Voices from the Past Part 138

One more thought:

My mother was the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hawks, and a well-bred Virginia farmer. G.o.d bless her; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her. I believe that I inherited extra drive from her unfortunate background.

That drive stands me in good stead.

Executive Mansion

June 10, 1863

I have experienced death many times. My aunt, my uncle, my brother's death. Then my mother's death of milk sickness. Such suffering. I whittled the pegs for her coffin. I can see her grave outside our cabin. I could see it each time we opened the door. In the spring and often during the summer I placed flowers on her grave.

She loved lilacs and roses. Her kindness lingers on.

Friends called her a woodland madonna.

Later, when my step-mother came, her love was felt by each one of us.

"Let me help you, Abe. Let me strain the milk tonight...you're tired. What a big stack of wood you've cut for us, son. That should last a while!"

She could handle an ax. She could lug a sack of flour.

When wolves howled, she'd lean over me and say a few words or kiss my forehead. When my shoulders ached she rubbed them with bear grease.

"If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take," is a prayer she taught me.

Sometimes we planted pumpkin seeds together, on a nearby slope. She was faster than I. Again and again, she urged me to attend school. Each time we moved, she located the nearest schoolhouse. "You've got to go, Abe."

I used to read to her.

She liked Aesop's Fables best. We'd sit in the evening sun and lean against the side of the cabin and I would read. We learned the fables quickly. Her favorite fable was "The Wolf and the Crane." In those days, my favorite was "The Snake and a File."

The White House

June 12, 1863

Often, when I am alone and tired, I remember the hot sun of the prairie summer, how it seems to hold down everything as far as the eye can see. I remember how it climbed almost every morning-like a wheel.

I remember the squeaking of leather as my horse pulled his plow; there was small corn growing nearby, in field after field. There were birds.

There is a biting sense of loss, looking into the past: we know this is something that can never take place again. We know, too, that we can resurrect ourselves, sometimes pleasurably. Today, I esteem those glimpses that rea.s.sure me, in spite of their pa.s.sing. Without them I think life would be so overcome by the present it would be difficult to continue living.

The better life should be everyman's goal, a life that is not eaten up by toil, a life where there is freedom for thought, freedom for action. Men should be able to draw from the past; men should be able to construct for the present, a plan. Man should have time to evolve for himself and posterity-a heritage evoking pride leading to achievement that makes life worth living.

The White House

June 20, 1863

Some of my happy days were pa.s.sed in East Salem, when I was an Illinois postmaster. Since the mail arrived only twice a week, I could peruse the Louisville Journal and the Intelligencer. I think there were about twenty-five families living in Salem in those days. I enjoyed delivering the mail personally; there was ample time to be friendly. So, I stuffed the letters inside my hat and walked from house to house. I got to know everybody that way. Summers were easy times. Remembering those summers they seem to stretch in a long line, with groves and fis.h.i.+ng spots here and there.

I remember a huge boulder where I used to sit. Probably I had delivered my last letter. A rabbit liked to sit near me. I would shut my eyes and appreciate the greatness of life in the rabbit, in the trees around me, in the wind-the greatness that existed in my mother's life.

June 24, 1863

At the Burkes' home, not far from the post office, I rented a room. The Burkes, who are Quakers, a family of two, put themselves out for me, and gave me an upstairs room with a lamp. At night I got out needle and thread and mended my clothes, or, sitting in a leather chair, I read. Charles Burke and I fas.h.i.+oned that chair.

He lent me pen and ink, and I was able to practice penmans.h.i.+p-copying from a spelling book; it seemed great fun to me to spell out words, so much easier than working with an ax. Mrs. Burke's tabby, grey and fat, liked to keep me company, flipping a paw at the M's and L's.

In Salem I fell into debt.

When my partner died, my partner in the grocery business, I a.s.sumed his indebtedness-$1,000. It took me years to wipe out that sum, as huge as the national debt.

I shucked corn, cradled wheat, chopped wood, ferryboated, clerked...$2.00 here, $5.00 here, $7.00 here. My debit column required all of my scheming. While I struggled to pay that thousand dollars I resolved to lay aside something as a cus.h.i.+on, but it was many years before I could carry out that resolution. Those were pinching times.

Executive Mansion

June 25, 1863

At Number 4, Hoffman's Row, we had our law office, second floor, a narrow room with a pair of elegant bra.s.s spittoons, a Pennsylvania wood burning stove. High on the wall, above my desk, hung an engraving of Benjamin Franklin. Our rough center table was usually overloaded with doc.u.ments-like some outlandish mule. Legal books and newspapers filled shelves. A narrow window faced the street; another window let in sunlight. The elements washed them. The floor was bare oak but we had a fine a.s.sortment of chairs. There was a lounge near the sunny window and I liked to stretch out there, on the s.h.a.ggy buffalo hide.

Billy Herndon and I had that s.h.i.+ngle, good natured Billy. Here we talked business, c.o.c.kfights, women, and horse races. For sixteen years we kept at it, learning, unlearning. For every stick of wood we burned in that Pennsylvania stove we had an ardent opinion.

Billy and I earned about $3,000 or $4,000, good for a town that already had eleven lawyers. Springfield, in those days, offered better legal services than sidewalks.

Pigs in the streets, mud on our boots-so it went. We offered our services at all hours of the day. Often I never walked home for lunch. When I rode circuit, Billy kept house. The wren that lived in a box outside our door had a neater establishment than ours, but, she was not a member of the state legislature.

The White House

July 3rd, 1863

During my political career, I have striven to be astute where slavery is concerned. The issue of slavery has been a sensitive one, always difficult. Anti-slavery sentiment has been in existence no matter where I lived, usually undercover. The Baptist preacher I listened to as a boy was anti-slavery. I believed him. I saw blacks in chains, men and women. I soon learned about the cruelty that menaced their lives, destroyed their lives; I felt that I could, if I lived long enough, thwart slavery, perhaps abolish it, make our great nation a free nation.

Patience, I repeated again and again to myself. I knew about Linda Mae. She was bound to William Wison for ninety-nine years. She was nineteen when that legal doc.u.ment was signed. When she reached 118 years she would be free. Patience?

Slavery was an old inst.i.tution in Illinois, winked at in the 30's and 40's. The first governor of the state possessed slaves. I have seen human beings herded and treated like animals. Our family moved from Kentucky, troubled by the ways of slavery. My black clients sometimes confided in me, described, underlined, the devious trickeries of the whites. Billy, my Springfield barber, had tales to tell. I have heard them as he shaved me or trimmed my hair.

I am slow to learn, and slow to forget. My mind is like a piece of steel-very hard to scratch anything on it, and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.