Читать книгу Abraham Lincoln - Baron Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood - Страница 12

1. Life at New Salem.

From this talk of large political movements we have to recall ourselves to a young labouring man with hardly any schooling, naturally and incurably uncouth, but with a curious, quite modest, impulse to assert a kindly ascendency over the companions whom chance threw in his way, and with something of the gift, which odd, shy people often possess, for using their very oddity as a weapon in their struggles. In the conditions of real equality which still prevailed in a newly settled country it is not wonderful that he made his way into political life when he was twenty-five, but it was not till twenty years later that he played an important part in events of enduring significance.

Thus the many years of public activity with which we are concerned in this and the following chapter belong rather to his apprenticeship than to his life's work; and this apprenticeship at first sight contrasts more strongly with his fame afterwards than does his boyhood of poverty and comparatively romantic hardship. For many poor boys have lived to make a great mark on history, but as a rule they have entered early on a life either of learning or of adventure or of large business. But the affairs in which Lincoln early became immersed have an air of pettiness, and from the point of view of most educated men and women in the Eastern States or in Europe, many of the associates and competitors of his early manhood, to whom he had to look up as his superiors in knowledge, would certainly have seemed crude people with a narrow horizon. Indeed, till he was called upon to take supreme control of very great matters, Lincoln must have had singularly little intercourse either with men versed in great affairs or with men of approved intellectual distinction. But a mind too original to be subdued to its surroundings found much that was stimulating in this time when Illinois was beginning rapidly to fill up. There were plenty of men with shrewd wits and robust character to be met with, and the mental atmosphere which surrounded him was one of keen interest in life. Lincoln eventually stands out as a surprising figure from among the other lawyers and little politicians of Illinois, as any great man does from any crowd, but some tribute is due to the undistinguished and historically uninteresting men whose generous appreciation gave rapid way to the poor, queer youth, and ultimately pushed him into a greater arena as their selected champion.

In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, Lincoln, returning from his New Orleans voyage, settled in New Salem to await the arrival of his patron, Denton Offutt, with the goods for a new store in which Lincoln was to be his assistant. The village itself was three years old. It never got much beyond a population of one hundred, and like many similar little towns of the West it has long since perished off the earth. But it was a busy place for a while, and, contrary to what its name might suggest, it aspired to be rather fast. It was a cock-fighting and whisky-drinking society into which Lincoln was launched. He managed to combine strict abstinence from liquor with keen participation in all its other diversions. One departure from total abstinence stands alleged among the feats of strength for which he became noted. He hoisted a whisky barrel, of unspecified but evidently considerable content, on to his knees in a squatting posture and drank from the bunghole. But this very arduous potation stood alone. Offutt was some time before he arrived with his goods, and Lincoln lived by odd jobs. At the very beginning one Mentor Graham, a schoolmaster officiating in some election, employed him as a clerk, and the clerk seized the occasion to make himself well known to New Salem as a story-teller. Then there was a heavy job at rail-splitting, and another job in navigating the Sangamon River. Offutt's store was at last set up, and for about a year the assistant in this important establishment had valuable opportunities of conversation with all New Salem. He had also leisure for study. He had mentioned to the aforesaid Mentor Graham his "notion to study English grammar," and had been introduced to a work called "Kirkham's Grammar," which by a walk of some miles he could borrow from a neighbour. This he would read, lying full length on the counter with his head on a parcel of calico. At other odd times he would work away at arithmetic. Offutt's kindly interest procured him distinction in another field. At Clary's Grove, near New Salem, lived a formidable set of young ruffians, over whose somewhat disguised chivalry of temper the staid historian of Lincoln's youth becomes rapturous. They were given to wrecking the store of any New Salem tradesman who offended them; so it shows some spirit in Mr. Denton Offutt that he backed his Abraham Lincoln to beat their Jack Armstrong in a wrestling match. He did beat him; moreover, some charm in the way he bore himself made him thenceforth not hated but beloved of Clary's Grove in general, and the Armstrongs in particular. Hannah Armstrong, Jack's wife, thereafter mended and patched his clothes for him, and, years later, he had the satisfaction, as their unfeed advocate, of securing the acquittal of their son from a charge of murder, of which there is some reason to hope he may not have been guilty. It is, by the way, a relief to tell that there once was a noted wrestling match in which Lincoln was beaten; it is characteristic of the country that his friends were sure there was foul play, and characteristic of him that he indignantly denied it.

Within a year Offutt's store, in the phrase of the time, "petered out," leaving Lincoln shiftless. But the victor of Clary's Grove, with his added mastery of "Kirkham's Grammar," was now ripe for public life. Moreover, his experience as a waterman gave him ideas on the question, which then agitated his neighbours, whether the Sangamon River could be made navigable. He had a scheme of his own for doing this; and in the spring of 1832 he wrote to the local paper a boyish but modest and sensible statement of his views and ambitions, announcing that he would be a candidate in the autumn elections for the State Legislature.

Meanwhile he had his one experience of soldiering. The Indian chief, Black Hawk, who had agreed to abide west of the Mississippi, broke the treaty and led his warriors back into their former haunts in Northern Illinois. The Governor of the State called for volunteers, and Lincoln became one. He obtained the elective rank of captain of his company, and contrived to maintain some sort of order in that, doubtless brave, but undisciplined body. He saw no fighting, but he could earn his living for some months, and stored up material for effective chaff in Congress long afterwards about the military glory which General Cass's supporters for the Presidency wished to attach to their candidate. His most glorious exploit consisted in saving from his own men a poor old friendly Indian who had fallen among them. A letter of credentials, which the helpless creature produced, was pronounced a forgery and he was about to be hanged as a spy, when Lincoln appeared on the scene, "swarthy with resolution and rage," and somehow terrified his disorderly company into dropping their prey.

The war ended in time for a brief candidature, and a supporter of his at the time preserved a record of one of his speeches. His last important speech will hereafter be given in full for other reasons; this may be so given too, for it is not a hundred words long: "Fellow Citizens, I presume 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 favour of a national bank. I am in favour 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."

To this succinct declaration of policy may be added from his earlier letter that he advocated a law against usury, and laws for the improvement of education. The principles of the speech are those which the new Whig party was upholding against the Democrats under Jackson (the President) and Van Buren. Lincoln's neighbours, like the people of Illinois generally, were almost entirely on the side of the Democrats. It is interesting that however he came by his views, they were early and permanently fixed on the side then unpopular in Illinois; and it is interesting that though, naturally, not elected, he secured very nearly the whole of the votes of his immediate neighbourhood.

The penniless Lincoln was now hankering to become a lawyer, though with some thoughts of the more practicable career of a blacksmith. Unexpectedly, however, he was tempted into his one venture, singularly unsuccessful, in business. Two gentlemen named Herndon, cousins of a biographer of Lincoln's, started a store in New Salem and got tired of it. One sold his share to a Mr. Berry, the other sold his to Lincoln. The latter sale was entirely on credit—no money passed at the time, because there was no money. The vendor explained afterwards that he relied solely on Lincoln's honesty. He had to wait a long while for full payment, but what is known of storekeeping in New Salem shows that he did very well for himself in getting out of his venture as he did. Messrs. Berry and Lincoln next acquired, likewise for credit, the stock and goodwill of two other storekeepers, one of them the victim of a raid from Clary's Grove. The senior partner then applied himself diligently to personal consumption of the firm's liquid goods; the junior member of the firm was devoted in part to intellectual and humorous converse with the male customers, but a fatal shyness prevented him from talking to the ladles. For the rest, he walked long distances to borrow books, got through Gibbon and through Rollin's "History of the World," began his study of Blackstone, and acquired a settled habit of reading novels. So business languished. Early in 1833 Berry and Lincoln sold out to another adventurer. This also was a credit transaction. The purchaser without avoidable delay failed and disappeared. Berry then died of drink, leaving to Lincoln the sole responsibility for the debts of the partnership. Lincoln could with no difficulty and not much reproach have freed himself by bankruptcy. As a matter of fact, he ultimately paid everything, but it took him about fifteen years of striving and pinching himself.

Lincoln is one of the many public characters to whom the standing epithet "honest" became attached; in his case the claim to this rested originally on the only conclusive authority, that of his creditors. But there is equally good authority, that of his biographer, William Herndon, for many years his partner as a lawyer, that "he had no money sense." This must be understood with the large qualification that he meant to pay his way and, unlike the great statesmen of the eighteenth century in England, did pay it. But, though with much experience of poverty in his early career, he never developed even a reasonable desire to be rich. Wealth remained in his view "a superfluity of the things one does not want." He was always interested in mathematics, but mainly as a discipline in thinking, and partly, perhaps, in association with mechanical problems of which he was fond enough to have once in his life patented an invention. The interest never led him to take to accounts or to long-sighted financial provisions. In later days, when he received a payment for his fees, his partner's share would be paid then and there; and perhaps the rent would be paid, and the balance would be spent at once in groceries and other goods likely to be soon wanted, including at long intervals, when the need was very urgent, a new hat.

These are amiable personal traits, but they mark the limitations of his capacity as a statesman. The chief questions which agitated the Illinois Legislature were economic, and so at first were the issues between Whigs and Democrats in Federal policy. Lincoln, though he threw himself into these affairs with youthful fervour, would appear never to have had much grasp of such matters. "In this respect alone," writes an admirer, "I have always considered Mr. Lincoln a weak man." It is only when (rarely, at first) constitutional or moral issues emerge that his politics become interesting. We can guess the causes which attached him to the Whigs. As the party out of power, and in Illinois quite out of favour, they had doubtless some advantage in character. As we have seen, the greatest minds among American statesmen of that day, Webster and Clay, were Whigs. Lincoln's simple and quite reasonable, if inconclusive, argument for Protection, can be found among his speeches of some years later. And schemes of internal development certainly fired his imagination.

After his failure in business Lincoln subsisted for a while on odd jobs for farmers, but was soon employed as assistant surveyor by John Calhoun, then surveyor of the county. This gentleman, who had been educated as a lawyer but "taught school in preference," was a keen Democrat, and had to assure Lincoln that office as his assistant would not necessitate his desertion of his principles. He was a clever man, and Lincoln remembered him long after as the most formidable antagonist he ever met in debate. With the help, again, of Mentor Graham, Lincoln soon learned the surveyor's business. He continued at this work till he was able to start as a lawyer, and there is evidence that his surveys of property were done with extreme accuracy. Soon he further obtained the local Postmastership. This, the only position except the Presidency itself which he ever held in the Federal Government, was not onerous, for the mails were infrequent; he "carried the office around in his hat"; we are glad to be told that "his administration gave satisfaction." Once calamity threatened him; a creditor distrained on the horse and the instruments necessary to his surveyorship; but Lincoln was reputed to be a helpful fellow, and friends were ready to help him; they bought the horse and instruments back for him. To this time belongs his first acquaintance with some writers of unsettling tendency, Tom Paine, Voltaire, and Volney, who was then recognised as one of the dangerous authors. Cock-fights, strange feats of strength, or of usefulness with axe or hammer or scythe, and a passion for mimicry continue. In 1834 he became a candidate again. "Can't the party raise any better material than that?" asked a bystander before a speech of his; after it, he exclaimed that the speaker knew more than all the other candidates put together. This time he was elected, being then twenty-five, and thereafter he was returned for three further terms of two years. Shortly before his second election in 1836 the State capital was removed to Springfield, in his own county. There in 1837 Lincoln fixed his home. He had long been reading law in his curious, spasmodically concentrated way, and he had practised a little as a "pettifogger," that is, an unlicensed practitioner in the inferior courts. He had now obtained his license and was very shortly taken into partnership by an old friend in Springfield.

2. In the Illinois Legislature.

Here his youth may be said to end. Springfield was a different place from New Salem. There were carriages in it, and ladles who studied poetry and the fashions. There were families from Virginia and Kentucky who were conscious of ancestry, while graver, possibly more pushing, people from the North-eastern States, soon to outnumber them, were a little inclined to ridicule what they called their "illusory ascendency." There was a brisk competition of churches, and mutual improvement societies such as the "Young Men's Lyceum" had a rival claim to attention with races and cock-fights.

And it was an altered Abraham Lincoln that came to inhabit Springfield. Arriving a day or two before his first law partnership was settled he came into the shop of a thriving young tradesman, Mr. Joshua Speed, to ask about the price of the cheapest bedding and other necessary articles. The sum for which Lincoln, who had not one cent, would have had to ask, and would have been readily allowed, credit, was only seventeen dollars. But this huge prospect of debt so visibly depressed him that Speed instantly proposed an arrangement which involved no money debt. He took him upstairs and installed him—Western domestic arrangements were and are still simple—as the joint occupant of his own large bed. "Well, Speed, I'm moved," was the terse acknowledgment. Speed was to move him later by more precious charity. We are concerned for the moment with what moved Speed. "I looked up at him," said he, long after, "and I thought then, as I think now, that I never saw so gloomy and melancholy a face in my life." The struggle of ambition and poverty may well have been telling on Lincoln; but besides that a tragical love story (shortly to be told) had left a deep and permanent mark; but these influences worked, we may suppose, upon a disposition quite as prone to sadness as to mirth. His exceedingly gregarious habit, drawing him to almost any assembly of his own sex, continued all his life; but it alternated from the first with a habit of solitude or abstraction, the abstraction of a man who, when he does wish to read, will read intently in the midst of crowd or noise, or walking along the street. He was what might unkindly be called almost a professional humorist, the master of a thousand startling stories, delightful to the hearer, but possibly tiresome in written reminiscences, but we know too well that gifts of this kind are as compatible with sadness as they certainly are with deadly seriousness.

The Legislature of Illinois in the eight years from 1834 to 1842, in which Lincoln belonged to it, was, though not a wise, a vigorous body. In the conditions which then existed it was not likely to have been captured as the Legislatures of wilder and more thinly-peopled States have sometimes been by a disreputable element in the community, nor to have subsided into the hands of the dull mechanical class of professional politicians with which, rightly or wrongly, we have now been led to associate American State Government. The fact of Lincoln's own election suggests that dishonest adventurers might easily have got there, but equally suggests that a very different type of men prevailed. "The Legislature," we are told, "contained the youth and blood and fire of the frontier." Among the Democrats in the Legislature was Stephen Douglas, who was to become one of the most powerful men in the United States while Lincoln was still unknown; and several of Lincoln's Whig colleagues were afterwards to play distinguished or honourable parts in politics or war. We need not linger over them, but what we know of those with whom he had any special intimacy makes it entirely pleasant to associate him with them. After a short time in which, like any sensible young member of an assembly, he watched and hardly ever spoke, Lincoln soon made his way among these men, and in 1838 and 1840 the Whig members—though, being in a minority, they could not elect him—gave him their unanimous votes for the Speakership of the Assembly. The business which engrossed the Legislature, at least up to 1838, was the development of the natural resources of the State. These were great. It was natural that railways, canals and other public works to develop them should be pushed forward at the public cost. Other new countries since, with less excuse because with greater warning from experience, have plunged in this matter, and, though the Governor protested, the Illinois Legislature, Whigs and Democrats, Lincoln and every one else, plunged gaily, so that, during the collapse which followed, Illinois, though, like Lincoln himself, it paid its debts in the end, was driven in 1840 to suspend interest payments for several years.

Very little is recorded of Lincoln's legislative doings. What is related chiefly exhibits his delight in the game of negotiation and combination by which he and the other members for his county, together known as "the Long Nine," advanced the particular projects which pleased their constituents or struck their own fancy. Thus he early had a hand in the removal of the capital from Vandalia to Springfield in his own county. The map of Illinois suggests that Springfield was a better site for the purpose than Vandalia and at least as good as Jacksonville or Peoria or any of its other competitors. Of his few recorded speeches one concerns a proposed inquiry into some alleged impropriety in the allotment of shares in the State Bank. It is certainly the speech of a bold man; it argues with remarkable directness that whereas a committee of prominent citizens which had already inquired into this matter consisted of men of known honesty, the proposed committee of the Legislators, whom he was addressing, would consist of men who, for all he knew, might be honest, and, for all he knew, might not.

The Federal politics of this time, though Lincoln played an active local part in the campaigns of the Whig party, concern us little. The Whigs, to whom he did subordinate service, were, as has been said, an unlucky party. In 1840, in the reaction which extreme commercial depression created against the previously omnipotent Democrats, the Whig candidate for the Presidency was successful. This was General Harrison, a respected soldier of the last war, who was glorified as a sort of Cincinnatus and elected after an outburst of enthusiastic tomfoolery such as never before or since rejoiced the American people. But President Harrison had hardly been in office a month when he died. Some say he was worried to death by office seekers, but a more prosaic cause, pneumonia, can also be alleged. It is satisfactory that this good man's grandson worthily filled his office forty-eight years after, but his immediate successor was of course the Vice-President, Tyler, chosen as an influential opponent of the last Democrat Presidents, but not because he agreed with the Whigs. Cultivated but narrow-minded, highly independent and wholly perverse, he satisfied no aspiration of the Whigs and paved the way effectually for the Democrat who succeeded him.

Throughout these years Lincoln was of course working at law, which became, with the development of the country, a more arduous and a more learned profession. Sessions of the Legislature did not last long, and political canvasses were only occasional. If Lincoln was active in these matters he was in many other directions, too, a keen participator in the keen life of the society round him. Nevertheless politics as such, and apart from any large purpose to be achieved through them, had for many years a special fascination for him. For one thing he was argumentative in the best sense, with a passion for what the Greeks sometimes called "dialectic"; his rare capacity for solitary thought, the most marked and the greatest of his powers, went absolutely hand in hand with the desire to reduce his thoughts to a form which would carry logical conviction to others. Further, there can be no doubt—and such a combination of tastes, though it seems to be uncommon, is quite intelligible—that the somewhat unholy business of party management was at first attractive to him. To the end he showed no intuitive comprehension of individual men. His sincere friendly intention, the unanswerable force of an argument, the convincing analogy veiled in an unseemly story, must take their chance of suiting the particular taste of Senator Sherman or General McClellan; but any question of managing men in the mass—will a given candidate's influence with this section of people count for more than his unpopularity with that section? and so on—involved an element of subtle and long-sighted calculation which was vastly congenial to him. We are to see him hereafter applying this sort of science on a grand scale and for a great end. His early discipline in it is a dull subject, interesting only where it displays, as it sometimes does, the perfect fairness with which this ambitious man could treat his own claims as against those of a colleague and competitor.