The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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An old man from Warren, called Dr. Gilmore, was then introduced on the
part of the defense. He swore that he had known Fisher for several
years; that Fisher had resided at his house a long time at each of two
different spells--once while he built a barn for him, and once while he
was doctored for some chronic disease; that two or three years ago Fisher
had a serious hurt in his head by the bursting of a gun, since which he
had been subject to continued bad health and occasional aberration of
mind. He also stated that on last Tuesday, being the same day that Maxcy
arrested William Trailor, he (the doctor) was from home in the early part
of the day, and on his return, about eleven o'clock, found Fisher at his
house in bed, and apparently very unwell; that he asked him how he came
from Springfield; that Fisher said he had come by Peoria, and also told
of several other places he had been at more in the direction of Peoria,
which showed that he at the time of speaking did not know where he had
been wandering about in a state of derangement. He further stated that
in about two hours he received a note from one of Trailor's friends,
advising him of his arrest, and requesting him to go on to Springfield as
a witness, to testify as to the state of Fisher's health in former times;
that he immediately set off, calling up two of his neighbors as company,
and, riding all evening and all night, overtook Maxcy and William at
Lewiston in Fulton County; that Maxcy refusing to discharge Trailor upon
his statement, his two neighbors returned and he came on to Springfield.
Some question being made as to whether the doctor's story was not a
fabrication, several acquaintances of his (among whom was the same
postmaster who wrote Keys, as before mentioned) were introduced as sort
of compurgators, who swore that they knew the doctor to be of good
character for truth and veracity, and generally of good character in
every way.

Here the testimony ended, and the Trailors were discharged, Arch. and
William expressing both in word and manner their entire confidence that
Fisher would be found alive at the doctor's by Galloway, Mallory, and
Myers, who a day before had been despatched for that purpose; which Henry
still protested that no power on earth could ever show Fisher alive.
Thus stands this curious affair. When the doctor's story was first made
public, it was amusing to scan and contemplate the countenances and hear
the remarks of those who had been actively in search for the dead body:
some looked quizzical, some melancholy, and some furiously angry.
Porter, who had been very active, swore he always knew the man was not
dead, and that he had not stirred an inch to hunt for him; Langford, who
had taken the lead in cutting down Hickox's mill-dam, and wanted to hang
Hickox for objecting, looked most awfully woebegone: he seemed the
"victim of unrequited affection," as represented in the comic almanacs we
used to laugh over; and Hart, the little drayman that hauled Molly home
once, said it was too damned bad to have so much trouble, and no hanging
after all.

I commenced this letter on yesterday, since which I received yours of the
13th. I stick to my promise to come to Louisville. Nothing new here
except what I have written. I have not seen ______ since my last trip,
and I am going out there as soon as I mail this letter.

Yours forever, LINCOLN.




STATEMENT ABOUT HARRY WILTON.

June 25, 1841

It having been charged in some of the public prints that Harry Wilton,
late United States marshal for the district of Illinois, had used his
office for political effect, in the appointment of deputies for the
taking of the census for the year 1840, we, the undersigned, were called
upon by Mr. Wilton to examine the papers in his possession relative to
these appointments, and to ascertain therefrom the correctness or
incorrectness of such charge. We accompanied Mr. Wilton to a room, and
examined the matter as fully as we could with the means afforded us. The
only sources of information bearing on the subject which were submitted
to us were the letters, etc., recommending and opposing the various
appointments made, and Mr. Wilton's verbal statements concerning the
same. From these letters, etc., it appears that in some instances
appointments were made in accordance with the recommendations of leading
Whigs, and in opposition to those of leading Democrats; among which
instances the appointments at Scott, Wayne, Madison, and Lawrence are the
strongest. According to Mr. Wilton's statement of the seventy-six
appointments we examined, fifty-four were of Democrats, eleven of Whigs,
and eleven of unknown politics.

The chief ground of complaint against Mr. Wilton, as we had understood
it, was because of his appointment of so many Democratic candidates for
the Legislature, thus giving them a decided advantage over their Whig
opponents; and consequently our attention was directed rather
particularly to that point. We found that there were many such
appointments, among which were those in Tazewell, McLean, Iroquois,
Coles, Menard, Wayne, Washington, Fayette, etc.; and we did not learn
that there was one instance in which a Whig candidate for the Legislature
had been appointed. There was no written evidence before us showing us at
what time those appointments were made; but Mr. Wilton stated that they
all with one exception were made before those appointed became candidates
for the Legislature, and the letters, etc., recommending them all bear
date before, and most of them long before, those appointed were publicly
announced candidates.

We give the foregoing naked facts and draw no conclusions from them.
BEND. S. EDWARDS, A. LINCOLN.




TO MISS MARY SPEED--PRACTICAL SLAVERY

BLOOMINGTON, ILL., September 27, 1841.

Miss Mary Speed, Louisville, Ky.

MY FRIEND: By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for
contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A gentleman
had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was
taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six
together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and
this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient
distance from the others, so that the negroes were strung together
precisely like so many fish upon a trotline. In this condition they were
being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their
friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of
them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery
where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and
unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing
circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and
apparently happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had
been sold was an overfondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost
continually, and the others danced, sang, cracked jokes, and played
various games with cards from day to day. How true it is that 'God
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in other words, that he renders
the worst of human conditions tolerable, while he permits the best to be
nothing better than tolerable. To return to the narrative: When we
reached Springfield I stayed but one day, when I started on this tedious
circuit where I now am. Do you remember my going to the city, while I
was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it?
Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much that about a week
since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone, the
consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither
talk nor eat.

Your sincere friend, A. LINCOLN.




1842
TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON MARRIAGE

January 30, 1842.

MY DEAR SPEED:--Feeling, as you know I do, the deepest solicitude for the
success of the enterprise you are engaged in, I adopt this as the last
method I can adopt to aid you, in case (which God forbid!) you shall need
any aid. I do not place what I am going to say on paper because I can
say it better that way than I could by word of mouth, but, were I to say
it orally before we part, most likely you would forget it at the very
time when it might do you some good. As I think it reasonable that you
will feel very badly some time between this and the final consummation of
your purpose, it is intended that you shall read this just at such a
time. Why I say it is reasonable that you will feel very badly yet, is
because of three special causes added to the general one which I shall
mention.

The general cause is, that you are naturally of a nervous temperament;
and this I say from what I have seen of you personally, and what you have
told me concerning your mother at various times, and concerning your
brother William at the time his wife died. The first special cause is
your exposure to bad weather on your journey, which my experience clearly
proves to be very severe on defective nerves. The second is the absence
of all business and conversation of friends, which might divert your
mind, give it occasional rest from the intensity of thought which will
sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to the bitterness
of death. The third is the rapid and near approach of that crisis on
which all your thoughts and feelings concentrate.

If from all these causes you shall escape and go through triumphantly,
without another "twinge of the soul," I shall be most happily but most
egregiously deceived. If, on the contrary, you shall, as I expect you
will at sometime, be agonized and distressed, let me, who have some
reason to speak with judgment on such a subject, beseech you to ascribe
it to the causes I have mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous
suggestion of the Devil.

"But," you will say, "do not your causes apply to every one engaged in a
like undertaking?" By no means. The particular causes, to a greater or
less extent, perhaps do apply in all cases; but the general one,--nervous
debility, which is the key and conductor of all the particular ones, and
without which they would be utterly harmless,--though it does pertain to
you, does not pertain to one in a thousand. It is out of this that the
painful difference between you and the mass of the world springs.

I know what the painful point with you is at all times when you are
unhappy; it is an apprehension that you do not love her as you should.
What nonsense! How came you to court her? Was it because you thought
she deserved it, and that you had given her reason to expect it? If it
was for that why did not the same reason make you court Ann Todd, and at
least twenty others of whom you can think, and to whom it would apply
with greater force than to her? Did you court her for her wealth? Why,
you know she had none. But you say you reasoned yourself into it. What
do you mean by that? Was it not that you found yourself unable to reason
yourself out of it? Did you not think, and partly form the purpose, of
courting her the first time you ever saw her or heard of her? What had
reason to do with it at that early stage? There was nothing at that time
for reason to work upon. Whether she was moral, amiable, sensible, or
even of good character, you did not, nor could then know, except,
perhaps, you might infer the last from the company you found her in.

All you then did or could know of her was her personal appearance and
deportment; and these, if they impress at all, impress the heart, and not
the head.

Say candidly, were not those heavenly black eyes the whole basis of all
your early reasoning on the subject? After you and I had once been at
the residence, did you not go and take me all the way to Lexington and
back, for no other purpose but to get to see her again, on our return on
that evening to take a trip for that express object? What earthly
consideration would you take to find her scouting and despising you, and
giving herself up to another? But of this you have no apprehension; and
therefore you cannot bring it home to your feelings.

I shall be so anxious about you that I shall want you to write by every
mail.

Your friend,
LINCOLN.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 3, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--Your letter of the 25th January came to hand to-day. You
well know that I do not feel my own sorrows much more keenly than I do
yours, when I know of them; and yet I assure you I was not much hurt by
what you wrote me of your excessively bad feeling at the time you wrote.
Not that I am less capable of sympathizing with you now than ever, not
that I am less your friend than ever, but because I hope and believe that
your present anxiety and distress about her health and her life must and
will forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt
as to the truth of your affection for her. If they can once and forever
be removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty has sent
your present affliction expressly for that object), surely nothing can
come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of misery. The
death-scenes of those we love are surely painful enough; but these we are
prepared for and expect to see: they happen to all, and all know they
must happen. Painful as they are, they are not an unlooked for sorrow.
Should she, as you fear, be destined to an early grave, it is indeed a
great consolation to know that she is so well prepared to meet it. Her
religion, which you once disliked so much, I will venture you now prize
most highly. But I hope your melancholy bodings as to her early death
are not well founded. I even hope that ere this reaches you she will
have returned with improved and still improving health, and that you will
have met her, and forgotten the sorrows of the past in the enjoyments of
the present. I would say more if I could, but it seems that I have said
enough. It really appears to me that you yourself ought to rejoice, and
not sorrow, at this indubitable evidence of your undying affection for
her. Why, Speed, if you did not love her although you might not wish her
death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is
no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a
rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know
the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it. You
know I do not mean wrong. I have been quite clear of "hypo" since you
left, even better than I was along in the fall. I have seen ______ but
once. She seemed very cheerful, and so I said nothing to her about what
we spoke of.

Old Uncle Billy Herndon is dead, and it is said this evening that Uncle
Ben Ferguson will not live. This, I believe, is all the news, and enough
at that unless it were better. Write me immediately on the receipt of
this.

Your friend, as ever,
LINCOLN.




TO JOSHUA F. SPEED--ON DEPRESSION

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, February 13, 1842.

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 1st instant came to hand three or four days
ago. When this shall reach you, you will have been Fanny's husband
several days. You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting; that I
will never cease while I know how to do anything. But you will always
hereafter be on ground that I have never occupied, and consequently, if
advice were needed, I might advise wrong. I do fondly hope, however,
that you will never again need any comfort from abroad. But should I be
mistaken in this, should excessive pleasure still be accompanied with a
painful counterpart at times, still let me urge you, as I have ever done,
to remember, in the depth and even agony of despondency, that very
shortly you are to feel well again. I am now fully convinced that you
love her as ardently as you are capable of loving. Your ever being happy
in her presence, and your intense anxiety about her health, if there were
nothing else, would place this beyond all dispute in my mind. I incline
to think it probable that your nerves will fail you occasionally for a
while; but once you get them firmly guarded now that trouble is over
forever. I think, if I were you, in case my mind were not exactly right,
I would avoid being idle. I would immediately engage in some business,
or go to making preparations for it, which would be the same thing. If
you went through the ceremony calmly, or even with sufficient composure
not to excite alarm in any present, you are safe beyond question, and in
two or three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of men.

I would desire you to give my particular respects to Fanny; but perhaps
you will not wish her to know you have received this, lest she should
desire to see it. Make her write me an answer to my last letter to her;
at any rate I would set great value upon a note or letter from her.
Write me whenever you have leisure. Yours forever, A. LINCOLN. P. S.--I
have been quite a man since you left.




TO G. B. SHELEDY.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., Feb. 16, 1842.
G. B. SHELEDY, ESQ.:

Yours of the 10th is duly received. Judge Logan and myself are doing
business together now, and we are willing to attend to your cases as you
propose. As to the terms, we are willing to attend each case you prepare
and send us for $10 (when there shall be no opposition) to be sent in
advance, or you to know that it is safe. It takes $5.75 of cost to start
upon, that is, $1.75 to clerk, and $2 to each of two publishers of
papers. Judge Logan thinks it will take the balance of $20 to carry a
case through. This must be advanced from time to time as the services are
performed, as the officers will not act without. I do not know whether
you can be admitted an attorney of the Federal court in your absence or
not; nor is it material, as the business can be done in our names.

Thinking it may aid you a little, I send you one of our blank forms of
Petitions. It, you will see, is framed to be sworn to before the Federal
court clerk, and, in your cases, will have [to] be so far changed as to
be sworn to before the clerk of your circuit court; and his certificate
must be accompanied with his official seal. The schedules, too, must be
attended to. Be sure that they contain the creditors' names, their
residences, the amounts due each, the debtors' names, their residences,
and the amounts they owe, also all property and where located.

Also be sure that the schedules are all signed by the applicants as well
as the Petition. Publication will have to be made here in one paper, and
in one nearest the residence of the applicant. Write us in each case
where the last advertisement is to be sent, whether to you or to what
paper.

I believe I have now said everything that can be of any advantage. Your
friend as ever, A. LINCOLN.




TO GEORGE E. PICKETT--ADVICE TO YOUTH

February 22, 1842.

I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad
memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your
truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are. Notwithstanding
this copy-book preamble, my boy, I am inclined to suggest a little
prudence on your part. You see I have a congenital aversion to failure,
and the sudden announcement to your Uncle Andrew of the success of your
"lamp rubbing" might possibly prevent your passing the severe physical
examination to which you will be subjected in order to enter the Military
Academy. You see I should like to have a perfect soldier credited to
dear old Illinois--no broken bones, scalp wounds, etc. So I think it
might be wise to hand this letter from me in to your good uncle through
his room-window after he has had a comfortable dinner, and watch its
effect from the top of the pigeon-house.

I have just told the folks here in Springfield on this 111th anniversary
of the birth of him whose name, mightiest in the cause of civil liberty,
still mightiest in the cause of moral reformation, we mention in solemn
awe, in naked, deathless splendor, that the one victory we can ever call
complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or
one drunkard on the face of God's green earth. Recruit for this victory.

Now, boy, on your march, don't you go and forget the old maxim that "one
drop of honey catches more flies than a half-gallon of gall." Load your
musket with this maxim, and smoke it in your pipe.




ADDRESS BEFORE THE SPRINGFIELD WASHINGTONIAN
TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 22, 1842.

Although the temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years,
it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a degree of
success hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of
hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed
from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active, and powerful
chieftain, going forth "conquering and to conquer." The citadels of his
great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temple and
his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been
performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are
daily desecrated and deserted. The triumph of the conqueror's fame is
sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and
calling millions to his standard at a blast.

For this new and splendid success we heartily rejoice. That that success
is so much greater now than heretofore is doubtless owing to rational
causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do well to inquire
what those causes are.

The warfare heretofore waged against the demon intemperance has somehow
or other been erroneous. Either the champions engaged or the tactics
they adopted have not been the most proper. These champions for the most
part have been preachers, lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and
the mass of mankind there is a want of approachability, if the term be
admissible, partially, at least, fatal to their success. They are
supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very
persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.

And again, it is so common and so easy to ascribe motives to men of these
classes other than those they profess to act upon. The preacher, it is
said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union
of the Church and State; the lawyer from his pride and vanity of hearing
himself speak; and the hired agent for his salary. But when one who has
long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have
bound him, and appears before his neighbors "clothed and in his right
mind," a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up, with
tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured,
now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving
children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with
woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and
a renewed affection; and how easily it is all done, once it is resolved
to be done; how simple his language! there is a logic and an eloquence in
it that few with human feelings can resist. They cannot say that he
desires a union of Church and State, for he is not a church member; they
cannot say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor
shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks
for pay, for he receives none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity
in any way be doubted, or his sympathy for those he would persuade to
imitate his example be denied.

In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of champions that
our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had the
old-school champions themselves been of the most wise selecting, was
their system of tactics the most judicious? It seems to me it was not.
Too much denunciation against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged
in. This I think was both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic,
because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything;
still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business;
and least of all where such driving is to be submitted to at the expense
of pecuniary interest or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and
drinker were incessantly told not in accents of entreaty and persuasion,
diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother, but in the
thundering tones of anathema and denunciation with which the lordly judge
often groups together all the crimes of the felon's life, and thrusts
them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him that they
were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that
they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers
and murderers that infest the earth; that their houses were the workshops
of the devil; and that their persons should be shunned by all the good
and virtuous, as moral pestilences--I say, when they were told all this,
and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow to acknowledge
the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their
denouncers in a hue and cry against themselves.