CHAPTER XIX.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF AGE.
When the death of Ann Rutledge came upon Lincoln, for a time threatening to destroy his ambition and blast his life, he was in a most encouraging position. Master of a profession in which he had an abundance of work and earned fair wages; hopeful of being admitted in a few months to the bar; a member of the State Assembly, with every reason to believe that, if he desired it, his constituency would return him—few men are as far advanced at twenty-six as was Abraham Lincoln.
CONCORD CEMETERY.—WHERE ANN RUTLEDGE WAS BURIED.
From a photograph by C. S. McCullough, Petersburg, Illinois. Concord cemetery lies seven miles northwest of the old town of New Salem, in a secluded place, surrounded by woods and pastures, away from the world. In this lonely spot Ann Rutledge was at first laid to rest. Thither Lincoln is said often to have gone alone, and “sat in silence for hours at a time;” and it was to Ann Rutledge’s grave here that he pointed and said: “There my heart lies buried.” The old cemetery suffered the melancholy fate of New Salem. It became a neglected, deserted spot. The graves were lost in weeds, and a heavy growth of trees kept out the sun and filled the place with gloom. A dozen years ago this picture was taken. It was a blustery day in the autumn, and the weeds and trees were swaying before a furious gale. No other picture of the place, taken while Ann Rutledge was buried there, is known to be in existence. A picture of a cemetery, with the name of Ann Rutledge on a high, flat tombstone, has been published in two or three books; but it is not genuine, the “stone” being nothing more than a board improvised for the occasion. The grave of Ann Rutledge was never honored with a stone until the body was taken up in 1890 and removed to Oakland cemetery, a mile southwest of Petersburg.
Intellectually he was far better equipped than he believed himself to be, better than he has ordinarily been credited with being. True, he had had no conventional college training, but he had by his own efforts attained the chief result of all preparatory study, the ability to take hold of a subject and assimilate it. The fact that in six weeks he had acquired enough of the science of surveying to enable him to serve as deputy surveyor shows how well trained his mind was. The power to grasp a large subject quickly and fully is never an accident. The nights Lincoln spent in Gentryville, lying on the floor in front of the fire, figuring on the fire-shovel; the hours he passed in poring over the Statutes of Indiana; the days he wrestled with Kirkham’s Grammar, alone made the mastery of Flint and Gibson possible. His struggle with Flint and Gibson made easier the volumes he borrowed from Major Stuart’s law library.
JOSEPH DUNCAN, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS DURING LINCOLN’S FIRST TERM IN THE LEGISLATURE.
Joseph Duncan, Governor of Illinois from 1834 to 1838, was born in Kentucky in 1794. The son of an officer of the regular army, he at nineteen became a soldier in the war of 1812, and did gallant service. He removed to Illinois in 1818, and soon became prominent in the State, serving as a major-general of militia, a State Senator, and from 1826 to 1834 as a member of Congress, resigning from Congress to take the office of Governor. He was at first a Democrat, but afterwards became a Whig. He was a man of the highest character and public spirit. He died in 1844.
Lincoln had a mental trait which explains his rapid growth in mastering subjects—seeing clearly was essential to him. He was unable to put a question aside until he understood it. It pursued him, irritated him, until solved. Even in his Gentryville days his comrades noted that he was constantly searching for reasons and that he “explained so clearly.” This characteristic became stronger with years. He was unwilling to pronounce himself on any subject until he understood it, and he could not let it alone until he had reached a conclusion which satisfied him.
This seeing clearly became a splendid force in Lincoln; because when he once had reached a conclusion he had the honesty of soul to suit his actions to it. No consideration could induce him to abandon the course his reason told him was logical. Not that he was obstinate, and having taken a position, would not change it if he saw on further study that he was wrong. In his first circular to the people of Sangamon County is this characteristic passage: “Upon the subjects I have treated, I have spoken as I thought. I may be wrong in any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.”