Part 16

“I am a Whig,” he said once: “I am so because I believe the principles of the Whig party are best adapted to promote the prosperity of the country. I seek to change no man’s allegiance to his party, be it what it may. A life of great length and experience has satisfied me that all parties aim at the common good of the country. The great body of the Democrats, as well as the Whigs, are so from a conviction that their policy is patriotic. I take the hand of one as cordially as that of another, for all are Americans. I place country far above all parties. Look aside from that and parties are no longer worthy of being cherished.”

“I know no south, no north, no east, no west,” he said, at another time. It was such sentiments as these that made him Lincoln’s ideal of a statesman. The conflict he had striven to avert was postponed--but it came. His children and grandchildren fought, some on one side some on the other. Two of his grandchildren who were brothers fought on opposite sides and both fell in battle. Such was the War between the States.

Daniel Webster

A Famous Orator

Daniel Webster was descended from one of the Puritans who came from Old England to New England in the “great emigration.” His father, Ebenezer Webster, was a sturdy pioneer who fought in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution. “Captain Webster, I believe I can trust you,” said General Washington, and this was the opinion of all who knew him.

Daniel, one of his ten children, was born in 1782 in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He was a delicate child and from babyhood was indulged and petted by his parents and brothers and sisters. He was fond of outdoor sports, but he was fond of study too and easily led his classes. Many characteristic stories are told of his boyhood. It is said that one of his first purchases was a handkerchief on which was printed the recently-adopted Constitution of the United States. Thus as a child he read and studied the great instrument which he was so eloquently to uphold. Looking back to his childhood in later years, Webster said: “I read what I could get to read, went to school when I could, and when not at school was a farmer’s youngest boy, not good for much for want of health and strength, but expected to do something.”

By means of many sacrifices on the part of his family, Daniel was kept at school and finally sent to college. The attitude of the family toward him is illustrated by an incident of his boyhood. He and his brother Ezekiel were one day allowed to go to town, each being provided with a small sum of spending-money. When they returned home Mrs. Webster asked Daniel, “What did you do with your money?”

“Spent it,” was the reply, and there followed an enthusiastic description of the day’s pleasures. Then the mother turned to the silent elder brother.

“And what did you do with yours, ’Zekiel?”

“Lent it to Dan’el,” was the quiet answer.

The family was always “lending to Daniel”--making sacrifices for him and feeling amply repaid by his affection and success.

Young Webster’s talents were early recognized; even in his college days his eloquence and commanding presence and deep sonorous voice attracted attention. When he was eighteen he delivered at Hanover a Fourth of July oration; in crude form it uttered the message--love of country and loyalty to the Constitution--which was the burden of his later speeches. After leaving college he began the study of law. He taught for awhile in order to aid his brother Ezekiel to obtain a collegiate education, but kept steadily on with his studies.

In 1805 he was admitted to the bar, and established himself in a New Hampshire village. He was an eloquent and able speaker, and gradually became prominent in politics, making addresses at Federalist meetings and on public occasions. In 1813, he was sent to Congress as a member of the House. There he met Clay and Calhoun, the other members of the “Great Triumvirate” of which you have heard. Webster spoke ably in behalf of a national bank, of the tariff, and of other measures advocated by the Federalists; he soon came to be recognized as one of the foremost men of his party.

After serving a term in Congress, however, he returned to private life for a few years. He removed to Boston where he continued the practice of his profession, earning money easily and spending it with equal facility, often before it was earned. He was known as one of the ablest lawyers and greatest orators in the country. The effect of his eloquence was aided by his commanding presence. “Good heavens, he is a small cathedral by himself,” said a witty Englishman.

Among Webster’s famous addresses on public occasions were the oration at Plymouth on the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, the address five years later at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument, and the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. The best-known passage in the eulogy is the imaginary speech of John Adams, which many people have supposed to be an extract from a real speech. This begins with the famous words, “Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.”

After serving again in the House, Webster was sent in 1827 to the Senate; there he supported Henry Clay’s “American system.” About this time the question of the tariff was causing much friction between the North and the South, and the people of South Carolina were discussing nullification. This discussion led to one of Webster’s ablest speeches. In 1830 General Hayne of South Carolina made a speech expressing the view that the Constitution was “a compact between sovereign states” and asserting the right of secession which Kentucky and Virginia in 1799 and New England in 1814 had threatened to exercise. In his reply to Hayne, Webster insisted that the Constitution was not a “compact” but a “national instrument,” and he made an eloquent argument for the Union and the Constitution. This speech was published and scattered far and wide; it was inserted in school-books and declaimed in debating societies; its author was regarded as the “great expounder and defender of the Constitution.”

The life-long ambition of Webster, as of Clay, was to become president, but like his rival he was doomed to disappointment. Many people thought that Webster might have attained the honor in 1852 had it not been for his speech in 1850 on the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was not an extremist. He considered slavery “one of the greatest evils, both moral and political,” and he was opposed to its being admitted into the western territories. He said, however, that the Constitution “found slavery in the Union, it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties” which could not honestly and honorably be broken. He asserted that a state had no right to refuse to give up runaway slaves to their masters, as was provided by the Fugitive Slave Law. He concluded his speech with an eloquent appeal for national harmony and the Union. His position was legally unassailable and he was animated by a desire to conciliate and unite the jarring sections, but the speech called forth a storm of indignation from the abolitionists. There was no longer any hope that he would receive the presidential nomination.

But the time was at hand when earthly honors were a matter of no moment to the great orator. His health was giving way, and he died September 8, 1852, at Marshfield, his beloved home beside the sea. His dying eyes were gladdened by the sight of the flag he loved, the symbol of the “Union and liberty” for which he had striven.

Abraham Lincoln

The War President

When asked about his early life Abraham Lincoln once said, “It can all be condensed into a single sentence and that sentence you will find in Gray’s ‘Elegy,’

‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’”

His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a roving, shiftless, man, a carpenter by trade; after his marriage his wife taught him to read and to write his name, but here his education began and ended. Abraham Lincoln’s mother came, he said, “of a family of the name of Hanks,” about whom nothing good is recorded. Of his mother personally, almost nothing is known.

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Kentucky. When he was seven years old, his father made one of his numerous moves, going to Indiana and taking up a claim of land. There he built what was called “a half-faced camp”--a log-shed open on one side; in this his family passed the winter. The next year Thomas Lincoln built a cabin; it had four walls, but for years it was left without floor, door, or window. Instead of steps there were pegs in the wall by means of which Abraham ascended to the loft where he slept. The furniture was rude and scanty. It consisted of a few stools, a rough table and bed, some pewter dishes, a skillet and a pot.

Abraham was only nine years old when his mother succumbed to a fatal disease. As she lay on her death-bed she called her son and daughter to her and gave them her last charge. “Be good to one another,” she said, “love God and your kin.”

The winter which followed was dreary and desolate for the motherless children. A few months later Thomas Lincoln brought to the cabin a second wife who was a mother indeed to the two little ones. She was thrifty and industrious, as well as kind and affectionate, and under her rule the family had more of the comforts of life than it had ever known before. Mrs. Lincoln insisted that ten-year-old Abe must be sent to school and so he trudged every day to the log schoolhouse a mile and a half from home.

He was a diligent student, and he read every book on which he could lay his hands. These books were few in number; the Bible, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” a history of the United States, and Weems’ “Life of Washington,” were read and re-read. His bookcase was a crack between the logs of the cabin wall. One night the binding of the “Life of Washington,” was injured by a driving storm; to pay the man from whom it was borrowed for the damage, Abe worked three days in his corn field. At night the boy would lie flat on the floor before the fire and cipher on a plank or a wooden shovel with a piece of charcoal; when the surface was covered with figures, he would erase them and begin anew.

His father considered the hours spent in study as wasted time, and Abe was often called to put his books aside to grub and plow and mow. Such work was little to his taste; he said in later years, “his father taught him to work but never taught him to love work.”

Abe grew fast and at seventeen he was over six feet tall. He was strong and active, but an awkward figure, in his homespun shirt, buckskin trousers, and cap of squirrel or coon skin.

In the spring of 1830 when Abe was twenty-one his father moved to Illinois where fertile land was to be had on easy terms. The household goods were carried on an ox-wagon and it took two weeks to make the long and tedious journey. In the new settlement the men set to work to clear away the forest and build cabins. Abe helped to split rails to fence in the little farm. He not only helped at home, but worked for others as occasion demanded. We are informed that he bargained with a Mrs. Miller “to split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers.”

A little later he made a trip to New Orleans with a boat-load of meat, hogs, and corn. In that city for the first time he saw slaves bought and sold. You remember that slavery had been introduced into America early in the seventeenth century. For a long time slavery existed in both the northern and the southern colonies, but in the course of time it was limited to the south where alone slave labor was profitable. Lincoln did not think that it was right that negroes should be sold like cattle, and he said, “If ever I get a chance to hit that thing [slavery] I’ll hit it hard.”

After his return home, he became clerk in a country store. Here by his scrupulous honesty he earned the nickname “Honest Abe.” One day he made an overcharge of fourpence and that night he walked several miles to return the money. During his leisure he continued his studies. Books were scarce, and on one occasion he walked six miles to borrow a grammar.

In 1832 Abe Lincoln was elected captain of a company of volunteers who marched with the regular troops against the Indian chief, Black Hawk. Most of the men went home when their term of enlistment expired but Abe Lincoln re-enlisted and served as a private. This was his only experience in actual warfare. When he returned home he presented himself as a candidate for the legislature. His neighbors heartily supported “humble Abraham Lincoln” who was one of them, but he was defeated. He was a clear, straightforward speaker with a pointed, well-told joke for every occasion.

After his political defeat he opened a store in partnership with a friend. As Lincoln spent his time in studying and telling jokes and Berry spent his in drinking, it is no wonder that the business proved a failure. Berry died soon after this; Lincoln assumed all the debts of the firm and paid them to the last penny, although it required his savings for over fifteen years.

Lincoln now began to study law, supporting himself, meanwhile, by doing such work as came to hand. People took it as a joke that this rough, awkward fellow was preparing himself for a profession. One day a man who saw him sitting on a woodpile poring over a book asked, “What are you reading, Abe?” “I am not reading; I am studying,” was the answer. “Studying what?” “Law, sir,” said Abe. The man laughed uproariously, but Lincoln kept on with his studies; neither in youth nor in manhood was he to be turned from a purpose by ridicule. He worked as a farmhand, he learned to survey lands, he served as postmaster of the country office. We are told that “he carried the office around in his hat,”--putting in his hat the handful of letters which came to New Salem and distributing them as he went to survey land.

In 1837 Lincoln was licensed to practice law. He resolved to make his home in Springfield, lately made the capital of the state. He rode thither on a borrowed horse, carrying in a pair of saddle-bags all his personal effects,--“two or three law books and a few pieces of clothing.” One who knew him in those days describes him as a tall, gaunt, awkward figure; he wore a faded brown hat, a loose, ill-fitting coat, and trousers which were too short; in winter he added to this costume a short cloak or a shawl. In one hand he carried a carpet-bag containing his papers, and in the other a faded green cotton umbrella, tied with a string. Like the other lawyers of the place, he “traveled on the circuit,” going from one place to another to attend courts. He usually carried with him a book or two; rising earlier than his companions, he would sit by the fire to read and think. In later days when a young lawyer asked Lincoln’s advice as to the best method of obtaining a knowledge of law, he answered that it was “simple though laborious,” such knowledge must be gained by careful reading and study. “Work, work, work, is the main thing.”

Lincoln was popular with men and was known as an honest, kind-hearted fellow. He himself told the following anecdote: one day as he was riding along dressed in his best he saw a hog “mired up” beside the road. Unwilling to soil his clothes, he passed on. The poor animal gave a grunt which seemed to say, “There now, my last chance is gone.” Unable to resist the brute’s appeal, Lincoln went back and helped it out.

In 1842 Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd, a clever, well-bred woman, who forwarded his professional and political success. She lacked, however, the amiable temper which would have made a happy home; more and more her husband’s interest centered in public matters and in politics. In 1844 he gave his enthusiastic support to Henry Clay, the presidential candidate, who was “his ideal of a statesman.” Two years later Lincoln was elected to Congress; after serving a term, he retired from public life for awhile, devoting himself to his profession and to his studies.

In 1854 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise led him again to take an interest in politics. Lincoln was opposed to the extension of slavery, but he did not agree with the extreme abolitionists; he said that “loyalty to the Constitution and the Union” forbade interference with slavery where it was already established. In 1856 he was a member of the Convention at Bloomington, Illinois, which formed the Republican party, the object of which Lincoln said was “the preventing of the spread and nationization of slavery.”

He became the Republican candidate for senator in 1858 and made a famous speech in which he asserted that the Union could not endure, part free and part slave. “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’” he said. “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall,--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other.” To a friend who objected to this utterance he said, “If I had to draw a pen across my record and erase my whole life from sight and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased.”

Lincoln was defeated by Douglas in this contest, but the eyes of the people were on him and in 1860 the Republican party made him its candidate for president. Some of the rails he had split were brought into the convention; the contest between free and slave labor was made an issue of the campaign. There were three other candidates in the field, and the division of votes in the old parties caused Lincoln to be elected. The southern people knew little about Lincoln personally; they knew, however, that he led the party which wished to destroy slavery. There had been so much disagreement and friction in the Union that some of the southern states now decided to leave it. The Constitution did not give the general government power to enforce a permanent union. In course of time there came to be held two different views about the Union,--one, generally held in the South, was that it was “a compact between sovereign states” and that the power of the state was supreme; the other, generally held in the North, was that the states made up one great nation to which belonged the supreme authority. The latter was the view held by Lincoln. He prepared for his inaugural address by studying the Constitution, Clay’s great speech of 1850, Jackson’s proclamation against nullification, and Webster’s reply to Hayne: locked in his dingy office he composed his inaugural address.

Before he left home, he paid a farewell visit to his aged step-parent who had been as a mother to him. Then with his wife and three sons, he set forth to Washington.

When he took the oath of office, it was over a divided Union. South Carolina had seceded and several other southern states had followed its example. Lincoln said, “the Union must be preserved” and he issued a call for seventy-five thousand soldiers. At this call there withdrew from the Union several states which loved the Union but believed in the supreme power of the states and the constitutional right of secession.

The reverse at Manassas distressed but did not daunt Lincoln. As commander-in-chief of the army and the navy, he appointed officers and supervised their movements. There were three great military tasks necessary for the northern forces,--to control the Mississippi River, to blockade southern ports, and to capture Richmond. The sea forces under Farragut and Porter successfully performed their tasks. In Virginia one unsuccessful or incompetent general after another was put forward and supported,--McClellan, Halleck, Pope, and Hooker. Meanwhile the great commanders, Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman, were fighting undiscovered in the west. At last they were brought forward and put at the head of magnificent armies to “end the job.”

As a military measure, in 1863, President Lincoln made the emancipation proclamation granting freedom to slaves. In November, of that year he made his famous address, consecrating the military cemetery at Gettysburg.

Not long before the presidential election of 1864, Lincoln issued a call for five hundred thousand soldiers; friends urged him to wait a few weeks as this call for troops might injure his chance of re-election. He refused saying, “What is the presidency worth to me if I have no country?”

In his second inaugural address are the famous words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in.” The end was already in sight. The capital of the Confederacy fell and Lee’s little army was forced to surrender. Lincoln expressed only sympathy for the defeated and desolate South. But his plans for reunion in peace and kindness were not to be carried out. Just as the great victory was accomplished he was struck down by the hand of an assassin, John Wilkes Booth. His death was an even greater loss to the South than to the North which mourned so bitterly, the heroic man of the people, the martyred president.

Ulysses Simpson Grant

April 27, 1822, was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, who by an error of which you will hear later had his name changed to Ulysses Simpson Grant. His father was Jesse Grant, an Ohio tanner. Grant’s ancestors had settled in New England in the seventeenth century and some had served in the French and Indian War and some had served in the Revolution, so he was of good American stock.

When Ulysses was about ten years old, his father moved to Georgetown, Ohio, about forty miles from Cincinnati. There he prospered and became the owner of a farm as well as a tannery. Ulysses was not specially fond of books, but his father was resolved that he should have a good education. The boy was sent regularly to school and was a faithful student. He had work to do at home too--sometimes in the tannery which he disliked, sometimes on the farm, which he liked better. He was fond of horses and learned to ride and drive well.