The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

by Abraham Lincoln

  LINCOLN’S LAST WRITING

  A few moments before the Presidential carriage left the White House on the fatal evening of April 14 to go to Ford’s Theater, George Ashmun, Congressman from Massachusetts and chairman of the 1860 National Republican Convention that had nominated Lincoln, asked for an interview with the President. There was no time to go into the matter about which he wished to speak—a cotton claim which one of his clients had against the Government—so Lincoln wrote out this pass to admit Ashmun to the White House in the morning. The carriage then drove off to the theater. There were to be no more tomorrows for the man who had laid down his pen for the last time.

  April 14, 1865

  ALLOW Mr. Ashmun and friend to come in at 9 A. M. tomorrow.

  A. LINCOLN

  1 Lincoln refers here to the shooting of Elijah Lovejoy, editor of the abolitionist Alton Observer. Lovejoy had had three printing presses thrown into the river. He was killed by a pro-slavery mob while trying to defend the fourth one. Owen Lovejoy, brother of Elijah, played an important part in Lincoln’s political career. See Lincoln’s letter to James Lemen, March 2, 1857, in which he refers to Lovejoy’s murder as “the most important single event that ever happened in the new world.” The reference to Lovejoy’s death, which occurred on November 7, 1837, correctly dates this speech as having been delivered in 1838. Many editions of Lincoln’s writings have wrongly dated it January 27, 1837.

  2 This evidently refers to Lincoln’s favorite poem, “Mortality” by William Knox, beginning “Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”

  3 This was an error which Lincoln later corrected. The prohibition of slavery in ceding the Virginia territory was not a condition of the deed.—ED.

  4 It was signed by President Pierce on May 30, 1854.

  5 The African slave trade had been forbidden by law in 1808.

  6 An emigrant aid society had been established in New England to give financial assistance to Free State men who were willing to settle in the Kansas-Nebraska Territory.

  7 The only man actually put to death under this law was Nathaniel Gordon, who was hanged in 1862 during Lincoln’s administration.

  8 John Pettit, Senator from Indiana.

  9 This is the birth of one of the major themes to be used by Lincoln in his formal debates with Douglas.

  10 California’s application for admission to the Union as a free state was the issue that had brought on the series of compromises in 1850, in which the South was given certain privileges in exchange for letting California be added to the free-state group. Among these privileges was the right of Utah and New Mexico to enter as slave or free states when either was ready to be admitted to the Union.

  11 In the October elections just held in these states the people had voted heavily against the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

  12 The Missouri Compromise.

  13 Stephen A. Douglas.

  14 Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney, James Buchanan.

  15 Dissenting justices in the Dred Scott decision.

  16 A German political club had just marched into the crowd.

  17 The word “grocery” in those days meant a store where liquor was sold.

  18 The Rev. Dr. Frederick A. Ross was a Presbyterian minister who, in 1856, had attacked abolitionist agitation as atheistic and anarchical.

  19 Senator Hammond of South Carolina had referred in a speech to a building he had erected on swampy ground using “mud-sills” sunk by his slaves. This was the kind of work that made slavery necessary, he said, rough work directed by men of intelligence. He said further that the “hireling system” of the North did the same thing. This aroused much resentment. At the Galesburg debate with Douglas, Lincoln’s followers had brought in a banner with the words: “Small-fisted farmers, mud-sills of society, greasy mechanics, for A. Lincoln.”

  20 Modern research indicates that he was probably killed in the spring of 1786.

  20aThe connection has been definitely established by more recent genealogical research.

  21 Hinton Rowan Helper’s The Impending Crisis of the South.

  22 In the Dred Scott decision.

  23 1786.

  24 At the Republican State Convention in Decatur on May 9, John Hanks had brought in two fence rails that Lincoln had split in 1830. They bore a placard reading: “Abraham Lincoln, The Rail Candidate for President in 1860.”

  25 The Know-Nothings.

  26 The book containing the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

  27 Jefferson and Adams both died on July 4, 1826.

  28 James Monroe, who died on July 4, 1831.

  29 During the draft riots in July, 1863.

  COMMENTARY

  WILLIAM HERNDON

  ALFRED BEVERIDGE

  CARL SANDBURG

  J. G. RANDALL

  BENJAMIN P. THOMAS

  STEFAN LORENT

  WILLIAM HERNDON

  William Herndon (1818–1891) was a personal friend and law partner of Lincoln, and one of his early biographers. Herndon played a large role in Lincoln’s early political career, managing the 1858 race against Stephen Douglas. After the President was assassinated, Herndon collected reminiscences of Lincoln’s boyhood and adolescence from various people who had known him and with Jesse Weik wrote Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (1889).

  NO FEATURE of his backwoods life pleased Abe so well as going to mill. It released him from a day’s work in the woods, besides affording him a much desired opportunity to watch the movement of the mill’s primitive and cumbersome machinery. In later years Mr. Lincoln related the following reminiscence of his experience as a miller in Indiana: One day, taking a bag of corn, he mounted the old flea-bitten gray mare and rode leisurely to Gordon’s mill. Arriving somewhat late, his turn did not come till almost sundown. In obedience to the custom requiring each man to furnish his own power he hitched the old mare to the arm, and as the animal moved round, the machinery responded with equal speed. Abe was mounted on the arm, and at frequent intervals made use of his whip to urge the animal on to better speed. With a careless “Get up, you old hussy,” he applied the lash at each revolution of the arm. In the midst of the exclamation, or just as half of it had escaped through his teeth, the old jade, resenting the continued use of the goad, elevated her shoeless hoofs and striking the young engineer in the forehead, sent him sprawling to the earth. Miller Gordon hurried in, picked up the bleeding, senseless boy, whom he took for dead, and at once sent for his father. Old Thomas Lincoln came—came as soon as embodied list-lessness could move—loaded the lifeless boy in a wagon and drove home. Abe lay unconscious all night, but towards break of day the attendants noticed signs of returning consciousness. The blood beginning to flow normally, his tongue struggled to loosen itself, his frame jerked for an instant, and he awoke, blurting out the words “you old hussy,” or the latter half of the sentence interrupted by the mare’s heel at the mill.

  Mr. Lincoln considered this one of the remarkable incidents of his life. He often referred to it, and we had many discussions in our law office over the psychological phenomena involved in the operation. Without expressing my own views I may say that his idea was that the latter half of the expression, “Get up, you old hussy,” was cut off by a suspension of the normal flow of his mental energy, and that as soon as life’s forces returned he unconsciously ended the sentence; or, as he in a plainer figure put it: “Just before I struck the old mare my will through the mind had set the muscles of my tongue to utter the expression, and when her heels came in contact with my head the whole thing stopped half-cocked, as it were, and was only fired off when mental energy or force returned.”

  From Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life: A Selection.

  ALFRED BEVERIDGE

  Alfred Beveridge (1862–1927) was a historian and a politician (U.S. Senator from Indiana) who remains well known today for his expansionist views, supporting economic imperialism and calling for the United States’s annexation of the Philippine
s, and for his leadership in the Progressive movement. In addition to his biography of Lincoln, which he left uncompleted at his death, he wrote a well-received biography of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, and numerous other books, including The Russian Advance (1903), Young Man and the World (1905), Americans of Tomorrow and Today (1908), What Is Back of the War (1915), and The State and the Nation (1924).

  ONE LAW [enacted in Lincoln’s first term in the General Assembly of Illinois in 1834–35] was of much importance and weighty influence on Lincoln’s approaching career as a lawyer and legislator; of great effect, too, in the development of his economic and political opinions. This was the law, for which Lincoln voted, incorporating a new State Bank to be located at Springfield, an institution of which he was soon to become the stoutest champion and defender. Also the charter of the Bank of Illinois at Shawneetown was extended; and several acts, creating new judicial districts, directing the election of judges by the Legislature, providing for appeals and times of holding court, were passed.

  But, vital and pressing as were State problems and necessities, national politics also deeply interested the legislators. From the foundation of the Government a National Bank had been a source of sharp dispute among statesmen; and the people had divided on the issue, the commercial classes ardently favoring such an institution, while the farming and laboring classes were unfriendly to it. The first Bank of the United States, ably and honestly conducted as the fiscal agent of the Government, had been denied a recharter in 1811, partly because of Jefferson’s hostility to it, but chiefly by the opposition of those who wished to establish and operate state banks without competition; and the second Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816, had had a stormy and variegated career. After a period of bad management, it, too, was successful and business had come to depend upon it for a trustworthy currency and the maintenance of stable conditions.

  Soon after the election of Andrew Jackson, however, differences between the Bank and the President developed which speedily grew into hostility on both sides. The Bank was accused of subsidizing the press, buying influential politicians, corrupting Congress—worse still, of manipulating credits for its own advantage.

  But the Bank was supported by the business interests of the country and Clay, Webster, and other powerful men in the National Senate and House were its determined champions. Influenced by hatred of the administration as much as by devotion to the Bank, these men had induced the Bank to apply formally to Congress in 1832 for a renewal of its charter which was to expire in 1836. This maladroit gesture was interpreted by Jackson as a move against him, the President accepted the challenge, and thus the Presidential campaign of 1832 had been fought largely on the issue of Bank or no Bank.

  The popular voice was thunderous against the dread “money power” of the East, and in support of “the people’s champion.” Jackson was re-elected, and, thus sustained and heartened, he ordered that no more public funds be deposited with the Bank and was about to remove government money already there. 1’hereupon the Senate denounced Jackson’s course as lawless, and the President replied by a protest which the Senate refused to enter on its Journal—a situation which aroused deep anger on both sides.

  Of necessity, the Bank began to call its loans, and to the discerning signs were already apparent of the financial storm and business disaster which soon were to sweep over the land. The Whigs denounced Jackson more bitterly than ever and the Democrats rallied to the cause of the “Old Hero” with fiery enthusiasm. Clay and other anti-Jackson Senators were mere attorneys of the oppressive corporation and “Menetekel is already written upon the Marble Palace,” declared the Illinois Advocate, voicing popular sentiment.

  So came the one notable political contest that took place in the Legislature of Illinois during the session of 1834–35, on a question which most concerned Lincoln for more than a decade. Those fundamental principles of national power under the Constitution, which Lincoln had already adopted and of which he was to become the greatest practical exponent, were the very crux of the Bank controversy.

  On Monday, January 5, 1835, Jesse B. Thomas of Madison County introduced resolutions, with a long preamble, stating with vigor and ability the Democratic position on the Bank stoutly supporting the course of President Jackson, and particularly approving the Administration’s course toward France in relation to American claims upon that nation.

  Soon the matter came to a head and the votes cast by Lincoln are of interest, showing his early views upon the grave constitutional and other questions involved in the Bank controversy. He voted against a motion to lay the resolutions on the table and for a Whig amendment declaring “a National Bank to be both useful and expedient.” Lincoln then voted against the preamble and against every resolution, except that condemning the Senate for refusing to enter Jackson’s protest upon its Journal and two others of a formal nature. The next day the Senate adopted similar resolutions by a vote of seventeen ayes to nine nays.

  But the friends of the Bank would not acknowledge defeat. Twelve days later the Bank resolutions were again considered, amended and adopted, Lincoln voting for them. Still the matter was not settled. The vote was immediately reconsidered, and the fight renewed. After debate and a mass of parliamentary thrusts and parries, the resolutions as amended were again adopted, Lincoln once more voting aye. Seemingly his views were not clear, though favorable to the Bank.

  Heated debates in the House were supplemented by continuous discussion in the lobby which was a place almost equal to the House itself in influencing legislative opinion. Indeed, this third House may have been more effective on members. After adjournment, especially at night, the lobby was always thronged, speeches made, and debates held without parliamentary restraints. Thus for nearly three weeks Lincoln heard what was said on all phases of the National Bank and the currency; but it does not appear that he took part in the controversy.

  Finally, by the dim light of candles, the General Assembly finished its work and, sometime before midnight, February 13, 1835, adjourned sine die. His first legislative experience thus ended, Lincoln went back to New Salem and again took up his surveying and handling of the scanty mail. The sum of his sojourn in Vandalia had been the making of friends, lessons in legislative procedure and manipulation, and the acquiring of knowledge of basic constitutional principles. He had heard great questions discussed by able and informed men. He had met cultivated women, too, and, in short, had visited a new world. Small wonder that, when he reached New Salem, he plunged into study with such abandon that his health suffered and friends thought him mentally affected. Henceforth the log cabin hamlet on the Sangamon held little or nothing that was attractive to the aspiring young Lincoln.

  From Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1858, 1928

  CARL SANDBURG

  Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and historian, a biographer of Lincoln, a novelist, a journalist, and children’s author. He was also a lecturer and folksinger. He was a part of the Chicago renaissance, which included such writers as Ben Hecht, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Edgar Lee Masters. He devoted thirty years to collecting reminiscences and other material about Abraham Lincoln, whom he had loved since he was a child, and wrote his biography over the course of two decades—the first volume, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, was published in 1926; the second, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, was published in 1939 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Sandburg also put together one of the first collections of American folk music called The American Songbag (1927).

  ON THAT Sunday [The surrender of Fort Sumter] of April 14, the White House had many visitors in and out all day. Senators and Congressmen came to say their people would stand by the Government, the President. The Cabinet met. A proclamation was framed. It named the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as having “combinations too powerful to be suppressed” by ordinary procedure of government.

  “Now therefore, I, Abraham Linco
ln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed.”

  He called on “all loyal citizens” to defend the National Union and popular government, “to redress wrongs already long enough endured.” The new army of volunteer soldiers was to retake forts and property “seized from the Union.” Also, “in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens.”

  Also the proclamation called both Houses of Congress to meet at noon on the Fourth of July. The war of words was over and the naked test by steel weapons, so long foretold, was at last to begin.

  From day to day since Lincoln was sworn in as President he had been moved toward war, saying casually to John Hay one day in April, “My policy is to have no policy.” Day to day events dictated. How did he explain Sumter? “The assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants,” he wrote later. “They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit aggression upon them. They knew—they were expressly notified—that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted.”

  The dilemma of a divided country Lincoln and Douglas discussed at the White House that Sunday of April 14, just after the flag came down at Sumter. Now Lincoln could be thankful that across the years of political strife between him and Douglas, the two had so spoken to and of each other that their personal relations had never reached a breaking point. The two foremost American political captains were closeted for a two-hour confidential talk, with only Congressman Ashmun in the room. Douglas read the proclamation to be published next morning, gave it his approval, though advising that he would call for 200,000 rather than 75,000 troops.