The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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The court received it of me, but it was not different from the plat
already on the record. I do not think I could ever have argued the case
better than I did. I did nothing else, but prepare to argue and argue
this case, from Friday morning till Monday evening. Very sorry for the
result; but I do not think it could have been prevented.

Your friend, as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, January 12, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:--On the day before yesterday I received a letter from
Harriet, written at Greenup. She says she has just returned from your
house, and that father is very low and will hardly recover. She also says
you have written me two letters, and that, although you do not expect me
to come now, you wonder that I do not write.

I received both your letters, and although I have not answered them it is
not because I have forgotten them, or been uninterested about them, but
because it appeared to me that I could write nothing which would do any
good. You already know I desire that neither father nor mother shall be
in want of any comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live;
and I feel sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to
procure a doctor, or anything else for father in his present sickness. My
business is such that I could hardly leave home now, if it was not as it
is, that my own wife is sick abed. (It is a case of baby-sickness, and I
suppose is not dangerous.) I sincerely hope father may recover his
health, but at all events, tell him to remember to call upon and confide
in our great and good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him
in any extremity. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs
of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in
Him. Say to him that if we could meet now it is doubtful whether it would
not be more painful than pleasant, but that if it be his lot to go now,
he will soon have a joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before, and
where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join
them.

Write to me again when you receive this.

Affectionately,
A. LINCOLN.




PETITION ON BEHALF OF ONE JOSHUA GIPSON
TO THE JUDGE OF THE SANGAMON COUNTY COURT,
MAY 13, 1851.

TO THE HONORABLE, THE JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURT IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF
SANGAMON AND STATE OF ILLINOIS:

Your Petitioner, Joshua Gipson, respectfully represents that on
or about the 21st day of December, 1850, a judgment was rendered
against your Petitioner for costs, by J. C. Spugg, one of the
Justices of the Peace in and for said County of Sangamon, in a
suit wherein your Petitioner was plaintiff and James L. and C.
B. Gerard were defendants; that said judgment was not the result
of negligence on the part of your Petitioner; that said judgment,
in his opinion, is unjust and erroneous in this, that the
defendants were at that time and are indebted to this Petitioner
in the full amount of the principal and interest of the note sued
on, the principal being, as affiant remembers and believes,
thirty-one dollars and eighty two cents; and that, as affiant is
informed and believes, the defendants succeeded in the trial of
said cause by proving old claims against your petitioner, in set-off
against said note, which claims had been settled, adjusted
and paid before said note was executed. Your Petitioner further
states that the reasons of his not being present at said trial,
as he was not, and of its not being in his power to take an
appeal in the ordinary way, as it was not, were that your
Petitioner then resided in Edgar County about one hundred and
twenty miles from where defendants resided; that a very short
time before the suit was commenced your Petitioner was in
Sangamon County for the purpose of collecting debts due him, and
with the rest, the note in question, which note had then been
given more than a year, that your Petitioner then saw the
defendant J. L. Gerard who is the principal in said note, and
solicited payment of the same; that said defendant then made no
pretense that he did not owe the same, but on the contrary
expressly promised that he would come into Springfield, in a very
few days and either pay the money, or give a new note, payable by
the then next Christmas; that your Petitioner accordingly left
said note with said J. C. Spugg, with directions to give
defendant full time to pay the money or give the new note as
above, and if he did neither to sue; and then affiant came home
to Edgar County, not having the slightest suspicion that if suit
should be brought, the defendants would make any defense
whatever; and your Petitioner never did in any way learn that
said suit had been commenced until more than twenty days after it
had been decided against him. He therefore prays for a writ of
Certiorari.

HIS
JOSHUA x GIPSON
MARK




TO J. D. JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 31, 1851

DEAR BROTHER: Inclosed is the deed for the land. We are all well, and
have nothing in the way of news. We have had no Cholera here for about
two weeks.

Give my love to all, and especially to Mother.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




TO J. D. JOHNSTON.

SHELBYVILLE, Nov. 4, 1851
DEAR BROTHER:

When I came into Charleston day before yesterday I learned that you are
anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to Missouri. I have
been thinking of this ever since, and cannot but think such a notion is
utterly foolish. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the
land richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and
oats without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work
for you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right
where you are; if you do not intend to go to work you cannot get along
anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no
good. You have raised no crop this year, and what you really want is to
sell the land, get the money and spend it. Part with the land you have,
and, my life upon it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury
you in. Half you will get for the land you spend in moving to Missouri,
and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of
land will be bought. Now I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a
piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and
particularly on Mother's account. The eastern forty acres I intend to
keep for Mother while she lives; if you will not cultivate it, it will
rent for enough to support her; at least it will rent for something. Her
dower in the other two forties she can let you have, and no thanks to me.

Now do not misunderstand this letter. I do not write it in any
unkindness. I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face the
truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away all
your time. Your thousand pretenses for not getting along better are all
nonsense; they deceive nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure
for your case.

A word for Mother: Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him.
If I were you I would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I think
you will not) you can return to your own home. Chapman feels very kindly
to you; and I have no doubt he will make your situation very pleasant.

Sincerely yours,
A. LINCOLN.




Nov. 4, 1851

DEAR MOTHER:

Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him. If I were you I
would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I think you will not) you
can return to your own home. Chapman feels very kindly to you; and I have
no doubt he will make your situation very pleasant.

Sincerely your son,
A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.

SHELBYVILLE, November 9, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:--When I wrote you before, I had not received your letter.
I still think as I did, but if the land can be sold so that I get three
hundred dollars to put to interest for Mother, I will not object, if she
does not. But before I will make a deed, the money must be had, or
secured beyond all doubt, at ten per cent.

As to Abram, I do not want him, on my own account; but I understand he
wants to live with me, so that he can go to school and get a fair start
in the world, which I very much wish him to have. When I reach home, if I
can make it convenient to take, I will take him, provided there is no
mistake between us as to the object and terms of my taking him. In haste,
as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, November 25, 1851.

DEAR BROTHER:--Your letter of the 22d is just received. Your proposal
about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I want or could
claim for myself; but I am not satisfied with it on Mother's account--I
want her to have her living, and I feel that it is my duty, to some
extent, to see that she is not wronged. She had a right of dower (that
is, the use of one-third for life) in the other two forties; but, it
seems, she has already let you take that, hook and line. She now has the
use of the whole of the east forty, as long as she lives; and if it be
sold, of course she is entitled to the interest on all the money it
brings, as long as she lives; but you propose to sell it for three
hundred dollars, take one hundred away with you, and leave her two
hundred at 8 per cent., making her the enormous sum of 16 dollars a year.
Now, if you are satisfied with treating her in that way, I am not. It is
true that you are to have that forty for two hundred dollars, at Mother's
death, but you are not to have it before. I am confident that land can be
made to produce for Mother at least $30 a year, and I can not, to oblige
any living person, consent that she shall be put on an allowance of
sixteen dollars a year.

Yours, etc.,
A. LINCOLN.




1852

EULOGY ON HENRY CLAY, DELIVERED IN THE STATE HOUSE AT SPRINGFIELD,
ILLINOIS, JULY 16, 1852.

On the fourth day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and oppressed
colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the Atlantic coast of
North America, publicly declared their national independence, and made
their appeal to the justice of their cause and to the God of battles for
the maintenance of that declaration. That people were few in number and
without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within
the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance
was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle between those resolute
rebels and their haughty would-be masters was still waging,--of
undistinguished parents and in an obscure district of one of those
colonies Henry Clay was born. The infant nation and the infant child
began the race of life together. For three quarters of a century they
have travelled hand in hand. They have been companions ever. The nation
has passed its perils, and it is free, prosperous, and powerful. The
child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and is dead.
In all that has concerned the nation the man ever sympathized; and now
the nation mourns the man.

The day after his death one of the public journals, opposed to him
politically, held the following pathetic and beautiful language, which I
adopt partly because such high and exclusive eulogy, originating with a
political friend, might offend good taste, but chiefly because I could
not in any language of my own so well express my thoughts:

"Alas, who can realize that Henry Clay is dead! Who can realize that
never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-chambers of his
country to beat back the storms of anarchy which may threaten, or pour
the oil of peace upon the troubled billows as they rage and menace
around! Who can realize that the workings of that mighty mind have
ceased, that the throbbings of that gallant heart are stilled, that the
mighty sweep of that graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of
that eloquent tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is
hushed hushed for ever! Who can realize that freedom's champion, the
champion of a civilized world and of all tongues and kindreds of people,
has indeed fallen! Alas, in those dark hours of peril and dread which our
land has experienced, and which she may be called to experience again, to
whom now may her people look up for that counsel and advice which only
wisdom and experience and patriotism can give, and which only the
undoubting confidence of a nation will receive? Perchance in the whole
circle of the great and gifted of our land there remains but one on whose
shoulders the mighty mantle of the departed statesman may fall; one who
while we now write is doubtless pouring his tears over the bier of his
brother and friend brother, friend, ever, yet in political sentiment as
far apart as party could make them. Ah, it is at times like these that
the petty distinctions of mere party disappear. We see only the great,
the grand, the noble features of the departed statesman; and we do not
even beg permission to bow at his feet and mingle our tears with those
who have ever been his political adherents--we do [not] beg this
permission, we claim it as a right, though we feel it as a privilege.
Henry Clay belonged to his country--to the world; mere party cannot claim
men like him. His career has been national, his fame has filled the
earth, his memory will endure to the last syllable of recorded time.

"Henry Clay is dead! He breathed his last on yesterday, at twenty minutes
after eleven, in his chamber at Washington. To those who followed his
lead in public affairs, it more appropriately belongs to pronounce his
eulogy and pay specific honors to the memory of the illustrious dead. But
all Americans may show the grief which his death inspires, for his
character and fame are national property. As on a question of liberty he
knew no North, no South, no East, no West, but only the Union which held
them all in its sacred circle, so now his countrymen will know no grief
that is not as wide-spread as the bounds of the confederacy. The career
of Henry Clay was a public career. From his youth he has been devoted to
the public service, at a period, too, in the world's history justly
regarded as a remarkable era in human affairs. He witnessed in the
beginning the throes of the French Revolution. He saw the rise and fall
of Napoleon. He was called upon to legislate for America and direct her
policy when all Europe was the battlefield of contending dynasties, and
when the struggle for supremacy imperilled the rights of all neutral
nations. His voice spoke war and peace in the contest with Great Britain.

"When Greece rose against the Turks and struck for liberty, his name was
mingled with the battle-cry of freedom. When South America threw off the
thraldom of Spain, his speeches were read at the head of her armies by
Bolivar. His name has been, and will continue to be, hallowed in two
hemispheres, for it is

"'One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die!'

"To the ardent patriot and profound statesman he added a quality
possessed by few of the gifted on earth. His eloquence has not been
surpassed. In the effective power to move the heart of man, Clay was
without an equal, and the heaven-born endowment, in the spirit of its
origin, has been most conspicuously exhibited against intestine feud. On
at least three important occasions he has quelled our civil commotions by
a power and influence which belonged to no other statesman of his age and
times. And in our last internal discord, when this Union trembled to its
centre, in old age he left the shades of private life, and gave the
death-blow to fraternal strife, with the vigor of his earlier years, in a
series of senatorial efforts which in themselves would bring immortality
by challenging comparison with the efforts of any statesman in any age.
He exorcised the demon which possessed the body politic, and gave peace
to a distracted land. Alas! the achievement cost him his life. He sank
day by day to the tomb his pale but noble brow bound with a triple
wreath, put there by a grateful country. May his ashes rest in peace,
while his spirit goes to take its station among the great and good men
who preceded him."

While it is customary and proper upon occasions like the present to give
a brief sketch of the life of the deceased, in the case of Mr. Clay it is
less necessary than most others; for his biography has been written and
rewritten and read and reread for the last twenty-five years; so that,
with the exception of a few of the latest incidents of his life, all is
as well known as it can be. The short sketch which I give is, therefore,
merely to maintain the connection of this discourse.

Henry Clay was born on the twelfth day of April, 1777, in Hanover County,
Virginia. Of his father, who died in the fourth or fifth year of Henry's
age, little seems to be known, except that he was a respectable man and a
preacher of the Baptist persuasion. Mr. Clay's education to the end of
life was comparatively limited. I say "to the end of life," because I
have understood that from time to time he added something to his
education during the greater part of his whole life. Mr. Clay's lack of a
more perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally,
teaches at least one profitable lesson: it teaches that in this country
one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire
sufficient education to get through the world respectably. In his
twenty-third year Mr. Clay was licensed to practise law, and emigrated to
Lexington, Kentucky. Here he commenced and continued the practice till
the year 1803, when he was first elected to the Kentucky Legislature. By
successive elections he was continued in the Legislature till the latter
part of 1806, when he was elected to fill a vacancy of a single session
in the United States Senate. In 1807 he was again elected to the Kentucky
House of Representatives, and by that body chosen Speaker. In 1808 he was
re-elected to the same body. In 1809 he was again chosen to fill a
vacancy of two years in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was elected
to the United States House of Representatives, and on the first day of
taking his seat in that body he was chosen its Speaker. In 1813 he was
again elected Speaker. Early in 1814, being the period of our last
British war, Mr. Clay was sent as commissioner, with others, to negotiate
a treaty of peace, which treaty was concluded in the latter part of the
same year. On his return from Europe he was again elected to the lower
branch of Congress, and on taking his seat in December, 1815, was called
to his old post-the Speaker's chair, a position in which he was retained
by successive elections, with one brief intermission, till the
inauguration of John Quincy Adams, in March, 1825. He was then appointed
Secretary of State, and occupied that important station till the
inauguration of General Jackson, in March, 1829. After this he returned
to Kentucky, resumed the practice of law, and continued it till the
autumn of 1831, when he was by the Legislature of Kentucky again placed
in the United States Senate. By a reelection he was continued in the
Senate till he resigned his seat and retired, in March, 1848. In
December, 1849, he again took his seat in the Senate, which he again
resigned only a few months before his death.

By the foregoing it is perceived that the period from the beginning of
Mr. Clay's official life in 1803 to the end of 1852 is but one year short
of half a century, and that the sum of all the intervals in it will not
amount to ten years. But mere duration of time in office constitutes the
smallest part of Mr. Clay's history. Throughout that long period he has
constantly been the most loved and most implicitly followed by friends,
and the most dreaded by opponents, of all living American politicians. In
all the great questions which have agitated the country, and particularly
in those fearful crises, the Missouri question, the nullification
question, and the late slavery question, as connected with the newly
acquired territory, involving and endangering the stability of the Union,
his has been the leading and most conspicuous part. In 1824 he was first
a candidate for the Presidency, and was defeated; and, although he was
successively defeated for the same office in 1832 and in 1844, there has
never been a moment since 1824 till after 1848 when a very large portion
of the American people did not cling to him with an enthusiastic hope and
purpose of still elevating him to the Presidency. With other men, to be
defeated was to be forgotten; but with him defeat was but a trifling
incident, neither changing him nor the world's estimate of him. Even
those of both political parties who have been preferred to him for the
highest office have run far briefer courses than he, and left him still
shining high in the heavens of the political world. Jackson, Van Buren,
Harnson, Polk, and Taylor all rose after, and set long before him. The
spell--the long-enduring spell--with which the souls of men were bound to
him is a miracle. Who can compass it? It is probably true he owed his
pre-eminence to no one quality, but to a fortunate combination of
several. He was surpassingly eloquent; but many eloquent men fail
utterly, and they are not, as a class, generally successful. His judgment
was excellent; but many men of good judgment live and die unnoticed. His
will was indomitable; but this quality often secures to its owner nothing
better than a character for useless obstinacy. These, then, were Mr.
Clay's leading qualities. No one of them is very uncommon; but all
together are rarely combined in a single individual, and this is probably
the reason why such men as Henry Clay are so rare in the world.

Mr. Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of eloquence
do, of types and figures, of antithesis and elegant arrangement of words
and sentences, but rather of that deeply earnest and impassioned tone and
manner which can proceed only from great sincerity, and a thorough
conviction in the speaker of the justice and importance of his cause.
This it is that truly touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard
Mr. Clay never failed to be moved by it, or ever afterward forgot the
impression. All his efforts were made for practical effect. He never
spoke merely to be heard. He never delivered a Fourth of July oration, or
a eulogy on an occasion like this. As a politician or statesman, no one
was so habitually careful to avoid all sectional ground. Whatever he did
he did for the whole country. In the construction of his measures, he
ever carefully surveyed every part of the field, and duly weighed every
conflicting interest. Feeling as he did, and as the truth surely is, that
the world's best hope depended on the continued union of these States, he
was ever jealous of and watchful for whatever might have the slightest
tendency to separate them.

Mr. Clay's predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep devotion
to the cause of human liberty--a strong sympathy with the oppressed
everywhere, and an ardent wish for their elevation. With him this was a
primary and all-controlling passion. Subsidiary to this was the conduct
of his whole life. He loved his country partly because it was his own
country, and mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a
zeal for its advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such
the advancement, prosperity, and glory of human liberty, human right, and
human nature. He desired the prosperity of his countrymen, partly because
they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to the world that free men
could be prosperous.

That his views and measures were always the wisest needs not to be
affirmed; nor should it be on this occasion, where so many thinking
differently join in doing honor to his memory. A free people in times of
peace and quiet when pressed by no common danger-naturally divide into
parties. At such times the man who is of neither party is not, cannot be,
of any consequence. Mr. Clay therefore was of a party. Taking a prominent
part, as he did, in all the great political questions of his country for
the last half century, the wisdom of his course on many is doubted and
denied by a large portion of his countrymen; and of such it is not now
proper to speak particularly. But there are many others, about his course
upon which there is little or no disagreement amongst intelligent and
patriotic Americans. Of these last are the War of 1812, the Missouri
question, nullification, and the now recent compromise measures. In 1812
Mr. Clay, though not unknown, was still a young man. Whether we should go
to war with Great Britain being the question of the day, a minority
opposed the declaration of war by Congress, while the majority, though
apparently inclined to war, had for years wavered, and hesitated to act
decisively. Meanwhile British aggressions multiplied, and grew more
daring and aggravated. By Mr. Clay more than any other man the struggle
was brought to a decision in Congress. The question, being now fully
before Congress, came up in a variety of ways in rapid succession, on
most of which occasions Mr. Clay spoke. Adding to all the logic of which
the subject was susceptible that noble inspiration which came to him as
it came to no other, he aroused and nerved and inspired his friends, and
confounded and bore down all opposition. Several of his speeches on these
occasions were reported and are still extant, but the best of them all
never was. During its delivery the reporters forgot their vocation,
dropped their pens, and sat enchanted from near the beginning to quite
the close. The speech now lives only in the memory of a few old men, and
the enthusiasm with which they cherish their recollection of it is
absolutely astonishing. The precise language of this speech we shall
never know; but we do know we cannot help knowing--that with deep pathos
it pleaded the cause of the injured sailor, that it invoked the genius of
the Revolution, that it apostrophized the names of Otis, of Henry, and of
Washington, that it appealed to the interests, the pride, the honor, and
the glory of the nation, that it shamed and taunted the timidity of
friends, that it scorned and scouted and withered the temerity of
domestic foes, that it bearded and defied the British lion, and, rising
and swelling and maddening in its course, it sounded the onset, till the
charge, the shock, the steady struggle, and the glorious victory all
passed in vivid review before the entranced hearers.