A Man for the Ages: A Story of the Builders of Democracy

by Irving Bacheller

WHICH PRESENTS THE PLEASANT COMEDY OF INDIVIDUALISM IN THE NEW CAPITAL, AND THE COURTSHIP OF LINCOLN AND MARY TODD.

Samson, with "Mr. Nimble" on a pad stuffed with straw in front of him, jogged across the prairies and waded the creeks and sloughs on his way to Springfield. The little lad was in his fourth year that summer. He slept and talked much on the way and kept Samson busy with queries about the sky and the creeks and the great flowery meadows. They camped the first night in a belt of timber and Samson writes that the boy "slept snug against me with his head on my arm. He went to sleep crying for his mother." He adds:

"It reminded me of the old days of my young fatherhood. `Mr. Nimble' wanted to pick all the the flowers and splash his bare feet in every stream. In the evening he would talk to the stars as if he were playing with them. To him the whole world is a plaything. He is like some of the grown folks in Chicago. He would sit hanging on to the reins and talk to the horse and to God by the hour. He used to tell me that God was a friend of his and I think he was right. It was good luck to get back to Sarah and the children. They took the little stranger into their hearts. 'Heart room, house room' is the motto of this part of the country."

It was a new town to which Samson returned. The Governor and the state officers had moved to Springfield. The new Capitol was nearing completion. The hard times which had followed the downfall of '37 had unjustly diminished Mr. Lincoln's confidence in his ability as a legislator. He enjoyed the practice of the law which had begun to turn his interest from the affairs of state. But the pot of political science boiled before the fireplace in the rear of Joshua Speed's store every evening that Lincoln and his associates were in Springfield. The wit and wisdom which bubbled into its vapors and the heat that surrounded it were the talk of the town. Many came to witness the process and presently it was moved, for a time, to more accommodating quarters. Before a crowd of people in the Presbyterian Church, Lincoln, Logan, Baker and Browning for the Whigs, and Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn and Thomas for the Democrats, having assiduously prepared for the trial, debated the burning issues of the time. The effort of each filled an evening and Lincoln's speech gave him new hope of himself. Wise men began to have great confidence in his future. He had taken the style of Webster for his model. He no longer used the broad humor which had characterized his efforts on the stump. A study of the best speeches of the great New Englander had made him question its value in a public address. Dignity, clear reasoning and impressiveness were the chief aims of his new method, the latter of which is aptly illustrated by this passage from his speech in reply to Douglas in the debate mentioned:

"If I ever feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world besides, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here without contemplating consequences before high heaven and in the face of the world I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty and my love."

In these perfervid utterances one may find little to admire save a great spirit seeking to express itself and lacking as yet the refinement of taste equal to his undertaking. He was no heaven-born genius "sprung in full panoply from the head of Jove." He was just one of the slow, common folk, with a passion for justice and human rights, slowly feeling his way upward. His spirit was growing. Strong in its love and knowledge of common men and of the things necessary to their welfare, it was beginning to seek and know "the divine power of words." Every moment of leisure he gave to the study of Webster and Burke and Byron and Shakespeare and Burns. He had begun to study the art of Irving and Walter Scott and of a new writer of the name of Dickens. There were four men who slept with him, in the room above Speed's store, and one of them has told how he used to lie sprawled on the floor, with his pillow and candle, reading long after the others had gone to sleep. Samson writes that he never knew a man who understood the art of using minutes as he did. A detached minute was to him a thing to be filled with value. Yet there were few men so deeply in love with fun. He loved to laugh at a story-telling and to match his humor with Thompson Campbell—a famous raconteur—and to play with children. Fun was as necessary to him as sleep. He searched for it in people and in books.

He came often to Samson's house to play with "Mr. Nimble" and to talk with Joe. Some of his best thoughts came when he was talking with Joe and some of his merriest moments when he was playing with "Mr. Nimble." He confessed that it was the latter that reminded him that he had better be looking for a wife.

But Lincoln was only one of many remarkable personalities in Springfield who had discovered themselves and were seeking to be discovered. Sundry individuals were lifting their heads above the crowd but not with the modesty and self-distrust of Honest Abe. "Steve" Douglas, whom Samson had referred to as "that little rooster of a man," put on the stilts of a brave and ponderous vigor. His five-foot stature and his hundred pounds of weight did not fit the part of Achilles. But he would have no other. He blustered much with a spear too heavy for his hands. Lincoln used to call him a kind of popgun.

This free-for-all joust of individualism—one of the first fruits of Freedom in the West—gave to the life of the little village a rich flavor of comedy. The great talents of Douglas had not been developed. His character was as yet shifty and shapeless. Some of the leading citizens openly distrusted him. He sought to command respect by assaulting men of full size and was repeatedly and soundly thumped for his presumption. He had endeavored publicly to chastise the sturdy Simeon Francis and had been bent over a market cart and severely wigged by the editor. Lincoln used to call these affairs "the mistakes of Douglas due wholly to the difference between the size of his body and the size of his feelin's." He never liked this little man, in opposing whom he was to come to the fulness of his power on the platform. It is evident that Lincoln regarded him as an able advocate of small sincerity looking chiefly for personal advancement.

There is a passage in the diary which illustrates the character of Douglas and Lincoln's knowledge of it. The passage relates to a day in the famous debates of 1858. Lincoln had not reached Havana in time to hear the speech of his opponent. A great crowd had come by train and in wagons. Taking advantage of his absence Douglas had called Lincoln "a liar, a coward and a sneak" and declared that he was going to fight him.