Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  In New Salem, Lincoln continued devouring newspapers, just as he had done in Indiana. Like many another merchant, he found this habit advantageous in business. He looked forward to the weekly arrival of the St. Louis Republican and Louisville Journal, two leading newspapers of the West. He particularly relished the Journal’s politics and wit, subscribing to it even when he lacked the money to buy decent clothes. Lincoln also regularly perused the Sangamo Journal, a Whig paper from nearby Springfield, which served as his political bible.

  Lincoln especially enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays and the poetry of Burns, Cowper, Gray, Pope, and Byron, though he subordinated such pleasure reading to his serious self-improvement studies. In Byron’s poems Lincoln evidently responded to the juxtaposition of brooding gloom and rollicking humor. He highly prized Pope’s “Essay on Man,” especially the following lines:

  All nature is but art unknown to thee;

  All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

  All discord, harmony not understood;

  All partial evil, universal good;

  And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

  One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.81

  Burns was Lincoln’s favorite. After studying hard for two or three hours in the evening, he would relax with a volume of his poems. He especially liked humorous verses like “Tom O’Shanter,” “Address to the Dial,” “Highland Mary,” “Bonny Jeane and Dr. Hornbrook,” “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” and “Epistle to a Young Friend,” which he memorized and recited with a Scottish accent. “Burns never touched a sentiment without carrying it to its ultimate expression and leaving nothing further to be said,” Lincoln declared.82 He may well have identified with Burns, a poor farm boy who grew up loathing the drudgery and ignorance of rural life; wrote satirical verse; cherished company, before whom he would tell stories and recite poetry; suffered from depression; and carried a book with him to read whenever he could find time. (Later, as an attorney riding the legal circuit, Lincoln always packed a volume of the Scottish poet in his saddlebags.)

  At times, melancholy would overtake Lincoln as he recalled his hardscrabble youth. In such a mood he read “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” by Burns, or Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” or a poem by William Cowper. Lincoln may have detected parallels between New Salem and the settings of Burns’s poetry. A New Salemite thought “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” would “describe many a prairie Cabin here.”83

  Lincoln also esteemed Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, particularly “The Raven,” which he repeated often. He also liked Poe’s short stories, notably “The Gold Bug” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

  Shakespeare brought Lincoln special pleasure. In New Salem he would sit on the banks of the Sangamon and quote the Bard of Avon with Jack Kelso, a sometime handyman and impractical devotee of poetry. He and Jack were constant companions, frequently seen conversing and arguing. Lincoln may have boarded with Kelso and his wife.

  After he left New Salem, Lincoln would regularly carry a copy of Shakespeare’s works with him when traveling. He liked above all Shakespeare’s political characters Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus. His favorite plays were Hamlet and Macbeth. As president, he told an actor that he had read and reread Shakespeare “perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader.”84

  Lincoln had little use for novels; he once told Henry Whitney “that he had never read a novel clear through.”85 But that was not quite the case, for he is known to have read Nathaniel Beverly Tucker’s George Balcombe: A Novel, published in 1836, and to have recommended it to Abner Y. Ellis. Ellis in turn lent him plays by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, James Kenney, and John M. Morton.

  Lincoln’s course of self-improvement drew him into the meetings of the Literary and Debating Society in New Salem, presided over by the warm, generous, and sociable James Rutledge. When Lincoln first spoke before the group in the winter of 1831–1832, standing with his hands in his pockets, everyone expected him to tell a funny story. To their amazement, he focused seriously on the question before the society. As he proceeded, he awkwardly gestured to emphasize his points, which were so convincing that they astonished his largely uneducated audience. After the meeting, Rutledge told his wife that “there was more in Abe’s head than wit and fun, that he was already a fine speaker; that all he lacked was culture to enable him to reach the high destiny which he Knew was in store for him.”86 As Lincoln gained more experience speaking at these unpretentious meetings, sometimes held in a vacant storeroom, he displayed the logic, intelligence, and spontaneity that would make him the most formidable debater in the New Salem area. David Burner recalled that arguments “seemed to come right out of him without study or long preparation.”87

  Lincoln’s skills as a debater may have been honed by Mentor Graham, whose forte as a teacher was elocution. The schoolmaster would have his charges repeat a sentence twenty or more times until they had delivered it properly. Quite possibly he had Lincoln perform such exercises.

  No records of Rutledge’s debating club survive, but those of some nearby clubs have been preserved. Those organizations usually met once a month, had rules about such things as orderly behavior and strictures against invoking God in argument, and often required that members participate in debate, declamation, composition, criticism, and lecturing. Anonymous papers were solicited and read aloud at meetings, though the bylaws of the Rock Creek Lyceum stipulated that an “anonymous reader shall examine the contents of his box, and on finding any obscene documents by this act be empowered to burn them without further ceremony.” Order did not always prevail. At least one of these clubs, the Rock Creek Lyceum, had its meeting broken up by roughnecks. Fittingly, at the time they were debating the question, “Which is the greatest evil which the human family is infested with?” Because of the disruption, however, they adjourned before reaching a verdict.88 Debate topics from this period in Illinois included what should be done with free blacks if slavery were abolished and whether or not slavery had been beneficial. There were also debates on public works, temperance, banking, public land policy, marriage, and woman’s voting and education. During his political career, Lincoln would address many of these issues.

  Lincoln’s studies progressed well at New Salem, but his career as a clerk did not, primarily because the flighty Offutt neglected the store. In early 1832, the store failed, leaving Lincoln and Maltby unemployed. Such misfortune was common on the frontier. As a resident of central Illinois observed in 1835, “Merchandizing is a tolerably good business, for those who understand it well, and have a sufficient capital to meet all of their engagements. We have but a few such merchants here however, and consequently merchandizing among the Suckers [i.e., Illinoisans] is considered rather a dangerous business.”89

  At this time, Vincent A. Bogue, owner of a store and mill near Springfield, announced that he would cut freight rates in half by bringing a steamboat, The Talisman, to Springfield. Farmers could use it to ship their crops cheaply to St. Louis and New Orleans; merchants, mechanics, and professional men also stood to gain. Lincoln and Maltby, out of work after the failure of Offutt’s store, saw an opportunity to make New Salem a shipping point for the new steamer. They bought a large log building, which they planned to use for storing and forwarding merchandise and crops. Bogue hired Lincoln and others to clear the channel of the Sangamon. In March the little vessel reached New Salem, where part of its cargo was stored at Lincoln and Maltby’s warehouse, and proceeded upriver as far as Portland Landing, a few miles from Springfield.

  Just as success seemed within reach, the water level began to drop, forcing the Talisman, on which Lincoln served as assistant pilot, to turn back. The boat retreated slowly in the face of stiff prairie winds, making only 3 or 4 miles a day. A sense of déjà vu may have overcome Lincoln when the vessel stuck on the same New Salem mill-dam that had snagged his flatboat a year earlier. By this time, the boat was in sad shape, with the cabin and
upper portions severely damaged by trees overhanging the sluggish river. The crew tore away part of the dam and retreated ignominiously to Beardstown, their mission a failure. After pocketing his $40 fee, Lincoln trudged back to New Salem, where his warehousing business met the same melancholy fate as Offutt’s store.

  Black Hawk War Service

  When Lincoln returned from Beardstown, he found New Salem astir with excitement over brewing trouble. Chief Black Hawk had led 800 members of the so-called British Band of Sauk and Mesquakie (or Fox) tribes across the Mississippi to repossess lands in northern Illinois that they had earlier ceded to the U.S. government. Governor John Reynolds called up the militia. Before the Black Hawk War would end in August, 10,000 state militiamen, aided by one-third of the U.S. regular army, would spend $2 million to chase several hundred Indian warriors from Illinois. Seventy-two whites and 600 to 1,000 Indians were killed.

  On April 21, 1832, Lincoln and sixty-seven others from the New Salem area responded to the call-up. Militiamen chose their own officers, and a prosperous sawmill owner, William Kirkpatrick, was confident that he would be elected the company captain. To his intense disappointment, however, the volunteers preferred Lincoln instead. Alhough Lincoln was reluctant to stand for the office, his friends grabbed him, pushed him forward, and lined up behind him to indicate their choice. Few stood behind Kirkpatrick, who was crushed by the result. Lincoln gleefully exclaimed to William G. Greene, “I’ll be damned, Bill, but I’ve beat him!”90 This first electoral victory of his life, Lincoln wrote in 1859, was “a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since.”91

  Lincoln’s unit, the Fourth Illinois Regiment of Mounted Volunteers, part of General Samuel Whiteside’s brigade, included some Clary’s Grove boys. One of its members described the Fourth as “the hardest set of men he ever saw.”92 The poet William Cullen Bryant portrayed them as “a hard-looking set of men, unkempt and unshaved, wearing shirts of dark calico, and sometimes calico capotes.”93

  Lincoln’s toughness, fairness, and native ingenuity made him an effective officer, although not everything went smoothly for him. When he issued his first order as captain, he was told, “Go to the devil, sir!”94 He may have had some rudimentary militia training in Indiana, but he knew little of military practice and terminology. One day as he was drilling his troops, he wanted them to pass through a gate, but he could not recall the command for having them turn endwise for that purpose. So he improvised, shouting out: “This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate!”95

  Lincoln served three brief tours of duty from late April to mid-July, but was disappointed that he saw no combat in the Black Hawk War. He had occasion, however, to witness its horrors. During his first tour, as captain of the Fourth Illinois, he marched west to the Illinois River, then north to the Mississippi, and finally to Rock Island, where he and his men were officially mustered into U.S. service. They proceeded up the Rock River to Dixon’s Ferry, then south to Ottawa, where they were disbanded, but not before they had observed casualties. On May 15 Lincoln and his men found the corpses of eleven soldiers, “all scalped some with the heads cut off[,] Many with their throats cut and otherwise Barbourously Mutilated.” These were casualties of the battle at Stillman’s Run, where a small band of Indians had routed a much larger militia force.96 A week later near Ottawa, Lincoln and his men discovered the mutilated bodies of women and children hanging upside down. A member of Lincoln’s company reported, “We Saw the Scalps they had taken—scalps of old women & children.… The Indians Scalped an old Grand Mother—Scalped her—hung her scalp on a ram rod—that it might be seen & aggravate the whites—They cut one woman open—hung a child that they had murdered in the woman[’]s belly that they had gutted—strong men wept at this—hard hearted men Cried.”97 In this charged atmosphere, Lincoln showed courage when his company grew visibly alarmed at a threat posed by a large force of Indians. He was riding a borrowed horse at the time, and though it was more dangerous to march along with his men rather than remain in the saddle, Lincoln sought out the horse’s owner, returned it, and took his chances on the ground.

  At the end of May, after a month’s service, the 1,400-man volunteer army disbanded. Only 300 of them—Lincoln included—reenlisted. For the other 1,100, army life had turned out to be less agreeable than they had anticipated. They insisted on returning home for, they claimed, their enlistment was nearly up, they had to tend their crops and business back home, and they had not enlisted simply to chase Indians across Wisconsin. Moreover, they found their commanding officers inadequate, especially General Sam Whiteside, a legendary hand-to-hand fighter but a failure as a brigade commander. He knew little of tactics and would not take charge of his men.

  Lincoln reenlisted because, as he put it, “I was out of work, and there being no danger of more fighting, I could do nothing better.”98 He joined Elijah Isles’s company of sixty-one other officers from the original force. (Lincoln was mustered into U.S. service by Lt. Robert Anderson, who in 1861 would command Fort Sumter when it fell to the Confederacy.) The company formed part of a cavalry force charged with protecting the frontier until a new army could be raised. They scouted in northern Illinois, reassuring settlers and menacing Black Hawk as best they could. While undertaking a risky mission to Galena, they paused to bury the victims of yet another massacre.

  On June 20, Lincoln volunteered for his final tour as a private in Dr. Jacob Early’s Independent Spy Company, a thirty-six-man outfit that primarily conveyed messages and conducted reconnaissance. On one occasion, the men came upon the corpses of several troops killed at Kellogg’s Grove and buried them, using their hatchets and hands to dig graves. Lincoln described the scene vividly: “The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay, heads towards us, on the ground, and every man had a round red spot on the top of his head, about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque, and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over.”99 (In 1860, Lincoln’s political opponents would belittle Early’s unit as useless, claiming that it was held in “general disrepute with men and officers of every other part of the army.”)100

  Military life had its sociable moments for Lincoln and his mates. When not marching, they held footraces, swam, wrestled, played checkers, chess, and cards, and listened to Lincoln as he regaled them with his vast repertoire of stories. They baked bread on ramrods, ate fried meat off of elm bark, and ground coffee in tin cups with their hatchet handles. Of a ration of chickens Lincoln said, “They are much like eating saddle bags,” then added, “but I think the stomach can accomplish much to day.”101 Lincoln was elected water bearer, a post he readily accepted in part because it exempted him from less agreeable chores such as cooking or gathering wood. During his three-week stint with the spy battalion, he and John Todd Stuart joined others in search of feminine companionship at Galena. Stuart, who came to know Lincoln well in the Black Hawk War, recollected that they “went to the hoar houses—Gen [James D.] Henry went—his magnetism drew all the women to himself—All went purely for fun—devilment—nothing Else.”102 All in all, Stuart remembered, he and Lincoln “had a first rate time on this campaign—we were well provided—the whole thing was a sort of frolic.”103

  Lincoln’s cheerful, agreeable nature stood him in good stead. According to Stuart, “Lincoln had no military qualities whatever except that he was a good clever fellow and kept the esteem and respect of his men. He made a very good Captain.”104 As an officer, Lincoln looked out for his men. When a regular army officer insisted that his own troops must enjoy preferment in rations and pay and then ordered Lincoln to perform an unauthorized act, he reluctantly obeyed. But he protested: “Sir—you forget that we are not under the rules and regulations of the war department at Washington—we are only volunteers under the orders & Regulations of Illinois. Keep in your own sphere & there will be no difficulty, but resistance will hereafter be made t
o your injust orders & further my men must be Equal in all particulars in rations—arms—camps &c to the regular Army.” Acknowledging that Lincoln’s complaint was just and realizing that he was determined to have his men treated fairly, the officer thereafter saw to it that the volunteers received the same treatment as the regulars. Lincoln’s action endeared him to most of his men.105

  Lincoln was not popular with everyone, however. His superiors disciplined him for firing his pistol near the camp and for allowing his troops to become drunk. In the first instance, he was arrested for a day, and in the second, he was made to carry a wooden sword for two days. Years later some privates in the company that he commanded disparaged Lincoln’s leadership to a Democratic historian and Confederate veteran, John F. Snyder, who reported that they “never spoke in malice of Lincoln, but always in the spirit of ridicule. They regarded him as a joke, an absurdity, and had serious doubts of his courage. Any old woman, they said, would have made a more creditable commander of a company than he did. Profoundly ignorant of military matters, and, from fear of losing his popularity, he made no pretense, or effort, to enforce discipline, or control his men in any way.”106

  In fact, Lincoln occasionally defied his men. One day an old Indian entered the camp, bearing a note signed by Secretary of War Lewis Cass attesting to his good character. Several troops menaced him, swearing that they had volunteered to fight Indians and that they intended to do so now. Lincoln interposed himself between them and the Indian, saying: “Men this must not be done—he must not be shot and killed by us.” Even when some accused the man of being a spy, Lincoln would not budge.

  “This is cowardly on your part Lincoln,” a comrade charged.