Ohio History Journal

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

AN ADDRESS BY CHARLES A. JONES

CHAIRMAN SATER: I feel that we are all obliged to Professor

Galbreath for making a little shift in the program here and in

giving us a chance to walk about for a few minutes and to be

present at the presentation and dedication of this beautiful gift

that Mr. Venable and his family have made to the Society.

A few years ago the managers of a very enterprising maga-

zine in this country sent out a questionnaire to the high school

students of the civilized countries of the world and they asked

for the answer to one question, they were polling high school

students of the civilized world to find out who, in their opinion,

was the greatest man of modern times. Now, that is a pretty

big order, my friends. But the high school students apparently

were able to answer that question. And who do you think led

the list? Probably a number of you have seen that list, maybe

some of you have not. But who do you think led the list of

the greatest man of the modern world? It wasn't Napoleon, there

wasn't a king or an emperor or a prince or a potentate or a rich

man in the list, not one. The man who received the greatest

number of votes as the greatest man of modern times was a

quiet, mild-mannered little Frenchman who spent his whole life

in a laboratory, Louis Pasteur, and the second name on that list

was Abraham Lincoln.

We are very fortunate this afternoon in having with us as

one of our speakers, one of the most careful, painstaking of the

younger students of Abraham Lincoln in the state of Ohio. We

never tire of hearing of Lincoln and you will not tire of hearing

what this speaker has to say of him.

Mr. Jones, as you know, was Secretary for Governor and

Senator Willis for seven years. He was Secretary for Gover-

nor Cooper throughout the entire time that he was Governor. But

Mr. Jones' reputation doesn't depend upon his connection with

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any other man. He has a name and a reputation and ability of

his own. You will discover that, if you don't already know it,

before he has proceeded very far with his paper. It is my great

privilege to introduce to you Mr. Charles A. Jones, who will

speak to us on Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Jones. (Applause.)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: That is a very much appreciated

introduction, a little bit different from the one that I got up in

Mansfield some months ago when I went up there to speak to

the men's group. The chairman of the meeting was making some

announcements in a perfectly informal manner.  I am certain

that he did not think about what he was saying. Nevertheless,

it was rather interesting. Right in the middle of his announce-

ments, he said to the group, "Now, boys, next week we will have

a real speaker." (Laughter.) And the boys looked at me and

I looked at them and then we all laughed.

I have been very much interested in the work of this Society

ever since the first time that I came to Ohio and went into a

little room down in the capitol building and saw a number of

things, one of which especially struck my attention, coming as I

did from the border state of Maryland. I saw a flag there with

a placard on it, "Rebel Flag from the First Maryland Regiment."

I suppose long since it has gone back to Maryland. It was the

first time in my life that I ever saw in any public place the

word "Rebel" and I have never forgotten it. The setting, of

course, as you know, in the state of Maryland was very different

in regard to that word from what it was out here in Ohio, and I

have never forgotten the impression that that particular exhibit

made upon me.

I have had very interesting and pleasant relations with the

Society and its officers through the years and have been glad to

make such contributions to it as I could. I was very much in-

terested in some phases of the paper which preceded. One of the

officers of this Society and I went up to one of the nearby counties

not so long ago to speak at a local historical society meeting. We

drove into the town and up to the court house and asked if this

was the place where the meeting was to be, and the gentleman

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who stood in front said to us, "I have no doubt this is where it

is to be, this is where they have their junk." (Laughter.)

A little later in the evening, after the meeting was over, we

were taken in to see the exhibit, which is really a very interesting

one, and the guide took us over almost instantly to one of the

cases and pointed out a piece of rope and told us that a certain

man was hung with that. (Laughter.) So I have some knowl-

edge of the subject matter that was discussed.

Nothing is more strange when you come to study it out,

except life, than the choices of men and women that history

makes for immortality, and by immortality in the sense in which

I use it, I mean the fame that will so endure that a hundred

years from today, the ordinary citizen in the ordinary country

of the world will know or care that a man lived and where he

lived and what he did. Those of you who have examined the

literature of any day much less than a hundred years ago are

always struck with the importance given to men and to events

which have wholly passed out of the knowledge of the men and

women of your own day and generation, probably never have

come to their attention, and yet at the time in which those things

happened or in which the men and women lived they had a no

inconsiderable importance.

Now, viewed from that standpoint, nothing is more strange

than that I should be here speaking to you about Abraham Lin-

coln or that you should be interested in him, or that this day

and generation should, in many places in the world, consider

Abraham Lincoln equal to or even above the man who is the

father of his country, George Washington.

There can be no question about the fact that in many coun-

tries of the world, Abraham Lincoln is definitely better known

than any other man that ever lived in the United States. Half

a world from here is the city of Chengtu, almost at the Tibetan

border. Walking down a little street of that city one day, a street

not much wider than this old and historic desk here, I looked

into the room of a little store and on the back wall of that store

I saw a Chinese printed picture of Abraham Lincoln. The man

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that owned the store knew practically nothing about Mr. Lin-

coln; he knew so little about the United States of America that

he asked how many days' journey it would take by sedan chair

to come from his country to this country. But he did know that

a man by the name of Abraham Lincoln who was born an ex-

ceedingly poor boy came to be one of the greatest men in the

world.

Not so very long ago in the city of Berlin, Germany, the

high school students were asked who was George Washington.

More than half of them did not know. There were many in-

teresting answers, among which was the statement that he was

the chief aide to General Pershing during the World War. Just

what they might have said about Mr. Lincoln is not recorded,

but that is an indication of the general knowledge of the world.

How marked it is that Mr. Lincoln achieved fame almost by

accident is illustrated, perhaps best, by the sketch of Mr. Lin-

coln's life that was given by Dr. Aked, one of the most famous

English preachers of our generation, at the Lincoln Memorial

Service in Washington, about six years ago. In beginning his

address, Dr. Aked said that to the people of Great Britain, "Abra-

ham Lincoln is an absolutely incomprehensible character." Those

were his exact words, and he added that his experience in the

United States led him to believe that Mr. Lincoln is actually as

little understood almost by the people of his country as he is by

the people of Great Britain. Of course, we wouldn't agree with

that statement.

And then Dr. Aked followed with this outline, which I want

to read to you with some little comments, because it is a state-

ment of the life of Mr. Lincoln as it might well have been set

down up to the time that he was past fifty years of age, the age

at which men in public life are usually well on their way towards

success or permanent failure. Let me read this:

"He was born amid conditions of poverty scarcely compre-

hensible to the men and women of today."

Oftentimes when I am speaking over the state, I refer to a

log cabin that is down here in the basement, which is a really

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wonderful exhibit of the life of a hundred or more years ago.

This cabin is a palace beside any building in which Abraham

Lincoln lived up to the time he was nineteen years of age. This

is a first class cabin. A hundred years ago the cabin in which

Mr. Lincoln was born was considered a third class cabin, even in

the hills of Kentucky where it stood and still stands, and if you

will go down there and talk with the people who have built those

cabins and lived in them, they will tell you that under any stand-

ards, the cabin in which Mr. Lincoln was born was a very poor

cabin. Then when his father moved to Indiana, he lived all

through one of the coldest winters in historical times in a build-

ing that had only three sides.

"Now," said Dr. Aked, "of his father, the less said the

better."

My own judgment is, while that was the judgment of our

fathers, it is not just. Nobody knew anything about Thomas

Lincoln or cared anything about him up until the time that Mr.

Lincoln became President, and the President's father was then a

man well along in years. Dr. Barton says, after very careful re-

search, that something happened to Abraham Lincoln's father

about the time he was forty or forty-five years of age which

transformed him from an ordinary individual with some degree

of enterprise, not very great, into an absolutely shiftless indi-

vidual. It was as the individual of that second period that

Thomas Lincoln came to the notice of men who cared and his

name was passed down into history. Thomas Lincoln was an

elder of his church and he was a public official. He did certain

things of more or less credit in the Kentucky neighborhood in

which he lived, all of which have been developed in the research

of the last few years to somewhat change the picture of Thomas

Lincoln. He wasn't the greatest man that ever lived by a long

shot, but neither was he, in the earlier years of his life, at least,

the poor, shiftless individual that he was when he came into the

picture of history.

Let me return to the outline. Dr. Aked said that "The best

that can be said of his mother is that she was an ignorant but

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rather attractive pioneer woman. Mr. Lincoln had no education

from the viewpoint of the modern school." The fact is that his

education from our viewpoint was less than a year. "From early

boyhood he was compelled to do hard physical labor for every-

thing which he secured, and to use his own testimony, he had to

work hard, but he never learned to like it. Life for him was

one succession of failures from the viewpoint of the thing which

he wanted to achieve. The three women he especially loved, his

mother, his sister and his sweetheart, all died in his early life,

their deaths casting over him a gloom from which he never en-

tirely emerged.

"He became a storekeeper and the business failed, plunging

him into debt from which he never was able entirely to emerge

until after he had served in the Congress of the United States.

He became a surveyor and his surveying instruments were sold

to pay his debts. He went into the Black Hawk War a captain

and returned a private. He rode a horse to the war and had to

walk back. He became postmaster at the town of New Salem,

and not only the postoffice but the town in which the postoffice

was located went out of existence. He became a candidate for

the legislature but was defeated. Then he was elected and his

name is associated with some of the worst economic legislation

ever enacted by the General Assembly of any state in the union."

Let me say that this last is not particularly to Mr. Lincoln's

discredit. The name of every other man of any consequence in

his period and place was associated with the same legislation. It

was a period of bond legislation, somewhat like the ones through

which we have gone with the same kind of consequences that we

are now having in the United States and are likely to continue to

have until we get some of this bond business cleared away.

"He became a candidate for Congress and was defeated.

Later he was elected and served two years. His record was such

as not only to prevent his re-election, but to prevent the elec-

tion of his friend, Judge Logan, who had been chosen by his

party to succeed him.

"He became a candidate for Land Commissioner, but the

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President for whom he had campaigned wouldn't appoint him.

The President wanted to appoint him as Governor of Oregon,

and it is to the exceedingly great credit of Mrs. Lincoln that she

said 'No' and made him obey it. He was a candidate for United

States Senator in 1852 and was defeated. He was a candidate

for the nomination for Vice President at the First Republican

National Convention in 1856, received perhaps a hundred votes

out of some three hundred and fifty, but he was defeated.

"In 1858, he was a candidate for United States Senator for

the second time, took part with Stephen A. Douglas in the

greatest political debate ever staged on the American continent

and emerged from the campaign defeated, deep in debt, and so

far as he could see and so far as Mrs. Lincoln, who had said

she was about to marry a President of the United States, could

see, his political career, the thing that he wanted more than any-

thing else in this world, was over."

He expected to have nothing further except the practice of

law in the city of Springfield, Illinois, with occasional excursions

into public affairs from an incidental viewpoint, and if he had

passed off of the stage at any time, ladies and gentlemen, in the

year 1859, there isn't a single person in this room nor in this

state except some technical students of history who would know

or care that any such a man as Abraham Lincoln ever lived.

In September, 1859, Mr. Lincoln came to Columbus and

spoke on the east side of the State House to less than a hundred

people. On the following day, the editors of the two leading

papers in this city, each, of course, without knowledge of what

the other was about to say, said editorially that "Abraham Lin-

coln, a former Congressman from Illinois, spoke yesterday by

the State House," and each editor took occasion to point out that

he didn't consider that it was an event of enough consequence to

go across the square to hear Mr. Lincoln. Now, that was in

September, 1859.

In January, 1860, a noted Washington correspondent issued

a volume of sketches of the probable presidential nominees and

the name of Abraham Lincoln does not appear in that volume of

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five hundred and sixty-two pages, except with reference to the de-

bate with Mr. Douglas, and if the National Convention had been

held in January, 1860, Mr. Lincoln would not have been nomi-

nated, and if it had been held in February, 1860, Mr. Lincoln

would not have been nominated. He wasn't in the thinking of

most of the people of the United States. What I am saying is

that this man who is pre-eminent in American history, who is the

best loved man in our history and the best known man in our

history, despite the fact that he had participated in what is prob-

ably the second most important law case from the viewpoint of

decisions in the history of the United States, the famous railway

bridge case, was a local man with nothing more than a local rep-

utation from a political viewpoint and that he would not have

been known to you today.

I do not propose to talk to you about the outstanding events

in Mr. Lincoln's life. You know them just as well as I do. I

do intend to talk about five very little things, without any one of

which in all human probability Abraham Lincoln would not have

been President of the United States.

Sometimes when we think about these outstanding men we

think about them in terms of monuments. George Washington

appears to more people in terms of that great obelisk down in

Washington than he does as an individual. Most people do not

know that all through his life George Washington had a very

great affection for another man's wife, which clouded his happi-

ness through all the years, just as Mr. Lincoln's loss of Ann Rut-

ledge probably clouded his life. The human element passes out

somehow as we go down through the years and a good deal that

we know or think we know about Abraham Lincoln, who has

been dead only sixty-six years, is myth, myth in its setting and

myth in its actuality. The fact is that Mr. Lincoln's way to des-

tiny was influenced by five or six little things like those which

might have affected and probably often have affected your own

lives.

The first of those about which I want to speak today is the

climate of the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Lincoln never was in

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Cleveland alive but once and that was in 1861 when he was on his

way to Washington to be inaugurated as President of the United

States. His body was brought back there on its way to entomb-

ment at Springfield. How then could the climate of the city of

Cleveland, Ohio, have a vital effect upon the life of Abraham

Lincoln? The fact is that probably no individual thing that hap-

pened to Mr. Lincoln directly or indirectly was as important as

that factor of climate.

In the year 1832, the littlest man physically that ever at-

tained great importance in the history of the United States grad-

uated in New England and started west to go somewhere to prac-

tice law. He had letters of introduction to some people in Cleve-

land, Ohio, and he came there and established a legal connection

that was far beyond his dreams and far beyond the dreams of

almost every young lawyer. He hadn't been there very long, how-

ever, when he was taken ill with what we would today probably

call bilious fever, or something like that. He was very ill for

three months. At the end of that three months, the doctors said

to him that he must either leave the city of Cleveland or take the

chance that he would pretty soon leave the world entirely.

So he took a canal boat and went down to Portsmouth, Ohio,

then down to Cincinnati where he attempted to make a legal con-

nection but couldn't; went on down to St. Louis and didn't have

enough money to stay there; went into Illinois to practice law,

because without any knowledge of the law and without any

money, he could live for a time until he could get himself estab-

lished.

That is why Stephen A. Douglas came to go to Illinois. He

didn't want to go to Illinois, he didn't intend to go to Illinois, he

went there only because of economic conditions, he had to go to

Illinois.

Now, then, if Stephen A. Douglas had stayed in the State of

Ohio, he probably would have become a great man; he might

easily not have become as great a man as he did become, because

we had in this state some pretty big men in those days, Thomas

Corwin of Lebanon, and Salmon P. Chase and a number of other

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men that could be named here today. But, nevertheless, the evi-

dence would seem to point to the fact that Stephen A. Doug-

las would have become a big man. He had a greater knowledge

of the psychology of public address than almost any man of the

fifties. He had a wonderful voice. He could imitate the roar of

a cataract or he could lower his tones to paint the picture of a

breeze. And yet he never read books to amount to anything.

He was the least read of any man who became great in the his-

tory of the United States, in a public capacity, in the years after

education became general, at least. He must have been a great

man because he succeeded to eminence in this country immediately

after Webster and Clay and Calhoun had passed off the scene of

action and he maintained his greatness by the power of his speech.

But suppose he had become great in Ohio, would that have

made any difference in the life of Abraham Lincoln? How

would Abraham Lincoln have come into contact with Stephen A.

Douglas if Stephen A. Douglas had been a resident of Ohio?

Lincoln could not have campaigned against Mr. Douglas for the

United States Senatorship, and if Mr. Lincoln had not cam-

paigned against Mr. Douglas for the Senatorship, in all proba-

bility Mr. Douglas would have been President of the United

States and Mr. Lincoln would have been an obscure figure in

Illinois.

It is pretty hard for an audience these days to understand

that when the Lincoln-Douglas debates started, they were not of

interest at all because Mr. Lincoln was taking part in them; Mr.

Lincoln was just the tail to the kite. Mr. Douglas was the kite

and I will give you current evidence of that. Mrs. Joseph B. For-

aker has written a very entertaining and interesting book on her

life, I Would Live It Again. Referring to the things of her

youth in the home of her father, the distinguished Congressman

Bundy of that day, she relates about the conversations around

the table concerning the fact that "a Mr. Lincoln was debating

the great Douglas in Illinois." After the debates were over some

time and the people had had a chance to think the thing through,

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Mr. Lincoln became the kite and Mr. Douglas became the tail to

the kite; but that wasn't true when those debates took place.

If Mr. Douglas had not had an attack of bilious fever in

Cleveland in 1832 and had stayed in Ohio, the whole course of the

life of Mr. Lincoln and the whole course of the national history

might have been changed. That is the first of the incidental

things to which I want to call attention today as important in the

life of this great man and as contributing directly to the develop-

ment of his life.

Now, then, we are going to skip clear over until the early

part of 1860. What little fame Mr. Lincoln had in the early part

of 1860 was due to the fact of his participation in these debates

with Mr. Douglas. The outline I have given you here that Dr.

Aked gave is in essence true. It would have been set down, if

anything had been written, in 1860. There wasn't a single sketch

extant of Mr. Lincoln in the early part of 1860 anywhere and you

can't find one today that was written up to that time, yet he was

past fifty years of age when he was nominated for the presidency

of the United States.

There are more books about Abraham Lincoln today than

about any other man that ever lived in the Western World, ex-

cept possibly Napoleon Bonaparte in France, but they weren't

written before 1860 and most of them were not written for thirty

years after Mr. Lincoln had passed off of the stage. Dr. Holland

wrote the life of Mr. Lincoln in 1866 and Ward Lamon, his as-

sociate, wrote one in 1872, and then along in 1888 or thereabouts,

his law partner, Mr. Herndon, with the assistance of Mr. Weik,

wrote a three volume edition that stirred everybody. About the

same time Hay and Nicolay issued their great ten volume history,

and it was supposed all that was worth while had been said. You

can put in about a dozen volumes all the things of permanent

worth that the people cared to know about Mr. Lincoln, at least

as far as they had appeared in print up to about 1890 or '95.

It was not until Ida Tarbell spent three or four years digging

up facts that nobody ever dreamed existed about Abraham Lin-

coln and the Lincoln family and printed them along about 1905

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and 1906, that the floodgates on Mr. Lincoln were let loose; and

now there are about twenty-five hundred volumes on Mr. Lincoln

and four or five thousand pamphlets. There is scarcely a month

goes by that some book that is worth while is not printed about

Mr. Lincoln. About six or eight have been printed this year

already. It takes forty or fifty dollars a year to keep up with the

procession if you buy just the publications that are really worth

while that come out every year. But the men who lived with Mr.

Lincoln and who immediately followed him didn't have much of

that kind and didn't care for much of that kind.

So we pass over to the early part of 1860, which was just a

few weeks after Mr. Lincoln came to Columbus to deliver this

address which was listened to by less than a hundred people. He

was not in the eye of the East as a presidential possibility at all.

Then there came to him an invitation to come to Brooklyn, New

York, to speak to a Lyceum Club of about a hundred members.

A man who happened to be one of the directors of this Lyceum

in Brooklyn had been out in Illinois and had heard Mr. Lincoln

in these Lincoln-Douglas debates. He thought it would be an

interesting and valuable thing from a monetary viewpoint to bring

Mr. Lincoln to Brooklyn as one of the attractions on that lecture

course, not because of anything he would say particularly but

because he was a natural physical and political curiosity. This

man had a strenuous time persuading his six associates that an

invitation should go to Mr. Lincoln at all.

I know just how that appealed to them. When I was on

the Senior Lecture Course Committee up at Delaware, we wanted

to bring Captain Jack Crawford, a famous Indian Scout, there,

not because of anything that he would say, but because we

thought he would be one of the few remaining curiosities of the

wild and wooly West. The faculty vetoed the suggestion; they

said we couldn't, he wouldn't contribute anything cultural to what

we were there for.

Well, now, that was about the same way with this committee

down at Brooklyn, but the director of the Lyceum Club finally

got the invitation across and sent it out to Abraham Lincoln.

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And then this thing occurred. Mr. Lincoln didn't want to go

to New York to deliver that address; he was tired; he felt he

was out of public life, but there was one reason why he wanted

to come east, and you who have sons and daughters in college

will sympathize with his viewpoint. The oldest son of Mr. and

Mrs. Lincoln was Robert T. Lincoln. This son, if it had not

been for the overwhelming greatness of his father, would today

be an outstanding man in American history. For many years he

was the leader of the Chicago Bar; he was a member of the cab-

inet of two presidents; he was talked about as a candidate for

Vice President and for the Presidential nomination; he became

president of the Pullman Company, not because he married any-

body connected with the Pullman Company, but simply because

of his great executive and legal ability, and he retained that posi-

tion through many years. He was an outstanding able man.

In the fall of 1859, however, he went to Harvard University

and attempted to pass the sixteen entrance examinations. It is

probable that the graduates of our day couldn't pass them after

they have gone through college, and therefore it may be with

some excuse that Robert T. Lincoln, at the end of those examina-

tions, found himself to have failed in fifteen out of the sixteen.

His parents sent him over to Phillips-Exeter Academy to be

stuffed for the second examination. He could get two chances at

Harvard then. If you didn't pass the second examination, you

didn't get in; that was all there was to it.

Now, if it was your son, you would be interested, wouldn't

you, even in this day? Mr. Lincoln was interested. He wanted

to go and see what Bob was doing, how the son was getting along,

and he didn't have the money. He hadn't had the money to pay

$250 of a campaign assessment the preceding fall. He was the

leader of the Illinois Bar, and yet he didn't have the money to go

from Springfield, Illinois, to Boston, Massachusetts, to see his son

who was about to pass the most critical examinations in his life.

So he wrote back to this Lyceum and he said to them, "If you

will give me $350, enough to go to Boston and spend some time

with Bob, I will come."

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You cannot imagine sitting here in this day and generation

what a sensation that letter made in Brooklyn. The Reverend

Henry Ward Beecher, who was then probably the greatest lyceum

talent in this country, or Ralph Waldo Emerson, or any men of

that class, would come from Boston or New York to Cleveland

and deliver their address and pay their own expenses for $75,

and here was this funny man from Illinois who wanted $350.

Well, by one of those strange chances of fate, they decided to

give it to him and Mr. Lincoln went to work on the address which

he was to give.

Before that address could be given, though, Ladies and Gen-

tlemen, the plaster fell off of the room in which that Lyceum was

accustomed to meet. I am talking about the little things now

that might happen about your life. And that Lyceum Committee

had to move that address from their hall to some place else and

for some reason, (and reading about it from the man who staged

the performance a few years ago, he frankly says that he does

not now know or did not then know how it all came about) it

came about that this address of Mr. Lincoln's was moved into the

most outstanding speaking hall in the United States or at least in

the East, outside of Congress, namely, the Cooper Union Hall.

That brought it to the attention of the most brilliant people in New

York, and if I remember correctly, William Cullen Bryant was

the presiding chairman over the meeting that night.

Mr. Bryant says somewhere that the most embarrassing ten

minutes he ever spent were the ten minutes at the time in which

he and Mr. Lincoln walked out on that stage and Mr. Lincoln

began to speak. Mr. Lincoln had bought a new suit of clothes

and he had put it in his carpet bag, in Springfield, Illinois, with-

out trying it on; carried it down to New York and took it out of

that carpet bag not to exceed two hours and a half before he was

to go on the stage before that great audience (for those days) of

a thousand or more people.

I spoke on this subject to the Chamber of Commerce in To-

ledo three years ago and when I had finished, one of the leading

men of that city said to me, "Mr. Jones, there is a fine lake cap-

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tain here who heard the Cooper Union speech." He said, "I think

you would be interested to go down and talk with him." And, of

course, I was. Seventy years had gone by. There aren't many

men living who heard the Cooper Union speech, not very many

comparatively who saw or talked with Mr. Lincoln. So Mr. Mc-

Cray of the Toledo Blade and I went down about five o'clock and

we went into a fine residence. In a minute a door opened; in

walked a man who in my judgment was dressed in the best suit

of clothes that I ever saw, Captain Craig, multi-millionaire lake

captain, ninety-six years of age. If I live to be seventy, I hope

I will have somewhat of the figure that he had at ninety-six, for

he was an upstanding man. "Gentlemen," he said, "what can I

do for you ?"

I said, "Captain Craig, I understand that you heard Mr. Lin-

coln at Cooper Union."

"I did, sir."

"Did you intend to go to hear him?"'

"I did not, sir."

"How did you come to hear him ?"

"I was on my way to the ferry to go home to Brooklyn that

night and I passed Cooper Union, which was quite a place in

those days. I saw a lot of people going in. I asked someone

what was going on; the answer was, 'That buffoon, Abe Lincoln

of Illinois, is going to speak.' I thought I had better go in and

see him, I had heard about Lincoln, so I went right in; I sat right

up in front."

"Well, what impression did Mr. Lincoln make on you when

you saw him?" Now, this was a lake captain. If you know any-

thing about the lakes, you know there are a lot of strange things

on the lakes that you see.

This was his answer. "He was the funniest looking human

specimen I ever saw." Then he went on to tell me. When I said

to you Captain Craig had on the best suit that I think I ever saw,

I really meant it. But he said to me that Captain Lincoln had

on that night one of the best suits he ever saw on a man, so the

impression he made wasn't due to the cheapness of the suit. But

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Captain Craig said, "You know, Mr. Lincoln was the funniest

looking thing that ever walked out on a stage. He hadn't had on

that suit and he didn't have it pressed, it didn't fit him anywhere,

the sleeves were about three or four inches too short, the pants

were also much too short." Captain Craig made a gesture with

his hands that I wish I could show to you. He showed by the ges-

ture how Mr. Lincoln's suit didn't fit him anywhere. "And then,

as if to clap the climax to a New York audience, the bright red

flannel underwear stuck down below his trousers."

I said to Captain Craig, "What impression did Mr. Lincoln

make on you when he spoke?"

He said, "After ten or fifteen minutes, the audience forgot

all about this funny man that was standing up there and thought

only of what he was saying. When the speech had come to a

conclusion, more people than I had ever seen on a similar occa-

sion stood around and discussed what was said until the lights

were turned off."

That speech was delivered the 27th of February, 1860. Mr.

Lincoln was nominated for President May 18, 1860. After the

meeting was over, the chairman of that meeting went with Mr.

Lincoln to a horse car, got in. with him, rode four or five blocks

until he came to the place where he was accustomed to stop;

got off, and let Mr. Lincoln proceed to his hotel alone. Mr. Lin-

coln got up the next morning and went to Boston without any-

body in New York caring that he went or being at the station to

bid him goodbye. Can you imagine a thing like that in this day

or generation; for any man who is likely to be nominated for

President of the United States by the convention next June? But

that is what happened to Mr. Lincoln less than three months be-

fore he was nominated.

The Cooper Union Speech ranks next to Webster's reply to

Hayne. Some people think it is even greater, the greatest polit-

ical speech ever delivered on this continent. It put Mr. Lincoln

into the thinking of the people of the East; it made him a presi-

dential possibility. It wouldn't have been delivered if Bob Lin-

coln had passed his entrance examinations to Harvard University,

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Report of the Forty-sixth Annual Meeting    617

 

and Robert T. Lincoln said that he was convinced that if he had

been just a little smarter and had passed those examinations, his

father never would have been President of the United States.

Very well, he still wouldn't have been President of the United

States if it hadn't been for two or three other little things. When

the Republican Convention met at the Wigwam in Chicago on

May 16, 1860, William H. Seward was the outstanding candidate

for the presidential nomination. William H. Seward was one of

the best qualified men for the presidency that the United States

ever produced, one of its greatest men. He ought to have been

nominated under all the rules of the game, in a Republican Con-

vention. In a Democratic Convention where one must have a two-

thirds vote, it is a little different. And he would have been nom-

inated if Horace Greeley hadn't been in that Convention. I say

he would have been; in all human probability, he would have been.

Horace Greeley, next to Abraham Lincoln, was the funniest

man in physical appearance of his day and generation, and one

of the ablest. He probably was the ablest and most influential

editor in this country for a continuous length of time. But Mr.

Greeley was like many others who, having achieved high rank

in some line of activity, think that in order to complete a career,

they must hold some political office. Having held a number of

political offices, I can't quite understand why that is so, but they

do. Greeley didn't say anything to anybody about it, he just ex-

pected that his companions, Mr. Seward and Mr. Tweed, with

whom he ran the Whig politics in New York, would give it to

him. He didn't say anything to them about it, he just expected

to be appointed Collector of the Revenues or Postmaster of New

York, and they not knowing anything about it, didn't appoint him.

I know just how that goes too. About three months after

Governor Cooper was in office, a lady from this city came in and

said to me, "Do you know that Mrs. So and So is very mad

at the Governor?" I said, "No, I don't. Why is she mad?"

"Why, he hasn't given her a job, he hasn't offered her one."

I said, "I can't imagine anybody that needs a job less than

that lady; she has about everything that anybody could want and

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she is just about as busy as she can be in political affairs of a

semi-official nature; what does she want with a job?"

She answered, "I don't know what she wants with it or even

why she wants to be tendered the job, but she is very mad at

Governor Cooper because he hasn't called her in and offered her

one."

That was the way with Horace Greeley and he wrote a let-

ter to Senator Seward which Senator Seward didn't read until

after the Convention of 1860. Mr. Tweed read it and didn't pay

any attention to it, threw it up on a desk.

All of this, when considered together, looks just as if there

was some preconcerted plan. Of course, there wasn't anything

of the kind.

When the Republican Convention met at the Wigwam in

Chicago in May, 1860, it allowed delegates to be seated by proxy

from the states that didn't have a full delegation. If you will

look up the record, you will find that is the only convention of

either of the major parties in the whole hundred years' history

of those conventions in which that was permitted. Mr. Greeley

had been denied a seat on the New York delegation because of

Mr. Seward, but the delegation from the Territory of Oregon,

away out in the Northwest, a territory in which Mr. Greeley never

set foot as long as he lived, lacked two members and the con-

vention was asked to permit outstanding Republicans to be seated

to represent the Territory of Oregon. Mr. Greeley was seated as

one of the two delegates. That gave him the prestige and the

power that a seat on the floor of any convention gives to a man,

a power which he could not possibly have otherwise, no matter

how great he may be.

Now, Mr. Greeley wasn't for Mr. Lincoln. He never was for

Mr. Lincoln. I know that he delivered a great address on Mr.

Lincoln after Mr. Lincoln was dead, but Mr. Greeley wasn't for

Mr. Lincoln that day. He was the biggest thorn in Mr. Lincoln's

flesh during his whole presidency. After Mr. Lincoln was dead

Greeley pronounced him a liar. That was his judgment of Mr.

Lincoln.

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Report of the Forty-sixth Annual Meeting    619

 

He wasn't there to nominate Mr. Lincoln, he wasn't there to

nominate anybody, he was there to defeat William H. Seward

and he was willing to do it with anybody. He went around from

delegation to delegation, lining up their second choice, not for

Abraham Lincoln, but for a man of whom you probably never

heard, Mr. Bates, who was Attorney-General of Missouri and

an infinitely greater man in the minds of most of the people that

May day than Abraham Lincoln. And he found out along about

2 o'clock in the morning--there is where this 2 o'clock expression

really originated--he found out about 2 o'clock in the morning

that he couldn't line up the delegates for Mr. Bates, but that

somehow or other it could be done for this man Lincoln of Illinois

whom he hadn't seen except incidentally.

And so from 2 o'clock in the morning until just before the

Convention was to meet at 10 o'clock, Mr. Greeley waddled from

delegation to delegation to undo that which he had previously

done and to line them up for second choice votes for this man

Lincoln of Illinois. Thus a few minutes before 10 o'clock when

he added up the result, he found that he lacked one and a half

votes of having enough to do that. Then he went to the man

from Mount Vernon, Ohio, and asked him if it became apparent

that Mr. Seward was not to be nominated, as Mr. Greeley the

preceding night at 10 o'clock thought would be the result, if Mr.

Seward were not to be nominated, would Ohio give enough votes

on the ballot that marked the break to nominate Mr. Lincoln. The

Ohio delegation said it would and it did. It gave four votes; a

gentleman that lisped cast them.

If Mr. Greeley had not been in the convention, the delegates

who were scattered between a number of candidates (and Ohio

in accordance with its general rule of having more than one can-

didate for President had three) would have had no one to line

them up for one man against the outstanding candidate. After

two or three votes, Mr. Seward would have been nominated in

all human probability and the convention would have adjourned

and gone home.

Now then, just to conclude this chapter of incidental and

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620       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

accidental things, Mr. Greeley got his chance to do that by one

of the least little things that ever was important in American

political history. If you will read the history of Republican Con-

ventions since that day, you will find that some very incidental

things have determined who was to be the nominee for President

of the United States--a chapter of incidental things that is prob-

ably not paralleled in any other country in the world. The first

of these happened at the close of the second day of that Repub-

lican Convention in 1860.

If you will get a copy of the official minutes of the conven-

tion, you will find that late on the second afternoon, Mr. Good-

rich moved to proceed to ballot for a candidate for the Presi-

dency. A motion to adjourn was made and lost. Amid great

disorder there were cries of "Ballot, Ballot." There was every

indication that the convention was about to make its choice.

Then the President said: "I am requested by the Secretary

to inform the gentlemen of the Convention that the papers neces-

sary for the purpose of keeping the tally are prepared, but are

not yet at hand, but will be in a few minutes."

Murat Halstead, Ohio's great journalist, writing for the Cin-

cinnati Commercial that night, states that a recess for two hours

was asked until the printer could deliver the tally sheets. This

delay was too much for the Convention. Whereas a moment be-

fore it had been insisting on a vote, it now adjourned over night

because a printer fell down on his job. If that printer had been

on time, if those tally sheets had been there, in all human prob-

ability, the outstanding candidate would have been nominated by

that Convention that night and the delegates would have taken

their trains for home and the nominee wouldn't have been Abra-

ham. Lincoln of Illinois, it would have been William H. Seward

in all probability. Because the tally sheets were not ready, Horace

Greeley had all night to line up the divergent delegates for one

man and that man turned out to be Abraham Lincoln.

Let no one go away from here and say that I say that Abra-

ham Lincoln was nominated for President because the tally sheets

weren't ready on time. I am not at all a believer in the theory

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Report of the Forty-sixth Annual Meeting     621

 

of history that limits the causes for great events solely to the

incidental things. If there hadn't been a great background in

Abraham Lincoln, he wouldn't have been nominated in Chicago

even then. But it is unquestionably true that in the political

affairs of the United States, great destinies have been determined

in the final throw of the dice by just such little things as the

failure of that printer to deliver the tally sheets on time, and with

the background as it was and all the other things entering into

it, the great character and the great training of Abraham Lincoln,

he still wouldn't have been President of the United States and

he still wouldn't have had his chance for immortality in all human

probability if it hadn't been possible in that Convention for dele-

gates to be seated by proxy, or if Horace Greeley had been ap-

pointed to the job he wanted some seven or eight years before

and had been on the delegation for Mr. Seward, or if the tally

sheets had been delivered on time.

Just in connection with our own local history, let me call

your attention to the fact that Stephen A. Douglas' law partner

in Cleveland was a man by the name of Andrews, who became

one of the greatest lawyers that Cleveland ever knew, who when

Abraham Lincoln came to Cleveland on his way to be inaugu-

rated as President of the United States was chairman on the

committee which officially welcomed him to the city of Cleveland;

the same man who twenty-nine years before had given Stephen

A. Douglas his opportunity in the city of Cleveland, Ohio.

We honor Mr. Lincoln today in a way that we honor no other

man in the United States. Down in Kentucky, they have taken

the little third rate cabin in which he was born and have encased

it in a marble structure which makes it one of the beautiful

shrines in this country. The state of Indiana proposes to spend

a million and a quarter of dollars to preserve the farm on which

during that cold winter Mr. Lincoln lived in a cabin with an open

side and that part of the farm on which on a cold, bitter, winter

day, Mr. Lincoln and his father buried his mother. Out in Illinois

almost every spot that is associated with Mr. Lincoln's life is

sacredly preserved.

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622       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

Down in the city of Washington, where he was President

and where life came to its end, we have preserved the humble

little house in which he died. There is a great collection of Lin-

coln relics brought together by a man from Ohio, one of the

greatest collections in this country. And then, dominating them

all, down on the Potomac, a grateful people have erected the cost-

liest monument ever erected to the memory of a man by any

people any place in the whole history of the world, comparable

only to the Taj Mahal in India, which was erected to the memory

of a woman. One of our great highways is the Lincoln Highway.

The greatest collection of "lives" is about Abraham Lincoln; in

every story book, in every treatise on the history of the United

States, the name of Abraham Lincoln has its places of eminence

and honor. And yet it might well not have been so if it had not

been for a chapter of incidental things, just the kind of things

that might happen in your life and mine.

I thank you very much. (Applause.)

Chairman Sater: I am sure, my friends, we are all greatly

indebted to Mr. Jones for bringing to us a great deal of informa-

tion about Abraham Lincoln which perhaps very few of us have

heretofore heard. We are under many obligations to Mr. Jones

for this tribute and I suspect, sir, that when we get old and feeble

and our minds go back to the doings of the Ohio State Archaeo-

logical and Historical Society and we try to connect something

with it, a good many of us will say, "Well, it was along back there

about that time Charlie Jones talked to us about Abraham Lin-

coln." (Applause.)

Mr. Randolph Walton spoke briefly on the influence

of the McGuffey Readers, a fine collection of all copy-

righted editions of which is found in the Library of the

Society, the presentation of the McGuffey Society of

Columbus, Ohio.

At 8:00 p. m. a large audience assembled in the chapel

of University Hall and heard Mr. Julius F. Stone in his

address on "Some Aspects of the Maya Civilization in

Central America."

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