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“We Are Lincoln Men:” Abraham Lincoln and His Friends by David Herbert Donald

 

Rating: (Recommended)

 

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Lonely

Even readers who can’t image that anything is left to be said about Abraham Lincoln, given all the fine books written about his life, will enjoy historian David Herbert Donald’s new book, We Are Lincoln Men. While often garrulous, Lincoln had few close friends throughout his life, and when he became President, he brought no close friends to Washington to help him in his work. Donald selects six men whom this distinguished historian and Lincoln scholar considers as the only close friends of the President. Through fine writing and precise analysis of the historical record, Donald makes a clear case for each relationship and the impact of that relationship on Lincoln’s life. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 2, “He Disclosed His Whole Heart to Me; Lincoln and Joshua F. Speed,” pp. 29-34:

The first time Lincoln met Joshua Speed was on April 15, 1837. Admitted to the bar just six weeks earlier, he rented a horse, thrust all his belongings into the saddlebags, and rode into Springfield from New Salem, ready to begin a new phase of his life. Speed later told of their meeting so many times that he could repeat it by rote: Lincoln came into the general store of Bell & Co., on the courthouse square, to price the furnish­ings for a single bed—mattress, sheets, blankets, and pillow. Speed, who was part owner of the store, took out his slate and calculated the cost at $17.00.

 

Lincoln said, “It is probably cheap enough; but . . . I have not the money to pay. But if you will credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then.” He added, in a tone of deep sadness, “If I fail in that I will probably never be able to pay you at all.”

Moved by his visitor’s melancholy Speed suggested a solu­tion: “I have a very large room, and a very large double-bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.”

 

“Where is your room?” Lincoln asked.

 

“Up stairs,” replied Speed, pointing to the stairway that led from the store.

 

Without saying a word, Lincoln picked up his saddlebags, went upstairs, set them on the floor, and came down, his face beaming, and announced: “Well Speed I’m moved.”

 

           This charming story, which Speed recounted over and over again in the years after Lincoln’s assassination, has been re­peated by nearly every Lincoln biographer, and it is essentially correct. But a little background information is needed to explain why a Springfield merchant should offer to share his bed with a total stranger who happened to wander into his store.

 

First, as Speed told his friend Cassius M. Clay his initial conversation with Lincoln was a good deal more extensive.3 As Speed gave the price of the mattress, the blankets, and the other furnishings, Lincoln walked around the store with him, inspecting each item, and making a memorandum of the cost. In the course of their conversation, Lincoln explained that he had recently been admitted to the bar and had come to Springfield to become John Todd Stuart’s partner. He hoped to fit up a small law office and adjacent sleeping room. Indeed, he had already contracted with a local carpenter to build him a single bedstead.

What is more important for understanding the story it was probably true that Lincoln had not met Speed up to this point, but the storekeeper knew perfectly well who Lincoln was and, indeed, had a good deal of information about him. Speed had heard Lincoln speak in a celebrated 1836 debate in Spring­field. He was so effective that George Forquer, a wealthy Springfield resident who had recently left the Whig party to join the Democrats and had been appointed register of the Land Office as a reward, felt it necessary to take Lincoln down, ridiculing him in every way he could. Lincoln, in reply referred to the lightning rod Forquer had just erected over his splendid Springfield house and told the audience: “I would rather die now, than, like the gentleman change my politics, and simulta­neous with the change, receive an office worth three thousand dollars per year, and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house, to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God.” Speed must also have known that Lincoln had served two terms in the Illinois state legislature and was one of the most prominent Whig politicians in the state.

 

Even so, the two young men were not personally acquainted when they first met.

 

           Initially, Speed and Lincoln seemed to be unlikely friends. Lincoln was twenty-eight. Speed, who was born in 1814, was five years younger. Slim and trim, he had, in the days before he began wearing disfiguring whiskers, a handsome face with reg­ular features. The son of a wealthy Kentucky planter, he had been brought up at Farmington, one of the great historic houses of Kentucky just outside Louisville. A member of a large and caring family he revered his father, adored his mother, and was fondly affectionate to his numerous brothers and sisters. Carefully educated at the best private schools in the West, he had attended St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown for a while before he decided to make his own way in the world. After clerking in a large Louisville store for two or three years, he set out in 1835 for Springfield, where he bought a part interest in the general store of Bell & Co. Though far from Kentucky he kept up an affectionate correspondence with his father and mother, writing them regularly and informing them, in his somewhat heavy-handed style, that “nothing gives me more pleasure than a consciousness that I have done nothing to forfeit the love or esteem of my parents.”

 

Lincoln, in contrast, was thin and gaunt, and he was still very rough in dress and appearance. He brought to his friend­ship with Speed no record of distinguished ancestry, no history of education and polish. He had nothing to offer except innate good manners, an eager desire to please, and a sensitivity to the needs of others. Both men were drivingly ambitious—Speed for wealth and comfort, Lincoln for fame.

 

For the next four years, Speed and Lincoln slept in the same bed, above the general store on the town square in Springfield. From time to time, they shared the big room above the store with Billy Herndon, who clerked for Speed, and with Charles Hurst, who also worked in the store. But much of the time, they were alone. The arrangement put Lincoln in closer con­tact with another person than any he had ever experienced.

 

As Lincoln settled in, he charmed Speed and his clerks with his endless fund of anecdotes, and, as the word spread, other unattached men in Springfield—mostly young lawyers and

clerks—began to gather in Speed’s store after hours, clustering around the big stove to listen to Lincoln’s tales and jokes. They met so regularly that Speed called the group “a social club without organization.” Soon the members began presenting their own stories and poems for criticism, and they engaged in informal debates.

 

When the stove grew cold and the other men went home, Speed and Lincoln were left together, to talk endlessly about everything. They discussed books and literature. Lincoln loved Shakespeare and Burns, some of whose poems he could recite from memory, while Speed favored the poetry of Lord Byron. They both had a taste for melancholy—one might say mor­bid—verse and liked to quote William Knox’s “Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud?” At the same time they both had a lively sense of humor. Lincoln in these early years was given to burlesque, and his endless anecdotes always had a point; Speed’s humor tended to be understated. They shared an intense interest in everything going on in Springfield and central Illinois. In 1841, when Speed was out of town, Lincoln sent him a long letter detailing the alleged murder of one Archibald Fisher, who lived in Warren County The case fasci­nated Lincoln—the fuller account that he prepared five years later revealed that Fisher was not murdered after all—and he was so sure that Speed shared all his interests that he minutely described the investigation for his friend.

 

Much of the time, Lincoln and Speed talked politics; they were ardent anti-Jacksonians and supporters of Henry Clay Complaining of the “trained bands” of Democrats, so well organized that they carried election after election, they signed and helped distribute an 1840 campaign circular announcing that the Whig Committee, to which they both belonged, planned “to organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls in the coming presidential contest.” They discussed at length the value of internal improvements— the building of canals and railroads with government funds-­which Whigs generally supported and Democrats opposed. Referring to the governor of New York who was responsible for the completion of the Erie Canal, Lincoln, usually so reticent about his political goals, confided to his friend that “his high­est ambition was to become the De Witt Clinton of Ills.”

 

But mostly they talked about themselves. Analyzing his roommate, Lincoln concluded that he was “naturally of a ner­vous temperament,” which, he judged from Speed’s confi­dences, he probably inherited from his mother.” For his part, Speed noted both the kindness of Lincoln’s heart and his “nervous sensibility” Once he remarked that Lincoln’s mind was “a wonder,” because impressions were easily made upon it and were never erased. “No,” replied Lincoln, “you are mis­taken—I am slow to learn and slow to forget. . . . My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and al­most impossible after you get it there to rub it out.” Summa­rizing their friendship after Lincoln’s death, Speed was sure of their total intimacy: “He disclosed his whole heart to me.”

For each relationship, Donald does a comparably fine job of presenting stories and anecdotes that capture the essence of the relationship. There are three hundred more pages about Lincoln in We Are Lincoln Men, and readers will find these pages helpful in understanding this often lonely figure, with a great sense of humor and a fine knack for storytelling.

Steve Hopkins, April 23, 2004

 

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The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the May 2004 issue of Executive Times

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