Part 29

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.

Memories...it wasn’t so long ago I tramped at the head of the ox team, as we moved from one place to another, one beginning that had not really ended, to another beginning that might not end. The oxen were faithful. They meant much to me. I will not forget. They ate from my hands, they blew their breaths on my fingers, they regarded me intently. It rained on us. The sun shone on us.

July 11, 1863

Was it twenty or thirty years ago, we drifted down the Mississippi, three of us on a loaded flatboat? She was well overloaded because all of us wanted to get rich quick. The second or third day on the river, a tornado- like storm struck us; I thought we would lose more than our cargo. Down went the stern, down went the bow. I thought lightning would strike us. My friends, John H___ and John J___ , were experienced river men. With luck we made it. In New Orleans, we sold both cargo and flatboat, and returned home by sternwheeler.

Memories—one of the most vivid is the New Orleans’ slave auction: men and women for the highest bidder. How much is my mother worth? I asked myself. How much is my father? My Uncle James? Two women were sold while I watched at the corner of a busy street. Two women, then three men were sold. Were they friends, relatives? Did they speak our language? Where were they taken? One of the men in New Orleans left the auction stand in handcuffs. The women rode away in fancy buggies—faces haggard.

I have never had to summon a jury in defense of freedom. No court can defend slavery if men are honorable.

Tuesday evening

Late

As the months pass, as troubles increase, I hunt for moments from yesterday, moments that may strengthen me, moments that may prove I was once young. There is my Ann Rutledge. I see her auburn hair, blue eyes and delicate face—more than ephemera. My love for her is real, apart, unrelated to the man I am, yet remembered—a contradiction. Although it is a lie I feel that Ann is alive.

I allowed my burden of debts to turn me away from marriage. I believed that frontier hardships were to remain my lot; I could not see harnessing her to a life of animal drudgery. Debts...they were like bars in a gate; I peered through those bars at her beautiful face.

We buried her among currant bushes, in the wind, in the sun. I left the cemetery to wander through hungry woodlands, woodlands I never saw again, that extended...I don’t know how far they extended. Hunger and sorrow...they were mine.

All that remains of our brief relationship is the memory of her voice, as she spoke, as she sang. She loved to sing hymns and frontier songs—her voice so feminine.

The touch of her hand, the touch of her voice...in the midst of war, under desperate commitments.

Evening

We were to enroll. Ann was to enroll at Jacksonville Academy. I was to enroll at Illinois College.

That year I called on her at the Rutledge farm, several times. We worked together in the fields. When she worked at Jim Short’s farm, I rode over to be with her. I helped her with the chores. Swampy place.

August came, hot, dry August. Corn was stunted that year. Few martins and swallows were around. But malaria was around and put me down, a day, two days, three. I sipped Peruvian bark—jalap. Late that month, her father sent for me.

Valued brother, come, Ann is very ill.

D. H. Rutledge.

I still have that message.

She lay on her bed, feverish; the log house seemed to be claiming her; she put her small hands in mine; her corn silk hair was around her face. In two days she was gone. We buried her in Concord, seven miles away, seven miles to walk behind her coffin.

It was many weeks, many weeks and miles of walking, before I recovered, out of that grey mystery.

I still write to her family. I want to know how the Rutledges are faring.

White House

In wagons, on foot, on horseback, they stream west, for the gold rush, for the promises. Ours is a migratory urge. Flux of men, women, children, reapers, sowers, which comes first? Which the most important? We Americans expropriate, accomplish, destroy. The rough rock becomes polished by time, but do we? Can such migrations achieve a true union?

I realize there is a power larger than self, more powerful than leadership. It is this mysterious power that causes this human wave. It is not destiny. It is an interchange of ideas, a wave or waves of emotion, a desire for betterment—and beyond that! The pioneer has this in his mind, as he hacks at timber, removes stumps, sprouts corn. Deep inside me, like a blue pool, I am in accord with these frontiersmen.

White House

window wide open

August 1st, 1863

In Springfield, when problems got under my skin, I sometimes woke at night, puzzled, thinking where am I? I’d find myself sitting up in bed, gesturing, talking to myself. Alarmed, I would dress and lay a fire and sit by it the remainder of the night, sit by the stove or go out into the backyard, if it was summer or autumn.

Melancholia has always dogged me. It seems to sit inside of me and peer out. It catches me, involves me, at the most unexpected moments. Melancholy influences my decisions, legal decisions or those at home, even while I am playing with the children. Like any physical handicap I try to live with it, minimize it.

Springfield problems were largely legal problems, problems for Billy and me, problems about horse thieves, mortgage foreclosures, defaults in payment, land titles. I lost a manslaughter case but won my defense of the nine women involved in rioting. I had a bevy of widows trail after me when I won the case of the man accused of robbing the mail of $15,000.

Such problems create a backwash over the years; I see now that on my circuit I avoided home very frequently, staying away two or three weeks at a time. Marital bliss and melancholia are known to be mates.

Executive Mansion

8/9/63

For years I was haunted by a great number of things. First, it was essential to learn to read. Then to write. To find work that would support me. I wished to help others. I felt that there was more to life than brute labor. I found friends. Honesty appealed. I was not impressed by rowdies. Serving as Captain in the Black Hawk War taught me that causes are not always good causes. Scalped men are not helpful men.

I can not forget those men lying in the bush, lying in a row, red sunlight on them.

My father was a slave to ignorance.

My mother was a slave to the wilderness.

I longed to abolish all kinds of slavery.

Some of my black friends were slaves; I wanted to abolish their kind of slavery. There is the slavery of poverty. Men and women eating potatoes day after day.

So, I was haunted.

Could I become man’s benefactor?

Lying in my attic, on my bed of corn shocks, I confronted log walls—- strong log walls.

August 9, 1863

On my circuit rides, when weather favored, when there was enough time, I stopped at a grove, dismounted, walked to a tree deep in the grove, a tree I had blazed when county surveying; I walked on to the second blaze that marked a green pool. It was a small shallow pool rimmed with short grass. Dragonflies came there. Crickets lived near there. Standing there, sitting there, I found meaning, a meaning I still respect.

Tell me, ye winged winds

That round my pathway roar,

Do ye not know some spot

Where mortals weep no more?

The White House

August 12, 1863

I suppose I may as well confess: I have always envied my partner his marital luck: Billy Herndon married Nancy Maxcy, back in ’40, a quiet beauty, a gentle beauty, blonde as corn silk, ready with dreamy smiles. She gave Billy rare personal happiness, made it easier for him after annoying legal squabbles, after long circuit rides. She gave him six healthy children. She was a giver in so many ways—alms for all. Theirs has been a continual romance.

The mind does tricks. I am back in my boyhood cabin. A prairie schooner stands outside. A man and woman have unhitched their oxen team, their little girl is made to feel at home by my mother. She is eight; I am eight or nine, I can’t remember. I remember that she was pretty. We played together all day. Then, came sunup, the ox team hauled away the schooner...my love was gone. I dreamed about her for weeks, happy dreams; in one of those repeated dreams we eloped, we went to California, we built a beautiful home...

My love for her has never gone away.

August 14, 1863

Many times Jenny plodded my rural circuit.

Usually, I gave her the reins. Every stopping place, store, tavern, church, saloon, school, was fixed in her brain. If I had to check her it was for some washout, new ruts in the road, a downhill run, a flooded creek. As we plodded along I read my law books or played the harmonica. June, July, August...January and February, we rocked in that black buggy with its scarlet spokes. I kept it in good shape but I never did eliminate the squeaks in the right rear spring.

In those days prosperity was slow in arriving. I settled my cases under trees, in churches, in schools and stores—for barter and for cash.

Mary never neglected my food hamper; always something tasty, with an apple or a carrot or two tossed in for Jenny. We would stop in a patch of woods on a hot day; I would yank off my boots and rest my corns. Thunderstorms often fell on us; at the nearest stable I would rub Jenny until she was dry, and she would look and look at me as I rubbed her.

Willie liked to accompany me on our summer jaunts; he got to know the lone dead pine; the maple grove at Dobson’s Creek; he knew the roosting place of the red hawk, the place of the squirrels. We often saw fox and deer. I might read Fennimore Cooper to him as we rode along.

“...Papa, look at those pigeons...a whole cloud of them.”

Willie’s favorite topic was the railroad, the locomotives. He knew every type of engine, their speed, their horsepower. “Wonder horses,” he called them.

“All aboard,” he would shout, as we got into our buggy. “Let’s go...the Indians are comin’.”

Who owns Jenny now?

Where is she?

She’s about eleven years old.

The White House

August 29, 1863

Glancing through a Greek history, I found something Euripides said in one of his plays:

Slavery, that thing of evil, by its nature evil,

forcing submission from man to what no man should yield to.

To set men free—that is the greatest goal any man could achieve.

But slavery is part of our issue. This is essentially a people’s contest. On the side of the Union is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.

Tuesday

I like to forget East Salem’s juvenility, sparring, boxing, wrestling. Pranks could be alarmingly stupid. There was Ike and his pony. He was fool enough to try to ride his piebald through a bonfire of shavings and cornstalks—to settle a bet. He raced across a field toward the blaze; just as he reached it, the pony bucked and pitched Ike into the fire. The onlookers stomped and roared and whistled. I was angry and took Ike to Dr. Samuel’s office, where the doctor shaved his head and salved his scorched face and hands.

I saw no profit, no form of progress in Salem’s rowdies. I preferred the simple things in life, a job, a long walk, hills, sun. As county surveyor I communicated through transit and tapes, through timberland acreage. They arranged life in useable proportions. This was a function beyond the village. To measure land was to measure the future. Precision spelled confidence.

September 1, 1863

To give the victory to the right, not through bloody bullets but through peaceful ballots—this is essential. Our constitution proves that the ballot can rule. Right- thinking men shall go to the polls, without fear or prejudice.

I think these thoughts, I write these words, as men attack, counterattack, retreat, die. Hate and bitterness are in control. I raise my spyglass and look through my window. A small sailboat moves along the Potomac. It is possible for a man to provision a boat, set sail, dis- appear. It is possible for a man to work with other men and achieve.

September 2, 1863

A drum corps passes the White House.

I listen.

I must ask myself some questions this evening: must civilization be influenced by greedy politicians, connivers, self-promoters, toadies? Is there such a thing as common sense where the bulk of mankind is concerned? Is Christianity a bulwark to be counted on, or is it cleverly concocted pretension? Must tragedy dog man’s footsteps? Does a lie have a more lasting influence than the truth? Do the echoes of John Brown end? Is the Dred Scott case on trial, decade after decade?

These and other questions flog my mind.

Men say I am moody, they say I am a man of mystery. If I am mysterious at times it is because I seek answers. I demand answers. Only fools accept the face of things. Men weary of my tales and my humor as I hunt for enlightenment for this troubled country. It is my duty to care more than anyone, and humor and satire have an influence not to be scorned.

The White House

September 15, 1863

If I were home my fat Filibuster would shove his whiskers into my face and meow. He loved to be scratched...he was Robert’s pet but when I lay on the floor of the parlor to read he would stretch out beside me. I’d scratch him and try to go on with my reading.

I would like to have supper tonight in my shirt sleeves, and answer the doorbell in my carpet slippers.

I would like to hear Mary scolding the iceman, as he tries, once more, to overcharge her.

How well she managed our house, penny-wise always. How well she attended the children. She found time to help the poor; was never too busy to chat with a neighbor.

“Let’s see a play tonight. There’s that new one, A For- tune to Share. Shall we go?”

I see myself puttering in the yard. There was time to prune the trees, to cut wood, plant flowers. The horse and cow were part of our lives. I was another man then.

I wonder what happened to my grey hat; it had a wide band inside, fine for stuffing letters and checks. Maybe Billy has it, hanging on the tree, at the back of our office.

The White House

Evening

Throughout that long, dry summer, Stephen Douglas and I battled our verbal battles. There was a noble pertinacity in the “Little Giant.” I called him a “slanderer” and a “sneak.” He dubbed me a “fraud,” and alluded to pro- slavery conspiracies. He attacked my “house divided” stand... I insisted that a nation could not endure half- free, half-slave.

Douglas had his private car, bannered and flagged. A handsome brass cannon boomed from a flatcar coupled to his train, boomed his entry into every town and city. Often our debates were veritable picnics, fireworks, bands. I rode on a Conestoga drawn by six white horses...bunting... flowers...pretty girls. Sometimes a secretary recorded our speeches.

As the summer wore on, I began to stress the moral issues with great emphasis. I had little hope that I would win the senate seat; my voice, pitched higher than his, also lacked accomplished delivery. The silent artillery of time was firing at us. I heard the country’s slaves crying out. I remembered that John Randolph said that slavery was “a volcano in full eruption.”

Votes...but it is not altogether a matter of votes.

Yet the day of reckoning arrived.

Douglas – 54. Lincoln – 46.

So I lost.

It will be hard to die and leave the country no better than if I had never lived.

September 29th, 1863

My Desk

I may remark that having in my life heard many arguments—or strings of words meant to pass for arguments—intended to show that the negro ought to be a slave—if he shall now fight in the Confederate Army to keep himself a slave, it will be a far better argument why he should remain a slave than I have ever heard before.

Perhaps he ought to be a slave if he desires it ardently enough to fight for it. Or, if one out of four will, for his own freedom, fight to keep the other three in slavery, he ought to be a slaver for his selfish meanness.

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Once again, we ask: what is freedom?

Individually, it is a chance to worship or not worship, it is a chance to earn a living, to raise a family, examine the past, improve one’s intellect, guard one’s health. It is also an opportunity to perfect national and international law. Certainly, freedom should not be a code but should emphasize, in every respect, human values. Millions in our land lack freedom. This condition must not continue. Education is the sure route toward freedom.

Thursday

My Desk

If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A is white and B is black. It is color then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule you are to be a slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule you are to be the slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

I hear rifle fire in the night.

October 4, 1863

This rainy evening I take up my pen again.

There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the infinite to the finite.

Probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did. But in my poor, maimed, withered way bear with me as I go on seeking for a faith that was with him of olden times, who exclaimed “Help thou my unbelief.”

I do not see that I am more astray—though perhaps in a different direction—than others whose points of view differ widely from each other in the sectarian denominations. They all claim to be Christians, and interpret their several creeds as infallible ones. I doubt the possibility, or propriety, of settling the religion of Jesus Christ in the models of man-man creeds and dogmas.

It was a spirit in the life that He laid stress on and taught, if I read aright. I know I see it to be so with me... The fundamental truths reported in the four Gospels as from the lips of Jesus, and that I first heard from the lips of my mother, are settled and fixed moral precepts with me. I have concluded to dismiss from my mind the debatable wrangles that once perplexed me with distractions that stirred up but never absolutely settled anything. I have tossed them aside with the doubtful differences which divide denominations. I have ceased to follow such discussions or be interested in them. I cannot without mental reservations assent to long and complicated creeds and catechisms.

The White House

I had a visitor this morning who needed to be reassured. He is a trembling old man from Arkansas, a local politician. After spelling out some good news for his benefit I told him this anecdote... I think it worked very well...

An eccentric old bachelor lived in the Hoosier state and was famous for seeing big bugaboos in everything. He lived with an elder brother and one day went out hunting. His brother heard him firing back in the cornfield and went out to see what was the matter. He found him loading and firing into the top of a tree. Not being able to dis- cover anything in the tree, he asked his brother what he was firing at. “A squirrel,” the man said, and kept on firing. His brother thought there was some humbug about the matter and looked him over carefully and found a big louse crawling about on one of his eyelashes.

Executive Mansion

October 12, 1863

After my nomination Springfield filled with ox carts, wagons, buggies, horsemen, trainloads of folk. Fifty- thousand poured into my little town. Hordes jammed the street in front of my house, yelling “Speech...speech!”

I greeted them, said a few words, joked.

Reporters swarmed around me. Friends came and went. I forgot to stable the horse, forgot to milk the cow. Mary scolded me for forgetting my supper.

Tad got lost in the crowd.

Wind blew, dust blew.

It seems very amusing to me now. Unreal.

Streets were lit with burning tar barrels and torches. People sang, paraded the streets.

“ Ole Abe Lincoln came out of the wilderness,

Out of the wilderness, out of the wilderness...”

I turned in mighty late that night, yet singers were still singing, singing “Gentle Annie” and other favorites.

October 13, 1863

Before leaving for Washington, I went to my office to say good-bye to Billy Herndon. It wasn’t easy climbing that stair. It was difficult to say good-bye to my old partner and friend. I gathered up some books and papers and laid them on the big table. I stretched out on the old couch, with the buffalo robe under me.

“How long have we been working together, Billy?”

“Over sixteen years,” he replied.

“We’ve never had a cross word all that time, have we?”

He nodded.

“That’s right.”

I asked him to retain our old shingle, on its rusty hinges.

“If I live, I’ll be coming back, and then we’ll go on as if nothing had ever happened.”

At the bottom of the stairs, we shook hands.

In keeping with my philosophy I felt certain that I would never return to Springfield.

October 21, 1863

White House

Library

The unfinished dome on the White House continues to trouble me. The incompletion has become a symbol. I peer through its maw and it seems a war wound. When will it be finished? And when it has been completed will the union of the North and South begin? A carpenter tips his hat: “Good morning, Mr. President.” Throughout the morning I have heard hammers and saws. Patience, I tell myself. A wise man invented patience. The emancipation of man will require great patience.

It is pleasant writing in the library. I will return again.

Here is a book, on my desk, entitled Sparta. I believe that the Spartans were often respected for their courage.

What is it men fear most? Death?

Ten men will have ten answers.

From the days of the Spartans men have floundered over freedom—spelling it a hundred different ways! The Iroquois had their idea of freedom. The Pilgrim had his. The blacks. The list can go on and on.

Freedom and death... I see they have an ugly affinity.

Nov 1st – 63

The Library