As postmaster, Lincoln had to make an accounting to the government for its share of money received, and this was to be receipted for by the postoffice agent. There was much chance for graft, and especially so in this case, as the agent to settle the business did not appear. It was not till Lincoln became a practicing lawyer in Springfield that the agent called upon him to close up his accounts as postmaster at New Salem.
The postoffice inspector produced a claim for seventeen dollars.
Lincoln paused a moment as if perplexed to remember just what it was.
A friend, seeing this, thought it was because Lincoln did not have the money, and so offered to lend him that amount. Without answering, Lincoln went to his trunk and brought out a package containing the exact amount, put away all that time, awaiting the business call of the postoffice agent.
As he turned over the money and received the receipt, he said, "I never use any man"s money but my own."
It is interesting to note that both Washington and Lincoln became surveyors just before the opening of their great careers. It can be reasonably said that, by a.n.a.logy, and even by contrast, they were also great surveyors for the rights of mankind.
Sangamon County was settling up so rapidly that John Calhoun, the official surveyor, could not do the required work. He had heard of Lincoln as being capable of doing almost anything required, so he sent for him to come and take the position of deputy surveyor.
Lincoln, so far, had studied human beings and law. He knew nothing about mathematics, much less about surveying, probably not more than he knew about military tactics when he was elected captain. But he knew he could learn what any one else had learned. He bought a book on surveying and stayed with it almost day and night. He borrowed wherever he could hear of a book on surveying. In six weeks he had mastered the subject so that the many surveys he afterward made were never disputed and were always found to be correct.
It is said that he was too poor at first to buy a surveyor"s chain and so used a grapevine. But even a grapevine in the hands of Lincoln told the truth about measurements, and the town of Petersburg, Illinois, is proud of having been surveyed and laid out by Lincoln.
III. OUT OF THE WILDERNESS PATHS INTO THE GREAT HIGHWAY
The Great Teacher in his "Sermon on the Mount," said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." If that dest.i.tute boy had not hungered and thirsted after right knowledge, the whole history of America, after his time, would have been different. But what boy would read, or what other boy ever did read such a book as the "Revised Statutes of Indiana?" To be sure, not the boy who is most interested in getting merely the most pleasure out of life, but the one who has a great desire to be useful and worthwhile in the world.
The next book that deeply impressed his career and probably had most to do with developing him to influence profoundly the history of our country was that beginning of every lawyer"s life, "Blackstone"s Commentaries."
This is the way Lincoln tells it himself: "One day a man, who was migrating to the West, drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel, for which he had no room in his wagon, which he said contained nothing of value. I did not want it, but, to oblige him, I bought it, and paid him, I think, a half-dollar. Without further examination I put it away in the store, and forgot all about it. Some time after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel, and, emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone"s Commentaries. I began reading those famous works and the more I read the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed."
[Ill.u.s.tration: First Inauguration of Lincoln as President.]
It was that interest which made the man and the great historical character of Lincoln. One lives according to his interest in life, and the meaning realized in him as humanity.
In 1834 Lincoln again tried for the legislature, and this time was elected. This gave him his long desired opportunity to study law. He borrowed books and read them incessantly until he mastered them. He never studied law with any one, as was the custom in those days. He did not require a teacher to lay out or explain his mental tasks.
To a young man who asked him, twenty years later, how to become a successful lawyer, he said, "Get books. Read and study them carefully.
Work, work, work is the main thing."
IV. LINCOLN"S FIRST LAW CASES
One of the first important law cases of Lincoln in its claims sounds remarkably like the unsolved problems of today, and shows how rights have to be developed year by year, how the public mind has to be built up from idea to idea like an individual mind.
A public-spirited attempt was made to build a bridge across the upper Mississippi. The boatmen declared it to be an invasion of human rights, as they had vested interests at stake in the business they had built up, ferrying people across the river. They declared that a man was an enemy of the people who would try to destroy business. But Lincoln won the case against them in favor of building the bridge for the larger interest of the people.
In another significant case he set a legal precedent. A negro girl had been sold in the free territory of Illinois. A note had been given for her but the maker of the note could not pay it when it became due and was sued for it.
Lincoln defended the maker of the note on the ground that the note was invalid because a human being could not be bought and sold in Illinois. The case was carried to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that Lincoln"s view of the case was correct law.
Another experience has still greater significance as to the professional character of Lincoln. He was engaged as counsel in a reaper patent case. It was to be tried at Cincinnati. The opposing counsel was an eminent lawyer from the East. Lincoln"s friends were eager for him to win this case, as it would give him great renown and prestige.
His client had four hundred thousand dollars at stake, an enormous sum at that time, and the capitalist became frightened at the great talent arrayed against Lincoln. He called in the services of a correspondingly great Eastern lawyer, Edwin M. Stanton. This eminent man was shocked at the sight of his colleague, Lincoln. He took entire control of the case and not only ignored Lincoln, but openly insulted him. Lincoln, through an open door in the hotel, heard Stanton scornfully exclaim to the client who had employed Lincoln, "Where did that long-armed creature come from and what can he expect to do in this case?"
At another time Stanton spoke of Lincoln as "a long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent."
Lincoln, completely discouraged and thrown out of any possible council with a man thus against him, quit the case and sorrowfully returned to Illinois.
And yet, only a few years later, in the great crisis of approaching disunion, Lincoln became President of the United States and he made Stanton his Secretary of War. Very soon Stanton learned to prize "the long-armed creature" as one of the n.o.blest and greatest men in the world. No one of Lincoln"s colleagues ever questioned his superior leadership as the supreme chief in a struggle profoundly affecting all civilization and human government.
When we consider how Lincoln worked his way up, through such dest.i.tution of knowledge and means, in twenty-five years, from a five-dollar suit before a justice of the peace to a five-thousand-dollar fee before the Supreme Court of the United States, we know that such progress does not come about by accident nor political fortunes, but by sheer interest and work.
V. THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LIVE FOR SELF ALONE
Henry Cabot Lodge says, "Lincoln could have said with absolute truth, as Seneca"s Pilot says, in Montaigne"s paraphrase, "Oh, Neptune, thou mayest save me if thou wilt; thou mayest sink me if thou wilt; but whatever may befall I shall hold my tiller true.""
The moral process of his life, in which the recorded incidents are only way-marks, is the only worthwhile interest for the American youth or for the newcomer to our sh.o.r.es.
Lincoln"s life-creed may be taken from a statement he has made of his personal duty. "I am not bound to win," he said, "but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right. I must stand with him while he is right, and I must part with him when he is wrong."
That this does not mean infallible individual judgment executed at any cost as imperial individual will may be inferred from the beginning of the statement, but it does mean the infallible integrity of honest conscience and character.
Lincoln had a conscience that was like harmony in music, and he could not uphold a wrong thing any more than he could intentionally use a wrong figure and hope to solve correctly his problem.
As an ill.u.s.trating incident, one of his clients wanted to bring suit against a widow with six children for six hundred dollars.
"Yes," said Lincoln, "there is no reasonable doubt that I can win this case for you; I can set the whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can greatly distress a widow and her six fatherless children, and thereby gain six hundred dollars for you which I can see belongs to them with about as much right as to you, but I"ll give you a little advice for nothing. Try some other way to get six hundred dollars."
Like the rich man who went away so disturbed from the advice of Christ, this man went away sorrowing.
In another instance Lincoln started in with a case believing his client innocent, then he reached the belief that the man was guilty.
Turning to his a.s.sociates in the case, he said, "Sweet, this man is guilty. You defend him. I can"t." The large fee in the case was forfeited, but his self-respect, that n.o.bility which carried him through many great dark hours, was saved.
Once, when out with his lawyer-companions, he climbed a tree, searching for a bird"s nest, out of which two fledgelings had fallen.
His companions made sport of him for giving so much time and work to such worthless things, but he exclaimed with such genuine feeling as to silence them, "I could not have gone to sleep in peace if I had not restored those little birds to their mother."
Lincoln liked to argue, and, to pa.s.s the time in a certain stage-coach ride, he was arguing that every act, no matter how kind, was always prompted by a selfish motive. About this time the stage pa.s.sed a ditch in which a pig was stuck fast in the mud. Lincoln asked the driver to stop. He then jumped out and rescued the pig.
The pa.s.senger with whom Lincoln had been arguing thought that he now had proof for his own side of the case.
"Now look here," he said as Lincoln climbed back into the stage, "you can"t say that was a selfish act."
"Yes, I can," replied Lincoln. "It was extremely selfish. If I had left that little fellow sticking in the mud, it would have made me uncomfortable till I forgot it. That"s why I had to help him out."
General Littlefield says that one day a client came in with a very profitable case for Lincoln. He told Lincoln his story. Lincoln listened a little while and his look went up to the ceiling in a very abstract way. Presently, he swung his chair around and said, "Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You"ll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn"t do it. If I was talking to the jury in favor of your case, I"d all the time be thinking, "Lincoln, you"re a liar,"
and I believe I"d forget myself and say it out loud."
Coleridge in his "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" might well have had Lincoln in mind when he wrote,
"Farewell! Farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou wedding guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.
"He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small For the dear G.o.d who loveth us, He made and loveth all."