A Slave Auction at the Fayette County Courthouse, LcxiiiRlon. K<
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THE BLUEGRASS REGION OF KENTUCKY
was the only part of the slaveholding South that Abraham Lincoln knew intimately. Even before the young Illinois lawyer had married a daugh- ter of one of Lexington's leading statesmen, he had taken Robert Todd's close friend, Henry Clay, as his political idol. Mary Todd, who had grown to young womanhood in Lexington, wid- ened Lincoln's circle of acquaintances in the Bluegrass to include such diverse personalities as fudge George Robertson, Lincoln's counsel, who supported emancipation in the abstract but indignantly demanded that the President pro- tect his slave property; the fiery Cassius M. Clay, who urged Lincoln to proclaim immediate emancipation and who raised a motley battalion in Washington, D. C, to defend the Capital; Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, the doughty Presbyter- ian minister who refused to ask special treatment for the members of his family in the Confeder- acy; and the Doctor's nephew, Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, who rejected a demand that he use his position to thwart Lincoln's elec- tion but immediately took up arms against him.
With the gifted pen that has won praise from so many students of Lincoln and the Civil War, William H. Townsend here describes the fabu- lous Bluegrass region which had so large a part in shaping Lincoln's views about emancipation and secession. Lexington, heart of the Bluegrass, had early been called the "Athens of the West," and the grace and culture of its pleasure-loving aristocracy could hardly have failed to impress any thinking man. Here Lincoln saw the genteel side of slavery— the trusted mammies whose word was law, the valets whose talent for mixing mint juleps was famous— but he also saw the public whipping post, slave jails, and slave auctions, and the disregard for the humanity of the Negro.
Lincoln and the Bluegrass has grown out of an earlier work by Mr. Townsend, Lincoln and His Wife's Home Town, published twenty-six years ago. The appearance of so much addi- tional Lincoln and Civil War source materials in the past quarter of a century has enabled Mr. Townsend to develop his study of Lincoln's rela- tion to the Bluegrass with greater insight and clarity. The book contains sixty illustrations, main of them previously unpublished photo- graphs from Mr. Townsend's collection.
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LINCOLN ROOM
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY
MEMORIAL
the Class of 1901
founded by
HARLAN HOYT HORNER
and
HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://archive.org/details/lincolnbluegrassOOtown
The
Cassius Jiarcellus Clay
Gdition
Autographed by the author for members of the
CIVIL WAR BOOK CLUB
'-^
Abraham Lincoln Meserve Collection
Lincoln and the Bluegrass
SLAVERY AND CIVIL WAR IN KENTUCKY
By William H. Townsend
University of Kentucky Press
COPYRIGHT © 1955 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PRESS COMPOSED AND PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 55-10383
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BTLLJIi
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To my wife Genevieve, our daughter Mary Genevieve, and our young granddaughter Mary Elodie
Preface
IT HAS been more than twenty-five years since Lincoln and His Wife's Home Town, from which the present work has de- veloped, first came off the press. During this period I have had the benefit of important and relevant sources which were either unknown or unavailable in 1929. The Abraham Lincoln As- sociation of Springfield, Illinois, has assembled The Collected Works into eight large volumes which contain hundreds of Lincoln letters and documents heretofore unpublished. The Herndon-Weik manuscripts and the Robert Todd Lincoln Col- lection are now open for inspection and research in the Library of Congress. The diaries of the Reverend William Moody Pratt, a veritable gold mine of information about Lexington and the Bluegrass from 1833 until long after the Civil War, are in the Library of the University of Kentucky. Diligence and luck have added to my own collection of Lincolniana many items which have proved useful in the present under- taking. As before, whenever possible I have allowed original sources to speak for themselves.
It is my opinion that the analysis of this new material af- fords a broader perspective and deeper insight into the affirma- tion made in the preface to the earlier book— that Abraham Lincoln's personal contacts with slavery in the Bluegrass gave him a firsthand knowledge of the "peculiar institution" that he could have acquired in no other way. The impact of these experiences upon Abraham Lincoln and the circumstances sur-
vni PREFACE
rounding them can hardly be more aptly stated than in the following paragraphs of that preface.
"Lexington lay in the heart of the largest slaveholding sec- tion of Kentucky. Here in the far-famed Bluegrass region, with its chivalry and romance, its culture and traditions, the various aspects of African bondage were fairly and accurately presented. Here the future Emancipator saw vexatious prob- lems and the difficulties of their solution from the Southerner's own viewpoint. Here, also, the fires of antislavery agitation burned fitfully but furiously, giving Lincoln, as he said, his 'first real specific alarm about the institution of slavery.'
"Lincoln's well-known conservatism on the 'dominant ques- tion' went a long way toward making him the nominee of the Republican party for President in 1860. It brought to him the powerful support of the Border States delegates who believed that he possessed a sympathetic understanding of their prob- lem and could deal with it better than any other candidate before the convention. During the anxious days following his election, as the nation drifted steadily into Civil War, the new President was gravely aware of the importance of Kentucky in the approaching conflict. 'I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game,' he wrote Senator Brown- ing. Lincoln also realized that the first danger of secession in Kentucky centered about the capital city of the Bluegrass, and in the succeeding pages we shall see how desperately the strug- gle was waged in that section and how eventually the state was saved to the Union."
Here, near the borderland of freedom, domestic ties were rent asunder, brother against brother, father against son, the whole social structure crumbling in the vast upheaval. Throughout those dark, bitter, tragic days, Lincoln never lost contact with Kentucky. Always she and her citizens, even those arrayed in arms against the government, were the objects of his patient solicitude.
In the laborious task of locating and assembling material, it has been my good fortune to have the constant and capable
PREFA CE ix
co-operation of various public institutions, as well as the ac- tive assistance and kindly interest of many individual friends. Among the former, I must thank the Lexington Public Library, Transylvania College Library, University of Kentucky Library, the Filson Club, Louisville Free Public Library, Kentucky State Historical Society, Library of Congress, Wisconsin His- torical Society, Abraham Lincoln Foundation, State University of Iowa Library, Illinois State Historical Library, and the De- partment of Lincolniana of Lincoln Memorial University.
Among the latter, my warmest thanks and appreciation are due to Clyde Walton, Iowa City, Iowa; Irving Stone, Beverly Hills, California; Ralph Newman and Mrs. Foreman M. Le- bold, Chicago, Illinois; Mrs. Philip B. Kunhardt, Morristown, New Jersey; Bruce Catton, New York City; Donald M. Hobart, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Percy C. Powell and David C. Mearns, Washington, D. C; R. Gerald McMurtry, Harrogate, Tennessee; Louis Warren, Fort Wayne, Indiana; Mrs. Lewis C. Williams, Evanston, Illinois; Holman Hamilton, Hambleton Tapp, Miss Jacqueline Bull, Miss Roemel Henry, Miss Virginia Hayes, Joe Jordan, Mrs. Louis Lee Haggin, Louis Lee Haggin, II, and Dr. Josephine Hunt, Lexington, Kentucky.
Mrs. Martha B. Cheek, wife of Professor Frank J. Cheek, Jr., of the University of Kentucky, a great-great-niece of Denton Offutt, has generously made available to me the voluminous records accumulated by her through long years of research concerning the Offutt family.
I must express particularly my abiding gratitude to my dear friends J. Winston Coleman and Thomas D. Clark of Lexing- ton, Kentucky, and Harry E. Pratt and his wife Marion of Springfield, Illinois. It is hardly too much to say that without their invaluable aid in research suggestions, verifying sources, supplying pictures, reading the manuscript, and, above all, their constant encouragement, the writing of this book in such "off hours" as an active law practice affords could not have been accomplished. Mrs. Mary Ada Sullivan has checked cita- tions, arranged footnotes, and prepared the manuscript for the
x PREFACE
publisher with an unflagging interest and efficiency much be- yond the call of duty.
This new work has been written almost upon the very site of Mme. Mentelle's famous boarding school that nurtured Mary Todd. I express the hope that the reader may find in these pages interesting and significant glimpses of her early years and of the friends and background of her girlhood, as well as a clearer view of some of the forces and events that made Abra- ham Lincoln the greatest exponent of human freedom, and that certain individuals, hitherto but little known to history, may receive just and adequate recognition for the deed that made them vivid, outstanding figures in their own day and generation.
William H. Townsend
February 12, 1955 28 Mentelle Park Lexington, Kentucky
Contents
PREFACE PAGE Vll
1. Athens of the West 1
2. The Lincolns of Fayette 16
3. The Early Todds 25
4. The Little Trader from Hickman Creek 30
5. Mary Ann Todd 46
6. Slavery in the Bluegrass 70
7. Grist to the Mill 81
8. The True American 99
9. The Lincolns Visit Lexington 120
10. Widow Sprigg and Buena Vista 141
11. A House Divided 157
12. Milly and Alfred 176
13. The Buried Years 192
14. Storm Clouds 209
15. Rebellion 239
16. Stirring Days in Kentucky 269
17. Problems of State and In-Law Trouble 299
18. With Malice toward None 320
19. Lilac Time 352
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 359
INDEX 387
Illustrations
Abraham Lincoln frontispiece
Transylvania University in the 1820's; Title page of The Ken- tucky Preceptor that Lincoln studied; Thomas Lincoln testifies how his brother spelled his name between pages 10 and 1 1
Thomas Lincoln's stillhouse near Lexington; "Ellerslie," home of Levi Todd, as it looked just before it was razed; Robert S. Todd between pages 26 and 27
Receipts signed by Lincoln for Denton Offutt; The Rutledge mill and Denton Offutt's store at New Salem, rebuilt on the original sites between pages 42 and 43
Mary Ann Todd; Home of "Widow" Parker, Mary Todd's grandmother, as it looks today; The confectionery of Monsieur Giron; Dr. Ward's Academy between pages 58 and 59
Sale of "bucks" and "wenches" on Cheapside; Slave cabins in the Bluegrass between pages 74 and 75
Reward for runaway slave; Slave auction on Cheapside
BETWEEN PAGES 90 AND 91
One of the brass cannon used in the defense of The True Amer- ican office; Cassius M. Clay between pages 106 and 107
Main Street in Lexington as Lincoln saw it; Slave auction in the courthouse yard; The home of Robert S. Todd, as it looks today between pages 122 and 123
"Nigger Trader" advertisements; Slave shackles
BETWEEN PAGES 138 AND 139
xiv ILLUSTRATIONS
Title page of Denton Offutt's book; Joe Offutt, pupil and "spit 'n' image" of his uncle Denton; "Mr. Bell's splendid place" in Lexington, where friends of the Lincolns lived; "Buena Vista," summer home of Robert S. Todd, with slave cabins, as it looked before it was razed between pages 154 and 155
Dr. Breckinridge's knife, designed by Clay; Cassius Clay's "dress- up" bowie knife and dirk between pages 170 and 171
Megowan's slave jail; Where Robards kept his "choice stock," as it looked before it was razed between pages 186 and 187
Lincoln's "indignation" letter to George B. Kinkead; Lexington in 1850; The old Lexington courthouse, where Lincoln was sued; Henry Clay between pages 202 and 203
Emilie Todd, as she looked when she visited the Lincolns; Stephen A. Douglas, debater; Abraham Lincoln, on the hus- tings; Mrs. Lincoln's letter to Emilie about her husband's
politics BETWEEN PAGES 218 AND 219
John C. Breckinridge; Abraham Lincoln to Cassius M. Clay
BETWEEN PAGES 266 AND 267
Handbill ordering acceptance of Confederate money in Lexing- ton; Yankees in the courthouse yard; Portrait of Judge George Robertson; General John Hunt Morgan
BETWEEN PAGES 282 AND 283
Martha Todd White, Mrs. Lincoln's half sister; Mary Todd Lincoln, in the autumn of 1863; Emilie Todd Helm, as she looked at the White House; Captain David Todd, Mrs. Lin- coln's half brother between pages 314 and 315
Major General Cassius M. Clay; Abraham Lincoln in 1864; "Lieutenant" Tad Lincoln; Martha M. Jones and Nellie; Lieu- tenant Waller R. Bullock; The Reverend Robert J. Breckin- ridge BETWEEN PAGES 330 AND 331
The tomb of Henry Clay; The Kentucky delegation to Abra- ham Lincoln's funeral between pages 346 and 347
ONE
Athens of the West
LATE afternoon on an early June day, 1775, in that new, enchanted region called "Kaintuckee"1: A small party of hunt- ers—lean, bronzed, muscular, with rifles in hand and scalping knives dangling from the girdles of their buckskin shirts- emerged from a dense canebrake that skirted the waters of Elkhorn Creek. Hungry and tired, after a leisurely reconnoiter they pitched camp for the night beside a clear bubbling spring that gushed from a crevice in a huge slab of moss-covered lime- stone.2
The frugal supper of parched corn and jerked venison over, the woodsmen sat around the blazing logs puffing their battered, old pipes in drowsy conversation. The day's journey had led them through the most picturesque and fertile country in all the western wilderness:3 luxuriant vegetation rooted in a loose, deep, black mold; giant trees of red and bur oak, yellow poplar, sugar maple, walnut, blue ash, beech, and wild cherry; violets, honeysuckle, and wild roses that perfumed the dim, shaded ravines; columbine, sweet William, and forget-me-nots basking in the placid sunshine; songbirds— the cardinal, bluebird, the
2 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
brown thrush, and the mockingbird; pheasants, partridges, wild turkey and the ivory-billed woodcock; and long vistas of gently undulating meadowland covered with bluegrass, dotted with browsing herds of elk, buffalo, and deer. Under the spell of this veritable paradise someone about the fire suggested that a station be established on the site of the camp, and various names were proposed for it. "York" and "Lancaster" were briefly considered, but both were dropped with a shout for "Lexington."
On the previous April 19 the first patriot blood of the Revolution had been shed on the village commons at Lexing- ton in distant New England, and avenging minutemen had crimsoned the green hedges along the road from Concord to Boston with King George's fallen redcoats. The news of this stirring event was just now slowly trickling through the wilder- ness, and every pioneer heart glowed with patriotism. Lexing- ton should indeed be the name of the new settlement, and by the fireside that night in June, 1775, the outpost on the banks of the Elkhorn was dedicated to the cause of American liberty.4
The rude blockhouse erected on the site soon gave way to a regular stockade of more than a dozen cabins built in the form of a parallelogram with palisades and heavy gates of point- ed logs. With the close of the Revolution the settlement began a steady growth. Streets were laid off, churches established, and the first schoolhouse in Kentucky was erected on the public square called "Cheapside" after the historic old marketplace in London.5 Transylvania Seminary, the first institution of higher learning in the West, was founded within the next few years.
On August 11, 1787, John Bradford published the first newspaper west of the Alleghenies. The early issues of the Kentucke Gazette consisted of four pages scarcely larger than a folio letterhead, embellished with crude woodcuts which the editor whittled into shape with his pocketknife.6 They were printed on an old, dilapidated hand press from type floated down the Ohio on a flatboat to the village of Limestone (now
ATHENS OF THE WEST 3
Maysville) and carried to Lexington by pack horses across swollen streams through the dense forest infested by skulking Indians.
The Gazette was a boon to the isolated pioneers who were starved for news, and every copy was eagerly devoured item by item. There was a page which contained "Foreign Intelli- gence" from London, Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople, four months old, and another devoted to "American Occurrences" from New York and Philadelphia, which had happened eight weeks before. "Locals," though scarce, were not wholly lacking. The editor condemned the practice of "taming bears," of "light- ing fires with rifles"; he noted that "persons who subscribe to the frame meeting house can pay in cattle or whiskey." Charles Bland advertised: "I will not pay a note given to William Turner for three second rate cows, till he returns a rifle, blan- ket, and tomahawk I loaned him." The public was warned that certain caches of "wheat, corn, and potatoes are impreg- nated with Arsenic or other Subtil poison" for marauding In- dians "to trap them." The editor promised his readers "to give quick and general information concerning the intentions and behavior of our neighboring enemies, and put us on guard." The town trustees announced that "running or racing" horses on the streets would no longer be allowed. Warned Bradford: "That noted horse thief Mose Murphy is said to have been in this town in the early morning of Thursday last." A few days later the Gazette laconically announced that "on Tuesday last Jesse Suggs was executed in this town for horse stealing, agree- able to sentence of the late court of Oyer and Terminer."
Early in June, 1792, the first legislature convened in Lex- ington. Here the government of the new commonwealth was organized, and Governor Isaac Shelby took the oath of office with much pomp and ceremony. With the arrival of statehood Lexington rapidly became not only the foremost town of Ken- tucky, but of the entire Western Country. The haunting dread of Indian attacks gradually faded away. Coonskin caps and buckskin hunting shirts were replaced by fashionable attire of
4 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
the latest eastern styles, as the prosperous inhabitants grew more and more absorbed in the business of the town and the cultivation of the fine arts.
Stores bulged with large and varied assortments of mer- chandise—glass, china, hardware, coffee, Madeira and port wines, India nankeen, dimity, calicoes, tamboured and jaconet mus- lins, raw silk hose, imported linens and laces. Show windows which displayed samples of these luxuries also advertised luridly labeled packages of Sovereign Ointment for Itch, Dr. Gann's Anti-Bilious Pills, Damask Lip Salves, and Hamilton's Grand Restorative for Dissipated Pleasures. Posted in public places were attractive prices being paid by New Orleans dealers for Kentucky products delivered there by raft and flatboat.
On the middle fork of Elkhorn Creek that meandered through the outskirts of the rapidly growing town Edward West experimented with a "specimen of a boat worked by steam applied to oars," which the Gazette predicted "will be of great benefit in Navigation of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers," adding that "Mr. West intends to apply for a patent for this discovery."
Another invention newly arrived also received much public attention. It was the "physiognatrace," by which "perfect like- nesses can be taken in a few seconds."
The Reverend Jesse Head, who would someday win himself a place in history as the preacher who married Abraham Lin- coln's parents, and Porter Clay, Henry's brother, were said to be the best cabinetmakers in the new country. The "high finish" which they gave "to native cherry lumber precludes the regret that mahogany is not to be had but at an immense cost."
Several religious denominations were now strong enough to erect houses of worship, and the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Catholics had church buildings sufficiently attractive to excite the comment of early travelers.
At the several bookstores the best and latest offerings by eastern publishers could be had at "Philadelphia retail prices."
ATHENS OF THE WEST 5
A Main Street shop sold Clark's Ov id, Cicero's Orations, Scott's Dictionary, Watts' Psalms & Hymns, Davidson's Virgil, Buck- anan's Domestic Medicines. Mr. Mullanphy on Cross Street (later Broadway) announced a new stock soon to arrive which would contain many volumes on "law, physics, divinity, his- tory, novels, plays, German and French chapbooks, together with the latest music for flute and violin."
The growth of the public library, organized in 1795, now made it necessary to move into more commodious quarters, where it enjoyed the solid support of the town's leading citizens.
One of the earliest schools was the Lexington Grammar School, established by Isaac Wilson of "Philadelphia College," who was described by the wife of a prominent citizen as a "poor, simple-looking Simon," but a person with whom she was "thoroughly satisfied" as a teacher for her two young sons. Several girls' schools, including one for "little Misses," who were taught "reading and needle work," were well attended. Waldemare Mentelle, of whom more will appear hereafter, had "lately removed to the town of Lexington, where he pro- poses, with the assistance of his wife, to teach young people French language and dancing."
Transylvania Seminary, the struggling little Presbyterian school originally located in the house of its headmaster, now chartered as Transylvania University, had moved to a substan- tial brick building of eight rooms. Dr. Samuel Brown, graduate of Edinburgh, noted physician and teacher of medicine, uncle of the little girl who would one day be Mary Todd Lincoln's stepmother, was organizing the university's medical department. Dr. Brown, schooled in the "prophylactic use of the cow-pox," had already vaccinated more than 500 persons before the skep- tical physicians of New York and Philadelphia would under- take the experiment.7
However, the noted French traveler, Francois A. Michaux, made rather caustic observations on the "budding metropolis" when he visited Lexington in 1802. "They are nearly all natives of Virginia," said he. "With them, the passion for
6 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
gaming and spirituous liquors is carried to excess, which fre- quently terminates in quarrels, degrading to human nature. The public houses are always crowded, more especially during the sittings of the courts of justice. Horses and lawsuits com- prise the usual topic of their conversation. If a traveler happens to pass by, his horse is appreciated, if he stops he is presented with a glass of whiskey." But Michaux also noted that the homes of the Kentuckians were neat, the women "very atten- tive to their domestic concerns," Sundays scrupulously observed, and the children "kept punctually at school."8
The criticism of the Frenchman was no doubt substantially correct, certainly so as to the early practice of gaming in Lex- ington, which largely consisted of wagering on horse races and card playing. The "ancient and honorable" rites of the card table were the amusement of tavern loungers, travelers, and the best citizens alike. Even the dignified and respected John Bradford, editor of the Gazette, and the Honorable Henry Clay, gallant "Harry of the West," were not immune from this intriguing diversion in which the desire to win exceeded the mere love of pecuniary gain.
One morning these two gentlemen met each other on the street. Luck had deserted Bradford the previous evening, and the turn of the last card had made him debtor to Clay in the sum of $40,000.
"Clay," said Bradford, "what are you going to do about that money you won last night? My entire property, you know, won't pay the half of it."
"Oh, give me your note for five hundred dollars," said Clay nonchalantly, "and let the balance go." The note was promptly executed, and a few nights later chance frowned on Clay, and he lost $60,000 to Bradford. Next day the same conversation ensued as before, except the situation was reversed, and Brad- ford quickly dismissed the matter saying: "Oh, give me back that note I gave you the other day for five hundred dollars, and we'll call it square."9
It was not many years, however, before the citizen of Lex-
ATHENS OF THE WEST 7
ington could find other ways to spend his leisure. Early in the first decade of the new century a theater was built, and whatever itinerant troupes lacked in dramatic art was made up in range of repertoire. Playgoers of Lexington were treated to every- thing from Macbeth to the farce, Matrimony, or the Happy Imprisonment. The first menageries visited the town when permission was given Thomas Adron to "shew his lyon" on the public square and the Gazette advertised the exhibition of a "living elephant." "Perhaps the present generation may never have the opportunity of seeing a living elephant again," said Bradford editorially.
Wax figure exhibits, usually held in the ballroom of the local tavern at which the exhibitor stopped, were infrequent but popular sources of amusement. These figures depicted tragedies, famous personages, and great historical events. The killing of Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr had deeply aroused the Western Country, and the first waxworks which opened in Lexington, while Colonel Burr was then on his way to Kentucky, contained a graphic reproduction of the famous duel.10 Conspicuously elevated on a platform the images of Colonel Hamilton and Colonel Burr glared stolidly at each other over their long leveled pistols, and a card pinned to the latter's coattails bore a vivid, if inaccurate, description of the encounter:
Oh, Aaron Burr, what hast thou done? Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton. You got behind a bunch of thistle And shot him dead with a big hoss-pistol.
A few weeks later, when Colonel Burr and his attendant rode up to Wilson's Tavern at the end of a journey on horse- back from the "unhealthy and inconsiderable" village of Louis- ville,11 a small boy recognized him from the likeness he had seen at the waxworks and excitedly notified the proprietor of the celebrity's arrival. After a journey south, Burr returned to Lexington, where he remained for some time in consultation
8 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
with Harman Blennerhasset and others, and here, as it was later charged, Burr laid some of his deepest plans for the estab- lishment of a western empire.
He was still in town when Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daviess, United States district attorney, filed charges of treason against him, which were finally dismissed, in the midst of much popular excitement, on motion of his counsel, Henry Clay. When Colonel Burr was again arraigned for treason at Richmond, Virginia, Lexington was still hotly divided upon the question of the defendant's guilt, and the chief witness for the prosecu- tion was James Wilkinson, commanding general of the United States Army, an early citizen of Lexington and first captain of her famous light infantry company.
The Burr-Wilkinson controversy, however, was finally over- shadowed and forgotten as the storm clouds of war with Great Britain appeared in the distance. On June 22, 1807, the British warship Leopard bombarded the American frigate Chesapeake, its deck uncleared, into surrender, and the Western Country flamed with indignation. From that day on, the Lexington press never ceased to advocate war on England.12 It was firmly believed that British influence lay behind the Indian excursions that now began to spring up, and hostilities had actually begun on the frontier many months before the formal declaration of war. Early in November, 1811, Colonel Daviess left Lexington with a company of volunteers to join General William H. Harrison against the Indians on the upper Wabash, and on the morning of November 7 at the battle of Tippecanoe, Lexington suffered her first casualties of the War of 1812. Colonel Daviess fell mortally wounded at the head of his troops with three bullets in his breast.13
Lexington's own peerless Harry of the West with fiery elo- quence was leading the impetuous youth of the nation to a militant resentment of long-suffered foreign aggression, and when on Friday, June 26, 1812, the postrider galloped into town with news that Congress had at last declared war on Eng- land, enthusiasm and patriotic ardor swept aside all bounds.
ATHENS OF THE WEST 9
"Cannon were fired, Captain Hart's company of Volunteer In- fantry paraded, and joy and gladness beamed upon the coun- tenance of every friend of his country."14 "News of the Decla- ration of War," said the Gazette four days later, "arrived in this place on Friday last, when there was a firing of cannon and musquetry commenced, and kept up until late in the evening. . . . Houses were illuminated and most decided evi- dence of approbation of the measures, was everywhere mani- fested."
Six companies were quickly raised in Lexington and Fayette County. The muster ground swarmed with eager, smooth- cheeked lads and silent, grizzled Indian fighters, anxious to shoulder arms against the hated foe. The editor of the Gazette laid down his pen for a rifle and joined Captain Hart's infantry- men as a private.
August 18, 1812, was a gala day in Lexington. Never before had there been so many people in town. Streets were blocked, windows and doors jammed, as the Fifth Regiment of Kentucky Volunteers, with drums beating and colors flying, "marched through town amidst the cheers and acclamations of a vast concourse of their grateful fellow citizens." Refreshments were served at Saunders' Garden, followed by an eloquent and stir- ring address from Henry Clay, and then the raw but ardent troops adjusted their knapsacks and started on the long march toward the enemy somewhere in the wilderness of the North- west.
From the beginning of the new year the Kentucky Volun- teers, particularly the companies from the Bluegrass, were heavily engaged against motley hordes of savages and British regulars. The months that passed were full of anxiety and suspense for the women back home, though they kept busy with spinning wheel and knitting needle, making supplies for the troops at the front. "Warm linsey clothes, socks, blankets, linen shirts, and shoes will enable our brave militia who have marched away, to think only of the enemy, of battle, of revenge, and of victory," wrote one of them, "and with these the women
10 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
of Kentucky, like those of Sparta, will be charming in the eyes of their countrymen and terrible to their enemies."15
On February 9, 1813, the Gazette announced in leaded col- umns the ambush and terrible butchery at the River Raisin, where the finest sons of the Bluegrass had fallen by the score. Captain Nathaniel Hart, wounded and captured, had been scalped and murdered by a drunken Indian. Scarcely a home had escaped bereavement, and though inured to peril and bloodshed, the town was plunged into the deepest gloom and sorrow. Grief, however, soon gave way to indignation and a burning desire to avenge the massacre. Marching feet again trod the muster ground to the stirring accompaniment of fife and drum, and campfires blazed in every direction. The ven- erable Isaac Shelby, first governor of the commonwealth, who had again been called to the executive chair, announced that he would lead the recently organized battalions, and the news that the old Revolutionary hero of Kings Mountain was once more in the saddle caused widespread enthusiasm.
All during the following spring and summer the Kentuck- ians stalked their ancient enemies through the tangled under- brush of a strange country, forcing the British and their savage allies slowly northward. Resistance, however, was stubborn and there were bloody checks now and then. The disaster at Fort Meigs left many vacant chairs around the firesides of Lex- ington. But finally there came a bright sunny day in October when the postrider halted his foam-flecked pony at Wilson's Tavern with thrilling news and with ' 'Victory" printed in big letters on his hat.16
General Harrison had met a small force of British regulars under General Henry A. Proctor and about twelve hundred Indians commanded by their famous chief Tecumseh near the Thames River. At a critical stage of the contest Colonel Rich- ard M. Johnson led his mounted Kentuckians in a wild charge under a galling fire against the British flank, and then dis- mounting, his force engaged the Indians in a terrific hand-to- hand encounter. This time the blood-curdling war whoops
Transylvania University in the 1820's. From an old print owned by Transylvania College
Title page of The Kentucky Preceptor that Lincoln studied From the original in the F. M. heboid Collection
KENTUCKY PRECEPTOR.
CONTAINING
A NUMBER Or USEFUL LESSONS
FOR READING AND SPEAKING.
COMPILED FOP. T!IE ISE OF SCHOOLS.
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ATHENS OF THE WEST 11
were lost in frenzied shouts of "Remember the Raisin." Colonel Johnson, with five bullets in his body, his white horse smeared with gore from fifteen wounds, had slain the great Tecumseh with a bullet from his long, silver-mounted pistol! Most of the British and many Indians had surrendered, and the terror- stricken survivors fled in great disorder.17
The enthusiasm and rejoicing in Lexington at the news of this victory were boundless, and while cannon roared, the town was illuminated and plans were made for a banquet for Gov- ernor Shelby, Colonel Johnson, and other heroes of the battle. American soil was now free from British occupation in the Northwest, and a year later, hostilities were over.
At the close of the war with England, Lexington settled down for a long era of peace and cultural development.18 A traveler in 1816 was thus deeply impressed by the town and its inhabitants:
The beautiful vale of Town Fork, which in 1797, I saw varie- gated with corn fields, meadows, and trees [said Judge Brown], had in my absence been covered with stately and elegant build- ings—in short, a large and beautiful town had arisen by the creative genius of the West. The log cabins had disappeared, and in their places stood costly brick mansions, well painted and enclosed by fine yards, bespeaking the taste and wealth of their possessors. The leathern pantaloons, the hunting-shirts and leggings had been dis- carded, for the dress and manners of the inhabitants had entirely changed.
The scenery around Lexington almost equals that of the Elysium of the Ancients. Philadelphia, with all its surrounding beauties, scarcely equals it. The surface resembles the gentle swell of the ocean, when the agitations of a storm have nearly subsided. The roads are very fine and wide. The grazing parks have a peculiar neatness; the charming groves, the small, square and beautiful meadows, and above all, the wide spreading forests of corn waving in grandeur and luxuriance and perfuming the air with its fra- grance, combine to render a summer's view of Lexington inex- pressibly rich, novel, grand and picturesque.
The site of the town is in a valley, but the declivities are so
12 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
gentle that some travelers, not scrupulously accurate, have described it as a plain. Town Fork Creek waters the central parts of the town. . . . Main Street presents to the traveler as much wealth and more beauty than can be found in most of the Atlantic cities. It is about eighty feet wide, level, compactly built, well paved and having foot ways twelve feet wide on each side. . . .
There are two bookstores, and three printing offices, from which are issued as many weekly papers, viz: the Reporter and Kentucky Gazette, both Republican, and the Monitor, Federal, and the only one of that political caste in the State. The inhabitants are as polished, and I regret to add as luxurious as those of Boston, New York and Baltimore, and their assemblies are conducted with as much ease and grace, as in the oldest towns of the Union.19
The early twenties of the nineteenth century found Lex- ington a thriving place, noted far and wide for its culture and its educational institutions, and exceedingly proud of its dis- tinguished citizens who had won fame in arts, science, and politics.20
Set in a grove of large forest trees, Transylvania University occupied a spacious, three-storied, brick building containing thirty rooms and surmounted by a tall, ornate cupola. In a short time the first institution of higher learning in the West had become widely known for its able and learned faculty, and the scope and thoroughness of its courses of instruction. The reputation of the university at this period can perhaps be indicated by comparison of its enrollment with schools of rec- ognized study in the East. In March, 1821, Yale College had but thirty-seven more students than Transylvania; Harvard exceeded her by only four; while Union, Dartmouth, and Princeton were considerably outnumbered.21
No traveler stopped overnight at Wilson's Tavern without hearing much of the personal history of Dr. Constantine Rafin- esque, the early French- American naturalist and botanist; Mat- thew H. Jouett, artist and pupil of the celebrated Gilbert Stuart; Dr. Horace Holley, the gifted educator, president of Transylvania University; Gideon Shryock, the architect; John Breckinridge, attorney general in the cabinet of Thomas Jef-
ATHENS OF THE WEST 13
ferson; and Henry Clay, speaker of the national House of Rep- resentatives, idol of the Whig party, and candidate for President of the United States. And among the younger generation there were those who would also write their names into the pages of the nation's history— some of whom fate had marked for tragic roles.
Down on West Short Street a bright, vivacious little girl with a temperament like an April day romped with her broth- ers and sisters about the ample grounds of her father's com- fortable home. Her grandfather had been one of the party of hunters who gave the town its name that night in June nearly a half-century before. In her veins ran the blood of a long line of sturdy Americans, noted for their courage, character, and high achievements.
Frequently her playmate was a small lad in his first trousers, with black hair, twinkling gray eyes, and a firm, resolute chin. John C. Breckinridge would some day be Vice-President of the United States, a candidate for President against the girl's hus- band, and would go down, at the zenith of his fame, with the wreck of a lost cause. Two blocks away, a slender, fair-haired youth attended Transylvania. He would come to know these two children very well indeed as the years went by. Though a lad in his sixteenth year, he had been elected by his class to a high place of honor in the closing exercises of the college year. On commencement day those who looked at the program saw that the name of the young man who had just delivered the oration entitled "Friendship" was Jefferson Davis of Mis- sissippi.22
The following year Washington's birthday was celebrated at the Episcopal church with orations by Robert J. Breckinridge of the Whig Society and by Gustavius A. Henry of the Union Philosophical Society. In the evening, said the Kentucky Re- porter, "a large party of gentlemen attached to the Philosophi- cal Society dined at Giron's where sumptuous and elegant repasts were served and toasts were drunk with the applause
14 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
of the company." President Horace Holley and other members of the Transylvania faculty proposed several of the thirty-six toasts, among them being: "To the health and prosperity of Jefferson Davis, late a student of Transylvania University, now a Cadet at West Point— May he become the pride of our Coun- try and the idol of our Army."23
The educational advantages of Lexington, however, were not confined to those enrolled in her local institutions. Over in the backwoods of Indiana a tall, gangling, awkward youth in a linsey-woolsey shirt and outgrown buckskin breeches that exposed his sharp blue shinbones pored over a small volume bound in gray boards and entitled the Kentucky Preceptor.2* This little book which contained, as stated in its preface, "the most fascinating and instructive historical accounts, dialogues and orations, with the different kinds of reading in prose and verse" had been carefully "compiled for the use of schools" and published at Lexington by Maccoun, Tilford and Com- pany. "The great importance of having proper books put in the hands of the rising generation, at an early period of life," continued the preface, "must be sufficiently evident to every reflecting mind. It is from these that the mind receives, in the most of cases, its first and most lasting impressions."
Young Abraham Lincoln had obtained this book from Jo- siah Crawford, a tightfisted neighbor whom the boys derisively called "Old Blue Nose." A short time before he had borrowed Parson Weems' Life of Washington, which had been soaked by rain that blew through cracks in the Lincoln cabin. Abe had "pulled fodder" three days in payment for that damaged volume, and now he took special care that nothing should happen to the Kentucky Preceptor. Having learned to read, write, and "cipher to the Rule of Three," Lincoln's school days were over, but the choice literature between the covers of the Lexington compilation was an education in itself, and the backwoods boy absorbed it eagerly. Returning to the cabin after a hard day in the fields, he would "snatch a piece of corn-
ATHENS OF THE WEST 15
pone from the cupboard, sit down in a corner, cock his long legs up as high as his head and lose himself in the Kentucky Preceptor."25
"Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still slavery!" began an essay on "Liberty." "Still thou art a bitter draught, and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account." Another article, entitled "The Desperate Negro," told the pathetic story of a faithful slave who cut his own throat to escape a flogging at the hands of his master. The Preceptor also related how Demosthenes overcame his defects of speech by "putting pebble stones into his mouth" and speaking to the waves along the seashore; it quoted the burning words of Robert Emmet, the Irish patriot, as he stood condemned to death for treason, the inaugural address of Thomas Jefferson, and the exquisite lines of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
But even as Lincoln practiced the elocution lessons of the Preceptor from the stumps of Indiana clearings, the golden age of Lexington was swiftly drawing to a close. The churning wheels of a new invention, the steamboat, had diverted the current of trade to the river towns of Cincinnati and Louisville, toppling the inland metropolis from her pedestal of commercial supremacy. Yet the capital of the Bluegrass with her elegant homes, churches, seminaries, artists, and statesmen, "pervaded by an air of ease and politeness in the social intercourse of the inhabitants which evinced the cultivation of taste and good feeling," would serenely maintain for many a day unchallenged title to the proud sobriquet: "Athens of the West."26
TWO
The Lincolns of Fayette
iN 1782 Abraham Lincoln, eldest son of "Virginia" John Lincoln, left the old plantation in the Shenandoah Valley to find a new home in the Western Country. With his wife and children, household goods and flintlock rifle, he followed the blood-stained Wilderness Road over the rugged Cumberlands into the rolling, fertile lowlands of Kentucky. Four years later, wrapped in deerskins with a lead slug in his back, the pioneer was laid away in a rude grave on the slope of a little hill near Hughes' Station in Jefferson County.1
On September 23, 1782, Abraham's youngest brother Thomas married Elizabeth Casner and brought his wife to the paternal roof on Linville Creek. Following the death of "Vir- ginia" John, Thomas conveyed his interest in his father's estate to his brother Jacob for the sum of 560 pounds, giving 100 pounds of the purchase money to his mother, Rebecca Lincoln.2 Then he too gathered up his family and set out over the same road that his favorite brother had traveled nine years before.3
It is quite probable that Thomas Lincoln had been greatly impressed by the glowing descriptions of "Kaintuckee" that
THE LINCOLNS OF FAYETTE 17
Abraham had sent back home. At any rate, on November 14, 1792, he purchased from Lewis Craig 290 acres in Fayette County on the waters of the south fork of Elkhorn Creek in consideration of 400 pounds cash.4
Thomas Lincoln chose his new home with discriminating judgment. He did not locate in Jefferson County, as had Abra- ham, nor in Washington County, where his brother's widow Bathsheba and his nephews, Mordecai, Josiah, and his name- sake Thomas, then were living. These counties had thinner soil and a far less attractive topography than the Bluegrass region. The Lewis Craig farm was situated in one of the richest and most inviting spots in all Kentucky, just five miles from the town of Lexington.
During the next fifteen or sixteen years Thomas Lincoln became one of the most prosperous men in the South Elkhorn neighborhood. He owned slaves,5 and with this labor under the management of his older sons6 he kept the farm in a high state of cultivation, raising corn, tobacco, hemp, and many hogs which he slaughtered and dressed for the market. Lincoln himself seems to have been largely occupied in the operation of a flourishing stillhouse on Elkhorn Creek near a fine spring of clear limestone water where he manufactured an excellent brand of bourbon whisky.7 He also had money to lend, and the records of the Fayette Circuit Court between 1803 and 1809 show many suits filed by him against persons who had failed to pay their notes.8
The beginning of 1809 presented a sharp contrast in the fortunes of Thomas Lincoln of Fayette County and his nephew Thomas of Hardin County. It was a momentous year for them both, though neither knew it then. The younger man lived on Nolin Creek with his little family in a rude log cabin with a dirt floor and a stick chimney daubed with clay. The thin sterile soil of his rough hill farm yielded hardly more than the barest necessities of life. Yet the head of this humble house- hold was at peace with the world. Nancy Hanks was a good wife; their little daughter Sarah was two years old, and her
18 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
presence alone made the bare cabin far from cheerless. The Lincolns were expecting another child in a few weeks and hoping for a son.
The uncle, however, in spite of his Bluegrass farm, his comfortable home, his slaves, and his stillhouse, was an un- happy man. Clouds were gathering rapidly on the horizon of Thomas Lincoln's domestic life. And just twenty-five days before the "child of destiny" arrived at the Nolin Creek cabin, the storm broke on South Elkhorn. On that day Lincoln exe- cuted a deed of trust to his son-in-law, John O'Nan, and his wife Elizabeth which recited that "divers controversies has arisen between Thomas Lincoln and Elizabeth in so much that the said Elizabeth hath come to a final determination to reside with her husband no longer," and he conveyed for her benefit his livestock, household furniture, and other personal property including "one negro man named Major, one negro girl named Charlotte and one negro boy named Moses; one brown horse and saddle and bridle and a brindle cow that gives milk."9 By the same instrument Elizabeth "releases the said Thomas Lincoln from any further support in as full and compleat a manner as she is authorized by law to do."10 At the same time, Lincoln deeded his farm to his eight children, re- serving a life estate to himself.11
But before the summer was over, the family troubles seem to have been adjusted. On August 15, 1809, Lincoln signed a contract with his wife, who was then living in Shelby County with her daughter, Margaret O'Nan, and another son-in-law, David Rice, which provided "that said Thomas covenants and agrees with said Elizabeth and David that he the said Thomas will receive the said Elizabeth into his family and treat her kindly and provide for her and the children and in case he should fail to treat his wife Elizabeth as a wife ought to be treated, said Thomas agrees to depart from the family estate or farm and take nothing but a horse, saddle & bridle and all his clothes leaving the rest of the estate to his wife & children
THE LINCOLNS OF FAYETTE 19
and never to return, unless by consent of said Elizabeth and David to said farm."12
The reconciliation, however, was short-lived, and on March 31, 1810, Lincoln filed a suit in the Fayette Circuit Court to set aside the deed of conveyance which he had made to his wife and children. His bill of complaint contained a long recital of marital woe. He said that by " Forty years of hard labour" he had accumulated an estate worth several thousand pounds and "until his mind became distracted by the unhappy chain of differences with his said wife few men laboured harder & lived more honestly than himself"; that "he loves and de- sires his said wife & with truth can say that whatever of his conduct towards her that may have savoured of either injustice or cruelty has proceeded either from a deranged mind or casual intemperance & intoxication, and while he, with the deepest contrition and remorse laments & acknowledges those errors of his own life, it has been the misfortune of his wife to have her errors also."
He alleged further that the deed of trust was obtained from him when he was sick and that the "defts. Elizabeth and Abra- ham tore him out of his bed, his wife demanded the deed and actually approached to strike him with a chair & was about to strike him when plaintiff repeled the blow by striking her, when the said defendant, Abraham, the son, ordered plaintiff for a damned old rascal to strip himself & in the most beastly and barbarous manner beat plaintiff until he was satisfied." He also averred that his son-in-law, Rice, had converted to his own use "about 20 barrels of plaintiff's pork & that the deft. Abraham has taken and converted to his own use between 400 & 500 gallons of whisky."13
The answers of Elizabeth Lincoln, her son Abraham, and her sons-in-law, David Rice and John O'Nan, were filed in Fayette Circuit Court on September 18, 1810.
Defts. say that they deny that part of the bill which charges said settlement deeds to have been done through the machinations
20 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
of any one, and that the truth really is and was that these settle- ment deeds resulted from a most infamous and fraudulent project of the plaintiff to get clear of his wife— to be divorced with a view to getting married again to a young woman. To which end he applied to the Assembly without delay and as soon as he failed there he became excessively embarrassed to make up the difference again with his wife. . . . Thereupon the said Elizabeth came back and agreed to live with plff which she hath ever since done as a good and true wife, but the plff hath never since that period at- tended to anything about his house or place, and hath been very abusive to the deft, Elizabeth, & has twice kicked her with his feet 8c once thrown a chair at her & gives her very repeatedly the most abusive language. . . . Deft. Abraham, saith that it is wholly untrue that he did the violence to the plff which he states but the true reason of the plff's violence toward him is his defense of his mother's person & property from the plaintiff's hand, who desires it to dissipate away to the impoverishment of his wife and children.
On Thursday morning, December 13, 1810, the litigants met in the low-beamed parlor of John Keiser's Indian Queen Tavern in Lexington to take the depositions of witnesses for the defendants. At one end of the long pine table brought in from the taproom sat Thomas Lincoln with his attorney, Robert Wickliffe, one of the ablest land lawyers in the West, whose lofty stature and courtly manners made him widely known in later years as the "Old Duke."
At the other end of the table sat Elizabeth Lincoln, her son Abraham, and her sons-in-law, John O'Nan and David Rice. They also were represented by distinguished counsel, Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daviess, noted Indian fighter, prosecutor of Aaron Burr, the first western lawyer to appear before the Su- preme Court of the United States, and the brother-in-law of Chief Justice John Marshall. Between the parties, near the center of the table, sat the presiding justices, William Worley and John Bradford, editor and publisher of the Kentucky Ga- zette. Across from them stood a high-backed hickory chair with a cornhusk bottom for the witnesses.
The first witness introduced for the defendants was Peter
THE LINCOLNS OF FAYETTE 21
Warfield. He was a tenant, he said, on Lincoln's farm and lived within a quarter of a mile of his house. From his personal ob- servation the complainant's recent conduct toward his wife had not been "that of a kind and affectionate husband."
Colonel Daviess: Is the complainant the aggressor when dis- putes have arisen between himself and wife?
Witness: Most generally he is.
Colonel Daviess: During last winter, while the wife of the complainant was preparing to commence distilling, did not the complainant secret the caps & cocks of the still for the purpose of preventing her doing so?
Witness: It is my opinion that he did hide them, as he very readily found them when he wished to do so.
Mr. Wickliffe: Is not Mrs. Lincoln in the habit of frequent intoxication?
Witness: I have frequently seen her in that state since I became a tenant of her husband.
Mr. Wickliffe: Have you not heard the complainant's wife make use of very gross vulgar language to the complainant during their quarrels?
Witness: I have.14
Colonel Daviess: Is it not generally believed in the neighbor- hood that Mrs. Lincoln's intemperance proceeded from the bad conduct of her husband?
Witness: I believe it is.15
A youth by the name of James Fleming was next called by the defendants, and after being sworn, stated that "in the month of May or June, 1809, this deponent was harrowing corn for the complainant, when he asked this deponent if he pre- pared poison for his wife whether he would give it to her and said that if he would, he would give him the best horse on his farm, which proposition this deponent rejected."
Mr. Wickliffe: How long has it been since you first mentioned this circumstance?
Witness: About six months ago.
Mr. Wickliffe: Was there any previous conversation which led to this proposition?
22 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
Witness: There was not.
Colonel Daviess: Was the complainant in a state of intoxica- tion when he made you this proposition?
Witness: No, he appeared perfectly sober.16
Further interrogation showed that young Fleming was liv- ing at Peter Warfield's house, and it was insinuated by Lincoln's counsel that Warfield had influenced the boy's testimony.
It is evident from the papers in the case that the tenant, Peter Warfield, was one of the "evilly disposed persons" re- ferred to in Lincoln's bill of complaint, and that he held War- field responsible for the circulation of the story that he had attempted to bribe the Fleming boy to poison Mrs. Lincoln. Thomas Lincoln was no longer a young man, and doubtless his once robust physique was somewhat shattered by dissipation, but like all the Lincolns he did not lack personal courage, nor was he averse to a fight when aroused. The testimony taken that morning in the parlor of the Indian Queen must have enraged him intensely, for when the taking of the depositions had been adjourned, he promptly laid violent hands upon the luckless Peter and gave him a most terrific thrashing.
The office of the high sheriff was only three blocks away and the town watchhouse even closer, but Warfield did not have his assailant arrested. On the contrary, he went home and, having sufficiently recovered, came to town next morning and filed suit against Lincoln for assault and battery, alleging in his petition that on the previous day Thomas Lincoln did "with fists and feet commit an assault upon the said plaintiff & him, the said plff, then & there did beat, wound & evily treat so that his life was despaired of greatly."17
The litigation between the Lincolns dragged along until June 13, 1811, when an order was entered which recited that "The parties having agreed, it is ordered that this suit be dis- missed."18 Evidently the termination of the suit was hastened by the fact that Colonel Daviess, counsel for defendants, was leaving that day with his regiment to join General Harrison in his campaign against the Indians on the Wabash.
THE LINCOLNS OF FAYETTE 23
The record is silent as to the terms of the settlement, but there is good reason to believe that the case did not end favor- ably to Thomas Lincoln. Certainly he never regained his for- mer prosperity or much, if any, of his property. On the contrary, he seems to have gone steadily down to utter insol- vency, and perhaps poverty, during the years that followed.19
Only once more before his death did the name of Thomas Lincoln appear in the public records. Nearly a year after the end of the Fayette County litigation in which he was so disas- trously involved, Thomas was called as a witness on May 19, 1812, to identify the signature of his deceased brother, Captain Abraham Lincoln.
Mordecai Lincoln, the captain's son, had brought a suit in the Nelson Circuit Court against Benjamin Grayson, guardian for the heirs of John Reed, alleging that Abraham Lincoln in the year 1783 had procured a warrant for 2,268 acres of land "at the lower end of the first Narrows below the first Buffalo crossing above the mouth of Bear Creek" and running down to Green River; that it was agreed between Lincoln and Reed that the latter should receive half the land for locating and surveying it, but that Reed had forged Lincoln's name to the assignment— spelling it, however, "Linkhorn"— and had then "fraudulently claimed all of it as his own."
During the taking of his deposition at the statehouse in Frankfort, Thomas Lincoln was asked by Mordecai: "Do you know how my father Abraham Lincoln spelt his name?" To which the witness replied: "He spelt it Abraham Lincoln."
"Are you acquainted with Abraham Lincoln's handwriting?" asked Mordecai.
"I am," replied Thomas, "having lived near him and seeing his writing often." The witness was then shown the questioned signature on the Reed document, and he emphatically declared it to be a forgery.20
Peter Warfield did not press his action for assault and bat- tery, and having found a more peaceful place of abode beyond the pale of Thomas Lincoln's wrath and the jurisdiction of the
24 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
court, he let the case be dismissed.21 "I had a very teageous journey," writes Warfield from St. Genevieve, Louisiana, "I was six weaks on the road but feal myself purfectly satisfyde with the cuntry."22
Thus, the dust-stained archives of the Fayette Circuit Court through a tragic, long-forgotten litigation reveal glimpses of Thomas Lincoln more intimate and personal than has ever been known of any other Lincoln except the President himself. But the cause of the trouble which brought ruin to the once happy household on South Elkhorn will remain unknown. Whether Thomas Lincoln finally succumbed to the nagging of a shrewish spouse, or fell an unwilling victim to the wiles of some rural vampire, or deliberately in his old age wandered away from the domestic rooftree in search of adventure, cannot now be ascertained. It is probable, however, that mutual indul- gence to excess in the mellow juice of Kentucky corn was a vital factor in the marital unhappiness of Thomas and Eliza- beth Lincoln.
The exact date of Thomas Lincoln's death is uncertain, though it occurred sometime during 1820. He was living on January 21 when Harbin Moore wrote his attorney and com- plained of "old Lincoln keeping himself concealed for eighteen months."23 But on December 11 commissioners were appointed to divide among his children the land conveyed by the deed of trust, and the order recited that Thomas Lincoln was de- ceased.24
In a few years the Lincolns disappeared from Fayette Coun- ty, and the court records indicate the removal of some of them to Missouri. Wherever they went, they now sank out of sight like all the rest of Abraham Lincoln's collateral relatives, never to make themselves known to their great kinsman in the tragic years of his fame.25
THREE
The Early Todds
AMONG the party of woodsmen who founded Lexington was Levi Todd, a stalwart Pennsylvanian just recently arrived in Kentucky.1 He and his two older brothers, John and Robert, were the sons of David Todd of Providence Township, Mont- gomery County, Pennsylvania. They had been educated in Virginia at the school of their uncle, the Reverend John Todd, who later obtained from the state legislature the charter for Transylvania Seminary and gave it the first library brought to Kentucky.2
Levi, John, and Robert had embarked upon the study of law, but dry parchment and musty tomes were not for them. Their ancestors were stubborn, restless Scottish Covenanters who had fiercely opposed the Duke of Monmouth at Bothwell Bridge and in defiance of the Established Church of England had fled their native heath for the north of Ireland and thence to America. The "Dark and Bloody Ground," the land of adventure, romance, and opportunity, lay beyond the hazy Al- leghenies, and in 1775 the three Todd brothers bade farewell to the Old Dominion and journeyed westward over the toma- hawk-blazed Wilderness Road.
26 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
Levi Todd went directly to Harrodsburg but soon joined the defenders of the fort at St. Asaph's in Lincoln County. Here he married Jane Briggs on February 25, 1779. Later he founded Todd's Station and became the clerk of the first court held in the Western Country.3 In 1780 he moved to Lexington, purchased property at the first sale of town lots, and was ap- pointed the first clerk of the Fayette County Court, which office he held until his death many years later.
Like his two brothers, Levi Todd took an active part in the military operations of the pioneers. He was a lieutenant under General Clark in his expedition against Kaskaskia and Vincennes, and participated in several retaliatory excursions against the Indians in the Northwest Territory. In the thickest of the ill-fated fight at Blue Licks, he was one of the few officers to survive the battle. Later he succeeded Colonel Daniel Boone in command of the Kentucky militia with the rank of major general.4
General Todd was deeply interested in every enterprise that went to the development of Lexington and the new common- wealth, and for many years he was a member of the board of trustees of Transylvania University.5 "Ellerslie," his elegant country estate situated on the Richmond Pike just beyond "Ashland," the home of Henry Clay, was one of the show places around Lexington, and here he reared a family of eleven chil- dren.
Robert Smith Todd, the seventh child, was born February 25, 1791.6 He was brought up from the time he could read and write in the office of the Fayette County clerk and entered Transylvania at the early age of fourteen. According to Dr. James Blythe, the president, he studied "Mathematics, Geog- raphy, Rhetoric, Logic, Natural & Moral Philosophy, Astron- omy, perfected himself in the Latin language, made consider- able progress in the Greek & history & conducted himself in a becoming & praiseworthy manner."7
By the time Robert S. Todd left college he was nearly six feet in height, erect and graceful in manner, with brown hair and eyes and a ruddy complexion. He immediately entered
Fhomas Lincoln's stillhouse near Lexington ^holograph taken by the author
Ellkrslie," home of Levi Todd, as it looked just before it was razed
Robert S. Todd From an original oil portrait
owned by the author
THE EARLY TODDS 27
the office of Thomas Bodley, clerk of the Fayette Circuit Court, where, said Bodley, he "supported a fair and unblemished character, remarkable for his industry, integrity and correct deportment."8 In addition to his clerical duties he studied law under the tutelage of George M. Bibb, chief justice of the Ken- tucky Court of Appeals, United States senator, and secretary of the treasury under President Tyler, and on September 28, 1811, he was admitted to the bar.9
It is possible that the young lawyer hung out his shingle for a brief period in Lexington, but if he did, there is no record of it. In any event he kept his job with Bodley, and he had good reason to do so. He was more than absorbed in wooing seventeen-year-old Eliza Parker, and if he should be so fortunate as to win her, he must save enough from his earn- ings in the clerk's office to sustain them over the lean years which confronted every fledgling barrister.
The Parkers were among the most substantial people of the town. Major Robert Parker, an officer in the Revolution and first cousin of Levi Todd, had in March, 1789, married Elizabeth R. Porter, eldest daughter of General Andrew Porter, a friend of General Washington and veteran of the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Germantown. Immedi- ately following the wedding the young soldier and his bride had set out on horseback from Pennsylvania over the moun- tains to Lexington, where they arrived in May.10
Major Parker was the first surveyor of Fayette County, the clerk of the first board of trustees of Lexington, and according to tradition he erected the first brick residence in the town. When on March 4, 1800, Major Parker died at his country seat in Fayette County, the Gazette described him as "an early adventurer to Kentucky— of extensive acquaintance— and uni- versally esteemed."11
Under the terms of Major Parker's will his widow and children were left a comfortable fortune consisting of town lots, farmlands, slaves, and personal property. The whole of the estate was devised to Mrs. Parker during her life, with only one injunction: "It is my sincere will and desire," wrote
28 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
the testator a few hours before his death, "that all my children shall be carefully brought up and well educated."12
In 1811 the Widow Parker lived in a rather imposing house on West Short Street, and her children attended the best schools in Kentucky. Her daughter Eliza was sprightly and attractive, with a placid, sunny disposition, a sharp con- trast to her impetuous, high-strung cousin, Robert S. Todd.
The courtship was progressing in a manner highly satis- factory to all concerned, when suddenly there came the rattle of "musquetry" and the booming of cannon as the delighted inhabitants of Lexington greeted the declaration of war against Great Britain. The thrill of combat from a long line of fighting ancestors ran through the veins of both the young deputy clerk and his sweetheart. Although barely twenty-one, Todd was already captain of a local company of raw militiamen, and now he eagerly began to prepare them for immediate service.13 However, on finding that the quota of Nathaniel Hart's veteran organization was yet unfilled, Captain Todd promptly dis- banded his own company and enlisted with his men in the Lexington Light Infantry, a proud military outfit that dated back to the time of "Mad Anthony" Wayne.14
In a few weeks the Fifth Kentucky Regiment was ready to start for the general rendezvous at Georgetown, and on that memorable day in August, 1812, as the "Old Infantry," re- splendent in "brilliant uniforms of blue, with red facings, bell- buttons and jaunty red cockades floating from their black hats," marched down Short Street, Eliza Parker waved a brave good- by to Private Todd from the side porch of her mother's house.
From Georgetown the Kentucky troops marched rapidly northward through a continual downpour of rain, and as the Old Infantry reached Newport, Robert S. Todd was stricken with pneumonia. For several weeks he lay dangerously ill in a rude shack on the low, marshy campground along the Ohio River, and when the regiment pushed on, Todd was left be- hind under the care of his brother Samuel, who after a few weeks brought him back home to Lexington.
THE EARLY TODDS 29
Recuperating quickly, the young soldier soon began to think of his comrades now slowly plodding in quest of the enemy through unbroken forests toward the Great Lakes. Every issue of the Reporter and the Gazette contained accounts of their hardships and adventures, until Todd, now fully re- covered, found that he could no longer remain at home while the companions of his boyhood braved the perils of approach- ing winter in a wilderness infested by a treacherous foe. Plucky Eliza Parker was again willing that he should go. Moreover, she was willing to become his wife before he went, and on November 26, 1812, at the home of the Widow Parker, Eliza was married to Private Robert S. Todd of the Fifth Regiment, Kentucky Volunteers.15 On the following day the young hus- band kissed his bride good-by and with his brother Sam rode off to join their comrades of the Old Infantry encamped in sleet and snow at the rapids of the Maumee.
Crossing swollen, icebound streams and struggling through snowdrifts, the two brothers arrived at Fort Defiance just in time to join the detachment of Kentucky troops commanded by Colonel Lewis in a relief expedition against Frenchtown on the River Raisin, and they were in the thickest of that ghastly encounter with Proctor and his Indians.16 The red and blue uniforms of Captain Hart's Lexington boys were conspicuous targets for savage rifles, and when the massacre was over, Captain Hart and half of his company lay dead and tomahawked in the snow.17 Sam Todd and another brother John were both wounded and captured.18 John ran the gaunt- let and escaped, but Sam was adopted into a tribe and remained captive for more than a year before he was ransomed for a barrel of whisky.
Robert S. Todd went through the horrible experience un- scathed. Before the year of 1813 was over, he returned to Lex- ington, where he and his young wife went to housekeeping in a comfortable dwelling which he erected on a lot belonging to the Parker estate, adjoining his mother-in-law on Short Street.19
FOUR
The Little Trader from Hickman Creek
On AN early autumn day in 1801 Samuel Offutt of Fred- erick County, Maryland, drove his yoke of oxen, hitched to a sturdy wagon with solid wooden wheels, over the Wilderness Road into the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. With him were his wife Elizabeth, his sons, Tilghman, Otho, Resin, Samuel, and Denton, and his two daughters, Eleanor and Arah. Two more sons, Azra and Zedekiah, and a daughter, Sarah, would be born in the Western Country.1
The Offutts of Frederick and Prince George counties, Mary- land, had been people of means and prominence since early colonial days. Samuel's great-great-grandfather, William Offutt, had owned large plantations in Prince George County, includ- ing "Clewerwell," "Neighborhood," "Gleaning," and "Calver- ton Ridge." Before leaving Maryland, Samuel had disposed of a considerable estate willed him by his father, William Offutt the Third.
Shortly after his arrival in Kentucky, Samuel acquired a large tract of rolling, fertile land eight miles southeast of Lex- ington on the waters of Hickman Creek. Here he erected a comfortable two-story residence of hewn logs with an elaborate
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 31
hand-carved double front doorway of wild cherry. The house was weatherboarded, with a wide wing on the side nearest the creek and a long ell in the rear.
Samuel furnished his new home with many heirlooms which he had brought with him over the Wilderness Road on his several trips from Maryland to Kentucky— four-posters, a tall mahogany grandfather clock, Windsor chairs, tables, chests, cup- boards, mirrors, sideboards, gold-edged chinaware, coin silver forks, spoons and ladles, an elegant tea service, Irish linens, and all sorts of cooking utensils.2
For many generations the Offutt family had been breeders of fine horses, and it was not long before Samuel had one of the best stock farms in the Bluegrass. In addition to horses he raised mules, sheep, cattle, and hogs, sending large cargoes of livestock each year down the Ohio and Mississippi to Natchez and New Orleans. He owned slaves and occasionally hired out his surplus labor, but there is no record of any sale of his Negroes.3 He also had money to loan, and if debtors who could pay refused to do so, he sued them with an alacrity which induced one hapless defendant to denounce him, but without avail, as "a gripping, mercenary character."4
Offutt was a man whose education was above the average in central Kentucky. He wrote a good hand, kept his accounts neatly, figured accurately. A firm advocate of schools, he built a schoolhouse on his own land fronting the Tates Creek Pike for the benefit of his own children and those of other families of the neighborhood.
At this time his son Tilghman had married and now lived in Logan County, Kentucky, and his daughters, Eleanor and Arah, also had found husbands and had moved to homes of their own. The other Offutt boys— Otho, Resin, Samuel, Den- ton, and, later, Azra— attended school— all of them regularly except Denton. Intelligent, industrious, imaginative, ambi- tious, Denton was almost from infancy a typical ''young man in a hurry." For him "book learning" was indeed a waste of time. He intended to go into business— to make money— to be rich some day. Some of the outstanding citizens in Lexing-
32 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
ton who had reached the pinnacle of success in trade and finance could hardly read or write! Even in law and states- manship, look at Mr. Clay who had received but little formal education!
In winter young Denton, besides running his own trap lines, hung around Chrisman's mill, especially in January when "hides" were "prime," buying mink and otter skins from other farm boys in the community. In spring and summer he helped his father prepare livestock for market. Even in early youth his amazing influence over animals was a subject of wide com- ment. He could handle with the greatest ease— quietly and gently— the wildest horse or the most obstinate mule.
Yet for all his scorn of schooling Denton was a worshiper of brains, and his hero was his younger brother Azra, who loved books, became a student at Transylvania, and graduated from its famous College of Medicine in the class of 1826. He boasted about Azra. Nobody had ever read so fine a piece as his thesis: "The Trephining in Injuries of the Head."5 Azra, declared Denton, would some day be the greatest physician and surgeon in the United States!
Brother Tilghman's horse breeding, training, and general livestock business prospered greatly in Logan County. By the early twenties he was far on his way to what he actually be- came a few years later— the largest taxpayer in that part of the state. Every spring he came to the Bluegrass and bought fine brood mares to breed to his stallions, especially his great trot- ting sire "Hamiltonian."6 In October of each year Denton and Tilghman's son Joe— said to have been the very "spit and image," both physically and temperamentally, of his uncle- drove large herds of stock overland to Natchez. In March they took them by flatboat down the flooded waters of Green River to the Ohio and thence to New Orleans.
On January 25, 1827, Samuel Offutt died. "Aged 76 years, and an inhabitant of this state for the last 26 years," said the Lexington Reporter.7 By the terms of his will he left to his wife Elizabeth his plantation and its equipment and all house-
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 33
hold goods for life, all of his slaves not specifically devised to others, and her choice of "four head of horses, four head of cows, twenty head of hogs and twenty head of sheep" from his stock on hand. The testator bequeathed to Resin "one negro man named Harry," to Azra "one negro man named Charles," to Denton "one negro man named George," to Arah "one negro girl named Mary." For the support and education of his grandson, William Offutt Thompson, he bequeathed a "negro girl named Caroline & also a negro boy named Gabriel." The residue of his property he left in equal shares to Otho, Tilghman, Samuel, Resin, Azra, Denton, and Arah.8
Several years previously Resin Offutt had set out with a party of adventurous Lexingtonians for the Missouri frontier. Glowing reports had come back of his quick success in trading in furs and horses with the Indians along the Platte River and in shipping cargoes down the river to St. Louis. It is quite evident from the local records that after the death of his father, Denton also determined to seek his fortune in the trading business which was making Resin rich in the West.
On January 19, 1829, Denton sold his one-seventh interest in the home place to his brother Samuel and also disposed of his Negro George, and all other personalty which he had re- ceived under the will of his father. By the fall of 18299 he had converted all available resources into cash, which probably amounted to as much as $2,000, and was ready to seek fame and fortune in a new country. But he left the old home on Hickman Creek with a heavy heart. Having acquired all the interest of the other heirs in his father's plantation, Dr. Azra had married lovely Antoinette Caroline Hale and with his bride moved there to live with his mother. That summer cholera broke out in the neighborhood, and on July 19, 1829, Antoinette, to the great distress of Azra and Denton, had been suddenly stricken with it and had died within a few hours.10
It is not known just when Denton Offutt arrived in Illinois, nor, indeed, why he went there at all, but he was first heard
34 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
from one day in February, 1831, when he stopped at the house of John Hanks in Macon County, near Decatur. It is possible that Offutt had heard of Hanks on some of his river trips with nephew Joe. In any event, he informed Hanks that he under- stood he had been "quite a flat boatman in Kentucky," and, said Hanks, "he wanted me to run a flat boat for him."11 Hanks was willing to undertake the job and suggested as another member of the crew his young cousin, Abraham Lincoln, re- cently arrived in Illinois, who also had had flatboat experience while living in Indiana.
"I hunted up Abe," said Hanks, "and introduced him and John D. Johnston, his step-brother, to Offutt. After some talk, we made an engagement with Offutt at 50c a day and $60.00 to make a trip to New Orleans."12
Offutt is described by those who saw him about that time as "a short, rather stockily built man, of good natured, amiable disposition, free handed and of great sociability— a trader and speculator who always had his eyes open to the main chance."13
Thus it happened that about the middle of March, 1831, Hanks and Lincoln paddled down the Sangamon River in a canoe to Judy's Ferry, where they met Johnston. Together they walked the five miles into Springfield, where they found their convivial employer entertaining friends at the Buckhorn, the town's leading tavern.
Having been unable to rent a flatboat, Offutt hired them to cut timber on government land and float the logs down the river to Fitzpatrick's mill, where lumber could be sawed to build a craft, eighty feet long and eighteen feet wide. Camp- ing in a "shanty shed," which they had hastily put up, the three men ate Lincoln's cooking, except for the few times when they were invited to the nearby cabin of Caleb Carman. Look- ing at the tall, gangling youth clad in a short, blue jean coat, trousers that exposed more than eighteen inches of sharp shin- bone, a broad-brimmed hat of buckeye splints perched jauntily on the back of his unruly shock of heavy black hair, Carman
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 35
thought he was a "Green horn," though "after a half hour's conversation with him, I found him no Green horn."14
Books being unavailable, Lincoln participated in the game of seven-up, played of evenings with Hanks and Johnston and others who visited the camp, handling his cards with excep- tional skill and entertaining everybody with his droll humor and funny stories.15 Finally after about six weeks the boat was finished and loaded with barrel pork, corn, and live hogs. Slowly it swung out from the marshy river bank— Skipper Offutt on deck, watching with growing admiration the stalwart, sin- ewy Lincoln as with mighty sweeps of the huge steering oar he maneuvered the clumsy craft into the current of the muddy Sangamon.
Skipper and crew had proceeded, however, only a few miles when serious trouble overtook them. At a little settlement called New Salem flood waters had receded so that the boat stuck on the milldam and hung there part way over for a day and a night. Most of the cargo, including the hogs, was trans- ferred to another boat. Lincoln then quickly solved what the watching villagers declared to be an insurmountable difficulty by borrowing a large auger and boring holes in the end of the vessel that projected over the dam. When the water that had leaked in ran out, the holes were plugged, barrels of pork pushed forward, and the boat then lurched over the dam with a resounding splash. Profoundly impressed by this exhibition of his new boathand's ingenuity, glowing with admiration at this fresh evidence of Lincoln's talents, Offutt declared to the crowd on the bank that he intended to build a steamboat especially to meet the obstacles of the Sangamon. She would have rollers for shoals and dams, runners for snow and ice, and with Lincoln as her captain "by thunder she'll have to go!"16
Down the river the boatmen went without further mishap into the broader, deeper Illinois, past Beardstown, where peo- ple on the shore laughed at the strange-looking craft with sails
3(5 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
of plank and cloth and its grunting, squealing freight, out upon the wide Mississippi, past St. Louis, where John Hanks left them, past Cairo, tying up for a day at Memphis, with brief stops at Vicksburg and Natchez.17 Then in early May, Offutt and his weather-beaten little crew poled into the busy harbor of New Orleans, where they would remain for a month while the owner leisurely and profitably disposed of his cargo.
One morning, strolling about town, taking in the sights, the men from Illinois came upon a slave auction. A handsome, light mulatto girl stood on the block, while prospective bidders pinched her flesh and otherwise satisfied themselves that the merchandise offered was of the quality proclaimed. For a few minutes they silently watched the revolting scene. Then Lin- coln turned away. "By God, boys, let's get away from this," he exclaimed in horror.18
In June, Offutt and his party boarded a steamboat for St. Louis. By this time a strong attachment existed between Lin- coln and his employer. The voluble, energetic, optimistic little Lexingtonian seemed widely traveled, as he talked of Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and the river towns of the Mississippi. Moreover, Offutt was a devoted fol- lower of Henry Clay, whom Lincoln had so much admired since he first began to read about him in the Louisville Journal at Gentryville. Offutt could not remember when he did not know, at least by sight, "Gallant Harry"; and his personal acquaintance with the great man, his oratorical ability and political triumphs, lost nothing in the telling.
Lincoln had completely charmed the little trader. He was in Offutt's opinion the shrewdest, best-read, most resourceful young man he had ever met. In fact, he was as smart and already knew as much about books as brother Azra, which from Denton was a very high compliment indeed. Fun loving, good humored, honest, Lincoln seemed to have all the qualities for a successful merchant, and before the boat arrived at St. Louis, Offutt had employed him to run a store which he in- tended to open at New Salem just as soon as goods could be
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 37
bought and delivered. Offutt got off the packet at St. Louis, where he was to purchase the merchandise and arrange for shipping and hauling it, while Lincoln started on foot for home, 120 miles away. Thomas Lincoln then lived at Buck Grove in Coles County, and Lincoln stayed there with his father for several weeks until it was time to meet his employer.
It was late in July, 1831, when Abraham Lincoln trudged to New Salem. Offutt had not arrived, and Lincoln did not know the reason until later. His mother had died on February 21. Having been notified that his presence was needed in the settlement and division of her estate, he had made a brief trip back to Kentucky.19 Embarking on his new venture with Lin- coln, he could use his share just now to excellent advantage.
He was distressed, however, to find brother Azra still utterly disconsolate over the loss of his lovely Antoinette, dead now two years that month. The doctor could not forget that at the time his wife became ill he was attending several patients suf- fering from the same malady from which she had died, and he had developed a fixation that he had "brought it home to her." Neglecting his practice, avoiding friends, he would sit for hours at the foot of her grave under the old trees in the orchard at the back of the house.
But beckoning fortune in young, virile, but somnolent Illinois visualized through the rose-tinted glasses of his incor- rigible optimism— Offutt, the Merchant Prince of the Sanga- mon, who would awaken this backwoods giant to a realization of his strength and potentialities— made it impossible to dwell at length even upon family afflictions. Selling his share of his mother's estate to Otho, he hurried back to keep his commit- ments with the waiting Lincoln.
The store opened about September 1, 1831, in a log cabin at the edge of the bluff above the village mill.20 It was a typical frontier establishment, with dry goods and whisky— liquor in quantity, but not by the drink— as much a part of the store as coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, tobacco, and gunpowder.21 In a short time the proprietor found his faith in his young clerk
38 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
so fully justified that he rented the mill from Rutledge and Cameron and put Lincoln, with "Slicky" Bill Greene as his assistant, in charge of the "whole shebang."22 Several times each day Lincoln's long legs carried him quickly from store to mill and back to store again.
Meanwhile, the little trader from Hickman Creek was also busy. On his Kentucky saddle horse he rode across the prairies and through the Sangamon bottoms, urging the production of bigger and better crops. Improvement in river transporta- tion afforded an easy, natural outlet. He would prove the Sangamon navigable except, possibly, at the lowest ebb in summer. He would buy all the grain and pork the farmers of the region could raise, process what was needed for their family use at his mill, settle their accounts at his store with part of it, and sell the excess in New Orleans. These were to be first links in a chain of integrated enterprises which event- ually would make every participant a man of fortune.
Lincoln found little in frontier life that he had not known before in Indiana. Religion was demonstrative and the use of ardent spirits widely prevalent. Community intercourse was centered about the familiar camp meetings, log rollings, house raisings, and trading excursions to the village on Satur- day afternoons.
But the devilry of the Clary's Grove boys added a spice and zest to New Salem atmosphere that Gentryville never had. Wild, reckless, impulsive, yet warmhearted, honest, and truth- ful—physical courage and strength their ideals of perfect man- hood—these young rowdies, largely descendants of Kentuckians who had brought their racing stock and game chickens to the frontier country, were equally ready for fight or frolic.23 Hos- tile to strangers whose "nerve" was yet untested, they stood aloof from Lincoln until one sunny afternoon, under the giant oak near Offutt's store, when droll, whimsical destiny sum- moned him by boastful proclamation of the infatuated little merchant from the Bluegrass.
Lincoln had grown steadily in the exalted esteem of his
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 39
employer— both as to physical and mental endowments. In New Salem and up and down the Sangamon valley Offutt extravagantly praised Lincoln's skill as a businessman and his amazing intellectual attainments, proclaimed him to be "the smartest man in the United States," and declared that he could "outrun, outjump, whip or throw down" any man in Sangamon County.24
So it happened that on this particular Saturday afternoon Offutt strutted back and forth in front of his store hailing passers-by with wide sweeps of an arm and a fist full of silver, offering to bet ten dollars on the manly prowess of his protege. Lincoln was inside the store when it started, but as soon as he heard of it he hurried out and tried to stop his overen- thusiastic employer, saying emphatically that he had no desire whatever to engage in any contest of this nature. It was too late, however, because Bill Clary had run out of his saloon next door, accepted the challenge, and named Jack Armstrong, leader of the Clary's Grove boys, as Lincoln's opponent. Arm- strong was a big-boned, square-built man of medium height, "strong as an ox," weighing over two hundred pounds, a vet- eran in frontier "kick, bite and gouge" combat, who had thrown or whipped every man who had wrestled or fought him.25 Lincoln weighed one hundred eighty-five pounds, was six feet four inches tall, cool, self-possessed, deceptively agile, and quick on his large feet.
Everybody in the village seemed to get word of the im- pending battle at the same time, and all turned out to witness what promised to be a thrilling example of the age-old contest between the lion and the panther. Whooping and "hollering," the Clary's Grove boys formed a circle, offering to wager knives, cash, trinkets, and whisky on their Jack but finding few takers except Offutt, who loudly continued to predict victory for his incomparable clerk, backing him to the limit of his available resources.
The two men, stripped to the waist, crouched, eyed each other, sidled cautiously, clenched, broke, grappled again, tug-
40 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
ging, twisting. Armstrong felt the tremendous strength of long, sinewy, rail-mauling arms; Lincoln staggered under the impact of powerful shoulders. Armstrong craftily tried his famous "hip lock," then the devastating "grape vine trip," but to no avail. All the tricks known to the backwoods "rassle" left both men on their feet, but Armstrong finally felt himself fading under the furious pace. Struggling finally to break a headlock, furious with pain and frustration, he now resorted to a maneuver which except in dire extremity he would have scorned. Lunging forward, he stomped the instep of Lincoln's foot with his boot heel, hoping that surprise, if not actual injury, would break the crushing hold that held his head viselike against his adversary's lean, hard body. But the foul backfired most disastrously for Armstrong. Infuriated at such tactics, before Jack could recover his balance Lincoln in a supreme effort lifted him high in the air and with a mighty heave flung him over his head. Hitting the ground flat on his back, Jack lay there shocked and stunned by the heavy fall.
At this moment the Clary's Grove boys, snarling "Kentucky and Irish curses," rushed forward to avenge their dethroned champion; but the defiant Lincoln, with his back against the store wall, dared them to tackle him one at a time and shouted his willingness to fight them all. Just then the vanquished Armstrong, who had a prodigious admiration for courage and brawn, rushed through the milling crowd and grasped Lin- coln's hand. "He's the best feller that ever broke into this settlement," he declared.26
Biographers agree that it would be almost impossible to overestimate the importance of this episode in its effect upon Lincoln's later life. In a single hour this penniless and almost friendless youth had acquired an ever-expanding group of stanch, fiercely loyal admirers who would serve him well in the near future and later, as he started upon that amazing political career which would end so tragically in smoke and flags and martyrdom.27
Offutt, of course, was almost beside himself with pride at
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 41
the adulation now being showered on his protege and the inflation of his own self-esteem. He bragged more than ever and let no one forget that recent events had fully verified his most extravagant predictions. But his unclouded happiness was not long to be enjoyed. The November 2, 1831, issue of the Kentucky Reporter contained a poignant news item: "On Thursday morning last, Dr. Azra Offutt of Jessamine County put an end to his existence by hanging himself with a rope. He was a very industrious, sober, moral citizen in good cir- cumstances and in the prime of life." The brokenhearted Azra had gone to join his beloved Antoinette under the old trees in the orchard. Denton had lost the man who held first place in his affections, whose intellectual attainments he had ad- mired most until he met Lincoln.
The Reporter of December 6 advertised the "Public Sale of the Personal Estate of Dr. Azra Offutt, dec'd."— his Negroes, his horses, cattle, mules and other livestock, his library, in- cluding "a handsome assortment of medical books." A post- script to the notice added, "All those who borrowed books belonging to the library of Dr. Offutt are requested to return them before the hour of sale."
Strange as it may now seem, it was Lincoln's ability to read books that astounded so many of his devoted friends. That he could write, too, was almost beyond the bounds of concep- tion. But to Offutt and the few other citizens of New Salem who had known men of intellect, it was the directness and precision of Lincoln's mental processes and his passion for bare facts that impressed them more than anything else. Har- vey Ross, the mail carrier, observed this on one occasion and remembered it in old age. He wanted to buy a pair of buck- skin gloves and asked Lincoln if he had any that would fit him. "There's a pair of dogskin gloves that I think will fit you," said Lincoln, throwing them on the counter, "and you can have them for seventy- five cents."
Ross was surprised to hear them called "dogskin." He knew
42 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
that the women of the neighborhood made all the gloves that were worn in that part of the country from deerskins tanned by the Indians, and that a large, dressed buckskin could be bought for fifty or seventy-five cents.
"How do you know they are dogskin gloves?" inquired the mail carrier.
"Well, Sir," replied Lincoln, who, as Ross thought, was somewhat "rasped" that his word should be questioned, "I'll tell you how I know they are dogskin gloves. Jack Clary's dog killed Tom Watkins' sheep and Tom Watkins' boy killed the dog and old John Mounts tanned the dogskin and Sally Speers made the gloves and that is how I know they are dogskin gloves."
"So, I asked no more questions about the gloves," said Ross, "but paid the six bits and took them . . . and never found a pair that did me the service that those did."28
With the passage of time it became increasingly evident that Lincoln was indeed the popular hero of New Salem and especially of the Clary's Grove boys. He was their representa- tive in all kinds of physical contests with champions from Richland, Indian Point, Sand Ridge, Sugar Grove, and other neighborhoods— running, jumping, lifting, wrestling.
"He could throw down any man that took hold of him," said J. Rowan Herndon. "He could outrun, outjump, outbox the best of them." And Herndon added, "He could beat any of them on anecdote."29
"I have seen him," said Robert B. Rutledge, "frequently take a barrel of whiskey by the chimes and lift it up to his face as if to drink out of the bung-hole, but, I never saw him taste or drink any kind of spirituous liquor."30
Though Lincoln never drank or brawled nor even used tobacco, he never rebuked his roistering companions, nor did he attempt to reform them in any way except, perchance, by force of personal example. Sometimes when he was stretched out reading on the counter, his head propped up with bolts of cotton or calico, a drunken fight would start in the village
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Receipts signed by Lincoln for Denton Offutt
Facsimiles owned by the author
The Rutledge mill {above) and Denton Oi flit's store at New Salem, rebuilt on the original sites. Herbert Georg Studios, Springfield, Illinois
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THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 43
street. Lincoln would run out and try to stop it without actual intervention. Failing in this, he would "pitch in," grab the aggressor by the "nap of the neck and seat of the britches," and toss him "ten or twelve feet easily." This, an eyewitness dryly observed, "usually ended the fuss," and Lincoln would quietly return to his book.31
So great was Lincoln's reputation for honesty and fair deal- ing that he was often chosen judge for cock fights, wrestling matches, gander pullings, foot races, and, indeed, as umpire in the settlement of disputes in other matters, and his decisions were accepted without a murmur.
Bap McNabb had a little red rooster and constantly boasted about his fierce prowess in the pit. One afternoon Lincoln refereed a match fight between Bap's fowl and an old ring-wise, battle-scarred cock of terrifying appearance. McNabb with a contemptuous and confident gesture tossed his bird into the pit. Instantly his feathered adversary leaped into the air and with ruffed hackles bore down upon him. The little red rooster with a terrified squawk turned tail, hopped out of the ring, and took to the bushes!
Sadly paying his wager, the chagrined McNabb silently car- ried his chicken home and threw him down in the barn lot. The little red rooster, now completely out of danger, flew up on the woodpile, strutted proudly back and forth, flapped his wings, and crowed with the most arrogant defiance. Bap looked at him a moment. "Yes, you little cuss," he exclaimed in utter disgust, "you're great on dress parade but not worth a damn in a fight!"32
Some thirty years later, General McClellan was reviewing a division of infantry on the Potomac Flats, just below the White House. Regimental bands were playing, flags flying, the ranks— splendidly uniformed— stood stiffly at attention as "Lit- tle Mac" galloped by on his magnificent black stallion. For months the general had stubbornly resisted all efforts to induce him to move forward against the enemy. From his office win- dow the President watched the martial scene. Then he turned
II LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
back to his desk. "Gen. McClellan," he said with a rueful smile, "reminds me of Bap McNabb's rooster."33
In the spring of 1832 Lincoln's employer realized that his New Salem days were numbered. All his hopes and schemes had been built upon his implicit confidence that the Sangamon River was navigable. Efforts to establish that important fact had flatly failed. Furthermore, New Salem had too many stores; and his, located near the steamboat wharf that was never to be, was farthest from the center of the village, if it must rely on business from the interior.
So one day Denton Offutt, disillusioned and broke, climbed into a farm wagon on the edge of the bluff. Rutledge and Cameron had taken back their mill. Offutt had turned over the store to his creditors. Tradition would say that they sued him and attached his stock of goods, but court records would deny it. He had failed in business, as thousands before him had failed and would fail again and again, but he had bilked nobody. While others had sustained losses in his commercial ventures which, perhaps, had been launched too optimistically, but always in good faith, he had suffered more than any of them, having lost every dollar of his savings and all of his in- heritance.
He was glad of one thing— Lincoln was securely in position to forge ahead in the world. He had recently announced for the Illinois legislature as a Whig— a Henry Clay Whig. He was joining the military campaign against Black Hawk, and the Clary's Grove boys were sure to elect him captain of their company. Yet Offutt was sad that some of those who had once so enthusiastically proclaimed him a veritable captain of finance now spoke harshly of him, calling him, in the words of Uncle Jimmy Short, a "wild, reckless, harum scarum kind of a man."34 Lincoln, of course, was not one of these. Indeed, it would have made Offutt happy to know what perhaps he never knew, that in future years, when Lincoln came to write his autobiographi- cal sketch, he would not fail to mention gratefully the name
THE LITTLE TRADER FROM HICKMAN CREEK 45
of the man who first gave him a larger vision of life and con- fidence in himself.
Slowly, the clumsy old vehicle descended the steep hill, crossed the rickety wooden bridge over Green's rocky branch, and turned, creakily, down the Sangamon valley.35 The little trader from Hickman Creek had left New Salem forever and with it all his dreams of early fame and fortune. Yet unwit- tingly, as Abraham Lincoln's first sponsor, he had already achieved a modest but inevitable immortality.
FIVE
Mary Ann Todd
On DECEMBER 6, 1817, two popular veterans of the War of 1812, Robert S. Todd of Captain Hart's infantry and Sergeant Bird Smith of Captain Trotter's cavalry, announced their part- nership in an "Extensive Grocery Establishment" advantageous- ly located on Cheapside. One of the firm, according to the Gazette, would attend "Foreign markets by which they will be enabled to supply their customers with every article in their line, on better terms and of better quality— indeed with any articles, such as fruits, et cetera that heretofore could not be procured."1 For the next several years the advertisements of Smith & Todd regularly appeared in the public prints, always listing a full line of high-grade groceries and the choicest, rarest wines, spirits, brandy, gin, and whisky.
Robert S. Todd was now one of the most enterprising and promising young businessmen of Lexington, deeply interested, as were his forebears, in political and civic affairs. He had been chosen clerk of the Kentucky House of Representatives with little or no opposition for two sessions,2 and was shortly to take his seat as a member of the Fayette County Court, a
MARY ANN TODD 47
position of some distinction in the community.3 Moreover, Todd was the father of a growing family, which consisted of two daughters— Elizabeth, born November 18, 1813, and Fran- ces, born March 7, 1815— and a son, born June 25, 1817, named Levi for his grandfather. On December 13, 1818, a third daugh- ter arrived at the Short Street residence, and the newcomer was given the name of Mary Ann for Mrs. Todd's only sister.4
Two years later another son, Robert Parker, was born, but in the middle of his second summer he died, and Nelson, the old body servant, hitched up the family barouche and, accord- ing to a quaint custom of the town, delivered at the doors of his master's friends black-bordered "funeral tickets" which read: "Yourself and family are invited to attend the funeral of Rob- ert P. Todd, infant son of Mr. R. S. Todd, from his residence on Short Street, this evening, at 5 o'clock. Lexington. July 22, 1822."5 Little Mary Ann was delighted when a baby sister came in 1824. All the other Todd children were old enough to go to school, and during their absence time hung heavily on Mary's hands until the arrival of Ann Maria.6 And now, with two "Anns" in the family, Mary's middle name was dropped from ordinary use to avoid confusion.
Lexington celebrated the Fourth of July, 1825, with much patriotic fervor. Sunrise was ushered in by the ringing of church bells. At four a.m. Captain Pike's company of artillery cadets appeared in the streets as infantry and "after performing evolutions" marched to the lodgings of the city's holiday guest, Major General Winfield Scott, and fired a salute.
Several barbecues were held in the country. At Mr. Cor- nett's Eagle Tavern, where General Scott, Captain Gale, his aide, and Henry Clay, the new secretary of state, dined, eighteen good stiff Kentucky bourbon toasts were drunk, among them being: "The Memory of Washington"; " 'The Union/ the paladium of our political safety and prosperity"; "Henry Clay, Secretary of State: The man resolved & sacred to his trust, in- flexible to ill, and obstinately just"; "Our distinguished guest, General Winfield Scott"; "The Ladies of the Western Country—
48 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
the rose is not less lovely, nor its fragrance less delightful be- cause it blossoms in the Wilderness." In the afternoon Clay and General Scott joined a large company of ladies and gen- tlemen at Captain Fowler's Garden, where there was dancing until "a late hour in the evening."7
But in the midst of all this celebration the home of Robert S. Todd was dark and quiet, only a single lamp burning low in an upstairs bedroom. Another boy had just been born to Eliza Todd, and death was hovering near the mother. All that day Mary and the other children anxiously watched the house with its closed shutters from their Grandmother Parker's side porch across the lawn. Old Nelson trudged in and out with packages from Graves' drugstore. At bedtime the one-horse gigs of Dr. Ben Dudley and Dr. Elisha Warfield still stood in front of the door, but next morning the doctors were gone, and pillowcases hung on the clothesline in the back yard. On the following day the funeral tickets read: ' 'Yourself and fam- ily are respectfully invited to attend the funeral of Mrs. Eliza P., Consort of Robert S. Todd, Esq., from his residence on Short Street, this Evening at 4 o'clock. July 6, 1825."8
Thus, at thirty-four years of age, Robert S. Todd was a widower with six small children, the last one, George Rogers Clark, only a few days old. Fortunately, however, he was able to keep his family intact. Ann Maria, his unmarried sister, came to live with them, and this capable young woman cheer- fully assumed the management of the household and the care of her brother's motherless children. The faithful Todd slaves, brought up in the family, made the task easier than it would have been otherwise. Jane Saunders was the housekeeper; Chaney, the cook; Nelson, the body servant and coachman, also served the dining room and did the marketing, while old "Mammy Sally" with the young nurse Judy took excellent care of the little Todds.
In January, 1826, the General Assembly convened at Frank- fort, and Robert S. Todd was again chosen clerk of the lower house. It was not long before the gay social life of the capital
MARY ANN TODD 49
brought him an introduction to Miss Elizabeth Humphreys, a charming, highly cultured young woman, a member of one of the oldest and most prominent Kentucky families. Two of her uncles, Preston Brown and Samuel Brown, earliest pro- fessor of medicine at Transylvania, were physicians widely known throughout the West. Another uncle, John Brown, had been Kentucky's first United States senator, while still another uncle, James Brown, brother-in-law of Mrs. Henry Clay, had represented Louisiana in the Senate, and was later minister to France.
In a few months Robert S. Todd was ardently seeking the hand of pretty Betsy Humphreys, although the numerous rela- tives of his first wife did not look with favor upon the court- ship. This opposition to his remarriage was reflected in one of his letters to Miss Humphreys, who was then visiting in New Orleans:
You have no doubt observed with what avidity and eagerness an occasion of this kind is seized hold of for the purpose of de- traction and to gratify personal feelings of ill-will and indeed often- times how much mischief is done without any bad motive. May I be permitted to put you on your guard against persons of this de- scription. Not that I would wish to stifle fair enquiry, for I feel in the review of my past life a consciousness that such would not materially affect me in your estimation, although there are many things which I have done and said, I would wish had never been done— and such I presume is the case of every one disposed to be honest with himself. . . . Wealth is sometimes the high road to distinction & honors, but rarely to real happiness; a competency is always necessary for our comfort $c happiness in every situation. Did I not believe that I could offer you the latter, I should never have proposed a change of the situation where you now enjoy it— and to effect that object, I have always felt it a duty which I owe to those entrusted to my care and protection, to use the necessary exertion. I am in that situation which the good old book describes as the most desirable: "Not so poor as to be compelled to beg my bread nor so rich as to forget my maker," to the latter part of my quotation, I know I have not paid that regard which my duty re- quired.9
50 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
By late October, Robert S. Todd and Betsy Humphreys were engaged, and Todd was writing his fiancee: "I hope you will not consider me importunate in again urging upon your consideration the subject of my last letter. I am sure if you knew my situation, you would not hesitate to comply with my wishes in fixing on a day for our marriage in this or the early part of the ensuing week."10
This was followed a few days later by another note to Miss Humphreys, which read:
Lexington, Oct. 25, 1826. Dear Betsy:
I received your kind letter of Monday, for which I return you my sincere acknowledgements. Availing myself of the privilege which it seems to give, I hasten to inform you that I will be down on Wednesday next, the 1st day of November. Mr. Crittenden, if unmarried, will be my only attendant. I intend to write to him by this mail. It is now late, & I bid you a pleasant good night. Be- lieve me Dear Betsy, when I subscribe myself
Affectionately yours, R. S. Todd.11
On Wednesday, November 1, 1826, Robert S. Todd and Betsy Humphreys were married at the historic old home of the bride in Frankfort.12 Todd's best man was John J. Crit- tenden, who in spite of his youth had already been speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, had served his state in the United States Senate, was later to be twice attorney general of the United States, governor of Kentucky, and again senator.13
The Widow Parker had been much opposed to the remar- riage of her son-in-law, and she never became fully reconciled to the second Mrs. Todd. The situation, therefore, which im- mediately confronted the young stepmother was not an easy one. Yet she assumed the duties of her new household with poise, tact, patience, and a deep interest in the welfare, educa- tion, and training of her six stepchildren. Mary, as Mrs. Todd soon discovered, was a sprightly, but curiously complex little
MARY ANN TODD 51
creature, high-strung, headstrong, precocious, warmhearted, sympathetic, and generous— a mischievous tomboy who, while leading her older brother Levi a merry chase, was also pas- sionately fond of birds, flowers, pretty dresses, and other dainty things that delight the feminine heart.
Mary was about eight years old when she entered the acad- emy of Dr. John Ward, located in a large, two-story building on the southeast corner of Market and Second streets.14 Dr. Ward, the rector of Christ Church Episcopal, was a native of Connecticut who had been bishop of North Carolina before coming to Kentucky in search of health. Kindly, scholarly, benevolent, he was nevertheless a strict disciplinarian. Far in advance of his time, he believed in coeducation, and his school numbered about 120 boys and girls from the best families in Lexington.
Early morning recitation was a peculiar regulation of Dr. Ward's academy, and during the summer months the history class assembled at five o'clock. One morning just before day- break the new nightwatchman, a recent stalwart immigrant from the Emerald Isle, observed a young lady hurrying up Second Street with a bundle under her arm. Thinking that he had discovered an elopement, the vigilant watchman gave chase, which ended only when the breathless "scholar," much to the merriment of the other pupils and the annoyance of Dr. Ward, burst into the schoolroom hotly pursued by Flan- nigan, club in hand.15
Mary Todd's cousin, Elizabeth Humphreys, a member of the Todd household during Mary's girlhood, on September 28, 1895, wrote vivid reminiscences of Dr. Ward and Mary's early school days:
His requirements and rules were very strict and woe to her who did not conform to the letter. Mary accepted the conditions cheerfully, even eagerly, and never came under his censure. Mr. Ward required his pupils to recite some of their lessons before breakfast. On bright summer mornings this was no hardship, and Mary skipped blithely to her recitations, but she never murmured
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF fLUNOIS
52 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
when conditions were not so pleasant. When she had to get up out of her warm bed and dress by candle-light, she smiled and trudged sturdily through snow and sleet. . . . Mary was far in advance over girls of her age in education. She had a retentive memory and a mind that enabled her to grasp and thoroughly understand the lessons she was required to learn. It was a hard task but long before I was through mine she had finished hers and was plying her knitting-needles. We were required to knit ten rounds of socks every evening.
Her cousin further stated that "Mary even as a schoolgirl in her gingham dresses was certainly very pretty. She had clear, blue eyes, long lashes, light brown hair with a glint of bronze and a lovely complexion. Her figure was beautiful and no old master ever modeled a more perfect arm and hand."16
But these days of early girlhood were far from a mere routine of tasks and recitations. Mary's uncle, the Reverend Robert Stuart, a professor of languages at Transylvania and a noted Presbyterian minister, lived a few miles from Lexington on the Richmond Pike, and here Mary spent many happy days: horseback rides down the shady winding lanes, picnics with the Stuart children under the majestic trees of nearby woodlands, nutting expeditions in autumn with excursions into dense thickets in search of wild grapes and the luscious papaw, hilari- ous sleigh rides in winter, with games, stories, and apple roast- ings in the evenings on the broad hearth of the giant fireplace that snapped and roared with seasoned hickory wood.17
Mary's most intimate friends, except for her cousin, Mary Stuart, were girls slightly older than she: Mary and Margaret Wickliffe, daughters of state senator Robert Wickliffe, dis- tinguished lawyer and one of the largest and wealthiest slave- owners in Kentucky, who lived at "Glendower"; Isabella Bod- ley, daughter of Thomas Bodley, officer of the War of 1812, presidential elector, grand master of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Kentucky, who lived at "Bodley House" and had a French governess and an English head nurse for the junior members of his large family; Catherine Cordelia Trotter, daughter of
MARY ANN TODD 53
General George Trotter, Jr., prominent merchant, one of the heroes of the Battle of the Thames, colonel of the old 42nd Regiment of Kentucky Militia in which Robert S. Todd had been a captain, who lived at "Woodlands"; and Mary Jane and Julia Warfield, daughters of Dr. Elisha Warfield, noted sur- geon, professor of surgery and obstetrics at Transylvania, breed- er of famous race horses, who lived at "The Meadows."
Adding much to the hilarity of all parties and outings, always anxious to promote the happiness and entertainment of this group, were the idolized older brother of the Wickliffe girls— Charles, tall, handsome, volatile, auburn-haired, blue-eyed —and Catherine Cordelia Trotter's amiable brother— George, dark, tense, studious, and slight of build, equally ready for fun and frolic. The two young men, almost the same age, were inseparable companions, and one or both of them on the front seat of the family two-horse carry-all, with Mary Todd and her young friends waving gaily from the rear of the vehicle, were a familiar sight on the streets of Lexington and the broad turnpikes of its countryside.18
Then, as suddenly as a falling star streaking across a calm, clear, evening sky, an event occurred at Frankfort which in- stantly ignited public opinion and set Bluegrass families aflame —one against another— for many a long year.
A bill was introduced in the legislature to prohibit the im- portation of slaves into Kentucky. Instantly Robert Wickliffe from the floor of the Senate scathingly denounced this sur- prising move of the antislavery group. Robert J. Breckinridge and Cassius M. Clay launched a vicious counterattack. Ken- tucky's first great battle for slavery— a contest which would shake the state to its foundations— was on, and distressing events followed fast and furious.
In only a few short months stark tragedy sat at the fireside of two Lexington families who were very close to the heart of Mary Todd. On March 4, 1829, Charles Wickliffe, impetuously rushing to the defense of his father, wrote an article which was
54 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
published in the Kentucky Reporter, proslavery mouthpiece, phrased in the most vitriolic language. The owners and editor of the Kentucky Gazette, chief organ of the emancipationists, "were a set of malevolent, black-hearted men." The sole reason for the existence of this vile set was to destroy the reputation of all persons who opposed their unholy schemes.
"Look at your present Senator [Robert Wickliffe] whose political life has been consistent, independent and firm, always pursuing a straight course, never losing sight of the interest and honor of his country. In the Gazette of the 13ult. they have denounced him as a heartless Aristocrat and dishonorable man." Young Wickliffe scorned the "nest of vipers called Ga- zette men," and particularly the writer of the piece, as "cheap calumniators" wholly "destitute of truth." "If other epithets would be termed decorous towards the public," said he, "I would add them also."
The next issue of the Gazette answered Wickliffe very much in kind, and three days later, a pistol in each hip pocket, the infuriated youth went to the newspaper office and attacked editor Thomas R. Benning, a small, unarmed man. When the newspaperman attempted to escape through a rear door, Wick- liffe shot him in the back. The killing of Benning threw the community, already excited by the agitation of the "Negro Law," into violent turmoil which became a tempest when Wickliffe was promptly acquitted by a proslavery jury. The report that the defendant had emerged from his trial "swag- gering and defiant" further fired public indignation.
Shortly thereafter it was widely rumored that friends of young, scholarly George Trotter were pressing him to take Benning's place on the Gazette, its editorial page having been inactive since his death. It was being urged as a duty he owed to the memory of his deceased father, General Trotter, "one of the earliest opponents of slavery in the West." This rumor and its accuracy were confirmed when in September the Gazette was delivered to apprehensive readers with the name of George Trotter at its masthead.
MARY ANN TODD 55
The dread of further conflict measurably increased when the very next issue contained an editorial which strongly in- sinuated that the acquittal of Benning's slayer had been due to a "picked and prejudiced" jury and to the "undue influence" of Henry Clay, who had delivered for two and a half hours a "harangue" in his defense.
Ten days later the young editor received a note which read:
Lexington, September 28, 1829. Mr. George J. Trotter:
A wanton and unprovoked attack made upon my feelings in the Gazette of the 18th of the present month, induces me to de- mand that satisfaction which is due from one gentleman to another. My friend, Dr. Ritchie, is authorized to settle the several points of time, mode and place.
Your obedient- Charles Wickliffe.
On October 1 Trotter replied:
Mr. Charles Wickliffe,
Sir, your note was received on yesterday by the hands of Dr. James Ritchie and whilst I cannot recognize your right to call upon me in the manner you have, still the satisfaction you ask for shall not be denied. My friend, John Robb, is fully authorized to confer with Dr. Ritchie as to the time, place and distance.
George J. Trotter.
P.S. It is not expected or desired by me that Mr. Robb will act longer in the affair than the arrival of my friend. G.J.T.
Under the code duello now being so punctiliously observed, Trotter as the challenged party had the privilege of choosing the weapons and specifying the distance, time, and place of meeting, which he did on the following day.
Lexington, October 2nd, 1829. Sir:
Mr. Trotter requests me to inform you that he has selected the pistol to meet Mr. Wickliffe, the distance to be 8 feet. Mr. Trotter will meet Mr. Wickliffe on Friday morning the 9th at 9:00 o'clock a.m. on the Fayette and Scott line, to be selected by the parties.
56 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
The friend whom Mr. Trotter has selected to act in the affair (for reasons satisfactory) does not wish to be known in the affair until Wednesday morning, at which time he will hand in the preliminary arrangements.
Respectfully,
John H. Robb.19
Friday, October 9, dawned cloudless, one of those glorious days of Indian summer in Kentucky. The long night had been sleepless with anxiety and foreboding for those who loved these two hotheaded scions of Bluegrass aristocracy— friends but yes- terday—now about to settle their quarrel on a so-called field of honor dictated by the barbarous code. The whole com- munity stood aghast at the mortal distance named by Trotter- only eight feet— when the customary distance was ten paces, or thirty feet!
Shortly before nine o'clock several two-horse carriages on the Georgetown pike turned into a large woodland— the old duelling ground— about six and a half miles from Lexington. The principals, their surgeons, and seconds alighted. It was observed that "Mr. Trotter and Mr. Wickliffe bowed at a re- spectable distance, neither speaking."
Dr. James Ritchie acting for Wickliffe and Captain Henry Johnson for Trotter marked off the distance, loaded and checked the flintlock pistols. The surgeons spread blankets on the ground a few yards away with their instruments, bandages, and medicines.
The choice of position and the right to give the word were both won by Dr. Ritchie. As the parties took their positions, Captain Johnson cautioned Wickliffe to hold his pistol more perpendicularly, but Trotter curtly instructed his second to "leave the matter entirely with Mr. Wickliffe." The two men stood calmly without coats, "presenting the right side to each other, their pistols held with muzzles presented to the ground."
"One— two— three— four— five," counted Ritchie slowly and distinctly. The pistols spoke together. The ball from Trotter's
MARY ANN TODD 57
weapon tore through Wickliffe's trousers, grazing him slightly at the hip. Wickliffe's aim had left Trotter untouched.
"I demand a second fire," said Wickliffe very sharply.
"Sir, you shall have it with pleasure/' replied Trotter.
Fifteen minutes later the duelists fired again— and again Wickliffe missed, while Trotter's bullet inflicted a mortal wound on Wickliffe in the lower abdomen.
As the stricken man slowly "eased himself to the ground," Captain Johnson approached him and in polite obedience to the rules of the code inquired if he was satisfied.
"I am, Sir," said Wickliffe. "I am -shot and unable to fire again."
Furiously galloping horses hitched to a careening rockaway rushed Wickliffe back to beautiful "Glendower," but all that loving hands and medical aid could do was of no avail. Just past noon Charles Wickliffe died, another precious sacrifice on the altar of the slavocracy.20
In 1832 Robert S. Todd purchased a new residence on Main Street just two blocks from his Short Street house.21 The sec- ond children were coming on, and a more spacious dwelling was desirable. Two slave jails were now being operated near the Short Street property— one just across the street and the other next door with only a narrow alley intervening. One event, however, in which Mary took a delighted interest, oc- curred before she left the old home. Her oldest sister Eliza- beth was married on February 29, 1832, to Ninian W. Edwards, son of former Governor Ninian Edwards of Illinois and then a junior at Transylvania, and Elizabeth's uncle, Dr. Stuart, was officiating minister.22
The new home on Main Street was a roomy brick house with double parlors, a wide hall in the center, and a long ell. The grounds of the rear lawn were ample for coach house, stable, and servants' quarters. The side lawn was a beautiful flower garden with a white gravel walk winding through the
58 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
clipped bluegrass to the conservatory, and through its lower edge ran a clear, gentle little stream, the Town Fork of Elkhorn Creek, where the Todd children waded and chased the min- nows that scurried across the smooth limestone bottom.
At fourteen years of age Mary Todd finished the preparatory course at Dr. Ward's and was ready to enter the select boarding school of Mme. Victorie Charlotte LeClere Mentelle. Mme. Mentelle and her husband, Augustus Waldemare Mentelle, were French gentlefolk of culture and high education. Both were born in Paris: Mme. Mentelle, the only child of a French physician; M. Mentelle, the son of a professor in the National and Royal Academy, who was also "historiographer" to the king. Shortly after their marriage in 1792 the young couple had fled from the terrors of the Revolution to America, finally reaching Lexington in 1798.23 For several years following their arrival the Mentelles taught a mixed class in French and gave lessons in dancing.24 Then they established a boarding school for girls on a rolling tract of woodland opposite "Ashland" on the Richmond Pike, donated by Mary's cousin, Mrs. Russell, a wealthy widow of the town.25
Mme. Mentelle was a rather large, handsome woman, an excellent dancer, a finished musician, an accomplished scholar in her native tongue, and Mary Todd undoubtedly acquired from her an intimate knowledge and a deep love of French, but the curriculum was much broader than the mere study of a single language. In fact, the chief purpose of Mme. Mentelle was to give her pupils, as she announced through the press, "a truly useful & 'Solid' English Education in all its branches."26
However, it was French that Mary took so completely to her heart. "She never gave it up," said Elizabeth Humphreys, "but as long as I knew her continued to read the finest French authors. At different times, French gentlemen came to Lex- ington to study English and when one was fortunate enough to meet her, he was not only surprised, but delighted to find her perfect acquaintance with his language."27
IIary Aw Todd. Em Hie Todd Helm's copy from the original daguerreotype
Home of "Widow" Parker, Mary Todd's grandmother, as it looks toda
\Y
The confectionery of Monsieur Giron. From the Mulligan Collection
Dr. Ward's Academy
MARY ANN TODD 59
Mary Todd spent four happy years at the institution on the Richmond Pike. Every Monday morning the Todd car- riage, driven by Nelson, the dignified coachman, rolled down the long avenue and left Mary on the broad piazza of the low, rambling, ivy-covered structure that sheltered Mme. Mentelle's little flock. And then on Friday afternoons Nelson came for her again.
It was not all study at the Mentelle school. This French gentlewoman knew the drudgery of work without play and how to maintain proper discipline without irksome restrictions. When afternoon classes were over, in warm weather the girls strolled arm in arm about the ample grounds, played games, or read to one another on the rustic benches under the fine old forest trees. Sometimes they gathered at the big sycamore near the entrance to the grounds to wave a greeting to their friend, Mr. Clay, as he drove to town for his mail. On winter evenings M. Mentelle, who wore his abundant white hair in a queue and still dressed in smallclothes, would take down his violin, and Mme. Mentelle, who "spared no pains with the graces and manners of young Ladies submitted to her care," instructed the pupils "in the latest and most fashionable Co- tillions, Round & Hop Waltzes, Hornpipes, Galopades, Mo- hawks, Spanish, Scottish, Polish, Tyrolienne dances and the beautiful Circassian Circle." "It was at Madame Mentelle's," according to cousin Elizabeth, "that she [Mary] learned to dance so gracefully. In after years, it was her favorite amuse- ment and the aristocratic society of Lexington afforded ample opportunity for the indulgence of this pastime."28
When Mary Todd finished boarding school, her father was one of the most prominent and influential citizens in central Kentucky, and no man in the state was more highly respected or better liked than Robert S. Todd. For years he had been a member of the Fayette County Court. Upon the incorporation of the city of Lexington in 1831 he was elected to its first board of council, and on July 13, 1835, the Branch Bank of Kentucky
60 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
opened its doors, with Robert S. Todd as its first president. Under the firm name of Oldham, Todd & Company he was also engaged in the cotton manufacturing business with a large plant at Sandersville near Lexington and a wholesale store in town, supplying an extensive trade in Illinois, Indiana, Mis- souri, and Ohio.
Although high in the councils of the Whig party in Ken- tucky, Todd had been for more than twenty years the almost unanimous choice of all political parties for clerk of the Ken- tucky House of Representatives.29 Now he was urged to be- come a candidate for lieutenant governor, and his name was actually presented to the state convention at Harrodsburg, but withdrawn at Todd's insistence by his friend, Richard H. Menifee.
The Todd home on West Main Street was noted for its warm hospitality. The gracious Mrs. Todd was a charming hostess, with Mary an eager, capable assistant. As was cus- tomary in the households of gentlemen of the Bluegrass, the Todd cellar was always well stocked with the finest Kentucky whisky and rare brandies,30 and it was freely conceded among those whose opinions were respected in such matters that "not even Mr. Clay's Charles could mix a mint julep like Robert Todd's Nelson."31
When Henry Clay, Senator Crittenden, their brilliant young protege, Richard H. Menifee, and other distinguished friends arrived at the Todd home, Nelson knew that a display of his wizardry was expected. And in a little while the old Negro, clad in his blue swallowtail with big brass buttons, would ap- pear in the library or the vine-covered house in the garden, carrying a silver tray filled with all the ingredients of his magic concoction.
The making of a julep was a ritual with Nelson, always to be performed with solemn dignity in the presence of thirsty, admiring guests: Tender, fragrant mint firmly pressed with the back of a spoon against the glistening inside of a coin silver goblet; the bruised leaves gently removed and the cup half
MARY ANN TODD 61
filled with cracked ice; mellow bourbon, aged in oaken staves, bubbling from a brown jigger, percolated through the sparkling cubes and slivers; granulated sugar slowly stirred into chilled limestone water to a silvery mixture as smooth as some rare Egyptian oil was poured on top of the ice; then while beads of moisture gathered on the burnished exterior of the goblet, old Nelson garnished the frosted brim with choice sprigs of mint and presented the tall cup with a courtly bow to the nearest guest.
However, Clay sometimes served his own guests with wine instead of bourbon. Gustave Koerner, a young Bavarian from Belleville, Illinois, attending the Transylvania law school, and another admirer of the Sage of Ashland walked out one morn- ing to "Mr. Clay's place." "About a mile on a fine turnpike road" they "came upon a fine park in the midst of which stood a tolerably large, white mansion-house." Going up to the door they "rang the bell, and a negro servant showed us into a large, semi-oval room, richly furnished, the walls being decorated with some fine portraits in oil." What attracted young Koerner first was "a large set of silver plate, amongst which was a very large, finely-chiseled pitcher with an inscription on it, which was on a beautifully carved side-board."
In a few minutes Clay came in. "A very long frock-coat made him look even taller than he was. His face was very long, and his mouth uncommonly large. He had very light blue eyes which he kept half closed when he spoke. His hair was thin and of a reddish color. There was a playful humor about his lips. His appearance upon the whole was not at first pre- possessing; but when you heard him converse, you felt you were under the influence of a great and good man."
Clay politely invited his guests to sit down, and shortly thereafter
a black servant came in and presented us on a silver waiter three glasses of Madeira of an excellent quality, which we emptied, bow- ing to one another. ... Of course, Mr. Clay showed that he had been living in the best society here and in Europe. He knew how
62 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
to draw people into conversation and to say something pleasant to everyone without appearing to flatter. He took snuff, which is quite uncommon here and handled his snuff box quite diplomati- cally. Seeing that our eyes had been repeatedly on the exquisite silver plate, he showed us the pitcher. The inscription on it proved that it was a present from some of the South American countries whose rights to recognition as independent states when they re- volted from Spain, he had so eloquently advocated in the halls of the Senate.32
Shortly after his visit to Clay, Koerner wrote his fiancee:
Lexington is a lively, handsome city, built on wave-like hills, surrounded by beautiful villas. The streets are nearly all lined with shade trees. No wonder the inhabitants are very proud of it! My American guide-book calls it perhaps the finest spot on the globe. Of course, I cannot subscribe to this panegyric. But, I am quite pleased with the place. It is the richest city in Kentucky and hence there is much show and luxury here. I have been in several houses and must confess that with us— in Frankfort-on-the-Main— the wealthiest people do not live as elegantly and comfortably.33
Although Lexington by this time had fallen far behind Louisville and Cincinnati in commercial activity, she had stead- fastly maintained her position as the center of education. Such institutions as Transylvania University, Lexington Female Sem- inary, Dr. Ward's Academy, Maguire's Classical, Scientific and English School for Male and Female Students, Mme. Mentelle's Boarding-School for Girls, VanDoren's Institute for Lads and Young Gentlemen, the Protestant Boarding-School for Young Ladies, Mrs. George P. Richardson's School for Little Misses, Cabell's Dancing-School, and Mme. Blaique's Dancing-Academy were all located within the limits of the town or its environs.
Lexington was also the social center of the state, and from June to September the taverns, boardinghouses, and private residences were crowded with guests from many states farther south who came to spend the summer in the Bluegrass. Thus the town had incurred the envy of her less popular neighbors, and it was believed in many quarters that the women of the
MARY ANN TODD 63
Bluegrass were vain, haughty creatures who looked with dis- dain upon those not fortunate enough to have been born in or near the "Athens of the West." Yet young James Speed of Louisville, later attorney general in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln, did not find this true of local society when he came to Lexington to enter Transylvania University. "Much better pleased in every respect than I anticipated," he wrote back home, "and especially with the ladies of Lexington. Tell my sisters of this and tell them that all they hear there of their stiffness is altogether a bugbear."34
In 1836 Frances Todd went to live with her sister, Eliza- beth Edwards, in Springfield, Illinois, and her departure left Mary the oldest daughter at home. She was then almost eighteen years old, with a plump, graceful figure, though be- low medium height; mischievous, long-lashed blue eyes under delicately arched brows; a broad, smooth forehead, straight nose, and a rather broad expressive mouth that broke dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.35 Brilliant, vivacious, impulsive, she possessed a charming personality marred only by a transient hauteur and, without malice, a caustic, devastating wit that could sting like a hornet.
On one occasion, as Elizabeth Humphreys recalled, it was both demeanor and tongue that nearly got her into trouble.
Mary found more difficulty in getting along smoothly with an Episcopalian student of Theology (a tutor in the family) than I ever knew her to have [wrote Elizabeth to Emilie Todd Helm]. The young man's manners were assuming and dictatorial and of- fensive, but we all tried to be polite. In spite of Mary's efforts to be agreeable, there was nothing but discord between them— let her do her best. With an ill-grounded and unjust suspicion that she was trying on all occasions to insult him, he waged a war without cause.
It happened frequently that Mary's father would be absent on business & Aunt by reason of illness not able to come to the dining room. One morning on such an occasion Mary & I went after the bell was rung to the breakfast room. Presby came in soon. Mary
64 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
took her seat at the head of the table, the young Theologian at the foot and I on one side. Grace was said with due reverence and then we commenced with keen appetites on the feast of good things be- fore us. Among the choice delicacies, we had some remarkably fine maple syrup. Mary helped me and then offered some to Mr. Presby, with the remark that she had always understood the Yankees ate molasses with everything. It was the word "Yankees," I suppose, that raised the storm. He was greatly irritated and in a real down East nasal twang spoke with an emphasis to be remembered for all time: "Miss 'Maree' there is a point beyond which I won't and can't stand. Miss Elizabeth with one or two exceptions, has always been polite, but, Miss 'Maree' never." The whole thing was so ludicrous to Mary, she leaned back and laughed immoderately. The laugh acted like a charm, it was "oil upon the waters" and we sailed the remainder of that day on a calm sea.36
It was a wholesome, fun-loving group of young folk that gave spice and gaiety to the staid old town during the few re- maining years that Mary made her home in Lexington. These fair young creatures were, of course, not lacking in the most handsome and eligible beaux. Gallant and romantic, most of them members of one of the four local military companies, accomplished in the exercises of the broadsword and the rapier, expert marksmen with both pistol and rifle— still the young men of Mary's acquaintance seem not to have attracted her, and there is not even a tradition that her heart ever gave the faintest little flutter in the presence of any of these scions of the old, aristocratic Bluegrass families. "She accepted their attentions," says Elizabeth, "but at times her face indicated lack of interest."
The ballrooms of Mathurin Giron offered Mary an oppor- tunity to indulge in her favorite amusement. It was the most fashionable of resorts for such entertainment in Kentucky.37 Giron, a unique character of the town, had his famous estab- lishment on Mill Street in a quaint, two-story brick building with Tuscan pilasters which supported a balcony of iron lace along the front of the upper story. A confectionery occupied
MARY ANN TODD 65
the first floor, where Giron's Swiss cook, Dominique Ritter, produced from the mysterious depths of his ovens marvelous creations in pastry, ripe fruitcakes, tall pyramids of meringues, and macaroons draped in filmy, snow-white sugar webbing. Here was made the mammoth "casellated" cake with the Stars and Stripes gloriously etched upon its sloping sides in red, white, and blue, which the citizens of Lexington presented to Marquis de Lafayette on his visit to Kentucky in 1825. On the second floor, separated by a wide hall, were the ballrooms with great paneled folding doors of polished cherry opening to the high frescoed ceiling. In each room were vast fireplaces with mantlepieces of the same exquisite wood supported by graceful columns.38
Little Giron, fastidiously dressed, hardly more than five feet in height, and almost as broad as he was tall, with his round, smoothly shaved face, and his cordial, kindly manner had been Mary Todd's friend since her childhood. The con- fectionery was just around the corner from her father's store and only a short distance from Dr. Ward's academy. The Frenchman had been attracted by the little girl's perfect ease of manner and utter lack of self-consciousness in the presence of adults, and amused by her quite obvious gift of sparkling repartee. Mary would frequently drop in on her way home from school or as she went to and from the store on Main Street, and many were the spiced buns and hot ginger cakes that he had slipped into her lunch basket in the course of their conversations.39
Mary, now grown to womanhood, still occupied a niche all her own in the large heart of Mathurin Giron. Their mutual love for the Gallic language was in itself an enduring bond be- tween them. At the brilliant suppers and balls that she at- tended, Giron hovered about Mary and her friends, voicing solicitude for their comfort and pleasure in his soft, piquant, broken English, and when she addressed him in his native tongue, his dark eyes glowed with ecstasy.40
66 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
In the summer of 1837 Mary Todd went to visit her sisters, Elizabeth and Frances, in Illinois. She had other relatives there also: an uncle, Dr. John Todd, and her three lawyer cousins: John T. Stuart, John J. Hardin, and Stephen T. Logan. The visitor from the Bluegrass had not been long in Springfield when she began to hear about Stuart's new law partner. His name was Abraham Lincoln. Both Stuart and Hardin had served with him in the Black Hawk War. He and her brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, had been members of the celebrated "Long Nine," who averaged more than six feet in height, from Sangamon County in the General Assembly at Vandalia.
Lincoln, she learned, was a newcomer in Springfield from a village on the Sangamon River called New Salem and had only recently been admitted to the bar. According to his friends he was a man of strange contradictions: fond of the society of women, but shy in their presence; subject to fits of depres- sion, yet a storyteller whose humor was irresistible; a shrewd, wily politician, but a man of rugged honesty and unswerving integrity; ungainly in personal appearance, though possessed of a simple, natural grace of manner, with a face homely to a marked degree in repose, but singularly charming when ani- mated; a man who would fritter away hours in veritable non- sense with shallow, sometimes tipsy companions, yet a profound, logical thinker, a persuasive stump speaker, a dangerous ad- versary in rough and tumble debate. Mary Todd's curiosity must have been piqued at these queer descriptions of a most unusual man, but she did not meet him once during her three- month visit in Springfield. Her time was quite fully occupied with balls, levees, and receptions given in her honor by rela- tives and friends, and the weeks passed swiftly.
As for Lincoln, he was then passing through the loneliest period of his life. Except for a few political acquaintances and one or two warm friends, he was almost a penniless stranger in the bustling capital of that new, growing country. But even so, he was not by any means idle. Besides a droll, halfhearted
MARY ANN TODD 67
courtship with portly Mary Owens, he was also deeply absorbed in his first important lawsuit— a bitter altercation with General James Adams, a prominent local citizen and lawyer. Lincoln boldly charged that his client, a poor widow, had been defraud- ed of a valuable tract of land by Adams, who had forged her deceased husband's name to the deed. It was largely the vigor- ous prosecution of this case that brought Lincoln shortly into prominence.41
In late autumn, 1837, Mary Todd returned home. The relations that existed between Mary and her stepmother, par- ticularly during the years just before she went to live in Spring- field, and her reasons for leaving home have long been matters of bitter dispute. Only two sources of documentary evidence on these mooted questions from persons then in a position to know now exist. In the papers of the suit brought to settle the estate of Robert S. Todd in 1849, George Todd, Mary's youngest brother, referred to "the malignant and continued attempts on the part of his stepmother, Mrs. E. L. Todd, to poison the mind of his father towards him," and asserted that Robert S. Todd was "mortified that his last child by his first wife should be obliged, like all his first children, to abandon his house by the relentless persecution of a stepmother."42 A
letter, dated "May , '48," written by Mary Lincoln to her
husband, who was then in Washington, speaks of "Ma," her stepmother, saying: "She is very obliging and accommodating, but if she thought any of us were on her hands again, I believe she would be worse than ever."43
These grave charges against Betsy Todd by her two most volatile stepchildren, considered carefully in connection with the voluminous record of a litigation that will be discussed in subsequent chapters, though taken at face value are not without mitigation. It must be remembered that by the sum- mer of 1839 Mrs. Todd in thirteen years had borne her husband eight children. Seven were living, their ages ranging from eleven years down to an infant in arms, and the ninth child
68 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
was born two years later. Under the existing circumstances it is not surprising that the willful, impetuous temperament of Mary Todd clashed sharply now and then with the conven- tional ideas of her busy stepmother. Moreover, it is extremely probable that the attitude of Mary's grandmother, Mrs. Parker, who never quite forgave Betsy Humphreys for marrying the husband of her dead daughter, had considerable influence in fomenting such discord as there was in the Todd household.
But whatever her situation may have been at home, Mary Todd's last summer in Kentucky was well occupied with the good times of Lexington's social season. From the first of June to early fall the town was filled with wealthy planters and their families who came northward to avoid the sweltering heat and the insidious malaria of the Deep South. The local newspapers left a fragmentary record of social activities during their stay in the Bluegrass, and doubtless Mary Todd had her share in all the gaiety and entertainment.
So it may be safely assumed that she attended on a Septem- ber night in 1839 probably her last public function in the old home town, a "grand farewell ball" given, as stated, by "the elite of southern society who have resorted in Lexington during the past summer." The affair was "in the hands of gentlemen & their ladies from Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama." The ballrooms of Mathurin Giron were never more alluring than they were that evening. The walls were painted to represent landscapes of blooming orange trees set here and there in clustering tubs. Chandeliers and sconces were lighted with innumerable wax candles, yellow and green and rose. Gentlemen in blue broadcloth coats with brass buttons, buff waistcoats, and laced ruffled shirts; ladies in white satins, with ethereal silk overdresses embroidered in fantastic figures, glided over the gleaming maple floors through the intricate, graceful mazes of the Circassian Circle to the soft strains of violin with pianoforte accompaniment. Couples with interesting things to say to each other occupied secluded benches along the iron balcony. "Rarely," said a gentleman who was present, "have
MARY ANN TODD 69
we witnessed so brilliant a display of beauty and fashion as graced the occasion."
A month later, on a crisp autumn morning, the Todd car- riage drove up to the trim little depot of the Lexington and Ohio Railroad at Mill and Water streets. On the narrow track of strap-iron rails spiked down to sills of stone stood the pride of the Western Country, a tiny steam locomotive called "The Nottaway." Attached to it was a single coach with seats for a dozen passengers inside and as many more on the top, which was surrounded by an iron railing.44 Old Nelson handed "Mis' Mary's" bags and boxes to the engineer, who placed them be- side the other luggage on the woodpile at the rear of the tender. Then, with a lurch and a shrill toot of the whistle the wheezy engine started, and in a few moments the little train was rattling and swaying down Water Street and out through the brown hemp fields and somber meadows. Mary Todd had started on the long journey to her new home in Springfield.
SIX
Slavery in the Bluegrass
AT AN assembly ball which Mary Todd attended shortly after her arrival in Springfield she met the young lawyer about whom she had heard so much on her former visit. The often told story of the desultory courtship that followed this intro- duction need not be repeated again. It is sufficient to note that on Friday evening, November 4, 1842, at the home of her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, while the rain beat against the windows of the front parlor, Mary Todd became the wife of Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was now the law partner of another of his wife's cousins, Stephen T. Logan. The senior member of the firm of Logan & Lincoln was one of the leaders of the Springfield bar, and he was exactly the right sort of a partner for Mr. A. Lincoln. Logan carefully prepared his cases; Lincoln was rather inclined to extemporize. Logan was a good collector and tight- fisted in money matters; Lincoln was utterly indifferent to material gain. With Logan every activity was subordinate to his profession; Lincoln's chief interest lay in the field of politics, to which the law afforded convenient access. Lincoln had been
SLAVERY IN THE BLUEGRASS 71
taken into the firm because of his remarkable ability as a trial lawyer, but Judge Logan was to be disappointed if he hoped to wean the junior partner away from the dominant passion of his life.
Lincoln had already served four terms in the Illinois legis- lature and at the time of his venture into matrimony was rather leisurely casting about for further political preferment. "Noth- ing new here," he wrote to a friend, "except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder."1 He of course could not then know that whatever might be said of the event in other respects, he had acquired a life partner who would infuse his phlegmatic temperament with a persevering energy which henceforth pushed him slowly but finally to heights of achievement beyond ambition's fondest dream.2
One is therefore not surprised to find the Springfield lawyer a few months later writing to one of his constituents: "Now if you should hear anyone say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is I would like to go very much."3
Mary Todd was a born politician. Since her earliest recol- lection the home of Robert S. Todd at Lexington had been a favorite rendezvous for the Whig chieftains of Kentucky. Mary knew them all: Robertson, Combs, Morehead, Letcher, Meni- fee, Buckner, the brilliant Marshall, the wise and beloved Crittenden, and still more intimately, the incomparable Clay, Lincoln's "beau-ideal of a statesman," idol of the Whig party throughout the nation. She had heard these jurists, governors, members of Congress, ministers to foreign countries, cabinet members, senators, and candidate for President of the United States discuss various problems of statecraft, not merely in public address, but around the fireside and the julep table of her father's house, and she was familiar with the important issues of the day.4
The one vital question that already held Lincoln's interest
72 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
was slavery, and it is no exaggeration to say that Mary Todd possessed more firsthand information on this subject than any other person with whom he had yet come in contact. On March 3, 1837, Lincoln had made his now famous declaration in the legislature at Vandalia that "Slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy."5 On July 23, 1841, in the case of Bailey v. Cromwell, the state supreme court had sustained his contention that the law of Illinois presumed all persons free, regardless of color. In his Washington's Birthday address Feb- ruary 22, 1842, Lincoln had invoked the day when there would not be a slave on earth.0
Yet, profoundly concerned as he was with this grave problem then beginning to agitate the whole country, Lincoln's knowl- edge of the Southland's "peculiar institution" was hardly more than superficial. He "saw almost nothing of slavery in his own childhood."7 And in his eighth year he moved to Indiana, a part of the Northwest Territory, where slavery was prohibited by the Ordinance of 1787.
At the time of his marriage Lincoln's personal knowledge of slavery in the South was derived almost entirely from having seen a slave sold at New Orleans in 1831 and from his visit to the Speed plantation in Kentucky ten years later. On the other hand, Mary Todd had been reared in the very heart of the largest slaveholding community in Kentucky. There, unlike the Deep South, the form of servitude was more patriarchal than otherwise. The Negro quarters, mostly of hewn logs but sometimes of brick or stone, were grouped near the mansion house. Each cabin had its "truck patch" filled with sweet po- tatoes and other succulent vegetables and several long rows of watermelons and tobacco. Stands of bees furnished golden honey for "ole Mammy's" flapjacks, while long-eared coon and possum dogs romped with pickaninnies and, often, with the white children around the cabin doors. "Missis" or "Mastah," sitting at the bedside of a sick slave, was not an uncommon sight. Nowhere did the yoke of bondage rest more lightly than on the servants in the household of Robert S. Todd. Chaney
SLAVERY IN THE BLUEGRASS 73
was in undisputed control of the kitchen, pompous old Nelson ruled the stables with a high hand, and black Mammy Sally, despot of the nursery, gave orders to the little Todds which even their mother did not dare revoke.
But Lincoln's wife was also familiar with the other side of the picture. In the southwest corner of the public square at Lexington stood the auction block, rickety and worn from many shuffling feet, while near the northeast corner was the whipping post of "black locust one foot in diameter, ten feet high and sunk two and a half feet in the ground."8 A visitor to the town in those early days, witnessing the use of this in- strument of torture, observed in his journal that the public square was "occasionally the scene of a barbarous practice; for it is here that incorrigible or delinquent negroes are flogged unmercifully. I saw this punishment inflicted on two of these wretches. Their screams soon collected a numerous crowd— I could not help saying to myself, 'These cries are the knell of Kentucky liberty.' "9
During all the years that Mary Todd lived on Main Street frequent gangs of Negroes were driven by traders over this thoroughfare en route to the slave markets of the South. The Todd residence stood close to the street, separated from it only by the width of the sidewalk. Mary from her fourteenth year watched these unhappy creatures— men, women, and children, manacled two abreast, connected by heavy iron chains that ex- tended the whole length of the line— as they plodded wearily past her door on their long march to the cotton fields of Georgia or the rice plantations of torrid Louisiana.10
That Mary and her cousin, Elizabeth Humphreys, were much distressed by these pathetic scenes is a matter of record, and each occurrence planted the conviction more deeply in their young hearts that slavery was a monstrous wrong.11 Oc- casionally some skulking wretch on his way to the Ohio River and freedom would creep up to the friendly back doors in Lexington for a bite of food. A mark on the fence in the alley at the rear of the Todd home indicated that "vittles" could
74 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
be had there, and many were the runaways fed by old Mammy Sally with the help of Mary and her cousin.12
One day Mary and Elizabeth read in a New Orleans news- paper of the outrages perpetrated by a Mme. LaLaurie on her slaves. "We were horrified," said her cousin, "and talked of nothing else for days. If one such case could happen, it damned the whole institution."13 And if Mary Todd was affected by brutality to slaves in distant Louisiana, it is not difficult to imagine the indelible impressions made upon her by similar occurrences that later took place in the vicinity of her own home.
Fielding L. Turner, a wealthy retired jurist, and his wife Caroline, member of a prominent Boston family, lived only a short distance from the Todds.14 They kept a pretentious establishment and owned probably more house servants than any other family in the city. Mrs. Turner, a large muscular woman with an ungovernable temper, frequently whipped her slaves with such violence that Judge Turner himself said: "She has been the immediate cause of the death of six of my servants by her severities."15 Her conduct had already become a public scandal, when one day in the early spring of 1837 Mrs. Turner deliberately threw a small black boy out of a second-story win- dow onto the stone flagging of the courtyard below, injuring his spine, breaking an arm and a leg, and making him a cripple for life.
The wanton cruelty of this incident intensely aroused the whole community, and in order to save his wife from threat- ened criminal prosecution, as well as for the protection of his other slaves, Judge Turner had her forcibly removed from their home to the lunatic asylum where after a confinement of several days Mrs. Turner demanded a trial on the question of her sanity. On March 31, 1837, a jury composed of Robert S. Todd and eleven other citizens was impaneled in the Fayette Circuit Court and "sworn well and truly to inquire into the state of mind of Caroline A. Turner." Before the trial began,
GREAT SALE
SLAVES
T
n.~
JANUARY 10, 1855
'HERE \Hf!f Be Offered For Safe at Public AucUon st the SLAVE MARKET. CH£APSi>$ LEXINGTON. AT The SLAVES of JOHN CARTCR. E»quire. of LEWli COUNTY, K\ On Account of His Removal to Indiana, a FreaState. The Slavrt L»*ted Bek>* Wi ■ At! R*i*«d on the CARTER PLANTATION at QUICK 3 Rt'N. L««isCou*t>. Ker ......
3 Bucks Aged from 20 to 26, Strong, Ablebodied
1 WetlCh, Sallie, Aged 42, Excellent Cook
1 Wench , Lize, Aged 23 with 6 mo. old Picinniny
One Buck Aged 52, good Kennel Man
■ 7 Bucks Aged from twelve to twenty, Excellent
■I'M1, ( ASH
a!*, »» i*r.tr mutt realize ca*h, oh in g. to h»* nmc*
>t*r?**ned previous to tale by addre*nng the under*
JOItX €/IRICRvEm|.
!»«». € iati U»l.«t a 1 ,.»% i+ 40|,|il>, i*«»ttttf« I**
Sale of "bucks" and "wenches" on Cheapside Facsimile in the Coleman Collection
Slave cabins in the Bluegrass. Coleman Collation
SLAVERY IN THE BLUEGRASS 75
however, the court received information that the commissioners of the asylum, finding no evidence of mental derangement in the defendant, had already released her from custody, and the jury was thereupon discharged and the matter dropped.16
During the early part of Mary Todd's last year in Kentucky her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell, were tried on a charge of "atrocious brutality" to a young female slave. The indig- nation of the citizens of Lexington is apparent from the pub- licity that was given to the proceedings. Dr. Constant testified that one cold morning he saw Mrs. Maxwell severely whipping a barefooted, thinly clad Negro girl "without being particular whether she struck her in the face or not." She was bleeding profusely from cuts and lacerations on the head and body. A month or so previous the witness noticed several scars on the girl's face, and she had kept an eye tied up for a week. Another witness, passing along the street, had seen a son of the Max- wells flogging this slave with a cowhide. The girl was cringing before the blows that fell upon her frail shoulders and begged piteously for mercy, but when she turned her face toward young Maxwell, he would strike her squarely across the nose and cheeks, sometimes with the keen lash and again with the heavy butt of the whip. A medical examination at the time of the trial revealed bruises, lacerations, and the searing marks of a red-hot iron on her emaciated body.17
However, the tragedy of the slave lay far deeper than mere mistreatment. Its dark, sinister shadow fell across the threshold of homes where the slave might even be the head of the house- hold and her children the acknowledged flesh and blood of the master.
Mary Todd could not remember when she did not know Richard M. Johnson, owner of "Blue Springs," a large, fertile plantation in the adjoining county of Scott. Hero of the Battle of the Thames, widely acclaimed as the slayer of the noted Indian chief Tecumseh, senior United States senator from Ken-
76 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
tucky, "Dick" Johnson was for years a welcome visitor in the Todd home on Short Street. Even after his break with Henry Clay— although he never came to the Main Street residence and the intimacy was never as close as before— Johnson and Robert S. Todd remained good personal friends.
A sturdily built man, slightly under medium height, with a shock of unruly hair prematurely gray, noticeably lame from the five wounds he had received while leading his mounted Kentuckians in the furious charge that routed Proctor's British Regulars and his savage allies, careless of dress and invariably wearing his beloved red waistcoat, "Old Tecumseh" was a prime favorite in the drawing rooms of Dolly Madison at the White House and moved in the most select circles of Capital society during his entire public life. A celebrated Washington hostess once described him as "the most tender-hearted, mild, affec- tionate and benevolent of men."18
Colonel Johnson never married, but in early manhood he took for his mistress an attractive octoroon slave girl, Julia Chinn, one of the chattels which had come to him in the set- tlement of his father's estate. Julia was in complete charge of all the domestic concerns of "Blue Springs" and was the mother of his two handsome daughters, Imogene and Adaline, who bore such slight evidence of Negro blood that, as their tutor observed, "a stranger would not suspect them of being what they really are— the children of a colored woman."
Deeply religious and like their mother members of the Great Crossings Baptist Church, they were as carefully and tenderly reared and their paternity as unconcealed as the most gently nurtured belle of the Bluegrass. Thomas Henderson, a young scholarly minister, superintendent of Choctaw Acad- emy, an Indian school established by Colonel Johnson on his Great Crossings farm, had charge of their education.
"I soon discovered," he later wrote, "such uncommon apt- ness in these two girls to take learning, and so much decent, modest and unassuming conduct on their part, that my mind became much enlisted in their favor."19
SLAVERY IN THE BLUEGRASS 77
When General Lafayette visited Kentucky in 1825, he went out of his way to pay his respects to Colonel Johnson and spent a night as his guest at "Blue Springs." A young farm boy of the neighborhood, Ebenezer Stedman, has left a brief, colorful record of all he saw on that memorable afternoon when he went with the "Imence croud of People to the Blew Spring, the Residence of Richard M. Johnson. Such a gethering of the People. He had cannon at the Spring & Commenced firing Long Before we Reached there. Evry thing that was necsary for the occasion was prepared in fine order. Johnsons Two Daughters they Played on the piano fine. They Ware Dressed as fine as money Could Dress them & to one that Did not no they ware as white as anny of the Laydes thare & thare ware a good many."20
Of course, it was inevitable that the domestic life of Colonel Johnson should become a sordid issue in the vicious politics and gangrenous journalism of that era.
On November 29, 1832, the Lexington Observer & Re- porter, chief organ of the Wrhig party in the West, carried under bold headlines "marriage extraordinary," a lurid account of the recent wedding between a "white man" and the "fair and lovely" Adaline Johnson, a "mulatto girl reputed and ac- knowledged daughter of the Honorable Richard M. Johnson." "This is the second time," declared the Observer & Reporter, "that the moral feelings of that part of the people of Scott County, who possess such feelings, have been shocked and out- raged by the marriage of a mulatto daughter of Col. Johnson to a white man, if a man who will so far degrade himself, who will make himself an object of scorn and detestation to every person who has the least regard for decency, can be considered a man."
Henceforth until his election as Vice-President in 1836, and so long, in fact, as Colonel Johnson held political office, the Whigs would center their fire on his octoroon mistress and his daughters. When the Trenton, New Jersey, Emporium concluded a eulogistic editorial on Johnson with the rhetorical
78 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
query: "What hand, when he dies, will be worthy to write his epitaph?" the Kentucky Tribune of Danville replied: "If he expires in his wife's gentle embrace, we will try our own hand at the epitaph— thus: 'Died in the Wool'."21
When on one occasion the Jacksonian press reminded the Whigs that similar attacks had been made upon "the great and good Jefferson," the Louisville Journal quickly pointed out a sharp distinction. "Like other men," said editor George D. Prentice, "the author of the Declaration of Independence had his faults, but he was, at least, careful never to insult the feel- ings of the community with an ostentatious exhibition of them. He never lived in open intercourse with an 'odoriferous wench'; He never bribed 'his white fellow citizens' to 'make such beasts of themselves' before the open eyes of the whole world as to stand up in the church, grasp the sable paws of negresses and pronounce the sacred vows of wedlock."
Then the indignant Prentice— who was not above a little quiet "blood pollution" himself, having been accused more than once of "disowning his own"— closed his diatribe by say- ing: "If Col. Johnson had the decency and decorum to seek to hide his ignominy from the world, we would refrain from lifting the curtain. His chief sin against society is the publicity and barefacedness of his conduct, he scorns all secrecy, all con- cealment, all disguise."22
However, "secrecy" or "disguise" was not a part of "Old Tecumseh's" nature. Subjected to the foulest scurrility for acknowledging the paternity of "mulatto bastards," taunted and reviled because he had affection tely reared these "mongrel daughters," giving them an education "equal or superior to most females in the country"— though, as the Reverend Mr. Henderson declared, "no attempt has ever been made to im- pose them on society"— he seemed outwardly oblivious to the flood of vilification and personal abuse that swirled about his snow-thatched head. Calmly he went his way without retort or comment of any kind.
But the abuse broke Adaline's heart, and when she died on the eve of her famous father's election to the second highest
SLAVERY IN THE BLUEGRASS 79
office within the gift of his countrymen, Colonel Johnson sadly wrote Henderson from Washington:
I thank you & all who administered to that lovely and innocent child in her final and awful hour. She was a source of inexhaustible happiness and comfort to me. She was mild and prudent. She was wise in her counsel beyond her years Sc obedient to every thought & every advice of mine. In her whole life I do not recall that she ever did an act that ever ruffled my temper. She was a firm 8c great prop to my happiness here— but she is gone where sorrow 8c sighing can never disturb her peaceful & quiet bosom. She is happy, and has left me unhappy in mourning her loss, which perhaps 1 ought not to do; knowing what a happy change she has made.23
It was such experiences as these that made Mary Todd thoroughly familiar with every aspect of slavery. Moreover, for ten years before coming to Springfield she had lived in the very midst of bitter controversy on the subject. As we have seen in a previous chapter, Robert Wickliffe was the leader of the radical proslavery faction, while two of her father's per- sonal and political friends, Robert J. Breckinridge and Cassius M. Clay, were spokesmen for those who favored emancipation. The ashen face of poor Charlie Wickliffe— Fayette County's earliest victim of this tragic strife— would never be blotted from her memory.
In the spring of 1830 a series of strong antislavery articles signed "B" appeared in the columns of the Reporter.2* They came from Breckinridge's brilliant pen and excited such violent discussion that two months later he was forced to withdraw as a candidate for the legislature and to retire from politics at the early age of thirty.25 But his efforts had not been altogether in vain, for on September 6, 1831, a few slaveholders met in Lexington and formed a society pledged to the emancipation of the future offspring of slaves at the age of twenty-one.26 This action, coming as it had from slaveholders themselves, threw the whole community into a turmoil such as had never been known before. Proslavery leaders pictured to the alarmed pop- ulace the hideous specter of a servile insurrection, while the emancipationists contended that all the furor was but a thinly
80 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
veiled attempt on the part of the slavocracy to suppress public discussion and a flimsy excuse for the infliction of a more galling discipline on the Negroes.
As bitterness, suspicion, charges, and recrimination in- creased, the Lexington jails were filled with slaves indicted for various offenses: murder, rape, arson, burglary— all punishable by death. For fifteen years prior to 1831 no Negro had been executed in Fayette County, but now excited juries, swayed by the passion and prejudice of the hour, inflicted the extreme penalty with terrifying frequency. On August 13, 1831, four slaves convicted of separate offenses were hanged from the same scaffold in the yard of Megowan's jail.27
Finally, however, out of this social travail had come the Nonimportation Act, passed by the General Assembly of Ken- tucky in 1833 after nearly five years of bloodshed. This law prohibiting slaves from being brought into the state for pur- poses of sale,28 with severe penalties for its violation, dealt a heavy blow to the slave trade. Its passage was a signal victory for the friends of gradual emancipation. Yet at the same time it rang the death knell to peace in Kentucky for many a day on the subject of slavery. Henceforth the proslavery element, always led by Robert Wickliffe, waged unceasing warfare against what they contemptuously called the "Negro Law." Time after time, bills for its repeal would be presented to the legis- lature and sometimes passed by the Senate, only to be regularly defeated in the House.
So it was that the woman who married Lincoln through her girlhood experiences in Lexington was peculiarly fitted to share in the great task which would make her husband im- mortal. She had been taught every phase of the great question, which finally came to be nearest his heart, by the very man whom her husband regarded with the most profound admira- tion. She knew what Lincoln himself probably did not then know: that frequent maltreatment and even gross brutality was an inseparable part of the institution of slavery, even where it existed in the mildest form.
SEVEN
Grist to the Mill
jIVLANY persons who knew Abraham Lincoln intimately have borne testimony to his fondness for newspapers. One authority has gone so far as to say that they were the "most potent in- fluence that ever came into Lincoln's life in Illinois."1 Lincoln's habit of reading newspapers had been acquired back in the early days when he kept the post office at New Salem. Patrons were often slow in calling for their mail, and the postmaster entertained himself with the Louisville Journal and other pub- lications that came to the office. After Lincoln went to Spring- field, local newspapers were available at his law office, and regularly he read others on the exchange table of his friend, Simeon Francis, editor of the Sangamo Journal.
It was not, however, until his marriage to Mary Todd that Lincoln had regular access to a southern journal. The news- paper that then began coming to the Lincoln residence was the Lexington Observer & Reporter, published semiweekly in his wife's home town.2 The politics of the Observer suited the Lincolns exactly. It was an uncompromising Whig, a stanch supporter of Henry Clay, and a friend of Robert S. Todd.
82 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
Gallant Harry of the West was in the Senate of the United States, and Todd, having served more than twenty years as clerk of the Kentucky House of Representatives, was now a member of that body from Fayette County.
Henry Clay had been Lincoln's idol since boyhood.3 A biography of the Kentucky statesman was one of the few books that he had read back in Indiana. He had studied Clay's speeches4 and was in complete accord with his views on in- ternal improvements, the tariff, slavery, and other public ques- tions of the day. Only a few weeks before his marriage Lincoln, as a member of the executive committee of the local "Clay Club," had extended an urgent invitation to the Sage of Ash- land to visit Springfield.5 The Observer was as completely de- voted to politics as any newspaper ever printed, and Lincoln now had an opportunity to follow the most minute activities of the great Whig leader.
Lincoln was also interested in the personal and political fortunes of his father-in-law. In the autumn of 1843 Todd had visited Springfield, where for the first time he met the tall, angular husband of his daughter Mary. Lincoln had found him a kindly, genial man much concerned over the welfare of his children and their families. On that occasion Todd had as- signed to his son-in-law several claims which merchants in Illi- nois owed him for cotton goods furnished them from his factory at Lexington. He had also given Mrs. Lincoln eighty acres of land near Springfield and had arranged to provide Mary and her husband cash advancements of $120 per annum, which continued until Lincoln was firmly established in his law practice.6
Mary was fond of reading aloud, and many were the eve- nings she read the stirring events in the "home" paper while Lincoln listened soberly, his chair tipped back against the chim- ney jamb in the living room, his feet encased in huge, black vel- vet carpet slippers on the vamps of which Mary had painstaking- ly embroidered "A.L."7 Slavery agitation was raging fiercely in Kentucky, with Lexington as the storm center. Robert Wick-
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liffe and Robert J. Breckinridge, not only opponents on the slavery question but bitter personal enemies, were engaged in a series of vitriolic debates on the Negro Law, which appeared in the columns of the Observer. The speeches of Breckinridge were being published in pamphlet form at the expense of Henry Clay, Robert S. Todd, and other friends, and widely distributed from Todd's store in Lexington.8 Mary's husband must have enjoyed the terse, scintillating eloquence of Breckinridge, whose declaration that "the highest of all rights is the right of a man to himself" now sounds so strikingly Lincolnian.
The Old Duke's son, Robert Wickliffe, Jr., was a candidate for Congress against Garret Davis, who was being warmly sup- ported by Robert S. Todd, Henry Clay and his cousin, Cassius M. Clay, and other stanch Whigs of Lexington.
Young Wickliffe and "Cash" Clay had shortly before fought a duel, exchanging shots without effect, and had, as Clay said, "left the ground enemies as we came."
At the beginning of his speeches Wickliffe would read a letter purporting to quote the statement of a Woodford County citizen which reflected upon his opponent, without informing his audience that the person quoted had issued a handbill in emphatic denial. On several occasions Clay, in the absence of Wickliffe's opponent, had interrupted Wickliffe and called at- tention to the unmentioned handbill. After this had happened a few times, Wickliffe sent for his relative, Samuel M. Brown, a post-office agent, who then lived or had his office in New Orleans. Brown was a fearless, quick-tempered, dangerous man of great physical strength— overbearing in politics— and reputed to have had "40 fights and never lost a battle."
Following receipt of his kinsman's appeal for help, Brown was soon on the ground and in secret conference with certain members of the Wickliffe clan at the Dudley House. It was agreed that if Clay interrupted the speaking next day at a bar- becue near a large spring that emerged from a limestone cavern called Russell's Cave, Brown would lead an attack upon him with "a crowd of desperate bullies," already alerted. Armed
84 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
with a "six-barrelled" pistol, he declared as he left the lobby of the Dudley House that if Clay opened his mouth at the barbecue, he "would blow his damned brains out."
Wickliffe began his speech at three o'clock. Again he re- peated the controverted statement, and again Clay, standing on the outskirts of the crowd, interrupted, citing Captain Jesse's denial.
"Sir," exclaimed Brown in menacing tones, "that is not true. Capt. Jesse said no such thing."
"You lie," Clay retorted.
"You are a damned liar," shouted Brown, rushing Clay from the front, while a gang of "roughs" seized him from be- hind, mauling him severely. Someone struck him a heavy blow on the head with a club, numbing an arm and dazing him momentarily. "Clear the way and let me kill the damn rascal," ordered Brown.
The crowd fell back. Clay found himself in an open space- Brown standing some fifteen feet away with his "six-barrelled" pistol leveled at his breast.
Forced to "run or be shot," Cash chose not to run. Drawing his bowie knife, he turned his left side with his left arm cov- ering it so as to present as "thin a target" as possible and ad- vanced upon his adversary. Brown waited until his intended victim was almost within arm's reach and then fired. Distinctly feeling the "shock of the ball just under the left rib" and realizing that he could be shot five more times in quick suc- cession, Clay "closed on" Brown before he could shoot again and "cut away in good earnest" with fierce thrusts of his knife that laid his enemy's skull open to the brain, cut off an ear, and dug out an eye. In another instant the proud hero of "40 fights" was thrown over a low stone wall and rolled ignominiously down the bluff into the dark waters of Russell's Cave.9
Clay was immediately rushed by his friends into a nearby house and stripped to the waist in search of his wounds. To their amazement it was discovered that the ball from Brown's pistol had struck the silver-lined scabbard of the bowie knife
GRIST TO THE MILL 85
and, being deflected, had lodged harmlessly in the back of Clay's coat, leaving only a red spot just over the heart.10
At the next term of the Fayette Circuit Court, Cassius M. Clay appeared in response to an indictment which charged him with assaulting Samuel M. Brown with intent to kill and "being arraigned, plead not guilty, and for his trial put himself upon God and his country."11 The case had attracted no little ex- citement throughout Kentucky because of the connection of its participants with the slavery controversy, and the Lincolns doubtless felt more than a casual interest in the accounts of the trial which filled the columns of the Observer. Henry Clay had emerged from retirement as a criminal lawyer to defend his kinsman, who was also represented by his brother-in-law, John Speed Smith, an uncle of Joshua Speed, Lincoln's early and most intimate friend. Robert S. Todd and Deputy Sheriff Waller Rodes, Mrs. Lincoln's cousin, were witnesses for the defense.
It was the theory of the prosecution that Clay and his anti- slavery Whig friends had gone to Russell's Cave with the de- liberate intention of breaking up a peaceful Democratic meet- ing. On the other hand, the defense stoutly contended that Brown, Wickliffe, Professor Cross of the Transylvania medical school, and Ben Wood, a policeman, had conspired to assas- sinate the defendant; that Clay acted solely in self-defense; and that only the prompt and vigorous use of his bowie knife had prevented the execution of the conspiracy. The weight of the evidence seemed to be with the defendant, but the jury was known to be proslavery almost to a man. The defense strove desperately to confine the testimony to the charge in the in- dictment, excluding politics and all other outside issues, but in this they were not wholly successful.
It was a dramatic moment in the historic old courthouse when at the conclusion of the evidence the tall form of Henry Clay rose to address the jury. Every seat in the circuit court- room was taken. Men and women crowded the aisles and stood with craning necks out in the corridors. Old men leaned for-
86 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
ward on their canes and cupped tremulous fingers about their ears to catch once more the sonorous cadences of that familiar voice. It had been forty-five years since "the Mill Boy of the Slashes," a stranger just arrived from Virginia, without even a friend to introduce him to the court, had been sworn in "upon his own motion" as a member of the Lexington bar.12 From that day Clay had lost few criminal cases, though it was now freely predicted by those who knew the popular feeling against his client that the twelve men in the jury box would never return a verdict in favor of the defendant.
But the old gladiator seemed fully equal to the occasion as he calmly buttoned his long frock coat across his breast and began to speak to the jury in an easy conversational tone. The editor of the Observer noted that " 'age had not withered nor custom staled the infinite variety of his genius;' there was a fire in his eye, elation in his countenance, a buoyancy in his whole action that bespoke the most complete confidence in the outcome of the trial." For more than two hours Clay addressed the jury with all the persuasive eloquence of his long experi- ence as an advocate. "Standing, as he did, without aiders or abettors, and without popular sympathy, with the fatal pistol of conspired murderers pointed at his heart, would you have had him meanly and cowardly fly?" he asked at the close in thundering tones. "Or would you have had him do just what he did do— there stand in defense or there fall?" And then, rising to his full height and turning partly toward the de- fendant, with the most pathetic voice, broken but emphatic, he exclaimed: "And, if he had not, he would not have been worthy of the name he bears!"13
After Mr. Robertson, the prosecutor, had made the closing appeal for the commonwealth, the jury retired, deliberated an hour, and then filed slowly back through the waiting throng to the jury box. Judge Richard A. Buckner peered over his spectacles at the twelve men in front of the bench. "Have you reached a verdict, gentlemen?" he asked, as he sternly rapped for order.
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"We have, your Honor," replied Foreman Sam Patterson, holding up a folded slip of paper which the sheriff handed to the clerk.
"We the jury find the defendant not guilty," read the clerk. There was a moment's silence, then scattering applause, quickly drowned by hisses, muttered threats, shuffling feet, and the sharp voice of Judge Buckner ordering the sheriff to "empty the courtroom." The antislavery forces had won their first victory in Lexington, and Henry Clay had achieved perhaps his greatest courtroom triumph.14
During the months that followed the trial of Cassius M. Clay, Lincoln found in the columns of the Observer ample evidence to support his conviction that "no man was good enough to govern another." Among the runaway slaves ad- vertised for were:
Jerry, rather spare, slow of speech when spoken to, of black complexion and one or two of his upper teeth knocked out.
Polly, a likely yellow woman, whose fingers on her right hand are drawn toward the palm from a burn.
William, [who has had] one of his legs broken and it is now somewhat twisted, which produces an impediment in his walk.
A negro man named Henry, commonly called "Sir Henry," who has the marks of a recent scald on the left cheek, neck and ear, the whole being scarcely yet healed.
Jesse, a dark mulatto, 45 years old, a small piece bit off one of his ears, a scar on one side of his forehead, and his right shoulder bone had been broken.15
The keeper of the slave jail announced that there had been apprehended and was now in his custody a "sprightly young mulatto wench" who said her name was "Callie," with a "brand on the cheek, forehead and breast resembling the letter 'H'." Also a "stout black boy, Mose, who has a burn on his buttock from a hot iron in shape of an 'X' and his back is much scarred with the whip." And "Alex, who has his ears cropped and has been shot in the hind parts of his legs."
A resident of Lexington had for sale "a Likely Negro girl,
88 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
fifteen years of age." A gentleman wished to purchase for his use a few "Young Men and Women." Another offered "a negro woman well acquainted with house business, about thirty years old, and occasionally fond of a dram." And on a certain county court day at the public auction block an owner would sell "Four Negroes, a woman, and her three children: a boy 9, a girl 7 and a boy 4. They will be sold separately if desired."
Then there came an afternoon in early May, 1843. Nearly two thousand people were assembled on Cheapside. The wealth and culture of the Bluegrass were there, as well as ladies and gentlemen from Cincinnati, Louisville, Frankfort, and as far south as New Orleans. Ordinarily a slave sale was an event that attracted only casual interest, usually attended by pro- spective purchasers and a few idle bystanders. But today a dense mass of humanity swarmed about the old, rickety auc- tion block at the southwest corner of the courthouse yard, and the public square was filled to overflowing with men and women in fashionable attire.
Two persons stood on the block: one was the auctioneer in a long swallow-tailed coat, plaid vest, and calfskin boots, with a white beaver hat on the back of his head; the other was a beautiful young girl with dark lustrous eyes, straight black hair, and a rich olive complexion, only one sixty-fourth Negro. She was white, yet a slave, the daughter of her master, about to be sold by his creditors to the highest and best bid- der. Reared as a house servant in a home of wealth and culture, Eliza had acquired grace, poise, education, and other accom- plishments most unusual in one of her station. Those who were selling her had taken no chances on her escape. For more than a week she had been confined in a filthy, crowded, vermin- infested slave pen with maimed and twisted pieces of humanity like William and Callie and Mose, and now she stood trembling and disheveled, staring with wide, frightened eyes into the upturned faces of that curious throng.
With his hand clutching the girl's shrinking shoulder, the
GRIST TO THE MILL 89
auctioneer addressed the crowd in businesslike tones. Here was a sprightly wench, such as never before had been offered at a public sale. She was skilled in all the household arts, de- pendable, trustworthy, and amiable in disposition. In the most insinuating tones he emphasized her exquisite physique and then called loudly for bids.
"How much am I offered for the wench?" he inquired in a harsh voice. The bidding started at two hundred fifty dollars. Rapidly it rose by twenty-fives and fifties to R\e hundred- seven hundred— a thousand dollars. When twelve hundred was reached only two bidders remained in the field: Calvin Fair- bank, a young minister who had just recently come to town, and a short, thick-necked, beady-eyed Frenchman from New Orleans.
"How high are you going?" asked the Frenchman.
"Higher than you, Monsieur," replied Fairbank.
The bidding went on, but slower— more hesitant— smaller. The auctioneer raved and pleaded. "Fourteen hundred and fifty," said Fairbank cautiously. The Frenchman was silent. The hammer rose— wavered, lowered— rose again— then the flushed and perspiring autctioneer dropped his hammer and jerked Eliza's dress back from her white shoulders, exhibiting to the gaze of the crowd her superb neck and breast.
"Look here, gentlemen!" he shouted, "who is going to lose such a chance as this? Here is a girl fit to be the mistress of a king!" A suppressed murmur of horror ran through the crowd. Women turned away and tried to leave. Exclamations of anger were heard on every side. But the man on the block, callous from experience, was not to be intimidated. He knew his rights: that under the law the weeping, cringing creature at his side was a chattel and nothing more.
"Fourteen sixty- five," ventured the Frenchman.
"Fourteen seventy-five," responded the preacher.
There was another frenzied appeal for bids, but none came, and it seemed that the contender from New Orleans was
90 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
through. Sickened at the spectacle, the crowd was melting away when suddenly the auctioneer "twisted the victim's pro- file" to the dazed and incredulous audience and "lifting her skirts, laid bare her beautiful, symmetrical body from her feet to her waist."
"Ah, gentlemen," he exclaimed, slapping her naked thigh with a heavy hand, "who is going to be the winner of this prize?"
"Fourteen hundred and eighty," came the Frenchman's voice feebly through the tumult.
The man on the block lifted his gavel. "Are you all done? Once— twice— do I hear any more? Thr-e-e." The high bidder stood with a smile of triumph on his swarthy features. Eliza, knowing who the preacher was, turned an appealing, piteous face in his direction.
"Fourteen eighty-five," said Fairbank.
"Eighty-five, eighty-five— eighty-five; I'm going to sell this girl. Are you going to bid again?"
The Frenchman shook his head. With a resounding thud the hammer fell, and Eliza crumpled down on the block in a swoon.
"You've got her damned cheap, sir," said the auctioneer cheerily to Fairbank. "What are you going to do with her?"
"Free her," cried Fairbank, and a mighty shout went up from the dispersing crowd led, surprisingly, by the great pro- slavery advocate, Robert Wickliffe, in whose carriage Eliza and her new owner drove to the house of a friend while her "free papers" were being made out.16
The sale of Eliza sorely taxed the allegiance of central Ken- tucky to its favorite institution and provoked wide discussion and comment.17 The emancipationists held it up as a hideous example of the barbarous slave code, while the opposition rather feebly contended that it was a most extraordinary incident, an extreme case never likely to occur again. And so the dis- cussion went on for months until the approaching presidential campaign absorbed public attention.
150 REWARD.
RANAWAY from the subscriber, on the night of Monday the 11th July, a negro man named
9
about 30 years of a^e, 5 feet 6 er 7 inches high; of dark color; heavy in the chest; several of hin jaw teeth out; and upon his body are several old marks of
fne \n hip, one or them straight down the hick. He took with him a quantity of clothing, and several hats.
A reward of $150 will be paid for his apprehension and security, if taken out of the State of Kentucky: §100 if taken in any county bordering on the Ohio river; $50 if taken in any of the interior counties ex- cept Favette: or |20 if taken in the latter county.
july 12-84-tf B. L. BOSTON.
Reward for runaway slave. Lexington Observer & Reporter
Slave auction on Cheapside
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The year 1844 was a momentous one for Lincoln. Things were happening down in the Bluegrass State that would ex- pand the area of his activities and give him more than state- wide prominence. The battle-scarred Harry of the West was sounding the call to faithful followers for a last desperate as- sault upon the citadel of the Presidency. Twice before in years gone by, the great prize had slipped through his fingers. Now the Whigs of the nation with boundless enthusiasm were gath- ering for the fray, thrilled as of yore by the unabated mag- netism of their old leader.
The Observer carried in large bold type at the head of its editorial column names already familiar to Lincoln, and one that he would come to know better: Henry Clay for President of the United States; William Owsley for governor; Archibald Dixon for lieutenant governor, who ten years later introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill that brought Lincoln out of political retirement; and Robert S. Todd for state senator.
From the first of May until the election in November the Observer contained almost nothing but politics. The activities of Senator Todd in behalf of Henry Clay were particularly noted. "His argument exceeded anything ever before heard on the subject," said the editor. "It was extremely sound and lucid. He was frequently interrupted by the hearty applause of the delighted audience."18 Clay remained quietly at his country seat, while column after column of the newspaper was devoted to his views on the question of the day and intimate sketches of his home life at "Ashland." Here, as nowhere else, could Lincoln obtain intimate glimpses of his "beau-ideal of a statesman," and in these pages he saw also the faraway but ominous gestures toward disunion.
A number of editorials discussed the resolution presented by citizens of Edgefield, South Carolina: "That the President of the United States be requested by the general convention of the slave states to call Congress together immediately; and the alternative distinctly presented to the free states, either to admit Texas into the Union, or to proceed peaceably and
92 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
calmly to arrange the terms of the dissolution of the Union."19 To this Clay with all his old-time vigor made ringing reply that must have stirred Lincoln's blood.
It was interesting to observe the attempts of the Democrats to place the Whig candidate in much the same position into which Lincoln himself maneuvered the agile Douglas fourteen years later. Clay was called an abolitionist in the South, while his political enemies charged him with proslavery sentiments in the North.20 The Observer of June 5, 1844, carried certified statements from several persons of prominence who declared that years before in the debate on the Missouri Compromise, Clay had said: "If gentlemen will not allow us to have black slaves, they must let us have white ones; for we cannot cut our firewood, and black our shoes, and have our wives and daugh- ters work in the kitchen." Clay denied this charge in dignified but emphatic language and closed his reply as follows: "I have no desire to disparage the industry of the wives of any of the certifiers to the extract, nor to boast of that in my own family, but I venture to say that no one of them performs more do- mestic industry with their own hands than my wife does at Ashland." And yet, according to the Observer of July 24: "Mr. Wickliffe abused Mr. Clay in the most violent manner. He stated that Mr. Clay was at the head of abolitionism in the United States, and that he assisted in stealing all the negroes that have run off from this state."
Meanwhile, Lincoln, as one of the Whig electors for his state, actively took the stump for his hero.21 Day after day he engaged his old surveying instructor, John Calhoun, Stephen A. Douglas, and other Democratic orators in joint debates which carried him to nearly every part of the state and "ex- cited much popular feeling." Toward the close of the cam- paign, he crossed the Wabash into Indiana and spoke at Rock- port and other places near the home of his boyhood. It was at Gentry ville that his early friend, Nat Grigsby, entered the room in the midst of his speech and Lincoln recognized him instantly. "There is Nat!" he exclaimed, halting suddenly in
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his remarks, and "striding from the platform," he pushed eager- ly through the crowd until he reached the modest Nat and grasped him by the hand. Then, as though no interruption had occurred, he returned to the platform and finished his speech. That night Grigsby and Lincoln slept together at the home of the village storekeeper, where the presidential elector from Illinois "commenced telling stories and talked over old times" until nearly dawn.22
During the latter part of August public attention at Lex- ington was diverted for a moment from politics to a local tragedy that was doubtless of interest to the Lincoln household. Mrs. Caroline A. Turner, who had outraged the community several years before by the brutal treatment of her slaves, had never reformed. Her husband, Judge Fielding L. Turner, be- fore he died in 1843 had stated in his will: "I have some slaves. I give them to my children. None of them are to go to the said Caroline for it would be to doom them to misery in life and a speedy death."23
The said Caroline, however, had renounced the will and obtained several of these Negroes, including a coachman named Richard, who was described as a "sensible, well-behaved yellow boy, who is plausible and can read and write." A short while thereafter, on the early morning of August 22, Mrs. Turner was flogging Richard with her usual zest and severity when the boy, with superhuman strength born of agony, broke the heavy chains that bound him to the wall, seized his mistress by the throat, and strangled her to death with his bare hands. In the midst of intense excitement Richard was arrested, thrown in jail, quickly indicted, and rushed into trial for the murder of Caroline A. Turner. Few seemed now to remember her cruelties that had created such widespread indignation a few years before. The very attitude of the press toward the case was a revelation of how blind the public was to the iniquity of slavery.24
Probably a dozen Negroes had died at the hands of Caroline
94 LINCOLN AND THE BLUEGRASS
Turner. Her own death had occurred under circumstances which, if they did not exonerate the slayer, ought to have at least reduced the homicide to "killing in sudden heat and pas- sion," which was not a capital crime in Kentucky. The de- fendant bore an excellent reputation, was quiet, peaceable and inoffensive. But the right of a slave to self-defense was a mere legal fiction. It would never do to admit that a bondman under any circumstances could ever take the life of his master or mistress— not even to save his own— and escape the gallows. Such, according to the indictment, was "against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Kentucky."
So on September 23, 1844, Richard was led handcuffed into court by Lincoln's cousin, Sheriff Waller Rodes, went through the formality of a trial, and was promptly found guilty of murder in the first degree. On November 19 at eleven o'clock Sheriff Rodes pulled a wooden trigger, and Richard plunged feet first through the narrow trap door of the scaffold in the jail yard and, obedient to the judgment of the court, "hung by the neck until dead."25
Wherever he went, Lincoln found his candidate assailed by the Democrats or Locofocos with amazing virulence. From the stump, the press, and pamphlets came venomous thrusts at not only the public career, but the private life of Henry Clay.26 Affidavits from Robert Wickliffe averred that "Mr. Clay has been in the habit of playing cards for money for many years back, at watering-places, on steamboats, and at private houses." Several congressmen recalled that in 1838 on the ex- citing question of the contested seats of the Mississippi mem- bers Clay had come over from the Senate to watch the votes in the House of Representatives and was standing close to the speaker's chair. The vote was a tie, and as Speaker Polk then cast his vote in the affirmative, "Henry Clay, looking directly at the Speaker with an expression and a gesture we shall never forget, exclaimed, 'Go Home, God damn you, where you be-
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long!' " Thomas Montague remembered that about a year before, he had been present at a sale of Thomas H. Clay's effects in Lexington, and that Henry Clay, exasperated at the low prices being bid for his son's property, "swore very loud and said, 'I do not care a God Damn whether the creditors get a damn cent of their debts or not, if they stand by and see the property sacrificed.' "27
Clay's enemies further called attention to his duel with Humphrey Marshall, his encounter with John Randolph, and his part in "the murder of the lamented Cilley" by William J. Graves. They pointed out that he was even then under bond in the District of Columbia to keep the peace toward William R. King, United States minister to France and formerly senator from Alabama, and that, although sixty-seven years old, "cov- ered with grey hairs," when recently asked whether he would fight a duel at his age, Clay had replied: "I can not reconcile it to my sense of propriety, to make a declaration one way or the other."28 To all this flood of hypocritical abuse the Whig press and stump speakers like Lincoln made vigorous reply, and the Observer thundered its heaviest broadsides29 in edi- torials styled: "Mr. Clay and His Revilers." As election day approached, the Whigs redoubled their efforts on behalf of the national ticket. Enthusiasm and confidence in an over- whelming victory at the polls were boundless, and no follower of Henry Clay in all the nation was more absorbed in the con- test than Abraham Lincoln.
At Lexington, barbecues were held under the giant trees of the Bluegrass woodlands, where that delectable concoction known as "Kentucky burgoo"— almost every kind of vegetable with dozens of chickens, pheasants, squirrels, rabbits, quail- stewed in huge iron kettles, whole shoats and lambs roasted on revolving spits, beeves baked in trenches under the hot fire of seasoned oak and hickory were served on dozens of wide tables each forty feet long. The Clay Club, with ornate ban- ners presented by the ladies, led by its grand marshals, Levi
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O. Todd and Jesse Bayles, marched in cheering torchlight pro- cessions to Cheapside, where they were addressed by various Whig orators.
On September 30 Calvin Fairbank, the Methodist preacher who had sprung into notice through his dramatic purchase of the slave girl Eliza, was arrested with Miss Delia Ann Webster, a young New England schoolteacher, principal of the Lexington Female Academy, on a charge of assisting slaves to escape, and the pair was lodged in Megowan's jail. It was charged that Fairbank and Miss Webster had taken three Negroes— Lewis, a waiter at the Phoenix Hotel, and his wife and child— in a hack to Maysville where they were ferried across the Ohio River to freedom.30 Public indignation was intense. Fairbank, heav- ily ironed, was thrown into the dungeon of the jail in solitary confinement. Miss Webster was given quarters in the "Debtor's Room." Israel, the old Negro hack driver, was stripped to the waist and after more than fifty lashes on his bare back con- fessed that he had driven the carriage which conveyed the pris- oners and the runaway slaves from Lexington to Maysville.31
The northern press in favor of Polk seized upon this in- cident as another opportunity to embarrass Mr. Clay further. Two days before the election the Ohio Coon-Catcher, a Loco- foco publication at Columbus, bitterly attacked the Whig can- didate, charging that Fairbank and Miss Webster "are im- prisoned, ironed and manacled within sight of the shades of Ashland," and called loudly to all abolitionists to vote against Clay.
On Saturday night, November 2, the presidential campaign closed at Lexington with a "grand Procession, with Torch Lights, Transparencies, etc." WThig leaders from many parts of the United States were present to participate in the final demonstration. Through the early hours of the evening the mammoth parade— Clay Clubs, fraternal orders, the military and citizens with blaring bands— marched and countermarched along the streets of the town, winding up at the public square where "Balloon & Fireworks" were set off, and standing be-
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neath a brilliantly illuminated Liberty Pole, Henry Clay made a short, graceful speech of gratitude and encouragement.
The election was held on November 4, 5, and 6. Both Lincoln and his wife were tremendously concerned over the result— Mary even more anxious, if possible, than her husband for the success of her old friend. Without rapid means of communication the contest remained in doubt for days. The Observer of November 13 announced that the result seemed to hinge on the state of New York, that only the returns from New York City and a few river counties were in, and that they were ''strongly indicative that the state has given her thirty- six electoral votes to Mr. Clay." But it was not to be. In a few days news came that Polk had carried the Empire State by a narrow margin, and Mrs. Robert S. Todd, knowing the anxiety of the Lincoln household, sat down and wrote Mary a graphic description of how Clay had taken his defeat.
The Todds and Clay and his wife were attending the wed- ding of a near relative of Clay. The party was composed of only intimate connections and friends, all of whom were Whigs and anxiously awaiting final news of the election. The New York mail was due in Lexington about ten o'clock that evening.
As the hour approached for the arrival of the mail [wrote Mrs. Todd], I saw several gentlemen quietly leave the room, and know- ing their errand, I eagerly watched for their return. As soon as they came in the room I knew by the expression of each counte- nance that New York had gone Democratic. The bearers of the news consulted together a moment, then one of them advanced to Mr. Clay who was standing in the center of a group, of which your father was one, and handed him a paper. Although I was sure of the news it contained, I watched Mr. Clay's face for confirmation of the evil tidings. He opened the paper and as he read the death knell of his political hopes and life-long ambition, I saw a distinct blue shade begin at the roots of his hair, pass slowly over his face like a cloud and then disappear. He stood for a moment as if frozen. He laid down the paper, and, turning to a table, filled a glass with wine, and raising it to his lips with a pleasant smile, said: "I drink to the health and happiness of all assembled here."
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Setting down his glass, he resumed his conversation as if nothing had occurred and was, as usual, the life and light of the company. The contents of the paper were soon known to every one in the room and a wet blanket fell over our gaiety. We left the wedding party with heavy hearts. Alas! our gallant "Harry of the West" has fought his last presidential battle.32
The defeat of Henry Clay was a great disappointment to Abraham Lincoln.33 Though twice before the Sage of Ashland had tasted the bitter dregs, there had always been hope for the future. Now his decisive defeat by Polk convinced Lincoln with Mrs. Todd that his old political idol had run his last race; that no man who did not actively espouse the cause of slavery could be elected President of the United States.34 The cam- paign, however, had been a decided success for Lincoln per- sonally. His influence as a Whig leader was no longer confined to Sangamon County. It had spread even beyond the boundary of the state, and he seemed about to achieve his highest am- bition to be, as he confided to a friend, the "De Witt Clinton of Illinois."35
EIGHT
The True American
V^ASSIUS Marcellus Clay was a unique and the most pic- turesque antislavery advocate in Kentucky. Born on a fine Bluegrass plantation in a magnificent old mansion of native granite, gray limestone, and red brick laid in Flemish bond, a son of the largest slaveholder in the state, he espoused the cause of emancipation at an early age, and by the time of his graduation at Yale College he was thoroughly steeped in the doctrines of William Lloyd Garrison.
He was a man of striking appearance and enormous physical strength: tall, handsome, big-boned, broad-shouldered, virile, graceful, with dark flashing eyes, a heavy shock of black hair, and a rich, sonorous voice which resembled that of his dis- tinguished kinsman. He was generous, frank, and polite to all, and even gentle among his friends, in spite of a hot temper that sometimes warped a usually sound judgment.1 Possessed of a restless energy that never flagged, an iron will that rode roughshod over all obstacles, utterly fearless, and fiercely com- bative when aroused, Clay was eagerly accepted into that small group of emancipationists who had so long been intimidated
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by the aggressive supremacy of the slave power in Kentucky.
To Mary Lincoln and her sisters in Springfield, Cash Clay seemed like a member of their own family. They had known him intimately since they were children, when he, while a stu- dent at Transylvania, came to live in the Todd home following the fire that destroyed the main building and dormitories of that institution in 1829.2 Several years later Clay had married Mary Jane Warfield, an intimate friend of the Todd girls, and young Mrs. Edwards, the oldest sister, was matron of honor at the wedding.
Since 1840 Cassius M. Clay had been the stormy petrel of central Kentucky politics, and old friends in Illinois