From a photograph kindly loaned by C.B. Hall, New York. General Shields was born at Dungannon, County of Tyrone, Ireland, in 1810; came to the United States in 1826; located in Randolph County, Illinois, and taught school there; was admitted to the bar in 1832, and practised at Kaskaskia. He was elected to the legislature in 1836, and there became acquainted with Lincoln. In 1841 he was made auditor of public accounts of Illinois, and it was while holding this office that he challenged Lincoln to mortal combat. In 1843 Governor Ford appointed him an associate justice of the Supreme Court—an office which he resigned two years later to become commissioner of the general land-office. His gallantry in the Mexican War was such that he was brevetted a major-general. The prestige which his military record gave him made him a United States Senator in 1849. Defeated for reelection by Lyman Trumbull in 1855, he removed to Minnesota. There, May 12, 1858, he was elected to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy, serving about ten months. Then he went to California for a year. August 19, 1861, President Lincoln, his old-time enemy, presented him with a brigadier-general's commission; but two years later he gave this up, and settled on a farm in Missouri. He remained in retirement for a while, but eventually emerged to become a member of the legislature, a defeated candidate for Congress, adjutant-general of the State, and finally, in 1879, once more a United States Senator, serving about six weeks of an unexpired term. He thus had the rare distinction to be a United States Senator from three States. In his later years he delivered lectures—"Reminiscences of the Mexican War" and "Recollections of Eminent Statesmen and Soldiers." He died suddenly at Ottumwa, Iowa, June 1, 1879. General Shields has been variously rated by his contemporaries. That he was a man of considerable ability is conceded, and he possessed the warmth and generosity common to his race.—J. McCan Davis.
MRS. NINIAN W. EDWARDS.
From a painting by Healy, owned by her son, Mr. A.S. Edwards, Springfield, Illinois. Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards was a sister of Mrs. Lincoln. Her maiden name was Elizabeth P. Todd. She was born at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1813, and died at Springfield, Illinois, her home since 1835, February 22, 1888.
COURT-HOUSE AT TREMONT WHERE LINCOLN RECEIVED WARNING OF SHIELDS'S CHALLENGE.
Tremont was about fifty miles north of Springfield, in Tazewell County. Although the internal improvements scheme of 1837 ran a railroad through the town, it was only reached in 1842, at the time of the Shields-Lincoln duel, by driving. The court-house is a fair example of those in which Lincoln first practised law.
No one can read this description in connection with the rest of Mr. Herndon's text, and escape the impression that, if it is true, there must have been a vein of cowardice in Lincoln. The context shows that he was not insane enough to excuse such a public insult to a woman. To break his engagement was, all things considered, not in any way an unusual or abnormal thing; to brood over the rupture, to blame himself, to feel that he had been dishonorable, was to be expected, after such an act, from one of his temperament. Nothing, however, but temporary insanity or constitutional cowardice could explain such conduct as here described. Mr. Herndon does not pretend to found his story on any personal knowledge of the affair. He was in Springfield at the time, a clerk in Speed's store, but did not have then, nor, indeed, did he ever have, any social relations with the families in which Mr. Lincoln was always a welcome guest. His only authority for the story is a remark which he says Mrs. Ninian Edwards made to him in an interview: "Lincoln and Mary were engaged; everything was ready and prepared for the marriage, even to the supper. Mr. Lincoln failed to meet his engagement; cause, insanity." This remark, it should be noted, is not from a manuscript written by Mrs. Edwards, but in a report of an interview with her, written by Mr. Herndon. Supposing, however, that the statement was made exactly as Mr. Herndon reports it, it certainly does not justify any such sensational description as Mr. Herndon gives.
If such a thing had ever occurred, it could not have failed to be known, of course, even to its smallest details, by all the relatives and friends of both Miss Todd and Mr. Lincoln. Nobody, however, ever heard of this wedding party until Mr. Herndon gave his material to the public.