Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  “If any man thinks I am a coward let him test it,” Lincoln replied, drawing himself up to his full height.

  One member of the regiment protested, “Lincoln—you are larger & heavier than we are.”

  “This you can guard against—Choose your weapons,” Lincoln retorted.

  That challenge abruptly ended all charges of cowardice. This episode was one of the first times William Greene ever witnessed Lincoln’s righteous anger. “He would do justice to all though the heavens fell,” Greene noted.107

  On another occasion Lincoln’s sense of fairness cost his troops money. When both his company and that of Lorenzo Dow Thompson of St. Clair wanted the same campsite, Lincoln agreed to wrestle Thompson in order to settle who would get the prize. As he later recalled, he boastfully “told my boys I could throw him, and they could bet what they pleased.” Lincoln added: “You see, I had never been thrown.… You may think a wrestle, or ‘wrastle,’ as we called such contests of skill and strength, was a small matter, but I tell you the whole army was out to see it.” Thompson had first choice of holds, and when Lincoln felt the strength of the man’s grip, he realized he was in for a struggle. After several attempts, Thompson threw him. “My boys yelled out ‘a dog fall,’ which meant then a drawn battle, but I told my boys it was fair, and then said to Thompson, ‘now it’s your turn to go down,’ as it was my hold then, Indian hug. We took our holds again and after the fiercest struggle of the kind that I ever had, he threw me again, almost as easily at my hold as at his own.”108 Lincoln’s men protested, unwilling to lose their bet, but he insisted that “the man actually threw me” and did so fairly.109 Many years later, Lincoln as president wanted to appoint Thompson to some office, as he explained, “just to show him I didn’t bear any malice.”110 Thompson, for his part, esteemed Lincoln highly for his sense of humor and because he was “much of a man.”111

  As a wrestler, Lincoln did better against “the champion of the Southern companies,” who, he recalled, “was at least two inches taller and somewhat heavier.” But, Lincoln said, “I reckoned that I was the most wiry, and soon after I had tackled him I gave him a hug, lifted him off the ground, and threw him flat on his back. That settled his hash.”112 Lincoln took pride in his wrestling skills. When during his presidency he was told that George Washington had won fame as a wrestler, he said: “If George was loafing around here now, I should be glad to have a tussle with him, and I rather believe that one of the plain people of Illinois would be able to manage the aristocrat of old Virginia.”113

  In 1848, as Lincoln ridiculed Democratic presidential nominee Lewis Cass, he poked fun at his own service record: “in the days of the Black Hawk War, I fought, bled, and came away,” he told his fellow Representatives on the floor of the U.S. House. “I was not at Stillman’s defeat, but I was about as near it, as Cass was to Hull[’]s surrender, and, like him, I saw the place very soon afterwards. It is certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break; but I bent a musket pretty badly on one occasion. If Gen: Cass went in advance of me in picking huckleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did; but I had a good many bloody struggles with the musquetoes; and, although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry.”114

  Despite this self-mockery, Lincoln felt proud of his role in the Black Hawk War, which proved valuable financially and politically. He earned $175 and 40 acres of public land; gained popularity among both soldiers and civilians by his service in the war; and made friendships that would prove important for his future careers as a politician and lawyer, most notably with John Todd Stuart, John J. Hardin, Edward D. Baker, and Joseph Gillespie. Though he saw no combat, he did get a taste of war, and his selection as captain whetted his appetite for future electoral contests.

  Lincoln’s military service ended in mid-July when he was mustered out in Wisconsin. With George M. Harrison, he walked rather than rode most of the way home, for their horses had been stolen the night before their departure. At Peoria they bought a canoe, paddled to Havana, sold the boat, and completed their 250-mile journey on foot.

  First Bid for Elective Office

  Upon returning to New Salem, Lincoln threw himself into the political campaign, which he had decided to enter back in March. After his literary society debut the previous winter, James Rutledge had urged him to run for the legislature. At first Lincoln balked, fearing he had no chance, but Rutledge suggested that “a canvass of the Country would bring him prominently before the people and in time would do him good.”115 Other friends seconded the idea but for a different reason. James Matheny remembered that the idea of Lincoln running for the legislature was “regarded as a joke; the boys wanted some fun; he was so uncouth and awkward, and so illy dressed, that his candidacy afforded a pleasant diversion for them, but it was not expected that it would go any further.”116

  In March Lincoln finally agreed to run and issued a lengthy announcement of his candidacy. John McNamar helped him compose the document and corrected the grammar. Like many other frontier merchants, Lincoln ran as a Whig. But as soon as he announced his intention, the Black Hawk War broke out. By the time it ended, he had only a few weeks to campaign for the legislature.

  With the election looming on August 6, Lincoln’s chances seemed poor, for he was a little-known Whig in a Democratic district. His formal campaign announcement made his principles clear. He rejected the Jacksonian creed, which The Democratic Review summarized in 1838: “As little government as possible; that little emanating from, and controlled by, the people; and uniform in its application to all.”117 Democrats in general believed that the only assertive action that the federal government should undertake was aggressive foreign expansionism. Whigs, on the other hand, favored positive government. A leading Whig spokesman, Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, explained in 1845, “ ‘THE COMMONWEALTH’ is the term best expressing the Whig idea of a State or Nation, and our philosophy regards a Government with hope and confidence, as an agency of the community through which vast and beneficent ends may be accomplished,” unlike the Democrats, who regard government “with distrust and aversion, as an agency mainly of corruption, oppression, and robbery.”118 The “great fundamental principle” of Whiggery, Greeley declared, was that “government is not merely a machine for making war and punishing felons, but is bound to do all that is fairly within its power to promote the welfare of the people—that its legitimate scope is not merely negative, repressive, defensive, but is also affirmative, creative, constructive, beneficent.”119

  Lincoln shared the Whig vision. He argued that the “legitimate object of government, is ‘to do for the people whatever needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.’ There are many such things—some of them exist in dependently of the injustice in the world. Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men’s property, are instances.”120

  In his 1832 campaign announcement, Lincoln above all championed government support for internal improvements that would enable subsistence farmers to escape rural poverty through participation in the market economy. “That the poorest and most thinly populated countries would be greatly benefited by the opening of good roads, and in the clearing of navigable streams within their limits, is what no person will deny.” Lincoln, who knew first-hand about poor and thinly populated places, wanted to spare others the ox-like drudgery that rural isolation had imposed on him and his family. To that end, he recommended affordable projects, primarily to facilitate navigation of the Sangamon River, a subject widely discussed that spring as excitement over the steamboat Talisman peaked. Lincoln justly claimed to have some expertise in navigating the Sangamon: “From my peculiar circumstances, it is probable that for the last twelve months I have given as particular attention to the stage of the water in this river, as any oth
er person in the country.” For modest sums, he predicted, the river could be straightened and its channel cleared. Desirable as other improvements might be, like canals and railroads, their high cost produced “a heart appalling shock.”

  Lincoln suggested another technique for liberating people from rural poverty: usury laws. The “baneful and corroding system” of lending money at extortionate interest rates “for the benefit of a few individuals” injured “the general interests of the community” by effectively imposing a heavy tax on borrowers. His implicit message was clear: people could not escape poverty without access to loans at reasonable interest rates. It was a popular issue; in 1833 Illinois legislators outlawed interest rates above 12 percent for loans of a year or longer.

  Yet another means for emancipating frontiersmen won Lincoln’s approval: public education, which he deemed “the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.” The kind of superstitious, primitive ignorance that surrounded him in Kentucky and Indiana could be banished by education, which would in turn promote “morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry.” Lincoln might have added that, just as he had observed the Sangamon River closely, so too was he intimately familiar with backwoods immorality, drunkenness, indolence, and sloth. He longed to see the day when that kind of world—the world of his father—would disappear.

  In the final paragraph of his campaign statement, Lincoln went beyond policy matters to reveal his personal feelings: “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.”121

  Lincoln’s ambition, like that of many other politicians, was clearly rooted in an intense craving for deference and approval. But unlike many power seekers, Lincoln was expansive and generous in his ambition. He desired more than ego-gratifying power and prestige; he wanted everyone to have a chance to escape the soul-crushing poverty and backwardness that he had experienced as a quasi-slave on the frontier. In 1852, he attributed his own views to the recently deceased Henry Clay: “Mr. Clay’s predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep devotion to the cause of human liberty—a strong sympathy with the oppressed every where, and an ardent wish for their elevation. With him, this was a primary and all controlling passion.”122 That description fits Lincoln as well as it did Clay. From first to last, Lincoln’s political goal was to free the oppressed, starting with the kind of frontier people whose conditions he knew first-hand; in time, the scope of his sympathies would broaden.

  To forward these principles, Lincoln had to campaign hard in late July and early August. He stumped the huge county, delivering speeches and socializing with the voters. His first campaign address was given at Pappsville, a hamlet 11 miles southwest of New Salem. An auditor remembered that it went something like this: “Fellow citizens, I suppose you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal-improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.”123 This speech did not mention public education or usury laws, but it did allude indirectly to the presidential campaign of that year, as Andrew Jackson sought reelection after vetoing the recharter of the Bank of the United States.

  Just before this maiden campaign effort, Lincoln quelled a fight. J. Rowan Herndon was whipping Jesse Dodson when Dodson’s friends intervened. Lincoln pitched in for Herndon, throwing Dodson’s allies about as if they were mere boys. He caught one of them by the neck and seat of his pants and flung him several feet. This decisive action won him many admirers in Pappsville.

  Illinois political rallies were usually followed by drinking sprees that inevitably led to fisticuffs, so the fight begun between Herndon and Dodson was not uncommon. During the 1832 canvass in Sangamon County, for example, voters engaged in several fights at groggeries. Gangs from nearby hamlets would gather in Springfield and do battle.

  Lincoln poked fun at his own odd appearance. On one occasion he self-deprecatingly observed, “Fellow Citizens: I have been told that some of my opponents have said that it was a disgrace to the County of Sangamon to have such a looking man as I am stuck up for the Legislature. Now, I thought this was a free country. That is the reason that I address you today. Had I known to the contrary I should not have consented to run.”124 On another occasion he said: “Gentlemen I have just returned from the Campaign[.] My personal appearance is rather shabby and dark. I am almost as red as those men I have been chasing through the prairies & forests on the Rivers of Illinois.”125

  Lincoln used logical, thoughtful, and engaging speeches to offset the effect of his unprepossessing appearance. Stephen T. Logan, who saw Lincoln address a crowd in Springfield, recalled that he was “very tall and gawky and rough looking,” wearing pants that ended 6 inches above his shoe tops. But Logan soon forgot about Lincoln’s looks: “after he began speaking I became very much interested in him. He made a very sensible speech. It was the time when [Thomas Hart] Benton was running his theory of a gold circulation. Lincoln was attacking Benton’s theory and I thought did it very well.… The manner of Mr. Lincoln’s speech then was very much the same as his speeches in after life—that is the same peculiar characteristics were apparent then, though of course in after years he evinced both more knowledge and experience. But he had then the same novelty and the same peculiarity in presenting his ideas. He had the same individuality that he kept up through all his life.”126 But his eloquence did not lead everyone to overlook Lincoln’s eccentric outward form. According to Henry C. Whitney, “responsible” citizens “could not seriously believe that so ill-dressed and fresh a spectacle” as Lincoln “could decently represent this important and populous county.”127

  Lincoln had to overcome more than his looks; campaigning in the 1830s could be grim and tiresome. Local candidates often spoke to audiences of no more than twenty to thirty at social events such as shooting matches or house-raisings. Even smaller audiences would attend evening meetings at log schools illuminated by a few candles. Hard pressed to overcome the deadening effects of such dismal surroundings, candidates resorted to the use of wit, humor, and vigorous, colloquial rhetoric and terse arguments.

  Lincoln, a political newcomer and long shot, declared that if he were defeated he would try and try again: “when I have been a candidate before you some 5 or 6 times and have been beaten every time I will consider it a disgrace and will be sure never to try it again.”128 And, indeed, in his first try for office he did lose, finishing eighth in a field of thirteen where only the top four vote-getters won legislative seats. It was, he remarked in 1859, “the only time I have been beaten by the people.”129

  Because Sangamon County was huge, Lincoln could not begin to cover it in the short time he had to campaign. On election day, few voters outside New Salem knew who he was. Still, his respectable showing boded well for the future. In New Salem, he did astonishingly well, winning 277 of 300 votes cast even though his candidate for president, Henry Clay, lost that precinct by 115 votes. Lincoln was so popular that several pro-Jackson partisans voted for him because he seemed so honest and worthy. Moreover, he pleased New Salemites who were keen to separate from sprawling Sangamon County and form their own county. Sin
ce Lincoln was their local candidate, they counted on him to help achieve that end. Also swelling Lincoln’s vote in New Salem was a long-standing enmity between one of his rivals, the Methodist minister Peter Cartwright, and Samuel Hill, the village’s leading merchant. Hill, a staunch Democrat, detested Cartwright so much that he not only voted for Lincoln, the Whig, but also worked for him.

  Lincoln was quite gratified despite the outcome, for his showing amazed many, including his strongest backers. His skeptical comrades, including James Matheney, discovered that he “knew what he was about and that he had running qualities.”130 And John Todd Stuart believed that Lincoln so impressed everyone with his candor, honesty, and effective speeches that he made friends for future campaigns. “He ran on the square,” said Stuart, “and thereby acquired the respect and confidence of everybody.”131

  Frontier Merchant, Postmaster, Surveyor

  Two years had to pass before Lincoln could run for office again. In the meantime, though jobless and broke, he resolved to stay in New Salem, where people had been exceptionally kind and where he had many friends. He thought about studying law but feared that his educational background was inadequate for that challenge. He also considered becoming a blacksmith. But before long, Lincoln found himself working at a store once again, this time as a co-owner.

  Early in 1832, William Franklin Berry, the son of John M. Berry, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, bought half-interest in a store from James Herndon. Berry’s partner, J. Rowan Herndon, soon sold his half to Lincoln on credit. Shortly after the August election, Berry, Lincoln’s junior by two years, and Lincoln opened their emporium with the stock on hand, supplemented by goods, including whiskey, purchased from Henry Inco and James A. Rutledge after their establishment had failed. Some friends wondered why a man of Lincoln’s integrity would associate with such a dissolute character as Berry.