April 1.—Aunt Ann was over to see us yesterday and she said she made a visit the day before out at Mrs William Gorham’s. Mrs Phelps and Miss Eliza Chapin also went and they enjoyed talking over old times when they were young. Maggie Gorham is going to be married on the 25th to Mr Benedict of New York. She always said she would not marry a farmer and would not live in a cobblestone house and now she is going to do both, for Mr Benedict has bought the farm near theirs and it has a cobblestone house. We have always thought her one of the jolliest and prettiest of the older set of young ladies.
March 24th, 1860.—I have a splendid piece of news to record here, my diary: Sister Mag has a baby boy and he is the first grandson in the house and my nephew. I feel as if I could not love him enough for he is to be named for Father. He is very small and very red, but he is a dear in spite of that and I know he will be lots of fun.
March 26th, 1860.—The baby is not to have Father’s full name after all; he is to be named for both of his grandfathers and that makes him James Edward Whitehead. Maybe I won’t love him so well, but I think I will, for he is Sister Mag’s own dear little son and I shall love him for that, even if I am disappointed. When Brother Junius looked at him he said, “another soldier to fight for the flag,” but I hope he will never have the opportunity to fight. War and bloodshed seem very terrible to me.
Lucy Brodie is making us a visit, she does not think much of babies. Her father was my father’s commission merchant once and the Brodie family lived in Tallahassee but they went back to New York when Lucy was quite young and she does not remember her Florida home. She is thirteen years old now and deeply interested in all she sees. The negroes are something new to her every time she looks at one and she often remarks on their queer looks and ways. Yesterday when Lulu had braided her hair and dressed her, even putting on her shoes, she said, “When I get back home I am going to think of this and wish I had one of my very own to carry about with me.” I do not believe Lucy has been kept at school as steadily as I have been, for the books she studied last term are like those I studied three years ago. Lucy has been visiting at Woodstock and Goodwood and she says she has enjoyed it all. She would like to stay longer and she has promised to come again.
February 9.—Dear Miss Mary Howell was married to-day to Mr Worthington, of Cincinnati.
February 28.—Grandfather asked me to read Abraham Lincoln’s speech aloud which he delivered in Cooper Institute, New York, last evening, under the auspices of the Republican Club. He was escorted to the platform by David Dudley Field and introduced by William Cullen Bryant. The New York Times called him “a noted political exhorter and Prairie orator.” It was a thrilling talk and must have stirred men’s souls.
To O. P. Hall AND I (or J.) H. Fullininder
SPRINGFIELD Feb. 4, 1860.
Messrs. O. P. Hall &
…………I OR J. H. Fullininder.
Gentlemen: Your letter in which, among other things, you ask what I meant when I said this “Union could not stand half slave and half free “; and also what I meant when I said “a house divided against itself could not stand” is received and I very cheerfully answer it as plainly as I may be able. You misquote, to some material extent, what I did say, which induces me to think you have not very carefully read the speech in which the expressions occur which puzzle you to understand. For this reason and because the language I used is as plain as I can make it, I now quote at length the whole paragraph in which the expressions which puzzle you occur. It is as follows: “We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but constantly augmented. I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. A house divided against itself can not stand. I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved: I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will avert the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it will become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
That is the whole paragraph; and it puzzles me to make my meaning plainer. Look over it carefully, and conclude I meant all I said, and did not mean any thing I did not say, and you will have my meaning. Douglas attacked me upon this, saying it was a declaration of war between the slave and the free states. You will perceive, I said no such thing, and I assure you I thought of no such thing. If I had said I believe the Government cannot last always half slave and half free, would you understand it any better than you do? Endure permanently and last always have exactly the same meaning. If you, or if you will state to me some meaning which you suppose I had, I can and will instantly tell you whether that was my meaning.
Your very truly,
A. LINCOLN.
To Alexander H. Stephens
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, 19 January, 1860.
Duplicated for Senator Jno. J. Crittenden
Honorable A. H. Stephens [1]
Dear Sir: Your letter and one from Hon. J. J. Crittenden, reached me at the same time. He wants a new party on the platform of “The Union, the constitution and the enforcement of the Laws” — not construed. You from your retirement at Liberty Hall complain of the bad faith of many in the free states who refuse to return fugitives from labor, as agreed in the compromise of 1850, 1854: but I infer that you agree with Judge Douglas that the territories are to be left to “form and regulate their own domestic institutions subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” I remember the letter of the Whigs in Congress in 1852 which defeated Gen’l Winfield Scott on the ground that he did not present your view of States’ rights. Also that your letter destroyed the Whig party and it is said that you and Toombs voted for Webster after he was dead. You are still “harping” on “my daughter” and you supported Zach Taylor as a sound Kentuckian. If I understand you, here are two constructions: Crittenden being willing for the Henry Clay gradual emancipation, I think. The rights of local self-government as defined by Webster, also including state determination of citizenship, are clearly in the Constitution. When we were both Members of the Young-Indian Club in Washington you then argued for paramount state Sovereignty going very nearly to the extreme of state nullification of Federal laws with John C. Calhoun: and of secession at will with Robert Toombs. The Colonies were subject up to July 4, 1776, and had no recognized independence until they had won it in 1783: but the only time they ever had the shadows of separate sovereignty was in the two years before they were compelled to the articles of Confederation July 9, 1778. They fought England for seven years for the right to club together but when were they independent of each other? Let me say right here that only unanimous consent of all of the states can dissolve this Union. We will not secede and you shall not. Let me show you what I think of the reserved rights of the states as declared in the articles of Confederation and in the Constitution and so called Jeffersonian amendments; suppose that I sold a farm here in Illinois with all and singular the rights, members and appurtenances to the same in any wise belonging or appertaining, signed, sealed and delivered: I have now sold my land. Will it at all change the contract if I go to the clerk’s office and add a post script to the record; that all rights not therein conveyed I reserve to myself and my children? The colonies, by the Declaration of July 4, 1776, did not get nationality, for they were leagued to fight for it. By the articles of Confederation of July 9, 1778, under stress and peril of failure without union, a government was created to which the states ceded certain powers of nationality, especially in the command of the army and navy, as yet supported by the states. Geo. Washington was Commander in Chief and congress was advisory agent of the states, commending but not enacting laws for the thirteen, until empowered. This proved insufficient and the peril of failure was great as ever, at home and abroad. Alexander Hamilton and others of New York were first to urge that a government with no revenues, except state grants, could have no credit at home or abroad. Three years later Virginia led the states in urging concessions of power, and then by twelve states —Rhode Island objecting — was framed our original Constitution of 1787 fully three and a half years after the peace that sealed our United national Independence. The post-script erroneously all attributed to Thomas Jefferson, came in three installments. The first ten (10) proposed in the first session of the Congress of the United States 25th September 1789 were ratified by the constitutional number of states 15 December 1791, New Jersey 20 November 1789 and Virginia is December 1791, eleven states only, Georgia and Connecticut dissenting. The eleventh amendment, proposed 5 March 1794., Third Congress, was then declared duly adopted by a President’s message of 8 January, 1798, eleven states consenting & finally all consenting. The twelfth amendment was proposed in congress 12 December 1803 and declared ratified through the secretary of state 25 September 1804 by the constitutional quorum of states. The first ten articles are the Bill of Rights and each set of amendments had a preface. The eleventh limited the Federal Judiciary. The twelfth regulated general elections for President and Vice-President of the United States. Do any or all of these retract the fee-simple grant of great and permanent powers to the Federal Government? There are three great Departments: I, the President commanding the Army and Navy and with a veto upon a plurality of Congress. II, the Congress coining all moneys; collecting all imposts on imports, regulating all interstate as all external commerce; making all subordinate Federal Judiciary as appointed of the President with power to have a ten mile square seat and to take grants or to buy for Forts, Dock yards and Arsenals; having post offices and post roads under laws executed by the President, and to frame supreme constitutional laws and set up courts and Judges. III, The supreme court set as arbiter and expounder of the constitution and of all differences of states and with states or of them with the Federation; no loop hole left for nullification, and none for secession, — because the right of peaceable assembly and of petition and by article Fifth of the Constitution, the right of amendment, is the Constitutional substitute for revolution. Here is our Magna Carta not wrested by Barons from King John, but the free gift of states to the nation they create and in the very amendments harped upon by states rights men are proposed by the Federal congress and approved by Presidents, to make the liberties of the Republic of the West forever sure. All of the States’ Rights which they wished to retain are now and forever retained in the Union, including slavery; and so I have sworn loyalty to this constitutional Union, and for it let me live or let me die. But you say that slavery is the corner stone of the south and if separated, would be that of a new Republic; God forbid. When a boy I went to New Orleans on a flat boat and there I saw slavery and slave markets as I have never seen them in Kentucky, and I heard worse of the Red River plantations. I hoped and prayed that the gradual emancipation plan of Henry Clay or the Liberian colonization of John Q. Adams might lead to its extinction in the United States. Geo. Washington, the Massachusetts Adams, Presidents James Madison and Monroe, Benj. Franklin opposed its extension into the territories before I did. The ordinance of 1784, 1787 for the North West territory ceded by Virginia, was written by Thomas Jefferson and signed only by slave-holders and that prohibited forever slavery, or involuntary servitude not imposed for crime. Your grandfather, Captain Stephens, suffered at Valley Forge and bled at Brandywine for the principles of the men of 1776-1783. Your Uncle, Justice Grier of the Supreme Bench has recently expounded the Supreme Law as I honestly accept it. Senator Crittenden complains that by the device of party conventions and nominations of candidates for Presidents and Vice-Presidents the Federal plan of separate and unbiased Electoral Colleges is taken away and the popular feature of elections is restored to the people. I reckon they wanted it so. What are you agoing to do about it? To abolish conventions you must abolish candidates. In your Oxford College orations, you say “I love the Union and revere its memories; I rejoice in all its achievements in arts, in letters and in arms.”If it is a good thing, why not just keep it and say no more about it?
I am not in favor of a party of Union, constitution and law to suit Mr. Bell or Mr. Everett and be construed variously in as many sections as there are states.
This is the longest letter I ever dictated or wrote. But this is to only you alone, not to the public.
Your truly,
A. LINCOLN.
[1] From a pamphlet entitled Some Lincoln Correspondence with Southern Leaders before the Outbreak of the Civil War, from the Collection of Judd Stewart, 1909. The letter was there printed from a copy certified as correct by Mr. Stephens.
This is Aunt Sue’s birthday; and she is spending the day with us. She brought the boys and Teresa and little Mary Eliza, who is a darling. Cousin Henry Whitaker is here, Aunt Sue and Mother love him dearly; but he hurt Aunt Sue’s feelings today. He is a great tease and sometimes he is not as careful as he should be not to give offense. Since all this trouble between the North and South, there is a tendency to say disagreeable things and you often hear of “Yankees” and always in derision. Everybody does not do this but you do hear it sometimes. Cousin Henry lives in North Carolina and we do not see him often, Aunt Sue called her children to speak to him and as he shook hands with the dear little boys he said: “Well, Sue, what are you going to make of these little Yankees ?”
Uncle Arvah is a New Yorker by birth and it was a thrust at him and Aunt Sue was angry and hurt; the children did not know what was meant. It is a pity to “stir up strife.”
New Years Day.—We felt quite grown up to-day and not a little scared when we saw Mr Morse and Mr Wells and Mr Mason and Mr Chubbuck all coming in together to make a New Year’s call. They made a tour of the town. We did not feel so flustrated when Will Schley and Horace Finley came in later. Mr Oliver Phelps, Jr., came to call upon Grandmother. Grandfather made a few calls, too.
January 5.—Abbie Clark and I went up to see Miss Emma Morse because it is her birthday. We call her sweet Miss Emma and we think Mr Manning Wells does, too. We went to William Wirt Howe’s lecture in Bemis Hall this evening. He is a very smart young man.
Anna wanted to walk down a little ways with the girls after school so she crouched down between Helen Coy and Hattie Paddock and walked past the house. Grandmother always sits in the front window, so when Anna came in she asked her if she had to stay after school and Anna gave her an evasive answer. It reminds me of a story I read, of a lady who told the servant girl if any one called to give an evasive answer as she did not wish to receive calls that day. By and by the door bell rang and the servant went to the door. When she came back the lady asked her how she dismissed the visitor. She said, “Shure ye towld me to give an evasive answer, so when the man asked if the lady of the house was at home I said, ‘Faith! is your grandmother a monkey!'” We never say anything like that to our “dear little lady,” but we just change the subject and divert the conversation into a more agreeable channel. To-day someone came to see Grandmother when we were gone and told her that Anna and some others ran away from school. Grandmother told Anna she hoped she would never let any one bring her such a report again. Anna said she would not, if she could possibly help it! I wonder who it was. Some one who believes in the text, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” Grandfather told us to-night that we ought to be very careful what we do as we are making history each day. Anna says she shall try not to have hers as dry as some that she had to learn at school to-day.
We had a very happy Christmas; just as good as if John Brown had never stirred up so much that was terrible. The scene on the back porch was just as merry; the presents were as joyfully received, the drinks as eagerly quaffed and the good wishes, which, with the negroes, correspond to toasts, were as heartily spoken. I do not believe it will be easy to turn our dear black folks against us though no doubt the abolitionists will keep on trying.
Inside the house we had a lovely time; the day was bright and beautiful. Father is well again; Uncle Richard and Aunt Nancy and all the boys took dinner with us; Cousin Bettie is at school in New York City; she is studying music under Francis H. Brown, the composer. Cousin Rob and I had such a good time. Christmas night we spent the evening at Dr. Holland’s. I forgot to say that Sister Mag and Brother Amos, Cousin Sarah and Cousin William and sweet little Nannie, their pretty baby and Brother Junius, of course, were with us Christmas day. We all went together to Greenwood, we always have a delightful time when we go there and this Christmas Cousin Mag and Dr. Betton were there, too. Dr. Holland does not allow dancing but we played games and had music, both vocal and instrumental, and everything good you could think of to eat. It was a set supper, for this is the way we do things in our neighborhood; all the house-keepers vie with each other in entertaining and not one surpasses Mother, if I do say it myself.
Sunday, December 8, 1859.—Mr E. M. Morse is our Sunday School teacher now and the Sunday School room is so crowded that we go up into the church for our class recitation. Abbie Clark, Fannie Gaylord and myself are the only scholars, and he calls us the three christian graces, faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity. I am the tallest, so he says I am charity. We recite in Mr Gibson’s pew, because it is farthest away and we do not disturb the other classes. He gave us some excellent advice to-day as to what was right and said if we ever had any doubts about anything we should never do it and should always be perfectly sure we are in the right before we act. He gave us two weeks ago a poem to learn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is an apostrophe to God and very hard to learn. It is blank verse and has 85 lines in it. I have it committed at last and we are to recite it in concert. The last two lines are, “Tell thou the silent sky and tell the stars and tell yon rising sun, Earth with its thousand voices praises God.” Mr Morse delivered a lecture in Bemis Hall last Thursday night. The subject was, “You and I.” It was splendid and he lent me the manuscript afterwards to read. Dick Valentine lectured in the hall the other night too. His subject was “Prejudice.” There was some difference in the lectures and the lecturers. The latter was more highly colored.
Friday.—The older ladies of the town have formed a society for the relief of the poor and are going to have a course of lectures in Bemis Hall under their auspices to raise funds. The lecturers are to be from the village and are to be : Rev. O. E. Daggett, subject, “Ladies and Gentleman” Dr Harvey Jewett, “The House We Live in;” Prof. F. E. R. Chubbuck, “Progress;” Hon. H. W. Taylor, “The Empty Place;” Prof. E. G. Tyler, “Finance;” Mr N. T. Clark, “Chemistry;” E. M. Morse, “Graybeard and His Dogmas.” The young ladies have started a society, too, and we have great fun and fine suppers. We met at Jennie Howell’s to organise. We are to meet once in two weeks and are to present each member with an album bed quilt with all our names on when they are married. Susie Daggett says she is never going to be married, but we must make her a quilt just the same. Laura Chapin sang “Mary Lindsey, Dear,” and we got to laughing so that Susie Daggett and I lost our equilibrium entirely, but I found mine by the time I got home. Yesterday afternoon Grandfather asked us if we did not want to go to ride with him in the big two seated covered carriage which he does not get out very often. We said yes, and he stopped for Miss Hannah Upham and took her with us. She sat on the back seat with me and we rode clear to Farmington and kept up a brisk conversation all the way. She told us how she became lady principal of the Ontario Female Seminary in 1830. She was still telling us about it when we got back home.
December 23.—We have had a Christmas tree and many other attractions in Seminary chapel. The day scholars and townspeople were permitted to participate and we had a post office and received letters from our friends. Mr E. M. Morse wrote me a ficticious one, claiming to be written from the north pole, ten years hence. I will copy it in my journal for I may lose the letter. I had some gifts on the Christmas tree and gave some. I presented my teacher, Mr Chubbuck, with two large hemstitched handkerchiefs with his initials embroidered in a corner of each. As he is favored with the euphonious name of Frank Emery Robinson Chubbuck it was a work of art to make his initials look beautiful. I inclosed a stanza in rhyme :
Amid the changing scenes of life
If any storm should rise,
May you ever have a handkerchief
To wipe your weeping eyes.
Here is Mr Morse’s letter :
“North Pole, 10 January 1869
” Miss Carrie Richards,
” My Dear Young Fr1end.—It is very cold here and the pole is covered with ice. I climbed it yesterday to take an observation and arrange our flag, the Stars and Stripes, which I hoisted immediately on my arrival here, ten years ago. I thought I should freeze and the pole was so slippery that I was in great danger of coming down faster than was comfortable. Although this pole has been used for more than 6,000 years it is still as good as new. The works of the Great Architect do not wear out. It is now ten years since I have seen you and my other two Christian Graces and I have no doubt of your present position among the most brilliant, noble and excellent women in all America. I always knew and recognised your great abilities. Nature was very generous to you all and you were enjoying fine advantages at the time I last knew you. I thought your residence with your Grandparents an admirable school for you, and you and your sister were most evidently the best joy of their old age. You certainly owe much to them. At the time that I left my three Christian Graces, Mrs Grundy was sometimes malicious enough to say that they were injuring themselves by flirting. I always told the old lady that I had the utmost confidence in the judgment and discretion of my pupils and that they would be very careful and prudent in all their conduct. I confessed that flirting was wrong and very injurious to any one who was guilty of it, but I was very sure that you were not. I could not believe that you would disappoint us all and become only ordinary women, but that you would become the most exalted characters, scorning all things unworthy of ladies and Christians and I was right and Mrs Grundy was wrong. When the ice around the pole thaws out I shall make a flying visit to Canandaigua. I send you a tame polar bear for a playfellow. This letter will be conveyed to you by Esquimaux express.—Most truly yours, E. M. MORSE.”
I think some one must have shown some verses that we girls wrote, to Mrs Grundy and made her think that our minds were more upon the young men than they were upon our studies, but if people knew how much time we spent on Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity” and Butler’s Analogy and Karnes’ Elements of Criticism and Tytler’s Ancient History and Olmstead’s Mathematical Astronomy and our French and Latin and arithmetic and algebra and geometry and trigonometry and bookkeeping, they would know we had very little time to think of the masculine gender.
Abby’s heart was full of the thought of the slave market when, six months later, John Brown put his belief into action and attempted to bring about the forcible liberation of the slaves, acting as he thought and said “ by the authority of God Almighty.” Death by hanging was his reward. He left the jail at Charlestown and met his fate “ with a radiant countenance and the step of a conqueror.”
At the hour appointed for the execution, December 2d, 1859, thousands of Northern hearts were with him, and in Dr. Cheever’s church, New York, prayers were offered.
Abby writes to her sister-in-law, Eliza Woolsey Howland:
8 Brevoort Place, Dec. 5, 1859.
My dear Eliza: I went round to Dr. Cheever’s lecture room for half an hour. I found it crowded with men and women —as many of one as the other—hard-featured men, rugged faces, thoughtful faces, some few Chadband faces; plain, quiet women; none that looked like gay, idle, trifling people. I entered just as some one suggested five minutes of silent prayer, which I have no doubt every soul of us made the most of, and then Dr. Cheever, who had the chair, gave out that hymn, “Oh, glorious hour! Oh, blest abode! I shall be near and like my God,” etc. Mr. Brace made a fervent prayer for John Brown. Then a Methodist brother made a few remarks—said “it did him good to cry Amen. It proved you to be on the right side and that you were not afraid to make it known, and it didn’t need a polished education to help you do that much for truth.” Then they sang, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” everybody singing with a will, and, indeed, throughout the meeting there was much feeling—some sobs and many hearty Amens.
The public feverish excitement constantly increased and carried our family along in its stream.
