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Why We Love Lincoln

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<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2> After the war of 1812, which was fought while Lincoln was in his rude Kentucky cradle, the continental spirit of the American people gradually rose to a high pitch, which was intensified in 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine was born and the Holy Alliance—not to say all Europe—was warned against armed interference with even the humblest republic of the Western Hemisphere. A new sense of power inspired swaggering, bragging American politics. So the Greeks bragged when Alexander overthrew Persia; so Christendom bragged when Charles Martel smashed the Saracens and made possible the Empire of Charlemagne; so the British bragged after Trafalgar and Waterloo; so the Puritans bragged when Cromwell struck off the head of King Charles. 40 The boastful spirit of America was encouraged by spread-eagle statesmen in blue coats, brass buttons and buff waistcoats, who spoke as though history began at Bunker Hill. Andrew Jackson, whose frontiersmen had thrashed the trained British regiments at New Orleans, had succeeded John Quincy Adams, the polished Harvard professor, in the White House. It was a time of grand talk. The People—with a capital P—puffed out their unterrified bosoms and made faces at the miserable rulers of Europe. It was brave and honest, this strutting, defiant democracy, but it took Charles Dickens some years later to show us the ridiculous side of it, even though he went too far. “Do you suppose I am such a d—d fool as to think myself fit for President of the United States? No, sir!” was Jackson’s estimate of himself in 1823. Yet there was the rough old hero in Washington’s chair at last. 41 Hayne had talked in the United States Senate of nullifying the nation’s laws in South Carolina, and Webster had thundered back his majestic defence of the indivisible Union. Then South Carolina had attempted nullification and threatened secession, to be promptly answered by President Jackson with an effective promise of cold steel and powder, and a gruff hint of the hangman’s noose. Beyond the Allegheny Mountains were the new Western States, with unpaved towns, frantic land booms, tall talk, and hero-hearted men in coonskin caps pushing out with axes and rifles into the unsettled national territories. In the midst of this half-organized civilization Abraham Lincoln listened to the slowly swelling voices of conflict that came to him in his Illinois village from the Eastern and Southern States. The great scattered West longed for means of transportation. Railroads, canals,42 steamboats! They meant wealth and power to the pioneers and the shrieking speculators. The Whigs under Henry Clay promised to raise such a national revenue through a high protective tariff that a mighty surplus of money could be divided among the States to carry on internal improvements. Lincoln was a Whig. He was for a high tariff and internal improvements. Had he not personally piloted a steamboat from Cincinnati between the crooked and overgrown banks of the Sangamon River, and had not the imagination of that country taken fire as the vessel reached Springfield? Railroads, canals, steamboats! And no recognition yet of the issue of disunion that was to shake the continent and drench it with blood. After the return from the Black Hawk war Lincoln offered himself as a candidate for the Legislature. His handbill, addressed to the voters, dealt mainly with river navigation, railroads and usury. 43 “I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life,” he wrote. “I have no wealthy or popular relatives or friends to recommend me.” Lincoln knew that public. He made his first speech in “a mixed jeans coat, claw-hammer style, short in the sleeves and bob-tail; flax and tow-linen pantaloons, and a straw hat.” First, he jumped from the platform, caught a fighting rowdy by the neck and trousers, hurled him twelve feet away, remounted the platform, threw down his hat, and made his historic entrance into American politics in these words: “Fellow citizens: I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments44 and political principles. If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same.” There is the Lincoln we love—simple, genuine, direct! He seemed to feel to the day of his death that the public was not some distant abstraction, to be approached fearfully and crawlingly; but men like himself, with the same feelings and aspirations. It was because Lincoln hated shams and sneaks, and had the root of kindly honor in his nature, and because he saw, at the very bottom, all men more or less the same, that he reached the average American heart as no one has reached it before or since. He was humble enough—and humility is an inevitable result of moral and spiritual intelligence—to believe that the honesty he felt in himself stirred an equal honesty in others about him. He was defeated in the election, but that was the only time the people rejected him. Failure did not sour Lincoln. He took odd jobs about the village—Offutt’s had45 “petered out”—and for a time he considered the blacksmith’s trade. But presently he became a partner in a general store with an idle fellow named Berry, giving his note in payment of his share. He and his partner bought out still another unsuccessful store, paying for it with their notes. The end of it all was that their business failed and Lincoln had to shoulder a debt that made him stagger for many years. He was not a good merchant. His fondness for study made him neglect his store. Having secured copies of Blackstone and Chitty he spent his days and nights studying law. He would go to the great oak just outside of the door, lie on his back with his feet against the tree, and lose himself in Blackstone for hours. The store was a failure, and Lincoln went back to rail splitting and farm work. But his law books were always with him. No hardship, no disappointment, could persuade him to give up his pursuit of knowledge. 46 In 1833 he became postmaster of New Salem, often carrying the scanty mail about in his hat and reading the newspapers before he delivered them. Meanwhile John Calhoun, the Surveyor of Sangamon County, wanted an assistant, and he appointed the tall, story-telling, likeable postmaster to the place. Lincoln knew nothing of surveying, but in six weeks he got enough out of books to fit him for the work. His survey maps are still models of accuracy and intelligence. Once more he was a candidate for the Legislature, in 1834. This time he was elected. He had to borrow money to buy clothes in which to make his legislative appearance. <hr /> 47 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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