The Backwoods Boy

Abraham Lincoln needed no such reminder. Before his first inauguration, and at intervals during his official life, he received frequent threatening letters, menacing him with death. These he kept in a package by themselves. Though he never permitted them to influence his action, they had their natural effect upon a mind and temperament subject to despondency, and not free from superstition. Mr. Lincoln had a strong impression that he would not live through his term of office. When, however, he was inaugurated for a second time, amid the plaudits of the nation, and the clouds of civil war seemed lifting to reveal a brighter future, his spirits, too, became buoyant, and he permitted himself to believe that all would end well, and he would be permitted to reconcile the disaffected States, and bring them back into the national fold. His heart was full of tenderness and magnanimity toward the States in rebellion. His large heart was incapable of harboring malice, or thirsting for revenge.

But he was only to come in sight of the Promised Land. It was for another leader to finish his weary and protracted task, and reap where he had sown.

On the evening of the fourteenth of April, 1865, President Lincoln and wife with two friends occupied a box at Ford’s Theatre, by invitation of the manager, to witness a performance of Tom Taylor’s “American Cousin.” They arrived late, and their entrance was greeted with enthusiasm, the large audience rising to their feet and cheering.

Not long afterward, John Wilkes Booth, a young actor, who, throughout the war, had made no secret of his sympathy with the Confederate cause, entered the theatre, and, not without difficulty, made his way through the crowded dress circle to the back of the box in which the President’s party were seated.

“The President has sent for me,” he said to the servant, showing his card, and thus he gained admission.

Standing in the door-way, after a hasty glance at the interior, he took a small Derringer pistol in one hand, holding at the same time a double-edged dagger in the other, he aimed deliberately at Mr. Lincoln, who sat in an arm-chair, with his back to him. There was a quick report, and the fatal bullet had entered Mr. Lincoln’s brain. Major Rathbone, the only other gentleman present in the box, quickly comprehending the truth, tried to seize the assassin, but he was too quick for him. Striking at him with his dagger, he sprang to the front of the box, leaped upon the stage, crying in a theatrical tone, “Sic semper tyrannis!” and “The South is avenged!” and, favored by his knowledge of the stage, escaped at the rear before the actors and audience, stupefied by the suddenness of his act, could arrest his flight.

Too well had the assassin done his work! The President never spoke, or recovered consciousness. He was carried from the theatre to a house near at hand, where, at twenty-two minutes past seven the next morning, he expired, with his mourning friends around him.

On the same evening another tragedy came near being enacted in another part of the city – a branch, no doubt, of the same wicked conspiracy. Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, lay sick at his house, having been thrown from his carriage and severely injured a few days before. A man, who proved to be Lewis Payne Powell, gained admission by a subterfuge, and, though warned by the servant that no one was admitted to see Mr. Seward, pushed past him into the Secretary’s chamber. At the entrance the Secretary’s son, Mr. Frederick Seward, forbade him to enter, but Powell struck him upon the forehead with the butt of a pistol, and, rushing to the bed, stabbed the helpless Secretary three times, and would have killed him but for his nurse, a soldier named Robinson, who grappled with him, receiving severe blows in the struggle. Powell escaped from the house, after stabbing no less than five persons.

To describe the grief, anger, and consternation which these two tragedies produced throughout the country, would be well-nigh impossible. Then, for the first time, it became apparent how dear to the popular heart was the plain, honest, untiring man who, for more than four dark and gloomy years, had borne the national burden, and labored as best he might to restore peace and harmony to a distracted land.

The conspirators had been only too successful, but they had not accomplished all they had in view. It had been expected that General Grant would form one of the President’s party; fortunately, he had excused himself, and left the city. Could he, too, have fallen a victim, dark indeed would have been the dawning of the next day, and the wide-spread feeling of horror would have been deepened.

In a recent conversation General Grant thus speaks of this sad time: “The darkest day of my life was the day I heard of Lincoln’s assassination. I did not know what it meant. Here was the rebellion put down in the field, and starting up again in the gutters; we had fought it as war, now we had to fight it as assassination. Lincoln was killed on the 14th of April. I was busy sending out orders to stop recruiting, the purchase of supplies, and to muster out the army. Lincoln had promised to go to the theatre, and wanted me to go with him. While I was with the President a letter came from Mrs. Grant, saying that she must leave Washington that night. She wanted to go to Burlington to see her children. Some incident of a trifling nature had made her resolve to leave that evening. I was glad to have it so, as I did not want to go to the theatre. So I made my excuse to Lincoln, and, at the proper hour, we started for the train. As we were driving along Pennsylvania Avenue, a horseman rode past us on a gallop, and back again around our carriage, looking into it.

“Mrs. Grant said: ‘There is the man who sat near us at lunch to-day with some other men, and tried to overhear our conversation. He was so rude that we left the dining-room. Here he is now, riding after us.’

“I thought it was only curiosity, but learned afterwards that the horseman was Booth. It seemed that I was to have been attacked, and Mrs. Grant’s sudden resolve to leave changed the plan. A few days after I received an anonymous letter from a man, saying that he had been detailed to kill me; that he rode on my train as far as Havre de Grace, and as my car was locked he failed to get in. He thanked God that he had failed. I remembered that the conductor had locked the car, but how true the letter was I can not say. I learned of the assassination as I was passing through Philadelphia. I turned around, took a special train, and came on to Washington. It was the gloomiest day of my life.”

Of the imposing funeral ceremonies, and the manifestations of deep grief throughout the nation, I need not speak. As Dr. Holland well says: “Millions felt that they had lost a brother, or a father, or a dear personal friend. It was a grief that brought the nation more into family sympathy than it had been since the days of the Revolution. Men came together in public meetings, to give expression to their grief… There were men engaged in the rebellion who turned from the deed with horror. Many of these had learned something of the magnanimity of Mr. Lincoln’s character; and they felt that the time would come when the South would need his friendship.”

There is no reason to believe that the Southern leaders countenanced or instigated this atrocious deed. It was the act of a half-crazed political fanatic, and the few who were in sympathy with him, and cognizant of his plans, were men of like character. Justice overtook them in the end, as might have been expected, but they had wrought irreparable mischief, and plunged a whole people into mourning.

CHAPTER XXXIII

MR. HERNDON’S ESTIMATE OF MR. LINCOLN

No one probably was better fitted to give a discriminating analysis of Mr. Lincoln’s character than Mr. W. H. Herndon, for more than twenty years his law-partner. From an address delivered at Springfield, Ill., Dec. 12, 1865, by that gentleman, I shall, therefore, quote freely, without indorsing everything that is said, but submitting it as the opinion of a man who knew Mr. Lincoln well:

“Mr. Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America. No man can put his finger on any great book written in the last or present century that he read. When young he read the Bible, and when of age he read Shakespeare, This latter book was scarcely ever out of his mind. Mr. Lincoln is acknowledged to have been a great man, but the question is, What made him great? I repeat that he read less and thought more than any man of his standing in America, if not in the world. He possessed originality and power of thought in an eminent degree. He was cautious, cool, concentrated, with continuity of reflection; was patient and enduring. These are some of the grounds of his wonderful success.

“Not only was nature, man, fact, and principle suggestive to Mr. Lincoln – not only had he accurate and exact perceptions, but he was causative; i.e., his mind ran back behind all facts, things, and principles to their origin, history, and first cause, – to that point where forces act at once as effect and cause. He would stop and stand in the street and analyze a machine. He would whittle things to a point, and then count the numberless inclined planes and their pitch, making the point. Mastering and defining this, he would then cut that point back and get a broad transverse section of his pine stick and point and define that. Clocks, omnibuses, and language, paddle-wheels, and idioms, never escaped his observation and analysis. Before he could form any idea of anything – before he would express his opinion on any subject, he must know it in origin and history, in substance and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his subject inside and outside, upside and downside. He searched his own mind and nature thoroughly, as I have often heard him say. He must analyze a sensation, an idea, and words, and run them back to their origin, history, purpose, and destiny.”

“All things, facts, and principles had to run through his crucible and be tested by the fires of his analytic mind; and hence, when he did speak, his utterances rang out gold-like – quick, keen, and current – upon the counters of the understanding. He reasoned logically, through analogy and comparison. All opponents dreaded him in his originality of idea, condensation, definition, and force of expression, and woe be to the man who hugged to his bosom a secret error if Mr. Lincoln got on the chase of it! I say, woe to him! Time could hide the error in no nook or corner of space in which he would not detect and expose it.”

“Mr. Lincoln was a peculiar man, having a peculiar mind. He was gifted with a peculiarity – namely, a new lookout on nature. Everything had to be newly created for him – facts newly gathered, newly arranged, and newly classed. He had no faith, as already expressed. In order to believe, he must see and feel and thrust his hand into the place. Such a mind as this must act strongly, – must have its time. His forte and power lay in his love of digging out for himself and hunting up for his own mind its own food, to be assimilated unto itself; and then, in time, he could and would form opinions and conclusions that no human power could overthrow. They were as irresistible as iron thunder, as powerful as logic embodied in mathematics.”

“An additional question naturally suggests itself here, and it is this: Had Mr. Lincoln great, good common sense? Different persons of equal capacity and honesty hold different views on this question – one class answering in the affirmative and the other in the negative.

“These various opinions necessarily spring out of the question just discussed. If the true test is that a man shall quickly, wisely, and well judge the rapid rush and whirl of human transactions as accurately as though indefinite time and proper conditions were at his disposal, then I am compelled to follow the logic of things, and say that Mr. Lincoln had no more than ordinary common sense. The world, men, and their actions must be judged as they rush and pass along. They will not wait on us – will not stay for our logic and analysis; they must be seized as they run. We all our life act on the moment. Mr. Lincoln knew himself, and never trusted his dollar or his fame on his casual opinions – he never acted hastily on great matters.”

“The great predominating elements of Mr. Lincoln’s peculiar character were – first, his great capacity and power of reason; secondly, his excellent understanding; thirdly, an exalted idea of the sense of right and equity; and fourthly, his intense veneration of what was true and good. His reason ruled despotically all other faculties and qualities of his mind. His conscience and heart were ruled by it. His conscience was ruled by one faculty – reason; his heart was ruled by two faculties – reason and conscience. I know it is generally believed that Mr. Lincoln’s heart, his love and kindness, his tenderness and benevolence were his ruling qualities; but this opinion is erroneous in every particular. First, as to his reason. He dwelt in the mind; not in the conscience, and not in the heart. He lived and breathed and acted from his reason, – the throne of logic and the home of principle, the realm of Deity in man. It is from this point that Mr. Lincoln must be viewed. His views were correct and original. He was cautious not to be deceived; he was patient and enduring. He had concentration and great continuity of thought; he had a profound analytic power; his vision was clear, and he was emphatically the master of statement. His pursuit of the truth was indefatigable – terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness, that the tallest intellects in the land bowed to him with respect. He was the strongest man I ever saw – looking at him from the stand-point of his reason, the throne of his logic. He came from that height with an irresistible and crushing force. His printed speeches will prove this; but his speeches before courts, especially before the Supreme Courts of the State and Nation, would demonstrate it. Unfortunately none of them have been preserved. Here he demanded time to think and prepare. The office of reason is to determine the truth. Truth is the power of reason – the child of reason. He loved and idolized truth for its own sake. It was reason’s food.

“Conscience, the second great quality and forte of Mr. Lincoln’s character, is that faculty which loves the just. Its office is justice; right and equity are its correlatives. It decides upon all acts of all people at all times. Mr. Lincoln had a deep, broad, living conscience. His great reason told him what was true, good and bad, right, wrong, just or unjust, and his conscience echoed back its decision; and it was from this point that he acted and spoke and wove his character and fame among us. His conscience ruled his heart; he was always just before he was gracious. This was his motto – his glory; and this is as it should be. It can not be truthfully said of any mortal man that he was always just. Mr. Lincoln was not always just, but his general life was. It follows that if Mr. Lincoln had great reason and great conscience, he was an honest man. His great and general life was honest, and he was justly and rightfully entitled to the appellation, ‘Honest Abe!’ Honesty was his great polar star.

“Mr. Lincoln had also a good understanding, that is, the faculty that understands and comprehends the exact state of things, their near and remote relation. The understanding does not necessarily inquire for the reason of things. I must here repeat that Mr. Lincoln was an odd and original man; he lived by himself and out of himself. He could not absorb. He was a very sensitive man, unobtrusive and gentlemanly, and often hid himself in the common mass of men, in order to prevent the discovery of his individuality. He had no insulting egotism and no pompous pride; no haughtiness and no aristocracy. He was not indifferent, however, to approbation and public opinion. He was not an upstart and had no insolence. He was a meek, quiet, unobtrusive gentleman. These qualities of his nature merged somewhat his identities. Read Mr. Lincoln’s speeches, letters, messages, and proclamations; read his whole record in his actual life, and you can not fail to perceive that he had good understanding. He understood and fully comprehended himself; and what he did, and why he did it, better than most living men.”

…

“There are two opinions – radically different opinions – expressed about Mr. Lincoln’s will by men of equal and much capacity. One opinion is that he had no will, and the other is that he was all will – omnipotently so. These two opinions are loudly and honestly affirmed. Mr. Lincoln’s mind loved the true, the right, and good – all the great truths and principles in the mind of man. He loved the true first, the right second, and the good the least. His mind struggled for truths and his soul for substances. Neither in his heart nor in his soul did he care for forms, methods, ways, – the non-substantial facts or things. He could not by his very structure and formation in mind and body care anything about them. He did not intensely or much care for particular individual man – dollar, property, rank, order, manners, and such like things. He had no avarice in his nature, or other like vice… What suited a little, narrow, critical mind, did not suit Mr. Lincoln’s, any more than a child’s clothes did his body. Generally, Mr. Lincoln did not take any interest in little local elections – town meetings. He attended no gatherings that pertained to local or other such interests, saving general political ones. He did not care (because he could not in his nature) who succeeded to the presidency of this or that Christian Association or Railroad Convention; who made the most money; who was going to Philadelphia; when and for what; and what were the costs of such a trip. He could not care who among friends got this office or that – who got to be street inspector or alley commissioner. No principle of goodness, of truth, or right was here. How could he be moved by such things as these? He could not understand why men struggled for such things. He made this remark to me one day – I think at Washington: ‘If ever this free people – if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office; a way to live without work; from which nature I am not free myself.’ It puzzled him a good deal at Washington to know and to get at the root of this dread desire, – this contagious disease of national robbery in the nation’s death-struggle.

“Because Mr. Lincoln could not feel any interest in such little things as I have spoken of, nor feel any particular interest in the success of those who were then struggling and wriggling, he was called indifferent – nay, ungrateful – to his friends. Especially is this the case with men who have aided Mr. Lincoln all their life. Mr. Lincoln always and everywhere wished his friends well; he loved his friends, and clung to them tenaciously, like iron to iron welded; yet he could not be actively and energetically aroused to the true sense of his friends’ particularly strong feelings of anxiety for office. From this fact Mr. Lincoln has been called ungrateful. He was not an ungrateful man by any means. He may have been a cool man – a passive man in his general life; yet he was not ungrateful. Ingratitude is too positive a word – it does not convey the truth. Mr. Lincoln may not have measured his friendly duties by the applicant’s hot desire; I admit this. He was not a selfish man, – if by selfishness is meant that Mr. Lincoln would do any act, even to promote himself to the Presidency, if by that act any human being was wronged. If it is said that Abraham Lincoln preferred Abraham Lincoln to any one else in the pursuit of his ambitions, and that, because of this, he was a selfish man, then I can see no objections to such an idea, for this is universal human nature.

“It must be remembered that Mr. Lincoln’s mind acted logically, cautiously, and slowly. Now, having stated the above facts, the question of his will and its power is easily solved. Be it remembered that Mr. Lincoln cared nothing for simple facts, manners, modes, ways, and such like things. Be it remembered, that he did care for truth, for right, for principle, for all that pertains to the good. In relation to simple facts, unrelated to substance, forms, rules, methods, ways, manners, he cared nothing; and if he could be aroused, he would do anything for anybody at any time, as well foe as friend. As a politician he would courteously grant all facts and forms – all non-essential things – to his opponent. He did so because he did not care for them; they were rubbish, husks, trash. On the question of substance, he hung and clung with all his might. On questions of truth, justice, right, the good, on principle – his will was as firm as steel and as tenacious as iron… Ask Mr. Lincoln to do a wrong thing, and he would scorn the request; ask him to do an unjust thing, and he would cry ‘Begone!’; ask him to sacrifice his convictions of the truth, and his soul would indignantly exclaim, ‘The world perish first!’ ”

…

“Mr. Lincoln sometimes walked our streets cheerily, good-humoredly, perhaps joyously – and then it was, on meeting a friend, he cried, ‘How d’ye?’ clasping one of his friend’s hands in both of his, giving a good, hearty soul-welcome. Of a winter’s morning he might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market-house, basket on arm, his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck, his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels, asking a thousand little quick questions, which his father heard not, not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there, so abstracted was he. When he thus met a friend, he said that something put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or elsewhere, and tell it he would, and there was no alternative but to listen.

“Thus, I say, stood and walked and looked this singular man. He was odd, but when that gray eye and face, and every feature were lit up by the inward soul in fires of emotion, then it was that all those apparently ugly features sprang into organs of beauty, or sunk themselves into a sea of inspiration that sometimes flooded his face. Sometimes it appeared to me that Lincoln’s soul was just fresh from the presence of its Creator.”

“This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our county in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon River, friendless, penniless, powerless, and alone – begging for work in this city, – ragged, struggling for the common necessaries of life. This man, this peculiar man, left us, in 1861, the President of the United States, backed by friends and power, by fame and all human force; and it is well to inquire how?

“To sum up, let us say, here is a sensitive, diffident, unobtrusive, natural-made gentleman. His mind was strong and deep, sincere and honest, patient and enduring; having no vices and having only negative defects, with many positive virtues. His is a strong, honest, sagacious, manly, noble life. He stands in the foremost rank of men in all ages, – their equal, – one of the best types of this Christian civilization.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

MR. LINCOLN’S FAVORITE POEM

One evening when Mr. Carpenter, the artist, was alone with Mr. Lincoln in his study, the President said: “There is a poem that has been a great favorite with me for years, to which my attention was first called when a young man, by a friend, and which I afterward saw and cut from a newspaper and carried in my pocket till, by frequent reading, I had it by heart. I would give a great deal to know who wrote it, but I could never ascertain.”

He then repeated the poem, now familiar to the public, commencing, “Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?”

This poem, which was written by William Knox, a young Scotchman, a contemporary of Sir Walter Scott, suits well the thoughtful, melancholy mood habitual to Mr. Lincoln. It is said that a man may be known by his favorite poem. Whether this can be said of men in general may be doubted. In the case of Abraham Lincoln I think those who knew him best would agree that the sadness underlying the poem found an echo in the temperament he inherited from his mother. I am sure my readers will be glad to find the poem recorded here, even though they may have met with it before: