The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

by Abraham Lincoln

When is, to force him from his track,

  An ambush on him sprung.

  Across the glade he sweeps for flight,

  And fully is in view.

  The dogs, new-fired, by the sight,

  Their cry, and speed, renew.

  The foremost ones, now reach his rear,

  He turns, they dash away;

  And circling now, the wrathful bear,

  They have him full at bay.

  At top of speed, the horsemen come,

  All screaming in a row.

  “Whoop! Take him Tiger—Seize him Drum”—

  Bang—bang—the rifles go.

  And furious now, the dogs he tears,

  And crushes in his ire.

  Wheels right and left, and upward rears,

  With eyes of burning fire.

  But leaden death is at his heart,

  Vain all the strength he plies,

  And, spouting blood from every part,

  He reels, and sinks and dies.

  And now a dinsome clamor rose,

  ’Bout who should have his skin.

  Who first draws blood, each hunter knows,

  This prize must always win.

  But who did this, and how to trace

  What’s true from what’s a lie,

  Like lawyers, in a murder case

  They stoutly argufy.

  Aforesaid fice, of blustering mood,

  Behind, and quite forgot,

  Just now emerging from the wood,

  Arrives upon the spot.

  With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair—

  Brim full of spunk and wrath,

  He growls, and seizes on dead bear,

  And shakes for life and death.

  And swells as if his skin would tear,

  And growls, and shakes again;

  And swears, as plain as dog can swear,

  That he has won the skin.

  Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee—

  Now mind, that not a few

  Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be,

  Conceited quite as you.

  LETTER TO JOSHUA F. SPEED

  The friendship with Speed is waning, and Lincoln regrets seeing it die. The “true philosophic cause” is probably Mrs. Lincoln’s jealousy of Speed combined with the geographical distance that separated the two men. Lincoln had been elected to the United States Congress on August 3 after a bitter campaign against Peter Cartwright, Methodist circuit-riding minister and Illinois pioneer. He had had to wait to see both Hardin and then Baker go to Washington before his own turn finally came. The second son, born on March 10th, is Edward Baker Lincoln, named after Lincoln’s friend. This boy died in infancy on February 1, 1850.

  Springfield, October 22, 1846

  DEAR SPEED: You, no doubt, assign the suspension of our correspondence to the true philosophic cause; though it must be confessed by both of us that this is rather a cold reason for allowing a friendship such as ours to die out by degrees. I propose now that, upon receipt of this, you shall be considered in my debt, and under obligations to pay soon, and that neither shall remain long in arrears hereafter. Are you agreed?

  Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.

  We have another boy, born the 10th of March. He is very much such a child as Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order. Bob is “short and low,” and I expect always will be. He talks very plainly—almost as plainly as anybody. He is quite smart enough. I sometimes fear that he is one of the little rare-ripe sort that are smarter at about five than ever after. He has a great deal of that sort of mischief that is the offspring of such animal spirits. Since I began this letter, a messenger came to tell me Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house his mother had found him and had him whipped, and by now, very likely, he is run away again. Mary has read your letter, and wishes to be remembered to Mrs. Speed and you, in which I most sincerely join her.

  LETTER TO ANDREW JOHNSTON

  What would have been an important first edition in American literature is projected, but, most unfortunately, it was never carried through. Johnston and Lincoln had planned to publish their own poems. Perhaps some local printer, on second thought, declined to underwrite the venture.

  Springfield, February 25, 1847

  DEAR JOHNSTON: Yours of the 2d of December was duly delivered to me by Mr. Williams. To say the least, I am not at all displeased with your proposal to publish the poetry, or doggerel, or whatever else it may be called, which I sent you. I consent that it may be done, together with the third canto, which I now send you. Whether the prefatory remarks in my letter shall be published with the verses, I leave entirely to your discretion; but let names be suppressed by all means. I have not sufficient hope of the verses attracting any favorable notice to tempt me to risk being ridiculed for having written them.

  FROM NOTES FOR A TARIFF DISCUSSION

  This is the first of many speculations made by Lincoln regarding the nature of labor and the relationship of government to it. Labor seems to be the one economic factor in which Lincoln, who was no economist, was really interested. Perhaps the fact that he himself had known from first-hand experience what labor was like made him keenly sensitive to its value. These notes may have been written while Lincoln was en route to Washington to take up his first term as Congressman. He arrived at the capital on December 2, and was seated on December 6.

  December 1, 1847[?]

  IN THE early days of our race the Almighty said to the first of our race, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been or can be enjoyed by us without having first cost labor. And inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

  But then a question arises, How can a government best effect this? In our own country, in its present condition, will the protective principle advance or retard this object? Upon this subject the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labor, useless labor, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious, and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two later, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, so far as possible, drive useless labor and idleness out of existence. And, first, as to useless labor. Before making war upon this, we must learn to distinguish it from the useful. It appears to me that all labor done directly and indirectly in carrying articles to the place of consumption, which could have been produced in sufficient abundance, with as little labor, at the place of consumption as at the place they were carried from, is useless labor.

  RESOLUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

  When Lincoln took his seat in Congress, the Mexican War had dragged on for twenty months. The country was sick of it; Whigs and anti-slavery people generally were opposing it. Lincoln was a new and green member of the House; he surprised everybody by getting up and delivering these Resolutions questioning the administration’s war policy. Lincoln’s query as to the exact location of the spot on which American blood had first been shed, and as to whether that spot was on Mexican or United States territory, was to cause him much trouble. Illinois had been particularly energetic in supporting the war with Mexico; she had sent many troops and important men to lead them. On January 12, 1848 (see below) Lincoln again spoke against the war—and completely alienated his own constituents.

  December 22, 1847

  WHEREAS, the President of the United States, in his message of May 11, 1846, has declared that “the Mexican Gove
rnment not only refused to receive him [the envoy of the United States], or to listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil.”

  And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that “we had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities; but even then we forebore to take redress into our own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our citizens.”

  And yet again, in his message of December 7, 1847, that “the Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment which he [our minister of peace] was authorized to propose, and finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil.”

  And whereas, This House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at that time our own soil; therefore,

  Resolved, By the House of Representatives, that the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House—

  FIRST. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution.

  SECOND. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico.

  THIRD. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States Army.

  FOURTH. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.

  FIFTH. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way.

  SIXTH. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States Army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the message stated; and whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.

  SEVENTH. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War.

  EIGHTH. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not so sent into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defense or protection of Texas.

  LETTER TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON

  In this letter, Lincoln speaks too soon. He discusses, rather coyly, his prospects for re-election. Four days later, his Mexican War speech completely blasted any chance of his being returned to Congress.

  Washington, January 8, 1848

  DEAR WILLIAM: Your letter of December 27 was received a day or two ago. I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken, and promise to take in my little business there. As to speech-making, by way of getting the hang of the House I made a little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of no general interest. I find speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to make one within a week or two, in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish you to see it.

  It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who desire that I should be re-elected. I most heartily thank them for their kind partiality; and I can say, as Mr. Clay said of the annexation of Texas, that “personally I would not object” to a re-election, although I thought at the time, and still think, it would be quite as well for me to return to the law at the end of a single term. I made the declaration that I would not be a candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly with others, to keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district from going to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself; so that, if it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I could not refuse the people the right of sending me again. But to enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to enter me, is what my word and honor forbid.

  I got some letters intimating a probability of so much difficulty amongst our friends as to lose us the district; but I remember such letters were written to Baker when my own case was under consideration, and I trust there is no more ground for such apprehension now than there was then.

  FROM A SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON THE MEXICAN WAR

  The President, to whom Lincoln here refers, was James K. Polk. Polk was a Democrat, Lincoln was a Whig; Lincoln speaks for his party here, using arguments which many other Whigs had already made, nevertheless, this speech ruined him politically in his own state. The most remarkable statement contained here is Lincoln’s discussion of a people’s right to revolution. This right, as here defined by him, was to be quoted against him, much to his embarrassment, by proponents of secession in 1860.

  January 12, 1848

  MR. CHAIRMAN: Some if not all the gentlemen on the other side of the House who have addressed the committee within the last two days have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President. I admit that such a vote should not be given in mere party wantonness, and that the one given is justly censurable, if it have no other or better foundation. I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did so under my best impression of the truth of the case. How I got this impression, and how it may possibly be remedied, I will now try to show. When the war began, it was my opinion that all those who because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously oppose the conduct of the President in the beginning of it should nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended.…

  The President, in his first war message of May, 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities were commenced by Mexico, and he repeats that declaration almost in the same language in each successive annual message, thus showing that he deems that point a highly essential one. In the importance of that point I entirely agree with the President.

  * * *

  … It is a singular fact that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there and thereby the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said which would either admit or deny the declaration. This strange omission it does seem to me could not have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client’s neck in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some point arising in the case which he dared not admit and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to make it appear so, but with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me that just such, and from just such necessity, is the President’s struggle in this case.…

  I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and wherever Mexico
was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one from that of the other was the true boundary between them. If, as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the boundary; but the uninhabited country between the two was. The extent of our territory in that region depended not on any treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on revolution. Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near about them, who may oppose this movement. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.