Lincoln, the unknown Read online

  But he was too hopeful, for the next time he went away on the circuit she called in another carpenter, got a lower estimate, and ordered the work done at once.

  When Lincoln returned to Springfield and walked down Eighth Street, he hardly recognized his own house. Meeting a friend, he inquired with mock seriousness, "Stranger, can you tell me where Mr. Lincoln lives?"

  His income from the law was not large; and he often had, as he put it, "hard scratching" to meet his bills. And now he had come home to find a large and unnecessary carpenter bill added to his burdens.

  It saddened him, and he said so.

  Mrs. Lincoln answered him in the only way that she knew how to react to a criticism—with an attack. She told him testily that he had no money sense, that he didn't know how to manage, that he didn't charge enough for his services.

  That was one of her favorite grievances, and many people would have backed her stand on that. The other attorneys were constantly irritated and annoyed by Lincoln's trifling charges, declaring that he was impoverishing the whole bar.

  As late as 1853, when Lincoln was forty-four years old and only eight years away from the White House, he handled four cases in the McLean Circuit Court for a total charge of thirty dollars.

  Many of his clients, he said, were as poor as he, and he didn't have the heart to charge them much.

  Once a man sent him twenty-five dollars; and Lincoln returned ten, saying he had been too liberal.

  In another instance, he prevented a swindler from getting hold of ten thousand dollars' worth of property owned by a demented girl. Lincoln won the case in fifteen minutes. An hour

  later, his associate, Ward Lamon, came to divide their fee of two hundred and fifty dollars. Lincoln rebuked him sternly. Lamon protested that the fee had been settled in advance, that the girl's brother was entirely satisfied to pay it.

  "That may be," Lincoln retorted, "but I am not satisfied. That money comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl; and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner. You return half this money at least, or I'll not take a cent of it as my share."

  In another instance, a pension agent had charged the widow of a Revolutionary soldier half the four hundred dollars to which her pension amounted, for getting her claim allowed. The old woman was bent with age, and in poverty. Lincoln had her sue the pension agent, won the case for her, and charged her nothing. Besides, he paid her hotel bill and gave her money to buy a ticket home.

  One day the Widow Armstrong came to Lincoln in great trouble. Her son Duff was charged with having murdered a man in a drunken brawl, and she pleaded with Abe to come and save the boy. Lincoln had known the Armstrongs back in New Salem. In fact, he had rocked Duff to sleep when he was a baby in the cradle. The Armstrongs had been a wild, rough lot; but Lincoln liked them. Jack Armstrong, Duff's father, had been the leader of the Clary's Grove Boys, and the renowned athlete whom Lincoln vanquished in a wrestling-match that has gone down in history.

  Old Jack was dead now. Lincoln gladly went before the jury and made one of the most moving and appealing addresses of his career, and saved the boy from the gallows.

  All the widowed mother had in the world was forty acres of land, which she offered to turn over to Lincoln.

  "Aunt Hannah," he said, "you took me in years ago when I was poor and homeless, and you fed me and mended my clothes, and I shan't charge you a cent now."

  Sometimes he urged his clients to settle out of court, and charged them nothing whatever for his advice. In one instance, he refused to take a judgment against a man, saying, "I am really sorry for him—poor and a cripple as he is."

  Such kindness and consideration, beautiful though it was, didn't bring in cash; so Mary Lincoln scolded and fretted. Her husband wasn't getting on in the world, while other lawyers were growing wealthy with their fees and investments. Judge

  David Davis, for example, and Logan. Yes, and Stephen A. Douglas. By investing in Chicago real estate, Douglas had amassed a fortune and even become a philanthropist, giving Chicago University ten acres of valuable land upon which to erect its buildings. Besides, he was now one of the most famous political leaders in the nation.

  How often Mary Lincoln thought of him, and how keenly she wished she had married him! As Mrs. Douglas she would be a social leader in Washington, wear Paris clothes, enjoy trips to Europe, dine with queens, and some day live in the White House. So she probably pictured herself in vain day-dreams.

  What was her future as Lincoln's wife? He would go on like this to the end: riding the circuit for six months out of the year, leaving her alone at home, lavishing no love on her, and giving her no attention. . . . How different, how poignantly different, the realities of life were from the romantic visions she had once dreamed at Madame Mentelle's in the long ago!

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  n most respects, as has been said, Mrs. Lincoln was economical, and took pride in the fact. She purchased supplies carefully and the table was set sparingly, very sparingly; there were just barely enough scraps left to feed the cats. The Lin-colns had no dog.

  She bought bottle after bottle of perfume, broke the seals, sampled them, and returned them, contendii g that they were inferior, that they had been misrepresented. She did this so often that the local druggist refused to honor her orders for more. His account-book may still be seen in Springfield with the penciled notations: "Perfume returned by Mrs. Lincoln."

  She frequently had trouble with the tradespeople. For example, she felt that Myers, the iceman, was cheating her with short weights; so she turned on him and berated him in such a shrill, loud voice that neighbors half a block away ran to their doors to look and listen.

  This was the second time she had made this accusation, and he swore that he would see her sizzling in hell before he would sell her another piece of ice.

  He meant it, and he stopped his deliveries. That was awkward. She had to have ice, and he was the only man in town who supplied it; so, for once in her life, Mary Lincoln humbled herself. But she didn't do it personally: she paid a neighbor a quarter to go downtown and salve over the wound and coax Myers to resume his deliveries.

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  One of Lincoln's friends started a little newspaper called "The Springfield Republican." He canvassed the town, and Lincoln subscribed for it. When the first copy was delivered at the door, Mary Todd was enraged. What! Another worthless paper? More money thrown away when she was trying so hard to save every penny! She lectured and scolded; and, in order to pacify her, Lincoln said that he had not ordered the paper to be delivered. That was literally true. He had merely said he would pay for a subscription. He hadn't specifically said he wanted it delivered. A lawyer's finesse!

  That evening, unknown to her husband, Mary Todd wrote a fiery letter, telling the editor what she thought of his paper, and demanding that it be discontinued.

  She was so insulting that the editor answered her publicly in a column of the paper, and then wrote Lincoln, demanding an explanation. Lincoln was so distressed by the publicity that he was positively ill. In humiliation, he wrote the editor, saying it was all a mistake, trying to explain as best he could.

  Once Lincoln wanted to invite his stepmother to spend Christmas at his home, but Mary Todd objected. She despised the old folks, and held Tom Lincoln and the Hanks tribe in profound contempt. She was ashamed of them, and Lincoln feared that even if they came to the house she wouldn't admit them. For twenty-three years his stepmother lived seventy miles away from Springfield, and he went to visit her, but she never saw the inside of his home.

  The only relative of his that ever visited him after his marriage was a distant cousin, Harriet Hanks, a sensible girl with a pleasing disposition. Lincoln was very fond of her and invited her to live at his home while she attended school in Springfield. Mrs. Lincoln not only made a servant of her but tried to turn her into a veritable household drudge. Lincoln rebelled at this, refused to countenance such rank injustice, and the whole thing resulted in a distressing scene.

>   She had incessant trouble with her "hired girls." One or two explosions of her fiery wrath, and they packed up and left, an unending stream of them. They despised her and warned their friends; so the Lincoln home was soon on the maids' black-list.

  She fumed and fussed and wrote letters about the "wild Irish" she had to employ. But all Irish became "wild" when they tried to work for her. She openly boasted that if she outlived her husband, she would spend the rest of her days in a

  Southern State. The people with whom she had been brought up, back in Lexington, did not put up with any impudence from their servants. If a Negro did not mind, he was sent forthwith to the whipping-post in the public square, to be flogged. One of the Todds' neighbors flogged six of his Negroes until they died.

  "Long Jake" was a well-known character in Springfield at that time. He had a span of mules and an old dilapidated wagon, and he ran what he vaingloriously described as an "express service." His niece, unfortunately, went to work for Mrs. Lincoln. A few days later, the servant and mistress quarreled; the girl threw off her apron, packed her trunk, and walked out of the house, slamming the (joor behind her.

  That afternoon, Long Jake drove his mules down to the corner of Eighth and Jackson streets and told Mrs. Lincoln that he had come for his niece's baggage. Mrs. Lincoln flew into a rage, abused him and his niece in bitter language, and threatened to strike him if he entered her house. Indignant, he rushed down to Lincoln's office and demanded that the poor man make his wife apologize.

  Lincoln listened to his story, and then said sadly:

  "I regret to hear this, but let me ask you in all candor, can't you endure for a few moments what I have had as my daily portion for the last fifteen years?"

  The interview ended in Long Jake's extending his sympathy to Lincoln and apologizing for having troubled him.

  Once Mrs. Lincoln kept a maid for more than two years, and the neighbors marveled; they could not understand it. The explanation was very simple: Lincoln had made a secret bargain with this one. When she first came, he took her aside and told her very frankly what she would have to endure; that he was sorry, but it couldn't be helped. The girl must ignore it. Lincoln promised her an extra dollar a week, himself, if she would do so.

  The outbursts went on as usual; but with her secret moral and monetary backing, Maria persisted. After Mrs. Lincoln had given her a tongue-lashing, Lincoln would watch his chance and steal out into the kitchen while the maid was alone and pat her on the shoulder, admonishing her:

  "That's right. Keep up your courage, Maria. Stay with her. Stay with her."

  This servant afterward married, and her husband fought

  under Grant. When Lee surrendered, Maria hurried to Washington to obtain her husband's immediate release, for she and her children were in want. Lincoln was glad to see her, and sat down and talked to her about old times. He wanted to invite her to stay for dinner, but Mary Todd wouldn't hear of it. He gave her a basket of fruit and money to buy clothes, and told her to call again the next day and he would provide her with a pass through the lines. But she didn't call, for that night he was assassinated.

  And so Mrs. Lincoln stormed on through the years, leaving in her wake a train of heartaches and hatred. At times she behaved as if insane.

  There was something a trifle queer about the Todd family; and since Mary's parents were cousins, perhaps this queer streak had been accentuated by inbreeding. Some people—among others, her own physician—feared she was suffering from an incipient mental disease.

  Lincoln bore it all with Christ-like patience, and seldom censured her. But his friends weren't so docile.

  Herndon denounced her as a "wildcat" and a "she wolf."

  Turner King, one of Lincoln's warmest admirers, described her as "a hellion, a she devil," and declared that he had seen her drive Lincoln out of the house time after time.

  John Hay, as secretary to the President in Washington, called her a short, ugly name that it is bqst not to print.

  The pastor of the Methodist Church in Springfield lived near the Lincoln house. He and Lincoln were friends; and his wife testified that the Lincolns "were very unhappy in their domestic life, and that Mrs. Lincoln was seen frequently to drive him from the house with a broomstick."

  James Gourley, who lived next door for sixteen years, declared that Mrs. Lincoln "had the devil in her," that she had hallucinations and carried on like a crazy woman, weeping and wailing until she could be heard all over the neighborhood, demanding that some one guard the premises, swearing that some rough character was going to attack her.

  Her outbursts of wrath grew more frequent, more fiery, with the passing of time. Lincoln's friends felt deeply sorry for him. He had no home life, and he never invited even his most intimate companions to dine with him—not even men like Herndon and Judge Davis. He was afraid of what might happen. He himself avoided Mary as much as possible, spending his eve-

  nings spinning yams with the other attorneys down at the law library or telling stories to a crowd of men in Diller's drugstore.

  Sometimes he was seen wandering alone, late at night, through unfrequented streets, his head on his chest, gloomy and funereal. Sometimes he said, "I hate to go home." A friend, knowing what was wrong, would take him to his house for the night.

  No one knew more than Herndon about the tragic home life of the Lincolns; and this is what Herndon had to say on pages 430-434 of the third volume of his Lincoln biography:

  Mr. Lincoln never had a confidant, and therefore never unbosomed himself to others. He never spoke of his trials to me or, so far as I knew, to any of his friends. It was a great burden to carry, but he bore it sadly enough and without a murmur. I could always realize when he was in distress, without being told. He was not exactly an early riser, that is, he never usually appeared at the office till about nine o'clock in the morning. I usually preceded him an hour. Sometimes, however, he would come down as early as seven o'clock—in fact, on one occasion I remember he came down before daylight. If, on arriving at the office, I found him in, I knew instantly that a breeze had sprung up over the domestic sea, and that the waters were troubled. He would either be lying on the lounge looking skyward, or doubled up in a chair with his feet resting on the sill of a back window. He would not look up on my entering, and only answered my "Good morning" with a grunt. I at once busied myself with pen and paper, or ran through the leaves of some book; but the evidence of his melancholy and distress was so plain, and his silence so significant, that I would grow restless myself, and finding some excuse to go to the court-house or elsewhere, would leave the room.

  The door of the office opening into a narrow hallway was half glass, with a curtain on it working on brass rings strung on wire. As I passed out on these occasions I would draw the curtain across the glass, and before I reached the bottom of the stairs I could hear the key turn in the lock, and Lincoln was alone in his gloom. An hour in the clerk's office at the court-house, an hour longer in a neighboring store having passed, I would return. By that time either a

  client had dropped in and Lincoln was propounding the law, or else the cloud of despondency had passed away, and he was busy in the recital of an Indiana story to whistle off the recollections of the morning's gloom. Noon having arrived I would depart homeward for my dinner. Returning within an hour, I would find him still in the office,— although his home stood but a few squares away,—lunching on a slice of cheese and a handful of crackers which, in my absence, he had brought up from a store below. Separating for the day at five or six o'clock in the evening, I would still leave him behind, either sitting on a box at the foot of the stairway, entertaining a few loungers, or killing time in the same way on the court-house steps. A light in the office after dark attested his presence there till late along in the night, when, after all the world had gone to sleep, the tall form of the man destined to be the nation's President could have seen strolling along in the shadows of trees and buildings, and quietly slipping in through the door of a modest frame hou
se, which it pleased the world, in a conventional way, to call his home.

  Some persons may insist that this picture is too highly colored. If so, I can only answer, they do not know the facts.

  Once Mrs. Lincoln attacked her husband so savagely, and kept it up so long, that even he—"with malice toward none; with charity for all"—even he lost his self-control, and seizing her by the arm, he forced her across the kitchen and pushed her toward the door, saying: "You're ruining my life. You're making a hell of this home. Now, damn you, you get out of it."

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  f Lincoln had married Ann Rutledge, in all probability he would have been happy, but he would not have been President. He was slow in thought and movement, and she was not the type that would have driven him to achieve political distinction. But Mary Todd, obsessed with an undying determination to live in the White House, was no sooner married to Lincoln than she had him out running for the Whig nomination for Congress.

  The battle was a fierce one; and, incredible as it seems, his political enemies accused him of being an infidel because he belonged to no church, and denounced him as a tool of wealth and aristocracy because he had affiliated himself through marriage with the haughty Todd and Edwards families. Ridiculous as the charges were, Lincoln realized that they might hurt him politically. So he answered his critics: "Only one of my relatives has ever visited me since I came to Springfield, and that one, before he got out of town, was accused of stealing a jew's-harp. Now, if that is being a member of a proud, aristocratic family, then I am guilty of the offense."