The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln Part 10

HOW HE WON THE NAME OF "HONEST ABE"

Abe Lincoln could not endure the thought of cheating any one, even though it had been done unintentionally. One day a woman bought a bill of goods in Offutt's store amounting to something over two dollars. She paid Abe the money and went away satisfied. That night, on going over the sales of the day, Abe found that he had charged the woman six and one-fourth cents too much. After closing the store, though it was late, he could not go home to supper or to bed till he had restored that sixpence to its proper owner. She lived more than two miles away, but that did not matter to Abe Lincoln. When he had returned the money to the astonished woman he walked back to the village with a long step and a light heart, content with doing his duty.

Another evening, as he was closing the store, a woman came in for a half-pound of tea. He weighed it out for her and took the pay. But early next morning, when he came to "open up," he found the four-ounce weight instead of the eight-ounce on the scales, and inferred that he had given that woman only half as much tea as he had taken the money for. Of course, the woman would never know the difference, and it meant walking several miles and back, but the honest clerk weighed out another quarter pound of tea, locked the store and took that long walk before breakfast.

As a "const.i.tutional" it must have been a benefit to his health, for it satisfied his sensitive conscience and soothed his tender heart to "make good" in that way.

Drink and misdirected enthusiasm interfered with Denton Offutt's success. After about a year in New Salem he "busted up," as the neighbors expressed it, and left his creditors in the lurch. Among them was the clerk he had boasted so much about. For a short time Abe Lincoln needed a home, and found a hearty welcome with Jack Armstrong, the best fighter of Clary's Grove!

J. G. Holland wrote, in his "Life of Abraham Lincoln," of the young man's progress during his first year in New Salem:

"The year that Lincoln was in Denton Offutt's store was one of great advance. He had made new and valuable acquaintances, read many books, won mult.i.tudes of friends, and become ready for a step further in advance. Those who could appreciate brains respected him, and those whose ideas of a man related to his muscles were devoted to him. It was while he was performing the work of the store that he acquired the nickname, 'Honest Abe'--a characterization that he never dishonored, an abbreviation that he never outgrew. He was everybody's friend, the best-natured, the most sensible, the best-informed, the most modest and una.s.suming, the kindest, gentlest, roughest, strongest, best fellow in all New Salem and the region round about."

CHAPTER XI

POLITICS, WAR, STOREKEEPING AND STUDYING LAW

STUDYING GRAMMAR FIRST

By "a step still further in advance" Dr. Holland must have meant the young clerk's going into politics. He had made many friends in New Salem, and they reflected back his good-will by urging him to run for the State Legislature. Before doing this he consulted Mentor Graham, the village schoolmaster, with whom he had worked as election clerk when he first came to the place. Abe could read, write and cipher, but he felt that if he should succeed in politics, he would disgrace his office and himself by not speaking and writing English correctly.

The schoolmaster advised: "If you expect to go before the public in any capacity, I think the best thing you can do is to study English grammar."

"If I had a grammar I would commence now," sighed Abe.

Mr. Graham thought one could be found at Vaner's, only six miles away.

So Abe got up and started for it as fast as he could stride. In an incredibly short time he returned with a copy of Kirkham's Grammar, and set to work upon it at once. Sometimes he would steal away into the woods, where he could study "out loud" if he desired. He kept up his old habit of sitting up nights to read, and as lights were expensive, the village cooper allowed him to stay in his shop, where he burned the shavings and studied by the blaze as he had done in Indiana, after every one else had gone to bed. So it was not long before young Lincoln, with the aid of Schoolmaster Graham, had mastered the principles of English grammar, and felt himself better equipped to enter politics and public life. Some of his rivals, however, did not trouble themselves about speaking and writing correctly.

GOING INTO POLITICS

James Rutledge, a "substantial" citizen, and the former owner of Rutledge's mill and dam, was the president of the New Salem debating club. Young Lincoln joined this society, and when he first rose to speak, everybody began to smile in antic.i.p.ation of a funny story, but Abe proceeded to discuss the question before the house in very good form. He was awkward in his movements and gestures at first, and amused those present by thrusting his unwieldy hands deep into his pockets, but his arguments were so well-put and forcible that all who heard him were astonished.

Mr. Rutledge, that night after Abe's maiden effort at the lyceum, told his wife:

"There is more in Abe Lincoln's head than mere wit and fun. He is already a fine speaker. All he needs is culture to fit him for a high position in public life."

But there were occasions enough where something besides culture was required. A man who was present and heard Lincoln's first real stump speech describes his appearance and actions in the following picturesque language:

"He wore a mixed jean coat, clawhammer style, short in the sleeves and bob-tail--in fact, it was so short in the tail that he could not sit upon it--flax and tow linen pantaloons, and a straw hat. I think he wore a vest, but do not remember how it looked. He wore pot metal (top) boots.

"His maiden effort on the stump was a speech on the occasion of a public sale at Pappyville, a village eleven miles from Springfield. After the sale was over and speechmaking had begun, a fight--a 'general fight' as one of the bystanders relates--ensued, and Lincoln, noticing one of his friends about to succ.u.mb to the attack of an infuriated ruffian, interposed to prevent it. He did so most effectually. Hastily descending from the rude platform, he edged his way through the crowd, and seizing the bully by the neck and the seat of his trousers, threw him by means of his great strength and long arms, as one witness stoutly insists, 'twelve feet away.' Returning to the stand, and throwing aside his hat, he inaugurated his campaign with the following brief and juicy declaration:

"'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 national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same.'"

The only requirement for a candidate for the Illinois Legislature in 1832 was that he should announce his "sentiments." This Lincoln did, according to custom, in a circular of about two thousand words, rehearsing his experiences on the Sangamon River and in the community of New Salem. For a youth who had just turned twenty-three, who had never been to school a year in his life, who had no political training, and had never made a political speech, it was a bold and dignified doc.u.ment, closing as follows:

"Considering the great degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already been presuming more than becomes me. However, upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them, but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether this is true or not, I can say for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the country; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor on me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

"CAPTAIN LINCOLN"

Lincoln had hardly launched in his first political venture when, in April, 1832, a messenger arrived in New Salem with the announcement from Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, that the Sacs and other hostile tribes, led by Black Hawk, had invaded the northern part of the State, spreading terror among the white settlers in that region. The governor called upon those who were willing to help in driving back the Indians to report at Beardstown, on the Illinois River, within a week.

Lincoln and other Sangamon County men went at once to Richmond where a company was formed. The princ.i.p.al candidate for captain was a man named Kirkpatrick, who had treated Lincoln shabbily when Abe, in one of the odd jobs he had done in that region, worked in Kirkpatrick's sawmill.

The employer had agreed to buy his hired man a cant-hook for handling the heavy logs. As there was a delay in doing this, Lincoln told him he would handle the logs without the cant-hook if Kirkpatrick would pay him the two dollars that implement would cost. The employer promised to do this, but never gave him the money.

So when Lincoln saw that Kirkpatrick was a candidate for the captaincy, he said to Greene, who had worked with him in Offutt's store:

"Bill, I believe I can make Kirkpatrick pay me that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook now. I guess I'll run against him for captain."

Therefore Abe Lincoln announced himself as a candidate. The vote was taken in an odd way. It was announced that when the men heard the command to march, each should go and stand by the man he wished to have for captain. The command was given. At the word, "March," three-fourths of the company rallied round Abe Lincoln. More than twenty-five years afterward, when Lincoln was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, he referred to himself in the third person in describing this incident, saying that he was elected "to his own surprise," and "he says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction."

IGNORANCE OF MILITARY TACTICS

But Lincoln was a "raw hand" at military tactics. He used to enjoy telling of his ignorance and the expedients adopted in giving his commands to the company. Once when he was marching, twenty men abreast, across a field it became necessary to pa.s.s through a narrow gateway into the next field. He said:

"I could not, for the life of me, remember the word for getting the company _endwise_ so that it could go through the gate; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the fence.'"

A HISTORIC MYSTERY EXPLAINED

Captain Lincoln had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits.

Many have wondered that a man of Lincoln's intelligence should have been guilty of this stupid infraction of ordinary army regulations.

Biographers of Lincoln puzzled over this until the secret was explained by William Turley Baker, of Bolivia, Ill., at the Lincoln Centenary in Springfield. All unconscious of solving a historic mystery, "Uncle Billy" Baker related the following story which explains that the shooting was purely accidental:

"My father was roadmaster general in the Black Hawk War. Lincoln used to come often to our house and talk it all over with father, when I was a boy, and I've heard them laugh over their experiences in that war. The best joke of all was this: Father received orders one day to throw log bridges over a certain stream the army had to cross. He felled some tall, slim black walnuts--the only ones he could find there--and the logs were so smooth and round that they were hard to walk on any time.

This day it rained and made them very slippery. Half of the soldiers fell into the stream and got a good ducking. Captain Lincoln was one of those that tumbled in. He just laughed and scrambled out as quick as he could. He always made the best of everything like that.

"Well, that evening when the company came to camp, some of them had dog tents--just a big canvas sheet--and the boys laughed to see Lincoln crawl under one of them little tents. He was so long that his head and hands and feet stuck out on all sides. The boys said he looked just like a big terrapin. After he had got himself stowed away for the night, he remembered that he hadn't cleaned his pistol, after he fell into the creek.

"So he backed out from under his canvas sh.e.l.l and started to clean it out. It was what was called a bulldog pistol, because it had a blunt, short muzzle. Abe's forefinger was long enough to use as a ramrod for it. But before he began operations he snapped the trigger and, to his astonishment, the thing went off!

"Pretty soon an orderly came along in great haste, yellin', 'Who did that?--Who fired that shot?' Some of the men tried to send the orderly along about his business, making believe the report was heard further on, but Lincoln he wouldn't stand for no such deception, spoken or unspoken. 'I did it,' says he, beginning to explain how it happened.

"You see, his legs was so blamed long, and he must have landed on his feet, in the creek, and got out of the water without his pistol getting wet, 'way up there in his weskit!

"But he had to pay the penalty just the same, for they took his sword away from him for several days. You see, he was a captain and ought to 'a' set a good example in military discipline."

HOW CAPTAIN LINCOLN SAVED AN INDIAN'S LIFE