The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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THE PAPERS AND WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

COMPLETE

CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION



Edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley

With an Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt

The Essay on Lincoln by Carl Schurz

The Address on Lincoln by Joseph Choate





VOLUME 1.


INTRODUCTORY

Immediately after Lincoln's re-election to the Presidency, in an off-hand
speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his admirers on
the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows:

"It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong
for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its
existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion
brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election,
occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to
the strain.... The strife of the election is but human nature
practically applied to the facts in the case. What has occurred in this
case must ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In
any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall
have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.
Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn
wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the
election is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a
common fort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven
and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I
have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.
While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election and
duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my
countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good, it adds
nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or
pained by the result."

This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is in a
peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great statesman who
made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in its lofty standard of
morality. Lincoln's life, Lincoln's deeds and words, are not only of
consuming interest to the historian, but should be intimately known to
every man engaged in the hard practical work of American political life.
It is difficult to overstate how much it means to a nation to have as the
two foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln. It
is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to feel that
the highest ambition any American can possibly have will be gratified
just in proportion as he raises himself toward the standards set by these
two men.

It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to advance
the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse for doing poorly
in the present; but it is an excellent thing to study the history of the
great deeds of the past, and of the great men who did them, with an
earnest desire to profit thereby so as to render better service in the
present. In their essentials, the men of the present day are much like
the men of the past, and the live issues of the present can be faced to
better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the leaders of
the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of Lincoln's
life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and
inefficiency--the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers
alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if
shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning
moralist of unbalanced mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but
has no power himself to do good and but little power to do ill--all these
were as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic themselves. His
life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom, because otherwise
adherence to right will be mere sound and fury without substance; and
that they must also act high-mindedly, or else what seems to be wisdom
will in the end turn out to be the most destructive kind of folly.

Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to leadership in
his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty to a
lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life, he also accepted human
nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve
results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a
man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from
mere self-seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more
sane and healthy mind--a man less under the influence of that fantastic
and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in reality
profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work-a-day world refuse to
do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the impossible.

In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian draws an
interesting distinction between the qualities needed for a successful
political career in modern society and those which lead to eminence in
the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral effort. He says:

"....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres of
statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate
earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on
an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a
loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here
likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician
deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is
in a great measure that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions of
modern life, the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses
secondary qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest
intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the intelligent men
of his time, and who pursues common ideals with more than common
ability.... Tact, business talent, knowledge of men, resolution,
promptitude and sagacity in dealing with immediate emergencies, a
character which lends itself easily to conciliation, diminishes friction
and inspires confidence, are especially needed, and they are more likely
to be found among shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men
of great original genius or of an heroic type of character."

The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest
American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this absolutely
democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who actually
combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus puts in
antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western country
lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world,
and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide
his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a leader
who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation or any
other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 22, 1905.




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

"I have endured," wrote Lincoln not long before his death, "a great deal
of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of
kindness not quite free from ridicule." On Easter Day, 1865, the world
knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really
signified. Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by
year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew
him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real. This should not be. For
Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more
than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious. Invaluable is the example of
the man, intangible that of the hero.

And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness listened
at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham Lincoln, yet
there is for us another way whereby we may attain such knowledge--through
his words--uttered in all sincerity to those who loved or hated him.
Cold, unsatisfying they may seem, these printed words, while we can yet
speak with those who knew him, and look into eyes that once looked into
his. But in truth it is here that we find his simple greatness, his
great simplicity, and though no man tried less so to show his power, no
man has so shown it more clearly.

Thus these writings of Abraham Lincoln are associated with those of
Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and of the other "Founders of the
Republic," not that Lincoln should become still more of the past, but,
rather, that he with them should become still more of the present.
However faint and mythical may grow the story of that Great Struggle, the
leader, Lincoln, at least should remain a real, living American. No
matter how clearly, how directly, Lincoln has shown himself in his
writings, we yet should not forget those men whose minds, from their
various view-points, have illumined for us his character. As this nation
owes a great debt to Lincoln, so, also, Lincoln's memory owes a great
debt to a nation which, as no other nation could have done, has been able
to appreciate his full worth. Among the many who have brought about this
appreciation, those only whose estimates have been placed in these
volumes may be mentioned here. To President Roosevelt, to Mr. Schurz and
to Mr. Choate, the editor, for himself, for the publishers, and on behalf
of the readers, wishes to offer his sincere acknowledgments.

Thanks are also due, for valuable and sympathetic assistance rendered in
the preparation of this work, to Mr. Gilbert A. Tracy, of Putnam, Conn.,
Major William H. Lambert, of Philadelphia, and Mr. C. F. Gunther, of
Chicago, to the Chicago Historical Association and personally to its
capable Secretary, Miss McIlvaine, to Major Henry S. Burrage, of
Portland, Me., and to General Thomas J. Henderson, of Illinois.

For various courtesies received, the editor is furthermore indebted to
the Librarian of the Library of Congress; to Messrs. McClure, Phillips &
Co., D. Appleton & Co., Macmillan & Co., Dodd, Mead & Co., and Harper
Brothers, of New York; to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dana, Estes & Co., and
L. C. Page & Co., of Boston; to A. C. McClure & Co., of Chicago; to The
Robert Clarke Co., of Cincinnati, and to the J. B. Lippincott Co., of
Philadelphia.

It is hardly necessary to add that every effort has been made by the
editor to bring into these volumes whatever material may there properly
belong, material much of which is widely scattered in public libraries
and in private collections. He has been fortunate in securing certain
interesting correspondence and papers which had not before come into
print in book form. Information concerning some of these papers had
reached him too late to enable the papers to find place in their proper
chronological order in the set. Rather, however, than not to present
these papers to the readers they have been included in the seventh volume
of the set, which concludes the "Writings."

[These later papers are, in this etext, re-arranged into chronologic
order. D.W.]

October, 1905,
A. B. L.




ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

AN ESSAY BY CARL SHURZ

No American can study the character and career of Abraham Lincoln without
being carried away by sentimental emotions. We are always inclined to
idealize that which we love,--a state of mind very unfavorable to the
exercise of sober critical judgment. It is therefore not surprising that
most of those who have written or spoken on that extraordinary man, even
while conscientiously endeavoring to draw a lifelike portraiture of his
being, and to form a just estimate of his public conduct, should have
drifted into more or less indiscriminating eulogy, painting his great
features in the most glowing colors, and covering with tender shadings
whatever might look like a blemish.

But his standing before posterity will not be exalted by mere praise of
his virtues and abilities, nor by any concealment of his limitations and
faults. The stature of the great man, one of whose peculiar charms
consisted in his being so unlike all other great men, will rather lose
than gain by the idealization which so easily runs into the commonplace.
For it was distinctly the weird mixture of qualities and forces in him,
of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that which
he had become with that which he had not ceased to be, that made him so
fascinating a character among his fellow-men, gave him his singular power
over their minds and hearts, and fitted him to be the greatest leader in
the greatest crisis of our national life.

His was indeed a marvellous growth. The statesman or the military hero
born and reared in a log cabin is a familiar figure in American history;
but we may search in vain among our celebrities for one whose origin and
early life equalled Abraham Lincoln's in wretchedness. He first saw the
light in a miserable hovel in Kentucky, on a farm consisting of a few
barren acres in a dreary neighborhood; his father a typical "poor
Southern white," shiftless and without ambition for himself or his
children, constantly looking for a new piece of land on which he might
make a living without much work; his mother, in her youth handsome and
bright, grown prematurely coarse in feature and soured in mind by daily
toil and care; the whole household squalid, cheerless, and utterly void
of elevating inspirations... Only when the family had "moved" into the
malarious backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a
woman of thrift and energy, had taken charge of the children, the
shaggy-headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old,
"began to feel like a human being." Hard work was his early lot. When a
mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on his father's
clearing, or hired out to other farmers to plough, or dig ditches, or
chop wood, or drive ox teams; occasionally also to "tend the baby," when
the farmer's wife was otherwise engaged. He could regard it as an
advancement to a higher sphere of activity when he obtained work in a
"crossroads store," where he amused the customers by his talk over the
counter; for he soon distinguished himself among the backwoods folk as
one who had something to say worth listening to. To win that
distinction, he had to draw mainly upon his wits; for, while his thirst
for knowledge was great, his opportunities for satisfying that thirst
were wofully slender.

In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit but little, he was taught
only reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. Among the people of
the settlement, bush farmers and small tradesmen, he found none of
uncommon intelligence or education; but some of them had a few books,
which he borrowed eagerly. Thus he read and reread, AEsop's Fables,
learning to tell stories with a point and to argue by parables; he read
Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, a short history of the United
States, and Weems's Life of Washington. To the town constable's he went
to read the Revised Statutes of Indiana. Every printed page that fell
into his hands he would greedily devour, and his family and friends
watched him with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after his daily work,
crouched in a corner of the log cabin or outside under a tree, absorbed
in a book while munching his supper of corn bread. In this manner he
began to gather some knowledge, and sometimes he would astonish the girls
with such startling remarks as that the earth was moving around the sun,
and not the sun around the earth, and they marvelled where "Abe" could
have got such queer notions. Soon he also felt the impulse to write; not
only making extracts from books he wished to remember, but also composing
little essays of his own. First he sketched these with charcoal on a
wooden shovel scraped white with a drawing-knife, or on basswood
shingles. Then he transferred them to paper, which was a scarce
commodity in the Lincoln household; taking care to cut his expressions
close, so that they might not cover too much space,--a style-forming
method greatly to be commended. Seeing boys put a burning coal on the
back of a wood turtle, he was moved to write on cruelty to animals.
Seeing men intoxicated with whiskey, he wrote on temperance. In
verse-making, too, he tried himself, and in satire on persons offensive
to him or others,--satire the rustic wit of which was not always fit for
ears polite. Also political thoughts he put upon paper, and some of his
pieces were even deemed good enough for publication in the county weekly.

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation as a clever young man, which he
increased by his performances as a speaker, not seldom drawing upon
himself the dissatisfaction of his employers by mounting a stump in the
field, and keeping the farm hands from their work by little speeches in a
jocose and sometimes also a serious vein. At the rude social frolics of
the settlement he became an important person, telling funny, stories,
mimicking the itinerant preachers who had happened to pass by, and making
his mark at wrestling matches, too; for at the age of seventeen he had
attained his full height, six feet four inches in his stockings, if he
had any, and a terribly muscular clodhopper he was. But he was known
never to use his extraordinary strength to the injury or humiliation of
others; rather to do them a kindly turn, or to enforce justice and fair
dealing between them. All this made him a favorite in backwoods society,
although in some things he appeared a little odd, to his friends. Far
more than any of them, he was given not only to reading, but to fits of
abstraction, to quiet musing with himself, and also to strange spells of
melancholy, from which he often would pass in a moment to rollicking
outbursts of droll humor. But on the whole he was one of the people
among whom he lived; in appearance perhaps even a little more uncouth
than most of them,--a very tall, rawboned youth, with large features,
dark, shrivelled skin, and rebellious hair; his arms and legs long, out
of proportion; clad in deerskin trousers, which from frequent exposure to
the rain had shrunk so as to sit tightly on his limbs, leaving several
inches of bluish shin exposed between their lower end and the heavy
tan-colored shoes; the nether garment held usually by only one suspender,
that was strung over a coarse homemade shirt; the head covered in winter
with a coonskin cap, in summer with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape,
without a band.

It is doubtful whether he felt himself much superior to his surroundings,
although he confessed to a yearning for some knowledge of the world
outside of the circle in which he lived. This wish was gratified; but
how? At the age of nineteen he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans
as a flatboat hand, temporarily joining a trade many members of which at
that time still took pride in being called "half horse and half
alligator." After his return he worked and lived in the old way until the
spring of 1830, when his father "moved again," this time to Illinois; and
on the journey of fifteen days "Abe" had to drive the ox wagon which
carried the household goods. Another log cabin was built, and then,
fencing a field, Abraham Lincoln split those historic rails which were
destined to play so picturesque a part in the Presidential campaign
twenty-eight years later.

Having come of age, Lincoln left the family, and "struck out for
himself." He had to "take jobs whenever he could get them." The first
of these carried him again as a flatboat hand to New Orleans. There
something happened that made a lasting impression upon his soul: he
witnessed a slave auction. "His heart bled," wrote one of his
companions; "said nothing much; was silent; looked bad. I can say,
knowing it, that it was on this trip that he formed his opinion on
slavery. It run its iron in him then and there, May, 1831. I have heard
him say so often." Then he lived several years at New Salem, in
Illinois, a small mushroom village, with a mill, some "stores" and
whiskey shops, that rose quickly, and soon disappeared again. It was a
desolate, disjointed, half-working and half-loitering life, without any
other aim than to gain food and shelter from day to day. He served as
pilot on a steamboat trip, then as clerk in a store and a mill; business
failing, he was adrift for some time. Being compelled to measure his
strength with the chief bully of the neighborhood, and overcoming him, he
became a noted person in that muscular community, and won the esteem and
friendship of the ruling gang of ruffians to such a degree that, when the
Black Hawk war broke out, they elected him, a young man of twenty-three,
captain of a volunteer company, composed mainly of roughs of their kind.
He took the field, and his most noteworthy deed of valor consisted, not
in killing an Indian, but in protecting against his own men, at the peril
of his own life, the life of an old savage who had strayed into his camp.

The Black Hawk war over, he turned to politics. The step from the
captaincy of a volunteer company to a candidacy for a seat in the
Legislature seemed a natural one. But his popularity, although great in
New Salem, had not spread far enough over the district, and he was
defeated. Then the wretched hand-to-mouth struggle began again. He "set
up in store-business" with a dissolute partner, who drank whiskey while
Lincoln was reading books. The result was a disastrous failure and a
load of debt. Thereupon he became a deputy surveyor, and was appointed
postmaster of New Salem, the business of the post-office being so small
that he could carry the incoming and outgoing mail in his hat. All this
could not lift him from poverty, and his surveying instruments and horse
and saddle were sold by the sheriff for debt.

But while all this misery was upon him his ambition rose to higher aims.
He walked many miles to borrow from a schoolmaster a grammar with which
to improve his language. A lawyer lent him a copy of Blackstone, and he
began to study law.

People would look wonderingly at the grotesque figure lying in the grass,
"with his feet up a tree," or sitting on a fence, as, absorbed in a book,
he learned to construct correct sentences and made himself a jurist. At
once he gained a little practice, pettifogging before a justice of the
peace for friends, without expecting a fee. Judicial functions, too,
were thrust upon him, but only at horse-races or wrestling matches, where
his acknowledged honesty and fairness gave his verdicts undisputed
authority. His popularity grew apace, and soon he could be a candidate
for the Legislature again. Although he called himself a Whig, an ardent
admirer of Henry Clay, his clever stump speeches won him the election in
the strongly Democratic district. Then for the first time, perhaps, he
thought seriously of his outward appearance. So far he had been content
with a garb of "Kentucky jeans," not seldom ragged, usually patched, and
always shabby. Now, he borrowed some money from a friend to buy a new
suit of clothes--"store clothes" fit for a Sangamon County statesman; and
thus adorned he set out for the state capital, Vandalia, to take his seat
among the lawmakers.

His legislative career, which stretched over several sessions--for he
was thrice re-elected, in 1836, 1838, and 1840--was not remarkably
brilliant. He did, indeed, not lack ambition. He dreamed even of making
himself "the De Witt Clinton of Illinois," and he actually distinguished
himself by zealous and effective work in those "log-rolling" operations
by which the young State received "a general system of internal
improvements" in the shape of railroads, canals, and banks,--a reckless
policy, burdening the State with debt, and producing the usual crop of
political demoralization, but a policy characteristic of the time and the
impatiently enterprising spirit of the Western people. Lincoln, no doubt
with the best intentions, but with little knowledge of the subject,
simply followed the popular current. The achievement in which, perhaps,
he gloried most was the removal of the State government from Vandalia to
Springfield; one of those triumphs of political management which are apt
to be the pride of the small politician's statesmanship. One thing,
however, he did in which his true nature asserted itself, and which gave
distinct promise of the future pursuit of high aims. Against an
overwhelming preponderance of sentiment in the Legislature, followed by
only one other member, he recorded his protest against a proslavery
resolution,--that protest declaring "the institution of slavery to be
founded on both injustice and bad policy." This was not only the
irrepressible voice of his conscience; it was true moral valor, too; for
at that time, in many parts of the West, an abolitionist was regarded as
little better than a horse-thief, and even "Abe Lincoln" would hardly
have been forgiven his antislavery principles, had he not been known as
such an "uncommon good fellow." But here, in obedience to the great
conviction of his life, he manifested his courage to stand alone, that
courage which is the first requisite of leadership in a great cause.