To this Lamon replied:—
You ask my recollection of Mr. Lincoln's views on the question of Temperance and Prohibition. I looked upon him as one of the safest temperance men I ever knew. He seemed on this subject, as he was on most others, unique in profession as well as in practice. He was neither what might be called a drinking man, a total abstainer, nor a Prohibitionist. My acquaintance with him commenced in 1847. He was then and afterwards a politician. He mixed much and well with the people. Believed what the people believed to be right was right.
Society in Illinois at that early day was as crude as the country was uncultivated. People then were tenacious of their natural as well as their acquired rights and this state of things existed until Mr. Lincoln left the State to assume the duties of President. The people of Illinois firmly believed it was one of their inalienable rights to manufacture, sell, and drink whiskey as it was the sacred right of the southern man to rear, work, and whip his own nigger,—and woe be unto him who attempted to interfere with these rights—(as the sequel afterwards showed when Mr. Lincoln and his friends tried to prevent the southern man from whipping his own nigger in the territories).
I heard Mr. Lincoln deliver several temperance lectures. One evening in Danville, Ill., he happened in at a temperance meeting, the "Old Washingtonian Society," I think, and was called on to make a speech. He got through it well, after which he and other members of the Bar who were present were invited to an entertainment at the house of Dr. Scott. Wine and cake were handed around. Mrs. Scott, in handing Mr. Lincoln a glass of homemade wine, said, "I hope you are not a teetotaler, Mr. Lincoln, if you are a temperance lecturer." "By no means, my dear madam," he replied; "for I do assure you (with a humorous smile) I am very fond of my 'Todd' (a play upon his wife's maiden name). I by no means oppose the use of wine. I only regret that it is not more in universal use. I firmly believe if our people were to habitually drink wine, there would be little drunkenness in the country." In the conversation which afterward became general, Judge David Davis, Hon. Leonard Swett, and others present joining in the discussion, I recollect his making this remark: "I am an apostle of temperance only to the extent of coercing moderate indulgence and prohibiting excesses by all the moral influences I can bring to bear."
LINCOLN'S SHREWDNESS.
Perhaps no act of Mr. Lincoln's administration showed his political shrewdness more clearly than the permission he gave for the rebel legislature of Virginia to meet for the purpose of recalling the state troops from General Lee's Army. This permission was given in a note to General Weitzel. Mr. Lincoln told Governor Francis H. Pierpont that "its composition occupied five hours of intense mental activity." Governor Pierpont says he was the loyal Governor of Virginia at the time, and Mr. Lincoln deemed it necessary to say something to him about so extraordinary a measure as permitting the rebel legislature to assemble when a loyal legislature with a loyal governor was in existence and was recognized by the federal government. Mr. Lincoln's note to General Weitzel read:—
"It has been intimated to me that the gentlemen who have acted as the legislature of Virginia in support of the rebellion may now desire to assemble at Richmond and take measures to withdraw the Virginia troops and other support from resistance to the general government. If they attempt it, give them permission and protection until, if at all, they attempt some action hostile to the United States, in which case you will notify them, give them reasonable time to leave, and at the end of which time arrest any who remain. Allow Judge Campbell to see this, but do not make it public."
To write this note occupied all Mr. Lincoln's time from 9 P. M. till 2 A. M.—"five hours of uninterrupted stillness."
Mr. Lincoln foresaw that an attempt would be made to construe his permission into a virtual recognition of the authority of the rebel legislature. He steered clear of this recognition by not speaking of them "as a legislature," but as, "the gentlemen who have acted as the legislature of Virginia in support of rebellion," and explained afterward when it was misconstrued, that he "did this on purpose to exclude the assumption that I was recognizing them as a rightful body. I dealt with them as men having power de facto to do a specific thing."