Page images
PDF
EPUB

sell his leather until it was perfectly dry. He became a wool merchant, but lost what little money he had earned. He selected land in northern New York, cut down the trees, built a cabin; but when emigrants were called for to make Kansas a Free State, he started for that Territory with several of his sons. He did not believe slavery would ever be abolished by telling the slave-holders it was a sin. He thought the only way to get rid of it was by making slave property insecure. Of the heroic deeds mentioned in the Bible, he was deeply impressed by what Gideon accomplished. He came to believe that he, also, was to be an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to give freedom to the slaves. He laid a plan to seize with a handful of men the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He thought the slaves every where would everywhere flock to him. There was no sanity in his plan. His few friends in whom he confided tried to dissuade him from such an attempt, but he

[graphic][merged small]

felt that he was called of God to execute it. He rented a farm on a mountain in Maryland, near Harper's Ferry, obtained guns which had been used by the Free State men in Kansas, and employed a blacksmith to make pikes.

1859.

With seventeen white men and five negroes he marched in the night to Harper's Ferry, seized the arsenal, captured Colonel Lewis Washington, and liberated his slaves. He stopped a railroad train, but Oct. 16, after a little while allowed it to go on. Two of the citizens mortally wounded one of Brown's sons. Brown's soldiers returned the fire and killed one citizen. The telegraph flashed the news far and wide. In Charleston the church-bells were ringing, drums beating, and 400 men hastening with shot-guns and rifles towards Harper's Ferry. The story of John Brown in the engine-house; its defence; the arrival of Robert E. Lee with United States marines from Washington and two cannon; the capture of John Brown; his mockery of a trial and execution, is a part of the history of the country.

Wendell Phillips, orator, from Boston, looking down into the open coffin and the face of John Brown, calm and peaceful in death, at his funeral in North Elbe, N. Y., said, "He has abolished slavery." James Russell Lowell, poet, wrote of him:

"Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne :
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.”

The curiosity of the people of New York and Boston in regard to the hitherto unknown man who had proved himself a match for Douglas was so great that he received an invitation to give a lecture in those cities.

The great hall of the Cooper Institute in New York was filled. William Cullen Bryant, poet and editor, presided. "Since the day of Clay and Webster no man has spoken to a larger assemblage of the intellect and mental culture of our city," wrote Horace Greeley, the editor of the "Tribune," when the lecture was over. "Mr. Lincoln is one of Nature's orators, using his rare powers solely to elucidate and convince, though the irresistible effect is to delight and electrify as well. . . . The hall frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause, which were prolonged and intensified at the close. No man

ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience." (*)

One of Mr. Lincoln's personal friends, Elihu B. Washburne, (') member of Congress from Galena, Ill., was in New York, and on Sunday they made their way together to the Five Points Mission Sunday-school,

which had been established in the most degraded section of the city. Many of the children were in rags. Rev. Mr. Pease, the superintendent, kindly welcomed them, and in response to his invitation Mr. Lincoln addressed the children.

[graphic]

Mr. Lincoln repeated his address at New Haven, Conn. A professor of rhetoric in Yale College listened in astonishment. Never before had he heard such plain, direct, clear, and comprehensive language words so simple that a child could understand what he was saying. Mr. Lincoln was to speak at Meriden, and the professor hastened to that town to hear him once more. He returned to the college and gave a lecture to his class upon the marvellous rhetoric of this man from the West who never had had the advantages of an education.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

From Meriden Mr. Lincoln went to Hartford and Norwich. The largest hall in Norwich was filled with people who desired to hear him.

"It gives me pleasure," the words of Mayor A. W. Prentice, who presided, "to introduce a gentleman with whom you are already acquainted, and whom you hope to see presiding in the Senate over Stephen Arnold Douglas as Vice-president of the United States." The mayor was anticipating that William H. Seward would be the Republican candidate for President, and Mr. Lincoln for Vice-president.

Rev. John Putnam Gulliver, one of the ministers of Norwich, listened in amazement to what Mr. Lincoln had to say. He had heard many eloquent men, but none that used such plain words with so much power. Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Gulliver, and the mayor met at the railroad station in the morning; the mayor introduced the minister.

"I have seen you before," Mr. Lincoln remarked.

"I think not. You must mistake me for some other person." "No; I saw you last evening in the town-hall."

"Is it possible that you could have observed individuals so closely in such an audience?"

"Oh yes; that is my way. I do not forget faces. Were you not

there?"

"I was, and I was well paid for going. I consider it one of the most extraordinary speeches I ever heard."

[graphic][merged small]

"Will you take a seat with me?" the kind invitation of Mr. Lincoln as they entered the car. "Were you sincere in what you said about my speech?"

"I mean every word of it. I learned more of the art of public speaking last evening than I could from a whole course of lectures on rhetoric."

"That is extraordinary. I am informed that one of the professors at Yale College followed me to Meriden to hear me a second time, and has been lecturing about my speech. I should like to know what there is about what I say that has made you and the professor think it any way remarkable."

"It is the clearness of your statements, your unanswerable style of reasoning, and your illustrations, which are romance, pathos, and fun welded together."

"I am much obliged to you. I have been wishing for a long time to have some one make an analysis for me. It throws light on a subject which has been dark to me."

"May I ask how you acquired your unusual power of putting things? It must have been a matter of education. No man has it by nature alone. What has been your education?"

"Well, as to education, I never went to school more than six months in my life. When I was a child I used to get irritated if anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I don't think I got angry at other things, but that disturbed my temper. I remember when the neighbors came in and talked to my father in the evening, I tried to understand what they were talking about. When I got hold of an idea I put it into my own language. It has become a kind of passion with me has stuck to me. I am not easy now when I am handling a thought till I have bounded it north, south, east, and west. Perhaps that accounts for the characteristic you spoke of, though I never put the two things together before."

"Did you not have a law education?"

"Oh yes! I'read law,' as the phrase is; that is, I became a lawyer's clerk in Springfield, and copied tedious documents, and picked up what I could of law in the intervals of other work. But your question reminds me of a bit of education I had which I am bound in honesty to mention. In the course of my law-reading I constantly came upon the word 'demonstrate.' I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon became satisfied I did not. I said to myself, 'What do I do when I demonstrate more than when I reason or prove? How does

« PreviousContinue »