He Knew Lincoln, and Other Billy Brown Stories

by Ida M. Tarbell

“I’ve always figured it out that he was a sight more contented after he got his grip on the slavery question. You know how he felt about slavery; thought it was wrong, and when he began to see there was a chance to fight it in a way that would count, he felt different towards his life, saw it did mean something, began to feel he was some real use. I reckon he began to believe God had a place for him—that he was put into the world for a good and sufficient reason. Now as I see Mr. Lincoln, that was all he ever needed to reconcile him to things. As he began to see more and more that he had his argument sound, and that it was takin’ hold in the country, that men was listenin’ to him and sayin’ he had it right, why more and more he was something like happy. He made up his mind that the time had come when God meant to say to slavery, ‘Thus far and no farther,’ and he was ready to put in his best licks to help Him.

“He wrestled with that question till he drove it clean out of politics right down onto bed rock of right and wrong, and there he stood; slavery was wrong, and accordin’ to his way of lookin’ at it, people who pretended to regulate their lives on religion ought to be agin it. Allus troubled him a lot and sometimes made him pretty bitter that so many folks that stood high as Christians was for slavery. I remember Newt Bateman tellin’ how Lincoln came in his office one day after his nomination—Newt was State School Superintendent, and he and Mr. Lincoln was always great friends,—well, he said Mr. Lincoln came in with a report of a canvass of how people in Springfield were goin’ to vote, and he said:

“‘Let’s see how the ministers in this town are goin’ to vote,’ and he went through the list pickin’ ’em out and settin’ ’em down, and, would you believe it now, he found that out of 23 ministers 20 were against him. He was dreadfully upset, and talked a long time about it. Newt said he pulled a New Testament out of his pocket.

“‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is how anybody can think this book stands for slavery. Human bondage can’t live a minute in its light, and yet here’s all these men who consider themselves called to make the teachin’ of this book clear votin’ against me. I don’t understand it.

“‘They know Douglas don’t care whether slavery’s voted up or down, but they ought to know that God cares and humanity cares and they know I care. They ain’t been readin’ their Bibles right.

“‘Seems to me sometimes as if God had borne with this thing until the very teachers of religion had come to defend it out of the Bible. But they’ll find the day will come when His wrath will upset it. I believe the cup of iniquity is full, and that before we get through God will make the country suffer for toleratin’ a thing that is so contrary to what He teaches in this Book.’

“As I see it, that idee grew in him. You know how he hated war. Seemed as if he couldn’t stand it sometimes, but there ain’t no doubt that more and more he looked at it as God’s doin’—His way of punishin’ men for their sin in allowin’ slavery. He said that more’n once to the country. Remember what he wrote in his call for a fast-day in the spring of ’63? No? Well, I’ve got it here—just let me read it to you.”

Billy rose, and after lingering long enough at the window to remark that the “storm wa’n’t lettin’ up any,” went to a scratched and worn desk, a companion piece to “Mr. Lincoln’s chair,” and took from the drawer where he kept his precious relics a bundle of faded yellow newspapers and selected a copy of the New York Tribune of March 31, 1863.

“Now you listen,” said Billy, “and see if I ain’t right that his idee when he talked to Newt had takin’ hold of him deep.” So Billy read sonorously the sentences which seemed to him to demonstrate his point:

“‘Insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people.’