[iii-44] Herndon, ii, 9-11; see, also, Holland, 127. For brief accounts and comments based on Herndon’s and on Holland’s narratives the reader is referred to: Hapgood, 108; Browne, 162-63; Hill, 215-16; Coffin, 104-05; Tarbell, i, 250; Pratt, 74-76; Selby, 97-98; McClure’s Stories, 101.
[iii-45] Herndon, i, 328-30.
A brief and less picturesque account of the incident was furnished to the author, about half a century after the event, by the Honorable Shelby M. Cullom, one of the counsel for the defense. He wrote: “During the trial, a question was raised as to the admissibility of certain testimony, which was very important to the defense. The Judge took an hour to come to a conclusion as to what he ought to do; and when he began to decide the question, he seemed to be leaning against the admissibility of the testimony. Lincoln saw that he was inclined that way, and sprang upon his feet, and manifested such intense earnestness that it appeared to change the Judge’s disposition, and he decided in favor of the admissibility of the testimony.”
Still, Herndon probably did not overstate the case. For the official crier, Captain Thomas W. S. Kidd, referring to that same episode, said: “Mr. Lincoln made a display of anger, the like of which I never saw exhibited by him before or after. He roared in the excess of his denunciation of the action of the Court.” (Rochester Herald, January 17, 1904. See Kidd, also, in Tarbell, i, 251-52.)
CHAPTER IV
[iv-1] Though under very different circumstances, Lincoln’s elation seems not unlike that of another famous man whose later life touched his at several points. The first dollar earned by Frederick Douglass, on free soil, in New Bedford, was paid to him, as he tells us, for stowing away a pile of coal for Mrs. Ephraim Peabody, the wife of a Unitarian minister. “I was not long in accomplishing the job,” runs his story, “when the dear lady put into my hand two silver half-dollars. To understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money, realizing that I had no master who could take it from me,—that it was mine,—that my hands were my own, and could earn more of the precious coin,—one must have been in some sense himself a slave.” (Douglass, 210.)
[iv-2] Lamon, pointing out some inconsistencies in the details of this anecdote as it is generally quoted, expresses doubts concerning its authenticity. He evidently did not know how often Lincoln had told the story to different persons. Their versions, as might be expected, vary somewhat, but they agree in the essential facts. See: Carpenter, 96-98; William D. Kelley, in Rice, 279-80; Leonard Swett, in Rice, 457-58; Holland, 33-34; Brooks, 38; Pratt, 16-18; Morgan, 27-28; Lamon, 72; McClure’s Stories, 17-18; Hanaford, 156-58; Boyden, 83-84; Irelan, xvi, 62-64; Tarbell, i, 38-39; Browne, 72-73; Banks, 14-16; Ward, 277-78; Thayer, 169-71; Ludlow, 66-68; Curtis’s Lincoln, 24-25; Whipple, 62-63; Selby, 52-53; Raymond, 754; Onstot, 51-52; Egbert L. Viele, in Scribner’s Magazine, October, 1878, p. 817; Alban J. Conant, in McClure’s Magazine, March, 1909, p. 514; interview with Governor Frank Fuller, in the New York Times, October 1, 1911, p. 10.
[iv-3] Browne’s Lincoln and Men, i, 259-61, 356; ii, 90-91.
[iv-4] Holland, 93.
[iv-5] See Lincoln to Speed, June 19, 1841, in Works, i, 168-75, and in Lamon, 318-19; also, Gibson W. Harris, in Columbia (Ky.) Spectator, January 27, 1905.