The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Arnold)/Chapter V

In December, 1847, Lincoln took his seat in Congress (the 30th) the only whig member from Illinois. His great rival, Douglas, had already run a brilliant career in the House, and now for the first time had become a member of the United States Senate. These two had met at Vandalia, and in the Illinois Legislature had always been rivals, and each was now the acknowledged leader of his party. The democratic party had, since the year 1836, been strongly in the majority, and Douglas in his state, more than any other man, directed and controlled it. Among Lincoln's colleagues in Congress from Illinois, were John Wentworth, John A. McClernand and William A. Richardson. This Congress had among its members many very distinguished men. Among them were ex-President John Quincy Adams; George Ashman, who presided over the convention which nominated Lincoln for President; Caleb B. Smith, a member of his cabinet; John G. Palfrey, the historian of New England; Robert C. Winthrop, speaker; Jacob Collamer, postmaster-general; Andrew Johnson, elected Vice-President with Lincoln on his second election; Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy; besides Toombs, Rhett, Cobb, and other prominent leaders in the rebellion.

In the Senate were Daniel Webster, John P. Hale, John A. Dix, Simon Cameron, Lewis Cass, Thomas H. Benton, John J. Crittenden, Mason and Hunter from Virginia, John C. Calhoun, and Jefferson Davis. Lincoln entered Congress as the leader of the whig party in Illinois, and with the reputation of being an able and effective popular speaker. It is curious to learn the impression which this prairie orator, with no college culture, made upon his associates. Robert C. Winthrop, a scholarly and conservative man, representing the intelligence of Boston, says, when writing thirty-four years thereafter: "I recall vividly the impressions I then formed, both of his ability and amiability. We were old whigs together, and agreed entirely upon all questions of public interest. I could not always concur in the policy of the party which made him President, but I never lost my personal regard for him. For shrewdness and sagacity, and keen practical sense, he has had no superior in our day and generation."

The vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, writing seventeen years after Lincoln's death, and recalling their service together in Congress, from 1847 to 1849, says:

"I knew Mr. Lincoln well and intimately, and we were both ardent supporters of General Taylor for President in 1848. Mr. Lincoln, Toombs, Preston, myself and others, formed the first Congressional Taylor club, known as 'The Young Indians,' and organized the Taylor movement, which resulted in his nomination..."

"Mr. Lincoln was careful as to his manners, awkward in his speech, but was possessed of a very strong. clear, vigorous mind."

"He always attracted and riveted the attention of the House when he spoke. His manner of speech as well as thought was original. He had no model. He was a man of strong convictions, and what Carlyle would have called an earnest man. He abounded in anecdote. He illustrated everything he was talking about by an anecdote, always exceedingly apt and pointed, and socially he always kept his company in a roar of laughter."

From the time they parted as members of the Taylor Club, until the Hampton Roads Conference in 1865, of which hereafter, these two remarkable men did not again meet.

Lincoln took a more prominent part in the debates than is usual for new members. On the 8th of January, 1848, writing to his young partner, Herndon, he says: "By way of experiment, and of getting 'the hang of the house,' I made a little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of no general interest." (He was second on the Committee of Post-offices and Post Roads.) "I find speaking here and elsewhere almost the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no more than when I speak in court." Writing to his partner again soon after, he gave the young gentleman some very good advice. "The way for a young man to rise," said he, "is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you that suspicions and jealousy never did help any man in any station." And it may be truthfully added, as will hereafter appear, that no man was ever more free from these faults than Lincoln.

On the 12th of January, 1848, he made an able and elaborate speech on the Mexican war, which established his reputation in Congress as an able debater. Douglas, long afterwards, in their joint debate at Ottawa, charged him with taking the side of the enemy against his own country in this Mexican war. To which Lincoln replied: "I was an old whig, and whenever the democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But when they asked money, or land warrants, or anything to pay the soldiers, I gave the same vote that Douglas did."

He had offered resolutions calling on the President, Mr. Polk, for a statement of facts respecting the beginning of this war, and speaking to these resolutions said:

"Let him answer, fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering let him answer as Washington would answer..."

"But if the President," he said, "trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms to destroy, plunged into it (the war) and was swept on and on till disappointed in the ease with which Mexico might be enslaved, be now finds himself he knows not where."

On the 27th of July, after he had, as a delegate from Illinois, aided to nominate General Taylor for President, Lincoln made what is called a campaign speech to promote his election against Cass, the democratic candidate. For that purpose the speech was very effective. It is full of satire, sarcasm, and wit; some of it rather coarse, but it was designed to reach and influence a class of voters by whom coarse and keen illustrations would be appreciated. The following extract will exhibit its characteristics:

"'But in my hurry I was very near closing on the subject of military coat-tails before I was done with it. There is one entire article of the sort I have not discussed yet; I mean the military tail you democrats are now engaged in dovetailing on to the great Michigander. Yes sir, all his biographers (and they are legion) have him in hand, tying him to a military tail, like so many mischievous boys tying a dog to a bladder of beans. True, the material they have is very limited, but they drive at it might and main. He invaded Canada without resistance, and he outvaded it without pursuit. As he did both under orders, I suppose there was to him credit in neither of them; but they are made to constitute a large part of the tail. He was volunteer aid to General Harrison on the day of the battle of the Thames, and as you said in 1840 that Harrison was picking whortleberries, two miles off, while the battle was fought, I suppose it is a just conclusion with you to say Cass was aiding Harrison to pick whortleberries. This is about all, except the mooted question of the broken sword. Some authors say he broke it; some say he threw it away, and some others, who ought to know, say nothing about it. Perhaps it would be a fair historical compromise to say, if he did not break it, he did not do anything else with it.'"

Lincoln entered into this presidential canvass very zealously. Writing to Herndon to get up clubs and get the young men to join, he says: "Let every one play the part he can play the best. Some can speak, some sing, and all can hallo!" He went to New York and New England, speaking often and earnestly for Taylor. Returning, he spoke with great effect in Illinois and other parts of the West during the canvass. General Taylor's election inspired hopes that the extension of slavery might be stopped, and that the administration might be brought back to the policy of prohibiting it in the territories.

The most important and significant act of Lincoln at this Congress, was the introduction by him into the House, of a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The bill provided that no person from without the District should be held to slavery within it, and that no person born thereafter within the District should be held to slavery. It provided for the gradual emancipation of all the slaves in the District, with compensation to their masters, and that the act should be submitted to a vote of the people of the District. He prepared the bill with reference to the condition of public sentiment at that time, and what was possible to be accomplished. The bill represents what he hoped he could carry through Congress, and into a law, rather than his own abstract ideas of justice and right. He believed, as he had declared many times, and emphatically in his protest to the resolutions in the Illinois Legislature, that slavery was "unjust to the slave, impolitic to the nation," and he meant to do all in his power to restrict and get rid of it.

Even this bill, mild as it was, would not be tolerated by the slave states, and their opposition was so decided and unanimous that he was not able even to bring it to a vote. He also at about this time voted against paying for slaves lost by officers in the Seminole war. His term as member of Congress expired March 4, 1849, and he was not a candidate for re-election.

He sought an appointment as Commissioner of the General Land Office from President Taylor, but, to the surprise of his friends, it was given to Justin Butterfield, a distinguished lawyer from Chicago. The offices of secretary and governor of Oregon Territory were offered to him, but both declined. When it is remembered how very active and influential he had been in securing the nomination and election of Taylor, the failure of the administration to appoint him to the office which his friends asked, is strange, and it was a great disappointment. He did not hesitate to decline the appointment to Oregon, conscious, perhaps, that there was a great work for him to do on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

After he became President, the member of Congress representing the Chicago district, in behalf of a son of Mr. Butterfield, asked for an appointment in the army. When the application was presented, the President paused, and after a moment's silence, said: "Mr. Justin Butterfield once obtained an appointment I very much wanted, and in which my friends believed I could have been useful, and to which they thought I was fairly entitled, and I have hardly ever felt so bad at any failure in my life, but I am glad of an opportunity of doing a service to his son." And he made an order for his commission. He then spoke of the offer made to him of the governorship of Oregon. To which the reply was made: "How fortunate that you declined. If you had gone to Oregon, you might have come back as senator, but you would never have been President." "Yes, you are probably right," said he, and then with a musing, dreamy look, he added: "I have all my life been a fatalist. What is to be will be, or rather, I have found all my life as Hamlet says:

'There's a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough-hew them how we will.'"

Mrs. Lincoln was not with him much of the time while he was in Congress. Robert Todd, their eldest son, was born on the 1st day of August, 1843; the second, Edward Baker, on the 10th of March, 1846; the third, William Wallace, on December 21st, 1850; and the fourth, Thomas, on April 4th, 1853. The mother was too busily engaged with family cares and maternal duties while her husband was at Washington, to leave home for any considerable time. His term having expired, and he having failed to obtain the office his friends sought for him, he left the capital for his prairie home, not to return until he went back, amidst the throes and convulsions of the rebellion, clothed with the fearful responsibilities of the Executive. While at Washington as member of Congress, did any dim, mysterious vision of the future dawn upon his mind? Did he sometimes dream of the White House, of the Presidency, of emancipation? Did the prophecy of the Voudou negress ever recur to him? Whatever his dreams, he returned to Illinois to devote himself, with zeal and energy, to the practice of the law.

Before entering upon the history of the slavery conflict, let us pause and consider Mr. Lincoln as a lawyer, advocate, and orator. From his retirement from Congress in 1849, until the great Lincoln and Douglas debate in 1858, and, indeed, until his nomination for the Presidency in 1860, he was engaged in the laborious and successful practice of his profession. He rode the circuit, attended the terms of the Supreme Court of the state and United States circuit and district courts, and was frequently called on special retainers to other states. He had a very large, and it might have been a very lucrative practice, but his fees were, as his brethren of the bar declared, ridiculously small. He lived simply, comfortably, and respectably, with neither expensive tastes nor habits. His wants were few and simple. He occupied a small, unostentatious house in Springfield, and was in the habit of entertaining, in a very simple way, his friends and his brethren of the bar, during the terms of the Court and the sessions of the Legislature. Mrs. Lincoln often entertained small numbers of friends at dinner, and somewhat larger numbers at evening parties. In his modest and simple home, everything was orderly and refined, and there was always on the part of both Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, a cordial, hearty, western welcome, which put every guest perfectly at ease. Her table was famed for the excellence of its rare Kentucky dishes, and in season was loaded with venison, wild turkeys, prairie chickens, quails, and other game, which in those early days was abundant. Yet it was the genial manner and ever kind welcome of the hostess, and the wit and humor, anecdote, and unrivalled conversation of the host, which formed the chief attraction, and made a dinner at Lincoln's cottage an event to be remembered.

Lincoln's income from his profession was from $2,000 to $3,000 per annum. His property at this time consisted of his house and lot in Springfield, a lot in the town of Lincoln, which had been given to him, and 160 acres of wild land in Iowa, which he had received for his services in the Black Hawk war. He owned a few law and miscellaneous books. All his property may have been of the value of $10,000 or $12,000.

When he returned from Washington in 1849, he would have been instantly recognized in any court room in the United States, as being a very tall specimen of that type of long, large-boned men produced in the northern part of the Mississippi valley, and exhibiting its most peculiar characteristics in the mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and in Illinois. He would have been instantly recognized as a western man, and his stature, figure, dress, manner, voice, and accent indicated that he was from the Northwest. In manner he was cordial, frank, and friendly, and, although not without dignity, he put every one perfectly at ease. The first impression a stranger meeting him or hearing him speak would receive, was that of a kind, sincere and genuinely good man, of perfect truthfulness and integrity. He was one of those men whom everybody liked at first sight. If he spoke, before many words were uttered, the hearer would be impressed with his clear, direct good sense, his simple, homely, short Anglo-Saxon words, by his wonderful wit and humor.

Attention has already been called to the great number of short and simple words in his writings and speeches. Lincoln was, upon the whole, the strongest jury lawyer in the state. He had the ability to perceive with almost intuitive quickness the decisive point in the case. In the examination and cross-examination of a witness he had no equal. He could compel a witness to tell the truth when he meant to lie, and if a witness lied he rarely escaped exposure under Lincoln's cross-examination. He could always make a jury laugh, and often weep, at his pleasure. His legal arguments addressed to the judges were always clear, vigorous, and logical, seeking to convince rather by the application of principle than by the citation of cases. A stranger going into court when he was trying a cause would, after a few moments, find himself on Lincoln's side, and wishing him success. He seemed to magnetize every one. He was so straightforward, so direct, so candid, that every spectator was impressed with the idea that he was seeking only truth and justice. He excelled in the statement of his case. However complicated, he would disentangle it, and present the real issue in so simple and clear a way that all could understand. Indeed, his statement often rendered argument unnecessary, and frequently the court would stop him and say: "If that is the case, Brother Lincoln, we will hear the other side." His illustrations were often quaint and homely, but always apt and clear, and often decisive. He always met his opponent's case fairly and squarely, and never intentionally misstated law or evidence.

Out of a multitude of causes a few are cited for illustration. One of the most interesting cases in which Lincoln was engaged early in his professional life, grew out of the sale of a negro girl named Nancy. It was the case of Bailey vs. Cromwell, argued and decided at the December term of the Supreme Court of Illinois, 1841.

The girl was alleged to have been held as an indentured servant or slave, and had been sold by Cromwell to Bailey, and a promissory note taken in payment. Suit was brought in the Tazewell Circuit Court to recover the amount of the note, and judgment was recovered. The case was taken to the Supreme Court, and Mr. Lincoln made an elaborate argument in favor of reversing the judgment. Judge Logan represented the opposite side. Lincoln contended, among other positions, that the girl was free by virtue of the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery in the Northwestern Territory, of which Illinois was a part, as well as by the constitution of the state, which prohibited slavery. He insisted that, as it appeared from the record that the consideration of the note was the sale of a human being in a free state, the note was void; that a human being in a free state could not be the subject of sale. The court, the opinion given by Judge Breese, reversed the judgment. The argument by Lincoln, a very brief and imperfect statement of which is given in the report, was most interesting, and the question of slavery under the constitution, the ordinance of 1787, and the law of nations, was very carefully considered. He was then thirty-two years of age, and it is probable that in preparing the argument of this case he gave the subject of slavery and the legal questions connected with it a more full and elaborate investigation than ever before.

The suit of Case vs. Snow, tried at the spring term of the Tazewell Circuit Court, illustrates both Mr. Lincoln's love of justice and his adroitness in managing an ordinary case. He had brought an action in behalf of an old man named Case, against the Snow boys, to recover the amount of a note given them in payment for what was known as a "prairie team." This consists of a breaking plow and two or three yoke of oxen, making up a team strong enough to break up the strong, tough, thick turf of the prairie. The defendants, the Snow boys, appeared by their counsel and plead that they were infants, or minors, when the note was given. On the trial Lincoln produced the note, and it was admitted that it was given for the oxen and plow. The defendants then offered to prove that they were under twenty-one years of age when they signed the note. "Yes," said Lincoln, "I guess that is true and we will admit it."

"Is there a count in the declaration for oxen and plow, sold and delivered?" inquired Judge Treat, the presiding judge.

"Yes," said Lincoln, "and I have only two or three questions to ask of the witness." This witness had been called to prove the age of the Snow boys.

"Where is that prairie team now?" said Lincoln.

"On the farm of the Snow boys."

"Have you seen anyone breaking prairie with it lately?"

"Yes," replied the witness, "the Snow boys were breaking up with it last week."

"How old are the boys now?"

"One is a little over twenty-one, and the other near twenty-three."

"That is all," said Mr. Lincoln.

"Gentlemen," said Lincoln to the jury, "these boys never would have tried to cheat old farmer Case out of these oxen and that plow, but for the advice of counsel. It was bad advice, bad in morals and bad in law. The law never sanctions cheating, and a lawyer must be very smart indeed to twist it so that it will seem to do so. The judge will tell you what your own sense of justice has already told you, that these Snow boys, if they were mean enough to plead the baby act, when they came to be men should have taken the oxen and plow back. They can not go back on their contract, and also keep what the note was given for." The jury without leaving their seats gave a verdict for old farmer Case.

One of the great triumphs of Lincoln at the bar was won in the trial of William D. Armstrong, indicted with one Norris, for murder. The crime had been committed in Mason County, near a camp-meeting. Norris was convicted and sent to the state prison. Armstrong took a change of venue to Cass County, on the ground that the prejudices of the people in Mason County were so strong against him that he could not have a trial. He was the son of Jack Armstrong, who had been so kind to Lincoln in early life. Jack was dead, but Hannah, who when Lincoln was roughing it at New Salem, had been so motherly; who had made his shirts, and mended his well worn clothes; who, when Lincoln was depressed and gloomy, had in her rude and motherly way tried to cheer him; she now came to him and begged that he would save her son from the gallows. She had watched his rise to distinction with pride and exultation. In a certain way she looked upon him as her boy, and she believed in him. Lincoln, and Lincoln only, as she thought, could save Bill from disgrace and death; he could do anything. She went to Springfield, and begged him to come and save her son. He at once relieved her by promising to do all he could.

The trial came on at Beardstown, in the spring of 1858. The evidence against Bill was very strong. Indeed, the case for the defence looked hopeless. Several witnesses swore positively to his guilt. The strongest evidence was that of a man who swore that at eleven o'clock at night he saw Armstrong strike the deceased on the head. That the moon was shining brightly and was nearly full, and that its position in the sky was just about that of the sun at ten o'clock in the morning, and that by it he saw Armstrong give the mortal blow. This was fatal, unless the effect could be broken by contradiction or impeachment. Lincoln quietly looked up an almanac, and found that, at the time this, the principal witness, declared the moon to have been shining with full light, there was no moon at all. There were some contradictory statements made by other witnesses, but on the whole the case seemed almost hopeless. Mr. Lincoln made the closing argument. "At first," says Mr. Walker, one of the counsel associated with him, "he spoke slowly and carefully, reviewed the testimony, and pointed out its contradictions, discrepancies, and impossibilities. When he had thus prepared the way, he called for the almanac, and showed that, at the hour at which the principal witness swore he had seen, by the light of the full moon, the mortal blow given, there was no moon at all."

This was the climax of the argument, and of course utterly disposed of the principal witness. But it was Lincoln's eloquence which saved Bill Armstrong. His closing appeal must have been irresistible. His associate says: "The last fifteen minutes of his speech was as eloquent as I ever heard... The jury sat as if entranced, and when he was through, found relief in a gush of tears." One of the prosecuting attorneys says: "He took the jury by storm... There were tears in Lincoln's eyes while he spoke, but they were genuine... I have said an hundred times that it was Lincoln's speech that saved that criminal from the gallows." He pictured to the jury the old Armstrong home, the log cabin at New Salem; the aged mother, her locks silvered with time, was sitting by his side, as he spoke; all the associations of those early days came thronging up, his own feelings were thoroughly roused, and when he was once thus roused, his personal magnetism was well nigh irresistible. None but men of the strongest will could stand against his appeals. The jury in this case knew and loved Lincoln, and they could not resist him. He told the anxious mother: "Your son will be cleared before sundown." When Lincoln closed, and while the state's attorney was attempting to reply, she left the court room and "went down to Thompson's pasture," where, all alone, she remained awaiting the result. Her anxiety may be imagined, but before the sun went down that day, Lincoln's messenger brought to her the joyful tidings: "Bill is free. Your son is cleared." For all of this Lincoln would accept nothing but thanks.

There was a latent power in him, which when roused was literally overwhelming. There were times, when fired by great injustice, fraud, or wrong, when his denunciation was so crushing that the object of it would be driven from the court room. A story is current around Springfield, that on one occasion his reply to an outrageous attack by a man named Thomas, was so severe, that Thomas was completely broken down, and ran out of the court room, weeping with rage and mortification.

The only instance known of his taking a fee regarded as large, was his charge of five thousand dollars to the Illinois Central Railroad, for very important services in the Supreme Court. This great corporation, extending with its road bed and branches, more than seven hundred miles in the state, was party in a case involving questions of difficulty; in this case Lincoln appeared and obtained a decision of vast pecuniary importance to the road. His friends, knowing his custom of charging small fees, insisted that in this case, and against a client so abundantly able to pay, his charge should be liberal, and bear some relation to the great service he had rendered.

In 1855 he was retained by Many, in the great patent case of McCormick vs. Many, involving the question of the infringement of the McCormick reaping machine patents. It was argued at Cincinnati, before Justice McLean, of the Supreme Court of the United States. Lincoln was associated with Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards his Secretary of War, and George Harding, of Philadelphia. On the side of McCormick were William H. Seward, Reverdy Johnson, and Edward N. Dickinson.

The last case Mr. Lincoln ever tried, was that of Jones vs. Johnson, in April and May, 1860, in the United States Circuit Court, at Chicago. The case involved the title to land of very great value, the accretion on the shores of Lake Michigan. During the trial, Judge Drummond and all the counsel on both sides, including Mr. Lincoln, dined together at the house of the author. Douglas and Lincoln were at the time both candidates for the nomination for President. There were active and ardent political friends of each at the table, and when the sentiment was proposed, "May Illinois furnish the next President," it was drunk with enthusiasm by the friends of both Lincoln and Douglas.

Was Lincoln, then, an orator? Yes, at times as great as the greatest of orators. He was always simple, earnest, and entirely sincere. At times he rose to the very highest eloquence--on rare occasions when greatly moved. When carried away by some great theme, with some vast audience before him, he seemed at times like one inspired. He would begin in a diffident and awkward manner, but, as he became absorbed in his subject, then there would come that wonderful transformation, of which so many have spoken. Self-consciousness, diffidence, and awkwardness disappeared. His attitude became dignified, his figure seemed to expand, his features were illuminated, his eyes blazed with excitement, and his action became bold and commanding. Then his voice and everything about him became electric, his cadence changed with every feeling, and his whole audience became completely magnetized. Every sentence called forth a responsive emotion. To see Lincoln, on such great occasions, on an open prairie, the central figure of ten thousand people, every sound but that of his voice hushed to perfect silence, every eye bent upon him, every ear open, eager to catch each word, his voice clear and powerful, and of a key that could be distinctly heard by all the vast multitude; to hear him on such occasions, speaking on the great themes of liberty and slavery, was to hear Demosthenes thundering against Philip; it was like hearing Patrick Henry plead for American liberty.