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While traveling eastward, some years since, I was honored with the company of Senator Fowler of Tennessee, and Hon. John Baton, then Commissioner of Education, and now President of Marietta College; and, the subject of Mr. Lincoln coming under review, we disdained our comfortable berths, and "The glow-worm showed the matin to be near," before we took note that I had spent the entire night in rehearsing, to these distinguished gentlemen, various incidents which suggested themselves to my mind, pertaining to this greatest of men, within my own personal experience; and this attention on their part was, of course, an homage to his memory, and not in any wise to me, and is indicative of the esteem in which his memory is held by men of breadth, culture and high attainments.

I have had other similar, though somewhat less radical, experiences; and, upon the advice of friends, the following sketches, written chiefly several years since, and now modified and amplified, are offered to the public with much trepidation, many misgivings, and no well defined ideas as to their reception.

I have, however, classified my subjects, as will appear, in order that those who so desire can omit what might be devoid of interest, having myself experienced, in the consideration of the various "Lives of Lincoln" I have seen, the difficulty of selection and avoidance which occurred in an unclassified consideration of the subject.

Mr. Lincoln was an unique character, and had an unique experience; so that all who knew him otherwise than, and different

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from, the biographical conception of him, should submit their knowledge and views of him to the world, in order that when a proper biography shall be made up from the disjecta membra then in being, all may go into the historical hopper together, each and all to contribute to an accurate similitude and "counterfeit presentment" of the man as he was.

Much error, both of fact and opinion, is prevalent concerning Mr. Lincoln, both in text and tradition. All sorts and every variety of apocryphal and morally impossible stories are on the market, and every shade and intensity of intimacy is claimed with him, by all sorts of individuals.

Dr. Holland attempted, immediately after his lamented death, to ascertain from his neighbors and those elsewhere who knew him well, what manner of man he was, with the queer result that the more he extended his inquiries and the deeper his research, the more entangled and obscure became his knowledge, and the more hopeless the difficulty of gaining any intelligent and satisfactory data upon which to base an analysis of his subject. This astute inquirer gives an amusing account of his perplexities: he found out that Mr. Lincoln was an able man, and also that his ability was meagre: that he was a profound, and likewise a superficial, lawyer: that he was a Christian and also an atheist: that he possessed a refined, and likewise a coarse, nature: that he was a profound dialectician, and that he was very shallow, and so on. On no one trait, did even those who saw him daily, for twenty years, agree.

At school, we were taught that no matter how dense or numerous a crowd might be which should gaze at a rainbow, no two individuals of that crowd could, by possibility, see the same rainbow; if this be so, as predicted of a heavenly object of transcendant beauty, having no moral quality except the sole one of entrancing the senses, how much less could we hope to find unanimity of opinion or sentiment concerning a lawyer, politician and statesman, whose whole life was a stern and relentless moral and political conflict -- who had neither grace, culture, polish or conventional refinement, and who was, by 1,857,610 voters out of 4,645,330, chosen as a

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reform ruler over 30,000,000 sovereign people of heterogeneous interests and feelings. And so we find, as might be expected, much ignorant, natural and wilful prejudice, arising and existing among all ranks, even among such as desired to be homogeneous with, and to think well of, him. Parson Brownlow habitually called him an "Abolitionist nigger;" Wendell Phillips designated him as the "Illinois slave-hound;" Greeley characterized him as a habitual law-breaker; the Southern press denominated him as an "ape," a "mulatto," a "gorilla," etc.; and in 1861, Stanton said that no one about Washington had any respect for him; had not even faith in his candor and sincerity.

As his administration wore on, and his gigantic intellect became impressed upon mighty deeds, the current of laudation set in strong, and he became a subject of quite as exuberant eulogy as he had been of pristine obloquy; and the scrutiny is still rife, and the world's opinion is on its way to a conception of the man as he stands before the shrine of, and is known to, unerring TRUTH.

As I state in the following chapters, and may suggest now, much of the misapprehension of Mr. Lincoln exists, by virtue of the difference of the object painted on the mental retina — the vision of one being directed to Mr. Lincoln's methods — that of the other to the object attained. Thus when one contemplates the ruler of 40,000,000 of the most highly educated, most erudite and enlightened peoples in this or any other age, narrating bizarre anecdotes during business hours, his feelings revolt at the sight; but when he beholds the shackles stricken off of 4,000,000 human beings born to hereditary slavery, by the disposition, will and moral power of this same man, he is stupefied with amazement at this exhibition of almost Almighty power.

Mr. Lincoln's record on the slavery question has puzzled the world, but a view of the whole field makes it perfectly clear. Abstractly speaking, he held the same views which were enunciated by Mr. Jefferson, in 1820, in these words

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of Fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two

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races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such slow degree, as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect."

Or, as held by Madison, and thus enunciated by him in 1821

"* * If an asylum could be found in Africa, that would be the appropriate destination for the unhappy race among us. * * * The repugnance of the whites to their continuance among them is founded on race prejudices, themselves founded on physical, distinctions which are not likely soon, if ever, to be eradicated. Even in states which display most sympathy with the people of color, on the Missouri question, prohibitions are taking place against their becoming residents. They are everywhere regarded as a nuisance, and must really be such as long as they are under the degradation which public sentiment enforces."

In other words, Lincoln was a colonizationist, as Jefferson, Madison and Henry Clay were; and he attempted in several ways, as I show, to engraft that policy on his administration as a practical measure, and would have made still more heroic efforts, looking to that end, had he completed his second term; and his policy of emancipation was adopted, against both his judgment, desire and conscience, in obedience to the highest of all political laws, and which supplants constitutions, laws and customs,

"Salus populi, supremo, lex est."

And contradictions are averred to inhere in his religious history; it being claimed by Messrs. Lamon, Herndon and Nicolay that he was an infidel, and as vigorously asseverated by Dr. Holland, Arnold and others that he was a Christian.

Mr. Herndon is not a man to mistake on this important phase of his lamented friend's character, hence candor must avow that in his youthful prime he was extremely latitudinarian in his religious beliefs. So also, was Paul of Tarsus. But Mr. Lincoln learned

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much, experienced much, and suffered much, and had many manifestations of God's mysterious power and intervention in mundane affairs, within thirty years, and the result of all these influences and considerations was, that the proof that he was a sincere Christian in 1863, '63 and '64, is quite as convincing as the proof that he was an infidel in 1832, '33 and '34.

The attribute of evolution applies to religion as to other moral and mental subjects. Conversion is as demonstrable as aught else, and it no more follows that the loose ideas of religion entertained by him, in his immature youth, should remain in statu quo in the days of his maturity of intellect, than that the "spread eagle" and vapid oratory of the Springfield village lyceum should be employed by him, with the autonomy of a nation and the weal of a race for a stake, and the world for an audience; and if the evidence of history attests that he was a free-thinker in 1834, it is attested by a cloud of witnesses that he was a Christian in 1863.

And similar and equally pertinent conclusions are applicable to other matters and traits of character.

In closing these sketches I am painfully conscious of their desultory and uneven character, of their lack of unity and homogeneity, and of the several repetitions of minor matters, for which there is no excuse.

These blemishes result from an attempt to put old wine in new bottles; or, more specifically, as I have elsewhere stated, from the imprudence of attempting to make homogeneous, or of sticking together with literary glue, several heterogeneous articles.

Originally commenced as a pastime, and to please a circle of friends alone, success, in any degree, can only be hoped for, because of my vantage ground as an intimate and close friend of Mr. Lincoln, and because, by reason of such intimacy, of the novelty of some of the facts and deductions, and not, in any sense, by reason, but in spite of, its literary style, or, rather, the lack thereof.

Chicago, May 1, 1892.

Signature of Henry C. Whitney

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Chapter I. Emancipator in Embryo.

Log Cabin at "Goose Nest" Prairie

Long after her sensitive heart and weary hands had crumbled into dust, and had climbed to life again in forest flowers, Lincoln said to Herndon, with tears in his eyes: "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."
-- HOLLAND.

DIALOGUE IN 1819.

MRS. CRAWFORD: "What do you expect will become of you, Abe, if you don't stop such nonsense?"

ABE: "I'm going to be President of the United States."
"I didn't know then (in 1830) I had sense enough to be a lawyer."
-- LINCOLN.

Among the vicissitudes incident to the progress of a government, based upon general suffrage, and composed of a heterogeneous people, exponents of the extremes of social life will be found, installed in its curule chair.

While stately mansions, in the bosom of culture and refinement, furnished luxurious homes for Washington, the Adams', Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Van Buren, and Buchanan; the rude log cabin sheltered Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, and Johnson; and in irregular, but inevitable succession, the Republican succeeded the Federalist, to be, in turn, supplanted again by the latter: the statesman gave way to the politician, and he, in ordinary sequence, to the military chieftain; who, in times resistless march, was supplanted again by the politician.

This exalted station has been adorned, for the most part, by professional politicians, some achieving the exaltation of

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statesmen, as Jefferson: others content to remain imbedded in the Serbonian bog of partisan servility, as Buchanan.

In four several instances, prior to 1860, military prowess captured the bastions and redoubts of the executive mansion. It probably is not sound policy, but it is inevitable: and experience attests that the via dolorosa which leads to the White House frequently lay through ensanguined fields.

Mr. Lincoln was the first civilian who attained to the national supremacy without the intervention of a substantial political record. He came directly to the chair of state from the mass and ranks of the people, as Jackson, a warrior, did.

Lincoln, Jackson and Johnson were on a par as to obscurity of origin and paucity of education, the scholastic training of the former being all comprised within four months.

In order to understand the peculiarities and characteristics of Abraham Lincoln, we must know somewhat of the environments of his childhood and youth, of his early home and its social life, of his associates, education and habits. In order to fully comprehend the moral exaltation to which he attained, we must know how dense the obscurity whence he emerged.

The pioneer's home was a cabin, constructed of undressed logs, the interstices filled up with native clay; puncheon floor, if any; no doors or windows as a rule; clapboard roof held in place by ridge poles.

Heating and cooking arrangements were comprised within a huge chimney built up of rocks, embedded in native clay; or of sticks of wood, between and around which was daubed as much clay mud as would adhere, and the fire was maintained through winter and summer alike -- in the former season for warmth and cooking, and in the latter season for cooking purposes alone. There usually was no door: but light was admitted through the door-way, which generally was unobstructed night or day, except in rough weather, when the gap was imperfectly closed by a "shutter," which answered as a substitute for a door; and which

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revolved on wooden home-made hinges, hewed out with an axe; or sometimes a strip of rag carpet or a deer's untanned hide, or a bed quilt was hung in the aperture, through which egress and ingress was had. The single room sufficed for all purposes; the cooking was performed by aid of skillets on the hearth, and the frugal meal was eaten sometimes on a stationary table, consisting of clap-boards held in place by two horizontal sticks inserted in the side of the cabin by aid of an auger, and sometimes on a movable table, equally rude.

Bedsteads, hewed out of native timber with a broad axe, occupied the end of the cabin which was not usurped by the broad fire-place: and when bed-time came, the members of the fair sex prepared for their nocturnal repose by stripping off their outer dress and removing their stockings, if they were favored with them, or by washing off the superfluous dirt from their feet if they were not addicted to the use of shoes; and the male gender made its nightly toilet in an equally primitive mode. But all parties -- men, women and children -- the members of the family, guests and strangers, alike, went to bed and got up, all in sight of, and in close proximity to, each other.

The writer himself stayed for nine consecutive weeks at one of these cabins, where a man and his wife and three children constituted the family; and the whole crowd, six of us, slept in a space, fourteen by eight feet in area, with not even a sheet hung up, to guarantee semi-privacy.

The ordinary stable of civilization is far, infinitely far, superior to the cabin of the backwoodsmen of Kentucky of three-fourths of a century ago.

The story which Stephen A. Douglas used to tell was but an ordinary incident. Soon after his arrival in Illinois, he chanced to stop with a Kentuckian who had settled in Cass County, and being shown his bed in one corner of the sole room: the whole family turned the battery of their united gaze on him, merely out of idle curiosity -- he was then no

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larger than a small boy, and equally as bashful -- and while trying to hide himself as well as he could behind his pants, was saluted by his landlord with: "I say, stranger, you've got a mighty slim chance of legs thar." And an English gentleman once told me that, chancing to stop at a pioneer home in Virginia, and bed-time having come, the father of the family cried out to his girls, who had already retired, "Say you, Marg and Milcy, lay over thar, and make room for this yere stranger."

These are not random or hyperbolical sketches; just what is herein narrated was the normal mode of life in the backwoods of Kentucky when Abraham Lincoln was reared there, in part. And his residences in Indiana and Illinois in the 20's and 30's were not so greatly in advance, in the matter of refinement. Thomas Lincoln, Dennis and John Hanks, and John D. Johnson were average specimens of men born and reared in the same condition of society in which Lincoln's lot was cast. Their social conditions and mental attainments can be seen, by those curious to know, in the graphic pages of Lamon and Herndon. That their boyhood and young manhood's companion achieved a more brilliant career and a more sublime destiny, is attributable to the finer fibre of the man, and to the more impressive and reverential fact, that the Unseen Power which controls nations and institutions had need of a Leonidas to hold the pass of our Thermopylae -- had need of a Moses to lead the children of Africa out of their house of bondage.

The food was corn bread, made from meal, salt and water, bacon, game; semi-occasionally poultry and pork; very pale butter at rare intervals; vegetables not as a rule, but very irregularly in summer. Jeans and linsey afforded the chief staples of clothing; to go barefoot was rather the rule and certainly was not at all uncommon for men and women; home-made moccasins, from the skins of groundhogs and other animals, and coarse brogans constituted the best attire for the feet; and while the stores were resorted

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to frequently for head gear it also was not uncommon that coons and opposum skins were improvised as coverings for the head.

Every man and boy was, both from choice and necessity, a hunter; a long, heavy rifle rested upon crotched sticks over the door-frame of every cabin, or was swung over the shoulder of the proprietor whenever he went to election, mill, justice's court or any other journey about his settlement. Neighborhood gatherings were very common -- and none were exempted from taking part -- house raisings, log-rollings, quilting bees, magistrates' trial days, elections, scrub races and religious awakenings. At these gatherings (except the latter) much of the neighborhood business was transacted; horses were swapped, contests of shooting at a mark were indulged in, local character was discussed, and, most important and inevitable, one or more fist fights crowned the honor of the day.

This was the highest effort of human ambition; they were not conceived, as a rule, in malice: they were simply designed as tests of the highest feats of ambition and manhood; sometimes malice would be engendered during a fight, and sometimes the most cordial amenity -- it all depended upon the characteristics of the combatants, their conduct during the contest, the issue of it, and the incidents connected with it. One of Lincoln's best and staunchest friends was Jack Armstrong whom he whipped in one of these fights; and whose son he defended successfully from a brutal murder as late as 1858.

Major Alexander Sympson, of Hancock County, Illinois, now deceased, informed me that he was just about Lincoln's own age, and that he was raised in the same general neighborhood with him, on Nolins' Creek, in Kentucky. He states that Lincoln himself, and all the other small neighborhood boys, were accustomed to meet at the mill, within a couple of miles or so of Lincoln's residence, and he well recollects of his attire and general appearance. He was the shyest, most reticent,

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most uncouth and awkward-appearing, homeliest, and worse dressed of any in the entire crowd. For some time he was suffered to look on in silence and take no part in the games, local contests or pugilistic encounters incident to these gatherings. But his turn to be ground up in the conventional mill of social routine came at last, and as it had been so long delayed, it was proposed to grind him into impalpable powder, socially, as it were. Sympson saw it all. Lincoln was standing at a huge tree when he was attacked, without either provocation or warning, by a boy larger than himself, and who, metaphorically, wore the belt, with the reserves thick and close at his back; but the very acme of astonishment was experienced by the eagerly expectant crowd, for Lincoln soundly thrashed the first, second and third boy in succession, and then placed his back against the tree, defied the whole crowd and taunted them with cowardice. But he was disturbed no more, then or thereafter. His prowess and mettle secured him immunity for the future. But he left that country soon afterward.

Education was an exotic in those regions. Lincoln's father could not read or write; his mother could do both, and was regarded as a miracle of learning therefor. Lincoln had a prodigious thirst for education and his father fostered this ambition: and in laying plans, the ultima thule of both wag that he should learn to cipher clear through the arithmetic. But his ambition was not fulfilled. His sole scholastic education was limited to reading, writing, and ciphering as far as the rule of three: and, in point of fact, he went to school but four months in his life.

When Lincoln was seven years of age he removed to Spencer County, Indiana, and when he was twenty-one years old, he removed to Macon County, Illinois and one year later took up his residence at the little hamlet of New Salem, in Illinois, where he lived until he removed to Springfield in 1837.

"Rutledge" Mill at New Salem

Although each of these several places of residence was on the frontier, yet a comparative advance was made in civilization

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with each change. Still, it must not be lost sight of that Lincoln's whole life thus far had been cast in the mold of rusticity and the backwoods.

Two circumstances are worthy of note in this connection: First, the manner in which Mr. Lincoln was attracted to New Salem; and second, the ephemeral existence of that inconsequential little hamlet itself. It was laid out two years before Lincoln emigrated to Illinois and three years before he took up his abode there. He lived there five years and a half, and while he did live there, it enjoyed a season of prosperity -- but although he was, in a financial sense, one of its feeblest citizens, yet when he left, in March, 1837, the place fell into desuetude, and in a few years it vanished utterly off the earth more rapidly than it came into existence. All that there ever was of it, was arranged on two sides of a crooked lane; no building there was of the value of two hundred dollars; its highest population was about one hundred souls, and they were housed and performed their business in about twenty structures in all. It was a sort of place only possible to stage coach days, at best, and there seems no good reason for its existence, even in such an era. This was his first residence, outside of a log cabin standing by itself in solitude: his first living in an aggregate community. An unfortunate occurrence first attracted him there. A boat which he was helping down the Sangamon River stuck on the mill dam located there: and hence his attention was directed to that, the most obscure and diminutive settlement on the entire stream. For some undefined reason, his employer conceived the project of embarking in a mercantile enterprise at this obscure place, and to enlist the services of Lincoln as a clerk, and, in point of fact, the latter made his appearance there in August, 1831, and the stock of goods not yet having arrived, lounged about town, spun yarns, acted as clerk in an election, performed feats of strength, and made friends, till the arrival of the goods, when he commenced his brief mercantile career. This lasted but one year, when his employer "busted up" and soon afterward Lincoln enlisted

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in the Black Hawk army and was elected a captain of one of the companies over a party who had persistently sought the position, and deemed that he had organized victory to secure it. He gained no laurels or anything else, in the tented field, but was enabled to give to the nation, by a speech in Congress fifteen years thereafter, his experience in the following terms, viz.: "I am a military hero. In the days of the Black Hawk war I fought, bled and came away. I was not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about as near it as General Cass was to Hull's surrender, and, like him, I saw the place very soon afterward. It is quite certain I did not break my sword (as Cass did) for I had none to break: but I bent my musket pretty badly on one occasion. If General Cass went in advance of me, picking berries, I surpassed him in charges on the wild onions. If he saw any live, fighting Indians it is more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from loss of blood I can truly say I was often very hungry. If ever I should conclude to doff whatever there is of black-cockade Federalism about me and thereupon they shall take me up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest that they shall not make fun of me as they have of Cass, by attempting to write me into a military hero."

Just before or during his military campaign the boys induced Lincoln to run for the legislature, which he did, and was defeated. He then was entirely without business or a home or the means of paying the meagre sums demanded for his daily bread and used to toss sleeplessly on his uneasy pillow (if he had one) from a solicitude as to what to do next. He had never done much manual labor -- in fact, he had no desire that way, but he seriously at one time contemplated becoming a blacksmith. While meditating on the expediency of adopting this calling he was offered, and embraced the chance of becoming a merchant, and the firm of "Berry & Lincoln" was formed, which flourished less than a year and ended leaving Lincoln twelve hundred dollars in debt, which

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seemed to him of as great magnitude as, and which he used to call, the national debt. However, he ultimately paid it off -- dollar for dollar -- principal and interest. After this he did little odd jobs as he could, and in 1833 he was made postmaster, and a little later deputy surveyor; then he read law, went to the legislature, was the chief agency in removing the capitol to Springfield, and on March 13th, in 1837, on a borrowed horse which resembled Rozinante, but which carried Lincoln and his fortunes, he left this insignificant hamlet which had been a haven of refuge for him for several years, and where he had developed from an obscure laborer at odd jobs to a local statesman endowed with the laudable ambition, as he himself stated it, to become the "DeWitt Clinton" of Illinois.

A chance traveler on this latter day might have been encountered, traveling in a southeasterly direction, on the state road between Havana and Springfield -- the county seats respectively of Mason and Sangamon counties -- and the latter the capitol-elect of the State.

He was astride a small pony, borrowed that morning from Bowling Green; his long legs nearly touched the ground, the saddle was substantially worn-out, and all that he possessed on earth was about seven dollars in cash in his pocket; in his saddle bags a copy of Blackstone, a copy of the compiled laws of Illinois for 1833, three volumes of session laws, two small volumes of miscellaneous books and a few articles of underwear, in harmony with the ungainly suit which protected and adorned his uncouth person.

A casual observer would have noticed nothing peculiar in this awkward specimen of manhood; superficially he seemed like a farm hand in search of employment: or, mayhap, an humble adventurer in search of a new home and en route for the government land office to make his entry: but an astute critic would have detected in the anxious face and deep-set and melancholy eyes, an embryonic genius seeking a

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career: but no one would have detected in this obscure waif on the sea of life, the Moses who was to lead the nation out of political bondage -- the Atlas who was to bear the Nation and Democracy itself from anarchy to safety.

Arrived at Springfield he glanced timidly at the few faces he saw in the road (for Springfield contained not a thousand people) as if to see whether his reception was to be cordial or frigid, but he elicited no hint of what was thought of him; if anything he was merely gazed at with a look of cold curiosity or indifference, and his heart sank within him as he reflected on the past, and cast a mental horoscope of the future.

His first stop was at the northwest corner of the public square, at a hitching rack, where he threw the bridle rein over a pin, and wearily taking off the saddle bags, gazed furtively up and down the silent street, and then entered a store on the west side of the square, apparently a little doubtful of his reception. But he was greeted cordially and heartily by the proprietor with, "Hello, Abe, just from Salem?"

Lincoln -- "Howdy, Speed! Yes, this is my first shew up."

Speed -- "So you are to be one of us?"

Lincoln -- "I reckon so if you will let me take pot-luck with you."

Speed -- "All right, Abe; it's better than Salem."

Lincoln -- "I just want to put my saddle pockets down here till I put my beast at Bill Butler's, then I want to see you."

In five minutes he returned. "Well, Speed, I've been to German's and got a single bedstead; now you figure out what it will cost for a tick, blankets, etc."

Speed (after figuring) -- "Say, seventeen dollars or so."

Lincoln's countenance fell. "I had no idee it would cost half of that, and I can't pay, but if you can wait on me until Christmas, and I make anything I'll pay; if I don't I can't -- I can't."

Speed -- "I can do better than that; upstairs I sleep in

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a bed big enough for two, and you just come and sleep with me till you can do better."

Lincoln (brightening up) -- "Good; where is it?"

Speed -- "Upstairs behind that pile of barrels -- turn to the right when you get up."

Lincoln (returning joyously) -- "Well, Speed, I've got moved."

And the great Emancipator lived to repay this and many other acts of kindness, by making a brother of this "friend in need" Attorney General of the United States.

Indeed, Joshua F. Speed came nearest to being Lincoln's confidential friend, of anybody on earth.

On the morning of that day Lincoln was without a home of any sort and started to find or make one, with all that he had on a borrowed horse, saying or thinking, with Bardolph,

"Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I * * * will ope."

Before night he was temporarily housed and received an equally warm welcome to the table of his friend Bill Butler, where he was to take his meals till he married in 1842, and with his bride took up quarters at the Globe Tavern for four dollars a week, where he stayed till he got a home of his own.

In these days, Springfield was an obscure village of less than one thousand people; and the business clustered about the public square. The State House had not been built and sessions of the legislature were held in a church. The Supreme Court sat in the circuit court room; the few brick buildings were of the most primitive order, low and diminutive; law offices were rude and equipped with the most rudimentary furniture. The firm of Stuart & Lincoln, of which the senior partner was Congressman, was merely provided with some boards to hold books, a rough carpenter-made table, one chair, a lounge, a bench, and an old wood stove. The library contained five Illinois reports, about twenty volumes of miscellaneous law books, statutes, and a

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goodly array of session laws, legislative reports and Congressional documents.

In this office, still in existence, Lincoln commenced the world in earnest, and passed nearly all his time there, day or night, for he left Speed's room after a little and slept here on the old lounge, of which it might be said

"The lounge contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed at night, a lounger's seat by day."

In that little uninviting village at this time there were but three country taverns, about half a dozen stores of all sorts, a small merchant's mill for custom work, and a community composed of a few families of the most aristocratic tendencies, and the bulk of the citizens exceedingly poor. The streets were wholly unimproved, and in summer were frequently obscured by clouds of dust, and in winter were impassable by reason of mud. There was but little attempt at sidewalks, and these in the part surrounding the public square: and the crossings consisted of chunks of wood, upon which in the reign of mud, pedestrians, if well balanced, might pick their way across the "slough of despond," which the streets were from November till March: and yet at that time in this primitive village, there lived Stephen T. Logan, John T. Stuart, Edward D. Baker, Samuel H. Treat, Josiah Lamborn, Jesse B. Thomas, Stephen A. Douglas, Cyrus Walker and others, four of whom have been in Congress, two in the U. S. Senate and others in high offices, besides some of the best lawyers in the West.

The real business of a lawyer in that region, in those early days, occupied but a short time; and they were wont to get together in the back part of the stores in the winter, and on store boxes outside, in the summer, and discuss politics; they being divided into "Jackson" men and Whigs; and politics raging then, where nothing was at stake beyond their prejudices, as effectively and emphatically as in manufacturing communities where politics was business, and brought thrift or leanness to the community; and in this coterie of

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lawyers in the years from '37 to '42 Lincoln ranked very nearly at the bottom of the list; indeed, his eccentricities, his outre appearance and propensity to tell stories, gave him his chief distinction.

I have elsewhere adverted to the fact, that on the 27th of May, 1856, Lincoln and I walked to the open space in front of the old court house at Decatur; and that Lincoln then said to me, in substance: "Here on this spot, twenty-six years ago, I made my first halt in Illinois; here I stood, and there our wagon stood, with all that we owned in the world:" and in point of fact, for a fortnight previously thereto, he had no home, except to lie on the bare earth at night and to eat his rations from a tin pan by the wayside.

For the ensuing year he lived in the rudest style of log cabin on the north fork of the Sangamon (a very prosaic) River; then his father abandoned even that and migrated east, in search of a better chance to live an indolent life; and Lincoln, being then a man for himself, was literally without a home of any sort: so he cast his lot with the few settlers in the rude hamlet of New Salem, where, amid poverty and privation, he studied law under the shade of a tree, in some nook in a store, at the foot of a hay-stack, or where he could, and at night crawled into a loft to sleep, how he could. For six years he lived in a way of which he might almost say: "The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but I have no place to lay my head." Coming to Springfield under the circumstances stated; he was at first there indebted to charity for a home; his meals being procured from one friend, and his lodgings from another, until he could independently sleep on his own rude lounge, in his own dirty office.

After five years of this desultory life, he married, without a home to carry his theretofore pampered and proud-spirited bride, and he took lodgings in a cheap tavern, still standing, at the economical price of four dollars a week.

After a while, he purchased a small one and a half

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story residence in an humble part of the town, and got him a horse, hired the village blacksmith to construct a buggy, procured a cow and built with his own hands the rude stable I have sketched elsewhere, and then for the first time in all his life -- being then thirty-five years of age -- he had a home, and he did not enjoy it for more than half the time, being away on the circuit, living as best he could, for half the year.

Mrs. Lincoln, during one of his three-months' absences, conspired with their next door neighbor, a carpenter, to raise the roof and add another story; which was done, and this house, modest enough even now, was the only real, genuine home that Lincoln ever had. I have narrated that he expressed a solicitude to me what he should do with his house when he went to Washington: not wishing, as he expressed it, to sell himself "out of house and home," nor wishing to rent it to strangers, who would abuse it. But he finally leased it to Mr. Bowen, superintendent of the Great Western Railway, who occupied it for several years; then one Oldroyd, a bookseller, took it and made a sort of Lincoln museum out of it; and finally Robert Lincoln presented it to the state, which properly made Mr. Oldroyd its custodian.

When Lincoln took leave of his home in February 1861 he had a secret presentiment that he would never see it again; and he did not.

In working His wonders in the moral, no less than in the physical, universe; God works in a mysterious way, wholly incomprehensible to us.

Home of Abraham Lincoln at Springfield

Thus, when in His good Providence, He desired to intervene between man and the broken law, and to redeem him from his fallen state, He chose as the Mediator and Redeemer,one born in a manger -- "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" -- the son of a humble carpenter of Nazareth; and when, likewise. He desired, in His good Providence, to extirpate human slavery in this, the only boasted, "free-country

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on earth," He selected as the Emancipator one born in a rude log cabin -- also "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" -- the son of a humble carpenter of Elizabethtown.

This man of lowly origin and obscure birth gave to the world the following account of his extraction and lineage:
"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia of undistinguished families -- second families, I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or '2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with a New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like."

A more extended research than the great Emancipator was enabled to give, prosecuted by Hon. J. L. Nail, of Missouri, a grandson of Mr. Lincoln's aunt, Nancy Brumfield, reveals the following facts of genealogy to a moral certainty, viz: -- that one Samuel Lincoln came from England in the year 1637, also that he had a son named Mordecai, Sr.; that he had a son whom he called Mordecai, Jr.; that he had a son John who emigrated to Virginia; and that he had a son Abraham, who was the father of Thomas -- who was the father of our hero. The original Samuel had a brother John who came to America a little earlier, perhaps about 1633.

Abraham, the grandfather, married one Mary Shipley in North Carolina, and his sons were Mordeeai, Josiah and Thomas, and his daughters were Nancy (Brumfield) and Mrs. Crume. Of Lincoln's mother nothing is definitely known except that her mother married one Henry Sparrow,

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and that Lincoln's mother was reared in the family of Thomas and Betsy Sparrow -- Thomas being a brother of the stepfather.

Abraham Lincoln had two uncles and two aunts on the paternal side, to-wit: Mordecai Lincoln and Josiah Lincoln, and the aunts respectively became Mrs. Crume and Mrs. Brumfield, all being of the highest respectability and character.

On the 26th day of July, 1861, I called on Mr. Lincoln at the executive mansion, just as the cabinet meeting broke up, and put in his hands a long letter covering four or five pages of foolscap, written by a nun at the Osage Indian Mission, in Kansas, to Mr. Lincoln, whom she supposed and proclaimed to be, her first cousin; she had been born of gentle blood, and reared in the convent school at Bardstown, Kentucky, Mr. Lincoln read this letter aloud in my hearing; it was a social letter; and gave a detailed and gossipy account of uncle this, aunt that and cousin the other: congratulated him fervently on his high exaltation; and piously commended him to the protection of the Holy Mother of God and the Saints. It was a fervent and excellent letter; and when he had read it clear through, he said, "She ain't my cousin, but she thinks she is," which he repeated, and added, "You see, Whitney, she thinks my father was Mordecai (or Josiah) Lincoln, whereas my father was Thomas; and Mordecai (or Josiah) was only my uncle; and he married a Mudd, and her father was a Mudd -- a brother; and her cousins were also my cousins, but she is not my cousin, though she thinks she is, and" (folding the letter carefully and putting it in a drawer) "I must write to her when I get time."

The only other time I ever heard him speak of his relatives was on the occasion of his obtaining a release of young Tom Johnston, who stole the watch, as shown elsewhere, and then he merely said: "This boy is not my nephew, but when my father married the second time; this wife had a boy of about my age, and we were raised together, slept together, and liked

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each other as well as actual brothers could do. This boy is a son of him -- my foster-brother." And likewise on the first day of February, 1861, when he requested me to go with him to Coles County to see his "mother," as he termed her.

Tremont House, Chicago, from 1850 to 1871

The name of Hanks was, in its origin, a derivative or corruption of the surname Henry, it being not uncommon in an early day to call Henry, "Hank," and from this very numerous family came one second only to the Virgin Mary, who gave to humanity the Saviour of mankind: she bestowing upon the world the emancipator of the black man from bodily slavery, and of the white man from political slavery. The Hanks are an humble race, but an estimable lady who was the wife of one of the recent Governors of Kansas descended from that family on the maternal side.

The name "Lincoln" was doubtless in regular succession from the original English ancestry, but in the vocabulary of "the dark and bloody ground," as it was in Daniel Boone's day, it was not often written, and when it was, it was written usually as the scribe caught the sound, Link-hern or Link-horn. Abraham Lincoln the last, seems always to have spelt it after the manner of his remote English ancestry.

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Chapter II. Ecce Homo.

* * * "A long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent."
-- EDWIN M. STANTON in 1858.

William Stetson tells of frequently seeing Mr. Lincoln on the sidewalk in front of his house, drawing a little cart in which was a child, his hands behind him grasping the tongue of the cart, his body bent forward for ease in drawing it; without hat or coat, and a pair of rough shoes on. Stetson wondered so rough a man lived in so fine a house.

He used to come to my house to get milk or to borrow something, in his shirt sleeves, with old patched trousers hitched up somehow with one suspender, and a very shabby pair of slippers on. He always greeted me, "How d'ye, Jim?" -- GOURLY.

During the first week of the battle of the Wilderness he scarcely slept at all.... I met him pacing back and forth, clad in an old wrapper, great dark rings under his eyes, his head bent forward on his breast. -- CARPENTER.

He was the instrument of God. The Divine Spirit which, in another day of regeneration, took the form of an humble artisan of Galilee, had again clothed itself * * * in a man of lowly birth and degree.
-- La Opinion, Bogota, U. S. of Columbia.

THERE are two different methods of treating this subject: the abstract and the concrete modes.

By the first method would be presented the results of the observer's observation and experience, and, possibly also, the results of the observation and experience of others, so that the reader would not see the man himself, but the image and conception of the man as the narrator and other observers saw him.

Photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Springfield

By the concrete method, would be presented to the mental view, the man himself as he appeared and acted, so as to enable the reader to deduce his own conclusions.

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The former might be more ornate and more satisfactory to the author, but the concrete mode would be more useful and more satisfactory to general readers, yet both methods must be used in order to please all. Do the very best we may, our defects of mental vision, our prejudices, hero-worship, sympathies and antipathies, all will handicap every effort to present an accurate mental likeness of Mr. Lincoln, or any other hero.

I hold in my hand a photograph of Mr. Lincoln, taken in June, 1860, before barbers and tailors and biographers and whiskers had marked him for their own, and had wrought a transformation in his appearance, character and individuality.

The wrinkles, lines, seams and protuberances are all here; so likewise the massive under jaw, indicative of firmness and undaunted purpose; the faithful sun has transferred the rugged lineaments and homely features to the camera, which in its turn has recorded them with fidelity, so that future generations, as well as his own contemporaries, may see him as he appeared in his own person, among men.

Here is a similar picture, taken at the same time, by the same artist, but the wrinkles, folds and protuberances are lacking, for, alas! the retoucher has been abroad in the land, and has abased nature in order to enthrone art.

And the likenesses of Lincoln, so-called, which are in vogue mostly now, are even more hypocritical and comely looking, but they are not likenesses of Lincoln.

In like manner, the biographer masks and disguises his subject until the product of his labors is a romance and not a biography. And many of the biographies, so-called, of Lincoln, are no exception to the rule.

The Apostle Paul, at Mars Hill, preaching to the Athenians, proclaimed that he saw in that city an altar dedicated, "To the Unknown God:" and he thereupon declared to them, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."

But it will be reserved for another generation to produce

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a Paul who can truthfully say of Lincoln: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly contemplate and extol. Him declare I unto you."

And all that I shall attempt to do, is to supply some missing links of biography by offering a few sheaves from that hitherto ungarnered field: -- "Life in the Eighth Judicial Circuit," and by adding some corollaries not hitherto discussed.

The usual and ordinary belief is -- that the career of the ultimately successful man is an uninterrupted and unbroken series of current successes, from zero to renown or affluence.

In practice, however, it appears that the progress of the successful and unsuccessful, alike, is strewn with current misfortunes, humiliations, checks and disasters, and that the adventurer who shall have attained the goal of ultimate defeat may nevertheless have been highly favored of fortune in life's current journey, while the laurelled victor may have trodden the winepress of humiliation and defeat all his days but the last.

Mr. Lincoln's career as a business man may be thus summarized: After practicing law, and living in the most frugal and economical manner for a quarter of a century, being his own hostler and errand boy, and attending to his own wood pile, cow and pig-pen himself, he had accumulated ten thousand dollars worth of property when he was elected as President of the United States, and having consumed his floating capital in living during 1860, he was compelled to borrow every cent of money which he had in his pocket when he started to Washington, and which he ultimately repaid out of his earliest receipts from his presidential salary.

His career as a politician may be thus exhibited: On April 21st, in the year 1832, he was elected to his first office -- that of Captain of a company in the Black Hawk war.

In 1833 he ran for the legislature and was defeated, but he was elected currently thereafter for four successive legislative terms.

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In the year 1834 he was appointed by President Jackson as postmaster of the inconsiderable hamlet of New Salem; and by John Calhoun, to the exceedingly inconsequential office of deputy surveyor of Sangamon County.

In the year 1844 he was an unsuccessful candidate for a nomination for Congress: and, in the year 1846, he was both nominated for, and elected to, a seat in Congress.

In the year 1849 he was an unsuccessful applicant for the office of Commissioner of the General Land Office.

In that same year he was successively tendered and declined the positions of Secretary and Governor of Oregon territory.

In 1854 he was elected to the legislature but declined to take his seat.

In the same year he was a candidate and defeated for, the United States Senate.

In 1858 he was again a candidate, and again defeated for, the United States Senate.

And he was many times a candidate for Presidential Elector, the last time being in 1856, and was uniformly defeated: and was voted for by the Whig party for United States Senator two or three times when that party had about one-third of the votes needful to elect. This embraces his entire political career up to 1860. Is it not a cheerless and disconsolate retrospect?

On January 5th, 1859, the day of Douglas' last election to the U. S. Senate by the legislature -- I was alone with Mr. Lincoln from 2 o'clock P. Md. till bed-time -- and I feel authorized to say that no man in the state was so gloomy, dejected and dispirited, and no man so surely and heartily deemed his life to have been an abject and lamentable failure, as he then considered his to have been. I never saw any man so radically and thoroughly depressed, so completely steeped in the bitter waters of hopeless despair. The surroundings, even, were eloquent of flat, prosaic failure. I found him alone, and

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doing nothing but brooding over his griefs and discomfiture; he was in his office, and this office, I will venture to assert, was the dingiest and most untidy law-office in the United States, without exception. My feelings were in unison with his, and our conversation was as cheerless and lugubrious as the sombre surroundings.

Yet, in twenty-two months from that doleful day, this recipient of Fortune's frowns had sounded the highest note on the gamut of success; for 1,857,610 of the elite of the nation had elected him to be the ruler of forty millions of people.

I first saw this wonderful man on the third day of June, 1854, on the Danville and Urbana State road, in front of an obscure country tavern called "Bailey's," near the line between Vermilion and Champaign counties, Illinois.

Judge David Davis, Mr. Lincoln, Leonard Swett and David B. Campbell were together, returning home from the Danville Circuit Court. They were travelling in a two-seated open spring wagon, there being no railways in that region in those days; and an hour later, I saw the same distinguished party which contained a President and Emancipator of a whole race of men in embryo, a United States Senator, U. S. Supreme Court Judge and President of the Senate in embryo, the Attorney General of Illinois, and a candidate for Congress and for Governor in embryo, and who should by due right have been an U. S. Senator from Illinois for thirty years.

It is somewhat singular, that I recollect each one of the other three, specifically; but that, all that I recollect of Mr. Lincoln, is that he was there to make up the four individuals.

The "Nebraska" bill (so called) had become a law, only five days before -- and, as news was then transmitted, it is probable he had not then heard of its presidential approval; and that portion of this great man's life, which affords material for the biographer, historian, essayist or lecturer, had not yet been reached in the cycle of time: but it was just about to dawn upon the world.

For this grave political crime, if not indeed moral perfidy;

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Douglas was, even then, being indicted in the public press, and when he came to his constituency after the adjournment of Congress in the succeeding August; he was put on trial for his political life, which was all of life that had any charms for him.

He opened his defence at Chicago in the succeeding September, with indifferent success, and early in October, he came to the state fair at Springfield with the intent to cajole and captivate the rustic classes.

It is entirely safe to say, that the Democrats of Illinois were, almost to a man, inimical to this measure; and that, at first, they were paralyzed with astonishment, fear or indignation, but when action became necessary, some followed their audacious leader, blindly; others, fled from the field of political battle: while a few joined with the Whigs to rebuke and overthrow this political iconoclast; these new allies informally consulted together as to who could most successfully combat the fallacies which they well knew Douglas to be an adept in, and which they also knew he would employ, to preserve harmony and discipline in his own ranks, and to debauch public sentiment on the moral question at stake. All spontaneously agreed on Lincoln; bidding him, in the spirit of the commission to the Andalusian Knight, in the medieval time:

"Take thou the leading of the van;
And charge the Moors, amain;
There is not such a lance as thine,
In all the hosts of Spain."

They met first at Springfield and again at Peoria, and had an engagement at Lacon, but Douglas pretended to be ill, and urged Lincoln to not debate with him any more, by reason of his illness, to which the latter, in his goodness of heart, assented. This is the reason Lincoln gave me, although Herndon gives a different reason.

I next saw Lincoln on the twenty-fourth day of October, after the above incidents took place; when he came to Urbana, to attend the fall circuit court. I saw him as

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he drove into town behind his own horse, which was an indifferent, raw-boned specimen, in his own blacksmith-made buggy -- a most ordinary looking one. He was entirely alone; and might have passed for an ordinary farmer, so far as appearances were concerned.

There was less than fifty cases on the docket of this court of all kinds, and, in point of fact, there was but one jury trial; and Lincoln was not in that. I think all in the way of court business that Lincoln did, at that term, was to make a brief argument to the court, in a chancery case.

While court was in session Lincoln came straggling, carelessly in, his face divested of his usual melancholy garb, and apparently in an humor to take life easy and gaily for the present moment. I noticed his intellectual countenance, and especially his eyes, so clearly indicative of deep reflection, at the first glance. I mentally pronounced him to be a great man at once. I never saw any man who impressed me so highly, at first sight, as Abraham Lincoln.

Of course I had learned of his propensity for story-telling: and I was not, consequently, greatly astonished, after he had listened for a while to the extremely prosy business, which engaged the attention of the court, to have experimental knowledge of his ability in that line.

That same evening he made a political speech, on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and its restoration, and I thought then, and have often thought since, that it was the greatest speech I had ever, up that date, heard: and I have never heard any greater since, except from Lincoln.

It was so clear, systematic and simple that I was enabled to rehearse it in substance from memory a month later at Monticello.

I furnish a verbatim report of this speech. It is one of his best efforts.

I well recollect how kindly and cordially he aided and advised me about my business at court, it being my first appearance at the bar. I did not feel the slightest delicacy

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in approaching him for assistance: it seemed as if he wooed me to close intimacy and familiarity, at once; and this from no selfish motive at all -- nothing but pure disinterested philanthropy and goodness of heart toward a young lawyer just commencing his career.

He sat on the bench, for the judge, for awhile for that term; and my first motion in court was made before him. I remember with what benignity he acted in this time that tried the soul of a fledgling at the bar; but how little did either he or I think that the hand that entered my first court order would eventually sign the death warrant of American slavery.

Next day he made some arrangement about his horse and buggy, and took the train to fill an appointment somewhere up north-west.

I saw him start for the train: being obliged to ride over two miles in an old dilapidated omnibus; he was the sole occupant of the nondescript conveyance; he had somehow procured, and had in his hand a small french harp, which he was making most execrable music with. I rallied him on this, to which, stopping his concert, he replied, "This is my band: Douglas had a brass band with him in Peoria, but this will do me:" and he resumed his uncouth solo as the vehicle drove off: and the primitive strains, somewhat shaken up by the jolting conveyance, floated out upon the air till distance intervened.

He may be thus described: all descriptions are substantially the same. He was six feet and four inches in height, his legs and arms were disproportionately long, his feet and hands were abnormally large, he was awkward in his gait and actions. His skin was a dark, sallow color, his features were coarse: -- his expression kind and amiable: -- his eyes were indicative of deep reflection, and, in times of repose, of deep sorrow as well. His head was high, but not large: his forehead was broad at the base, but retreated, indicating marked perceptive qualities, but not great reflective ones:

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and in this phrenology is sadly at fault. He wore a hat measuring seven and one-eighth. His ears were large; his hair, coarse, black and bushy, which stood out all over his head, with no appearance of ever having been combed.

His mobile face ranged, in modes of expression, through a long gamut: it was rare that an artist could catch the expression, and Lincoln's face was of that kind that the expression was of greater consequence than the contour of the features.

When I first knew him his attire and physical habits were on a plane with those of an ordinary farmer: -- his hat was innocent of a nap: -- his boots had no acquaintance with blacking: -- his clothes had not been introduced to the whisk broom: -- his carpet-bag was well worn and dilapidated; -- his umbrella was substantial, but of a faded green, well worn, the knob gone, and the name "A. Lincoln" cut out of white muslin, and sewed in the inside: -- and for an outer garment a short circular blue cloak, which he got in Washington in 1849, and kept for ten years. He commenced to dress better in the spring of 1858, and when he was absent from home on political tours usually did so: after he became President he had a servant who kept him considerably "slicked up:" but he frequently had to reason Lincoln into fashionable attire, by telling him his appearance was "official."

He probably had as little taste about dress and attire as anybody that ever was born: he simply wore clothes because it was needful and customary: whether they fitted or looked well was entirely above, or beneath, his comprehension.

When he first ran for the legislature he presented this appearance: He wore a blue jeans coat, claw hammer style, short in both the sleeves, and in the tail: -- in fact, it was so short in the tail he could not sit on it: homespun linen trousers, a straw hat and "stogy" boots.

Of course this was putting the best foot forward, but ordinarily, in his youthful days, when not posing as a candidate, he was dressed thus:

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"He wore flax and tow-linen trousers -- about three inches too short: one suspender; no vest or waistcoat. He wore a calico warmus, such as he had in the Black Hawk war: coarse brogans, color of the native hide; blue yarn stockings and straw hat, minus a band and turned up behind."

Judge Matheny informs me that when Lincoln first ran for the legislature it was regarded as a joke; the boys wanted some fun: he was so uncouth and awkward, and so illy dressed, that his candidacy afforded a pleasant diversion for them, but it was not expected that it would go any further. It was found, however, during the canvass, that Lincoln knew what he was about and that he had running qualities: so Matheny told him he was sowing seeds of success: and that next year he would win. And he did. Governor Yates told me that the first time he saw Lincoln was at New Salem, where he was lying on a cellar door, in the shade, reading. There were many odd-looking specimens of humanity in that region in those days, but Lincoln exceeded all in grotesqueness, oddity and a queer style of dress: but his conversation showed excellent sense. They went to dinner at Lincoln's boarding place, which was a rough log house, with a puncheon floor and a clapboard roof: the dinner was bread and milk.

After the bill had passed for the removal of the capital to Springfield, a vigorous attempt was made to reconsider it: and a General Ewing, a man of ability, fine address and pride of character, led this attempt. Lincoln was selected by the Sangamon delegation to champion their side, which he did with spirit and force: and Ewing, in his reply, turning to the Sangamon delegation, thus spurned Lincoln: "Gentlemen, have you no other champion than this coarse and vulgar fellow to bring into the lists against me? Do you suppose I will condescend to break a lance with your low and obscure colleague?"

John W. Baddeley was a blunt Englishman who lived

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at Leroy in McLean County in an early day. He was entirely truthful, and with no disposition to exaggerate. He told me that a suit having been brought against him in the circuit court he employed John T. Stuart to defend it. When the time of court came, at which his case was to be tried, an ungainly, awkward specimen of humanity, clad in homespun, ill-fitting clothes; and with the appearance of a country rustic on his visit to the circus, sought him out eagerly, as he was putting up his team at the livery stable, and slyly and awkwardly handed him a note which read substantially as follows:

"Mr. Baddeley -- DEAR SIR -- I cannot possibly attend the McLean Court at this term, and I have sent my partner, Abraham Lincoln, who will hand you this, to attend to the ‘Fell’ suit: he will try it well: please restate your case, and bring your witnesses to him, and you can pay him the balance of my fee, &c. (Signed) JOHN T. STUART."

Baddeley, although living in the frontier, was a merchant, and still preserved much of the hauteur and aristocratic notions of an English gentleman. The courts were altogether too democratic for him, at their very best: his idea of a court of justice was a court with judges with wigs and gowns -- barristers ditto -- tipstaves, &c., and his disdain at beholding the uncouth bumpkin before him, posing as a barrister, and aspiring to officiate for him in the Aula Regis, was beyond all endurance: and he then and there, to the great edification of the stable boys, abused both Stuart and his astonished messenger without stint or limit: and then went to the hotel and employed McDougall, afterward U. S. Senator from California, to defend his case.

But Baddeley afterward became one of his staunch friends and admirers: he removed to Champaign and at each term of court we would all visit his house, where he would entertain us with a sumptuous dinner, in regular old English style, all cooked by himself. He and his son were among my best clients and best friends. John T. Stuart told me

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that he recollected the incident well, and that Lincoln told him all about it.

But although he could endure without resentment the vaporings of this irate suitor, it need not be supposed that he was a man to brook an unequivocal insult. Contrariwise, one of his marked characteristics was his undaunted courage: it was not of the rash, aggressive and ostentatious kind which so conspicuously marked Jackson, yet he was an utter stranger to fear.

When James Shields -- afterwards a Senator from three States, and a general in two wars -- demanded the author of a clever pasquinade written by the two ladies who after-ward severally became Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Trumbull; Lincoln promptly caused himself to be announced as the responsible party: and when a duel was forced on him to rehabilitate the injured honor of the gallant Shields, Lincoln unhesitatingly accepted: and carefully and methodically put himself in training: and wrote out the following "Instructions" for the guidance of his second, Dr. Merryman.

The preliminaries of the fight are to be:
1^st. Weapons: Cavalry broadswords of the largest size, precisely equal in all respects, and such as are now used by the Cavalry Company at Jacksonville.

2nd. Position: A plank, ten feet long, and from nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed on edge on the ground, as the line between us, which neither is to pass his foot over, upon forfeit of his life. Next, a line drawn on the ground, on either side of said plank, and parallel with it, each at the distance of the whole length of the sword and three feet additional from the plank: and the passing of his own such line by either party during the fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest.

3rd. Time: On Thursday evening, at five o'clock, if you can get it so: but in no case to be at a greater distance than Friday evening, at five o'clock.

4th. Place: Within three miles of Alton, on the opposite

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side of the river. The particular spot to be agreed upon by you.

Any preliminary details coming within the above rules you are at liberty to make at your discretion: but you are, in no case, to swerve from these rules, or to pass beyond their limits.

Apropos of this duel: I tried, on one or two occasions, to draw him out on it: but he always parried the subject, as if he was ashamed of it, but Linder, one of our contemporaries, was more fortunate: being with Lincoln at Danville court the latter picked up a lath and was going through the broadsword manual, when Linder asked why he chose broadswords in his proposed duel with Shields, to which Lincoln replied: "To tell you the truth, Linder, I didn't want to kill Shields, and felt sure I could disarm him, having had about a month to learn the broadsword exercise: and furthermore, I didn't want that damned fellow to kill me, which I rather think he would have done if we had selected pistols."

But he had very little courage to confront the fair sex: on the contrary, he was very shy, bashful and awkward in presence of ladies: unless, and sometimes even if, he knew them very well.

I recollect of his being invited to tea, at the same time my family was, at the home of Mr. Boyden, then Mayor of Urbana. He and I went together from court, which he was holding for Judge Davis; and he got along so-so while I was present: but in a few moments I was called to the outer gate to speak with a client: and upon my return, Lincoln appeared as demoralized and ill at ease as a bashful country boy. He would put his arms behind him, and bring them to the front again, as if trying to hide them, and he tried. apparently but in vain to get his long legs out of sight. And yet no one was present but Mrs. Boyden, and my wife and her mother.

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At another time, in 1858, when we were at Centralia, on the railway platform, waiting for a train, Victor B. Bell introduced a lady as one who was a great admirer of Henry Clay, and sought an introduction, because of his great advocacy of Mr. Clay in former years. Lincoln bowed as awkwardly and under as much embarrassment as could be imagined -- and then with extreme awkwardness put down his carpet bag, and shifting his umbrella to his other hand, and putting out his disengaged hand, said, "Howdo! Howdo! I don't know how to talk to ladies: Whitney can tell you that, etc."

At another time, he was expected to arrive at Monticello from Bement on the occasion of a mass meeting at the former place. A procession went out to meet him, and I, being also there, walked out to see the procession. When I reached Lincoln's carriage, in which he sat alone, uneasy and extremely embarrassed at the crowds which lined the way, and were staring at him; he exclaimed, forgetful of surroundings, "There's Whitney! Get right in here; driver, stop a minute," etc., and he seized me by the hand with both of his, and drew me into the vehicle, when he said heartily: "I'm mighty glad you are here; I hate to be stared at, all by myself; I've been a great man such a mighty little time that I'm not used to it yet," and he certainly appeared to feel greatly relieved, at my presence.

It may seem even more singular, but it is nevertheless true, that he generally felt somewhat embarrassed and abashed at confronting an audience to make a political speech. As late certainly as 1856, we were going together to a church at Champaign, one evening, where he was to make a political speech, when he said, "I do wish it was through." "Why so?" I inquired. He replied: "When I have to speak, I always feel nervous till I get well into it." I expressed surprise, to which he said, "That's so; I hide it as well as I can, but it's just as I tell you."

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"This long, bony, sad man floated down the Sangamon River in a frail canoe in the spring of 1831.

"Like a piece of driftwood, he lodged at last, without a history, strange, penniless and alone. In sight of the capitol of Illinois, in the fatigue of daily toil, he struggled for the necessaries of life. Thirty years later, this same unique and peculiar man left the Sangamon River, backed by friends, by power, by the patriotic prayers of millions of people, to be the ruler of the greatest Nation in the world," and four years thereafter, on the banks of the same river, he was borne to his grave,

"Hallowed by tears, the purest ever shed;
A Nation's sobs and tears, his funeral hymn --
A Nation's heart, his mausoleum grand;
A Nation's gratitude, his deathless fame.
A Nation saved, his labors' vast reward."

By what magic spell was this, the greatest moral transformation in all profane history, wrought?

What Genius sought out this "roving child of the forest," -- this obscure flatboatman, -- and placed him on the lonely heights of immortal Fame?

Why was this best of men made the chief propitiation for our national sins?

Was his progress causative or fortuitous; was it logical or supernatural; was the Unseen Power, or he himself, the architect of his fortune?

What moral can be deduced from his melancholy life and untimely death?

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Chapter III. Life on the Eighth Circuit.

Court Week on the Eighth Circuit

Life on the circuit was a gay one. It was rich with incidents * * * Lincoln loved it.
-- Herndon.

The history of the life of Abraham Lincoln should be analyzed and separated, for the purposes of consideration, into five several epochs, as follows, viz.:
First -- That portion which commences with his birth, on February 12, 1809.

Second -- That part which began about April 1st, 1830, when he stood in front of the court house, in Decatur, Illinois, by the side of four yoke of gaunt oxen, and a rude wagon, in which was contained all the property that Lincoln and his father owned, in the world.

Third -- That portion which commenced about March 15, 1837, when he rode from New Salem to Springfield on a borrowed horse, and having as his sole property in the universe a pair of old saddle-bags, containing two or three law books and a few pieces of nondescript clothing, and with about seven dollars in his pocket; and being kindly offered the use of one-half of a bed, in a room over Speed's store, put his few goods there, and coming down, said, "Well, I'm moved."

Fourth -- That portion commencing on May 29, 1854, when he was trying an inconsequential replevin suit in Danville, and President Pierce signed and made a law of the Kansas-Nebraska bill.

Fifth -- Finally, that portion which commenced with taking the Inauguration Oath, and ended with his life.

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As I have before stated, I first saw Lincoln at "Bailey's" tavern, on the road from Danville to Urbana, in Illinois, on June 3d, 1854, or five days after the commencement of the fourth era, and my actual acquaintance with him commenced on October 24th, 1854, and lasted until October 10th, 1861, or seven years.

During this fourth era of his life, he was undergoing training for the grandest mission ever entrusted by Providence to a single man, and it must of necessity be prolific of interest, generally to any scholar or patriot, and specifically to the student of American history.

The living witnesses of that eventful period of his life are fast disappearing, and will, soon, all be gone; and no one who ever traveled on the circuit with him during that time has ever given any narrative of it, except Leonard Swett in a lecture, and Lamon in a few brief sentences in his biography.

The judicial circuit, in which Lincoln lived, had, anterior to 1853, consisted of fourteen counties, but in that year had been reduced to eight, viz.: Sangamon, Logan, Tazewell, Woodford, McLean, DeWitt, Champaign and Vermilion.

Lincoln was the only lawyer who traveled over the entire circuit; he, however, made it a practice to attend every court, and to remain till the end. This lasted till 1858, when the circuit was radically changed, and Lincoln's attention became much engrossed with politics, which weaned him from a close application to law.

It is to me an interesting reflection, that probably one-half of my readers are not of sufficient age to recollect the time when Mr. Lincoln lived or died.

It also seems interesting to me, now, to reflect that before he was known to fame, I used to traverse, periodically, the wild Illinois prairies with this greatest of men, -- these prairies now teeming with a dense and busy life, then quite as desolate and almost as solitary as at Creation's dawn, -- that our means of travel were limited to home-made vehicles, that we were accustomed to put up at homely farm-houses and village

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inns; and sleep two in a bed, and eight in a room; that our business was transacted, and our daily bread earned, in unkempt court-rooms, where, ten months in the year, the town boys played at marbles or rudimentary circus; that our offices were ambulatory, being located now on the sunny side of a court house, then under the shade of a friendly tree, and, anon, on the edge of a sidewalk.

It is strange to contemplate that in these comparatively recent, but primitive days, Mr. Lincoln's whole attention should have been engrossed in petty controversies or acrimonious disputes between neighbors about trifles; that he should have puzzled his great mind in attempting to decipher who was the owner of a litter of pigs, or which party was to blame for the loss of a flock of sheep, by foot rot; or whether some irascible spirit was justified in avowing that his enemy had committed perjury; yet I have known him to give as earnest attention to such matters, as, later, he gave to affairs of state.

Railways had just made their advent when I first settled in that circuit, and five out of eight county seats were reached by modes other than the rail: -- chiefly by private conveyance. Settlements were mainly restricted to the watercourses and timber groves, and the broad prairies were in the same condition of virginity and desolation that they had been since Columbus saw the welcome light at San Salvador.

The county seats were located at small and primitive villages, and the business of the court was meagre and uninteresting. The only law library in the circuit, beyond a few small collections of law-books, was at Springfield, and we depended mainly for our references on the old Statutes of 1845, and on the ten volumes of Illinois reports, which, at that time, embraced all of our adjudged and settled law.

If the business on our circuit was meagre, the good cheer and conviviality were exuberant: and if we did not make much money, our wants "were few and our pleasures simple," and our life on the circuit was like a holiday.

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The semi-annual shopping of the country districts was transacted during court week: the wits and county statesmen contributed their stock of pleasantry and philosophy: the local belles came in to see and be seen: and the court house, from "early morn till dewy eve," and the tavern from dewy eve to early morn, were replete with bustle, business, energy, hilarity, novelty, irony, sarcasm, excitement and eloquence. At the tavern the lawyers slept two in a bed and three or four beds were located in one room: at meals, the Judge, lawyers, suitors, jurors, witnesses, court officers, and prisoners out on bail, all ate together and carried on a running conversation all along the line of a long dining-room.

When one court was through, the Judge and lawyers would tumble into a farmer's wagon, or a carryall, or a succession of buggies, and trundle off across the prairie, to another court; stopping by the way at a farm-house for a chance dinner.

In this kind of unsteady, nomadic life, Lincoln passed about four months in each year; he had no clerk, no stenographer, no library, no method or system of business, but carried his papers in his hat or coat pocket. The consideration and trial of each case began and ended with itself; he was continually roused to devise a new policy -- new tactics -- fresh expedients, with each new retainer.

Each county, of course, had a somewhat different population, and a somewhat different class of business; each recurring week brought with it a new and different class of clients to treat with -- new and diverse juries to entertain, cajole or convince; new and distinct conditions of chaos, to evoke order from.

This life on the circuit was in the nature of a "school of events" to him, and taught him to deal, off-hand, and on the spur of the moment, with emergencies.

The counties of Champaign and Vermilion were closely identified and bound together; and, socially, segregated from the rest; while the business in those counties seemed to produce

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less strain on the bench and bar than in the rest of the circuit. Certain it is, that the social circle which revolved around the Judge was larger and more active there than elsewhere.

If less attention was demanded by the business at the court house -- our surplus energies found free vent in the Judge's room, in the evening. Moreover, for some reason, matters went "free-and-easy" in court; it appearing -- as it were -- that the substantial business repast had engaged the court's attention in the other six counties; and now, that the end of the circuit was reached, it was prepared, and the time had come, to trifle with the dessert.

It need not, however, be supposed, that Judge Davis lacked dignity: for, contrariwise, he was highly dignified when needful: but was equally astute in his judgment, as to when laissez faire was quite as, if not indeed, more, appropriate to the occasion, in hand.

For better results all around, are obtained when men in stress of circumstances are permitted as far as practicable to be unhampered with rules and restrictions. All parties in a court room, are apt to labor, more or less, in the collision of adverse interests and feeling, under visible or latent excitements: and the less harsh, tyrannical and -- dignified (if you please): and the more paternal and patronizing, the Judge is: -- the more the probability of securing the best and most accurate results in court. Judge Davis was a model in the way of putting lawyers whom he did not dislike, at their ease: although, it must also be narrated, that, when he got angry, as he sometimes did, the whole moral atmosphere was surcharged with sulphur and lurid sparks: making it uncomfortable for the members of the bar:

"Full well the busy whisper circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned."

The Judge was as ponderous in his excellent judgment and common-sense, as in his physique: (300 x): and he endeavored to rid cases of their technicalities, and to get down

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to the actual merits, as expeditiously as possible. He was full of vim and energy on the bench, when there was a necessity for it: but when the evening was come, he would gather his courtiers about him, and make a night of it, similar to the knights of the Round Table, or the Pickwick Club.

As for Lincoln, he had three different moods, if I may so express myself: first, a business mood, when he gave strict and close attention to business, and banished all idea of hilarity, I. e., in counselling or in trying cases, there was no trace of the joker; second, his melancholy moods, when his whole nature was immersed in Cimmerian darkness; third, his don't-care-whether-school-keeps-or-not mood; when no irresponsible "small boy" could be so apparently careless, or reckless of consequences.

To illustrate the "style" of business in court by something very common: the first term of Davis' court I attended, the Judge was calling through the docket for the first time, in order to dispose of such cases as could be done summarily, and likewise to sort the chaff from the wheat, when he came across a long bill in chancery, drawn by an excellent, but somewhat indolent lawyer, on glancing at which, he exclaimed, "Why, brother Snap, how did you rake up energy enough to get up such a long bill?" "Dunno, Jedge," replied the party addressed, squirming in his seat and uneasily scratching his head. The Judge unfolded and held up the bill: "Astonishing, ain't it? Brother Snap did it. Wonderful, eh! Lincoln?" This amounted to an order on Lincoln to heave a joke in at this point, and he was ready of course; he had to be, he never failed. "It's like the lazy Preacher," drawled he, "that used to write long sermons, and the explanation was, he got to writin', and was too lazy to stop." This was doubtless improvised and forgotten at once, as I never heard of his repeating it. It was rather feeble, but it was better than the stock word "Humph!" so often printed as a reply, but never really uttered, and it is literally true that

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* * * "he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope." He always had a reply, and it was always pertinent, and frequently irresistibly funny, but the pity is that his funniest stories don't circulate in polite society or get embalmed in type.

In the evening, all assembled in the Judge's room, where the blazing faggots were piled high, and the yule log was in place, and there were no estrays there, although the door was not locked. Davis' methods were known, and his companions well denned, and, if a novice came, he soon found out both. For instance, an unsophisticated person might be attracted to the Judge's room by our noise, supposing it to be "free for all." If Davis wanted him, he was warmly welcomed, the fatted calf was killed, and the ring put on his finger; but if he really was not desired, he was frozen out by the Judge thus: "Ah! Stop a minute, Lincoln! Have you some business, Mr. Dusenberry?" If Dusenberry should venture: "Well, no! I came designin' ---- " Davis would interrupt him, "Swett, take Mr. Dusenberry out into the hall, and see what he wants, and come right back yourself, Swett. Shut the door. Now, go ahead, Lincoln! You got as far as ---- Ha! Ha!! Ha!!! ‘She slid down the hill, and -- ,’ but wait for Swett. Swett!! Swett!!!" called he. "Hill," (to Lamon) "call Swett in. Now, Lincoln, go ahead," etc. "She slid down the hill, you know. Ho! Ho! Ho!!!" Any one who knew Davis would recognize this.

"Would we do nothing but listen to Lincoln's stories?" Oh! yes, we frequently talked philosophy, politics, political economy, metaphysics and men; in short, our subjects of conversation ranged through the universe of thought and experience.

One night, we discussed Washington at length, and some speculation was ventured as to whether he was perfect, whether he, too, was not fallible, being human, but Lincoln protested, -- "Let us believe, as in the days of our youth,

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that Washington was spotless; it makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect: that human perfection is possible."

The Judge had an orgmathorial court (as he called it) to try us for any breach of decorum. I wish I could properly narrate some of the proceedings of these courts, some of Swett's speeches, and Lincoln's interjections; they were better than the sketches of the Pickwick Club. Of course, all this was desultory and evanescent, and so designed by the actors; the seal of secrecy was necessarily implied. While, of course, nothing wrong was said or done, yet it would have been atrocious to disclose the secrets of the Judge's coterie in their entertainments, nor do I recollect of ever having heard anything we discussed there mentioned, or alluded to, outside. The Judge did not hesitate to advert to court matters in his hands for action, thus: Some section hands on the Illinois Central R. R. had caught a setter on the prairie, and tied it to a stake, and set fire to the dry grass around it, so that the dog burned to death. As I was attorney for the railway, the rascals, when the case got into court, looked to me for counsel, and I advised them to plead guilty, leaving it for the court to act. This matter coming up in the room, the Judge remarked drily: "This court considers the wanton burning of a bird-dog as a very serious matter," and I knew by that, that my men would catch it good, unless I could, in some way, hedge against it, which I did next day. At another time, the doctrine of metempsychosis was discussed by the whole crowd, i. e., the doctrine that when one man dies, a child is born which inherits the vital principle -- the soul -- of the departing one, when suddenly, the conversation was diverted to the character of a mean lawyer on our circuit whom I will call Quirk, but not of our coterie, and after we had picked his character to pieces, so that there was nothing left of it, we resumed on metempsychosis, and as we had about exhausted our ideas about it, it was noticed that Lincoln had ventured nothing on the subject, either of metempsychosis

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or Quirk, and so (of course, that wouldn't do) Davis gave Lincoln his usual nudge: "Queer doctrine! Queer doctrine!! Eh! Lincoln?" The latter had been rather reticent and abstracted through the evening, but we knew he didn't like Quirk better than the rest of us did, but he was ready as usual; as I have said, he never let Davis' check on his resources go to protest: "I rayther reckon, that's good doctrine, and it's nothin' agin' it, that when Quirk was born, no one died." These things are not in Lincoln's best vein -- in fact, are not worth considering, except as showing traits of character, and here, Lincoln showed the utility of his nimble wit, in "killing two birds with one stone," as it were, for his reply disposed of metempsychosis and Quirk at once, commending the doctrine, and killing off Quirk by an innuendo.

"But past is all his fame [as a court jester]; the very spot,
Where once he triumphed, is forgot."

In point of fact, the country hotels, wherein were the scenes of our revelries, are all demolished, and ugly brick blocks are substituted in their places, and Samuel of Posen spreads his wares and net for country merchants, where Lincoln, and Davis, and Swett, and Lamon, and the rest were wont to congregate. At Danville, the county seat of Vermilion County, the Judge, and Lincoln, and I used to occupy the ladies' parlor of the old McCormick House, changed to a bed-room during court, the former occupying a three-quarter bed, and Lincoln and I occupying the other one, jointly. This parlor was an "annex" to the main building, and one door opened out directly on the sidewalk, and as the fall term was held in cold weather, we had a hearth wood fire to heat our room. One morning, I was awakened early -- before daylight -- by my companion sitting up in bed, his figure dimly visible by the ghostly firelight, and talking the wildest and most incoherent nonsense all to himself. A stranger to Lincoln would have supposed he had suddenly gone insane. Of course I knew Lincoln and his idiosyncracies, and felt no alarm, so I listened and laughed. After he had gone on in

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this way for, say, five minutes, while I was awake, and I know not how long before I was awake, he sprang out of bed, hurriedly washed, and jumped into his clothes, put some wood on the fire, and then sat in front of it, moodily, dejectedly, in a most sombre and gloomy spell, till the breakfast bell rang, when he started, as if from sleep, and went with us to breakfast. Neither Davis nor I spoke to him; we knew this trait; it was not remarkable for Lincoln, although this time to which I refer was a radical manifestation of it, a proof that "True wit to madness, sure, is oft allied."

Court House at Clinton

At another time, in this same place: one evening, Lincoln was missing immediately after supper: he had no place to go, that we could think of -- no friend to visit -- no business to do -- no client to attend to: and certainly no entertainment to go to: hence "Where is Lincoln?" was the question. I visited all the law offices and stores, but got no trace whatever: and at nine o'clock -- an early hour for us -- Davis and I went, grumblingly and hungry for mental food, to bed, leaving the problem unsolved. Now, Lincoln had a furtive way of stealing in on one, unheard, unperceived and unawares: and on this occasion, after we had lain for a short time; our door latch was noiselessly raised -- the door opened, and the tall form of Abraham Lincoln glided in noiselessly. "Why Lincoln, where have you been?" exclaimed the Judge. "I was in hopes you fellers would be asleep," replied he: "Well, I have been to a little show up at the Academy:" and he sat before the fire, and narrated all the sights of that most primitive of country shows, given chiefly to school children. Next night, he was missing again; the show was still in town, and he stole in as before, and entertained us with a description of new sights -- a magic lantern, electrical machine, etc. I told him I had seen all these sights at school. "Yes," said he, sadly, "I now have an advantage over you in, for the first time in my life, seeing these things which are of course common

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to those, who had, what I did not, a chance at an education, when they were young."

Our methods of travel were also primitive; going in vehicles over dirt roads, sometimes good -- sometimes dusty, and not unfrequently, quite muddy: sometimes six or eight of us would go in one vehicle, and enliven the journey with negro melodies, led by "Hill" Lamon, an adept in that line.

Occasionally the accomplished wife of Leonard Swett would accompany him on the circuit: and in such case: those two, Lincoln and myself, would go together in a two-seated vehicle: and we would have to talk sense on such a trip.

Lincoln had a great fondness for geometry, a science he adopted himself: and he used to carry a small volume around sometimes in his coat pocket. While he dressed rudely, yet he was scrupulously clean and close shaven: he wore no whiskers till after he was elected President: and he never let his beard get the start of him.

There was nothing unpleasant physically or morally, or worthy of adverse comment in personal intercourse with Abraham Lincoln. Astute observers are aware that there are persons to be met with who may be termed, "mechanical" gentlemen: their genuflections, "small talk" and petty compliments are complete, but there is no warmth, enthusiasm, heartiness or sympathy in them: they have the cold gleam of a sun-struck iceberg. Mr. Carker and Mr. Tulkinghorn are in point, likewise George the Fourth and his friend Beau Brummel -- veneered or "mechanical" gentlemen.

Then there is a kind I may term an essential gentleman: one who is animated by substantial human sympathy -- who has

* * "A heart to pity
"And a hand open as day, for melting charity."

The latter may not be graceful -- may not have taken lessons in deportment -- may utterly fail in "small talk:" but

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his smile has sunshine and warmth; and not the moonbeam's cold gleam: his conversation is homely but sincere: his word is reliable: he gives no "word of promise to the ear but broken to the hope:" you feel in his presence that here is a Man. Such was Abraham Lincoln -- every inch a gentleman -- not in form, but in substance.

In the fall of 1857, he attended at the photograph gallery of Sam. Alschuler in Urbana, to have his picture taken: he was attired in a linen coat: doubtless the same one which he wore to Cincinnati just before, and which Stanton so rudely lampooned. The artist suggested that he should wear his black coat. Lincoln replied that he had left it home, and had none other there.

"Try my coat," said the accommodating artist: and the future emancipator was taken in a borrowed coat, with a velvet collar on, which shows plainly: -- the picture being still in existence. On another occasion, earlier, a very poor artist induced him to sit and took a daguerreotype which resembled (not Lincoln but -- say) the Wandering Jew: and exposed it in his outer show-case. Afterward, some of us were passing there, and the artist induced the Judge to sit, and when the Judge (who was quite vain) would get posed in a striking attitude, Alex. Harrison -- a waggish Danville editor -- would thrust out in his view this picture of Lincoln, and it was so comical that the portion of Davis lying below the belt would heave like a choppy sea: and we kept it up in spite of the Judge's remonstrances, and prevented his getting a picture. That made a case for the orgmathorial court and Alex. was tried and convicted that very night.

Photo of Lincoln

The most ridiculous case, our orgmathorial court had to try was a lot of us, who went to Georgetown, in Vermilion County, one Saturday night on a political expedition: and chartered the second story of the hotel: then got a wash-pitcher full of bad whisky, and made a night of it. Next, (Sunday) morning we returned to Danville, and reaching a substantial farm house and finding the women folks at

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church, were invited by the man, whom some of us knew, to inspect his house, and ate up half a dozen (being all there were) nice pies. I may add that Lincoln never had anything to do with such a scrape as that. We never would have dreamed of his being involved in any such: in fact in our orgmathorial courts, he was simply a spectator.

Occasionally on the circuit, we would be invited out to spend the evening, and of this sort of thing, the Judge was very fond. He was very much at home in company, and had an excellent fund of "small talk," but Lincoln shirked all such invitations, all he could, and I have known of his sitting in the room all alone of an evening while the rest of us were at a ball or a party, and when we got back, our friend would be rolled up, fast asleep, in bed.

He would attend all entertainments, but really preferred going alone, and ensconcing himself in some nook or corner where he could see without being, himself, seen.

In the spring of 1855, John T. Stuart, who was his first law partner, his wife's cousin, and his neighbor, and Lincoln and myself were attending court at Bloomington, and all three staying at the Pike House, where we ate at the same table and went to court together, and, also, spent our leisure time together. One evening, a concert troupe was there, and when time came to attend, I went, and found Lincoln already there in one place and Stuart in another, and that was essentially Lincoln's style of doing such things.

This was the "Newhall" family of singers, of Jacksonville, one of whom was a Mrs. Hillis, a beautiful singer, and of her he said, "She is the only woman that ever appreciated me enough to pay me a compliment." "I thought," said Davis, "that you was an universal favorite with the fair sex."

The "taverns" were ordinary, indeed, and frequently the court and bar were forced to spend the night at a farmhouse on the road. This was notably the case between Urbana and Danville, and between Charleston and Paris.

One night, when Judge Treat and four lawyers, including

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Lincoln, were staying at a farmhouse east of Charleston, they were all put in two connecting rooms to sleep, in one of which was a fire, whose smoldering embers cast fitful flashes of light in the opaqueness of the two chambers. Judge Treat slept in the room with no fire, and getting up in his long nightgown in the night to visit the fireplace for something, awoke Gen. Linder, who slept in the room having the fire. The latter, being superstitious, thought a veritable ghost had entered the room, and he set up a series of shrieks, which Lincoln afterward avowed, chilled his blood to the extreme capillaries. Lincoln said, in describing the scene, that no one who had never heard such exclamations, could imagine the awful terror which the human voice could convey.

Arrived in town, the best room in the hotel was reserved for the judge and such lawyers as he would indicate, for single rooms were unknown on this circuit in Lincoln's day. At Danville, the ladies' parlor of the hotel was fitted up with a three-quarter bed for the Judge, and a double bed for Lincoln and myself. Artificial heat came from a wood fire on the hearth. There was a long dining-table, graced at the head by the Judge, who was flanked by the lawyers on each side. Then came jurymen, witnesses, prisoners out on bail, and the general public.

I well recollect a term of court at Urbana, where a prisoner, who was on trial for perjury, used to spend the evenings with us in the Judge's room; and of a term of court at Danville, where the prisoner, on trial for larceny, not only spent his evenings in our room, but took walks with us and ate in our immediate company.

Of dress, food, and the ordinary comforts and luxuries of this life, he was an incompetent judge. He could not discern between well and ill-cooked and served food. He did not know whether or not clothes fitted. He did not know when music was artistic or in bad taste. He did know, however, if it suited him, and he had a certain taste in that

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direction, but it was not for anything classical, but something of a style to please the rustic ear.

During the long trial of the "sand bar" case, in Chicago, in March, 1860, I spent nearly every evening with him. It is singular that he was not obtruded upon by politicians or newspaper men, but he was not. One night he dined out, one night he went to Waukegan and made a speech, and one night he accompanied me and James W. Somers (still alive) to hear Rumsey and Newcomb's minstrels, at the Metropolitan Hall. One night, John Wentworth called, and another night, "Bob" Blackwell called, and that was all.

The chief Republican newspaper was the "Press and Tribune." It contained articles every day advocating the nomination of Lincoln, and copying from other papers which advocated the same.

He and I called on Gen. Schenck, with whom he had served in Congress, at the Richmond House. I recollect that Lincoln called him "Bob," and it seemed right.

But although I have heard of cheap fellows, professing that they were wont to address him as "Abe," I never knew of any one who ever did it in my presence. Lincoln disdained ceremony, but he gave no license for being called "Abe." His preference was being called "Lincoln" with no handle at all. I don't recollect of his applying the prefix "Mr." to any one. When he spoke to Davis, he called him "Judge," but he called us all on the circuit by our family names merely, except Lamon, whom every one called "Hill." We spoke of him as "Uncle Abe," but to his face we called him "Lincoln." This suited him; he very much disliked to be called "Mr. President." This I knew, and I never called him so once. He didn't even like to be called "Mr." He preferred plain "Lincoln."

Altho', as a rule, our court business was tame and uninteresting, yet occasionally we had a case to attract general attention, among which may be mentioned the noted slander

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case of "Spink vs. Chiniquy;" which came to the Champaign court by change of venue from Kankakee County.

Father Chiniquy, who has since achieved an international fame, was the proprietor of a village called St. Anne's, in Kankakee County; and Peter Spink -- a French gentleman of high honor and chivalric disposition, was proprietor of a town in the same county known as L'Erable. All were French Catholics, and Father Chiniquy ministered to both parishes, the services being conducted in the French language. In a sermon at L'Erable, Father Chiniquy made this bold statement: "One among you has committed perjury; he went to Squire Smith's, and in a trial perjured himself." Mr. Spink was not present, but was not long in being advised of it and he hastened to the shire town; and the next day, the Sheriff visited St. Anne's and cited the shepherd of the flock, to appear and make good his charge. Father Chiniquy was plucky, and plead justification; and preparations were made for a "fight to the finish," by, not only the two principals, but the two respective neighborhoods, as well: for all became involved as principals or partisans. And, not only so, but inasmuch as L'Erable was near the line of Iroquois County, the quarrel extended, also, into that county. A change of venue brought the case to Champaign County and when the term came on, the principals, their lawyers and witnesses, and an immense retinue of followers, came to Urbana. The hotels were monopolized, and a large number camped out. Mr. Spink had the following counsel, viz.: Hon. Charles R. Starr: Hon. Jesse O. Norton and Hon. Oliver L. Davis: all of whom have subsequently been circuit judges: and Norton was then the Congressman: and Chiniquy had the following lawyers: Jno. W. Paddock; Uri Osgood: Abraham Lincoln and Leonard Swett. The trial was entered upon, and the evidence was arrayed chiefly in French: and Mr. Brosseau, then a young lawyer, and now a distinguished member of the Los Angeles bar, was the interpreter. The entire Iroquois bar was there, chiefly as spectators, among whom I may mention

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Spotswood Augustine Washington, a son of George Washington's brother, and the heir apparent to the sovereignty, had Washington been king. When the tedious trial was nearly through, a juryman was detected crying: the court noticed it, and said promptly, "What is that juror crying about?" "My child is dying," sobbed he. In point of fact, a neighbor had come into court and, unperceived by any one, whispered this information. The Judge called up the neighbor, and satisfied himself of the fact, and at once said to the juryman: "You're discharged -- go at once." "Now," said the Judge, "Gentlemen, will you proceed with the eleven jurymen?" Both sides consulted and Lincoln said "We will," but Norton said, "We decline." In point of fact they thought they could make their case better, somehow, by another trial. The jury was therefore discharged -- a new jury ordered, the tedious trial all gone over again; and the jury disagreed.

Photograph of David Davis, and Autograph

Next term, the crowd in no wise diminished, all came to our county, camp-outfits, musicians, parrots, pet dogs and all, and the outlook was, that all their scandal would have to be aired over again, but Lincoln abhorred that class of litigation, in which was no utility, and he used his utmost influence with all parties, and finally effected a compromise, after a jury had been chosen: and the case was therefore dismissed.

Judge Davis, of our circuit, was, on first acquaintance, one of the most genial and companionable men I ever knew. He had a large and active brain, and an immense fund of hard, practical common-sense. He was, before he came to the bench, an excellent office and business lawyer -- his forte lay in collecting claims and adjusting difficulties; also in probate and tax-title matters, and in general out-of-door law business. He had not great erudition, and no brilliancy; he did not know, or care for, the philosophy of the law, but he was the incarnation of common-sense and sterling judgment; he could not make a speech, and never did so; on one or two occasions he wrote out and read a political essay, but he was

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an interesting conversationalist, and had a cacoethes loquendi of mammoth range and volume.

He was an excellent host and entertainer, and was sedulous to aid in all ways (that involved no pecuniary outlay) young men of parts who came fresh to our bar, and strangers who happened to strike his fancy. He was an efficient and willing mediator in all petty difficulties which arose within the charmed circle of his friends, and his word was social law with all of us.

He understood the laws of good breeding and the canons of true politeness as thoroughly as Count d'Orsay, and his sense of propriety was absolute and inflexibly correct. He was an ornament to society, and although his self-appreciation was great, it was no more so than his merits and worth authorized.

When he commenced the world: he was shy, modest and diffident: -- necessity and ambition forced him to take a bolder stand than his native disposition prompted: his aggressiveness was grafted on his nature by culture, experience and determination.

He was earnest and solicitous to promote the welfare of his friends: -- but he was a good hater: and more than willing to let the object know and understand it.

In pecuniary matters, he was a man of conflicting notions and desires: -- he would have been very fond of ostensible generosity -- but he was excessively penurious: and thoroughly practical and business-like in small, as well as great, matters.

While he was a member of the Supreme Court and of the Senate, his correct idea, as a business man, was that as he paid a high price for his board: it was a woeful waste and practically wrong to also pay out money for lunches at the capitol: hence he watched that outlay with a jealous eye, and circumscribed it within the narrowest limits.

Court House at Paris, Illinois

In short, he viewed that matter, as he would any business affair: and not only did not relish the paying out of

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money twice for his provender; but likewise did not relish paying 1,000 per cent profit even on a few apples or a glass of milk, which constituted his repast at noon-tide. He was a strict business man in this, as in all else; and he did right in resisting the small pilferings incident to life in Washington. He lent fifty dollars to an impecunious lawyer of Urbana, who soon thereafter died; leaving the debt unpaid: and his family in abject poverty. It was not in accordance with the Judge's system and business-like habits to let it stand in that way: -- so he informed me that he intended to prove up the debt against the estate and might probably present it to the widow.

Although a great speculator, yet he was a thoroughly honest man, as he understood and realized that term: he would enter ten thousand acres of land in Illinois or Iowa with land-warrants; and hold on to it, till he realized ten dollars an acre: and he would acquire farms by foreclosure at much less than their value, and this was, to him, strictly legitimate: but he abhorred anything which was universally conceded to be dishonest or mean.

This principle entered into, and animated his judicial duties: he disdained all fraud and sharp practice, on the part of the bar, and would not countenance it unless it was venial, and the practitioner was well compensated for it.

In some respects, he had great will power, of which he was very proud: but in other respects, his will power was feeble. At Paris, a murderer was convicted by the jury and a sentence of death ordered: but the Judge had not the courage to pronounce sentence; and he admitted it; and his condition was pitiful as the term wore on, leaving the murderer unsentenced. So Charlie Constable came to his rescue; and in a bold, plain, hand wrote out a form of sentence and nerved the Judge up to the performance of reading it to the victim; which he did in a shaky voice.

After Lincoln was elected, and trouble was brewing down in Dixie, the Judge was exceedingly alarmed, and extremely

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anxious that a compromise should be effected. He talked about it to every one who would listen to him, and wrote many letters on the subject: he had no plan or policy to suggest: but, agitated by fear, was in favor of anything that would placate and turn away the wrath of the South.

I frequently thought what a "mess" we should have had, if he had been the President, instead of Lincoln: it would have been Buchanan, over again.

From an ardent desire to execute even and exact justice; he shunned and abhorred all technicalities: and got right down to the essential merits of any law-suit or proposition. "It appears to me" -- Swett once commenced, in an argument, on a demurrer. "I don't care how it appears to you," broke in the Judge; "hand up your authorities, if you have any." The imperturbable Swett, nothing daunted, commenced again: "As I was saying" The Judge interfered again: "I don't care if you was, if you have any authorities in point, let's have them, without so much talk." That was Davis' style: any one who knew him, will recognize it.

Flattery and cajolery went further, and was more effective with him (if it was applied with a dainty brush and deftly done) than any other great man I ever knew: but if awkwardly put, or laid on thick, he would resent it, in unequivocal terms.

From young men he took an interest in, he expected and exacted unremitting and persistent adulation and servitude: one might be a servitor for nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days, but if he failed on the last day of the last year, all his previous efforts were in vain. It was debasing to be a henchman for the Judge: but also profitable if it was persisted in long enough: for the Judge used his political influence for all it was worth for his friends.

Leonard Swett was his great favorite when I first knew them both; but he was of too sturdy a manhood to long remain in an attitude of servility to any one. Among other pastimes indulged in by the Judge in 1856 was deriding and

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abusing Lovejoy, the abolitionist, then just elected to Congress for the first time: and all members of his coterie would echo his denunciations: -- they had to.

"I don't see the sense of this persistent abuse of Lovejoy," said Swett, in his manly way; "if he errs at all, it is on the right side." A blank silence fell on the crowd. The Judge was mad, and every one knew it: and after Swett went out, he abused him for half an hour. And for such and similar reasons, Swett could not long remain in leading strings to Davis.

He had a prodigious ambition and an earnest desire for wealth and position. In consequence, he kept a close eye on every public man in Illinois who had started the race of life with, and had distanced him, either in the amassing of wealth, or of honors. His bete noir in McLean County was Gridley: Oh! my: but he did hate him. Gridley had got rich -- probably richer than Davis: and he would not pay needed deference to him.

"You don't call that law, you are talking to the jury, do you?" said the Judge. "My clients hired me to try this case, and if we need your help, we will call on you," retorted Gridley. "All right: I'll instruct the jury directly; and then we'll see who rules this court," rejoined the Judge. He used to wonder how Gridley and Matteson (the Governor) could get so rich; and over again and again, he declared it could not have been honestly done; although, at the same time, he was worth a million; and all honestly obtained, at that.

The Judge was born in Cecil County, Maryland, on March 9th, 1815. His people were rigid Episcopalians: and he received his academical education at the Episcopal College at Gambier, Ohio: then in charge of the celebrated Bishop Chase, graduating at the early age of seventeen and a half years. He thence commenced the study of law at Lenox, Massachusetts, and afterward attended the law school at New Haven, Connecticut, where he graduated in the fall of 1835.

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He was tall, slim and very shy and bashful: while at Lenox, he had become engaged to a Miss Sarah Walker, daughter of the circuit judge of that circuit: and their wedding was to take place as soon as, and whenever, the Judge could get established as a lawyer, with the ability to maintain a wife: and so he betook himself to what was then, the wild western frontier, charged with the duty of founding a home for himself and his affianced.

He first settled at Tremont, then the county seat of Tazewell County. This village, now so insignificant, was then a place of much consequence; and many leading men resided there at that time, among whom may be mentioned, Ira T. Munn and T. J. S. Flint, afterward leading warehousemen of Chicago: Dr. C. H. Ray, the most brilliant editor that Chicago ever had: Col. Josiah L. James and his son Benjamin, father of the actor: also Senator Cullom. And it was at Tremont that the correspondence between Lincoln and Shields, preliminary to the duel, took place.

The Judge made little headway here: it was too advanced for a novitiate in the law: and after experiencing the pangs of hope deferred for about one year, he shook the dust of that place off his feet, and started out in a search for a locality more promising to him. Among other places that he visited was Decatur, and while there he contracted a spell of typhoid fever which prostrated him for some weeks, and after he recovered, he commenced to grow into the condition of obesity so well known.

Finally, however, he settled at Bloomington, then an extremely new and primitive town, succeeding to the practice of Jesse W. Fell, who engaged in other pursuits. It was "root hog or die" with the Judge: his expectant bride was waiting for him to found a home for them; and he was obliged to assume a boldness not natural, and hustle for business. His progress was slow but sure. He discarded all "Genius licks" and flights of oratory (having vainly tried both) and went into collecting claims -- buying tax titles -- settling

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estates, and the like prosaic business, and trading in land; in all of which he exhibited great shrewdness, and displayed great energy.

In 1838, he married; and in 1844, he was elected to the legislature: and two years thereafter, he was defeated for the State Senate by one John Moore, a wagon-maker -- a defeat which the Judge took to heart, for he was very sensitive indeed. In 1847, he was elected a member of the State Constitutional Convention, in which body he sought very earnestly to prescribe very economical salaries, insisting upon $600 a year as the salary for the circuit judges, a remarkable proposition, in view of the fact that the judge of his circuit was obliged to travel by private conveyance over a geographical fourth of the whole state; and hold court twice a year in fourteen counties, and pay his own expenses. Had the Judge's proposal been adopted, no one but a wealthy man could have taken the place: however, one thousand dollars was the amount agreed on; and in the following year Davis himself succeeded Judge Treat -- no competitor appearing: and for fourteen consecutive years he was the judge of his circuit, starting with fourteen counties, one of which contained the capital of the state, and ultimately being reduced to five. In his circuit, there practiced at different times, McDougall, afterward Senator from California; Baker, afterward Senator from Oregon; Walker, afterward Senator from Wisconsin; Douglas, then Senator from Illinois; Voorhees, afterward Senator from Indiana; Usher, afterward Secretary of the Interior; besides Lincoln, Judge Logan, Stuart, Benedict, Gridley, Swett, Hannah, Dickey, O. L. Davis, and many other lawyers of eminence.

Davis was a good circuit judge: -- he disdained technicalities, sharp practice, "the law's delay and the insolence of office:" and aimed at practical and just results in the shortest mode: and his common sense and good judgment led to a general habit of submitting cases to him with no intervention of a jury: and his adjudications gave as general satisfaction

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as and evoked fewer appeals than, those of any other judge in the state.

His social qualities on the circuit were of the most charming character; every evening that we were not invited out, the Judge had a social reunion in his room, from which he excluded all whom he did not want, and at which he made every one whom he did include, entirely at ease. The star performer was Lincoln, but there were many others of considerable talent.

The "Davis" coterie was not strictly confined to lawyers: editors, local statesmen, bankers, merchants, physicians and farmers, were included. Whom the Judge wanted, he, somehow, got: -- whom he did not want, he fired out or froze out. His ways were sui generis and incomprehensible.

He possessed an inordinate ambition: and in the days when I first knew him, had a smothered ambition to go to Congress. Had he asserted his wish, he might have had a large following, but he was too proud-spirited to do so, and, besides, his circuit and influence extended into three several districts.

And the Judge was never publicly mentioned for Congress till 1858; and Lovejoy had, by that time, become altogether too popular to brook any opposition in that district.

It was very unsafe for any lawyer to express any dissatisfaction with the Judge's opinions or indicate his purpose to go to the Supreme Court: he considered any dissent from his adjudications as a personal affront.

Swett and I were once trying a little case, when we thought the Judge was prejudiced against our side of the case, and Swett excepted to a ruling; the Judge was wrathy, and gave Swett a terrible scathing: and I was once trying a railway case, and took occasion to exercise the ordinary prerogative of taking an exception to a ruling: "Of course," said the Judge with an expression of perfect contempt.

Lincoln had a way of excepting with so much grace and

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deference, and so apologetically, that the Judge was rather flattered by it.

He didn't care for forms or appearances: if he knew he was right, that was sufficient for him: for instance, he entered, and afterward sold considerable land in our county: and had a necessity to sue some of the notes given for deferred payments: so he sent them to me and I brought suit: when court sat, and he gave the first call to the docket, he did not call these cases at all: but at a convenient season, when it came time to adjourn court, he did not adjourn, but remained on the bench until everybody filed out, except the clerk and sheriff, he busying himself reading some court papers.

Then I arose, and called up the case of "Davis vs. Smith." "Well," said the Judge, nonchalantly, "what is wanted?" "Default on a note." "Has the defendant been served in time and no appearance?" asked he. "Yes, your Honor, all is regular." "Mr. Sheriff, call John Smith."

"Jaw Smy -- Jaw Smy -- Jaw Smy," said the sheriff perfunctorily. No answer.

"Judgment by default: clerk assess damages," said the Judge, and went on with his reading a decent length of time, and then formally adjourned court. There was no pre-arrangement at all about this. I instinctively knew what the Judge wanted and how he wanted it done; and he instinctively knew how to play his part, and how I would play mine: and no one in all Champaign County knew that the Judge had really rendered judgment in his own case, but himself, the clerk, sheriff and myself. Could he not have accomplished it thus -- he must necessarily have brought another judge there to enter these formal judgments or sent them to another circuit by change of venue. As there was no inherent wrong in this, the Judge didn't care for its appearance -- provided it could be done in the sly way it was done.

By reason of a pressure on him on account of his private business he used frequently to get Lincoln to hold

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court for him. It was illegal and coram non judice: and might have got Lincoln and the sheriff and suitors into difficulty: for all proceedings of such a -- so-called -- court, were tortiuous and void.

He was extremely sensitive to public opinion; several of our best citizens, destroyed some whisky shops, and pleaded guilty. Davis lectured them severely, and fined them, as was eminently proper -- in fact he could not do otherwise: but they wanted him to make a temperance speech and fine the whisky seller.

His election coming on within two months; they put up a vagabond as a candidate for Judge and voted for him, in order to deride Davis: he felt very sore, as he justly should: but never mentioned it in our county, except in a letter to me.

Like Midas, all he touched, turned to gold: he had a claim of $800 to collect for a New York client and not being able to get money, accepted, as a compromise, eighty acres of land, south of (what was then) Chicago; but his clients repudiated the settlement; and Davis was forced to take the land for the $800. He did not see this land for sixteen years till July, 1860, when he and I rode out to inspect it; and oh! what a sight; several colonies from counties Killarney and Tipperary had colonized it with wretched hovels and ditch fences located at all angles, except with the compass.

I had quite an amount of litigation in expelling them and getting the land clear, which I finally did -- for which service the Judge warmly thanked me; and he ultimately sold the land, which is now in Chicago, for one million of dollars.

Fac-simile of Letter from David Davis

Altho' Lincoln and Davis were, of necessity, intimate and friendly, for several years: -- yet, in some important characteristics, they were organically very unlike: to-wit: Lincoln was poor and democratic, and in his tendencies and associations a plebeian: while Davis was rich and aristocratic, and with the animus -- somewhat disguised, of a patrician.

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Lincoln sprang from the poor whites of Kentucky: Davis from the rich, slave-holding classes of Maryland: Lincoln wanted to be alone when going to an evening entertainment: Davis wanted a retinue of followers: Davis was very careful of his personal appearance and style: Lincoln did not care for either: Davis was an epicure: Lincoln was an ascetic: Davis had great acquisitiveness and talent to gratify it: while Lincoln did not know the A, B, C of making money. But they were, alike, frugal to excess: -- Lincoln from necessity -- Davis from choice: and they also were alike, in an earnest desire to entertain and be entertained: the former from necessity again -- the latter from choice, also. Both were ambitious: -- Davis for display, power and shekels: Lincoln, in order to gratify his ambitious wife.

He was an imposing looking man, and quite proud of his personal appearance, as he well might be.

Originally a Whig, when that party broke up, he had too much contempt for the Democratic leaders to affiliate with them; and, both on principle, and because the Illinois Whigs, as a rule, fused with the Republican party, he did so too.

Moreover, although he was born in Cecil County, Maryland, yet he was a northern man by education and training; and, besides, had married a most estimable Yankee wife.

Appointed on the bench of the United States Supreme Court in 1862, the Judge endeared himself to the reactionary Democracy by a radical opinion antagonistical to the right of the military authorities to punish Knights of the Golden Circle and became a very loud and showy candidate for the Presidency in the newspapers, as the time approached for the conventions of 1872; and, at the Liberal Republican convention of that year, his name was mentioned outside for the nomination; but Illinois had too great a wealth of talent there, and presented two other candidates, each stronger than the Judge: -- and all were defeated.

Being accidentally elected to the United States Senate in 1877, without any party backing or political following, he, in

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a moment of weakness and ill-judgment, accepted the position, and $5,000 a year for six years, vacating a higher position and $10,000 a year, for life; and the end of his public career was then plainly apparent.

The probabilities are, that the Judge expected this move to be a sort of horse-block to the Presidency: and after taking his seat, he attempted the unwise policy of trying to ride two horses at once, going in opposite directions: and he very soon experienced the folly of trying to serve two political masters; he had no influence beyond his vote -- and was badgered and ridiculed by politicians who were unworthy, really, to unloose his shoe latchets: and he soon degenerated into a perfunctory Senator: and finally was shelved, by being elected by general consent to be the presiding officer of the Senate -- the most unenviable position, per se, in Washington politics.

When his term ended, he retired to private life, after a continuous official and honorable career of thirty-six years.

This retirement was not grateful to the feelings of the Judge: he pined for the excitement and associations of his Washington life.

Existence on his farm was too prosaic for him, although he was then seventy years old.

The Judge had sufficient business to fully engross his attention; he was immensely wealthy; had a large rent-roll: and a great private business; but he was more than ever conscious that he committed the great error of his life in leaving the Supreme Court bench; for he well knew that he reaped no laurels in his new station; and that, at the very moment when he retired ingloriously from the Senate, he might have retired from the Supreme Court with eclat; and (what would have been of equal importance to a man of the Judge's ruling passion) with a yearly life annuity of ten thousand dollars.

The Judge soon began to run down hill; his huge dimensions began to shrink visibly; he was restless; his ambition had been foiled; and the dread hereafter was in view.

Photograph of Leonard Swett

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He had amassed a large fortune; he had, at the time of leaving the Senate, married as a second wife, a very charming and estimable woman; and he had a stately and elegant mansion.

But a spirit of unrest possessed him; one would think that, coming as he did to Illinois with nothing and amassing millions by his indomitable energy and trenchant economy -- and filling two of the highest positions in our Republic; should have fulfilled the ambition of any man; but the Judge had failed in his higher aspirations; saw the inevitable hour approaching when he must relinquish all his earthly comforts and luxuries; and he was probably as unhappy a man as there was in the whole state; doubtless his sad-eyed tenants were happier than he; and the end came: he had to be content with a few feet of the earth of which he had for fifty years monopolized and ruled over so much; and his name occupies but a few inches in local, and none in general, history.

When I first knew the eighth circuit, the great triumvirate consisted of Davis, Lincoln and Swett: and their social consequence was in the order named.

For some time after each session of court, their "wise saws and modern instances" formed the chief staple of conversation, in the stores and wherever men would gather: -- for we were comparatively shut out from the world, in ordinary; and the most important incident in our lives, was the semi-annual meeting of court: although in my county, its total sitting was comprised within two or three days, twice each year.

" 'Twas bright -- 'twas beautiful: 'tis past."

Swett was only twenty-eight years of age, but was already then so popular in that end of the circuit, that no other name was considered for Congress: and in 1856 the four southern counties of our congressional district, not only sent delegates pledged and instructed for him; but each county likewise sent a large and clamorous lobby for him.

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But we had not counted on the preponderance of the large counties of Will, Bureau, La Salle and others where he was unknown; and the great popularity of Swett at and about home, availed nothing, when we met the northern cohorts, in convention.

In the fall of 1854, Swett and I rode together in a "ram-shackle" buggy from Danville to Urbana: and he gave me a full account of his entire life; and I thought then, and still do, that I never met a man, so charming in his style and manner. He was born in Turner, Maine -- educated at Waterville College -- read law with Shepley and Dana in Portland -- and started west on his adventures when he was twenty-one years old: -- got somehow to Madison, Indiana, where he enlisted in the Mexican War -- became ill at Matamoras (I think); and was left in an army hospital to die, as was thought: but, nevertheless, recovered -- was discharged from the service at St. Louis: and found his way to Peoria -- thence to Clinton -- a "fagged-out, sick soldier," as he put it: commenced the practice of law there and both Davis and Lincoln took a great fancy to him -- made him a pet: aided him in getting business: -- favors which Swett never forgot; and he adhered to both of these distinguished friends through life and to those they respectively left behind them, after death. He was the most generous and unselfish man I ever knew. I think that Swett contributed as much to the nomination of Lincoln as Davis did; but he made no claim at all, but always gave the entire credit to Davis.

It is clear that Lincoln did not wish to appoint Davis as Supreme Judge, but did wish to appoint Browning: and that Swett changed his mind by virtue of his importunities: -- and it took a great man to move Lincoln from a formed opinion: -- and in a thousand instances, Swett postponed his own interests to that of those who importuned him: -- sometimes, friends, and usually bores.

In the years of his adolescence, he had every promise of a brilliant political career: no other man was thought of in

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our county for Congress from 1854, for a decade thereafter, could we have had the choice: but the district was very large and Swett's end of it was outnumbered, by the other end: and in 1862, when he did run in a new district, he was (on account of his intimacy with Lincoln) made a "scape-goat" for the apparent short-comings of the Administration: and defeated by John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner, and the same who defeated Douglas, in his first race for Congress.

In 1860, Swett's friends made use of his name in the preliminary canvass for the gubernatorial nomination; the other competitors being Yates and Judd, with Swett in the lead.

When the delegates and outsiders were assembling at Decatur, the inquiry went all around, "Where's Swett?" In that supreme movement of Fate: he was where he should not have been: and was not where he should have been; for the sequel disclosed that he had gone to Danville just before the convention sat; and, true to his inability to say No, had got into a murder case, which took longer to try, than he had thought; and when his presence at the opening chapter of the convention was indispensable and would have achieved success: his absence demoralized and disintegrated his own friends: and enabled the opposition to prevail against him: and thus did his Nemesis thrust aside his destiny; for, had he been the War Governor, as Yates was; he would easily have been promoted to the Senate, as Yates also was: and would have been -- what Yates was not -- the leading statesman of our state, for thirty years; in my judgment.

The Decatur State Convention of 1860, was the "tide in the affairs of men" which would have led him to fortune: but which he omitted: and his after-life (politically considered),

"Was bound in shallows and in miseries."

Thereafter, he entered into Wall Street, and made a handsome fortune; on which he designed to retire -- secure a good library, for he had a strong literary proclivity; and

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take life easy: but a pretended friend, just as he had formed this good resolution, seduced him into making just one more venture; which happened to prove disastrous: and he had to start the world again anew: and he settled at Chicago as a law partner with Judge Van H. Higgins, where for twenty years he occupied a conspicuous position as one of the best jury advocates in the Northwest; his services being sought for in critical trials, in various parts of the country: going at one time, to New Haven, Connecticut, to try a heavy case.

Many of the triumphs were astounding, to those who knew not the magnetism of the man: and the seductive charms of his magic eloquence.

I now recall the cases of young Sloo at Shawneetown (which John A. Logan and Judge W. J. Allen prosecuted) and Wintermute at Yankton in Dakota, both of whom he cleared, against "light and knowledge," as well as law and evidence: and for some years, murderers were wont to engage Swett, who raised the plea of insanity with success, nearly always.

He was not a profound lawyer, but he was a most adroit, ingenious and brilliant advocate; and I personally knew, that in a jury case, Lincoln preferred association with him to any other lawyer in the State. Indeed, Lincoln seemed to lean on him, and to say in effect, "I am all right now, that Swett is with me."

The same principle obtained in his statesmanship: -- whenever Lincoln got hold of Swett Lincoln would consult him at length, on his policies: and the only reason why he did not honor him with an office (beyond that of Government Director of the Union Pacific Railway) was, because Swett was too near to him: and he was fearful he would be censured; but I have reason to know, that Lincoln thought more of Swett, as a man, than any other man in Illinois during the war.

In 1854, after a romantic courtship, which he gave me

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the full details of, he married a charming young lady in New Hampshire, who, early, became an invalid, but to whom he was assiduous in his devotion throughout. And he had, always, an elegantly appointed home, where he delighted to entertain the elite of the nation, for as an entertainer, Swett was incomparable, and he was very fond of home and its adjuncts. Although his friends were greatly disappointed that he barely missed a brilliant political career, he took his disappointments with nonchalance, and said to me, one day: "You have heard of reformed gamblers -- well, I am a reformed politician." His adhesiveness to his friends, and his inability to say No/ was the rock on which the bark which contained his political aspirations foundered. He was the prey and sport of adventurers, who used his transcendent talents for their narrow and selfish ends.

He would have been the John A. Logan of Illinois politics, had he had the ordinary self-preservation of mankind.

A Lawyer's Advertisement of Central Illinois

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Chapter IV. The Presidential Nomination.

Looking backward through the vista of time thirty-one years, or more, ago, it seems as if the nomination of Lincoln was an easy achievement, and as though it was a spontaneous movement of the people. I was with Mr. Lincoln every evening but four during his sixteen days' stay in Chicago, in the months of March and April preceding the nomination -- during most of the time we were alone, except one evening we attended an entertainment by a minstrel troupe: and I presumptively knew that politicians of Chicago entertained no such idea, inasmuch as the only two men of any note whatever, who called on Mr. Lincoln, were John Wentworth, and he had partaken largely, just before, of the cup which cheers, etc., and Robert S. Blackwell, a lawyer of eminence in his profession, but of no meritorious political character. Indeed, no other solitary man intruded on us at the Tremont House, except a young theoretical German politician who wanted to learn something of our politics: and I likewise presumptively knew that Lincoln himself entertained a merely possible hope of success, for he talked to me freely of the situation, and told me of letters he had received from various leading men on the subject, and the contents thereof. It was a subject of nightly discussion between us, and I think he was candid with me, and regarded himself as a mere possibility for the nomination. The credit of the nomination belongs to certain men whom I will name, and it was the resultant of a combination of shrewd schemes, all in harmony, though the actors were not, with the general plan, and all converging to one point, viz.: the nomination. This is as susceptible of proof as any moral fact, as I shall show.

The United States Capitol (Front)

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But let me first exhibit, as well as it can be done, when the possible idea or hope of becoming President first animated Lincoln himself, and then I will set forth the genesis of his first nomination.

I was with Lincoln upon terms of the closest intimacy, upon two different occasions, when the thought might have been, and probably was, first engendered in his mind, and each of which have been selected by different persons who professed to know, as the occasion in question: although Lincoln himself never gave a hint of the kind to me then or thereafter, or to any one else, within my knowledge.

The first occasion will involve a history of the first "Anti-Nebraska" convention, which met at Bloomington on May 29th, 1856, it being the convention which organized the Republican party in Illinois, and which nominated Wm. H. Bissell for Governor, and Abraham Lincoln as one of the presidential electors at large.

The "call" for this convention, as I remember it, embraced all persons who were opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, or to the further extension of slavery into territory then free. I forget who issued it. It was designed to inaugurate a new party, really, from the debris of the Whig party -- the callow Abolitionist party -- and that segment of the Democratic party which had a responsive and awakened conscience.

Lincoln was to go as a delegate, although he was very cautious and conservative at that time, but he became, before the convention concluded its labors, the most prominent person connected with that incipient movement.

Judge Davis resided at Bloomington, but was then holding court at Danville; he had invited, to stay at his fine residence just east of town, Archibald Williams, of Quincy, T. Lyle Dickey, of Ottawa, Mr. Lincoln and myself. The Judge did not expect to be, and was not, in fact, at home, during the sitting of the convention.

Lincoln was to go from Danville court direct to Bloomington

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via Decatur, and he and I agreed that I should meet him at Tolono, and accompany him; we stopped at Decatur just before night, and put up at a hotel, there being no train north till early next morning. As I remember it now, we did not meet a single chance acquaintance, although this was the county of Lincoln's first residence in Illinois, and where he had split the historic "rails," although I may add there was more romance than substance about this rail-splitting. Lincoln was not a hard worker.

After supper we strolled out for a walk, and when we came to the court house, Lincoln walked out a few feet in front, and after shifting his position two or three times, he said, as he looked up at the building, partly to himself and partly to me: "Here is the exact spot where I stood by our wagon when we moved from Indiana twenty-six years ago; this isn't six feet from the exact spot."

He said further to me: "We came into town and kept on and made our first stop right in front of the court house, where we now are." I asked him if he, at that time, had expected to be a lawyer and practice law in that court house; to which he replied: "No: I didn't know I had sense enough to be a lawyer then." He then told me he had frequently thereafter tried to locate the route by which they had come; and that he had decided that it was near to the line of the main line of the Illinois Central Railroad.

We walked till early bed-time, during which he told me of his early adventures in both Macon and Sangamon counties, the Hanks family, etc.; also his early struggles in life.

Early the next morning we took the train for Bloomington; it had come from Centralia, and had but few persons on board. We sat in the rear of the only coach not consecrated to tobacco smoke; and no one was in our part of the car.

Lincoln was extremely anxious to know if there were any delegates on board the train, en route to the convention. He requested me to make inquiry in that direction of the few passengers; which I found some excuse for declining to do;

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so Lincoln himself went to the forward end of the car, and gazed through the list as he paced slowly back to where I sat deeply engaged with "The Howadji in Syria." "I really would like to know if any of those men are from down south, going to the convention," said he. "I don't see any harm in asking them," I replied. "I believe I will," he said, at last; and he left me to perform his errand. In fifteen or twenty minutes he came back, his face radiant with happiness; he had found two delegates from Marion County. The point was this: Southern Illinois was thoroughly hostile to "black republican" ideas; and Lincoln's hope was to discern any sentiment down there in that line. It will be recollected by many that one solitary vote was cast for Fremont in Johnson County; but in the large majority of counties in Logan's district not a single vote was cast against Buchanan.

Judge Davis' house was but a few yards from the Illinois Central depot; and on going there neither of the others had arrived, but when we came to tea in the afternoon we found Judge Dickey, who had preceded us a short time, Mr. Williams not arriving till the night train.

After dinner, Lincoln proposed that I should go with him to the Chicago & Alton depot, in another part of the town, to see who might arrive from Chicago. On our way Lincoln stopped in at a very diminutive jewelry shop, where he bought his first pair of spectacles for 37 1/2 cents, as I now recollect it; he then remarking to me that he had got to be forty-seven years old, and "kinder" needed them. As we approached the depot we found ourselves to be late, and that the omnibuses were just starting away, full of passengers, several of whom at once recognized and called out to Lincoln.

As we turned to retrace our steps, Lincoln said to me sotto voce, but enthusiastically: "That's the best sign yet; Judd is there; and he's a trimmer."

It must be borne in mind that our convention was as yet but an experiment, and it was not definitely known how successful

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it would become. Judd was afterward an applicant for the position of Secretary of the Interior under Lincoln; and was in fact made Minister to Prussia.

Throughout all the various steps preceding and during the entire work of the convention, Lincoln was active, alert, energetic and enthusiastic. I never saw him more busily engaged, more energetically at work, or with his mind and heart so thoroughly enlisted.

The convention assembled in Major's Hall, with Archibald Williams as temporary chairman. When Lawrence County was called, no response came. The secretary was proceeding with the call when Lincoln arose and exclaimed, anxiously looking all around: "Mr. Chairman, let Lawrence be called again: there is a delegate in town from there, and a very good man he is, too." The call was repeated, but no reply came. The delegate, whose courage failed him at the last moment, in the presence of the Abolitionist contingent, was Jesse K. Dubois; he came, indeed, as a delegate; but, seeing Lovejoy and other Abolitionists there as cherished delegates, he, through indignation or timidity, stayed away for the time being.

The afternoon of the convention was, as usual, devoted to speeches, Lincoln being accorded the post of honor, and making the last speech of any consequence -- although B. C. Cook got in a little speech, later. I never in my whole life up to this day heard a speech so thrilling as this one from Lincoln. No one who was present will forget its climax. I have since talked with many who were present and all substantially concur in enthusiastic remembrances of it.

The audience was largely composed of old, veteran politicians, whose fancies were not easily beguiled, nor readily entrapped into enthusiasm; but when the majestic Lincoln, after reciting the history of the encroachments of the slave power, defined clearly the duties of the hour; and then, with a mien and gesture that no language can describe, exclaimed (referring to threatened secession), "When it comes

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to that, we will say to our Southern brethren: we WONT go out of the Union: and you SHAN'T:" the effect was thrilling and indescribable: no language can convey any conception of it. I have never seen such excitement among a large body of men, and scarcely ever expect to again.

John L. Scripps has given his experience of this most remarkable speech in the following enthusiastic description: "Never was an audience more completely electrified by human eloquence. Again and again, during its delivery, they sprang to their feet and upon the benches, and testified by long-continued shouts and the waving of hats, how deeply the speaker had wrought upon their minds and hearts. It fused the mass of hitherto incongruous elements into perfect homogeneity; and from that day to the present they have worked together in harmonious and fraternal union."

The convention adjourned a few minutes later; and, as I passed down-stairs with the crowd, Jesse K. Dubois (who had been afraid to respond to the roll-call of counties, but who came in later, and was nominated for State Auditor), seized me by the arm with a painful grip and made an exclamation to me close to my ear, which I soon afterward repeated to Lincoln.

Of course he was the lion of the hour; everybody crowded around him; florid congratulations were as thick as autumnal leaves "that strowed the banks of Vallambrosa:" enthusiastic hand-shaking was the normal state of man; and that "thrilling speech" was the burden of every man's theme, on that occasion. Lincoln got disentangled from the applauding crowd at length; and he and I started off in the direction of Judge Davis' house; but immediately diverged into a side street to shake off everybody; and as soon as we were out of every one's hearing Lincoln at once commenced a line of remark upon the extraordinary scene we had just witnessed, and whose prime mover he was, at the same time bending his head down to make our conversation more confidential. In

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a glow of enthusiasm I said in reply to a question by him: "You know that my statements about your speeches are not good authority, so I will tell you what Dubois, who is not so enthusiastic as I am, said to me as we came out of the hall. He said: ‘Whitney, that is the greatest speech ever made in Illinois and it puts Lincoln on the track for the Presidency.’ "

While I was making this reply, he walked along without straightening himself up for some thirty seconds, perhaps without saying a word; but with a thoughtful, abstracted look: -- then he straightened up and immediately made a remark about some commonplace subject, having no reference to the subject we had been considering.

Did he then recognize, in this burst of enthusiasm from Dubois, the voice of destiny summoning him to the highest responsibility on earth? If so, well for him was it that he did not also see the granite tomb, only eight years distant, consecrated by more tears than any other since the human race began!

Dubois' opinion was, when I told him of it, that Lincoln's first conception of the Presidency dated from this incident.

Only seventeen days from the incident narrated just now, the National Convention met at Philadelphia to nominate a national ticket, whose nominees should be inimical to the further spread of human slavery.

At the same time, an extra session of the circuit court of Champaign County convened at Urbana, Illinois, to dispose of a large mass of unfinished business. Judge Davis held the court, and Lincoln, having a few cases to try, attended.

President's Room in Capitol

At the Judge's request, I secured a room for Lincoln, him and myself at the American House, kept by one John Dunaway. This primitive hostelry had three front entrances from the street, but not a single hall down-stairs; one of these entrances led directly into the ladies' parlor and from

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it an entrance was obtained to the dining-room, and also from another corner a flight of stairs conducted us to our room. Close by the front and dining-room doors was kept a gong which our vulgar boniface was wont to beat vigorously, as a prelude to meals, he standing in the doorway immediately under our windows; and thereby causing us great annoyance.

This term of court was extremely prosaic, having for trial cases meagre both in amount and incident, tried usually by the court without the aid of a jury.

The weather was dry and hot: our surroundings were not conducive to comfort, and I don't recollect to have ever attended a more uninteresting term of court.

The way we appropriated the news was thus: The Chicago Press used to reach town by the noon mail. Lincoln and Davis would go to the room direct from court, while I would go to the postoffice and get Judge Cunningham's paper. I would then read the news to them in our room.

While coming in one day with the paper I met Dunaway, our host, coming down from our room, where he had been and still was searching anxiously for his gong, which some ruthless hand had, alas, abstracted. When I had reached the room I was in the presence of the culprit. Lincoln sat awkwardly in a chair tilted up after his fashion, looking amused, silly and guilty, as if he had done something ridiculous, funny and reprehensible.

The Judge was equally amused; but said to him: "Now, Lincoln, that is a shame. Poor Dunaway is the most distressed being. You must put that back," etc., etc.

It seems that Lincoln, in passing through the dining-room, had seen the offending and noisy instrument; and in a mischievous freak had secreted it between the top and false bottom of a center table, and where no one would have thought of looking for it. But he and I immediately repaired to the dining-room and while I held the two contiguous doors fast Lincoln restored the gong to its accustomed place, after

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which he bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time, I following.

I think it was on that very day -- if not it was on the next day, at any rate it was on Thursday, June 19th, I read from the Chicago paper the following: "John C. Fremont was nominated for President on the first ballot. All the New England states went bodily for Fremont, except eleven votes for McLean. New York gave 93 for Fremont." Next day at noon I was on hand with the paper again, from which I read the following, viz.: "The convention then proceeded to an informal ballot for Vice-President, which resulted as follows: Dayton, 259; Lincoln, 110; Ford, 7; King, 9; Banks, 29; Sumner, 30; Collamer, 15; Johnson, 2; Pennington, 7; Carey, 3. Mr. Eliot, of Massachusetts, withdrew the names of Sumner, Wilson and Banks at their requests. Wilmot's name was then withdrawn. The motion was then carried to proceed to a final ballot. Dayton was then unanimously nominated for Vice-President with the following exceptions: New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut 20 for Lincoln," etc. Davis and I were greatly excited, but Lincoln was phlegmatic, listless and indifferent: his only remark was: "I reckon that ain't me; there's another great man in Massachusetts named Lincoln, and I reckon it's him."

Next day I got the paper, as usual, and saw, not only that it was our Lincoln, but learned what remarks were made in the convention. The Judge and I were especially incensed at Palmer's reply to a question proposed, it being that we could carry Illinois either with or without Lincoln. The inquiry was made about Lincoln: "Will he fight?" Lincoln betrayed no other feeling except that of amusement, at the sole qualification demanded.

I may observe, that we had not expected Lincoln to be a candidate at this time; all talk about his candidacy was abstract, and not concrete as yet: our favorite was Judge McLean.

The succeeding day I got the paper early and started to

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court with it before its adjournment. I met Lincoln at the west gate of the court house square, quite alone, coming from court, which had not, even then, adjourned. He was grave, gloomy, thoughtful and abstracted. I handed him the paper, which contained a wood cut of Fremont, and remarked: "It's a shame for a man with such a head as that to beat Judge McLean." Lincoln took the paper quite mechanically, and looked at it for a moment with no show of interest, and then handed it back, with the remark: "I don't see anything wrong about that head." I felt rebuked, for my remark was really unjust; but looking again, I said, handing him back the paper, "I think that a man who parts his hair in the middle, like a woman, ain't fit to be President." He took the paper again, quite mechanically, looked at the picture for a moment, and then, with no remark at all, handed it back, and resumed his walk, gloomy and abstracted.

A day or two later he was ready to return home. He had collected $25 or $30 for that term's business thus far, and one of our clients owed him $10, which he felt disappointed at not being able to collect; so I gave him a check for that amount, and went with him to the bank to collect it. The cashier, T. S. Hubbard, who paid it, is still living in Urbana and will probably remember it. I do not remember to have seen him happier than when he had got his little earnings together, being less than $40, as I now recollect it, and had his carpet-bag packed, ready to start home.

James H. Matheny, one of his life-long friends, has informed me that Lincoln's first real specific aspirations for the Presidency dated from the incident of his being named in the convention as a candidate for Vice-President, at that time, and it is certain, that, from thenceforth, all of Lincoln's energies and finesse were directed to its achievement; but that he did not then discern the road that led to the desired goal, is manifest from his letter to me, written three months thereafter, in reference to the nomination of Lovejoy for Congress.

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And so it probably was that, either by the enthusiastic prophecy of Dubois on May 29th, or by the vote for Vice-President on June 19th, 1856, the idea of becoming a candidate for President was first lodged in Lincoln's mind; and in either case, I was the John the Baptist who was the forerunner of the great news.

Now, I am willing to concede, nay, I believe, that from that time Lincoln trimmed his sails to catch the breeze which might waft him to the White House: but the conclusion is not correct that Lincoln was demanded by the people; and that the nomination was accorded to the spontaneous and universal demand of the nation, independent of any political finesse on the part of his political friends.

Contrariwise, the leader chiefly indicated was Seward; and, after him, the popular sentiment was divided between Chase, Bates, Lincoln and one or two others; but not including Cameron, whose strength did not emanate from the people.

After the periods above indicated by me, there was considerable loose talk about Lincoln for a place on the ticket for 1860, but it was the mere possibility only; and not anything so substantial as faith, or even a cheerful hope. Herndon, always enthusiastic, wrote a stirring letter to me on April 1st, 1859, in which he said, "Work and ‘put money in thy purse’ for 1860. This 1860 is ‘a going’ to be the great struggle of America," but made no reference whatever to or about Lincoln or to his possibilities; and no newspaper deemed it of sufficient consequence to mention his name for the position till May 4th, 1859, when the Central Illinois Gazette, a weekly paper, edited by J. W. Scroggs, brought Lincoln out; but the article excited no attention and produced no results, as Lincoln had already been spoken of feebly at home in that connection, and the article thus discounted.

On the evening of January 6th, 1859, of the day succeeding the day that Stephen A. Douglas was elected to the Senate, a small party of Lincoln's most intimate personal

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friends met in the inner office of the Secretary of State at Springfield to counsel together about the future of the Republican party -- whether it was to have any future, etc. At that time John J. Crittenden and Horace Greeley, and perhaps others, leaders in the opposition to the Democratic party, were in favor of running Douglas as the candidate for President, in opposition to the administration Democratic party, thus designing to crush out the party of Seward and Lincoln, between the upper stone of Douglas and "Anti-Lecompton," and the nether stone of Buchanan and his Lecompton constitution; and the outlook was gloomy enough, for Douglas had just been officially endorsed by his own state; had the support of the greatest Republican editor in the nation, and was apparently striding on, like a Colossus, "conquering and to conquer." On the authority of Jack Grimshaw, Herndon fixes the date of this meeting as "early in 1860." In this he is in error; the occurrence was on the night succeeding the election of Douglas, on January 5th, 1859. The persons whom I recollect to have been present were Lincoln, Dubois, John M. Palmer, Jo. Gillespie, Jackson Grimshaw and myself; but I am of opinion that Hatch (Secretary of State), Judd (State Senator), and Peck, of Chicago, were also present. The proceedings were entirely informal -- and the meeting was not held in order to bring Lincoln out for President. Palmer spoke first; and said in substance that this meeting was called in order to determine whether it was expedient to longer try to keep the party afloat, in view of the defection of Greeley -- the endorsement of Douglas, etc. He said: "I am decidedly in favor of maintaining the party, and I see no valid reason for discouragement," etc., and showed good reasons for proceeding, undismayed. Others spoke in a similar strain, but no allusion was made to Lincoln's candidacy, till Jesse K. Dubois spoke; and, at the end of his speech, he said: "And I am also in favor of putting Lincoln up for a place on the ticket, either for President or Vice-President -- one or the other." This

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sentiment was cheered; and when Dubois had concluded, Lincoln was called for and made a modest speech, at the close of which he said, "As to the matter of my name on the National ticket" -- when he was stopped by several of us; and he subsided.

The "house divided against itself" speech of June 17th, 1858 -- the joint debate with Douglas -- the speeches in Ohio; and notably the Coopers Institute speech, constituted the "stock in trade" which formed Lincoln's contribution to the "wigwam" convention; but the finesse which enabled his friends to utilize that capital to set off and overcome the great political capital which Seward had been accumulating for many years, was never exceeded in adroitness and effectiveness in this country.

In addition to the "mint, anise and cummin" -- the bye-play, so to speak; the real effective work was thus, viz.:

First -- The state convention which met at Decatur in the spring of 1860 enthusiastically nominated Lincoln, and also injected into the canvass the novelty and glamour of the "rail-splitting" episode: which took like wild-fire.

Second -- Norman B. Judd, one of the shrewdest and most effective of politicians, being member of the National Committee for Illinois, secured Chicago as the seat of the convention.

Third -- Reduced railway fares and other inducements were secured to guarantee a large attendance of Illinoisans; and in other ways the machinery of enthusiasm was set in motion for Lincoln.

Fourth -- Whereas the Indiana delegation had been selected with the primary object of securing general control of the Interior Department, and special control of the Indian bureau; and the Pennsylvania delegation, in part, had been organized with the intent of controlling the Treasury Department, therefore it was essential to pander to those wishes, in order to secure the delegations, so far as might be, of those states.

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Fifth -- And to have a good "send off" it was needful that Indiana and Illinois should be solid for Lincoln on the first ballot.

The two chiefs of diplomacy in these various movements were Judd, chairman of the Illinois delegation, and member of the National Committee: and David Davis, Judge of the Eighth Circuit: these men did not like each other, but nevertheless, animated by the most imperious necessity, worked in substantial accord. Judd had already secured the convention to be held at Chicago: and a delegation had been secured from Illinois, nearly solid for Lincoln: the recusant ones were prayed with and cajoled, till they, too, came over to Lincoln. Then William P. Dole, a crafty politician formerly from Indiana, and then from Paris, Illinois, was promised to be Commissioner of Indian Affairs: and Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior: and the Indiana delegation was thus secured.

Next Yates, the candidate for Governor in Illinois and Lane, the candidate for Governor from Indiana, circulated among the outlying delegates and assured them that unless Lincoln would be nominated, it was useless for them to stay in the field -- that with Lincoln, both states were sure -- without him, they were hopeless: and Indiana, being an October state, that racket was worked for all it was worth.

But the crowning effort, the sine qua non of negotiations, was the securing of the Pennsylvania delegation: which was accomplished "in the wee sma' hours" of the day the balloting was had. The actual negotiators on the part of Lincoln were: Davis, Swett, Logan, Judd and Dole: and on the part of Cameron: Reed, Casey, and Sanderson: others were consulted, as Palmer, Herndon, Dubois, Hatch, and others -- but the actual negotiation was by the parties I have named.

The agreement, as finally reached, was thus:
1. These negotiations shall be forever secret and confidential.

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2. Lincoln's friends have no actual authority -- none but a moral right.

3. If Lincoln shall be President -- Cameron shall have a place in his cabinet.

4. And he shall procure the indorsement of the Republican State Committee.

What caused the first trouble was, the lack of "verification of the powers" of the Illinois men: they had to admit, not only that they had no authority, but even that Lincoln had sent word written on a newspaper margin that he would be bound by no bargain: but they urged that Lincoln could not repudiate the promise of Davis -- and Logan -- and Swett. The demand for the Treasury and nothing else was the next point of difficulty: the Illinois men had in view the wrecking of the Treasury by Buchanan's Secretary and Cameron's flagitious record and were firm in their refusal to be limited to that one department.

And there was one stray bit of humor, which was thus narrated: Palmer stated impressively: "Well, gentlemen, it is all of no use unless we get Lincoln, for without him, we will lose both Illinois and Indiana." "Oh! no!" almost shrieked Davis, in counterfeited alarm. "Don't -- don't say that, Palmer, that will ruin us," etc., and this bit of charlatanry had an effect as was intended.

Lincoln did not really expect ever to be nominated before the convention. In March and April, 1860, while he was trying the "sand-bar" case with Judge Higgins, Lincoln went with James W. Somers and me to a minstrel show at Metropolitan Hall, in Chicago. Said I: "Possibly in a few weeks you will be nominated for President right here;" for it was then thought that the convention would be held in that hall; his reply was, "It is enough honor for me to be talked about, for it." And when Wm. N. Coler, Esq., now of New York, came from Springfield to Chicago on the first day of the convention, Lincoln said to him, "I've a good notion to go up

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with you -- but I am too much of a candidate to be there, I reckon; yet not enough of a candidate to stay away."

The "political necessity" which Nicolay and Hay say demanded Lincoln before and during the sitting of the convention, was the necessity of Caleb B. Smith to be Secretary of the Interior; of Wm. P. Dole to be Commissioner of Indian Affairs; of David Davis to be either a supreme judge or a cabinet officer; of Norman B. Judd to be a cabinet minister; and of Simon Cameron to be Secretary of the Treasury. Had not these political necessities existed, Seward's great reputation and his acknowledged position as leader of the party would have prevailed and Lincoln would doubtless have been a member of the cabinet, and an obscure one for Lincoln did not shine except as a leader. In a subordinate position, as junior counsel, etc., he was very feeble; as a cabinet officer he would have been a nonentity.

Apropos of our visit to Rumsey&Newcomb's Minstrels in March, 1860, as I have stated, the piece d'resistance -- the star performance -- was as follows:

DIXIE'S LAND.

Ethiopian "walk round," by D. D. Emmett.

I wish I was in de land of cotton
‘Cimmon seed an’ sandy bottom --
Look away -- look 'way -- away -- Dixie's land.
In Dixie's land whar I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin'.
Look away -- look 'way -- away -- Dixie's land.

CHORUS -- Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!!
In Dixie's land we'll took our stand
To lib an' die in Dixie. [Repeat.]
Away -- away -- away down South in Dixie.

Ole missus marry Will -- de -- Weaber,
William was a gay deceaber;
Look away, etc.
When he put his arms around her