Recollections Of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 - free ebook by Ward Hill Lamon

RECOLLECTIONS of ABRAHAM LINCOLN

1847-1865 By...

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WARD HILL LAMON

EDITED BY DOROTHY LAMON TEILLARD WASHINGTON, D. C. PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR 1911 Copyright By Dorothy Lamon A.D. 1895 Copyright, 1911 By Dorothy Lamon Teillard All rights reserved THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A....

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PREFACE.

The reason for thinking that the public may be interested in my father's recollections of Mr. Lincoln , will be found in the following letter from Hon. J. P. Usher , Secretary of the Interior during the war:— Lawrence, Kansas , May 20, 1885. Ward H. Lamon, Esq., Denver, Col. Dear Sir , — There are now but few left who were intimately acquainted with Mr. Lincoln. I do not call to mind any one who was so much with him as yourself. You were his partner for years in the practice of law, his confiden

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PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION. In deciding to bring out this book I have had in mind the many letters to my father from men of war times urging him to put in writing his recollections of Lincoln. Among them is one from Mr. Lincoln's friend, confidant, and adviser, A. K. McClure, one of the most eminent of American journalists, founder and late editor of "The Philadelphia Times," of whom Mr. Lincoln said in 1864 that he had more brain power than any man he had ever known. Quoted by Leonard Swett, in the

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MEMOIR OF WARD H. LAMON.

Ward H. Lamon was born in Frederick County, about two miles north of Winchester, in the state of Virginia, on the 6th day of January, 1828. Two years after his birth his parents moved to Berkeley County in what is now West Virginia, near a little town called Bunker Hill, where he received a common school education. At the age of seventeen he began the study of medicine which he soon abandoned for law. When nineteen years of age he went to Illinois and settled in Danville; afterwards attending le

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EARLY ACQUAINTANCE.

When Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency in 1860, a campaign book-maker asked him to give the prominent features of his life. He replied in the language of Gray's "Elegy," that his life presented nothing but "The short and simple annals of the poor." He had, however, a few months previously, written for his friend Jesse W. Fell the following:— I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Harden County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps

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JOURNEY FROM SPRINGFIELD TO WASHINGTON.

On the 11th of February, 1861, the arrangements for Mr. Lincoln's departure from Springfield were completed. It was intended to occupy the time remaining between that date and the 4th of March with a grand tour from State to State and city to city. Mr. Wood, "recommended by Senator Seward," was the chief manager. He provided special trains, to be preceded by pilot engines all the way through. It was a gloomy day: heavy clouds floated overhead, and a cold rain was falling. Long before eight o'clo

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INAUGURATION.

If before leaving Springfield Mr. Lincoln had become weary of the pressure upon him for office, he found no respite on his arrival at the focus of political intrigue and corruption. The time intervening between his arrival at Washington and his Inauguration was, for the most part, employed in giving consideration to his Inaugural Address, the formation of his Cabinet, and the conventional duties required by his elevated position. The question of the new Administration's policy absorbed nearly ev

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GLOOMY FOREBODINGS OF COMING CONFLICT.

After the first shout of triumph and the first glow of exultation consequent on his Inauguration, Mr. Lincoln soon began to realize with dismay what was before him. Geographical lines were at last distinctly drawn. He was regarded as a sectional representative, elected President with most overwhelming majorities north of Mason and Dixon's line, and not a single electoral vote south of it. He saw a great people, comprising many millions and inhabiting a vast region of our common country, exaspera

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HIS SIMPLICITY.

Political definitions have undergone some curious changes in this country since the beginning of the present century. In the year 1801, Thomas Jefferson was the first "republican" President of the United States, as the term was then defined. Sixty years later, Abraham Lincoln was hailed as our first Republican President. The Sage of Monticello was, indeed, the first to introduce at the Executive Mansion a genuine republican code of social and official etiquette. It was a wide departure from the

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HIS TENDERNESS.

Mr. Lincoln was one of the bravest men that ever lived, and one of the gentlest. The instances in his earlier career in which he put his life in peril to prevent injury to another are very numerous. I have often thought that his interposition in behalf of the friendless Indian who wandered into camp during the Black Hawk war and was about to be murdered by the troops, was an act of chivalry unsurpassed in the whole story of knighthood. So in the rough days of Gentryville and New Salem, he was al

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DREAMS AND PRESENTIMENTS.

That "every man has within him his own Patmos," Victor Hugo was not far wrong in declaring. "Revery," says the great French thinker, "fixes its gaze upon the shadow until there issues from it light. Some power that is very high has ordained it thus." Mr. Lincoln had his Patmos, his "kinship with the shades;" and this is, perhaps, the strangest feature of his character. That his intellect was mighty and of exquisite mould, that it was of a severely logical cast, and that his reasoning powers were

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THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF HIS CHARACTER.

No one knew better than Mr. Lincoln that genuine humor is "a plaster that heals many a wound;" and certainly no man ever had a larger stock of that healing balm or knew better how to use it. His old friend I. N. Arnold once remarked that Lincoln's laugh had been his "life-preserver." Wit, with that illustrious man, was a jewel whose mirth-moving flashes he could no more repress than the diamond can extinguish its own brilliancy. In no sense was he vain of his superb ability as a wit and story-te

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THE ANTIETAM EPISODE.—LINCOLN'S LOVE OF SONG.

In the autumn of 1862 I chanced to be associated with Mr. Lincoln in a transaction which, though innocent and commonplace in itself, was blown by rumor and surmise into a revolting and deplorable scandal. A conjectural lie, although mean, misshapen, and very small at its birth, grew at length into a tempest of defamation, whose last echoes were not heard until its noble victim had yielded his life to a form of assassination only a trifle more deadly. Mr. Lincoln was painted as the prime mover in

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HIS LOVE OF CHILDREN.

No sketch of Mr. Lincoln's character can be called complete which does not present him as he appeared at his own fireside, showing his love for his own children, his tenderness toward the little ones generally, and how in important emergencies he was influenced by them. A great writer has said that it were "better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked by children." So Mr. Lincoln firmly believed; and whenever it chanced that he gave offence to a child unwittingly he never rested un

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THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH.

Among the many historic scenes in which President Lincoln was an actor there is not one, perhaps, where a single incident gave rise to speculations so groundless and guesses so wide of the truth as his justly celebrated Gettysburg speech. [H] Since his death there has been an enormous expenditure, not to say a very great waste, of literary talent on that extraordinary address, as there has been on almost everything else he did, or was supposed to have done, from his boyhood until the moment of h

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HIS UNSWERVING FIDELITY TO PURPOSE.

During the long series of defeats and disasters which culminated in the battles of Fredericksburg and of Chancellorsville, there arose in certain circles of the army and of the National Legislature a feeling of distrust and dissatisfaction, that reached its climax in an intrigue to displace Mr. Lincoln, if not from his position at least from the exercise of his prerogatives, by the appointment of a dictator. Such a measure would have been scarcely less revolutionary than many others which were o

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HIS TRUE RELATIONS WITH McCLELLAN.

The character of no statesman in all the history of the world has been more generally or more completely misunderstood than that of Abraham Lincoln. Many writers describe him as a mere creature of circumstances floating like a piece of driftwood on the current of events; and about the only attribute of statesmanship they concede to him is a sort of instinctive divination of the popular feeling at a given period, and on a given subject. They do not thus dwarf Mr. Lincoln in set phrase or formal p

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HIS MAGNANIMITY.

Mr. Lincoln regarded all public offices within his gift as a sacred trust, to be administered solely for the people, and as in no sense a fund upon which he could draw for the payment of private accounts. He was exempt from the frailties common to most men, and he cast aside the remembrance of all provocations for which he had cause to nourish resentment. Here is a notable instance: A rather distinguished man had been for years a respected acquaintance; his son, who was in the army, was convicte

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CABINET COUNSELS.

In November, 1861, the public mind was wildly agitated by an episode of the war, which, although without military significance, at one time threatened to predetermine the final issue of the contest in favor of the independence of the Southern States, by the accession of a powerful ally and auxiliary to their cause. It not only seriously imperilled our existing relations of peace and amity with a foreign power, but came near converting its declared neutrality into an active sympathy and co-operat

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CONFLICT BETWEEN CIVIL AND MILITARY AUTHORITY.

The execution of the Fugitive Slave Law in the District of Columbia became a question much discussed in Congress, and was a frightful scandal to the Radical members. The law remained in force; and no attempt was made by Congress to repeal it, or to provide for the protection of the Executive officers whose duty it was to enforce it. The subject gave Mr. Lincoln great concern, but he could see no way out of the difficulty except to have the law executed. The District had become the asylum of the

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PLOTS AND ASSASSINATION.

The fact that we have in this country a literature of assassination, "voluminous and vast," suggests a melancholy reflection on the disordered spirit of the times through which we have passed, and on the woful perversity of human nature even under conditions most favorable to intellectual progress and Christian civilization. It is hurtful to our pride as Americans to confess that our history is marred by records so repugnant to the spirit of our liberal institutions, and to the good fellowship w

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APRIL 14

Mr. Lincoln, accompanied by his wife, Miss Harris and Maj. Rathbone, of Albany, New York, was occupying a box at Ford's Theatre, in the city of Washington. The play was "Our American Cousin," with the elder Sothern in the principal rôle. Mr. Lincoln was enjoying it greatly. Lee had surrendered on the 9th; on the 13th the war was everywhere regarded as ended, and upon that day Secretary Stanton had telegraphed to Gen. Dix, Governor of New York, requesting him to stop the draft. Sothern as Lord Du

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LINCOLN IN A LAW CASE.

Mr. Lincoln believed that: "He who knows only his own side of a case knows little of that." The first illustration of his peculiar mental operations which led him always to study the opposite side of every disputed question more exhaustively than his own, was on his first appearance before the Supreme Court of Illinois when he actually opened his argument by telling the court that after diligent search he had not found a single decision in favor of his case but several against it, which he then

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MR. LINCOLN'S VIEWS OF THE AMERICAN OR KNOW-NOTHING PARTY.

That Mr. Lincoln found in the Declaration of Independence his perfect standard of political truth is perhaps in none of his utterances more conclusively shown than in a private letter to his old friend Joshua F. Speed, written in 1855, in which he says: "You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist. I am not a Know-Nothing! that is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of

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ACCOUNT OF ARRANGEMENTS FOR COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH.

New York , March 20, 1872. My dear Sir , — ....I send you for such use as you may deem proper the following letter written by me when at "Old Orchard Beach" a few years ago, giving the "truth of history" in relation to the address of Mr. Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in this City on the 27th of February, 1860.... ... We, the world, and all the coming generation of mankind down the long line of ages, cannot know too much about Abraham Lincoln, our martyr President. Yours truly, (Signed) James A

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THE RAIL-SPLITTER.

It has been said that the term "rail-splitter" which became a leading feature of the campaign in 1860 originated at the Chicago convention when Mr. Deland of Ohio, who seconded the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, said: "I desire to second the nomination of a man who can split rails and maul Democrats." Mr. Delano not only seconded the nomination, but "seconded" the campaign "cry." Gov. Oglesby one week before at the State Convention at Decatur introduced into the assemblage John Hanks, who bore on hi

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TEMPERANCE.

On the temperance question Mr. Lincoln has been quoted by the adherents of both sides. He had no taste for spirituous liquors and when he took them it was a punishment to him, not an indulgence. In a temperance lecture delivered in 1842 Mr. Lincoln said:—"In my judgment such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more from the absence of appetite than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe if we take habitual drunkards as a class their heads and

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LINCOLN'S SHREWDNESS.

Perhaps no act of Mr. Lincoln's administration showed his political shrewdness more clearly than the permission he gave for the rebel legislature of Virginia to meet for the purpose of recalling the state troops from General Lee's Army. This permission was given in a note to General Weitzel. Mr. Lincoln told Governor Francis H. Pierpont that "its composition occupied five hours of intense mental activity." Governor Pierpont says he was the loyal Governor of Virginia at the time, and Mr. Lincoln

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LETTERS.

Fairfield, Conn. , Jan. 9, 1861. W. H. Lamon , Esq.: Dear Sir , — Yours of December 26th duly received. Connecticut is death on secession. I regard it the duty of the Government to uphold its authority in the courts as effectually south as it has done north if it can, and to hold its forts and public grounds at whatever cost and collect the revenue ditto. There is but one feeling here, I believe, though in the city of New York there are those who sustain her actions, that secession is disgracefu

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RELIGION.

January 31, 1874. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher: My dear Sir , — My attention has been directed to a "Review of the Life of Lincoln" which appeared in the "Christian Union." This paper was by many attributed to your pen; it certainly must have received your editorial sanction. I do not conceal the fact that some of its criticisms touched me sharply; but I determined, after no little deliberation, that it was better to submit in silence to whatever might be said or written of that biography. It happens

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