Part 2

“‘Was there much talk about his bein’ killed?’ Well, there’s an awful lot of fools in this world and when they don’t git what they want they’re always for killin’ somebody. Mr. Lincoln never let on, but I reckon his mail was pretty lively readin’ sometimes. He got pictures of gallows and pistols and other things and lots of threats, so they said. I don’t think that worried him much. He was more bothered seein’ old Buchanan givin’ the game away. ‘I wish I could have got down there before the horse was stole,’ I heard him say onct in here, talkin’ to some men. ‘But I reckon I can find the tracks when I do git there.’ It was his cabinet bothered him most, I always thought. He didn’t know the men he’d got to take well enough. Didn’t know how far he could count on ’em. He and Judge Gillespie and one or two others was in here one day sittin’ by the stove talkin,’ and he says, ‘Judge, I wisht I could take all you boys down to Washington with me, Democrats and all, and make a cabinet out of you. I’d know where every man would fit and we could git right down to work. Now, I’ve got to learn my men before I can do much.’ ‘Do you mean, Mr. Lincoln, you’d take a Democrat like Logan?’ says the Judge, sort of shocked. ‘Yes, sir, I would; I know Logan. He’s agin me now and that’s all right, but if we have trouble you can count on Logan to do the right thing by the country, and that’s the kind of men I want--them as will do the right thing by the country. Tain’t a question of Lincoln, or Democrat or Republican, Judge; it’s a question of the country.’

“Of course he seemed pretty cheerful always. He wan’t no man to show out all he felt. Lots of them little stuck-up chaps that came out here to talk to him said, solemn as owls, ‘He don’t realize the gravity of the situation.’ Them’s their words, ‘gravity of the situation.’ Think of that, Mr. Lincoln not realizing. They ought to heard him talk to us the night he went away. I’ll never forgit that speech--nor any man who heard it. I can see him now just how he looked, standin’ there on the end of his car. He’d been shakin’ hands with the crowd in the depot, laughin’ and talkin’, just like himself, but when he got onto that car he seemed suddint to be all changed. You never seen a face so sad in all the world. I tell you he had woe in his heart that minute, woe. He knew he was leavin’ us for good, nuthin’ else could explain the way he looked and what he said. He knew he never was comin’ back alive. It was rainin’ hard, but when we saw him standin’ there bare headed, his great big eyes lookin’ at us so lovin’ and mournful, every man of us took off his hat, just as if he’d been in church. You never heard him make a speech, of course? You missed a lot. Curious voice. You could hear it away off--kind of shrill, but went right to your heart--and that night it sounded sadder than anything I ever heard. You know I always hear it to this day, nights when the wind howls around the house. Ma says it makes her nervous to hear me talk about him such nights, but I can’t help it; just have to let out.

“He stood a minute lookin’ at us, and then he began to talk. There ain’t a man in this town that heard him that ever forgot what he said, but I don’t believe there’s a man that ever said it over out loud--he couldn’t, without cryin’. He just talked to us that time out of his heart. Somehow we felt all of a suddint how we loved him and how he loved us. We hadn’t taken any stock in all that talk about his bein’ killed, but when he said he was goin’ away not knowin’ where or whether ever he would return I just got cold all over. I begun to _see_ that minute and everybody did. The women all fell to sobbin’ and a kind of groan went up, and when he asked us to pray for him I don’t believe that there was a man in that crowd, whether he ever went to church in his life, that didn’t want to drop right down on his marrow bones and ask the Lord to take care of Abraham Lincoln and bring him back to us, where he belonged.

“‘Ever see him again?’ Yes, onct down in Washington, summer of ’64. Things was lookin’ purty blue that summer. Didn’t seem to be anybody who thought he’d git reëlected. Greeley was abusin’ him in _The Tribune_ for not makin’ peace, and you know there was about half the North that always let Greeley do their thinkin’ fer ’em. The war wan’t comin’ on at all--seemed as if they never would do nuthin’. Grant was hangin’ on to Petersburg like a dog to a root, but it didn’t seem to do no good. Same with Sherman, who was tryin’ to take Atlanta. The country was just petered out with the everlastin’ taxes an’ fightin’ an’ dyin’. It wa’n’t human nature to be patient any longer, and they just spit it out on Mr. Lincoln, and then, right on top of all the grumblin’ and abusin’, he up and made another draft. Course he was right, but I tell you nobody but a brave man would ’a’ done such a thing at that minute; but he did it. It was hard on us out here. I tell you there wa’n’t many houses in this country where there wa’n’t mournin’ goin’ on. It didn’t seem as if we _could_ stand any more blood lettin.’ Some of the boys round the State went down to see him about it. They came back lookin’ pretty sheepish. Joe Medill, up to Chicago, told me about it onct. He said, ‘We just told Mr. Lincoln we couldn’t stand another draft. We was through sendin’ men down to Petersburg to be killed in trenches. He didn’t say nuthin’; just stood still, lookin’ down till we’d all talked ourselves out; and then, after a while, he lifted up his head, and looked around at us, slow-like; and I tell you, Billy, I never knew till that minute that Abraham Lincoln could get mad clean through. He was just white he was that mad. “Boys,” he says, “you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You’re actin’ like a lot of cowards. You’ve helped make this war, and you’ve got to help fight it. You go home and raise them men and don’t you dare come down here again blubberin’ about what I tell you to do. I won’t stan’ it.” We was so scared we never said a word. We just took our hats and went out like a lot of school-boys. Talk about Abraham Lincoln bein’ easy! When it didn’t matter mebbe he was easy, but when it did you couldn’t stir him any more’n you could a mountain.’

“Well, I kept hearin’ about the trouble he was havin’ with everybody, and I just made up my mind I’d go down and see him and swap yarns and tell him how we was all countin’ on his gettin’ home. Thought maybe it would cheer him up to know we set such store on his comin’ home if they didn’t want him for president. So I jest picked up and went right off. Ma was real good about my goin’. She says, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if ’twould do him good, William. And don’t you ask him no questions about the war nor about politics. You just talk home to him and tell him some of them foolish stories of yourn.’

“Well, I had a brother in Washington, clerk in a department--awful set up ’cause he had an office--and when I got down there I told him I’d come to visit Mr. Lincoln. He says, ‘William, be you a fool? Folks don’t visit the President of the United States without an invitation, and he’s too busy to see anybody but the very biggest people in this administration. Why, he don’t even see me,’ he says. Well, it made me huffy to hear him talk. ‘Isaac,’ I says, ‘I don’t wonder Mr. Lincoln don’t see you. But it’s different with me. Him and me is friends.’

“‘Well’ he says, ‘you’ve got to have cards anyway.’ ‘Cards,’ I says, ‘what for? What kind?’ ‘Why,’ he says, ‘visitin’ cards--with your name on.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘it’s come to a pretty pass, if an old friend like me can’t see Mr. Lincoln without sendin’ him a piece of pasteboard. I’d be ashamed to do such a thing, Isaac Brown. Do you suppose he’s forgotten me? Needs to see my name printed out to know who I am? You can’t make me believe any such thing,’ and I walked right out of the room, and that night I footed it up to the Soldiers’ Home where Mr. Lincoln was livin’ then, right among the sick soldiers in their tents.

“There was lots of people settin’ around in a little room, waitin’ fer him, but there wan’t anybody there I knowed, and I was feelin’ a little funny when a door opened and out came little John Nicolay. He came from down this way, so I just went up and says, ‘How’d you do, John; where’s Mr. Lincoln?’ Well, John didn’t seem over glad to see me.

“‘Have you an appintment with Mr. Lincoln?’ he says.

“‘No, sir,’ I says; ‘I ain’t, and it ain’t necessary. Mebbe it’s all right and fittin’ for them as wants post-offices to have appintments, but I reckon Mr. Lincoln’s old friends don’t need ’em, so you just trot along, Johnnie, and tell him Billy Brown’s here and see what he says.’ Well, he kind a flushed up and set his lips together, but he knowed me, and so he went off. In about two minutes the door popped open and out came Mr. Lincoln, his face all lit up. He saw me first thing, and he laid holt of me and just shook my hands fit to kill. ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘now I am glad to see you. Come right in. You’re goin’ to stay to supper with Mary and me.’

“Didn’t I know it? Think bein’ president would change him--not a mite. Well, he had a right smart lot of people to see, but soon as he was through we went out on the back stoop and set down and talked and talked. He asked me about pretty nigh everybody in Springfield. I just let loose and told him about the weddin’s and births and the funerals and the buildin’, and I guess there wan’t a yarn I’d heard in the three years and a half he’d been away that I didn’t spin for him. Laugh--you ought to a heard him laugh--just did my heart good, for I could see what they’d been doin’ to him. Always was a thin man, but, Lordy, he was thinner’n ever now, and his face was kind a drawn and gray--enough to make you cry.

“Well, we had supper and then talked some more, and about ten o’clock I started downtown. Wanted me to stay all night, but I says to myself, ‘Billy, don’t you overdo it. You’ve cheered him up, and you better light out and let him remember it when he’s tired.’ So I said, ‘Nope, Mr. Lincoln, can’t, goin’ back to Springfield to-morrow. Ma don’t like to have me away and my boy ain’t no great shakes keepin’ store.’ ‘Billy,’ he says, ‘what did you come down here for?’ ‘I come to see you, Mr. Lincoln.’ ‘But you ain’t asked me for anything, Billy. What is it? Out with it. Want a post-office?’ he said, gigglin’, for he knowed I didn’t. ‘No, Mr. Lincoln, just wanted to see _you_--felt kind a lonesome--been so long since I’d seen you, and I was afraid I’d forgit some of them yarns if I didn’t unload soon.’

“Well, sir, you ought to seen his face as he looked at me.

“‘Billy Brown,’ he says, slow-like, ‘do you mean to tell me you came all the way from Springfield, Illinois, just to have a _visit_ with _me_, that you don’t want an office for anybody, nor a pardon for anybody, that you ain’t got no complaints in your pocket, nor any advice up your sleeve?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘that’s about it, and I’ll be durned if I wouldn’t go to _Europe_ to see you, if I couldn’t do it no other way, Mr. Lincoln.’

“Well, sir, I never was so astonished in my life. He just grabbed my hand and shook it nearly off, and the tears just poured down his face, and he says, ‘Billy, you never’ll know what good you’ve done me. I’m homesick, Billy, just plumb homesick, and it seems as if this war never would be over. Many a night I can see the boys a-dyin’ on the fields and can hear their mothers cryin’ for ’em at home, and I can’t help ’em, Billy. I have to send them down there. We’ve got to save the Union, Billy, we’ve got to.’

“‘Course we have, Mr. Lincoln,’ I says, cheerful as I could, ‘course we have. Don’t you worry. It’s most over. You’re goin’ to be reëlected, and you and old Grant’s goin’ to finish this war mighty quick then. Just keep a stiff upper lip, Mr. Lincoln, and don’t forget them yarns I told you.’ And I started out. But seems as if he couldn’t let me go. ‘Wait a minute, Billy,’ he says, ‘till I get my hat and I’ll walk a piece with you.’ It was one of them still sweet-smellin’ summer nights with no end of stars and you ain’t no idee how pretty ’twas walkin’ down the road. There was white tents showin’ through the trees and every little way a tall soldier standin’ stock still, a gun at his side. Made me feel mighty curious and solemn. By-and-by we come out of the trees to a sightly place where you could look all over Washington--see the Potomac and clean into Virginia. There was a bench there and we set down and after a while Mr. Lincoln he begun to talk. Well, sir, you or nobody ever heard anything like it. Blamed if he didn’t tell me the whole thing--all about the war and the generals and Seward and Sumner and Congress and Greeley and the whole blamed lot. He just opened up his heart if I do say it. Seemed as if he’d come to a p’int where he must let out. I dunno how long we set there--must have been nigh morning, fer the stars begun to go out before he got up to go. ‘Good-by, Billy,’ he says, ‘you’re the first person I ever unloaded onto, and I hope you won’t think I’m a baby,’ and then we shook hands again, and I walked down to town and next day I come home.

“Tell you what he said? Nope, I can’t. Can’t talk about it somehow. Fact is, I never told anybody about what he said that night. Tried to tell ma onct, but she cried, so I give it up.

“Yes, that’s the last time I seen him--last time alive.

“Wa’n’t long after that things began to look better. War began to move right smart, and, soon as it did, there wa’n’t no use talkin’ about anybody else for President. I see that plain enough, and, just as I told him, he was reëlected, and him an’ Grant finished up the war in a hurry. I tell you it was a great day out here when we heard Lee had surrendered. ’Twas just like gettin’ converted to have the war over. Somehow the only thing I could think of was how glad Mr. Lincoln would be. Me and ma reckoned he’d come right out and make us a visit and get rested, and we began right off to make plans about the reception we’d give him--brass band--parade--speeches--fireworks--everything. Seems as if I couldn’t think about anything else. I was comin’ down to open the store one mornin’, and all the way down I was plannin’ how I’d decorate the windows and how I’d tie a flag on that old chair, when I see Hiram Jones comin’ toward me. He looked so old and all bent over I didn’t know what had happened. ‘Hiram,’ I says, ‘what’s the matter? Be you sick?’

“‘Billy,’ he says, and he couldn’t hardly say it, ‘Billy, they’ve killed Mr. Lincoln.’

“Well, I just turned cold all over, and then I flared up. ‘Hiram Jones,’ I says, ‘you’re lyin,’ you’re crazy. How dare you tell me that? It ain’t so.’

“‘Don’t Billy,’ he says, ‘don’t go on so. I ain’t lyin’. It’s so. He’ll never come back, Billy. He’s dead!’ And he fell to sobbin’ out loud right there in the street, and somehow I knew it was true.

“I come on down and opened the door. People must have paregoric and castor ile and liniment, no matter who dies; but I didn’t put up the shades. I just sat here and thought and thought and groaned and groaned. It seemed that day as if the country was plumb ruined and I didn’t care much. All I could think of was _him_. He wan’t goin’ to come back. He wouldn’t never sit here in that chair again. He was dead.

“For days and days ’twas awful here. Waitin’ and waitin’. Seemed as if that funeral never would end. I couldn’t bear to think of him bein’ dragged around the country and havin’ all that fuss made over him. He always hated fussin’ so. Still, I s’pose I’d been mad if they hadn’t done it. Seemed awful, though. I kind a felt that he belonged to us now, that they ought to bring him back and let us have him now they’d killed him.

“Of course they got here at last, and I must say it was pretty grand. All sorts of big bugs, Senators and Congressmen, and officers in grand uniforms and music and flags and crape. They certainly didn’t spare no pains givin’ him a funeral. Only we didn’t want ’em. We wanted to bury him ourselves, but they wouldn’t let us. I went over onct where they’d laid him out for folks to see. I reckon I won’t tell you about that. I ain’t never goin’ to get that out of my mind. I wisht a million times I’d never seen him lyin’ there black and changed--that I could only see him as he looked sayin’ ‘good-by’ to me up to the Soldiers’ Home in Washington that night.

“Ma and me didn’t go to the cemetery with ’em. I couldn’t stan’ it. Didn’t seem right to have sich goin’s on here at home where he belonged, for a man like him. But we go up often now, ma and me does, and talk about him. Blamed if it don’t seem sometimes as if he was right there--might step out any minute and say ‘Hello, Billy, any new stories?’

“Yes. I knowed Abraham Lincoln; knowed him well; and I tell you there wan’t never a better man made. Leastwise I don’t want to know a better one. He just suited _me_--Abraham Lincoln did.”

BACK IN ’58

BACK THERE IN ’58

Hear ’em? Hear the Lincoln and Douglas debates? Well, I should say I did. Heard every one of ’em. Yes, sir, for about two months back there in ’58, I didn’t do a thing but travel around Illinois listenin’ to them two men argue out slavery; and when I wa’n’t listenin’ to ’em or travelin’ around after ’em, I was pretty sure to be settin’ on a fence discussin’. Fur my part I never did understand how the crops was got in that fall; seemed to me about all the men in the state was settin’ around whittlin’ and discussin’.

Made Lincoln? Yes, I reckon you might say they did. There’s no denyin’ that’s when the country outside begun to take notice of him. But don’t you make no mistake, them debates wa’n’t the beginnin’ of Abraham Lincoln’s work on slavery. He’d been at it for about four years before they come off, sweatin’ his brains night and day. The hardest piece of thinkin’ I ever see a man do. Anybody that wants to hear about him back there needn’t expect stories. He wa’n’t tellin’ stories them days. No, sir, he was thinkin’.

Curious about him. There he was, more’n forty-five years old, clean out of politics and settled down to practice law. Looked as if he wouldn’t do much of anything the rest of his life but jog around the circuit, when all of a suddint Douglas sprung his Kansas-Nebraska bill. You remember what that bill was, don’t you?--let Kansas and Nebraska in as territories and the same time repealed the Missouri Compromise keeping slavery out of that part of the country, let the people have it or not, just as they wanted. You ain’t no idee how that bill stirred up Mr. Lincoln. I’ll never forgit how he took its passin’. ’Twas long back in the spring of ’54. Lot of ’em was settin’ in here tellin’ stories and Mr. Lincoln was right in the middle of one when in bounced Billy Herndon--he was Lincoln’s law partner, you know. His eyes was blazin’ and he calls out, “They’ve upset the Missouri Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska bill is passed.”

For a minute everybody was still as death--everybody but me. “Hoorah!” I calls out, “you can bet on Little Dug every time,” for I was a Democrat and, barrin’ George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, I thought Douglas was the biggest man God ever made. Didn’t know no more what that bill meant than that old Tom-cat in the window.

“Hoorah!” I says, and then I happened to look at Mr. Lincoln.

He was all in a heap, his head dropped down on his breast, and there he set and never spoke, and then after a long time he got up and went out. Never finished that story, never said “Good-by, boys,” like he always did, never took notice of nuthin’, just went out, his face gray and stern, and his eyes not seein’ at all.

Well, sir, you could ’a’ knocked me over with a feather. I never seen him take anything that way before. He was a good loser. You see how ’twas with me, Kansas-Nebraska wa’n’t nuthin’ but politics, and my man had beat.

I told Ma about it when I got home. “It ain’t like him to be mad because Douglas has beat,” I says, “I don’t understand it,” and Ma says, “I reckon that’s just it, William, you don’t understand it.” Ma was awful touchy when anybody seemed to criticise Mr. Lincoln.

I s’pose you’re too young to recollect what a fuss that bill stirred up, ain’t you? Must ’a’ heard your Pa talk about it, though. Whole North got to rowin’ about it. Out here in Illinois lots of Democrats left the party on account of it, and when Douglas came back that summer they hooted him off a platform up to Chicago. You couldn’t stop Douglas that way. That just stirred up his blood.

Far’s I was concerned I couldn’t see anything the matter with what he’d done. It seemed all right to me them days to let the folks that moved into Kansas and Nebraska do as Douglas had fixed it for ’em, have slaves or not, just as they was a mind to. And I tell you, when Douglas came around here and talked about “popular sovereignty,” and rolled out his big sentences about the sacred right of self-government, and said that if the white people in Nebraska was good enough to govern themselves, they was good enough to govern niggers, I felt dead sure there wa’n’t no other side to it.

What bothered me was the way Mr. Lincoln kept on takin’ it. He got so he wa’n’t the same, ’peared to be in a brown study all the time. Come in here and set by the stove with the boys and not talk at all. Didn’t seem to relish my yarns either like he used to. He started in campaigning again, right away, and the boys said he wouldn’t promise to go any place where they didn’t let him speak against the Kansas-Nebraska bill. I heard him down here that fall--his first big speech. I hadn’t never had any idee what was in Abraham Lincoln before. He wa’n’t the same man at all. Serious--you wouldn’t believe it, seemed to feel plumb bad about repealin’ the Missouri Compromise, said ’twas wrong, just as wrong as ’twould be to repeal the law against bringing in slaves from Africa. I must say I hadn’t thought of that before.

I remember some of the things he said about Douglas’ idee of popular sovereignty, just as well as if ’twas yesterday. “When the white man governs himself,” he said, “that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another, that is more than self-government, that is despotism.” “If the negro is a man, then my ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal.” “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

And he just lit into slavery that day. “I hate it,” he said. “I hate it because it is a monstrous injustice.” Yes, sir, them’s the very words he used way back there in ’54. “I hate it because it makes the enemies of free institutions call us hypocrites, I hate it because it makes men criticise the Declaration of Independence, and say there ain’t no right principle but self-interest.” More’n one old abolitionist who heard that speech said that they hadn’t no idee how bad slavery was or how wicked the Kansas-Nebraska bill was ’til then.

As time went on, seemed as if he got more serious every day. Everybody got to noticin’ how hard he was takin’ it. I remember how Judge Dickey was in here one day and he says to me, “Billy, Mr. Lincoln is all used up over this Kansas-Nebraska business. If he don’t stop worryin’ so, he’ll be sick. Why, t’other night up to Bloomington, four of us was sleepin’ in the same room and Lincoln talked us all to sleep, and what do you think? I waked up about daylight and there he was settin’ on the side of the bed with nuthin’ on but his shirt, and when he see my eyes was open he sings out, ‘I tell you, Judge, this country can’t last much longer half-slave and half-free.’ Bin thinkin’ all night far’s I know.”