COPYRIGHTED BY
D. C. MILNER

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
L. R. M.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

    At the opening of the nineteenth century Napoleon Bonaparte was the commanding figure of the world. The hero of the new century is Abraham Lincoln. While identified with the Civil War as commander-in-chief of the victorious armies, no man ever suffered more than he on account of that terrible conflict. In vivid contrast with the famed Corsican, he was ever in great-hearted, tender sympathy with human suffering and misfortune. He lacked utterly that traditional ambition of other rulers of men which gratifies self-seeking interests even at the cost of suffering and death to their fellow-men.
Lincoln's soul revolted at war, yet he realized that, as things were, war must be; and he it was who, in the face of cries for peace at any price, said : "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."    ¹
It was to be expected that men would try to conjure with the great name of Lincoln. He has been claimed as a follower even by atheists and spiritualists. Those who favor liquor-drinking and liquor-selling have made special efforts to identify him with their cause. Many volumes have been published treating of Lincoln's religious faith and his relation to slavery. When we think of the great controversies on the subjects of intemperance and slavery we cannot but realize that Lincoln must have had vital relations with both subjects. It will surely, therefore, be not only reasonable but profitable as well to publish all the facts as to his relations to the temperance reform.

    Wine and strong drink have a large place in the literature of many nations. College students find praises of wine abounding in their classical studies, and many college songs have a decided bacchanalian flavor. Poets, from Horace to Robert Burns, have glorified wine and liquor-drinking. For ages men accepted the dominance of drink and the facts of drunkenness as necessities of human nature. Dickens' pictures of the drink debauchery in the England of his day are paralleled in the customs and conditions surrounding the Great Emancipator. ² The marvel about Lincoln is that in the midst of almost universal drinking he not only grew up entirely free from the habit but, from his early youth, was consistently antagonistic to drink.

    Total abstinence and prohibition had small place in the thoughts of the people of Lincoln's day. There was general acceptance of the idea, however, that alcoholic liquors were a necessity. In everyday life they were a part of hospitality and supposed good cheer; in sickness they were regarded as sovereign remedies. Alcoholic liquor was called aqua vitoz, the water of life.

    Since this book was prepared for the press there has been published a most interesting book by Dr. Ervin Chapman, entitled "Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln," which contains the most extended account hitherto published on "Lincoln and Temperance."

My dear friend, the Rev. Dr. Edward C. Ray, of Santa Barbara, Cal., read my early notes on the subject of this book, and urged its completion and publication. .

    Judge Robert McMurdy, of Chicago, the eminent lawyer and devoted friend of philanthropy, aided me with many suggestions.

    The late Jenkin Lloyd Jones, the founder of Abraham Lincoln Centre of Chicago, the man who led in the discovery of Lincoln's birthplace, who was instrumental in its rescue from pollution as the site of a distillery, and whose "love for and veneration of the martyr-president" was said "by a friend" to be "the consuming passion of Mr. Jones' life," urged the publication of the book, on the ground that it was not simply a temperance document but an addition to the Lincoln literature.
 

LINCOLN AND LIQUOR

CHAPTER I

DRINK IN PIONEER DAYS

    During the childhood and youth of Abraham Lincoln liquor-drinking was almost universal, and that period in American history has been described as one of sad debauchery. Robert Ellis Thompson writes :

    At the opening of the century it really seemed as if the manhood of America was about to be drowned in strong drink. The cheapness of untaxed intoxicants rum, whiskey, and apple-jack, made by any one who chose to undertake the business and sold at every gathering of the people without reference to the age or sex of the purchaser had made drunkenness almost universal. Samuel Brech, writing at the close of the eighteenth century, says that "it was impossible to secure a servant white or black, bond or free who could be depended on to keep sober for twenty-four hours. All classes and professions were affected. The judge was overcome on the bench ; the minister sometimes staggered on his way to the pulpit. When a church had to be built, the cost of the rum needed would be greater than that of the lumber or the labor employed. When an ecclesiastical convention of any kind was to be entertained it was a question how much strong drink would be required for the reverend members." ³

    In "A History of American Christianity," we are told that "the long struggle of the American Church against drunkenness as a social and public evil began at an early date," but while there were indications of a public sentiment against the evils of drink, it "did not prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of drunkenness as one of the distinguishing characteristics of American society at the opening of the nineteenth century. . . . Seven years of army life with its exhaustion and exposure and military social usage had initiated into dangerous drinking habits many of the most justly influential leaders .of society, and the example of these had set the tone for all ranks. . . .
    Gradually and unobserved the nation had settled down into a slough of drunkenness of which it is difficult for us at this date to form a clear conception. In the prevalence of intemperate drinking habits the clergy had not escaped the general infection. The priest and the prophet had gone astray through strong drink." ⁴
Weddings were, as a rule, drinking frolics. Christmas, New Year's day, and other holidays were times of excessive drinking and drunkenness. College commencements and other functions, and even ministers' ordinations and installations, were not considered complete without a supply of liquors.

The Rev. Lyman Beecher thus describes the ordination of a minister at Plymouth, Connecticut, in 1810:

    At this ordination the preparation for our creature comforts besides food included a broad sideboard covered with decanters and bottles, and sugar and pitchers of water. There we found all kinds of liquors then in vogue. The drinking was apparently universal. This preparation was made by the society as a matter of course. When the consociation arrived, they always took something to drink around, also before public services, and always on their return. As they could not all drink at once, they were obliged to stand and wait as people do when they go to mill. When they had all done drinking and taken to pipes and tobacco, in less than fifteen minutes there was such a smoke you could not see. The noise I cannot describe. It was the maximum of hilarity. They told their stories and were at the height of jocose talk. 5

    This describes happenings, not on the rough and wild frontier, but at a most solemn religious meeting in staid and cultured New England. At a noted college in Virginia, when the corner stone of a new building was laid, one of the trustees generously provided a barrel of whiskey for the occasion. The head of the barrel was removed, dippers were provided, and everybody was urged to partake.

A noted Harvard professor, picturing the scenes at commencement in those early days, writes :

    The entire common, then an unenclosed dust plain, was completely covered on Commencement day, and the night preceding and following it, with drinking-stands, dancing-booths, mountebank shows and gambling-tables ; and I have never heard such a horrid din, tumult, and jargon of oath, shout, scream, fiddle, quarreling, and drunkenness as on those two nights.

Col. T. W. Higginson, in his "Recollections," says:

    I can remember when the senior class assembled annually around Liberty Tree on Class Day and ladled out bowls of punch for every passer-by, till every Cambridge boy saw a dozen men in various stages of inebriation about the village yard.

Similar stories are told of Yale, Dartmouth, and other colleges. There was a common maxim in those days that no man could be found in one of the colleges who had not been drunk at least once in his life.

    The Rev. John Chambers, for over fifty years a Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, became prominent as an advocate of temperance. Much disturbed by the common custom of serving liquor at funerals, he gave notice from his pulpit that he would enter no house where liquors were supplied. On one occasion, coming to the door of the house where he was to officiate and seeing glasses and decanters on the table, he refused to enter. Though a heavy rain was falling, when he was invited in out of the wet, his reply was: "No! I'll drown first." He compromised far enough to hold a service at the door, while an elder held an
umbrella over him. This action on the part of the minister made a great sensation, and an elder and some members withdrew from his church. ⁶

    In 1833 Dr. George B. Cheever, a minister in Salem, Massachusetts, published a pamphlet entitled "Deacon Giles' Distillery." In the form of allegory, Deacon Giles was pictured as running a distillery and also as having a room in his liquor factory where Bibles were sold. In a dream imps entered by night and painted signs on the casks which became visible when they were tapped for retail sale. The inscriptions were of this style:

    "Who hath woe? Inquire at Deacon Giles' Distillery."

    "Who hath Delirium Tremens? Insanity and Murder ? Inquire at Deacon Giles' Distillery."

    At that time there were four distilleries in full blast in Salem, and one of them was run by a deacon who also sold Bibles in his distillery. A relative of his had been drowned in a whiskey vat, and he had a drunken son ; and these incidents were also pictured in the dream. The deacon who owned this distillery sued the young minister for libel; and although defended by Rufus Choate, he was sentenced to pay a fine and to thirty days' imprisonment. The women of Salem sympathized with Cheever, furnished his cell with comfortable furniture, and saw that he did not lack good things to eat. As might have been expected, the affair excited great attention, and the pamphlets had a tremendous sale. Dr. Cheever had as successor to his first pamphlet another entitled "Deacon Jones' Brewery; or Distiller turned Brewer." In this imps were pictured as dancing around the brewery caldrons, casting in noxious and poisonous drugs. There were no further prosecutions, but the two "dreams" proved to be powerful documents in behalf of the rising temperance reform.

    Slavery and intemperance were at that time recognized as twin evils, and the two reforms that aimed at their destruction were in many cases antagonized by the same advocates. Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, who became noted as an apologist for slavery from the standpoint of the Bible, published a book with the title, "The Triumph of Temperance is the Triumph of Infidelity." He declared that the wines of the Bible were all intoxicating liquors, and that the temperance reformers, when urging total abstinence, were doing the work of infidels.

    Rev. Dr. J. M. Sturtevant, in a private letter, tells of visiting and worshiping in an old church at Talmadge, Ohio, where he "was shown the wooden vessel which had held the gallon of whiskey given as a prize for the first stick of timber brought to the spot for its construction."

    Farmers were compelled to supply liquor to their helpers, and men thought that, without liquor, they could not endure the toil of harvest or thrashing. It was the common belief that men engaged in any form of hard labor needed alcoholic liquors, and they demanded as a right that employers should furnish regular supplies. Mothers and babes were given liquor, and it was thought of such value that good people said they could not sleep at night without assurance that there was liquor in the house. While these ideas prevailed in the older portions of the country, the superstitious belief in the need and value of alcoholic liquors was even more prevalent in frontier life. In the pioneer days of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois the market for the crops was limited, and there was a lack of transportation. There were many small neighborhood distilleries. Corn was made into whiskey because that was easily transported, and it was even used in the payment of debts. Indeed, when Lincoln's father decided to leave Kentucky, he sold his farm and took part of the payment in whiskey.

    The liquor saloon, as it now exists, with every device for the encouragement of drinking, was, however, at that time utterly unknown. In the barroom of taverns were small cupboards under lock and key, from which whiskey, brandy, and rum were sold.
Whiskey was sold in stores just as molasses and similar commodities were sold.

    Although Lincoln was born and grew to manhood in the midst of such conditions, and in an age when such were the popular ideas in regard to drink, he never drank, but was a lifelong total abstainer. When a very young man he was so impressed with the evils of drink that he wrote an essay on temperance, an essay that made such an impression on the community that a minister asked for a copy and had it printed in an Ohio newspaper. It is possible that this paper may yet be found. ⁷ In his mature life, in a very noted address, hereinafter referred to more fully, Lincoln spoke of the almost universal use of liquor and said : When all such of us as have now reached the years of maturity first opened our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor recognized by everybody, used by everybody, repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the first draught of the infant and the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the other disease ; government provided it for soldiers ; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or hoedown anywhere about, without it, was positively unsufferable. So, too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manufacture and of merchandise. The making of it was regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he who could make most was the most enterprising and respectable. Large and small manufactories of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town ; boats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation to nation; and merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with precisely the same feelings on the part of the seller, buyer, or bystander as are felt at the buying and selling of plows, beef, bacon, or any other of the real necessities of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated, but recognized and adopted its use. It is true that even then it was known and acknowledged that many were greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing.

    General Neal Dow gives many illustrations of the sentiment as to liquor. He was born in 1804. Writing of the days of his youth (he and Lincoln were nearly the same age), he says:

    Liquor was found place on all occasions. Town meetings, musters, firemen's parades, cattle shows, fairs, and, in short, every gathering of the people of a public or social nature, resulted almost invariably in scenes which, in these days, would shock the people of Maine into indignation, but which were regarded then as a matter of course. Private assemblies were little better. Weddings, balls, parties, huskings, barn-raisings, and even funerals, were dependent upon intoxicants, while often religious conferences and ministerial gatherings resulted in an increase of the ordinary consumption of liquors.

    The same writer gives an account of the liquors provided at the dedication of a church building. The first minister of that church was warned by his officers to drink less, as he had several times "appeared in such a condition that he could scarcely mount the pulpit stairs." The church, though it at length dismissed him, was so divided by the stand taken against liquor that it was almost wrecked.

General Dow also tells of an early pastor of a Portland church who was making the rounds of the parish. At every house he was expected to "take something," as was the common custom of ministers at that time. The good parson, after accepting many invitations to drink, said :
"Deacon, this will never do; we shall be drunkards together. I will not drink any more."

    Another illuminating incident related by General Dow concerns the collapse of the frame of a church, some miles in the country, by which a number of people were injured. The accident was caused by some drunken men engaged in constructing the edifice. When teams came to Portland for doctors to set the
the physicians at some festive gathering in such drunken condition that the injured men had to wait until the next day to get surgical help. It was after this that the people made the discovery that men "could do hard work without rum," and one man who built a large house offered the workmen, if they would abstain from strong drink the cost of the liquor ration. ⁸

    In those days reputable people, some of them officers of the church, sold liquor in their stores. General Dow affirms that an examination of the account books of the country stores from 1820 to 1840 showed that a majority of the entries were for liquor. D. R. Locke (the Petroleum V. Nasby of the Toledo Blade}, who investigated prohibition in Maine, said that he found one set of books in a village store in which eighty-four per cent of the entries were for rum. All sorts of clothing and groceries "appeared at rare intervals, but rum was splotched on every page."

    One of the men closely associated with Lincoln's life as a young man, before the future President became a resident of Springfield, was Dr. John Allen. He was Lincoln's physician at a critical period. At the time of the death of Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's first love and fiancée, his health was broken and he had a protracted illness from chills and fever. Dr. Allen urged Lincoln to go to the home of Bowling Greene, and Greene and his wife, under the good physician's direction, nursed him back to health and strength.

    Dr. Allen was noted as a sturdy opponent of both slavery and intemperance. He was an active worker in the Washingtonian movement, and many of the early settlers strongly opposed his crusades against liquor. One of his associates in this temperance work was Rev. John Berry, whose son was Lincoln's partner I'n the Salem store. Young Berry's drinking habits helped wreck the business. The father, however, had much influence over Lincoln.

    Even in the churches of that day there was strong opposition to meddling with the liquor business. Mentor Graham, the school-teacher who helped Lincoln prepare for his surveying work, was a member of the "Hardshell" Baptist Church. He became an ardent advocate of temperance. At a meeting of the church to consider this reform movement, Graham by a unanimous vote was suspended from membership because of his activities in the cause of total abstinence. At the same meeting the church suspended another member who was found "dead drunk."

    An inquisitive member took exception to this action of the congregation. Taking a partly filled flask of liquor from his pocket, he shook it in the face of the congregation, and in the nasal drawls associated with Hardshell religious meetings, said :

    "Brethering, you have turned one member out beca'se he would not drink and another beca'se he got drunk, and now I want to ask a question : How much of this 'ere critter does one have to drink to remain in full fellowship in this church ?" ⁹

    The late William Reynolds of Peoria, Illinois, noted as a Sunday-school worker, is authority for the statement that churches of this type resented all interference with slavery or liquor-drinking, and strongly opposed Sunday schools. One of their preachers, according to Mr. Reynolds, took as his text for a sermon: "The gates of hell shall not prevail." There were four gates of hell, he said. The first was those Bible societies that were putting the Scriptures in the hands of the unlearned. The second was the Republican party, which was in favor of freeing the niggers and went around preaching nigger equality. The third was the Sunday school, which professed to teach the Scripture but was really getting the young people together for a frolic on the Lord's Day and getting them to hanker after one another. The fourth gate of hell was those temperance societies that went around smelling people's breaths and interfering with the people's personal liberty to take a little something for their stomachs' sake and many infirmities. "But," he concluded, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church."

CHAPTER II

LINCOLN AS A SUFFERER FROM DRINK

    A common saying among apologists for drink has been : "You let liquor alone and it will let you alone." Many facts prove this an untruth. Innocent and abstaining wives and children and sober fathers and mothers are often great sufferers because some one near and dear to them has become a victim of alcoholic liquor. The drink traffic, producing through its victim poverty, crime, and disease, lays heavy burdens on the sober part of the community. Many burdensome taxes are caused or increased by the need of caring for criminals, paupers, and people rendered mentally and physically infirm as a result of drink.

    When quite a young man Lincoln was returning home one evening with some companions after a hard day's work threshing wheat. They found a man lying by the roadside. He was an old and respectable neighbor, but hopelessly drunk. All efforts failed to rouse the man to help himself. Lincoln's companions said: "He has made his bed; let him lie in it." It was a cold night, and the man would have perished if this inhuman resolution had been carried out. Lincoln, however, without help, took the poor inebriate, who was a big man, on his shoulders, and carried him a long distance to the cabin of Dennis Hawks, where he built a fire, warmed and rubbed the man, and cared for him during the night. It is recorded that this drunkard reformed and showed a lifelong gratitude to Lincoln for saving his life. ¹⁰ Abraham Lincoln carrying that drunken man was typical of the sober community caring for the victims of drink.

    While Lincoln was a lifelong abstainer, he suffered many things from drink. His own father was not a drunkard. According to Herndon, he "had no marked aversion for the bottle, but indulged no more freely than the average Kentuckian of his day." ¹¹ There are indications, however, that a number of Lincoln's relatives and friends were victims of drink.

    While he was a clerk in the store at New Salem, Lincoln had often to deal with the rude crowds that came to the village. The "Clary's Grove boys" were a lawless, rollicking crowd; and often, under the influence of liquor, committed outrages upon innocent people. Lincoln proved himself their superior in feats of physical strength and gained such power over them that under his pressure many of their ruffian performances were ended.

    One of the most painful trials of Lincoln's life was occasioned by his business relations with William F. Berry. Berry and Lincoln formed a business partnership, purchased the groceries of the village, and consolidated them. The partners, having no money, gave their notes for about fifteen hundred dollars.

    Berry, who was the son of a Presbyterian minister, was a hard drinker and a gambler. It is said that he spent most of his time drinking liquor, while Lincoln was absorbed in reading, with the result that the business enterprise proved a failure. The drunken partner let Lincoln bear the whole burden of the indebtedness. For fifteen years Lincoln carried the heavy load. He spoke of it often as the "national debt." He told the creditors he would pay them, and they believed him. The notes, with the high interest then prevailing, were finally paid while Lincoln was a member of Congress. Afterwards he told a friend:
"That debt was the greatest obstacle in my life." Allen Thorndike Rice says :

    Ruined by a drunken partner, he failed, but as money came to him he paid his honest debts. ¹²

    It is quite in harmony with the cruelty of the alcoholic liquor traffic, which ruined Lincoln's business through his associate, to spread a slander upon the memory of the innocent sufferer. The saloon interests even now try to lend to their traffic a cloak of respectability by using the name of Lincoln and claiming him as a business partner.

    Dr. Sturtevant records that when he was a boy he saw Lincoln many times. His father, President Sturtevant, of Jacksonville, one of Lincoln's friends and advisers, came home one day from a trip and said in the family circle : "I saw Abraham Lincoln on the train. I said to him : 'Many of us are praying for your success at the polls.' Lincoln, as one of those sad flashes passed over his face, replied: 'I don't know, President Sturtevant, I don't know. We are dealing with men who had just as soon lie as not." So, after Lincoln's death, the liquor advocates, in their propaganda, have not hesitated to make false statements and have even fabricated speeches in favor of their cause.

    Dr. Sturtevant admits that, while Lincoln never was a saloonkeeper, probably as a storekeeper he did for a little while sell liquor, but he adds :
That is not strange, considering the ideas of the time and the circumstances of his bringing-up. But, considering the views of the people with whom I spent my youth, it seems impossible that there could have been anything seriously wrong in Lincoln's habits about the use of liquor, and I never heard of it.

    Lincoln's own account of his mercantile experience we find in the short autobiography written in June, 1860, compiled for use in preparing a campaign biography. After his return from the Black Hawk war he was a candidate for the Legislature. This was
the first time he ran for office, and, as he says, "the only time he was ever beaten on the direct vote of the people." He was now without means and out of business, but was anxious to remain with his friends, who had treated him with so much generosity, especially as he had nowhere else to go. He studied what he should do : thought of learning the blacksmith trade, thought of trying to study law, rather thought he could not succeed at that without a better education. Before long, strangely enough, a man offered to sell and did sell to Lincoln and another as poor as himself an old stock of goods upon credit; and he says that was the store. Of course they did nothing but get deeper and deeper in debt. At that time Lincoln was appointed postmaster at New Salem. The store "winked out."

The advocates of the saloon have not only claimed that Lincoln drank ; they have also tried to make it appear that he was a liquor-seller. There can be found in the windows of saloons what is styled, "Reproduction from the original records of the saloon license issued to Abraham Lincoln," published by the National Retail Liquor Dealers' Association.

    This document was a "license to keep a tavern" where liquors were to be sold. There is not the slightest evidence that Mr. Lincoln ever knew of the application. His name is signed to the bond, as Miss Tarbell says, "by some other than himself, very likely by his partner," the dissolute Berry heretofore referred to. The partnership had been in a store which, because of Berry's drinking habits and Lincoln's inexperience, was a financial failure, and the debts of which burdened Lincoln many years. ¹³ Nicolay and Hay say "the tavern was never opened," and yet the liquor people publish a picture of "the building where Abraham Lincoln conducted a saloon." ¹⁴

    In the first Lincoln-Douglas debate at Ottawa, August 21, 1858, in his reply to Douglas' statement that he had been a grocery keeper, Lincoln said : "The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a grocery keeper. I don't know as it would be a great sin if I had been, but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little still house up at the head of a hollow."

The New York Sun, in an editorial on "The Little Still House," referring to the charge of Douglas, said :
    Of course if he kept a grocery in the days of his young manhood, he sold rum. Wet goods were an invaluable source or attraction of custom in the "store." Deacons vended whiskey and gin. A grocer was a grog-seller, but Lincoln, speaking whimsically in the third person, said he had never kept a grocery, but had worked in a little still house. From this little still house at the head of a hollow grew Douglas' grocery which was transformed into a doggery. It is possible enough that Lincoln's "saloon license" exists in facsimile as an ornament of saloons. The House that Jack Built is the progressive order of the architecture of myth.

    The Lincoln legend-making or folk history goes on. . . . Possibly some wag will yet build the little still house at the end of the hollow, discover it and get an association to buy it. The renewed interest in Lincoln's "liquor license" may indicate that he is to figure as a witness against the drys.

    As to the failure of the store of Berry and Lincoln, Leonard Swett states that Lincoln was absent several months in the Black Hawk war and continues :
As he returned home he found his old partner had been his own best customer at the whiskey barrel, that all the goods were gone, but having failed to pay the debts, there were eleven hundred dollars for which Lincoln was jointly liable. I cannot forget his face of seriousness as he turned to me and said : "That debt was the greatest obstacle I have ever met in life. I had no way of speculating and could not earn money except by labor, and to earn eleven hundred dollars, besides my living, seemed the work of a lifetime. There was, however, but one way. I went to the creditors and told them if they would let me alone I would give them all I could earn over my living, as fast as I could earn it."

Mr. Swett says further:

    A difference, however, soon arose between him and his partner in reference to the introduction of whiskey into the establishment. The partner insisted that, as honey catches flies, a barrel of whiskey in the store would invite customers and their sales would increase, while Lincoln, who never liked liquor, opposed this innovation. ¹⁵

    Henry B. Rankin refers to "Lincoln's partner in the store at Salem, whose unfortunate habit of drinking brought so great a disaster upon the business that it was not until 1850 that Lincoln was able to pay the last debt of the firm." ¹⁶

W. H. Herndon, the long-time partner of Lincoln, was a peculiar man with many brilliant gifts and many weaknesses. He is thus described by Joseph Fort Newton :

    All through his career, after it had a beginning, he had a hard fight with the drink habit, with many victories and occasional bitter defeats; a battle which Lincoln watched with never-failing pity. That was environment, very tragical in his case and characteristic of the period. But Lincoln knew Herndon, his abilities and his failings, his qualities of mind and heart, and the two men loved each other like brothers of unequal age. ¹⁷

    Lincoln, as President and Commander-in-Chief of the army, had a number of painful and perplexing experiences caused by drinking generals. Colonel Maus, for years connected with the regular army, and noted in medical and military affairs, says: "Half of the disasters, both personal and general, in military life were due to alcohol." The result of a number of battles in the Civil War was affected by the condition of commanders under the influence of drink.

    The great reputation of General U. S. Grant cannot now be affected by the true statement that his great career was near wreckage several times because of drink.

    The case is of so much interest and importance that particulars may be given to show how nearly General John Barleycorn robbed us of our greatest military chieftain.
As a young man, Grant was almost a Puritan in his life and habits. He learned to use both liquor and tobacco during the Mexican War, after he was twenty-five years of age. He was easily affected by liquor, and a single glass produced a visible effect.
He himself fully realized his danger, and after his return from Mexico he helped organize in the barracks a lodge of the "Sons of Temperance," giving its work hearty encouragement.

    When promoted to a captaincy Grant was sent to the Pacific coast. There he had dreary surroundings and an unsympathetic commander, and on one occasion, under the influence of liquor, he was unable to perform his duty. His colonel told him to "reform or resign." Grant said : "I will resign and reform/'
Following his resignation came years of poverty and struggle in St. Louis. He drank at intervals, but through the influence of his wife seemed to win a victory over his habits. ¹⁸

    The California record stood in the way of Grant's getting rank and position at the opening of the war. Generals Fremont, McClellan, and Pope treated him as a man with a doubtful past. After he had won recognition and was commissioned as Brigadier-General there were occasions when he yielded to the old appetite, and it required the loving care of his wife and the devoted friendship of his chief of staff, General Rawlins, to guard him from the danger of drink.
    To quote James Ford Rhodes in this connection, he says that at the time of the siege of Vicksburg, while suffering from lassitude and depression during the hot weather, "Grant on one occasion yielded to his appetite for drink." Following this lapse, General Rawlins wrote to Grant the remarkable letter in which he said:

    The great solicitude I feel for the safety of this army leads me to mention what I had hoped never again to do, the subject of your drinking. . . . Tonight I find you where the wine bottle has just been emptied, in company with those who drink and urge you to do likewise, and the lack of your usual promptness of decision and clearness in expressing yourself in writing tended to confirm my suspicions. . . . You have the full control of your appetite and can let drinking alone. Had you not pledged me the sincerity of your honor early last March that you would drink no more during the war, and kept your pledge during your recent campaign, you would not today have stood first in the world's history as a successful military leader. Your only salvation depends upon your strict adherence to that pledge. You cannot succeed in any other way.

    Rhodes then relates how "Rawlins removed a box of wine in front of Grant's tent that had been sent him to celebrate his prospective entrance into Vicksburg, and next morning he searched every suspected tent for liquor and broke every bottle he found on a nearby stump." After citing Lincoln's words uttered when Lee was invading Pennsylvania and Hooker was still in command of the Army of the Potomac, "How much depends in military matters on one master mind!"
Rhodes compares Grant and the Confederate commanders, adding:

"He was a greater general than 'Stonewall' Jackson, but he might have been still greater could he have said with Jackson, changing only the name of Federal to Confederate, 'I love whiskey, but I never use it; I am more afraid of it than I am of Confederate bullets."
    And he goes on to say:
    "The anxiety of the President and his advisers over the Vicksburg campaign was intense, and their dominant idea as expressed by a friend of Stanton's was, 'If we keep Grant sober we shall take Vicksburg.' " ¹⁹
One more reference is made by Rhodes to the weakness of the great General, which overcame him after the unsuccessful attack on Petersburg, when "the bitterness of disappointment drove him for a while to drink."
    According to Rawlins, "Grant digressed from his true path" twice after this, but after the last deviation he pulled himself together and did not again falter. And Rhodes adds:
    It was an unclouded brain that carried on the siege of Petersburg to its capture, forced the evacuation of Richmond, and effected the final discomfiture of Lee and the ruin of the Southern Confederacy. ²⁰

    President Lincoln was repeatedly warned as to Grant's habits, but there can be no doubt that the reports as to his excesses were greatly exaggerated. When men visited the President and urged Grant's removal from his high command because he drank, Lincoln said :
    "I can't spare this man ; he fights. Tell me the kind of whiskey he drinks; I should like to send a barrel to some of the other generals."
This bit of grim pleasantry brings to mind the story of King George of England, who, when told that Admiral Nelson of Trafalgar fame was "mad," said:
"I will get him to bite some of the other officers."
    The case of General Hooker cost Lincoln many hours of anxious suffering. When "Fighting Joe" was appointed to the command of the Army of the Potomac the President had been advised about his weakness for liquor, and plainly warned him about it. At the disastrous battle of Chancellorsville it was charged that during the engagement Hooker drank freely to celebrate his early successes in the battle. General Carl Schurz, however, expresses doubts about Hooker's intoxication at that time. He says:

    The weight of competent witnesses is strongly against this theory. It is asserted, on the other hand, that he was accustomed to the consumption of a certain quantity of whiskey every day; that during the battle he utterly abstained from his usual potations, for fear of taking too much inadvertently, and that his brain failed to work because he had not given it the stimulus to which it had been habituated. ²¹

General O. O. Howard thus refers to this instance of defeat through drink in the war for the Union :

    In one of our great battles we suffered defeat and many of us have believed that the mistake which caused the defeat was due to an excess of whiskey drunk by the officer in command. I had the testimony, from an officer who was with him, that pitchers of liquor were brought to his table and that he and those around him drank as freely from them as if they contained only water. The orders the commander gave were the direct opposite from what he would have given had he not been suddenly confused by drink. A heavy loss of men and material and a dreadful defeat for our cause was the result. ²²

    There has been much controversy over General Hooker's apparent stupefaction at the crisis of the battle. Some have believed that he was disabled by the shock of a cannon-ball striking a post near which he was standing.
Secretary of the Navy Welles, in his "Diary," makes this record :
    Sumner expresses an absolute want of confidence in Hooker, saying he knows him to be a blasphemous wretch, that after crossing the Rappahannock and reaching Centerville, Hooker exultingly exclaimed, "The enemy are in my power and God Almighty cannot deprive me of them." I have heard before of this, but not so direct or positive. The sudden paralysis that followed when the army, in the midst of a successful career, was suddenly checked and commenced its retreat, has never been explained. Whiskey is said by Sumner to have done the work. The President said that if Hooker had been killed by the shock which knocked over the pillar that stunned him we would have been successful. ²³

    The bloody and humiliating defeat at Chancellorsville caused Mr. Lincoln great suffering. Whether we accept the Schurz explanation of Hooker's abstinence from his habitual potations of whiskey or Sumner's belief in his actual drunkenness, drink was the cause of the disaster.

    Lincoln's suffering when he received the news of the retreat of the army was most intense. Noah Brooks who, with an old friend of Lincoln's, was waiting in the White House, says :
A door opened, and Lincoln appeared, holding an open telegram in his hand. The sight of his face and figure was frightful. He seemed stricken with death. Almost tottering to a chair, he sat down, and then I mechanically noticed that his face was of the same color as the wall behind him not pale, not even sallow, but gray like ashes. Extending the dispatch to me, he said with a hollow, faroff voice, "Read it news from the army." The telegram was from General Butterfield, then, I think, chief of staff to Hooker. It was very brief, simply saying that the Army of the Potomac had "safely recrossed the Rappahannock" and was now at its old position on the north bank of that stream. The President's friend, Dr. Henry, an old man and somewhat impressionable, burst into tears, not so much, probably, at the news as on account of its effect upon Lincoln. The President regarded the old man for an instant with dry eyes, and said, "What will the country say? Oh, what will the country say?" He seemed hungry for consolation and cheer, and sat a little while talking about the failure. Yet it did not seem that he was disappointed so much for himself, but that he thought the country would be. ²⁴

This disaster prompted the striking poem of E. C. Stedman, entitled, "Wanted, A Man." Lincoln was so impressed with it, that he read to his cabinet the poem, ²⁵ which runs:

Back from the trebly crimsoned field
Terrible words are thunder-tossed ;
Full of the wrath that will not yield,
Full of revenge for battles lost.
Hark to their echo, as it crossed
The capital, making faces wan,
End this murderous holocaust
Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man!

No leader to shirk the boasting foe
And to march and countermarch our brave
Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low
And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave ;
Nor another whose fatal banners wave
Aye in Disaster's shameful van ;
Nor another to bulster and lie and rave
Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man!

Is there never one in all the land,
One on whose might the Cause may lean?
Are all the common ones so mean?
What if your failure may have been
In trying to make good bread from bran,
From worthless metal a weapon keen?
Abraham Lincoln, find us a Man!

    There is no official record of the large number of officers whose resignations were forced on account of their drink habits, but it is generally known that many were dismissed by courts martial, on account of their conduct while under the influence of liquor.

    Mr. Lincoln endured much mortification from the drinking excesses of Vice-President Johnson. "When the Republicans were denouncing Andrew Johnson after his maudlin speech on the 4th of March, 1865, he only said, Poor Andy,' and expressed the hope that he would profit by his dreadful mistakes."

    In the awful tragedy of Lincoln's assassination liquor had its part. Nicolay and Hay give a vivid description of the scenes associated with that calamity. They refer to the assassin in this way: "Partisan hate and the fumes of brandy had for weeks kept his
brain in a morbid state." Booth and his co-conspirators held their councils in saloons and barrooms. "Just before he entered the theater for his murderous attack, he rushed into a nearby saloon, ordered a glass of brandy and gulped it down." ²⁶

It is a grim comment on the heartlessness as well as the stupidity of the liquor traffic that at the centennial celebration of Lincoln's birthday, in this Washington saloon was this notice:

HERE IS WHERE JOHN WILKES BOOTH GOT HIS LAST DRINK.

Lord Charnwood, referring to the assassin Booth,
said:
    In him that peculiarly ferocious political passion which occasionally showed itself among Southerners was further inflamed by brandy and by that ranting mode of thought which the stage develops in some few. ²⁷
William H. Crook says:
Booth had found it necessary to stimulate himself with whiskey in order to reach the proper pitch of fanaticism.

    Speaking of the last days of Lincoln's life, Crook
writes :
    In crossing over to the War Department we passed some drunken men. Possibly their violence suggested the thought to the President. After we had passed them, Mr. Lincoln said to me, "Crook, do you know I believe there are men who want to take my life?" Then after a pause he said, half to himself, "And I have no doubt they will do it." Crook, dismayed, asked, "Why do you think so?" His reply was: "Other men have been assassinated. . . . If it is to be done it is impossible to prevent it." ²⁸

CHAPTER III

LINCOLN AS AN ABSTAINER

    Abraham Lincoln was a man of remarkable physical strength, and to the end of his life was capable of enduring tests that would crush most men.
"The sturdy constitution that Lincoln inherited from five generations of pioneers," says Arnold, one of his biographers, "was hardened by the toil and exposure to which, even more than most backwoods boys, he was subjected from early childhood."

    One of the well authenticated stories of his great strength is directly connected with liquor. A friend, William G. Greene, made a wager that Lincoln could lift a cask holding forty gallons of whiskey high enough to drink out of the bunghole. It is said that
"he squatted down and lifted the cask to his knees, rolling it over until his mouth was opposite the bung." His friend Greene cried out, "I have won my bet, but that is the first dram of whiskey I ever saw you swallow, Abe." "And I haven't swallowed that, you see,"
said Lincoln as he spurted out the liquor. ²⁹ Commenting on this anecdote, Mr. Arnold writes:

    In this final episode of the little story is to be found a clue, if not to the source of his extraordinary vigor, at least to its continued preservation, unimpaired by the vices that have shorn so many Samsons of their strength. . . . He grew up strong in body, healthful in mind, with no bad habits, no stain of intemperance, profanity or vice. He used neither tobacco nor intoxicating drinks, and thus living he grew to be six feet four inches high and a giant in strength. ³⁰

    So remarkable were Lincoln's feats of strength in wrestling, lifting heavy weights, chopping down trees and splitting rails, that he has been called a "Samson of the backwoods." He had the strength of a giant, united with all the signs of a physical health that would have carried him to a great age. His freedom from every form of vice was in entire harmony with the advanced ethical ideas of our day.

    In the time of his young manhood the great men that Lincoln specially admired were Clay and Webster, and both of these were excessive drinkers. Stephen A. Douglas, his longtime political opponent, was a remarkable man, but in marked contrast to Lincoln in personal habits as well as in moral ideals. Horace White says of Douglas: "Although patriotic beyond a doubt, he was colorblind to moral principles in politics and stoneblind to the evils of slavery." ³¹
Douglas was also so given to drink that he was unable to fill a number of public engagements because of his drunken condition; and the last days of his life were filled with excessive drinking.

    The incident related by Mr. Greene occurred long before the modern discovery that alcohol was not a stimulant but a poison, and that instead of being a help to strength it is a source of weakness. Lincoln's antagonism to drink seems to have been instinctive.
There are also traditions that his mother warned her boy of the dangers of drink and made him promise to be an abstainer.

    Herndon says :
    New Salem was what in the modern parlance of large cities would be called a fast place, and it was difficult for a young man of ordinary moral courage to resist the temptations that beset him on every hand. It remains a matter of surprise that Lincoln was able to retain his popularity with the hosts of young men of his own age and still not join them in their drinking bouts and carousals. One of his companions said, "I am certain that he never drank any intoxicating liquors ; he did not even, in those days, smoke or chew tobacco." ³²

    As to life in New Salem, Lord Charnwood has this to say :
    It never got much beyond a population of one hundred, and, like many similar little towns of the West, it has long since perished from the earth. But it was a busy place for awhile, and, contrary to what its name might suggest, it aspired to be rather fast. It was a cock-fighting and whiskey-drinking society into which Lincoln was launched. He managed to combine strict abstinence from liquor with keen participation in all its other diversions. ³³

    Lincoln stated many times that he never drank liquor, and his own repeated declaration ought to have long ago silenced the charges of the champions of alcoholic beverages.

    Because the liquor dealers' associations continue, however, to circulate these slanders, it is necessary to repeat the record of the actual facts. Wherever there is a saloon contest, posters and circulars are issued by the advocates of alcohol claiming that Lincoln used liquor as a beverage. Some years ago a man declared that he had been on intimate terms of friendship with Lincoln and that repeatedly they drank whiskey together. The interview in which this declaration was made was widely published in the newspapers.
In order to establish either the truth or falsity of the statement, letters of inquiry were written to the only survivor of Lincoln's family, his son, Robert T. Lincoln, and to his secretaries and biographers, Hay and Nicolay. Their replies, in possession of the author,
are as follows :

    Another of Lincoln's secretaries, William O. Stoddard, still living at this writing, writes from Madison,

    New Jersey, June 30, 1917, in reply to a letter of
inquiry :

    You have somewhat surprised me. I did not know that at this late day there was any question of controversy as to the lifelong conduct and position of Abraham Lincoln on the temperance question.

    Robert T. Lincoln's letter is marked "Private," but in a later note, dated June 30, 1915, he says: "I have no objection to your printing the letter I wrote to you on December 4, 1894." It will be noticed that in that letter he wrote: "I have seen him several times take a sip of wine at the table, but if he ever did anything more I do not know it." It is evident that Lincoln himself did not regard this taking a sip of wine as violating the spirit of his repeated pledges of total abstinence.

    In addition to the pledge he took and urged upon others of the Washingtonian Society, there is the following pledge of total abstinence given by him on January 19, 1838, in connection with the Sangamon Temperance Society:

    The members of this society agree not to use intoxicating liquor or provide it as an article of refreshment for their friends nor for persons in their employment, nor will they use, manufacture, or traffic in the same except for chemical, mechanical, medicinal, and sacramental purposes.

    Mr. Lincoln added to his pledge : "specially never to drink ardent spirits."

    It is interesting to note that Lincoln was not a member of any fraternal organization, except those relating to temperance. He was a member of the Sons of Temperance. The pledge of this order was as follows :

    I will neither make, buy, sell nor use as a beverage any spirituous or malt liquors, wine, or cider.

    Leonard Swett, an intimate personal friend of Lincoln's, says of him :
    Not more than a year before he was elected President he told me that he had never tasted liquor in his life. "What?" I said, "do you mean to say you never tasted it?" "Yes, I never tasted it."
    Shelby M. Cullom, also an intimate friend of Lincoln's, who lived in Springfield most of his life, and who served his State as Governor and for several terms as United States Senator, said, in contradiction of the report that Lincoln drank :

    Lincoln never drank, smoked, or chewed tobacco, or swore. He was a man of the most simple habits. I recall distinctly when a committee of Springfield citizens, including myself, called at Lincoln's house, after he was nominated for President, to talk over with him the arrangements for receiving the committee on notification. Lincoln said : "Boys, I never had a drop of liquor in my whole life, and I don't want to begin now." ³⁴

    Concerning the historic occasion when Lincoln received official notice of his nomination for the Presidency by the Chicago convention, we have a great variety of testimony, differing in some minor points, but all agreeing in the fact that he declined to provide liquors for the entertainment of the committee. Carpenter, who painted the picture of Lincoln and his cabinet, gives the following report of what took place at the meeting:

    After the ceremony had passed [the notification and Lincoln's reply], Mr. Lincoln remarked to the company that as an appropriate conclusion to an interview so important and interesting as that which had just transpired, he supposed good manners would require that he should treat the committee with something to drink, and, opening a door that led into a room in the rear, he called out, "Mary ! Mary !" A girl replied to the call, to whom Mr. Lincoln spoke a few words in an undertone, and, closing the door, he returned again to converse with his guests. In a few minutes the maid entered, bearing several glass tumblers and a large pitcher in the midst, and placed them upon the centertable. Mr. Lincoln arose, and, gravely addressing the company, said : "Gentlemen, we must pledge our mutual healths in the most healthy beverage which God has given to men. It is the only beverage I have ever used or allowed in my family, and I cannot consistently depart from it on the present occasion. It is pure Adam's ale from the spring." And, taking the tumbler, he touched it to his lips and pledged them his highest respects in a cup of cold water. Of course all his guests were constrained to admire his consistency and to join in his example. ³⁵

    Charles Carleton Coffin, who was present at the ceremony, says that after responding to the formal notification, Lincoln said :

    Mrs. Lincoln will be pleased to see you, gentlemen. You will find her in the other room. You must be thirsty after your long ride. You will find a pitcher of water in the library.

    Entering the library, they found "a plain table with writing-materials upon it, a pitcher of cold water and glasses, but no wines or liquors." Mr. Coffin also reports that a citizen of Springfield told him that several citizens called on Mr. Lincoln and suggested to him that some entertainment should be provided, offering at the same time to supply the needful liquors.
Mr. Lincoln replied:

    Gentlemen, I thank you for your kind intentions, but must respectfully decline your offer. I have no liquor in my house and have never been in the habit of entertaining my friends in that way. I cannot permit my friends to do for me what I will not myself do. I shall provide cold water nothing else. ³⁶

    Lincoln's letter to J. Mason Haight, of California, who made inquiry about the serving of liquors, is clear and conclusive. Shortly after Mr. Lincoln's formal notification, as above recited, Mr. Haight wrote Lincoln a letter wishing to know whether liquors were or were not served on that occasion. In reply he received the following :

    Lieutenant-Governor Koerner, a noted enemy of prohibition, but a friend of Lincoln, was at the notification meeting. His reference to the absence of liquor is rather amusing. He said: "Ice water, it being a very hot evening, was the only refreshment
served.' ³⁷

    Robert J. Halle, editor of the liquor paper, Champion of Fair Play, makes special criticism of John Hay's letter of November 24, 1894, and questions its
genuineness, saying:

    The letter is most cunningly worded, and, even if genuine, is very inconclusive; the letter is undated and the name of the person to whom it is supposed to have been sent carefully omitted; it makes reference to only one kind of alcoholic beverage, viz., whiskey.

    Mr. Halle asks why the name of only one liquor is mentioned, and concludes: "The natural inference is that Lincoln drank some of the other kinds, to his private secretary's knowledge."

    In the letter to Mr. Hay, to which he replied, he was asked explicitly about the claim of the man who said Mr. Lincoln "drank whiskey." The facsimile of Mr. Hay's letter has been widely published, and no one familiar with his handwriting ever challenged the genuineness of the document.

    The most pitiful attempt the liquor men have made to try to prove that Lincoln used liquor as a beverage is their publication in facsimile of a page in the ledger of the Springfield drugstore of Corneau & Diller, which shows that during a number of months several charges were made for brandy. ³⁸ R. W. Diller, who was one of Lincoln's intimate friends, denounced with indignation the stories that Lincoln drank. 11

    There are a number of well authenticated incidents which illustrate Lincoln's habits of abstinence. Mr. Herndon relates that Lincoln told many times the following story:
He was traveling in a stage coach, the only other passenger being a Kentuckian, who offered him a chew of tobacco and was answered :
"No, I thank you, I never chew."
    Later on the fellow-traveler offered a cigar, which was also politely declined, on the ground that he never smoked. As the coach stopped at the station to change horses, the Kentuckian poured out a cup of brandy and said :
    "Stranger, seeing you do not smoke or chew, perhaps you will take a little of this fine French brandy. It's a fine article and a good appetizer."

    This last best evidence of hospitality was also declined by Lincoln ; and when the two separated the man said:
"Stranger, you are a clever but strange companion. I may never see you again, and don't want to offend you, but my experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has blamed few virtues." ³⁹
    The stories of Lincoln's drinking are all traceable to unreliable sources. As an illustration, there was published in a Chicago paper in 1908 the following:

    L. White Busbey, secretary to Speaker Cannon, said that he recalled that an old citizen of Illinois once told him that Lincoln sold whiskey when he was a country storekeeper. "This old man lived in the town where Lincoln kept store and Stephen A. Douglas taught school," said Mr. Busbey. "He told me that at the end of every school term Lincoln had a slate full of credits against Douglas. The barrel was empty and Lincoln was broke."

    In the Lincoln-Douglas debates Douglas referred to Lincoln as a former grocery-storekeeper. Lincoln replied :
"Yes, I was selling goods behind the counter, and Mr. Douglas was drinking before it."

    This passage-at-arms as to selling and buying comprised the only pleasantries of the debate. History proves that Lincoln and Douglas never met until 1834, and then at Vandalia. Lincoln was then a member of the Legislature, while Douglas, who was four years Lincoln's junior, was a candidate for State's Attorney. The New Salem store had "winked out" long before that meeting.

    One of the oldest and most intimate friends of Lincoln was Dr. William Jayne, of Springfield. His sister became the wife of Senator Lyman Trumbull, and was the bridesmaid at the Lincoln wedding. Dr. Jayne was the first Governor of the Territory of Dakota by the appointment of President Lincoln. Paul Selby, a pioneer editor and friend of Lincoln, said in 1908 that Dr. Jayne was one of the few persons then living "who knew Lincoln intimately and were accustomed to meet him almost daily in private life and frequently enjoyed the hospitality of his home."

In a letter to Mr. Selby, Dr. Jayne made the following statement:
    I first knew Mr. Lincoln more than seventy years ago quite well after he came to Springfield in 1837. He boarded with William Butler (in 1859 to 1862 State Treasurer), the second house west of my father's home, from the time he came to Springfield until he married. My father first and I afterward were Butler's family physicians. I think I knew Mr. Lincoln as well as any man now living in our city except John W. Bunn, who politically knew Mr. Lincoln very intimately. I do not believe Lincoln ever drank wine or whiskey after he came to our city to live. What he may have done prior to coming to our city I do not know. He joined the Washingtonian Temperance Society, made a temperance speech on February 22, 1842, and I have a copy of that speech. Mr. Lincoln never served wine to any one in his home while he was in Springfield. What he may have done in the White House I do not know. I have dined with him in the White House, and certainly he had then no wine. My opinion is that he never drank any spirits in youth. Of his early years, of course, I cannot speak with knowledge.

In an interview Dr. Jayne said further :
    One could with safety wager any sum that no man in Springfield ever saw Lincoln take a drink. When the committee came to notify him of his nomination, a friend sent him a quantity of liquor, but he refused to serve it himself or to permit Mrs. Lincoln to do so. He said he never had offered drink to any one and he did not intend to begin then.

General John Cook was Colonel of the first regiment mustered into service from the State, the Seventh Illinois. He was appointed Brigadier General by President Lincoln for meritorious services at Fort Donelson. In a letter to Mr. Selby, General Cook says:
    My acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln began about 1840, or a little before, and from that time until the assassination the friendship shown me never relaxed. The story of Mr. Lincoln's keeping bar or tending a saloon (called a grocery in early days) is purely bosh, and the assertion that he was addicted to the use of liquors of any description whatever is a dastardly calumny. I never knew him to take even a social drink with any one, and I never knew him to enter a saloon for any purpose. Without ostentation he was ever the champion of a total abstinence.

    Speaking of a visit to Washington after Lincoln's first inauguration, during which time he was a guest at the White House for some three weeks, General Cook says:

    I sat at the family table and on suitable occasions was permitted to be present at different functions. During all of such occasions, as has been the custom from time immemorial, wine was ever present, but on no occasion did I see Mr. Lincoln raise the glass to his lips. ⁴⁰

    Stephen A. Douglas once attempted to ridicule Mr. Lincoln's abstaining habit and asked sneeringly:
"What! are you a temperance man?"

    "No," drawled Lincoln, with a smile, "I'm not a temperance man, but I'm temperate in this I don't drink." ⁴¹

    General Horace Porter relates that at one time Lincoln came to City Point on a steamboat to visit General Grant, and, after giving his greetings and saying complimentary things about the hard work of the winter's siege, mentioned that he was not feeling well because he had been badly shaken up on the boat. A staff officer suggested :

"Let me send for a bottle of champagne for you, Mr. President; that's the best remedy I know of for seasickness."
"No, no, my young friend," replied the President, "I've seen many a man in my time seasick ashore from drinking that very article."
"That was the last time," General Porter adds, "that any one screwed up sufficient courage to offer him wine." ⁴²

 

CHAPTER IV

LINCOLN AS A TEMPERANCE REFORMER

    The name of Abraham Lincoln stands first and foremost in the story of the abolition of human slavery, and yet Lincoln was not, in a strict sense of the word, an abolitionist until he faced the question of emancipation as a war measure. He hated slavery because he believed it to be cruel and unjust. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," were his words. According to Herndon, Lincoln looked upon slavery, temperance, and universal suffrage as the great questions of moral and social reform, and early made this declaration.

    "All such questions," he observed one day to Herndon, as they were discussing temperance in their office, "must first find lodgment with the most enlightened souls who stamp them with their approval. In God's own time they will be organized into law, and thus woven into the fabric of our institutions." ⁴³

    Heretofore there has been no general recognition of Lincoln's notable relation to temperance reform. The facts are, however, that he not only gave his personal example by lifelong abstinence, but he also identified himself actively with the first widespread popular movement to advance the temperance cause. In the Washingtonian movement he not only gave his public example by taking the pledge, but he made a personal canvass, spoke on many occasions, and as a climax he delivered in behalf of the reform a great address, which is a classic.

    It must be remembered that most of Lincoln's temperance speeches were delivered in obscure places before he became a man of prominence and when his views upon public questions were not regarded as of special value.

    The temperance reformation of which the modern movement is a continuance began in an effective and organized way in 1825. ⁴⁴ At the close of the Revolution the evils of intemperance were greatly increased.
    The one name to be specially honored in the awakening of the American people is that of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia. He was the most distinguished physician of the country, and had also a large place in connection with the independence of the Colonies. As a member of the Continental Congress of 1776 he was One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was a leading advocate of free schools and of the education of women, and was one of the founders of the first antislavery society, organized in 1775.

    This distinguished American, holding medals and honors from European sources and recognized as a leader in humanitarian movements, published in 1785 his "Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Body and Mind." It was a remarkable document and gives forcible statements of the evils of drink that are still effective. His arguments, however, were against distilled liquors.

    In 1811, Dr. Rush presented to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, convened in Philadelphia, a thousand copies of his essay and made an earnest appeal for some action by the Assembly. As a result, a committee was appointed that in 1812 reported strongly against intemperance, yet did not declare for total abstinence. Committees of conference with other denominations were appointed, and during that year action was taken by the Methodist and Congregational Churches, which marked the beginning of the persistent work of the churches against intemperance.

    In 1825 the Reverend Lyman Beecher preached his six sermons on the "Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance." The publication of these sermons, which were translated into several languages and widely circulated among other nations, was considered the greatest influence in creating a distinct sentiment against not only the use of liquor but also the traffic itself. ⁴⁵

    In 1826 The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was formed. This was the beginning of a new era, in that the declaration was made that the only practical and effective remedy for intemperance was total abstinence. In the church of Rev. Albert Barnes at Morristown there was a society that pledged its members not to drink more than a pint of applejack a day as against the usual allowance of a quart.

    In 1836 the American Temperance Union was organized at a convention in Saratoga and took the advanced step of extending to all intoxicating liquors the principle of total abstinence.

    The next important advance in temperance reform was the Washingtonian movement, beginning in 1840. Later, in 1849, Father Mathew, the great Irish apostle of temperance, visited the United States, held great meetings in all parts of the country, and administered the pledge to some 600,000 people. Then followed the organization of the temperance fraternal societies, to preserve the fruits of the previous agitations. The first of these was the Sons of Temperance, organized in 1842, followed by the Good Templars in 1851. The Congressional Temperance total abstinence society was formed in 1842, and added much prestige to the movement.

    The first prohibitory law was passed in Maine in 1846. The liquor men made an effort to have all restrictive measures as to the sale of liquor removed. Suits were carried to the United States Supreme Court from several States. The argument for this appeal was made by Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate. In handing down his decision on the case, in 1847, Chief Justice Taney, noted for his Dred Scott proslavery decision, said :

    If any State deems the retail and internal traffic in ardent spirits injurious to its citizens and calculated to produce illness, vice, and debauchery, I see nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent it from regulating and restraining the traffic or from prohibiting it altogether if it thinks proper.

    The National Temperance Society and Publication House was founded in 1865, and for many years led the temperance movements of the country. In 1874 was organized the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the largest and in many ways the most powerful organization in behalf of temperance reform. In later days came the pledge-signing total abstinence crusades, the organization of church boards and societies, the Prohibition Political Party, and the great Anti-Saloon League. One of the important results of all these movements is that at this time ( 1918) twenty States have voted to ratify the prohibition amendment to the Constitution.

    In the days of Lincoln's special activity in temperance work intense interest on the slavery question crowded out other reforms. It is apparent, however, that the temperance reform was a close second in Lincoln's heart to abolition. It may be that the delay of the triumph over alcohol required the time of the last half-century, because it was needful to add to the moral sentiment against drink the powerful arguments of science, of physical and mental efficiency, and the coming together of social influences.

    The Washingtonian Society was founded in the barroom of a Baltimore hotel in 1840 by six members of a drinking club. One of these was by vocation a tailor, another a carpenter, while there were two blacksmiths, a coach maker, and a silversmith. Rev. Matthew Hale Smith was then making temperance addresses in the city, and some members of the club were sent to hear one of his lectures and report. In giving the account, one said that temperance was all right. The tavern-keeper, who was a listener, insisted that the temperance people were hypocrites. This provoked the reply:
    "It is to your interest to cry them down."
It was finally proposed to form a society, the following pledge being prepared and signed :

    We, whose names are annexed, desirous of forming a society for our mutual benefit and to guard against a practice a pernicious practice which is injurious to our health, standing, and families, do pledge ourselves as gentlemen that we will not drink any spirits or malt liquors, wine, or cider.

    In a few months they had seven hundred members. John H. W. Hawkins, who had been a confirmed drunkard, became their leader and a powerful advocate of the cause. He ultimately carried the crusade to almost every State in the Union, making two visits to Springfield, Illinois.

Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler says in his account of the pioneer leaders of the temperance cause :
    The greatest single result of this movement was the conversion of John B. Gough from an obscure and wretched young sot into the most brilliant, popular and effective advocate of our cause that the world has yet seen.

Dr. Cuyler says further :
    The last name I record is the most illustrious of them all the name of him who in early life defended the principles of total abstinence and who closed his glorious career by binding up the Union and by unbinding the manacles of the slave the name of our country's best beloved, Abraham Lincoln. ⁴⁶

    The Washingtonian movement swept over the country like wildfire. Popular meetings were held in school-houses, halls, and churches. Many of the speakers were reformed drunkards who had taken the pledge and related their experiences.

    The experience of John B. Gough, as related by himself in his "Autobiography," may illustrate the methods of the meetings. Gough had gone to the lowest depth of poverty and wretchedness, and when he was in despair and ready for suicide he was invited to one of the meetings by Joel Stratton, a waiter. This is his own account :

    When I stood up to relate my story, I recognized my acquaintance who asked me to sign. He greeted me with a smile of approbation which nerved and strengthened me for my task as I tremblingly observed every eye fixed upon me. I lifted my quivering hand and then and there told what rum had done for me. I related that I had once been respectable and happy and had a home, but that now I was a homeless, miserable, scathed, diseased, and blighted outcast from society. I said scarce a hope remained to me of ever becoming that which I once was, but, having promised to sign the pledge, I had determined not to break my word and would now affix my name to it. In my palsied hand I with difficulty grasped the pen, and in characters almost as crooked as those of old Stephen Hopkins on the Declaration of Independence I signed the total abstinence pledge and resolved to free myself from the inexorable tyrant Rum. ⁴⁷

    Dickens' first visit to America was in 1842, the year when the Washingtonian movement was at its height and the year in which Lincoln delivered his notable address on Washington's birthday. We find records of Dickens' journeys across the country in coaches. In one hotel he ate with the boarders, and they had no drink but tea and coffee.

    I ask for brandy, but it is a temperance hotel and spirits are not to be had for love or money.

    On visiting the Military Academy at West Point, he writes of the hotel that "it had the drawback of being a total abstinence house," as wines and liquors were
forbidden to the cadets.

    On his visit to Cincinnati he wrote of a great temperance convention held there on the day after his arrival, the parade passing the hotel in which he lodged :

    It comprised several thousand men, the members of various Washingtonian auxiliary temperance societies, and was marshaled by officers on horseback who cantered briskly up and down the line with scarfs and ribbons of bright colors fluttering out behind them gaily. ... I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen who formed a distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong with their green scarf's carrying their national Harp and their portrait of Father Mathew high above their heads. They looked as jolly and good-humored as ever, and working here the hardest for their living and doing any kind of sturdy labor that came in their way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought.

    The banners were very well painted and flaunted down the street famously. There was the smiting of the rock, the gushing forth of the waters ; and there a temperate man with "considerable of a hatchet" (as the standard bearer would probably have said) aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently about to spring upon him from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this part of the show was a huge allegorical device, borne among the ship-carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while upon the other, the good ship Temperance sailed away with a fair wind to the hearts' content of the Captain, crew and passengers.

    Dickens also writes of the temperance songs of the children of the free schools, and the speeches adapted to the occasion, "but the main thing was the conduct and appearance of the audience throughout the day, and that was admirable and full of promise." ⁴⁸

    An examination of the newspaper files of that time shows that little space was given to reports of meetings or speeches unless they were related to immediate political events; but it is known that Lincoln became interested in the Washingtonian movement and made many speeches in Springfield and throughout the adjoining country, advocating total abstinence and the signing of the pledge.

    Roland Diller, a longtime resident of Springfield, was an intimate personal friend of Lincoln from 1844 to the end of his life. His drugstore was not far from the Lincoln home and was one of the favorite haunts of Lincoln and a number of his friends, who frequently gathered there to tell stories and discuss politics. ⁴⁹

    Dr. Howard Russell, founder of the Anti-Saloon League, was in Springfield early in 1900 and visited Mr. Diller, to look at some relics of the great President. He said that he was specially interested in temperance work; whereupon the old druggist told him that Lincoln was a pronounced temperance man and not only never used intoxicating liquor of any kind but was also an earnest advocate of the reform. Mr. Diller further told Dr. Russell that there were still living people who had attended the Washingtonian meetings at which Lincoln spoke and who had taken the pledge as given by Mr. Lincoln.

    Some months after this, by arrangement of Mr. Diller, Dr. Russell met Cleopas Breckenridge, a farmer of Sangamon County and a reputable citizen of high standing, who had served in the Civil War as a sergeant in Company D of the Thirty-third Illinois Volunteer Infantry. ⁵⁰ Mr. Breckenridge remembered that in the summer of either 1846 or 1847 he had attended a temperance meeting in the neighborhood schoolhouse, at which Lincoln made the address and gave the pledge of total abstinence.

    Lincoln had already gained a reputation as a public speaker and as a rising young lawyer, and the notice of his coming, said Breckenridge, drew a large crowd. Lincoln made an earnest plea for total abstinence. When he had finished his address he took from his pocket a paper and said :

    "This is what is called the 'Washingtonian Pledge.' Many thousands of people throughout the country have signed it. I have signed this pledge myself and would be glad to have as many of my neighbors as are willing sign it with me."

    Many signed it, including Breckenridge, who was then ten years old. Lincoln kindly urged him to take the pledge, and when the boy had given his name, said to him : "You keep that pledge, and it will be the best act of your life."

    Breckenridge said he had always felt under a solemn obligation to keep the pledge Lincoln had given him, and under many temptations in the war and amid other surroundings had never broken it, counting it an essential element in a successful life.

    Breckenridge further gave Dr. Russell the names of others still living who had taken the pledge at the hands of Lincoln at this meeting at South Fork schoolhouse in 1847. Two of them, R. E. Berry and Moses Martin, gave accounts similar to that rendered by Breckenridge, and all three of the men made their affidavits to the facts as stated by them.

    One of these men reproduced the following pledge as given by Lincoln :

    Whereas, the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage is productive of pauperism, degradation, and crime; and believing it is our duty to discourage that which produces more evil than good, we therefore pledge ourselves to abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage.

 

CHAPTER V

LINCOLN AND PROHIBITION

    The most distinguishing relation of Abraham Lincoln to the temperance reform was on the side of moral suasion, especially as it was exemplified in the Washingtonian movement. He had other relations to the traffic which he expressed directly and indirectly a number of times.

    The liquor advocates have given extensive publicity to Lincoln's vote in the Illinois legislature of 1840 on "An act to regulate tavern and grocery licenses." In the House Journal of December 19, 1840, it is recorded that Mr. Murphy, of Chicago, moved to strike out all after the enacting clause and to insert the following:

    That after the passage of this act no person shall be licensed to sell vinous or spirituous liquors in this State and that any person who violates this act by selling such liquors shall be fined in the sum of one thousand dollars, to be recovered before any court having competent jurisdiction.

    It was an apparent effort by a friend of the liquor business to make the bill an object of ridicule. Lincoln moved to lay the Murphy amendment on the table, and this was carried by a vote of seventy-five Yeas to eight Nays. This action has been widely paraded as evidence that Mr. Lincoln voted against prohibition. ;

    In 1855 a prohibitory law was submitted to the voters of Illinois and was defeated. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, was an ardent advocate of prohibition. Joseph Fort Newton says:
    Lincoln, neither prohibitionist nor abolitionist, held aloof, not wishing to divert attention from the supreme question of the age, but Herndon plunged into the thick of the fight, writing and speaking with all the more zeal because liquor was his personal enemy. ⁵¹

    Mr. Lincoln may have been politically neither prohibitionist nor abolitionist, but we know that he hated slavery, and there is every evidence that he hated also the liquor traffic. Just as he became the Great Emancipator when the right time came, so he would have welcomed the day, if it might have come to him, to sign a bill forbidding forever the traffic in alcoholic liquor.
Lord Charnwood says:
    His social philosophy, as he expressed it to his friends in these days, was one which contemplated great future reforms abolition of slavery and a strict temperance policy were among them. But he looked for them in a sort of fatalistic confidence in the ultimate victory of reason and saw no use and a good deal of harm in premature political agitation for them. He is reported to have said : "All such questions must find lodgment with the most enlightened souls who stamp them with their approval. In God's own time they will be organized into law and thus woven into the fabric of our institutions." This seems a little cold-blooded, but perhaps we can already begin to recognize the man who, when the time had fully come, would be on the right side, -and in whom the evil which he had deeply but restrainedly hated would find an appallingly wary foe. ⁵²

    There cannot be found in any speech or letter of Lincoln's a single word expressing the slightest sympathy with the licensed traffic in liquor. In his great address on Washington's birthday he said :

    Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confirms the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.

He also said, speaking of the temperance revolution:
    When the victory shall be complete when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth how proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that people who shall have planted and nurtured to maturity both the political and moral freedom of their species.

    When Lincoln refers to the "total and final banishment of all intoxicating drinks" he is plainly anticipating the wiping-out of the liquor traffic. If all men were abstainers there would be no reason for the existence of the traffic. If no intoxicating liquor were manufactured or sold no one would be induced to form the drink habit.

    The friends of the liquor traffic have not only resorted to misrepresentations in their efforts to identify Mr. Lincoln with their business, but have even used forgery. In 1887, in Atlanta, Georgia, there was an exciting campaign to close the saloons. At that time the Negroes were voting in Georgia, and it was shrewdly planned to use the name of Lincoln to capture their votes. Handbills were circulated, headed in large letters:

FOR LIBERTY ! ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S PROCLAMATION.

    Underneath this was a picture of a Negro kissing the hand of Lincoln, who was in the act of striking off his shackles, the Negro's family standing near by, Under the picture was printed this ostensible quotation:

    Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and in making crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibitory law strikes a blow at the very principles on which our government was founded. I have always been found laboring to protect the weaker classes from the stronger, and I can never give my consent to such a law as you propose to enact. Until my tongue be silenced in death, I will continue to fight for the rights of man.

Then followed this appeal :

Colored voter, he appeals to you to protect the liberty he has bestowed upon you. Will you go back on his advice ? Look to your rights ! Read and act ! Vote for the sale !

A copy of this handbill was sent by the writer of these pages to Hay and Nicolay. A reply was received as follows from Hay:
    Neither Mr. Nicolay nor I have ever come across this passage in Mr. Lincoln's works, which we have been several years compiling.
Mr. Nicolay, who spent years in gathering Lincoln's papers, speeches, and writings of every kind, said:
    In all this vast collection there is nowhere any speech, letter or document, or reported conversation by him on the subject of prohibition.
In spite of these statements, this forged quotation continues to be used in wet-and-dry campaigns. A letter of inquiry as to its origin was sent to the National Model License League, of which Colonel T. M. Gilmore is president, eliciting this reply :

As to the reported words of Abraham Lincoln beginning "Prohibition will work great evil to the cause of temperance," I beg leave to say that I can not at this time tell you where the original may be found.

In another letter he admits that after diligent search through numerous authorities he could find no evidence that Lincoln ever used such language. ⁵³

A prominent liquor journal says :
    It may be impossible to prove conclusively that Lincoln used the exact words in the disputed sentence.

In 1853, Rev. James Smith in Springfield gave a lecture entitled, "A Discourse on the Bottle; Its Evils and the Remedy." On January 2gth a request was made by those who heard it for the publication of the address, because its general circulation would help public sentiment, and Lincoln was one of the signers.

The wording of this request was :
    The undersigned listened with great satisfaction to the discourse, on the subject of temperance, delivered by you on last evening, and believing that if published and circulated among the people it would be productive of good, we respectfully request a copy thereof for publication.

    An extract from the address is as follows :
    The liquor traffic is a cancer in society, eating out its vitals and threatening destruction; and all attempts to regulate the cancer will not only prove abortive but will aggravate the evil. No, there must be no more attempts to regulate the cancer ; it must be eradicated ; not a root must be left ; for until this is done all classes must continue to be exposed to become victims of strong drink, and the woe in the text must abide upon us : "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that putteth the bottle to him." The most effectual remedy would be the passage of a law altogether abolishing the liquor traffic, except for mechanical, chemical, medical, and sacramental purposes, and so framed that no principle of the constitution of the States or of the United States be violated.

    After Lincoln had attained prominence as a lawyer he was in Clinton, attending court, and made a notable plea. A grogshop had badly demoralized a number of men, and their families had suffered. A company of women, anticipating the work of Carrie Nation and her hatchet, had made a raid on the infamous place, had broken the bottles and demijohns, and smashed the whiskey barrels and the furniture. They were arrested and prosecuted. It is said that the local attorneys feared the influence of the liquor men, but Lincoln volunteered his services in their defense.

    The late Rev. Dr. D. D. Thompson, editor of the Northwestern Christian Advocate, published the following portion of Lincoln's plea:
    May it please the court, I will say a few words in behalf of the women who are arraigned before your Honor and the jury. I would suggest, first, that there be a change in the indictment, so as to have it read, "The State against Mr. Whiskey," instead of "The State against the Women." It would be far more appropriate. Touching this question, there are three laws : First, the law of self-protection ; second, the law of the statute ; third, the law of God. The law of self -protection is the law of necessity, as shown when our fathers threw the tea into Boston harbor, and in asserting their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the defense of these women. The man who has persisted in selling whiskey has had no regard for their well-being or for the welfare of their husbands and sons. He has had no fear of God nor regard for man; neither has he had any regard for the laws of the statute. No jury can fix any damages or punishment for any violation of the moral law. The course pursued by this liquor-dealer has been for the demoralization of society. His groggery has been a nuisance. These women, finding all moral suasion of no avail with this fellow, oblivious to all tender appeals, alike regardless of their prayers and tears, in order to protect their households and promote the welfare of the community, united to suppress the nuisance. The good of society demanded its suppression. They accomplished what otherwise could not have been done.

    Henry B. Rankin, in referring to this case, says:

    In the midst of his powerful appeals to the jury in behalf of the women, and his attack upon the evils of the traffic and use of intoxicating spirits, the speaker turned, and, pointing his long, bony finger toward the venerable Parson Berry, who was among those present, exclaimed :
"There stands the man who years ago was instrumental in convincing me of the evils of trafficking in and using ardent spirits. I am glad I ever saw him. I am glad I ever heard and heeded his testimony on this terrible subject." ⁵⁴
    Herndon says that at the close of his plea "Lincoln gave some of his own observations on the ruinous effects of whiskey in society and demanded its early suppression."
    At the conclusion of Lincoln's speech, the court, without waiting for the verdict of the jury, dismissed the women, saying:
    "Ladies, go home. I will require no bond of you, and if any fine is ever wanted of you we will let you know."
    According to Herndon, this trial took place in 1855, which was the year in which a prohibition law was submitted to the voters of Illinois and was defeated. ⁵⁵
    James B. Merwin, founder of The American Journal of Education and widely known as a writer and speaker on educational and literary subjects, was also among the early advocates of prohibition. He states that he and Lincoln campaigned together for prohibition in 1854 and 1855. "In that: memorable canvass," he says: "Mr. Lincoln and myself spoke in Jacksonville, Bloomington, Decatur, Carlinville, Peoria and many other points." Richard Yates, afterwards Governor and United States Senator, presided at the Jacksonville meeting. In one of the early speeches Lincoln made, Merwin reports him as saying:

    Is not the law of self-protection the first law of nature the first primary law of civilized society? Law is for the protection, conservation and extension of right things and of right conduct, not for the protection of evil and
wrongdoing.
    The State must, in its legislative action, recognize, in the law enacted, this principle it must make sure and secure these endeavors to establish, protect, and extend right conditions, right conduct, righteousness.
    These conditions will be secured and preserved, not by indifference, not by a toleration of evils, not by attempting to throw around any evil the shield of law, never by any attempt to license the evil.
    This sentiment of right conduct for the protection of home, of state, of church, of individuals, must be taken up, embodied in legislation, and thus become a positive factor active in the State. This is the most important function in the legislation of the modern State.
    This saves the whole, and not a part, with a high, true conservatism through the united action of all, by all, for all.
    The prohibition of the liquor traffic, except for medical and mechanical purposes, thus becomes the new evangel for the safety and redemption of the people from the social, political, and moral curse of the saloon and its inevitable evil consequences of drunkenness.
 
According to Merwin, Lincoln often said:
    'The saloon and the liquor traffic have defenders, but no defense."
    The same authority also gives the following as the gist of Lincoln's speeches in the campaign:
    This legalized liquor traffic as carried on in the saloons and grogshops is the tragedy of civilization. Good citizenship demands and requires that what is right should not only be made known, but be made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected and defeated, but destroyed.
    The saloon has proved itself to be the greatest foe, the most blighting curse of our modern civilization, and this is why I am a practical prohibitionist.
    We must not be satisfied until the public sentiment of this State and the individual conscience shall be instructed to look upon the saloonkeeper and the liquor seller, with all the license can give him, as simply and only a privileged malefactor a criminal.
    Mr. Merwin is also authority for the statement that Lincoln, in advocating the entire prohibition of the liquor traffic, used nearly the same language and in many instances the same illustrations he used later in his arguments against slavery. ⁵⁶

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates Lincoln at one time said:

    "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." The fact that a thing was wrong was sufficient reason for Lincoln's opposition, and Mr. Merwin points out that in one of his speeches Lincoln said :

    The real issue in this controversy, the one pressing upon every mind that gives the subject careful consideration, is that legalizing the manufacture, sale, and use of intoxicating beverage is a wrong as all history and every development of the traffic proves it to be a moral, social, and political wrong.

    Lieutenant Governor Gustave Koerner, one of the leading Germans of Illinois, was the leader of the forces that defeated prohibition in the campaign of 1855. He was, however, a devoted friend of Lincoln

Early in the Civil War Major Merwin worked as a volunteer in the camps around Washington, making many addresses to the soldiers on questions of morals, and especially on temperance. His work had the hearty commendation of the then commander-in-chief, General Winfield Scott. On July 24, 1862, President Lincoln issued this order : "Surgeon General will send Mr. Merwin where he may think the public service will require." A number of the army officers, members of Congress and other prominent men heartily endorsed Mr. Merwin's army work. The notes of General Scott and President Lincoln have been preserved in facsimile. In the Century Magazine of June, 1917,
Major Merwin had a Lincoln story, and the following statement was published in the editorial notes :

Major J. B. Merwin, veteran temperance worker, got to know Lincoln very well when they were both working in the temperance cause in Illinois during the years 1854-1855. From 1861 to 1865 Major Merwin was in Washington nearly all the time, engaged in temperance work among the soldiers. "In fact," he writes, "when I was in Washington, I slept on the top floor of the White House and came to know Lincoln about as well as
any one could."

and ardently supported him in his nomination and election as President. It may be counted certain that if Lincoln had ever uttered any words against prohibition his friend and admirer would have used them in the campaign.
    It is said that some of Mr. Lincoln's political followers were alarmed about his radicalism on the prohibition question and made an unsuccessful effort to silence him.

    It is a fact that has escaped mention by the majority of Lincoln's biographers that the first newspaper nomination of Lincoln for President was in a journal that was noted as an advocate of temperance reform.
    In a letter written by William O. Stoddard, one of Lincoln's secretaries, dated June 30, 1917, is this statement :

I wrote and printed the first editorial nomination of him for President. I sent out 200 extra copies to the press and it was widely copied and commented on. The Central Illinois Gazette (Champaign, Illinois), of which I was part owner and sole editor, was the only out-and-out aggressive temperance journal in all that region. We were bitterly assailed as "fanatics" but we kept our own place "dry." ⁵⁷

The first notice was under the title: "Our Next President." It appeared in the Central Illinois Gazette on May 4, 1859, and is republished by Whitney. ⁵⁸



 

CHAPTER VI

LINCOLN'S GREAT TEMPERANCE SPEECH

    Abraham Lincoln's name is high in the list of the great orators of the world. His greatest speeches are identified with questions of moral and political reform. His plain, vigorous Anglo-Saxon style gave him note before his time of wider fame. The "Gettysburg Address" and the "Second Inaugural Address" are counted his masterpieces. His letter to Mrs. Bixby, expressing his sympathy to her as the mother of five sons who had died as soldiers in the Union Army, is hung in a great library at Oxford University as a model of English style.

    Mr. Bryce, writing of the florid rhetoric so common in the oratory of Lincoln's time, says that Lincoln "escaped it entirely" and that "his example had much to do in changing the common practice to a new style whose notes were simplicity, directness, and breadth." ⁵⁹

Dr. Newton, discussing the influences upon young men in the law office of Lincoln and Herndon, says :

    A new school of eloquence might have formed itself by the methods of Lincoln, depending for its results, not upon the subtlety of the rhetoric nor the magic of elocution, but claiming attention and assent by direct and honest appeals to the common understanding. ⁶⁰

    Lincoln has so great a reputation as a story-teller that many have wondered why so few of his stories are to be found in his published addresses. In the course of the famous debates with Senator Douglas some of his friends did, indeed, urge him to introduce more of his witty illustrations and funny stories, and so get applause. Lincoln, however, replied :

"The occasion is too serious. I do not seek applause, or to amuse the people, but to convince them."

    Biographers of Lincoln make special mention of three speeches: the one delivered by invitation of the Springfield Washingtonian Society, February 22, 1842; the "House Divided Against Itself," at Springfield, June 17, 1858; and the "Cooper Institute Address," February 27, 1860. In connection with all of these there is evidence that they were prepared with special care and regarded by Lincoln himself as his own productions of special value. The two later speeches had direct relation to his nomination and election as President.

The Washingtonian movement came to its climax in 1842, and the 22nd of February of that year was noted for the great temperance meetings held in all parts of the country. In many cities there were parades with music and banners. In Boston, Faneuil Hall was filled three times during the day with enthusiastic audiences.

    Dr. John Marsh described the celebration in New York in these words:

    The grand festival at Center Market Hall on the birthday of our immortal Washington was got up and carried through in a style worthy of the movement with which it was connected. The magnitude of the halls, their appropriate decorations, the immense crowds of people, the eloquence of the orators, the beauty and rich supply of the table, the hearty congratulations of the guests, the pith of the sentiments and the power of the temperance odes .sung by thousands of voices these, gratifying as they were, did not fill our vision so much as the object of the festival and the character and circumstances of the many there, once poor, unfortunate drunkards, now disenthralled, reformed men gathered together with their happy families to rejoice in their wonderful deliverance ; the whole forming an entirely new era in the moral history of our great city. ⁶¹

    Notable  meetings were held in Washington City.
The Congressional Temperance Society had been organized there in 1833, its object as announced being "by example and kind moral influence to discountenance the use of ardent spirits and the traffic in it throughout the community." The pledge did not forbid the use of fermented and malt liquors, and it was found that this partial pledge did not prevent the fall of members of the society. Under the influence of the Washingtonian movement the society was reorganized in 1842 on the basis of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, a brilliant Congressman, himself a victim of drink, began a speech at the time of the reorganization of the society with these words:

The old Congressional Temperance Society has died of intemperance, holding the pledge in one hand and a champagne bottle in the other.

    The whole country was so affected by the Washingtonian crusade that many enthusiastic friends of temperance believed their cause was about to triumph and that the liquor traffic was to be annihilated. In this year of 1842 the demand for whiskey was reduced one-half from that of the previous year, because of the reformation of the drinkers. Distilleries ran only on half-time.

Fashionable drinking, too, was becoming unfashionable. The New York Mercantile Journal made the statement :

    At the great and splendid levee given on the occasion of his daughter's marriage, the President of the United States of America had not a drop of wine or other alcoholics furnished. Nothing but cold water was to be had, and on a wedding occasion, too. What a noble step !
One which will draw to him thousands of hearts, warm and .fresh, and will tell on the future destinies of the nation.

    Many people thought the movement, founded on the law of love, would win the final battle against intemperance. At a great convention held in Boston in 1842, the following resolution was adopted:

RESOLVED, That the unparalleled success of the Washingtonian movement in reforming the drunkard and inducing the retailer to cease his unholy traffic affords conclusive evidence that moral suasion is the true and proper basis of action in the temperance cause; and that we, therefore, earnestly recommend to its friends not to compromise the high and commanding position it now occupies.

On the 22nd of February in the same year, at the request of the Springfield Washingtonian Society, Lincoln made his great address in the Second Presbyterian Church. It has become a classic in temperance reform.

Herndon writes:

    Early in 1842 he entered into the Washingtonian movement organized to suppress the evils of intemperance. At the request of the Society he delivered an admirable address on Washington's birthday in the Presbyterian Church. 62

Lamon says:

    For many years Lincoln was an ardent agitator against the use of intoxicating beverages and made speeches far and near in favor of total abstinence. Some of them were printed, and of one of them he was not a little proud. 63

Robert H. Browne says :

I n those years of cheap whiskey, dwarfed lives and rum-rotted intellects, he heartily united with a company of the brave and fearless men and women of the time in about the first crusading organization against the drinking, sure-killing rum habit the Washingtonians, a famous temperance society that saved many a victim and accomplished wondrous good in its day. He was an organizer, and in visits to different places he organized and started several temperance societies. ⁶⁴

Mr. Browne also gives extracts from Lincoln's noted speech of 1842 as an illustration of his early prowess and zeal.

Dr. Newton says:

    In 1842 Lincoln took part in the Washingtonian temperance crusade, making several speeches, one of which has come down to us. Comparing it with his former efforts, one discovers a marked advance in restrain of style, which became every year less decorative and more forthright, simple and thrusting; and the style was the man. Rarely has that difficult theme been treated in so calm, earnest, and judicious a manner with surer insight or a finer spirit. He was already dreaming, it would seem, of a time when there should be neither a slave nor a drunkard in the republic. But his address, so far from finding favor, excited hostility, for, speaking out of his wide knowledge of men and the wise pity which such knowledge begets, he was led to say frankly that those who had never fallen into the toils of the vice had escaped more by lack of appetite than by any moral superiority, and that, taken as a class, drinking men would compare favorably in head and heart with any other class. This was as a red rag to the more intemperate of the temperance reformers, to whom drinking was a crime a temper of mind to which Lincoln, as abstemious in habit as in speech, was averse. Indeed, his preeminent sanity in the midst of extremists was one of the chief attractions of his life. ⁶⁵

In more than one letter Lincoln has referred to this address in a way that showed he regarded it as worthy of special consideration. To his intimate friend Joshua F. Speed he wrote:

    You will see by the last Sangamon Journal that I made a temperance speech on the 22nd of February, which I claim that Fanny and you shall head as an act of charity to me ; for I cannot learn that anybody else has read it or is likely to. Fortunately, it is not very long, and I shall deem it a sufficient compliance with my request if one of you listens whi