Two years later Abraham Lincoln was asked to be a candidate for the United States Senate. He would be running against Douglas. Abe wanted very much to be a Senator. Even more he wanted to keep slavery out of the new states. Taking part in the political campaign would give him a chance to say the things that he felt so deeply.
"I am convinced I am good enough for it," he told a friend, "but in spite of it all I am saying to myself every day, "It is too big a thing for you; you will never get it." Mary insists, however, that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States, too."
Perhaps it was his wife"s faith in him that gave him the courage to try. Never was there a more exciting campaign. Never had the people of Illinois been so stirred as during that hot summer of 1858. A series of debates was held in seven different towns. The two candidates--Douglas, "the little Giant," and "Old Abe, the Giant Killer," as his friends called him--argued about slavery. People came from miles around to hear them.
On the day of a debate, an open platform for the speakers was decorated with red-white-and-blue bunting. Flags flew from the housetops. When Senator Douglas arrived at the railroad station, his friends and admirers met him with a bra.s.s band. He drove to his hotel in a fine carriage.
Abe had admirers, too. Sometimes a long procession met him at the station. Then Abe would be embarra.s.sed. He did not like what he called "fizzlegigs and fireworks." But he laughed when his friends in one town drove him to his hotel in a hay wagon. This was their way of making fun of Douglas and his fine manners.
Senator Douglas was an eloquent orator. While he was talking, some of Abe"s friends would worry. Would Old Abe be able to answer? Would he be able to hold his own? Then Abe would unfold his long legs and stand up.
"The Giant Killer" towered so high above "the Little Giant" that a t.i.tter ran through the crowd.
When he came to the serious part of his speech, there was silence. His voice reached to the farthest corners of the crowd, as he reminded them what slavery really meant. He summed it up in a few words: "You work and toil and earn bread, and I"ll eat it."
Both men worked hard to be elected. And Douglas won. "I feel like the boy," said Abe, "who stubbed his toe. It hurts too bad to laugh, and I am too big to cry."
All of those who loved him--Mary, his wife, in her neat white house; Sarah, his stepmother, in her little cabin, more than a hundred miles away; and his many friends--were disappointed. But not for long. The part he took in the Lincoln-Douglas debates made his name known throughout the United States.
Abe Lincoln"s chance was coming.
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During the next two years Abraham Lincoln was asked to make many speeches. "Let us have faith that right makes might," he told one audience in New York, "and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
At the end of the speech, several thousand people rose to their feet, cheering and waving their handkerchiefs. His words were printed in newspapers. Throughout the Northern States, men and women began to think of him as the friend of freedom.
By 1860 he was so well known that he was nominated for President of the United States. Stephen A. Douglas was nominated by another political party. Once more the two rivals were running for the same office.
Several thousands of Abraham Lincoln"s admirers called themselves "Wide Awakes." There were Wide Awake Clubs in near every Northern town. Night after night they marched in parades, carrying flaming torches and colored lanterns. And as they marched, they sang:
"Hurrah! for our cause--of all causes the best!
Hurrah! for Old Abe, Honest Abe of the West."
No one enjoyed the campaign excitement more than did Willie and Tad Lincoln. They did their marching around the parlor carpet, singing another song:
"Old Abe Lincoln came out of the wilderness, Out of the wilderness, out of the wilderness, Old Abe Lincoln came out of the wilderness, Down in Illinois."
People everywhere were talking about Old Abe, and he received a great deal of mail. Some of the letters came from Pigeon Creek. Nat Grigsby, his old schoolmate, wrote that his Indiana friends were thinking of him.
Dave Turnham wrote. It was in Dave"s book that Abe had first read the Declaration of Independence. A package arrived from Josiah Crawford who had given him his _Life of Washington_. The package contained a piece of white oak wood. It was part of a rail that Abe had split when he was sixteen years old. Josiah thought that he might like to have it made into a cane.
Hundreds of other letters came from people he had never seen. One from New York state made him smile.
"I am a little girl only eleven years old," the letter read, "but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you won"t think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are.... I have got four brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try to get the rest of them to vote for you. You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President...."
The letter was signed "Grace Bedell." In less than two weeks she received an answer. Abraham Lincoln, who loved children, took her advice. By election day on November 6, 1860, he had started to grow a beard.
He spent the evening of election day in the telegraph office. Report after report came in from different parts of the country. He was gaining. He was winning. After a while he knew--his friends knew--all Springfield knew--that Abraham Lincoln was to be the next President of the United States. Outside in the streets the crowds were celebrating.
They were singing, shouting, shooting off cannons. Abe told his friends that he was "well-nigh upset with joy."
"I guess I"d better go home now," he added. "There is a little woman there who would like to hear the news."
Mary was asleep when he entered their bedroom. Her husband touched her on the shoulder. "Mary, Mary," he said with a low chuckle, "we are elected."
By February the Lincolns were ready to move. Abe tied up the trunks and addressed them to "A. Lincoln, The White House, Washington, D.C." Before he left Illinois there was a visit he wanted to make to a log farmhouse a hundred and twenty-five miles southeast of Springfield. His father had been dead for ten years, but his stepmother was still living there.
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Travel was slow in those days, and he had to change trains several times. There was plenty of time to think. He knew that hard days lay ahead. There were many Southerners who said that they were afraid to live under a President who was against slavery. Several Southern states had left the Union and were starting a country of their own. For the United States to be broken up into two different nations seemed to him the saddest thing that could possibly happen. As President, Abraham Lincoln would have a chance--he must make the chance--to preserve the Union. He could not know then that he would also have a chance to free the slaves--a chance to serve his country as had no other President since George Washington.
His thoughts went back to his boyhood. Even then he had wanted to be President. What had once seemed an impossible dream was coming true. He thought of all the people who had encouraged and helped him. He thought of his mother who, more than any one person, had given him a chance to get ahead.
"Mother!" Whenever Abe said the word, he was thinking of both Nancy and Sarah.
Sarah was waiting by the window. A tall man in a high silk hat came striding up the path.
"Abe! You"ve come!" She opened the door and looked up into the sad, wise face.
"Of course, Mother." He gave her the kind of good bear hug he had given her when he was a boy. "I am leaving soon for Washington. Did you think I could go so far away without saying good-by?"
The word spread rapidly that he was there. One after another the neighbors dropped in, until the little room was crowded. As he sat before the fireplace, talking with all who came, Sarah seemed to see, not a man about to become President, but a forlorn-looking little boy.
She had loved that little boy from the moment she first saw him. He had always been a good son to her--a better son than her own John.
When the last visitor had gone, she drew her chair closer. It was good to have a few minutes alone together.
"Abe," she told him, "I can say what scarcely one mother in a thousand can say."
He looked at her inquiringly.
"You never gave me a cross word in your life. I reckon your mind and mine, that is--" she laughed, embarra.s.sed, "what little mind I had, seemed to run together."
He reached over and laid a big hand on her knee. She put her wrinkled, work-hardened hand on his.
When the time came to say good-by, she could hardly keep the tears back.
"Will I ever see you again?" she asked. "What if something should happen to you, Abe? I feel it in my heart--"
"Now, now, Mother." He held her close. "Trust in the Lord and all will be well."
"G.o.d bless you, Abraham."
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He kissed her and was gone. "He was the best boy I ever saw," she thought, as she watched him drive away.