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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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