Flashlights of Abraham Lincoln

Flashlights of Abraham Lincoln
by Julia Mygatt Powell
1921

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This a short sketch telling the story of slavery in America beginning with the American Revolution, and, naturally, termiinating with the end of the American Civil War. Its a story of the Abolisionist movement, and the ever widening philosophical gap between the North, and the South, and the several compromises that served to delay the inevitable split. And, mostly, it is the story of Abraham Lincoln's roll in bringing slavery to an end.

This is a short work, consisting of about 102 pages of text.

The following is an excerpt from the first two sections of the book:

ONE day in the year 1855, there stood at the entrance to the Burnett House in Cincinnati, that old hostelry which was lately burned (190), a long, lean, gaunt, sad-eyed man of about forty-five.

His clothes were ill fitting and he wore heavy boots.

He was in that city as one of the counsel for the defendants in a case of patent infringements upon reaping machines.

As this rather inelegant looking man, with all his native picturesqueness stood there, other counsel also employed in the defense came near ; they looked the Hoosier over, passed him by without speaking, as unworthy of notice, and walked into the hotel. It would never do to have a man like that associated with them on this important case.
What man was this, who, unresentful of his treatment, stayed through the trial of this case, and silently watched its progress? It was said afterward that the judge was as much influenced by his unspoken, but expressive sympathy and the play of his features, while he paced back and forth during the progress of the case, as by the argument of the other counsel, who ignored him.

And who was this man ? It was the same man who the following year, standing on the edge of the platform at Bloomington, Ill., held his audience spellbound, as, leaning forward on his toes, hands on his hips, his eyes flashing, his whole face
illumined with the divine fire of truth, proclaimed the fact that SLAVERY WAS WRONG, and to his audience, pressing forward, pale and breathless, to catch his
every word, he seemed like a giant inspired as he shouted. "WE WON'T GO OUT OF THE UNION AND YOU SHAN'T!" And then, as though to pour oil upon the troubled waters, he suggested ballots instead of bullets.

"At that moment," said Judge Scott, one of his hearers, "he was the handsomest man I ever saw."

And still five years later, in 1860, when the committee from the great Chicago Convention, amongst whom were William M. Evarts and Carl Schurz, called at his unpretentious home in Springfield. Ill., to notify him of his nomination to the Presidency of the United States, they eyed their candidate with many misgivings — "his great height, his huge hands and feet, his lankness, his shoulders drooping as though he were irresolute. His smooth shaven face seemed like bronze : cheeks sunken, cheek bones high, nose large, the under lip protruding a little, eyes cast down.
But when he lifted his head to reply, the men were thrilled by the change. He became erect, the eyes beamed with fire and intelligence. Strong, dignified, he seemed transformed.

'Why, sir, they told me he was a rough diamond.' said one. 'Nothing could have been in better taste than his speech.'

'We might have done a more daring thing, but we could not have done a better thing,' they said afterward."

Let us throw a flashlight backward over this man's pathway.

We see him twenty-nine years before this, entering New Salem. Ill., just twenty-one. and penniless, begging for work, which he readily found. He had not even good clothes, but he had great strength and he was a good fellow. He was six feet, four inches tall. He could outrun any young man in the country' 'round, and lift as much as three ordinary men. Then his wit, his stories, his good and kindly nature, which had always won him friends, made friends at once for him now. This was in 1831. The next year, he was a candidate for the State Legislature. He was defeated, but won out of 300 votes in his own district. In two years he was again a candidate, and this time, elected.
The people looked upon him as a prodigy". Why ? Was it his strength, his great height, his wit. his stories? These all helped, but there was something back of all these. There was the power of CHARACTER and of KNOWLEDGE. And whence came at this early age this power? During these twenty-one years, what had he read — what had he learned?

Many a college bred man might well look with envy upon this ragged youth as he walked into New Salem to make his own way.
The books he had conned were The Life of Washington. Aesop's Fables,

Pilgrim's Progress, the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, which he knew by heart. And last, but by no means least, the Bible.

T.G. Holland has well said. "ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S POVERTY OF BOOKS
WAS THE WEALTH OF HIS LIFE.

The few he had. did much to perfect the teaching which his mother had begun, and to form a character, which for quaint simplicity', earnestness, truthfulness and purity has never been surpassed among the historic personages of the world.
Lincoln's lack of books threw him upon his own resources."

"By books may Learning sometimes befall. But Wisdom never by books at all." A testimonial to this early influence was given by Lincoln himself, when in a speech at Trenton, N. J., on his way to assume his duties as President, he said, "Away back in my childhood, I got hold of a small book called Weem's Life of Washington. I remember all the accounts there given of the battlefields and struggles for the liberties of this country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton. The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves in my memory more than any Revolutionary event. I recall thinking then, boy though I was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that thing which they struggled for, that something even more than National independence, that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world for all time to come; I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution and the liberties of the people, shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made.'