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The Lincoln Story Book

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THE LINCOLN STORY BOOK

A Judicious Collection of the Best Stories
and Anecdotes of the Great President,
Many Appearing Here for the
First Time in Book Form


COMPILED BY

HENRY L. WILLIAMS




PREFACE.


The Abraham Lincoln Statue at Chicago is accepted as the typical
Westerner of the forum, the rostrum, and the tribune, as he stood
to be inaugurated under the war-cloud in 1861. But there is another
Lincoln as dear to the common people--the Lincoln of happy quotations,
the speaker of household words. Instead of the erect, impressive,
penetrative platform orator we see a long, gaunt figure, divided
between two chairs for comfort, the head bent forward, smiling
broadly, the lips curved in laughter, the deep eyes irradiating their
caves of wisdom; the story-telling Lincoln, enjoying the enjoyment he
gave to others.

This talkativeness, as Lincoln himself realized, was a very valuable
asset. Leaving home, he found, in a venture at "Yankee notion-pedling,"
that glibness meant three hundred per cent, in disposing of flimsy
wares. In the camp of the lumber-jacks and of the Indian rangers he
was regarded as the pride of the mess and the inspirator of the tent.
From these stages he rose to be a graduate of the "college" of the
yarn-spinner--the village store, where he became clerk.

The store we know is the township vortex where all assemble to "swap
stories" and deal out the news. Lincoln, from behind the counter--his
pulpit--not merely repeated items of information which he had heard,
but also recited doggerel satire of his own concoction, punning and
emitting sparks of wit. Lincoln was hailed as the "capper" of any
"good things on the rounds."

Even then his friends saw the germs of the statesman in the lank,
homely, crack-voiced hobbledehoy. Their praise emboldened him to
stand forward as the spokesman at schoolhouse meetings, lectures,
log-rollings, huskings auctions, fairs, and so on--the folk-meets of
our people. One watching him in 1830 said foresightedly: "Lincoln
has touched land at last."

In commencing electioneering, he cultivated the farming population and
their ways and diction. He learned by their parlance and Bible phrases
to construct "short sentences of small words," but he had all along
the idea that "the plain people are more easily influenced by a broad
and humorous illustration than in any other way." It is the Anglo-Saxon
trait, distinguishing all great preachers, actors, and authors of that
breed.

He acknowledged his personal defects with a frankness unique and
startling; told a girl whom he was courting that he did not believe
any woman could fancy him; publicly said that he could not be in looks
what was rated a gentleman; carried the knife of "the homeliest man";
disparaged himself like a Brutus or a Pope Sixtus. But the mass
relished this "plain, blunt man who spoke right on."

He talked himself into being the local "Eminence," but did not succeed
in winning the election when first presented as "the humble" candidate
for the State Senate. He stood upon his "imperfect education," his not
belonging "to the first families, but the seconds"; and his shunning
society as debarring him from the study he required.

Repulsed at the polls, he turned to the law as another channel,
supplementing forensic failings by his artful story-telling. Judges
would suspend business till "that Lincoln fellow got through with his
yarn-spinning" or underhandedly would direct the usher to get the rich
bit Lincoln told, and repeat it at the recess.

Mrs. Lincoln, the first to weigh this man justly, said proudly, that
"Lincoln was the great favorite everywhere."

Meanwhile his fellow citizens stupidly tired of this Merry Andrew--they
"sent him elsewhere to talk other folks to death"--to the State House,
where he served several terms creditably, but was mainly the fund of
jollity to the lobby and the chartered jester of the lawmakers.

Such loquacious witchery fitted him for the Congress. Elected to the
House, he was immediately greeted by connoisseurs of the best stamp--
President Martin van Buren, "prince of good fellows;" Webster, another
intellect, saturnine in repose and mercurial in activity; the
convivial Senator Douglas, and the like. These formed the rapt ring
around Lincoln in his own chair in the snug corner of the congressional
chat-room. Here he perceived that his rusticity and shallow skimmings
placed him under the trained politicians. It was here, too, that his
stereotyped prologue to his digressions--"That reminds me"--became
popular, and even reached England, where a publisher so entitled
a joke-book. Lincoln displaced "Sam Slick," and opened the way to
Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. The longing for elevation was fanned by
the association with the notables--Buchanan, to be his predecessor
as President; Andrew Johnson, to be his vice and successor; Jefferson
Davis and Alex. H. Stephens, President and Vice-President of the
C. S. A.; Adams, Winthrop, Sumner, and the galaxy over whom his
solitary star was to shine dazzlingly.

A sound authority who knew him of old pronounced him "as good at
telling an anecdote as in the '30's." But the fluent chatterer reined
in and became a good listener. He imbibed all the political ruses, and
returned home with his quiver full of new and victorious arrows for
the Presidential campaign, for his bosom friends urged him to try to
gratify that ambition, preposterous when he first felt it attack him.
He had grown out of the sensitiveness that once made him beg the
critics not to put him out by laughing at his appearance. He formed
a boundless arsenal of images and similes; he learned the American
humorist's art not to parade the joke with a discounting smile. He
worked out Euclid to brace his fantasies, as the steel bar in a
cement fence-post makes it irresistibly firm. But he allowed his
vehement fervor to carry him into such flights as left the reporters
unable to accompany his sentences throughout.

He was recognized as the destined national mouthpiece. He was not of
the universities, but of the universe; the Mississippi of Eloquence,
uncultivated, stupendous, enriched by sweeping into the innumerable
side bayous and creeks.

Elected and re-elected President, he continued to be a surprise to
those who shrank from levity. Lincoln was their puzzle; for he had
a sweet sauce for every "roast," and showed the smile of invigoration
to every croaking prophet. His state papers suited the war tragedies,
but still he delighted the people with those tales, tagging all the
events of what may be called the Lincoln era. The camp and the press
echoed them though the Cabinet frowned--secretaries said that they
exposed the illustrious speaker to charges of "clownishness and
buffoonery."

But this perennial good-humor--perfectly poised by the people--
alleviated the strain of withstanding that terrible avalanche
threatening to dismember and obliterate the States and bury all
the virtues and principles of our forefathers.

Even his official letters were in the same vein. Regarding the one to
England which meant war, he asked of Secretary Seward if its language
would be comprehended by our minister at the Victorian court, and added
dryly: "Will James, the coachman at the door--will he understand it?"
Receiving the answer, he nodded grimly and said: "Then it goes!"
It went, and there was no war with the Bull.

Time has refuted the purblind purists, the chilly "wet-blankets"; and
the Lincoln stories, bright, penetrative, piquant, and pertinent are
our classics. Hand in hand with "Father Abraham," the President next
to Washington in greatness, walks "Old Abe, the Story-teller."



LINCOLN CALENDAR.


Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809, Hardin County, Kentucky.
"Lincoln Day."

1817--Settled in Perry County, Indiana; father, mother, sister, and self.

1818--October 5, Mrs. Thomas Lincoln (Nancy Hanks) died; buried
Spencer County, Indiana. In 1901, a monument erected to her memory,
the base being the former Abraham Lincoln vault. Schooling, a few
months, 1819, '20 and '28, about six months' school.

1819--Thomas (father of A. L.) marries again: Mrs. Johnson (Sally Bush)
of Kentucky.

1830--March, Lincoln family remove into Illinois, near Decatur.

1831--Works for himself: boatbuilding and sailing, carpentering,
hog-sticking, sawmilling, blacksmithing, river-pilot, logger, etc.,
in Menard County, Indiana.

1831--Election clerk at New Salem. Captain and private (re-enlisted)
in Black Hawk War. Store clerk and merchant, New Salem. Studies for
the law.

1832--First political speech. Henry Clay, Whig platform. Defeated
through strong local vote. Deputy surveyor, at three dollars a day,
Sangamon County.

1834--Elected to State legislature as Whig. (Resides in Springfield
till 1861. Law partner with John L. Stuart till 1840.)

1835--Postmaster, New Salem; appointed by President Jackson.

1838 to 1840--Reelected to State legislature.

1840--Partner in law with S. T. Logan.

1842--Married Miss Mary Todd, of Kentucky. Of the four sons, Edward
died in infancy; William ("Willie") at twelve at Washington; Thomas
("Tad") at Springfield, aged twenty; Robert M. T., minister to
Great Britain, presidential candidate, secretary of war to President
Garfield. His only grandson, Abraham, died in London, March, 1890.

1844--Proposed for Congress.

1845--Law partner with W. H. Herndon, for life.

1846--Elected to Congress, the single Whig Illinois member; voted
antislavery; sought abolition in the D. C.; voted Wilmot Proviso.
Declined reelection.

1848--Electioneered for General Taylor.

1849--Defeated by Shields for United States senator.

1852--Electioneered for General Scott.

1854--Won the State over to the Republicans, but by arrangement
transferred his claim to the senatorship to Trumbull. October, debated
with Douglas. Declined the governorship in favor of Bissell.

1856--Organized the Republican Party and became its chief; nominated
vice-president, but was not chosen by its first convention; worked
for the Fremont-Dayton presidential ticket.

1858--Lost in the legislature the senatorship to Douglas.

1859--Placed for the presidential candidacy. Made Eastern tour "to get
acquainted."

1860--May 9, nominated for President, "shutting out" Seward, Chase,
Cameron, Dayton, Wade, Bates, and McLean.

1861--March 4, inaugurated sixteenth President; succeeds Buchanan,
and precedes his vice--Andrew Johnson, whom General Grant succeeded.
Civil War began by firing on Fort Sumter, April 12.

1862--September 22, emancipation announced.

1863--January 1, emancipation proclaimed. November 19, Gettysburg
Cemetery address. December 9, pardon to rebels proclaimed.

1864--Unanimous nomination as Republican presidential candidate for
re-election, June 7. Reelected November 8.

1865--March 4, inaugurated for the second term. April 14, assassinated
in Ford's Theater, Washington, by a mad actor, Wilkes Booth. April 19,
body lay in state at Washington. April 26, Booth slain in resisting
arrest, by Sergeant Boston Corbett, near Port Royal. April 21 to May 4,
funeral-train through principal cities North, to Springfield, Illinois.

1871--Temporarily deposited in catacomb.

1874--In catacomb, in sarcophagus. The completed monument dedicated.

1876--To frustrate repetition of body-snatchers' attempt, reinterred
deeper.

1900--A fifth removal; the whole structure solidly rebuilt, containing
the martyred President, his wife, and their three children, as well as
the grandson bearing Abraham's name.




THE LINCOLN STORY BOOK


* * * * *


CHILDISH RIME.

In a copybook, at the age of nine or ten:

Abraham Lincoln,
his hand and pen.
he will be good, but
god knows when.

The small "g" led a public speaker to denounce the sort of men--"sordid
and ignorant"--who write "God with a small g and gold with a big one."
This was a scrapbook in humble imitation of the albums in the East.

Another copybook motto. (A year or so later.)

Good boys who to their books apply
Will all be great men by and by.


* * * * *


THE LITTLE HATCHET DID IT.

In 1823 Abraham Lincoln went briefly to Crawford's school, a log house,
pleasing the teacher by his attention to the simple course. The boy
had read but a small library, principally "Weems' Life of Washington,"
which had impressed him deeply. This is shown by the following anecdote
told by Andrew Crawford, the Spencer County pedagogue: The latter saw
that a buck's head, nailed on the schoolhouse, was broken in one horn,
and asked the scholars who among them broke it. "I did it," answered
young Lincoln promptly. "I did not mean to do it, but I hung on it"--he
was very tall and reached it too easily--"and it broke!" Though lean,
he weighed fairly. "I wouldn't have done it if I had 'a' thought it
would break."

Other boys of that "class" would have tried to conceal what they did
and not own up until obliged to do so. His immediate friends believed
that the hatchet and cherry-tree incident in Washington's life traced
this truthful course.


* * * * *


THE LITTLE HATCHET AGAIN TURNS UP.

In his teens Abraham Lincoln, while not considered a man, was able to
swing an ax with full power. It was the borderer's multifarious tool
and accompanied him everywhere. One time, while sauntering along
Gentryville, his stepsister playfully ran at him of a sudden and
leaped from behind upon him. Holding on to his shoulders, she dug her
knees into his back--a rough trick called fun by these semi-savages--and
brought him to the ground. Unfortunately, she caused him to release the
ax in his surprise, and it cut her ankle. The boy stopped the wound and
bandaged it, while she moaned. Through her cries, he reproached her,
and concluded:

"How could you disobey mother so?" for she had been enjoined not to
follow her brother. "What are you going to tell her about getting hurt?"

"Tell her I did it with the ax," she replied. "That will be the truth?"
she questioned, with the prevarication of her sex inborn.

"Yes, that's the truth, but it is not all the truth. You tell the
whole truth."

The mother was forgiving, and nothing more came of the casualty.

* * * * *


LINCOLN'S WEDDING-SONG.

Abraham Lincoln's own sister Sarah married one Aaron Grigsby, a man in
the settlers' line of life; and Abraham, a youth under age, composed
an epithalamium on the occasion. The title was "Adam and Eve's
Wedding-Song," and the principal verses are given to show what
roughness pervaded the home on the frontier:

The woman was not taken from Adam's feet, we see,
So we must not abuse her, the meaning seems to be.
The woman was not taken from Adam's head, we know;
To show she must not rule him--'tis evidently so.
The woman, she was taken from under Adam's arm,
So she must be protected from injuries and harm.


* * * * *


"RISK THE HOGS AND I WILL RISK MYSELF!"

At the age of seventeen, Lincoln, the strongest and "longest" younker
of the neighborhood, was let out by his father for six dollars a month
and board to a James Taylor, ferryman of Anderson's Creek and the Ohio
River. He was also expected to do the farmwork and other jobs, as well
as the chores in and about the house. This included tending to the
baby--the good wives uniting to pronounce Abe the best of helps as
"so handy," as Mrs. Toodles would say.

He had attained his fixed height, exactly six feet three inches. (This
is his own record.) He really did, with his unusual strength, more
than any man's stint, and failing to gain full man's wages, whether it
was his father or he handled it, he felt the injustice, which soured
him on that point. He enraged his employer's son by sitting up late to
read, so that the young man struck him to silence. But the young giant
refused from retaliating in kind, whether from natural magnanimity
belonging to giants, or from respect for the "young master," or from
self-acknowledgment that he was in the wrong. He learned the craft of
river boatman in this engagement. One day, on being asked to kill a
hog, he replied like the Irishman with the violin, "that he had never
done it, but he would try."

"If you will risk the hog," he said, "I will risk myself!"

Becoming hog-slaughterer added this branch occupation to the many of
"the man of all work." Taylor sub-let him out in this capacity for
thirty cents a day, saying:

"Abe will do any one thing about as well as another."


* * * * *


THE REST WAS VILE.

The Lincoln homestead in Indiana, in 1820-23, had at the first the
primitive corn-mill in the Indian fashion--a burnt-out block with a
pounder rigged to a well-sweep. A water-mill being set up ten miles
off, on Anderson's Creek, that was superseded, as improvement marched,
by a horse-power one. To this Lincoln, as a lad of sixteen or seventeen,
would carry the corn in a bag upon an old flea-bitten gray mare. One
day, on unhitching the animal and loading it, and running his arm
through the head-gear loop to lead, he had no sooner struck it and
cried "Get up, you de----," when the beast whirled around, and, lashing
out, kicked him in the forehead so that he fell to the ground insensible.
The miller, Hoffman, ran out and carried the youth indoors, sending for
his father, as he feared the victim would not revive. He did not do
so until hours after having been carried home. When conscious, his
faculties, as psychologically ordained, resumed operations from the
instant of suspension, and he uttered the sequel to his outcry:

"----vil!"

Lincoln's own explanation is thus:

"Just before I struck the mare, my will, through the mind, had set the
muscles of my tongue to utter the expression, and when her heels came
in contact with my head, the whole thing stopped half-cocked, as it
were, and was only fired off when mental energy or force returned."

His friends interpreted the occurrence as a proof of his always
finishing what he commenced.


* * * * *


"NO HEAPING COALS OF FIRE ON THAT HEAD."

The wantonly cruel experiment of testing the sensitiveness in reptiles
armored, passed into a proverb out West in pioneer times. Besides
carving initials and dates on the shell of land tortoises, boys would
fling the creatures against tree or rock to see it perish with its
exposed and lacerated body, or literally place burning coals on the
back. In such cases Lincoln, a boy in his teens, but a redoubtable
young giant, would not only interfere vocally, but with his arms,
if needed.

"Don't terrapins have feelings?" he inquired.

The torturer did not know the right answer, and, persisting in the
treatment, had the shingle wrenched from his hand and the cinders
stamped out, while the sufferer was allowed to go away.

"Well, feelings or none, he won't be burned any more while I am
around!"

He did not always have to resort to force in his corrections, as he
obtained the title of "Peacemaker" by other means, and the spell in
his tongue, at that age.


* * * * *


STUMPING THE STUMP-SPEAKER.

When Lincoln became a man and, divorced from his father's grasping
tyranny, set up as a field-hand, he lightened the labor in Menard
County by orating to his mates, and they gladly suspended their tasks
to listen to him recite what he had read and invented--or, rather,
adapted to their circumscribed understanding. Besides mimicry of the
itinerant preachers, he imitated the electioneering advocates of all
parties and local politics. One day, one such educator collected
the farmers and their help around him to eulogize some looming-up
candidate, when a cousin and admirer of young Lincoln cast a damper
on him, crying out, with general approval, that Abe could talk him
dry! Accepting the challenge, the professional spellbinder allowed
his place on the stump of the cottonwood to be held by the raw
Demosthenes. To his astonishment the country lad did display much
fluency, intelligence, and talent for the craft. Frankly the stranger
complimented him and wished him well in a career which he recommended
him to adopt. From this cheering, Lincoln proceeded to speak in
public--his limited public--"talking on all subjects till the
questions were worn slick, greasy, and threadbare."


* * * * *


MAKING THE WOOL, NOT FEATHERS, FLY.

The "export trade" of the Indiana farmers was with New Orleans, the
goods being carried on flatboats. The traffic called for a larger number
of resolute, hardy, and honest men, as, besides the vicissitudes of
fickle navigation, was the peril from thieves. Abraham early made
acquaintance with this course as he accompanied his father in such
a venture down the great river. Then passed apprenticeship, he built
a boat for Gentry--merchant of Gentryville--and "sailed" it, with the
storekeeper's son Allen as bow-hand or first officer. He and his crew
of one started from the Ohio River landing and safely reached the
Crescent City--safely as to cargo and bodies, but not without a
narrow escape. At Baton Rouge, a little ahead of the haven, the boat
was tied up at a plantation, and the two were asleep, when they became
objects of an attack from a river pest--a band of refugee negroes and
similar lawless rogues.

Luckily their approach was heard and the two awoke. Having been warned
that the desperadoes would not stand on trifles, the young men armed
themselves with clubs and leaped ashore, after driving the pirates off
the deck. They pursued them, too, with such an uproar that their number
was multiplied in the runaways' mind. Both returned wounded--Abraham
retaining a mark over the right eye, noticeable in after life, and not
to his facial improvement. They immediately unhitched the boat and
stood out in the channel.

"I wish we had carried weapons," sighed Lincoln. "Going to war without
shooting-irons is not what the Quakers hold it to be."

"If we had been armed," returned Allen, as regretfully, "we would have
made the feathers fly!"

It had not been too dark for the shade of the enemy to be perceived,
so his skipper gave one of his earnest laughs, and replied:

"You mean _wool_, I reckon!"


* * * * *


LOG-ROLLING TO SAVE LIVES.

It was in the spring after the deep snow of 1831, that three or four
lumbermen, who had built a large flatboat for carrying a cargo to New
Orleans, were on the Sangamon River, trying the rowboat, or scow, to
accompany the vessel. The river was very high and on the run. Two of
the men leaped into the boat to get the drink for being the first in,
and sent her out into the current. They were unable to stem it and row
back. Lincoln shouted for them to head up and try the sleeping, or
dead water, along shore. But they were mastered, and paddled for a
wrecked boat, which had a pole sticking up. But though the man who
grabbed for it secured his hold, the boat was capsized and the other
was flung into the tide.

Lincoln, as captain, shouted out to him:

"Carman, swim for that elm-tree down there! You can catch it! Keep
calm. Lay hold of a branch."

The tree was at a convenient height, and Carman caught on and swung
himself out; but the icy water chilled him to the bone. But he was
safe for the present, seeing which the captain called out to the other
to let go his pole and let himself be carried down to the tree, also.
If he hung on in the open there much longer, he would become stiff and
unable to swim. The man managed to reach his mate, and the two were
joined at the tree.

The manager of the rescue found a log and, attaching a rope, rolled it
into the stream, with the help of others who had arrived on the scene.
They towed it up some distance to get a good send-off, and a young
daredevil got on it with the intention of being floated down to the
tree, where all three would become passengers and be drawn home. But
in his haste to do so, Jim Dorrell raised himself off his log by the
branch he grasped and, along with the other unfortunates, made three
men to be saved.

When the riderless log was hauled up inshore, Lincoln mounted it to
make the next cast in person. Having an extra rope with him, he
lassoed the tree and soon drew the log up. Cold as they were, the
three men dropped down and straddled beside him. At his orders the
men on the bank held the rope taut, so that the log, allowed to swing
off freely, slung around with the current to the side, and the four
were disembarked. This made Abraham the hero of the Sangamon River
among the boatmen.

(Narrated by John Rolls, of New Salem, a witness.)


* * * * *


LINCOLN'S FIRST DOLLAR.

As in all farming communities, where the only movement of currency is
when the crop comes in and the debts accumulating during the growth
are settled and the slight surplus spent, the Indiana pioneers little
knew "extra" cash. To obtain it, the men used their off hours in
guiding intending settlers, assisting surveyors and prospectors,
felling and hewing trees, and horse-trading. Another source of income
out of bounds was to send a stock of produce down the river to sell or
barter for the Southern plantation produce. As there was talk at home
of furnishing their house, Abraham bethought him of this resource. His
father consented readily to any notion that might result in gain, and
his mother, though believing nearly two thousand miles of water travel
onerous, allowed her "yes." Besides, the young man, by excessive work
on their place, had piled up a goodly stock of salable stuff. Abraham
had only to make a boat. It was small, merely to hold the "venture"
and his hand-bundle of "plunder" for the trip and land cruise at New
Orleans. Western country boys who had seen the Crescent City talked of
the exploit as the Easterners of seeing Europe.

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