雙語(yǔ)·林肯傳 4

4

The Lincolns settled near Decatur, Illinois, on a stretch of timber land running along a bluff overlooking the Sangamon River.

Abe helped to fell trees, erect a cabin, cut brush, clear the land, break ffteen acres of sod with a yoke of oxen, plant it to corn, split rails, and fence the property in.

The next year he worked as a hired man in the neighborhood, doing odd jobs for farmers: plowing, pitching hay, mauling rails, butchering hogs.

The frst winter Abe Lincoln spent in Illinois was one of the coldest the State had known. Snow drifted ffteen feet deep on the prairies; cattle died, the deer and wild turkey were almost exterminated, and even people were frozen to death.

During this winter Lincoln agreed to split a thousand rails for a pair of trousers made from brown jean cloth dyed with white-walnut bark. He had to travel three miles each day to work. Once, while crossing the Sangamon, his canoe was upset, he was thrown into the icy water, and before he could reach the nearest house, Major Warnick's, his feet froze. For a month he was unable to walk, and so he spent that time lying in front of the fireplace at Major Warnick's telling stories, and reading a volume of the Statutes of Illinois.

Prior to this, Lincoln had courted the major's daughter, but the major frowned on the idea. What? A daughter of his, a Warnick, married to this gawky, uneducated rail-splitter? A man without land, without cash, and without prospects? Never!

True, Lincoln didn't own any land; and that wasn't all—he didn't want to own any. He had spent twenty-two years on farms, and he had had enough of pioneer farming. He hated the grinding toil, the lonely monotony of the life. Longing for distinction, as well as for contact with other social beings, he wanted a job where he could meet people and gather a crowd around him and keep them roaring at his stories.

While living back in Indiana Abe had once helped foat a fatboat down the river to New Orleans, and what fun he had had! Novelty. Excitement.Adventure. One night while the boat was tied up to the shore at the plantation of Madame Duchesne, a gang of Negroes, armed with knives and clubs, climbed aboard. They meant to kill the crew, throw their bodies into the river, and foat the cargo down to the thieves' headquarters at New Orleans.

Lincoln seized a club, and with his long, powerful arms knocked three of the marauders into the river, then chased the others ashore; but, in the fght, one of the Negroes slashed Lincoln's forehead with a knife and left over his right eye a scar that he carried to his grave.

No, Tom Lincoln could not hold the boy Abe to a pioneer farm.

Having seen New Orleans once, Abe now got himself another river job. For ffty cents a day and a bonus he and his stepbrother and second cousin cut down trees, hewed logs, floated them to a sawmill, built a fatboat eighty feet long, loaded it with bacon, corn, and hogs, and foated it down the Mississippi.

Lincoln did the cooking for the crew, steered the boat, told stories, played seven-up, and sang in a loud voice:

The turbaned Turk that scorns the world

And struts about with his whiskers curled

For no other man but himself to see.

This trip down the river made a profound and lasting impression upon Lincoln. Herndon says:

In New Orleans, for the first time Lincoln beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw “negroes in chains—whipped and scourged.” Against this inhumanity his sense of right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened to a realization of what he had often heard and read. No doubt, as one of his companions has said, “Slavery ran the iron into him then and there.” One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh and made her trot up and down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that “bidders might satisfy themselves” whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not. The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of “unconquerable hate.” Bidding his companions follow him he said, “By God, boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that thing [meaning slavery], I'll hit it hard.”

Lincoln became very popular with Denton Offut, the man who hired him to go to New Orleans. Offut liked his jokes and stories and honesty. He employed the young man to go back to Illinois, fell trees, and build a log-cabin grocery store in New Salem, a tiny village composed of fifteen or twenty cabins perched on a bluff high above the winding Sangamon. Here Lincoln clerked in the store and also ran a grist and sawmill, and here he lived for six years—years that had a tremendous infuence on his future.

The village had a wild, pugnacious, hell-raising gang of ruffians called the Clary's Grove Boys, a crowd who boasted that they could drink more whisky, swear more profanely, wrestle better, and hit harder than any other group in all Illinois.

At heart they weren't a bad lot. They were loyal, frank, generous, and sympathetic, but they loved to show off. So when the loud-mouthed Denton Offut came to town and proclaimed the physical prowess of his grocery clerk, Abe Lincoln, the Clary's Grove Boys were delighted. Theywould show this upstart a thing or two.

But the showing was all the other way, for this young giant won their foot-races and jumping contests; and with his extraordinarily long arms he could throw a maul or toss a cannon-ball farther than any of them. Besides, he could tell the kind of funny stories they could understand; and he kept them laughing for hours at his back-woods tales.

He reached the high-water mark of his career in New Salem, as far as the Clary's Grove Boys were concerned, on the day all the town gathered under the white-oak trees to see him wrestle with their leader, Jack Armstrong. When Lincoln laid Armstrong out, he had arrived, he had achieved the ultimate. From that time on the Clary's Grove Boys gave him their friendship and crowned him with their allegiance. They appointed him judge of their horse-races and referee of their cock-fights. And when Lincoln was out of work and had no home, they took him into their cabins and fed him.

Lincoln found here in New Salem an opportunity he had been seeking for years, an opportunity to conquer his fears and learn to speak in public. Back in Indiana the only chance that he had had at this sort of thing had been in talking to little groups of laborers in the felds. But here in New Salem there was an organized “l(fā)iterary society” that met every Saturday night in the dining-room of the Rutledge tavern. Lincoln joined it with alacrity and took a leading part on its program, telling stories, reading verses that he had written himself, making extemporaneous talks on such subjects as the navigation of the Sangamon River, and debating the various questions of the day.

This activity was priceless. It widened his mental horizon and awakened his ambition. He discovered that he had an unusual ability to infuence other men by his speech. That knowledge developed his courage and self-confdence as nothing else had ever done.

In a few months Offut's store failed and Lincoln was out of a job. Anelection was coming on, the State was seething with politics, and so he proposed to cash in on his ability to speak.

With the aid of Mentor Graham, the local school-teacher, he toiled for weeks over his frst address to the public, in which he announced that he was a candidate for the State Legislature. He stated that he favored “internal improvements... the navigation of the Sangamon... better education... justice,” and so on.

In closing he said:

“I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relatives or friends to recommend me.” And he concluded with this pathetic sentence: “But if the good people in their wisdom shall see ft to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.”

A few days later a horseman dashed into New Salem with the startling news that the great Sac Indian chief, Black Hawk, was on the war-path with his braves, burning homes, capturing women, massacring settlers, and spreading red terror along Rock River.

In a panic Governor Reynolds was calling for volunteers; and Lincoln, “out of work, penniless, a candidate for offce,” joined the forces for thirty days, was elected captain, and tried to drill the Clary's Grove Boys, who shouted back at his commands, “Go to the devil.”

Herndon says Lincoln always regarded his participation in the Black Hawk War “as a sort of holiday affair and chickenstealing expedition.” It was just about that.

Later, in the course of a speech in Congress, Lincoln declared that he didn't attack any redskins, but that he made “charges upon the wild onions.” He said he didn't see any Indians, but that he had “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes.”

Returning from the war, “Captain Lincoln” plunged again into hispolitical campaign, going from cabin to cabin, shaking hands, telling stories, agreeing with every one, and making speeches whenever and wherever he could fnd a crowd.

When the election came he was defeated, although he received all but three of the two hundred and eight votes cast in New Salem.

Two years later he ran again, was elected, and had to borrow money to buy a suit of clothes to wear to the legislature.

He was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840.

There was living in New Salem at that time a ne'er-do-well whose wife had to take in boarders while he fished and played the fiddle and recited poetry. Most of the people in town looked down upon Jack Kelso as a failure. But Lincoln liked him, chummed with him, and was greatly infuenced by him. Before he met Kelso, Shakspere and Burns had meant little to Lincoln; they had been merely names, and vague names at that. But now as he sat listening to Jack Kelso reading “Hamlet” and reciting “Macbeth,” Lincoln realized for the frst time what symphonies could be played with the English language. What a thing of infnite beauty it could be! What a whirlwind of sense and emotion!

Shakspere awed him, but Bobby Burns won his love and sympathy. He felt even a kinship with Burns. Burns had been poor like Lincoln. Burns had been born in a cabin no better than the one that had seen Abe's birth. Burns too had been a plowboy. But a plowboy to whom the plowing up of the nest of a field-mouse was a tiny tragedy, an event worthy of being caught up and immortalized in a poem. Through the poetry of Burns and Shakspere, a whole new world of meaning and feeling and loveliness opened up to Abraham Lincoln.

But to him the most astounding thing of all was this: neither Shakspere nor Burns had gone to college. Neither of them had had muchmore schooling and education than he.

At times he dared to think that perhaps he too, the unschooled son of illiterate Tom Lincoln, might be ftted for fner things. Perhaps it would not be necessary for him to go on forever selling groceries or working as a blacksmith.

From that time on Burns and Shakspere were his favorite authors. He read more of Shakspere than of all other authors put together, and this reading left its imprint upon his style. Even after he reached the White House, when the burdens and worries of the Civil War were chiseling deep furrows in his face, he devoted much time to Shakspere. Busy as he was, he discussed the plays with Shaksperian authorities, and carried on a correspondence regarding certain passages. The week he was shot, he read “Macbeth” aloud for two hours to a circle of friends.

The infuence of Jack Kelso, the shiftless New Salem fsherman, had reached to the White House....

The founder of New Salem and the keeper of the tavern was a Southerner named James Rutledge, and he had a most attractive daughter, Ann. She was only nineteen when Lincoln met her—a beautiful girl with blue eyes and auburn hair. Despite the fact that she was already engaged to the richest merchant in town, Lincoln fell in love with her.

Ann had already promised to become the wife of John McNeil, but it was understood that they were not to be married until she had had two years of college.

Lincoln had not been in New Salem very long when a strange thing happened. McNeil sold his store and said that he was returning to New York State to bring his mother and father and family back to Illinois. But before leaving town he confessed something to Ann Rutledge that almost stunned her. However, she was young and she loved him, and she believed his story.

A few days later, he set out from Salem, waving good-by to Ann andpromising to write often.

Lincoln was postmaster of the village then. The mail arrived by stage-coach twice a week, and there was very little of it, for it cost from six and a quarter cents to twenty-fve to send a letter, depending on the distance it must travel. Lincoln carried the letters about in his hat. When people met him they would ask if he had any mail for them, and he would pull off his hat and look through his collection to see what he had.

Twice each week Ann Rutledge inquired for a letter. Three months passed before the first one arrived. McNeil explained that he had not written sooner because he had been taken sick with a fever while crossing Ohio, and had been in bed for three weeks—part of the time unconscious.

Three more months passed before the next letter came; and when it arrived it was almost worse than no letter at all. It was cold and vague. He said that his father was very ill, that he was being harassed by his father's creditors, and that he did not know when he would be back.

After that Ann watched the mail for months, hoping for more letters which never came. Had he ever really loved her at all? She had begun now to doubt it.

Lincoln, seeing her distress, volunteered to try to fnd McNeil.

“No,” she said, “he knows where I am, and if he doesn't care enough to write to me I am sure I do not care enough to have you try to fnd him.”

Then she told her father of the extraordinary confession that McNeil had made before he left. He had admitted that he had been living under an assumed name for years. His real name was not McNeil, as every one in New Salem believed, but McNamar.

Why had he practised this deception? His father, he explained, had failed in business, back in New York State, and had become heavily involved in debts. He, being the eldest son, had, without disclosing his destination, come West to make money. He feared that if he used his rightname, his family might learn of his whereabouts and follow him, and he would be obliged to support them all. He didn't want to be hampered by any such burden while struggling to make a start. It might delay his progress for years. So he took an assumed name. But now that he had accumulated property he was going to bring his parents to Illinois and let them share his prosperity.

When the story got abroad in the village it created a sensation. People called it a damn lie and branded him as an impostor. The situation looked bad and gossip made the worst of it. He was—well, there was no telling what he was. Perhaps he was already married. Maybe he was hiding from two or three wives. Who knew? Maybe he had robbed a bank. Maybe he had murdered somebody. Maybe he was this. Maybe he was that. He had deserted Ann Rutledge, and she ought to thank God for it.

Such was New Salem's verdict. Lincoln said nothing, but he thought much.

At last the chance for which he had hoped and prayed had come.