The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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Shortly after this, without coming to any positive understanding with
her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first saw me. During my
stay there I had letters from her which did not change my opinion of
either her intellect or intention, but on the contrary confirmed it in
both.

All this while, although I was fixed, "firm as the surge-repelling rock,"
in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the rashness which
had led me to make it. Through life, I have been in no bondage, either
real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired to be
free. After my return home, I saw nothing to change my opinions of her
in any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time
in planning how I might get along through life after my contemplated
change of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might
procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much,
perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter.

After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, here I am,
wholly, unexpectedly, completely, out of the "scrape"; and now I want to
know if you can guess how I got out of it----out, clear, in every sense
of the term; no violation of word, honor, or conscience. I don't believe
you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the lawyer
says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: After I had delayed
the matter as long as I thought I could in honor do (which, by the way,
had brought me round into the last fall), I concluded I might as well
bring it to a consummation without further delay; and so I mustered my
resolution, and made the proposal to her direct; but, shocking to relate,
she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it through an affectation
of modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the peculiar
circumstances of her case; but on my renewal of the charge, I found she
repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried it again and
again but with the same success, or rather with the same want of success.

I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unexpectedly found
myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to
me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the
reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at
the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also
that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have, had
actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the
whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a
little in love with her. But let it all go. I'll try and outlive it.
Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with
truth be said of me. I most emphatically in this instance, made a fool
of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of
marrying, and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with any one who
would be blockhead enough to have me.

When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to amuse me.
Give my respects to Mr. Browning.

Your sincere friend, A. LINCOLN.




1839
REMARKS ON SALE OF PUBLIC LANDS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 17, 1839.

Mr. Lincoln, from Committee on Finance, to which the subject was
referred, made a report on the subject of purchasing of the United States
all the unsold lands lying within the limits of the State of Illinois,
accompanied by resolutions that this State propose to purchase all unsold
lands at twenty-five cents per acre, and pledging the faith of the State
to carry the proposal into effect if the government accept the same
within two years.

Mr. Lincoln thought the resolutions ought to be seriously considered. In
reply to the gentleman from Adams, he said that it was not to enrich the
State. The price of the lands may be raised, it was thought by some; by
others, that it would be reduced. The conclusion in his mind was that
the representatives in this Legislature from the country in which the
lands lie would be opposed to raising the price, because it would operate
against the settlement of the lands. He referred to the lands in the
military tract. They had fallen into the hands of large speculators in
consequence of the low price. He was opposed to a low price of land. He
thought it was adverse to the interests of the poor settler, because
speculators buy them up. He was opposed to a reduction of the price of
public lands.

Mr. Lincoln referred to some official documents emanating from Indiana,
and compared the progressive population of the two States. Illinois had
gained upon that State under the public land system as it is. His
conclusion was that ten years from this time Illinois would have no more
public land unsold than Indiana now has. He referred also to Ohio. That
State had sold nearly all her public lands. She was but twenty years
ahead of us, and as our lands were equally salable--more so, as he
maintained--we should have no more twenty years from now than she has at
present.

Mr. Lincoln referred to the canal lands, and supposed that the policy of
the State would be different in regard to them, if the representatives
from that section of country could themselves choose the policy; but the
representatives from other parts of the State had a veto upon it, and
regulated the policy. He thought that if the State had all the lands,
the policy of the Legislature would be more liberal to all sections.

He referred to the policy of the General Government. He thought that if
the national debt had not been paid, the expenses of the government would
not have doubled, as they had done since that debt was paid.




TO _________ ROW.

SPRINGFIELD, June 11, 1839
DEAR ROW:

Mr. Redman informs me that you wish me to write you the particulars of a
conversation between Dr. Felix and myself relative to you. The Dr.
overtook me between Rushville and Beardstown.

He, after learning that I had lived at Springfield, asked if I was
acquainted with you. I told him I was. He said you had lately been
elected constable in Adams, but that you never would be again. I asked
him why. He said the people there had found out that you had been
sheriff or deputy sheriff in Sangamon County, and that you came off and
left your securities to suffer. He then asked me if I did not know such
to be the fact. I told him I did not think you had ever been sheriff or
deputy sheriff in Sangamon, but that I thought you had been constable. I
further told him that if you had left your securities to suffer in that
or any other case, I had never heard of it, and that if it had been so, I
thought I would have heard of it.

If the Dr. is telling that I told him anything against you whatever, I
authorize you to contradict it flatly. We have no news here.

Your friend, as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH ON NATIONAL BANK

IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, December 20, 1839.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It is peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt a
continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been conducted
in this hall on several preceding ones. It is so because on each of
those evenings there was a much fuller attendance than now, without any
reason for its being so, except the greater interest the community feel
in the speakers who addressed them then than they do in him who is to do
so now. I am, indeed, apprehensive that the few who have attended have
done so more to spare me mortification than in the hope of being
interested in anything I may be able to say. This circumstance casts a
damp upon my spirits, which I am sure I shall be unable to overcome
during the evening. But enough of preface.

The subject heretofore and now to be discussed is the subtreasury scheme
of the present administration, as a means of collecting, safe-keeping,
transferring, and disbursing, the revenues of the nation, as contrasted
with a national bank for the same purposes. Mr. Douglas has said that we
(the Whigs) have not dared to meet them (the Locos) in argument on this
question. I protest against this assertion. I assert that we have again
and again, during this discussion, urged facts and arguments against the
subtreasury which they have neither dared to deny nor attempted to
answer. But lest some may be led to believe that we really wish to avoid
the question, I now propose, in my humble way, to urge those arguments
again; at the same time begging the audience to mark well the positions I
shall take and the proof I shall offer to sustain them, and that they
will not again permit Mr. Douglas or his friends to escape the force of
them by a round and groundless assertion that we "dare not meet them in
argument."

Of the subtreasury, then, as contrasted with a national bank for the
before-enumerated purposes, I lay down the following propositions, to
wit: (1) It will injuriously affect the community by its operation on the
circulating medium. (2) It will be a more expensive fiscal agent. (3)
It will be a less secure depository of the public money. To show the
truth of the first proposition, let us take a short review of our
condition under the operation of a national bank. It was the depository
of the public revenues. Between the collection of those revenues and the
disbursement of them by the government, the bank was permitted to and did
actually loan them out to individuals, and hence the large amount of
money actually collected for revenue purposes, which by any other plan
would have been idle a great portion of the time, was kept almost
constantly in circulation. Any person who will reflect that money is only
valuable while in circulation will readily perceive that any device which
will keep the government revenues in constant circulation, instead of
being locked up in idleness, is no inconsiderable advantage. By the
subtreasury the revenue is to be collected and kept in iron boxes until
the government wants it for disbursement; thus robbing the people of the
use of it, while the government does not itself need it, and while the
money is performing no nobler office than that of rusting in iron boxes.
The natural effect of this change of policy, every one will see, is to
reduce the quantity of money in circulation. But, again, by the
subtreasury scheme the revenue is to be collected in specie. I
anticipate that this will be disputed. I expect to hear it said that it
is not the policy of the administration to collect the revenue in specie.
If it shall, I reply that Mr. Van Buren, in his message recommending the
subtreasury, expended nearly a column of that document in an attempt to
persuade Congress to provide for the collection of the revenue in specie
exclusively; and he concludes with these words:

"It may be safely assumed that no motive of convenience to the citizens
requires the reception of bank paper." In addition to this, Mr. Silas
Wright, Senator from New York, and the political, personal and
confidential friend of Mr. Van Buren, drafted and introduced into the
Senate the first subtreasury bill, and that bill provided for ultimately
collecting the revenue in specie. It is true, I know, that that clause
was stricken from the bill, but it was done by the votes of the Whigs,
aided by a portion only of the Van Buren senators. No subtreasury bill
has yet become a law, though two or three have been considered by
Congress, some with and some without the specie clause; so that I admit
there is room for quibbling upon the question of whether the
administration favor the exclusive specie doctrine or not; but I take it
that the fact that the President at first urged the specie doctrine, and
that under his recommendation the first bill introduced embraced it,
warrants us in charging it as the policy of the party until their head as
publicly recants it as he at first espoused it. I repeat, then, that by
the subtreasury the revenue is to be collected in specie. Now mark what
the effect of this must be. By all estimates ever made there are but
between sixty and eighty millions of specie in the United States. The
expenditures of the Government for the year 1838--the last for which we
have had the report--were forty millions. Thus it is seen that if the
whole revenue be collected in specie, it will take more than half of all
the specie in the nation to do it. By this means more than half of all
the specie belonging to the fifteen millions of souls who compose the
whole population of the country is thrown into the hands of the public
office-holders, and other public creditors comprising in number perhaps
not more than one quarter of a million, leaving the other fourteen
millions and three quarters to get along as they best can, with less than
one half of the specie of the country, and whatever rags and shinplasters
they may be able to put, and keep, in circulation. By this means, every
office-holder and other public creditor may, and most likely will, set up
shaver; and a most glorious harvest will the specie-men have of it,--each
specie-man, upon a fair division, having to his share the fleecing of
about fifty-nine rag-men. In all candor let me ask, was such a system
for benefiting the few at the expense of the many ever before devised?
And was the sacred name of Democracy ever before made to indorse such an
enormity against the rights of the people?

I have already said that the subtreasury will reduce the quantity of
money in circulation. This position is strengthened by the recollection
that the revenue is to be collected in Specie, so that the mere amount of
revenue is not all that is withdrawn, but the amount of paper circulation
that the forty millions would serve as a basis to is withdrawn, which
would be in a sound state at least one hundred millions. When one
hundred millions, or more, of the circulation we now have shall be
withdrawn, who can contemplate without terror the distress, ruin,
bankruptcy, and beggary that must follow? The man who has purchased any
article--say a horse--on credit, at one hundred dollars, when there are
two hundred millions circulating in the country, if the quantity be
reduced to one hundred millions by the arrival of pay-day, will find the
horse but sufficient to pay half the debt; and the other half must either
be paid out of his other means, and thereby become a clear loss to him,
or go unpaid, and thereby become a clear loss to his creditor. What I
have here said of a single case of the purchase of a horse will hold good
in every case of a debt existing at the time a reduction in the quantity
of money occurs, by whomsoever, and for whatsoever, it may have been
contracted. It may be said that what the debtor loses the creditor gains
by this operation; but on examination this will be found true only to a
very limited extent. It is more generally true that all lose by it--the
creditor by losing more of his debts than he gains by the increased value
of those he collects; the debtor by either parting with more of his
property to pay his debts than he received in contracting them, or by
entirely breaking up his business, and thereby being thrown upon the
world in idleness.

The general distress thus created will, to be sure, be temporary,
because, whatever change may occur in the quantity of money in any
community, time will adjust the derangement produced; but while that
adjustment is progressing, all suffer more or less, and very many lose
everything that renders life desirable. Why, then, shall we suffer a
severe difficulty, even though it be but temporary, unless we receive
some equivalent for it?

What I have been saying as to the effect produced by a reduction of the
quantity of money relates to the whole country. I now propose to show
that it would produce a peculiar and permanent hardship upon the citizens
of those States and Territories in which the public lands lie. The
land-offices in those States and Territories, as all know, form the great
gulf by which all, or nearly all, the money in them is swallowed up.
When the quantity of money shall be reduced, and consequently everything
under individual control brought down in proportion, the price of those
lands, being fixed by law, will remain as now. Of necessity it will
follow that the produce or labor that now raises money sufficient to
purchase eighty acres will then raise but sufficient to purchase forty,
or perhaps not that much; and this difficulty and hardship will last as
long, in some degree, as any portion of these lands shall remain
undisposed of. Knowing, as I well do, the difficulty that poor people
now encounter in procuring homes, I hesitate not to say that when the
price of the public lands shall be doubled or trebled, or, which is the
same thing, produce and labor cut down to one half or one third of their
present prices, it will be little less than impossible for them to
procure those homes at all....

Well, then, what did become of him? (Postmaster General Barry) Why, the
President immediately expressed his high disapprobation of his almost
unequaled incapacity and corruption by appointing him to a foreign
mission, with a salary and outfit of $18,000 a year! The party now
attempt to throw Barry off, and to avoid the responsibility of his sins.
Did not the President indorse those sins when, on the very heel of their
commission, he appointed their author to the very highest and most
honorable office in his gift, and which is but a single step behind the
very goal of American political ambition?

I return to another of Mr. Douglas's excuses for the expenditures of
1838, at the same time announcing the pleasing intelligence that this is
the last one. He says that ten millions of that year's expenditure was a
contingent appropriation, to prosecute an anticipated war with Great
Britain on the Maine boundary question. Few words will settle this.
First, that the ten millions appropriated was not made till 1839, and
consequently could not have been expended in 1838; second, although it
was appropriated, it has never been expended at all. Those who heard Mr.
Douglas recollect that he indulged himself in a contemptuous expression
of pity for me. "Now he's got me," thought I. But when he went on to
say that five millions of the expenditure of 1838 were payments of the
French indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions had
been for the post-office, which I knew to be untrue; that ten millions
had been for the Maine boundary war, which I not only knew to be untrue,
but supremely ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough
to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to
go unexposed,--I readily consented that, on the score both of veracity
and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or I were the more
deserving of the world's contempt.

Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party and
the Whigs is that, although the former sometimes err in practice, they
are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in
principle; and, better to impress this proposition, he uses a figurative
expression in these words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but
they are sound in the head and the heart." The first branch of the
figure--that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel--I admit
is not merely figuratively, but literally true. Who that looks but for a
moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their
hundreds of others, scampering away with the public money to Texas, to
Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find
refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly
affected in their heels with a species of "running itch"? It seems that
this malady of their heels operates on these sound-headed and
honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in the comic song
did on its owner: which, when he had once got started on it, the more he
tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing
this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems too
strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier, who was always
boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably
retreated without orders at the first charge of an engagement, being
asked by his captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I have as brave a
heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever danger
approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it." So with Mr.
Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their hand for the most
laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but
before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally "vulnerable
heels" will run away with them.

Seriously this proposition of Mr. Lamborn is nothing more or less than a
request that his party may be tried by their professions instead of their
practices. Perhaps no position that the party assumes is more liable to
or more deserving of exposure than this very modest request; and nothing
but the unwarrantable length to which I have already extended these
remarks forbids me now attempting to expose it. For the reason given, I
pass it by.

I shall advert to but one more point. Mr. Lamborn refers to the late
elections in the States, and from their results confidently predicts that
every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next
Presidential election. Address that argument to cowards and to knaves;
with the free and the brave it will effect nothing. It may be true; if
it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours
may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was
the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great
volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that
reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a
current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over
the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed
no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons
on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly
taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with the
hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all
may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us
from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions
not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate
the cause of my country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing
up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
Here, without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the
face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem
it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks
with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none falter
who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall
fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to
our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that
the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in
disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in
defending.




TO JOHN T. STUART.

SPRINGFIELD, December 23, 1839.
DEAR STUART:

Dr. Henry will write you all the political news. I write this about
some little matters of business. You recollect you told me you had drawn
the Chicago Masark money, and sent it to the claimants. A hawk-billed
Yankee is here besetting me at every turn I take, saying that Robert
Kinzie never received the eighty dollars to which he was entitled. Can
you tell me anything about the matter? Again, old Mr. Wright, who lives
up South Fork somewhere, is teasing me continually about some deeds which
he says he left with you, but which I can find nothing of. Can you tell
me where they are? The Legislature is in session and has suffered the
bank to forfeit its charter without benefit of clergy. There seems to be
little disposition to resuscitate it.

Whenever a letter comes from you to Mrs.____________ I carry it to her,
and then I see Betty; she is a tolerable nice "fellow" now. Maybe I will
write again when I get more time.

Your friend as ever, A. LINCOLN

P. S.--The Democratic giant is here, but he is not much worth talking
about. A.L.




1840
CIRCULAR FROM WHIG COMMITTEE.

Confidential.

January [1?], 1840.

To MESSRS ________

GENTLEMEN:--In obedience to a resolution of the Whig State convention, we
have appointed you the Central Whig Committee of your county. The trust
confided to you will be one of watchfulness and labor; but we hope the
glory of having contributed to the overthrow of the corrupt powers that
now control our beloved country will be a sufficient reward for the time
and labor you will devote to it. Our Whig brethren throughout the Union
have met in convention, and after due deliberation and mutual concessions
have elected candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency not only
worthy of our cause, but worthy of the support of every true patriot who
would have our country redeemed, and her institutions honestly and
faithfully administered. To overthrow the trained bands that are opposed
to us whose salaried officers are ever on the watch, and whose misguided
followers are ever ready to obey their smallest commands, every Whig must
not only know his duty, but must firmly resolve, whatever of time and
labor it may cost, boldly and faithfully to do it. Our intention is to
organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls
in the coming Presidential contest. We cannot do this, however, without
your co-operation; and as we do our duty, so we shall expect you to do
yours. After due deliberation, the following is the plan of
organization, and the duties required of each county committee: