted were reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic. 
 
 But this poverty of books and furniture did not 
 prevent the schools being full of life and variety. If 
 they had little they made much of what they had. 
 There might be but one reader, but it was packed 
 with interesting selections, meant not only to give a 
 good vocabulary but to teach history, natural science, 
 geography, as well as to arouse a love of generous 
 actions and a contempt for meanness and injustice. 
 Many of the selections chosen dealt with the men 
 that had formed the United States and with their 
 hopes that in this new land there would be freedom 
 and a chance for all that were oppressed. 
 
 The very problems in the arithmetic often aimed 
 to teach facts about the country, as those given 
 Abraham when he was studying subtraction : 
 
 "General Washington was born in 1732. What 
 is his age in 1787?" 
 
 "America was discovered by Columbus in 1492 
 and its independence declared in 1776. How many 
 years elapsed between these events ?" 
 
 Having no books, and eager to have copies of the 
 examples given out, Abraham made himself copy 
 books by fastening together sheets of paper. 
 
 Much was made of spelling in the pioneer schools, 
 the pupils choosing sides and spelling down almost 
 every day. One of the excitements of the neighbor- 
 
28 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 hood was the public spelling bee. Lincoln was so 
 much better speller than most of his friends that the 
 side which had him for a leader at these bees nearly 
 always won. Indeed, finally, he was ruled out of the 
 contests entirely because of his superior accuracy. 
 This did not prevent his giving a hint to his friends 
 sometimes when they were puzzled over a word. 
 
 One of his little girl friends told as long as she 
 lived how once when she was hesitating whether 
 defied was spelled fi, fy or fe, she looked at Lincoln 
 and he put his finger to his eye. She took the hint 
 and spelled the word. In spite of this early reputa 
 tion, Lincoln never was an accurate speller. He 
 knew this himself. Once a boy who had been taken 
 by his father to call on Mr. Lincoln in the White 
 House heard the President tell how his secretaries 
 had trouble with him because he rarely spelt very 
 right; he made it verry. The boy never forgot hear 
 ing a President of the United States confess that 
 there were words that he could not spell. 
 
 Another important event in the "blab" school, to 
 which all the neighborhood flocked, were the debates. 
 One subject which always brought out a heated argu 
 ment in which the fathers and mothers of the chil 
 dren took a keen interest, was, "Which has the most 
 to complain of, the Indian or the negro?" 
 
 Besides the spelling bee and the debate, the schools 
 held what they called exhibitions, generally at the 
 end of the term. All the pupils were expected to 
 perform, either speaking pieces or taking parts in 
 dialogues. In these exercises, as in the spelling and 
 debating, Lincoln excelled, He loved to speak, and 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 29 
 
 as his memory was good and his ideas of the mean 
 ing of the piece clear, he nearly always aroused his 
 audience to enthusiasm by his rendering. 
 
 But Lincoln did not have many terms at even the 
 "blab" schools. All the days that he passed inside 
 of a school house do not amount to more than a year. 
 There were a few weeks in Kentucky before he was 
 eight years old and short periods after he moved into 
 Indiana; one when he was ten, another when he 
 was fourteen, and the last and shortest when he was 
 seventeen. 
 
 Abraham realized that he would certainly forget 
 what he learned in these broken terms unless he con 
 stantly put it in practice. Nothing slips away from 
 one like unused knowledge. He was determined not 
 to let anything escape, and he worked out his own 
 system of saving his learning. He would lie on the 
 floor at night before the open fire and on the back 
 of the big wooden shovel, with a piece of charred 
 wood, use the multiplication table on problems which 
 he made up; and when the shovel was covered, he 
 would pare off the surface with a sharp knife and 
 begin again. Nor did he allow himself to forget 
 the pieces which he had learned in school, often de 
 claiming them before his parents and their visitors. 
 
 Abraham not only saved what he had learned in 
 school; he found ways of adding to it. He discov 
 ered when he was still very young that everybody 
 about him knew something that he did not know, and 
 that by listening and asking questions of others he 
 could learn things that could not always be found 
 in books, certainly not in books that he had. His 
 
30 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 curiosity about what was going on in the world, about 
 what people were doing and how they were doing 
 it, what they thought and why they thought it, was 
 so great that he rarely met a stranger that he did 
 not try to learn from him. He would leave his work 
 to the disgust of his father or employer when a 
 stranger passed on the road, and ask questions. 
 
 One of the places where he learned most from 
 others was the general store at Gentryville, kept by 
 William Jones. It was the custom on mail day, Sat- 
 urda^ 1 afternoons, rainy days, and almost every even 
 ing, for the men and boys in and around Gentryville, 
 to gather in Mr. Jones store. They talked of the 
 weather, of the crops, and of all the joys and trag 
 edies of the countryside. They listened to everybody 
 who had come back from a trip down the river and 
 to every visitor that had come from the East or the 
 South. Chiefly, they discussed politics. The mail 
 came once a week, by a carrier from Rockport. He 
 brought the one regular paper, a weekly, the Louis 
 ville Journal. 
 
 Lincoln was so good a reader that he was often 
 asked to read articles to the company. And then 
 came the discussion. There were great questions to 
 discuss, too, and Lincoln always went home with his 
 mind full of new thoughts and new information after 
 an evening spent in Jones store. 
 
 His habit of watching what went on around him 
 and of asking questions when he was puzzled, served 
 him well when he was a ferryman and on his trips 
 down the Mississippi. What a boy gets out of hikes 
 and travel depends upon how good a use he makes 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 31 
 
 of his eyes and his tongue, upon his ability to see 
 things as they are and to ask wise, not foolish, ques 
 tions. Lincoln could make a trip on foot to Rock- 
 port, fifteen miles from his home, and come back 
 with more information and new ideas than a boy 
 who had not his trained faculty for seeing and listen 
 ing would bring back from a trip to Europe. 
 
 He was not only a listener and an observer ; he had 
 discovered when a very little fellow that stories of 
 what men thought and had done could be found in 
 books. It was the Bible which first taught him this. 
 It was difficult to get Bibles in those days. When 
 the colonies first quarreled with England, they put 
 an embargo on all imports. As there was neither 
 paper nor type enough in the country to print Bibles, 
 there was soon such a dearth of them that in 1777 
 Congress ordered the purchase of 20,000 in Hol 
 land. When the war was over, cheap Bibles came 
 in again from England, and were scattered over the 
 country where they were needed most. It was one 
 of these English Bibles that came into Thomas Lin 
 coln s household. Abraham s education was founded 
 on this book. He knew much of it by heart. He was 
 familiar with the lives of the men that it tells about, 
 he thoroughly absorbed its wonderful teachings, and 
 even as a boy he tried to model his conduct upon 
 them. 
 
 For a number of years this Bible was the only 
 book he had at home, but he was so eager to read 
 that he always was on the lookout for books in other 
 people s houses. Wherever he heard of a book, any 
 where within twenty miles, he could not rest until he 
 
32 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 had borrowed it; he would keep it in his pocket and 
 read it whenever he had a spare moment. Much as 
 he enjoyed talking and playing games at noontime 
 when he was working with a number of boys, if he 
 had a book he would go off by himself and read; and 
 at night, after he had his supper, he would go to his 
 room and read as long as there was light. Before 
 returning a borrowed book he would often make 
 long extracts of the passages that had interested him 
 most not so simple a thing for a boy to do that in 
 those days. Lincoln had not only to save paper and 
 sew it together for a copybook, but he had to cut 
 his pen from turkey quills and make his ink from 
 brier root. 
 
 The winter that he spent at the mouth of Ander 
 son s Creek, running the ferry, he lived in a house 
 where there were many books, most of them new to 
 him, and the family were surprised to find that he 
 spent his night, as well as his little leisure in the day 
 time, reading. 
 
 One of the most serious difficulties that he had as 
 a boy came from being not as careful as he should 
 have been of a book he had borrowed. It was 
 Weems s "Life of Washington." Lincoln was fas 
 cinated with the story of Washington s goodness and 
 greatness and his services to the country, and he read 
 and re-read the volume. One night he left it in a 
 crack between two logs of the cabin. A rainstorm 
 came up while he was asleep and the book was 
 soaked. The owner was Josiah Crawford, a neigh 
 bor near Gentryville, and Lincoln went at once to 
 him and showed him what had happened. Mr. 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 33 
 
 Crawford perhaps wanted to give the boy a lesson in 
 carefulness, or perhaps he thought it was a chance 
 to get some extra help at his work. At any rate, he 
 told him that as a penalty for the injury he had 
 allowed to come to the book, he must pull fodder 
 for three days. As a man was paid only about thirty 
 cents a day at that time and as the book was rare 
 and valuable, it was not an unjust punishment. 
 
 His hunger for books, for it can be called nothing 
 else a hunger quite as real as that one feels for 
 food and the time and trouble he gladly took to get 
 them, earned him more than one useful friend. For 
 instance, there was the constable in Gentryville, 
 David Turnham, who owned a copy of the revised 
 statutes of Indiana, which he used himself in his busi 
 ness. Lincoln was so interested in this book, which 
 contained not only the laws of the State but a copy 
 of the Declaration of Independence and the Consti 
 tution of the United States, that he used to go to 
 Mr. Turnham s house and read there. This ac 
 quaintance grew into a friendship which lasted as 
 long as Mr. Turnham lived. He always treasured 
 the book which Abraham had read so often at his 
 home, and years later, after the assassination, he 
 gave the book to Mr. Lincoln s -friend and law part 
 ner, William Herndon. It is now in New York 
 City, one of the treasures of the Library of the New 
 York Law Institute. 
 
 The more Lincoln read, the more he wanted to 
 read. Often he brooded over his handicaps his 
 few books always borrowed and never his own 
 the difficulty of finding time to read when he must 
 
34 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 work from sunrise to sunset six days in the week 
 the lack of companions interested like himself. It 
 was hard, lonely work educating himself. He seems 
 never to have allowed his discouragement to get the 
 better of him. However hard things were, he stuck 
 to his determination to know and to understand. In 
 his ambition he was fortunate in having the help and 
 sympathy of his stepmother. When his father 
 fretted because the boy "wasted" so much time read 
 ing, she defended him. She loved to talk over with 
 him what he had read and sought in every way she 
 could to make it easier for him to find time and 
 materials for study. 
 
 The more he read and studied, the more he 
 learned about using his mind. He began to see that 
 it was not the number of books he read that mat 
 tered, that it was the mastery of what was in them. 
 He discovered that when he had laid aside a book 
 for the ax or plow or hammer, he could still use his 
 mind on its contents, make sure that he understood 
 it fully. 
 
 To be certain that he really understood was one 
 of his great desires. He had no patience with slov 
 enly thinking. When he was a very little boy, if he 
 heard people talking about things which he did not 
 understand, he would sometimes lie awake half the 
 night trying to figure them out. He was never satis 
 fied until he had a thing clear in his mind. He strug 
 gled a long time to understand the relation of the 
 earth to the sun and the moon. Finally, he had it so 
 clearly fixed in his mind that he could make his com 
 panions understand it. A little girl friend used to 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 35 
 
 tell when she was a grown woman how one day she 
 said to Abraham, "The moon is going down." And 
 he replied, "No, it is not going down, but we the 
 earth, are going down;" and then went on and ex 
 plained the revolution of the earth on its axis, and 
 its course around the sun. 
 
 He soon discovered that the more clearly he ex 
 plained to others the more fully he understood him 
 self and the more firmly facts and ideas were fixed 
 in his mind. Whenever he could find anybody to 
 listen to him he would go over what he had read. 
 As he grew older he often had an audience of men 
 as well as boys listening to his serious speeches and 
 discussions. 
 
 This training which he was giving both his wits 
 and his tongue served him in more than one tight 
 place as he was growing to manhood. The winter 
 he kept the ferry at Anderson s Creek, he was even 
 able to make a successful plea in his own defense 
 when brought before a local justice of the peace on 
 a serious enough charge. It happened in this way: 
 
 Two farmers kept the ferry across the river on 
 the Kentucky side. As there were only occasional 
 travelers, it was the practice, when any one wanted 
 to cross from one side to the other, to ring a bell for 
 the ferryman. The farmers on the Kentucky side 
 were busy men and frequently did not respond 
 promptly. Lincoln fell into the habit, when the de 
 lay was long, of pushing out from his side of the 
 river and picking up the traveler, and, of course, re 
 ceiving the fee for carrying him over. This hap 
 pened so often that the Kentucky ferrymen began 
 
36 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 to suspect that Lincoln was trying to steal their 
 trade and decided to trap him. One day, when they 
 had not answered the bell and he had finally crossed, 
 they waylaid him, took him before the squire, and 
 made their charge. 
 
 Lincoln saw at once that the case was serious. 
 Unless he could defend himself it meant a jail sen 
 tence. So, when the squire asked him for his de 
 fense, he made it frankly and persuasively. He had 
 had no idea, he claimed, that in crossing the river he 
 was doing anything but a favor to the Kentucky 
 ferrymen. He knew that they were busy and did not 
 like to leave their work. He knew that the travelers 
 ought not to be kept waiting overlong. He thought 
 that he was accommodating every one concerned 
 when he took the men over. 
 
 There was no mistaking his honesty, at least so 
 the squire seems to have thought. Besides, his argu 
 ment was so clear and sound that the squire finally 
 let him off. Not only that, the squire was so inter 
 ested in the young man that he had a long talk with 
 him and invited him to come whenever he pleased 
 to the trials that were held before him. 
 
 Abraham was quick to take advantage of this invi 
 tation. Nothing went on in southwestern Indiana 
 that interested him so much as the scenes in the local 
 courts. He again and again walked to Rockport, 
 the county seat of Spencer County, nearly twenty 
 miles from his home, to attend court. There he 
 became acquainted with Judge John Pitcher, whose 
 curiosity about the big, roughly dressed lad that lis 
 tened so intently to the pleadings of the lawyers and 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 37 
 
 to his own speeches, was so strong that he talked with 
 him whenever he had the opportunity, advised him, 
 and loaned him books. 
 
 Another court which Lincoln frequently attended 
 was that at Boonville, the county seat of Warwick 
 County. It was a rather long hike, nearly fifteen 
 miles, and Lincoln made it usually on foot. He even 
 once went barefoot to follow a murder trial, so in 
 terested was he. 
 
 The desire to understand everything so clearly 
 that he could make others understand it, became 
 more and more a passion with Lincoln as he grew 
 older, and led him to something very important in 
 his education, and that was, a great care about how 
 he said things, about the words he used, and the sen 
 tences he constructed. He found that if his listeners 
 were really to understand his arguments he must 
 use words familiar to them, generally simple words ; 
 that he must use phrases that were straightforward 
 and clear. As his great desire was to think clearly 
 himself and have others understand his thoughts, he 
 became very particular, turning his phrases over and 
 over until they were as intelligible as he could make 
 them. 
 
 He discovered that one way to interest, as well as 
 to make people understand, was by illustrations 
 drawn from things that they were familiar with, so 
 he fell into the habit of explaining by stories drawn 
 from the incidents of daily life. The dog gnawing 
 and pulling at a root all day long in order to get at 
 a woodchuck served him as a lesson in persistency; 
 the sleepy, lazy horse, driven to action by the bite 
 
38 Boy Scouts r Life of Lincoln 
 
 of a chin fly, served him as an illustration of the way 
 an annoying or disheartening thing may drive one 
 to an effort which, without it, he would not make. 
 Everything in the world about him was full of mean 
 ing. It was not only that he saw things, but that he 
 thought out their meaning and after he had thought 
 it out he explained it whenever chance came. 
 
 It was natural that his desire to express himself 
 so that he could convince and move others should 
 lead him to writing. He is known to have written an 
 essay on kindness to animals and another on the 
 horrors of war, subjects that not only appealed to 
 his natural kindly instincts but which were often 
 treated in the school readers of that time. When he 
 was about nineteen, he wrote an essay on the Amer 
 ican Government and our duty to preserve the 
 Union, which he submitted to his friend, Judge 
 Pitcher of Rockport. Years afterward Judge 
 Pitcher, talking about this essay, declared that u the 
 world could not beat it." 
 
 But it was not on serious topics only that he wrote. 
 He had caught the trick of rhyming, and all of these 
 early years used it freely. 
 
 When his sister Sarah was married to Aaron 
 Grigsby the brother of that William Grigsby with 
 whom he had had the dispute over the ownership of 
 a dog Abraham wrote a song which was sung at 
 the wedding by the Lincoln family. It was the story 
 of the creation of Eve from Adam s side, and ended 
 with lines which, it is to be hoped, Sarah Lincoln s 
 new husband remembered: 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 39 
 
 "The woman was not taken 
 
 From Adam s feet we see, 
 So he must not abuse her, 
 The meaning seems to be. 
 
 "The woman was not taken 
 
 From Adam s head, we know, 
 To show she must not rule him 
 Tis evidently so. 
 
 "The woman she was taken 
 
 From under Adam s arm, 
 So she must be protected 
 From injuries and harm." 
 
 Lincoln s facility in rhyming always astonished his 
 friends. There was nobody else in the country so 
 accomplished. They could understand his strong 
 arm but not his faculty of verse making, and the 
 community was more impressed when it was discov 
 ered that Lincoln could use his accomplishment in 
 ridiculing those who had slighted or wronged him. 
 The feeling of the Grigsbys against Abraham was 
 so strong, probably because of the fight over the dog, 
 that they did not invite him to a wedding in the 
 family, although everybody else in the neighborhood 
 was there. Abraham took his revenge in verse, writ 
 ing a long string of jingles ridiculing them. It was 
 a novel kind of revenge in Gentryville and probably 
 cut deeper because of that. 
 
 Lincoln had discovered a dangerous thing, that he 
 could hurt people by satire and ridicule dangerous, 
 because so easily abused. A blow with the tongue 
 or pen may be more cruel than a blow with the fist. 
 
40 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 If he had not been kind at heart, given to measuring 
 all his actions by his idea of what was right and what 
 was wrong, that newly discovered power might have 
 proved later a cruel weapon in his hands. 
 
 But he was kind, and felt about his skill in satire 
 very much as he did about his strength of body, that 
 it was something that should not be used wan 
 tonly; and in later life he learned to use it only 
 when he was indignant over meanness or injus 
 tice, but then to such good effect that there was 
 nothing that those who knew him dreaded more. In 
 this case of the Grigsbys, whatever resentment they 
 may have felt over his lampooning was forgotten, 
 for, years later, when he was President of the United 
 States, one of his stanchest supporters in southwest 
 ern Indiana was William Grigsby. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest thing that he learned in his 
 hard struggles to make the most of his life was to 
 suit his conduct always to what he felt to be right. 
 He did not believe one thing and do another. It 
 could not have been easy for a boy who was so strong 
 and supple that he could throw anybody that he had 
 ever met, to refuse good-naturedly to fight some 
 quarrelsome bully whose chief ambition was to have 
 everybody afraid of him. Lincoln could afford to 
 laugh at such boys. He knew his own strength, but 
 he believed fighting and quarreling to be contempt 
 ible and wrong. He would have no part in them, 
 unless he was literally driven to it. If, as happened 
 occasionally, a gang that loved fighting for its own 
 sake attacked him, they found, to their shame, that 
 they were no match. There seems never to have 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 41 
 
 been a boy in the community that he could not pick 
 up and throw over his head; or, if forced to hit, he 
 could not straighten out with one blow. But he took 
 no pride in any brutal use of his strength, though he 
 used it freely in helping others. If there was a log 
 or a timber so heavy that no one could lift it, he 
 would shoulder it. He loved to test himself, too, 
 in all sorts of games, for he took pride in the supple 
 ness as well as in the strength of his body. 
 
 He used his sense of what was right and wrong as 
 one does a compass in the woods, to point his way; 
 and he would no more be false to that sense of right 
 and wrong than the traveler would to his compass. 
 He had thought it all out and he had come to see that 
 it is only by justice, kindness, honesty of mind and 
 heart in dealing with people that a man can become 
 useful and happy, and, as for himself, his mind was 
 made up. He might never have gone to school but 
 a year in his life, never had books or clothes like 
 those that the well-to-do boy even in that part of the 
 world in those times had, he might have to depend 
 upon labor with his hands for his food and shelter; 
 but this he had come to believe, that the greatest 
 things in the world, greater than wealth or honor, 
 were within his reach. And these were, to be loyal 
 in all his relations, obedient to the law, cheerful 
 whatever his hardships, and trustworthy always. 
 
 Lincoln s steady, determined training of himself 
 made a strong impression on his friends. Many of 
 the older people especially watched and often said 
 to one another, "He will make his mark," "He 
 will be a great man by and by." 
 
42 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 And, indeed, that is what Lincoln intended. He 
 was ambitious to know and see and be more than 
 those about him. Everything that he learned showed 
 him that there were men in the world who did great 
 and noble things. How were they able to do them? 
 He learned that they had to labor and sacrifice in 
 order to be what they were, but that did not frighten 
 him. All his life he had had to labor and sacrifice 
 simply to get food and clothes. He began to see 
 that the difference in the usefulness and in the powers 
 of men comes from the fact that some of them so 
 love knowledge and so desire to be useful that they 
 are willing to make great efforts; while others want 
 everything done for them; and he saw that these 
 men who want everything done for them never be 
 came useful or important. 
 
 He kept at his work of learning, understanding, 
 and telling others so persistently that by the time he 
 was twenty-one years old, although he had never 
 been in school more than a year, he had an education 
 which no college or university alone can give ; to be 
 sure, the college or university may make it much 
 easier to learn these things, but they cannot do the 
 work for a man, he must do it for himself. If a 
 man is to have the love of knowledge he must culti 
 vate it. If he is to have an eye that sees everything 
 that goes on about him, he must train it. If he is 
 to have the power to think through a hard problem, 
 he must acquire it by continually putting his mind 
 to hard problems, never giving up anything that 
 puzzles him until he has thought it through; if he 
 is to be able to explain that problem to others, he 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 43 
 
 must constantly exercise himself in explaining clearly 
 by word and by pen. Above all, if he is to be truth 
 ful, courageous, clean* cheerful, reverent, he must 
 watch himself constantly, control and shape his im 
 pulses, training his heart as he does his mind and 
 body. 
 
 Lincoln had done these things. By the time he 
 was twenty-one years of age, he had learned the 
 things that are most important in education, and it 
 was now time for him to start out for himself. He 
 did not see much chance of going further in Indiana, 
 and it is probable that he would have left home of 
 his own will if his father had not made up his mind 
 to leave Spencer County. He had not prospered 
 there as he had hoped, and that old malarial trouble 
 of which Nancy Hanks Lincoln had died had broken 
 out again. 
 
 One of Abraham s cousins, John Hanks, had gone 
 to Illinois, and had come back with wonderful tales 
 of a land without forests to be cleared and of a soil 
 that was so rich it only needed scratching to yield 
 a crop. He proposed to go there and settle. The 
 stories stirred all of the pioneer instinct in Tom Lin 
 coln, and he decided to follow John Hanks, so the 
 Lincolns sold their land, their extra stock, and prod 
 uce, and in March of 1830, just a month after 
 Lincoln was twenty-one, they started, a party of 
 thirteen, on a journey into the new land. 
 
 Everybody was sorry to see them go. It was a 
 hard parting, particularly for Abraham. He had 
 lived fourteen years in this valley, from the time he 
 was seven until he was twenty-one. He knew every- 
 
44 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 body within many miles of his home, and he was on 
 friendly terms with everybody. He was leaving be 
 hind scores of friends, the grave of his mother. He 
 knew that in starting out for himself which, once 
 this moving was over, he must do he must go 
 among strangers ; but it was a new adventure, prom 
 ising him the chance he so eagerly awaited; besides 
 he was too busy with the work of the journey to 
 have time to brood. 
 
 The goods of the family had been packed into a 
 big wagon and Abraham drove the oxen which pulled 
 the load, a task that required skill and attention. 
 The roads, poor at best, were terrible at this season, 
 half frozen in some places, full of deep holes in 
 others. There were no bridges and often the heavy 
 wagon broke through the soft ice which still cov 
 ered the streams. Abraham had his hands full all 
 day and at evening when they camped he must care 
 for his oxen and help with the horses, for most of 
 the party, including Mrs. Lincoln, were on horse 
 back, each rider carrying strapped behind a great 
 bundle of fodder. 
 
 The journey led them through two good sized 
 towns Vincennes and Palestine. Lincoln saw on 
 this trip his first printing press and his first juggler. 
 The skill of the latter particularly amazed him. 
 Here, he saw, was somebody who could do some 
 thing with his body that he could not do. He never 
 lost his interest in this sort of skill, and always at 
 fairs, in later life, he would go to watch the strong 
 men throwing balls and performing other feats of 
 jugglery. 
 
He Finds His Kingdom 45 
 
 Much of the interest of the trip came from a little 
 business venture that he was making on the side. 
 He had foreseen that there was a chance of making 
 a little extra money, so he went to his friend, Mr. 
 Jones, of the general store, and asked him to make 
 up a pack of things that he could peddle along the 
 way. Needles, pins, thread, calico, buttons, knives 
 and forks, went into his pack, and all were sold on 
 the trip. 
 
 It took two weeks for the Lincolns to reach Macon 
 County, Illinois, where John Hanks had already 
 selected a piece of land for them. This land lay 
 about ten miles west of Decatur, the county seat, 
 on a bluff overlooking the Sangamon River. There 
 were acres of open prairie and much fine timber a 
 really beautiful spot. All hands fell to with energy 
 to build a cabin, and this done, to split rails for a 
 field. Most of these rails were split by Abraham 
 himself, and thirty years later some of them were 
 carried in political parades and shown in political 
 conventions. 
 
 The field fenced, the ground must be broken and 
 put into crops. In all this work Lincoln helped. It 
 was true he was now of age and had the right, accord 
 ing to law, to start out for himself; but this he was 
 unwilling to do until he sa^w his father established. 
 That done, he set out on a search for work, his ax 
 over his shoulder, for the first time in his life a free 
 and independent man. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 STARTING OUT FOR HIMSELF 
 
 Get work: it is better than what you work to get. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 IF you had seen him in the summer of 1831, when 
 he started out for himself, probably the last 
 thing you would have believed was that Abra 
 ham Lincoln had in him the making of a great man. 
 The chances are that you would have looked at his 
 clothes instead of his eyes, have judged by the kind 
 of work he was doing instead of finding out what 
 was going on in his mind. Certainly, if you had 
 seen only the outside you would not have picked him 
 out as a future leader of a great country. And yet, 
 to the Boy Scout, with his trained appreciation of 
 strength, vigor, and suppleness, he would have been 
 a remarkable figure. 
 
 Lincoln was twenty-two years old, almost six feet 
 four inches in height, and weighed nearly one hun 
 dred and eighty pounds. There was not an ounce 
 of extra flesh on his body, nothing but hard, sinewy 
 muscle, and if he had gripped your hand you would 
 have known that he could crush it if he wished. 
 Carrying his great frame erect, he walked with long, 
 elastic strides, arms swinging. When sitting he 
 slouched "sat on his shoulder blades," people said; 
 
 4 6 
 
Starting Out for Himself 47 
 
 when reading he liked to lie at full length on the floor 
 or ground. His face matched his body a thin face, 
 with high cheek bones, broad forehead, and big nose. 
 There was a curious drop at one side of his lower 
 lip and a big wart on his right cheek. His eyes were 
 gray and his hair heavy, coarse, and black. His big 
 body was clad in clothes so poor and ill fitting that 
 they attracted attention even in those pioneer days. 
 Usually they were made of what was called jeans, 
 a cotton mixture, roughly woven at home. His 
 trousers were nearly always too short and his coat 
 hitched up in the back. You see, if you are given 
 to judging people by their clothes, the probability is 
 that you would have passed by this future President 
 of the United States. 
 
 In spite of appearance, however, from the time 
 that Abraham Lincoln began to work on his own 
 account, it was on the educated people, the big men 
 of the community, that he made the deepest impres 
 sion. He amazed them by his knowledge, his 
 thoughtfulness, his clear and forceful expression of 
 ideas. They were surprised at his interest in the 
 affairs of the countryside and his sensible way of 
 looking at them. Almost at once he interested him 
 self in a local public question. 
 
 Lincoln had seen, as soon as he arrived in Macon 
 County, that the great need of the settlers was better 
 transportation some way to get easily to the big 
 markets of the world with their produce. Now, 
 close to his new home was a river, the Sangamon, 
 which about one hundred and fifty miles to the west 
 joined the Illinois River, some seventy miles from 
 
48 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 where it flowed into the Mississippi. But it was 
 such a lawless, zigzag stream and so blocked by 
 driftwood and snags that it had never been consid 
 ered navigable. Lincoln worked near this river for 
 several months after he arrived in Illinois and, 
 trained as he was to watch and think about his sur 
 roundings, studied its ways until he made up his 
 mind it could be opened and that to do this was the 
 first business of the settler. 
 
 One day as he and his cousin John Hanks were 
 at work with others in the fields, a candidate for 
 office stopped to talk to them. He talked on the 
 very subject Lincoln had been thinking about the 
 navigation of the Sangamon. When he had finished, 
 John Hanks declared loudly that Lincoln could make 
 a better speech than that. "Let him do it," the boys 
 shouted. It must have been a surprise to them when, 
 without hesitation, Abraham bounded to his feet and 
 made a speech which the candidate himself admitted 
 to be better than his. He knew enough of speech- 
 making to understand that was not the first time the 
 big rail splitter had talked on his feet. 
 
 "Where did you learn that?" he asked him. Abra 
 ham told him modestly enough how he had read and 
 tried to make all he read clear to himself and others 
 by speaking when he could find listeners. "Keep 
 on," the man told him, "you ll make your mark some 
 day." 
 
 It was the Sangamon River that gave him his first 
 chance and soon after it gave him a second when 
 he and his half brother and his cousin were hired 
 to pilot a flatboat with a load of produce from near 
 
Starting Out for Himself 49 
 
 Springfield to New Orleans. It was a chance to 
 prove that he was right in the things that he had 
 been saying about the navigation of the river. 
 
 Early in 183 1 the three young men went to Spring 
 field where they were to meet their employer. But 
 they found he had not kept his agreement to have a 
 boat ready and loaded for them, and that if they 
 were to make the trip, they must build the boat 
 themselves. 
 
 It was work with which all three were familiar, 
 and soon they were busy getting out the timber. 
 There were no lumber yards to draw upon, but there 
 was plenty of government land with timber for the 
 asking. Going into the woods they built a camp 
 and set about their task. The camp was near a set 
 tlement known as Sangamon town, and it was not 
 many days before the inhabitants were telling one 
 another that there was a big fellow down in the new 
 camp who was a wonderful story-teller. It soon 
 became the habit at noontime and in the evening for 
 all the menfolks around to drift into Abraham s 
 camp to listen to him talk. Their favorite seat was 
 a long log, off which the men, convulsed with 
 laughter, rolled so often that they soon had it pol 
 ished. It was long known in Sangamon town as 
 "Abe s log." 
 
 The boat was finished early in April and safely 
 launched; but it did not get off without an exciting 
 accident in which Lincoln s coolness and courage in 
 danger came out strongly. 
 
 A log canoe or dugout had been made for use with 
 the flatboat and two men who had been helping the 
 
50 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 party attempted to launch it. The river was high, 
 overflowing its banks, and they were careless. 
 Hardly was the dugout in the water before over it 
 went, throwing them into the cold, rushing stream. 
 They were swept rapidly away by the swift current, 
 but finally succeeded in reaching the branches of a 
 half-submerged tree in midstream. 
 
 How to rescue the two men, perched up above the 
 roaring river, was a problem. Lincoln took the 
 matter promptly in hand. Seizing the heavy ropes 
 on the flatboat, he called on the whole party to help 
 attach them to a big log, and shove it into the stream. 
 A daring fellow was selected to guide it to the tree 
 in which the men were perched. He did so, but, 
 excited with his success, sprang up too quickly and 
 was thrown into the water, losing the log and only 
 barely reaching the tree, to which now three half- 
 frozen, frightened men were clinging. 
 
 A second log was secured and the maneuver re 
 peated, but Lincoln himself directed the life boat this 
 time. He was able to bring it so near the tree that 
 he could throw a line about the trunk and hold it 
 secure until the prisoners had climbed down and 
 seated themselves. Then, freeing his craft, he or 
 dered it pulled slowly to shore. 
 
 By this time the whole countryside was on the 
 banks watching the rescue, and when a short time 
 afterward Lincoln and his friends floated away from 
 Sangamon town, he went with a reputation not only 
 as the best story-teller that had ever been in those 
 parts, but as a fearless and resourceful hero. 
 
 Thirty miles or so down the river, the flatboat 
 
Starting Out for Himself 51 
 
 and its crew met with a second mishap in which Lin 
 coln was again the central figure. In an attempt to 
 go over a milldam at the town of New Salem the 
 boat hung, bow in air. The boxes and hogsheads 
 began settling into the stern and water flowing in. It 
 looked like a shipwreck and the whole neighborhood 
 gathered to shout directions and warnings. Lincoln 
 paid little attention to his audience, but quickly began 
 unloading and shifting cargo. Part of it was sent 
 ashore in the dugout, and the rest was carried for 
 ward until gradually the weight began to raise the 
 stern. When the angle was changed he bored a 
 hole in the bottom of the boat, letting out the water 
 which had run in and was soon able to push the craft 
 over. "A mighty smart chap," declared the people 
 in New Salem, who had been watching operations. 
 From the Sangamon they floated into the Illinois 
 River and from the Illinois into the Mississippi and 
 on down to New Orleans. Although Lincoln had 
 made the trip at least twice before he was now much 
 better prepared to benefit by what he saw and heard. 
 The month he spent in New Orleans was one of the 
 richest so far in his life. In 1831 the city was filled 
 with people from all parts of the world, but particu 
 larly from France and Spain. There were many 
 Creoles and Indians. Besides, there was a commu 
 nity of pirates and filibusters, fresh from wild and 
 often wicked adventures and preparing for new ones. 
 Along with these were hundreds of rivermen from 
 the full length of the Mississippi. It was said that 
 one could walk a mile in those days over the tops of 
 the flatboats tied up along the wharves in New Or- 
 
52 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 leans. Lincoln lived among these rough men, heard 
 their tales, and learned their ways. 
 
 Nothing in the brilliant life of the city interested 
 him so much as the slave market. It was the first 
 time he had seen men and women put upon the auc 
 tion block as he had been accustomed to seeing 
 horses and cows and hogs. The separation of moth 
 ers and children, husbands and wives, brothers and 
 sisters filled him with angry amazement. From the 
 time that he was seven years old he had lived in free 
 states. Slavery was only a name to him. He had 
 been taught by his father and many of his friends 
 to regard it as wrong, but he had all his life heard 
 men for whom he felt respect uphold it as a neces 
 sary institution. What he saw in the slave market, 
 the most terrible and inhuman part of slavery but 
 a necessary part if men and women were to be con 
 sidered as property which could be bought and sold 
 filled his mind. He could not think or talk about 
 anything else. "If ever I get a chance to hit that 
 thing," he told his cousin, "I ll hit it hard." 
 
 After the month in New Orleans, the travelers 
 came back by steamer to Illinois. Their employer, 
 a venturesome, boastful trader, who was looking for 
 a chance to establish himself permanently in Illinois, 
 had decided to open a store in New Salem. He 
 had been so pleased with what he had seen of Lin 
 coln that he asked him to take charge of this store; 
 and so, in the summer of 1832, Lincoln returned to 
 the town where more than one citizen recognized him 
 as the resourceful and cool fellow who, a few months 
 
Starting Out for Himself 53 
 
 before, had saved a flatboat and its cargo from sink 
 ing in the Sangamon. 
 
 But New Salem quickly discovered that Lincoln 
 was as able in many other ways as he had been in 
 saving his boat. He surprised them both by the 
 variety of things he could do and by the kindliness 
 and zest with which he did them. Just after his 
 arrival an election was held in the town and the clerk 
 in charge the schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, 
 needed an assistant. When anything unusual was 
 going on, particularly anything that brought men 
 together, Lincoln was sure to be on hand. Mentor 
 Graham, seeing him in the crowd, asked him if he 
 could write. "I can make a few rabbit tracks," he 
 answered. It would not have been surprising if 
 Graham had been a little doubtful about his capacity, 
 but he tried him out, and immediately saw that here, 
 in spite of his queer looks,, was a young man who 
 knew his business. He made the entries correctly 
 and promptly and asked such intelligent questions 
 and made such shrewd comments that the school 
 master was greatly taken with him. When things 
 were a little dull he enlivened the crowd by telling 
 stories. Before night, all New Salem was telling 
 about the stranger who had dropped in, made such 
 a good clerk, and illustrated his talk by the most 
 amusing and striking stories that they had heard 
 in many a day. 
 
 By the time the store was open he had won the 
 good will and respect of the best people in New 
 Salem; soon after he won over the roughest part 
 
54 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 ot the community, a wild and lawless gang known 
 as the Clary s Grove Boys a name given them from 
 their meeting place in a grove near the town. One 
 of the ambitions of this gang was to include in its 
 membership the strongest wrestlers and hardest 
 fighters in the country. Their champion at this time 
 was Jack Armstrong, whom they boldly declared to 
 be as strong as an ox and able to lick anybody alive. 
 
 Lincoln s employer, hearing these boasts and 
 proud of his clerk s strength and skill, retorted that 
 Lincoln could lift more, run faster, jump higher, 
 wrestle better than any man in Sangamon County. 
 Of course, the Clary s Grove Boys would not let that 
 pass, and they ordered Armstrong u to throw Lin 
 coln." Abraham did not like these wrestling 
 matches. There was too much "wooling and pull 
 ing" about them, he said. But it was an open 
 challenge with the promise of fair play, so he con 
 sented. There was great excitement over the match, 
 the community generally expecting Armstrong to 
 make short work of the new man. But almost at 
 once everybody saw that the champion had met his 
 match. He could not throw Lincoln. Realizing 
 this, after a long struggle, he tried a "foul." 
 
 Lincoln had wrestled in good humor to this point, 
 but when he realized what Armstrong was doing he 
 was furious. Seizing him by the throat he held him 
 at arm s length, shaking him as a dog might a rat. 
 The gang, seeing their champion in this inglorious 
 predicament, rushed to his assistance. For a few 
 minutes it looked as if Lincoln would be downed 
 by numbers, but he held them off until, amazed at 
 
Starting Out for Himself 55 
 
 his strength and skill, they fell back in admiration, 
 and Armstrong, ashamed of his trickery, loudly 
 declared that Lincoln was the best man that had 
 ever broken into camp. 
 
 Lincoln s place was now secure with the young of 
 the countryside. He was their chosen umpire in all 
 sports and they heeded his warning^ and took 
 his advice when nobody else could influence them. 
 When fall came and the regular muster of the militia 
 for the drilling required by law was made, it was 
 the young men that chose Lincoln for captain, just 
 as their elders chose him for clerk of elections and 
 referee in town matters. 
 
 This popularity with all classes encouraged Lin 
 coln to think that his ambition to take an active part 
 in public affairs might not be hopeless, after all. 
 Dare he offer himself as a candidate for office? By 
 this time he had become so intimate with Mentor 
 Graham, the schoolmaster, that he told him of his 
 ambition. The schoolmaster understood, as Lincoln 
 did not, that, intelligent and thoughtful as he was, 
 his lack of systematic schooling would be a serious 
 handicap to him if he went into public life. "For 
 one thing you must learn not only to speak well and 
 fluently but speak correctly," he told him. "That 
 is, you must know more than you do about the sci 
 ence of grammar." 
 
 "I can learn it, can t I?" said Lincoln. 
 
 "Yes," said the schoolmaster, "and I will help 
 you." 
 
 So far as Abraham could find out, there was at 
 that time but one grammar to be borrowed in the 
 
56 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 whole countryside, and that was some miles away. 
 He did not wait, but started at once for the book; 
 and for weeks after that he could be seen in every 
 spare hour, working over the principles and trying 
 to apply them. He did a good piece of work. There 
 were only two slips which Lincoln in later life was 
 wont to make and these many educated people make. 
 One was to split his infinitives, and the other was 
 to confuse "shall" and "will." 
 
 He learned something by this mastery of gram 
 mar which he seems not to have fully realized be 
 fore, and that is that men arrange the knowledge 
 they collect of a particular subject and the principles 
 governing this knowledge which they work out into 
 what is called a science, and that in order to get a 
 solid basis for work in the world it is necessary to 
 master at least the outlines of the essential sciences, 
 that these are the foundations of an education and 
 that it is through the schools that men have agreed to 
 teach the elements of the necessary sciences. Lin 
 coln saw that heretofore he had been reading and 
 studying without plan and although he had taught 
 himself to think out and express problems clearly, 
 he had little systematic knowledge. 
 
 "If that s a science," he said when he had finished 
 with grammar, "I guess I ll try another." 
 
 While he was working on his grammar he de 
 cided to prepare an address to the people of the 
 district, announcing himself as a candidate for the 
 State legislature. You see, he did not intend to lose 
 any time in letting people know what his ambitions 
 were. He did not intend that lack of money, school- 
 
Starting Out for Himself 57 
 
 ing, or clothes should stand in his way. He went 
 straight after the thing that he wanted, and in 
 March, 1832, only one year after he came into the 
 State, and when he was only twenty-three years old, 
 he put out his announcement; but hardly was his 
 bid for votes out before his and everybody s mind 
 was turned from politics to war an Indian war. 
 
 One morning in April, a rider dashed through the 
 streets of New Salem, scattering handbills signed 
 by the governor, calling for volunteers to repel an 
 invasion by the Sac Indians, led by a chief whose 
 name was familiar to every Illinois settler, Black 
 Hawk. The Sacs had once owned the northern por 
 tion of Illinois, but in 1804 had sold it to the United 
 States, and moved west of the Mississippi, with 
 the understanding that they could hunt and plant 
 corn in Illinois until it was settled. The whites had 
 not kept faith with the Indians, squatters in large 
 numbers taking possession of land still unsurveyed. 
 The Indians had resisted and there had been much 
 bitterness and violence from both White and Red. 
 Finally, in the spring of 1832, Black Hawk decided 
 to invade the State. He had been persuaded by 
 agitators that if he would attack, other Indian tribes 
 would join him and that the British would send him 
 powder and rifles; there was no chance of either of 
 these things happening. 
 
 As soon as Black Hawk and his braves appeared 
 along the Rock River, the governor called for vol 
 unteers from the State to help the soldiers of the 
 regular army stationed at Fort Armstrong (Rock 
 Island in the Mississippi) to drive him back. There 
 
58 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 were few slackers among the younger men when 
 this call came to New Salem, one of the first to enlist 
 being Lincoln. Each company chose its own cap 
 tain, and to Lincoln s surprise and delight, he was 
 elected. He often said, in talking about his life, 
 that nothing that had ever happened to him pleased 
 him more than this honor. 
 
 Undoubtedly it was because of the liking that the 
 men had for him that they chose him, for probably 
 no man in New Salem knew less about military mat 
 ters than he did. He did not know how to give 
 orders. Nor did he know the regulations necessary 
 for the discipline of a camp. During the march, 
 on which they immediately started, he constantly 
 got into trouble through his ignorance. In later life 
 he used frequently to tell with great enjoyment of 
 his own awkwardness and mistakes. Once when the 
 company was marching twenty abreast, they came 
 up against a fence in which there was a gate. Lin 
 coln, at his wits end as to the proper order, called 
 out: "This company is dismissed for two minutes, 
 when it will fall in again on the other side of the 
 gate." 
 
 Because of his good-humored tolerance with his 
 company and their propensity for mischief and 
 carousing, he had to suffer much military humiliation 
 and once, not at all for his own fault, but for shield 
 ing his men, he wore a wooden sword for two days. 
 
 Black Hawk was followed north for a month 
 without an encounter. By this time the volunteers 
 were pretty well tired of the long marches, poor 
 
Starting Out for Himself 59 
 
 food, and poor shelter. Most of them refused to go 
 on and finally the governor mustered them all out 
 and arranged for a new levy. This broke up Lin 
 coln s company. He did not go home, however, but 
 reenlisted as a private in a company of mounted 
 independent rangers, whose duty it was to carry mes 
 sages and spy on the enemy. After a month of this 
 work these rangers were mustered out and Lincoln 
 enlisted a third time in an independent company and 
 here he remained until the end of the war in July. 
 
 He saw no fighting through the three months 
 saw no hostile Indians except a few dead ones that 
 he helped bury. But if there were no battles, there 
 was much real hardship, for the food was scanty and 
 poor, the marches long and difficult, often through 
 forests and swamps, and the ground offered the only 
 beds. The return to New Salem, after he was finally 
 mustered out at Whitewater in Wisconsin, was espe 
 cially hard, for his horse had been stolen and he was 
 obliged to "foot it" save when a friendly comrade 
 gave him a lift or when he could get a canoe and 
 paddle down a stream flowing in the direction that 
 he was going. 
 
 If his service in the Black Hawk War brought 
 Lincoln no glory as a soldier it was the finest oppor 
 tunity he had yet had for making the acquaintance 
 of numbers of men and of studying the needs and 
 the conditions of Illinois. He met, in the three 
 months of campaigning and marching, scores of 
 men with whom he was later to work in the law 
 and in politics. His experience taught him, too, how 
 
60 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 right he had been in thinking that the greatest need 
 of Illinois at that time was better transportation. 
 He still believed the way to get this was by improving 
 the rivers and he came back to New Salem more 
 confident than ever that the navigation of the Sanga- 
 mon River was the issue on which to make his cam 
 paign, for the war had by no means killed his polit 
 ical ambition. As a matter of fact, he knew that 
 he was stronger than ever with the men of his county, 
 and when he reached New Salem he picked up his 
 campaigning where he had dropped it, using the very 
 handbills which he had had ready when the call to 
 volunteer came. 
 
 His campaigning had none of the formality of 
 that of to-day. Candidates traveled from settle 
 ment to settlement, on foot or a-horseback, often in 
 groups, picking up an audience wherever they could 
 find men and spending much time by .the wayside, 
 at the stores, or in taverns discussing the questions 
 of the day. Every man felt that politics was part 
 of his business and that he must understand it if he 
 was to vote right; consequently he took every op 
 portunity to hear and to question. Speakers ex 
 pected to be interrupted by their hearers and a great 
 deal of their success depended upon the good humor, 
 the frankness, and the information they put into 
 their answers. If a speaker resented a question, it 
 was generally concluded he was caught or consid 
 ered himself superior to his hearers. Lincoln liked 
 his audiences too well to treat their interruptions 
 contemptuously; besides he was so interested in what 
 he was talking about and was always so anxious to 
 
Starting Out for Himself 
 
 61 
 
 Data does not exist for 
 determining positively *J. 
 the route Lincoln followed 
 in the Black Hawk War. 
 JT Only thegeneraldtrectionof 
 the marches of his company 
 are indicated here. In poln{r 
 from Ottawa to Galenaand back 
 Captain lies may hare very well 
 marched his company through 
 Dlzon s Ferry. In returning from 
 Whitewater to New Salem, Lincoln 
 may have followed the river to Dizon 
 There were undoubtedly several ald 
 marches such aa that on June 85, from 
 Dizon to Kellogg a Grove and back, 
 which are not shown In this map. 
 
Starting Out for Himself 63 
 
 get new light that he regarded questions as a help 
 rather than a hindrance. 
 
 He frequently found other duties at public meet 
 ings than speaking and answering questions. He 
 had to keep the crowd in order. A regular feature 
 of most of the political gatherings seems to have 
 been a fight on the outskirts. Lincoln did not hesi 
 tate to come down from his platform when inter 
 rupted by a scrap and in his own way restore order. 
 Noticing that one of his friends was getting the 
 worst of it in a general fight which broke out at 
 one of his meetings, he jumped from the platform, 
 pushed his way through the crowd, and, seizing the 
 bully who had started the row by the seat of his 
 trousers, "threw him" so those who saw it always 
 insisted "twelve feet away." Returning to the 
 stand he went on with his speech. 
 
 There was no doubt but that the people liked 
 his speeches. He spent most of his time arguing 
 that the Sangamon should be opened and he showed 
 them how it could be done. They saw that he had 
 studied the river, knew how it acted at different 
 seasons, where its length could be shortened, its 
 channel cleared. Here was a young man who kept 
 his eyes open, they said, and who studied not only 
 what was in printed books but in the greatest of 
 books, the life and country around him. Then they 
 liked the modesty of his speeches. "Upon the sub 
 jects I have treated," he told them, "I have spoken 
 as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any 
 or all of them, but as soon as I discover my opin 
 ions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce 
 
64 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 them." "Knows he can learn," they told one an 
 other, "and means to do it. Isn t afraid to change 
 if he finds he s wrong. He ll make his mark yet." 
 
 How strong he made himself in Sangamon 
 County was shown when the elections came, for, al 
 though there were eight candidates in the field, he 
 stood third on the list. In New Salem he received 
 227 of the 300 votes cast. Who would dream, to 
 have seen him starting out from his father s log 
 cabin in Macon County in the spring of 1831, in 
 his jean trousers, his ax over his shoulder, that in 
 two years he would receive over two thirds of the 
 vote cast in the town in which he settled, for a posi 
 tion so important as that of member of the Illinois 
 Assembly. 
 
 The election, even if called a defeat, was a vic 
 tory. He had made himself a place among men 
 in his community. He knew it well. That was 
 the thing he had been working for. He was far 
 from discouraged. Two years from now there 
 would be another election and he meant to win that 
 time. 
 
 But now he must have work. Storekeeping, he 
 had learned when he was clerking, just about sat 
 isfied him, and as there was a grocery for sale in 
 New Salem, he and an acquaintance, William Berry 
 a fellow not too fond of work, it must be ac 
 knowledged decided to buy the store, giving their 
 notes in exchange. And so, late in 1832, we find 
 the firm of Lincoln & Berry in business in New 
 Salem. 
 
 Hardly had they opened their door before two 
 
Starting Out for Himself 65 
 
 other groceries in New Salem were forced to sell. 
 Lincoln and Berry, in spite of the fact that they had 
 no money, bought the stocks. It was high finance ! 
 Two penniless youths buying up three stores and 
 doing it entirely on credit. Not a cent of money had 
 passed hands in the consolidation. 
 
 What pleased Lincoln about the undertaking was 
 that he now had ample time to read. Customers 
 usually found him lying on the counter, his feet 
 propped up against a pile of groceries or calico, 
 reading anything he could get his hands on. 
 
 But even if he was an unbusinesslike storekeeper, 
 there probably never was a more popular one. His 
 store, as that of his friend Jones in Gentyrville, be 
 came the meeting place of the men from the town 
 and the county in their leisure hours, a place to dis 
 cuss politics, neighborhood affairs, listen to stories. 
 Liking for him grew steadily and as people knew 
 him better they began to comment more and more 
 on his scrupulous honesty. A woman told how one 
 evening he weighed her out a half pound of tea, and 
 the next morning when he came in discovered on his 
 scales a four-ounce weight. He realized at once 
 that in the darkness he had made a mistake and 
 without waiting hurried off and delivered the balance 
 of the half pound. Another customer told how he 
 walked three miles once, after the store was closed, 
 to return an overcharge of six and a quarter cents. 
 
 And as for his kindness, it was not long before 
 in New Salem, as back in Gentryville, he had made 
 a reputation for helping everybody that was in 
 trouble. You could always count on him. He 
 
66 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 boarded in the little country tavern, but more than 
 once when there were too many travelers for the 
 beds, Lincoln cheerfully gave up his and slept on 
 the counter in his store. More than one traveler 
 who had broken down or stuck in the mud in the one 
 poor street of New Salem had a tale to tell of a 
 storekeeper of wonderful strength who lifted the 
 wagon out or mended the broken parts. 
 
 It was through his willingness to do a good turn 
 to a traveler that this year of storekeeping brought 
 him the most valuable books he had ever owned, 
 books he was fully able to appreciate and use. One, 
 day a man drove up, who was moving his family 
 and household goods westward and had overloaded. 
 He asked Lincoln if he would not buy a barrel of 
 plunder for which he had no room. Lincoln good- 
 naturedly consented, and, paying for the barrel, put 
 it away without knowing what was in it. Some time 
 afterward he dumped the contents on the floor and 
 was amazed to find in the collection a complete set 
 of Blackstone s Commentaries. No possession 
 could have been more precious to him at the mo 
 ment; and he set himself to the reading of these vol 
 umes, which he always considered the basis of legal 
 learning, with a determination to master them. Men 
 seeing him stretched under the tree in front of Lin 
 coln & Berry s store, or lying on his counter, would 
 ask what he was reading. "Reading?" he would 
 say, "I am studying studying law." And more 
 than one who received this answer went away, shak 
 ing his head over Lincoln s way of keeping store. 
 
 It was not long before the community, seeing his 
 
Starting Out for Himself 67 
 
 interest in the law, began to ask services of him. 
 The justices of the peace would call on him to dis 
 cuss a point or to examine the papers they had made 
 out. Lincoln was quick to see that here was a chance 
 for him, so he began to study how to make out wills, 
 contracts, deeds all of the various legal instru 
 ments by which men carry on their business. It was 
 not long before he was doing this work for many 
 of his friends, sometimes with fees, oftener with 
 out. 
 
 If Lincoln s partner, William Berry, had been 
 industrious and honest, he might have made up for 
 what Lincoln lacked as a storekeeper; but he was 
 neither. He was a shiftless fellow, drinking more 
 than was good for him, and in six months time 
 the firm was forced to sell. They sold to men who 
 were no more sensible than they in business, and 
 who not only failed but, worse still, fled without 
 making any arrangement for paying the notes which 
 they had taken over. Soon after this Berry died, 
 and Lincoln found himself responsible for the debts 
 of the three stores consolidated the year before, as 
 well as the debts of the gentlemen who had taken 
 over the venture responsible and not a cent to his 
 name. There was a way out of it. He might have 
 pleaded bankruptcy, but he could not square such 
 a course with the laws that he had laid down for 
 himself. He went to the various creditors, promis 
 ing them that he would pay everything if they would 
 give him time. 
 
 And he did every cent of it, although he was 
 nearly twenty years in doing it and found it so heavy 
 
68 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 a burden that he used to speak of his obligation 
 as the National Debt. 
 
 But what was he to do now? A big debt on his 
 hands, a great ambition in his heart, no friends to 
 help him with money or influence only himself to 
 rely on. It was not a bright outlook, you may 
 think, but as a fact Lincoln had made in this part of 
 Illinois a reputation for honesty, hard work, in 
 telligence and kindness which was worth more than 
 a fortune in money would have been. He had 
 proved himself the kind of young man that work 
 seeks, and even before the store was closed, an open 
 ing had come. 
 
 A very important task in a new and growing 
 country is the surveying. Farms and roads are 
 being laid out, towns are being started, the work 
 of fixing boundaries goes on incessantly, and it re 
 quires not only knowledge and skill but indifference 
 to hardship, particularly the latter, in a country like 
 Sangamon County. The surveyor for that part of 
 the world a well-educated gentleman, John Cal- 
 houn, needed a helper. He had noticed Lincoln, 
 and just before the store failed sent him word that 
 if he would qualify that is, if he could show that 
 he knew enough of the science of surveying he 
 would take him on his staff. 
 
 Two points troubled Lincoln in this offer. He 
 and Calhoun belonged to opposite political parties 
 and he feared that if he accepted office he might 
 be expected to change his views that he could not 
 do. Then, he knew nothing of the science of sur 
 veying. He went to see Calhoun and frankly stated 
 
Starting Out for Himself 
 
 A 
 
 J /" 
 
 or A WAP or ALBAHT. ILL.. MADR nr I.TNCOLH- 
 
Starting Out for Himself 71 
 
 his doubts. He was told that his position had no 
 political string tied to it and that if he would learn 
 surveying they would wait for him. 
 
 Now surveying is not an easy science, but to Lin 
 coln this was no objection. It was something new 
 to learn, it meant honest, useful, and well-paid work 
 that gave him a chance to serve people and at the 
 same time to get acquainted with them. 
 
 He borrowed the necessary books and hurrying 
 back to New Salem, went at them. Night and day 
 he studied, going to Mentor Graham for help when 
 puzzled. His friends saw him grow thin and white 
 under the effort he made. It was tremendous, for 
 in six weeks he reported to Calhoun that he had 
 mastered the books and was ready for duty. 
 
 He now had a business a business he liked and 
 one for which he soon proved he was thoroughly 
 competent. He was a careful, accurate, conscien 
 tious surveyor. The boundaries he drew were 
 never disputed; but, what is more remarkable, he 
 seems to have always remembered the lines he had 
 drawn and the marks that he had made. His son 
 Robert says that in 1858, when he was a boy of 
 about fifteen, he drove his father once through a 
 region in which he had done much surveying, and 
 that several times, Mr. Lincoln stopped the horse 
 and laughingly asked him to go a little distance into 
 the woods and see if he could not find, at a par 
 ticular spot which he described, a blazed tree. He 
 had marked that tree, he said, as a survey corner. 
 Robert Lincoln says that he did this several times 
 and not once did he make a mistake. 
 
72 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 But surveying was only a way of earning an hon 
 est living. He had no idea of making it a perma 
 nent profession, nor did he let it interfere with his 
 ambition to become a member of the next Assem 
 bly for which the election came in the fall of 1834. 
 As he worked he campaigned, and successfully, for 
 when the time came, Lincoln was elected. 
 
 Something more important than his election hap 
 pened to him in this campaign, however. This was 
 making up his mind to adopt the law as a profes 
 sion. Deeply interested as he had always been in 
 legal reading* he had never dared before this to 
 hope that there was a chance for him to learn enough 
 to be admitted to the bar, but while he was elec 
 tioneering one of his fellow candidates, John T. 
 Stuart, a lawyer of Springfield with whom he had 
 become acquainted in the Black Hawk War, began 
 to urge him to try for the bar. "I ll lend you 
 books," he told Lincoln. "Study nights and as you 
 travel from place to place just as you have always 
 done. You have already a foundation. You can 
 do it." 
 
 There was nothing Lincoln wanted so much to be 
 lieve as that he could do it. At least he could try. 
 Springfield was twenty miles from New Salem, but 
 he walked or rode back and forth, to get the books 
 he wanted, and as he traveled he studied them 
 often aloud. 
 
 You can see him, can you not? A long, lean 
 figure, with a great shock of black hair, surveying 
 instrument under his arm, an open book in his hand, 
 striding or riding across the rough prairie, pre- 
 
Starting Out for Himself 73 
 
 
 
 I AO1MIL OF A BEl OHT OF A BOAD SURVEY BT LINCOLN. 
 
Starting Out for Himself 7$ 
 
 paring for the life he wanted. He was not yet twen 
 ty-six years old, but see what he had done. He 
 had found by sheer hard work an interesting, use 
 ful way of earning his living; he had deter 
 mined that the way was open, with more hard work, 
 to the profession he loved and honored above 
 all others the law; and he was a member of the 
 Assembly of Illinois. But could he go on? Could 
 a young man, handicapped by poverty and lack of 
 social and educational opportunities as he had been, 
 succeed when he left the pioneer country and tried 
 his fortune among people of training and wealth? 
 The next great test for Lincoln was to prove that 
 he was as good or better a man than those who had 
 had every chance put in their way while he had had 
 to make chances for himself out of what seemed to 
 many nothing but handicaps, 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A GREAT DECISION 
 
 I didn t begin with askings. I took my job and I stuck 
 And I took the chances they wouldn t, an now they re, 
 calling it luck. 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING. 
 
 TWO years after he had made his great deci 
 sion to become a lawyer, Lincoln felt himself 
 ready to apply for admission to the bar. He 
 seems to have been able to satisfy those in author 
 ity that he was fit, for in September of 1836 he 
 was licensed. He did not begin to practice at once, 
 for just before this license was issued, he had been 
 reflected to a second term in the State legislature. 
 This kept him busy for the winter, but as soon as he 
 came back to New Salem, early in the spring of 
 1837, he packed up his few belongings they could 
 all be put into a saddlebag and said good-by to 
 the town. 
 
 It could not have been an easy parting, for New 
 Salem had been his home for nearly six years. There 
 was probably not a man, woman, or child in the 
 town or the county around that he did not know, 
 and with almost every one of them he had friendly 
 relations. Twice they had sent him to the legisla 
 ture, and they would have liked to have had him 
 stay by the town, for nearly all of his friends pre- 
 76 
 
A Great Decision 77 
 
 dieted that he had the makings of a great man in 
 him. 
 
 Not only was the parting hard, but the future 
 looked anything but bright. He was giving up the 
 profession by which he had been earning his living. 
 He had what seemed to him a huge debt on his 
 hands that left over from his venture in the gro 
 cery business and he was entering a profession 
 which already had many followers in Springfield, 
 the town which he had chosen as his future home. 
 Could he succeed? How could he live? Would 
 there be anybody that would be willing to admit him 
 into his office? 
 
 It was rather a melancholy young man that rode 
 into Springfield in March of 1837 and looked about 
 for a place to live. Fortunately, he came on a 
 friend at the start a prosperous young storekeeper, 
 James Speed by name, who advised Lincoln to rent 
 a room and furnish it himself. 
 
 "But I haven t the money to buy the furniture," 
 Lincoln told him. 
 
 "If that is so, come and live with me," Speed 
 said, "I have a big room, plenty of space for two 
 of us, over the store." 
 
 Lincoln brightened up at once, and, running up 
 stairs, threw his saddlebags on the floor and came 
 back, exclaiming joyfully, "Well, Speed, I m 
 moved." 
 
 He had as good success in finding a law partner 
 as he had a home. Major John T. Stuart, with 
 whom he had become acquainted in the Black Hawk 
 War and by whose advice he had decided to take 
 
78 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 up the law as a profession, was just severing his 
 connection with his partner. He believed in Lin 
 coln and invited him to join him. 
 
 It was a fine chance for a young lawyer this as 
 sociation with a man so well established and so gen 
 erally respected as Major Stuart, and at once the 
 training that Lincoln had given himself began to 
 come out in his work. Whatever the case, big or 
 little, his first effort was to find out the root of the 
 thing, what it really hinged on. He knew that it 
 is not the leaves on the tree or the branches that 
 count, it is the root, and it was this in his law prob 
 lems that he looked for. He would give away 
 point after point if he did not feel they were es 
 sential. 
 
 u Strip off the technicalities," he used to say, "get 
 at the heart of the thing, and then you can win." 
 He never had any patience with people that fussed 
 over things that did not matter. Once, when he 
 was President, a commission he had sent out to 
 make an investigation came back with a huge re 
 port, loaded down with details. Lincoln was thor 
 oughly disgusted. "If I send out a man to look up 
 a horse for me, I want him to come back with his 
 points ; not how many hairs he has on his tail." And 
 so in the law, it was always points he was after. 
 
 Having the points, he took ample time to explain 
 to a jury just what they were, always in the sim 
 plest kind of language, without Latin phrases or 
 technical terms of any kind, such as many lawyers 
 used. He generally knew the jurors, or at least 
 knew about them, just what their experiences had 
 
A Great Decision 79 
 
 been, the kind of thing they would understand; and 
 he talked to them as if they were sitting around the 
 stove, arguing. He was very particular, too, that 
 the counsel opposing him should not befuddle the 
 minds of the jury with misrepresentations. When 
 a lawyer tried this with Lincoln, he was sure to meet 
 his match. He would spring to his feet and pro 
 test so effectively that almost invariably the lawyer 
 would be overruled. Sometimes his anger over a 
 misstatement was so great that those who listened 
 said he roared like a lion. 
 
 This habit of Lincoln s of protesting when he be 
 lieved the jury was being deceived frequently caused 
 funny scenes in the Illinois courts. One stormy day, 
 he had come into court with his feet soaked, and 
 after presenting his case, sat down by the courtroom 
 stove to dry out. He had pulled off his boots and was 
 holding up his big feet, all the time listening intently 
 to the opposing lawyer. Suddenly, the lawyer said 
 something that Lincoln knew not to be true. He 
 didn t stop to put on his boots, but with one in each 
 hand sprang into the middle of the room, complain 
 ing loudly to the judge that the counsel was wil 
 fully deceiving the jury. 
 
 So honest was he in his law work that he would 
 never, if he could help it, take a case in which he 
 did not thoroughly believe. He wanted nothing 
 but clean cases, he said. This came largely from 
 his reverence for the law it was intended to do 
 justice. Those who were wrong should not win a 
 case, in his judgment, and he was unwilling to help 
 them do so. He had the greatest contempt for 
 
8o Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 the fellow that would look over the register of 
 deeds to hunt up defects in titles or who was on 
 the watch for quarrels out of which he might get a 
 case. He was unwilling to stir up lawsuits. "There 
 could not be a worse man," he used to say, "than 
 one who would do this." His idea was that a law 
 yer s business was to point out to people who were 
 disputing how they could settle their differences. 
 His theory was set down in one of his fine phrases, 
 "As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior oppor 
 tunity of being a good man." 
 
 He carried out this theory. A man came to him 
 once to ask his help in a claim he was making for 
 six hundred dollars. Lincoln at once saw that the 
 case was tricky. "You have no claim," he thun 
 dered. "I won t take your case, and my advice to 
 you is that you go to work and earn six hundred 
 dollars." 
 
 When he found young men or boys trying to prac 
 tice sharp tricks on others and appealing to the 
 law to help them he always took it seriously and 
 did his best to point out to them what a dangerous 
 thing it was to begin life in this way. 
 
 An old farmer once employed him to recover a 
 note from two young men who had bought a team 
 from him and refused to pay on the ground that 
 they were minors. Lincoln took the case, and ad 
 dressing the jury he told them that this was one of 
 the most important cases they had ever had to de 
 cide, that it was not a matter of the payment of 
 the money simply, but it was a matter of the future 
 of the two boys. They were just starting out in 
 
A Great Decision 81 
 
 life. They had tried a dishonest trick. If the jury 
 should give a verdict for them it would leave a stain 
 of dishonor upon them which they could never live 
 down. They would always be known as tricksters. 
 After a long and serious talk of this kind, he turned 
 to the young men. 
 
 "Boys," he said, "pay the note. You owe it. 
 Don t begiji life in this dishonest way." 
 
 The elder of the two boys was so moved by Mr. 
 Lincoln s appeal that he promptly promised to pay 
 the farmer, and the judge dismissed the case. Lin 
 coln as a lawyer often did work for boys not unlike 
 that of a wise judge of a juvenile court. 
 
 The training that he had given himself in public 
 speaking from the time that he went to school in 
 Indiana came in good stead now. It had made it 
 natural and easy for him to speak what was in his 
 mind. Not only did he do this with great clear 
 ness, emphasizing only the points that seemed to him 
 to matter, but with a candor which won every lis 
 tener. His wonderful skill in illustrating a point 
 by a story helped him greatly with a jury. Often 
 he could make them see things by a story or an 
 illustration drawn from things with which they were 
 familiar more quickly and effectively than by any 
 amount of hard legal argument. And you could 
 depend on him to put all the fun possible into his 
 pleading. He told his stories with so much zest, 
 often acting them out as he went along, that every 
 body in the courtroom was all attention when he 
 began to plead. 
 
 Take this case as an illustration. A quarrelsome, 
 
82 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 profane chap in the community had attacked a man, 
 but he had chosen the wrong victim this time, for 
 he was soundly thrashed. Instead of taking quietly 
 what he had brought upon himself, like the bully 
 that he was, he brought a charge of assault and bat 
 tery against the man whom he had attacked. Mr. 
 Lincoln took the case of the defendant. He told 
 the jury that his client was in the fix of a man who, 
 walking down the road with a pitchfork on his 
 shoulder, was attacked by a fierce dog. In fighting 
 the animal off he stuck the prongs of his fork into 
 the brute and killed him. 
 
 "What made you kill my dog?" said the farmer. 
 
 "What made him try to bite me?" 
 
 "Well, why didn t you get after him with the 
 other end of the pitchfork?" 
 
 "Why didn t he come after me with his other 
 end?" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, as he made this answer, whirled 
 about, in his long arms an imaginary dog, and 
 pushed its tail toward the jurors. The acting was 
 so good and so comical that the case was won with 
 out further pleading. 
 
 The court enjoyed Lincoln s fun, but at the same 
 time they had a wholesome respect for his indig 
 nation. When he tried a case against an out-and- 
 out rascal, he was often biting in his satires. You 
 remember how, when he was still a boy in Gentry- 
 ville, he used satirical verse to ridicule an enemy. 
 When he came to the law, he often employed his 
 power of satire against an opponent. "Lincoln s 
 skinning him," the people used to say, and he him- 
 
A Great Decision 83 
 
 self would sometimes remark, "Just you watch me 
 skin him," when he was prosecuting a sneak, a liar, 
 or a thief. 
 
 All these qualities would not have amounted to 
 so much in the law if he had not been so thorough 
 and so continuous a student. Much as he had read, 
 he was always conscious of how much he did not 
 know one of the most important things for a man 
 who wants to do real things in the world to realize. 
 He was never willing to let even a small case go 
 without giving it honest study. Lawyers who trav 
 eled with him on the circuit always told, as long as 
 they lived, of how, night after night, when they 
 were sleeping, Lincoln would lie in bed with a lamp 
 on a chair beside him, studying law books. Always 
 to know more was what he was after. 
 
 Whenever he had a chance, he studied lawyers of 
 large reputation and compared his own knowledge 
 with theirs, trying to learn from them. In 1855, 
 twenty years after he took his first decision to read 
 law, he was called to Cincinnati in a case which was 
 famous in those days, that of the McCormick 
 Reaper. 
 
 The case hinged on the ownership of certain pat 
 ents, and required much knowledge of harvesting 
 machinery. The company which was being sued by 
 McCormick for infringing his patents had employed 
 the best patent lawyers in the country, among them, 
 Edwin M. Stanton, who, only a few years later, was 
 to be Secretary of War under Lincoln. 
 
 A younger member of the company who knew 
 Lincoln well and admired him greatly, suggested 
 
84 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 that he be included in the counsel. Mr. Lincoln was 
 greatly pleased, for it would associate him with 
 famous lawyers of the East. He studied the testi 
 mony diligently and went to Cincinnati where the 
 trial was held, hoping, no doubt, to make an im 
 pression. But when he arrived there, he felt that 
 Stanton and his associates, men of the East, who 
 regarded themselves as vastly superior to the coun 
 try lawyer of Illinois, treated him with something 
 like contempt. They did not seek his counsel, and 
 they did not ask him to present his argument. Mr. 
 Lincoln was much hurt by their unwillingness to 
 take him in, and at first wanted to go home, but his 
 friend persuaded him to stay and hear the trial out. 
 No sooner was the argument fairly launched than 
 he became intensely interested. He saw at once 
 that these men whom he believed to have been un 
 fair and unkind to him were at the same time great 
 lawyers, men with a large command of legal learn 
 ing. He listened with the closest attention to every 
 point made; never, he claimed afterward, had he 
 heard pleading which impressed him more. 
 
 After the trial was over he said to his friend, "I 
 am going home. I am going home to study law." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Lincoln," his friend said, u you stand 
 at the head of the bar in Illinois now. What are 
 you talking about?" 
 
 "Oh, I know, I can get along with the way things 
 are done there now," he said; "but these college- 
 trained men, who have devoted their whole lives 
 to study, are coming out West one of these days. 
 They study their cases as we never do. They have 
 
A Great Decision 85 
 
 got as far as Cincinnati now. They will soon be 
 in Illinois. I am going home to study law, and 
 when they get to Illinois, I ll be ready for them." 
 
 Hard work always counts. More and more im 
 portant cases came Lincoln s way, many of them 
 connected with the development of the new coun 
 try. An interesting one came to him in 1857. You 
 remember how all through his young manhood he 
 had been associated with rivers the Ohio, the San- 
 gamon, the Mississippi and how interested he had 
 been in the transportation and travel which went on 
 by the rivers? But in the 4o s and 5o s railroads 
 began to multiply in Illinois. Soon they wanted 
 to cross the Mississippi and reach the great plains 
 beyond. It was natural enough that the river boats 
 which up to this time had had a monopoly of the 
 carrying trade should object to the rivers being 
 bridged. Not only did they object but the cities 
 of the South objected. They thought it would di 
 vert business from them. But a bridge was put over 
 the Mississippi finally at Rock Island. It proved 
 a great thing for Chicago, then little more than a 
 village ; the town began to build up rapidly because 
 of this direct connection with the country beyond. 
 
 In 1856 a steamer, the Effie Afton, struck one of 
 the piers of the Rock Island Bridge and was wrecked 
 and burned, a part of the bridge being at the same 
 time destroyed. The owners of the steamboat at 
 once brought suit against the railroad. The river 
 must not be bridged again. St. Louis, then the 
 largest city along the river, jealous of the growth 
 of Chicago, joined the boat owners in the fight 
 
86 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 The entire Middle West was excited over the issue. 
 Lincoln was engaged to defend the bridge. 
 
 It was a case which gave him full opportunity for 
 the problems that he liked best. The character of 
 the Mississippi, its currents, velocity, driftwood, 
 depth of water, the customs of navigators and pilots 
 many points involving nice problems both of river 
 navigation and of engineering were involved. 
 
 He went at the task u like a dog at a root," as he 
 used to express it, and mastered an enormous num 
 ber of facts and figures so thoroughly that as the 
 trial went on, he was able, again and again, to cor 
 rect his opponents, without consulting his notes. He 
 won the case practically on two points one based 
 on common sense, that one man has just as good a 
 right to go across a river as another has to go up 
 or down it; the second based on an imaginative sense 
 of what was good for the country. He drew a 
 wonderful and moving picture of the possibilities of 
 the great West beyond the Mississippi and the duty 
 of men to combine to open it up to the world. 
 
 This case showed Lincoln at his very best, and 
 it proved, too, how thoroughly he was following 
 his decision, the decision he had taken two years 
 before at Cincinnati to go back to Illinois and 
 study law. 
 
 Hard as he worked and extensive as was the prac 
 tice he built up, Lincoln never made much money. 
 His first object in practicing law was not money; 
 it was to see that justice is done among men. His 
 fees were always small, and they were fitted to the 
 pocketbook of his client. Again and again he would 
 
A Great Decision 87 
 
 take a case for a poor or weak client where he would 
 receive little or nothing when he might have ob 
 tained a good-sized fee on the other side. 
 
 A widow whose cow had been killed by a rail 
 road train once came to him for help. The rail 
 road, knowing Lincoln s power, was anxious about 
 the case. It did not want the widow to win lest 
 a precedent be established and it be obliged to pay 
 damages whenever its trains killed an animal. It 
 accordingly sent an agent to Mr. Lincoln, offering 
 him a retainer of five hundred dollars a very large 
 sum at that time, if he would take the case. 
 
 "But I have already promised the widow I will 
 take her case." 
 
 "But the widow cannot pay you anything," the 
 agent argued, "and here is five hundred dollars as 
 a retainer." 
 
 "No," thundered Lincoln, "I won t go back on 
 her. I will take her case and moreover I will win 
 it." And win it he did. 
 
 Although Lincoln made so little money as a law 
 yer, there never was a man more generous with what 
 he had. Money seems to have meant nothing to 
 him save to fulfill his obligations and to help others. 
 His father s family was one of the first to profit 
 all their lives by his generosity. Thomas Lincoln 
 kept his little home in Coles County, Illinois, until 
 his death, and his stepmother held it afterward and 
 had her support through Abraham Lincoln s kind 
 ness. He could be very stern, however, with those 
 of his relatives whom he knew were shiftless. No 
 more sensible letters were ever written to a lazy 
 
88 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 and discontented man than those Lincoln wrote to 
 his stepbrother, John D. Johnston, a ne er-do-well 
 whom he had often assisted. Here is one of them : 
 
 "DEAR JOHNSTON: Your request for eighty dollars I do not 
 think it best to comply with now. At the various times when 
 I have helped you a little you have said to me, We can get 
 along very well now; but in a very short time I find you in 
 the same difficulty again. Now, this can only happen by some 
 defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. 
 You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, 
 since I saw you, you have done a good whole day s work in any 
 one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you 
 do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that 
 you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting 
 time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and 
 still more so to your children, that you should break the habit. 
 It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, 
 and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier 
 than they can get out after they are in. 
 
 "You are now in need of some money; and what I propose 
 is, that you shall go to work, tooth and nail, for somebody 
 who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take 
 charge of your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make 
 the crop, and you go to work for the best money wages, or 
 in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to 
 secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, 
 that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of 
 May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own 
 indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if 
 you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will 
 get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. 
 In this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead 
 mines, or the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to 
 go at it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles 
 County. Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out of 
 debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep 
 you from getting in debt again. But, if I should now clear 
 you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. 
 You say you would almost give your place in heaven for 
 seventy or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven 
 very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get 
 
A Great Decision 89 
 
 the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months work. 
 You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed me the 
 land, and if you don t pay the money back, you will deliver 
 possession. Nonsense! If you can t now live with the land, 
 how will you then live without it? You have always been kind 
 to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. On the con 
 trary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth 
 more than eighty times eighty dollars to you. 
 "Affectionately your brother, 
 
 "A. LINCOLN." 
 
 So modest was Lincoln about his fees that his 
 fellow lawyers were often provoked at him, because 
 he would not keep up prices. They even on one oc 
 casion arrested him and held a mock trial at which 
 he was accused of impoverishing the bar. He was 
 found guilty but let off on condition that he would 
 correct what they claimed to be his evil ways. 
 
 These mock trials of the Illinois lawyers were 
 one of the ways that they amused themselves on the 
 circuit. In those days in that part of the world, 
 lawyers traveled from county seat to county seat 
 over a big circuit. Lincoln lived in Springfield, but 
 he practiced throughout the Eighth Judicial Dis 
 trict. There were five counties in this district, and 
 every fall and every spring the court traveled from 
 place to place, taking care of the law business. 
 There were no railroads, and they went on horse 
 back or in buggies or wagons, generally in groups. 
 These trips were full of fun and excitement. The 
 country was wild and many of the lawyers carried 
 guns, looking for deer and smaller animals. Not 
 unfrequently the court was delayed a day or more 
 because a part of the company, the judge included, 
 was tracking a deer, Practical jokes were common 
 
9o Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 on these journeys. Lincoln played one once of 
 which lawyers in Illinois still tell. 
 
 It was in the spring of the year, and a river which 
 the party supposed they must cross in order to get 
 to the town where they were due had overflowed the 
 prairies; it looked as if the whole country was under 
 water. None of the lawyers except Lincoln were 
 familiar with the place, and they were feeling pretty 
 serious. 
 
 "I know this country," Lincoln told them, "and if 
 you will trust yourselves to me, I will take you to 
 town safely." Of course they consented. 
 
 "You must strip," he said, "it is pretty wet around 
 here," so judge and lawyers pulled off coats, trou 
 sers, shirts, and boots down to the skin, rolled them 
 all in tight bundles, and, under Lincoln s directions, 
 strapped them to their saddles. 
 
 "Fall in line," was Lincoln s order; and at the 
 head of this queer-looking procession he started on 
 a long, roundabout journey. For two or three hours 
 the men traveled, the water never much above their 
 horses hoofs, when suddenly Lincoln announced, 
 "Here s our town." Then it dawned on them that 
 their idea that they must cross the main channel of 
 the river in order to get to the place was a mistake ; 
 that they had been on the right side all the time. 
 All that they had been doing in their nakedness was 
 to skirt the edge of a shallow overflow. 
 
 If the stories of these years that Lincoln traveled 
 the Eighth Circuit are full of practical jokes, they 
 are still fuller of tales of his kindness, not to men 
 
A Great Decision 91 
 
 alone but even to birds of the air. His companions 
 when they went back to their families nearly al 
 ways had some story to tell their children of the 
 good turns he did. 
 
 One day as they were going along, he heard birds 
 crying. He at once dismounted, looked them up, 
 found they had fallen from their nest, and carefully 
 put them back. Again they passed a young pig 
 which had been caught in a rail fence, so tight that 
 it could not get out. It was squealing for dear life 
 and in danger of killing itself. Lincoln stopped and 
 with great care removed the fence and let the little 
 fellow loose. Then he put the bars back and went 
 on. 
 
 In the towns everybody knew him and loved him. 
 There were boys and girls in many of those towns 
 who would run home at night, crying joyfully, "Mr. 
 Lincoln has come ! Mr. Lincoln has come !" When 
 he visited in their homes they gathered about him 
 and listened to his stories. Many a boy, when he 
 knew Mr. Lincoln was going to try a case, would 
 slip in to hear him argue. He would play ball with 
 them on the street, pitch quoits, and wrestle with 
 them. They were not afraid even to play practical 
 jokes on him. 
 
 He wore a tall, stovepipe hat, as was the custom, 
 and one day in Bloomington, Illinois, some of his 
 young admirers rigged a string across the street, at 
 just the proper height to catch his hat and tip it off. 
 Lincoln took after the young rascals, chasing them 
 so hard and furiously that they were frightened. 
 
92 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 He finally collared them all, and when he saw they 
 were looking scared, said, "Come on, boys, I will 
 stand treat." 
 
 Not only was he the friend of the children but of 
 the young men just starting out in the law and need 
 ing advice and encouragement. He never was too 
 busy to help a beginner out of a tight place or to 
 give him a hint if he saw he was in danger of mak 
 ing a mistake. To many a young lawyer on the 
 circuit he was like a father. Perhaps the best thing 
 he gave them after his genuine sympathy in their 
 difficulties was his constant advice to "work, work, 
 work." 
 
 Everywhere he went, up and down the country, 
 he was loved; and never, in all those years when 
 he was not only becoming daily a greater and greater 
 lawyer but was becoming more and more prominent 
 in public affairs, did he neglect an opportunity to 
 do a good turn to an old friend. 
 
 In 1857, when his mind was absorbed with several 
 important lawsuits, with the arguments that he was 
 working out against the extension of slavery in this 
 country, and with fostering the new Republican 
 party which was opposed to this extension, he 
 learned one day that Duff Armstrong, the son of 
 Jack Armstrong, the bully of the Clary s Grove 
 Gang whom, you will remember, he had thrashed 
 in New Salem back in 1832, had been arrested for 
 murder. 
 
 Now the thrashing that Lincoln had given Jack 
 Armstrong had done him good and had made him 
 Lincoln s friend. It had made Hannah Armstrong. 
 
A Great Decision 93 
 
 his wife, Lincoln s friend, too, and she had played 
 almost the part of a mother to him doing his 
 mending, washing his clothes, and looking after 
 him in many ways. When Lincoln heard of the 
 sorrow that had come to Hannah Armstrong, he 
 immediately wrote her the following letter: 
 
 "Springfield, 111., 
 
 "Sept., 1857- 
 
 "DEAR MRS. ARMSTRONG: I have just heard of your deep 
 affliction, and the arrest of your son for murder. I can 
 hardly believe that he can be capable of the crime alleged 
 against him. It does not seem possible. I am anxious that 
 he should be given a fair trial, at any rate; and gratitude for 
 your long-continued kindness to me in adverse circumstances 
 prompts me to offer my humble services gratuitously in his 
 behalf. 
 
 "It will afford me an opportunity to requite, in a small 
 degree, the favors I received at your hand, and that of your 
 lamented husband, when your roof afforded me a grateful 
 shelter, without money and without price. 
 "Yours truly, 
 
 "A. LINCOLN." 
 
 One night in August, 1857, at a camp meeting 
 near Havana, Duff, while drunk, quarreled with a 
 friend and thrashed him. A few hours later, the 
 same night, this boy was killed. The marks of two 
 blows were found upon him one of them proved to 
 be from an ox yoke in the hands of a third mem 
 ber of the gang. Duff Armstrong was accused of 
 dealing the second with a sling shot. He denied 
 having used anything but his fist in the quarrel with 
 the victim, a quarrel which he admitted. The first 
 man was tried, found guilty, and sentenced. Duft 
 
94 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 lay in jail for several months, awaiting his trial. 
 Mrs. Armstrong in the meantime was distracted 
 with anxiety. Jack had died soon after Duff s ar 
 rest, and the last thing he had said to her was, "Sell 
 everything you have and clear Duff." She was not 
 at all sure it could be done. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s letter must have come to her like 
 a gift from God. The lawyers whom she had en 
 gaged were glad enough to have his assistance. It 
 was a number of months before the trial came off. 
 Mr. Lincoln took charge of the case from the start. 
 
 The witnesses, the jury, the spectators were nearly 
 all people, or sons of people, that he had known 
 in his early days in Illinois, and he talked to them 
 in his friendly, intimate fashion, trying to get at 
 the truth of what had happened. It finally came 
 down to this, that the only damaging testimony 
 against Duff was that of a boy who swore that he had 
 seen Duff strike. "What time of night was that?" 
 Mr. Lincoln asked. 
 
 "Ten or eleven o clock," he said. 
 
 "How could you see him?" 
 
 "Why," he said, "it was full moon, and I could 
 see as clear as when the sun was in the sky." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln came back again and again to this 
 testimony. "You could see him by the light of the 
 moon?" It was thoroughly impressed on the jury 
 that this was where the case hung, and it seemed 
 as if this evidence would convict poor Duff. 
 
 When Mr. Lincoln rose to speak, he went back 
 to the early days when he had known Duff s father 
 and mother, and told of their kindness to him when 
 
A Great Decision 95 
 
 he was alone and poor. He painted something of 
 the life of the boy and his waywardness, and showed 
 that the only serious testimony against him was this 
 of the boy who swore that he saw him strike by the 
 light of the moon. At this point, Mr. Lincoln 
 pulled out of his pocket an almanac of 1857, and 
 turning to the phase of the moon on the date of the 
 murder, he pointed out that it was quite impossible 
 that this testimony was true, because the moon that 
 night was in its first quarter and had sunk before 
 the hour of the murder. 
 
 Judge and jury and lawyers pored over the al 
 manac in amazement. He had completely riddled 
 the damaging testimony, and Duff was freed. 
 
 This springing of a surprise at the end of a trial 
 was characteristic of Mr. Lincoln. It was like the 
 surprise in a play. In the Trailer case, as it is 
 called, where Lincoln represented the two Trailer 
 brothers who had been arrested on a confession of a 
 third brother for the murder of a man, he created 
 a sensation by producing in the open court the man 
 said to have been murdered. 
 
 It was in this way that in the years from 1837 to 
 1860, Lincoln built up his law practice. In those 
 years he tried nearly one hundred and seventy-five 
 cases before the Illinois Supreme Court, many of 
 them of first importance. He became a great law 
 yer, not only because of his knowledge of the law 
 and his skill in pleading, but because he looked on 
 the law as the instrument for seeing that justice is 
 done. He did it by his clearness of mind, his pas- 
 
96 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 sion for the truth, his candor, his wit, his honest in 
 dignation against the thing that was mean and 
 sneaking, and, above all, by his willingness to study 
 and keep studying, always feeling that he did not 
 know enough of his great subject. There can be 
 no doubt that if he had continued in his profession 
 the day would have come when he would have 
 been able to meet on equal terms the great lawyers 
 of the East as they came West, and that he himself 
 would have been going East as their peer. 
 
 But, great as was his interest in his profession, 
 his reverence for it and his desire to serve men 
 through it, the law had always had a rival in Lin 
 coln s mind; that rival was politics. In all these 
 years in which he had been building himself up in 
 the law to a point where he could meet the best of 
 them, not only at home but abroad, he had never 
 forgotten that he was a citizen before he was a law 
 yer. We left him in 1834 a member of the state 
 legislature to follow his course as a lawyer, now 
 we will go back and see what kind of a public servant 
 he had made. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CALL OF HIS COUNTRY 
 
 And though he promise to his loss 
 He makes his promise good. 
 
 NAHUM TATE. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN was only a little boy 
 when he first began to understand that he 
 lived in a country in whose affairs every man 
 is expected to take a part. Revolutionary soldiers 
 who had fought under George Washington some 
 times sat at his father s fireside and told tales of 
 Valley Forge and Yorktown. He learned from 
 them that the United States was a young country and 
 that it had cost men a terrible struggle to give it 
 life. He discovered that after the war of which 
 they talked there had followed a long, hard polit 
 ical fight to secure what they spoke of as the Union. 
 And they told how, when the plan for running this 
 Union was ready they called it a Constitution 
 it had taken months to persuade the people to agree 
 to it and to promise to carry on their affairs accord 
 ing to its directions. 
 
 Later a life of Washington fell into his hands 
 which helped him to understand still better what 
 men had done in those early days. He never forgot 
 the stories of the battlefields, of the sufferings of 
 soldiers, of women, and of children of which that 
 
 97 
 
98 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 book told. The thing that fixed itself particularly in 
 his mind was that these men had struggled for 
 something more than their own interest, something 
 more even than independence; it was a dream that 
 if they could work out their freedom in the way that 
 they had planned, that it would be a "great promise 
 to all the people of the world, to all time to come." 
 
 Washington, the Constitution, the Declaration of 
 Independence these were the things over which he 
 pondered; and as he did so there came a great de 
 sire in him to do his part toward making the new 
 country a success. He wanted to be a man like 
 Washington, like others of whom he read in the 
 "Kentucky Preceptor" men who had spent all their 
 lives trying to free the oppressed and bring more 
 happiness to the world. 
 
 You have seen how, in all those years of his early 
 manhood, difficult as things were for him, he worked 
 hard and constantly to fit himself to be the kind of 
 a man he thought a citizen in a free country should 
 be. "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambi 
 tion," he told the people of Sangamon County, when 
 he first asked their votes. "Whether it be true or 
 not, I can say for one that I have no other so great 
 as that of being esteemed by my fellow men by 
 rendering myself worthy of their esteem." The 
 more the people knew of him, the more they real 
 ized that he was what he sought to be "worthy of 
 their esteem" ; and it was because of this that they 
 elected him to three successive terms in the As 
 sembly. 
 
The Call of His Country 99 
 
 Lincoln began his career as a public servant de 
 termined to repay the people of Sangamon County 
 for its confidence they should never be sorry they 
 chose him. He was not going to let them even be 
 ashamed of his appearance. Up to this time in 
 his life he had never worn anything but rough and 
 ill-fitting clothes. Now he proposed to look like 
 a legislator, so, hateful as borrowing was to him, 
 he went to a well-to-do friend and asked him to 
 lend him enough money to buy a complete outfit 
 a broadcloth suit, a satin waistcoat and stock, a 
 high hat. When he arrived in Vandalia there was 
 nothing in his appearance to discredit Sangamon 
 County. 
 
 Luckily for him, the chief interest of the Assem 
 bly when he entered was transportation a matter 
 on which he had thought much. Up to this time Lin 
 coln had seen no practical method but improving 
 the rivers. Railroads would cost too much. At 
 one time, when there had been talk of building a 
 short line connecting Sangamon County with the 
 Mississippi, he had said in a speech, "However high 
 our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of 
 a railroad, there is a heart-appalling shock accom 
 panying the amount of its cost." The sum which 
 gave Lincoln this shock was $290,000 1 
 
 But by the time he reached the Assembly, things 
 had changed in the country. There had been an 
 enormous increase in population. Population meant 
 wealth wealth, if they could have railroads. So, 
 without much consideration of how they were going 
 
ioo Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 to pay for them, the legislators began laying out 
 railroads in every direction. Practically every town 
 in Illinois and even some settlements that could 
 scarcely be called towns sent delegations to the 
 capital, asking for a railroad. It was easy enough 
 to put it on paper, so down it went until the State 
 was crossed and crisscrossed in every direction with 
 hopeful plans. 
 
 Of course there was no way of paying for all this 
 except by credit, and quite as freely as they had made 
 their paper railways, they now voted bonds. Lin 
 coln was carried away as thoroughly as the rest 
 of his colleagues, voting charters and credits with 
 out limit. A confident, hopeful citizen, his new 
 colleagues thought him, one who believed in the 
 State and was willing to agree to anything which 
 promised to help in its development. It was not 
 long, however, before they began to see that he was 
 something more, that he had in him the makings 
 of an unusual political leader. The capital of Illi 
 nois at that time, Vandalia, was in the southern part 
 of the State. The population of the north was in 
 creasing every day, and there began to be loud com 
 plaints about the inconvenience of traveling so far 
 to get to the Assembly. It soon became certain 
 that there must be a change, and of course at once 
 there were many candidates in the field for the 
 prize. Among these was Springfield, in Sangamon 
 County. It was a small, unkempt town, with no 
 communication with the rest of the world except by 
 the poorest of poor roads ; but its geographical po- 
 
The Call of Eh Country ^ : vioi 
 
 sition was ideal particularly in the minds of the 
 Sangamon delegation. This group of men, known 
 as the "Long Nine 7 because their average height 
 was around six feet, and their average weight some 
 thing over two hundred pounds, was as big in 
 energy and brains as in body, and they rushed the 
 capital as if it had been a football. 
 
 Lincoln from the start of their dash showed a 
 shrewdness, a quickness of wit, and a power of per 
 suasion that delighted the "Long Nine" as much 
 as it dismayed the rival delegations. He had a qual 
 ity of great value in politics, and that was a sense 
 of what the other fellow would probably do ; it made 
 it possible for him to get ahead of him. To secure 
 the prize for Springfield he was willing to do every 
 thing but be dishonest. When it came to securing 
 a vote by promising something that he could not ful 
 fill or by a trade which he felt to be unfair, the 
 "Long Nine" soon learned that they could not count 
 on Lincoln. Urged at one critical point in the cam 
 paign to consent to a bit of logrolling which he con 
 sidered wrong, he broke forth in an indignant re 
 fusal that the legislators never forgot. It was a 
 convincing demonstration that you could not buy 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Sangamon County carried off the capital, after a 
 lively fight; and it was Lincoln s leadership that 
 did it, so everybody declared. 
 
 The people saw that he was a leader, but they 
 soon learned that when it came to a matter of con 
 viction he was not the kind of leader that steps softly. 
 
ZO$ Soy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 In a question of right or wrong, he would go out 
 of his way, if necessary, to let people know his opin 
 ion. 
 
 Illinois was much excited in the late 3o s over the 
 growth of abolition sentiment in the State. The 
 Assembly, to discourage this, passed a resolution 
 saying, among other things, that they heartily dis 
 approved of the formation of abolition societies and 
 of the doctrines taught by them, that they believed 
 the right of property in slaves to be sacred to the 
 slave-holding States, and that the general govern 
 ment had no power to abolish slavery in the District 
 of Columbia, as the Abolitionists were asking should 
 be done. 
 
 Lincoln and one of his friends refused to vote 
 for this resolution; and, not content with that, they 
 put in a protest declaring that while they believed 
 the institution of slavery to be founded on both in 
 justice and bad policy, they considered that abolition 
 agitation tended rather to increase than to abate its 
 evils. They added that Congress, in their judg 
 ment, did have the right to abolish slavery in the 
 District of Columbia, although it had not power 
 to interfere with it in the States where it then 
 existed. 
 
 It took a brave man to take this stand publicly 
 at that moment. Lincoln might easily have said 
 nothing and quieted his conscience simply by a vote, 
 but he preferred to make it clear to every one just 
 where he stood on every point in the dispute. 
 
 That is, before his service in the legislature was 
 over, he had definitely stamped on the minds of 
 
The Call of His Country 103 
 
 people of his State the kind of politician he was 
 clever, ingenious, interested, long-sighted, rigidly 
 honest, and courageous in matters of right and 
 wrong. He showed these same qualities in his cam 
 paigning outside of the Assembly. No man was 
 harder to trap. He was quick to see the weakness 
 or the falsity of an opponent s argument or action, 
 and was equally quick in his attack. He never al 
 lowed an insinuation against his own political honor 
 to go unchallenged. One of his opponents once 
 hinted publicly that he knew things about Lincoln 
 which, if told, would ruin his chance of reelection; 
 but he liked the young man and would do him the 
 favor of not telling. 
 
 Lincoln lost no time in replying to this sneaking 
 attack. 
 
 "No one has needed favors more than I," he 
 wrote the gentleman, "and generally few have been 
 less unwilling to accept them, but in this case favor 
 to me would be injustice to the public, and therefore 
 I beg your pardon for declining it. If I have done 
 anything, by design or by misadventure, which, if 
 known, would subject me to forfeiture of the con 
 fidence of the people of Sangamon County, he that 
 knows that thing and conceals it is a traitor to his 
 country s interests. I find myself wholly unable to 
 form any conjecture of what fact or facts, real or 
 supposed, you speak. I am flattered with the re 
 gard you manifest for me, but I do hope that on 
 mature reflection you will view the public interest as 
 of paramount consideration and therefore let the 
 worst come. 
 
IO4 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 "I wish an answer to this, and you are at liberty 
 to publish both if you choose." 
 
 He never got an answer, and the gentleman 
 stopped his hinting. 
 
 On another occasion, after Lincoln had made a 
 very able speech, sustaining the Whigs against their 
 great rival of those days, the Democrats, a promi 
 nent Democrat who had once been a Whig and had 
 gone over to the other side angered by Lincoln s 
 arguments, proceeded to answer him in a conde 
 scending manner. "The young man would have to 
 be taken down," he said, u he was assuming too 
 much. He was sorry, but he would have to do it." 
 
 He was a much older man than Lincoln. He was 
 able and prosperous, owning the best house in 
 Springfield and the only one which carried a light 
 ning rod. Lincoln, indignant at the patronizing 
 tone of his opponent, answered him. 
 
 "The gentleman announced that the young man 
 would have to be taken down," he said. "It is 
 for my fellow citizens, not for me, to say whether I 
 am to be up or down. I desire to live, and I desire 
 place and distinction; but I would rather die than, 
 like the gentleman, live to see the day that I would 
 change my politics for an office worth three thou 
 sand dollars a year and then feel compelled to erect 
 a lightning rod to protect a guilty conscience from 
 an offended God." 
 
 Whig Springfield and Sangamon County went wild 
 over the reply, and the gentleman for the rest of 
 his life never appeared in a political group that 
 somebody did not say "Lightning Rod." 
 
The Call of His Country 105 
 
 Lincoln s skill in making his political enemies ri 
 diculous sometimes led him a little far. He was 
 frequently merciless when he found he could tease 
 a political opponent. Once he narrowly escaped 
 ruining his political future by indulging this pro 
 pensity. 
 
 Among the Democratic officials of the State in 
 1842 was James Shields, a quick-tempered Irish 
 man, courageous but vain and overconfident just 
 the kind of game that Lincoln loved to hunt. The 
 Whigs at that moment were very much disturbed 
 because the Democratic officials had decided that 
 State taxes could not be paid in State bank notes but 
 must be paid in silver. There was a reason for this. 
 The State s money had greatly depreciated largely 
 because of the extravagant schemes for internal im 
 provement that the legislature had voted in its re 
 cent sessions schemes in which Lincoln had taken 
 his full part. The State officers did not propose to be 
 paid in depreciated currency. The Whigs con 
 tended that this was disloyal, and Lincoln attacked 
 the order in a letter to the local Whig paper, signed 
 "Aunt Rebecca." In this letter he ridiculed Shields 
 swagger and vanity. 
 
 Shields was furious at being selected as the target 
 for Democratic policies. The matter, however, 
 might have passed off without any serious conse 
 quences if two young ladies in the town one of 
 whom, Mary Todd, afterward became Lincoln s 
 wife had not seized this opportunity to poke still 
 further fun at Shields. He was a gallant man too 
 gallant, so the young ladies of Springfield thought 
 
106 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 and under the same signature that Lincoln had 
 used, "Aunt Rebecca," they sent several letters to 
 the paper. 
 
 When Shields read these, his anger knew no 
 bounds. He was going to challenge the man that 
 was guilty of them, and demanded his name from 
 the editor. The editor, not willing to bring the 
 young ladies into the trouble, appealed to Lincoln. 
 "Give him my name," Lincoln said, "and in no case 
 that of the girls." 
 
 Without approaching Lincoln as to whether or 
 not he really was the author of the articles, Shields 
 wrote an angry letter, demanding a "full, positive, 
 and absolute retraction of all offensive allusions," 
 as well as an apology for what he declared were 
 insults. Unless this was forthcoming at once, then 
 Lincoln must take the consequences, which, of course, 
 meant a duel. 
 
 Lincoln was calm enough. He sent back word 
 that since Shields had not taken the trouble to ask 
 him whether or no he was the author of the arti 
 cles, had not pointed out what was offensive in 
 them, and had threatened consequences, he could 
 not answer: that he must either withdraw this note 
 or submit a challenge. Shields was altogether too 
 angry to withdraw, and a challenge was forth 
 coming. 
 
 According to usage, this left with Lincoln, the 
 challenged party, the choice of weapons, position, 
 time, and place. He promptly laid them down. In 
 reading them, remember that Shields was a little 
 man, with a reach of arm that went with his height; 
 
The Call of His Country 107 
 
 that Lincoln was six feet four, with an unusually 
 long arm: 
 
 "First. Weapons: Cavalry broadswords of the 
 largest size, precisely equal in all respects, and such 
 as now used by the cavalry company at Jacksonville. 
 
 "Second. Position: A plank ten feet long, and 
 from nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed 
 on edge, on the ground, as the line between us, 
 which neither is to pass his foot over on forfeit 
 of his life. Next a line drawn on the ground on 
 either side of said plank and parallel with it, each 
 at the distance of the whole length of the sword and 
 three feet additional from the plank; and the pass 
 ing of his own such line by either party during the 
 fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest. 
 
 "Third. Time: On Thursday evening at five 
 o clock, if you can get it so ; but in no case to be at 
 a greater distance of time than Friday evening at 
 five o clock. 
 
 "Fourth. Place : Within three miles of Alton, on 
 the opposite side of the river (the Mississippi), the 
 particular spot to be agreed on by you." 
 
 There was nothing to do but for Shields to ac 
 cept; and indeed, in his temper, he asked nothing 
 better. 
 
 On the day set, the duelists with their seconds 
 drove their old-fashioned buggies into Alton, broad 
 swords rattling on the bottom. They promptly 
 crossed the river to a sand bar belonging to the 
 Missouri mainland. Things looked very serious. 
 The rumor that a duel was to be fought spread 
 around Alton, and numbers of people came down 
 
io8 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 to the banks and a few who could get skiffs started 
 to row to the scene. 
 
 Lincoln was very grave. He made no jokes now. 
 Indeed, some of his friends believed that he was 
 beginning to be frightened, so quiet was he; but 
 presently one of them saw him reach over and pick 
 up one of the swords, draw it from its scabbard, 
 and feel along the weapon with his finger as a barber 
 feels the edge of his razor. Then rising, he stretched 
 out his long arm and clipped off a twig from a 
 branch high above his head. There was not a man 
 in the party who could reach anywhere near that 
 twig, and the absurdity of that long-reaching fel 
 low fighting with Shields, who could walk under his 
 arm, almost drove his seconds into hysterics. 
 
 The plank had been set, the lines drawn, when 
 suddenly from across the Mississippi there appeared 
 a group of influential friends and acquaintances of 
 both men. They had heard rumors of what was 
 going on, and realizing what a tragedy might re 
 sult, had hastened to Alton, arriving just in the nick 
 of time. Taking Shields aside, by dint of per 
 suasion and argument they induced him to withdraw 
 his first note. After that it was easy to adjust the 
 trouble "with honor to all concerned" ; and it was 
 not long before the duelists were on their way home, 
 chatting pleasantly. 
 
 The party did not come back to the Illinois shore, 
 however, without playing a practical joke on the 
 crowd that had gathered on the banks. As they 
 approached, the watchers saw lying in the bottom 
 of one of the boats what seemed to be a bloody 
 
The Call of His Country 109 
 
 figure. Beside him sat friends, one of them with 
 a big fan which he was diligently plying. There was 
 great excitement on the shore as to whether it was 
 Lincoln or Shields that was wounded. But as the 
 boat drew up they saw the supposed man was a big 
 log covered with a red flannel shirt; and that Lin 
 coln and Shields, both of them sound, were heartily 
 enjoying the joke played on the crowd. 
 
 It was a lucky escape for Lincoln. "I didn t in 
 tend to hurt Shields," he told one of his friends, 
 "unless I did so clearly in self-defense. If it had 
 been necessary, I could have split him from the 
 crown of his head to the end of his backbone." It 
 was a good lesson for him one that he needed. He 
 never got over being ashamed of the affair and when 
 it was mentioned his friends noted that he was very 
 quick to divert attention by telling a story that led 
 in some other direction. And never in his later 
 history do we find him provoking an antagonist by 
 ridicule in his early merciless way. 
 
 The episode had a bearing, he soon found, on 
 his political fortunes. He had refused reelection 
 to the legislature in 1 840, thinking that the time had 
 come when he might take the next step upward in 
 his political career; that is, seek an election to Con 
 gress. There was every reason for him to believe 
 that he would be successful. His popularity, par 
 ticularly in his own county, was great, he was be 
 coming throughout the State more and more a fa 
 vorite for serious political discussions. His friends 
 were warm and sympathetic with his ambition, and 
 so in 1842 he tried for the nomination. 
 
no Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 But he was not the only man in the Whig party 
 that wanted the nomination to Congress. There 
 were two other candidates, intimate friends of his 
 Edward D. Baker and John J. Hardin, Both of 
 them were men of honor, popular in the community, 
 excellent lawyers. Here was a new test for Lin 
 coln. What would he do now that he had friends 
 as rivals? Would he sacrifice them to his ambi 
 tion? Could he keep his ambition and keep his 
 friends? How was a man to act in such a situa 
 tion? Lincoln soon discovered how serious a trial 
 he had before him a trial which was going to prove 
 just how stanch his loyalty was, just how genuine 
 his honor. 
 
 In the first move in the campaign in 1842, he 
 lost; that is, he was defeated by his own Sangamon 
 delegation, Baker being selected in his place. One 
 reason for his defeat was that he was a duelist. 
 Public opinion was severe against the practice, which 
 still prevailed in some parts of the country and which 
 right-thinking people were doing their utmost en 
 tirely to destroy. Lincoln was not at all embit 
 tered by his friend s success, but threw himself heart 
 ily into the campaign to elect him. When they came 
 to the convention where the matter was decided, it 
 was not Baker but the third in the trio, Hardin, who 
 was nominated. Lincoln took quick action. There 
 were three of them, all wanting to go to Congress. 
 Why should they not take turns? And he asked 
 that the convention put itself on record as favoring 
 Baker not himself, notice, but Baker for the 
 next session that of 1844. This was quickly done, 
 
The Call of His Country ill 
 
 although Hardin s friends resented the maneuver. 
 It made a second term for their candidate out of 
 the question. 
 
 In 1844 Lincoln did not present himself but 
 worked as persistently for Baker as he would have 
 done for himself. Baker was elected, and almost 
 at once Lincoln began to lay the foundation for his 
 own nomination in 1846. He was convinced that 
 the principle of "turn about is fair play" applied to 
 this case. Baker s friends had accepted it. He had 
 rather taken it for granted that Hardin and his 
 friends accepted it, but he had not been long work 
 ing on his campaign before he discovered that here 
 he was wrong, that Hardin really wanted a renomU 
 nation. Lincoln was hurt, and a little indignant. 
 
 "If neither of us had been to Congress," he told 
 his friends, "or if we both had, it would only ac 
 cord with what I have always done, for the sake 
 of peace, to give way to him; and I expect I should 
 do it. But to yield to Hardin under present circum 
 stances seems to me as nothing less than yielding to 
 one who would gladly sacrifice me altogether. This 
 I would rather not submit to." Sore as he felt, he 
 was determined that there should be no quarrel, and 
 he constantly warned his friends not to criticize 
 Hardin "Nothing can be said against him," he 
 kept declaring. "He is talented, energetic, unusu 
 ally generous, and magnanimous. Make no argu 
 ment but that turn about is fair play. Fortu 
 nately, Hardin was magnanimous, and when he 
 realized how much his rival was taking the matter 
 to heart, he withdrew. 
 
112 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 At the next election, 1846, Lincoln s ambition was 
 realized: he was a congressman. 
 
 It was in November of 1847 tnat he started for 
 Washington. It was an exciting trip for him, for 
 never before had he been farther east than Indiana. 
 The only cities that he had seen up to that time 
 were New Orleans and St. Louis : Chicago was still 
 too small, too much of a home product to be counted 
 as a city. Washington itself was not much more 
 than a big rambling village. The wings of the 
 Capitol had not been built. The dome and the 
 great terraces were unfinished. Washington s 
 monument was only halfway up. Most of the pop 
 ulation lived on Capitol Hill and the near-by streets. 
 The great development out toward the northwest 
 had not yet begun. The streets were unpaved. It 
 was a barren, slovenly town; but nothing of this 
 Lincoln realized. It was the capital of the country 
 he loved to which he was going, and it was among 
 the men who were running that country that he 
 was now to sit. 
 
 He was not long in making friends. His kindli 
 ness, his gift for story-telling, his sound sense, and 
 .thorough familiarity with both the history and the 
 affairs of the land, as well as his skill in argument, 
 men quickly noted, and because of them sought his 
 acquaintance. Daniel Webster, whose Sunday- 
 morning breakfasts were among the most popular 
 social affairs in Washington, soon was asking Lin 
 coln as a regular guest. He was asked to join the 
 "Young Indian Club" a group of congressmen in 
 terested in the discussion of national questions. It 
 
The Call of His Country 113 
 
 was in this club that he first debated with older and 
 abler men the idea of State sovereignty, one of his 
 chief antagonists being Alexander Stephens, a man 
 who, later, was to be a leader in the effort to prove 
 by force the soundness of this idea. 
 
 The newspaper correspondents, too, discovered 
 Lincoln, and reported him as the best story-teller 
 in Congress. One of his favorite haunts, and one 
 where he made many friends among public men, was 
 a bowling alley. Lincoln never was long in a place 
 that he did not look for some active sport. Bowl 
 ing gave him just what he wanted, and as often as 
 it was possible for him to find time he joined the 
 matched games in an alley on Capitol Hill, near the 
 boarding house where he lived with many other mem 
 bers of Congress. He was an awkward bowler but 
 played with great zest, and solely for exercise and 
 amusement. He always took success or defeat with 
 equal good nature. His playing was punctuated by 
 amusing comments and illustrations. The fame of 
 him as a bowler soon spread, and when it was known 
 that he was in the alley people were sure to gather 
 to listen to his jokes and stories. 
 
 He was not slow in winning respect in Congress, 
 for he set himself at once to hard work, mastering 
 the congressional procedure, acquainting himself 
 with the men and their methods, and thoroughly 
 studying the questions on which he must give a vote. 
 
 The question which took most of his time was 
 the very serious one of the war with Mexico over 
 Texas. He had opposed the war, which had begun 
 in the spring of 1846, and had done so from the 
 
114 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 start of the quarrel. He went to Washington, in 
 tending to support the war in every particular ex 
 cept that of declaring it right; but the administra 
 tion wanted not only support, it wanted approval. 
 Lincoln would not give this. He not only refused 
 to vote that he believed the war justified, but he 
 boldly declared that the United States had been the 
 aggressor, and he challenged the administration to 
 prove the contrary. It was unpopular talk, and 
 even in Springfield, where they knew his record best, 
 his Whig friends even his friend and law partner, 
 Mr. Herndon cautioned him. 
 
 Lincoln answered hotly* "Would you have voted 
 what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you 
 would not. Would you have gone out of the House 
 skulked the vote? You are compelled to speak 
 and your only alternative is to tell the truth or a 
 lie. This vote has nothing to do in determining 
 my votes on the question of supplies. I have al 
 ways intended and still intend to vote supplies." 
 
 Unpopular as his position was he persisted in it. 
 The Mexican War was wrong, the United States had 
 been the aggressor ; and, since this was so, he would 
 not pretend otherwise. 
 
 When the war was won and the great Western 
 territory, including not only what we now know as 
 Texas but New Mexico and California, was ad 
 mitted to the Union there came to the front the 
 question that all thoughtful men had dreaded: 
 Was the territory to be free or slave ? It was con 
 stantly coming up in Congress. Lincoln voted prob 
 ably forty times, in the course of his term, for mak- 
 
THE EARLIEST KNOWN PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN. ABOUT 1848. AGE 39 
 
 From the original daguerreotype owned by Mr. Lincoln s son, the Hon. 
 Robert T. Lincoln. 
 
The Call of His Country 115 
 
 ing the territory free ; and he boldly stated his posi 
 tion whenever the opportunity allowed. Not only 
 that, but, as many of his friends thought, he went 
 out of his way to declare for the exclusion of slavery 
 from the District of Columbia. 
 
 In the campaign of 1848 he kept this up; and 
 more and more certain did it become as his term 
 drew to a close that he would not get a chance for 
 renomination even if he should ask it. His bold 
 ness was not all that hurt him. It had turned out 
 that he was not a good wirepuller, could not get of 
 fices for his friends in the way they had expected. 
 As a matter of fact, Lincoln was poor at this kind 
 of business. If a man did not seem to him fit for 
 a position he was very liable to tell him so; or, if 
 he did put in his application, to do it with such a 
 candid statement of his client s merits as to ruin 
 his chances. He had a strong feeling that fitness 
 was the chief reason for giving a man an office. He 
 could not be an enthusiastic supporter of anybody 
 simply because he owed him a vote. It was under 
 something of a cloud, then at least in political 
 circles that he ended his term in Congress in the 
 spring of 1849 and came back to Illinois. 
 
 To be sure, he had had a wonderful time. He 
 had seen not only Washington, but in the campaign 
 of 1848, between the two sessions, he had been 
 asked to go to New England to make speeches for 
 the Whig presidential candidate, General Taylor, 
 and there he had met a number of prominent men. 
 On his way home he had done a little sight-seeing, 
 had been to Niagara Falls and felt all of its over- 
 
Ii6 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 whelming grandeur. He planned some day to tell 
 in a lecture what he had seen and felt in face of the 
 great waters, and made notes which are to be found 
 among his published papers. After leaving Niagara 
 he had a little adventure that set his wits working in 
 an entirely different direction. 
 
 The boat on which he was traveling was stranded 
 on a sand bar. The captain had ordered all the 
 empty barrels and boxes on board to be forced un 
 der the side of the boat. These empty receptacles 
 acted as a buoy, and in a little time the vessel swung 
 clear. Lincoln was greatly interested in the opera 
 tion and hardly was he back in Springfield before he 
 began tinkering on a device for taking care of just 
 such an accident. He spent hours in a little car 
 penter shop near his office, working on a model; 
 and finally, when he went back to Washington for 
 the remainder of his term, he took it along and se 
 cured a patent. This model sits on the shelves of 
 the Patent Office to-day. 
 
 When Lincoln returned to Springfield in the spring 
 of 1849, it looked as if his political fortunes were 
 at an end. He did not whine or sulk. He did not 
 announce that he was suffering for doing what he 
 thought was right. He took what had happened 
 quietly and good-naturedly. Lincoln never had any 
 sympathy with people who nourished a grudge 
 against the public for their defeats and failures. He 
 had a law partner, younger than himself, who was 
 inclined to feel that he was being kept down in the 
 world by older men. Mr. Lincoln chided him for 
 his complaining. 
 
The Call of His Country 117 
 
 "The way for a young man to rise," he told him, 
 "is to improve himself every way he can, never sus 
 pecting that any one wishes to hinder him. Sus 
 picion and jealousy never did help any man in any 
 situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous at 
 tempts 60 keep a young man down and they will 
 succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted 
 from its true channel, to brood over the attempted 
 injury." 
 
 Lincoln did not brood now; he worked harder 
 than he ever had before to make a good lawyer of 
 himself. For the next five years his attention was 
 occupied almost entirely with legal matters. If you 
 will examine his published letters and speeches for 
 this particular five years, and compare them with the 
 periods of equal length just before and just after, 
 you will realize how completely politics had dropped 
 out of his life. The probability is that he would 
 have gone on with the law, giving no more attention 
 to public affairs than any good citizen should give, 
 in his judgment, refusing public office if it came his 
 way, devoted to his profession, if there had not sud 
 denly been presented to Congress a bill seeking to 
 overthrow the solemn engagement known as the 
 Missouri Compromise, into which the people of the 
 United States had entered over thirty years before. 
 This compromise provided that there should be no 
 slaves north of 36 30 north latitude in the vast 
 territory running from the Gulf of Mexico to Can 
 ada and as far west as the Rocky Mountains, bought 
 by the United States in 1803 from France. In Lin 
 coln s judgment, to repeal this arrangement was not 
 
r li8 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 only a violation of sacred obligations which the coun 
 try had taken, but was directly opposed to the in 
 tent of the men who had founded the country. 
 
 What should he do? To attack the bill meant 
 that he must turn his mind from his profession, that 
 he must give time and strength which he could ill 
 afford to give. It was doubtful if there was po 
 litical honor in the struggle, for he saw that to take 
 the stand that he must take would be unpopular with 
 many of the people of Illinois. He did not hesitate. 
 Cost what it might, he did not propose that the 
 Missouri Compromise should be repealed, that ter 
 ritory long ago set aside for freedom by the will of 
 the people of the country should be open to slavery. 
 
 Possibly he was the more willing to go into the 
 fight because the repeal of the Missouri Compro 
 mise had been fathered by his strongest political 
 enemy in the State of Illinois, the man of whom Lin 
 coln, if he was ever jealous of anybody, was jealous, 
 and that was the senior senator from Illinois, 
 Stephen A. Douglas. If you must fight, it is well to 
 have an opponent that brings out all your strength. 
 Lincoln knew that he had such an opponent, and he 
 made ready for what was to be the fight of his life. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE 
 
 Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 WHEN Lincoln, in 1854, went into what was 
 to be the fight of his life, he did it because 
 he believed that he was right and that if 
 he could get a chance he could make the people of 
 Illinois agree that he was right. The question 
 which stirred him so mightily was whether or not 
 the United States should allow slavery to be ex 
 tended into territory where it did not then exist, 
 and where it had been agreed thirty years before 
 it should never be allowed to go. Lincoln believed 
 that this could not lawfully be done. He knew that 
 the men who organized the Union, the men that we 
 speak of as the "Fathers," had believed that if they 
 stopped the slave trade, as they did, and shut up 
 slavery in a certain number of states, it would finally 
 die a natural death. That is, they believed that 
 property if it is to live must have room in which to 
 grow, also that it must have the tolerance and 
 friendly recognition of all of the people of the coun 
 try where it exists. Lincoln had always held this 
 view. 
 
 At the same time, he had never agreed with the 
 
 119 
 
I2O Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 Abolitionists who were trying to destroy slavery in 
 the States where it was legal. He insisted that the 
 free States should let the slavery of the other States 
 alone, let it die of itself. Nor did he hate the peo 
 ple of the South as many of the Abolitionists did 
 because of slavery. They found slavery there when 
 they were born, he argued. "They are just what 
 we would be in their situation. If slavery did not 
 exist among them, they would not introduce it. If 
 it did now exist among us, we should not instantly 
 give it up. I surely will not blame them for not 
 doing what I should not know how to do myself." 
 
 But if he did not hate the South he did hate slav 
 ery thought it a terrible wrong; and it was be 
 cause of this hatred that he was ready to throw aside 
 his law practice in 1854 to go into what he realized 
 would be a long and terrible struggle. 
 
 The man who had brought on the fight was an old 
 antagonist of his, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas 
 had walked into Illinois from the East, his coat over 
 his arm, in those years when Lincoln was carrying 
 a log chain and reading law at night. The two 
 first came together in 1836 in the State Assembly. 
 You could hardly find two men more different in 
 looks and in their ways of getting on. Douglas was 
 a stout little man, only 5 feet 4 inches tall Lincoln 
 was 6 feet 4 he had a great mane of black hair 
 and when he spoke he often roared like a lion. 
 Douglas had all the qualities which win men. He 
 was handsome, confident, gay, eloquent; and he was 
 willing to go along with anybody who would help 
 
The Fight of His Life 121 
 
 him to get what he wanted. He was wonderfully 
 able as a politician, adroit and brilliant as a speaker; 
 but no one would ever have thought of applying to 
 him the term which always followed Lincoln, that 
 of "honest." 
 
 At the start the two men were rivals. They be 
 longed to the same Springfield debating club, where 
 they were frequently pitted against each other. 
 They differed in politics, Lincoln being a Whig and 
 Douglas a Democrat; and in times of campaigning 
 spoke from the same platform or followed each 
 other over the same territory. They were even 
 rivals for the hand of the same woman, it is said, 
 the woman who became later Mr. Lincoln s wife. 
 But Douglas soon left Lincoln far behind. He was 
 given important State offices, was elected to the Su 
 preme Bench of the State and three times to Con 
 gress. He was a senator of the United States, and 
 one of the most distinguished and popular figures 
 in the country, when, in 1847, Lincoln arrived in 
 Washington, an unknown man. 
 
 By 1854 Douglas was regarded as a future Presi 
 dent. He knew how good his chances were, and 
 he was intent on doing everything that he could to 
 enlarge them. To win he must have the favor of 
 the South. He understood the desire of a large 
 part of the slaveholders of the South to have new 
 territory for their property. He knew if he could 
 give it to them that he would have their support. 
 At that time he was the head of the Senate commit 
 tee on territorial organization. Two new territo- 
 
122 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 ries, Kansas and Nebraska both of which, you will 
 remember, were inside the line which by the Mis 
 souri Compromise was to be forever free wanted 
 to be organized. It was the business of his com 
 mittee to introduce a bill arranging this. Douglas 
 tacked on to this bill an amendment which left it to 
 the people of the territories, and to the new States 
 which might be formed from them, to decide whether 
 they wanted to be free or slave. "This was right," 
 he said, "it was popular sovereignty." A little later 
 he consented, rather reluctantly, to a second amend 
 ment repealing the Missouri Compromise. 
 
 When the North learned of Douglas action, it 
 broke out in anger and revolt. Particularly was 
 Illinois amazed and indignant. He was their man, 
 their great man, their "Little Giant," as they popu 
 larly called him. Could it be possible that he had 
 so misunderstood their feeling about slavery that he 
 would wantonly, and apparently for no other rea 
 son than to increase his own popularity in a section 
 of the country which naturally mistrusted him be 
 cause he was a Northern man, break a contract which 
 most of them regarded as sacred as the articles of 
 the Constitution? 
 
 As we have seen, nobody was more stirred by the 
 news of the repeal than Abraham Lincoln. He 
 could think of nothing else. He went over in his 
 mind the whole experience of the country with slav 
 ery the efforts to confine it, the efforts to spread 
 it, the bitterness that had been born in both North 
 and South because of the struggle. Would it never 
 rest? Was the hope and belief of the "Fathers" 
 
The Fight of His Life 123 
 
 that if it were confined it would ultimately die of 
 itself a false hope ? Must this dangerous struggle 
 go on forever? 
 
 As he went about the circuit, he talked of noth 
 ing else. It was the last thing at night and the first 
 thing in the morning. He was gradually coming, 
 in his own mind, to a conclusion, terrible to himself 
 and so terrible to others that many of his best friends 
 refused to listen to him when he talked of it and 
 that was, that it was impossible for the Union to 
 exist half slave and half free. Once on the circuit, 
 one of his friends tells of waking up early in the 
 morning and seeing him sitting on the edge of the 
 bed in his long nightshirt. "I tell you," Lincoln 
 broke out when he saw his friend was awake, "this 
 country cannot exist much longer half slave and half 
 free." "Oh, go to sleep, Lincoln," his friend re 
 plied. 
 
 Douglas came back in the fall, after he had put 
 through his Kansas-Nebraska bill, as it came to be 
 called, to try to explain to the Illinois people what 
 he had done. He started in Chicago, and they 
 howled him down, though he fought half the night 
 with them. It was a new experience for the "Little 
 Giant," accustomed as he had always been to ap 
 plause and congratulations. But he was no coward ; 
 and he started out through the State to defend him- 
 self. 
 
 In October he came to Springfield. It was the 
 week of the State fair, and he had a great audience, 
 on which he used all his tremendous power of elo 
 quence and persuasion. "Why, why," he pleaded, 
 
124 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 "should any one object to allowing the people of a 
 State to regulate their own affairs, to choose the 
 kind of property they want have slaves or not? 
 Was not that their right?" 
 
 Lincoln had been asked to answer Douglas. His 
 speech, four hours long, is one of the most impor 
 tant of his life, for in it he marshaled like a general 
 the army of arguments he had been gathering in his 
 months of hard thinking. The result was an amaze 
 ment to everybody, friend or foe, and particularly 
 did it take hold of young men. Among those in 
 his audience was a boy of twenty, Horace White by 
 name. This boy had never in his life heard any 
 thing before that so moved him; and years later, 
 when he had become one of the most influential 
 editors in this country, he drew a picture of the scene, 
 which you can take as a true picture of Lincoln not 
 only at this time, but in other great speeches which 
 he was to make. 
 
 "It was a warmish day in early October," Hor 
 ace White says, "and Mr. Lincoln was in his shirt 
 sleeves when he stepped on the platform. I ob 
 served that, although awkward, he was not in the 
 least embarrassed. He began in a low and hesitat 
 ing manner, but without any mistakes of language, 
 dates, or facts. It was evident that he had mas 
 tered his subject, that he knew what he was going 
 to say, and that he knew he was right. He had a 
 thin, high-pitched, falsetto voice of much carrying 
 power, and could be heard a long distance in spite 
 of the bustle and tumult of the crowd. He had the 
 accent and pronunciation peculiar to his native State, 
 
The Fight of His Life 125 
 
 Kentucky. Gradually he warmed up with his sub 
 ject, his angularity disappeared, and he passed into 
 that attitude of unconscious majesty that is so con 
 spicuous in Saint Gaudens statue at the entrance 
 of Lincoln Park in Chicago. . . . Progressing with 
 his theme, his words began to come faster and his 
 face to light up with the rays of genius and his body 
 to move in unison with his thoughts. His gestures 
 were made with his body and head rather than with 
 his arms. They were the natural expression of the 
 man, and so perfectly adapted to what he was say 
 ing that anything different would have been quite in 
 conceivable. Sometimes his manner was very im 
 passioned, and he seemed transfigured with his sub 
 ject. Perspiration would stream down his face, and 
 each particular hair would stand on end. ... In 
 such transfigured moments as these he was the type 
 of the Hebrew prophet. 
 
 "I heard the whole speech. It was superior to 
 Webster s reply to Hayne, because its theme is 
 loftier and its scope wider. ... I think also that 
 Lincoln s speech is the superior of the two as an 
 example of English style. It lacks something of the 
 smooth, compulsive flow which takes the intellect 
 captive in the Websterian diction, but it excels in 
 the simplicity, directness, and lucidity which appeal 
 both to the intellect and to the heart. The speech 
 made so profound an impression on me that I feel 
 under its spell to this day." 
 
 A few days later the two men met again, this time 
 at Peoria; and went over the same arguments. 
 Douglas sat in the front row and heard Lincoln an- 
 
126 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 swer his eloquent plea to let each State decide what 
 kind of property it wanted to govern itself as it 
 pleased. 
 
 "What Mr. Douglas means," retorted Lincoln, 
 "is that as you do not object to my taking my hog to 
 Nebraska therefore I must not object to your taking 
 your slave. I admit this is perfectly logical if there 
 is no difference between hogs and negroes. . . . 
 The doctrine of self-government is right, but it has 
 no application as here attempted. When the white 
 man governs himself, that is self-government; but 
 when he governs himself and also governs another 
 man, that is not self-government, that is despotism. 
 No man is good enough to govern another man with 
 out that man s consent. I say this is the leading 
 principle, the sheet anchor of American Republi 
 
 canism." 
 
 Lincoln s terrible seriousness, the closeness of his 
 argument, the intentness of his great audience, filled 
 Douglas, listening there in the front row, with 
 alarm. Lincoln was digging under his foundations. 
 If he kept this up, he saw that his own house might 
 be falling over his head. And so, after the lecture, 
 he said to him, "Lincoln, you are giving me more 
 trouble in debate than all the United States Senate. 
 Let s quit and go home." And Lincoln, always ami 
 able too amiable, his friends said agreed. 
 
 It was the end of the first round of the fight, and 
 the honors were not with the great champion; they 
 were with his unknown challenger. 
 
 But if Douglas had any idea that when Lincoln 
 accepted his suggestion that they "quit and go 
 
The Fight of His Life 127 
 
 home** it was to be the end of the fight, he soon 
 saw his mistake, for Lincoln went to work like a 
 beaver to elect to office every candidate in Illinois, 
 Democrat or Whig, opposed to the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise. He began by offering him 
 self for the State Assembly, and was elected. Think 
 ing he had a chance to be made senator, he resigned 
 and went out campaigning, speaking only on the sub 
 ject which had set his mind and soul aflame. When 
 he found that he could not be nominated, but that 
 an anti-Nebraska Democrat who was running against 
 a Douglas Democrat could be if he gave up his 
 chance, he did it. "Never mind about me," he told 
 his friends. "We will have an anti-Nebraska sena 
 tor in Washington to fight Douglas." 
 
 Douglas, watching from Washington, saw that, 
 as the months went on, the opposition to him in 
 Illinois was growing more and more serious. It 
 was no longer a matter of scattered groups in the 
 different political parties ; these groups were getting 
 together. In May, 1856, at Bloomington, they pub 
 licly broke from their old moorings and formed a 
 new party the Republican. 
 
 Douglas realized how much Lincoln had to do 
 with the making of this organization and its plat 
 form ; he knew, too, that it was Lincoln who at this 
 meeting, when the organization was completed, had 
 made a speech that had brought his audience to its 
 feet again and again with wild cheering a speech 
 so eloquent, passionate, and sincere that the very 
 reporters taking notes for their newspapers threw 
 down their pencils, forgot what they were there for 
 
128 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 and at the end found themselves standing on the 
 tables, shouting at the top of their lungs. 
 
 Because of their excitement, no report was made 
 for the newspapers and all over Illinois the speech 
 was known as "Lincoln s Lost Speech," and men who 
 heard it told, as long as they lived, of its greatness. 
 His law partner, Mr. Herndon, who like the report 
 ers, at the end of ten minutes threw down the pencil 
 with which he was taking notes, declared that "If 
 Mr. Lincoln was 6 feet and 4 inches high usually, at 
 Bloomington that day he was 7 feet and inspired at 
 that." 
 
 An exciting summer followed the convention. 
 The Republicans had their first full ticket State and 
 national in the field, and the Illinois men of 
 different parties who had united at Bloomington 
 pulled together as if they had been trained from 
 boyhood to the same political harness. Their reso 
 lution and indignation was kept at white heat by 
 the civil war that then raged in Kansas. The ter 
 ritory was soon to seek statehood under Douglas 
 bill, and between the settlers who were determined 
 to make it a slave State and those who were equally 
 determined it should remain free there was open 
 warfare. 
 
 In Illinois the Republicans proclaimed: "The 
 Missouri Compromise must be restored, Kansas 
 shall be free." With such campaign cries in a State 
 so devoted to Douglas it was wonderful that there 
 was no violence; and that there was none was, in 
 no small measure, due to Lincoln who constantly 
 preached self-control to his associates and in his 
 
The Fight of His Life 129 
 
 speeches kept to the hard, cold, unanswerable argu 
 ments which two years before had made Douglas 
 cry, "Let us quit and go home." 
 
 When November came, the unbelievable hap 
 pened in Illinois the new party swept the State, 
 electing its whole ticket. For the first time in his 
 history, Douglas and his followers were defeated 
 all along the line. A few months after the election 
 things were made still worse for him by a decision 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States which 
 declared that the Missouri Compromise and all com 
 promises like it were unconstitutional that Con 
 gress had no power to pass them that it had no 
 power to make territory free as it had tried to do. 
 Slaves were property and a man could take his 
 property where he wished. 
 
 There was a fresh uproar in Illinois, as loud a 
 one as there had been over Douglas bill. Lincoln 
 used the new move of the slavery party to strengthen 
 the argument he had been building up. What was 
 this last move, he asked, this Supreme Court de 
 cision but another timber for the frame of a house 
 that they were preparing to build? See how ex 
 actly it fitted into the timber that Douglas had pre 
 pared! When we see a lot of frame timbers, dif 
 ferent portions of which we know have been gotten 
 out at different times and places by different work 
 men, joined together and see them exactly make the 
 frame of a house, we find it impossible not to be 
 lieve that the workmen are following a common 
 plan. That is, you see that Lincoln was charging 
 that Douglas and his party were in a conspiracy to 
 
130 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 extend slavery all over the country, into the old as 
 well as the new States, the North as well as the 
 South. Many of those who listened to him said to 
 one another, "It does look like it. Maybe Lin 
 coln is right when he says we cannot exist much 
 longer half slave and half free, that we must become 
 all one or all the other." 
 
 It was a serious thing for Douglas ambition to 
 have Illinois turning against him at this moment. 
 His term as senator was about to end. If he were 
 not reflected he would probably not have a chance 
 at the presidency in 1860 or 1864 as he had planned. 
 He must do something. 
 
 The chance came just in the nick of time. Kan 
 sas was ready to adopt a constitution according to 
 Douglas plan. The people were to have a free 
 chance to vote whether they should or should not 
 have slavery. By an outrageous fraud that nobody 
 denied, a constitution "with slavery" was fixed on 
 them, and Douglas party the President and all 
 refused to interfere. Douglas made a terrible scene 
 in the Senate, speaking for three hours, defying his 
 party and declaring he would never submit. He 
 had promised Kansas that she should be perfectly 
 free to choose. This had not been a free election. 
 "Are you going to force it on them against their 
 will," he said, "simply because they would vote it 
 down if you had consulted them? Is that the mode 
 in which I am called upon to carry out the principle 
 of self-government? If Kansas wants a Slave con 
 stitution," he shouted, "she has a right to it; if she 
 wants a Free-State constitution she has a right to 
 
The Fight of His Life 131 
 
 it. It is none of my business which way the slavery 
 clause is decided, / care not whether it is voted up or 
 down." 
 
 All through the North there was great rejoicing 
 over Douglas bold stand. He was for fair play, 
 and many leading Republicans began to suggest tak 
 ing him into the party if the Democrats threw him 
 over. They even hinted to the Republicans in Illi 
 nois that they accept him as their candidate for 
 the Senate that fall. But the Republicans in Illinois 
 knew Douglas too well. They looked on the at 
 tack he had made on his party for its stand in Kan 
 sas as a political trick timed exactly so as to win 
 back his old followers. They knew that his revolt 
 against the fraud did not touch the real question 
 which was whether slavery was to be kept where the 
 law had put it or was to be allowed to spread from 
 new State to new State. And their answer to the 
 suggestion that they join with the Democrats in re 
 turning him was to nominate Abraham Lincoln to 
 run against him for the Senate. 
 
 Douglas came back to Illinois to make his cam 
 paign in bad humor. He was uneasy. The coun 
 try outside might not know anything about this man 
 he must meet; but he did. He knew that man had 
 a dangerous habit in debate of springing new argu-. 
 ments on you, of insisting you answer them, of pur 
 suing you if you did not or could not. He had the 
 habit of asking questions which if you answered them 
 in one way angered Illinois and if you answered them 
 in another way angered the South. And, worst of 
 all, this man was in dead earnest about the righf 
 
132 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 and wrong of things. Lincoln cared whether slav 
 ery was voted up or down. He did not. If Lin 
 coln drove him too often into a corner and made the 
 people see he did not care, that would be dangerous 
 in Illinois. 
 
 But of all this he gave no sign. He set out in 
 a special railway coach, gay with flags, a brass can 
 non mounted at the rear to announce his approach 
 for all the world like a conquering hero on a tri 
 umphal march. 
 
 Lincoln camped on his trail, traveling as he could 
 now in an ordinary day coach, now in the caboose 
 of a freight train, now driving across country, ham 
 mering incessantly at Douglas position. He hoped 
 to force Douglas to a challenge to debate. The 
 "Little Giant" was wary. He did not want to speak 
 from the same platform with his rival and when 
 Lincoln realized this, he became the challenger. 
 There was no escape ; but, instead of accepting Lin 
 coln s proposition that they divide time everywhere 
 for the rest of the campaign, Douglas named places 
 at which he would meet Lincoln. These debates 
 were to occur at intervals of about two weeks. 
 
 At last the second round of the great fight was 
 called. 
 
 The great champion dreaded it. "I shall have 
 my hands full," he told his friends privately. They 
 pooh-poohed at the idea and boasted loudly of the 
 great show that was coming: 
 
 "The Little Giant chawing up Old Abe." 
 
 Not a few of Lincoln s followers, much as they 
 admired him, dreaded the encounter. Was Lin- 
 
The Fight of His Life 133 
 
 coin, after all, fit to meet this big man this man 
 who had always won, who had long been a United 
 States senator, who, right or wrong, probably would 
 be President ? Who was Lincoln that he should ac 
 tually challenge such a man? Lincoln felt, rather 
 than heard, this fear in his friends minds. Finally 
 one of them told him in Springfield one day that the 
 Republicans were looking forward to the debate 
 which he had brought upon himself with deep con 
 cern. A shadow went over Mr. Lincoln s face. It 
 quickly gave way to a blaze of eyes and a quiver 
 of lips. 
 
 "Sit down," he said to his friend, "and let me 
 tell you a story. 
 
 "You have seen two men about to fight?" 
 
 "Yes, many times." 
 
 "Well, one of them brags about what he means 
 to do. He jumps high in the air, cracking his heels 
 together, smites his fist and wastes his breath trying 
 to scare somebody. You see the other fellow, he 
 says not a word." Here Mr. Lincoln s voice and 
 manner changed to great earnestness and repeat 
 ing "You see the other man, he says not a word. 
 His arms are at his side, his fists are closely doubled 
 up, his head is drawn to the shoulder, and his teeth 
 are set firm together. He is saving his wind for 
 the fight, and as sure as it comes off he will win it, 
 or die a-trying." 
 
 If you will take a map and locate the towns which 
 Douglas had picked out for the great tournament 
 Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charlestown, Gales- 
 boro, Quincy, Alton you will see that by a little 
 
134 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 trouble anybody in the State could hear at least one 
 of the debates. Nothing had ever happened in the 
 lives of the boys of Illinois so exciting. It was like 
 the World Series. Everybody turned out. Whole 
 neighborhoods packed themselves into a prairie 
 schooner or on a hay wagon drawn by four or six 
 horses. They came in buggies, in barouches, on 
 horseback, by rail, by canal; a boy walked bare 
 footed through the dust for miles rather than miss it. 
 
 Most of them carried their food so that the de 
 bating point was like one grand picnic streets, 
 fields, hillsides crowded with campers. At every 
 corner were fakirs and hucksters selling lemonade 
 and pain killer, flags and badges, telling fortunes or 
 making stump speeches. 
 
 The debates came off in the afternoon, and long 
 before the hour the great crowds would surge toward 
 the stand the boys pushing their way to the front, 
 climbing to the roofs of any near-by house or near 
 by trees. 
 
 For four years these boys had been listening to 
 the great discussion. They had heard it at home, 
 at school, in the streets, at political meetings. They 
 knew what it was all about, and many of them could 
 use the arguments for or against the extension of 
 slavery as skillfully as their fathers, such was the 
 constant training in debate that their schools gave. 
 More than one of them, too, had finished his de 
 bate over the great question with his fists. And 
 now they were to see the champions of the two sides. 
 They were like boys who, having for years played 
 baseball at home and with neighboring teams, come 
 
The Fight of His Life 135 
 
 at last to see a game between national champions. 
 What they were interested in was the men, and how 
 they did it, how they handled themselves when they 
 came to face each other. 
 
 Each boy had chosen his leader, and was loud in 
 his praise of him. It was natural that any boy 
 should be proud to wear a Douglas badge. He was 
 their "great man" "the next President of the 
 United States" that was enough for many. But 
 boys felt differently about Lincoln they liked him, 
 liked him because he liked them always noticed 
 them, talked to them when he had the chance in 
 deed, sometimes even in the rush of the campaign, 
 joined them for a few minutes at ball told them 
 a story or even treated them at the grocery. Many 
 a boy and girl who heard one or more of the de 
 bates, loved to tell all during life of some little at 
 tention of Mr. Lincoln. Down at Jonesboro, a lit 
 tle girl, all dressed up for the great event, picked 
 her way through the dust to do an errand in a gro 
 cery store. Mr. Lincoln sat inside and as she passed 
 drew her to him. "She s an orphan," said the store 
 keeper. And the great man drew a dime from his 
 pocket and slipped it into her hand. Do you sup 
 pose that she ever forgot that little act of sympathy 
 and kindness? 
 
 They liked his fun whether they were for Doug 
 las or for him, and many a one always remembered 
 how at one debate when it came his turn to answer, 
 he slipped off his long duster and said to a young 
 girl beside him, "Please hold my coat while I stone 
 Stephen." 
 
136 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 They liked the habit he had of giving them a smile 
 quite their own if they came around with their father 
 or some grown friend at a reception. At the last of 
 the debates at Alton, a very much excited small boy, 
 "effervescing with patriotic enthusiasm," as he de 
 scribed himself later, by the name of J. Henry Lea, 
 went with his father to the hotel to congratulate 
 Mr. Lincoln. A large group of the leading men 
 of Illinois, men whose names are a part of the his 
 tory of the country, surrounded Mr. Lincoln, yet 
 when the small boy was presented he found time to 
 give him not only a cordial handclasp but to say a 
 few special kind words to him. From that hour, so 
 Mr. Lea wrote fifty years afterward, he was to him a 
 "demigod." 
 
 Mr. Lea became later a genealogist. Realizing 
 that Lincoln was the only great American whose an 
 cestry had not been clearly established, and resent 
 ing that because of ignorance and partisanship so 
 much scandal and misrepresentation had gathered 
 about it, he set out to establish clearly by docu 
 ments the Lincoln pedigree. He worked for nearly 
 thirty years on this task until finally he was able to 
 establish an unbroken line from the farm where 
 Lincoln was born in Kentucky, back through Vir 
 ginia, into Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, across 
 the ocean to England, and back to one Robert Lin 
 coln who was born and died in Hingham, England, 
 in the sixteenth century. 
 
 When Mr. Lea published this work in 1908, he 
 submitted it to the American people whom Lincoln 
 loved so well "as a slight tribute to the memory of 
 
The Fight of His Life 137 
 
 their best and wisest statesman, father, and friend." 
 This was the kind of enthusiasm that the debates 
 aroused in many a boy. 
 
 Then he was always telling stories or giving il 
 lustrations either on the platform or as he talked 
 to the groups gathered about that stuck in a boy s 
 mind. A boy who heard Mr. Lincoln use his fa 
 mous snake illustration could not fail to understand 
 why he objected to taking slaves into new terri 
 tory. "If I saw a venomous snake crawling in 
 the road, any man would say I might seize the near 
 est stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed 
 with my children, that would be another question. 
 I might hurt the children more than the snake, and 
 it might bite them. Much more if I found it in 
 bed with my neighbor s children, and I had bound 
 myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his 
 children under any circumstances, it would become 
 me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the 
 gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly 
 made up, to which the children were to be taken, 
 and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes 
 and put them there with them, I take it no man would 
 say there was any question how I ought to decide ! 
 
 "That is just the case. The new territories are 
 the newly made bed to which our children are to go, 
 and it lies with the nation to say whether they shall 
 have snakes mixed up with them or not. It does 
 not seem as if there could be much hesitation what 
 our policy should be 1" 
 
 One of the things that Mr. Lincoln was trying 
 hardest in the debates to make Illinois understand 
 
138 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 was that Mr. Douglas had one kind of an argu 
 ment for the North and another for the South. 
 More than one boy was able to see this by a story 
 that he told of a man who had a very lazy pony. 
 The man finally bought a pair of spurs, but they 
 were not long of any use, for the moment the pony 
 felt the prod he would stick out a forefoot and 
 lie down. The owner decided that he would trade 
 him off. He found a man with a fine horse and 
 proceeded to tell him of the wonderful qualities of 
 his pony. At the moment they were passing a 
 clump of bushes where he saw some pheasants. He 
 struck his spur into the pony who immediately put 
 out his forefoot and lay down. "There are pheas 
 ants around here," he cried out. "This pony is a 
 hunter and a setter. This is his way of warning 
 me." And, sure enough, when the men dismounted 
 and went to the bushes they did scare up the birds 
 and were able to shoot them. The man was very 
 much impressed and finally made a trade. 
 
 They changed their saddles and went on. Soon 
 they reached a stream which they had to ford. The 
 new owner of the pony applied his spur as they went 
 into the stream, when out went the pony s forefoot 
 and down he lay. The former owner cried out, 
 "Don t be discouraged. He is just as good for fish 
 as he is for fowl." "And that s the way with Doug 
 las," he would say, "he is as good for the South as 
 he is for the North." 
 
 One feature of the fight which Lincoln s boy 
 friends particularly resented was Douglas trickery 
 in debate. He was a poor Scout when it came to 
 
The Fight of His Life 139 
 
 meeting the hard blows Lincoln gave him. He be 
 gan by trying to belittle Mr. Lincoln. "He s a kind, 
 amiable, intelligent gentleman," he said. He d first 
 known him twenty-five years ago; they d been to 
 gether in the legislature for a term, and then Mr. 
 Lincoln had "subsided," been "submerged." Ten 
 years later, when he was in the United States Sen 
 ate Lincoln had turned up in Congress for a term, 
 but the people had refused to return him and now 
 here he was, disputing an election with him. Of 
 course Douglas did not say, "Isn t that the most 
 impudent and absurd thing you ever heard of?" but 
 that was what his hearers knew he wanted them to 
 feel, and his followers took the cue and set out to 
 make Mr. Lincoln in every way ridiculous. 
 
 The chief Douglas paper, The Times of Chicago, 
 followed its leader by making a hodgepodge of all 
 that Mr. Lincoln said. They made his sentences 
 ungrammatical, ran them together, left out punc 
 tuation or misplaced it, twisted his meaning, so that 
 the result was often an unreadable conglomeration 
 of nonsense. And when The Press and Tribune, a 
 Lincoln paper, published his speeches properly and 
 charged The Times with mangling its reports, the 
 Douglas paper came back, declaring that they were 
 exact, but that the Republicans, realizing how badly 
 Mr. Lincoln was doing, had sent out some one to 
 "rake after" him. That this was not true, we know 
 from the same Horace White whose description of 
 Mr. Lincoln in 1854 I have already given you. Mr. 
 White was at the time on The Press and Tribune, 
 and it was his business to go over the shorthand re- 
 
140 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 ports made of all the speeches and he declares he 
 never made any change. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was always good-natured under these 
 repeated efforts to make him out an insignificant 
 person. "Of course what Mr. Douglas says is 
 true," he replied. "With me, the race of ambition 
 has been a failure a flat failure; with him, it has 
 been a splendid success. Senator Douglas is of 
 world renown. All of the anxious politicians of his 
 party, or who have been of his party for years past, 
 have been looking upon him as certain, at no distant 
 date, to be the President of the United States. They 
 have seen in his jolly, fruitful face post offices, land 
 offices, marshalships, and Cabinet appointments, 
 chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and 
 sprouting forth in wonderful exuberance, ready to 
 be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On the con 
 trary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. 
 In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen 
 that any cabbages were sprouting out." 
 
 Nor did this kind of attack dishearten him. He 
 believed too profoundly in the truth and soundness 
 of his arguments, "I know the judge is a great man, 
 while I am only a small man, but / feel that I have 
 got him" 
 
 Nor was this effort to make fun of Mr. Lincoln 
 Douglas most serious offense against the code of 
 fair play in debate. When he knew Lincoln did 
 have him was making an argument or a charge that 
 he could not answer or stating facts that he could 
 not disprove he actually roared with rage and 
 called it all a lie. Lincoln took it good-naturedly. 
 
The Fight of His Life 141 
 
 "It is no use," he said, "for Judge Douglas to swell 
 himself up, take on dignity, call people liars. If 
 you have ever studied geometry, you remember that, 
 by a course of reasoning, Euclid proves that all the 
 angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. 
 Euclid has shown you how to work it out. Now if 
 you undertake to disprove that proposition and show 
 that it is erroneous, would you prove it to be false by 
 calling Euclid a liar?" 
 
 What really irritated Mr. Lincoln was being 
 forced constantly to give time to answering charges 
 that did not bear on the great theme. For instance, 
 Douglas again and again charged that he had re 
 fused to support the Government by voting sup 
 plies for the Mexican War. This was not true. Lin 
 coln had always voted supplies. Finally, at one of 
 the debates where Douglas was taking up time re 
 peating this, Lincoln settled it by seizing by the col 
 lar a friend of Douglas, a man who had been in 
 Congress at the same time that he was, and dragging 
 him to the platform, "Here, you were there, and you 
 know whether I voted supplies or not. Is Judge 
 Douglas telling the truth?" The man so unexpect 
 edly dragged in front of the audience had to admit 
 that Douglas was lying. 
 
 "Judge Douglas," he complained one day, "is 
 playing cuttlefish a small species of fish that has 
 no mode of defending himself when pursued except 
 by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water 
 so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes." 
 
 The way the two men fought became more and 
 more interesting, especially to boys and young men. 
 
142 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 A boy wants fair play. He doesn t like to see the 
 man he is backing play tricks, if he is an honest boy. 
 The anger and bitterness and unfairness of Douglas 
 in the struggle lost him much sympathy even among 
 his followers; and the good nature, kindliness, and 
 fairness of Lincoln softened even his enemies. That 
 is, Douglas lost sympathy as Lincoln gained it. His 
 sincerity, his scrupulous care to state things as they 
 were, to correct or explain an error if one was 
 pointed out, his frankness in meeting every point 
 that Douglas made, never evading or skulking, piled 
 up the respect of friend and foe. His deep earnest 
 ness, his appeal to the right and wrong of the mat 
 ter took deepest hold, especially of the young. 
 Many a boy felt his heart burning with a desire to 
 spend his life fighting for the right thing, the honest 
 thing, as he watched Abraham Lincoln making his 
 great fight. It was this that made Illinois, as a 
 whole, feel as the debates came to a close that the 
 honors were fairly Lincoln s. Every one, friend 
 and foe, agreed that he had been what a man should 
 always be honest, brave, and courteous. 
 
 The debates closed the middle of October, and 
 in November came the elections. Lincoln had 
 nearly four thousand more votes in the State than 
 Douglas, but a senator is elected by the legislature; 
 and the Democrats came out with forty seats to the 
 Republicans thirty-five; that is, Douglas had won 
 the senatorship. 
 
 Of course Lincoln was disappointed; but his 
 friends wondered that he did not seem downhearted. 
 He laughed and said that even if he had stubbed his 
 
The Fight of His Life 143 
 
 toe, he was too big to cry. The truth was, however, 
 that he did not think himself defeated. He had set 
 out to do something which he considered more im 
 portant to his party and to the country than being 
 himself elected. He had set out to prove that Doug 
 las was carrying water on both shoulders trying 
 to make Illinois think he meant one thing and the 
 South another. He felt he had done that, for he 
 knew the South would never accept the explanation 
 by which Douglas had won Illinois. This meant 
 that Douglas never would be President. 
 
 He was satisfied that he had persuaded great 
 numbers of people that unless slavery was stopped, 
 as the Fathers had expected it to be, it would spread 
 all over the country. At the same time, he knew he 
 had made these same thousands of men, women, and 
 boys feel that this never must be, because slavery 
 was wrong. 
 
 As for himself, "Well," he said, "although I now 
 sink out of view and shall be forgotten, I believe I 
 have made some marks which will tell for the cause 
 of civil liberty long after I am gone." And that 
 had been his great aim not merely to be senator. 
 You see, he really thought he had won. 
 
 And so he went cheerfully back to his law. And 
 high time, too. For months he had been earning 
 nothing and the time had come when he had not even 
 money for houshould expenses, 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE BIG GIANT OF ILLINOIS 
 
 He went about his work such work as few 
 Ever had laid on head and heart and hand 
 
 As one who knows, where there s a task to do, 
 
 Man s honest will must Heaven s good grace command. 
 
 TOM TAYLOR. 
 
 NEXT to winning a fight is giving the winner a 
 drubbing that sets the knowing who look on 
 to saying, "Watch that man. He has the 
 makings of a champion." 
 
 That is what happened in the Lincoln-Douglas 
 fight of 1858. Douglas won; that is, he was elected 
 senator; but Lincoln put up a fight that set scores of 
 young men and some older ones in Illinois declaring 
 that he was a "great man; a greater man than 
 Douglas;" "the greatest man who ever lived" one 
 young editor shouted, forthwith rushing to his paper 
 and proposing him for the next President of the 
 United States 1 
 
 Their enthusiasm was strengthened by evidence 
 that came to them of the impression Lincoln s work 
 had made outside of the State even on "great men" 
 leaders in the life of the East. What was the joy 
 of one of this young group when he received a let 
 ter from an important Easterner, asking: "Who is 
 
 144 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 145 
 
 this man that is replying to Douglas in your State? 
 Do you realize that no greater speeches have been 
 made on public questions in the history of our 
 country?" 
 
 "There," they all cried as the letter was passed 
 around, "I told you so." 
 
 One Lincoln man in the East, when the struggle 
 was going on, came back to tell how amazed and 
 delighted he had been to find that whenever it was 
 known he was from Illinois, all sorts of questions 
 about Lincoln were asked him: How old he was, 
 where he had been educated, what he "did." Was 
 he rich? How did he know so much? 
 
 This friend boasted loudly, u We have two giants 
 in Illinois. Douglas is our little Giant but our Big 
 Giant is Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 "This interest should be kept alive," he told Mr. 
 Lincoln. "It will make you president," and he sug 
 gested that a sketch or "life" be published. Lincoln 
 only shook his head. "What s the use of talking of 
 me for the presidency, while we have such men as 
 Seward, Chase, and others, who are so much better 
 known to the people, and whose names are so inti 
 mately associated with the principles of the Repub 
 lican party? Everybody knows them; nobody scarcely 
 outside of Illinois knows me. Besides, is it not, as 
 a matter of justice, due to such men, who have car 
 ried this movement forward to its present status, in 
 spite of fearful opposition, personal abuse, and hard 
 names? I really think so. 
 
 "Let s don t talk about it, it won t pay." 
 
 His hesitation did not discourage his friends. He 
 
146 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 had the makings of a champion. They would back 
 him. One of them the young editor who had lost 
 his head at the convention in 1856 when Lincoln 
 had made the speech which had carried everybody 
 away with enthusiasm went to Washington about 
 a year after the debates and began to talk up Lincoln 
 to members of Congress. 
 
 He was an available man, he told them; that is, 
 he was a man they could all get together on which 
 was not true in the case of other better-known candi 
 dates. What this young editor was really trying to 
 do was to make people in various parts of the coun 
 try know that Lincoln was in the field and that Illi 
 nois was behind him. 
 
 In the meantime, Lincoln was building himself 
 up politically better than he realized. If he didn t 
 see much chance for himself he saw a great future 
 for the Republican party if they were "united and 
 resolute." They must keep their pile of votes to 
 gether. They must not waste time dallying with 
 Douglas as some of the Easterners were still in 
 clined to do. They must stand solid for 1860. He 
 found many chances to do his part in keeping the 
 ranks in line. From all sides there came calls for 
 him to help the Republicans. It was such a call that 
 in the fall of 1859 took him to Ohio. He went will 
 ingly, for he was again on Douglas heels. And 
 again he believed he "had" him. The Little Giant 
 had given him a fine opening by declaring that the 
 men who had founded the country, the "Fathers" 
 believed with him that Congress had no power to 
 keep slavery out of the territories that it was purely 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 14? 
 
 a local matter. Lincoln was terribly indignant over 
 this contention. 
 
 "There are two ways of establishing a proposi 
 tion/ he said in Ohio. "One is by trying to demon 
 strate it upon reason, and the other is to show that 
 great men in former times have thought so and so, 
 and thus to pass it by the weight of pure authority. 
 Now, if Judge Douglas will demonstrate somehow 
 that this is popular sovereignty the right of one 
 man to make a slave of another, without any right in 
 that other or any one else to object demonstrate it 
 as Euclid demonstrated propositions there is no ob 
 jection. But when he comes forward, seeking to 
 carry a principle by bringing it to the authority of 
 men who themselves utterly repudiate that principle, 
 I ask that he shall not be permitted to do it. He 
 asks the community to believe that the men of the 
 Revolution were in favor of his great principle, when 
 we have the naked history that they themselves 
 dealt with this very subject matter of his principle, 
 and utterly repudiated his principle, acting upon a 
 precisely contrary ground. It is as impudent and 
 absurd as if a prosecuting attorney should stand up 
 before a jury and ask them to convict A as the mur 
 derer of B, while B was walking alive before them." 
 
 Lincoln realized, however, that he did not neces 
 sarily rout Douglas by insisting that he was wrong. 
 He must prove it, and so when late in the year he 
 received an invitation from the Young Men s Repub 
 lican Club of Brooklyn, New York, to speak in 
 Plymouth Church the next February, he set to work 
 to collect full proofs. It was a heavy task, but he 
 
148 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 did not shirk it. All through the winter he pored 
 over records and documents and histories of the 
 period when the Constitution was being made and 
 amended, refreshing his memory, digging up new 
 facts, examining and strengthening the arguments 
 he had been building up in the last six years and out 
 of it all producing a new speech which he knew was 
 a good one good because it was sound at the heart 
 the truth and the whole truth about the "Fathers." 
 
 When the time for his engagement came, the 
 speech was finished and carefully written out. Anx 
 ious to look his best as well as to do his best, he 
 bought a brand-new suit of clothes and started East. 
 When he arrived he found that the club had trans 
 ferred the lecture to New York City, such was the 
 interest in his coming. He was to speak in Cooper 
 Union and to have in his audience a big group of 
 distinguished men men like Horace Greeley, 
 George William Curtis, William Cullen Bryant. It 
 was to be a trial of his ability, he saw, a test of what 
 he was worth. He set his teeth hard. He knew 
 he had his proofs if he could only present them so 
 as to show people their real meaning and stir them 
 to action! 
 
 He had written the speech in full, but he had gone 
 over his arguments so carefully and so often in his 
 mind that he had no need of notes. Nor did he make 
 any attempt to catch his audience at the start by the 
 stories and jokes for which he was famous and which 
 they rather expected from him, but plunged at once 
 into the heart of the question, taking as his text 
 words from Douglas own mouth : 
 
LINCOLN IN FEBRUARY, 1860, AT THE TIME OF THE COOPER 
 INSTITUTE SPEECH 
 
 From photograph by Brady. It was a frequent remark of Lincoln that 
 this portrait and the Cooper Institute Speech made him President. 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 149 
 
 "Our Fathers, when they framed the government 
 under which we live, understood this question just 
 as well, and even better than we do now." 
 
 "I agree," said Mr. Lincoln, "now let us see how 
 they understood it." Who were the "Fathers?" 
 First, there were the thirty-nine men who signed the 
 Constitution. What did they think about letting 
 slavery into the territories? Man by man he had 
 picked them out and hunted up just what they had 
 said and how they had voted on the subject. He 
 showed his audience that twenty-one of the thirty- 
 nine were on record as against slavery in any terri 
 tory the United States then owned only two he 
 found had ever voted for its admission. He in 
 cluded the members of the first Congress in the 
 "Fathers" as they had adopted the first ten amend 
 ments made to the Constitution and he showed that 
 this congress of seventy-six men passed an ordinance 
 forbidding slavery in all the territory we then owned. 
 
 Of course we should count George Washington 
 as a "Father." What did he think about Congress 
 having the power to keep slavery out of the terri 
 tory? Why, he signed the bill that did the thing. 
 Moreover, he told Lafayette he thought it a wise 
 thing to do and that for his part he hoped the time 
 would come when all the States would be free. 
 
 That is, Lincoln had taken Douglas at his word 
 and showed by proof, which had cost him long days 
 of research, that the "Fathers" had thought slavery 
 ought to be restricted, that they had made the best 
 laws they could to restrict it ; and had stood by these 
 laws as long as they lived. 
 
150 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 All that the Republicans now asked, Mr. Lincoln 
 said, was that Congress continue to do as the 
 "Fathers" had done. "As those Fathers marked it, 
 so let it be again marked as an evil not to be ex 
 tended but to be tolerated and protected only be 
 cause of and so far as its actual presence among us 
 makes that toleration and protection a necessity." 
 
 Resting on the historical foundation that he had 
 laid, Lincoln went on in his speech to claim that the 
 Republicans, far from being revolutionists as Doug 
 las was declaring them to be, were in fact the real 
 conservatives ; that, they were following the Consti 
 tution, not evading it. If this were true, why should 
 there be men threatening to leave the Union in case 
 a Republican President was elected? What would 
 satisfy people that were making these threats? 
 Nothing in the world, Lincoln said, but that the 
 Republicans should declare that slavery was right 
 and allow it to spread, and he ended his speech with 
 certain sentences, necessary to bear in mind if you 
 are to fully understand just how Lincoln was think 
 ing and feeling at this moment. 
 
 "If slavery is right," he said, "all words, acts, 
 laws, and constitutions against it are themselves 
 wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If 
 it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality 
 its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly in 
 sist upon its extension its enlargement. All they 
 ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery 
 right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they 
 thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 151 
 
 thinking it wrong is the precise fact upon which de 
 pends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as 
 they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full 
 recognition as being right ; but thinking it wrong, as 
 we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes 
 with their view, and against our own? In view of 
 our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can 
 we do this? 
 
 "Wrong, as we think slavery is, we can yet afford 
 to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to 
 the necessity arising from its actual presence in the 
 nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, 
 allow it to spread into the national territories, and 
 to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense 
 of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty 
 fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none 
 of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so 
 industriously plied and belabored contrivances such 
 as groping for some middle ground between the right 
 and the wrong; vain as the search for a man who 
 should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such 
 as a policy of don t care on a question about which 
 all true men do care ; such as Union appeals beseech 
 ing true Union men to yield to Disunionists, revers 
 ing the divine rule and calling, not the sinners, but 
 the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to 
 Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washing 
 ton said and undo what Washington did. 
 
 "Neither let us be slandered from our duty by 
 false accusations against us, nor frightened from it 
 by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of 
 
152 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right 
 makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare 
 to do our duty as we understand it." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s highly intelligent audience was so 
 captivated by the careful and solid way in which he 
 built up his arguments and by the force and origi 
 nality of his expressions that again and again the 
 packed house stopped him by long and enthusiastic 
 applause. He won them completely. The next day 
 The New York Evening Post, of which the poet, 
 William Cullen Bryant, was editor, published the 
 whole speech, and a committee of the Young Men s 
 Republican Club, eager to let people see what this 
 Western man, who had so carried away an Eastern 
 audience, looked like, took him out and had his 
 photograph made. A few days later this picture 
 filled the front page of Harper s Weekly. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln used to say that the Cooper Union 
 speech and this picture made him President. You 
 should study the picture as well as the speech. And 
 if you do, you will see at once that he was not the 
 uncouth, ill-clad man that his enemies were already 
 describing him to be. This picture shows a man of 
 dignity and gentleness, with a face of strong lines 
 and features and eyes deep with feeling. And as for 
 clothes, they were the correct ones of the day, easily 
 and unconsciously worn. A man to look at again 
 and again if you met him in a crowd. 
 
 You can imagine how all that had happened in 
 New York delighted his friends back home who were 
 working so hard to make him Illinois 1 candidate for 
 President. There were not a few of the most impor- 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 153 
 
 tant Republicans in the State who felt as Lincoln 
 had felt himself that with Seward and Chase in the 
 field it would be wasting ammunition to use Lincoln. 
 Seward had the lead, and it was this lead that Lin 
 coln s friends were trying to overcome. They, of 
 course, made the best of what he had done in New 
 York. "Look at this," they shouted, "his whole 
 speech reported in a big New York paper, and a 
 full-page picture in Harper s Weekly. They recog 
 nize what we have always said, that Lincoln is a 
 great man. And if this is so, why should we not 
 stand by our own? Why go outside of the State for 
 a candidate when we have such material?" 
 
 When Lincoln came back after a month of speak 
 ing and sight-seeing in the East he found his presi 
 dential boom had grown like a gourd in his absence, 
 and it looked every day more and more as if he and 
 not Seward would be the choice of the State when 
 the convention was held. And so it happened. He 
 was nominated at Decatur, the town near which his 
 father had settled in 1831. 
 
 Whatever opposition there was to him when the 
 convention met was swept away by a simple demon 
 stration, suggested by the very man with whom in 
 those early days he had cut rails and steered flat- 
 boats. This was John Hanks, who, you will remem 
 ber, Thomas Lincoln had decided to follow into Illi 
 nois. Hanks was still living on his farm near Deca 
 tur, and although he was a Democrat, his admiration 
 for Lincoln was so great that when he heard that his 
 name was before the convention, he went into town 
 and looked up a delegate whom he knew. "I have 
 
154 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 known Mr. Lincoln for thirty years," he told this 
 man, "and we are opposed in politics. I have seen 
 him defeated again and again, when he knew that all 
 he had to do to win was to change, but he has never 
 changed. I respect him and I want you to help me 
 to do something for him." 
 
 Hanks went on to tell this man how, in their boy 
 hood days, he and Lincoln had toiled together, some 
 times flatboating, sometimes lumbering; how they 
 had tramped the prairies and forests with gun and 
 ax, cut and mauled rails along the Sangamon River, 
 to enclose his father s little home. All this time, 
 however hard he was working, there never was a 
 time but what he managed somehow to get books. 
 He settled all the disputes in the neighborhood, and 
 his decisions were always abided by. U I never knew 
 a man so honest, under all circumstances, for his 
 whole life," declared John Hanks. "My wife used 
 to say to me that some day Abe would come out and 
 be something, but I could not exactly see how a day 
 laborer, hopelessly poor, would ever stand much 
 chance to get up high in the world. So when I heard 
 that they were going to run him for President here 
 at Decatur, I thought that it might be a good thing 
 to present some of the rails that we made together 
 thirty years ago. I thought they would speak louder 
 in his praise than any orator could and that the con 
 vention would like to honor true labor." 
 
 The friend to whom John Hanks said all of this, 
 and probably a good deal more, quite agreed; and 
 as a result of their talk, just before the vote on the 
 candidate was taken, a little procession marched into 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 155 
 
 the room, bearing a big banner mounted on fence 
 rails. On this banner was this inscription: 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The Rail Candidate 
 FOR PRESIDENT IN 1860 
 
 Two rails from a lot of 3,000 made in 
 1830 by John Hanks and Abe Lincoln 
 whose father was the first pioneer of 
 Macon County. 
 
 The whole convention broke out in cheers and 
 began to call "Lincoln, Lincoln." "I suppose," said 
 Mr. Lincoln, rising and pointing to the banner, "that 
 I am expected to reply to that. I can t say that I 
 made those rails or not, but I am quite sure that I 
 made a great many just as good." The heart of the 
 convention warmed toward him a great man the 
 "Big Giant" of Illinois; a man who knew nobody 
 better what hard labor meant. A wise man in the 
 crowd, listening to the cheers, turned to a friend and 
 said, "Seward has lost the Illinois delegation." And 
 so he had. 
 
 Lincoln was Illinois choice, her "favorite son." 
 But how about the country? Could he get even one 
 more State? Why should he get another State, Lin 
 coln still asked himself, when there were men like 
 Seward and Chase? 
 
 The friends who had engineered his boom to this 
 point did not stop to ask this question. They were 
 too busy. 
 
156 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 The national Republican convention of 1861 was 
 held in Chicago, and this gave them a great advan 
 tage the advantage a home team always has on its 
 own field over a visiting team. There are more 
 banners flying for it, more girls wearing its colors, 
 bigger crowds cheering its moves. The Lincoln dele 
 gation did not neglect a single point. They flung 
 banners across every street in Chicago, draped the 
 face of every friendly building. They brought in 
 crowds from all over the prairies, with every State 
 band they could lay their hands upon, to march and 
 sing and hurrah. 
 
 Other States might import famous bands and ora 
 tors and banners ; but Illinois saw to it that her man 
 had more of everything. 
 
 When a political party chooses a candidate for 
 President, the chief thing is to find a man who can 
 be elected. The business of Lincoln s friends in this 
 convention was to persuade a majority of the dele 
 gates that he had a better chance of being elected 
 than any other man, even Seward himself. Seward 
 was the leader of the party, no doubt, but there were 
 great States like Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and 
 New Jersey in which the prejudices against him were 
 so strong that they could not elect him. Why go 
 down to defeat with Seward, the Illinois men argued, 
 when there was no such prejudice against Lincoln? 
 
 But the delegates from other States could argue 
 the same about their favorite sons, and did. The 
 Illinois delegates then had the task of persuading 
 each of these different States that in case its candidate 
 could not win, the next best man was Lincoln. 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 157 
 
 Still another task that they had was trying to con 
 centrate on Lincoln at once as many as possible of 
 the delegates who had come "uninstructed." 
 
 Men always work fiercely at national conventions, 
 but probably no delegates ever worked harder than 
 these friends of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. For 
 days before the convention and night and day after 
 it began, they ran from one State group to another, 
 arguing, pleading, threatening, trading. And their 
 work told, for, even before the convention was called 
 on May i6th, Lincoln s chances were looking up. All 
 through the early days of the convention these 
 chances constantly improved ; still, on the morning of 
 the day the nomination was to be made, there seemed 
 to be no great likelihood of his succeeding. The 
 best observers were saying that Seward s nomination 
 was sure. 
 
 A great convention for nominating a President is 
 always one of the most exciting things that happens 
 in this country, and the crowds it draws together are 
 among the largest that we ever see. In Chicago in 
 1860 the Republicans had an enormous gathering. 
 They had built a great barn of an auditorium which 
 they called the Wigwam big enough to hold some 
 ten thousand people. This was packed to the very 
 roof the morning the voting began while outside the 
 streets were packed quite as closely with people wait 
 ing for news. If you have ever been at a convention 
 you know how, after the names of all the candidates 
 are in, and the voting begins, you hold your very 
 breath. You know how quickly your pencil flies as 
 you put down the votes for each man, how swiftly 
 
158 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 you add them up, how quickly you compare the re 
 sults ! That morning in Chicago, hundreds of pen 
 cils, held by hands, many of which trembled with ex 
 citement, cast up votes; and the very first addition 
 told a tale. Lincoln had 102 votes 5 1 1 /2 more than 
 the next man below him. It was a big difference. 
 
 Could these 5 1 1 / 2 votes be secured for him ? They 
 belonged to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania knew that 
 she had no chance of winning for her man, Simon 
 Cameron. Might she not be impressed by the size 
 of Lincoln s vote and change at once for him? There 
 was a quick consultation; the answer came: "Penn 
 sylvania gives her 52 votes for Lincoln." It was the 
 beginning of a break. Others quickly followed, and 
 when the flying pencils added up the second ballot, 
 Lincoln had 182 votes. The third ballot was taken 
 quickly, and ten thousand people sat breathless as 
 State after State turned over its vote to Lincoln. 
 This last report was scarcely in before a whisper 
 and then a yell ran through the great crowd 231^ 
 votes for Lincoln; 2j4 more would give him the 
 nomination. Ohio was the first to act 4 votes from 
 Chase. He had won. 
 
 You know, of course, what happened then. You 
 can imagine the roar that rose and fell until there was 
 no breath left in the cheerers. Illinois that morning 
 had packed the Wigwam with men and women pre 
 pared, in case of Lincoln s nomination, to outroar 
 anything that had ever been known in the history of 
 political conventions. One of Lincoln s friends who 
 had worked longest and hardest for him has left ? 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 159 
 
 stirring description of what this claque did when 
 the vote was announced. 
 
 "The scene which followed baffles all human de 
 scription. After an instant s silence, as deep as 
 death, which seemed to be required to enable the 
 assembly to take in the full force of the announce 
 ment, the wildest and mightiest yell (for it can be 
 called by no other name) burst forth from ten thou 
 sand voices which we ever heard from mortal 
 throats. This strange and tremendous demonstra 
 tion, accompanied with leaping up and down, tossing 
 hats, handkerchiefs, and canes recklessly into the air, 
 with the waving of flags, and with every other con 
 ceivable mode of exultant and unbridled joy, con 
 tinued steadily and without pause for perhaps ten 
 minutes. 
 
 "It then began to rise and fall in slow and billow 
 ing bursts, and for perhaps the next five minutes 
 these stupendous waves of uncontrollable excitement, 
 now rising into the deepest and fiercest shouts and 
 then sinking like the ground swell of the ocean into 
 hoarse and lessening murmurs, rolled through the 
 multitude. Every now and then it would seem as 
 though the physical power of the assembly was ex 
 hausted and that quiet would be restored, when all 
 at once a new hurricane would break out, more pro 
 longed and terrific than anything before. If sheer 
 exhaustion had not prevented, we don t know but the 
 applause would have continued to this hour." 
 
 While this was going on inside the Wigwam, the 
 town outside went crazy, A boy with a cannon had 
 
160 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 been placed on the roof with instructions to fire if 
 Lincoln was nominated. When this cannon boomed 
 the news, twenty thousand people in the neighbor 
 hood took up the cry. It spread over the city, and 
 from the city to the country; and before morning it 
 was just as Douglas said when he heard the news in 
 Washington, "There won t be a tar barrel left in 
 Illinois to-night." 
 
 Down in Springfield the town had been hanging 
 around the telegraph office all the morning, waiting 
 for news. Mr. Lincoln himself had dropped in two 
 or three times only to go out when the report came 
 in that the voting had begun. He still did not think 
 it was possible that he could win over Seward. He 
 was standing in the door of a shop across the square, 
 talking to a friend, when he suddenly saw a boy 
 plunging headlong through the crowd toward him. 
 He was shouting at the top of his voice: "Mr. 
 Lincoln, you are nominated ! Mr. Lincoln, you are 
 nominated!" 
 
 You can imagine what happened in Springfield 
 then the handshaking and the laughing and the 
 crying! How the men gathered about Mr. Lincoln 
 and the woman ran in to talk it over with Mrs. 
 Lincoln! How the boys and the girls gathered 
 around Tad and Willie the two Lincoln boys who 
 were at home ! 
 
 It was the beginning of an exciting nine months 
 for Springfield a nine months in which almost every 
 day brought some new joyful or tragic sensation. 
 
 If Mr. Lincoln had had doubts of his nomina 
 tion up to the very hour that the excited small boy 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 161 
 
 rushed across the square shouting the news, he had 
 less of his election. If the Republicans held to 
 gether, it looked as if it could be done and this was 
 true chiefly because those who opposed him were 
 badly divided. There was a party that believed 
 slavery could not legally be kept off new soil by either 
 Congress or local government, and it had a ticket 
 in the field. There was a party which declared Con 
 gress could not keep it out but that the local govern 
 ment could; or, as Mr. Lincoln put it: "A thing 
 may be lawfully driven away from where it has a 
 lawful right to be;" and it had a ticket and Douglas 
 was at its head. There was a third party which 
 evaded the slavery question and declared for the 
 Union, and it had a ticket. A situation more helpful 
 to Mr. Lincoln s success could not have been ar 
 ranged, if the Republicans only held together. But 
 would they? Would great men like Seward and 
 Chase consent? To Mr. Lincoln s great joy they did 
 soon consent, and, disappointed as they were, wrote 
 him manly letters of congratulation. Seward s fol 
 lowers were all for bolting the nomination at first 
 and putting Mr. Seward in the field. He laughed at 
 them. "The Republican party was not made for 
 William H. Seward," he said, "but Mr. Seward, if 
 he is worth anything, for the Republican party." 
 
 It was not long before everybody was in line. If 
 they worked they could do it, they kept telling one 
 another. 
 
 It was a great campaign, that followed; and it 
 was a campaign in which more boys took part than 
 any that the country had ever seen. The feature in 
 
1 62 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 which they were most interested was the "Wide 
 Awakes." There were bands organized for street 
 parades, bodyguards for political speakers, and for 
 all sorts of campaign work, such work as Boy Scouts 
 would do nowadays. They wore black-glazed caps 
 and capes and carried blazing coal-oil torches. The 
 ambition of each club of Wide Awakes was to outdo 
 all neighboring clubs in fantastic marching. They 
 learned all the movements they could hear of and 
 invented their own combinations, drilling until they 
 were perfect in their forming and reforming. Their 
 favorite march was the zigzag an imitation of a 
 rail fence. Each band, of course, had its own partic 
 ular badge, and each was ambitious to have on its 
 badge a picture of Mr. Lincoln splitting rails or 
 steering a flatboat. 
 
 Many of the Wide Awakes carried their banners 
 mounted on rails in the fashion introduced at the 
 Decatur convention, and proud indeed was the club 
 that had one of the original rails Lincoln had made 
 in 1831. None of the Wide Awakes owned a Lin 
 coln relic quite so precious, however, as the band at 
 Hartford, Connecticut this was the very maul with 
 which he had split the rails which were now in such 
 demand. This maul was treasured by the Hartford 
 Wide Awakes as long as they existed and finally was 
 given to the Connecticut Historical Society, where it 
 is still to be seen. 
 
 The Wide Awakes marched and everybody sang. 
 The refrain of the favorite song ran : 
 
 "Oh, ain t you glad you joined the Republicans?" 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 163 
 
 But the finest was Whittier s " The Quakers are 
 Out. JI 
 
 "Give the flags to the winds! 
 
 Set the hills all aflame! 
 Make way for the man with 
 
 The Patriarch s name! 
 Away with misgivings away 
 
 With all doubt, 
 For Lincoln goes in when the 
 
 Quakers are out!" 
 
 Marching and singing were only the accompani 
 ments to the speaking. The campaign was distin 
 guished by some of the noblest and most sincere 
 political speeches we ve ever heard in the United 
 States. The theme was so great that of human 
 freedom that it brought out the best in men. 
 Charles Sumner, William H. Seward, Carl Schurz, 
 Horace Greeley, Salmon P. Chase were the most 
 noted of these speakers; but there was scarcely a 
 county in the North that did not have its local ora 
 tor. Through the summer and fall there was a con 
 tinual succession of rallies and celebrations and polit 
 ical picnics bringing together thousands of people. 
 The greatest of these all was in Springfield in August, 
 when a procession of seventy-five thousand people 
 eight miles long passed before Mr. Lincoln s door. 
 Think of what that meant to the boys of the town 
 that knew and loved him so well ! 
 
 The hard work the Republicans were putting in, 
 the enthusiasm that their feeling that they were right 
 was giving them, the division in their opponents 
 lines, told every day; and long before election time 
 
164 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 Mr. Lincoln felt reasonably sure that he would be 
 the next President .of the United States. But, along 
 with this certainty, came an increasing anxiety. Ever 
 since the Republicans had set out to prevent slavery s 
 spreading to free soil, there had been many groups 
 of important people in the slave States, who had 
 threatened to go out of the Union and fight to stay 
 out, if the Republicans should ever elect a President. 
 They had said this in 1856, and when Mr. Lincoln 
 went over to the new party that year and made his 
 great "lost speech," he had told them that, such 
 questions were to be settled in this country "by bal 
 lots, not bullets." And he had added, "We won t 
 go out of the Union, and you shan t." 
 
 The more flourishing the Republicans became, the 
 louder the threats of the Disunionists. When Mr. 
 Lincoln spoke in Cincinnati in the fall of 1859, he 
 had a good many of the discontented in his audience, 
 and he took pains to reassure them. "Suppose we 
 do beat you," he said, "what are we going to do with 
 you? We mean to treat you as nearly as we possibly 
 can as Washington and Jefferson and Madison 
 treated you. We mean to leave you alone, and in 
 no way interfere with your institution, to abide by 
 all and every compromise of the Constitution. We 
 mean to remember that you are as good as we, that 
 there is no difference between us other than the dif 
 ference of circumstances. We mean to recognize 
 and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts 
 in your bosoms as other people or as we claim to 
 have, and treat you accordingly. We mean to marry 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 165 
 
 your girls when we have a chance the white ones, 
 I mean; and I have the honor to inform you that I 
 once did have a chance in that way." 
 
 As the election approached and it looked more and 
 more as if the Republicans would succeed, the Dis- 
 unionists became louder and louder in their threats. 
 Mr. Lincoln, however, never really believed that 
 they would carry out what they said. It did not 
 seem possible to him. To him the Union was one 
 and indivisible, something sacred, that must be pro 
 tected and preserved. He felt that it was not only 
 the liberty and happiness of the people of this coun 
 try that was involved in the preservation of the 
 Union, but the hope of the world for all future time. 
 We were trying to work out a government based on 
 the Declaration of Independence a government 
 which promised that in due time the weights should 
 be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all 
 should have an equal chance. For men deliberately 
 to attempt to break up a Union which had this senti 
 ment behind it was unthinkable to him. He did not 
 believe it of the South, and although the defiance 
 became thicker and thicker through the summer and 
 fall, he held to this opinion. And in this he was 
 backed by Seward and Schurz and Bryant all of 
 whom laughed at the alarms. Not a few people in 
 the South for in every State there were groups of 
 Unionists kept writing him, not to be frightened, 
 that although there might be disorder if he were 
 elected, there certainly would not be secession. 
 
 But suppose they should try it? He had to ask 
 
1 66 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 himself that. And did. Well, there was no doubt at 
 all in his mind about what his duty would be he 
 must preserve the Union. 
 
 You see, then, that even before his election, his 
 problem had begun to change, that instead of its 
 being a fight to keep slavery back where it legally 
 belonged, it looked as if it might become a fight to 
 keep the Union together. 
 
 In November, the hopes of the Republicans were 
 realized Mr. Lincoln was elected. No sooner was 
 this done, however, than he saw how mistaken he had 
 been in his confidence that the Disunionists would not 
 carry out their threats. Seven States, one after the 
 other, quickly left the Union, and as they left they 
 prepared to defend themselves, seizing United States 
 forts and arsenals within their reach and voting 
 large sums for arms. Early in February of 1861, 
 these states united in a new government, the South 
 ern Confederacy adopted a constitution, elected of 
 ficers, and went about creating an army and navy. In 
 doing this they were quite as sure that they were 
 right as Mr. Lincoln was sure that they were wrong. 
 Just as he believed and said that if the South suc 
 ceeded in extending slavery to free territory they 
 would eventually extend it into the free States, so 
 the South believed that if Mr. Lincoln and his party 
 prevented their extending slavery, they would event 
 ually try to abolish it, even where it had been made 
 legal. If we cannot live and do what we think right 
 within the Union, they said, we will leave it and 
 establish a government where we can follow out our 
 own ideas of what is right and what is wrong. This 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 167 
 
 meant, of course, that the Disunionists did not share 
 Mr. Lincoln s strong devotion to the Union. 
 
 While all this was going on, Mr. Lincoln was 
 sitting in Springfield. Not until after his inaugura 
 tion on March 4th would he have the power to lift 
 his voice or take a step to interfere with what the 
 seceding States were doing. The barn door was 
 open, the horse was being stolen before his eyes, and 
 he could do nothing. It was even doubtful if, when 
 he finally did get to Washington, he could find the 
 tracks. Nothing is harder than not to have the 
 power to lift your hand when something you love is 
 being destroyed. The helpless Republicans were dis 
 tracted. There were some in the party who said, 
 "Let them go." There were others who said "Let s 
 compromise give them what they want." And 
 there were still others who said with Mr. Lincoln 
 in 1856, "We won t go out of the Union, and you 
 shan t." That is, the united party that had elected 
 Mr. Lincoln was becoming a divided party; and each 
 faction was besieging Mr. Lincoln to adopt its way 
 of thinking. 
 
 Thousands of letters and hundreds of visitors 
 poured into Springfield begging him to stand by his 
 guns, to spike his guns, to deliver his guns to the 
 Disunionists. Threats filled his mail threats of 
 hanging, of shooting, of kidnaping. He kept his 
 head through it all, and he held his tongue as well, 
 going about his preparations for Washington, select 
 ing his Cabinet, writing his inaugural address, closing 
 up his law business, though not taking down his 
 "shingle." "Let it hang there undisturbed," he told 
 
1 68 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 his partner. "If I live, I am coming back some time 
 and then we will go right on practicing law as if 
 nothing had happened." He went out of his way to 
 say good-by to all his old friends, and took a day off 
 to visit his father s grave in Coles County, and to 
 pass a few hours with his beloved stepmother, now 
 over seventy years old. The parting with her was 
 the saddest of all for, far away in the country, as 
 she was, the threats against Mr. Lincoln s life had 
 reached her, and she had come to feel that she would 
 never see him alive again. 
 
 At last everything was done, and on the evening 
 of February n, 1861, Mr. Lincoln and his family 
 and a large party of friends left Springfield for 
 Washington. As he stood at the end of his car look 
 ing over the great gathering, he made a little parting 
 speech, which is counted by lovers of good English 
 one of the most perfect things he ever said. There 
 were boys of fourteen in that crowd who were so 
 deeply moved by it that they were able to repeat 
 it as long as they lived. 
 
 "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 cen 
 tury, and have passed 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 assist 
 ance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I 
 cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois 169 
 
 Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain 
 vith you, and be everywhere for good, let us confi 
 dently hope all will yet be well. To His care com 
 mending you, as I hope in your prayers you will 
 commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 
 
 Although Mr. Lincoln knew that there were many 
 people who thought he would never reach Washing 
 ton alive, and the probability was that there were a 
 few people who had sworn that he should never live 
 to be inaugurated, he did not allow his danger to in 
 terfere in the least with the program of receptions 
 and speech-making that had been laid out for him. 
 He made every speech and shook every hand. He 
 even remembered at one place to ask from the tail 
 end of his car for a little girl who, a few months be 
 fore, had written him a letter, asking if he had any 
 little girls and telling him that she thought he would 
 look better with whiskers. Mr. Lincoln had an 
 swered her that he regretted the necessity of say 
 ing that he had no daughter, but that he had three 
 sons, one seventeen, one nine, and one seven. As 
 to the whiskers, he wrote her, "As I have never 
 worn any, don t you think that people would call it 
 a piece of silly affectation were I to begin wearing 
 them now?" Regardless, however, of what people 
 might think he had actually begun to grow the whisk 
 ers, and passing through the town where the little girl 
 lived, he asked for her. Of course, she was there. 
 Who would not be, having received a letter from 
 him? And when he called for her she came forward 
 with a great bunch of flowers for him, and received 
 in return a hearty kiss of thanks. 
 
170 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 When the program had been carried out in full, 
 all the speeches made the last was at Harrisburg 
 on February 22d he heeded the warnings of detec 
 tives and friends that a plot to assassinate him as he 
 passed through Baltimore had been discovered, and, 
 slipping away from his party, took an earlier train 
 than that which he had been announced to take, and 
 at daylight on February 23d, was safe in the capital. 
 
 On March 4th came the inauguration. Never was 
 an inaugural address listened to with such anxiety. 
 What would he say? What would he say about the 
 new government that the seceding States had 
 formed? What would he say about the forts and 
 arsenals that they had seized? Would he say, Go 
 in peace I Or would he hold to his view that the 
 Union could not be broken? 
 
 What he did say was not harsh, but it was firm. 
 What it amounted to was that, in his judgment, the 
 Union was made to last, that no State could vote 
 itself out, that in spite of what had been happening 
 in the South, he regarded the Union still unbroken, 
 and that he should go ahead, administering the laws 
 everywhere, holding the forts, collecting custom 
 duties, distributing the mails. He should not in 
 vade the seceding States or use force against them. 
 Kindly and affectionately he begged the dissatisfied 
 not to take in hot haste a step which they would never 
 take deliberately, but to "think long and well." 
 "Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time," he 
 counseled them. At the end, he again assured them 
 "the government will not assail you. You can have 
 no conflict without being yourself the aggressor." 
 
The Big Giant of Illinois I? 1 
 
 But in the next sentence he warned them : "You have 
 no oath registered in heaven to destroy the govern 
 ment, while I shall have the most solemn one to 
 preserve and protect and defend it." 
 A moment later he took that oath. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ARMED WITH A SINGLE PURPOSE 
 
 To front a lie in arms and not to yield 
 This shows, methinks, God s plan 
 And measures of a stalwart man. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWBLL. 
 
 IT often happens when a man takes a splendid 
 oath like that of Abraham Lincoln on March 
 4, 1 86 1, "to preserve, to protect and to defend * 
 the Constitution that he does not see definitely 
 what it means in conduct; that is, he has no clear 
 idea as to how he is going to make good. Mr. Lin 
 coln, when he took his oath, did see. "My course is 
 as plain as a turnpike road," he told one of his 
 friends. 
 
 He had mentioned several things in his inaugural 
 address that he saw on this "turnpike road." One 
 was to hold the forts that belonged to the United 
 States. 
 
 Now, as we have seen, the seven States in going 
 out of the Union had taken possession not only of 
 the forts but of the arsenals, dockyards, custom 
 houses everything belonging to the United States 
 within their borders. Nothing was left excepting 
 three forts along the Florida coast, and one in the 
 center of Charleston Harbor Fort Sumter, held by 
 
 172 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 173 
 
 a small group of United States soldiers under Major 
 Robert Anderson. 
 
 According to Mr. Lincoln s oath, he must hold 
 Sumter. Whether he did or not would be a test of 
 the kind of a President he would prove to be one 
 who meant what he said, or one who, when he saw 
 that what he said carried serious consequences with 
 it, would squirm out. 
 
 One of the earliest letters that came to him on his 
 first full day as President of the United States was 
 from Major Anderson, telling him that he had 
 neither the men nor the guns and ammunition to de 
 fend himself; worse still, that his provisions were 
 almost gone. He might pull through on dry bread, 
 pork, and water for four weeks, but no longer. If 
 they were to be relieved, Major Anderson said, it 
 would take 20,000 men. 
 
 He was not exaggerating. Fort Sumter was 
 nearly encircled by hostile forts and batteries, and 
 in January, when President Buchanan had attempted 
 to send provisions, the vessel had been fired upon by 
 the determined South Carolinians and had retired. 
 The harbor was stronger now than in January and 
 South Carolina no less determined that the North 
 should not reach Fort Sumter with food supplies or 
 guns. 
 
 What should be done? There were no 20,000 
 men on which Mr. Lincoln could put his hands. The 
 regular army at that moment numbered only about 
 16,000 men, and most of these were in the West 
 where Indian troubles called for constant attention. 
 Moreover, nearly one third of their officers had al- 
 
174 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 ready gone over to the Confederacy. The small 
 navy was also scattered in many different waters. 
 There were many people in the North who wrote 
 Mr. Lincoln that, since he had no force to relieve 
 the fort, he had better surrender it. There were 
 others who, while they did not quite like to use the 
 word "surrender," urged that there be no effort to 
 relieve Major Anderson, since it would surely cause 
 war. 
 
 A man must carry out his plans with the tools in 
 his hands. Mr. Lincoln saw only one thing as pos 
 sible, and that was to send the garrison provisions. 
 He would not allow brave men as they had shown 
 themselves to go hungry, he said, nor would he give 
 up the fort; that would be to admit the justice of the 
 Southern cause and go back on his word. Instead 
 of weakening he was every day feeling more resolute 
 about the matter of disunion. He worked con 
 stantly on the case in his own mind. What he asked 
 was whether, when an election had gone against a 
 group of citizens in a republic, they had a right to 
 break up the country. If this could be done, then 
 Mr. Lincoln felt that there was no use trying to 
 establish a "government of the people by the same 
 people." He asked himself whether there might not 
 be a fatal weakness in all republics. "Must a gov 
 ernment of necessity be too strong for the liberties 
 of its own people or too weak to maintain its own 
 existence?" It is not only governments that have to 
 ask themselves this question in this life. It is rare 
 indeed when any group of people, young or old, come 
 together, that sooner or later they do not find that if 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 175 
 
 they become strong there is danger of their becom 
 ing tyrannical and that if they remain weak there is 
 danger of their going out of existence. And this is 
 just as true of the individual as it is of a group. If 
 you are strong, you must look out or you will be a 
 tyrant. If you are weak, you must look out or you 
 will be a nobody. 
 
 This was what Mr. Lincoln was going over in his 
 own mind at this time. His conclusion was that it 
 was so important, not only for the United States but 
 for the future of the world, that it be proved that a 
 republic can be strong enough not only to resist at 
 tacks from the outside but to settle troubles inside, 
 that it was worth risking a war to get the proof. 
 
 No, he would not break his word: he would send 
 provisions to Fort Sumter; but at the same time he 
 would send word to the governor of South Carolina 
 that, in doing this, he would not now put in men, 
 arms, nor ammunition; and that, if later he con 
 cluded to do so, he would notify him unless, of 
 course, there should be an attack upon the fort. 
 
 The provisions were sent; but before they reached 
 the fort it was bombarded. The bombardment be 
 gan on the morning of April 12, 1861. Major An 
 derson and his men held out all that day and the 
 next. The night of April I3th, Mr. Lincoln had a 
 dream. He was sailing rapidly on a singular and 
 indescribable vessel toward a dark and indefinite 
 shore. The next morning, the I4th, when news 
 came that Sumter had fallen, he connected the fall 
 with his dream. He had reached the dark shore. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had told the seceding States in his 
 
Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 inaugural address that they could have no conflict 
 without being themselves the aggressors. Clearly 
 they were now the aggressors, and there was no more 
 question in the mind of the North than there was in 
 his mind that since the seceding States were unwilling 
 to trust to "time, discussion, and the ballot box" as 
 he had advised, the government must take back by 
 force the property they had seized and which they 
 had proved they meant to hold by force. 
 
 And so he at once issued a call for 75,000 men. 
 With that number he and his Cabinet believed that 
 they could suppress the rebellion, as they called it. 
 
 But the fall of Sumter and this call for men to 
 subdue them was all that was needed in the South to 
 unite both Secessionists and Union men. Still more 
 serious, the Southern Confederacy was quickly en 
 larged now that the tug had come four more States 
 joining fortunes with the seven that were out when 
 the Republicans came in. A third group the Bor 
 der States complicated Mr. Lincoln s situation, for 
 these States Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri 
 could not decide between the contestants. They were 
 pulled both ways. They would not go out of the 
 Union, but they would not fight the South. Mr. Lin 
 coln s problem was not merely putting down a rebel 
 lion. It was a question of overwhelming a hostile 
 country; that is, it was war. The 75,000 men he 
 had called for were not a drop in the bucket. 
 
 The country itself felt this, and all over the North 
 there was hardly a town in which, with the news of 
 the fall of Sumter, young and old men did not hasten 
 to form companies to offer to the government. Meet- 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 177 
 
 ings were called in churches, schools, and courthouses 
 and on the village greens, and before the minister or 
 schoolmaster or judge or politician who urged the de 
 fense of the Union had time to finish his speech, 
 there was a rush of men and boys to put down their 
 names. Before many weeks went by the Washington 
 government was swamped with the men that flowed 
 into the new army. 
 
 One of our greatest difficulties, Mr. Lincoln told 
 Congress on July 4, 1861, when he called them to 
 gether to report what he had done and to ask for 
 money to carry on the war, has been to avoid receiv 
 ing troops faster than we could take care of them. 
 "The people will save their government," he said, 
 "if the government itself will do its part only indif 
 ferently well." 
 
 It was not only men that were rushed to Wash 
 ington, but it was offers of funds from States and 
 from individuals. All the inventors of the country 
 set themselves to work to improve weapons and 
 boats. All the people who knew anything about 
 military science rushed in to offer themselves as 
 instructors. The doctors came to build up hospitals, 
 and women came to offer themselves as nurses. 
 
 In this instant answer to the guns that destroyed 
 Sumter, the action of no one man was more hearten 
 ing to Mr. Lincoln than that of his antagonist in his 
 famous fight against the extension of slavery to free 
 soil Stephen Douglas. Mr. Douglas had been de 
 feated for the presidency when Mr. Lincoln was 
 elected. He was a senator at that time and in a 
 position to know better than Mr. Lincoln did just 
 
178 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 how resolute the South was in its threat to break 
 up the Union. This was something he would not 
 listen to. He was afraid Mr. Lincoln would weaken 
 not carry out his promise to hold the forts, and 
 when finally he did and Sumter was fired on, Mr. 
 Douglas went to him, offering him all his great in 
 fluence to back him. He wired his decision to all his 
 followers and at once went out to speak for the 
 Union beginning in Illinois itself. Never had he 
 been so eloquent not Demosthenes or Mirabeau or 
 Patrick Henry were greater, his hearers declared. 
 His courage and patriotism at this critical moment 
 were remembered the longer because this was his 
 last campaign. He died suddenly only a few weeks 
 after the first call for troops to defend the Union. 
 
 In the South the same thing was happening. Every 
 man, woman, and child put himself and everything 
 he had at the command of the Confederate Govern 
 ment. There they did not call themselves rebels, 
 of course. They were defending their country a 
 country which they believed they had a right to 
 form. 
 
 If Mr. Lincoln believed and he seemed at first 
 to have the idea that the North would find it easy 
 to overthrow the South, he soon was disappointed. 
 The great army which gathered around Washington 
 had its first trial in July of 1861 only a few miles 
 south of Washington, at a place called Bull Run. 
 The battle was on a Sunday, and a good many men 
 went in carriages or on horseback down into Vir 
 ginia to see it. But before night they were back in 
 hot haste the Northern army had been defeated, 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 179 
 
 and was in retreat. It looked at first as if Washing 
 ton itself might be captured. 
 
 It was a terrible shock to the confident North, and 
 a horrible disappointment to Mr. Lincoln. Why 
 had it happened? That was what he set himself to 
 decide. What was their weakness? While he was 
 trying to find this out, a great many men were trying 
 to make out that it was not defeat but a panic caused 
 by teamsters and sight-seers. "I see," Mr. Lincoln 
 said one day to one of these people, u we whipped 
 the enemy and then ran away from him." 
 
 He was not the man to conceal or explain away 
 a reverse or to shirk his responsibility in connection 
 with one. He knew that the Constitution made the 
 President of the United States the commander in 
 chief of the army and navy, and that, though he had 
 a War Department and a Navy Department and 
 many officers and admirals, he must bear the burden 
 for whatever went wrong. The battle of Bull Run 
 was his defeat. How could he prevent another? 
 
 Mr. Lincoln believed that the defeat was charge 
 able largely to green soldiers and inexperienced of 
 ficers. He knew the battle had been fought before 
 the army was ready because the North had been long 
 urging, at the top of its voice, "On to Richmond." 
 The North must learn patience. He must have a 
 trained and disciplined army that would not be 
 stampeded by a panic of its teamsters if Richmond 
 was to be taken. For this he must have a com 
 mander who knew the business of training and in 
 whom the North would have confidence. There was 
 one man who seemed to be fit for the place, Gen. 
 
l8o Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 George B. McClellan, who had been doing work in 
 West Virginia of which the country thought well, 
 and it was General McClellan that Lincoln now made 
 commander of the Department of the Potomac with 
 an order to prepare the army to take Richmond. 
 
 The camp in which this work was to be done was 
 on the heights across the river from Washington, 
 and in the next month nobody had eyes for any other 
 field. It was the army they all believed would win 
 the war, so why trouble about the smaller armies 
 scattered in Missouri, Kentucky, or Tennessee? No 
 request of McClellan s was denied men and money 
 flowed freely to him. And he did his part, rapidly 
 turning the awkward, untrained squads into splendid, 
 efficient companies. 
 
 All through the fall of 1861 the country watched 
 the new army drilling and maneuvering, improving 
 its camp, building fortifications around Washing 
 ton, and daily becoming more wonderful to look at. 
 Thousands came to look at it, too, and conducted by 
 members of Congress or the Cabinet, made sight 
 seeing visits through the camp or watched the bril 
 liant reviews. 
 
 No visitor came oftener to McClellan s camp 
 than Mr. Lincoln himself, and none gave closer at 
 tention to every detail of camp life, spoke to more 
 private soldiers, asked more questions of the officers. 
 His hope, like that of the country, was in this great 
 army which McClellan was bringing into such per 
 fect form. 
 
 But as the winter approached people became anx- 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 181 
 
 ious. Why did not this wonderful army do some 
 thing? Everything had been done for it ; why not on 
 to Richmond? Mr. Lincoln, who had felt strongly 
 that McClellan should not be asked to move until 
 he was ready, finally began to prod him; but always 
 the general had excuses the army lacked this or 
 that; the enemy outnumbered him; he was not ready. 
 He trained and trained and trained, but advance he 
 would not. 
 
 As the pressure of the government and the de 
 mand of the country became stronger, he became 
 apparently more obstinate in his resolve not to move 
 until he chose, and to Mr. Lincoln he became actu 
 ally insolent, often keeping him waiting when he 
 came to his headquarters, as well as saying con 
 temptuous things about him which were repeated 
 over the country. Mr. Lincoln was very patient 
 under all this. When one day he had been kept 
 waiting half an hour by the general and some indig 
 nant friend resented it, he said, "I will hold McClel 
 lan s horse if he will give us a victory." 
 
 It was not McClellan s insolence that troubled 
 him, it was a fear that, splendid as the general might 
 be as a maker of armies, he was not the one to use 
 them. McClellan was troubled by what he called 
 the "slows ;" he was not a fighter. And he must have 
 a fighter. Was there one anywhere ? 
 
 He began to study carefully day by day what the 
 commanding officers in other fields were doing. He 
 was like the leader of a league ball team, who must 
 be keeping his eye on the teams of the country to see 
 
1 82 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 what new and promising talent is developing so that 
 he will be ready, when somebody fails him, to put his 
 hand on material in which there is hope. 
 
 Almost every day and often at night he went to 
 the telegraph office, which was only across the street 
 from the White House, and, sitting by the desk of 
 the telegraph operator, looked over the big grist of 
 telegrams which were constantly coming in, study 
 ing each man s work. He began to send many let 
 ters and telegrams to these officers, asking them 
 questions, giving them advice, urging them to be 
 more cautious here or to be more daring there. He 
 encouraged them to action, praised them if they suc 
 ceeded, and came quickly to their relief if they failed. 
 Every officer in the long chain which the North was 
 trying to stretch around the Confederacy soon began 
 to see that the President s eye was on him. He be 
 gan to understand, too, that he could not fool the 
 President, that he might be a civilian but that he had 
 a surprising sense of military affairs. 
 
 This understanding on Mr. Lincoln s part was no 
 accident. He had been working night and day to fit 
 himself to play his part as a commander in chief by 
 learning something of military science. He read the 
 best books on the subject, talked them over with the 
 educated officers of the army, and applied what he 
 learned to his own problem. That is, he did what 
 he had done back in 1832 when he saw a chance to 
 earn his living by surveying instead of by the hard 
 labor of rail-splitting and flatboat steering; when he 
 made up his mind in 1849 to let politics alone and 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 183 
 
 become a first class lawyer he studied night and day 
 the science he must practice. 
 
 His military problem, he saw, was to pen up the 
 Confederates in their own States not only prevent 
 ing them from invading the North but from trading 
 with any part of this or any other country. You can 
 imagine him studying out on the great map which 
 hung in his office in the White House what must be 
 done to shut them in. The western boundary of the 
 Southern Confederacy was made up of Texas, Ar 
 kansas, and Missouri; its northern boundary of Ken 
 tucky, West Virginia, and Maryland. On the east 
 was the Atlantic and on the south the Gulf of Mex 
 ico. Mr. Lincoln saw that, if possible, he must 
 drive the defenders of the Confederacy east 
 of the Mississippi, bringing that river under 
 Union control and giving him New Orleans and 
 its port. He must hold his northern line and 
 blockade the Atlantic and Gulf ports so that the 
 Confederates could neither get in nor out. This was 
 the general plan. The first and far and away the 
 most important part of this plan was to take Rich 
 mond, which had been made the capital of the enemy 
 government when Virginia joined the Confederacy. 
 If this plan of penning up the Confederacy, opening 
 the Mississippi, and capturing Richmond was to be 
 promptly carried out, Mr. Lincoln realized early in 
 the war that it must be by outmatching the enemy in 
 strategy. He had the greater numbers, but the ene 
 my was quicker on his feet. "We must fail," he told 
 one of his generals in January of 1862, while he was 
 
1 84 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 waiting in vain for McClellan to move, "unless we 
 find some way of making our advantage an over 
 match for his ; this can only be done by menacing him 
 with superior forces at different points at the same 
 time, so that we can safely attack one or both if he 
 makes no change; and if he weakens one to 
 strengthen the other, forbear to attack the strength 
 ened one, and seize and hold the weakened one, gain 
 ing so much." 
 
 This idea of threatening at two points so as to 
 tempt the enemy to divide his forces, and of attack 
 ing quickly any point known to be weakened would be 
 good strategy in any game, you will agree. Mr. 
 Lincoln constantly urged it on his generals. Once 
 when Lee had stretched his line in Virginia over a 
 long distance, he telegraphed to General Hooker, 
 then the commander of the Army of the Potomac : 
 "If the head of Lee s army is at Martinsburg and 
 the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericks- 
 burg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very 
 slim somewhere. Could you not break him ?" 
 
 But this kind of strategy, which he saw almost at 
 the start to be essential if the Union armies were to 
 outmatch those of the South, was the very strategy 
 he found his generals were the slowest to under 
 stand and adopt. 
 
 It was not only military science which interested 
 him, but everything connected with the job of war. 
 He was especially keen on getting better rifles, and 
 inventors found that frequently when they could get 
 no hearing at the War Department, Mr. Lincoln 
 would take time to test their guns himself. He had 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 185 
 
 found a clerk in the Navy Department who was as 
 interested as he in firearms, and whenever he got his 
 hands on a new rifle he would ask this man to "go 
 shooting" with him. His target was usually a sheet 
 of white government note paper pinned to a tree. 
 From this he would pace off eighty to one hundred 
 feet, take a quick aim, and often put almost every 
 bullet through the paper. He enjoyed the sport 
 like a boy. 
 
 The balloon began to be used early in the war for 
 observation purposes, and Mr. Lincoln delighted in 
 watching it sailing over Washington or swaying 
 above the troops. It was he, too, who insisted that 
 John Ericsson, the famous Swedish inventor, should 
 have a chance to try out the plans for an armored 
 monitor which he wanted to build. 
 
 Ericsson s idea was to mount on a raft a round 
 turret furnished with guns and to encase the whole 
 thing in armor. Up to that time our navy was built 
 entirely of wood, and there was doubt about whether 
 it was possible to use armor. Mr. Lincoln s en 
 couragement of Ericsson proved one of the most 
 fortunate things in the early part of the war. 
 
 The Confederates, ahead of the Unionists in 
 using the idea, had already covered the "Merrimac" 
 with plate. When she came out of the Norfolk navy 
 yard she destroyed two big wooden Union vessels, 
 with almost no trouble at all. They, of course, had 
 not a shadow of a chance against her iron sides. 
 There was terror throughout the North at this re 
 sult. What could not the "Merrimac" do in their 
 ports if the Confederates sent her out? No gun 
 
1 86 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 could touch her. What would she do to Washington 
 if she came up the Potomac? 
 
 The answer came quickly. The queer ironclad 
 thing that John Ericsson had built was already on 
 its way south. It came in such a hurry that it was 
 actually finished on the way. When the "Merrimac" 
 steamed out the morning after the "Monitor" ar 
 rived, to sink another wooden ship, she was faced 
 by what looked like u a cheese box on a raft." John 
 Ericsson s "Monitor" might look queer, but it didn t 
 take her long so to batter the "Merrimac" that she 
 was glad to retreat. This contest was the beginning 
 of the ironclad navies of the world. People in 
 Washington who were impatient with the President s 
 willingness to try out new ideas were a little more 
 respectful after this experience. 
 
 The close study Mr. Lincoln was giving to mili 
 tary matters was far from making him cocksure or 
 domineering. His generals ought to know better 
 than he did. He had put them there to do certain 
 work. He must give them a chance not "meddle ;" 
 but generals who, like McClellan, thought Mr. Lin 
 coln s patience weakness were sure, sooner or later, 
 to learn their mistake. His patience had a limit. As 
 soon as he was convinced that a man was not doing 
 what he had been given a fair chance to do, he be 
 came every inch commander in chief. This was long 
 happening in McClellan s case. It is probable that 
 the general thought Mr. Lincoln would not dare to 
 order him to move until he made the sign. He 
 thought he was too popular with the army there 
 was no general in all the Civil War more beloved 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 187 
 
 by his soldiers than General McClellan too popu 
 lar in the North. He was mistaken. In January, 
 1862, Mr. Lincoln asserted himself and ordered a 
 general advance on the entire front on Washington s 
 birthday, February 22d. The country was jubilant. 
 The war was going on. 
 
 McClellan disobeyed, making all his old excuses 
 and his disobedience cost him dear, for it turned a 
 great part of the public against him. They began to 
 call him "the Virginia creeper," and even a traitor 
 who did not mean to fight a most unjust charge. It 
 was not until April that finally he was pried from 
 his camp and the march on Richmond began. 
 
 He moved, but not by the route which Mr. Lincoln 
 thought the common-sense one, directly across Vir 
 ginia to Richmond, fighting as he went. He took his 
 army down the Potomac, landed it on the Peninsula, 
 and from there advanced. Mr. Lincoln, of course, 
 had the power to compel the general to follow the 
 plan he preferred, but he argued that, even suppos 
 ing his was the wiser way, no man does as well on a 
 plan which he has been forced to adopt as on one 
 he has worked out for himself. The President 
 therefore consented to the Peninsular Campaign, 
 making one condition, that a certain fixed number of 
 troops should be left to protect Washington. 
 
 If you will look at a map you will see why this was 
 necessary. By taking the army down the Potomac 
 the route from Richmond to Washington was left 
 open. The Confederate commander in chief, Gen 
 eral Robert E. Lee, was too able a soldier to miss 
 such a chance that Mr, Lincoln knew. He knew,. 
 
1 88 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 too, that General Lee had officers under him who 
 were masters of quick dashes on weak spots that is, 
 General Lee had none of McClellan s reluctance to 
 taking a chance Washington must not be left ex 
 posed. But McClellan did not leave behind the 
 troops agreed upon, and when Mr. Lincoln found 
 this out he ordered them back. Moreover, when 
 ever in the four months campaign he thought the 
 Washington garrison weak, he held back troops 
 McClellan wanted and expected. It gave the general 
 a grievance a reason for his failure to reach Rich 
 mond, for, though he did advance to within a few 
 miles of the city, did do some brilliant fighting, in 
 July he was obliged to fall back on the James River. 
 The real reason of his failure was probably the 
 reason that he had tarried so long in his training 
 camp; overcaution, exaggeration of the enemies 
 numbers and equipment. As a fact he seems always 
 to have had the larger force, but he had none of the 
 dash, the mobility, the ingenuity of the Confeder 
 ates. At the outset of the campaign, for instance, 
 he delayed a month before Yorktown, making the 
 most scientific and elaborate preparation to reduce 
 it, only to find when he attacked, that the enemy had 
 gone 1 
 
 When Mr. Lincoln saw that the campaign on 
 which the North had rested all its hopes for so long 
 was a failure, he was, as he said, as nearly incon 
 solable as he could be and live. His disappointment 
 came as the climax to a series of private as well as 
 public troubles through all this year and a quarter 
 of war. He was a man who could not bear to see 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 189 
 
 stranger or friend hurt even disappointed. He 
 had a friendly heart, which needed for its own con 
 tent to see all the world happy. War and the cal 
 culated killing of men was a hideous thing to him. 
 And yet he had to be responsible for a war, and from 
 the start that war had taken from him people that 
 he loved dearly. 
 
 One of the first of these was an Illinois boy, Elmer 
 E. Ellsworth. Young Ellsworth had been known all 
 over the country as the leader of the Chicago Zou 
 aves a military organization which both by its uni 
 form and its brilliant maneuvering had been the envy 
 of boys and young men everywhere. Mr. Lincoln 
 brought Ellsworth to Washington and made him a 
 colonel in the volunteer service. In May, 1861, he 
 was one of the officers of an expedition sent across 
 the Potomac to drive the enemy from Arlington and 
 Alexandria. Mr. Lincoln had been able to see from 
 his windows in Washington a Confederate flag, fly 
 ing from a staff in this territory; and it had been a 
 great annoyance to him. As the Union force ap 
 proached this flag, young Ellsworth dashed ahead 
 and tore it from its staff, but as he did so a ball 
 struck and killed him. His death hurt Mr. Lincoln 
 cruelly. He immediately wrote to Colonel Ells 
 worth s parents the first of many tender letters of 
 consolation which he was to write before the war 
 was over. 
 
 "Washington, D. C, May 25, 1861. 
 "To the Father and Mother of 
 Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, 
 
 "Mv DEAR SIR AND MADAME: In the untimely loss of your 
 noble son, our affliction here is scarcely less than your own. 
 
190 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 So much of promised usefulness to one s country, and of bright 
 hopes for one s self and friends, have never been so suddenly 
 dashed as in his fall. In size, in years, and in youthful ap 
 pearance a boy only, his power to command men was surpass 
 ingly great. This power, combined with a fine intellect and 
 indomitable energy, and a taste altogether military, constituted 
 in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent in that depart 
 ment I ever knew. 
 
 "And yet he was singularly modest and deferential in social 
 intercourse. My acquaintance with him began less than two 
 years ago; yet, through the latter half of the intervening period, 
 it was as intense as the disparity of our ages and my engrossing 
 engagements would permit. To me he appeared to have no 
 indulgences or pastimes, and I never heard him utter a profane 
 or an intemperate word. What was conclusive of his good 
 heart, he never forgot his parents. The honors he labored for 
 so laudably, and for which, in the sad end, he so gallantly gave 
 his life, he meant for them no less than for himself. 
 
 "In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness 
 of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to 
 the memory of my young friend, and your brave and early 
 fallen son. 
 
 "May God give you the consolation which is beyond all 
 earthly power. Sincerely your friend in common affliction, 
 
 "A. LINCOLN." 
 
 In October the President received a second blow, 
 even heavier. This was at the battle of Ball s Bluff, 
 where one of his dearest and oldest Illinois friends, 
 Colonel E. D. Baker, was killed. The President was 
 at General McClellan s headquarters when the news 
 came in. He did not wait to hear more, but with 
 bowed head, tears rolling down his cheeks, his face 
 pale and wan, passed out of the building. One of 
 the newspaper correspondents, watching him, noted 
 that he almost fell as he stepped into the street and 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 191 
 
 that, as he walked to the White House, both hands 
 were pressed upon his heart. 
 
 In February, sorrow came still closer to him, into 
 his own family, when Willie Lincoln, now eleven 
 years old, the elder of the two boys with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lincoln in the White House, fell ill and died. 
 He was the one of the three sons most like Mr. Lin 
 coln himself gentle, reflective, and studious. "Just 
 such a boy as I was at his age," Mr. Lincoln used 
 to say as he watched Willie puzzling over his prob 
 lems or absorbed in his reading. His father s elec 
 tion, the trip to Washington, the coming of the war, 
 had all been of deepest interest to Willie Lincoln. 
 He kept a journal, a scrapbook, and many souvenirs. 
 After the battle of Ball s Bluff, where his father s 
 friend, Colonel Baker, was killed, he wrote some 
 boyish verses in memory of the soldiers killed, which 
 were published in a Washington paper. All of these 
 interests of Willie endeared him especially to Mr. 
 Lincoln, and his death was a blow from which it was 
 very difficult for him to recover. 
 
 It came at a moment, too February of 1862 
 when he was finding it hard to get his plans for 
 prosecuting the war carried out, and when he was 
 receiving from all sides the most bitter criticism. It 
 seemed sometimes as if everybody in Washington 
 and in the country felt that he knew better how to 
 run the war than Mr. Lincoln did. Hundreds of 
 men and women came to tell him what he ought 
 to do, Congress badgered him from morning till 
 night, great commissions visited him. He heard 
 
192 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 them all. He must know what people were think 
 ing, and perhaps there might be in the mob some 
 body who had something of value to offer. It would 
 not do to let a helpful idea slip for lack of a little 
 patience. What he feared in all this tumult of com 
 plaint and advice and angry excitement was that good 
 men doing their best might be forced out of position, 
 that the plans which he was working out painfully 
 and slowly would be upset and all the little headway 
 lost. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said one day to some particularly 
 excited and unreasonable visitors, "suppose all the 
 property you are worth was in gold, and you had put 
 it in the hands of Blondin, to carry across the 
 Niagara River on a rope. Would you shake the 
 cable or keep shouting at him, Blondin, stand up 
 a little straighter; Blondin, stoop a little more; go a 
 little faster; lean a little more to the north; lean a 
 little more to the south? No, you would hold your 
 breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands 
 off until he was safe over. The government is 
 carrying an enormous weight. Untold treasures are 
 in their hands; they are doing the very best they can. 
 Don t badger them. Keep silence, and we will get 
 you safe across." 
 
 You can imagine how the people shook the cable 
 when they heard of McClellan s failure to take 
 Richmond. Mr. Lincoln had not only to bear their 
 outcries but the anger of McClellan, who took no 
 blame for the way things had turned out. As he 
 fell back he wired to Washington: U A few more 
 thousand men would have changed this battle from a 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 193 
 
 defeat to a victory. If I save this army now I tell 
 you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any 
 person in Washington. You have done your best to 
 sacrifice this army." 
 
 It was a cruel charge, and not a just one ; but Mr. 
 Lincoln seems to have sensed what McClellan was 
 suffering over the cutting to pieces of his splendid 
 troops, and his replies to the cries of pain and anger 
 that came from the general were kind if firm. "I 
 give you all I can and act on the presumption that 
 you will do the best you can with what you have, 
 while you continue ungenerously, I think, to assume 
 that I could give you more if I would. I feel any 
 misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as 
 you feel it yourself. If you have had a drawn battle, 
 or a repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not 
 being in Washington. We protected Washington 
 and the enemy concentrated on you. Had we 
 stripped Washington he would have been upon us 
 before the troops could have gotten to you." 
 
 Nor did he fail, stricken as he was by the falling 
 back of the army, to thank McClellan for the "hero 
 ism and skill" which he showed in this withdrawal. 
 It would be "forever appreciated," he told him, and 
 he added, "If you can hold your present position we 
 shall hive the enemy yet." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln went down to camp to look things 
 over. He was inclined to let McClellan try again, 
 but the country and his advisers would have none of 
 it. They were done with McClellan. Mr. Lincoln 
 himself could not save him, and in August he called 
 him back from the Peninsula to his old position 
 
194 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 across the Potomac from Washington. McClellan 
 was heartbroken over the order; but, as it turned 
 out, it gave him another great chance. 
 
 While he had been gone, Mr. Lincoln, in order to 
 be sure that there were sufficient forces between 
 Washington and Richmond, had formed the Army 
 of Virginia and called from the West General John 
 Pope to command it. When McClellan left the 
 James, Lee saw his chance and hurried north to at 
 tack Pope. In the second battle of Bull Run at the 
 end of August, Lee thrashed Pope soundly and broke 
 his army to bits. This done, he raced for Maryland. 
 
 In the panic that seized Washington, Mr. Lincoln 
 kept his head. Pope had failed. McClellan was on 
 the ground. He knew he understood "licking an 
 army into shape" and so, in spite of what anybody 
 might or did say, he ordered him to take full charge, 
 to rally the distracted troops, overtake Lee, defeat 
 him, and destroy his army. 
 
 For once McClellan acted with promptness. He 
 whipped the army into shape, raced after Lee, over 
 took him at Antietam in Maryland, and defeated 
 him. But he did not pursue him. Though Lee s 
 army was hardly half his in size and far from its 
 base, McClellan let him get away while he stopped 
 to rest. For six weeks he lay there "resting" with 
 Lee scarcely fifty miles away! 
 
 Mr. Lincoln stood it as long as he could and then 
 put bluntly to McClellan facts about his generalship 
 which were as true in the winter of 1861 and 1862 
 as true in the Peninsula campaign as they were now. 
 He was "overcautious" overcautious when he 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 195 
 
 should be bold. He was assuming that he could not 
 do what Lee was constantly doing; that he could not 
 feed an army where Lee and his generals were feed 
 ing one ; could not move by wagon though Lee was 
 doing it over twice the distance with half the wagons. 
 "One of the standard maxims of war is to operate 
 upon the enemy s communications as much as pos 
 sible," he told McClellan, "without exposing your 
 own. You seem to act as if this applies against you 
 but cannot apply in your favor." Did McClellan 
 admit that Lee was more than his equal on a march? 
 Were not the roads as good for him as for Lee? 
 Was it not unmanly to say that our troops could not 
 march as well as Lee s? Pursue him fight him. 
 "If we cannot beat him where he is now, we never 
 can he again being within the entrenchments of Rich 
 mond." 
 
 If anything could stiffen a man s pride, shame 
 him to bestir himself, it would seem that such a let 
 ter would; but McClellan did not budge. His 
 horses had sore tongues, were fatigued, he wired. 
 And Mr. Lincoln, breaking out into that sarcasm 
 of which he was a master but which he so controlled, 
 wired McClellan, "Will you pardon me for asking 
 what the horses of your army have done since An- 
 tietam that fatigues anything?" 
 
 His patience was reaching the breaking point 
 again. He must have a general who would move 
 as well as train, pursue as well as fight, and on No 
 vember 7th, nearly two months after the battle of 
 Antietam, he removed the general. McClellan had 
 had his last chance in the army, and lost. But as 
 
196 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 we are to see later, he was not through with Mr. 
 Lincoln. The time was to come, when he was to 
 cross swords on another field that of politics. 
 
 If the general had been overcautious, as Mr. Lin 
 coln charged, surely he had himself been overpatient; 
 but we would not be able to say this of him if he 
 had felt sure at any time for many months that he 
 had in all his armies a better man than McClellan. 
 He was by no means sure that General Ambrose 
 Burnside, whom he now appointed to command the 
 Army of the Potomac, would do better. But he 
 was the best material he saw. 
 
 It was an unhappy choice. Burnside failed him, 
 failed him in December at the battle of Fredericks- 
 burg, where 10,000 dead and wounded Union sol 
 diers were left on the field and 2,000 were missing. 
 After his defeat Burnside showed no ability to pull 
 his troops together and put new heart into them. 
 He must have another general. There was another 
 man, like Burnside a corps commander under Mc 
 Clellan, "Fightin* Joe" Hooker, whom he had been 
 watching. He had faults which Mr. Lincoln feared, 
 but he had qualities, too. He decided to try him, 
 but in appointing him he bravely laid all his doubts 
 before the general. Read the letter and see how 
 "square" and kind it is. No wonder that Hooker 
 said, "It is just such a letter as a father might write 
 to his son." 
 
 "GENERAL: I have placed you at the head of the Army of 
 the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to 
 me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to 
 know that there are some things in regard to which I am not 
 
Armed with a Single Purpose 197 
 
 quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and 
 skillful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do 
 not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. 
 You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not 
 an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within 
 reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think 
 that during General Burnside s command of the army you have 
 taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much 
 as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, 
 and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I 
 have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently 
 saying that both the army and the government needed a 
 dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, 
 that I have given you the command. Only those generals who 
 gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you 
 is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The gov 
 ernment will support you to the utmost of its ability, which 
 is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all 
 commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have 
 aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander 
 and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. 
 I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you 
 nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good 
 out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now 
 beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and 
 sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. 
 "Yours very truly, 
 
 "A. LINCOLN." 
 
 What a pity that Hooker no more than Burn- 
 side was the man; for he, like Burnside, gave the 
 overburdened President not only another defeat 
 that of Chancellorsville in May not only a defeat, 
 but he let Lee slip by him, cross the Potomac, and 
 make for Pennsylvania. Hooker took after him in 
 hot haste, but resigned on the way; and into his 
 place went a third corps commander from the Army 
 of the Potomac, General George Meade. 
 
198 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 Now the question was: What could Meade do? 
 Could he overtake Lee and defeat him as McClel- 
 lan had done at Antietam? And if so, what would 
 he then do? Pursue him or let him go? We have 
 learned enough of Mr. Lincoln s determination to 
 find a fighting, pursuing leader, to be sure that un 
 less Meade did both he, too, would be replaced. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 STEADY IN STORMS 
 
 Beautiful he was with that which none may scorn 
 With love of God and man and things forlorn, 
 And freedom mighty as the soul in him. 
 Large at the helm of state he leans and looms 
 With the grave, kindly look of those who die 
 Doing their duty. 
 
 MADISON CAWEIN. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN S anxiety was acute over 
 what General Meade would do, now that 
 he had taken charge of the Army of the 
 Potomac, in the very middle of its chase into Penn 
 sylvania after Lee. When Meade did overtake Lee 
 at Gettysburg and the battle, which was to last three 
 days, began on the morning of July i, 1863, the 
 President sat hour after hour beside the telegraph 
 instrument, or, in his eagerness, rose and leaned 
 over the cipherer as he translated the dispatch. By 
 the end of the third day he was utterly worn out, 
 and the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, persuaded 
 him to go home to get a little rest, promising that, 
 if any definite news came in the night, to let him 
 know. 
 
 It was close to midnight when the telegram finally 
 came in, announcing the great victory. Mr. Stan- 
 ton seized the dispatch and ran at the top of his 
 
 199 
 
2OO Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 speed to the White House and up the stairs to Mr. 
 Lincoln s sleeping room. "Who s there?" called 
 the President. When he heard the word "Stanton" 
 he did not wait for dressing gown or trousers, but 
 pulled open the door, u in the shortest nightshirt and 
 longest legs," Mr. Stanton used to say in telling the 
 story, "I ever saw on a human being." Stanton was 
 out of breath, but Lincoln read the news in his face, 
 and, seizing him by the shoulders, danced him round 
 and round the room until both of them were ex 
 hausted. They then sat down on a trunk, and the 
 President, still in his nightshirt, read over and over 
 again the telegram which had brought him unspeak 
 able relief and joy. 
 
 When General Lee retreated from Gettysburg, it 
 was toward the Potomac. A heavy rain fell as he 
 went, making the river almost impassable. It gave 
 Meade a wonderful chance, for, hurt and exhausted 
 as his army was, it was still much larger than Lee s 
 no more exhausted, and behind it was a friendly 
 country. Lee, no doubt, expected an attack on the 
 north side of the Potomac, but it did not come. 
 Even when his army was divided in the crossing, 
 Meade did nothing. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s despair over tnis inaction was al 
 most unbearable. Once over the river, the Union 
 forces, he said bitterly, would be quite as likely to 
 capture the man in the moon as any part of Lee s 
 army. His disappointment was embittered by some 
 thing very hard for a man of his frank and open na 
 ture to bear, and that was suspicion of General 
 Meade s sympathy with his policies. It seemed to 
 
Steady in Storms 201 
 
 him as if Meade and his generals wanted Lee to 
 cross the river, wanted him to get away. He was 
 within Meade s easy grasp, and to have closed upon 
 him would have ended the war. The opportunity 
 was gone. Could it be that Meade was tainted 
 with that sympathy for secession that had crept all 
 through the North, until it was so strong that in 
 recent months it had come boldly into the open and 
 fearlessly raised its ugly head. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln knew well enough that the growth of 
 this sympathy "copperheadism," as its worst form 
 was called came largely from dislike by many peo 
 ple both in and out of his own party for what he 
 had been doing about slavery. 
 
 He had made it quite clear at the beginning of 
 the war, you remember, that he thought he had no 
 right to touch slavery in the States where the Con 
 stitution had left it. He fought to save the Union. 
 But the war was only a few months old when he 
 realized he must do something. The anti-slavery 
 people wanted him to set the slaves free. They 
 seemed to think that if he would he could abolish 
 slavery by his simple word. It would be like the 
 Pope s bull against the comet, he told them. The 
 South could laugh at such an order as long as they 
 were victorious; tell him to come and take the 
 slaves, 
 
 He couldn t do that; but there was one thing that 
 he was willing to do and that was to ask Congress 
 to buy the slaves of any State that would emanci 
 pate them buy them and colonize them in some 
 unsettled part of the country where they could be- 
 
202 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 come self-supporting and self-directing. Through 
 all the months he was occupied with building up an 
 army and trying to get it to do something, he was 
 working on this scheme of buying and freeing, which 
 he called "compensated emancipation." He wanted 
 the Border States those States which lay midway 
 between North and South and which both sides were 
 trying to win over to accept this offer. They were 
 losing their slaves by the hundreds. If they would 
 free them, the United States would pay for them. 
 If they did not do it, they would lose them all sooner 
 or later, anyway, through the wear and tear of war. 
 But, though Mr. Lincoln begged and argued with 
 the Border States to accept his plan, they would not 
 touch it. Nor did the North have any enthusiasm 
 about it. It wanted him either to let the negroes 
 entirely alone or else free them all by a proclama 
 tion the kind of proclamation which would have 
 done no good because it could not have been en 
 forced. 
 
 He went very slowly in the matter, determined to 
 do nothing that the Constitution, which was the book 
 of rules he was following, did not allow. He knew 
 it allowed him to do anything with property which 
 was necessary to save the Union from being de 
 stroyed. Slaves were property. Anything he did 
 with them to save the Union was constitutional. But 
 even supposing he could and did free all or certain 
 slaves, how was that going to help him save the 
 Union? There were certain things that he would 
 win at once; he would stop the back fire the Aboli 
 tionists had kindled and were feeding and that 
 
Steady in Storms 203 
 
 would help. He would take laborers from the fields 
 and workshops of the South and would gain sol 
 diers (he meant to arm the negro) for the armies 
 of the North and laborers for her workshops and 
 that would help. 
 
 He would probably prevent England and trance 
 from recognizing the Confederacy. England and 
 France did not understand or sympathize with Mr. 
 Lincoln s feeling about the Union. They could not 
 see why the South did not have a right to set up for 
 herself if she wanted to ; but Mr. Lincoln knew that 
 if they saw that the success of the North meant the 
 destruction of slavery they would probably refuse to 
 recognize the Confederacy and that would help. 
 
 But if he might gain, he also stood to lose. If 
 he put out the back fire of the Abolitionist, he might 
 kindle that of the Copperhead. What use would he 
 have for negro soldiers and negro laborers if by the 
 making of them he lost white soldiers and white la 
 borers? What would he gain by silencing England 
 and France if in so doing he turned the Border 
 States against him? 
 
 In the summer of 1862, when things were going 
 from bad to worse in the army, he made up his mind 
 that he must try new tactics or he would lose the 
 war and that the strongest new weapon, although 
 a dangerous one, would be some form of emancipa 
 tion so he set to work. He was getting ready, but 
 he would not be hurried. 
 
 Men who knew that Mr. Lincoln hated slavery 
 as few men ever had, who remembered how he had 
 fought against its extension, wondered. Why did 
 
2O4 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 he hesitate? "A man watches his pear tree day 
 after day," he told one of them, impatient for the 
 ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the 
 process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But 
 let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length 
 falls into his lap." 
 
 When Horace Greeley, the powerful editor of 
 the New York Tribune, tried to drive him by prayers 
 and abuse, he silenced him by a letter which is a 
 model for those of us who really want people to un 
 derstand what we intend to do and why we intend 
 to do it : 
 
 "As to the policy I seem to be pursuing, as you say, I have 
 not meant to leave any one in doubt. 
 
 "I would save the Union. 
 
 "I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. 
 
 "The sooner the national authority can be restored, the 
 nearer the Union will be the Union as it was. 
 
 "If there be those who would not save the Union unless they 
 could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. 
 If there be those who would not save the Union unless they 
 could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with 
 them. 
 
 "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, 
 and is not either to save or destroy slavery. 
 
 "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I 
 would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, 
 I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and 
 leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
 
 "What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do 
 because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I 
 forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to 
 save the Union. 
 
 "I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing 
 hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe 
 doing more will help the cause. 
 
Steady in Storms 205 
 
 "I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and 
 I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true 
 views." 
 
 It would seem as if nobody could have had any 
 doubts about his intentions after that. 
 
 It was in September of 1862 that the time finally 
 came when he believed that what he had been get 
 ting ready to do about slavery would help the Union. 
 He had been waiting for a victory, he said, fearing 
 that if he issued the proclamation he had prepared 
 while the armies were retreating it would seem like 
 a last shriek. But he had promised God that if He 
 would give him a victory, he would issue it. The 
 victory came at Antietam, as you know. 
 
 The night before that battle, Mr. Lincoln had that 
 same dream that he had had before the fall of Fort 
 Sumter. He was on a singular and indescribable 
 vessel, sailing toward a dark and indefinite shore. 
 But this time, when he reached the shore, there was 
 light, not darkness, as after Sumter, for McClellan 
 had driven Lee back. Mr. Lincoln kept his word 
 to his Maker. 
 
 The proclamation he sent out said that on the 
 first day of January, 1863, all the slaves in States 
 in rebellion should be "then, thenceforward and for 
 ever free." It also said that the United States 
 would "recognize and maintain" this freedom. Of 
 course this did not destroy slavery it simply prom 
 ised to free certain slaves in case the rebellion went 
 on, and it also gave the States in rebellion the chance 
 to save their slaves if they would lay down their 
 arms, 
 
206 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 When the first day of January came, Mr. Lincoln 
 signed the proclamation. The writing is slightly 
 tremulous "Not because of any uncertainty on my 
 part," Mr. Lincoln told some who noticed it, "but 
 because I signed just after three hours handshaking 
 at the New Year s reception." 
 
 He was sure he had done right. He was sure 
 he had the right to do what he had done, but he 
 knew he was in for a stormy time, that if he had 
 spiked some guns by his proclamation he had brought 
 other guns into action. He looked them all smil 
 ingly in the muzzle, and sized up the situation one 
 day to his Cabinet: "We are like a lot of whalers 
 who have been long on the chase. We have at last 
 got the harpoon in the monster and we must now 
 look out how we steer him or, with one flap of his 
 tail, he will send us all into eternity." 
 
 It certainly seemed at times as if they might as 
 well give up trying to steer the monster, so terribly 
 did he plunge and leap. The most serious thing 
 was that thousands of people in the North declared 
 that Mr. Lincoln had changed the purpose of the 
 war: he had made it one to abolish slavery. That 
 is, they refused to accept Mr. Lincoln s idea that 
 what he did about slavery was in order to save the 
 Union. 
 
 The result of the Emancipation Proclamation 
 which hurt and alarmed Mr. Lincoln most was that 
 it turned multitudes of the common soldiers in the 
 army against him. They had not gone into the army 
 to free slaves, they said, and so in droves they ran 
 away. 
 
Steady in Storms 207 
 
 It hurt him because he loved them felt that he 
 understood them and that they somehow had sensed 
 this love and understanding. Washington lay so 
 close to the big Eastern armies that streams of sol 
 diers were constantly pouring south through the 
 town. As they loitered about sight-seeing or pleas 
 ure-seeking in their hours off they often ran across 
 the President whose habit of early rising, of going 
 out himself for his newspapers, of unexpectedly 
 turning up at the Capitol, the arsenal, or on the 
 street gave them a chance to speak to him often to 
 ask a favor. 
 
 They found it simple to see him at the White 
 House, too. If the orderlies stopped them with the 
 word that the President was "busy," "not receiv 
 ing," "with the Cabinet," they had a powerful friend 
 in Tad Lincoln. Tad had a great love for all sol 
 diers and a great contempt for orders and rules. 
 If he was within hearing the chances are that he 
 would seize the disappointed soldier by the hand and 
 pushing aside guards drag him straight to his father 
 with a demand that his story be heard. 
 
 The frequent visits Mr. Lincoln made to the 
 camps endeared him to the men. They were at once 
 at home with him as he walked about, chaffing them 
 over their tent housekeeping even now and then 
 swapping stories with them or measuring with the 
 unusually tall ones. He seemed much more one of 
 them than their officers. One thing that delighted 
 them and of which they often talked was his horse 
 manship. At the first grand review of McClelland 
 army there had been among the officers a good deal 
 
208 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 of contemptuous fun over the idea of the President s 
 riding beside General McClellan, who was known 
 for his splendid horsemanship, and who they sus 
 pected to be not unwilling to "show off" at the ex 
 pense of the President. A man who saw the review 
 and knew how the officers were talking, says that 
 when the day came a spirited black horse was se 
 lected for the President to ride. Mr. Lincoln 
 calmly walked up to the animal, and the instant he 
 seized the bridle to mount it was evident to horse 
 men that he "knew his business." He had the ani 
 mal in hand at once. No sooner was he in the sad 
 dle than his mount began to prance and whirl, but 
 the President sat as unconcerned as if he and the 
 horse were one. The test of endurance soon came. 
 McClellan, with his magnificent staff, approached the 
 President, who joined them and they dashed to a 
 distant part of the field. The artillery began to 
 thunder, the drums beat, and the bands struck up 
 "Hail to the Chief." While the troops cheered, 
 Mr. Lincoln lifted his tall hat from his head and, 
 holding the bridle rein in one hand, dashed calmly 
 and easily down the long line. He could ride, and 
 the soldiers were proud of him. 
 
 It was in the hospitals in and around Washington 
 that they learned to know him best. The city was 
 so close to the Virginia battlefields that all through 
 the war it was the headquarters of the wounded. 
 After the battles they were brought back by thou 
 sands and laid in long rows on the wharves and sta 
 tions along the Potomac until the ambulances could 
 carry them to the hospitals. They came in such 
 
Steady in Storms 209 
 
 numbers after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, 
 and later after Grant s battles in the Wilderness, 
 that public buildings and private houses were used. 
 In the summer Mr. Lincoln lived at the Soldiers 
 Home at the head of 7th Street, and all along his 
 way, as he went back and forth to the White House, 
 he passed between barracks and tents filled with the 
 wounded. With the soldiers in these hospitals, as 
 well as those scattered about the town, he quickly 
 established friendly relations. He knew many of 
 the patients by name and when they were hopelessly 
 wounded would send them flowers and special mes 
 sages. 
 
 It was the youth of them that wrung his heart. 
 He loved boys. You have seen how, in those days 
 back in Springfield, on the circuit, while he was car 
 rying on his great fight against Douglas, he always 
 had a word for any boy that crossed his path. 
 When he began to see the army he was gathering, 
 it was the youth of it that amazed him, as indeed it 
 must amaze all who see armies in the making. He 
 knew that hundreds of these soldiers were lads un 
 der eighteen who had boldly lied, and frequently 
 had their lies ignored, in order to try out the great 
 adventure; and he realized, particularly after Bull 
 Run, how unfitted these half-grown lads were to 
 stand for long the intolerable hardships of war, to 
 rally quickly from wounds and exposure. 
 
 No day in all the war was harder for him than 
 that day after the defeat at Bull Run, when, through 
 a dripping rain, men and boys trailed across the 
 Long Bridge over the Potomac in disorderedi 
 
2io Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 ashamed, horrified squads. Their faces were coated 
 with the red dust of Maryland, and the smoke and 
 dirt of powder. Their clothes were thick with mud. 
 Starved for food and drink, they took from the 
 hands of the pitying, weeping Unionist women of 
 Washington the bread and coffee which they of 
 fered them from the doors of their houses or from 
 the rough counters set up along the street. And, 
 fed, they dropped into doorways, into open spaces, 
 anywhere there was a vacant spot, and slept and 
 slept boys of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. 
 
 No trial, among all the many that overwhelmed 
 Mr. Lincoln during the war, quite equaled that of 
 allowing a soldier to be shot. It was the one thing 
 about which he was ever heard to say, "I can t bear 
 it." When the news of terrible defeats, like those 
 of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville came, he 
 might walk the floor and groan, and groan. Men 
 saw his eyes sink deeper and deeper, his color change 
 to a gray like that of death, his shoulders become 
 more and more bent; but never did he say, "I can t 
 bear it." It was only on Friday, toward the 
 sunset hour, that he would walk the floor of the 
 White House, saying, "They are shooting a boy out 
 at such a place to-day. I can t bear it! I can t 
 bear it!" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln would never allow the death sen 
 tence to be carried out if he could find a shadow of 
 excuse to forbid it. The Secretary of War and 
 many of the generals in the army constantly bom 
 barded him with indignant protests against his clem 
 ency; but if he had found a reason that satisfied him, 
 
Steady in Storms 21 1 
 
 or even half satisfied him, they could not shake his 
 determination. Fathers and mothers and friends 
 would come to beg him to save a boy. Driven 
 night and day as he was by the demands made upon 
 him, he would personally examine the papers, go 
 himself to the telegraph office, stand over the instru 
 ment until the order had been sent to delay the sen 
 tence, not rest until he had an answer back that the 
 telegram had been received and the order would be 
 carried out. A boy might have run away out of 
 sheer fright. Mr. Lincoln had a drawer full of 
 what he called "leg cases," and he would say some 
 times in explanation of his sympathy for them that 
 if God had given a man a pair of cowardly legs 
 what could you expect but that he would run away ! 
 
 One of the pardons of sentenced soldiers which 
 touched the country most deeply and which has gone 
 into the wonderful drama of John Drinkwater, 
 "Abraham Lincoln," was of a soldier that had slept 
 on his post. After marching all day he had taken 
 a sick comrade s place for guard duty. It was too 
 much. He had fallen asleep, been discovered, and 
 sentenced. Mr. Lincoln visited the army soon after 
 this and, asking if there were any sentences, was 
 told, yes, there was a boy to be shot on such a day. 
 
 The President went to see him, talked with him, 
 asked him to tell him about it. He could not help 
 it, the condemned lad said, he was too tired, he 
 didn t know he could be too tired to keep awake. 
 There was no doubting the truth of his explana 
 tion, and the President, putting his arm about him, 
 said, "My boy, you are not going to be shot. I am 
 
212 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 going to send you back to the regiment. But how 
 are you going to pay my bill?" 
 
 Dazed by the great news, he could scarcely think. 
 He had a little money his parents would mortgage 
 the farm perhaps some of his friends would help 
 they might give five or six hundred dollars. 
 
 "It is not money I want," Mr. Lincoln told him. 
 "My bill is a very large one, and there is nobody 
 in the world but you can pay it. If you will prom 
 ise from now on to shirk no duty so that when you 
 come to die you can say, I have kept my promise/ 
 then your debt will be paid." 
 
 The boy gave his word. A few months later he 
 was shot in battle and while dying asked that a mes 
 sage be carried to the President. "Tell him," he 
 said, "that I have tried to be a good soldier and 
 that I died thinking of his kind face." 
 
 You can understand, then, how bitter it was for 
 Mr. Lincoln to know that the common soldiers whom 
 he so loved were deserting because of the Eman 
 cipation Proclamation, and that they would be shot 
 if caught; but he had no bitterness against them. It 
 was against those back home whom he believed to 
 be influencing them that his anger was directed. 
 "Must I shoot a simple-minded boy who deserts," 
 he said, "while I must not touch a hair of a wily 
 agitator who induced him to desert? I think that 
 to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only 
 constitutional, but withal a great mercy." 
 
 If the escape of Lee after Gettysburg and the re 
 volt at home and in the army were giving Mr. Lin 
 coln anxiety and suffering, he had at last a victory 
 
Steady in Storms 213 
 
 in the West which took much of the sting from his 
 troubles a great, unqualified military success, a suc 
 cess not tainted like Antietam and Gettysburg had 
 been by a failure to seize the advantage gained, but 
 a success followed up. He believed, too, he had at 
 last the thing he had sought from the start, a man 
 that would fight fight as General Lee had been 
 fighting General Ulysses S. Grant, who, on July 4, 
 1863, had been able to telegraph him that Vicks- 
 burg, the key to the Mississippi, which he had been 
 besieging for many weeks, had fallen, its defenders 
 had marched out, the Union flag was flying; at last 
 the "Father of Waters went unvexed to the sea." 
 
 The fall of Vicksburg, coming as it did on the very 
 day of the battle of Gettysburg and before it was 
 known that so much of the fruits of Gettysburg was 
 to be lost, put heart into the North. It helped, too, 
 to put an end to talk on the other side of the Atlantic 
 of recognizing the Confederacy talk which per 
 sisted after the Emancipation Proclamation be 
 cause, as the friends of the Confederacy there said, 
 the North never could be victorious. But, above 
 all, it gave Mr. Lincoln the man he sought to save 
 the Union. 
 
 Grant was a West Pointer. Nobody knew much 
 of him when the war broke out in spite of his hav 
 ing won a captaincy in the Mexican War, for seven 
 years before the fall of Sumter he had left the army 
 and gone into business. The first shot in 1861 
 brought him quickly back. He took the appoint 
 ment given him without haggling or complaining. 
 He did the thing they asked of him and so well that 
 
214 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 before the end of 1861 he was in command of a 
 big military division, that including the southern part 
 of Illinois and the western part of Kentucky. It 
 was in clearing the Confederates out of this terri 
 tory that in February, 1862, he attacked Fort Don- 
 elson on the Cumberland River and sent a famous 
 message to the commander : "No terms other than 
 unconditional and immediate surrender can be ac 
 cepted." "Unconditional Surrender" (U. S.) 
 Grant now became his name, and major general of 
 volunteers his rank. Mr. Lincoln, watching his 
 work in dispatches and on maps, noted that it was 
 steady, patient, untiring, and when in the summer 
 of 1862, after McClellan s failure to reach Rich 
 mond, he felt the need of a fresh military mind to 
 help him in Washington and decided to call General 
 Halleck, Grant s commander in chief, East, it was 
 Grant that he put at the head of the army in west 
 Tennessee. 
 
 There was much opposition to Grant s promotion 
 from men within and without the army. They came 
 to Mr. Lincoln with old slanders. Mr. Lincoln had 
 one answer, "I cannot spare this man. He fights." 
 
 Grant finally, in the spring of 1863, came in his 
 fighting to the siege of Vicksburg. He made some 
 moves that Mr. Lincoln thought unwise, but he kept 
 his hands off. And now this man that fought had 
 given him what was so far in the war the success of 
 successes. After his victory Grant did not wait an 
 hour to follow up his advantage. He pursued, 
 cleaning up as he went, and was ready at the right 
 moment to help in the next great Western military 
 
Steady in Storms 215 
 
 movement opening eastern Tennessee. There 
 were many loyal people in eastern Tennessee and 
 they had suffered much through the war. Mr. Lin 
 coln had set his heart on relieving them, but his 
 armies there had never succeeded, and largely for 
 the reason McClellan did not succeed : the generals 
 had the "slows." Things were in a very bad way 
 by September of this year, 1863, the Union armies 
 being shut up in Chattanooga and unable even to 
 get proper food. Mr. Lincoln promptly turned the 
 problem of relieving them over to Grant, who lost 
 no time either in getting in food or in bringing up 
 troops. In November his armies attacked the Con 
 federates entrenched on the heights around the town 
 and drove them from their vantage points. 
 
 Nothing now was too much to do for this general 
 who, while his enemies abused him, plotting his 
 ruin, kept silent and fought. Congress revived for 
 him an old military grade that had lapsed, that of 
 lieutenant general, a rank that had never been given 
 to any one except George Washington; and in 
 March, 1864, Lieutenant General Grant was put in 
 command of all the armies of the United States. 
 
 Only two large Confederate forces now remained 
 in the field, that which under Grant s generalship 
 had been driven from around Chattanooga but which 
 still threatened the Union forces in that part of the 
 country and General Lee s army which General 
 Meade had been watching but never injuring in all 
 the months since Gettysburg. Grant s job was to 
 see that these two forces were beaten and scattered. 
 The first he turned over to General W. T. Sherman, 
 
2i6 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 who had been under him through all his hardest cam 
 paigns, and the second he took hold of himself. 
 
 What a relief to Mr. Lincoln, after this long 
 three years hunt for a general, to turn over the com- 
 mandership to a man who always attended strictly 
 to his business of fighting, never mixing politics with 
 it, who attacked whenever he could get the chance, 
 who used the forces he had, whose one idea was 
 Mr. Lincoln s idea to put down the rebellion. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln put it up to Grant to end the war. 
 He did not ask his plans didn t want to know them ; 
 he told the general, "You are vigilant and self-re 
 liant. I am pleased with this and wish not to ob 
 trude any constraints or restraints upon you. If 
 there is anything that is within my power to give, 
 do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a 
 brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you." 
 
 The relief came none too soon, for he had another 
 task on hand and that was fighting the tremendous 
 civilian army that had arisen in the North to prevent 
 his reelection. It was an army made up not only 
 of Democrats who hated him because he was not of 
 their party; of Copperheads who wanted to see the 
 South succeed; of Abolitionists who held him re 
 sponsible for not destroying slavery at once, root 
 and branch, though there was no human, not to say 
 legal, way of doing that; of pacifists who so hated 
 the horrors of war that they were willing to sacrifice 
 the Union and the chance of giving freedom to hun 
 dreds of thousands of human beings but of thou 
 sands of his own party men who thought he should 
 have issued the Emancipation Proclamation earlier 
 
Steady in Storms 217 
 
 and men who thought he should not have issued it 
 at all; men who believed in the Emancipation Proc 
 lamation but would not consent to an amendment to 
 the Constitution abolishing slavery forever from 
 the Union; men who thought he should have dis 
 missed General McClellan earlier or not at all; who 
 didn t like this or that member of the Cabinet. 
 Every move he had made or refused to make had 
 turned somebody against him, and these people were 
 now as determined to defeat him for a second term 
 as the Democrats and secessionists themselves. 
 
 All through the winter and spring of 1864 they 
 looked for somebody that they could put in his place. 
 Mr. Lincoln was exasperatingly indifferent to their 
 efforts. He showed no spite or ill feeling. If the. 
 people wanted somebody else it was their right to 
 have him. He had no business to interfere. 
 
 But the people did not want somebody else that 
 was clear. General Fremont was a candidate, and 
 it was said that "thousands" would flock to nomi 
 nate him four hundred came. Mr. Chase, the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, was a candidate, but his 
 own State of Ohio asked for Mr. Lincoln. When 
 the convention met in June the politicians all agreed 
 the people would not take anybody in his place. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was no doubt right about the popu 
 lar demand for him: "They probably knew it was 
 never wise to swap horses in crossing a stream and 
 had concluded that he was not so poor a horse but 
 that they might make a botch of it if they tried to 
 swap." 
 
 But no horse ever had more difficulty in fording 
 
218 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 a stream to keep his feet and the track than Mr. 
 Lincoln now had. Everybody that had opposed him 
 combined to fret, nag, and bewilder him. They 
 came at him from all sides, trying to break his will 
 and confuse his judgment. They did not by any 
 means agree as to what should be done, but they 
 did agree to oppose whatever Mr. Lincoln did. 
 
 The severest test of a man s courage and fidelity 
 to purpose comes when not only his enemies but his 
 friends turn on him. If he sticks then to the thing 
 he has undertaken, he is a man. Mr. Lincoln did 
 stick. He handled the different forces that threat 
 ened or hectored him bravely, sensibly, and for the 
 most part good-naturedly. It was only now and 
 then that he burst out in contempt or indignation at 
 some particularly outrageous performance which he 
 thought was hurting the cause. 
 
 There was the draft. Grant needed men many 
 of them. He believed that a great, fresh outpour 
 ing of troops might quickly end the war. Friend 
 and foe warned Mr. Lincoln that he could never 
 be elected if he made another draft. "But what 
 good is it to me to be elected if I have no country? 
 We need the men to save the country/ and he asked 
 for 500,000. 
 
 Then there were the peace-at-any-price people. 
 They accused him of so hating the South that he was 
 willing to bleed the North to crush her, yet no man 
 in the North was more just and tolerant to the South 
 than he and no man suffered more over the loss 
 and suffering of war. The war had been undertaken 
 
Steady in Storms 219 
 
 to save something more precious than life and it 
 would continue until that end was secure. 
 
 Even so powerful an editor as Horace Greeley 
 joined this faction that accused Mr. Lincoln of not 
 doing his part to end the suffering. There were 
 agents from Jefferson Davis now in Canada, Greeley 
 claimed, prepared to make peace and Mr. Lincoln 
 was so obstinate and bloodthirsty he would not send 
 any one to treat with them. Mr. Lincoln finally 
 turned the tables neatly on his critic. He sent him 
 as an agent to see the gentlemen, telling him that 
 any proposition they had which recognized the Union 
 and abolished slavery would be considered, but as 
 Mr. Lincoln believed, they had neither powers nor 
 proposition; they were mischief-makers. But when 
 Mr. Greeley failed "to crack the nut," found Mr. 
 Lincoln was right and he wrong, it only added an 
 other grievance against the President ! 
 
 There were the selfish those who in these dread 
 ful times thought only of advancement, office, 
 claims, favors. His patience was often badly 
 strained by their insistence. "Go away, my man. 
 Go away," he said one day to a soldier who wanted 
 him to interfere. "I might as well try to bail out 
 the Potomac with a teaspoon as to attend to all the 
 details of the army." 
 
 To another man who was pestering him to give 
 personal attention to some small claim, he told a 
 story of a steamboat captain he had known on an 
 Illinois river. This captain always took the wheel 
 when the steamer reached the rapids. One day 
 
22O Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 when the boat was plunging and wallowing and it 
 was taking all his skill to keep her in the narrow 
 channel, a boy pulled his coat-tails. "Say, Mister 
 Captain/ he said, "I wish you would stop your boat 
 a minute, I ve lost my apple overboard !" 
 
 He was the captain of a ship tossed and beaten 
 by winds and waves and hundreds of passengers were 
 calling to him to stop while they picked up their lost 
 apples I 
 
 These selfish and inconsiderate people were but 
 a small annoyance beside those who, agreeing with 
 him that the Union should be saved, disagreed so 
 violently with him about the way he took to save it 
 that they were almost willing to let it be destroyed 
 rather than let him succeed in his plans. 
 
 There had come to be by this time several differ 
 ent classes of Unionists. Mr. Lincoln once made 
 a table of them. There were the people who were 
 for the Union: 
 
 With, but not without, slavery. 
 
 Without, but not with, slavery. 
 
 With or without, but preferred it with. 
 
 With or without, but preferred it without. 
 
 There was a second division of those who believed 
 in Union without slavery who wanted : 
 
 1, Gradual but not immediate emancipation. 
 
 2, Immediate but not gradual emancipation. 
 Those in the above group who leaned to slavery 
 
 were more bitter than ever just now because they 
 saw that by saving the Union in Mr. Lincoln s way 
 they were going to get finally something much more 
 sweeping than the Emancipation Proclamation 
 
Steady in Storms 221 
 
 and that was an amendment to the Constitution, 
 abolishing slavery for good and all in the United 
 States. That was in the platform on which Mr. 
 Lincoln was running. You should read this plank 
 carefully in order to understand how much more 
 his election now would mean to human freedom than 
 it would* have meant if he had been satisfied to stop 
 with the Emancipation Proclamation. 
 
 "Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now con 
 stitutes the strength, of this rebellion, and as it must be, 
 always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of republican 
 government, justice and the national safety demand its utter 
 and complete extirpation from the soil of the republic; and 
 that while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamation 
 by which the government, in its own defense, has aimed a death 
 blow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such 
 an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in 
 conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever 
 prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits of the juris 
 diction of the United States. 
 
 These divisions among the Republican Unionists, 
 with the suspicion and hate and crime they caused, 
 gave great joy naturally to the Democrats who had 
 nominated General McClellan. He was a good 
 Union man and believed in carrying on the war, but 
 as he was opposed to Mr. Lincoln everybody else 
 opposed flocked about him, among them the peace 
 people. Much to his disgust, even the secessionists 
 claimed him as their friend and exhorted their ar 
 mies to win a victory in order to help his election. 
 
 By August there seemed little chance of Mr. Lin 
 coln winning. His best and most hopeful friends 
 
222 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 assured him it was impossible. He thought so him 
 self. Now, Mr. Lincoln wanted to be reflected. 
 He wanted to finish the job, he said. As he saw it, 
 the only way that the Union could be saved now was 
 his way. If the people did not take him they would 
 get a divided country one-half of it built on slav 
 ery. "Very well," he said grimly, one day when an 
 alarmed supporter was telling him how black the 
 outlook was, "very well. It s the people s business, 
 the election is in their hands. If they turn their 
 backs to the fire and get scorched in the rear, they ll 
 find they have got to sit on the blister." 
 
 But whatever happened, he did not propose to 
 turn his back to the fire. 
 
 You have seen that often in Mr. Lincoln s effort 
 to put down the rebellion he was saved from disaster 
 in the very nick of time at Antietam, at Gettysburg, 
 at Chattanooga. Now at the moment when he was 
 admitting probable defeat, a victory came to aid 
 him a brilliant and important one. 
 
 When General Grant took charge of all the Union 
 armies he had put General Sherman at the head of 
 the Western forces. His task was to drive out the 
 Confederates still massed south and east of Chat 
 tanooga. Sherman had pushed the enemy with tre 
 mendous energy, beating him at every point until at 
 the moment when Northern discouragement was at 
 its height, he wired Mr. Lincoln: 
 
 "Atlanta is ours and fairly won." 
 
 Sherman s message was like a summer thunder 
 shower, clearing the air of suffocation and leaving 
 brisk breezes and fresh life behind. And with it 
 
Steady in Storms 223 
 
 went other victories of vast importance : one was the 
 capture of the last port through which the Confed 
 erates were able to trade, that of Mobile Bay on 
 the Gulf of Mexico. Through it they had been 
 sending out cotton, receiving back food and arms. 
 Now came news from Admiral Farragut that this 
 last big leak was stopped. And then came swiftly a 
 series of battles fought by General Phil Sheridan 
 which closed the Shenandoah Valley, through which, 
 from the beginning of the war, General Lee had been 
 able to send his daring forces on raids threatening 
 Washington and Pennsylvania. 
 
 Nothing in all the war had worried Mr. Lincoln 
 more than these dashes at Washington. He could 
 not endure the idea of its capture and any danger 
 of it and there had been danger more than once 
 threw him, cool-headed as he was, almost into 
 panic. In this very summer, when things were so 
 dark and everybody turning against him, one of these 
 raids had taken place, the Confederates coming so 
 near to the town that his summer home was con 
 sidered unsafe. 
 
 Grant had at once put General Sheridan on the 
 job of clearing out the valley and now it was done 
 done with a fire and dash that recalled "Stone 
 wall Jackson," the famous Confederate general 
 killed at Chancellorsville who, in the early days of 
 the war, had so tormented the Union Army from 
 this very valley which Sheridan now made safe. 
 
 These victories piling up took many arguments 
 from the mouths of Mr. Lincoln s enemies. He was 
 finishing the war. It might take time more hard 
 
224 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 fighting, more suffering; but victory now seemed 
 sure, victory with the Union, a Union from which 
 human slavery, which had so nearly wrecked it, 
 would be forever wiped. 
 
 People believed it, and a little later when the elec 
 tion came they proved their faith, for it was Abra 
 ham Lincoln, not General McClellan, to whom the 
 majority gave their votes. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 VICTORY 1 
 
 He held his place 
 
 Held the long purpose like a growing tree 
 Held on through blame and faltered not at praise, 
 And when he fell, in whirlwind, he went down 
 As when a kingly cedar, green with boughs, 
 Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
 And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 
 
 EDWIN MARKHAM. 
 
 IF you will turn back to those days in 1861 when 
 Mr. Lincoln made his call for men to put down 
 the rebellion, you will find him saying that the 
 question to be settled by the war was whether or no 
 a government by the people could be broken apart 
 by a group of these same people when they were 
 dissatisfied with the results of an election. If that 
 could happen, then no free government could long 
 endure on the earth. It was not only the fate of 
 the United States but of men everywhere that was 
 at stake. 
 
 As the war went on he kept this question con 
 stantly in the people s mind. Can you guard this 
 Union you have made? Can you save it from this 
 attack from the inside? Do you care enough for 
 it to hold out whatever it may cost you? He would 
 not let them forget what they were fighting for. He 
 
 225 
 
226 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 continually thrust forward the idea in what he wrote 
 or said. It is the theme of one of the greatest of 
 his speeches, made in November of 1863, when the 
 Gettysburg battlefield was dedicated as a national 
 cemetery. Every Scout should know this Gettys 
 burg speech by heart. 
 
 "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
 on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and 
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
 
 "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
 that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can 
 long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
 We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final 
 resting place for those who here gave their lives that that 
 nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we 
 should do this. 
 
 "But, in a larger sense we cannot dedicate we cannot 
 consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, 
 living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far 
 above our poor power to add or detract. The world will 
 little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can 
 never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, 
 rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they 
 who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather 
 for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before 
 us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion 
 to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
 devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall 
 not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have 
 a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln did more than to talk and fight for 
 unionism. He did his best to live it; that is, he did 
 his best to work with all men who wanted to save 
 the Union, however much they differed from him in 
 
MR. LINCOLN AND His SON THOMAS, FAMILIARLY KNOWN AS TAD, 
 ABOUT 1864 
 
 Photograph by Brady. 
 
Victory! 227 
 
 their views of how it was to be done, however hard 
 they might be to work with, however unjust, re 
 vengeful, or insolent they might be to him per 
 sonally. 
 
 No man ever treated another with more contempt 
 than Mr. Stanton had at one time treated Mr. Lin 
 coln. But Lincoln knew that Stanton was able, that 
 he had a passion for the Union that was like his 
 own ; and that the Union might have his services, he 
 made him Secretary of War. 
 
 Horace Greeley at one time wilfully misrepre 
 sented the President in the Tribune. He had let 
 ters from Greeley in his possession which would have 
 disposed thoroughly of the harmful accusations, but 
 to publish them would have discredited Greeley; 
 and the Union needed the support of the Tribune. 
 Rather than weaken that support he himself suf 
 fered a serious personal wrong. 
 
 Mr. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, intrigued 
 under his very eyes to prevent his renomination in 
 1864; but Mr. Lincoln ignored the treachery. He 
 knew that Chase was of great value to the cause, 
 that his one weakness was an uncontrolled desire 
 to be President of the United States. "He would 
 be a good President," was all that Mr. Lincoln 
 would say when his friends pointed out Chase s ac 
 tivities. He would have nothing to do with any 
 contest that would in any way divide those who were 
 supporting the Union. 
 
 This will to unite with others for a main pur 
 pose, cost what it might to his own pride, reputa 
 tion, ambition, became more and more a part of 
 
228 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 him. That great American poet, Walt Whitman, 
 was much in Washington during the war and saw 
 Mr. Lincoln so often, as he went to and fro about 
 his business, that they fell to nodding and smiling 
 at each other, though, so far as Whitman tells us, 
 they never spoke. The poet had a great under 
 standing of men, and he came to feel finally, as he 
 says, that the hardpan of Mr. Lincoln s character 
 was unionism, that it had become in him a u new 
 virtue" something to be added to the other vir 
 tues that he found in his character, such as "hon 
 esty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience." 
 
 Whitman was right. Unionism was not only the 
 great passion of his heart, the backbone of all his 
 hopes and dreams for this land and all lands; but 
 it was a part of his character. This being true, 
 you can understand how much his reelection in 1864 
 meant to him. It answered the great question that 
 had been following him all through the war. It 
 showed, as he said, that he, who was most devoted 
 to the Union and most opposed to treason, would 
 receive most of the people s votes. That is, that 
 when the people had made a government through 
 which they believed they could secure liberty and 
 equal opportunity, they would not allow it to be 
 broken up by attacks from within any more than 
 by attacks from without. 
 
 The election meant the end of the war. It was 
 an order from the people to go ahead on the lines 
 that Grant had laid down. It would take a miracle 
 now to save the Confederacy. Lee s army in Rich 
 mond and Petersburg was besieged by Grant and 
 
Victory! 229 
 
 daily growing weaker, while Grant was daily grow 
 ing stronger. Johnston, with the only other large 
 Confederate body, was being driven northward by 
 Sherman, who, after the fall of Atlanta, leaving 
 forces behind to take care of the enemy still remain 
 ing in Tennessee, had started on a march through 
 Georgia. He had captured Savannah and Charles 
 ton, and then, turning northward, had swept the 
 Confederate forces ahead of him. That is, Lee 
 and Johnston with their armies were being gradu 
 ally pressed together by the forces south as well as 
 north of them. This meant that in not many weeks 
 the military end must come. 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln was leaving all this to Grant. 
 He had other things to do. The first of these was 
 to make sure that the cause of all this trouble 
 slavery, was forever ended in the United States. 
 As we have seen, the Emancipation Proclamation 
 did not do this. It needed an amendment to the 
 Constitution to make it certain; and this amendment 
 had, at Mr. Lincoln s request, been put into the 
 platform on which he had run and been reflected. 
 It was now before Congress. In January it was 
 adopted. Never, in all his troubled life, had he had 
 ?, deeper satisfaction. "This amendment is a king s 
 cure for all the evils ; it winds the whole thing up," 
 he said the night after its passage to the serenaders 
 who surrounded the White House cheering him and 
 clamoring for a speech. 
 
 To be sure, there was still work to do, for an 
 amendment to the Constitution requires ratification 
 by two thirds of the States. He thought they were 
 
230 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 going to get it. That very day Illinois had ratified. 
 In the next month sixteen States followed her and 
 two of these, Virginia and Louisiana, had been 
 among the seceders. Before the end of the year the 
 amendment was proclaimed a part of the Consti 
 tution of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln rejoiced the more over the amend 
 ment because he felt the negroes had shown them 
 selves worthy of it. They had helped themselves 
 from the beginning of the war. When it was pro 
 posed to make soldiers of them, there had been on 
 both sides ridicule and protest they would not 
 fight. But they had fought, and it was not many 
 months after the Emancipation Proclamation was 
 issued before Mr. Lincoln had the satisfaction of 
 answering those who declared they would not fight 
 for negroes, that there were 200,000 negroes fight 
 ing for them that is, fighting for the Union. If 
 they would not fight when the reward of that fight 
 ing was to be their own freedom, he felt that they 
 were not worth freeing, but they had made good 
 soldiers. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln not only put the negroes into the 
 army, and insisted that they be rewarded according 
 to the services that they gave, but in every way he 
 could he encouraged them to go to work for them 
 selves, go into business, go to school. He sought 
 in every way to show them his friendly interest. 
 There was bitter criticism, particularly in Washing 
 ton, of the attention he gave them, but it did not 
 budge him. There was a truly great negro who 
 arose during the war Frederick Douglass ; and Mr. 
 
Fictory! 231 
 
 Lincoln, wishing to talk to him, sent his own car 
 riage to bring him to the White House to take tea 
 with him. 
 
 At the last New Year s reception, held on Janu 
 ary I, 1865, hundreds of colored people gathered 
 at the doors, hesitating to enter yet desiring to 
 shake the President s hand. When the crowd of 
 whites had retired, they began timidly to enter. 
 Wearied as he was by the long hours of handshak 
 ing, when Mr. Lincoln discovered his visitors, he 
 insisted that all should be admitted. They pressed 
 about him, weeping, blessing him, and kissing his 
 hand. To the negro Mr. Lincoln now was friend 
 and savior. Not many of them, perhaps, realized 
 just what had happened. Few of them certainly 
 realized the burden of responsibility and effort that 
 freedom would bring them; but all of them real 
 ized that the hated word "Slave" was wiped out. 
 He was "Massa Linkin," "Uncle Sam" one never 
 to be forgotten when they prayed. Better than 
 many white people, the negroes seem to have real 
 ized the burden that was upon him " Tears like 
 he got everything hitched to him," one faithful 
 negro said, in exhorting his friends to pray for the 
 President. To all of them he came as something 
 more than a man. "He walks the earf like the 
 Lord," they said. 
 
 The most striking proof of what the negro, backed 
 by the government, had been able to do for himself 
 came on March 4, 1865, when Mr. Lincoln was 
 inaugurated, for in the procession which accompa 
 nied him to the Capitol were not only negro regi- 
 
232 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 ments of such soldierly bearing as to wring admira 
 tion from even the hostile, but there were delegations 
 from colored civic bodies, proofs of the promptness 
 and efficiency with which representatives of the race 
 had seized the opportunity that under his leader 
 ship had been held out to them. 
 
 It brought him great joy. Indeed those who had 
 begun to feel that he never would be glad again, 
 so heavily had the war weighed down his heart and 
 mind, were already noting a change in his color, his 
 eye, the way he carried himself. He was begin 
 ning to enjoy things again. Particularly was he en 
 joying his boy Tad the only one that had been 
 with him after Willie s death in February of 1862, 
 for his eldest son Robert was still in college. 
 
 People noted now that Mr. Lincoln rarely went 
 out without Tad at his side. He even rode in the 
 carnage beside him when he went to his inaugura 
 tion. Tad, now ten years old, was a wonderful 
 companion for him, for a boy more full of life and 
 vigor and more bubbling over with mischief never 
 lived. One of Mr. Lincoln s secretaries, John Hay, 
 a very young man himself, only twenty-four, a lover 
 of life in all its forms, lived in the White House, 
 and has left a charming picture of the boy. 
 
 He had a bad opinion of books, Mr. Hay tells 
 us, and no opinion of discipline. He thought little 
 of a tutor who would not help him in kite flying, in 
 yoking his kids to a chair, or driving his dogs tan 
 dem across the south lawn. Tad was a passionate 
 lover of animals. He filled the White House with 
 cats and kittens, dogs and goats, in much the same 
 
Victory! 233 
 
 way that Mr. Roosevelt s boys did in his day. If 
 harm came to one of his pets, it was such a grief to 
 him that it was a grief to Mr. Lincoln himself. A 
 pet goat went astray once when he was in New York 
 with his mother, and Mr. Lincoln as well as the 
 housekeeper spent time in trying to hunt Nannie 
 up ; and when they failed, Mr. Lincoln wrote a long 
 letter explaining the case. 
 
 Tad loved to get up things. Once for days, in 
 collusion with some of his little friends, he held a 
 minstrel show in the attic of the White House, he 
 being a great success as The Black Statue. A penny 
 was charged for admission, and soldiers, orderlies, 
 and strangers in town flocked to this unusual show. 
 
 One morning, being at a loss for something to 
 do, he bought out the stock of gingerbread from an 
 old lady who kept a stand near the White House, 
 teased a government carpenter to give him a board 
 and sawhorses, and set up shop in front of the im 
 posing entrance through which all distinguished vis 
 itors passed. You can be sure that there was no 
 senator or office seeker who came up that morning 
 that did not buy something from the keen little mer 
 chant. When he was discovered and a sudden end 
 put to his business, his gingerbread was about gone 
 and his hat full of money. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln backed him up in most of his esca 
 pades. "Let him run," Mr. Hay quotes the Presi 
 dent as saying, "he has time enough to learn his let 
 ters and get pokey. Bob was just such a little ras 
 cal, and now he is a very decent boy." And in 
 truth Tad was a decent boy truthful and generous. 
 
234 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 There was many a poor woman and tattered soldier 
 that some rigorous servant was trying to keep away 
 from Mr. Lincoln whom Tad seized by the hand 
 and dragged to his father, insisting that their cases 
 be immediately attended to. 
 
 Truly as he loved his father, Tad never had any 
 proper sense of showing him respect. He had 
 picked up many a street song about "Old Abe" and 
 would sing these songs saucily before his father, 
 often following at his heels about the White House 
 grounds, singing a doggerel at the top of his voice, 
 Mr. Lincoln paying no attention. 
 
 Tad was an enthusiastic lover of the soldiers, 
 and never was prouder than when, at the request 
 of the captain of Company K which guarded the 
 White House grounds, he was allowed to have a 
 uniform and to wear it. Often he rode, in full 
 regalia, with this company as it attended his father ; 
 and he took an active part in its games and pranks. 
 
 The way Mr. Lincoln "spoiled" Tad came in for 
 much criticism from both friends and enemies in 
 Washington. These were the same people who 
 criticized him for telling amusing stories, for read 
 ing funny books, like Artemus Ward s, for sitting 
 down at the mess table of Company K, for chaffing 
 with the common soldiers when he visited the camps, 
 for giving a long audience to Tom Thumb when 
 Barnum s circus visited Washington, for going out 
 by himself in the morning to buy his own paper, for 
 looking up information that he wanted in different 
 departments instead of sending orderlies to get it 
 for him criticized him for being natural and kind 
 
Fictory! 235 
 
 and simple in all his ways, for not feeling himself 
 above others, for wanting them to feel that he was 
 their friend as well as their President. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s joy that the war was so near an 
 end was the more beautiful because it had no trace 
 of exultation over those who had opposed him in 
 the North or fought him in the South. We talk 
 about being good losers, but the real test of a man 
 and a gentleman is being a good winner. It is poor 
 sportsmanship not to try to make him whom you have 
 defeated forget his defeat. The conquerer in war 
 who will not forgive but will punish and punish and 
 punish, beyond the terms of peace, is a maker of 
 new wars. Mr. Lincoln was too great a gentle 
 man as well as too wise a man to want to humiliate 
 those he had conquered. It was no pleasure for him 
 to triumph over any one, he told the serenaders 
 that crowded under his window the night of his re 
 election. He got no satisfaction from knowing that 
 somebody had been disappointed or pained by his 
 success. 
 
 He talked the same thing to the group of excited 
 young men who inside were gloating over the re 
 turns as they came in and who were particularly 
 exultant over the defeat of certain violent anti- 
 Lincoln men. "You have more of that feeling of 
 personal resentment than I. Perhaps I may have 
 too little of it, but I never thought it paid. A man 
 has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If 
 any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the 
 past against him." 
 
 One of his chief anxieties in these days was to 
 
236 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 get the States that had been out or half out of the 
 Union back in, to get them settled into their old 
 relations, their rebellion forgotten, and the whole 
 country backing them in all honest efforts to accept 
 the results of the war. He wanted them to feel 
 at home, to work to have things as if there had been 
 no war. 
 
 If this was to be done the North must not med 
 dle overmuch with the government the States set 
 up as they came back they must not interfere with 
 their elections. So far as possible he wanted them 
 to come back in their own way. The question was 
 not at all, as he saw it, whether a new State gov 
 ernment was perfect or not. The point was to get 
 something and help to improve it as time went on. 
 One of his last counsels in regard to the government 
 of the States that were returning was not to reject 
 and spurn what they tried to do. "If we do that," 
 he said, "we would do our utmost to disorganize 
 and disperse them." True, the new government 
 might be to what it should be only "as the egg is to 
 the fowl, but we shall sooner have the fowl by 
 hatching the egg than by smashing it." 
 
 In all his talk and writing about getting things 
 to going again in the old way there was this same 
 sound good sense and this same kindliness. But 
 he had as great difficulty in persuading men to his 
 views of the problem as he had had in holding them 
 to his way of saving the Union. The chief hin 
 drance came from a hateful spirit of revenge that a 
 few men felt toward all who had tried to go out 
 of the Union. They refused to trust their efforts 
 
Victory! 237 
 
 and their pledges. When Louisiana, in 1863, after 
 the Confederates were swept from power, started 
 a new Union government and wanted to send rep 
 resentatives to Congress, there were people who 
 insisted that Northerners alone should be elected. 
 Mr. Lincoln realized both the injustice and the bad 
 policy of such a procedure. "To send a parcel of 
 Northern men here as representatives, elected at 
 the point of the bayonet, would be disgusting and 
 outrageous, and were I a member of Congress I 
 would vote against admitting any such man to a 
 seat." He was for helping the people back in the 
 way they wanted to come, however wrong he 
 thought they might have been in going out. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was no more willing to punish the 
 men who had led in the rebellion than he was to hin 
 der and humiliate the people in their efforts to re 
 store their old relation to the Union. Congress had 
 passed an act declaring the leaders in the Confeder 
 acy traitors. They were to be imprisoned, hanged, 
 but he would hear to none of it. Unyielding as he 
 was when any one talked about a peace which would 
 sacrifice either the Union or freedom for the black 
 man, he was all mercy when they came to talk about 
 the men who had led in the rebellion. In every pos 
 sible way he spread the idea that he would have 
 nothing to do with any form of revenge. It shamed 
 him that the great cause should be soiled by so 
 mean a spirit. 
 
 "I used to know a boy in Springfield," Mr. Lin 
 coln said, when some one asked him what was he 
 going to do with Jefferson Davis, "who saved up 
 
238 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 his money and bought a coon. But the coon was 
 too much for him fought him with tooth and claw, 
 scratched his face, tore his clothes. After a few 
 days he took the animal out on a leash. 
 
 "Why don t you get rid of that coon, if he is such 
 a trouble to you?" a man who saw him sitting dis 
 consolately on the curb asked. 
 
 "Hush," the boy said, "don t you see he is gnaw 
 ing his rope off? I will let him do it and then I will 
 go home and tell the folks he got away from me." 
 
 This spirit of mercy grew in him. When he 
 came to his inauguration on March 4, 1864, he gave 
 it expression in one of the most beautiful paragraphs 
 in all English literature, his idea of the spirit with 
 which men should look upon the mighty problems 
 which always follow a war: 
 
 "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm 
 ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us 
 strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation s 
 wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and 
 for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve 
 and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and 
 with all nations." 
 
 Not only was it for the North to be merciful ; he 
 felt it should be humble. The North as well as the 
 South had consented at the start to the continuance 
 of slavery in the country. 
 
 "If we shall suppose," he said in his inaugural, 
 "that American slavery is one of those offenses 
 which, in the providence of God, must needs come, 
 but which, having continued through His appointed 
 time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives 
 
Victory/ 239 
 
 to both North and South this terrible war, as the 
 woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall 
 we discern therein any departure from those divine 
 attributes which the believers in a living God always 
 ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope fervently do 
 we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speed 
 ily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 
 until all the wealth piled by the bondman s two hun 
 dred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
 and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash 
 shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as 
 was said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
 be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and 
 righteous altogether. 
 
 A few days after his inauguration, Mr. Lincoln 
 took a vacation took it with the army behind 
 Petersburg. With Mrs. Lincoln, Tad, and a few 
 of his friends, he sailed down the Potomac, and up 
 the James to Grant s headquarters, where he re 
 mained for ten days. The time was filled with vis 
 its to the soldiers, in camp and in their trenches, 
 with long talks with officers before roaring camp 
 fires, with reviews of the army, with excursions up 
 and down the river with Admiral Porter who was 
 commanding the naval forces supporting Grant. 
 All of the business of war went on under his eyes. 
 There was much hard fighting, and he saw much of 
 the wounded and dead; but he shirked none of the 
 sorrow. He was supported by the consciousness 
 that it must end now very soon. 
 
 When he was with Grant and Porter, he fre 
 quently turned the talk to what was to be done with 
 
240 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 the leaders and the rank and file of the Confederacy 
 when the war was over. He wanted Grant to be 
 very liberal with Lee and his men. "We must get 
 them to plowing at once," he said, "to gathering in 
 their crops, to eating popcorn at their own firesides. 
 If you can get them to do that, you cannot get them 
 to shoulder a musket again for half a century." "If 
 Grant is wise," he told Porter, "he will give them 
 their guns to shoot crows with and their horses to 
 plow with it will do no harm." As for the lead 
 ers themselves, his whole idea was, during this visit 
 at City Point, to "let them down easy." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was still at Grant s headquarters 
 when, on the morning of April 3d, news was brought 
 to him that Richmond was being abandoned. 
 Petersburg at last had fallen, and General Lee saw 
 that the capitol could no longer be held. Jefferson 
 Davis and his Cabinet had left, and Lee was march 
 ing his army southward, with Grant after him in 
 double quick time. 
 
 Richmond had suffered cruelly from fire and bom 
 bardment, and was in terrible disorder now that its 
 defenders had been withdrawn. But, regardless of 
 all this, Mr. Lincoln insisted that he should see the 
 city. Two days after the evacuation began, he en 
 tered with little Tad, three or four friends, and a 
 small guard, and walked through the burning, shat 
 tered town. 
 
 Its streets were filled with drunken whites and 
 blacks, and from doors and windows hostile men 
 and women watched his progress. Never perhaps 
 had Mr. Lincoln done a more reckless thin? than 
 
Vktory! 241 
 
 in this visit to Richmond; but here, as all through 
 his term as President, he ignored danger. He had 
 that natural, instinctive courage which leads men to 
 go where they think their work calls them, indiffer 
 ent and even impatient of caution. From the day 
 that he had been nominated he had had repeated 
 warnings of danger to his life. It was only the 
 watchfulness of the War Department and of de 
 tective agencies working separately that saved him 
 from assassination on his way to Washington for 
 his inauguration. 
 
 As the war went on the number of disordered 
 minds that felt that, by putting an end to his life, 
 the cause of the South might be served, multiplied. 
 Mr. Lincoln would hear just as little as he could of 
 the plots that were unearthed, and yet they came to 
 him so thick that he had a drawer in his desk which 
 he called his "Assassination" drawer. u You get 
 used to anything" he would say sometimes to 
 alarmed friends. His burdens were so heavy and 
 so many that he would not cripple himself by in 
 dulging in thoughts of personal danger. The guard 
 that was kept about the White House and the secret 
 service men who attended him everywhere had great 
 difficulty in watching him. He liked to go out alone, 
 to ride alone. He disliked guards. One of his 
 habits that gave them the greatest uneasiness was 
 slipping away from them on summer nights after 
 he had finished his work at the White House, to 
 walk alone to the Soldiers Home, three miles away. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was quite as indifferent to danger 
 when visiting the armies as he was in going about 
 
242 Boy Scouts Life of Lincoln 
 
 Washington. More than once in the war he ven 
 tured into conspicuous places along a battle line, 
 and had to be hurried away by watchful protectors 
 who realized what a wonderful target his tall, lean 
 figure, topped by a high black hat, made for Con 
 federate riflemen. 
 
 As he had gone about Washington and along bat 
 tle lines, careless of harm to himself, so now he 
 went among the distracted, embittered people of 
 Richmond. No bitterness or enmity toward them 
 Was in his heart. Possibly he was willing to run 
 this great danger to show them that he was their 
 friend, not their conqueror. The wisest among 
 them knew this. When in the winter before he had 
 gone himself to Hampton Roads to tell Alexander 
 Stephens and other agents of the Confederacy that 
 they could have peace as soon as they would give 
 up their idea of separation and consent to emanci 
 pation, and not before, the question of what would 
 be done with the leaders of the rebellion had come 
 up. Would they be hanged? Stephens had said 
 to him then something which pleased him enor 
 mously: "To tell the truth, we have none of us 
 been much afraid of being hanged with you as Presi 
 dent." 
 
 Directly after the visit to Richmond Mr. Lincoln 
 went back to Washington. All the way home his 
 mind was filled with ideas of mercy. As they 
 approached the city, Mrs. Lincoln said to him, 
 "Washington is filled with our enemies." The 
 President turned on her sharply. "Don t use that 
 word. There are no enemies now." He was not 
 
Victory! 243 
 
 willing that even in his own household the thought 
 should be uttered. 
 
 He kept this idea uppermost in his talks with the 
 members of his Cabinet. On April I4th there was 
 a Cabinet meeting. The President was very happy. 
 Lee had surrendered to Grant on the 9th. Only 
 Johnston s army remained in arms, and its speedy 
 surrender to Sherman was certain. He was sure 
 they would soon hear of it, he said, perhaps even 
 before morning, because the night before he had had 
 the dream that all through the war had come to 
 him before great events before the fall of Sumter, 
 Antietam, Gettysburg, the fall of Atlanta a dream 
 of a dim, mysterious ship sailing to a dark and un 
 known shore. Something important always hap 
 pened after it. The only important event likely now 
 to occur was the surrender of Johnston. 
 
 That would end it all, and their whole thought 
 now must be to bring back the States into their old 
 relation, make everybody happy again; there must 
 be no unnecessary humiliating or tormenting the 
 war was over. Nobody need expect him, he in 
 sisted, to have any part in hanging or killing. Let 
 the leaders get out of the country if they wanted 
 to shoo them off. But no resentment. They are 
 to be our fellow citizens now, and we must treat 
 them so. There had been enough sacrifice of lives. 
 
 And so the Cabinet meeting ended; the members 
 going home with their minds full of the merciful 
 ness of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 That evening Mrs. Lincoln had arranged a thea 
 ter party, and rather late, after dinner, they went 
 
244 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 with some young friends to Ford s Theater where 
 a humorous play called "Our American Cousin" was 
 to be given. Mr. Lincoln loved the theater. It 
 rested him as almost nothing else except his "funny 
 books," and this evening he seemed to get unusual 
 pleasure, perhaps because he carried a lighter heart 
 than he had for so many weary years. The audi 
 ence, too, were happy and friendly, and they cheered 
 and waved their handkerchiefs again and again as 
 he came into his box. The third act of the play had 
 been reached, and he was smiling at some gay sally, 
 when suddenly the audience heard a pistol shot, 
 and saw a man leap from the President s box. He 
 turned toward them as he struck the stage, crying, 
 "Sic semper tyrannis!" and disappeared. 
 
 The meaning of this strange interruption to the 
 play came to the audience only as they turned their 
 eyes to the box from which the man had leaped. 
 There they saw that the President alone was sitting 
 quietly in his seat, that over him hung Mrs. Lin 
 coln, sobbing; that men and women were crowding 
 in. They heard a call for a doctor for water. 
 Then there ran through the house the whisper, "The 
 President is shot is dying!" 
 
 They carried him, unconscious, to a bed in a house 
 across the street; and early the next morning the 
 word went out to the country that Abraham Lin 
 coln was dead dead at the very hour that the great 
 cause to which he had given long years of agony and 
 labor was secured. 
 
 The heart of the country seemed to break at the 
 news. In the South wise men knew that they had 
 

 Courtesy of George Gray Barnard. 
 
 STATUE OF LINCOLN MADE BY GEORGE GRAY BARNARD 
 
Victory! 245 
 
 lost their best friend, and hastened to condemn the 
 deed. On the Union armies, gay as they were with 
 the end of their long struggle, there fell a silence 
 such as comes upon strong men when they see a 
 loved father dead. For days after the news reached 
 Sherman s army which was singing its way north 
 ward, no song was heard, no smile was seen. Father 
 Abraham was dead. 
 
 They carried him back to his old home in Spring 
 field, and all along the way of the slow march, men 
 and women, boys and girls, passed before the bier 
 as it lay in state in the cities or stood night and day 
 watching the passage of the train. Many a man 
 and woman grew up to tell their children and grand 
 children of the moment when the news of Abraham 
 Lincoln s death reached them. The woman who is 
 writing these lines, a little girl then, remembers see 
 ing her father coming toward the house all the 
 spring out of his step, his shoulders bent, of seeing 
 her mother run out and hearing her alarmed cry, 
 "What is it? What is it?" of seeing, not hearing, 
 a whisper in her ear, of watching her tears, of won 
 dering why the doors should be closed and crape 
 hung on the knobs, of being told something she was 
 far from understanding, but which she could never 
 forget " Abraham Lincoln is dead." 
 
 And so it was. The whole North wept and no 
 body who lived ever forgot the day or hour when 
 the news came. 
 
 He was a great, good and wise man. He became 
 what he was by his fidelity to what he regarded to be 
 true, just, honorable and merciful. He early ac- 
 
246 Boy Scouts 9 Life of Lincoln 
 
 cepted labor as a necessary and dignified part of 
 man s life. To learn to do something well and to 
 do it with all one s might was the only genuine man 
 liness, in Lincoln s judgment. The idler was a nui 
 sance to himself and his fellows. 
 
 He learned early that a man s real kingdom is 
 his mind and that no man is so placed that he does 
 not have opportunity to feed, train and rule it. 
 
 He was equally concerned with the training of the 
 heart, with keeping its impulses clean and noble and 
 kind, and though he saw all about him every form 
 of evil and meanness and uncleanness, these things 
 he resolutely resisted. 
 
 He never allowed himself from his earliest life 
 to despise any man, however poor and mean and 
 wrong that man may have been. His whole effort 
 was to help men, to understand them; and, above 
 all, he desired liberty for all men. The greatest 
 idea that came to him in his boyhood was that of 
 the preciousness of freedom. Nothing ever stirred 
 him as the thought that men in forming this gov 
 ernment meant that all under it should be free. He 
 hated the contradiction that slavery was to this prin 
 ciple, and when the opportunity came, he was 
 willing to sacrifice for this idea of a land in which 
 all men should work together for liberty, justice, 
 and opportunity, his profession, his peace of mind, 
 and his life. 
 
 Throughout the years of terrific struggle against 
 disunion and for emancipation, his one concern was 
 to be right in mind and heart. It did not matter 
 about him, all that mattered was that the truth should 
 
Victory! 247 
 
 be kept uppermost. He indulged in no contempt 
 for those who differed with him. They could be 
 honest and think differently, he knew. He took no 
 pleasure in triumphing over any man that he had 
 defeated. He would countenance no revengeful act 
 toward even those who had tried to break down the 
 Union whose preservation he believed to be so 
 necessary to the future progress and happiness of 
 the world. 
 
 The history of this or no other land offers to the 
 American Boy a more worthy and beautiful model 
 on which to base and rear his own than Abraham 
 Lincoln, 
 
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