Читать книгу The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 - Various - Страница 3

By George Lowell Austin

There is something eminently satisfactory in the reflection that, when the new faith, "That all men are created equal," and that "Governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," was finally assailed by the slave-power of America, and had to pass the ordeal of four years of war, a man born and reared in poverty, deficient in education, unused to the etiquette even of ordinary society, and untutored in the art of diplomacy and deception, had been selected by the people of the United States to become the representative of the new faith, and the defender of the government established upon it. This man was Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, the record of whose life, at once important, eventful, and tragic, it is pleasant to recall.

There are, in my judgment, at least four men associated with the period of the civil war, who, in their early lives, their struggles, their training, and their future callings, ought forever to command the admiration of this people: Lincoln, the lowly, the exalted, the pure man in rude marble, the plain cover to a gentle nature, the giant frame and noble intellect; Grant, the defender of the Federal Union, the unflinching soldier, around whose dying couch a whole nation now lingers, whose light will shine down through future ages a warning to conspirators, to freemen a pledge, and to the oppressed a beacon of hope; Stanton, the lion of Buchanan's cabinet, the collaborator of Lincoln, the supporter of Grant, gifted with the far-seeing eye of a Carnot, spotless in character, incorruptible in integrity, great in talent and learning, and a fit object of unhesitating trust; and John Rogers, the American sculptor, who has offered, in his beautiful and famous group of statuary, "The Council of War," an undying tribute to these three great leaders in American history, and is himself worthy to be grouped with them in our remembrance.

If we could have looked into a rude log-cabin in Hardin county, Kentucky, on the morning of the 12th of February, 1809, we should have seen an infant just born,—and with what promise of future greatness? Looking ahead ten years, we should have discerned this infant, Abraham, developing into youth, still living in the old log-cabin, with neither doors nor windows, with wolves and bears for neighbors, with a shiftless father. But his mother was dead! Still this mother had left her impress, and she had become in that boy's heart "an angel of a mother." She made him what he afterwards proved himself to be. Follow Abraham Lincoln where we will,—from the cradle to the grave,—and we shall find honesty and kindness ever distinguishing him. In his boyhood, among boys, he was always fighting the battle of the offended and the weak; in manhood, he was always protecting the fugitive from an angry mob; as a lawyer, saving the widow's son from the gallows, and declining the rich fee of an unrighteous cause; as a public debater, the fairest ever met in the political arena; and as president of the republic, honest in his convictions and kind to his bitterest enemies.

Let us not forget the difficulties which it was his lot and his good fortune to surmount. He never was six months at school in his life; and yet, by the use of a single book and the occasional aid of a village schoolmaster, he became an expert surveyor in six weeks! At the age of twenty-one he accompanied his family to Illinois. One morning, when seated at the breakfast-table of his employer, Lincoln was told that a man living six miles away had a copy of an English grammar. He left the table at once, and went and borrowed the book. During the long winter evenings that followed, in the light of the village cooper's shop, he pored over the pages of that book,—studying the science of language, the theory of human speech, and qualifying himself to become the author of one of the three great State papers of modern times, by the light of burning shavings!

But we leave that early life of his, which, in rude simplicity, repeats "the short and simple annals of the poor."

In 1832 Black Hawk, the celebrated Indian chief, then in his sixty-seventh year, crossed the Mississippi to regain the Rock River valley,—the scene of his early trials and triumphs. His coming meant war upon the pale-faced stranger, that had ventured to possess the hunting-grounds of the red men. Several companies of volunteers were raised to meet him, and Abraham Lincoln served as captain of one of them.

When the war was over Lincoln returned to New Salem, his home in Illinois, and shortly afterwards began the study of the law. He was still poor in purse, his clothing was threadbare, but his ambition was immense. He often pursued his study in the shade of a tree. One day Squire Godbey—a very good man he was, too, so we are told—saw him seated on a pile of wood, absorbed in a book, when, according to the squire, the following dialogue took place: "Says I, 'Abe, what are you studying?'—'Law,' says he. 'Great God Almighty!' says I." Studying law astride of a wood-pile, probably barefooted, was too great a shock for the squire's susceptible nature. He continued to study, then to practise a little without fee, and finally was admitted to the bar in 1836.

Judge Davis, once on the Supreme Bench of the United States, a man spotless alike upon the throne of justice and in his daily walk, was upon intimate terms with Lincoln for upwards of twenty years, and during more than half of that period sat upon the judicial bench before which Lincoln most frequently practised. No one is abler than he to speak of Lincoln as a lawyer,—a lawyer who became one of the first of the Western bar,—a bar that can proudly point to its Carpenter, its Trumbull, its Ryan, and its Davis. He says:—

"The framework of Lincoln's mental and moral being was honesty; and a wrong cause was poorly defended by him. The ability which some eminent lawyers possess of explaining away the bad points of a cause by ingenious sophistry was denied him. In order to bring into full activity his great powers it was necessary that he should be convinced of the right and justice of the matter which he advocated. When so convinced, whether the cause was great or small, he was usually successful.

"He hated wrong and oppression everywhere; and many a man whose fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a court of justice has writhed under his terrific indignation and rebukes. He was the most simple and unostentatious of men in his habits, having few wants, and those easily supplied."

In 1837 Mr. Lincoln removed to Springfield, Ill., where he entered into partnership with his old friend, John T. Stuart; and this partnership continued until 1841. In 1834 he had been elected to the Legislature, and after his removal to Springfield he was again chosen to that body. It was during this period that he found the nerve, when it did require courage, to express and record his protest against the injustice of slavery. Twice as a youth he had made a trip to New Orleans,—in 1828 and 1831,—and on his second visit had for the first time observed slavery in its most brutal and revolting form. He had gone into the very centre of a slave mart, had seen families sold, the separation forever of husband and wife, of parent and child. When we recall how deeply he always sympathized with suffering, brute as well as human, and his strong love of justice, we can realize how deeply he was affected by these things. His companions on this trip have attempted to describe his indignation and grief. They said. "His heart bled. He was mad, thoughtful, abstracted, sad, and depressed."

The years which Mr. Lincoln passed in Springfield were the preparatory years of his future greatness. From this time onward he was ever a busy man.

He was once associated with Mr. Swett in defending a man accused of murder. He listened to the testimony which witness after witness gave against his client until his honest heart could stand it no longer; then, turning to his associate, he said: "Swett, the man is guilty; you defend him: I can't." Swett did defend him, and the man was acquitted. When proffered his share of the large fee Lincoln most emphatically declined it, on the ground that "all of it belonged to Mr. Swett, whose ardor and eloquence saved a guilty man from justice."

At another time, when a would-be client had stated the facts of his case, Mr. Lincoln replied: "Yes; there is no reasonable doubt but I can gain your case for you. I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads. I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get for you $600, which rightfully belongs, it seems to me, as much to the woman and her children as it does to you. You must remember that some things that are legally right are not morally right. I shall not take your case, but will give you a little advice, for which I will charge you nothing. You appear to be a sprightly, energetic man: I would advise you to try your hand at making $600 some other way."

I turn now to another phase of his nature, and recall that he had not grown up to manhood without the usual experiences of the tender passion. It was while he was yet living at New Salem that his heart opened to a fair, sweet-tempered, and intelligent girl, with the romantic name of Anne Rutledge. They were engaged to be married as soon as he should be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court. But in August, 1835, she died. Her beauty and her attractions and her early death made a very deep impression upon him. We are told that he idealized her memory, and in his recollections of her there was a poetry of sentiment, which might possibly have been lessened, had she lived, by the prosaic realities of life. With all his love of fun and frolic, with all his wit and humor, with all his laughter and anecdotes, Lincoln, from his youth, was a man of deep feeling. We have it on the authority of the most reliable of his biographers, that he always associated with the memory of Anne Rutledge the poem which, in his hours of despondency, he so often repeated:—

I never read this beautiful poem, so full of the true philosophy of life, so suggestive of the rich promises of the hereafter, that I do not think of the great president. He first found it in the columns of a newspaper, cut it out, carried it in his pocket, and treasured it in his memory for many years without knowing who was its author.