A Man for the Ages Part 53

He did and in time confessed to Samson Traylor that Mr. Lincoln's reproach had been the saving of him. A judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiffs for the full amount of their claim with costs. The character of Lionel Davis had been sufficiently revealed. Even the credulous Mrs. Kelso turned against him. Mr. Lincoln's skill as a lawyer was recognized in the north as well as in the middle counties. From that day forth no man enjoyed a like popularity in Tazewell County.

When Samson and Harry Needles left the Court-House, there seemed to be no obstacle between the young man and the consummation of his wishes.

Unfortunately, as they were going down the steps Davis, who blamed Samson for his troubles, flung an insult at the st.u.r.dy Vermonter. Samson, who had then arrived at years of firm discretion, was little disturbed by the anger of a man so discredited. But Harry, on the sound of the hateful words, had leaped forward and dealt the speculator a savage blow in the face which for a few seconds had deprived him of the power of speech.

That evening a friend of Davis called at the City Hall with a challenge.

The hot-blooded young soldier accepted it against the urgent counsel of Samson Traylor, Mr. Lincoln having left the city. It was a fas.h.i.+on of the time for gentlemen to stand up and shoot at each other after such a quarrel. But Davis, since the trial, had no character to defend and therefore no right to enter the field of honor with a man of Harry's standing. But the young officer had promised to fight and was not to be dissuaded.

As to the details of the tragic scene that followed next day, the writer has little knowledge. Samson was not the type of man for such a chronicle. The diary speaks of his part in it with shame and sorrow and remorse. His mind seems to have been too much engaged with its own fears and thoughts to take note of the color. We may infer from one remark in it that the sky was clear. We know, too, that it was at day-break when he and Harry rode to a point on the prairie "something more than a mile from the city limits." There he tells us they met Davis and one friend of the latter and two surgeons who had driven to the scene in a box wagon. It is evident, too, that great secrecy had been observed in the plan and its execution and that, until sometime after the last act, Lincoln knew nothing of the later developments in the drama of Davis's downfall. For the rest of the deplorable scene the historian must content himself with the naked details in the diary of a puritan pioneer.

They are, at least, direct and derive a certain vividness from their haste to be done with it as a proceeding of which the less said the better.

"I went because there was no escape from it and with the shadow of G.o.d's wrath in my soul," Samson writes. "The sun rose as we halted our horses.

We paced the field. The two men took their places twenty yards apart.

Harry was a little pale but he stood up as straight and steady as a hitching post. The pistols rang out at the command to fire and both men fell. Davis had been hit in the left shoulder. My handsome boy lay on his face. The bullet had bored through his right lung. Before I could reach him he had risen to his feet ready to go on with the battle. Davis lay like one paralyzed by the shock of the bullet. His seconds declared they were satisfied. The surgeons began their work. I saw them take the bullet out of Harry's back where it had lodged under his skin. I helped them put the wounded men into the wagon and rode to the house of one of the doctors near the city wherein were rooms for the accommodation of critical cases, leading Harry's horse and praying for G.o.d's help and forgiveness. I took care of the boy until Steve Nuckles came to help me.

Bim arrived when Harry was out of his head and didn't know her. She was determined to stay and do the nursing but I wouldn't let her. She did not look strong. I loaned her the money to pay the debt to Davis and persuaded her to go back to her work in Dixon. She went and was rather heart-broken about it.

"As she was leaving she looked into my face and said: 'Don't tell him or any one what has happened to me. I want to tell him.'

"I promised to keep her secret and did it. Soon I learned that she was down sick of her worries. I sent her mother to her and kept the small boy with me.

"The surgeon said that Harry would live if lung fever didn't set in. It set in but he pulled through. He mended slowly. I had some fear of arrest but the conspiracy of silence kept the facts under cover. It was partly due, I guess, to the friends.h.i.+p of John Wentworth for me and Honest Abe.

He kept it out of the papers. There were no complaints and the rumors soon fell into silence. I spent about six weeks at Harry's bedside and in the store which has begun to prosper.

"The boy, 'Mr. Nimble,' is a cunning little man. When he began to get better, Harry loved to play with him and listen to his talk about fairies. The young man was able to leave his bed, by and by, but he didn't get over his weakness and pallor. He had no appet.i.te. I sent him with Nuckles into the Wisconsin woods to live in the open. Then I took the small boy to Dixon with me in the saddle. Bim had just got back to her work. She was distressed by the news of Harry's condition.

"'I fear he has got his death-blow,' she said with a sad look in her face. 'I had hoped that we could be married this autumn. But something comes between us always. First it was my folly and now it is his folly.

It seems as if we hadn't sense enough to get married when there's nothing in the way of it.'

"She told me that Eliphalet Biggs had been there. He had heard of the boy and wished to see him and demanded to know where he was. For fear that Biggs would try to get possession of 'Mr. Nimble' I took him with me to Springfield in the saddle.

"I learn that Davis has recovered his health and left the city. A man can not do business without friends and after the trial Chicago was no place for him."

CHAPTER XXIII

WHICH PRESENTS THE PLEASANT COMEDY OF INDIVIDUALISM IN THE NEW CAPITAL, AND THE COURTs.h.i.+P OF LINCOLN AND MARY TODD.

Samson, with "Mr. Nimble" on a pad stuffed with straw in front of him, jogged across the prairies and waded the creeks and sloughs on his way to Springfield. The little lad was in his fourth year that summer. He slept and talked much on the way and kept Samson busy with queries about the sky and the creeks and the great flowery meadows. They camped the first night in a belt of timber and Samson writes that the boy "slept snug against me with his head on my arm. He went to sleep crying for his mother." He adds:

"It reminded me of the old days of my young fatherhood. 'Mr. Nimble'

wanted to pick all the the flowers and splash his bare feet in every stream. In the evening he would talk to the stars as if he were playing with them. To him the whole world is a plaything. He is like some of the grown folks in Chicago. He would sit hanging on to the reins and talk to the horse and to G.o.d by the hour. He used to tell me that G.o.d was a friend of his and I think he was right. It was good luck to get back to Sarah and the children. They took the little stranger into their hearts.

'Heart room, house room' is the motto of this part of the country."

It was a new town to which Samson returned. The Governor and the state officers had moved to Springfield. The new Capitol was nearing completion. The hard times which had followed the downfall of '37 had unjustly diminished Mr. Lincoln's confidence in his ability as a legislator. He enjoyed the practice of the law which had begun to turn his interest from the affairs of state. But the pot of political science boiled before the fireplace in the rear of Joshua Speed's store every evening that Lincoln and his a.s.sociates were in Springfield. The wit and wisdom which bubbled into its vapors and the heat that surrounded it were the talk of the town. Many came to witness the process and presently it was moved, for a time, to more accommodating quarters. Before a crowd of people in the Presbyterian Church, Lincoln, Logan, Baker and Browning for the Whigs, and Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn and Thomas for the Democrats, having a.s.siduously prepared for the trial, debated the burning issues of the time. The effort of each filled an evening and Lincoln's speech gave him new hope of himself. Wise men began to have great confidence in his future. He had taken the style of Webster for his model. He no longer used the broad humor which had characterized his efforts on the stump.

A study of the best speeches of the great New Englander had made him question its value in a public address. Dignity, clear reasoning and impressiveness were the chief aims of his new method, the latter of which is aptly ill.u.s.trated by this pa.s.sage from his speech in reply to Douglas in the debate mentioned:

"If I ever feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world besides, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

Here without contemplating consequences before high heaven and in the face of the world I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty and my love."

In these perfervid utterances one may find little to admire save a great spirit seeking to express itself and lacking as yet the refinement of taste equal to his undertaking. He was no heaven-born genius "sprung in full panoply from the head of Jove." He was just one of the slow, common folk, with a pa.s.sion for justice and human rights, slowly feeling his way upward. His spirit was growing. Strong in its love and knowledge of common men and of the things necessary to their welfare, it was beginning to seek and know "the divine power of words." Every moment of leisure he gave to the study of Webster and Burke and Byron and Shakespeare and Burns. He had begun to study the art of Irving and Walter Scott and of a new writer of the name of d.i.c.kens. There were four men who slept with him, in the room above Speed's store, and one of them has told how he used to lie sprawled on the floor, with his pillow and candle, reading long after the others had gone to sleep. Samson writes that he never knew a man who understood the art of using minutes as he did. A detached minute was to him a thing to be filled with value. Yet there were few men so deeply in love with fun. He loved to laugh at a story-telling and to match his humor with Thompson Campbell--a famous raconteur--and to play with children. Fun was as necessary to him as sleep. He searched for it in people and in books.

He came often to Samson's house to play with "Mr. Nimble" and to talk with Joe. Some of his best thoughts came when he was talking with Joe and some of his merriest moments when he was playing with "Mr. Nimble." He confessed that it was the latter that reminded him that he had better be looking for a wife.

But Lincoln was only one of many remarkable personalities in Springfield who had discovered themselves and were seeking to be discovered. Sundry individuals were lifting their heads above the crowd but not with the modesty and self-distrust of Honest Abe. "Steve" Douglas, whom Samson had referred to as "that little rooster of a man," put on the stilts of a brave and ponderous vigor. His five-foot stature and his hundred pounds of weight did not fit the part of Achilles. But he would have no other.

He bl.u.s.tered much with a spear too heavy for his hands. Lincoln used to call him a kind of popgun.

This free-for-all joust of individualism--one of the first fruits of Freedom in the West--gave to the life of the little village a rich flavor of comedy. The great talents of Douglas had not been developed. His character was as yet s.h.i.+fty and shapeless. Some of the leading citizens openly distrusted him. He sought to command respect by a.s.saulting men of full size and was repeatedly and soundly thumped for his presumption. He had endeavored publicly to chastise the st.u.r.dy Simeon Francis and had been bent over a market cart and severely wigged by the editor. Lincoln used to call these affairs "the mistakes of Douglas due wholly to the difference between the size of his body and the size of his feelin's." He never liked this little man, in opposing whom he was to come to the fulness of his power on the platform. It is evident that Lincoln regarded him as an able advocate of small sincerity looking chiefly for personal advancement.

There is a pa.s.sage in the diary which ill.u.s.trates the character of Douglas and Lincoln's knowledge of it. The pa.s.sage relates to a day in the famous debates of 1858. Lincoln had not reached Havana in time to hear the speech of his opponent. A great crowd had come by train and in wagons. Taking advantage of his absence Douglas had called Lincoln "a liar, a coward and a sneak" and declared that he was going to fight him.

Lincoln heard of this and said in his speech:

"I shall not fight with Judge Douglas. A fight could prove nothing at issue in this campaign. It might prove that he is a more muscular man than I or that I am a more muscular man than he, but this subject is not mentioned in either platform. Again he and I are really very good friends and when we are together he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore when the Judge talked about fighting he was not giving vent to any ill feeling but was trying to excite--well, let us say enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience."

Justice accomplished her ends now and then with comic displays of violence in the prairie capital. One night Abe Lincoln and certain of his friends captured a shoe-maker who had beaten his wife and held him at the village pump while the aggrieved woman gave him a sound thras.h.i.+ng. So this phase of imperialism was cured in Springfield by "hair off the same dog" as Lincoln put it.

One evening while E.D. Baker was speaking in the crowded village court room above Lincoln's office and was rudely interrupted and in danger of a.s.sault, the long legs of Honest Abe suddenly appeared through a scuttle hole in the ceiling above the platform. He leaped upon it and seizing a stone water pitcher defied any one to interfere with the right of free speech in a worthy cause.

So it will be seen that there were zestful moments in these sundry vindications of the principles of Democracy in the prairie capital.

About this time Miss Mary Todd, the daughter of a Kentucky banker, arrived in Springfield to visit her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards. She was a fas.h.i.+onably dressed, good-looking girl of blue-gray eyes and dark hair. She had been well educated in the schools of Lexington and could speak French as well as English.

"Well, Mary, haven't you found the fortunate young man yet?" Mr. Edwards playfully asked the day of her coming.

"You know my husband is going to be President of the United States and I hoped that I would find him in Springfield," Mary answered in a like vein.

"There's great fis.h.i.+ng here," said Mr. Edwards. "I know the very man you are looking for. He has come up from the ranks and is now the most popular member of the Legislature. He can make a stirring speech and they say he is going to be the President of the United States. He's wise and witty and straight as a string but a rough diamond--big, awkward and homely. You're just the girl to take him in hand and give him a little polish and push him along. His name is Abraham Lincoln."

Speed knew the Todds--a distinguished Kentucky family with a Governor of Virginia and other historic figures in its record. When he called upon Mary she asked about Mr. Lincoln and said she would like to meet him.

"She's just the girl for you, Abe," Speed said to him that evening. "She is bright and well educated and her family has influence. She could be a great help to you."

This interested the member from Sangamon County who was indeed eager to get along. The companions.h.i.+p of a refined young lady was the very thing he needed.

"Let's go over and pay our respects to her," Speed suggested. They went, Lincoln being carefully dressed in his first suit of black clothes.

Miss Todd was a bright, vivacious girl of middle stature, twenty-two years old. She was fas.h.i.+onably dressed and carried her head proudly--a smart-looking, witty, well spoken girl but not especially handsome. She was most agreeable to the young men. Honest Abe was deeply impressed by her talk and fine manners and general comeliness. He felt her grace and charm and spoke of it, with enthusiasm. But to him and to her there seemed to be an impa.s.sable gulf between them. She changed her mind about that, however, when she heard him speak and felt the power of his personality and saw his face lighted by the candle of his spirit. It was a handsome face in those moments of high elation. Hards.h.i.+p and malarial poison had lined and sallowed his skin. He used to say that every time the fever and ague walked over him, they left a track on his face. The shadows of loneliness and sorrow were in its sculpturing. But when his eyes glowed with pa.s.sion one saw not the rough mask which the life of the pioneer had given him. His form lost its awkwardness; his face took on a n.o.ble and impressive beauty. Those times every eye looked longingly upon him because of the great and wonderful things with which he was interfused. To quote his own words to the boy, Josiah Traylor, his character was speaking as well as his lips. Mary had the insight to recognize his power. She felt the strength of his spirit. She agreed with her friends that here was a man of great promise. She felt the need of him.