Part 7 (1/2)
When I determined to abandon the hard work on the farm to enter the study of law at Springfield, my father being so close to Mr.
Lincoln, I went to him for advice. He expressed a willingness to take me into his own office as a student, but said that he was absent on the circuit so much that he would advise me to enter the law office of Stuart and Edwards, two prominent Springfield lawyers, of whom I have written more at length in an earlier chapter. There I would have the advantage of the constant supervision of one or the other member of the firm.
From that time until he left Springfield never to return, I had constant means of observing Lincoln as a lawyer. I was at times a.s.sociated with him as a junior counsel in the trial of law suits.
I was employed in a murder case which Lincoln and Logan were defending, I being the boy lawyer in the case. They made a wonderful defence. I do not know whether the defendant was guilty or not, but I do know that he was acquitted.
During my life I have been acquainted with very many able lawyers, and I have no hesitation in saying that Lincoln was the greatest trial lawyer I ever knew. He was a man of wonderful power before a court or jury. When he was sure he was right, his strength and resourcefulness were well-nigh irresistible. In the court-room he was at home. He was frank with the court, the juries, and the lawyers, to such an extent that he would state the case of the opposite side as fairly as the opposing counsel could do it; he would then disclose his client's case so strongly, with such honestly and candor, that the judge and jury would be almost convinced at once in advance of the testimony. Judge Davis once said that the framework of Lincoln's mental and moral being was honesty, and that a wrong cause was poorly defended by him.
The story is told that a man offered to employ him in a case and told him the facts, which did not satisfy Lincoln that there was any merit in it. He said to him: ”I can gain your case; I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can distress a widowed mother and six fatherless children, and thereby get for you six hundred dollars, which it appears to me as rightfully belongs to them as to you. I will not take your case, but I will give you a little advice for nothing. You seem to be a sprightly young man, and I advise you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars in some other way.”
Mr. Lincoln was for a time employed by the Illinois Central Railroad as one of its attorneys. In a case in one of the counties of Judge Davis's circuit to which the railroad was a party, it was announced that the company was not ready for trial, and the court inquired the reason; to which Mr. Lincoln replied that Captain McClellan was absent. The court asked, ”Who is Captain McClellan?” Lincoln replied that all he knew about him was that he was the engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad.
What a strange juggling of destiny and of fate! In little more than two years McClellan's fame had become world-wide as the general in charge of all the armies of the Republic, only to prove in the estimation of many people the most stupendous failure as a commander in all our military history; Davis had become a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; and Lincoln had reached the Presidency.
In the trial of the murder case to which I have referred, I never saw more striking evidence of Mr. Lincoln's power over a court.
There came a question of the advisability of certain testimony which was very vital to the defendant. The question was thoroughly argued by Judge Logan and Mr. Lincoln until the court took a recess for dinner at noon. The Judge announced that he would render his decision when the court reconvened. The courthouse was filled on the reconvening of court in the afternoon, and the Judge began rendering his opinion on the point in dispute. It seemed to Mr.
Lincoln and those present that he was about to decide against the admissibility of the evidence. Lincoln sprang to his feet.
Apparently he towered over the Judge, overawing him. He made such a tremendous impression that the court apparently gave way, and decided the point in the defendant's favor.
Mr. Lincoln was not only a great statesman, but he was one of the ablest, most astute, and shrewdest politicians whom I have ever known. From my earliest recollection of him he took keen interest in public affairs and was the foremost public man or politician in his section of the State. He was not among the first to join the Republican party. He clung to the old Whig party as long as a vestige of it remained. Almost immediately after he drifted into the Republican party, he became its recognized leader in Illinois, and his public utterances attracted the attention of the Nation to him.
I recollect having heard him utter the memorable words in the Republican Convention of my State in 1858:
”A house divided against itself cannot stand. This Government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
What words of wisdom! He looked through the veil between him and the future and saw the end more clearly than any other man in public life. This was a carefully prepared speech, in which every word was weighed. Some of his friends, to whom it was read, advised him not to use the clause I have quoted, ”a house divided against itself.” He was wiser than any of them. With a self-reliance born of earnest conviction he said that the time had come when the sentiments should be uttered, and that if he should go down because of their utterance by him, then he would go down linked with the truth.
I listened to much of the great debate between Lincoln and Douglas, the greatest political debate which ever took place in this country.
I have always felt that Lincoln never expected to be elected to the Senate in 1858. I think he saw more clearly than any of us that the advanced position which he took in that debate made his election to the Senate at that time impossible. He was then fighting for a great principle. He did carry a majority of the popular vote, but Douglas secured a majority of the Legislature.
His defeat apparently affected him little, if at all. I felt very badly when it became apparent that Douglas had secured a majority of the Legislature. I met Lincoln on the street one day, and said: ”Mr. Lincoln, is it true that Douglas has a majority of the Legislature?” His reply was an affirmative. I then expressed the great sorrow and disappointment that I felt. He placed a hand upon my shoulder, and said: ”Never mind, my boy; it will all come right.” I believe that he then felt certain that the position he took in that memorable debate would make him the logical candidate of the Republican party for the Presidency in 1860, which it did.
And two years from that very day the Republican party celebrated its first national victory in his election as President of the United States.
It has been said that Mr. Lincoln never went to school; and he never did to any great extent, but in a broad sense of the word, he was an educated man. He was a student, a thinker; he educated himself, and mastered any question which claimed his attention.
There was no man in this country who possessed to a greater degree the power of a.n.a.lyzation.
He was a student all his life. One incident that occurred in Springfield, some years before he finally left, will serve as an ill.u.s.tration.
An old German came through the town and claimed that he could teach us all to read and speak German in a few weeks. A cla.s.s was organized for the purpose of studying German. Lincoln became a member of the cla.s.s, and I also was in it, and I can see him yet going about with the German book in his pocket, studying it during his leisure moments in court and elsewhere. None of the rest of us learned much, but Lincoln mastered it, as he did every other subject which engaged his attention.
His home life was a pleasant one. I often visited at his home, and so far as my observation went, I do not hesitate to say that not the slightest credence should be given to the many false stories that have from time to time appeared, manufactured largely by those who desired to write something new and sensational concerning the life of President Lincoln in his home, and concerning Mrs. Lincoln.
Mr. Lincoln was regarded generally as an ungainly man, and so he was; and yet on occasions he appeared to me to be superior in dignity and n.o.bility to almost any other man whom I have ever seen.
I was present when the committee from the National Convention, that gave his first nomination for President, came to Springfield to notify him of his nomination. He stood in the rear of a double parlor in his home, and as the Hon. George F. Ashmun, president of the convention, presented the members of the delegation one by one to him, I thought that he looked what he was--the superior of any man present. Many of the eminent men composing that delegation had believed that Lincoln was some sort of a monster. I stood among them after they had met him and listened to their comments.
The lofty character, the towering strength, the majesty of the man had made a great impression upon them. They had come expecting to see a freak; they discovered one of the princes of men.
In this connection, I must be permitted to refer to another occasion.
It so happened that I was in Was.h.i.+ngton when the President's son Willie died. The funeral ceremony took place in the East Room of the White House, in the presence of the President and his cabinet and a few other friends. When the ceremony was about concluded and President Lincoln stood by the bier of his dead boy, with tear- drops falling from his face, surrounded by Seward, Chase, Bates, and others, I thought I never beheld a n.o.bler-looking man. He was at that time truly, as he appeared, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief, possessing the power and responsibilities of a President of a great Nation, yet with quivering lips and face bedewed with tears, from personal sorrow.
The morning that Abraham Lincoln left his home in Springfield never to return is not to be forgotten. It was early on the morning of the eleventh of February, dark and gloomy, with a light snow falling.