The Backwoods Boy; or, The Boyhood and Manhood of Abraham Lincoln

by Jr. Horatio Alger

“Mr. Lincoln had also a good understanding, that is, the faculty that understands and comprehends the exact state of things, their near and remote relation. The understanding does not necessarily inquire for the reason of things. I must here repeat that Mr. Lincoln was an odd and original man; he lived by himself and out of himself. He could not absorb. He was a very sensitive man, unobtrusive and gentlemanly, and often hid himself in the common mass of men, in order to prevent the discovery of his individuality. He had no insulting egotism and no pompous pride; no haughtiness and no aristocracy. He was not indifferent, however, to approbation and public opinion. He was not an upstart and had no insolence. He was a meek, quiet, unobtrusive gentleman. These qualities of his nature merged somewhat his identities. Read Mr. Lincoln’s speeches, letters, messages, and proclamations; read his whole record in his actual life, and you can not fail to perceive that he had good understanding. He understood and fully comprehended himself; and what he did, and why he did it, better than most living men.”

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“There are two opinions—radically different opinions—expressed about Mr. Lincoln’s will by men of equal and much capacity. One opinion is that he had no will, and the other is that he was all will—omnipotently so. These two opinions are loudly and honestly affirmed. Mr. Lincoln’s mind loved the true, the right, and good—all the great truths and principles in the mind of man. He loved the true first, the right second, and the good the least. His mind struggled for truths and his soul for substances. Neither in his heart nor in his soul did he care for forms, methods, ways,—the non-substantial facts or things. He could not by his very structure and formation in mind and body care anything about them. He did not intensely or much care for particular individual man—dollar, property, rank, order, manners, and such like things. He had no avarice in his nature, or other like vice.... What suited a little, narrow, critical mind, did not suit Mr. Lincoln’s, any more than a child’s clothes did his body. Generally, Mr. Lincoln did not take any interest in little local elections—town meetings. He attended no gatherings that pertained to local or other such interests, saving general political ones. He did not care (because he could not in his nature) who succeeded to the presidency of this or that Christian Association or Railroad Convention; who made the most money; who was going to Philadelphia; when and for what; and what were the costs of such a trip. He could not care who among friends got this office or that—who got to be street inspector or alley commissioner. No principle of goodness, of truth, or right was here. How could he be moved by such things as these? He could not understand why men struggled for such things. He made this remark to me one day—I think at Washington: ‘If ever this free people—if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office; a way to live without work; from which nature I am not free myself.’ It puzzled him a good deal at Washington to know and to get at the root of this dread desire,—this contagious disease of national robbery in the nation’s death-struggle.

“Because Mr. Lincoln could not feel any interest in such little things as I have spoken of, nor feel any particular interest in the success of those who were then struggling and wriggling, he was called indifferent—nay, ungrateful—to his friends. Especially is this the case with men who have aided Mr. Lincoln all their life. Mr. Lincoln always and everywhere wished his friends well; he loved his friends, and clung to them tenaciously, like iron to iron welded; yet he could not be actively and energetically aroused to the true sense of his friends’ particularly strong feelings of anxiety for office. From this fact Mr. Lincoln has been called ungrateful. He was not an ungrateful man by any means. He may have been a cool man—a passive man in his general life; yet he was not ungrateful. Ingratitude is too positive a word—it does not convey the truth. Mr. Lincoln may not have measured his friendly duties by the applicant’s hot desire; I admit this. He was not a selfish man,—if by selfishness is meant that Mr. Lincoln would do any act, even to promote himself to the Presidency, if by that act any human being was wronged. If it is said that Abraham Lincoln preferred Abraham Lincoln to any one else in the pursuit of his ambitions, and that, because of this, he was a selfish man, then I can see no objections to such an idea, for this is universal human nature.

“It must be remembered that Mr. Lincoln’s mind acted logically, cautiously, and slowly. Now, having stated the above facts, the question of his will and its power is easily solved. Be it remembered that Mr. Lincoln cared nothing for simple facts, manners, modes, ways, and such like things. Be it remembered, that he did care for truth, for right, for principle, for all that pertains to the good. In relation to simple facts, unrelated to substance, forms, rules, methods, ways, manners, he cared nothing; and if he could be aroused, he would do anything for anybody at any time, as well foe as friend. As a politician he would courteously grant all facts and forms—all non-essential things—to his opponent. He did so because he did not care for them; they were rubbish, husks, trash. On the question of substance, he hung and clung with all his might. On questions of truth, justice, right, the good, on principle—his will was as firm as steel and as tenacious as iron.... Ask Mr. Lincoln to do a wrong thing, and he would scorn the request; ask him to do an unjust thing, and he would cry ‘Begone!’; ask him to sacrifice his convictions of the truth, and his soul would indignantly exclaim, ‘The world perish first!’ ”

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“Mr. Lincoln sometimes walked our streets cheerily, good-humoredly, perhaps joyously—and then it was, on meeting a friend, he cried, ‘How d’ye?’ clasping one of his friend’s hands in both of his, giving a good, hearty soul-welcome. Of a winter’s morning he might be seen stalking and stilting it toward the market-house, basket on arm, his old gray shawl wrapped around his neck, his little Willie or Tad running along at his heels, asking a thousand little quick questions, which his father heard not, not even then knowing that little Willie or Tad was there, so abstracted was he. When he thus met a friend, he said that something put him in mind of a story which he heard in Indiana or elsewhere, and tell it he would, and there was no alternative but to listen.

“Thus, I say, stood and walked and looked this singular man. He was odd, but when that gray eye and face, and every feature were lit up by the inward soul in fires of emotion, then it was that all those apparently ugly features sprang into organs of beauty, or sunk themselves into a sea of inspiration that sometimes flooded his face. Sometimes it appeared to me that Lincoln’s soul was just fresh from the presence of its Creator.”

“This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our county in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon River, friendless, penniless, powerless, and alone—begging for work in this city,—ragged, struggling for the common necessaries of life. This man, this peculiar man, left us, in 1861, the President of the United States, backed by friends and power, by fame and all human force; and it is well to inquire how?