The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

by Abraham Lincoln

Mr. Lincoln was never a profound historical student: if he happened to need historical facts for the purposes of a political or legal discussion, he read them on the spur of the occasion. For this reason his opinions of current affairs all through his life were based more upon individual observation and reflection than upon scientific deductions from the experience of the world. Yet at this time, when he probably felt more keenly than ever after the want of a little learning to embellish the letters and speeches he was ambitious to compose, he is said to have read Rollin's "Ancient History," Gibbon's "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," and similar works, with great diligence and care. The books were borrowed from William Green, Bowlin Greene, and other parties in and about New Salem.

But he greatly preferred literature of another sort, such as Mrs. Lee Hentz's novels; some of which he found among the effects of Mr. Ellis, at the time his companion and occasional bedfellow. "He was very fond," Mr. Ellis declares, "of short stories, one and two columns long,—like 'Cousin Sally Dillard,' 'Becky Wilson's Courtship,' The Down-easter and the Bull,' 'How a bashful man became a married man, with five little bashful boys, and how he and his red-headed wife became Millerites, and before they were to ascend agreed to make a clean breast of it to each other;' and how, when the old lady was through, the Down-easter earnestly wished that Gabriel might blow his horn without delay." One New Salemite insists that Mr. Lincoln told this latter story "with embezzlements" (embellishments), and therefore he is firmly convinced that Mr. Lincoln "had a hand" in originating it. The catalogue of literature in which he particularly delighted at New Salem is completed by the statement of Mr. Rutledge, that he took great pleasure in "Jack Downing's Letters."

Mr. Lincoln still relished a popular song with a broad "point" or a palpable moral in it as much as he had ever enjoyed the vocal efforts of Dennis Hanks and his rollicking compeers of the Gentryville grocery. He even continued his own unhappy attempts, although with as little success as before, and quite as much to the amusement of his friends. To the choice collection of miscellaneous ballads acquired in Indiana, he now added several new favorites, like "Old Sukey Blue Skin," and some selections from the "Missouri Harmony," with variations by himself. He was also singularly fond of an Irish song, "which tells how St. Patrick came to be born on the 17th day of March."

"You ask me," says Mr. Ellis, "if I remember the first time I saw Mr. Lincoln. Yes, I do.... I was out collecting back tax for Gen. James D. Henry. I went from the tavern down to Jacob Bales's old mill, and then I first saw Mr. Lincoln. He was sitting on a saw-log talking to Jack and Rial Armstrong and a man by the name of Hohammer. I shook hands with the Armstrongs and Hohammer, and was conversing with them a few minutes, when we were joined by my old friend and former townsman, George Warburton, pretty tight as usual; and he soon asked me to tell him the old story about Ben Johnson and Mrs. Dale's blue dye, &c., which I did. And then Jack Armstrong said, 'Lincoln, tell Ellis the story about Gov. J. Sichner, his city-bred son, and his nigger Bob;' which he did, with several others, by Jack's calling for them. I found out then that Lincoln was a cousin to Charley Hanks of Island Grove. I told him I knew three of the boys,—Joe, Charley, and John,—and his uncle, old Billy Hanks, who lived up on the North Fork of the Sangamon River, afterwards near Decatur."1

1 "I myself knew old Billy Hanks, his mother's brother, and he was a very sensible old man. He was father to Mrs. Dillon, on Spring Creek; and Charley, Billy, jr., and John were his sons: they were all low-flung,—could neither read nor write. Some of them used to live in Island Grove, Sangamon County.... I remember the time that Lincoln and E. D. Baker ran in convention, to decide who should run for Congress in old Sangamon; that some of Baker's friends accused Mr. Lincoln of belonging to a proud and an aristocratic family,—meaning the Edwardses and Todds, I suppose; and, when it came to Mr. Lincoln's ears, he laughed heartily, and remarked, 'Well, that sounds strange to me: I do not remember of but one that ever came to see me, and while he was in town he was accused of stealing a jew's- harp.' Josh Speed remembers his saying this. I think you ought to remember it. Beverly Powell and myself lived with Bell and Speed, and I think he said so in their store. After that a Miss Hanks came to spend the winter with Mrs. Lincoln."—A. Y. Ellis.

This interview took place shortly after the Black Hawk War; but it was not until the next year (1833), the period at which we have now arrived, that Lincoln and Ellis became "intimate." At that time Ellis went there to keep a store, and boarded "at the same log-tavern" where Lincoln was. Lincoln, being "engaged in no particular business," merely endeavoring to make a lawyer, a surveyor, and a politician of himself, gave a great deal of his time to Ellis and Ellis's business. "He also used to assist me in the store," says this new friend, "on busy days, but he always disliked to wait on the ladies: he preferred trading with the men and boys, as he used to say. I also remember that he used to sleep in the store, on the counter, when they had too much company at the tavern.

"I well remember how he was dressed: he wore flax and tow linen pantaloons,—I thought about five inches too short in the legs,—and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He wore a calico shirt, such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogans, tan color; blue yarn socks, and straw hat, old style, and without a band.

"Mr. Lincoln was in those days a very shy man of ladies. On one occasion, while we boarded at this tavern, there came a family, containing an old lady and her son and three stylish daughters, from the State of Virginia, and stopped there for two or three weeks; and, during their stay, I do not remember of Mr. Lincoln ever eating at the same table when they did. I then thought it was on account of his awkward appearance and his wearing apparel."

There lived at New Salem at this time, and for some years afterward, a festive gentleman named Kelso, a school-teacher, a merchant, or a vagabond, according to the run of his somewhat variable "luck." When other people got drunk at New Salem, it was the usual custom to tussle and fight, and tramp each other's toes, and pull each other's noses; but, when Kelso got drunk, he astonished the rustic community with copious quotations from Robert Burns and William Shakspeare,—authors little known to fame among the literary men of New Salem. Besides Shakspeare and Burns, Mr. Kelso was likewise very fond of fishing, and could catch his game "when no other man could get a bite." Mr. Lincoln hated fishing with all his heart. But it is the testimony of the country-side, from Petersburg to Island Grove, that Kelso "drew Lincoln after him by his talk;" that they became exceedingly intimate; that they loitered away whole days together, along the banks of the quiet streams; that Lincoln learned to love inordinately our "divine William" and "Scotia's Bard," whom his friend mouthed in his cups, or expounded more soberly in the intervals of fixing bait and dropping line. Finally he and Kelso boarded at the same place; and with another "merchant," named Sincho, of tastes congenial and wits as keen as Kelso's, they were "always found together, battling and arguing." Bill Green ventures the opinion, that Lincoln's incessant reading of Shakspeare and Burns had much to do in giving to his mind the "sceptical" tendency so fully developed by the labors of his pen in 1834-5, and in social conversations during many years of his residence at Springfield.

Like Offutt, Kelso disappeared suddenly from New Salem, and apparently from the recollection of men. Each with a peculiar talent of his own, kind-hearted, eccentric creatures, no man's enemy and everybody's prey, they strolled out into the great world, and left this little village to perish behind them. Of Kelso a few faint traces have been found in Missouri; but if he ever had a lodging more permanent than the wayside tavern, a haystack, or a hedge, no man was able to tell where it was. Of Offutt not a word was ever heard: the most searching and cunning inquiries have failed to discover any spot where he lingered for a single hour; and but for the humble boy, to whom he was once a gentle master, no human being that knew him then would bestow a thought upon his name. In short, to use the expressive language of Mr. Lincoln himself, he literally "petered out."