Part 8 (2/2)

”In dat case, dis chile he takes to de woods!”

Mr. President elucidated the black prospect.

”I am not willing to a.s.sume any new responsibilities at this juncture.

I shall, therefore, avoid going to the one place with Spain or with the negro to the other--but shall take _to the woods_!”

A strict and honest neutrality was therefore observed, and--San Domingo is still a bone of contention, though not with Spain, for it is an eye on our ca.n.a.l.

THE UNPARDONABLE CRIME.

The ma.s.s of examples of Lincoln's leniency, mercifulness, and lack of rigor, lead one to believe he could not be inexorable. But there was one crime to which he was unforgiving--the truckling to slavery. The smuggling of slaves into the South was carried on much later than a guileless public imagine. Only fifty years ago, a slave-trader languished in a Ma.s.sachusetts prison, in Newburyport, serving out a five years' sentence, and still confined from inability to procure the thousand dollars to pay a superimposed fine. Mr. Alley, congressman of Lynn, felt compa.s.sion, and busied himself to try to procure the wretch's release. For that he laid the unfortunate's pet.i.tion before President Lincoln. It acknowledged the guilt and the justice of his condemnation; he was penitent and deplored his state--all had fallen away from him after his conviction. The chief arbiter was touched by the piteous and emphatic appeal. Nevertheless, he felt constrained to say to the intermediary:

”My friend, this is a very touching appeal to my feelings. You know that my weakness is to be, if possible, too easily moved by appeals to mercy, and if this man were guilty of the foulest murder that the arm of man could perpetrate, I might forgive him on such an appeal. But the man who could go to Africa, and rob her of her children, and sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer, that he can never receive pardon at my hands. No!

he may rot in jail before he shall have liberty by any act of mine!”

BEYOND THE BOON.

The other slave-trade case is more tragic than the above.

It roused much excitement, as the conviction for slave-trading was the first under the special law in any part of the land. The object of the unique process was William Gordon. Sentenced to be hanged like a pirate, the most prodigious effort was made to have the penalty relaxed with a prospect that the term of imprisonment would be curtailed as soon as decent. It would seem that merchant princes were connected with the lucrative, if nefarious, traffic in which he was a captain. But the offense was so flagrant that the New York district attorney went to Was.h.i.+ngton to block mistaken clemency. He was all but too late, for the President had literally under his hand the Gordon reprieve. The powerful influence reached even into the executive study. Lawyer Delafield Smith stood firmly upon the need of making an example, and Mr. Lincoln gave way, but in despair at having to lay aside the pen and redoom the miserable tool to the gallows, where he was executed, at New York. ”Mr. Smith,” sighed the President, ”you do not know how hard it is to have a human being die when you know a stroke of your pen may save him.”

VAIN AS THE POPE'S BULL AGAINST THE COMET.

The potency of the Emanc.i.p.ation Act was so patent to the least politician that, long before 1863, when its announcement opened the memorable year for freedom, not only had its demonstration been implored by his friends, but some of his subordinates had tried to launch its lightning with not so impersonal a sentiment. To a religious body, pressing him to verify his t.i.tle of Abolitionist, he replied:

”I do not want to issue a doc.u.ment that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the pope's bull against the comet.”

A VOLUNTEER CAPTAINCY WORTH TWO DOLLARS.

While he was a lumberer, Lincoln was in the employ of one Kirkpatrick, who ”ran” a sawmill. In hiring the new man, the employer had promised to buy him a dog, or cant-hook, of sufficient size to suit a man of uncommon stature. But he failed in his pledge and would not give him the two dollars of its value for his working without the necessary tool. Though far from a grudging disposition, Lincoln cherished this in memory. When the Black Hawk War broke out and the governor called out volunteers, Sangamon County straightway responded and raised a company of rangers. This Kirkpatrick wished and strove to be elected captain, but Lincoln recited his grievance to the men, and said to his friend William Green (or Greene):

”Bill, I believe I can now make even with Kirkpatrick for the two dollars he owes me for the cant-hook.”

Setting himself up for candidate, he won the post. It was a triumph of popularity which rejoiced him. As late as 1860, he said he had not met since that success any to give him so much satisfaction.

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