Lest We Forget, II: Abraham Lincoln

Lest We Forget II. — Abraham Lincoln By Seymour B. Young, President of the First Council of Seventy "Arms, and the Man I Sing" In the western wilds of old Kentucky (this account is ab- breviated from Dixon's Southerner), we find located a pioneer family, Thomas Lincoln and his wife, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. One day Thomas observed his wife smiling and humming to herself sweet little airs, as she went about her household duties. "What's the matter, Nancy? what makes you so happy?" "Thomas, I have had a vision." "A dream I reckon?" he said. Nancy re- plied, "I have been signaled from the shores of eternity, God has answered the prayer of my heart and sent me a son." I saw him strong and brave, patient and wise, thousands hung on his word, and great men came to do him homage; with bowed head he led me into a beautiful home that had shining white pillars, he bowed low and whispered in my ear, "This is yours, my angel mother, all that I am I owe to you, but it has cost me my life." She paused a moment and whispered, "Oh, Tom, my hus- band, a new song is singing in my soul." In a brief sketch below, we get a glimpse of the first view Lincoln had of an African slave. At a quilting to which he ac- companied his mother, a negro slave appeared and took their horse and wagon under his care while the mother and son entered the room where the visitors were assembled. The boy stood rooted to the spot until the negro disappeared; he had no idea that one human being could be so different from another, and in breathless awe he asked his mother, "Is he folks?" "Of course," his mother answered, smiling. (Abbreviated from Dixon's Southerner.) "What makes him so black?" "The sun in Africa." "What makes his nose so flat, and his lips so thick?" "He was born that way." "What makes him come here?" "He didn't. Slave traders put him in chains and brought him across the sea and sold him into slavery." The little form suddenly stiffened as the boy asked, "Why didn't he kiU 'em?" The mother answered, "he didn't know how to defend him- self." "Why don't he rim away?"

116 IMPROVEMENT ERA She answered, "He hasn't sense enough, I guess; he has a home, plenty to eat and clothes to wear, and he is afraid if he starts to run away he will be caught and whipped." It was nearly twelve, midnight, before the boy knelt, in their little home, beside his mother's knee to say his evening prayers. When the last words were spoken, he remained kneel- ing, his eyes gazing into the flickering fire. The mother bent over him, "What are you thinking about, boy? The house you are going to build for me?" "No! What? That nigger, wasn't he funny, you don't want me to get you any niggers with the house, do you?" "No." "I didn't think you would," he went on thoughtfully, "be- cause you said General Washington set his slaves free and wanted everybody else to do so." One morning she found her boy gazing up into the sky, wistfully looking with shining eyes, far up into the still autumn ether. He was watching the disappearance of the martins, as they winged their steady flight to a more congenial winter cli- mate. His mother touched his hand and said, "Don't worry, boy, they will come back." And he replied with a trembling voice, "I can hardly hear them now, they are so far away. You are sure ma?" he asked pathetically. "Sure," she answered. "Will they know when it is time?" "Yes, someone will tell them." "Who?" "God, that's what the Bible means when it says, the Stork knoweth her apopinted time." "But maybe God will be so busy he will forget my birds." "He never forgets, he even marks the beat of the sparrows wing." The mother's faith was contagious; the drooping spirit caught the flash of light from her eyes and he said, "We'll watch for them next spring, won't we? and I'll put up some new gourds for them to mate in." That night when the father re- turned to the cabin he picked up his boy, placed him upon his knee, and stroked his dark head. "Do you know, boy," he began slowly, "that we came out to Kentuck, yes siree, with old Daniel Boone himself, and I was a little shaver no bigger than you. "One day a little village of white people was surprised and nearly all the inhabitants were put to death by the savages, among them was your grandfather." The boy asked in an awed whisper, "Did they scalp my grandfather?" "That they did. Your Uncle Mordecai and I was working

LEST WE FORGET 117 in the new ground, clearing it for corn, planting, when all of a sudden Indians raised right up out of the ground. Your grand- pa dropped dead the first shot, and Uncle Mordecai ran to the cabin for his rifle. A red skin rushed up and scalped my own daddy before my eyes, then he grabbed me and started into the woods and then, sonny, something happened, old Speakeasy, up there," pointing to his rifle, "stretched her long neck through a chink in the logs and said something to Mr. Redskin, she didn't raise her voice much louder than a whisper, I can hear it yet echoing through the woods. That Indian dropped me and he dropped dead at my feet." "We had to pay the price of blood for this beautiful coun- try," said the mother, "nothing seems ever to be worth having that doesn't cost precious lives." We next see Lincoln in the glory of his young manhood, as he appeared in Washington, at his inaugural as President of the United States, on the 4th of March, 1861. On the evening previous, he had been smuggled into the city in a freight car, and on this morning, March 4, he appeared before a vast as- sembly of Northern and Southern people who came to witness the services and listen to the inaugural address, and to the ad- ministration of the oath of office by the chief justice of the United States. At the opening of these services Senator Bacon, of Oregon, a personal friend of Lincoln, stepped quickly to the edge of the platform, and with hand outstretched, and in an easy, graceful manner, said, "Fellow citizens, I have the honor to introduce to you, Abraham Lincoln, President elect of the United States." (The account of the inaugural of President Lincoln March 4, 1861, is condensed from Dixon's Southerner.) A deathly silence covered that great multitude, as with a pall, as the once ragged, lowly, barefoot boy, from a Kentucky back-woods cabin, stepped forward into the fiercest limelight that ever beat on human head. As Lincoln stepped onto the speaker's stand under the crowded canopy, there was an instant, awkward pause, as in his new black suit, satin vest and shining silk hat he seemed ill at ease, he looked in vain for a place to put his hat and cane. Finally he leaned the stick against the railing, but saw no place for his new hat. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, his defeated Northern opponent, for the presidency, with a kindly smile took the hat, and as he slipped gracefully back into his seat he whispered to the lady beside him, "If I can't be president I may at least hold his hat." Silence continued to hover over that vast multitude. The opening words of his address, however, seemed somewhat reassuring, to the south, when Lincoln said, "I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it already exists, and

118 IMPROVEMENT ERA I believe that I have no legal right to do so." And now his voice rang out clear as the ring of a trumpet, "I hold that the Union of these states is perpetual and that no state has the right to secede," and still no cheer came from the strangely silent crowd. At last the sentences, big with the fate of millions, were slowly and tenderly spoken, "I shall take care that the laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed in all the states; doing this I deem to be a simple act of duty on my part, and I shall perform it." A cheer swept the crowd, it died away and rose again with new power, and a third time it rang out clear and strong. Lincoln continued, "I trust this will not be re- garded as a menace, but only as the purpose of the Union, that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. In doing this there need be no bloodshed nor violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided in me will be used to hold and occupy and possess the property, and places belonging to the government." The powder mine exploded and a cheer arose as the grim walls of Fort Sumter and Pinckney in far off southern waters flashed red before every eye, the applause suddenly died away into silence and a man in the crowd in front of the platform yelled, "We're for Jefferson Davis." There was no answer, no dis- order. "But beyond what may be necessary for those objects," Lincoln continued, "there will be no invasion, no using of force against the people anywhere." Here Douglas nodded his ap- proval and said in low tone, "Good, that means no coercion." Then followed, in solemn tones, the fateful sentences. "In your hands, my disatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you unless you first assail it; you can have no con- flict with the government without yourselves being the ag- gressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. You can forbear the assault upon it, I cannot shrink from its defense. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mys- tic cords of memory stretching from every battle field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as assurely they will be by the better angels of our natures." At last he had touched the hearts of all, the sincerity and beauty of appeal for a moment hushed all bitterness and pas- sion, and a universal cheer went up from the audience. The black-robed figure of the venerable chief justice

LEST WE FORGET 119 stepped forward with extended open Bible, his trembling fin- gers and pale intellectual face gave the last touch of dramatic contrast between the old and the new. The tall, dark man, rev- erently laid his left hand on the open book, raised his right arm and slowly repeated the words of the oath after the chief justice. "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.'* The roar and the excitement of the inauguration had passed; and the old fashioned southern town of Washington, with its 60,000 inhabitants, no longer asleep perhaps, but still aristocratic, skeptical, maintained a sneering attitude, toward the new administration. Just now Lincoln proved himself the undoubted leader of his party. On the first day of his service, Secretary of State Seward, assumed to himself the position of prime minister whose duties he also assumed to include a gen- eral supervision of all parts of the government, as well as a regency over the executive. Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, took up the gauntlet against Lincoln at once. He not only regarded the President with contempt, but ex- tended to this action the political trickster and assumed the airs of a premiership in a democratic republic.