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 their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class."
None of his nearest associates ever saw Mr. Lincoln voluntarily call for a drink but many times they saw him take whiskey with a little sugar in it to avoid the appearance of discountenancing it to his friends. If he could have avoided it without giving offence he would gladly have done so. He was a conformist to the conventionalities of the surroundings in which he was placed.
Whether Mr. Lincoln sold liquor by the dram over the counter of the grocery store kept by himself and Berry will forever remain an undetermined question. When Douglas revived the story in one of his debates, Mr. Lincoln replied that even if it were true, there was but little difference between them, for while he figured on one side of the counter Douglas figured on the other.
Mr. Lincoln disliked sumptuary laws and would not prescribe by statute what other men should eat or drink. When the temperance men ran to the Legislature to invoke the power of the state, his voice—the most eloquent among them—was silent. He did not oppose them, but quietly withdrew from the cause and left others to manage it.
In 1854 he was induced to join the order called Sons of Temperance, but never attended a single meeting after the one at which he was initiated.
Judge Douglas once undertook to ridicule Mr. Lincoln on not drinking. "What, are you a temperance man?" he inquired. "No," replied Lincoln, "I am not a temperance man but I am temperate in this, to wit: I don't drink."
He often used to say that drinking spirits was to him like thinking of spiritualism, he wanted to steer clear of both evils; by frequent indulgence he might acquire a dangerous taste for the spirit and land in a drunkard's grave; by frequent thought of spiritualism he might become a confirmed believer in it and land in a lunatic asylum.
In 1889 Miss Kate Field wrote W. H. Lamon saying:—
Will you kindly settle a dispute about Lincoln? Lately in Pennsylvania I quoted Lincoln to strengthen my argument against Prohibition, and now the W. C. T. U. quote him for the other side. What is the truth?
... As you are the best of authority on the subject of Abraham Lincoln, can you explain why he is quoted on the Prohibition side? Did he at any time make speeches that could be construed with total abstinence?
To this Lamon replied:—
You ask my recollection of Mr. Lincoln's views on the question of Temperance and Prohibition. I looked upon him as one of the safest temperance men I ever knew. He seemed on this subject, as he was on most others, unique in profession as well as in practice. He was neither what might be called a drinking man, a total abstainer, nor a Prohibitionist. My acquaintance with him commenced in 1847. He was then and afterwards a politician. He mixed much and well with the people. Believed what the people believed to be right was right.
Society in Illinois at that early day was as crude as the country was uncultivated. People then were tenacious of their natural as well as their acquired rights and this state of things existed until Mr. Lincoln left the State to assume the duties of President. The people of Illinois firmly believed it was one of their inalienable rights to manufacture, sell, and drink whiskey as it was the sacred right of the southern man to rear, work, and whip his own nigger,—and woe be unto him who attempted to interfere with these rights—(as the sequel afterwards showed when Mr. Lincoln and his friends tried to prevent the southern man from whipping his own nigger in the territories).
I heard Mr. Lincoln deliver several temperance lectures. One evening in Danville, Ill., he happened in at a temperance meeting, the "Old Washingtonian Society," I think, and was called on to make a speech. He got through it well, after which he and other members of the Bar who were present were invited to an entertainment at the house of Dr. Scott. Wine and cake were handed around. Mrs. Scott, in handing Mr. Lincoln a glass of homemade wine, said, "I hope you are not a teetotaler, Mr. Lincoln, if you are a temperance lecturer." "By no means, my dear madam," he replied; "for I do assure you (with a humorous smile) I am very fond of my 'Todd' (a play upon his wife's maiden name). I by no means oppose the use of wine. I only regret that it is not more in universal use. I firmly believe if our people were to habitually drink wine, there would be little drunkenness in the country." In the conversation which afterward became general, Judge David Davis, Hon. Leonard Swett, and others present joining in the discussion, I recollect his making this remark: "I am an apostle of temperance only to the extent of coercing moderate indulgence and prohibiting excesses by all the moral influences I can bring to bear."