LINCOLN STORIES 4

Having just finished reading the book Herndon’s Lincoln by William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s friend for 20 years and law partner for 16 years, and a then young writer named Jesse W. Weik, I thought it time for me to weigh in with a short essay on Abraham Lincoln. Herndon’s book which was first published in 1888 and updated in 1892 (Herndon died in 1891) has a modern incarnation in 2006 being edited by Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis.

The Herndon book is arguably, in my opinion undoubtedly, the best book on Lincoln excluding Lincoln’s presidential years. It is not only Herndon’s close association with Lincoln that makes his a stellar book, but also because Herndon got the idea to write the book within months of Lincoln’s assassination and immediately began to assemble letters and documents to and from and about Lincoln. Additionally Herndon interviewed many people who knew Lincoln before Herndon had met him as well as Herndon’s own contemporaries, in some cases traveling to places within and without the state of Illinois. Recounting of why it took decades for Herndon to write and get his book published is too long a tale to tell here.

It was Herndon, for example, who established beyond any doubt that Lincoln’s first love was a young woman named Ann Rutledge who tragically died of disease at the age of 19. Herndon knew Ann Rutledge as well as the Rutledge family and other people who knew her. It is because the Herndon book was out of print (it was never a popular seller) and forgotten for so long that the story of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge was doubted and even declared a myth (e.g., the 1979 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia called the story a myth). Herndon ‘s biography of Lincoln was criticized at the time because Herndon, even though he was an ardent admirer and greatly respected Lincoln, was determined to presented his subject in as complete and totally human light as possible - figuratively with warts and all. Herndon described Lincoln’s political ambition as, “a little engine that knew no rest” which did not sit well with Herndon’s critics. Yet it was demonstrably true. A couple of months after Lincoln lost the Illinois senatorial race to Stephen Douglas in 1858 Herndon asked Lincoln how he was doing. Lincoln replied that it reminding him of the overgrown boy who painfully stubbed his toe – it hurt too much to laugh and he was too big to cry. Not only does this reflect on Lincoln’s ambition, but it shows how long these types of expressions have been around.

There is some confusion about how many political elections Lincoln lost. I remember one historian saying Lincoln lost many elections. Lincoln himself said he was proud that he only lost one election that was put directly to the people. Lincoln was right. Here are the facts: Lincoln first ran for the state of Illinois legislature as a Whig in 1832 at the age of 23, two weeks after he was discharged from the militia in the Black Hawk War and where as he said he fought only mosquitoes. Of the eight unsuccessful candidates from his district he came third. In 1834 he ran again and was elected, receiving the second highest vote total from his district. Lincoln was reelected three more times to the legislature with the most votes of all the candidates from his district and in his third and fourth terms he was runner-up for Speaker of the legislature.

In 1846 Lincoln ran successfully for the U.S. congress again as a member of the Whig party. Even though he wanted to, he did not run for reelection in 1848 because of a somewhat vague understanding among members of the Whig party that various people would take turns. Owing to his vocal opposition to President Polk’s generally popular Mexican American War (1846-48) it is doubtful that Lincoln would have won reelection had he run in 1848.

Lincoln ran for the U.S. senate in 1854 and again in 1858 this time against incumbent senator Stephen Douglas losing both times. However until the XVII amendment to the U.S. constitutional was ratified on April 8, 1913 senators were elected by the state legislatures.

Lincoln was noted as a great story teller and there was always a point or as he said a “nub” to his stories. He used stories to gently put off suggestions from his friends he did not want to pursue; to deflect annoying questions from strangers; and to tell off his personal and political enemies when they became unbearable. The following of his stories are illustrative. I do not remember where I read, or possibly saw on television documentaries, these stories about Lincoln although I am sure there were several sources.

When Lincoln engaged Stephen Douglas in a series of seven debates for the position of U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1858 Douglas noticed that what Lincoln said when they were in the northern part of the state was not completely consistent with what Lincoln said in Southern Illinois. At the start of their next debate Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced. When it was Lincoln’s turn to speak he turned to the audience and said, “Now my opponent says I am two-faced, but I leave it to you, if I had two faces would I keep this one?” Douglas was right, but it was impossible to pursue a serious point when the crowd was convulsed with laughter. Getting the best of Lincoln was something few people managed.

A stranger asked Lincoln how many soldiers the South had in the field. Lincoln said he had it on good authority that the number was twelve hundred thousand. The man was appalled by the answer and said, “Good heavens, that many?” Lincoln responded, “Yes, after being whipped by the Confederates our generals tell me they were out numbered by three to one, and I must believe them. Now I know that we have four hundred thousand troops in the field so three times four is twelve. Don’t you see it?” After that what could one do but resolve to not ask the president any more impertinent and silly questions.

Senator Benjamin Wade (R-Ohio) who was chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War went to the White House to lobby Lincoln to remove Gen. Grant as commander of the army. Lincoln refused. Whereupon the vainglorious and overbearing Wade launching into an attack on Lincoln saying, “You have put this government on the road to Hell by your obstinacy and in fact you are only a mile away from Hell at this minute!” Lincoln quietly asked Wade a question: ‘The distance from here to the Capital building is about one mile is it not?” Wade grabbed up his hat and cane and stalked out of the White House. At least he was intelligent enough to realize he had been well and truly told off for his hubris and bad manners.

Before Lincoln issued the presidential directive called the Emaciation Proclamation on September 22, 1862 to be effective on January 1, 1863, he was pestered, not to say harassed, especially by three abolitionary members of congress: Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson of Massachusetts & Representative Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. One day Lincoln was speaking to a long time acquaintance from Illinois in the White House and as he was looking out of a window he saw the three men coming up the front door path. Lincoln sadly told his visitor that it reminded him of the boy in Sunday school reading aloud about the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. The boy stumbled badly when pronouncing their names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and as he continued reading in acute embarrassment his eyes, traveling ahead in the text, spotted their names again. “Look, look there”, he exclaimed with much agitation, “It’s those same damn three fellows again!”

Twice Pulitzer Prize winning author, Lincoln biographer, and Harvard history professor emeritus, David Herbert Donald (1920 - ) told the following story during a C-SPAN Book-TV interview: A few years ago he was getting his annual physical examination from a long time friend and world famous Harvard medical school internal medicine specialist when the doctor ask him what book he was working on. Donald replied that it was a biography of Abraham Lincoln except this time it was about Lincoln’s personal relationships.

Professor Donald explained that Aristotle described three types of friendships – enjoyable friendships; useful friendships; and close friendships. Lincoln had many enjoyable friendships as he enjoyed people’s company and being a very entertaining person they enjoyed being around him. And Lincoln certainly had many useful political friendships with the politicians in Washington D.C. and Illinois. But when it came to close, intimate friendships Lincoln had none. Professor Donald postulated that for an adult to form close friendships it was necessary for him to have close friendships as a child. Lincoln had a step-brother nearly his same age, but they had completely different personalities and therefore did not get along well. Being on the American frontier there were few other children of Lincoln’s age that he came in contact long enough to become firm friends or chums. As Donald was telling his doctor friend this he notice a tear coursing down this renowned and highly respected doctor’s cheek as he said, “I never had a chum when I was growing up.” Donald said “I didn’t know what to say, I still don’t know what to say.”

According to William Herndon or “Billy” as Lincoln called him and other lawyers in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln was adequately familiar with the law, but not exceptionally so. Rather it was in nisi prius (presenting a case before a judge and jury) where Lincoln excelled. Yet even here if he was not completely convinced of the rightness of the case he was less than overwhelming. There were more than a few cases which Lincoln refused to accept because he thought his prospective client was in the wrong. Given that his client was on firm legal and moral ground however, Lincoln was not excelled by any lawyer in the state and few if any in the country. Lincoln could and did argue points in favor of the opposing party better than his own lawyer could, yet Lincoln would give counter arguments that were more convincing so he almost always won those cases.

Abraham Lincoln’s virtues were myriad and substantial, his faults minor, yet like all mortals he did possess them. Between his heartbreaking loss of Ann Rutledge and marriage to Mary Todd he had a girl friend named Mary Owens. Like Mary Todd she tended to be a bit on the stocky side or pleasingly plump if you prefer (Ann Rutledge’s dimensions were given as 5ft. 4in. and 120 lbs., but she died still in her teens). Mary Owens later explained to William Herndon that she turned down Lincoln’s offer of marriage saying he was, “deficient in those little links which make up the chain of women’s happiness – at least it was so in my case.” There was an occasion when several men and lady friends were horseback riding and there was a stream to cross which was a bit difficult. The men who were riding a little ahead were solicitous of the ladies, but Lincoln who was accompanying Mary Owens did not look back to see how she was doing. After she caught up she upbraided him by saying, “You are a nice fellow! I suppose you did not care whether my neck was broken or not.” Mary Owens said that Lincoln laughingly replied (she supposed by way of compliment) that he knew that she was plenty smart to take care of herself. Mary Todd was born in to an upper class Kentucky family and might have had a happier life if she had been as perceptive as Mary Owens although had she not married Abraham Lincoln she would have never lived in the White House.

Historians widely agree that at most Lincoln had cumulatively one year of primary school education. This was not nothing as Lincoln was an avid student who was eager to learn, yet how could anyone with such a meager formal education write some of the greatest prose in the American language? The Gettysburg Address delivered on November 19, 1863 is world famous and is his most quoted oration, but consider also these excerpts from his 1st & 2nd presidential inaugural addresses.

At the end of his first inaugural speech he turned directly to the South and said: “In your hands my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mythic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

In his 2nd inaugural address on March 4, 1865 (his 1st was March 4, 1861) he concluded with: “Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war will speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so shall it be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness 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 has borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is alleged to have said, “Now he belongs to the Ages.” Truly he does.