The redoubtable captain followed with a “crotch-holt,” but that terrible device was resisted as easily as water runs from a duck’s back. A trick called “sliding away,” was introduced, only to confirm the growing opinion of the spectators that the doughty wrestler from Sangamon had met his master.
A moment of indecision followed, the slipping of a mental cog, so to speak,—just enough to allow the despised St. Clair man to get in his fine work, and once more the legs of the valiant captain rose in the air and both men fell to the ground in a heap.
“Dog fall!” yelled Lincoln’s men.
“Fair fall!” retorted Moore’s men.
A free fight was imminent, but Lincoln, disgruntled and defeated though he was—in one fall at least—was a “good loser.” Springing to his feet before the referee could act, he cried: “Boys! The man actually threw me once fairly; broadly so, and this second time—this very fall, he threw me fairly though not apparently so.” That settled the matter and the frankness of the speaker saved him his reputation although his men had lost all their available property.
On the 8th day of August, 1860, Professor Risdon Marshall Moore, then of McKendree College (now of San Antonio, Texas), son of the referee, Jonathan Moore, called upon Mr. Lincoln at the latter’s house in Springfield with a delegation of college men, devotedly attached to Mr. Lincoln’s cause. In introducing Prof. Moore, Lieutenant Governor Koerner added, “of St. Clair County.”
Prof. Moore then stated: “Mr. Lincoln, we have called to see the next President.” To which Mr. Lincoln replied: “You must go to Washington to see the next President.”
During this and other conversation which followed, Mr. Lincoln eyed Prof. Moore constantly with a suspicious twinkle of the eye, after which he asked: “Which of the Moore families do you belong to? I have a grudge against one of them.”
Professor Moore replied with a still merrier twinkle: “I suppose it is my family you have the grudge against, but we are going to elect you President and call it even.”
There were present at that meeting the same O. H. Browning who had witnessed the match nearly thirty years before, Norman B. Judd, Richard J. Oglesby and some others, to all of whom Mr. Lincoln related the story as herein told, concluding with these words: “I owe that Moore family a grudge, as I never had been thrown in a wrestling match until the man from that company did it. He could have thrown a grizzly bear.”