Reminiscences of a. Wayfarer Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska, as remembered by the writer, who has spent fifty one years here. Many years alter the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wei lington. in company w i t h a friend, was attending a theatre one night in London. I mined i ately in front of them sat two young army officers, busily en gaged in discussing the details of that world renowned engage ment. The stern old Duke Ms toned attentively to those sprigs of the army, dressed out in full military tig, and critically com menting on the most decisive battle that up to that time had been fought in modern times, till, with some impatience in his manner, he turned to his friend and said: “Pretty soon I shall come to the conclusion I was not there." Similarly, I have thought, when reading the various ac counts of Abraham Lincoln, I have seen since he became the world famous character he now is, that I did not know the man; that it must be some other man of the same name they were writing about and not the llli nois rail splitting lawyer I once knew, who came up by the force of his own genius to tower above the universal group of his age, and who in times subsequent, became president of the United States, conducted the greatest war in history to a successful conclusion, wiped from the es cutcheon of America the foul blot of slavery, was himself murdered, imolated on the altar of feudal hate and thence by the assassin's bullet went up into everlasting history and heaven. That is the man I am going to write about. It is entirely pertinent to the main purpose I have in mind in writing these reminiscences that I tell of the man Lincoln, at whose instance and advice 1 be came a citizen of a western ter ritory and to whom 1 owe a per. sonal debt of gratitude and for whom l have a remembrance different from any i ever had j for any other man. Appended to this paper is a letter I re ceived from Mr. Lincoln in an swer to one l had written him asking for advice in a matter that had for me at the moment, a peculiar interest. 1 was near j ing my term in college and had about made up my mind to se lect the profession of the law as1 my vocation in life. 1 had known i of Mr. Lincoln all my life as lie and my father had been young | men together in the valley of the Sangamon in the early years of the decade of 18110. His name was a kind of household word not only in the family to which! I belonged but among ail the j people round about in the vicin ity of the town he mentioned in bis letter as New Salem. When t I had arrived at the notion ofj making a lawyer of myself 1 ad- j dressed him for two reasons,; lir>t, because he was easily the head of a bar as brilliant as any J in the United States in t h e i middle of the last century; sec-1 ond, because of his friendship and association with my father and with the people among whom I was born. The letter will explain itself and will go far to show of what stuff its author was made and the great kindness of heart that charac terized every act of his life. He was a distinctively great law yer, high up in the favor of the whole state, busy with great af fairs in his profession and yet he took time to write a letter to a mere boy in which he not only gives fatherly advice, but to il lustrate his meaning, recites a part of his own obscure history and the circumstances under which he prepared himself for the same profession. Running all through that letter there is a vein of considerate kindness characteristic <>l the maynificent man who was writiny it. (treat in his profession, distinctive in the estimation of'men. busy with yrcat affairs he yet re a c lied down his hand from ids lofty place in the bar to one of the lowly who was seekiny to travel the same professional road that lie had traveled to yive him i kindly assistance and bid him a hearty yod speed. I was born in the neiyhbor hood in which he commenced 1 his career as a lawyer, and in the same year he beyan tin practice at Sprinyfield where he afterwards passed the whole of his professional life, If is said in a recent publication that has come under my observation, that he did not wake tip to lind himself famous as a lawyer, or words of that import. It is not at all clear what the writer of wonderful man above all its other household tfods, and why, on this, the one hundredth anni versary of bis birth, it stands at attention to do him honor. I had peculiar and abundant opportunities for observing and studying him, and his methods of dointf thint's,but 1 doubt that any of his contemporaries or anybody else ever knew what lie would do next. None of them ever knew just how to take him, or what to expect from him. In the trial of a case he rarely ever made an objec tion to questions put to a wit ness by his opponent. On one occasion lie was asked in my presence why he had allowed certain questions to be asked and answered by a witness. “Well" said he, "it uas not very | important and tin* witness knew a fact or two that 1 wanted, and could not very well ”et by mak- I in” him my witness, and l con- ' eluded that by lettiny the other side have full and unobstructed latitude they would probably throw a door open for me to yo after the fact on cross examina tion, and they did.” Me ”ave another reason for fort and always as something of course, as the right thing in the right place, and at the right time It is said lie was a homely man, that is, not good looking or very graceful in his move ments and action. It might strike some people that way,but I atn bound to say it did not so strike me. He was tall and a little awkward, but let him get warmed up before a jury or a crowd and he became as grace ful in appearance as anybody, i In his quiet moments he had a sad expression of countenance, ; and there was an indefinable suggestion in his general ap pearance that lie had become | old before his time. The boy never entirely dies out of the man, nor the girl out of the wo man but there was nothing J about Mr. Lincoln to impress one with the fact that he had ever been young. Nevertheless he could make more fun than j anybody, and woe unto the op ponent who by any chance be came the subject of his wit. ft was not rasping or biting, nor was it exactly ridicule, but it was sure to subject its object to ways the same,and like himself, looked like it had been old fora long time. It made him appear very much taller than he really was, but was essentially a part of that incomprehensible entity called Lincoln. He knew the people better than anybody, their inodes of thought and their general lia bility to be misled by high sounding phrase and misty statements He had the rare faculty of illustrating a great principle by things within the ordinary experiences of men and by parallels drawn from the commonest affairs of life. Let me give an instance. As is well known, there hasal ways been a conflict between the followers of Jefferson and those of Hamilton in what was called their theories concerning the na ture and powers of the govern ment of this country. Jefferson was partial to a diffusive govern ment while it is certain Hamil ton was in favor of a strong central government. The con flict between those two schools has been steadily maintained since the inception of the gov ernment itself. I heard Mr. > ■ ■■ * • .yh-uC 2- /y.rjr l <■■ y r 7 oX>-' A* f w O'<* a* «/•*.» O *■*, ■ X.. * i?. 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X * »■'/■’ 7 /*X ^ /x ' X L 4. ’ (....s /*■■,*..„, .^/ ; > '-, ./ X . * Xy' / < 'v 4' Fac simile of Letter of Advice written by Abraham Lincoln to Isharn Reavis in I855 now published for the first time that twaddle meant, or what idea he intended to convey. No man ever awoke from the sleep of obscurity and found himself famous, unless he had previous ly done something to make him so. The great Englishman who was responsible for this notion of awaking to find himself fam ous, had previously written the epic of “Cldlde Harold", which, when published, made the name of Byron an unforgetable one for all time. But this is certain, and makes plain 1 think, much that is puzz ling and difficult of understand ing in the life and history of Abraham Lincoln, namely, that when the great God evoked him from the imperceptible a n d placed him upon this earth, there appeared the most corn pletely original man the world has had for a thousand years. It was Carlyle, 1 believe, who said, the world loves its original men, and that is the reason, per haps, -why the world cherishes the memory of this strangely allowing irrelevant and imma terial questions to be asked, es peciallv when the answers were not likely to prejudice the rights of his client. It was this: that constant or frequent objections were likely to create a prejudice , in the minds of jurors, leading them to think that the objector was trying to hide something from them, and whether the jurors knew it or not, that sus picion might at a critical stage of their deliberations, militate ; against the interest of that side As an advocate I don’t think | he had an equal anywhere. He | was all powerful with a jury, | and only he knew, if the fact ! was known at all, why that was so. That he could sway men almost as lie pleased was owing to the fact that he was a com plete master of the human pas sions, instinctively knowing all the springs of action common to men, and was able to call them into play whenever it suited his purpose to do so. And all that, was done without apparent ef a good deal of unpalatable mer riment. Mr. Lincoln was not careful or particular about his clothes, nor whether they conformed to the latest fashion, but while they appeared, without over taxing the imagination, to have been made for somebody else, they were still about as good, generally speaking, as thextog gery of his associates. There was nothing of the “dude'about him, nor was there the slightest indication in his peculiarity of dress, that it was the effect of affectation or design to attract attention. It was always the same, very new or all showing service in about the same de gree, differing from that related of R. Wilfer, whom his great biographer said, had but one ambition in life, and that was to have an entirely new suit of clothes throughout at one and the same time from boots tv) hat, but had never been able to achieve it. He wore a very tall hat, al Lincoln in a veryCterse way il lustrate the difference between these two theories. He said that Hamilton believed it was necessary to have a head as well as a tail t o anything. While the theory of .Jefferson was all tail and no head. Ham ilton believed in a government resulting from a union of the states and that said resultant government was supreme and formed the head while the states formed the office of tail, so to speak. Jefferson believed that ultimate government belonged to the states, and thereby pro viding a multitude of tails and no head. It was a crude and homely i way of putting the case, but it was the whole case in a1 nut shell. The dullest mind, could comprehend it easily when put in that way, and might not if put in any other way. The idea conveyed was that without a head the government would be a mere rope of sand to fall to pieces of its own weight in case of extreme emergency. There came a day when tlies * two theories were put to th test and the homely man who was then talking, of all the mi! lions in the great republic, ha*1 been, in the providence of (foci selected t o determine upon which,the nation could be saved He selected the one his great good common sense told bin was the true one, that of Ale.' under Hamilton, and all the world now knows with wlia' wisdom he made the selection He would have done that i Hamilton had never said an\ thing on the subject, for lie was greater than Hamilton, greatt than Jefferson (it is doubtfv whether the latter ever had a idea of popular government tha he did not borrow from th French publicist Rousseau) greater than them all, in this that he was more completel representative of the people and in the people in their aggre gate capacity, resides all the wisdom and all the strength v any nation. In great crises when life or death Js involved in the issue in the case of persons or na tions, little attention is paid to anything but the mean necessary to efficient self-dt fense. Constitutional limit ations and current statute law have little to do with the fighting of a battle, it is nearer the truth to say they have not) ing to do with it. There came a day in the lit* of Mr. Lincoln when he w; > charged with violating the con stitution by employing the wa power of the government to pur. down armed resistance to its lawful authority. They said to him, you canine coerce a sovereign state. VVelL said he, (in effect) 1 am not trv ing to coerce a state or states, i am only trying to wrest the arms from the hands of its, or their rebellious citizens and make them obey the lawT. It is' a contradiction of terms to as sunie that the states can do anything dissociated from then citizens. You people, said he would use] the constitution t > justify your attempt to destroy the Union,as though it was pei fectly constitutional to do that but you say it is unconstitutioi al for me to use it to preserv ■ the Union. If you were right about this, the sooner wre are rid of such a constitution th • better, but you are not. Every word you say to that effect is . libel and gross slander on tha great instrument, for in every line of it I see ample justifies tion for employing force to saw the Union against force err ployed to destroy it. riiis is something of a digres sion, but it is done to illustrate tlie fact that in all the position s in life that destiny, or duty, 01 what not, placed him, his great good judgment,based on admir able common sense (he called i horse sense), was at all times his mighty weapon of offence oi defence as circumstances re quired. But it’was my original inten tion to speak of him as I knew him, that is, as a hoy knows a man, before inexorable destiny took him up and placed his name among the stars. My acquaintance with him covered the three years I was reading law. I did not read in his office for reasons given in his letter hereto attached, but that did not prevent me having the benefit of his advice and counsel, and to have before me the constant object lesson af forded me by witnessing his con duct of many cases in the courts Let me give an illustration ot his advice to me. He was de fending in the Armstrong mur der case, and I observed in se lecting the jury, his peremptor\ challenges were not directed U individual jurors as being per sonally objectionable, but to a class of persons. He was fre Contiuued on Next Page.