Lincoln's Residence at Springfield, Illinois.
Lincoln’s raft from New Salem arrived in New Orleans in May, 1831. At that time it seemed as if all the adventurers in the world had gathered there, and it was probably the wickedest city on earth. It was the gathering place of pirates, robbers and wild boatmen of the river and gulf.
The city in its wild prosperity and barbarity must have made a strong impression on Lincoln. Worst of all was its hideous slave market. Here men and women were herded together like animals and sold like cattle. Here he saw negro girls, many of them nearly white, treated like beasts. At the auctioning off of a mulatto girl he turned away from the revolting spectacle, saying to his companions, “Boys, let’s get away from this. If I ever get a chance to hit that thing (meaning slavery), I’ll hit it hard.”
And to him was given the chance, through the terrible ordeal of civil war, to drive that shame forever from the land of freedom. Only in the light of twentieth century developments can we look back and see what a desperate condition America would be in if the Southern half of the United States had succeeded in becoming a separate slave-nation. Great evils were involved and great wrongs had to be worked out from among the passions and prejudice of the times, but we can now all believe, no matter how meritorious was state patriotism, or how sincere the faith of the people, or how correct their interpretation of the original Union, that we have a greater America, destined to take a better part in making a nobler civilization for a more progressive world.
III. TESTS OF CHARACTER ON THE LAWLESS FRONTIER
There were gangs of good-natured rowdies, and there were roughhouse communities in pioneer days.
Such a community and such a gang was in the neighborhood of New Salem, known as Clary’s Grove and the Clary Grove Boys. They delighted in being rough and coarse, though, it is said, to their credit, that they were generous and most faithful friends.
Denton Offutt for some reason liked to boast to them of his hired man. He seemed to believe that it shed glory on himself as an employer. He told the Clary Boys that his man could lift more, throw farther, run faster, jump higher and wrestle better than any man in Sangamon County. This hurt the Clary boys’ sense of superiority. They decided to test it out. Accordingly, they appointed Jack Armstrong as their best man to prove their right to the championship.
Lincoln objected to the “tussle and scuffle” ideas of the time, he disbelieved in the honors won by “wooling and pulling,” but the age of “fist-and-skull” duels was not yet at an end, and the question of best man had to be tried out.
Clary’s Grove came one day to back their man as representative of themselves, and New Salem turned out to back the other. It was to be “catch-as-catch-can and the best man wins.”