they were first attacked by others, in which case I should feel it both
a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend
to the advancement of justice.

But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great degree of
modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already
been more presuming than becomes me. However, upon the subjects of which
I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in
regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is
better only to be sometimes right than at all times wrong, so soon as I
discover my opinions to be erroneous I shall be ready to renounce them.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or
not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being
truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their
esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be
developed. I am young and unknown to many of you; I was born and have
ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or
popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown
exclusively upon the independent voters of the county, and if elected,
they will have conferred a favour upon me for which I shall be
unremitting in my labours to compensate. But if the good people in their
wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too
familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.

Your friend and fellow-citizen,
A. LINCOLN.




_Letter to Colonel Robert Allen. June 21, 1836_


Dear Colonel, I am told that during my absence last week you passed
through this place, and stated publicly that you were in possession of a
fact or facts which, if known to the public, would entirely destroy the
prospects of N.W. Edwards and myself at the ensuing election; but that,
through favour to us, you should forbear to divulge them. No one has
needed favours more than I, and, generally, few have been less unwilling
to accept them; but in this case favour to me would be injustice to the
public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it. That I
once had the confidence of the people of Sangamon, is sufficiently
evident; and if I have since done anything, either by design or
misadventure, which if known would subject me to a forfeiture of that
confidence, he that knows of that thing, and conceals it, is a traitor
to his country's interest.

I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture of what fact or
facts, real or supposed, you spoke; but my opinion of your veracity will
not permit me for a moment to doubt that you at least believed what you
said. I am flattered with the personal regard you manifested for me; but
I do hope that, on more mature reflection, you will view the public
interest as a paramount consideration, and therefore determine to let
the worst come. I here assure you that the candid statement of facts on
your part, however low it may sink me, shall never break the tie of
personal friendship between us. I wish an answer to this, and you are at
liberty to publish both, if you choose.




_Lincoln's Opinion on Universal Suffrage. From a Letter published in the
Sangamon "Journal." June 13, 1836_


I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in
bearing its burdens: consequently I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms [by no means excluding
females].




_From an Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.
January 27, 1837_


As a subject for the remarks of the evening "The perpetuation of our
political institutions" is selected. In the great journal of things
happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account
running under the date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.
We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of
the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and
salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system
of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of
civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former
times tells us. We, when remounting the stage of existence, found
ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled
not in the acquirement or the establishment of them; they are a legacy
bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented
and departed race of ancestors.

Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves,
and through themselves us, of this goodly land, and to rear upon its
hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis
ours only to transmit these,--the former unprofaned by the foot of the
invader; the latter undecayed by lapse of time. This, our duty to
ourselves and to our posterity, and love for our species in general,
imperatively require us to perform.

How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the
approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we
expect some transatlantic military giant to step across the ocean and
crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa
combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their
military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force,
take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a
trial of a thousand years.

At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer,
if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from
abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and
finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die
by suicide.

There is even now something of ill omen among us. I mean the increasing
disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to
substitute wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of
courts; and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of
justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that
it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would
be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.

*       *       *       *       *

I know the American people are _much_ attached to their government. I
know they would suffer _much_ for its sake. I know they would endure
evils long and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it
for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually
despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons
and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the
alienation of their affection for the government is the natural
consequence, and to that sooner or later it must come.

Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected. The question
recurs, how shall we fortify against it? The answer is simple. Let every
American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity,
swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least
particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their
violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support
of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the
Constitution and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his
property, and his sacred honour; let every man remember that to violate
the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the
charter of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the
laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that
prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in
colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs.
Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and
enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the
political religion of the nation.

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me
not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, or that
grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions
have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that
although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as
possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example
they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If
such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least
possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne
with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any
case that may arise, as, for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism,
one of two positions is necessarily true--that is, the thing is right
within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all
good citizens, or it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by
legal enactments; and in neither case is the interposition of mob law
either necessary, justifiable, or excusable....

They (histories of the Revolution) were pillars of the temple of
liberty; and now that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall
unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars,
hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us, but
can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason--cold,
calculating, unimpassioned reason--must furnish all the materials for
our future support and defence. Let those materials be moulded into
general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence
for the Constitution and laws; and that we improved to the last, that we
remained free to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that
during his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or
desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump
shall awaken our Washington.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its
basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution,
"the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should
undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing
beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair. But
such belong not to the family of the lion or the brood of the eagle.
What? Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a
Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks
regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to
story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It
denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to
tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It
thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it,
whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving free men. Is
it unreasonable, then, to expect that some men, possessed of the
loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its
utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such a
one does, it will require the people to be united with each other,
attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to
successfully frustrate his design.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as
willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet that
opportunity being passed, and nothing left to be done in the way of
building up, he would sit down boldly to the task of pulling down. Here,
then, is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such a one as could not
well have existed heretofore.

*       *       *       *       *

All honour to our Revolutionary ancestors, to whom we are indebted for
these institutions. They will not be forgotten. In history we hope they
will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read. But
even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it
heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor
so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At
the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a
participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those
scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a
living history was to be found in every family,--a history bearing the
indubitable testimonies to its own authenticity in the limbs mangled, in
the scars of wounds received in the midst of the very scenes related; a
history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise
and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are
gone. They can be read no more for ever. They were a fortress of
strength; but what the invading foemen could never do, the silent
artillery of time has done,--the levelling of its walls. They are gone.
They were a forest of giant oaks; but the resistless hurricane has swept
over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its
verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a
few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few
more ruder storms, and then to sink and be no more.




HUMOROUS ACCOUNT OF HIS EXPERIENCES WITH A LADY HE WAS REQUESTED TO
MARRY

_A Letter to Mrs. O.H. Browning. Springfield, Illinois. April 1, 1838_


Dear Madam, Without apologising for being egotistical, I shall make the
history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw you the subject
of this letter. And, by the way, I now discover that in order to give a
full and intelligible account of the things I have done and suffered
since I saw you, I shall necessarily have to relate some that happened
before.

It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my
acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to pay a
visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed
to me that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with her on
condition that I would engage to become her brother-in-law with all
convenient dispatch. I, of course, accepted the proposal, for you know I
could not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but
privately, between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with
the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, thought
her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to plodding
life through hand-in-hand with her. Time passed on, the lady took her
journey, and in due time returned, sister in company, sure enough. This
astonished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily
showed that she was a trifle too willing, but on reflection it occurred
to me that she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to
come, without anything concerning me having been mentioned to her, and
so I concluded that if no other objection presented itself, I would
consent to waive this. All this occurred to me on hearing of her arrival
in the neighbourhood--for, be it remembered, I had not yet seen her,
except about three years previous, as above mentioned. In a few days we
had an interview, and, although I had seen her before, she did not look
as my imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over-size, but she
now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an "old
maid," and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the
appellation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid
thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features,--for her
skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles--but
from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a
kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at
the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than
thirty-five or forty years; and, in short, I was not at all pleased with
her. But what could I do? I had told her sister that I would take her
for better or for worse, and I made a point of honour and conscience in
all things to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to
act on it, which in this case I had no doubt they had, for I was now
fairly convinced that no other man on earth would have her, and hence
the conclusion that they were bent on holding me to my bargain. "Well,"
thought I, "I have said it, and, be the consequences what they may, it
shall not be my fault if I fail to do it." At once I determined to
consider her my wife, and this done, all my powers of discovery were put
to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off
against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, but for her
unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this, no woman
that I have ever seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself
that the mind was much more to be valued than the person, and in this
she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been
acquainted.

Shortly after this, without attempting to come to any positive
understanding with her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first
saw me. During my stay there I had letters from her which did not change
my opinion of either her intellect or intention, but, on the contrary,
confirmed it in both.

All this while, although I was fixed "firm as the surge-repelling rock"
in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the rashness which
had led me to make it. Through life I have been in no bondage, either
real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired to be
free. After my return home I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in
any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time in
planning how I might get along in life after my contemplated change of
circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the
evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than
an Irishman does the halter.

After all my sufferings upon this deeply interesting subject, here I
am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely out of the "scrape," and I now want
to know if you can guess how I got out of it--out, clear, in every sense
of the term--no violation of word, honour, or conscience. I don't
believe you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the
lawyer says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: After I had
delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in honour do (which, by
the way, had brought me round into the last fall), I concluded I might
as well bring it to a consummation without further delay, and so I
mustered my resolution and made the proposal to her direct; but,
shocking to relate, she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it
through an affectation of modesty, which I thought but ill became her
under the peculiar circumstances of the case, but on my renewal of the
charge I found she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I
tried it again and again, but with the same success, or rather with the
same want of success.

I finally was forced to give it up, at which I very unexpectedly found
myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to
me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the
reflection that I had so long been too stupid to discover her
intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them
perfectly; and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody
else would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness.
And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I
was really a little in love with her. But let it all go! I'll try and
outlive it. Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can
never in truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance,
made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to
think of marrying, and for this reason--I can never be satisfied with
any one who would be blockhead enough to have me.

When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to amuse me.
Give my respects to Mr. Browning.




_From a Debate between Lincoln, E.D. Baker, and others against Douglas,
Lamborn, and others. Springfield. December 1839_

*       *       *       *       *


... Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party
and the Whigs is, that although the former sometimes err in practice,
they are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in
principle; and the better to impress this proposition, he uses a
figurative expression in these words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in
the heel, but they are sound in the heart and in the head." The first
branch of the figure--that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the
heel--I admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that
looks but for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their
Harringtons, and their hundreds of others, scampering away with the
public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a
villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they
are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running
fever? It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the
sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in
the song did on its owner, which, when he had once got started on it,
the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard
of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems
to be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier who
was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who
invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the
engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied, "Captain,
I have as brave a heart as Julius Cæsar ever had; but somehow or other,
whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it." So
it is with Mr. Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their
hands for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts
can dictate, but before they can possibly get it out again, their
rascally vulnerable heels will run away with them....




_Letter to W.G. Anderson. Lawrenceville, Illinois. October 31, 1840_


Dear Sir, Your note of yesterday is received. In the difficulty between
us of which you speak, you say you think I was the aggressor. I do not
think I was. You say my "words imported insult." I meant them as a fair
set-off to your own statements, and not otherwise; and in that light
alone I now wish you to understand them. You ask for my present
"feelings on the subject." I entertain no unkind feelings to you, and
none of any sort upon the subject, except a sincere regret that I
permitted myself to get into such an altercation.




_Extract from a Letter to John T. Stuart. Springfield Illinois. January
23, 1841_


For not giving you a general summary of news, you must pardon me; it is
not in my power to do so. I am now the most miserable man living. If
what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there
would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better,
I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is
impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me. The matter you
speak of on my account you may attend to as you say, unless you shall
hear of my condition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall be
unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene might help
me. If I could be myself, I would rather remain at home with Judge
Logan. I can write no more.




_From an Address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society.
Springfield, Illinois. February 22, 1842_


Although the temperance cause has been in progress for nearly twenty
years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a
degree of success hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of
hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed
from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active and powerful
chieftain, going forth conquering and to conquer. The citadels of his
great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temples and
his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been
performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made,
are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror's fame is
sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and
calling millions to his standard at a blast.

*       *       *       *       *

"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall not acknowledge
ourselves such by joining a reform drunkard's society, whatever our
influence might be." Surely no Christian will adhere to this objection.

If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to take
on himself the form of sinful man, and, as such, to die an ignominious
death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the
infinitely lesser condescension for the temporal and perhaps eternal
salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their
fellow-creatures; nor is the condescension very great. In my judgment,
such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more from the
absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over
those who have. Indeed I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a
class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison
with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness
in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The demon of
intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius
and generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more
promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to
his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel
of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born of
every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that
arrest all can give aid that will; and who shall be excused that can and
will not? Far around as human breath has ever blown, he keeps our
fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains
of moral death....

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind,
unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true
maxim "that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."
So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him
that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches
his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his
reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in
convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that
cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his
judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned
and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues
to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself,
transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than
steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than herculean
force and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to
penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man,
and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his
own best interests....

Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers fell, was
the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and
therefore must be turned adrift and damned without remedy in order that
the grace of temperance might abound, to the temperate then, and to all
mankind some hundreds of years thereafter. There is in this something so
repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless,
that it never did, nor never can enlist the enthusiasm of a popular
cause. We could not love the man who taught it--we could not hear him
with patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it, the
generous man could not adopt it--it could not mix with his blood. It
looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers
overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded
shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the
benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too
remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be
induced to labour exclusively for posterity; and none will do it
enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it
as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are
made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.

What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a
whole community to rise up and labour for the temporal happiness of
others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of
which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal
welfare at no more distant day! Great distance in either time or space
has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead
and gone, are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less
in the cases of others. Still, in addition to this there is something so
ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to
render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned
into ridicule. "Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if
you don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment." "Be the powers, if
ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist."




_From the Circular of the Whig Committee. An Address to the People of
Illinois. March 4, 1843_


... The system of loans is but temporary in its nature, and must soon
explode. It is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that
must soon fail and leave us destitute.

As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his
original means devoured by interest, and next, no one left to borrow
from, so must it be with a government.

We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax,
must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is
now denied by no one. But which system shall be adopted? Some of our
opponents in theory admit the propriety of a tariff sufficient for
revenue, but even they will not in practice vote for such a tariff;
while others boldly advocate direct taxation. Inasmuch, therefore, as
some of them boldly advocate direct taxation, and all the rest--or so
nearly all as to make exceptions needless--refuse to adopt the tariff,
we think it is doing them no injustice to class them all as advocates of
direct taxation. Indeed, we believe they are only delaying an open
avowal of the system till they can assure themselves that the people
will tolerate it. Let us, then, briefly compare the two systems. The
tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in
large parcels, at a few commercial points, will require comparatively
few officers in their collection; while by the direct tax system the
land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going
forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass
and other green thing. And, again, by the tariff system the whole
revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods, and those chiefly the
luxuries and not the necessaries of life. By this system, the man who
contents himself to live upon the products of his own country pays
nothing at all. And surely that country is extensive enough, and its
products abundant and varied enough, to answer all the real wants of its
people. In short, by this system the burden of revenue falls almost
entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and
labouring many, who live at home and upon home products, go entirely
free. By the direct tax system, none can escape. However strictly the
citizen may exclude from his premises all foreign luxuries, fine cloths,
fine silks, rich wines, golden chains, and diamond rings,--still, for
the possession of his house, his barn, and his homespun he is to be
perpetually haunted and harassed by the tax-gatherer. With these views,
we leave it to be determined whether we or our opponents are more truly
democratic on the subject.




_From a Letter to Martin M. Morris. Springfield, Illinois. March 26,
1843_


It is truly gratifying to me to learn that while the people of Sangamon
have cast me off, my old friends of Menard, who have known me longest
and best, stick to me. It would astonish, if not amuse, the older
citizens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless
boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put down
here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family
distinction. Yet so, chiefly, it was. There was, too, the strangest
combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and
therefore, as I suppose, with few exceptions, got all that church. My
wife has some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some with the
Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set
down as either the one or the other, while it was everywhere contended
that no Christian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church,
was suspected of being a deist, and had talked about fighting a duel.
With all these things, Baker, of course, had nothing to do. Nor do I
complain of them. As to his own church going for him, I think that was
right enough, and as to the influences I have spoken of in the other,
though they were very strong, it would be grossly untrue and unjust to
charge that they acted upon them in a body, or were very near so. I only
mean that those influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent. upon
my strength throughout the religious controversy. But enough of this.




_From a Letter to Joshua F. Speed. Springfield. October 22, 1846_


We have another boy, born the 10th of March. He is very much such a
child as Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order. Bob is "short and
low," and I expect always will be. He talks very plainly--almost as
plainly as anybody. He is quite smart enough. I sometimes fear that he
is one of the little rare-ripe sort that are smarter at about five than
ever after. He has a great deal of that sort of mischief that is the
offspring of such animal spirits. Since I began this letter, a messenger
came to tell me Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house his
mother had found him and had him whipped, and by now, very likely, he is
run away again.




_From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Washington. January 8, 1848_


Dear William, Your letter of December 27th was received a day or two
ago. I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken, and
promise to take in my little business there. As to speech-making, by way
of getting the hang of the House, I made a little speech two or three
days ago on a post-office question of no general interest. I find
speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly
scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to make
one within a week or two, in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish
you to see it.

It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who desire
that I should be re-elected. I most heartily thank them for their
partiality; and I can say, as Mr. Clay said of the annexation of Texas,
that "personally I would not object" to a re-election, although I
thought at the time, and still think, it would be quite as well for me
to return to the law at the end of a single term. I made the declaration
that I would not be a candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly
with others, to keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district
from going to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself; so that,
if it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I could
refuse the people the right of sending me again. But to enter myself as
a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to enter me, is what
my word and honour forbid.





_From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Washington. June 22, 1848_


As to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the
older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into
notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?
You young men get together and form a "Rough and Ready Club," and have
regular meetings and speeches. Take in everybody you can get. Harrison
Grimsley, L.A. Enos, Lee Kimball and C.W. Matheny will do to begin the
thing; but as you go along gather up all the shrewd, wild boys about
town, whether just of age or a little under age--Chris. Logan, Reddick
Ridgley, Lewis Zwizler, and hundreds such. Let every one play the part
he can play best,--some speak, some sing, and all "holler." Your
meetings will be of evenings; the older men, and the women, will go to
hear you; so that it will not only contribute to the election of "Old
Zach," but will be an interesting pastime, and improving to the
intellectual faculties of all engaged. Don't fail to do this.