The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

by Abraham Lincoln

  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 beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington 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 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.

  FROM A SPEECH AT NEW HAVEN, CONN.

  After his address at Cooper Union, Lincoln went on through New England to make a speaking tour there. At New Haven he delivered his celebrated statement approving of labor’s right to strike.

  March 6, 1860

  ANOTHER specimen of this bushwhacking—that “shoe strike.” Now be it understood that I do not pretend to know all about the matter. I am merely going to speculate a little about some of its phases, and at the outset I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere. One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is just here. What is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flatboat—just what might happen to any poor man’s son. I want every man to have a chance—and I believe a black man is entitled to it—in which he can better his condition—when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is the true system. Up here in New England you have a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, and yet where will you find wealthy men so wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity? There is not another such place on earth! I desire that if you get too thick here, and find it hard to better your condition on this soil, you may have a chance to strike and go somewhere else, where you may not be degraded, nor have your family corrupted by forced rivalry with Negro slaves.…

  FROM A LETTER TO MARK W. DELAHAY

  Delahay was a lawyer and a professional politician whom Lincoln had known in Illinois. He had gone to Kansas to live, and there Lincoln had met him again in December, 1859, while on a speaking tour. In this strange letter, Lincoln, after avowing that it is wrong to “enter the ring on the money basis,” offers to furnish one hundred dollars to Delahay to pay his expenses to the Republican Convention at Chicago so he could try to swing Kansas for Lincoln. The aftermath of this is interesting: Delahay was not appointed a delegate; Lincoln then offered him money to go as a ringside booster; after he became President, Lincoln made him Surveyor-General of Kansas and Nebraska; in 1863 he made him United States District Judge for Kansas—all this against the warnings of his friends that Delahay was corrupt, a drunkard and an incompetent person. In 1864, Delahay hastily resigned from his judgeship just as impeachment proceedings were being brought against him. Why Lincoln backed this man again and again has never been explained. The strange relationship is one of the unsolved mysteries of Lincoln’s life.

  Springfield, Ill., March 16, 1860

  DEAR DELAHAY: I have just returned from the East.… I sincerely wish you could be elected one of the first Senators from Kansas; but how to help you I do not know. If it were permissible for me to interfere, I am not personally acquainted with a single member of your Legislature. If my known friendship for you could be of any advantage, that friendship was abundantly manifested by me last December while in Kansas.…

  As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to say I can not enter the ring on the money basis—first, because, in the main, it is wrong; and secondly, I have not, and can not get, the money. I say, in the main, the use of money is wrong; but for certain objects, in a political contest, the use of some, is both right and indispensable. With me as with yourself, this long struggle has been one of great pecuniary loss. I now distinctly say this: If you shall be appointed a delegate to Chicago, I will furnish one hundred dollars to bear the expenses of the trip.

  LETTER TO E. STAFFORD

  Lincoln writes again on the money situation. He has not got, and could not raise, ten thousand dollars.

  Springfield, Illinois, March 17, 1860

  DEAR SIR: Reaching home on the 14th instant, I found yours of the 1st. Thanking you very sincerely for your kind purposes toward me, I am compelled to say the money part of the arrangement you propose is, with me, an impossibility. I could not raise ten thousand dollars if it would save me from the fate of John Brown. Nor have my friends, so far as I know, yet reached the point of staking any money on my chances of success. I wish I could tell you better things, but it is even so.

  LETTER TO SAMUEL GALLOWAY

  The prospective Republican Presidential nominee candidly appraises his own chances for election—it nominated.

  Chicago, March 24, 1860

  MY DEAR SIR: I am here attending a trial in court. Before leaving home I received your kind letter of the 15th. Of course I am gratified to know I have friends in Ohio who are disposed to give me the highest evidence of their friendship and confidence. Mr. Parrott, of the legislature, had written me to the same effect. If I have any chance, it consists mainly in the fact that the whole opposition would vote for me, if nominated. (I don’t mean to include the pro-slavery opposition of the South, of course.) My name is new in the field, and I suppose I am not the first choice of a very great many. Our policy, then, is to give no offense to others—leave them in a mood to come to us if they shall be compelled to give up their first love. This, too, is dealing justly with all, and leaving us in a mood to support heartily whoever shall be nominated.…

  LETTER TO C. F. McNEIL

  Lincoln had been in Chicago attending court; he returned to find that he had been criticized in a newspaper article for accepting pay for delivering his Cooper Union address. He writes to a friend to explain.

  Springfield, April 6, 1860

  DEAR SIR: Reaching home yesterday, I found yours of the 23d March, inclosing a slip from The Middleport Press. It is not true that I ever charged anything for a political speech in my life; but this much is true: Last October I was requested by letter to deliver some sort of speech in Mr. Beecher’s church, in Brooklyn—two hundred dollars being offered in the first letter. I wrote that I could do it in February, provided they would take a political speech if I could find time to get up no other. They agreed; and subsequently I informed them the speech would have to be a political one. When I reached New York, I for the first time learned that the place was changed to “Cooper Institute.”

  I made the speech, and left
for New Hampshire, where I have a son at school, neither asking for pay, nor having any offered me. Three days after, a check for two hundred dollars was sent to me at New Hampshire; and I took it, and did not know it was wrong. My understanding now is—though I knew nothing of it at the time—that they did charge for admittance to the Cooper Institute, and that they took in more than twice two hundred dollars.

  I have made this explanation to you as a friend; but I wish no explanation made to our enemies. What they want is a squabble and a fuss, and that they can have if we explain; and they cannot have it if we don’t.

  When I returned through New York from New England, I was told by the gentlemen who sent me the check that a drunken vagabond in the club, having learned something about the two hundred dollars, made the exhibition out of which the Herald manufactured the article quoted by the Press of your town.

  My judgment is, and therefore my request is, that you give no denial and no explanation.

  REPLY TO THE COMMITTEE SENT TO NOTIFY LINCOLN OF HIS NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT

  The incredible had happened. The obscure native son of Illinois had received the Republican nomination for President at the Chicago convention on May 18. On the next day, the official nominating committee arrived in Springfield to tell Lincoln what he already knew. They visited him at his home, calling on him during the evening, while a great crowd waited in the street, and bonfires were lighted to celebrate the event. This is Lincoln’s verbal reply to the committee.

  Springfield, Illinois, May 21, 1860

  MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE: I tender to you, and through you to the Republican National Convention, and all the people represented in it, my pro-foundest thanks for the high honor done me, which you now formally announce.

  Deeply and even painfully sensible of the great responsibility which is inseparable from this high honor—a responsibility which I could almost wish had fallen upon some one of the far more eminent men and experienced statesmen whose distinguished names were before the convention—I shall, by your leave, consider more fully the resolutions of the convention, denominated the platform, and without any unnecessary or unreasonable delay respond to you, Mr. Chairman, in writing, not doubting that the platform will be found satisfactory, and the nomination gratefully accepted.

  And now I will not longer defer the pleasure of taking you, and each of you, by the hand.

  LETTER TO GEORGE ASHMUN AND THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

  Lincoln writes his official letter of acceptance, addressing it to George Ashmun, president of the Chicago convention, a man to whom he was later to address the last bit of writing he ever penned (April 14, 1865).

  Springfield, Illinois, May 23, 1860

  SIR: I accept the nomination tendered me by the convention over which you presided, and of which I am formally apprised in the letter of yourself and others, acting as a committee of the convention for that purpose.

  The declaration of principles and sentiments which accompanies your letter meets my approval; and it shall be my care not to violate or disregard it in any part.

  Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due regard to the views and feelings of all who were represented in the convention—to the rights of all the States and Territories and people of the nation; to the inviolability of the Constitution; and the perpetual union, harmony, and prosperity of all—I am most happy to co-operate for the practical success of the principles declared by the convention.

  LETTER TO SAMUEL HAYCRAFT

  Now that Lincoln had become famous through his nomination to the Presidency, all sorts of people began writing to him about all sorts of things. Haycraft was the clerk of the court at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and a man interested in preserving records of local history. Lincoln gives him some genealogical facts and begins a correspondence that was soon to cause him much trouble (see June 4, August 16 and August 23, 1860).

  Springfield, Illinois, May 28, 1860

  DEAR SIR: In the main you are right about my history. My father was Thomas Lincoln, and Mrs. Sally Johnston was his second wife. You are mistaken about my mother. Her maiden name was Nancy Hanks. I was not born at Elizabethtown, but my mother’s first child, a daughter, two years older than myself, and now long since deceased, was. I was born February 12, 1809, near where Hogginsville [Hodgenville] now is, then in Hardin County. I do not think I ever saw you, though I very well know who you are—so well that I recognized your handwriting, on opening your letter, before I saw the signature. My recollection is that Ben Helm was first clerk, that you succeeded him, that Jack Thomas and William Farleigh graduated in the same office, and that your handwritings were all very similar. Am I right?

  My father has been dead near ten years; but my step-mother, (Mrs. Johnston) is still living.

  I am really very glad of your letter, and shall be pleased to receive another at any time.

  AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH WRITTEN FOR USE IN PREPARING A CAMPAIGN BIOGRAPHY

  Demands for biographical information about the Republican nominee were increasing; campaign biographies had to be written, and more facts about Lincoln’s life were needed. He writes here in the third person to give the necessary structure of personal data for such works. (See also letter to Samuel Galloway, June 19, 1860.)

  June 1, 1860 (circa)

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN was born February 12, 1809, then in Hardin, now in the more recently formed county of La Rue, Kentucky. His father, Thomas, and grandfather, Abraham, were born in Rockingham County, Virginia, whither their ancestors had come from Berks County, Pennsylvania. His lineage has been traced no farther back than this. The family were originally Quakers, though in later times they have fallen away from the peculiar habits of that people. The grandfather, Abraham, had four brothers—Isaac, Jacob, John, and Thomas. So far as known, the descendants of Jacob and John are still in Virginia. Isaac went to a place near where Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee join; and his descendants are in that region. Thomas came to Kentucky, and after many years died there, whence his descendants went to Missouri. Abraham, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, came to Kentucky, and was killed by Indians about the year 1784.23 He left a widow, three sons, and two daughters. The eldest son, Mordecai, remained in Kentucky till late in life, when he removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where soon after he died, and where several of his descendants still remain. The second son, Josiah, removed at an early day to a place on Blue River, now within Hancock County, Indiana, but no recent information of him or his family has been obtained. The eldest sister, Mary, married Ralph Crume, and some of her descendants are now known to be in Breckenridge County, Kentucky. The second sister, Nancy, married William Brumfield, and her family are not known to have left Kentucky, but there is no recent information from them. Thomas, the youngest son, and father of the present subject, by the early death of his father, and very narrow circumstances of his mother, even in childhood was a wandering laboring-boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly write his own name. Before he was grown he passed one year as a hired hand with his uncle Isaac on Watauga, a branch of the Holston River. Getting back into Kentucky, and having reached his twenty-eighth year, he married Nancy Hanks—mother of the present subject—in the year 1806. She also was born in Virginia, and relatives of hers of the name of Hanks, and of other names, now reside in Coles, in Macon, and in Adams counties, Illinois, and also in Iowa. The present subject has no brother or sister of the whole or half blood. He had a sister, older than himself, who was grown and married, but died many years ago, leaving no child; also a brother, younger than himself, who died in infancy. Before leaving Kentucky, he and his sister were sent, for short periods, to ABC schools, the first kept by Zachariah Riney, and the second by Caleb Hazel.

  At this time his father resided on Knob Creek, on the road from Bardstown, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, at a point three or three and a half miles south or southwest of Atherton’s Ferry, on the Rolling For
k. From this place he removed to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the autumn of 1816, Abraham then being in his eighth year. This removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky. He settled in an unbroken forest, and the clearing away of surplus wood was the great task ahead. Abraham, though very young, was large of his age, and had an ax put into his hands at once; and from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument—less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons. At this place Abraham took an early start as a hunter, which was never much improved afterward. A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham with a rifle-gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game. In the autumn of 1818 his mother died; and a year afterward his father married Mrs. Sally Johnston, at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a widow with three children of her first marriage. She proved a good and kind mother to Abraham, and is still living in Coles County, Illinois. There were no children of this second marriage. His father’s residence continued at the same place in Indiana till 1830. While here Abraham went to ABC schools by littles, kept successively by Andrew Crawford, [William] Sweeney, and Azel W. Dorsey. He does not remember any other. The family of Mr. Dorsey now resides in Schuyler County, Illinois. Abraham now thinks that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or academy as a student, and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law license. What he has in the way of education he has picked up. After he was twenty-three and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar—imperfectly, of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of Congress. He regrets his want of education, and does what he can to supply the want. In his tenth year he was kicked by a horse, and apparently killed for a time. When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, he made his first trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. He was a hired hand merely, and he and a son of the owner, without other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the “cargo-load,” as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar coast; and one night they were attacked by seven Negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the melée, but succeeded in driving the Negroes from the boat, and then “cut cable,” “weighed anchor,” and left.