We have anticipated a score of years in speaking of Mr. Lincoln's relations to his family. It was in August of the year 1831 that he finally left his father's roof, and swung out for himself into the current of the world to make his fortune in his own way. He went down to New Salem again to assist Offutt in the business that lively speculator thought of establishing there. He was more punctual than either his employer or the merchandise, and met with the usual reward of punctuality in being forced to waste his time in waiting for the tardy ones. He seemed to the New Salem people to be "loafing"; several of them have given that description of him. He did one day's work acting as clerk of a local election, a lettered loafer being pretty sure of employment on such an occasion. [Footnote: Mrs. Lizzie H. Bell writes of this incident: "My father, Menton Graham, was on that day, as usual, appointed to be a clerk, and Mr. McNamee, who was to be the other, was sick and failed to come. They were looking around for a man to fill his place when my father noticed Mr. Lincoln and asked if he could write. He answered that 'he could make a few rabbit tracks.'">[ He also piloted a boat down the Sangamon for one Dr. Nelson, who had had enough of New Salem and wanted to go to Texas. This was probably a task not requiring much pilot-craft, as the river was much swollen, and navigators had in most places two or three miles of channel to count upon. But Offutt and his goods arrived at last, and Lincoln and he got them immediately into position, and opened their doors to what commerce could be found in New Salem. There was clearly not enough to satisfy the volatile mind of Mr. Offutt, for he soon bought Cameron's mill at the historic dam, and made Abraham superintendent also of that branch of the business.
It is to be surmised that Offutt never inspired his neighbors and customers with any deep regard for his solidity of character. One of them says of him with injurious pleonasm, that he "talked too much with his mouth." A natural consequence of his excessive fluency was soon to be made disagreeably evident to his clerk. He admired Abraham beyond measure, and praised him beyond prudence. He said that Abe knew more than any man in the United States; and he was certainly not warranted in making such an assertion, as his own knowledge of the actual state of science in America could not have been exhaustive. He also said that Abe could beat any man in the county running, jumping, or "wrastling." This proposition, being less abstract in its nature, was more readily grasped by the local mind, and was not likely to pass unchallenged.
[Illustration: MAP OF NEW SALEM AND VICINITY]
Public opinion at New Salem was formed by a crowd of ruffianly young fellows who were called the "Clary's Grove Boys." Once or twice a week they descended upon the village and passed the day in drinking, fighting, and brutal horse-play. If a stranger appeared in the place, he was likely to suffer a rude initiation into the social life of New Salem at the hands of these jovial savages. Sometimes he was nailed up in a hogshead and rolled down hill; sometimes he was insulted into a fight and then mauled black and blue; for despite their pretensions to chivalry they had no scruples about fair play or any such superstitions of civilization. At first they did not seem inclined to molest young Lincoln. His appearance did not invite insolence; his reputation for strength and activity was a greater protection to him than his inoffensive good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them umbrage. It led to dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal banter to a wrestling-match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all this "wooling and pulling," as he called it. But Offutt's indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show his mettle. Jack Armstrong, the leading bully of the gang, was selected to throw him, and expected an easy victory. But he soon found himself in different hands from any he had heretofore engaged with. Seeing he could not manage the tall stranger, his friends swarmed in, and by kicking and tripping nearly succeeded in getting Lincoln down. At this, as has been said of another hero, "the spirit of Odin entered into him," and putting forth his whole strength, he held the pride of Clary's Grove in his arms like a child, and almost choked the exuberant life out of him. For a moment a general fight seemed inevitable; but Lincoln, standing undismayed with his back to the wall, looked so formidable in his defiance that an, honest admiration took the place of momentary fury, and his initiation was over. As to Armstrong, he was Lincoln's friend and sworn brother as soon as he recovered the use of his larynx, and the bond thus strangely created lasted through life. Lincoln had no further occasion to fight his own battles while Armstrong was there to act as his champion. The two friends, although so widely different, were helpful to each other afterwards in many ways, and Lincoln made ample amends for the liberty his hands had taken with Jack's throat, by saving, in a memorable trial, his son's neck from the halter.
This incident, trivial and vulgar as it may seem, was of great importance in Lincoln's life. His behavior in this ignoble scuffle did the work of years for him, in giving him the position he required in the community where his lot was cast. He became from that moment, in a certain sense, a personage, with a name and standing of his own. The verdict of Clary's Grove was unanimous that he was "the cleverest fellow that had ever broke into the settlement." He did not have to be constantly scuffling to guard his self-respect, and at the same time he gained the good-will of the better sort by his evident peaceableness and integrity.
[Illustration: LEAF FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S EXERCISE BOOK. The page here shown in reduced fac-simile is from the Exercise Book presented by William H. Herndon to the Keyes-Lincoln Memorial Collection. When the book was written Lincoln was about seventeen.]
He made on the whole a satisfactory clerk for Mr. Offutt, though his downright honesty must have seemed occasionally as eccentric in that position as afterwards it did to his associates at the bar. Dr. Holland has preserved one or two incidents of this kind, which have their value. Once, after he had sold a woman a little bill of goods and received the money, he found on looking over the account again that she had given him six and a quarter cents too much. The money burned in his hands until he locked the shop and started on a walk of several miles in the night to make restitution before he slept. On another occasion, after weighing and delivering a pound of tea, he found a small weight on the scales. He immediately weighed out the quantity of tea of which he had innocently defrauded his customer and went in search of her, his sensitive conscience not permitting any delay. To show that the young merchant was not too good for this world, the same writer gives an incident of his shop-keeping experience of a different character. A rural bully having made himself especially offensive one day, when women were present, by loud profanity, Lincoln requested him to be silent. This was of course a cause of war, and the young clerk was forced to follow the incensed ruffian into the street, where the combat was of short duration. Lincoln threw him at once to the ground, and gathering a handful of the dog fennel with which the roadside was plentifully bordered, he rubbed the ruffian's face and eyes with it until he howled for mercy. He did not howl in vain, for the placable giant, when his discipline was finished, brought water to bathe the culprit's smarting face, and doubtless improved the occasion with quaint admonition.
A few passages at arms of this sort gave Abraham a redoubtable reputation in the neighborhood. But the principal use he made of his strength and his prestige was in the capacity of peacemaker, an office which soon devolved upon him by general consent. Whenever old feuds blossomed into fights by Offutt's door, or the chivalry of Clary's Grove attempted in its energetic way to take the conceit out of some stranger, or a canine duel spread contagion of battle among the masters of the beasts, Lincoln usually appeared upon the scene, and with a judicious mixture of force and reason and invincible good- nature restored peace.
While working with Offutt his mind was turned in the direction of English grammar. From what he had heard of it he thought it a matter within his grasp, if he could once fall in with the requisite machinery. Consulting with Menton [Footnote: This name has always been written in Illinois "Minter," but a letter from Mr. Graham's daughter, Mrs. Bell, says that her father's name is as given in the text.] Graham, the schoolmaster, in regard to it, and learning the whereabouts of a vagrant "Kirkham's Grammar," he set off at once and soon returned from a walk of a dozen miles with the coveted prize. He devoted himself to the new study with that peculiar intensity of application which always remained his most valuable faculty, and soon knew all that can be known about it from rules. He seemed surprised, as others have been, at the meager dimensions of the science he had acquired and the ease with which it yielded all there was of it to the student. But it seemed no slight achievement to the New Salemites, and contributed not a little to the prevalent impression of his learning.
His name is prominently connected with an event which just at this time caused an excitement and interest in Salem and the neighboring towns entirely out of proportion to its importance. It was one of the articles of faith of most of the settlers on the banks of the Sangamon River that it was a navigable stream, and the local politicians found that they could in no way more easily hit the fancy of their hearers than by discussing this assumed fact, and the logical corollary derived from it, that it was the duty of the State or the nation to clear out the snags and give free course to the commerce which was waiting for an opportunity to pour along this natural highway. At last one Captain Vincent Bogue, of Springfield, determined to show that the thing could be done by doing it. The first promise of the great enterprise appears in the "Sangsmo Journal" of January 26, 1832, in a letter from the Captain, at Cincinnati, saying he would ascend the Sangamon by steam on the breaking up of the ice. He asked that he might be met at the mouth of the river by ten or twelve men, having axes with long handles, to cut away the overhanging branches of the trees on the banks. From this moment there was great excitement,— public meetings, appointment of committees, appeals for subscriptions, and a scattering fire of advertisements of goods and freight to be bargained for,—which sustained the prevailing interest. It was a day of hope and promise when the advertisement reached Springfield from Cincinnati that "the splendid upper-cabin steamer Talisman" would positively start for the Sangamon on a given day. As the paper containing this joyous intelligence also complained that no mail had reached Springfield from the east for three weeks, it is easy to understand the desire for more rapid and regular communications. From week to week the progress of the Talisman, impeded by bad weather and floating ice, was faithfully recorded, until at last the party with long-handled axes went down to Beardstown to welcome her. It is needless to state that Lincoln was one of the party. His standing as a scientific citizen of New Salem would have been enough to insure his selection even if he had not been known as a bold navigator. He piloted the Talisman safely through the windings of the Sangamon, and Springfield gave itself up to extravagant gayety on the event that proved she "could no longer be considered an inland town." Captain Bogue announced "fresh and seasonable goods just received per steamboat Talisman," and the local poets illuminated the columns of the "Journal" with odes on her advent. The joy was short-lived. The Talisman met the natural fate of steamboats a few months later, being burned at the St. Louis wharf. Neither State nor nation has ever removed the snags from the Sangamon, and no subsequent navigator of its waters has been found to eclipse the fame of the earliest one.