''Abe'' Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, Alexander Kelly McClure [suggested reading TXT] 📗

of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.

“We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.

“We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which history of former times tells us.

“We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.

“We toiled not in the acquisition or establishment of them; they are a legacy bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.

“Theirs was the task (and nobly did they perform it) to possess themselves, us, of this goodly land, to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours to transmit these—the former unprofaned by the foot of an intruder, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation—to the generation that fate shall permit the world to know.

“This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity—all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

“How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?

“Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?

“Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa, combined, with all the treasures of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

“At what point, then, is this approach of danger to be expected?

“I answer, if ever it reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.

“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.

“As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

“I hope I am not over-wary; but, if I am not, there is even now something of ill-omen amongst us.

“I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice.

“This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit it, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to deny.

“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times.

“They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning sun of the latter.

“They are not the creatures of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or non-slave-holding States.

“Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting Southerners and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits.

“Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.

“Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they may undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or Presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle.

“What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never!

“Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

“It seeks no distinction in adding story to story upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others.

“It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief.

“It scorns to tread in the footpaths of any predecessor, however illustrious.

“It thirsts and burns for distinction, and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating the slaves or enslaving freemen.

“Another reason which once was, but which to the same extent is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far.

“I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people, as distinguished from their judgment.

“But these histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength.

“But what the invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done, the levelling of the walls.

“They were a forest of giant oaks, but the all-resisting hurricane swept over them and left only here and there a lone trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more rude storms, then to sink and be no more.

“They were the pillars of the temple of liberty, and now that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, the descendants, supply the places with pillars hewn from the same solid quarry of sober reason.

“Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy.

“Reason—cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials for our support and defense.

“Let those materials be molded into general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and the laws; and then our country shall continue to improve, and our nation, revering his name, and permitting no hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be the first to hear the last trump that shall awaken our Washington.

“Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest as the rock of its basis, and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’”

 

TOM CORWINS’S LATEST STORY.

One of Mr. Lincoln’s warm friends was Dr. Robert Boal, of Lacon, Illinois. Telling of a visit he paid to the White House soon after Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, he said: “I found him the same Lincoln as a struggling lawyer and politician that I did in Washington as President of the United States, yet there was a dignity and self-possession about him in his high official authority. I paid him a second call in the evening. He had thrown off his reserve somewhat, and would walk up and down the room with his hands to his sides and laugh at the joke he was telling, or at one that was told to him. I remember one story he told to me on this occasion.

“Tom Corwin, of Ohio, had been down to Alexandria, Va., that day and had come back and told Lincoln a story which pleased him so much that he broke out in a hearty laugh and said: ‘I must tell you Tom Corwin’s latest. Tom met an old man at Alexandria who knew George Washington, and he told Tom that George Washington often swore. Now, Corwin’s father had always held the father of our country up as a faultless person and told his son to follow in his footsteps.

“‘“Well,” said Corwin, “when I heard that George Washington was addicted to the vices and infirmities of man, I felt so relieved that I just shouted for joy.”’”

 

“CATCH ‘EM AND CHEAT ‘EM.”

The lawyers on the circuit traveled by Lincoln got together one night and tried him on the charge of accepting fees which tended to lower the established rates. It was the understood rule that a lawyer should accept all the client could be induced to pay. The tribunal was known as “The Ogmathorial Court.”

Ward Lamon, his law partner at the time, tells about it:

“Lincoln was found guilty and fined for his awful crime against the pockets of his brethren of the bar. The fine he paid with great good humor, and then kept the crowd of lawyers in uproarious laughter until after midnight.

“He persisted in his revolt, however, declaring that with his consent his firm should never during its life, or after its dissolution, deserve the reputation enjoyed by those shining lights of the profession, ‘Catch ‘em and Cheat ‘em.’”

 

A JURYMAN’S SCORN.

Lincoln had assisted in the prosecution of a man who had robbed his neighbor’s hen roosts. Jogging home along the highway with the foreman of the jury that had convicted the hen stealer, he was complimented by Lincoln on the zeal and ability of the prosecution, and remarked: “Why, when the country was young, and I was stronger than I am now, I didn’t mind packing off a sheep now and again, but stealing hens!” The good man’s scorn could not find words to express his opinion of a man who would steal hens.

 

HE “BROKE” TO WIN.

A lawyer, who was a stranger to Mr. Lincoln, once expressed to General Linder the opinion that Mr. Lincoln’s practice of telling stories to the jury was a waste of time.

“Don’t lay that flattering unction to your soul,” Linder answered; “Lincoln is like Tansey’s horse, he ‘breaks to win.’”

 

WANTED HER CHILDREN BACK.

On the 3rd of January, 1863, “Harper’s Weekly” appeared with a cartoon representing Columbia indignantly demanding of President Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton that they restore to her those of her sons killed in battle. Below the picture is the reading matter:

COLUMBIA: “Where are my 15,000 sons—murdered at Fredericksburg?”

LINCOLN: “This reminds me of a little joke—”

COLUMBIA: “Go tell your joke at Springfield!!”

The battle of Fredericksburg was fought on December 13th, 1862, between General Burnside, commanding the Army of the Potomac, and General Lee’s force. The Union troops, time and again, assaulted the heights where the Confederates had taken position, but were driven back with frightful losses. The enemy, being behind breastworks, suffered comparatively little. At the beginning of the fight the Confederate line was broken, but the result of the engagement was disastrous to the Union cause. Burnside had one thousand one hundred and fifty-two killed, nine thousand one hundred and one wounded, and three thousand two hundred and thirty-four missing, a total of thirteen thousand seven hundred and seventy-one. General Lee’s losses, all told, were not much more than five thousand men.

Burnside had succeeded McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac, mainly, it was said, through the influence of Secretary of War Stanton. Three months before, McClellan had defeated Lee at Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the War, Lee’s losses footing up more than thirteen thousand men. At Fredericksburg, Burnside had about one hundred and twenty thousand men; at Antietam, McClellan had about eighty thousand. It has been maintained that Burnside should not have fought this battle, the chances of success being so few.

 

SIX FEET FOUR AT SEVENTEEN.

“Abe’s” school teacher, Crawford, endeavored to teach his pupils some of the manners of the “polite society” of Indiana—1823 or so. This was a part of his system:

One of the pupils would retire, and then come in as a stranger, and another pupil would have to introduce him to all the members of the school n what was considered “good manners.”

As “Abe” wore a linsey-woolsey shirt, buckskin breeches which were too short and very tight, and low shoes, and was tall and awkward, he no doubt created considerable merriment when his turn came. He was growing at a fearful rate; he was fifteen years of age, and two years later attained his full height of six feet four inches.

 

HAD RESPECT FOR THE EGGS.

Early in 1831, “Abe” was one of the guests of honor at a boat-launching, he and two others having built the craft. The affair was a notable one, people being present from the territory surrounding. A large party came from Springfield