Chapter 3

The flatboat built and loaded, the party started for New Orleans about the middle of April. They had gone but a few miles when they met with another adventure. At the village of New Salem there was a mill-dam. On it the boat stuck, and here for nearly twenty-four hours it hung, the bow in the air and the stern in the water, the cargo slowly setting backward--shipwreck almost certain. The village of New Salem turned out in a body to see what the strangers would do in their predicament. They shouted, suggested, and advised for a time, but finally discovered that one big fellow in the crew was ignoring them and working out a plan of relief. Having unloaded the cargo into a neighboring boat, Lincoln had succeeded in tilting his craft. By boring a hole in the end extending over the dam the water was let out. This done, the boat was easily shoved over and reloaded. The ingenuity which he had exercised in saving his boat made a deep impression on the crowd on the bank. It was talked over for many a day, and the general verdict was that the "bow-hand" was a "strapper." The proprietor of boat and cargo was even more enthusiastic than the spectators, and vowed he would build a steamboat for the Sangamon and make Lincoln the captain. Lincoln himself was interested in what he had done, and nearly twenty years later he embodied his reflections on this adventure in a curious invention for getting boats over shoals.

NEW ORLEANS IN 1831.

The raft over the New Salem dam, the party went on to New Orleans without trouble, reaching there in May, 1831, and remaining a month. It must have been a month of intense intellectual activity for Lincoln. New Orleans was entering then on her "flush times." Commerce was increasing at a rate which dazzled merchants and speculators, and drew them in shoals from all over the United States. From 1830 to 1840 no other American city increased in such a ratio; exports and imports, which in 1831 amounted to $26,000,000, in 1835 had more than doubled. The Creole population had held the sway so far in the city; but now it came into competition and often into contest with a pushing, ambitious, and frequently unscrupulous native American party. To these two predominating elements were added Germans, French, Spanish, negroes and Indians. Cosmopolitan in its make-up, the city was even more cosmopolitan in its life. Everything was to be seen in New Orleans in those days, from the idle luxury of the wealthy Creole to the organization of filibustering juntas. The pirates still plied their trade in the Gulf, and the Mississippi River brought down hundreds of river boatmen--one of the wildest, wickedest sets of men that ever existed in any city.

Lincoln and his companions probably tied their boat up beside thousands of others. It was the custom then to tie up such craft along the river front where St. Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats without going ashore. No doubt Lincoln went, too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous, called the "Swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey, and the flint-lock pistol ruled.

All of the picturesque life, the violent contrasts of the city, he would see as he wandered about; and he would carry away the sharp impressions which are produced when mind and heart are alert, sincere, and healthy.

In this month spent in New Orleans Lincoln must have seen much of slavery. At that time the city was full of slaves, and the number was constantly increasing; indeed, one-third of the New Orleans increase in population between 1830 and 1840 was in negroes. One of the saddest features of the institution was to be seen there in its most aggravated form--the slave market. The great mass of slave-holders of the South, who looked on the institution as patriarchal, and who guarded their slaves with conscientious care, knew little, it should be said, of this terrible traffic. Their transfer of slaves was humane, but in the open markets of the city it was attended by shocking cruelty and degradation. Lincoln witnessed in New Orleans for the first time the revolting sight of men and women sold like animals Mr. Herndon says that he often heard Mr. Lincoln refer to this experience: "In New Orleans for the first time," he writes, "Lincoln beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw 'negroes in chains--whipped and scourged.' Against this inhumanity his sense of right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened to a realization of what he had often heard and read. No doubt, as one of his companions has said, 'slavery ran the iron into him then and there.' One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that 'bidders might satisfy themselves' whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not. The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of 'unconquerable hate.' Bidding his companions follow him, he said, 'Boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that thing' (meaning slavery), 'I'll hit it hard.'"

Mr. Herndon gives John Hanks as his authority for this statement. But this is plainly an error, for, according to Mr. Lincoln himself, Hanks did not go on to New Orleans, but having a family and being likely to be detained from home longer than at first expected, turned back at St. Louis. Though there is reason for believing that Lincoln was deeply impressed on this trip by something he saw in a New Orleans slave market, and that he often referred to it, the story told above probably grew to its present proportions by much telling.[A]

[Footnote A: "No doubt the young Kentuckian was disgusted [with what he saw in the New Orleans slave auction]; but there is no proof that this was his first object lesson in human slavery, or that, as so often has been asserted, he turned to his companion and said, 'If I ever get a chance to hit slavery, I will hit it hard.' Such an expression from a flatboat-man would have been absurd."--_Personal Reminiscences of 1840-1890, by L.E. Chittenden._]

LINCOLN SETTLES IN NEW SALEM.

The month in New Orleans passed swiftly, and in June, 1831, Lincoln and his companions took passage up the river. He did not return, however, in the usual way of the river boatman "out of a job." According to his own way of putting it, "during this boat-enterprise acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to account, he contracted with him to act as a clerk for him on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New Salem."[A] The store and mill were, however, so far only in Offutt's imagination, and Lincoln had to drift about until his employer was ready for him. He made a short visit to his father and mother, now in Coles County, near Charleston (fever and ague had driven the Lincolns from their first home in Macon County), and then, in July, 1831, he drifted over to New Salem, where, as he says, he "stopped indefinitely and for the first time, as it were, by himself."

"The village of New Salem, the scene of Lincoln's mercantile career," writes one of our correspondents who has studied the history of the town and visited the spot where it once stood, "was one of the many little towns which, in the pioneer days, sprang up along the Sangamon River, a stream then looked upon as navigable and as destined to be counted among the highways of commerce. Twenty miles northwest of Springfield, strung along the left bank of the Sangamon, parted by hollows and ravines, is a row of high hills. On one of these--a long, narrow ridge, beginning with a sharp and sloping point near the river, running south, and parallel with the stream a little way, and then, reaching its highest point, making a sudden turn to the west, and gradually widening until lost in the prairie--stood this frontier village. The crooked river for a short distance comes from the east, and, seeming surprised at meeting the bluff, abruptly changes its course, and flows to the north. Across the river the bottom stretches out, reaching half a mile back to the highlands. New Salem, founded in 1829 by James Rutledge and John Cameron, and a dozen years later a deserted village, is rescued from oblivion only by the fact that Lincoln was once one of its inhabitants. His first sight of the town had been in April, 1831, when the flatboat he had built and its little crew were detained in getting their boat over the Rutledge and Cameron mill-dam, on which it lodged. When Lincoln walked into New Salem, three months later, he was not altogether a stranger, for the people remembered him as the ingenious flatboat-man who, a little while before, had freed his boat from water (and thus enabled it to get over the dam) by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in the bottom."[B]

Offutt's goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and he "loafed" about, so those who remember his arrival say, good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in his droll way making friends of everybody. By chance, a bit of work fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave him an opportunity to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election day. The village school-master, Mentor Graham by name, was clerk, but the assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr. Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling place, and called to him, "Can you write?" "Yes," said the stranger, "I can make a few rabbit tracks." Mr. Graham evidently was satisfied with the answer, for he promptly initiated him; and he filled his place not only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he immediately began "to spin out a stock of Indiana yarns." So droll were they that years afterward men who listened to Lincoln that day repeated them to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his story-telling.

[Footnote A: "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John, Hay. Volume I.]

[Footnote B: New Salem plays so prominent a part in the life of Lincoln that the MAGAZINE engaged Mr. J. McCan Davis, of Springfield, Illinois, who had already made a special study of this period of Mr. Lincoln's life, to go in detail over the ground to secure a perfectly accurate sequence of events, to collect new and unpublished pictures and documents, and to interview all of the old acquaintances of Mr. Lincoln who remain in the neighborhood. Mr. Davis has secured some new facts about Mr. Lincoln's life in this period; he has unearthed in the official files of the county several new documents, and he has secured several unpublished portraits of interest. His matter will be incorporated into our next two articles.]

Photographed from the original poll-book, now on file in the county clerk's office, Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln's first vote was cast at New Salem, "in the Clary's Grove precinct," August 1, 1831. At this election he aided Mr. Graham, who was one of the clerks. In the early days in Illinois, elections were conducted by the _viva voce_ method. The people did try voting by ballot, but the experiment was unpopular. It required too much "book larnin," and in 1829 the _viva voce_ method of voting was restored. The judges and clerks sat at a table with the poll-book before them. The voter walked up, and announced the candidate of his choice, and it was recorded in his presence. There was no ticket peddling, and ballot-box stuffing was impossible. To this simple system we are indebted for the record of Lincoln's first vote. As will be seen from the fac-simile, Lincoln voted for James Turney for Congressman, Bowling Green and Edmund Greer for Magistrates, and John Armstrong and Henry Sinco for Constables. Of these five men three were elected. Turney was defeated for Congressman by Joseph Duncan. Turney lived in Greene County. He was not then a conspicuous figure in the politics of the State, but was a follower of Henry Clay, and was well thought of in his own district. He and Lincoln, in 1834, served their first terms together in the lower house of the legislature, and later he was a State senator. Joseph Duncan, the successful candidate, was already in Congress. He was a politician of influence. In 1834 he was a strong "Jackson man;" but after his election as Governor he created consternation among the followers of "Old Hickory" by becoming a Whig. Sidney Breese, who received only two votes in the Clary's Grove precinct, afterward became the most conspicuous of the five candidates. Eleven years later he defeated Stephen A. Douglas for the United States Senate, and for twenty-five years he was on the bench of the Supreme Court of Illinois, serving under each of the three constitutions. For the office of Magistrate Bowling Green was elected, but Greer was beaten. Both of Lincoln's candidates for Constable were elected. John Armstrong was the man with whom, a short time afterward, Lincoln had the celebrated wrestling match. Henry Sinco was the keeper of a store at New Salem. Lincoln's first vote for President was not cast until the next year (November 5, 1832), when he voted for Henry Clay.--_Note furnished by J. McCan Davis_.]

_(To be continued.)_

THE LOVE OF THE PRINCE OF GLOTTENBERG.

BY ANTHONY HOPE,

Author of "The Prisoner of Zenda," "The Dolly Dialogues," etc.

I.

It was in the spring of the year that Ludwig, Prince of Glottenberg, came courting the Princess Osra; for his father had sought the most beautiful lady of a royal house in Europe, and had found none to equal Osra. Therefore the prince came to Strelsau with a great retinue, and was lodged in the White Palace, which stood on the outskirts of the city, where the public gardens now are (for the palace itself was sacked and burnt by the people in the rising of 1848). Here Ludwig stayed many days, coming every day to the king's palace to pay his respects to the king and queen, and to make his court to the princess. King Rudolf had received him with the utmost friendship, and was, for reasons of state then of great moment, but now of vanished interest, as eager for the match as was the King of Glottenberg himself; and he grew very impatient with his sister when she hesitated to accept Ludwig's hand, alleging that she felt for him no more than a kindly esteem, and, what was as much to the purpose, that he felt no more for her. For although the prince possessed most courteous and winning manners, and was very accomplished both in learning and in exercises, yet he was a grave and pensive young man, rather stately than jovial, and seemed, in the princess's eyes (accustomed as they were to catch and check ardent glances), to perform his wooing more as a duty of his station than on the impulse of any passion. Finding in herself, also, no such sweet ashamed emotions as had before now crossed her heart on account of lesser men, she grew grave and troubled; and she said to the king:

"Brother, is this love? For I had as lief he were away as here; and when he is here he kisses my hand as though it were a statue's hand; and--and I feel as though it were. They say you know what love is. Is this love?"

"There are many forms of love," smiled the king. "This is such love as a prince and a princess may most properly feel."

"I do not call it love at all," said Osra, with a pout.

When Prince Ludwig came next day to see her, and told her, with grave courtesy, that his pleasure lay in doing her will, she broke out:

"I had rather it lay in watching my face;" and then, ashamed, she turned away from him.

He seemed grieved and hurt at her words, and it was with a sigh that he said: "My life shall be given to giving you joy."

She turned round on him with flushed cheek and trembling lips:

"Yes, but I had rather it were spent in getting joy from me."

He cast down his eyes a moment, and then, taking her hand, kissed it, but she drew it away sharply; and so that afternoon they parted, he back to his palace, she to her chamber, where she sat, asking again: "Is this love?" and crying: "He does not know love;" and pausing, now and again, before her mirror, to ask her pictured face why it would not unlock the door of love.

On another day she would be merry, or feign merriment, rallying him on his sombre air and formal compliments, professing that for her part she soon grew weary of such wooing, and loved to be easy and merry; for thus she hoped to sting him, so that he would either disclose more warmth, or forsake altogether his pursuit. But he made many apologies, blaming nature that had made him grave, but assuring her of his deep affection and respect.

"Affection and respect!" murmured Osra, with a little toss of her head. "Oh, that I had not been born a princess!" And yet, though she did not love him, she thought him a very noble gentleman, and trusted to his honor and sincerity in everything. Therefore, when he still persisted, and Rudolf and the queen urged her, telling her (the king mockingly, the queen with a touch of sadness) that she must not look to find in the world such love as romantic girls dreamt of, at last she yielded, and she told her brother that she would marry Prince Ludwig, yet for a little while she would not have the news proclaimed. So Rudolf went, alone and privately, to the White Palace, and said to Ludwig:

"Cousin, you have won the fairest lady in the world. Behold, her brother says it!"

Prince Ludwig bowed low, and, taking the king's hand, pressed it, thanking him for his help and approval, and expressing himself as most grateful for the boon of the princess's favor.

"And will you not come with me and find her?" cried the king, with a merry look.

"I have urgent business now," answered Ludwig. "Beg the princess to forgive me. This afternoon I will crave the honor of waiting on her with my humble gratitude."

King Rudolf looked at him, a smile curling on his lips; and he said, in one of his gusts of impatience:

"By heaven! is there another man in the world who would talk about gratitude, and business, and the afternoon, when Osra of Strelsau sat waiting for him?"

"I mean no discourtesy," protested Ludwig, taking the king's arm and glancing at him with most friendly eyes. "Indeed, dear friend, I am rejoiced and honored. But this business of mine will not wait."

So the king, frowning and grumbling and laughing, went back alone, and told the princess that the happy wooer was most grateful, and would come, after his business was transacted, that afternoon. But Osra, having given her hand, would now admit no fault in the man she had chosen, and thanked the king for the message, with great dignity. Then the king came to her, and, sitting down by her, stroked her hair, saying softly:

"You have had many lovers, sister Osra, and now comes a husband."

"Yes, now a husband," she murmured, catching swiftly at his hand; and her voice was half caught in a sudden sob.

"So goes the world--our world," said the king, knitting his brows and seeming to fall for a moment into a sad reverie.

"I am frightened," she whispered. "Should I be frightened if I loved him?"

"I have been told so," said the king, smiling again. "But the fear has a way of being mastered then." And he drew her to him, and gave her a hearty brother's kiss, telling her to take heart. "You'll thaw the fellow yet," said the king, "though I grant you he is icy enough." For the king himself had been by no means what he called an icy man.