LINCOLN (Vol. 1-7). Theodore Roosevelt

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СКАЧАТЬ nineteen years old when Lincoln knew her first. It was shortly after the Black Hawk War. She was a winsome girl, with fair hair and blue eyes, and Lincoln's heart was captivated by her sweet face and gentle manners. So attractive a girl was not, of course, without suitors, and Anne had been wooed by one James McNeill, a young man who had come to New Salem soon after the founding of the town. He had been more than ordinarily successful, and had bought a large farm a few miles north of the village. He was unmarried—at least he so represented himself—and paid devoted attention to Anne. They were engaged, although both had acquiesced in the wishes of Anne's parents that they should not be married until she was older.

      About this time Lincoln appeared in New Salem and went to board at the Rutledge tavern. Here he saw Anne, and was much in her company. During the next year McNeill became restless and discontented. He said it was because he wanted to see his people. So he decided to go East on a visit. He sold out his interests in New Salem—an act not at all necessary if he were going only on a visit, and which in the light of after events had much significance—telling Anne that it was his hope to bring his father and mother back with him and establish them upon his farm. "This done," he said, "we will be married." He then set out on his journey.

      It was late in the summer before Anne heard from him. He explained that he had been taken ill with chills and fever on the way, and had been long delayed in getting home. But the long wait had been a great strain upon Anne. Lincoln, meanwhile, had become the postmaster in New Salem, and it was to him that Anne came to inquire for letters. He watched her anxiety with sympathy, and in a way became her confidant. His tender heart, which never could resist suffering, was deeply touched at sight of her distress. Finally McNeill's letters ceased altogether; and then Anne confided to Lincoln something which McNeill had told her before he left, and which until now she had kept secret,—namely, that his name was not McNeill but McNamar. He had explained to her that he had made this change because his father had failed in business and that as his oldest son it was his duty to retrieve the family fortunes. So he had changed his name, and come West, hoping to return in a few years to his family a rich man. All this Anne had believed, and had not repeated until now.

      All New Salem joined in declaring McNamar an impostor and his story a fabrication. "Who knew how many wives he had?" they said. With one accord Anne's friends denounced him; and although his story turned out afterward to be not altogether false, it is small wonder that Anne herself at last came to believe that either he was dead or had ceased to love her.

      While matters were in this state, Lincoln ventured to show his love for Anne. It was a long time before she would listen; but, convinced at last that her former lover had deserted her, she promised, in the spring of 1835, to become his wife. But Lincoln had nothing on which to support a family,—in fact, could hardly support himself. Besides, Anne was anxious to go to school another year. So it was decided that she should spend the winter in an academy in Jacksonville, while Lincoln devoted himself to the study of the law. Then, when she should return from school, he would be a member of the bar and they could be married.

      A happy spring and summer followed. All their friends took an interest in the lovers, and their prospects seemed bright. But Anne's health began to fail. She could not rid herself of her haunting memories. There was a possibility that she had wronged McNamar. What if he should love her still, and should return and find her wedded to another? Had she wronged both men? In her thoughts was perpetual conflict. The old love still persisted. Her conscience troubled her. She doubted, and was morbidly melancholy. All this wore upon her; she fell ill. At last her condition became grave, then hopeless. Lincoln was sent for. Anne's last hour was passed alone with him. She died at sunset, August 25, 1835. An old neighbor who saw Lincoln just after his parting with the dying girl says: "There were signs of the most terrible distress in his face. His grief became frantic. He lost all self-control, even the consciousness of his own identity; and his closest friends in New Salem pronounced him insane, crazy, mad. They watched him with especial vigilance on dark and stormy days. At such times he raved piteously, often saying, 'I can never be reconciled to having the snow fall and the rain beat upon her grave.'" His old friend, Bowlin Greene, alone seemed possessed of the power to quiet him. He took him to his own home and kept him for several weeks, an object of undisguised solicitude. At last it seemed safe to permit him to return to his old haunts. Greene urged him to go back to the law; and he did so, but he was never the same man again. He was thin, haggard, and careworn. He was as one who had been at the brink of the grave. A long time afterward, when the grass had for nearly thirty years grown over the grave of Anne Rutledge, Lincoln was one day introduced to a man named Rutledge in the White House. He looked at him a moment, then grasped his hand and said with deep feeling: "I love the name of Rutledge to this day. Anne was a lovely girl. She was natural, well-educated. She would have made a good, loving wife. I did honestly and truly love her, and I think often, often of her now." Mr. Herndon has said that the love and the death of this young girl shattered Lincoln's purposes and tendencies. "He threw off his infinite sorrow only by leaping wildly into the political arena. He needed whip and spur to save him from despair."

      The period of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood and youth had closed when he stood by the grave of Anne Rutledge. He had long been a man in stature. He was now a man in years; yet the rough path he had been forced to travel had made his progress toward maturity painfully slow. In spite of his low birth, of his dire poverty, of the rudeness and illiteracy of his associates, of the absence of refinement in his surroundings, of his scanty means of education, of his homely figure and awkward manners, of his coarse fare and shabby dress, he dared to believe there was an exalted career in store for him. He hewed out the foundations for it with indomitable spirit. It was to be grounded on manly virtues. It seems as though the boy felt the consecration of a high destiny from the very dawn of his intelligence, and it set him apart, secure amid the temptations and safe from the vices that corrupt many men. In the rough garb of the backwoodsman he preserved the instincts of a gentleman. He was the companion of bullies and boors. He shared their work and their sports, but he never stooped to their vulgarity. He very seldom drank with them, and they never heard him speak an oath. He could throw the stoutest in a wrestling match, and was ready, when brought to it, to whip any insolent braggart who made cruel use of his strength. He never flinched from hardship or danger, yet his heart was as soft and tender as a woman's. The great gentle giant had a feeling of sympathy for every living creature. He was not ashamed to rock a cradle, or to carry a pail of water or an armful of wood to spare a tired woman's arms. Though destitute of worldly goods, he was rich in friends. All the people of his acquaintance knew they could count on his doing the right thing always, so far as he was able. Hence they trusted and loved him; and the title of "Honest Abe," which he bore through life, was a seal of knighthood rarer and prouder than any king or queen could confer with the sword. Abraham Lincoln was one of nature's noblemen. He showed himself a hero in every circumstance of his boyhood and youth. The elements of greatness were visible even then. The boy who was true to duty, patient in privation, modest in merit, kind to every form of distress, determined to rise by wresting opportunities from the grudging hand of fate, was sure to make a man distinguished among his fellows,—a man noted among the great men of the world, as the boy had been among his neighbors in the wilds of Spencer County and New Salem.

      The site of the town where Lincoln spent the last three years of the period covered in this portion of his biography is now a desolate waste. A gentleman who visited the spot during the summer of 1885 thus describes the mournful scene: "From the hill where I sit, under the shade of three trees whose branches make one, I look out over the Sangamon river and its banks covered apparently with primeval forests. Around are fields overgrown with weeds and stunted oaks. It was a town of ten or twelve years only. It began in 1824 and ended in 1836. Yet in that time it had a history which the world will not let die as long as it venerates the memory of the noble liberator and martyr President, Abraham Lincoln."

      Chapter III

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      Abraham Lincoln's career as a lawyer covered СКАЧАТЬ