Lincoln: A Photobiography (5 page)

Fifteen months passed before friends arranged a secret meeting between Lincoln and Mary. When they saw each other again, they knew that they wanted to resume their courtship. On November 4, 1842, they told Elizabeth and Ninian that they intended to be married.

The wedding took place that evening in the Edwards parlor before a few close friends. Afterwards, the newlyweds climbed into a carriage and rode off through the rain to their first home—a furnished room in the Globe Tavern, where they paid four dollars a month for board and lodging. It was the best Lincoln could afford. A few days later he wrote to a friend: "Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder."

As was the custom in those proper Victorian days, Lincoln called his bride Mary, while she addressed him as Mr. Lincoln. But this soon changed to Mother and Father. Their first child, named Robert Todd after Mary's father, was born at the Globe Tavern nine months after their wedding. A few months later, with financial help from Mary's father, the Lincolns bought a comfortable house where they would live for the next seventeen years. Three more sons were born in that house—Eddie in 1846, Willie in 1850, and Thomas or Tad in 1853.

Lincoln's career flourished. After working as a junior partner with John Todd Stuart and later with Stephen T. Logan, he opened

Marriage license of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd, dated November 4, 1842. They were married that evening.

Above:
Purchased for fifteen hundred dollars, this house at Eighth and fackson streets in Springfield was the only home that Lincoln ever owned. In this 1860 photograph, Lincoln and his son Willie are standing on the terrace, just inside the picket fence.
Below:
The sitting room in Lincoln's home, as sketched for
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
in 1860.

his own law office. He invited talkative young William Herndon to join him as junior partner. Soon he was able to pay off the last of his New Salem debts. Meanwhile, he had his eye on a seat in Congress. In 1846, Lincoln won his party's nomination, and after a spirited campaign, he was elected by a large majority to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The following year he was off to Washington with Mary, four-year-old Robert, and the baby Eddie. They moved into a boardinghouse on Capitol Hill that catered to Whig politicians. But Mary found that she was bored and unhappy in Washington. After three months, she packed up and left with the boys to spend the rest of Lincoln's term with her family in Kentucky. "I hate to stay in this old room by myself," Lincoln wrote to her. "What did [Robert] and Eddie think of the little letters Father sent them? Don't let the blessed fellows forget father."

The major issues during Lincoln's term in Congress were the spread of slavery beyond the South, and the war between the United States and Mexico, which had broken out in 1846. By the time Lincoln took his seat in Congress, American troops had occupied Mexico City The Mexican government was about to sign a peace treaty giving up more than two-fifths of its territory—including the present states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado.

Many Whigs had opposed the Mexican War. They accused President fames Polk's Democratic administration of starting the conflict on purpose, in order to seize Mexican territory. Some Whigs charged that the war was a plot by Southern Democrats to grab vast new areas for the expansion of slavery.

Lincoln had criticized the war from the beginning. Soon after taking his seat in Congress, he introduced a series of resolutions attacking the Democrats' war policy, calling the war "immoral and unnecessary." Back home in Illinois, his antiwar stand did not go down well. Democratic newspapers ridiculed his "silly and imbecile" position, accusing him of a "treasonable assault" on the president. Illinois had wholeheartedly supported the war, and Lincoln's outspoken opposition almost wrecked his political career.

On the issue of slavery, his record was mixed. He supported a bill to prohibit slavery in any of the lands taken from Mexico. And he proposed a bill of his own to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but when the measure drew fire from both Whigs and Democrats, he dropped it. Aside from that, Lincoln took no active part in the growing antislavery movement in Congress.

His two-year term was a disappointment. When he returned home to Springfield, he was disappointed again. Lincoln had worked hard for the Whig party and its candidate Zachary Taylor, who was elected president in 1848. Afterward, he hoped to be rewarded with a government post as commissioner of the General Land Office. But the job went to someone else. With his political fortunes at a low ebb, Lincoln returned to full-time practice of the law.

Then he faced a personal tragedy. His boy Eddie, not yet four, fell gravely ill. After lingering for two months, the child died on February 1, 1850. Mary collapsed in shock. Robert, who was then six, would remember his mother's uncontrolled sobbing, the dark circles under his father's eyes, the house draped in black. Mary shut herself in her room and stayed there for weeks. Lincoln buried himself in his work.

Lincoln was now in his forties. He would usually walk the few blocks from his house to his law office in downtown Springfield, stopping along the way to greet friends and chat in his distinctive high-pitched voice. He walked with a slight stoop, head bent forward, stepping along firmly like a man following a plow.

The office of Lincoln & Herndon occupied two cluttered and unswept rooms on the second floor of a brick building across from the state capitol. Neither man was much for neatness, and people said that orange seeds sprouted in dusty office corners. Lincoln's favorite filing place for letters and papers was the lining of his high silk hat. When he was finished with documents, he stashed them away in mysterious places. After his death, Herndon found a bundle of papers marked: "When you can't find it anywhere else, look here."

When visitors called, Lincoln usually greeted them with one of his jokes or anecdotes. One morning a friend heard him tell the same story to three different callers, "and every time he laughed as heartily and enjoyed it as much as if it were a new story."

From their disorderly office, littered with letters, documents, journals, and books, Lincoln and Herndon handled more than a hundred cases a year. Lincoln became one of the most sought-after attorneys in the state. He took on all sorts of cases, ranging from disputes over runaway pigs to murder. And he represented all kinds of clients, from powerful corporations to penniless widows.

When he agreed to take on a client, he mastered every detail of the case before going to court. Once, during a lawsuit over patent rights, Lincoln wanted to show a jury the differences among various makes of mechanical reapers. Models of several reapers were brought into the courtroom. As he explained how each machine worked, he knelt down in order to point out the moving parts. Fascinated by his technical knowledge, the jurors left their seats, came over, and got down on their knees beside him.

Lincoln was at his best when addressing a jury. His speeches were seasoned with wit and humor, and he could boil down the most complex issue to its simplest terms. Lincoln was shrewd, but he also had his superstitions. When selecting a jury, he would favor fat men (because they were jolly and easily swayed, he believed) and reject men with high foreheads (because they had already made up their minds).

William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner from 1844 to 1865.

In his most famous murder trial, Lincoln defended Duff Armstrong, the son of his old New Salem chum, Jack Armstrong. Duff and another man had been charged with attacking James Metzger during a drunken brawl. Metzger died three days later. The prosecution's star witness, Charles Allen, testified that he had seen Duff strike Metzger on the head with a slingshot. He had seen everything clearly, Allen testified, because a full moon was shining directly overhead.

When Lincoln rose to cross-examine the witness, he hooked his thumbs under his suspender straps and asked Allen to repeat his story. Now, was Allen sure about the moon being overhead? Allen was sure. Lincoln nodded and stroked his chin. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a copy of the 1857 almanac, flipped through the pages, and read aloud to the jury. At the time of the brawl, the moon wasn't directly overhead. It was low in the sky, about an hour away from setting. The jury quickly found Duff Armstrong not guilty.

Lincoln spent much of his time traveling through the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which sprawled across fourteen Illinois counties. Every spring, and again in the fall, the presiding judge left his Springfield headquarters to make a swing around the circuit, holding court for a few days in each county seat. Lincoln and other Springfield lawyers went along to try cases in remote prairie courthouses.

For six months a year, Lincoln rode from town to town along empty trails in an old horse-drawn rig, his legal papers and a change of clothing in his carpetbag. Lodging was primitive. Lawyers slept two to a bed, with three or four beds to a room in crude country inns. Criminals and judges often ate at the same table. Sometimes, Lincoln had just a few minutes to confer with a client before going to trial.

But he didn't mind the hardships. Life on the circuit offered a chance to meet all sorts of people, to sit by a roaring tavern fire in the evening, swapping stories and rehashing the day in court. And the long days of travel across the silent prairie gave him time to be alone with his thoughts, away from family interruptions. Out on the circuit he seemed "as happy as
he
could be," said a friend, "and happy no other place."

He was earning a substantial income now, but his rural habits stayed with him. Neighbors would remember Lincoln milking the
family cow in the carriage shed before breakfast, grooming his horse in the backyard, chopping firewood by moonlight. On quiet family evenings he loved to sprawl on the parlor floor, reading his newspapers or roughhousing with Willie and Tad and their yellow dog, Fido.